00:00:52 ◼ ► And I feel very refreshed from my vacation, even though I only arrived home yesterday afternoon.
00:01:04 ◼ ► I can feel I'm getting a little bit like airheaded, you know, like my body's not really sure where it is right now.
00:01:19 ◼ ► And his question comes from Michael who wants to know, do you keep expired passes in your wallet app?
00:01:33 ◼ ► And the one that I treasure the most is I have my ticket from game five of the 2014 world series.
00:01:48 ◼ ► And I don't, I, my ticket was an electronic ticket, so I don't have a souvenir of going to that world series game.
00:01:58 ◼ ► I took a screenshot of it because I kept being concerned that Apple will destroy it at some point, but instead Apple created a whole sort of like expired archive that you can.
00:02:30 ◼ ► I like that they let you do that and not, don't just coldly, uh, destroy all older passes after a while.
00:03:03 ◼ ► It was, it was like the whole thing shakes and the thing gets put through the shredder.
00:03:11 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a question of your own to help us start and open a future episode of Upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in a Snill Talk question.
00:03:24 ◼ ► I would like to remind our listeners that we currently have a special deal running for Upgrade Plus.
00:03:35 ◼ ► If you use the code holidays2024 at checkout, when you go to getupgradeplus.com, this is actually available for this show and many other shows here in Relay FM that have membership content.
00:03:46 ◼ ► You can go to giverelay.com to find out more, but this gives you 20% off an annual plan.
00:03:51 ◼ ► So if you want to hear our longer ad free episodes of the show each and every week with tons of bonus content, you can go to getupgradeplus.com.
00:04:00 ◼ ► Use the code holidays2024 at checkout and you can get 20% off an annual plan, but this could also be if you want to gift it to somebody in your life, you can do that.
00:04:21 ◼ ► But the main thing that you should be thinking about as a listener of this show is longer ad free versions each and every week.
00:04:40 ◼ ► So this is actually kind of fun for me because like I said, I posted about this on Mastodon.
00:04:45 ◼ ► When I'm on vacation, I like that I get to be a listener of the shows that I'm usually on.
00:04:59 ◼ ► And so I like it when I get to listen to those shows and I don't know what's going to happen to them.
00:05:11 ◼ ► I took a bunch of spatial video clips on my vacation, which is not really a thing that I would do.
00:05:18 ◼ ► And it wasn't like, I liked what you said about like, if it's an important moment, maybe you don't want to do that because the video quality isn't as good.
00:05:25 ◼ ► Like it's really noticeable now when you see an SDR video on an iPhone, like it looks wrong.
00:05:33 ◼ ► But I thought I would tell, what I was doing is in moments that I was enjoying myself, you know, was at Disneyland.
00:05:39 ◼ ► I took a bunch of video clips at Disneyland because I thought that they might be pretty interesting for a lot of things going on, right?
00:05:49 ◼ ► But also like I was looking for what could be good memories and like, and these would be like quite evocative of good memories.
00:06:04 ◼ ► Like there is something in me that's like, I think that these clips will just make me feel sad more than anything.
00:06:19 ◼ ► I Apple keeps talking about how it evokes emotion and it feels like a memory and those can be good and those can be bad.
00:06:31 ◼ ► But, um, like I said, I think to James last week, ultimately what you really, the goal is that it should be full quality, right?
00:06:48 ◼ ► Um, but it is, you know, I wouldn't start shooting everything in there, but I like the idea.
00:06:54 ◼ ► And this is what I've been trying to do too, is I like the idea of capturing a few things that feel like one it's, it's a memory that I might want to keep.
00:07:10 ◼ ► Like the idea that you've got stuff in the foreground and stuff in the background and kind of the composition of the shot is going to make it more evocative.
00:07:16 ◼ ► Because as you know, the analysis of the video shows, if, if everything's in the distance or, you know, it, you lose the 3d effect and then all you're getting is a low quality video.
00:07:27 ◼ ► Because like, what I was thinking about for this trip specifically was not necessarily moments, but environments.
00:07:37 ◼ ► So like one of my favorite places at Disneyland is the, uh, like the, with my, one of my favorite places to eat is like the Hank Pym restaurant lab.
00:07:49 ◼ ► Cause they do such great food, but also you're in the Avengers world and the Avengers themed music is playing.
00:07:58 ◼ ► And so there's one moment I just took a video clip of me with one of the huge, like just me sitting on a table.
00:08:08 ◼ ► And the Avengers theme was playing and Spiderman was walking by and it was like, I feel like if I want to live that moment again, could be very interesting because I enjoy being in that environment.
00:08:21 ◼ ► But I do wonder like if it provides something which feels like the environment, is it not just going to make me sad that I'm not actually there?
00:08:28 ◼ ► Like, I, this is one, I don't know what it's going to feel like, but I tried to take like.
00:08:33 ◼ ► Video clips of things that made me feel good in the moment and I'm going to see how they make me feel sometime next year when I look at them on a headset.
00:08:51 ◼ ► No, the only, my best idea, I don't know if I mentioned this last week or not, but my best idea was what if for the 40th anniversary of the Mac, they do the new iPad pro that has a, that has the Mac OS mode.
00:09:14 ◼ ► Like they had like a website and it had, they created like a font that people could download that had all of the Macs in it that you could like use it as like a text font.
00:09:30 ◼ ► Which is what I said to James is the 20th anniversary Mac was for Apple's 20th, not the Mac's 20th.
00:09:57 ◼ ► Maybe we'll do a special episode of upgrade where like we get Steven Hackett on and we pick, we draft 40 Macs for 40th anniversary.
00:10:44 ◼ ► I didn't want to record anything, but there was, cause I remember also we were sitting in a hotel room and you and Steven were furiously working on something because there was some kind of a anniversary.
00:10:58 ◼ ► Oh, it's Mac OS X became as old as classic Mac OS when it was, uh, replaced that happened to that month.
00:11:10 ◼ ► There was something going on that week and everyone was working and I didn't want to work, but all of this is to say, I don't think Apple's going to do anything product related for the 40th anniversary Mac.
00:11:30 ◼ ► Apple has announced a partnership of us company Amcor to package its Apple Silicon chips that will be produced in TSMC's Arizona plant.
00:11:42 ◼ ► They're based in Arizona and they're opening a new facility to package the chips that were coming from TSMC.
00:11:47 ◼ ► My understanding is that the original plan was going to be that TSMC, any chips that were fabbed at the TSMC fab were going to be sent to Taiwan for packaging.
00:11:59 ◼ ► I remember Ben Thompson talking about this, that like, this is one of the ridiculous things about the TSMC fab is they didn't have the facilities.
00:12:09 ◼ ► I did some reading today to understand what packaging a chip actually meant because until now I genuinely thought it just meant putting it inside of a plastic box.
00:12:26 ◼ ► And so the packaging facilities will put it inside of something and maybe along with some other chips that aren't necessarily on that chip itself to be installed into a device.
00:12:49 ◼ ► And so Apple are going to be, from the chips that are made in Arizona, they will now stay in Arizona, which is definitely beneficial to shipping them all the way across the globe to be repackaged up again.
00:13:07 ◼ ► And the idea there is that they've got all these little parts and sometimes they got chiplets and all of that.
00:13:11 ◼ ► And they're all, you could build it so that each of them is installed on like a circuit board, but that's not what you want.
00:13:19 ◼ ► What you want is for the whole package, since it is a system, you know, on a chip basically, to be one thing.
00:13:38 ◼ ► And so you package them together in one unit and then the units get installed in the devices instead of all the little bits.
00:13:47 ◼ ► "Apple and Amcor have worked together for more than a decade packaging chips used extensively in Apple products.
00:13:54 ◼ ► With a shared desire to manufacture in the US, Apple and Amcor developed plans to build the largest outsourced advanced packaging facility in America.
00:14:18 ◼ ► And like genuinely, like I see something like this and I was like, yes, this is, in my opinion, this is exactly the kind of thing that government should be doing.
00:14:35 ◼ ► And they are now doing that in such a way that they are incentivizing all of these companies to make stuff in America, which is like not really a thing that happens anymore for technology.
00:14:46 ◼ ► There's a debate to be had about whether it puts down roots or whether it's just artificial.
