00:00:19 ◼ ► April 1st, 2024. We're no fools. My name is Mike Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason.
00:00:25 ◼ ► It's great to be here, Mike. It's great to be here on the worst day of the year. The worst day.
00:00:30 ◼ ► I, I, this morning I just turned to Lauren in bed while we were, uh, like having our tea and I said,
00:00:35 ◼ ► "Oh, by the way, it's April 1st, don't believe anything today." She's like, "Okay, great."
00:00:39 ◼ ► And then there's an ugh, like, "Ugh, boy, yeah, great." Everything we say here is real.
00:00:45 ◼ ► I like it when people just have fun. They're not like trying to trick you. That's, you know,
00:00:50 ◼ ► I'm not into that. No, it's a great day for funny bits, right? Funny bits are fine. Most of them are.
00:00:54 ◼ ► Be funny. Well, yeah, it is also a day for people who aren't funny to try to be funny and those
00:01:00 ◼ ► don't work out so well. But faking fake stuff is not, is my least favorite. I have a Snow Talk
00:01:06 ◼ ► question for you. It comes from Levan who asks, "Have you tried reading comics on your Vision Pro?
00:01:20 ◼ ► I don't view Vision Pro as a reading device. I will read things in it, but that's just not
00:01:25 ◼ ► how I use it. I haven't tried comics. I guess I will, but I just even my, I just have no
00:01:32 ◼ ► enthusiasm for it. Like I'm enthusiastic about immersive video and about 3D movies and even
00:01:38 ◼ ► about just watching like a baseball game like I did last week. Like there are lots of things about
00:01:42 ◼ ► it that I'm interested in. Reading, I feel like I've got better devices. Like if I'm gonna read
00:01:49 ◼ ► a book, I've got a better device. It's my Kobo. If I wanna read a comic book, I've got a better
00:01:55 ◼ ► device. It's my iPad Pro. And I think I just prefer that. Now I have scrolled articles,
00:02:02 ◼ ► but even like longer articles, I don't really wanna read them on the Vision Pro. I'd really rather
00:02:06 ◼ ► read them somewhere else. So I have been reading this. So this is one of those cases where I just
00:02:11 ◼ ► kind of take the question and totally turn it sideways. That's fine. I have an answer so we
00:02:15 ◼ ► can come back around. Okay. But here it is. I have been reading the Amazing Spider-Man comic that you
00:02:22 ◼ ► recommended to me. That was in Upgrade Plus. So in Upgrade Plus I made a good recommendation for
00:02:26 ◼ ► Jason, I think. I hope. Nick Spencer's Amazing Spider-Man run. And I've been reading that and
00:02:31 ◼ ► enjoying it. I have come to realize, and I think Marvel has done this too. When I was reading comics
00:02:38 ◼ ► the first time, and then certainly the second time I really got into reading comics when the iPad
00:02:43 ◼ ► came out. The struggle is something that I think they call it the eternal present in comics, but
00:02:50 ◼ ► it's this idea that every comic that's ever existed, there's actually a great book called
00:02:54 ◼ ► All of the Marvels about this, where a guy decided to read every Marvel comic in the Marvel universe
00:03:00 ◼ ► in order from start to finish and tell the story. 'Cause it's meant to all have happened.
00:03:07 ◼ ► And the problem with that is that first off, it's way too much. It's like how the TV show M*A*S*H,
00:03:13 ◼ ► if you do a timeline of everything that happens in the TV show M*A*S*H, it's literally impossible
00:03:22 ◼ ► It's a little like that, where Peter Parker, even if he's in his 30s and married to Mary Jane Watson,
00:03:29 ◼ ► Peter Parker has lived too much and there have been too many lives and too many things have come
00:03:36 ◼ ► and gone. And it's this eternal present also where Peter Parker today is in the 2020s, and he
00:03:44 ◼ ► remembers events that happened to him a couple years ago, but when those events actually happened,
00:03:48 ◼ ► it was the 1970s. And you're like, "Well, how does it all mean?" It doesn't make any sense.
00:03:52 ◼ ► This is a long way of saying that one of the things that I appreciated in reading these first few Nick
00:03:56 ◼ ► Spencer Spider-Man comics is I feel like Marvel philosophically has gotten over the whole idea
00:04:10 ◼ ► that it makes sense. I feel like, I didn't even mention, the other problem is if you try to do
00:04:16 ◼ ► essentially a reboot and say, "Oh well, but he's actually back in school now," or "Oh, he and Mary
00:04:21 ◼ ► Jane weren't actually married," and you try to make him younger again. So he gets into his 30s
00:04:26 ◼ ► and then suddenly he's in his early 20s again, but everything happened, which doesn't make any sense.
00:04:31 ◼ ► So the Nick Spencer Spider-Man, it sets him in a certain age, recent events are remembered,
00:04:37 ◼ ► distant past events are vaguely remembered, but I feel like it gets over the hump of like,
00:04:43 ◼ ► "It's good enough." You get it. You get who this is. We're just telling some Spider-Man stories here.
00:04:49 ◼ ► And that's all that matters, which is great because the burden of trying to make everything
00:04:54 ◼ ► connect and make sense, which is impossible anyway, makes for worse storytelling. So I felt
00:04:59 ◼ ► a freedom of just saying, "Look, this is what this book is about. He's back with Mary Jane and he's
00:05:07 ◼ ► unemployed for a different reason. And just get over it." I liked that about it. I really
00:05:15 ◼ ► appreciated that I could just dive in and accept the premise of what this Spider-Man story was
00:05:20 ◼ ► trying to do and then just go with it. So yeah, as the series goes on, more things come up from
00:05:27 ◼ ► the past, but I think he does a very good job of just picking what's necessary. Yeah, and you just
00:05:31 ◼ ► have to accept it. I mean, I find that the "But what about this?" and "Didn't he already meet this
00:05:36 ◼ ► person in this?" and all that, it's like, I just am over it now. I just want to tell some good stories.
00:05:41 ◼ ► Like that's all that matters. I think they're getting ready to reboot everything again, right?
00:05:46 ◼ ► They're doing new ultimate stuff. That's fine, whatever. There's gonna be new ultimate Spider-Man.
00:05:52 ◼ ► It's like, I think it's already started, but it's on Marvel Unlimited in a couple of weeks.
00:06:04 ◼ ► The issue is you end up with this huge comic page in front of you and it's too much head movement
00:06:13 ◼ ► to get through the comic. What I didn't try and what might be nice is if you are somebody who likes
00:06:19 ◼ ► the Marvel Unlimited app, same as the Comixology app before it, does the thing where it zooms into
00:06:25 ◼ ► each area. I know that some people like that and maybe reading it like that would be pretty nice,
00:06:32 ◼ ► but I mean, you'd probably be tapping quite a lot, but no, I like the full page. Just read the
00:06:36 ◼ ► full page. And it is kind of cool that the Vision Pro has the "You can switch from landscape to
00:06:42 ◼ ► portrait." That's actually really nice for when you're reading a comic because you don't actually
00:06:47 ◼ ► have to physically move the iPad around. You can just look at the button. It is a good experience.
00:06:53 ◼ ► It is just not what I would particularly want. But what I'm happy about what Marvel did here
00:07:00 ◼ ► is they would just like, "Screw it. We're just gonna make it available." Because I think that
00:07:04 ◼ ► that is what a lot more apps should be. I think they should be like, "We'll just put it up."
00:07:11 ◼ ► You can use it if you want to. And if you like it, great. I really wish more people would have
00:07:14 ◼ ► done that. If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question of your own to help us open a future
00:07:21 ◼ ► episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your own Snell Talk question.
00:07:27 ◼ ► I have a follow up for you, Jason. You remember a while ago we spoke about there was a rumor that
00:07:35 ◼ ► the Apple stores were going to start bringing this new technology in where they would be able
00:07:41 ◼ ► to update the phones in the boxes? Right. Images of this machine have appeared online. So I have
00:07:49 ◼ ► a link here from MacRumors. So this device is built to allow for this perfect placement. So you
00:07:54 ◼ ► take the iPhone boxes and you put them in and the machine lights up. Once the machine detects that
00:08:00 ◼ ► there's an iPhone, it is able to remotely boot up the iPhone while the iPhone is still sealed in the
00:08:05 ◼ ► box, update the software and turn it off. It takes about 15 to 30 minutes for a phone update to
00:08:11 ◼ ► complete. The device in the image looks like it can take six phones at a time and there are
00:08:16 ◼ ► multiple devices stacked on top of each other. So my thinking on this is this is quite an
00:08:21 ◼ ► interesting idea, but for the main time that this is most important, which is around iPhone launch
00:08:26 ◼ ► time, this feels wholly impossible as a thing to achieve from when the phones arrive to when people
00:08:33 ◼ ► will be taking them out of the store. It feels to me like this is an interesting idea, but that
00:08:40 ◼ ► needs to be much, much faster than that time period or be able to take way more of these things. You
00:08:46 ◼ ► know what I mean? Like half an hour per iPhone feels like a lot. Yeah, it's true. I wonder what
00:08:55 ◼ ► the volume is and how many of these machines they're making and all of that. And I think that
00:08:58 ◼ ► this is going to be limited to certain models that have an older version of software. Maybe it's less
00:09:05 ◼ ► for the launch iPhones and it's more for the ongoing stock so that when you hand out an iPhone
00:09:10 ◼ ► to somebody in March, it's not all the way back on the one when it was manufactured in December
00:09:19 ◼ ► or whatever. I don't know, depending on the stock in the store. I don't know. I love this idea.
00:09:34 ◼ ► be because people were like, "Oh, you can't do that." It's like, well, Apple makes the device.
00:09:39 ◼ ► They absolutely can do that. They have a mode where it's either looking for a specific Wi-Fi
00:09:44 ◼ ► or it's looking for a very specific NFC attachment and then it gets on a network or it's looking for
00:09:50 ◼ ► a USB attachment. They've built this thing to do this. They built the iPhone and this device to
00:09:56 ◼ ► work together to make this happen, which is cool. But you're right. How many iPhones move out the
00:10:01 ◼ ► door in a day and how many are you going to be able to do this? And also that means somebody
00:10:06 ◼ ► in the retail store is minding the oven the whole time. - I can imagine a scenario where you might
00:10:14 ◼ ► be able to request it or they might be able to ask when you're picking up your device, like,
00:10:18 ◼ ► would you like us to make sure this is up to date for you, that kind of thing. So there's definitely
00:10:22 ◼ ► uses for it, but this kind of technology would be way better if it was built into the trucks
00:10:27 ◼ ► that brought the iPhones. - Sure, on the planes. - Yeah, it can be done on the ship or in the
00:10:34 ◼ ► factory or I guess the factory is too soon in the process. - That's before they're in the box.
00:10:38 ◼ ► Whatever that they put on it at the factory is no longer current. And so, yeah, it may be for,
00:10:47 ◼ ► I would imagine that the biggest issue is early on in the shipping, where they make a lot of them
00:10:51 ◼ ► and they're old versions and that they need to get them up to the current version. But it's not
00:10:57 ◼ ► scale. I love how clever it is, but you're right saying that what's the scale of this? And the photo
00:11:03 ◼ ► that MacRumor has posted shows two of them stacked on top of each other. And it's like,
00:11:10 ◼ ► well, you are already at the point now where you were like, oh, we'll make it with six. Six will
00:11:15 ◼ ► be good, right? And then people are like, nope, get me more and I'll just put them in a stack.
