00:00:00 ◼ ► from relay this is upgrade episode 604 for february 23rd 2026 today's show is brought to you by delete me claude insta360 and the pets table my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how are you very good thank you i have a snow talk question for you uh this one comes
00:00:29 ◼ ► in from jim who wants to know jason when you're making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich do you put
00:00:34 ◼ ► the jelly on the peanut butter slice or on the bare bread slice wow i this is a perennial question i feel
00:00:42 ◼ ► like i've talked about this before none of that matters of snell talks they'll always all come
00:00:46 ◼ ► around again people want to want to know uh for some reason what my opinion of this is and i do like a
00:00:53 ◼ ► peanut butter and jelly sandwich it's one of my favorites and i feel like jim has made the classic
00:00:59 ◼ ► error the classic logical error which is making assumptions about what all the options are for
00:01:05 ◼ ► making a peanut butter sandwich and he's gotten it wrong he's really let himself down here now while
00:01:10 ◼ ► i don't have peanut butter and jelly i do sometimes have like i'll have a jam you know maybe i have jam on
00:01:16 ◼ ► toast or something and i will follow the same thing that you're about to say that you do i'm sure that's
00:01:21 ◼ ► right because we should be clear mike has a nut allergy yeah peanut i could have a peanut butter and
00:01:27 ◼ ► jelly sandwich but it may be the last sandwich uh the last so it'd be a good one that'd be a good
00:01:32 ◼ ► one i don't know i don't know so here's the answer jim um how you make a peanut butter and jelly
00:01:39 ◼ ► sandwich is you take the peanut butter and you put a layer of peanut butter on one slice of bread and
00:01:44 ◼ ► then you put a layer of peanut butter on the other slice of bread adjust according to how much peanut
00:01:50 ◼ ► butter you want and then you put the jelly on one or the other of those slices or both i guess
00:01:56 ◼ ► whatever it doesn't matter they're going together again yeah why do you do this the answer is the
00:02:00 ◼ ► peanut butter seals the gooey jelly and prevents it from getting the bread wet so you put the jelly in
00:02:06 ◼ ► the middle in a pocket surrounded by waterproof peanut butter and then you have a good peanut butter and
00:02:14 ◼ ► jelly sandwich that will that will survive for um you can put that in a in a in a bag and take it to
00:02:20 ◼ ► school and have it for your school lunch as i did for many many many lunches over the years and it won't
00:02:25 ◼ ► get soggy because the the jelly is stuck in between the peanut butter layers and won't go won't go through
00:02:31 ◼ ► so as previously stated obviously i don't have a lot of firsthand peanut butter experience so are you
00:02:38 ◼ ► telling me that peanut butter is waterproof that was not a thing that i knew i mean even rocks aren't
00:02:44 ◼ ► truly waterproof water resistant but what i'm saying is they the the peanut butter the the jelly can't
00:02:49 ◼ ► get through the peanut butter right the the peanut butter forms a seal and the jelly can't get through
00:02:55 ◼ ► so no matter how much jelly you want to use i mean too much it's going to go out the sides right but
00:03:00 ◼ ► like it it is this is the way you make a peanut butter sandwich is you put peanut butter on either
00:03:04 ◼ ► side and then the jelly goes in the middle and then uh the jelly doesn't escape except out the sides but
00:03:09 ◼ ► it doesn't it doesn't get the bread because what what you don't want is to open up your your lunch sack
00:03:15 ◼ ► and find that you've got this weird uh purple uh wet bread goo because the jelly has been absorbed by the
00:03:23 ◼ ► bread you don't want that no good yeah for me this is like similar to the um you know like the scones
00:03:31 ◼ ► technique you know of clotted cream and jam you don't just put on one side you put both clotted
00:03:37 ◼ ► cream and jam on both halves i mean you do then eat them separately but nevertheless i don't know why
00:03:42 ◼ ► you would restrict yourself to to just putting the one on each side of the bread so i'm pleased we're able
00:03:47 ◼ ► to clear that out for jim if you have a snow talk question that you would like to send in for us to
00:03:51 ◼ ► open a future episode of the show just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your snow talk
00:03:56 ◼ ► so today's episode is pretty much entirely us covering the 2025 six colors apple report card
00:04:06 ◼ ► we'll get to that in a little bit but before we do kind of the thing that's like looming in the air
00:04:11 ◼ ► uh is the apple experience which is happening next week uh experience as a reminder this is going to be
00:04:18 ◼ ► happening uh simultaneously in three locations around the world shanghai london and new york jason is going
00:04:25 ◼ ► to be i mean i hope in new york i will be in new york my understanding is the weather in new york
00:04:32 ◼ ► right now is intense but maybe that uh hopefully that will have cleared up it's far away from now
00:04:37 ◼ ► isn't it it's not that it's not next it's wednesday yeah so i yes i hope that it will be okay for me to
00:04:42 ◼ ► travel on wednesday or on tuesday next week not this week not this week um but there's been a little
00:04:49 ◼ ► some piece of information and some speculation uh about the event since we spoke last so in his power
00:04:54 ◼ ► on newsletter mark german reports that apple is planning a quote three day flurry of announcements
00:05:00 ◼ ► with things kicking off on monday of next week and ending with whatever is happening on wednesday
00:05:05 ◼ ► at the experience event mark says there will be at least five products announced over the week
00:05:11 ◼ ► uh my personal bet on this is that the wednesday item is the big deal item probably the macbook
00:05:18 ◼ ► and that there will be a video of some kind that debuts at the event because this is the thing of
00:05:24 ◼ ► like oh people saying oh mark says it's going to be a press release week and we've seen these before
00:05:28 ◼ ► right like apple rolls out press releases over a course of many days etc but there's not usually like
00:05:33 ◼ ► an experience event but my thing is these the three events happening around the world are all starting
00:05:39 ◼ ► at the same time including which i keep bringing up which i think is hilarious the one in shanghai begins
00:05:43 ◼ ► at 10 p.m which is just like an incredible time to have a president uh everyone will be very tired and
00:05:49 ◼ ► full of dinner i guess um yeah so my expectation is that they they wanted this one for a reason because
00:05:58 ◼ ► they could have just done it on thursday if they just needed the press releases all to go out it feels
00:06:03 ◼ ► to me like what this is is i i mean and again i i don't know i got an invitation to show up put my
00:06:12 ◼ ► put my body in new york city on wednesday but um my my guess is uh iphone 17e on monday new ipads on
00:06:30 ◼ ► and those are three things that we think they're going to announce so that's my guess it could be
00:06:36 ◼ ► it could be reversed it could be new ipads on monday and and but but my guess is it's going to be
00:06:42 ◼ ► kind of like that rolling thunder kind of thing and then uh so where they'll have like phone and then
00:06:47 ◼ ► ipad and then mac and that'll be the three-day flurry that kerman is suspecting interesting because
00:06:52 ◼ ► we're also expecting macbook pro yeah would you imagine they would do that on the same day they
00:06:58 ◼ ► wouldn't say do like macbook pro and ipad on on one day i don't think so i mean if this is what i'm
00:07:04 ◼ ► saying is is i expect that if there are macs they're not going to do macbook pro and ipad one day and
00:07:10 ◼ ► macbook air and macbook on another day okay i just to me also logistically like there's mac pr and
00:07:17 ◼ ► there's iphone pr and there are different parts of the company right i just feel like they're going to
00:07:21 ◼ ► tell the mac story and and and when they tell the mac story they'll say yeah yeah i mean also because
00:07:26 ◼ ► the the m5 um macbook pro will be nice but it's just a chip bump uh but and then the macbook air also just
00:07:34 ◼ ► a chip bump and then there's going to be that probably the wild new macbook um that will be uh less
00:07:41 ◼ ► probably in some ways less compelling in terms of sales than the other products that get announced but
00:07:48 ◼ ► it's the most interesting in terms of being entirely new and a new approach for apple so um
00:07:54 ◼ ► my guess is that they would all go at once and that would be a big mac bonanza uh but who knows i mean
00:07:59 ◼ ► that's just a guess that's just my guess is that they they'll roll it out like that they could do a
00:08:03 ◼ ► mac a day if they wanted to but i just i just kind of can't see it yeah no okay it's gonna be interesting
00:08:10 ◼ ► to see what they what they do i wonder if like in a different timeline you know if apple intelligence
00:08:16 ◼ ► sort of shipped when it was supposed to if this would have been a whole event and it also would
00:08:19 ◼ ► have included some home products or something um because it seems like they've got so much going on
00:08:25 ◼ ► but for whatever reason not enough that they feel is event worthy uh which you know if it is the list
00:08:31 ◼ ► of stuff that they have i kind of agree with the way they're doing it i mean i've gone to new york
00:08:35 ◼ ► before and it's been like an ipad and a macbook pro right like i've done that multiple times i've been
00:08:40 ◼ ► to new york for new macbook pros multiple times now yeah i think three times at least so i i feel like
00:08:48 ◼ ► this is just their usual at this point um and and you know the details matter like i assume that that
00:08:56 ◼ ► we're going to get there at for this experience at 9 a.m and they will have already made or or they will
00:09:02 ◼ ► will be making that announcement and i don't know the details i don't know if we're going to get briefed
00:09:06 ◼ ► before about it or if i'm going to have to like text dan and say can you cover this because i'm in the
00:09:11 ◼ ► middle of an apple experience right now you know i don't it once we once we hear i don't know how they're
00:09:15 ◼ ► going to handle it logistically from a press standpoint but um but you know them rolling out
00:09:20 ◼ ► a product a day for a few days is a trick they like to pull sometimes they've done that fairly
00:09:25 ◼ ► recently so um i don't know i'm looking forward to seeing it you know my my best guess i know i said
00:09:31 ◼ ► this last week is that the experience itself is going to be a way for press and influencers and all of that
00:09:37 ◼ ► to be told apple's story about all of these products with demos and this is the for those who don't know
00:09:43 ◼ ► like when they did final cut camera um a few years ago on the ipad pro they had a studio setup
00:09:50 ◼ ► with iphones running final cut camera and an ipad running final cut pro and they and with a and they
00:09:57 ◼ ► showed us what the person on the ipad was doing to adjust the iphones and to record and what came out
00:10:04 ◼ ► and then we went into another place where there was like a macbook pro and there was a it was a an audio
00:10:09 ◼ ► studio and they were showing us logic or something like that right like they have these um hands-on areas
00:10:18 ◼ ► where you can say i touched the product i looked at it but they also do the storytelling part of it
00:10:21 ◼ ► and then remember again these products probably won't come out for another week right that's usually
00:10:26 ◼ ► how they do it they they take about a week to load it into stores and that's the week where you'll get
00:10:30 ◼ ► the embargoed reviews right before the the products go on sale so it'll be interesting to see the details
00:10:36 ◼ ► but like in the end what we're going to get is we're going to get some new apple stuff next week
00:10:43 ◼ ► analogous to this set of products um and it would have been the march 2022 apple event which was the
00:10:50 ◼ ► last time they did a march event and the reason i was thinking about this is this is when they
00:10:55 ◼ ► introduced the mac studio like that was like the brand new thing um and it's just it's just interesting
00:11:00 ◼ ► to me that like what it's not that it does say anything but i it's just interesting about you know
00:11:05 ◼ ► they're introducing potentially introducing a new mac uh next week and like that event by the way was
00:11:11 ◼ ► a new iphone se with 5g green color for the iphone 13 pro ipad air with m1 and the mac studio and studio
00:11:21 ◼ ► display and it's just yeah so it's just interesting like i'm not saying anything about it but it's like
00:11:26 ◼ ► that was the last time they introduced like a brand new mac and it was also in a march event and it kind
00:11:31 ◼ ► of headlined that event so peak performance was the name of that one uh john gruber is very keen on the
00:11:38 ◼ ► idea that apple could use this time to do something related to f1 especially with the vision pro uh the
00:11:45 ◼ ► f1 season begins in a couple of weeks it's actually that week so sunday the 8th is going to be the
00:11:51 ◼ ► australian grand prix which is the first grand prix uh in the apple tv era um john has been talking
