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The Talk Show

442: ‘Bad Dates’, With Jason Snell

 

00:00:00   I wanted you on the show, Jason, for a couple of weeks now. We've been trying to work it out, and now you are, and in the interim, I got very angry at you.

00:00:08   Yeah, that's true.

00:00:09   Now I'm angry.

00:00:09   It's true. I'm sorry you're angry. We're seeing each other next week, so you can pick me down then.

00:00:13   Well, that's why I want to work this out before we're in person.

00:00:16   Okay, good. I've got to work it through.

00:00:17   I'm listening to the upgrade. One of my favorite upgrade episodes of the year is you and Mike Hurley doing the recap of the Apple Report Card.

00:00:27   It's part of the whole Apple Report Card annual extravaganza. I love it.

00:00:32   And then you get to be talking about the Mac, and you make the very interesting observation that the way you've set up the report card all along is partly to fight against category proliferation.

00:00:47   For sure.

00:00:48   Because it's already in a lot of categories.

00:00:49   Yeah.

00:00:50   And partly just to make it—let's make it difficult on the scorers, the graders, the voters.

00:00:56   What do we call the invitees?

00:00:58   The panelists.

00:00:58   The panelists, I would say.

00:01:00   I'm not giving you two Mac categories. You've got to set up like the gestalt of the Mac as a whole.

00:01:05   And I agree. I both find it difficult, and it makes me angry, but I agree that it's like getting some exercise in.

00:01:13   It's supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to work your muscles.

00:01:17   And then you get to yapping with Mike about how you would have graded it, which we'll get to in a moment.

00:01:24   And you said you would have given it an A because you don't get the kerfuffle over Tahoe.

00:01:29   That's not quite what I said. By the way, I'm going to throw you a bone here.

00:01:34   This is my piece offering right up front, which is I think you're right about the Siri AI category.

00:01:37   I think I need to add it.

00:01:38   And I think you were right last year, and I just forgot to add it.

00:01:41   I made a to-do to put that in my spreadsheet so that it happens for next year, because I think you're right.

00:01:47   I think this year especially, it will be very interesting to see what happens.

00:01:50   And so I want to kind of commit to that now that I think that's a good idea.

00:01:54   But look, what I said about the Mac, it's funny because I don't think we disagree as much.

00:02:01   I don't think you're going to need to throttle me too much.

00:02:04   Maybe just to unconsciousness instead of death.

00:02:09   Honestly, it's one of these things too where it's obviously the trend over the last few months is people talking about how terrible they think liquid glass is and how bad they think it is on Tahoe.

00:02:18   And I don't entirely disagree with that.

00:02:21   But I do think that Tahoe has a lot of positives because, I mean, they added productivity features to Tahoe.

00:02:27   I think it's the best new set of productivity features added to the Mac in years.

00:02:31   And I've been using it since developer beta 2, and I find it perfectly usable.

00:02:37   I don't disagree with any of the criticism of the icons, of the little icons in the menus, of the bad effect of liquid glass and how it was implemented in Tahoe.

00:02:50   Although my argument is that because it was such a low priority for Apple, clearly.

00:02:56   I feel like if they had given the Mac more love, and I use that term loosely with liquid glass, I think it would have been worse, not better.

00:03:04   And so I'm kind of okay that it's a half-assed version of liquid glass because I think it could have been way worse.

00:03:10   But in the end, a lot of that stuff, I don't like it.

00:03:12   It's just like when they did the settings app redesign.

00:03:14   It was terrible.

00:03:16   And you can criticize it, and they deserve to be criticized because I think that all of this angst about this stuff is actually a symptom of a larger disease that Apple has had for a while in terms of their focus or lack of same on whatever you can call it.

00:03:33   Human computer interface, like you and Marco did in the survey.

00:03:35   No, no, John, Syracuse.

00:03:37   Oh, right, right, John.

00:03:38   You can call that user experience, whatever you want to say, focusing on usability.

00:03:43   And that's been kind of a problem and a sore spot for them for a while.

00:03:47   I think the liquid glass stuff just was an eruption.

00:03:49   It was like the, maybe it's the straw that broke the camel's back, if you want to say that.

00:03:53   But I feel like it's not the only problem.

00:03:55   It's like a really good exemplar that gets everybody talking about those issues.

00:03:59   But that all said, Tahoe added triggers for automation at a system level and access to the Apple's cloud models in automation, which I find super useful.

