552: Table for Six

0:00:00We'll see you next time.

0:00:30I am joined by my first in a cavalcade of all-star co-hosts. It's Casey Liss. Hi, Casey.

0:00:37Hello, Jason. I am so thankful to be here. I am so very lucky to be the first one. It's

0:00:43a bold strategy for you going with me first because it's only downhill from here, but I

0:00:47respect that.

0:00:47Let's see if it works out for me. The truth is I was kicking off with Steven and then Mike

0:00:56said, no, no, no, no, no. I'll be there that week. And that was last week. And so you're

0:01:00going to be second track, which I would argue if you're making a mixtape or a mixed CD or

0:01:04a playlist, as High Fidelity would tell you that number two, the second track, it's very

0:01:11important. Like that's the key track.

0:01:13See, I appreciate it. That's what I appreciate.

0:01:15You end up being number one. And that's okay too. So we're going to start this episode with

0:01:20a Snell Talk question. This question comes from me, Jason Snell, to all of us, including

0:01:29you, Casey, because the question on everybody's mind is, did Mike and Adina have the baby yet?

0:01:34And I am happy to reveal that they did. It was a question. Mike was like, I'm not sure if

0:01:40that's going to be public by the time you do upgrade. But about an hour ago, he was like,

0:01:43yeah, okay, you could do it. Yes. Please welcome to the world, baby Sophia. My understanding

0:01:48is that everybody in the Hurley family is doing okay. There's an Instagram post. There's a picture

0:01:56of a baby. People can check it out. Sophia was born on Saturday, the 22nd of February.

0:02:01And Mike posted on Instagram, Feb 22, which made me laugh because that's how not English he is.

0:02:08He didn't do 22 February. He did February 22. But congratulations to the Hurleys. That's so great.

0:02:15It was unexpected and sudden, according to Mike. They were not due until later this week. This was

0:02:23going to be his padding week. See, getting used to it already that nothing goes as planned with

0:02:30children, both in the good and the bad ways. Getting used to it from the start. But no, incredible

0:02:35congratulations from me as well to all three of the Hurleys. This is incredibly good news. I haven't had

0:02:40the chance to ask him all the questions because all I know is, like you said, it was unexpected. And I

0:02:46don't know, other than the obvious, I don't know what that means. So I'm very excited and curious to

0:02:51hear what the birth story is to the degree that the two of them are willing to share, which may or may

0:02:55not ever be public, to be clear. But I'm excited to hear it. And I'm very, very happy for them.

0:03:00And like you said, to the best that I've been told, everyone's doing great. Obviously, everyone is

0:03:05upside down and inside out, but everything is fine and proceeding as you would expect.

0:03:10Yeah. No, it's great. It's great news. I'm really excited about it. I'm so happy for them. I do. I

0:03:14will say, I always, when I have, I talked to a friend who's had a baby and they say that it went

0:03:19really fast. They're saying it like, oh man, it went really fast. Like they're, they got the thousand

0:03:24yard stare and they're like, it went so fast. I can't even. And I just, it makes me mad because

0:03:29our children did not go fast. They went excruciatingly slow. We, we, you know, I think

0:03:36Lauren was in labor with Jamie for more than a day, I think into a second day. And they were

0:03:42like, you know, this isn't progressing. I mean, it was, it was, uh, and, and with Julian was

0:03:46very similar. It went on and on and on and on. And so I do have a friend who like literally,

0:03:52um, she, she took a, a taxi to the hospital and, um, they got her into her, her room and

0:04:00she went into the bathroom of her room before she'd ever been in the bed. And she just had

0:04:04the baby in the bathroom hospital room. And that's like, that's fast. Right. And I'm like,

0:04:10that seems horrible for you, but also kind of good for you. Cause it just happened and then

0:04:15it was over. Attracted is not good. Anyway. So yes, congratulations to Hurleys. The paternity

0:04:20clock already had started, but now it starts for real, real. Uh, don't know when Mike will

0:04:25be back, but he's going to take a couple of months off. At least we have, like I said,

0:04:28I've got, I've lined up. I have one slot, I think, unless he comes back early cause the

0:04:31baby was early, but probably not. Um, I think it's more likely he'll come back later rather

0:04:35than earlier where he'll say, I'm not ready yet, but I've got a long list of people lined

0:04:41up starting with Casey to fill in for Mike. So I hope everybody enjoys that. And then of

0:04:46course, welcomes Mike back when he comes back. I will definitely welcome Mike back.

0:04:50I already can tell you that because this is his way of reminding me all the work he does

0:04:55on upgrade. Right. Thank you, Mike. Uh, now I would like to turn to a brand new segment on

0:05:00upgrade. That's right. Does Mike know about it? No, he doesn't. Uh, it is a new segment that

0:05:05we're inaugurating right now and it's called fatherly advice, where I turn to my co-host who

0:05:12is a father himself. And, and we provide Mike with up here at the top of the show where Mike

0:05:18might still might actually listen to it with a little story or a tidbit about being a parent

0:05:23advice, uh, whatever you want. And Casey, it's your turn. Do you have some fatherly advice

0:05:29or something similar to talk about where Mike can hear us, but not respond?

0:05:34Even better. That's the best kind. Uh, yeah. So coincidentally, I'm going to, I'm going to plug,

0:05:39uh, our show, Mike in my show. Uh, we are doing an episode of analog that Mike had mostly coordinated

0:05:45on his side. Uh, that'll be out in the month of March where he's collecting fatherly advice from all

0:05:51of his co-hosts, I presume, including you, Jason. Um, and so there's going to be a lot in there,

0:05:55but I'm going to, I don't recall exactly what I had told him, uh, when we spoke about this and

0:05:59collect, he collected my two cents, uh, a week or two back. But what I'm going to go with is

0:06:03that it's important. So many things are important when being a parent, but it's important among many

0:06:10other things to be incredibly flexible and understand when you need to pick your battles.

0:06:16That's true of pretty much any relationship in life, but especially with parenting and you definitely

0:06:20know, need to know which battles to pick and you'll learn over time. And as a silly anecdote

0:06:26for this, which is kind of actually tangentially related. I remember before I was a dad that I would

0:06:32look at new parents in, this is when I still went to an office and whatnot. I would look at new parents

0:06:36that came in with like, uh, baby stuff all over their shirts. I don't want to be any more graphic

0:06:41than that, but you know, typically on the shoulder area, there's baby stuff all over their shirts.

0:06:45Who knows where it came from Casey? Honestly, nobody knows. That's the thing. Uh, they would come in

0:06:49with this like stuff all over their shirt. And I'd be like, what are you doing? You couldn't

0:06:53spend the time to just change before you got to work. And I think once I went back after Aaron had

0:06:58Declan and Aaron had very long labor for both Declan and Michaela, uh, I think it was within a week or so

0:07:04of going back to work that I looked down and I saw a stain on one of my shoulders and I realized,

0:07:10Oh, yep. I get it now. I get it. The things that I thought mattered, they don't matter and new things

0:07:17matter now and that's okay. And so you got to be flexible and you got to know when to choose your

0:07:21battles somewhat within yourself. Do I, do I really need to change the shirt or not? But often and

0:07:27usually with your children. And I don't mean that that sounds negative to say, pick your battles.

0:07:30I don't mean it that way at all, but you have to figure out when to be flexible and when to not.

0:07:35And, you know, I don't have any specific advice with regard to that. You know, obviously each

0:07:39situation is different. Each parenting style is different. Um, but it's important to realize

0:07:44that, Oh, you know what, even though this is not what I prefer, it'll be fine. It'll be fine.

0:07:49You know? And, and I, I don't think that being a helicopter parent and, you know, steering the child

0:07:55every second of every day and telling them exactly what to do when is not personally my, my approach

0:08:00to parenting. And so that implies that you're going to have to let them do something that's maybe

0:08:05a little bit more dangerous than you want, because that's part of learning is screwing up and getting

0:08:10hurt and allowing them to pick themselves up and helping them pick themselves up. Uh, so be flexible

0:08:15and pick your battles is I think what I'm going to go with for today. I mean, you're, you strike me as

0:08:18somebody knowing you a little bit about who likes it the way he likes it, right? Like I like it a

0:08:23certain, you have your opinion, like this is the way to do it. This is the way I like it. And boy,

0:08:27does having kids disabuse you of that really rapidly because you just on the priority list,

0:08:33do you realize that that you thought that was priority number one and it's actually priority

0:08:36number 100 and that your kids have the top 99 priorities. So you just have to roll with the

0:08:41punches and, and that's just the truth of it. I love what you said about letting them fail. Um,

0:08:47I, and learn, right. Or, or make a mistake and learn. And, and there was a point where one of our

0:08:53kids had, had gotten way behind. I don't even remember which one now, honestly, it's been so long.

0:08:57I got behind on their homework and the teacher was like, they need to, they've not turned in

0:09:03all this homework and it's going to be not, it's not going to count and they need to do it and all

0:09:07these things. And Lauren got really kind of upset about it and said, they're going to get a bad grade

0:09:12and all this stuff. And I said, okay, first off it's sixth grade or fifth grade, the grade they get

0:09:18has no impact on their life at all, will not affect their life trajectory in any way. And I said,

0:09:23we can, we, we can give them feedback, but maybe having a whole bunch of the work that they didn't

0:09:30do get marked as a zero and they get a bad grade in the midterm report card in fifth grade when it

0:09:37doesn't matter is a good learning experience for them. And it was one of those things that like,

0:09:42oh yeah. And I don't think Lauren necessarily agreed with me because I think she's like, no,

0:09:46it's a bad grade. You shouldn't get them. And I was like, I know you shouldn't get them.

0:09:50I know, but maybe getting them is that little shock that that kid needs to go. Oh, oh no,

0:09:56I can't let that slide. And better to do it now when the grades don't matter than for them to do it in

0:10:02high school where it's going to kill their, you know, a list of colleges because they messed up when

0:10:08it, uh, you know, when somebody is looking. No, I couldn't agree with you more. Just a very quick

0:10:13anecdote about my own life. I was a relatively decent student and I like to think of myself as

0:10:18reasonably bright. I was never, you know, a valedictorian or anything like that, but I was a

0:10:22pretty good student. And this was all through elementary school, middle school, high school.

0:10:25I went to a very small high school. Um, and I don't recall where I graduated within our like a hundred

0:10:30person graduating class, but ultimately I didn't really have to try that hard growing up. And that

0:10:36sounds like a flex, but it actually ended up being very much to my detriment because then I got to

0:10:41college and suddenly not only did I need to try, I needed to try real freaking hard. And so it ended

0:10:48up that I really had wished for failures in the past, as silly as that may sound, because that would

0:10:54have better equipped me. This is exactly what you were saying. That would have better equipped me for

0:10:58when I really needed it, you know, here at 18 years old, just arriving at Virginia Tech and realizing,

0:11:04oh no, I don't know how to study. I thought I did, but I don't. Yeah. This is going to be a problem.

0:11:09Yeah. And you're, and you're now you're surrounded with a bunch of people who were also the same

0:11:14student that you were. And you used to be surrounded with people where you're like, you could get by

0:11:17because everybody else, oh, those guys all have to work, but I don't. And now guess what? Those guys

0:11:21aren't in your college with you. They're, it's, it's all people with better grades than you who are in

0:11:26your college with you. Yep. Yep. So true. Uh, yeah, yeah. Well, that is fatherly advice. Thank you,

0:11:32Casey. And, uh, and, uh, yeah, I'm going to try to do that with many of my, uh, there's a,

0:11:37I might be inviting lots of fathers onto the podcast. I'm just saying it may happen that way.

0:11:43And so, yeah, it, uh, it's a fun time for us to think about Mike and everything. Mike, uh,

0:11:49thinks he's going to go through and then what he's actually going to go through,

0:11:52but let's move on to a more familiar, uh, chapter marker, right? More familiar.

0:11:58Yes, please.

0:11:59Show art. Something, a segment I have art for. It's the rumor roundup.

0:12:03Yeehaw.

0:12:04Yeehaw. Thank you. Uh, a couple items in rumor roundup. Uh, by the way, it is actually, there's

0:12:11only one item, Mark Gurman's, uh, newsletter, which very kindly generates itself on Sunday,

0:12:15uh, for us to pick apart on Monday. Didn't really have any rumors in it this week, but there is a,

0:12:20but yet Casey list came through and texted me this morning when I was having my tea in the morning

0:12:24saying, here's a story. Uh, we'll link to the article on the verge reporting about these leaks

0:12:30from a leaker named Majin Boo, who says, uh, this is what the iPhone 17 is going to look like.

0:12:37And I would say if you're following along with upgrade and you're following along with iPhone 17

0:12:42rumors, you will not be surprised at this. Uh, it is what we've been talking about, but this is just

0:12:48saying again, reinforcing the idea that what Apple's doing with the industrial design of three of their

0:12:53phones this fall is they're taking, uh, the, I guess, what is John Syracuse to call it on ATP,

0:12:59the camera Mesa, uh, and extending it, uh, all the way across. So it's like the, the, the Mesa is now

0:13:08just a full bar at the top of the iPhone, which is a very different look. Even if the, the, the camera

0:13:16bump is so large now that you might as well just embrace that it's going all the way across. Um,

0:13:22and, and of course Mesa Spanish for table. And I would say, if I had to describe this to people

0:13:26who haven't seen it, uh, it used to be a table for four up there, but now it's going to be a table

0:13:30for six. It's so true. And that's what's, that's what's going on here. I don't, I mean, we tend to

0:13:36get used to everything, but I look at this and I'm like, Hmm, I don't, I mean, I know Google pixel does

0:13:41this. I, I, I, I don't know how I feel about the, the industrial design of the bar going all the way

0:13:47across. But honestly, I was, uh, on a zoom call with my, uh, with my family last night with Lauren's,

0:13:54uh, mom and dad and siblings. And we do those in the living room on, um, on Apple TV. And I use

0:14:00continuity camera and I was looking at the camera bump on my iPhone 16 and thinking, yeah, they're all

0:14:06ugly. Like it's not, it's not like this is going to make it uglier. In fact, this might make it a little

0:14:10more consistent in that it's, it's pretending, right. It's pretending that it's not going all

0:14:16the way across the phone, but at this point it's going almost all the way across. Why not embrace

0:14:19it? Yeah, I, I think you're right that a familiarity is what's making me familiarity with the current

0:14:26Mesa, the table for four, the four top, um, the familiar familiarity with the four top, if you will,

0:14:32is what makes this very distasteful to me at first glance. And visually it's not doing a lot for me.

