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Upgrade

404: Convert Your Nostalgia to Money

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 404. Today's show is brought to you by ZocDoc,

00:00:14   TextExpander, and CleanMyMac X. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi Jason.

00:00:19   File not found.

00:00:20   Ah, host not found. I have a #SnellTalk question for you. It comes from Ryan. He says,

00:00:26   - I had a couple of questions like this,

00:00:29   and I picked one of them today.

00:00:30   People want to know this about you, Jason.

00:00:32   Jason, you are a man who watches a lot of movies, TV,

00:00:36   and reads a lot of books.

00:00:38   Is there something you're giving up

00:00:39   to be able to find this time,

00:00:41   or are you limiting things?

00:00:43   How do you manage it all?

00:00:44   - No, all my time is unlimited.

00:00:46   I have unlimited time to do whatever I want,

00:00:48   and I never give anything up ever.

00:00:50   - That's how you do it.

00:00:51   - Some people go 24/7.

00:00:55   I'm going like 35, eight.

00:00:58   I'm doing eight days a week, 35 hours a day.

00:01:00   That's me.

00:01:01   Look, obviously you just have to balance it.

00:01:05   Like, is there something I'm giving up

00:01:06   or limiting to do those things?

00:01:07   Well, of course, I'm giving up something else

00:01:10   that I could be doing.

00:01:11   You gotta balance it.

00:01:15   I don't, I mean, one of the reasons I reduced my workload

00:01:20   on the incomparable this year,

00:01:22   after 10 years, 11 years of doing it every week,

00:01:26   is that I had run out of sort of easy subjects of things

00:01:30   that I already knew a lot about, or movies I'd seen a lot,

00:01:33   or all of that.

00:01:33   I was running out of those, and I

00:01:35   was finding the grind of having to have essentially a TV

00:01:39   series, or movie, or book, or series of books

00:01:43   every single week to be too much homework for me.

00:01:47   And so all of my kind of content consumption

00:01:49   was becoming homework for the podcast.

00:01:51   and it was a lot, and the pace was a lot.

00:01:54   And so I cut back.

00:01:55   I'm only doing about half the episodes this year,

00:01:58   and I'm having guest hosts for the other half.

00:02:01   So that's part of it, is like, yeah,

00:02:03   I don't have that much time in the day.

00:02:06   I also think that you may, because so much of my life

00:02:09   is kind of converted into content, I will say,

00:02:12   you may be overestimating how much time I spend

00:02:16   with movies and TV and reading books.

00:02:19   I do, I mean, I read books before I go to bed,

00:02:23   and after dinner, we all sit down and watch a movie

00:02:27   or some TV for a couple of hours.

00:02:29   That's time with, that's family time.

00:02:34   If it's moon night, then my son is there,

00:02:36   and if it's not, then we're watching other stuff,

00:02:38   and it's my wife and me, and that's part of what we do.

00:02:41   I don't know, I mean, that's the thing we like to do.

00:02:47   If I had my evenings back, we would find something else

00:02:50   to do and spend our time in that, right?

00:02:52   Then we would be playing board games or whatever.

00:02:56   It's a thing you have to balance out.

00:02:57   I was thinking the other day,

00:02:58   if I didn't do anything other than tech stuff,

00:03:02   what would my life be like?

00:03:04   And I'm not quite sure I've always had side project stuff.

00:03:08   I'm sure that I would have,

00:03:14   I would probably do more tech stuff to fill some of that,

00:03:18   but part of my work-life balance really is the balance

00:03:21   between the stuff that I do mostly during the day now

00:03:25   that is upgrade and downstream and six colors,

00:03:30   it's that stuff, and the stuff I do kinda in the evenings,

00:03:34   which is reading books and watching TV

00:03:36   or recording the incomparable,

00:03:37   which is generally done in the evenings too.

00:03:39   So I like to kinda have that balance.

00:03:42   I'm fortunate that my hobbies are very similar to my job.

00:03:47   You get to do what you love,

00:03:48   and so part of what I love is the stuff

00:03:51   that I then end up doing as side projects,

00:03:53   which kind of become part of your job.

00:03:56   It can cut the wrong way when everything is a job,

00:04:03   then you have no freedom,

00:04:05   which is one of the reasons why I cut back

00:04:07   on the incomparable,

00:04:08   is I felt like it was eating up too much of my life.

00:04:11   But I've got, you know, there's also stuff that I do that is not those things and I'm

00:04:17   not publishing things to the internet and that's fine. Like, I have a D&D game that

00:04:23   I play on Monday nights occasionally that is not a podcast. It's just friends getting

00:04:27   together. I know, on Zoom. But it's not a podcast. I have to turn off the recording

00:04:31   thing. Yeah, we're doing, Lauren and I are doing curling at our local curling club that

00:04:40   just got a facility in Oakland. If you want to find me, Bay Area, find me at the curling

00:04:46   club once a week-ish. We do stuff like that too. But the big answer is, yeah, I'm sure

00:04:56   there's something I'm giving up, but these are the things that I've chosen to do. It's

00:04:59   like saying, for any hobby, "Myke, what are you giving up to be interested in keyboards?"

00:05:03   It's like, I don't know, right? Something else that you would be doing instead. But

00:05:08   But I'm not, I mean, I guess if I gave it up completely, then I'd spend more time, what,

00:05:14   watching baseball games, listening to music, lounging in the backyard, pulling weeds, mowing

00:05:19   the lawn, like, you know, that's life, you gotta balance all those things.

00:05:24   - So trade-offs.

00:05:25   - Yeah.

00:05:26   - If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out

00:05:28   a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk, or use question mark SnellTalk in the Relay FM Discord.

00:05:34   The prophecy was foretold. Jason, you have received your studio display already. That

00:05:40   was fast. That was fast. That turned around really fast. I was impressed. In fact, I got

00:05:46   a note that my airbill had been printed before I'd even returned the display. I got that

00:05:52   right after the podcast yesterday. Wow. Or last week. It was one of those things where

00:05:59   is like, oh, this is happening fast.

00:06:01   I am not, okay, so we did upgrade,

00:06:05   which meant that people heard my story.

00:06:09   I'm not entirely convinced that people didn't hear my story

00:06:14   and then check into it and say, this is bad PR,

00:06:18   let's expedite his thing.

00:06:21   I think maybe it just happened though.

00:06:23   I think maybe the timing was right

00:06:24   where it just kind of happened and this is how it turned out.

00:06:27   So the good news is I have it,

00:06:28   it doesn't have big horizontal things on it.

00:06:30   I hope that monitor that they shipped me went somewhere

00:06:33   where somebody could look at it and go,

00:06:34   uh-oh, what is happening here?

00:06:36   Is this a one-off or do we need to fix

00:06:38   our production system? - That one got driven

00:06:39   over to Craig's house.

00:06:40   - I think maybe it goes to--

00:06:43   - Yeah, they're in the Discord, says,

00:06:45   I wonder who is currently posting about their display

00:06:47   not arriving on the day of the promise.

00:06:49   - There was somebody in-- - Someone in the Bay Area.

00:06:51   - Somebody in the six-color Slack was talking about

00:06:53   how theirs just got pushed back a couple of weeks

00:06:55   and somebody else replied,

00:06:56   that's 'cause yours went to Jason.

00:06:57   (laughing)

00:06:59   That's probably what happened.

00:07:00   I'm pretty sure that Bob Mansfield

00:07:05   still takes all the bad hardware,

00:07:07   even though he's retired, they still go to Bob's house.

00:07:09   Gets taken over to Bob's house

00:07:10   and then people come and retrieve from there.

00:07:12   Pretty sure that's what it is.

00:07:13   Craig doesn't want your hardware.

00:07:16   Craig's a software guy, he doesn't want your hardware.

00:07:19   Anyway, I did hear this last week from a lot of people

00:07:22   who work in various aspects of Apple sales and support,

00:07:27   which is not surprising.

00:07:29   The general trend of that was,

00:07:31   this is not supposed to happen like this,

00:07:33   which is good, good to know.

00:07:35   It sounds though like a lot of my guesses

00:07:38   about what happened last week

00:07:39   seem to have been fairly accurate.

00:07:42   The idea I am told by multiple people

00:07:45   is to make the customer satisfied

00:07:48   as quickly and easily as possible.

00:07:50   And in times of plenty where products are available

00:07:53   at the drop of a hat,

00:07:54   The idea is to do a return and a new order,

00:07:57   and the new order will be there in a couple of days,

00:08:00   and it will be a fast turnaround.

00:08:02   And you treat it as a return,

00:08:03   and then they will pluck it off and say, "This is faulty."

00:08:06   But that's the best way to do it in order,

00:08:08   for expediency's sake, to get a new product,

00:08:11   'cause what you wanna do is just get the product

00:08:13   the consumer wanted in their hands as fast as possible.

00:08:17   But this was a very weird situation

00:08:19   where that wasn't the case.

00:08:20   Doing a new order was not going to get me a new one

00:08:23   as fast as possible.

00:08:24   it was gonna get me a new one in 10 weeks or whatever.

00:08:27   So the right answer was what eventually happened,

00:08:32   which was to mark it as essentially a repair,

00:08:35   which is how it, I think, is how it should always work.

00:08:39   But the other, culturally the other thing,

00:08:43   which is return a new order,

00:08:45   culturally that happens because it's faster

00:08:49   and less complicated for the customer,

00:08:53   even though it's not really how you should do it, right?

00:08:56   But I think Apple has just sort of normalized,

00:08:58   like the most important thing is not following our policy,

00:09:01   it's making the customer happy.

00:09:03   And in most cases that's return and replace.

00:09:05   - And this is one of those things where like,

00:09:07   yeah, sure, maybe that is the fastest way to do it.

00:09:09   But I think that this, that is a process

00:09:12   that should be hidden from the customer.

00:09:14   Like this thing of you have to process a return

00:09:18   and then we'll do a replacement.

00:09:20   - Right, well, this is the thing is that,

00:09:22   So this thing that is built up around

00:09:24   trying to make it the best thing for the customer,

00:09:27   it gets complicated because then you're,

00:09:31   it's not hiding that thing from the customer.

00:09:33   So it turns out the right answer in this case

00:09:35   was to do the thing they don't normally do

00:09:38   in these circumstances 'cause it's less expedient,

00:09:41   which is to say, this is broken.

00:09:44   We're gonna put this in the essentially repair channel.

00:09:47   And by repair, in this case,

00:09:48   they're not gonna repair my one that they sent me.

00:09:51   They're going to get me a new replacement

00:09:52   and they're gonna put that one in the flow

00:09:54   for this one is broken, and then they'll fix it

00:09:56   and sell it, it's refurbished, or they'll throw it away,

00:09:58   or whatever they do with it.

00:09:59   Recycle it, of course, recycle.

00:10:01   So that was the right answer, and we did get there.

00:10:07   I think it would all have worked out a lot better

00:10:10   had the guy on the phone not sent me to the Apple store,

00:10:14   which was, you know, everybody I heard from was,

00:10:16   that's a mistake.

00:10:17   If you don't have an appointment, you really can't do that.

00:10:20   You gotta have a Genius Bar appointment,

00:10:21   guy like made me a Genius Bar appointment and then canceled it and said you can just

00:10:25   go. And it's like no that was not the case. So that was that was where the kind of the

00:10:29   guy got messed up is punting me to the Apple store when he really should never have offered

00:10:33   me my retail store and said here's what we're gonna do I'm gonna send you a form you're

00:10:37   gonna send that back with this air bill PDF you're gonna print it out put them in the

00:10:41   box send it back I'm gonna I'm gonna have a replacement sent to you done and that sort

00:10:45   of didn't happen. And I did get a call from somebody at Apple about this after someone

00:10:52   at Apple heard upgrade. And I told them my story. I basically said, "Look, I already

00:10:58   had the monitor at that point, right? By the time I talked to this guy, I had already gotten

00:11:01   the replacement and it worked fine." But I told them the story and I said, "Here's what

00:11:06   happened to me. Best as I can tell, it's because of this thing. If you have any influence on

00:11:13   clarifying these policies so this doesn't happen

00:11:15   to somebody else, that would be great.

