00:00:00 ◼ ► this is upgrade episode 547 for january 20th 2025. today's show is brought to you by squarespace fitbud and delete me my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike how are you i'm pretty good i'm pretty good i have a snow talk question for you that i'm pretty sure i've asked before
00:00:29 ◼ ► from the same person yeah and uh eli writes in and says jason how did you enjoy the flop house live last
00:00:37 ◼ ► night thank you for letting this upgrade and flop house fan say hi uh it was great thank you to eli uh i did
00:00:46 ◼ ► speak to some upgrade uh listeners the the you know we have between john and merlin and me i feel like
00:00:55 ◼ ► we've turned a lot of people onto the flop house the upgrade ease there's a lot so there's some overlap
00:01:00 ◼ ► there so there were definitely some listeners there uh ran into a former co-worker of mine who works at
00:01:08 ◼ ► apple now got to got to see him i knew he was coming he texted me he's like you're going i said yeah i'm
00:01:12 ◼ ► going he says okay well we'll see you there uh but it was great to see him uh we had a nice time i mean
00:01:18 ◼ ► it's easy to get there it's the the shows in north beach it's like super easy to get there across the
00:01:22 ◼ ► bridge and uh then it's the boys and you know there's really a delightful thing about about
00:01:27 ◼ ► seeing those people who i've been listening to for so long and they're just up there doing their
00:01:32 ◼ ► doing their thing great great uh highly recommend the flop house as a live podcast experience we had a
00:01:39 ◼ ► great time all three of them oh yeah good i mean i'm not sure how they do their live shows they don't
00:01:45 ◼ ► do it they don't do it any other way no it's they they do a presentation or each of them for a live
00:01:50 ◼ ► in-person show that each of them does a presentation the presentations are very funny i think stewart
00:01:55 ◼ ► really killed it with his presentation which was about new york city um but not quite well it was really
00:02:02 ◼ ► good it was very funny it was just completely absurd and um and uh and then they do when they're done
00:02:07 ◼ ► with their presentations then they do an episode where they talk about you know a bad movie and we
00:02:11 ◼ ► got uh rennie harland's classic pirate flop uh cutthroat island so which i have not seen
00:02:19 ◼ ► uh yeah we had a good time and that the only problem is that you know in six months or eight months or
00:02:24 ◼ ► something like that a saturday will come and there'll be a new flop house episode and it'll be
00:02:28 ◼ ► what we already heard and i'll be like oh okay we we heard that one that happens that's the downside of
00:02:34 ◼ ► of going to a live show is that you don't get a new episode when they drop that in their feed and
00:02:38 ◼ ► they they always do anyway it was great if you'd like to send in a question to help us open a future
00:02:43 ◼ ► episode of the show please go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your snell talk question thank you to
00:02:48 ◼ ► eli last name of howard for sending that question in uh it's time for what has become our new recurring
00:02:54 ◼ ► segment about notification summaries jason it's time for summing up summing up this was new this was a
00:03:02 ◼ ► thought that i had on the train this morning i was proud of myself and here we are summing up and jason's
00:03:08 ◼ ► made some wonderful artwork uh which you can look at your podcast app now and see it uh and this is
00:03:15 ◼ ► because i mean last few weeks we've been tracking the story about uh apple's notification summaries and
00:03:21 ◼ ► and the bbc essentially uh as kind of being the flag bearer for this feature isn't good and it was announced
00:03:28 ◼ ► uh in the past week that uh ios 18.3 beta 3 came out with a selection of changes for notification
00:03:37 ◼ ► summaries first off summaries of quote news and entertainment apps has been temporarily disabled
00:03:44 ◼ ► apple is apparently working on bringing this feature back in a future update uh during the setup process it
00:03:51 ◼ ► is made even clearer that this is a beta feature you'll be able to disable summaries from notifications
00:03:57 ◼ ► themselves by swiping to the side tapping options and turning them off can't believe this wasn't
00:04:02 ◼ ► already there i just would have assumed that was already there uh and summarized notifications are now
00:04:08 ◼ ► italicized so if you have uh an app or even messages say it summarizes your notifications when they're
00:04:16 ◼ ► summarized it has that little icon that it has right the little summary icon that they've made
00:04:20 ◼ ► and then the text is italicized which i think looks horrendous i think it looks so bad and it screams what
00:04:30 ◼ ► it is which is a band-aid that they have scrambled to come up with yep like what is the bare minimum we
00:04:37 ◼ ► can do this has literally happened between you know between betas here as this has gone on and and it's
00:04:44 ◼ ► clearly a directive from on high saying this do something resembling anything right um and it's a
00:04:52 ◼ ► that's what it is it's a it's a band-aid it's it's what among the things that we suggested was you could
00:04:57 ◼ ► just turn it off for news apps for a while and they totally did that um which is it's funny too because
00:05:03 ◼ ► you can still select a news news apps as one of the class of apps to get summaries for and then below it
00:05:09 ◼ ► it just says but not now it doesn't work now but when it does work again it'll work it's like okay
00:05:14 ◼ ► thank you like what what this is one of these things that happens i think quite rarely where it's like
00:05:21 ◼ ► we have been saying they should do such and such a thing right or like you know lots of people have
00:05:25 ◼ ► been saying apple should do such and such a thing but when they do it it's like i didn't expect that
00:05:31 ◼ ► i didn't think they would do it i mean it's what we wanted them to do but i'm surprised they did it
00:05:36 ◼ ► uh and and they have they've done it which is just turn it off which yeah it's not good like this is
00:05:44 ◼ ► running to the press never helps mike running to the press never helps and and miss summarizing the
00:05:48 ◼ ► press never helps either and it is i mean it's bad when you're when you're badly summarizing news
00:05:55 ◼ ► organizations they're they're gonna let you hear about it and that's bad press for apple and so i mean
00:06:00 ◼ ► that is the as classic steve jobs the running to the press never helps thing in the app store
00:06:05 ◼ ► uh guidelines but like the truth is that uh it does it does help because it always helps because
00:06:12 ◼ ► apple hates bad publicity and and they people called them on this and i think it's funny i would not have
00:06:20 ◼ ► predicted this would be the thing that got apple in trouble but uh it is so now we're seeing them
00:06:27 ◼ ► scrambling to look this was a a a band-aid anyway like the apple intelligence is kind of a band-aid
00:06:34 ◼ ► right apple intelligence is like we as we've detailed over the course of the last six months
00:06:38 ◼ ► is a a way for them to try and really quickly jam things into their operating system to look like
00:06:44 ◼ ► they've got ai stuff going on because they were behind yeah and so i think this whole episode has
00:06:50 ◼ ► exposed the fact that the a lot of the issues with apple intelligence aren't the llms it's the
00:06:55 ◼ ► implementations of the llms and the choices apple has made now going into this i thought this is an
00:07:00 ◼ ► opportunity for apple to show that it can make good choices this is a an area where it made bad choices
00:07:05 ◼ ► because it wanted to scramble and put this stuff in there before really thinking it through and now it
00:07:11 ◼ ► has to do damage control and and the real problem here is you know okay so you temporarily shut off
00:07:18 ◼ ► news and entertainment summaries but you keep the ui like you're kind of committing to bringing it back
00:07:24 ◼ ► now but what's your strategy for bringing it back how is that going to work so again it's not not great
00:07:31 ◼ ► and it really does expose what we all kind of suspected all along which is that this is a real
00:07:37 ◼ ► scramble for uh for apple to get this stuff in there and they left a lot of stuff in the background
00:07:46 ◼ ► that was super messy and it's not a great look for apple apple certainly doesn't it's not to say that
00:07:52 ◼ ► other tech companies don't do stuff like this all the time it's that apple doesn't like to be seen
00:07:57 ◼ ► as breaking a sweat and scrambling and struggling and that's what they're doing with this stuff
00:08:03 ◼ ► uh naturally the bbc is thrilled i mean they're very excited about this they wrote uh an article
00:08:10 ◼ ► uh saying it with a i like there was um uh an analysis from uh technology editor zoe kleinman
00:08:17 ◼ ► whose titles are a rare u-turn from apple which i do agree with that kind of framing of her addition to
00:08:23 ◼ ► the news article like it is um as i say like it's what we wanted like we wanted them to do something
00:08:31 ◼ ► but it's still surprising when it happens um and i just wanted to say is uh i'm impressed
00:08:37 ◼ ► with the bbc like they they really i think there are a lot of news organizations a lot of people
00:08:42 ◼ ► pushing on this but but it kind of feels like the bbc was really kind of waving the flag on this one
00:08:49 ◼ ► because they got the initial kind of quote from apple um to be like hey we're looking at this uh and
00:08:54 ◼ ► they've ended up kind of making a bigger change i also saw a coming right from a different uh angle
00:09:00 ◼ ► joanna stern um has been writing in her newsletter tech things uh apple intelligence insists that she
00:09:08 ◼ ► or her wife has a husband which is really rough uh gotta be a husband in there somewhere somewhere
00:09:14 ◼ ► so that's basically like look there's a marriage here there surely there has to be a husband that's
00:09:20 ◼ ► that's what apple intelligence is saying which we are joking but that's so bad right uh frequently
00:09:26 ◼ ► with joanna stands i message summaries it displays something along the lines of and i've been seeing
00:09:32 ◼ ► a posties uh online over the last couple of months uh something like expresses frustration with husband
00:09:37 ◼ ► like it says in the summary um and this is assuming based on the context of their being like there is
00:09:44 ◼ ► it seems like because there is a wife or partner mentioned in the message somewhere that the ai is
00:09:51 ◼ ► making this leap all of us who sort of know how these things work could say i understand how it got
00:09:55 ◼ ► there right i understand that what why doesn't it for younger people who aren't and people who aren't
00:10:00 ◼ ► married in general why why does it not summarize things as husbands and wives all the boyfriends and
00:10:04 ◼ ► all the other male people that people know are husbands and all the the females are our wives and
00:10:09 ◼ ► but why doesn't it do that well the answer is because the text of joanna's text with her wife
00:10:14 ◼ ► include the idea of a wife and so they're like oh the lm is like well that's a super important
00:10:21 ◼ ► context clue that there's a marriage here so i can use married words but then they mention
00:10:24 ◼ ► one of their sons and it's like well there is a male in the marriage cloud and therefore we will
00:10:33 ◼ ► assign that person to be a husband i mean i can understand it and and joanna talks about this and
