522: Reserve Your Spot

0:00:00[music]

0:00:09From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 522 for July 29th, 2024.

0:00:15This episode is brought to you by FitBond. Delete me and ladder.

0:00:19My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason.

0:00:23Hi, Mike. Anything interesting happen lately?

0:00:27Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. I have a snow talk question for you to begin today's episode.

0:00:31It comes from me and I would like to know, Jason, how was your flight home from London?

0:00:36Oh, it was great. I mean, it was sitting on a plane for a long time. It wasn't great. I read a lot and that was fine.

0:00:43It was uneventful. We got home. I didn't hallucinate anything on the drive home, which is important because, you know,

0:00:49that's flying this direction, that's the long day. You know, you leave in the morning and then a long time passes and it's still daytime.

0:00:56That was weird. But made it home. I was going to take the Elizabeth line, the very exciting...

0:01:05So I took the Elizabeth line a couple of times this weekend.

0:01:11And this is Crossrail. It's super fast and air conditioned and smooth ride and it's great.

0:01:16We get to Paddington Station at six in the morning to go to Heathrow.

0:01:21And the Elizabeth line escalators are all blocked off.

0:01:27And the trains are running and it's like, no, you can't go down there.

0:01:32I don't know why, but I have a theory. I have a conspiracy theory, which is a conspiracy theory by the Heathrow Express.

0:01:42Oh, you think that there's like...

0:01:46They just put barriers up and then they position their salespeople because their train is right there, like right next to where it is.

0:01:53And they had a conveniently located salesperson there to sell us two tickets to go on the Heathrow Express instead for twice the price.

0:02:01But at that point we got to get to the airport. Right. So we went on the Heathrow Express instead of the Elizabeth line to the airport.

0:02:06It's too bad. I was looking forward to sticking it to the man by just riding the Elizabeth line,

0:02:12which also another thing I noticed before we even talk about London, just as part of this journeys thing,

0:02:18I noticed on all the signs and the maps and the website that the Elizabeth line is not part of the London underground.

0:02:30No. It's weird. So there's the underground lines.

0:02:34There are the overground lines, which are going to get names as we talked about this weekend.

0:02:40They're going to get names. And then there's the Elizabeth line, which is part of the transit system, but not officially part of...

0:02:50Well, and it has no other name, so it's just its own thing. It's the Elizabeth line. It is what it is.

0:02:57Yeah. It's like, it's all TFL, right? And like TFL and underground and tube, these are all used interchangeably.

0:03:04Because ostensibly it works the same. Like if it's part of TFL, you use the Oyster card, it's all, everything works together.

0:03:14But Elizabeth line leaves London. It just goes and goes and goes.

0:03:21Way out there. So instead it's got its own identity and that's fine.

0:03:25Also, I have another transit related update, which was the first tube station we went to.

0:03:31It would not accept my Apple pay. Okay.

0:03:34And so we're like, I guess we're going to have to get our Oyster cards. Cause I was like, well, wait a second. Why?

0:03:38It's supposed to work. Why isn't it not working?

0:03:40So we went to the Oyster card machine and we bought two Oyster cards of which one was delivered.

0:03:45And then there was a sign that put up saying, we don't have any more cards. Contact somebody.

0:03:48You maybe got the only Oyster card in London. Like that.

0:03:51Yeah. Right. So then we go back and we, we tried every turnstile and one of the turnstiles took my Apple pay.

0:03:59And so Lauren used all the credit on that Oyster card and then she used hers and I used mine.

0:04:05That was fine. But like, it was just the luck of the draw that the first gate I went to did not want to let me enter.

0:04:14It could have been like a weird thing with the car being approved with a bank. Like who knows how that stuff works.

0:04:20It's a mysterious black box.

0:04:23I don't know, but I'm glad it did finally work because we were in a position there where we had, if we couldn't use our card and our credit card, you know, Apple pay to get in the tube.

0:04:34And, uh, and there weren't Oyster cards in the Oyster card machine.

0:04:39I'm not quite sure. I mean, we would have taken a cab to wherever we were going. I think it was with our, it was with our bag. So it was to the hotel, but it was fine.

0:04:47Probably you could have bought a paper ticket from the machine is probably what you would have done.

0:04:53Anyway, it didn't, it didn't end up mattering because, uh, then it worked and then it was great. Cause there's nothing, nothing like tapping with your watch and going right on.

0:05:02Yes, absolutely the best.

0:05:04So that was my snow talk question, but if you would like to send in a snow talk question dealer, so please go to upgrade feedback.com and you can send that in.

0:05:13So we obviously spoke about this. I expect most people know, but Jason has just returned from London because we just had the relay 10 event in London at the historic Hackney empire in front of a over a thousand relay listeners.

0:05:28Uh, which it was an absolutely incredible event. We have audio available, so that's available now in the departures feed, which is where we put, uh, all of our live stuff.

0:05:38So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. If you want to listen, uh, it was a great time. It, you know, I wanted this to happen for so long and we worked really, really hard to make it work.

0:05:52And this event excelled in every possible way for me. Uh, it was just a wonderful celebration of relay and everyone involved from all of the hosts that were there.

0:06:07The host that couldn't be there even, and all of the listeners that could be there and all the listeners that maybe couldn't make it was just unforgettable.

0:06:15And to have that many hosts together again in this kind of way, it felt like something that has been so long and it really felt like the family again, which it hasn't felt like for me in a long time.

0:06:30Like WWDC 2023 was the last time we had that many people together, but it's still not the same because it's people were still spread out.

0:06:38And like, really, it hasn't felt this way for me for like five years since relay five in San Francisco. And it was so incredible.

0:06:45And Jason, you did such an incredible job as the host again. And I am so grateful that you did it.

0:06:51You were so much fun and really made the show.

0:06:54You're the one who made me do it. You were, you were, you were going to host it and then you're like, no, you just do it.

0:06:58I was going to do it. You got to run the board. You got to be Mr. Scorekeeper.

0:07:02Yeah. And we got to do the thing that we do, which I love. You know, we got to, uh, we got to be a double act, which is always such a great joy for me.

0:07:11And then occasionally remember that Steven was also there.

0:07:13I, Steven got to give his thoughts, you know?

0:07:15He did. He shared his thoughts. Reluctantly.

0:07:19And don't forget, we asked him to do a job and he didn't do it. Do you remember that? We won't spoil it, but you know, he was asked.

0:07:24Yeah. Yeah. There's a one, one specific request was made of Steven.

0:07:28And then when came time for him to reveal what he was going to tell us, he said, I didn't do it.

0:07:32It's amazing. Actually as a comedy moment, it was far better that way.

0:07:37I'm happy that he didn't have the answer.

0:07:39And I'm sure that Kate will know. Kate knows the answer to that question and has taken the actual, because that's really the truth is if you want precision counting, what you really want is a listener, not one of the hosts.

0:07:53They're not good at it.

0:07:54No. We also were honored, surprisingly, with Relay has received the St. Jude Creator Achievement Award, which is such an incredible honor.

0:08:07And I've put some links in the show notes to some pictures of mine and also a picture Steven took, which shows the award.

0:08:13St. Jude came, we had some representatives from AllSack, which is the fundraising organization of St. Jude to come and speak to our audience.

0:08:22They wanted to come and be able to tell our audience how much this partnership has meant to them over the last five years.

0:08:29And they surprised us with this award. And I think we're the second people to get it.

0:08:36And that is truly one of the great honors of my life to receive an award like that, to get that kind of recognition.

0:08:45But it's not just for Steven.

0:08:47Yes, it's not just for Dr. Lupo.

0:08:48But Dr. Lupo is a big deal for fundraising.

0:08:52Yeah, I had never heard of Dr. Lupo. And then we went to Memphis for the fundraising Creator Summit earlier this year.

0:09:00And I had never heard of Dr. Lupo, but I was rapidly told of Dr. Lupo because his fundraising skills for St. Jude are legendary.

0:09:07Yeah, he raises like millions a year.

0:09:10Not a doctor. I'm just saying not a doctor.

0:09:12Wasn't he a doctor at some point?

0:09:16Oh man, if he was really a doctor.

0:09:18I think that's why.

0:09:19I'd like him less now even.

0:09:21And so Dr. Lupo is a game streamer. And so we're connected with the gaming kind of fundraising St. Jude Play Live.

0:09:29They honored us with that award, but it's for all of us. It's for the community. It's for everyone.

0:09:34And I'm just so thankful of it.

0:09:37And you may have noticed at the top and you'll notice I'm doing it now.

0:09:40One of the things we announced at the live show, and this is a rolling thing most likely.

0:09:46We're changing the name of Relay FM to just Relay. And we have some branding stuff that's going to be happening.

0:09:54We announced it in the live show and it's going to be happening hopefully over the coming weeks.

0:09:59We're still waiting on some approvals from the US trademark office of the new artwork.

0:10:06But I think the thing we're pretty set on is we're dropping the FM from the name of the company.

0:10:11Still in the URL if you miss it. Don't worry. The URL is not going anywhere.

0:10:16No, you don't want to get rid of the URL. That tends to be a bad idea.

0:10:19Federated states of Micronesia. They're still getting their money.

0:10:23As we enter our 10th year, it's time for some simplification when it comes to our branding.

0:10:28Bit of a refresh and it's going to be rolling.

0:10:30We'll call it Relay.

0:10:31It's still called Relay because that's all anybody ever calls it. That includes us.

0:10:37It was something that me and Steven really tried to hold on to for a long time and then just let it go.

0:10:43Steven had a very telling comment where he said that he's wanted to change the Relay logo for nine and a half years, basically.

0:10:51Yeah.

0:10:52So we've finally done it.

0:10:56He finally talked you into it, huh?

0:10:58There was never an idea, like Relay.

0:11:02Yeah, exactly.

0:11:04Also, how often do you want to re-range your company, you know?