00:11:17   So, but in the end, I've got a display,

00:11:18   it's hovering over my desk, it's on an arm,

00:11:19   I can push it back and lift it up and do all those things,

00:11:23   and it's floating again, and my desk is super clean,

00:11:26   and it looks great, and it's not the nano-textured one,

00:11:30   which I, since I don't have a window behind me,

00:11:32   I actually prefer, 'cause everything's a little bit crisper.

00:11:35   And it's great.

00:11:38   - So, Rami, you have the nano-textured one

00:11:41   as the review unit, right?

00:11:41   - Yeah, yeah.

00:11:42   So now that you've had both of them in your space,

00:11:46   you're happier with the glossy.

00:11:48   - Absolutely, because it's just a little bit crisper.

00:11:51   'Cause the nano texture, that is a textured display.

00:11:53   And so everything looks a little, this is the trade-off.

00:11:57   Everything looks a little--

00:11:58   - It looks like it's behind something.

00:12:00   - It looks a little less sharp

00:12:01   because there's a texture in front of it.

00:12:03   It's almost diluted.

00:12:05   Like you're losing the blackest blacks.

00:12:08   Everything gets a little grayed up

00:12:10   because of that texture reflecting.

00:12:12   'cause what it's doing is it's taking whatever light

00:12:14   it is getting and it is diffusely reflecting it,

00:12:17   which is how it is an anti-glare display.

00:12:21   But the downside of that is everything is sort of,

00:12:24   all that light is diffusely reflected

00:12:25   and it kind of reduces the contrast a little bit.

00:12:28   If you're somebody who is,

00:12:30   like you talking about,

00:12:33   you talked to Gray about this on Cortex,

00:12:35   like he is a big nanotexture boy.

00:12:38   And like, I get it.

00:12:40   for people who are sensitive to reflections,

00:12:43   and like, it's amazing that that is available for people.

00:12:47   But my window is to my left.

00:12:50   There is no scenario where I'm gonna turn my desk

00:12:52   with my back to the window.

00:12:53   I don't want that.

00:12:54   I like to look out the window.

00:12:55   And so I'm in a position where I don't need

00:12:58   an anti-glare display, and I'm happy to not have one

00:13:01   because I do think that there's a little bit

00:13:03   of a trade-off there, plus the money.

00:13:04   - I'm assuming there aren't really,

00:13:08   that you have no new, oh, you should get the VESA, right?

00:13:11   It's on the VESA now.

00:13:12   - Yeah. - This has the main difference.

00:13:14   - Yeah, it's just-- - Can I assume

00:13:15   that all went well? - Yeah, it's literally

00:13:17   the same VESA arm that I got when I bought my previous desk

00:13:20   that I've just kept on moving.

00:13:22   And so I had a Dell display on it,

00:13:25   I had the original 5K iMac on it,

00:13:27   I had the iMac Pro on it,

00:13:28   and now I've got this display on it.

00:13:30   But it's much lighter than those iMacs,

00:13:32   so that's kind of funny.

00:13:34   It's a lot easier to kind of move around.

00:13:36   But it's the same arm.

00:13:38   I thought about getting a new arm.

00:13:40   They're probably nice and newer, cooler mounting arms,

00:13:43   but it works fine.

00:13:44   So yeah.

00:13:45   - Why change it up?

00:13:46   - Back to normal.

00:13:47   I mean, with the Mac Studio under the desk now,

00:13:50   it actually is, it feels very much like my old setup.

00:13:54   The difference being there are fewer cables passing over

00:13:57   the, on the monitor arm.

00:13:59   Cause now I don't, I, all the other stuff that used to be

00:14:02   plugged into the back of the iMac is now under the desk

00:14:04   plugged into the back of the Mac studio.

00:14:06   So it's actually a little less cluttered than it used to be.

00:14:09   - A couple of weeks ago,

00:14:11   I think it was a couple of weeks ago,

00:14:12   I mentioned we were talking about the Twitter user

00:14:17   whose name has escaped me right now.

00:14:18   I think the name was Chaos, I think,

00:14:20   who took apart a magic keyboard with touch ID

00:14:25   and was able to extract the touch ID power button from it

00:14:28   so they could make their own little touch ID button

00:14:30   to sit on their desk.

00:14:31   And I vowed to do this myself.

00:14:34   All the parts have arrived

00:14:35   And so I'm gonna do this on stream

00:14:37   and Jason's gonna join me.

00:14:39   So it's gonna be on June 6th.

00:14:41   I'll remind everyone about this next week too.

00:14:43   - Sorry, it's gonna be May.

00:14:44   - I have a real problem right now, Jason,

00:14:46   where May is being erased from my mind.

00:14:49   I keep doing this.

00:14:50   I did this to you.

00:14:51   I've been doing it with lots of things.

00:14:53   I keep saying June 6th when I mean May 6th.

00:14:56   For me right now, April was rolling right into June.

00:14:59   I'm just ready for W2C.

00:15:00   - I love it.

00:15:00   Let's do it.

00:15:01   Let's just skip right over May.

00:15:03   Sorry, May.

00:15:03   You're outta here.

00:15:04   May for one day, May 6th at 9.30am Pacific, 12.30 Eastern,

00:15:11   5.05pm best time at BST.

00:15:14   That's what that means.

00:15:16   It's British summertime.

00:15:17   So yeah, I'll remind everyone about this next week,

00:15:19   but me and Jason are going to be hanging out for a bit

00:15:21   and I'm going to be trying to extract a circuit board

00:15:24   and a fingerprint sensor from a keyboard.

00:15:29   So that should be fun.

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00:17:37   support of Upgrading all of Relay FM.

00:17:40   I hate you.

00:17:42   Oh, hi.

00:17:43   Do you know this? Do you know that I hate you right now?

00:17:46   This is cyberbullying.

00:17:48   You are cyberbullying me.

00:17:49   Wait, what?

00:17:50   I feel like.

00:17:51   I think you are the one, you are actively cyberbullying me

00:17:55   by streaming your playdate.

00:17:57   I watched you stream your playdate

00:17:59   and watched you not be able to play the games.

00:18:01   And I was just getting more and more mad at you, Jason,

00:18:04   because you don't deserve it, all right?

00:18:06   I deserve the playdate.

00:18:08   You don't deserve the playdate.

00:18:09   - I was learning how to play on the stream.

00:18:11   I learned how to play on the stream.

00:18:13   I had a breakthrough on the surfing game

00:18:15   while we were on the stream. - I know,

00:18:16   that was really fun.

00:18:17   That was the one I was talking about.

00:18:18   That was hilarious to me.

00:18:20   You were just like, "Wah!"

00:18:22   Just like spinning the crank wild

00:18:24   for realizing it controls your direction.

00:18:26   - Well, it says crank it up.

00:18:27   It says crank it up.

00:18:28   - It does, it does.

00:18:30   My play date's on the way too.

00:18:32   So I'm hoping I'll have mine by the end of this week

00:18:36   and so we can talk about it

00:18:37   in a little bit more detail next week.

00:18:39   But I wanted to know like what are your

00:18:42   kind of first impressions of the play date?

00:18:45   - I love the hardware.

00:18:46   I wish it had a backlight because it is very hard to use.

00:18:50   I feel like this is the perfect game thing to like play outside because it really needs

00:18:55   to be well lit.

00:18:57   I know why it doesn't have a backlight but I wish it had a backlight because it is hard

00:19:01   to see.

00:19:02   I'm hoping somebody made, I don't know if you remember this Jason but this was always

00:19:05   the thing with the original Gameboys right?

00:19:07   The original Gameboys didn't have lights on them so you could buy these lights that you

00:19:10   would attach them.

00:19:12   I hope somebody makes this for Playdate.

00:19:13   It's like the original Kindle where the early Kindles I had a little clip on book light

00:19:17   for the kindles, which seems so stupid, but at least it made it, I could read at night.

00:19:21   So yeah, hardware feels great. The attention to detail in the software by Panic is great.

00:19:33   Love the setup details, love the sideloading. You can sideload it on your computer, but

00:19:37   you can also drag the file into the web interface on Playdate's website and it'll get synced

00:19:42   to you. So very kindle-like experience is what I would say. It's like you can do it

00:19:47   either way. You can be in their system or you can not be in their system and it doesn't

00:19:51   matter. There are some games out there of varying quality. Honestly, if I have a criticism

00:19:59   of Playdate at this point, it is that I – the first two games of the season one, I appreciate

00:20:09   that one of them is an arcade game and one of them is more like an RPG game and an extended

00:20:13   game. I think that that is a very good bit of of curating the game experience. I think

00:20:20   it's a very smart. I will say that finding the surfing game kind of impenetrable is was

00:20:28   kind of reduced my enthusiasm right because that's one of the two games that are there

00:20:33   and in the long run and I know like it just shipped and there are gonna be more games

00:20:38   coming in. In fact, I get the distinct impression that in this last few days as these products

00:20:42   have started to ship, the people who had been working on Playdate games are like, "Oh, geez,

00:20:47   I need to get it out there." I found one game, in fact, I played it on the stream, there

00:20:50   was a Tetris game that didn't sideload and was very weird. And then when I lost at the

00:20:55   end, it had a very, very, did you see that very bad frame rate problem? Suddenly it reduced

00:21:01   to sort of like one frame every five seconds as it animated the end of the game. And I

00:21:06   I left a note for the developer of that game

00:21:08   and he pushed an update that said,

00:21:11   "Oh yes, I changed the ending

00:21:13   'cause it turns out that the frame rate was really bad

00:21:15   on the actual hardware."

00:21:16   'Cause he was just using,

00:21:17   so all these developers are not even using,

00:21:19   or many of them are not even using hardware,

00:21:21   they're just using the development environment.

00:21:25   So, big picture I would say,

00:21:28   what let me down about the play date

00:21:30   is that there weren't enough games to choose from on day one

00:21:33   and I don't know what the answer is there.

00:21:35   I think while it's great that Panic is talking about

00:21:38   doing a catalog app that people can put their games in

00:21:42   so that there can be a place to find Playdate games,

00:21:45   you can sideload them, whatever, but they need,

00:21:48   if not a store, at least a directory.

00:21:51   - They called it a store.

00:21:52   They called it a store.

00:21:53   - It sounds like it will be both.

00:21:54   You could be in their store or you can just be in

00:21:57   as a directory linking to your own place

00:21:58   where people buy it.

00:22:00   - Which is kind of like the Microsoft store.

00:22:01   That's how the Microsoft store works.

00:22:03   - And I know it's early days,

00:22:04   So, you know, when this is shipping to,

00:22:07   in a couple of months,

00:22:08   it'll be shipping to a larger group of people.

00:22:10   I was one of the first people to get one.

00:22:12   So it's early yet.

00:22:13   But that is my real complaint,

00:22:16   is that I feel like out of the box,

00:22:18   it should have a better selection.

00:22:21   I wonder, I actually wonder,

00:22:23   this is talking our discussion of like the binge drop

00:22:26   versus the weekly release.

00:22:28   I kind of wonder, given that they have what, 20 games,

00:22:31   it's like a 10 week season.

00:22:34   I wonder if maybe they should have put four games on

00:22:37   week one instead of two just to have more selection.

00:22:41   It just, that's the part of it that I think

00:22:43   that they've gotten wrong.

00:22:44   And if there's a must have game out there

00:22:46   on the internet now or in the next couple of months

00:22:50   where people are like, well yeah,

00:22:51   but just go get this game for $8 and it's amazing

00:22:53   and then it's worth it, that'll solve this problem too.

00:22:56   Just right now there's kind of nothing.

00:22:58   Although I was happy to get the,

00:23:00   There's a Space Invaders game that is basically unplayable.

00:23:02   You can play it, but you can't win it.

00:23:05   And there's Tetris, which, like I said,

00:23:07   was sort of broken, but was sort of playable.

00:23:09   And honestly, having that little yellow play date

00:23:13   where I can just play Tetris, that kinda hit the spot.

00:23:17   That kind of made me feel happy.

00:23:19   So I just want a little more variety of the games on it,

00:23:22   but it's a beautiful piece of hardware.

00:23:23   And I love the idea of this cute little,

00:23:26   it's so small, cute little thing.

00:23:28   I think by the time they reach critical mass of shipping,

00:23:33   which right now they are not,

00:23:34   for good reason that they're still kind of testing out

00:23:37   their shipping, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm one of the

00:23:40   first international people to receive one.

00:23:42   - Right.

00:23:43   - 'Cause I was very early in the system, like you.

