00:00:00 ◼ ► from relay this is upgrade episode five five five a triple woo it's brought to you by fitbot google
00:00:17 ◼ ► gemini squarespace and delete me i am your host jason snell mike hurley of course continues to be
00:00:23 ◼ ► on paternity league leave but i paternity league actually i really like that idea it's like uh
00:00:28 ◼ ► various fathers uh battling over which who has the cutest baby pictures whoa he keeps sending them
00:00:35 ◼ ► to me um it's really nice to hear from him he's out there somewhere joining me in our latest of our
00:00:42 ◼ ► cavalcade of guests while mike is gone is the one the only my fellow js john siracusa welcome john
00:00:49 ◼ ► welcome back thank you glad to be here as always if i sound extra energetic today it's because my plane
00:00:57 ◼ ► got home from my weekend in portland oregon at 12 30 a.m and there's a lot of tea so that's good
00:01:07 ◼ ► um but we don't have time to talk about airlines let's talk about uh random things sent in by
00:01:15 ◼ ► listeners it's snell talk and this question comes in from tim tim says whenever i hear jason talk about
00:01:24 ◼ ► mill valley i which is where i live i think of back to the future is hill valley modeled on it
00:01:31 ◼ ► do you have a mall and if so how many pines does it have important check for timeline questions how
00:01:38 ◼ ► many pines are at the mall uh two one or who knows another number of pines could be at the mall the mall
00:01:45 ◼ ► could just be a pine forest with no shopping it could be um i don't know i i i've wondered this
00:01:54 ◼ ► question too i think fundamentally hill valley is just a very funny name because it's a tall thing and
00:01:58 ◼ ► a low thing like together how could that be whereas mill valley is named after a sawmill that was in the
00:02:06 ◼ ► valley below the mountain and that's not a very interesting name but that's the name that we got
00:02:11 ◼ ► um i i think the implication is that hill valley is in la and not in well no maybe it is okay we're not
00:02:19 ◼ ► going to go deep on back to the future geography but there is a there there's they end up in a gold
00:02:23 ◼ ► rush town um it's a gold rush town in the 19th century which suggests that it is in northern california
00:02:31 ◼ ► probably it moves around a lot sometimes it's very la like sometimes it's very san francisco like
00:02:36 ◼ ► um but i don't think it's really modeled on us we are not we we are not as modern suburban as that
00:02:44 ◼ ► because the geography here is very rugged and limited in southern marin especially and so we're kind of the
00:02:49 ◼ ► towns up in a canyon and there's not room for the sort of suburban sprawl we do have there is a mall up the
00:02:55 ◼ ► road but it's not in mill valley it's in a different city so uh and john i have a related
00:03:02 ◼ ► to that i have a sunblasted hellscape report for you because whenever you visit me you point out the
00:03:06 ◼ ► brown hills behind my house and say this is a hellscape and i'll just not just behind your house
00:03:10 ◼ ► they're everywhere they're everywhere in california but they are specifically also behind my house i'll
00:03:14 ◼ ► just say it's march it's a saint patrick's day and guess what those hills are beautifully green right
00:03:19 ◼ ► now don't get used to it they'll be brown very soon but i think you're overthinking this hill
00:03:24 ◼ ► valley mill valley question like i have only been to your town a few times but it is geographically
00:03:29 ◼ ► nothing like the you know stereotypical bat plot suburban street it's not there's i don't think
00:03:35 ◼ ► there's anything like that there like it's not that wide and flat and just you know no we do have a
00:03:40 ◼ ► downtown that is not you know it's too small to be the hill valley downtown with the big square there
00:03:47 ◼ ► are other places in in marin that would probably be closer to that than mill valley i really think i think
00:03:52 ◼ ► mill valley was resonating in their brains when they came up with hill valley but i think fundamentally
00:03:57 ◼ ► yeah i hate to say it this is like a version of our friend todd vazieri's is that a easter egg or a
00:04:02 ◼ ► thing in the movie i think the answer is like is this uh does this have deep meaning or is it just a really
00:04:06 ◼ ► dumb pun uh and that's what it is it's it's what it's hill and valley that's it really uh but thank you
00:04:16 ◼ ► tim for writing in there there's no mall in mill valley and the nearby malls don't seem to have any
00:04:25 ◼ ► john it is time for fatherly advice uh segment where we uh dispense some some wisdom question mark
00:04:36 ◼ ► to mike who is probably still listening to the show because it's early enough in the show that he
00:04:42 ◼ ► hasn't given up in order to go feed a baby or watch a apparently watch a formula one race at 4 a.m
00:04:47 ◼ ► while feeding a baby which is apparently what happened over the weekend do you have any
00:04:50 ◼ ► words of wisdom to impart to mike listener mike i heard the uh the analog episode where he cut together
00:04:57 ◼ ► like all the clips of like all the people that mike does podcasts with on a regular basis giving him
00:05:01 ◼ ► fatherly advice uh but he's making good use of his connections to fathers to try to aggregate this and
00:05:07 ◼ ► you are continuing it yes that was a good episode i think he got a lot of good advice there i actually
00:05:12 ◼ ► had a discussion with my wife about this after i listened to that episode and i said it's really
00:05:16 ◼ ► difficult for me to think about what kind of fatherly advice i would give and like i could fill
00:05:20 ◼ ► this entire episode with just that type of thing but my what i was discussing with my wife i said i
00:05:25 ◼ ► really struggle because my inclination would be to give the kind of advice that nobody wants to hear
00:05:30 ◼ ► because that's just my nature like you don't want to tell people about the bad things that will be
00:05:36 ◼ ► part of the difficult parts of fatherhood like why that's that's not like it's it's a happy occasion
00:05:41 ◼ ► you have a new baby you're a new father let's not bring it down by talking about all the difficulties
00:05:46 ◼ ► and the struggles and stuff like that um so a lot of my advice that i would give i have to set aside and
00:05:52 ◼ ► then his questions were like uh advice for the first month and then bigger picture advice uh and bigger
00:05:58 ◼ ► picture advice i feel like new fathers it's useless to them like it's not that's not it's not time it's
00:06:05 ◼ ► not time for like big picture fatherhood advice when you have a baby like you're in it's triage mode
00:06:10 ◼ ► right especially your first baby it is kind of an all hands on deck emergency there's this new living
00:06:15 ◼ ► thing that you are responsible for uh so i think the first month advice is more actionable than the big
00:06:21 ◼ ► picture advice because i just don't think the big picture advice it's not time for that it's not the
00:06:25 ◼ ► appropriate occasion so um given all that my my first month advice my like you know and presumably
00:06:33 ◼ ► hopefully he doesn't need much of this now my first month advice is also kind of in the bummer vein
00:06:38 ◼ ► because again me um and it would just be this and i think he got some of this on his program where
00:06:44 ◼ ► people are trying to be a little bit nicer about it which is um when you have struggles during you know
00:06:52 ◼ ► you're a new father you've got a new baby when you have struggles and difficult times uh it's easy
00:06:58 ◼ ► to think that the difficulties and thoughts that you're having are outside the bounds of of normalcy
00:07:06 ◼ ► that like yeah sure everyone struggles but i'm no one feels this bad about this no one dislikes this
00:07:13 ◼ ► this as much as i'm disliking it no one you know like and you'll beat yourself up about it you'll be like
00:07:17 ◼ ► this is supposed to be a happy occasion i'm supposed to be happy that i have a new baby why am i having
00:07:21 ◼ ► any negative feelings whatsoever about being a new father uh and i'm here to tell you that any
00:07:26 ◼ ► terrible negative feeling that you have that makes you feel guilty about having it do not feel guilty
00:07:32 ◼ ► other people have had it believe me you are you are not alone in this because people don't talk about
00:07:37 ◼ ► people like oh i have a new father how is it and everyone has to put a brave face on it and say how
00:07:40 ◼ ► wonderful it is and how they're making it through and it's tough but i'm still loving every minute
00:07:43 ◼ ► you won't love every minute of it and no one wants to hear you talk about that and i just
00:07:47 ◼ ► wanted to let you know as as a father who's had infants uh that anything you're thinking and feeling
00:07:53 ◼ ► that is that you're feeling guilty about you should uh be assured that other people have thought and
00:07:59 ◼ ► felt this exact same way and they've also felt guilty about it and beating yourself up about it
00:08:03 ◼ ► doesn't help uh and then you know the other advice that he got on his program which is totally true
00:08:06 ◼ ► is like this will pass you will get through it and there'll be another thing and another thing
00:08:10 ◼ ► another thing so everything is temporary hang in there mike yeah it's it's hard and there's a lot
00:08:16 ◼ ► before you have a baby there's a lot of joking of like ha ha ha we won't sleep ha ha ha it's not so
00:08:21 ◼ ► funny when you haven't slept in days and the baby is crying and right at you as loud as it can and
00:08:27 ◼ ► there's nothing you can do to make the baby quiet like it it's not ha ha ha funny then it's just and
00:08:32 ◼ ► the thing is you never want to tell us to people because maybe they'll have a baby that is easier than
00:08:37 ◼ ► average right and they won't know because everyone's first baby is like that's the only experience you
00:08:40 ◼ ► have but like you don't want to scare people and think it's going to be terrible because maybe it
00:08:44 ◼ ► won't be maybe it'll be just fine right but it just this is like just in case just in case you find
00:08:49 ◼ ► yourself having negative thoughts about fatherhood that you thought you would never have because
00:08:56 ◼ ► don't worry that's the thing that happens to everybody um we're empty nesters and i know you are
00:09:02 ◼ ► very close to being in the same situation not that close but we'll see well all right i mean okay we'll
00:09:07 ◼ ► see well my son graduates college it's a question of whether he will come back to the house so that is
00:09:12 ◼ ► true that is absolutely true yes we're empty nesters for the time being and then any day we could get a
00:09:19 ◼ ► call that said i'm returning home and that's just what you you just have to accept it but what i was
00:09:24 ◼ ► going to say is that one of lauren's things that she has started to tell people and she laughs about it but
00:09:34 ◼ ► if you're lucky it's not well that's true i mean you gotta look at both sides of it that's the goal
00:09:43 ◼ ► you're trying to give them escape velocity yes that is that is the goal um but it's tough to get there
00:09:48 ◼ ► after all that and then you miss your kids because they're not around we just spent the weekend in
00:09:51 ◼ ► portland and we got to spend a lot of time with jamie we were doing a curling thing but we also got to
00:09:57 ◼ ► spend a lot of time with jamie she came out to to beaverton to the curling club and saw us there and then we
00:10:02 ◼ ► went in on on saturday and we had brunch with her and then we had dinner with her yesterday before we went to
00:10:10 ◼ ► the airport it was really nice but we also came to that realization that the thing about your kids leaving
00:10:15 ◼ ► where you live and being somewhere else is that now you have to go visit them in addition to all
00:10:21 ◼ ► the other travel you want to do it just is there's a lot going on there but um it's good to have her
00:10:26 ◼ ► out on her own like that anyway regardless i think thank you for the fatherly advice john i appreciate it
00:10:33 ◼ ► um i i came up with this idea and didn't tell mike and then he did that whole episode and i was like
00:10:41 ◼ ► let's do a little bit we're gonna start rumor roundup um and then we'll probably do uh some of
00:10:47 ◼ ► it after the next ad break as well but i wanted to start a little rumor roundup now with you because
00:10:52 ◼ ► you know mark german he publishes things on sundays and um this podcast is recorded on mondays so it's
00:11:00 ◼ ► perfectly primed to take in and decrypt or attempt to decrypt the mysterious reporting of
00:11:06 ◼ ► mark gerber mark gerber berg gerberg it's a new uh a new guy hey look i was i didn't get to sleep until
00:11:14 ◼ ► 130 uh the iphone air was in his uh in his clutches this week uh in terms of his topic on his power on
00:11:22 ◼ ► newsletter and he's reported about it a lot this is and he he makes the point of saying i call it the
00:11:27 ◼ ► iphone air which is good right because we all know that they can invent a product and call it whatever
00:11:33 ◼ ► they want but until marketing signs off on what gets printed on a label and stuck to a box and put in a
00:11:38 ◼ ► press release it could be called anything but he did go over some of the details he's already reported and
00:11:44 ◼ ► added some new details so just to summarize what he's saying this is this this falls new entrant replacing
00:11:51 ◼ ► the iphone plus it uh that it is two millimeters thinner than the existing iphone so that reduces
00:11:59 ◼ ► it by about a fifth it will have a screen that's around 6.6 inches so a little bit bigger than the
00:12:06 ◼ ► iphone pro but smaller than the max slim borders like the pro pro motion for smooth scrolling that is an
00:12:14 ◼ ► interesting tidbit and a standard dynamic island interface the camera control button battery life
00:12:21 ◼ ► that's on par with current phones despite being far thinner one camera the c1 cellular modem
00:12:28 ◼ ► um and then he said they were trying to make it bigger like pro max size but that they they had
00:12:35 ◼ ► concerns that if you spread this thin thing over that big uh size it will be too bendable and you'll get
00:12:41 ◼ ► another bend gate and he also said that they were talking again about the portless iphone idea what
00:12:46 ◼ ► if there were no ports none at all um and they that german says they didn't go down that path because
00:12:54 ◼ ► they were afraid that the eu would be mad at them for making a phone without usbc and having another kind
00:13:00 ◼ ► of argument about that which i that one i'm not sure i i'm not sure i buy that one at all that feels like a
00:13:07 ◼ ► telephone keep in mind this is something mike and i always talk about it's like keep in mind who are his
00:13:10 ◼ ► sources what do they know what do they not know and what do they have a particular point of view and that
00:13:15 ◼ ► one just feels like a like a telephone game kind of thing where they're like yeah the eu and and he
00:13:20 ◼ ► maybe took that a little more legitimately than they than than they did but um interesting you know
00:13:27 ◼ ► the thing that jumped out for me here was promotion because that's not a low-end iphone feature uh but
00:13:33 ◼ ► it's not it sounds like they really are positioning this as it's not a it's not an iphone 17 but thinner
00:13:40 ◼ ► it's it's something in between the iphone and the iphone pro what did you think about this report
00:13:45 ◼ ► yeah this product is always ever since it's been rumored as like the slimmer iphone has always seemed
00:13:51 ◼ ► like a like a luxury play like making something thinner and lighter uh in in a realm where that is
00:13:59 ◼ ► you know desirable and sacrificing some other stuff for it doesn't seem like the bargain model it's
00:14:04 ◼ ► so clearly the uh like you know aesthetics and handling over uh utility and that is a luxury
00:14:12 ◼ ► type of thing so it makes perfect sense to me that they would put promotion on it um i mean
00:14:18 ◼ ► maybe the only reason it doesn't even have the rumored to have the a19 pro is because it's just
00:14:23 ◼ ► too big and too hot right so it's but it's got the plane a19 uh the whole phone is built around trying
00:14:27 ◼ ► to be thin and they're going to charge extra for that uh you know extra over the plane 17 so that
00:14:34 ◼ ► makes sense and promotion let's tell you like i'm so sick of that being a differentiator like the state
00:14:41 ◼ ► of the art has moved on soon it's going to be like the cheapest you know 99 android phone you can buy
00:14:47 ◼ ► is going to have a 120 hertz screen and apple's still going to be trying to differentiate the
00:14:50 ◼ ► low-end products it's like all right now you had you had a good run it's a good differentiator but
00:14:55 ◼ ► like at a certain point you have to say can we even you know can we even get screens that are
00:15:00 ◼ ► optimized for 60 hertz anymore or should we just anyway i you know and i realize it's more expensive
00:15:04 ◼ ► for the fancy screens that can do like the one refresh per second and all that other stuff but
00:15:08 ◼ ► well yeah but but 16 you know 16 gigabytes of ram is more expensive than eight but at some point you
00:15:13 ◼ ► really do have to just say yeah and it's not that much more expensive not that it's like yeah and
00:15:19 ◼ ► speaking speaking of not that much more is another thing i give a little bit of side eye for again we
00:15:23 ◼ ► need uh um some materials engineer like dr drang to uh do the math on this but okay they were they
00:15:29 ◼ ► didn't want to make it bigger because they're afraid it would be too much how much more leverage
00:15:33 ◼ ► how much additional bending power do you have for the mere millimeters of extra length and width that
00:15:39 ◼ ► you would get with a whatever the the max sizes because what is the pro is like 6.3 or something
00:15:45 ◼ ► yeah i'm i'm terrible with those kind of numbers but yeah it's a little bit diagonal measure it's not
00:15:51 ◼ ► the pro it's not the pro size it's a little bit bigger so it's closer to that pro max size already but
00:15:57 ◼ ► then they said they didn't want to go the extra mile there so so even just like lay a pro on top of a
00:16:02 ◼ ► pro max how much taller is it and then do the math on how much extra force you get for an optimal
00:16:08 ◼ ► scenario of like a fulcrum exactly in the middle and if they're that close to the threshold of the
00:16:13 ◼ ► thing bending that that makes a difference you know so anyway that's that's going to be the challenge
00:16:17 ◼ ► with the with a thin phone is to make sure it doesn't bend too much uh but they've been there
00:16:20 ◼ ► before hopefully they do a good job of it i don't necessarily agree that the reason they didn't
00:16:24 ◼ ► make it the pro max size was bending there are so many other reasons you wouldn't make it that big
