00:00:17 ◼ ► And the show today is brought to you by Memberful, Ladder, and Notion. I am not Mike Hurley, but I am
00:00:24 ◼ ► Jason Snell, one of the voices you're used to hearing. Mike Hurley is on assignment with me, as
00:00:53 ◼ ► Yeah, we are the Double J. James and Jason are here. I don't know who the third J would be.
00:01:08 ◼ ► because of the Thanksgiving holiday last week, essentially nothing has happened. But we're going
00:01:14 ◼ ► to find things to talk about. I suspect when I'm on podcast, generally, we find things to talk about.
00:01:20 ◼ ► Yeah. But before we do that, I would like to do what usually is our Snell Talk question,
00:01:31 ◼ ► the most exciting time of the year, everybody. It's Cyber Monday. And while Thanksgiving is a
00:01:39 ◼ ► US only holiday, Cyber Monday is for the world. James, how are you feeling on Cyber Monday?
00:01:46 ◼ ► Well, I was at a Thanksgiving dinner at the weekend, so I mean, I've already been eased into
00:01:52 ◼ ► it. So yeah, I mean, I have spent, well, actually no money today because Cyber Monday is like Black
00:02:11 ◼ ► Kobo, many other companies that just keep sending me emails like, "Maybe you didn't buy
00:02:19 ◼ ► anything yesterday, but maybe you'll buy something today. Would you like a £500 LEGO set?" Well, yes,
00:02:25 ◼ ► but no. Yeah. It sounds up your alley. It sounds like that's something you would like. I don't know
00:02:30 ◼ ► where you would put it. You're flat and small enough. I think you would need a room just
00:02:36 ◼ ► literally filled with LEGO and I mean filled about five feet high. So that would be awkward.
00:02:40 ◼ ► People who are viewing the video of this will see the... there used to be three frames filled
00:02:48 ◼ ► with LEGO minifigures behind me. There are now six, two of which are not currently filled,
00:02:52 ◼ ► but I'll get that. That's a great promotion for our videos that we do on various channels,
00:02:57 ◼ ► as well as sometimes experimenting with the full show on YouTube. By experimenting, I mean,
00:03:02 ◼ ► sometimes we post it. When we don't post it, it's because something horrible has failed.
00:03:09 ◼ ► specifically made reference to what's behind him. I don't even know what he's talking about.
00:03:13 ◼ ► That's a surprise for everyone. It is. That's great. I've been in that room. I've slept in
00:03:19 ◼ ► that room where you are now. But anyway, let's let's... Cyber Monday. I agree with you. I was
00:03:25 ◼ ► watching the Black Friday football game on Amazon Prime because Amazon Prime convinced two of this
00:03:31 ◼ ► country's great institutions, Amazon and the NFL, came together to put a football game on Black
00:03:37 ◼ ► Friday for the first time, where there were QR codes everywhere for various things you could buy.
00:03:43 ◼ ► I wonder how it did for them. But I did load one of the QR codes, which just went to a page with
00:03:49 ◼ ► Black Friday deals. And late on Black Friday evening, I switched to that tab or I reopened
00:03:56 ◼ ► Safari and it went to that tab and reloaded it. And what was it? It had already flipped over to
00:04:01 ◼ ► Cyber Monday deals. They just like, "Next, next up." And then after Cyber Monday, I don't know
00:04:06 ◼ ► what's next. Maybe it's literally just holiday buying from that point off. We don't even need
00:04:11 ◼ ► to cloak it in a clever phrase. When I was growing up, all the sales came after Christmas. It's like
00:04:16 ◼ ► your Boxing Day sales that we've lost. We've lost the true meaning of Christmas, which is the sales
00:04:22 ◼ ► that come after them. It's the Boxing Day sales. It's the war on Boxing Day sales. All right.
00:04:26 ◼ ► What we want to do here, and I just had this idea last night. I decided to go with it. Cyber Monday,
00:04:37 ◼ ► in the general public tried to talk about for buying things on computers, which is what we now
00:04:42 ◼ ► just call shopping. But back in the day, it was novel. And so they lifted cyberspace, cyberpunk
00:04:49 ◼ ► kind of thing, William Gibson-esque. And so I thought we would do a little word association.
00:04:54 ◼ ► It's cyber word association. I looked in my dictionary app and saw all the words that start
00:04:59 ◼ ► with cyber, and I thought I would get your thoughts about them. Just quick word association.
00:05:04 ◼ ► Here we go. Cyber law. My mind immediately went to Robocop. Is he law or is he justice? Is he order?
00:05:13 ◼ ► Law and order, Robocop edition. He's kind of judged red, but more metal. Right. It's the American
00:05:23 ◼ ► judge dread Robocop. I think that's actually pretty fair. And nobody gets satire on either side.
00:05:30 ◼ ► Cyber crime. Well, chopper, the most chaotic neutral droid. Oh, from Star Wars Rebels, right?
00:05:43 ◼ ► I should have said, by the way, that these cyber words were randomized by random.org. So
00:06:08 ◼ ► is not quite right because it was OpenDoc, right? So it was like a web browser window you could put
00:06:23 ◼ ► although I read recently that apparently it was just in a reference to that on the internet,
00:06:32 ◼ ► I'm trying to remember what it is. I was watching last night that had a club called Cyberdog in the
00:06:44 ◼ ► Cyberdog, it was in some ways the epitome of '90s Apple, the bad product name, the unclear concept.
00:06:55 ◼ ► We spent a lot of money on R&D trying to develop technologies without actually figuring out
00:07:13 ◼ ► Oh, my favorite toy from when I was a child. Also astronauts and cosmonauts, James. Those are more
00:07:21 ◼ ► I never encountered the Micronaut comics. I only ever encountered the toys, and the toys turned up
00:07:30 ◼ ► in the discount toy places. So I would go and I would buy quite a lot of these heavily reduced,
00:07:39 ◼ ► transparent little people and fun ships and bases and stuff. And they are probably all still in my
00:07:49 ◼ ► parents' attic somewhere, and I need to go digging. You should. And if you don't want them, I'll take
00:07:54 ◼ ► them, but you should want them. Cyber Slacker. Well, what came to my mind for this was Bill
00:08:06 ◼ ► I don't know. I'm going to actually open the dictionary for this one, but this is there.
00:08:10 ◼ ► There is not a more 90s word than Cyber Slacker. I think a person who uses their employers internet
00:08:15 ◼ ► and email facilities for personal activities during working hours. See, we don't even have
00:08:26 ◼ ► And I don't know why, but my brain said John Siracusa because, well, that's just what came
00:08:41 ◼ ► definition a person with an extreme or irrational fear of computers? I guess to truly know them,
00:09:11 ◼ ► I like cats, right? Cats are great. I don't like cat cafes because all the cats tend to be,
00:09:18 ◼ ► shall we say, sedated by a variety of things, and I feel bad for the cats. I'm sure it's just so that
00:09:26 ◼ ► they can have a chill life with all the annoying children running around wanting to hug them, but
00:09:33 ◼ ► robot cats. What I want to say here, and this is true, is cybercafe is actually a cat cafe.
00:09:37 ◼ ► But imagine instead of cats, they had computers. So you come in and you can sort of like,
00:09:43 ◼ ► don't pick up the classic unless it gets on your lap. Just sit down and put your hands on it.
00:09:50 ◼ ► And I would also say that this is yet another word where cybercafe, a place where you go to maybe
00:10:03 ◼ ► CB; And Ted Lasso domain names because I had so many Ted Lasso ones that were shown in the show,
00:10:15 ◼ ► CB; You were a cyber squatter on Ted Lasso branding domain names. I believe you let that
00:10:21 ◼ ► go. So people who are out there who want to get it from a season one episode of Ted Lasso, a domain
00:10:27 ◼ ► that appeared in the background, if you want to own it, you can own it now. CB; Yeah, this is my
00:10:33 ◼ ► gift to everyone. CB; Cyber war. CB; Again, the word that just came into my mind was Twitter,
00:10:43 ◼ ► because that's really all it is these days, and it's nothing that I want anything to do with.
00:10:58 ◼ ► trying to get something and the Roomba bumps into me, it should know where I am, but it's not very
00:11:08 ◼ ► smart, our Roomba. CB; Do you do the thing where you see the Roomba coming and you just,
00:11:12 ◼ ► it's like the Roomba Roomba, it's like a dance where you just keep your feet moving just ahead,
00:11:18 ◼ ► so you can always just sort of like, "Oh, it's coming back. I'm going to take a step." And
00:11:21 ◼ ► I do that a lot in the kitchen because whatever timing I have, it seems inevitable that when I'm
00:11:26 ◼ ► trying to make myself a sandwich, the Roomba is in the kitchen. The Roomba is a great idea for a
00:11:31 ◼ ► product for somebody who doesn't work at home, and I work at home like you do. And it's less good
00:11:36 ◼ ► because you have to dodge a robot as it roams around your house. It's less good. Cyberpunk.
00:11:42 ◼ ► MG; Keanu Reeves, the original cyberpunk. He's been in so many--well, okay, not the original,
00:11:58 ◼ ► picture of the Cyberdog Place, which now tell me what show I was watching yesterday. It's a shop
00:12:04 ◼ ► in Camden. CB; Yeah, you were watching Doctor Who, and it's come back to Doctor Who again because
00:12:19 ◼ ► William Gibson, Neuromancer, and all of that, but Keanu Reeves can be the living embodiment.
00:12:35 ◼ ► seller of TAT when I was in the store. CB; And now we would just call that an online store, but
00:12:45 ◼ ► MG; Well, I immediately think of Roboism with Kathy Campbell and Alex, so that's just some
00:12:54 ◼ ► branding. CB; Cybercast actually is listed as a video broadcast of an event transmitted over the
00:13:06 ◼ ► it's just a podcast instead. We don't have the cyber. We're leaving the cyber for CyberTube,
00:13:24 ◼ ► which was an interesting model because I watched it over several decades go from a bustling hive
00:13:32 ◼ ► of capitalism to closing one shop after another. Then everybody moved up to one level and they
00:13:39 ◼ ► started to close, and then it went away. The saddest thing I have ever seen is David Price
00:13:45 ◼ ► sitting at a small table in the middle of Valco trying to sign autographs for 10 pounds, and there
00:13:51 ◼ ► was nobody there. CB; Well, that's not good. Cybermall, by the way, officially in the dictionary
00:13:56 ◼ ► as a commercial website through which a range of goods may be purchased. You don't say. Cybernetics,
00:14:04 ◼ ► a real word. MG; Yeah, well, you know, it's a T-800 or something like that because, I don't know,
00:14:20 ◼ ► I know now why you humans cry. Cyberkondriak. MG; Well, I wrote down Marvin the Paranoid Android,
00:14:29 ◼ ► but I mean, he did have a pain in the diets down his left side, so I don't think he was a
00:14:35 ◼ ► cyberkondriak, really. CB; Apparently, a cyberkondriak is somebody who compulsively searches
00:14:39 ◼ ► the internet for symptoms. It's the WebMD addict, basically. I get it. You've got everything.
