00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 505. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Vitally and Ladder.
00:00:27 ◼ ► Ah, that was a... I was lost there. You know, I said 505 and you said it back to me and I had no idea.
00:00:33 ◼ ► Reference there. 505. 505 is the name of an interstate highway in California. So a little 505 trivia for you there.
00:00:43 ◼ ► I love it, thank you. Yes, you did hear the draft music. We are going to be doing a draft late run in today's episode.
00:00:50 ◼ ► It is an action-packed episode today. Surprise draft. Surprise draft. That includes a surprise draft.
00:00:55 ◼ ► We'll get to that later on in the show. But first, I must ask you a Snell Talk question.
00:01:00 ◼ ► This one comes from Andy who wants to know, "Jason, will you be getting a Blake Snell jersey since he has just signed with the Giants?"
00:01:09 ◼ ► Yes, San Francisco Giants signed Blake Snell, the winner of the Cy Young Award, which is for the best pitcher in the National League last year with the Padres.
00:01:15 ◼ ► He was a free agent all winter long and at the very end of the free agency season, signed a two-year deal with him opt-out.
00:01:23 ◼ ► Basically a one-year deal with the Giants. So for the first time ever, my favorite team, my childhood team,
00:01:29 ◼ ► employs a player, a star player, but regardless, a player with my last name. No relation, by the way.
00:01:38 ◼ ► No relation. And Andy, the answer is, "Will I be getting a Blake Snell jersey?" I think the entire family will be getting Blake Snell jerseys.
00:01:47 ◼ ► I think it's like, look, personalized journey. I'm assuming all of the merch that could be produced in this one-year period, you will buy all of them.
00:01:58 ◼ ► Personalized jersey, you normally have to pay to have it be personalized with your name and stuff.
00:02:07 ◼ ► Got it. Boom. Done. And I'll just keep that for like ever. I look forward to what I'm assuming is gonna be like
00:02:15 ◼ ► dad joke of every game where you're like broaching the plate, "It's Snell," and you're like, "Oh, off I go!"
00:02:26 ◼ ► And every time he would strike somebody out or something, the scoreboard would have this
00:02:34 ◼ ► thing. It'd be like, "Snell!" And Lauren and I were just laughing. I took pictures of it. I took some
00:02:39 ◼ ► video of it. It's just like, it's really nice to have your whole... It's like when I was using
00:02:44 ◼ ► my aunt and uncle when they lived in Florida and we went to a Jacksonville Suns game and their entire
00:02:57 ◼ ► Can I buy it all? Because the entire stadium is monogrammed for me." I bought a hat. I have a JS hat.
00:03:05 ◼ ► It's great. Pretty good. But yeah, it's a little like that. It's weird. In fact, if I wanted
00:03:12 ◼ ► a different number other than his number seven that he's gonna wear, it would actually cause some
00:03:16 ◼ ► cognitive dissonance, right? People would be like, "Well, why are you wearing a six?" So it's just all
00:03:22 ◼ ► at least seven. People like seven. That's a nice number. Lucky seven it is. And Jamie was born on a
00:03:29 ◼ ► seven. So I'll put it down that way too. Andy, yes. The answer is yes and probably much, much more.
00:03:37 ◼ ► That's the answer. If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of
00:03:42 ◼ ► Upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snell Talk question. Saddle up partner,
00:03:48 ◼ ► it's time for a rumor round up. Oh yeehaw. Wow, the horses got here early today. Very early. There's
00:03:53 ◼ ► stuff going on in this episode. Lots of other stuff. They were scared away from the courthouse
00:03:57 ◼ ► and so here they are. Oh wow. That's what you gotta get. They shouldn't be there. They should not be
00:04:02 ◼ ► at the courthouse. Were they shooed away by like a bailiff? Did a bailiff go, "Get out of here, you
00:04:08 ◼ ► rumor horses. We don't want you here." And they were "Nayyyy." And he said, "Uh, yes." Yay. Yay. I think
00:04:13 ◼ ► it would be right. And they left. Mark Gurman and his power on newsletter has reported that iOS 18,
00:04:19 ◼ ► previously dubbed Apple's biggest update ever, will see new tools and options for home screen
00:04:25 ◼ ► customization. MacRumors followed this up with their own sources saying that Apple will quote,
00:04:31 ◼ ► "introduce the ability to create blank spaces, rows, and columns between app icons. The grid layout will
00:04:37 ◼ ► remain, but we will be able to operate more freely within that grid." So like Android, although I will
00:04:43 ◼ ► also say you can free place widgets on the iPad. You can. That's a thing that people, a lot of people
00:04:49 ◼ ► don't know, but like you could free place widgets. You can take a widget out of the grid and put it
00:04:54 ◼ ► like down in the corner and it just stays there. So they've already, that was the first like, "Oh,
00:04:59 ◼ ► look at this. Something is happening that's different." So I think this is good. I've been,
00:05:04 ◼ ► you know, I've been playing with all those Android e-readers and stuff and like, it's really nice to
00:05:08 ◼ ► be able to say, "I'll put this icon here and just have it be there instead of playing the weird
00:05:15 ◼ ► kind of like puzzle game you do where you move one thing and then everything else moves around it."
00:05:20 ◼ ► And you're like, "No, that's not what I wanted." So that's, I mean, it only took them how long,
00:05:24 ◼ ► but here we are. So hooray. Something else that I like that you can do on the iPad is you can have
00:05:32 ◼ ► different app/widget layouts depending on portrait and landscape. Also nice. Yes. Absolutely. I'm a
00:05:41 ◼ ► big fan of that. Good stuff. I imagine that that is all informing where they're going next with
00:05:47 ◼ ► iPhone home screens. Yeah. Which will be very cool. Yeah. Along with all the AI stuff. Sure.
00:05:55 ◼ ► Also, the Wall Street Journal talking about AI stuff is reporting that Apple is holding
00:06:03 ◼ ► conversations with OpenAI and Baidu as well as Google to offer AI features for the phone.
00:06:09 ◼ ► This would seem to suggest that what Apple is most likely going to be doing is creating the
00:06:15 ◼ ► capability for a user to choose which chatbot, I guess we could call them, just for the ease of
00:06:20 ◼ ► understanding service that they would like to work with. In the same way that you can choose your
00:06:25 ◼ ► default browser, right? So Baidu would be in China and then you'd have probably OpenAI and Gemini
00:06:34 ◼ ► elsewhere. So yeah, probably there'll be a preference and someone will pay a lot of money
00:06:40 ◼ ► for that. I expect Google, like who's going to be first, who's going to be your default.
00:06:46 ◼ ► But this is an interesting idea and I think would make a lot of sense. It would be surprising if
00:06:54 ◼ ► they're going to offer this stuff and everyone's going to have it ready for September, but it's a
00:06:57 ◼ ► great opportunity. So I'm sure it would be prioritized by whoever Apple decides to work with.
00:07:08 ◼ ► that Apple uses to parse this," and that it would actually respond in that form. I do wonder if this
00:07:13 ◼ ► is general purpose chatbot feature or if some of this is, "What do I use as a data source when I
00:07:20 ◼ ► need to get more data back from something that I don't have through one of my other data sources?"
00:07:26 ◼ ► And how much of this is... It could be swappable. It could happen dynamically based on the results
00:07:33 ◼ ► that you want. I wonder about the business model because people pay to use ChatGPT. So there's a
00:07:39 ◼ ► question like, "Is Apple going to pay them to use their services?" Does it work out where you're like,
00:07:57 ◼ ► But I'm also wondering, does Apple view these sources as interchangeable or is Apple trying to
00:08:03 ◼ ► make different deals for different markets or for different functionality? I think it's all open.
00:08:10 ◼ ► - Or maybe you can only do this if you're an iCal+ subscriber, otherwise it goes to the web.
00:08:16 ◼ ► - I don't know. Maybe. I also wonder if there's a distribution of volume going on here where,
00:08:25 ◼ ► like in the US and other regions that have OpenAI, GPT and Google Gemini, if one of the concerns we
00:08:34 ◼ ► mentioned last week, which is that this could potentially be the most AI volume ever for one
00:08:41 ◼ ► of these things, and are there enough resources for this thing to stay functional? Well, one way
00:08:48 ◼ ► you could make there be enough resources would be to spread it out and say, "We're not just using
00:08:53 ◼ ► Google. We're using Google and we're using OpenAI and maybe others for different queries."
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00:11:30 ◼ ► It's time for DMA today. Literally today. The European Union has published a press release
00:11:39 ◼ ► stating that Apple will be involved in a DMA non-compliance investigation along with Meta
00:11:46 ◼ ► and Google. We've touched on this briefly. Lots of companies are involved in the DMA stuff, but
00:11:51 ◼ ► we just focus on Apple here because it's already too much of just Apple. I can't focus on alphabet
00:12:00 ◼ ► meta as well in this stuff. Looking at the press release that they put out, the EU is concerned
00:12:06 ◼ ► that Apple is still trying to steer users away from pricing and offers that other developers offer.
00:12:14 ◼ ► The EU believes that Apple is not adequately providing choices for default apps and they
00:12:25 ◼ ► may be "defeating the purpose" of the DMA as well. The investigation that they have launched could
00:12:32 ◼ ► last up to 12 months and presumably if Apple has not changed things during this period,
00:12:49 ◼ ► It's a different form of the same thing we've been saying all along, which is one of the challenges
00:12:58 ◼ ► with Apple in Europe with the DMA is Apple... So the EC has been supportive of the idea that Apple
00:13:10 ◼ ► as a platform owner needs to do things to protect the security of the platform and they want Apple
00:13:18 ◼ ► to continue to innovate. There are all sorts of things that they say they're not trying to do.
