Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, Episode 442. Today's show is brought to you by Rocket

00:00:15 ◼   ► Money and Ladder. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hi, Myke Hurley. Shout out to our friend James Thompson as we do every 100 episodes when

00:00:23 ◼   ► we hit 42.

00:00:24 ◼   ► There you go. It's nearly James' birthday. This is an early birthday present to James

00:00:29 ◼   ► Thompson, creator of Peacock.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Happy birthday, James Thompson. Is it a momentous birthday? Is it a big birthday?

00:00:37 ◼   ► Who could say?

00:00:38 ◼   ► They're all momentous when you get to this age.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Psst, it is.

00:00:44 ◼   ► It is.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I have a hashtag Snell Talk question or AKA just Snell Talk question.

00:00:50 ◼   ► I'm still trying to work the hashtag out of my vocabulary.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Phil asks, "Jason, if you podcast in your garage, does your car always have to live

00:00:58 ◼   ► outside?"

00:00:59 ◼   ► I haven't parked my car in my garage for years.

00:01:04 ◼   ► California baby.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Our cars are wet right now, but yeah.

00:01:09 ◼   ► We bought a minivan in 2010.

00:01:11 ◼   ► - Are you having the rain that I'm seeing everywhere?

00:01:15 ◼   ► - Well, you know,

00:01:16 ◼   ► still talk is not supposed to be about weather, Myke,

00:01:18 ◼   ► but blue sky right now, but yeah,

00:01:20 ◼   ► we've had an enormous amount of rain,

00:01:21 ◼   ► enormous, enormous amount of rain,

00:01:24 ◼   ► washing the dirt off our cars.

00:01:27 ◼   ► We bought a van in 2010

00:01:29 ◼   ► that basically didn't fit in the garage.

00:01:31 ◼   ► And at that point we committed

00:01:33 ◼   ► to just not parking our cars in the garage,

00:01:35 ◼   ► at which point I realized slowly over a couple of years,

00:01:39 ◼   ► I could actually use the garage

00:01:41 ◼   ► and thus began our soft conversion of the garage,

00:01:44 ◼   ► which is, you know, I hung the curtains

00:01:47 ◼   ► and moved stuff out of half of it and put,

00:01:49 ◼   ► we moved the door so it opens to the inside of the house

00:01:51 ◼   ► instead of the outside of the house.

00:01:53 ◼   ► But yes, Phil, that's, you've figured it out.

00:01:56 ◼   ► We don't park our cars in our garage.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Our garages essentially become half storage

00:02:01 ◼   ► and half my office and our cars live in the driveway

00:02:04 ◼   ► and the elements and the birds and the leaves and the sun,

00:02:09 ◼   ► it's all on the cars.

00:02:11 ◼   ► But as John Syracuse likes to point out,

00:02:14 ◼   ► when he comes to California, he looks at the car,

00:02:17 ◼   ► all the older cars we have here,

00:02:19 ◼   ► and it's like he's in a museum, he says,

00:02:22 ◼   ► because all those cars would have just rusted out to nothing

00:02:25 ◼   ► and even driving around in Boston,

00:02:26 ◼   ► let alone sitting out on the street.

00:02:27 ◼   ► But yeah, no, our car's sit outside, that's it.

00:02:30 ◼   ► - Like Cuba or something then, right?

00:02:32 ◼   ► Isn't that the thing?

00:02:32 ◼   ► all the really old cars in Cuba because they do they do because they don't they

00:02:36 ◼   ► didn't get it imports for a while from anywhere except like trabies from East

00:02:40 ◼   ► Germany or something yeah mm-hmm yeah if you would like to send in a question for

00:02:45 ◼   ► us to open a future episode of upgrade just go to upgrade feedback calm and

00:02:49 ◼   ► send in your snail talk question or use question mark snow talk in the relay FM

00:02:53 ◼   ► members discord we're talking about Twitter later on today because feels

00:02:57 ◼   ► almost pointless to even mention.

00:03:00 ◼   ► You can send them via Twitter anymore,

00:03:02 ◼   ► because who's there?

00:03:03 ◼   ► But that's a conversation for later on.

00:03:06 ◼   ► We have some follow-up, Jason Snow.

00:03:09 ◼   ► First, I would like to thank everybody

00:03:11 ◼   ► who sent in follow-up via the feedback tool.

00:03:14 ◼   ► I think we got more follow-up in the past week

00:03:16 ◼   ► than we have gotten in a really long time,

00:03:18 ◼   ► so I appreciate everybody's excitement

00:03:21 ◼   ► about the feedback tool.

00:03:22 ◼   ► There was a ton of stuff, questions that we got sent in

00:03:25 ◼   ► that we're going to use in this episode, later episodes.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Lots of people just telling us that they love that we have the feedback tool.

00:03:30 ◼   ► We're reading all of it. Even if we don't use some of it in some episodes, we do read all of it.

00:03:35 ◼   ► So thank you to everybody that's been sending it in.

00:03:37 ◼   ► And you can send in your feedback for the show by going to upgradefeedback.com.

00:03:41 ◼   ► We had a bunch of people write in with fixes for the seasonal HomeKit items thing

00:03:46 ◼   ► that we mentioned last time.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So like, what do you do if you unplug your Christmas lights

00:03:51 ◼   ► and then it just shows that you have an item as unresponsive in HomeKit?

00:03:55 ◼   ► So if you go to the accessory detail view inside of HomeKit and turn off the status options

00:04:04 ◼   ► that are at the bottom, this will remove it from the home summaries and then you won't get those

00:04:09 ◼   ► errors anymore. And then there's a second part of this that a bunch of people wrote in because

00:04:14 ◼   ► I was thinking about this. If I turned it off from the summaries I would lose it. I was like convinced

00:04:20 ◼   ► that I would just "where are the lights?" right because then they're not showing up in any of the

00:04:23 ◼   ► some reason I'd forget that I'd have to go into the specific room quote unquote in homekit to find it.

00:04:29 ◼   ► So then a bunch of people said create a seasonal or holiday room or section in the home app and just

00:04:36 ◼   ► move all that stuff there so then you'll know where to find it later on. So that's very clever

00:04:40 ◼   ► and just like a good way to handle this. I'm gonna say Apple this is an opportunity for you to do

00:04:46 ◼   ► something better here with this right because it makes perfect sense that there would be things

00:04:52 ◼   ► that you'd only need at certain times of the year,

00:04:55 ◼   ► not even just like holiday things, you know?

00:04:57 ◼   ► Like as the seasons change,

00:04:59 ◼   ► it's just like certain devices that you might not need,

00:05:01 ◼   ► so you unplug them completely.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And then, you know, it's all going wild.

00:05:06 ◼   ► So I would like to see something to maybe designate

00:05:09 ◼   ► of like, this device is not always plugged in,

00:05:12 ◼   ► like don't worry about it, you know?

00:05:14 ◼   ► - I like that I have created a deactivated room

00:05:16 ◼   ► and my Christmas lights item is now living in there.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - Thank you to the many upgradeans

00:05:22 ◼   ► to send that in.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Also got something from Curtis who says,

00:05:25 ◼   ► "No one's buying a $2,000 Apple headset

00:05:28 ◼   ► that does not already own the latest AirPods Pro.

00:05:31 ◼   ► This is a non-problem."

00:05:32 ◼   ► So this is in our complaint to the idea in Rumor Roundup

00:05:36 ◼   ► of the AirPods Pro may be required to use the Apple headset

00:05:41 ◼   ► because of like bandwidth and stuff like that

00:05:45 ◼   ► for some things.

00:05:46 ◼   ► - And I said, if I spend $3,000 on the headset,

00:05:48 ◼   ► I want you to throw in the AirPods Pro

00:05:49 ◼   ► that are required for free.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So I disagree with Curtis that it's a non-problem.

00:05:53 ◼   ► I think it's a problem for Apple.

00:05:54 ◼   ► If this is a product that can only be sold

00:05:56 ◼   ► to a subset of a subset of Apple customers,

00:05:59 ◼   ► you also need to have this other thing.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I think the idea that if this is a product

00:06:05 ◼   ► that's only sold to people who have the latest AirPods Pro,

00:06:09 ◼   ► I would also say that's a problem

00:06:10 ◼   ► because again, subset of a subset, not great.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Also let's all media coverage of the product

00:06:16 ◼   ► include a free shot at the product

00:06:18 ◼   ► by saying not only do you have to buy this thing,

00:06:20 ◼   ► but you have to buy this other thing from Apple too.

00:06:21 ◼   ► And oh, Apple gets rich on that

00:06:23 ◼   ► 'cause you gotta buy their expensive headphones

00:06:24 ◼   ► in order to even use it, in order for it to even be usable,

00:06:27 ◼   ► even if that's not true and it's got built-in speakers,

00:06:31 ◼   ► they will take the shot.

00:06:32 ◼   ► I think it's just a known goal, you don't wanna do it.

00:06:34 ◼   ► And more than that, being seen selling a product

00:06:38 ◼   ► for 2,000, 2,500, $3,000,

00:06:40 ◼   ► and then being seen as also including

00:06:43 ◼   ► a whole bunch of extra purchases on top of it

00:06:45 ◼   ► that you have to add in order to have the best experience

00:06:47 ◼   ► when it's already very, very expensive.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I mean, I guess if you're selling a luxury car,

00:06:52 ◼   ► that's how you do it.

00:06:53 ◼   ► But that's my point.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Is this a luxury car?

00:06:56 ◼   ► Because developers aren't gonna build for a platform

00:06:58 ◼   ► that is a super narrow luxury tech object.

00:07:02 ◼   ► They need some belief that a lot of units are gonna be sold

00:07:06 ◼   ► so that they can sell a lot of software

00:07:07 ◼   ► to the people who bought it.

00:07:09 ◼   ► So I appreciate the feedback, but I just don't agree.

00:07:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that it is a,

00:07:14 ◼   ► I don't know if I necessarily agree that like,

00:07:16 ◼   ► just because you would buy that product

00:07:19 ◼   ► that you would own every single product?

00:07:21 ◼   ► Like what if you just didn't want the AirPods Pro, right?

00:07:24 ◼   ► Like there just wasn't a thing that you wanted.

00:07:26 ◼   ► - Non-problem.

00:07:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I just think that I agree

00:07:32 ◼   ► with everything you said, right?

00:07:33 ◼   ► Of like, you open yourself up to just more criticism

00:07:38 ◼   ► over the already expensive product

00:07:41 ◼   ► for the sake of 60, 70, 80, 90, $100,

00:07:44 ◼   ► whatever it ends up costing, right?

00:07:46 ◼   ► For the AirPods Pro to be produced,

00:07:49 ◼   ► Just put them in.

00:07:50 ◼   ► And I know that that is like not an Apple thing to do,

00:07:53 ◼   ► to give you something for free or bundle it in the box.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Like I was thinking about iPhone charges.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Well, you know I have a good random piece of follow up.

00:08:03 ◼   ► So I bought my mom an iPhone for Christmas.

00:08:06 ◼   ► I think I mentioned this, I got her an iPhone 13.

00:08:09 ◼   ► She had an iPhone XR.

00:08:11 ◼   ► I got a call from her a couple of days after getting it

00:08:14 ◼   ► and she's like, "There's something wrong

00:08:15 ◼   ► "with the battery on this phone."

00:08:18 ◼   ► And so I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

00:08:19 ◼   ► And she's like, "Oh, the battery's running down

00:08:21 ◼   ► and I'm running out of battery at the end of the day."

00:08:25 ◼   ► So I was like, "All right, well, sometimes it takes

00:08:28 ◼   ► a few days for some processing to occur.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Just keep your eye on it and let me know."

00:08:33 ◼   ► She's like, "Okay."

00:08:34 ◼   ► And I was like, "Just take your charger to work with you.

00:08:36 ◼   ► Do you have a charger at work?"

00:08:37 ◼   ► She's like, "No, I just have a charger at home."

00:08:38 ◼   ► I was like, "Okay, take your charger to work with you."

00:08:41 ◼   ► She's like, "Okay."

00:08:42 ◼   ► So, you know, couple of days go by and she's like,

00:08:44 ◼   ► "I'm still having problems."

00:08:46 ◼   ► I'm like, what's going on here?

00:08:48 ◼   ► And then I realized she had an iPhone XR.

00:08:50 ◼   ► She had like a 5 watt iPhone power adapter, right?

00:08:54 ◼   ► So I had to then buy her a power adapter

00:08:59 ◼   ► because she also had a USB-C cable in the box now anyway,

00:09:02 ◼   ► right, so it's not, even the cable does nothing.

00:09:05 ◼   ► And so it was kind of just my point of like,

00:09:07 ◼   ► going all the way back to when they took the power adapter

00:09:10 ◼   ► out of the box, like it doesn't work like that.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Like the whole idea of like everyone has these things,

00:09:14 ◼   ► it doesn't work like that.

00:09:15 ◼   ► 'Cause you, over many years, the amount of power required

00:09:19 ◼   ► for these things changes.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And just the secondary part of like,

00:09:23 ◼   ► if this was purely an environmental thing,

00:09:26 ◼   ► just give people the option to have one added in for free

00:09:28 ◼   ► then every now and again.

00:09:29 ◼   ► - Right. - You know, the people

00:09:30 ◼   ► that update their phone every five years,

00:09:33 ◼   ► they need a new power adapter.

00:09:35 ◼   ► But, you know, they're now having to buy that

00:09:37 ◼   ► on top of what they would have otherwise.

00:09:40 ◼   ► - I'll also say that this is,

00:09:43 ◼   ► The argument that they don't need to do this is missing the point, I think, of the fact

00:09:48 ◼   ► that it's a design failure, right?

00:09:52 ◼   ► If Apple releases a—regardless of the price, but especially if it's two or three thousand

00:09:56 ◼   ► dollars—if Apple releases a headset that can't properly do audio in a way that really

00:10:02 ◼   ► is immersive or can be used for communication or whatever without an additional purchase,

00:10:08 ◼   ► doesn't that suggest that they failed at something in the product?

00:10:12 ◼   ► If they're like, yeah, we couldn't do that.

00:10:15 ◼   ► And again, I can see the argument that's like,

00:10:17 ◼   ► well, actually what we did is we decided

00:10:18 ◼   ► everybody's ears are different

00:10:19 ◼   ► and everybody's audio preferences are different.

00:10:21 ◼   ► And so we wanted to make that a separate feature.

00:10:23 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, but like, if you're charging $3,000 for it,

00:10:26 ◼   ► it's very hard for you to say, well,

00:10:28 ◼   ► what we did was we cut the price from 3,200 down to 3,000.

00:10:32 ◼   ► So now it's a deal and you can go buy a set of headphones.

00:10:34 ◼   ► It just, it seems like a miss just to even be talking

00:10:37 ◼   ► about the fact that everybody's gonna go,

00:10:40 ◼   ► Like the Quest 2 has a headphone jack, right?

00:10:45 ◼   ► So you can listen using the Quest 2 audio.

