00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 227. Today's episode is brought to you by FreshBooks,
00:00:16 ◼ ► Holo, and Luna Display. I am very excited that we were back to normal. My name is Myke Hurley,
00:00:21 ◼ ► I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow, happy new year. I like-- happy new year. I like the-- the
00:00:27 ◼ ► usual upgrade theme. I like the special themes too, but it's nice to have the regular upgrade
00:00:33 ◼ ► theme back and back to a regular show. Segmented beautifully episode that we have for you today.
00:00:43 ◼ ► probably. It's all for the best. So we do have some follow-up actually about our special episodes,
00:00:48 ◼ ► which we'll get to in a moment, but we must institute regular format rules here. So we have
00:00:54 ◼ ► a hashtag Snow Talk question that comes from Steve. Steve wants to know, "Jason, what is your
00:00:58 ◼ ► favorite taco?" Taco. They are-- I didn't think about the fact that this is a word I cannot say,
00:01:06 ◼ ► Taco? Taco. Taco. There's no good way for me to say it because if I say it-- Taco. It's like--
00:01:13 ◼ ► it's like talk-o. Yeah, but the thing is, if I say it like a British person, it sounds ridiculous.
00:01:18 ◼ ► If I say it like an American, I sound ridiculous too. Would you like a taco? Taco. Taco.
00:01:24 ◼ ► No, it's taco. Taco. I-- well, this is a-- this is an interesting question. I-- congratulations,
00:01:38 ◼ ► as is typical of the stuff made by my mom, the most midwestern of Mexican food, which is a hard shell
00:01:47 ◼ ► with ground beef and a little bit of quote-unquote Mexican sauce in it with some like cheese
00:01:53 ◼ ► and lettuce on top. And you know what? That is comfort food. I still like that, and we have that
00:01:59 ◼ ► occasionally here at home. But we also have soft tacos a lot. I don't love corn tortillas. I prefer
00:02:06 ◼ ► flour tortillas. I know that that's-- that's heresy, but it's just the way it is. I prefer
00:02:10 ◼ ► the flavor of flour to corn. Yeah, that's it. It's about the flavor. I don't love the corn
00:02:16 ◼ ► tortilla flavor in a soft taco. The hard tacos are-- are corn too, but it's different there.
00:02:22 ◼ ► And there's a place in Mill Valley called Joe's Taco Lounge that is good, and they make these
00:02:30 ◼ ► shrimp tacos that are little fried shrimps. So they're like little prawn, little breaded shrimps,
00:02:40 ◼ ► Is that the place you took me to? Joe's Taco Lounge-- no, no, you went to the fancy-- we took
00:02:45 ◼ ► you to the fancy Mexican restaurant that we never go to because it's too expensive. No, Joe's Taco
00:02:50 ◼ ► Lounge is a dive. It's great, but it's a dive. So yeah, that-- that's-- I'm going to say that--
00:02:56 ◼ ► I'm going to say the shrimp-- shrimp tacos from Joe's Taco Lounge, but, you know, honestly,
00:03:01 ◼ ► all tacos are my favorite. That's my answer. All tacos are my favorite. I love all tacos.
00:03:07 ◼ ► I am a native Californian. If you'd like to send in a question to open a future episode of Upgrade,
00:03:13 ◼ ► just send in a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk, and you may be picked. Thank you to Steve for
00:03:17 ◼ ► Steve's submission today. We get to follow up. So the holiday special was great. We were really
00:03:23 ◼ ► pleased with how it came out. People seemed to really enjoy it, which was awesome, but I wanted
00:03:26 ◼ ► to direct people to a YouTube video created by H.M. Boutet, who is responsible for Cortex Animated.
00:03:33 ◼ ► He does some animations for Cortex. They did an incredible animation of the introduction of the
00:03:40 ◼ ► episode. It is well worth your one minute and 18 seconds to watch. I agree. I was very impressed.
00:03:47 ◼ ► I did have that moment where I looked at it and said, "I look nothing like the animated Jason in
00:03:51 ◼ ► this." And then I looked at the animated mic, which is the same animated mic from Cortex Animated,
00:04:08 ◼ ► they kind of create their own versions. So like, yeah, they're very, they're a very talented
00:04:13 ◼ ► individual, but they basically create versions of us based upon how we sound as opposed to how
00:04:22 ◼ ► Yeah, that's really what I was getting at. I had that moment of like, "Wow, I don't look like this."
00:04:30 ◼ ► and said, "Oh yeah, Myke doesn't look like that either. It's fine. These are characters in an
00:04:33 ◼ ► animated thing." And it was really cool. I've never had anything like that for anything that
00:04:42 ◼ ► in case people didn't go to upgradeys.com, because there were spoilers if you hadn't listened,
00:04:48 ◼ ► if you hadn't listened to the episode and then gone to the site. I'm very proud of this project
00:04:53 ◼ ► that me and Zach worked on, and I think it's worth going, checking out. We have all of the
00:04:59 ◼ ► answers for every winner, every runner-up of every upgradey in all time is now on this website,
00:05:06 ◼ ► and it will be continued to be updated in the future. So that is a resource that is there for
00:05:11 ◼ ► you in case you were wondering, "Who did win Best Mac App in 2015 as the upgradeys?" Well,
00:05:28 ◼ ► and we'll get it taken care of. Because we had to compile from all the history this year, so yeah.
00:05:34 ◼ ► It was a tricky thing, but yeah, if anybody does have any things that don't look right,
00:05:43 ◼ ► the upgradey award winner for the best movie of the year was Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse,
00:05:52 ◼ ► Yeah, you were right, Jason Snell. Oh my god. Oh my god. No spoilers, I'm not going to talk
00:05:58 ◼ ► about the movie, but I loved it. It was my favorite movie of the year, even though I saw it in 2019,
00:06:13 ◼ ► explain to people, because I was deeply skeptical, and I love Spider-Man, it's one of my favorites,
00:06:17 ◼ ► I was deeply skeptical when they announced this, but it is the best animated movie of 2018. It is
00:06:24 ◼ ► maybe the best Spider-Man movie ever. It is one of the best superhero movies ever made.
00:06:29 ◼ ► It is all of these things. It is a really great movie. In fact, if you don't usually watch
00:06:34 ◼ ► animated stuff, or maybe you say, "Well, I might watch the Pixars," but that's it, you should watch
00:06:41 ◼ ► this, because this is going to beat out the Pixars for the Oscar for best animated feature, and
00:06:47 ◼ ► deservedly so. It is an astounding achievement, and also a crowd-pleaser. So it looks great. It's
00:06:55 ◼ ► got a great story. So I know you're skeptical, but if you get a chance to see Spider-Man into
00:07:04 ◼ ► I absolutely adored it. I cannot wait to see it again. I hope it's not too long before it comes
00:07:09 ◼ ► out on video. I also wanted to give a shout-out, some follow-out, Jason, to MacPowerUsers464,
00:07:18 ◼ ► because I am very proud of my co-founder, Steven Hackett, as he has taken the reins from Katie
00:07:22 ◼ ► Floyd, who decided that she wanted to move on to different projects, and Steven has taken the reins
00:07:29 ◼ ► at request of the host of the show. They wanted Steven to take over, and he did his first episode
00:07:35 ◼ ► yesterday, and it's really, really good. I miss Katie already, but I'm also really happy that
00:07:40 ◼ ► Steven's taken over the role, because I think he's perfect for it, and the episode's really good,
00:07:44 ◼ ► and you should go listen to it. All right. See, I thought you were going to say you should
00:07:47 ◼ ► listen to MPU-462, which has got a really great guest, who is me. But no, it's Steven's at first
00:07:54 ◼ ► episode. I guess that's important in the great history of MacPowerUsers, but there's a new co-host.
00:07:58 ◼ ► Yeah, whatever. You're very important, too, Jason. I'll make sure to put your link in the show notes
00:08:03 ◼ ► also. In the great annals of MPU history. They had to come up with a new name, because it's my
00:08:09 ◼ ► third time, so they can't even call it Jason Snell Returns anymore. I think there's something
00:08:13 ◼ ► about the Snell Zone in there. Yep, Return to the Snell Zone, which I loved when I saw that episode.
00:08:18 ◼ ► I blame you. Oh, I was so excited. It's great. Anyway, congratulations, Steven. Steven's now in
00:08:26 ◼ ► the Spark Zone. So, Jason, we made a promise in our Upgrades episode that we were going to talk about
00:08:32 ◼ ► the upcoming new keyboard from Bridge, the new iPad Pro keyboard, because you got a world exclusive,
00:08:41 ◼ ► hands-on. I did. I did. I realized I should probably have put, like, an all capital letters
00:08:46 ◼ ► exclusive, and I didn't. I didn't do that. Can you explain to me how this happened? Because there is
00:08:51 ◼ ► a kind of fun story about this exact model. Well, they contacted me and said, "We're going to be
00:08:58 ◼ ► showing it at CES, which is this week, but our CEO, you know, we have a test unit. It's not a
00:09:06 ◼ ► final production run, but we have a test unit, and we can send it to you over the holidays, which is
00:09:11 ◼ ► not the most ideal time, but we can let you have it for a week, and you could be the first one to
00:09:16 ◼ ► write about it, and then, you know, we'll let some people get their hands on it at CES." And I said,
00:09:22 ◼ ► "Sure. Like, yeah, I'm not going to turn down an exclusive." You had a lot of pressure not to break
00:09:26 ◼ ► it, right? Well, I didn't, you know, I was actually really concerned because the FedEx guy didn't come
00:09:32 ◼ ► until late in the afternoon on the day that I was sending it back to them, which was the day we
00:09:35 ◼ ► agreed I would send it back, so they got it back in time and all of that, and I started to get a
00:09:39 ◼ ► little nervous, like, "Oh, no, what if I ruin their CES plans by not having, by the FedEx guy not
00:09:45 ◼ ► coming, and then the FedEx guy came?" It was fine. But yeah, so I got my hands on it. I got the
00:09:49 ◼ ► Bridge 12.9 Pro, which is their new version of their keyboard for the iPad Pros from 2018,
00:09:56 ◼ ► and I got to spend, I did spend a week with it, and then I had to take it and put it in box and
00:10:02 ◼ ► send it back and go back to my other keyboards, and that made me sad. Yeah, so tell me why did it
00:10:07 ◼ ► make you sad? Like, what was your overall kind of impression about this new model? The bottom line
00:10:14 ◼ ► is that it is, this was already my favorite keyboard for the iPad Pro for the last generation.
00:10:19 ◼ ► They had a bunch of production issues with their first-generation version. They did a second
00:10:23 ◼ ► generation version of the old model that changed the keyboard slightly. It's still a good keyboard.
00:10:29 ◼ ► It's still better than the keyboards that Apple ships. They're, you know, they move, they're
00:10:33 ◼ ► clicky. I guess they're less stable, so if key stability is your number one thing, but they're
00:10:40 ◼ ► good. It's a good keyboard. I recommend it to people. That second gen seems to have been reliable.
00:10:45 ◼ ► Everybody who I know who's picked one up has been happy with it. You know, this is that keyboard
00:10:50 ◼ ► where it's got little, it's like, it turns your iPad into a laptop temporarily. You slide it into
00:10:55 ◼ ► these two little clips, and at that point, you've got your iPad as the screen, and the keyboard deck
00:11:00 ◼ ► is the Bridge keyboard, and they're connected, and you can, you know, put it at any angle and put it
00:11:05 ◼ ► in your lap, and it's like you're using a laptop. But the great thing, of course, is you're using
00:11:10 ◼ ► an iPad, and the moment you don't want to use it as a laptop anymore, you just pull it off,
00:11:14 ◼ ► and it's an iPad again. That's always the question we get, right, is, "Why won't you just use a
00:11:20 ◼ ► laptop?" And the answer is, "Well, I can't pull the screen off my MacBook and have it work."
00:11:28 ◼ ► like, to that point now, which is just simply like, "Well, can you rip the screen off?"