00:13:23 ◼ ► The challenge is that Apple is making changes but also pointing to its role as a platform owner to
00:13:33 ◼ ► say, "But we need to keep this secure, so we're going to do it this way." And I think a lot of
00:13:37 ◼ ► these conflicts are visible here where Apple is saying, "Well, we need to do... Let's take the
00:13:51 ◼ ► browsers or we could take the core technology fee." There's this balance or the access to
00:13:59 ◼ ► sideloading and say, "Well, to keep it safe, we're going to erect a very high barrier that very few
00:14:07 ◼ ► people are going to ever go over." And that ends up being a conversation which is like, "Well,
00:14:16 ◼ ► it's like, "Wait a second. You've set the rules of the thing that you're doing to comply
00:14:22 ◼ ► to make it so that nobody will want to do it." And it's not entirely surprising that the EU
00:14:28 ◼ ► regulators would come back and say, "Well, that wasn't the purpose." The purpose of these
00:14:33 ◼ ► regulations is for you to open things up so that people will take advantage of it. So doing it,
00:14:40 ◼ ► but making it so poisonous that nobody wants to actually implement it, in their mind, is not
00:14:47 ◼ ► complying. And that's what's going on here. And this is one of those dangers of Apple having this
00:14:52 ◼ ► incremental approach, is they're saying, "You didn't go far enough." And the question is,
00:14:58 ◼ ► and I don't know enough about how the EU's system works here, but is this something where Apple is
00:15:04 ◼ ► now going to get fined? Or is this more like Apple now has a ticking clock and the EU is going to
00:15:10 ◼ ► come in and say, "Here are the things you need to do, or we're going to give you a giant fine."
00:15:15 ◼ ► Because at some point there has to be a hammer. We've seen Apple make changes in the last few
00:15:21 ◼ ► weeks. And the question is, what's the hammer? What motivates them to do that? What is hovering
00:15:28 ◼ ► over them that's like, "If you don't do this, do this or else," essentially? What's the "or else?"
00:15:33 ◼ ► And that big fine is the "or else." That enormous fine is the "or else." Because you're talking
00:15:40 ◼ ► about what is it like? It's billions of dollars. It's 10% of global revenue, but it apparently can
00:15:48 ◼ ► go up to, I think, 20% if there are multiple infractions, I guess. So it's not one of these
00:15:55 ◼ ► "pay $100 million and ignore the law" kind of things. It's designed to have teeth. So that's
00:16:02 ◼ ► what's hovering over Apple. And I don't know. I think the question is also, what do the regulators
00:16:11 ◼ ► want? Do the regulators want Apple to do what they say? Or do the regulators want to make an example
00:16:17 ◼ ► of Apple? And I don't know the answer to that question. I think they want Apple to comply.
00:16:22 ◼ ► There's a question about, do they want to do a big fine just because it'll be like Landmark
00:16:28 ◼ ► and everybody will point to it and be like, "Oh boy, here we go. You got to do what they say."
00:16:33 ◼ ► - Yeah, there are a lot of ramifications to that though, which is like, you might want the fine,
00:16:39 ◼ ► but what happens to Apple's business in the European Union if they're going to keep getting
00:16:51 ◼ ► I think realistically, I think you're right. They just want Apple to comply because then the EU
00:17:01 ◼ ► looks strong and they get what they want, which they believe, you've got to hope that they believe
00:17:06 ◼ ► is the right thing to do, whether, whatever. - But again, there's no pre-clearance though,
00:17:15 ◼ ► it's not like Apple took their entire plan to the regulators and said, "Okay, here's what we're
00:17:19 ◼ ► planning on doing. Do you have any comments for us? Well, you should do this more. Okay,
00:17:28 ◼ ► "We don't think this looks right." You know what I mean? There was a way they could have
00:17:32 ◼ ► crafted their policies to be, "To not defeat the purpose of the DMA." Me and you have sat here and
00:17:40 ◼ ► been like, "That doesn't seem right still." - And that's not their strategy. That's not their
00:17:44 ◼ ► strategy. It's to do what they think is the letter of the law and then basically be told by the EU,
00:17:50 ◼ ► "That's not good enough." And so here we have this action, which is essentially saying,
00:17:54 ◼ ► "We're investigating this because we don't think it's good enough." And I get it. We've had
00:18:01 ◼ ► numerous examples where we've said, "This seems contrary to the purpose of the DMA, the way that
00:18:06 ◼ ► Apple has chosen to do it." When the DMA was passed, we had a lot of theoretical thoughts,
00:18:14 ◼ ► theoretical stuff like, "Oh, this means Apple's going to open this," or "This means Apple's going
00:18:20 ◼ ► to change this policy." And what ended up happening was Apple opened this to a limited group defined
00:18:26 ◼ ► in a very narrow way by Apple. Apple added this feature in a limited way with a limited set of
00:18:35 ◼ ► ability for developers to implement it. - And they changed policy X, created a new policy,
00:18:41 ◼ ► which inherent to the new policy would take us all the way back to the start again because
00:18:50 ◼ ► - Right. And I don't know if I really anticipated it being quite like that, where it was like,
00:18:58 ◼ ► "Well, you say we have to do an app marketplace or sideloading. So we're going to do an app
00:19:06 ◼ ► marketplace and not sideloading," which turns out was not what they intended. And in order to do
00:19:12 ◼ ► sideloading, here are all the rules and here's the money you have to put aside and here are the other
00:19:17 ◼ ► ways you have to qualify. And then they build up a whole bureaucratic structure on top of it,
00:19:22 ◼ ► which I didn't think it would be quite that strategy, which is, "We're going to do what
00:19:29 ◼ ► you say, but make it impossible for almost anybody to actually use it." And that leads to this, which
00:19:37 ◼ ► is we've already seen them say, "Oh, sideloading, yeah, we're going to add that later," where they
00:19:45 ◼ ► the noncompliance investigation, it feels like it's an escalation, but it's almost like an
00:19:51 ◼ ► intentional escalation. At least from the outside, I look at this and I think, "This is the EU
00:19:58 ◼ ► arming its..." Well, you can't arm a hammer, but lifting the hammer, cocking the hammer.
00:20:10 ◼ ► No, what it is, so there's a compliance hammer to be used here. This is them, if not picking it up
00:20:16 ◼ ► and putting it over Apple's head, they took it out of the drawer, and now it's sitting right there,
00:20:25 ◼ ► like, "I could pick up this hammer at any point." But that's what this is. So it's an escalation.
00:20:41 ◼ ► Apple hates. But this is the game they're playing, is they brought this on themselves by saying,
00:20:46 ◼ ► "We're going to do the minimum, and then you're going to have to tell us where we did it wrong."
00:21:05 ◼ ► and that's the way it goes. I understand that. I understand how complicated it can be to legislate
00:21:11 ◼ ► a spirit of the law, da-da-da-da-da. I think that legislation like this has to be part in spirit,
00:21:17 ◼ ► as well as the letter. Because if you, but Apple has, you could argue Apple has complied by the
00:21:23 ◼ ► letter of the law, but that compliance has gotten us to a point where it was kind of a waste of time
00:21:32 ◼ ► for everybody. Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to go off on a tangent here, but I'll just say,
00:21:43 ◼ ► Anything can be willfully misinterpreted, where you think you passed a law that was very clear.
00:21:49 ◼ ► I was just reading the story about this, about how there was a, some sort of, I forget what it was,
00:21:55 ◼ ► state law that was passed somewhere, and they're like, "Aha, we did it, we did it, it's all very
00:21:59 ◼ ► clear now." And then like one court case completely inverted the intent of the state law. Whoa,
00:22:06 ◼ ► because they encouraged a judge to read the case in a different way. And so, I think, implied in
00:22:15 ◼ ► the whole purpose of having a regulatory regime in the European Union is when they do the DMA,
00:22:23 ◼ ► they're saying, "Here's the big picture of what needs to happen. Here's why it needs to happen."
00:22:31 ◼ ► And the regulator will ensure that it happens. And that gives the regulator some authority to say,
00:22:38 ◼ ► "Yes, I know you parsed," like for example, "I know you parsed the thing about marketplaces and
00:22:45 ◼ ► sideloading to have it be an either/or, and then you're not doing sideloading. We've decided that
00:22:51 ◼ ► you're doing sideloading." Right? And I know people can get upset and be like, "Well, but,
00:22:55 ◼ ► you know, it's an either/or, look at the," and then they're doing that thing, right, where you're
00:22:59 ◼ ► reading the words on the page and saying, "But look, but your honor, this says we don't have to
00:23:04 ◼ ► do it." And that's why you put a regulator behind it. And the regulator is instructed, "You know
00:23:11 ◼ ► what we want," right? They're giving orders to the regulator, like, "Here's the laws we've written,
00:23:15 ◼ ► and you know what we want to get out of this." And it's your judgment about, not the judgment of a
00:23:21 ◼ ► judge who's listening to the regulated, it's your judgment about whether this is fulfilled or not.
00:23:31 ◼ ► - Two reasonable people having a disagreement would listen to each other, and if something was
00:23:37 ◼ ► misunderstood and corrected, they would try to work together to deal with it. That is not how
00:23:41 ◼ ► the legal system works, right? Where it's this idea of like, "Well, we read it this way, and we
00:23:45 ◼ ► can get someone to agree with us," and that's the end of it. And I just personally don't particularly
00:23:51 ◼ ► vibe with that. I know it's what has happened, but I don't necessarily think that just because
00:23:55 ◼ ► something has been a way, it should be that way forever. And I think that even though this is
00:23:59 ◼ ► complicated and brings its own set of issues that you have to work through, that this method of
00:24:05 ◼ ► legislating, if you'll call it that, this method of rule-making, where you're kind of trying to
00:24:11 ◼ ► have a conversation with the regulatory body and deal with it properly, so you're getting to the
00:24:16 ◼ ► intention of the law in the first place, I think that jives more with what I want from the world.
