00:00:11 ◼ ► 584. We are not the kind of podcast that gives our hosts ridiculous made-up titles. No, we
00:00:18 ◼ ► don't. So why would we? I would like to introduce you to my entirely unremarkable friend and co-host,
00:00:24 ◼ ► James Thompson. Hi, James. Thanks, Jason. I mean, it is always a pleasure to do this show,
00:00:35 ◼ ► may or may not have occurred last year. But in turn, I'd like to introduce you to my completely
00:00:41 ◼ ► fine co-host, John Voorhees. Hello, hello, everybody. Could we just maybe think about going
00:00:47 ◼ ► back to titles because I kind of miss them. I mean, I feel like I have a chance to win this
00:01:00 ◼ ► We're back together again. Yeah, yeah, we're back together. And it's, you know, you expect
00:01:10 ◼ ► Okay. All right. Yeah, we'll just, I mean, it's perfectly normal. Let's do some follow-up.
00:01:20 ◼ ► This happened. We're sorry. We didn't notice because we just assume that that's what happens.
00:01:39 ◼ ► James, come on. Hey, look, we got some really nice compliments last week, too, that I wanted
00:01:45 ◼ ► to mention because we had those great kids on. You know, we had Federico, Steven, and Mike,
00:01:50 ◼ ► and they're doing some great stuff over at the Prompt. So we're really, we're proud of them. I mean,
00:01:57 ◼ ► you know, they're out there doing their thing and doing their podcasts. I'm glad that they're still
00:02:04 ◼ ► I am informed by a few listeners that Jason was incorrect when he said that Netflix offered a buttload
00:02:32 ◼ ► Yes. So as with every single New Year's Day episode that we've done, we like to look back
00:02:38 ◼ ► on the previous year and present some awards to the deserving candidates. So I welcome you
00:02:58 ◼ ► For its sudden, wholehearted embrace of Formula One in all its forms as it was releasing F1,
00:03:07 ◼ ► the movie. Probably my favorite thing. John, you might have gotten this press briefing or
00:03:17 ◼ ► they made this big deal out of adding a 3D Monaco to Apple Maps because the Monaco Grand Prix was going
00:03:25 ◼ ► to be happening there in a couple of years. And I was like, that Apple Maps as your Formula One
00:03:35 ◼ ► Yeah, it was. It's just, I mean, there was so much, like Apple went from 0 to 50, huh? Huh? Huh?
00:03:51 ◼ ► I think it was the fact that every time I opened any part of iOS, it was plugging the movie.
00:03:57 ◼ ► You know, you open up, find mine, it'll tell you where you can find the movie and things like that.
00:04:03 ◼ ► All right. Well, our second award for this installment of the JPeries is the Everywhere and
00:04:11 ◼ ► Nowhere All at Once Award. And this year, that goes to our friend App Intense. Because, you know,
00:04:17 ◼ ► App Intense, they're both everywhere, powering everything all at once. But they're also kind
00:04:27 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm glad I didn't rush to, like, fully re-implement all my App Intense code, you know,
00:04:43 ◼ ► Indeed. So, the Alan Dye Award for being completely transparent goes to Tim Cook for handing over
00:04:57 ◼ ► But the transactional nature, shall we say, of some of these interactions did rankle a little
00:05:06 ◼ ► I think that's fair. I'm going to give the Graceful Exit Award. And this goes to Jeff Williams,
00:05:14 ◼ ► former Apple COO, who managed to cover himself in dignity by retiring, not having anything weird
00:05:25 ◼ ► going on, not being part of a week of Apple executives coming and going. He just retired.
00:05:34 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. I want to applaud him. He sounds like he made a decision like a regular human
00:05:39 ◼ ► being. And you know what? His reward for that, in addition to the Graceful Exit Award, is that
00:05:44 ◼ ► he got a seat on the Disney Board of Directors, which has got to be pretty sweet for a retirement
00:05:54 ◼ ► And lifetime pass for your whole family to all Disney parks everywhere, I assume, is a part
00:06:03 ◼ ► Yeah. Well done. Well done. This year's Finally Award goes to Apple Product Marketing for finally
00:06:10 ◼ ► unifying the OS version numbers on all the platforms. Finally. John, it's so nice. I know
00:06:16 ◼ ► James is it's probably complicated for developers for for it's always come for for for writers. It is so
00:06:24 ◼ ► nice to be able to casually say, oh, the 26.2 updates came out today. Yes, it is so nice. Although I do now
00:06:33 ◼ ► find myself forgetting what the last version of all the OS's was, because I think about 26 all the time
00:06:40 ◼ ► now, I don't think about 18 or 11 or whatever it is of the other things. I mean, this is Apple
00:06:46 ◼ ► Product Marketing. They're just retroactively renamed them. So like 25, 25, 23. That would be really
00:06:52 ◼ ► complicated. We'd have to have a chart, I think. Yeah, I the A series processors still bother me, but
00:06:58 ◼ ► because they're so close to the iPhone numbers, but not. Yep. Yeah. I'm sure they will, they will like
00:07:05 ◼ ► round up these like, uh, renegade numbers every now and again and just change them to current main
00:07:12 ◼ ► numbers. I hope so. Um, the, are we the baddies award goes to jointly to services revenue and the app
00:07:20 ◼ ► store for continuing to fight all attempts at regulation on a country by country basis, you know,
00:07:25 ◼ ► rather than just say, well, actually, you know, the right thing to do is this. No, we will fight it
00:07:31 ◼ ► in every court in the land. Yeah. I mean, you're giving, you're literally giving an award to services
00:07:35 ◼ ► revenue, which I think is a bold move. Um, and I guess you can go to the purple charts on six colors