00:11:58 ◼ ► about it on daring fireball and on his podcasts and stuff about the potential for some kind of
00:12:03 ◼ ► immersive experience for the vision pro and if they were to do that uh they could show it in some so they
00:12:09 ◼ ► could show something an example of it at least to media in advance uh i just wanted to talk about this
00:12:14 ◼ ► because i'm i don't i'm not sure about that i don't i don't know if we'll have anything uh that's
00:12:19 ◼ ► immersive for uh f1 yeah i mean anything is possible anything's possible and having people
00:12:26 ◼ ► an experience like that i mean because you're going to need people to put on their vision pro and stuff
00:12:30 ◼ ► like that i mean i i i'm i doubt it but i i think it's possible i want to use this though to say
00:12:36 ◼ ► something about what i expect apple's f1 strategy for vision pro to be which is i don't expect it to
00:12:41 ◼ ► be immersive video i expect it to be an immersive experience where you've got like that app that
00:12:48 ◼ ► tried to do this for a little while and then disappeared it's going to be you can put up whatever
00:12:52 ◼ ► uh cameras you want and have like a whole bunch of cameras visible in your field of view in the vision
00:12:57 ◼ ► pro and maybe a um a model of the course that's showing a 3d model of where the cars are on the
00:13:05 ◼ ► course um and so so like an immersive dashboard full of content from f1 not what i think a lot of people
00:13:15 ◼ ► keep thinking is going to be what apple does which is put you on a car immersively yeah not only is
00:13:21 ◼ ► that almost impossible technically but uh it would make you sick and it would be boring after a while
00:13:27 ◼ ► and also they're just these cameras would just be too heavy it would mess up the races like these are
00:13:32 ◼ ► these are precision machines it's impossible technically to do it um and they i mean generally
00:13:38 ◼ ► with racing i remember when they did this with indycar that um eventually what happens is the car
00:13:43 ◼ ► spec includes a camera right yep and then everybody has a camera in the same place and it's just part of
00:13:49 ◼ ► the spec but that's how it works is literally the design of the car has to include the camera for it to
00:13:56 ◼ ► work this way and they just did a new design but i don't think there's an immersive camera at the back
00:14:00 ◼ ► of it right so uh and and you don't want it i mean you don't want to see that so they might do that uh
00:14:06 ◼ ► given the sort of pace of apple and this stuff i feel like apple's big like let's try something
00:14:12 ◼ ► interesting technically tends to come at the end of their season and not at the beginning
00:14:15 ◼ ► yeah um so i i wouldn't be surprised if toward the end of the season or at some marquee race
00:14:21 ◼ ► during the season they announce that they've got a new vision pro experience um i'm not sure also
00:14:28 ◼ ► just practically that apple wants to waste their time on a major product launch event on vision pro
00:14:34 ◼ ► sorry yeah vision pro so this also is just a moment where i wanted to just uh reflect a little bit on
00:14:40 ◼ ► formula one on apple tv because i think we're getting very close to the first race now with
00:14:45 ◼ ► very little specific information about how things are going to be working so yeah the the apple tv app
00:14:52 ◼ ► now i understand has a formula one tab and it has all the races listed in it so you can add them to
00:14:57 ◼ ► your watch list and it has a bunch of educational content which is i expect coming from f1 tv
00:15:02 ◼ ► now mike you you know you know how it is that they started like pushing mls content everywhere yeah
00:15:07 ◼ ► it's like that okay there's just like f1 like you see f1 and there's an f1 row in the in the main view
00:15:15 ◼ ► and they want to show you that there's an f1 thing like it's a lot there's a lot going on
00:15:19 ◼ ► oh interestingly they have a lot of sky sports content in there so that is fascinating to me
00:15:25 ◼ ► zoe just posted a thing that says sky sports which means mike may still be right about who's going to
00:15:32 ◼ ► be doing but we still do not know and i've been doing furious googling for this to try and find out
00:15:37 ◼ ► who are the default announcers and and at the moment it just seems like everybody has opinions now
00:15:42 ◼ ► what zoe is saying is that there may be two feeds so you may be able to choose which i think is great
00:15:48 ◼ ► between sky sports and f1 but that will be fascinating to me because it will do the weird thing
00:15:53 ◼ ► if they do that which is you will be able to watch the f1 races on apple tv and they will talk about
00:16:01 ◼ ► the things you can do as a sky sports customer and recommend of additional sky sports content which
00:16:06 ◼ ► they do during the the race that was always the thing when you watched it on espn you would still
00:16:10 ◼ ► be hearing the sky sports stuff and that's why it won't be the default it won't be the default but
00:16:14 ◼ ► i'm pleased that they will offer it because some people do prefer the british announcers because that's
00:16:21 ◼ ► who they're used to hearing because that's who they're used to yeah so that's cool that they're
00:16:25 ◼ ► going to have that potentially but i'm keen to see how it will be but the fact that it's labeled
00:16:29 ◼ ► currently as events and then events colon sky sports seems to indicate what the default will be but
00:16:35 ◼ ► nevertheless i feel like there is still so much that has not that we don't know that we don't know
00:16:41 ◼ ► the one thing they have announced is that a selection of races will be shown live in imax
00:16:47 ◼ ► theaters throughout the year love it great um hilariously as i found that like just googling
00:16:54 ◼ ► around about this is trying to find like what does this mean because i don't think what it means is
00:16:58 ◼ ► they're using any imax cameras to shoot races like i can't of course find anything about that um
00:17:04 ◼ ► but some of the races that they've chosen are some of the european races which would mean
00:17:09 ◼ ► in pacific time these are at like six in the morning i'm not sure i'll be surprised if the
00:17:15 ◼ ► theater is open uh for those because they will be live um potentially this is where a vision pro
00:17:21 ◼ ► element could come in if they were doing anything technically impressive for this content but if that
00:17:27 ◼ ► was the case i would also have imagined them to announce that alongside this announcement that apple
00:17:32 ◼ ► have made this is like an apple announcement they're partnering with imax um to show these races so
00:17:38 ◼ ► yeah i'm intrigued to see i would maybe we're gonna hear something in the next week um but currently
00:17:44 ◼ ► there is not a lot of information about what the first race is going to look like on apple tv
00:17:49 ◼ ► yeah um so i can say from mls that i i got a couple of mls briefings yeah that were like the week before
00:17:57 ◼ ► the season started where they had their sports people talking about what they were going to do and we got
00:18:03 ◼ ► to ask questions and i got to ask my question about are you doing anything in 4k and the answer is no
00:18:09 ◼ ► which always was very disappointing to me um we'll see if you know maybe they will do that whether it's
00:18:15 ◼ ► with me or not maybe they will do some of that i feel like and i could be wrong about this but i feel
00:18:21 ◼ ► like apple pr knows that i do sports that makes any sense like when i got called to talk to eddie
00:18:31 ◼ ► i was by no means the only person who got to talk to eddie about the sports app but i got the sense
00:18:36 ◼ ► that one of the reasons i got invited is because i get sports yeah you're a sports guy yeah yeah and
00:18:44 ◼ ► so and i also have gotten those mls briefings so so maybe um and i've i've watched an f1 race sitting
00:18:52 ◼ ► on the couch right next to my good friend mike the expert will call me oh that's not that's such a happy
00:18:57 ◼ ► memory i have time that was a really that was a good time yeah that was the baby was asleep for much
00:19:03 ◼ ► of it most of it i would say the vast majority she she was pretty good yes you're uh by the way
00:19:07 ◼ ► happy birthday to your daughter thank you so much thank you so much i kept thinking back it i know
00:19:13 ◼ ► it's like a blur to you yeah i kept thinking back to the fact that you were on leave for all that time
00:19:17 ◼ ► and honestly it's like a blur to me i'm like wow i did whatever six eight episodes of upgrade without
00:19:23 ◼ ► mike um in a row that was wild uh but now it's just all receded into the past and it's like it didn't
00:19:29 ◼ ► even happen and there's uh and there's sophia it's great yep she is one year old that was yesterday
00:19:34 ◼ ► anyway so uh all of this to say our plan for the draft hasn't changed so we're going to be drafting
00:19:43 ◼ ► on monday it's possible that some of our picks will be unavailable to us if they do a press release before
00:19:53 ◼ ► we record yeah this is this is how it's going to work we're going to make a list of the things that
00:19:57 ◼ ► are possible and everything that gets announced monday morning before we record is ineligible
00:20:01 ◼ ► yeah that's it and so then we'll just do the draft and obviously we'll be it was always going to be a
00:20:06 ◼ ► smaller draft anyway um and this may make it even smaller than that we'll find out but we are still
00:20:12 ◼ ► going to be drafting on monday um and we'll do kind of a slightly adapted uh rule set which you've done
00:20:19 ◼ ► before so you know it will be within the seven day window anything that happens uh will be counted
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00:22:36 ◼ ► so it is time to dig into the six colors report card for 2025 jason what is the six colors report card
00:22:48 ◼ ► uh so it is a survey of people i know and people they know uh who have like opinions who pay i think what
00:22:57 ◼ ► i refer to them as is apple watchers people who spend time thinking about apple writers editors developers
00:23:04 ◼ ► podcasters and others and i've been doing this uh for 11 years hard believe uh it was a recommendation uh
00:23:15 ◼ ► coven made to me two months into doing six colors he's like i have an idea for a thing and maybe you
00:23:22 ◼ ► could do it and i did it and i still do it um and the idea is to get sentiment it is it is a sense of
00:23:28 ◼ ► sentiment about what people are thinking i call it in my true california style i call it the vibe in the
00:23:34 ◼ ► it is it is not meant to surprise you it's meant to reflect what you've been sensing whether you agree
00:23:43 ◼ ► or not from podcasters writers developers other people on the internet on social media who are big
00:23:50 ◼ ► like kind of apple focused people um what they've been feeling the last year or about and especially
00:23:56 ◼ ► about the last year because i asked these questions in january um it's a little later this year to post
00:24:02 ◼ ► mostly because of some other things that we will that i i got knocked back like two or three weeks
00:24:08 ◼ ► for other stuff that i'll talk about it in another time exciting stuff really exciting stuff tbd we'll
00:24:14 ◼ ► talk about that soon um lots of things going on uh a lot of surprising things in my inbox this last
00:24:22 ◼ ► month let's just put it that way and we'll get back to that as those things happen but um so uh but it's
00:24:28 ◼ ► out now and uh and so they were asked about 14 different subjects and asked to rate them on the
00:24:34 ◼ ► scale from one which is worse to five which is best and then also optionally provide text commentary which
00:24:39 ◼ ► every year they seem to provide about 32 000 words of text commentary which i also post to the website so
00:24:44 ◼ ► the idea here is basically how are people feeling about apple and its platforms in a bunch of different
00:24:49 ◼ ► categories and um to say it up front a lot of people say i really wish you could have this category
00:24:55 ◼ ► broken in two or three and you know let me talk about the mac software and hardware separately because
00:25:01 ◼ ► i have this year it's like i have very positive feelings about mac hardware and negative feelings
00:25:04 ◼ ► about mac software and my response is first off i don't want it to be a 30 point survey i think it's
00:25:09 ◼ ► hard to read i think there are too many categories as it is but i've had to add some because apple's kind
00:25:14 ◼ ► of expanse of products and its reach has changed and grown so i've had to expand that a little bit
00:25:21 ◼ ► but the other part is i kind of like the idea of making people pick an overall score about a platform
00:25:26 ◼ ► like yeah you can separate mac hardware and mac software but that's not what i'm asking i'm asking
00:25:31 ◼ ► how the mac is doing and you need to decide how the mac is doing considering all of the things that
00:25:38 ◼ ► happened and the iphone and the ipad etc so there are a bunch of platform questions and then there
00:25:44 ◼ ► are a bunch of kind of uh other category apple questions that go into the mix and um and i don't
00:25:50 ◼ ► vote in the survey i just uh calculate i use my spreadsheet i calculate results i make some charts
