Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 557, recorded March 28th, 2025, released March 31st.

00:00:18 ◼   ► We're recording this a little bit early.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I am one of your regular hosts, of course, Jason Snell.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Mike Hurley continues to be on assignment.

00:00:25 ◼   ► His assignment is paternity leave this time.

00:00:28 ◼   ► And with me this week, oh, on a show brought to you by Google Gemini and Ecamm, by the way.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Haha, see, got it in there.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I'm going to totally get this nailed by the time Mike comes back.

00:00:39 ◼   ► It is my compatriot at Six Colors, as well as the host of Clockwise here on Relay,

00:00:46 ◼   ► The Rebound, off on its own, on The Rebound, and many other podcasts over at The Incomparable.

00:00:53 ◼   ► It's Dan Morin.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Hi, Dan.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Hi, Jason.

00:00:57 ◼   ► And I'd say it's so nice to talk to you unusually, but we talk pretty frequently.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Yeah, this is, for those who do not know, we are weekly on, actually on Fridays when we're

00:01:06 ◼   ► recording this, we do the Six Colors podcast, which is for Six Colors members only.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And people seem to like it, actually.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I get great feedback and praise for that podcast.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Every once in a while we break some news.

00:01:19 ◼   ► You know how it goes.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Oh, I mean, every now and then somebody quotes us on a site and it's weird.

00:01:24 ◼   ► But this time we are, we are talking on what will be a regular episode of Upgrade.

00:01:31 ◼   ► They're all a little bit different with Mike Gunn, but that's fine.

00:01:34 ◼   ► We'd like to start though with a Snell Talk question.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I know you love, you love it.

00:01:39 ◼   ► You can, I'm going to ask you to chip in here after I answer this question.

00:01:46 ◼   ► I'm prepared.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Javier, there was a time in my life when this would have been the most embarrassing

00:02:04 ◼   ► question possible because having grown up loving Star Trek, you get to that point when you're

00:02:11 ◼   ► sort of like, I would say a high school student and you start to realize that everybody thinks

00:02:16 ◼   ► you're a gigantic nerd because you're a gigantic nerd.

00:02:18 ◼   ► And you're like, oh no, deny, just deny it.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Deny that you're a gigantic nerd.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Throw away all your stuff and pretend that you're not a gigantic nerd.

00:02:27 ◼   ► Here's a pro tip kids.

00:02:29 ◼   ► It doesn't help.

00:02:30 ◼   ► It doesn't hide anything.

00:02:33 ◼   ► It does not hide anything at all.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Anyway, during this period, I think when I graduated from high school, maybe, or thereabouts,

00:02:40 ◼   ► my parents gave me what I still have.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And I'm now for the watchers on YouTube, I'm holding in my hand.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Which is a Franklin Mint Pewter USS Enterprise.

00:02:51 ◼   ► It probably cost a lot of money.

00:02:54 ◼   ► It's beautiful.

00:02:55 ◼   ► And I was super embarrassed when they gave it to me, which is funny because I still have it.

00:03:01 ◼   ► And now I think it's really beautiful.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And the problem is that it came, because the USS Enterprise is meant to only fly in space and

00:03:07 ◼   ► not be in Earth's atmosphere, even though it is in Earth's atmosphere and a few things.

00:03:12 ◼   ► It had a stand.

00:03:13 ◼   ► It was a little stand, sort of shaped like the Starfleet symbol.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And that broke off.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And the problem now is that I love this thing and would like to kind of have it on a stand.

00:03:22 ◼   ► And I can't because it broke off.

00:03:25 ◼   ► It's actually, the part of the stand is still stuck in there.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I might be able to get that out.

00:03:29 ◼   ► But yeah, recruit our pal John Maltz and his 3D printer and print yourself a new stand.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Like John Maltz might be up for this because he is a Star Trek fan.

00:03:39 ◼   ► But I'm going to throw it out to the wider upgrade community.

00:03:43 ◼   ► If somebody would like to work with me to figure out how to build maybe a 3D printed stand or

00:03:49 ◼   ► a partially 3D printed stand, maybe the piece that's coming out of the ship needs to be 3D

00:03:53 ◼   ► printed because it's a specific shape.

00:03:55 ◼   ► But then it could be on something heavier so it doesn't tip over.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Anyway, upgradefeedback.com because it is beautiful and I'm no longer embarrassed by it.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And in fact, it's a very sweet thing my parents did for their nerdy son.

00:04:06 ◼   ► So that all said, it's not my favorite Star Trek related memorabilia.

00:04:10 ◼   ► In the year 2000, I went to a wedding.

00:04:13 ◼   ► It's actually our friends, Philip Michaels and Lisa Schmeiser's wedding in Las Vegas.

00:04:16 ◼   ► And the Star Trek experience was still in Las Vegas then where you could go and there was

00:04:22 ◼   ► like a bar.

00:04:23 ◼   ► You could have like Romulan ale or Klingon blood ale, which were just beer with food coloring.

00:04:30 ◼   ► I had the Klingon blood ale.

00:04:33 ◼   ► And there was a little experience you had where you're on the bridge of the next generation

00:04:37 ◼   ► enterprise.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And in the gift shop, because there's always a gift shop.

00:04:39 ◼   ► Of course.

00:04:40 ◼   ► There was a very simple product that yet it, I just loved it at the time and I still love

00:04:47 ◼   ► it to this day.

00:04:48 ◼   ► It's just a teddy bear.

00:04:50 ◼   ► But it's a teddy bear wearing Captain Kirk's uniform from the original series.

00:04:55 ◼   ► I love him.

00:04:57 ◼   ► He's the best.

00:04:58 ◼   ► I always have him on a shelf somewhere nearby because he's just adorable.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And so the Captain Kirk bear is my favorite Star Trek memorabilia.

00:05:08 ◼   ► Now, Dan, I have to ask you, you're a big Star Wars fan.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I know you're also a Star Trek fan because nerds, what's your favorite piece of memorabilia

00:05:16 ◼   ► or collectible?

00:05:17 ◼   ► Well, let me throw this out for you.

00:05:18 ◼   ► A couple of things.

00:05:18 ◼   ► One, I do remember when I was a kid, there was an exhibit at the Science Museum that was

00:05:23 ◼   ► a Star Trek TNG exhibit here in Boston.

00:05:26 ◼   ► And my parents took me.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And the only thing I remember about it really is I bought a, it was like a lanyard with a

00:05:33 ◼   ► badge, like an ID badge on it.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And I bought a Geordi one.

00:05:36 ◼   ► So I had a Geordi little ID badge on a lanyard that I loved.

00:05:40 ◼   ► No idea where that is now.

00:05:42 ◼   ► I also had a little like toy phaser and a toy tricorder from TNG, both of which I like.

00:05:48 ◼   ► I still have the tricorder.

00:05:49 ◼   ► I don't really know where the phaser is.

00:05:50 ◼   ► And recently I've also acquired a communicator, old school TOS communicator and a badge, Strange

00:05:59 ◼   ► New World style, you know, or non-com badge, but insignia because that's been my Halloween

00:06:04 ◼   ► costume the last couple of years.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I bought a shirt and I have the badge.

00:06:07 ◼   ► But my favorite piece of Star Trek memorabilia is I got given probably circa 1993 a mug that

00:06:16 ◼   ► has the, it's from the NCC-171A.

00:06:19 ◼   ► It's part of like the, it's the official China, you know, a sort of style, but it's like a

00:06:23 ◼   ► mug with the Starfleet insignia on it.

00:06:26 ◼   ► On the back it says USS Enterprise NCC-171A.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And it's a false graph mug.

00:06:32 ◼   ► I still have it.

00:06:33 ◼   ► I still drink from it on the regular.

00:06:34 ◼   ► And then I was amazed to discover that our pal John Maltz has one as well and his broke

00:06:39 ◼   ► and he found another one on eBay.

00:06:41 ◼   ► So I worry about the day when that goes and I won't be able to find it because John has

00:06:46 ◼   ► already bought the replacement.

00:06:47 ◼   ► He bought your replacement money.

00:06:48 ◼   ► He bought my replacement.

00:06:49 ◼   ► On the Star Wars side, people who are watching the video can see behind me, I have a bookcase

00:06:54 ◼   ► here which has a bunch of stuff on it, Legos and some toys and stuff.

00:06:58 ◼   ► I do have a nice Chewbacca sock monkey up there somewhere, which you can't quite see.

00:07:03 ◼   ► So recently, about a year and a half ago, my wife and I went to Disney World and I got

00:07:09 ◼   ► to go to Galaxy's Edge for the first time and I built my own custom lightsaber.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Now, I built a couple.

00:07:16 ◼   ► I built one in the past.

00:07:17 ◼   ► It's like the plastic pieces that you screw together and they're in a big bin when you go

00:07:21 ◼   ► there.

00:07:21 ◼   ► But this time we splashed out for the experience.

00:07:24 ◼   ► You go and like have within a room with like 20 other people and there's a whole like show

00:07:31 ◼   ► as you pick your pieces and they're like metal.

00:07:34 ◼   ► So you can also see behind me right here on my bookcase.

00:07:37 ◼   ► That is my lightsaber, my custom lightsaber that I built.

00:07:41 ◼   ► It is quite heavy.

00:07:42 ◼   ► It weighs several pounds because it is made of solid metal and it has in it, it's got a

00:07:49 ◼   ► little switch and you can flick the switch and it has a blade that's not currently screwed

00:07:53 ◼   ► in because otherwise it would be really hard to store.

00:07:55 ◼   ► It lights up and inside of it, there are crystals that you pick during this whole experience that

00:08:02 ◼   ► dictate what color it is.

00:08:04 ◼   ► But you can get different crystals, swap them in and it makes different color.

00:08:09 ◼   ► It changes the color and it changes the sounds.

00:08:11 ◼   ► I was very disturbed at this event when I looked around and realized of the 20 or so people in

00:08:17 ◼   ► there, the vast majority chose either purple or red lightsabers.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Throw inside, all of you choosing red lightsabers.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Then I had green and there was like one person had purple.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Everybody else had red and purple, red, 1% blue, blue, one blue, one blue.

00:08:34 ◼   ► One green, mostly purple and red.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And I was like, I don't know, what's wrong with it?

00:08:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Seems like, uh, seems like in the zeitgeist.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Seems about right, actually.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't, I'm not happy about it.

00:08:45 ◼   ► I'm not happy about it.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Mine's green, by the way.

00:08:47 ◼   ► Mine's green because green is my favorite color and also because it's very similar to Luke's

00:08:51 ◼   ► Return of the Jedi lightsaber.

00:08:52 ◼   ► All right.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:53 ◼   ► That's, uh, the nerdiest Snell talk ever, but it's, it's okay.

00:08:56 ◼   ► You asked for Javier and you got it.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Mike's not here for us to get mad at us being nerdy.

00:09:02 ◼   ► So we're doing it.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Exactly right.

00:09:03 ◼   ► And yes, you can go to, uh, search for Upgrade Podcast on YouTube.

00:09:06 ◼   ► If you want to see us pointing at things behind us or holding things, uh, not really great

00:09:11 ◼   ► audio podcasting, but, um, you know, that's, that's, it's a, it's a rare moment where I feel

00:09:16 ◼   ► like we, we, uh, we had some show and tell there.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Um, maybe I'll, maybe I'll find a clip, a frame grab and stick it in there somewhere.

00:09:25 ◼   ► All right, moving on to the fatherly advice segment where I asked one of our parade of father co-host

00:09:32 ◼   ► fill-ins if they have any words of wisdom or observations to impart to Mike early enough in the

00:09:37 ◼   ► episode where he's still listening or he skipped that previous chapter and has moved on to this

00:09:41 ◼   ► chapter.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Straight, straight to the fatherly advice, right in the veins.

00:09:44 ◼   ► What's your advice for Mike?

00:09:45 ◼   ► You know, it's interesting.

00:09:46 ◼   ► I am probably of all your guests.

00:09:48 ◼   ► I assume I'm the one with the most recent experience with a very young child.

00:09:52 ◼   ► You are a kid.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:53 ◼   ► My kid's only a two and a half.

00:09:55 ◼   ► Um, so I've been through this in the not too distant past and I will, so we got a lot of good

00:10:01 ◼   ► advice when we were expecting our first kid.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Like we had a lot of friends that we asked and one of my friends I will call out specifically,

00:10:07 ◼   ► um, this woman named Angel sent us a really wonderful email that she's like, this is my like,

00:10:12 ◼   ► like standard email I sent to people who asked me about this.

00:10:15 ◼   ► And it's just really thoughtful and really well-reasoned, all this great advice.

00:10:18 ◼   ► And one of the things that stuck in my mind from this is the nothing lasts longer than two

00:10:24 ◼   ► weeks, which is a way of saying anything bad that's happening.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Your baby's not sleeping.

00:10:30 ◼   ► They're not like, you know, oh, they don't like this food or they're crying about this thing.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Like it's, it's frustrating when you're in that moment and you feel like, oh my God, is this

00:10:40 ◼   ► my life?

00:10:40 ◼   ► Is my life forever?

00:10:42 ◼   ► This baby not sleeping or this baby being upset or not liking this thing or that thing

00:10:47 ◼   ► to which I say, deep breath.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Nothing lasts longer than two weeks.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Now the flip side of that is nothing good lasts longer than two weeks or good or bad.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Nothing lasts longer than two weeks.

00:10:57 ◼   ► There will be something else.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Something else will happen.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Something else will change.

00:11:00 ◼   ► But it also is a good reason and sort of reminder to slow down and enjoy those things.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Because, you know, your kid doing something really amazing and cute, write it down like

00:11:11 ◼   ► you will forget.

00:11:13 ◼   ► You don't think you'll ever forget how cute that one thing they did was where they, I don't

00:11:17 ◼   ► know, said a word the specific way or crawled over something.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And you're like, oh my God, that's so amazing.

00:11:23 ◼   ► I'll never forget that.

00:11:24 ◼   ► There is a lot going on in your brain right now.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Trust me.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Write it down.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Write yourself a little note.

00:11:29 ◼   ► My wife and I have a little file of things where we write down cute stuff that our kid

00:11:33 ◼   ► has done.

00:11:33 ◼   ► So we can refer back to, oh yeah, remember when he was doing that?

00:11:36 ◼   ► And then my second corollary I'll put in there is the pick your battles thing, which I think

00:11:41 ◼   ► somebody else mentioned as well.

00:11:42 ◼   ► But I think is an important one to stress.

00:11:44 ◼   ► And this probably is more of a long-term, you know, less a case when your kid is an infant.

00:11:51 ◼   ► But as you hit toddlerhood and realize that there are some very particular, your toddler

00:11:57 ◼   ► will be very particular and specific about things that they want to do.

00:12:01 ◼   ► And you will be trying to put a jacket on them and get out the door.

00:12:05 ◼   ► You will be trying to get them to put their shoes on.

00:12:07 ◼   ► You will be trying to get them to eat their vegetables.

00:12:10 ◼   ► And just, you know, again, deep breath, relax, think to yourself, this is the hill I want

00:12:17 ◼   ► to die on.

00:12:17 ◼   ► And the answer is, if it's not, that's fine.

00:12:20 ◼   ► If they're throwing around their food and it's like, you know, I can't get them to eat

00:12:24 ◼   ► that, it's fine.

00:12:25 ◼   ► It's going to be okay if they miss their vegetables for a day or two.

00:12:27 ◼   ► It's totally reasonable.

00:12:29 ◼   ► Just decide which of the things that you actually need to get done and do those.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Don't worry about everything else.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And I think I want to refer back also to, I think John Syracuse had a really good one

00:12:40 ◼   ► too, about like the, you know, feeling like, having feelings about it and like questioning

00:12:46 ◼   ► things and like beating yourself up sometimes.