00:10:48 ◼   ► If you want headphones, you can plug into the headphone jack

00:10:51 ◼   ► and put whatever headphones you want in there,

00:10:53 ◼   ► theoretically, right?

00:10:55 ◼   ► With this though, it's like, well, no headphone jack,

00:10:56 ◼   ► it's Apple, they need to be wireless.

00:10:58 ◼   ► And then the specific report is that they need to be

00:11:00 ◼   ► a very specific newest version of the AirPods Pro 2.

00:11:05 ◼   ► So suggesting Apple's very latest and greatest tech

00:11:08 ◼   ► is going to be required to do something that then, again, according to Germin's report,

00:11:13 ◼   ► is a key feature of the product, which is communication stuff.

00:11:16 ◼   ► It's like, that's where it all kind of like piles up.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I could see it being sort of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, if you want a nicer experience,

00:11:22 ◼   ► you get some headphones.

00:11:24 ◼   ► But that's not what it is.

00:11:25 ◼   ► It's like, if you want part of the key experience, you must get the newest chip that's in only

00:11:31 ◼   ► a couple of Apple products.

00:11:33 ◼   ► That's where it starts to become a little bit ridiculous when you're talking about a

00:11:36 ◼   ► product that is not, we're trying to keep the price down. And that's why it's only...

00:11:40 ◼   ► Like, I don't feel this way if after all of this it's cheaper than we think, which

00:11:45 ◼   ► is, by the way, feedback that I've gotten from several listeners by various

00:11:51 ◼   ► channels, which is a lot of people have talked about the iPad introduction and

00:11:55 ◼   ► it being, you know, everybody thought it would be the iPad be over a thousand and

00:11:59 ◼   ► it was $500, and wondering if Apple is actually sandbagging a little bit here.

00:12:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure if that's true or if people are looking at the the bill of goods and

00:12:07 ◼   ► Calculating a mark up in their head, but I have heard from people who say yes, but that way they'll dazzle us

00:12:13 ◼   ► How could people be possibly impressed with a headset that cost $1,500 or $1,800?

00:12:19 ◼   ► It's so expensive and the answer is prime the pump by telling everybody it's three grand and then when it's 1,500

00:12:25 ◼   ► You're like, oh what a relief instead of what 1500

00:12:28 ◼   ► But, you know, the cheaper it is, the more you can make the argument, "Look, if you want

00:12:32 ◼   ► the best experience, pay a little more for accessories."

00:12:34 ◼   ► But the more expensive it is, the harder I think it is to make that argument.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Again, unless you're a luxury car maker and taking that approach, the problem is if you're

00:12:42 ◼   ► trying to popularize this platform and get developers to develop for it, coming out with

00:12:49 ◼   ► the ultra-high-end product is probably not the best way to do it.

00:12:54 ◼   ► I think I mentioned the iPad thing on the episode too.

00:12:57 ◼   ► It was like a hope of mine that they would do this, but.

00:13:01 ◼   ► - You may, in fact, you did in episode 440.

00:13:04 ◼   ► You mentioned it.

00:13:06 ◼   ► An almost original iPad-like price surprise.

00:13:08 ◼   ► And I know that because I now have a secret tool

00:13:11 ◼   ► that lets me search old episodes of upgrade.

00:13:13 ◼   ► - We'll talk about that one day.

00:13:16 ◼   ► - One day.

00:13:18 ◼   ► - We'll round up for you.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Saddle up, Jason Snell.

00:13:20 ◼   ► - All right, I'm up on the saddle.

00:13:22 ◼   ► According to Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has cancelled their plans for a full screen iPhone SE4 in

00:13:28 ◼   ► 2024.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Kuo, I think this is due to the consistently lower than expected shipments of mid to low

00:13:34 ◼   ► end iPhones.

00:13:36 ◼   ► This SE4 was expected to be a full screen experience and maybe Apple is just not completely

00:13:43 ◼   ► sure of what's going on with this tier of phones that they make, so they seem to have

00:13:48 ◼   ► at least put on hold or completely cancelled the SE4.

00:13:53 ◼   ► But this has an interesting ramification, due to concerns over Apple's own modems.

00:14:02 ◼   ► Due to the concerns that the performance of the in-house baseband chip may not be up to

00:14:06 ◼   ► par with Qualcomm's, Apple initially planned to launch its baseband chip in 2024 and let

00:14:12 ◼   ► the low-end iPhone SE4 adopt it first and decide whether to then use it in the iPhone

00:14:18 ◼   ► 16 to use its baseband chip depending on the development status of the iPhone SE4. A cancellation

00:14:24 ◼   ► of the iPhone SE4 has significantly increased the chances of Qualcomm remaining the exclusive

00:14:29 ◼   ► supplier of baseband chips for the 2024 iPhone 16 series.

00:14:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, so again, you don't wanna make a mistake

00:14:38 ◼   ► and ruin your iPhone, right?

00:14:40 ◼   ► And we remember that time when Intel modems

00:14:44 ◼   ► and Qualcomm modems were shared across an iPhone release.

00:14:49 ◼   ► And it turned out that the Intel modems weren't as good

00:14:53 ◼   ► as the Qualcomm modems.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And I think Apple even did some speed gating

00:14:57 ◼   ► of the Qualcomm modems so that they would all seem the same.

00:15:00 ◼   ► But it was one of those, it was a bad thing.

00:15:01 ◼   ► And the iPhone's too important to let that happen.

00:15:03 ◼   ► So they have the smart idea, right?

00:15:05 ◼   ► Of saying, let's test this in our iPhone SE, right?

00:15:09 ◼   ► It's a low volume product.

00:15:10 ◼   ► It's a low end product.

00:15:12 ◼   ► We can put our chip in there.

00:15:13 ◼   ► And even if it's slower than Qualcomm, what do you want?

00:15:16 ◼   ► It's a cheaper phone.

00:15:19 ◼   ► And if it goes well, we can look at the results

00:15:21 ◼   ► and then we can release that chip elsewhere or not.

00:15:26 ◼   ► And now the test bed is killed because I think,

00:15:31 ◼   ► like you said, and we talked about this previously,

00:15:33 ◼   ► Apple seems to be struggling with the identity of portions

00:15:37 ◼   ► of the iPhone line, right?

00:15:39 ◼   ► Like the iPhone mini and then the iPhone plus

00:15:41 ◼   ► and neither of those seems to have worked

00:15:43 ◼   ► according to reports that well.

00:15:44 ◼   ► And the iPhone SE now being another concept

00:15:47 ◼   ► that's sort of like, you know, maybe not.

00:15:50 ◼   ► So they're struggling with that.

00:15:52 ◼   ► But the, yes, the spinoff is really interesting,

00:15:54 ◼   ► which is that was also gonna be their test bed.

00:15:56 ◼   ► And if they can't test it with that,

00:15:58 ◼   ► then the better safe than sorry

00:16:00 ◼   ► to just kind of commit to Qualcomm for 2024.

00:16:03 ◼   ► But Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple continues to work on their modem chips with the hopes

00:16:09 ◼   ► of a 2024 release.

00:16:12 ◼   ► So who knows what's going on there.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Maybe they're still like still hoping that they can get them to work well, but if they

00:16:18 ◼   ► do they're gonna have to take the plunge on it.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Maybe they sacrifice another phone in the lineup, who knows.

00:16:23 ◼   ► An interesting tidbit on this is it's not just the modem.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Apple is looking to combine the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips together too and make them

00:16:30 ◼   ► themselves to drop parts from another supplier, at least to design them themselves.

00:16:35 ◼   ► And that seems to be closer to fruition that Apple – Apple's already done some Wi-Fi

00:16:39 ◼   ► and Bluetooth in some of their products, but to take it to the iPhone, for example, and

00:16:44 ◼   ► take those over, it's all part of their plan, but Broadcom definitely took a hit in their

00:16:49 ◼   ► stock when the report came out that Apple was working hard and felt like they were getting

00:16:54 ◼   ► closer to being able to build their own chip to do Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and not have to

00:16:59 ◼   ► buy that chip from Broadcom.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Mark Gurman and Ross Young are both reporting that Apple is looking to develop its own micro-LED

00:17:07 ◼   ► displays for the iPhone and iPad, but starting with the Apple Watch Ultra first.

00:17:13 ◼   ► Some debate on the timing of this is either going to be 2024 or 2025 for the first models

00:17:18 ◼   ► to appear in an Apple Watch Ultra, but it's expected that production will begin in 2024

00:17:24 ◼   ► at least, no matter when the devices are released.

00:17:27 ◼   ► You may think to yourself, what's the benefit of this? Well, Mark Gurman says, "The display

00:17:31 ◼   ► is intended to offer improved brightness, color reproduction and viewing angles, making

00:17:35 ◼   ► images look more like they are painted atop the display glass, and replace parts currently

00:17:40 ◼   ► supplied by companies like Samsung and LG." However, it's worth noting that someone

00:17:46 ◼   ► actually has to make the displays, this is just Apple designing them and designing the

00:17:50 ◼   ► technology. Ross Young suggests that it would still be LG display that does this, but Apple

00:17:55 ◼   ► would be moving away from using their technology and designs, not their manufacturing capabilities.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Right. So it's actually a little bit more like with Apple Silicon where Apple takes

00:18:05 ◼   ► over design of the thing, but there's still somebody else who makes it, right? Taiwan

00:18:10 ◼   ► semiconductor TSMC does that. This is going to be like that potentially. And also this

00:18:17 ◼   ► is one of, remember, it's like Apple's smallest display, right? And then this rumor has been

00:18:21 ◼   ► out there for some time. I think it's very easy to jump to the conclusions like, "Oh,

00:18:25 ◼   ► "Uh-oh, Apple gonna make all their display technology

00:18:28 ◼   ► going forward."

00:18:29 ◼   ► And it's like, this is gonna take years, if ever,

00:18:33 ◼   ► for this to happen.

00:18:34 ◼   ► But I do think it's interesting that Apple decided

00:18:36 ◼   ► that this was tech that they could push forward themselves

00:18:39 ◼   ► and gain some sort of an edge.

00:18:42 ◼   ► And so they have done it.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Whether it's, you know, whether it goes beyond this,

00:18:47 ◼   ► who knows, but it's interesting, right?

00:18:49 ◼   ► You can see in all these areas,

00:18:51 ◼   ► Apple trying to push a little bit on, you know,

00:18:53 ◼   ► taking control of the key aspects of its own hardware.

00:18:57 ◼   ► - And this was similar to the original Apple Watch

00:19:01 ◼   ► had OLED, right?

00:19:02 ◼   ► And it was OLED so, so much sooner than any other devices

00:19:07 ◼   ► that Apple made got OLED.

00:19:08 ◼   ► So it makes sense here too.

00:19:10 ◼   ► - Right, OLED Apple Watch and then eventually OLED iPhone

00:19:12 ◼   ► and still not OLED iPad, right?

00:19:15 ◼   ► Or Mac display.

00:19:17 ◼   ► So you can see the slow roll of display tech

00:19:22 ◼   ► and how it might become economical

00:19:24 ◼   ► in something like an Apple Watch display

00:19:26 ◼   ► years before it might even remotely become economical

00:19:30 ◼   ► in something like an iPhone, if it ever does, right?

00:19:32 ◼   ► Because there's competing display tech

00:19:34 ◼   ► and it might turn out that, you know,

00:19:37 ◼   ► like a lot of us thought that maybe OLED

00:19:39 ◼   ► would come to the iPad faster and it hasn't.

00:19:41 ◼   ► And some, you know, there's different display techs

00:19:44 ◼   ► with different price and performance characteristics

00:19:49 ◼   ► basically, and something that makes sense on a screen

00:19:52 ◼   ► this size for a product this price might not make sense

00:19:55 ◼   ► ever on a larger device compared to some other tech

00:19:59 ◼   ► that has different characteristics when you weigh them

00:20:01 ◼   ► and say, actually we're better off with this other thing.

00:20:05 ◼   ► So it'll be interesting to see what happens here,

00:20:08 ◼   ► but I like that this seems to be moving forward.

00:20:12 ◼   ► This was a rumor that was out there like years ago

00:20:14 ◼   ► that Apple was trying to push the micro LED stuff forward.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And 9to5Mac is reporting that Apple could have Mac news this week.

00:20:23 ◼   ► "Apple could be making its first announcement of 2023 as soon as tomorrow," sources say.

00:20:29 ◼   ► The company is holding Mac-related briefings with influencers and select members of the

00:20:34 ◼   ► press this week, and an announcement could be made via Apple's newsroom website on Tuesday,

00:20:40 ◼   ► which is tomorrow, as we record this.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Certainly, we're talking about a lot of stuff that Apple could have done and didn't do,

00:20:47 ◼   ► like different updates to maybe iMacs, MacBook Pros, Mac Minis, that kind of stuff.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Yeah, that MacBook Pro, Mac Mini thing that everybody seemed to say was primed for the

00:21:00 ◼   ► fall and never happened and they did that statement where they're like, "And that wraps

00:21:04 ◼   ► up the year for us."

00:21:05 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, wait a second.

00:21:07 ◼   ► Okay, I guess that wraps up the year."

00:21:09 ◼   ► And it did.

00:21:12 ◼   ► know that suggests that that announcement's just kind of floating out there and I know

00:21:16 ◼   ► Mark Gurman at one point said they don't introduce products in January so it'll probably be March

00:21:21 ◼   ► and I remember at the time thinking well I mean no they've introduced products in January

00:21:25 ◼   ► and if this report is correct it would suggest potentially that that thing that they couldn't

00:21:32 ◼   ► ship in November they can ship in January so maybe we'll have something to talk about

00:21:36 ◼   ► next week about new stuff that would be great.

00:21:38 ◼   ► - It would be nice, well, hoping that they're exciting.

00:21:41 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:21:42 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:21:43 ◼   ► - Well, right, I mean, yeah, the rumor of,

00:21:47 ◼   ► you know, MacBook Pros are always exciting

00:21:49 ◼   ► for a certain category, even if it's just a speed update,

00:21:51 ◼   ► and waiting for the other to shoot a drop on the Mac Mini,

00:21:55 ◼   ► that could be good.

00:21:57 ◼   ► But who knows?

00:21:58 ◼   ► I mean, Apple Card, like, there's lots of things

00:22:01 ◼   ► it could be that are not as exciting.

00:22:03 ◼   ► - We wouldn't expect, like, the bigger MacBook Air

00:22:07 ◼   ► or Mac Pro or anything like that, right?

00:22:10 ◼   ► - Anything's possible.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Based on the rumor of the chain of events

00:22:16 ◼   ► for all these products,

00:22:18 ◼   ► the ones that are the clearest

00:22:21 ◼   ► as sort of like they've been on the verge

00:22:23 ◼   ► of being introduced are the Mac Mini

00:22:26 ◼   ► and the MacBook Pro M2,

00:22:29 ◼   ► which would mean we'd get a look

00:22:30 ◼   ► at what the higher end M2 chips look like,

00:22:33 ◼   ► which would be fun.