00:07:42 ◼ ► and give it to them there. They're the purple bar. So yeah. Yeah. They, it's a, it's a war on all fronts
00:07:49 ◼ ► for Apple continues to be wars on all fronts go so well. They do. They do. Um, I am going to give
00:07:57 ◼ ► what I'm calling the most dented can award to a satellite SOS, uh, which has always been introduced
00:08:06 ◼ ► as being only for a couple of years. You're not going to get it forever. Uh, everybody's like,
00:08:11 ◼ ► well, what happens, uh, when that runs out and Apple hasn't said anything and they keep deferring
00:08:17 ◼ ► with, you know, kicking the can down the road because they can't quite figure out how to square
00:08:22 ◼ ► the idea that they need to make money from a service, uh, that is designed to keep people from dying
00:08:28 ◼ ► because that leads in some very distressing places. I would argue that you're, when you buy an iPhone,
00:08:35 ◼ ► you probably should just get satellite SOS for the life of the iPhone. But I find it very funny that
00:08:41 ◼ ► Apple continues to struggle with whether they're going to let you and what happens if it lapses by
00:08:51 ◼ ► I think the commercial that, you know, for, for that feature would be quite different if it was a
00:08:58 ◼ ► paid service, you know, probably they'd have a way that you could activate the subscription
00:09:03 ◼ ► over satellite so that you could pay for it. You know, when you're on the mountain and you really
00:09:08 ◼ ► need it, you know, press here, uh, to, to sign up and send an SOS. My thought was that they would
00:09:14 ◼ ► build out all of these other things like, like texting and all of that. And at that point they
00:09:18 ◼ ► would charge for that, but they'd keep the underlying SOS allowed or that's kind of what I was
00:09:27 ◼ ► if you have to use SOS and you're not, you know, then you just pay $10 or whatever to Apple. But
00:09:32 ◼ ► I think it's better if the SOS part just stays free forever with your iPhone, free with your
00:09:38 ◼ ► expensive iPhone purchase. Sounds good to me. Yeah. It sounds good to me too. Well, this year's
00:09:43 ◼ ► musical chairs award goes to Apple's AI team who seemingly can't sit still for more than a few
00:09:50 ◼ ► months at a time. Yeah. Who, who would get it? We don't know. I mean, it's the fact that,
00:09:58 ◼ ► Although there seem to be a lot more chairs empty at Apple than there are anywhere else.
00:10:03 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, they're rearranging them. That's nothing bad could happen if you rearrange the
00:10:07 ◼ ► The musical deck chairs award. Yes. I like that. Um, finally, the Louvre award for the heist of the
00:10:14 ◼ ► century, uh, goes to generative AI for continuing to steal the creative work of everybody on the planet.
00:10:21 ◼ ► Oh, I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Okay. Um, that was great. I think we had a
00:10:28 ◼ ► good time. Uh, always like to like to do some fake awards. Now it's sponsor time. And again, because of
00:10:36 ◼ ► our bad behavior in the past, uh, relay FM co-founder, Stephen Hackett has insisted that he read the ads
00:10:43 ◼ ► because sponsors won't let us do it anymore. Uh, everybody knows why we'll, we won't get into it.
00:10:50 ◼ ► This episode of connected is brought to you by century. Logs are really helpful when they're part
00:10:59 ◼ ► of the full picture, not stuck as a separate tool. Centuries new log tools, bring them into the same
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00:11:13 ◼ ► with the issues you're already debugging and connect them directly to the code and spans that matter.
00:11:18 ◼ ► We use century here at relay to monitor both our CMS and our ad inventory management system. We built
00:11:27 ◼ ► both. Uh, they're both ours and we only, we got a part-time developer. He's a freelancer. He's got
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00:11:39 ◼ ► issue. He gets an email. I see it in Slack and we can get to work. And don't forget when you sign up,
00:11:45 ◼ ► you'll have Sear century's new AI debugging agent on hand too. It's like hiring an engineer who already
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00:12:06 ◼ ► that century S E N T R Y century.io. They have a free dev plan and listeners of this show can use the
00:12:16 ◼ ► code connected on signup for three months free of their team plan and 150,000 free errors. That's
00:12:24 ◼ ► century.io with the code connected or check out the link in the show notes. My thanks to century for
00:12:30 ◼ ► support a connected and all of relay. Well, thank you, Stephen. And now we come to the section that
00:12:40 ◼ ► some people have been waiting for. I don't think that any of us should be defined by our wins, losses,
00:12:46 ◼ ► cheating in these pickies competitions. I mean, we all contribute so much to the podcast each year
00:12:52 ◼ ► on top of that. Um, but I guess we should look back and just see how good we were at predicting the
00:12:58 ◼ ► technology trends of 2025. And first up, because we have multiple competitions to adjudicate this year,
00:13:04 ◼ ► we have the overall annual pickies for 2025. I'm feeling pretty good about this one. Oh boy,
00:13:10 ◼ ► this is going to be amazing. Please lower your shoulders and relax for the reading of the
00:13:16 ◼ ► minimalist pickies charter. Every year we play two games and predict what will happen at WWDC and
00:13:30 ◼ ► throughout the year. We pick in reverse order of the previous contest's final standings.
00:13:35 ◼ ► Everyone picks five things that they think will happen. The person with the most right things wins.
00:13:43 ◼ ► In the case of a tie, there are multiple winners. We do not let mere chance determine success here.