00:16:28 ◼ ► um just because like you're trying to split the difference here and also it's so thin to get more
00:16:34 ◼ ► battery you want it to be bigger than the pro so yeah they it's it's i think it looked they looked
00:16:41 ◼ ► at it and they said what price do we want to hit here and they don't want it to be 1199 like a pro max
00:16:46 ◼ ► right they they wanted to be maybe it's 999 like a pro instead of 899 like the plus but i don't don't
00:16:54 ◼ ► think they wanted to make it the high-end model right i i don't think they wanted to do that and so
00:16:58 ◼ ► as a result um i think they made right like a bigger phone is more expensive right everything about it is
00:17:05 ◼ ► more expensive gruman points out here too that that like they really did target battery life with this
00:17:10 ◼ ► and they did that by saving power in other areas i think that's the c1 in action among other things i
00:17:17 ◼ ► mean i think the main place they get their battery life from is one camera yeah one camera just plain
00:17:22 ◼ ► more room and they made the phone bigger so both of those things like square square feet of battery
00:17:27 ◼ ► and that's the dimension that's the dimension that really helps right like it you make it thinner but
00:17:32 ◼ ► you also make it wider you get some battery space back you you do some things with some maybe lower
00:17:37 ◼ ► yeah you get rid of the other cameras you have a much more power sipping modem and you put it all
00:17:45 ◼ ► together and you you try to hit that that battery level whatever the battery goal is for them and the
00:17:50 ◼ ► screen the like the the promotion screen the other feature of it i'm assuming like all the other ones
00:17:55 ◼ ► is that it can do really low refresh rate that saves battery life when you're not doing animation so
00:18:00 ◼ ► that all it all adds up to i can you look at this physically at the rumors of this phone and they
00:18:07 ◼ ► i can see that phone having pretty much the same battery life as the plane 17 given what's in it
00:18:13 ◼ ► or the or the uh 16e yeah might be a better model i i do kind of think the 16e was like experiment
00:18:20 ◼ ► number one this feels like experiment number two and as german wrote in his newsletter this week at
00:18:26 ◼ ► bloomberg um it breaks ground for future models this was a thing that mike and i talked about last year
00:18:32 ◼ ► that one of the reasons you might try to make a thin phone is that if you're going to make a folding
00:18:37 ◼ ► phone each of those planes has to be super thin and so you're building up knowledge and experience
00:18:46 ◼ ► building you know trying to minimize the thickness of your phone on the path toward a foldable phone
00:18:51 ◼ ► which german says might happen 26 or 27 and he mentions that as a part of that one of the other
00:18:58 ◼ ► things they might do is uh finally do the proper kind of under display sensor thing that means you don't
00:19:05 ◼ ► need a dynamic island or as much of a cutout in the screen we'll see um uh i'm i mean i i don't want to
00:19:15 ◼ ► think about how expensive that phone is going to be but i have to admit i as as many issues as there
00:19:23 ◼ ► are with ipad os and we're not even going to talk about federico vatici wrote an article last week
00:19:27 ◼ ► where he basically said you know i i that mr ipad himself was like i think i'm just going to go back
00:19:34 ◼ ► to the mac the ipad is just kind of what it is and it's not really any more than that but i'll say this
00:19:39 ◼ ► apple's experience building ipad os and building a an os platform that allows tablet apps to be
00:19:46 ◼ ► decent um i really start to think about that foldable iphone being a nice iphone that folds
00:19:53 ◼ ► out into something that's more like an ipad and i think i can see uh apple having some real advantages
00:20:00 ◼ ► there and german says that they they are gonna the the crease will be imperceptible whatever that
00:20:06 ◼ ► means um i don't know it it interests me as as somebody who likes the ipad and has an iphone
00:20:13 ◼ ► the idea that you could just carry around an iphone and then pop it open and it's an ipad
00:20:17 ◼ ► i'm interested by that i don't know if you find that is it like a back door to make instagram make an ipad
00:20:24 ◼ ► app because they'll they'll technically only be making a phone app but if you want instagram to fill
00:20:28 ◼ ► the whole new foldable iphone screen you kind of already already made an ipad app i don't know they'll
00:20:34 ◼ ► still find a way to they will they'll find a way to ruin it but that's that's the problem with uh you
00:20:38 ◼ ► know when apple if and when apple comes out with a foldable and the screen is just you know much
00:20:42 ◼ ► larger more like an ipad um and phone apps have to fit themselves to that screen will the guidance
00:20:49 ◼ ► essentially be do what you do in an ipad mini sort of and if that's the case they're back to the same
00:20:54 ◼ ► old problem is like people want to make phone apps and apple's had real trouble getting even the
00:21:00 ◼ ► biggest companies in the world to bother making a decent ipad app or in the case of instagram
00:21:10 ◼ ► ipad don't really forget about taking advantage of the very latest features and everything like that
00:21:14 ◼ ► they just don't really care what they look like on the ipad yeah as somebody who uses my ipad a lot
00:21:19 ◼ ► i would say um i think it i don't think the situation is dire i do think that they benefit
00:21:27 ◼ ► from having built the system that makes it fairly easy for an iphone app to be an ipad app and be
00:21:33 ◼ ► decent and i mostly i say that because i think this year google once again rededicated itself to making
00:21:39 ◼ ► changes to allow their tablet apps to finally be good on android and you know maybe they'll crack it
00:21:46 ◼ ► but they have said that so many times and every time i've used an android tablet i have been aghast
00:21:52 ◼ ► at how terrible it is and yeah the situation is way worse over there that's why the ipad looks better
00:21:56 ◼ ► it's literally the only viable tablet platform really yeah i mean even if we complain about details and
00:22:01 ◼ ► there are plenty to complain about about ipad apps let me tell you um last year i did it again last
00:22:07 ◼ ► year i bought a an android tablet and tried it out uh that one that had the non-reflective screen so
00:22:12 ◼ ► they were trying to make it like an e-reader and i opened those tablet apps on android they're so bad
00:22:17 ◼ ► like you ipad users don't know how good they've got it just because that that i mean good for google
00:22:22 ◼ ► for acknowledging that yes they are bad and we're going to try again but they have tried they have
00:22:27 ◼ ► said that so many times and it's still terrible so i don't know what they're i don't know and then
00:22:32 ◼ ► where apple's got ipad they've got split view and i i just i think about the folding and unfolding
00:22:40 ◼ ► iphone and i think that's been the frustration is it's the rare case in modern apple where the
00:22:46 ◼ ► software is all there it really is they got to get that hardware right in order to ship it but i think
00:22:51 ◼ ► their software story is is decent yeah the lack of competition from google is actually really hurting
00:22:57 ◼ ► apple here because they they don't how would they feel any urgency when when they're competing against
00:23:02 ◼ ► nothing basically yeah yeah it's not good over there all right we will we have a little more um
00:23:08 ◼ ► rumor roundup to do but first i want to tell you about our sponsor this episode of upgrade is brought
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00:25:18 ◼ ► okay john i guess they're redesigning all the things that's uh that's the other story that's out there this
00:25:27 ◼ ► week i know you guys talked about this on atp last week people can check that out as always i assume
00:25:33 ◼ ► most people have already checked that out but it is a wild idea um that apple is going to spend this
00:25:40 ◼ ► summer unveiling uh a dramatic overhauled redesign across all of their operating systems ios ipad os and
00:25:50 ◼ ► mac os and it may be i would not say inspired by vision os because i don't think that's how it works i think
00:25:57 ◼ ► vision os was the first aspect of this project to do an os redesign to drop that's how you would do it
00:26:06 ◼ ► as you'd say what's our new oh we've got a new os coming out well let's use it as the testing ground
00:26:12 ◼ ► for our new thing but you know mac os ios ipad os as well um and a stated goal at least in the report is
00:26:19 ◼ ► some more kind of unification of operating systems which you know anybody who's used the settings app
00:26:25 ◼ ► on the mac um it's got to put a a chill down your spine what do you think about this you know i guess
00:26:34 ◼ ► that on on atp like the the the first question about any kind of overhaul like this is to what end
00:26:40 ◼ ► why why are we doing this and there are answers i mean the the most obvious one is you just gotta
00:26:45 ◼ ► change the look of things every once in a while to keep things fresh um and we've had the current look
00:26:51 ◼ ► even though it has evolved uh over time for for a long time now and it you can add excitement to your
00:26:57 ◼ ► plat to all your platforms by saying look at look at this new look i mean just think of aqua for the mac
00:27:01 ◼ ► it's controversial yeah but it sure added a ton of excitement i mean i don't know if the rollout of
00:27:06 ◼ ► mac os 10 would have been half as exciting if they hadn't decided to do something incredibly bold
00:27:11 ◼ ► with the look and feel of their operating system they could have just shipped it as platinum i mean
00:27:15 ◼ ► mac os 10 server was like that you could switch the betas back to that right uh but they or they even
00:27:20 ◼ ► could have gone with the next look if they wanted to but they came up with something entirely new and
00:27:24 ◼ ► it added a lot of controversy and a lot of excitement um and so you have to do that every once in a while
00:27:30 ◼ ► so that's one of the answers now given the other things we may talk about in this episode and the
00:27:35 ◼ ► current state of apple this isn't great timing for them to say you know every every 10 years or so we
00:27:42 ◼ ► should do a big uh look and feel overhaul but we're kind of in the middle of a crisis involving technology
00:27:48 ◼ ► that's unrelated to look and feel and so the timing's not great i mean on the one hand if everybody loves
00:27:55 ◼ ► the new look hey this really helps us with the difficulties we're having in other areas right
00:27:58 ◼ ► on the other hand if the new look turns out not so good which a lot of people feel like it might
00:28:05 ◼ ► uh based on past history uh this is a bad time for that to be layered on top of all the apple
00:28:10 ◼ ► intelligence stuff and the i think the the main reason especially people in the know are wary about
00:28:15 ◼ ► this is like you said apple's recent history and doing similar things but just in general hardware and
00:28:22 ◼ ► software one of the things that apple has stumbled on in the past decade has been finding the right
00:28:28 ◼ ► balance between form and function and that is a balance and you can't be all in one direction or
00:28:33 ◼ ► the other but for a while in both hardware and software it seems like apple had been choosing
00:28:40 ◼ ► form over function they would make beautiful computers that didn't have the function out
00:28:44 ◼ ► didn't have the ports and everything people needed that you know they would they wanted to make it as
00:28:48 ◼ ► thin their phones as thin as possible and they would bend they want to make the keyboard as thin as
00:28:52 ◼ ► possible then it would break and on the software platforms they would redesign mac apps that were
00:28:56 ◼ ► full-featured to make them look more like their ios counterparts and lose half the features of them
00:29:00 ◼ ► and they would never come back right it's it's beautiful it's consistent it's it looks nice but it's like
00:29:06 ◼ ► these aren't just objects we look at we like them to look nice but we also have to use them so what is
00:29:11 ◼ ► the correct balance and thinking about apple doing a multi-platform redesign we're just out here going
00:29:18 ◼ ► boy i hope i hope those bad instincts don't come out i hope they don't lean heavily into simplification
00:29:24 ◼ ► making everything look as clean and as beautiful as their least capable platform especially on the mac you
00:29:30 ◼ ► don't want them to be inspired by how simple things are on the phone because that the phone is the phone
00:29:36 ◼ ► and the mac is the mac they're very different platforms you know it would almost be as if
00:29:41 ◼ ► their redesign for the phone had the information density and precision pointing requirements of the mac
00:29:46 ◼ ► user interface from like a decade ago that would be equally inappropriate apple does not do go in that
00:29:51 ◼ ► direction but you really have to let each platform be true to itself and that's apple will give lip
00:29:56 ◼ ► service to that all day but we look at what they've done recently and so we're we're worried we're
00:30:00 ◼ ► concerned we've seen them make incorrect choices recently and basically not remedy those like settings on the
00:30:06 ◼ ► mac it did one of the things that had to accomplish which is give me a more scalable easier way to add
00:30:12 ◼ ► settings because there are so many of them and make them a little bit easier to find with a better search
00:30:15 ◼ ► which arguably whether they did that yeah but i think the the actual like you know day-to-day use of that
00:30:23 ◼ ► is that it is less pleasant to use than the old one it doesn't look as good and you've just moved
00:30:29 ◼ ► everything so every no one can find anything anymore and the places where things are don't really i mean
00:30:34 ◼ ► they're new places but set aside that they're new the places things are don't really make that much
00:30:38 ◼ ► sense lots of things are hidden under little eyes in a circle with modal things on top of other things so
00:30:42 ◼ ► it's we look at that and we're like at best it's a wash at worst you've just sort of you know made
00:30:49 ◼ ► different mistakes so i i am going to give what i'm going to call an optimistic take on this
00:30:56 ◼ ► this is not a prediction okay because i i agree with you i am concerned that the track record here
00:31:06 ◼ ► recently is not good but my optimistic prediction or not non-prediction my optimistic scenario there's
00:31:14 ◼ ► your hope my hope is because because you know one of the things that i keep thinking is like it's not
00:31:22 ◼ ► as simple as it looks from the outside it's very easy to cherry pick things from the outside and not
00:31:26 ◼ ► understand what actually was going on on the inside and i firmly believe you get judged on your output you
00:31:32 ◼ ► don't you know you don't ship it's like when all those uh covid uh hurt shows shipped out nonsensical
00:31:38 ◼ ► episodes and they said but covid and it's like i understand and i feel for you but your episodes
00:31:43 ◼ ► were still bad you know and and you don't you don't get a a pass for that even though i understand it
00:31:49 ◼ ► emotionally in the end you are you are not judged because it was hard to ship you're judged on what you
00:31:54 ◼ ► ship but that said i do wonder first off when we talk about the things that they've done recently
00:32:01 ◼ ► to the mac to make them more like the iphone and the ipad and they are often not very good and don't
00:32:09 ◼ ► make sense i mean the checkboxes example is a great one where switches where you can't necessarily even
00:32:14 ◼ ► detect whether it's on or off or what you do when you click on it what does it do whereas a checkbox
00:32:19 ◼ ► that's empty or full is pretty clear um but i think that was a directive to make the mac more like
00:32:30 ◼ ► the iphone and the ipad right i think that that was the idea i understand the impulse which is um we
00:32:36 ◼ ► want a family resemblance between our products so that if you're an iphone user you'd rather use a mac
00:32:43 ◼ ► than a pc because it will be more familiar to you and there are so many more iphone users there are so
00:32:49 ◼ ► many more iphone users which means even now even now they are picking up new mac users who've never
00:32:55 ◼ ► used a mac before because people are so comfortable in the apple ecosystem and you want to give them a
00:33:00 ◼ ► leg up you want them to be able to sort of understand the mac conceptually especially if they've only ever
00:33:05 ◼ ► used a pc or a chromebook i get all of that but my optimistic view is what we saw was literally
00:33:12 ◼ ► make it more like the ipad slap some ipad and iphone coding on the mac in order to make it
00:33:18 ◼ ► look a little more like the other products and what i want to believe because right like everything it
00:33:25 ◼ ► could be a new movie gets announced and everybody's like well that could be terrible i was like well
00:33:29 ◼ ► literally every project could be terrible and literally every project could be good it depends
00:33:34 ◼ ► on how they execute it we don't know what's going on inside but i look at these reports and i think
00:33:38 ◼ ► what they may be doing is saying look we have so many platforms they've all evolved separately we've
00:33:45 ◼ ► tried to put new coats of paint on parts of them but what we really need to do since we haven't done it
00:33:50 ◼ ► since seven really is let's go back and come up with a apple uh interface language for the rest of the
00:34:01 ◼ ► 2020s and how it varies and good design would be how it varies across our platforms based on what kind of
00:34:09 ◼ ► device they are because a watch and a and an apple tv and a vision pro and a mac and an iphone and an ipad
00:34:15 ◼ ► are all different but you want to make them feel sort of familiar so a good design team would absolutely do
00:34:22 ◼ ► all of that and that's why my theory is that the apple or the vision pro is uh is a a forerunner
00:34:29 ◼ ► of that because if you've got a whole project to rethink all of your os interfaces for the future
00:34:34 ◼ ► and you're shipping the vision pro you could invent something completely random for it but you know you're
00:34:41 ◼ ► going to be replacing it with this new thing down the road why not have it be based on like draft one of
00:34:47 ◼ ► that as you're as you're building it out for all your all your platforms so my optimistic view is
00:34:52 ◼ ► the right thing to do at apple would be to take a step back come up with general principles about what
00:34:59 ◼ ► the modern apple design interface you know interface design should be consider all your products and the