0:14:38And there's a lot of empty space in the span between the, the triangle O cameras and the dual,

0:14:45um, what is it? Lens and a lidar on the other side of the phone.

0:14:49And there's just a lot of the flash. I think it's the flash and the lidar on the, on the far side.

0:14:53Sorry. Yes. Yes. That's what I meant to say. My apologies.

0:14:55So the cluster is still clustered, which is interesting.

0:14:57Right. Exactly. And, and I presume that's because they need the two cameras next to each other for,

0:15:03um, spatial video, but I'm not entirely sure. I mean, maybe they could have made like a Cyclops

0:15:08looking thing by putting the other camera dead center. I don't, maybe that would have been worse,

0:15:11but that being said, even though visually this doesn't do a lot for me, the thought of having

0:15:18a more consistent back, especially with which to set my phone down, that sounds very appealing.

0:15:24And the other important thing about these renders is that for the pro max and the pro,

0:15:29if I understand this, right, it looks like that the metal there's metal for the camera Mesa and the

0:15:37surround around the edge of the phone. I'm having a hard time painting a word picture here, but

0:15:42the surround around the edge of the phone is metal. And then there's a large glass section that is

0:15:47within the metal that permits presumably not only cellular radio, wifi radio, but also, uh,

0:15:52Qi charging and MagSafe charging. And so the key here is that if I'm understanding this, right,

0:15:57that, and if you look at the photo, if you're looking at this show art or what have you,

0:16:01if you look at the photo, it's like this maroony red section. Um, and if that is glass,

0:16:06then that means there's a layer, if you will, of metal around it, which is incredibly important.

0:16:13I presume for more robust drop survivability. You know, if you drop your phone that I've shattered

0:16:19a couple of back glasses on iPhones and it's infuriating every time because you feel like,

0:16:24why is this all glass? Why is this all glass? Couldn't we put something around this? And that's

0:16:30what these renders seem to indicate is that they're putting a little sliver of metal around the whole

0:16:34thing in order to presumably help with, um, you know, how the strength and robustness for lack of a

0:16:41better word. I don't know. I don't know. It's, it's right. They, they only know, I think the truth

0:16:46is that a lot of this is coming from case leak where they know, um, they, they, all they can do

0:16:50is intuit what it looks like based on the dimensions of, and the shapes that they've been given. And so

0:16:55there's a real question about, you know, what is in that cutout area? Is that raised? Is it just a

0:17:00different material? Um, and, and then what happens when you drop it? And you would think that that big

0:17:06table would capture many of the drops and the edges at that point, because it's raising it up.

0:17:11And honestly, what is it like to use it on a table? Does that stabilize it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:17:16Because that would be, I was, I was tapping on my iPhone, uh, on the, on the tabletop the other day

0:17:21and being like, yep, that's right. Don't tap in the bottom right corner. Everything just wiggles.

0:17:24Uh, maybe this would be better for that. I don't know, but I don't love the look, but I guess what I'm

0:17:30saying is I don't love the look, but I don't really love the look. When I look at it and think about it,

0:17:34the existing camera thing is not particularly attractive either. It's just necessary. And what

0:17:42they're doing is they're, they're making it so that the phone is thinner, except for the part

0:17:47that's not. Um, and this is, this is just like kind of embracing that and that, that, that reality of

0:17:52it. And hopefully those cameras on it are not themselves sticking out, but that's what happens

0:17:58currently. So maybe so. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about that too, that it would bum me out if the Mesa

0:18:04continues to have even more depth. I mean, that's to your point on the peaks in the Mesa. Yeah. And

0:18:10to your point, that is the way it is now. And it's like, it's not that big a deal, but I don't know

0:18:13having it be completely flush would be such an improvement. I think both aesthetically and, you

0:18:18know, in terms of sitting it down and so on and so forth. So I would love it if these were sitting

0:18:23flush. It doesn't give me vibes that they are flush said differently. I think you're correct that

0:18:28they do protrude a little bit more, which is too bad, but you know, I'll take what I can get.

0:18:33And even though, again, aesthetically, this is doing very little for me, I think in terms of

0:18:38behavior in real world, you know, toughness, I suspect that this will be a upgrade.

0:18:44Oh, nice. I like what you did there. All right. We're going to move on to yet another segment.

0:18:50That's right. All before the first ad break, no less. Yet another segment that I have art

0:18:54for. This is the B-Tails.

0:18:56Mm-hmm.

0:18:58Woo-hoo. Okay.

0:19:00Sorry. I forgot which role I'm playing here. I'm not used to this.

0:19:03I know. It's weird. Just a real quick one. Vision OS 2.4, developer beta one, was released

0:19:10by Apple. This is the thing that basically Mark Gurman reported about a week ago because

0:19:17somebody who got the Apple briefing obviously talked to him. I mean, just as somebody who

0:19:22got the Apple briefing, I can just tell you now somebody who got that briefing talked to

0:19:26him. I don't know why.

0:19:27One hundred percent.

0:19:28Presumably whoever got it had their own channel that they could have done a story for under

0:19:34embargo and instead just decided to just what the heck, just give it to Mark Gurman and see

0:19:38what he does with it. Anyway, so it's everything that was already reported. But anyway, Apple

0:19:41intelligence is in there now. And then there's a bunch of stuff that's not in there now,

0:19:45but will be there at some point that they told us about, which kind of frustrates me because I

0:19:49installed the beta on my iPhone and on my Vision Pro in order to do this. So the Apple intelligence

0:19:54stuff is what you'd expect, right? It's writing tools and image playground and all that stuff is

0:19:58there now. And, you know, one of the things when they mentioned Apple intelligence and they

0:20:03introduced it back last June is they didn't mention the Vision Pro. And we were told, I don't

0:20:08know if you heard this, Casey, but I heard from sort of behind the scenes, somebody was like,

0:20:12oh, it'll come to the Vision Pro. Don't worry about that. But it wasn't on the record. Wasn't

0:20:15official and there was no timeframe. Well, here it is, right? So here it is. They say it's

0:20:19going to ship in April. It's in beta now, but there are other things that I think are way

0:20:24more interesting than, than Apple intelligence. So first off, spatial gallery app.

0:20:29Yes, I am very interested in this. So I also got a briefing. I forget what day it was,

0:20:35but we got a briefing, uh, the same, I think it was the same day. And, uh, they, they spoke

0:20:40about a spatial gallery app, which they basically said, this is my interpretation anyway, that there's

0:20:46going to be spatial content. And I don't believe it's immersive. Is that correct? To the best of

0:20:53your knowledge, it's simply spatial content. It's not immersive, right? That's this is spatial

0:20:57spatial means not immersive basically. So 3d, um, stuff, pictures, right? And also panoramas,

0:21:05which aren't panoramas are in here and they're not 3d panoramas. I don't think, I think they're

0:21:10just panoramas that wrap around you, but it's like, this is the other stuff. That's not immersive

0:21:14video basically. Right. So again, and I have a lot of trouble describing this to people that don't have

0:21:20a lot of time with the vision pro, but if you think about it, there's, you know, you're, you're

0:21:23looking at a rectangle in space, but that rectangle is flat and that's like watching a

0:21:28regular video. Then you're looking at a rectangle or a square in space and there's depth within

0:21:32that rectangle or square and that's spatial. That's what we're talking about. And then immersive

0:21:37is when you can actually tilt your head and look around and see different, you know, a different

0:21:42perspective. It's a 480 degree filling your vision, uh, and 3d kind of thing. And that's the,

0:21:50that's like the ultimate, but there's a lot of 3d content that you can do.

0:21:53Like with your own pictures as well as the panorama stuff, which is not 3d, but it's

0:21:58wrapping around you to give you that kind of full thing. These are the other, yeah, the

0:22:00other things that vision pro does that are interesting. And so they built this app and

0:22:04it's interesting because it's like in my story, I think I said, it's like the TV app

0:22:09sort of in the sense that it's sort of like, here's some stuff we want to show you. It's

0:22:14like a featured area in the TV app. It's, it's a, uh, curated by Apple. Apple does the

0:22:22updating. It's not all Apple content, but it's all curated by Apple. And, uh, and in

0:22:29the demo, they showed that there's some, um, there's some third party 3d content that they're

0:22:35highlighting, which is nice. Um, but also there, um, there's Apple stuff. And my question is,

0:22:41what is it exactly? Like they have, they have a shot of Jason Siegel that's in 3d with

0:22:49the little clapboard in front of him from shrinking that, uh, so like, okay, but what I don't know

0:22:57is, and they, and they say that they've got severance content too, although I don't think

0:23:00I saw that, but what I don't know is, is this what that rumor was about Monarch where they

0:23:07said Apple was, had a 3d camera on set for behind the scenes stuff, but we never saw it.

0:23:12And because, because what I'm afraid is that this is like a picture of Jason Siegel behind

0:23:20the scenes. And that's all it is that like, here's our extra content in the spatial gallery.

0:23:25It's a photo that's in 3d that somebody took with an iPhone or whatever on the set. And it's

0:23:30like, that's sort of interesting, but like I, what I'm hoping is that this will actually

0:23:36contain some 3d video content as well, but that, that, that, that maybe, cause we've been

0:23:42frustrated all of us who are kind of fans of this immersive stuff that there hasn't been

0:23:47any immersive stuff. That's been like behind the scenes on an Apple show or something is,

0:23:52is it maybe there's some 3d video of it instead. And that's where they're doing their,

0:23:56their VAM, their value added media stuff for behind the scenes. I don't, I don't know.

0:24:01My fear is that it's like, Hey, it's like looking through a view master or something that's a throwback

0:24:06where it's like, Hey, here's Jason Siegel in 3d. Yep. Yep. And then you're like, okay. And then

0:24:11you swipe to the next one. So we'll see what's in the spatial gallery, but, um, but it could be

0:24:16interesting because that is the idea is they want to also highlight third-party apps that have

0:24:20interesting content. So you could imagine the IMAX app might show up in here and the, the, the,

0:24:27some other there, I have had, uh, some other people send me links to like other 3d content apps on

0:24:32vision pro. And this is a way for Apple to sort of like float that stuff up. So if you're a vision pro

0:24:37user, you can see that stuff. And then there are links off to like those apps and stuff, which is

0:24:42it's, I don't, so I'm, I'm afraid the spatial gallery is not going to really kind of like be earth

0:24:47shattering, but, um, but it is the answer to the question. Why is Apple not trying to push more of

0:24:52this stuff to, to, and show off what the vision pro can do? I think this is them trying.

0:24:57Yeah. Agreed. And what I like about the spatial gallery gallery is not only is it giving us more

0:25:04unique content, you know, it's not immersive as we discussed, but at least it's stuff that's

0:25:09if depending on how you classify it, you could argue is unique to the vision pro or certainly within

0:25:14the Apple ecosystem anyway, is unique to the vision pro. And what I love is that the, the

0:25:19implication here, if not the direct statement from Apple is that it will be updated regularly.

0:25:24And I mean, to their credit, they're doing more immersive. There's Steve, it seems like they're

0:25:28picking up a little steam on the immersive stuff, but still not as much as I would like. And I think

0:25:32I speak for you in saying that. Um, and so here at least it's not immersive, but at least we're

0:25:37getting more unique stuff for the vision pro. And the other thing that I really like about this,

0:25:41and they did not say this to be clear, this is me now, uh, wish casting is if you have a mechanism

0:25:47by which there, there is a place that people could, or that, that companies or, you know, uh, people that

0:25:53Apple have a relationship with can send their content and then it can be shown to users.

0:25:59I could imagine them opening this up to anyone and saying, Hey, if you just happen to be a very

0:26:04skilled amateur photographer and you take, you know, a really great panorama of something,

0:26:09submit it to Apple and maybe it'll get featured again. This was not stated. This is just me

0:26:13guessing.

0:26:13I would go further and say, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a shot spatially on iPhone contest or

0:26:20something like that.

0:26:21Oh yeah.

0:26:21Right.

0:26:21Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:26:22And that the winners get shown in the spatial gallery.

0:26:25Um, that, that might be a way that they might structure all that. Um, there is also like there

0:26:30is for the Apple watch. There is now going to be a vision pro app on the, on iOS, on iPhones and

0:26:35iPads, uh, vision pro app. Um, not, you know, vision pro stands alone, unlike the watch, which

0:26:41sort of doesn't stand alone and you need it for maintenance. But what they're trying to do here,

0:26:44it actually reminded me a lot of, um, the app that meta makes for the quest, um, where you sort of

0:26:51don't need it. Maybe you need it a little occasionally, but what it does let you do is

0:26:56browse what's going on, browse what's in the app store. And my understanding is you can send,

0:27:02you basically can get apps and they will be queued up and downloaded by your vision pro

0:27:07when you're not, I think when you're not using it, as long as it's awake. Um, and that is,

0:27:12and media as well, that you'd be able to like take media and say, put that on my vision pro

0:27:18and it will be there when you put it on later, which is, again, I've done that on the quest

0:27:22a lot where I have bought, I've heard, I've heard about apps and then I've, I've sent them

0:27:27to the, the meta quest from the meta quest app. So, um, uh, it's just another like laying,

0:27:34laying more foundational work. And I think this shows how, what a, uh, early stage product this

0:27:40is, right. And to be, to be kind about it, like this is, this is something that they could

0:27:44have shipped day one, but there was no way they, it was too early for them to do it, but they

0:27:48are now putting in the work to get something like a vision pro app on iOS. Yeah. And I think the key

0:27:55difference, if I understood correctly from the briefing, the key difference here though, is

0:27:58at least the way it used to be when the Apple watch was new was that the Apple watch app only showed up.

0:28:04If I recall correctly, once you, you made it an Apple watch, I think I have that right. I might be

0:28:09lying to you. Um, where either way, even if I'm wrong, the vision pro app, my understanding is you

0:28:13absolutely can get that as just a regular, you know, iPhone user. We don't know because it's not in

0:28:18developer beta one of iOS, but, um, it is that the idea is if you have a vision pro on your account,

0:28:25the app shows up. If you don't have a vision pro on your account, you can still go to the app store

0:28:30and download it. And it's, you know, there's a lot of marketing stuff in that app too. So there's a lot

0:28:34of, isn't this cool? You can dream on your future vision pro from the vision pro app if you want to.