00:11:24 ◼ ► like what's in the box? iPhones. Updates are the mind killer. Okay, all right, I'll put my iPhone
00:11:33 ◼ ► in the box. It's fine. - But it's a cool idea. I mean, this is kind of one of those things where
00:11:37 ◼ ► where could they take it, you know? And it is a cool idea. Maybe there's something in the future
00:11:42 ◼ ► where maybe it doesn't need to do the full update and it takes like five minutes, but then the first
00:11:47 ◼ ► time that it turned on, it completes the update. Like you're just like loading the package on.
00:11:52 ◼ ► This has come from multiple iPhones that have launched now where the software that you need for
00:11:59 ◼ ► that phone is not on that phone. - It's not on the phone. And you're trying to do a backup from your
00:12:04 ◼ ► most recent iPhone, which is already on the new version. And they've improved that, right? Where
00:12:09 ◼ ► they're like, ah, this is another version. It's newer. Would you like me to update my phone? Update
00:12:15 ◼ ► me to that version and then restore? And you're like, yes, it does it. It's better. But the goal
00:12:20 ◼ ► is that you walk out of the store without having to do a software update. - Yep, that's the goal.
00:12:24 ◼ ► WWDC has been announced. WWDC 24, June 10th to 14th, 2024. It happened in the last couple of
00:12:36 ◼ ► days. - It's the second week of June. Surprise some people. I did go look and see when schools
00:12:40 ◼ ► get out here in California and it is that week and it never fails that they do it the week that
00:12:49 ◼ ► Apple. You did it again. People at Apple don't have kids in school. I'm glad. I don't anymore,
00:12:55 ◼ ► but I laughed. I actually went and looked up my local high school's school calendar and sure
00:13:00 ◼ ► enough, that's their last week because of course it is. It's just very funny. I don't know why they
00:13:05 ◼ ► do it that way. Also, interesting styling on the logo, right? It's more like triple V DC.
00:13:12 ◼ ► Just interesting. - Yeah, I think they did this on some merch last year. I think like the tote bag
00:13:20 ◼ ► had the W styled this way. Or maybe it didn't, but it's a fun look. It's a fun look. You know,
00:13:27 ◼ ► Apple is really, this is like the admission that WWDC is too long. - It is. Shorten it up there.
00:13:37 ◼ ► - That you can say worldwide developers conference with as many syllables, which is always fun.
00:13:42 ◼ ► So yeah, it's happening June 10th, 14th. I also like that Apple have now created a developer page
00:13:50 ◼ ► on YouTube where they're going to be uploading the sessions this year. - And they've got the old
00:13:54 ◼ ► sessions up there. - Yeah, from 2023. So this makes things even more accessible than they were
00:14:00 ◼ ► before. - And just to be clear, chances of Mike coming to California for WWDC are low? - Yeah,
00:14:06 ◼ ► low. I mean, it's not definitely no right now. I'll know within a couple of weeks if it's like,
00:14:13 ◼ ► if it's definitely no or maybe. That's where I am right now. - You got stuff going on. - Yeah,
00:14:18 ◼ ► I got a lot of things going on and I'm just not sure if I can squeeze it into the schedule.
00:14:21 ◼ ► - You already went to the US for a Vision Pro. - You already went, yep. Now we're going back for
00:14:28 ◼ ► podcast of thumb. And it's not like I'm not going to be seeing my friends around that time.
00:14:32 ◼ ► - It's true. It's true. - Everyone's coming to me for a change. - That's right. Finally.
00:14:37 ◼ ► I mean, I've come to London and seen you what, three or four times now? - Yeah, more than most.
00:14:51 ◼ ► yeah. - As thank you to the literally hundreds of Upgradients who wrote in to help us pick a name
00:14:58 ◼ ► for our new segment, which will be the combination of all potential regulation, whether it be DMA,
00:15:05 ◼ ► DOJ, and what will inevitably come. This could have encapsulated Dutch dating apps when we were
00:15:11 ◼ ► doing that for a while. - Yeah, any legal or regulatory proceedings involving Apple will
00:15:25 ◼ ► That's going to be the new name. This was by far and away the most frequently suggested and also
00:15:34 ◼ ► the best one. So thank you to everybody who suggested Lawyer Up. That will be the new name.
00:15:39 ◼ ► We're having some new artwork made, which I'm very excited about, which is why this segment is still
00:15:46 ◼ ► called DMA today, 'cause we don't have the artwork yet, but we will soon. I think the second best
00:15:53 ◼ ► that I saw was Regulation Roundup, which I also love. - Also very funny. - But I don't wanna pollute
00:16:00 ◼ ► the namespace. - It's not all regulation. It's like it's better this way. - We can't round
00:16:09 ◼ ► The regulation, we cannot round it up. - No, we just gotta lawyer up. That's what we gotta do.
00:16:21 ◼ ► 10% of their global revenue, where does the money go? Could it make its way to social programs in the
00:16:30 ◼ ► EU and their countries?" So this is a question where I looked at it and was like, "I don't have
00:16:36 ◼ ► the answer for this." We get a lot of these kinds of questions. Should I understand? People ask
00:16:40 ◼ ► questions that there's just no way that me or you could know the answer. I think sometimes what
00:16:44 ◼ ► people are looking for is our opinion on such a thing. But for me, my opinion is like, "Yeah,
00:16:49 ◼ ► I mean, it probably should." So I started Googling around and I couldn't find it. So I used a tool,
00:16:55 ◼ ► this new AI tool that I like called Perplexity. I heard about this on the Hard Fork Podcast and
00:17:01 ◼ ► I've been trying it out. And essentially what Perplexity does is it uses various models,
00:17:15 ◼ ► specifically. Effectively, better than a Google search is what they're going for. That's their
00:17:21 ◼ ► idea. And they gave me the following, and I'll put a link in the show notes so people can see
00:17:25 ◼ ► what it looks like. They say, "The search results that they've done do not explicitly state what the
00:17:35 ◼ ► However, typically when the European Commission imposes fines, the money collected from these
00:17:40 ◼ ► fines goes into the general budget of the European Union. This budget is used to fund various EU
00:17:46 ◼ ► programs and activities across member states, which can range from agricultural subsidies
00:17:51 ◼ ► to regional development projects, research and innovation programs, and more." So the idea is
00:17:56 ◼ ► yes, in theory, any money that they would collect from DMA fines would and could go to the European
00:18:04 ◼ ► people in some form. Yeah, whatever programs are being done by the EU. Yeah. So interesting
00:18:11 ◼ ► questions, interesting thought exercise. Maybe this makes these kinds of things more appealing to
00:18:17 ◼ ► EU citizens. I don't know. But there's a lot of conversation at the moment about the fines and
00:18:25 ◼ ► how they equate to revenue. I don't really want to wade into that right now, but there you go.
00:18:37 ◼ ► it will be lawyer up. Nice. This episode is brought to you by SaneBox. Having no emails in your inbox
00:18:46 ◼ ► is a thing of the past. In fact, I would call it a dream, a dream, just so you know, could you
00:18:50 ◼ ► imagine? We're so inundated with email, it is impossible now to respond to everything. And I
00:18:57 ◼ ► actually think these days, I don't think this is unique to me, most email that you receive is not
00:19:03 ◼ ► really for your response. It's stuff that you receive. It's not necessarily personal communication.
00:19:08 ◼ ► It's really about just responding to those important messages, those personal communications.
00:19:18 ◼ ► as like a triage for your email. As messages flow in, SaneBox takes a look at what's there
00:19:35 ◼ ► to pay attention to now and what stuff you can get to later on. I've used SaneBox in the past,
00:19:40 ◼ ► and I thoroughly recommend it. The ability to be able to have their filtering tools right there.
00:19:45 ◼ ► You can have like SaneNews, SaneLater. So these are emails that as they reach your inbox,
00:19:54 ◼ ► you can go check them later on. You can set up custom stuff too. And it really means that your
00:19:59 ◼ ► inbox is going to get better trained over time because the system learns from where you're
00:20:03 ◼ ► putting the emails into the folders. And we'll be able to just give you the email that you need
00:20:16 ◼ ► drag messages from annoying senders and you'll never hear from them again, which is such a great
00:20:20 ◼ ► feature. Because sometimes you get email that you can't unsubscribe from. There's no matter what you
00:20:26 ◼ ► want to do. And I try and they still email me and I'm like, okay, you're in the black hole. Goodbye.
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00:20:44 ◼ ► See how SaneBox can magically remove distractions from your inbox with a two week free trial.
00:20:56 ◼ ► SaneBox.com/upgradefm. Our thanks to SaneBox for their support of this show and Relay FM.
00:21:05 ◼ ► Room around up. Yeehaw. Mark Gurman is reporting that the new iPads that we did our draft on
00:21:13 ◼ ► last week will be launching in May. Production is now being ramped up for these devices.
00:21:19 ◼ ► Apparently they were supposed to launch in March or April, but there has been a delay on both
00:21:24 ◼ ► finishing the version of iPadOS that will run on them as well as some production delays from the
00:21:28 ◼ ► OLED panels. You know, some people might say, wow, you did that draft prematurely. And I'm going to
00:21:32 ◼ ► say no. I actually kind of like this idea that we did a little message in a bottle from a time when
00:21:37 ◼ ► there are fewer details that are clear, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do it is it felt
00:21:42 ◼ ► like nobody is entirely sure about all the details, not even Mark Gurman. And that that would allow us
00:21:50 ◼ ► to go in and really be uninformed when making our draft choices or only lightly informed.
00:21:57 ◼ ► And I liked that. I felt like that was a good competitive, surprising sort of thing. And I
00:22:02 ◼ ► honestly don't mind since we're pretty confident that there's going to be a big iPad release, right?
00:22:06 ◼ ► To take a draft and then have it be a message in a bottle, toss it in the draft ocean, I don't know.
00:22:12 ◼ ► It's like a time capsule. We'll open it up in May. This is something that would be hard to do
00:22:19 ◼ ► like other times, but it really did feel that it was specifically iPads coming, right? And so this
00:22:26 ◼ ► was an easier one to do. And I do like that basically this product launch will come and go
00:22:34 ◼ ► and would maybe otherwise not have a draft and that would be a shame. So considering that there
00:22:39 ◼ ► is interesting stuff with them. Right. We did this last year with one prospective draft where we
00:22:45 ◼ ► recorded on a Monday, we thought they would announce an event or do a product release on
00:22:53 ◼ ► It was the October event. And it worked, right? We did that. And I like that because otherwise
00:22:58 ◼ ► we're missing drafts. So if we have some sort of confidence that there's going to be a product
00:23:02 ◼ ► announcement and uncertainty about what it is, then doing a draft in the hopes that it will one
00:23:09 ◼ ► day be cashed in, I think is perfectly fine. So I look, not that it's all about us. I'm also
00:23:14 ◼ ► looking forward to having their be new iPads and I'm sorry that they're not coming sooner,
00:23:22 ◼ ► So this next topic, it's not a rumor, but I think is a conversation, a news story that is
00:23:31 ◼ ► interesting to people who are interested in rumors. It's about what powers rumors. It's the
00:23:37 ◼ ► behind the scenes, the thing that makes rumors happen, which is leaks. Yes. Last week, friend
00:23:45 ◼ ► of the show, Joe Rossignol of MacRumors posted a report about Apple suing a former employee,
00:23:51 ◼ ► Austin Aude, I've looked this up like three times and I think that's how I'm going to say it,
00:23:57 ◼ ► Aude, for leaking confidential information to the media. This is a quote from Joe. Aude joined Apple
00:24:05 ◼ ► as an iOS software engineer in 2016. Shortly after graduating college, he worked on optimizing
00:24:16 ◼ ► sensitive projects." So I'll just stop there. I have heard and spoken to people in similar
00:24:41 ◼ ► but they are at a point in the funnel where they find out about so much stuff because of the thing
00:24:48 ◼ ► that they work on. And how Apple is structured, right? Where you end up with these functional
00:24:53 ◼ ► groups where instead of it just being the people on the iPad team who know about the iPad, it's
00:24:58 ◼ ► like, well, the people who work on the chips for the iPad and the graphics for the iPad,
00:25:02 ◼ ► you could just go through it. Well, they all know about what's happening with the iPad because they
00:25:06 ◼ ► had to work on it, at least to a certain degree. One of the teams that I imagine is like very
00:25:12 ◼ ► powerful or very late stage is the web team at Apple, right? Like people building the website,
00:25:18 ◼ ► so maybe they don't get like, maybe they get like, oh, you got to be ready for two weeks here,
00:25:24 ◼ ► and they don't know what it is until that point, but they have all the imagery, all the names,
00:25:29 ◼ ► all the price, like the stuff are very helpful. Anyway, so there's a lot of these computers that
00:25:32 ◼ ► are not on the internet that are in a locked room that they have to go in. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah,
00:25:46 ◼ ► one of the weird parts of this. So the lawsuit alleges that Audé used his work-issued iPhone to
00:25:54 ◼ ► leak sensitive information to journalists over a five-year period. This included details about
00:26:00 ◼ ► the Vision Pro, the Journal app, as well as policies for product development and regulatory
00:26:05 ◼ ► compliance. It appears that most of the leaks were given to two reporters, Aaron Tilly, who works at
00:26:11 ◼ ► the Wall Street Journal and was previously at The Information, and another unnamed second reporter,
00:26:16 ◼ ► who also worked at The Information. A lot of detail and screenshots are actually available
00:26:21 ◼ ► in the lawsuit, which Joe went through and wrote about, that relate to Audé leaking information
00:26:25 ◼ ► about the Journal app specifically. This is like one of the key parts of the complaint.