00:25:56 ◼ ► i pull some quotes and then we've got a story but i i make you give your results here this is why i love
00:26:06 ◼ ► yes this is part of part of this game is that i will have not even decided what i would have voted
00:26:11 ◼ ► in any of these categories and mike will just say what's your score and i have to make something up
00:26:15 ◼ ► because i mean that's i mean that is the experience for me i don't know if it's the experience for most
00:26:20 ◼ ► people that vote i vote in the survey every year i'm honored to be uh asked i just go through it and
00:26:27 ◼ ► just start scoring and then just write about how i feel so it's very vibes focused for me i think there's
00:26:32 ◼ ► probably a lot of people that have very different approaches maybe more scientific than others like
00:26:38 ◼ ► so what i do is i put my vote in and then i save um it's like a google form and i just save a pdf of
00:26:45 ◼ ► it and then i reflected on it today and when i was going back over it today i realized that like
00:26:49 ◼ ► some of my stuff i'm not sure is weighted correctly against each other and we'll kind of get to that
00:26:54 ◼ ► later on but it's how i feel about each item and the situation is that basically it is hard to compare
00:27:02 ◼ ► say the iphone to world impact i feel like right and so like the weighting of it can be a bit funny
00:27:09 ◼ ► sometimes so we'll talk about that as we go and i'd say the idea too because i i do sometimes get
00:27:15 ◼ ► comments about it less now than maybe in the earlier days of like the question of like it's not meant
00:27:20 ◼ ► to be scientific right like the part of the part of this is that there are going to be extreme opinions
00:27:25 ◼ ► and also in some of these categories it's how you define it yeah and i don't tell them how to define
00:27:33 ◼ ► it i i give a very broad like tell tell me and we'll go through the categories and i'll say when when
00:27:39 ◼ ► i give them this but like the last one that we'll talk about world impact uh which used to be social
00:27:44 ◼ ► and environmental impact like it's what you want it to be that's part of the test part of the test is
00:27:50 ◼ ► how do you view this and then how do you think they did and your personal priorities of the 56 people
00:27:56 ◼ ► who answered the survey are what come out and then it gets averaged and and the outliers are in there
00:28:02 ◼ ► but they're they're going to get pushed down by the average but there's going to be a trend
00:28:05 ◼ ► and that that's that's what i'm trying to get here is i'm not uh trying to prove anything people
00:28:10 ◼ ► who are angry about a particular category will be like what are you trying to and it's like i'm
00:28:14 ◼ ► really not i'm really just trying to the only thing i'm trying to prove is this seems to be a trend where
00:28:19 ◼ ► people are happy or unhappy about x and that's it that's all i'm trying to do is like how do we
00:28:24 ◼ ► understand generally how people felt about apple in 2025 yeah how the year went sometimes it is almost
00:28:32 ◼ ► like a rorschach test on a five point scale which is a hilarious thing to do but it is that like you
00:28:38 ◼ ► you can see it i feel like i can see it in some of these results which we will get to very in just a
00:28:43 ◼ ► moment where i feel like some categories have taken huge hits yeah where i'm not sure that they needed
00:28:50 ◼ ► some people very comfy yeah so he was angry that day yeah let's start with a mac so the overall panel
00:28:58 ◼ ► of uh uh judge it no participants panelists panelists the panelists they voted this remember this is a
00:29:06 ◼ ► five point scale 3.5 which is down from 4.2 year over year yeah the overall sentiment is that mac
00:29:15 ◼ ► hardware is still great but tahoe is the biggest issue uh with half-baked visuals and usability issues
00:29:22 ◼ ► that come from liquid glass redesign apple silicon is still great but the offering has now become
00:29:29 ◼ ► complex i'm assuming this is mostly referencing say like the m3 making a return yeah i think i think
00:29:36 ◼ ► that that's exactly what it is is is um the hardware was great people really hate tahoe um some people
00:29:44 ◼ ► really hate tahoe um the uh apple silicon is still great and then yes people were like well
00:29:51 ◼ ► this is also the year that they came out with an m3 ultra like what while there was an m4 and then
00:29:59 ◼ ► there was an m5 and the idea of like i feeling i mean some people don't care and some people are like
00:30:05 ◼ ► it feels a little messy and fair enough the these this is the range of opinions about this i the only
00:30:11 ◼ ► other thing i would say here is that apple silicon vaulted this max score up in 2020 to a record high
00:30:17 ◼ ► level of a 4.7 average out of average out of five like that's everybody voted five on that right like
00:30:25 ◼ ► that's like amazing it has come all the way back down gradually sliding over time to now down at 3.5
00:30:31 ◼ ► which is basically where it was before apple silicon was announced um not the trough of sort of the the
00:30:38 ◼ ► butterfly keyboard era but um but not great and i think it's giving back isn't it 20 because it's now
00:30:44 ◼ ► in between the 2018 to 2019 range which is butterfly keyboard time well i i feel like 2016 at 2.6 and
00:30:53 ◼ ► 2017 at 2.9 like it was real bad in the in the that was when it's at its worst last half and and it has
00:31:01 ◼ ► not gone down to those numbers but it has given back all of the good feeling of apple silicon yeah and i
00:31:07 ◼ ► think that again i would say that is almost entirely due to people's feelings about tahoe and this is what
00:31:13 ◼ ► i was just referencing i think this is one of the categories which i think has been hit way harder
00:31:17 ◼ ► from my perspective than it should have been i don't think that like so we've had it's been 4.2
00:31:24 ◼ ► in 22 23 24 i would not say that tahoe is that bad that it takes it back to the pre-apple silicon
00:31:33 ◼ ► somewhat doldrums of the mac where everything else is as good if not better than it has been for the last
00:31:40 ◼ ► multiple years like all the hardware stuff it's like okay some things in tahoe don't look as good as
00:31:47 ◼ ► they used to like that is from my perspective essentially what we're dealing with like i
00:31:51 ◼ ► don't i think the usability issues that are evident in 26 they are not problems that i ever encounter on
00:32:00 ◼ ► the mac so my score was a four so my comments were that basically 2025 wasn't a particularly exciting year
00:32:08 ◼ ► for the mac um like i think this year will be fantastically exciting with what could be coming this
00:32:14 ◼ ► year but the but for me the project the product line is on a continued excellent trajectory to the
00:32:20 ◼ ► point that i would struggle to knock it from and you know it can't be a five but for me for it to be
00:32:26 ◼ ► lower than a four is kind of inconceivable yeah i get it where are you at well mike the question now
00:32:34 ◼ ► is am i gonna be a rascal am i gonna am i gonna gonna be a rascal and generate content or am i
00:32:41 ◼ ► gonna be reasonable be a rascal jason be a rascal okay five yeah i agree with you i love it five five so
00:32:50 ◼ ► here's here's the thing and look everybody gets to have their opinion enjoy it i appreciate it there's
00:32:55 ◼ ► some really great comments in there i think the hubbub about tahoe is completely overblown
00:33:05 ◼ ► my biggest complaint about tahoe and liquid glass is that they basically it's an afterthought and as a result
00:33:13 ◼ ► i think it's actually the least bad of all of them there are a bunch of people who said it was the most bad
00:33:18 ◼ ► i don't agree at all i think it's the least bad of all of them not because it's well done it's not
00:33:23 ◼ ► well done it's because they did very little because they don't care about the mac and it was an afterthought
00:33:28 ◼ ► and i think it was actually a blessing that liquid glass was an afterthought on the mac because we dodged
00:33:33 ◼ ► a bullet there there's stuff that's not great most of it is not a big deal i've been using tahoe since
00:33:39 ◼ ► the developer beta 2 i think and it's fine the people it's just i just get a sense again i'm not trying
00:33:47 ◼ ► to run anybody down but i do get a sense that people are just looking for things to complain
00:33:50 ◼ ► about a lot of the time and i get a sense of like oh i touched something and it was slimy and it's like
00:33:56 ◼ ► well wipe your hand off and move on with your life like i just i find it entirely usable
00:34:01 ◼ ► even though some of the decisions are bad and they shouldn't have made them i could say the same thing
00:34:07 ◼ ► about the decisions they've made about like the settings app and stuff like that there's things that
00:34:11 ◼ ► apple has done in terms of the design of the mac that are bad does it merit people avoiding
00:34:16 ◼ ► tahoe i would say no and i would say no partially because tahoe has the most productivity features
00:34:22 ◼ ► of a new mac os in like 10 years spotlight and they're good spotlight is so good the the spotlight
00:34:28 ◼ ► stuff the clipboard history the the automation triggers on the mac like there's so much good
00:34:34 ◼ ► stuff there so like you don't have to like liquid glass i don't like it i think that what they did was
00:34:39 ◼ ► kind of half-hearted i think that's good for the mac uh also you just get used to it and it's not that
00:34:44 ◼ ► big a deal is it going in the wrong direction sure does it impact my day-to-day use of my mac
00:34:49 ◼ ► not even a little so yeah if you're somebody who's like well i can't bear to update and get all these
00:34:55 ◼ ► new features of tahoe because if i click a drop down menu there will be confusing icons there and i'm
00:35:00 ◼ ► opposed to them it's like i don't like them they're bad but like i just ignore them i just don't i just
00:35:09 ◼ ► don't care so that's my salty five which is love it oh i love it which is just i just don't and then
00:35:15 ◼ ► the hardware is so good and again if you're really upset and you're downgrading them because they did
00:35:21 ◼ ► an m3 ultra instead of an m4 ultra like i don't know what to tell you the m3 ultra was incredibly
00:35:26 ◼ ► impressive for people who wanted it i don't know what's going on with the mac pro but nor do i care
00:35:31 ◼ ► it just feels like it's a dead product at this point and uh and and the m5 was amazing and had
00:35:36 ◼ ► all that ai stuff in it that that means that local ai on apple products is now like incredibly powerful
00:35:42 ◼ ► so like i don't know i just yes if i was a little more measured i might say four for those reasons but
00:35:49 ◼ ► if i'm going to be a little salty i'm going to say five because i think that a lot of the reasons that
00:35:52 ◼ ► people are knocking down the mac this year i just don't agree that's why i'm not allowed to vote
00:35:57 ◼ ► i agree with you completely i mean and i but i went for a four just because i feel like i have to leave
00:36:02 ◼ ► room for when the hardware is extra special which many years in the last few it has been and i kind
00:36:09 ◼ ► of feel like i don't want to do 25 as a four as a five when i think 26 will be a five here is a
00:36:16 ◼ ► challenge with this survey is that it's years based and different people again different people can view
00:36:20 ◼ ► it in different ways a lot of the people in the survey clearly view it as what did they do in 2025
00:36:26 ◼ ► i don't i view it as where where are we in 2025 where are we now i'm not going to knock that like
00:36:37 ◼ ► if there was no new revised design of a mac in 2025 what because they revised a bunch of them in 24 and
00:36:46 ◼ ► 23 and they're great and they're really on a new cycle and everything is fine i'm not going
00:36:52 ◼ ► to knock them down because they didn't do something novel to amuse me right like it's just i and i
00:36:57 ◼ ► understand other people just view it through the lens of well what did they do in 25 it was just a
00:37:01 ◼ ► bunch of little step updates so i'm going to give them a lower grade and i just i i'm not interested
00:37:06 ◼ ► in viewing it that way like do i do i knock the macbook air the the m4 macbook air because it's
00:37:13 ◼ ► the same design as the m2 but has an m4 in it no i mean i could knock it for the the sky blue that was
00:37:19 ◼ ► not blue but um but like no it's it that platform is in a good place so i and you know the new mac mini
00:37:27 ◼ ► it looks great like i have no complaints about it the mac studio is good the macbook pro is good
00:37:32 ◼ ► um the imac is good like i just don't i'm not concerned about that when i'm looking at 2025 i'm
00:37:39 ◼ ► i'm asking the question where are we now not what did they do to amuse or please me in 2025 if that
00:37:46 ◼ ► makes sense it's more about status than it is about achievements in the year well i want you to know if
00:37:50 ◼ ► it was possible for me to change my score i would change it to a five because you have sold me on that
00:37:54 ◼ ► too late it's too late but i just i get okay we're both at four and a half that's great there
00:37:59 ◼ ► you go you love it we balance out mine doesn't count though unfortunately so iphone panel is a 3.9