00:11:34 ◼ ► Yeah, right. I mean, it's like, I will agree. If you spend all of your time with a Bridge keyboard,
00:11:40 ◼ ► then there is at least a little more relevant question about why wouldn't you just use a
00:11:45 ◼ ► MacBook. The answer is probably that you prefer iOS at that point. But for me, the reason I love
00:11:52 ◼ ► using my iPad Pro is because I can use it as a laptop when I want and as a tablet when I want,
00:11:58 ◼ ► because it's truly convertible, and Apple doesn't make a convertible laptop. That's not what they,
00:12:02 ◼ ► that they don't do that. So the Bridge keyboard does this for me for the iPad. They also have
00:12:12 ◼ ► And the big question with the iPad Pro 2018 was the clips. The bezels, the clips go on the corners
00:12:19 ◼ ► at the bezels, and of course, the bezels are much smaller on the new iPad. So there was a question
00:12:24 ◼ ► like, "Are they going to be able to make this work?" And in my week with it, the answer is yes.
00:12:27 ◼ ► These clips, which are kind of rubber padded so they don't harm the iPad, and they hold it in
00:12:34 ◼ ► place, and it seems very solid, and I can tilt it and put it in and take it out and all of these
00:12:42 ◼ ► things, and it just worked fine. I wrote this thing and posted it on Twitter, and I had a bunch
00:12:48 ◼ ► of people asking, and a lot of them were very concerned about like, "Will this scratch my iPad?
00:12:51 ◼ ► Will it break my iPad? Will it do weird things to my iPad screen?" And I don't see any of that.
00:12:57 ◼ ► Just as I didn't see it with the last model. It works like the old model does. There's a little
00:13:03 ◼ ► more precision maybe required to slide it into the clips, but I actually don't think there's that
00:13:08 ◼ ► much more precision because you always want to be precise sliding this thing in. It takes a couple of
00:13:14 ◼ ► tries before you figure out the right approach for it, because what you want to do is get it lined up
00:13:19 ◼ ► perfectly anyway so that when you close it, it just is like a laptop. And if you do it haphazardly,
00:13:25 ◼ ► you'll get it where the top is shifted off a little bit from the bottom, which is not great.
00:13:29 ◼ ► So you have to learn the right way to make it all fit together. But a couple attempts of that,
00:13:37 ◼ ► and then you figure it out. So day one, I figured out this is my approach to get it in there,
00:13:43 ◼ ► and then it's just kind of second nature after that. And then at that point, yeah, I took this
00:13:47 ◼ ► to the local cafe to write some of my columns, and I'm carrying a laptop in my hands essentially,
00:13:54 ◼ ► and it's designed to match the style. That was the challenge for them, because I think internally,
00:13:59 ◼ ► it's basically their last keyboard. The difference is that it's got those straight edges with the
00:14:11 ◼ ► - Yeah, yeah. So they're losing a lot of side space just because they lose the same size.
00:14:22 ◼ ► so now the keyboard shrunk in. It's almost exactly the same size as the iPad. It's almost exactly the
00:14:39 ◼ ► So it's actually lighter than the MacBook Pro, and of course, you can take half of that weight
00:14:43 ◼ ► off whenever you want. But it looks really great when it's closed, because you know that iPad looks
00:14:48 ◼ ► very laptop-y styling already, and then you put the keyboard on, and then it's that styling in a
00:14:56 ◼ ► laptop configuration, which it looks pretty nice. They actually put a little divot in down by where
00:15:05 ◼ ► - Yeah, because that was one of the challenges, is how do you get your fingers around it to open
00:15:09 ◼ ► it up? And now there's that little divot. You just peel it open there, and it opens up into laptop
00:15:14 ◼ ► mode. - Let me ask you a question. I don't know if you have the answer to this, but I know
00:15:18 ◼ ► it's that the divot is in the exact place where the induction charger is for the pencil. I assume
00:15:22 ◼ ► it's pretty fiddly if you have the pencil attached and open it now, right? - Yeah, absolutely. I
00:15:30 ◼ ► think the nice thing about the pencil is when it's open, it's hanging out up there. When it's closed,
00:15:37 ◼ ► it can hang out there, and it's not a problem. When you want to open the laptop and you've got
00:15:42 ◼ ► the pencil attached, you should probably take the pencil off. But it's okay. You really put it in
00:15:47 ◼ ► your hand, open it up, and snap it back on. So there is that. But that's just sort of... I mean,
00:15:52 ◼ ► there's no other... Apple designed that pencil location as the surface that's not attached to
00:15:56 ◼ ► anything, and then you close a laptop and that's what you get. So I don't think it's a big deal.
00:16:00 ◼ ► - I mean, maybe they would do this in the future. They don't need to put that divot in the middle.
00:16:05 ◼ ► It could be on the edges or at the corners or something, right? - I suppose. - But it's not
00:16:13 ◼ ► the end of the world, but it's just something I know that like, "Ah, that's gonna bug me.
00:16:17 ◼ ► I can see it." - Yeah, if your pencil is riding with your... I don't use the pencil in laptop
00:16:22 ◼ ► mode, so it's not a big issue for me. But if your pencil is riding with your iPad all the time,
00:16:26 ◼ ► it will be... I mean, I would say you can also just open it from the sides like you do the
00:16:32 ◼ ► previous generation in that case. - Which is probably what I'll do. - But you're not using
00:16:35 ◼ ► the advantage of that little divot thing there. You may also be able to find that with the right
00:16:41 ◼ ► finger, kind of like with your thumb hooking under or something, you can do it and keep the pencil,
00:16:46 ◼ ► like a little magic trick, keeps the pencil secure as you open it. I don't know. - I will say,
00:16:53 ◼ ► it looks like that the hardware, they have done a much better job at keeping up with the iPad.
00:17:00 ◼ ► One of the great things about this iPad is how incredible the hardware looks, and it looks like
00:17:04 ◼ ► Bridge have done their absolute best to match it. And I think that that is quite an achievement
00:17:09 ◼ ► from them. - Yeah, they did a good job. It's not shipping until what they say is early spring,
00:17:15 ◼ ► which is a long time. And I had a guy who said that, "Oh, that's terrible. It should be shipping
00:17:21 ◼ ► now." And I'm like, "Well, it's so easy to do. It's one of those things where it's like,
00:17:25 ◼ ► 'Oh, this is very simple to do,' says the person who doesn't do it." And I talked to the CEO about
00:17:30 ◼ ► it and they're like, "To do this, they really did need to see it. They needed to match the materials
00:17:35 ◼ ► because they wanna match all the colors." And the colors changed by the way, like they wanna match
00:17:39 ◼ ► all the colors. Well, the color, right? They didn't the gold, is there a gold for this one? I mean,
00:17:46 ◼ ► no, not on the iPad Pro, right? I don't even remember. I live in a space gray world. Is it
00:17:50 ◼ ► just space gray and silver? Anyway, they have to match the colors. They wanna match the anodization.
00:17:54 ◼ ► They wanna match the edges. And somebody was like, "Well, there were leaks beforehand for cases and
00:18:00 ◼ ► stuff." It's like, I don't know, would I want to finalize and start building stuff on a product
00:18:05 ◼ ► I'd never seen? This is a very small company. There's no way they're gonna do that. And as a
00:18:10 ◼ ► result, we're not gonna get them until early spring. But I'd say for people who are using the
00:18:17 ◼ ► or have used the most recent Brydge keyboard on the other iPad, the previous iPad, this is
00:18:25 ◼ ► basically that except in the shape and size of this new version. Still Bluetooth because
00:18:33 ◼ ► the guy who was armchair quarterbacking Brydge also said, "Well, why not just use the smart
00:18:37 ◼ ► connector?" And the answer is, then you have to build like a little thing that climbs up to the
00:18:42 ◼ ► smart connector. And it's just like Bluetooth is fine. - This also has the benefit this time.
00:18:48 ◼ ► They said this, I mean, I know you didn't get to test this, but you can plug it in via USB-C now
00:18:52 ◼ ► to charge it, which is amazing, and to use it. So that addition, by the way, I'm really pleased
00:18:59 ◼ ► that they did that. It's 'cause now I never have to think about charging it, 'cause I'll always
00:19:04 ◼ ► have a USB-C cable around, and if you charge the keyboard, and I think I charge it more often than
00:19:09 ◼ ► you do because I use backlighting and you don't. But now I can just plug it in and keep using it
00:19:14 ◼ ► while it's charging, which is, that is really cool. I'm pleased that they've made that addition.
00:19:18 ◼ ► I can't wait to get my hands on this. And thank you to Brydge for sending it to Jason. So we got
00:19:24 ◼ ► to talk about it early. - Yeah, and when the final comes out, we'll check that out too. And yes,
00:19:29 ◼ ► I can officially say before everybody writes in, yes, silver and space gray are the only options
00:19:33 ◼ ► here, but Brydge does this color matching stuff. So they wanna make sure that they've got all that
00:19:40 ◼ ► Like there is no real space gray. - It's not an international standard, no. So anyway, yeah,
00:19:47 ◼ ► I liked it. It's good. It will become my go-to keyboard again when it ships. And in the meantime,
00:19:53 ◼ ► you know, I'm back to having the smart keyboard folio for some stuff and external Bluetooth or
00:20:01 ◼ ► USB keyboards for other situations. And I'll just, you know, I'll muddle through somehow,
00:20:15 ◼ ► - I didn't get a chance to see the 11 inch model. And I imagine it's gonna be, you know,
00:20:21 ◼ ► it'll be better than the old 10.5 inch 'cause it'll be a little bit larger. No, it's the same
00:20:26 ◼ ► footprint, right? With a bigger screen. So it'll be the same as the 10.5 except with some different
00:20:32 ◼ ► clips and stuff, but that should be good too. That 10.5 one was a good device too. And oh,
00:20:46 ◼ ► but it's also still cheaper than buying a smart keyboard folio because the smart keyboard folio
00:20:52 ◼ ► Okay. Can't wait. Today's show is brought to you by Hullo who make insanely comfortable buckwheat
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00:21:05 ◼ ► under the weight of your head. They support your head and neck. And this is super awesome.
00:21:09 ◼ ► I, as I was going to sleep last night, Jason, I was like moving my pillow around and I kind of like
00:21:15 ◼ ► bunched it up into the middle like I do. And I put my head on it and it just stays there. I wake up
00:21:19 ◼ ► in the morning and it's exactly the same way. I love it. I absolutely love my Hullo pillow.
00:21:24 ◼ ► I was getting frustrated. I was on a pillow quest to try and find something just at the time when
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00:21:34 ◼ ► back. I absolutely love it. Their pillows stay cool. They stay dry rather than like foam pillows
00:21:40 ◼ ► or feather pillows. There's no flipping the pillow to find the cool side. The whole, all of it's cool
00:21:45 ◼ ► and it is very cool too. I like it a lot. You can add and remove the filling to suit your needs. So
00:21:50 ◼ ► the pillow can be just the size that you want it. Buckwheat hulls are kind of like, the easiest way
00:21:54 ◼ ► I can describe them is they're kind of like little shells. So it's like a, it's a very different
00:21:58 ◼ ► feeling. It almost feels a little bit like a bean bag at times. I like the sound it makes when I move
00:22:04 ◼ ► my head and I hear it moving inside. It's very different experience. And I really think that
00:22:09 ◼ ► something you should try out, like if you're not comfortable at night, probably with the
00:22:13 ◼ ► pillows that you've got, or even if just the idea of hearing a very soothing bean bag sound,
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00:23:09 ◼ ► out. Thanks to hollow for their support of this show and relay FM. Time for some upstream news,
00:23:16 ◼ ► but upstream this week is one very big, very important topic. So CES is going on right now.
00:23:24 ◼ ► And CES, one of the big things, one of the big things that remains at CES is television news,
00:23:30 ◼ ► like actual TVs. Lots of companies have pulled out of CES over the years, right? Because they
00:23:34 ◼ ► want to have their own events and stuff. And lots of different types of technology are mostly
00:23:39 ◼ ► ignored, but CES is where the TVs get shown off. And this year, Apple is all over the news in a
00:23:47 ◼ ► way that I don't think we would have ever expected. There's two different things going on here.