00:23:45   - Yeah, you're a couple before me, so.

00:23:47   - Yeah, and so, you know, I know that they're like,

00:23:50   they're kind of taking baby steps in their shipping,

00:23:52   which I think is the right thing to do,

00:23:54   just 'cause it seems like they're gonna be really

00:23:55   going at scale soon.

00:23:57   My expectation is by the time that people start receiving them at scale, there will

00:24:00   be way more games available.

00:24:02   I'll put a link in the show notes that Zach put out of a wiki.

00:24:08   Someone's keeping a track of some of the community games that are available.

00:24:12   And I watched a really good interview on the Spawn on Me podcast of Cable Sasa.

00:24:17   Kelly was interviewing him.

00:24:19   And they were talking about this exact idea of the season thing.

00:24:26   and Cable's like, "I'm really hoping that people

00:24:31   "are willing to stick with it."

00:24:32   Right?

00:24:33   - Sure.

00:24:34   - That like, the general consensus is sticking with it.

00:24:37   But he said, "However, we do have some tools available

00:24:42   "to us that if it seems that people don't seem to like it,

00:24:46   "that we can take advantage of."

00:24:48   My expectation there is they can maybe increase

00:24:51   really small games or just let someone say,

00:24:53   "Hey, just give me a mall now."

00:24:56   And we'll see how that goes.

00:24:58   - This actually reminds me a lot.

00:25:00   I know I just mentioned it,

00:25:01   but a lot of the conversation that we've had,

00:25:04   and that I know that I've talked about

00:25:06   on a bunch of other podcasts about streaming releases,

00:25:10   binge drop versus weekly drop.

00:25:12   And we talked here about,

00:25:15   very specifically about Apple,

00:25:17   like doing the,

00:25:18   we're gonna give you two or three episodes upfront,

00:25:19   and then it's gonna be weekly.

00:25:21   And this, I was thinking about this with Playdate.

00:25:25   And by the way, Zach in the Discord says it's 24 games,

00:25:28   so it's a 12-week season.

00:25:30   - Yeah, it was originally gonna be 12 weeks

00:25:32   with one game a week,

00:25:33   and then they increased it to two games a week for 12 weeks.

00:25:36   - So this is my take as a very early Playdate person,

00:25:41   is that I think they needed to do it.

00:25:45   I agree with the idea of not dropping 24 games

00:25:48   on the console to begin with, right?

00:25:50   Like, you're gonna miss games.

00:25:53   you're gonna have such an embarrassment of games

00:25:55   that there's gonna be a game that you would spend time with

00:25:58   that you're not gonna spend time with.

00:25:59   And I think it's bad.

00:26:01   I don't think you should do that.

00:26:03   That said, I think starting with those two was a mistake.

00:26:07   I really do.

00:26:08   I think that they need to come out stronger

00:26:13   out of the gate so people are really enthusiastic about it.

00:26:16   - But this is the problem, I think, with the Playdate,

00:26:19   because I have heard from some of the reviewers,

00:26:21   'cause the reviewers, they got two games a day

00:26:24   for 12 days.

00:26:27   I've seen lots of people say that the surfing game

00:26:30   is one of their favorites.

00:26:32   - I read a review that said the surfing game

00:26:33   was impenetrable, which I nodded about, so.

00:26:36   - Right, but I think this is always gonna be the problem.

00:26:39   - That's the argument for more games, right?

00:26:40   Because you have more chances to get something

00:26:42   that really clicks.

00:26:43   - I think one of the things that is good about this

00:26:45   compared to when it was initially announced

00:26:47   is this idea of sideloading.

00:26:49   They didn't talk about this for a really long time.

00:26:52   I think they actually weren't so clear about it

00:26:54   until like a week ago, like launch day.

00:26:58   The idea of like, hey, you can just go and get these games

00:27:01   from wherever you wanna get them

00:27:02   and you upload them on our web tool

00:27:04   and it gets pushed to your play date.

00:27:05   Which reminds me of the Kindle.

00:27:07   - It is, it is.

00:27:07   - I know you can do it by plugging it into,

00:27:09   but I like that idea, it's like very kindling.

00:27:11   - The difference is if you wanna play it right now,

00:27:13   the best thing to do is sideload it

00:27:14   because when you put it on the,

00:27:16   There's no like force sync, it sort of just happens

00:27:19   eventually and not in the moment.

00:27:21   So that is, I found myself sideloading things

00:27:23   'cause I wanted them now.

00:27:24   Also there were some things that I could sideload

00:27:25   that I couldn't get into Panix Tool,

00:27:28   which I thought was kind of funny.

00:27:29   That they had put, the developer had,

00:27:32   I think Panix Tool validates like the little text file

00:27:35   that goes with it that says what game is this

00:27:37   and who's it from and sideloading does not care.

00:27:40   So.

00:27:42   - Well that's the way to do it, right?

00:27:42   - Yeah.

00:27:43   - Like that's the kind of the benefit.

00:27:44   - Yeah.

00:27:45   just think it's I think this is really interesting I would be disappointed if

00:27:50   they got rid of this idea because it's the whole idea it's the name oh I agree

00:27:56   right I agree I love the season idea and I actually think it's I would like it to

00:28:01   be sustainable I would like to be able to sign up for a new season of playdate

00:28:04   and have a season premiere and have those roll out like I think it's

00:28:08   actually a really great idea especially for these games that are on this little

00:28:11   handheld that are little fun games having that excitement I love I love

00:28:15   that idea I just I guess what I'm really saying is I would advocate for a the

00:28:20   modified weekly schedule that a lot of streamers are doing now where you start

00:28:24   with a bunch and then roll them out start maybe four is about maybe four or

00:28:30   or maybe it's two and then two the next day and then it's weekly or something

00:28:35   like that like I feel like there's maybe something to tweak there to go out a

00:28:39   little bit stronger. I expect them to tweak it because there was definitely in

00:28:45   the reviews a lot of question about the the the games the quality of the games

00:28:52   if they worked or not but I think it was hidden a little bit in the reviewers

00:28:56   minds because they just got two more tomorrow and for you you know like

00:29:01   you've you got two games you didn't really like and now you're waiting you

00:29:05   you know you may be at what like five days before you would get another two

00:29:09   and so I think I wouldn't be surprised if again by the time they're shipping

00:29:14   wave two or whatever like batch two maybe is four games that you get

00:29:19   especially because the whole idea of the play date was originally it was date

00:29:24   synced for everyone right so like you would get when your play date arrived

00:29:31   all of the games released up to that date.

00:29:34   It wasn't when you got it and then moving on.

00:29:36   So when mine arrived, say mine arrives Monday,

00:29:40   you've got four and I have four,

00:29:42   but they couldn't do this because they couldn't get them out

00:29:45   in the way that they wanted.

00:29:46   - Right, 'cause that is, and I think,

00:29:49   imagine that for a moment.

00:29:50   Imagine that it's a year from now or eight months from now

00:29:53   and there are thousands of play dates out there

00:29:55   and season two starts.

00:29:57   - I think that's why they're gonna do season two

00:29:59   because they'll actually get to live out what they wanted.

00:30:01   - Right, and everybody experiences those games together.

00:30:05   That is perfect.

00:30:08   Like I get why you wouldn't wanna do this now,

00:30:10   'cause like I said, I'm not saying drop 24 games

00:30:13   on the system when it ships.

00:30:14   I'm not saying that.

00:30:16   But yeah, and it's early days.

00:30:18   I think that's the bottom line is it's early days,

00:30:20   and if you get one of these three months from now

00:30:22   or six months from now,

00:30:23   then you're gonna have lots of content out there

00:30:27   that is gonna be available.

00:30:29   And that's my feeling now is that being this early on,

00:30:32   even though they've had a couple of years to work on this,

00:30:35   it still feels like on the actual game side,

00:30:39   it's just light.

00:30:41   And it may just be that the curtain is only now coming up

00:30:43   and this will be very different in a few weeks.

00:30:45   And I hope so, 'cause the hardware is great.

00:30:47   And I love the idea of this model too.

00:30:49   It's fun.

00:30:50   And it's fun that it's people we know.

00:30:51   Obviously the gaming business,

00:30:53   there's lots of big corporations

00:30:56   that have all sorts of ways of structuring

00:30:57   gaming game rollouts and stuff like that.

00:30:59   But this is like the indie game experiment

00:31:03   that's going on, indie game handheld.

00:31:05   And I like that.

00:31:06   I think it's interesting 'cause we get to debate the models

00:31:09   and they are seeing their plans meet reality right now.

00:31:14   And that's fascinating too, right?

00:31:16   Because they've had two, three, four years

00:31:18   to think about what this would be like.

00:31:20   And now reality will hit and they'll realize

00:31:22   some of their assumptions were wrong

00:31:24   and they're gonna have to adjust.

00:31:25   That's fascinating.

00:31:27   What I love about Last Thing on This, we're gonna be talking about Playdate for weeks, right?

00:31:30   Because I'm gonna want to talk about it more when I get mine, you know, just look.

00:31:34   I mean, but we've been talking about it for years on this show, right?

00:31:37   Like, we've been so excited about it.

00:31:39   But it's been so fascinating to me, like, as I am watching more games media,

00:31:43   just to hear how people refer to Panic.

00:31:47   Like, they are the company from Goose Game and Firewatch.

00:31:51   Yeah.

00:31:52   Right?

00:31:53   It's just interesting, and I don't criticize that, by the way.

00:31:56   Like if you are a video game outlet,

00:31:58   - That's the content.

00:31:59   - Don't talk about transmit, what's the point?

00:32:00   Right, like it doesn't, you know, it's like, oh,

00:32:02   - We all know that they're the company from the truck

00:32:05   of the FTP client, but that's not,

00:32:08   that's not what it is to everyone else.

00:32:11   - I mean, and it's like, this is clearly what Panic! want,

00:32:14   right, Panic! want to be seen as both, and they should be,

00:32:16   'cause they are, right, they are in that world.

00:32:18   Like, they are both a Mac developer and a game developer.

00:32:22   I actually really wonder what their future is.

00:32:24   I think possibly they will be a games company.

00:32:28   I think that they are on course to be a games company.

00:32:33   And I am really intrigued to see what that ends up at

00:32:37   because there is a lot of money that they can make

00:32:42   from this market because games are so big, right?

00:32:46   And at a certain point,

00:32:48   they may have to make some decisions

00:32:50   and I could really imagine them scaling back

00:32:53   a lot of their Mac stuff to focus on game stuff,

00:32:56   because it's in the DNA of the company anyway.

00:32:59   - It's potentially an iPhone/Mac thing,

00:33:04   where you tap into a very small portion of the games market,

00:33:08   but it's so huge compared to the Mac software market.

00:33:12   - What is that thing that Steve Jobs said,

00:33:14   like that tiny percentage of the phone market

00:33:16   and how big it would make,

00:33:17   like when they announced the iPhone,

00:33:19   when they launched the iPhone,

00:33:20   and they were talking about just getting a slither

00:33:22   the smartphone market how big it would be for them mm-hmm like that well I use

00:33:26   transmit so so hey look they're there I think they're always going to employ Mac

00:33:32   developers at panic but yes it would be very interesting if panic was the games

00:33:38   indie game darling that also makes an FTP client and a development tool on the

00:33:43   side Jason I think they are that now I think they are now maybe so love it

00:33:49   we'll see. I can't wait for mine. I really want it to hurry up. I'm so excited. We're

00:33:55   talking about binging. It is impossible for us not to do some upstream this week because

00:34:00   the news has been... Myke, we did two episodes of downstream last

00:34:05   week. Two! It's an every other week podcast. I'm so happy that you pulled the cord and

00:34:10   did the first ever, the inaugural emergency episode of downstream because, like always,

00:34:17   I know this is why you do this show, and I get it.

00:34:20   Just listening to Julia talk through her thought processes,

00:34:22   it's just like, oh my God,

00:34:23   she's like the smartest person on the planet.

00:34:25   - She is.

00:34:26   - She's just so fricking smart.

00:34:27   So I really implore people listen to downstream episode 16,

00:34:31   because honestly, nothing that I add here

00:34:34   is really gonna be that much value.

00:34:36   You can already hear Jason

00:34:37   have a more intelligent conversation about this.

00:34:40   But CNN+ is dead.