00:14:47 ◼ ► MG; Now known as human being. CB; Yes. Cyberculture. MG; I visualized an exhibition of AI
00:14:56 ◼ ► stolen art, you know, just a whole load of things that were nicked from other artists. CB; Nice,
00:15:04 ◼ ► nice. The dictionary definition is "the social conditions brought about by the widespread use
00:15:12 ◼ ► you're soaking in it. Cyberpet? MG; Also cyberdog. CB; Okay, well, we came all the way back around.
00:15:28 ◼ ► MG; They keep trying to bring Tamagotchis back, like their color now. CB; Yeah, well, I mean,
00:15:34 ◼ ► sure. The final word is cyberbullying. MG; And I said what the Discord does to Mike every week.
00:15:40 ◼ ► CB; Yeah, I was going to say, whenever Mike is challenged in any way that's not in person,
00:15:47 ◼ ► and honestly, even when it's in person, he thinks that it's cyberbullying. That's not how that
00:15:51 ◼ ► works. All right, well, thank you for participating in our first and last Cyber Word Association game.
00:15:58 ◼ ► I do want to tell people that the upgradees are still open for nominations. This is the 10th,
00:16:06 ◼ ► believe it or not, annual upgradees. You can go to upgradees.vote. Nominations run until December
00:16:13 ◼ ► 5th, so you've got a little bit more time. You've got another week. We really rely on your
00:16:18 ◼ ► nominations. Not only is it great to get the voice of the upgradeians in the upgradees, but also you
00:16:24 ◼ ► get to tell us about things that we don't know about. We'll go, "Oh, what's that?" and we'll check
00:16:29 ◼ ► it out. And sometimes that leads to us talking about it or writing about it and maybe making it
00:16:35 ◼ ► a nominee or a winner. So we could not do the upgradees without your help, or at least we could,
00:16:40 ◼ ► but it wouldn't be as good. So please help us. upgradees.vote. That episode is coming out on
00:16:44 ◼ ► December 18th, a little bit earlier than usual, because we've got some other special stuff planned
00:16:51 ◼ ► for the rest of this month and into the beginning of next year. So you can see all the previous
00:16:56 ◼ ► winners of the award at upgradees.com, of course. I will not try and influence the vote in any way.
00:17:03 ◼ ► Okay, good. Good. Good job. Upgrade Plus, by the way, if you love upgrade and want to hear more of
00:17:09 ◼ ► it, please subscribe to Upgrade Plus. No ads, bonus content every week, access to the excellent Relay
00:17:14 ◼ ► FM members Discord, and there is a special deal right now. Until December 15th, you can get 20%
00:17:20 ◼ ► off a new annual plan. You use the code HOLIDAYS2024 at checkout. Go to getupgradeplus.com. Get your
00:17:27 ◼ ► first year of Upgrade Plus for $40. Find out more at giverelay.com. Now this week on Upgrade Plus,
00:17:37 ◼ ► who knows what we're going to talk about, but I'm going to guess it's probably going to be
00:17:40 ◼ ► Doctor Who related. Who knows? Who knows, eh? Who knows? Let's do a little bit of follow-up. Open AI,
00:17:48 ◼ ► Mike and I decided to take the brave step to talk about Open AI last Monday, thinking it's probably
00:17:54 ◼ ► over, right? It's probably over now and there will be no more news about Open AI. I don't think we
00:18:00 ◼ ► actually believe that, but we thought we could maybe like slide in some takes on last Monday,
00:18:04 ◼ ► and I'm glad we did. But just to wrap that up in a bow in case you were not paying attention,
00:18:10 ◼ ► the board realized that the whole company was going to dissolve and Satya Nadella, as Mike said,
00:18:19 ◼ ► he's a stone cold killer, said we could just take them all at Microsoft, which seems like it was
00:18:24 ◼ ► basically a ploy to get Open AI to do what they did, which is reshape the board and bring Sam
00:18:30 ◼ ► Altman back. So in the end, I don't know what the net result is other than Sam Altman's back.
00:18:36 ◼ ► He's not on the board. The board is still sort of semi-independent. Their weird governance is
00:18:41 ◼ ► still there, but I feel like if nothing else, there is now kind of an acceptance that Open AI
00:18:47 ◼ ► is going to do what it's going to do and the board is probably not going to suddenly fire everybody.
00:18:56 ◼ ► perhaps, that all the women have now been removed from the board. The ones who wanted, perhaps,
00:19:02 ◼ ► to consider the ethics of rushing to ship generative AI products without thinking of all
00:19:14 ◼ ► CB They just got in the way, I guess. Get them out of there. I could say things ironically now that
00:19:22 ◼ ► I'm not going to say, right? Because it would all be funny, but also kind of unpleasant. So I'm just
00:19:26 ◼ ► going to move on and mention another thing that is something that we cover on Upgrade from Time
00:19:32 ◼ ► to Time, which is Apple's little holiday films that they released. They released a new one. It's
00:19:36 ◼ ► called Fuzzy Feelings. Put a link in the show notes to that. And over at Six Colors, my pal
00:19:43 ◼ ► Andy Anotko wrote a, I think, funny article about his journey while watching this video about empathy
00:19:51 ◼ ► that includes... It's about a bad boss, but is he really a bad boss? Because the main character is
00:19:59 ◼ ► late for work and the boss says, "You're late for work." And is he being mean about it? But she's
00:20:05 ◼ ► making an elaborate stop motion video in which she gets to harm him in various ways. But in the end,
00:20:13 ◼ ► she learns that he's a human being, which she should have known all along and ends up being nice
00:20:19 ◼ ► to him at the end. So it's a weird... I enjoyed it. And I think that it's very impressive that in
00:20:24 ◼ ► a few minutes it takes you on a whole journey, a whole story arc. I thought it was a lot of fun and
00:20:30 ◼ ► it looks really great, but it is weird. It's a little weird. I had slightly a different response
00:20:36 ◼ ► to watching it. I think that boss deserved everything that he was getting in Felt and Life.
00:20:44 ◼ ► Why did she suck it up and be nice to him just because he knitted her a sock? He eats alone
00:20:59 ◼ ► because I thoroughly was impressed by the various murder scenarios that she had dreamed up for him
00:21:08 ◼ ► because it started with him losing his trousers and then go on a bit and he was being hit by cars
00:21:15 ◼ ► and all sorts of things. And I thought, "This is a really interesting Apple advert. I'm not sure
00:21:22 ◼ ► what the message is, but I'm really on board." And then she kind of like... Because I think she was
00:21:29 ◼ ► coming in late because she doesn't want to be at work. He's terrible. He doesn't take any of her
00:21:37 ◼ ► feedback. He closes the door when she's coming up to try and talk to him about things. Don't give
00:21:44 ◼ ► up on your Felt murder dreams, lady. (laughs) So you're disappointed that it takes a turn at the
00:21:49 ◼ ► end where she learns the spirit of the holiday season and human empathy. Yeah, I think he should
00:22:01 ◼ ► I feel conflicted about it now. Let me take a pause to tell you about our sponsors this week.
00:22:08 ◼ ► Our first sponsor is Memberful. Sometimes taking a risk is the move you need to make to get where
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00:23:36 ◼ ► now, I got it working in a week, and it was really only a few hours to put it together. So a year of
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00:24:17 ◼ ► This is the beauty of it. If you use WordPress, as I do, boom, plugin, done. MailChimp, Stripe
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00:24:53 ◼ ► explore with no credit card required. I absolutely did that too. You set it up. You can't take
00:25:04 ◼ ► how would this work and how would it look? And then when you're ready to open the doors,
00:25:31 ◼ ► James, you didn't do the hoo-hoo. Okay. I did my own hoo-hoo and no, we all know how painful that
00:25:38 ◼ ► can be. All right. I had a rental car this weekend. I just am telling you a little story. It's vaguely
00:25:43 ◼ ► Beta. I almost said Beta. You're doing it to me. It's Beta related, James. I had a rental car with
00:25:50 ◼ ► CarPlay this weekend because I don't have cars with CarPlay. So then I get rental cars with
00:25:55 ◼ ► CarPlay. It's very exciting. This was a Jeep Wrangler. Shout out to Casey Liss. I was driving
00:26:00 ◼ ► a Jeep in the snow in Colorado. And I had a couple of observations. One is the shared playlist
00:26:11 ◼ ► feature in CarPlay, which we didn't use and none of my family knew about. And I'm not sure, is it
00:26:17 ◼ ► in there in the shipping version? Have they added that or is it in the 17.2 Beta? I'm not sure. You
00:26:23 ◼ ► don't drive. So how would you know? I don't drive and I don't have CarPlay. Not a real road tripper.
00:26:28 ◼ ► And I only installed the 17.2 Beta this morning. Okay. Well, it is a new feature of 17 at least,
00:26:36 ◼ ► whether it's in the shipping version or not. And I think that would be great because my daughter was
00:26:41 ◼ ► trying to pick songs for us to listen to when we were on a long part of the drive and driving from
00:26:46 ◼ ► the airport because the airport in Denver is very far away from everything. And she's like pulls the
00:26:54 ◼ ► USB-C cable as far as she can away from where it's plugged into the car in order to use it. And I'm
00:26:59 ◼ ► sitting there looking at the taught USB-C cable as she was trying to pick music. And I thought,
00:27:03 ◼ ► well, this is the perfect example of bringing up that share interface where you can have a shared
00:27:08 ◼ ► playlist of what's coming up next and people can add songs to it, which I can't wait to use that
00:27:14 ◼ ► feature, but I still haven't used it despite that. But it got me thinking about the other feature
00:27:18 ◼ ► that I really want to try. And that is in the 17.2 Beta for sure, which is collaborative playlists.