00:23:51 ◼ ► The most important of these is what Samsung is doing. So Samsung announced that beginning this
00:23:58 ◼ ► spring, all of their 2019, 2019 TVs that go on sale, the 2019 TVs, that's an interestingly
00:24:06 ◼ ► difficult thing to say. Let's just say it's 29 TV. There you go. I love it. And all of their
00:24:12 ◼ ► 2018 models will get an update to add AirPlay 2 and apps for the iTunes movies and TV store.
00:24:28 ◼ ► All of this content is integrated into the TV. You'll see in the universal search and Bixby for
00:24:34 ◼ ► some reason. This is wild. That's our story, people. The big news of the day, bigger than
00:24:41 ◼ ► any news ever, is finally iTunes is coming to Bixby. It's what we've all been waiting for the
00:24:45 ◼ ► day and here it is. Man. Yeah. I mean, just like who I'm pinching myself now. I cannot believe
00:24:51 ◼ ► iTunes is coming to Bixby at last. Wow. But the thing is, we make a joke. That sentence doesn't
00:24:57 ◼ ► make any sense, right? Like, oh, you'll be able to ask Bixby for your iTunes content. That's wild.
00:25:03 ◼ ► I mean, the idea that Samsung TVs and it's the 2019 TVs and the 2018 models with a firmware
00:25:13 ◼ ► update, right? So this is the platform that Samsung is using, which is what Tizen. They
00:25:24 ◼ ► Dieter Bohn kind of reference. It's like, hang on a second. This is a Tizen app, right?
00:25:30 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, who knows? But it's, yeah. So this is fascinating because it's AirPlay 2,
00:25:38 ◼ ► which means that if you've got any Apple device, you can shoot basically anything over to your
00:25:42 ◼ ► Samsung TV. But the app thing is also interesting because that's more complex, right? Because now
00:25:48 ◼ ► they're having to build in something and it's this iTunes app for movies and TV. Although,
00:25:53 ◼ ► as we're going to talk about, very strongly hovering in the background is Apple's forthcoming
00:26:00 ◼ ► video service, right? Like that's like, it's yeah, it's great. You can rent a movie on iTunes on your
00:26:04 ◼ ► Samsung TV and also Apple's video service will play on it. So there's a quote from Eddy Cue in
00:26:10 ◼ ► Samsung's press release. Um, it says, "We look forward to bringing the iTunes and AirPlay 2
00:26:15 ◼ ► experience to even more customers around the world through Samsung smart TVs. So iPhone, iPad, and
00:26:20 ◼ ► Mac users have yet another way to enjoy all their favorite content on the biggest screen in their
00:26:25 ◼ ► home." Um, I just love that Eddy was in that press release. It just made me smile. So I thought that
00:26:30 ◼ ► I kind of had this news all locked down, right? It's like, okay, so some TVs are going to get all
00:26:35 ◼ ► of this stuff easy, easy peasy, right? But then today more stuff started happening. So Apple
00:26:41 ◼ ► updated the AirPlay 2 page to focus on some additional features coming soon to AirPlay 2
00:26:51 ◼ ► and then more news has come out. Vizio and LG have both announced TVs, but their TVs just have AirPlay
00:26:59 ◼ ► and HomeKit support. They don't have the iTunes app that Samsung has. Which, that adds some
00:27:06 ◼ ► complexity to all of this. Cause I thought, ah, we've got to unlock, right? Like it's exactly what
00:27:11 ◼ ► we thought was going to happen. Apple's going to have an app on all of these providers, smart TVs,
00:27:16 ◼ ► and it's going to come to Fire TV and that's how they get their content out there. And that may
00:27:20 ◼ ► still happen, but for some reason, maybe Samsung has some exclusivity or whatever, but it's added
00:27:26 ◼ ► like a wrinkle in all of this. So it's amazing to see that AirPlay 2 is getting on all of these TVs,
00:27:32 ◼ ► because that way it doesn't matter whether Apple has an app on them or not. You can just
00:27:36 ◼ ► throw the content over to the TV and you'll be able to do, you'll be able to use Siri on your phone.
00:27:41 ◼ ► So you'll say like, ahoy telephone, send this on my TV or whatever. Watch this on my TV.
00:27:47 ◼ ► Yeah, play, play, play the play Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon's TV show on my TV set. Yes.
00:27:52 ◼ ► And then also there's going to be what Apple calling new convenient built-in controls to
00:27:58 ◼ ► let you control media and the volume of the TV. It's kind of unclear, like the way that this like
00:28:03 ◼ ► is red, it might be new UI that appears somewhere. I took, I took that as being that it may be in a
00:28:09 ◼ ► lock screen or in the video, in the TV app that there'll be some controls that will also talk to
00:28:17 ◼ ► the, you know, the TV and let them, let them, you know, control the volume and all that. It may just
00:28:22 ◼ ► be a UI update to existing functionality, but it is, it is very interesting to see these two things
00:28:27 ◼ ► split apart. I think it's hard to tell from the outside whether this is something that is
00:28:33 ◼ ► contractual, something like Samsung gets a period of exclusivity. Clearly Samsung got to be first
00:28:39 ◼ ► out of the gate. That was part of the deal. And it might be that, I mean, maybe it's like Samsung
00:28:44 ◼ ► said, we'll build your app if you give us, you know, the, the first drop on this or something
00:28:53 ◼ ► major league baseball, when I went to see their offices, you know, they have to, they, they have
00:29:04 ◼ ► PlayStations and iOS and Apple TV and Xbox, right? Like all of these platforms, they have to build
00:29:13 ◼ ► it and Roku, right? And Fire TV. And it is interesting to think about like, well, what's
00:29:20 ◼ ► Apple going to do? And like Apple could totally do that, but a different, I think, I don't know
00:29:24 ◼ ► enough about these boxes. Like I think there are different models. Some of the models are,
00:29:29 ◼ ► you write the app. Some of the models are the vendor writes the app. Sometimes it's sort of like,
00:29:34 ◼ ► like the old Apple TV. I get the impression that you can do like a generic thing where you're
00:29:39 ◼ ► basically like filling out a bunch of configuration files and there's just a generic media player app.
00:29:43 ◼ ► Although that doesn't sound like something Apple would want to do, but it might get them on more
00:29:47 ◼ ► platforms. So I'm not clear. Yeah. And there hasn't been a demo of this by the way. So like
00:29:52 ◼ ► Samsung's TVs, they're showing that are in CES right now for as much as I've been able to work
00:30:02 ◼ ► Well, and there's a question about when this all happens and when this update happens, because
00:30:11 ◼ ► it will be something different, right? If the Apple TV launch happens, then this may be all
00:30:25 ◼ ► Yeah. Like singular never shipped on the iPhone, right? Because it was rebranded as AT&T by the
00:30:30 ◼ ► time that it shipped, even though it was singular when they announced it. Yeah. And so I would be
00:30:36 ◼ ► surprised if there aren't iTunes slash Apple TV apps on other boxes or TVs down the road,
00:30:43 ◼ ► but there is a question of like, can they do it? What goes into that? Like what goes into building
00:30:50 ◼ ► an app for Vizio or LG and can you add it after the fact or can you not, you know, and I don't
00:30:56 ◼ ► know. It's possible that Apple is only bothering to do this with bigger players. So like Samsung
00:31:00 ◼ ► will get it. Amazon will get it. You know, maybe Roku, like an actual app, everybody else you
00:31:06 ◼ ► Airplay. Yeah, it may be. And in the end, if, if what you're saying is, Hey, you've got one of
00:31:11 ◼ ► these TVs and you've got an iPhone, you start playing it and say, go to the TV. And then your
00:31:17 ◼ ► iPhone, uh, the Airplay 2 experience, your iPhone just looks like your iPhone. It's like, not like
00:31:21 ◼ ► your iPhone. It has to sit there and mirror the video playback or anything like that. You kind of
00:31:25 ◼ ► like send it over there and then it's gone and that's good. Like that's, that's a, you can keep
00:31:30 ◼ ► using your phone and it's also streaming video to your TV and it's all fine. So I think it's good.
00:31:36 ◼ ► I think it's a, uh, it gets Apple content on all of these TVs without people having to buy an Apple
00:31:42 ◼ ► TV. And that's really the big deal here. I've heard, you know, uh, there are definitely a lot
00:31:46 ◼ ► of people who are like, well, why is this a big deal? iTunes is on windows and all that. It's like,
00:31:50 ◼ ► yeah, Apple has kept the crown jewels of their video stuff locked down to playback on Apple
00:31:57 ◼ ► devices. And if you want to play it back on a TV, you need to use Apple TV or like an adapter out
00:32:03 ◼ ► of your iOS device. Right? Those are the ways that you do it. And with this, Apple is in, in the
00:32:10 ◼ ► prelude to launching their TV service, Apple is opening the flood gates, which is like, Nope, we
00:32:14 ◼ ► want Apple TV, Apple video content to be available on as many devices as possible. And you don't need
00:32:21 ◼ ► to buy an Apple TV box to do it. Which is, uh, something we've talked about. I feel like
00:32:27 ◼ ► Upgradients are very prepared for this sort of story because we've been talking about this for
00:32:31 ◼ ► a while now. And the idea that as with the Amazon echo story where it's like, well, what does that
00:32:38 ◼ ► mean for the HomePod? And the answer is, well, the HomePod will continue to be a premium hardware
00:32:42 ◼ ► product with high margins. That's got that Apple, uh, you know, stamp of approval for people who
00:32:48 ◼ ► want to buy all Apple stuff, but you can also now get Apple music on, uh, the echo. And this is like
00:32:53 ◼ ► the same thing, right? Which is like, I think the Apple TV is still going to exist as this high-end
00:32:58 ◼ ► product that is all Apple through and through, but that's not enough. Like Apple wants their
00:33:04 ◼ ► video stuff to be available more broadly. And it seems like they've got people out there really
00:33:08 ◼ ► pushing all the TV manufacturers so that all these modern TVs and presumably video box platforms too,
00:33:16 ◼ ► are going to be able to play Apple stuff either via AirPlay or an app, uh, because they want to
00:33:21 ◼ ► be everywhere. They want the video service to not just be for people who have Apple devices,
00:33:25 ◼ ► especially since a lot of people still want to watch TV on a TV set. And Apple, that has been a
00:33:31 ◼ ► huge barrier. Like even if you've got an iPhone, like I don't want to watch TV shows on my iPhone,
00:33:36 ◼ ► unless I'm really desperate, right? Especially if I'm at home and I've got a 65 inch TV,
00:33:41 ◼ ► I won't watch it up there. How do we get it there? And up to now Apple's been, well, you pay us a lot
00:33:45 ◼ ► of money for an Apple TV. And as of 2019, Apple is saying, Nope, we want every TV and every box that
00:33:52 ◼ ► we can think of. Presumably there'll be more announcements to come. I'm kind of assuming
00:33:56 ◼ ► that this will be true to play our video stuff because they're going to be charging people and
00:34:01 ◼ ► getting people to sample and then pay for their new video service. And they want that to be the
00:34:06 ◼ ► broadest audience possible. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing these announcements now, but like, I really
00:34:12 ◼ ► feel like it is a lock that it gets on fire TVs. Like that, that just feels like a lock to me
00:34:17 ◼ ► because of Apple Music on Echo. Yeah. I, you get, you get the sense that Apple and Amazon last year
00:34:24 ◼ ► came to an agreement about a lot of things. Right. Which was again, as we spoke about on this show
00:34:31 ◼ ► was like, it was probably, you know, they, they, they settled all family business on that day.
00:34:37 ◼ ► Everything was taken care of, you know, now we'll sell your products and you'll give us your music
00:34:42 ◼ ► and TV and we'll, and then we'll give you the app that you want for your Apple TV and like fun,
00:34:48 ◼ ► fun, fun. We're all good again. This is super interesting to me. I mean, I've been trying,
00:34:54 ◼ ► I've been like running this idea around in my head and I feel like it seems pretty clear to me
00:34:59 ◼ ► at this point that that the company that we know is, is changing in some very significant ways.