00:26:30 ◼ ► And a quote from Joe, "Apple believes that Audé's actions were extensive and purposeful,
00:26:35 ◼ ► with Audé allegedly admitting that he leaked information so he could kill products and features
00:26:42 ◼ ► with which he took issue." This is why I wanted to talk about this on this show today. Because
00:26:48 ◼ ► there have been multiple times in the past where Jason and I have been asked questions or spoken
00:26:52 ◼ ► about, like, where does this information come from? Why do we know about this? And we find out
00:26:59 ◼ ► about a lot of things. And I think that there is a consideration that needs to be taken into the
00:27:06 ◼ ► provenance of a leak or a rumor. And that, I think, and I think we agree on this completely, a lot of
00:27:12 ◼ ► the time, people, when you hear something that sounds strange or weird or like really negative,
00:27:18 ◼ ► it is someone who is upset about the fact that their pet project was killed, or a thing that
00:27:25 ◼ ► they care about was killed, or a thing that they don't like was released. They lost an argument.
00:27:30 ◼ ► And so they want to put it out there. And you can see, like, there are these screenshots
00:27:35 ◼ ► that are in the article where Audé's referencing, like, he says, "I can't wait for chaos to break
00:27:42 ◼ ► out before Apple corporate people even wake up." So, like, it's, he clearly had an axe to grind.
00:27:50 ◼ ► And maybe that was why he did this. Unfortunately, it was a company-owned axe that he was grinding.
00:27:56 ◼ ► So let me just get this last piece out and we can talk about that. Apple found out about the leaks
00:28:02 ◼ ► in late 2023. And Audé was fired during a meeting about these events during the misconduct process.
00:28:08 ◼ ► Audé denied leaking information and excused himself to use the bathroom. He then deleted
00:28:12 ◼ ► what, quote, "significant amounts of," he then deleted, quote, "significant amounts of evidence
00:28:18 ◼ ► from his phone," which Apple knows about, and has some access to screenshots and information,
00:28:33 ◼ ► if you were to quit, they'll cut your phone off, right? And it was just dead. And, or they have
00:28:38 ◼ ► access to this kind of stuff. And it is really wild that somebody would go to the lengths that
00:28:44 ◼ ► Audé went to using the phone that Apple gave him. It's a very, very strange thing to do.
00:28:52 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, okay. It's, this is sort of amateur hour here. And, and, and that's
00:29:01 ◼ ► why he got caught. Because lots of people leak stuff to Mark Gurman, and they haven't gotten
00:29:07 ◼ ► caught so far as we can tell, right? So this is a, this is a leaker who was bad at leaking.
00:29:12 ◼ ► But I want to go back to that, the point about why, why he did it. Kill products and features
00:29:24 ◼ ► which is we don't always do it with every item, because I do think that there are various
00:29:29 ◼ ► psychologies involved in leaking, but one of them is trying to affect change. And this can be
00:29:36 ◼ ► positive or negative. You can view it however you want. But when somebody inside Apple leaks
00:29:42 ◼ ► something, sometimes it's because they think it's a mistake. They actually think the company is
00:29:56 ◼ ► That they think Apple maybe has lost its way or like that they have, um, they can see something
00:30:03 ◼ ► that like their, their bosses can't see, and it's going to hurt the company. Apple, I mean,
00:30:08 ◼ ► they think they're helping Apple because they think Apple has made a mistake. What Apple would say is
00:30:13 ◼ ► we know we're doing this. We decided you're hurting us because you're trying to, uh, expose what we're
00:30:20 ◼ ► doing to the outside. But I think it's fair to say, and, and, and we see this, um, this is actually not
00:30:26 ◼ ► super different, except it's in advance to what we do, right? Where, where if we think,
00:30:32 ◼ ► if we think something Apple is going to do or is reported to be doing is bad, we'll say it too. And
00:30:37 ◼ ► I've always said, you know, the goal there is really to get attention on it so that maybe,
00:30:42 ◼ ► uh, it gives somebody on the inside a stronger argument to say, maybe, you know, look, see,
00:30:47 ◼ ► I told you, here's the proof that people agree with me. I'm not just shouting into the wilderness
00:30:50 ◼ ► here. Uh, you know, we went, took this out to the general public and, and, uh, people are upset
00:30:55 ◼ ► about it, but like there, there's a manipulation thing going on here. And I think that that's
00:30:58 ◼ ► interesting, right? It's always, uh, this was the, the example I always like to give is that
00:31:03 ◼ ► expensive NBC thing where somebody was like, Oh, it's all just going to be network, uh, quality
00:31:07 ◼ ► content on TV plus. And, uh, it was, you know, my pet theory is still that that was a particular
00:31:13 ◼ ► producer on a particular show that was actually originally intended to be at a more adult audience
00:31:19 ◼ ► and was refigured as a younger audience show. And they were mad and felt like they blamed Apple for
00:31:24 ◼ ► it because they thought that, and they extrapolated that to be all of Apple shows, which turns out
00:31:28 ◼ ► wasn't true. It was that particular show. So always asking yourself the question as a consumer
00:31:33 ◼ ► of, of, of content and of rumors and of all these things is who benefits from this? We should always
00:31:39 ◼ ► ask those questions, who benefits and why are they doing it? Because a lot of times when we cover
00:31:44 ◼ ► stuff that's being rumored, um, this is, this starts, it starts to smell like this. I'll put
00:31:51 ◼ ► it that way where you're like, why, you know, this is a curious, as you said, kind of curious
00:31:55 ◼ ► rumors of like, why, why now? Why this? And the answer is sometimes to somebody is, uh, unhappy
00:32:02 ◼ ► with how it went inside Apple. And now they're going to, um, leak that in order to grind that axe.
00:32:07 ◼ ► Obviously I don't know this person. I can't get into their head. I really don't understand the
00:32:12 ◼ ► scenario where they were so mad about the journal app. Like, I don't know what it could have been
00:32:23 ◼ ► I think this is a person who is, um, who has some very strong opinions and is also, I think,
00:32:35 ◼ ► and, and, uh, has ended up in a world of trouble now for, for this. But, um, yeah, it's,
00:32:42 ◼ ► and you kind of inherent like that in the fact that we know about this because we only know about
00:32:50 ◼ ► this because our day is denying a lot of stuff. So app and, and because of the destruction of
00:32:58 ◼ ► evidence, Apple is unhappy with the amount of information he's provided them about what exactly
00:33:03 ◼ ► he leaked into who. So they are now pursuing legal action to try and get more of the full scope.
00:33:08 ◼ ► That's why we know about this because this stuff happens often. Like I've heard about it before,
00:33:13 ◼ ► people that have been leaks and have been terminated and maybe it's in a similar way to
00:33:21 ◼ ► this where it's done on a device that Apple has some level of access to. And maybe they have,
00:33:27 ◼ ► you know, we've heard about the security team, right? Maybe they had like a, a, a reason to
00:33:32 ◼ ► expect that someone was doing something and checked in on them and it turns out they were,
00:33:37 ◼ ► or they gave them some information that, you know, we've heard about that before, right? Where like,
00:33:41 ◼ ► they give incorrect information to someone and if it gets out, they know who they gave it to,
00:33:52 ◼ ► it's making it worse. And that's where we're at. Well, he's, they're making an example of him.
00:33:56 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, in the end, this, this comes out publicly. It's because Apple wants people inside
00:34:02 ◼ ► Apple to know that Apple does care about this and that you can get in big trouble and have your
00:34:17 ◼ ► So I have one other thing. I had a comment. It's actually former employee Phil Schiller,
00:34:26 ◼ ► actually Michael Gartenberg on Twitter, who asked the question, is it ethical for journalists to
00:34:31 ◼ ► repost links knowing it's confidential information and the consumer really has no right to know this
00:34:35 ◼ ► isn't Watergate or the Pentagon papers. And here's, here's, I, I responded to him. Here's
00:34:43 ◼ ► a version of that, a podcast version of that. So it's fits in more than a tweet. So talking
00:34:48 ◼ ► about like leaks that you get from a source or whatever, is it? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like,
00:34:53 ◼ ► does as a journalist if you know that they're they're passing you confidential information,
00:35:00 ◼ ► right? Like what's the, what's the ethics there. And from a journalism standpoint, here is where
00:35:06 ◼ ► generally the ethical line is drawn, which is you are not supposed to, and in fact, it illegal for
00:35:10 ◼ ► you to induce people to give you information that would require them to break the law or their
00:35:15 ◼ ► contracts or something like that. So inducement, the idea that you approach somebody at Apple,
00:35:20 ◼ ► who you know, or who you don't know and say, Hey, you got any info? You give me the info. I want,
00:35:30 ◼ ► I have in for information for you, journalist about what's going on inside Apple. It is considered
00:35:42 ◼ ► it's their job. And they may be, you know, they're taking their own risk, but they're bringing you
00:35:46 ◼ ► information. And in that way, it is Watergate or the Pentagon papers in the broadest sense of
00:35:51 ◼ ► somebody comes with, comes to you with information and your job is information about Apple.
00:36:02 ◼ ► I don't really have a problem with it. However, I also, the implicit in this is the idea that this
00:36:10 ◼ ► isn't Watergate or the Pentagon papers that he's saying it is important stuff to the, to the general
00:36:15 ◼ ► important to know what Apple's doing. People are doing it for entertainment. I think that there's
00:36:20 ◼ ► truth in that. And I have always thought that. So the way I put it on, on Twitter, which I don't
00:36:25 ◼ ► spend a lot of time on, but he asked me directly and I was like, okay, I'll respond to this.
00:36:28 ◼ ► I think the consumers need to know about the future of tech companies is overstated. Back in
00:36:35 ◼ ► the day, when I started in this business, there was a weekly newspaper called Mac week. And they
00:36:43 ◼ ► were often referred to as Mac leak because a lot of what they did was here's what Apple's doing
00:36:49 ◼ ► next. Here's what other companies are doing next in advance of them announcing anything.