00:04:08   And a new Spotlight that is sort of the biggest update to Spotlight in maybe ever.

00:04:14   And they added a clipboard history for the very first time to any Apple operating system.

00:04:19   There's a lot of stuff that's there, and I can kind of look past how ugly it is because I do find it useful.

00:04:26   And at the same time, Mac hardware, everybody basically agrees, is basically like a perfect score.

00:04:33   Like they are on all cylinders on the hardware side.

00:04:35   So between the functionality of Tahoe and how great the Mac hardware is doing, look, when I said I was being a little rascally or the term that Stuart Wellington uses on the flophouses, I'm a little stinker.

00:04:47   It was because I gave a 5 instead of 4.

00:04:49   A reasonable argument would be, look, I know that there are problems with the UI, but all the other things give it to a 4.

00:04:56   I said a 5 because I was just going to make trouble.

00:04:58   And because I've seen so many people who are like, I'm not even going to install it, like you and Marco and other people.

00:05:04   And I just don't get it because it's like I get that it's ugly.

00:05:08   I get it that it's a regression in a bunch of areas, but there are also a bunch of good things in it.

00:05:13   So I, you know, that's so, yes, I was a little stinker and said it was a 5.

00:05:19   Probably wasn't.

00:05:20   I don't even make up those numbers until Mike asks me about it.

00:05:23   I literally don't think, what would I say?

00:05:25   What would I give an A or a B to?

00:05:28   I literally don't think about it until it was that moment.

00:05:30   And you heard me say it.

00:05:31   It was like, should I be reasonable or should I be a stinker?

00:05:34   And the answer was be a stinker, be a rascal.

00:05:36   So I said 5 out of 5.

00:05:37   But I do think, I mean, I am here to defend Tahoe at least a little bit because I think there's good stuff in it.

00:05:42   I just, and again, I can, look, when I click down a menu in the menu bar, do I roll my eyes a little at all those icons?

00:05:48   Yes, I do.

00:05:49   They're bad.

00:05:50   You should be able to turn them off.

00:05:52   There was a great essay about how they're totally inconsistent.

00:05:56   It reminded me a lot of what I wrote about the settings app, which is like, why are the icons colored the way they are?

00:06:01   Why are they in the order they are?

00:06:03   Why are they in groups?

00:06:04   What do the groups mean?

00:06:05   Nobody knows.

00:06:06   Just use the search box.

00:06:07   It's a huge, just a give up on this massive scale.

00:06:10   The icons are kind of like that too.

00:06:12   But at the same time, I use my Mac every day.

00:06:15   I get work done.

00:06:16   And I actually stopped using LaunchBar and I just use Spotlight now.

00:06:20   And it does basically everything I use LaunchBar for.

00:06:22   So yeah, Tahoe.

00:06:24   You've already, I didn't even share the outline of my show.

00:06:30   I actually made an outline because we have so much to cover.

00:06:32   I know what you're doing.

00:06:33   Where I can't wing it.

00:06:33   But I actually was going to ask you what launcher you use.

00:06:37   And you've already answered.

00:06:38   We'll come back to that.

00:06:39   We will come back to that.

00:06:40   I mean, I felt like I was simultaneously pushing against the trend a little bit.

00:06:46   I want to be honest, right?

00:06:47   Like I don't really agree.

00:06:48   And you wanted to make me upset.

00:06:49   But I also, the little extra part, I was thinking of you.

00:06:53   A little extra part.

00:06:53   I really was.

00:06:54   The fact that you're willing to admit that publicly makes me feel much better.

00:07:00   Oh, yeah.

00:07:01   Somebody said, I'd really like John and Jason to talk this through on the talk show, which you're welcome.

00:07:05   I saw that.

00:07:06   And my reply was, I admit, I was thinking of John when I said it all.

00:07:10   I mean, I did.

00:07:11   Do other people not have a little, like, imagine John Gruber audience on their shoulder?

00:07:16   I mean, maybe.

00:07:17   And there's people out there listening.

00:07:19   And I'm sure there's some of them are still listening.

00:07:21   Maybe.

00:07:23   No baseball yet.

00:07:24   So that's good.

00:07:25   No, no baseball yet.

00:07:27   I've gotten a little bit of, a little bit, not a lot, much more in my email friend and like Mastodon reader feedback of, keep Adam, this sucks.

00:07:39   But a little bit of, hey, come on, what's the big deal?

00:07:42   I upgraded.