00:35:06 ◼ ► You know, like Apple is making some very big changes and like whether or not this is something
00:35:12 ◼ ► that you like or whether you feel it's in their best interest or not. Like at this point, it kind
00:35:17 ◼ ► of doesn't matter because the train has left the station. Like they have spent and are spending
00:35:23 ◼ ► billions of dollars on creative television shows and I totally understand a lot of people's position
00:35:29 ◼ ► that this is not the company that they know. I get it. It's super weird. This is why this segment
00:35:35 ◼ ► exists because we find it interesting but also super weird and we like to talk about it, right?
00:35:40 ◼ ► Like Apple is doing all this stuff, which doesn't make sense. Also, I saw a lot of people arguing
00:35:46 ◼ ► that they just don't think it'll be successful and they think it's a bad move and that is a
00:35:51 ◼ ► perfectly reasonable opinion to hold. I don't know if I agree with it but I'm not convinced
00:35:57 ◼ ► it's going to be successful either. I'm not sure what how this is going to go but like you said,
00:36:04 ◼ ► Apple has already gone down this path. I looked it up. They made their big thing where they released
00:36:10 ◼ ► a whole appendix to their quarterly earnings report talking about services revenue. That
00:36:15 ◼ ► was their blowing the horn of like watch services revenue. It's growing. That's our next big thing.
00:36:20 ◼ ► You know when that was? That was January of 2016. That was three years ago. Apple has been on this
00:36:29 ◼ ► track for three years publicly and probably for longer privately and this is just and you know the
00:36:37 ◼ ► the TV execs have been there for a year and a half. It'll be almost two years by the time they
00:36:42 ◼ ► launch this thing probably and this is Apple changing what it's doing to be more because
00:36:51 ◼ ► they believe that there's an opportunity here for revenue growth and they believe that in this era
00:37:04 ◼ ► then you lose some power and again they're looking for places where they can move the needle in terms
00:37:14 ◼ ► of revenue growth and you know a lot of skepticism about whether Apple can be a true Netflix or
00:37:21 ◼ ► Amazon Prime Video competitor or a competitor to Disney plus and I think those that skepticism is
00:37:26 ◼ ► valid but if you look at the bigger picture here we are entering as Tim Goodman says on the TV talk
00:37:34 ◼ ► machine podcast that I do with him times of confusion right where there's so many shows out
00:37:42 ◼ ► there and there's so many services and there are more streaming services and we're entering this
00:37:45 ◼ ► period where everybody is doing a streaming service and most of them will probably fail
00:37:52 ◼ ► because it's a gold rush right now yes but as with the iPhone right where if you are one of the
00:38:00 ◼ ► few left standing that has a very profitable business in five years as a video streaming
00:38:07 ◼ ► provider you have valuable real estate that is impossible to you know that will be worth far
00:38:15 ◼ ► more than what you spent on it and that's we're in the land rush territory here and Apple may not
00:38:20 ◼ ► make it but that's why Apple's doing this is there is a huge opportunity because if they're one of the
00:38:26 ◼ ► four or five if they can if they can spend a few billion dollars a year and create the next
00:38:30 ◼ ► HBO it doesn't even need to be the next Netflix per se but it could be or the next Hulu if Apple
00:38:37 ◼ ► can do that and become one of the ones that sticks that will be a profitable long-term business that
00:38:47 ◼ ► will provide them revenue growth over the next five years and that's what that's why they're
00:38:50 ◼ ► taking their shot and they've got lots of cash and when you've got hundred more than a hundred
00:38:55 ◼ ► billion dollars of cash you can spend a few billion dollars on a bet in an area that seems
00:39:02 ◼ ► like there's a chance of a big payoff if you end up being one of the services that's left standing
00:39:08 ◼ ► in a few years and that's what they're doing and it may not work but they've been on this path for
00:39:13 ◼ ► quite a while now and I think again not to toot our own horn too much but like I think Upgradians
00:39:19 ◼ ► have heard us talk about this I think everybody listening to this podcast knows that this has been
00:39:23 ◼ ► a path that they've been on so at least it has you can disagree with it but at least it hasn't taken
00:39:28 ◼ ► you by surprise they've been on this path for a while like this is a even if this is an absolute
00:39:33 ◼ ► failure this is like a three-year thing we're going to go through even if they stop because
00:39:39 ◼ ► they're in agreements they've got stuff and you know they've got all this stuff they're signing
00:39:43 ◼ ► all these shows there's multiple years of content that they've currently got signed because it takes
00:39:48 ◼ ► a long time to make this stuff this is going to become a thing they talk about all the time
00:39:54 ◼ ► and every presentation that they do every keynote is going to include something to do with this
00:40:00 ◼ ► there's going to be lots of celebrities coming out on stage we're going to see Steve Corral
00:40:03 ◼ ► he's going to come out and talk about his show right like this is a this is a new thing for them
00:40:08 ◼ ► like if you really didn't like when you saw a bunch of celebrities with the Apple Music thing
00:40:13 ◼ ► get used to it friends because it's going to happen this is this is about to become a very
00:40:18 ◼ ► big part of Apple's strategy and again I don't know if it's right or wrong but I my personal
00:40:25 ◼ ► belief is this is the thing they need to do this is the thing that they should have done a couple
00:40:30 ◼ ► of years ago this way right because the carpool karaoke thing the planet the apps thing was a
00:40:35 ◼ ► dumb idea they did it badly and they put a bad taste in everyone's mouth that is what happens
00:40:40 ◼ ► when when tech guys try to program content because that's what that was right like yeah it was it was
00:40:47 ◼ ► people from inside of Apple and some of the people from Apple Music who were not tv people but music
00:40:52 ◼ ► music people and they tried to make some shows they they tried to like buy in on carpool karaoke
00:40:58 ◼ ► but did it in the complete wrong way because it should have had James Corden if they were going to
00:41:01 ◼ ► do that tv show right like they messed it up so what did they do they spent a lot of money hiring
00:41:07 ◼ ► really credible people we don't know what these shows are going to look like right like we've
00:41:12 ◼ ► heard we spoke about and I've seen this Christina Warren made a really good point on twitter to us
00:41:16 ◼ ► about this right about like are are these are they going to have too much influence on it are
00:41:21 ◼ ► they going to stop any explicit content yeah maybe but that also doesn't mean it's going to fail it
00:41:26 ◼ ► just means it might be not what you expect the big question is uh and she's Christina's comment was
00:41:32 ◼ ► she's a little worried about like meddling from the tech guys like okay they hired the pros to do this
00:41:37 ◼ ► but what if Tim or Eddie or somebody else at Apple is like I've got notes about this is Tim
00:41:45 ◼ ► I have notes about the what Reese Witherspoon is doing right like what uh I think that's a problem
00:41:51 ◼ ► I'm not sure the uh no explicit content expensive NBC kind of stuff is necessarily the kiss of death
00:41:59 ◼ ► I don't think it is I really don't think it is because there are levels that you can program at
00:42:04 ◼ ► and you know Disney Plus is not going to be programming at HBO level or Netflix kind of hard
00:42:11 ◼ ► you know rated R kind of stuff there there is an audience for it that is different um so if it's
00:42:17 ◼ ► done well then it could be a interesting brand position for them here's why I think it's not an
00:42:24 ◼ ► issue about like this the explicit content stuff is I don't watch completely all explicit content 24/7
00:42:32 ◼ ► right like this is not a thing that I do yeah you know like I don't not all of my tv shows have sex
00:42:38 ◼ ► in them like this is not a thing but I'm not saying that I'm going to just be watching Apple's
00:42:51 ◼ ► might not be explicit but then there are other shows like your Game of Thrones which are not
00:42:58 ◼ ► there anyway they're somewhere else like currently we go to places and watch content but like people
00:43:03 ◼ ► still watch content on NBC right people still watch content on network television that they
00:43:07 ◼ ► really enjoy like Brooklyn Nine-Nine one of my favorite tv shows it's on NBC there's very little
00:43:13 ◼ ► hardcore sex and nudity in Brooklyn Nine-Nine so it's like I I don't I understand why people think
00:43:19 ◼ ► this but I don't think that it means they won't make good stuff they'll just make good stuff that
00:43:25 ◼ ► meets certain guidelines of maturity so there's still good content to be in that area maybe I
00:43:31 ◼ ► think it's a question because of whether it is something that the tv guys are running based on
00:43:36 ◼ ► a premise and they accepted that premise when they came and they're like here's what we're going to do
00:43:40 ◼ ► because we don't know what this what the brand promise of Apple tv is going to be right and who
00:43:44 ◼ ► their target audience is we don't know anything about it we are we are making guesses and it's
00:43:48 ◼ ► very easy to say it's going to be Netflix or it's going to be HBO but it's probably not it's probably
00:43:52 ◼ ► going to be a little bit different and they're going to position it as something that is great
00:43:55 ◼ ► for families great for people who've got kids and also for adults but it's not going to be you know
00:44:03 ◼ ► there is also the argument that again full credit to Christina for pointing this out we we've talked
00:44:08 ◼ ► about it before in the expensive NBC conversation which is sometimes we hear from a lot of people
00:44:13 ◼ ► who are like well wait a second I don't like those shows that have like really brutal violence and
00:44:18 ◼ ► nudity and sex I prefer stuff that that is not quite as hard core as that right and and and why
00:44:28 ◼ ► are you saying that if it doesn't have violence and sex it's not any good and that's not what we're
00:44:33 ◼ ► saying I think there's an audience for it but there are other audiences what the concern is
00:44:37 ◼ ► is that a lot of the best tv creators want complete freedom and when you're recruiting somebody to
00:44:47 ◼ ► to do a show for you and you may think well I'm writing them a check shouldn't they be happy the
00:44:53 ◼ ► challenge is that Netflix and Amazon and others are also bidding for their work if they are a
00:44:58 ◼ ► a-list creator and if Netflix says we won't give you any content notes make what you want
00:45:06 ◼ ► that is different and better than Apple saying we have we have a level of standard that you need to
00:45:13 ◼ ► know about we're not going to allow nudity and we're not going to allow violence beyond a certain
00:45:18 ◼ ► point and sex beyond a certain point and you have to be okay with that and if you're an a-list
00:45:22 ◼ ► creator and you look at these offers and they're very similar you're probably going to take the
00:45:26 ◼ ► one that gives you complete freedom because then you just don't have to hassle you you you can do
00:45:29 ◼ ► whatever you want not necessarily even that you're planning or that your show needs gratuitous nudity
00:45:36 ◼ ► but that you like the idea that you've got in Netflix or Amazon a partner with a track record
00:45:41 ◼ ► of letting people do the kind of stuff they want to do and with Apple you're like ah they're going
00:45:46 ◼ ► to give me a hassle so we're in this but nothing succeeds like success right so Apple right now has
00:45:52 ◼ ► got a lot of people who basically saw the size of the check and are taking them on faith so it's
00:45:57 ◼ ► money and a little bit of faith but it's it's mostly the money right at some point if Apple
00:46:03 ◼ ► launches this and the content is good and it's a successful thing then it will be known what you do
00:46:09 ◼ ► when you make an Apple show and you'll look at it and you'll look at the money but you'll also look
00:46:13 ◼ ► at oh I have now heard positive things from colleagues and I've seen the content and now I can
00:46:20 ◼ ► I can go in there and I can trust them on the flip side if you if they launch the stuff and it's not
00:46:26 ◼ ► very good and it's really generic and it's like warmed over network TV and there are lots of
00:46:30 ◼ ► stories about people getting stuff taken out because Apple said it was not appropriate for
00:46:34 ◼ ► their audience then it will be that much harder for Apple to sign top level talent so that's I
00:46:39 ◼ ► think that's the issue that is just outstanding and we're going to have to find out about because
00:46:44 ◼ ► it's not that they can't make this work it's just how they approach it and how they execute and and
00:46:49 ◼ ► as I said to Christina on Twitter in the end the the argument here is Apple might might be bad might
00:46:55 ◼ ► do this badly and then it'll be bad and then it'll be a failure and it's like that is that is
00:47:00 ◼ ► absolutely a possibility yeah but that's true of anything right like you have to execute in the end