00:12:49 ◼   ► And like having, you're like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm having these thoughts or whatever.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Forgive yourself really, I think is another big part of it.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Like go easy on yourself.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Like I definitely had a breakdown like just a couple weeks into having a kid where I was

00:13:02 ◼   ► convinced I was the world's worst dad and I was really bad at this.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I didn't know what I was doing.

00:13:06 ◼   ► I couldn't have, like the kid wasn't doing it.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Like anything I felt like I tried didn't work.

00:13:11 ◼   ► It's going to be okay.

00:13:13 ◼   ► It's going to be fine.

00:13:14 ◼   ► It's going to be fine.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Everybody feels that way.

00:13:17 ◼   ► I like emailed a bunch of my friends who are dads and they are all super great.

00:13:20 ◼   ► And like, don't worry.

00:13:22 ◼   ► Everybody knows your syndrome.

00:13:23 ◼   ► You're fine.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:24 ◼   ► It's very, statistically, it's very unlikely that you're the worst dad.

00:13:27 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:13:28 ◼   ► That is, that helps.

00:13:29 ◼   ► You know, you're like, oh, I'm probably about average, you know, maybe a little above average.

00:13:33 ◼   ► I like to flatter myself.

00:13:35 ◼   ► I'll work for it.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:36 ◼   ► That's it.

00:13:37 ◼   ► So go easy on yourself.

00:13:39 ◼   ► It's going to be okay.

00:13:40 ◼   ► All right.

00:13:41 ◼   ► Very good.

00:13:42 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:13:42 ◼   ► Happy to help.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Hi to Mike.

00:13:46 ◼   ► And let's move on to some follow-up.

00:13:48 ◼   ► I got some good follow-up in the last few days since we recorded Monday's episode, since

00:13:53 ◼   ► we're recording this a little early.

00:13:54 ◼   ► And here it is.

00:13:58 ◼   ► First, an anonymous writer wrote in and said, I was listening to Upgrade and Stephen Hackett

00:14:03 ◼   ► posited that adding cameras to the Apple Watch or AirPods would pose a problem for people who

00:14:07 ◼   ► work in sensitive areas.

00:14:08 ◼   ► I work in the defense industry.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Apple Watches and AirPods are already banned from secure spaces.

00:14:13 ◼   ► So adding a camera wouldn't change anything.

00:14:15 ◼   ► The rules disallow any electronic device with a transmitter, camera, or storage.

00:14:20 ◼   ► But I do agree with Stephen's general point about introducing cameras unexpectedly into

00:14:24 ◼   ► private spaces.

00:14:25 ◼   ► See?

00:14:26 ◼   ► It's not a problem.

00:14:28 ◼   ► Put them in there because they can't use them already.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Although, I don't, Dan, I don't know.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Aren't defense rules meant to be broken anyway?

00:14:38 ◼   ► Oh, topical.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Let's move on to.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Before we start delving too deep into that one.

00:14:45 ◼   ► I mean, what is a rule?

00:14:46 ◼   ► Really?

00:14:47 ◼   ► What is, I mean, sometimes you just want AirPods.

00:14:50 ◼   ► One of those people has brought a camera into some place they shouldn't have.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I guarantee you.

00:14:54 ◼   ► 100%.

00:14:54 ◼   ► Boyd wrote in and said, in that same episode, Jason suggested that ideally tvOS's primary

00:15:01 ◼   ► landing page should be a TV app-centric one.

00:15:04 ◼   ► As a non-US Apple TV user, I hope the screen full of app icons remains.

00:15:07 ◼   ► Apple does not have a great track record when it comes to integrating non-US or really non-English

00:15:11 ◼   ► content.

00:15:12 ◼   ► I'm worried it would turn the TV experience into a wasteland for us abroad.

00:15:15 ◼   ► Because without the local streaming apps and live TV, is that not just the current TV app

00:15:20 ◼   ► but then as the primary interface?

00:15:21 ◼   ► No thanks.

00:15:22 ◼   ► I got several people wrote in or posted on Blue Sky or Mastodon and said, Jason, you're

00:15:28 ◼   ► completely wrong.

00:15:29 ◼   ► The all-app grid is the way to go.

00:15:32 ◼   ► And I appreciate their perspective.

00:15:35 ◼   ► A lot of them, the argument was the TV app is bad.

00:15:39 ◼   ► I guess embedded in my argument that Apple needs to embrace the TV app as the main interface

00:15:43 ◼   ► of tvOS is that it wouldn't be the current TV app.

00:15:49 ◼   ► It would be an improved TV app with more access to your apps.

00:15:53 ◼   ► And yes, they should do a better job with content across the system and floating it up.

00:15:58 ◼   ► I think I mentioned that the current TV app is, even on the main screen, is too TV Plus-centric

00:16:04 ◼   ► and it needs to be focused on broader content.

00:16:06 ◼   ► But if you look at what Google and Amazon do, one of the top rows, maybe on Amazon, it's

00:16:11 ◼   ► like right below that ad for Mancini's Sleep World, is a row of apps that are your apps.

00:16:19 ◼   ► So the app launcher is in the home screen.

00:16:21 ◼   ► And although Apple is, if you scroll down, there are apps in the home screen and the TV app as

00:16:27 ◼   ► well.

00:16:27 ◼   ► I do think the TV app, if it's going to bear the load of the entire interface, would need

00:16:30 ◼   ► to be better.

00:16:31 ◼   ► I'm not saying that.

00:16:33 ◼   ► But I do think that when you use these other interfaces, it's just very clear that it's

00:16:39 ◼   ► deeply confusing that Apple has that, but it also has this kind of blank screen, which feels

00:16:45 ◼   ► old-fashioned.

00:16:45 ◼   ► I did hear from some people who don't use most services and just use third-party apps that

00:16:51 ◼   ► they completely control.

00:16:52 ◼   ► And they don't want to have this experience either because they don't use their Apple TV

00:16:56 ◼   ► that way.

00:16:56 ◼   ► I would argue that there's no TV box that really is geared toward that use and that if

00:17:01 ◼   ► Apple went away from that direction, I feel for those people, but I think it would be perfectly

00:17:05 ◼   ► reasonable.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Also, honestly, if Apple wanted to make it that if you really didn't want to use the TV app

00:17:13 ◼   ► and you could go back to the app, the launch screen experience, they could maybe make that

00:17:18 ◼   ► a setting.

00:17:18 ◼   ► But I think the default should be a very functional TV app that actually integrates with third-party

00:17:25 ◼   ► apps.

00:17:25 ◼   ► That's what I was trying to say.

00:17:26 ◼   ► I would also argue maybe there's another middle ground there in some ways, which is, wouldn't

00:17:31 ◼   ► it be nice if there was a configurable app, kind of like the TVO app, almost widgetized,

00:17:36 ◼   ► where you could drop in, like, well, I watch these apps.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Let me just drop in a widget for that here, a widget for that.

00:17:41 ◼   ► I mean, the other alternative, obviously, is to make it much more of an open API so those

00:17:46 ◼   ► local apps could integrate in some way, but you'd still need some degree of user choice

00:17:51 ◼   ► to allow the user to say, these are the things I want to watch.

00:17:54 ◼   ► I think there is something to that.

00:17:56 ◼   ► I think there's something to the idea of making it more customizable.

00:17:58 ◼   ► I would love, I was thinking about this because I watch a bunch of stuff on Plex.

00:18:02 ◼   ► I watch a bunch of stuff on YouTube.

00:18:03 ◼   ► I would love apps to be able to contribute whole rows to the TV home screen.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Again, configurable, so I could maybe put up next on Plex if I really cared about it, or

00:18:16 ◼   ► up next on YouTube in my, or what's on my YouTube TV, TVR, or whatever it is, and have

00:18:22 ◼   ► it be even more that's feeding out of those apps.

00:18:24 ◼   ► And that's, again, I think that's one of my complaints about the current TV app is that

00:18:28 ◼   ► Apple's not, among the things that Apple's kind of not moving forward with, with tvOS,

00:18:34 ◼   ► better integrating the apps that do want to share data with the system.

00:18:38 ◼   ► And that's, you know, I know it's via APIs and all that, but I'm telling you, I think

00:18:42 ◼   ► if Apple did an API that allowed Plex to put shows in your face on the home screen, the new

00:18:49 ◼   ► home screen, I think, you know, Plex would jump to the challenge on a lot of apps, maybe not

00:18:54 ◼   ► Netflix, right?

00:18:54 ◼   ► But a lot of apps would jump to that challenge.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And then customizability, so it feels more like it's your device.

00:18:59 ◼   ► I got a whole wish list.

00:19:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And that's what I want to say to Boyd is I've got a whole wish list about ways the TV app

00:19:05 ◼   ► should be better.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:06 ◼   ► That I think it is incumbent on Apple to make the TV app better if they go away from the

00:19:10 ◼   ► home screen approach.

00:19:12 ◼   ► But, but my larger point is that it's very hard to look at the state of affairs out there

00:19:15 ◼   ► and think the right way to do a TV box is a blank screen full of icons.

00:19:21 ◼   ► And then you launch individual silos.

00:19:23 ◼   ► I think that that's just not the way it works or should work.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Literally just over the last week, I was at my parents' house and my mother asked something

00:19:32 ◼   ► about like the Apple TV that I set up for them.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And it was like, oh, I can see my photos on here.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I'm like, yeah, there is a photos app on the Apple TV.

00:19:39 ◼   ► And I like showed her where it was.

00:19:40 ◼   ► And she's like trying to remember which she's like, oh, it's that orange icon.

00:19:43 ◼   ► It's like, no, it's the one that looks like the photos app on your phone.

00:19:46 ◼   ► And she's like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense.

00:19:49 ◼   ► And it's like, I understand why you never would have bothered looking for that, though.

00:19:53 ◼   ► I mean, it's just a sea of icons.

00:19:55 ◼   ► And there was a time where that was very accessible and easy when we were all learning

00:19:59 ◼   ► how to use our smartphones.

00:20:00 ◼   ► But it's been almost 20 years.

00:20:02 ◼   ► I think we can expect a little bit more and maybe push the envelope a bit and make things

00:20:09 ◼   ► a little friendlier and more customizable.

00:20:10 ◼   ► This is a classic Apple, like, we know best.

00:20:13 ◼   ► We're going to provide the one way of doing it kind of situation.

00:20:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Somebody did actually write in.

00:20:19 ◼   ► You mentioned widgets.

00:20:20 ◼   ► Somebody wrote in and suggested, I wonder if the widget kit framework could be applied

00:20:24 ◼   ► somehow to tvOS.

00:20:25 ◼   ► And I think it's a great point.

00:20:26 ◼   ► Like, could you drop a widget from one of your streaming apps on the home screen somewhere?

00:20:30 ◼   ► I think it'd be great.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Really interesting idea, too.

00:20:33 ◼   ► Linus wrote in and he said, regarding the Snell Talk discussion about how exactly to disclose

00:20:39 ◼   ► where you live on the internet.

00:20:40 ◼   ► This was Casey writing in after he was already on the show about me talking about living in

00:20:46 ◼   ► Mill Valley.

00:20:47 ◼   ► Linus says, in Germany, you're legally obliged to state your place of residence in the imprint

00:20:52 ◼   ► of your own website, unless you have a company with a different address, I guess.

00:20:55 ◼   ► I don't want to judge this one way or the other, but it's a strange feeling at first.

00:20:59 ◼   ► And I just wanted to say, I pay a surprising amount of money for a post office box at my

00:21:05 ◼   ► local post office, specifically because legally, if you send out mass emails, you must include

00:21:11 ◼   ► a mailing address at the bottom of it.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And even though, as I said last week, I bought my house in 1999, it's very easy to find where

00:21:19 ◼   ► I live.

00:21:19 ◼   ► Don't be creepy.

00:21:21 ◼   ► I don't want to put my home address on every email I send, so I pay for a PO box at my

00:21:27 ◼   ► local post office instead.

00:21:30 ◼   ► So I think there are various rules about this where it's like, you can't hide on the internet.

00:21:35 ◼   ► You have to show where you really are.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And if you've got especially a small business, it's like, but privacy?

00:21:40 ◼   ► I'm just a guy in a house.

00:21:42 ◼   ► I had the same thing where I don't remember what if it was for GDPR compliance or something,

00:21:46 ◼   ► but there was a point at which I had to put on my website, like my contact info.

00:21:50 ◼   ► And I just made like a hidden page on the website, but it's like, and I think I even tried to avoid

00:21:55 ◼   ► having it crawled by robots.

00:21:56 ◼   ► I don't know how well that worked, but it's technically there just so I could link to it

00:22:01 ◼   ► and put it in as the, you know, okay, I've fulfilled your requirements.

00:22:06 ◼   ► But it is weird after all these years to feel like, all right, I'm just going to put

00:22:11 ◼   ► up my name and my address in plain text on my website.

00:22:15 ◼   ► Very weird.

00:22:17 ◼   ► I mean, and this is the right thing to do is to go to your local PO or a mailbox store.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And I thought about it, but as you pointed out, it's expensive.

00:22:27 ◼   ► And I looked at it and I was like, it's just, I don't know if it's worth it for me.

00:22:31 ◼   ► The U.S. Postal Service is just, it's jacked up that rate, like 40% every year.

00:22:35 ◼   ► I was surprised how much, because I investigated this a couple of times, like maybe that would

00:22:39 ◼   ► be worthwhile.

00:22:39 ◼   ► And I was like, that is more than I pay for many of my services.

00:22:43 ◼   ► Honestly, if my business got enough mail, sure, it would be worth it.

00:22:48 ◼   ► But the fact is we get so little mail that every now, every like month or so, Lauren says,

00:22:53 ◼   ► she takes the key chain that's got the key on it.

00:22:55 ◼   ► And it's right here.

00:22:57 ◼   ► It's right by our Whole Foods.

00:22:58 ◼   ► It's very, we can walk to the post office, but we'll check it.

00:23:02 ◼   ► And there's like two things in it and they're junk mail and they go in the recycling bin.

00:23:06 ◼   ► It's a great ecosystem where the paper comes in, it gets put in a box, people take it out

00:23:10 ◼   ► of the box, put it in the recycle bin, and then leave the post office.

00:23:13 ◼   ► Because you can see all the same inserts from everybody else.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Because they just get put in everybody's box behind the scene there.

00:23:19 ◼   ► But anyway, it is, and I think Linus's point here is also very interesting because

00:23:23 ◼   ► it's meant to protect consumers, but it's also a privacy violation.

00:23:29 ◼   ► So they've said like, I'm going to tip toward the consumers, but you could argue, especially

00:23:35 ◼   ► for certain individuals, that it's also a privacy violation the other way.

00:23:40 ◼   ► It feels like there should be a carve out for if you are a business with fewer than like

00:23:44 ◼   ► X employees, or if you have a customer base smaller than Y, maybe you could get an exemption

00:23:50 ◼   ► or something, but yeah.

00:23:54 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Google Gemini.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I used Gemini for the first time the other day, and the most impressive thing to me was

00:24:01 ◼   ► just talking to it.

00:24:02 ◼   ► You go live with it, and then it's just like you're having a conversation.

00:24:05 ◼   ► You can just talk about your day, or have it explain something to you, or start brainstorming

00:24:10 ◼   ► ideas.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I'll give you an example.

00:24:12 ◼   ► I pretended I had a job interview coming up, and I asked for it to help me prep for the interview.

00:24:17 ◼   ► It immediately started suggesting common questions I might get asked.

00:24:21 ◼   ► Then, I started talking through my answers out loud, and it would give me feedback, and

00:24:26 ◼   ► it's all happening in real time, like I'm talking to a career coach.

00:24:29 ◼   ► That's just what I tried first, but you can talk to it about anything, and that's the magic

00:24:34 ◼   ► of it, how you can have this back and forth, and it's all seamless.