00:13:48 ◼ ► There shall be no disputes over scoring because we are just inherently honorable people.
00:13:55 ◼ ► I think we're going to have to change number one on the charter to say we, we, sometimes we play a
00:14:03 ◼ ► third game, which is predicting things in the autumn. We'll do that on Jason Voorhees day next year. It'll be
00:14:11 ◼ ► fine. Um, for those who don't know, that's the first Friday, the 13th of the year is Jason,
00:14:20 ◼ ► I like to think so. Uh, okay. It's round one. Uh, we should, I guess we should recap our own picks
00:14:27 ◼ ► here. So John, why don't you get us started? Sure. So I said that a revision or new model of the
00:14:33 ◼ ► Apple watch will be introduced that supports a new sensor. Nope. Nope. Yeah. This is false.
00:14:42 ◼ ► Um, I said that a new iPhone SE would be introduced that supported Apple intelligence. Now the lawyers
00:14:51 ◼ ► have said that no iPhone SEC SE was introduced and thus this is false. Yes. Uh, you could argue that the
00:15:00 ◼ ► 16E is really an iPhone SE, but that's not how I worded it. You could, yes, you could have argued
00:15:06 ◼ ► that if you had worded this slightly differently, you would have been correct. Yes. If I had written
00:15:11 ◼ ► a different sentence, a low end, a new low end iPhone model, right? Like, but you didn't know,
00:15:18 ◼ ► I, but since there are other people who've also mentioned iPhone SEs, I'm prepared to accept this.
00:15:23 ◼ ► Um, so my first pick, boy, I was so confident in this Apple will introduce a new home appliance with
00:15:29 ◼ ► a screen. Well, it requires new Siri. And last year at new year's, we still thought maybe Apple was
00:15:37 ◼ ► going to ship AI features, which they didn't at all the whole year. So that's wrong. Let's move on to
00:15:44 ◼ ► round two. I don't even, that was bad. So we're going to miss. All right. Well, I got on the, uh,
00:15:49 ◼ ► iPhone SE bandwagon too. And I predicted that the iPhone SE would have a 48 megapixel camera sensor.
00:15:56 ◼ ► Nope. Now, of course the 16E did, but that's not an SE. Not an SE. Could have worded it better.
00:16:03 ◼ ► I picked there was going to be a brand new redesigned mouse. And I don't know why I picked that. I don't,
00:16:10 ◼ ► I just, at the time I was baffled, I'm still baffled. I mean, I, it was like, because we've,
00:16:15 ◼ ► we had the whole, you know, all the jokes, all the memes about the, the, the magic magic plug in the
00:16:23 ◼ ► bottom thing. I thought there would be something, you know, but, uh, no, apparently not.
00:16:32 ◼ ► Yeah. It's wish custom. Speaking of optimism, uh, and returning to my theme of what we thought about
00:16:38 ◼ ► AI last year at the turn of the new year, I said a third party LLM partner other than open AI will
00:16:45 ◼ ► finally be announced by Apple, but it won't actually be available until the last quarter of 2025. This is
00:16:51 ◼ ► false on all counts. Remember when they kept dropping Google Gemini's name in 2024 in the summer. And here we
00:16:59 ◼ ► are a year and a half later and it's still just open AI. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't understand what's
00:17:05 ◼ ► going on there. Um, I mean, the only thing I can think of is there's money exchanging hands in some
00:17:13 ◼ ► direction, but I don't know. Well, the part, it doesn't help that they don't have smart Siri ready.
00:17:18 ◼ ► I mean, you know, what are you going to do? We're going to use Gemini someday in a product that might
00:17:22 ◼ ► come out at some time, you know? Also third party LLM provider. Like if, if you're working with
00:17:28 ◼ ► Google on being the first party LLM provider, maybe you just don't need to worry about the
00:17:33 ◼ ► third party stuff. Open AI has probably the most popular consumer AI. So you could throw that in
00:17:39 ◼ ► there. But yeah, I think in the background there that they're working with Google on Gemini reportedly
00:17:43 ◼ ► like that, I guess that takes priority. Anyway, I'm still, I'm just really surprised that we've
00:17:48 ◼ ► gone 18 months, but all the AI choices that we thought last year are just wrong because they
00:17:52 ◼ ► didn't do it. They didn't do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. You're right. All right.
00:17:57 ◼ ► So we're on to round three. The scores, by the way, for people who are wondering are still,
00:18:01 ◼ ► everybody has nothing. So yes, we're about to, but we're, we're about to ramp it up here. I think,
00:18:07 ◼ ► I think I feel good about the next three rounds in round three. I predicted that Apple will not
00:18:13 ◼ ► announce a new Vision Pro before the next annual pickies. John, here we are. And we did in fact get
00:18:20 ◼ ► an M5 Vision Pro. I thought this was a lock. I was very surprised. I thought this was a lock for you.
00:18:25 ◼ ► I cannot believe it. I know. I was very surprised. Wow. Yeah. M5 Vision Pro, who knew? Who knew?
00:18:39 ◼ ► to get back into the Wi-Fi writer business. Just because, and I'll say, the reason that I picked
00:18:44 ◼ ► this is I'm really fed up with all my Wi-Fi writing equipment and I want something that works. But
00:18:52 ◼ ► Apple did not return. No. Between this and the mouse though, James, something must have happened. You
00:18:57 ◼ ► had a moment there. Yeah. He really thought he was Nostradamus there for a minute. He did. I mean,
00:19:03 ◼ ► like sometimes I think if you pick the really bold thing and it comes true, you look so good. It's true.
