0:00:00[music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 503 for March 11th, 2024.
0:00:15This episode is brought to you by Factor and DeleteMe.
0:00:18My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason.
0:00:22- Hi, Mike. How are you? - I'm very good, thank you. How are you?
0:00:26- I'm doing good. Why wouldn't I be? - Yeah, exactly.
0:00:29I mean, we're recording this an hour earlier than usual because of the cruel tyranny of time,
0:00:37- and I couldn't be more excited. - It's not really an hour.
0:00:41It depends on how you look at time, right? Because for you it's the same time.
0:00:44It's actually an hour earlier for me, but you've lost an hour.
0:00:48But I've lost an hour and I can't find it anywhere.
0:00:51- I hope you find it. - Boo. Thanks.
0:00:53I have a Snow Talk question for you that comes from a Christian who wants to know,
0:00:58"What is your strategy with the face detection feature of photos?
0:01:02Do you only tag close friends and family or do you give a name to anyone it detects?"
0:01:07Christian, neither of those. Neither of those.
0:01:10I do not only tag close friends and family, nor do I give a name to everyone it detects.
0:01:16I give a name to anyone whose name I know off the top of my head,
0:01:23so I know them well enough to label them.
0:01:25There's a lot of pictures of little kids from my kids' school things,
0:01:32and they don't get tagged unless it's very obviously like a friend my kids had for a long time,
0:01:40in which case I will mark them.
0:01:42For example, I've been inconsistent with famous people because I'm looking at my photos library here.
0:01:51Hey, there's Seth Green. He's in my photos library.
0:01:54That's weird. - Because he was at the Space Shuttle launch that I went to.
0:01:57Okay, I'm going to tag Seth Green. There he is. Now he's tagged.
0:02:01I recognize Seth Green and now he's in there.
0:02:03Well, I think I have Sal, who you all know. I've got him in there.
0:02:06I think I have Steve Jobs and Tim Cook in my people, because I have pictures of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
0:02:13But mostly it's friends and family and kids' friends and stuff like that.
0:02:19And occasionally, there are lots of random faces that I have not done anything with.
0:02:26I just leave them in there. But I'm saying I named my daughter's kindergarten teacher.
0:02:33As I scroll through, there are some that are named, but mostly not.
0:02:42Yeah, okay. I think you fall closer to the second category, where I am in the first category,
0:02:47where I only put names to people I truly really care about in my life.
0:02:52And so there are people in the ad people section where I'm not going to put them in.
0:02:57Because for me, it's like, whose photos do I really want to look back over?
0:03:02And I actually also did find out in preparing for this, I didn't know that it was called People and Pets now,
0:03:09because it used to be called Faces. - It is. That was just this version last fall.
0:03:14And in fact, as I just put it into our Discord, I have pets there, including not my own pets.
0:03:19Romeo, the adorable friend of the show, who is occasionally walking across the rooftop next to me as I record.
0:03:27He has his own entry, where I've snapped various shots of Romeo doing his thing, adventuring around my neighborhood.
0:03:34I have two pets in mind. My brother's dog and a friend's dog.
0:03:39I wonder, actually, I don't know the answer to this. If you don't tag pets, does it just say people?
0:03:45I don't think so. I think it's renamed to People and Pets, regardless.
0:03:50If you have no photos of animals at all in your photo library, I don't know what happens then.
0:03:56If anybody does know, please let us know. Write in over at UpgradeFeedback.com.
0:04:02If you have no animals, does it say just people? Or maybe I'll say just the first person write that in.
0:04:08If you don't think you're the first person, don't write in, because otherwise I'll be digging through a lot of follow-up.
0:04:11Or just don't write in.
0:04:12Or just don't write in at all. Thank you so much to Christian for sending that question.
0:04:16If you would like to help us open an episode of the show, just send in a Snell Talk question.
0:04:21We're going to UpgradeFeedback.com. It can be about anything you like. You help us open an episode.
0:04:27Couple of items of follow-up. We are recording the day after the Oscars. Did you watch the Oscars, Jason?
0:04:33I did. I watched the whole thing.
0:04:36And Apple didn't win any.
0:04:39Apple won zero, even though Killers of the Flower Moon was up for a lot, and that's an Apple movie.
0:04:44Apparently, they ran a big campaign, spent a lot of money. No Oscars.
0:04:49I think Lily Gladstone was their best chance, and she was one of the favorites for the Best Actress award.
0:04:55But it sounded like kind of a toss-up between her and Emma Stone, and Emma Stone won that one.
0:05:03So none for Marty and Marty's movie, and none for Tim and company.
0:05:09But it happens. They can just hold Coda tighter to their heart.
0:05:14It's the same for Netflix, too, right? They didn't win anything with Maestro.
0:05:16I know that that was their big bet, was Maestro, and they didn't win on that either.
0:05:22I did what I always do. I watched a bunch of clips this morning.
0:05:25So I watched the monologue, which I enjoyed, but especially my very favorite thing.
0:05:30And I recommend everybody watches this. Ryan Gosling just going all out with his performance of I'm Just Ken,
0:05:37which is the musical number from Barbie. This man is an absolute treasure.
0:05:41The amount of effort he put into this from a performance perspective, I was very impressed.
0:05:46And it's so much fun. And it's great.
0:05:49It's great. It's fantastic. It's the high point of the whole show.
0:05:53And I say that as somebody who didn't really love his performance in Barbie.
0:05:58But this? Yeah, I didn't really like it. I thought he was outshined, charisma-wise, by other Kens.
0:06:05And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe don't put Sima Liu so close to Ryan Gosling.
0:06:11But this is amazing. It's great.
0:06:14And my other high point of the whole thing was when Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger came out,
0:06:19and you thought they were going to do a twins joke. And they're like, "Well, you know why we're here.
0:06:22It's because we both lost to Batman." And they're like, "There he is."
0:06:26And it's Michael Keaton in the audience, and he's giving him the steely glare of Batman.
0:06:30And he holds it the whole bit. They keep cutting back to him.
0:06:33He's still giving him the steely glare and some nods and some "I'm going to get yous" hand gestures.
0:06:39And it's just that was like, that made me laugh so much.
0:06:41So it's like, "Ah, yes, it's Batman, including the great line. How'd he get you?"
0:06:47He's like, "Well, you know, he found my one weakness. Heat? No, love."
0:06:52And he says, "Oh, he just threw me out. He just threw me out a window."
0:06:55It looked like this was a pretty good Oscar for this kind of stuff.
0:06:58The John Cena bit was very funny to me.
0:07:01John Cena bit was good? Yeah, there were mostly good bits.
0:07:03There was one... Even the presenter bits were pretty good.
0:07:06I actually liked the... They had five former winners come out and speak directly to the five nominees
0:07:12in the acting categories. I thought that was really good.
0:07:16There was one intro that was really groan-worthy and bad,
0:07:20where there was a whole banter back and forth. I forget what it was even now.
0:07:24And it was just the worst. It was just unwatchable.
0:07:27But other than that one, it did really well. So I think they did a good job.
0:07:31I enjoyed it. I thought it was a pretty good show.
0:07:36Oh, yeah, John Mulaney doing his whole getting off track with Field of Dreams plot thread questions
0:07:42instead of introducing the category. Also very funny, and John Mulaney is just great.
0:07:46There are rumors about this, and I hope it's true, that Mulaney might be the next Oscars host
0:07:52or might do it after Kimmel, because he did the Governor's Ball,
0:07:56which is the one, or the Governor's something. Isn't that the ball?
0:07:59There's like a pre-Oscars thing. And he hosted that.
0:08:03So he's great. Kimmel is perfect for that job. I was reminded again.
0:08:09He's perfect for that job. Yeah, some of his jokes were silly and some of his jokes were dad jokes,
0:08:12but he's trying to set a mood, take it a little light, while also understanding
0:08:20that this is important for the nominees. ABC does the Oscars. He's a talk show host on ABC,
0:08:25so it actually is a perfect fit. But I think he's very good at the job.
0:08:30So if he doesn't want to do any more, I think, sure, John Mulaney is hilarious
0:08:34and would be a very interesting choice. But also in my mind, Kimmel and this year's producers
0:08:41could just keep doing it, because they did a good job. Sorry, Apple.
0:08:47And my favorite movie, the movie that I walked out of, and I thought, yep, that's it.
0:08:50That's the best movie I saw all year. That's probably best picture. That happened.
0:08:54So Oppenheimer won them all. I have a point, but I could just go back to the Kimmel part.
0:08:59The one part of it I did not like the jokes about Robert Downey Jr. I didn't think that
0:09:04they were good, and I feel like we should have passed these kinds of jokes in 2024.
0:09:09I liked it up to a point, and I thought it went on too long. I think viewing it from a
0:09:17Hollywood perspective of that he was unemployable, and then he's come all the way back to this.
0:09:25But then again, he did that and better in his thank you speech.
0:09:29It was way better. I think it would have been better to lean on the unemployable
0:09:35than to make drug jokes. That was not, I didn't find that.
0:09:39Well, they started to riff on it, and it was a bit, like I said, I think it went on too far.
0:09:43I think that there was a little jab to be made about like, can you believe it?
0:09:47And then you move on and it dwelt on. There were a few bits like that where I was like,
0:09:51yeah, you know, but that's in the grand scheme of things, pretty good for,
0:09:56I mean, I've seen some Oscar shows that were like death, and this was not that.
0:09:59Then about Oppenheimer, we were watching it this morning, and Eddie turned to me and she was like,
0:10:04I just think it's great that the best picture is a movie we actually saw and enjoyed,
0:10:09which is like, I feel like it's a rare thing. I feel like for a long time, we've watched
0:10:16the best picture after it won best picture because it won best picture. But like, it's rare that like
0:10:23there was the movie that I chose to see because I wanted to see it ended up being the best picture.
0:10:29So yeah, it's a good feeling.
0:10:31DMA today time, everybody's favorite segment. This is actually DMA related today. It's not
0:10:40just European adjacent. So over the course of about three days last week, Apple pulled
0:10:46and reinstated Epic's developer account in Sweden again. So I'm going to try and bridge all of this.
0:10:55It started with an exchange of emails between Phil Schiller and Tim Sweeney about getting assertions
0:11:01that Epic would follow the rules again, and not like break rules like they did last time.