00:22:35 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean,

00:22:35 ◼   ► The Gherman's not hot on the iMac as a whole,

00:22:37 ◼   ► but the Mac Pro is floating out there,

00:22:39 ◼   ► the 15-inch MacBook Air is floating out there.

00:22:41 ◼   ► There are some other options that could surprise us.

00:22:44 ◼   ► It just, it feels like those two are, I mean,

00:22:47 ◼   ► for a long time, everybody was pretty convinced

00:22:50 ◼   ► who had inside knowledge that they were gonna roll out

00:22:52 ◼   ► in November or October, and it didn't happen.

00:22:56 ◼   ► So that, like with that MacBook Air,

00:22:58 ◼   ► M2 that we were waiting for forever,

00:23:00 ◼   ► like it kept, felt like it was about to come,

00:23:02 ◼   ► and then eventually it would have to.

00:23:05 ◼   ► These feel like that, but yeah, they could surprise us.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Absolutely anything's possible.

00:23:10 ◼   ► It's also possible that this is not right

00:23:12 ◼   ► or it's possible that it's something,

00:23:15 ◼   ► maybe EdiQ's got another blog post.

00:23:16 ◼   ► I don't know, but we'll find out.

00:23:18 ◼   ► - This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money.

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00:25:12 ◼   ► of this show and Relay FM.

00:25:15 ◼   ► According to Mark Gurman, Apple is looking at adding touch screens to the Mac. "Apple

00:25:21 ◼   ► Engineers are actively engaged in the project.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Apple has been long making comments about this being a bad fit for the Mac product,

00:25:31 ◼   ► suggesting that the iPad is the way to go.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And I have these two phrases in my mind that I'm sure I've heard at some point but

00:25:41 ◼   ► Google was failing me today.

00:25:43 ◼   ► One was zombie arms, the other was toaster fridge.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Were either of these ever said and about the idea of touchscreen Macs?

00:25:55 ◼   ► Zombie Arms, yes. Toaster Fridge, no. Toaster Fridge was about an iPad/Mac combination,

00:26:01 ◼   ► like combining the two. And you can get to a touchscreen Mac sort of being like that,

00:26:10 ◼   ► but that's not, I don't believe that that is what that was about. People can correct

00:26:14 ◼   ► if I'm wrong, zombie arms, the idea is if, and again,

00:26:18 ◼   ► totally overstated by people,

00:26:22 ◼   ► ergonomically, if the primary way you interface

00:26:27 ◼   ► with a screen that is basically perpendicular

00:26:32 ◼   ► to your keyboard that you have to reach out for,

00:26:35 ◼   ► so not in your lap, not in your hand,

00:26:38 ◼   ► but where we put our computer monitors,

00:26:41 ◼   ► if the primary way you interact with it

00:26:43 ◼   ► is by holding your arms out.

00:26:45 ◼   ► And you try to do that all day, it won't work.

00:26:48 ◼   ► And you'll get the zombie arms, right?

00:26:50 ◼   ► You're stretching your arms out,

00:26:51 ◼   ► like you're looking for brains and you're reaching,

00:26:53 ◼   ► and it's not great ergonomically.

00:26:57 ◼   ► However, I don't know of any computers

00:27:02 ◼   ► like PCs or Chromebooks that have a touchscreen

00:27:08 ◼   ► and don't have another pointing device too, right?

00:27:12 ◼   ► that are in that traditional configuration.

00:27:15 ◼   ► I'll make all those statements.

00:27:17 ◼   ► And having, I know many years ago, I talked about this.

00:27:20 ◼   ► My daughter had a Chromebook with a touchscreen

00:27:21 ◼   ► for a long time, and I would use it occasionally.

00:27:24 ◼   ► And because I've been trained with the iPhone and the iPad,

00:27:29 ◼   ► there would be a button, you know,

00:27:30 ◼   ► like an alert would come up on the screen

00:27:31 ◼   ► and I'd just tap it with my finger,

00:27:34 ◼   ► or I'd scroll with my hand.

00:27:35 ◼   ► And I wouldn't even think about it,

00:27:37 ◼   ► of like reaching down to the keyboard

00:27:38 ◼   ► and using the track pad or whatever.

00:27:40 ◼   ► I just scroll because it's such a natural gesture.

00:27:42 ◼   ► That's not the same as saying,

00:27:44 ◼   ► I'm gonna do a four hour Photoshop job

00:27:47 ◼   ► on my studio display essentially

00:27:50 ◼   ► by stretching my hands out.

00:27:52 ◼   ► And like, ergonomically,

00:27:54 ◼   ► that's a totally different situation.

00:27:57 ◼   ► So, you know, it's one of those things where like,

00:28:01 ◼   ► I think Apple was making a very specific point

00:28:03 ◼   ► about primary touch interface.

00:28:06 ◼   ► And I think in some ways they were kind of cloaking

00:28:09 ◼   ► the fact that they just didn't want to do it,

00:28:11 ◼   ► because nobody was really asking

00:28:12 ◼   ► for a primary touch interface,

00:28:14 ◼   ► they were asking for an additional interface type,

00:28:16 ◼   ► which was touch, because wouldn't it be nice

00:28:18 ◼   ► if in addition to this beautiful trackpad and keyboard

00:28:20 ◼   ► that you've given me, if an alert comes up on the screen

00:28:23 ◼   ► and I absentmindedly tab on it,

00:28:25 ◼   ► because you've taught me with your iPads and your iPhones

00:28:28 ◼   ► that I could tap on that okay button and it works,

00:28:31 ◼   ► that it would work on my Mac too.

00:28:33 ◼   ► And Apple says, "No, no, you don't do that."

00:28:38 ◼   ► And like, all right, I mean, that is,

00:28:40 ◼   ► I don't think I'd agree with that,

00:28:43 ◼   ► but that was sort of what was going on there.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - In general, how do you feel about the idea

00:28:50 ◼   ► of a touchscreen on your Mac laptop?

00:28:54 ◼   ► - If it's,

00:28:57 ◼   ► if it's a traditional laptop,

00:29:02 ◼   ► it feels incremental to me.

00:29:05 ◼   ► Seems nice, right?

00:29:07 ◼   ► Would you agree?

00:29:08 ◼   ► It seems nice. - Oh, I'd love it.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Just for the convenience sometimes.

00:29:12 ◼   ► - I mean, have you touched your MacBook screen?

00:29:14 ◼   ► - 100% yeah. - Forgetting

00:29:15 ◼   ► that it doesn't have touch?

00:29:16 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:29:17 ◼   ► - I do it all the time.

00:29:18 ◼   ► And especially now that I have an iPad Pro

00:29:20 ◼   ► in a Magic Keyboard, which we've had for almost,

00:29:24 ◼   ► coming up three years now, I think,

00:29:26 ◼   ► which has a laptop-like configuration,

00:29:29 ◼   ► but also has touch, right?

00:29:30 ◼   ► It has a pointing device, but it also has touch.

00:29:32 ◼   ► And so, yeah, that happens all the time now,

00:29:34 ◼   ► where I'm like, oh, I'll just scroll this.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Oh, right, it's a Mac.

00:29:37 ◼   ► I need to put my fingers down here

00:29:38 ◼   ► and do two fingers scrolling on the trackpad instead.

00:29:41 ◼   ► And is it better to keep my hands down there?

00:29:43 ◼   ► Sure.

00:29:44 ◼   ► Would I want my primary thing,

00:29:45 ◼   ► would I want them to take my trackpad away

00:29:48 ◼   ► on my MacBook Air?

00:29:49 ◼   ► Absolutely not, right?

00:29:50 ◼   ► Like, no, I don't want that at all, but I would like it,

00:29:54 ◼   ► but that seems kind of incremental, right?

00:29:55 ◼   ► That's like, oh, that's nice.

00:29:56 ◼   ► That's a nice little addition,

00:29:58 ◼   ► but it's not really groundbreaking.

00:30:00 ◼   ► What would be groundbreaking is what it unlocks,

00:30:03 ◼   ► because once you have a touchscreen,

00:30:06 ◼   ► a lot of shapes and features of what we think of as MacBooks today are up for grabs, right?

00:30:15 ◼   ► Apple, I think we would all pretty much agree, Apple has kind of perfected the laptop design,

00:30:20 ◼   ► right? I think everybody in the computer industry would probably agree that if you talk about

00:30:24 ◼   ► the traditional laptop design, which is a top and a bottom and a hinge, and you open

00:30:29 ◼   ► it up and there's a screen and there's a keyboard and a trackpad, like everybody, the PC industry

00:30:33 ◼   ► already agreed because they knocked off the MacBook Air. Every laptop is like a

00:30:36 ◼   ► MacBook Air now. Not every, but you know what I'm saying. Like everybody really

00:30:41 ◼   ► realized that is kind of the platonic ideal of a laptop for the last

00:30:46 ◼   ► decade. But the PC laptop world is full of like weird other kinds of devices

00:30:53 ◼   ► that are still running Windows but do different stuff. And Apple has not

00:31:01 ◼   ► played in that other than via expressing it via the iPad, which is its own issue,

00:31:07 ◼   ► right? Like what what are these two products? Apple sort of said traditional

00:31:10 ◼   ► laptop, Mac OS and the Mac, and then tablet touch interface primary that you

00:31:15 ◼   ► can put in a case that has a keyboard and all that iPad, and they're separate

00:31:18 ◼   ► products. But what Apple has missed out on is the idea of, well, what if I want a

00:31:22 ◼   ► device that is a, you know, PC, a desktop device, a Mac OS device, that can have

00:31:31 ◼   ► the level of interface flexibility that the iPad has. The iPad starts as a naked touch

00:31:37 ◼   ► tablet and then you can add on keyboard or keyboard and trackpad or pencil or external

00:31:42 ◼   ► keyboard and mouse or external display or you know you can you can stack all of the

00:31:46 ◼   ► things on top of that bare iPad. But the Mac can't do anything, a MacBook Air can't do anything

00:31:52 ◼   ► other than be a MacBook Air. I mean you can close it up and attach it to an external display.

00:31:57 ◼   ► that's the other, it's great active transformation is becoming a block of metal that runs other

00:32:03 ◼   ► computers or other things, right? So that's what they're missing out on and that's what gets me

00:32:09 ◼   ► excited about talking about touchscreen Macs is not the incrementally nice thing of like, yeah,

00:32:14 ◼   ► I can scroll on the screen, but it's like what could that free Apple up to do with the Mac

00:32:20 ◼   ► interface and the Mac hardware design.

00:32:23 ◼   ► Because we've only seen iterations of these kinds

00:32:29 ◼   ► of alternate products from PC manufacturers.

00:32:33 ◼   ► And I personally don't feel convinced

00:32:36 ◼   ► that let's let the PC manufacturers do it, they'll solve it.

00:32:39 ◼   ► As a long time Apple product user,

00:32:43 ◼   ► I actually don't believe that's true.

00:32:45 ◼   ► I don't believe it.

00:32:45 ◼   ► well, you know, we gave Asus and Dell and Samsung

00:32:50 ◼   ► and Microsoft a decade to innovate here, and they solved it.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Maybe they solved it, right?

00:32:55 ◼   ► But it's like, what would Apple do?

00:32:57 ◼   ► What would Apple do if they could make a convertible

00:32:59 ◼   ► where you could take a standard laptop

00:33:02 ◼   ► and turn the screen around, fold it down or whatever,

00:33:05 ◼   ► and turn it into a tablet?

00:33:06 ◼   ► What would that be like?

00:33:07 ◼   ► That you could have a Mac that was also a touch tablet

00:33:10 ◼   ► or had Apple Pencil support?

00:33:12 ◼   ► what if you could tear the keyboard off of a Mac and still use it because its brains

00:33:19 ◼   ► were all up in the screen? What would that be like? Like, they've experimented with this

00:33:23 ◼   ► stuff but I wonder if Apple has something to add to the conversation. Are you excited

00:33:30 ◼   ► about the possibility of a touchscreen MacBook?

00:33:32 ◼   ► I've wanted one for years because I can't see any reason why you wouldn't do it. And

00:33:38 ◼   ► I don't need a full scale rewrite of Mac OS to make this happen. I just want the ability

00:33:44 ◼   ► to scroll a web page and sometimes hit a button with my thumb. This is a very easy thing to

00:33:51 ◼   ► deal with.

00:33:52 ◼   ► It doesn't have to change the world.

00:33:53 ◼   ► No. I really don't need them to do more than that. I just don't feel the requirement for

00:34:00 ◼   ► it. You were saying about PC laptops and the weird and wonderful designs. Do you know what's

00:34:05 ◼   ► not considered weird on a PC laptop, touchscreen. Like all of the weird things that happen in

00:34:12 ◼   ► the PC world, touchscreens are not one of them. In fact, it feels like these days if

00:34:18 ◼   ► a PC laptop doesn't have a touchscreen on it, that is a point to bring up. Like I feel

00:34:24 ◼   ► like just at this point, you know, yeah, look, go ahead and do something to macOS to make

00:34:30 ◼   ► it more touch friendly. Like sure there are going to be some things that might be a bit

00:34:34 ◼   ► tricky but you know what Apple like you really understand how to make touch

00:34:38 ◼   ► friendly user interfaces and/or the ability to try and guess what someone's

00:34:43 ◼   ► doing like we've all heard about that right like the you know it's not just

00:34:47 ◼   ► where you're touching it's what they're expecting that you're touching and so

00:34:50 ◼   ► much goes into that like especially with the keyboard and stuff like right you

00:34:53 ◼   ► know it's gonna be tricky it's gonna be complicated but just start with like

00:34:58 ◼   ► alright we have a touchscreen on this thing so now people can pinch and zoom

00:35:01 ◼   ► and scroll and just go for it. Now here's the thing I wanted to bring up from

00:35:05 ◼   ► Mark's piece. Based on current internal deliberations the company could launch

00:35:10 ◼   ► its first touchscreen Mac in 2025 as part of a larger update to the MacBook

00:35:16 ◼   ► Pro. Does this feel like the right Mac to start with, the MacBook Pro? Well if

00:35:22 ◼   ► they're adding a touchscreen and it adds cost the MacBook Pro does kind of make

00:35:26 ◼   ► sense. I do wonder, I have two thoughts about this. One is doing what you're

00:35:30 ◼   ► describing which is just saying it's cool there's a touchscreen now whatever

00:35:34 ◼   ► and like it doesn't change the world it's just like we've got the you know we

00:35:39 ◼   ► got all these touch api's that come over and catalyst and all of that and like

00:35:44 ◼   ► iPad apps will recognize it automatically and it's cool but it's a

00:35:48 ◼   ► MacBook Pro still it's not any different right the MacBook Pro is a good choice

00:35:51 ◼   ► for that because a touchscreen is gonna add some cost and the MacBook Pro can

00:35:55 ◼   ► bear it and they can make some arguments that like you know this is the this is

00:35:59 ◼   ► you pay more and you get more, you get this feature,

00:36:01 ◼   ► and then eventually it'll come to all of its other laptops,

00:36:03 ◼   ► but not on square one.

