00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 509. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace,
00:00:16 ◼ ► Lada, and Vitally. It is April 22nd, 2024. My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason!
00:00:31 ◼ ► I just, you know, you were very specific on when we recorded this episode, so I thought I'd get more specific.
00:00:46 ◼ ► I usually don't say it in that order. I usually say it before I say the names of our sponsors.
00:00:56 ◼ ► Which is the only show I say the date for, you see. And so I'm still kind of like working that into my intro.
00:01:22 ◼ ► I do it for downstream and that's the reason I just say recorded on this date so people can understand that.
00:01:59 ◼ ► It's funny Mike, right before we got started we were talking about Friends and how I know that people have rewatched that.
00:02:45 ◼ ► It's not, oh, every few years I go back to this TV show at all and nor do I watch the whole thing.
00:02:52 ◼ ► We did a Buffy rewatch for the incomparable, which was fun, but that was not the same thing.
00:02:59 ◼ ► I'd say the shows that I revisit the most as kind of comfort viewing are Doctor Who and Star Trek.
00:03:11 ◼ ► And actually I've gone back and revisited Strange New Worlds as well because I love that show, the current show.
00:03:18 ◼ ► But that's very much like I just feel the vibe of I want to have this comfortable, familiar thing.
00:03:44 ◼ ► Ken Burns Baseball, which is a, what is it, 20 hour documentary about the history of baseball.
00:03:59 ◼ ► But I only really do that on Thursdays when Lauren works until eight and I'll just make myself some dinner and watch a couple hours of Ken Burns Baseball.
00:04:11 ◼ ► Mostly my rewatching comes at a comfort time of like, I'll think of an episode of Doctor Who from 2007, or I'll think of a TOS episode.
00:04:30 ◼ ► Sometimes I'll bring those with me on a trip or something, but usually it's just at home.
00:04:40 ◼ ► Sometimes it will just, I will open a video file on my Mac and watch it for 10 minutes and then close it out and go on with my day.
00:04:52 ◼ ► I have things that I keep meaning to rewatch in a more systematic way, but it just never, or almost never seems to happen.
00:04:59 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a question for us to open up a future episode of Upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your own Snell Talk question just like Sasha did.
00:05:10 ◼ ► Jason, last week we spoke about the AI pin from Humane, and then later on in the week, basically all of the conversation turned to reviews.
00:05:21 ◼ ► And it was a lot of it was focused around MKBHD's review and if, or if not, someone with MKBHD's reach should negatively review a product because it can kill said company.
00:05:39 ◼ ► And I just wondered if you had anything you wanted to add to that kind of conversation of if bad reviews kill companies and if they're ethical or not.
00:06:00 ◼ ► The bottom line, so let me, let me try to, to bottom line this to make this slightly shorter of a long story, which is, I think a lot of people in the tech industry misunderstand the role of independent reviewers and media people.
00:06:16 ◼ ► They think of them as being, some of them, not all of them, but some of them think of them mistakenly as being because they're part of their marketing plan.
00:06:31 ◼ ► The reason that the outside, the outlets have value is fundamentally because they don't just repeat what you say in your marketing.
00:06:39 ◼ ► They, if they filter it and you take a risk that they're not going to like it, but you, you stand to benefit from positive distribution to an audience that is loyal to the creators or the brands or whatever you want to, whatever it is.
00:06:53 ◼ ► Like there, there's a whole understanding there that is not that sophisticated, but it is somewhat sophisticated that, uh, there, that's the exchange is I'm not going to tell you what to write.
00:07:04 ◼ ► Uh, but if you write or speak or whatever about this product, it benefits me because it gets my product name out there.
00:07:10 ◼ ► And if you endorse it or like it, that is, uh, that's a win for me because I didn't, I couldn't control it.
00:07:26 ◼ ► I think there's this also a certain class of Silicon Valley tech industry, bro, who really believes that a they're changing the world for the better and the technology industry in general.
00:07:35 ◼ ► And B everybody in the tech industry is sort of like, we should all be in the same boat rowing in the same direction.
00:07:43 ◼ ► Um, and first off that attitude is I think fundamentally silly, but I think some of those Silicon Valley tech bros think that the tech press is part of the boat and it's not.
00:08:01 ◼ ► We're, we're doing something different and we interact, but we're not on the same team.
00:08:07 ◼ ► Now, my other big point that I wanted to make about this is people are talking about responsibility and about the power of reviewers and they're really focused on MKBHD, which is a credit to him because he is, he's so good and he deserves all his success.
00:08:26 ◼ ► It was the wall street journal or David Pogue at the New York times, like, or Steven Levy in Newsweek magazine.
00:08:32 ◼ ► Like it's, it's not just the people back in the day it was people, but it was also the brands that they represented that had a lot of, a lot of power.
00:08:42 ◼ ► We were well aware that if we gave a product a bad review, we would severely harm its sales because of who we spoke to in our market.
00:09:09 ◼ ► Because be aware that if you get it wrong, you could crush your product and it was your mistake.
00:09:16 ◼ ► We actually had a rule that if it was going to be like a two mouse review or lower, that we had our reviewers contact the vendor.
00:09:26 ◼ ► Not to warn them that a review was coming necessarily a negative review, not to get permission to say bad things about their product.
00:09:39 ◼ ► Cause you have those moments as a reviewer where you're like, it can't be MKBHD was saying this, how, you know, embargoed reviewers also talk with each other.
00:09:57 ◼ ► You, you know, that you've got a responsibility to your audience, but also just in general, you know, the power that you potentially wield over this company's product to get it right.
00:10:09 ◼ ► So I think this is healthy in the sense of everybody having a discussion about what the role of reviewers is.
00:10:23 ◼ ► Everything I write and have written for my entire career has been referred to by somebody as a review.
00:10:40 ◼ ► So anyway, I think having it, even though it was a dumb reason, an opportunity to talk about it and to make clear why we do what we do and who we serve is probably valuable.
00:11:16 ◼ ► And we're fortunate that the most powerful and best tech reviewer is also, I think, a very thoughtful, reasonable human being.
00:11:32 ◼ ► I think it's too bad that he got singled out here, but at the same time, I think he handled it well.