0:11:06Then Apple removed Epic's account again, in part because of public criticisms that Sweeney posted
0:11:13on X about Apple's response to the DMA, which is a wild thing for Phil Schiller to put in writing.
0:11:19Just like, I don't know what he's doing. Then the EU commission, I think quite rightly,
0:11:26started asking questions about this. Then Apple reinstated them again. This is a stupid,
0:11:32petty mess to add on top of all of the other stupid messes that they're trying to deal with
0:11:37right now. This is absolutely superfluous, unnecessary, benefited nobody. I do not know
0:11:43why this happened. Yeah, it was after the, I would say, basically a PR own goal of them putting down
0:11:50in their little letter about how they essentially view the app store as a gift to everybody else,
0:11:55and that Spotify built a whole big successful business on Apple, giving it to them for free.
0:12:02Which at the time, I think I said this last week, I thought, "Well, doesn't that make you look kind
0:12:07of dumb that that was your business model that you stuck with?" Also, it just gets to the whole idea
0:12:12of Apple's attitude toward other people being involved in their platforms as being that Apple
0:12:17creates the value and they sort of suck the value away, which is not true. It's much more symbiotic
0:12:21than they would believe. But this, I think this shows just how rooted this mindset is,
0:12:29which is, and also I gotta say a little bit baffling, and this is the thing is I thought
0:12:36when I saw that letter from Phil Schiller basically saying, "Hey, Tim, you know, reassure me you're not
0:12:43going to break the rules again." And his response was, "I absolutely reassure you we will not break
0:12:49the rules again, and I will provide anything you want in writing to say that." The result was then
0:12:57that Apple then banned them and said they did it because they were mean to Apple, they dared to
0:13:03criticize Apple publicly. It's like, "Well, wait a second. Feelty to Apple is not in the App Store
0:13:10rules, right? Omerta, right? Silence and do not talk about Apple and your relationship with Apple
0:13:18is not in the App Store rules, nor would it be legal for it to be there, especially in Europe."
0:13:24And so for them to do that, it shows you how petty and vindictive people at Apple can be. And
0:13:31it's a bad look when you're an incredibly powerful company. It's understandable to a certain extent
0:13:37when you're fighting for your life, which is I think why that attitude got ingrained in Apple.
0:13:42It was in the early Steve Jobs return era, and they were fighting for their lives. But I will say
0:13:46also I think it's just a Steve Jobs trait that has transferred to the company, as he's always
0:13:50felt like he did. He always felt like he did great works and everybody else made money off of it,
0:13:55and he felt like they were all just kind of leeching off of his greatness. And just bottom
0:13:59line, I've seen it. It happened in the relationship with Macworld and Macworld Expo. It's just a fact.
0:14:04And then I see it here and I think, "Oh yeah." And let's be clear, I'm just going to be honest.
0:14:09Look, I've worked with a lot of great people at Apple over the years, but I've seen this firsthand
0:14:16that if you do stuff Apple doesn't like, they won't say so necessarily, but they'll punish you.
0:14:23They'll punish you. They'll forget you on the next round of review units or whatever. It has
0:14:31happened to me multiple times, to people I know multiple times. And in this, I was getting the
0:14:37flashbacks, which is it's like, "Oh, we're going to..." Phil Schiller assures Sweeney that if he
0:14:46gives him his word, basically, they'll let them back in, probably knowing that the European
0:14:53Commission wants them to let them back in. And Sweeney, who is not a compliant guy,
0:14:58I find him unpleasant and he has a real attitude. And his response to Phil is like, "Yes, Phil,
0:15:06anything. I assure you, and we will provide anything you want." And then they're also doing
0:15:12their public publicity campaign against Apple's policies. And that's what gets you kicked out,
0:15:20is daring to speak your dissent to the powerful gatekeeper. Well, that's certainly not going to
0:15:27play well in the regulatory environment where they're trying to shut down powerful gatekeepers.
0:15:33But I found the whole thing telling and offensive. And I feel like Apple's relationship with
0:15:42regulators and developers about the App Store needs a reset. And while Phil...
0:15:49Really, Phil fixed a lot of things that were wrong with the App Store when he came back.
0:15:57Because remember, Eddie was in charge of this, and I think didn't really care about it. And Phil
0:16:01Schiller came in, took it over. And if you think relationships with Apple and developers are bad
0:16:06now, you should have seen it back then. The number of arbitrary rejections and some of the rules,
0:16:13a lot of things changed for the better. At this point, though, when I look at stuff like this,
0:16:18I feel like there needs to be some new blood in this relationship. Almost politically, you need to
0:16:23sort of say, "No, we're going to put somebody new in charge of this stuff, and they're going to be
0:16:27able to sort of say, "Okay, we're going to reset, and we're going to change the rules a little bit,
0:16:31and we're going to..." It's not going to be like it was. Because this is so poisonous that I'm
0:16:36not sure how Phil Schiller can represent Apple in this stuff. And that's not to say that he
0:16:43hasn't done some good stuff and isn't a really smart guy, but I feel like this can't continue
0:16:50like this. It's different people for different phases, right? Eddie was good for getting it set
0:16:55up. Phil has been good for building it up to this powerhouse that it is and giving more options to
0:17:00developers for how they make money and this kind of stuff. But maybe there is a new mindset needed
0:17:07for the regulation era of the App Store. Quite frankly, it's a long email that Phil wrote to Tim,
0:17:15where essentially it boils down to the fact that you broke the rules in the past, and your
0:17:21criticism is why we're not letting you in. And so really what it means is it's the criticism.
0:17:26It's the criticism. They reinstated the account knowing full well what they'd done in the past.
0:17:31So the only thing that had changed is Tim Sweeney was tweeting about it. And that is an
0:17:37absolutely unacceptable reason to deny anyone to be in the App Store, let alone one of the biggest
0:17:45game makers in the world, probably the biggest game maker in the world, which should be on the
0:17:49platform. Why do you think I have anonymous people who do the Apple report card every year?
0:17:53Honestly, this is the thing is if you want things out of Apple, I mean, it's not necessarily if I'm
0:18:00on the record criticizing Apple, Apple's going to pull me from the App Store, my perfectly fine app,
0:18:05but it does mean like, "Oh, now I'm not going to get help with my app," or "Now I'm not going to
0:18:09get my app featured in the App Store," or whatever. Now my icon is never going to appear on a slide at
0:18:16WWDC. It's petty stuff like that. That absolutely happens. So that's the problem here. And that's
0:18:23why I think there needs to be a reset. And I don't know what it's going to take. What's it going to
0:18:28take? Is this what it's going to take? Is it a $2 billion fine that it's going to take? Is it going
0:18:33to be a future fine that's even larger from the EC than what it's going to take? The 10% of the
0:18:37overall company turnover. Those are the fines that are on the line for the DMA. So I don't know what
0:18:45it's going to take, but I know we've talked about this a lot in the past, but like now there's even
0:18:49more teeth to it. Like Apple's not playing the game it thinks it's playing. It's not playing the
0:18:56game it was playing five years ago, certainly not 10 years ago or 15 years ago. And yet it's acting
0:19:03like it is. It's acting like it's an upstart that's just trying to make it and figuring things out.
0:19:10And it's like it's 2009 and it's not. It's 2024. You're a giant. You're making huge amounts of
0:19:17money and acting in a way that is like, you know, that is imperious and dangerous and arrogant and
0:19:25threatening to all of those who are not as powerful as you, who you hold sway over,
0:19:31which is everybody. And again, just to be clear about this, the whole DMA and the whole EC thing,
0:19:39the whole idea there, the concept behind it is that there are certain gatekeepers so powerful
0:19:44that they exert an undue amount of power over everybody. And so it's bad for businesses and
0:19:51consumers. Nothing reinforces that than trying to rule by fear, which is effectively what Apple
0:20:00has been and continues to do. And there there's no better example than this of literally do not
0:20:07criticize us or we will make your business break. This is the best example. Like, I can't recall
0:20:14ever seeing in writing an Apple executive telling a developer we are not going to allow you in the
0:20:24app store because you were mean. And it is wild to me. Yeah, because you disagree with us about our
0:20:31business and you said it out loud. You can disagree with us all you like as long as you never
0:20:35tell anybody and act like you like it. That's the policy. It's wild of all the times to do this.
0:20:43That's why I made that comment about writing it down. The fact that this is written down is like,
0:20:48have you learned nothing? But I just want to spell this out again, though, just to say
0:20:55this is this is entirely consistent. Anyone who wants to tell me that this is an aberration and
0:20:59it's because it's Tim Sweeney and all of that and that Apple doesn't normally act this way,
0:21:03talk to someone who knows better because talk to a developer who's had a run-in with Apple,
0:21:09talk to somebody in the press who's had a run-in with Apple. This is how Apple has operated for
0:21:14more than a decade, for at least 15 years, probably more like 20 years, 25 years, I don't
0:21:19know, pretty close to as long as I've been doing this. They play hardball. And like I said, it was
0:21:29never fun, but they are so powerful now. And this is the result. It's not necessary. It is not
0:21:38necessary. I firmly believe that Apple can compete on its own merits. And that's the part that really
0:21:45bugs me about all of this. And again, I don't know if it's just the why should we change the
0:21:50thing that we've done that's been so successful, whether there's some arrogance attached to that.
0:21:53I mean, I think there is, but I think that there must be an underlying fear going on here as well,
0:22:00because I don't think Apple needs to play like this to win, but they feel like they...
0:22:06It's like, if you let it be a more fair playground, more fair playing field,
0:22:12what do you think is going to happen? I think Apple would do well, but I guess their attitude
0:22:20is why find out? It's just the worst. Why find out? If we own the refs, I mean, we've got a
0:22:29good team. We've got a really good team. We probably got the best team, but we also own the
0:22:33refs and the stadium and the field. So why should we even risk it? We've got to buy. This is a win.
0:22:40The Washington generals might show up, but that's going to be it. We are going to own it. And that's
0:22:49the part that drives me crazy, is that I think that they can... Not only do I think that they
0:22:52could succeed on the merits, it would actually force them to make an effort in some places maybe
0:22:57where they don't make an effort, and that would make it better for developers and better for users,
0:23:01but instead we're left with this sort of naked bullying that's happening, and it's outrageous.