00:14:53 ◼ ► But if the goal is, and I think you could say either the goal is to make things in America because Apple's an American company and they feel pressure from politicians to show that they're putting jobs in America.
00:15:10 ◼ ► But it's also why Apple does demonstrations about, we're going to build this plant here and we're going to do this and CHIPS has become a big thing.
00:15:26 ◼ ► So the idea here that Apple, you know, is working with TSMC to build that plant and I know people are like, well, but it's not for the cutting edge chips.
00:15:34 ◼ ► But you could see either way, either it's an investment that the government and these companies are making in America that will put money in the economy or, and they're hoping that it will have some follow on benefits where over time there's more chip manufacturing.
00:15:52 ◼ ► It doesn't always go that way, but I think that that's part of the goal here is, well, how, if the whole supply chain is somewhere else, how do you ever get a, you know, try to react to that?
00:16:11 ◼ ► And from my opinion, this kind of thing makes more sense than just putting like, uh, restrictions on the chips to and from China.
00:16:20 ◼ ► Like from my, in my opinion, like actually having an in, in like encouraging manufacture.
00:16:33 ◼ ► I also like the idea that this is a, a thing that instead of doing that, well, we make the chips here, but then we send them to Taiwan and then we bring them back.
00:16:44 ◼ ► And it makes me wonder, cause I was thinking about, they have talked about other portions of their global supply chain and assembly and like the glass from Corning and all of that, that if you have a good.
00:16:57 ◼ ► It's a packager partner in America, you have the option of not only packaging your chips in America, but even like taking chips made elsewhere and bringing them to America and having them packaged here and being able to say, look what we did.
00:17:09 ◼ ► This chip was put together in America, even though it's not all from made in America parts.
00:17:20 ◼ ► In a way it is, but Apple is so huge now that Apple is a Apple impacts the economies of most countries, many countries in the world.
00:17:29 ◼ ► And this is an example of in their, in their home territory, how they're trying to, to thread the needle.
00:17:39 ◼ ► Uh, even the people who are well versed in, in the chip industry, uh, you know, I think don't know for sure, although they probably have opinions, but it's an interesting wrinkle that Apple now has a packaging partner.
00:17:53 ◼ ► Even from a political perspective, this feels better to me than what I consider to be the ridiculous show of the Mac Pro being made in America.
00:18:02 ◼ ► Which was, which was pretty artificial and it was only a small volume and the rest of them were still being made elsewhere, but it allowed for a photo op with the president.
00:18:18 ◼ ► And then those like this kind of investment could allow for M-core to increase their growth, right?
00:18:24 ◼ ► In America and employ even more people rather than just like, we're going to create this one factory for show and build some Mac Pros in it.
00:18:30 ◼ ► And again, I'm sure somebody out there will say, Oh, well, yeah, but the chips, the stuff that they're getting out of here is not going to be the stuff that's cutting edge.
00:18:56 ◼ ► Uh, before we started recording today, Killers of the Flower Moon will be available to rent or buy this week, tomorrow actually, as we're recording, but there's still no word.
00:19:06 ◼ ► And when it comes to TV plus, and this includes other platforms, not just on iTunes, like you can buy it on Prime Video.
00:19:15 ◼ ► so I guess they got to make some of the money back before they want to put on TV plus, I assume.
00:19:27 ◼ ► So I, it feels to me like what, what they're doing here is they, they have either with Paramount or with Martin Scorsese or whatever, they have agreed that they're doing a standard film rollout.
00:19:37 ◼ ► So Apple's bankrolling it and it will ultimately live on Apple TV plus for free for everybody.
00:19:44 ◼ ► Who's a subscriber, but they're going to do the full on movie theaters, digital rollout, probably expedited, but digital rollout, this first round of video on demand where you pay to rent or buy.
00:19:57 ◼ ► And then it will go to TV plus and, and that, that will still happen, presumably, you know, early next year, I would guess, but there, um, it is in contrast to Napoleon, right?
00:20:22 ◼ ► Yeah, it might be, it might be, this might be what they're going to do when they put things in theaters.
00:20:29 ◼ ► Napoleon, what they've done is they put it at the top of the TV app and said, add it to your list and it will come in a bit.
00:20:38 ◼ ► And then at the backend, they're, they're, they're doing what Netflix does not do because Netflix does the.
00:20:45 ◼ ► Like obligatory release because some artists wants it or for awards reasons and Apple with these movies is doing a real theatrical release, including all the steps, even the digital step, uh, of sale and rental.
00:21:04 ◼ ► I do feel like, cause they did what they did with the, what you mentioned, they did with Napoleon, they also do with Killers of the Flower Moon.
00:21:11 ◼ ► Like don't tell me about the movie in the TV app if it's like months until it's on TV plus.
00:21:32 ◼ ► Yeah, that's that's my guess is that this would be on TV plus in January, but I don't know.
00:21:39 ◼ ► Cause they could choose to say no, no, no, once it's out of theaters, it's just on TV plus and that's a thing that they, they haven't done.
00:21:45 ◼ ► I wonder if there's some psychology here that I wonder about sometimes cause Disney, I feel like Disney's really gotten beaten down with this now that during the pandemic, they put like all the Pixar movies direct on Disney plus.
00:22:02 ◼ ► And I think one of the reasons that the Pixar movies and other Disney animation and that Marvel movies do not do as well in theaters as they did before the pandemic is that Disney has trained a lot of people to just wait for it to show up on Disney plus that's why we're paying for Disney plus apparently is you wait a little bit and your Marvel movies and your Pixar movies will just show up there.
00:22:28 ◼ ► And I wonder if this is one of the ways you try to counter that is to say, we're going to treat Napoleon and killers of the flower moon as movies.
00:22:38 ◼ ► We funded them and we know where they're going to go eventually, which is TV plus, but what we're not going to do is say, Oh, if you see Apple's logo on an ad for a movie, don't go see it because it'll just show up on your Apple TV later.
00:22:56 ◼ ► So it's a cut. I mean, and also yes, and your relationship with the directors and your distributors theatrically and all of those things are, are in the mix too.
00:23:22 ◼ ► I think I just, I never got around to seeing it and I did not feel the desperate need to catch a Marvel movie because I knew it would show up in my Disney plus app.
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00:25:57 ◼ ► So really the first one is just a thing that I wanted to just mention just to kind of follow the thread line through a little bit.
00:26:03 ◼ ► So there were a bunch of reports last week that Apple is winding down its modem development project due to the poor results that they've seen so far.
00:26:11 ◼ ► So these were some reports that were coming through from the supply chain and I saw them in a bunch of places.
00:26:27 ◼ ► If the work was shuttered, that would mean Apple would waste billions of dollars and would probably need to lay off hundreds of people."
00:26:46 ◼ ► And I mean, maybe there's somebody out there who's got some intelligence that this is happening.
00:26:50 ◼ ► But my guess, based on what Mark says here too, and based on where those rumors were coming from, is that this is more Apple retrenching.
00:26:57 ◼ ► And saying that project we were, we said we were going to do next year, we're not going to do now because of the delays that we had already heard about.
00:27:05 ◼ ► Like it's more likely that if it's like a supply chain thing of like, oh, we're hauling production on this, but it doesn't mean it's done.
00:27:11 ◼ ► It's just that they're not going to continue it for the time being or like in a sense of like, we're not going to go into production on that thing, but it doesn't mean that they're not going to do it at all.
00:27:21 ◼ ► It's just maybe they've missed their timeline again, which is the thing that we already kind of knew, right?
00:27:29 ◼ ► So a month or so ago, I think we spoke about, there was a big report that, uh, the Apple card relationship with Goldman Sachs was in jeopardy and it kind of seemed like everybody wanted out of the deal.
00:27:47 ◼ ► Well, the Wall Street Journal is saying that Apple is ending its partnership with Goldman Sachs within the next 12 to 15 months that they have kind of gone to Goldman Sachs.
00:28:06 ◼ ► Uh, Mark Gorman also wrote about this in his newsletter and he thinks they're going to be, they will move to chase.
00:28:12 ◼ ► It seems like the best home for them, but it actually is unknown at this point, it seems where the company will land.