00:36:57 ◼ ► All we ever did was follow embargoes, announce things when they were announced, that was it.
00:37:07 ◼ ► technology publications separate so that when Apple got mad at Mac week, they didn't get mad
00:37:11 ◼ ► at Mac user theoretically because we followed the rules and they would talk to us, even though they
00:37:15 ◼ ► wouldn't talk to Mac week for a large part because they were reporting on things before they were
00:37:20 ◼ ► ready. Um, Mac week's argument was always, well, our audience is it's, it's a controlled circulation
00:37:28 ◼ ► publication, which means that it's qualified people who read Mac week. This is in the print days,
00:37:34 ◼ ► had to fill out a card about how many Macs basically they were, um, they were in charge
00:37:41 ◼ ► of and what buying authority they had. The idea is these were volume buyers of Mac computers and
00:37:47 ◼ ► accessories that they, they were making buying decisions. And the whole premise was the people
00:37:54 ◼ ► making buying decisions had budgets and they were trying to plan their budgets and when to buy and
00:37:59 ◼ ► when not to buy and advanced information about when Apple was coming out with new products
00:38:05 ◼ ► directly impacted their buying decisions. That was the argument. And there's truth in it.
00:38:16 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine a publication being able to survive and be profitable purely with just
00:38:27 ◼ ► that very specific audience. That seems really weird to me. I mean, the idea was that the
00:38:31 ◼ ► advertisers were, and you got it for free, by the way, the advertisers knew they were reaching the
00:38:36 ◼ ► people with the money who bought stuff and you're advertising the stuff and like that on one level,
00:38:42 ◼ ► it's actually kind of a brilliant, it's an old business model, but at the time it was kind of
00:38:46 ◼ ► brilliant, which is people wanted to get it, but they couldn't get it. But the advertisers knew,
00:38:49 ◼ ► even though it was a small audience, it was a super select audience of the people who had the
00:38:53 ◼ ► money to buy their products in volume. And they really wanted to reach those people. But you know,
00:39:00 ◼ ► the truth is, and I thought this at the time I remember reading, so Mac, we would come out,
00:39:04 ◼ ► I forget what day it was, and we would get them at our offices. We were down in Foster City
00:39:08 ◼ ► on the peninsula. They were up in San Francisco. They even kept us geographically separate for a
00:39:17 ◼ ► or at least before they were on the web. And I would get the issue. And I remember walking to
00:39:21 ◼ ► lunch, I go get a sandwich across, there was like a big circle pathway with lawn in the middle.
00:39:32 ◼ ► It was a big office tower located in the suburbs. It was really sleepy. There's stuff there now,
00:39:37 ◼ ► but not when I was there. And I would walk over and I would stand in line at Togo's and I would
00:39:43 ◼ ► order my sandwich and they would make my sandwich and they would give me my sandwich. And then I
00:39:46 ◼ ► would walk back. And all the while I'm reading the new issue of Mac week. It was fun. Even then,
00:40:01 ◼ ► even today's rumors have the effect of saying, don't buy a MacBook Air M2 right now. The M3
00:40:09 ◼ ► is coming out and the M2 will probably go lower in price. Right? Like the Mac room is buying guide,
00:40:14 ◼ ► right? That's exactly. Absolutely. Don't buy an iPad right now because in May there are going to
00:40:20 ◼ ► be new iPads. It's absolutely true that that is a component of it, but let's also not kid ourselves
00:40:25 ◼ ► that a component of it is Apple won't talk about what they're working on. And when it happens,
00:40:32 ◼ ► there's a lot of detail and there's a lot of PR spin, and then we can talk about it then,
00:40:37 ◼ ► but it's more fun to have it spread out and to talk about what Apple might be doing in advance.
00:40:41 ◼ ► Right? It is. We have a draft. We have these rumor roundup segments. Like it is more fun.
00:40:46 ◼ ► I think it's sometimes interesting because it gives us more space to wonder about why they're
00:40:51 ◼ ► doing what they're doing because Apple will never say why, even when they come out with a product,
00:40:54 ◼ ► they'll never say why. It gives a little more space, a little more time to think about it.
00:41:03 ◼ ► self-serving though it might be a little bit that it helps me think about all the aspects of the
00:41:09 ◼ ► product before the product gets announced. So I can sort of like go on a little journey about
00:41:12 ◼ ► what this product might be and where it fits and all of those things. But I think it's also fair
00:41:17 ◼ ► to say it is not Watergate or the Pentagon Papers. It is in part, I mean, as much as Bloomberg will
00:41:23 ◼ ► say, well, and then Apple stock changed in the hours after this report when it has no connection
00:41:28 ◼ ► whatsoever. I do think it does. It is also about entertainment. So it's fair. It's fair, but at the
00:41:34 ◼ ► same time, if somebody, I'm not in this business, but like if somebody comes to me or, you know,
00:41:38 ◼ ► puts an anonymous thing in our feedback form, one of Mike's anonymous informants saying, here's a
00:41:43 ◼ ► thing that's going on at Apple, or I get these, I get messages from people who are like, I work at
00:41:48 ◼ ► Apple or I worked at Apple and I can explain a little bit of the backstory and that helps inform
00:41:53 ◼ ► my understanding of the thing we're talking about. I can find that, I find that useful.
00:41:57 ◼ ► I will accept it. I'm not going to be like, no, no, no, you shouldn't be talking about that friend.
00:42:02 ◼ ► Hands off that information. I don't, I, the onus is not on me. Like it is their job to know what
00:42:07 ◼ ► they can and can't say. And it's, it's not, I'm not going to go to them, but if they come and
00:42:13 ◼ ► bring it to me and I will say this is generally accepted as the difference in journalism and you
00:42:18 ◼ ► can like it or not. You could, you could argue like, Oh, one other piece about Michael Gartenberg's
00:42:25 ◼ ► statement that I thought was interesting is he said, this guy really screwed Apple quite a bit.
00:42:29 ◼ ► And this is what I would say to that. I also think Apple dramatically overstates the damage
00:42:33 ◼ ► that leaks do. I think leaks do in, in, in like 90% of cases, 99% of cases do no damage to Apple.
00:42:40 ◼ ► None at all. Apple wants to make a splash and have it be a surprise and all of that. But you know
00:42:44 ◼ ► what? They seem to be doing okay. And almost every major Apple announcement of the last,
00:42:56 ◼ ► It doesn't really matter. So, uh, although I, so on that level, it's also a game that's being played
00:43:03 ◼ ► that doesn't matter. And, and that would be my counter argument to Apple suing the guy who
00:43:07 ◼ ► absolutely violated his conditions of employment is I don't think Apple really wants to talk about
00:43:14 ◼ ► the tangible damage that was done because I don't think there really is any, I think Apple's
00:43:26 ◼ ► entertainment as the leaks are about theater and entertainment. I would argue neither of them
00:43:31 ◼ ► really matters. And while Apple absolutely has the right to roll out their products in the way that
00:43:35 ◼ ► they choose, I am dubious that leaking something here and there really makes a difference.
00:43:41 ◼ ► So I think one of the things that Gartenberg is getting at, which I'm intrigued what your opinion
00:43:48 ◼ ► is on this is like this kid's career is over, right? And like he's maybe his entire professional
00:43:55 ◼ ► career, especially depending on what the outcome of this, um, lawsuit is, is there a responsibility
00:44:03 ◼ ► from the reporters or is there like, should the reporters feel, I hate to use this word,
00:44:09 ◼ ► but guilty in any way about this? Or is it just like, well, this is just the way that it went down?
00:44:13 ◼ ► No, I think, uh, look, I think this is a gray area that I think is worth considering, which is
00:44:21 ◼ ► if you are the reporter on the receiving end of information from somebody and they're your source
00:44:28 ◼ ► and you realize what they're doing is kind of, I mean, and you may not know, they may be really
00:44:32 ◼ ► cloaked, but there is, there is potentially a moment where as the, as the receiver of the
00:44:39 ◼ ► information, you have to say, am I protecting my sources or am I going to leave them hang,
00:44:46 ◼ ► hung out to dry and know that they're going to burn out, but that's okay. There'll be another
00:44:50 ◼ ► one later and this guy's going to be ruined. Um, but that's okay because there'll be another guy
00:44:56 ◼ ► tomorrow and I don't care. Like I, I, I wouldn't want to live like that. Right. However, how do you
00:45:02 ◼ ► tell? I think that's the problem is if, if I got a signal from a source, I do this now, I do this
00:45:09 ◼ ► now when people send me stuff and I'm like, I'm not going to even, I'm not going to even, I'm going
00:45:12 ◼ ► to, I'm going to obscure this a little bit because I think they were a little too specific here.
00:45:16 ◼ ► I'm going to obscure this a little bit. And I honestly, I think Mark Gurman probably does that
00:45:20 ◼ ► too, right. Where he, he's obscuring things that maybe he could get away with more specifics,
00:45:29 ◼ ► But like, I think that's one of the things that maybe, you know, like we've spoken about the way
00:45:32 ◼ ► that Mark started speaking and writing differently at Bloomberg. And maybe that might've been a
00:45:43 ◼ ► so what I would say is I think there is an ethical issue where if you're, if you are as a reporter,
00:45:57 ◼ ► a source that you trust. And I don't know how this would come up, but that in doing so, you
00:46:02 ◼ ► think it's gonna, you know, if the, if not this time, then sometime soon it is going to
00:46:16 ◼ ► Honestly, I think most journalists would be motivated to protect them in the sense that
00:46:22 ◼ ► they want to keep getting information from them. But certainly in terms of just a human being,
00:46:27 ◼ ► you know, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to publish information that destroyed somebody's career.
00:46:32 ◼ ► Right. Yeah. But how do you know? I mean, it is also one of the reasons I'm not in that business.
00:46:37 ◼ ► Yes. Is that it's a really dangerous game to play. And like, and I'm, I'm not saying here that,
00:46:42 ◼ ► that these reporters didn't do this, but like, you know, I would hope at least they learn now to be
00:46:47 ◼ ► like, all right, we're talking a signal, but is this your personal phone or is this your work phone?
00:46:55 ◼ ► I feel like if you were establishing a long-term relationship with someone, right? Like it's not
00:46:58 ◼ ► just a one-off leak. Surely you've got to, to have a conversation of like, how are we going to share
00:47:04 ◼ ► this information? Like, I feel like that there has to be like, uh, you are, you should, that is like,
00:47:22 ◼ ► you being on signal is not enough. Are you on signal on a device not managed by your employer?
00:47:28 ◼ ► Like it's like, here's, here's some tips now. So you, so you've decided to be an informer.
00:47:36 ◼ ► And then like, here are the ways that you don't get caught, right? That totally should be part of it.
00:47:45 ◼ ► presumably, or only vaguely know who this guy is. Um, I think there's probably an assumption that
00:47:50 ◼ ► they know what they're doing, especially since they contacted through signal and all of that.
00:47:53 ◼ ► How would you know that it was a managed device? Um, but that's why, that's why you're right. You,
00:47:59 ◼ ► you want to start. And for all I know, they do this to some people, um, they maybe even did it
00:48:03 ◼ ► to this guy and maybe Mark Gurman does this too. But that, that whole idea of like, if you've got
00:48:07 ◼ ► a good source, one way you can help is to guide them to not getting caught, which again, I don't
00:48:14 ◼ ► think is necessarily unethical because they came to you, but it could be argued, right?