00:38:06 ◼ ► up from a 3.7 year over year this is based on the strength of the overall lineup the base 17 model got a
00:38:14 ◼ ► bunch of much needed features people love the 17 pro bit more polarized on the air but liquid glass was
00:38:21 ◼ ► criticized not entirely but it was and again a travesty i think this is a travesty i went for
00:38:29 ◼ ► five out of five because i think i've said it on this show um the 2025 lineup of iphones is i think the
00:38:36 ◼ ► best lineup of iphones that apple has ever produced um that across the board every single phone is
00:38:43 ◼ ► brilliant basically all you need to do is decide which iphone you want not like it's not this
00:38:51 ◼ ► backwards thing you can just choose any of them it's it's not like oh i need battery life no you're
00:38:56 ◼ ► just like oh they'll all do a great job oh i need a good camera they'll all do a great job so like
00:39:01 ◼ ► every iphone is fantastic this year that last year you could just choose um and overall i am very happy
00:39:07 ◼ ► with ios 26 i know that there are rough edges but i don't care about them because i like the way that
00:39:12 ◼ ► liquid glass looks i like the ideas represented in the redesign as well as the look of it i like the
00:39:19 ◼ ► animation i like the fluidity of the system and i have also really enjoyed seeing how some apps have
00:39:24 ◼ ► reworked their interfaces to match apples i think some of the information hierarchy of ios 26 apps i much
00:39:30 ◼ ► prefer um to what they were uh replacing so this is an easy five out of five for me the easiest five
00:39:38 ◼ ► out of five that i give uh for the 2025 scorecard uh yeah it's a five for me too absolutely again i mean
00:39:46 ◼ ► liquid glass it's got its issues did was it i mean it was it was always going to be kind of half baked
00:39:52 ◼ ► but it was more like quarter baked um they made some assumptions i again i think i don't agree with the
00:39:58 ◼ ► people who are like roll it back make it back to the old version i just don't like i think it's a new
00:40:03 ◼ ► look and feel and when you do that things break i think they should have put more thought into it i
00:40:09 ◼ ► think that there were some mistakes in the formulation of it that came from um kind of missteps in the
00:40:14 ◼ ► design process that said i don't have a hard time using my phone and it's all it's it's fine and this
00:40:22 ◼ ► was absolutely in the most important product category for apple the best product year they've had
00:40:28 ◼ ► in ages from the air which is an amazing weird but like amazing product that also feels like you're
00:40:35 ◼ ► using a phone from the future to that iphone 17 pro with the new anodized aluminum back and especially
00:40:43 ◼ ► in orange it's so good i still look at my iphone and marvel at it even now at how good it is like and how good
00:40:53 ◼ ► it looks all the time so uh and then the 17 got all those pro features there's so much good stuff here
00:41:00 ◼ ► that again i feel like apple writing uh high on so much about its most important product category
00:41:08 ◼ ► there is not enough there about liquid glass for me to uh notice basically so five yeah absolutely it's
00:41:17 ◼ ► it's fantastic i mean this one is a heartbreaker for me that like it didn't even pass four it's like
00:41:23 ◼ ► yeah i just i would love to see some of the individual scores um people were grumpy they were
00:41:29 ◼ ► grumpy about apple i think that we'll get to it but like i think people are not going to cut apple a lot
00:41:34 ◼ ► of slack this year and i think that goes into it and that is part of the vibe in the room but i would
00:41:38 ◼ ► you know again my this is why i don't insert myself in the survey my opinion is that uh whether it's
00:41:46 ◼ ► grumpiness about apple or just a trend to everybody wants to get in some shots on liquid glass which is
00:41:53 ◼ ► not it's certainly worthy of criticism but i feel like the balance there has tipped way beyond the
00:42:00 ◼ ► level that is actually deserved and i think part of that has to be because of the rest of the atmosphere
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00:44:05 ◼ ► so we now go to the ipad the panel voted for the ipad at 3.7 which is up from 3.5 year over year
00:44:16 ◼ ► the windowing system in ipad os 26 this brought people back to the ipad but still some skepticism
00:44:24 ◼ ► over the purpose of the product i find it fascinating that the windowing system is so good i guess that
00:44:31 ◼ ► it's the thing that can knock the trend away of liquid glass like yeah fascinating to me that like
00:44:37 ◼ ► this was a year where there was no significant ipad hardware in 2025 right just i think just updates
00:44:48 ◼ ► yeah so like the the big ipad pro was 2024 wasn't it when they had the like the tandem oled that was
00:44:55 ◼ ► the super fan right that was the m4 and now it's an m5 so there wasn't anything significant there
00:45:00 ◼ ► it still received liquid glass but the windowing system was enough to push it up which i agree with
00:45:07 ◼ ► like i think that this should be as good a score as you know we've had for the ipad which it nearly is
00:45:13 ◼ ► the best score was 4.1 and then 4 in 2017 2018 2019 but this brings it up to like the 2020 level
00:45:20 ◼ ► which was 2020 level of ipad that's magic keyboard territory like that was that was a good time
00:45:26 ◼ ► um for me five out of five again uh ipad os 26 it's reignited my love of the ipad um i think that
00:45:36 ◼ ► apple has done a great job of letting the ipad be the best that it can be um with the constraints of
00:45:43 ◼ ► what the ipad kind of inherently is like it's never going to be the mac it's still going to be more rigid
00:45:49 ◼ ► but now they're allowing me to use the apps on that or on the platform in the way that makes the most
00:45:55 ◼ ► sense to me multiple on screen freely resizing them it works great with stage manager for me
00:46:01 ◼ ► like i'm a big fan and it's so good that it encouraged me to buy a magic keyboard again which
00:46:06 ◼ ► i've not used the magic keyboard in years but this system just sings with it so i love it five out of
00:46:12 ◼ ► five yeah we're the five boys today so far well it'll go down from here but uh i agree i i have a hard
00:46:19 ◼ ► time given what's in ipad os 26 not saying five out of five there again there were only speed bumps
00:46:25 ◼ ► and if you view this as a what did you do for me this year um it was less dramatic but i i think that's
00:46:31 ◼ ► because the ipad is in a pretty decent place they they were about to see some updates i think that the
00:46:35 ◼ ► base ipad needs to be uh better than it is but like i they've solved the windowing problem they added a
00:46:43 ◼ ► bunch of other features including solving the podcast problem like i can't go against that i
00:46:48 ◼ ► bought an m5 ipad pro i think it's great and i think the ipad is great for what it is as an ipad
00:46:55 ◼ ► i understand that there are people who use this survey every year to question why the ipad exists
00:47:00 ◼ ► i don't know what to tell you the ipad exists to be an ipad so and it's pretty good at it and it's
00:47:06 ◼ ► doing pretty well if you feel like you want to vote it down because it isn't what you want it to
00:47:11 ◼ ► be entirely fair but what i don't want it to be somebody oh who was it matt birchler i think uh
00:47:19 ◼ ► friend of the show hi matt uh posted a wild idea that he was like i think they're going to get rid
00:47:24 ◼ ► of ipad os and there's just going to be ios and it'll run on iphones and lower end ipads and that the
00:47:29 ◼ ► ipad pro will just run mac os and that'll be the end of the ipad os and it's like i love a hot take but
00:47:34 ◼ ► that is so wrong i think i think matt may be onto something but it's in the wrong direction
00:47:39 ◼ ► yeah yeah i mean well it's a good subject for another day i'll just say um the ipad pro is not
00:47:47 ◼ ► a mac and they this year they they solved or last year they solved the one of the biggest problems of
00:47:52 ◼ ► it it is true there you know it's capable of so much and the software isn't there for a lot of it
00:47:57 ◼ ► it is a frustration but i use my ipad all the time and i love it and i use it in lots of contexts
00:48:04 ◼ ► and i just i just don't have a problem with it i think that they're doing pretty well uh and so
00:48:08 ◼ ► i'm pretty happy with the state of the platform after a year like this so so yes in that way in
00:48:13 ◼ ► that way i've decided um my i don't feel dissatisfied that the ipad is not something it's it's it is not
00:48:21 ◼ ► something that it's not um and i'm more encouraged by the fact of where we are now given the improvement
00:48:27 ◼ ► and if that makes me inconsistent with my previous votes so uh so be it i think that that 2025 is the
00:48:35 ◼ ► year that apple actually display what they think the ipad can be and what it is like i think this is the
00:48:41 ◼ ► clearest way that they have been able to speak about the ipad and show it because often the way
00:48:48 ◼ ► they speak about it it doesn't work that way like it's it's they have not actually been able to
00:48:54 ◼ ► demonstrate what they are showing but now i feel like it's aligned like the way they feel about this
00:49:00 ◼ ► computer and the way this computer works i think are now the closest they've ever been if you told me
00:49:06 ◼ ► five years ago that in at the end of 2025 um there'd be a full-bore mac chip in the ipad pro
00:49:14 ◼ ► it would have complete windowing mac style entirely you know just open mac style windowing traffic lights
00:49:21 ◼ ► and everything traffic lights and everything and it would have all of these other software improvements
00:49:27 ◼ ► and it ran final cut pro and logic pro and all you know apple's pro apps had come over to it
00:49:33 ◼ ► um i wouldn't believe you yeah but that's where we are and it's not you know it's not everything that
00:49:41 ◼ ► everybody wants that's life but i i think it's in such a better place now wearables so wearables is
00:49:49 ◼ ► is actually a bunch of categories um all broken up so there is an overall and also separate scores for
00:49:56 ◼ ► apple watch and vision pro um the overall score for the panel was at 3.5 uh which is down
00:50:03 ◼ ► from 3.6 uh essentially the the the thing that would fall into the overall category from the the
00:50:13 ◼ ► things that you pulled out the airpods pro 3 were polarizing um and i gave this category a 3 for this
00:50:20 ◼ ► reason so i enjoy the the performance of the airpods pro 3 uh the noise cancellation is astoundingly good
00:50:30 ◼ ► i think they're brilliant at doing all of that but this was the first model that felt physically
00:50:36 ◼ ► uncomfortable to me for the first couple of weeks and i am used to them now but they are absolutely
00:50:42 ◼ ► not as comfortable to wear um i also have a thing where you know like let's say i'm i'm watching
00:50:48 ◼ ► something in bed if i put my head in just the wrong angle close to the pillow they whistle in my ears
00:50:54 ◼ ► i'm so oh yes i don't know whistling yeah don't know why they're doing that a friend of the show
00:50:58 ◼ ► underscore david smith he couldn't stop his from whistling like all the time maybe it's like something
00:51:05 ◼ ► to do with the shape of his ear not that i'm saying anything about underscores ears but you know i don't
00:51:10 ◼ ► know what's going on in there um but yeah fascinating product they do a great job but they're just
00:51:18 ◼ ► no set of airpods before felt to me like they were making trade-offs they were just improving
00:51:29 ◼ ► were in memphis uh since then um they've just settled in for me and i have no issues with them
00:51:34 ◼ ► at all but i think that why i describe this as surprisingly polarizing right like this is apple's
00:51:39 ◼ ► killer product and i think everybody expected the airpods pro 3 to just continue on a path where
00:51:45 ◼ ► everybody would be like oh my god they're so much better and instead some people said they
00:51:49 ◼ ► were so much better and other people are like i don't like them like they they're uncomfortable
00:51:53 ◼ ► or they've got weird quirks about them and i think that's interesting i don't think they're bad but i
00:51:57 ◼ ► think that they i was surprised that they didn't kind of go from strength to strength and they and they
00:52:02 ◼ ► didn't i would give this a three as well because it's not it's it's not just about airpods it's about
00:52:07 ◼ ► overall um i think having new airpods pro and i i like them a lot i think that that's actually a
00:52:13 ◼ ► great release um it's the other parts of the wearables category for apple where um there are
00:52:19 ◼ ► a lot of issues yep apple watch the panel is at 3.4 down from a 3.7 essentially incremental updates
00:52:27 ◼ ► uh was the issue here i gave the apple watch a two out of five um to me the apple watch has become
00:52:34 ◼ ► desperately boring as a product line um and you know i will say this was not included in my scoring
00:52:40 ◼ ► but i will just say it here uh you know one of the apple watch's best things is fitness but the
00:52:47 ◼ ► fitness app has become really hard to use the ios 26 redesign of the fitness app is is very bad