0:28:41Um, and then, you know, I, I, when, so I wrote a piece, um, a few weeks ago about the first

0:28:46anniversary of vision pro. And I wanted to make the point that even though we complain about,

0:28:52especially like how slow they've been to roll out immersive video stuff, and it's really been a

0:28:56surprise. What's also been a surprise and a good surprise is Apple has not stopped updating and

0:29:03improving the vision pro over this first year. You know, so many of those features,

0:29:08spatial personas is a great example that Mac virtual display getting improved. These are major

0:29:14things that make the vision pro much, much better at what it does. And they, they have been rolling

0:29:20those out over the course of the last year. Well, here's one that was a complaint that we had from day

0:29:26one about vision pro, which is that guest mode was bad, right? Yep. And they've already improved guest

0:29:32mode a little bit because it'll remember your most recent guest settings, which is nice. But this new,

0:29:38uh, 2.4 is going to have an improved guest mode where you can, uh, on your iPhone, you can approve

0:29:48what your guest is doing, add apps for your guests to use. And it's got a workflow where you can tap

0:29:55through and get your airplay automatically. So you can see what they're seeing in the vision pro.

0:30:01So this is very clearly from feedback for people being frustrated who want to show this to other

0:30:06people and they can't. Absolutely. And to back up just a half step, the way it works today is on 2.3

0:30:13or whatever the current version shipping version is. What I would have to do is I would have to put

0:30:16the vision pro on. Then I would have to go into control center and say, I would like to do guest

0:30:20mode. And then it'll ask me, okay, well, what, what apps do you want to permit? Or do you want to

0:30:24permit all of them? Do you want to turn on airplay, et cetera, et cetera. Then I say, okay, go. And then

0:30:28I take the vision pro off. And then the next person has five minutes to put it on and start the, the,

0:30:34start the, um, like, uh, eye tracking calibration process, which I get, I mean, there's nothing

0:30:38inherently wrong with that, but, but what Jason just said, and it's important to see the difference

0:30:42is that in this new world, you know, let's say Aaron wanted to try the vision pro on or do something

0:30:47in the vision pro. She just puts it on her head. And then, and then the, my phone will say,

0:30:52Oh, hold on somebody. That's not you. Just put the vision pro on. It's not even in the app. It's

0:30:56actually like one of these things like continuity camera or something like that, where it, where it

0:30:59like slides up and says, Hey, vision pro is in guest mode. What do you want to do? And then you go

0:31:05through and give it, uh, you know, your authority, which is so much better than having to put the

0:31:10thing on, put the helmet on yourself and then hand the helmet to a friend, right? Like much better,

0:31:14so much better. Now we haven't tried this because again, correct. Although I installed betas on my

0:31:20phone days before going on vacation, uh, it's none of it is there. I actually don't know if the guest

0:31:27mode is there. I haven't tried that one yet, but the, uh, the other stuff isn't there yet, but,

0:31:30but it will get there eventually. Um, and, and then also having it be any, I mean, you can get

0:31:37a view into what they're watching, but like to have it be a kind of grease the skids for getting,

0:31:43uh, air plate up and running so that you can just see what they're seeing on your iPhone is great as

0:31:48well. So, uh, I think, or iPad, I think most of this stuff is iPhone or iPad. Yeah. I mean, I've,

0:31:54I've done a guest mode like, you know, months ago I did guest mode where I had the vision pro,

0:32:00um, mirroring to a TV in the living room and that, that, that worked. And it's nice to have

0:32:05like a more group experience. This was like in February of last year when everyone was trying

0:32:08it for the first time and everyone else wants to see what the person in the vision pro is doing,

0:32:11et cetera, et cetera. So, um, and that is great. The one, the one crutch or crux or issue with this,

0:32:16with the, which the chat room is talking about is that DRM stuff is, is hidden. And I have every

0:32:23reason to believe it will remain because it's airplay. It strips anything that's protected content gets

0:32:28pulled out of airplay. That's just in screenshots, which is, which is annoying to begin with, but I

0:32:33get, but the real crummy thing is if you're trying to like talk a person through a demo, like, Hey,

0:32:39I want you to go do the dinosaur experience. And then I want you to go watch a little something in

0:32:43Disney plus. And then I want you to go do something else. The problem is not only is that blacked out

0:32:48when you're looking at the airplay version, it's actually blacked out. If I recall correctly in

0:32:53the vision pro itself, which is inferior. I'm pretty sure that's true. That's not great. And so,

0:32:59and so this would be one thing if I just can't follow along watching somebody watch Avengers in

0:33:033d fine. No, no worries, but it's, everything is black. And when it, with an immersive experience,

0:33:08I think literally you're just staring into empty into the void because it's just all black.

0:33:12Yeah. I, I sent you a screenshot cause I was actually using call sheet in vision pro last

0:33:16week. And the moment that I took the screenshot, the movie I was watching with call sheet to the

0:33:21side, turn black for a second, it took the screenshot and then it turned back into the

0:33:25movie. And I thought, Oh no. And I sent you the screenshot. And I was like, look at me watching

0:33:29a black rectangle with call sheet there. Which I mean, again, I get that 100%, particularly

0:33:36from the airplay perspective, but I wish there could be some middle of the road where what's

0:33:41reflected in airplay is black, you know, that that's fair, but whatever seen within the

0:33:45goggles, within the vision pro them itself, that was still, you know, this regular full

0:33:49fidelity, you know, exactly what you would always see.

0:33:52Yeah. Well, uh, good to see more vision pro updates on the way, right. That by, by the time

0:33:57we get to WWDC vision pro will already be up there with the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac in

0:34:04terms of supporting Apple intelligence. And that's, that's good. Cause that was not a given.

0:34:09Um, so definitely not. It's a nice, nice to see them. They are continuing to move ahead

0:34:13and address some of the big issues. You know, I have a very quick question for you related

0:34:17to this. Do you happen to know off the top of your head, how much Ram is in the vision

0:34:20pro? Does it have eight gigs or whatever the magical minimum is for Apple intelligence?

0:34:23I don't know. It obviously has enough to do Apple intelligence cause it does it, but I don't

0:34:29know if they've disclosed that off the top of my head. I don't know. Uh, but it's a, it's

0:34:33looks like, you know, according to Wikipedia are doing 10 seconds of Googling. It's 16

0:34:39gigs. So that is definitely more than enough.

0:34:41Powerful, powerful system. Powerful system.

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0:36:06All right, Jason, would you like to lawyer up for a moment?

0:36:11Let's lawyer up clunk clunk. Thank you. I appreciate that. Apple is turning off advanced data protection in

0:36:19the UK. I would just say as foretold in a previous episode of upgrade. Um, we're not saying it's good,

0:36:26but we're saying we saw it coming. This is of course due to changes in UK laws that demand access

0:36:33to end-to-end encrypted data. And so they said, Apple, you got to give us a way to access it. And,

0:36:39and what Apple did was not do what the UK government seemed to be asking, which is create a system with a

0:36:45back door. Instead, they said, we're going to turn off ADP advanced data protection. We're going to

0:36:51turn it off in the UK. And, and when they made that announcement, before they made that announcement,

0:36:56they had actually changed the software configuration on Apple devices. So you couldn't turn it on if you

0:37:01were in the UK. And, uh, so that's the case. Now you can't turn it on. If you're in the UK,

0:37:05if you do have it on, they, Apple says they will have to disable it in the near future. Apple actually

0:37:11can't remote disable it because that would completely invalidate the entire concept of

0:37:15advanced data protection. But I've seen lots of speculation about this. It seems like the most

0:37:20logical thing will be that at some point access to cloud services will probably get cut off if you

0:37:26keep it on right. In order for Apple to remain within the letter of the law, they'll be like your

0:37:32iCloud, um, will not update anymore. They haven't said any of this, but that's, I think, reasonable

0:37:38speculation that that will be the stick. I thought they did. I thought they did say that. I don't

0:37:42know if I'll be able to cite my source quickly while we're recording, but I could swear that they did say

0:37:46at some point it will, you will lose iCloud access if you don't turn it off. I mean, what I've seen is

0:37:52that you will have to disable it and we will provide future guidance, but it's logical that that's what

0:37:56will happen is that the stuff that is covered by ADP will stop working until you turn it off if

0:38:02you're in the UK. Right. Again, check my math on that. I can't cite a source off the top of my head,

0:38:08but I'm pretty sure it's common sense is the source regardless of whether Apple said it or not. I think

0:38:12it's clear. Now I want to, I want to be clear about what ADP does because Apple has a bunch of different

0:38:16products that do sort of similar things here. There's ADP, um, there's lockdown mode, which is

0:38:21different. ADP, the whole point of it is there was a, a selection of Apple services that Apple held

0:38:27a key to, which meant that Apple could, uh, well, first off, Apple could respond to your help from

0:38:33you where you're like, Oh no, I lost my password and now I'm locked out of all my stuff. And Apple's

0:38:38like, ah, that's okay. We have a key for that. So we can go through a password reset system,

0:38:43ID reset, you know, flow, and we can get you back into your account. Um, but also it allows Apple to

0:38:50respond to legal requests from law enforcement to unlock the contents that you've got on their servers

0:38:57and let law enforcement look at them. Um, so what ADP did was take a bunch of those services and create a

0:39:09new version where Apple doesn't hold the key, which means that if you lose your access, if you lose your

0:39:17login or one of the other, you know, a device that's got access to a key that will unlock it, which does

0:39:23include, it's not just your devices and it's not just like your Apple ID. It can be a device password.

0:39:28And actually, if you have a, uh, if you have a backup, uh, contact, I forget, is it the legacy

0:39:33contact? I forget that you can, you can basically give a friend and say, you can unlock in an emergency.

0:39:39You can unlock my Apple ID. Um, they can do that, but Apple doesn't have a key and those services are

0:39:45free form wallet passes, voice memos, Siri shortcuts, Safari bookmarks, reminders that aren't

0:39:52on a Cal dev server reminders to iCloud. Basically notes, photos, iCloud drive, and most importantly,

0:39:59iCloud backup because iCloud backup includes device backup and messages backup. So this is the famous

0:40:08San Bernardino example, for example, uh, for instance, and there are others like this where you're like,

0:40:14Oh, it's all encrypted. All their messages are encrypted. Their devices are encrypted. But if you've got

0:40:20Apple's key to iCloud backup, you've got their device backups and their messages backup and Apple can

0:40:27decrypt the backups, even if the stuff that's on the, on the cloud server is end-to-end encrypted.

0:40:33So it's this specific set that, um, that is covered by ADP and Apple introduced this while it was feeling

0:40:41pressure, right? From governments about like snooping. I feel like they built this feature to basically say,

0:40:47look, now we, now we don't even have the key. You just go away and don't come to us. And what the UK

0:40:52government has done and said, actually legally now you can't not have the key and therefore they're

0:40:58going to turn ADP off. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. And it's a bummer that this is happening. Like I,

0:41:04I find it very frustrating that the UK has decided that not only do they get the data of their citizens,

0:41:12which in and of itself is kind of gross, but given Mike's not here to defend himself, uh, given that

0:41:18the UK loves themselves a security camera and loves to watch on their citizens. Um, I'm not entirely

0:41:24surprised that they wanted this, but the thing that really grinds my gears about it is that the way the

0:41:28law is written. Well, two things. First of all, the way the law is written is that they can get

0:41:32access to any user worldwide, which no, right. I don't love that. I don't love that at all.

0:41:38And, um, and secondly, Apple isn't allowed to say anything about it, which is also really gross.

0:41:45Like I kind of understand where they're coming from on that one, but I find that very, very gross.

0:41:49And so yeah, country that loves to surveil their citizens wants to be able to surveil their citizens

0:41:56news at 11, like in and of itself, this is not that surprising, but the fact that they try to reach

0:42:00into other countries citizens, I find really an, a dramatic and gross overstepping of what is really

0:42:07agreeable and acceptable. And that's one part of this story that we'll have to play out, right?

0:42:12Because what Apple didn't do is turn off ADP for everyone in the world. And so there's a, there's

0:42:17a scenario here where the UK government basically comes to Apple and says, you need to, I mean,

0:42:23first of all, they could come to Apple and say, this isn't what we asked for. Um, which would,

0:42:27even though it effectively is, it isn't exactly what they asked for, but they could also say,

0:42:31no, I want to get that guy in Singapore. You know, I want to get that person in the, in Saudi Arabia.

0:42:40I want their data and they're not in my country and they haven't been in my country, but it doesn't

0:42:46matter. We have reasons to get their data, give us their data. And if they have ADP on and they go to

0:42:54Apple, what happens then? Because Apple would be in violation of this law. And I think that, you know,

0:43:00I don't know enough about, um, international treaties and, you know, but it is, and the

0:43:08question is, would they push it that far? Or is this enough? Cause they're basically, Apple is

0:43:12basically just reverting off of a feature. This is not new. I, there are a lot of, um, I would say

0:43:19mostly from people who make a living making people upset and frightened. That's just my take on it. I think

0:43:24there are a lot of people out there who really make a living frightening people. That's what they

0:43:28do. Uh, who, who say, Oh, Apple has completely caved into the UK and this is terrible. Um, but the truth

0:43:35is, um, this is actually Apple reverting to the previous system where this stuff is, you know, the key

0:43:45is held and that's not great, but it's not Apple building a whole new system to hand all your data to

0:43:51the UK. It's literally the, uh, if the metaphor is like the back, this is not the back door, it's the

0:43:56front door, which is what I think Tim Sweeney said. It's like the, the house never had a door. And a

0:44:01couple of years ago when people were sniffing around the front door, Apple built a door. And then one of

0:44:07those people, this metaphor is getting out of hand said, no, actually, if this house is in the UK, you

0:44:12need to leave that door open. But the door was, there was never a door before that. That's the point

0:44:17here. So it's not great. I want to read Apple's part of Apple's statement that they released,

0:44:21because I think this is an interesting choice that they made. They said, we are gravely disappointed

0:44:25that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the

0:44:30continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy. As we have said many times

0:44:34before, we have never built a back door or master key to any of our products or services. And we never

0:44:40will. Now they don't mention the UK law in particular because legally they're not allowed to.