00:24:37 ◼   ► If you haven't tried it yet, it's definitely worth checking out.

00:24:40 ◼   ► You'll see what I mean.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Our thanks to Google Gemini for the support of this show and all of Relay.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Let's turn to Upstream.

00:24:49 ◼   ► I have one Upstream item.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Mike is going to be so sad to not be here for an Upstream segment because he likes it so

00:24:56 ◼   ► much, but I didn't know where else to put this, so I'm going to put it in a segment that we

00:25:01 ◼   ► have.

00:25:02 ◼   ► It's an interview with Seth Rogen in Variety about his new Apple TV Plus show, The Studio,

00:25:08 ◼   ► which is getting great reviews.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I haven't seen it yet.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I haven't seen either, but it's on my list.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Everybody I've seen seems to really like it and think it's very funny.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I love Hollywood satires.

00:25:18 ◼   ► I really do.

00:25:18 ◼   ► They're one of my favorite genres.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Yeah, and apparently there's a character in this who is literally the Tim Robbins character

00:25:24 ◼   ► from The Player, but it's not played by Tim Robbins.

00:25:28 ◼   ► It's played by Bryan Cranston, which is weird.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Like, was Tim Robbins not available?

00:25:31 ◼   ► He's on another Apple TV show.

00:25:32 ◼   ► He's on another show.

00:25:33 ◼   ► That's right.

00:25:34 ◼   ► Anyway, people really like it, and that's great.

00:25:36 ◼   ► This is an interesting tidbit.

00:25:38 ◼   ► Oh, by the way, this show, The Studio, every episode has a oner, which is the industry talk

00:25:45 ◼   ► for a long single take shot that is often, they're often spectacular, but they're also

00:25:52 ◼   ► showing off.

00:25:53 ◼   ► And apparently in The Studio, they put a, it's meta.

00:25:58 ◼   ► They are discussing oners as well as doing them, sometimes while doing them, apparently,

00:26:04 ◼   ► which is hilarious.

00:26:05 ◼   ► I feel bad for them because the show Adolescence on Netflix, it's four episodes and they're

00:26:11 ◼   ► all oners the whole episode.

00:26:13 ◼   ► So they kind of stole their concept there.

00:26:17 ◼   ► We were talking about that on The Rebound and Lex talking about how stressful it is when

00:26:21 ◼   ► you get to like, okay, you're like 90% done.

00:26:24 ◼   ► Don't flub a line now.

00:26:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:26:26 ◼   ► There's a, there's a, before and afters has a thing about the CGI in the VFX in Adolescence.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Because, and this is actually kind of brilliant, right?

00:26:37 ◼   ► It's messy to do a oner.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And so there are, they are erasing things that are bad in the background and taking the

00:26:45 ◼   ► shadow of the camera off of the chest of somebody who's in the oner and things like that.

00:26:50 ◼   ► And I thought, I'd never really thought about that, but that's really cool.

00:26:53 ◼   ► So you keep the concept of the oner, but you use VFX to clean it up so that you don't

00:27:00 ◼   ► have to be as precise as you would otherwise have to be.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Like nobody wants to see, oh God, the, the boom's in the shot there.

00:27:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:27:07 ◼   ► You know, that's really takes me out of this moment.

00:27:09 ◼   ► You're, you're making this very immersive, very, you know, a shot designed to make you

00:27:13 ◼   ► feel like you are in the thing, in the show, in with the, like, it's, it's just real and

00:27:18 ◼   ► happening.

00:27:19 ◼   ► And all of a sudden you're like, oh, I can see the guy holding the microphone over there.

00:27:23 ◼   ► Although, uh, tangent, but, um, it's the 20th anniversary of the office, the American office,

00:27:28 ◼   ► and there was a great oral history about the office that I will try to find.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Uh, but, uh, they were talking about how they had to hire, they hired documentary filmmakers

00:27:40 ◼   ► to shoot the show.

00:27:41 ◼   ► And they had to explain to them and the writers had to figure out, like, you can't say, you

00:27:48 ◼   ► know, we want you to cut to this or that you, you, they would set the scene and they would

00:27:54 ◼   ► tell the documentary filmmakers and the camera people.

00:27:57 ◼   ► They're like, you know, who were, they hired from making documentaries, like shoot it like

00:28:01 ◼   ► a documentary.

00:28:02 ◼   ► And, and if the boom gets in the shot, it's fine because the boom is in the office.

00:28:09 ◼   ► It's a documentary and that they had to, now it's incredibly common to do that.

00:28:14 ◼   ► But at the time it was not, it was actually really hard.

00:28:19 ◼   ► So that is a piece on, uh, the Hollywood reporter.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I'll put in the show notes by Rick Porter.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Never, never watched a full episode of that show, Jason.

00:28:27 ◼   ► It's a great show.

00:28:28 ◼   ► It's a great show.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Went to high school with two of those guys.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Never, never watched the episode of that show.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Uh, it's true.

00:28:33 ◼   ► You did.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Well, maybe that's why.

00:28:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Did John Krasinski wrong you in some way?

00:28:37 ◼   ► Um, only one, no, never.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:28:41 ◼   ► He was always, my, my minor interactions with him were always very pleasant.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Anyway, Seth Rogen, uh, uh, BJ Novak is the other person you went to high school with.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Uh, Seth Rogen said to Variety, because of the way we shot it, essentially nothing could

00:28:54 ◼   ► be done after the episode.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Apple would give us notes, but the answer was always, we can't do that.

00:28:59 ◼   ► Can you take out this line?

00:29:00 ◼   ► Nope.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Can you go from this line to this line?

00:29:02 ◼   ► Nope.

00:29:02 ◼   ► We can't do any of that because it's a one-er.

00:29:05 ◼   ► Brilliant.

00:29:06 ◼   ► That is brilliant.

00:29:07 ◼   ► Genius.

00:29:08 ◼   ► That's great.

00:29:11 ◼   ► I, I really love that.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And also, I mean, I also feel like at the same time, you got to have a pretty good relationship

00:29:16 ◼   ► of course, with the studio to be able to do that.

00:29:19 ◼   ► And especially in this case where you're doing something that is a satire about this industry,

00:29:24 ◼   ► like you need them to be realized, like, you know what?

00:29:27 ◼   ► We're going to make fun of stuff.

00:29:28 ◼   ► It might hit a little close home, close to home for you, but like, this is the show you

00:29:32 ◼   ► hired us to make, right?

00:29:34 ◼   ► This is the show you bought.

00:29:34 ◼   ► That's right.

00:29:35 ◼   ► That's right.

00:29:36 ◼   ► And, and they probably said, we're going to have some one-ers.

00:29:38 ◼   ► So you, you need to give us notes about that at script stage and not when we shoot it,

00:29:41 ◼   ► you know, not after we shoot it.

00:29:43 ◼   ► And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:29:44 ◼   ► And then they give them notes and they're like, well, it's too late now.

00:29:46 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:29:47 ◼   ► But anyway, brilliant.

00:29:47 ◼   ► Brilliant move, Seth Rogen.

00:29:48 ◼   ► Okay.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Rumor roundup time.

00:29:51 ◼   ► Yeehaw!

00:29:52 ◼   ► Oh man.

00:29:53 ◼   ► The best yeehaw yet.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Well done.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:29:57 ◼   ► Spoken, spoken by a Massachusetts guy.

00:30:00 ◼   ► You know, we're a little, we're a little cowboy out here.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Okay.

00:30:02 ◼   ► We're going to start with the iPhone fold.

00:30:04 ◼   ► The folding phone due apparently next year.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Apparently this is actually going to happen in 2026.

00:30:09 ◼   ► We're, we're very much in a, uh, where there's smoke stage.

00:30:13 ◼   ► Cause the rumors about this have started to come much faster.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I've seen half a dozen over the last couple of weeks.

00:30:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:19 ◼   ► And it's, it's, um, between this and the thin phone, the iPhone air, Mike and I did a podcast

00:30:25 ◼   ► at some point last year where these things were starting to be talked about, where I did

00:30:28 ◼   ► one of those connect the dots.

00:30:30 ◼   ► And I was like, wait a second, they make the thin phone next year and they use all of that

00:30:34 ◼   ► thinning technology that they're, that they're working on for a whole cycle the following

00:30:39 ◼   ► year to make the two thin planes of a folding phone.

00:30:42 ◼   ► And that seems to be what is happening here.

00:30:45 ◼   ► My understanding is, it's just one of those pasta things where you put the phone through

00:30:49 ◼   ► and you crank it and it just spits out a nice thin, a very large thin phone out the other

00:30:53 ◼   ► side.

00:30:53 ◼   ► And then you throw it in hot water.

00:30:54 ◼   ► You're done.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Yep.

00:30:56 ◼   ► Um, so the, the detail here is about the aspect ratio of the unfolded display.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Now this is a, this comes from a, uh, Weibo based account called digital chat station.

00:31:10 ◼   ► So sounds super legit, but I, you know, again, it is, it is a China based source for something

00:31:16 ◼   ► that's probably in the supply chain.

00:31:17 ◼   ► I actually think that's not unreasonable that they, it, what, here's what it's going to be.

00:31:23 ◼   ► The, it's going to fold out to a four by three aspect ratio screen.

00:31:27 ◼   ► That is 7.8 inches diagonally.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Now the reason this is interesting is a four by three, in addition to being the classic

00:31:35 ◼   ► television ratio, we're back.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Everything comes around.

00:31:39 ◼   ► Jason is the, it's one of my favorite things.

00:31:41 ◼   ► Speaking of Star Trek, watching those classic Star Trek episodes on an iPad, it fills the

00:31:47 ◼   ► screen because iPads are also four by three.

00:31:50 ◼   ► So the, the iPad mini is 8.3 inches diagonal.

00:31:54 ◼   ► So this would be an iPhone that folds open to almost an iPad mini, including being the

00:32:00 ◼   ► right aspect ratio.

00:32:02 ◼   ► And, um, as our friend Federico Vittici commented on Mastodon, if this is true, it's kind of ironic.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Apple will embrace the iPad's most common criticism.

00:32:10 ◼   ► It is just a giant iPhone, but Dan, I got to say as a big fan of the, of the iPad and somebody

00:32:19 ◼   ► who uses his iPhone, but like not a lot, lot, I love this idea.

00:32:24 ◼   ► I really love this idea that I could just have a phone that was an iPad or in my case, an

00:32:29 ◼   ► iPad that was also a phone.

00:32:30 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, I think this is always kind of where I envisioned them going.

00:32:35 ◼   ► I mean, unlike a lot of the, this is where their advantage is, right?

00:32:38 ◼   ► Unlike a lot of the other companies making foldable phones, almost all of those companies

00:32:43 ◼   ► with maybe the exception of Samsung just make phones, right?

00:32:47 ◼   ► They don't generally make tablets.

00:32:50 ◼   ► And moreover, even if they do, they're not good, right?

00:32:53 ◼   ► Like, because Android is not a great tablet, you know, system.

00:32:57 ◼   ► So Apple has a huge advantage here in that they have a successful tablet system and a successful

00:33:02 ◼   ► phone system.

00:33:03 ◼   ► And if they can make the, you know, the utility of it is once you get that open into a, you

00:33:09 ◼   ► know, a four, three ratio, you can probably run iPad apps, like just like their iPad apps.

00:33:14 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, there'll be some scaling and whatever, but like it's fairly, it's the same ratio.

00:33:19 ◼   ► So it shouldn't matter that much.

00:33:20 ◼   ► It's a huge advantage that Apple has a good, and we can, there's a lot of iPad criticism

00:33:26 ◼   ► out there and there's a lot of issues with Apple's developer relations and all that.

00:33:29 ◼   ► But that all said, the iPad is the definitive tablet.

00:33:33 ◼   ► It's got a great library of software, even if we have a lot, again, not saying that there

00:33:38 ◼   ► are, it's perfect.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I'm just saying that in terms of being a competitive advantage over Android phones, in terms of

00:33:44 ◼   ► making a, an iPhone that opens up and you go into iPad mode, it's a big advantage for them.

00:33:50 ◼   ► I think it really is.

00:33:51 ◼   ► It can make this product very, very good because they've spent 15 years on the iPad and they

00:33:57 ◼   ► just get to use that when this phone is unfolded.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Really interesting.

00:34:02 ◼   ► And I know, I saw some criticism there, like, well, all the videos in 16.9, so is it really,

00:34:07 ◼   ► what's the point?

00:34:08 ◼   ► And it's like, well, to your point, A, there is a lot of older content in 4.3.

00:34:12 ◼   ► There is, I mean, if you're dealing with an iPad, you already have this problem.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Like letterboxing is a thing, you know, we, it's fine.

00:34:20 ◼   ► We've been dealing with this for years.

00:34:22 ◼   ► So I don't think it's necessarily bad.

00:34:24 ◼   ► And I think the idea of having a larger screen that's available to you, because like, look,

00:34:28 ◼   ► I like having a phone with a decent size screen, but if I could flip that open and have a much

00:34:33 ◼   ► larger screen for the cases where I need that, that's pretty compelling to me.

00:34:37 ◼   ► So I don't know if it would be good enough to, like, I don't feel like it would make me get

00:34:40 ◼   ► rid of my iPad necessarily.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Cause I use my iPad for a lot of things that I think this may not be suited for, but I'm

00:34:46 ◼   ► super intrigued by it.

00:34:47 ◼   ► And I think, I think there's something here.

00:34:50 ◼   ► And plus like, this is the first version, so it's going to continue to evolve.

00:34:54 ◼   ► I also think one of the points that's been interesting that we, you know, you've been

00:34:58 ◼   ► making elsewhere.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And I think people have been talking about is Apple is kind of feels like it's at the top

00:35:04 ◼   ► of its hardware game.

00:35:05 ◼   ► And the hardware is a big question here, even more so than software, as we just discussed,

00:35:09 ◼   ► like the software could just be like it's iPadOS on the inside and it's iOS on the outside.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Fine.

00:35:14 ◼   ► But the hardware is the question because this is the issue we've seen with all the foldable

00:35:19 ◼   ► phones.

00:35:19 ◼   ► They are more fragile.

00:35:20 ◼   ► They have creases.

00:35:22 ◼   ► The screens can break, right?

00:35:23 ◼   ► Like these are a lot of risks that you're taking here, but Apple does seem to have really

00:35:28 ◼   ► high quality hardware engineers and they are really firing on all cylinders.

00:35:31 ◼   ► So I'm sure there will be some shortcoming of this device.

00:35:36 ◼   ► There has to be like, let's go.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So that's the first version, right?

00:35:39 ◼   ► Doesn't do face ID.

00:35:40 ◼   ► It's going to be touch ID.

00:35:42 ◼   ► It's going to be the camera is not going to be that great, but we'll see.

00:35:46 ◼   ► Maybe the screen won't work quite the way they want it to.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And maybe there'll be more of a crease than they want.

00:35:50 ◼   ► But like, again, this is starting point, right?

00:35:53 ◼   ► Like, yeah.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:54 ◼   ► And it feels very much like the point where Apple feels like the screen technology is

00:35:59 ◼   ► good enough for an iPhone to have it.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Whereas I think many of their competitors don't mind being out early with something that doesn't

00:36:05 ◼   ► quite work right.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Apple tends not to do that and kind of just hangs there for a while, especially with something

00:36:11 ◼   ► like the iPhone, which is the crown jewel.

00:36:13 ◼   ► I'm just not sure I'm ready to spend $2,000 on a phone.

00:36:15 ◼   ► I know.

00:36:16 ◼   ► I mean, but I will say this.

00:36:18 ◼   ► If you're somebody who frequently buys an iPhone and an iPad, it starts to get interesting.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Although even then, you could buy a regular iPhone and an iPad Air and have two products.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, it's a place for them to get their revenue up, but also a place to experiment.