00:35:05 ◼ ► ways that they you know properly would be applied and then come up with a whole system that's in place
00:35:11 ◼ ► that's consistent that you can go out with across all your devices that feels familiar but is also
00:35:17 ◼ ► well designed in the sense of it's designed for the product that it's actually running on that's not
00:35:23 ◼ ► inconsistent with the reports we've gotten i don't know if it's happening but that would be the right
00:35:29 ◼ ► thing to do i think yeah that that is a plausible scenario of what the project might have been still
00:35:34 ◼ ► i guarantee the project also might have been oh we really need a new look come up with something yeah
00:35:38 ◼ ► right that's true um but here's here's the thing that always concerns me about that even if they
00:35:43 ◼ ► they that was the project they were undertaking i no longer have the faith i used to have that the
00:35:48 ◼ ► people who are available will make the correct choices for everything you just laid out what's
00:35:53 ◼ ► required of them you have to do that you have to you know a new look for all our systems do what's
00:35:57 ◼ ► best for each platform and that's hard to me that it's really hard they just but it just seems to me
00:36:01 ◼ ► that the people they have there do not understand what the strengths and weaknesses of the platforms are
00:36:06 ◼ ► as evidenced by what they do to them particularly on the mac uh where i feel like the phone they have
00:36:10 ◼ ► a pretty good read on the ipad i like we've just got done complaining about like it's not like it seems
00:36:16 ◼ ► like they don't understand the potential of that platform and what it can and should be and so they
00:36:21 ◼ ► end up treating it as uh a little bit more uh you know less capable than we than we know it truly is
00:36:26 ◼ ► the mac especially everything we've seen from them for like over a decade has been to uh to take the
00:36:33 ◼ ► mac and make it less capable and make it less good the things that only the mac can do it's the only
00:36:38 ◼ ► thing with a gigantic screen it's the only thing with a guaranteed precision pointing device uh it has
00:36:43 ◼ ► the most complexity has the most capability it has the the most complicated software and everything
00:36:48 ◼ ► they do to the mac whenever they touch it makes me think they don't understand that and don't don't
00:36:54 ◼ ► know like and so i i agree with the project you've outlined i wish the people executing it i had more
00:37:01 ◼ ► faith that they would do the right things honestly i i don't know because it's a black box and i don't
00:37:07 ◼ ► know anybody who has told me anything about this i am just gonna be a small team it's gonna be
00:37:12 ◼ ► what i would say is it's just as likely that the people there are actually very talented and agree
00:37:19 ◼ ► with everything you're saying but the resources they've been given and the directives they've been
00:37:24 ◼ ► given over the last five or ten years have made them do things that even they don't they know that ain't
00:37:33 ◼ ► it but they have done it because like that's just i i would almost guarantee you that people who designed
00:37:39 ◼ ► the systems system app on mac os the settings app know everything that's wrong with it but they
00:37:45 ◼ ► either weren't given the authority to make it better or they weren't given the resources to make it better
00:37:52 ◼ ► and so it just sits there but in the end it's what it goes back to what i was saying which doesn't matter
00:37:56 ◼ ► what you are is what you ship right like that is that is uh the uh the lesson of the of the real
00:38:02 ◼ ► you know what you ship is is all that matters the story behind it does not matter um it's either good
00:38:09 ◼ ► or it's not and what they've shipped hasn't generally been good um they've done some good stuff but there's
00:38:16 ◼ ► also been a lot of horrific stuff so my hope is they were empowered to say let's go back to the basics
00:38:23 ◼ ► and start from the beginning and then get this design out across all of our platforms you know and a project
00:38:31 ◼ ► that would probably have taken several years um and i hope that that's the case right because the
00:38:38 ◼ ► the worst case scenario here is yeah it's a new it's a coat of new paint um that isn't really well thought
00:38:44 ◼ ► out like that's how you do a bad user interfaces it's the bad it's bad design the mac looks like this because of the
00:38:50 ◼ ► iphone and like that's not how a mac works but it doesn't matter or even if it's even if it's like
00:38:54 ◼ ► they do undertake the project as you described it but they say and this is our answer to that and our
00:38:58 ◼ ► answer to that is less information density on the mac our answer to that is massively simplified things
00:39:02 ◼ ► on the mac our answer to that is everything you've ever seen on the mac is now legacy and this is the way
00:39:06 ◼ ► new mac things look and our answer to that is the new way things things look on the mac is not good
00:39:11 ◼ ► right and so even if they undertake the right project they would say here is our answer and it's just
00:39:23 ◼ ► it seems like system settings as an example a recent you know a recent part of the mac that has been
00:39:29 ◼ ► overhauled despite them trying to improve it and so on and putting a brave face on craig
00:39:35 ◼ ► federi saying we think it's great app blah blah blah i think within apple they know that system
00:39:41 ◼ ► settings redesign was not a hit yes they can they can convince themselves well you know it solved some
00:39:46 ◼ ► problems for us and the user and as long as people don't actively hate it let's just call it a wash
00:39:52 ◼ ► but it wasn't a hit no one was jazzed about it nobody was excited nobody was like this is great i hope
00:39:58 ◼ ► they redo the whole os to look like this like that wasn't happening so i hope they take that feedback
00:40:03 ◼ ► and it does it feels like we're kind of in the same situation we were with the like the mac laptops
00:40:07 ◼ ► for a while where there was this pent-up feeling where the customers just were frustrated because
00:40:12 ◼ ► the customer base would say apple do x y and z and we will like your products better and apple just
00:40:18 ◼ ► didn't have the ears to hear that for so long and when they finally did it was such a relief
00:40:22 ◼ ► laptops a little bit thicker more ports get rid of the touch bar put it and it's like oh thank god
00:40:29 ◼ ► and we were and there was much rejoicing and people and it helps apple silicon was amazing too so but
00:40:33 ◼ ► still like it felt like such a release and i and i feel like we're in that same spot with the os design
00:40:40 ◼ ► stuff where there is some obvious stuff that the the world wants apple to do and so far they have just
00:40:45 ◼ ► refused to do it it's kind of the biggest version of that of course is the app store where it's just
00:40:48 ◼ ► like you can feel all you want but apple's just not going to do it but in the realm of hardware and
00:40:52 ◼ ► software there is like this pent-up obvious thing we wish they would come out or like the mac round type
00:40:58 ◼ ► which they would come out and say we hear you that you're right we should that we should rededicate
00:41:04 ◼ ► ourselves to the mac being the place for complexity information density and capability moderated by you
00:41:11 ◼ ► know make easy things easy and hard things possible like if they came out and said all the right things
00:41:15 ◼ ► and had design that backed it up people would flip out it would be great right or on the flip side of
00:41:20 ◼ ► that if if the new os just plain looks really cool and has not that many things against it just look
00:41:28 ◼ ► at aqua aqua had so many problems but it looks so cool that you balanced all the problems with yeah
00:41:34 ◼ ► but come on it's super cool right and they glided on the super coolness until they got the whole rest
00:41:39 ◼ ► of their fairly disastrous os you know like it was slow right buggy it didn't run the stuff like
00:41:44 ◼ ► they glided on the coolness and that can take you real far so that's that's another possible
00:41:48 ◼ ► saving scenario like maybe please just let it at least be like cool looking that we really like it
00:41:54 ◼ ► you also go i mean there is an argument to be made um and this is what happened with aqua and it's what
00:42:00 ◼ ► happened with um ios 7 is yeah you gotta go too far you ship you ship it at 130 percent yeah and then
00:42:07 ◼ ► you spend spend the next three years dialing it back to 100 percent um and like that just happens
00:42:14 ◼ ► that happens with redesigns i i went through so many magazine and website redesigns and you i'm sure you
00:42:19 ◼ ► have implemented many website redesigns and like everybody has a lot of great ideas and then they
00:42:23 ◼ ► meet reality and then you back off of it but what i'll tell you i think bold redesigns that have to be
00:42:29 ◼ ► backed off of are more effective than timid redesigns that aren't really redesigns like if you're gonna do
00:42:35 ◼ ► it have the courage of your convictions and then you'll learn you know you'll get beat up and you'll
00:42:39 ◼ ► be like oh that doesn't make that doesn't work people don't like it let's change it and you saw
00:42:44 ◼ ► that with ios you saw that with mac os 10 i i do have here's another little i'm going to give you a
00:42:49 ◼ ► little injection of optimism here too john okay you ready um i wonder if apple is in a really different
00:42:56 ◼ ► philosophical place with its os's and its devices now than it was even five years ago and this is the
00:43:03 ◼ ► silver lining in the dark cloud of the evolution of the ipad which is i think apple legitimately
00:43:12 ◼ ► believed 10 years ago that the ipad was the future and that the mac was going to go away
00:43:15 ◼ ► i think now the ipad is a curiosity that is mostly a media tablet that can also be used in some
00:43:23 ◼ ► professional circumstances by some people but will never be anything more than a fisher price toy
00:43:28 ◼ ► versus the mac and apple is fine with that apple is just fine with that it's not the future anymore
00:43:34 ◼ ► and meanwhile in contrast the mac now seems to be the uh does everything product in their lineup
00:43:41 ◼ ► because it can it could theoretically run iphone and ipad apps and control your iphone and all of that
00:43:46 ◼ ► and who's using a mac you're either using it in a very simple mode i suppose but really like the mac
00:43:52 ◼ ► as more people just live on their phones the mac is the place where complexity happens so i could make
00:43:58 ◼ ► the argument that today's apple thinks more of the mac being a power tool and is less distracted by the ipad
00:44:08 ◼ ► being the real future of computing than it was five or ten years ago and that could mean that they make
00:44:14 ◼ ► some better decisions about the mac on the software side sort of like how they eventually made better
00:44:20 ◼ ► hardware decisions with the mac the problem with personifying apple in this way is that apple feels
00:44:25 ◼ ► this and apple feels that is that it's easier to to attribute uh changes in attitude of the company as
00:44:31 ◼ ► personified when the leadership is not exactly the same as it was then and i know the leadership learns
00:44:36 ◼ ► again they had the mac roundtable johnny ive did leave so the leadership's not exactly the same they did fix
00:44:41 ◼ ► stuff but the attitude toward the ipad is very clearly different than it was for whatever reason
00:44:45 ◼ ► yeah like but i do kind of feel like at the very highest levels that tim cook really wishes the ipad
00:44:50 ◼ ► was what's a computer i agree the what's a computer tablet he's still the guy in charge and he's had to
00:44:55 ◼ ► sort of like grudgingly uh shift course here which is fine like with with the os stuff uh with the look
00:45:01 ◼ ► and feel i i guess my biggest most optimistic hope is at least have them make different mistakes
00:45:06 ◼ ► like they already did the mistake where they made everything too translucent and the rumors that
00:45:11 ◼ ► they're going to do that same mistake again it's like come on like do a different mistake like there's
00:45:15 ◼ ► plenty of other mistakes you can make but do a different one like windows has already made the
00:45:19 ◼ ► mistake with like the aero glass look that was too translucent mac os 10 made it with aqua which was
00:45:23 ◼ ► too translucent vision pro it makes sense for it to be translucent because your room is behind it
00:45:28 ◼ ► but adopting that uh across all their platforms because it looks cool i hope it does look cool
00:45:34 ◼ ► but just the problems the problems caused by transparency can we make a different mistake
00:45:39 ◼ ► there's so many other ones you can make please pick a different one and my my concern now now now that i've
00:45:44 ◼ ► i'm really vacillating between optimism and pessimism but like i'm processing i heard you do it on atp
00:45:49 ◼ ► we're all kind of processing this right and it's like what do i think about this my pessimism is
00:45:54 ◼ ► and i hate to bring up that settings app again but this is this is my reasoning when i um for for a few
00:46:00 ◼ ► years i taught uh web and information design uh at the graduate school journalism where i went at uc
00:46:06 ◼ ► berkeley um and i i got down deep into information architecture and understanding information design and so
00:46:15 ◼ ► although i'm not a computer interface designer or really a designer at all i spent a lot of time in products
00:46:20 ◼ ► that are design adjacent where it's not the design and the output matters and i'm supplying the raw
00:46:25 ◼ ► content that goes into a thing that is designed and and in you know in various parts of my career i've
00:46:30 ◼ ► been a person involved in making those decisions so my concern based on what i've seen from apple
00:46:39 ◼ ► is that apple seems to have some designers and some leadership that are very focused on visual design
00:46:47 ◼ ► and are not focused on information and interaction design and that's bad because you need all of those
00:46:56 ◼ ► things because you need to think about it's that it's starting to keep coming back to the steve jobs
00:47:01 ◼ ► things but it's like design is how it works it really is not what it looks like what it looks like matters
00:47:06 ◼ ► but how it works matters and my the things that concern me are as you mentioned the settings app is a great
00:47:11 ◼ ► example where it looks like the settings app on apple's other platforms now but some of the decisions
00:47:17 ◼ ► made are are counterintuitive they they the content isn't organized in any way which i i i hate to be the
00:47:25 ◼ ► one to say oh it's a simple fix it'll take 15 minutes but like you could have a better starting menu
00:47:30 ◼ ► for when they're when they're moving everything you're already moving everything yes take that
00:47:34 ◼ ► opportunity to organize actual information architecture organize now's your chance you're going to move
00:47:39 ◼ ► everything anyway otherwise everybody's going to use search and then you change the search index it can
00:47:42 ◼ ► kind of break it so now nobody can find anything it's not good so that concerns me and then it goes
00:47:47 ◼ ► down to that interaction level too i mentioned the the the the sliders instead of check boxes which i
00:47:52 ◼ ► know you brought up too like that's a really great example of what's the problem we're trying to solve
00:47:56 ◼ ► here and it's bad information design to have a toggle that you can't tell how it's toggled and also to
00:48:02 ◼ ► move the labels much farther away from the exactly so you don't know because that's on the phone they're
00:48:07 ◼ ► real close to each other it's a narrow screen on the mac oh we got to make the window bigger but now
00:48:11 ◼ ► my label is five inches from the thing as opposed to a checkbox where it's right next to it so my my
00:48:16 ◼ ► hope is that that was all based on a directive right because what we can't read into this is there's a
00:48:21 ◼ ► manager somewhere who was told look we have to do this and we know it's bad but we have to do it it's
00:48:25 ◼ ► like okay but is that manager did that did that change did those marching orders change did they
00:48:31 ◼ ► get the old time religion is he convinced himself that it's actually amazing like that was my other
00:48:35 ◼ ► complaint about system settings i just think the controls don't look attractive either so if they
00:48:39 ◼ ► were concentrating on the look and feel they failed there so it's not attractive i don't find it nice i
00:48:43 ◼ ► find it just a sea of dark boring looking gray and text fields that don't look like text fields and
00:48:49 ◼ ► labels that are far away from buttons and that's even before you get to the information architecture
00:48:57 ◼ ► this episode of upgrade is brought to you by google gemini i used gemini for the first time the other
00:49:04 ◼ ► day and the most impressive thing to me was just talking to it you go live with it and then it's just
00:49:09 ◼ ► like you're having a conversation you can just talk about your day or have it explain something to
00:49:14 ◼ ► you or start brainstorming ideas i'll give you an example i pretended i had a job interview coming up
00:49:20 ◼ ► and i asked for it to help me prep for the interview it immediately started suggesting common
00:49:25 ◼ ► questions i might get asked then i started talking through my answers out loud and it would give me
00:49:30 ◼ ► feedback and it's all happening in real time like i'm talking to a career coach that's just what i
00:49:35 ◼ ► tried first but you can talk to it about anything and that's the magic of it how you can have this back
00:49:40 ◼ ► and forth and it's all seamless if you haven't tried it yet it's definitely worth checking out you'll
00:49:45 ◼ ► see what i mean i thanks to google gemini for the support of this show and all of relay
00:49:49 ◼ ► i would argue in fact that apple doesn't need a design refresh i understand why they feel they
00:49:58 ◼ ► must because it's fashion and i get that but the underlying problem that i think a lot of users and
00:50:05 ◼ ► this includes iphone users this includes the most important users to apple's business iphone users
00:50:11 ◼ ► i think and german does mention this so maybe there's some hope here again we're trying to
00:50:15 ◼ ► just hang in there baby just hang in there um is is is making it better designed like from a functional
00:50:24 ◼ ► standpoint making it more intuitive decreasing complexity um and that's hard and it's not solved
00:50:33 ◼ ► by a code of new paint right so that's that's the challenge here is like it's really and i i really
00:50:38 ◼ ► don't want to say it's easy because it's not this is an incredibly hard problem to solve so many of