0:23:06And again, I don't like Epic particularly, and I don't like Tim Sweeney particularly, but boy,
0:23:12he managed to get some real clarity about Apple's behavior toward developers with this.
0:23:19And I will just like... Hopefully, this is going to be the last point. We can move on,
0:23:22but at least we clearly both really care about this, right? And I think, yeah, but for me,
0:23:27I feel like I'm seeing a lot online of like anti-Europe sentiment about this whole thing
0:23:33happening, but for me, this is why it's happening. Because without the European commission,
0:23:39no one would have changed this decision. If this was a decision that, before the DMA,
0:23:45that was the end of this, right? Phil Schiller sends this email to Tim Sweeney,
0:23:49done. And because that was what they decided. Like the last 15 years, literally what you're
0:23:54describing is the last 15 years, where if you get on Apple's bad side, if you don't do what they
0:23:58want, you're out. That's it. There's no judge. And they only changed this decision because the
0:24:04European commission told them to. And so they did it. So this is why we need it. Someone has
0:24:11to change this and it's Europe. I think that there are reasonable criticisms of governments
0:24:17trying to get results through legislation that don't necessarily get the results that they want.
0:24:22But I think this is a really good example of what happens when oversight is added to a process where
0:24:27there was none. In very simple terms, there was no oversight and now there is actual oversight.
0:24:33And that's the only reason that this whole thing happened and that Epic Sweden has its account back.
0:24:38I would prefer for it not to be a government too, but we've been asking for years for Apple to do
0:24:46something about this and they've decided not to. We've talked about this a lot. We live in an era,
0:24:50we were talking about this in terms of Tim Cook and China at one point, right? We live in an era
0:24:54where, when I was a kid, I used to read science fiction about the future. The future where
0:24:59corporations were more powerful than governments. We live in the present where corporations are
0:25:04more powerful than most world governments and as powerful as many other world governments.
0:25:09And this is a case where, who is going to solve this issue anywhere? And the answer is,
0:25:15the entire European Union can take on Apple. That's what it takes. Maybe South Korea a little
0:25:25bit, the Netherlands a little bit, takes government actors. And I'm not saying that governments are
0:25:28the best use of this, but who else is there? Who is as powerful and can make these companies
0:25:34do what they want? There's nobody else. They are so powerful and they have such a stronghold
0:25:39on parts of our world that it's necessary. We have another item in DMA Today, by the way,
0:25:45but I think it is all of the same thing, which is criticism of some of Apple's policies that leads
0:25:53to changes in policies that I'm skeptical would ever have been made otherwise. Because again,
0:25:58there's a hammer now with the EC. Because I guess it is worth noting, I should have mentioned this
0:26:04at the top, the DMA is now in effect. Yes. In between the last two episodes. Happy DMA Day to
0:26:09all who celebrate. It's happened now. And this is why I think the epic thing could be changed,
0:26:16because well now there were the rules. The rules are in place and so everybody has to get in line.
0:26:24Apple before releasing 17.4 and because the DMA was going into effect of 17.4, they made some
0:26:32tweaks to the new business terms that developers can opt into. So this is everything about the
0:26:37core technology fee and all that kind of stuff. It's the new business terms. So they made three
0:26:41changes. Previously, if you wanted to opt in with any app that an entire business would own,
0:26:47it would opt in every associated developer account you may have in your business. But you can now do
0:26:52this on a per account business, not a corporation business. So if you had some large company and it
0:26:57had multiple developer accounts and multiple apps, if you did app A, apps B and C would also need to
0:27:03go into the new business terms. But now you don't need to do that. You can do it on a per account
0:27:09basis. You are now allowed to switch back from the new business terms to the old ones. One time,
0:27:15there was previously, if you go to the new business terms, there's no coming back. No
0:27:21turning back. Now you can come back one time, which realistically means you can go back and forward
0:27:25technically any amount of times you want. We thought, oh, there's clearly some kind of
0:27:30technical reason for this. No, if you can come back, this means this is just what Apple wants
0:27:34you to do, but you're allowed to go there. And if you've made a big mistake, you can go back
0:27:38to the old 70, 30 terms. And there's new eligibility criteria for app marketplaces.
0:27:46Basically, you can provide the letter of credit where you do like the 1 million euro.
0:27:53There is now a second way that you can do this. So if you can't provide the line of credit,
0:27:59you can apply to be an app marketplace if you have been "a developer in good standing
0:28:06for more than two years" and have an app that has had more than 1 million installs in a year
0:28:13in the European Union. These are the new terms. No changes on the core technology fee, though,
0:28:20so nothing's been adjusted there. This might affect the developer of AltStore,
0:28:24and I would imagine SetApp as well. It would be helpful for them, right? That they may now not
0:28:30have to provide the line of credit. However, if those are two apps that we know had already said
0:28:35they were doing it, so they must have been able to get that. But now maybe they don't need to.
0:28:39Although, again, it may help them out there. And I do wonder if this is somebody going to the EC,
0:28:43or whether this is feedback to Apple, or how exactly this pathway works to get this stuff.
0:28:48Because it could very well be that there's feedback from developers who are like,
0:28:53"But what about this scenario?" And Apple's like, "Oh yeah, okay,
0:28:55all right, that doesn't hurt us. That's fine." I could imagine that there is a developer that
0:29:01Apple would quite like to have an app marketplace, or it would be beneficial to them if they had one,
0:29:05but they can't get the... The associated developer account thing is big,
0:29:09too, right? Because it used to be that it was everywhere, and now it's sort of like it could be
0:29:13in a sub-account. I actually wonder what this means for something like Facebook, right? Like,
0:29:21could you end up with Facebook Europe having a Facebook app store, just for Facebook Europe,
0:29:27that's separate from the blue Facebook account, and all of those, and that Facebook Europe would
0:29:35be under the terms for their new app store, but they wouldn't be paying per install for
0:29:39the blue app that was in the app store, but was coming from a different Facebook corporate account.
0:29:45I don't know. Who knows?
0:29:49This episode is brought to you by Factor. Eating better doesn't have to be hard. In fact,
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0:31:03the story, is that Lauren goes to work every day, unlike me, and she needs lunch every day. I mean,
0:31:10I do too, but I have a whole refrigerator of food that I own, and so she would just take the meals
0:31:14away because they passed her test. We've gotten a few boxes from Factor, and I mean, I really don't
0:31:19think there's a better... We get podcast stuff, right? Some of us are like, "Well, that's nice,
0:31:23dear," and the Factor meals were like, "I want that. I want that. I want that. Give me that.
0:31:30Give me that. Give me that," and so I had one of them, I think. She took them all, so don't listen
0:31:37to me. Listen to Lauren. They taste good. They don't taste like weird microwave, and the ones
0:31:46with chicken, where Lauren has specifically said to me, "I do not like reheating chicken in the
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0:31:55and they were great because I've had them too, and they are really, really good. The ingredients
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0:32:14ingredients are, and you don't realize how low your expectations are for a cold, microwavable
0:32:20lunch until you have Factor, and you're like, "Oh, it turns out the bar was lower than I thought,"
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0:33:01support of this show and all of Real AFM. It's time for the B-Tails.
0:33:09VisionOS 1.1 is now available and brings of it. This is the first major update to VisionOS since
0:33:20it was released, and it comes with it. I guess the headlining feature is new personas. Have you
0:33:27set up a new persona for yourself? I have. I set up a new persona in 1.1. It looks better.
0:33:33It looks better. It looks more like me. It looks a little bit better. I can't really even quantify
0:33:38it other than to say I think the expressions. Also, they have the new capture. There's a new
0:33:42accessibility capture, which I used, which allows you to capture your face without holding it up.
0:33:48You can put it on an eye-level surface, which is really nice because then you're capturing me while
0:33:54I'm gripping a thing in front of my face, and I feel like my facial expressions and my arms and
0:34:03everything is a little more relaxed when I'm not holding that thing and trying to get it to point
0:34:09right at me. So yeah, better capture and better capture process. I had to do mine three times,
0:34:16though, because the first two times I did it, my eyes were looking in different directions.
0:34:22That's not a thing that I have, but that was happening, but I fixed it. What I would say,
0:34:30and I think I've seen this in mine and in others too, the skin tones seem warmer.
0:34:37I think that is a key difference that I'm seeing. I think it was better too. I think the variation
0:34:45on the face of the skin tone was better, and they say that among the things that's better is skin
0:34:50tone and makeup too. I think that they're maybe doing a little more attentiveness to some details
0:34:57on faces that maybe got a pass in the 1.0 personas. My mouse still doesn't move, though.
0:35:03They did not fix the mouse thing. So anybody who's rolling this out in the enterprise,
0:35:09which I guess is happening, there's MDM now, so these can be managed devices. A bunch of stuff
0:35:14that's in the iPhone and the iPad that they're like, "Nope, not for 1.0. Nope." And so that and
0:35:19the iMessage contact key verification is in there now. For something that they have not added that
0:35:25is driving me mad, no profiles in Safari. No profiles in Safari. So I can't get my tabs
0:35:32hidden away from me in my other profiles. I have already followed the feedback on that. I was a
0:35:39good boy, but I haven't gotten that. It's weird. They're syncing up features, but not all the
0:35:44features have made it, which is kind of funny. I wonder if they're like, "How do we do that
0:35:47interface?" Anyway, because the tabs are kind of weird in Safari anyway. Mac Virtual Display is
0:35:53supposedly improved. I haven't really noticed, but I've heard people say that it is more stable and
0:35:57clearer than it was, which is nice. This is the new Safari Phil Snappier, right? I'm sure it's
0:36:05clearer now. I'm sure it's clearer. Captive Wi-Fi network, so if you're in a hotel or something or
0:36:09in an office building somewhere and you have to log in and agree to their terms. I reported that
0:36:15to Apple where, I think I said this in the show, where I couldn't, when I was trying to do the
0:36:18setup, I couldn't connect to the Wi-Fi network because I needed to do the capture portal. But
0:36:24then my wonderful wife, Adina, was able to convince the hotel to give me their direct
0:36:30Wi-Fi. That was how I got it set up. And that's how you got in. That's right. The context there,
0:36:35you talked about the Wi-Fi and then your helpful wife, Adina, and I almost read that as Wi-Fi.
0:36:40My Wi-Fi, Adina. Wi-Fi, Adina. Yeah, Wi-Fi, Adina. We'll just run it right in there. Amazing.