00:28:19 ◼ ► And there was some talk about MX, but the problem with that is that you're converting Mastercards into MXs, which is going to be a problem for a lot of customers.
00:28:26 ◼ ► Who don't want an MX, they want a, a Mastercard that MX isn't taken as many places and all of those things.
00:28:32 ◼ ► And, uh, so chase is not a bad, I mean, I don't know whether that's Mark having some behind the scenes skinny or whether that's even, it didn't feel like it with the way that he wrote it, but I don't know.
00:28:45 ◼ ► Or if it's a plant, but yeah, I mean, I wonder if it's maybe wish casting a little bit of sort of like somebody saying, you know, who would be good as chase, like somebody inside Apple saying, you know, chase might be good.
00:28:54 ◼ ► Like alert Bloomberg mentioned this so that chase pays attention because businesses pay attention to what is on Bloomberg.
00:29:01 ◼ ► And, uh, so maybe something like that is happening there where, um, there's someone somewhere who's kind of hoping that the chase Apple thing is the right partnership.
00:29:22 ◼ ► And I think Apple doesn't want to have a partner who desperately wants out of the deal, but I read this as being that Apple has decided to let Goldman Sachs off the hook.
00:29:32 ◼ ► It does feel that way, but because of the way that the deal is written, like Apple have to ask Goldman Sachs if they can leave, even though Goldman Sachs wants them to leave.
00:29:44 ◼ ► There's like this grace period point where they can ask to go and if they do, there's like a, I think like a 12 month kind of winding down of the project, but because the deal was extended, they kind of need to, to around each other a little bit.
00:29:59 ◼ ► But yeah, I guess from Apple knows, I'm sure knows that Goldman doesn't want them, but they're locked into an arrangement.
00:30:06 ◼ ► And so I guess this is kind of like moving through the process and they're just like, I guess they found someone else or they're going to try and at some point they're going to do it themselves, which I think is the more complicated thing.
00:30:17 ◼ ► I would expect Apple probably didn't want to move to someone else unless they had to, because eventually I'm sure they're going to try and just like work this out on their own.
00:30:28 ◼ ► Well, you don't want to spin up a whole bank of your own if you don't need to and you don't, you're not sure that you are going to need it in the long run.
00:30:39 ◼ ► It, uh, only it, it's only sensible once you decide that it's a key thing that you want to control, it's much better in a highly regulated environment to have a partner.
00:30:51 ◼ ► Uh, and so, yeah, I'm sure that they would prefer a partner and an engaged partner, right?
00:31:00 ◼ ► Because, um, this was a like experiment for them to take on consumer banking and they seem to have almost immediately regretted it.
00:31:07 ◼ ► And I don't get the sense that this is something where no one will touch it because nobody wants to do business with Apple in the banking sector.
00:31:17 ◼ ► And, and so, yeah, so I guess we'll watch it, but as somebody with an Apple card, I'm kind of curious about what happens, uh, down the road because at some point they're going to have to say, Hmm, you're this just happened with us.
00:31:31 ◼ ► We got a, a letter that was like, Hey, we sold your mortgage to this totally other group that will now be contacting you.
00:31:50 ◼ ► I had, I, I had a bank that got acquired by another bank and it was the same thing where you have to kind of go through these steps and it's a little bit weird because of the regulation.
00:32:08 ◼ ► That's something that Goldman helps with, but there is a company called Apple financing LLC that is responsible for it, which is different to the Apple card where Goldman Sachs is responsible.
00:32:20 ◼ ► So I don't know if they're going to continue trying to scale what that company can do, but I'm sure they would like to.
00:32:34 ◼ ► So there's, this is confusing the Apple savings is Goldman, but you know, they have like the Apple pay kind of card thing, like Apple pay cash thing.
00:33:01 ◼ ► Now I had read in my kind of research about this topic today that green dot is not like particularly reliable apparently.
00:33:13 ◼ ► Move this to that partner as well, which is one of the reasons that Mark Gurman said that chase could work because chase offer debit card stuff.
00:33:25 ◼ ► So if they were to move to chase, they could use move the debit stuff, which is Apple cash and the credit stuff, which is Apple card.
00:33:44 ◼ ► Uh, a report from an interview from Alex Heath at the verge with workflow founders, Ari Weinstein and Conrad Kramer.
00:33:54 ◼ ► They have joined up with X Apple product manager, Kim beverage to launch a new company focused on bringing AI tools to the desktop.
00:34:22 ◼ ► So the ultimate goal, according to Weinstein is to, is to recreate the magic that you felt when you use computers in the eighties and nineties, if you turned on an Apple two or an Atari, you'd get this basic console where you could type in basic code as a user and program the computer to do whatever you wanted.
00:34:42 ◼ ► Everybody spends time in very optimized operating systems of pieces of software that are designed to be extremely easy to use, but are not flexible.
00:34:50 ◼ ► Sometimes you've got a browser window open with a schedule on it and you just want to say, add this to my Canada, but there's no way to do that.
00:34:56 ◼ ► We think that language models and AI give us the ingredients to make a new kind of software that can unlock this fundamental power of computing and make everyday people able to use computers to actually solve their problems.
00:35:10 ◼ ► I guess they're looking at bringing large language models to the desktop, the website, which incredible domain name software.
00:35:20 ◼ ► Inc is basically just Mac OS eight is their website is like the theme of their website.
00:35:30 ◼ ► Like literally it's an emulator running and all the information is inside the apps running in the emulator, which is hilarious.
00:35:37 ◼ ► I mean, first off, if you are leaving a big company after having sold it, which is what happened with workflow.
00:35:45 ◼ ► Then, uh, you stay for awhile and you vest and then you get out of there and that's what they did, which is sad for, for shortcuts, but, and then you're trying to do another company and get investment.
00:36:02 ◼ ► So there's some of that going on here too, but I like the idea a little less cynically.
00:36:08 ◼ ► That what they're saying here is the, you know, these are people who've thought about user automation and customization for a long time, right?
00:36:14 ◼ ► And we, when we talk about it, like nerdy computer people, uh, do, and I count myself in there, do automation and things.
00:36:24 ◼ ► But the challenge, I think that they may be faced with shortcuts is that most people, even with something as friendly as the little shortcuts blocks, where it's not code that you're writing, it's still super intimidating.
00:36:49 ◼ ► And it's this idea that like there is, and I don't want to say necessarily intelligence, but like there's an awareness of the context of what you're doing on your computer.
00:37:04 ◼ ► And the example is so great, which is you've got a browser window open with a schedule on it.
00:37:12 ◼ ► And the idea there is that your agent knows what that window is that you're looking at and knows what's in it and understands what it is and understands what about it would get added to a calendar and is capable of asking questions.
00:37:33 ◼ ► Because even though computers save us time in so many different ways, the fact is you get in a situation where what you have to do is look at data that's in a window that's understandable, that says, how about we meet at this time or, you know, look at this schedule for what we're going to do tomorrow.
00:37:48 ◼ ► And you end up going like, okay, I'm going to move that window over to the left and I'm going to open my calendar to the right, and I'm going to make a bunch of entries and enter all the events back in.
00:37:59 ◼ ► And like, you know, that should, you shouldn't have to do that, but it's also not something where you could, even if you're an automation person, you could look at it and say, ah, I can automate this because how do you automate random emails that say, here's some stuff, right?
00:38:13 ◼ ► You, you need something like a language model that's aware of what's going on in the system and the context of it to sit there and parse it and sort of like understand what that context is.
00:38:35 ◼ ► I feel like you can still get the computer to do a lot of things and I don't think their company is here to say, aha, we're going to let people now all of a sudden program the computer to do whatever you wanted in a way that is like locked down.
00:38:48 ◼ ► Like I don't, I don't entirely agree with that premise because the whole idea of the second part seems to be that you can get the computer to do what you want it to do by asking because it understands it.
00:39:01 ◼ ► And that's a little bit like, I'd say turning on an Apple two or an Atari was super intimidating and that's not what they're going for here.
00:39:08 ◼ ► But I like the idea that there's stuff that, that, um, you know, can you create not user automations, but like an assistant that will help solve the problem because this is taking it back to user automation.