00:24:28 ◼ ► Yeah, so you end up with a set of regulators who, it's their job to... And again, ultimately,
00:24:41 ◼ ► instructing an arm of the government to work with the companies that want to do business in the
00:24:48 ◼ ► region to follow the rules. If we take it to the big picture, it's like, "Who are these people to
00:24:53 ◼ ► tell Apple what to do?" Well, the answer is, it's Europe. And Apple can be in Europe, but if you're
00:24:59 ◼ ► going to be in Europe, you have to follow the laws in Europe, just like how Apple follows the laws in
00:25:02 ◼ ► China. If you want to be there, you got to follow... Those are your choices. Follow it or leave,
00:25:08 ◼ ► those are your choices. And as a result, you've got to listen to the regulators. And if it's a
00:25:16 ◼ ► tough regular... Again, I think the regulators are very focused on specific things that Apple does,
00:25:25 ◼ ► I think they're just less impressed with the idea that Apple is going to erect huge barriers to
00:25:30 ◼ ► things that are mandated by the DMA in the name of security. Because again, with creating that proxy
00:25:39 ◼ ► for a developer in good standing of two years in the App Store and a million downloads, if I
00:25:44 ◼ ► was a regulator, and I'm not, I would look at that and say, "You've gone against the spirit of what
00:25:51 ◼ ► we're trying to do here and sort of claiming that you can't police your own developer system, and
00:25:58 ◼ ► that therefore you're going to erect this huge barrier." And my thought would be, "Your barrier
00:26:02 ◼ ► needs to be a lot lower. And if you're afraid about fraud, it's your job to stop people from
00:26:10 ◼ ► fraudulently becoming members of your development community. You can't put it on the regulation and
00:26:17 ◼ ► say, "Well, we're going to just make it impossible for people to use this feature because we can't
00:26:21 ◼ ► police our own App Store and our own developer membership system." And that's the back and forth
00:26:40 ◼ ► The US Department of Justice, 15 states and the District of Columbia sued Apple last Thursday on
00:26:48 ◼ ► the grounds of anti-competitive actions related to the iPhone related products. It is a very
00:26:54 ◼ ► complicated 88 page document that Jason has read. So I read Jason's article and we're going to use
00:27:00 ◼ ► that, which is very good. Felt to me anyway. Everybody out there can just listen to Mike and
00:27:04 ◼ ► it will go from the Department of Justice to me to Mike to you. Yep, that's how it works. And we're
00:27:08 ◼ ► going to use that as a framework for discussion today. So you broke this down into a bunch of
00:27:12 ◼ ► segments and we'll start by, you know, if we're looking at antitrust, we start by saying there's
00:27:17 ◼ ► a monopoly, right? That's how we get to this point. So the DOJ is suing Apple on the grounds
00:27:22 ◼ ► of anti-competitive behavior, anti- is it anti-competitive or antitrust? Is that, are they
00:27:27 ◼ ► the same? They are the, yeah, antitrust. A trust is like a monopoly. It's a, it's a, from the,
00:27:32 ◼ ► it goes dates back to the days of railroads and oil companies being monopolies. Wonderful,
00:27:36 ◼ ► wonderful, wonderful, great. Uh, so we need to first define a monopoly. So the Department of
00:27:41 ◼ ► Justice has tried to do that. Um, a 60% share of the US smartphone market, which is what Apple has,
00:27:52 ◼ ► So they are kind of carving it up, um, in a few ways. One, the Department of Justice is using
00:27:59 ◼ ► revenue generate instead of units sold. They've created a new sub market of smartphone called
00:28:04 ◼ ► performance smartphone, which pushes Apple up to 70%. And they also accuse Apple of attempting
00:28:11 ◼ ► to create a monopoly through various tactics. So even if they haven't got like 90% of the market,
00:28:17 ◼ ► they're really trying to get it. Is that fair? I mean, I've just summarized your summary, but.
00:28:22 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. The idea here is they need to establish why this is a monopoly and it's actually
00:28:26 ◼ ► kind of hard. And so they have said, well, it's just in the US and it's just revenue. And it's,
00:28:39 ◼ ► you know, 70% revenue share. And then I'd say the other thing they do that in my mind suggests that
00:28:45 ◼ ► they, that they, uh, know that their numbers aren't very strong and they're just trying to,
00:28:52 ◼ ► they're, they're trying to make their case here. Um, at one point they do finally get to a number
00:28:57 ◼ ► that I think most people would say is verging on a monopoly, which is a number that, uh, starts at 90.
00:29:04 ◼ ► And they do that by making the bold claim that 90% of the smartphone market is controlled by Apple
00:29:16 ◼ ► ah, we got to 90 by adding in two competitors who are not part of this lawsuit. I don't,
00:29:22 ◼ ► it's bananas. But the truth is historically what defines a monopoly is not like a number. It is,
00:29:29 ◼ ► it has to do with the power exerted over the entire market as defined, what that market is,
00:29:34 ◼ ► that's defined. And, um, it also can vary based on even the regions of the, the circuit courts
00:29:43 ◼ ► of the federal, uh, judicial system. And if you, um, if you're wondering why they filed in New
00:29:50 ◼ ► Jersey, New Jersey, this circuit court had a case where they found that a company involved in making
00:29:57 ◼ ► like dentures and accessories or something had a 60 some percent market share. And they said they
00:30:03 ◼ ► were a monopoly because of the way that they use their power. And they undoubtedly picked this
00:30:09 ◼ ► court because of that. So I, you know, I'm not a lawyer. I look at this and I think it doesn't
00:30:14 ◼ ► pass the sniff test of being a monopoly, but they will make some very clever, as we said before,
00:30:19 ◼ ► you can argue anything and you could say, well, Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the sense of
00:30:24 ◼ ► being 90% of the market, but the power they exert over the smartphone market is such that they are
00:30:31 ◼ ► behaving as a monopoly. That would be the argument. It's just, you know, this would be easier if
00:30:36 ◼ ► Apple's real market share was 70%. This would be way easier if it was 80%. And this would be,
00:30:42 ◼ ► I would say a slam dunk if it were 90%. So I think it is an issue where they really have to,
00:30:47 ◼ ► they have to make the case that Apple exerts huge control over this market. And Apple's defense is
00:30:53 ◼ ► going to be that it's a highly competitive market and that Apple, everything Apple is doing is
00:30:59 ◼ ► because they have brutal competition, not just in the U S but all around the world. And the more
00:31:04 ◼ ► they can globalize it, the lower their market share gets because the U S is their best market.
00:31:08 ◼ ► So this is kind of interesting because it dovetails from what we were just talking about.
00:31:12 ◼ ► So like for me, this is like, I don't care about percentages like me personally, because
00:31:18 ◼ ► that last point that Apple attempts to create a monopoly through various tactics, and we're going
00:31:23 ◼ ► to go through those tactics that the DOJ is setting out. I think that that is the key to it,
00:31:29 ◼ ► that like Apple is trying really hard and if they could, they would very happily take that 90% and
00:31:37 ◼ ► treat it exactly the same. Sure. Sure. Yeah. The challenge, the challenge is that legal tactics
00:31:44 ◼ ► by a regular company become illegal when a monopoly does them. So there's this fuzzy line,
00:31:52 ◼ ► and you can make the historical claim, right? That Apple's market share has actually grown a
00:31:58 ◼ ► little bit, but like they are locked in a battle with Google and Android in general, and Samsung in
00:32:05 ◼ ► particular in the premium category, and that this is a fierce competition and that Apple's decisions
00:32:13 ◼ ► are based on that and not based on control. Like, cause in the end it's about is Apple just trying
00:32:18 ◼ ► to take its power to reap, you know, all these benefits or is it doing it because it is locked
00:32:26 ◼ ► in a struggle with the competition and it's competing. And that's one of the things we have
00:32:30 ◼ ► to deal with. I should also say for people who don't, you know, have not spent any time thinking
00:32:33 ◼ ► about antitrust law or aren't in the US, you may be saying to yourself, why does it matter? Like,
00:32:41 ◼ ► they obviously have a big market share and they're very powerful and you can put them together with
00:32:44 ◼ ► Samsung and Google and get them over 90%. And really, if you look at it as iOS and Android,
00:32:49 ◼ ► it's a hundred percent essentially of the smartphone market. And that gives Apple as one
00:32:54 ◼ ► of two major players and gatekeepers enormous control over the market, right? Which is what
00:32:58 ◼ ► the EU's argument is, right? Except for this, you gotta, in order to have a lawsuit, you gotta have
00:33:06 ◼ ► a law. It's gotta be illegal. They gotta do something illegal. And the United States has been
00:33:14 ◼ ► very bad at passing new laws about things like... The DMA is a law and then they broke the law and
00:33:22 ◼ ► then said you have to comply with it. Yeah. And they wrote it with the big tech companies in mind.
00:33:27 ◼ ► The Sherman Antitrust Act is what the Department of Justice is using. It is well over a hundred
00:33:33 ◼ ► years old. It was written for the era where there were huge monopolies and things like,
00:33:38 ◼ ► in cutting edge industries like trains and oil. And, but this is the thing is, that's all they
00:33:45 ◼ ► got. That's all they got. And monopoly law and antitrust law has evolved over time. And there are
00:33:53 ◼ ► lots of complex definitions of it now because you have to kind of evolve it. Otherwise,
00:33:58 ◼ ► all you're going to get is the Rockefellers and the Stanfords of the world, right? From the 19th
00:34:05 ◼ ► and early 20th centuries. And so it has evolved, but this is what they have to use. So if you're
00:34:11 ◼ ► wondering, like, why are we even arguing about if Apple's a monopoly? Why can't we just talk about
00:34:15 ◼ ► Apple's behavior? The fact is that if the Department of Justice can't definitively prove
00:34:21 ◼ ► that Apple is behaving as a monopoly, they have no case. Because Apple's not being accused of doing
00:34:27 ◼ ► anything that's illegal in general. They're being accused of doing things that are illegal
00:34:33 ◼ ► for people with monopoly power to do. And that's the huge difference. So everything is about the
00:34:40 ◼ ► monopoly. In my opinion, I mean, it's not just my opinion, one of the worst things that happened here
00:34:44 ◼ ► is Epic took Apple to court. Because there is nothing in here about the App Store, right? Like,
00:34:51 ◼ ► about Apple's control of the App Store. Because Epic and Apple have already had this fight,
00:34:58 ◼ ► and Epic lost. And I feel like if the Department of Justice could have included in here,
00:35:13 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, there's stuff in there. They mentioned it, but they are steering away from it.
00:35:17 ◼ ► And this is okay. There's a lot of talk about this. This has been out there for a little while
00:35:24 ◼ ► now. And there are people who are like, aha, take it to big tech. And there are other people who are
00:35:29 ◼ ► like, this is ridiculous. This is such a stupid thing. It's a waste of everybody's time. I would
00:35:35 ◼ ► say my frustration with this is that there are lots of things Apple does that I don't like,
00:35:44 ◼ ► and that I think are questionable in terms of their behavior, in terms of things that I think
00:35:53 ◼ ► that Apple is doing that seem very unfair, and that they're using their power and their control
00:35:59 ◼ ► of their platform to be anti-competitive. There are lots of examples of that. Very few of them
00:36:08 ◼ ► are in this lawsuit. And part of it is that already in the Epic Games case, a lot of this
00:36:16 ◼ ► stuff was sort of run up the flagpole and found to be not super convincing. It doesn't mean they
00:36:19 ◼ ► can't make those arguments again. And this legal panel could say, actually, we do believe those
00:36:25 ◼ ► arguments. But it makes it harder. And I think it also suggests, given some of the weak arguments
00:36:30 ◼ ► that are in this first filing, I would say anything you don't see in here is probably not because they
00:36:35 ◼ ► forgot about it. It's because it felt even weaker to them to allege. And as a result, I'm frustrated
00:36:43 ◼ ► by this because I look at this and I think, it's kind of misguided. You missed a huge opportunity.