00:19:18 ◼ ► fine from the European Commission. Now in 2024, the record was what? What did we look at? We looked
00:19:24 ◼ ► it up, James. 1.2 billion? Yeah, it was like 1.8 billion. 1.8 billion euro. It was billions.
00:19:28 ◼ ► And this is false because the biggest fine Apple got in 2025 was half a billion. So not even close.
00:19:36 ◼ ► A year half a billion. Not even close. So that's wrong. Scores remain zero. We got a couple more
00:19:42 ◼ ► rounds to get some points here, John. All right. Round four. A new Apple TV will be introduced with
00:19:55 ◼ ► Yeah. I think when there's all these rumors of like, oh, there's going to be this, this,
00:20:00 ◼ ► this, and we're expecting it to be announced, you know, like towards the end of the year and
00:20:15 ◼ ► I said that Apple would introduce an M series chip in a configuration that is better than an Ultra,
00:20:24 ◼ ► which was laughable. And I can't even remember if they introduced the new Ultra even last year.
00:20:52 ◼ ► but it is awfully weird to just kind of throw in the M3 Ultra in the mix with all the M4s.
00:21:02 ◼ ► My prediction was that the only new feature on the MacBook Air beyond an M4 processor will be an
00:21:08 ◼ ► upgraded webcam. Now, I feel like this is the closest any of us have come to being right so far.
00:21:15 ◼ ► Yeah. I'd written, you know, it has better support for multiple monitors, which is a feature that Apple
00:21:24 ◼ ► Yeah. And it's a feature, I think, of the design of the M4, but I have to go with you that that's a
00:21:32 ◼ ► feature. They did upgrade the webcam, by the way, but that monitor support, I think, puts it over the
00:21:38 ◼ ► edge as another new feature. So I'm going to, I should have, and I should have said something about
00:21:44 ◼ ► like hardware here because that's really what I meant. Yeah. Right. But yeah. So good on Apple.
00:21:51 ◼ ► They, you know, I should have picked the new, there's a new color in the MacBook Air that nobody
00:21:56 ◼ ► can see, but I didn't do that. Okay. No score still round five. Go ahead, John. All right,
00:22:01 ◼ ► here we go. Final round. Let's, let's pull out a big win here. I predict, I predicted that the M5
00:22:08 ◼ ► will separate the CPU and GPU memory architecture, which will be explained in the context of improving
00:22:17 ◼ ► Apple intelligence and gaming, which is again, untrue. Instead, we got neural accelerators,
00:22:26 ◼ ► Yeah. This is why this was a wild choice. This is one of those choices. This is like a James
00:22:31 ◼ ► choice. I think that there was, I think that at one point there was a rumor that the sandwiching
00:22:36 ◼ ► of like the multi-layer chip architecture was somehow separating those in some way. Um, but obviously
00:22:43 ◼ ► that's not true. I mean, two things that you could, uh, say that Apple didn't really care about,
00:22:48 ◼ ► uh, last year were gaming and Apple intelligence. They, they, they say they care about the gaming.
00:22:55 ◼ ► Uh, I mean, they do every, every time, you know, but it's a, it's a real Lucy's football of a,
00:23:00 ◼ ► of a promise. I know. I've given up my optimism about gaming on the Mac is, is fading. Yeah.
00:23:07 ◼ ► Um, I, again, you know, last round wild picks. I said that Apple was going to announce a partnership
00:23:15 ◼ ► with a third party publisher, e.g. Sony or steam to help bring games to the vision pro.
00:23:21 ◼ ► Now you could say that adding support for Sony's, uh, VR controllers, I mean, only to be a thing
00:23:33 ◼ ► You use the word Sony in your pick, but otherwise no. Define partnership. Really? Yeah. Publisher
00:23:45 ◼ ► You think this was your wild pick as if your previous four picks were not also wild picks.
00:23:50 ◼ ► I feel somebody needs to not just go for the, okay. All right. Well, I went Jason, you're
00:23:56 ◼ ► the, you're the only hope here. I went with the obvious and my pick is so bad that it's
00:24:01 ◼ ► wrong halfway before it gets halfway through the sentence, which is Apple's home appliance
00:24:07 ◼ ► with a screen will be named in whole or in part home pod. Uh, rebranding the whole home
00:24:14 ◼ ► line as home pod. Uh, well, they would have to ship a home appliance with a screen for that
00:24:18 ◼ ► to happen. We all thought it would happen. It didn't happen. We think mostly because the
00:24:23 ◼ ► whole Siri architecture that it was built to use didn't ship. And so no home appliance.
00:24:36 ◼ ► what this will happen. Um, but, uh, it means our final score is I have nothing. James has
00:24:41 ◼ ► nothing. John has nothing, which means you could view that as we all lost, but I prefer to think
00:24:47 ◼ ► we all tied and our winners. Yeah. By the, by the, the description in the charter, it's three
00:24:53 ◼ ► way tie. We all won. I think so. Okay. One more obligatory commercial from Stephen Hackett.
00:25:02 ◼ ► This episode of connected is brought to you by Squarespace. It's a new year and you're probably
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00:27:06 ◼ ► All right. It is time for us to score more pickies because we did our autumn edition, a new, a new flavor,
00:27:16 ◼ ► the leaves turn colors, and we decided to play a game where we zeroed in on like the last few months
00:27:22 ◼ ► of the year. Um, so here we go. Let's, uh, uh, are we ready? Are we ready to do the autumn edition?