0:11:07And so, yeah, again, just an incredible time.

0:11:11Oh, can I shout out? I want to shout out listener Marley's who appeared and not only did I identify her on site, I said, "That's Marley's, isn't it?"

0:11:21But she was wearing a bootleg or shall we say semi-unwittingly authorized by me, but it doesn't matter.

0:11:29It was bootleg.

0:11:30Bootleg merch. It was a DMA Today t-shirt.

0:11:35It was in blue, the color of, because, you know, color, spectacular.

0:11:41So we may need to reboot that.

0:11:48Nobody wants that t-shirt except Marley's. There'd be one person that will buy it. They already have it.

0:11:54They already made it for herself, yeah.

0:11:56So, yeah, it was just like, you know, I don't really have the words to explain how I'm feeling right now. I'm exhausted.

0:12:03It has been a very difficult couple of weeks, but this, I could not have asked for any better than how the event went.

0:12:13So I hope that people enjoyed it and they'll listen to the audio and enjoy that too.

0:12:17We'll talk more about some of my excitement of things that I did on my trip in Upgrade Plus.

0:12:27Ah, lovely.

0:12:28I just will mention here that among the other things that we did, we got a boat ride from the inventor of emojis himself, Jeremy Burge.

0:12:43The Burge budge.

0:12:44That was amazing. If you look on Instagram, you will find, and TikTok, because Jeremy, you will find lots of pictures of me and Casey and Aaron Liss cranking locks up and down in central London so that Jeremy's boat could pass through various places.

0:13:02And of course, the best place to learn how to use locks is in the middle of Camden, where there's the huge shopping and dining and people-watching area that the people they're watching are you while you try to figure out how boats work.

0:13:18So we had a great time. The weather was great. Jeremy was a wonderful host and I could not have spent a more pleasant sort of half day than cruising central London with the Liss's and Jeremy.

0:13:34And then at one point I turned around and James Thompson appeared on the boat. Ah, where'd he come from?

0:13:39Scotland, I think.

0:13:41Well, originally, yeah. I know that because he came down, him and his wife came down with me and Lauren on the train. They were right there. I saw him come down.

0:13:51But suddenly you're just on a boat ride with people and then you turn around and there's more people on the boat. Yeah. Tricky. He's tricky.

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0:16:22Mike, while you introduce the next segment, I'm just going to, I'm a, there's a little local color. Okay. You ready?

0:16:29I'm going to be eating a digestive biscuit.

0:16:32Oh, wonderful. That's great.

0:16:34One of those things that I like to, right, like a little souvenir. They're available here too at various stores, but no, no, no. These I bought at a, like a Tesco.

0:16:45Very British.

0:16:47They're really British.

0:16:48So we've been gone for a couple of weeks, I think. And so there's been a, there's been a bit of news that I wanted to cover.

0:16:55First off is some vision pro stuff. So Apple has released some more details about a selection of immersive content coming to vision pro.

0:17:03The first new content, which is available now asterisk is a series called boundless and it depicts a hot air balloon ride in the first episode.

0:17:12Weirdly, this content is not available in the UK until the fall, even though it's available in the US right now, which is a thing I can't fully fathom because surely they own this content.

0:17:23Like I don't, I can't, I don't know what's going on there.

0:17:26They, they don't, they want to, um, they want to wait till more people have the vision pro in the UK so they can blow their minds.

0:17:32I just don't understand. I mean that while weird is like the only logical thing to me, but that doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. Like very, very strange.

0:17:42It's a very strange decision. But anyway, they also detail in this, in a press release I've got in the show notes, some of the upcoming content that we'd saw a little bit about WWDC.

0:17:51There's a film from the weekend. It's a couple of new short films and footage from the NBA all star weekend.

0:17:57They're all coming later on this year, which means maybe they'll come next year to the UK. I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. And I find it really peculiar.

0:18:04The final coming soon vision pro environment has now arrived. It's called Lake Vrangla. Vrangla? I'm definitely saying that wrong.

0:18:14It's named after a Norwegian lake, which it's the lake that it is based on.

0:18:19This is the, this is your moody, moody, foggy lake. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Twin Peaks environment. Yeah.

0:18:24It seems to have been, the availability for it has been, seems to be pushed out over the air. You go to the environments tab and download it.

0:18:30You don't need to do a software update to get it. And it's downloadable from the environments tab itself.

0:18:37I find this really interesting that this is the second thing that I can remember with the vision pro where they're just like, oh, hey, you can do this now.

0:18:46And there hasn't been like a point update. So we had spatial personas was one of them. Like it was like, hey, reboot your device.

0:18:53And now we have this. I find that really interesting. This is the kind of, this is a way that I would like Apple to be doing more software updates.

0:19:01I think people said this for a long time of like, you can, you don't have to do this all at once, right?

0:19:06Like you can only do your feature updates when they're all paired with a much larger set of feature updates.

0:19:13You could do little bits here and there. But the thing that makes me hopeful is that this mechanic of pushing environments over the air

0:19:22maybe could lead to more in the future. Like they've clearly built for the ability to, I guess, to just download them.

0:19:29So since they're down, they were already, they were already downloadable, right? Like you, they weren't all on device.

0:19:35You can remove them and download them.

0:19:37Exactly. Because they're like big assets. They're, they're large. And so if you're doing, I think they're anticipating having storage management issues and that they built it to be modular.

0:19:47If that's the case and there isn't any new operating system feature that's required, right? This should be totally modular.

0:19:55There should be like a, a roster in a file that the OS looks at that says, what are the available environments?

0:20:05And it can update dynamically to add other environments and they just show up because they're downloads, right?

0:20:11They should be able to be this dynamic. So I hope they will be, and I hope there are more of them.

0:20:17And as we've said before, I also hope that developers get a way to contribute environments at some point here, because there are some really nice immersive environments in other apps that it would be nice to use.

0:20:30Right? Like you could, then you could really hang out at the top of Avengers Tower and that would be fun.

0:20:36Someone asked me recently, I think it's on Mastodon, like do you know, if you think about these two things together, like third party watch faces and third party environments, like are we, are we in the same boat with this wish?

0:20:47And my kind of feeling on that is Apple has never encouraged the development of watch faces for the Apple watch.

0:20:55But with the Vision Pro, they have the ability for you to create an immersive environment inside of an application and it's like a thing that is what it's called, like you can do it and then, then have your apps sit on top of it.

0:21:09So in theory, it doesn't seem like a big leap.

0:21:14I would be shocked if the Disney+ app environments were really any different from what Apple's building. They're just walled off in the app. And so I think it's a, it's, there may be some technical details, but I don't know why you would, you would build it differently.

0:21:30You'd want it to be using the same kind of process. And if that's the case, it would seem to be like the next step would be to let apps contribute those to the system.

0:21:40And it's really interesting, like weird in a way that there were two coming soon environments. There was this one and there was Bora Bora. Bora Bora is part of Vision OS 2, but this one is just available now.

0:21:50I love the Vision Pro and Vision OS team because they do things in ways that I just can't expect.

0:21:56There's some strange, strange forking, strange dichotomy going on here, but wait, wait, wait till you hear about what's happening with the iOS betas, but that's later.

0:22:08During Comic-Con, Ron Moore gave more details about Star City, the For All Mankind spinoff series set in the Soviet Union with parallel timing to the beginning of For All Mankind.

0:22:20So it goes back to the beginning of when For All Mankind season one.

0:22:23Yeah, the space race in the sixties.

0:22:25The show will debut after the next season of For All Mankind, which is currently in production.

0:22:32They're planning a multiple season arc for Star City, like For All Mankind, and it will feature time jumps.

0:22:38So I would hope that we're going to basically go back to the beginning and tell every season.

0:22:44The show is currently being written and they are planning on some, but not all of it to be in Russian.

0:22:51Yeah, it sounds like somebody asked, is this just going to all be in Russian and Ron Moore said, I don't see how we can do that.

0:22:55So my guess is that they'll either like Hunt for Red October it, where they'll like start it in Russian and have everybody speak English,

0:23:03or they'll do a thing that a lot of movies do where they have everybody speaking with Russian accents in English, but the writing will all be in Cyrillic Russian.

0:23:12And maybe when there are scenes with people speaking other languages, they might drop back to actually speaking Russian so that you can have that kind of disconnect between the languages.

0:23:24That other people are speaking, but that's my guess. I don't think Apple TV Plus really wants a show that's entirely in Russian.

0:23:31Have you seen Shogun?

0:23:33Oh, Mike, it's so good.

0:23:36Yeah, we just finished it last week. Unbelievable. Like truly incredible.

0:23:42That's a show that's almost entirely in Japanese. The difference there is that Japan is a market for Disney Plus and Hulu.

0:23:51It works better in Japanese.

0:23:54Also, it's part of the real history of Japan and it works better in Japanese and there's very little English, whereas Apple's not really concerned about the Russian market.

0:24:02But the reason I brought it up is like it's such a mind-bending thing. So all of the Japanese characters are speaking Japanese to each other.

0:24:10But there is an English character who most of the time you hear him, he's speaking Portuguese.

0:24:18But that's English. But he also speaks English sometimes and you never know. I just wonder if they might try and maybe do something like that. I don't know.

0:24:28I don't know what that would mean.

0:24:30I can't conceive of... No, I don't think they will. I think almost everybody will speak English with a Russian accent except for when maybe they're interacting with other people.

0:24:38But yes, Shogun is brilliant and there's a whole... Like the fact that they wrote it in English and then they had it translated into Japanese

0:24:46and then they went to Japanese playwrights and had them write that Japanese in the style of Japanese Shogun dramas.

0:24:56So it's more flowery and more... They said a little more Shakespearean, right? Like it's period language, not modern Japanese.

0:25:04And then that's what the actors were given in their scripts.

0:25:08And then they based... I think they based the captions then for English on that translated and then wordsmith version to bring it back to English.