00:50:42 ◼ ► apple's problems and the problems of the tech industry in general about user interface are very hard to
00:50:47 ◼ ► solve because how do you ship new features every year and not have enormous complexity or have the
00:50:52 ◼ ► features just disappear forever and nobody even knows that they're there which is absolutely where we are
00:50:56 ◼ ► with the iphone but their problem is about that it's about usability a lot more than it is about look
00:51:03 ◼ ► and feel and my concern is that it's very much going to be same old winchester mystery house with a coat
00:51:08 ◼ ► of new paint i'm a little worried yeah actually speaking of that whenever i see like to make it more
00:51:16 ◼ ► intuitive i just have negative feelings immediately because i've never seen that that as a description of
00:51:20 ◼ ► interface and how to actually be good uh but on to that end and you know the winchester mystery house
00:51:26 ◼ ► problem or whatever actually sort of transitioning to the next topic there is a technology that could
00:51:35 ◼ ► no it's not but it's uh lm and lms can can actually help a lot in this area a very focused that's like
00:51:45 ◼ ► that's kind of the problem is like when you when you have so many features in such a capable phone
00:51:49 ◼ ► it's difficult to design an interface that allow people to access all of them if only there were
00:51:54 ◼ ► something on the phone that could help them in that area without even just experienced users who know
00:52:00 ◼ ► exactly which screen it's buried in sometimes it's just faster to ask your apple tv to turn subtitles off
00:52:05 ◼ ► even though you know how to get to the control yeah right so that's the you know and so how's apple
00:52:09 ◼ ► doing in that area so that's that's the so the great segue thank you um it is while we were talking in
00:52:16 ◼ ► the last segment about about interface design i did think about that which is or maybe none of it
00:52:21 ◼ ► matters it doesn't matter just ask your computer to do a thing and it does it and then you know you
00:52:26 ◼ ► walk away and you don't have to worry about it which honestly at this point if they could nail that
00:52:32 ◼ ► just okay like i i mean the settings the settings app is so bad that i would just give up i'm like can i
00:52:38 ◼ ► just please just do this thing for me um but it it it is so we should talk about apple's uh various
00:52:45 ◼ ► apple intelligence and siri disasters that's what this segment is where that uh silver lining of the
00:52:50 ◼ ► dark cloud i can't see it right now um obviously they they uh gruber and i talked about it last week
00:52:56 ◼ ► i caught gruber sort of like um in the middle of his uh of his heel turn of his of his identity crisis
00:53:05 ◼ ► a little bit where um he said he felt bamboozled and then the more he thought about and then he wrote
00:53:10 ◼ ► you know something rotten and cupertino but and he's calling out like this is the fact that they
00:53:15 ◼ ► they made this announcement and didn't really show it and advertised it and then delayed it all because
00:53:22 ◼ ► they couldn't get it to work is certainly a pretty powerful symptom of what feels like we've been
00:53:28 ◼ ► witnessing in terms of what apple is going wrong there um i think i was fascinated this week by um
00:53:37 ◼ ► some pieces including one by ben thompson trying to sort of like poke at it a little bit and say well
00:53:43 ◼ ► what could apple do that might actually be better at this and i thought it was a really interesting idea
00:53:48 ◼ ► to say and it goes to apple's control and it's apple's desire to be perceived that i had they had
00:53:54 ◼ ► last year for sure as being with it with ai and wanting it to all be about them and ben made the
00:53:59 ◼ ► point that i think is a great one and i was thinking this in a different context last year but it's still
00:54:03 ◼ ► true which is what if this was a little more about everyone else what if apple hooked the os more
00:54:10 ◼ ► aggressively up to various llms not just chat gpt and then built some apis so that app developers could
00:54:16 ◼ ► fairly easily use leverage whatever llm is set up and answer whatever questions that way especially
00:54:24 ◼ ► when apple's work in this area is uh is struggling and then separately the one that i kept thinking of
00:54:30 ◼ ► and i honestly was thinking about it uh about marco and overcast but i was thinking about it in other
00:54:35 ◼ ► context too which is apple's stated goal for this product cycle was we're we've built an llm of our own
00:54:43 ◼ ► and it's running on your iphone and ipad and mac and developers can't touch it which i don't know if
00:54:51 ◼ ► they want to touch it or not but like one way you could make your platform appealing is by saying
00:54:56 ◼ ► your apps now can have features enabled by our on-device llm isn't that great here's the api for it
00:55:02 ◼ ► and instead it was very much like apple intelligence is going to change how you use your computer
00:55:07 ◼ ► change how you use your phone you can only use our apps yeah it kind of reminds me of the pre-llm
00:55:14 ◼ ► uh incarnation of this uh on ios and apple's other platforms which was uh machine learning ml
00:55:21 ◼ ► uh i remember the uh the core ml framework that essentially let the demo was like you can make
00:55:27 ◼ ► a model or whatever you know make train a model on how to identify hot dogs uh and then you with core
00:55:33 ◼ ► ml you can wrap it up in a way that it's usable across all of our platforms and then you ship
00:55:37 ◼ ► your app with your model that you train to identify hot dogs and across all of your platforms now you
00:55:42 ◼ ► have an app that you've shipped that can identify hot dogs yeah uh and that's cool technology and
00:55:47 ◼ ► that's a great way to let people incorporate machine learning into their apps but i feel like
00:55:51 ◼ ► from my impression of the apps that are out there most developers don't want to take a bunch of python
00:55:57 ◼ ► and train a machine learning model on hot dogs and bundle it with their app and ship it and bloating
00:56:01 ◼ ► the size of their app and they just want there to be a framework on ios that can identify hot dogs
00:56:05 ◼ ► yeah just to give a silly example yeah like os level platform level integration of technologies is
00:56:11 ◼ ► so much easier for third parties to adopt in their apps it's great that they can ship their own thing
00:56:17 ◼ ► like if someone i haven't read ben thompson's thing yet but if someone's hearing this and saying
00:56:20 ◼ ► well that's dumb people can do that now people can ship an lm with their app now it's like okay
00:56:24 ◼ ► how big do you want your app to be and do you want seven different apps each with their own
00:56:28 ◼ ► model that by the way can't run in the background because it'll get killed because it's too damn big
00:56:32 ◼ ► like this is something that the platform has to supply exactly for you they just give me one of
00:56:37 ◼ ► or two of them in a framework that i can use so i don't have to ship it with my app to use your hot
00:56:41 ◼ ► dog example which i really love so i'm gonna run with it um the photos app probably can identify hot
00:56:47 ◼ ► dogs and if not i mean it can identify lots of things i don't believe there is an api that lets you
00:56:52 ◼ ► hand an image to the system and have it run through what the photos app does and spit back a whole bunch
00:56:59 ◼ ► of things that are describing what that image is they do have things where you can identify faces
00:57:02 ◼ ► and stuff so some of the photos app stuff is exposed but like and we're talking about all like pre lm you
00:57:07 ◼ ► know machine learning it comes it comes down to the same thing the capability to bundle that with your
00:57:12 ◼ ► app is great and needs to exist for people on the cutting edge but most people just want to be able to
00:57:17 ◼ ► use a os framework that they don't have to ship that they don't have to train that apple makes
00:57:21 ◼ ► better every year after year that uses all of the hardware on the phone so the greatest extent let
00:57:26 ◼ ► me give you the the example i was thinking of about overcast and this is not endorsed by marco okay
00:57:31 ◼ ► not endorsed by marco but i i walked through the process where i thought okay i use whisper on my mac
00:57:36 ◼ ► to do transcriptions it's amazing um the latest one on this on this m4 max macbook pro that i've got
00:57:43 ◼ ► it's it's transcribing it like i forget what it is 30 30 x like it's it's wild i did last week's
00:57:51 ◼ ► podcast with gruber which lasted like 10 hours and it transcribed it in like five minutes it was amazing
00:57:56 ◼ ► but so podcast transcripts apple is doing podcast transcripts up in the cloud they are literally
00:58:01 ◼ ► consuming every podcast that's an apple podcast in a bunch of different languages and generating a
00:58:07 ◼ ► transcript and showing it now how marco is not going to do that right he's not going to be able to
00:58:11 ◼ ► build an enormous cloud system that does that he just can't he's that overcast is not going to be
00:58:17 ◼ ► able to do that guess what overcast is running on a bunch of devices with neural engines that are
00:58:22 ◼ ► pretty powerful and you could build a system that that generated a transcript and maybe even
00:58:30 ◼ ► intelligently check to see if there was a transcript available right if there isn't you transcribe it and
00:58:36 ◼ ► upload it to overcast at which point that transcript is available for everybody else who uses overcast it's
00:58:40 ◼ ► distributed transcription you could do that that would be pretty cool however for that really to
00:58:48 ◼ ► be enabled there needs to be a model that marco could use that is run on the system because if he
00:58:54 ◼ ► tries to build into his app his app will just get killed um but the power of being able to say for any
00:59:01 ◼ ► app developer not just marco for any app developer to say oh look at these great ml ai whatever apis that i can
00:59:09 ◼ ► use that are provided by being on an iphone or being on a mac and that makes my app so much better
00:59:14 ◼ ► because it's the system one and it's reliable and it's right there and i can use it but with apple
00:59:20 ◼ ► intelligence and i think for expediency reasons more than anything else apple was like ah we got to ship
00:59:25 ◼ ► something let's just put our model on there and put some apps we'll use it and that'll be it but that's
00:59:31 ◼ ► why i think ben thompson's suggestion is is a smart one which is while you're having all these problems
00:59:36 ◼ ► what if you enabled your app developers to take advantage of your platform and your neural engine
00:59:43 ◼ ► and all these great things you've done to make their apps better so that iphone apps are good
00:59:49 ◼ ► like that it it seems simple but um i i think there's something to it and i have thought there
00:59:55 ◼ ► was something to it since last june because it felt very much like apple was like you know they do the
01:00:01 ◼ ► we can't wait to see what you do with it thing that not apple intelligence really i mean it's just not
01:00:08 ◼ ► there was no for a developer conference there was other than the xcode code completion stuff there was
01:00:13 ◼ ► no developer message for apple apple intelligence other than to prepare your apps to be harvested
01:00:18 ◼ ► as i said like make sure you set up your app intense make sure we can get at your stuff make
01:00:21 ◼ ► sure you know what your apps can do but someday in the future our lm will be issuing commands to
01:00:26 ◼ ► control your app and extracting information of it so yeah there's two two parts of this like one
01:00:30 ◼ ► the basic one that that you just mentioned before like that apple has this control issue um that they
01:00:36 ◼ ► we're stuck in a situation my my pet example because it is relevant to one of the apps that i make
01:00:40 ◼ ► is uh stage manager um stage manager is a a different new way to handle multiple applications
01:00:47 ◼ ► on both the mac and ipad um stage manager is one idea of how that could be done i always felt like
01:00:54 ◼ ► it should have been possible for a third party to make stage manager there should be apis involving
01:00:59 ◼ ► the windowing system on both the ipad and the mac good safe apis that apple vens that you can use
01:01:05 ◼ ► so that third parties can say oh i have an idea about managing windows let me try this and then let
01:01:11 ◼ ► a million third parties take their crack at it it doesn't mean apple can't also have a crack at it
01:01:15 ◼ ► but if you make apis that allow if you make your system uh you know extensible in that way i mean
01:01:20 ◼ ► apple had to make the apis for stage manager and it's way harder to make them public but still
01:01:25 ◼ ► that is a good discipline to do for apis like that uh we didn't do that so what we were stuck
01:01:30 ◼ ► with window management we just sit out here waiting around to see what the next idea apple has is
01:01:37 ◼ ► within window management because every idea apple has ever had especially on the mac still exists on
01:01:41 ◼ ► the mac for the most part they just keep adding them which is like okay fine but like boy imagine
01:01:45 ◼ ► apple if this was no longer your sole responsibility imagine if you were empowered third parties to try out
01:01:51 ◼ ► a bunch of stuff and then just steal the best idea and put it into the operating system for crying
01:01:54 ◼ ► out right and so we're in the same situation with ai it's like we're stuck out here waiting
01:01:58 ◼ ► for apple to do it now the second aspect of the ai thing which is makes it more difficult is a lot
01:02:03 ◼ ► of the things that apple has announced for apple intelligence and the reason i think most of us
01:02:08 ◼ ► when we saw their announcement said this is a good strategy for apple this is a good idea
01:02:11 ◼ ► is it leverages apple's strengths they do have lots of information on device they do have powerful
01:02:16 ◼ ► hardware on device apple intelligence's strategy of not being like we just have a thing in the cloud
01:02:21 ◼ ► and you talk to it it's like no this thing runs on your device it makes it's going to make a semantic
01:02:28 ◼ ► that the app developers are already vending through app intense like that's a good idea
01:02:32 ◼ ► making that available third parties is extremely difficult because you would essentially be giving
01:02:39 ◼ ► third parties access to data across multiple applications on your phone it would know everything
01:02:43 ◼ ► about you and be able to like because that's what apple intelligence would do and we we trust apple to
01:02:47 ◼ ► do that now you're saying oh if i make this pluggable third parties third parties will be able to see
01:02:52 ◼ ► all my text messages all my emails all my contacts all you know it's just like it's incredibly invasive
01:02:57 ◼ ► so it's even even more against apple's like uh philosophy more against apple's sort of inclination
01:03:05 ◼ ► to say well we can never do that only apple can provide apple intelligence because we would never
01:03:09 ◼ ► trust a third party that they feel that way about window management only apple can manage windows
01:03:13 ◼ ► because we would never trust the third party to do that god forbid they knew what size and position
01:03:17 ◼ ► your windows are in right it's like it's it's just so against what they want to do as an institution
01:03:23 ◼ ► and i understand the the pushback internally about doing that in apple intelligence but that's not what
01:03:28 ◼ ► we were just talking about we were like okay fine just let marco do transcriptions of audio that he has
01:03:33 ◼ ► that he uploads he's already got that audio there's no privacy implication here it's like cloud kit yes
01:03:38 ◼ ► developers could make their own servers with their own data store in their own database but if you
01:03:43 ◼ ► provide cloud kit and it actually works and it's decent people will just use that and wow now it's
01:03:47 ◼ ► way easier to make that app on the phone than it is on another platform and their apps are better for
01:03:51 ◼ ► it if you did a good job with cloud kit because there is a speech to text for example engine on ios
01:03:57 ◼ ► you just right but it's not the same as transcribe these podcasts it's not the same as hey let me check
01:04:01 ◼ ► this giant mp3 over the wall oh looks like you already transcribed it and that's one example but like
01:04:04 ◼ ► the bit larger it's just like there should be a ideally robust set of apis that allow app developers
01:04:11 ◼ ► to have access to these these models that are running on the device that apple and again from
01:04:16 ◼ ► a battery standpoint from a from a power consumption standpoint that apple and the system is able to
01:04:22 ◼ ► prioritize and say this is going to run slower because of the state that i'm in right now whereas
01:04:27 ◼ ► if you put it in your app you know apple's just going to kill it when it because like that just like
01:04:32 ◼ ► the apps i'll have the screen that says leave your screen on plug your phone in play break out
01:04:36 ◼ ► you know prevent screen sleep from going like just all the things that third part i think of
01:04:41 ◼ ► the times when i was i was using a third party app that would um essentially analyze your photos so
01:04:46 ◼ ► you could type in hot dog and find all the hot dogs way before apple did it and to get that thing to
01:04:51 ◼ ► index your photos required plugging your phone in and letting the app be there and the app would
01:04:54 ◼ ► prevent the screen from sleeping and it would just sit there for hours grinding away to get the
01:04:59 ◼ ► results when apple built it in i don't have to do that anymore i just use my phone normally and it
01:05:03 ◼ ► indexes my photos in the background and it controls it and i know it can be frustrating sometimes where
01:05:07 ◼ ► it's like why hasn't it indexed yet but that's the reason why is that it's looking at your battery
01:05:10 ◼ ► and you're plugged in status and all of those things and and a more robust selection of this and again
01:05:21 ◼ ► right i i think they are worried that they were being they were caught flat-footed they're seen as
01:05:27 ◼ ► behind they were behind and what if and this is the part i know there are a lot of real skeptics out
01:05:32 ◼ ► there what if it completely changes the game and if you're apple and you've got the most valuable
01:05:38 ◼ ► company in the world you really want to eliminate as many changes the games without it being us who
01:05:44 ◼ ► changes the game as possible and they got they got really scared and that is why they made some bad
01:05:50 ◼ ► decisions including like i said last week lowering the bar on what they were going to announce
01:05:55 ◼ ► in terms of the probability that it would ship in the cycle because they wanted to make a big