00:10:40 ◼ ► i think that it's really interesting because it exposes exactly what's going on here and it's not
00:10:47 ◼ ► the case and she says this very much it's like it's not the case that apple is trying to be biased
00:10:53 ◼ ► and apple says to her apple's ai tools were built with responsible ai principles to avoid
00:10:59 ◼ ► perpetuating stereotypes and systemic biases the problem as joanna points out is that it's about
00:11:05 ◼ ► probability and so the the llm is saying it's more probable that there is a husband in this marriage
00:11:14 ◼ ► than that there are two wives which is true right but it's different to say to have a computer say
00:11:22 ◼ ► i have beep boop beep boop i have calculated the probability and the way it comes from the human
00:11:29 ◼ ► side it's like an iphone barreling into your marriage like a kool-aid man going hey where's
00:11:36 ◼ ► the husband and it's like the two wives are there going what the hell are you doing iphone right like
00:11:40 ◼ ► i can understand it from the beep boop computer side but we don't see the beep boop computer we see
00:11:45 ◼ ► the kool-aid man and it's just like you're a big dumb rude lummox who's breaking things and making
00:11:50 ◼ ► assumptions and you're wrong and that's the difference between computers and probability
00:11:56 ◼ ► and like society and and being rude and you know having bad behavior and the problem is when you
00:12:03 ◼ ► have a computer act like it's a person kind of if you don't get that right it's a disaster yeah and it
00:12:09 ◼ ► also doesn't feel intelligent does it right like it doesn't feel intelligent like the phone knows
00:12:16 ◼ ► joanna stern knows everything about her and knows absolutely should know she has a wife because the
00:12:22 ◼ ► personal context baby yeah like you know like it doesn't feel like a leap to make that assumption
00:12:28 ◼ ► and like i i get the point i really so like joanna spoke to an apple spokesperson and they said quote
00:12:34 ◼ ► apple's ai tools were built responsible ai principles to avoid perpetuating stereotypes and
00:12:39 ◼ ► systemic biases i really don't like that quote from them because that's great but it didn't do it did
00:12:44 ◼ ► it like you can say that as much as you like but it didn't do it in this scenario right like it's not
00:12:50 ◼ ► worked has it but like they don't they don't say that didn't work they're just like oh well we tried
00:12:55 ◼ ► it's like yeah but it doesn't work like that well which comes back to the whole um we need to hold
00:13:00 ◼ ► them responsible for what they do not what they say and and can't just say well it's a beta and you
00:13:05 ◼ ► know lms right they're kind of messy you got to say it doesn't work you guys know lms you're doing it
00:13:09 ◼ ► wrong it's a failure it's a bug it's a failure you need to fix it or stop it it doesn't really matter
00:13:14 ◼ ► what else is going on here we can all understand that you're trying to be i mean what they're really
00:13:20 ◼ ► saying is look we tried like you said we tried everything to do it but it's still probability and so
00:13:25 ◼ ► it's still going to happen and like i understand it but it's not understanding why it's happening
00:13:31 ◼ ► is not good enough right like it it because in a human context it's getting it wrong and if the
00:13:37 ◼ ► whole point of this tool is to use this stuff to put things in a human context and it puts them in
00:13:42 ◼ ► wrong then it's a flop that's it because it's not even like like you can listen to what we're saying
00:13:50 ◼ ► and be like oh you guys are overblowing it or whatever like it's you know like what is this
00:13:54 ◼ ► scenario that is being spoken about how is this you know like what but the point is these features are
00:14:01 ◼ ► supposed to impress people right so you want to use them but if this is your scenario you're not
00:14:07 ◼ ► impressed by it are you right like and that is the problem here and like that the bigger problem that
00:14:13 ◼ ► that i think we've been teasing out with apple intelligence for the last six months maybe more is
00:14:18 ◼ ► this technology is supposed to impress people it's supposed to be good this is bad right like
00:14:26 ◼ ► over and over again we're seeing examples of this technology just not being good enough now you
00:14:34 ◼ ► can say it's a beta and that is fine if apple were in their action saying that which they're not right
00:14:42 ◼ ► like prompting people to go and install it like when they set up their phones uh or giving them push
00:14:48 ◼ ► notifications making ads about it like that's not that's not a feature you're trying to tweak right
00:14:55 ◼ ► that is a buy this phone get this feature so that feature should be good i wrote a piece last week
00:15:03 ◼ ► about one of the ways that apple has failed i know i've mentioned this on the show the one of the ways
00:15:11 ◼ ► that apple has sort of failed recently is when they make a misstep it seems to be because they're
00:15:15 ◼ ► making assumptions or following rules that no longer apply and this is one of my examples which is
00:15:20 ◼ ► they don't know how to soft pedal a feature every feature is shouted as the greatest new thing and
00:15:30 ◼ ► marketed and all of that and it seems like they kind of don't know how to say here's a new thing that
00:15:37 ◼ ► we're testing you can try it if you want but it might not work instead they're like it's a beta enjoy and
00:15:42 ◼ ► it's like people don't know what that means and it doesn't come across as as being uh uh you know
00:15:48 ◼ ► reluctant it comes across as being super confident because everything apple does is like no we're
00:15:52 ◼ ► super confident in everything we do and so you shouldn't be super confident about this feature
00:15:56 ◼ ► because it isn't something to be confident about and you can put it out there and say look we're
00:16:02 ◼ ► working on this new tech but but but the reason that they're working on all this new tech is they feel
00:16:07 ◼ ► like they're behind and so they want to catch up by acting all cool and being like oh yeah yeah yeah
00:16:11 ◼ ► we got ai yeah sure try it out it's great and then in the background somebody's going beta it's a beta
00:16:18 ◼ ► but like the whispered beta does not is not heard over the shouts of apple intelligence right that's just
00:16:24 ◼ ► the bottom line and so that's that's what they're stuck with is this very weird uh situation where they
00:16:30 ◼ ► are trying to act like one of the cool kids but they're not one of the cool kids and you know it's
00:16:36 ◼ ► not a great it's just not a great situation um it leads to bad outcomes and i think that that that if
00:16:42 ◼ ► you get somebody who's kind of poisoned with the the narrative of ai you it's easy to scoff at this
00:16:48 ◼ ► and go why are they making a big deal about it ai you know it's probability and it makes mistakes and
00:16:53 ◼ ► it'll all get better you know but right now it's just not that it's like all of that is true but like
00:16:58 ◼ ► look through it through a product lens and it's like joanna is an apple customer who is being told
00:17:05 ◼ ► by her device that she i guess should have a husband she's certainly being told inaccurate information
00:17:13 ◼ ► about her family and like it's not acceptable that's a that's a very large in in classic computer
00:17:19 ◼ ► terms we would say a very large bug that's it okay last thing i wanted to wrap up on this i just think
00:17:26 ◼ ► this technology is indicating an issue with kind of the incumbent incumbents where like the big companies
00:17:35 ◼ ► where people have an expectation from them because they already have a bunch of data or whatever you
00:17:39 ◼ ► like apple and google they're really being pointed out with their failures more in this than the new
00:17:44 ◼ ► companies because the new companies they have an inherent like we're hey we're still working this out
00:17:50 ◼ ► where we expect more from the big tech companies that exist currently and that's kind of i think what
00:17:57 ◼ ► apple is falling foul to like you have everything about me right so you should be able to do a good job
00:18:05 ◼ ► you're right if open ai or anthropic or whatever does stupid stuff everybody's like oh well you know
00:18:13 ◼ ► it's the new tech they're doing crazy stuff they're just silly toddlers they don't know what they're doing
00:18:17 ◼ ► yeah but then apple does it and it comes with the weight of apple and it's like look we all
00:18:23 ◼ ► we all saw this coming this is this is the consequence of apple's trying very hard to catch up
00:18:29 ◼ ► in an area where they really got flat-footed which they haven't done in a while and it's hard for them
00:18:34 ◼ ► and they're working really hard and it's i get it but this is the trade-off that apple has chosen to
00:18:42 ◼ ► make which is in order to seem cool they are taking this risk which is to have uh big mistakes in their
00:18:50 ◼ ► in their tech yeah this is maybe a a trick question because i feel like i know the answer and i know what
00:18:57 ◼ ► you would say too but do you think that apple saw this coming like executives at apple do you think
00:19:03 ◼ ► they saw this this this coming this this kind of like the way it has gone so far i'm sure there are
00:19:10 ◼ ► people inside apple who knew this would happen yeah because we knew this would happen we knew there would
00:19:14 ◼ ► be a controversy involving something that was generated that didn't work right um i'm sure there are people
00:19:20 ◼ ► who warned about it 100 and i think what happened is that a very at a very high level probably tim cook
00:19:27 ◼ ► the decision was made that we have to do this we have to go all in on this this is a huge problem
00:19:34 ◼ ► that we're behind we have to catch up and it will be worth it in the long run for us to do this even
00:19:40 ◼ ► if we take some hits in the short run now my guess is that there's a spectrum of opinions or there was a
00:19:47 ◼ ► spectrum of opinions among apple's leaders about what that amount of hit taking would be and i'm sure there
00:19:56 ◼ ► were some who were told no no no we got it we are on it it's going to be great and and maybe this is
00:20:01 ◼ ► tim cook who is like yeah i i trust my people it's apple we're going to do the best stuff and then there
00:20:07 ◼ ► were probably some people again i don't know who but like let's say craig federighi who is like you
00:20:11 ◼ ► know what we're going to take some hits but we got to do it because he was probably hearing from his
00:20:14 ◼ ► managers they're like this stuff is not reliable it doesn't reach apple's expectation and so it's going to be
00:20:21 ◼ ► rough and we're going to be slapping these implementations in really fast now maybe it really just depends on how many
00:20:25 ◼ ► yes men there are in the chain right to say oh yeah yeah craig it's going to be great it's going to be
00:20:29 ◼ ► perfect we're going to it's apple but i'd imagine that there are some executives who knew and and this
00:20:34 ◼ ► is the thing i don't think it makes a difference because i think through the line if you had said
00:20:40 ◼ ► to apple executives when they made this decision to go all in on llms that okay you are going to be
00:20:45 ◼ ► able to catch up you are but it's going to be a rough ride and by rough ride i mean you're going to
00:20:51 ◼ ► features that don't work right you're going to have to do some apologies you're going to have to
00:20:55 ◼ ► turn some stuff off it's going to look the facade's going to crack a little bit but after a couple of
00:21:01 ◼ ► years two three years any potential existential threat you face from ai will be will be mitigated