00:39:24 ◼ ► Like the number one reason that I started using Apple script is that I had different apps that I wanted to talk to each other and they don't talk to each other.
00:39:41 ◼ ► So I had to write scripts that looked over there and grab this and put it over here and all of that.
00:39:49 ◼ ► Like a lot of the stuff we do is in a silo and the only entity that is looking at your screen and all the windows in it and knows about what you're doing is you the user.
00:40:07 ◼ ► Wouldn't it be nice if your computer also understood the context of all the different things that you were doing and could do something with it.
00:40:17 ◼ ► That's a real challenge, but that is one of those frontiers of computing, which is we're still on this app model where there's not a lot of information shared and everything has to be done explicitly.
00:40:28 ◼ ► And, you know, you, you know, your calendar doesn't look at your email unless the calendar app and the email app have been written to talk to each other.
00:40:46 ◼ ► Knew what was in your apps and could do things from, take things from one app and put it in another app.
00:40:51 ◼ ► And that's, that's, uh, it's not quite the same as what we think of as user automation, but, um, it gets to, I think, uh, an important point about, uh, a weakness with how we use computers.
00:41:06 ◼ ► Cause this is where they come from, but like this just, it, to me, it feels like the logical way that a computer should be able to work, right.
00:41:14 ◼ ► And I will say this kind of idea is giving me hope because I've had this like bubbling concern about Apple and advanced Siri AI.
00:41:29 ◼ ► That Apple's gonna create their own advanced large language model that can interact with your email, your notes, your calendar.
00:41:41 ◼ ► Like for me on my iPhone, will I only be able to get my calendar and my email to talk together if I use mail.app and calendar.app?
00:41:54 ◼ ► And like, I'm worried that these, that the operating system versions of these types of tools are going to become even stronger platform lock-ins for operating system developers.
00:42:10 ◼ ► I would say not even necessarily, nefariously, but more like it's so hard to do this stuff that they say, well, we're just gonna, you know, we're going to build it into our apps first because that's what we're doing.
00:42:25 ◼ ► Like I do believe that it could be, but I don't know if that's the route they're going to go.
00:42:29 ◼ ► And so I see tools like this and the Mac as like the savior of that because a tool on the Mac has way more ability.
00:42:39 ◼ ► So I think the issue is going to be closed platform systems like the iPhone and the iPad.
00:42:43 ◼ ► You're not going to be able to have an app like this from Software Applications Incorporated, but it will work on the Mac.
00:42:50 ◼ ► And this is just a concern that I have that like, if Apple are going to do this, I want them to create an API that developers can write to.
00:42:58 ◼ ► And then of course you have the problem with big platform companies, Microsoft, Google, maybe not working very well with Apple's APIs, but at least want them to try, right?
00:43:09 ◼ ► That like it would be possible to plug in to whatever system they're building, but I'm concerned that it won't be the case.
00:43:14 ◼ ► Let me back out for a second though, because I think that there's another way of viewing this and I don't know if Apple is doing this.
00:43:21 ◼ ► I suspect that this group is doing this, which is what if you didn't have to rely on all of those APIs?
00:43:34 ◼ ► Because you've got things in the cloud, you've got an email database in the cloud and all of that.
00:43:37 ◼ ► But I was thinking like one of the great advantages of an, of a large language model and the system trained to understand how to use a Mac, let's say, is, and you, and apps can do this now, right?
00:43:49 ◼ ► With accessibility settings, you can, you can ask for a UI control and you can ask to see the screen.
00:43:56 ◼ ► And so the power of, of a piece of software being able to understand by looking at your windows and what apps are open and what apps are on your system from that understanding.
00:44:13 ◼ ► How to use your computer and what's in it and what the data is without having to be like, Oh, you're trained on fantastic.
00:44:22 ◼ ► How you can use fantastic Cal now, but have it be like, Oh, there's a calendar app here.
00:44:32 ◼ ► To just, to back it out a layer and just say, what we're training is an AI system that understands how to use your Mac and what's on it so that you can just say.
00:44:44 ◼ ► Take, you know, the stuff that's in my browser and put it in my calendar and it knows what your calendar is.
00:44:57 ◼ ► And, and it came up when I was thinking about that humane AI pin, which is for this stuff to be really powerful.
00:45:02 ◼ ► What you want is for it to have access to your personal data so that it knows, you know, it, it knows everything that's on your calendar and can write directly to your calendar.
00:45:15 ◼ ► And so it knows all sorts of contexts and all of that, but even something that just knew how to use your computer.
00:45:28 ◼ ► Like it knows my apps and it knows what all the windows are and it knows what all my bookmarks are.
00:45:35 ◼ ► And from that, if I tell it to do a thing on my computer, it could just do it instead of me having to make like 15 clicks and dragging things and moving windows around.
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00:48:49 ◼ ► We had an interesting Ask upgrade question that I wanted to maybe turn into a little bit of a story time with the two of us.
00:49:00 ◼ ► Maybe for people that don't know necessarily our history, if maybe I don't know how long people have been listening to the show.
00:49:06 ◼ ► But Braden wrote in to say, how did the two of you become Apple reporters/content creators?
00:49:38 ◼ ► I mean, if I, if I was asked to give my occupation, I would say technology journalist and podcaster, probably that would be the, how would I be introduced on Jeopardy?
00:49:58 ◼ ► Although I have sometimes in conversation with people when they ask what I do said, I'm, I guess I'm a content creator on the internet now.
00:50:20 ◼ ► I would say technology because it gets across what I do and what area I do it in, uh, better than content creator does.
00:50:27 ◼ ► Do you think the typical Jeopardy audience would more easily take journalists over content creator?
00:51:08 ◼ ► And in college, I went, worked in my college newspaper and they had just switched to all max.
00:51:17 ◼ ► Um, and by the end of my college time, I was the editor in chief of the college newspaper and the person who was, um, like updating the software and running the network so that we could all print to the printer at once.
00:51:29 ◼ ► Instead of having to move our files to the computer attached to the printer, it was a whole thing.
00:51:43 ◼ ► Thinking that that would be a way for me to stall having to get a job and maybe get a better paying job, which did happen.
00:51:50 ◼ ► I don't necessarily endorse the idea of journalism school, but, um, and, and I learned everything I, I really needed at that point by my college newspaper.
00:51:58 ◼ ► I didn't really need the journalism instruction, but I did learn some things including like that.
00:52:11 ◼ ► And, uh, she worked at Mac user and I was a huge Mac fan and a Mac user reader actually.
00:52:17 ◼ ► And so I got, I badgered her into letting me be a summer intern and then they hired me essentially.
00:52:26 ◼ ► And then everything else is just sort of my career ride, but that was that moment where I was like, I would love to do that because it was literally a thing that I loved that.
00:52:38 ◼ ► And, um, on top of that, it was working in publishing and in journalism and also about a subject that I truly loved.
00:52:55 ◼ ► Um, what I found out later is that, um, when they merged Mac world and Mac user, that a lot of the Mac world people did not love it.
00:53:01 ◼ ► Some of them did, but a lot of them were in it because they wanted to be in magazines and not because they wanted to, they cared as much about computers.
00:53:09 ◼ ► And there were a few people like that at Mac user too, where, you know, they went from, from Mac user to vanity fair or something like that.
00:53:18 ◼ ► Um, it's kind of weird and I never got it because I was, I was committed to the subject matter.
00:53:23 ◼ ► And so from there, I just, you know, we came over from Mac user to Mac world and I rose through the ranks and ended up as the editor in chief and the editorial director.
00:53:31 ◼ ► And then didn't got promoted again and hated my job and quit and, and went off and decided to do my own thing because I had been working and seeing my friends and peers doing things on their own for a while and really wanting to do that.
00:53:44 ◼ ► So like, you know, I got John Gruber, his first bylines in Mac world, originally writing how tos and then eventually writing some, some columns.
00:54:03 ◼ ► And, you know, eventually I was worried that it had been a little late, but eventually that's what I did is between that and, and all the podcasts that started to come up that I also really appreciated.
00:54:15 ◼ ► And so, um, and now that's, that leads me to now, but it really was, I mean, the number one reason I did, uh, I did journalism in school and worked at college newspaper and did a, you know, summer internship at a daily newspaper and all those things.