01:06:01 ◼ ► big a big push right the whole thing was make a big splash uh and they did make a big splash and there
01:06:07 ◼ ► is blowback now and i guess we can debate whether the big splash was enough to get by even though now
01:06:13 ◼ ► they're dealing with the blowback but the the truth is this wwc is going to be so interesting because
01:06:18 ◼ ► what happens when you're not in panic mode you've had a year to consider you've had a year to
01:06:25 ◼ ► learn but you've also failed at a bunch of stuff and people on the outside are going to look at you
01:06:30 ◼ ► with a more skeptical eye because you didn't deliver everything you promised i i i i do wonder i hope to
01:06:37 ◼ ► see them having learned something from this that my worry is that they won't one of the things i think is
01:06:43 ◼ ► saving them here is that the uh the most optimistic promises of what lm-based technology would be delivering
01:06:50 ◼ ► by this point in time have not been met not to say that they're not useful they are they're very useful
01:06:55 ◼ ► and apple is behind and other people doing better things with them but they have been saved by the
01:07:00 ◼ ► fact that even if everything that they announced worked perfectly and or or was replaced with the
01:07:04 ◼ ► best in the entire industry it's like this seems like a good addition to the phone but it's not
01:07:09 ◼ ► replacing the phone or taking away their power as a platform or it's like you don't need a phone you
01:07:13 ◼ ► just need an ai pin and that's all you need no right didn't happen either so like and samsung
01:07:18 ◼ ► have not shipped phones with technology i i know people are like oh but it does this thing great it's
01:07:22 ◼ ► like the truth is people don't look and say i can't buy an iphone because it doesn't have all the things
01:07:28 ◼ ► that google with samsung and that's what apple's worried about and apple doesn't even need to be i
01:07:32 ◼ ► know it doesn't sound like apple it sounds more like samsung but apple doesn't need to be first
01:07:35 ◼ ► apple just needs to be close enough there needs to be as little daylight between them and everybody else
01:07:40 ◼ ► as possible and one of the most positive stories of the last year in terms of ai is it sure seems
01:07:45 ◼ ► like ai is much more of a commodity than it was before and that's good for apple because if apple
01:07:50 ◼ ► can either just build it themselves and it's it's basically as good as anyone else's then that's
01:07:56 ◼ ► great for apple if apple offers uh various llms from other companies because they're all just
01:08:02 ◼ ► commodified and it's like sure you want to use you got a gpt account you got a google account you got a
01:08:07 ◼ ► a claude account what we don't care whatever then that's good for apple because apple's building a
01:08:12 ◼ ► layer up from there doing their secret sauce stuff on top of those great models that other people are
01:08:18 ◼ ► building either way that's good for apple but despite despite i would say a much more favorable
01:08:27 ◼ ► environment over the last year they are stumbling i i again i think they're stumbling because of the
01:08:32 ◼ ► decisions made not in the last year but before that when they got caught flat-footed and put this crash
01:08:39 ◼ ► program together to generate apple intelligence and that's why i'm so fascinated by the idea of the
01:08:43 ◼ ► course correction because yeah we could they are messing this up and yet the conditions are still
01:08:50 ◼ ► really favorable for them to get their act together yeah yeah like i i feel like the like the uh sort of
01:08:56 ◼ ► hockey stick graph things like well you know by 2025 you don't even need a phone it'll just be an ai and
01:09:02 ◼ ► it will artificially render things to a dumb screen that you hold in your hand and it will render apps
01:09:06 ◼ ► in real time and there won't even be apps it'll just be like a thing that it's like that has not come to
01:09:10 ◼ ► pass so like the things that apple was afraid of that would essentially uh make their platform moot not
01:09:15 ◼ ► moot but like uh due to them what the the iphone did to the pc right that's what they're afraid of right
01:09:22 ◼ ► that it still exists and it's still important but uh the new most important thing is no longer the
01:09:28 ◼ ► phone now it's the ai pin or now it's phones that are essentially tiny little ai things with the screen
01:09:32 ◼ ► uh and the path towards that if we are even on that path has stalled out and lms are like this is an
01:09:40 ◼ ► important useful piece of technology that you have to be good at because it's going to enhance your
01:09:43 ◼ ► phone and you have to have it but nobody is in a situation where this this like lms like open ai is
01:09:48 ◼ ► not going to uh put samsung and apple uh dethrone them as important hardware makers of phones or something
01:09:54 ◼ ► like that's like oh that's great remember when apple was important because they made iphones but only
01:09:57 ◼ ► all everyone cares about is the open ai pin now nope uh so and it doesn't seem like they're on that path
01:10:03 ◼ ► so yeah it definitely seems like a technology that there's a lot of competition in but that it's
01:10:09 ◼ ► it's like it's like a you know desktop publishing or the web or the internet the internet was so incredibly
01:10:14 ◼ ► important and yet it did not make the personal computer no longer relevant and if anything it
01:10:19 ◼ ► made it more relevant well and you could argue that again unless there is a moat somewhere unless
01:10:25 ◼ ► google comes up with something that allows them to completely make an ai powered version of android
01:10:30 ◼ ► that means that the iphone is irrelevant and apple has nothing to contribute because that's the fear
01:10:35 ◼ ► right is there whatever comes next apple has nothing to contribute whether it's uh you know uh which i
01:10:40 ◼ ► would argue given how they're doing in the hardware on the hardware side i i have a hard time they'll
01:10:45 ◼ ► always have something to contribute yeah so the moat even and it would hurt their pride right it would
01:10:50 ◼ ► hurt their pride if they became more of a uh hardware and uh layer company on somebody else's model they
01:10:57 ◼ ► don't want to do that but yeah that i feel like that is probably their worst case scenario knowing what
01:11:02 ◼ ► we know right now about ai is it's hard to imagine a scenario where one company does this
01:11:08 ◼ ► and nobody else cracks it and even then i would argue in a scenario where there was one company
01:11:15 ◼ ► if let's say google figures it out i think even google would be like yeah you can you can do this
01:11:21 ◼ ► on the iphone too because it's like no no they just want they just want your eyeballs and your ad
01:11:26 ◼ ► dollars um and that would be apple wouldn't love that but also there's all the competitors to google
01:11:30 ◼ ► so i i just i i think that lack of a moat here means that in the end apple does need to catch up they
01:11:36 ◼ ► need to get their act together but in the long run when we talk about layering putting things
01:11:41 ◼ ► underneath apps putting creating apis that connect your great iphone and app experience with whatever
01:11:48 ◼ ► ai technology is relevant if they can do that part it doesn't really matter about about how far behind
01:11:57 ◼ ► or ahead they are in terms of their llms because the the assumption here is that nobody ultimately is
01:12:04 ◼ ► going to be very far behind because we saw with deep seek uh the lesson that at least we're trying to
01:12:10 ◼ ► take from deep seek is it's not as hard as it seems to to catch up and once the genie is out of the
01:12:16 ◼ ► bottle it's out of the bottle for everybody and that's actually good for apple because when you're behind
01:12:21 ◼ ► and you're struggling to catch up if somebody tells you don't worry it's easy to catch up
01:12:26 ◼ ► you we've rubber banded it it's like mario kart i know you're in the back but guess what good news
01:12:30 ◼ ► um that's what i i think that it's potentially good for apple but they have to execute and that
01:12:37 ◼ ► that is i think the real kind of gnashing of teeth that's happened over the last week is
01:12:42 ◼ ► if it it feels like apple has they set ambitious goals they did it last minute but if we look at
01:12:47 ◼ ► the last nine months of what they've shipped they it shows it shows that it was last minute and slapped
01:12:53 ◼ ► together and overly ambitious and that they couldn't do it and that's worrisome yeah lms kind of remind
01:13:01 ◼ ► me of like most sort of technological innovations where like they're founded on scientific papers that
01:13:06 ◼ ► anybody can read it was a breakthrough and a technique to do a thing that they have been trying to do
01:13:10 ◼ ► with different techniques earlier and said well here i have a new way to do it everyone can see
01:13:14 ◼ ► those papers it's kind of like the the integrated circuit in the transistor right uh anyone could make
01:13:20 ◼ ► a chip a cpu memory like that that whole revolution of the personal computer revolution there was no one
01:13:27 ◼ ► who has a we're the only people who know how to make an integrated circuit so we're going to take over
01:13:31 ◼ ► the world like no everybody knows how to make them and what turned out to be the moat was like uh you
01:13:36 ◼ ► know microsoft's platform deal with ibm and uh their integration with intel as as a you know the intel
01:13:42 ◼ ► windows duopoly had nothing to do with no one else knows how to make a personal computer there was lots
01:13:47 ◼ ► of competition and their their moat was involving business deals that some of which turned out to be
01:13:52 ◼ ► illegal and a bunch of stuff like and in that in that respect apple is looking like the microsoft of
01:13:56 ◼ ► today like oh they've got all the terrible draconian uh control over their platform and a stranglehold on
01:14:02 ◼ ► all these devices not the same way microsoft did but like the moat has nothing to do with no one
01:14:07 ◼ ► else knows how to make a cpu and now arguably you just mentioned like apple's hardware like they're
01:14:12 ◼ ► actually really good at that that potentially comes from the fact that they've made so much money by
01:14:17 ◼ ► controlling the app store that they can pay for the best process from tsmc and that's what gives them
01:14:21 ◼ ► the hardware mode but also like the intangibles so they talked about an adp of you know uh anybody can
01:14:28 ◼ ► make a pc but who can make a really good customer pleasing pc if you've given all the same parts we
01:14:33 ◼ ► all got the same cpus hard drives memory cases blah blah now go who can make one that's pleasing
01:14:38 ◼ ► apple's been historically pretty good at making products that please customers that are desirable
01:14:43 ◼ ► using things that everybody else has access to that's true of the iphone that's true of all the
01:14:48 ◼ ► macs that they make there's no other other than apple silicon which arguably apple has shown is not
01:14:54 ◼ ► that big of a deal because for many many years apple was not the hardware leader when it came
01:14:59 ◼ ► to cpu performance and still macs were very desirable and in the news and popular computers and
01:15:05 ◼ ► seen as the best in the industry even when they were a minuscule market share so most of the advantages
01:15:11 ◼ ► apple have seem pretty durable they're either microsoft style business terribleness that we hate but
01:15:16 ◼ ► nevertheless gives them an advantage or they're apple's traditional strengths of they make good tasteful
01:15:21 ◼ ► choices assembling the pieces that are available to everybody uh and in the alarm around everything
01:15:26 ◼ ► that has happened has been open for everybody including like the the deep seek thing they were
01:15:31 ◼ ► open about what they did they said we just have a new twist on doing the stuff that you were doing but
01:15:35 ◼ ► we can do it cheaper and here's how we did it now everybody knows that so like only in the movies
01:15:40 ◼ ► is they're like i've got the secret formula nobody has it most technological revolutions the steam
01:15:44 ◼ ► engine the internal combustion engine integrated circuit everybody gets access to that tech it's just a
01:15:49 ◼ ► question of who can execute with the best combination of things that give them an advantage and very
01:15:55 ◼ ► often the advantages are not fair microsoft's advantages in that era were not fair apple's
01:15:59 ◼ ► advantages arguably with the app store are quote-unquote not fair uh but those are durable
01:16:03 ◼ ► advantages as are just you know being a good company that makes products that people want and that's
01:16:08 ◼ ► why the ben thompson argument holds a lot of water for me is the idea that how does apple in a world
01:16:13 ◼ ► where the lms are just kind of out there how what is your advantage that keeps you on top and their
01:16:19 ◼ ► hardware is part of it but being a platform that's really good to take advantage of all of that is
01:16:27 ◼ ► probably more important than like do we have it because everybody's gonna have it that's not enough
01:16:32 ◼ ► it's what do you do with it and if they can add their their own secret sauce in some places that's
01:16:37 ◼ ► great but also allowing the developers and their ecosystem to use the power of this stuff um because
01:16:44 ◼ ► google will probably do that and like again it's competition and they just don't want to be on the
01:16:49 ◼ ► other side of it so they're gonna have to yeah and some of the advantages that apple has they are
01:16:54 ◼ ► essentially a stable platform they're they've had customers for a long time they don't change things
01:16:58 ◼ ► in a way that breaks stuff that often they have the uh the customers that are the most willing to
01:17:03 ◼ ► spend money like they just it's it's already an extremely attractive place to do whatever it is
01:17:08 ◼ ► you're gonna do with computers and lms or whatever and so it should be easy for them to continue to make
01:17:14 ◼ ► this a good safe place for you to launch your new service or app that is powered by lm stuff because
01:17:21 ◼ ► they have just so many other surrounding advantages and their sort of refusal to open up to that but
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01:19:29 ◼ ► overall narrative i guess this is he obviously has people who are on the siri team who are in that meeting
01:19:36 ◼ ► who just recorded and transcribed or whatever and just leaked the whole thing to him which is
01:19:40 ◼ ► it's a little like those stories about like facebook has a big meeting and they're like okay nobody leak
01:19:45 ◼ ► this and five minutes later you know nobody leak this says facebook at meeting because it immediately
01:19:50 ◼ ► leaks um this is robbie walker who's apparently the senior director in charge of siri he did an all hands
01:19:55 ◼ ► meeting where he said the delays were ugly and embarrassing but he also said that you know marketing is is
01:20:01 ◼ ► partially at fault for doing ads about these features and on one level he's right on another level who gave
01:20:09 ◼ ► ad marketing and advertising the confidence that this feature would be implemented i mean maybe
01:20:14 ◼ ► um robbie walker was like no don't do it we can't do it no but probably it was like yeah we could do it
01:20:21 ◼ ► and sweating a little bit and and uh it's so like who gave him the idea that they could they could uh
01:20:29 ◼ ► advertise these features i do wonder that um and uh german's report says it's unlikely to result in
01:20:35 ◼ ► management changes on tip cook's executive team that would mean admitting fault which apple hates
01:20:41 ◼ ► doing boy i hear that right that's hard it's hard to admit you can make leadership changes without
01:20:46 ◼ ► admitting fault they get rid of people all the time and never admit fault how many different people have
01:20:50 ◼ ► been involved of app ahead of apple retail the paper master guy with the cpu thing like they don't
01:20:55 ◼ ► don't admit fault but they still make changes scott forestall just wanted to spend more time producing
01:20:59 ◼ ► plays okay yeah um the it is look a lot of people are interpreting this in ways that suggest that
01:21:06 ◼ ► they've never been at a big corporation and been in an all-hands meeting right because like you know
01:21:12 ◼ ► what they don't do in an all-hands meeting what they don't do is say you guys all blue suck you i i hate you
01:21:19 ◼ ► all you're lucky to have jobs maybe some of you will get fired um you in particular blew this you
01:21:24 ◼ ► in particular blew that i don't even know what i'm doing here you guys are a bunch of rejects like that
01:21:30 ◼ ► is not what happens instead it's sort of like oh i know it's bad out there and i know there have been
01:21:35 ◼ ► some missteps but it's not just us it's a whole bunch of people and we're going to work together and
01:21:38 ◼ ► we're going to we're going to figure this out the difficulty is that everybody on the outside look at
01:21:43 ◼ ► looks at this and go goes um really you gave a pep talk to the siri team because siri's just so such
01:21:51 ◼ ► a wayward i think i it might have been one or two adb episodes ago but i think i i grabbed the exact
01:21:57 ◼ ► same uh analogy that gruber grabbed in his article and i think i was also talking about the same thing
01:22:02 ◼ ► which was the siri team which is the the uh the famous mobile me meeting where steve jobs did his uh
01:22:07 ◼ ► classic steve jobs is a giant jerk thing where he asked questions of what mobile me is supposed to do
01:22:11 ◼ ► and listens patiently for the answer and says then why the f doesn't it do that and then he yells at
01:22:16 ◼ ► them all and tells them they're a bunch of rejects um steve jobs is a jerk uh and like it grew even put
01:22:21 ◼ ► in his article that like what what the siri teams need is not the like what he's a participation award
01:22:27 ◼ ► type of thing of like saying oh you tried your best or whatever what the team needs is for for
01:22:31 ◼ ► leadership to tell them they're a bunch of losers i disagree with that no i don't think yeah steve jobs
01:22:37 ◼ ► did do that doesn't mean it's good leadership it's a thing that he did and he was a jerk
01:22:41 ◼ ► uh he had other qualities that made up for that but uh don't do that because if you if you actually
01:22:48 ◼ ► like it doesn't mean put on the blinders and say oh we're we're great in everything like there's a way
01:22:53 ◼ ► again if you've worked in a big company there's a way for leadership to say we have not uh we're not
01:22:59 ◼ ► working up to expectations we we should hold ourselves to higher standards but not say that in a
01:23:04 ◼ ► way that is uh viscerally satisfying to outside observers who want to see the siri team get yelled