00:21:08 ◼ ► every one of them would say let's do it and so here we are maps again isn't it or something right
00:21:14 ◼ ► where it's like a little bit they they have an institutional memory of like i know it's different
00:21:17 ◼ ► but just in the sense of like it's going to be bad for a while but we will be able to pull through
00:21:23 ◼ ► this like if you believe in the organization yeah and i know there are ai skeptics out there who say
00:21:29 ◼ ► things like you know they didn't have to do this they didn't have to do it they're just running like
00:21:33 ◼ ► lemmings like the rest of tech into this llm stuff i i get what you're saying and there's definitely
00:21:38 ◼ ► a possibility that at the end of all of this all the llm stuff ends up being like fruitless and it's like
00:21:43 ◼ ► oh this is all a parlor trick and it's really not there i don't believe that i don't believe that
00:21:47 ◼ ► either because because i can see it's already benefiting me so like i know that this is it
00:21:51 ◼ ► i think that 100 of what they're trying is not gonna gonna work but some percentage of it is gonna work
00:21:58 ◼ ► and therefore it's it's probably worth it but i think if you're apple this is what we talked about
00:22:02 ◼ ► with the car it's what we have talked about with the vision pro one of the things you're doing if
00:22:09 ◼ ► your apple is placing bets in order to eliminate existential threats you have all the money and
00:22:15 ◼ ► power in the world and you know what happens in the innovators dilemma you know that that all the giants
00:22:20 ◼ ► of one generation flop in the next generation because they can't adapt to changes and steve jobs knew
00:22:26 ◼ ► this it's be your own replacement that's the whole idea you get you get too comfortable you don't want
00:22:35 ◼ ► so they look at this and they say if if we do nothing because we're skeptical about llms
00:22:41 ◼ ► you know like we did two years ago and now look at everybody talking about ai if we just continue to
00:22:47 ◼ ► do nothing while google goes all in and microsoft goes all in with open ai all the other platforms for
00:22:55 ◼ ► computing are going to have robust ai integrated to them and we aren't and at that point what do you want
00:23:04 ◼ ► to risk that it matters and maybe it doesn't matter maybe it matters a little maybe it matters a lot
00:23:12 ◼ ► but there's certainly a risk of existential distress for apple in not following them and i know it doesn't
00:23:22 ◼ ► it's not great to say you got to follow them but like once and they didn't for a while right but once
00:23:27 ◼ ► there started to be some fruitful things coming out of the ai world that's when apple went oh crap
00:23:33 ◼ ► like because they had been a little too conservative and now they're over they are overreacting but
00:23:42 ◼ ► they're overreacting because they they need to get to that end state where uh google and open ai and
00:23:49 ◼ ► microsoft and all the rest can't kill apple because apple missed whatever the killer ai feature is
00:23:56 ◼ ► so that's why they did it i understand why they did it i i could maybe make the argument that
00:24:03 ◼ ► i look i don't like how they rolled this out because it does feel like they could have they could have
00:24:09 ◼ ► they could certainly could have done a better job maybe they could have taken their time but
00:24:13 ◼ ► remember we're also the ones bellyaching that the better siri isn't going to come until 2026 right
00:24:18 ◼ ► like they they they are kind of taking their time but they also need to ship stuff and i do think that
00:24:23 ◼ ► the attitude that changed within apple a year ago was i know it's not perfect but we've got to ship it
00:24:29 ◼ ► and then we'll figure it out and guess what we're in figure it out time now we have reached with with
00:24:34 ◼ ► the notification summaries we certainly have reached figure it out time and it's going to come down
00:24:40 ◼ ► to apple's people saying what can we do with our appley approach to this to make this better
00:24:49 ◼ ► and to make people understand what it is and to make it useful and i think as we've detailed the
00:24:54 ◼ ► last couple of weeks there are a lot of things they could do that were more nuanced to get notification
00:24:59 ◼ ► to be summarized in a better way and they didn't do any of that they just sort of slapped in an llm so
00:25:05 ◼ ► maybe this will see them back off and say okay we're going to refactor this maybe notification
00:25:12 ◼ ► summaries for news don't don't become apple intelligence again maybe when they come back
00:25:18 ◼ ► they are something they're like a bulleted list of summaries here are the three most recent summaries
00:25:22 ◼ ► uh three most recent headlines and tap to get a full list and they're processing the summaries in a
00:25:27 ◼ ► different way instead of saying well there were 10 bubbles now there's one bubble which is sort of
00:25:31 ◼ ► how it's doing right now so we'll see we'll see but this is look this is the this is the path they
00:25:37 ◼ ► have chosen like the godfather right like and i understand why they chose the path and i think if
00:25:43 ◼ ► you would ask them to answer your question i think if you would ask them and you told them what the cost
00:25:47 ◼ ► was and that it would you know give them a black eye and all of that but in the end it was going to
00:25:53 ◼ ► guarantee that they were going to well not guarantee but you know they were going to give it a go
00:26:01 ◼ ► figure out and find out that's where we are figure out and find out they are they are finding it out
00:26:07 ◼ ► finding out and and now they got to figure it out again it just keeps going around that's the cycle
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00:28:15 ◼ ► all of relay so as two people who do not use tiktok shall we talk about tiktok let's i love the tiktak
00:28:26 ◼ ► it's where i talk about the poker mans i love it uh i think there are some news stories
00:28:32 ◼ ► that are unavoidable i think and this is one of them um yep it is very complicated i honestly at
00:28:42 ◼ ► this point i think it is too complicated to try and sum this story up i'm assuming most of our listeners
00:28:47 ◼ ► have at least some grasp of of what's going on but i'm going to give a incredibly brief confusing
00:28:54 ◼ ► summary so as it stands of where we are recording right now uh on the 20th of january tiktok is
00:29:02 ◼ ► operational in the usa but not available to download in any app store it appears that president trump is
00:29:08 ◼ ► attempting to get an extension for the app to be sold at least in part to a u.s company or maybe the
00:29:14 ◼ ► government it's not really clear uh this is all gonna i mean this is all gonna change uh probably
00:29:22 ◼ ► rapidly but it is an amazingly chaotic moment where the app went down the the companies that
00:29:29 ◼ ► take care of the infrastructure put it back up and said basically well president trump said it at this
00:29:36 ◼ ► point president elect trump said that he'll take care of us once he takes the oath of office which he
00:29:40 ◼ ► just did as we started this podcast and he'll sign an executive order and and it'll be okay and
00:29:51 ◼ ► like we can't do that and so they've kept them off of the app store the problem with i'll sign an
00:29:57 ◼ ► executive order is this is a law and the only thing in it it was a law passed by congress signed
00:30:05 ◼ ► by biden it is a law it remains a law now even though trump is president it remains a law and the
00:30:11 ◼ ► only thing in it is the president can delay this for 90 days if there is pending a pending sale
00:30:17 ◼ ► which there isn't or is there or are they going to pretend that there is and do laws matter anymore
00:30:24 ◼ ► i guess we'll find out yeah but it's a very peculiar scenario and and some of these statements like
00:30:29 ◼ ► the statement that like oh well we just the the the u.s government will buy half of it and then it'll be
00:30:36 ◼ ► fine it's like first off buy half of it is not what the law requires it needs to be a complete divestment
00:30:42 ◼ ► and also the idea that and that we would say well just cut in the u.s government for half and we're
00:30:49 ◼ ► not going to pay anything is like a shakedown it's literally like well nice app you got there shame if
00:30:54 ◼ ► anything happened to it but if it like i just and so who knows where it's going to go it's also funny
00:31:01 ◼ ► because you know who started the talk about banning tiktok donald trump and now he's like no i'll i'll
00:31:08 ◼ ► save i'll save tiktok like what what is so it's it's nonsensical but that's everybody though at the
00:31:15 ◼ ► same time this this topic has become like this weird like hot potato where people want to do it and then
00:31:21 ◼ ► don't want to do it right because it's like biden's like yeah let's do it and then on the day that's
00:31:25 ◼ ► happening he's like yeah no i didn't really want to do it and it's like everybody is like
00:31:30 ◼ ► they wanted to do this and there are apparently reasons that no one can talk about as to why
00:31:35 ◼ ► tiktok needs to be banned in the us of a uh and then also nobody wants to ever and then this is one of my
00:31:41 ◼ ► other things one of the reasons i wanted to bring this story onto the show today is to give kind of
00:31:45 ◼ ► like a thing that i want to kind of get across to upgradians right i think part of the reason that
00:31:51 ◼ ► this story has been so complicated over the last 48 hours is because there are lots of opinions
00:31:56 ◼ ► online and everybody is saying different things like for example the idea about this uh 90 day
00:32:04 ◼ ► extension thing i am seeing smart people say this does apply and also it doesn't apply and so like
00:32:12 ◼ ► what are you supposed to do with that so i think that this is our first test of media literacy
00:32:18 ◼ ► in the second trump presidency this is where i'm not saying i have any feeling as to what is right
00:32:26 ◼ ► or wrong here because i i genuinely have no idea but this is an example of what we're about to see
00:32:33 ◼ ► for the next four years like it or not and i will say as someone who doesn't live in america i
00:32:49 ◼ ► construction or destruction of american chinese international politics yeah that's what's
00:33:01 ◼ ► happening here yeah right it was it was the ban was mooted because the thought was that china is an
00:33:07 ◼ ► adversary of the united states and they built this popular app with the kids that let that can read
00:33:11 ◼ ► their minds and can change their minds by using their their their evil algorithm and that has been
00:33:18 ◼ ► perfected on the brains of the youths and um it and therefore we must ban it because the chinese
00:33:25 ◼ ► communist party is going to control our minds and and and we can't stop them oh no and now it seems to
00:33:31 ◼ ► be has been turned into a bargaining chip which is sort of like well you know you are a chinese company
00:33:39 ◼ ► but in the u.s we need to run it uh which sounds honestly it sounds very much like some of the stuff
00:33:44 ◼ ► out of europe except without the law part which is very much like well no in our region you have
00:33:49 ◼ ► to do things completely differently or get out and tiktok doesn't want to do them in the way the u.s
00:33:56 ◼ ► wants them to do them which is divest their u.s operations to someone who you know in america
00:34:02 ◼ ► and and so it becomes a political football right it is now part of the the narrative between
00:34:08 ◼ ► washington and beijing and that's where we are so i can't wait for tim cook to run in and say i'll