0:44:46That's not great. I don't love that. But I do. That last sentence is really interesting,

0:44:52right? Because that's Apple putting a stake in the ground saying, no master keys. We're not going to

0:44:57make a master key for you. And, you know, first off, great. And secondly, if they stop saying that,

0:45:04pay attention, right? Like if they stop saying, oh no, no master keys, that means something very bad has

0:45:11happened. Yep. It's a heck of a canary for sure. And what's also interesting about this is

0:45:16the implication there, or at least the way I read it is that, okay, your move. And if the UK compels

0:45:24them to build a back door or master key or what have you, this is Apple pretty much saying, we're going

0:45:30to leave the UK, or at least that's how I read it, which I can, I find it hard to imagine that they

0:45:35would actually get to that point. But this is one of the only things that I think Apple might

0:45:41actually grow a backbone and put their heels in the sand and say, nope, I'm sorry. We're not going to do

0:45:46it. I think this is an interesting game that the UK government is playing because obviously, and this

0:45:52is the weird thing about talking about Apple these days, right? One of the weird things about it, I know

0:45:56Mike and I have talked about it a lot. I know you've talked about it on ATP. Like Apple's the,

0:46:01Apple's bigger than lots of countries at this point. And, and so the, the balance of power is

0:46:09interesting. Like the UK government obviously has a culture, as you mentioned, it's a culture of

0:46:16surveillance and we're protecting you by watching everywhere and all of that in some ways that some

0:46:21of the laws in the US, as long as they're being enforced anyway, are, are, are opposed to.

0:46:26Um, but this is one of those cases where I do wonder about the politics of it because it is

0:46:33politics, right? The, if the UK government, if somebody in the UK law enforcement says, you know,

0:46:40we're going to push Apple on this and we're going to demand something and we're going to hold them in

0:46:43violation of this and all of that. At some point, if you're a politician who is in charge of those

0:46:50people, if you're Keir Starmer or one of the people in his cabinet in the UK government,

0:46:54and you consider the risk that what Apple's going to do is say, put out a press release that doesn't

0:47:02explain why, but says Apple to cease operation in the United Kingdom, Apple to lay off all of the

0:47:08thousands of people. This is similar to the inverse of a story we're going to talk about a little bit

0:47:11later. Apple to remove billions of pounds of investment from the UK, relocate jobs out of the

0:47:17UK, uh, and, and say, we can't tell you why, but we deeply regret and we'll miss the UK, but we can't be

0:47:24there anymore. Like that's what Apple has over the UK government. And I got to say, like, we can't pretend that

0:47:32that wouldn't matter, right? Like if you're Keir Starmer, do you want that? Because there's somebody

0:47:39down in your law enforcement or intelligence group somewhere who has gravely overreached with their

0:47:46demands of Apple. And personally, I don't think he can make that choice. I don't think a politician

0:47:54is going to tell the people in this country that one of the major tech companies in the world is going to

0:48:01pull all of its sales and all of its jobs out of your country because somebody says, well, it'd be

0:48:08easier for us if we could tell them to unlock this guy's phone in Saudi Arabia, right? I don't, I don't

0:48:15actually believe that that's a winning and that's bizarre, right? First, right. It's bizarre that Apple

0:48:19could like overpower people inside the UK government, but I think that's where we are. Honestly, I do think

0:48:25that that would be a really bad moment for the UK government if they pushed them that far.

0:48:31I couldn't agree more. And, you know, we're not really in a position to throw stones given that we barely

0:48:36have a government at this particular point in time, but

0:48:38I like to talk about other governments, you know, Casey right now, I like to talk about them.

0:48:42Anyone but us, good grief. But, um, but no, I think this feels to me like the UK vastly overplaying their

0:48:51hand because I really do believe that for all of Apple's many faults these days, particularly in the

0:48:57last several months, I really think, like I said a minute ago, that they will stick to their guns on

0:49:03this. I really do believe it. And I think it would be ruinous for both, um, ruinous, maybe a

0:49:09little bit dramatic for an entire government, but go with what I'm the vibe of what I'm trying to say

0:49:13here, that it would be ruinous for the UK to actually compel them to do this. And I think that

0:49:18Apple would at the very least, you know, start pulling out features or, or perhaps entire products

0:49:23or stop selling products in the UK. And I think Apple is of the belief that if they really do play this

0:49:29game of chicken and if the, if the UK really doesn't flinch first. And so Apple has to say,

0:49:34okay, we're pulling out, you know, that beautiful thing at Battersea, which I haven't seen, but I've

0:49:38understood to be just phenomenally pretty that office of Battersea and all of those jobs, as you mentioned,

0:49:43I really do think Apple would start to say, okay, we're going to wind all this down unless you guys,

0:49:49you know, find you folks find a solution that's, that's more agreeable. And I don't see the UK

0:49:55winning that game of chicken. I really don't. And as a potentially former world leader, as a resident

0:50:01of a potentially former world leader at this point, uh, I think that the UK is playing this hand as

0:50:06though they still own half the planet and they don't. And so I don't think this is going to end

0:50:11well for the UK. If they, if they decide to stick their heels in a very reasonable approach to this

0:50:16is the UK says, okay, well, you've done the 80 ADP thing. We'll, we'll call it even.

0:50:21That's the real politic here, right? Is declare victory. This is, this is the truth. As I, as I

0:50:26get older, I realized that a lot of this is in politics is about the appearance of success

0:50:32more than it is success. So with a hundred percent, with this, if they want to, the UK government can

0:50:39declare victory. They made one of the tech giants change their policy because of them and move on

0:50:48without pushing it because they know that if they push it much further, it could actually go

0:50:53sour on them. Now, not to say they won't try it. They could try it, but, but I feel like there's a lot

0:50:58of this, and this is actually, I think true for a lot of stuff happening in the U S right now that we'll

0:51:02get to, uh, and, and stuff we will not get to, but there's a lot of that aspect, which is, you know,

0:51:07sometimes it's not about doing the thing. It's about saying, you're going to do the thing,

0:51:12declaring victory and then not talking about it ever again and moving on because you get to just

0:51:17the, the, and I know that this is kind of cynical, but there is some truth to the fact that if you're

0:51:21a politician and you can say, yep, check that box moving on, nobody goes back and says, wait,

0:51:27that I, in fact, I'll get to this a little bit later too. There's a related story about this.

0:51:32Nobody goes back and says, wait, you check that box, but then nothing happened. It's like,

0:51:35I don't know. I checked the box. What do you mean? Let's move on. Uh, so there's some of that.

0:51:40I have one more lawyer up item I want to get to really quickly and it's silly, but it's fun,

0:51:45which is, um, remember Casey, you remember when, uh, they did that thing where, uh, the porn app went

0:51:53on alt store pal, the alternative app store in the, the EU. And they said, it's the first porn app

0:51:58approved by Apple. And Apple got very angry, very angry because Apple was so angry. I mean,

0:52:04they were going to scold that porn app regardless, but like, uh, alt store just amped it up a little

0:52:09bit by saying Apple approved, Apple approved. Apple's like, we do not approve of this app.

0:52:13And he's like, I didn't say you approved of it. I said, you approved it. Well, good news,

0:52:19everybody, because Riley tested of alt store has posted that Apple has changed their form email

0:52:27for approval slash, uh, what is it? Uh, approval slash readiness for apps that have been notarized

0:52:35for use in the EU. It used to say the following app has been approved for your distribution.

0:52:40And it now says the following app is ready for distribution.

0:52:44It's so petty. It's so petty. Honestly, it's petty on every side. And it makes me so happy because

0:52:53ultimately it's such a silly thing. And it's one of those, like, you know, Michael Jackson eating

0:52:56popcorn gifts, you know what I'm saying? It's just like, there's no real stakes here. Everyone will be

0:53:01fine, but it's just so funny. And it's, you know, as Merlin says, a lot of times, you know,

0:53:05words have meaning. And even though I think Riley took a little bit of creative license, like strictly

0:53:11speaking, what, what was said was true that, you know, Apple approved it. Yes. But nevertheless,

0:53:16it is funny to me how quickly a company as big as Apple can move when they have a little bit of egg on

0:53:22their faces. I like, I like to think that somebody, it went down a large chain of managers to whoever is in

0:53:29charge of the email templates for developers. Like, who's that person? And they're like,

0:53:35which intern is that? Right. Yeah. Who's got to do the email templates. Anyway, that's okay. Now things

0:53:40are not, they're no longer approved. Future porn apps in, in alternative app stores will merely be

0:53:47ready. So didn't that solve a problem? Um, okay. I, I've, I've promoted this twice. So I'm going to

0:53:54just jump to it now, which is, uh, uh, not we're leaving lawyer up sort of, but we're still in kind

0:54:00of a political sphere, which is, um, on Monday as right before we record this, Apple put out a newsroom

0:54:06post. Uh, so basically a press release, uh, saying that it's investing $500 billion in the USA,

0:54:13USA, USA, USA. Oh God. I can't even say that. I know, I know, I know. Apple today announced its

0:54:20largest ever spend commitment. That is a bad phrase and you should feel bad for writing it

0:54:25with plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U S over the next four years.

0:54:30What an interesting increment of time. Yep. Um, Apple and partners will open a new advanced

0:54:36manufacturing facility in Houston to build servers for private cloud compute and Apple will also double

0:54:41its U S advanced manufacturing fund, create an academy in Michigan to train the next generation

0:54:46of U S manufacturers and grow its research and development investments in the U S to support

0:54:50cutting edge fields like Silicon engineering. It's really weird reading stuff like this in front

0:54:55of you, Casey, cause you are the one who reads this stuff on ATP. It's strange. And, and it talks

0:55:02about how it look, here's the thing about this. This isn't new. And a lot of people I predict,

0:55:07cause it just came out, are going to point to this and they see, see, see what Apple's doing with, uh,

0:55:11Trump administration. See Apple's been doing this for a while now, folks. Apple has been talking

0:55:15about how many jobs it creates and listing a bunch of States where Apple has business prominently like,

0:55:20Oh, we're in Texas and Oregon and, and, and, uh, and California and Utah and New York and North

0:55:26Carolina and all these things. This is entirely precedented. Uh, it, it at least started in 2018,

0:55:33which yes, was the first Trump administration and, and they announced the $5 billion advanced

0:55:40manufacturing fund. It came right after they repatriated a bunch of money back from overseas

0:55:44due to tax breaks that they got to bring it back into the U S if you remember back then they announced

0:55:49what is now their Austin campus. But I will say this is, this is a political game. Apple has been

0:55:55playing since then, including during the Biden administration, because in 2021, they did this

0:56:01and put out a press release with a whole bunch of stuff, including $430 billion in U S investments

0:56:06and another new campus in North Carolina. Now video editor of the show, Chip Sutterth has been sending me

0:56:13these links for a while now that remember the thing about checking the box and then nobody checks what

0:56:19happened to the box after it was checked that North Carolina hub three years later is basically

0:56:27on hold. And Apple has not talked about whether they will actually build it or not. And they talked

0:56:32about investment in, in Raleigh, Durham area schools and all this stuff. And it's like, it's unclear

0:56:37what's going on there, but just to be just as a note, it's not something that I've really brought up

0:56:42on the show, but I just want to point out, like sometimes these things get promised. And then there's a

0:56:46question about if they ever get delivered, but they get promised. And, and so I I'm curious how

0:56:52you feel about this Casey, but I look at this and I say, this is modern Apple doing what it feels is now

0:57:01from, you know, in the last eight or 10 years, necessary relationship maintenance with the U S

0:57:08government to point out how much it loves the United States, even though it does things in other

0:57:13countries. It puts a lot of money into the United States. It's got campuses and it's, it's a little

0:57:18bit like how they spread everything in the Apollo program over all 50 States. It's like, look how many

0:57:23States we're in. We impact all of these jobs in all of these States. And it is in some ways, the inverse

0:57:29of what I described about the UK stuff. It's, it's Apple saying, look how much money we put into the U S

0:57:35and how many jobs we put into the U S and doesn't that mean that you American government, like, like us,

0:57:41a great American company. And, uh, I, I could argue that investing in America for a big American company

0:57:48is not, is not bad. In fact, it's good. Um, the fact that they have decided to make it a press release

0:57:55item every few years does suggest that they feel they have to do this in order to please anybody

0:58:02with power in Washington. Yeah. You know, for me, I'm just happy that at least this grift is happening

0:58:09in the traditional way rather than in the slimy way of, you know, of the former Trump administration

0:58:16and this Trump administration. Uh, no, I kid slightly, but I mean, I think I, you know, I'm going to have to

0:58:21read all those letters now, Casey. So thank you for sending them. You're welcome. You're welcome.

0:58:25Yeah. Uh, no, you can send them to me. It's fine. Um, but no, I, I think this, this feels particularly

0:58:32gross to me right now because it's not my team. That's that's on the field, if you will. And so

0:58:38I'm more sensitive because you know, when it, when, when it was my team, it was like, oh yeah, you know,

0:58:44they're just go America. Right. Why, why not? But now it's like, oh, this feels gross for years.

0:58:48That's awfully conspicuous as you said earlier. Um, but ultimately what I'm trying, what I've been

0:58:54wrestling with a lot lately, and we've talked about this on ATP, you guys have talked about it quite a

0:58:57bit here on upgrade. Um, I, I think my view, my mental model of Apple is very different than the

0:59:07reality of Apple. And I think that's always been true, but it's been particularly stark to me anyway,

0:59:12very recently as it seems like Apple in some or Apple as a whole. And sometimes Tim individually

0:59:18is, you know, getting on one knee and kissing the ring and doing a lot of things that I find

0:59:24in, in, in contrast to what I think Apple stands for. It would be like if Apple said to the UK,

0:59:31oh yeah, you're right. Let's put that back door in. Totally. I would find that super gross in this.