00:36:34 ◼   ► I'm hoping this is all real.

00:36:36 ◼   ► The other rumor item is the iOS 19 interface, which has been chatted about a lot.

00:36:42 ◼   ► FrontPage Tech has a video showing mock-ups of it.

00:36:47 ◼   ► I find it fascinating that one of the things that John Prosser says in his video is that

00:36:52 ◼   ► when we last showed you, because remember, they did a thing with a mock-up of a camera app

00:36:55 ◼   ► and said, see, it kind of looks like the sports app, kind of looks like the invites app.

00:36:59 ◼   ► This is what they're doing with their design language.

00:37:01 ◼   ► And he says in this video, the camera app was all we were allowed to share at the time,

00:37:06 ◼   ► which is fascinating because what that suggests to me is that they got a lot of information

00:37:11 ◼   ► from somebody on the inside and they said, you can't leak this all, which is interesting

00:37:15 ◼   ► because that's a very weird condition to put on something as a leaker.

00:37:20 ◼   ► Obviously, they must have been afraid.

00:37:21 ◼   ► It's a leaker.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Yeah, right?

00:37:23 ◼   ► Like it is, it just strikes me.

00:37:27 ◼   ► It's like, here's all this information, but you can't print most of it yet.

00:37:30 ◼   ► Just wait and we'll get to it later.

00:37:32 ◼   ► And I mean, we've worked with people who've had great sources who haven't been able to print

00:37:35 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:37:36 ◼   ► I understand it, but I think it's funny where the control of what gets leaked out of the

00:37:41 ◼   ► dump of information is the source's control, but the source gives them everything, but then

00:37:48 ◼   ► says, but you can't do all of it yet.

00:37:50 ◼   ► It just is weird to me.

00:37:51 ◼   ► Don't worry, Jason.

00:37:53 ◼   ► They are clean on OPSEC.

00:37:54 ◼   ► I'm sure it was all on signal.

00:37:56 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Anyway, this design is more rounded, has translucent glass elements.

00:38:00 ◼   ► It's the things we've been thinking about.

00:38:02 ◼   ► You can get some suggestions of it from Vision OS.

00:38:04 ◼   ► Although again, I will say my feeling is they were working on this design language and Vision

00:38:08 ◼   ► OS got it because they needed to ship Vision OS and they didn't want to ship it with an old

00:38:13 ◼   ► design language that was about to be replaced.

00:38:15 ◼   ► So they shipped it with what they were working on and used it as a trial.

00:38:18 ◼   ► But I don't think it's like they built Vision OS and everybody said, that's it.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Let's do that for everything.

00:38:24 ◼   ► I don't think that's the case here.

00:38:25 ◼   ► I do think that those apps that came out, sports and invites, were influenced heavily by this

00:38:32 ◼   ► design language.

00:38:32 ◼   ► I do think that that's true.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Interesting outline floating effect for the keyboard in some of the mock apps.

00:38:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it was, I mean, again, you can watch the front page tech video.

00:38:43 ◼   ► It is like essentially if it was a web article that would have three screenshots, but instead

00:38:47 ◼   ► there's this long video with jokes and false starts and filler and I don't love them, but

00:38:53 ◼   ► I also understand it's the YouTube game.

00:38:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:56 ◼   ► It's a YouTube game.

00:38:58 ◼   ► It's a YouTube game.

00:38:59 ◼   ► I, yeah, I'm curious to know just how accurate these are.

00:39:03 ◼   ► I mean, obviously we see some pushback on this as you, yeah.

00:39:08 ◼   ► So Mark Gurman weighed in and he said the iOS 19 images floating around aren't representative

00:39:12 ◼   ► of what we'll see at WWDC.

00:39:14 ◼   ► They look to be based on either very old builds or vague descriptions, missing key features.

00:39:19 ◼   ► Expect more from Apple in June.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Regardless, mock-ups, real or not, are always exciting for Apple Watchers.

00:39:24 ◼   ► So he's literally like saying, don't listen to John Prosser, but pats him on the head and

00:39:28 ◼   ► says, but it's fun.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Everybody's having fun, aren't they?

00:39:31 ◼   ► And I, what I think here is fascinating too, because this either means Mark Gurman knows

00:39:37 ◼   ► what it looks like, can't report more about it and is knocking this down.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Or I think more likely one of Mark Gurman's sources reached out to him and said, this is

00:39:46 ◼   ► not representative.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:48 ◼   ► And I can, I can believe that.

00:39:49 ◼   ► I mean, even if it's not inaccurate in the sense that it was correct at some point, Apple

00:39:57 ◼   ► always has a vested interest in trying to downplay these kinds of things, right?

00:40:01 ◼   ► Because it wants to make a big splash when it unveils this.

00:40:04 ◼   ► And so it is, you know, within their interest to be like, no, no, no, no, you think you've

00:40:09 ◼   ► seen it all, but that's not, that's not really what it looks like.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Either that or Mark Gurman was also given all that information with a condition not to leak.

00:40:15 ◼   ► This has got one guy is going around telling everybody, oh, here's all the iOS 19 screenshots,

00:40:20 ◼   ► but you can't, you can't publish them anywhere except for this one.

00:40:23 ◼   ► And maybe these three.

00:40:25 ◼   ► I mean, I'm intrigued in the idea of a, of a big new design overhaul.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Uh, we talked about this a little bit on clockwise this week, uh, uh, Micah and I, especially

00:40:33 ◼   ► in our post show, um, you know, there, there's a lot to be said about this.

00:40:38 ◼   ► The iOS seven design language has lasted a long time, right?

00:40:41 ◼   ► I mean, 12 years that's, it's gotten refined obviously over that time.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Uh, we don't have exactly the same interface that we had when iOS seven debuted, but it is

00:40:51 ◼   ► still fundamentally kind of the same look and feel broadly speaking.

00:40:56 ◼   ► But in that time, we've had a lot of changes like Johnny Ive was instrumental in the iOS

00:41:01 ◼   ► seven redesign and he's not there anymore.

00:41:03 ◼   ► So, and he, and you know, not only is he not there, but a lot of the people who worked for

00:41:07 ◼   ► him are not there.

00:41:08 ◼   ► So the people who are coming up now probably have, you know, uh, maybe this is all they've

00:41:12 ◼   ► seen.

00:41:13 ◼   ► They've only lived with the iOS seven one.

00:41:14 ◼   ► So they get a chance to really push the envelope and do something different.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Um, and you know, I know there's a lot of people who get trepidatious because of the

00:41:21 ◼   ► idea of like, Hey, well, no, we don't want to change for just for changes sake.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Right.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Like, well, people get frustrated.

00:41:27 ◼   ► The photos redesigned this year is a good example.

00:41:29 ◼   ► Like I know people who still get frustrated with it.

00:41:31 ◼   ► I think it's a nice redesign.

00:41:32 ◼   ► I think it is thoughtful, but I can understand why people who are, especially are very emotionally

00:41:37 ◼   ► attached to their photos and are frustrated when they can't find the thing that they used

00:41:40 ◼   ► to know how to get to are like, why is this all different?

00:41:43 ◼   ► Um, but I think it's one thing that we don't think about enough is sort of the flip side.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Like you shouldn't leave things the way they are just for the sake of leaving things the

00:41:52 ◼   ► way they are either.

00:41:53 ◼   ► Like that's the corollary to this is you can't just keep things the same forever because

00:41:59 ◼   ► especially in, in something like technology where the field is moving forward faster and

00:42:04 ◼   ► faster and there's different stuff.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Like you can't just expect that last year's interface or 12 years ago interface is going

00:42:10 ◼   ► to accommodate the stuff you're doing now.

00:42:11 ◼   ► I've heard from a lot of people who say, say I'm worried about this because I don't really

00:42:16 ◼   ► like the direction that Apple's interfaces have been going lately.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And I totally get that.

00:42:20 ◼   ► That is a reason to have trepidation.

00:42:22 ◼   ► At the same time though, I often see these arguments that are like, well, I don't like what Apple

00:42:27 ◼   ► has done with this interface.

00:42:28 ◼   ► So they, so I'm, they, they shouldn't change it essentially.

00:42:31 ◼   ► So they shouldn't do something new because I don't like what they have now.

00:42:34 ◼   ► And, and that's, I get the fear, but it also doesn't make any sense.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Like I can make the argument.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I don't know if they're going to succeed at this.

00:42:42 ◼   ► I really don't like, I do agree.

00:42:44 ◼   ► There are lots of reasons to be worried.

00:42:46 ◼   ► And the truth is you mentioned iOS seven.

00:42:50 ◼   ► The truth is every redesign, this happened with a Mac world web redesign and the macro print

00:42:55 ◼   ► redesign that I did and all that, like every redesign goes too far and then spends time

00:43:01 ◼   ► reeling it back.

00:43:02 ◼   ► But you do end up getting to a new base place that was not possible when you spent a decade

00:43:08 ◼   ► just shoving new things into an existing design.

00:43:10 ◼   ► That's why designs get old and weird.

00:43:12 ◼   ► So my counter argument, my hope, my reason for hope and optimism, I'll say it again for

00:43:18 ◼   ► Mac users is yes.

00:43:21 ◼   ► It's been annoying to have iOS things shoved into Mac OS over the last decade, but what

00:43:26 ◼   ► if that's because they were using iOS design language to shove things into Mac OS because

00:43:33 ◼   ► the iOS design language and the Mac OS design language never really synced up.

00:43:39 ◼   ► And what if with this, if they did it right, they should be thinking about a design language

00:43:45 ◼   ► that can scale across all their devices and what's unique about each of their devices.

00:43:50 ◼   ► I'm not saying they will do this, but I'm saying that that's a reason for optimism because I think

00:43:56 ◼   ► that Mac stuff will get a better design in a design system that thinks about the Mac and I'm not sure the stuff they brought to the Mac over the last 10 years from iOS has been anything but stuff that they, you know, they slap into Mac OS and it doesn't feel like Mac OS.

00:44:14 ◼   ► So there's, I think there's reason for hope here.

00:44:16 ◼   ► I totally get the argument that their track record recently is, uh, is worrisome and that

00:44:21 ◼   ► this may be bad.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Also when it comes out and people have a million criticisms of it, that doesn't mean it's a

00:44:27 ◼   ► failure for a few reasons.

00:44:28 ◼   ► One is, as I discovered when people complained about the box box during the Superbowl, anything

00:44:34 ◼   ► new will be, will be attacked because it's new and people are used to what is there before.

00:44:38 ◼   ► And as I said before, every redesign goes too far and needs to get reeled back in to the nature of the beast.

00:44:43 ◼   ► In fact, a redesign that doesn't go too far is not an effective redesign.

00:44:46 ◼   ► I would argue because it's too timid and you need to try a bunch of stuff.

00:44:50 ◼   ► And then, and then you find out over the summer and over the success of years of OS release, you, you, you sand off all the rough, rough edges and hopefully get to a good place.

00:45:00 ◼   ► That's where this is going to go, but that's not going to stop any of the discourse about this.

00:45:05 ◼   ► No, absolutely not.

00:45:06 ◼   ► Because people feel, I mean, again, phones are things that we carry with us every day and many of us use them constantly.

00:45:13 ◼   ► And so it is something you are exposed to much more than even in many cases, people who sit down at a computer at some point.

00:45:20 ◼   ► And so I think people just get emotionally attached and yeah, I get it.

00:45:25 ◼   ► It's, it can be frustrating if you pull out this device that you're so used to having your entire life in and all of a sudden you're like, ah, yeah, everything's different.

00:45:34 ◼   ► Where do I, where's my stuff?

00:45:35 ◼   ► That's what happened with iOS 7.

00:45:37 ◼   ► iOS 7 convinced a lot of people just to not trust any software updates because it completely changed their, and Apple has changed their approach since then.

00:45:45 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Between that and it came on the heels of Apple Maps too, right?

00:45:49 ◼   ► Like that was a bad, like one, two punch over those two years.

00:45:52 ◼   ► That's rough time.

00:45:53 ◼   ► When people talk about dark time now for Apple with the AI stuff and all that, this came up in Mac Break Weekly last week where it was like, yeah, you remember the butterfly keyboard and all the ports going off the laptops?

00:46:04 ◼   ► Or yeah, you remember Apple Maps and the iOS 7 redesign?

00:46:09 ◼   ► Like Apple has rough patches.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And the question is, you know, do they course correct or not?

00:46:14 ◼   ► That's the, that's the catch.

00:46:16 ◼   ► And how quickly do they, do they course correct?

00:46:17 ◼   ► Also a good, good point being made in our member discord, David Schaub saying, you know, I'm concerned Apple will break the accessibility features I use to mitigate Apple's old or wrong choices.

00:46:27 ◼   ► And it's like, I get it, but this is one of those things like a movie is announced and people start listing all the reasons it's going to be bad.

00:46:34 ◼   ► And the fact is any project can be good or bad.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And until you see it, you don't know.

00:46:40 ◼   ► And so, yes, David is absolutely a hundred percent right to be concerned that Apple is going to blow it and break things and mess everything up and not make accessibility features to allow you to un-mess it up.

00:46:52 ◼   ► It is a legitimate concern, but I would also argue maybe this is an opportunity for Apple to fix those issues so that it isn't a concern anymore.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And until we see how they execute, we don't know.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I'm going to take it even a step further, Jason.

00:47:06 ◼   ► Every update, like every movie, can be good and bad.

00:47:10 ◼   ► There may be things about it that are good.

00:47:12 ◼   ► And there may be things about it that are bad.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Also true.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Probably will be.

00:47:15 ◼   ► In fact, odds are.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Unlike a movie, well, I mean, some movies, they do the special edition and the director's cut and all that.

00:47:21 ◼   ► But like, unlike most movies, software evolves, right?

00:47:24 ◼   ► And redesigns evolve.

00:47:26 ◼   ► So you throw it out there and then you, I mean, it always happens.

00:47:29 ◼   ► We did a Macworld website redesign that was so vastly better than the previous one.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And a lot of the feedback was, I can't believe you did this.

00:47:37 ◼   ► You've ruined the website because it doesn't do X.

00:47:40 ◼   ► And our response to that was not, oh, let's revert to the old website.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Our response was, oh, we got X a little bit wrong.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Let's fix it.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Right?

00:47:49 ◼   ► And that's not the same as this whole design is useless.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Throw it all out.

00:47:52 ◼   ► It's like, no, I mean, we thought this would be something that you would like.

00:47:57 ◼   ► And it turns out it doesn't really work.

00:47:59 ◼   ► And let's talk about it and let's get more feedback and let's make changes if we need to.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And that's just, it's part of the process.

00:48:04 ◼   ► So we'll be talking, I, Dan, I think this is a preview of our summer.

00:48:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:10 ◼   ► There's going to be a lot of, a lot of design change talk.

00:48:13 ◼   ► I am sure.

00:48:13 ◼   ► I think maybe this will, I mean, you know, people doing the conspiracy theory that this

00:48:18 ◼   ► will take the pressure off a Apple intelligence, which I think is not, certainly not why they

00:48:23 ◼   ► did it, but sure.

00:48:23 ◼   ► It probably will.

00:48:24 ◼   ► We'll have a new thing to talk about.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not a design smoke screen, but it might be a smoke screen regardless.

00:48:31 ◼   ► To paraphrase the old, you won't have Apple intelligence to kick around anymore.

00:48:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:37 ◼   ► All right.

00:48:38 ◼   ► Really quick dive into the B-tails.

00:48:41 ◼   ► Woo-hoo.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Woo-hoo.

00:48:43 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, you got it.

00:48:44 ◼   ► You're the right age.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Oh, I love DuckTales.

00:48:47 ◼   ► Please.

00:48:47 ◼   ► For the B-tails.