00:07:43   Yeah, some of this stuff is ugly.

00:07:44   The corner radiuses.

00:07:46   I'm a radiuses man, not a radii, but use your preferred plural.

00:07:50   Not everything needs to be Latin.

00:07:50   Exactly.

00:07:51   I'm anti-Latin.

00:07:53   So octopuses, not octopi.

00:07:56   I mean, it's a mess.

00:07:56   I can simultaneously defend the usability or the functionality in Tahoe and say that there's, I think there's no denying that it's a mess design-wise.

00:08:05   Like, when that blog post about the corner radius resizing a window at the corner came out, I thought, I mean, I felt like I had been gaslit up to then.

00:08:13   Yes.

00:08:13   Because I was like, why is my mouse not working?

00:08:15   And then they're like, oh, it's because they broke the resize tool.

00:08:18   Oh, okay.

00:08:19   And because it works sometimes, because you just throw your mouse towards the corner and you click and you resize, and then sometimes you don't, and you think, what is going on?

00:08:28   And then you slow down a little, and you're like, what?

00:08:31   Yeah.

00:08:32   The funny part about that, too, and Adam Engst and I talked about it on the previous episode of the show, that Norbert Heger, who sort of wrote the definitive two blog posts about the corner resizing, wrote, took the time.

00:08:46   Now, speaking of LaunchBar, he's actually one of the developers of LaunchBar, or I don't know what his title is, but it might be the lead developer over at Objective Development.

00:08:55   But because he's a developer, of course, wrote a utility to move the mouse cursor automatically, presumably using accessibility APIs, one pixel at a time, to map out the hotspot of where you can resize this.

00:09:13   And Apple, obviously in response to the public catching on to this, hey, the corner resizing in Tahoe is clearly off in 26.2, addressed it in the 26.3 betas, all the way up to the release candidate, the RC, which is supposedly, hey, if we don't find anything deal-breaking, this is going to be the official release.

00:09:40   And they remapped it and made, instead of making it a stupid little square that's mostly off the window edge, they kind of made a round rect-shaped region around the corner, which is what is kind of necessary.

00:09:56   If you're going to make these comically large kindergartner-sized corner radiuses, you kind of need something like this.

00:10:06   It was in the release candidate, and then when the final version came out, Norbert ran his utility again, and they went back to the dumb little square that's mostly off the side.

00:10:16   I guess that was a deal-breaker.

00:10:17   I think it's obviously the case that there must be one or more major third-party apps that have stuff, UI elements, in the corners.

00:10:28   Maybe even Apple's own apps.

00:10:30   Who knows what they are?

00:10:31   They're not going to – Apple's not going to say.

00:10:32   But they clearly, in the release candidate, discovered that there are some Mac apps out there that put things in the corner that now the little things in the apps in the corner were overlapping with the resize zones.

00:10:44   And they're like, oh, maybe we – and again, maybe, just maybe, rectangular – overall rectangular windows should have – if the corners aren't actually sharp, crisp, cornered rectangles, if they are round recs, and as Steve Jobs said 40 years ago, round recs are everywhere, they should be gently rounded.

00:11:09   Yeah, there's no doubt.

00:11:10   Yeah, there's no doubt.

00:11:10   I mean, they made some mistakes there, right?

00:11:14   And then they tried to rectify them and realized that there were more mistakes.

00:11:17   I like that they tried to rectify them.

00:11:19   I mean, that's good.

00:11:20   At least somebody's looking –

00:11:22   I'll pace my wins when I get them.

00:11:23   So even though it didn't ship in 26.3 final, it was really – it is – and again, you speak as fluent Cupertino-ese as I do.

00:11:32   That's Cupertino-ese for, okay, okay, we're listening, we're aware of this.

00:11:37   I'll go all the way back.

00:11:40   I will go all the way back here to the name Liquid Glass and the most obvious aspect of it across all the platforms and the emphasis Apple put on it at its introduction back at WDC, which is that it looks like liquid glass, right?

00:12:00   It does, and there's an increased emphasis on transparency and translucency and the liquid, liquidity.

00:12:10   Moves like a liquid, reflects like a liquid, all those things.

00:12:13   And there are things that stretch that I can – and in some places on iOS where you can move them, I actually – it's like I'm finding more places where you can stretch things where it looks stupid that you can stretch them.

00:12:25   It's a cool effect, but it looks dumb.

00:12:27   But that's the thing that still gets the most complaints.