00:47:08 ◼ ► and the the creative people behind them had a terrible experience then very clearly they will
00:47:14 ◼ ► have blown it but we just don't know now we have some guesses but in the end you know it could go
00:47:20 ◼ ► either way yeah and I think that this is changing a lot of our perceptions of how they operate and
00:47:26 ◼ ► it's going to continue to because this is like a totally very very different world and yeah people
00:47:31 ◼ ► have a hard time wrapping their head around the idea that Apple is Apple is doing this and and
00:47:35 ◼ ► again you get the you get the carpool karaoke and planet of the apps things a lot from people who
00:47:39 ◼ ► are who are basically saying you know Apple already tried tv and it was a disaster it's a very
00:47:44 ◼ ► different story this time but I get the idea that it's very hard to shake the perception that these
00:47:49 ◼ ► are computer people making tv yeah I mean a lot of the time all you've got is what you've seen
00:47:53 ◼ ► right and if that's what you've seen I mean Netflix was a logistics company they basically
00:47:58 ◼ ► they they were a tech company in that they could build a website and a logistics company in that
00:48:02 ◼ ► they had warehouses with DVDs right and they became Netflix as we know today they are essentially a
00:48:09 ◼ ► tech and logistics company that turned the corner into producing original content and then a
00:48:14 ◼ ► streaming technology company right when they went to streaming originally but then they started
00:48:17 ◼ ► creating all their own originals and they became Netflix they did it Amazon again is a tech and
00:48:23 ◼ ► logistics company who hired a bunch of people to run a studio to make stuff and now they have
00:48:29 ◼ ► successfully done that so it's not like this hasn't happened before and the reality is the
00:48:34 ◼ ► tech companies have the money Sony just their CEO just announced to some surprise this didn't even
00:48:40 ◼ ► make it in our headlines but to some surprise at CES that Sony he the new CEO is like wanting to
00:48:46 ◼ ► double down on Sony as an entertainment company as a maker of video games and streaming services
00:48:52 ◼ ► and as a movie studio and that is people everybody thought that they would just sell it off and get
00:48:57 ◼ ► out of the business but again you know Sony is tech company they they see the value of being in
00:49:04 ◼ ► the entertainment industry so this is not the only time a company has tried to do this what Apple is
00:49:09 ◼ ► doing right now it's very different for Apple and they may not succeed at it but if you think of
00:49:15 ◼ ► Apple as a company that only can make good hardware that's fair but they also have a lot
00:49:22 ◼ ► of cash in which they can set up entirely new businesses and take a shot and that's what they're
00:49:27 ◼ ► doing so we'll see how it goes but it is it's not it's not Apple you know Apple took the name
00:49:32 ◼ ► computer off of their company more than 10 years ago they're a different company now and they
00:49:39 ◼ ► continue to grow and change and do things in the last two years you and I have done a lot of shows
00:49:43 ◼ ► where we've said here's what we expect from Apple because they've done it the same way the last few
00:49:47 ◼ ► years and been surprised when they did something different Apple's not playing by their old rule
00:49:51 ◼ ► book anymore they're and I think that's good because I think complacency is will be the death
00:49:57 ◼ ► of any company especially a company that's been as massively successful and profitable as Apple so I
00:50:02 ◼ ► like that they're trying other stuff I we also yes should we also still be critical of how they're
00:50:08 ◼ ► handling the Mac and iOS and things like that sure but when you've got hundreds hundreds of or
00:50:14 ◼ ► a hundred billion dollars in the bank you know the people who are programming Apple TV are not
00:50:19 ◼ ► designing keyboards for laptops these are separate businesses and yeah and people have a hard time
00:50:24 ◼ ► keeping those things apart right people are like oh why are they doing a TV thing when they should
00:50:28 ◼ ► be making better laptops it's like well you know those are different things they should be making
00:50:34 ◼ ► a TV thing and making better laptops and one part of their group is over here doing a and the other
00:50:39 ◼ ► part is doing b and you know your criticism of b really doesn't have anything to do with a I don't
00:50:44 ◼ ► think Tim Cook is skipping the meeting about the the MacBook keyboard in order to watch his screeners
00:50:51 ◼ ► of the new Ron Moore space drama right well that's that is what we expect anyway I think Tim was
00:50:59 ◼ ► watching his screeners when he's on his uh his stationary bike at 5 a.m I think that's probably
00:51:04 ◼ ► what he's doing oh and he's flying to Europe for to meet people yeah um we we stated this I want
00:51:10 ◼ ► to reiterate it because it's a lead into the next part even though we'll take a break because like
00:51:14 ◼ ► the reason they are doing this my primary reason they are doing this is to appease Wall Street
00:51:22 ◼ ► so Apple need to show growth and one of the ways they will show revenue growth is in getting their
00:51:30 ◼ ► existing customers to give them more money right it's very important for the game that Apple has
00:51:35 ◼ ► played and I mean it wasn't Tim, Tim didn't decide to put uh to make Apple public but this is where
00:51:41 ◼ ► they are they have to appease Wall Street it's kind of his job to do that so one of the ways
00:51:45 ◼ ► they're going to do it is they're saying we're going to increase the services revenue and part
00:51:48 ◼ ► of the services revenue is making people pay them more money for more stuff and this way especially
00:51:53 ◼ ► by doing what they're doing now they can make their existing customers pay but isn't it also
00:51:57 ◼ ► nice that now you don't need to be an Apple customer to watch their content you just need
00:52:01 ◼ ► a Samsung TV and probably a Fire TV box so they can get Android customers to pay for their content
00:52:06 ◼ ► too so this is a way for Apple to get more money and viewed a certain way Apple launching a TV
00:52:14 ◼ ► service is literally no different than Apple doing research into AR glasses or cars or anything else
00:52:23 ◼ ► they're doing what happened three years ago when they announced that thing about services revenue
00:52:27 ◼ ► that shows you that Apple internally has been talking because of Wall Street because they're
00:52:32 ◼ ► a public company and Wall Street is concerned with growth about the obvious end of the road for
00:52:39 ◼ ► massive iPhone revenue growth and sales growth right the end of the ride I wrote a whole thing
00:52:45 ◼ ► at Tom's Guide and we'll talk about it in our next segment I suspect about Apple and the iPhone
00:52:50 ◼ ► but like it's been very clear for a long time that Apple knows that their massive engine for
00:52:56 ◼ ► revenue growth that Wall Street has loved is going to stop and it's going to be profitable but it's
00:53:02 ◼ ► not going to be growth like they're used to and so they have been placing lots of long-term bets
00:53:08 ◼ ► on other ways they could raise revenue to grow revenue beyond the iPhone and this is one of those
00:53:14 ◼ ► bets but those all the money that they spent on Project Titan whether or not there's ever anything
00:53:20 ◼ ► that comes out of it that was one of those bets too this is just more visible because they're
00:53:23 ◼ ► spending money and paying Hollywood people and making deals with TV manufacturers but it's all
00:53:28 ◼ ► the same in the end which is how do we find new ways to grow Apple because you know the fact is
00:53:34 ◼ ► although a lot of Apple fans would like Apple to just sort of stick to its knitting and focus on
00:53:41 ◼ ► making computers and maybe phones and iPads forever the fact is as a public company they
00:53:48 ◼ ► basically can't they basically can't the pressure to continue showing revenue growth is enormous and
00:53:54 ◼ ► you know we could argue about whether that is healthy for any company who's incredibly profitable
00:53:59 ◼ ► to be forced to show revenue growth but that's just how the welcome to capitalism this is where
00:54:04 ◼ ► we are so they're going to take that cash hoard that they've got and invest in a whole bunch of
00:54:08 ◼ ► stuff and hope that some of that stuff hits it doesn't all have to hit but hope that some of that
00:54:13 ◼ ► stuff hits and continues to be the engine that fuels revenue growth even as the iPhone is just
00:54:19 ◼ ► throwing off profits you could think of it that way in fact and we'll talk about this more in the
00:54:22 ◼ ► next segment that you know the cash generated by the stable profitable iPhone business is the thing
00:54:28 ◼ ► that you use to fund whatever is next. Today's show is brought to you by our friends at Luna Display
00:54:34 ◼ ► have you ever looked at your iPad and your Mac and you thought these devices should work together
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00:55:28 ◼ ► much I'll tell you something for me Jason that I did just yesterday actually I'm preparing for
00:55:33 ◼ ► this show I write out my notes for this show in Apple Notes that's tip because I'm collecting
00:55:37 ◼ ► links in there and I'm writing my notes out some stuff I write like big chunks of our outline which
00:55:42 ◼ ► I will drop in something that drives me crazy on iOS is rich text is not observed well for between
00:55:49 ◼ ► applications so if I copy a lovely bulleted list in my notes and drop it into Google Docs
00:55:55 ◼ ► it doesn't observe the bullets it just puts a bunch of asterisks in and I have to go through
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00:56:03 ◼ ► opened Apple Notes I copied it in Apple Notes pasted it into my web browser into Google Docs
00:56:08 ◼ ► and the formatting was was maintained it's like thank you Luna Display I'm so happy that I have
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00:56:28 ◼ ► it and then I can add that thing maybe on the Twitch dashboard or whatever which doesn't work
00:56:33 ◼ ► on my iPad I absolutely love my Luna Display you can use it like how I do you know you plug it into
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00:57:22 ◼ ► Luna Display for their support of this show and Relay FM. So this is I didn't realize until we
00:57:31 ◼ ► started talking about this how perfectly these two topics that we're talking about today go together
00:57:35 ◼ ► yeah I just kind of flowed into it in the last segment I was like oh uh we're talking about the
00:57:40 ◼ ► next thing now aren't we we should take a break so Apple need to continue to show an increase in
00:57:46 ◼ ► services revenue and they knew this because they knew eventually the iPhone would either flatten or
00:57:52 ◼ ► start to go down and I think to everybody's surprise it's happening right now on Wednesday
00:57:59 ◼ ► Tim Cook posted a letter to investors on apple.com that highlighted they would not meet their revenue
00:58:05 ◼ ► guidance for the holiday quarter which is the financial quarter Q1 and that they were now going
00:58:10 ◼ ► to adjust their figures Apple had previously set their revenue guidance at somewhere between 89
00:58:16 ◼ ► to 93 billion dollars for the quarter it has now been adjusted to 84 billion dollars in overall
00:58:22 ◼ ► revenue for the quarter so we're looking at a change a miscalculation of somewhere in the range
00:58:28 ◼ ► of five to nine billion dollars right that's kind of like where we're looking at they're saying it
00:58:33 ◼ ► will be 84 roundabout but they were previously projecting somewhere between 89 to 93. I'll give
00:58:39 ◼ ► some more follow-up there was a great discussion on ATP this week about this very topic luckily for
00:58:44 ◼ ► them it happened like an hour before they recorded so like yeah that was that was very pleased that
00:58:49 ◼ ► they got that interest under the wire there so let's talk about why did this happen so I should
00:58:54 ◼ ► just say like the the letter is very complex and we're trying our best to break it down right
00:59:00 ◼ ► because it is written for investors and I think as you would probably imagine and as I believe
00:59:05 ◼ ► a lot of it is written in such a way to try and hide a little bit about what might actually be
00:59:10 ◼ ► happening like Apple can talk about and I believe everything they're saying but I'm sure there's
00:59:15 ◼ ► there's a little bit in there where they're just trying to like make things look a little better
00:59:19 ◼ ► than maybe they are because this is how companies operate right like you're not gonna be completely
00:59:23 ◼ ► honest that's no there there's the um yeah the idea here is that they are trying to put the best
00:59:30 ◼ ► face on it they can yes um because although I also oh right exactly but they also have to disclose
00:59:36 ◼ ► and I think what's interesting is that even though the bulk of it is about China shortfall they if it
00:59:44 ◼ ► was really all about China's shortfall and they had no other concerns it that's what the statement
00:59:50 ◼ ► would say and it wasn't that was it took we took a header in China oh also that was the biggest that
00:59:55 ◼ ► was primarily why oh also here's a whole bunch of other things and like that is my when I first saw
01:00:01 ◼ ► it I thought well this is interesting because it sounds to me like Apple had a problem in China