00:36:49 ◼ ► And some of the stuff that you are picking is dumb. Is this the best you can do is sort of how
00:36:56 ◼ ► I walk away from this? Because I don't think that there aren't any competitive urges that Apple has
00:37:03 ◼ ► that they have been exercising over more than a decade. But two things. One, is it illegal?
00:37:10 ◼ ► And that's on Congress, right? That's on the lawmakers to make laws about is it legal or not,
00:37:17 ◼ ► as opposed to just feels real icky. And so, is it illegal or not? And then the other thing is the
00:37:26 ◼ ► Department of Justice, do they even get it? Is my other concern. Remember when we talked about the
00:37:40 ◼ ► humane AI pin? And one of the things that we picked out about it was, there's this, it's a cool demo
00:37:48 ◼ ► and it's a cool product. And I think it's actually very instructive that if you don't have a smart
00:37:51 ◼ ► home platform that you own that's dominant, it's very hard for you to even make a presence in the
00:37:57 ◼ ► market. Which again, it's not illegal, but I think it's troubling about where the market is now with
00:38:03 ◼ ► the two huge companies that control it. But the big thing about the humane AI pin was also that
00:38:11 ◼ ► their whole thing is sort of like, isn't it great? You can be freed from your smartphone.
00:38:15 ◼ ► And you and I both were talking about how people like their phones, right? They're looking at them
00:38:22 ◼ ► all the time. They like them. I've yet to see one of those, like those late night commercials that
00:38:27 ◼ ► are like, oh, I'm tired of opening cans. I hate it. I open cans all day. And somebody was like,
00:38:33 ◼ ► I've got a can opener for you. Right? It's a little like that, which is like, oh, I'm tired
00:38:37 ◼ ► of looking at my phone all the time. There's all these games and I can scroll in social media.
00:38:41 ◼ ► I wish, help me AI pin, right? That doesn't exist. And I think of that about this lawsuit too,
00:38:47 ◼ ► which is the lawsuit has a real tenor. Like, people don't like the iPhone when in fact,
00:38:52 ◼ ► customer satisfaction, as Tim Cook would tell us, very high on the iPhone. People love the iPhone.
00:38:56 ◼ ► They love it. And there is a, there was an undercurrent in this suit of this idea. Cause one
00:39:01 ◼ ► of the things that they're really trying to challenge is lock in the idea that Apple traps
00:39:04 ◼ ► its customers and its ecosystem and it can't get out. And there is no doubt, no doubt, no denying
00:39:09 ◼ ► the fact that Apple sees lock in as a benefit and Apple likes lock in. Apple likes making it
00:39:15 ◼ ► stickiness. And I bet they have so much discovery, like documents and emails that confirm that part
00:39:27 ◼ ► make it easier to switch to our competition? Which is not illegal if you're not a monopoly.
00:39:35 ◼ ► the document is written is very much like aha through nefarious means Apple has trapped people
00:39:41 ◼ ► in their ecosystem. They don't want to be there anymore. They want to escape, but they can't,
00:39:46 ◼ ► they've been trapped. And it has this, it really has this whiff of that classic argument that
00:39:50 ◼ ► people who buy Apple hardware or Apple products in general are just dupes of marketing and seamless.
00:39:57 ◼ ► And exactly. And that, and then they're trapped and then they're just harvested for all their
00:40:02 ◼ ► cash by Apple. And it's like both of these. So, so Apple desiring making decisions that enable lock in
00:40:09 ◼ ► and making their ecosystem sticky is a thing. Right. But when I read about it in this case,
00:40:41 ◼ ► I always have thought Apple behaves, Apple should have more confidence in itself. And I know people
00:40:49 ◼ ► are like, what do you mean Apple's very arrogant? It's like, yeah, but Apple, we did that episode
00:40:54 ◼ ► where it's like, they own the field, they own the refs. And I it's like, why compete is Apple's
00:40:58 ◼ ► attitude. It's like, why compete if we don't have to? And I think Apple does believe that their
00:41:03 ◼ ► products are superior, but they also believe that they shouldn't have to compete because why,
00:41:07 ◼ ► why bother? And, and a lot of these regulatory exercises we're going through here are those
00:41:13 ◼ ► groups saying one by lawsuit, by regulation, whatever, saying, no, you need to, you need to
00:41:18 ◼ ► actually compete on the merits, which I think is funny because I think Apple competes fine on the
00:41:23 ◼ ► merits. And in some areas where they don't compete on the merits, I think it's true that they would
00:41:27 ◼ ► work harder if they had to compete. Again, is that illegal or not? Depends on if they're a monopoly,
00:41:33 ◼ ► depends on a bunch of other things, but it is, they, they kind of bring this on themselves because
00:41:37 ◼ ► what they're doing is saying we want it to be sticky. We want lock-in, uh, because why wouldn't we?
00:41:43 ◼ ► And as a result, that's evidence of them saying we don't want competition, which is not great if
00:41:49 ◼ ► you're in a antitrust lawsuit. I just, you know, we're going to get into some of the details here,
00:41:54 ◼ ► but like there is just like a, like a thing for me, or it's like, I don't think a company can make
00:41:58 ◼ ► $22 billion a quarter and not expect to be regulated. Right. Yeah. You know, like this was
00:42:05 ◼ ► going to happen. It's just happening this way. I mean, one of my pet theories is always that
00:42:10 ◼ ► Apple's whole corporate culture is based on when they were the little guy who was about to go out
00:42:14 ◼ ► of business, going up against enormous adversaries who had monopoly power and that they were just
00:42:19 ◼ ► trying to survive and that they still have that attitude, even though the shoe was on the other
00:42:23 ◼ ► foot now. And I think you see that in stuff like this, where you, yes, if you and one of your
00:42:29 ◼ ► competitors, I so grossed, we said that wrong. Let me say $90 billion a quarter, sorry, not 20.
00:42:36 ◼ ► That was just one product is what I was thinking of. Let's, let's, let's, let's break it down.
00:42:41 ◼ ► And again, this is not about law. This is just about like common sense, right? Smartphone is
00:42:47 ◼ ► basically required for everybody, every human on planet earth. And there's only two kinds.
00:42:53 ◼ ► Yeah. Google and Apple. Yeah. Within, I mean, again, I'm sure next year is the year of Linux
00:42:59 ◼ ► in the pocket, but, um, like really AI in the bin. And I know there's different, different androids
00:43:05 ◼ ► in China. There's two, there's two platforms here for the most important product in the world,
00:43:13 ◼ ► essentially most important tech product in the world. Do we not think that if there are only two
00:43:20 ◼ ► that they have enormous amounts of power over the human race? And do we not think that perhaps
00:43:26 ◼ ► governments might want to have a say about how they perform some aspects of their business?
00:43:31 ◼ ► I think it's not unreasonable to say that. And also when there are two and one of them has more
00:43:42 ◼ ► but the problem is the governments don't work on vibes. They work on laws. And in the US,
00:43:47 ◼ ► there are not a lot of laws that directly address this stuff. So they gotta, they gotta go with
00:43:51 ◼ ► something like the Sherman 80 trust act, which has been used, used against Microsoft. Um, anyway,
00:43:57 ◼ ► yeah, it's, so this is where we are is I think, I think you and I have come back to one of my
00:44:02 ◼ ► initial points, which is feels like there's something here and this doesn't feel like it's it,
00:44:06 ◼ ► but this is what we got. It might be though, like maybe it might be enough, right? Like it might be
00:44:13 ◼ ► enough because let's go through some of these things. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say it might
00:44:18 ◼ ► be enough in the sense that it might spur apple to make changes that are substantial. It might be
00:44:25 ◼ ► enough for a judge to agree with. Sure. Sure. Depending on the details. Absolutely. Because,
00:44:32 ◼ ► okay, let's, let's, let's, we have all of these points and I saw someone say this and I, and I,
00:44:37 ◼ ► and I thought that it was a really good argument. Like some of these points seem strange unless
00:44:42 ◼ ► maybe they have a lot of evidence that makes them make sense, right? Where like, you can say,
00:44:46 ◼ ► look, apple does this thing. We know it because here's the emails. One of them is suppressing
00:44:51 ◼ ► cross platform technologies. Uh, the idea that apple makes it harder for developers to release
00:44:57 ◼ ► software that works the same on iOS and Android, therefore making it harder for users to switch
00:45:02 ◼ ► and know that they would have a comparable experience if they had a different, uh, phone.
00:45:06 ◼ ► The department of justice site that some of these things are suppressed are cloud streaming games,
00:45:14 ◼ ► third party messaging apps, not being able to receive incoming SMSs. So you are pushed into
00:45:27 ◼ ► message receiver. I think that is a super strong argument to me, right? They, they put their
00:45:34 ◼ ► messaging service in the SMS app. Exactly. Uh, smartwatches other than the apple watch,
00:45:41 ◼ ► not being able to be fully featured digital wallets. And the one that is the weirdest to me,
00:45:46 ◼ ► super apps, super apps, super apps are mostly popular in Asia and there are a few different
00:45:54 ◼ ► ones. Uh, we chat is often cited, but WhatsApp is actually one really in India, especially.