00:48:20 ◼ ► It could be argued that if you're making them a better leaker. Yeah. If you're making them a
00:48:24 ◼ ► better leaker, let me tell you how to really never get caught. I'm not sure that that is ethical or
00:48:29 ◼ ► not. The more that you, cause this is the weird gray area, right? And again, when there is no
00:48:33 ◼ ► judgment on anyone here, we're just talking about this, but the more that you encourage someone,
00:48:39 ◼ ► the worse you are making it for them when they inevitably get caught. Yes. And that, and that's,
00:48:44 ◼ ► that's all part of the give and take. And, and it's one reason that I don't really want to,
00:48:48 ◼ ► and have never really wanted to be in this, this particular business, but I think you can do it and
00:48:53 ◼ ► be ethical. I really do. I think you can be, I don't think it's fundamentally unethical to report
00:48:57 ◼ ► on some businesses secrets because they are not national security secrets as Michael Gartenberg
00:49:02 ◼ ► says, but on the other hand, they're not national security secrets. Right? Like both of those things
00:49:08 ◼ ► are true. Right? They're not important. They're not, but that cuts both ways. Yeah. So it's
00:49:14 ◼ ► interesting. I would love, maybe one day we will chat to Mark Gurman about, not about what he's
00:49:20 ◼ ► reporting and not about who his sources are, but about how he handles sources. Cause I'm not
00:49:26 ◼ ► blaming him or the people of the information. This is hard and it's, it's really tricky. And I think
00:49:32 ◼ ► there are ways to do this ethically. And you know, I'm, I, I wonder about that, but, but it is,
00:49:38 ◼ ► there are lots of gray areas too, as you said. So anyway, my, my short version of this is,
00:49:42 ◼ ► it's this guy's fault. It's not the information's fault. It's this guy's fault. And the information
00:49:49 ◼ ► might be an accomplice or an accessory in a way, but really if it came over, unless they recruited
00:49:54 ◼ ► him like a spy or something, if it came over the transom and it's not really their job to make sure
00:50:01 ◼ ► he's not going to get caught, even though they might help, it's not their job. And, and while
00:50:07 ◼ ► this information, I think is, I don't think, I don't, I don't think it's wrong to publish
00:50:13 ◼ ► information like this. And I also question how dangerous it is to Apple and how vital it is to
00:50:21 ◼ ► the public interest. I think those are also both true. Like just the sham of it being like important
00:50:26 ◼ ► for business planning purposes, not that it can be that way, but that mostly it's about just the
00:50:32 ◼ ► interest in finding out what Apple's doing next. But also at the same time, I don't think it really
00:50:36 ◼ ► causes damage to Apple. I just don't, I don't believe that. I don't fundamentally Apple will
00:50:40 ◼ ► tell you, we're doubling down on security on privacy. You know, we're doubling down on our
00:50:44 ◼ ► product announcement security because we want to make it secret and then make a big stink. Like,
00:50:49 ◼ ► I get that that's their PR approach, but I would argue that there is very little difference
00:50:57 ◼ ► in most cases between an Apple product launch, where we know sort of what's going to happen and
00:51:03 ◼ ► an Apple product launch where we don't know what's going to happen. In terms of the net effect to
00:51:08 ◼ ► Apple, the net benefit to Apple. I, I, there's a little, but like it's overstated. It's deep. It's
00:51:14 ◼ ► just completely overstated. So I have two, two points I want to make to finish this up. One,
00:51:23 ◼ ► please make sure that you have a thorough checklist that you're going through with your
00:51:26 ◼ ► informants to make sure that they're not going to get caught in this manner. Two, I know we have a
00:51:32 ◼ ► lot of young people that listen to the show. I know we have a lot of young people who listen to
00:51:35 ◼ ► the show who work at Apple. Don't do this. It's not worth it. Like this guy's career is over. Like,
00:51:42 ◼ ► you don't want to be in that scenario. Yeah. Don't do it. I know that sometimes it's fun and
00:51:48 ◼ ► you want to share things with people. And like what I'll say to you is something that I've
00:51:52 ◼ ► experienced, which I think is super great. Like I meet people and they're like, Hey, you know,
00:51:55 ◼ ► that thing I worked on that thing. It's already out there. No one's going to get in trouble for
00:52:00 ◼ ► that. Yeah. All right. That's what I was going to say is the people I talked to who are currently
00:52:04 ◼ ► working at Apple, just to, just to be clear about this, they are incredibly diligent about this.
00:52:11 ◼ ► I absolutely do hear from them after something comes out where they're like, Oh yeah, yep. I've
00:52:16 ◼ ► been, I had one that was like literally vision pro got announced and like, Oh yeah, I've been
00:52:20 ◼ ► using that for nine months. Oh my God. Where they won't say, cause they care. Yeah. I have a bunch
00:52:25 ◼ ► of same as you. I have a bunch of personal friends, like good personal friends who work at Apple.
00:52:30 ◼ ► They don't tell me what they work on and I don't ask because I don't want that on me. Yeah. And,
00:52:35 ◼ ► and they, they, so generally I would say Apple employees very diligent about this. And when they,
00:52:40 ◼ ► when I do talk to them about, you know, shop talk, it's generally about not only is it not
00:52:46 ◼ ► about secrets, but it's generally ways that they allow me to be better informed so that I don't
00:52:52 ◼ ► make mistakes about what Apple is doing, which is incredibly valuable. And I appreciate. So they're,
00:52:57 ◼ ► they're very diligent and generally acting in Apple's best interests. And I, I I'm glad
00:53:03 ◼ ► that they feel like they're able to do that, but they are, you know, they are, are they're
00:53:09 ◼ ► taking care. They're, they're not trying to like, again, they have the ability to keep secrets.
00:53:16 ◼ ► That would be very difficult. Like it must be painful, right. To hear a podcaster talking
00:53:21 ◼ ► about a thing and you know, absolutely everything about it and can't say anything about it,
00:53:25 ◼ ► but they do it because they know that those are the rules. Just send me a note, like everything
00:53:30 ◼ ► you said was wrong. I'm not going to tell you what, but it was all wrong. Oh, well I'll get
00:53:34 ◼ ► it next time. Oh well. And if, if you're going to use upgradefeedback.com to send us anonymous
00:53:40 ◼ ► information, do it. Don't do it from Apple. Don't do it from inside the building or on an Apple
00:53:47 ◼ ► managed device. Please do not do that. Just don't do it. Kids, please just don't. Like I, I want you
00:53:53 ◼ ► all to have really long, successful careers. Yeah. There, there, there really isn't much
00:53:58 ◼ ► worth to it. It's okay. It would not bother me if Rumor Roundup went away, you know, like I like
00:54:03 ◼ ► this segment. I find it fun. If the rumors and leaks stopped, I'd also be okay. But it never will.
00:54:08 ◼ ► But it never will. It just never, it never will. It never will. The supply chain at the very least,
00:54:12 ◼ ► but it, it, you know, it just, it won't because people are people and, and the same stuff that
00:54:16 ◼ ► was feeding Mac the knife in 1992 is feeding Mark Gurman now. And that's just how it is. It's the,
00:54:21 ◼ ► not the same people. It's just the same dynamic. I really wish, I genuinely wish Austin nowaday the
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00:57:20 ◼ ► So you wrote an article about immersive, a couple actually on immersive content on the vision pro
00:57:29 ◼ ► sparked because we finally have more immersive video. So apple put out a selection of immersive
00:57:36 ◼ ► videos when the vision pro launched. There was one about high wire, there was an Alicia Keys video,
00:57:42 ◼ ► there was a dinosaur video, and there was like this sizzle reel video of like lots of different
00:57:47 ◼ ► types of things that you could watch in an immersive environment. A lot of these things
00:57:53 ◼ ► said like episode one. But there have been no more episodes in these shows. No, apple hasn't released
00:58:00 ◼ ► any more immersive content since the launch of vision pro. And so then apple announced that there
00:58:04 ◼ ► was going to be a, we knew about this a while ago actually, it was referenced in a press release
00:58:11 ◼ ► about the MLS season pass reference to the fact that they were doing a highlight reel in immersive
00:58:18 ◼ ► video for the 2023 MLS cup. The MLS cup, yes, which is like, is that a separate thing to the
00:58:26 ◼ ► season? Like it's like the playoffs? It's the postseason. It's the playoffs. Okay, it's the
00:58:29 ◼ ► playoffs. Okay, cool. So we knew this and then they announced it was coming. Oh great, here it is,
00:58:35 ◼ ► it's gonna come out. And then we found out it was a five minute highlight package of the MLS season.
00:58:40 ◼ ► Or of the playoffs. Of the playoffs, I'm sorry, the MLS cup. You ask a bunch of questions in your
00:58:47 ◼ ► article that I'd like to talk about with you. The first being, why did it take three months to
00:58:51 ◼ ► produce a package? Yeah. Which is a great question. More than three months to do a five minute
00:58:57 ◼ ► highlight package. Because they obviously have had the cameras throughout the entire thing. So like,
00:59:01 ◼ ► you know, is this how long this content takes? Was it not a priority? MLS cup final was like
00:59:07 ◼ ► December 10th or something like that. And they didn't even get it ready for the season opener.
00:59:11 ◼ ► Yep. So what's the holdup? And why have we not seen any other immersive videos? So the MLS cup
00:59:18 ◼ ► took 100 days and there have been no other releases, even though we've seen clips in the
00:59:24 ◼ ► sizzle reel, none of those have been released too. Yep. You and I've heard a couple of them who
00:59:30 ◼ ► mentioned that the video is just not good. You didn't enjoy it? Yeah. So, you know, sometimes
00:59:36 ◼ ► you have to make a judgment and not have talked to anybody else about it and just, you gotta be
00:59:43 ◼ ► out on your own. And that was the case with me when I watched that immersive video. I watched it
00:59:47 ◼ ► and I thought, oh, this is bad. And I was laughing because today I got Stratechery and Ben Thompson
00:59:53 ◼ ► wrote about the sizzle reel and I'm like, oh boy, what does Ben think? And Ben was like, this is
00:59:58 ◼ ► bad. And I'm like, yeah, all right. It's not just me. It's bad. It's bad, Mike. It's a bad choice.
01:00:05 ◼ ► Yeah, I watched it too. It's bad. And why is it bad? I think is very instructive. I think it's
01:00:11 ◼ ► really instructive. It is edited like a regular video highlight reel. It's lots of quick cuts.
01:00:16 ◼ ► It's five minutes long, first off. Lots of quick cuts. It actually shows all of the potential of
01:00:23 ◼ ► immersive video and fails at all of it. The moment that blew me away is there's a moment where
01:00:30 ◼ ► you're watching somebody move toward the goal with the ball. And it's like you're on the sideline and
01:00:38 ◼ ► you're seeing the artistry of the detailed technical skill of these soccer players that
01:00:43 ◼ ► you don't see from far off. It's actually harder on TV. And so your eyes are watching the ball maybe,
01:01:13 ◼ ► watching the action. And I'm like, "Why am I watching this dude?" So my point is, every time
01:01:19 ◼ ► you make a cut, you have to reorient. And it takes seconds, right? Because now you're in a new place
01:01:24 ◼ ► and you got to look around. And you missed the goals in the highlight reel. You missed the goals
01:01:29 ◼ ► because they've cut from the side view to the behind the goal view, which is a better view of
01:01:34 ◼ ► the actual goal. But in doing so, you missed the goal because they cut and didn't give you enough
01:01:39 ◼ ► time to reorient. And this is the lesson that I'm very grateful that this video was released in this
01:01:43 ◼ ► way, because it's a lesson that I've learned. I had hoped that they would have learned this
01:01:47 ◼ ► while they were working on it, but that didn't happen. I have learned the lesson, which is
01:01:52 ◼ ► immersive video takes time. You can't quick cut immersive video. The whole idea is immersion.