00:11:38 ◼ ► His response to that guy on Twitter was amazing, which is, I don't think we agree on what my job is, which really does say it all.
00:11:56 ◼ ► It's to discuss and comment and interpret and say what we agree with and what we disagree with and talk about our experiences with the product and be honest and be forthright.
00:12:06 ◼ ► And if that, if that serves the greater, you know, ends of a tech company, then so be it.
00:12:15 ◼ ► But like the reason we get access when we do interviews, when we do, yeah, they want it to benefit them.
00:12:22 ◼ ► But they know that reaching a channel that isn't just receiving marketing is important and you stand to benefit if you can get through it and get out the other side.
00:12:35 ◼ ► And, uh, and the downside of it is if you, if you make a product that's bad, it is not the responsibility of the reviewer.
00:12:42 ◼ ► As, as, as Marquez said in his followup video, what killed, if it, if it did indeed kill the AI pin or that car that he reviewed, the answer is what kills a bad, a company that makes a bad product or a bad product?
00:13:15 ◼ ► Like we would get, we just share where reviews or little app reviews when the iPhone came out and it'd be for like an app nobody's heard of.
00:13:33 ◼ ► But something like a humane AI pin is like super hyped by a company with lots of funding.
00:13:44 ◼ ► I saw somebody argue that Marques should have just passed it by because who really cares about the AI pin?
00:13:50 ◼ ► It is a hyped product with lots of funding and it does not meet the level of why, why single out a bad, weak product that nobody cares about.
00:14:31 ◼ ► And he talks about in his do bad reviews, cool companies video, but also humane sent it to him.
00:14:41 ◼ ► The cost benefit analysis from humane's perspective is we send this to these reviewers.
00:14:45 ◼ ► One, it, the reviewers are going to reach people that are PR will never, ever, ever, ever be able to reach.
00:14:51 ◼ ► Right. Because they don't have loyal, humane customers, but all of these brands, all of these reviewers have loyal readers, listeners, viewers.
00:15:04 ◼ ► Now I know some people in business who would say all presses, good press, and you know what, to a certain degree, it's right.
00:15:19 ◼ ► Although if they can survive, it also creates the potential for a comeback narrative down the road.
00:15:24 ◼ ► And if I was inside of humane, that's probably what I would be saying is this is going to be great because everybody's going to be following this.
00:15:40 ◼ ► And so you take the risk and their problem is that they, I mean, from observing a lot of their company messaging, their problem is that they over promised and under delivered.
00:16:01 ◼ ► "I love Jason's expansion on his thoughts regarding Vision Pro and the discussion about people judging it wrong.
00:16:07 ◼ ► In the section about spatial personas, however, I had a viscerally negative reaction to Mike saying they would be good for people in long distance relationships.
00:16:15 ◼ ► My partner and I spend roughly half or more of the year apart, and the last thing either of us wants is a simulated, quote unquote, performance captured virtual chat.
00:16:30 ◼ ► So, to start off, I didn't say this, Casey said this. It wasn't even on the episode Jason was on.
00:16:36 ◼ ► No, we don't have to blame Casey because I agreed with him. I agreed that it sounds like a great idea.
00:16:40 ◼ ► Because the thing that I loved about the idea of this for somebody in this kind of relationship is it adds something to the types of ways in which you could communicate.
00:16:51 ◼ ► There are activities that you can participate in in a spatial persona call, like playing games in virtual spaces.
00:17:09 ◼ ► where their persona is sitting next to you and you're watching the same thing and the audio is all panned, that might be a superior experience too.
00:17:17 ◼ ► If you're talking, it's spatial audio. If I'm watching a movie with my wife and she says something, we're both still looking at the screen.
00:17:25 ◼ ► I'm not turning to look at her. And at least with the way that the spatial persona call set this up, it could add to that.
00:17:42 ◼ ► Because I get the sense that they haven't, and to say that you've viscerally negatively react to what I've got to say,
00:18:10 ◼ ► They're going around, they're showing you the thing on their wall that they just put up, or their cat, or whatever.
00:18:18 ◼ ► I think what we're trying to get across is that there are some unique features of spatial personas
00:18:23 ◼ ► that can, in certain contexts, be beyond what other, including FaceTime, other kind of connections do,
00:18:53 ◼ ► Unless you've tried spatial personas, I think part of this is we're expressing the experience of using them.
00:19:04 ◼ ► I get the sense that a lot of the people who are talking about them haven't actually used them,
00:19:10 ◼ ► and that makes it harder to have a frame for a debate about what spatial personas do well and don't do well
00:19:27 ◼ ► but we have so much communication that is passed through some kind of digital facsimile.
00:19:40 ◼ ► Something like spatial personas may never, ever take off, but if it does, I think it would be fun for people.
00:19:49 ◼ ► I have been wanting to set up more of these hangout sessions with friends, because we had a great--
00:20:33 ◼ ► I know there are privacy issues and all that, but I want to know when my friends have their Vision Pro on.
00:21:04 ◼ ► We felt like we were with each other, even though we were seeing each other in different places,
00:21:22 ◼ ► Right. We're not saying replace from a FaceTime, but I do think that there are certain contexts and certain things where it is,
00:21:30 ◼ ► even though, and this is the thing, I think we said it, but I'll say it again, even though, yes, it is not their face,
00:21:45 ◼ ► But I will say it's good enough that in context with the spatial audio, I think it goes across the uncanny valley
00:22:01 ◼ ► But in certain circumstances, I think it makes connection on some wavelengths that might not be there with something like a video chat.
00:22:17 ◼ ► an additional consideration for those in the UK is that Kobo can integrate with the Libby app.
00:22:22 ◼ ► This is not possible with Kindle devices in the UK, and one of the reasons I switched to Kobo."
00:22:54 ◼ ► And then you can just say, once it's checked out in OverDrive, if your Kobo is logged into your OverDrive account, it just syncs the book.
00:23:06 ◼ ► You basically tap in Libby and it opens your Amazon account and you press send to Kindle and it syncs it.
00:24:41 ◼ ► I would think there's room for some cameos from, because remember, the show is set across decades.
00:24:56 ◼ ► Plus telling that story from the other perspective of the Soviets being the first to land on the moon
00:25:12 ◼ ► I mean, they're there the whole time, but like going to Star City for the first time in season four.