00:46:12 ◼ ► you can order food, you can order cars, right? Like it's a whole thing. They build little mini
00:46:17 ◼ ► apps. They basically build a platform that is the app. And then they have little mini apps inside it
00:46:22 ◼ ► that they control. And so you end up in a, in a situation in China where one of the things about
00:46:26 ◼ ► the Chinese market, and I know we talk about this when we do the quarterly stuff here is that in
00:46:31 ◼ ► China, if everything you do is in WeChat, then, um, you can go to an Android phone. And as long
00:46:39 ◼ ► as there's WeChat, which there is, you can do everything there too. And you can go to iPhone
00:46:43 ◼ ► and there's WeChat. So you do everything there. And this is the whole cross platform thing. What
00:46:48 ◼ ► the department of justice is trying to say is apple makes it hard to switch and that that is a,
00:46:53 ◼ ► an anti-competitive action and it should be easier to switch. And there, I think there are,
00:47:02 ◼ ► is a technological naivety, naivety about, about platforms being different. And the idea that,
00:47:09 ◼ ► that, uh, you know, we're not going to say all software must be developed with the same APIs,
00:47:15 ◼ ► right? Like that, that's bizarre. And yet if they're different, the more different they are,
00:47:20 ◼ ► the harder it is to switch between them. Also, I would argue that, you know, if I were to switch
00:47:25 ◼ ► from iOS to Android today, I would lose my Apple watch because it's not compatible, but I could
00:47:29 ◼ ► replicate everything else I do on Android. Right? So switch the cost of switching. I'm, I'm a little
00:47:34 ◼ ► bit skeptical of, but I think it's an interesting lens for them to view this situation, which is to
00:47:38 ◼ ► say how easy it is to switch. And in China, it's very easy to switch. Now, the problem with that is
00:47:44 ◼ ► that there's another monopoly, which is the super app, which is itself a monopoly. I can't believe
00:47:51 ◼ ► that the department of justice in an antitrust case is asking for Uber to be the place where I
00:47:57 ◼ ► live my life, which is essentially what I would have. Right. Which is so here's the idea, Mike,
00:48:02 ◼ ► the idea, and this, this comes in somewhere else, which is the whole argument in this document,
00:48:07 ◼ ► which is that the only reason we're here today is because the DOJ sued Microsoft, which something,
00:48:12 ◼ ► something, something big question mark allowed Apple to flourish, which is not true. It's, it's
00:48:17 ◼ ► a, it's a laugh. Uh, it is them patting themselves on the back. Um, but if you, if you view it through
00:48:22 ◼ ► the lens of that, then the super app thing, you could say, oh, well, this is great. Cause it'll
00:48:26 ◼ ► give them work. Um, for the next decade, when a super app comes to monopoly, they can sue them.
00:48:32 ◼ ► The department of justice, the Apple have total control. They exert power over the platform to
00:48:40 ◼ ► limit developers and users. Yeah. Can't argue with that one. No, I mean, that's right. Not,
00:48:47 ◼ ► not a bad, so yeah, cross-platform total control, um, are I think, and lock in, right. Those are the,
00:48:59 ◼ ► other and they keep trying to go into new markets and over time they will just do that more and more
00:49:05 ◼ ► and more until they can try and control all of the stuff. And that is, that is definitively,
00:49:11 ◼ ► I would say the, the, the defining characteristic of an illegal monopoly is that you have a huge
00:49:17 ◼ ► power base in one area. And then from there you can exert it elsewhere and your competitors can't,
00:49:25 ◼ ► can't compete elsewhere with you because of your base in your monopoly, because it's very hard
00:49:31 ◼ ► to compete with somebody who's got that level of power. And so with Microsoft, the argument was
00:49:36 ◼ ► Microsoft wasn't allowing browser competition because it had operating system dominance and
00:49:41 ◼ ► they lost that case. Basically they, they, they changed how they did it and they had to unbundle
00:49:46 ◼ ► IE and all of those things happened and then Apple came along. So look, hooray. So, um, that,
00:49:52 ◼ ► that's one of the challenges here is these, um, the, are, are they using that power in a narrowly
00:50:00 ◼ ► defined monopoly to, I mean, the smartwatch thing is a good example where like what they're not
00:50:07 ◼ ► saying, the DOJ is not saying really is, uh, Apple not bringing the Apple watch to Android is
00:50:14 ◼ ► monopolistic, right? Like that, that's a very weird argument to make to say, if you don't support
00:50:21 ◼ ► other platforms, you're bad. Like it's illegal to release it for your only your own platform.
00:50:26 ◼ ► It's not what they're saying. It is weird though, that Garmin doesn't have an API, right? To be able
00:50:33 ◼ ► to get messages. And there's arguments that they, that there is that to some degree, and I want to
00:50:37 ◼ ► see the evidence, but the, the argument that I think has more resonance, if it's true is Apple.
00:50:43 ◼ ► And it sounds like something Apple would do, right? Which is Apple built a whole bunch of APIs
00:50:48 ◼ ► for the Apple watch so that the Apple watch would work well. And I don't think anybody would say
00:50:53 ◼ ► that is fundamentally bad. I think people would, I mean, maybe there's somebody at the department
00:50:57 ◼ ► of justice, but I think it's a reasonable person would say Apple innovating with its own product
00:51:06 ◼ ► The challenge that the DOJ sees here is, and I don't know whether it's at the time it ships
00:51:12 ◼ ► or within a reasonable amount of time is Apple built all that stuff for the Apple watch. And the
00:51:17 ◼ ► argument goes, and the allegation is that other smartwatches try to get access to all of that
00:51:23 ◼ ► close tie-in with the system that allows them to function at the same way that they do on Android
00:51:30 ◼ ► and they can't. And that's their argument is that Apple, and then it goes to cross-platform and,
00:51:37 ◼ ► and lock in by saying, essentially, if you want to use a smartwatch on an iPhone, you can only use
00:51:42 ◼ ► Apple's because the others aren't very good because they're being anti-competitive. And of course,
00:51:49 ◼ ► it doesn't work on the other platform. So if you switch, you're not just buying a new phone,
00:51:52 ◼ ► you have to buy a new watch now. And that's all about lock in and anti-competitiveness. That's
00:51:56 ◼ ► the argument that they're making. And I think, again, the idea that at some point Apple needs
00:52:01 ◼ ► to let other smartwatches work on the iPhone, they can't just make it that the, well, the Apple watch
00:52:06 ◼ ► works the best. That if somebody wanted to put in the investment, if Google wanted to put the
00:52:10 ◼ ► investment to have one of the Google smartwatches work as well with iOS as the Apple watch does,
00:52:16 ◼ ► they should be able to do that. That's the argument. They also say that Apple uses security
00:52:23 ◼ ► for convenience. I'm going to read a quote from you, which includes a quote from the Department
00:52:27 ◼ ► of Justice. It calls Apple's privacy and security justifications an elastic shield that can stretch
00:52:33 ◼ ► or contract to serve Apple's interests. Yes, go off DOJ. They do do this. They do. They absolutely
00:52:43 ◼ ► do. And the problem is, I mean, elastic shield is actually really great because implication in there,
00:52:49 ◼ ► this is my favorite line in the whole document. The implication there is it stretches or contracts
00:52:55 ◼ ► to serve its interests. What it's not saying is Apple says, like we've heard these troll arguments
00:53:02 ◼ ► before, right? Which is like, well, Apple says that privacy and security matter, but it don't
00:53:06 ◼ ► really, all that matters to them is money. It's like, that's not true. Privacy and security
00:53:11 ◼ ► absolutely matter to Apple. And it's absolutely a priority for them. It is also true that Apple's
00:53:17 ◼ ► behavior is not only prioritizing privacy and security. It also is about their own interests,
00:53:26 ◼ ► about money, maybe about lock-in. Those things are also in there. And once you let those things
00:53:33 ◼ ► creep in, it makes it easier for, say, the Department of Justice to point at it and say,
00:53:39 ◼ ► you're hiding behind security. Like we said about the rules in Europe for letting somebody into the
00:53:45 ◼ ► store where they're like, oh, well, yeah, you can do sideloading. You just have to spend two years
00:53:50 ◼ ► in a penalty box and find a way to get a million downloads in Europe. And then you're free to do
00:53:54 ◼ ► what you want. And we have to do this because of platform security. And it's like, well, there are
00:54:01 ◼ ► probably other ways to answer that problem, but you've decided to make it about platform security.
00:54:05 ◼ ► What I would say is, it's not consistent. There are examples where Apple is doing features that
00:54:11 ◼ ► benefit privacy and security, that it's entirely about privacy and security. There are cases where
00:54:17 ◼ ► it's mostly about privacy and security, but they also look at it and say, oh, we could also make
00:54:21 ◼ ► some money here. And it has the added effect of having a little lock-in. It's good for us. And
00:54:26 ◼ ► they do it. And then there are other ones where they talk about the privacy and security and you
00:54:30 ◼ ► look at it and you go, really? Because it seems to me like your real motivator here is that this
00:54:35 ◼ ► gives you more power or control or money or some combination of those. And that's been, and again,
00:54:43 ◼ ► they have nobody but themselves to blame because they could, they muddy these waters. They muddy
00:54:49 ◼ ► these waters with their business decisions. And it is like one of the things that you cannot avoid
00:54:56 ◼ ► from this. And I think one of the things that's going to continually come back to buy Apple is
00:55:01 ◼ ► they are always talking about the tight integration between hardware and software. That that is what
00:55:06 ◼ ► they care about. They promote heavily on this. Is it now said that this is illegal to do?
00:55:13 ◼ ► I don't know, but the fact that they have been so hell-bent on this idea that only their stuff
00:55:23 ◼ ► can work together, that's now going to become a problem for them. This is one of the more
00:55:29 ◼ ► existential threats to Apple, is this idea that Apple's whole idea of integrated devices is
00:55:49 ◼ ► and I don't know the details, but like the Apple watch is a good example. We could use others.
00:55:56 ◼ ► Apple does this thing where they announce a new product and it's like, I mean, AirPods are like
00:56:01 ◼ ► this too, right? Where it's like, Oh, well Bluetooth wasn't good enough. So we invented
00:56:05 ◼ ► a new thing and it makes our headphones way better than anybody else's headphones on our platform.
00:56:10 ◼ ► I don't think that that is in any way illegal. That's Apple's business model. That's how they
00:56:18 ◼ ► make good products. The challenge, and this might make the whole thing untenable, which is the
00:56:23 ◼ ► danger for Apple. The challenge is if you read that as being, we built a bunch of stuff that only
00:56:29 ◼ ► we ever get access to and it means that our product in this category will always be better
00:56:33 ◼ ► than any of the other products in this category. And you can buy other earbuds if you really want
00:56:37 ◼ ► to, but they're never going to be as good as ours. So you might as well just buy ours, right?
00:56:50 ◼ ► privacy tracking device. So their tracking device, right? The AirTag. But Apple knew this was going
00:57:00 ◼ ► - So they created a system where you can make a product like this and apply, and you would be in
00:57:15 ◼ ► - Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the latest example is the journaling app, which includes all sorts of
00:57:21 ◼ ► things that are about your phone watching what you do, what music you play, what podcasts you listen
00:57:25 ◼ ► to, where you've been, what photos you've taken. A lot of stuff that has to happen on device
00:57:30 ◼ ► because it's monitoring you, right? But it's your device and it's monitoring you because it's with
00:57:36 ◼ ► you all the time. And then you decide what you want to do with it. And what Apple, in the past,
00:57:41 ◼ ► I would argue, what Apple would have done is announced the journaling app and release it.