00:34:42   - It's dead.

00:34:43   - And Netflix had a bad quarter.

00:34:46   And yeah, that's basically CNN Plus.

00:34:48   Here's, I'll see if I can do the TLDR here.

00:34:51   CNN Plus is dead.

00:34:53   A lot of takes out there about how it was a flop

00:34:55   and people didn't like it.

00:34:56   Truth is it had nothing to do with its launch.

00:34:58   It had nothing to do with its number of subscribers.

00:35:01   Warner Media was basically spun out by AT&T

00:35:06   and merged with Discovery Communications.

00:35:09   And that finally, that approved and closed like last week

00:35:14   or two weeks ago.

00:35:16   and Discovery, now it's Warner Brothers Discovery as the new company. And the people like in

00:35:21   charge of Warner Brothers Discovery, all the people who were in charge at CNN and Warner

00:35:27   Media left. Like they're out. They're out. And the new team does not want an additional

00:35:34   streaming service devoted to news. Not part of their strategy. They're really talking

00:35:39   about merging I think everything in basically under HBO Max. And so rather than go through

00:35:45   the motions for a while and shut it down or merge it in, they just decided to shut it

00:35:49   down now and then figure out what they're going to do. So this was much more about the

00:35:54   new team coming in and saying, "We don't want this. This is not a direction we want to pursue,"

00:35:59   than it is about. There's literally no, what I said to Julia is there's no realistic subscriber

00:36:04   number in the first three weeks of CNN Plus that would have changed their minds. It literally

00:36:10   could not have happened because that's not what this is about.

00:36:13   - But what an obscene waste of money.

00:36:16   - Right, it is, it depends on what they do with it, right?

00:36:20   Like they need to--

00:36:21   - I mean, they can still do things,

00:36:23   but there was an inconsequential amount of money wasted.

00:36:27   - The marketing was completely wasted.

00:36:28   They signed talent, it's possible they will repurpose

00:36:31   that talent and it won't be wasted.

00:36:33   We don't know what the other part of this is,

00:36:36   but they may do some streaming shows on CNN's app

00:36:39   or their website and put things in HBO Max.

00:36:43   And like, they're not gonna get the marketing budget back

00:36:46   and there are gonna be people who lose their jobs

00:36:48   and they're gonna pay severance

00:36:49   and all of those things are gonna happen.

00:36:51   Like that's absolutely true.

00:36:53   In the aggregate, it remains to be seen

00:36:56   how much of this they choose to salvage

00:36:57   and how much of this they choose to dump.

00:36:59   But you know, the new people coming in have no ego to bruise

00:37:03   about the bad decisions made by the previous regime, right?

00:37:06   It's very easy for them to say, nope.

00:37:09   hand and just wipe it out and that's what's going on here. So yeah, this is, sure, that

00:37:15   old group decided to launch this thing anyway. I have a theory, which is that Jeff Zucker,

00:37:19   who is the head of CNN, basically said, "Look, I know David Zaslav, who's the CEO of the

00:37:24   new combined company, he'll let me do this. We got a plan. It'll be fine." But of course,

00:37:29   Jeff Zucker got fired, and so he wasn't even there. And the other people who were there

00:37:34   all basically lost their jobs, and the new people coming in were not impressed. So that's

00:37:39   my theory is CNN+ was launched, and Julia said as much, it was sort of a, "Well, if

00:37:44   we launch it, then they can't kill it." And they killed it. It didn't matter. They killed

00:37:51   it anyway. They're like, "Aha! What will you do now that we've launched it before you—literally

00:37:55   like a week before you took over, we launched it?" And they're like, "Yeah, we're still

00:37:58   gonna kill it. Sorry." It's like, "We called your bluff," or "We called your bluff that

00:38:03   called our bluff, and now it's dead." The bigger news to me, honestly, though, and I

00:38:07   I think in general.

00:38:09   It's funny that like this could happen

00:38:10   and they could still be big in news and streaming media

00:38:13   is that Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in Q1

00:38:18   after estimating they would gain 2.5 million.

00:38:22   But I think the bigger part of it is saying

00:38:24   that in the next quarter they're gonna lose

00:38:26   another 2 million paying subscribers.

00:38:28   - What do we know from Apple results?

00:38:29   By the way, Apple results later this week

00:38:31   we'll be talking about charts and numbers next week,

00:38:33   Myke's favorite episode.

00:38:34   - Oh boy, I can't wait.

00:38:35   - Oh yeah, so it's always about like Wall Street

00:38:37   cares about where you're going, not where you've been,

00:38:39   because where you've been is already priced into the stock.

00:38:41   It's where you're going, what they wanna do.

00:38:43   So Netflix losing a little bit.

00:38:45   It is a milestone, but at the same time,

00:38:47   if they hadn't turned off their service in Russia,

00:38:49   they wouldn't have lost.

00:38:50   They would have still gained.

00:38:52   But they say they're gonna lose two million next quarter.

00:38:54   And there are lots of reasons for it.

00:38:55   Julia goes into some of them on downstream.

00:38:57   I think it is a milestone because,

00:39:02   as I said on downstream, one of my favorite quotes ever

00:39:05   is John Madden, the football coach,

00:39:08   saying that winning is a great deodorant.

00:39:11   And I know I've used that quote here

00:39:12   about Apple and the App Store,

00:39:14   but it's also true of Netflix,

00:39:15   which is it's very hard to do cultural change

00:39:18   when you're winning.

00:39:19   Even if parts of what you're doing aren't working,

00:39:22   even if parts of what you're doing

00:39:23   are showing signs of weakness,

00:39:25   it's very hard to make cultural change when you're winning,

00:39:27   'cause you're winning.

00:39:28   Who cares about this part?

00:39:30   We're making money, we're growing, it doesn't matter.

00:39:33   And then you're not winning,

00:39:35   And all of a sudden, like what happened with this is that

00:39:38   during the, it wasn't even a press release,

00:39:40   like during the commentary,

00:39:42   after announcing that they had lost subscribers,

00:39:45   the CEO of Netflix said,

00:39:48   "Oh yeah, we're gonna do an ad tier."

00:39:50   - It sounded so desperate.

00:39:52   - And it was desperate, but what he's really doing

00:39:55   is trying to send a message to investors, to Wall Street,

00:39:58   saying, "No, no, no, we've got plans.

00:40:00   Like this, we're gonna do this."

00:40:01   But they've been so adamantly like,

00:40:03   "No, no, we are a premium service

00:40:05   that we don't have that.

00:40:06   And immediately, oh yeah, we're gonna do an ad tier too.

00:40:09   But that was a sacred cow that is gone now.

00:40:11   And I think that is what I think we have to watch

00:40:14   at Netflix now, is they are now,

00:40:18   they're in a great position.

00:40:20   They've spent the last decade being first in streaming.

00:40:24   And it means they are now a giant of entertainment

00:40:27   up there with Disney and HBO and all the rest, great.

00:40:31   But now they're in, they've gone from being like

00:40:35   the land rush to being at cruising speed,

00:40:37   where they are just in the trenches.

00:40:40   I'm mixing all the metaphors here, but right,

00:40:41   they're fighting it out now.

00:40:43   The big expansion period is over,

00:40:45   and now they just have to run themselves

00:40:46   like an entertainment company,

00:40:48   and it means they have to think about ads.

00:40:51   It means they have to think about their development program

00:40:53   where they, you know, they drop everything.

00:40:56   They don't market it very well,

00:40:57   they drop it and then they move on.

00:40:59   They do a lot of quantity,

00:41:00   but the quality is really not there.

00:41:02   They don't have a lot of banner, like high profile stuff

00:41:05   that really brings people in,

00:41:06   like how Disney has been able to do it

00:41:09   with Star Wars and Marvel.

00:41:11   - I think HBO is a better comparison there

00:41:15   because like Disney have it in the pocket already, right?

00:41:20   They've got the people you wanna hear about.

00:41:23   Like they've got Star Wars, they've got Marvel.

00:41:27   HBO have to create new IP, right?

00:41:31   They're in the same boat as Netflix, really.

00:41:32   - Yeah, but they've got DC,

00:41:34   they've got some intellectual property there, right?

00:41:36   Theoretically, Harry Potter--

00:41:37   - Sure, but HBO, I feel like HBO Max

00:41:38   has been creating a bunch of shows, right,

00:41:40   that are like, these are brand new things

00:41:41   you've not heard about before, and you wanna watch 'em.

00:41:44   - But the big picture here is that, yeah,

00:41:45   is that Netflix has really become,

00:41:49   the perception of Netflix is that

00:41:51   they're just a fire hose of content.

00:41:53   And that even when there's something big

00:41:54   that's coming to Netflix that people wanna see

00:41:57   that they don't know about it.

00:41:59   And then if you are not paying attention

00:42:01   the one or two weeks they're promoting it,

00:42:03   you don't even know that it happened.

00:42:05   Like it's really easy to like love a show

00:42:06   and then miss that it came back

00:42:09   because of the way Netflix has approached this.

00:42:11   And what we're gonna see is Netflix

00:42:13   is gonna change that too.

00:42:14   As easily as Netflix said,

00:42:16   "Oh no, we're gonna do a cheaper ad tier."

00:42:18   And they're not gonna put ads on your Netflix,

00:42:20   but they are going to offer Netflix for cheaper

00:42:22   if you watch ads.

00:42:23   That's what they're gonna do.

00:42:24   like literally everybody but Apple so far is doing.

00:42:28   So they're gonna do that,

00:42:29   but they are gonna change the,

00:42:30   they're gonna experiment more with the binge drop thing

00:42:32   and going back to maybe a weekly schedule.

00:42:34   They're gonna change what they develop.

00:42:36   They're probably gonna develop fewer things.

00:42:38   They might, and I know this seems like kind of a wild idea,

00:42:41   they might be a little less quick with the trigger

00:42:43   of canceling a show after two seasons if it's promising,

00:42:47   because they might realize that they actually need

00:42:49   to cultivate that and build that catalog

00:42:51   where things have a satisfying ending

00:42:53   instead of just being cut off because it doesn't matter,

00:42:56   it's all just water in the fire hose, right?

00:42:58   Like, we will see Netflix questioning now

00:43:01   all of its sort of sacred cows

00:43:03   that have made Netflix Netflix,

00:43:05   which is good because if you compare Netflix

00:43:06   to the policies of all of its competitors,

00:43:09   so many of them are outliers,

00:43:11   and they're really not outliers for good reasons.

00:43:13   They're outliers because Netflix went first,

00:43:16   made some decisions,

00:43:18   and has not had any need to revisit them.

00:43:20   So it's gonna be fascinating to watch

00:43:22   the changes at Netflix now that they're literally just playing in the big leagues, which is

00:43:28   great, but they're playing in the big leagues with HBO Max and Disney and then down the

00:43:33   line Paramount Plus and Apple TV Plus and stuff like that. They are in it now and it's

00:43:40   a struggle for them. So it's going to be a challenge for them.

00:43:45   Rumors continue that Apple have actually already made a deal for NFL Sunday Ticket. This is

00:43:52   from Matthew Belloni at Puck News. "My sources say it's apples to lose at this point. One

00:43:59   source told me this weekend that the deal is actually done and is being kept quiet at

00:44:03   Apple's request." Right, so for people who don't know, NFL Sunday Ticket is how you watch

00:44:08   all the NFL games that are out of your local market. So your local TV stations are showing

00:44:12   a couple of games. But in the NFL, there are like whatever, 14 games on a Sunday? Something

00:44:20   like that, that are nationally, they're not nationally televised, they're only on local

00:44:24   stations. So if you're a fan of an out-of-market team, or if you just want to watch like the

00:44:28   best teams and not your local teams, I used to be a Sunday Ticket subscriber. It's great.