0:25:20I love it. I could make an argument that one of the very first truly global TV shows ever is Shogun because it's an American TV show except a lot of the producers are Japanese.

0:25:33Most of the actors are Japanese. The writing started in English but went to Japanese and they used experts. It's a real collaboration.

0:25:40And it was shot in Canada. And for anybody who hasn't seen it.

0:25:42Did you know that? It was all in Canada?

0:25:44And shot in Canada. Well, I mean, they're like, "We need something to double for a feudal Japan."

0:25:48And they're like, "There's a lot of coastline in British Columbia that is just empty with trees that will do the job."

0:25:56So it's wonderful. Highly recommended. Everybody out there. Shogun. It's great. Disney+ everywhere but the US where it's Hulu.

0:26:04I would not be surprised if we're talking about this again in the Upgradies.

0:26:09I would not be surprised. Yes. Agreed.

0:26:12The retro PC emulator, UTM SE, has now been approved by Apple. It is now available in both the App Store and the Alt Store.

0:26:22This is one of the two retro PC emulators we were talking about multiple weeks ago. This and Eidos.

0:26:33So this app had been previously rejected and rejected in notarization after being held up in notarization.

0:26:39It got spoken about publicly. The app has now been what is being referred to as adapted but not really sure how exactly.

0:26:47Like maybe some changes have been made to the app. Then it was approved by Apple. And it's in the Alt Store too.

0:26:54We don't have a lot of details here about how much of this is Apple changing its policies because of attention.

0:27:00And how much of this is that there was a lot of attention but the truth was that what was holding it up was something very specific.

0:27:08I think the problem there is that I could give Apple some benefit of the doubt that maybe it was being held up for a reason that was not the reason we thought.

0:27:16The problem is that as far as anyone can tell it was never properly communicated what was going on.

0:27:22And that's often a problem with this stuff is that Apple makes decisions and they just don't talk about it.

0:27:27Their default is to be as opaque as possible even to their partners like developers.

0:27:33So now that UTM SE is out there, I've seen screenshots of people running like Windows 95 on their iPads which is wild.

0:27:40And like great, I'm glad that this got through. I think it's very funny that Apple's strategy for Alt Store seems to be

0:27:48if we can co-opt as much of the Alt Store as possible and just put it in the App Store maybe we should do that.

0:27:53But I think it's good for users. I did note that Steve Trout and Smith tried to get old versions of Mac OS running on it.

0:27:59And there are some things that make it not like done by Apple but just things that make that less difficult or more difficult that he couldn't, I think he couldn't get it to work.

0:28:09But the idea that it's a PC emulator and it's meant to be for games, old games.

0:28:13But if you want to run Internet Explorer and Windows 95 or whatever, I guess you can, which is also kind of cool.

0:28:20That actually means that my baseball game that I love, Diamond Find, which is a Windows only game, it's so, it uses no, I don't want to insult it,

0:28:31but I'll say it uses no modern features of Windows. I think it could probably just run in UTMSE as a retro game even though it's a current game.

0:28:40So yeah, this is cool, but it's also very frustrating that Apple is both seemingly kind of undercutting.

0:28:47I mean, the good news is it's in the App Store worldwide, which means Alt Store's existence in Europe is forcing Apple to make changes that it's rolling out worldwide,

0:28:54which means it benefits way more people. That's great. It's frustrating that this is what it took.

0:28:59And it's frustrating that it went through the whole rejection dance with apparently very little conversation and communication with the people involved.

0:29:08Because that's the thing that really, we talk about Apple doing a lot of this stuff to itself.

0:29:13This is one of those areas, right, where if you treat your partners, your business partners, with some respect and communicate with them,

0:29:23then these things wouldn't necessarily blow up in the press because they would understand what was going on.

0:29:29Unfortunately, what seems to happen is there's a weird chain of command inside Apple where the people who decree, "Let's reject that," are not the people communicating.

0:29:39People communicating don't really know and are told probably not to even elaborate.

0:29:44And so they just say, "No, we're rejecting you," or they give a vague reason.

0:29:47And they can't, like, this is the problem, that if they were clearer with their business partners,

0:29:54the business partners would not necessarily have to run to the press if there was a real back and forth.

0:30:00But what ends up happening is they're opaque, they're making just clear, just like, "No, you're rejected," arguments.

0:30:09There's not really much of a conversation going on.

0:30:11And then you end up with people like us talking about it and people writing stories about it and then people at Apple seeing those stories and saying,

0:30:19"Wait a second, why did we do it that way?" And then they fix it and it's like, this could all have been avoided.

0:30:24You mentioned that it seems like Apple keep putting apps in the App Store that are being submitted to Alt Store.

0:30:31Let me tell you about one that won't.

0:30:33Alt Store has announced that they will be bringing Fortnite to Alt Store Hal in the EU, which is wild, wild.

0:30:42Yeah, yeah.

0:30:43It's huge news.

0:30:44So Epic is going ahead and Epic's like, "You don't need our game store. You can go to some other game store, some other app store.

0:30:50You can get Fortnite there, it's fine."

0:30:52So they're going to be, yeah, so the Epic game store for iOS is still coming and now it seems like they'll put it in other places too.

0:31:01So this is huge news for Alt Store. And I think it actually makes sense for Epic because I reckon Alt Store has a pretty good install base because of Delta.

0:31:12Yeah.

0:31:13And so why not put Fortnite?

0:31:14If I'm Epic, I mean, they could be like, "No, no, the whole plan here is to build our own store."

0:31:19I don't think that's it. I think they're going to build their own store, but the whole plan is to get Fortnite to people in the EU.

0:31:25And if Alt Store has an existing audience and they can say, "Sure, you can get Fortnite in Alt Store and not have to install a different app marketplace, great, do it."

0:31:34It's also a good political move for Epic, right? Like, it makes them look good to developers, which they want to do.

0:31:40Oh, yeah, they're so benevolent.

0:31:42And also this will be like a thing that they can go to the European Commission and be like, "Hey, look, we love to play ball, but Apple, we just can't."

0:31:53You know, Alt Store's terms are really good for us and we can now look where everyone's successful.

0:32:00And speaking of Alt Store, Alt Store 2.1 is now available and it features the first third-party apps.

0:32:06So as well as Delta and Clips, which were from Alt Store, there's now UTMSC, which we mentioned earlier.

0:32:14There are a couple of torrenting apps, which is like wild to think about.

0:32:18That's the best example of an app category. I mean, it's the best example left now that emulators are in there, of an app category that Apple has just decided they don't want on their platforms, right?

0:32:29BitTorrent clients, they just don't want them because even though there are legitimate uses of BitTorrent, there are far more illegitimate uses of BitTorrent.

0:32:37And so Apple is just like, "We're not going to bother. We're just going to say this is a place we don't want to go as a matter of policy."

0:32:42And so in the EU, policy like that can't determine what gets notarized. So obviously, BitTorrent apps are being notarized by Apple and put in Alt Store in the EU.

0:32:54There's also an application which is reminiscent to 3DF StreetPass, if people know what that means.

0:33:01It's basically you can run this application and if you pass people in the real world, your devices can communicate with each other if you want that as the thing in your life.

0:33:10And finally, Apple is partnering with Taboola to bring advertising to Apple News and stocks.

0:33:18So if you are on the web and you see a grid of boxes as an ad with absolutely wild things in those boxes, that is Taboola.

0:33:32However, they're going to be bringing a more tailored experience to Apple's platforms, utilizing what Taboola calls "native ads," which are expected to be more relevant to the content that they appear on.

0:33:44And Taboola's CEO told The Verge that they're giving Apple some control over what kinds of content could appear.

0:33:51I mean, okay, a couple of things. So there's an easy joke here, right? Taboola, maker of garbage ads, is going to bring garbage ads to Apple's News and stocks apps. That's the simple, easy...

0:34:03And, you know, is it entirely wrong? No, there's enough truth in it that it's good, and that's certainly what I felt.

0:34:09But there's a couple of things here. One is, there are good ads and there are bad ads. And there are good ad platforms and bad ad platforms.

0:34:17And I would say, is the existence of a deal between Apple and Taboola a sign that what Apple wants is for more of Taboola's lousy ad boxes to be stuck in Apple's interface?

0:34:30I think not. I think they have probably a range of ads and clients and they want to re-

0:34:38If you're Taboola, you don't want to say, "Our business is garbage," right? You don't want to say that. You want to say, "Our business is an ad business, and we cover the gamut.

0:34:46And we've got garbage." They won't say that, but let's just say, "We've got garbage and we've got really classy stuff.

0:34:53And it's a whole range. It's like, who do you want to reach? Where do you want to reach it? What kind of ads do you want to buy? How much do you want to pay? We gotcha!"

0:35:00We got the whole range. So it could be that Apple is going to use them for garbage. It could be that Apple is actually going to use them for kind of like a higher level thing.

0:35:10I will also point out, and this is the other point that makes this story a little less easy to rip on them, which is Apple has always allowed its content providers to stick ads in their content, right?

0:35:25And so, you know, when you get- News Plus is not an ad-free experience, right? If you read Wall Street Journal in News Plus, as I do, first off, you'll always get a pop-up asking you to sign up for a newsletter.

0:35:38And second, you will get their ads, many of which are kind of garbage-y and might even be taboola. So there's already garbage ads throughout Apple News. They're brought by Apple's partners.

0:35:51And this is not necessarily going to change any of that. This is the stuff that Apple is placing in News and having a new partner.

0:35:59And so I don't like it because they make really lousy ads and have kind of polluted the web. And I had many, many arguments 10 years ago at IDG where somebody would come and say, "Look, it's free money. We just stick this thing on."

0:36:12It's like, well, it's not free. There's a cost. The cost is those terrible things are on every one of our pages showing terrible things.

0:36:19Initially, Taboola's pitch, by the way, was they used their technology to intuit from your website which of your content was the most clickable. And then they would build an ad unit with like four links.