00:57:44 ◼ ► And only Apple's app would have access to all that data. And instead, what they did is they built an
00:57:49 ◼ ► API and they released an app that uses the API and they opened that API up to other apps to get that
00:57:55 ◼ ► same data. And I know there's details there. I don't want to get into it. My point is, this is
00:58:00 ◼ ► the kind of thing that is the model potentially, which is, so you do the Apple watch. The question
00:58:07 ◼ ► is what's Apple's burden to allow others access to this stuff? I think the argument would be,
00:58:12 ◼ ► Apple, you cannot create private APIs, essentially, for your integrations that no one else gets access
00:58:23 ◼ ► to so that you can exert your platform ownership power to prevent any competition on the platform.
00:58:31 ◼ ► Now, there are a lot of arguments inside there, which is, does that mean that every time,
00:58:35 ◼ ► because the way that would hamper innovation is saying to Apple, every time you do anything
00:58:40 ◼ ► innovative at all, you immediately need to release a detailed API spec and have everything be public
00:58:46 ◼ ► so that somebody else can come in very quickly and write to all of those APIs. And there are cases
00:58:52 ◼ ► where that's probably really fair. You're a third party who's been trying to serve this market. I
00:58:56 ◼ ► mean, I don't know, you're Pebble back in the day for smartwatches. You're day one or you're an app
00:59:03 ◼ ► that's desperately wanted an API for something and then Apple decides to make an app like your app
00:59:08 ◼ ► and now there's an API for it. The least they could do is let you also access the API. So the
00:59:13 ◼ ► question is, does that have to happen when they ship it? Because that's going to increase the
00:59:16 ◼ ► burden on Apple. It would be the equivalent. I mean, this is the wrong example because it
00:59:21 ◼ ► was in the early days of the iPhone, but it'd be the equivalent of saying you can't ship the iPhone
00:59:25 ◼ ► until you have an app store. It's that kind of thing, right? Where they're like, no, no, no,
00:59:29 ◼ ► we need time. We don't even have the developer tools built yet. We ship the product. We can do
00:59:33 ◼ ► the product, but doing the developer documentation and all those things, it's going to take more
00:59:37 ◼ ► time. We still are having to work on that. It's like, okay, fair enough. That's where we are with
00:59:41 ◼ ► stuff like this, which is it's probably okay for Apple. It's okay for Apple to innovate.
00:59:50 ◼ ► But I think what the argument would be is it's not okay for Apple to take all of the extra
00:59:55 ◼ ► connective tissue that they built that makes their integrated product work and keep it to themselves
01:00:01 ◼ ► as the platform owner so that no one else can make a competitive product and have access to
01:00:07 ◼ ► that same stuff. Therefore, everybody who uses an iPhone is really going to be predisposed to
01:00:12 ◼ ► buy AirPods because AirPods work better. I think that's the biggest potential danger and change.
01:00:21 ◼ ► And why this thing talks about private APIs, I think is like, it's a huge, to me, that's a
01:00:26 ◼ ► huge thing because that's the one that blares out to me as being anti-competitive, which is,
01:00:32 ◼ ► it's not about Apple innovating. It's about Apple innovating and keeping all of the innovations on
01:00:38 ◼ ► the hardware side as special to the platform owner, leading to a situation where nobody can compete
01:00:47 ◼ ► with a platform owner on its platform anywhere in any other product. And that's, I mean, this goes
01:00:51 ◼ ► back to our complaints about things like the Kindle books and stuff like that, where it's like,
01:00:57 ◼ ► Apple has built a product on its platform and made it impossible for anyone to compete with them.
01:01:03 ◼ ► That seems anti-competitive to me, right? That's where it bugs me. And some of that's in here,
01:01:13 ◼ ► They've released a statement. This is from 9to5Mac. "We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the
01:01:18 ◼ ► facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it. And this is gonna take years. There'll
01:01:23 ◼ ► be lots of hearings. We'll learn lots of interesting things maybe." - Microsoft took a decade.
01:01:29 ◼ ► - There'll be lots of documents released from discovery process, which will be fascinating.
01:01:40 ◼ ► in the last few years I've told anyone, you shouldn't use email. But what you also shouldn't do
01:01:45 ◼ ► is say, let's not use email, 'cause Google did that and then they lost. So you need to say in
01:01:50 ◼ ► person to everyone, don't write anything down. And then you end up in a problem where no one
01:02:01 ◼ ► - I don't know how to break this to you, Mike, but that's how this whole thing started is this
01:02:18 ◼ ► - Well, here's the, it's like Schrodinger's evidence, right? At what point is something
01:02:33 ◼ ► - So we're probably gonna need a new name for this segment 'cause now we have DOJ today and
01:02:40 ◼ ► things based on jurisdictions and this doesn't help us when there's something in Korea that happens.
01:02:44 ◼ ► - Well, at first it didn't seem like we needed, we didn't know we were gonna need it. You know
01:02:49 ◼ ► what I mean? So, answers on a postcard. Go to upgradefeedback.com, give us your suggestions.
01:02:59 ◼ ► - Well, I just thought it might be an intro, you know, you never know what you're gonna get.
01:03:19 ◼ ► - We'll see. We'll come up with it. Send in your suggestions, upgradefeedback.com. If you have what
01:03:33 ◼ ► - And we need to replace, we lost that one, so we gotta get a new one in. But yeah, I think DMA
01:03:39 ◼ ► today is gonna be retired because now we need a broader Apple under scrutiny thing, whatever
01:03:49 ◼ ► - This episode is brought to you by Vitally. Customer success teams today, they're facing
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01:05:21 ◼ ► We wanted to have some fun because we've been talking a lot about legislation and you know
01:05:27 ◼ ► what's on the horizon? iPads. So it hasn't happened yet, which is fantastic. I was checking
01:05:32 ◼ ► the Apple newsroom furiously today, but as of recording on Monday the 25th of March, there have
01:05:39 ◼ ► been no iPad announcements. So we're doing an iPad draft. What this will also do is hopefully give us
01:05:45 ◼ ► at least three drafts this year, which is good from a scoring perspective when it comes to drafts.
01:05:51 ◼ ► These are the rules. Gotta make some drafts where we can. Yeah, we gotta do it. This is a great idea
01:05:57 ◼ ► from you. I'm happy that you came up with it, especially because we're going to be talking
01:06:01 ◼ ► about so much legal stuff. It's not our first preemptive draft, right? Like, you know, we've done
01:06:05 ◼ ► it before, but I felt like I was listening to Connected last week and I had that moment where
01:06:09 ◼ ► I thought, you know, there's a lot of unknown things. And fortunately, Mark Gurman on Sunday did not
01:06:15 ◼ ► have big iPad news to share and he's off next week. So I thought this would be a really good time for
01:06:22 ◼ ► us to just be on the details of the iPad and then we'll see what happens when it happens and we'll
01:06:28 ◼ ► score it then. These are the rules. There will be eight rounds. 16 overall picks. The winner of the
01:06:34 ◼ ► previous draft gets first pick. That is me. There are some slight amendments to these rules because
01:06:39 ◼ ► of the way we're doing it. The items that we're going to be picking from are chosen from a
01:06:43 ◼ ► predetermined list that we have agreed upon and are not ridiculously obvious. For an item to count,
01:06:55 ◼ ► Stephen Hackett, because it's not like there's not going to be an event probably, and we're going to
01:06:58 ◼ ► leave it all the way up until we score it. Stephen Hackett will adjudicate in case of a scoring
01:07:03 ◼ ► stalemate. There are no partial points. The points awarded on the episode of final want to finalize
01:07:08 ◼ ► during the scoring segment. In the case of a tie, there is a tiebreaker question. Loser gets a pick
01:07:14 ◼ ► of tiebreaker question. The winner becomes draft champion and displays the champion pennant. The
01:07:20 ◼ ► loser becomes the draft challenger and displays the challenger pennant. You can find interactive
01:07:25 ◼ ► scorecards for this draft and all drafts over at upgrade.cards. Thanks to our friend Zach Knox.
01:07:32 ◼ ► You can buy your own draft t-shirt anytime at upgradeyourwardrobe.com if you would like to
01:07:38 ◼ ► show off your love for the draft. In 2023, there were three drafts. WWDC, September, October. I
01:07:46 ◼ ► won all of them. And I was also the 2023 draft champion, obviously, if I won all three. There
01:07:54 ◼ ► have been three drafts historically in March. Jason has won them all. Fun fact. Mike, I think
01:07:59 ◼ ► we should do a draft in March. The 2022 March draft was the last time Jason won a draft.
01:08:06 ◼ ► I am on a losing streak. We're going to have to abolish drafts pretty soon. You think that's the
01:08:10 ◼ ► way we're going to deal with this? Interesting. That's very interesting. In case of, as I
01:08:18 ◼ ► mentioned before, if there's a tiebreaker question, Jason is going to be able to set an over/under on
01:08:26 ◼ ► the tiebreaker we decided, which is what will be the iPad Pro starting price? So Jason, you set the
01:08:32 ◼ ► number and I will set whether it's over or under. So I guess this is for the 11 inch, right?
01:08:39 ◼ ► The lowest price that you can buy into a new iPad Pro. If they keep an old model around,
01:08:44 ◼ ► which they won't, but if you do, that doesn't count. Current iPad Pro, do you know the starting
01:08:57 ◼ ► Jason, this is from Spold in the chat. Does Mike have a draft monopoly? Someone alert the Department
01:09:05 ◼ ► of Justice. Yeah, I know. That's right. You're using your draft monopoly against me. You want
01:09:12 ◼ ► to say that it's just competition, but I'm going to say... So $799 is the current. I'm going to say
01:09:31 ◼ ► Hmm. Okay. I think that's... So you get $949 and $899 and even $799 if they keep it the same.
01:09:52 ◼ ► It could well be, but I'm going to take the under on it because it's a big jump, right?
01:09:59 ◼ ► It's a big, big jump. It is. It is. And we'll talk about why, but I think I'm going to take the under
01:10:04 ◼ ► on it. All right. So we're not doing categories in this. We have lots of different picks across
01:10:09 ◼ ► all of the various iPads that we're going to choose from, but we're just doing this as like
01:10:15 ◼ ► eight rounds. So my first pick, both iPad Pro models have an OLED screen. Okay. All right.