00:54:36 ◼ ► Focused on and kind of pushed on, didn't let slip by to go to a place that was doing stuff that I was interested in.
00:54:43 ◼ ► And once I was in there, I made myself indispensable, I guess enough that I made myself hireable so that they, they, they hired me after being an intern.
00:54:53 ◼ ► So it's a scene from one direction, from one perspective, it's sort of a straight line.
00:54:58 ◼ ► I had this conversation with, um, with Lauren a lot where, you know, it took her a very long time to figure out that she wanted to be a librarian.
00:55:10 ◼ ► Um, and for me, it was always pretty clear, like I wanted to do media stuff and also I love computers.
00:55:34 ◼ ► And what I found is that most of the people there thought of me as a, uh, as a media person.
00:55:53 ◼ ► It was, it was surprised me because I feel like at least in my inner life, I, what I'm doing now is not surprising at all from even when I was like eight.
00:56:14 ◼ ► I think of everybody that I work with, you're the person who has done the thing they've wanted maybe for the longest.
00:56:26 ◼ ► Like if I think about pretty much everyone else that I work with, the thing that they're doing now, podcasting or writing was the thing that they started doing.
00:56:39 ◼ ► Like whether that other thing was originally a dream or just a career that they moved into.
00:56:51 ◼ ► I'd say the, the, the place that I have a similarity with those other people, all of our colleagues doing this is when I was in college.
00:57:05 ◼ ► It was, it was the nineties and people were like, I, every now and then I get this little, like, Oh yeah, the guy from magazines.
00:57:19 ◼ ► And there was a postscript version that I laid out in page maker that you could print from anywhere in the world.
00:57:23 ◼ ► And we took submissions, it was short stories, took submissions from all over the world.
00:57:31 ◼ ► But like, that was a thing that I, I was so excited about the potential for the internet for publishing.
00:57:46 ◼ ► And so the one thing I would say is, and I've told this story a million times, but like, I went to Mac user and I was like, we need a website.
00:57:52 ◼ ► And I was told the future was on CompuServe and we were not going to do a website because CompuServe was a service where they paid to be online.
00:57:59 ◼ ► Imagine that. And they paid us because we had a special thing where we got money because people didn't just sign up for CompuServe.
00:58:07 ◼ ► They signed up for our publishers, sort of like in it's like CompuServe Plus essentially is what it was.
00:58:14 ◼ ► And so I learned that important lesson that never, that companies are very bad at looking at new revenue streams when they have existing revenue streams.
00:58:22 ◼ ► And so what I would say is, and then we, we embrace podcasts really early, really early at Mac world.
00:58:32 ◼ ► And I set up, we had a blog in the nineties before the blog was a word called tv.org, where my friends from college and I wrote reviews of television shows in an era where if you were on the internet writing things about television, the people who made the TV shows would just email you.
00:59:00 ◼ ► The guy who did Everybody Loves Raymond wrote us an email asking if we had seen it because we hadn't written about it yet.
00:59:19 ◼ ► And I just remember that because it's like, Hey, what do you think about Everybody Loves Raymond, which show, which I liked, but at that point I hadn't, I hadn't been watching it and I did watch it.
00:59:30 ◼ ► But like, he was obviously a little needy where it's like, why did the, why did these guys not write about that?
00:59:58 ◼ ► My point being that with Intertext, the magazine, with TV, I was always doing side projects and they were always about trying things on the internet and the podcasts ultimately were incomparable.
01:00:13 ◼ ► And the reason is when I got out of college, I couldn't get a job in internet anything.
01:00:22 ◼ ► The only paying media jobs for a very long time were magazines and newspapers in that era.
01:00:32 ◼ ► And then I spent all of my time on the side doing experimentation online because I knew where it was going, but I was trapped.
01:00:40 ◼ ► So, so I just, that, that's part of my story that I always want to mention is, is even though it seems like a straight line in that way, there is a sense in which I'm like other people we know who had this thing going on the side because I had a media job, but it wasn't doing the right stuff.
01:01:29 ◼ ► I got an iPod mini and that like sent me through the everything, you know, I was frequently reading all the blogs and websites.
01:01:45 ◼ ► Remember that website, like things like that, uh, that kind of got me on to then like watching keynotes and stuff like that where like I, like I fell down the rabbit hole, became obsessed with read all the rumor sites.
01:02:09 ◼ ► Um, my interest continued, you know, getting new products, that kind of stuff and apps and reading blogs, listening to podcasts to the point where in 2010 when talking with a friend, we used to talk on the phone all the time and we would talk about like Apple and technology and stuff like that.
01:02:30 ◼ ► And so I did that in 2010, uh, as the way that many people go, one podcast became many podcasts covering all of my various interests.
01:02:44 ◼ ► So basically I needed a website to collect up to like five different shows I was doing within a year.
01:02:51 ◼ ► Um, but I, you know, had various things like the pen addict started in 2012, for example.
01:02:57 ◼ ► Um, so then in 2013, uh, the network that I founded, which was called 70 decibels, I started in 2011.
01:03:12 ◼ ► Um, it was that, that I feel like leading up to that point, I'd started to get a bit of a foothold in the community and people were aware of me.
01:03:21 ◼ ► Um, and the show that I did, uh, which I very rarely, I very seldom say its name, but I might as well now.
01:03:33 ◼ ► We were like, we were basic, we were best friends, but basically like brothers and that's where it came from.
01:03:41 ◼ ► Obviously I would not start a podcast called the bro show in 2023, but nevertheless I did.
01:03:48 ◼ ► And that was what it was called and I, it was, it started just as me and Terry, but then we, we got guests on the show that like became a thing.
01:03:57 ◼ ► Um, and we would invite people from the community, including my cohost right now, Jason was on the bro show and all my other shows over the time.
01:04:04 ◼ ► Uh, we would invite people on and this was like a great idea back in the day of like, well, we can have people on, we'll get to know them and then they'll promote the show and we'll find new listeners.
01:04:23 ◼ ► Um, I've heard people say this before and I think it makes sense that like, then the thing was like people like Jason, people, uh, like, like say John Syracuse, all these, but didn't have podcasts of their own or hadn't been doing podcasts for very long.
01:04:40 ◼ ► So if you were a fan of that person, you follow them on Twitter, you follow their blog or whatever.
01:04:45 ◼ ► You would listen to the guest episode or something they did because you never really got to hear them very much.
01:04:55 ◼ ► And so like, I really stuck in my brain is like, this is a reason why it worked then, but maybe it doesn't work now because like if Jason's a guest on a show, you might not feel that so much of a need to listen to it because you hear him every week on this show, for example.
01:05:11 ◼ ► And sometimes maybe people just want to hear the interviews, like if someone's enjoying this into this conversation, this is kind of probably what a lot of interview shows would be like, how did you get started?
01:05:26 ◼ ► I kind of moved some of the shows I was doing and changed some of the theming of them a little bit.
01:05:33 ◼ ► Uh, then in 2014, Steven and I decided that we wanted to be in charge of our own destiny because we wanted to actually take a proper run at making our side thing our main thing.
01:05:44 ◼ ► And we felt like the best way to do this was to own the company, be in charge of the direction.
01:05:51 ◼ ► And then just a couple of months later, I was like, we started in August and I think in October or November of 2014 was when I quit my job and this is what I did.
01:06:05 ◼ ► So then I think like one of the key things I'm thinking of today, it took 13 years for me to go to an Apple event, 13 years of producing content to attend my first Apple event.
01:06:18 ◼ ► And I was also like working as this being my side thing for like four or five years before it could actually be my main thing.
01:06:26 ◼ ► So that was a long time of like having doing something on the side, which if you don't mind me pivoting straight into the advice, Jason, I would actually like to do it now.
01:06:50 ◼ ► Like it takes a long time of hard work for no money and no audience to make something successful.
01:06:59 ◼ ► If like if you want to do this, Braden or anybody else listening to the show, if you want to be a podcaster, a YouTuber, a blogger, you want to be a TikToker.
01:07:08 ◼ ► Like you have to I mean, I guess it's different with TikTok because they like to throw views at you in the start.