0:36:31And one or two or three of those links would actually be to your content. And the idea was we know what the real clickbait is.

0:36:40So let us drive your users to more content on your site. But also by placing your content in this ad unit alongside the ads that we're selling to other people's content, we're making that ad unit more visible to readers, which makes those other pieces of content more clickable, which makes the ad unit more effective, which makes more money for everybody involved.

0:37:03That was their initial pitch.

0:37:04It's a pretty good pitch, actually.

0:37:06It's not bad. But as with so many ad products, and you know this, you've seen this, as with so many ad products, it just degrades over time as everybody tries to push direct revenue maximization.

0:37:17And I think that element everywhere I see it now is just all ads. They're not using the initial idea, which was a pretty clever idea of like three of these things are from Macworld and the fourth is a random thing.

0:37:32And I think they even had a deal where like part of it was that your content went in their algorithm so relevant, like your readers, I think even because they were following you, your readers on other sites would get ads for your content on those sites because they knew you would be into it.

0:37:53Like there was a whole technology pitch there, but in the end, it's just sort of like boxes full of garbage.

0:37:58So anyway, it's a more complicated story, but this does fit into the narrative that we've talked about where there's an SVP at Apple who's in charge of, or maybe it's just a VP, who's in charge of ad revenue.

0:38:10Like he's in charge of ad revenue.

0:38:11And my immediate thought when I saw this was this is my message to everybody who has told me that when I wrote that column saying an ad version of Apple TV Plus is inevitable because literally everybody has it.

0:38:23This is why it's inevitable because at some point they will say, oh, not enough people are watching TV Plus.

0:38:29What if we give them to it cheaper and we get to amp up our ad revenue?

0:38:33So here we are.

0:38:34So you mentioned that the ads that exist in partner content, like they're there already and they're from the publisher.

0:38:45Where are these Taboola ads going to go?

0:38:49I think Apple can insert ads, but that their partners also insert ads.

0:38:55I think that's how that goes.

0:38:57So there's going to be everyone's insert in ads.

0:38:58There's going to be ads everywhere.

0:39:00So I think that's the deal.

0:39:02I have not, you know, or do they go in the top level pages?

0:39:08Maybe that's it.

0:39:09Maybe they don't insert ads in content, but these will go, cause I don't think I see their ads in my content on their site, but they could insert great.

0:39:17Cause they've got like today and news plus and sports and puzzles and shared with you and they've got special coverage sections.

0:39:26They have their own stuff now.

0:39:27Yeah.

0:39:28Right.

0:39:29They've got all of that stuff and those are places where they can insert new elements.

0:39:34You know, they're not sticking ads.

0:39:37Actually, you know what I just found it said apps feeds and select publisher articles.

0:39:44So maybe Apple's also doing deals with the wall street journal to put ads in on their behalf or something.

0:39:49Could be also when I scroll down to a six colors post in news plus or news below the story, there are, there's a grid of currently it's news.

0:40:02For me, it's news plus recommended reads and then more from six colors and then people also read and then more to read, which is more six colors posts.

0:40:12So they could also put taboola units down below where there's currently just currently they're trying to push you to other content in news.

0:40:21Plus they could also put ad units down there.

0:40:24Taboola is a funny new word, isn't it?

0:40:28It's like a yeah, it's it's isn't it a salad.

0:40:31I have no idea.

0:40:33I just figured it was one of those like nonsense web two oh words.

0:40:37It's bulgur and it's it's like from from the Easter this we made that the deli in college is to bully taboola taboola.

0:40:48Yeah, that's what it is.

0:40:50It's a cold salad that that was one of the things that we sold at the deli that I worked out when I was in as according to Wikipedia taboola also transcribed to Bula to bully to bully to Bula.

0:41:03It's an event in salad most made mostly finely chopped parsley with tomatoes, men onion bulgur and others.

0:41:10And yeah, exactly.

0:41:12It's a little it's a cold salad also taboola.

0:41:15I always thought was funny because it's also like a taboo like our ads are so bad that you shouldn't use them, but you will all of those things can I here's my here's my aside for people have not heard the story before the deli I worked out in college is my hometown just summers work there.

0:41:31Family friends Hungarian couple owned it Hungarian immigrants went to school with their kids and and the the guy who ran it his hit well his wife.

0:41:44They both passed away now.

0:41:45She was great.

0:41:46I called her boss that was she she like Jason.

0:41:49What are you doing?

0:41:50Sorry bus, you know, I just I called her boss.

0:41:52She's the only person I've ever called boss.

0:41:53She was great her husband grumpy man a very grumpy man.

0:41:58And I've got a million stories of things.

0:42:02He said that were hilarious.

0:42:04My favorite though is because this is a tourist town.

0:42:07We had like the the gold rush State Park is where their restaurant was.

0:42:11So you go across the street for lunch because you're visiting this gold rush town and first off if you were bringing your kids, he would see you coming with your kids and he'd say oh no kids which was great in his Hungarian accent.

0:42:22But the best one was people would come in and they'd order a sandwich and they'd say what kind it can I could I have the sandwich on the ham sandwich and be like, okay, what kind of what kind of bread you want you would say and they would say just the regular bread and he'd say is no regular bread Kaiser roll French roll wheat right pumpernickel.

0:42:48French roll.

0:42:52Okay, good.

0:42:53I'm not that hungry.

0:42:54Can I have a half sandwich?

0:42:56No half sandwich order whole sandwich eat half.

0:43:00Anyway, taboola.

0:43:02He's he was he this was he like soup Nazi.

0:43:05He was he was yeah, I mean he should not have been a frontline customer.

0:43:10Interactor, but it was a mom and pop business and so that's how it was and and and roja was making most of the she was the the the chef she was making was the other the other thing is roja had a one of her fingers was was partially truncated.

0:43:25Okay, and and I don't know exactly what caused it.

0:43:29But when we when she showed me how to use the meat cutter for the first time, she held up her hand with one of her fingers too short and said don't put your hand in the meat cutter.

0:43:38They were awesome.

0:43:41They were they were awesome.

0:43:42I really hope that like that maybe she was born with that but like just loved to let people think it was from the I don't I don't know but it was it's terrifying anyway those are my stories but but but he had the he had the real Dracula accent and so it was it was and was super grumpy so what kind of the Dracula accent.

0:44:05Yeah, interesting.

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0:46:17Room around uptime Jason Snow!

0:46:21Yeehaw! The horse is still here. They are still here.

0:46:24There's been some corralling of a certain type of round up horse in the shape of the SE. Over the last couple of weeks there has been a flurry of rumours from various supply chain sources about the iPhone SE4.

0:46:429to5Mac reporting on a source from Weibo gave the following spec list for this rumoured device. A 6.06 inch OLED screen with a notch of a 60hz refresh rate featuring an A18 processor, 6 or 8GB of RAM.

0:47:01A single 48 megapixel camera, aluminium frame, face ID, USB-C looking to launch in spring of 2025 with a somewhere in the region of $499-$549 price tag.

0:47:23Another Weibo source is reporting that it would use the same frame as the iPhone 16 which casts a little doubt on the idea of the single camera.

0:47:33Because you would expect if they are using the exact same frame they would need to adopt the two camera system that you would find in the 16 but who knows.

0:47:41Let's just use that. Either it's going to have one camera or two cameras but it will be built on the platform of the current smallest iPhone.

0:47:50The Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that Apple is planning once again to debut their own 5G modem and that the SE4 would be one of the first devices to get it.

0:48:00What do you think about this? I think overall, here's what I'll say I know there's people already lamenting in the chat.

0:48:08This is clearly the moving on from the iPhone SE as being the "small phone" and that they are now bringing it into line with what would be considered in 2024 as the base specs of an iPhone.

0:48:22I think it's just inevitable. I think the SE has always represented old models and not size. Even though the old models, the rule, it's like the law of iPhones that the further back in the past you go the smaller they are but it's not what the SE is for.

0:48:41The SE is to build Tim Cook's plan. Let's go through here. Tim Cook's plan is to sell old phones for cheaper. That's their goal. Old phones for cheaper and not cheap phones but old phones for cheaper.

0:48:54That's how they get more affordable iPhones in their product line. They keep selling that phone from two years ago or three years ago.

0:49:01The problem is that after a while old phones for cheaper doesn't work because the specs are so bad that first off even if they can get the parts because the parts will stop being available and the specs are bad.

0:49:13The specs are so bad that you end up in a situation where you either can't run the current OS or you're forced to maintain compatibility with old models much longer than you'd like to if you're Apple because you're still selling that thing or you only sold it a year ago.

0:49:32The SE exists to hold down that bottom of the product line more or less with something that's got, it feels kind of like an old phone but it has modern enough specs that Apple will support it for a while.

0:49:51Then it also doesn't get updated every year and so it needs to last a while. That's the purpose of the SE. All the rest of it, the size, the fact that it's a smaller phone is beside the point.

0:50:02It seems reasonable. I'm actually a little surprised at some of the decisions that they've made that apparently will make this thing affordable because obviously OLEDs now are at such volumes that they can do that with a notch and everything.

0:50:17They consider that a baseline iPhone thing. It's been there since the iPhone X but still. Face ID is in it. They skimped on Face ID for most iPads but on iPhone it's the modern currency.

0:50:33Rather than build a Touch ID button for iPhone, they're like, "Nah, we'll just put Face ID in there. It's fine." Presumably, there's so much volume of Face ID sensor for the iPhone that they're like, "We can do that. It's not a problem. We can get that price down."

0:50:49I think it shows that in the future that iPads will all have Face ID too. It's just a case of getting there.

0:50:55There's some complication probably because of the thinness of the iPad versus the iPhone. In the end, one of the advantages that they have is if they're reusing parts, they're making volume orders for parts and those parts get cheaper over time.

0:51:12That's why the SE is always made out of reused parts because they're cheaper.