00:27:25 ◼ ► The idea that I can make a playlist. I was thinking about this because I used to have a
00:27:28 ◼ ► playlist that is at various points in a failure of iTunes or the music app. I don't know which. I
00:27:33 ◼ ► lost this. It's probably still on an iPod somewhere in my drawer. I could maybe see what songs were on
00:27:40 ◼ ► it from that, but it was a favorite humorous playlist of mine called Creepy Stalkers, where
00:27:46 ◼ ► it was good songs. And then you listen to the lyrics and realize that it is about very bad
00:27:51 ◼ ► behavior by people who really need to just let it go and move on with their lives. But it makes for
00:27:56 ◼ ► good songs, but it's also creepy. And I was talking to my daughter about it, and she had a bunch of
00:28:03 ◼ ► suggestions of songs that I don't know that were also sort of creepy stalker-esque. And I had that
00:28:07 ◼ ► moment of thinking, this is what a shared playlist is for. So one of these days, those collaborative
00:28:14 ◼ ► playlists will come out, and I will try that USB road trip control the music feature, which let me
00:28:20 ◼ ► tell you, have there been shouting arguments in my life about who gets to choose what song plays on
00:28:26 ◼ ► the radio? Yeah, yeah. At least one. So this is a good feature, and I'm looking forward to it. But
00:28:33 ◼ ► neither of those things have I tried yet. And at least one of them, and maybe both of them,
00:28:38 ◼ ► is in the beta. So yeah, I thought I would slide it into details. This is all about Cars, James. So
00:28:47 ◼ ► long car journeys, we end up listening to either podcasts or audiobooks. So it's not something
00:28:53 ◼ ► that is like... There's usually debate over, will we listen to my podcasts or will we listen to
00:28:59 ◼ ► Saskia's podcasts, which are quite different. She listens to a lot of things that are sort of
00:29:09 ◼ ► JONATHAN Right. Yeah, that is the issue. In our four-family group, we will occasionally listen
00:29:16 ◼ ► to podcasts together, but it's fairly rare. Usually it's more like, let's just get some music on so
00:29:21 ◼ ► we're not just sitting there and listening to the road and occasionally saying something. We do talk,
00:29:45 ◼ ► JONATHAN You have to turn on the defogger. All the windows got fogged up while you were listening.
00:29:56 ◼ ► MG You're not wrong. Driving to Edinburgh is a long-ish drive because that's like 45 minutes
00:30:09 ◼ ► All right. In the spirit of Cyber Monday and the holiday season, which is all about commerce,
00:30:17 ◼ ► of course, I thought we would do another quick segment about where we are right now in terms of
00:30:27 ◼ ► Apple products. Just a little idea I had, because we don't have news to talk about, which is like,
00:30:33 ◼ ► go through the list of current Apple products and say, what would we recommend for people who are
00:30:38 ◼ ► looking for something for this season of commerce? And what will we not? Do you get it? You get the
00:30:59 ◼ ► Full range of things. You can spend infinite, almost infinite amounts of money if you want
00:31:06 ◼ ► to fully spake one of those. And as we discovered, the high-end Macs ones, they beat my M1 Ultra Mac
00:31:16 ◼ ► Studio by significant amounts. And that makes me sad. JONATHAN Yeah. Yeah. I think this is the
00:31:22 ◼ ► easiest one on the list, honestly, is if you are looking for a MacBook Pro for you or someone else,
00:31:33 ◼ ► for all of our consternation about that low-end MacBook Pro, I think it's better than what was
00:31:56 ◼ ► instead of just the M3, do that because you get a lot more for your money once you break that
00:32:02 ◼ ► 1999 barrier. But yeah, now is a perfect time for that. What do you think about the MacBook Air?
00:32:10 ◼ ► Would you recommend anybody buy a MacBook Air now? It is both a great product, but also a little bit
00:32:19 ◼ ► I was thinking about that because I'm in the market for something, and I don't know what,
00:32:24 ◼ ► because I usually have the split lifestyle of I have my Mac Studio, which is where I do all the
00:32:31 ◼ ► sort of heavy lifting, and then I have something that I sit on the sofa and answer emails on and
00:32:36 ◼ ► things. And that seems like the perfect candidate for a MacBook Air. But there's just part of me
00:32:42 ◼ ► that's thinking, "Yes, but if I waited maybe until March, maybe I would get an M3 MacBook Air." So,
00:33:08 ◼ ► incrementally better, but only incrementally. I think it won't change in any substantive ways,
00:33:20 ◼ ► when you're looking for a product like this that doesn't have the Pro chip and the Pro features
00:33:25 ◼ ► and all of that, I think it's going to not matter whether you get an M2 or an M3 because it's going
00:33:31 ◼ ► to last a long time. I really love that laptop. I love the design of it. I love everything about it.
00:33:36 ◼ ► And there's a 13 and a 15-inch version now, which I know that, although I always like little
00:33:42 ◼ ► laptops, it's a stumbling block for some people. And so, to have a more affordable large screen
00:33:48 ◼ ► laptop, there may be somebody, you or somebody in your life who has either shied away from the
00:33:53 ◼ ► MacBook Air because of the screen size or has maybe spent too much money, maybe they got an
00:33:58 ◼ ► Intel MacBook Pro and one of the reasons they do is just because they wanted a bigger screen,
00:34:03 ◼ ► this would be a perfectly great time to get them a MacBook Air. And honestly, if you are on a
00:34:09 ◼ ► serious budget and you want to get somebody a computer and they don't need a lot of horsepower,
00:34:15 ◼ ► I think you can find the M1 MacBook Air for like $799 now. That's a great deal on a really good
00:34:21 ◼ ► computer that will serve you for years because the M1 alone, it's not the new design, it's the
00:34:26 ◼ ► old style design and all that, but you know what? It's an Apple Silicon Mac and it's going to be
00:34:38 ◼ ► MG Yeah, I mean, even the lowest of the Apple Silicon chips are significantly better than many,
00:34:47 ◼ ► if not most of the Intel Macs that ever existed. CB; We have this effect because this is a tech
00:34:54 ◼ ► podcast and we are tech nerds and we live in tech nerd circles and sometimes I think we lose sight.
00:35:00 ◼ ► This is one of the reasons why everybody got angry with me when I talked about low price
00:35:05 ◼ ► MacBook Pros with not enough RAM. Some people don't have our priorities and they don't have
00:35:12 ◼ ► our use cases and they don't have our budgets. And Apple Silicon, like talking about an M1 Air,
00:35:19 ◼ ► I know that there are probably a lot of people out there like, "Oh, but it's so old and outmoded."
00:35:23 ◼ ► And it's like, yeah, it's true, but it's also $799 and the person who's thinking of buying it,
00:35:28 ◼ ► they probably have some battered MacBook Air from 2016, something like that, right? That's 2015.
00:35:39 ◼ ► They've got, I know people who are replacing computers that are six, seven years old, right?
00:35:46 ◼ ► Which most tech nerds, except John Siracusa won't do, but people do. And anybody coming from Intel,
00:36:02 ◼ ► they've been proven that they can hang onto a computer and use it for years and they want to
00:36:06 ◼ ► get productivity out of it. And I think once you cross over into Apple Silicon, even if it's just
00:36:10 ◼ ► an M1, you are going to get productivity for years. It's going to be a huge boost and you
00:36:15 ◼ ► are going to be good for a long time because I think Apple is going to be very good about,
00:36:24 ◼ ► all the way back to M1, I think. I think the support will be solid for the chips that it
00:36:36 ◼ ► that M1... I would choose the M2 if you've got the budget because it's more modern and it's beautiful,
00:36:42 ◼ ► but not everybody can do that. Or they're buying it for a kid or something and they're like,
00:36:46 ◼ ► "I can't, I'm not going to spend $1,000 on a..." I get it. 799 M1 Air is a pretty great deal.
00:36:55 ◼ ► Well, if you're the kind of person that's buying a Max Studio, you probably would want the M3 Ultra
00:37:09 ◼ ► Yeah, it is because it is... Yes, the M2 is good. The M3 will be significantly better. I mean,
00:37:24 ◼ ► And keep in mind, Max Studio is Ultra and Max. They don't use the Pro chip in the Studio. They
00:37:30 ◼ ► use the Max and the Ultra. And the Max is the one that is so much faster than the previous generations
00:37:36 ◼ ► of Max where they really souped it up. And then imagine an Ultra on top of that. But even if
00:37:40 ◼ ► you're just in the market for the Max version, the base model Max Studio, I think you're going
00:37:44 ◼ ► to want to wait for the M3 because I'm certainly looking at that and thinking that's going to be a
00:37:53 ◼ ► it is a tiny cube that'll cost you whatever, $5,000 to $10,000. And yeah, I'm looking at it
00:38:05 ◼ ► And I love it. It's great. It's fast. And now I'm seeing that it is slowly falling off the
00:38:14 ◼ ► performance curve. And I am running into things where it's like, it would actually be nice.
00:38:19 ◼ ► Maybe I should have specced it when I got it originally with more GPU cores. I didn't think
00:38:26 ◼ ► And just to be clear, the base model Ultra starts at $2,000 for the Max version. The Ultra,
00:38:42 ◼ ► something they said to Loki at some point, I think. But I think anybody who's looking at that
00:38:48 ◼ ► should probably wait, right? Because performance obviously matters to them, or they would get a Mac
00:38:52 ◼ ► Mini where it matters less. Speaking of which, Mac Mini. And I feel like I want to say something
00:38:58 ◼ ► similar to the MacBook Air, which is I'm sure there will be M3 Mac Minis next year. Well,
00:39:04 ◼ ► I'm not sure. I'm less sure than of some other systems, but I think probably. And I think if
00:39:08 ◼ ► you're in the market for a Mac Mini, I don't think it matters. I bought a Mac M2 Mac Mini
00:39:12 ◼ ► a few months ago. I think it's fine because you're using those for utility. If you're using it as a
00:39:24 ◼ ► base Mac Mini is not going to be like the M3. If it does roll out, I don't think you're going to
00:39:31 ◼ ► say, "Oh no, I missed all these wonderful features." Because I really doubt it's going to just be a
00:39:35 ◼ ► little bit faster. I don't think it's going to be as big a deal. You could do it. If you need it now,
00:39:38 ◼ ► you could buy it now and be okay. Yeah. Get a Mac Mini under the tree. Mac Pro, what do you think?