00:34:14 ◼ ► save your tiktok for you tiktok might want to right like tiktok at this point may have decided
00:34:22 ◼ ► we want to sell like even though they were saying they didn't want to but they they thought that
00:34:26 ◼ ► maybe this wouldn't happen and they went to the supreme court and the supreme court were like no
00:34:31 ◼ ► this law stands you have to right so now and it seems like from the way they are talking right and
00:34:36 ◼ ► they're like thank you glorious leader trump right like in the app of like he saved seriously for all
00:34:42 ◼ ► right like yeah it sounds very much like tiktok wants to work with president trump but that doesn't
00:34:49 ◼ ► mean that the people republic of china wants tiktok to sell its assets which is a thing exactly from my
00:34:58 ◼ ► understanding right that has to occur yeah the chinese the chinese government has to say we'll let
00:35:04 ◼ ► you otherwise it won't happen because they have absolute control of china and so they have to want it
00:35:09 ◼ ► and then also again i'm going to point this out because theoretically again who knows we're now in
00:35:15 ◼ ► a new era there's a law on the books yeah that says they got to do this or they're out just like the
00:35:21 ◼ ► first piece of technology focused legislation in like two decades or something yeah it it's very clear
00:35:27 ◼ ► about what that law says and the president saying it's okay doesn't do it right like you need you really
00:35:34 ◼ ► need an act of congress to change the law and again i will say can they get a majority of the house and
00:35:43 ◼ ► the senate to do anything even remotely controversial right now yeah we will see but like that's part of
00:35:54 ◼ ► the question here is is yes one the law says they got to sell two if the if the chinese government
00:36:00 ◼ ► doesn't want them to sell they can't sell uh step three profit i don't know i mean i don't know it is
00:36:08 ◼ ► it is going to be fascinating to watch but that's why i keep coming back to the fact that in the end
00:36:14 ◼ ► the only answer here is international politics the only answer is what does that say about the
00:36:21 ◼ ► relationship with between the u.s and china and and like it might be unilateral it might be
00:36:28 ◼ ► cooperation like it might be unilateral in the sense that the chinese government might might
00:36:32 ◼ ► look at trump and this is a thing i think that gets underrated about trump is trump breaks all sorts of
00:36:39 ◼ ► norms but i will i will say this he does sometimes i think break through calcified positions out of
00:36:50 ◼ ► kind of terror where like if he's like well you know i'm going to do this thing and you know we're going
00:36:56 ◼ ► to take tiktok or we're going to do this and and you know i wouldn't put it past the chinese government
00:37:00 ◼ ► to be like oh this guy all right whatever like i i really wouldn't um they could also very easily be
00:37:07 ◼ ► like no we draw a line here on tiktok that's it that's what we're going to draw the line on and that
00:37:12 ◼ ► that's fair too but you never know i i think that um when you're dealing with trump you have a different
00:37:20 ◼ ► playbook and some stuff changes that was that seemed intractable intractable because the
00:37:25 ◼ ► intractability was based on well the americans would never do this and then this guy rolls in and he's
00:37:30 ◼ ► like well i'm doing it and everybody's like but sir we never do that he says i don't care i'm doing it and
00:37:35 ◼ ► they're like okay well let's see what happens now and and then the other the the intractable situation
00:37:40 ◼ ► changes positively negatively who knows but uh chaotically but it can break log jams just
00:37:47 ◼ ► because the accepted rules of the game no longer apply in this case who knows there's also been a
00:37:53 ◼ ► lot of it turns out that but the that the the chain of ownership that starts with bite dance and goes
00:37:59 ◼ ► downward includes several other unrelated apps that have also been banned yeah i honestly the real loser
00:38:06 ◼ ► here is marvel snap absolutely absolutely like what is it i'm trying to like like shrapnel just
00:38:12 ◼ ► catching some shrapnel this one so marvel snap is a game made by a company called second dinner
00:38:19 ◼ ► they are developer they're the developer of this uh game it is published by a company called nuvia
00:38:26 ◼ ► which is owned by bite dance yep this law does not get rid of tiktok this law is against bite dance
00:38:35 ◼ ► so any app associated with bite dance and there's other ones like cap cut which is like a video
00:38:41 ◼ ► editing app is they're they're killed now the weird thing is like so this is where we continue with
00:38:47 ◼ ► like what is actually going on here right so marvel snap is not available in the app store and uh as of
00:38:55 ◼ ► today still marvel snap is not available which means the service providers for marvel snap to keep it online
00:39:04 ◼ ► are not bringing it back in the us which is different to tiktok right right so like that is like another
00:39:11 ◼ ► thing where like there is this like tiktok carve out now within the law which is bigger because it's
00:39:19 ◼ ► bite dance this is just this is like it or hate it an incredible story right like it is it is so much
00:39:28 ◼ ► happening what i want to do is try and guess what happens next so this is what i think is going to
00:39:37 ◼ ► happen right okay lay it on me trump is going to find a way to do the 90 day extension like like it or
00:39:43 ◼ ► not like that's in there everyone's authority right yeah people are going to be like well what what is
00:39:49 ◼ ► the what is the thing that you're that you're you know you're giving 90 days to and he's like i got a
00:39:54 ◼ ► plan is we need 90 days and they're like who's going to stop him who's going to stop him who is
00:39:59 ◼ ► the president at this point right like is the question like the point that this was done and and i and i am
00:40:04 ◼ ► of the i could be of the persuasion of the president of elect the president elect is a powerful person
00:40:10 ◼ ► right because everybody knows what happens to the sitting president at this point no one cares so
00:40:17 ◼ ► like like like it or not no matter what the rules are the fact that the president elect said something
00:40:23 ◼ ► that he was going to do i think you can argue to a point if that which most people could just let go
00:40:30 ◼ ► sure like if it was supposed to be done by such and such day or whatever he said he was going to do it
00:40:41 ◼ ► someone multiple someones are going to try to step in to buy tiktok to run it in the u.s as a separate
00:40:51 ◼ ► entity away from by dance right and there are already lots of suitors and we're going to hear about a lot
00:40:57 ◼ ► more of them because this is an incredible asset for you to buy it is china will say no it will go
00:41:03 ◼ ► away at the end of the 90 days tiktok gone and then trump can still say i tried it's not me that's
00:41:10 ◼ ► what that's where i think this ends up in fact he can say now i need my my people in congress to
00:41:15 ◼ ► repeal that law if he wants to or because here's the thing here's the funny thing about it you could
00:41:22 ◼ ► also say that he will he will realize at some point in these 90 days that it really is you know china
00:41:31 ◼ ► especially if china just says no to him right that it's like oh well they're the bad guys
00:41:35 ◼ ► we don't want them anyway and just use good old american feeds on youtube and instagram i don't
00:41:42 ◼ ► think congress repeals this law i don't think it's because he can change his mind in a fraction of a
00:41:46 ◼ ► second right and in fact his original opinion was tiktok is bad because china and it won't won't take
00:41:52 ◼ ► long i think this will happen over the next four years a lot where whoever is sort of like the most
00:41:57 ◼ ► influential in the inner circle goes and says yeah but sir you don't actually it's china and they're
00:42:04 ◼ ► bad and they won't and if he gets frustrated he's like oh they won't sell it to me well that just proves
00:42:08 ◼ ► our point that it's bad let's ban it yep um and and they he can do that too or he can pivot and say
00:42:14 ◼ ► congress please you know let's change the law here maybe it only needs to be half owned or something i mean
00:42:19 ◼ ► that's the other thing that you could always bet on is the unsatisfactory solution which solves a
00:42:26 ◼ ► problem that didn't need to exist was created to address a very specific thing going on and then they
00:42:33 ◼ ► solve it in a way that does not address the specific thing that went on right like that that's a lot of
00:42:38 ◼ ► politics it seems to me is oh no we've got a problem of our own creation let's fix it by doing this other
00:42:43 ◼ ► thing unrelated to the problem that we created so we'll i have no predictions this could go
00:42:49 ◼ ► any way i know i said this is there's no way that this the chain of events that i've set out go in
00:42:56 ◼ ► that order like if or all right but that's just like for as much as i could try and apply logic to
00:43:02 ◼ ► what the next three months are going to look like it it is it is that from my mind um here's my other
00:43:09 ◼ ► question to you and see if you're willing to kind of hold my hand and jump off the cliff with me
00:43:13 ◼ ► do you have an opinion as to whether tiktok should be banned in the u.s um you know i don't i don't know
00:43:23 ◼ ► that i do i don't know that i do i my default would be no my default would be uh that banning blanket
00:43:33 ◼ ► bans of things that are owned by companies in other countries is only going to backfire on the u.s
00:43:38 ◼ ► since so many of our things are are all around the world and all it does is encourage the creation
00:43:44 ◼ ► of a completely broken up internet which is exactly what china has and you know do that for the rest
00:43:50 ◼ ► of the world so that we're all using our own stuff and not interacting like i don't think that's good
00:43:54 ◼ ► for the world in general and i think that this sort of thing deals with that i i think being concerned
00:44:01 ◼ ► that a an adversary of the u.s has control of a of an information platform in the u.s it's a little
00:44:10 ◼ ► bit like when americans tried to buy that uh what was it was it the was it the telegraph they tried to
00:44:14 ◼ ► buy a british newspaper yeah and the uk government was like no no non-uk people can't own british
00:44:21 ◼ ► newspapers we we won't we won't allow it or whatever i think that's like you can't have a
00:44:24 ◼ ► majority and a yeah like full ownership right and the same is true of of movie studios and tv network
00:44:31 ◼ ► or tv networks for sure is an issue in the u.s so i i think that you could argue that which is that
00:44:38 ◼ ► that uh we are concerned about media control by a foreign country uh especially with the power of the
00:44:44 ◼ ► i think there is an argument to be made there my gut feeling is that maybe you could i know just dream
00:44:51 ◼ ► on here legislate some rules about what the owners of social media algorithms are allowed to do and how
00:45:00 ◼ ► they're allowed to control it and that there's a provision for it to be taken over if it's being
00:45:04 ◼ ► used in a way that's contrary to national security or something like that instead of just grabbing it but
00:45:10 ◼ ► i would say the short version is it's really complicated and my gut is the more of this you
00:45:16 ◼ ► do the worse it will be for all of your other american tech companies because everybody else will start to