0:51:19I know what you mean about the thinness but the iPad Pro is the thinnest ever and they've got it in that.

0:51:25It's probably expensive.

0:51:27Definitely. I imagine it a longer timeframe than the SE but I think it shows eventually.

0:51:34There's a decay period where it comes down in price as they ramp it. Yeah, exactly.

0:51:39I think this phone sounds fantastic for $500.

0:51:43It's pretty good for a $500 phone.

0:51:45I would not have expected OLED. If they do that, I actually pull off an OLED screen in here. That's fantastic.

0:51:52OLED A18 will get Apple intelligence. Probably on the higher side of RAM.

0:51:58A 48 megapixel camera is fantastic.

0:52:01This sounds like a great phone. Just like a great phone.

0:52:05I feel like in the past, when new SE models have been introduced, they have rarely felt state of the art where I feel like even if this comes in 2025, this will feel modern.

0:52:19It's not going to feel old, I don't think.

0:52:23Yeah, and that's kind of the goal, right?

0:52:25They don't want it to feel old. They just want to make it affordable.

0:52:29You can keep your old models around for a while but one of the advantages of the fact that they kind of fall off after a while is that then you've got the SE down there.

0:52:39It's modern, right? It's cheap but it's modern.

0:52:44This is a trick, right? It's got a bunch of cheap parts but it's got enough RAM and processor to do what Apple wants.

0:52:52Everything else is going to be cheaper but that's okay.

0:52:56Apple is fine with that but that's the downfall of the Tim Cook sell old phones model is that at some point you have to update the processor in there.

0:53:08That's what the SE is for.

0:53:09Yeah, looks nice.

0:53:11Not everybody needs to buy a $1000 iPhone. That's the truth.

0:53:16Speaking of $1000 iPhones, Ming-Chi Kuo has shared some details of the previously mentioned ultra-thin iPhone Air or whatever it's going to be.

0:53:26For next year.

0:53:27Yeah, in the iPhone 17 line. So as a refresher, the Plus will go away and in its place will be a new designed iPhone that is really thin.

0:53:40So it would feature, this is what Ming-Chi Kuo is currently saying, this would be in iPhone 17 so 2025.

0:53:49A 6.6 inch display, so it's a little smaller than the Max display.

0:53:54It will have an A19 chip, not the Pro version.

0:53:58A single rear camera, the previously mentioned Apple 5G modem.

0:54:03And a "titanium aluminium frame" so it will be aluminium with some titanium, less titanium in it than the Pro phones.

0:54:11So I guess they can still call it titanium but it will be lighter.

0:54:15And again this would mean the end of the Plus phone for the 17 line but Kuo is stressing that this phone is not expected to replace the Plus.

0:54:24It would be a fourth distinct product and the main selling point will be its design, not its specs.

0:54:32Right, so we talked about this a few episodes ago and I love the idea.

0:54:36This is the idea of drive people who are design driven to a new phone.

0:54:43We've seen it before, new iPhone designs sell phones. They sell phones.

0:54:47One of the big criticisms when they do a nice internals update is but it doesn't look any different.

0:54:53And for some people it's often characterized as being like people want to be seen with a new iPhone.

0:54:59They're very status conscious and they want to be seen with it.

0:55:01I'm sure those people exist.

0:55:02Also I think if you can see a change you feel motivated because it's a different phone.

0:55:07And it's less motivating to get an incredible internal upgrade on your iPhone but it looks exactly like your old one.

0:55:14It's demotivating.

0:55:16There's real buying psychology going on here that is not "I want to be seen with the latest iPhone."

0:55:22It's more than that.

0:55:23So this is a really smart idea. Apple has obviously never found success with the mini and the plus in getting their lower end model but bigger or smaller to be a thing that satisfies them.

0:55:37Whatever metrics they're looking for it doesn't do it.

0:55:39So it's like what if we make a more expensive, totally different design.

0:55:44It's thin. It's got different set of specs.

0:55:46Single rear camera is really interesting.

0:55:48The idea that they might have one really good camera on there but it's like we're going to get rid of all those other cameras that people know.

0:55:54People use them but most people don't use them very much.

0:55:58They use the camera.

0:56:00So can you do it that way?

0:56:01And does that save you a lot of space inside the device?

0:56:04I'm sure it does.

0:56:05So you do all of that stuff and maybe you create something that's like an aspirational high-end product that points the way to the future.

0:56:12Because that's what I'm going to do with the X.

0:56:14It points the way to the future but for now it also is like for the people who are looking at high design and they want to buy the future today and they're willing to spend more than they would on an iPhone Pro.

0:56:26They're reaching a different market and they're able to extend that price that people are willing to pay.

0:56:34Because while it's important to have a $500 iPhone out there like the SE, I think what Apple has learned over time is there's a certain portion of their audience that if you keep selling more,

0:56:43expensive iPhones, they don't care.

0:56:45They'll just buy it.

0:56:46And so if you're happy with it you're like, "Oh, I would like more money please."

0:56:50So yeah, so sell them a $2,000 iPhone or whatever.

0:56:53And not everybody has to buy that one but if there's a portion of your audience that's currently giving you $1,400 who could now give you $2,000, you probably should let them, right?

0:57:03Let me come back to that.

0:57:05Digitimes is reporting that 2026 could also see the first foldable iPhone.

0:57:10The reports suggest it would be a foldable form factor similar to the Z Flip.

0:57:15So it would fold in half.

0:57:17It would be a flip phone.

0:57:18Jason, could these be the same phone?

0:57:20Hmm, I think not because there are reports about 25 or 26.

0:57:26But, but Mike, what I just said about the future of the iPhone and what we said the last time we were talking about this is one of the things about doing a thinner, thinner,

0:57:39thinner iPhone, right?

0:57:41One of the things about building a thinner iPhone, people are like, "Why does it need to be thinner?"

0:57:46Is you are trying out technologies on that phone, making everything thinner.

0:57:52How do we make it thinner?

0:57:53Possibly in part because the thinner you make a single plain iPhone, the thinner a folded iPhone is when it's folded.

0:58:04And I don't know if these are the same phone, although I got those vibes.

0:58:08This sounds really familiar, but it feels like maybe this iPhone thin for 2025 is like the technology test bed for their foldable iPhone in 2026, right?

0:58:19Which is like, first off, we've got to get this thing thin enough that it can fold.

0:58:24And then we make the one that folds.

0:58:26Now you're a folding phone person, so I'm curious what you think about this report about actually having a foldable iPhone.

0:58:32If Apple wants to make a foldable phone, this is the form factor I would like.

0:58:38It's very nice from a tactile perspective to close the phone.

0:58:42I've always enjoyed that with the Z Flip.

0:58:45And with the way the Z Flip works, it also has that screen on the front which you can use for a lot of things.

0:58:50If you're watching the Olympics, you're seeing this phone a lot.

0:58:53It seems like you're giving it to everyone.

0:58:55I've been seeing it in the Olympics coverage.

0:58:59I really like the idea of Apple trying this.

0:59:04I think it would be very intriguing.

0:59:06I would also like to see them make a foldable iPad too, the same idea.

0:59:12But in that one being, you unfold it to make it bigger.

0:59:16It's already big and you open it up and you can make it even bigger on the inside.

0:59:20The reason I say that to me, I see what you're saying about one could help the other.

0:59:27But a one-year time difference doesn't seem like a lot.

0:59:30They're not looking for feedback.

0:59:32I think it's more like they've got a roadmap and then there's a whole bunch.

0:59:36If they have a limited number of things that they can do in any cycle,

0:59:39and they need a huge number of things to make the Flip phone happen,

0:59:44building some of them into the thin phone the year before gives them more runway to build out that whole thing.

0:59:51Apple is actually like a scrimp and save kind of company

1:00:02because they've got so many operating systems and so many different products.

1:00:05They do so much of this work for themselves that they need to have a multi-year strategy of,

1:00:14"We're going to do this and that enables this, and then we can move that technology to this other product."

1:00:18So I looked at this and thought not that this was the same product,

1:00:21but more like the only way to get to that product in two years is to do some of the work the year before

1:00:29for a different product and then we push to the next product. Does that make sense?

1:00:34I just wonder if it's too many phones.

1:00:38It could be.

1:00:40Let's imagine that we get the Flip phone, iPhone Flip in 2026.

1:00:46That could mean the 2026 iPhone line, the new ones, the iPhone 7, 18 line would be the iPhone 18 Pro,

1:00:57the iPhone 18 Max, the iPhone 18 Air, and the iPhone 18 Flip.

1:01:02That might be too many phones. That might be too many.

1:01:05It might be. I don't know. It's a good question.

1:01:10Unless maybe they could swap them out. They have four, but some phones come every two years.

1:01:16I don't know. Would they want to do that? Probably not.

1:01:19I have no idea. Interesting, I'll say, at least, the idea of them trying stuff.

1:01:24Here's a wild idea for you, though.

1:01:27What if it's the iPhone 18, 18 Pro, 18 Max, and 18 Flip, and 18 Pro and Max are the thin phone?

1:01:38Okay.

1:01:40That's what they did with the 10.

1:01:44For the iPhone 17 year, it is a thing that stands on its own.

1:01:51This is the future of the iPhone.

1:01:54But then the next year, they have enhanced that technology, taken it a step further, given it the three cameras.

1:02:02Or giving it an amazing camera that can do what the three cameras did.

1:02:08I'm just saying, there are ways they can simplify the product line.

1:02:11There's also an argument that they don't need to necessarily simplify the product line.

1:02:14Having a bunch of iPhones is the most important product to them.

1:02:17Samsung has a bunch of Galaxy phones. They're not stopping.

1:02:21They're happy to have 90 different phones out there.

1:02:23They have the Galaxy phones, the S phones, which is their regular phone.

1:02:29They have the two folding phones, and they announced them at different times of the year.