00:36:06 ◼   ► And then the wild idea here is,

00:36:08 ◼   ► what if this is more than a MacBook Pro,

00:36:12 ◼   ► or not a MacBook Pro?

00:36:14 ◼   ► What if it really is sort of like a new laptop

00:36:17 ◼   ► that has support for some of this stuff,

00:36:20 ◼   ► like touch and maybe even Apple Pencil again,

00:36:23 ◼   ► and it's a MacBook Studio or something.

00:36:26 ◼   ► It's like the Modbook comes back,

00:36:28 ◼   ► but like something like that,

00:36:30 ◼   ► 'cause we're obviously, you and I,

00:36:33 ◼   ► big fans of the studio concept

00:36:37 ◼   ► and what other studio products could there be.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I could see that.

00:36:41 ◼   ► That might not be the 2025 MacBook Pro, right?

00:36:44 ◼   ► Like the question is, is Apple's idea here,

00:36:46 ◼   ► well, when we do touch on a Mac, it's gonna be radical.

00:36:49 ◼   ► When we do touch on the Mac, it's gonna change everything

00:36:51 ◼   ► 'cause it's gonna free us up to make this Mac

00:36:53 ◼   ► we've wanted to make for years, and now we're gonna make it.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Or do they do the thing where they're like,

00:36:58 ◼   ► "It's cool, no big deal, right?

00:37:00 ◼   ► Like it's just, yeah, we have touch, whatever,

00:37:02 ◼   ► we don't care."

00:37:03 ◼   ► And then maybe they're freed up to do more down the road,

00:37:06 ◼   ► but they start with just sort of like,

00:37:08 ◼   ► "It's just a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen

00:37:11 ◼   ► so you can scroll stuff.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Don't get too excited about it."

00:37:16 ◼   ► And honestly, it could be either, right?

00:37:18 ◼   ► It depends, I think ultimately it depends

00:37:20 ◼   ► on how Apple's hardware designers feel

00:37:22 ◼   ► about the opportunities that touch screens bring

00:37:25 ◼   ► to their product line and to macOS specifically.

00:37:28 ◼   ► And do they think, well, no,

00:37:31 ◼   ► because that's just the iPad.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Then something like the MacBook Pro

00:37:36 ◼   ► where it's sort of like, no, no, no, it's cool.

00:37:37 ◼   ► It's just a basic touch screen.

00:37:40 ◼   ► You're not meant to use it

00:37:41 ◼   ► as the primary interface device, it makes more sense.

00:37:44 ◼   ► If they are like, we've been dying to make a convertible

00:37:49 ◼   ► and can't because of the touch thing, then they might get more radical.

00:37:56 ◼   ► You mentioned in your link post on Six Colors that you think it would require some design

00:38:01 ◼   ► changes to macOS to make it more appropriate. Do you have any thoughts on kind of the areas

00:38:06 ◼   ► that you would like to see them tweak to make this a reality?

00:38:10 ◼   ► Some stuff needs to be bigger, although honestly they've already been doing that work, right?

00:38:13 ◼   ► Remember, we've been speculating about touch screens for a while now because they've been

00:38:16 ◼   ► doing that work. They made a lot of targets larger. The menu bar is taller. Each menu

00:38:20 ◼   ► item is a little bit taller.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Because that was a whole thing with Ventura, right? Where like everyone was hanging on

00:38:25 ◼   ► a, hang on a minute, and then Craig Federighi was doing interview after interview saying,

00:38:29 ◼   ► "We're not doing it! We're not doing it!"

00:38:31 ◼   ► And I also mentioned in that post, like, I have, actually, I use the screens app to connect

00:38:37 ◼   ► to my, to connect to my Mac mini server, and for whatever reason, the, sort of use the

00:38:44 ◼   ► the screen as a track pad to drive the cursor

00:38:46 ◼   ► around the screen stopped working.

00:38:49 ◼   ► And so for the last month or so,

00:38:51 ◼   ► I've been using the tap to select interface instead,

00:38:54 ◼   ► where I actually, instead of moving, you know,

00:38:56 ◼   ► sliding my finger on my iPad screen

00:38:57 ◼   ► to move the cursor on the Mac and then tap,

00:39:00 ◼   ► I have to actually like literally put my finger

00:39:03 ◼   ► on the thing I want to tap on and tap it on the iPad

00:39:06 ◼   ► and it goes straight through to the Mac.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Very different experience.

00:39:10 ◼   ► And what I'd say is it works fine.

00:39:12 ◼   ► It's not great.

00:39:14 ◼   ► everything could be a little bit bigger,

00:39:16 ◼   ► but other than that,

00:39:18 ◼   ► and they could make everything a little bit,

00:39:20 ◼   ► they could scale the screen

00:39:21 ◼   ► and make all items on the screen interface elements bigger

00:39:24 ◼   ► if they wanted to, but like it's usable.

00:39:26 ◼   ► And certainly for stuff like scrolling

00:39:28 ◼   ► or tapping on an okay button,

00:39:29 ◼   ► or like it's completely usable.

00:39:32 ◼   ► So I don't think it's,

00:39:33 ◼   ► I think that there's work that they would want to do,

00:39:36 ◼   ► but they've already done some of the work.

00:39:37 ◼   ► And we're talking about a release in 2025.

00:39:40 ◼   ► So they've got some time to do the work

00:39:42 ◼   ► if they have decided to go down this road.

00:39:45 ◼   ► I don't think it's a,

00:39:47 ◼   ► this is one of those things that people say,

00:39:48 ◼   ► it's like, oh no, they'll never do it

00:39:49 ◼   ► because they have to totally change the Mac interface.

00:39:51 ◼   ► It's like, eh, they already changed it some.

00:39:53 ◼   ► Also, it's kind of usable as it is.

00:39:55 ◼   ► And again, it's not the primary use case.

00:39:58 ◼   ► It's not meant to be.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Now, if they're gonna make a convertible

00:40:00 ◼   ► that's gonna look like macOS

00:40:02 ◼   ► when you put it into tablet mode,

00:40:03 ◼   ► yeah, they're gonna have to make some changes.

00:40:05 ◼   ► But who knows, right?

00:40:07 ◼   ► Like, does a convertible Mac in tablet mode

00:40:09 ◼   ► look like a Mac at all?

00:40:10 ◼   ► or does it go into like an iPad-like mode

00:40:13 ◼   ► where it's still macOS, but the interface changes

00:40:17 ◼   ► when there's no longer a pointing device available

00:40:19 ◼   ► and you're just using a touchscreen.

00:40:20 ◼   ► That would be more work for them,

00:40:22 ◼   ► although they could crib from the iPad,

00:40:24 ◼   ► but it wouldn't require a redesign of standard macOS.

00:40:27 ◼   ► It would be like an alternate mode.

00:40:29 ◼   ► - And I think, safe to say,

00:40:32 ◼   ► we are both not expecting by any stretch

00:40:35 ◼   ► that this is a combo iPadOS/MacOS product.

00:40:39 ◼   ► - Only, well, no, although I think that it's,

00:40:44 ◼   ► if Apple decides to go with something

00:40:48 ◼   ► that has a pure touchscreen mode in a conversion,

00:40:51 ◼   ► I think there's a question of,

00:40:52 ◼   ► is iPad OS essentially embedded inside Mac OS

00:40:57 ◼   ► at that point, right?

00:40:59 ◼   ► That it's a Mac that can also run basically

00:41:01 ◼   ► in an iPad mode that is still a Mac, which is weird,

00:41:06 ◼   ► but like they could do that if they wanted to,

00:41:08 ◼   ► if they thought that was the best approach.

00:41:10 ◼   ► I wanna take a step back though,

00:41:13 ◼   ► 'cause when we talk about the toaster fridge,

00:41:15 ◼   ► this is the collision of the iPad and the Mac,

00:41:18 ◼   ► which have come together in a lot of ways

00:41:21 ◼   ► over the last few years, but are also still separate.

00:41:24 ◼   ► And look, I don't have the answers here,

00:41:27 ◼   ► and I appreciate how hard it must be

00:41:29 ◼   ► for people inside Apple to make these decisions about,

00:41:32 ◼   ► and we see it with that iPhone story, right?

00:41:34 ◼   ► Like sometimes they make the calls and they think,

00:41:36 ◼   ► I think this is how it's gonna work out

00:41:37 ◼   ► with these lower end iPhone models.

00:41:39 ◼   ► And then they look at the sales data, the real answer,

00:41:42 ◼   ► and they're like, "Oh, we got it wrong."

00:41:44 ◼   ► Like it happens.

00:41:45 ◼   ► These are hard decisions to make.

00:41:47 ◼   ► But that said, there's a little part of me

00:41:50 ◼   ► that says to myself, okay, I love the iPad.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And now I don't have an iPad laptop,

00:41:57 ◼   ► which I wrote several columns about a few years ago,

00:41:59 ◼   ► but the Magic Keyboard makes the iPad

00:42:01 ◼   ► when it wants to be pretty much a laptop.

00:42:05 ◼   ► However, my Mac can't be more like an iPad.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Apple hasn't allowed it to be more like an iPad.

00:42:13 ◼   ► It's sure, it's thinner and it's got the curved edges

00:42:15 ◼   ► and it's got that nice screen.

00:42:16 ◼   ► But in the end, there are places that the Mac platform

00:42:21 ◼   ► is not allowed to go.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Allowed by who?

00:42:24 ◼   ► Allowed by Apple's own decision to stake out ground

00:42:29 ◼   ► for certain product shapes for iPadOS.

00:42:34 ◼   ► And I guess my question is, one, how's that going?

00:42:38 ◼   ► How's iPad OS pushing into those areas going?

00:42:41 ◼   ► Because what I'm not talking about is like base model iPad.

00:42:44 ◼   ► I'm not talking about the iPad Air.

00:42:46 ◼   ► I'm talking about the iPad Pro with all these accessories

00:42:48 ◼   ► and with stage manager and all of that.

00:42:51 ◼   ► And I could make the argument, and I don't want to,

00:42:57 ◼   ► 'cause I like my iPad Pro,

00:42:59 ◼   ► but I could make the argument

00:43:02 ◼   ► that Apple would be better off making a convertible Mac

00:43:06 ◼   ► that can go into an iPad mode than making an iPad Pro.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Because the iPad obviously is struggling

00:43:15 ◼   ► to become more Mac-like.

00:43:18 ◼   ► And maybe the Mac would struggle to become more iPad-like.

00:43:23 ◼   ► I mean, sure, it probably would.

00:43:26 ◼   ► But sometimes that boundary between the Mac and the iPad

00:43:30 ◼   ► feels artificial and it feels like neither product can become, can reach

00:43:36 ◼   ► its full potential as long as there's this wall between them that a Mac can't

00:43:43 ◼   ► look more like an iPad and iPadOS struggles to be more like a Mac.

00:43:49 ◼   ► So are you envisioning a world where they do merge the product line?

00:43:54 ◼   ► I mean, no, because I think Apple is very conservative about this stuff, honestly.

00:44:02 ◼   ► But if I were at Apple, I would have that conversation, which is, are we happy with

00:44:09 ◼   ► how the iPad is going at the high end?

00:44:12 ◼   ► Are we happy with all the effort we've put into making the iPad Pro more like a Mac?

00:44:18 ◼   ► And are we happy with macOS being limited to sort of traditional laptop shape and not

00:44:27 ◼   ► going further down the path of touch?

00:44:29 ◼   ► And if we look out in this product line, especially since you've got generations of people raised

00:44:35 ◼   ► in touch interfaces now, and so to have a computer that doesn't have a touch interface

00:44:38 ◼   ► at all is kind of weird, but the iPad at the high end, like, this is that struggle.

00:44:48 ◼   ► And I think if I were at Apple, I would at least have to ask, would we be better off

00:44:56 ◼   ► considering iPadOS a basis for a touch mode on MacOS so that the people who say that their

00:45:06 ◼   ► iPadOS power users can get what they want on a computer that is built to have more power,

00:45:16 ◼   ► as opposed to a device that's been scaled up

00:45:20 ◼   ► to provide more power,

00:45:21 ◼   ► but without the software being able to be there.

00:45:24 ◼   ► Like the macOS software has all this stuff,

00:45:26 ◼   ► the iPad still struggles to catch up.

00:45:28 ◼   ► And what if we had said a long time ago,

00:45:31 ◼   ► instead of doing a higher end iPad and iPad Pro,

00:45:34 ◼   ► what if we make an effort to start making Macs

00:45:38 ◼   ► that can be converted into tablet-esque things

00:45:41 ◼   ► that can run an iPad mode essentially,

00:45:44 ◼   ► or something kind of like it?

00:45:45 ◼   ► I know there's a lot of complexity here.

00:45:47 ◼   ► I know there's like, but what about,

00:45:49 ◼   ► what apps would it run?

00:45:50 ◼   ► And what would the interface look like?

00:45:52 ◼   ► And like, I get it.

00:45:54 ◼   ► I totally get it.

00:45:55 ◼   ► This is hard stuff, but I'm combining,

00:45:58 ◼   ► I'm just putting out there my two separate thoughts.

00:46:01 ◼   ► One of which is, it feels to me

00:46:02 ◼   ► like Mac laptop design is stalled,

00:46:04 ◼   ► in part because Apple doesn't wanna experiment at all

00:46:07 ◼   ► with touch screens or do anything

00:46:09 ◼   ► that's sort of like happening over in the iPad space.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And secondly, that the iPad Pro especially

00:46:14 ◼   ► has really struggled on the software side,

00:46:16 ◼   ► because when you try to make the iPad do more,

00:46:19 ◼   ► you end up having these solutions that sometimes are great,

00:46:24 ◼   ► like the pointer support, I think is legitimately great.

00:46:27 ◼   ► But that on the software side, especially, you know,

00:46:31 ◼   ► in terms of third-party apps,

00:46:33 ◼   ► and in terms of things like file management,

00:46:35 ◼   ► that even when Apple tries, they do kind of struggle,

00:46:38 ◼   ► and I'm not sure there's an enormous audience for pushing,

00:46:43 ◼   ► what we think of as pushing the iPad

00:46:44 ◼   ► to the highest esoteric high end,

00:46:48 ◼   ► whereas in a Mac context,

00:46:50 ◼   ► we would think of it as like using a computer, right?

00:46:53 ◼   ► Like on the iPad, it's like,

00:46:54 ◼   ► you're a complete maniac to use an iPad like this.

00:46:59 ◼   ► But the like this is literally like using a Mac, right?

00:47:05 ◼   ► And yet there's a disconnect there.

00:47:07 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:47:09 ◼   ► That's a lot of thoughts engendered by one report

00:47:11 ◼   ► about touchscreen Macs,

00:47:12 ◼   ► but it does make me think of the fact that it is,

00:47:14 ◼   ► we are talking about an iPad feature

00:47:16 ◼   ► being inherited by the Mac and what does that mean?

00:47:18 ◼   ► But in my heart of hearts,

00:47:20 ◼   ► my guess is because Apple is so careful

00:47:23 ◼   ► and Apple is so conservative about this stuff,

00:47:25 ◼   ► that it's not gonna mean any of that.

