529: Grind Down That Silicon

0:00:00[Music]

0:00:08From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 529 for September 16th 2024, a monumental day that we'll get to shortly.

0:00:19This episode is brought to you by Fitbod, DeleteMe and Backblaze.

0:00:23My name is Mike Hurley and I have the absolute joy and pleasure of being joined by my friend, Jason Snow. Hi, Jason.

0:00:31It is delightful to be here with you today, Mike.

0:00:35We're celebrating, we'll talk about this later on in the show.

0:00:38We are.

0:00:38But literally today is the 10 year anniversary to the day of Upgrade, episode 1.

0:00:47Mm-hmm.

0:00:48Which is, uh...

0:00:49Yep.

0:00:50It's cool, man.

0:00:51That's cool.

0:00:52So I have a Snortalk question to start in possibly the only way that could be acceptable, which comes from TF who wants to know,

0:00:59Jason, what is the weather like today?

0:01:01At least one person cares.

0:01:05Currently, as we record, 59 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy and foggy, we had a change in the weather,

0:01:14TF over the weekend and our usual best weather of the year, September, October pattern has been disrupted.

0:01:23And we've gone into a weird kind of a fog cooler foggy mode, which is okay.

0:01:28I mean, I do enjoy those warm late September days, but it's a cool and foggy.

0:01:34We went to the baseball game yesterday.

0:01:35You know this, Mike, you're San Francisco Giants.

0:01:39Let's go.

0:01:39And the last game we went to, it was sunny and hot.

0:01:46It was still sunny for half the game and then the high clouds came in.

0:01:50But having it be a little cooler and there being some wind was good because we were not as miserably hot.

0:01:56They built that stadium specifically to block the wind.

0:02:00And so like the flags were whipping and we had almost no wind where we were sitting, which is really nice.

0:02:05But that does make it hot on a hot sunny day.

0:02:09So yeah, anyway, windy foggy kind of loop kind of weird.

0:02:12So thank you, TF.

0:02:13Thanks for asking.

0:02:14Now, oh, update real time follow up.

0:02:17Okay, 60 degrees.

0:02:18We broke 60 everybody.

0:02:20That's good.

0:02:20I'm happy to have gotten that real time update.

0:02:22Let me tell you, I'm in Memphis, Tennessee.

0:02:25Weather is bananas over here, Jason.

0:02:27Oh, yeah?

0:02:28Hot and humid?

0:02:29So much rain, so much rain.

0:02:31Rain.

0:02:32It is raining like, well yesterday it was raining like mad.

0:02:36It was very...

0:02:37Remember that rain?

0:02:38Was it like the rain when we came back from the baseball game that one time?

0:02:41Nearly as bad as that.

0:02:42I maintain the rain.

0:02:43That was biblical.

0:02:44That rain time, one time when we were at baseball, me, you and Steven is the worst rain I have ever seen.

0:02:50Ever.

0:02:50Where it was raining so hard that the rain was bouncing off the ground.

0:02:56Yeah, hitting you from all angles.

0:02:58Yeah, it was up there.

0:03:00When I was a kid, we took a trip to Washington, DC and we were in the Smithsonian, I want to say.

0:03:06We were in the cafeteria, but what I remember is there weren't very many people there.

0:03:11There was a question about whether we should go back to where we were staying because there was a tornado warning.

0:03:16And I also remember that one of the glass panels in the windows of the cafeteria at the Smithsonian was broken and water was just pouring in.

0:03:27And I thought, is this where we die right here?

0:03:30Is this the end of the world?

0:03:32Will the tornado come and get us?

0:03:34As a California kid, I don't know anything about tornadoes anyway.

0:03:37But that Memphis, yeah, that was probably even worse than that.

0:03:40And it's cold.

0:03:41It was like cold yesterday too.

0:03:43Cold, raining.

0:03:44Really?

0:03:45Yeah, I think Steven was saying it's like the tail end of a hurricane.

0:03:49Like there is a hurricane.

0:03:50Oh yeah, there is that hurricane.

0:03:51Memphis is just getting the rain of it all.

0:03:54Well, good news.

0:03:57For the rest of the week, and I will be joining you in Memphis soon.

0:04:00For the rest of the week, this is now the Memphis local weather segment, just letting everybody know.

0:04:05Highs in the mid to upper 80s.

0:04:09So it's going to warm up and all that moisture that's down in the ground is going to come out and make everything nice and humid.

0:04:17So get ready for that one.

0:04:18Yummy.

0:04:20It's going to be like, temperature of like 80 feels like of 150.

0:04:26Something like that.

0:04:28Hope your raincoat has a raincoat.

0:04:30Yeah.

0:04:31If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question for us to open a future episode of the show, please go to upgradefeedback.com.

0:04:41I am in Memphis right now because this Friday, September 20th at 12 p.m. Eastern time to 12 a.m. Eastern time at youtube.com/atrelayfm

0:04:54will be the sixth annual podcastathon for St. Jude from the St. Jude campus.

0:05:01We're doing it on YouTube this year, which is going to be great because you can rewind the video if you want to.

0:05:06Like I love that about YouTube live streaming compared to Twitch and then it will be on our YouTube channel forever.

0:05:12So there's a link in the show notes which you can go to to actually you can like put a reminder on YouTube, but you can also just watch it straight there.

0:05:20Make sure you mark your calendars.

0:05:22Jason's going to be here, Casey of this is going to be here, Kathy Campbell's going to be here.

0:05:26We're going to have an incredible time raising money for the kids of St. Jude bigger and better than ever.

0:05:31More hosts and hijinks than ever.

0:05:33It's childhood cancer awareness month.

0:05:35So that is why we're going to be broadcasting the sixth annual podcastathon for the kids of St. Jude for the Relay for St. Jude campaign.

0:05:44And talking about campus.

0:05:47We got to see this happening over the last few years and last year in October, St. Jude welcomed the first patients and families to its newest housing facility, the Domino's Village.

0:05:58It's one of four housing facilities that are available to St. Jude patients because St. Jude has treated patients from across the United States and around the world, which makes housing for patients and their families a critical need.

0:06:11So St. Jude provides free housing to any patient who needs treatment requiring an overnight stay and whose family must travel 35 miles or more to the campus.

0:06:21And now they have one more option when they need housing.

0:06:24The Domino's Village is six stories tall with more than 307,000 square feet and it features 140 fully furnished apartments.

0:06:32Patients and their families that are staying in the Domino's Village can spend quality time together in places like the Arts and Cross room, the community kitchen and outdoor activity space that has a large LED movie screen for movie nights.

0:06:44There's also places like a toddler room, a beach themed play space designed just for the little ones with a walk in lighthouse and colourful mural with sea creatures, sailboats and beach umbrellas.

0:06:54Plus they have a medical clinic with three exam rooms where patients can get medicine or preclinical work before a procedure to the hospital.

0:07:02This is another thing in the big stack of things for what makes St. Jude special to me.

0:07:07Because they understand that families need to feel like families and kids need to feel like kids even though they're going through this horrible traumatic thing of having cancer treatment or treatment for other life-threatening diseases.

0:07:21They make sure to put the money that they are given in the donations to good use like this. That yes it goes to treatment for cancer, yes it goes to research for more treatments but it also goes to making the lives of these kids affected by one of the worst things that could happen to a human to make their lives that little bit better while they're receiving their treatment.

0:07:42The Relay community has shown so much generosity over the last 5 years and 6 podcastathons and we would love support again this year to support the life saving mission of St. Jude.

0:07:55Please go to stjude.org/relay where you can make a donation today and there are some incredible awesome rewards that you can redeem if you do.

0:08:03Plus you can also find out about employee matching and how to set up a fundraising campaign of your own where there are even more fantastic incentives available.

0:08:11Don't forget the podcastathon will be on Friday September 20th from 12pm eastern on the Relay YouTube channel.

0:08:18When we rally for a common cause we become more than a community, we become beacons of hope for all.

0:08:23That's why we're asking you all to join Relay and St. Jude this September for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

0:08:29Together we can help cure childhood cancer so go to stjude.org/relay to donate or create your campaign today.

0:08:37While me and Stephen may be competing for the title of co-founder champion this month, we're all united when it comes to what matters most.

0:08:44Finding cures and saving children. One last time that is stjude.org/relay.

0:08:49Be a beacon people. That's what Ted Lasso would probably say.

0:08:52He would say that. Be a beacon.

0:08:54Their hope, right? This is what they are. St. Jude's hope.

0:09:00I'm in the dark but there's a beacon over there.

0:09:02Very rarely is there a sinister beacon.

0:09:05That sounds like a siren.

0:09:10That's not a beacon.

0:09:12That's a good point.

0:09:13That is a really good point.

0:09:15Beacons are hope. Beacons are shining light through the darkness. It's a good metaphor I think.

0:09:18So be a beacon people, Ted Lasso might say.

0:09:21And Jason would say.

0:09:23I would say. If I were more homey like Ted Lasso I would.

0:09:28Would you like to do some follow up?

0:09:30Of course. Just going to say it here.

0:09:36One of the things I look forward to the most in doing Upgrade when we started was that I had never done a podcast that I was on every week so that we could have a continuity where there was follow up.

0:09:52Because The Incomparable is not like that and I was not on every Macworld podcast.

0:09:57They were all just kind of like mix and match and Upgrade I was very excited.

0:10:01And Clockwise didn't have a format that could have follow up.

0:10:04So that was one of the things I was most excited by about doing Upgrade was the existence of follow up and the ability to have an ongoing story and back and forth with listeners.

0:10:14So it's great.

0:10:15So I'll swallow a little bit of this now but later on we've got some questions from listeners about the show and its history and Six Colors and you know these 10 years we've shared together.

0:10:22But one of the questions was about what's changed over the show's history.

0:10:27This is something that changed because in the beginning of Upgrade you were so excited for follow up we did way too much of it.

0:10:34I see. Interesting.

0:10:38There was much too much follow up and I think we kind of scaled that back over time because we were spending a significant portion of the show just talking about the previous episodes.

0:10:47Which I know it works for some.

0:10:49It works for some.

0:10:50It works for some. I did have a moment where I, you know, okay let's just be real here.

0:10:57There are moments where I feel like I'm almost at the end of an episode of ATP and they're still doing Ask ATP.

0:11:03I'm like are there segments in this podcast or is it all Q&A now?

0:11:08#AskUpgrade by the way.

0:11:10I get it.

0:11:13I get it that there is a comfort but also you don't want to do too much of it.

0:11:18This came in from an anonymous listener via the feedback form.

0:11:22In the draft episode you mentioned how annoying it is that the A-series chips don't line up with the phonename but it's even worse internally at Apple.

0:11:31The iPhone 15 Pro shipped with the A17 whose internal project identifier is H16P.

0:11:38H16P reuses IP from H15G which is the M3.

0:11:43In my organization we primarily develop for the G variant which is M-series chips and inherit that design for other chips.

0:11:50So when figuring out which chip is in each product we have to consider H15, H16, A17 and iPhone 15.

0:11:58It is very difficult to keep straight.

0:12:00And just keeping, yeah keeping one A17 is H16.

0:12:07Yep.

0:12:08Which is based on an H15.

0:12:10Which is the M3.

0:12:11I'll point out it's also running iOS 18.

0:12:15I recommend that people inside Apple begin constructing if they haven't already a bingo game.

0:12:26Okay.

0:12:27Where you have various letters and numbers on a bingo sheet and see if you can connect them all to various products because that's what this sounds like.

0:12:35I've got H16 and M3 and A17 and I15 and yeah.

0:12:43That's a bingo.

0:12:44It's wild.

0:12:45That's wild.

0:12:46You know what?

0:12:47Internal is internal.

0:12:48I get it.

0:12:49I find it weird that Apple hasn't synced this stuff up externally because there's confusion in communication to customers I think when you're getting 18 on your 16.

0:13:01It's like why?

0:13:03Why am I?