01:02:00 ◼ ► So like, I love that shot behind the goal. I love the shot from the sideline. I love the shot from
01:02:06 ◼ ► the field before the game where you're looking at a full stadium and fireworks are going off in the
01:02:10 ◼ ► sky. I love the shot of the jacked up supporters in the stands with their wacky signs. And when
01:02:19 ◼ ► they're pulling the big banner up over them, right? That just looks fun. Yeah, which is the
01:02:25 ◼ ► Columbus fans put "Hell is real" on a banner, which is a whole story about the "Hell is real"
01:02:29 ◼ ► sign. You can look it up. Each individual shot is like, "Oh yeah, this is what it's good for."
01:02:37 ◼ ► But at no point in the video did I feel like I was at the event. Instead, I was constantly
01:02:42 ◼ ► discombobulated. So great for me in that I got to learn about what not to do in immersive video.
01:02:50 ◼ ► And great that I have now discovered that other people feel the same way. But it squandered the
01:02:57 ◼ ► opportunity completely, which is you got to take your time. And the other videos that Apple has
01:03:02 ◼ ► released, the high wire and all that, they take the time. That's the difference is they take the
01:03:07 ◼ ► time and you settle in and now you're there. And that's the magic of it. So I don't want
01:03:12 ◼ ► a highlight reel. I want to be courtside. I want to settle in and feel the excitement. And
01:03:20 ◼ ► the occasional cut, of course, the Alicia Keys video is a great example. It cuts occasionally,
01:03:25 ◼ ► but if it cut like a music video, it would be unwatchable. Because every time they cut,
01:03:31 ◼ ► you're looking at the wrong thing. And then you got to look around and see where everything is.
01:03:34 ◼ ► And part of the glory of immersive video is that you're seated in a spot and you can look around
01:03:39 ◼ ► and you can explore what's around you and your surroundings and you become immersed in it.
01:03:48 ◼ ► why did it take so long? And three, is there nobody at Apple who looked at this video and said,
01:03:54 ◼ ► "Oh no, this is bad actually." And maybe they did. And maybe the fact is the way it was shot,
01:04:00 ◼ ► they can't go back to the MLS Cup playoffs. They can't. The footage they've got is the footage
01:04:05 ◼ ► they've got. Maybe there was a technical reason why they couldn't really do something. But I
01:04:11 ◼ ► assumed that that MLS Cup final would be a 15 minute long kind of immersion into the final.
01:04:22 ◼ ► And it was actually like two minutes of the five minute video with a bunch of quick cuts.
01:04:26 ◼ ► It's like, it's just a mistake. Maybe they were forced into a corner with some technical issues.
01:04:31 ◼ ► I don't know, but I don't really want to make excuses for them. And so I don't know what's
01:04:39 ◼ ► their latest release suggests a misunderstanding of what it's good at. - The video shows the
01:04:48 ◼ ► promise. There are so many parts of it where I'm like, "This looks great." - There's a moment that
01:04:53 ◼ ► it takes your breath away and then it's gone. And you don't get to spend time in it. - And it's not,
01:04:58 ◼ ► there's that sizzle reel, which is fun because it's showing the promise of the sizzle reel,
01:05:04 ◼ ► but I don't need to keep being shown promise. I've already seen what football can look like
01:05:12 ◼ ► because it was in the sizzle reel. They had a shot, right? So I don't need this particularly.
01:05:18 ◼ ► Oh, this would be fine if there was already more, right? If they had released another 10 videos,
01:05:27 ◼ ► this would be like, "Okay, this one maybe wasn't great, but it's cool. I got to see some fun shots
01:05:36 ◼ ► of the football. That's fine." - It still would be broken and you'd be like, "This is not how
01:05:40 ◼ ► you do sports." - We wouldn't be talking about it specifically. - But we're desperate for content
01:05:56 ◼ ► It's funny too because I really expected my reaction to be, "Oh, okay." Either dazzled or
01:06:02 ◼ ► like, "Oh, interesting. There are things that work about it and there are things that don't."
01:06:05 ◼ ► I did not expect at all to watch five minutes of it and think, "Oh, this is just bad." Like, just
01:06:10 ◼ ► bad. My short review of it is Quick Cuts is the wrong format for this and while it's not unwatchable,
01:06:17 ◼ ► it's not good. It shows everything that's the promise and fails to deliver on all of the promise.
01:06:23 ◼ ► It couldn't have done a better job of delineating what's the promise of sports immersive video
01:06:38 ◼ ► but I completely understand where you're coming from, right? But like for me, I do see it. I
01:06:44 ◼ ► watched it and was like, "This looks good. I'm enjoying what I'm seeing," but can see that there
01:06:51 ◼ ► is absolutely not enough of it and it's just the wrong format. And so what my assumption is that
01:06:58 ◼ ► people that put this together, they are used to making that format. - Sports 2D, 16 by 9,
01:07:08 ◼ ► HD sports highlight reels. It feels like that. It feels exactly like that. That this is not a demo
01:07:14 ◼ ► of immersive video. It's a highlight reel that happens to be an immersive video, which is a
01:07:20 ◼ ► classic mistake, right? It is the new medium mistake. It's like saying, "Hey, television
01:07:24 ◼ ► was invented. So let's record stage plays with television cameras." It's like, "No, no, no, no,
01:07:30 ◼ ► no. That's not what television is for." - And again, just to underscore what you're saying,
01:07:35 ◼ ► start. Say you've got a three or four second clip and something catches your eye to the left
01:07:42 ◼ ► and you look at it and you want to see what's going on, but then the clip changes. Now,
01:07:46 ◼ ► if you're watching on something on a screen, that's fine because you're just following along
01:07:52 ◼ ► with whatever the director is showing you at this moment. - And your field of view encompasses the
01:07:56 ◼ ► entire image, right? - Yeah, but in the Vision Pro, you've moved your head. You're looking in
01:08:01 ◼ ► the wrong direction from what's happening. - Yeah, looking at that guy standing on the sidelines
01:08:06 ◼ ► instead of the goal because that's where the cut has left me. - Yeah, but when it was good, though,
01:08:13 ◼ ► like, "Oh, I thought it was real good." Watching goals in that scenario is fantastic. Seeing
01:08:19 ◼ ► the reactions, like, there's this one where you see the goalkeeper kind of slam his hands on the
01:08:24 ◼ ► ground. You see the guy who just scored looking back at him with a smile on his face, like, "This
01:08:29 ◼ ► is real good. I need more of this part." - Yeah, well, that is the contrast and that's why I think
01:08:38 ◼ ► it's so fascinating is I think that as a package, it blows it, but the individual elements are
01:08:45 ◼ ► amazing, right? Like, it is strangely a video that makes me desperately want more immersive
01:08:51 ◼ ► sports video and at the same time, I think it's a failure. And so what does that mean? I mean,
01:08:58 ◼ ► it means they did this one wrong, but boy, this is going to be great when they figure it out.
01:09:07 ◼ ► I don't know who watched this. And again, I don't know the backstory. I don't know who could watch
01:09:12 ◼ ► this and say, "No, this is how it should look in immersive video." And again, the backstory may be
01:09:16 ◼ ► they had to get it out. There were technical problems. They were very limited in what they
01:09:20 ◼ ► could do. If it's a choice, it was just desperately the wrong creative choice, but it may be that
01:09:26 ◼ ► there are complications here and that they're well aware of the limitations of this and on to the
01:09:32 ◼ ► next one. But like the individual moments, like you mentioned the goals. The goals are amazing.
01:09:37 ◼ ► The sideline view, the artistry. This is what I always feel about soccer is that, and I feel this
01:09:42 ◼ ► way about baseball too, is like they reward closer viewing. When you are an in-depth fan,
01:09:49 ◼ ► I think one of the reasons the NFL is popular is that the NFL is great on its surface. It's very
01:09:55 ◼ ► exciting. It also rewards closer viewing if you understand how the game is being played at a high
01:10:00 ◼ ► level. But if you don't understand it, it's just fun to watch it. Soccer is sort of fun to watch,
01:10:11 ◼ ► confrontation between the pitcher and the catcher are fighting against the batter. The batter is
01:10:17 ◼ ► trying to guess and they're trying to outwit the batter. If you dial into that level of the game
01:10:23 ◼ ► and can see it, which TV does really well and it's much harder when you're in the upper deck,
01:10:30 ◼ ► baseball can be really magical. Well, soccer, my point here is, unless you're at the event or
01:10:37 ◼ ► you're watching real closely or in immersive video, you're right on the sideline, every
01:10:43 ◼ ► foot placement, every body move that these soccer players do in order to get advantage on the
01:10:49 ◼ ► defender, in order to move the ball into a position where they can put it somewhere else, the passes,
01:10:54 ◼ ► the shots. The more of that you see from close up, it's really amazing. And that's in there.
01:11:03 ◼ ► It's just so fleeting. And honestly, the fans, I'll say it again, the fans, the atmosphere,
01:11:08 ◼ ► they have the Columbus stadium, they have the LA stadium, they have the stadium in Seattle. Packed,
01:11:14 ◼ ► you're in a stadium, you're on the field in a stadium full of screaming fans, and then you
01:11:18 ◼ ► see the fans. It's awesome. Unfortunately, none of it is enough. Every shot is individually brilliant
01:11:31 ◼ ► and there's not enough of any of it. Plus I miss the goals because I'm looking somewhere else and
01:11:38 ◼ ► that's just a mistake. You can't do it. I had to back up, which breaks the immersion, and then
01:11:47 ◼ ► okay, I need to be looking over here in this shot, even though that's not what I want to look at,
01:11:55 ◼ ► But this isn't the only way to watch sports on the Vision Pro. The MLB app has been updated and it
01:12:03 ◼ ► seems like you were expecting something cool that was not delivered. So I'm taking a journey here
01:12:09 ◼ ► with MLB. I'm going to write a piece about some good things about MLB that I haven't written about.
01:12:14 ◼ ► I wrote a couple pieces about this last week because it was opening day, the start of the
01:12:18 ◼ ► season. They let the baseballs out. They let the baseballs out of the gate and on Friday we're
01:12:24 ◼ ► going to the Giants game unless we get rained out and we'll get to watch the San Francisco
01:12:29 ◼ ► baseballs be rolled out. Let's go Giants. Let's go Giants. Let's go Giants. Let's go Giants.
01:12:48 ◼ ► It's bananas, right? It's just, yeah. And who better to talk about baseball and gambling than
01:12:53 ◼ ► John Gruber? Yeah, incredible. So first off, I'll say the iPad app, just my iPad app of the MLB app
01:13:02 ◼ ► just doesn't launch on my Mac anymore. They didn't update and I heard from a lot of people who say
01:13:05 ◼ ► that that's the case, although I have since also heard from a couple people who say it doesn't
01:13:08 ◼ ► crash on their Mac. I don't know what's going on there. Anyway, so that stinks. But that was just
01:13:13 ◼ ► a side note to the vision pro app, which since the vision pro came out, there's been an MLB app,
01:13:18 ◼ ► but all it does is play like game two of the world series from last fall. It's a demo. It's great.
01:13:23 ◼ ► Good idea actually to have a demo on there. Well, they, they released the official live version
01:13:30 ◼ ► for opening day and it feels very much like it's, um, it got rushed out the door for opening day and
01:13:36 ◼ ► they weren't ready. So like the main window, you know how in vision pro you can put a window
01:13:42 ◼ ► further away and everything, the content is still basically the same size. It's just further away in
01:13:47 ◼ ► depth. MLB app isn't like that. If you put it further away, it gets really tiny. Like, what are
01:13:54 ◼ ► you doing? And the control, the little close bar and, and, and, and handling bar at the bottom are
01:14:01 ◼ ► like, I don't know about the length, but like they're way far below the window, which is weird.