00:25:22 ◼ ► So I love that Apple cares enough about the show, which is a great show, to not only renew it for a fifth season,
00:25:31 ◼ ► And regarding it being unannounced, but it seemed likely, Dan and I talked to the showrunners.
00:25:49 ◼ ► And it sure seemed like they were planning for season five, but they were also being diligent and polite
00:25:56 ◼ ► in saying they hadn't actually gotten the official or it hadn't been officially announced.
00:26:04 ◼ ► But I think this was like, it's not surprising because of the way the show was pitched initially, right?
00:26:20 ◼ ► He had always pitched it as like, I have like 70 years worth of idea for the show, right?
00:26:26 ◼ ► Like that was always kind of like the original idea that it could go on for series after series after series.
00:26:42 ◼ ► is like once this show's like Star City is a couple of seasons in, someone could create like an optimal viewing order for the show.
00:26:52 ◼ ► Yeah, so you'd be like, watch these two episodes of For All Mankind, then these three episodes of Star City.
00:27:00 ◼ ► Talking about rewatches, that would be a great way to rewatch For All Mankind at some point in the future.
00:27:05 ◼ ► Yeah, Apple could maybe even innovate there and put some links into the apps so that you can like jump from one to the other or connect the dots or all that.
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00:30:16 ◼ ► According to display analyst Ross Young, the upcoming 12.9" iPad Air may feature a mini-LED screen.
00:30:30 ◼ ► So they have these screens. They already know how to make them. They've worked out how to make them well.
00:30:41 ◼ ► But if this is the case, I would also expect that the 10.9" would still just be an LCD.
00:30:53 ◼ ► And if this is what happens, the line up has gotten even more perplexing than it already was.
00:31:06 ◼ ► which is to use the sizes of the iPad Pro current models and the accessories of the iPad Pro current models,
00:31:25 ◼ ► Like, literally, how do we take the iPad Pro stuff and make it maybe cheaper to produce?
00:31:31 ◼ ► But really, if they looked at this and they're like, "Well, you know, it would be cheaper for us to just use the screen from the 12.9" iPad Pro,
00:31:59 ◼ ► But it is also telling me that, like, well, that's going to be probably expensive, right?
00:32:06 ◼ ► I don't know. I mean, again, if it's the same screen that they've been making for years,
00:32:10 ◼ ► it is going to come down in price over time. And maybe that's the reason they choose it.
00:32:15 ◼ ► Like, I mean, one reason you make an iPad Air out of parts of the iPad Pro is to make it cheaper.
00:32:36 ◼ ► Like, that's why Apple reuses so many parts of their products in the lower-end products,
00:32:43 ◼ ► is because they use them, they build them for a few years, and the cost of making them becomes way less.
00:32:56 ◼ ► Like, I would have a hard time imagining that somebody didn't literally look at a spreadsheet
00:33:05 ◼ ► versus engineering a new 12.9 display for this iPad Air and say, "Yeah, it's worth it. Let's just use the old one."
00:33:13 ◼ ► It's like, "Come on, Apple. I'll tell you what you gotta do here. iPad Studio. It's not an iPad Air."
00:33:25 ◼ ► It comes in two different sizes, and it's exactly the same except for the screen, which is better on the 12.9."
00:33:47 ◼ ► Like, I don't see a scenario where that wasn't the case, but maybe they couldn't get it done.
00:33:52 ◼ ► To be honest, if they do this 12.9 one, that further tells me that that was the case, like, that the plan was, right?
00:33:58 ◼ ► So we'll do the 12.9, then we'll bring it to the smaller one, and then in a couple of years down the line,
00:34:11 ◼ ► but then for whatever reason, you can't get the 10.9 mini-LED working, and now look where you are.
00:34:16 ◼ ► And then you look at it and say, you know, OLED's coming down the line, let's not worry about it.
00:34:30 ◼ ► Oh yeah, I'm just saying that they looked at that for the iPad Pro, and maybe they said,
00:34:39 ◼ ► Yeah, but then the iPad Air product manager's like, "Oh no! We had such a clear idea for what we're going to do here."
00:34:52 ◼ ► Like, I feel like I can't remember a time where a product has been so impending for so long.
00:35:02 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, it's got, not got to be, but that's the, like, in Mark Gurman's newsletter this week,
00:35:06 ◼ ► he was saying, like, it seems like supply chain is starting to dry up now, so it should be within the next couple of weeks.
00:35:13 ◼ ► MacRumors has put together a round-up of camera rumours for the iPhone line coming later this year,
00:35:31 ◼ ► So this will have a new look for the iPhone for as much as the camera layout would excite people,
00:35:56 ◼ ► The ultra-wide lens will be upgraded on the Pro phones to get better low-light performance
00:36:05 ◼ ► I'll be excited about this, because the ultra-wide is used too often in the new phones,
00:36:12 ◼ ► like for when you get close to stuff, like the macro mode comes into play way more than I would want,
00:36:19 ◼ ► and getting a higher quality lens here would make that better, so I'm excited about that.
00:36:26 ◼ ► This is also your spatial capture lens, and I think it's your continuity camera lens for doing center stage.
00:36:45 ◼ ► "Well, how often do people use ultra-wide?" But that's the answer, they use it in different contexts.
00:36:50 ◼ ► And then this would match so that you could capture spatial video at a higher resolution.
00:37:05 ◼ ► So it would be increasing the focal length of the periscope lens from 77 millimeters to 300 millimeters,
00:37:20 ◼ ► but because they've reduced the size of the part so it will fit in the regular Pro phone,
00:38:05 ◼ ► To take photos and/or video with a capacitive button that sits on the side of the phone,
00:38:45 ◼ ► I mean we've extolled the virtues of physical buttons to do specific tasks here before,
00:39:35 ◼ ► so the thing is it's not entirely on device, it's the model runs entirely on device, right?
00:39:54 ◼ ► they could be other AI models, they could be specific APIs for various kinds of content.
00:40:12 ◼ ► and the model knows what you want, and then the model knows how to query those cloud services,
00:40:21 ◼ ► And the idea here is that over time, you could have it interface with other models and other APIs,
00:41:03 ◼ ► Like it doesn't mean that the people who have the most powerful models will not benefit and have success,
00:41:52 ◼ ► So I'm not saying they'll succeed, but I'm saying that I feel like this is within Apple's capabilities to succeed,
00:42:20 ◼ ► What they're saying is I want to do these things that are amazing and are enabled by that technology.