00:47:26 ◼   ► And that the iPad Pro is still gonna be kind of a product

00:47:29 ◼   ► that is kind of Mac-like,

00:47:30 ◼   ► but never really verges too far in that direction.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And the Mac becomes a little more iPad-like in some ways,

00:47:37 ◼   ► especially using like Catalyst,

00:47:39 ◼   ► and in the long run Swift UI,

00:47:40 ◼   ► apps that are built with some touch sensibility

00:47:43 ◼   ► on top of them.

00:47:44 ◼   ► And that maybe Apple down the road experiments

00:47:47 ◼   ► with some different shapes,

00:47:49 ◼   ► but for now I think is gonna be mostly happy

00:47:51 ◼   ► that Mac OS laptops look like laptops.

00:47:53 ◼   ► I am excited about the potential for change here

00:47:58 ◼   ► because it's been whatever 13 years since the MacBook Air

00:48:03 ◼   ► sort of defined what the laptop shape was and what's next.

00:48:09 ◼   ► But I do feel like part of today's Apple is this restraint

00:48:14 ◼   ► of saying, look, it works,

00:48:17 ◼   ► so we're not gonna mess with it.

00:48:19 ◼   ► And if that's the case, then throw a touchscreen on there,

00:48:23 ◼   ► satisfy some people, and then walk away

00:48:27 ◼   ► and don't push it beyond that.

00:48:29 ◼   ► - 'Cause I guess at that point,

00:48:32 ◼   ► in this scenario we're looking at here

00:48:35 ◼   ► of the Mac gaining some kind of iPad-like mode,

00:48:40 ◼   ► really, what you're left with is,

00:48:42 ◼   ► 'cause the iPad would continue to exist in this scenario,

00:48:46 ◼   ► is what are you looking for hardware-wise, right?

00:48:50 ◼   ► Like, what is, you know, that's what the customer has asked.

00:48:54 ◼   ► And actually, like I was thinking about this

00:48:57 ◼   ► as you were talking, I'm not sure most people

00:49:01 ◼   ► are buying an iPad for iPadOS.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Like, oh man, I want iPad OS.

00:49:08 ◼   ► - Right.

00:49:09 ◼   ► - And I'm not saying that as a bad thing to iPad OS,

00:49:11 ◼   ► I just mean that I think people are buying,

00:49:14 ◼   ► they want an Apple product for its apps, services, whatever,

00:49:18 ◼   ► and then it's like, well, which one do I want?

00:49:20 ◼   ► And I don't buy an iPad for iPad OS,

00:49:24 ◼   ► I buy an iPad for what the iPad does,

00:49:27 ◼   ► and it's good at what it's doing

00:49:28 ◼   ► because of its form factor, right?

00:49:30 ◼   ► Like, I want something to read my news

00:49:33 ◼   ► on a slightly larger screen, iPad Mini is perfect.

00:49:36 ◼   ► I want something to watch some video,

00:49:39 ◼   ► you know, the iPad Air is perfect for that, right?

00:49:41 ◼   ► Because then I haven't got this big keyboard in the way

00:49:44 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:49:45 ◼   ► And so in that scenario of like, well,

00:49:47 ◼   ► the iPad Pro can still exist for people that want

00:49:50 ◼   ► all of that form factor,

00:49:52 ◼   ► but for people that really like iPad OS,

00:49:55 ◼   ► they could use it on their Mac too.

00:49:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just, I keep coming back to thinking,

00:50:00 ◼   ► why do I have an iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard?

00:50:02 ◼   ► And the answer is I do like iPad OS,

00:50:04 ◼   ► but what I really like is that I like that I have one device

00:50:07 ◼   ► that I can use in a tablet mode

00:50:08 ◼   ► and I can also use in a keyboard laptop-esque mode.

00:50:11 ◼   ► And there's nothing stopping Apple from saying,

00:50:13 ◼   ► "Well, why not a Mac laptop that can become a tablet

00:50:17 ◼   ► instead of a tablet that can become a laptop?"

00:50:20 ◼   ► And that's a good question, right?

00:50:24 ◼   ► Like I have a MacBook Air and an iPad Pro.

00:50:27 ◼   ► Now, aside from the fact that that means Apple

00:50:30 ◼   ► has sold me two pieces of hardware instead of one,

00:50:32 ◼   ► which is a consideration, although I would,

00:50:34 ◼   ► I think that I'm probably a little more of an outlier.

00:50:37 ◼   ► But if I, if Apple made something that was a MacBook Air

00:50:42 ◼   ► or MacBook Pro like device,

00:50:44 ◼   ► that could also be an iPad Pro like device,

00:50:48 ◼   ► and I could just turn them,

00:50:50 ◼   ► and whether that's disconnecting the keyboard,

00:50:53 ◼   ► or whether that's flipping around the screen or whatever,

00:50:55 ◼   ► something, some version of what you see

00:50:57 ◼   ► in all these windows laptops

00:50:58 ◼   ► or convertibles that are out there.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Would that be my primary computing device?

00:51:03 ◼   ► I think it probably would be.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I think it probably would be.

00:51:06 ◼   ► I think that would be enough for me to say,

00:51:08 ◼   ► well, now I have everything in one place

00:51:10 ◼   ► and it's a laptop when I want it to be

00:51:12 ◼   ► and not when I don't.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Also, there's a certain level of artificiality

00:51:16 ◼   ► of the fact that iPad Pro can be put in that case

00:51:18 ◼   ► and look like a laptop,

00:51:20 ◼   ► but it can't actually run macOS in that scenario.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Only, I mean, I know why, and yet on another level,

00:51:26 ◼   ► it's like, but it's a laptop, why not?

00:51:28 ◼   ► And the answer is, well, no, it looks like a laptop,

00:51:31 ◼   ► but it still has to behave in accordance

00:51:34 ◼   ► with its base mode of being a touchscreen.

00:51:36 ◼   ► And so all these things that I can do on a Mac,

00:51:39 ◼   ► I can't do on my iPad.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Like I was doing a thing this weekend

00:51:42 ◼   ► where I had to collaborate with a bunch of people

00:51:44 ◼   ► in Discord while also using Google Sheets.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And I tried to use an iPad for it.

00:51:49 ◼   ► And about like five minutes in,

00:51:51 ◼   ► I just went and I got my MacBook Air.

00:51:53 ◼   ► Because as much as I love my iPad Pro,

00:51:55 ◼   ► can't, it's a bit terrible for that.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Same screen size, but it just, it can't.

00:52:02 ◼   ► It just is bad at it.

00:52:03 ◼   ► It's just really bad at it.

00:52:05 ◼   ► And that's just the lot of an iPad user

00:52:09 ◼   ► is sometimes you hit that wall

00:52:11 ◼   ► and it's like the shape of this thing suggests

00:52:13 ◼   ► that it could do everything my laptop could do, but it can't.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And I think, and this is why I say

00:52:20 ◼   ► these are big picture things and this is hard decisions

00:52:23 ◼   ► for people at Apple to make is people at Apple

00:52:25 ◼   ► have to decide what does the laptop look like in five years or 10 years and what

00:52:28 ◼   ► does our laptop look like there and where's the iPad going and is the iPad

00:52:32 ◼   ► high-end stuff successful enough for us to continue investing lots of money and

00:52:36 ◼   ► time in paying people to develop new software for iPad OS that makes it creep

00:52:43 ◼   ► toward but never really reach Mac OS or is there another path and maybe the

00:52:50 ◼   ► answer is no right I mean absolutely the answer could be no it doesn't really

00:52:54 ◼   ► makes sense when you pencil it all out. I'm just saying, it's a hard question and when

00:52:57 ◼   ► Apple does something like potentially commit to doing touch screens on on Mac OS, you have

00:53:04 ◼   ► to ask the question, like, where do, did you redraw the line? Is this where the line is

00:53:09 ◼   ► now or is there no line and we need to decide where to draw the line? Because they could

00:53:14 ◼   ► have easily drawn the line at no laptop like thingy on iPad OS and they didn't do that.

00:53:22 ◼   ► They made the Magic Keyboard and they introduced pointer support.

00:53:27 ◼   ► So they didn't draw the line there.

00:53:30 ◼   ► So where is that line?

00:53:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:53:32 ◼   ► It's just that's what's all swimming in my head.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And I think it's fascinating and I think it's a hard decision for people at Apple to make.

00:53:38 ◼   ► And I hope they had those conversations, right?

00:53:40 ◼   ► I hope it isn't a culture where they're just like, "No, no, no.

00:53:43 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:53:44 ◼   ► We'll put a touchscreen on the laptop.

00:53:46 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:53:47 ◼   ► laptops in 2030 are going to look exactly like they did in 2020. You know, they'll

00:53:53 ◼   ► be thinner and lighter and more powerful, but otherwise it's still going to be those

00:53:55 ◼   ► two planes that you open up and that's it. Like, that would be a shame if they didn't

00:53:59 ◼   ► – if they weren't open to the possibilities of this. And I honestly don't know if that's

00:54:05 ◼   ► the case. But that's like high-pay-grade level stuff at Apple. That is product vision

00:54:10 ◼   ► stuff. And I'm not going to be out here as a pundit saying, "I could do that job,"

00:54:16 ◼   ► or I've got an easy answer. I probably could not do that job. It's certainly not an easy

00:54:21 ◼   ► answer but it's interesting to consider the paths that Apple has and maybe where they're

00:54:29 ◼   ► choosing to walk and also based on Gherman's report really you get the impression that

00:54:34 ◼   ► this is a potentially a change, right? That somebody said, "I've reconsidered where we

00:54:40 ◼   ► need to take this and that's led to this decision." And that's interesting, right? Because that's

00:54:45 ◼   ► That's Apple questioning its path forward for that product.

00:54:51 ◼   ► I wonder where that will lead us.

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00:56:45 ◼   ► On Thursday evening, Twitter cut API access to a variety of the most popular third party

00:56:52 ◼   ► apps, rendering them unusable.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Literally can't log in, log you out, can't log in, can't do nothing.

00:57:00 ◼   ► This seemed to be a targeted thing.

00:57:05 ◼   ► It seemed to be that the most popular apps, typically iOS apps, Tweetbot, Twitterific

00:57:11 ◼   ► for example, there were some smaller apps to stack around.

00:57:14 ◼   ► Twitterific on the Mac had a different API key so it was still available because it had

00:57:19 ◼   ► fewer users, that kind of thing.

00:57:22 ◼   ► There had been no communication from Twitter about this to anybody, including developers.

00:57:27 ◼   ► There's been no response from any questions to Twitter from reporters, developers or whatever.

00:57:35 ◼   ► This isn't just iOS, Android, basically it seems like all of the most popular third

00:57:40 ◼   ► party apps, the ones that maybe showed up somewhere.

00:57:45 ◼   ► This was bubbling a lot over the weekend, lots of people talking about it obviously.

00:57:49 ◼   ► The information had a report suggesting that this was an intentional decision based on

00:57:54 ◼   ► conversations in the Twitter Slack that they were shown, seemed pretty clear from that.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:01 ◼   ► And I heard from somebody who, again, it's a somebody who knows somebody at Twitter,

00:58:04 ◼   ► so it's secondhand, but somebody who I think, uh, yeah, I, I believe this person who said,

00:58:10 ◼   ► uh, who sent me a note that said, yeah, I heard from a person I know in Twitter and

00:58:14 ◼   ► this is totally intentional. Bottom line. Yeah.

00:58:17 ◼   ► I mean, and I think it was, I mean, it was obvious, but was proven by the fact that the

00:58:22 ◼   ► the developers of TweetTatBots switched their API key on the backend to test if this was

00:58:28 ◼   ► a targeted thing. So they switched their key to a new key, it was very limited but users

00:58:33 ◼   ► could sign in, it got cut off again. So, so ends another part of Twitter for a large portion

00:58:41 ◼   ► of our listenership at least. Because I have no doubt that there are many people that use

00:58:47 ◼   ► use third party apps that would not use the official app, which is why they were using

00:58:52 ◼   ► third party apps in the first place. And I have no doubt that this whole situation would

00:58:59 ◼   ► not kind of engender people to wanting to make that switch, right? Like that if Twitter

00:59:04 ◼   ► pulled the rug from under you as a user, let alone as a developer, you as a user, you might

00:59:09 ◼   ► be more angry about doing what they want you to do, right? So I expect that there are even

00:59:15 ◼   ► more people now moving over to services like Mastodon than there ever was in our previous

00:59:21 ◼   ► list in our kind of corner of the internet.

00:59:23 ◼   ► Yeah, or dumping out of it entirely. I'm sure, you know, in our audience, there are definitely

00:59:28 ◼   ► portions of Twitter's user base that don't seem to be going anywhere. My sports list

00:59:32 ◼   ► is still, you know, going strong. I have now bookmarked it in Safari to just literally

00:59:39 ◼   ► go to that page and read that list because I can't view it in Twitterific anymore on

00:59:44 ◼   ► on my iPad, I can on my Mac, which is weird.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Like they haven't killed the Mac API token yet.

00:59:50 ◼   ► Curious, Ben Thompson wrote about this a little bit

00:59:54 ◼   ► on Stretecory today.

00:59:55 ◼   ► He had the exact same thought that I had about it,

00:59:57 ◼   ► which is it does feel like maybe they've given up

01:00:00 ◼   ► on Twitter Blue as a revenue driver,

01:00:02 ◼   ► because you would think, and this is,

01:00:06 ◼   ► I think this also shows you how Twitter doesn't seem

01:00:08 ◼   ► to actually have any plans or anything

01:00:11 ◼   ► that they can think through.

01:00:12 ◼   ► If anything takes five steps

01:00:14 ◼   ► and takes more than a few days to implement,

01:00:17 ◼   ► they are just not gonna bother doing it

01:00:19 ◼   ► because a logical thing to do

01:00:21 ◼   ► with your super engaged and enthusiastic user base

01:00:25 ◼   ► who loves your service so much

01:00:26 ◼   ► that they use a third party app

01:00:28 ◼   ► in order to get all these wizzy features,

01:00:30 ◼   ► but the third party app has some issues

01:00:33 ◼   ► that they don't display your ads

01:00:34 ◼   ► and they don't display your algorithm, et cetera, et cetera.

01:00:37 ◼   ► You could come up with a plan

01:00:39 ◼   ► that allows API access,

01:00:42 ◼   ► but only for people who pay for Twitter Blue.

01:00:45 ◼   ► Or allows API access,

01:00:47 ◼   ► but they have to include your ads in the feed.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And that the way that the ads get turned off

01:00:52 ◼   ► is via Twitter Blue or reduced is via Twitter Blue.

01:00:55 ◼   ► And that they have to implement an algorithmic timeline.

01:00:58 ◼   ► And would all these things make the users of those apps

01:01:00 ◼   ► complain because they would degrade the experience?

01:01:03 ◼   ► Sure, but you could use those people as a,

01:01:09 ◼   ► You can make those developers jump through hoops

01:01:11 ◼   ► for you potentially and do that.