00:52:54 ◼ ► um like very bad when you're trying to select a workout if you scroll that screen just goes on
00:53:00 ◼ ► forever like it's it feels like it's lost the idea of what scrolling how scrolling should work on the
00:53:04 ◼ ► yeah and there you have to wait the part that gets me that is really unforgivable is you have
00:53:09 ◼ ► you select a workout and you have to wait for the animation to animate before you see your options
00:53:17 ◼ ► and the old one you just scrolled and the buttons were on the scroll and then you tap start and you
00:53:22 ◼ ► start now it's like it's zoomed in and then it has to zoom out and they fade in and then you can tap
00:53:27 ◼ ► it's like what are we even doing here and maybe you can shortcut it but it's like that but why show
00:53:31 ◼ ► it that way i i i don't like it i i probably say three because i still use my apple watch i wear it
00:53:37 ◼ ► every day and i like it and i use it for a lot of stuff but you're not wrong it's boring it seems stalled
00:53:45 ◼ ► yes um the os is uh you know they made some changes to it i don't know if they're positive changes it
00:53:53 ◼ ► feels kind of lost um i don't know whether some of that is the legacy of like they wanted it to be a
00:53:59 ◼ ► whole app machine and now they kind of don't but there are still apps that are in it and like i i don't
00:54:06 ◼ ► know it i hate to say it but it's given off some apple tv vibes to me now where it's almost like
00:54:13 ◼ ► they've decided that it's fine and they're not going to pay it much attention anymore and i think
00:54:18 ◼ ► it's not fine enough and that's a mistake and that's how i feel about the apple tv too also because
00:54:22 ◼ ► they're a leader in this category still in a lot of ways they maybe feel less pressure to do more
00:54:28 ◼ ► and they need to do more um and and that's that's on the software side and then the hardware side i think
00:54:34 ◼ ► you're right like i like my apple watch i like how thin it is i like how big the screen is i think it's a
00:54:39 ◼ ► good balance but you're right it is it does feel boring right i can't believe it still looks the
00:54:45 ◼ ► way it does like yeah that essentially it's the same thing like it just hasn't changed at all really
00:54:53 ◼ ► like in the ways in which it has changed i mean you kind of hold two apple watches up off you know
00:54:59 ◼ ► next to each other it's like oh that was a little bit bigger but like it's the same thing you know
00:55:04 ◼ ► yeah yeah i mean the ultra is different and that's good but like i i agree it just it feels
00:55:09 ◼ ► and you know they could be busy as as bees on the inside working on this stuff but from the outside
00:55:16 ◼ ► it feels like apple has kind of like decided that they've they're done with the apple watch and i think
00:55:20 ◼ ► that's a mistake not finished with it like they've given up but like they've completed it and now
00:55:25 ◼ ► they can just be well that's it we've given that to the world let's maintain it and move on and i think
00:55:29 ◼ ► that's a mistake something i wonder about slash worry about like looking at previous rumor roundup
00:55:34 ◼ ► reporting from mark german and others is like apple is working on you know trying to make a big leap in
00:55:40 ◼ ► in health and fitness you know they've been trying to get that glucose monitoring going forever
00:55:44 ◼ ► and i wonder like is there a new whiz bang version of the apple watch that includes that feature
00:55:50 ◼ ► potentially but they just they just they can't ship it because it's not done they haven't finished that
00:55:56 ◼ ► right and so there's a new redesign that includes this and it's going to be a huge deal but now we're
00:56:02 ◼ ► just we're just waiting and they're going to keep iterating until i don't know and i don't know if
00:56:07 ◼ ► maybe all those reports about eddie q you know coming in and killing the fitness plus idea and rolling
00:56:12 ◼ ► features back into the health app and stuff like that if that i mean i would my gut feeling is that
00:56:17 ◼ ► that that would be good for the apple watch as well that maybe there's a real um that that whole group
00:56:22 ◼ ► just kind of got mired in all of that i would say about that you mentioned the sensor like glucose
00:56:27 ◼ ► monitoring on the apple watch well gee that would be great sure right but like is that your product
00:56:32 ◼ ► path for the apple watch is let's just keep it the way it is and add sensors to it because i don't think
00:56:37 ◼ ► that's probably all you should be doing but no i don't know uh and then the vision pro the panel
00:56:45 ◼ ► rated at a did you give a score for the apple watch sorry oh uh three three vision pro panel rated at
00:56:52 ◼ ► 2.2 down from a 2.4 uh essentially the vision pro continues to be acknowledged by many as impressive
00:57:00 ◼ ► technology but lacks purpose demand or developer kind of engagement i went for a two out of five as well
00:57:07 ◼ ► here um i was very surprised that they revised the vision pro hardware this year uh i like the new strap
00:57:14 ◼ ► option but this platform just has not gotten to where i was hoping that it would like i respect apple
00:57:20 ◼ ► continuing to do things like they are still doing things the operating system got good enhancements in
00:57:27 ◼ ► 26 and while slow and small they do continue to do new stuff on it new content like here's something
00:57:34 ◼ ► else here's something else i respect them doing that considering how the world around it doesn't seem to
00:57:41 ◼ ► care yeah yeah i'm i'm torn here i'm i think i'm gonna just put it right down the middle at three
00:57:48 ◼ ► um the fact that they did an update but it didn't really do anything but they did do an update they
00:57:53 ◼ ► announced accessories for it um works with the sony hand controllers there's that new pet logitech you
00:58:01 ◼ ► know pencil basically um that i have here and i have not used it so i gotta do that i've been busy with
00:58:08 ◼ ► many other things in my life but i i'm working on that um and uh you know this this year right um they
00:58:17 ◼ ► did a live they announced it last year they did a live nba game and they're doing more of those
00:58:21 ◼ ► and they've got um you know there's stuff going on i i agree i think that i think there's a real
00:58:27 ◼ ► letdown with the vision pro because and if you go back and you look at it i think it's all
00:58:34 ◼ ► understandable in a way which is this product is not it's an experiment it was always an experiment
00:58:40 ◼ ► when it came out it was clear it was so expensive it was impractical i i think apple's failure here is
00:58:48 ◼ ► not to get people to buy them i think apple's failure here is in getting developers excited
00:58:55 ◼ ► about building the future and there are some and there are a lot of like filmmakers who are very
00:58:59 ◼ ► interested in in in generating content for it i think having the the sports test with the nba
00:59:06 ◼ ► that's really interesting because they could sell a bunch um this is also the year where they
00:59:11 ◼ ► seem to have pivoted away from making a lighter vision pro to starting with some some glasses and
00:59:16 ◼ ► building up from there which i think is probably the right approach i think the truth thing about
00:59:20 ◼ ► the vision pro is it is simultaneously apple's most amazing hardware they've ever built and a pretty
00:59:25 ◼ ► impressive piece of operating system software and also nowhere near something that regular people
00:59:32 ◼ ► would want to buy like a decade away so what i hope happens is the vision pro continues to just
00:59:39 ◼ ► exist as a platform for people to try for people to experiment with and for stuff like edge case stuff
00:59:47 ◼ ► like in live nba games or immersive f1 i think that they're if they can keep that going because i do think
00:59:54 ◼ ► that ultimately there's a product like this that is more affordable and will be more broadly used or
01:00:01 ◼ ► will feed into products that are more affordable and more broadly used but this is just so it's just so
01:00:07 ◼ ► far off and and you see it in the whole category right like it's not like meta is embracing vr they've
01:00:15 ◼ ► pivoted to ai entirely right they've they i mean games was their thing and then they've just closed the game
01:00:21 ◼ ► studios and they closed exactly the fitness app which i was cool super is it supernatural supernatural yeah
01:00:28 ◼ ► they shut that one down they shut it down so they bought it and then and then they shut it down so
01:00:32 ◼ ► like i'm really torn on this like i like it and yet i don't find reasons to use it and there's not a lot
01:00:38 ◼ ► there when you when you do it but some of the stuff in it is spectacular and i think it's an amazing piece
01:00:42 ◼ ► of hardware so like i want to keep them around them to keep it around and there's only so much they can
01:00:47 ◼ ► do because the technology isn't there at the same time i do really feel the loss of of what little momentum
01:00:54 ◼ ► it had and so that's a that's the thing i struggle with but i'm gonna i'm gonna give it a three because
01:00:58 ◼ ► my expectations for it are so low because it is not a mainstream product and they did have little
01:01:03 ◼ ► glimmers of maybe reasons why people might want to buy it in the future like the nba announcement
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01:03:54 ◼ ► of relay let's move on to the home category now so the panel rated this a 2.6 out of 5 down from a 2.7
01:04:04 ◼ ► saying that the home strategy appears to have stalled the app is still not great and questions on whether
01:04:10 ◼ ► new home hardware is being held back by ai i gave this one a 1 out of 5 because i just don't know where
01:04:20 ◼ ► else to grade this um i just think that this is a category that apple was not doing a lot in and not
01:04:27 ◼ ► really pushing forward in the ways that i would want and then we had glimmers of hope and then just none
01:04:33 ◼ ► of those products have happened uh and it feels like you know maybe i'm too close to the rumors here but
01:04:40 ◼ ► like it feels like the product that i want exists but they made some bad choices and can't ship it
01:04:46 ◼ ► and i find that very frustrating yeah i mean i think i i mean the question is again is it is it status
01:04:57 ◼ ► because i find home kit to be stable for the most part in my life sure but it's so uninspiring so you know
01:05:08 ◼ ► it's a one or a two for me somewhere in there it's like yes it's like the home home kit and the home
01:05:13 ◼ ► app is they work fine right but there's still things about them that are just like bafflingly
01:05:18 ◼ ► yeah i agree simple where you could do so much more yeah i think i think what i'm struggling with here is
01:05:24 ◼ ► i i said before about there's the status check version of this and there's the what did you do in
01:05:29 ◼ ► the year yeah and i think what i struggle with in part is that if if i think the status is high
01:05:34 ◼ ► i'm less concerned about what they did during the year but if the status is low and they didn't do
01:05:39 ◼ ► something during the year it goes it goes together so i will give this a one because nothing happened
01:05:46 ◼ ► and it's not good enough and if we take into account the fact that there seem to be reasons why nothing
01:05:52 ◼ ► happened right that that they put their products that are ready to ship but they can't ship them
01:05:57 ◼ ► because of siri and all this stuff well so be it in the end they didn't ship anything there's kind
01:06:02 ◼ ► nothing they have abandoned this category this category it was clear to many of us that apple
01:06:09 ◼ ► should have been embracing some smart home products like a decade ago and they just didn't bother and
01:06:14 ◼ ► then only in the last few years when wearables home and accessories as a category has stalled out
01:06:18 ◼ ► revenue wise do they seem to have started to pay attention to this and like it's a little bit late
01:06:22 ◼ ► and the problem is they still haven't done anything even though there are lots of reports that they're
01:06:26 ◼ ► paying attention they still haven't really done anything and so it's hard for me to get enthusiastic
01:06:32 ◼ ► about apple in the home i am optimistic that there's a bunch of stuff and that 2026 will be apple
01:06:38 ◼ ► re-engaging with the home but i thought that would happen last year and it didn't so we'll see what
01:06:43 ◼ ► happens i'll say this year but but yeah we'll say one uh the apple tv the panel gave this a 2.8
01:06:51 ◼ ► down from a 3.2 so that's quite a drop um people questioning is the apple tv still the best option
01:06:58 ◼ ► for a device of this category um i know that you will say say yes i remember when i said it's like
01:07:03 ◼ ► jason tried them well google google tv is pretty good and if you're in the google ecosystem and have
01:07:08 ◼ ► youtube tv and a bunch of stuff like that you could get a google tv and be happy although i think google
01:07:13 ◼ ► is not going to invest in google tv anymore either so i don't really know what's going on with that but
01:07:18 ◼ ► google tv is pretty good um and apple tv is better but not that much better um and worse in some
01:07:24 ◼ ► ways and all the rest of them are atrocious and awful that's the thing about apple tv right