0:36:45And those environments still say "coming soon" too, which I love. I love that. Soon is not yet.
0:36:51Virtual keyboard is supposed to be better. I haven't seen that it's better. It's still awful.
0:36:56And you can delete apps from the home view now. Yay! Apple's apps. Yeah, you can take Apple's
0:37:03apps out. I immediately got rid of mail. Goodbye mail, I don't want you. No, I use mail. That's
0:37:10one of the ones I use, which is kind of weird. I use Spark. Goodbye mail. But anyway, it's nice
0:37:16to see that there's an update, that it actually has some things in it. I don't know how many
0:37:20more of these are in the line before they just are entirely focused on 2.0, but I would hope
0:37:24that they're going to keep going with the things that are like the real pain points to get us
0:37:28through. Because again, 2.0, while we might see a beta of it in June, will not ship until September.
0:37:34And I think leaving this thing out even at 1.1 until September for people who are not
0:37:40brave. And I mean, there is an argument that if you're brave enough to be on the Vision Pro,
0:37:44you can be brave enough to be on the developer beta, but I don't think that's fair. I think
0:37:48you need to keep pushing the 1.0 features forward a little bit further too. I agree too.
0:37:54One of the things that I mentioned previously is I was, you know, because the window management
0:37:59is a problem. Like if the device turns off, which my device loves to turn off like every day,
0:38:04you lose your windows. And something I was hoping to get was, you know, I could maybe
0:38:08make a shortcut to at least open the apps that I use a lot and then I can move them where I want
0:38:12them. But the open app shortcut action would just open an app and then close it and then open the
0:38:18next app and then close it. Federico found that that has now been fixed. So the open app shortcut
0:38:23works as you would imagine, where it will just open a bunch of apps and stack them on top of
0:38:27each other, but then you can move them around. So now you could build a shortcut to open your
0:38:32favorite apps and then you could just move them where you need them to be. That is at least an
0:38:39improvement that they fixed that and I'm pleased that they did. I mean clearly everybody who has
0:38:44written about or talked about VisionOS has talked about how window management is, I mean,
0:38:51I would say it's a work in progress, but that's not fair because it's not. It's like there needs
0:38:57to be some because right now window management is literally there are windows. You can move them
0:39:01around. You can open them and close them. Good luck, which is okay as a start, but like yes,
0:39:06it would be really nice if you could save a workspace. You could save a set of windows.
0:39:10Have you been in this position where you've lost a window? You know the app is running,
0:39:17but you can't find the window and you can hold the crown down to bring it to the front,
0:39:21but it brings all of them to the front and then you have to relay out all of your things. There's
0:39:27no like can I find that app and bring it here? Because what I find funny with that too is like
0:39:32there are some apps that support multiple windows, but you can't like open a new window if you can't
0:39:38see the current one. Yeah, absolutely. I've also run into with one app I ran into a situation where
0:39:45it was one of these time battery widget apps where I could set it and then I could never get back to
0:39:51the screen. I think they did an update to fix it, but like I could never get back to the screen
0:39:55where you set it because the screen where you said it was the opening window, but once it had
0:40:00a window open it remembered that that was the clock and the battery count and you could never
0:40:06get back to the setup screen. I was like ah 1.0 OS here we are beta apps 1.0 OS it's fine,
0:40:13but it all needs to get better. I'm not expecting like a new interface model in 1.x right? I'm not,
0:40:21but there are some things like the open at least the open app shortcut does what
0:40:25you want it to do. It would be nice if some of those coming soon environments actually came
0:40:30soon. It's still soon, but not yet. But not what what are you waiting for? Why? I want my beach.
0:40:36You know missives from the sun are fine, but that's a reference to an upgrade plus episode.
0:40:45Missives from the sun that are puscular and on the in the out in the distance in Joshua Tree are
0:40:52great, but like I want my beach. I want my beach. Bring me the beach. I want to be Ken or I want to
0:40:57work as Ken. That's there you go that that's in the in the dream house. Yeah let's do it.
0:41:02Room around up time. Saddle up partner. Yee-haw. So many segments today. Wow. So many segments.
0:41:09Look this is we're a segment show. Are we reacting to the death of Upshift where we're like
0:41:15we have to run into the arms of our other segments. There was a different version of today's show that
0:41:21brought Upshift back, but I got no because there was that big Bloomberg article right and I was
0:41:26thinking about talking about it but then decided I didn't want to talk about it anymore. So that
0:41:30we did it. We did it. It's it's in the ground. We did it. And but yes look we're a very segment
0:41:35focused show. I think that's part of the joy of upgrade. I'm sure some people don't but I love it.
0:41:41As of today's recording there are still no OLED iPad Pros. It was rumored that they would come
0:41:48this month. There have been differing rumors. Some people saying that it would happen last week,
0:41:53this week. Mark Gurman is saying later on in the month. So we are now on iPad Pro Watch over here.
0:41:59I guess so. I guess we are. I mean I was checking the Apple newsroom on the hour every hour for
0:42:05three hours today because as I said to Jason before we started recording I didn't prep half
0:42:10of this show until like 20 minutes. This is like an hour before we started because I didn't want
0:42:15to throw away work which I've done before. So I will now be doing that every Monday in case all
0:42:21the iPad Pros appear. I've got a few Ming-Chi Kuo reports for you today. Okay. Because I'm busy.
0:42:28Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that Apple has canceled its plans for a micro LED screen. Micro led?
0:42:34Micro LED screen in the Apple Watch Ultra for "the foreseeable future due to costs being too
0:42:41high to be economically viable." It appears from Kuo's reporting that this is actually the case for
0:42:47all micro LED projects from Apple. As of right now they can't seem to make the technology work
0:42:52for them and be cost effective but they hope to return to it at some point. As a reminder,
0:42:58because I had to look this up again today, micro LED tends to be better than OLED in brightness,
0:43:03color, and contrast. So it's like a step past OLED. Yeah, I think this follows a report that a
0:43:10supplier of micro LED had announced that they had lost a major supply or a major contract. Yep,
0:43:20that was the report. And then Ming-Chi Kuo rolls in and goes "yeah that was Apple." And Kuo also
0:43:25added that like he is had the understanding that there are people at Apple that got laid off who
0:43:31were working on micro LED. Yeah, I mean this is honestly a speculative thing, right? Where you're
0:43:39like "I think this could beat OLED and that we could take this and this could be our new
0:43:43technology." And then you go down the road a few years and you say "no it's not." Right? Like that's
0:43:49going to happen. You investigate stuff, it doesn't all pan out. And it sounds like this just didn't
0:43:53pan out or didn't, to use a slightly different metaphor, pencil out where they looked at the
0:43:58cost and they said "this doesn't make sense to do this." So yeah. At some point they will get back
0:44:04to it. It makes sense, right? Like it's an advancement technology, but it doesn't look like
0:44:10now is going to be the time that they get it done. So moving on, Kuo also has a couple of reports
0:44:18about the Vision Pro. First off that he expects Apple will not make any significant hardware
0:44:22upgrades until at least 2027 for the Vision Pro. He expects a modification of the current model
0:44:29in late 2025 or early 2026, but his focus would be on reducing manufacturing cost and production
0:44:35efficiency. It may not be a public revision at all unless they make a price cut. So they may
0:44:41change the way they make the thing to make it more cost effective, but it's not like Vision Pro
0:44:47with an M3 in it or whatever. It'd be more like Rev B, right? And really you wouldn't know unless
0:44:55they were like "hey the Vision Pro is 2500 now" or "it's 3000" or whatever. We didn't do this,
0:45:01it's a little too early for the draft of the ages, but I wonder what chip will be in the
0:45:08next hardware, you know, actual hardware revision, not a stealth revision, of the Vision Pro? Is it
0:45:15going to be like the M5? M6? I mean it's got an M2 in it now. M2 in it now, so if they made it today
0:45:23it would be an M3 and so you maybe would say M3 until 2025. So then maybe, yeah, maybe M7?
0:45:31M6 maybe? I don't think it's on. Yeah. Is it going to be every year for the M series? Maybe?
0:45:37M6, M7? I mean it's just going to be interesting. If this is true you're going to have a Vision Pro
0:45:42running the M2 replaced by a Vision Pro running the M567. It's a long, it's a long way to go,
0:45:51it's all I'm saying. Yeah, we're gonna find out. Yeah, you know what though? We could talk about
0:45:56this later on. Less of an impact maybe now. Yeah, well I was gonna say I think one of the reasons,
0:46:02by the way, that that's okay is I think there are a bunch of things that Apple wants to bring to the
0:46:09M series that they already put in the R1 coprocessor. Yeah. That there's stuff that's
0:46:16like, oh this will be better at this and it's like, yeah, we had to build a whole chip for that.
0:46:20Yeah, we did it already. Now we can put it in here. Yeah. I do wonder though if they,
0:46:24maybe they had that discussion about like, could we slide an M4 in here in 2026 or an M3 or are
0:46:31we going to keep it at the M2? But I've been expecting for a while now that Vision Pro is just
0:46:36going to be what it's going to be for a while, right? This is not a quick iterate product because
0:46:41it's so far out in the future in terms of what's in it. It's so sort of unreal already. It could be
0:46:47one of those things where they're not even currently pushing it as far as it could be
0:46:53pushed, right? And so like there are efficiencies that they could make within the software, for
0:46:58example, to make it run better and like it's a very powerful machine maybe for what it's doing,
0:47:01we don't know, but we'll find out by 2026 and see how it's running at that point.
0:47:07Quo also reports that Apple is still on track to launch the Vision Pro outside of the US before
0:47:13WWDC. Quo said that US sales have slowed down significantly currently, but that Apple have
0:47:19sold between 200 to 250,000 units, which outperformed their estimate of 150 to 200,000
0:47:26in this period. It's expected that other English speaking nations will see the Vision Pro first
0:47:31because that's just the easiest to do, but MacRumors is reporting that Apple is currently
0:47:35working on localizing Vision OS into French, German, Italian, and Spanish. So there are your
0:47:42next places. You'll probably see the UK, Australia, Canada, and then the rest.