00:12:31   It's the translucency and transparency in the places where things you can't read because of the translucency and transparency.

00:12:39   Right.

00:12:40   Yes, that's an issue, but that is the least of the things that are my complaints on Tahoe because you can fix that with the accessibility settings.

00:12:49   And you've always been able to, as Apple has ying and yanged over what's translucent by how much for now, what, 24 years since Mac OS – the first version of Mac OS X?

00:13:04   And, you know, they've – the idea that certain aspects of the interface will be translucent or transparent just to look cool has – now it's like about a quarter of a century old.

00:13:17   In yings and yangs and ebbs and flows as years change and releases change, that's the least of the problems.

00:13:24   It is – and I'll go back all the way to classic Mac OS when there was the abandoned – what was it called?

00:13:33   Not the theme manager, the appearance manager in Mac OS 9.

00:13:37   Maybe it shipped in Mac OS 8.5?

00:13:40   Mm-hmm.

00:13:41   Yeah, I guess it probably was around 8.5.

00:13:42   Yeah, where you had all the different themes that you could theoretically apply.

00:13:45   And the appearance manager's appearance, no pun intended, more or less coincided with Steve Jobs' return to Apple and the next reunification and Avi Tevanian taking over software development.

00:14:01   And doing – for all – some of my disagreements over things like file name extensions and Mac OS X, but doing a very good job kind of – Mac OS 9 in the classic era was an outstanding release, Hall of Fame release of Macintosh system software.

00:14:16   And obviously, they were kind of save the company heads down – literally, save the company heads down, we've got to make this new operating system that combines the best of Mac OS with the best of the next step operating system and get this out.

00:14:30   And it didn't ship for five years or four years, depending on how you count.

00:14:34   That was the main thing, but they did a good job keeping classic and kind of sharpening classic, if you will.

00:14:40   But there was this thing called the appearance manager built into the operating system, which is – for somebody who wasn't around then, seems crazy for Apple to ship with the idea that you could have completely arbitrary skins like Winamp or all the various MP3 players from the heyday of third party.

00:15:00   There was one that was like – you could make it look like a whimsical child's toy.

00:15:04   Gizmo.

00:15:05   With little spirals and stuff, yeah.

00:15:07   Gizmo, yeah.

00:15:08   And there was the one that looked like an architect paper that apparently only shipped as a developer beta in Japan.

00:15:13   But, of course, we found all of these, and we were able to run them.

00:15:16   And then Steve Jobs comes back and is, what are you guys doing?

00:15:20   This is our job to decide what our operating system looks like.

00:15:24   Get rid of them all.

00:15:25   And the only things that shipped – there still was the control panel for appearance manager with themes.

00:15:32   And the only themes were platinum with different accent colors based on the colors of the iMac, I guess, eventually.

00:15:40   But if you consider that with totally different themes, and if you could still do that today, which you can't, the problems that I'm most concerned about in Tahoe, the ones that have me not upgrading, would still be there even if there was a way to apply a Sequoia theme.

00:15:59   Or even, ideally, go back like 10 years to LCAP or one of those operating systems and apply the LCAP theme system-wide and just choose it.

00:16:11   The other changes in Tahoe, the things like putting – which really gets me.

00:16:16   The icons in the menu bar items really single-handedly is the single biggest reason I'm not upgrading.

00:16:22   It just makes me so furious, and I find it – every time I sit here at my podcast station, which runs Tahoe, and I'm looking at them, like, right now, it makes my blood boil because it makes them so goddamn hard to read.

00:16:33   There is a reason.

00:16:35   I think I've mentioned this on previous shows.

00:16:37   Like, when you go into a restaurant and you look at – what do you look at to order from?

00:16:42   A menu.

00:16:43   They don't put little icons representing the food next to the items.

00:16:48   I bet some bad restaurant does.

00:16:50   Yeah, there's probably some.

00:16:52   Does the Cheesecake Factory do that, maybe?

00:16:53   I don't know.

00:16:54   They don't have enough icons.

00:16:55   No, they would be the last one to do it.

00:16:57   I mean, imagine how many icons.

00:16:58   It would bankrupt the company to generate that many icons.

00:17:00   But I like the idea, too, because you'd have very similar foods that would have very different icons just because they didn't want to reuse the icon, and they're inconsistent with, why is the pizza icon this over here and this over there?

00:17:10   And I don't – yeah, I don't disagree.