00:45:21 ◼ ► do it too and that's not great but i do understand it's just like the foreign ownership laws there is
00:45:29 ◼ ► some reason for it because you know it's to take the the pod people example you know the idea that some
00:45:37 ◼ ► foreign adversary whether it's china or russia or whoever can um can like turn on the algorithm that
00:45:45 ◼ ► makes everybody revolt in the u.s like it's it's an extreme ridiculous argument but you know again
00:45:52 ◼ ► there are less ridiculous versions of that that are potentially a problem so i think there might be
00:45:59 ◼ ► something there but i think that in the end it's probably bad for the world and bad for the u.s if
00:46:06 ◼ ► i agree with that i do say that i you know i i i understand and sympathize with the opinion that
00:46:15 ◼ ► if china blocks out the rest of the world and doesn't allow any social media in it is peculiar to me
00:46:25 ◼ ► that the rest of the world will let it out right like there is a i understand that the thinking there of
00:46:34 ◼ ► like what china blocks itself off from the rest of the world and then like then it creates uh an app that
00:46:43 ◼ ► is out to the world i i can see some of the thinking there but i agree that it is very complicated my
00:46:48 ◼ ► bigger thought though is like i just i don't think tiktok's very good for people i'm sorry i don't that's
00:46:53 ◼ ► why i don't use it i think that in i what i will say is i think that if it did go away i think it might
00:47:00 ◼ ► be good for people even if they don't like it um and sorry all tiktok users but here's what i will hit
00:47:08 ◼ ► what i will posit especially to the people that listen to this show most people that listen to this show i
00:47:13 ◼ ► think would be of the opinion that there i love it in discord in a members discord right now i see
00:47:19 ◼ ► several people are typing which you know is always a bad sign of course they are um where you know with
00:47:26 ◼ ► services like threads or twitter or whatever people were like i want a non-algorithmic timeline
00:47:33 ◼ ► give me the people i follow i you know chronological but yet you will just scroll endlessly to the
00:47:42 ◼ ► algorithm of video and and just like lose hours i that yeah that's why algorithms in general are
00:47:48 ◼ ► dangerous and it is because they're so easy and they're so good yeah and and that's why i think
00:47:54 ◼ ► that they are they are dangerous and and i'm not saying like it'll rot your brain or anything like
00:47:59 ◼ ► i'm just saying they're dangerous for everybody because you have to exert a level of self-control and that
00:48:02 ◼ ► can be difficult and i don't think that they're that they're great for people in general and that's
00:48:07 ◼ ► not just tiktok that's that's like all of them i think all of social media and and i mean tiktok is
00:48:13 ◼ ► just you know doom scrolling there's something about the short form video though that i think is like
00:48:19 ◼ ► particularly bad and i don't know why but like all of them reels tiktok uh shorts like there's something
00:48:27 ◼ ► about that format that it feels like for people that i observe in my life becomes incredibly
00:48:34 ◼ ► addictive like more than and i think part of it is it doesn't end right so like infinite it will just
00:48:42 ◼ ► carry on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever i have those moments here's an admission i have
00:48:48 ◼ ► those moments where i really don't want to be doing something else and it's usually like i'm i'm
00:48:52 ◼ ► having my tea and my breakfast in the morning and i don't want to get up and maybe the maybe
00:48:56 ◼ ► the cat has crawled underneath my legs under the blanket and it's warm and it's pleasant and i have
00:49:01 ◼ ► this sort of swirling set of things i can do i can check my email i can look at uh ivory i can look at
00:49:10 ◼ ► slack i can look at discord i can look at blue sky i can look at my sports list that's it and i find
00:49:18 ◼ ► occasionally i will get to the point where i've done all of those things i've had my morning routine
00:49:23 ◼ ► and i don't want to get up you know and i will check them again but but here's the thing
00:49:29 ◼ ► i i do run out i run out of places to check and i think to myself all right you know time to get up
00:49:37 ◼ ► but when when it never runs out like we bought a um we have a tankless hot water heater and uh a good
00:49:47 ◼ ► thing to have when you have teenagers but what i discovered is all it means is that the the you're
00:49:50 ◼ ► they'll just take a shower forever because they'll never run out of hot water you'll never run out of
00:49:56 ◼ ► hot water and you know again it's just like there is it is it gets real dangerous when there's no end
00:50:03 ◼ ► to the internet right like it it's just as really dangerous and we should be cognizant of that i'm
00:50:08 ◼ ► not saying that tiktok should be banned i'm not saying that uh for that i'm not saying that uh reels
00:50:14 ◼ ► or or youtube shorts or like any of that i'm just being aware that it's probably not good for us and
00:50:21 ◼ ► that as a society we need to understand that yeah i'm not saying it should be banned because of that i'm
00:50:28 ◼ ► saying if it was banned that might not be a bad thing for people right in general i think it could
00:50:34 ◼ ► be helpful for people i i i i this is why i never used to take targets why i don't use reels like i i am
00:50:40 ◼ ► could immediately see the problem for me that i would lose myself like tons of time in my day that i would
00:50:49 ◼ ► lose myself to it and i don't i don't want that and i don't i don't know how good it is and i'm also
00:50:56 ◼ ► very much at the persuasion that i like to i like to choose who i'm following even if it's
00:51:03 ◼ ► algorithmic like i like to choose you know like and that's what i like about instagram like it keeps
00:51:10 ◼ ► showing me stuff but it's from the people i'm following it just shows them in the order that
00:51:13 ◼ ► it wants rather than this just like it's better let's just turn on the fire hose forever it's like
00:51:24 ◼ ► i do occasionally and it's scary because it knows what i'm interested in and it will throw things out
00:51:31 ◼ ► there that are like oh yeah i should probably watch that but but i agree my primary use of youtube is
00:51:37 ◼ ► subscriptions yeah let me refer to that never is too strong like the on occasion i'll be like oh here's
00:51:43 ◼ ► a talk show segment from an actor that i like and i'll watch that but like knows yeah but and that's
00:51:49 ◼ ► because i don't want to subscribe to like yeah late night talk show like i subscribe to the taskmaster
00:51:55 ◼ ► youtube channel and um as a result my algorithm gets filled with all of the talk show appearances of
00:52:02 ◼ ► taskmaster contestants right yes which is fine again great fine i'll see james acaster doing something
00:52:10 ◼ ► it's fine great i i hear he was at the uh the hackney empire yeah really that's what it is
00:52:17 ◼ ► it's my algorithm is just people who performed at the hackney empire sometimes it's me you know
00:52:23 ◼ ► sometimes it's yourself sometimes it's taskmaster but anyway that's a that's a conversation about
00:52:28 ◼ ► tiktok from two people who don't use tiktok i am very intrigued to see where this goes can't wait
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00:55:07 ◼ ► support of this show and relay let's cleanse our palates now by talking about severance and silo a
00:55:14 ◼ ► little bit oh okay it's a big it's a big time uh yeah i'll say no spoilers let's start the conversation
00:55:21 ◼ ► by saying no spoilers right and if we're gonna get into anything then we will say hey spoilers but no
00:55:26 ◼ ► spoilers i mean i can't spoil season two of severance because i haven't even seen any of it yet so
00:55:30 ◼ ► but i wanted to kind of just talk about the fact that these shows exist at the same time and what
00:55:37 ◼ ► that could mean or not for apple so this is on friday apple tv plus saw the season finale of silo
00:55:44 ◼ ► season two uh and the season premiere of severance season one that's good to do season two sorry yes
00:55:51 ◼ ► that's good to do right that's smart of them that feels like some good programming over apple tv plus to
00:55:57 ◼ ► kind of get those to line up because yep you can't leave you can't leave and also maybe you're you're
00:56:02 ◼ ► you know you're coming for severance and you're like oh this what's this silo show i mean don't
00:56:05 ◼ ► watch that episode because that'd be rough but you might then go back and catch up which i just did i i've
00:56:14 ◼ ► so i actually at the end of this topic i want to talk about silo a little bit but but i'll let
00:56:20 ◼ ► people know so they can skip ahead if they if they don't want spoilers but i don't want to spoil anything
00:56:24 ◼ ► i want to talk big picture about the show but i know that yeah different people have different um
00:56:28 ◼ ► uh feelings about spoilers and i'm one of them uh there's quite a bit of buzz for severance uh apple
00:56:34 ◼ ► is going big on the marketing for this one so it's talking of uh youtube and talk shows uh the stars
00:56:41 ◼ ► of the show are on every talk show right now they're appearing in every outlet possible magazines youtube
00:56:46 ◼ ► shows i'm seeing them all over social media talking to you know every outlet possible apple pulled off a
00:56:53 ◼ ► pretty big stunt marketing stunt grand central terminal in new york where they had like a glass cube
00:56:58 ◼ ► which had severance desks in it and they had some actors coming in and out the day culminating in the
00:57:05 ◼ ► actual actors of the show being at grand central um i'll put a link in three hours apparently yeah
00:57:11 ◼ ► they went for three hours my word that's what adam scott said on uh on stephen colbert's show he said we
00:57:17 ◼ ► were in there for three hours and uh couldn't go to the bathroom whoa that's big time so yeah i'll put a
00:57:23 ◼ ► link in the show notes to a youtube video that apple made of that which reminded me of just how much of a
00:57:27 ◼ ► banger the severance theme song is i'd forgotten how good that is and also uh a kind of first person
00:57:33 ◼ ► account from parker otolani who wrote like a good piece kind of talking about it and he saw it kind
00:57:38 ◼ ► of throughout the day that is it it's interesting that they're doing this i mean it kind of there is
00:57:45 ◼ ► another question i was thinking about money right like yeah we've heard that apple's trying to cut back
00:57:52 ◼ ► but this is quite expensive i mean similarly i've seen reports i don't know if i believe that apparently
00:57:57 ◼ ► the final episode of severance had like a 40 million dollar budget i don't believe that but i do believe
00:58:02 ◼ ► the show is expensive so first off i want to be clear i believe the reports about apple cutting back
00:58:07 ◼ ► are about movies and not tv sure sure yes okay but are the tv shows working that much more that like
00:58:14 ◼ ► i don't know i think they are i think i think that they they bring more people to the uh to the
00:58:21 ◼ ► service and then the other thing i would say that apple knows is true is people don't subscribe to
00:58:27 ◼ ► apple tv plus to check out apple tv plus and this is what all the streamers learned they come for
00:58:33 ◼ ► content they do and you get these season two shows that were bangers in season one and people talked
00:58:38 ◼ ► about them and this is your biggest i would argue chance which is season two because you can you you know