0:13:04But it's got a 17 in it.

0:13:05I know what?

0:13:06Huh?

0:13:07Hmm.

0:13:08Johnny Serugy confirmed in an interview with YouTuber Giga1 that the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro have 8GB of RAM.

0:13:17He spoke about it very specifically, very openly and talking about why they needed to move to 8GB, what it enables for Apple intelligence and then all of the other benefits that may come from having this amount of RAM in an iPhone.

0:13:33So they did it.

0:13:34They said it.

0:13:35They've actually said it.

0:13:36Yeah.

0:13:37This doesn't -- I think what's interesting in thinking about our draft versus, for example, the Ricky's on connected and other games like that is that we have very specifically limited ourselves to the event video.

0:13:51And that leads to some interesting calculations and calibrations.

0:13:54For example, both of us missed on the announcement of the OS release date, which is today.

0:14:00But they didn't mention it.

0:14:01They just put it out in a press release.

0:14:02And I think that's part of the strategy is like what does Apple deem worthy of mentioning in the video?

0:14:07And honestly, my opinion is that there are details that Apple used to care about, not just -- I know people are like, oh, well, you know, Apple doesn't -- omitted a bunch of stuff from this video.

0:14:20We noticed that.

0:14:21I think that Apple is recalibrating as well for the fact that they're doing this video and you know what, that watch the film, watch the event, all that stuff like stays on their website for a long time.

0:14:33I think they viewed the live event as more of a press download.

0:14:38And now they are more and more leaning into the film as being even higher kind of level.

0:14:45And like the day the OS release comes out is not at that level.

0:14:51They're like that's in the press release.

0:14:52And I think we're going to see more of this actually where these details are going to end up leaking out later.

0:14:58That they're just going to say, look, obviously there needs to be more -- a higher memory environment and more memory bandwidth.

0:15:05And that might be as detailed as they get.

0:15:07And then sure, there'll be an executive interview the same day, the next day, there'll be a press release where they'll actually release stuff that is beyond, like way beyond what's in the video.

0:15:17Because I think they're -- my observation anyway is that I feel like the videos are getting less specific intentionally because they're on a path toward being more of a commercial than they've ever been.

0:15:32And I think that wasn't the case when they were on stage where it was sort of -- I think mentally they were still like the press is here.

0:15:39And we're dealing with the press and we're going to give them details.

0:15:42And oh yes, the world is also watching.

0:15:44And I think now they flipped all the way over to we may invite the press or not, but this video is for the world and we don't need to get to that level of detail.

0:15:54The obvious example is at the end of the video they don't say, "Hey, if you're watching this in the Steve Jobs theater, go back at the end and there'll be products out the back."

0:16:03Of course not. They're not going to craft it like that.

0:16:05So I think this is in line with that where Johnny Ceruggi is happy to say that they have 8 gigs of RAM, but it's not going to be in the video.

0:16:12It's not needed.

0:16:13Well, because this is like similarly now they have the opportunity to get that information out in different ways.

0:16:18So Apple want the world to know that the phones have 8 gigabytes of RAM in them, but didn't deem that worthy of taking time in the big event commercial.

0:16:29But they know they can get that information out to people so they'll just give it out through interviews like this.

0:16:35Right. I mean, there's the stuff you dump in a press release, there's the stuff you put on the website, and there's the stuff that you hold as a tidbit that you know will get reported.

0:16:44And then you drop that in an interview. And that's all part of the strategy.

0:16:50It's just a different strategy maybe and maybe a more sophisticated one than the old one was.

0:16:56So to continue with some bits and bobs that have happened since the event last week.

0:17:01To comply with EE regulation, the batteries on the iPhone 16 line have apparently been specifically designed to be easier to replace.

0:17:09This was a thing in a press release.

0:17:10I look forward to the tear downs for this to understand how.

0:17:15But I did see today something that I guess is funny. I think unrelated really, but it's just a funny contrast to this.

0:17:21That the Pro phones, the battery replacement has become 20% more expensive.

0:17:26But I don't think these are separate things in my mind.

0:17:30I don't think that the ease of the battery replacement is what dictates the cost of the battery replacement.

0:17:40Right. That may be true. Interesting. Yeah. Tear downs are going to tell us a whole lot, right?

0:17:45Tear downs are also going to reveal the difference in the chips, right?

0:17:48Because there's this initial thought that because the GPUs were one different between the Pro phone and the non-Pro phone that that meant it was a binned chip.

0:17:55But there are suggestions that based on how you read the specific text of what was said in the event, that they may be describing in the Pro chips the cores from the M4.

0:18:07But they didn't describe the non-Pro chip that way.

0:18:11And there's a question if maybe the non-Pro chip is a different chip generation even though it's on the new process.

0:18:21Well, M3 was on the old process and my understanding is you had to re-architect that.

0:18:25But maybe it's using some cores out of that or it's out of some parts of the M2.

0:18:29We just don't know.

0:18:31And that's the thing that somebody's going to grind down that silicon and try to see what's in there.

0:18:36And that's all cool. That's the next little one.

0:18:38It's funny because Apple knows people are going to do this.

0:18:43And Apple could eliminate all doubt by just disclosing all of this in interviews and things.

0:18:48But this is how the game is played.

0:18:50Some of this stuff they're like, "Look, if you want to do it, you can speculate. We're not going to talk about it."

0:18:54And that's just how it goes. So I look forward to it too.

0:18:58The iPhone 16 Pro features a new Qualcomm modem that should see an increase of 5G download speeds of around 25% over the 15.

0:19:08Now, I think this is interesting.

0:19:10Gotta hand it to Qualcomm. What a great partner.

0:19:12Well, this is why it's funny to me.

0:19:14Like, Qualcomm just purposely making it harder for Apple to make their own modems by making them better and better and better.

0:19:21Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:24Sucks.

0:19:25It's like, "Oh, good news, iPhone people. The Qualcomm modems are even better. Your 5G is even faster."

0:19:30All it does is raise the bar. I mean, Qualcomm knows it, right?

0:19:33All it does is raise the bar for Apple about what Apple has to do if they're going to make their own modems and go away from Qualcomm.

0:19:38Mm-hmm.

0:19:39I think the truth is that Apple doesn't have to go away from Qualcomm. It just wants to.

0:19:46And it doesn't have to go away everywhere, right?

0:19:48Like, it's possible that the rumor that they're going to do this in the iPhone SE and maybe in some iPads, you're trying it out.

0:19:57Let's see how it goes.

0:19:59Either you're confident that the iPhone 17 is going to have better 5G even though Qualcomm's raising the bar.

0:20:14Or you could always say, "Hmm, okay. We're going to wait another year or something like that."

0:20:18Who knows? I don't know what all the different benefits are for Apple.

0:20:21But in the meantime, Qualcomm, since this is one of their key things that they do, is 5G modems. Good for them.

0:20:30This sounds like it's a faster modem in the Pro models of iPhone.

0:20:35Yeah.

0:20:36And 24% faster is pretty impressive.

0:20:41I'm really intrigued to see what that translates to. But great, right? Like, if you could just make it faster just by putting a new modem in it, like, fantastic.

0:20:55But I guess as well, you've kind of got to have the speed available to you in your plans or whatever.

0:20:59But nevertheless, it's still a cool thing to have.

0:21:01Sure.

0:21:02The FDA has already approved the AirPods Pro as a hearing aid in the US.

0:21:06So that was fast.

0:21:08So we can assume that they'll probably be ready to go as soon as iOS 18 drops, provided Apple is expecting that and it's in there.

0:21:16Yeah. And this just in, Mike. This just in. They also approved the sleep apnea.

0:21:24Oh, wow. Wow, okay. That's pretty cool.

0:21:29They did that today.

0:21:31Man, the FDA is like, they're on it.

0:21:34Yeah. And Apple, I don't know whether this means Apple's like, "FDI, do what we say." Or whether it's more like, "Can you hold off? We don't have a final thing. Now, okay, now we're ready.

0:21:44Now we're ready to seek approval." But they knew, like Apple last week was so confident about, "These will be approved." Right?

0:21:51But the timing is interesting that they've gotten it to go just as they're launching it.

0:21:57And the question is, will this require a software update or is there some sort of like secret switch that can get flipped when you're in a region that's got an authorization, which would be a cool way of doing it?

0:22:09This reminds me of, do you remember like way back in the day when Apple had to work with, was it the FCC?

0:22:18And they ended up creating a new process for submitting things secretly, which wasn't a thing that they had.

0:22:26Right. Because that was the story when the original iPhone came out, is that one of the reasons they announced it way before they shipped it is that they had to go through a public FCC process to get the radios verified.

0:22:35And so the iPhone was going to be leaked by the FCC if they did that. And so the story is that they did it early and then sought FCC approval.

0:22:48And yeah, not great, not ideal, but you're working with a public agency, but at the same time, the public agency knows that industry does not necessarily want all of their stuff to be disclosed by the public.

0:23:01So until it's like, until the disclosure time happens.

0:23:05So I'm sure that there's something going on here, whether some of our listeners who are in government could probably tell this, whether this is a wink, wink, nudge, nudge kind of situation, or if there's literally a process where the company says we're seeking approval, but we don't have, we're not ready to ship the product yet.

0:23:22So can we hold off and you can release your final evaluation when we're ready to ship? Is that official or is that more like an understanding between these groups? I don't know.

0:23:34Cool though. I hope that isn't too long until I get some of these features in the UK, but I'm not necessarily holding out hope for it, especially with the, I think it was sleep apnea that they, I think one of the two, it was the hearing aids where they didn't even mention the UK, but hopefully it will get done here too.

0:23:54An Apple has shared an image of Wired that was created in image playgrounds. Apple is calling this the first public image that has been seen outside of Apple's original demos.

0:24:06And it is supposed to represent Craig Federighi's dog celebrating a birthday.

0:24:11I would say like, it's the best one of these images I've seen from them, but I still, I still like, but why though, you know, like congratulations, I guess, but why?

0:24:27It's also very funny that Wired put this big thing across the image that says AI generated image, which is in line with their policies. So it's just funny to see that image, this image going around the web with just that text over the top of it.

0:24:42But that's pretty smart from Wired.

0:24:45So I mean, my thoughts immediately were, I guess Apple's still trying to, you know, still trying to make this happen where I thought like maybe they would back off on this and instead they're kind of like pushing forward on it and saying, see, it's fun.

0:24:58It's what I said back in June, right? It's fun with your phone. It's fun.

0:25:03And, but they're still trying to make it happen, which I guess means technically they're still trying to make Craig Federighi's AI generated dog fetch happen.

0:25:13That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

0:25:15I don't know.

0:25:16You should be happy with that.

0:25:17That's the best I look. These are the jokes folks. Anyway, yeah, I, it's, it's fine.

0:25:24I mean, it looks like AI generated pictures.

0:25:27It's again, my, my feelings about this are complicated because I don't, you know, I don't really like the look, but I also appreciate the fact that there are scenarios in which

0:25:39it could be used for fun and it's just like low stakes. Nobody's losing their jobs.

0:25:47It's literally like, it's fun versus like, if you put it and it's in a text message, right?

0:25:55Like you put in a keynote presentation when you might otherwise have needed a, an image library subscription that is for a company that is paying photographers or whatever.

0:26:07Like it starts to get weird when you do that.

0:26:10But which is why I kind of like the AI emoji better because it feels much more emojis are constrained and in terms of their language, but also in terms of what is an emoji.

0:26:24And so you're kind of creating images that look like emoji design, Apple's own art emoji design that kind of, I feel better about that.

0:26:34But you know, this is what Apple, I don't even know if this is what Apple thinks people want.

0:26:40I think this is what Apple is afraid people want and that will be used against them by their competitors.

0:26:49And so, you know, I watch football over the weekend and Google's got lots of pixel ads.

0:26:54I don't know. Now you're in America. You may see more of these and maybe, maybe notice them and find them interesting.