01:10:32 ◼ ► I still think that there's a non-zero chance that they'll pull a gacha and they'll be like...
01:10:38 ◼ ► I agree. Like the low end model won't have OLED after all. And look, or they just don't even do,
01:10:45 ◼ ► you know what I mean? Like we thought they were going to do mini LED on the 11 inch and they never
01:10:50 ◼ ► did it. So I feel like it's until for something like this, like a technology like this, I do feel
01:10:56 ◼ ► like there is a possibility that it could change at any moment because of an issue until they've
01:11:01 ◼ ► done it once. You know what I mean? And until they've had an OLED iPad Pro, they've not had one.
01:11:07 ◼ ► It's Schrodinger's OLED. It's like I read something over the weekend. I didn't, but it just keeps
01:11:13 ◼ ► coming into my mind. Good old Schrodinger. Okay. I'm going to go with there's a new Apple Pencil.
01:11:20 ◼ ► Okay. I had this in, so I make a provisional list. I hope we both do this, right? Like we,
01:11:30 ◼ ► I just feel like now's the time for it. I mean, it is possible that they will, they will do it
01:11:35 ◼ ► later, but I feel like if there's new iPad Pro model and there's a new Apple Pencil coming,
01:11:39 ◼ ► that this would be the time to do it. So why not do it right now? We have a lot of potential
01:11:43 ◼ ► Apple Pencil picks. So let's not give, let's not talk about the Apple Pencil yet in case it comes
01:11:49 ◼ ► up through other things. Okay. My second pick will be a very popular one if it happens, which
01:11:57 ◼ ► is that the webcam is on the horizontal edge of the iPad Pro. Yep. That's a good call. It feels
01:12:09 ◼ ► it would really, this feels to me that you, they did it on that one because that was the first one
01:12:16 ◼ ► that they changed after making that decision. And now it should come to the other products,
01:12:20 ◼ ► in my opinion. Yeah. No makes sense to me. And if they have a brand new design of the iPad Pro,
01:12:27 ◼ ► then like, I imagine it would be hard to have a new revision of the previous iPad Pro and do that
01:12:33 ◼ ► because they designed that iPad in a certain way. But you've got to imagine if this iPad Pro has
01:12:39 ◼ ► new technology in it, like an OLED screen, that was going to need to be some change to the way
01:12:45 ◼ ► that the product was made. And so if you're going to go back to the design drawing board again,
01:12:49 ◼ ► that you would, you would also include something that like this, which makes a lot of sense.
01:12:58 ◼ ► that Apple disappoints us and we're like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll be the next time. And they're
01:13:01 ◼ ► like, no, no, we couldn't. To be fair. That is the, that is the under, like the underwriting
01:13:06 ◼ ► current of all drafts is we can be, it's the Apple may disappoint us. It's always there.
01:13:11 ◼ ► It's always there. Now we aren't allowing anybody to pick there will be a new Magic Keyboard
01:13:17 ◼ ► because that feels fairly strong. So I'm going to choose a larger track pad on the Magic Keyboard.
01:13:23 ◼ ► Okay. I just try to think of a laptop like Magic Keyboard, which is what Mark Gurman has reported.
01:13:30 ◼ ► And I think one of what's the, what's one of the real knocks on the Magic Keyboard is the size of
01:13:35 ◼ ► the track pad. So if they made it larger, just a little bit, if they made it laptop like then
01:13:41 ◼ ► maybe it's not going to have that wild cantilever thing. If you don't have to do that and you give
01:13:49 ◼ ► My third pick, the iPad Air comes in current iPad Pro sizes. Ah, yes. Right. So this is the idea
01:13:59 ◼ ► that the iPad Air will be compatible with, uh, with the two sizes of iPad Pro. Yeah. And we'll
01:14:08 ◼ ► use the existing, uh, accessories for the current model iPad Pro. So there'll be a, uh, what is it?
01:14:14 ◼ ► An 11 and a 12.9. An 11. Yeah. I mean, and that would make sense from that, right? Especially if
01:14:19 ◼ ► they're going to move on the Magic Keyboard, maybe they, your old Magic Keyboard will go with this,
01:14:24 ◼ ► right? And it's like, great. Now you can move that down the line. The potential issue I see
01:14:29 ◼ ► with this pick, the iPad Air might be bigger. Could be. Could be. Or the story that they're
01:14:36 ◼ ► going to do a big iPad Air is not true, as it turns out. Exactly. That's a possibility. Also
01:14:41 ◼ ► possible. But yeah, I think if they're going to do it, they do it this way. And I do think now is
01:14:47 ◼ ► the time you could do it if the iPad Pro is going to take a jump. And just, just for fun, I think
01:14:53 ◼ ► they could call that product the iPad Air Plus. I hope they don't, but they could. That's just a
01:14:58 ◼ ► little funsy. A little tip of the hat. Nice. I'm going to say the base model iPad receives an
01:15:03 ◼ ► update. Okay. New base iPad. 11th generation. This feels like something you wouldn't pick
01:15:12 ◼ ► if it was a video, right? I just feel like they're going to refresh everything. Yeah. But like, I
01:15:19 ◼ ► mean, if there was an event, maybe you would. Oh yeah. Like, would they even mention it? Well,
01:15:23 ◼ ► sure. They'll mention that the low cost iPad. Yeah, they will. But it's probably a minor
01:15:27 ◼ ► update from the 10th because the 10th was a big update, but there'll be, there'll be something
01:15:31 ◼ ► and they may get rid of the ninth. We'll see. All right. My fourth pick, bringing us halfway.
01:15:37 ◼ ► The iPad Pro starts at a higher price. Oh, interesting. I do think it will be more expensive.
01:15:48 ◼ ► I don't know if it's going to be from seven, was it 799 to 959? 899? Yeah, right. Right. I could
01:15:57 ◼ ► imagine 899. I think too much higher and it's maybe too much. Oh, I agree. It doesn't mean
01:16:06 ◼ ► they'll stop it. So here's my thought. I agree that making them incredibly expensive is not,
01:16:19 ◼ ► Air from the iPad Pro and they've got OLED on these devices and 999 is right there. That's,
01:16:26 ◼ ► that's my gut feeling is, is this would be an opportunity for Apple to kick the iPad Pro
01:16:31 ◼ ► way up the product line, started at 999. And you know, I hope they don't. I, right. I hope they,
01:16:47 ◼ ► increase the price of the iPad Pro. Right. But yeah. And I do think that that's possible. I'm
01:16:53 ◼ ► just not sure it's going to go up that high. Like I imagine that the, the 12.9 inch that,
01:16:58 ◼ ► that will be, that might get a bigger bump, but I'm not sure if the 11 would. Could be. Although
01:17:04 ◼ ► keep in mind that the 12.9 has the fancy backlighting now and they're both getting OLED. So
01:17:09 ◼ ► what does that mean? They're both coming from sort of a different place display wise. Yeah.
01:17:13 ◼ ► I don't know. I don't remember. We had those rumors that they're going to be hugely expensive
01:17:16 ◼ ► and then we had the rumors that said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
01:17:18 ◼ ► no. They're not going to be, I don't know what to think anymore. The unit. I don't know what to
01:17:22 ◼ ► think anymore. Okay. I am going to go again, be the change you want to see in the world. Okay.
01:17:29 ◼ ► I am choosing an iPad Pro case is offered in a color that is not gray, white or black. My word,
01:17:36 ◼ ► Jason Snow. In my opinion, they currently sell a smart folio that's blue. It's dark blue,
01:17:43 ◼ ► but it's blue. Okay. Marine blue. So I'm holding out hope that there'll be like, and we've got
01:17:50 ◼ ► again, you know, midnight in the forest, green, whatever it is that there's some color, not,
01:17:57 ◼ ► not saying the magic keyboard necessarily. Right. Cause that's probably not, that's probably going
01:18:00 ◼ ► to be boring, but that there'll be a case that will not be for the iPad Pro that will not be
01:18:06 ◼ ► gray, white or black. So right now there is a case. Yes. One. One. All right. Midnight blue,
01:18:15 ◼ ► midnight blue, Mike midnight blue, but it's not black. It's blue. You're riding on the fact that
01:18:20 ◼ ► they will, they will have a replacement for this essentially. Right. Like that's what you're hoping
01:18:25 ◼ ► for. Well, I mean, I suppose if they don't change the size of the iPad Pro at all, and they use the
01:18:32 ◼ ► existing cases, then that would also be true. But I'm, I'm thinking they will have to do new cases
01:18:37 ◼ ► cause the shape will be different and they will have their usual, which is like, it comes in,
01:18:44 ◼ ► it comes in monochrome and also this one very vaguely colored one. I don't think you're going
01:18:49 ◼ ► to do like bright pink. Right. But there'll be one that is dark green or dark blue, something like
01:18:56 ◼ ► that. All right. This could be an interesting one to score. We'll see how that goes. Wish you the
01:19:03 ◼ ► best of luck there. Cause colors always fun. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by Ladder.
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01:21:11 ◼ ► No, but, but my, my reason to not line this out was that it, that it works for not charging. It's
01:21:17 ◼ ► like with data support. Well, then get rid of that. I don't want it. You're not going to pick
01:21:21 ◼ ► it then. No, I don't want it. Although just saying that I will say that maybe we could have lined out
01:21:26 ◼ ► your iPad Pro case one considering it's like they already do it, but nevertheless, we'll let it fly.
01:21:31 ◼ ► Honestly, when they do a new one, it is a serious risk that they just go back to monochrome.
01:21:51 ◼ ► That's what made that outlandish, which is why I couldn't believe that you picked it. Okay. Function
01:22:04 ◼ ► And when I use an iPad Pro with external keyboards that have it, it's so great because I can do media
01:22:10 ◼ ► control and brightness control. And then you get to the Magic Keyboard, which is a product that I
01:22:15 ◼ ► love, but like no function row is brutal. So I hope that that would be like the obvious things,
01:22:33 ◼ ► Man. I don't like these at all. Okay. This is vague enough that I'm going to pick it and just
01:22:40 ◼ ► hope for the best, which is iPad Pro has a new OS feature that takes advantage of Magic Keyboard.
01:22:45 ◼ ► Okay. That's the thing we have. Can we try and talk about what we think that might be just
01:22:57 ◼ ► I just want to, I want to see if there's a software feature that they introduce, right?