00:58:46 ◼ ► people loved it yeah you know it's got some power you you know you've got a a season in the in the
00:58:53 ◼ ► catalog if people want to sign up and binge and get to season two it is the perfect time and you're
00:59:01 ◼ ► reminding people who saw season one and with by the way severance it was so long ago now it was like
00:59:04 ◼ ► three years ago to remind them that severance exists and that they like it and that they should
00:59:08 ◼ ► probably come back to apple tv plus and watch it again this is the perfect time to market apple tv plus
00:59:13 ◼ ► and what we learned is it's a it's surprising once you get people on a service they don't they don't
00:59:18 ◼ ► churn as much as you think like what we learned with a lot of the sports stuff is uh peacock having an
00:59:26 ◼ ► nfl playoff game did really well for peacock long term so people came for the nfl game and then they stayed
00:59:34 ◼ ► at a surprising rate the olympics peacock learned the same lesson people came for the olympics but then
00:59:40 ◼ ► they're like well i got peacock and oh there's stuff on peacock and and the percentage that churned
00:59:44 ◼ ► out that canceled was surprisingly low i mean it's still a big number but that's one way to build
00:59:52 ◼ ► audience is to get people to sign up because and we know this with apple tv plus there's so much really
00:59:57 ◼ ► good stuff on apple tv plus that you have a great time it's an easy i would say if there's a show that
01:00:04 ◼ ► interests you it's an easy purchase even if you only keep it for a month or two because they have a
01:00:10 ◼ ► so if you haven't seen a bunch of these shows that are really good uh then then you can you can binge
01:00:18 ◼ ► them and then you can drop back off um and they know a percentage of people will see the value of
01:00:23 ◼ ► the apple tv content and will be like i'm gonna stick around for this so i think it's really smart on their
01:00:27 ◼ ► part like people know about ted lasso right like that's the one right i would say ted lasso is solid
01:00:33 ◼ ► mid-tier in apple's lineup of content they have maybe four or five shows that are significantly
01:00:42 ◼ ► better than ted lasso including shrinking in my opinion like i think i saw someone post this uh
01:00:48 ◼ ► like last week i don't have that hand but like shrinking is what people think ted lasso is which
01:00:54 ◼ ► is like a beautiful way to describe it which i really agree with like but there's so much good
01:01:00 ◼ ► stuff there and and look there is a something to be said about like apple making investments right
01:01:07 ◼ ► because my point is like these shows they are clearly expensive and and everything that we hear oh yeah is
01:01:13 ◼ ► that apple tv plus has a very small viewership compared to its competitors so like they are per i when
01:01:20 ◼ ► i'm watching watching silo and i was i said to adina i was like i would love to know how much apple has
01:01:26 ◼ ► spent per viewer on this show oh wow because i bet it is a an amount of money that would be
01:01:33 ◼ ► upsetting right but like this is the the bet right that like in the long term considering they have the
01:01:40 ◼ ► money why not do this right and like you're establishing apple are have i think established
01:01:47 ◼ ► themselves at this point as like hbo right like that they have a selection of smart good television
01:01:53 ◼ ► that you will go and you will watch and like at a certain point and they're getting closer and
01:01:58 ◼ ► closer to this all the time of having the hbo thing of one show ends another one begins right that
01:02:04 ◼ ► like and they did it silo has ended severance has begun and then apple's thing is like well it's not
01:02:09 ◼ ► going to work out this way but like severance ends for all mankind starts for all mankind ends slow
01:02:15 ◼ ► horses starts like that is what they i think are probably trying to get to because i think as always
01:02:20 ◼ ► worked for hbo right that like oh white lotus ends and now we're going to start the last of a season
01:02:26 ◼ ► two right like that they've had that kind of run absolutely that's that's how you program because you
01:02:31 ◼ ► don't want people to to drop and hbo did that masterfully as well i think yeah this is one of those
01:02:38 ◼ ► cases where i saw a piece over the weekend that was somebody complaining that severance is on apple tv
01:02:44 ◼ ► plus like it's such a great show but it's on this it's on this thing nobody watches and it's like guy
01:02:48 ◼ ► that's the point it's like you should watch it the point is not where they should move it to another
01:02:53 ◼ ► streamer that i subscribe to the answer should be you should pay the money and watch it and i'm just
01:02:58 ◼ ► going to go through a list of the jason recommended shows if you have not watched apple tv okay apple tv
01:03:04 ◼ ► plus for all mankind four seasons worth 40 episodes you could watch there uh let's see what
01:03:10 ◼ ► else do we have here um foundation starts a little slow picks up 20 episodes and they're making a third
01:03:18 ◼ ► season of that right now let's see what else severance two seasons of severance it's going to be great
01:03:25 ◼ ► slow horses four seasons it's british so 24 episodes but still four seasons of slow horses really loved it
01:03:33 ◼ ► um what else do i want to put in here i'm going bad monkey alphabetically monkey bad yeah bad monkey
01:03:40 ◼ ► shrinking silo for sure and these are all kind of complete masters of the air that miniseries was
01:03:48 ◼ ► really really really good um dark matter i loved could not love it more um mythic quest is great if
01:03:58 ◼ ► you're somebody who is turned off by uh rob mcelaine or or by uh him buying a soccer team or by uh it's
01:04:07 ◼ ► always sunny in philadelphia which is not a tone for everybody mythic quest we talked about it from
01:04:13 ◼ ► inception yeah here on upgrade we've talked about like what rob mcelaine is doing a show with apple and
01:04:18 ◼ ► it's about the video game industry and what is that it's so great so yeah mythic quest ted lasso
01:04:24 ◼ ► uh smigadoon is really good yes you know as a as a musical uh parody but also actually a musical
01:04:31 ◼ ► the after party was really good first season of both of those better than the second but doesn't matter
01:04:36 ◼ ► they're both really good shrinking is amazing uh time bandits i really enjoyed i'm sad that they canceled it
01:04:43 ◼ ► after 10 episodes because i thought it was a really fun show bad monkey great ted lasso my wife really likes loot
01:04:49 ◼ ► it's it's i i don't enjoy it but she really likes it i hear very good things about bad sisters too
01:04:54 ◼ ► which is also a show that i haven't seen oh and she also loves physical physical is also a winner in our house
01:04:59 ◼ ► basically uh you could subscribe for severance and just have a real great time because there is so
01:05:05 ◼ ► there is so much good stuff on there and yeah and and like with this and then maybe again like season
01:05:11 ◼ ► three of silo right like they're hitting maybe these points of like this is a big deal now right
01:05:17 ◼ ► and like if ted lasso returns that will be a big deal again right and you're kind of course over time
01:05:24 ◼ ► of course you're picking up these shows and it gets like becomes bigger and bigger but i will say
01:05:28 ◼ ► this for severance season two feels like the biggest kind of moment for apple tv plus it does
01:05:38 ◼ ► i agree i agree um i think it's it's a a good opportunity for them and they are trying to take
01:05:45 ◼ ► advantage of it i think that uh they tried to do it with ted lasso but i think that there there were
01:05:50 ◼ ► some challenges with ted lasso that with severance especially since it hasn't been on for a few years so
01:05:55 ◼ ► they're really trying to it's it's been able to build some word of mouth but also it's been forgotten
01:05:58 ◼ ► so having the big marketing push for it and having so much more in their library than they did when ted
01:06:05 ◼ ► lasso kind of became a success that uh there's that too certainly i would say also severance is a
01:06:11 ◼ ► perfect match for so much of their content because so much of their content is that sort of big budget
01:06:19 ◼ ► sci-fi tinged drama thing silo is like that for all mankind is like that dark matter is like that i mean
01:06:28 ◼ ► foundation is like that there are a lot of shows like that on on apple tv plus that are close to
01:06:34 ◼ ► severance in that way that i think is really interesting and then yeah if you like adam scott from
01:06:39 ◼ ► the comedy stuff he's done you know then there are some comedies too so it's it's like yeah they've done
01:06:45 ◼ ► a really great job with that service it has exceeded all my expectations i know we talk about it here
01:06:49 ◼ ► every so often i am i am surprised it is if you would ask me to predict what apple tv plus would
01:06:54 ◼ ► look like in five years i would not have imagined this hit rate i really would not have i want to
01:07:00 ◼ ► talk about silo real quick so okay i'm not going to i don't want to talk about any of the plot points
01:07:06 ◼ ► of silo right so like you're not going to hear about that but i'm going to talk in very vague terms
01:07:10 ◼ ► mostly about the show's production but in very vague terms about the show so if you are very
01:07:14 ◼ ► spoiler adverse you can just skip ahead to the next chapter we won't talk about anything else after
01:07:18 ◼ ► this uh so i've watched all of it first two seasons which i assume you have seen yeah it's really good
01:07:25 ◼ ► uh yeah like i would say that the world building is what i like about the show because it's interesting
01:07:32 ◼ ► right like the it's an interesting premise like season two started in a way that i was like well
01:07:38 ◼ ► i don't know but it really picked up and and i and i liked it a lot because like season two was just a
01:07:43 ◼ ► little bit like the beginning of that season kind of felt like they were just trying to have new surprises
01:07:48 ◼ ► rather than them like really making sense as to why we're doing this and season two is is is
01:07:54 ◼ ► problematic uh from a storytelling standpoint in the sense that sort of half of it is the show you know
01:08:00 ◼ ► and half of it is not the show you know yeah and that's weird and it's it's it's tricky i think
01:08:05 ◼ ► they did a good job i really really enjoyed the season point where they're where they're like
01:08:09 ◼ ► flipping between the stories yeah that's when it picks up like the first episode is a bit like i
01:08:13 ◼ ► don't know what's going on here i wonder if the first two episodes would have been more effective
01:08:17 ◼ ► did they drop at the same time i don't know because i think that once once they're they're toggling
01:08:29 ◼ ► is that it's not really sure to know what the truth is as a viewer which is abnormal for these
01:08:39 ◼ ► kinds of shows right where like typically something will happen and then something else will happen and
01:08:45 ◼ ► you as the viewer could be like oh i know what's going on here but i feel like this show is very
01:08:50 ◼ ► much like the people in the show don't know what's going on and they have differing views and i don't feel
01:08:57 ◼ ► like it's clear to know that i know what's happening either right which i like about this show i agree i
01:09:03 ◼ ► want to say something about the premise too because i and maybe some of the listeners will share this with
01:09:08 ◼ ► i i get exhausted by the world view even though i kind of share it but i get exhausted by fiction that is