00:27:30 ◼ ► John, did you want to say something here? I do. I have, I have a little statement to make regular,
00:27:35 ◼ ► regular listeners are going to remember that there were some questionable rules added to the
00:27:40 ◼ ► pickies charter in the autumn by James in an attempt to give them an unfair advantage as well as boost his
00:27:48 ◼ ► ego. Hmm. Yeah. Well, let's read the rules and see what we think, James. All right. Yes. I,
00:27:55 ◼ ► my lawyer has told me not to come in. Uh, every year we play three games and we predict what will
00:28:07 ◼ ► happen at WWDC during the autumnal season, a new edition, and over the course of the whole year.
00:28:21 ◼ ► And the, for the autumn, for the autumnal pickies, everyone picks five things they think will happen
00:28:27 ◼ ► between September 1st and the annual pickies episode at the end of the year. James gets an
00:28:33 ◼ ► additional sixth pick because he just deserves it. In the case of a tie, there are multiple winners.
00:28:49 ◼ ► Yeah. There shall be no disputes over scoring because we are all just inherently honorable
00:28:53 ◼ ► people, especially James, who is the most honorable. That's what it says here. I got to read it.
00:28:57 ◼ ► Yeah. At the end of each round, Jason and John will alternate saying something nice about James.
00:29:11 ◼ ► Well, that's how it worked. And now we have to score it. So let's see how we did. Round one. Of course, James went first and John flipped a coin and John won. So it'll go in that order. James, what did you pick in round one?
00:29:24 ◼ ► I'm sure my hubris will not result in a terrible loss here. Anyway, my round one pick was an M5 Pro or an M5 Max chip will ship before the end of the year. This was surprisingly false.
00:29:38 ◼ ► Yeah. Really surprised. I thought that was a good, a good choice. And they only rolled out the M5 and only in, you know, the, the low end macro pro and iPad. It was surprising.
00:29:50 ◼ ► So you can buy a MacBook Pro and you can have, uh, an M5 or an M4 Max. The worst one is the M5 that it's weird.
00:30:00 ◼ ► It is weird. I was, I was convinced we would have a second event in like early November basically, but yeah, we did not. Anyway, my pick was that AirPods Pro three would be released and they were so a right answer.
00:30:15 ◼ ► Yes. Finally. So predicting a year ahead. We're very bad. Predicting three months ahead. We're better. Yes. Already. Yes. So good job. AirPods Pro three came out. Um, my pick in the first round was the new iPhone will be, or a new iPhone will be less than six millimeters thick, but not as thin as an iPad pro.
00:30:40 ◼ ► And this was so precisely. I nailed it. Nailed it. Absolutely. Nailed it. I got one right here. It's, it's thin, it's super thin, but not as thin as my iPad pro, which I also have right here. So, you know, if they, if they fight it out, the iPad pro still wins.
00:30:55 ◼ ► Uh, I said for round two, uh, one of the new phones will have an eight X or greater optical zoom. And I think this is true. Um, it's a 48 megapixel sensor and they're just taking the middle 24 out of it. But I think the whole point was that there's a, there's a camera stop that says eight X. And I think that there is, I think you got it because of that.
00:31:18 ◼ ► Apple would certainly like you to believe that there is an eight X and that it's optical. Yeah. All right. I predicted that the Apple TV would be updated and it was not. I don't know what I was, why I was so into the Apple TV. Lucy keeps pulling the football away from you. You're like, no, that Apple TV, it's really going to happen. I really, I don't even really need or want another Apple TV, but I was convinced it was coming.
00:31:40 ◼ ► Oh, um, I picked Apple TV plus shows will win several Emmy awards, but not the most of any outlet, which again, I think I got it. I threaded the needle there. They did win a bunch of Emmys, but they didn't win the most.
00:32:01 ◼ ► It was at the time when they won the Emmy awards though. So yeah, that's true. That's true. And if you go to their PR webpage, it still says TV plus there too.
00:32:10 ◼ ► This is such a good branding campaign. I like the part where they changed the name and then didn't have their new little bumper to show up for like another two weeks. It was like really lockstep. Great job, everybody. That should have been one of our awards at the beginning is the perfect rebranding campaign award.
00:32:29 ◼ ► round three. Again, we're picking things that we were certain we're going to turn up. Um, a new Apple studio display is introduced with a better camera. I won't complain about. And again, halfway through the sentence I've already lost, but like the rumors still say it's coming and, uh, it sounds really nice.
00:32:49 ◼ ► Yeah. There were, yeah, there were new rumors that it's going to be promotion and have some sort of HDR, which I mean like, duh, of course it should have those things, but it still hasn't shipped.
00:33:02 ◼ ► All right. Uh, I predicted that at least one Apple watch will be released. That doesn't need an iPhone for workout buddy. And I was wrong. The workout buddy is still, you know, needs, needs its own buddy, which is the iPhone.
00:33:17 ◼ ► I totally get what you're saying here, right? Because the idea is sometimes Apple introduces a feature in the new OS at WWDC and, and puts constraints on them that are resolved by new hardware in the fall that they can't talk about.
00:33:31 ◼ ► But it didn't happen because they're, they're constraints that don't make a lot of sense. And especially for people who are like bike riding, running, that kind of thing. The whole idea, what, I mean, if you get a cellular Apple watch, you can go do those things without your phone.
00:33:45 ◼ ► But now if you want the workout buddy, which admittedly not the greatest feature ever, but it, uh, you can't do that still.