0:26:59But like they are pushing circle around something to search it on AI, which is clearly Apple's thing with the camera control is, is going to be an answer to that.

0:27:10And like this is the, this is why I think Apple really is going so deep down in this embrace of AI.

0:27:19I think it's not that Apple is convinced that people want it.

0:27:22I think Apple is afraid that people will want it and that it will be used against them by their competitors.

0:27:28And so I think there's a scenario. I don't know what you think about this, but I think there's a scenario where a year or two on, we realized that 90%, I mean, not a hundred percent, but like 90%, 80% of these AI features are a dog.

0:27:42No offense to Craig Federighi's dog and nobody wants them and they're pointless and why.

0:27:47And then there are a few that are really good and then they're like, Oh, this is what people want, but we're not at that state.

0:27:51Now we're at the stage now where it's like, what can we do with AI? Let's shovel it out there.

0:27:56And if you're Apple, you're like, Ooh, I really don't want to do that, but we're going to get killed.

0:28:00If this stuff is popular because we're so far behind years away, we better do it.

0:28:05And we'll see, we'll see if offering, because offering it to make images of a dog at a birthday party or your mom as a superhero to the public is one thing, but like, is this just Memoji?

0:28:19Is this just Slofies?

0:28:21I mean, right? Like you can push it, but it doesn't mean anybody wants it.

0:28:24So we'll see.

0:28:26Genmoji I could see. Genmoji I think I could see.

0:28:30Genmoji is more interesting.

0:28:31Yeah.

0:28:32And I'm going to, I'm going to counter something that I think is probably in the heads of some listeners right now, which is, yeah, but so many people are already using AI generated images, using AI chatbots and stuff.

0:28:40It's like, I don't believe that the people who are tinkering around with AI chatbots are representative of the entire human population.

0:28:48I don't believe it.

0:28:49They're different people.

0:28:50It doesn't mean that the general human population won't also like generating images like that.

0:28:54They might, but the people who are tinkering around with chatbots are computer nerds.

0:28:59I'm sorry.

0:29:00Even if they don't know it, they are.

0:29:02Anybody who's like, I will talk to a chatbot now.

0:29:04I just don't think that represents the vast majority of the much more low tech, you know, smartphone using populace.

0:29:14So I don't think we know, and maybe they will love it.

0:29:17Maybe they will.

0:29:19I just, but, but you know, these companies have tried other stuff that seemed fun.

0:29:24Apples, when I mentioned Memoji and Slofies, those were both, hey, fun with your phone, yay kind of features, and they went nowhere.

0:29:34So we'll see.

0:29:36Yeah, we'll see.

0:29:37This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Fitbud.

0:29:43If you're looking to change your fitness level, getting started can be pretty complicated or it can be daunting.

0:29:48And that's why I'm pleased to let you know that Fitbud is an easy, affordable, and approachable way to build a fitness plan that is made just for you.

0:29:55Fitbud understands that everybody has their own path with personal fitness, which is why they use data to make sure they customize everything to suit you perfectly.

0:30:04Fitbud adapts as you improve to make sure that every workout is challenging and interesting while pushing you to make the progress you're looking for.

0:30:11Superior results are achieved when a workout program is tailored to your unique body, experience, environment, and goals, and these are all stored in your Fitbud gym profile.

0:30:20Fitbud tracks your muscle recovery so you can avoid burnout and keep up your momentum, and it builds your best possible workout by combining AI with exercise science.

0:30:29They have analyzed billions of data points and they have all been fine-tuned by certified personal trainers.

0:30:34One of the things I really love about Fitbud is that when I'm presented with a new exercise, I get instructions on how to complete it, but also videos.

0:30:42These are shot from multiple angles so I can be absolutely sure that this new exercise that I'm learning, I'm going to be doing it correctly.

0:30:49And this is again one of the things that makes me confident and it's built up my confidence with exercise because I know that Fitbud has got my back.

0:30:56Your muscles improve and they work in concert with your entire musculoskeletal system. Overworking some muscles or underworking others can negatively impact your results, so Fitbud will track your muscle fatigue and recovery to design a well-balanced workout routine.

0:31:10This also means you won't be getting bored as the app mixes up your workouts with new exercises, rep schemes, supersets, and circuits.

0:31:17The app is fantastic and easy to use, you can stay informed with Fitbuds progress tracking charts, weekly reports and sharing cards, and it integrates with your Apple Watch, Wear OS Smartwatch and other apps like Strava, Fitbit and Apple Health.

0:31:30Personalized training of this quality can be expensive. Fitbud is only $12.99 a month or $79.99 a year, but you can get 25% off your membership by signing up today at fitbud.me/upgrade

0:31:42So go now and get your customized fitness plan at fitbud.me/upgrade, that is fitbud.me/upgrade for 25% off your membership. Our thanks to Fitbud for their support of this show and Relay.

0:31:55So today, let's do the B-Tails! It's the B-Tails because it's new OS day around here, so it's less, as we're recording right now I think they're still in beta because they're not available, but they will be available by the time this episode comes out.

0:32:15And it's okay because the point ones are also still in beta and will remain in beta until they release next month, right?

0:32:21Yes, very good point. There's always more betas. And this is probably a historical day because today iOS 18, iPad OS 18, WatchOS 11, macOS Sequoia and VisionOS 2 are released.

0:32:33This is probably the most released from Apple ever, like the most operating systems in a day because we now have VisionOS in the fray.

0:32:44What reviews have you written this year? I have a macOS review, an iPad OS adjunct to Dan Morin's iOS review.

0:32:56I have a piece that's going up later about my feelings about the new changes to the Photos app, and then Dan's got his iOS 18 piece.

0:33:04I want to write something about the watch, I haven't gotten there yet, and it may be in conjunction with the actual new watch as well. And I need to write more about VisionOS, although I already wrote about when that VisionOS 2 developer beta came out.

0:33:18And it's great, I don't know, there's nobody who is using a Vision Pro who should not be on VisionOS 2, bottom line. Just do it.

0:33:26It's absolutely the right version of it. What was it like to write the macOS review this year? I know that I've been talking to John Voorhees about his, and it seems like a bit of a struggle, to be honest.

0:33:40So one of the challenges is Apple Intelligence is hanging over everything. It's true of all of these reviews. It's just hanging out there. The main event is not here.

0:33:56This release is like a bunch of the side stuff, but there's this thing that Apple has leaned on as the most impressive thing that they're doing, and it's not there. Which is weird.

0:34:11So that's a weird feeling. And I would say also, yes, in the beta process, a lot of features were just sort of being added as they went and being changed as they went. I felt like there was a lot of stuff that was way more movable this summer than it has been in the past.

0:34:29And that can be a challenge as well. For the last few years, the way I've written my review is I write a public beta story when the public beta comes out. So that gives me a few weeks after they announce to spend time with it and then write a story about the public beta.

0:34:45But the public beta, I'm not being judgmental about it. It's a public beta. It's early days. They've got the summer to fix things. That's why it's a beta. And so I will make observations about, "Huh, this thing is missing. This thing doesn't work right. I don't know about this thing yet."

0:35:00And then in the fall, I come back to the close to final and I recheck everything and see what progress they've made. And I don't know if there's been an OS version that made more progress over the summer than Sequoia, where a bunch of stuff changed.

0:35:16And a bunch of stuff that I complained about in July is just fixed. So I deleted a lot of stuff from parts of it, which is good news, right? But it also shows you that they were shipping things in June that were...

0:35:31I mean, maybe they did some changes based on feedback, but I think a lot of it was also they were making changes because they were putting things in that were not feature complete in order to get them in the beta. And then they added them on as they went.

0:35:44So it's been an interesting process.

0:35:47Yeah, I haven't really spent any time with Sequoia. I never really play around with the Mac betas anyway. But you were sharing some stuff with me and I thought that you had a really good way of talking about there being this cloud that's hanging over everything, which is the actual version of iOS 18.

0:36:13And more than... And Mac OS 15.

0:36:17All of the point ones is what I was trying to say. All of the point ones for the major platforms include the big thing.

0:36:29Which is, every year this happens. This has been happening for a long time. That 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 have features in them and we know they're coming. But it is much rarer for what feels like the entire point of having the new operating system to not be in the initial shipping version.

0:36:51And you can kind of feel how you'd like about Apple intelligence, but if you are looking at the company and thinking about the company in the way that we do, it is clear that this is actually what they care about.

0:37:08But they don't have anything to show for it today. This is also that function of the iPhone controlling everything. It doesn't make sense to ship iOS 18 right now.

0:37:22They should ship iOS 18 in October. They ship iOS 18 and it includes a bayette for Apple intelligence. But what are you going to do about the iPhone?

0:37:32So you kind of have to ship it now. It's just one of these funny things about how the iPhone dictates everything.

0:37:41And that's why 0.0 of all of this stuff is coming out today because the iPhone comes out on Friday. And they can't ship it with 17 on it. So here we are.

0:37:52Yeah. So here we are. Yeah. And it's, I mean, I could ask are the intelligence features far behind enough that you had to delay them to October?

0:38:04I think what we're seeing here is Apple hedging. I think in June when Apple announced this, they were not convinced there wouldn't be big problems that prevented them from shipping it immediately.

0:38:18And so they said, look, it's not going to be in the first version and we'll get to it when we get to it soon thereafter.

0:38:25Now they've obviously reached the point where they feel like, yeah, October, we can ship it in October.

0:38:30If they had known that they were this close, would they have pushed it a little and gotten it into 0.0?

0:38:39Maybe. I don't know. I still think that, I mean, there, there are some worry about how it's going to work, but there's also some worry about just the strain it's going to put on, you know, their servers that they're building their little private compute cloud thing and all of that.

0:38:53But, um, it is a little curious that they're literally saying like, Oh yeah, in a couple of weeks, it'll be out. Just like, well, why didn't you push that?

0:39:00I know you're running full speed here, but like the developer betas haven't changed that much. So could you have just shipped 18.1 as 18.0 and been fine?

0:39:10Probably, but I think they didn't know that when their initial plan, but so we're left, we're left looking at everything else.

0:39:17And it is fine. Like there are always a spread of features. Like there's always like the eight, the eight tier features that are there that are the big ones that are like, Oh, this is a big change.

0:39:29And then there are a bunch of B tier features that are pretty nice. And then there's like, the C tier is just like all of this little tiny detail stuff.

0:39:39So there's still a bunch of B tier features and depending on the platform, I mean, I would argue that there may be some arguably A tier features, but really.

0:39:49Apple intelligence just obscures it all. So really you've just got to say Apple intelligence is the thing that Apple's focused on. That is the number one feature on all these releases and it's not there.

0:39:58So we're left with the rest and it's a little bit weird. And I feel bad for some of the features like on the Mac, iPhone mirroring features really nice.

0:40:05And I think we'll make people's lives better. And I think that Apple's pitch for it was actually really smart having used it now because they talked a lot about using notification center as the method to get to phone mirroring.

0:40:19And I found that that's actually true. The idea that I don't often go, Oh, I shall bring up my iPhone now and look at what is going on.

0:40:29But instead I get a notification on my iPhone, but it comes up on my Mac and I click on it and it opens iPhone mirroring to that app that I don't have on my Mac.

0:40:41I'm like, Oh, okay. All right. Right. Like now it's all kind of seamless on this one screen that I'm using right now. Um, and they did a good job. It's like, it's, it's smooth.

0:40:52I've got some quibbles, but like in general, it works really well. They fixed a bunch of stuff in the beta. There's complaints I made about mirroring and specific, you know, about like you couldn't edit the home screen.

0:41:05You couldn't add or remove apps and stuff. And they, they fixed that you still can't access control center, which I find a little bit weird and you can't force a rotation, which there are apps where they work in both formats, but sometimes it's better in one than the other.

0:41:20And if it supports both sizes, it will always stay vertical. I don't love what, what if you actually physically turn the device? Will it do it for no really? No, no, that's related to the.