1:02:34This is a thing we spoke about a long time ago.

1:02:37Oh, you made that pick of two different iPhone release schedules.

1:02:41Two different launches.

1:02:43I would love them to get weird with the iPhone, at this point in the iPhone's career.

1:02:49That now they're starting to try new stuff again.

1:02:52This excites me.

1:02:54The idea of this year and next year, brand new iPhones that have no previous comparison.

1:03:00That idea is very exciting to me, of a thing that they could do.

1:03:04I guess we'll wait and see.

1:03:06This episode is brought to you by Ladder.

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1:04:56It's time for the B-Tails.

1:04:59*sings*

1:05:01Interesting one this week.

1:05:03iOS 18.1 Beta 1, iPadOS 18.1 Beta 1 and Sequoia 15.1 are available as we are recording.

1:05:14We have not seen 18.0 yet, but yeah, here they are.

1:05:19That's right. This is what we've done.

1:05:22What's going on here?

1:05:24I don't know. I mean, it is...

1:05:26Basically, Apple has decided that they are going to do a parallel beta process for Apple Intelligence.

1:05:33That it seems like these versions are probably essentially the 18.0, 15.0 versions,

1:05:39but with an additional thing, which is Apple Intelligence features.

1:05:44It wouldn't surprise me if they develop their betas for a while.

1:05:47Apple's not saying whether there will also be public betas.

1:05:50Apple's not saying why they're continuing doing the two streams.

1:05:54Obviously, Apple intends to ship the 18.0s,

1:05:58and then the 18.1s will enable the Intelligence features.

1:06:02I'm not entirely clear, other than if you're a developer

1:06:06and you want to make sure that your app works on 18.0.

1:06:10Otherwise, you presumably will want to run 18.1

1:06:15because it's got the Apple Intelligence features in it.

1:06:18Unless there's something cataclysmically broken there. I don't know.

1:06:21But for now, yeah, we've got multiple beta paths going on here

1:06:25where there are now developer betas for these new versions,

1:06:29new versions that have Apple Intelligence features built in.

1:06:34So finally, people are getting their hands on,

1:06:37or be able to get their hands on it,

1:06:38if they go to the developer beta one of one of these versions,

1:06:42which you'll be able to choose from your little pop-up of which stream

1:06:46do you want to be on.

1:06:48And then there are some Apple Intelligence features in there.

1:06:53So does this mean that 18.0 will have zero Apple Intelligence features now?

1:07:00I think it does.

1:07:01Okay.

1:07:02So that seems to have, okay, it's changed from the reporting,

1:07:07and Mark Gurman did have a report about this over the weekend

1:07:10that he said this was going to happen.

1:07:12I mean, obviously it doesn't change anything from Apple's perspective

1:07:15because they were never clear.

1:07:17Yeah, I mean, we don't know about the timing.

1:07:20It may be that we'll get an 18.0 update early, right?

1:07:23That's one thing they could do,

1:07:24they haven't done before, but they could do,

1:07:26is ship the OS's late summer even, early fall.

1:07:31So they're out on other devices and they are preloaded on the new iPhones

1:07:35when they arrive.

1:07:36And it's just a stable set of generic 18.0's that run.

1:07:43And then, and I wonder if that's what they're doing,

1:07:47is saying, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to pull that forward.

1:07:49Oh, wow.

1:07:50And ship this stuff.

1:07:51I hadn't considered that.

1:07:52And then the point ones will come and we'll make a big deal about them.

1:07:57But maybe we should just get this out the door first.

1:07:59I don't know.

1:08:00Either that or these will be at the normal time.

1:08:03The new iPhone will ship, it won't have Apple intelligence enabled.

1:08:06They'll say it'll be later this month or whatever.

1:08:09And there'll be an 18.1 that follows behind it.

1:08:11I don't know.

1:08:12I do wonder though, if part of this,

1:08:14whether the public sees it in August or early September,

1:08:17I do wonder if they'll lock it and start putting it on those devices, right?

1:08:22Just as this is 18.0.

1:08:24Maybe nobody else will even see 18.0, who knows?

1:08:26Maybe they'll just put it on the new devices and wait

1:08:29and hope that 18.1 is ready.

1:08:31It's a mystery.

1:08:33We'll have to watch it, but it's messy for now, at least.

1:08:35It's a little bit messy.

1:08:37Also interesting, so the new top level setting called Apple intelligence and Siri.

1:08:42When you first click on it, what you're going to get is a thing that says,

1:08:45"Join the Apple intelligence wait list to reserve your spot

1:08:49and get ready to experience intelligence that understands your personal context."

1:08:53Reserve your spot on the wait list.

1:08:56Apple is a star up now.

1:08:58They're using growth hacking, and then we're going to share our numbers online.

1:09:03That's right.

1:09:05If you tweet our special URL, we'll put you on our wait list.

1:09:09This is an interesting suggestion of how they are trying to prepare to gate demand.

1:09:14If they have demand problems, they can just not let people on.

1:09:18I imagine this may continue through the summer and into the fall

1:09:21as these features roll out, that they're going to want to have the ability to say,

1:09:26"Oh, no, that's too many people. Our servers are dying,"

1:09:29and be like, "Let's pause the beta for a little bit

1:09:34and wait until we've got everything together."

1:09:38We'll have to watch how long the Apple intelligence wait list goes.

1:09:42Although what I've been told is that for the developer beta,

1:09:47developers should be granted access within a few hours.

1:09:51It can vary based on what time of day and the weekend and whatever,

1:09:54but it's not meant to be one of those things where you hurry up and download the beta,

1:09:58and then you have to wait a week for your wait list item to be approved.

1:10:02It's intended for this developer beta, at least, to be something that is granted fairly quickly.

1:10:07I hope that they're going to use the developer beta as a way to judge scale

1:10:12because I think it would kind of suck if Apple announced this

1:10:16and then everybody had to wait when it actually ships to the public

1:10:20because that is honestly, for me, a very strange thing for a company of Apple's size to be doing,

1:10:26but I guess the competitors do it too, but it is just weird to me.

1:10:31That is weird to me.

1:10:32Whether it stays in the long term or not, I think they are worried about,

1:10:38if it's just for the beta or even when it's initially available for everybody,

1:10:43I think they're worried about a spike in demand they can't handle that they did not properly account for.

1:10:49And so this allows them some small degree of control

1:10:54if they get in a problematic moment that they can be like, "Hold it."

1:10:58I guess it's like when Underscore talks about that phase releasing you can do in the App Store, right?

1:11:03That he doesn't want to release WidgetSmith to all WidgetSmith customers at once.

1:11:06Exactly.

1:11:07He wants to roll it out in case there's something he needs to adapt.

1:11:09I was going to say, it's a very similar thing, which is,

1:11:13I first had this when I had a TiVo back in the day.

1:11:16There were secret codes if you were in the TiVo forums where you could get the update,

1:11:21but what they did is what a lot of commercial, it's become sort of standard practice,

1:11:26especially for stuff that's more slow to update home stuff,

1:11:30is they update 1% of their list and see what happens.

1:11:36Why update everybody at once?

1:11:38Update a tiny portion and see what happens, and then go to 10% and see what happens.

1:11:44Because if it's a disaster, then you've not destroyed all of your customers' stuff.

1:11:48You've only destroyed a small random sample of them, which is not great, but it's better.

1:11:52So we're all going to get on the wait list. That'll be exciting.

1:11:57And when you get off the wait list, what you get are the writing tools,

1:12:02which come in the context menu.

1:12:04So where copy and paste is, there'll be a writing tools item,

1:12:07and it slides up from the bottom on the iPhone and iPad,

1:12:11a writing tool sheet that has all those, you know, summarize or make this more businesslike or, you know, whatever,

1:12:17check the grammar, all of that's in that sheet.

1:12:20There's a bunch of Siri stuff, so writing tool stuff.

1:12:24Siri stuff is seamlessly switching between voice and typing.

1:12:27So you can type a little and then talk a little and then type a little, and that will apparently work, which is wild.

1:12:32The new design is in there that people were trying to enable before.

1:12:36It's like it's in there, including activating type to Siri by double tapping on the bottom of the screen.

1:12:42That gesture's in there, and then you can type your,

1:12:44you're in a place where you're not supposed to yell at your phone.

1:12:47You can just type your query in there.

1:12:49All the product knowledge is in there.

1:12:50So they did this thing where their model has learned everything that's in Apple's documentation.

1:12:56So if you're like, how, yeah, exactly.

1:12:59So it's like, how do I do this thing?

1:13:01And it'll just bring you an answer from the knowledge search.

1:13:05And part of this is, this is the Siri that will allow you to sort of like,

1:13:11if you stumble while you're talking and say, no, no, no, I meant this,

1:13:14it follows along with that and it will be able to maintain some context across multiple statements.

1:13:21I really hope that that product knowledge stuff is good,

1:13:24because I would like to be able to rely on that for myself and also for other people,

1:13:29that I will be able to just teach people in my life that that's what you do to find something.

1:13:34Because there was a thing when we were trying to do the live show,

1:13:38when we were setting up for the live show, three people, including me,

1:13:43were trying to find the setting on macOS that would stop my screensaver from coming on

1:13:50when the Mac was on power.

1:13:53And it was actually in the lock screen part of system settings,

1:13:58which was not the place that I thought it would be in.

1:14:02I looked in screensaver, it was not there. I looked in battery, it was not there.

1:14:06That's where these things used to be.

1:14:08But it was in a new thing called lock screen,

1:14:10which isn't what I would have thought for the Mac,

1:14:14like the screensaver settings being in lock screen.

1:14:17I don't think that those two things are the same.

1:14:20But I would love to have been able to just bring up my assistant and just say,

1:14:25how do I disable my screensaver when on battery?

1:14:29And it'd tell me, just do that, but we'll see how good it is.