00:39:44 ◼ ► I mean, I would argue, was it ever a good time to buy a Mac Pro? Solid. I was going to say the
00:39:51 ◼ ► same thing. I mean, if you want to buy it, we're not going to stop you. We're not the law. We're
00:39:56 ◼ ► not Judge Dredd and/or whoever we said the American equivalent of Judge Dredd was. RoboCop. We're not
00:40:01 ◼ ► RoboCop either, no. You have more than 20 seconds to comply. I don't know what it's for. I think
00:40:13 ◼ ► it's because they said, "We're going to ship a Mac Pro." And so they've shipped a Mac Pro. But
00:40:35 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, if somebody wants it, I think that's great. I have said for a long time that there is a
00:40:44 ◼ ► volume that Apple has as a minimum for shipping anything. Even a Mac, you have to sell a certain
00:40:51 ◼ ► number of them. The Mac Pro kind of goes against that. I'm sure that they are... First off, they're
00:40:58 ◼ ► doing it because they sort of made that promise and they designed that case and they want to
00:41:03 ◼ ► deliver something in that case. And I'm sure that they've heard from certain key customers who have
00:41:09 ◼ ► IO card needs that the compact systems that are kind of like laptops that Apple does everywhere
00:41:17 ◼ ► else in the Mac line now aren't going to fulfill their needs. I would even argue then you could
00:41:22 ◼ ► probably do it with Thunderbolt in the breakout box. But maybe there are cases where that's not
00:41:26 ◼ ► even true or you wanted something cleaner than a breakout box connected by a cable. Okay. But
00:41:32 ◼ ► they've got to know how many Mac Pros they're ever going to sell. And it can't be a large number,
00:41:37 ◼ ► but they must think that it's key sites and they already have the case and they already have the
00:41:41 ◼ ► chips. It probably is the reason why they never did the quad chip version because it was hard and
00:41:46 ◼ ► they're like, "We're not going to sell any of them because it's going to cost a fortune."
00:41:49 ◼ ► MG - That's what I was going to say is like the one thing that I think would give it some kind
00:41:54 ◼ ► of revitalization is if they did actually put in an even more ultra chip into the thing. But yeah,
00:42:07 ◼ ► CB - All right, next year, no new iPads this year. Next year, all new iPads. So I think the default
00:42:23 ◼ ► "Should I buy an iPad?" And I've literally told them, "Well, probably not because they haven't
00:42:27 ◼ ► touched them in a year. And there's going to be a whole load of catch up you will get in the 18
00:42:40 ◼ ► confident will still be on sale this time next year, and that's the low-end, 10th generation iPad.
00:42:52 ◼ ► 10th generation iPad at a discounted price. And honestly, if you just want a low-end iPad,
00:43:04 ◼ ► don't need anything more than the base model iPad. And that's a really nice, they redesigned it,
00:43:09 ◼ ► it feels much more modern. It's got the touch ID button instead of the home button on the front.
00:43:16 ◼ ► Feels like a modern iPad while being pretty affordable. I assume next year it'll come down
00:43:21 ◼ ► in price, but still, that would be something that I might recommend to people right now.
00:43:25 ◼ ► For everything else, I think I'd say wait and see. MG - Unless it's something that you're giving as a
00:43:30 ◼ ► Christmas present, then yeah. CB - Yeah, I mean, even then, I mean, yeah, you can do what you want,
00:43:36 ◼ ► but even then you're like, "Oh, here's this iPad Air that's kind of stale and is going to be
00:43:40 ◼ ► replaced with something new next year." Yeah, do it if it makes sense, but it's not the savvy choice.
00:43:48 ◼ ► It doesn't mean that if you see it or get a good deal or whatever, you couldn't make it.
00:43:51 ◼ ► I put the iPhone down here. I mean, they turn the iPhone over every year in the fall. This is why,
00:43:57 ◼ ► right? If you want an iPhone, get it, I think. MG - Yeah, I mean, I think it only becomes more
00:44:05 ◼ ► of an issue when you... Because we know what the cycle is. It's unlikely that they're just going
00:44:10 ◼ ► to turn around in July and say, "Surprise, new iPhones." So it's only when you're past that
00:44:18 ◼ ► six months, which I think in my head of, and you're getting closer to the new phones than
00:44:34 ◼ ► CB; They are. 15s are good. Never a bad time. And then the older models actually are pretty good too,
00:44:40 ◼ ► and you get deals on those too. But this is how they get you. It's literally designed so that when
00:44:46 ◼ ► people have a conversation like this in the buying season that the iPhones are all there and they're
00:44:53 ◼ ► fresh and they're ready to go. Don't buy an iPhone SE now because I think that's about ready to turn
00:44:58 ◼ ► over again. And the Apple Watch is a similar story, right? I think that if you want to get
00:45:22 ◼ ► "Oh, but they're about to unveil a brand new amazing..." There's even the rumor of the Apple
00:45:26 ◼ ► Watch 10 kind of thing out there, and it's unclear if that will come next year or if it might be
00:45:32 ◼ ► further down the line. So I wouldn't... In terms of the like, "Should I buy something now or should
00:45:38 ◼ ► I wait because something new is around the corner?" Yeah, no, the Apple Watch progress is slow, but
00:45:43 ◼ ► the latest ones are refreshed and they're ready for you if you want to buy them. You can do it.
00:45:48 ◼ ► MG - I think we didn't mention the iMac. CB - Oh, we didn't. I skipped right over the iMac. We should
00:45:53 ◼ ► mention it. It just came out. I think you should buy it, right? Like, if you want it, buy it.
00:46:05 ◼ ► CB - You're not gonna get it. MG - You're not waiting like six months is not gonna have that.
00:46:14 ◼ ► Discord, maybe the Six Colors Discord, and in the end it was... Their solution was they found a deal
00:46:20 ◼ ► on an LG Ultrafine 5K 27-inch monitor, which is much cheaper than the Apple Studio display
00:46:27 ◼ ► or the Samsung display, which I didn't like, but which is comparable to the Studio display,
00:46:40 ◼ ► buying an external display, even a Studio display, and a computer is going to be more expensive than
00:46:45 ◼ ► buying an iMac, the beauty of it is that that display will last you a long time, and in three or
00:46:51 ◼ ► four years or five years or whatever, you could buy a new Mac Mini and still use that perfectly
00:46:57 ◼ ► fine display, and that's when you start to save money, is because you're just replacing
00:47:03 ◼ ► the computer and you're keeping that display, but you do have to buy that. There's the initial
00:47:07 ◼ ► investment in the display, and I know that people are... The Ultrafine, nobody seems to love the
00:47:13 ◼ ► Ultrafine, but it is the iMac 27-inch panel, and it looks good, even if it's not Apple-level of
00:47:21 ◼ ► quality of build, and then you can get a Mac Studio if you want to, but you can get a Mac Mini,
00:47:28 ◼ ► and you can put that together pretty reasonably. If you're a 27-inch iMac user who is frustrated
00:47:34 ◼ ► and doesn't like the 24-inch M3 iMac, although if you haven't seen it, you should go to an Apple
00:47:41 ◼ ► store if you can and see it, because it's pretty good. It may be enough screen for you, but if it's
00:47:46 ◼ ► not, then I think the 27-inch display and a Mac Mini will give you... I mean, base Mac Mini will
00:47:53 ◼ ► give you iMac performance, right? It's not an M3, but it's an M2. It's close enough, and then if you
00:48:00 ◼ ► want a little more performance, you can get the Pro version, which no iMac has right now. So,
00:48:09 ◼ ► MG - The only thing, the only sort of possible wildcard in this whole scenario is it is the
00:48:17 ◼ ► 40th anniversary of the Mac in January, and there's part of me, because there was the 20th
00:48:22 ◼ ► anniversary Mac, which was a ridiculously... I mean, it was kind of like an iMac ahead of its
00:48:30 ◼ ► time. It was a flat screen. CB - And to be clear, not 20 years ago, because it was the 20th anniversary
00:48:36 ◼ ► of the founding of Apple, not the 20th anniversary of the Mac, and came out a year too late. MG - But
00:48:41 ◼ ► still, 40th anniversary of the Mac, maybe they do something fancy, something nice. CB - It won't be
00:48:51 ◼ ► an iMac though, because they said they're not going to do an iMac. As much as I'm skeptical
00:48:56 ◼ ► that they said we're not going to do a 27-inch iMac, which everybody who's read is like, "Ah,
00:49:01 ◼ ► but what about a 30-inch iMac or a 32-inch iMac?" All that. I get that. The fact that they went to
00:49:12 ◼ ► like, I got it. I was sent it, right? Here is a statement from Apple. It wasn't, "A dogged
00:49:17 ◼ ► journalist finally gotten a PR person to confirm this thing." It's like, no, they sent out a
00:49:21 ◼ ► crafted statement about not doing a bigger iMac. I think that implies that it's going to be a while
00:49:27 ◼ ► before there's a bigger iMac if there ever is. I think that you don't worry about it. But yes,
00:49:41 ◼ ► like we've talked a long time about, convertible things that, you know, could become like,
00:49:47 ◼ ► it's like an iMac, but it's also a big tablet or, you know, like drawing thing or whatever.
00:49:53 ◼ ► It would be nice if they did something that we haven't seen before. I don't think it's likely,
00:49:58 ◼ ► but it's just that day because it's the day before my birthday, so I always think of it.
00:50:03 ◼ ► CB - A little birthday present for you from Apple. I should probably say this for some sort of
00:50:10 ◼ ► annual pick, extravaganza, or a year in preview and all that, but I'll give a preview here of it,
00:50:15 ◼ ► which is my wild idea. If they do something pretty wacky for the 40th anniversary of the Mac,
00:50:29 ◼ ► MG - Or they announce for the 40th anniversary of the Mac that they're getting rid of the Mac.
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00:52:17 ◼ ► James, you are a very kind co-host who gave me a topic today. I have to build this. You know,
00:52:27 ◼ ► Mike gives me topics. Mike's up. I'm sleeping. It's Monday. It's Monday in the UK. I am just
00:52:32 ◼ ► sleeping away Sunday night into Monday morning. I wake up on Monday morning and there's a show doc.
00:52:37 ◼ ► Maybe I've left some notes in places for Mike, but he puts it together. I had to put together this.
00:52:43 ◼ ► I did it my Sunday afternoon. Then I come in this morning and look. James has given me a topic.
00:53:00 ◼ ► Basically, it's one of these things where you take a thing that is happening in your actual life
00:53:04 ◼ ► and turn it into a story. I have been, like over the last weeks, everybody has been turning up the
00:53:13 ◼ ► screws on their subscription pricing, including Apple who just put up all their tiers of things
00:53:20 ◼ ► because they want to make some more revenue, some revenue. It's unclear. And I think a lot of people
00:53:29 ◼ ► are reaching the point of it being too much money and are doing the thing of like, "Well,
00:53:36 ◼ ► do I actually need to have this thing or do I need like five different versions of this thing?"
00:53:42 ◼ ► And I'm certainly at that point. I mean, it's not necessarily that I can't afford it. It's just that
00:53:49 ◼ ► I don't think they justify the amount that a lot of these things are. And when the leaps are,
00:53:56 ◼ ► it's not just, "Well, this is going up 10% in line with inflation," or whatever it's like.