0:41:34No, cause your device could be in standby and it's going to run the phone in vertical vertical. So it's not, no, it's just, it's a thing that they should add. They probably will at some point because there are, there are apps where that's nice to be able to force it into, into horizontal instead of vertical.

0:41:49And they added their little window manager on the Mac, which I don't want to belittle it by saying, Oh, they got a little window manager, but that's like the tiling stuff.

0:42:00Yeah. It's just, it's basic, but like, that's the point is there are lots of apps out there that do this stuff like Moom from my pals over at Many Tricks is one of them, but like there are lots of them and they all do more, but this is something and it's, and it's stuck.

0:42:19And if people want it more, there are third party apps to solve it, but this is like a very basic, I want to put this window to the right. I want to put this window to the left and keyboard shortcuts in order to move and dock sliding things into the corners and having them resize and dock there.

0:42:35Like, it's just nice. It's a, it's a well thought out basic feature that is not going to blow the third party apps, third party utilities that really need this to be like, Oh, I need, I need it to be in three. And I need it to move this thing around when I hold down this key.

0:42:52And like Apple's not going to do any of that stuff. It is once again, just trying for like a simple addition for the masses. And it is that. And I don't think it needs to be a lot more complicated.

0:43:02I don't love the fact that you can't change the keyboard shortcuts that it applies and that they use the globe key, which if you're using a third party keyboard, you kind of don't have.

0:43:12But again, nice Mac feature. The video conferencing stuff is nice. They have been layering on all the video that you take with your device, their own like video synthesis, right?

0:43:29So we, they had the effects that came in and the portrait effect and all of that. And so this time they have background replacement and there are a bunch of images of like Apple park that you can put behind you.

0:43:42But you can also use your own and Apple's background replacement tech is really good. And now every single app just gets it if they're using video, because you can set that at the system level.

0:43:53And they just keep kind of like ratcheting there. It's a nice little feature. Is it enough to upgrade on its own? No, but security updates are probably the reason you update on your own.

0:44:05You know, and I mean, the list goes on, I'll throw out another one here. Safari. I really like high distracting items and I know it's kind of like a manual ad blocker, but like here's the thing. I don't think that websites should be prevented from making money on ads.

0:44:24Right. I clearly don't believe that, but I do believe there is a point. And that's why I think it's great that Apple calls this high distracting items. There is a point where you are trying to watch, trying to read an article.

0:44:35And right next to the words is a video, possibly even overlaying the words is a video that is auto playing.

0:44:42And it's so, or there's an ad that's blinking and it's so hard to focus on reading an article when that is in your peripheral vision. And so Apple's basically said, we will let you make it go away.

0:44:57And it disappears like Thanos has snapped. It just into little particles and it goes away. And like, I can't be against that because that's a, in my mind, that is a violation of the contract between the reader and the website.

0:45:11If they are making it impossible to read your article in order to load it up with distracting ads, I think that's it's gone too far.

0:45:19And it puts it in the user's hands to say, no, that ad. And what I found is a lot of times the really distracting ad actually has an ad under it because they're trying to work around ad blockers and the ad under it is not distracting because it's not animated or video.

0:45:35So there are a lot of positive things about it, but I've really liked that feature because there are sites I read that with that, like literally good sites and then halfway in the middle of the article, they just start playing a video of a completely different article about a different topic.

0:45:52And I know why, I know it's there so that they can run a pre-roll ad and claim that people were watching that video, but it's muted and like it's a ripoff. It's a ripoff to the advertiser. It's a ripoff. It's bad policy.

0:46:05And now as a user, I can just say, I don't want to see that. And it goes away and then I can read my article in peace.

0:46:11Can I give you a quick hit list of the things that I like from the various betas that I've tried?

0:46:18Sure.

0:46:19So this is, I've been using iOS and iPadOS 18 and I've tried, I put watchOS 11 on my watch a couple of days ago as well.

0:46:28So in general, the emoji tap backs and the text effects and messages are fantastic.

0:46:34Like they are a reason to upgrade to iOS 18. The text effects are so fun.

0:46:39And I really, I think Apple has done an incredibly good job of detecting effects to be added to words.

0:46:47Like for example, a couple of days ago, I, for emphasis on a word, repeated a letter a bunch of times at the end of the word.

0:46:56You know, it's like, thank you, that kind of thing. And it picked that up.

0:47:00I was like, you should add an effect to the you because you've obviously done something weird to it.

0:47:04So they're doing a good job of that, but also they're just really fun to play around with and emoji tap backs, you know, about time.

0:47:11It is past time, but they are great. I agree.

0:47:15The control center, I like the third party actions. It's fiddly to set up, but you set it up once.

0:47:22I like that you're able to have multiple pages for HomeKit because I can now have a different page with distinct items, one for my home and one for the studio, which I love that I can have that and that can set them up the way that I want to.

0:47:35Game mode is the thing that's been added when you play games, right? And I know that this is doing stuff like it changes some of the thermal properties and gives you more power, but something that it does spatial audio for iPhone games.

0:47:50Now, this makes a ton of sense to me. I actually think spatial audio makes the most sense for video games on your phone than it does for watching movies and stuff.

0:48:00It just fits really well, especially if I play a lot of games that have sounds, like not music, but sounds, and I can hear those sounds while I'm listening to a podcast.

0:48:11And this makes a lot of sense because the podcast is up here in my ears and the sounds from the game are happening down there on my phone.

0:48:18I really like it. I think it works pretty well. The new photos design, it takes some setting up, again, like Control Center, but once you've set it up, you're left with something that works better for you.

0:48:33That's kind of my overall feelings on photos. Does that jive with you?

0:48:38Yeah, and like I said, I wrote a piece for my feelings about this. There was a lot of initial backlash to the photos design, and I think the initial beta was a step too far because it was literally like you could scroll up or down or sideways.

0:48:55I was like, "Mm, that's a lot of different things happening in one app." And they took out the scroll sideways, and now it opens with two things, the library grid above and collections below.

0:49:08And again, I heard from people who were like, "Oh, I can't believe they did this. I just want my library. I just want my grid of photos that's completely chronologically ordered with the most recent ones at the top."

0:49:25Photos has two things about it. One of them is it's where your system camera roll basically is, and you need to be able to get to it to get to that last photo you took.

0:49:33I get it, but the whole point of having a photo library is to look at the photos in the library, I think. And that includes on your devices, not just like back home on a Mac or something.

0:49:45It includes on your devices, especially for like... And I think, again, our more computer-focused community is maybe over indexing on, "I don't want to see collections. I just want to see a utilitarian grid."

0:50:02And I just don't agree. I think the problem with Apple's... First off, there's this perception that it's just Apple's stupid machine learning stuff trying to recommend a memory for me.

0:50:14And that is on Apple, because that's how Apple pushed this stuff primarily was with these memories that could be very weird, weird labels, weird collections and all of that.

0:50:24But first off, collections is way more than that. And I think that a lot of them, if you want them to be utilitarian, you can actually make really great utilitarian collections.

0:50:34I would argue that recent days and travel alone, and then people and pets, where you can now make groups. So you can say, "I want all the pictures. I want to see all the pictures of these four people together," and make a person group as well.

0:50:48Those are utilitarian. You could scroll back through a grid forever in order to find something. You should probably use search, which by the way is also incredibly better now than it used to be.

0:51:01You can just search for plain text, essentially, like, "Find me all the photos of Jamie on a beach in Hawaii," and you just type it and it comes out. And it's exactly right, which is amazing.

0:51:13But the recent days, when you get to that open screen, yeah, you can scroll back. It's like, "A few days ago, I did this thing." Well, yeah. Or you could look at recent days and go back three days and go, "There it is," and tap and see all the photos from that day.

0:51:28It is utilitarian. If you want to go beyond that, they're also generating memories and featured photos and stuff like that. And you can customize it. Like you said, you can pin things. You can move the order around to make it be what you want.

0:51:43But Apple is trying to serve two purposes here because Apple feels, and I think they're right, that hiding all of the curation behind a tab and having everybody's main interface be a featureless grid is a mistake.

0:52:00And they're right. It is a mistake because it's bad user interface. Featureless grid is not the right way to do it. There are use cases where featureless grid is the right thing. It's utilitarian. "I need to go and find that thing I just did. There it is. Got it."

0:52:17But if that's all photos is, there's something wrong because there's so much else going on. And I firmly believe that a huge percentage of regular users never tap on the tabs and are not aware of what Apple is doing behind the scenes to organize their photos.

0:52:32And why do we have hundreds of thousands of photos in our photos library if it is not to look at them? And Apple trying to find ways to get you to look at them again and surface them is part of the reason the app exists.

0:52:44So I'm a big fan. I think this is the right thing to do. And I think if people are grousing about, "Oh, I only want to see a grid," like, how are you using your photos library? And maybe consider looking at the utilitarian features and collections because their recent days alone is very helpful in just coalescing your photos down into the most recent days.

0:53:03Or travel that coalesces your trips based on your GPS and time data so that you can just say, "Where is that trip I took?" And instead of scrolling back a year to find that trip you took, you look at trips and you go back four and you're like, "Oh, that trip," and you tap on it. It's just the right thing to do. So I think they nailed it.

0:53:20I also like that the grid of photos at the top, you can choose how it's displayed, whether you want it to be displayed in date order or added order, like when added to the library. I love that you can do that because I would often find myself trying to find an image.

0:53:37But it's like, is it in recents or is it in my library? But you can just choose. And by default, my choice is to, I want to see things as when they were added to my library because that makes more logical sense to my mind.

0:53:51And to be clear, Photos has been using machine learning for a decade. And none of the features I've mentioned are Apple Intelligence. I think the only Apple Intelligence features in Photos are cleanup, which removes things from the background, which works really well.

0:54:04Not perfect, but none of these things are, but it works really well. And there's a freeform text to make it generate a memory movie and stuff for you. That's an AI feature.

0:54:15But the rest of it…

0:54:16Super good UI. Oh my God, the UI for that feature is so good.

0:54:19Yeah, with all the things flying in and the lasers and stuff. Yeah, there's a lot going on there.

0:54:23And it shows you the words it's searching to collate what you're looking for. It's very, very good. Very good UI.

0:54:28Yeah. I wanted to mention the passwords app.

0:54:30Oh, yeah. Okay. I haven't used, I haven't really paid any attention to it.

0:54:34It's good. I have dealt with performance issues when importing. I have a big one password library. It's like 2000 passwords and it bugs down.

0:54:47It bugs down. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I've been using it a long time, right? So it really, it really bugs down and I think it's a problem.

0:54:56And then deleting them is also really slow. It gets slow. I think they've got some work to do there.

0:55:02And then I think passwords as an app is so good that what it does, especially if you're coming from one password,

0:55:10is reveal all the ways that I think Apple still fails at dealing with this because I've been using it for the last few weeks full time.

0:55:18And what I found is then I come to a website that wants to use my credit card and it doesn't autofill from Apple for some reason, from the wallet.

0:55:27Because that's not in passwords, it's in the wallet. But if I'm not going to use one password, then I'm using Apple's wallet stuff.

0:55:32And I come to websites where it won't autofill or it won't autofill the date and it won't or it won't autofill the little CVV code.

0:55:40Yeah. And trying to get that out of Apple wallet is awful.

0:55:45And one password does a very good job of brute forcing those kinds of scenarios, I think.

0:55:51And if it fails, use a keyboard shortcut to call up your credit card and grab and copy and paste the dates and codes out of it.

0:55:59And Apple is not good enough there. Apple Wallet feels very much like they've sort of moved on from autofilling in the browser because they want you to use Apple Pay.

0:56:09But the fact is, the reality, I'm not always using Apple Pay on websites. That's just how it is. And they don't do as good a job of that.

0:56:17And there's other similar data. I was asked to put in my driver's license. I was like, "Oh, boy."