01:00:05 ◼ ► with iPhone and they're using this moment to have the China thing kind of overshadow all of these
01:00:13 ◼ ► other underlying things that are going on with the iPhone and I feel like that is probably what's
01:00:18 ◼ ► going on here is right like there is weakness in the iPhone elsewhere they made some mistakes
01:00:22 ◼ ► about the iPhone elsewhere and they're they're not I think maybe even legally not allowed to just
01:00:27 ◼ ► completely sweep that stuff under the rug they need to get it out there they want your attention
01:00:31 ◼ ► on China they want your attention on the big thing and not all the other underlying things but it's
01:00:36 ◼ ► hard not to look at all the fact that they went to the trouble of mentioning them and say you know
01:00:41 ◼ ► you know yes this is a big China miss that's the primary driver here but they're also owning up to
01:00:47 ◼ ► having a lot of other issues largely regarding the iPhone more worldwide and it's so it's important
01:00:52 ◼ ► not to not to let that override the fact that there is a big miss in China but also not to
01:00:57 ◼ ► ignore the rest of it yeah because there was more right like that's what's so interesting about this
01:01:01 ◼ ► so like why why did this happen why did they meet why did they miss this so as you say China's what
01:01:07 ◼ ► they're saying is the big thing tariffs economic deceleration rising tensions with the U.S. they
01:01:12 ◼ ► give every possible reason right that that there could be a thing there's great free peace that Ben
01:01:18 ◼ ► Thompson just posted about Apple's errors he calls it his weekly piece at Stratechery and he makes the
01:01:24 ◼ ► very strong point that they should have seen this coming for a few reasons and that's actually my
01:01:29 ◼ ► biggest concern about this is at the time I remember they did this forecast I'm like wow
01:01:35 ◼ ► okay like everybody's like really great like because we trust Apple's forecasting they have
01:01:40 ◼ ► they have very rarely steered anyone wrong and as Ben Thompson wrote like number one on the agenda
01:01:47 ◼ ► should be the last time Apple followed up a super fancy new phone that brought a lot of new features
01:02:02 ◼ ► six s with the bigger phone so they did the 10 and they're like oh no no no no everybody in China is
01:02:10 ◼ ► going to rush out and get the 10s like no they didn't and and I think that makes a good point
01:02:16 ◼ ► like this is not just necessarily about economic weakness in China although it's this is complicated
01:02:20 ◼ ► it's about a lot of different things but Ben's point I think is a good one which is also the
01:02:25 ◼ ► Chinese market has shown a lack of receptivity to the S model of something when they bought the
01:02:31 ◼ ► original model the previous year and that drove sales up and I think the iPhone 10 was a hit in
01:02:35 ◼ ► China but that you know what the the iPhone 6 was a hit in China and then nobody bought the 6s
01:02:40 ◼ ► because it was just the 6 with slight differences and the Chinese market seems to want more demand
01:02:46 ◼ ► more from a new iPhone if they're going to buy a new iPhone. Yeah allow me to read these two quotes
01:02:51 ◼ ► so this is one I like these two back to back because I think it shows what we're what we're
01:02:56 ◼ ► trying to say here so lower than anticipated iPhone revenue primarily in greater China accounts for
01:03:01 ◼ ► all of our revenue shortfall to our guidance and for much more than our entire year-over-year
01:03:06 ◼ ► revenue decline that is written in such a way that I don't fully understand it and I think that's kind
01:03:11 ◼ ► of the point because if that's all it was then why does it why is it then followed up by this
01:03:17 ◼ ► statement while greater China and other emerging markets accounted for the vast majority of year
01:03:22 ◼ ► over year iPhone revenue decline in some developed markets iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as
01:03:28 ◼ ► we thought they would be so what I my takeaway from this Jason with absolutely no real expertise
01:03:34 ◼ ► is that if you look at everything overall right if you the the with what happened in China
01:03:42 ◼ ► there are other parts of this that brought it down but then there are other parts in other
01:03:47 ◼ ► countries that brought it back up again so it's like that these these two things are true but the
01:03:53 ◼ ► real picture is they lost money everywhere in China they made money in other places in in other
01:03:59 ◼ ► markets that brought it back up again which is why they still have to point out the fact that there
01:04:04 ◼ ► was still enough iPhone revenue decline outside of China which made the iPhone down year over year
01:04:10 ◼ ► that's my read on this so like while greater China and other emerging markets accounted for the vast
01:04:15 ◼ ► majority of the year-over-year iPhone revenue decline in some developed markets iPhone upgrades
01:04:21 ◼ ► also were not as strong as we thought they would be now I am going to take that to mean the United
01:04:26 ◼ ► States of America and the reason I will take that is because later on when they talk about
01:04:32 ◼ ► developed markets they specifically name some but they don't specifically name any here so
01:04:39 ◼ ► why did this happen why in some developed markets did Apple sell less iPhones Apple say
01:04:46 ◼ ► macroeconomic challenges fewer carrier subsidies iPhone battery replacements these are wild to me
01:04:54 ◼ ► by the way like those last two yeah because the carrier subsidies is not a 2019 or 2018 new thing
01:05:01 ◼ ► this has been a thing that's been going on for a long time right their ongoing narrative in the in
01:05:05 ◼ ► the in the calls that they do with analysts quarterly has been that the carrier subsidies
01:05:10 ◼ ► going away has changed buyer behavior and I think that's what they're saying here I think again you
01:05:15 ◼ ► and I would probably say why did it take them quite so much by surprise I do agree with the idea that
01:05:24 ◼ ► they're trying to figure out what the new buying cycle is and the old rules don't apply and in his
01:05:30 ◼ ► CNBC interview Tim Cook did the day of this one of the things that he talked about was Apple being
01:05:36 ◼ ► more aggressive not only in those trade-in programs that you and I talked about where it's the 10r
01:05:40 ◼ ► with the trade-in and all of that that they're trying to push but also in more being more active
01:05:46 ◼ ► in pushing you know monthly plan monthly plan payments because it was really good for Apple
01:05:52 ◼ ► when the perception was that the iPhone will cost you know $300 instead of a thousand dollars even
01:05:59 ◼ ► though you were paying for it monthly for two years it was really good for Apple because it
01:06:04 ◼ ► lowered the the perceived price and so I think in the future you will regardless of what Apple does
01:06:09 ◼ ► in terms of the actual price of these iPhones I think you will see Apple be even more aggressive
01:06:15 ◼ ► in terms of having the the trade-in programs and and a and a price with a monthly fee basically like
01:06:25 ◼ ► a monthly installment plan kind of thing I think they're going to do even more of that because
01:06:30 ◼ ► their feeling is you know we can sell a lot more iPhones over time if people feel that they're
01:06:34 ◼ ► cheaper than they are by putting them on a plan like back in the subsidy days so I agree with
01:06:39 ◼ ► that the question is did they not factor that in already I guess maybe they were more optimistic
01:06:44 ◼ ► about being able to convert people it just seems like a surprise that is that somehow caught them
01:06:49 ◼ ► it comes back to what I was saying before which is I think my number one takeaway about all of
01:06:52 ◼ ► this is not like oh no the sky is falling iPhone sales are flat and and below expectation and it
01:06:58 ◼ ► was only the second most profitable Apple quarter ever right like there are problems and then there
01:07:03 ◼ ► are problems my problem with this is that Apple blew it which means that either they had no idea
01:07:10 ◼ ► and they were taken completely by surprise which is you know like did they take their eye off the
01:07:17 ◼ ► ball or they are delusional and they believe their own press releases and they think that app that
01:07:22 ◼ ► they can never go down they can only go up either way I think that's the fundamentally worst part of
01:07:28 ◼ ► this is there are lots of things that are listed in this story that they should have anticipated
01:07:34 ◼ ► and they either didn't believe it because of some delusion or they didn't see it and either way that
01:07:44 ◼ ► is concerning right that is it actually reminds me of when they released the iPhone SE and they
01:07:49 ◼ ► were like whoa we sold more of these than we thought that was a good that was a good story
01:07:55 ◼ ► but at the same time it's like how it shows you guys are out of touch with your customers because
01:08:01 ◼ ► you should have anticipated that this phone would have demand and even though you released it you
01:08:05 ◼ ► didn't believe in it so I'm having one of those moments here which is why did you miss this because
01:08:12 ◼ ► a lot of this stuff does not seem unforeseeable the iPhone battery replacement program is a similar
01:08:18 ◼ ► thing it's like that's been going on for like a year guys you should know how it's been going
01:08:25 ◼ ► yeah this should not have been a surprise this in the last two years I think this is bull uh
01:08:31 ◼ ► here's my thinking on this right okay one how many could it really have been now let's imagine
01:08:37 ◼ ► it's hundreds of millions right it's not going to affect revenue growth the fact that the batteries
01:08:42 ◼ ► were replaced or that apple may have been doing the battery replacements at a loss that's an
01:08:46 ◼ ► operating cost it's not a revenue thing right you don't subtract the amount of money that it costs
01:08:50 ◼ ► them to replace these batteries from iphone revenue right like I feel I've seen a lot of
01:08:54 ◼ ► people talking about that these are not the same thing right like Tim is not saying we were taking
01:09:05 ◼ ► saying with this is like people replacing their batteries means that they didn't buy new phones
01:09:12 ◼ ► now there are a bunch of issues in that right which is like one so you were coasting for years
01:09:18 ◼ ► on the idea that people needed new phones because their batteries were bad right but the other part
01:09:25 ◼ ► is if somebody decides that they're going to put a new battery in their old phone and this is better
01:09:31 ◼ ► for them than the new phone does that say something about the new phone like what does that say like
01:09:38 ◼ ► my feeling is the phones are too expensive and that's what's happened here yeah I think it's
01:09:43 ◼ ► I think it's all those things I think this is it's really funny to think that this uh this new story
01:09:51 ◼ ► about battery so let's let's even rephrase this a decision made in iphone engineering in power
01:09:57 ◼ ► management to solve the problem of of old iphone batteries not being able to hold the charge and
01:10:04 ◼ ► causing spontaneous shutdowns which was really annoying and their response was we can fix this
01:10:10 ◼ ► by throttling and then everybody has a better experience because while their phone is slow and
01:10:16 ◼ ► that's not great at least it stays functional and it doesn't you flip open the camera and it dies
01:10:22 ◼ ► which was the most common thing is a flip open the camera or video and it dies because now it's got a
01:10:28 ◼ ► spike it needs more battery more power than the battery can give it and it shuts itself down
01:10:42 ◼ ► gate story which led to apple changing its ui and and getting lots of bad press but it also led to
01:10:51 ◼ ► apple doing a very i would say very steve jobsian thing which is like fine fine get have another
01:10:57 ◼ ► bat have a cheap battery and and that may have been at a loss yeah that had a lot of fallout
01:11:03 ◼ ► because um i've talked to people who work in the apple retail stores and since that battery program
01:11:08 ◼ ► was announced the whole year they were completely swamped with battery replacements like it is it
01:11:15 ◼ ► like it completely changed the complexion of at least the people i've talked to of their stores
01:11:20 ◼ ► where they have people frantically working on this massive influx of people who are bringing in things
01:11:26 ◼ ► and keeping on keep in mind this is this is retail employees being uh focused not on people who are
01:11:32 ◼ ► buying phones but on people who are uh doing something that apple's taking a loss on possibly
01:11:38 ◼ ► so there's there's a lot of loss going on because of this program and in the end what and i you know
01:11:45 ◼ ► i don't know about you but i kept hearing people from people in december who are like oh yeah i'm
01:11:49 ◼ ► i gotta take my phone in before december 31st yep for the battery replacement like i knew many
01:11:55 ◼ ► people who did that and so like what we've done here apple you have inadvertently educated the
01:12:03 ◼ ► market that the when your iphone is old uh get a new battery and i do think um that in a tech bubble
01:12:13 ◼ ► we miss how people really use their iphones and i think the the i saw a thread about this on twitter