00:17:12   It's a mess, and it's a – this is why I keep saying it's a symptom.

00:17:16   I mean, I – so back – oh, God, so long ago now.

00:17:20   Back a very long time ago, I taught a class for a few years about web design at the Graduate School of Journalism.

00:17:28   It wasn't really about web design, but it was like basically make a blog, make a website because it was one way – that was an era where students who want to be journalists, you could go into a newsroom and say, I understand the web.

00:17:39   That was kind of the premise of it.

00:17:41   But one of the things we hammered on was usability in web design.

00:17:44   And I still think in terms of that to this day because – and I don't know.

00:17:49   Do you remember Don't Make Me Think, the book by Steve Krug?

00:17:52   Great book.

00:17:53   I do.

00:17:53   Yeah.

00:17:54   And about interface design.

00:17:55   And that's what I keep thinking of when you talk about like those icons.

00:17:58   The icons are noise.

00:18:00   I think there are people for whom the icons could theoretically be useful, but the way it's implemented is so poor and inconsistent, which I keep coming back to this concept of information architecture.

00:18:15   It's why I spent so much time railing about the settings app is it's not organized in any logical way.

00:18:23   It's – and you can organize – like those icons are color.

00:18:25   The icons in the menu bar are just monochrome, but like the icons in settings are color, but the colors don't mean anything.

00:18:31   And they're grouped together, but the groups don't mean anything.

00:18:34   It's like – imagine if those icons in the menu bar in Tahoe had colors of various shades and there was only one menu.

00:18:45   Yes, exactly.

00:18:46   That's what the settings app is.

00:18:47   Right.

00:18:48   And it's just – and this is why I keep coming back to that this is a symptom.

00:18:52   I'm sure you know this, talking to people at Apple, anytime people say, why doesn't Apple know that this is bad?

00:19:00   Believe me, there are lots of people at Apple who know that it's bad.

00:19:04   The problem is they're not being listened to.

00:19:08   And to me, it all comes back to the fact that whoever is making decisions has decided that – and in this case, maybe it's Alan Dye and the people who loved Alan Dye who didn't want him to leave.

00:19:23   But whoever it is in that system, there are people who are like, but what about the usability?

00:19:27   And it feels very clear if you look at the last 10 years of Apple software that those people aren't being listened to.

00:19:34   And look, it's a terrible task to be defending usability over something that's new because you're kind of like saying, I want to build this amazing building.

00:19:43   And you're like, but it'll fall down.

00:19:44   And they're like, we don't care.

00:19:45   It's so amazing.

00:19:46   Make it work.

00:19:47   And I do get the sense that a lot of the people at Apple are just being told, make this thing work, even though it doesn't work.

00:19:52   But that, to me, it just – I don't have any inside knowledge of this, but it sure feels like a fundamental cultural problem.

00:20:00   And the culture isn't necessarily that there aren't people who care about usability.

00:20:03   It's that those people's arguments haven't been allowed to carry the day.

00:20:08   And you end up with these things that, like, there's no – somebody – information architecture.

00:20:15   You look at the icons and you're like, somebody could do a project where they say, okay, we're going to put icons in the menu bar.

00:20:20   What are the rules?

00:20:21   When do they go in?

00:20:22   When do they not go in?

00:20:23   Are they all monochrome?

00:20:24   Okay, great.

00:20:25   What kinds of icons are used for what kinds of tasks?

00:20:28   Let's build a book of what you use in certain ways and how you figure out which SF symbol to use if you're just using SF symbols.

00:20:36   And we can also communicate that to developers.

00:20:39   And I just don't get the sense that anything like that happened.

00:20:43   Yeah, I think based on some discussions with people inside and outside Apple and thinking about it, I think one of the ways that this went off drifted away very slowly and where people like me and you are in a perfect position to sort of take a step back and say, yeah, because we were both using the platform and commenting on it in detail throughout this entire period.

00:21:12   You really do have to go back to Steve Jobs and you really do have to go back to his irreplaceable role.

00:21:20   I find myself recently referring to it over and over again.

00:21:24   I got to put this in the show notes, but the joke cartoon from 20 years ago about Silicon Valley org charts and the one for Apple is just a circle with one dot in the middle, which is Steve Jobs.

00:21:36   Do you remember this Silicon Valley org?

00:21:39   Yeah, the joke org chart.

00:21:41   Yeah.

00:21:41   What is it like?