01:23:10 ◼ ► at right that's leadership leadership is letting people know that we have to do better but also not
01:23:16 ◼ ► berating them and shoving their dog in the poo they made on the carpet shoving the dog's nose in the
01:23:20 ◼ ► poo they made in the carpet which by the way is also not good for dogs yeah so this authoritarian
01:23:25 ◼ ► mindset that wants to see the people who did the bad thing punished and yelled at yeah it may feel
01:23:29 ◼ ► good on the outside for siri let's do it yeah it may feel good to think that's happening but that's
01:23:34 ◼ ► not what leadership looks like and steve jobs is a poor example to model here um but i do agree that
01:23:39 ◼ ► i mean honestly like do you think there's anybody on the siri team who thinks that their product is
01:23:42 ◼ ► awesome at this point nobody this is the thing and this is why it's complex and i know that people
01:23:47 ◼ ► have very strong feelings about this but nobody knows the weaknesses of siri like the siri team
01:23:54 ◼ ► right they especially the rank and file right they know and and that's what i was going to say is
01:23:59 ◼ ► look given everything wave hands like given everything about siri obviously there's a problem but
01:24:12 ◼ ► what is the problem i don't believe the problem is that the engineers aren't working hard enough
01:24:17 ◼ ► and don't know what they're doing i don't exactly yeah for sure is it is at this point i would say a
01:24:23 ◼ ► clearly a deeply structural problem at apple and that's why it's hard to change because i mean this
01:24:29 ◼ ► is i put in our notes i actually like this whole sequence that's happened in this last week because
01:24:34 ◼ ► apple needs to have a struggle and a challenge because apple's been riding so high for so long that they
01:24:39 ◼ ► they're like why change why should we ever change anything we do we're so awesome and i feel like
01:24:44 ◼ ► the ai the llm thing was like the start of the humbling moment but i feel like maybe this week we've
01:24:48 ◼ ► really got the humbling moment which is if you look at siri it's not the people who are working on it
01:24:54 ◼ ► it is whoever decided it's either whoever decided oh no this is the our strategy and it failed and and
01:25:01 ◼ ► they gave the wrong marching orders or my gut feeling john is this is a fundamental structural
01:25:07 ◼ ► problem at apple where the people who are in charge of the various parts of implementation
01:25:13 ◼ ► or budgeting made some decisions about siri where it's like well we could completely throw it away
01:25:18 ◼ ► but why don't we patch it uh we'll kick the can down the road and you know we could i or i need more
01:25:25 ◼ ► money and they're like well we got this other thing on the os side we're not going to give you more money
01:25:28 ◼ ► for the siri team um whatever the reason and it's unless you're inside apple you don't know the reason
01:25:34 ◼ ► but it feels to me like this is a fundamental structural problem in apple not a couple of lazy
01:25:40 ◼ ► people in the siri programming team right it's a structural problem and the problem with that is
01:25:45 ◼ ► for a structural problem to be fixed you must admit that it exists and that means high level people
01:25:57 ◼ ► is not how the structure should be and that some people may need to lose power and authority and
01:26:04 ◼ ► budget in order to give somebody else power and authority and budget in order to make this work
01:26:09 ◼ ► better and it's that famous line like uh you know nothing makes somebody commit to a bad idea like their job
01:26:16 ◼ ► depending on it or sorry for the paraphrase charles dickens or whoever that was but upton sinclair
01:26:22 ◼ ► convincing someone of something when the job depends on not understanding it it sounds like him but that's
01:26:26 ◼ ► yeah you you you have to depend on misunderstanding it and that's that's i my gut feeling is that's where
01:26:31 ◼ ► this is is this is apple for all of the success apple has had with some of its structures and i've said
01:26:37 ◼ ► this about steve jobs's whole like rebuild of their corporate culture for all the success it led to
01:26:41 ◼ ► there are little corners of it where you're like oh that's actually kind of ugly and that's why apple
01:26:47 ◼ ► has these warts in various places and and so that i mean that's when i look at this from the outside
01:26:53 ◼ ► again it's like we could kick robbie walker we could kick at the siri team but he's just trying
01:26:58 ◼ ► to pump up a team that's probably deeply demoralized about all of this and my guess is it's not any of their
01:27:05 ◼ ► fault and so you could like we could let's fire somebody but my guess is that it it's got to be
01:27:10 ◼ ► up at the tim level really to say why have we failed at this and that takes somebody admitting
01:27:17 ◼ ► they failed at it which i think apple has a hard time admitting especially modern apple yeah so the
01:27:22 ◼ ► serious situation makes some vague sense and like you know whatever it's a it's an acquisition was it
01:27:27 ◼ ► forestall found this company and 20 whatever and says we should get this it's a cool thing it should
01:27:31 ◼ ► have on our phone and they roll it out and it does some stuff but like you know the it's it's not great
01:27:37 ◼ ► it doesn't set the world on fire people like it eventually voices since become more common apple's
01:27:41 ◼ ► like well great we've already got one of those we were in fact we were one of the early voices since
01:27:44 ◼ ► but like it is part of the iphone but it's not a part that's like driving sales and for all the
01:27:51 ◼ ► efforts of the siri team to improve it over the years i think apple's just started to see it as like
01:27:55 ◼ ► this is just the price of admission you need to have a thing in your phone that is like siri we have
01:27:58 ◼ ► one of those and so we're basically fine just put this on autopilot right then llms come along
01:28:03 ◼ ► and it's like oh uh we probably should have been awake earlier because even things like amazon's
01:28:09 ◼ ► voice assistant were kicking our butt but it's like well we're fine like they're not a big differentiator
01:28:13 ◼ ► what we have is fine and all of a sudden they are going to be a big differentiator and you can't
01:28:17 ◼ ► turn the organization on a dime like that because you're not built to treat this part of your operating
01:28:23 ◼ ► system as as strategically important as it has suddenly become so you can just tell the existing
01:28:28 ◼ ► team and the existing structure uh do the better thing that other people are doing now and it's like
01:28:33 ◼ ► well that's not this team for how long since 2011 has been sort of like a thing that you need to have
01:28:40 ◼ ► but that isn't probably going to get that much better and you know we've heard stories from inside the
01:28:45 ◼ ► the siri team in years before the llm of like uh warring factions within it's like this team has a
01:28:51 ◼ ► new idea of how we can overhaul siri and this team has a different idea about how we can overhaul siri
01:28:55 ◼ ► and let's pit them against each other and pick the one that wins and like whatever ones they were
01:28:59 ◼ ► picking were not the right ones and that didn't put them in a good position now to say oh and by the
01:29:03 ◼ ► way uh llms exist uh reimagine siri in light of current technology that or the organization is not equipped to
01:29:10 ◼ ► do that but that is their task their their task is to i talked about as an adp it's asked us to do
01:29:14 ◼ ► what amazon claims to have done which is reimagine our voice assistant for the llm age and alexa has
01:29:22 ◼ ► been around for ages and has huge numbers of capabilities and must have been an incredible
01:29:26 ◼ ► project to say start over do a new thing based on llms uh you know and they claim that they're shipping
01:29:33 ◼ ► like this month or so uh apple has barely claimed to barely even tried to claim that they're going to
01:29:40 ◼ ► do what amazon says that they've done uh and yeah that's a task that's before them and yeah so it just
01:29:45 ◼ ► seems like a structural problem that it's going to be difficult for them to solve and also i think
01:29:48 ◼ ► i don't think apple is yet entirely convinced like if you if you asked the the big leadership at apple
01:29:56 ◼ ► how much more important has siri become now that llms exist like strategically for our platform
01:30:03 ◼ ► obviously it's more important than it was is it the most important thing has it just moved up a little
01:30:08 ◼ ► bit and it's like a tie with like some other function it's just i don't know if they're ready to
01:30:14 ◼ ► turn i mean i bet they would say well we did we we hired the google ai guy years ago and so we've we
01:30:21 ◼ ► think we're giving it the appropriate amount of attention and as you said um all we see is what
01:30:25 ◼ ► you're producing what you're producing is not competitive yeah you are not producing what you're
01:30:29 ◼ ► producing stuff is not competitive and you don't even have like the most optimistic plans still have
01:30:35 ◼ ► you behind everybody else and by the way we haven't even seen what that's going to produce so if you
01:30:40 ◼ ► think you've appropriately turned the dial on structurally and budget and everything for siri
01:30:46 ◼ ► the outside world is telling you it's not the most important thing in the world but it's way more
01:30:49 ◼ ► important than you're treating it and the organization you have now is not capable of doing it and that has
01:30:54 ◼ ► nothing to do with anybody in that all hands meeting who's listening except for maybe one or
01:30:58 ◼ ► two of the people up on the stage but probably not even them because it's not like they get to decide
01:31:02 ◼ ► how much money they get versus how much money the car project gets versus how much money vision pro gets
01:31:06 ◼ ► right that's not they can lobby for the resources they think they need but in the end their career
01:31:12 ◼ ► depends on them saying that they can deliver something that they think they can deliver without asking for
01:31:17 ◼ ► for 10 times the budget yeah i i also suspect that something you just said was right which is i don't
01:31:26 ◼ ► think siri has been prioritized i think that they talk a good game and they market it and there's not a
01:31:30 ◼ ► sporting event that goes by where there isn't a oh ask siri what the who the leader in home runs is or
01:31:36 ◼ ► whatever um i my gut feeling just as an outside observer is that siri isn't well funded and that
01:31:44 ◼ ► part of this is like it's suddenly become this incredibly important thing but they are dealing
01:31:48 ◼ ► with years of neglect and one of my examples of this it's not just you know that siri is kind of dumb
01:31:54 ◼ ► it's that shortcuts is siri that's the siri group that does shortcuts they bought workflow the siri group
01:32:00 ◼ ► bought it and then apple says okay shortcuts is the future of automation on all of our platforms
01:32:05 ◼ ► which is great there's a lot to like about shortcuts but even well especially the greatest fans of
01:32:11 ◼ ► shortcuts would tell you that for a core part of the operating systems of one of the biggest companies
01:32:18 ◼ ► in the world it feels like five people three people two people are working on it the app is a mess it
01:32:26 ◼ ► hasn't really advanced very much um it is it's fine but it it's rickety it breaks during every beta
01:32:36 ◼ ► it it just feels like there's not a lot of love on shortcuts and then all of a sudden siri and
01:32:40 ◼ ► shortcuts because of app intents have become like a major tenet of the future of apple's platforms and
01:32:47 ◼ ► that's great and i hope it got them more money more resources but they also have to deal with the last
01:32:53 ◼ ► five years of not really getting a whole lot of love and a whole lot of patience or the money got
01:32:59 ◼ ► poured into a research project that didn't pan out and they're left in maintenance mode over on the other
01:33:03 ◼ ► side we can't we can't decide that but it's a mess and it's led to and here's the thing
01:33:08 ◼ ► i think it's just a lack of vision i think it's a lack of vision at apple thinking everything is okay
01:33:13 ◼ ► believing that because they're apple everything is going to work out okay when you look at airpods
01:33:21 ◼ ► you think about maybe the apple equivalent of the meta ray bands you think about carplay you think
01:33:26 ◼ ► about um it's not just the novelty of talking to your phone it's it's about all of the smart home
01:33:31 ◼ ► devices including apparently this new smart home screen thing that they were supposed to have shipped
01:33:36 ◼ ► that was going to require app intents that haven't shipped so that product probably can't ship but
01:33:41 ◼ ► like yeah i think there was a lack of understanding about exactly how far behind they were on siri
01:33:46 ◼ ► a lack of prioritization of it and then one of those oh no moments when they when they realized the llm
01:33:53 ◼ ► thing was happening was oh no it's also a chatbot and it puts us to shame and i gotta say again
01:34:01 ◼ ► the llm chatbots aren't good they're impressive but they say a lot of stupid things and yet they are
01:34:09 ◼ ► vastly better than siri like even so they are vastly better than siri even though and they're bad i think
01:34:14 ◼ ► they're bad i use them to i ask them questions and i'm like oh man you just completely made that up and
01:34:20 ◼ ► that's really bad and yet they're better than siri so like i don't know i don't know what the solution
01:34:27 ◼ ► is but but it is not because um you know mary over in the corner there has been working at home
01:34:33 ◼ ► three days a week and we think she's kind of slacking off on her siri work that is not what's
01:34:38 ◼ ► going on here this is people with bigger salaries than mary who have made some bad decisions and i
01:34:43 ◼ ► think it goes to the top yeah and that's that's the difficulty being an armchair quarterback outside
01:34:48 ◼ ► of organizational structures all we can know is that there's something not working and we can make
01:34:52 ◼ ► guesses about why but we don't know we can't actually anyone who has a strong opinion of exactly
01:34:56 ◼ ► who's responsible unless you work for apple even if you do work for apple you probably don't know
01:35:00 ◼ ► that because you just see your little world where your boss's boss makes some dumb decisions but you
01:35:04 ◼ ► don't understand that their boss actually is the real source of that dumb decision and yeah that's
01:35:09 ◼ ► that's what leading a company means you have to uh you know correct these things and to be fair to tim
01:35:15 ◼ ► cook i think he as shown by him hiring the wrong people and then firing them quickly afterwards
01:35:19 ◼ ► he does eventually figure out that things are wrong i just don't know where the blame lies
01:35:24 ◼ ► here uh other than it's clear that they haven't given this the attention that it needs to get whether
01:35:29 ◼ ► that's personnel attention or money attention or both and they already started out behind and so
01:35:33 ◼ ► we're seeing the obvious result of that which is they are not able to put out things that are
01:35:39 ◼ ► competitive because of the decisions they made years and years ago that's the way this stuff works
01:35:43 ◼ ► right if they made bad decisions about manufacturing cpus they'd be in the same situation but
01:35:47 ◼ ► they made good decisions there yeah and poor ones here and like these are decisions that you can't
01:35:51 ◼ ► turn around on a dime so it's you know even if they're doing everything right right now still
01:35:57 ◼ ► it's going to be years before they write this ship yeah it's um like i said i i like that this is
01:36:05 ◼ ► happening in the sense that i feel like apple needs to take some punches right i feel like they have been
01:36:09 ◼ ► been riding high for so long and i always cart out the famous john madden expression because i love it
01:36:15 ◼ ► which is winning is a great deodorant as long as you're winning all of those things that are going
01:36:20 ◼ ► on that stink and you can't smell them and then that's why siri got to be the way it was like yeah
01:36:25 ◼ ► siri exists and the iphone's a huge hit things and siri's there so who cares yeah we have one and
01:36:31 ◼ ► we're doing great so it must mean siri's great yeah i didn't mean that at all you had one
01:36:35 ◼ ► organizational delusions because everybody's job defense depends on them misunderstanding what's
01:36:41 ◼ ► going on yeah and and so on that level if you're somebody who wants apple to do better apple getting
01:36:48 ◼ ► a black eye in public and having to make like how much did they hate having to say we're not going to
01:36:53 ◼ ► ship that so much that they loaded that one sentence at the beginning of the statement with
01:36:58 ◼ ► just the most ridiculous hyperbole about how amazing apple is before they said but that's it
01:37:03 ◼ ► that being said uh we are not shipping that feature um and it and then they use the like in the coming
01:37:10 ◼ ► year which nobody knows what it means but they're not going to say like i some year that comes they
01:37:15 ◼ ► hate they hate that they hate it they hate it they are a very proud company they hate any sign of weakness
01:37:21 ◼ ► like that and so obviously this is painful for them and you know again we saw it in robby walker trying
01:37:31 ◼ ► to give his team a pep talk right like i get it i totally get it um you hope really what i hope above
01:37:38 ◼ ► everything else is that people at the very top of the company and this goes all the way to tim
01:37:44 ◼ ► use this as an opportunity to dig down and say why did this happen because obviously at some point
01:37:51 ◼ ► in the chain everybody was like going great boss going great we're going to do it it's going to be
01:37:55 ◼ ► great there's some people who are too successful at managing up somewhere in this chain yes and so
01:38:00 ◼ ► you got to dig it out and that's very painful um and and again it may it may lead to somebody getting
01:38:05 ◼ ► fired but probably my guess is probably not unless there's gross incompetence somewhere my guess is
01:38:10 ◼ ► it was you know this person had this incentive and this person had this incentive and we did we
01:38:15 ◼ ► realized oh that completely ruined us for siri because they were working in opposite and there
01:38:21 ◼ ► was nobody to say you guys need to work together on this right like they just that's probably what the
01:38:26 ◼ ► cause is but somebody's got to get in there with a flashlight and figure it out because you know they
01:38:32 ◼ ► let that sit there until siri became a disaster unless i mean look there could be gross incompetence