00:42:37 ◼ ► but no guarantee, but this sort of reporting, it, you know, I'm not, I'm not turned off by this.
00:42:46 ◼ ► I feel like I'm gearing myself up for the WWDC presentation that was going to blow my socks off, right?
00:43:36 ◼ ► Also when they release it, it'll like the first developer betas will come out and it won't be on.
00:43:42 ◼ ► Later this summer, we'll turn them on and then they'll turn them on and they won't work.
00:43:48 ◼ ► And then like a month later, they'll be like, oh, but we did a 0.1 release and now it works great.
00:43:52 ◼ ► Like we we've been, we've seen this story before, but I would like to see their ambitions.
00:43:57 ◼ ► Like I want to see how they, just as Apple is pretty good, usually at creating a product design designed around what people want to do instead of saying, well, we got this new chip, so let's stick it in there.
00:44:16 ◼ ► And so the way they tell the story about AI, because they know they have to tell an AI story.
00:44:21 ◼ ► They have resisted for years and years and years, but they are clearly, they're on the train now.
00:44:33 ◼ ► Like I don't think any of us were expecting spatial computing out of the vision pro announcement that that was the vision there.
00:44:41 ◼ ► But then yes, we're going to feel a high and then we're going to come crashing down to earth.
00:44:46 ◼ ► And then at some point, going back to our conversation about reviewers, at some point in the fall, we will finally get an idea of what reality is.
00:44:58 ◼ ► And according to Lika Kosutami on Twitter, Apple has ended production of their fine woven cases and are likely going to look at another replacement for leather.
00:45:08 ◼ ► Kosutami has reported accurate information about cases, including fine woven and accessories in the past.
00:45:22 ◼ ► I mean, when I was in New Zealand, we were driving around and there's like, there's like all these sheep and then all the fines are out there.
00:45:36 ◼ ► So the European Union is going to take the fines from Apple that Apple no longer weave into cases.
00:45:45 ◼ ► And as we spoke about before, they're going to take those fines and then they're going to distribute them amongst the Europeans so they can have their project.
00:45:52 ◼ ► So Lauren has a fine woven case that she's had on her phone since day one because she got a new phone this year.
00:46:15 ◼ ► And it was, by the time it got through a teenager's hands for a couple of years on top of being used by Lauren for a couple of years.
00:46:26 ◼ ► But like for the longest time, I know this is a cliche, but like the leather, it really does sort of,
00:46:44 ◼ ► And it's just the plastic around the edges is smashed and the back doesn't look very nice.
00:47:23 ◼ ► I just think go all silicon and then make a nicer silicon, like do something to make like a pro silicon case or whatever.
00:47:33 ◼ ► I'm just, I don't think anyone's going to be happy with whatever they try and replace the leather case with,
00:47:55 ◼ ► Let's be real. If you're like me, we have a tendency to put some things off until the very last minute,
00:48:00 ◼ ► whether that's going to the DMV, arranging my next dental checkup or getting to that next home improvement project.
00:48:06 ◼ ► I cannot tell you how many frames there are in my house right now that need to be put up, but they're just like pictures and frames.
00:48:14 ◼ ► Well, most of the time this stuff will work itself out or you'll just get to it when you get to it.
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00:49:48 ◼ ► I couldn't resist it. Here we are. We've left Rumour Roundup, we got on the train and now we're in emulation station.
00:50:01 ◼ ► We spoke about it a little bit last week that emulators were starting to appear in the app store, mysteriously disappearing.
00:50:08 ◼ ► But this was, we were waiting for something that did happen, which is Riley Testaert's Delta emulator was launched worldwide.
00:50:26 ◼ ► The week that the first app marketplace arrived, which we've been talking about for months now, that's not the news.
00:50:38 ◼ ► So as I said, if you are in Europe, you can get Delta through alt store PAL. It's not in the app store.
00:50:49 ◼ ► Worldwide, Delta has been either number one or number two app in the whole of the app store every single day since it launched on Wednesday.
00:51:00 ◼ ► Here in the UK, it's only been eclipsed by the London Marathon app, because the London Marathon was yesterday.
00:51:07 ◼ ► In the first two days, Riley posted on Mastodon that the app had received 1.4 million downloads.
00:51:15 ◼ ► So I'm expecting it's probably somewhere between 5 to 15 million downloads now, which is unbelievable.
00:51:27 ◼ ► I said to Riley on Mastodon, "You should have some kind of paid component for this app."
00:51:37 ◼ ► And I was like, "You know what? Fair enough. But still Riley, at least premium themes and app icons.
00:51:45 ◼ ► Yeah, and app for icons and themes or something, just to let people throw money at it a little bit.
00:51:48 ◼ ► And we'll get back to Delta and alt store in a second, but just to kind of talk about emulators, there are more established emulators on the way.
00:51:55 ◼ ► So there is an emulator called Provenance, which is an emulator that can run systems that Delta can, so a lot of the old handheld Nintendo systems.
00:52:05 ◼ ► But also the Provenance emulator on other platforms runs Sony Playstation games, GameCube games and others.
00:52:13 ◼ ► It's going to be interesting to see exactly which systems are going to run in Provenance, because the Dolphin GameCube emulator,
00:52:21 ◼ ► they have said that they cannot run on the iPhone as Apple does not allow for just in time compilation on the iPhone, aka JIT.
00:52:35 ◼ ► For one of the developers on the iOS project, they said, "The GameCube and Wii have a PowerPC-based CPU inside them."
00:52:45 ◼ ► "All modern Apple devices use an ARM-based CPU. It isn't possible to directly run PowerPC code on an ARM CPU and vice versa.
00:52:56 ◼ ► We submitted a DMA interoperability request to Apple for JIT support, but it was denied."
00:53:10 ◼ ► So like a lot of the handheld Game Boy, Nintendo DS, that kind of stuff, that's all there in Delta and I'm sure is going to be in Provenance.
00:53:30 ◼ ► You know, I opened Kirby Pinball and made all the beeps and boops and my wife looked at me and was like, "What is happening?"