00:54:06 ◼ ► Yeah, because it was all teaser rates back when it was 0% interest. So they're just like,
00:54:11 ◼ ► "Yeah, teaser rate. We'll borrow the money. We'll pay it back later, teaser rates." And then there's
00:54:16 ◼ ► inflation and they need to raise the rates anyway. And it's like, "You know, when we said $6,
00:54:22 ◼ ► Yeah. And Netflix was, I think, the early culprit of this. And I think probably started a lot of
00:54:29 ◼ ► these runs of subscription rates. And you get the email from Netflix saying, "And we're putting it
00:54:36 ◼ ► up this much. And also, we're going to give you adverts now." And I'm like, "No, no, you don't."
00:54:46 ◼ ► So Netflix, we cut Netflix six months ago or something. And yeah, we've had a number of other
00:54:54 ◼ ► services that have all said, "Yeah, we think that adverts are really what you want." And I'm like,
00:55:01 ◼ ► Yeah. We talk about this on downstream a lot. But the truth is that there's this economic
00:55:06 ◼ ► challenge where there is an amount of revenue you make from each user in the ad-based system,
00:55:13 ◼ ► right? Where they know... And this is assuming they sell all the ads and they sell them all at
00:55:16 ◼ ► a good rate. When we talk about this, sometimes we start to run away to assume that all ads are sold
00:55:22 ◼ ► and they're all sold at the perfect rate, which does not happen. I've worked at a magazine for a
00:55:27 ◼ ► lot of years. There are ad slowdowns. You have to sell below rate. But if everything's humming
00:55:32 ◼ ► along, you make X amount from that person on the ad tier. It's the amount of money you're making
00:55:38 ◼ ► from them on ads and the money they're paying you because they're doing both, which my magazine,
00:55:43 ◼ ► you had to pay for it and there were ads in it. It's a standard model. It's not unreasonable to
00:55:54 ◼ ► and they look at how much money they make per user on that and they think, "Oh no, we make less money
00:56:13 ◼ ► inveterate pay for the ad free tier person, I am not interested in your ad tier at all. It is
00:56:20 ◼ ► terrifying because Netflix now really doesn't want you to not see ads. In order to get that other
00:56:30 ◼ ► premium ad free version to pencil out for them, they have to raise the price kind of a lot because
00:56:37 ◼ ► the ads are so successful. It's great in the sense that I think Netflix and other places will be a
00:56:44 ◼ ► little more accessible for people who are willing to watch the ads, but I'm not. I think you're not.
00:56:50 ◼ ► And so you end up in a situation where now you're paying even more because the ad business has been
00:56:56 ◼ ► so successful that they're going to charge you even more figuring that if you don't like it,
00:57:00 ◼ ► you can just flee to the ad version. Yeah, and I think it wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't had
00:57:07 ◼ ► whatever the last decade with... I don't know how long Netflix has been doing their thing, but
00:57:14 ◼ ► we've had this ad free model for so long. It's like, "I pay you money, you give me shows."
00:57:31 ◼ ► fled from in the first place." No, I don't want to do that. And the other thing is not...
00:57:36 ◼ ► Also, we had all the amazing shows as well because all of these people were just trying to
00:57:43 ◼ ► get as many subscribers as possible. It was a gold rush. They were overspending in order to
00:57:50 ◼ ► get people in the door. But it was a gold rush and it was also a golden age. We had so much
00:57:55 ◼ ► really good stuff. And now it's like, as Joe pointed out in the chat, production has been
00:58:01 ◼ ► down for so long because of all the strikes because they didn't want to give the writers
00:58:12 ◼ ► it's going to be thin on the ground the next few months too. Now would be a great time to cancel.
00:58:18 ◼ ► Yeah, there's going to be like six months of whatever. We haven't actually got any shows in
00:58:27 ◼ ► the pipeline apart from these two or three that we held back, and that's your lot. So yeah, this
00:58:33 ◼ ► is a great time to save money and cancel all your subscriptions. And it's not just... I mean, I'm
00:58:41 ◼ ► talking about TV, but it's not just TV. Software. Software. I mean, we will come back to my views on
00:58:50 ◼ ► developer or app subscriptions, but with things like the Adobe, they've been hiking their prices
00:58:59 ◼ ► up and I just got an email from them saying, "Yeah, we would like fast amounts more for
00:59:05 ◼ ► Illustrator and Photoshop." And I use both of those things a lot in my work, but I'm not using
00:59:13 ◼ ► them to a level they couldn't be replaced by something like the Affinity suite of software,
00:59:21 ◼ ► which is indeed what I bought Black Friday deal this weekend because I can pay once and I can use
00:59:35 ◼ ► That's what you were doing. For the people who don't know, the Affinity apps are so good. I was
00:59:43 ◼ ► using an ancient copy of Illustrator that was 32-bit and that stopped working. I tried to use it.
00:59:54 ◼ ► And I realized, what am I doing here? And I bought Affinity Designer, which is their Illustrator equivalent.
01:00:06 ◼ ► like t-shirts and stuff and some podcast art. And it was never going to be worth it to pay
01:00:14 ◼ ► a subscription for it. And the Affinity app is just fantastic. And then on the photo, I do pay for
01:00:19 ◼ ► Photoshop and there are so many good photo editing apps out there, but I have 25, 30 years of
01:00:27 ◼ ► Photoshop in my brain now. So that one is still reasonably priced enough that I'm not yet willing
01:00:34 ◼ ► to give up Photoshop, but everything else sort of like in that the Affinity, I just couldn't be more
01:00:40 ◼ ► impressed with their stuff. And a lot of the Adobe, the push is AI generative stuff, at least
01:00:49 ◼ ► in the last couple of releases, which is worse than most of the generative AI stuff I have ever
01:00:58 ◼ ► used. But I don't want to be funding that really, to be blunt about it. And I've paid for Photoshop
01:01:09 ◼ ► like about 30 minutes before this podcast started recording because our video editor, Chip, wanted
01:01:16 ◼ ► some stuff and I double clicked it. It launched Photoshop, which then said, "Oh, we had trouble
01:01:21 ◼ ► with your payment, so we can't open this file." And in like my cross-ness, I just paid for it again
01:01:31 ◼ ► - $120 or something. And it's like for the app I've been using for most of my life at this point,
01:01:37 ◼ ► I'm like, "Okay, fine." If they continue to raise it, I would have that moment where I'd say,
01:01:41 ◼ ► "There are so many other options here, Pixelmator and..." - And I own most of the other options.
01:01:47 ◼ ► Like I bought the whole Affinity Suite. So I'm going to play with the Photoshop equivalent and
01:01:53 ◼ ► see. - I have Pixelmator and Acorn, and I'm sure I could use the Affinity Photo app too. The only
01:02:00 ◼ ► reason I'm using Photoshop is inertia, but boy, there's a lot of inertia there. And they know it,
01:02:06 ◼ ► they know it, but this is the risk with the subscription inflation is every time you increase,
01:02:18 ◼ ► Like when I give up Photoshop, I think I'm never coming back, right? So don't push me too hard here.
01:02:24 ◼ ► - And it was Illustrator was up to, I don't know, it was like £280 or something. And it was like,
01:02:44 ◼ ► - They're not a sponsor, but if you go to affinity.serif.com, they are having a Buy Friday
01:02:52 ◼ ► 40% off sale that's still going on. And I can endorse, certainly I can endorse Designer,
01:02:57 ◼ ► but their goal really is to sort of replicate the classic Adobe suite as apps you can just buy,
01:03:11 ◼ ► which is very impressive. So yeah. And you don't have any subscriptions in your apps, right?
01:03:16 ◼ ► - No. So I understand both sides of this because as a developer, it would be really nice if I had
01:03:25 ◼ ► recurring income because if you bought Pcalc for iOS, that's like 15 years ago. And you may have
01:03:34 ◼ ► tipped or something, but I've not charged for any updates, which is foolish, but there isn't really
01:03:42 ◼ ► a good way to do it. And from a developer point of view, I would really like that because the money
01:03:53 ◼ ► coming in regularly and you have an idea of what you're going to get and how much churn as you say
01:03:57 ◼ ► and all that. But as a consumer, I hate them. And lots of consumers hate them. And I think there's
01:04:06 ◼ ► a more of an argument if you've got a thing that is tied to a service. If there's like backend
01:04:11 ◼ ► servers and maybe you're paying somebody else down the line for like weather data or something,
01:04:17 ◼ ► I think there's an argument. For something like a calculator, it's harder. I mean, I'm not saying
01:04:25 ◼ ► that there is no work done because there is work done. And even just making the things keep running
01:04:31 ◼ ► is a lot of work, but it's harder to sell a consumer on that, I think. And especially now that
01:04:39 ◼ ► everybody's feeling this pressure, it's like if I turned around tomorrow and I said, "Oh yeah,
01:04:44 ◼ ► Peacock's gonna be a subscription now," I do not think that would go down particularly well.
01:04:53 ◼ ► CB; That's outrageous. Okay, so I get what you're saying. There is an app that I'm not gonna mention
01:04:58 ◼ ► because I'm not trying to shame them because I actually think it's still a great app and I
01:05:02 ◼ ► understand they need to do what they need to do. There is an app that I have come to rely on,
01:05:06 ◼ ► and their new version is going to a subscription model. And it is not an app that has a substantial
01:05:13 ◼ ► server component. They're really just saying, "From now on, we want you to pay us." And I get
01:05:20 ◼ ► the argument is it's continually developed, but it's a utility that the amount of value I get,
01:05:24 ◼ ► I do rely on it, but I think about paying a subscription for it and it just stops me cold
01:05:30 ◼ ► because I do that. And we all do this, right? You do the calculation. What's the value here?
01:05:35 ◼ ► If the price and the value or the good feeling, a lot of the subscriptions I get are the good
01:05:40 ◼ ► feeling of, "I love this app. I want it to keep going." And then I look at the price and I think,
01:05:45 ◼ ► "Yeah, for an app I use a lot." And yet this one app, it stopped me short where I thought,
01:05:53 ◼ ► "Really? This is just a utility that does this one thing." And it's like, "Well, no. Now it's an
01:05:58 ◼ ► annual thing that you spend money on to do this one thing." And I don't understand the psychology
01:06:06 ◼ ► entirely because sometimes I'm very happy about it, but every now and then I see one and I think,
01:06:10 ◼ ► "This is kind of pushing it." But the flip side of that, and it's something that you did,
01:06:15 ◼ ► I boosted you or whatever they call it, I masked it on, you did a Black Friday sale for Peacock.
01:06:28 ◼ ► You don't charge for upgrades. You are putting your product on sale and it's a product that
01:06:36 ◼ ► people can only buy once. Why are you doing that? To capture people who would otherwise never buy it?
01:06:47 ◼ ► over the years is whenever you do a big sale, because I don't normally... This was an experiment,
01:06:56 ◼ ► the Black Friday stuff. But I did, I think for the 30th anniversary of Peacock, I did a 90% off.