01:07:13 ◼ ► So you get that initial peak and then the crash when the algorithm stops recommending you.
01:07:29 ◼ ► And for the love of creating, expecting a paycheck or expecting an audience, if that's what you're how you're going into this, you're already starting badly and I'd recommend you don't.
01:07:36 ◼ ► Like if you're like, oh, I'm going to start a side business as a podcast and then I want to get advertisers.
01:07:44 ◼ ► Do not think about that, because if you go into it expecting to make money, you'll just be sad until the day you may eventually make money and then you'll probably won't get there because it's a hard road of many years.
01:08:05 ◼ ► So if you want to do it, if you want to create a thing of your own, you should like start a thing of your own.
01:08:21 ◼ ► Like for me, when I started out, I kind of got to know people on Twitter because people were like, it was smaller then.
01:08:29 ◼ ► I actually think Mastodon is kind of great for this because Mastodon feels like what Twitter used to feel.
01:08:34 ◼ ► You could actually meet people because Mastodon is smaller and more like focused around technology by and large.
01:08:41 ◼ ► And I guess we have a lot of the federated feeds that you can maybe because back in the day, right?
01:08:49 ◼ ► One of the ways that I found people on Twitter is it was kind of possible in a bunch of apps to just like view all the tweets, like all of them.
01:09:03 ◼ ► Or like you could look at a hashtag and you'd be able to like or topic and you'd be able to read stuff.
01:09:11 ◼ ► And I feel like the federated feeds and something like Mastodon is more like that now, right?
01:09:18 ◼ ► You can just read stuff and you can find new people and you can build up like conversations with them.
01:09:28 ◼ ► Like we kind of got to know each other because we were doing the same thing at the same time.
01:09:33 ◼ ► And then there was kind of like a crew of people that kind of moved up at the same time.
01:09:39 ◼ ► But then if you start writing stuff, you know, maybe share them with people that you, their content you create, maybe get some thoughts on them.
01:09:58 ◼ ► I actually think there is a beat kind of having no audience is a great way to get good, right?
01:10:29 ◼ ► Like, like you said, um, the, there's a reason why so many of us in this little sphere talk about starting something as a side project and then a turning into something.
01:10:41 ◼ ► It not only does that say something about how it's not going to blossom immediately and it takes time.
01:10:48 ◼ ► It goes with Mike's statement about needing to get good and doing that maybe in private.
01:11:04 ◼ ► The word hustle I always felt like meant you're, you're, you're, you're hustling for money.
01:11:17 ◼ ► And I don't think that fits my experience and the experience of most of the people I know.
01:11:26 ◼ ► It's got, you can't just, I know I have seen people who are very clearly hustling on the side because they think there's an opportunity, you know, to be, to be had there.
01:11:42 ◼ ► It's like those people don't make it because they don't love it and it's a grind and it's not a gold rush.
01:11:56 ◼ ► And I would go further and say, you got to do a thing that you're comfortable with, that you understand and that you love and then also learn from it.
01:12:04 ◼ ► And the reason I say that is if you get Tik TOK, and that's like the way you think you can express yourself the best.
01:12:26 ◼ ► If you're like, Oh, I feel like I should do Tik TOK because that's where the kids are, but I don't get it.
01:12:38 ◼ ► Like everybody that I followed and enjoyed had a blog and they all wrote about their opinions for Apple.
01:12:51 ◼ ► And I'm not saying don't like try Tik TOK and learn about it and maybe you'll love it, but don't do it because you feel like that's the thing you need to tactically do.
01:13:07 ◼ ► I was thinking of you when I gave this example, which is you would think in that context back in that era, that maybe the solution was I will also start a blog and that's how I will get into this.
01:13:26 ◼ ► I think, uh, that's, that's the, or at least that's the advice I've given because I love it.
01:13:30 ◼ ► And I, I, and, and you have to do that because not just because, oh, people are going to know if you don't love it.
01:13:43 ◼ ► And, and I would say one of my top pieces of advice for people who want to do like podcasts or blogs or, or any kind of content is the number one thing you got to do is be consistent.
01:13:59 ◼ ► And it's like episode one and then a week later, episode two, and then two weeks later, episode three, and then two months later, episode four, where they apologize for not being around for two months, but now they're back.
01:14:11 ◼ ► That happens all the time because it's hard to be, you know, this, this is, we're coming up for 500 episodes of upgrade pretty soon, right?
01:14:29 ◼ ► It's every week I have to sit here and on Monday morning, every Monday morning at 9 AM and Mike has to sit there every Monday evening at five ish.
01:14:44 ◼ ► And, and the fact is you're sending a signal to your listeners or your audience more broadly, that you're going to be dependable.
01:14:54 ◼ ► I'd say anybody who wants to work with you, you're sending a message that you're diligent and you'll stick with it and you're reliable.
01:15:29 ◼ ► Like if somebody does something really cool and we call it out, we may not know who they are, but we just say, here's this person.
01:15:35 ◼ ► And there are so many cases where there was somebody who was seemingly random and we mentioned that they did a cool thing or whatever.
01:15:41 ◼ ► And then over time they ended up being somebody who is a friend or at the very least a friend of the show.
01:15:52 ◼ ► Uh, but, but being, make no mistakes that it is hard and that there's no one path, but what you really need to do is the, uh, look inside yourself and find like, what are the things that you love and you want to do?
01:16:04 ◼ ► And, uh, do those things in a, in a place and in a medium that makes sense that you get and that you understand and that you love and you should know that.
01:16:15 ◼ ► You try things out and you'll learn, even if it's a medium that you understand or you think you understand and you love, you're going to learn a lot about, oh, that doesn't work.
01:16:22 ◼ ► And that's a bad Tik TOK post or whatever, or that's a bad YouTube video or whatever it literally, whatever it is, you're going to learn a lot, but you should start being grounded on it being something that you're doing because you
01:16:35 ◼ ► And not because it's some sort of a calculation, sorry to all the business people out there.
01:16:40 ◼ ► Like, what do you mean you make a cold business calculation, but for stuff like this, I don't think you can, cause you can't fake it.
01:16:45 ◼ ► If you've got lots of money, you could fake it, but if you don't have a lot of money and you're just doing it, you gotta, you just gotta do the work.
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01:18:12 ◼ ► That's vitally.io/upgrade for a free pair of AirPods Pro when you schedule a qualified meeting. Our thanks to vitally for their support of this show and Relay FM.
01:18:21 ◼ ► Now last week, Jason, you didn't do any Ask Upgrade questions, so I have a backlog for you.
01:18:38 ◼ ► Ah, so I have a 5.1 setup, so not full Dolby Atmos, but I have a 5.1 setup in my living room.
01:18:53 ◼ ► And I really love the spatial audio because just like with old DVD audio stuff before, like having being inside the music is really cool.
01:19:25 ◼ ► And in fact, I often, sometimes it can sound interesting, but a lot of times it makes the albums that I know really well from listening to them in stereo at my desk.
01:19:34 ◼ ► Sound weird because the mix is the mix down is different and I don't, I don't necessarily, I mean, I don't hate them, but I don't, I don't go, oh yeah, give me the spatial audio on the, on the AirPods as much.
01:19:54 ◼ ► Like there's many songs that I've listened to a spatial audio where I can hear something in the song that I hadn't heard before.
01:20:10 ◼ ► I've, I feel like anything that comes out now, the mix is really well done and I've gone back and listened to some music that I'd originally listened to and wasn't sure of.
01:20:20 ◼ ► I think this is a thing that producers are learning a lot from and it can be done well.
01:20:27 ◼ ► I turned off the head tracking stuff a while ago with movies, especially I don't like that.
01:20:42 ◼ ► And, uh, I feel like with, with watching movies on an iPad, that kind of thing, it can be a bit weird.
01:20:55 ◼ ► I remember we were on a flight recently, uh, and I didn't press play on her iPad and then like immediately jumped her iPad and I knew exactly what was going on, which she thought the sound was coming out of the iPad because of the spatial audio stuff.
01:21:10 ◼ ► Uh, I will also say Jason, I am a convert of, uh, the adaptive mode on, uh, AirPods Pro.
01:21:32 ◼ ► Um, I like that I can just talk to someone real quick and it, and it just pauses my music or the podcast.