0:47:48MacRumors is reporting via Trendforce that server manufacturer Supermicro is "aggressively
0:47:56expanding its capability to try and secure an order from Apple to assist with their upcoming
0:48:01AI needs." It's expected Apple may be ordering around 20,000 servers this year for iOS 18,
0:48:08looking to spend over $4 billion. I include this, I mean, it doesn't really say like, you know,
0:48:13this is Supermicro trying to do it, but the server industry is expecting Apple will be making some
0:48:18kind of order. This, I feel like kind of answers the question of it's not all going to be on device.
0:48:24Right. Oh yeah, for sure. Well, there's a lot of processing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely,
0:48:29I think they're going to put as much on device as they can, but you're going to have a whole
0:48:33bunch of stuff that just benefits dramatically from it being in the cloud. And that's what I
0:48:37would want to see as a hybrid model, because if they're going to do it on a device, they won't be
0:48:40able to compete, but like I want there to be a split. And this is an indication at least that
0:48:44there will be that split, which I think is important if Apple really wants to make a good
0:48:48run at this. There needs to be some stuff that's done on the web. So there you go. Supermicro,
0:48:53the company mentioned in that Bloomberg big hack story. You know, I was thinking about,
0:48:57I was thinking about it, but what happened there? All right. Here's an interesting one.
0:49:03According to Reuters, Apple is hiring Olivia Allaire Dalton, deputy assistant to the US
0:49:10president and white house principal deputy press secretary. Bolton is expected to be taking a
0:49:16senior communications role at Apple. Maybe Apple needs somebody who knows how to communicate with
0:49:22governments. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I, you know what? I didn't consider that. Yes. Maybe that's what
0:49:28this is for. Wow. Could she be leading their efforts to communicate on the government and
0:49:36regulatory side of the business? Maybe as a senior communications person who might could maybe could
0:49:42send better emails to people like Tim Sweeney. Maybe. I don't know. This could be for like
0:49:47external, but also maybe Apple is preparing for these fights in America too, which I do feel like
0:49:53it's going to happen. Uh, Dalton worked for, has worked for Joe Biden for 20 years, apparently.
0:50:00So, okay. So you got to expect this person knows some people. Oh yeah. And I'm going to say now
0:50:08that means Tim Cook, you can just, you can stay a CEO for another 20 years. That's 20 years,
0:50:1320 more years. And according to business insider, Apple is also hiring Joseph Cady,
0:50:18who is an advertising executive from NBC universal to join a team working on global ad sales at Apple
0:50:24TV+. Uh, these reports would seem to indicate Apple is working potentially on an ads tier for
0:50:29TV+. I wrote a story on Mac world last year, thanks to my, you know, downstream conversations
0:50:38and all that, and seeing how the way that this works, that it was inevitable that Apple would
0:50:44put ads on a tier of Apple TV+. Inevitable. Literally everybody else is doing it, including
0:50:51companies that said they would never Disney did it. Did it. Netflix did it. Like Amazon did it.
0:50:57Amazon was the last where I was like, well, maybe because of the it's an ecosystem play. Maybe. Nope.
0:51:01Amazon put ads on there. Now I'm not sure what this means in terms of Apple TV+ being like,
0:51:08are they going to make everybody who's currently on Apple TV+ play, pay more for an ad free version,
0:51:15which is what Amazon did, or are what they, are they going to make a bunch of Apple content
0:51:20available for free or for some smaller price or tied into other Apple services, but with ads,
0:51:28but the ad, what, what for the shorthand for people who are our listeners who hate ads,
0:51:33I will say is an analysis of the businesses of streaming have largely found that you make more
0:51:41money per user from an ad ad tier than from a no ad tier, which is why all the no ad tiers are
0:51:49getting their prices raised because Netflix discovered that at their old price tiers,
0:51:54they made more money from the people watching ads than they did from the people who didn't
0:51:58and were paying more, which is bad news for people who pay more like me to not watch ads.
0:52:03Cause all of that's more expensive now because they need, it doesn't make sense, right? It
0:52:06doesn't make sense that you would have, you'd be making less money from your premium subscribers.
0:52:11So, and, and if you, if you lose them, you'll probably figure you'll lose them to the ad tier
0:52:16where you're making more money anyway. So I think Apple can't, Apple can't let this go by.
0:52:21They, they, they can't. I, I, I think one of Apple's struggles is that TV plus is a largely invisible
0:52:28thing. When you talk to people out there, like it is a very small service and it's had some
0:52:34successes like Ted Lasso, but it is, uh, it is small and that this might be a way for them
0:52:41to get that content out there to a much larger audience and then upsell them on the paid product.
0:52:46If they made this free or really cheap. They need to do it. You know, I talk about this a lot,
0:52:53but my favorite podcast, the town, which is about, uh, Hollywood, there is the,
0:52:57basically everybody that comes on that show seems to see some variation of it's good content,
0:53:01but nobody's watching it. Like Apple needs that there, the viewership is very low for, uh,
0:53:08for TV plus stuff and except for Ted Lasso. So they, they need to find a way to get more
0:53:15people to watch the content. So having a easy to use free tier, like I hear people like in my life
0:53:21talk about it a lot where it's like, I, you know, Oh, I've, I've referenced the TV plus thing. Like,
0:53:27Oh, you know, I watched had less have been and canceled it. And so maybe I'll come back to it
0:53:31later on. Like people did dip out, but yeah. And it's too bad. It's also too bad. Right. Because
0:53:36those of us who have it and I've seen like, it's got a lot of really great stuff. Like it's batting
0:53:39average is very good. There's a lot of really great stuff. Like if I, if somebody came to me
0:53:44and said, I've never done Apple TV plus, and I'm thinking of getting it, what should I watch? I'd
0:53:48be like, Oh boy, like all the seasons of for all mankind, all the seasons of Ted Lasso, Ted Lasso,
0:53:54both the foundation seasons, silo, slow horse. Oh my God. There's so much stuff. Yep. Uh,
0:54:02they're like, there's a lot of stuff there. Sure. Yeah. I've heard that. Is it masters of air?
0:54:09Is that what it's called? Yeah. I've seen mixed reviews of it. So, I mean, that's for dads who
0:54:14want to see something about world war II. It's great. Dad's need shows too. Dad's need shows.
0:54:19That's nice. Well, they should start with slow horses though, but then yes, they can watch
0:54:22masters of air. There's a lot of good content on TV plus, but it has a very tiny audience.
0:54:27And that's not great for Apple because they actually do want to have like, they're paying
0:54:32a lot of money for this content. If there's another way for them to monetize it, that will
0:54:35increase the amount of money they make. They should do it. So, um, I, I, I suspect we'll get
0:54:41a free or cheap Apple TV tier with ads and not the one that we're all on now. Um, and if they do that,
0:54:48I'll be very sad. And I think that's a bad decision, right? Cause I think they're struggling
0:54:52to get people to pay for Apple TV as it is. This episode is brought to you by delete me.
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0:57:19So you have published your M3 MacBook Air review. I have. And I wanted to talk about a
0:57:27couple of things with you. Sure. Really does it feel any different to the M2 MacBook Air?
0:57:33No it's functionally identical. Yeah. I think if you're I mean it's incrementally faster on
0:57:40multi-core like I can do the number I did the numbers yeah it's incrementally faster on multi-core
0:57:4517% or something it's good it's a nice update and you know so the GPUs are better the ray tracing
0:57:52like if you're playing games that have a ray you know ray tracing that is going to make a huge
0:57:55difference. I do love to trace those rays. You got to trace the rays if you want to chase the rays.