00:48:47 ◼   ► I'm right here.

00:48:48 ◼   ► I can do the whole song.

00:48:49 ◼   ► This is like an almost all segment episode.

00:48:52 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:48:53 ◼   ► We've got segments.

00:48:53 ◼   ► I might as well tag things as being in a segment if we've got a segment to do.

00:48:57 ◼   ► Mac OS 15.4 and iOS.

00:48:58 ◼   ► 18.4 should be out imminently.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Last week, they put out a bunch of release candidates, including Mac OS twice.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Something was in there that wasn't quite right.

00:49:10 ◼   ► So that should be out this week, maybe even momentarily.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Of course, what does it contain?

00:49:16 ◼   ► Well, not any of those promised AI features.

00:49:18 ◼   ► Zing.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Boom.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Oh, we already have been talking about that for weeks.

00:49:21 ◼   ► But Apple Intelligence actually picks up support officially for French, German, Italian, Brazilian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, simplified, and English in India and Singapore.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So that's nice.

00:49:35 ◼   ► The priority inbox features that were strangely only on the iPhone now appear on the Mac and the iPad in this update.

00:49:41 ◼   ► Sure.

00:49:42 ◼   ► The easy device setup with Quick Start, where just like with a phone and an iPad, you can now set up a Mac by holding your old Mac.

00:49:49 ◼   ► If it's running this or your phone near your Mac and having it basically say, yeah, this is who this person is.

00:49:55 ◼   ► This is their Apple ID and get that thing started quickly, which is really nice.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Great feature.

00:50:00 ◼   ► I remember it was like eight, nine years ago.

00:50:04 ◼   ► It was a long time ago where Mike and I did that episode where we complained the whole episode about how Apple's iPhone setup was a disaster.

00:50:12 ◼   ► And that your happiest day as an iPhone buyer became a nightmare because you couldn't get things transferred and all of that.

00:50:18 ◼   ► And I'm happy to report, I'm not taking credit for it, but I'm happy to report that since we've done that, it really has been on a trajectory where they are so much better at this aspect of device setup than they used to be.

00:50:30 ◼   ► So this is bringing it to the Mac.

00:50:31 ◼   ► It's great.

00:50:32 ◼   ► It gets better every year.

00:50:33 ◼   ► I mean, I honestly think that the transfer and speaking as someone who gets a new phone every year and has to do that dance every time.

00:50:41 ◼   ► I mean, I think that that process is vastly improved year over year over year.

00:50:45 ◼   ► And I think it's good that they're adding that to the Mac side as well, because you don't do it probably as much as you do with the phone.

00:50:51 ◼   ► But it's still, if you've got the benefits, you might as well leverage them.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Yeah, for sure.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Also, visual intelligence improvements.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Yeah, it's coming to the iPhone 15 Pro will be able to use it in the Pro Max because it will, remember, it relied on the camera control button, which those didn't have.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Right.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Even though those can run Apple intelligence.

00:51:14 ◼   ► On the 16e, they do.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And so now they'll be able to do that on the 15 Pro.

00:51:19 ◼   ► Yeah, either via the action button.

00:51:21 ◼   ► And there's also a control in control center.

00:51:23 ◼   ► What's the ambient music change?

00:51:24 ◼   ► So there's now ambient music available in the control center as well.

00:51:29 ◼   ► Apple added these four different sound categories, sleep, chill, productivity, and well-being.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And it just plays music in the background.

00:51:36 ◼   ► It just plays ambient music.

00:51:37 ◼   ► So if you're like, I mean, you know, speaking of someone who does put his headphones in sometimes and doesn't put anything on, like I'm at the coffee shop or something, and I'm just like, sometimes I'll have music on, but then I'll pause it and I'll forget to put it on again.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, the idea of just having ambient background noise available.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Sure.

00:51:52 ◼   ► It's fun.

00:51:53 ◼   ► It's a fun idea.

00:51:53 ◼   ► And in a really interesting feature that I have not used a lot, but the priority notifications are there on iOS.

00:52:02 ◼   ► So you get these notifications that it is analyzing with its ML models and saying, this seems important.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And so they get floated to the top and they are outlined and they glow.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And it's like, this seems to be an important notification for you.

00:52:16 ◼   ► I've used this in the beta.

00:52:19 ◼   ► It is mixed, as you might expect from these types of features.

00:52:24 ◼   ► Sometimes it works fine.

00:52:25 ◼   ► But just this morning, I definitely got one that was for one of those, you haven't paid your toll, your car toll scams.

00:52:32 ◼   ► So it's like, okay, well, that's not important.

00:52:34 ◼   ► So never mind.

00:52:35 ◼   ► And then there's one other thing I noticed, actually, as I was scrolling through, I forgot.

00:52:39 ◼   ► This is, you know, was in the beta when 18.4 came out, is the Apple News food section will be available.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Ah, yes.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Plus subscribers, the recipes and all that stuff, which I think is interesting.

00:52:50 ◼   ► It does feel a little bit like with its integration with sports stuff and then the puzzles that it's added.

00:52:56 ◼   ► In some ways, I think Apple is trying to recreate the newspaper a bit more in its Apple News thing, which I think is clever.

00:53:02 ◼   ► It's a content bundle.

00:53:03 ◼   ► I wonder sometimes, the food thing is the thing that made me wonder about it.

00:53:08 ◼   ► But I also now am thinking about the puzzles and stuff, too, is I appreciate the all-in-one approach,

00:53:15 ◼   ► which is, like, it's all-in Apple News app for News Plus subscribers.

00:53:18 ◼   ► They're trying to create a content bundle.

00:53:20 ◼   ► Yep.

00:53:21 ◼   ► I do wonder if, and this is going to make anybody who uses, like, a third-party app wins,

00:53:27 ◼   ► but, like, I do wonder if they should maybe just make a recipes app that contains all that content.

00:53:32 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And maybe a games app.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Oh.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Lex.

00:53:39 ◼   ► Lex, cover your ears.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Apple.games.

00:53:42 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:53:43 ◼   ► It's because, I mean, the challenge is that some people use news all the time.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Other people don't even think about it.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And if you, so the argument is this will get people to use the news app.

00:53:54 ◼   ► And then once we got them, the counterargument is people who don't go in the news app because

00:53:59 ◼   ► they don't find it valuable are never going to find this content, even if they might like

00:54:02 ◼   ► to do the crossword puzzle, even if they might like to look up recipes.

00:54:07 ◼   ► Like, I think about this, and I'm like, oh, recipes in the news app.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:10 ◼   ► I mean, the Times does this with its setup, right?

00:54:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:13 ◼   ► The New York Times app is news, but then it has a cooking app, and then it has a puzzles

00:54:17 ◼   ► app, and they're separate.

00:54:18 ◼   ► It does.

00:54:18 ◼   ► And you can subscribe to them separately in some cases, too.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:54:21 ◼   ► So I do wonder, I'm not saying that Apple should make a full-fledged recipes app that you could

00:54:27 ◼   ► add your recipes to, although they might do that, but it would be interesting if they

00:54:32 ◼   ► could put their news plus.

00:54:34 ◼   ► What I'd really like, this will not happen, but wouldn't it be nice if Apple thought this

00:54:39 ◼   ► way, is Apple's put a bunch of recipes in news plus.

00:54:43 ◼   ► What if Apple offered a recipes API that allowed recipe apps to include Apple news plus recipes

00:54:50 ◼   ► in their search?

00:54:52 ◼   ► That'd be interesting.

00:54:54 ◼   ► So like cremela or paprika or whatever could pull from that.

00:54:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:00 ◼   ► I was wondering briefly if there was a thing in the alternative, too, where it could pull

00:55:03 ◼   ► stuff from your recipe apps into Apple news plus or pull games that you want to play.

00:55:08 ◼   ► And I was like, I don't know if that's a good solution or not, but it would be cool if there

00:55:12 ◼   ► was integrations with like, hey, you like these games in Apple news plus.

00:55:15 ◼   ► Why don't you try out Lex's games or the New York times games or what have you?

00:55:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:20 ◼   ► That'd be interesting, too.

00:55:21 ◼   ► All right.

00:55:23 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Ecamm.

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00:59:38 ◼   ► Dan, WWDC 2025.

00:59:43 ◼   ► It's here.

00:59:45 ◼   ► It's now.

00:59:45 ◼   ► I got to go.

00:59:46 ◼   ► I'm not surprised they're doing it.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Right now.

00:59:48 ◼   ► No.

00:59:48 ◼   ► Not right.

00:59:49 ◼   ► Not a surprise that they're doing it.

00:59:52 ◼   ► We're all shocked.

00:59:52 ◼   ► Not a surprise the way they're doing it.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Not a surprise that it's the week of June 9th, but at least now we know and can therefore

00:59:59 ◼   ► make our hotel reservations.

01:00:01 ◼   ► The most important of all, make your travel plans.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:07 ◼   ► Nothing, as you said, nothing surprising about this from the format, which sounds like it's

01:00:12 ◼   ► going to be exactly what we've seen the last several years.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Yep.

01:00:15 ◼   ► I mean, we've talked a lot about this.

01:00:16 ◼   ► I know you've talked a lot about this.

01:00:18 ◼   ► There's no reason for them to change.

01:00:20 ◼   ► This is kind of a piece with their, like, you know, when you're on top, why change, right?

01:00:25 ◼   ► Like, it's working for them.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Works for them.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Yes.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Like, would there be elements of doing a live show that could have advantages?

01:00:33 ◼   ► Sure.

01:00:33 ◼   ► Would those advantages outweigh them being able to do a heavily produced, you know, pre-recorded

01:00:38 ◼   ► video?

01:00:38 ◼   ► Not necessarily.

01:00:39 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:00:40 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:00:41 ◼   ► It gives them complete control.

01:00:43 ◼   ► I wonder about some of the ancillary stuff.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Like, last year, for example, we got that post-keynote session where I, Justine, interviewed

01:00:53 ◼   ► John, John, Andrea, and Tim, and everybody.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And, like, I, again, a lot of that felt like damage control, right?

01:01:01 ◼   ► Like, we're behind on AI and we need to talk about it.

01:01:04 ◼   ► So, let's, yeah, let's promote our, what we're doing.

01:01:06 ◼   ► I don't know that I expect them to repeat that this year.

01:01:10 ◼   ► I think this will look more like the pre-ones where it's like, okay, it's a recorded thing,

01:01:14 ◼   ► then there's the State of the Union, and then you'll have some other stuff.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I mean, they may experiment.

01:01:19 ◼   ► The Apple PR has shown, like, if they have a new thing, like, if they do the big redesign,

01:01:23 ◼   ► I could see them doing a post-keynote availability, press availability at the Steve Jobs Theater

01:01:32 ◼   ► with the design team talking about the new design.

01:01:37 ◼   ► And the idea there is that it's a controlled environment that allows the press to write

01:01:42 ◼   ► more about their, you know, what they want to say about why they did the design the way

01:01:47 ◼   ► they did.

01:01:47 ◼   ► I could see it, but it would really take that where they feel that that's necessary.

01:01:51 ◼   ► And I could also see them say, no, it's not necessary.

01:01:53 ◼   ► We'll do a, we'll do an exclusive with Wired or something and, and we'll put it there or the

01:01:59 ◼   ► Wall Street Journal or whatever it is.

01:02:00 ◼   ► We'll do some exclusive interviews and we'll have somebody go on the talk show and that'll

01:02:04 ◼   ► be that.

01:02:05 ◼   ► But it's going to be the same game plan.

01:02:07 ◼   ► We also got a lot of, um, of briefings.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Like I was, like there was an Xcode briefing and there was a private cloud compute briefing

01:02:15 ◼   ► and they, more than they've done in the past.

01:02:18 ◼   ► And again, it depends on what they want to explain to the press.

01:02:21 ◼   ► They could do.

01:02:21 ◼   ► It's controlled narrative, right?

01:02:22 ◼   ► It's, it's, it's not only what they want to talk about is what they don't want to talk

01:02:25 ◼   ► about, right?

01:02:26 ◼   ► So if you're like, you know, if they're, if they're promoting something where it's like,

01:02:30 ◼   ► here, we're going to talk about the new redesign or whatever, it's because they may not want

01:02:34 ◼   ► to talk about Apple intelligence, for example, this year.

01:02:36 ◼   ► Uh, and so if they can, again, spin, if they can shunt you into talking about, these are the

01:02:41 ◼   ► topics we're really excited to talk about and those other things, that's fine.

01:02:44 ◼   ► We'll answer your questions, but we're not as excited to talk about those.

01:02:46 ◼   ► So let's, let's focus on this stuff.

01:02:47 ◼   ► It's a, I mean, it's a, it's a press event and it's also a PR event because they'll invite

01:02:52 ◼   ► developers there.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Um, and, and I mean, that's going to be an interesting dynamic because there's a lot of

01:02:59 ◼   ► uncertainty right now about us based events.

01:03:01 ◼   ► The fact is there are a lot of people who are going to be reluctant to travel to the U S

01:03:04 ◼   ► given what's going on with immigration enforcement.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Fortunately, most of the event is online, but, and the, and the group of developers who gets

01:03:11 ◼   ► invited is incredibly small, but I have also heard from a lot of people in our community

01:03:15 ◼   ► who don't come as an invited developer, but come because this is the one event all year

01:03:20 ◼   ► where all the people in the community, high profile developers and media people are, and,

01:03:26 ◼   ► and people we know at Apple are all in the same place.

01:03:28 ◼   ► And that will also get hit by this, where there are people we know who feel like they aren't

01:03:34 ◼   ► comfortable coming through U S immigration for various reasons, you know?

01:03:38 ◼   ► And, uh, I think that will be the case where all those, this is a, everybody gets together.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I suspect that it will not be as much as it's been in the past for those reasons.

01:03:49 ◼   ► It does feel between that.

01:03:51 ◼   ► And also some of the flack Apple has taken for its political and other stances or lack thereof,

01:03:58 ◼   ► uh, you know, there is a, a feeling, I think a slightly more subdued feeling around it this

01:04:04 ◼   ► year.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Uh, so there's a lot of challenges, but that said, however many, uh, developers they invite,

01:04:09 ◼   ► they will get a bunch of gleeful developers who will cheer, uh, that will be in the seats

01:04:13 ◼   ► at Apple park and they will go ahead with it.

01:04:16 ◼   ► But you know, that, that is a thing that's kind of hanging over it and we'll see.

01:04:18 ◼   ► It's not going to be the, the audience of a last place baseball team on a cold day, right?

01:04:23 ◼   ► It's not going to be like, Oh, all those open seats, right?

01:04:25 ◼   ► They'll fill all the seats.

01:04:26 ◼   ► What's going to happen though, is that we're going to, we're going to be at a, at a dinner

01:04:30 ◼   ► at a restaurant somewhere and be like, or even at the event and say, well, where is so

01:04:34 ◼   ► and so?

01:04:34 ◼   ► And, and, and the answer is going to be, well, they didn't come.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:37 ◼   ► And, uh, in fact, what I would love, this is a thing that they haven't announced, but I

01:04:41 ◼   ► would love if they would consider doing this and they might do this.

01:04:44 ◼   ► It's possible is to offer some alternate venues.

01:04:48 ◼   ► I know they did that in London last year where they did an event at Battersea.

01:04:54 ◼   ► So it's possible that there could be some other things, but it's not going to be the same because

01:04:59 ◼   ► it's not going to be the one place that everybody is.

01:05:01 ◼   ► That's not going to happen.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:03 ◼   ► I do think that would be smart.

01:05:04 ◼   ► And they've done a lot of their little like, uh, tech talks and stuff, right?

01:05:08 ◼   ► In various places.

01:05:09 ◼   ► They have a lot of offices around the world.