00:33:54 ◼ ► All right. My next pick in the third round was a kind of a layup. Um, but you never know. Apple sometimes doesn't do things, but Apple will release a heartwarming film long commercial for the holiday season. And they did, they did friends, the flight of the concords. They had puppets in a forest. Um, it was heartwarming. It was called a film.
00:34:13 ◼ ► It was a long commercial because they used an iPhone to shoot it all. The little puppet shot it all on the iPhone as well. So iPhones shooting, iPhones shooting, iPhones. Um, so I get, I get that. Let's do a little score recap. Shall we? After three rounds, I have three points.
00:34:30 ◼ ► Uh, John has one point. One, one point. And James has one point. So yeah, that's how it is. Let's see how those scores can change in round four.
00:34:42 ◼ ► So round four. I said that Apple will drop a promo for their Neuromancer TV show. And the reason I picked this was that had it been at least one promotional image had come out months before.
00:34:59 ◼ ► We don't have any idea when that's even coming at this point. I don't think, do we? I assume next year.
00:35:04 ◼ ► Next year, but that's it. They haven't given it a date. I assume they'll give it a date when they release a, a trailer for it.
00:35:10 ◼ ► Yeah. They really haven't actually announced very much for 2026 yet. I mean, there's a couple of things that were just recently announced for April, but there's not much beyond January.
00:35:21 ◼ ► Right. I keep saying next year. People should know we recorded this a little bit before new year's. It's being released on new year's day. So when I say next year, I mean 26.
00:35:28 ◼ ► We're in 25. Hello. This is the past, but we're going to pretend that it's new year's day.
00:35:32 ◼ ► Um, in my mind, I'm, I'm trying not to say 2027 at this point. I'm all, I'm confused all over the place.
00:35:39 ◼ ► It's true. All right. My prediction was that Apple will make an acquisition that's reported to be valued at more than $5 billion.
00:35:48 ◼ ► And for context, the Beats acquisition, which is the biggest one ever was $3 billion. And I was convinced that given all the froth in the AI market that Apple was going to make some kind of acquisitions of something and it would be very expensive and that they were ready to do that. And apparently that's not what happened.
00:36:10 ◼ ► Um, I said, Apple will make another newsroom post about a financial commitment to something involving American manufacturing, just because it seems like they would do that. Right.
00:36:24 ◼ ► And indeed on December 8th, they posted Apple manufacturing Academy launches virtual programming in which they boast about their, their plan to invest $600 billion in the U S economy over the next four years. Do I know Apple or not?
00:36:48 ◼ ► Yeah. So I, I was, I was feeling negative about the chances of the vision pro having any kind of revival. And I said, no new vision pro hardware would ship before the end of the year. And I fell into the same trap that John fell into, um, because they did, they even had a new strap. So, uh, it was, it was a surprise to us all.
00:37:20 ◼ ► All right. So I predicted that Apple will introduce at least one new OS feature based on new hardware that wasn't in the iOS 26 betas.
00:37:39 ◼ ► And this is the, you can hold your phone vertically and get a, get a horizontal, uh, selfie cam shot. And it's, it's very nice. I've got it. Um, it's cool. It's definitely the best selfie camera. Um, I've ever owned. Like it's really good. Um, they always hold that stuff back. It's really funny. Um, they've gotten better. I will say this. They've gotten better at hiding its presence in the betas.
00:38:03 ◼ ► Yes. We used to be able to divine these features and therefore features of the new iPhones from the betas, but they seem to have properly concealed it now.
00:38:12 ◼ ► Yeah. That one was really well hidden. No one, I don't think anybody came up with that in advance.
00:38:16 ◼ ► I don't think so. I mean, that's the beautiful thing about the software side is everything leaks from the supply chain, right? Um, very little leaks from inside Cupertino and it's mostly just Mark Gurman sources. And this was a really interesting one because if you can, if you can hold the software really close, you can still surprise people.
00:38:33 ◼ ► Um, a little bit because they can, they can keep a really tight circle around it and they did with this feature. So good for them. Um, my ridiculous round five pick was that the Mac pro will be updated or an update will be announced. And I am, I have gone 180 on the Mac pro now. I think it's never going to be updated again and it's going to be discontinued, but I I've learned my lesson. I don't get a point here. Ugh. Nope. Nope.
00:39:03 ◼ ► Mac pro. It's just going to be a Mac studio, like sellotaped inside the case. Yeah. That's about it. Um, round six is the bonus pick for James because James knows what we did, I guess. James, what was your pick?
00:39:17 ◼ ► So, um, um, you can tell how like, I don't want to say positive we were on Apple intelligence.
00:39:25 ◼ ► But, uh, I said that Apple would make a significant investment into Anthropic or buy them outright, mirroring Microsoft's investment into open AI.
00:39:37 ◼ ► I mean, cause it seemed like they were just completely failing to do anything. Um, and so the, the way out of that is you spend some money, but they didn't do that. And they continue to not seem to be making much progress, but who knows what's happening behind the scenes.
00:40:00 ◼ ► It got you. It got you. So the final scores, uh, it, it, uh, does me great pleasure to announce, uh, I had four. John had two. James with his extra pick still only finished with one. And that means I am the winner.
00:40:25 ◼ ► After the harrowing events of the autumnal pickies, it has been universally voted that James be stripped of all unconstitutional powers and that additional safeguards be put in place to stop such things ever happening again.
00:40:42 ◼ ► All right. Every year we play three games and predict what will happen at WWDC during the autumnal season and throughout the year.
00:41:15 ◼ ► There shall be no disputes over scoring because we are all inherently honorable people, aside from James, who is questionable at best.