00:53:39 ◼ ► So I am of a generation where we got the first video game, Home Systems, so that was for me it's the Atari 2600 or maybe people had like the Odyssey or the Intellivision.
00:53:52 ◼ ► And then I got into computers and I didn't buy a game console again until the 90s when I got a PS1.
00:54:11 ◼ ► So I would love a PS1 emulator because I'd be playing NFL Blitz 2000 on that all the time.
00:54:24 ◼ ► I completely understand that. I kind of thought that you would probably have checked it out for professional curiosity.
00:54:32 ◼ ► Sure. And that's the question about the 1.4 million downloads is how much of that is, "I heard about this, I'll check it out."
00:54:53 ◼ ► Delta is incredible. I've tried a lot of emulators over the years on Android phones and stuff like that. And it really is superbly done.
00:55:04 ◼ ► One of the things that I was very surprised about is it has a save syncing system with Dropbox.
00:55:10 ◼ ► So today I was using the Delta iPhone app in compatibility mode on my vision pro with a Sony PlayStation controller playing Pokemon.
00:55:31 ◼ ► If you're on the Patreon and you'd use the old alt store or you were on the test flight, which is how Delta has run for years, there is an iPad app.
00:55:47 ◼ ► So I don't know what their plan is. But if you're playing Game Boy games, using it in compatibility mode is totally fine.
00:56:51 ◼ ► Do they have a rule about what retro means and they won't accept games past a certain level if they even can run on the iPhone?
00:57:06 ◼ ► I'm not sure about the answers to these questions, but I do wonder if they're going to try and do something.
00:57:14 ◼ ► Because they could just send a scary letter to Riley, which is what Nintendo has done before, to other companies.
00:57:25 ◼ ► I feel, as a non-lawyer, I feel the same about this as I do about ripping DVDs that you own.
00:57:37 ◼ ► Which is, if you sell me games and then you stop making a device and it dies, and I still want to play the games, and you're like, "Too bad."
00:57:50 ◼ ► So it feels to me like in the spirit of the Betamax ruling, which was about shifting, recording things off of a VCR,
00:58:02 ◼ ► But I can also see an argument made by a game console manufacturer that the emulator itself is containing...
00:58:14 ◼ ► To be compatible, it has to contain details of the platform that the platform owner believes are copyrightable and that they own.
00:58:26 ◼ ► Again, I'm not sure the law is on their side there, although that wouldn't stop a giant company from threatening and saber rattling and maybe forcing expensive litigation.
00:58:37 ◼ ► But I keep coming back to the fact that if there are legal ways to let legal owners of cartridges, for example, dump the ROMs from their devices and put them on this system,
00:58:52 ◼ ► that they should be allowed to do so. As long as there's a legal way, you can't outlaw it.
00:58:59 ◼ ► The example that I've been using is you can put a pirated book in iBooks or Apple Books. You can do that. You can put a pirated book in there.
00:59:16 ◼ ► But just because you can doesn't mean that they can't be allowed, because there are plenty of legitimate uses for playing video files or loading in EPUBs.
00:59:25 ◼ ► I think this holds for this too, personally. John Vorhees wrote a story that I feel like was designed for people to point to during debates about this, which I love.
00:59:38 ◼ ► Which is, here is a USB device that you can put a cartridge in and it dumps it to a file on your Mac and then you can use it on an emulator.
00:59:47 ◼ ► The whole point of it is not just it's news you can use. If you've got a bunch of these cartridges, you can buy this device and then put all of your saves and all of the device data on an emulator.
01:00:05 ◼ ► There's the whole idea of, these are old games nobody cares about from a business standpoint and they may be locked in copyright prison where nobody knows who has the rights to them, so they're completely lost forever.
01:00:20 ◼ ► And I'm sympathetic to that, absolutely. But there's also the more specific argument, which is, I have the game, here it is, I'm gonna use some technology to put it on a device and then I'm gonna play it, and that you can't prevent me from doing this.
01:00:38 ◼ ► That I believe is absolutely moral. Is that legal? Will somebody try it? I would hope that if somebody got, if one of these console makers so objected to this that they attacked, and the Yuzu example, that is a different example I think.
01:01:01 ◼ ► But some of these older consoles that are long gone, I think, I would hope that some organizations would come to the defense of the makers of those projects.
01:01:14 ◼ ► Because it's a bad precedent to set that it's impossible to emulate old devices because Nintendo has the right to prevent anybody from ever playing a Game Boy game again.
01:01:32 ◼ ► Well, there's a couple of things in this thing. Obviously, I think of this from the Nintendo examples because it's the company that I'm most familiar with, like how they work and all this kind of stuff. I mean, you're right, the Yuzu thing, I thought that they were within their rights to do that.
01:01:47 ◼ ► It was emulation of the Switch, which seems madness to me why they couldn't allow that. I don't think, because as well, it was just piracy mainly that people were doing rather than emulation.
01:01:58 ◼ ► And there's always that element here, right? But it's not just that element. And you can tip over into that. That's why I like Jon's story because he's like, this is not piracy.
01:02:05 ◼ ► No, I have that thing too, the GB operator. It's cool. I believe that you should be able to emulate a game if you own it. I don't see, like you said, I think that is perfectly valid. Why not? I already own this. I've given you the money. Here we go, this is fine.
01:02:23 ◼ ► The issue with Nintendo though is a lot of the games that people want to emulate, they're not lost. Nintendo still sell them. You can get a lot of these on the Switch.
01:02:33 ◼ ► So it becomes a little bit more complicated to say that I want to play Mario 3 and it can't be lost to time.
01:02:41 ◼ ► So this is my thought about why some of these arguments need to not be made, which is the argument that I want to play a game that's lost forever. I am sympathetic to that from a history standpoint. There are lots of games out there that nobody cares about, that maybe you care about.
01:02:58 ◼ ► But the truth is that Nintendo, I wish they were better stewards of this because emulation would be a lot less of an issue if they were better stewards of this and let you play games on their current consoles. There are some, but there are others that are not available on current consoles.
01:03:22 ◼ ► Right, and I don't like the idea that saying, "Well, you can play this on the current Switch, so buy a Switch and then buy the game again on the Switch." And you're just getting what you got before that you already have in a cartridge.