00:44:34   And it's been a DirecTV exclusive, so basically people would get satellite dishes on their

00:44:38   roofs just for this product. It was a great driver of satellite TV into people's homes,

00:44:46   which is why they spent so much money on it. Now, Apple is going to do something different

00:44:51   with it, although I think it's similar, and I'll get to that in a minute, but I totally

00:44:56   believe that Apple's already made this deal, and it's just quiet because I think that's

00:44:58   what happened with Major League Baseball, it's the same thing, and they just waited

00:45:01   until they had an event to announce it. I totally believe they're doing this. I think

00:45:05   going to be a big deal because more people will have access to this product than currently

00:45:11   do because they don't have satellite TV, but they have the internet. I have some questions

00:45:16   about like bars and things that do Sunday Ticket. I wonder if that will be belonging

00:45:20   to Apple or whether maybe the NFL will offer an alternate kind of package that's for public

00:45:27   exhibition stuff because there's a question of like, how can you put on 10, can your internet

00:45:32   in your bar handle 10 different HD streams of different Apple things on all of your TVs,

00:45:40   right? Like, I wonder about that, but that's like a minor thing that there's probably a

00:45:44   technical solution for or a contractual solution for. But no, it's another example like with

00:45:51   baseball of Apple getting into sports and having, I think, I think they'll charge for

00:45:56   this. I think this won't just be an Apple TV+ thing. I think they'll probably be a premium,

00:46:01   you know, Apple TV Pro Max, something to get this.

00:46:06   But I think that Apple's motivations are broader,

00:46:10   which I guess brings me to my theory, Myke.

00:46:12   I told you I had a theory that I wanted to get out.

00:46:13   - Yeah, I wanna hear your theory.

00:46:14   - All right, so I know a lot of people talking

00:46:18   about the baseball thing and the NFL thing too,

00:46:21   and saying like, well, Apple's gonna pay more,

00:46:24   even though they're giving away the baseball games for now.

00:46:26   The goal is just to get people to try Apple TV Plus

00:46:30   and drive people to subscribe eventually

00:46:33   'cause they're gonna wanna do it

00:46:35   and then they'll get their money and that's what it's for.

00:46:37   Get people into Apple service ecosystem.

00:46:40   My theory, and I think the Sunday Ticket thing

00:46:42   goes along with this, is that they're actually doing

00:46:44   something that is kinda like what DirecTV did,

00:46:47   which is what you wanna do

00:46:49   is increase your addressable market.

00:46:51   So in the case of the sports stuff,

00:46:54   I think it's another way for them to drive adoption

00:46:58   of devices that can play Apple TV+ content,

00:47:03   which means devices with a TV app.

00:47:04   Not Apple TV boxes necessarily,

00:47:07   but devices that have the TV app.

00:47:09   I was thinking about this because of my friend Greg,

00:47:12   Greg Noss, who I've known since college.

00:47:14   He's a Dodger fan, I don't hold that against him.

00:47:19   But, well I do a little bit, but it's okay.

00:47:20   He holds me being a Giants fan against me, it's fair.

00:47:23   Rivals.

00:47:24   So he was complaining,

00:47:25   the Dodgers were on Friday Night Baseball, week before last. And he said, and I said,

00:47:32   "It's free, you don't have to pay Apple." He was complaining about having to pay Apple,

00:47:36   which is a common complaint, right? It's like, "I already pay for the thing to get the Dodgers

00:47:39   and now this game isn't on and Apple's supposed to want my money for it? What is that about?"

00:47:44   But what I realized is, "Okay, well, it's free." And his response was, "Well, yeah,

00:47:47   but I have to watch it on a computer." And I said, "Do you not have a device that will

00:47:51   put Apple TV app on your television set?" And he said, "No, I don't. None of my TVs

00:47:57   support it, and I don't have a streaming box that supports it, so I would have to

00:48:01   watch it on a computer." And I thought, well, this is one of the reasons Apple is

00:48:06   doing this. Apple is doing this in part, at least, this is my theory, because what

00:48:12   it really wants to do is not just get people to sign up for Apple TV+ or

00:48:16   sample Apple TV Plus. But what they also want to do is motivate people to buy equipment

00:48:25   and you know it could be a new TV sure but it could also be a $20 Roku stick right? These

00:48:29   things aren't that expensive actually. It means you have to go down to the store. You

00:48:33   can probably get one at a convenience store. You certainly can get one at Target or Walmart.

00:48:37   I got one for my mom. A $20 Roku box or stick or whatever or an Amazon one if you want to

00:48:42   do that. Buying a relatively cheap thing that you attach to your TV, or setting up your

00:48:51   TV's smart features that you haven't set up, whatever it is. And if Greg did that, if Greg

00:48:57   spent $20, bought a Roku stick, attached it to his TV so he could watch The Dodgers on

00:49:01   Friday night, he's now part of the potential addressable audience for Apple TV. Not all

00:49:07   those people are gonna buy Apple TV. But I think it actually benefits Apple to

00:49:13   have people have TV sets with smart features in them that include the TV app.

00:49:18   And it also kind of benefits everybody, right? It also benefits anybody else who

00:49:24   who might not have been addressable before. But it certainly gets Apple now.

00:49:28   How do you get people, because it's only really recent TVs and boxes that support

00:49:32   the TV app, because Apple made that deal a couple years ago, right? Two, three years

00:49:35   ago. Well, this is a great way to motivate people that, and NFL Sunday

00:49:39   Ticket will be a great way to motivate people to do that. And then, you know, if

00:49:43   you buy a $20 Roku stick for baseball, maybe you stick around, maybe you don't.

00:49:48   But, so that's part of my theory about one of the calculations they're

00:49:53   making here is to actually, how do we get people in a position where they could

00:49:58   even consider watching Apple TV Plus? And here you go. You don't have to pay for

00:50:04   for the baseball game you just have to make sure that you've got an app that

00:50:07   supports it. I think that's interesting it is funny right like because it

00:50:12   definitely severs that idea of like hardware software talking together like

00:50:19   that's what we do at Apple I think that they do have to let go some of the

00:50:22   hardware part for the service part right like we just have to try and make the

00:50:27   best apps we can on the hardware that we have available to us I did see like on a

00:50:30   a similar point, Charlie Chapman, I saw tweet the other day saying, "I guess by acquiring

00:50:36   those MLB games," writes, "Apple kind of bought a bunch of native local news coverage across

00:50:42   the whole country explaining exactly what Apple TV is and how to use it."

00:50:46   Yeah. Everybody's favorite baseball team will explain at some point or newspaper or sports

00:50:53   website or whatever, they're all going to have to explain week by week to fans of new

00:50:57   teams every Friday, here's how you get Apple TV set up." And again, that goes hand in hand,

00:51:05   right? Because it may be, if you don't have this and you want to watch it on your TV,

00:51:09   go buy a Roku stick. And you're like, "Well, okay, that's not an Apple TV box, so why would

00:51:16   Apple do that?" And the answer is, if they can get in front of them with the TV app anyway,

00:51:22   it's good for Apple.

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00:53:04   This is one of the weirder things I've seen you put in our document. It says, "Jason wants

00:53:08   to talk about Apple Park logistics."

00:53:10   - Right, yeah, I do because it's one of those things,

00:53:14   you know it, when you listen to a podcast

00:53:15   and you wanna talk back to it and you can't

00:53:17   because you're just a listener.

00:53:18   So I have-- - You just talk about it

00:53:19   on your own podcast. - I have my own podcast.

00:53:21   That's right. - Yeah.

00:53:23   - The talk show episode 343, it's a really great episode.

00:53:25   It's Paul Kapasas from Rogue Amoeba.

00:53:26   They talk about baseball and audio hijack,

00:53:30   near and dear to my heart, both of them, it's great.

00:53:33   They were speculating a lot about this thing

00:53:34   that we talked about a couple weeks ago,

00:53:36   the idea of the special event on the day

00:53:39   of the WWDC keynote that Apple says will be happening

00:53:42   in person with developers and students at Apple Park, right?

00:53:47   In person where they'll watch the videos on a big screen.

00:53:52   And my understanding is it's outside.

00:53:56   I imagine it's gonna be in the ring somewhere,

00:53:59   whether it's the rainbow stage or a modified,

00:54:03   the only reason it might not be the rainbow stage

00:54:05   is maybe they need to modify it

00:54:06   in order to have more people there,

00:54:07   but they've already got a big stage set up.

00:54:09   so it seems like the best place.

00:54:11   What was interesting, so they were speculating about it,

00:54:16   and I just wanted to go over this as somebody

00:54:18   who's been to a bunch of events

00:54:19   at the Steve Jobs Theater now.

00:54:21   I really do believe, as I said on a past upgrade,

00:54:26   this is gonna be a relatively small number of people

00:54:28   brought in to the inside of the park,

00:54:30   to that stage or something like it,

00:54:32   for kind of a PR and photo opportunity.

00:54:36   You know, we're starting to get the community together,

00:54:38   we handpick some developers and we have a bunch

00:54:40   of student developers we wanna show off, right?

00:54:42   Apple loves that, like to have that kind of opportunity.

00:54:46   I will say as a sidebar, and this is a journalist problem,

00:54:49   but I'm dreading being invited to come to the event

00:54:54   to interview the fans or students or whatever who are there,

00:54:59   because it's really important to cover the actual content

00:55:04   of the keynote.

00:55:06   and I'm only one person.

00:55:10   I can't cover the content of the keynote

00:55:12   and cover people watching the keynote, right?

00:55:16   Like if I had to choose,

00:55:18   I would choose the content of the keynote.

00:55:19   So I'm troubled by that a little bit.

00:55:21   I'm actually kind of afraid of that.

00:55:22   I'm hoping that they won't make me make that decision.

00:55:25   - Make you, but sure.

00:55:28   - Well, you know, it's very hard to turn down

00:55:30   a request by Apple to go to Apple Park and all of that,

00:55:33   and yet it might make my coverage worse.

00:55:35   And so, anyway, so what I want to talk about though

00:55:39   is the logistics of it, because Gruber and Kefauzis

00:55:41   were talking about this a little bit.

00:55:43   And I don't know about Jon's experience going to events

00:55:46   at the Steve Jobs Theater and how he gets there.

00:55:48   And I don't know if he rents a car

00:55:50   or if he just takes an Uber or something

00:55:52   to the Steve Jobs Theater.

00:55:53   He is right in when he talked about access

00:55:56   to Apple Park versus Infinite Loop.

00:55:58   Infinite Loop, you could just go there, like even now,

00:56:02   but certainly even back in the day

00:56:03   when it was the HQ of Apple,

00:56:05   you could just get off the freeway, get off 280,

00:56:08   you make a right turn at the end of the off-ramp,

00:56:10   make a left turn at the light,

00:56:12   and then a left into Infinite Loop.

00:56:15   And you're on the loop,

00:56:16   and you can park in the parking lot

00:56:17   where the employees park,

00:56:19   and the company store was in,

00:56:22   I don't know if it's still there,

00:56:23   maybe it's still there,

00:56:24   is in Infinite Loop 1.

00:56:25   You're literally in the building that Apple people are in,

00:56:29   but there's a little store at the beginning of it.

00:56:32   It's just right there.

00:56:33   When they, it was designed as an office park

00:56:35   when Apple was not what Apple is now.

00:56:37   So Apple Park was designed as a fortress.

00:56:40   And so as a result, there is a visitor's center there

00:56:42   with an Apple store.

00:56:44   It is across, and you've been there, right?

00:56:46   - Yeah.

00:56:48   - It's across Tantao Avenue.

00:56:50   It's the Tantao visitor's center.

00:56:53   So it's a two lane street.

00:56:54   It's across the street from Apple Park.

00:56:56   But it's not really across the street from Apple Park.

00:56:58   It's across the street from the fence and the embankment

00:57:02   and the trees and then in the distance

00:57:04   that you can see their ring, right?

00:57:06   It's not close.

00:57:07   - No, you just get like a, you know it's out there.

00:57:10   - Yeah, I can sort of see it through the trees

00:57:13   and it was definitely built to keep all the fans

00:57:16   who came to Infinite Loop at arm's length from Apple Park.

00:57:18   That's the whole purpose of that.

00:57:19   - One of the things I find so interesting

00:57:22   is you can go up on the roof, right?

00:57:23   You can look at it, right?

00:57:24   And the thing that I find so interesting about that,

00:57:28   as you say, it's not super close.

00:57:30   It's like kind of across the street.

00:57:31   you can't, at least with the last time I went there,

00:57:35   with the wide angle lens,

00:57:36   you can't get a photo of the whole rings,

00:57:39   just how big Apple Park is.

00:57:41   Like it's so large, you zoom all the way out

00:57:44   and you still can't, you have to panorama

00:57:46   if you want to get an image of the entire,

00:57:48   like the building.

00:57:50   - Yep, so it is, it's big.