0:56:23And you can keep that in a locked note or something, but there's other personal information that it doesn't do as good a job about.

0:56:29I also have some import errors that happen to me where I would try to log into a website using passwords and it would say the password is wrong.

0:56:36And I would look in passwords and it was the wrong password. It was like an old password.

0:56:40But in one password from which it had imported the data is the right password.

0:56:45So I had to do a bunch of cleanup there too. So I guess what I'm saying is it's good. Apple's progress is good.

0:56:55But there are still things that in terms of autofill that it needs to do a better job of.

0:57:00Because right now, if I was not also having, my one password app is still on my system.

0:57:08I guess what I'm saying is I tried to use passwords all the time and Apple's adjunct things that are like what's in one password.

0:57:16And I end up having to go back to one password more than I expected. And that's not great.

0:57:23So it's a good step, but I feel like there's more to do there and the app needs to get a little bit better.

0:57:31But yeah, I don't know if there's anything else.

0:57:36MathNotes is nice. MathNotes has come along over the summer.

0:57:43It was kind of bad at the beginning of the summer and it's much better now.

0:57:48So it still has some quirks where you want to use variables and it thinks you're doing something different.

0:57:57And every now and then I write something and it gets the little squiggle under it and I tap to see what does MathNotes think this is.

0:58:04And it thinks it's some complex math equation. And I'm like, oh no, that's just a letter. Why are you doing this?

0:58:12And this also featured that makes sense to real people, regular non-computer nerd people.

0:58:19It's cute and it works very well and it's a lot of fun.

0:58:22Lauren's response was something like, oh yeah, trying to do math when you have to type it in with a keyboard is impossible because it's really bad.

0:58:31This is one of those things that our keyboards weren't really made for and that we all learned how to do the math with our hands and you're writing the equations and all of that.

0:58:40And MathNotes just does that. It's actually pretty great.

0:58:43So yeah, there's a bunch of good stuff in there. It's just that we're also just waiting for the main event to happen and that's Apple Intelligence.

0:58:53I have a couple of little bits. So you're talking about great ways to surface your photos.

0:58:58Allow me to extol the virtues of the Apple Watch Photos face.

0:59:02It rules. It's so good. It's so good.

0:59:08So the way it works is you start on your phone and you pick some photos.

0:59:13You can pick like, you can also pick just like, not images, but like show me photos of this person.

0:59:24You can do that too.

0:59:26And what happens is they are analyzed and they are cropped on the phone based on a machine learning analysis of what the key images are that you want to see because obviously a photo is not the same shape as an Apple Watch.

0:59:42So it tries to keep the subjects of your photo in view. It does a pretty good job.

0:59:47It's not perfect, but it's better than not doing it at all. Very impressive.

0:59:51You can also have the time be dynamic.

0:59:56What that means is it will make the time bigger or smaller based on the content and the spaces around the content in the photos.

1:00:03Again, not perfect, but pretty good. For example, there's a photo that's got me and Lauren and there's some space to the side and it wraps the, it puts the time on the left wrapped.

1:00:14So it's the first two digits are at the top and the bottom two digits are at the bottom because it knows that's the space it's squeezed into.

1:00:20But for another photo, we might be at the bottom and it puts it above and it uses the depth effect to actually have our heads be a little bit in front of the time.

1:00:28And then another photo might say, "I can't do that here." And it tries to put it in the least obtrusive place in front of us.

1:00:34But there's a lot of stuff going on for that photo, the new photo's face on the Apple Watch.

1:00:39My recommendation is if you want to try it out, go in and set it up.

1:00:44It has a few things. It's kind of like the lock screen, right? You can choose pictures of nature, I think pictures of pets, pictures of buildings like architecture and cities, I think they call it, and pictures of people.

1:00:58So I set mine up to be like nature, cities and pictures of my wife. And then every day it gives you a new set of images.

1:01:06And then they scroll through throughout the day and you can also just tap on the watch face and it will cycle through them. And it's doing that thing like the lock screen, like as Jason said, sometimes it's a picture of my wife and the time part of it is behind her head.

1:01:20And you can also have two complications on it too, which I think is fantastic. So I have the date and I have the weather.

1:01:29And I think now I'm like 90% sure this is going to be my watch face now because it brings me happiness when I look at my watch.

1:01:38Like it's joyful to me because I get to see these photos of things that I care about. I think this is incredible.

1:01:44They've done a fantastic job with this. It's like they took the lock screen photo shuffle, shrunk it down and put it on the watch and I think they did a really good job of it.

1:01:54I like more widgets. There are much more widgets than the Apple Watch. I like the suggestions. I like that you can kind of say like don't suggest this to me or do suggest this to me. I think that's pretty good.

1:02:06One of the new widgets that I like a lot is the workout one where you can just start your three most recent workout types just from a widget. I think that's really good.

1:02:17I like the vitals thing. It's just like a cool app to have. And then just because I don't want it to feel left out, we mentioned VisionOS 2 a little bit.

1:02:25The new gestures for going to the home screen, bringing up control center and stuff, it's so much more natural than the way they were doing it before.

1:02:33And then the new environments and stuff like that. VisionOS 2 is a good leap forward. And as Jason mentioned earlier, which I agree with, if you have a vision pro, you should be on VisionOS 2 because it just makes everything a little bit better.

1:02:46But yeah, this is part one of iOS 18. We'll be doing this all over again, I guess in like a month and then maybe again like two months later as we add in all these Apple intelligence features.

1:02:59Since this is a real retrospective episode as well because it's our anniversary, I'm going to say I had a late idea when I was trying to figure out what the opening photo for my macOS review was going to be that I really like.

1:03:18And I've mentioned it in passing here before. So I'll just mention it here. It's an Easter egg, but I love it, which is it's macOS Sequoia, which is named after the national park as we discovered when we were measuring for the California Bear Trophy.

1:03:32But it's also the tree. The park is named for the tree. Sequoia is the redwood and there's a bunch of different kinds of redwoods. There's giant sequoias and there's the California coastal redwoods.

1:03:40There is a redwood tree in my backyard, a Sequoia in my backyard. And I have spent the last 20 years writing and editing OS reviews in the summertime under that tree.

1:03:54That's my favorite place to be to work on stuff in the summertime. I sit out there in a camp chair and I work under the tree. And it's a Sequoia.

1:04:02So my art for the macOS review this time is literally a Mac running the new, awesome, classic Mac screensaver under the tree. Because it's a Sequoia and it's macOS Sequoia.

1:04:16And I don't, you know, it made me happy to be like, yeah, I got it. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to show the tree. So there it is.

1:04:23Very nice.

1:04:24Tree. Me and my tree.

1:04:26This episode is brought to you by Delete.me. Have you ever wondered how much of your personal data is available on the Internet?

1:04:34This is an uncomfortable thing to think about. Your private information could be out there, especially since there are data brokers who make it their sole business to harvest this data and sell it.

1:04:44But we have the right to be private, to stay private and protect our privacy. And this is where Delete.me comes in.

1:04:51Delete.me is a subscription service that removes your personal information from the largest people search databases on the Web and in the process helps prevent potential ID theft, doxing and phishing scams.

1:05:01You can sign up and provide Delete.me with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there.

1:05:07Delete.me sends you a regular personalized privacy report that shows what they found, where they found it and what they removed. And it isn't just a one time service. Delete.me is always out there working for you constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet.

1:05:23As I have gotten older and as I have been online for longer, I am aware of the huge trail of stuff that is left behind me, you know, like various email addresses, maybe places that I put information I didn't expect that they would go and it just like a tumbleweed and like a snowball just carries on going forever.

1:05:40What I love is now Delete.me is out there tidying up for me. They are getting rid of the stuff that I don't want to be online anymore and what I really like is I can tell them just remove these things because there are certain things that I do want to remain out there. I am a professional online. I don't want to not exist on the Internet.

1:05:55But there is stuff, maybe various email addresses, contact information that I would just prefer to be gone and Delete.me takes care of that for me.

1:06:02Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete.me now at a special discount for listeners of this show. Today you can get 20% off your Delete.me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/upgrade20 and use the promo code 'upgrade20' at checkout.

1:06:18The only way to get that 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com/upgrade20 and enter the promo code 'upgrade20'. That is J-O-I-N-D-E-L-E-T-E-M-E.com/upgrade20 promo code 'upgrade20'. A thanks to Delete.me for the support of this show and Relay.

1:06:35So we mentioned this earlier in the beginning of the show but it is a very special anniversary here. This has been an anniversary year and this is an anniversary year not just for this show but for Six Colors.

1:06:50So 10 years ago you left IDG and started Six Colors. We started Upgrade. It's a big day. Congratulations, Jason.

1:07:00Literally Upgrade and Six Colors launched at the same moment because it was when the embargo dropped on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus reviews.

1:07:09I mentioned this in a little bit in my post on Six Colors today about the 10th anniversary but I got the review units from Apple which I didn't always get and then had to tell my PR person I wouldn't actually be at Macworld when the embargo dropped.

1:07:29It was like, "Well, what are we going to do?" I could have just run away with the phones but I also felt like that Apple was giving me those phones because I'm me but also because I had an outlet at Macworld.

1:07:41I could have pressed it but I didn't want to so I made a deal with the powers that be at Macworld that I would give them a review for free if they had a prominent link to my reviewers notebook at Six Colors and a prominent link in my bio at the bottom to Six Colors.

1:07:58It was really like literally this is going to be viewed by a lot of people who read Macworld and I want them to know that I started a new site.

1:08:05That's what we did. I wrote the review for them which disappeared from the internet and is now in Six Colors as of last week for reasons.

1:08:15I feel like I own it because I wrote it for free and they were no longer holding up their part of the deal which is they were no longer posting it and linking to my site.

1:08:24So it's like, "All right, well, I'm going to take that one back." They offered to find it and repost it. I'm like, "Just don't worry about it. I'll post it."

1:08:31So I had that going to them. I wrote a substantial sort of like reporters notebook essentially talking about my experience reviewing those phones.

1:08:40Those were milestone phones too, right? Those are the first much larger iPhone 6 Plus. The 6 Plus, it was even larger still and they drove a huge upsurge in iPhone sales.

1:08:51It was a big moment for Apple and the iPhone.

1:08:55That phone was a great success that turned into a future disaster that they were clearing up for many years because those phones were so successful.

1:09:03It really messed up their earnings for a long time to come because they were this huge, huge bump in sales.

1:09:10That's like, "What's wrong with you? Why can't you do that more?" That was really a one-time thing.

1:09:16It is funny that obviously I'm aware of 10 years and I've been thinking about it a lot and thinking back to when we started the show and how long ago that feels.

1:09:24But the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus feel way older than this show in my mind. They feel so long ago.

1:09:33I can't believe that when we were planning this show, it was like the iPhone 5S is the phone we were using.

1:09:43It is very strange. All that stuff had to drop at the embargo time, which was an afternoon embargo.

1:09:57I don't really know quite what they were doing there. They've changed it since then.

1:10:00But that was back again 10 years ago. Things were different.

1:10:03You, as I recall, were going to Romania? Is that right?

1:10:12No, I was in Italy.

1:10:14Oh, you were going to Italy. Okay. So you had a vacation. So what are we going to do with this?

1:10:19In the end, I went to XOXO Festival over that weekend, so it was before that.

1:10:26It was Thursday or whatever. It was very quick after the aftermath of me leaving IDG and all of that.

1:10:33Almost immediately, we had to record and talk about the iPhone because that was going to be our first episode.

1:10:41And you were going to be gone on vacation. So we pre-recorded episode one. I posted it.

1:10:48I remember distinctly, because we didn't really know what we were allowed to do.

1:10:54It was also incredibly new for both of us, especially me. I'd never been in that experience before.

1:10:59And we tried our best to make it sound like it was happening in the moment it was happening.

1:11:06It was really weird because I can't make it sound like I knew about this before.

1:11:11No, you're recording something in advance, but acting as if it was done at the release time.