01:14:06 ◼ ► It's like, what's going, it's not like any other one. Um, start a video. There's some selection
01:14:12 ◼ ► problems there. I had to get it really close before I could actually like properly select a
01:14:15 ◼ ► video to stream. It opens a new window with that video, but the main window remains visible,
01:14:20 ◼ ► which some apps do. Some apps don't, but I don't need the main window. I've got my video playing.
01:14:27 ◼ ► So I do the close on the main window, the close box, the whole thing goes away. You can't close
01:14:33 ◼ ► the main window, but the whole thing just quits. Okay, great. So I put the main window somewhere
01:14:38 ◼ ► else and I'm watching. And first off, I don't see any game day information, which is this other mode
01:14:44 ◼ ► that they put in. Turns out it is there, although I'm not sure it was there on the video I was
01:14:48 ◼ ► looking at on day one, but it is there. Um, it's, uh, uh, on the video playing. So to get into game
01:14:56 ◼ ► day mode, you have to be watching a video, which means that if you're blacked out on video, you
01:15:01 ◼ ► can't watch it. Um, let me tell you what game day mode is because it's very clever. So it's, it's,
01:15:06 ◼ ► it's an immersive space, which I don't like. I don't think it needs to be immersive. I,
01:15:10 ◼ ► it precludes other apps from running along with it, which I don't like. Um, but what you get is
01:15:17 ◼ ► you get like a big scoreboard that is the video and of the game playing and a bunch of information,
01:15:23 ◼ ► like the pitch tracking and a lot of play by play data, lots of data. And then below it is a field.
01:15:30 ◼ ► Well, you have two options. It's a, it's the home plate and the strike zone. And every pitch,
01:15:35 ◼ ► you see the ball come in with the actual trajectory and whether it was a ball or a strike.
01:15:40 ◼ ► But the other mode is a field, which I love. And it's the whole field, like on my floor. And every
01:15:48 ◼ ► player is a little disc, a little, a little circle with their number on it. And as the game and the
01:15:55 ◼ ► ball, like you see when the pitch is thrown, there's a little streak from the pitcher to
01:15:58 ◼ ► the catcher. When a ball is hit up in the air, you see the ball go up in the air and it marks like
01:16:04 ◼ ► the exit velocity and the apex, how high it was at the, at the top of the arc. And then where it
01:16:10 ◼ ► comes down, that's all in there. Pretty awesome. Um, however, it would lose players. So I would
01:16:18 ◼ ► frequently get in a position where like the left fielder was just gone. Third baseman was gone.
01:16:23 ◼ ► Sometimes the, the, it would show the base runners. Sometimes it wouldn't show the base runners. The
01:16:27 ◼ ► base runners were not a different color. So that was super confusing because you couldn't tell the
01:16:31 ◼ ► second baseman from the runner on second base. Um, occasionally numbers, it would get confused
01:16:37 ◼ ► and it never resolved it. So like a base runner would run down to first base and be very close to
01:16:41 ◼ ► the first baseman, obviously. And then suddenly they would pop. There would just be one circle
01:16:46 ◼ ► there. And the, and, and one of them had been, I don't know, assimilated and never came back. And
01:16:52 ◼ ► you can never see that, that base runner again, but first baseman again, just buggy, just super buggy.
01:16:58 ◼ ► Um, it's a hard, it feels like a hard thing to do because it requires, um, requires the live data
01:17:03 ◼ ► and that kind of stuff. Like I can see how it's complicated. They have all the live data and I
01:17:08 ◼ ► don't blame them. Like they're, they're trying to do cutting edge things, but it's super buggy. And
01:17:11 ◼ ► I think it struck me that, um, that it was really buggy on day one. Um, I don't, for something like
01:17:19 ◼ ► the 3d stuff, I don't blame them. That is a brand new technology that they're trying to do. However,
01:17:24 ◼ ► the home window being broken, isn't great. The fact that if you close it, your video stops playing
01:17:30 ◼ ► is bad. And then, you know how I love a quad box, Mike. Um, you can't play more than one video at
01:17:35 ◼ ► a time. Nobody loves quad boxes more than you. No, I love watching more than one thing at a time.
01:17:40 ◼ ► Right. And you can't do it. You can't say, I want to play this game and then put it over there. And
01:17:43 ◼ ► then I want to play this game and I put it over there. It just won't do it. First game goes away.
01:17:47 ◼ ► But come on guys. So hopefully they will get up to speed with it, but it was a real disappointment
01:17:52 ◼ ► on opening day. I love their ambition, but, um, but it's, it's buggy and kind of broken and it's
01:17:59 ◼ ► too bad. Um, I will say, I do want to throw in a positive note and I will write about this, which
01:18:04 ◼ ► is the Apple TV app got updated to support the quad box. They have their own quad box. They used
01:18:10 ◼ ► to be picture and picture only. Um, and it is in some ways the best quad box implementation I've
01:18:15 ◼ ► seen on Apple TV in that it has a lot of clarity. Uh, it puts up like what buttons you need to push
01:18:22 ◼ ► to change the modes, um, so that you don't get lost. Uh, Lauren was telling me how I do the quad
01:18:31 ◼ ► box on the Fubo app on Apple TV, but she never does because she doesn't even know. Cause you got
01:18:35 ◼ ► to do swipes and click and holds and stuff. And you got to become like an expert at driving that
01:18:40 ◼ ► app. MLB app puts up a little thing in text. This is press this button to get the audio and press
01:18:46 ◼ ► this button to bring it to the center. And, and there's a little strip you swipe down and there's
01:18:50 ◼ ► a little strip of games and you like, it says click to add or click to remove. It's really
01:18:55 ◼ ► well done. Um, and something that tells me about my expectations for software being bad, like it
01:19:06 ◼ ► does what it should. And I was surprised by it, which is I'm in quad box or double box or triple
01:19:11 ◼ ► box or whatever, multi view they call it. Right. And each game you can click to zoom in. And on
01:19:20 ◼ ► that screen, it's got the game day view as an option and game day on the Apple TV, it like pulls
01:19:28 ◼ ► the image back a little bit and it puts like the live pitch data and stuff around it. It's, it's
01:19:33 ◼ ► cool. It's a lot of data, but if you're a certain kind of nerd, it's really awesome. And I thought,
01:19:39 ◼ ► I can't believe I can enter game day from here, but I thought I bet I'm out of multi view now.
01:19:43 ◼ ► Like it probably took me out of multi view. So I press the back button and it zooms back out to
01:19:47 ◼ ► full screen and the game debut goes away. And I think what happens if I press the back button
01:19:53 ◼ ► again and I press the back button and it zoomed it back out into multi view. And I thought, huh,
01:19:58 ◼ ► like that's how it should work. Right. And yet I had zero expectations that it would do it the
01:20:05 ◼ ► right way. I figured I had, I had silently left into a different mode and I was going to have to
01:20:09 ◼ ► exit that and then re build my multi view and all that. No, they built it all. It's really great.
01:20:14 ◼ ► My only complaint about multi view is that there aren't multiple layouts. If you want to watch four
01:20:18 ◼ ► games at once, one of them is big. And then there are three on the side that are little,
01:20:22 ◼ ► whereas Fubo lets you do the four up where it's literally four screens in a rectangle, one, two,
01:20:28 ◼ ► three, four, um, filling your entire screen. They don't do that probably in part so that they can
01:20:33 ◼ ► put up their little text and like help you use this feature. But I would love that. But otherwise,
01:20:39 ◼ ► honestly, Apple TV app, pretty great. So thumbs up to them for that vision pro. I love their Moxie.
01:20:45 ◼ ► I love that what they're trying. It's broken. It's busted. And I'd also really like the iPad app to
01:21:02 ◼ ► is their attempt to display it. And if they can get that right, it will be amazing. Cause I was,
01:21:08 ◼ ► I literally, Mike, I literally just got and sat down on my floor. Like I was a kid in kindergarten,
01:21:13 ◼ ► like let's all get on the floor. But for me, I sat down on the floor. So I was next to my little
01:21:17 ◼ ► magic model baseball stadium and I could watch the little baseballs get hit up into the sky and come
01:21:25 ◼ ► down and the little circles ran around and stuff. And I thought, this is it's and you can look up at
01:21:30 ◼ ► essentially the scoreboard where the video of the game was playing. It was pretty cool. It was
01:21:35 ◼ ► pretty cool. There's some potential there. I had a similar experience. Uh, I tried out an app called
01:21:40 ◼ ► Vroom for Formula One. This is a beta. I'll put a link in the show notes to a Vimeo video as the
01:21:47 ◼ ► test flight link in there. It's actually developed by Chaos Tian who was the person who was the,
01:21:55 ◼ ► they like, make a touch ID button. Yeah. This app requires F1 TV. Um, if you have F1 TV,
01:22:06 ◼ ► which is a paid service, which is mostly available outside of the UK, don't ask, but yes,
01:22:13 ◼ ► are you as able to use it and it's amazing. So you can have, you can watch the races, you can have
01:22:20 ◼ ► all of the quad box kind of user on the outside of specific drivers. So you can see there on board
01:22:26 ◼ ► cameras, which is the thing you can do in the F1 TV app for VisionOS as well. But this app also has
01:22:33 ◼ ► a live track simulation. So you can see where all of the drivers are on the track at all times,
01:22:40 ◼ ► going around the track. It's incredible. So good. I love it. So good. There have been a few of these
01:22:47 ◼ ► kinds of things. I've seen a lot of mock-ups for VisionOS stuff. This is the first app that I've
01:22:51 ◼ ► actually been able to use that does it. And, uh, F1 need to just do this. They just need to do this.
01:22:57 ◼ ► This is really cool because they have all the data. F1 is very data focused and I use app,
01:23:05 ◼ ► another app called BoxBox, which gives me a live activity of stuff that's happening. And
01:23:09 ◼ ► you can know all the information in real time. It's all API based as well, especially F1 TV.
01:23:18 ◼ ► especially sports with the Vision Pro, there is a lot of promise. We just need to see it realized,
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01:25:55 ◼ ► First comes from Max who says, "Do you think the Walmart M1 MacBook Air deal is the truth behind
01:26:01 ◼ ► of the strategy that replaces the rumors from last year that Apple was working on a less expensive
01:26:07 ◼ ► laptop?" I don't think so. I think, I mean, strategy that replaces maybe, but like the rumors
01:26:15 ◼ ► were about supply chain and they were about actually trying to engineer a lower cost MacBook.
01:26:22 ◼ ► It's possible, I think it's also entirely possible that what is going on is that Apple is in the long
01:26:27 ◼ ► run wanting to have a product in that space when the M1 MacBook Air can no longer be sold.
01:26:33 ◼ ► Can they roll down the M2 into that space or do they really want to create a cheaper to produce
01:26:40 ◼ ► laptop? The challenge there is any new laptop is not cheaper to produce because it's new
01:26:46 ◼ ► and that's difficult for them. So that's why they roll down old models instead. So it might be
01:26:54 ◼ ► related but I don't think it's what was motivating those rumors. Because the rumors were about
01:26:59 ◼ ► engineering a new laptop not about making the M1 go to a different place. That's an old laptop.
01:27:04 ◼ ► I can imagine a scenario where there were a few things on the board. One of them was making a new
01:27:13 ◼ ► one but they ended up going with this. Which I actually think this is a pretty good strategy.