01:07:05 ◼ ► Which was, you know, that's silly. It was like, it's a dollar. And it made so much money doing
01:07:15 ◼ ► that. And it's not something that, you know, it's not like if it was 99 cents, I would always be
01:07:21 ◼ ► making that kind of money. But it's because it was a big deal and it got a lot of press and it didn't
01:07:29 ◼ ► affect sales in the slightest. Because it's not taking anything away from the regular sort of
01:07:35 ◼ ► steady sales. The Black Friday thing was an experiment because I've done it for the last
01:07:40 ◼ ► couple of years with dice, which is my standard experimental product. And it did pretty well.
01:07:49 ◼ ► I mean, like you get this big bump of sales and again, no downside that I could see. The thing is
01:07:58 ◼ ► you people then start to come to expect it, you know? And it's like, well, I won't buy that because
01:08:04 ◼ ► I know it goes on sale every year on Black Friday or whatever. But I mean, part of it is, you know,
01:08:11 ◼ ► Peacock is 15 years old, like that version of Peacock is 15 years old, the iOS one. And the
01:08:28 ◼ ► AC: Now you'll eventually reach everyone who would ever possibly want to buy a calculator and put it
01:08:34 ◼ ► on an iOS device. MG; Yeah. And then, well, no more sales for you. It was kind of like, well,
01:08:40 ◼ ► let's do a thing. Let's see how this works. And you know, it did very well. It is continuing to
01:08:47 ◼ ► do very well. It will pay for Christmas. But I don't have good solutions to all of these things
01:08:53 ◼ ► because, you know, it's not like a lot of this stuff is absolutely essential. And if people are
01:09:00 ◼ ► starting to see everything going up in price, they're going to start to see, well, where are
01:09:09 ◼ ► we going to make cutbacks? We're not going to buy the thing. We're not going to do this. Or we're
01:09:13 ◼ ► going to wait for it to be on a deal, which was what I was counting on. And that kind of seems to
01:09:17 ◼ ► have paid off. But yeah, making money is a funny old thing in this world. AC; It is. So when you're
01:09:28 ◼ ► looking at that app and saying, like I find it fascinating that it has sold as well as it has
01:09:35 ◼ ► over time because it is a single purchase. And if I bought, so if I bought Peacock on the iPhone 15
01:09:42 ◼ ► years ago, I still get it. All of it, right? All of it. And I know you've got like a tip jar in
01:09:49 ◼ ► there, but basically you have, do not have a model. You are continuing to keep it updated and it is
01:09:56 ◼ ► your number one, I would assume moneymaker for your business. And you know, you do things
01:10:03 ◼ ► differently and you don't have a lot of overhead and you work out of your house and all of those
01:10:07 ◼ ► things. But like have we talked, we're talking about subscriptions here. Remember like this is
01:10:15 ◼ ► the, why they do subscriptions. And I agree a subscription for a calculator does seem like a
01:10:22 ◼ ► weird thing to do, but at the same time, this is your job and you do need to make money on what
01:10:29 ◼ ► you're doing. I think the thing is we are making the money, you know, like it's never been, I've
01:10:36 ◼ ► never been at the point where, you know, like I'm saying sales are down, but you know, they're down
01:10:43 ◼ ► like say, I don't know, 20, 30% from the peak of what they were. So you still, there is still an
01:10:52 ◼ ► ongoing flow of people who say, oh, I need a calculator. And so you haven't explored or you
01:10:59 ◼ ► filled that entire gap of people. They're always people realizing they actually need a better
01:11:03 ◼ ► calculator than what Apple has to offer. But you can see it's slowing, which is, you know,
01:11:09 ◼ ► that is the, you know, you can see the universe expanding out and record number of installed base
01:11:19 ◼ ► and all of that plus new people come in and they, or their needs change and they search for it. So
01:11:24 ◼ ► it's not going to steady state, but it's also not like you reach the end and there are no more sales.
01:11:30 ◼ ► MG; No, no. So, you know, if that was what it was looking for, then, you know, I would be like,
01:11:37 ◼ ► yeah, subscriptions, they're great. Let's have those. But, you know, that's the canary. If I
01:11:44 ◼ ► go for subscriptions, things are going bad. But I just, right now, you know, we're making enough
01:11:55 ◼ ► money to comfortably live and, you know, you can do the maths on how long am I going to live from
01:12:02 ◼ ► this point? How much money do I need? Right. And you don't have investors who are obsessed with
01:12:08 ◼ ► growth. You are doing what they, I think they call a lifestyle business, which is a little bit silly,
01:12:13 ◼ ► but there it is. MG; Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. It's like it makes us enough money to
01:12:23 ◼ ► You know, we can just kind of like, mangrothe our way through this whole thing and see how it goes.
01:12:35 ◼ ► But yeah, I just, you know, I could make more money, but to a certain extent, why? Maybe I
01:12:46 ◼ ► just have a nice business and people like me. Look, Lauren and I had this conversation this
01:12:50 ◼ ► weekend that there are different sort of like choices and different career trajectories. I
01:12:57 ◼ ► forget what we were talking about, but it came up the idea that in the line of work that I'm in,
01:13:04 ◼ ► and really the line of work that you are in, there is this question of like life work balance. And
01:13:11 ◼ ► like if I wanted to maximize the amount of money I make, I would make some different choices. I
01:13:18 ◼ ► would enjoy my work less and work a lot more. And I could probably do that, right? I could launch
01:13:27 ◼ ► new initiatives and have new stuff and do stuff beyond what I'm doing now, drop some of the stuff
01:13:32 ◼ ► that doesn't make a lot of money that I do because I enjoy it and focus it all. And I made the
01:13:39 ◼ ► decision that I don't want to do that. Like that I don't want to, you know, I've been going the
01:13:46 ◼ ► other way where I realize I'm working so many hours on so many projects and that I need to do
01:13:52 ◼ ► less because not only will the stuff that remains be better, but I will also have more energy and
01:13:58 ◼ ► that's part of the whole thing. So you do have that balance that you have to seek, but at the
01:14:04 ◼ ► same time, you also need to pay your bills and all of that. CB; Yeah, and I think that that balance
01:14:10 ◼ ► thing is something that certainly I've been thinking particularly over the last like four
01:14:15 ◼ ► years or something because, you know, the sort of the last couple of years, I was pushing myself
01:14:23 ◼ ► harder than I should have because I wasn't feeling particularly creative, you know, because the sort
01:14:31 ◼ ► of global events going on around us. And, you know, so it's like, well, you've got to be creative,
01:14:38 ◼ ► you've got to be on the cycle, you've got to have your stuff out for when Apple has their stuff out
01:14:42 ◼ ► and you've got to do all the things. And I kept pushing myself and pushing myself and effectively
01:14:48 ◼ ► a burnt out and I was fed up and I didn't want to do any of it. And this year what I did was I've
01:14:56 ◼ ► done less, you know, it's like I've done stuff. I did explored interactive widgets and dice and
01:15:04 ◼ ► I've been doing things and I've been playing with vision pro things and stuff. But I don't want to
01:15:11 ◼ ► say I did the minimum because I don't think I did the minimum, but I did not like push myself where
01:15:16 ◼ ► I was working more than was healthy. And I've kind of like I've had, you know, I'm taking a bit of a
01:15:25 ◼ ► break just now, you know, I got stuff out. I've, you know, I did as I say like messing with vision
01:15:32 ◼ ► pro things. But I'm, you know, I think we need downtime, like otherwise and particularly I will
01:15:44 ◼ ► say as both of us are in our 50s, you get to the point of like what is actually more important to
01:15:53 ◼ ► me? You know, I would like to enjoy my life. I would like to, you know, not give myself a
01:16:01 ◼ ► wide variety of chronic conditions that will continue until I die because I have pushed
01:16:07 ◼ ► myself too hard on stuff. And so, I think it's, you know, it's finding the balance of doing enough
01:16:16 ◼ ► work and work is also interesting because, you know, it is a creative outlet as well. But you
01:16:25 ◼ ► want to enjoy it. And I think that's the thing. It's like, you know, we've talked to a number of
01:16:29 ◼ ► people we know, you know, like mentioning no names, but somebody who runs an awful lot of D&D. And
01:16:36 ◼ ► you know, said person was saying maybe he's going to take January off from doing stuff. And I'm like,
01:16:43 ◼ ► I think that's an excellent idea. You know, have a break, take a break, relax. We all deserve it.
01:16:50 ◼ ► And that's a thing that you're doing for fun, right? And that's part of it too, is I know you
01:16:54 ◼ ► have obligations and other people and all that, but like there you do need to regulate yourself
01:16:58 ◼ ► and watch yourself. That said, I have a, well, I don't want to say it's a million dollar idea,
01:17:03 ◼ ► but maybe you can tell me why this has never happened. Because one thing that strikes me is
01:17:07 ◼ ► with Peacock being the way it is, you and you play around with graphics and stuff. What you could do
01:17:15 ◼ ► is add new features and ask people to pay for the upgrade for the, to unlock the new features as a
01:17:23 ◼ ► revenue source within Peacock. Most of, I mean, the numbers don't change, right? Numbers are
01:17:28 ◼ ► numbers. They don't really change. So you can't say, Oh, 2023, the new numbers are here. You need
01:17:35 ◼ ► the, you need to buy the new upgrade for peak alchemy. You're using the old numbers, right? I
01:17:39 ◼ ► get it. But, um, like you people out there, kids in schools even have to do graphing calculator
01:17:50 ◼ ► stuff. And that's not a feature that you've ever put into peak calc. And I've always thought like,
01:17:56 ◼ ► well, that's an obvious, I thought like 20 years ago, well, this is an obvious direction for James
01:18:01 ◼ ► to go and eventually, and you never have, and maybe you never need to, but it did strike me
01:18:04 ◼ ► that if you, if you made peak calc also have a graphing function, you would probably be able to
01:18:09 ◼ ► charge for it. I mean, there was the whole thing with the graphing calculator has been shipped on
01:18:15 ◼ ► the Mac for a long time. And I don't want to step on Ron's toes, but I think that, you know,
01:18:30 ◼ ► that we will consider this, this is just between us, you know, nobody's listening. I'm not actually
01:18:36 ◼ ► like particularly excited about numbers. It is a thing that people assume that I am like, wow,
01:18:48 ◼ ► I must be like really big on maths. It's not the case. What I like is designing user interfaces for
01:19:00 ◼ ► things. And that is what gets me up in the morning is I want to make a new thing. So like, for
01:19:09 ◼ ► example, dice apps, you know, it's like, this is a completely different sphere of doing things. And
01:19:18 ◼ ► it's fun to sort of like, well, how would the interface work for this? What would be the best
01:19:24 ◼ ► way to do these kinds of things? And that is what is interesting to me rather than the actual
01:19:30 ◼ ► numbers. I mean, you've got to get the numbers right. But James numbers graphs aren't numbers.