1:11:17That's a thing. It was our first episode. So it became this thing of, "Well, in the last week, I left my job of 20 years,

1:11:28started a new website," which again, we were recording before it was up.

1:11:32"Started a new website, reviewed these phones, and we are starting this podcast, which we need to explain to people."

1:11:39And all of that happened really in the course of a week. All of these things happened.

1:11:45It was an absolute wild ride. And what I said on my piece on Six Colors today is,

1:11:50"I really, really, really wanted to take some time off. I was burned out and I wanted to take some time off."

1:11:59And the exact opposite happened, which is the moment I left IDG, I was working on launching my site and writing those reviews

1:12:08and recording with you and getting it all edited and set up so that we could go live.

1:12:12And that's just because the iPhone event is too big to ignore. If you're launching yourself into a new world of starting a podcast,

1:12:21starting a website and all of that, the iPhone week is the right time to do it.

1:12:25So we did it and I didn't get that little break that I always envy people with.

1:12:31They're like, "I'm going to take some time and then do my next thing." I'm like, "Okay, must be nice. Must be nice."

1:12:36Yeah, I always find that weird too. It's like, "Wait, what are you going to do?"

1:12:42Just sit on a beach somewhere?

1:12:44Yeah, sounds nice.

1:12:46Yeah, it would be kind of nice to take that break, but it didn't happen.

1:12:50So Upgrade One ended up being this really interesting combination of it being a six-color site announcement,

1:12:56new podcast explanation, and iPhone embargo review all in one.

1:13:02So I put out the call for some questions from Upgradeians.

1:13:06And I've got a selection of questions from our listeners who wanted to get some of the thinking about us and reflection.

1:13:14First comes from Aaron. "Looking back, how have your interests in the tech products and companies that you cover changed,

1:13:21and how has this impacted the structure of the show?"

1:13:24Honestly, I think we did a lot of hedging at the beginning because we weren't quite sure.

1:13:34Again, Apple was in a very different place when we conceived of this show.

1:13:37iPhone had not exploded to the degree that it would with a six.

1:13:41It was still sort of the size of Steve Jobs' Apple, and now it's the size of Tim Cook's Apple.

1:13:47It has been a huge change in what Apple is and what it does.

1:13:52And I think we were unsure where we would go, and so the initial description of the show was very broad.

1:13:59I think at the time I was thinking I would be interested in Amazon Echoes and what Google was doing,

1:14:08and the Nest and the Kindle and all of these things that do interest me.

1:14:14But I was thinking, "Okay, honestly, you can't predict the future. Let's not limit ourselves."

1:14:22I think that was the idea, which was, "Let's not limit ourselves. This could be, we'll see where it goes."

1:14:28And over the course of time, I think what happened is I could look at this as a failure, but I don't think it was.

1:14:34I think it was dealing with the cards we were dealt, which is Apple exploded and got so big in so many different areas

1:14:45that a lot of that other stuff that I was in many cases still interested in got pushed to the periphery

1:14:54because the concept of covering what Apple was doing in 2014 and in 2024 or even 2018, I feel like is totally different.

1:15:07That Apple just went in so many different directions that it became, Upgrade became more of an Apple-focused podcast

1:15:15than I expected it to be when we started. I thought we would need to spread a little further and wider.

1:15:21I think the truth is we could have, but there was so much that I think we didn't need to.

1:15:30The path Apple was on was so interesting that we needed to follow it, if that makes sense.

1:15:35I actually think we could probably take a new crack at our show description anyway.

1:15:42I think it's still too broad considering where we are now.

1:15:45But I think that's the thing of over these last 10 years, if you cover Apple, if there you're a beat,

1:15:54there's more than ever stuff to talk about. There's more stuff than there's ever been to talk about.

1:15:59I think that we both keep a healthy interest in all technology and we bring it to the show,

1:16:07but it always comes second to if there is big news with Apple to talk about.

1:16:12Because that is the bread and butter of the show.

1:16:15Yeah, and Apple has imprinted itself. I mean, Apple casts such a shadow over the tech world.

1:16:19It would be different if Apple was off in a niche somewhere and was super weird

1:16:23and this podcast was like, "Oh, I guess the rest of the world is happening,

1:16:27but we're only really focused on this corner case with Apple."

1:16:30But that's just not the case. Apple is huge.

1:16:34It is the biggest or one of the biggest companies in the world and people really care about it.

1:16:46It affects the rest of the tech industry. It affects the rest of the world.

1:16:50So yeah, I think that has led us in that direction. Our interests are broader than that.

1:16:56But again, I think that we would show it more if Apple was more esoteric than it is.

1:17:03But it's really central. So it's hard to avoid.

1:17:06And what you said about Apple being your beat, I mean, that's the truth of it.

1:17:09Leaving IDG, the biggest change for me, and this is still the case,

1:17:12is I used to try to think about Apple as our beat and think holistically about

1:17:15how we were going to literally cover everything with a staff.

1:17:18And as a human being, a single person, and even working with Dan on Six Colors,

1:17:22working with you on Upgrade, Apple is actually too big for even it to be your beat.

1:17:30I mean, that's the thing. You end up having to choose what in Apple is your beat

1:17:34because Apple is too much. There is just too much of it.

1:17:39Jonathan asks, "You've both spoken about being so happy that the other person wanted to do a show with each other."

1:17:45So we both said that about each other.

1:17:47But I'd like to know, what was it that made the potential of doing a show together so exciting for you both?

1:17:55You tell me, Mike.

1:17:57You're Jason Snell.

1:17:59Oh, ha ha.

1:18:00No, seriously though.

1:18:01That's not what I was looking for there.

1:18:02That was the reason for me.

1:18:05Even ten years ago, I was in a very different spot to where I am now.

1:18:13And there's a question a little bit later on where I might talk about that a little bit more.

1:18:17But my position in our community was different.

1:18:25And I was someone that was starting to establish myself a little bit.

1:18:30But there were certain people who sat at the top of the Apple-focused tech community that we're a part of.

1:18:40That all of our listeners are a part of.

1:18:42But you've got the content creators that we call now, but writers as we called them then,

1:18:47that sat at the top of that tree.

1:18:50And you were one of these people.

1:18:52You always have been.

1:18:54Jason Snell was one of the people that everybody knew.

1:19:00Jason knew everyone.

1:19:02Jason's party at WWDC was one of the hottest tickets that you could get.

1:19:07I remember getting my first invite to that party and I nearly did a backflip.

1:19:13I was so excited.

1:19:14It was huge for me.

1:19:17To have one, just to know you and to be friends with you was exciting enough.

1:19:24But to have gotten the opportunity then to be in a position where I would be your equal.

1:19:33That we would host a show together was just so incredible to me.

1:19:38I always loved when I got to hear you talk about technology and was always sad about the fact that I didn't get to hear you talk about it enough.

1:19:48Because you were in the corporate structure that you were in.

1:19:52I sure was.

1:19:55This was the famed conversation in the history of Upgrade when me and you sat down for an hour in Ireland at the All Conference and spoke about all of this stuff.

1:20:07I remember thinking how incredible it would be to hear a tech podcast like the ones that we do with you on it.

1:20:17But for me, what an honour it would be to be able to do it with you.

1:20:22Because you are a historic figure in the history of covering Apple.

1:20:28You are.

1:20:29Whether you like it or not, you were at the iPod event.

1:20:33You have been through the history of this industry.

1:20:37You have been there.

1:20:39That is an absolute honour for me to be able to have gotten the opportunity to do this show with you.

1:20:46It continues to be an honour for me today.

1:20:48Thank you.

1:20:50I didn't mean to call you old.

1:20:52Yeah.

1:20:54Oh, my hip.

1:20:56So that little conversation, that was in the spring of 2014, I think.

1:21:04Yeah.

1:21:06That means it came after I had already attempted to escape my job once.

1:21:12I know I have said this before.

1:21:14You say you tried to quit and they didn't let you.

1:21:16What is that?

1:21:17Well, I tried to quit.

1:21:18I had nowhere else to go.

1:21:19I just couldn't do the job anymore.

1:21:20I was miserable.

1:21:21They said, "No, no, no.

1:21:22We just changed our management structure.

1:21:23There is a new person in charge.

1:21:25It is going to be better.

1:21:26Please stay.

1:21:27Please stay."

1:21:28I was like, "All right.

1:21:29Okay."

1:21:30Because, again, I got up the courage to quit and not have anywhere else to go.

1:21:35I wanted to start things on my own.

1:21:37But it was, you know, you waver.

1:21:41You waver.

1:21:42To have the full-court press, very charming, very flattering from the people at IDG to stay.

1:21:47We got this new guy.

1:21:49We are putting him in charge.

1:21:50It is going to be better.

1:21:53That was all fine.

1:21:55I regret not actually just saying, "Well, no."

1:21:59But in the end, it worked out, I guess, in the sense that, seriously, eight months later,

1:22:03the new guy who was going to fix everything got laid off, got fired.

1:22:07The new president of the group got cut.

1:22:11How well did that work?

1:22:13Well, I got severance out of it because I told them I wasn't really interested in going through these shenanigans again.

1:22:17I got more runway to start my own thing.

1:22:19But I say this because I had spent a great deal of time thinking about what I wanted to do.

1:22:26And when I saw you at OOL and we had that conversation, I had already been thinking about that a lot.

1:22:32And in this era -- so this is the era where you guys were doing the prompt on 5x5.

1:22:37It was an era where Hypercritical had just finished.

1:22:43And I had been listening -- I don't even know what was happening with the talk show --

1:22:49but I had been listening to this model of tech podcasts where there were people talking.

1:22:55It was like somebody who's a writer, reporter, whatever, talking to somebody else about it,

1:23:00and you build a podcast around it with envy.

1:23:03And during Fireball, too, I was like, "Ah, I could do that. I'd love to do that.

1:23:09But I've got my corporate job, and that's fine."

1:23:12So I'd been thinking about that a lot.

1:23:14And so when we got to the point where we had that good conversation,

1:23:17I had definitely been thinking about these sorts of things.

1:23:20We got to the fall, and I realized that I was going to be going out on my own.

1:23:25You guys at that point started Relay.

1:23:28And again, I'd been listening to the prompt, and I was listening to Connected, and that was my identifier.

1:23:33And I think the reason that I approached you -- and not Steven, who I could have approached --

1:23:40was in part because we had had that conversation at OOL,

1:23:44and in part because I felt like we were different enough in a way that Steven was a little more aligned with me, actually,

1:23:53that I thought that it might be a better combination.

1:23:57Otherwise, Steven and I would just talk about performers all the time.

1:24:01It would have been canceled after like 10 episodes of the Performa podcast.

1:24:05So instead, I don't know, and I think when we had that conversation, we made a good connection.

1:24:11Anyway, so definitely part of it was just me thinking, "I like that you guys were starting Relay."

1:24:16I wanted to do that two-person podcast with continuity and follow-up.

1:24:21I wanted all of that, and it just seemed like the best fit.

1:24:26So you and Steven ended up being one of the very first people to hear that I was leaving

1:24:30because we needed to plan it if we were going to do it.

1:24:34This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Backblaze.

1:24:38Backblaze are the folks that look after your digital data with their unlimited computer backup for macOS and Windows for just $99 a year,

1:24:47so you can protect all of your data automatically, never having to think about it.

1:24:53It's not just for personal use. Backblaze is great for businesses.

1:24:56Protect the whole team's data through a centrally managed administrative console.

1:25:00It's easy to deploy across multiple workstations with silent and link-based deployment options,

1:25:06and the enterprise control add-on includes granular access permissions, advanced single sign-on options,

1:25:11group management controls, and compliance support.

1:25:14You're in safe hands with Backblaze. They really know their stuff.

1:25:17They have been recommended by the New York Times, Magazine, Inc. Magazine, I should say, Macworld, PCWorld, Life, Wire, Wired,

1:25:26Tom's Guide, 9to5, Mac, and more, and you can access your backed up data from anywhere in the world using their web app or their iOS or Android apps.