01:12:21 ◼ ► that i thought was really good which is if you if you look at uh my friends who are not in the tech
01:12:25 ◼ ► bubble do this too like so many of them have broken iphones that they still use you know iphones with
01:12:32 ◼ ► shattered screens that they still use this idea that you know you you just replace your iphone
01:12:38 ◼ ► every year or two like in the real world a lot of people try to stretch their iphone as long as they
01:12:44 ◼ ► can because they will like the new phone when they get it but they the old one works fine and they
01:12:49 ◼ ► just want to keep using it for as long as possible and the battery replacement program is like a shot
01:12:54 ◼ ► in the arm right it's like oh i didn't even know i could just get the battery replaced and now it's
01:12:58 ◼ ► faster and it lasts longer i'm never going to need a new iphone right and and so there has been this
01:13:04 ◼ ► uh interesting educational process where apple inadvertently has educated everybody who's
01:13:09 ◼ ► interested in getting the longest life out of their iphones that they can do that by paying
01:13:13 ◼ ► you know 29 or 59 or whatever the the final you know new 2019 rate is it's still a pretty good
01:13:18 ◼ ► deal and way better than buying a new iphone and they burden their retail store in the process which
01:13:23 ◼ ► is really great so so yeah and then the more you raise the price of the iphone the more the weight
01:13:32 ◼ ► goes toward putting off an upgrade so it's both of those things i see a lot of this as like they
01:13:38 ◼ ► inadvertently dug their own grave on this situation because i saw steve trout and smith
01:13:46 ◼ ► mentioned this this is the same year where ios 12 made old phones run better uh-huh at the same time
01:13:54 ◼ ► they're giving you batteries to make them last longer people aren't buying as many new phones
01:13:59 ◼ ► it's like if you think about it right now i don't like i'm not trying to build a conspiracy theory
01:14:03 ◼ ► here but like there is this idea of like this planned obsolescence right like people have a
01:14:07 ◼ ► belief that their phones are only supposed to last an amount of time then they get a new one
01:14:11 ◼ ► so what that actually translated into is people's phones would would get slow they would start dying
01:14:16 ◼ ► so they buy a new phone right but like so what was actually happening is that was happening people's
01:14:22 ◼ ► phones were were crapping out on them so they buy a new one but now there are these two things
01:14:27 ◼ ► which mean their i older iphones run better so they're not buying the new phones especially when
01:14:33 ◼ ► the new iphones are really expensive so it's one of these things you mentioned earlier about apple
01:14:38 ◼ ► knowing their customers maybe this means they didn't know why people they thought everyone was
01:14:43 ◼ ► buying these new phones every year because they were amazing and new and they loved them so much
01:14:48 ◼ ► what it actually turned out was they were only lasting them two years so they had to buy a new
01:14:52 ◼ ► one yeah yeah that's i think there is some truth in that um i do think you mentioned the ios 12 stuff
01:14:59 ◼ ► you know based on what they said on stage i i kind of feel like this is actually apple's long game
01:15:06 ◼ ► apple's long game is we we are going to i mean they set it on stage we want you to be able to use
01:15:13 ◼ ► use the iphone as long as possible we want to extend that life because we want you to feel good
01:15:18 ◼ ► about having that but unsaid there are a couple of things one is we want to keep the resale value high
01:15:23 ◼ ► because we want to get you in a new iphone and if the old iphone value stays up because it continues
01:15:32 ◼ ► to be useful that trade-in will give you some trading value you're more motivated to buy and
01:15:36 ◼ ► then we will take that and we will we will do something else with it that that makes us more
01:15:40 ◼ ► money so that's number one and then number two is um oh you only want to buy an iphone every four or
01:15:46 ◼ ► five years well we're going to start making thousand dollar iphones like and so instead of
01:15:53 ◼ ► you buying a 500 dollar iphone every two years you're going to buy a thousand dollar iphone every
01:15:57 ◼ ► four years the problem with that is sticker shock it's easier to do if you're on a program if you
01:16:03 ◼ ► literally just pay apple monthly for four years or three years or two years to get a new iphone
01:16:09 ◼ ► but when you have to write a check for a thousand dollars it's a lot harder to buy that phone and
01:16:16 ◼ ► and so those two things work so like i get what they're doing which is if this is if phones are
01:16:21 ◼ ► not disposable and they need to be kept for many years why don't we make them better and
01:16:27 ◼ ► nicer and that way we keep our revenue and you keep having a great phone that can last a long
01:16:32 ◼ ► time and everybody wins and the problem is i think consumers are saying yeah but that's still too
01:16:38 ◼ ► much money i'll just hang on to my phone for a little bit longer and the and the cycle gets
01:16:43 ◼ ► longer and it seems to me like maybe apple's calculation about that either hit them too soon
01:16:48 ◼ ► or like you know like this was the plan but they didn't expect it to be this year or whatever right
01:16:53 ◼ ► you know because i do feel like underlying all of this i mean we've been talking about it here but
01:16:57 ◼ ► underlying all of this is i get the sense that amid all of these other things they probably
01:17:04 ◼ ► made a mistake on pricing they probably pushed it a little too far i uncategorically now believe
01:17:11 ◼ ► that like i i thought it and like you know it's like because here's the thing and again this is
01:17:15 ◼ ► super anecdotal but everyone that i know outside of the tech bubble that i've spoken to about this
01:17:20 ◼ ► week i've gone yeah of course because the phones are too expensive yeah exactly every and this
01:17:24 ◼ ► isn't like a perception thing those phones are way too expensive like we all knew this we knew this
01:17:31 ◼ ► and it's like this idea of like oh well they're made out of stainless steel yeah but you chose
01:17:35 ◼ ► to make them out of stainless steel right like that didn't happen exactly well and the iphone 10
01:17:39 ◼ ► and this is the other piece and something that ben thompson mentioned is like you talk about the 10r
01:17:43 ◼ ► which is like it's nice that they made a cheaper phone although again it's not really cheaper
01:17:47 ◼ ► because it's the cost of the old iphone 7 plus right it's not cheaper it's like multiple hundreds
01:17:53 ◼ ► of dollars more than the phone was in its place previously exactly 750 for that but there's the
01:17:59 ◼ ► other piece which is apple has cultivated uh an audience of people who want the best that's why
01:18:03 ◼ ► they go with apple is they want the best and the 10r isn't the best the 10s is the best so a lot of
01:18:09 ◼ ► people even though the 10r is a really great phone i think there's some buying psychology there where
01:18:12 ◼ ► people look at the 10 and they're like yeah but no i'm gonna get the 10 or 10s or the 10s max so
01:18:17 ◼ ► that's going on too that adds complication um their decision to release the 10 10 the 10 and then the
01:18:26 ◼ ► 10s and 10s max was a decision to build this ultra premium phone at a high price and i actually i
01:18:34 ◼ ► think i i understand that maybe that phone is super expensive to make and as a result they want
01:18:40 ◼ ► to price it high the problem is that if your audience only wants the best iphone and you've
01:18:44 ◼ ► made a super best iphone that costs too much for a lot of your audience you lose your audience right
01:18:49 ◼ ► like the idea that you can create an edition right a watch edition but if the only people who will
01:18:55 ◼ ► buy your product always want the best and the best is now overpriced it's priced out of their price
01:19:01 ◼ ► range then they just don't buy right i think there's some maybe some psychology here that they
01:19:06 ◼ ► that they missed i don't know i mean we're all speculating about this on the outside but that's
01:19:10 ◼ ► that that is my gut feeling is that is that they've been look let me take you back two years
01:19:17 ◼ ► remember when we heard the first rumors about the iphone 10 and the idea that they were going to
01:19:23 ◼ ► release two phones they were going to release or three phones a 10 and an 8 basically um and you
01:19:29 ◼ ► and i had a long conversation on this show about how risky it was that apple was tinkering with the
01:19:36 ◼ ► iphone because it's their it's their most important product and it's like super risky to change
01:19:41 ◼ ► pricing and confuse the market with like two different models and are people going to buy the
01:19:46 ◼ ► eight if there's a 10 or are they going to buy the 10 if there's an eight and all of this stuff
01:19:51 ◼ ► and this goes back to our previous segment too like why why risk it and the answer is because
01:19:58 ◼ ► they they knew that all these factors that they just said in this report that they were
01:20:05 ◼ ► surprised by they knew all of this stuff was happening they knew that the that the carrier
01:20:09 ◼ ► subsidies were going away and that uh that the the lifespan of your iphone was going to be longer
01:20:16 ◼ ► because people weren't going to want to uh buy on a two-year uh contract anymore like they did with
01:20:21 ◼ ► their cellular plans and they knew all of these things and so this was all part of their strategy
01:20:25 ◼ ► to change the iphone pricing and get more revenue out of it so that they could keep growing revenue
01:20:30 ◼ ► even when sales were flattening they like knew all of this that's why they made these huge risks and
01:20:37 ◼ ► with this this year's models i think it might be fair to say this is what we kind of were worried
01:20:42 ◼ ► about the previous year which is they made a bunch of changes to how they market and sell iphone
01:20:47 ◼ ► models and they they got some it looks like they got some things wrong and uh what will be most
01:20:56 ◼ ► interesting in 2019 is to see if they recalibrate because as several people enjoy pointing out apple
01:21:04 ◼ ► does plan these things years in advance so like at this point if they really did get taken by
01:21:09 ◼ ► surprise and released this statement saying they did like can they change their plans for 2019
01:21:16 ◼ ► are they locked into a bad plan and if they can how do they do that that it's going to be really
01:21:20 ◼ ► interesting to see because i think you and i both agree that they they made some very interesting
01:21:26 ◼ ► moves this year and some of the feedback they got from the market is you know the consumers is they
01:21:33 ◼ ► pushed it too far so they did give some indication about something that they're going to be trying
01:21:39 ◼ ► as kind of like a let's try and put a happy face on this but before we get to that let me thank
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01:23:50 ◼ ► all right so a couple of quotes how are they going to fix this we are undertaking and accelerating
01:23:57 ◼ ► other initiatives to improve our results is point one and then the only thing that tim gives us is
01:24:05 ◼ ► one such initiative is making it simple to trade in a phone in our stores finance the purchase over
01:24:10 ◼ ► time and get help transferring the data from the current to the new phone this is not only great
01:24:14 ◼ ► for the environment it's great for the customer their existing phone acts as a subsidy for their
01:24:18 ◼ ► new phone and it's great for developers as it can help grow our install base that developer's point
01:24:22 ◼ ► i don't even get it it's like whatever like you're just throwing something in there for funsies at
01:24:25 ◼ ► this point jason can i say some follow-up from previous weeks when we were talking about all
01:24:30 ◼ ► those banners and we tried to to position it as like maybe the iphone isn't in trouble but it's
01:24:35 ◼ ► this this and this i think we can say now they were there because the sales weren't good right
01:24:39 ◼ ► like i feel like we can say that now like they were struggling they knew they were struggling
01:24:44 ◼ ► and they were trying to juice the sales going into the holiday season by selling more phones
01:24:52 ◼ ► overarching thing which is part of the idea of pricing a phone that high is that then you have
01:24:57 ◼ ► to start getting trade-ins but would they have had the giant price with the asterisk in it if
01:25:01 ◼ ► they weren't needing to boost the moving of phones i think this says that that's that's exactly right
01:25:06 ◼ ► right is that they they had that moment where like wow we need to be way more aggressive at finding
01:25:10 ◼ ► a way to sell people this phone for not the full price because they're not buying it at full price
01:25:15 ◼ ► and you know that's that's the truth of it i think the the yeah pricing it that high like if they've
01:25:23 ◼ ► got room to room to discount it that's good like i feel like when you see uh like target or best
01:25:30 ◼ ► buy or something have an apple device for a hundred dollars off one of that's one of the
01:25:34 ◼ ► advantages of the high prices that they're setting is that they can do discounts that they couldn't
01:25:38 ◼ ► do before but in this case being this aggressive about it somebody saw the numbers in november and