01:01:14 ◼   ► But Twitter has obviously decided it's just not worth it.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Let's just, it's actually strange 'cause it's a move

01:01:20 ◼   ► that comes from a position of power, it seems,

01:01:22 ◼   ► where it's like, well, we'll just kill those clients

01:01:24 ◼   ► and then everybody will have to use our app or our website.

01:01:27 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, but a lot of them, you'll lose,

01:01:30 ◼   ► I don't know about a lot, you will lose a bunch of them.

01:01:33 ◼   ► You will lose some percentage of them

01:01:35 ◼   ► because that is how they've interacted with your service

01:01:39 ◼   ► from day one. Like I have used Twitter to the extent that I have over the years because

01:01:43 ◼   ► I have native apps. And that's why I used it more than I used Facebook or Instagram.

01:01:49 ◼   ► It's because I had native apps on my Mac especially, but also on my iPad and iPhone. And the Twitter

01:01:55 ◼   ► native app was never really any good and it's still not very good. It's got its moments.

01:02:00 ◼   ► I did use it for a little while off and on, but like they're proceeding from this, I guess

01:02:06 ◼   ► think a position of power, which is like, what are they going to do? They obviously

01:02:09 ◼   ► have to keep using Twitter, so they'll just come to our app, which is, I think, maybe

01:02:12 ◼   ► an assumption they shouldn't make. But also the way it was handled shows just how classless

01:02:17 ◼   ► this company is, because they obviously don't, not only did they have the attitude of like,

01:02:25 ◼   ► well, we'll break these apps and then those users will come running to us, but they didn't

01:02:29 ◼   ► have the respect to the apps and the developers, but especially to the users of saying, we're

01:02:36 ◼   ► gonna do a shutdown.

01:02:37 ◼   ► You have a week or 21 days or whatever, or a month

01:02:41 ◼   ► to shut down the API and migrate people.

01:02:43 ◼   ► And here's how you do it.

01:02:44 ◼   ► And you can put a message in your app

01:02:45 ◼   ► and don't renew anybody's payments for your apps anymore

01:02:49 ◼   ► because your apps aren't gonna work after February 1st

01:02:51 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:02:52 ◼   ► And they could have done that.

01:02:54 ◼   ► And that would have been the right thing to do.

01:02:59 ◼   ► I was gonna say the classic thing to do,

01:03:00 ◼   ► but it's literally, it's the right thing to do.

01:03:01 ◼   ► Right thing to do for your users,

01:03:03 ◼   ► right thing to do for these partners

01:03:04 ◼   ► who have been partners of Twitter for like often

01:03:07 ◼   ► more than a decade, just make it clear.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Instead, not only did they do the wrong thing,

01:03:13 ◼   ► the classless thing, but I would say

01:03:16 ◼   ► they did the cowardly thing.

01:03:17 ◼   ► And also it shows their own ineptitude

01:03:20 ◼   ► because they just turned it off.

01:03:22 ◼   ► They didn't tell anybody.

01:03:24 ◼   ► They let everybody figure it out.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And they only turned it off for certain apps

01:03:27 ◼   ► and even for certain versions of certain apps.

01:03:29 ◼   ► 'Cause like I said, my Mac Twitter if it still works for now

01:03:31 ◼   ► which is bizarre.

01:03:33 ◼   ► So they did that badly.

01:03:34 ◼   ► They didn't communicate it.

01:03:37 ◼   ► They still haven't, as we were recording,

01:03:40 ◼   ► communicated anything about this.

01:03:42 ◼   ► These things just broke.

01:03:44 ◼   ► So you've got your users who use those apps

01:03:46 ◼   ► and rely on them.

01:03:47 ◼   ► It looks like the apps broke, but it was actually you.

01:03:51 ◼   ► And you never explained yourself.

01:03:53 ◼   ► And I'd say it's also fitting that this is a company

01:03:55 ◼   ► that no longer has a communications department

01:03:58 ◼   ► or anybody who's supposed to communicate for the company.

01:04:01 ◼   ► because Elon Musk doesn't believe

01:04:04 ◼   ► in communications departments.

01:04:05 ◼   ► He just fires them and shuts them down.

01:04:09 ◼   ► So Tesla doesn't have one, SpaceX doesn't have one, right?

01:04:12 ◼   ► So yeah, is it the right business move

01:04:17 ◼   ► for Twitter in the long run to not have third-party clients

01:04:24 ◼   ► that don't show their experience and don't show their ads?

01:04:27 ◼   ► From a purely business standpoint,

01:04:30 ◼   ► it is the right thing to shut them down.

01:04:32 ◼   ► You either have to build a program

01:04:34 ◼   ► where you are using those apps to make you money as well,

01:04:39 ◼   ► which would require a lot of effort, I think,

01:04:43 ◼   ► that they don't seem to be willing to have.

01:04:44 ◼   ► So, okay.

01:04:45 ◼   ► It's never been Thompson's point, and he's right.

01:04:49 ◼   ► So it's sort of never made sense.

01:04:51 ◼   ► They've sort of kept them around

01:04:52 ◼   ► kind of out of some sense of-

01:04:53 ◼   ► - No, they've been the odd one out, right?

01:04:55 ◼   ► Like Twitter's the only company like this

01:04:59 ◼   ► to have an API that they're still using.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Like this is what I think is the main thing

01:05:05 ◼   ► that's going on here is there is no desire

01:05:09 ◼   ► or even ability at the moment inside of Twitter

01:05:13 ◼   ► to maintain the API and make significant enough changes

01:05:18 ◼   ► to it that Twitter the company will benefit

01:05:21 ◼   ► from these users.

01:05:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's what I'm saying is that you could do it,

01:05:26 ◼   ► but it would be a real effort.

01:05:27 ◼   ► And why?

01:05:29 ◼   ► Facebook doesn't let people build Facebook clones

01:05:31 ◼   ► and the people who try to do,

01:05:32 ◼   ► they tend to bring the hammer down on.

01:05:34 ◼   ► This is a historic thing.

01:05:36 ◼   ► It has to do with the founding of Twitter

01:05:37 ◼   ► and Twitter trying to become popular

01:05:39 ◼   ► by leveraging their API, which absolutely happened

01:05:43 ◼   ► and apps like Twitterrific that were there at the beginning,

01:05:45 ◼   ► not only did they help define features of Twitter

01:05:49 ◼   ► for Twitter, but also helped give Twitter stickiness

01:05:54 ◼   ► by making pleasant apps in which to use the service.

01:05:57 ◼   ► That's all true.

01:05:59 ◼   ► But if you're at Twitter in 2023, or arguably 2017,

01:06:03 ◼   ► there really are only the two paths,

01:06:06 ◼   ► which is you either make a real effort

01:06:08 ◼   ► to make Twitter different in the sense

01:06:10 ◼   ► that it's got this open API with a bunch of,

01:06:12 ◼   ► and you make the API terms make sense for you financially,

01:06:16 ◼   ► or you turn it off.

01:06:17 ◼   ► Those are your choices.

01:06:18 ◼   ► But the problem is, again, you announce a sunset, right?

01:06:22 ◼   ► You announce that you're gonna do it.

01:06:24 ◼   ► So I don't have a problem with Twitter saying,

01:06:26 ◼   ► "Look, why are we letting people view Twitter without ads? That's how we make all our money."

01:06:31 ◼   ► I totally get it. The jig is up. I really enjoyed using Twitter for more than a decade without

01:06:37 ◼   ► ever seeing any ads. That was awesome for like 15 years. Great. I get that you don't want me to do

01:06:43 ◼   ► that. Okay, fine. But the way they did it showed how clueless and classless they are, truly. That

01:06:52 ◼   ► that this is the best they could do is, and cowardly,

01:06:54 ◼   ► let's make it a threesome, clueless, classless, and cowardly.

01:06:59 ◼   ► They did it scattershot,

01:07:01 ◼   ► they did it basically in the dead of night.

01:07:04 ◼   ► They didn't tell anybody that they did it,

01:07:06 ◼   ► and they left their users

01:07:08 ◼   ► and their longtime partners in the lurch.

01:07:10 ◼   ► And I just believe that it would not have been hard to say,

01:07:14 ◼   ► we're gonna turn this stuff off in a week or in a month,

01:07:18 ◼   ► but they chose this other path.

01:07:21 ◼   ► and it's their business, they can make their decision.

01:07:24 ◼   ► But I think it says, for all of the talk

01:07:27 ◼   ► about pronouncements by Elon Musk,

01:07:32 ◼   ► and the way he has comported himself on Twitter,

01:07:36 ◼   ► and the wisdom of this guy buying this company

01:07:39 ◼   ► in the first place and how he tried to get out of it,

01:07:41 ◼   ► all of that aside, I look at this and I think,

01:07:45 ◼   ► this is a great indictment

01:07:47 ◼   ► of how badly run the new Twitter is.

01:07:51 ◼   ► is that they did it this way.

01:07:53 ◼   ► And nobody's gonna stop them,

01:07:56 ◼   ► but I would say that showing this utter lack of respect

01:08:00 ◼   ► for your users is gonna bite you in the end.

01:08:05 ◼   ► And that being, and I'm just gonna,

01:08:11 ◼   ► just twist the knife a little bit,

01:08:13 ◼   ► and you didn't even do it right.

01:08:15 ◼   ► You missed some, you missed some.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Why is Twitterific on the Mac still working?

01:08:21 ◼   ► It's 'cause you blew it.

01:08:22 ◼   ► You can't even, you couldn't even settle

01:08:25 ◼   ► family business competently.

01:08:27 ◼   ► You blew that too.

01:08:29 ◼   ► You did it scattershot because this is not even a betray,

01:08:33 ◼   ► just a betrayal, it's a half-assed betrayal.

01:08:35 ◼   ► So well done, that says it all

01:08:37 ◼   ► about where Twitter is right now.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And like everybody else who I respect,

01:08:44 ◼   ► who has said this in the past,

01:08:47 ◼   ► That's pretty much it for me.

01:08:50 ◼   ► I'm gonna look at my little sports list

01:08:52 ◼   ► using their web interface,

01:08:53 ◼   ► but this isn't a company that's doing anything

01:08:55 ◼   ► that I'm interested in.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And they've shown through their actions,

01:09:02 ◼   ► they've shown just how badly run this company is.

01:09:04 ◼   ► I didn't think some company could be worse run

01:09:07 ◼   ► than the old Twitter,

01:09:08 ◼   ► but the new Twitter is managing to do it.

01:09:10 ◼   ► - It's this seems pretty clear that Elon Musk found out

01:09:13 ◼   ► that there were third party apps on Wednesday.

01:09:16 ◼   ► and says shut 'em off.

01:09:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:09:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, because that's what modern Twitter seems to be.

01:09:21 ◼   ► Today's Twitter seems to be a completely dysfunctional

01:09:25 ◼   ► company ruled by fiat by a child king.

01:09:27 ◼   ► - If I owned it, if it was my company, right,

01:09:32 ◼   ► if I was in the situation where I ended up having

01:09:35 ◼   ► billions of dollars and decided I wanted to buy it,

01:09:37 ◼   ► I would shut down the API.

01:09:40 ◼   ► I wouldn't do it the way he did it, but I would do it,

01:09:44 ◼   ► because it doesn't make sense.

01:09:46 ◼   ► It doesn't make business sense long term to do this.

01:09:51 ◼   ► Like, because it's even like, all right, okay,

01:09:53 ◼   ► you could charge people subscriptions, right?

01:09:55 ◼   ► But as we've seen in the past, every single feature

01:09:58 ◼   ► that you may ever want to add to the platform,

01:10:00 ◼   ► you then have to consider the API.

01:10:03 ◼   ► This is why Apple tried-- - And everyone has a cost.

01:10:04 ◼   ► - This was, sorry, it's why they tried

01:10:05 ◼   ► to get rid of the API, right?

01:10:07 ◼   ► Group messaging, they tried to get rid of it already

01:10:10 ◼   ► and they couldn't do it, and then they decided,

01:10:13 ◼   ► all right, let's try and make it work out.

01:10:15 ◼   ► And then they tried to make it work out

01:10:18 ◼   ► and now it's gone, right?

01:10:19 ◼   ► Like I, it is a legacy weird thing

01:10:24 ◼   ► that they never got away from.

01:10:26 ◼   ► And I think like Ben Thompson mentioned again,

01:10:28 ◼   ► I mentioned Ben a lot, Shuritaker is great,

01:10:29 ◼   ► you should read it.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Every single one of the previous CEOs

01:10:33 ◼   ► should have gotten rid of it,

01:10:34 ◼   ► but no one could get their act together enough to do it.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Right?

01:10:38 ◼   ► And look, please don't misunderstand

01:10:39 ◼   ► what I'm saying here, right?

01:10:40 ◼   ► Like if you are a person who loves Twitter

01:10:43 ◼   ► and loves Tweetbot, I'm not saying

01:10:45 ◼   ► that you shouldn't get what you want, right?

01:10:46 ◼   ► Like this is different, but like as a user

01:10:49 ◼   ► and as the owner of the company.

01:10:51 ◼   ► But like from a realistic standpoint,

01:10:54 ◼   ► to run that network properly, right?

01:10:57 ◼   ► It has to be advertising and the advertising

01:10:59 ◼   ► has to be good and done well.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And that means it needs to be in a controlled environment

01:11:05 ◼   ► where you can get the statistics and blah, blah, blah, blah,

01:11:08 ◼   ► Like to make Twitter as good as it can be,

01:11:11 ◼   ► all of Twitter's users need to be on Twitter,

01:11:13 ◼   ► which is why Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat,

01:11:17 ◼   ► none of these apps have third-party services.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Whereas Jason mentioned earlier, some of them used to.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Like there was an Instagram API, there was a Facebook API,

01:11:28 ◼   ► because at Web 2.0, that's what you did, right?

01:11:32 ◼   ► But now you don't do that anymore

01:11:34 ◼   ► because it makes everything more difficult.

01:11:38 ◼   ► But as you say, the way that they did it

01:11:39 ◼   ► was just ridiculous, bad, and just half-butted,

01:11:44 ◼   ► I will say.

01:11:46 ◼   ► - I already said half-assed, you can say that.

01:11:48 ◼   ► - I know, but I don't wanna say it.

01:11:50 ◼   ► - All right.

01:11:51 ◼   ► - 'Cause then I have to say it the way I say it,

01:11:53 ◼   ► and it sounds weird, right? - Half a butt.

01:11:54 ◼   ► - Like as an English person. - Harf-arst.

01:11:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it just doesn't roll right.

01:11:59 ◼   ► - The, yeah, I mean, we're going back and forth now.

01:12:04 ◼   ► This is the bottom line, is that I think it makes

01:12:05 ◼   ► business sense for them to do it.

01:12:07 ◼   ► I agree, they should have done it long ago.

01:12:08 ◼   ► I'm not happy about that because I, like I said,

01:12:10 ◼   ► feel like I've gotten away with it for 15 years, right?