00:57:53   The Steve Jobs Theater, which I have been to,

00:57:56   you know, what you're doing is you walk across the street,

00:57:58   there's a, essentially like a pass through,

00:58:01   a check-in desk building there that you,

00:58:06   for an event at the Steve Jobs Theater

00:58:07   or a briefing or whatever, you check in

00:58:10   and then they pass you through to the other side.

00:58:12   It's very weird, it's a mirrored building,

00:58:14   so both sides are exactly the same, it's very strange.

00:58:17   So you pass through to the inner universe of Apple Park

00:58:20   and then you go up, if you're going to Steve Jobs Theater,

00:58:22   you go up the hill to the left, to the south,

00:58:26   and Steve Jobs Theater is there.

00:58:27   Steve Jobs Theater is at a remove

00:58:29   from the actual proper Apple Park.

00:58:31   It's kind of off on the edge.

00:58:33   So you're not actually close to the ring

00:58:36   when you're at the Steve Jobs Theater.

00:58:38   So I think they could do it,

00:58:41   like they're doing an event with how many people

00:58:43   inside the ring, like they could totally do it

00:58:45   because what they would do is they would set up

00:58:47   the same thing where you would go from the visitor center

00:58:49   and you'd pass through showing that you're approved.

00:58:52   And then you would be sent off to the right

00:58:55   instead, presumably, and they would have,

00:58:58   and they don't let you run free.

00:59:00   There's no free roaming at Apple Park.

00:59:01   - The doors are all locked.

00:59:03   - Well, when you're going to the Steve Jobs Theater,

00:59:06   it's several hundred yards uphill to get to the theater.

00:59:11   And I will just tell you, not 10 yards goes by

00:59:16   that there isn't an Apple employee there

00:59:17   being very friendly and welcoming you

00:59:19   and telling you where to go.

00:59:21   But like, you're not alone at the...

00:59:26   Now I've been there for a briefing.

00:59:27   - This way, sir.

00:59:28   - I've been there for a briefing

00:59:29   and that hasn't been the case.

00:59:30   And it's been a little eerie 'cause I'm like,

00:59:32   I could just take off and run and where would I go?

00:59:34   But then that wouldn't be that great.

00:59:36   So, but my point is they do crowd control.

00:59:39   They're not gonna let you go off the path.

00:59:41   So they would have a path that would take you

00:59:42   to whatever point they're ushering people through

00:59:45   to get to inside the ring,

00:59:46   to a theater that was inside the ring,

00:59:48   assuming that that's where it's gonna be.

00:59:50   Shouldn't be a problem.

00:59:51   So there's questions about that.

00:59:52   I don't think it'll be a problem.

00:59:53   But here's the piece of info that I wanted to dump

00:59:56   that I think that they didn't really get to in the talk show

00:59:59   that I want to mention, which is,

01:00:00   there is an underground parking lot

01:00:01   beneath the visitor center.

01:00:03   It is enormous.

01:00:04   It's at least two levels.

01:00:05   I think it might be more levels than that.

01:00:06   And they're very, very large levels.

01:00:09   So in terms of getting people to drive to Apple Park,

01:00:14   for the people who are not like Ubering there,

01:00:17   to drive to Apple Park and park at the visitor center

01:00:21   on a day where there's a special event,

01:00:22   so they're not gonna let any employees park there,

01:00:25   it's just gonna be invited guests.

01:00:28   Trust me, they can get a lot of people to park

01:00:32   and walk across the street and go to the event.

01:00:34   It's not a problem.

01:00:35   That parking lot is built for that.

01:00:37   There are an enormous number of parking spaces under there.

01:00:41   I don't think it's a problem.

01:00:43   Even if it was more people than could fit

01:00:44   in the Steve Jobs Theater,

01:00:46   I don't think it would be a problem.

01:00:47   It's certainly not a problem.

01:00:48   Like I parked down there.

01:00:50   One time I had to go down an extra level

01:00:52   and like it was kind of creepy

01:00:54   and there's nobody down there.

01:00:55   So what I'm saying is it's not a big deal

01:00:59   to get people in Apple Park.

01:01:02   Now, I am sure this is not part

01:01:04   of Apple's original plan, right?

01:01:05   Their whole plan was Steve Jobs Theater.

01:01:07   (laughs)

01:01:08   The whole plan was you park in the underground lot,

01:01:12   go across the street, go in the doors, go to the left,

01:01:15   Steve Jobs Theater, big event.

01:01:17   - We built this beautiful state of the art,

01:01:19   incredible facility.

01:01:20   - Absolutely.

01:01:21   - For people to come and watch our presentations.

01:01:22   - But COVID, and so they're gonna do an open air thing.

01:01:25   And like, great, I think it's great improvisation.

01:01:27   But I just wanted to say,

01:01:30   I don't think that this is one of those things

01:01:32   where you can say, well,

01:01:33   I don't really think they're gonna have,

01:01:34   I mean, I don't think they're gonna have

01:01:35   5,000 people in there,

01:01:37   but I think that they can make the logistics work just fine.

01:01:42   People are talking about a bus,

01:01:44   like where would the bus come from?

01:01:46   'Cause this is not like,

01:01:47   it's not like the developers and guests,

01:01:49   maybe some of the special guests

01:01:51   would be translated over there.

01:01:52   - Maybe the students.

01:01:53   I could imagine them picking up the students

01:01:55   from somewhere in San Francisco.

01:01:56   - Sure, if they're being put up somewhere.

01:01:58   But so many of these things are gonna be just like people,

01:02:01   look, it's the suburbs, they're just gonna show up.

01:02:03   - I wouldn't be surprised if they had a group rate again

01:02:05   at a hotel like they used to do at WWDC.

01:02:08   - Could be, I mean, shuttle buses can happen.

01:02:09   But I guess what I'm just saying is,

01:02:12   if you invited literally just people from the Bay Area

01:02:14   and told them to drive there, it would be fine.

01:02:17   It's the suburbs, Apple built a lot of parking.

01:02:20   They built parking under the visitor center specifically

01:02:24   for public events at places like the Steve Jobs Theater.

01:02:28   So there's a lot of parking down there.

01:02:30   I'm sure it's mostly used by Apple employees

01:02:32   during the rest of the time,

01:02:33   but when I go there for special events,

01:02:36   there's a person there that makes sure

01:02:38   you're not an Apple employee before you're allowed in.

01:02:41   They're like, "If you're an Apple employee,

01:02:42   "you gotta turn around."

01:02:43   And I'm like, "I am not an Apple employee."

01:02:45   They're like, "All right, sir, move along."

01:02:46   So anyway, I think that's what they'll do.

01:02:49   I don't know if they'll invite the media or not. I'm still thinking that it's possible

01:02:53   that they will invite the media either to cover the special event or even potentially

01:02:58   to have the media go if they're, you know, if they pass a test and are vaccinated, maybe

01:03:03   even in the Steve Jobs theater, but if not that, then out in the outside to do that.

01:03:10   There may be a media contingent there. It's unclear. But anyway, parking's not going to

01:03:14   a problem. And Apple is capable of turning that, you know, doing an outdoor event at

01:03:21   that campus even though that wasn't the plan.

01:03:23   -Should we go down to the room and round up?

01:03:27   -Let's put on our spurs.

01:03:30   -Marshall Ming-Chi Kuo, name suggested by Tony in the Relay FM members Discord.

01:03:34   -Yee-haw.

01:03:35   -Marshall Kuo is reporting at the front-facing camera. No? That doesn't work?

01:03:40   -It's a little too close to Roger Kuo. It's Ming-Chi Kuo.

01:03:43   - No, I just called him Sheriff German.

01:03:45   - Yeah, okay, all right.

01:03:46   - Right?

01:03:47   - It's fine, it's just Marshall's also a name.

01:03:50   So it sounds like his name is Marshall.

01:03:51   - Yeah, but I'm not saying that.

01:03:53   Sheriff could be somebody's name.

01:03:54   - All right, the Marshall, what is the Marshall reporting?

01:03:57   - The Marshall is reporting that the front facing camera

01:04:00   of all iPhone 14 models would be upgraded

01:04:02   to get autofocus capability.

01:04:04   One of those things that every time I see a headline

01:04:07   like this, 'cause there was one of these a little while ago,

01:04:10   it was for something else, but it's like,

01:04:12   wait it doesn't have it no it doesn't have it the front-facing camera does not

01:04:15   have auto focus auto focus capability there will also be a wider aperture on

01:04:22   the iPhone 14 front-facing camera to allow more light into the lens not only

01:04:26   could this lead to better portrait mode it will also give overall image quality

01:04:30   gains for the front-facing cameras which are always great and I guess I saw

01:04:35   somebody say this on Twitter would just continue to show just how bad the rest

01:04:39   of Apple's front-facing cameras on their Macs are when the iPhones just get better and better

01:04:44   and better.

01:04:45   Yep, exactly.

01:04:47   The first iPhone 14 molds have leaked on Chinese social media network Weibo.

01:04:53   These always come out kind of around this time and then not too long after YouTubers

01:04:58   get their hands on production like dummies, you know, so like these are just like the

01:05:03   built from the specs.

01:05:05   these are genuine, which I mean they might as well be because what all they're

01:05:09   really confirming is the sizes which we've known about for years so that

01:05:13   Apple we're gonna be moving to this which is two regular sized phones, two

01:05:18   max size phones. So there will be the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 max and then

01:05:23   the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max. So yeah. Yeah that's that's the way

01:05:30   it's gonna be. I am look I mean I'm a iPhone mini user apparently one of the

01:05:35   the happy with the mini. Clearly it didn't sell well and I think it's gonna

01:05:41   be really interesting to see what the uptake is on the bigger, you know, iPhone

01:05:47   14 Max, right? The idea of... It's gonna sell so much. ...of this sort of base model but big, how

01:05:55   that's gonna do. And it'll be interesting how Apple views it. I think Apple must

01:05:59   figure that people like a big phone but they don't necessarily like the big

01:06:03   price of the Pro Max. That is a limiting factor where people are like, "Oh, that's too much.

01:06:09   I'm just going to get the regular phone." And it makes sense. It makes sense. It's funny

01:06:14   too because they did with the XR, they did a big cheap phone at one point and then they

01:06:21   kind of stopped. And I wonder if that was the experiment to see how people reacted to

01:06:25   it and now they've put it into the regular line. Makes sense.

01:06:28   - I think the problem is big, cheap, right?

01:06:31   - Yeah.

01:06:32   - Like the XR was downgraded,

01:06:34   and I don't think that that helped that device.

01:06:36   This will be big, more expensive,

01:06:41   but still cheaper than Pro.

01:06:43   - Yeah.

01:06:44   - So I think we'll be overall,

01:06:45   I think this is a better lineup,

01:06:48   because I don't think people should be punished

01:06:51   because they want to have a big screen

01:06:53   that they have to spend $1,000 for it.

01:06:55   - I agree.

01:06:56   And you know, look, I'm sorry to Jason

01:06:59   and every other iPhone mini user.

01:07:01   I've said this before, you can't complain.

01:07:03   You should have just bought more of them.

01:07:04   - I guess I should have bought more than one.

01:07:06   - You should have bought,

01:07:06   every iPhone mini user should have bought four.

01:07:09   - Well, there's a thing we always say

01:07:10   when a local business closes where it's like,

01:07:12   wow, I guess that one time we went there

01:07:14   wasn't enough for them to stay in business.

01:07:16   That's how I feel about the iPhone 14 mini.

01:07:18   It's like, wow.

01:07:19   - I've never heard that before.

01:07:20   - Oh yeah, yeah. - It's really good.

01:07:21   - It's like, oh, we went to that restaurant twice.

01:07:23   Well, I guess the two times we went to that restaurant

01:07:24   in the last six years was not enough

01:07:26   to keep it in business.

01:07:28   That's how I feel about the iPhone 14 mini, right?

01:07:30   It's like, oh well, I guess the one iPhone 14 mini

01:07:32   that I bought was not enough to keep it in circulation.

01:07:35   Oh well.

01:07:36   - Look, you know, dear listener,

01:07:37   I'm not talking about your favorite thing here,

01:07:39   but it's always funny to me when I see like,

01:07:41   such and such websites closed down,

01:07:43   or such and such magazines closed down,

01:07:45   and everyone's like, oh man, this used to mean so much to me

01:07:48   and it's like, yeah, but that's the key part, right?