1:25:36It's a super handy feature.

1:25:38Backblaze offers multiple restore options, including rapid recovery via USB hard drives shipped to you in the event of data loss or ransomware,

1:25:46or you can go old school restore by mail for a refundable fee with a hard drive with all of your data shipped directly to your door.

1:25:54I have been a very happy Backblaze customer for an incredibly long time.

1:25:59One of my favorite things about Backblaze is I never think about it.

1:26:03It's just out there, it's protecting all of my data for me, it's backing it up to the cloud, and I never even think about it.

1:26:09Backblaze has my back and I know I can rely on them.

1:26:13It's absolutely rock solid whenever I've needed to restore files.

1:26:16It's been incredibly easy to do.

1:26:18I love that I have access to them via their iOS app if I need them to.

1:26:21It's an absolutely essential thing for me. I put it on my family's computers too. I love it.

1:26:26Go to backblaze.com/upgrade so they'll know that you came to them from the show and they'll continue to support this show which we'd appreciate.

1:26:33Backblaze have restored over 55 billion files for their customers.

1:26:38Don't be that person and forget to backup your important files.

1:26:41Receive a fully featured, no risk free trial at backblaze.com/upgrade.

1:26:46Go there, have a play around, start protecting yourself from a data disaster.

1:26:49Don't put it off, start today.

1:26:51Our thanks to Backblaze for their support of this show and all of Relay FM.

1:26:55I said the FM, because I'm thinking old school, you know?

1:26:58Yeah, let's hear it. Switch on.

1:27:01Switch on.

1:27:02Jerry says, "Are there any episodes that you have produced that could get me started with how to make a podcast of my own?"

1:27:09And I knew we had done this and I ended up finding it.

1:27:13It was episode 200.

1:27:14It was a very long time ago now in July 2018.

1:27:18Because we were celebrating our 200th episode by answering some questions from listeners.

1:27:23And also talking about how we podcast, why we podcast, that kind of stuff.

1:27:28I have no doubt that that stuff is very relevant today except for every time we say Skype, replace it with Zoom.

1:27:35And you'll be good.

1:27:37Yeah.

1:27:38Adam asks, "Is there anything you miss about being a smaller company?"

1:27:42Or I would maybe reframe that of like from when we started to now.

1:27:47Were there things that you miss from the earlier days of Six Colors to now?

1:27:51Oh, I mean, Six Colors is not that different.

1:27:54Relay has grown, but Six Colors is what it was.

1:28:00It's me and Dan and that's nice because one person's side is harder.

1:28:08And it's great that Dan is there because we also have all these other things that we're doing.

1:28:13I really appreciate that Dan Morin, who worked for me for ages at Macworld.

1:28:17I don't know if he was always part of my plan or not, but I think my plan was really to give all of my friends who no longer had a place to post things on the internet, to give them a place to do this.

1:28:32Like Dan Frakes, before he got a job, he posted a couple of things.

1:28:36And Philip Michaels posted something.

1:28:38I mean, there were people in those early days.

1:28:42But Dan wanted to make a go of it kind of like on his own and he was willing to do his tech stuff at Six Colors.

1:28:49He did a bunch of others blogging in other places.

1:28:52So the shape of it is not that different from the start.

1:28:55Like I said earlier, the big change is scope.

1:29:00My old job was thinking big picture and having a team of people and trying to cover everything.

1:29:04And I think we did a great job.

1:29:05I think we assembled a great team.

1:29:07We had a lot of really amazing writers and editors and Macworld and the Macworld website especially.

1:29:13We really got to cover Apple kind of in great detail with a lot of different angles.

1:29:18Being just me or just me and Dan, the scope completely changed.

1:29:24And so we found our way and all of that.

1:29:26Other than the fact that we did a membership and added a community, and that has changed the feel of it a little bit.

1:29:37Because there's now like, the Six Colors readers are no longer theoretical.

1:29:41They're actual people in a Discord.

1:29:43And before that, a Slack.

1:29:45RIP to the Slack.

1:29:47But we moved it to Discord.

1:29:48Anyway, that's changed. But I would say that the Six Colors side of it is not that different in the sense that it's just a place for me to post my things that I write.

1:30:00And it continues to be that.

1:30:02Really, I feel like this is a better question.

1:30:04So what are you feeling right now?

1:30:06I mean, being a smaller company is nice because you have less to do.

1:30:11Like less in theory.

1:30:13Being a smaller company means that you have less things that you need to manage.

1:30:17But what has actually happened is as we got bigger, Stephen and I brought in people to do more jobs.

1:30:23So like if Relay was smaller, I'd probably be busier.

1:30:26So I actually don't miss being a smaller company than we are now.

1:30:32I mean, the bigger something gets, the more pressure it can bring.

1:30:35But that just comes with the territory.

1:30:37That's kind of what you pay for success, I suppose, in a way.

1:30:40So I don't miss being a smaller company at all.

1:30:44There are things I miss from when we started.

1:30:47There was a lot of excitement and there was always new things happening, which was fun.

1:30:52And a lot of those new things happening were new shows.

1:30:56Like in our first year or two, we were launching stuff left, right and centre.

1:30:59And they were really exciting projects with loads of really exciting people.

1:31:03And we just decidedly do less of that now.

1:31:07Because it's just not the mode that Relay is in as a business.

1:31:11It's not where we are right now.

1:31:13The way that I've been trying to phrase it is, we are like listener first.

1:31:19And those listeners are the ones that we have.

1:31:21I'm really focused now.

1:31:24And that's the same for this show too.

1:31:26It's the same for all of my shows.

1:31:27I'm really serving the people that are here.

1:31:30And trying to give those people what they want.

1:31:33Rather than trying to find new people endlessly.

1:31:37And tailoring and ruining things for that.

1:31:40For example, I think a good thing of that is the video that we do.

1:31:44The logical way to do this is for me and Jason to see each other.

1:31:48And that is the logical way to make a video show.

1:31:51But we don't want to make the show worse for the people that have been listening to it for ten years.

1:31:55By now, instead of me describing to Jason what something looks like, I show him.

1:32:00And that is what naturally would happen if we were looking at each other.

1:32:04But that is doing a disservice to our existing listeners.

1:32:07I don't think that that is listener first.

1:32:09So we produce the video version of this show in a very different way.

1:32:13To how other people might or how we would naturally.

1:32:16To make sure that we're doing all that stuff.

1:32:18I don't miss being smaller.

1:32:20It's less kind of like, "Oh, what could happen next?"

1:32:26But I actually think I'm good with that.

1:32:28I think I'm fine with it.

1:32:30Something you said that I wanted to mention.

1:32:34When you're starting out.

1:32:37And I know I've talked about this before and I did a whole episode of Focused about this as a guest star.

1:32:44But when you're starting out, you do everything.

1:32:47Because who else is going to do it?

1:32:49So if you can do it, you do it.

1:32:51And that means you can do it. Or you learn to do it. And then you do it.

1:32:55The thing about...

1:32:57And again, is Six Colors bigger? I don't know.

1:33:00But we have revenue.

1:33:02We have a business. I know what the money is in the business.

1:33:05Day one, we had nothing. And so you do everything.

1:33:08Now we've got more of a business.

1:33:11One of the things that's allowed me to do is realize that there are things that I was doing.

1:33:17Not because... And this is important for anybody else who's in similar circumstances.

1:33:23I was doing it because I could.

1:33:25Not because it was a thing that I had to do.

1:33:31Because me doing it was the secret sauce.

1:33:35And I work in a business where there is a certain percentage of what I do where me doing it is the secret sauce.

1:33:42I am a content creator. I am a writer. I am a podcaster.

1:33:47I am a producer of podcasts.

1:33:49I have ideas for things that we're going to do on this show or on the podcast-a-thon or on the incomparable.

1:33:55I have ideas of... That's part of the mix.

1:33:58I have strategy of where do I want to go? Is there something I want to change?

1:34:02It's business strategy that because it's my business, I need to do.

1:34:05It's a thing that has to be me.

1:34:07But there was this huge chunk of things that I only was doing because I'd been doing them.

1:34:15And not because I needed to do them.

1:34:18And not because I added the magical element.

1:34:20And so I did spend some time two, three years ago finding people to work with.

1:34:27Who I could pay to do those things.

1:34:29And that gave me more time back to have more energy and more time to do the things that I actually need to do that are things that are for me.

1:34:39And not things that anybody could do.

1:34:41Because again, going back to that, I'm just one person thing.

1:34:44If you're just one person, and I'm sure that somebody like Marcus Brownlee experiences this on an even greater scale.

1:34:51Because he's got such a successful business.

1:34:53But it's the same idea, which is 100% of his time should be focused on the things that only he can do.

1:34:59And he can do everything that people in his business do.

1:35:04He can do it.

1:35:05But he doesn't need to.

1:35:07And so he hires staff to shoot and edit and all these things.

1:35:11And even somebody like Quinn at Snazzy Labs, it's the same thing.

1:35:14A lot of content creators can do everything or almost everything.

1:35:19But at a certain point, there's only so much a single human being can do in a day.

1:35:26You need to focus on the things that you absolutely need to do.

1:35:30And let other people be your teammates who can do those other things and work with you.

1:35:35So that for me is the biggest thing about being a more established company.

1:35:42And I don't miss it.

1:35:46Because I was very much chief cook and bottle washer kind of person at the beginning.

1:35:51Because everybody in a small business is that.

1:35:53And I know Relay, it's the same thing.

1:35:55You grow over time and one of the things that allows you to do is work with other people to do those other tasks.

1:36:02And then you can focus more on the stuff you need to.

1:36:04And that's been a big change.

1:36:06Christian asks, "I've only been listening to this show for about four years, which means I've missed out on over half of upgrade."

1:36:12Well, Christian, it is all out there.

1:36:14I wouldn't recommend it, but you can always go back.

1:36:17What are some of the things that were stuck around since the beginning?

1:36:20Are there any bits or segments that have been dropped over the years?

1:36:23So I did some thinking about this.

1:36:26So a lot of our special episodes started in year one.

1:36:31The drafts, upgrade-ies, holiday special, they all started within the first year.

1:36:37We dropped out some segments, like Upstream, because it became its own show.

1:36:41And we had the Summer of Fun that came in.

1:36:45At some point, that was after the first couple of years, because we were realizing how hard it was to come up with things to talk about in the summer.

1:36:53And I feel like we used to have more guests on for timeless topics throughout the year, rather than what it is now, which is guests typically are covering somebody's vacation.

1:37:04So I think that's kind of the changes that we've had.

1:37:06Right. There was an early time where I was like, "Let's get Scott McNulty on to talk about the Kindle."

1:37:12I was like, "We know three."

1:37:14Yeah, we don't really do that anymore, but we were trying to figure it out.

1:37:18What's funny is, for a show that's got segments, we called them "verticals" at the beginning.

1:37:24Because I was laughing at the idea that everybody in the media business calls things that are focused on a particular topic a "vertical."

1:37:31And so then we did a lot of jokes about verticals.

1:37:34But we did build up segments and ask, upgrade, and follow up and all of those things.

1:37:41Oh my gosh, yeah. Ask, upgrade. Don't forget, we created that.

1:37:44That segment of sending your questions is called "Ask Something." It came from this show.

1:37:49Follow up, we did not create. Ask, upgrade, we created.

1:37:51Follow up, we did not create.

1:37:53So I'd say a lot of it was there, but we definitely...

1:37:58There's stuff that you think is going to be a thing, and then it's not a thing, and you just drop it and you move on.

1:38:05And that definitely continues to happen.

1:38:09But in the early days, yeah, there was a lot more experimenting with...

1:38:12Again, you're like, "What's the show? Are we going to bring guests on to talk about particular topics?"