01:21:41 ◼ ► Cause if I start singing pauses it, that is, I feel like they should do something about that.
01:21:47 ◼ ► I don't know how, but like you, if you use conversational awareness and you have AirPods, you can't sing along.
01:21:52 ◼ ► And so like sometimes I'm in the studio, I start singing along and then my music stops.
01:22:04 ◼ ► Cause I use adaptive mode, which allows me to still hear things, but, uh, it's less noisy.
01:22:10 ◼ ► And I am mostly in that when I'm not actively trying to block sound like on an airplane.
01:22:25 ◼ ► If I'm cooking say, right, I'm in a quiet environment, but I don't want to hear the sounds of the cooking.
01:22:30 ◼ ► So I'll put noise cancellation on so I can hear my podcast more clearly without the sounds of pots and pans or whatever.
01:22:46 ◼ ► It's or if I'm running and I'm on a, on a path and there's somebody working, you know, blowing leaves or hammering things or whatever, like, and I'm not going to get run over by a car.
01:22:56 ◼ ► I will often toggle it on there, but most of the time I'm running on a street and I have the, I have the adaptive mode on and works great.
01:23:14 ◼ ► Apple's pro the noise canceling is really good, but just the natural seal that the AirPods max provide with the noise canceling is fantastic.
01:23:29 ◼ ► Like Apple's pro have gotten better and better, but there's always going to be a natural amount of like soundly could ship will come through.
01:23:51 ◼ ► Like that kind of, I just, yeah, that I'm a big AirPods max fan and I really only use them when I'm flying.
01:24:13 ◼ ► I hate, I hated over ear headphones, but I did at one point buy a pair of Sony noise canceling headphones.
01:24:19 ◼ ► This is like five years ago now and it makes my ears sweaty and I don't like it, but they absolutely do such a great job.
01:24:29 ◼ ► If you power, if you do that and then do noise canceling, you've got the seal and the noise canceling, and it really is going to be your optimal experience.
01:24:42 ◼ ► I find myself frustrated that my phone and my Mac don't always have the same information when doing searches for people in photos.
01:25:28 ◼ ► When you do training, I believe that data now gets synced across your devices, which is a hint to all of the devices about who these people are.
01:25:40 ◼ ► But what they don't do is sync all the machine learning analysis info from every photo into the cloud, which they could do.
01:25:58 ◼ ► Because then you've got different devices with their individual machine learning models, trying to analyze every photo when you take it.
01:26:08 ◼ ► And if they're not analyzing your photo database because it's gotten records pushed, pushed to it from another device, is it going to be as accurate?
01:26:23 ◼ ► So they're trying to do it where if you say, yes, this is this person, that data, I believe sinks now.
01:26:34 ◼ ► But yeah, the only other way to do it would be to say, no, no, no, we're doing all of our analysis in the cloud.
01:26:40 ◼ ► And that would require Apple to, um, not have your photos be encrypted and that they would do lots of cloud processing.
01:26:48 ◼ ► So I think their heart's in the right place and they're trying to make this, this situation better.
01:26:57 ◼ ► And I don't know whether the answer is one device scans it and then all the other devices just get the metadata.
01:27:15 ◼ ► Like I want to have it all processed locally, but I also want it to be accurate across every device.
01:27:28 ◼ ► And I think I prefer the trade-off of things not being completely accurate than all of my stuff living somewhere that I don't want it to.
01:27:43 ◼ ► And that's because all the, you know, anytime you as a user, as a human being say, this is this person, I believe that gets tagged on the photo
01:28:11 ◼ ► Um, again, if Apple can find a way to do it where it doesn't have to do that and that they're all kind of like sharing one brain.
01:28:36 ◼ ► And sometimes as Apple weather, I have an overcast one because I run and play podcasts on my Apple watch using overcast to air pods.
01:28:53 ◼ ► It's less important workouts so that I can also trigger my running workout when I go out running with my Apple watch.
01:28:59 ◼ ► And when I'm traveling, I use the, um, much anticipated and finally here flighty Apple watch complication.
01:29:27 ◼ ► Cal is like the big one in the middle, which tells me what my next event is going to be.
01:30:02 ◼ ► I have showing the current amount of time that's actively been tracking and then medications and do kind of just open their application.
01:30:31 ◼ ► Like, so if I want to get like a little bit more than what the little widgets given me, I can, sorry, what the complications given me, I can go to the widgets.
01:30:38 ◼ ► Um, and I'll also say when I'm traveling as well, I changed to a traveling watch face, which has Flyte is the big one in the middle because again, super useful when I'm traveling.
01:30:49 ◼ ► Uh, most of the time it is, um, California cause I can make it look like utility, but it has the more modern complications.
01:31:20 ◼ ► I just decided to give in and just like, just get as much data and information as possible.
01:31:25 ◼ ► I've given in, yeah, it's like, it looks like a computer watch and it is a computer watch now.
01:31:30 ◼ ► And I've given up the fight and I've actually been very happy with this setup that I've got because it is making my watch more useful to me.
01:31:52 ◼ ► It's best for your audience when you have one, but it's hard when you're already busy with work and other projects.
01:32:03 ◼ ► Memberful has everything you need to run a membership program of your own, including a streamlined and powerful checkout, easy to use memberful.
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01:32:51 ◼ ► But we do other things that we were talking earlier on the show that we're running a discount right now.
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01:33:56 ◼ ► If you had an iOS or MacOS developer at your disposal to build an app just for you, what would it be?
01:34:04 ◼ ► I think Nathan sent this in for, um, for last week when James was on and I was going to spring it on him, but we ended up not doing it.
01:34:23 ◼ ► I have told James that he needs to work with me on building a curling stopwatch app for the Apple watch.
01:34:50 ◼ ► Just like it is, you have a bunch of templates, like checklist templates and you just press a button and then they become active.
01:34:56 ◼ ► So you're packing checklist, your grocery list, like things that are typically the same, but then you just tap a button and you then just get them all to check off very easily.
01:35:13 ◼ ► So I have like a shortcut that I can run and then things would duplicate like a template project that sits in, but it's like, it's not perfect.
01:35:24 ◼ ► If I had an iOS developer at my disposal, they would build my app idea instant checklist.
01:35:42 ◼ ► But the other, the other thought that I had is I would like an cross-platform app, ideally, but certainly a Mac app that lets me write automation.
01:35:54 ◼ ► Either, I mean, not necessarily using shortcuts, but like using Python or JavaScript or whatever, and have those show up in shortcuts as actions.
01:36:07 ◼ ► So basically like letting me write subroutines that I can store away and then use as actions.
01:36:13 ◼ ► And, and I think that you're not able to dynamically add actions to the shortcuts library, but this is one of my frustrations with shortcuts that I thought it's really like, can I use a developer to do an end around around Apple?
01:36:27 ◼ ► And I'm sure if there were some very specific ones, that would be my other answer would be, I want an app that contributes these functions to shortcuts so I can use them inside shortcuts.
01:36:37 ◼ ► But wouldn't it be great if you could write your own shortcut actions instead of having to like make a shortcut that does all those things and then refer to it.
01:36:45 ◼ ► And then when you want to share it, you've got to like, I just, it would be fun to be able to build that in a different way.
01:36:51 ◼ ► And probably the answer is shortcuts should just get better and solve this problem for me.
01:36:56 ◼ ► I guess what you're saying is that you would have a library of scripts that you've written, but then in shortcuts, they just show us like the name of the thing.
01:37:09 ◼ ► And then ideally, then another thing that would be, would require shortcuts is ideally then when you share that shortcut, having the ability to pick up it's the custom blocks that came along with it and include them in the shortcut.
01:37:22 ◼ ► So you don't have to share because sometimes you share a shortcut and you're like, I actually need to share three shortcuts with you because they're all interrelated.
01:37:34 ◼ ► The world needs to know that Jason Snell is very helpful to me when it comes to shortcuts.
01:37:43 ◼ ► Jason writes shortcuts and he shares them with me and then I don't know how to make it work.
01:37:51 ◼ ► Because I want you to benefit from the goodness of it and you don't need to become a shortcuts expert.