0:59:36it's not apples to apples, but it feels similarly gross. Now I'm glad that you, you went back and

0:59:42looked at how this has been for the last almost 10 years, because that makes me feel a lot better

0:59:47about it. And, and what I think this is, and I think you said this a moment ago is this is Apple

0:59:52maintaining their relationship with the U S government. And I think it's a little grosser at sometimes than

0:59:58others, both irrespective of what team you're on or whatever the case may be. But it seems that Apple

1:00:04being as big as they are. And you mentioned earlier, you know, as big as bigger than a lot of countries,

1:00:09they have to play politics and Tim has to play politics. And even though I find a lot of their

1:00:17actions, particularly of late to be pretty gross, ultimately at the end of the day, it is Tim's job

1:00:25and Apple's job to continue it to exist in whatever climate they happen to find themselves in and

1:00:30hopefully push forward and push for what they think is right. And what they think is best for example,

1:00:36you know, going carbon neutral and things in, in products where they can, but ultimately it's,

1:00:41it's their, it's not their job to change governments. It's their job to do whatever they need

1:00:47to, to work within the government of the day. And intellectually, I get that, but my heart that

1:00:53kind of hurts at the moment. And I know that that's unfair, but that's just kind of how it feels.

1:00:57Yeah. I think this is the truth. And the reason that I mentioned that it's happened multiple times

1:01:01before is that I do think that this is more about, it's less about who is president and more about the

1:01:08scrutiny that, that tech companies now undergo. Like there was an era where American tech companies

1:01:15standing astride the world and being incredibly powerful was not considered particularly political.

1:01:20in the U S it was just considered a win hooray U S companies are powerful. And then there was a turn

1:01:25where it was like, Oh, now we're going to investigate these tech companies. And while Apple has missed a

1:01:30lot of that drama, it hasn't missed all of it. And I, I keep saying this on this podcast, but it is just

1:01:37like that dynamic with the, with Keir Starmer, you know, not wanting to tell the citizens of the UK

1:01:41that Apple is going to pull all its jobs out and stop selling iPhones and all of that.

1:01:46I think that the same is true here where it's, it's hard for an American president

1:01:49to say the U S is the home of the number one, you know, tech company in the world,

1:01:55but they're our enemy and we're going to destroy them. Right? Like it's not really what they would

1:02:00really want to do is say, yay, USA number one. That's what they want to do. But there, there,

1:02:06there are increasingly, if not quick, quick pro quotes. And sometimes there are the sense that

1:02:11Apple needs to put out press releases talking about how many jobs it creates, talking about how much

1:02:16money it's committing, even if it was already going to open that factory, even if it was already going

1:02:20to build that campus or, and I think to a certain extent, they, they lean into doing a little more of

1:02:25that because they know it looks good. And they, the, the cost of not doing it is going to be more

1:02:31than the, you know, the savings that they would get by putting it in a different country. And so they,

1:02:37they just, let's just do it. Let's build that, that thing at the, at the triangle in North Carolina.

1:02:42There's a lot of great college graduates there. It's a great place to have a campus. Let's build

1:02:44one there maybe eventually sometime. And so that's just sort of regardless of American politics right

1:02:52now, I think that that is where tech companies are and where Apple and Tim Cook are trying to do this,

1:02:58which is navigate a way to show their value to not just Donald Trump, but to America and all the

1:03:05people in power to say, we are a good American company that does things in America for Americans,

1:03:10even if they were doing most of it already. Uh, it changes the narrative a little bit about,

1:03:15Oh, all Apple does is outsource everything to China and say, no, no, no, that's not true.

1:03:19We do so much here in America. And I think a lot of that was true before, but in 2018, what Apple felt

1:03:25they needed to do was say it out loud, right? To say, we get all our glass from Corning in Kentucky

1:03:30or wherever. I think it's Kentucky. Um, like they need to, they feel they need to say that cause they

1:03:35need to say, okay, we're going to show our work about how we're a good American company so that we don't

1:03:39get regulated and we don't get treated badly. And part of that is cause I know, um, people out there who

1:03:45have seen this will know that the president of the United States has already posted a thing in all caps on his

1:03:51social media site, taking full credit while misspelling a word. Um, part of the quid pro quo,

1:03:57part of the reason you do this is you are allowing whoever is in power to take credit for what you're

1:04:02doing. And that's part of what this is. And that was true in 2018. It's true in 2021 and it's true

1:04:08today. You don't have to like it, but I think that, I think that that's, that's what's going on here.

1:04:13And it's sort of the, the bigger picture of, of we live in an era where Apple is so huge

1:04:18that it, it, it, and it's under enough scrutiny because its category is under such scrutiny that

1:04:23it needs to prove to provide enough cover to people in power that they can say, Oh, see, like,

1:04:32like Donald Trump did today. See Apple is investing in the USA. Isn't that great? And that's like,

1:04:39that is the game they're playing. Yep. I couldn't agree more. And you know,

1:04:43a complimentary read of this is, and you, you implied this or kind of sort of said it a second

1:04:47ago, and you definitely were talking about this a little while ago. A very complimentary read of this

1:04:52is, well, you know what? This was already in the works anyway. And we didn't know that. And perhaps

1:04:57they wouldn't have made such a stink about it, but it was already in the works anyway. Who cares?

1:05:01Let's just get ourselves a win. Let's cozy up with the people in power and say, look at us and look at

1:05:06all the great things we do for our country. And it, the complimentary read is that the, okay, yeah,

1:05:10I guess they're making a big, you know, a big festoosh about it for arguably no true real reason,

1:05:16but all this stuff was art maybe already in the works anyway. And either way, whether or not that's

1:05:22true or not. Another thing I think that's worth noting is that Apple's under a lot of regulatory

1:05:28scrutiny in a lot of countries around the world, but including America and granted the political

1:05:34atmosphere now is a lot different than when this regulatory scrutiny really started to, you know,

1:05:38take a monocle to them, if you will. But, um, but no, I think it to curry favor with the American

1:05:44government broadly is a very good idea for Apple. And so if you take my emotions away from it for a

1:05:50second, and if you take away the fact that I don't, I don't like this from an emotional standpoint,

1:05:54if you look at the brass tacks from a business standpoint, it is very much an Apple's best interest

1:06:01and Tim's best interest for the government to like Apple. And so by that metric, Tim and Apple

1:06:07are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, even though I personally find it to be a

1:06:11little bit gross. I will say, um, I believe this press release would exist even if Kamala Harris was

1:06:17president because it existed when Joe Biden was president. And I think the reason is the atmosphere

1:06:22wouldn't be that different in terms of tech under scrutiny. And if, uh, Harris was president and it

1:06:29was a Republican Congress, maybe, I mean, first off, as we saw with Keir Starmer, who is a member of the

1:06:34labor party in the UK and, and, and yet they are still pressing this, like the Democrats would also still

1:06:39be saying, Oh, you know, big tech danger, et cetera, et cetera. They don't want to get, uh, beaten on that

1:06:45on, on like national security by the Republicans. And then the Republicans in Congress would have their

1:06:49committees where they're looking at big tech and what is Apple doing and all of that. Like it would be the

1:06:54case regardless. It's the, it is not necessarily about the specific players. It's about where we

1:07:01are with big tech and politics and how these big tech companies are reacting to it. But I'm going to

1:07:07say this again and then we can move on, which is, I think that ultimately there is not enough credit

1:07:14given to the idea that some of these dominant countries around the world or companies around the world

1:07:19are American and that as an, and that the U S government is going to give them leeway because

1:07:26you don't really want Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook to be enemies. You want them to be

1:07:33examples of American reach in the world. Now that may have consequences for those companies elsewhere in

1:07:40the world. And we've seen that, but I do think that, that it, it just feels unlikely to me that any American

1:07:45government is going to attempt to destroy one of the great American companies, just like I think

1:07:52Keir Starmer is going to have a hard time trying to call Apple's bluff about Apple potentially leaving

1:07:58the UK. I think, and that says something about the power of tech companies, I guess, but you never

1:08:03know. You never know what politicians might do. You never know. All right. We are going to take

1:08:08a break right now for where a familiar voice is going to send you a message.

1:08:14This episode of upgrade is brought to you by Google Gemini. I tried Gemini a couple of days ago,

1:08:22the Gemini live where you can just talk to it. And it really is wild to have a full on conversation

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1:08:32holidays. And when it starts giving you results, you can just stop it and say, okay,

1:08:36but what about something low key for a smaller group? And then it will adjust to that. So you

1:08:40could just keep going until you get an idea that you want. I think that's what I would use it for the

1:08:45most brainstorming things. It's so good. If you don't know where to start or you hit a wall, you just go

1:08:50to Gemini. It helps you get the ball rolling, but you can use it for all kinds of stuff. If you want to

1:08:55learn something new, you can have it give you advice, ask it to explain Bitcoin in simple terms, or you

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1:09:10you, responds, adapts to your style of conversation. Just try it out. It's free. Our thanks to Google

1:09:16Gemini for their support of this show and all of Relay.

1:09:19Okay. Let's talk about phones now. Casey, how about that? Yes, please. Let's talk about computers and

1:09:26computer phones. Uh, the, I, the iPhone 16e was announced last week. Um, and, uh, and I, I called

1:09:36it that it wasn't the SE. I feel good about that. I feel in our, in our paternity draft. I, I got a

1:09:41couple of points. That was, that makes me feel nice. It's a weird phone, right? I mean, it's got,

1:09:45it's like both familiar and unfamiliar. I'm fascinated by the, the choices Apple made

1:09:50about what they said. Likewise. Was worth putting in your SE successor, your low-end phone. What

1:09:57features it's worth putting in and what features it's not. So like the hit list is it's got an

1:10:02action button. It's got an OLED screen with face ID and the notch. So it's basically like the iPhone

1:10:0610 screen, which was seven years ago. It's got a ceramic shield on the glass, but they make a point

1:10:12of saying it's not the new ceramic shield that's on the latest models. It's the previous generation

1:10:16ceramic shield. So it's not as shieldy as it was. It's got USB-C instead of lightning. It's got Apple

1:10:22intelligence and an A18 processor. That's all great. What it doesn't have is it doesn't have the new

1:10:26photographic styles. It doesn't have MagSafe. It doesn't have colors. It comes in black and white.

1:10:30Uh, it doesn't have millimeter wave, doesn't have ultra wide band. Um, curious, right? Like it's,

1:10:35it's just fascinating to see. I'm sure there is a very specific manufacturing reason why all of these

1:10:42choices were made, but I am fascinated about what gets left out and what gets put in a phone like

1:10:48this. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We spoke about this on ATP last week because in a very rare, uh,

1:10:53lucky break for us, it was announced on a Wednesday before we recorded. And at the time I didn't have a

1:10:58lot of, uh, I didn't have a lot that I'd read about it. I didn't have a lot of time to think about it.

1:11:02And now that I've had a little bit of time to process, I, and, and hear some input from others,

1:11:08the things that make the most sense to me are, I think a combination of two things. Um, a lot of

1:11:14people have spoken about and written to ATP and potentially to upgrade as well to say, look,

1:11:20this isn't the, yeah, on the surface, this is a consumer phone, but this isn't really a consumer

1:11:25phone. What this is, is a bulk purchase phone. So as an example, uh, here in Richmond, Virginia,

1:11:32a capital one is one of the largest employers. They're a large credit card company. Um, in fact,

1:11:37they're merging with discover card as we speak, as far as I know, um, really big, really, really big

1:11:43bank effectively. And most of their employer employees, excuse me, get issued phones. And I

1:11:49think most of them get issued iPhones. And so I bring this up to say, I could imagine a place like

1:11:54capital one buying hundreds, thousands of iPhone 16 ease or 16 E as, uh, connected, called it that

1:12:02was 16. Uh, anyways, I could see them buying, you know, hundreds or thousands of these. And if you're

1:12:08buying this as a corporate device, do you really care if there's MagSafe? Do you really, does the

1:12:13colors are need to be, need to approve a corporate device? Do you care if you don't have millimeter

1:12:18wave? Does anyone care other than me? If they don't have millimeter wave, I can make an argument

1:12:23for ultra wide band perhaps, but Jen, the photographic styles, who cares? So like,

1:12:27if you look at it through that lens, and I don't know if this is true or not, this is just a guess.

1:12:31If you know, you could even say that it's a 16 enterprise edition. Um, again, that that's not

1:12:37factual, but you could squint and you could see how that could be the case. And the other thing is you

1:12:42got to remove a bunch of stuff in order to hit a particular price point. And, uh, as we record,

1:12:47it was earlier today that Ben Thompson at Stratechery put up a post about the 16 E and what

1:12:53his, and what his point was among other things was look, phones have effectively gotten cheaper

1:12:59because they've stayed the same price. And I always forget that, that everything in life has so much

1:13:05more expensive now, but except iPhones. Now this one is a, is like, well, what is it? 130 bucks or

1:13:10170 bucks more than the 40% more in actual dollars. Uh, like today's dollars from the one that was for

1:13:16sale yesterday, but not right. Cause it's 599 instead of 429. But, um, but yes, Ben did the

1:13:23calculations and it's true. Like if you look at the March over time of buying power and inflation and

1:13:29all of that, right. It's still, I mean, this is the thing is I'm sure he went into it thinking it's

1:13:33actually not more expensive. And what he found was, no, it's, it's still more expensive. This is that

1:13:38thing, right? Casey, where you want the black and white clarity, like the iPhone 16 E, you want it in

1:13:42black and white. Uh, but, but it's actually in shades of gray, like an iPhone 16 pro. So sorry,

1:13:49I'm not that I'm bitter about it, but, um, it's, it's complicated, right? Like it's, it is more

1:13:56expensive, but it's not hugely more expensive. And, and Ben says like, and also like, if the idea was

1:14:04that the cheap phone really helped Apple in emerging markets, it's not really like that clear that it has

1:14:10very much. So it is, it's complicated, right? But they did. I mean, you have to say they made a

1:14:17decision. I feel like a lot of this ends up being, uh, about margins and about, I mean, they're probably

1:14:23on the iPhone 14 production line. Uh, Dan Warren made that point last week on the six college podcast.

1:14:29I think he's right. Like they, they took the iPhone 14 off sale. The iPhone 16 E seems really iPhone 14 E

1:14:36in a lot of ways, uh, but it's not. Uh, and so like, you know, it's, it's Tim Cook's Apple. I'm sure some

1:14:43degree of this is literally, they looked at the, they're going to a much more expensive, uh, product

1:14:48line, right? They, the, those face ID sensors are not as expensive as they used to be when the iPhone

1:14:5210 came out, but they're still expensive. And the OLED screen is, it's not the new one with the dynamic

1:14:56island, but it's still expensive. And they did the math and they said, well, you know, I, I took the

1:15:02MagSafe and the colors away and it still needs to be five 99. And Tim Cook was like, fine, that's fine.