1:38:18And now, the answer to that now is essentially no, unless it's a special episode or somebody is not around. We don't do that.

1:38:27I think a lot of that comes from me. This is my own personal taste.

1:38:33I tend, in my podcast listening, to not enjoy guests in the regular show format.

1:38:42Sure.

1:38:44Because I think that you get joy and you're attached to the host of the show. You just want to hear them.

1:38:52So that's what I prefer, and so I try and bring that to most of my shows, to be honest.

1:38:57And really, we only have guests where you need to.

1:39:00I agree. I definitely have that on some of my podcasts where there's a guest episode.

1:39:04I'm not as into it because I'm into the hosts talking to each other, and that's what I like.

1:39:09Also, keep in mind at this point that early on in our run, I was doing Clockwise.

1:39:15And I heard from somebody the other day who said, "I didn't realize Jason used to do Clockwise."

1:39:19I was like, "Oh, man. Oh, my God. It's been so long."

1:39:22I'm the co-creator and original co-host of Clockwise with Dan.

1:39:27We did that together. We came up with the format together.

1:39:30We stole it basically from IDG under their noses. They gave us permission to do it.

1:39:34And then executives regretted it later, but it's too bad.

1:39:37We were out the door. Don't try to stop us.

1:39:40But that's two guests every week.

1:39:43And then when Steve and I did download, we had guests every week.

1:39:47And let me tell you, nothing makes you not want to schedule guests like scheduling guests regularly.

1:39:53So upgrade not having guests is not only good content-wise,

1:39:58but also I was at a point early on where I realized very quickly that the last thing I wanted to do was schedule guests.

1:40:04And Zach has made a point in the Discord which I think will clarify a slight addendum that I have to my point.

1:40:10Zach says, "I think The Vergecast has done guests on the show while bringing in some other journalists for some segments."

1:40:16But similarly, I think another relay host dropping into the show is less disruptive.

1:40:22For me, it's like when somebody comes into the show and they don't really have a rapport with the hosts

1:40:28because they're a subject area expert or whatever, that kind of stuff for me is like,

1:40:33"Ah, we're kind of breaking things a little bit." So I just prefer in general.

1:40:37I get a lot of emails from those people and they're PR people saying, "Oh, here's a person who can shoot."

1:40:41We sure do. "Oh, Jason, I was so excited today."

1:40:44Because I thought I was getting an email that I'd be happy with for the rest of all time.

1:40:49So basically I'm skimming this email. It's one of these, "Hi, I'm such and such person. I do this and this and this."

1:40:57And I'm skimming it and it says, "Johnny Ive." And I was like, "Oh my god, it's happening!"

1:41:02But no, it wasn't that. Johnny Ive was a guest on another podcast and they wanted us to drop it into our feed.

1:41:07There were people. But yeah, this happens all the time. I get these, "We're going to do a feed drop with this show?"

1:41:13It's like, "No, I don't ever want to do that. I don't ever want to do that."

1:41:16We have gotten these requests from podcasts that you listen to, listeners.

1:41:22And I will never do this because I think it is a terrible idea.

1:41:27But I thought that someone was trying to bring Johnny Ive on the show, but that did not happen.

1:41:32Question from David. This is to Jason.

1:41:39Mike's been covering Apple for 10 or so years now. How do these years compare to your first 10?

1:41:45Well, so the difference is my first 10 would have been '93 to 2003.

1:41:52So my experience was weird, dying Apple at Death Store.

1:41:58Steve Jobs comes back, brings out the iMac, opens a bunch of retail stores, brings out the iPod on the way up.

1:42:07That is my first 10 years.

1:42:09You said, "Oh, you go back in history." I got a contact about somebody doing a podcast about the day the Mac was launched, the original launch of the Mac.

1:42:21And they said, "Oh, you seem to have been covering this."

1:42:23And I said, "Just to be clear, I was 13 years old.

1:42:27Just to be clear, I didn't touch a Mac until several years later and didn't buy a Mac until the 1990s.

1:42:40So no, I don't go that far back.

1:42:43So my first 10 years was very much I have made a horrible mistake because I loved Apple stuff, loved the Mac,

1:42:50doing something I love in media about something I love while it's dying.

1:42:57Because it's like the triple whammy.

1:43:01It's like I made a bad career decision.

1:43:04It's going to lead me to cover things that I don't care about because I like the Mac.

1:43:08My preferred platform is Dying, the company that makes it is falling apart.

1:43:12It was grim, folks. It was real grim.

1:43:16And then like a dream, I mean seriously, if you had told me in the depths of 1997,

1:43:24like, "Oh, no, no, here's what's going to happen next."

1:43:26Now that they just bought Next from Steve Jobs, right?

1:43:29Like Steve Jobs is around. I'm like, "Yeah, I know he's around, but he's like I'll honor him."

1:43:32And then this person from the future would be like, "No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.

1:43:36Steve Jobs is going to take over and he's going to turn the Mac around and he's going to make it successful.

1:43:41And people are going to like be wowed by those products.

1:43:44And he's going to open a bunch of retail stores."

1:43:46I'm like, "Well, that sounds like a bad idea."

1:43:47It's like, "No, no, it's a good idea."

1:43:49Because they're also going to release a music, a portable music player, a digital music player.

1:43:53I'm like, "Are you high right now, future person? Are you crazy? That will never."

1:43:58And they're like, "No, no, no, no, no. Listen to me.

1:44:01By the time you've been in this business a decade, Apple will be on the upswing.

1:44:05It'll be making lots of money. It'll be a lifestyle brand.

1:44:08It'll have cool music and ads.

1:44:10It'll have retail stores everywhere and people will come into the retail store to buy the little music player.

1:44:14And they'll see the Mac and they'll fall in love with it.

1:44:16And they'll be like, "Oh, I guess maybe I should buy a Mac too."

1:44:20And everything is about to change.

1:44:22And then I won't even tell you what happens in the next decade, but it gets even wilder then.

1:44:27I tell you, that person, I would not ascribe 1% chance that they were right.

1:44:36It was not good. It was bad times. It was very, very bad.

1:44:43So the unlikely thing that they had the comeback story and that it began in '97 and just sort of went from there,

1:44:51where at the end of my first decade covering Apple, they were basically on the upswing and headed for,

1:44:57we didn't know it at the time, but they were in iPod heaven and the retail was really growing.

1:45:02And so the Mac was really going and OS X was out and that changed the game for the Mac a lot too.

1:45:10And then, you know, upswing to the iPhone eventually.

1:45:14You, in the last 10 years, have, we talked about it, have experienced the inflationary period of Apple,

1:45:22where it went from being Steve Jobs' company to being a colossus striding the world.

1:45:28Where Tim Cook is referred to in journalism circles sometimes as being one of America's ambassadors to China,

1:45:37in the sense that when relations between the two countries are not always that great,

1:45:41Tim Cook has good relationships with people in China and understands them.

1:45:45Like that's bananas. That fact that Apple's, most of Apple's feuds are not with its competitors,

1:45:51but with countries and regional governments, like that's what, I think that's what's happened in the last 10 years.

1:46:00So it's really dramatically different. And there's a decade in between there that set the stage for that.

1:46:05But like this has been, I think upgrade has really been the chronicle for the last 10 years of what has happened to Tim Cook's Apple,

1:46:12where everything is the stage set by the decisions that Steve Jobs made early on in his return to Apple.

1:46:20And in the launch of the iPhone, but like the moment where the iPhone really kind of blew it out and caught fire and was just,

1:46:27not literally caught fire, I keep saying the iPhone's exploded. People are going to take me out of context.

1:46:31That's not what I mean. It's metaphor people.

1:46:32Breaking iPhone 16.

1:46:34So it's a, like that, for me, that's the story of the last 10 years is just like Apple has gotten so much bigger

1:46:44and so much more influential and powerful because of this huge growth in primarily the iPhone,

1:46:51but then services on top of that and the Apple watch and the AirPods on top of that.

1:46:56And it's just kind of like, it is just a very different company than it was 10 years ago. What do you think?

1:47:01I mean, I couldn't agree more. Like, you know, it depends on where you cut my 10 years from.

1:47:05It's either the 10 years from when I started, but I started at the iPad, right?

1:47:09It was when I first started podcasting, it's when the iPad had been released.

1:47:12Or you start it from 10 years from now and it starts with the biggest, most successful iPhone,

1:47:19contextually the most successful iPhone in history, right? And it's like, you know, it is a very, very different time.

1:47:27But there is interesting parallels, right? Where like you're looking at Steve Jobs and like his rise through

1:47:34everything that he did and changed the company and the ways that he wanted to change it, like over that longer period of time.

1:47:40And then you have the same with Tim, right? Like Tim took over the company, worked out what he was doing,

1:47:44and then started changing it and modeling it the way that he wants. Very different times, but the ideas remain the same.

1:47:51I wanted to very quickly, if you've listened this far, I wanted to just mention Upgrade Plus again.

1:47:59So I think this is a good time to talk about it. We have a membership program.

1:48:04You can go to getupgradeplus.com and you can learn more. We mention it a lot.

1:48:08But in the last five years, Upgrade Plus has become an incredibly important thing to the both of us

1:48:14because of how it represents how we make a living, where membership has become the stable bedrock on which the show can be built from.

1:48:24Advertising goes up and down. Sometimes we don't have as many advertisers. Sometimes our advertisers don't pay as much as other times of the year.

1:48:31But our membership remains consistent and we would love for you to consider becoming a member.

1:48:38You get longer ad-free versions of the show every week. You get access to the Relay Discord.

1:48:43You get access to other perks for being a Relay listener, including additional bonus content.

1:48:49But for the purpose of this conversation, what I'm saying right now, you support the show.

1:48:55It helps the show continue. Me and Jason want to continue doing this show for as many more decades as you'll allow us.

1:49:01I would really love it if you would consider becoming a member and supporting the show.

1:49:07You can find out more by going to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up today.

1:49:11It would mean an awful lot to the two of us, I'm sure. Right, Jason?

1:49:15Yes, absolutely. It's been a great thing. Like I said about Six Colors, the same goes for Upgrade.

1:49:20It has been great to have that as part of this journey and has allowed us to continue doing what we do.

1:49:26Yep. All right, so that's going to be it for this week's episode.

1:49:31If you would like to send us feedback, some follow-up or questions, you can always go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send those in.

1:49:40I guess next week's episode, we're going to be reviewing the iPhone 16.

1:49:45It's a banger. We have new iPhones in hand, hopefully.

1:49:49And we'll be together.

1:49:51And we'll be together in person, that's right.

1:49:53Yeah. You can check out Jason's work and Dan's work.

1:49:57There's a bunch of articles about reviews and stuff over on sixcolors.com.

1:50:02And you can hear him on the incomparable.com and here on Relay.

1:50:05You can listen to my podcast here on Relay and check out my work at cortexbrand.com.

1:50:10Jason is @jsnell. I am @imike.

1:50:13You can find clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are @upgraderelay.

1:50:18Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus.

1:50:21Thank you to our sponsors.

1:50:23This week is to find people over at Backblaze, DeleteMe, and Fitbud.

1:50:27They help make this show possible.

1:50:29Please go to stjude.org/relay and consider donating to our campaign for this year.

1:50:35And don't forget, this Friday, September 20th, at 12pm to 12am US Eastern Time,

1:50:40you can catch the sixth annual Podcastathon broadcasting live from the campus of St. Jude.

1:50:46Me and Jason will be there, Stephen will be there, Casey will be there, Kathy Campbell will be there.

1:50:50It's going to be an incredible time. I hope that you'll join us.

1:50:52And I will say right now, more than ever, thank you for listening to this show.

1:50:57Whenever you started, we appreciate you.

1:51:00This is why we do this. We do this for you.

1:51:03And we hope that you will always enjoy it.

1:51:05Until next week, say goodbye to Jason Snell.

1:51:07Goodbye Mike Hurley.

1:51:10[Music]

1:51:13(upbeat music)