01:07:50   Like, it used to.

01:07:52   Like, I get that you, nostalgically,

01:07:54   will miss this magazine now that it's not gonna

01:07:56   be published anymore. Sorry, Macquarie. Macquarie is still published though, right?

01:08:00   In a digital sense, yes.

01:08:02   Yeah. But I think in the UK there's still a physical Macquarie.

01:08:05   No, I don't think it's physical in the UK either.

01:08:07   No? Maybe got rid of it? Anyway. But the point is, is like, these things, if you kept, if

01:08:14   you were able to translate your nostalgia to money, it would still be around. The problem

01:08:18   is everybody stopped buying it. Like, otherwise it would stick.

01:08:23   It's funny that you mention this because I wrote about this last week, and we'll put

01:08:27   a link in the show notes.

01:08:28   I wrote a piece about the HomePod and the studio display and what they had in common

01:08:31   that was at least partially based on the fact that Marco Arment was talking about how he

01:08:36   loves his HomePods and they don't make them anymore, and how there was a news story about

01:08:40   how HomePods are now going for more than their list price on eBay because the people who

01:08:44   love them really, really, really, really love them.

01:08:46   And it made me think about a couple of things, one of which is sometimes there's a specific

01:08:53   group that has very specific needs and a product fills their needs and it makes them very happy.

01:08:58   I feel like the reason I mentioned the studio display is I think that's the reason for the

01:09:01   disconnect between people who say, "Why don't you just buy a 32-inch curved Dell 4K display

01:09:07   and be happy?" We know the answer, which is because there are some very specific attributes

01:09:11   of the studio display that don't really exist elsewhere other than on that ultra-fine that

01:09:15   nobody seems to love. These are the reasons why that display is backordered as it is and

01:09:21   why people are excited about it within a very specific niche. The HomePod is like that too.

01:09:26   We think of the original HomePod as a failure because it was a market failure, right? But

01:09:31   market failure doesn't mean that it wasn't filling a niche that was perfect for a certain

01:09:36   subgroup of people.

01:09:38   I am one of those people. I adore my two HomePods and Stereo Pair.

01:09:42   And Marco talking about it like he said, "I did the research. There's nothing out there

01:09:47   that matches what the HomePod does. And it's true. Now one of the reasons there isn't anything

01:09:52   out there is because the niche is probably not big enough, and it wasn't big enough for

01:09:58   Apple, and that's why Apple did it. It also doesn't make it untrue that the HomePod was

01:10:02   overpriced and over-engineered if you're thinking of it from a market perspective of "we want

01:10:07   a product that's going to sell really well." But that doesn't change that for the people

01:10:11   it fits. It is a great product and a tragedy that nobody else, not enough other people

01:10:18   bought it for them to keep making it. I mentioned in my article like my dad's favorite snack

01:10:23   chip when I was a kid got discontinued and it was really sad but like you know he couldn't

01:10:29   buy enough bags. It really it had to be a hit or they weren't gonna make it anymore

01:10:34   and they stopped making it and that's just how it is and it stinks but that's how it

01:10:38   is, "Well, I could put the iPhone mini in that category too." Like, it stinks because

01:10:43   I love it, but I also get it that as much as I love it, obviously they're not enough

01:10:49   of me to meet Apple standards for an iPhone. And those standards are real high, right?

01:10:54   Because they sell a lot of iPhones and they're looking at that mini thinking, "Surely we

01:10:58   could do something else that would sell better." And I'm sure that the iPhone 14 Max will sell

01:11:03   better.

01:11:04   Speaking of the HomePod, Sheriff Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple is still working on

01:11:10   a combined HomePod and Apple TV device. This would also include a camera for FaceTime calls.

01:11:21   Sheriff Gurman believes there is no specific replacement to the original HomePod in the

01:11:25   works at Apple, but expects more HomePod mini devices. This hybrid HomePod/Apple TV product

01:11:33   is expected to be the centerpiece of the home strategy

01:11:36   for Apple into the future.

01:11:38   And the expectation is it is a device

01:11:41   that is still connected to a TV.

01:11:43   So there have been conversations before

01:11:45   about a home pod with a screen

01:11:46   and maybe that will still come.

01:11:48   But this is the like,

01:11:50   - This is the soundbar.

01:11:51   - Soundbar.

01:11:52   - This is the Apple soundbar

01:11:54   where they're gonna do spatial audio, right?

01:11:56   And even if it's one device, right?

01:11:58   It's gonna be a soundbar, but they're gonna say,

01:12:00   well, yes, but our spatial audio processing

01:12:02   makes it sound like a,

01:12:04   and you'll probably be able to add HomePod minis,

01:12:07   maybe to add to the surround or something like that.

01:12:10   And it's, but it's based on Apple TV, so you hook it in.

01:12:14   It's gonna have a camera in it that does center stage,

01:12:17   because if you have the idea of like,

01:12:19   you're sitting in front of your TV

01:12:20   and it's zooming into you to do a FaceTime call

01:12:23   with somebody, like it totally, this is,

01:12:26   I wrote about this like four years ago.

01:12:28   It does fit as a product.

01:12:30   It's interesting that they're gonna try it.

01:12:32   - As time has gone on since we first spoke about that,

01:12:35   more pieces are falling into place, right?

01:12:37   Like center stage.

01:12:38   - Right.

01:12:39   - They're actually building camera technology

01:12:40   that would work.

01:12:41   - Right, and your home pods that are connected

01:12:42   to your Apple TV, right?

01:12:43   That's a proof of concept essentially for the idea

01:12:46   of doing the external speakers along with an Apple TV device

01:12:49   and then you throw in center stage

01:12:51   and it all starts to kind of accumulate.

01:12:53   It also accumulates to the idea of a home pod

01:12:56   that you put in your kitchen that does center stage

01:12:58   and they may yet do that too.

01:13:00   But it sounds like Mark Gurman thinks, the sheriff thinks,

01:13:03   that this is coming.

01:13:04   I also, the more HomePod mini devices

01:13:06   I think is interesting.

01:13:07   I, in my piece last week about the HomePod,

01:13:10   I think I threw in there that like,

01:13:12   it seems like with the HomePod mini,

01:13:13   they've got something that is a better fit,

01:13:15   and that what they're probably gonna start doing now

01:13:17   is iterating up from there, right?

01:13:19   Like, instead of-- - They'll make that

01:13:21   a bit better. - Right.

01:13:22   They make it better, make it sound better,

01:13:23   maybe make a version that's more expensive,

01:13:25   but what they're not gonna do is leap back

01:13:27   to the big HomePod, because they're like,

01:13:29   that burned them, now they're gonna try to like start

01:13:31   from this new base at the mini,

01:13:33   and then maybe there will be another HomePod in the future,

01:13:37   but what it'll probably be is a little bit bigger,

01:13:39   little bit more capable HomePod mini,

01:13:42   not the old HomePod.

01:13:44   - HomePod is the name of this product.

01:13:46   - Is this product, yeah, it might be, it might be.

01:13:49   - Because you know what made me think of it,

01:13:51   it was the way you emphasized the word home.

01:13:53   - HomePod. - HomePod.

01:13:55   - And the centerpiece of the home strategy, right?

01:13:57   That would be, and it'll be all the other things

01:14:00   that an Apple TV already is.

01:14:01   It'll be your home kit hub.

01:14:05   Wonder if they'll put a, you know,

01:14:07   maybe they will do a more proper kind of home kit

01:14:10   integration into the tvOS update that's coming in June.

01:14:14   - Matter, right?

01:14:15   Matter's gonna be a thing eventually.

01:14:17   And Apple have already spoken even in presentations.

01:14:20   You know, so like it's all gonna start coming together.

01:14:23   It's just taking time.

01:14:25   - Yeah.

01:14:26   - Yeah, Gorman is also reporting that Apple is of course

01:14:29   working on M3 chips right now.

01:14:31   (laughs)

01:14:31   It's just funny to me.

01:14:33   The first M3 Mac could be unveiled

01:14:35   towards the end of next year.

01:14:37   - Next year.

01:14:38   No kidding.

01:14:39   People are laughing about this, but it's like,

01:14:41   he's reporting it because he has somebody saying,

01:14:45   "Yes, we are working on the M3."

01:14:47   And so he's gonna say that.

01:14:49   Obviously any of us could say it,

01:14:51   but he's got somebody who is specifically working,

01:14:53   basically who is working on the M3 saying,

01:14:55   yes we are working on the M3. And it gives us a little bit of an idea that the M series

01:15:00   is going to be on an annual timeline. That they're not going to do 18 months or two years.

01:15:04   That's the thing that I find interesting about this is it shows that the foot is still on

01:15:07   the accelerator. Because that was the question that we've had over the last couple of weeks,

01:15:11   right? Like, okay, so the M2 is coming now. Like it's going to start happening any day

01:15:16   now, right? Like by previous rumors it could happen imminently.

01:15:19   Which is actually an 18 month gap from the M1 to the M2. So him saying it may be end

01:15:24   of next year, I guess that's another 18 month gap. So maybe that's the pacing is an 18 month

01:15:32   gap between these things.

01:15:33   - And that's what we kind of wanted to get an idea of. Mark also does confirm that he

01:15:38   does still believe in iMac Pro is in the works, but it will not be anytime soon.

01:15:42   - Yeah, I think that's one of those things where he has an idea of what products are

01:15:44   imminent and that's not imminent. I still think that that product is probably coming

01:15:50   based on M2 Pro and my guess would be yeah,

01:15:55   that would maybe be like early next year kind of thing.

01:15:58   I think it'll happen.

01:15:59   I just don't think, you know,

01:16:00   they didn't make it a priority for generation one

01:16:03   and it'll probably be late in generation two.

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01:18:06   support of this show and all of Real AFM. Let's do some #AskUpgrade

01:18:12   questions to finish out today's episode of Upgrade. The first comes from Gene who

01:18:16   asks, "There are at least four modifier keys you can use to create keyboard

01:18:21   shortcuts. Five if you use the hyper key." The hyper key is when you bind, is it all

01:18:26   four of them to one key? A lot of people do that with caps lock and stuff. So the

01:18:31   possible combinations for shortcuts that you choose yourself could be infinite. Do

01:18:36   Do you have a personal system for creating keyboard shortcuts that make them easier to remember?

01:18:40   I bought a stream deck.

01:18:43   That is perfectly valid as a thing, right? Or like for me, like I've used macro pads where it's just like I don't need to remember the shortcut itself, just what it does.

01:18:53   Similarly, I use a Wacom tablet and the Wacom tablet has eight buttons on the side that I programmed to do different things in Logic.

01:19:01   in logic so I know what these buttons do. I don't necessarily remember what key like

01:19:07   combinations they're assigned to.

01:19:09   Yeah, there are a few things where I've tried to bind it to a normal kind of keyboard shortcut

01:19:13   like for, you know, inserting a markdown link or something like that that I try to assign

01:19:18   to every app and do it that way and that's like Command K or Command Ship K or there's

01:19:22   just different versions of that. But so many of them it is hard to remember. That's why

01:19:27   I got a Stream Deck is because I wanted to have a visual representation of it. It's actually

01:19:31   why I would love for Apple down the road or also, I'll say this, it's an opportunity for

01:19:37   keyboard manufacturers too, to have something like a Stream Deck, but it's the F keys.

01:19:43   So what you mean is like, it's like a bar that you could touch.

01:19:48   Kind of, but it would be physical keys and then you would actually use software to control

01:19:53   what they showed and what they did,

01:19:56   but sort of like a bar that you could touch

01:19:59   because the F keys,

01:20:00   that's the problem I have with the F keys

01:20:02   is F keys are inscrutable.

01:20:04   That's just like, oh, F6, well now.

01:20:07   And then Apple has taken over the F keys

01:20:09   and turned them all into like system hardware shortcuts.

01:20:12   So then you're like, oh, do I keep those?

01:20:14   Or do I have to press the function key?

01:20:16   - I like that they put the icons on them, right?

01:20:19   Like to show you what they do.

01:20:20   - Well, yeah, they've repurposed stuff for that.

01:20:22   But that's the thing.

01:20:23   So it basically in the end,

01:20:25   this is why I bought a Stream Deck to begin with

01:20:27   is not because of all the wizzy automation stuff.