01:09:17 ◼ ► in the absence of society uh you will end up with a terrible post-apocalyptic world yeah that's ruled
01:09:28 ◼ ► by the powerful uh at the point of a gun and everybody else will do their bidding and is awful and this is
01:09:36 ◼ ► actually why i stopped watching the walking dead is because they just kept going to towns with cruel
01:09:41 ◼ ► overlords and there was violence and terrible things and then they it's it's why i noped out of a bunch
01:09:48 ◼ ► of other shows um because i i appreciate that as a speculative fiction premise but it's just soul
01:10:00 ◼ ► sucking to watch another yes we're the real enemy the real enemy is humanity the zombies aren't the
01:10:05 ◼ ► problem it's the it's the governor and all those things it's like it's just exhausting and i didn't
01:10:10 ◼ ► watch silo for like several months after it came out even though i read the books because i'm like
01:10:14 ◼ ► it's about an authoritarian state and a silo and i don't really want until now and here's the thing
01:10:20 ◼ ► exactly why here's the thing because of the details of the society because the society is
01:10:25 ◼ ► theoretically based on different but still like cultural norms and a system and it seems to be
01:10:32 ◼ ► functional you get into it and you're like okay this is a weird silo world and we're in it and i don't
01:10:40 ◼ ► understand it and then people start dying and you think to yourself hmm what's going to happen but
01:10:45 ◼ ► it becomes about like how are the variations and details of the silo world going to affect these
01:10:51 ◼ ► people and for whatever reason it skates past the like more nihilistic view that it's just some
01:11:00 ◼ ► dictator at the top because at least you know the way it's working it's much more complicated maybe it's
01:11:05 ◼ ► more like a soviet system you know maybe it's more like east germany i don't know but like it's not
01:11:11 ◼ ► the walking dead and and that once i watched and like i said i read the books but i'm like i don't
01:11:17 ◼ ► know about the tone of this thing once i watched it i was like oh actually this does not push any of
01:11:22 ◼ ► those buttons for me and and so if you're somebody who's wondering that i i would say you could go ahead
01:11:27 ◼ ► and it it doesn't feel like that similarly the characters nobody feels like inherently bad like not
01:11:34 ◼ ► all of the things that they do are bad or that they remain bad i feel like there's there's like
01:11:38 ◼ ► they're complicated and they're like complicated doing whatever they're doing for the reason they're
01:11:43 ◼ ► doing it yeah and it shows it shows the power of wanting to maintain continuity and how what people
01:11:47 ◼ ► really want is continuity and safety and and that sometimes they will act against their own best
01:11:52 ◼ ► interests because they want continuity and safety and and you see that writ large in the silo and
01:11:57 ◼ ► and then some people take advantage of that it's yeah i think it's yeah i think it's really well done
01:12:01 ◼ ► plus plus there's a mystery and yeah you know the origins origin questions and it it makes a lot of
01:12:07 ◼ ► early if you haven't seen the show at all it makes a lot of early narrative choices where you're like
01:12:11 ◼ ► oh i wonder who the main character is here because yeah it's not who you think yeah yeah that that is a
01:12:17 ◼ ► really nice way that the show starts i mean it would have worked better if there wasn't if i hadn't seen
01:12:21 ◼ ► so much promotion for the show over time but sure it's at least it's still like really interesting but
01:12:26 ◼ ► also like there are lots of characters in the show especially in season two there's like multiple main
01:12:31 ◼ ► characters in season two like which is true which works really well that i like i will say there's a few
01:12:37 ◼ ► things that i bristle on with the show though like it has a lot of amazing performances but also some not
01:12:43 ◼ ► good performances that detract for me here's a funny thing everybody in silo speaks with an american
01:12:52 ◼ ► accent what is going on they shoot the show they shoot the show in the uk yeah and there's a varying
01:12:58 ◼ ► degree of comfort with american english i'm so happy that you have zeroed in on my exact first problem
01:13:05 ◼ ► which is walker why why is she doing this that uh that is uh i don't remember the actress's name but
01:13:13 ◼ ► she plays the mum in succession it's like your accent is really bad why are you doing it because there
01:13:19 ◼ ► are multiple characters in the show that don't have american accents so why did we do this like i don't
01:13:28 ◼ ► understand there are like there's irish people who are just speaking in irish accents i mean there is the
01:13:32 ◼ ► main character of the show who's not american and is not really doing anything uh you've there are
01:13:39 ◼ ► there's a whole variety of accents but some people choose some oh wow rebecca rebecca ferguson is
01:13:45 ◼ ► swedish and her american accent is sort of british and sort of american and sort of swedish and it's kind
01:13:52 ◼ ► of all over the place and i think she's just speaking jason i i don't i don't think she's really
01:13:56 ◼ ► doing it that's her english language accent i think so because to me i mean i've seen her in a bunch of
01:14:01 ◼ ► stuff and it didn't really feel like she sounded any different to how she sounds now so i i think
01:14:06 ◼ ► that i think that what i would say is i think one of the problems with silo and i don't think it's a
01:14:11 ◼ ► big problem but a thing to get over is i think some of the actors aren't comfortable with the accent
01:14:16 ◼ ► they're doing and as a result their performances are a little especially with dialogue are a little
01:14:21 ◼ ► bit they kind of they kind of just hit your ear and you're like you know and it may be maybe uh you
01:14:28 ◼ ► would let it go otherwise it is a weird weird uh choice on their part because it is shot in the uk
01:14:34 ◼ ► there's also some of the writing is weird like some of the some of the things that characters say to
01:14:39 ◼ ► each other are just not how human beings talk maybe they talk like that in the silo maybe they're silo
01:14:45 ◼ ► people maybe in the silo they are overly melodramatic like i don't know but like there's just some stuff
01:14:51 ◼ ► where i'm like i don't i don't know why they're talking that way like i find this particularly with
01:14:58 ◼ ► like the people in like it the the in the mechanics area that they say like they constantly talk about
01:15:06 ◼ ► the values it's just weird that some of the dialogue is like i don't understand why this is
01:15:11 ◼ ► happening uh but anyway my my last thing i want to mention i wonder how long and i think that there's
01:15:17 ◼ ► two more series of this show maybe or yes they renewed it for a third and fourth season and then
01:15:22 ◼ ► that that is it that the plan is the show is done yes okay because my my fear on this show is how long
01:15:30 ◼ ► could it persist well so here's the thing is the difference between it and a show that's spinning
01:15:35 ◼ ► out mythology as it goes like lost which i loved lost i really did and i'm fine with how it ended it's
01:15:41 ◼ ► fine i and i and it's a it was a great ride and you know i'm i i don't have a lot of uh time for
01:15:48 ◼ ► people who hate on lost because i think it was one of the best shows ever and just because they
01:15:52 ◼ ► struggled with the plot at a few points i think that there's just too much good stuff in there for
01:15:56 ◼ ► it to matter but this is based on a series of novellas by hugh howey called wool and the whole world
01:16:02 ◼ ► is built and that means that graham yost who's a great producer of television by the way he's produced
01:16:07 ◼ ► so much great tv and he's he's running the show he has a whole book of mythology he knows exactly what
01:16:14 ◼ ► the story is and better than that i would say as a really successful tv producer over a long period of
01:16:21 ◼ ► time he has the ability to tweak it as he sees fit to make it work better as a television show so it's not
01:16:28 ◼ ► just that they have the story and that means they're not inventing it as they go but when they started
01:16:34 ◼ ► they had the story and they and they could know how they wanted to tell their version of that story
01:16:39 ◼ ► and i heard quite a while ago when they renewed it for season two i think the producer said we want
01:16:45 ◼ ► four seasons because that's the story so then apple gave them four seasons and that's the story so i think
01:16:51 ◼ ► i think it will be exactly what that is and no more you know i put lost in our document so maybe that's
01:16:58 ◼ ► why you mentioned it and i'm not coming up i've never actually seen lost but i know it's a show
01:17:02 ◼ ► that people bring up as like uh there are threads never answered right and like there are threads
01:17:09 ◼ ► that are never answered also in life that happens but here's here i'm going to give you a little pitch
01:17:12 ◼ ► for lost maybe for when it's two in the morning and uh you're up because of the baby yeah lost when it
01:17:19 ◼ ► aired frustrated all of its viewers because it aired you know 22 episodes a year across 52 weeks
01:17:27 ◼ ► and it's traditional network tv and that meant it came back for six episodes and then there was like
01:17:31 ◼ ► four weeks where it wasn't on or reruns and then it come back for five episodes it is a modern
01:17:37 ◼ ► connected streaming essentially series before its time and it plays way better when you can watch it all
01:17:46 ◼ ► does it matter when you have to wait months between episodes will i still enjoy it if i know how it ends
01:17:51 ◼ ► how it ends doesn't matter cool that's good because what you know about how it ends doesn't matter it's
01:17:58 ◼ ► like a coda that's a great point apple i swear what are you doing so i'm watching silo season one i'm
01:18:06 ◼ ► halfway through season one i go to my apple tv and select to continue watching for silo it auto plays
01:18:13 ◼ ► the trailer for season two which includes the final moment of season one why would you do that
01:18:19 ◼ ► why would you do that to me don't do that to me that is stupid so i'm like halfway through season one
01:18:26 ◼ ► i know how the season's gonna end now the moment's still good kind of loses some of its like punch if
01:18:33 ◼ ► i've already seen it because it's the first shot of the trailer that you're showing autoplay even
01:18:39 ◼ ► though i don't want you to it's very bad i speaking of autoplay i'll just say i uh after last week
01:18:46 ◼ ► where we laughed about mark german calling apple tv a laggard yes i have i have purchased a new fire tv
01:18:55 ◼ ► and a new google tv and the the process continues and i will report back i look forward to this
01:19:14 ◼ ► whoo there's again there are things that both of those things have that i so wish apple tv i do not
01:19:21 ◼ ► understand why apple tv doesn't have them but then there then there's all the other things anyway we'll get
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01:21:33 ◼ ► it's time for some follow-up haha i tricked you i tricked you i had just a couple of follow-up items
01:21:41 ◼ ► that i wanted to do today but they didn't fit any roles in the show because i have big topics i wanted
01:21:46 ◼ ► to talk about so yeah simon writes in and says if airpods heart rate monitoring is more reliable than on
01:21:53 ◼ ► the wrist it would be great for running the apple watch misses large portions of heart rate on a cold