01:07:29 ◼ ► yeah no new hardware for the apple tv tv os gets minimal updates and there is an overall concern
01:07:35 ◼ ► that the tv app spends too much time promoting apple tv content of course uh i gave this a 2 as well
01:07:41 ◼ ► i'd say well i gave this a 2 out of 5 um this is just another product that feels stagnant um
01:07:47 ◼ ► i i do feel like from a hardware perspective i'm not sure that i need or want them to do anything to
01:07:55 ◼ ► the current apple tv like i think it is fine but i would like them to do something more advanced you
01:08:04 ◼ ► know like we've spoken about like a soundbar or putting a camera in it or something yep um and then
01:08:08 ◼ ► i would like them you know i there are so many things that they could do to tv os to make tv os
01:08:13 ◼ ► better and and they and they don't do them uh for whatever reason that they don't do them yeah this
01:08:19 ◼ ► is i'm gonna give it a 2 as well um i don't need new apple tv hardware um i imagine they'll update it
01:08:26 ◼ ► mostly just to put a chip in it that they're still making um and that they'll just keep it going it does
01:08:31 ◼ ► 4k it does basically all the things you needed to do the os is so stagnant and it's one of those
01:08:36 ◼ ► cases where again i'm very frustrated because i get that apple feels like they're kind of in an okay
01:08:41 ◼ ► place with it and they're complacent about like that like i just said i think it's probably the best
01:08:47 ◼ ► option for people even now but it feels old and it feels like it comes from a different era of tv
01:08:56 ◼ ► and if you look at these other boxes other than roku if you look at amazon's box if you look at google's box
01:09:02 ◼ ► what you'll see is a more integrated hole um where there's a main interface kind of like the tv app
01:09:13 ◼ ► but also like live there's so much fast stuff free streaming there there apple does some live
01:09:20 ◼ ► for sports but like they have not embraced live as a concept and every service you get has live channels
01:09:26 ◼ ► in it and you could integrate them all together and create like a grid of what's on right now which
01:09:30 ◼ ► a lot of people like and apple seems to be just opposed to the idea which is bizarre like this is
01:09:37 ◼ ► where it's going yeah whether you like it or not this is where it's going and apple just i don't know
01:09:43 ◼ ► whether they don't get it or they're not um empowered to to do it but like apple tv needs another rethink
01:09:49 ◼ ► and they haven't done it and it's so frustrating because while the platform is pretty good versus
01:09:56 ◼ ► the competition it it's so desperately needs to be rethought yeah so i i'm frustrated about that you
01:10:03 ◼ ► talk about should they do a soundbar they should absolutely do a soundbar but i i'm sure it's back
01:10:08 ◼ ► behind all the other home products that they can't ship yeah they don't need to make an apple tv with a
01:10:12 ◼ ► they need to make a continuity camera yes just a standalone continuity camera i know you know those
01:10:18 ◼ ► who listen to the sponsored version will hear that we have a sponsor just now about webcams and things
01:10:24 ◼ ► like that like apple should find a partner or apple should make a continuity camera that you can put on a tv
01:10:31 ◼ ► or anywhere and your apple tv and other devices can just pick it up and use it and it could connect
01:10:36 ◼ ► wirelessly because they're good at that exactly because that's how continuity camera works but to
01:10:41 ◼ ► say well we built this whole continuity camera feature but you gotta i just did this last night
01:10:45 ◼ ► oh we got a zoom with lauren's family okay i'll get out the tripod and put my iphone in it and tap
01:10:51 ◼ ► the thing on the back while it's sideways that says i want to use it as a continuity camera it's like
01:10:54 ◼ ► it's it's it looks great it's an amazing feature i just want to put one of those on top of my tv
01:11:00 ◼ ► and let it sit there right or put it in a stand on a desk you know like our sponsor's product
01:11:06 ◼ ► or whatever like why does that again when we talk about home stuff it's like apple tv doesn't need
01:11:12 ◼ ► to do that it already has the software make an accessory or find a partner who will partner with
01:11:17 ◼ ► you to make an accessory that does this and instead it just sits there but i but i do think like you
01:11:22 ◼ ► mentioned the soundbar soundbars are so popular right now and the idea that apple could just sell
01:11:27 ◼ ► a soundbar and it would cost a fortune but it would have apple tv built into it and it would have great
01:11:32 ◼ ► audio and it would be like a home pod under your tv they're gonna make money on that product like
01:11:36 ◼ ► again i just don't know what is happening so anyway yeah i'll say two um just because what
01:11:43 ◼ ► they've got i mean two is exactly the right score for this because their ambition is is their current
01:11:49 ◼ ► status is two and their ambition is one and so they get to ride by with this too but like
01:11:54 ◼ ► it needs to be better there is like the tv app and the vision sorry the tv and vision os and vision
01:12:08 ◼ ► pro sorry well i'll get this right in a second the apple tv and the apple vision pro they're somewhat
01:12:12 ◼ ► similar to me in a way where yeah a lot of things that would make tv os feel better to use exist in the
01:12:21 ◼ ► system but nobody uses them like one of the key ones for me is that you can link your profiles in apps
01:12:32 ◼ ► with the profiles system like the in apple tv so for example if you just have you know you have a kid
01:12:41 ◼ ► and you just want when the kid is watching apple tv that they only see kids profiles in say disney plus
01:12:48 ◼ ► youtube wherever this api tool set exists but that no one cares to do anything with it and apple seems
01:12:57 ◼ ► to not be able to convince any companies to adopt the technology and this is one of those things where
01:13:01 ◼ ► i would say i know people are going to say well that's the fault of the developers but ultimately
01:13:05 ◼ ► you've got one of the world's most rich and powerful companies apple could spend some time and effort and
01:13:11 ◼ ► money and make it happen but they choose not to the apple tv shows apples and we're going to get to
01:13:16 ◼ ► developer relations later on but it shows most clearly the developer relations problem because
01:13:22 ◼ ► the only apps that people care about on their apple tv are are services yes owned by other massive
01:13:31 ◼ ► companies that apple cannot strong arm yeah no they they and and they need to work with them better
01:13:38 ◼ ► right they need to work with them all better i i will say i've written about this before we'll probably
01:13:43 ◼ ► talk about it again um when i say apple tv needs a rethink i really mean it like i they did that whole
01:13:52 ◼ ► future of tv as apps it was a huge mistake there shouldn't be an app screen get rid of the app store let's
01:13:58 ◼ ► get rid of the app store well no i mean the app store as a concept is fine because you you want to add
01:14:05 ◼ ► well everything's got an app store because you have to find the service and add it right like that's
01:14:09 ◼ ► fine the app screen that looks like your iphone and i use it as the default but like no the tv app
01:14:15 ◼ ► should be the default the tv app should be where everybody goes forever there shouldn't be an app
01:14:20 ◼ ► screen there should be an app list in the that's customizable in the tv app and that should be it
01:14:25 ◼ ► and other other streaming boxes do this and it's fine it's just fine and it would be less confusing
01:14:36 ◼ ► they need to just go down the list and be like like completely rethink so much of what they're doing
01:14:42 ◼ ► look at what google and amazon are doing amazon's got the best interface of all of them amazon actually
01:14:48 ◼ ► has the best streamer box except for the fact that literally everywhere you turn amazon is selling
01:14:54 ◼ ► you something and marketing things to you and it's unbearable i can't bear it functionality wise they're
01:15:00 ◼ ► the best they they are it's so good but um but so bad that i i couldn't even continue using it for
01:15:09 ◼ ► a minute more than necessary because it was so awful because that's amazon they they want to degrade
01:15:15 ◼ ► your experience with their marketing and that's just what you get when you get amazon but uh apple could do
01:15:20 ◼ ► something like that and it would be legitimately good and i would love apple tv to be legitimately
01:15:25 ◼ ► good and not the best of a bad lot but that's where we are right now i use it literally my entire
01:15:29 ◼ ► interface for tv is apple tv i don't have another box i only use apple tv and it's fine but it could be
01:15:36 ◼ ► so much better so i'm not mad apple tv i'm just disappointed services the panel gave this a 3.6 up
01:15:46 ◼ ► from a 3.5 with good shows and movies on apple tv other services remaining solid however there is too
01:15:54 ◼ ► much marketing of apple services in their operating systems and most of the things they make are good
01:15:59 ◼ ► but not the best in class yeah apple needs to definitely have a best practices about self-promotion
01:16:05 ◼ ► i'm okay with some limited i get it we're all tied in so we see the the this marketing and we're like i
01:16:11 ◼ ► no i know already people don't know lots of people don't know where it becomes a dark pattern is the
01:16:18 ◼ ► problem the fact that you can't say i don't want to see that again you can't customize uh something and
01:16:25 ◼ ► say like i don't want to see f1 stuff again you can't say never show me the please follow f1 again
01:16:33 ◼ ► right like you need to give users power to say i'm done and um and and probably to say never ever get in
01:16:42 ◼ ► my way again in a setting somewhere um i understand the need to market your services i don't have a
01:16:47 ◼ ► problem with it users need to have the power to say no and it feels to me like there there are moments
01:16:54 ◼ ► where apple starts to feel like amazon in terms of um you know this t thank you for buying our apple tv
01:17:02 ◼ ► and using our tv app but we really want you to see our ad for our peacock bundle and for f1
01:17:09 ◼ ► and like okay i've seen the ad for the peacock bundle like 20 times at some point i need to say
01:17:21 ◼ ► i gave services a five uh apple tv plus for me props up this entire category because apple tv is
01:17:32 ◼ ► like a 10 out of five and so everything else that's bad it just pulls it up like i use and i'm happy
01:17:38 ◼ ► enough with apple's other services you know i'm an apple one premium premium premium whatever it's
01:17:45 ◼ ► called the top level so i just get everything right um and you know i like apple arcade because
01:17:50 ◼ ► every year i'll get a couple of games out of it uh i'm apple music works totally fine for what i need
01:17:56 ◼ ► from a music service uh i get to read some stories on apple news so i don't need to pay for every single
01:18:02 ◼ ► possible service that i would want and the list goes on right so like but for me apple tv is incredible
01:18:08 ◼ ► uh the level of content that they are producing is outstanding and it is astounding uh they the majority of my
01:18:15 ◼ ► favorite tv shows last year came from apple uh so far this year it's the same thing all over again
01:18:22 ◼ ► um and you know i i also look at this as a as an industry watcher they had a hit with f1 like an
01:18:30 ◼ ► absolute hit a hit that broke records kind of hit for like in its category you know like brad pitt's
01:18:37 ◼ ► biggest box office opening of all time i think like the uh it was the i think the highest gross in live
01:18:42 ◼ ► action movie of last year like just like wild stuff that they were doing and it's a good movie that i
01:18:47 ◼ ► really enjoyed so i think for me uh from the personal level and also looking at it from the
01:18:53 ◼ ► professional level uh i think that they they absolutely crushed it and so i give them a five
01:18:58 ◼ ► out of five yeah i i think i'm gonna say five as well because i think that apple services business
01:19:05 ◼ ► is doing so well and that the content is good um even news which i news plus which i complain about
01:19:11 ◼ ► but like i find a bunch of stuff there that's paywalled elsewhere and and i get to read it
01:19:16 ◼ ► and like i don't go there it's not a daily visit for me but like then i'll get a link to a story on
01:19:22 ◼ ► some site and i'll go oh i can read this in apple news plus and i go over there and it's there and i get
01:19:27 ◼ ► to read it i like that apple tv is great they are doing such a great job with that service um so much
01:19:33 ◼ ► good content in it um yeah i i remember when apple services weren't very good i like they're really
01:19:40 ◼ ► good now they do a good job um my biggest complaint is what i said at the beginning which is i think apple
01:19:45 ◼ ► needs to find a way to balance over marketing their services to the point where it degrades the user
01:19:53 ◼ ► experience and i a a good example of that is their new subscription for the creator studio where
01:20:02 ◼ ► they put they they turn free i work apps into premium apps freemium apps uh and put upsells in your apps