1:15:07And that's, it's not very dramatic to say that somebody with a spreadsheet somewhere looked through

1:15:12the parts bin and looked at the cost, but that's probably what happened. Yep. No, I think that's

1:15:18exactly it is. It was a combination of what is the ultimate goal. If you take my theory as fact,

1:15:25what in that, this was the 16 enterprise edition, you know, if, if we keep that lens, if we look at

1:15:31everything through that lens, what are the things that we can drop? Because unquestionably

1:15:35you can't have it all at this price point. It's not a cheap phone. I'm not trying to say it's a cheap

1:15:40phone by any stretch, but you can't have it all. So what are you going to drop? And you're going to

1:15:42drop the things that maybe a corporate or, you know, like educational customer won't care about.

1:15:48And I'm not, again, I can't stress enough. This is not factual. I don't know. I have no birdies,

1:15:52but this is the most logical interpretation I can find because otherwise some of these,

1:15:57some of these removals or some of these things that have been left behind, if it really is a

1:16:02consumer phone, like why not have the photographic styles? MagSafe is freaking great. I love MagSafe.

1:16:08I would desperately miss MagSafe. I would probably miss MagSafe more than ultra wide band. And so,

1:16:13you know, a lot of these, these things that are left behind look really weird if you look at it from

1:16:19a consumer's perspective, but looking at it from a corporate perspective, they make at least some

1:16:23modicum of sense. Right. And you end up with people who are just like, I just want an iPhone. I mean,

1:16:27I might buy one of these for my mom because yeah, long story short, my, you know, her phone broke

1:16:31while my sister was visiting her. And so she bought her an SE. And the problem is my mom has really

1:16:35struggled in the desert with kind of wrinkly fingers. She can't get touch ID to work. And my sister bought

1:16:40her another touch ID phone. I'm like so mad because like, no, she can't do touch ID. We need to get

1:16:46her a face ID phone. So she still has to put in her password every time. It makes me so mad. I might

1:16:52get her one of these. I told this to Mike, by the way, over the weekend. And he said, you're a good

1:16:56son. That was very nice. Thank you, Mike. And there's, there's a marketing product line thing

1:17:01too. I mean, it creates this $599, $699, $799, $899, $999, right? And then $1199 for the big one. But

1:17:09like it, it, it does that where you can get an Apple intelligence model for $599. The $699

1:17:15phone is not an Apple intelligence model. Um, there's, and then over time, I, I do think

1:17:21that they'll probably update this phone every two or three years and that's good enough.

1:17:24Right. And they'll, and they'll increment the number to whatever the latest is. I, you know,

1:17:29it is not, look, it's probably not for anybody who listens to this podcast. Although I have been

1:17:34surprised. There are a lot of people who just don't care about their iPhone and it's all,

1:17:38there is an argument to be made that they're all so good at this point that it's, it's

1:17:43fine. Like it's fine and you buy it and then you use it for seven years and it's fine. And

1:17:48who cares? And I think that other than the people who want a small phone, and unfortunately the

1:17:52truth is small phone era is just over Apple. If enough people bought it, Apple would make

1:17:57one, not enough people buy it. It's sad. RIP iPhone mini, but that's just how it is. Uh,

1:18:03but a lot of people don't really care about all these super powerful features. So I, I consider

1:18:10MagSafe curious and I wonder if it, there was just simply an engineering decision where it's

1:18:14like, we can't put that in and do this other thing that we need to do because you know, all

1:18:19the accessories and now you've got this weird outlier that's a 16, but it's not compatible with

1:18:27MagSafe accessories. It's not great. Not great. But you know, Apple, we've seen it with the Apple

1:18:32pencil. We've seen it in a bunch of other areas. If it comes down to a little confusion in the

1:18:37product line or money, Apple chooses money.

1:18:43Every time, every time it's like, Oh, you got four Apple pencils there. And they're like, sorry,

1:18:46I can't hear you. I'm counting my money right now. Because I do think that that's the, you know,

1:18:52there's a lot of us on the outside are like, but Oh, but your product line could be much cleaner and

1:18:56nicer. And then there's somebody with a spreadsheet inside of Apple. It was like, Nope. Right. Like

1:19:01that simple. Um, always moving toward perfection, but never, ever, ever reaching it because reasons.

1:19:07And, and that, that feels like that's part of the iPhone 16 e story. You know, the big story though,

1:19:11is the C one, right? Like this is, we we've been talking to six years. We've been talking about

1:19:16Apple building its own cellular chip, right? It bought Intel's modem business. Actually,

1:19:20it's longer than that because I believe there were rumors that Apple was trying to build a cellular chip

1:19:24themselves and they, and they were very frustrated. So it's probably more like eight years or 10 years

1:19:30that this has been going on. But six, nearly six years ago, Apple bought Intel's modem business for a

1:19:36billion dollars and then hired a bunch of people and it's taken them this long, but they've got

1:19:44the C one, which is their first beachhead in not having to pay Qualcomm for chips, still had to pay them

1:19:50for licensing patents probably for a long time, but not chips anymore in some of these products. Uh, I don't

1:20:00know. We don't know enough about it. The product is not like we out yet. We don't have the details I have

1:20:05predicted in the draft that there will be some scandal that comes out that Apple probably already

1:20:10knows is true about the specs of this thing, but that they haven't talked about it. And then somebody

1:20:14will find it and go, Oh no, the C one doesn't do this. And there'll be a, you know, tempest in a

1:20:19teapot and then everybody will forget about it. But like, I feel like this is what this phone is going

1:20:22to be remembered for. Cause this is the first step into a new world where I assume, you know, we are now

1:20:27on the path where eventually every Apple product, please, please, please, including lap Mac laptops,

1:20:32please, please, please, please, we'll have an Apple cellular chip in them.

1:20:36Yep. No, it's obvious that this was coming at some point. I mean, you don't have to be a talking head

1:20:42like the two of us to look at Apple and realize this is a fundamental technology in so many of their

1:20:47products, please, including the Mac books, please. And so they're going to want to control this.

1:20:51I forget the quote, you know, exactly what quote I'm thinking of, but you know, it's in our best

1:20:55interest to, you know, control all the stuff that our products rely on. It was said much more eloquently

1:20:59than that, but you get the point. And, um, and so it is clear that they've been working. I mean,

1:21:04obviously we've known it, but even if we didn't know it, it would be clear that they've been working

1:21:07toward this for a long time. And it makes a lot of sense to take a phone that's, I don't think a lot

1:21:13of, a lot of consumers are going to buy. Some certainly will. I'm not trying to say no, but none of them

1:21:17will, but some, some will, but I don't think a lot of consumers will buy it. It's not.

1:21:21It's not the core. It is the most outlier of new iPhones ever.

1:21:25Exactly. And so you take this, what presumably may not be in certainly in terms of like,

1:21:33you know, your average consumer is not going to be the most popular phone and you experiment there

1:21:38and it makes perfect sense. And one of the interesting things that this phone does have,

1:21:43which we have not mentioned yet is of all the 16s I blur, no, it was all the 6.1 inch phones. I forget

1:21:48the, the, the, um, asterisk they put on the statement, but it has better battery life than

1:21:54most of its contemporaries. Yeah. If not all. Yeah. And there's 26 hours of constant video

1:22:01playback. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. And the reason I bring this up in the,

1:22:06in the context of the C1 is that they said during their presentation that this is the most power

1:22:12efficient modem on the market. And so you can imagine, and you know, you can see how these two

1:22:17are related. And we had at ATP, a handful of people that wrote in and said, look, the only thing I care

1:22:22about in my phone is battery life. Everything else is secondary to that. So you know what I'm going to

1:22:26be buying myself and iPhone 16 E and you know, I, I get that. And as a quick aside, another thing that

1:22:32a handful of people said was that I guess MagSafe can interfere with pacemakers, um, which, which means

1:22:37that if you have a phone without MagSafe, that's a great thing if you also have a pacemaker. So that's

1:22:41another example. Um, but anyways, coming back to C1, this is extremely exciting and I am really happy and

1:22:49curious to see how this rollout goes because I remember years ago, and I'm sure you do, you do too,

1:22:54Jason. There was several years ago now, I don't recall which phone it was, but there was a lot

1:22:59of brouhaha, some of which may have been invented. Some of which, some of which was probably real,

1:23:03but Oh, if you have a Qualcomm modem, then your phone is faster or better. I forget the details,

1:23:09but if you have one of the Intel modems, then yours is like, you know, hamstrung from the factory. And I

1:23:14forget if it was speed or power, there was some issue. I don't recall what it was. I think it was top

1:23:19data data rates. I think it was, and it was not a huge difference, but it was enough for nerds to notice

1:23:24and say, Oh, you want the secret Qualcomm version, not the secret Intel. Exactly.

1:23:27Exactly. And so I'm very curious to see, as you said a moment ago, what's going to be the drama

1:23:33here. We already know some of the drama is no millimeter wave, but again, I think the only

1:23:36person in the entire planet that cares about that is me because I happen to have a spot where,

1:23:41which is millimeter wave. And I haven't been there in a long time, to be honest with you,

1:23:45even though it's right around the corner from me, but it is incredibly cool. And sorry,

1:23:49I should back up a half step. If you are, if you have service that supports millimeter wave,

1:23:54which I think in America might only be Verizon, which I have.

1:23:58I think AT&T does it too, but I'm not sure.

1:24:00Oh, is that right? Okay. My mistake. Either way, if you happen to be within, I think it's literally

1:24:05eye shot of a tower that supports millimeter wave, you can. And I personally, with my own

1:24:13telephone have gotten two and a half gigabits per second over the freaking air. Like it's incredible

1:24:21how fast this is.

1:24:22It's got very, very low range and doesn't go through walls very well. So it's kind of like

1:24:28wifi, but if you were in, so I did this over at the, um, at the palace of fine arts in San Francisco

1:24:36at their, uh, their little duck pond and all of that. And the first Apple device that supported

1:24:41millimeter wave, which I think was an iPad I took over there and it was the exact same thing,

1:24:46which is like, Oh my goodness. It is incredibly fast, but it's not very popular because yeah,

1:24:51the range is terrible on it. It's, it's fast, but the range is terrible on it. And it's essentially

1:24:55like a hotspot from your wireless carrier. Uh, it really is just like a 5g tech demo, right? Like

1:25:02it doesn't seem like it's very practical, but it's, it's cool, but it's not very practical. And it's

1:25:07like, I totally see why Apple in building the scene one was like, Nope, but there'll be some other

1:25:14quirk. I feel like it's almost certain. Maybe not, maybe not, but it feels like there'll be

1:25:18some other quirk about it. Now Apple didn't talk about this a lot. And I know some people have said

1:25:22like, aha, they didn't talk about it a lot. That means something. I was like, I don't know. I was

1:25:26unsure if they were going to even mention that it's in there, but they did. Agreed. They, they mentioned

1:25:30it and there's like a paragraph from Johnny Shroogey and somebody did a like brief interview with Johnny

1:25:35Shroogey about this, the Apple chip chief, chief, chip, chief, uh, that guy, you know, uh, Mr. It's,

1:25:43it's Johnny who y'all know, not that one, the other one. Uh, and that's it. So they did a little,

1:25:49I would say part of the reason they did a little is because the goal is not for you to notice,

1:25:56right? The goal is to ship it and have it just be fine. What they're not doing. And Mark Gurman has

1:26:03talked about them building the C2 and the C3. Of course that like, we know that the, this group works

1:26:07many generations ahead of reality, right? Like we know that. And, and I think Gurman's report said

1:26:14they expect to match or exceed Qualcomm. You don't know what Qualcomm is going to do in the intervening

1:26:19time with the C3 or something like that. So like, it's not like they can boast, ah, we've beaten Qualcomm.

1:26:25It's really just like, look, we're in the game. Yes, we built this. Let's not make a big deal out of it.

1:26:31I don't think that's because there's a scandal coming or something like that. I think there'll

1:26:34be some dumb manufactured thing that people notice. I do think though, that it's just,

1:26:38it's not something to boast about. And so they're both, they're, they're doing the minimum boast,

1:26:43right? Which is like, yeah, we made it and that's it. No, I couldn't agree more. You know,

1:26:47just to tug on that thread just a little bit, if the C3 is the one that just really sticks it to

1:26:54Qualcomm, could you call it maybe like, I can imagine like C3 performance optimized. And then you

1:27:00would have the Apple C3PO. I can just see it now. Oh no. See, I thought you were going to say it's

1:27:05really going to happen with the C4, which offers explosive speeds. Even better. This is all going

1:27:11to happen. Everybody get ready for all the Star Trek memes next year or later this year when the M5

1:27:16comes out, because the M5 was the ultimate thinking AI computer in a Star Trek episode. And at least

1:27:22John Maltz and I are going to be flooding the internet with the ultimate computer episode of TOS memes

1:27:26next fall, in the fall.

1:27:29One other quick thing to mention before we move on is that I saw a video from a YouTuber,

1:27:34Andrew Edwards. And as far as I know, he was the only one that got invited into Apple's lab and

1:27:41was with Johnny Sruji that we were speaking about earlier. And he didn't have any interviews on camera

1:27:46or anything like that. But a little bit into the video, let me see if I can grab a timestamp here

1:27:52after my YouTube ad. I'll vamp while that's going on. In the YouTube video, at about five minutes and

1:27:5915 seconds or thereabouts, he kind of casually mentions that the A18 and C1 working in concert

1:28:06supports dynamic traffic management. And the example he used was, you have just sent a photo to somebody.