1:14:33I would love to never have to Google something

1:14:36and be taken to the Apple support forums ever again in my life.

1:14:39Yeah, no kidding, right?

1:14:41The fact is they make this great instructional content for their stuff.

1:14:45I think this is going to be,

1:14:47I'm sure that the people I know who work on this stuff

1:14:50are not necessarily thrilled with the idea that their work is now just grist for an AI model.

1:14:57At the same time, if it means that you can ask your phone how to do a thing

1:15:01and it just tells you, that is kind of the purpose.

1:15:04Imagine that.

1:15:05That is kind of the purpose of what they're working on,

1:15:08is to actually inform and help users.

1:15:10And maybe this is a better way to do that.

1:15:12So that's all in there.

1:15:15The reduce interruptions focus, which is the AI-driven focus mode,

1:15:21including an auto summary of the notifications on your lock screen.

1:15:25So it will summarize what's going on, but you're going to reduce interruptions.

1:15:29So that's there.

1:15:30Some of the new photos features, natural language search within photos

1:15:35and the ability to create a memory movie based on a text prompt are both in there.

1:15:39And summaries of audio transcription.

1:15:43So you can do audio transcriptions from things like recording a call

1:15:45or recording audio and notes from like a lecture or a meeting or whatever.

1:15:49And then the feature that will allow you to summarize that.

1:15:52So the transcription is a feature that's already in there.

1:15:55And now you will be able to apply a summary of like what happened in this.

1:15:58And so that's all in there.

1:16:02Mail features, priority messages is in there.

1:16:06The summaries in mail, where it summarizes your message

1:16:11instead of giving you the first two lines of it is supposedly in there.

1:16:13What about image stuff like image playgrounds?

1:16:15No, no, no, no, no.

1:16:17We'll get to that.

1:16:18So smart reply for mail is also in there.

1:16:20Summaries and messages and smart reply messages are in there.

1:16:25Quite a lot actually.

1:16:27So that's a lot.

1:16:28What's not in there?

1:16:29Image creation.

1:16:30Both image playground and genmoji are not in there.

1:16:33Clean up in photos, the background removal feature

1:16:35or background replacement feature not in there.

1:16:38Priority notifications AI stuff is not in there.

1:16:43Oh, so this is where it's like moving your notifications around

1:16:49and trying to surface the ones at the top.

1:16:51Yeah, I think that stuff's not in there.

1:16:53Is it summarizing notifications?

1:16:55I think it's just the focus mode that's doing that,

1:16:57but I'm not 100% on that.

1:16:59Okay, okay.

1:17:00No, no, summarizing notifications is in there

1:17:02and the reduce interruptions is in there.

1:17:04It's just the priority notifications isn't happening.

1:17:08In all the personal context, Siri stuff and the in-app actions,

1:17:12shortcuts kind of stuff, that's just not there.

1:17:14And obviously the chat GPT integration, I think previously was said

1:17:17was not gonna be there until later in the fall.

1:17:20And it's not in the beta either.

1:17:22So that's sort of where they are.

1:17:24It's an interesting mix of what's in and what's out,

1:17:27but there's actual stuff that's out.

1:17:29And we should just say the beta dropped

1:17:31as we were recording the show.

1:17:33We knew about it in advance, right?

1:17:35Like I had this all written up, but like we-

1:17:37Haven't used it.

1:17:38But we haven't used it, right?

1:17:40I literally got briefed on this and then we started upgrade

1:17:43and then the beta dropped while we were recording upgrade.

1:17:45So you can hear about it now 'cause it's out,

1:17:47but we don't have personal experience with it.

1:17:49That's gonna have to wait.

1:17:50But there's a lot in there.

1:17:52Are you gonna put 18.1 on any of your devices?

1:17:55Oh yeah, I'm gonna take my beta devices.

1:17:57At least one of my beta devices will go on 18.1 immediately.

1:18:00Yeah, for sure.

1:18:01I haven't put any of the beta's.

1:18:03I haven't put 18 on my phone yet.

1:18:06I was wondering if it would do it.

1:18:08I don't think I wanna put 18.1 on my iPhone

1:18:12because it will make moving to a new iPhone really complicated.

1:18:17Tricky, yeah.

1:18:18But I might put it on my iPad now and try this stuff out.

1:18:22I'll see what people say about it over the next few days.

1:18:26I'm being pretty restrained with the beta's this year.

1:18:29That's good, that's fine.

1:18:31Everybody gets to make their own decision.

1:18:33This is very peculiar, it's very strange.

1:18:35For a very limited set of people, the Apple intelligence era,

1:18:39get ready Mike, begins now.

1:18:41Yeah.

1:18:42Chills.

1:18:43Here's the thing though, here's the thing I wonder,

1:18:46what's gonna happen of these beta's now?

1:18:50Are we gonna get 18.0 and 18.1 every two weeks

1:18:53with the same features in it

1:18:54except one has the Apple intelligence on top

1:18:56or are they gonna be completely different tracks now?

1:18:59I gotta be honest, I asked them that

1:19:02and I did not get a satisfying answer.

1:19:04I didn't really didn't get an answer.

1:19:06And so I don't know,

1:19:07I'm surprised that they didn't have an answer ready to go.

1:19:10I think I would be surprised

1:19:13if they didn't move in lockstep from here on out,

1:19:16but I don't have a guarantee that that's the case.

1:19:20And I do worry a little bit

1:19:22that there's gonna be stuff locked down in 18.0

1:19:26that's not gonna be in 18.1 quite like at the,

1:19:30I hope that's not the case.

1:19:31I hope it's really just sort of like

1:19:33two builds of the same changes,

1:19:35but one of them has the AI stuff in and the other doesn't.

1:19:38Yeah.

1:19:39- I hope so, it's gonna be interesting.

1:19:42- Yeah, we'll watch it and see, but first taste

1:19:44and yeah, early days, the thing I would specify here is

1:19:48there was some talk in our discord about this

1:19:51and I think it's 100% true that

1:19:54what Apple is trying to do here is suggest

1:19:56this is a preview for developers and wink,

1:20:00everybody else who wants to go there,

1:20:03but what it is is not what they're gonna ship to customers.

1:20:07It is beta, it is early days.

1:20:10There are gonna be things that are weird about it,

1:20:12it's a beta, they know that people are gonna hop on this

1:20:14and they're gonna talk about everything

1:20:16that's going on with Apple intelligence.

1:20:17They're obviously really wary of that,

1:20:20but, and should be, right?

1:20:23But at the same time,

1:20:24I know we've talked about it in the past

1:20:26when we talk about me writing about betas and stuff,

1:20:29it's like they ship something to everybody

1:20:32and it's broken, you say Apple shipped a broken thing.

1:20:35- Yep.

1:20:36- If they ship a beta that has something broken,

1:20:39you say, hey, this thing is broken, I hope it's fixed.

1:20:44And that's the difference between something

1:20:47that's not shipping to customers

1:20:49and something that's shipping to customers.

1:20:50So there is a level,

1:20:51you can acknowledge things that are broken,

1:20:53but there is a level,

1:20:54I know the internet doesn't do nuance,

1:20:56but there is a level of judgment and outrage

1:20:59that should not happen this summer

1:21:01because it is in beta and because it's in 18.1,

1:21:05I would say that's another attempt by Apple to say,

1:21:08it's really in beta, like really in beta.

1:21:12So be gentle, I guess is what they're saying, be gentle.

1:21:15- It's time for some Ask Upgrade Questions.

1:21:21First one comes from Carlos, who says,

1:21:25"Against Jason's advice, I tried the Kobo Libra color

1:21:30and he was right, it's not good.

1:21:32My Kindle Oasis is dying and Amazon has discontinued it.

1:21:36Since Upgrade is the premier e-reader podcast,

1:21:40I wanted to ask, is there a nice Kobo or other e-ink reader

1:21:44in the same way the Oasis feels light but premium?"

1:21:47- It's tough.

1:21:49I have been meaning to write

1:21:51and have just not done it yet,

1:21:53a story about the sad state of e-readers

1:21:58because the latest Kobo updates made me so sad.

1:22:03I wrote a review of that Libra color.

1:22:06It's worse than the Libra 2's screen

1:22:09because it's using the color e-ink screen

1:22:11and the contrast isn't as good.

1:22:13I like Kobos in general,

1:22:14but the fact that they aren't selling

1:22:16their black and white one Libra anymore,

1:22:18they just aren't, they just sell the color one now,

1:22:20which means you get washed out,

1:22:23okay color that's not really relevant when you're reading,

1:22:25but every page that you read,

1:22:28the background's like a little grayer,

1:22:31the contrast is worse, it's not good.

1:22:33It still may be the one that I'd recommend,

1:22:36but it's a real regression and a disappointment.

1:22:39I would say the one I would look at

1:22:43is the one that Lauren uses,

1:22:45and it's a little pricier and it's a little bigger,

1:22:48but it's still really good, and that's the Kobo Sage.

1:22:51It's a little bit bigger,

1:22:53it's got a flush screen, it's got page turn buttons,

1:22:58it's an eight inch e-reader.

1:23:01So if size, if you're willing to go a little bit larger,

1:23:05it's really nice.

1:23:07So I think at this point,

1:23:09that's probably what I would recommend,

1:23:11but I wish, yeah, I'm really disappointed

1:23:16that Kobo is not keeping,

1:23:18it is like all in on this color thing,

1:23:20being, well, everybody loves color,

1:23:21and it's like maybe that color ink screen

1:23:25will improve over time.

1:23:27I mean, not the one that's in that model,

1:23:28but they'll improve that technology

1:23:30so that when you're not displaying color,

1:23:32it doesn't have that background dot pattern,

1:23:36which is basically a gray.

1:23:37When you look close, you realize it's kind of a dot pattern,

1:23:39but it just decreases contrast

1:23:41'cause what you want with text

1:23:43is you want your text and the background

1:23:44to have a high contrast.