01:05:12 ◼   ► They have retail stores around the world.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Like I've always thought like, you know, if, if you're going to call it the worldwide developers

01:05:18 ◼   ► conference, like, I don't know, embrace that first part a little bit more, realize that

01:05:22 ◼   ► you have lots of people.

01:05:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:23 ◼   ► Granted, it's great that everybody's online, but if you can also sort of have opportunities

01:05:26 ◼   ► for people to gather locally to like, Hey, we're going to watch the keynote at the Apple

01:05:30 ◼   ► store or we're going to invite several developers who live in this country to come to the campus

01:05:34 ◼   ► and I don't know, Bangalore or something like, you know, that's great.

01:05:37 ◼   ► You should do that.

01:05:38 ◼   ► You should take advantage of the fact that you're a global company.

01:05:41 ◼   ► So you and I both spent our, uh, most recent Macworld columns talking about what this event

01:05:46 ◼   ► is going to be and what they're going to do.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I, I argued in mine this week that I think this is the most intriguing, um, WWDC maybe

01:05:55 ◼   ► ever since I've been covering it.

01:05:57 ◼   ► And you know, the early days of OS 10, there was a lot of interest in like what they were

01:06:01 ◼   ► doing, but here it's more, it's not really about what they're doing as much as like, what

01:06:07 ◼   ► is the strategy and how do they communicate it?

01:06:10 ◼   ► Because they created the Apple intelligence brand.

01:06:14 ◼   ► That was kind of the goal of last June and they did do that.

01:06:17 ◼   ► So maybe they back off a little bit.

01:06:19 ◼   ► My theory in my Macworld column was that they enter a cleanup and consolidation phase, right?

01:06:25 ◼   ► They, it was a big mess last year.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Maybe they, this year they can afford to say, we're improving our models.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Here's a few details.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Here's some changes that we're making to how it's implemented that, that make it nicer.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Um, we'll ship the stuff that we promised that we didn't ship the last time.

01:06:41 ◼   ► Maybe there's a few new features.

01:06:43 ◼   ► Wouldn't it be nice if part of the story was developer focused this time?

01:06:47 ◼   ► Because as we noted last June, but I just want to put it out there again, most of what

01:06:51 ◼   ► they announced last June at the worldwide developer conference was not things that developers

01:06:56 ◼   ► could do anything with, like the most developer integration is like, you could make a button

01:07:02 ◼   ► to do image playgrounds, or you could use the, the, the writing tools in your app, but there

01:07:08 ◼   ► wasn't like access to Apple's models or anything like that.

01:07:11 ◼   ► And I understand it on one level, which is, it was brand new and it was rushed to market.

01:07:14 ◼   ► But another level, you, it, as a platform play and Ben Thompson wrote about this on

01:07:20 ◼   ► Stratechery a couple of weeks ago, handing a lot of these tools to developers could actually

01:07:24 ◼   ► make your platform much stronger.

01:07:26 ◼   ► So I do wonder if they will have a developer story that's more fully featured this time.

01:07:31 ◼   ► That would be nice.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

01:07:33 ◼   ► I mean, you know, obviously the big thing that everybody was kind of looking to for the developer

01:07:37 ◼   ► story was app intents, right?

01:07:39 ◼   ► Like that is a place where there was integration.

01:07:41 ◼   ► It's like the, pretty much the only place that developers could have their apps touch Apple

01:07:47 ◼   ► intelligence at all.

01:07:48 ◼   ► And of course that's now been delayed.

01:07:50 ◼   ► So there's a question as to whether or not that will be something they want to talk about

01:07:54 ◼   ► this year.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Like, yeah.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Is that still happening?

01:07:58 ◼   ► Well, do they put that in the beta?

01:07:59 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:00 ◼   ► I mean, they might say.

01:08:01 ◼   ► That's a big question.

01:08:01 ◼   ► Guess what?

01:08:02 ◼   ► We are shipping that.

01:08:03 ◼   ► And here it's in the developer betas and you've got all summer to help us make this stuff

01:08:09 ◼   ► better.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Let's get going.

01:08:11 ◼   ► And in fact, I would argue that that change is so huge that giving developers lots of runway

01:08:17 ◼   ► instead of dropping it on a 0.4 would be really good.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Like that would be a much.

01:08:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Especially if you've taken it a step further.

01:08:25 ◼   ► Like if you're doing more.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:26 ◼   ► If that's the case, I do wonder if that's actually one of the reasons they delayed those features

01:08:30 ◼   ► is they're like, you know, there's so much here.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Let's get the long rollout starting at WWDC instead of dropping this in a point release

01:08:38 ◼   ► with a very narrow beta cycle.

01:08:40 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:08:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:08:42 ◼   ► So maybe I want to see what they learned.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Right?

01:08:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:46 ◼   ► I want to see what they learned from last year.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Did they learn anything?

01:08:48 ◼   ► Right?

01:08:49 ◼   ► Did they learn their lessons?

01:08:50 ◼   ► That's the question.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Did they learn things about AI that they can say, oh yeah, we've realized that this is

01:08:55 ◼   ► the right thing to do?

01:08:56 ◼   ► Or did they not?

01:08:57 ◼   ► And then did they learn about over-promising and under-delivering?

01:08:59 ◼   ► Because they just put a bunch of new executives in charge of Siri.

01:09:03 ◼   ► And I know there's a lot of pressure to ship something that's better Siri and ship it soon.

01:09:08 ◼   ► Sooner rather than later.

01:09:10 ◼   ► And I agree.

01:09:12 ◼   ► I want to see new Siri sooner rather than later.

01:09:15 ◼   ► My fear is that they could get tricked into over-promising and under-delivering for Siri

01:09:23 ◼   ► like they did with Apple Intelligence.

01:09:25 ◼   ► Right?

01:09:26 ◼   ► Sure.

01:09:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:26 ◼   ► There's a lot of questions about how they're going to respond to what they did last year.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Right?

01:09:30 ◼   ► Like this was kind of the thrust of my article is like, you've got a couple different

01:09:33 ◼   ► options into how you handle this.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Right?

01:09:36 ◼   ► First option is to cop to it.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Be like, you know what?

01:09:40 ◼   ► We announced these really exciting features last year.

01:09:42 ◼   ► We realized that we're going to take a little more time than we needed, but we're excited

01:09:45 ◼   ► to announce they're coming in iOS 19.

01:09:47 ◼   ► And maybe even here's some tweaks we've made or things that like more details, et cetera.

01:09:51 ◼   ► That's one option.

01:09:52 ◼   ► Option two is to just not talk about it, which sounds ridiculous, but I can easily imagine

01:10:01 ◼   ► a world where Apple maybe like says like, yep, and we've obviously we've got Apple Intelligence.

01:10:04 ◼   ► Moving on.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Let's talk about iOS 19 redesign.

01:10:07 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:10:07 ◼   ► Right?

01:10:08 ◼   ► Like, and we'll all look at each other and they'll just keep going.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Right?

01:10:12 ◼   ► They just don't want to talk about it.

01:10:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Because that was your column is like, feels like they might want to apologize here or at

01:10:17 ◼   ► least do a apologetic statement of some sort.

01:10:21 ◼   ► Right?

01:10:21 ◼   ► Maybe not a full on apology, but just an acknowledgement.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:25 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:10:26 ◼   ► Or maybe not.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And then the other question is, you know, like you said, is this just a consolidate

01:10:32 ◼   ► and clean up?

01:10:33 ◼   ► Or is this them saying, look, look, you know, AI is still big.

01:10:37 ◼   ► We're going hard on it.

01:10:38 ◼   ► And here's our next generation of Apple Intelligence features.

01:10:41 ◼   ► Or here's what we're doing to improve the stuff we put out last year.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Like, and especially in the case of the former, if you're talking about new features that you're

01:10:50 ◼   ► adding under this umbrella of Apple Intelligence, how do you deal with the fact that you didn't

01:10:53 ◼   ► ship everything that you promised the first time?

01:10:55 ◼   ► Because on the one hand, it's like, well, what, like, can you build on it?

01:11:01 ◼   ► Like, technologically speaking, like, it's not like you can take something like App Intents

01:11:05 ◼   ► or, you know, personalized Siri and soup it up when you never shipped it in the first place.

01:11:11 ◼   ► And then the other side of that, as you and I discussed elsewhere recently, is like,

01:11:15 ◼   ► realize that you're talking, as we said, to a press event, you're talking to developers,

01:11:19 ◼   ► you're talking to press.

01:11:21 ◼   ► Both of these people are going to be a heck of a lot more skeptical about anything you

01:11:24 ◼   ► announced in this area.

01:11:25 ◼   ► A lot, right?

01:11:26 ◼   ► Because you did not ship it.

01:11:28 ◼   ► And in the past, you have a lot of credibility built up where we all, you know, kind of accepted

01:11:33 ◼   ► that if you talked about a thing like, okay, some stuff might ship in the fall, some stuff

01:11:37 ◼   ► might ship in the spring.

01:11:38 ◼   ► That had started slipping more and more lately.

01:11:40 ◼   ► But it would get shipped in that version, especially with something that is that big a deal that you

01:11:47 ◼   ► spent that much time on.

01:11:49 ◼   ► But instead, what we got to is a point of realizing, maybe not only are you not going

01:11:54 ◼   ► to ship that, but it didn't work when you had it, right?

01:11:56 ◼   ► Like, it was never a thing.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Nobody saw it.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Nobody saw it demoed.

01:11:58 ◼   ► So a lot of press are going to be a lot like harder on like big claims that Apple makes.

01:12:02 ◼   ► They're going to ask to see demos.

01:12:04 ◼   ► They're going to ask to see like, okay, does that work?

01:12:07 ◼   ► Can you show that to me?

01:12:08 ◼   ► Can I try it?

01:12:09 ◼   ► Like, what state is this in?

01:12:11 ◼   ► And so I think you have to realize if you're Apple going into this, that you are going

01:12:14 ◼   ► to be subjected to a lot more scrutiny than in the past.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And you have to be prepared to deal with that because you're going to get a lot of questions

01:12:20 ◼   ► out.

01:12:20 ◼   ► And Apple PR, they're very good at what they do.

01:12:23 ◼   ► They're very good at talking about the things they want to talk about and not talking about

01:12:25 ◼   ► the things they don't want to talk about.

01:12:27 ◼   ► But I think a lot of those of us who are there are going to be asking a lot of questions.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And more to the point, we are going to be noting when they talk about things and don't

01:12:36 ◼   ► want to show them to us.

01:12:37 ◼   ► So you got to be very careful about how you're doing that.

01:12:40 ◼   ► And that's the lesson I want to see if they learned this time.

01:12:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:42 ◼   ► They made it harder on themselves.

01:12:44 ◼   ► And I think they, I think they are, I think they are aware of that.

01:12:47 ◼   ► I, that if, if I'm certain about anything, it's that one that I think they know because

01:12:54 ◼   ► of what happened last time that they need to be more specific about timeframes.

01:13:00 ◼   ► If they can be also more warning flags about this is going to ship next year, which they

01:13:06 ◼   ► did some.

01:13:06 ◼   ► I mean, I will say that, that, um, like John Gruber was on here a few weeks ago and he said

01:13:13 ◼   ► he felt bamboozled by WWDC announcements because they couldn't, they didn't ship them.

01:13:16 ◼   ► And I dug up my piece from afterward.

01:13:20 ◼   ► And one of the things that I pointed out is the Siri section of that keynote is aggressively

01:13:27 ◼   ► in the future tense.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:29 ◼   ► You know, so much of what they do is like, look at this image playgrounds does this image

01:13:33 ◼   ► playgrounds does this.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Genmoji does this.

01:13:35 ◼   ► And then they're like, let's talk about what Siri will be able to do.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Siri will be able to do this.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Will, and it's all suddenly we're like in the future, we will do Siri as opposed to it

01:13:45 ◼   ► does it now.

01:13:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:13:47 ◼   ► That was 20, 20, 30, 20, 37 flag, big red flag right there.

01:13:51 ◼   ► So, uh, we'll see.

01:13:53 ◼   ► A lot of things I'll do in the future, Jason.

01:13:55 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:13:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's amazing stuff in the future.

01:13:57 ◼   ► I'm going to be in great shape.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I'm going to go, I'm going to run a four minute mile in the future.

01:14:02 ◼   ► I will run a four minute mile.

01:14:04 ◼   ► I mean, you could, if you put your mind to it, it's all possible.

01:14:06 ◼   ► So yeah, I, I, how they, how they frame it, what they show, how they choose to show it.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Um, I'm sure it goes into the, they're going to have conversations about it based on last

01:14:15 ◼   ► year, but that's, again, that comes back to my thing that I find most fascinating is last

01:14:20 ◼   ► year was an aberration.

01:14:22 ◼   ► Last year really was Apple kind of panicked, rushing and behaving very on Apple-like in

01:14:30 ◼   ► some ways because they felt like they had to get the stuff out.

01:14:33 ◼   ► It's been a year.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Do they feel less panicked?

01:14:36 ◼   ► I would argue yes, at least in some areas, maybe not so much in others.

01:14:40 ◼   ► I mean, I really would argue that I don't think Apple feels the abject panic, existential panic

01:14:46 ◼   ► of being completely flat-footed on AI.

01:14:49 ◼   ► They've had, you know, a year plus to be on this path now.

01:14:53 ◼   ► And I still believe that if you look at what's out there with AI, uh, catching up is not going

01:14:59 ◼   ► to be hard because it seems.

01:15:02 ◼   ► I was listening to a podcast the other day where they're like, they're so far behind and they're

01:15:06 ◼   ► still behind.

01:15:07 ◼   ► It's going to take them forever to catch up.

01:15:08 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know.

01:15:09 ◼   ► I look out at AI and it feels like everybody is just continuing to advance the ball.

01:15:14 ◼   ► And that, that, uh, deep seek suggested that it's really easy to just kind of like do a

01:15:19 ◼   ► fast follow of the people who are out there and that there's not much of a moat.

01:15:23 ◼   ► And if that's true, then Apple doesn't have a lot to worry about.

01:15:26 ◼   ► They need to press forward.

01:15:27 ◼   ► They are still behind, but they, it gives me more confidence that they can be good enough

01:15:32 ◼   ► and catch up.

01:15:33 ◼   ► So I feel like the panic is not quite as strong, although the Siri panic may be real.

01:15:37 ◼   ► The features they didn't ship may be real.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Uh, but so what do they learn and how is their demeanor different and how does that impact

01:15:45 ◼   ► how they communicate this stuff?

01:15:47 ◼   ► Is, is it less panicky than last time?

01:15:51 ◼   ► Is it not panicky?

01:15:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:15:53 ◼   ► I mean, I think, you know, Apple say what you will for Apple.

01:15:58 ◼   ► I think they work hard to try and cultivate obviously a demeanor of being very,

01:16:02 ◼   ► calm and rational, right?

01:16:05 ◼   ► Like they don't, they don't like to look like they're sweating.

01:16:08 ◼   ► It's not a, not in their, in their, in their image.

01:16:11 ◼   ► So everything you're going to see out of them is going to feel very, I think the, you know,

01:16:17 ◼   ► they will project an image of being very much on top of things and very decisive and very,

01:16:23 ◼   ► yeah, this is how things are doing that.

01:16:24 ◼   ► We're very excited about this, all of this.

01:16:26 ◼   ► Um, but yeah, our job as people who have watched this company for a long time is to read

01:16:31 ◼   ► between the lines and see why are they doing these things?

01:16:34 ◼   ► And what does that tell us about what they learned or did not learn from last year?

01:16:38 ◼   ► I think in the post keynote episode that Mike and I did last year, I said, they feel very

01:16:43 ◼   ► much like the proverbial duck where they really want to be completely serene above the water

01:16:49 ◼   ► waterline, but in this case, everybody knows they are paddling furiously below the waterline

01:16:56 ◼   ► because they just don't want to be seen as breaking a sweat.