01:19:34 ◼ ► That's the beauty of it is graphs are graphics and you like graphics. I know you heard here first,
01:19:41 ◼ ► the vision pro peak calc is going to have a virtual, a full 3d grapher. Well, that is not
01:19:51 ◼ ► a product. No, maybe not. No, I'm just trying to get you into it. I get it though. I get it. You
01:19:56 ◼ ► know, you, you wanted to build up an interface and build a product and you built a calculator
01:20:01 ◼ ► and it has become your career, which is kind of funny. Yeah. I mean, it's not like I, I'm,
01:20:08 ◼ ► I am now I am the peak out guy or the dice guy or whatever. Like 10 years ago, 15 years ago,
01:20:15 ◼ ► I was the drag thing guy. Right. And I don't think anyone remembers tracking anymore other than John
01:20:23 ◼ ► Syracuse who keeps trying to replicate it with his own apps. Absolutely. He does. And I am,
01:20:27 ◼ ► you know, it is one of those things that the curse is only ever truly lifted once you pass it on to
01:20:33 ◼ ► somebody else. Yes. And I, I'm very happy for John and I support all of his efforts in this field.
01:20:45 ◼ ► That's right. Well, yeah, I, I I was going to ask you if, if you think if John's continued
01:20:54 ◼ ► effort to slowly rebuild drag thing, one app at a time has only convinced you that you were right
01:20:59 ◼ ► to stop. Yeah. I mean, it really has. It's I mean, app Apple these days is tightening up a lot of
01:21:09 ◼ ► stuff. So, you know, if you back in the day, you could have an app that did anything at all. You
01:21:15 ◼ ► know, you could hook into the lowest levels of the system and you could, you know, you, you want to
01:21:20 ◼ ► like control an app in some way, you can do that. No problem. Nowadays, it's like, as you have seen,
01:21:27 ◼ ► you get 15 dialogue boxes saying this app really wants to like, you know, look at the contents of
01:21:35 ◼ ► your windows or control this or whatever. And it's getting tedious and it's getting locked down and
01:21:41 ◼ ► it's writing sort of system level utilities is like being in a war with Apple. And, you know,
01:21:51 ◼ ► you just look at like the, even the audio hijack people, the hoops that you need to jump through
01:21:58 ◼ ► when you first install that, you know, now, now restart your computer, hold down this button,
01:22:04 ◼ ► switch on this scary sounding thing, and then you can install it. And, you know, that, that,
01:22:10 ◼ ► that's one of the beauties of calculators is they just exist and they don't have to do any of these
01:22:16 ◼ ► things. Even dice apps is the same. I, I don't miss that system utility space because it was
01:22:25 ◼ ► just becoming hard. And I, you know, you can ask John if you perhaps have him on a podcast at any
01:22:32 ◼ ► point a couple of weeks, maybe. Yeah, sure. And you can say, does he regret all his choices?
01:22:40 ◼ ► Sure. Sure. I just, every time he tells, talks about the pain that he's going through and
01:22:45 ◼ ► building those apps, I just imagine I just like you appear like hovering overhead, smiling happily
01:22:53 ◼ ► in your retirement drag thing. I feel like every time I still get, I still get the emails like,
01:22:58 ◼ ► you know, not often, but like I will get an email from somebody who says, I just updated my machine
01:23:05 ◼ ► to whatever system after, you know, Catalina or later and drag thing doesn't work. How do I make
01:23:11 ◼ ► it work? And I go, I'm afraid to tell you don't you don't. It's an X utility. Please check out
01:23:18 ◼ ► these utilities from John Syracuse. Indeed. This episode of upgrade is also brought to you by
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01:25:22 ◼ ► supporting, Mike and Upgrade. Time for a very brief discussion of the Vision Pro before we go.
01:25:32 ◼ ► I really wanted to get your thoughts as a developer about where we are. We're probably not a month out.
01:25:38 ◼ ► We're probably a few months out from Vision Pro shipping. And I wanted to know, but before we get
01:25:45 ◼ ► to the developer part, can we talk a little bit about spatial videos? Because I think you and I
01:25:49 ◼ ► have both been experimenting with spatial videos. We got a letter from Upgrading and Brandon about
01:25:54 ◼ ► converting. There was an app that converts your spatial video shot on an iPhone to a format that
01:25:59 ◼ ► lets you view it on an Oculus Quest, which I did. I think you did. What did you think of that?
01:26:05 ◼ ► MG; So, I've seen a lot of fairly high-quality video on the Quest, so I had an idea in my head.
01:26:15 ◼ ► And I first did this, and I just walked through my apartment, and I looked at it and I thought,
01:26:26 ◼ ► "Well, that doesn't look very good at all." It's a 2D video. It didn't really seem to add anything.
01:26:35 ◼ ► And I did another test, which was to have my dear wife talking at me, and I recorded her. And that
01:26:44 ◼ ► actually worked quite well because there was somebody close enough to the camera that you
01:26:49 ◼ ► could get a sense of 3D separation from what's around you. And it's fine, but it's fairly obvious.
01:27:01 ◼ ► I mean, it should be obvious, but it's not a 180 view which you get with a lot of these 3D videos,
01:27:10 ◼ ► where you can look around a scene independent of where the camera was actually pointing. We had
01:27:16 ◼ ► this--not 3D, but you had your experiments with the 360 camera when we were recording D&D. And
01:27:23 ◼ ► that's an interesting thing because you can make a different choice to whatever the person was
01:27:30 ◼ ► looking at. So you can look off in the corner or whatever, and this isn't that. It is basically a
01:27:37 ◼ ► rectangular or square or whatever video, but it has depth. It's like a 3D movie, effectively,
01:27:56 ◼ ► something to that, to watching a video, that you get this certain amount of depth to it. But it's
01:28:05 ◼ ► not like you're there. I've seen some kind of fairly hyperbolic statements about how magical
01:28:16 ◼ ► it is, and I'm just thinking, "Well, you've clearly never seen any decent 3D video before."
01:28:22 ◼ ► Cote: Now, it may be that in the context of VisionOS, they're gonna do some more processing
01:28:28 ◼ ► with it because we're not watching it in VisionOS. And they're certainly doing things like having the
01:28:33 ◼ ► fuzzy frame and all of that, which I think it's all there to kind of cover the imperfections in
01:28:38 ◼ ► here. And look, they're doing what they can with this. It's 1080 at 30 frames a second,
01:28:44 ◼ ► and it's not that high resolution, and you kind of need to have it as a little fuzzy-edge thing.
01:28:50 ◼ ► All their demo videos, or at least two of their initial demo videos, including the ones that I
01:28:55 ◼ ► saw, are a kid blowing out candles and people at a campfire, both of which are designed to have smoke
01:29:04 ◼ ► in the foreground. And there's a reason for that. You can see there's an element hovering in the
01:29:11 ◼ ► foreground with a lot of parallax to what's in the background, and it makes you go, "Oh,
01:29:15 ◼ ► right. Oh, it's a 3D effect." And in this video that I shot, very similarly, if there isn't
01:29:21 ◼ ► something very close in the foreground, like I was walking past people or had people sitting in front
01:29:32 ◼ ► and you end up with something that's just a 1080 video, to the point where I would say,
01:29:37 ◼ ► somebody asked, they said, "I'm going out with a beta." This is sort of like a little backward
01:29:44 ◼ ► details happening here. And should I shoot using these spatial videos? Should I shoot 3D video with
01:29:53 ◼ ► my iPhone on this trip? And my thought was, you know what? Sure, if it's something where there
01:30:00 ◼ ► are lots of people in the foreground or lots of elements in the foreground and nearby, and you're
01:30:05 ◼ ► going to get the most out of it, try some because they may be fun. But honestly, if these are
01:30:11 ◼ ► precious moments, especially if they're not stuff that really benefits from this depth collection
01:30:18 ◼ ► going on, I mean, you're better at shooting at... I'd shoot a 4K, I'd shoot at 60 frames.
01:30:24 ◼ ► I mean, take panoramas because those look great too. They're still, but they're beautiful and
01:30:30 ◼ ► immersive. But if you're shooting video right now, unless it's something that really is going
01:30:51 ◼ ► And I think one thing that I don't know that there's an answer out there for is whether
01:30:57 ◼ ► these things recorded on the Vision Pro are going to be 1080, 30. Because I mean, the Vision Pro
01:31:07 ◼ ► Yes. Oh, those cameras are high resolution and they're identical. And the other problem here is
01:31:11 ◼ ► that the iPhone has to crop the sensor on the One because it's the ultra-wide. And so the quality
01:31:19 ◼ ► is degraded overall when you put them together. I'll mention if you're a Six Colors member,
01:31:23 ◼ ► Joe Rosenstiel wrote a piece. It's subscription fatigue. You may not be. It's fine. But if you
01:31:28 ◼ ► are, Joe Rosenstiel wrote a piece about this where he kind of broke it down in detail and
01:31:33 ◼ ► said a lot of the same things we're saying here. And that it's really interesting. And Apple is
01:31:37 ◼ ► trying to get around some of the faults of it, but it really does have its limitations,
01:31:47 ◼ ► do not start taking every video you take as a spatial video because the quality isn't going
01:31:57 ◼ ► to be very good. You're giving up lots of quality in order to get 3D effect. And you know what?
01:32:02 ◼ ► Yeah. If you're at a birthday party for your kid and you want to take some of those videos in 3D,
01:32:08 ◼ ► go for it. But I would say also then switch and take a bunch of videos at 4K and your preferred
01:32:16 ◼ ► frame rate because those are going to look amazing in the Vision Pro 2. They're just not going to
01:32:21 ◼ ► have depth. They're going to look amazing on your TV. They're just not going to have depth. It's
01:32:24 ◼ ► okay. Not everything needs to be 3D, especially when you have to give up so much to get it.
01:32:30 ◼ ► Yeah. And I think that, as you say, a 4K 60 HDR thing, I think is going to look probably better
01:32:46 ◼ ► CB; What I would like Apple to do is let you say, I'm capturing--and I think probably they
01:32:51 ◼ ► technically can't do it right now--I'm capturing spatial video. And the spatial video will only
01:32:57 ◼ ► be at 1080. But since I'm also using the main camera as a part of that, I will also get a main
01:33:04 ◼ ► camera video out at full quality in 2D. That's where it should go, right? You should have the
01:33:11 ◼ ► maximum quality possible that you want at least out of the good camera and a degraded quality
01:33:16 ◼ ► video that's out of both cameras. But I don't think they can do that right now. Or if they can,
01:33:21 ◼ ► they can't. The amount of post-processing required, it's not worth it. But that's really what this
01:33:28 ◼ ► feature should be. You shouldn't have to make the choice. You should be able to shoot it at 4K
01:33:32 ◼ ► in the one camera and then generate a 1080 out of both cameras in stereo. But the framing change,
01:33:39 ◼ ► I get that there are lots of issues there, but that's the ideal. Users should not have to make
01:33:50 ◼ ► There's people selling these little 3D cameras. I would like to see Apple do something.