00:41:22 ◼ ► Any future attempts to subvert the competition will result in that person being unable to vote in any of the pickies for a whole calendar year.
00:41:49 ◼ ► So my round pick is that Apple is going to release at least one brand new app, either a system app or something that's available on an app store for any device.
00:42:00 ◼ ► So this what this could include would be something like final cut for the iPad, which is available on a store or it could include something like invites, which is just I think is that one?
00:42:15 ◼ ► Anyway, it could be a system app, one that's available on the app store, or it could even be I said an app store, not the app store.
00:42:29 ◼ ► It's just one new one new app this year that a new app that has not existed before that will either appear as a system app or be available for download somewhere.
00:42:41 ◼ ► I like this pick, John, because it's broad enough that it could happen, but I feel like it also could totally not happen.
00:43:01 ◼ ► Now, knowing my luck, they will introduce an M4 ultra processor, but I'm hoping that like the version numbers, all the numbers will be the same.
00:43:12 ◼ ► I mean, they said that they weren't going to do an ultra in every generation, but if they skipped M4 and did an M5 ultra, that would do it.
00:43:31 ◼ ► I am going to go with a new rumor that just was floated a couple of weeks ago, and I love it.
00:43:37 ◼ ► And it's so hilarious that I'm just going to pick it, which is somehow the iMac Pro returned.
00:43:50 ◼ ► If there's an iMac with a big screen and high-end processors and they just call it a big iMac or something, it's still an iMac.
00:44:00 ◼ ► It's a big one with the Pro-level processors, not the baby processors, like the base iMac.
00:44:05 ◼ ► I will bet you that this is someone who saw a new studio display in a factory somewhere.
00:44:11 ◼ ► I think that may be true, but Gurman seemed fairly confident two years ago that this product...
00:44:19 ◼ ► He's been reporting about this product, the Apple Silicon iMac Pro, for like four years.
00:44:27 ◼ ► It got bumped from M2, and then there was a report that they were seeing testing of a device that seemed like it might be, or, you know, in a binary that they didn't mean to release or whatever, an actual iMac Pro.
00:44:48 ◼ ► And I feel like with Gurman saying they kind of always wanted to do it, maybe this will be the case.
00:44:56 ◼ ► I feel like Apple has made a really great case to, we make displays, we make laptops that you can connect to those displays, and they're very powerful, or you can get a Mac Studio.
00:45:09 ◼ ► I don't see it, but if Gurman's reporting that people inside Apple think it should happen, maybe people inside Apple have a reason for it to happen.
00:45:20 ◼ ► I mean, that Studio display has a processor in it anyway, just slap a Pro processor in it.
00:45:28 ◼ ► At that point, it could just use an A-whatever processor, like the cheap laptop that's being rumored, right?
00:45:38 ◼ ► All right, on to round two, where I predict that Apple opens up its private cloud compute LLM to developers, because right now it's not available.
00:46:01 ◼ ► Yeah, I suspect that this is a capacity thing, that they haven't been able to scale up the server farms and stuff quickly enough to have done that last year.
00:46:11 ◼ ► I was thinking about WeatherKit, right, which is the Dark Sky API rebooted as an Apple thing.
00:46:26 ◼ ► And in a way, that's because it's basically a weather API, and they don't want to give it away for free and all of that.
00:46:32 ◼ ► And I wonder if that could be the model here, that they're going to charge for usage of it as it scales.
00:46:40 ◼ ► Because I actually think that's kind of fair, that you shouldn't, you know, I doubt that Apple wants to make private cloud compute resources available for free.
00:46:53 ◼ ► My pick for round two is that significant changes are made to Liquid Glass in the 27 updates.
00:47:05 ◼ ► Well, having spent the last month and a bit working away on Liquid Glass in my Dice app, there are just so many cases where you can come up with something completely unreadable.
00:47:36 ◼ ► I mean, with some of the stuff, it's like, give developers, like, a control over the amount of blurring that's happening behind the glass and things like that.
00:47:46 ◼ ► Because sometimes, you know, all you need is just, like, you know, 20% more blur, and then it would be completely readable.
00:47:54 ◼ ► So I think the picking the frosted glass or whatever the option is called that turned up in the 26.1 updates, I think we'll get something more.
00:48:08 ◼ ► And, you know, I don't imagine that it's the people are going, oh, well, you know, Alan Dye's left, so everything is going to completely change overnight.
00:48:23 ◼ ► Maybe it's going to be something a little bit like light and dark mode, where there's, like, totally clear and frosted mode.
00:48:38 ◼ ► I think the interesting thing about this pick, James, is that you're putting the definition of significant in our hands.
00:48:46 ◼ ► Yeah, and I feel, as we have stated, that at least two of the three of us are honorable people.
00:48:52 ◼ ► I think we, you know, if it's just completely minor and I'm, like, arguing for some slightly rounded corner or something, then you can just tell me to get lost.
00:49:42 ◼ ► So what I want, what, what I am tempted to say is late spring because they have promised that they're going to ship those features.
00:50:07 ◼ ► Because I feel like it's just too much and they're going to want to roll this, that stuff out.
00:50:11 ◼ ► And they're going to want it to be at least somewhat solidified and maybe even do a little OS revision and then get it out for the holidays.
00:50:37 ◼ ► I think that there's going to be people who, if a feature is not done that the hardware depends on, they're not going to, you know, like roll the dice.
00:50:52 ◼ ► How would you like to be the person whose job is to charge up all of those things that are sitting in a warehouse?