0:58:01Man dude. But yeah I mean I had somebody ask me this on social media it was like oh but
0:58:08does it actually feel do you sit down with it and go whoa and like I have an M2 midnight MacBook
0:58:14Air and I have an M3 review unit midnight MacBook Air and I migrated one to the other and I was
0:58:19using the M3 and I was like okay I mean it's like it feels like home it's the same. The point here
0:58:26is again now don't upgrade from the M2 to the M3 unless there's the one feature there's the one
0:58:32feature that if you want that feature you should do it but other than that you can M2 is fine like
0:58:38for the M1 it's an interesting argument I think the M1 Air is still great and fine but you know
0:58:43you could if you if you're gonna hand it down like for me I think about the M3 and I think the only
0:58:49way I would buy an M3 Air is if I do a hand-me-down right if I if I take the M2 or or Lauren's M1 and
0:58:56I give that to let's say Jamie so that she can do more video work for upgrade as our social media
0:59:02expert that I might do but I'm not gonna you know other than a roll down like the M1 is great like
0:59:11the M1 Air is great so it's really still honestly about people who are on Intel and are like I can't
0:59:18I can't go and in fact that that ties in to one the one like surprising new feature of the M3 Air
0:59:25which is that the the ability to drive two external displays with the lid closed which I know some
0:59:31people who are on Intel that's what they wanted is the the run two external displays maybe with
0:59:37a lid open sorry you can't do that but with the lid closed I mean two displays is the limit of
0:59:41the base M chips it's been that way there are good reasons for it they would have to add it would add
0:59:46size and cost to the chip and it's not what they're solving for if you want to drive three
0:59:50displays you should get a better chip than that that's just bottom line and I'm okay with that
0:59:55choice on Apple's part it was always frustrating that you could run your MacBook Air and lid closed
1:00:00and still not drive a second display it was very frustrating so I'm glad that they've addressed
1:00:04that and I did haul the Studio B studio display out and put it on my desk here with my other studio
1:00:13display and I put it in like a v-shaped configuration so I had display all around me
1:00:18and then I texted Casey and I said I don't know how light how you live like this because it's
1:00:23just not for me it's too many things too many pixels too many k what I do here at my recording
1:00:29desk I have one display in portrait where I have I have audio hijack and zoom like I have all of
1:00:39the apps that are recording on that display so it's always visible no matter what I'm looking
1:00:44I can always look over and be like yes I am recording so that you know that's what I have it
1:00:49for that's nice yeah I just it's never really been for me but I did I work that way there's some
1:00:54quirks one of them one of them can be scaled and the other one like scaled up to like more space
1:01:00and the other one really can't and I wonder if that's just a function of the capability of like
1:01:06the the you know we can do one at 5k and one in 6k and so it may be like that that's too many pixels
1:01:12because it has to put the put the the scaled mode it's probably like drawing a larger one and then
1:01:18scaling it down and it can't something is going on there that was surprised me a little but like
1:01:22I was able to run it at sort of standard display mode with those two displays and you don't need
1:01:27more space you've got more space you've got two monitors now how much space do you need you monsters
1:01:31Casey's response when I said I don't know how you live like this to send a picture of his three
1:01:36displays and I was like god just go away but um but yeah I was able to do it and it was great so
1:01:41if you're that person who has especially if you've been hanging out on intel and being like I can't
1:01:46give up my multiple displays I hope this will satisfy you because this is uh it you know I
1:01:54think it's pretty good I never really liked I tried to use a an open laptop display with an
1:01:59external display for a while I never really liked it because it was like what where is the I had it
1:02:04on like a riser and it was tilted and it's still like the keyboard is there it still felt weird
1:02:09anyway if you're that person that's a great reason to get it also can I tell my story about how I
1:02:15spent a lot of money and about four hours of the one day I had to write the article on one paragraph
1:02:21of my review can I do that can we pause just for one second okay I just have one I have a couple
1:02:26of things I wanted to ask you about okay display thing all right is there any thing that you are
1:02:32aware of for why they could not enable this on the m2 MacBook Air so there's some stuff going around
1:02:40about how they did make a change in the m2 that allowed the uh the system to so in the m1 the
1:02:47system it was hardwired essentially into the display and they and this this story um the
1:02:53atp talked about it a lot the um last week the the story is basically that um even in the mac mini on
1:03:01m1 you could only output one through thunderbolt and one through hdmi so there's like a hardwired
1:03:06port they changed the design in m2 apparently uh that enough that the mac mini could output both
1:03:13on thunderbolt they didn't have to go through the hdmi um but the m2 laptops didn't ever pick up
1:03:19that feature so the question is the sort of conspiracy question is could they do a firmware
1:03:24update for the m2 to enable the same feature yeah that's my that's what I wonder because they're
1:03:30doing it with the m3 they're doing that with a macbook pro because it would seem that they did not
1:03:34build into the m3 the ability for this to happen because otherwise that macbook pro would have had
1:03:38that feature right like if it was specifically built in except except they did sort of build
1:03:43into the m2 this other aspect of it yeah but they didn't enable it and then they didn't enable it on
1:03:48the m3 macbook pro but they did then enable it and say that they will back port it to the m3 macbook
1:03:54pro i i don't know the answer i think there are two scenarios that i just want to say for all the
1:04:01people out there who are like you know conspiracy theorists i'm gonna lay them both out there you
1:04:06decide you know how is princess kate doing i don't know oh please don't bring this to my show i can't
1:04:12handle this the people in my life it's driving me mad photos were edited my photos were edited
1:04:18anyway here are the two scenarios here are the two scenarios scenario one is yes apple built this
1:04:24feature into their chip in m2 and yet nefariously withheld it for the entire run of that chip
1:04:29because reasons but now they're enabling it because reasons and uh okay i think the more
1:04:37reasonable suggestion because they never enabled it in the m2 even though they put it there and
1:04:43yet they've done it for the m3 i think the more reasonable suggestion is that they did that work
1:04:47in the m2 either to push this down the line to a point where in a future model they would be
1:04:54comfortable putting it in and turning it on or they thought they had fixed it for the macbook air
1:05:00and then they tried it and there was something that didn't work well maybe not maybe like you
1:05:06could do it but maybe it was not up to their standards inconsistent buggy or whatever and
1:05:11they're like shut it down we're just not going to do it for this generation better luck next time
1:05:16let's fix it for m3 i think i i can't like if it worked fine in m2 they would have done this when
1:05:26they rolled out m2 and they didn't so i think it's more likely that it didn't work fine or it was
1:05:35never intended to work on the macbook air but they were working toward where they would get with the
1:05:41m3 it is i will admit utterly baffling that they shipped the macbook pro with m3 with this
1:05:49limitation that they could have addressed and didn't until now or later when the firmware
1:05:56update comes out for it that that's weird right but you know sometimes the mother just wants to
1:06:02edit her kids faces so that they're smiling on mother's day well i happens i will leave this show
1:06:07the show will end i will walk away from this podcast right now i'm just getting people who
1:06:13don't understand it will be baffled people who get it will get it and it's just i'm i'm just saying
1:06:17there are conspiracy theories out there and some of them are probably not worth thinking about
1:06:22this what i'm saying all right so thank you for answering my question you're well partly in a way
1:06:26that i wish you wouldn't have but let's talk about what cost you some money and time okay these
1:06:32things have wi-fi 6e i have like hero sixes that don't support wi-fi sexy and i thought to myself
1:06:39should i get faster wi-fi in my house like it's been a little while since i bought new heroes
1:06:48should i do it like faster wi-fi is nice although most of the computers won't take advantage of it
1:06:52but eventually they will okay so i bought a new hero max 7 which the box came i'm like this is
1:07:05a very large box for one hero they're very huge they're very big it's huge it's it's giant it's
1:07:12like the size of a dinner plate there were multiple reasons why i didn't go with like the
1:07:186e stuff when when i was buying stuff when we moved into our house last year partly it was cost
1:07:22because it is much more expensive right now yes but the other was they're so much bigger and it's
1:07:27like one of these things where at some point they will get smaller and cheaper but that point is not
1:07:32now yeah so i decided to do it i i did it and the reason and it's fine it's it's for my work um
1:07:38i set up the m3 macbook air and it got basically the same speed as my ethernet and i was like wow
1:07:45okay that's great right like for me yeah faster file transfer inside the house is good but like
1:07:51the number one thing is if i can get the same up and down to the world as i do on my ethernet
1:07:57connected mac studio word we're living large here it was like gigabit up and down that's what i want
1:08:04great it doesn't always work that way it was inconsistent but like i was able to get it to
1:08:08work that way and my my macbook arim too while pretty speedy was not as speedy so i'm like okay
1:08:15all right worth it i can talk about it i wrote a paragraph about it the problem is that i changed
1:08:21my network configuration mike know what happens then everything breaks so my internet connection
1:08:28broke um it turns out that the way my fiber router was set up is it was forwarding all of the traffic
1:08:36to the mac address of the old ero that i had replaced oh god so i had to connect my a macbook
1:08:45air via an ethernet dongle directly to the uh to the fiber router and change it to point
1:08:52and i was like what is happening why is it not working why is it not working i could get internet
1:08:58out but like i couldn't get any traffic back in what is happening here turns out um i figured it
1:09:04out i set that to the new router and it didn't work so then i rebooted them both rebooted the
1:09:11fiber router rebooted the ero didn't work rebooted unplugged everything including the other ero
1:09:17put it all back in didn't work reset the ero remapped all of my network settings for
1:09:25all of the like port forwarding and reservations and stuff didn't work and i was so frustrated and
1:09:34i was like okay let's just and so i unplugged everything again left it for five minutes came
1:09:39back plugged it in didn't work i'm like what is happening i looked i looked at the at the router
1:09:44settings i'm like i googled for it and they're like do this it's like i did that that's what i
1:09:49did i googled that last time i set this up why is it not working i sent it and then i did actually
1:09:54the thing that cured this the thing that solved it which is i sent an email to ero support and i said
1:10:01why is it that when i swapped one of your heroes for the other all of a sudden i can't get any any
1:10:07traffic forwarding but the moment i sent it i thought to myself this isn't the ero the ero is
1:10:11not seeing any traffic this is coming from the router the router is is still not even though
1:10:16it's set to forward it it's still i reset the router um it still didn't work like what is
1:10:23happening and and then and i and i uh unplugged it and replugged it four hours in i've rebooted
1:10:32these things so many times and then i was reminded of the number one thing that i always learn and
1:10:40then always forget about network stuff which is you know what solves network stuff mike what is it
1:10:48time because the next time i unplugged them and re-plugged them it all worked
1:10:54and presumably if i had done nothing other than pointed at the right thing
1:11:00and and unplugged them and re-plugged them a few times over the course of four hours
1:11:05after four hours because something was cached somewhere even through resets it would have just
1:11:12started working so um and zack is saying fun with with like time to live concept like at least from
1:11:19a network perspective uh it shouldn't be because the time to live was set to be very low i was i
1:11:26reset the device that was forwarding to the other device it didn't matter though somewhere somewhere
1:11:31in there in the connection between those two devices there was a thing that really wanted
1:11:37to forward all the traffic to the wrong place and that just stayed there until suddenly it went oh