01:16:59 ◼   ► And you could argue that that's why those features went in there and that, and that people feel

01:17:06 ◼   ► like they blew it is because they, if they're going to announce a feature, they're going to

01:17:10 ◼   ► do so with confidence.

01:17:11 ◼   ► So much confidence.

01:17:12 ◼   ► In fact, that then their marketing team put out ads showing the feature in action.

01:17:16 ◼   ► And, you know, that's why I think maybe the greatest failure in that whole process was a

01:17:22 ◼   ► failure to communicate properly how hard it was going to be to implement those features.

01:17:28 ◼   ► When lots of us sat there and thought that's a heavy lift, that's going to take them a lot

01:17:33 ◼   ► of time.

01:17:33 ◼   ► That's clearly a, a next spring kind of thing.

01:17:36 ◼   ► Cause that's a big, big, hard feature to implement.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:41 ◼   ► And, and they were like, no, but we're never going to, we're never going to let them see

01:17:44 ◼   ► a sweat.

01:17:45 ◼   ► What I'm hearing Jason is you're saying what we have here is a failure to communicate.

01:17:51 ◼   ► I'm just saying, be a duck, be a duck, be a duck or don't be a duck, be a goldfish,

01:17:57 ◼   ► be a goldfish.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Um, we're going to go to ask upgrade in a moment.

01:18:03 ◼   ► I just wanted to mention if you love upgrade and want to get more of it, please consider

01:18:07 ◼   ► subscribing to upgrade plus longer ad free episodes every week, access to the relay members,

01:18:12 ◼   ► discord, tons of bonus content, including two members, only relay shows and more bonus content.

01:18:17 ◼   ► You support Mike and his new baby by signing up for upgrade.

01:18:21 ◼   ► Plus, uh, people in memberful tell us we have incredibly low churn, which basically means

01:18:25 ◼   ► our members want to say, say, subscribe once they've signed up.

01:18:28 ◼   ► That's a good sign.

01:18:30 ◼   ► Uh, so please consider upgrade plus, and now we move on.

01:18:34 ◼   ► It's time for ask upgrade.

01:18:37 ◼   ► I expected nothing less from the author of the galactic cold war series.

01:18:44 ◼   ► Full of lasers.

01:18:45 ◼   ► Full of, I'm just full of lasers.

01:18:47 ◼   ► You are a laser machine.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Uh, first question comes from Rio who asks, what do you do when you fall behind on your podcast

01:18:54 ◼   ► listening?

01:18:55 ◼   ► I'm on a Disney family vacation combined with additional, uh, hockey episodes.

01:18:59 ◼   ► I fell behind close to a hundred hours on my podcast.

01:19:02 ◼   ► So far, I've bumped speed to two X on some episodes and not listening to time irrelevant

01:19:08 ◼   ► episodes.

01:19:09 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:19:09 ◼   ► What do you, what do you do when, uh, you're behind on podcasts?

01:19:14 ◼   ► I have the dirty secret of a podcaster.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Jason, I don't listen to that many podcasts.

01:19:19 ◼   ► I mean, how could you, you work at home and I, and I make podcasts.

01:19:23 ◼   ► I'm usually podcasting or writing.

01:19:24 ◼   ► I have limited time to listen to podcasts.

01:19:27 ◼   ► I do try to catch up on the few shows that I listened to regularly of which I should say

01:19:33 ◼   ► upgrade is one.

01:19:33 ◼   ► I don't always, I think I triage some stuff, right?

01:19:36 ◼   ► Like there's times where I'll be like, I've got to be backlog.

01:19:38 ◼   ► Usually if I have a backlog, it's because I was traveling.

01:19:41 ◼   ► Um, and a lot of times if I really have a backlog, it's because I was traveling and I

01:19:45 ◼   ► want to listen to the shows that I am normally on, but I was not on like my shows.

01:19:50 ◼   ► So it's like, oh, I was not in the rebound on the rebound this week.

01:19:53 ◼   ► So let me listen to John and Lex and what they talked about, or I wasn't on clockwise.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Let me listen to what Micah did in my absence so I can know kind of have continuity or what

01:20:01 ◼   ► have you.

01:20:01 ◼   ► Sure.

01:20:01 ◼   ► Um, a lot of times I have the benefit there of like, I've traveled, so maybe I'm on a

01:20:05 ◼   ► plane or something and I have some time or I'm at the airport and I need to kill some

01:20:09 ◼   ► time listening to a podcast.

01:20:10 ◼   ► So that's fine.

01:20:11 ◼   ► But I, you know, in the past when I have, you know, listened to more podcasts, more consistently,

01:20:16 ◼   ► I literally, I just, I just declare bankruptcy.

01:20:19 ◼   ► I think that's what it is.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Yep.

01:20:21 ◼   ► That's the answer.

01:20:22 ◼   ► If it's new stuff, especially.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Like if it's timely, no, I'm not going to listen to that.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Declare bankruptcy is the answer.

01:20:28 ◼   ► If you, if you can't get to it, if it's narrative or whatever, it's like, okay, then I, I will

01:20:33 ◼   ► spool it out, but no new stuff.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Don't worry about it.

01:20:36 ◼   ► I have podcasts where I'm largely not on the current.

01:20:39 ◼   ► I'm just going through the archive.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Rest is history is kind of like that for me.

01:20:42 ◼   ► And that's easy.

01:20:43 ◼   ► Cause I can just hold, I can just hold those there.

01:20:45 ◼   ► It's history.

01:20:46 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:20:47 ◼   ► All that's happened.

01:20:47 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:20:48 ◼   ► But I mean, I just, I, I was in Hawaii and I had a huge backlog and I just recently,

01:20:53 ◼   ► I deleted a bunch of like two ATPs and a couple of connecteds and like, I just, yes, this is,

01:21:01 ◼   ► this is the truth is bankruptcy is a thing.

01:21:03 ◼   ► If you are behind, first off the timely stuff, listen to the timely episodes.

01:21:07 ◼   ► Don't listen to the past episodes.

01:21:09 ◼   ► You can go back to the past episodes if you need to.

01:21:11 ◼   ► If there are segments in the past episodes that sound interesting, maybe you jump to those

01:21:16 ◼   ► and listen to those and then delete those episodes, but you can't, you can't be a completist in

01:21:22 ◼   ► these scenarios.

01:21:22 ◼   ► Cause I, I absolutely have dealt with the same thing, especially on vacations.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And I think the answer is it's okay.

01:21:28 ◼   ► If let's say, I know you're going to feel like you missed out, but like if you went on vacation

01:21:34 ◼   ► and came back and you had that really long John Grouper episode of Upgrade and the really long

01:21:38 ◼   ► John Syracuse episode of Upgrade, and then you're looking at Stephen Hackett and Dan Morin,

01:21:43 ◼   ► you're like, oh boy, well, you know, maybe you don't listen to the Grouper and Syracuse episodes,

01:21:49 ◼   ► or maybe you look at the chapter markers and say, well, I really want to hear the Upgrade

01:21:53 ◼   ► Plus segment where Jason and John talked about James Bond for 40 minutes, or maybe the reverse.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And you say, definitely not that, whatever it is, take control of your life and it's okay to,

01:22:03 ◼   ► to skip.

01:22:04 ◼   ► And if you know what, if it becomes a part of podcast lore, it's still there.

01:22:08 ◼   ► You go back and listen, download it again and listen to it again.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And that's fine.

01:22:11 ◼   ► Think about it this way.

01:22:12 ◼   ► You were on vacation, having amazing experiences.

01:22:15 ◼   ► Those podcast hosts didn't get to have those experiences.

01:22:18 ◼   ► They missed out on you.

01:22:19 ◼   ► I was watching, um, on YouTube, I was watching a segment of Conan O'Brien's podcast where he

01:22:25 ◼   ► was talking about hosting the Oscars.

01:22:28 ◼   ► It was really interesting.

01:22:29 ◼   ► The whole time I'm watching it though, I'm thinking, meanwhile, while the Oscars were going

01:22:33 ◼   ► on, I was literally sitting on a beach in Hawaii.

01:22:37 ◼   ► And it's just like, I win.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Conan O'Brien loses.

01:22:43 ◼   ► I win.

01:22:44 ◼   ► I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii.

01:22:45 ◼   ► He had to host the Oscars.

01:22:46 ◼   ► He had to host the Oscars.

01:22:47 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:22:47 ◼   ► Nobody wants that job.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Nobody wants, uh, he's coming back.

01:22:51 ◼   ► He's doing it again.

01:22:51 ◼   ► I know.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Good for him.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Good for him.

01:22:53 ◼   ► All right.

01:22:53 ◼   ► Logan wrote in and said, seeing as Apple is rumored to be running behind, do you think

01:22:56 ◼   ► the company will purchase their way to a better Siri?

01:22:58 ◼   ► If so, what would they pick?

01:22:59 ◼   ► Maybe perplexity or anthropic?

01:23:02 ◼   ► I mean, they could.

01:23:03 ◼   ► The problem is the AI companies tend to have really overflated valuations.

01:23:07 ◼   ► And like I said, I feel like one of the lessons of DeepSeek is maybe there's not much of a

01:23:11 ◼   ► moat here and then unless you really want the people and an influx of people and the risk

01:23:16 ◼   ► there is they're not going to want to come work for Apple and, you know, I aqua hire, I could

01:23:21 ◼   ► maybe see, um, or if something really ends up in trouble, but I think not.

01:23:28 ◼   ► But I think, I think you need to state your commitment to AI and keep hiring people to do

01:23:33 ◼   ► the job and catch up because I don't get the sense that, you know, Google, what Google

01:23:39 ◼   ► does can't be replicated by perplexity.

01:23:41 ◼   ► What anthropic does can't be replicated by open AI and vice versa.

01:23:45 ◼   ► I just don't get that sense.

01:23:46 ◼   ► If that becomes true, then yeah, they're going to have to buy somebody, but I just don't think

01:23:50 ◼   ► it's true.

01:23:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:51 ◼   ► I think the, if you look at Apple's history, it's far more likely that if they want to

01:23:56 ◼   ► purchase something, they'd purchase a small company doing something with AI that's specific

01:24:01 ◼   ► to something they want to do.

01:24:02 ◼   ► I mean, they've done this a bunch with mapping and different kinds of software over the years.

01:24:07 ◼   ► It's very rare for them to do a really big purchase.

01:24:10 ◼   ► I mean, you know, we've talked about this.

01:24:11 ◼   ► Beats, right, is still, I think, the biggest purchase.

01:24:14 ◼   ► 3.2 million or was it next?

01:24:16 ◼   ► I don't remember.

01:24:17 ◼   ► Either way, it's very rare.

01:24:19 ◼   ► We're talking decades between acquisitions that large.

01:24:22 ◼   ► And I don't think, as Jason said, there's not enough for them to get in terms of

01:24:26 ◼   ► secret sauce that makes it worthwhile for them to go out and spend however many hundreds

01:24:31 ◼   ► of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, it's going to cost them to buy a

01:24:34 ◼   ► company that is that big and that prominent.

01:24:36 ◼   ► And they have talent.

01:24:39 ◼   ► I mean, you look at the stuff they've done, look at their machine learning blog, like they

01:24:42 ◼   ► have people doing this.

01:24:43 ◼   ► I don't think that the AI is necessarily the problem.

01:24:46 ◼   ► I think the bigger question is, what are you going to do with it?

01:24:49 ◼   ► And that's the part where the rubber meets the road and you got to figure that out.

01:24:53 ◼   ► And that's, you know, not a problem that you can necessarily just throw people at.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I agree.

01:24:57 ◼   ► Anthony writes, Jason has spoken before that he primarily uses his Mac at home and doesn't

01:25:04 ◼   ► use his phone as much unless he's away from the house.

01:25:06 ◼   ► With the new iPhone mirroring, does he ever pick up his phone at home anymore?

01:25:09 ◼   ► First off, I actually probably use my iPad as much as I use my Mac at home because I use

01:25:15 ◼   ► my Mac for work and everything else I use my iPad at home.

01:25:19 ◼   ► My Mac is a laptop now.

01:25:21 ◼   ► I still don't generally don't leave it anywhere but docked.

01:25:24 ◼   ► It's a very rare day that the MacBook Pro comes out into another place in my house.

01:25:31 ◼   ► I did work on it in the backyard the other day where we had a really beautiful day.

01:25:35 ◼   ► We had like an 80 degree day.

01:25:36 ◼   ► Sunny, warm sat in the backyard for the first time this year.

01:25:39 ◼   ► That was really sweet.

01:25:40 ◼   ► And I use my laptop because I got that now.

01:25:42 ◼   ► I bring my whole computer with me out there.

01:25:44 ◼   ► It works pretty well.

01:25:46 ◼   ► So that's the case.

01:25:47 ◼   ► But I don't use my iPhone as much.

01:25:48 ◼   ► Although I will say, Anthony, I use my iPhone more than I used to in part because I have

01:25:54 ◼   ► so many devices now that have iPhone apps to control them.

01:25:59 ◼   ► And even if I can put them on my iPad or even on my Mac, there's this whole issue of like,

01:26:04 ◼   ► you know, is the iPad authenticated?

01:26:07 ◼   ► So I use that more than I used to.

01:26:10 ◼   ► iPhone mirroring.

01:26:12 ◼   ► Here's the truth.

01:26:13 ◼   ► I don't use iPhone mirroring as much as I would like to for two reasons.

01:26:17 ◼   ► The first is my iPhone lives on in a charger in standby mode and the charger is in my kitchen.

01:26:26 ◼   ► It's actually it's coming out of my kitchen.

01:26:29 ◼   ► There's the there's a counter that runs sort of to the hallway door and that's where it is.

01:26:34 ◼   ► It is the two places that I work are in my garage and in the back bedroom, neither of

01:26:40 ◼   ► which is within range of that to do iPhone mirroring.

01:26:43 ◼   ► So that's not great.

01:26:45 ◼   ► It means I have to pick up the iPhone and and mindfully bring it with me, at which point

01:26:48 ◼   ► I kind of can just open the iPhone.

01:26:51 ◼   ► And my other problem with the iPhone mirroring is authentication.

01:26:54 ◼   ► And I don't know.

01:26:55 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple is doing things properly from a security standpoint.

01:27:00 ◼   ► But let's be honest here.

01:27:01 ◼   ► Every time I use the iPhone mirroring, one of two things happens.

01:27:06 ◼   ► Either it says you need to go open your iPhone and put in your password for me to use this

01:27:12 ◼   ► feature, which is so frustrating.

01:27:14 ◼   ► It's like I'm right here.

01:27:17 ◼   ► Or the other thing that sometimes happens is I've got my iPhone open and I think, you know

01:27:21 ◼   ► what, I can just do this on the Mac.

01:27:22 ◼   ► And then I click iPhone mirroring and it says, I'm sorry, iPhone mirroring won't work

01:27:26 ◼   ► because your iPhone is being used.

01:27:29 ◼   ► And then, you know what I do?

01:27:32 ◼   ► Then I lock it so that I can do that.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And it says, now you need to authenticate on your iPhone because it's locked.

01:27:38 ◼   ► What is happening?

01:27:40 ◼   ► I don't know if this is intentional or not, but I think it reset the permissions every

01:27:47 ◼   ► time there was a software update.

01:27:48 ◼   ► And we're in the beta phase now.

01:27:50 ◼   ► So I'm frequently updating the software on my iPhone every couple of weeks.

01:27:53 ◼   ► And so I think every time I did that, it's like, oh, you got to re-authenticate.

01:27:58 ◼   ► And it's so few and far between that I forget.

01:28:00 ◼   ► And I did notice the other day I used it and it did not prompt me.