01:20:29   It really was because I like the idea of mapping

01:20:32   some of the things that I do that were previously,

01:20:35   you know, is it shift command, alt S,

01:20:38   or is it shift control alt, or is it control option,

01:20:41   but my keyboard says alt,

01:20:43   or is it control option command?

01:20:45   Like which three is it?

01:20:47   And I would do the wrong one and be like,

01:20:50   "Uh," and then undo that.

01:20:51   Now I'm gonna do this new one.

01:20:53   And now I have several things on my Stream Deck

01:20:56   that it's just, it's that function.

01:20:58   And so like, I just press the button

01:21:01   that has the label that says it does this,

01:21:04   and that's better.

01:21:05   Like I, so I don't have a strategy

01:21:07   'cause I find it very hard to remember

01:21:09   other than some very specific things.

01:21:12   Very hard to remember these, you know,

01:21:14   a mnemonic for not only what letter is it

01:21:18   or number or F key,

01:21:20   but which modifiers I'm pressing, it's just, it's too much.

01:21:24   - So I use, most of mine that I use

01:21:27   for like quick navigation stuff on the Mac,

01:21:30   I use a combination of command and option

01:21:34   and then some key.

01:21:35   So like for Fantastical, it's command option C

01:21:39   and it brings down Fantastical from the menu bar.

01:21:42   And then I have the same with P for Pcalc.

01:21:46   Now, ideally, if I hadn't been using Fantastical

01:21:49   for so long that would be F and then like right but fantastic house is just

01:21:57   that way and also a friend of the show David's box has been on a personal

01:22:01   crusade to get me to use Moom for window management and I have been recently and

01:22:05   they use command option and then a bunch of letters to do some window management

01:22:09   stuff and I actually really like it I'm getting more into that now and I'll put

01:22:13   a link in the show notes he made a video after trying to convince me and then a

01:22:16   video that he made finally convinced me. Aaron wrote in and says if Apple were to

01:22:23   make a fitness only wrist device as discussed on episode 403 would you still

01:22:28   feel the need to wear it through the day to capture steps, stand breaks, etc. So

01:22:32   this is something I was looking for more right like I've spoken to a bunch that I

01:22:36   wish that Apple would just make a band right not a watch and yes I would wear it the

01:22:40   whole day because that's kind of the whole point. My thing is I want to

01:22:43   be able to get all of the fitness tracking without having to wear Apple's

01:22:49   watch so I could still feel free to wear other watches but still get all of the

01:22:54   exercise and fitness tracking and all of the sensors so yeah I would just wear it

01:22:58   on my other wrist like a bracelet like that's that's the idea yeah but yep one

01:23:04   day I wished Dom asked do you think Apple will return to making routers at

01:23:09   some point with more routers, routers, routers at some point, routers at some

01:23:14   point with more services being focused on cloud and internet connectivity these

01:23:20   days. I think they're firmly out of this business and I do not think they need to come back to it. This isn't like the other stuff.

01:23:28   This isn't like monitors. I mean I would love for them to do it but at

01:23:32   this point they would be competing with some products that are basically using

01:23:36   using the Apple playbook. They would need a very strong story to tell, and it would

01:23:44   have to be about security and privacy. It would have to be about overriding all of your

01:23:51   – basically building their own VPN into it or something like that, like private browsing.

01:23:57   They're building into their devices instead, right? So I think it's probably unlikely.

01:24:02   It's not an area where I'm sure that they can make a difference, but I'm not sure they

01:24:06   can make enough of a difference given that you've got Euro and Orbi and stuff like that.

01:24:11   The products that exist in this market are all just genuinely good and there's a lot

01:24:15   of them, right?

01:24:16   Like this isn't, I don't think that, and it's also, I feel like this is the kind of product

01:24:22   where it's kind of, it stays out of your way and Apple don't really make stay out of the

01:24:27   way products anymore.

01:24:28   Yeah.

01:24:29   The stuff that you're interacting with.

01:24:31   They want the infrastructure, right?

01:24:33   - They want the infrastructure,

01:24:34   and then they can do stuff like the home kit secure router

01:24:37   if they really want to, right?

01:24:39   You can, they can keep making that stuff more.

01:24:42   Like this gets to the question of,

01:24:45   should Apple make light bulbs, right?

01:24:48   For smart home.

01:24:49   Like that's what this falls into for me these days.

01:24:52   - Yeah, where do you draw that line?

01:24:53   - The answer is no.

01:24:54   Like the answer is no.

01:24:55   Like I, you know, like I use Eero at the studio

01:25:00   and I have an Orbi at home,

01:25:01   and I have great results with these products.

01:25:04   Like I have no, this isn't like some of the other stuff.

01:25:07   I'm not like, oh, please let me get airport back again.

01:25:10   Like I just don't feel that way at all.

01:25:11   - If Eero or Orbi didn't, if those didn't exist,

01:25:13   and so everything was still just old style routers,

01:25:16   I would say that there was more of a space

01:25:18   for Apple to come in and say, look, look, we've done this.

01:25:20   But that's what those products did

01:25:21   is take an Apple like approach to it.

01:25:23   So the ability, so if you're Apple

01:25:26   and you're looking at where you pick your spots,

01:25:27   something like that, it's like, it's kinda already covered.

01:25:30   And while I could see them, again,

01:25:32   making it a cornerstone of their strategy,

01:25:34   if they would need to make it more,

01:25:37   they really would need to lead into the privacy thing

01:25:39   and say, these are all Apple secured

01:25:41   and all the traffic that goes through them

01:25:44   goes to our network and your provider doesn't look at it.

01:25:48   And like, they would have to make it

01:25:49   this like super security product.

01:25:51   And I don't think they wanna do that.

01:25:52   I don't think the customer experience

01:25:53   would be very good on that.

01:25:55   Like, it just doesn't seem like this is an area

01:25:57   where Apple is gonna be able to add enough

01:26:00   to make it worth doing.

01:26:01   - And it's like if they didn't have the ability

01:26:04   for say like HomePods or iPads to be home hubs,

01:26:08   I could imagine it.

01:26:08   But they already have that.

01:26:09   - Sure, but they-- - So they don't, you know.

01:26:11   - Exactly. - They don't need it.

01:26:13   Finally today, Ryan writes in and asks,

01:26:15   "Spatial audio with head tracking.

01:26:17   Is this a case of Apple trying to make fetch happen?

01:26:20   It's not something that I particularly enjoy

01:26:22   and I have definitely heard other people complain about it

01:26:24   and I'm wondering why Apple is trying so hard

01:26:27   to market it as a big feature.

01:26:29   Why is Apple pushing the spatial audio

01:26:31   and head tracking feature to this level?

01:26:34   - It is not subtle.

01:26:36   And when you're demoing spatial audio,

01:26:41   the subtleties of spatial audio,

01:26:44   which remember if you're doing it in a pair of headphones,

01:26:49   what it's doing is it's taking multi-channel

01:26:52   and processing it into stereo dynamically

01:26:56   based on your head position.

01:26:57   So you can have things positioned behind you

01:27:00   and you turn a little bit

01:27:00   and they turn along with your head, but it's subtle.

01:27:05   And the head tracking where your audio is coming out

01:27:08   of the device that's right in front of you is not subtle.

01:27:11   And that's my answer.

01:27:12   Apple likes this feature because you can tell it's happening

01:27:16   and be impressed by the,

01:27:18   "Whoa, I can't believe it's like that, ooh."

01:27:21   And I think that's the truth,

01:27:23   because I think that it's not subtle.

01:27:25   And that there are subtle benefits

01:27:26   that people might get out of spatial audio

01:27:28   in other environments that are not,

01:27:31   I mean, I can see how some people might like it,

01:27:33   but I think that it's also, it just demos well.

01:27:36   It's like the equivalent of having the TVs at the Best Buy

01:27:40   in showroom mode where they're super bright and saturated.

01:27:45   And like, you'd never wanna watch a TV like that

01:27:50   in your home, but they have them like that

01:27:52   on the show floor because they're trying to sell you on them

01:27:56   and they want to stand out.

01:27:58   It's a little like that, I think.

01:28:00   - So for me, one of the things that actually annoys me

01:28:06   the most out of this feature, it's not so much

01:28:08   that it does the head tracking thing,

01:28:09   which I know bugs people, right,

01:28:11   of like your iPhone's to the left,

01:28:13   and so it always, that's where it always sounds

01:28:15   like the audio's coming from.

01:28:16   Like I know why it annoys people.

01:28:18   What annoys me about it is if you turn your head

01:28:20   for long enough, it just re-centers.

01:28:21   - Right, 'cause it doesn't actually know

01:28:24   where your iPhone is.

01:28:25   - I know, but that annoys me, right?

01:28:27   It annoys me, it's like, commit to this.

01:28:29   If you're gonna do it, commit to it.

01:28:30   Don't like, then all of a sudden break it.

01:28:32   Like, you know, like that frustrates me.

01:28:35   I like spatial audio in general.

01:28:37   Jury's out for me a little bit

01:28:40   with the head tracking part.

01:28:41   I leave it on, but I don't know how I feel about it.

01:28:44   But I think in general,

01:28:45   the spatial audio technology is excellent.

01:28:48   But I think one of the other problems of head tracking

01:28:51   is a thing that I've observed many people do,

01:28:53   which is the first time that they're on a plane

01:28:55   and they think that they haven't connected their headphones

01:28:57   and they freak out.

01:28:58   - Yeah.

01:28:59   - Right, like Adina had this.

01:28:59   She's like, she thought she was playing her movie out loud.

01:29:02   I was like, "No, no, no."

01:29:03   Like I was like, "No, no, no, it's just,

01:29:04   "the AirPods are just, you know, they're doing their thing."

01:29:07   But yeah, spatial audio is cool.

01:29:09   I think you're right.

01:29:09   The reason I do the head tracking

01:29:11   is so they can actually demonstrate spatial audio

01:29:13   to people that otherwise maybe can't pick it up otherwise.

01:29:17   And this won't be a problem with the VR headset, right?

01:29:19   They'll just--

01:29:20   Yeah.

01:29:20   It'll be-- they'll actually know where your head is.

01:29:23   That's why they're building all this technology.

01:29:25   It's just like another part of it.

01:29:26   It is.

01:29:27   This is like-- you know, it's more augmented reality,

01:29:30   but for audio.

01:29:31   And this is all-- again, we're talking about that HomePod

01:29:34   thing, right?

01:29:34   It's like-- I think over the last few years,

01:29:37   you can see that they are building

01:29:39   all these individual technologies,

01:29:40   and they're coming towards--

01:29:42   they're all moving towards each other.

01:29:44   And this is just another one.

01:29:45   This is a thing that Apple does that,

01:29:46   secretive as they are, so often it happens that they release a product and

01:29:50   you look back and realize that they put all of these pieces together over

01:29:53   several years in public and then put them in a product.

01:29:58   If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade

01:30:03   or use question mark #AskUpgrade in the Relay FM members discord, which you can

01:30:07   get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you

01:30:12   can sign up $5 a month $50 a year we talk about Elon Musk and Twitter today

01:30:17   and if you want to hear our thoughts about that you can go get it it's the only place we're

01:30:23   gonna talk about it for now so if you want it you gotta get upgradeplus.com

01:30:29   and you get those opinions thank you so much to ZocDoc text expander and

01:30:35   CleanMyMacX for their support of this show if you want to find Jason online

01:30:40   and you can go to Twitter. He is @JasonL. For now. You can go to sixcolors.com. Jason

01:30:52   will have a bunch of great content and coverage of Apple's Q2 charts. Q2, right? It's Q2.

01:31:00   Yep. Yep. Q2 results. Are you going to be live streaming? Yeah, we'll do a live stream

01:31:05   sometime in the afternoon after the event is over because there's nothing more exciting

01:31:09   than watching two guys on a video show you charts.

01:31:13   - Well then, there's something even more exciting maybe

01:31:16   is listening to two guys talk to you about those charts.

01:31:18   - Next week.

01:31:19   - Which will be happening next week.

01:31:20   I'm Myke, I am YKE.

01:31:23   Yeah, I think that's it for this week's episode of Upgrade.

01:31:25   - Say goodbye Myke Hurley.

01:31:26   - Goodbye Myke Hurley.

01:31:28   Yeah!

01:31:30   [ Music ]