1:28:12I just sent Jason a picture from the UVA football game or what have you. And even though I'm sitting

1:28:20there and also trying to refresh scores on ESPN or something like that, it knows that my priority is

1:28:26likely to get that photo to Jason as quickly as possible. So that if I understand this and what

1:28:31Andrew was saying correctly, the A18 and C1 can work in concert to say, yes, the user, me, does want to

1:28:37look at ESPN. But the very first thing you need to do is get that photo to Jason as quickly as

1:28:41possible. And it can make that kind of quality of service determination behind the scenes. This is

1:28:46not something that I'm doing personally. It's doing on my behalf, but that's really cool. And this is

1:28:50when Apple is at its finest is doing these little tweaks and doing these little things in order to

1:28:55make the whole, the whole experience that much better. And I'm really excited to see where this goes,

1:29:02if this is the case. And certainly if indeed these chips are that much power friendly, which I have no

1:29:09reason to believe they aren't, you know, think of any time that your phone is in a spot with crummy

1:29:14service and there's not a whole ton Apple can do about this. I don't reckon, but what your phone does

1:29:18is it tries even harder to reach the near cell phone tower. So it will power up those radios even more.

1:29:26But what if those radios are inherently more power sufficient? And I'm talking well out of my comfort zone.

1:29:32I don't know if that's even realistic, but I can see how if this thing, which is arguably one of the

1:29:38most power hungry things in your, in your phone, especially when the screen is off, if we can make that more

1:29:45power efficient, we could see tremendous battery gains across the entire, maybe iPhone 17 lineup. And let me tell

1:29:50you, I am here for battery gains. First, I would like you to be hired as the colors are, but after that, I would

1:29:56be here for power gains. I would love it. I'd like somebody who is not colorblind to be the colors

1:30:00are. I just want there to be one. Yeah. So, so the thing about that, that I, I saw that video

1:30:06and it's very interesting, but it is marketing, right? Like I don't know enough about cellular chips to

1:30:12not to know, like for all I know, Qualcomm has a system that allows their customers who are building

1:30:20phones to prioritize certain kinds of traffic. They, they may have their own, you know, uh, QoS,

1:30:26uh, quality of service kind of plan where you're like, this is a priority. Now this is a priority.

1:30:31So one way you do marketing is you claim, here's a great thing that we built. Your competitor also

1:30:36does that, but you don't mention that. Another thing is though, and what strikes me about this is

1:30:41I was thinking like, even if Qualcomm does offer this sort of thing, it may be that they don't

1:30:49offer it in the way that Apple would like them to. Right. And this, this takes us back to the bigger

1:30:54point. And it's sort of like, if you think back to the Intel Mac era, for example, is Qualcomm

1:31:01cellular chips like Intel processors are made for a market, right? Like they talk to their customers,

1:31:10they'll do things for special customers, but basically like Intel made a chip and like PC makers

1:31:18could use it and Apple could use it. And maybe Apple talks to them and says, could you please do this?

1:31:21And occasionally that like they did that MacBook air chip, but then they did turn around and start

1:31:26selling it to everybody else as well. Right. Like, and I'm sure Qualcomm does that too. Again,

1:31:30I don't know enough about the cellular chip market, cellular motive market to know, but I imagine it's

1:31:36very similar where Qualcomm has got parts and they talk to their partners about what they need, but in

1:31:41the end they make a part that is productized. It is for anybody to buy on their price list, more or less.

1:31:46And that is not what Apple does with Apple Silicon. And I think it, that's why it has so much

1:31:53interesting potential is that the look, I have over the last few years had a chance at some of these

1:31:59product launches to talk at least briefly with people who are involved in the Apple Silicon

1:32:03process and what they keep impressing on me. And again, this is also marketing, but I do believe

1:32:09that this is how they think, which is every Apple Silicon chip, they know what products it goes in,

1:32:15right? Like they, they build it for specific products. The M4, they're like, they know it's going in

1:32:23the iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. And like they, they could tick off every product

1:32:30it's designed for. And that gives Apple some special powers to do what Apple wants for the products that

1:32:39it's building. And so when I look at the C1, that's what I think is maybe they're talking a good game

1:32:44about this stuff, but Qualcomm does something similar. But what it means is that Apple can now

1:32:50control, especially going forward, when this is everywhere, it can, it can build in stuff that is

1:32:57optimized only for them because they don't make that product for anyone else. It doesn't need to do

1:33:02anything right. And therefore it's more efficient because they don't need to do anything that is

1:33:07some other customer of Qualcomm's needs that Apple doesn't need, or a specific thing that Apple would

1:33:12really, really, really like Qualcomm to have done five years ago and Qualcomm just won't do it.

1:33:16Like they can just do all that stuff now. And that's, that's why the C1 is exciting to me

1:33:20is because it suggests that Apple by taking complete control over it is going to get, is going to get

1:33:27benefits in terms of functionality and in terms of optimization, because they're just making it for

1:33:31themselves. Yep. I couldn't agree more. It's a very astute point. And, and again, like that's where

1:33:36this gets really interesting is seeing Apple, you know, working on both sides of the table,

1:33:42so to speak in that, you know, instead of asking Qualcomm, may we have it now it's just, okay,

1:33:49we need go build it. You know, and it's hard to say no to your coworkers, you know? And, and so I think

1:33:57this could be very interesting. And, and, and I, I think C1 that it's, it's interesting in of itself,

1:34:02for sure. But it's that at this point, we're just trying to get to table stakes. And again,

1:34:06we don't even have millimeter wave and whether or not you think that matters personally,

1:34:10factually speaking, it's not table or it is table stakes, I guess I should say. And we don't have

1:34:15it yet, but maybe the C2 does have millimeter wave. And maybe the C3 is where we start to get really

1:34:21interesting and exciting stuff. And I am very, very excited to see how this goes. And you made a very

1:34:27good point earlier that this is one of those like kind of flies under the radar sort of things that

1:34:32we probably won't hear all that much about, but I think this is where a lot of the interesting stuff

1:34:39with iPhones and hopefully max, God help us. I hope so. That's where a lot of the interesting stuff is

1:34:46going to be happening in the near future. I think.

1:34:47Yeah. I hope this is the thing that leads to cellular max because we're not going to get into it here.

1:34:53You can listen to a recent episode of ATP where they, they went through it again about why

1:34:57Marco and Casey want cellular max. And I co-signed the entire thing because I agree.

1:35:02You know, very quickly, you can, you can tether, but it's not great. And we like it better if you

1:35:08don't have to, but it'd be better if you don't have to just very, very quickly. Uh, I forget how this

1:35:12came up, but we were talking, I think a friend of mine was over who was also an Apple nerd like me.

1:35:17And we were talking about this briefly and, and he had made a joke that, Oh, I'm going to have to

1:35:22upgrade my laptop recently or soon. And Aaron was like, I'm sorry, what? And he was like, no, no,

1:35:27no, because he might have cellular MacBooks. And she was like, what are you talking about? And I said,

1:35:30Oh, well, you know, we might be able to get an internet connection on my MacBook, blah, blah, blah.

1:35:32And let me tell you, I have not, I have no interest in upgrading my M3 max MacBook pro. I genuinely

1:35:38don't like it's great. Yeah. But if there is a cellular MacBook pro, I will insta buy it at any

1:35:44cost. Like I don't care. It will be immediately purchased at any cost whatsoever. I am that excited

1:35:51for it. Yeah. And it's fine if you don't get it. But, um, uh, my problem is when people don't get why

1:35:58we want this and therefore say it shouldn't exist because you're basically saying, look, I know you

1:36:03like it, but no, you can't have it. And like, we can, we can talk until we're blue about why we

1:36:08think cellular in a Mac laptop would be great because I think cellular and iPads is great.

1:36:13And I don't buy non-cellular iPads anymore because it's great, but we're not going to get into that

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1:38:35of relay Casey. It's gadget time. Oh, I'm excited. It's gadget time. I wanted to having you on, I wanted

1:38:46to do a little home gadget check-in because I am a big believer in home gadgetry, especially I would say

1:38:55ambient information. I know you recently, I don't know if you want to give people a little update. You did,

1:39:00you recently did a project where you basically have this super stealthy thing in your light switch

1:39:07that gives you ambient information with, which is like, I love, I tell, tell people what you did.

1:39:15Cause if they don't listen to ATP, they don't know this and we should start there.

1:39:18Sure. So I somehow, for some reason, I don't really know why I got it in my brain that I wanted to be

1:39:25able to know a couple of things about the state of my like house and world. And I wanted to be able to

1:39:29know that as you said, ambiently ambient is the perfect word for it. And we had in our kitchen,

1:39:35a former telephone Jack that I took away because we haven't had a home phone in years. And I put just

1:39:41a blank there and it occurred to me, wait a second, what if I got like programmable LEDs and I could

1:39:46turn on LEDs or turn them off based on the state of certain things. And that did not pass. As I like

1:39:53to joke, the historical commission, which is to say my beloved wife, Erin said, I don't know if I'm

1:39:57really in love with that idea, but we were able to reach a compromise, which is there's a, like this

1:40:03odd manufacturer of smart home stuff, which I'd never heard of previously called HomeSeer,

1:40:07H-O-M-E-S-E-E-R. And they make light switches, which are the standard paddle light switches that

1:40:13you'll see in most homes in America anyway. But what's interesting about them is that they're

1:40:18dimmers. And on the side, there's a series of seven LEDs that by default indicate how powered the

1:40:25fixture is, you know, is it very dim or very, or very bright, but you can tell it not to do that.

1:40:31And instead give you full control over how those LEDs are lit, what color they are, which ones are lit,

1:40:37et cetera. And we're probably going to talk about in a minute or, uh, or maybe we'll talk about it next.

1:40:42Uh, I've become one of those home assistant, uh, zealots slash, uh, you know, people that won't stop

1:40:49talking about home assistants. And now I'm talking to you about it rolling my eyes. Yep. Yeah, I know.

1:40:53And it's fair because we are the worst. It's just like CrossFit, you know, as soon as you start

1:40:57CrossFit or as soon as you start home assistant, all you can talk about is CrossFit or home assistant.

1:41:00And so in any case, what I've done is I've set up with home assistants such that there's a, there,

1:41:07again, there's seven lights. I'm only using three of them at the moment. One of them will turn red

1:41:11when the garage door is open and it, when it will, it will turn itself off when the garage door closes.

1:41:16One of them will turn white when the Volvo, Aaron has a plug-in hybrid Volvo. And when it's charging,

1:41:21it'll turn white when it's charged, it'll turn off. And then, uh, John Syracuse and my cohost on ATP

1:41:26turned me on to these, uh, long range, uh, but very low power, uh, smart home gadgets by a company

1:41:33called Yolink Y O L I N K. And so I installed one of these, like a contact sensor. That's one of those

1:41:39things where it knows if things are closed or open. And I installed one on my mailbox. So when the

1:41:43mailbox is opened, it's a little more complicated than this, but the short of it is when the mailbox is

1:41:47opened, then a blue light will appear on this light switch that is in the kitchen. And they're

1:41:52very physically small LEDs. They're only a millimeter or two across. So if you're looking at it, you 100%

1:41:59can see them very easily. But if you're just kind of passing by, you might not even notice. And this has

1:42:04been such a delight for me, not because any of this is really useful, like in particular, whether or not

1:42:11the car is charging, is that really actionable? No. Am I going to postpone a trip somewhere on account

1:42:17of the car still being charging? No, but it's neat that I know that it's charging.

1:42:22But the ambient thing, it makes you know, like, Oh, did I forget to plug in the car? Oh no, it's

1:42:26charging. And, and, and that's it. Right. It's like you otherwise would have to go outside and look

1:42:30or go in the garage and look and see whether the car is charging or not. But now, you know,

1:42:34Oh yeah, no, I did it already. I don't need to worry about it, which is, is right. You know,

1:42:38that's, that's what, that's, what's great about this ambient stuff is, you know, it lets you know

1:42:43at a glance, whether something is going on that previously would have required you to either go

1:42:47somewhere or bring up a computer to look right. Or a phone or whatever. And instead, you're just like

1:42:52the lights on. And like, imagine, I think this is a real thing. Like the, the, a light in your house

1:42:59lets you know if you left the garage door open, like that's great. That is, that should be a feature

1:43:04of houses. Right. Exactly. And it's, it's just silly things like that. And more than anything else,

1:43:10it was like, I, I nerd sniped myself and I just, I wanted to see if I could do this and I was able to,

1:43:16and it, and I honestly believe that it looks pretty reasonable. This is a, a manufactured, uh, you know,

1:43:24a smart light switch. It's not me drilling holes into like a blank outlet cover or anything like that,

1:43:31which as, as hard I would, as I may have tried, it would have looked janky. And so the historical

1:43:35commission was right to veto it, but, uh, I think it looks pretty good, but I got to tell you,

1:43:40there's another ambient thing in my life that I'm really enjoying that I know is also entering your

1:43:45world or has actually been in your world for a long time. So I, I, Marco brought, talked about this

1:43:50thing called terminal. Now full disclosure, they are going to sponsor ATP in the future, but I had never

1:43:55heard of this. Marco bought it of his own volition with his own money, et cetera, et cetera. Uh,

1:43:59they did send me the one I'm about to hold up for free, but it's this little like, uh,

1:44:04e-ink thing that you can put all sorts of interesting stuff on. So for me, I have it at the

1:44:11moment split in half and the left-hand side shows the agenda, if you will, for the family for the next

1:44:18few days. And then the right-hand side is split in half again. So there's, uh, there's the weather in

1:44:24the upper right, as I look at this. And then speaking of ambient computing on the bottom,

1:44:29right, um, we've been having some problems with both our indoor, our main refrigerator and our,

1:44:34uh, garage refrigerator. And we got different yield link devices. I actually haven't spoken about this

1:44:39on ATP. We got different yield link devices that'll tell you temperature. And we were trying to figure

1:44:45out, are these fridges really broken or not? And so what I did was I used terminal. Now to be clear,

1:44:50that's no vowels, T R M M L. Um, but I use terminal and their custom plugin system,

1:44:56which we'll talk about more, I'm sure in a second. And I actually have now granted it doesn't update

1:45:00very frequently, but I have the current temperature of both the indoor fridge, the indoor freezer,

1:45:05the outdoor free fridge and the outdoor freezer on here, just because we were trying to keep an eye

1:45:09on it. As it turns out, we're getting a new set of fridges on Friday. So that'll go away.