01:33:58 ◼ ► Its entire point of it is to shoot spatial video. It's just a small thing, and it doesn't have to be--
01:34:06 ◼ ► CB; I don't think Apple even needs to make it. I think if Apple finds good partners who they can
01:34:11 ◼ ► sell at the Apple Store saying, "Here is a great thing to capture spatial video for Vision Pro,"
01:34:15 ◼ ► and it works with Vision Pro, thumbs up, seal, licensing program, all those things they
01:34:20 ◼ ► are good at doing, I think that would be a great way. They don't necessarily even have to make the
01:34:26 ◼ ► product. They just need to find a partner who can sell that product. I agree. Although, again,
01:34:31 ◼ ► your point, you mentioned that I brought a 360 camera to Portland when we did the incomparable
01:34:35 ◼ ► get together and we played D&D. I'll see if I can put it in the show notes because it's just public
01:34:43 ◼ ► now. There's a 360 video we did on YouTube. If you watch that inside an Oculus Quest or whatever,
01:34:48 ◼ ► MetaQuest, you're sitting on the table. You're like a very small person standing on the table
01:34:55 ◼ ► while we play D&D. There's no director. There's no camera angle. You just look around and see
01:35:03 ◼ ► what people are doing. That's immersive. It's 2D, but it's immersive in a completely different way,
01:35:10 ◼ ► but still it's really immersive and interesting. There's not a single answer here. A gorgeous 4K
01:35:18 ◼ ► HDR 60 frames a second video is going to have a lot of feelings of realism and you are there
01:35:26 ◼ ► that a 3D video at 1080 is not going to have and a 360 video is going to have an immersion level
01:35:45 ◼ ► This is what they can do with the current hardware and if it becomes a thing, they could turn iPhones
01:36:04 ◼ ► and the price and all of those things, I'm sure they're discussing whether there's a future iPhone
01:36:09 ◼ ► that has a much more capable… This is kind of a hack, right? I appreciate that they did it,
01:36:14 ◼ ► but it is kind of a hack to get it to do this at all and it's great that it does it. It is
01:36:20 ◼ ► really cool. It's a cool idea because you're out and about. You're probably not wearing a Vision Pro.
01:36:24 ◼ ► Speaking of which, as a developer talking about the headset itself, what's your experience been?
01:36:35 ◼ ► So again, this is my standard canary that I do not have a Vision Pro developer kit. I know
01:36:42 ◼ ► you were saying on previous weeks that some people are starting to get them. It's unclear whether
01:36:51 ◼ ► Right, or if it's just bigger companies, yeah. Yeah, because I can imagine you start out with
01:36:56 ◼ ► the Disney's and the whatever and then you work your way down. But yeah, I don't have anything
01:37:01 ◼ ► yet. And I would say if you are building a complicated 3D app and you don't have a developer
01:37:09 ◼ ► kit, it is tough because the more complex, the more interactions you're doing, the more distant
01:37:20 ◼ ► the experience of using the Vision Pro developer kit, or sorry, the simulator is. If you're
01:37:27 ◼ ► building a 2D stuff like taking your existing apps, I think it's entirely doable. There are
01:37:38 ◼ ► this. It seems like only yesterday, but 15, 16 years ago when we were building iPhone apps in
01:37:46 ◼ ► the simulator and nobody had an iPhone, it's the, "Well, I know how it might feel and I will build
01:37:54 ◼ ► this thing." And then as soon as I got like with Peacock, I got it onto an actual iPhone in my hand.
01:38:01 ◼ ► I'm like, "This doesn't work well like this." The kind of interaction model of you holding it in
01:38:11 ◼ ► your hand and tapping on it, it's not the same as you clicking with your mouse and moving a cursor
01:38:17 ◼ ► around. And while the Vision Pro, there is a kind of effectively you're moving a cursor around
01:38:24 ◼ ► because you're looking, it's not one-to-one. And I think, I mean, had I had the experience of being
01:38:35 ◼ ► an Apple developer kitchen, I think I'm allowed to say that was actually, you realize that, yeah,
01:38:44 ◼ ► oh, this is different. There are things that are important that I'm not doing that just don't,
01:38:52 ◼ ► it's not really an issue on an iPad. And I think there's going to be that the first run of apps is
01:39:02 ◼ ► there's going to be a lot of stuff where it's like, to make an analogy, it's like when the
01:39:09 ◼ ► first Catalyst app shipped. You can tick the box and you can ship an app, but is it the best app
01:39:17 ◼ ► for the platform that you're going on? And I think over time, people will kind of realize more what
01:39:25 ◼ ► is important, what's not as important. And I think things will get better on that front. I mean,
01:39:34 ◼ ► I've got like my apps are running happily. My apps ran day one. There's still things in them that I
01:39:41 ◼ ► don't think are the best way of doing things. CB; Can you just drop bananas? Do they drop bananas
01:39:45 ◼ ► out into the world in a random way? Are they in windows? Are you rolling dice in 3D spaces,
01:39:54 ◼ ► MG; All of the above has been tried to some degree or another. I have thrown bananas in
01:40:03 ◼ ► augmented reality. It is a thing that has happened. And I will tell you, those bananas look great.
01:40:12 ◼ ► There is a certain amount of like I spent an unrealistic--not just bananas, the dice. I've
01:40:16 ◼ ► spent an unrealistic amount of time making perfect little 3D models of dice. And to see those as a
01:40:25 ◼ ► real thing or as close to a real thing as you can get is pretty amazing because you move your head
01:40:32 ◼ ► just slightly and like all the reflections on them change. And it's like, those look real. And
01:40:40 ◼ ► that's really, it is a really amazing thing to see these things. It's like 3D printing it and
01:40:48 ◼ ► putting it in front of you. But the question like, so I think like the Vision Pro is probably one of
01:40:57 ◼ ► the most impressive pieces of technology that I've used, full stop. It's got so much stuff which is
01:41:07 ◼ ► ahead of like other headsets because we've both got our meta quests and things like that. And it's
01:41:15 ◼ ► way better than that. I am still not 100% sure what the use case is, which is a different thing.
01:41:28 ◼ ► And I'm sure Apple is having this same kind of thought. And I'm 100% going to do my apps for it,
01:41:35 ◼ ► and I'm going to see where this goes because I think it is an extremely interesting space. But
01:41:44 ◼ ► do I think it's a sure bet? No. But still, the technology is so cool, and they've done so much
01:41:54 ◼ ► with it. And even not just the technology, the software. The software is really good. The way
01:42:01 ◼ ► that they've sort of adapted the developer APIs into 3D and done things is very interesting.
01:42:10 ◼ ► It just comes down to I'm waiting to see the killer app for this thing. I don't think it's
01:42:17 ◼ ► going to be a calculator. I'm not even sure it's going to be a dice app, although the dice app
01:42:21 ◼ ► might look cool. But what is going to be the thing? And I think things will come, but it's
01:42:40 ◼ ► Oh, definitely. I was quite glad. The rumors are that this thing is probably not going to be January.
01:42:47 ◼ ► We're probably more talking March or something. That's good because what I'm going to do is I'm
01:42:52 ◼ ► going to spend basically January and February and whatever of March working on this stuff. Because
01:42:58 ◼ ► I think that's my plan for the start of this year is to... I mean, I've been doing things,
01:43:02 ◼ ► but I'm really going to sort of make the best apps that I can at that point. And then we'll
01:43:24 ◼ ► amazing thing and it's going to find a place or maybe it's not. I don't know the answer.
01:43:29 ◼ ► Yeah. Nobody does. That's the beauty of it. Whatever happens, it's going to be a surprise
01:43:53 ◼ ► instead of just a listener and in the chat room, which you frequently are, thank you for that too.
01:44:11 ◼ ► bananas on it. I don't know what that's about. It's a sign that you're here somewhere. He got
01:44:15 ◼ ► to us. He substituted the usual upgrade flight with a banana. You can find James. James,
01:44:24 ◼ ► Well, as was stated, if you act now, you can get PCALC on dice of 50% off from... If you go
01:44:33 ◼ ► to PCALC.com, just follow the links there. If you follow me on... Usually Mastodon is probably the
01:44:41 ◼ ► place that people will find me at and I'm James Thompson on mastodon.social, Thompson without a P.
01:44:47 ◼ ► And I'm also... I'm on everything else as well. And all their social networks are weird. Mastodon
01:44:56 ◼ ► seems like the one that has got most of the tech people on it. Doesn't have all the fun people on
01:45:10 ◼ ► Okay. That's very good. Of course, you can send us your feedback, your follow-up and your questions.
01:45:17 ◼ ► At upgradefeedback.com. Didn't do any Ask Upgrade today, but it'll be back next week when Mike is
01:45:22 ◼ ► back. You can also check out my writing. I am at sixcolors.com. Podcast here at Real AFM, of course,
01:45:29 ◼ ► over at the incomparable.com. Doctor Who Flashcast is back. We're doing... Dan Moore and I are doing
01:45:34 ◼ ► For All Mankind on the NASA Vending Machine podcast with every episode. Lots of that stuff
01:45:39 ◼ ► going on. That's that stuff that I do for fun and not for money, by the way, that I mentioned
01:45:43 ◼ ► earlier, because it's fun to talk to my friends about stuff that I'm excited about. You can also
01:45:48 ◼ ► find me on Mastodon, JSnell@Zeppelin.flights. Mike always says that I'm on threads. Really not. Not
01:45:56 ◼ ► yet. Maybe not ever, but we'll see. And check out our videos. We have a YouTube channel. We're on
01:46:01 ◼ ► TikTok and Instagram. It's Upgrade Relay on all of those things. And we do often post the full show
01:46:08 ◼ ► as well as some fun clips. And I know I've heard from a bunch of people who that their preferred
01:46:13 ◼ ► way to listen to podcasts is to have it playing in YouTube. And occasionally you glance over and see
01:46:16 ◼ ► that there are humans saying those words and we are working on that one. We're going to work on
01:46:21 ◼ ► that one. Thank you to our members who support us with UpgradePlus.com. Thanks once again to our
01:46:26 ◼ ► sponsors for this week episode, Memberful, Ladder, and Notion. And of course, as always, thank you for