01:12:13 ◼   ► Of using their service without seeing any ads.

01:12:15 ◼   ► It's great, it's great.

01:12:16 ◼   ► The only money I've ever given to anybody

01:12:17 ◼   ► was to Twitter client developers.

01:12:19 ◼   ► It's great, it's bad for Twitter.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Good for everybody else, bad for Twitter.

01:12:22 ◼   ► And you're right, if you're trying to rapidly,

01:12:25 ◼   ► if you're trying to fix Twitter

01:12:26 ◼   ► and rapidly develop things,

01:12:27 ◼   ► the last thing you need to do is go into a hole

01:12:29 ◼   ► where you're like, hey, we did polls.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Well, we can't release polls yet

01:12:32 ◼   ► because we need to do a polls API

01:12:34 ◼   ► and then communicate that to the developers

01:12:36 ◼   ► of our third-party clients and then give them time to,

01:12:38 ◼   ► in order to, it's like, no, no, no.

01:12:40 ◼   ► I just want it so that I roll out polls

01:12:42 ◼   ► with the things I control,

01:12:43 ◼   ► which is my app developers and my web developers.

01:12:45 ◼   ► And then we're done, right?

01:12:46 ◼   ► Like I get it.

01:12:47 ◼   ► I totally get it.

01:12:49 ◼   ► And there is a counter argument to be made,

01:12:51 ◼   ► which is the other way to do it is open source media,

01:12:55 ◼   ► like the Fediverse and like Mastodon and all of that,

01:12:57 ◼   ► where there are open clients

01:12:59 ◼   ► and it's a completely open environment.

01:13:00 ◼   ► And that's fine.

01:13:01 ◼   ► You gotta find another business model there.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And maybe the business model is people are paying

01:13:05 ◼   ► for servers and clients and all of that.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Maybe that's a different ecosystem,

01:13:09 ◼   ► but if I'm the CEO of Twitter,

01:13:13 ◼   ► that's not my business, right?

01:13:14 ◼   ► That's not my business.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Dick Costolo tried at one point to kill the clients

01:13:19 ◼   ► and then Dick or Jack or somebody tried to then

01:13:23 ◼   ► start a project where they were gonna support

01:13:25 ◼   ► sort of like a idea of a federated social media.

01:13:28 ◼   ► But like the bottom line is that yes,

01:13:30 ◼   ► yes, Twitterific created so much value for Twitter,

01:13:34 ◼   ► right down to the bluebird.

01:13:35 ◼   ► and the word tweet, all of that is true.

01:13:38 ◼   ► And that the clients popularize the service,

01:13:40 ◼   ► all of that is true.

01:13:41 ◼   ► But if you're standing at Twitter in 2023,

01:13:44 ◼   ► the right business decision is to say,

01:13:45 ◼   ► well, that's all well and good, but I need to make money

01:13:48 ◼   ► and the clients don't make any business sense.

01:13:50 ◼   ► And I think it's true.

01:13:52 ◼   ► So kill them.

01:13:55 ◼   ► But to do it like this,

01:13:56 ◼   ► I mean, to do it like this shows

01:13:58 ◼   ► that they're either incontinently managed

01:13:59 ◼   ► or realize that this is gonna be a problem.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Yeah, or realize this is gonna be a problem.

01:14:05 ◼   ► like I said, cowardly.

01:14:06 ◼   ► And so they just wanna like not say anything

01:14:08 ◼   ► and kind of whistle as they walk away from the crime scene,

01:14:11 ◼   ► instead of just sort of like standing up and taking it

01:14:14 ◼   ► and saying what we've said here,

01:14:16 ◼   ► which is it doesn't make a business sense.

01:14:18 ◼   ► We appreciate all the contributions these people have made.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Here's what our users who are using those apps should do

01:14:23 ◼   ► in order to migrate to our apps and website,

01:14:26 ◼   ► January 30th, February 1st, whatever is the last day.

01:14:32 ◼   ► goodbye. But they can't even do that. So not necessarily the wrong business decision, but

01:14:37 ◼   ► just done poorly and in the wrong way.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Craig Hockenberry of Developer

01:15:01 ◼   ► social media space and says he has some ideas. I really hope this is a Phoenix-like moment.

01:15:14 ◼   ► It's hard to explain unless you were there at the time, right? But it built Twitter.

01:15:22 ◼   ► It built it. Without it, it wouldn't be the same. And it's not even just the words and

01:15:29 ◼   ► the contributions like that. It made it a beautiful, wonderful, usable thing.

01:15:36 ◼   ► I'm really interested to see if Lightning can strike twice here.

01:15:41 ◼   ► I hope it does for them because they are a great bunch of people who deserve it.

01:15:47 ◼   ► But obviously, the app at the moment is Ivory from Tapbots.

01:15:52 ◼   ► Everyone's excited about Ivory. If you can get on the beta,

01:15:56 ◼   ► that there'll be a shipping version of iMari faster now

01:16:00 ◼   ► than there was gonna be otherwise.

01:16:02 ◼   ► So I guess they're the apps to look out for at the moment.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Just what it seems for people that are using Mastodon,

01:16:09 ◼   ► although it seems like something from the Icon Factory

01:16:12 ◼   ► is probably sometime away.

01:16:14 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:16:15 ◼   ► I mean, they all seem kind of burned out,

01:16:17 ◼   ► but I will say that Craig and Ged and Sean

01:16:25 ◼   ► from ICON Factory, Sean Heber, who did most of the,

01:16:28 ◼   ► I think he's been the primary developer on Twitterific

01:16:30 ◼   ► for quite a while now.

01:16:32 ◼   ► They're all on Mastodon, right?

01:16:34 ◼   ► And they have, and as Craig's post says, they have been,

01:16:37 ◼   ► and obviously the Tapbots people are also on Mastodon,

01:16:40 ◼   ► and Paul is over there talking about Ivory,

01:16:42 ◼   ► and a lot of us have tried it not, it's great,

01:16:43 ◼   ► it's great app.

01:16:44 ◼   ► So I wonder, but, and Craig's post is interesting in that,

01:16:48 ◼   ► what Craig's not doing, it seems to me, is hinting that,

01:16:51 ◼   ► yeah, we're gonna make something of our Twitterific

01:16:53 ◼   ► code base by doing Masteriffic, right?

01:16:56 ◼   ► Like, I don't think that's what he's saying,

01:17:00 ◼   ► but I like the idea that they are getting

01:17:03 ◼   ► in a conference call, the icon factory people,

01:17:06 ◼   ► and they are saying, well, we've got this code base.

01:17:11 ◼   ► Is there something, is there a product we can make with it

01:17:15 ◼   ► since Twitteriffic is going away?

01:17:17 ◼   ► And what do we want it to be?

01:17:19 ◼   ► And what Craig is saying is let's not just do

01:17:22 ◼   ► Twitter-ific for Mastodon. But let's think about it more broadly. And he mentioned federated

01:17:30 ◼   ► social media and he mentioned Microblog by name, for example, which is Manton Reese's

01:17:37 ◼   ► Fedeber's compatible microblogging environment that's, it's cool. And that strikes me as

01:17:42 ◼   ► being Icon Factory saying, "Yeah, we're looking at this stuff, but one, we're kind of burned

01:17:49 ◼   ► out because they've been fighting these battles with Twitter for a long time. And two, we

01:17:56 ◼   ► want to do it right and we want to not rush in. And he's not casting shade on anyone.

01:18:04 ◼   ► I think Paul Haddad is very smartly saying we're just gonna do this ivory thing and we're

01:18:10 ◼   ► gonna make it happen and we're gonna give people a place to go that's nice. And it is

01:18:13 ◼   ► nice. And they had started to do it before this.

01:18:17 ◼   ► I think I got factory sort of saying,

01:18:20 ◼   ► after this difficult time,

01:18:22 ◼   ► we're going to take the time to pause

01:18:26 ◼   ► and consider what we would do.

01:18:28 ◼   ► And I think that's a great approach too,

01:18:31 ◼   ► that when they come out with something,

01:18:34 ◼   ► Tapots is gonna get the first mover advantage here.

01:18:36 ◼   ► I mean, they're not the first movers,

01:18:37 ◼   ► but they're the first very serious developer,

01:18:41 ◼   ► app developer company to take a very serious product

01:18:46 ◼   ► and build a version of it essentially on Mastodon.

01:18:49 ◼   ► I know there are lots of Mastodon apps out there.

01:18:51 ◼   ► I think Twitterrific may benefit or Icon Factory

01:18:54 ◼   ► may benefit from taking the Twitterrific source code

01:18:56 ◼   ► and thinking about it a bit more

01:18:58 ◼   ► and trying to do something different.

01:18:59 ◼   ► Because honestly, that's how they were successful

01:19:01 ◼   ► on Twitter back in the day,

01:19:03 ◼   ► was thinking those deep thoughts

01:19:05 ◼   ► about what Twitter should be and how it should work.

01:19:08 ◼   ► And a lot of the things that are in the Twitter product

01:19:11 ◼   ► are because Icon Factory had to spend time

01:19:14 ◼   ► thinking about the Twitterific product.

01:19:17 ◼   ► And a lot of those decisions they made

01:19:19 ◼   ► ended up influencing the Twitter product.

01:19:21 ◼   ► So I'm interested in the idea

01:19:23 ◼   ► that they're gonna use their brains to sort of think

01:19:25 ◼   ► what does a federated decentralized social media

01:19:28 ◼   ► posting and reading app look like?

01:19:31 ◼   ► And great, I'd love to see it

01:19:34 ◼   ► because Twitterific was in my dock

01:19:36 ◼   ► of my iPhone and my iPad for more than a decade.

01:19:42 ◼   ► and it's not there anymore.

01:19:44 ◼   ► And that's sad.

01:19:45 ◼   ► - This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Upgrade Plus.

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01:21:08 ◼   ► Let's finish out today's episode with some Ask Upgrade.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Patrick asks if you were Tim Cook and you could add either a touchscreen or a

01:21:18 ◼   ► cell modem to the next generation MacBook Pro which would you choose

01:21:23 ◼   ► because you think it would sell more computers? Wow what a question to sell

01:21:32 ◼   ► more computers yes that's the specific part right I'll say for me touchscreen

01:21:38 ◼   ► all day. I think a touch screen is easy to market. How do you market? Oh, hey, do you

01:21:44 ◼   ► want to use what most people call Wi-Fi, but is actually set like it's too complicated.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Like I feel like it's not a great ad. I think a great ad is someone's using their Mac and

01:21:56 ◼   ► just reach out and touch it and scroll. I think there are enough people go, "Oh, I want

01:22:00 ◼   ► that." Then like, "Oh, hey, I'm outside and I can sign up for another data plan. How awesome."

01:22:05 ◼   ► I agree with you, although I think that both of them will probably sell a similar number

01:22:11 ◼   ► of computers, but yes, it's also a much, it's just a much clearer thing to market.

01:22:14 ◼   ► You can almost see the ad, right?

01:22:15 ◼   ► That it's just like somebody, a finger reaches out and touches the screen and a thing happens

01:22:20 ◼   ► and you know, popular music plays and you can see it.

01:22:25 ◼   ► You know, you know what that's like.

01:22:26 ◼   ► I got a free ad for you, Apple, right?

01:22:28 ◼   ► Two people sitting next to each other, one of them reaches out to touch it.

01:22:32 ◼   ► Someone goes, "No, don't do it!" and then they do it and it scrolls, right?

01:22:35 ◼   ► "Oh, you know, like, yeah, that's how I've seen that in my life so many times."

01:22:40 ◼   ► Brant asks, "If you could wave your magic wand over the MacBook lineup and bring either

01:22:44 ◼   ► cellular connectivity or face ID to the entire line, which would you choose?"

01:22:49 ◼   ► Now Brant wants to know just which would we choose.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Yeah, cellular, because Touch ID is fine.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And cellular is a great feature that, although we just said, may not sell as many computers

01:22:59 ◼   ► as a touchscreen, I think it's a very great and convenient feature.

01:23:02 ◼   ► And I know you can tether, but you know what?

01:23:04 ◼   ► I don't like tethering.

01:23:05 ◼   ► It's not always reliable.

01:23:07 ◼   ► It's kind of inconvenient.

01:23:08 ◼   ► It drains the battery of the device

01:23:10 ◼   ► that you are tethering to.

01:23:12 ◼   ► I think that there's real value in being able to

01:23:16 ◼   ► pay that upgrade to your cell provider

01:23:19 ◼   ► and get data wherever you go with your laptop.

01:23:22 ◼   ► And face ID, while nice, and I would like to see it,

01:23:26 ◼   ► we have touch ID and on, this is a MacBook question.

01:23:30 ◼   ► Every MacBook has a keyboard with a touch ID sensor on it.

01:23:35 ◼   ► It's that's good enough.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Like it's on a display, on an iMac, something like that.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Face ID would be nice, but is it necessary on a MacBook?

01:23:46 ◼   ► I don't think it is.

01:23:47 ◼   ► - We're in agreement on that one.

01:23:50 ◼   ► Like I would like tethering for that reason.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Like it's wild to me.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Like I'm gonna use the battery of two devices

01:23:55 ◼   ► so I can get an internet connection.

01:23:56 ◼   ► Like just that, just so inefficient, frustrating.

01:24:01 ◼   ► I would prefer that over Face ID.

01:24:03 ◼   ► Because as you say, especially on a laptop,

01:24:05 ◼   ► Touch ID is really easy, really easy.

01:24:07 ◼   ► - It is, it is.

01:24:09 ◼   ► It's there on all of them and it works great, right?

01:24:11 ◼   ► It's different if you're, like I am sitting at a desk here

01:24:15 ◼   ► where I've disassembled the keyboard

01:24:16 ◼   ► and made a little Touch ID thingy.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Like it would be great if the screen could just go,

01:24:22 ◼   ► oh, it's Jason and that would be fine.

01:24:24 ◼   ► but like on a laptop, I'm never like,

01:24:27 ◼   ► "Oh no, I must move my finger to..."

01:24:30 ◼   ► It would be nice to have,

01:24:31 ◼   ► but it's not like I would take cellular over it any day.

01:24:34 ◼   ► - Christian asks, "What was your favorite

01:24:38 ◼   ► or most listened to album from 2022?"

01:24:41 ◼   ► - Being funny in a foreign language by the 1975.

01:24:45 ◼   ► It turns out that if the 1975 release an album in a year,

01:24:48 ◼   ► that's pretty much gonna be the album I listen to the most.

01:24:51 ◼   ► That's what I've learned.

01:24:52 ◼   ► They're my favorite band of the moment

01:24:53 ◼   ► and they have been my favorite band at the moment since I discovered them whenever that

01:24:57 ◼   ► was five years ago. So yeah, yeah, definitely in 1975.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Very good album. Mine is Surrender by Maggie Rogers.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Also good album. Similarly, like if Maggie Rogers releases an

01:25:09 ◼   ► album it's going to be my album of the year. I think she's incredible. Like her body of

01:25:14 ◼   ► work across two albums is about as good as for me you could ever find in a singer-songwriter.