01:25:43 ◼ ► was like oh no and then they're like what can we do what can we do and i would imagine by this time
01:25:48 ◼ ► by by the fall when they launch new iphones again that we're going to see this we're we're going to
01:26:09 ◼ ► and and trading offers and they're going to be super aggressive about it's like a it's like a
01:26:14 ◼ ► buying a car right they're going to be like what can i do to get you to leave here today with an
01:26:18 ◼ ► iphone what can i do to get you a new iphone today exactly right so so it'll be like well you've got
01:26:24 ◼ ► what phone do you have now oh you have an eight or you have a seven well uh you can get this for
01:26:29 ◼ ► this price and uh or you could get this for with you trading your seven for twenty dollars a month
01:26:38 ◼ ► for two years and we'll set you up right here like and if i'm apple and apple retail right i am
01:26:45 ◼ ► investing huge amounts of time and money right now in a strategy that will let you know the
01:26:52 ◼ ► upgrade experience the apple has done you and i did that show a long time ago about how
01:26:58 ◼ ► frustrating it was to buy a new iphone on the on the back side because you had to transfer your
01:27:02 ◼ ► data and all of that and it's echoed here a little bit which is the buying it at the apple store
01:27:07 ◼ ► can still be frustrating especially with the sticker shock that's there now so this is the next
01:27:12 ◼ ► way to make the getting a new iphone experience to be uh be better and it serves apple because it
01:27:19 ◼ ► sells more new iphones which is can we make it super easy that if you walk into the store and
01:27:24 ◼ ► say i want a new iphone for them to be like do do do uh you know you're signed up for this thing
01:27:29 ◼ ► we'll bill you every month uh we transferred your data and here's your phone and you walk out like
01:27:35 ◼ ► the the slicker they can make that the better that'll that'll be for them and the better that
01:27:39 ◼ ► they'll be able to make a sale whether they can do that all without also cutting the the retail price
01:27:44 ◼ ► is interesting i will say i never thought apple would stop reporting sales figures and they did
01:27:51 ◼ ► that so it wouldn't surprise me if apple starts not marketing the full price anymore if apple
01:27:57 ◼ ► just stops talking about 999 right get a new iphone from 499 right yeah 349 with the standard 20
01:28:06 ◼ ► also i'll say if they do an apple prime subscription service um does that fit in here where you can just
01:28:13 ◼ ► say you know apple prime customers can come in and get it for and that built into apple prime is a
01:28:19 ◼ ► two-year iphone thing i mean there's lots of things that they could do but i i do wonder if at the very
01:28:25 ◼ ► least that you're just not going to see apple market the full price of their phones anymore
01:28:29 ◼ ► like like back in the day when there were carrier subsidies and you could buy an unlocked phone
01:28:33 ◼ ► for 699 but who does that that's crazy um you know we're we've entered this era where that
01:28:41 ◼ ► unlocked price is the price everybody sees and it's really bad for apple we should actually do
01:28:47 ◼ ► some ask upgrade questions to finish out today's episode and and i think of this mainly because we
01:28:53 ◼ ► have a question from ted here and ted says if apple would introduce apple prime during the next
01:28:58 ◼ ► iphone launch including like you get an iphone you get apple care apple music and apple tv the video
01:29:04 ◼ ► service and news for say like a couple hundred dollars a month do you think that this is something
01:29:09 ◼ ► that would entice people i'll also include in the links uh an article from mg seagull where mg wrote
01:29:15 ◼ ► about all of this sort of stuff a while back and kind of followed it up recently with this stuff
01:29:20 ◼ ► one do you think this is something that will exist and two is it something that would interest you
01:29:29 ◼ ► something that is worth it what what you really want to do is make a bundle that has things in
01:29:33 ◼ ► it that people want and then they get some other stuff that they didn't want but maybe they use
01:29:38 ◼ ► out of it um and you know so like for me i look at this and like well what would i use and what
01:29:46 ◼ ► would i not use out of it and i'm i am paying for apple music i am going to pay for apple video i
01:29:50 ◼ ► am paying for icloud storage i don't generally pay for apple care but if i could pay apple monthly
01:29:59 ◼ ► a fee that seemed reasonable and get all of that and potentially yeah potentially get uh you you
01:30:06 ◼ ► would probably have to add in devices right because there's so different many different device levels
01:30:10 ◼ ► so the price would change what you would pay as a monthly but the idea is that all the other apple
01:30:15 ◼ ► services it's basically the iphone plan upgrade plan with apple services rolled into it on top
01:30:22 ◼ ► and i could do that for my ipad and they would just add in another monthly fee for that and there'd be
01:30:26 ◼ ► a predictable thing i'd think about it i'd think about it just services alone i would think about
01:30:32 ◼ ► it because i i kind of don't love the fact that i get you know a bunch of individual charges
01:30:37 ◼ ► apple invoices every week from different parts of apple it seems like a waste i would really like to
01:30:43 ◼ ► just sort of know what i'm paying them and what i'm getting out of it but i i get that there's a
01:30:47 ◼ ► lot of complexity here um and i think also if you're somebody who is not comfortable putting
01:30:53 ◼ ► down a credit card for a thousand dollar piece of hardware the idea that you have an understandable
01:31:00 ◼ ► expense that you know you're going to be paying x per month for two years instead of having that
01:31:05 ◼ ► giant expense up front that for a lot of people that that is something that they're a lot more
01:31:10 ◼ ► comfortable with so i think i i i feel like apple at some point has to bundle their services
01:31:15 ◼ ► together in some way um i don't know what way that would be but you know when they add video and they
01:31:21 ◼ ► add the the news stuff that they're doing it starts to feel like they have so many different services
01:31:27 ◼ ► that surely one way you make people tied even more tightly to your ecosystem in a services
01:31:40 ◼ ► i i'm starting to look at stuff like this and i feel like it seems inevitable now as a way to
01:31:45 ◼ ► solve the two issues that they have right like you get people on these plans and they'll just keep
01:31:50 ◼ ► getting new phones every time rather you can they just keep rolling up to a new one um and then so
01:31:55 ◼ ► then you have even more phones in the chain to sell at cheaper prices when they roll out of those
01:32:00 ◼ ► year or two year long contracts and it also puts more money into your services because people get
01:32:06 ◼ ► in the services because the only way to get the phones on these rolling contracts is to do them
01:32:10 ◼ ► in the bundles like i see all of that together as like a yeah okay i think i can see all that
01:32:16 ◼ ► happening our next question comes from adam adam wants to know jason when you're editing
01:32:22 ◼ ► ferrite what is the best way to get large audio files onto your ipad so i used to use usb all the
01:32:28 ◼ ► time um you know you attach your ipad to your mac via usb you open itunes you go to the ipad you go
01:32:33 ◼ ► to file sharing you pick ferrite and then you drag the files in which is a terrible interface
01:32:41 ◼ ► and i wish apple would would change it however now i'm starting to think apple will never change it
01:32:45 ◼ ► because uh i have stopped doing that i airdrop the files i bring my ipad over to my my iMac and
01:32:54 ◼ ► i use airdrop and airdrop will if i if they're all the same file type so if i've got waves of
01:33:00 ◼ ► waves of every file that is going in the podcast i can select them all and drag them over to my iMac
01:33:06 ◼ ► or my ipad with airdrop from my iMac and airdrop goes really fast when it's it's a dedicated direct
01:33:13 ◼ ► connection it goes really fast it's not quite as fast as the wired connection but it's really fast
01:33:18 ◼ ► and the nicest part is that ios is much better at accepting airdrops than it used to be so when i
01:33:24 ◼ ► get those files over a dialog box pops up and says what app would you like these files in and it knows
01:33:32 ◼ ► that the last time i used it i selected ferrite so that one's highlighted i tap ferrite ferrite
01:33:37 ◼ ► opens and all the files appear and they went straight into ferrite and that's it so um i
01:33:44 ◼ ► since i have tried that it's super easy to do and that's what i do now and if you have different file
01:33:49 ◼ ► types you have to do them separately otherwise airdrop gets confused so if i have a an aiff
01:33:54 ◼ ► along with the waves aiff has to get loaded separately by a separate airdrop but otherwise
01:34:00 ◼ ► it's a it's really straightforward and um and so yeah i'm using that now i don't want to use like
01:34:05 ◼ ► icloud drive or anything like that because what ends up happening is that i have to upload those
01:34:09 ◼ ► files all the way up to the cloud even in my house and then download them back from the cloud in my
01:34:13 ◼ ► house and it's stupid that's just a waste of time and i don't need them then then i can delete them
01:34:18 ◼ ► from them there's no point in doing that so airdrop uh you would be surprised what stuff you can
01:34:22 ◼ ► airdrop to ios if you haven't tried it in a while it's uh it's pretty versatile in accepting files
01:34:28 ◼ ► via airdrop so that's what i use now and finally today richard says i'm trying to make a shortcut
01:34:34 ◼ ► that can add text to an existing note in the notes app and i'm sure that i'm sharing with other
01:34:38 ◼ ► people do you know a way this is really i this is a great frustration for me um apple notes does not
01:34:44 ◼ ► let you append to notes right i have a note shortcut so what i'll do is like if i want to
01:34:51 ◼ ► add something like a url or whatever um i will open the shortcut and take the url then i have
01:34:58 ◼ ► a little menu pop up that says what note do you want this to go into and tap it and it just opens
01:35:03 ◼ ► the note and then i have to paste it it's not great this is based on something that federico
01:35:07 ◼ ► built like it's not the perfect way to do it but for now that's all it can be i really hope that
01:35:12 ◼ ► a shortcut gets added in the future to append to a note that i would love that because i'm doing this
01:35:21 ◼ ► let you do it so bear and evernote both have shortcuts to append to existing notes so i know
01:35:28 ◼ ► that you were saying that you share with people evernote has sharing functions it's up to you if
01:35:33 ◼ ► it's that important that you would move to it but they are some options but i really do hope that
01:35:39 ◼ ► apple will add and append to uh notes shortcut in the future because that would be so great yeah
01:35:44 ◼ ► yeah i agree i think there's a way to append text to a file in icloud drive there again but that's
01:35:51 ◼ ► not work for apple notes notes which is just text file yeah because that that append to that came
01:35:57 ◼ ► from workflow the one that lets you append to a file in dropbox or whatever so that's like a
01:36:02 ◼ ► grandfather in workflow uh action so uh fingers crossed for something on notes there in the future
01:36:09 ◼ ► that would be lovely all right so that wraps up this episode of upgrade if you want to find our
01:36:14 ◼ ► show notes go to relay.fm/upgrade/227 but they should also be in your app of choice if you want
01:36:20 ◼ ► to send in a question for us to answer at the end of the show hashtag ask upgrade would really
01:36:25 ◼ ► appreciate that thank you to everybody that does um you can open the show with a hashtag snow talk
01:36:30 ◼ ► question which can be about pretty much anything by and large not tech stuff i think is my is my
01:36:35 ◼ ► preferable in most cases because we can answer those questions in ask upgrade which is why i asked
01:36:41 ◼ ► jason about mexican food today i'm not saying the word because i just can't do it if you'd like to
01:36:46 ◼ ► send in some feedback for the show you can send tweets to us or to the @_upgradefm account
01:36:52 ◼ ► but we are on twitter i am @imike jason is @jsnell j s n e double l sixcolors.com and the
01:36:59 ◼ ► incomparable.com are two places you can go to for more snail content but we both host many other
01:37:04 ◼ ► shows here at relay fm uh go to relay.fm/shows i bet that jason is gonna have all of the ces
01:37:11 ◼ ► coverage you're hoping for and download this week uh yes it's gonna be good i think we i i i
01:37:18 ◼ ► i'll promote this if you haven't looked at download this is what i did i want you to tell
01:37:29 ◼ ► relay.fm/download i think it's mica sargent and flow ion who are gonna come and join stephen
01:37:34 ◼ ► and me and we're gonna draft things from ces so people should check it out very much looking
01:37:38 ◼ ► forward to that one so if you want it if you want a draft and you want it to be about ces
01:37:42 ◼ ► the only place you can go to get it is not going to be my assumption um thank you so much to our
01:37:47 ◼ ► sponsors this week to find people at freshbooks hollow and lunar display and most of all thank