1:11:46right this guy done solved i wasted four hours taking screenshots of the aero app so i'd remember
1:11:55what ports were being remapped to what i'm like oh it didn't matter i just needed to wait i just
1:12:00needed to be patient i need to leave the house for four hours anyway those four hours i could
1:12:04have been writing a macbook air review that i wasn't but you know the wi-fi is it's really
1:12:11fast and i think covers the house better because it's an enormous thing with many many different
1:12:16antenna in it uh different bands so i look forward to the day that i do buy a device that has wi-fi
1:12:24uh 6e in it because i'll it'll be fast hooray how does the uh midnight coating hold up to fingerprints
1:12:33now okay new anodization seal the same one that's on the space black and apple's like aha it will be
1:12:40better for fingerprints it will be like don't worry about the fingerprints i'm gonna be that
1:12:45guy and say i have two midnight macbook areas now and let me tell you they both cover with
1:12:49fingerprints it's fine that's i don't they don't bother me but they're also not invisible they are
1:12:55present i wonder if maybe part of it is that the space black is lighter than the midnight they kept
1:13:02the midnight shade is exactly the same as it was on the m2 and so i wonder if maybe one of the
1:13:07reasons the space black on the macbook pro is not so black is because the blacker you make it the
1:13:13worse the fingerprints look and so they did the anodization seal on a darker gray and it it doesn't
1:13:19pick up as much the midnight macbook air even on the m3 i'm sorry like i try to say i might say that
1:13:26it's fainter or something but really it's it's not any different i mean like for me at least i
1:13:34was i i put fingerprints on it immediately um wiping them off seemed pretty similar to
1:13:38maybe they wipe off a little bit better but like i'm struggling to try to give you anything here
1:13:43other than to say in my experience it like if you if you the only thing preventing you from
1:13:49buying an m2 macbook air is that you can't bear the fingerprints on the midnight macbook air
1:13:54do not buy the m3 midnight macbook air because it still has fingerprints on it pretty much the same
1:14:00sorry i know you spoke about like um speed and and that kind of stuff a little bit already but
1:14:07there was something that i kind of really took away from the charts in your piece which is just
1:14:10that you know there are year-over-year improvements with these m series chips but
1:14:14apple silicon really is enforcing the idea that it's kind of like two years is what you should
1:14:19be looking at at the like the very soonest before you would want to update yeah if you need to really
1:14:24push it other than like very specific things in certain areas like there's the video encoding
1:14:28stuff that went on the m2 that wasn't on the m1 so if you're doing things to like uh apple's uh
1:14:33apple's codex uh encoding there is built in in a processor block in the m2 that wasn't there in the
1:14:39m1 it was only in the m1 uh pro and max and ultra um and the so they're like it's got a new i think
1:14:47it's a neural engine that has more cores or it's the newer neural engine i mean there's stuff in
1:14:51there and the ray tracing is in there right there's stuff but unless you're a very specific use case
1:14:57that requires these kind of updates even the m1 i mean if you're pushing if you're pushing
1:15:02your CPUs or your GPUs uh from an m1 you will get it's it's like 30 or 40 percent faster i mean it
1:15:11will be it'll be better i would argue that most of the people who are in that situation might want to
1:15:16think about like a macbook pro because you're pushing it that hard because the macbook air
1:15:20is a fanless laptop that is pretty good for most people but it's not going to do it for everybody
1:15:25so i i don't know um it's yeah it's i would say what i said before which is coming from intel
1:15:32then sure it's a no-brainer coming from the m1 even there i think i think i think the m1 air is
1:15:40fine i think it's still fine so i think apple silicon um we've seen two revisions now and i
1:15:46probably wouldn't give a strong buy recommendation to an upgrader coming from m1 even though i i like
1:15:51the design i think the m2 air design that's now in the m3 is is really good um i i you know i like
1:15:59the screen i like the magsafe like there are lots of reasons but again the m1 air is still a good
1:16:05computer did you find the quote world's best consumer laptop for ai to be especially good
1:16:12at ai tasks uh i mean no uh examples that i was given i mean like it's great in the cloud because
1:16:23it just uses the cloud it's got a neural engine the ai task that i use the most is optimized for
1:16:28gpu and not for neural engine um but it works i like it's entirely just it's it's no i think
1:16:36not really any better than the m2 was it really is just that apple knows that everybody's talking
1:16:41about ai and ai laptops and i think intel is pushing this concept of the ai laptop and apple's
1:16:46like wait a second and and really it's that decision of like do you hover above the fray
1:16:51or do you feel like you're getting uh beaten up about ai which apple is and therefore you're
1:16:57going to say no no no no no no no our laptops do that too we just haven't talked about it and so
1:17:01now we're going to talk about it but as it was i ran a whisper transcribe on them and it was faster
1:17:09but again it was it was absolutely uh destroyed by a whisper transcode on a 40 gpu macbook pro right
1:17:18so yeah i will make apple's argument for them a little bit and just say that like because i know
1:17:23a lot of people have been putting fun as i put fun in now so i will now argue on the other side too
1:17:27the majority of tasks that people are doing with ai right now are web-based tasks and the
1:17:35macbook air is thin light great battery life yeah safari is great to use so fast wi-fi you can fast
1:17:42wi-fi right you can make the argument that for the majority of tasks that people are actually doing
1:17:47of ai the macbook air could well be the best laptop for this because i think it's the best
1:17:54laptop for web browsing consumer laptop right which is because the macbook pro is yeah they're
1:17:59basically consumers are using chat gpt consumers are not putting their own models onto a machine
1:18:05and right there are some apps that do it for like photo stuff and there are some and there may be
1:18:09more in the future but yes i think all of us all of us uh close focus apple people look at this and
1:18:16we're you know we kind of laugh at it but like what they're doing here is i think apple has
1:18:20felt like there's a perception that apple doesn't do ai which is incorrect and that they haven't
1:18:25talked about it and that arguments have been framed around ai for laptops and for computers
1:18:31in general and that apple is left out of the argument or is discounted and they they are afraid
1:18:38that when somebody's weighing a purchase of an apple silicon laptop versus a an intel laptop
1:18:45that one of the arguments that's being used against them is well this is an ai laptop apple
1:18:50doesn't do ai and so apple's basically said okay if those are going to be the terms of the debate
1:18:55so be it we're now going to talk about ai so ai has become essentially a check mark on a box right
1:19:01you can't not talk about even if you check every box and and you know but you know for those who
1:19:07don't know back when there were boxes the check mark on the box was obvious things but if you
1:19:12didn't put it there people would think you didn't support it and so you ended up with an enormous
1:19:17list of things with check marks next to them because you need to reassure people yes it does
1:19:22that and ai is now a check mark for laptops so yes it's in the press release and does it change
1:19:30the mac experience at all no not at all but it also took apple to actually start using the words
1:19:37right yeah they were refusing to use the word apple was very much like this isn't really
1:19:43artificial intelligence it's more like machine learning and we I was on that camp and the world
1:19:47says yeah but we're calling it ai you're like all right i guess we're calling it that now it's just
1:19:52look i didn't like the word app i preferred program or software and you know what at some
1:19:57point you're like all right we're doing apps they're apps now yay apps would have rose by any
1:20:03other name hallucinate so sweetly jason you know does anything remain missing from the macbook air
1:20:11for you where what are the things you would like to see apple address with the macbook air that
1:20:16they've yet to the webcam is fine i mean they're doing a lot of processing but it's still a 1080
1:20:23webcam i would like them to put a higher resolution webcam with a larger field of view and center stage
1:20:32but they they haven't and i know it's very thin i get it but like
1:20:35i want there to be a better camera up there yeah um uh you know i i like i like touch id great when
1:20:43i have used windows laptops like i have a surface go that you know is terrible but it runs some
1:20:50windows software and uh every time i open it up it's like oh jason and it logs me in because it's
1:20:56got face recognition and i think this dumb old windows convertible has face recognition and my
1:21:04max don't and maybe it's bad and maybe this maybe it's not up to apple standards and all that but
1:21:08like i feel like the real reason there's no face id on apple laptops is because they want to engineer
1:21:14the screen part to be so thin that the sensors don't fit in there and they can't or more
1:21:19accurately they can't reuse their sensors from the iphone and the ipad and therefore they just
1:21:25don't bother and there should be face id on mac laptops and and and honestly and on mac desktops
1:21:31like on on uh or on the studio display right like there should be there should be face id on the mac
1:21:37and they're just gonna say this no one's gonna like it jason but i'm gonna say it all right
1:21:41you ready this is gonna be very unpopular but i'm gonna say it i would take to get a better camera
1:21:48and face id i would take a camera bump on a laptop whoa i'd take it i want them that bad i have
1:21:55camera bumps on my phone and i'm fine with it put a put a camera bump on the laptop give me the
1:22:01features yeah i said it good good for you i will take the bullet you know yeah uh you know you can
1:22:09you can you can flog me on social media it's fine so you put a list in here and i actually this is
1:22:14what i was going to say so thank you for channeling me or we're in agreement on this but the other
1:22:18thing that's out there that you put in here that's absolutely true i feel like at this point we're
1:22:22on the same wavelength is that yeah we we we we lose track of it and every now and then we mention
1:22:28it but i'm just going to say it again there's a whole conversation that we've had here many many
1:22:31times before but it needs to be said again which is uh you know what would be great especially when
1:22:36my wi-fi was broken and i was trying to figure out whether things were reachable from the outside or
1:22:41not and i had to use my iphone which was not ideal for setting settings in a web page cellular option
1:22:47on laptops is is i i keep thinking that they it feels to me now like they're just trying to put
1:22:54it off until they can integrate cellular into their chips which keeps getting kicked down the
1:22:59road but like i find cellular and my ipad so useful and people always say i'm gonna say it
1:23:06here because every time we mention this people like oh you can just tether i hate tethering
1:23:10does my phone hot it kills the battery it's inconsistent or you've got a wire attached to
1:23:17another thing i don't i i don't like it i have a cellular ipad i'm very happy i have to connect
1:23:24to tethering every three times to get it to work one time this is like oh this is constant for me
1:23:29you know it's like you connect it's like doesn't work connect doesn't work connect oh yeah it works
1:23:33now it's a real good enough option which is like oh there's this thing that's kind of quirky and
1:23:37strange but it exists and therefore you shouldn't need anything more and the answer is no we we
1:23:42deserve better mac users deserve better mac users deserve to have cellular options on the laptops
1:23:48just like ipad users have and uh and get on it like again like this should be in there i'm sorry
1:23:55it should be in there as an option and i don't want to hear yeah i don't hear about tethering
1:23:58and i don't want to hear about well they would have to pay a fee i don't care so they have they
1:24:02probably have to pay a thousand dollars but like put give me the option give me the option of having
1:24:07cellular on a laptop it would be great and i know that there's os things but they have been making
1:24:12progress on the os side in controlling data usage by runaway you know apps they're doing more there
1:24:19and i would also say you know what if you're that concerned about data usage get an unlimited plan
1:24:24but like live get me the option let me have the option of putting a mac on cellular via some means
1:24:30other than uh connecting to an example give us what we deserve cell radios and camera bumps
1:24:36that's what we deserve all right just give us what we deserve on our laptops but all in all
1:24:41m3 mac will care good laptop right good laptop yeah because the m2 was great and this is just
1:24:48that but a little more recent so it's the latest model of the m2 if you remember from the mac draft