01:28:04 ◼   ► And I was like, oh, did I enter the password or maybe they fixed that?

01:28:07 ◼   ► So I'm not sure.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Maybe they'll make some changes about that.

01:28:09 ◼   ► But I agree, the barrier to entry on it is just high enough that a lot of times it's

01:28:13 ◼   ► like, look, I've got Face ID.

01:28:13 ◼   ► I can literally just pick this up, open it, and I'll be doing the thing I want to be doing.

01:28:17 ◼   ► I might as well just open it up.

01:28:19 ◼   ► I like it.

01:28:19 ◼   ► It's a cool feature.

01:28:20 ◼   ► And I like it for specific tasks that I want to do where it's like, you know what would

01:28:24 ◼   ► be great?

01:28:24 ◼   ► Having a keyboard that I can use with my iPhone right now or accessing this app that I

01:28:29 ◼   ► like only can get on my phone.

01:28:31 ◼   ► So this is one of my, maybe I'll put this on my macOS wish list.

01:28:35 ◼   ► In addition to having the lock behavior be better, what I would really like is I would

01:28:40 ◼   ► like to be able to add iPhone apps like I can add web apps.

01:28:48 ◼   ► So they go in the dock or they go in users, you know, my user folder applications so that

01:28:53 ◼   ► I could just have a shortcut that opens iPhone mirroring and opens that app.

01:28:57 ◼   ► So it feels like that app is running.

01:28:59 ◼   ► But I don't think that feature exists.

01:29:00 ◼   ► I don't think, I think it's just like all or nothing.

01:29:03 ◼   ► And I would love that because there are specific apps.

01:29:05 ◼   ► You can launch, you can launch from notifications.

01:29:07 ◼   ► So if you can do that, it feels like you could have a shortcut to open a app.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Feels like, right?

01:29:11 ◼   ► And you can do widgets on your desktop.

01:29:13 ◼   ► So anyway, yeah, I also, I know why they're doing it because they're using continuity.

01:29:18 ◼   ► But like if my iPhone is in my house on my Wi-Fi and I want to view it, I should just be

01:29:24 ◼   ► able to view it.

01:29:25 ◼   ► I shouldn't, I should not have to, even if it's a setting I have to set, like saying if

01:29:29 ◼   ► you're on my home Wi-Fi, just let me do it.

01:29:32 ◼   ► Because that's the thing that really kills me is I have this great iPhone mirroring feature,

01:29:37 ◼   ► but it doesn't matter.

01:29:37 ◼   ► I have to get up and walk down the hallway and get the iPhone and then do the thing I

01:29:42 ◼   ► wanted to do without getting up and walking down the hallway and getting the iPhone.

01:29:45 ◼   ► So I hope they make it better.

01:29:46 ◼   ► It's a cool feature, but I don't use it.

01:29:48 ◼   ► The answer to Anthony is I actually don't use my iPhone as much with mirroring because

01:29:53 ◼   ► of all the roadblocks.

01:29:54 ◼   ► So I hope it gets better is all I can say.

01:29:57 ◼   ► I agree.

01:29:59 ◼   ► Darren wrote in and he says, do you listen to any podcasts where you can't tell the hosts

01:30:04 ◼   ► apart?

01:30:05 ◼   ► I don't have that issue with upgrade, but on Jason's recommendation, I started listening

01:30:08 ◼   ► to the rest is history.

01:30:09 ◼   ► And for the life of me, I can't separate the identities of the two hosts.

01:30:11 ◼   ► I used to have the same problem with reply, reply all as well.

01:30:14 ◼   ► Does this ever happen to you?

01:30:16 ◼   ► And if so, any tips on how to fix it?

01:30:17 ◼   ► Now I'm fascinated by this because I can tell Tom and Dominic apart easily, but I think

01:30:24 ◼   ► some of it is you have to have an ear for it.

01:30:26 ◼   ► I was always really good.

01:30:27 ◼   ► I have always been really good at hearing voices, even of like voiceover artists and being able

01:30:32 ◼   ► to pick out who it is.

01:30:33 ◼   ► Um, so some of it is just how our brains process information.

01:30:36 ◼   ► I'd say for me, it's time is the other thing is just the more time you spend.

01:30:41 ◼   ► Uh, also if that podcast has a video rest is history posts, you has a YouTube channel.

01:30:45 ◼   ► They post clips and they sometimes post extended segments.

01:30:48 ◼   ► You watch that a little bit and then you'll get pictures of them in their, in your mind

01:30:52 ◼   ► and you'll see who's speaking.

01:30:53 ◼   ► And that might help your brain kind of lock on to who is who.

01:30:57 ◼   ► I would like to ask now my, my cohost, John Syracusa, what he thinks.

01:31:01 ◼   ► Oh, I mean, Dan Morin, lots of people can't tell you guys apart, which I don't understand,

01:31:06 ◼   ► but apparently it's a thing.

01:31:08 ◼   ► We're clearly very different.

01:31:09 ◼   ► Jason.

01:31:10 ◼   ► Oh, what?

01:31:10 ◼   ► I know.

01:31:12 ◼   ► People tell me that too.

01:31:15 ◼   ► And I am, I don't get it.

01:31:17 ◼   ► Cause I don't hear, I don't John.

01:31:19 ◼   ► I, to my, my mind has a very distinctive voice and I does, I do not confuse him with anybody.

01:31:24 ◼   ► No, um, I don't, I don't really.

01:31:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:26 ◼   ► I do get that a lot though.

01:31:27 ◼   ► Um, I don't have this problem either.

01:31:29 ◼   ► I think like you, I just have a brain that's wired for it.

01:31:32 ◼   ► And again, I don't listen to so many podcasts.

01:31:34 ◼   ► Oh, my other piece of advice, in addition to give it time and maybe watch videos to kind

01:31:39 ◼   ► of maybe trick your brain into, into learning who these people are.

01:31:42 ◼   ► My other, you're not going to like it people, but I'm going to put it out there.

01:31:45 ◼   ► Maybe for that podcast, slow it down.

01:31:49 ◼   ► I was going to say, maybe they sound very different at one X and it's because you're listening at

01:31:54 ◼   ► two X that you can't differentiate between them.

01:31:56 ◼   ► Just a guess.

01:31:57 ◼   ► I wouldn't advocate going to 0.5.

01:31:59 ◼   ► No.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Unless, unless you enjoy podcasts where people sound drunk.

01:32:04 ◼   ► Uh, and it's very funny for about the two seconds I let it say.

01:32:11 ◼   ► Uh, but yeah, I agree.

01:32:13 ◼   ► I mean, slow it down to one is what I'm saying.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Or, or just slow it down a notch or two until you can pick it up and then maybe you can crank

01:32:21 ◼   ► it back up.

01:32:21 ◼   ► But that would be another suggestion.

01:32:22 ◼   ► I think there are ways to trick your brain to do this or to educate your brain.

01:32:26 ◼   ► And then it starts to map everything and then it will start to work.

01:32:29 ◼   ► That's my guess.

01:32:29 ◼   ► Um, I know it's hard.

01:32:31 ◼   ► Brains are weird.

01:32:33 ◼   ► Brains are weird.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Brains are weird.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Anyway, thanks, John.

01:32:35 ◼   ► I mean, Dan, sorry.

01:32:37 ◼   ► I got you confused again.

01:32:38 ◼   ► Ah, Jason, I'm done with this show.

01:32:40 ◼   ► It happened a lot in the beginning with the incomparable.

01:32:42 ◼   ► I was like, it's, I never, ever in a million years would have guessed weird.

01:32:46 ◼   ► You know, the funny thing is, as I joke, John lives like five minutes from the house where

01:32:51 ◼   ► I grew up.

01:32:51 ◼   ► I know.

01:32:52 ◼   ► He lives in the same town where I grew up.

01:32:53 ◼   ► He lives very close to my parents, but he grew up in New York.

01:32:56 ◼   ► So it's not like our accents are even the same.

01:32:58 ◼   ► I read a whole piece today about the, uh, California accent, which was really, uh, funny

01:33:05 ◼   ► because it's, the whole idea is California say they don't have an accent, but they do have

01:33:10 ◼   ► an accent.

01:33:10 ◼   ► Uh, great story, very fun.

01:33:13 ◼   ► And, and they, they said that the biggest, the thing that, the one thing that everybody

01:33:16 ◼   ► already knew about people in the West is that the, is the caught, caught merger where

01:33:21 ◼   ► the C-O-T and C-A-U-G-H-T in California are identical.

01:33:25 ◼   ► Whereas in, in the East, you get a lot of people who say caught and caught.

01:33:29 ◼   ► Caught.

01:33:30 ◼   ► Caught.

01:33:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:31 ◼   ► It is, my, uh, in-laws are both from Queens, so I have lots of New York.

01:33:35 ◼   ► That's, that's very strong.

01:33:36 ◼   ► Every now and then I, I just like to rip out a Florida because it's fun.

01:33:40 ◼   ► I do, I do highly recommend, by the way, it's several years old now, but the, um, the old

01:33:45 ◼   ► New York times quiz where it would ask you, it would try to nail down where your, your dialect

01:33:50 ◼   ► is from.

01:33:51 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:33:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:51 ◼   ► That thing was incredible.

01:33:52 ◼   ► It was so good.

01:33:53 ◼   ► This piece points out that it's two things, right?

01:33:55 ◼   ► It's the, it's your word use and it's your, it's, it's your vowels and things like that.

01:34:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:00 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:34:01 ◼   ► And that they can move at different rates and that usually word use is fast and that the,

01:34:06 ◼   ► the phonetics are slow.

01:34:07 ◼   ► But in the case of California, that's actually not the case.

01:34:10 ◼   ► So really interesting.

01:34:11 ◼   ► And, and yeah, that New York times thing, um, said you're probably from Modesto for me.

01:34:18 ◼   ► And it's like, Modesto was the largest city to where I grew up.

01:34:22 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:34:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:23 ◼   ► Nailed it.

01:34:23 ◼   ► The one that got me on that one was, it told me like, all right, so I got Boston, which I

01:34:27 ◼   ► did not think was terribly hard, but then it does like secondary places.

01:34:30 ◼   ► And the secondary place for me was Rochester, New York, where my mom's family is from.

01:34:34 ◼   ► And I was like, I don't even understand how you figured that out.

01:34:37 ◼   ► Amazing.

01:34:37 ◼   ► Amazing.

01:34:38 ◼   ► Um, one last question.

01:34:40 ◼   ► This is from Chris, who said the perfect segue.

01:34:43 ◼   ► I'm thinking about getting upgrade plus, but I'm in hesitance since the bonus content isn't

01:34:46 ◼   ► in its own feed.

01:34:47 ◼   ► How do you recommend going back and listening to all the past episodes or should I just start

01:34:51 ◼   ► listening going forward?

01:34:52 ◼   ► It's sort of a bookend podcast question.

01:34:54 ◼   ► Chris, thanks for thinking about getting upgrade plus, uh, the way upgrade plus works is generally

01:35:01 ◼   ► just, we do an upgrade plus segment at the end of the show.

01:35:04 ◼   ► So there aren't standalone episodes.

01:35:06 ◼   ► It's true.

01:35:07 ◼   ► I would say it's all just, I would go forward, but if you do want to go back and dip into

01:35:14 ◼   ► the archive, uh, just be a little more active, make sure your podcast player has a chapter

01:35:19 ◼   ► skip function and skipped upgrade plus.

01:35:21 ◼   ► Cause there's a chapter for the plus version always at the very end that just plays plus

01:35:27 ◼   ► and depending on your podcast player, some of them will even let you like say only play

01:35:31 ◼   ► this chapter with this name and you could do it that way too.

01:35:34 ◼   ► I think Castro does that.

01:35:35 ◼   ► So I, yeah, I was going to say the, the, I am always amazed when people tell me they've

01:35:40 ◼   ► gone back and listened to some of our older, like there's shows where that's fine.

01:35:43 ◼   ► Like people will listen to like total party kill.

01:35:45 ◼   ► Cause it's like, okay, it's a story.

01:35:46 ◼   ► Fine.

01:35:47 ◼   ► You want to start at the beginning.

01:35:48 ◼   ► That's great.

01:35:49 ◼   ► But like, I love, I love all of you out there, but please don't start at like clockwise

01:35:54 ◼   ► one and listen to almost 600 episodes.

01:35:58 ◼   ► But you don't need to, you know, the only person who would do that, it's John Syracuse.

01:36:02 ◼   ► I started at the beginning, Jason.

01:36:05 ◼   ► Always start at the beginning.

01:36:06 ◼   ► A Syracuse of Muppet.

01:36:08 ◼   ► It's a little too Muppet, I think.

01:36:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:09 ◼   ► A little too Muppety there.

01:36:11 ◼   ► John is a little Muppety, but not that Muppety.

01:36:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:12 ◼   ► Turn it down a little bit.

01:36:14 ◼   ► Thank you for this episode.

01:36:16 ◼   ► We have reached the end.

01:36:17 ◼   ► You can send us your feedback, follow-up and questions at upgradefeedback.com.

01:36:21 ◼   ► I am still in charge of that.

01:36:22 ◼   ► So be nice.

01:36:23 ◼   ► I also wrote an awesome shortcut that automatically puts them on the clipboard formatted, right?

01:36:27 ◼   ► So I can paste them in the show doc because I'm not willing to live like Mike lives.

01:36:31 ◼   ► Thank you to our members who support us, as mentioned earlier with Upgrade Plus.

01:36:35 ◼   ► We are going to take a couple of extra kind of home tech questions from listeners in Upgrade

01:36:42 ◼   ► Plus this time.

01:36:42 ◼   ► And of course, support Mike and his baby.

01:36:44 ◼   ► I'm going to keep holding that baby up by being an Upgrade Plus subscriber.

01:36:49 ◼   ► To be fair, the notes say, Mike Hurley, colon, if you want to buy a gift for Mike's baby,

01:36:55 ◼   ► get yourself an Upgrade Plus membership.

01:36:56 ◼   ► So it's Mike saying this.

01:36:58 ◼   ► Mike's holding his baby up.

01:36:59 ◼   ► I got some pictures, baby pictures the other day from Mike.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Adorable, adorable baby.

01:37:03 ◼   ► And Mike has a very nice striped robe.

01:37:06 ◼   ► A little comment.

01:37:07 ◼   ► I've never really seen Mike's robe before, but when you're getting a baby.

01:37:11 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you spend a lot of time in that robe.

01:37:12 ◼   ► You let it all hang out.

01:37:13 ◼   ► You can find us on YouTube and see our things that we like from Star Wars and Star Trek by searching for Upgrade Podcast.

01:37:23 ◼   ► Thank you to our sponsors, Google, Gemini, and Ecamm Live for supporting this episode.

01:37:28 ◼   ► And thank you all for listening.

01:37:30 ◼   ► And of course, thank you, Dan Morin, for taking some time away from your many other podcasts,

01:37:35 ◼   ► including the one we do at Six Colors, to be here this week.

01:37:37 ◼   ► I really appreciate it.

01:37:39 ◼   ► It is distinctly my pleasure.

01:37:41 ◼   ► I love Upgrade.

01:37:41 ◼   ► It really is one of the few shows I listen to every week.

01:37:44 ◼   ► So it's always nice to be on because...

01:37:47 ◼   ► It's one podcast you don't have to listen to this week.

01:37:49 ◼   ► I don't have to listen to it this week.

01:37:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:51 ◼   ► All right.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Thank you for that.

01:37:52 ◼   ► Thanks, everybody.

01:37:53 ◼   ► We'll be back next time with yet another in the cavalcade of guest stars.

01:37:56 ◼   ► Who will it be?

01:37:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:37:58 ◼   ► I actually do know, but I'm not going to tell you.

01:38:00 ◼   ► And we will see you next time.