01:21:58 ◼ ► run for many people including me so we have to use a chest strap instead if airpods would do a better
01:22:03 ◼ ► job because the ears are warmer so blood flow doesn't restrict like around your wrist this would be
01:22:08 ◼ ► great as chest straps aren't all that comfortable interesting i love this follow-up i think it's
01:22:13 ◼ ► interesting because uh as is famously true if it doesn't happen in cupertino it doesn't happen anywhere
01:22:18 ◼ ► so the fact that if you're on a cold a cold run what is that right like that we cupertino doesn't
01:22:25 ◼ ► know about that so this is good feedback um that would be a great use case i would also say more
01:22:30 ◼ ► broadly um i'm not sure if we mentioned this last time i feel like more sensors also doesn't just mean
01:22:36 ◼ ► maybe you could measure temperature better in the ears than on your wrist more sensors in general
01:22:40 ◼ ► means that you could the device can compare the output of the two sensors and maybe come to a better
01:22:46 ◼ ► idea of what the actual figure is you could get more precise potentially that's also very interesting
01:22:52 ◼ ► but this is great great info simon thank you derek said you mentioned that someone had created a list
01:22:57 ◼ ► of your favorite the rest is history episodes could you please share it i don't remember whether this
01:23:02 ◼ ► came up on the main show or on upgrade plus but i wanted to share it here anyway so i want to thank
01:23:06 ◼ ► blue sky user and upgrading brandon who put together a list of all of the uh series that we recommend
01:23:13 ◼ ► people start with and their episode numbers so i'll put a link to that in the show notes because if you
01:23:20 ◼ ► do want to get started uh i recommend it because it's all these are great thank you brandon uh and
01:23:27 ◼ ► there's not enough time to do a rumor roundup today uh actually next week there's room there's i've got
01:23:32 ◼ ► rumors going back a month now that i want to talk about so we're gonna have a rumor roundup roundup it's
01:23:37 ◼ ► going to be a big we're going to do a big rumor roundup i think there's a lot of interesting stuff in
01:23:40 ◼ ► there um but mark german said in his newsletter that mac os 15.4 will get the new mail design with
01:23:46 ◼ ► sorting and i hope this includes ipad os and i'm very happy about this because i didn't think it was
01:23:50 ◼ ► going to happen into ios 16 or mac os 16 or whatever this is with all the sorting which i do actually
01:23:57 ◼ ► like i guess for my sins uh because nobody else seems to like it but it means that i could finally get
01:24:02 ◼ ► rid of spark so i'm and this is probably for an april release but a beta to be uh soon now it is time
01:24:14 ◼ ► charith wants to know did the colors are moved to nintendo jason have you seen the new nintendo switch
01:24:22 ◼ ► nintendo switch 2 i have it's it's all black with some little color on it now it's like oh no
01:24:29 ◼ ► i'm right i guess the the the joy cons are black with like little color on the sides is that right
01:24:35 ◼ ► yeah yeah there's a there's a little color on the side of them and also around the joystick
01:24:41 ◼ ► look look this is this is the launch video the colors are i mean first off the colors are the
01:24:46 ◼ ► point of the colors are i think feel this has been lost is the colors are supposed to bring good
01:24:50 ◼ ► colors to things which is why we think the colors are as being held captive inside cupertino and
01:24:54 ◼ ► they're occasionally allowed to design something and then they're like the iphone 16 and then they're
01:24:58 ◼ ► put back in their cell um nintendo my feeling is nintendo can't help itself and like they're like oh
01:25:04 ◼ ► yeah yeah here's a preview it's all black and like you know will the first one be all black maybe but
01:25:10 ◼ ► like they can't help themselves there'll be a white one and there'll be a blue joy con and a pink joy
01:25:15 ◼ ► con and i mean it's just gonna happen come on don't worry about it too much yeah they i i i hope for
01:25:21 ◼ ► more color i hope that they have uh options like because the original nintendo switch shipped in two
01:25:26 ◼ ► colors you could get either the gray one or the red and blue one so who knows maybe they'll do this
01:25:31 ◼ ► but i agree like this is nintendo's whole thing they just keep selling you more controls and more colors
01:25:36 ◼ ► uh but i was a little bit sad to see it be all black but it does look cool and i actually think i
01:25:40 ◼ ► want to talk about nintendo switch to a little bit more and upgrade plus this week so we'll talk about
01:25:44 ◼ ► that and upgrade plus uh an anonymous person wrote in to say i recently got my first ever macbook air
01:25:50 ◼ ► and i remember jason talking about his desktop background the updates with the iss that's the
01:25:55 ◼ ► international space station right iss yeah the location but i can't remember the name of the app
01:26:00 ◼ ► can you help me out okay this is not what i have um i think that there's some conflation going on here
01:26:06 ◼ ► i have downlink it's downlinkapp.com uh downlink doesn't use the iss uh it uses a geostationary
01:26:13 ◼ ► satellite it's the goes satellite geostationary operational environment satellites geostationary
01:26:20 ◼ ► means it's at such a high uh altitude that as it orbits the earth the earth orbits under it and
01:26:27 ◼ ► therefore it's stationary it's always in the same place over the pacific or over the atlantic and taking
01:26:34 ◼ ► these pictures which means that you can make a desktop and it looks like you are also always getting
01:26:39 ◼ ► the same view as the clouds change and as night comes and all of that that's what i do cool and
01:26:44 ◼ ► it's great i don't know if that's what anonymous is thinking of but i recommend downlink it's a lot of
01:26:50 ◼ ► fun and it's it uses the ghost satellites and the imagery is great you can set a custom crop so i've got
01:26:55 ◼ ► sort of the west coast out to hawaii i can i can open and look at my desktop and see the clouds or see
01:27:01 ◼ ► the high pressure that's been driving all that wind that's been terrible in california like right now
01:27:05 ◼ ► california is just a bubble with no clouds and that's the high pressure that's happening there
01:27:10 ◼ ► um a little bit of fog in the valley that's about it um it's great i love it and you can choose your
01:27:16 ◼ ► crop or you can get the full earth view because it's so far out there it shows the whole can see
01:27:21 ◼ ► the whole thing which is pretty awesome although it can also be scary because you're like oh no
01:27:24 ◼ ► they put that planet in outer space but uh all planets are in outer space that's that's the truth
01:27:30 ◼ ► anyway uh and uh hopefully nothing will bad will happen to the ghost satellites because it is a
01:27:35 ◼ ► one of the many important services to environmental science currently being done by the u.s government
01:27:40 ◼ ► um we'll see how that goes before we do our final ask upgrade question i wanted to ask upgrading and
01:27:46 ◼ ► send in up ask upgrade questions because i would like some more uh people always get a couple every
01:27:50 ◼ ► week but i would like some more so if you have a question that you think would be you would either
01:27:54 ◼ ► like us to answer you think could be fun for us to answer just go to upgradefeedback.com and please
01:27:59 ◼ ► send your question in our last today comes from rob who asks if you could have any classic mac desktop
01:28:05 ◼ ► design but with fitted modern components what would it be yeah um you should go first because you have
01:28:13 ◼ ► the definitive answer here it's the easy answer it's the imac g4 so this is with a little kind of like
01:28:19 ◼ ► half dome base and the monitor arm that's kind of free-flowing obviously i would want a bigger screen
01:28:24 ◼ ► than what it shipped with but like that style is maybe the best industrial design that apple's ever
01:28:33 ◼ ► put out um yeah especially i think it is especially good because it was one and done right that if maybe
01:28:39 ◼ ► they had continued iterating on that design we may not hold so much fondness for it right like
01:28:45 ◼ ► because it was this one thing in history similar to the cube right a lot of people love the cube and i think
01:28:52 ◼ ► these things that were they were these little perfect things that never were iterated on we
01:28:58 ◼ ► kind of hold them with a lot of nostalgia because it's like you know like the imac when it was like
01:29:02 ◼ ► the all-in-one like the kind of the g4 no the g5 which that was a really cool design too right like
01:29:09 ◼ ► the first into imac that where it was just like all in the screen but they iterated on that design
01:29:14 ◼ ► so much that by the end of it we don't love it as much i think so what i would say is i think the g4 is
01:29:22 ◼ ► the answer to rob's premise um i think you are cheating by saying a bigger screen i would say
01:29:48 ◼ ► and they couldn't get the floating thing to work now i would say that you could do that now
01:29:57 ◼ ► i think especially since the parts the parts are so much um uh less inside of it you could even use
01:30:04 ◼ ► some of the room on the inside of it maybe but you could you could make a bigger screen version of this
01:30:09 ◼ ► now i think you could probably do it i guess the problem would be the weight right you have to weigh
01:30:13 ◼ ► down the base so it doesn't tip over but but that all said yes i think the definitive answer to this
01:30:18 ◼ ► question is if if it's the same design but with modern components it would be the imac g4 and if that
01:30:26 ◼ ► meant that it was the 17 inch screen or slightly larger screen but in that same space uh and retina
01:30:32 ◼ ► and beautiful i would take it that would be awesome um i'm going to throw in because uh my tweak to
01:30:37 ◼ ► this premise is uh rob says desktop design and my answer is actually the 12 inch macbook still
01:30:44 ◼ ► would love a an apple silicon design of that super small macbook because it was amazing
01:30:52 ◼ ► and uh before its time and it was so limited in terms of heat and and processor speed and all that
01:31:00 ◼ ► and if you put a base level m series chip in there that would be a great computer so jason
01:31:15 ◼ ► to a friend of my wife's and they got in contact to say i think that computer has died now
01:31:25 ◼ ► ah to me it was incredible to consider that computer was still going yeah today but it has now met its end
01:31:35 ◼ ► it won't it won't it won't hold charge anymore like it it just can't and well i mean honestly they could
01:31:42 ◼ ► they could probably replace the battery and keep using it but so this was this was the conversation
01:31:47 ◼ ► but like the bigger conversation was it's probably time for a new computer yeah it is um also to rob's
01:31:54 ◼ ► point because i know people will ask this point modern components also means not that keyboard
01:31:58 ◼ ► thank you yeah yeah of course uh if you would like to send in your feedback your follow-up or
01:32:06 ◼ ► your questions for us to answer on the show go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send them in thank
01:32:12 ◼ ► you to those of you that do every week also thank you to our members and supporters of upgrade plus they
01:32:16 ◼ ► get longer ad-free episodes of the show every week and today we're going to talk a little bit about
01:32:21 ◼ ► our impressions of the nintendo switch 2 go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up you can find the
01:32:27 ◼ ► show on youtube by searching for upgrade podcast and i would like to thank our sponsors for this episode