01:38:38 ◼ ► somebody could be like embezzling money and like i don't know but probably the most likely scenario is
01:38:45 ◼ ► just it's a large organization that uh didn't need to understand what it was doing wrong until
01:38:52 ◼ ► it got punched in the face which it did this week yeah last week really quickly i wanted to talk about
01:39:04 ◼ ► my review of the macbook air and the mac studio i know you guys have talked about that on atp a bunch
01:39:11 ◼ ► i just wanted to say i wrote a review it's called am i blue i know i'm asking i'm i'm asking am i
01:39:18 ◼ ► blue the oh no get elliot kalen in here um here's the thing that i really like about that
01:39:27 ◼ ► like look john you know this from from your big review days of os 10 uh writing a review is a
01:39:34 ◼ ► challenge uh it's more of a challenge where there's less to say and so i have a lot of these apple
01:39:39 ◼ ► products that are so iterative i've started to just think i'm going to really write an essay
01:39:44 ◼ ► about thoughts that are tangentially related or prompted by the release of a new product because
01:39:50 ◼ ► it's very hard to do a lot more than that when the product hasn't changed very much and neither of
01:39:54 ◼ ► these products changed very much but the one thing that i landed on with the with the air and i i
01:40:01 ◼ ► hinted at this with gruber last week but again i couldn't talk about the piece like that i had it
01:40:06 ◼ ► is the most important thing about this product i think is the price i think that they finally got
01:40:10 ◼ ► the brand new macbook air with 16 gigs of ram down to 999 which is you know where they want that product
01:40:18 ◼ ► all along but they couldn't afford it with the m2 and the m3 and it makes it really easy for me if
01:40:23 ◼ ► somebody says oh i need to buy my kid a mac for college or whatever like just get them a macbook
01:40:28 ◼ ► air like it's not just get them a macbook air it is it is back to being kind of the default i don't
01:40:35 ◼ ► have to say well save a little money get the m2 or well the older design but it's still pretty good
01:40:41 ◼ ► is the m1 like i don't have to do any of that anymore i can really just say the m4 at 999 is more
01:40:47 ◼ ► than i would argue probably like more than 98 of mac users need it is just the mac to buy i think what
01:40:55 ◼ ► do you uh what do you think about that yeah i mean as with any uh exercise in uh finding eliminating
01:41:06 ◼ ► second biggest thing so now they've eliminated just so many things you mentioned the price uh 16 gigs of ram
01:41:12 ◼ ► this is a great design it's got magsafe back on it it's got all these things going for it
01:41:16 ◼ ► and by being so successful in correcting past mistakes and moving bottlenecks now 256 gig ssd
01:41:23 ◼ ► is sitting there saying here i am i'm the storage space i'm the tall poppy i'm the problem i'm the
01:41:28 ◼ ► long line on the graph uh but still like unlike the ram uh storage has the advantage that like there are
01:41:35 ◼ ► people who can are fine with that like there's you can say that it's easier to i mean it's easier to
01:41:42 ◼ ► extend storage you can add storage like you can't add ram uh and 256 if you're using it mostly as
01:41:47 ◼ ► sort of like a terminal for a cloud-based things or whatever that won't affect you in the way that ram
01:41:52 ◼ ► would because you keep opening up those chrome tabs and you keep doing more complicated things the
01:41:55 ◼ ► ram's going to be a problem but uh the storage space is you're not going to need much more of it if
01:41:59 ◼ ► you open up 75 new chrome tabs so yeah they've they're they've come they're really really close
01:42:05 ◼ ► to like if i had to say that the next two things they need to do to make this like even more perfect
01:42:10 ◼ ► uh is you need obviously a bigger default ssd and you put an sd card slot back on it right before that
01:42:15 ◼ ► thing becomes obsolete right before no one uses sd cards and then you're basically done but like but
01:42:20 ◼ ► yeah this is this is exactly i feel exactly the same way you do is there's so many people in my life
01:42:24 ◼ ► i was saying it's a slightly more complicated decision but at this point you should wait for
01:42:29 ◼ ► the m4 it's coming out soon uh and now that it's here it's like it's a no-brainer it's just it's
01:42:34 ◼ ► it's so it's so great not to have to try to convince people to upgrade the ram right you don't we don't
01:42:40 ◼ ► have to have that conversation anymore you don't have to tell people what ram is it's just and all you
01:42:43 ◼ ► have to do is how much stuff do you have because people understand that how much stuff do you have
01:42:47 ◼ ► do you have more than 256 gigs of stuff right now on your mac laptop well then you need to get a
01:42:53 ◼ ► bigger one and they understand that it's like oh that's the stuff that i have and that's it and
01:42:57 ◼ ► everything else about it like just the performance of their lowest price one thousand dollar laptop in
01:43:03 ◼ ► single core which is what matters for that is amazing the battery life that you get from the m4
01:43:08 ◼ ► the m4 is such a great chip it's so perfect in the macbook air such an ideal combination of chip
01:43:13 ◼ ► and laptop uh this is and and we're we're in the place where like this has been the design for a
01:43:20 ◼ ► little while now right we're not like this is a brand new design or it's not getting old it's just
01:43:25 ◼ ► this is a great computer i'm i'm gonna recommend my father buy one of these i'm gonna get one for my
01:43:29 ◼ ► daughter for when she goes off to college uh i got my son i think it was the m2 one which was the
01:43:35 ◼ ► most recent one when he went off to college and he's used that for his whole time in college so far so
01:43:40 ◼ ► yeah this is basically uh taking a mac that was already great and making it even better and even
01:43:47 ◼ ► though i can see ways they could still improve it is a it is a relief uh to to just see this computer
01:43:54 ◼ ► come out and have it be like back in the 2011 macbook air days when you knew exactly what computer
01:43:59 ◼ ► would recommend everybody this is that again they took them a long time to get back to that there was
01:44:03 ◼ ► a dark period where it was non-retina and then there's the whole apical silicon transition uh
01:44:08 ◼ ► i mean arguably the m1 macbook air was pretty close to that but it didn't have mag safe and stuff like
01:44:13 ◼ ► that so uh but yeah uh m4 macbook air great computer if you need a mac laptop and you don't
01:44:19 ◼ ► know what you need and your needs are not high get this computer it will as long as you don't drop it
01:44:23 ◼ ► or break it it will last you so long i get the idea too about storage being the tall poppy but one one
01:44:38 ◼ ► just an add-on to 999 instead of an add-on to 1099 or 1199 which means if you say well yes but 16
01:44:47 ◼ ► gigs of of ram and 512 ssd is the minimum anybody should buy well guess what those used to be way
01:44:55 ◼ ► more expensive too they're not 999 but they're less than they were because the 16 is now thrown in
01:45:01 ◼ ► and you you know it was 256 to start when it was more expensive too so it's now you're starting down
01:45:09 ◼ ► at 999 and if you need more storage you can add it so it still is that's that's what i've already told
01:45:14 ◼ ► a couple of people is we'll get this and consider the 512 storage upgrade but otherwise it's it's just
01:45:20 ◼ ► great yeah and they're also enjoying this like i don't know how brief it is but they're enjoying a
01:45:25 ◼ ► period now where we're still in a situation where it is reasonable for the least expensive apple laptop
01:45:31 ◼ ► to have a non-hdr non-120 hertz screen we just talked about that on the phone before and as kind
01:45:37 ◼ ► kind of untenable for a thousand dollar phone to have a 60 hertz screen but still i would say
01:45:41 ◼ ► they have not passed out of the area where it makes sense for their cheapest laptop to not have
01:45:47 ◼ ► the amazing screen that's on the macbook pros at a certain point that won't be true at a certain
01:45:51 ◼ ► point every mac will need to have 120 hertz hdr screen but we're not there yet so enjoy this time
01:45:57 ◼ ► when you don't have to look it's like when the macbook air was non-retina when it was non-retina
01:46:01 ◼ ► and everybody most everybody was non-retina it's like yeah that seems appropriate but it was non-retina
01:46:05 ◼ ► for way too long and at a certain point you're like oh the macbook air it's a good computer but
01:46:09 ◼ ► it's still not retina can you believe they haven't made a retina macbook air so enjoy this period
01:46:14 ◼ ► of peace in macbook air kingdom where the computer is well spec'd and well priced and it's a great
01:46:19 ◼ ► computer and the chip is great and the things that it has make sense for the price point and have the
01:46:24 ◼ ► things that most people need because a few years from now we'll be back on this program saying i
01:46:29 ◼ ► cannot believe that the macbook air still doesn't have 120 hertz screen yeah no it's now's the time
01:46:38 ◼ ► said about that i went to the apple store by the way i went to an apple store to look at these
01:46:45 ◼ ► and they had a gold one sitting next to one that was either silver or blue and i swear to you i did
01:46:50 ◼ ► could not i determined i i was i refused to ask the help i could not determine what color that was i
01:46:55 ◼ ► went to the about this mac to see if it would reveal if it's buried in there i couldn't find it
01:47:06 ◼ ► the the sole way to tell because it's so subtle is you have to have brighter light or different
01:47:11 ◼ ► colored light you have to tilt it you have to go so much and this is because that's the idea is it's
01:47:17 ◼ ► super subtle and like again whatever i get they must just really feel like this is the way is is it's
01:47:23 ◼ ► it's got to be a silver laptop and then it could be light silver or dark silver it could be blue silver
01:47:28 ◼ ► or yellow silver but it's still silver or it's black slash navy i'm leaning towards it being silver
01:47:34 ◼ ► because again the gold one was next to it and i could tell the gold one was gold but i could not
01:47:38 ◼ ► tell what the one next to it i i swear to you i i almost gave this away on my last monday with gruber
01:47:44 ◼ ► and i was under embargo so i kind of had to pivot really quick to having it be a more a more general
01:47:48 ◼ ► anecdote but i can now reveal when i opened my review unit of that of that sky blue um i thought
01:47:55 ◼ ► they sent me silver i just assumed they sent me silver and i thought that's a weird choice when
01:47:59 ◼ ► you have a new color to send the reviewers the old color and then i did a search on my shipping
01:48:03 ◼ ► manifest from the apple pr it says it says sky i'm like i guess this is it i had to go get a silver
01:48:12 ◼ ► i got a silver macbook air and a silver apple tv remote and i laid them on and i was like oh
01:48:18 ◼ ► it is i mean even then it was sort of like it's a little darker and i guess that could be blue but
01:48:22 ◼ ► at that point isn't my brain making it blue i i don't and blue is my good color john blue is
01:48:27 ◼ ► a good color for me they're just gaslighting you by sending you a box that says sky blue but putting
01:48:31 ◼ ► a silver one in it i mean i wondered i i wondered but it does seem like maybe it is blue now i don't
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01:50:55 ◼ ► for supporting upgrade and all of relay john you have any opinions about the mac studio i mean
01:51:01 ◼ ► i don't know it's just a little update whatever you know speaking of things that like build up over
01:51:09 ◼ ► time when you're waiting for that big release uh i feel very much like i did at the beginning of atp
01:51:16 ◼ ► when we were waiting for them to update the mac pro with an appropriate uh appropriate successor
01:51:22 ◼ ► uh the way back when i read that blog post the case for a true mac pro successor uh you have to look
01:51:29 ◼ ► at the date of that to realize i was writing that before the trash can came out so uh which at least was
01:51:36 ◼ ► like them trying right um the the the story for the whole apple silicon era has been but what do you do
01:51:42 ◼ ► with the really big powerful mac because we know you don't sell a lot of them uh and that is actually
01:51:48 ◼ ► the most difficult kind of chip to make and it costs the most and it's you know it's just you want me to
01:51:54 ◼ ► spend all this money on a computer that i sell so few of and the chips are so powerful we just got done
01:51:59 ◼ ► saying the macbook air is more than mac than anybody ever needs why are we even trying to do this and i have
01:52:03 ◼ ► been a strong proponent of this is a thing you need to do not because it will make you money because it
01:52:07 ◼ ► will not or it shouldn't i think it shouldn't i think you should lose money on every mac pro that
01:52:11 ◼ ► you sell wow you should be making it the same reason like i said in that post the same reason
01:52:16 ◼ ► car companies make concept cars or limited production sports cars that lose money on everyone that they
01:52:21 ◼ ► sell they make them because they're car people and they like fast cars and it helps the business
01:52:26 ◼ ► it helps morale it helps the people who work for you it it it has a halo effect outside the company
01:52:33 ◼ ► apple should always be trying to make the fastest personal computer uh ever made uh and if they're
01:52:39 ◼ ► trying to do that now they're not doing a great job because thus far they have had as far as we know
01:52:43 ◼ ► on the outside world lots of interesting ideas and plans about how they could make uh an appropriate
01:52:49 ◼ ► super high-end mac with apple silicon and they have not been able to let any of them see the light of
01:52:55 ◼ ► day so instead what we've gotten are the mac studio which is an amazing computer that is tiny and sitting
01:53:01 ◼ ► behind you there look how small it is so powerful so great it's basically like take take our laptops
01:53:07 ◼ ► and put them in a desktop case with way better cooling uh and more ports and all the things that you get
01:53:12 ◼ ► from a desktop that's a great computer no shade on the mac studio and the mac pro is like it's a mac
01:53:16 ◼ ► studio with slots that you can't do much with yeah um so the mac studio now gets a little bit of the
01:53:22 ◼ ► mac pro treatment oh mac studio has been perfect everything's everything's great about the mac studio
01:53:27 ◼ ► they in fact do make a chip for the mac studio called the the ultra series of chip and that is appropriate
01:53:31 ◼ ► for a computer that big and it's a really good chip for a computer that big and they had made the m1
01:53:36 ◼ ► ultra and they made the m2 ultra then the m3 came along and there was no m3 ultra we're like huh
01:53:40 ◼ ► hmm what's up with that anyway the m4 came along m4s are great everyone loves m4s they're great in all
01:53:47 ◼ ► their computers uh they're gonna come up with a mac studio they'll they'll put the m4 max now and it
01:53:51 ◼ ► will be great uh don't know what the deal with the ultra is but you know like an m4 max max studio is
01:53:57 ◼ ► great too and so they put out the the new mac studio it's got an m4 max which is a great chip for
01:54:01 ◼ ► that great uh but it's also got an ultra chip and guess what is the m3 ultra here we are at the end of
01:54:06 ◼ ► the m4 generation and here's an m3 ultra it's like hey i exist too it's like what we were looking for
01:54:13 ◼ ► you a long time ago and you didn't appear so we assumed you wouldn't we thought you died
01:54:16 ◼ ► yeah where were you where were you i'm not gonna say the m3 ultra is not an appropriate chip for the
01:54:22 ◼ ► max studio because it is it's just an appropriate chip for the max studio last year yeah yeah and and
01:54:28 ◼ ► they said look i got the briefing i was on the same briefing as grouper um you know they i don't
01:54:35 ◼ ► know the exact wording and i wouldn't be allowed to quote it anyway but i got i got the strong
01:54:39 ◼ ► impression that the goal with the m3 ultra was to make it thunderbolt 5 and and like to soup up and
01:54:45 ◼ ► have more addressable ram and all of that and you know they're never going to say it because again
01:54:49 ◼ ► they're a very proud company but my guess is that that that project got it got delayed like it they
01:54:55 ◼ ► didn't they weren't able to do it and they threw some shade i would say during that briefing at least the
01:55:00 ◼ ► suggestion was that the thunderbolt certifying it for thunderbolt 5 took longer than they expected and
01:55:06 ◼ ► you know they so they wave their like their hands at it because it is weird right it's a weird weird
01:55:12 ◼ ► choice weird choice that they did it and that they chose not to release an m3 max max studio without the
01:55:18 ◼ ► ultra they just delayed it yeah and they delayed it so long i think this is probably the story they
01:55:23 ◼ ► delayed it so long that they had an m4 max so they're like well i guess we will put that one in
01:55:28 ◼ ► there and let's be clear 95 i would say 90 of the max studios that will be sold will be m3 max or m4
01:55:37 ◼ ► maxes because it will actually be the fastest way to do most of the things that people will do with
01:55:41 ◼ ► the max because it's a it's a slower core in the m3 but there are more of them and so if you're doing
01:55:49 ◼ ► work that requires all of that like that extra top layer it's worth the money to spend on getting it
01:55:57 ◼ ► because it will be faster but even in my briefing apple was like it is faster than the m4 max at when
01:56:04 ◼ ► it's maxed out and they said when it's maxed out and that's like literally that's the only time it's
01:56:08 ◼ ► faster is when it's maxed out and for your day-to-day work though if when you're not doing maxing it
01:56:13 ◼ ► out the m4 max is faster like it's not it's not just as fast it is faster it is plain faster because
01:56:19 ◼ ► most of the things you're going to be doing because it's an m4 not no3 i was talking to gruber about this
01:56:23 ◼ ► actually of like um back in the intel days we were kind of used to the old intel's cadence which would
01:56:30 ◼ ► be they would make a bunch of cpus and often when they were having a new process node intel back when
01:56:35 ◼ ► they were the king of the fabs and they had the best process technology they'd come up with a new one
01:56:38 ◼ ► and they usually make a laptop chip first and then a desktop chip and then like sometimes like a year and
01:56:43 ◼ ► a half later there'd be the zeon that uses those cores that you didn't notice the connection
01:56:47 ◼ ► because they didn't name them like apple does where it's like an m and a number but the zeon alphabet