00:50:58 ◼ ► Well, they've got that technology now, that thing where they can, you know, software update phones that are still in the box.
00:51:33 ◼ ► I think, I mean, I think the risk here is that it all just gets rolled into Fitness Plus.
00:51:39 ◼ ► But I could also see some sort of AI health advice type of feature that becomes a separate thing.
00:51:57 ◼ ► I think the question is, yeah, do they recast Fitness Plus and roll that AI coach into it?
00:52:06 ◼ ► Or is it, do they revamp, you know, it and call it something, you know, health plus or whatever?
00:53:07 ◼ ► Could be if that cheap MacBook is not just a recast of the MacBook Air, but is different.
00:53:27 ◼ ► Let's not kick this back to robot or not again with these things about what kind of hoodies
00:53:59 ◼ ► Because I don't think Apple's going to mess up macOS just so that touchscreen MacBook Pros
00:54:42 ◼ ► And that some of the features that were demoed in 2024 at WWDC will not be out by WWDC 2026.
00:54:51 ◼ ► So in terms of scoring, what I'm thinking is we need to be able to recreate those demos that
00:54:57 ◼ ► Craig Federighi did, like when he went to pick up his mom at the airport and figure out whether
00:55:02 ◼ ► there was what the trap when he had to leave the restaurant to go to the airport, that kind
00:55:23 ◼ ► And it's going to overlap too, because I fully expect by June that we will start seeing new
00:55:34 ◼ ► I think that they'll, they'll do more, but I also think that some of this stuff is not going
00:55:49 ◼ ► I've gone for Apple is going to blame the European commission for something in a press release
00:55:55 ◼ ► because Apple loves to say how the European commission is just making their, making everything
00:56:08 ◼ ► So basically a news, something on newsroom that blames the European commission for something.
00:56:12 ◼ ► Now this is specifically a, a post on newsroom, which will say we couldn't do this because
00:56:44 ◼ ► But they'd very rarely say in the press releases that, yeah, you're not getting this thing
00:56:54 ◼ ► And sometimes they make those statements that are, that are the newsroom posts that is, is
00:56:58 ◼ ► like thoughts on flash kind of newsroom posts where they're like, this is anti-competitive
00:57:20 ◼ ► We will be able to say on next year's episode that Siri is better and not collapse in rueful
00:57:33 ◼ ► I'm just saying if we agree that a year later, Siri has gotten better and we'll know it, we
00:57:46 ◼ ► I mean, just because they release the new version does not necessarily mean it's better.
00:57:52 ◼ ► If they release a new version and it says something wildly inappropriate to someone and that makes
00:58:02 ◼ ► But in day-to-day use, if it turns out that actually Siri is way better and we're using
00:58:13 ◼ ► I think we'll, yeah, I think we'll know because I can tell you right now, looking at it today,
00:58:25 ◼ ► If Siri just doesn't say, I can look that up for you on your phone or something like that,
00:58:38 ◼ ► We are going into the final round, round five, and I want to put together a string of conditions
00:58:50 ◼ ► So I predict that Apple will release a new studio display that's going to have Thunderbolt 5.
00:58:56 ◼ ► It's going to have a brighter 120 hertz refresh rate, and it's going to be OLED, which I think
00:59:22 ◼ ► Look, you can get a really good display that has all of those things for less than a studio
00:59:45 ◼ ► I thought Apple really, really, really needs to re-engineer the external monitor mode on
01:00:02 ◼ ► like for a company that's supposedly supportive of environmental issues, forcing people once
01:00:15 ◼ ► And forcing, you know, you get an iMac or especially that huge iMac Pro screen, and you
01:00:26 ◼ ► I understand why it didn't happen in the early days, but like, we can do this now with Thunderbolt
01:00:34 ◼ ► I actually just abandoned my studio display for a 32-inch OLED screen from Asus because
01:00:46 ◼ ► I just, I wish they would, even if it's just Thunderbolt and there's a mode you can put
01:00:51 ◼ ► the display, the iMac in and it turns it into a Thunderbolt display, that would be fine, but
01:00:59 ◼ ► It's, it's just, it's a real shame that they don't because it, they're wasting those displays
01:01:05 ◼ ► You know, your iMac gets a little old, you buy a Mac studio, you plug it into the back of
01:01:17 ◼ ► No, even the studio display, it has this problem to a degree because you can't just plug a Windows
01:01:23 ◼ ► I will say that, um, I tried that Samsung display that is the equivalent and like, I didn't like
01:02:02 ◼ ► But I think this might be the year that we get at least, you know, he, he might not, he
01:02:10 ◼ ► might not retire or he might not change his position next year, but I think we're going
01:02:35 ◼ ► I'm going to do a little more targeted version of James's pick for my pick, which is I, I
01:02:42 ◼ ► And so I'm going to predict that in addition to remaining as CEO throughout this year, well,
01:02:50 ◼ ► let's not say that he might stop being CEO at some point in 26, but before that, there will
01:03:09 ◼ ► I don't want to, I don't want to predict that because he might very well not be CEO at the
01:03:13 ◼ ► end of the year, but I do think they're going to do this thing where they're going to elevate
01:03:25 ◼ ► So like, I, I like that idea cause it keeps him around, but, um, and, and the CEO is allowed
01:03:30 ◼ ► in the board guidelines to be the chairman of the board and the current board chair has
01:03:43 ◼ ► And then he passed away so quickly that, um, it didn't really happen, but like that was
01:03:48 ◼ ► the whole idea of the Steve jobs leadership transition was going to be, he's going to be