1:23:46That's what makes a good reading experience.

1:23:48And what they did is they sacrificed contrast

1:23:50for color, but the color's not important enough

1:23:54to make that sacrifice.

1:23:56I'm sorry, and if people disagree, that's fine,

1:23:59but Kobo has decided that if you disagree too bad,

1:24:02you can't buy that product anymore.

1:24:04You can only buy the color ink version.

1:24:06So I am sorry to Lister Carlos,

1:24:10but that would be the one I'd recommend

1:24:12is maybe try the Sage.

1:24:15If you're willing to have a little bit larger e-rear,

1:24:18it's good, it's really good.

1:24:20- So the Libra 2 then, that one?

1:24:24- Libra 2 has discontinued.

1:24:25If you can get a used Libra 2 somewhere,

1:24:28the Libra color has replaced the Libra 2.

1:24:31- That is strange, isn't it?

1:24:33- So if you can get a Libra 2 used on eBay or whatever,

1:24:38go for it because that's what I'm still using.

1:24:42I bought the color and I'm back to the Libra 2

1:24:45and it's good, but that Sage is really good too.

1:24:48It's just a little bit larger than maybe you're used to,

1:24:51but otherwise it's got all the advantages

1:24:53and it's still using the black and white screen.

1:24:55For now, until they get a color screen that size

1:24:57and they discontinue it,

1:24:58but right now that would be what I would do.

1:25:01- And this may be a silly question,

1:25:04but I just want to ask it anyway.

1:25:06Can you read Amazon books on a Kobo?

1:25:09Is there like an Amazon app or anything?

1:25:11Like I don't know if this is an Android.

1:25:13- No, the way you work, if you've got an existing,

1:25:16there's a whole story here.

1:25:17If you've got an existing Kindle library

1:25:19and you have a Kindle, even if it's an older Kindle,

1:25:22in fact, especially if it's an older Kindle,

1:25:24first off, if you're going to a Kobo,

1:25:26don't get rid of your Kindle, keep it around.

1:25:28Two things you can do.

1:25:29One is you can have your old books on the Kindle

1:25:31and read those on the Kindle instead of the Kobo.

1:25:33But the other thing, this is a little secret.

1:25:37Amazon lets you download files, book files,

1:25:43for your registered Kindle to sideload it

1:25:47to the Kindle via USB.

1:25:50And this is because some people

1:25:51can't get their Kindle connected.

1:25:54There's a whole legacy of history here,

1:25:56but what it means is you can download that file.

1:25:59And if you download that file,

1:26:02if you look around the internet,

1:26:04you'll find that there's a plugin for Calibre,

1:26:06the ebook management app,

1:26:08that will take that file that you've downloaded

1:26:10and pull the DRM off of it,

1:26:12and then you can just put it on a Kobo.

1:26:13- You gotta find it,

1:26:14it fell off the back of a truck somewhere.

1:26:16- Well, I mean, you can just search for Calibre plugin,

1:26:20remove DRM from Kindle books, and you will find it.

1:26:23And you have to put in your Kindle serial number

1:26:27'cause it's all based on like,

1:26:28basically it's using the pathway that your Kindle uses.

1:26:32But I will say that continues to work for me,

1:26:36but you gotta have a Kindle.

1:26:37It's much more complicated if you don't have a Kindle

1:26:40and you've got Kindle books.

1:26:42But anyway, for me, that works reliably,

1:26:46that if I've got a Kindle book I wanna look at on a Kobo,

1:26:49or if there's like a special,

1:26:50it's very rarely the case that there's price disparity

1:26:52between Kindle and Kobo,

1:26:53but if there is, I can get it on the Kindle

1:26:55and then I just download it for my Kindle, which I have,

1:26:58and then drop in Calibre,

1:27:01and it will convert it from whatever Kindle format

1:27:03it's in, Mobi,

1:27:04and it will turn it into an EPUB designed for Kobo

1:27:08and sync it to my Kobo.

1:27:10So that's the pro tip if you wanna go there.

1:27:12But the other way you could do it is

1:27:14just keep your old Kindle around.

1:27:15They're small, just keep it around.

1:27:17And if you wanna, it's like revisiting an old book, right?

1:27:21You go get the old book off the shelf.

1:27:22So you could get the old e-reader off the shelf

1:27:24if you want for that old book.

1:27:26That's the other way to do it.

1:27:28- Jorgen writes in and says,

1:27:30"These days we make a lot of fuss about AI

1:27:32being able to sum up a large text,

1:27:35large text, just large text into a few sentences.

1:27:39If I recall correctly,

1:27:40this is something that System 7 or so

1:27:42could do back in the late 20th century.

1:27:45Does JSON have any information about this feature?"

1:27:48- Yeah, it was called vTwin.

1:27:52It was used in a feature called Apple EG,

1:27:55which was a search engine.

1:27:57You could basically,

1:27:58I think that it was a tech demo.

1:28:01They built a search engine for your contents.

1:28:04It's like a proto spotlight almost.

1:28:06And it did, so you could search your content.

1:28:11You could put it up as a search engine on your website

1:28:13if your website was served from a Mac,

1:28:15which some of us did back in the day.

1:28:17And it had a summary feature to it.

1:28:19So I think that's what Jorgen is talking about here.

1:28:22That was Mac user days for me.

1:28:26So we're talking like '96, '97 that Apple EG existed.

1:28:30And if you search for Apple EG, you can't find it.

1:28:33But if you search for vTwin,

1:28:35I found at least one document

1:28:38that's like a white paper about vTwin

1:28:42and how they built it,

1:28:45which is really adorable

1:28:46'cause it's like search engines from 1996.

1:28:50But it went basically nowhere,

1:28:53even though Apple has basically rebuilt it

1:28:55when they built Spotlight.

1:28:56They rebuilt their indexing engine.

1:28:58I don't know what it uses now

1:29:00and if it ever used vTwin or anything like that.

1:29:03- Reading this question

1:29:05and also with you just mentioning then about tech demos

1:29:10made me recall a conversation I was having

1:29:15over the weekend with some of our friends.

1:29:16And it was kind of about like these kinds of features

1:29:20that have been shown off multiple times,

1:29:24but they never actually catch on

1:29:26because they don't work well enough.

1:29:28And how I think large language models

1:29:30might be able to make them better.

1:29:31So stuff like this,

1:29:32and I was thinking about language translation.

1:29:34Like I've lost count of the amount of companies

1:29:37that have shown off as part of a new device

1:29:40or a new operating system,

1:29:41how good their live translation is,

1:29:44but it never seems to really catch on,

1:29:47obviously in a way

1:29:48because companies keep reintroducing live translation

1:29:51as a thing that they've now made.

1:29:52And I wonder if things like large language models

1:29:55might help here, I don't know,

1:29:57but this is kind of the point that I'm driving at

1:30:00is like there are certain types of features

1:30:03that are always so intriguing that people will keep,

1:30:06like companies would keep trying to do them

1:30:07over and over and over,

1:30:09but they may never actually really work the way you want.

1:30:12And that's what I was thinking about with this,

1:30:14like tech summaries,

1:30:15like we're still doing the same thing

1:30:16we've been doing for 20 or 30 years

1:30:18because it would be a great thing if it existed.

1:30:20It just doesn't work, has not yet worked well enough.

1:30:25- That's an interesting thought.

1:30:26- Yeah.

1:30:27- And B asks, you recently spoke about the possibility

1:30:31that the Apple intelligence model

1:30:33could be using around three gigabytes of memory.

1:30:36It's a pretty large amount to be taken up on a Mac

1:30:39that could only have eight gigabytes of RAM.

1:30:42Do you think this could be the moment

1:30:43that Apple bumps up the base Mac models?

1:30:47- No.

1:30:48- I think, okay, I was gonna say,

1:30:50I think in general,

1:30:51we could be in the era of just more RAM in devices,

1:30:55but you can't use it all.

1:30:57- Could be, right.

1:30:58The idea that you increase the RAM,

1:30:59but everybody knows that there's a big chunk of it

1:31:01that's gonna be taken up by Apple intelligence.

1:31:03- Yeah, like we go from eight to 12,

1:31:05but really it's the same as it was previously

1:31:07because the intelligence models are just hoarding it.

1:31:11- Yeah.

1:31:12Never, never bet on Apple increasing the bases,

1:31:16although that would be nice.

1:31:19I do wonder if the next set of chips will have a,

1:31:24they'll do the three RAM chip design

1:31:28where they can bump it all,

1:31:29but they only bump it to 12, not 16.

1:31:32Something like that and do, I mean, we'll see.

1:31:36We'll see where they go with it.

1:31:37It would be an appropriate moment for Apple to do it

1:31:41because they want the base experience

1:31:43of Apple intelligence to be decent,

1:31:45but we'll see what they think if they think that it doesn't,

1:31:50if that eight is good enough,

1:31:52or if they're like, all right,

1:31:54this is an opportunity to take it to 12 or 16 as the base,

1:31:57or whether they say it's okay at eight

1:31:59and then we'll sell RAM upgrades.

1:32:01- Yeah.

1:32:02If you would like to send us in a question of your own,

1:32:05please go to upgradefeedback.com

1:32:08where you can also send in your feedback of the show

1:32:11and your follow-up.

1:32:12If you wanna check out Jason's work,

1:32:13go to sixcolors.com and you can hear his podcasts

1:32:17on the incomparable.com and here on Relay.

1:32:19You can listen to my shows here

1:32:21and check out my work at cortexbrand.com.

1:32:24You can find us online.

1:32:25Jason is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L,

1:32:29and I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

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1:32:37Thanks to our members who support us each and every week

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1:32:43Ladder, Delete Me, and Fitbot.

1:32:46But most of all, thank you for listening.

1:32:48Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

1:32:51- Goodbye, Mike Hurley.

1:32:53(upbeat music)

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1:33:08Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test.