01:56:51 ◼ ► super or whatever you'd be like well that actually has the chorus from last year's chips in them and
01:56:56 ◼ ► that was just the way we thought silicon would always work with cpus because intel was so dominant so
01:57:00 ◼ ► you make you make the small easy laptop chip first then you make a desktop chip and then ages later you
01:57:04 ◼ ► make the 28 core big giant zeon and everyone was fine with that and by the way the zeons were slower
01:57:09 ◼ ► in single core right they had slower clock speeds but in exchange you got a huge number of course
01:57:14 ◼ ► when apple came out with apple silicon they threw it was so disruptive of like all your previous
01:57:20 ◼ ► assumptions about how silicon work throw them out the window because here's apple silicon and it does
01:57:24 ◼ ► things it seems like they shouldn't be possible and one of those things i felt like was the time
01:57:28 ◼ ► delay between the m1 m1 pro m1 max and m1 ultra was like they're practically doing these not at the same
01:57:35 ◼ ► time but like it's not a zeon timeline the m1 i mean m1 came out a little bit earlier than the
01:57:39 ◼ ► other ones but like the pro and the max and then the ultra and then the same schedule with the with
01:57:43 ◼ ► the m2 uh how long those took and then uh the m3 there was no ultra but the pro and the max seems so
01:57:49 ◼ ► contemporary with the other ones the m4 they i think they shipped the m4 pro and max before the plane m4
01:57:55 ◼ ► macbook air which just came out even though there was the m the plane m4 mac mini and so the timelines
01:58:00 ◼ ► were so compressed and so now we're in this current era it's like well if you look at the m3 ultra it's
01:58:04 ◼ ► basically on a zeon timeline with the m3s and it's like okay well two things for that one that's not
01:58:09 ◼ ► what they had trained us to expect with the previous generations yep were those just anomalies and this
01:58:14 ◼ ► is the norm or whatever like we'll see how that goes but two one of their explanations that you just gave
01:58:20 ◼ ► for the delay in the m3 ultra is like oh well we made the m3 in the thunderbolt 4 era and to make the
01:58:26 ◼ ► m3 ultra make sense at all we have to put thunderbolt 5 on it because can you imagine if the m3 ultra came
01:58:31 ◼ ► with thunderbolt 4 and like all the old stuff yeah and if you if the gap is long enough between the the
01:58:38 ◼ ► m whatever and its ultra variant you end up having to ship that ship in a world where there's a new
01:58:44 ◼ ► version of thunderbolt and by the way that delays you even more because now you are retrofitting like
01:58:49 ◼ ► the whole m3 line was not made with thunderbolt 5 in mind it didn't exist and now you have to jam
01:58:53 ◼ ► it in there and that draws the timeline out there so whatever the appropriate time gap is between the
01:58:57 ◼ ► plain old m and the ultra version i think this gap is too long so yeah shrink it up imagine if last
01:59:05 ◼ ► year they had shipped an m3 max and m3 ultra max studio and they said and the ultra has thunderbolt 5
01:59:12 ◼ ► we've got a thunderbolt 5 isn't that amazing yeah and it was i i get the impression that it was too early
01:59:18 ◼ ► or something like that and and and that was a bad decision i guess on their part to to plan it out that way or
01:59:23 ◼ ► it slipped i don't know the story or they hadn't been able to retrofit it in that timeline it could
01:59:27 ◼ ► be like i know they're blaming the certification but maybe because it's a big deal to make a chip for
01:59:31 ◼ ► both thunderbolt 4 and thunderbolt 5 so the ultra is not just like oh we just two maxes two maxes and
01:59:36 ◼ ► stick them together no you had to redo all the thunderbolt stuff for the minimum plus the memory addressing
01:59:40 ◼ ► right so maybe it just took them longer to do that like if you don't design the whole family up front
01:59:46 ◼ ► like the m1 pro max and ultra where they all have the same crap and you know like that strategy
01:59:52 ◼ ► if you don't do that and they're of a piece and the ultras are somehow even more exotic and different
01:59:56 ◼ ► that's just gonna push the ultras out even farther to the point where you now you're shipping a computer
02:00:00 ◼ ► with an m with two different numbers m3 and m4 are coming it grouper suggested last week that maybe
02:00:04 ◼ ► they just need to come up with a new name for it like the zeon where it just obfuscates the fact that
02:00:09 ◼ ► it's using old cores yeah to hide the fact that they do that but like i mean i i'm not ready to give
02:00:14 ◼ ► up on it because like like you did it with m1 and m2 were those anomalies that we could never
02:00:18 ◼ ► see to be repeated again like those timelines seemed reasonable to me i believe you can do it again
02:00:23 ◼ ► given everything you know that they've done with the apple silicon transition that this is that maybe
02:00:28 ◼ ► the weirdest hiccup so far is you know i think they're still doing a pretty good batting average
02:00:33 ◼ ► for me the weird thing about this john is that they didn't update the mac pro well so that's that's
02:00:40 ◼ ► is that an atp like you look at this and you try to apply logic and you say okay they didn't update
02:00:46 ◼ ► the mac pro and also they said not every generation will have an ultra which is a strong hint that a
02:00:51 ◼ ► strong hint that the m4 ultra won't exist yes so if i put those two together and use logic
02:00:56 ◼ ► that means the mac pro will have a chip that's not an m4 ultra but is even better yes finally a chip
02:01:02 ◼ ► appropriate to that case or they care so little about the mac pro that they're just going to announce
02:01:07 ◼ ► an m3 ultra mac pro in a few months exactly and the other shoe drops and it's just like everybody's
02:01:13 ◼ ► like oh that that those are those are i feel those are our choices i i want to believe that there is an
02:01:19 ◼ ► m4 magic extreme that is just for the mac pro and that we're going to get maybe even a like a little
02:01:27 ◼ ► tick tock thing where there's like a a high-end studio chip one year and a and a mac pro chip the
02:01:33 ◼ ► next year and we go like that back and forth i i want to believe but the other option and it would
02:01:38 ◼ ► just be so sad if like in june they're like oh yeah and also we added that chip that we that we shipped
02:01:43 ◼ ► in march to the mac pro to yay and then that's it and it remains identical functionally identical to the
02:01:50 ◼ ► mac studio because what you want is because i think uh some podcasts i was on last week we were
02:01:55 ◼ ► talking about this it's like the reason you wouldn't put that super high-end extreme chip in
02:01:58 ◼ ► the mac studio is because the mac studio can't cool it right it can't fit yeah it can't fit can't cool
02:02:04 ◼ ► it and and finally there's a reason for the mac pro to exist yeah like that's that's that's the problem
02:02:10 ◼ ► with applying the logic that it leads you to these conclusions but then you have to have out there of
02:02:14 ◼ ► like no they just don't care they just it's gonna you're gonna they're gonna be m3 ultra is
02:02:21 ◼ ► like as disappointing as the m3 ultra mac pro was because it's like what are they gonna do
02:02:25 ◼ ► with the mac pro because it hadn't transitioned you know like what are they gonna do with that
02:02:28 ◼ ► uh nothing they're just gonna same as the studio right like they those two computers should not have
02:02:34 ◼ ► the same top-end chip the whole point is that that massive case with that massive cooling can handle
02:02:39 ◼ ► things that let the mac studio be the mac studio yes it should not have the same chip in the mac pro and
02:02:44 ◼ ► so the fantasies of the extreme are you know are still out there and if they just ship it with the
02:02:51 ◼ ► ultra it's like oh it's just another year of this built-up tension about like what what are you doing
02:02:57 ◼ ► like some people will say they should just get rid of the mac pro some people like me will say they
02:03:01 ◼ ► should give it an appropriate chip we know they've had designs and strategies of how to do something for
02:03:07 ◼ ► that they just haven't been able to execute in any of them which is which fine like you try you're
02:03:12 ◼ ► ambitious the the jade 4c die and the m1 didn't work out too expensive can't make the math whatever
02:03:18 ◼ ► right come up with a new plan that's why that's why my hope for the mac pro chip is that it is not
02:03:24 ◼ ► any assemblage of maxes but is instead two things that are even bigger and badder than maxes stuck
02:03:29 ◼ ► together or maybe just like you know i don't know what the radical limit is for how many things but like
02:03:33 ◼ ► just a purpose-built thing just for the mac pro it absolutely would not fit in any other computer and and
02:03:39 ◼ ► here's the thing you can put the m3 ultra in the mac pro too you can put an m3 max in in the mac pro
02:03:45 ◼ ► like if people need card slots like don't tie them to paint you know like not that they're going to do
02:03:49 ◼ ► this but i don't begrudge less powerful chips in the mac pro but that case needs a reason to exist
02:03:54 ◼ ► yeah and so i really hope they roll something out that uh is appropriate for that and if they do just
02:04:01 ◼ ► roll out the m3 ultra and that's the top end we're just we'll see you here next year with my
02:04:04 ◼ ► believe shirt on i'll just keep wearing that shirt until they stop using that case or until they
02:04:08 ◼ ► finally figure out what they're going to do and like you're you're what you said before about the
02:04:13 ◼ ► studio like it's kind of weird that they didn't ship it with the uh with the m3 max right that
02:04:19 ◼ ► the fact that they didn't ship the studio with the m3 max when they could have it was a chip that existed
02:04:25 ◼ ► and you could have put it in that case and it would have been fine the fact that they didn't do that
02:04:29 ◼ ► lens credence to them rolling out an m3 ultra max studio is top end and you would say but why didn't
02:04:34 ◼ ► they roll that out when they did the studio it's like oh they didn't feel like it yeah or they or
02:04:37 ◼ ► they could it wasn't ready then yeah they wanted to save all them for the only thing is like the
02:04:41 ◼ ► volumes are so small here you can't be like oh the max studios are absorbing all those m3 ultras
02:04:46 ◼ ► really like the volumes of everything is so small no like i just this is i know people you were just
02:04:53 ◼ ► talking about oh what are they going to do with apple intelligence wwc and like that is the more
02:04:56 ◼ ► important thing to be watching but my my personal one number one interest with a bullet going to wwc
02:05:02 ◼ ► and continues to be from past years and this year is what are you doing with the mac pro i have i have
02:05:08 ◼ ► when we're talking about the logic of this timeline i have a disconcerting suggestion for you which is
02:05:13 ◼ ► it comes and goes there's no mac pro news in the fall the macbook pros come out with the m5 pro and max
02:05:19 ◼ ► chips in the spring the macbook air comes out with the m5 and and in wwdc 2026 the m4 extreme is
02:05:31 ◼ ► released after all m5 chips have been released you sound like a sports fan who's saying there's always
02:05:36 ◼ ► next year we'll get them next year i don't know i i just i worry that we're now saying well yeah but
02:05:41 ◼ ► the m4 extreme is going to come on the m4 timeline and what we just saw with the m3 ultra is that it
02:05:46 ◼ ► didn't right so right here's the thing though like if they do in 2026 they come out with an extreme
02:05:52 ◼ ► chip the the existence of the stream chip alone gives it excuses that the existence of the ultra
02:05:58 ◼ ► the m3 ultra does not because they've never made a chip like this they've made multiple ultras before
02:06:03 ◼ ► which is why it's so disappointing that the timeline in this one if if 2026 they come out with the m4
02:06:08 ◼ ► extreme still i will be jazzed because it's like you did it you made a chip that's the big it took a long
02:06:14 ◼ ► time it's probably going to be expected but you did it and so i won't i actually won't be that mad
02:06:19 ◼ ► about that i have to i have to believe that um ben thompson's reaction to the m3 ultra which was
02:06:25 ◼ ► oh when you start having that much ram available to the gpus it starts to get really interesting and
02:06:31 ◼ ► a lot of ai applications because you can run enormous ai models on it not the biggest but some big ones
02:06:38 ◼ ► i cannot imagine that people inside apple who are working on apple silicon have not had that same
02:06:44 ◼ ► thought and that perhaps that is one of the selling points of an m4 extreme will be look at how much
02:06:54 ◼ ► addressable ram we are going to give these things there's the private private cloud compute angle
02:06:58 ◼ ► which is like uh okay so apple doesn't care enough about the mac pro to actually ship a chip appropriate
02:07:03 ◼ ► for it but they seem to care a lot about private cloud compute and yeah they're using m2 ultras in
02:07:06 ◼ ► there now but the rumors are they're going to make a chip appropriate for doing ai in the cloud stuff
02:07:12 ◼ ► with you know huge amounts of addressable memory and huge resources maybe the thing that the mac pro
02:07:17 ◼ ► could not make happen which is an appropriate chip the private cloud compute will make happen and
02:07:23 ◼ ► the mac pro team are like can we just can we just use what you're using for the private cloud compute
02:07:27 ◼ ► servers and like vaguely repurpose it to the mac pro because we tried to make our own chip for
02:07:31 ◼ ► this computer and no one they would never let us do it but you're doing it for the data center can we
02:07:35 ◼ ► steal that and stick it in a mac pro and call it the m4 extreme that's the desperation we're in now which
02:07:40 ◼ ► is like something that apple cares enough about to actually fund because i think they're going to do
02:07:44 ◼ ► private cloud compute i think they're going to make a purpose-built server chip for private cloud
02:07:48 ◼ ► compute for apple intelligence german says made in america too which is perfect because that's a
02:07:51 ◼ ► mac pro kind of deal too because they're low volume and well the chip won't be the chip yeah
02:07:57 ◼ ► but they'll assemble them all yeah sure wherever they assemble these are but yeah like that is a
02:08:02 ◼ ► chance and and i don't think that it'll be like oh they're going to repurpose the mac pro chip for
02:08:06 ◼ ► private cloud no it's entirely going to be the thing apple real actually cares about which is apple
02:08:10 ◼ ► intelligence and private cloud compute they'll make that and then if the mac pro team can say finally
02:08:15 ◼ ► finally something exists for us to stick in this case uh can we steal that from you uh we'll see how that
02:08:20 ◼ ► works out uh before we go i have one ask upgrade question that is perfectly a good way to end a
02:08:29 ◼ ► perfect segue it comes from hank says when speculating on an apple silicon chip above the ultra why aren't
02:08:36 ◼ ► all the old mac heads that's us john leaning toward calling it a quadra seems like a good fit because
02:08:42 ◼ ► quad means four and it's hypothetically going to have four max chips welded together i personally became
02:08:46 ◼ ► a mac user in 2004 is quad is quadra a bad idea because there is baggage with those computers or is
02:08:52 ◼ ► it just too dated uh just an opportunity to say quadra which is a fun old mac name quadras weren't bad
02:09:01 ◼ ► quadras were really no there's no baggage that's a great image they had a great reputation they felt so
02:09:07 ◼ ► fast i remember the first time i touched a quadra and like a an apple not an apple retail store an apple
02:09:12 ◼ ► retailer a third party seller with no apple stores existed then anyway first time i touched when i was
02:09:16 ◼ ► like just pulling down menus it felt like when i first used the se 30 like the 680 40 and the quadras
02:09:21 ◼ ► which i believe is the origin of the quad it was the four and the 40 40s right so fast such great name
02:09:28 ◼ ► recognition for those computers it was back when max cost even more than they do today if you can hard to
02:09:33 ◼ ► believe it was pentium before pentium in the sense that they made a brand name out of the code number of
02:09:38 ◼ ► the chip essentially yeah yeah but but anyway i don't think they'll reuse that name because i don't
02:09:43 ◼ ► think the right approach to the mac pro is at this point considering their attempts is four of them
02:09:49 ◼ ► because it's a waste of a lot of resources they should reallocate this the the space that they
02:09:54 ◼ ► would have for four of them like you have the problem with crosstalk and the communication overhead
02:09:59 ◼ ► and even just doing two of them they've struggled to make it twice as fast so i think they're better
02:10:03 ◼ ► off making two really big things that look like nothing they've ever made and sticking them
02:10:06 ◼ ► together then taking four of their existing things and so that kind of rules out the quadra name and i
02:10:11 ◼ ► don't think they would reuse it because it's it's definitely a 90s era uh apple marketing name even
02:10:17 ◼ ► though we have nostalgia for it today's apple would never pick a name like that yeah that's true but it's
02:10:23 ◼ ► a fun name and i had no baggage i just wanted to clear the quadra's name yeah it was a great those
02:10:27 ◼ ► were quadra is a name of honor there were a lot of computers that apple was selling then and you knew
02:10:31 ◼ ► that if you got the quadra you were getting the really really good chip and that's right it was really
02:10:35 ◼ ► fast and yes it was the end of the motorola era and then that we got our power pcs that were amazing
02:10:41 ◼ ► but like in the day the quadra was awesome that was a that was the best i remember looking on to a
02:10:48 ◼ ► co-workers quadra when i started a mac user with great envy but uh then the power pc came out when
02:10:56 ◼ ► everything changed all right um that is going to be the end of our regular episode of course upgrade plus
02:11:00 ◼ ► we will continue the discussion i'm going to ask john about his new app hyperspace which is now
02:11:05 ◼ ► available in the mac app store and if you would like to be a part of ask upgrade upgrade feedback
02:11:12 ◼ ► dot com is the place to go i have to read all the feedback while mike is gone so be nice thank you in
02:11:18 ◼ ► advance uh and get upgrade plus dot com if you want to hear that extra segment every week and also if you want to
02:11:25 ◼ ► support mike and mike's baby that's a great way to do it you can find us on youtube just search for upgrade
02:11:37 ◼ ► it will be a it'll be repetitive it'll be redundant i don't know uh but i also want to thank our
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