01:25:19 ◼   ► The opening song Overdrive on her album Surrender is legitimately one of my favorite songs of

01:25:25 ◼   ► all time.

01:25:27 ◼   ► If you just listen to that one song, if it doesn't blow you away, like I'm surprised,

01:25:34 ◼   ► then you can just stop there.

01:25:35 ◼   ► But there's another song Horses, where sometimes, I know this song very well, sometimes I just

01:25:40 ◼   ► listen to the album, Horses comes on, makes me cry.

01:25:42 ◼   ► Completely random, it's just a beautiful song.

01:25:44 ◼   ► She has just one of the greatest voices maybe ever.

01:25:49 ◼   ► I love her. I loved her album Heard It in a Past Life. I don't like Surrender as much as Heard It in a Past Life.

01:25:56 ◼   ► I think that's my issue with it more than anything else. But it's a good album and she's a great artist.

01:26:02 ◼   ► And I love that she is a... she's like a folk singer who also understands like modern...

01:26:12 ◼   ► lots of modern music techniques and styles. And it's a great... I know we've talked about her before.

01:26:17 ◼   ► It's just a fun fusion of those things that it's like,

01:26:21 ◼   ► what if somebody with real strong folk impulses

01:26:24 ◼   ► was making modern music in 2022,

01:26:29 ◼   ► which is Maggie Rogers.

01:26:31 ◼   ► You've just described Maggie Rogers and she's great.

01:26:34 ◼   ► - Like she has this talent,

01:26:36 ◼   ► which I feel like she can sing

01:26:39 ◼   ► while she's breathing in and out,

01:26:40 ◼   ► which is like, 'cause sometimes she just continues

01:26:43 ◼   ► making different noises for like a really long time

01:26:46 ◼   ► in a way that does not feel like it is humanly possible.

01:26:50 ◼   ► And so Maggie Rose is awesome.

01:26:51 ◼   ► - Maybe she's a robot.

01:26:53 ◼   ► - Jason wants to know, I don't know if this is you,

01:26:56 ◼   ► you can tell me. - It's not me.

01:26:57 ◼   ► - And I assume this is directed at me.

01:26:58 ◼   ► Why have you gone from HomePod minis to a Sonos system?

01:27:01 ◼   ► So, as a clarification, I had HomePods

01:27:04 ◼   ► rather than HomePod minis,

01:27:06 ◼   ► but I can give you a bunch of reasons.

01:27:07 ◼   ► So the Sonos app is awesome.

01:27:10 ◼   ► The fact that you can sign in to multiple streaming services

01:27:13 ◼   ► from multiple people and have it all in one view,

01:27:15 ◼   ► all accessible to everyone in that house is fantastic.

01:27:20 ◼   ► Adina has a very good curated favorite for us on her Spotify that I really like. There

01:27:26 ◼   ► is literally no way for her to share that to me on Apple Music and it stay up to date.

01:27:30 ◼   ► But at home I can just choose that on Sonos and the Sonos app.

01:27:33 ◼   ► It is so easy to group and ungroup speakers on an ad hoc basis inside of the app. Like

01:27:38 ◼   ► if maybe I want to turn it off upstairs or I want to turn on these two downstairs or

01:27:42 ◼   ► I want to change it. Same with the audio levels, you can control them all independently or

01:27:47 ◼   ► as a group. It's so much easier to control music in general and where it's playing rather

01:27:52 ◼   ► than using the very clunky controls that are built into iOS to do this. Like the control

01:27:57 ◼   ► center thing is a nightmare. What I like is that this is Sonos' entire business. This

01:28:05 ◼   ► is all they do. So they have to put the best effort into making this overall experience

01:28:10 ◼   ► and hardware the best it can be.

01:28:13 ◼   ► Then they have options with their devices.

01:28:14 ◼   ► They have devices with line-in support.

01:28:16 ◼   ► So I have a device like a Sonos 5.

01:28:19 ◼   ► I've plugged my turntable into it.

01:28:20 ◼   ► I can put records on it and play that music in my entire home.

01:28:24 ◼   ► Apple don't have that.

01:28:25 ◼   ► They have battery powered options if you want that.

01:28:29 ◼   ► They have soundbar options.

01:28:30 ◼   ► It goes on and on and on.

01:28:33 ◼   ► Just for me, for what I want with music and even I think now television audio, Sonos is

01:28:39 ◼   ► is the right call. That's why.

01:28:42 ◼   ► - Okay. I use Sonos speakers in my office and I like it.

01:28:45 ◼   ► I use HomePods in my living room and I like them too.

01:28:48 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:28:49 ◼   ► - I'm not as enamored with Sonos' app as you are.

01:28:53 ◼   ► Mostly again, that's because I do a lot of music listening

01:28:56 ◼   ► on my Mac and the Sonos app on the Mac.

01:28:59 ◼   ► Eh, it's not that great.

01:29:01 ◼   ► - It's, I mean, I like that it exists,

01:29:03 ◼   ► but like I don't really manage my music on my Mac.

01:29:06 ◼   ► - Well, and I also listen,

01:29:07 ◼   ► I have an iTunes library that includes my music

01:29:09 ◼   ► and it includes Apple Music stuff

01:29:12 ◼   ► and they're intermixed in the music app

01:29:14 ◼   ► and Sonos app doesn't really have that experience.

01:29:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's just Apple Music.

01:29:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it's fine.

01:29:23 ◼   ► What I have learned is that I think it's more stable

01:29:27 ◼   ► when I do it from the Mac.

01:29:29 ◼   ► Well, no, actually, no, the stability is about the same

01:29:33 ◼   ► using Sonos and using the music app.

01:29:36 ◼   ► The part that surprised me is that I had a trial

01:29:39 ◼   ► for Spotify, which I no longer have.

01:29:41 ◼   ► And Spotify's app has the Sonos protocol built into it.

01:29:45 ◼   ► So it just directly connects to the Sonos speakers

01:29:47 ◼   ► and tells them to stream from Spotify.

01:29:49 ◼   ► And that was way more reliable than air playing from my Mac.

01:29:53 ◼   ► But I also didn't like the Spotify app on my Mac.

01:29:55 ◼   ► So here we are.

01:29:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's called Spotify Connect.

01:30:00 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:30:00 ◼   ► - I think Sonos built in Spotify's system

01:30:03 ◼   ► to allow that to work.

01:30:04 ◼   ► It's basically Chromecast for audio.

01:30:08 ◼   ► - And it's basically like AirPlay 2, right?

01:30:10 ◼   ► If you do AirPlay 2 right,

01:30:11 ◼   ► what you do is you say to the HomePod or other speaker,

01:30:14 ◼   ► "Go play this audio file," and it does the work

01:30:17 ◼   ► and your device is controlling it,

01:30:19 ◼   ► but not doing all of that work.

01:30:20 ◼   ► But strangely, not as reliable.

01:30:22 ◼   ► - Sonos is AirPlay 2, but yeah, who knows?

01:30:25 ◼   ► - Sonos is as reliable doing AirPlay 2

01:30:27 ◼   ► as the music app is reliable doing AirPlay 2,

01:30:30 ◼   ► which is kind of reliable sometimes.

01:30:33 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:30:34 ◼   ► And Dr. Arden asks, would you ever attend CES?

01:30:37 ◼   ► And I will amend this to be have you as well.

01:30:40 ◼   ► - Well, Myke, would you ever attend CES?

01:30:43 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:30:43 ◼   ► Just to have done it, I don't want to go and report on it,

01:30:48 ◼   ► but it just seems like a weird thing to do once,

01:30:51 ◼   ► but that's it.

01:30:53 ◼   ► - Friends, I got a little story for you.

01:30:55 ◼   ► It's very little.

01:30:56 ◼   ► I've been to CES many times.

01:31:00 ◼   ► When it was not conflicting with Macworld Expo,

01:31:03 ◼   ► they would sometimes send me.

01:31:05 ◼   ► As I rose in the company at IDG,

01:31:09 ◼   ► they wanted me there,

01:31:11 ◼   ► that Macworld and PC World did stuff together.

01:31:14 ◼   ► How we had a trailer on the parking lot

01:31:17 ◼   ► and we'd do coverage and it was a whole thing.

01:31:20 ◼   ► I hate CES.

01:31:21 ◼   ► I hate it.

01:31:22 ◼   ► I hate it.

01:31:23 ◼   ► I don't really like Las Vegas

01:31:24 ◼   ► and a lot of the things that appeal about Las Vegas

01:31:26 ◼   ► are things that don't appeal to me.

01:31:29 ◼   ► And if you love Las Vegas, great.

01:31:30 ◼   ► I have friends who love Las Vegas.

01:31:32 ◼   ► It doesn't really appeal to me.

01:31:33 ◼   ► I don't really like it.

01:31:34 ◼   ► I think it's kind of gross.

01:31:36 ◼   ► Las Vegas, when it's entirely full

01:31:38 ◼   ► of tech industry people and hangers on

01:31:43 ◼   ► and marginally related to tech industry,

01:31:46 ◼   ► but they come to CES because they've got a booth

01:31:48 ◼   ► in the giant airplane hangar warehouse number five

01:31:53 ◼   ► on the giant campus.

01:31:54 ◼   ► It's unwalkable.

01:31:55 ◼   ► It's, you can't see it all.

01:31:56 ◼   ► It takes days to walk through it all.

01:31:58 ◼   ► you know, all these things.

01:32:00 ◼   ► So that Vegas is even worse than the Vegas

01:32:03 ◼   ► I don't already like.

01:32:04 ◼   ► So there's that.

01:32:05 ◼   ► You can't, as a person,

01:32:07 ◼   ► unless you have a very specific area of specialization,

01:32:10 ◼   ► you can't really cover CES.

01:32:12 ◼   ► You have to very much focus 'cause it's enormous.

01:32:15 ◼   ► So from a journalism standpoint, it's not great.

01:32:18 ◼   ► Also, many of the announcements of CES are a joke

01:32:21 ◼   ► because they don't ever come true.

01:32:23 ◼   ► And there's a lot of ploys and a lot of like showbiz,

01:32:26 ◼   ► nonsense that doesn't go anywhere.

01:32:28 ◼   ► and do anything.

01:32:29 ◼   ► So on that level, it's kind of a waste of time too.

01:32:32 ◼   ► So suffice to say, I don't like CES.

01:32:35 ◼   ► Would I ever attend CES?

01:32:36 ◼   ► Let me put it this way.

01:32:37 ◼   ► There was a period, a low period in my final year at IDG,

01:32:42 ◼   ► where I decided I was gonna leave and I quit.

01:32:46 ◼   ► And they asked me, where are you going?

01:32:49 ◼   ► And I said, "Nowhere, I just can't work here anymore."

01:32:51 ◼   ► Which is not what you wanna hear as a supervisor

01:32:54 ◼   ► of somebody who's quitting, 'cause it's like, oh no.

01:32:57 ◼   ► - What's happened?

01:32:57 ◼   ► And they're like, please, please, please stay.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Please, please, please stay.

01:33:00 ◼   ► And I had basically two conditions

01:33:03 ◼   ► under which I would stay.

01:33:04 ◼   ► 'Cause they're like, we're new management.

01:33:05 ◼   ► We're gonna do things different.

01:33:06 ◼   ► We're gonna turn this around.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Friends, they didn't turn it around.

01:33:09 ◼   ► The person who said this to me was fired.

01:33:13 ◼   ► But I was like, okay, I was a sucker.

01:33:14 ◼   ► I should have quit.

01:33:15 ◼   ► I should have said no, but I said yes.

01:33:17 ◼   ► My two things that I said was one,

01:33:20 ◼   ► if we're gonna go through another,

01:33:21 ◼   ► 'cause we were about to lay a bunch of people off.

01:33:22 ◼   ► And I said, okay, one,

01:33:23 ◼   ► if we go through another big layoff like this down the road,

01:33:26 ◼   ► please just lay me off because I don't wanna,

01:33:28 ◼   ► I'm not gonna go through that again.

01:33:30 ◼   ► And that's what they did.

01:33:31 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

01:33:32 ◼   ► People who were remaining after you got rid of everybody.

01:33:36 ◼   ► My second argument about what I would be,

01:33:40 ◼   ► what I would have to do

01:33:41 ◼   ► if I was gonna be convinced to stay was,

01:33:43 ◼   ► don't send me to CES.

01:33:46 ◼   ► Literally number two was, don't send me to CES.

01:33:50 ◼   ► And you know what?

01:33:51 ◼   ► We had a whole, they agreed to it.

01:33:54 ◼   ► And then like a week later, they're like,

01:33:56 ◼   ► what do you mean?

01:33:56 ◼   ► Somebody said, what do you mean Jason's not going to CES?

01:33:59 ◼   ► And they came back to me and they said about the CES thing.

01:34:01 ◼   ► And I'm like, guys, I told you, no CES.

01:34:05 ◼   ► And in the end, what we negotiated was,

01:34:08 ◼   ► I went to CES for one day, I flew in in the morning,

01:34:11 ◼   ► I flew out in the evening, I was there for a single day,

01:34:15 ◼   ► didn't sleep in Vegas,

01:34:17 ◼   ► just did whatever stupid stuff they wanted me to do.

01:34:20 ◼   ► So would I ever attend CES?

01:34:24 ◼   ► No, no, you would have to pay me,

01:34:28 ◼   ► you would have to pay me a lot of money,

01:34:29 ◼   ► I guess is what I'm saying.

01:34:30 ◼   ► Everybody's got a price.

01:34:32 ◼   ► If you paid me a lot of money,

01:34:33 ◼   ► but willingly to just go to CES to do my job,

01:34:38 ◼   ► no, no, no, no, no, no, I hate it, it's terrible.

01:34:42 ◼   ► - If you would like to send in a question

01:34:44 ◼   ► for us to answer on the show,

01:34:47 ◼   ► you can use question mark ask upgrade

01:34:49 ◼   ► in the Relay FM members Discord,

01:34:51 ◼   ► or you can send in some feedback for us.

01:34:53 ◼   ► Go to UpgradeFeedback.com or click the link in your show notes and you can fill in the

01:34:57 ◼   ► feedback there, follow up and also you'll ask upgrade questions.

01:35:01 ◼   ► Thank you to everybody that has done that.

01:35:04 ◼   ► If you want to find us online go to SixColors.com for Jason Snell.

01:35:09 ◼   ► Jason also hosts many shows here on Relay FM and at The Incomparable.

01:35:14 ◼   ► I am also hosting many podcasts here at Relay FM and you can find products that I make along

01:35:20 ◼   ► with CGP Grey at CortexMerch.com.

01:35:23 ◼   ► Thank you to Ladder and Rocket Money for their support of this week's episode.

01:35:29 ◼   ► And thank you for listening. Also thank you to our members who listen to us on Upgrade Plus.

01:35:35 ◼   ► We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

01:35:39 ◼   ► Have fun at CES, Myke!

01:35:41 ◼   ► Thanks Myke!

01:35:41 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:35:45 ◼   ► [ Music ]