01:03:35 ◼ ► And that's what I have a problem with is Nintendo should be making these available and saying, "Well, our business is that we put the work in to build this emulator and validate all of these things that we own, and people who want the convenience of buying it can buy it and they can play it, and isn't that great?"
01:03:51 ◼ ► But I don't, if I own that game, like, hmm. I mean, it's not a remaster or anything. It's not a new thing. It's literally the thing that I own. My argument is, "No, I'm not buying it again for your new console. I don't want to do that. I just want to play it."
01:04:10 ◼ ► And again, I don't know if that's legal, but that would be my moral argument is it's great. I want everybody who makes hardware to make available all the stuff they used to have, but the problem is, yeah, some of it they can never make available.
01:04:25 ◼ ► I just got, okay, here's a tangent. I just got a book last week in the mail from Amazon. I preordered it like six months ago. It is my favorite comic book of all time. It's called The Micronauts. It came out in the '70s.
01:04:38 ◼ ► It is my favorite comic book of all time. It has been out of print since it was printed. And the reason is it's a licensed comic book. It's not a Marvel comic. It's a Marvel comic with Marvel characters that also contains licensed toys owned by the MeeGo Corporation, which is now part of Hasbro.
01:04:59 ◼ ► And so it went out of print forever. And could you download digital scans of those issues? Sure you could. Do I have the originals? Sure I do. But my point here is saying a lot of stuff is never going to be available because it was a license that was made.
01:05:18 ◼ ► Nintendo was like, "Yeah, Pokémon! We'll do Pokémon and we'll license it from the people who own Pokémon." And the license drops and like, they can't... Whenever the license drops, it's gone. Like, you can't do it anymore.
01:05:33 ◼ ► It's like how I can still play Carcassonne by Code Monkeys. Is that who did Carcassonne? But that's because I bought it like 10 years ago on the iPad. But like, there's a Carcassonne in the App Store now and it's not that game because they lost the license.
01:05:47 ◼ ► Sometimes it's like music that's in the game is the problem. Like, there are games that they're kind of lost to time because no one can agree the rights on the music again.
01:05:57 ◼ ► It's true for movies and TV shows, but it's really bad for code, especially code from the early days. Like, I really believe that one of the reasons Apple doesn't just say, "Here's an Apple II emulator. Like, here's all the source code for the Apple II. Go to town."
01:06:12 ◼ ► I mean, I know they did it to the Lisa, but they did it to the Lisa in the Computer History Museum. Like, the danger is you're still a big corporation with lots of money.
01:06:20 ◼ ► And if there's like a library that was written by somebody and licensed to you in 1979 as Apple and nobody remembers it and nobody knows that it's there,
01:06:32 ◼ ► but the person who owns the rights to the company that had that library is still alive or their heirs are still alive or they sold that license to someone else,
01:06:42 ◼ ► they could sue Apple for distributing Apple IIe system software from the '80s because it contains an esoteric thing that nobody knew was there.
01:06:53 ◼ ► And the fact is, they would be in the right if they own the license to that, but nobody knows. And as a result, there's paralysis, right?
01:07:02 ◼ ► Where people are just like, "I can't. We can't clear this. We don't know." So that's the value of being able to go. Like, you could go on eBay and buy old issues of the Micronauts, right?
01:07:11 ◼ ► Like, they can't. They're not destroying the stuff that's out there. Well, a Game Boy cartridge is that, right? Which is, "I have the thing."
01:07:19 ◼ ► And I know it's not, you don't own the game, you own a license to the game, but I do think that if you get a physical cartridge, you should be allowed to play that.
01:07:29 ◼ ► - Yep. I agree. I think we're very aligned here. The moral stance is one, but the legal stance is untested.
01:07:37 ◼ ► - I don't know the legality. I know that there's some, and then there was like the Java Oracle case too that might even come to play here,
01:07:45 ◼ ► but there's some thought that if there's software in the emulator that is doing some very specific things to emulate the hardware in a way that is actually containing things that the console maker could exert,
01:08:06 ◼ ► - Well, Delta is interesting because the Nintendo DS emulation in Delta, you have to provide your own BIOS files. Now, where you get those, who can tell?
01:08:20 ◼ ► - You can dump them from your hardware, but you can also just download them on the internet. Well, yeah, I mean, I've got, honestly, I have an Apple II emulator,
01:08:28 ◼ ► and it is running with a ROM file that you have to supply, and the ROM file is not the file from my Apple II. I could have dumped the ROM from my Apple II, but you know what?
01:08:38 ◼ ► I didn't bother. I just got one off the internet, but I feel like I'm in the moral right here because I've got one right behind me, and also the Apple II who cares is another argument I would make.
01:08:49 ◼ ► Like, just let it, if I want to play Choplifter, if I want to play Karateka, so be it. You should let me do that.
01:08:56 ◼ ► - You know what, Jason? No one's going to stop you from playing these games. No one should, or maybe somebody should stop you.
01:09:02 ◼ ► - Well, I mean, I'll just put it out there. What happens if somebody puts an Apple II game emulator on the store? Is that not a retro console because it's also a computer and you could put other software on that?
01:09:11 ◼ ► - I can't wait to see how far it could end up going, like, in that. Why can't I emulate classic Mac now, too? Why not?
01:09:21 ◼ ► - Well, that was, so that's one of the thoughts that I had is there are a lot of great classic Mac games. There are a lot of great classic iPhone games from the early days of the iPhone that you could probably play on a modern iPhone in emulation.
01:09:36 ◼ ► And so, like, I know that Apple's paying developers to put up new versions and recompile them and all of that, but wouldn't it be amazing if Apple just opened the gates to a whole bunch of old, no longer compatible with the iPhone games, just by saying,
01:09:51 ◼ ► "Oh, yeah, iOS whatever, future version, now contains an emulator for older versions of iOS, so those apps just continue to run."
01:09:59 ◼ ► Like, that would be amazing, right? You could totally do that if you wanted to, but I think that there are some challenges with, you know, I don't know, I'm skeptical that Apple would ever allow somebody to put a Newton emulator or an Apple II emulator or a Mac emulator in the store.
01:10:19 ◼ ► - Gotta say, though, Jason, we didn't think this would happen either. We're in Uncharted waters.