01:27:17 ◼ ► Like I like this heavily discounted MacBook Air thing. I think it makes sense. Yeah, I think the
01:27:23 ◼ ► question is, because also this isn't the end of it, right? That rumor, it's entirely possible that
01:27:28 ◼ ► that's a product that even if they decided to go with it wouldn't be out for another year or two,
01:27:32 ◼ ► right? It's not necessarily that they like did a bunch of work and said, "No, let's just sell the
01:27:37 ◼ ► M1." I mean maybe but my guess is that it's a longer term kind of thing than that. But maybe
01:27:44 ◼ ► they put it all together and realized that it didn't make sense and that the best thing to do
01:27:49 ◼ ► was just to keep selling the old laptops for a while at a low price. I've got two questions
01:27:56 ◼ ► here. I think they're two sides of the same coin so I'm reading both. Lee asks, "Is the
01:28:01 ◼ ► Department of Justice case actually now in Tim Cook's legacy? Under his tenure, the actions and
01:28:07 ◼ ► choices from Apple have led them to these moments of conflict with regulators. So rather than a car
01:28:12 ◼ ► or the Vision Pro, is this Tim's legacy?" Albert asks, "Given Apple's handling of the DMA and AI,
01:28:23 ◼ ► So they're both sides of the same coin. You want me to flip a coin? Is that what's happening now?
01:28:32 ◼ ► that both of these questions are of a similar thing of like, is Tim to blame for all of this?
01:28:50 ◼ ► To be determined, I'm sorry to say it this way, but this is how it has to be, is what is the
01:28:58 ◼ ► result? If the result is a nothing or an almost nothing, minor changes to Apple's business model
01:29:03 ◼ ► that don't actually have major effects on Apple's future, then no, to all. If Apple ends up having
01:29:19 ◼ ► which is a question, right? Like it may be that if there's a deep disruption in Apple's business
01:29:24 ◼ ► model, we'll look back and say, how would they have satisfied these people? How would they have
01:29:29 ◼ ► changed their case? Because it's possible that all the things we've said, "Oh, this could have been
01:29:36 ◼ ► avoided if you did all these things," it's possible that wouldn't have avoided it, that it was going
01:29:40 ◼ ► to happen. They didn't make it better, but it's possible that this was unavoidable. If it goes
01:29:44 ◼ ► badly and Apple ends up being broken up or their business model is invalidated because they have to
01:29:56 ◼ ► makes everything more difficult for them, and as a result, Apple as a business is kind of broken,
01:30:02 ◼ ► absolutely it's part of Tim Cook's legacy. Dare I say the jury's still out? There is no jury yet,
01:30:08 ◼ ► but there may be at a time in the future. I think those are the questions. History is not yet to be
01:30:13 ◼ ► written on this point. It could be his legacy. Is it reasonable to consider if it's time for him
01:30:22 ◼ ► to step down? Given Apple's handling of AI, you mean the thing that they haven't announced yet?
01:30:27 ◼ ► Is it reasonable to say that Tim Cook should step down because Apple didn't have a large language
01:30:34 ◼ ► model out there last year? No, it's not. That's stupid. It's stupid. History is not written if,
01:30:42 ◼ ► in five years it turns out that AI completely changed how computing works and Apple never got
01:30:47 ◼ ► there because they were sleeping too long. Then yes, then it's a great question. I just don't know.
01:30:53 ◼ ► For both of these, I'd say the jury is still out. Right now, what I would say is that Tim Cook's
01:30:58 ◼ ► legacy is that when he took over, Apple was a fraction of the size that it is now. Judged by
01:31:05 ◼ ► market valuation and profits and revenue, Tim Cook's legacy is that Apple scaled up from a
01:31:13 ◼ ► company that had a lot of potential to a company that had all the money. If I had to guess,
01:31:22 ◼ ► that will be his legacy. But the truth is, legacy when? Legacy now? Legacy in five years? Legacy in
01:31:29 ◼ ► 20 years? Because it's possible from the vantage point of 20 years, we'll say, "Oh, Tim Cook,
01:31:34 ◼ ► yeah, they made a lot of money then, but then they got in trouble and lost their way." Or we might
01:31:38 ◼ ► say, "Oh, Tim Cook, yeah, they made a lot of money and then they went out of business or were regulated
01:31:43 ◼ ► out of business." Or we might say, "Oh, yeah, Tim Cook, he really grew Apple to a whole new level
01:31:49 ◼ ► and then they just kept going from there." But in five years and 20 years, the legacy is constantly
01:31:56 ◼ ► being recalculated. But for right now, I'd say that people... Right now, the judgment would be
01:32:04 ◼ ► that he took a business that was smaller and granted, had a lot of the pieces ready to go.
01:32:09 ◼ ► People were like, "Oh, well, Steve Jobs got all that ready." It's like, he did get it all ready.
01:32:12 ◼ ► But Tim Cook's the one who took all that stuff that he inherited from Steve Jobs and presided
01:32:31 ◼ ► - No, I actually think you've given the only right answer, which is that at this point,
01:32:38 ◼ ► for both of these things, and the reason I point out these things, we've had a few questions like
01:32:51 ◼ ► all of the things that have led to the DMA and the DOJ, they were a scenario of the exact right
01:32:57 ◼ ► thing to do because Apple is massive, massive, and it makes so much money. And you can make a very
01:33:07 ◼ ► good argument that Tim Cook did exactly what he was supposed to do, which was make the most money
01:33:13 ◼ ► possible. - Yeah, and grow the company, and grow the stock price, and grow the valuation, and all
01:33:18 ◼ ► those things. And it may be yet that the DMA or something, again, the DMA and the US regulations
01:33:27 ◼ ► could break Apple. I think the most likely scenario is Apple, after protesting that a lot of the
01:33:35 ◼ ► changes that are wanted are anathema to Apple's entire business model and its credo of protecting
01:33:43 ◼ ► its customers. And we all say that it is actually because Apple wants to make more money, that the
01:33:52 ◼ ► concessions Apple has to make to satisfy everybody are so limited that while Apple makes a little
01:34:04 ◼ ► business model are instituted, and they keep on going. I think that that's actually the most
01:34:08 ◼ ► likely scenario, is that what changes is minor. But if I worked at Apple, I would be really worried
01:34:15 ◼ ► about the risk that the change is going to be major and it's going to break our business. I
01:34:18 ◼ ► would be. And I'm trying not to be cynical here, but I suspect that the way this will work is Apple
01:34:25 ◼ ► will give in on things that turns out don't actually matter as much as Apple says they do,
01:34:30 ◼ ► but they want a posture that they do so that they can be pained when they do it, so that it
01:34:36 ◼ ► limits the scope. And that in other cases, they basically deal with a US system that is generally
01:34:44 ◼ ► favoring big US companies anyway, so they can get away with even less. I think that's the most
01:34:51 ◼ ► likely scenario, in which case Tim Cook's entire approach would be more or less vindicated. But
01:34:58 ◼ ► it's too early for us to say. I certainly don't. If they get really, really, really, really shafted
01:35:04 ◼ ► by the EU or by the United States, and it breaks their business, then it absolutely would be
01:35:12 ◼ ► reasonable to say Tim Cook has to leave, because they're going to need to show some resignations
01:35:16 ◼ ► and say, "We're changing our entire approach because you're right, and we're chastened,
01:35:26 ◼ ► - I don't think we're going to get there. I don't think so. There is a scenario in which
01:35:31 ◼ ► one of these things could be so horrifically bad that really the only smart thing to do from a PR
01:35:38 ◼ ► perspective is to have a new CEO. Yes, that could happen. I do not think that's going to happen.
01:35:52 ◼ ► I don't even think it would massively impact the company. I think you would end up with a scenario
01:35:59 ◼ ► where it's put to the test. What we're saying has been the case forever, which is people just want
01:36:05 ◼ ► to buy iPhones and use their iPhones. And that complying with all of this stuff doesn't really
01:36:12 ◼ ► make a material difference because people just want to use their iPhones. - Earlier in this podcast,
01:36:18 ◼ ► we talked about how Apple, I think, overstates the value of secrecy in product announcements.
01:36:28 ◼ ► I think Apple overstates the importance of lots of stuff, and they do it strategically.
01:36:35 ◼ ► And this is a case where I think Apple has dramatically overstated, not that it isn't true,
01:36:43 ◼ ► but that they overstate the impact of all sorts of things like what the EU is trying to do,
01:36:48 ◼ ► the EC is trying to do, and what the US alleges. I think they've actually, behind the scenes,
01:36:54 ◼ ► they've got a lot of stuff that they're willing to give on, and they know it's not going to make
01:36:57 ◼ ► an impact or it's going to make a minor impact. Losing a little control, losing a little power
01:37:04 ◼ ► is not necessarily something that ever shows up on a balance sheet. Losing a little money does,
01:37:10 ◼ ► and it's going to hurt because Apple is a public company, and they might make a little less money,
01:37:16 ◼ ► and that there are people at Apple who have a very strong incentive to prevent that from happening.
01:37:20 ◼ ► But I, as an outside observer, can say even that doesn't really matter. If the spigot's still on,
01:37:26 ◼ ► it's just flowing a little bit less, and it means you are a little less enormously profitable and a
01:37:31 ◼ ► little less enormously valuable. I have a hard time envisioning scenarios. It doesn't mean they
01:37:37 ◼ ► can't happen. The most likely scenario is that Apple gives up a little power, gives up a little
01:37:44 ◼ ► control, but not as much as you think, and gives up a little bit of revenue in competing with others,
01:37:49 ◼ ► and it doesn't really matter, and that they just continue steaming forward because they're so huge
01:37:56 ◼ ► and so profitable that in the end it doesn't matter. If I had to predict, that's my prediction,
01:38:02 ◼ ► is that this is not going to be the thing that stops Apple. Now, something else might stop Apple.
01:38:08 ◼ ► The lesson of the Microsoft case is that it turns out that it was all kind of a waste of time
01:38:15 ◼ ► in some ways because the next generation of stuff kind of rendered it irrelevant. We can argue that
01:38:22 ◼ ► point. Were they distracted? Is that why they missed on mobile? Opening up the web allowed
01:38:27 ◼ ► cross-platform to be better and it wouldn't have happened if IE was unconstrained? Okay, we can
01:38:32 ◼ ► argue it, but my bigger point remains, which is what Apple is afraid of and Google and every other
01:38:38 ◼ ► tech giant is missing the boat on the next big thing. That's the existential risk for Apple,
01:38:47 ◼ ► Like I said, if AI, it turns out, makes devices essentially irrelevant and apps and operating
01:38:56 ◼ ► systems irrelevant because everything's going to be running on machine learning and we're just
01:38:59 ◼ ► going to talk or tap or whatever to a model that's going to do what we want, that could potentially
01:39:05 ◼ ► eliminate a huge amount of Apple's uniqueness in the market and therefore destroy their
01:39:11 ◼ ► business model. That's a real existential threat, but I think it's unlikely that regulatory scrutiny
01:39:43 ◼ ► You can send us in that feedback or any questions you have for our various segments over at
01:39:47 ◼ ► upgradefeedback.com. You can check out Jason's writing at sixcolors.com. You can hear his
01:39:53 ◼ ► podcast at the incomparable.com and here on Relay FM, where you can listen to me too. And check out
01:39:58 ◼ ► my work at cortexbrand.com. If you want to find us on social media, Jason is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.
01:40:05 ◼ ► I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can watch video clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
01:40:12 ◼ ► We're @upgraderelay on there. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. You can
01:40:18 ◼ ► get longer ad-free versions of the show at getupgradeplus.com. Thank you to our sponsors
01:40:23 ◼ ► of this week's episode, ExpressVPN, Ooni, and SaneBox. And thank you for listening. I'll be
01:40:29 ◼ ► back next week. Jason will be on vacation and I'll be having a guest host. Until the next time we