01:37:54 ◼ ► I just need you get to get you up and running so that you can do the great stuff that the shortcuts enable.
01:38:15 ◼ ► So I'm pleased that Jackson asked, I've noticed that some of Jason's recent Macworld columns have been translated into Spanish.
01:38:23 ◼ ► Has the potential of a new audience changed how he chooses what to write about and how has working with presumably a translator changed the process?
01:38:37 ◼ ► I, my former employer, publisher of Macworld used to be called International Data Group, IDG.
01:38:44 ◼ ► Because they, the whole, the whole philosophy was, build these magazines and have them be everywhere all over the world.
01:39:12 ◼ ► And the way it worked was as the flagship Macworld in the US, we gave our stories, you know, our files away.
01:39:21 ◼ ► And the licensees, some of them were licensees, some of them were owned and operated by IDG, but the licensees is what we called them.
01:39:39 ◼ ► It was his philosophy was people in the country know what the people in the country care about and we don't.
01:39:44 ◼ ► And so you're not going to have a like a brand manager in the US who's telling Macworld Italia what to do, right?
01:39:51 ◼ ► Macworld Turkey knows the Turkish market and they know whether it's more consumer or more professional and they, and they adjust accordingly.
01:40:04 ◼ ► Macworld Turkey took a lot of stuff from us and so the experience of seeing your work in another language, the ones that I remember the most are Macworld Turkey, where I don't understand a single thing about Turkish.
01:40:32 ◼ ► They did what they did, and this is, you know, is it counter to the original IDG philosophy or not?
01:40:42 ◼ ► They're using WordPress and they built it out for everybody in the world and all their different brands.
01:40:46 ◼ ► And so what used to be entirely separate groups now has one CMS where they publish all their websites that are still being published by Foundry.
01:40:53 ◼ ► And at one point that, so Macworld UK and US now are, have the same editorial operation actually, and they share content.
01:41:07 ◼ ► And what ended up happening was they would pick some of the articles and translate them.
01:41:15 ◼ ► I don't work for Macworld Spain and my editor at Macworld does not care about Macworld Spain.
01:41:27 ◼ ► There is a thing in the CMS that now says, the way it affected me is there's a thing in the CMS that says, where is this going and what language is it in?
01:41:50 ◼ ► But in terms of like dealing with the international implications of my writing being translated, it was very much like old school IDG in that I just didn't pay attention to it.
01:42:16 ◼ ► So I would go into the, my little dashboard and WordPress for, for foundry, and it's supposed to be a list of my articles.
01:42:30 ◼ ► It is kind of fun though, to see your articles translated into another language, because that moment where you see the byline and all the other words make no sense.
01:42:53 ◼ ► Um, I wonder if as AI translation gets better, as machine learning translation gets better, we are going to end up in a situation where every language, every website is available to everyone everywhere, assuming they can get to it.
01:43:15 ◼ ► But I do wonder in the long run, if whether it's in browser or it's on the sites, that that stuff gets translated so well that there are people like Federico had to work so hard on his English and it's excellent.
01:43:34 ◼ ► But I do wonder in the long run, if that won't even be necessary, maybe for podcasts, right?
01:43:39 ◼ ► But for writing, if it won't even really be necessary, because if you're writing something and you have very something very perceptive to say, and you're in Taiwan or you're in Spain, uh, everybody just reads it and they're reading their native language and they all understand it.
01:43:57 ◼ ► I, I still fall on the Pat McGovern side a little bit, which is I'm writing about the markets that I know and the field that I know.
01:44:06 ◼ ► And what I write, cause what this happens right with, with us where we'll say something and somebody will say, well, actually in this country, that's not true.
01:44:23 ◼ ► And even if I wanted to, the amount of effort that would be required would be enormous and wouldn't it would not.
01:44:31 ◼ ► So, um, I, I do think that there's some truth in, in having the value of the people who actually understand what's going on in those countries, right?
01:44:41 ◼ ► Like presumably somebody is writing about specific issues that are happening in France and they're doing it in French and maybe they're linking to English language articles too.
01:44:52 ◼ ► But I would imagine that they are talking about the issues that matter to people in France about like that.
01:44:56 ◼ ► They don't have to have an iPhone in a box in a box anymore and stuff like that that happens in France.
01:45:01 ◼ ► Or there are people in the Netherlands writing in Dutch about dating apps, uh, with different, you know, ways to buy them now.
01:45:09 ◼ ► Like I imagine that stuff is happening and that's great because there's, there's only so much of that that I can do cause I'm not there and I'm not, I'm not living it day to day.
01:45:21 ◼ ► They're doing it just a few shows right now and very limited episode numbers, but I think could be cool if they can make it work, which is they are doing translations with AI using a version of the podcast as voice.
01:45:38 ◼ ► So like somebody just translating this show, even like speaking it doesn't is, oh, it's fine, but not as appealing to me.
01:45:48 ◼ ► But the idea that it would be me, my voice and your voice talking in French, that is cool to me because it's like if it can actually learn my intonation and can kind of sound like me, but it's a different language.
01:46:02 ◼ ► I think that that is a cool thing and could allow for more people around the world to more easily like consume the content.
01:46:07 ◼ ► I think the problem is the quality of the transcripts right now isn't good enough because we, we, there's so much idiom that's going on and so much of the, the nature of, of having a
01:46:24 ◼ ► I think even with podcasts, you're going to, you're going to get to the point where the transcription is really accurate and you can on the fly translate it and text to speech it back out in a voice that matches the original speaker.
01:46:48 ◼ ► But I don't think they're like, you know, step one, we want this step two question marks, step three profit.
01:46:55 ◼ ► Like I don't see the question marks in a cloud, like in step two, I think it's pretty straightforward that all those things are happening and will continue to happen and will connect at some point.
01:47:04 ◼ ► Even though, like for me, I actually think the biggest challenge is not taking somebody's voice and putting it in another language.
01:47:11 ◼ ► And it's not translating, although translating can have issues and needs to get better.
01:47:17 ◼ ► I think my concern is that they get our, um, idiomatic conversation style translated, transcribed in a way that actually makes sense because that's, that's hard.
01:47:35 ◼ ► And anonymous writes in says, I enjoy reading six colors on both the website and via Apple news, but I know Jason is not Apple news's greatest fan.
01:47:47 ◼ ► So is there a downside or upside for independent website owners to make their content available on Apple news?
01:47:58 ◼ ► I only supply my RSS feed to Apple news, which I think means you get the sponsor messages as well.
01:48:17 ◼ ► I can supply page view numbers and I can supply RSS feed numbers to them, but in the end, our sponsors are mostly there to get our audience in wherever they find it.
01:48:27 ◼ ► So if you read on the site, you'll see it and you're not a member, you'll see a text ad, but there's also a sponsor.
01:48:32 ◼ ► In the RSS feed and there's a sponsor, thank you on the site and it's all part of the package and that stuff goes to Apple news.
01:48:41 ◼ ► So I'm trying to make it as, as a neutral as possible because I understand that people, uh, consume content in different ways.
01:48:53 ◼ ► That's the thing we do too, is there's a, there's a newsletter at the end of the week with the content of the week.
01:48:58 ◼ ► So I'm trying to reach people wherever they want to be. Um, and beyond that, I mean, if I had a page view model, then I would, I would do RSS summaries and force people to go to the site to read it.
01:49:20 ◼ ► I don't want to, I'm happy to be in a position where I don't feel like I need to do stuff like leave content out of the feed.
01:49:27 ◼ ► And in order to drive people to the site, cause that's not a thing they actually want to do.
01:49:47 ◼ ► And I'm unclear on exactly how much, like, I would be happy to, for my stuff to be better in Apple news, but the amount.
01:49:54 ◼ ► It, every time I've looked at it, it's like, you're turning a rock over and there's all sorts of creepy crawlies underneath.
01:50:00 ◼ ► So for now I'm just kind of content to, they've got a, an RSS feed to munch on and that's, that's what it is.
01:50:07 ◼ ► You can send us your feedback, your followup and questions for ask upgrade and snow talk by going to upgrade feedback.com.
01:50:21 ◼ ► You can hear his shows at the incomparable.com and here on relay FM, where you hear me as well.