01:10:25 ◼ ► Darren wrote in to say, this is an interesting wrinkle for me, "As someone in the European Union, Delta isn't actually available in the App Store. If I want to get Delta, I need to subscribe to Alt Store and pay the one euro 50 cents plus VAT a year or go to the side-loading route via the Mac."
01:10:45 ◼ ► Okay, this is kind of interesting. I looked through some posts that Riley was putting online to talk about this.
01:10:54 ◼ ► So, effectively, they don't have a choice about this if they want to make Alt Store. They accepted the terms, so that's the end of it.
01:11:03 ◼ ► Because they accepted the terms and they accepted the terms before the terms allow for that one-time switchback wouldn't have made a difference anyway, but because they've done that, they want to be an alternative app marketplace people, any app that they release is now going to pay the CTF.
01:11:18 ◼ ► So they need a way to do that. So to pay the core technology fee, they need to offer it through Alt Store and charge you a euro 50 a year for that so they can cover it.
01:11:27 ◼ ► But Alt Store has other free apps that you otherwise can't get. And there's going to be other benefits that non-EU citizens will never get. Like there's that clipboard manager Federico was trying out and freaking out about because it was so cool.
01:11:39 ◼ ► Those things are going to be in Alt Store. So yes, you pay a euro 50. I wish I could pay Riley a euro 50 a year for this application to be honest because Delta is that good.
01:11:54 ◼ ► I think if Riley had known everything up front, he might have made a slightly different choice. Because I think that the way you would do this is you would put Delta in a different company and let Delta have its own account and put it available on the App Store for free worldwide.
01:12:12 ◼ ► Then again, Riley may be approaching this as a way to get people to use the App Store or the old store.
01:12:18 ◼ ► So someone asked Riley this and he said, "If we made another developer account and put Delta on it, Apple could terminate it and our main one for violating the terms of service."
01:12:25 ◼ ► Oh yeah, for sure. I'm just saying there might have been a way to let somebody license Delta and put it up. They might have been able to do something like that.
01:12:35 ◼ ► But I think the point is, yeah, in the EU what they're trying to do is he's trying to use Delta and the clipboard manager and some other stuff to bootstrap Alt Store.
01:12:44 ◼ ► That's the goal here. I know that that stinks, but the CTF means this is how it has to be.
01:12:50 ◼ ► It also means that in any other country or region where laws change to create alternative app stores or sideloading and therefore the CTF comes into account,
01:13:04 ◼ ► it will be a decision point for Delta about whether they enter in those regions and go to the CTF route or they just stay with it free in the App Store.
01:13:15 ◼ ► So just a fun little wrinkle on that one, but Alt Store does seem cool. I do wish I could get it, but that's not going to happen.
01:13:24 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm surprised that they are allowing, because remember, Apple still sort of has to approve your app because you've got to submit it and it's going to get notarized.
01:13:37 ◼ ► Something like that clipboard manager, which is operating and would never have been allowed in the App Store, has been allowed to run.
01:13:47 ◼ ► But apparently the emulators that use a JIT, even though they made a DMA petition, Apple rejected it.
01:14:15 ◼ ► And so it seems, if you can twist a public API to do what you want, they maybe don't have grounds to reject you.
01:14:25 ◼ ► I don't love this narrow interpretation of the rules and I feel like there may be some more challenges there.
01:14:33 ◼ ► We'll see. Where the EC might say, "No, no, no, Apple, that's not good. You need to give them the freedom to do that."
01:14:45 ◼ ► Now I know that there are security risks around it, but it's not like this can't happen on the iPhone because it now does.
01:14:57 ◼ ► Throw up a warning dialogue that says, "This app contains a just-in-time compiler and Apple can verify the code that gets compiled."
01:15:08 ◼ ► Which is kind of, you have to do a lot of this nonsense to even get Alt Store running anyway still.
01:15:22 ◼ ► It's against the spirit of what the EC is trying to do to have it be like, "Well, Apple still doesn't want you to run that kind of emulator."
01:15:35 ◼ ► And I wish that that was not the case worldwide, right? Because again, I want to play NFL Blitz 2000 on my iPad.
01:15:41 ◼ ► Yeah, but this is it. Don't forget that you have said that they're not in accordance with the DMA.
01:15:56 ◼ ► The whole thing about this, the reason they changed this emulator was because they knew how popular Delta was going to be and they were right.
01:16:02 ◼ ► And I guess Apple is also kind of hoping that maybe Riley will put some kind of payment thing in there because then they get the benefit too, right?
01:16:10 ◼ ► Because now the most popular app in the world right now, in the sense of being newly downloaded, is Delta.
01:16:16 ◼ ► And so Apple knew that, you know, they were going to be, there would be Europeans, I guess they'd done it anyway,
01:16:22 ◼ ► but people would be going wild to try and get this stuff. So they've enabled it in the App Store.
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01:17:54 ◼ ► More on ebooks. This question comes from Josiah who says, "Upgrade seems to be the e-reader podcast, so I thought I'd ask here. Is there an e-reader that can use custom fonts?
01:18:07 ◼ ► My ability to read and focus is significantly higher when using the open dyslexic font, but I want a device to read on that is less distracting than my phone but smaller than an iPad."
01:18:17 ◼ ► So I got two answers here. One is, Kobo lets you sideload fonts. I think Kindle lets you sideload fonts onto the device too. You attach the device to your Mac and it comes up as a USB thing.
01:18:29 ◼ ► On Kobo you can just drag fonts in and I think you can do that on Kindle and not 100% on that one. I think they changed that. But you don't have to do it Josiah because I believe all modern Kindles and Kobos come with open dyslexic font already installed.
01:18:48 ◼ ► Do Kindle fonts look good now? I know there was a lot of people that were unhappy. I think Grey was unhappy with that for a long time.
01:18:55 ◼ ► When I went down into Kobo land a few years ago, it was in part because I was frustrated by the sluggish changes to the Kindle over time. I'd used a Kindle for so long and it really hadn't changed at all.
01:19:10 ◼ ► Of course, inevitably three months after I switched to the Kobo, they updated the Kindle software and it's a lot better now.
01:19:18 ◼ ► Yeah, it is. It's a lot better now. I would say it's not as good as Kobo, but it's real close. It was not close before.