1:45:13But the point is I can, because I'm a dork and because I can write a little bit of code and

1:45:19because of home assistant, I can put something like that. The temperature of a refrigerator inside

1:45:25my house, I can put that on this little e-ink thing that will probably live on our refrigerator

1:45:31at some point, but currently it's just sitting on the windowsill in front of the kitchen sink,

1:45:34which is also pretty central to the kitchen. It is so delightful. And I love this thing and

1:45:40the battery life, especially if you get the extended battery, which is not very expensive. And that's

1:45:43what I did. The battery life is preposterous. It's measured in months. It's really,

1:45:47really good stuff. That's the beauty of e-ink. So this is actually shockingly similar to my existing

1:45:51e-ink calendar that I wrote about a few years ago that I still use that's in my kitchen.

1:45:56The big difference, it's the same, it's basically the same screen. I think mine has a second color,

1:46:00but otherwise it's basically the same. Black and white screen, e-ink, doesn't use power except when

1:46:07it's drawing. Otherwise there's no power. And my thing is a Raspberry Pi. So it's got power all the

1:46:12time and no battery. This not only does it have a much better case because mine's a 3D printed case.

1:46:16It's got the battery, which is great. And it's an ESP32, which is like this other thing. I've got

1:46:22the ink plate six color, which I have been experimenting with lately. And it's battery life

1:46:27is also bananas. And the reason is these ESP32s are super low power. They've got a sleep mode. You

1:46:32basically tell it to wake up every so often and check a remote server via your wifi. And then they

1:46:39check and then they write to the e-ink screen and then they go back down and use essentially no power

1:46:44until they wake up again. And this is why you can have them last forever and ever and ever. Cause you

1:46:48know, a phone screen, you've got to power it and backlight it and all those things. You don't do any

1:46:53of that with e-ink. It doesn't have any backlights or anything. It's just natural light on it like

1:46:58anything else, like a piece of paper, but, um, it's great. I'm exploring the terminal stuff because

1:47:03again, um, I want to, I love the idea that somebody made a product of this and it's a nerdy product,

1:47:10but it is a product. And, and that is in contrast to my thing where I bought a, a screen and a raspberry

1:47:17pie and, and, and took a GitHub project that was written in Python. That was like a German guy who wrote a,

1:47:24it was like a portal themed desk calendar. It was, and I, I, you know, I tore apart most of his code,

1:47:31uh, and made what I wanted and I've used it for a few years now. This is like that, but turned into

1:47:37a product. The case is so nice. It's so well done because it's not a 3d printed case. It's a mass

1:47:43produced case. Um, you know, they're using injection molding or something to do it. It's got that battery in

1:47:49it. And, and then they put a web interface on it. So basically you go to their website and there are

1:47:54apps that you can get, and there are plugins that you can write yourself. It's basically using HTML

1:47:59technology for the display and the way it works in order to keep it all sort of server side is it uses

1:48:06all that. And then it renders it into an image. And the image is what gets downloaded by your terminal

1:48:11at your house. Right? Like, so all the brains are on the server. They are not in the terminal. The

1:48:15terminal knows enough to wake up and ask when it asks, what image do you have for me? And it asks,

1:48:21when should I wake up next? And that's it. Right. Exactly. That's, that's all it does. So I love,

1:48:27I love this. I have played with this. I have it, um, in my kitchen right now, right next to my other

1:48:31thing. And what I've ended up with is I've got a couple of boxes that are generated by,

1:48:37as a part of my weather station and as a part of building this other thing, I've got,

1:48:42I've already got some JSON files on my web server. That's my server in my house. And so I can have a,

1:48:48I can have a custom plugin for terminal that just looks at my JSON files on Snell zone. Uh,

1:48:53because that's what it is. Snell zone. It's a real, it's a real web server in my house. So, um,

1:48:59and displays those. So I've got, um, basically I'm caching Apple's weather kit data locally because

1:49:05there's an API cost for it. Right. And as a developer, I've got a developer account.

1:49:09I can, I can load it a lot, but if I had lots of devices loading it a lot, it might be a problem.

1:49:15So I have my server every 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever. I don't even remember what it is.

1:49:2030 minutes. It, it goes and pulls weather kit data from Apple and just writes it on my server

1:49:25so that all my other scripts just look at my server instead of making an API call. It's easier.

1:49:31And it's just a JSON file. So I was able to get that up and running where I have a little thing

1:49:35with, uh, with, uh, the high for the next six days or something. And a little graphic of what the,

1:49:41you know, conditions are going to be a rain cloud or a sun or whatever. Um, and then on the left side,

1:49:47what I ended up doing, I was using their, their calendar plugin. Um, but I found it hard to read.

1:49:51And the thing is I solved this problem. I have a, I have a Python script that outputs an image

1:49:56with my calendar and Lauren's calendar on it already. So I actually just have it loading that image.

1:50:03That's super cool. That I love that. I genuinely love that. I'm not trying to be sarcastic. That is

1:50:08really genuine. Yeah. I mean, cause I'm reusing. So here's the truth of it. I suspect that in the end,

1:50:12I'm going to like the, uh, the case and battery of it so much. And, and the web stuff is okay. Although

1:50:21you've got to learn somebody else's web framework in order to get the layout right. And the problem I

1:50:26have with a terminal is that I already solved this problem myself. Yeah. But this is the thing is most

1:50:31people haven't. And, and I love that they are making this. It's still a super nerdy product,

1:50:35right. But it is a level, a level down from having your own raspberry PI and your own Python script

1:50:42that you have hacked to connect to various APIs in order to get it to work. Right. Like I already did

1:50:48that. If you gave me a terminal now, I wouldn't do that because yeah, exactly. Why, but I've already

1:50:54done it. So I suspect that in the end, what my terminal is going to end up being is just displaying

1:51:00images generated on my server by my scripts, because then I have like, we have, it's like your

1:51:05ambient lights. I have, if it's going to, if Apple weather says it's going to rain today,

1:51:09it puts a, an umbrella on the screen of my calendar. Nice. And this actually happened last

1:51:15week where Lauren was going to walk out the door and she said, Oh, the umbrella is up. I

1:51:17better bring an umbrella or a raincoat because it was, it wasn't raining, but it was going to

1:51:22rain that day according to Apple weather. Um, if it's trash night and our trash night

1:51:27alternates between, um, bottles and cans and a paper alternate weeks. So if you're

1:51:35it puts up an icon on Thursday night, that's either an icon of bottles or it's an icon

1:51:41of boxes. Right. And, and it's great. Cause I don't need to look it up. It's just right

1:51:47there. It's like, Oh, it's paper tonight. And then I'll take out the right one. A little

1:51:50ambient thing. It's fun to do that in terminal. Like then you're dealing with logic, which

1:51:56it doesn't really want to do. And like, I was just like, I'm not like, this is why I probably

1:52:01am just going to keep doing this myself because I've gone too far. Like I, some people said

1:52:06he should have stopped before he went too far, but he went too far. Um, but for, for people

1:52:12who listen to shows like this, I think this is a great sort of starter kit for doing ambient

1:52:17devices to forgetting a great, what's great about having a low power e-ink display into your

1:52:23life. Because while it's actually not great for stuff like your, your, uh, fridge temperatures,

1:52:28because like I've got current, I've got a, uh, electric time that shows like the current time

1:52:33and temperature. And it's a not an e-ink device. It's a different device. Like I can show, I can use

1:52:39that feed and show current temperature on the e-ink thing, but it only updates every half hour or

1:52:43whatever. So it's not actually the current temperature. And so it's not for that. It's not

1:52:48going to, you could have it show whether your garage door is open or not, but it would actually

1:52:52be telling you what your garage door was doing the last time it refreshed.

1:52:55Exactly right. It's, and coincidentally, I did do that. I very briefly integrated like home

1:53:00assistant terminal and whatnot, and it wasn't that terribly difficult to do. Uh, but then I realized,

1:53:05cause I didn't realize how infrequently the terminal updates, which to your point is something

1:53:09like half an hour by default. And they're working on bringing that down, but it'll kill the battery

1:53:14is it'll kill the battery when it does it. That's the, that's the problem. Uh, and if

1:53:19you want to put this on magnets on your, on your, uh, on your fridge, you really want it

1:53:22to last three months or whatever, which it probably will. I've got, uh, I've got that little ink

1:53:28plate six color. Um, and it's been running for a couple of weeks now. Um, checking my calendar

1:53:33again, a version of my calendar image every three hours or something, uh, which is all I need

1:53:41for my calendar really. And it's, it's two weeks and going strong. I don't know how long

1:53:45it's going to last, but it's like one of those examples of it. Once you've got a device that

1:53:50will go for weeks or months without a charge, you can just put it without a cord on your fridge

1:53:55or wherever. Exactly. And you don't need a cord dangling. You don't need anything like that.

1:53:59And then every so often you take it off and plug it in for a couple hours and then it's good

1:54:03for another few months. It's awesome. That's why I do recommend, um, if people are interested

1:54:09in this, that they try the terminal, um, not a sponsor here. I don't think it's even a future

1:54:15sponsor here, but like it, what this is, this is, it is a lot of times I write about this stuff and

1:54:20people are like, Oh, but raspberry pie and Python. And I have to write a script that is writing images

1:54:25on onto a, an image file that then gets put on, you know, like it's too much. It's just too much.

1:54:30And, and most people don't have Dr. Drang like I do, who, where I can say, Hey, Dr. Drang,

1:54:35I need your help with some Python. Uh, true, true story. There's a, there's a couple of posts on Dr.

1:54:41Drang's, uh, uh, site, which I guess I need to link to now, uh, where he helped me out with part of this

1:54:46project. Um, and so most people don't have that. My point is that's okay. Terminal is an attempt to

1:54:53make something that again is not, it's super nerdy, right? It's just not so super nerdy that

1:55:00you need to be writing your own custom Python script. Um, and that's, I think that's good.

1:55:05I also like the fact that they are open sourcing their firmware and there's a way to get it to not

1:55:10use their servers. And they have a commitment that if they go out of business, they, you know,

1:55:14you can basically make it run without using their servers at all. You can use their software on your

1:55:20server. You can like, there's so many other ways to do it, but also they're trying to put a nice UI

1:55:27on this so that more regular people can say, can I just add the Google calendar widget and put in my

1:55:32calendar or, or the iCloud calendar widget and put in my calendar and then put a weather forecast in

1:55:38with my zip code and get something that is nice and updates every three or six hours. And is, is all

1:55:45the things that are good about using an e-ink display for this kind of ambient information where

1:55:50like now you've got, imagine a piece of paper, except it's your Google calendar or your iCloud

1:55:55calendar. That's awesome. That's kind of awesome. Yeah. And that's what this is. And the genesis of

1:56:00this, part of the reason I was so excited about it was we, we literally at the end of the very last day

1:56:07of the month, I will go into my Apple calendar on my Mac and are into the calendar app and I will print

1:56:12the family calendar because at this point it's just Aaron and me for all intents and purposes.

1:56:17You know, the kids aren't old enough to have their own real calendars and we'll, I'll print the Apple

1:56:22calendar and I will, you know, put that on magnets on the fridge. And that's great because our, our lives

1:56:29are not that busy that the calendar changes all the time, but you know, what's great than a calendar

1:56:33that never changes is a calendar that will change and will update itself. And so this thing, even if to

1:56:39your point earlier, even if it only updates every three or six or nine hours, it's still better than

1:56:44one that only updates when you go upstairs and print a new copy and then bring that back down.

1:56:48Like that is a much preferred version of, of all of this than, uh, than, than the piece of paper,

1:56:54you know, that's just stuck on your fridge. So I am really enthusiastic about this. Uh, once we get our

1:56:58new fridges, hopefully Friday, I will be able to re repurpose that corner of the terminal and I will

1:57:03probably mount this on the, uh, incoming fridge, you know, at that point. And I'm, I'm really excited

1:57:08about it. Very, very nice. Well, we're going to talk about home assistant and upgrade plus. So

1:57:15yes, I love this. Hang on for that, but this is going to be the end of the regular episode. You

1:57:19can send us your feedback, follow up on questions. I have to read it. So be nice. Upgradefeedback.com.

1:57:24Just please, I beg you. Uh, but, uh, thank you to our members who support us with upgrade plus. We

1:57:32will be talking about some other Casey stuff, home assistant. Maybe we'll talk about call sheet a

1:57:35little bit, get upgrade plus.com. If you want to buy a gift for Mike and his baby, um, upgrade plus

1:57:41is a great way to support Mike and his growing family. How about that? That is a, that is a thing

1:57:46that Mike wrote, but I am just going to keep on saying it. Uh, you can obviously find us on YouTube

1:57:52by searching for upgrade plus thanks to our sponsors vitally Google Gemini and express VPN. But most of all,

1:57:59thank you all for listening. And most, most of all, thank you, Casey Liss for guesting for Mike,

1:58:04the new dad. You're doing your friend a solid and you're doing me a solid too. Thank you so much for

1:58:09being here. No, the pleasure is all mine. It is such a pleasure to, to be on the show with you. And

1:58:14if you'll permit me to blow a little smoke here, upgrade is such an impossibly good program. And I

1:58:19get more annoyed at upgrade than I think I do at any other show because you guys make such good points.

1:58:24So often in every single episode, there's at least one of you that at least once I say,

1:58:28Oh, I wish I thought of that. And so I know I'm preaching to the choir since you're listening to

1:58:32me say this on upgrade, but for what it's worth, you can extract this and use it elsewhere. I love

1:58:37this show so much. I love this show so much. And you two are so great together. And even though it's

1:58:41fun to have a little diversion, nevertheless, uh, I am really excited for Mike, for Mike to come back

1:58:46and to get more of upgrade in my ears. Cause it's one of my favorite podcasts.

1:58:49Yeah. Bad news is you can't listen to this episode of upgrade cause you already.

1:58:52I know. Right. I can. I can think about it, but that idiot Casey that never got anything

1:58:57right. Yeah. What's wrong with upgradefeedback.com, I guess. Um, you can send your own feedback in

1:59:02about yourself if you really want to. Uh, yeah, no, I, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much

1:59:06for being here next week. Mike will be back because we prerecorded an episode because I'm on vacation

1:59:12next week and Mike is on paternity leave. And like what happens to the podcast then? And the answer

1:59:16is we prerecorded something that I think is really super fun and I hope you will all like, and I hope

1:59:21nothing enormous happens in the news in the next week because we're not going to cover it next week.

1:59:27Instead, we're going to have some fun. Uh, so anyway, thank you all again for listening. And thank you,

1:59:31Casey, uh, Mike and I will be back next week. Thank you, Jason.