01:20:11 ◼ ► and like you like i understand you're gonna like this is my this is my guideline i'm not an absolutist
01:20:19 ◼ ► here i understand you need to communicate that there are things on offer there is a limit to that
01:20:24 ◼ ► communication and putting ui elements in apps that don't go away is too far too far i mean i think i
01:20:33 ◼ ► think the whole thing was a travesty putting those i work apps in that was a mistake and they they should
01:20:39 ◼ ► feel bad but um also it just shows they somebody needs to be the the the marketing police right
01:20:47 ◼ ► like what it feels like to me as somebody who used to deal with this and fight these battles every day
01:20:52 ◼ ► at my corporate media job is there's nobody defending the user and saying no and there needs to be somebody
01:21:00 ◼ ► needs to be on the other side of the let's put marketing everywhere and actually say or that person
01:21:04 ◼ ► being overruled constantly by by the need to push services that's that's true either that or they
01:21:10 ◼ ► don't they are not given a voice that is listened to and it's a mistake and and it goes down to user
01:21:15 ◼ ► interface like you got to let the user decide and you know yes you need to make them aware of what
01:21:22 ◼ ► you're offering them but you also need to step back when they say enough and they don't do that enough
01:21:28 ◼ ► i just want to give a correction for myself uh if one was not the highest grossing uh live action movie
01:21:33 ◼ ► but it was the ninth uh highest grossing movie of the year which nobody was expecting uh that movie
01:21:39 ◼ ► and a best picture nominee and which nobody was expecting no one could have imagined um what was
01:21:45 ◼ ► your score for services i'd say five okay because again i think you you agree with me right that
01:21:50 ◼ ► there's a lot of problems but their output is just is unbelievable yeah it's so much better than
01:21:56 ◼ ► one could expect yeah are there is there room for improvement i mean of course there is but i think
01:22:01 ◼ ► they're running at an incredibly high level right now they are making quality they are making content
01:22:07 ◼ ► of the quality level that hbo produces like they're doing it consistently and it's unbelievable i mean i
01:22:14 ◼ ► could say four four and a half you know but i'll go with you and say five i if i give it some thought
01:22:20 ◼ ► i probably take it down to a four just because i do have these other concerns and some of the services
01:22:24 ◼ ► aren't as good but like it's a i have a positive it's a thumbs up for me regardless we'll say four
01:22:30 ◼ ► i'll i'll i'll put it at four my unofficial tally thank you uh hardware reliability was a 4.5 down from
01:22:39 ◼ ► a 4.6 this one was interesting to me because there were no significant issues i don't know why it went
01:22:45 ◼ ► down why has it gone down uh but it just has you know different mix of people people having a bad day
01:22:51 ◼ ► people being grumpy it'd be 4.5 look for the last six years it's it's been 4.5 or 4.6 it is at a high
01:22:57 ◼ ► level this is a grade a this is like a little kid saying uh saying why did i get uh a 95 on my paper
01:23:06 ◼ ► instead of 100 like don't complain shut up kid now here's my thing i voted this a five however i i think
01:23:13 ◼ ► i would like to if again i would like to change my vote maybe to a four so i don't use i use no case on
01:23:20 ◼ ► my iphone um i obliterated an iphone um last year by dropping it because like okay i dropped it on the
01:23:30 ◼ ► concrete that's my own fault i noticed a couple of days ago uh my the the bottom rail of my iphone 17 pro
01:23:39 ◼ ► is bent um and again i must have dropped it again what all of this is to say i think that
01:23:46 ◼ ► aluminium is just softer right than steel and titanium and while i love and would not change
01:23:56 ◼ ► the the the way that this phone looks because i love the aluminium back i love the color
01:24:01 ◼ ► i think that i have gotten very used to the strength of the iphone in the last number of
01:24:09 ◼ ► years and i think that that strength has been degraded by going back to aluminium so from a
01:24:15 ◼ ► reliability standpoint i don't it isn't as high for me but i wouldn't change it if that makes sense but
01:24:24 ◼ ► it's just something that i wanted to note but my scores are five out of five and nothing can do about
01:24:27 ◼ ► it but that's fair and look i drop my phone often enough but i'm not dropping this phone more uh and
01:24:34 ◼ ► the old phones used to be able to handle it uh more much more than the current phones can okay i'm gonna
01:24:39 ◼ ► give it a five i think apple's uh making the best hardware it's ever made yep and uh on all fronts
01:24:52 ◼ ► multiple jokes about how the guy running hardware maybe should be a the ceo of the company yeah i i
01:25:00 ◼ ► took a screenshot and sent it to a group chat today at the urine because i what i find funny about this
01:25:05 ◼ ► scenario is i wonder if every single one of those people thought they were being unique in their joke
01:25:10 ◼ ► because it's just the same joke three times i hats off to you for for laying it out that way
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01:27:42 ◼ ► apple software is broken down into two subcategories operating system quality the panel rated this as a
01:27:53 ◼ ► 2.7 out of 5 down from 3.4 liquid glass uh is the thing here tahoe got the hardest beating again
01:28:02 ◼ ► bugs and glitches etc and people demanding slash wanting a year of refinement and usability fixes
01:28:12 ◼ ► uh i gave this a 4 out of 5 because again fan of liquid glass while i would like refinement that's
01:28:18 ◼ ► fine i struggled with something here about apple intelligence right because they have obviously
01:28:26 ◼ ► massively fumbled apple intelligence but i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing like
01:28:33 ◼ ► if they had shipped the apple intelligence features would my computing life be better or worse like it's
01:28:41 ◼ ► hard for me to like i wanted to include this in here but i didn't feel like it made sense to knock
01:28:48 ◼ ► down my my rating of the quality of the operating system because the lack of apple intelligence has not changed
01:28:55 ◼ ► the quality of the operating system when in fact the inclusion of apple intelligence could have
01:29:00 ◼ ► so it's a bit of a schrodinger's ai here or something i don't really know what's going on there but
01:29:06 ◼ ► there you go four out of five for me because i just don't have the same level of problem that the rest of the panel seems to have
01:29:12 ◼ ► yeah i'm gonna say three here um because good things this year ipad os 26 windowing addressing a bunch of
01:29:23 ◼ ► concerns there productivity features in tahoe um that's very good but i don't disagree with the idea that
01:29:33 ◼ ► there uh this design caused a lot of glitches um did some things that were unnecessary and that
01:29:40 ◼ ► apple taking and basically after a big redesign like this they kind of need to take a year where
01:29:47 ◼ ► they don't throw more things at users and developers and instead try to refine this stuff so that it's
01:29:52 ◼ ► in a better place i i think that it's almost it's not just the people demand it but it's also like
01:29:57 ◼ ► the year after you do something this big you should probably spend your focus on the next year on
01:30:03 ◼ ► uh continued cleanup and refinement and driving it sort of where you think it's going to ultimately go
01:30:08 ◼ ► um because it's a it's not a ship it and forget it kind of process right it's it's very much the
01:30:14 ◼ ► opposite you need to ship it and then work hard to get it where you need it to be so i'm going to put
01:30:19 ◼ ► it down the middle because i think there was a bunch of good os stuff this year um and then there were
01:30:24 ◼ ► also some challenges that they needed to uh that they need to address for sure app quality is a 3.1 down
01:30:33 ◼ ► from a 3.5 i also gave this a 4 because i didn't didn't really feel any different about it uh from
01:30:40 ◼ ► an os quality perspective i don't really feel like there's anything that's particularly different one
01:30:47 ◼ ► yeah this is like apple's apple's uh first party apps that are available separately um i think apple
01:30:55 ◼ ► sports got a lot better um final cut and logics updates came mostly this year and not last year
01:31:03 ◼ ► um the and as well as the i work issues i'm going to have some feelings for next year's survey and
01:31:11 ◼ ► podcast episode um but i think i nothing jumped out at me here so you know i would i would probably say
01:31:18 ◼ ► three or four well it's um maybe they fix it by the time the survey comes around maybe maybe you
01:31:26 ◼ ► maybe you never know they have the time if you care about the survey i work team you have the time
01:31:30 ◼ ► uh developer relations the panel rated this at a 2.3 which is low but it's down from a 2.4
01:31:39 ◼ ► uh yeah let me let me tell the story here uh about this is one of those areas where looking at the
01:31:45 ◼ ► history of the survey really helps when i did the survey in 2015 one of the reasons there is a developer
01:31:50 ◼ ► relations category is that the the relationship between apple and developers was at a low it was
01:32:09 ◼ ► um and you'd say well isn't that true now it's like well yeah but what happened is in 2016
01:32:20 ◼ ► uh changes like the 15 you know over the over the next few years they did the 15 for small developers
01:32:25 ◼ ► instead of 30 and they changed the app store rejection process to have more places where you
01:32:34 ◼ ► could appeal and tamp down a lot of the most egregious app store behavior in terms of rejection
01:32:41 ◼ ► which gave hope right there was a hope that this was going to be the beginning of a of a turnaround
01:32:46 ◼ ► like a good trajectory so the score went way up it went from 2.2 in 2015 to 3.6 in 2017
01:32:53 ◼ ► what's happened since that those heady days of openness and reform is a long slow slide to the
01:33:02 ◼ ► point that now with 2024 and 2025 we are back down in the 2015 territory and there there are lots of
01:33:10 ◼ ► reasons for it um i'd say a lot of this is stuff that we already suspected but now we know which is
01:33:16 ◼ ► apple's behavior as an attitude as revealed in various legal documents where apple has to defend its
01:33:23 ◼ ► practices um and developers have taken notice that this is apple testifying about how they view the app
01:33:34 ◼ ► store and how they view developers and it is not a positive for building a relationship with developers
01:33:39 ◼ ► developers who felt like apple was exploiting them and didn't care about them and just tried to you know
01:33:44 ◼ ► harvest them and viewed all of their work as basically accruing to apple and that you know they exist
01:33:50 ◼ ► because apple is so benevolent in granting them the ability to work on their platform and all of that
01:33:56 ◼ ► all of that has come out in uh in legal transcripts and discovery and things like that so um that's rough
01:34:04 ◼ ► also this summer they had to put out a new design right this summer they had to do huge amounts of
01:34:09 ◼ ► work at the shifting sands of liquid glass right because you know even if you decided okay i've got to do
01:34:15 ◼ ► this i've got to support liquid glass it kept changing in the betas and a bunch of stuff didn't work right
01:34:19 ◼ ► so um it it's it's a mess um people you know people praised parts of you know the apis and the
01:34:28 ◼ ► tools and stuff like that but generally i understand why this has gone down because there's a feeling
01:34:32 ◼ ► that they're from developers that they're not valued and that apple was also creating a lot of work for
01:34:37 ◼ ► them with a design agree or disagree with the looks at the design with a design that seemed to have not
01:34:43 ◼ ► been as well implemented and thought out as it could have been which increased the burden on developers
01:34:56 ◼ ► continued thing from the last couple of years but it's been hit hard uh for me this year so
01:35:02 ◼ ► essentially the longer that we are continuing to see apple make arguments in public and in courts
01:35:08 ◼ ► with governments around the world over things like alternative app marketplaces the clearer and
01:35:13 ◼ ► clearer apple's i think anti-developer stance shows and for me this year one thing so one there was one
01:35:23 ◼ ► thing that was medium and one thing it was very like really nailed at home so the medium thing is the
01:35:27 ◼ ► arbitrary 27 percent that judge of on gonzalez rogers kind of hammered them over that they're still trying
01:35:32 ◼ ► to work their way out of right they just created that amount of money as the cut that they needed because
01:35:37 ◼ ► they wanted to get back to 30 but for me the the um i don't remember i think it might have been in that case
01:35:43 ◼ ► but the corporate culture that created you know like the the slack screenshots that we saw
01:35:52 ◼ ► about creating the scare screens and the corporate culture that must have been created at apple
01:35:56 ◼ ► to the level that designers at apple would be talking about these screens being more scary because executives
01:36:03 ◼ ► would like it that way right like that to me is just like shows that that there is a rotten core