1:24:54many people said m2 macbook air best mac i love it and so this is just that again and there was
1:25:01a whole like there's the there's the discourse going around and like oh i i miss the wedge design
1:25:07i have no time for this discourse i have no time for it i i don't either like i mean sure people
1:25:13are nostalgic for for all sorts of stuff that is in the past and gone but this is this is i like
1:25:18this design better like it's great if you want to keep the design of a 10 year old laptop that's
1:25:24great it still works use it you know what i mean like we don't have to keep making new ones you
1:25:30want an old laptop so bad use the old laptop but new laptop better than old laptop that's that's
1:25:36what i say i agree if you enjoy this show and would like more of this show there's a very easy
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1:26:52it is time for ask upgrade questions
1:26:57kevin writes in and says have either of you tried facetime on apple tv i tried it for the first time
1:27:05this weekend and i was blown away by how good the experience with continuity camera was
1:27:10i have okay i've done zoom and facetime on apple tv do you do it a lot i do it some although i will
1:27:18say it's a little telling that um that we didn't last night we did our zoom with lauren's family
1:27:26and we just did it on an ipad sitting on the table instead um there's two reasons for that one is i
1:27:33didn't want to go get the camera mount and attach it and connect it and do all of those things and
1:27:37we were doing a bunch of other stuff and watching the oscars and making dinner and it was just
1:27:40another thing um and the other thing is sound honestly which is i feel like when when the audio
1:27:47is coming out of the tv far away and the microphone is on the phone far away that you end up sort of
1:27:52like shouting and then there's room echo and it's not it cannot be as necessarily as good some of
1:27:58that i think facetime is better at this and the zoom strangely because zoom does this all the time
1:28:03for other zooms is maybe lacking a little bit there and maybe it will get better over time
1:28:08but i found that that was a little echoey and that people were complaining about how we sounded which
1:28:12is like that's not acceptable um so so it's a work in progress there i will say again apple or
1:28:21one of its partners who you know if apple doesn't want to do it sometimes they're like oh we'll have
1:28:26bell can do it or whatever they need somebody needs to make a continuity camera right because
1:28:34there's no usb c on the apple tv anymore there's no usb on the apple tv anymore they took it off
1:28:42so you can't just plug in a webcam to it and use that you have to use continuity camera so i would
1:28:47like somebody to make a continuity camera that i can leave plugged in sitting on top of my tv so
1:28:54that whenever we get a facetime while we're watching tv for my daughter my son other members
1:28:58of my family i can just say yes and boop it pops up on apple tv but um now it's like oh good your
1:29:06phone and move it over here and like i just don't want to do it so um and we could like use continuity
1:29:12camera like on down on the table and look at the tv but then we're looking above the camera which
1:29:17is also weird and not ideal so so my answer is i think this is a really good feature and i think
1:29:22center stage looks really good with the iphone camera and i think it works really well and i
1:29:27love the angle it gives where you can see us and we're sitting on the couch and it feels like a
1:29:30sci-fi movie and i like it a lot but i've had some audio problems especially with zoom and i hate the
1:29:36fact that i have to go through all the trouble of getting it and balancing it my phone falls off
1:29:39because i didn't balance it right and i'm like i'm gonna break my phone trying to set up continuity
1:29:44camera so i want there to be a continuity camera sold by somebody that i can leave plugged in
1:29:50sitting on top of my tv please this isn't what you're asking for but i just wanted to put it
1:29:55in here because i saw it i don't know why i find it funny but i do the bell can have an apple tv
1:30:00like a tv focused uh mount magsafe mount thing now where you can put it on top of the tv or stick it
1:30:09to the wall or whatever um i just find that funny i don't know why but it's funny to me you know i
1:30:15haven't i have not used it and i had not considered which i have that mount it's good okay oh yeah the
1:30:20belkin it's just there it's their mount for it's mount for tv essentially right it's for apple tv
1:30:264k but like it's it maybe it's a slightly different version of the same mount but it
1:30:30looks just like the mount that i have that goes on the studio display i mean yes it's it's it's
1:30:36fine stuck to the wall this one which is what makes it oh okay well that's that's that's nice
1:30:41i guess mounting bracket for okay the keyhole mounts and mounting bracket added for added
1:30:45stability that's that's good um but again then you got to still put your phone on it right like
1:30:51and it just sits up there otherwise and i just i kind of want there to just be a camera up there
1:30:55that would be a lot nicer i don't know have you used this at all i have not because
1:30:59okay um i didn't have a way to do it that made sense uh especially with the way that we have
1:31:05things set up like we have our tv mounted to the wall right and so like ah yes it's just like how
1:31:09would i even do this and then it's like i'm just gonna put like the phone or the ipad in front of
1:31:13me i'll just talk to the ipad that's in front of me which is i've been doing for years exactly and
1:31:17so like there i do see the benefit of this product but there are some weird places i'd never even
1:31:23considered the thing about like if it's with your phone and your phone's all the way over there if
1:31:28you have that kind of living room which i know you do you have quite a long living room how are they
1:31:32hearing you like with the phone uh yeah it's a good feature it is a good feature but it's not
1:31:38one that i've used i i think i think it's only going to get better i think you you got to do a
1:31:42lot of audio processing on the on the microphone to get it to isolate the voices which i think that
1:31:47they're doing some of already like i said i think the facetime experience actually was better which
1:31:52leads me to believe that maybe like apple really tuned this and zoom is sort of they're new on the
1:31:57platform and i think they're maybe using things that are tuned for other environments and hopefully
1:32:02they know that and then that they're working on it but like i really like the idea i would really
1:32:06like to be able to make all of those calls that we do with our kids and lauren's family in the living
1:32:12room i'd like to do those all on the tv i think that would be really nice because when i've done
1:32:17it it's really quite pleasant but it it's not it's not all the way there it just isn't tom says do
1:32:25you or asks do you think the ipad mini would ever get face id and the best possible screen available
1:32:32i translate it to this basically do we ever think apple would make a pro version of the ipad mini
1:32:37i don't i don't think so i don't think so anymore it's gonna always hover in the mid-range i think
1:32:44it's always going to be like the small version of the mid-range ipad yes and that they it's a
1:32:49combination of giving it a decent price for people who are price sensitive and want a smaller one
1:32:55and a decent you know price for people who want a small ipad that that is decent specs so i think
1:33:01it's always going to be the small mid-range ipad is like it will follow that so you know i do expect
1:33:07it will get face id at some point in the future like i expect years into the future the ipad air
1:33:13will get face id like yeah probably and so then it did mini would probably follow and oled maybe
1:33:21in the future and the mini would get oled too but like i feel like it's always going to be on that
1:33:25kind of ipad air level right while i would love a all bells and whistles version of the ipad mini
1:33:32i don't think that's what this product is okay just don't think it is that anymore because it's
1:33:38going to be very hard to argue uh an 800 dollar ipad mini or whatever it would be right uh that's
1:33:45just a hard argument to make yeah ian wants to know what is your backpack of choice for commuting
1:33:51of a larger than usual technology loadout i usually need to keep two 16-inch macbook pros
1:33:56with me due to work my word and most bags aren't very accommodating i'm expecting neither of us and
1:34:02i especially know if you will be able to answer this question specifically but i do have a
1:34:06recommendation that i want to make for for myself for a larger uh technology loadout like two i don't
1:34:12know if any bag in the world can accommodate two 16-inch macbook pros i would love to know what ian
1:34:17needs that for as well but i want to make a recommendation for my kind of traveling bag which
1:34:23is where i have the most technology on a daily basis i've used a bag from belroy for years now
1:34:30called the belroy tokyo tote pack which i really love it's like a tote bag with backpack straps
1:34:35great and i was using for travel the bag that all the nerds use the peak design right so that
1:34:42became the the nerd bag for a while the peak design everyday backpack i got frustrated with
1:34:48that bag over time like it has a very specific way that it wants you to use the bag and i ended
1:34:55up not fitting with that so i went with uh a while ago another belroy bag the belroy venture ready
1:35:01pack it's a big bag big bag and i use this when i travel and this bag is so big how big is it you
1:35:10ask this bag is so big you can how big is it you can fit the vision pro travel case in it
1:35:17horizontally it's that big so you know you can you can fit the vision oh oh no your vision pro
1:35:25case you can fit my vision pro case that's cheap yeah i'm talking about my backpack the pillow the
1:35:31apple pillow yes that can fit horizontally in this bag so you can still put more stuff in this bag
1:35:38i would say you probably could fit two 16-inch laptops in this bag it would be tight but that
1:35:44you would do it yeah this bag is really really nicely made i love belroy stuff and it's basically
1:35:49what i wanted which was it's got some pockets but it's got just a very large open space where i can
1:35:55put lots of big stuff in there so that's what i use that's what i recommend i just want to
1:35:59recommend this bag to everyone i recommended it to our friend underscore and he bought it and he
1:36:05loves it too so don't just take my word for it you can take underscore's word for it as well
1:36:09and i'll i'll just say again my backpack is is a 25 year old backpack that i loved so much that
1:36:17when it started to fall apart um i contacted the company and they're like we don't make that
1:36:22anymore we'll send you a new one i'm like but i like this one and they sent me a new one it's
1:36:26like i don't like this one i like this old one um so much so that i went on ebay and i found one
1:36:34that was the same and i bought that so i'm actually not using the same backpack i've used for 25 years
1:36:39i'm using another version someone else's backpack that i've used for 25 years our friend james
1:36:47thompson also has this backpack and still uses it because it's great but they don't make it anymore
1:36:51so um i can't really recommend it but i i can fit stuff in it so that's a backpack from the
1:36:59late 90s that uh has had a vision pro in it so that's pretty cool get a time machine yeah
1:37:05that's 1999 go to brent haven say i want your computer backpack you know what computer laptops
1:37:13from 25 years old probably can fit two 16 inch mac because laptops were bigger so yeah it's not as
1:37:20well padded as i think modern backpacks are but yeah i mean i could i have fit big big laptops in
1:37:26there you're probably right because the laptops were bigger back then you probably could fit
1:37:30so okay that's my answer then that's my final answer machine time machine or ebay if you would
1:37:37like to send in a question that we can answer with the words time machine go to upgradefeedback.com
1:37:43you can send us in your feedback your follow-up your ask upgrade questions and your snow talk
1:37:48questions i just want to say as always thank you so much to our listeners who send me in so much
1:37:53interesting stuff every week and i just want to say again i love so much that people use the form
1:37:58the form makes my life so much better i don't want the email it's terrible to get this stuff on
1:38:03social media the form is good form is good so thank you to people that use the form if you
1:38:09want to find jason's work online including his wonderful uh review of the m3 macbook air go to
1:38:15sixcolors.com you can hear jason's shows here on relay fm and the incomparable.com as well you can
1:38:22listen to my podcast here on relay fm you can find my product work at cortexbrand.com we're
1:38:27on social media jason is at j snow j s n e double l i am at i mike i m y k e if you want to find
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1:38:47channel we're playing around with some fun stuff there uh thank you to our members the supporters
1:38:52of upgrade plus thank you to delete me and factor for their support of this week's episode but most
1:38:58of all thank you for listening we'll be back next week until then say goodbye jason snow time machine
1:39:04mike time machine time machine you