01:23:03 ◼ ► That's not in current iPad OS that, that, that an accessory is involved with, right? Like a new
01:23:11 ◼ ► feature or, or I could take it back to it has a new OS feature, but like, I want to, I want it to
01:23:16 ◼ ► be like, oh, here's the thing the iPad couldn't do before that it does now. The iPad Pro has a new
01:23:24 ◼ ► OS feature that takes advantage of a new accessory. Like, that's kind of got to be the two things
01:23:28 ◼ ► combined. Cause then it's not super like, you know, just a new OS feature might be a little too
01:23:33 ◼ ► uh, broad, but at least this is like, maybe there's, maybe the pencil does something new,
01:23:42 ◼ ► OS update for these things. And it's because I'm going to say an accessory that needs a thing
01:23:47 ◼ ► to do a magically new thing that we haven't seen before. Yep. All right. My pick six was that one.
01:23:56 ◼ ► Haha. Finally. I'm doubling down and I'm going to say the iPad air webcam is on the horizontal edge.
01:24:08 ◼ ► Oh, okay. I'm doubling down. All right. So you believe it's horizontal everywhere. Yeah.
01:24:23 ◼ ► but basically you're like, no, no, this is the time where they're going to the horizontal.
01:24:26 ◼ ► They should do it. So, and they have done it. So I feel like they should just continue that.
01:24:40 ◼ ► Um, I'm going to pick more colors are nonsense. Magic keyboard comes color matched to iPad pro
01:24:55 ◼ ► models. I like this one. Right. So the idea here is that the reports are that it's going to have
01:25:00 ◼ ► an aluminum element to it. Yes. And if you've got, if you've got a starlight and midnight or a space
01:25:06 ◼ ► gray and silver iPad pro, presumably they would color match them, right? Because the current ones
01:25:13 ◼ ► are in two colors, but they're not matched to anything because there's no material like that
01:25:18 ◼ ► on the iPad pro right now. But if they have an aluminum element on the keyboard, presumably they
01:25:26 ◼ ► would want to color match it to the aluminum on the iPad. That's the idea. Yeah. I mean,
01:25:32 ◼ ► if they're going to make it out of aluminum, they 100% should do this. Right. So I would like to see
01:25:38 ◼ ► it. Right. Can you imagine them selling a space gray model and not having a space gray keyboard?
01:25:42 ◼ ► That's weird. I mean, I can't imagine it. I can't imagine it. I hope that they don't do that,
01:25:48 ◼ ► but don't do it. So my next pick is one that I feel like when I say it, considering how we've
01:25:54 ◼ ► been pretty scrutinized, we might actually remove it, but it was in the list. So I'm going to say it.
01:25:58 ◼ ► The new Apple pencil charges magnetically. Yeah. Well, so here's the idea here is there are,
01:26:05 ◼ ► we have an Apple pencil now that charges via USB-C. Yeah. One of the theories might be that if they,
01:26:13 ◼ ► if it attaches magnetically, but can they charge it magnetically when they're also moving the webcam?
01:26:20 ◼ ► We'll find out. I'm going to pick it. Okay. I think that would be a serious regression.
01:26:25 ◼ ► I agree. They did that. I put in charge via USB-C and then I thought, well, let's do both
01:26:30 ◼ ► sides of this and see what happens. Yeah. Right. Um, you know, there's a thing here for me where
01:26:36 ◼ ► it's like, they might be able to just make it work by doing the charging on one side and the webcam
01:26:41 ◼ ► on another side and the way that the keyboard cases and stuff might work would be based on that
01:26:47 ◼ ► idea. Yeah. You know, we'll see. But yeah, I, I can see why they would change it. I would be
01:26:57 ◼ ► really surprised if they couldn't have found a way to deal with this. Yeah, I think so.
01:27:04 ◼ ► Um, magic keyboard only works with 2024 iPad pro models. Okay. Just it's a new keyboard. It only
01:27:12 ◼ ► works with a pro it's for the pro. There's going to be something about it. I think it's going to be
01:27:15 ◼ ► the attachment because it's going to be more laptop-like and that's going to require very
01:27:19 ◼ ► specific iPad hardware that is allowed, allowing it to do that attachment via magnets or whatever.
01:27:27 ◼ ► And it's not going to be backward compatible with any other models of iPad because of that.
01:27:31 ◼ ► All right. Eight pick final pick. I'm looking at my list here. Yeah, I know. A little short list.
01:27:45 ◼ ► I have two that I'm really struggling with to choose from. One is one that I think could happen.
01:27:58 ◼ ► The other is, is something I want to happen. Oh, go with your, go with what you want to happen.
01:28:12 ◼ ► I'm going to go with, all right, I'm going to go with one that splits the difference. It's
01:28:16 ◼ ► one that I think should happen and one that I think will happen. The iPad pro gets mag safe.
01:28:22 ◼ ► Oh, I don't think this will happen. Now it's got magnets on the back, but that's not what you're
01:28:37 ◼ ► But here's what I'll say, right? About this. The only reason I've picked this, there are two types
01:28:43 ◼ ► of mag safe. There are two types of mag safe. And I don't think it's going to get iPhone mag safe.
01:28:48 ◼ ► Yeah. You think it's going to get Mac mag safe? Yeah. Because iPhone mag safe to me doesn't make
01:28:52 ◼ ► sense for this product. Or a new third iPad mag safe. Yeah. I mean, you know what? There might
01:28:57 ◼ ► be another one. You get it. You get it if that happens. They might say, uh, like, you know,
01:29:02 ◼ ► like, oh, now the keyboard attaches magnetically and charges via mag safe. It's like a completely
01:29:07 ◼ ► different thing. Uh, but they got like, you know, you attach the, the lat, the iPad to the keyboard
01:29:14 ◼ ► and the keyboard has some new mag safe thing. But yeah, I think mag safe cause magnet magnetic
01:29:21 ◼ ► charging is good. Apple has two different types of it. At least one of those should come to the
01:29:26 ◼ ► iPad. Stop making me plug it in. I agree. I agree. Okay. I'm going to go with my last pick. Uh,
01:29:35 ◼ ► I'm going to pick new Apple pencil has an eraser. Okay. Now, now, now I'm, I'm going to leave this
01:29:42 ◼ ► open. One of the rumors about the Apple pencil is that it's going to have swappable tips.
01:29:47 ◼ ► If one of the swappable tips is an eraser, I get this pick. If it's got an eraser on the backside,
01:29:53 ◼ ► I get this pick. If it's got a button that you hold down, it doesn't matter to a racer. I get
01:29:58 ◼ ► the pick. If they like to find a racer function in the Apple defined by Apple in hardware. Yes,
01:30:05 ◼ ► you get this pick and there are multiple ways to do it. And I'm an eraser. This is not so the pick
01:30:11 ◼ ► that I was choosing from was the Apple pencil has at least one button, which is a thing I've been
01:30:16 ◼ ► asking to do since the first one, right? Actual button. Cause I feel like now they might do a
01:30:22 ◼ ► solid state button cause they've gotten better at that. Right. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. As somebody
01:30:26 ◼ ► who, you know, the current Apple pencil, I never use their like double tap kind of thing. Cause
01:30:32 ◼ ► it's not, cause it's not very good. It's not very reliable. It's not reliable enough, but if they
01:30:35 ◼ ► can have a little button or something like that or, and the swappable tips. And, and the reason
01:30:44 ◼ ► exists, the fourth Apple pencil. Yeah. How can you have a thing called pencil and never have an
01:30:50 ◼ ► eraser? It's bananas. Especially when like at first, all right, fine. You put the charging
01:30:56 ◼ ► thing there, but then you didn't do that. You know, and like they said, and also for people
01:31:00 ◼ ► that think if it's got a button on it, I'm going to press it all the time. Trust me. You won't. I
01:31:03 ◼ ► use a Wacom tablet. It has a button exactly where your finger goes. You just don't, you,
01:31:08 ◼ ► you just know how to hold it from a pressure perspective without engaging it. Yeah. Yeah.
01:31:13 ◼ ► The Apple will build in a very particular level of resistance and it's not rocket science. And then,
01:31:18 ◼ ► and then it's a physical button. Yeah. It doesn't want to actually put a little button in there.
01:31:23 ◼ ► Yeah. That is the iPad draft. Maybe we'll score it next week. Maybe it's the week after, maybe it's
01:31:29 ◼ ► four months from now. Right? Like we've done this. This is for whenever these iPads happen.
01:31:35 ◼ ► And I guess basically the way we'll do this is it's whenever they have iPad pros. Should we just
01:31:42 ◼ ► use that as the thing? Yeah. If yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not gonna, what we're not gonna do is
01:31:46 ◼ ► partially score the draft and wait for the iPad air to come out. This is dependent on the iPad pros
01:31:51 ◼ ► being released and we'll score it whenever that happens, which hopefully will be in the next couple
01:31:55 ◼ ► of weeks. I hope so. Again, if you would like to score along, go to upgrade.cards. There will be
01:32:03 ◼ ► a scorecard there from our wonderful friend, Zach Knox, who puts those together for us. No ask
01:32:08 ◼ ► upgrade this week, but if you want to send in your questions for our next episode, go to upgradefeedback.com.
01:32:15 ◼ ► You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com. I really recommend going and reading Jason's
01:32:23 ◼ ► because there was much more detail there. It's a really, really good article. Genuinely,
01:32:28 ◼ ► like I read it and was like, I don't, I feel like I don't need to read anything else. So thank you
01:32:31 ◼ ► so much for doing that work for me, Jason. You took like an hour off my prep today. Great. You
01:32:37 ◼ ► can also hear Jason's shows here on Relay FM and at the incomparable.com. You can listen to me here
01:32:42 ◼ ► on Relay FM too and check out my work at cortexbrand.com. If you want to find us online, Jason
01:32:47 ◼ ► is at Jsnell, J S N E double L. I am @imike. Yes. I am trying to shorten this. All right. I've
01:32:55 ◼ ► heard your feedback. I'm doing my best. You can watch video clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram
01:33:01 ◼ ► and YouTube. We are @upgraderelay. Thank you to our members who support us of Upgrade Plus. Go
01:33:06 ◼ ► to getupgradeplus.com. You can sign up today. We're going to talk about all of the things that
01:33:10 ◼ ► were on the draft list that we didn't pick. Thank you to our sponsors, Ladder, Vitaly and Squarespace.