01:36:11 ◼ ► inside of some parts of apple which are pushing them to make things as bad as they can possibly be
01:36:19 ◼ ► to make sure that you cannot leave the app store so yep yeah um i'm gonna say two only because they also
01:36:30 ◼ ► have put in um after some delays they have put a lot of work into getting xcode to actually do ai and
01:36:37 ◼ ► they seem to be up on that because they did a recent update but they've been pushing that since last year
01:36:42 ◼ ► um in a way that um they i mean they obviously had to but they did and uh they didn't do as much
01:36:51 ◼ ► catching up as they seem to have done early this year but like i feel like they they are doing some work
01:36:56 ◼ ► on that side um but it's not enough to counteract the rest of it yep and then we learned at world
01:37:06 ◼ ► impact yep what everyone's been waiting for panel 2.1 down that's an f from 3.1 this is the biggest
01:37:15 ◼ ► year over year drop in the survey this year um cook's relationship with trump and a betrayal of apple's
01:37:23 ◼ ► values is one of the things that people pointed out uh over and over again as an issue here
01:37:28 ◼ ► um a believed and yeah i will say believed deprioritization of environmental initiatives
01:37:35 ◼ ► um removing of the ice block app from the app store um while some acknowledge the difficult position
01:37:47 ◼ ► this is one for me where the scoring was very tough i went for two out of five because i am disappointed
01:37:55 ◼ ► of everything that everyone else is but if i'm looking at apple's overall impact on the world
01:38:01 ◼ ► i think that they're you know i i don't feel like we're seeing a change in their environmental stance
01:38:08 ◼ ► i i don't i have not perceived that um and then things like the work they do in accessibility like
01:38:14 ◼ ► these are things that i still appreciate that they continue to push on and for their effect on the
01:38:20 ◼ ► overall world i think i can't give them a one um but i give them a two yeah i think i'm at a two
01:38:28 ◼ ► as well and in part that's because i think some of the things that are perceived to have been abandoned
01:38:33 ◼ ► by apple haven't been abandoned by apple they have been hidden by apple apple realizes they're in an
01:38:37 ◼ ► environment where if they talk about their carb carbon you know zero 2030 pledge they're just
01:38:43 ◼ ► going to get yelled at um by people in power if they talk about their commitment to uh diversity
01:38:49 ◼ ► they're going to get yelled at so instead what they do is they they they say look at us we've got this
01:38:56 ◼ ► whole uh uh new university uh program thing that we're doing in detroit and they don't talk about
01:39:05 ◼ ► who's in detroit they talk about how it's industry but that is also clearly trying to diversify the
01:39:12 ◼ ► people who are involved in that aspect of engineering um but they're not going to talk about it and you
01:39:17 ◼ ► can fault them for that but like i think they're beat there's a lot of behavior that they're still
01:39:21 ◼ ► trying to do but here's the thing about this category for me this category has always meant
01:39:25 ◼ ► apple likes to talk a big game about how it's trying to leave the world better than it found it
01:39:29 ◼ ► um and championing various social and environmental policies and causes and posting things on its
01:39:36 ◼ ► you know on its home page and on its ceo's twitter feed and things like that and this category is always
01:39:42 ◼ ► meant to be how is apple apple brought this up apple didn't need to do this apple's the one who uses
01:39:47 ◼ ► this for positive pr look at us we're special we're different we believe in stuff how they doing
01:39:52 ◼ ► and this year again we can argue about the tactical nature of what tim cook has chosen to do
01:40:00 ◼ ► but this year apple has decided they're not gonna do or talk about that stuff because it might threaten
01:40:10 ◼ ► the bottom line as a profit-driven publicly held company i would argue that's not especially surprising
01:40:17 ◼ ► but it is certainly some cognitive dissonance with the way apple has talked about itself in the past
01:40:23 ◼ ► and in that way it is very hard to look at the behavior of tim cook over the last year and not said that
01:40:32 ◼ ► he is walking away from this aspect of apple's perceived personality yeah and i guess i i know he's got his
01:40:43 ◼ ► reasons but that's not the issue really so yeah i'll give it a it's a two verging on a one for me i want
01:40:53 ◼ ► you know i could go i could get salty again and say it's a one um but but like i get why it's happening
01:40:59 ◼ ► but that to me that's not the point the point of this category is not why it's happening the point is
01:41:04 ◼ ► apple said they were different and that they cared about a bunch of stuff that didn't go to the bottom
01:41:10 ◼ ► line and that they were going to do their environmental stuff not because it was going to be
01:41:15 ◼ ► great for the bottom line but because it was the right thing to do and this year what apple has done
01:41:20 ◼ ► is stuff that was the wrong thing to do except for the bottom line that was a choice that they made
01:41:27 ◼ ► yeah it's a good point of like you brought this up not us right they you you wanted the benefit from
01:41:33 ◼ ► this when you were comfortable and you were in a time where it was beneficial for you to to do it
01:41:38 ◼ ► and now it's not so you don't get the benefit anymore yeah you got to live it down now like you you said
01:41:44 ◼ ► we care about all this stuff and then the government changed and they said we hate people who care about
01:41:49 ◼ ► that stuff how are you doing and they're like we love you you're great and that's it i mean they they
01:41:55 ◼ ► bring it upon themselves i'm sure people would be disappointed with tim cook's behavior otherwise but
01:41:59 ◼ ► the cultivated i mean and you know we can argue about it because i don't think it was false i think
01:42:05 ◼ ► that apple has corporate values but at the end of the day it's a profit-seeking corporation that is not
01:42:14 ◼ ► interested in taking a stand if it's going to hurt their profits and so they didn't so to kind of wrap up
01:42:23 ◼ ► uh i want to just look at some of the biggest like just kind of like overall so there were only three
01:42:28 ◼ ► categories that were up year over year and that was iphone ipad and services and they were very small
01:42:33 ◼ ► gains um everything else was down the biggest losers were the mac apple os quality and world impact
01:42:41 ◼ ► so interesting year very interesting interesting yeah and i do wonder you know i do wonder how much
01:42:51 ◼ ► of an impact the world impact rating had on everything else i think it made for bad vibes yeah and and
01:43:01 ◼ ► although we can laugh about it um i think the vibe in the room concept shows itself in things like this
01:43:10 ◼ ► i think everybody not everybody the people who voted very low in apple's impact on the world maybe karen
01:43:15 ◼ ► healy will do an analysis of this but my guess is that um that if you are voting one or two in this
01:43:23 ◼ ► category you are not predisposed to give apple the benefit of the doubt in other categories
01:43:27 ◼ ► i want to finish out one ask upgrade question we do two i put i put a winter olympics one to ask
01:43:42 ◼ ► nothing about f1 i've got the f1 app i've checked out some subreddits where else do i need to go to
01:43:49 ◼ ► get up to speed there is one answer for you brian and it is netflix's drive to survive this is the way
01:43:58 ◼ ► that many people get into the sport including me um i watched the first season and second season of
01:44:04 ◼ ► drive to survive just as it so the first season i think was in 2019 second season was in 2020 i watched
01:44:10 ◼ ► both of them just before the the 2020 season was supposed to start but it got delayed uh for a
01:44:16 ◼ ► little bit for obvious reasons um there are seven seasons of drive to survive now i liked basically
01:44:23 ◼ ► all of them except for one but it doesn't matter um i recommend you either start with the first one
01:44:31 ◼ ► because it's great um and you may just enjoy it but the the best thing for you to do if you are if you
01:44:37 ◼ ► have limited time is to begin with the season that drops this friday which is everything that would
01:44:44 ◼ ► have happened in the 2025 formula one season and it will set you up perfectly for when the new season
01:44:50 ◼ ► begins um i would recommend you just watch season one because like it is the best season of the show
01:44:56 ◼ ► um because that was a very exciting year that it was covering lots of strange things happened but
01:45:04 ◼ ► many of the people that are in that season are not even in the sport anymore so like if you if you can
01:45:10 ◼ ► only watch one season you should watch the one of season eight which comes out on friday it will set you
01:45:15 ◼ ► up but then you could maybe go back and watch other stuff it will give you more knowledge as well kind
01:45:20 ◼ ► of like historical knowledge of the show but drive to survive the team that produced that show for
01:45:25 ◼ ► netflix they really know what they're doing this and also the 2025 season was very dramatic so i think
01:45:31 ◼ ► it's going to be a good season of drive to survive uh as well so that would be my recommendation if
01:45:36 ◼ ► anyone is thinking like oh hey look i'm going to get f1 now because it's part of my uh apple tv
01:45:45 ◼ ► and josh wrote in and says do you have any thoughts on the olympic on olympic athletes using old wired
01:45:52 ◼ ► iphone earpods with the button on them it's common to see freestyle skiers and snowballers click their
01:45:59 ◼ ► music on before starting their run it feels like an indictment against apple that people are still
01:46:05 ◼ ► using a technology that they launched in 2020 in 2012 instead of using newer products well i mean first
01:46:12 ◼ ► off really is is wired earbuds with a clicker technology in 2012 i know what this person is
01:46:20 ◼ ► saying but it actually goes way back yeah beyond that yeah um it it is so my thought i mean you said
01:46:29 ◼ ► to me it's some of it is fashion it is fashion so it is very fashionable right now for people to use
01:46:37 ◼ ► ipods and wired headphones and even wired headphones with their iphone it is a fashion thing that people
01:46:43 ◼ ► are doing uh it became trendy you'll see lots of celebrities doing it this is not just an olympics
01:46:48 ◼ ► thing um there are you know you'll see celebrities photographed all the time with this stuff and people
01:46:53 ◼ ► are digging out old ipods and using them as their music players like this it's it's i don't think this is
01:46:59 ◼ ► an olympics thing as much as it is just a wider trend amongst younger people so i think also if you're a um
01:47:05 ◼ ► if you're concerned about your look having a little tiny earbuds with the cable coming down is maybe
01:47:11 ◼ ► better than than what how airpods look even now i think airpods have been normalized but still they
01:47:17 ◼ ► look a little unusual the other thing i thought here is um i wonder if you're a skier or a snowboarder
01:47:26 ◼ ► if you've got a wired headphone and it pops out of your ear it's not going to go into the snow and be lost forever
01:47:36 ◼ ► if you've got why if you've got a an airpod and it falls out of your ear you will never get it back and i wonder
01:47:56 ◼ ► exactly they're in the helmet great example they're in there exactly you want to you want a physical
01:48:02 ◼ ► clicker that with your gloves on or whatever yeah you can click to start your music i love that they
01:48:06 ◼ ► listen to music on their runs that's also hilarious lots of so yeah there are lots of practical reasons
01:48:11 ◼ ► there are helmets that have speakers inside them yeah too so they you know in some cases they may not
01:48:15 ◼ ► actually have headphones in at all they may just have a speaker you will remember like me i think it was
01:48:19 ◼ ► the burton smart jacket that was like a big ipod accessory burton amp yeah my my brother-in-law
01:48:26 ◼ ► as a teen snowboarder reviewed that for mac world and got our copy desk to query when he said it was sick
01:48:32 ◼ ► was that positive and i had to say yes that is what the kids say what year was that oh my god i don't
01:48:39 ◼ ► i don't know oh my god 2006 something like that but they fedexed him the jacket and he wore it
01:48:47 ◼ ► snowboarding and got a picture taken and wrote a wrote a little thing or told me a little thing about
01:48:51 ◼ ► what he thought about it and he's a middle-aged dad now it's been that long but back then he was just
01:48:56 ◼ ► some punk kid snowboarder with the burton amp jacket uh yeah so that's part of it too i have i mean
01:49:03 ◼ ► i haven't skied in ages but i actually have a ski helmet that's got a a mini jack in it and a little
01:49:08 ◼ ► speaker inside and a clicker and it's the same same deal you you you know you've got your gloves on
01:49:16 ◼ ► whatever the last thing you're going to be doing is it reaching under your helmet or or you know and
01:49:21 ◼ ► you've got gloves so you got to take your glove off like forget it it doesn't make sense so yeah
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