01:19:26 ◼ ► Is the typography better? It is. I think the Kobo typography is still a little bit better.
01:19:34 ◼ ► I would say most of the ways that motivated me to switch have been improved now. I don't know if I would have switched or not.
01:19:44 ◼ ► There are nuances about the Kobo that I like better and I like just not being entirely attached to Amazon.
01:19:54 ◼ ► The truth is the typography is better, the interface is better, the library integration that we spoke about earlier is better.
01:20:02 ◼ ► So Kindle is a lot better than it used to be. Unfortunately, Amazon has decided that page turn buttons don't matter.
01:20:14 ◼ ► I hate e-readers without page turn buttons, so that alone will probably keep me on the Kobo.
01:20:20 ◼ ► But yeah, modern Kindles do a lot better. When I set it to the right font at the right settings,
01:20:26 ◼ ► the only issue, and this is true with both, is some publishers publish their books with forced justification and hyphenation turned on.
01:20:39 ◼ ► I don't want random amounts of space between each letter on a line so that they fill up the complete column.
01:20:48 ◼ ► That's strange to me because it's essentially a computer that it would force it, right?
01:20:53 ◼ ► Well, there's an EPUB setting to force it and I hate it because what you should be able to do is turn it off.
01:20:58 ◼ ► But on these e-readers, you turn it off and it doesn't turn off. And the reason is it's in the file.
01:21:11 ◼ ► I will frequently find a book like that and I will bring it into Calibre on my Mac, strip the DRM off of it because I have to,
01:21:19 ◼ ► change the setting to allow it not to be justified, and then sync that file back to my e-reader so that I can turn it off.
01:21:28 ◼ ► So I know it's in the file. I know it's in the file specified by the publisher and I hate it.
01:21:49 ◼ ► But this came up, I think last time that I still think the Kindle Paperwhite is probably the go-to e-reader for like real casual people,
01:22:01 ◼ ► I like the Kobos because they've got the physical page turn buttons and they've got a small one that's fairly affordable.
01:22:10 ◼ ► And then a larger one with a flush screen that is a little more expensive, but also very nice, like reading a hardcover.
01:22:16 ◼ ► And so I recommend them. But if you look at them and you're like, "Whoa, that's too much."
01:22:33 ◼ ► And this round they have been, that person that I dealt with is gone and they've been completely unresponsive.
01:22:40 ◼ ► So I have a pre-order. People keep asking me what I think. It's like, they're not out yet.
01:22:51 ◼ ► Jason, I need you. I will not trust anybody else's review. I only want your honest review.
01:23:01 ◼ ► I wish I could have gotten it three weeks ago so I could have been a part of that set of reviews.
01:23:09 ◼ ► But then Amazon has never sent me anything or considered me at all relevant to e-readers.
01:23:23 ◼ ► I've got the one color version of the one that I already use and I will review that as soon as I get it.
01:23:45 ◼ ► They want to make it as thin as possible, but there has to be a thick part where you hold onto it.
01:23:51 ◼ ► So they put the battery and stuff, they put in the thick part, but there's also the thin part.
01:24:30 ◼ ► So I think it's cool to see it now that it exists, but we want to keep seeing that that tech get better.
01:24:37 ◼ ► Roman writes in and says, "I get the argument that the humane AI pin needs iOS or Android integration to be viable.
01:24:45 ◼ ► How do you think this integration could work without thoroughly compromising the iPhone experience?
01:25:20 ◼ ► Or whatever it is, it's like the way it's been built. It's tiny, it's small, it's their first thing.
01:25:24 ◼ ► Whatever it is. I don't think an AI pin that only had Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and talked to your phone would behave like that.
01:25:38 ◼ ► I would have to construct a scenario where they're given unfettered access and do a terrible job
01:25:54 ◼ ► My answer is no. I think it could be built to work fairly easily without thoroughly compromising the iPhone experience.
01:26:03 ◼ ► What I would say is, I appreciate Roman's point here broadly, which is talking about integration with the iPhone is complicated.
01:26:11 ◼ ► It depends on implementation details. Apple is, I think, right to be concerned that third-party accessories
01:26:26 ◼ ► leading it to be one of these sort of like, "What can Apple do? They can't allow anything on their platform
01:26:39 ◼ ► I think Apple could totally do this because Apple is a very capable company that could probably give access to its platform
01:26:47 ◼ ► at a limited way that would still be enough to satisfy the makers of devices like this.
01:26:57 ◼ ► That's debatable. But to take it to the extreme of like, "Oh, what if it destroyed the iPhone?"
01:27:08 ◼ ► I feel like Apple could create a series of APIs that provide similar information to and through,
01:27:14 ◼ ► like what an Apple Watch can do, obviously. If they did something like that, you'd be a lot of the way there.
01:27:18 ◼ ► But also, if there was an inherent issue that large language models and the way that they work
01:27:47 ◼ ► and that other watchmakers who've investigated being on the iPhone have decided that they can't be
01:27:52 ◼ ► because they can't do a good enough job, that there are things that Apple does that prefer the Apple Watch.
01:28:01 ◼ ► I know that there's some stuff that is available that Humain could build on an iPhone in order to do some syncing,
01:28:13 ◼ ► Didn't Marco say even Apple Podcasts has some things that it can do that Overcast can't do?
01:28:26 ◼ ► Yeah, so this is my point, is an aspect of the DOJ's argument that I actually kind of agree with.
01:28:39 ◼ ► and tie it all in together and release it because they have to instead build a huge array of public open APIs,
01:28:50 ◼ ► And it also, honestly, it blunts the advantage they should have as the inventor of the Apple Watch
01:29:05 ◼ ► and I know that's really squishy, that Apple should provide access to its platform to competitors.
01:29:12 ◼ ► And that includes things like the Apple Watch, somebody else should be able to make a smartwatch.
01:29:18 ◼ ► At this point, 10 years later, somebody should be able to make a smartwatch for the iPhone
01:29:27 ◼ ► And my understanding is the reason, because look, hey, anybody who's selling an Apple Watch in the United States right now,
01:29:57 ◼ ► And that goes for things like the AI pin because the AI pin is essentially a smartwatch of a sort, of a weird sort.