00:21:42   Everybody's got a dotted line to Steve Jobs or?

00:21:44   Yeah.

00:21:45   And Amazon is just like this perfect bureaucracy.

00:21:48   Google is like a university style mess.

00:21:52   Facebook is bizarre.

00:21:55   Microsoft is a bunch of sub organizations pointing guns at each other.

00:22:00   Oracle has a giant legal arm and sort of a small engineering arm.

00:22:06   But then Apple is just this sort of sphere around one dot in the middle.

00:22:10   And it was kind of true.

00:22:12   And Steve Jobs trusted his gut.

00:22:14   Right.

00:22:15   And Steve Jobs had wonderful taste in UI design.

00:22:18   And it's like I said this with Adam angst in the previous episode that the principles of user interface design are a lot like the principles of grammar in writing.

00:22:34   And I will say, I will admit as a writer, I have forgotten everything.

00:22:39   I always, I've always written by ear.

00:22:42   I just have.

00:22:43   And because of that, I was absolutely terrible trying to learn Spanish as a second language.

00:22:48   And I've forgotten.

00:22:49   I took four years of it in high school.

00:22:50   And pretty much can ask, donde esta el baño?

00:22:55   Or something.

00:22:55   I think that's.

00:22:57   Where's the bathroom?

00:22:57   Sure.

00:22:58   Where's the bathroom?

00:22:59   And dos hamburguesas y papas fritas, por favor.

00:23:03   I would like two hamburgers and french fries, please.

00:23:06   I can order some food.

00:23:08   Amazing.

00:23:09   And I can ask where the bathroom is.

00:23:11   And that's about it.

00:23:12   Because I don't.

00:23:14   My brain, I just write and craft English by ear.

00:23:18   But I know, I do, it's like I intuitively know the rules.

00:23:21   And I think Steve Jobs was like that with user interface design.

00:23:25   And as I pointed out when I was comparing and contrasting Alan Dye's introduction of Liquid Glass at WWDC with Steve Jobs' introduction of Aqua back in like 2001 at a Mac World, one of the Mac Worlds that was at the time held all around the world.

00:23:40   And Steve Jobs was using words like key window and pointing out things like the key window, you could see that it has this prominence apart from the background windows.

00:23:50   And Alan Dye's word salad introducing Liquid Glass didn't use any of those human-computer interaction terms.

00:23:57   And the main thing people remember from that introduction was Steve Jobs saying, look at this, we wanted to make the buttons look lickable.

00:24:04   And it was true.

00:24:05   And he did.

00:24:06   And they did.

00:24:07   But also he knew these human-computer interaction principles like making the front window, the one that has input focus, visually prominent so that you can tell at a glance without having to think or look or just hunt for the red, yellow, green buttons.

00:24:22   Or God, like the way that in previous versions of iPadOS before this year when you had split screen, you know, you really – it was really like where's Waldo trying to figure out which of the panels had input focus.

00:24:35   Yep.

00:24:36   Yep.

00:24:36   Which is just wrong.

00:24:37   It is as wrong as saying he don't go there no more.

00:24:41   It's grammatically – as wrong as that grammar is was as wrong as that human interface design.

00:24:48   Yet I think it was sort of like that the Alan Dye graphic designer school of interface design is, well, this looks better because fading things out if they don't have focus doesn't look cool.

00:25:02   And it's like you've completely lost the purpose of what you're doing.

00:25:06   Yeah.

00:25:06   I do wonder because – and I will say Aqua, I mean, Aqua did have some legibility issues.

00:25:12   It wasn't perfect.

00:25:13   But I totally get what you're saying because, look, one of the consequences of Tim taking over from Steve is that Tim didn't have that sense, right?

00:25:23   So, he has to rely on trusted lieutenants.

00:25:25   And it's not a big leap to suggest the danger there is if you trust somebody, you shouldn't.

00:25:32   And I think, like, that story that they were disappointed that Alan Dye got poached by Meta, which a lot of us are like, what?

00:25:43   Why?

00:25:44   I think they're used to him.

00:25:46   They invested their trust in him.

00:25:48   And this is one of those things where Tim Cook's not going to look at the designs that come out of Alan Dye's group and say, I'm worried about your lack of focus on usability.

00:25:57   He's just not because he's been – he's the guy.

00:26:01   And the CEO does not have that bone in his body.

00:26:04   And so, it's going to be – so, that's the danger of investing all of your hope on somebody.

00:26:10   They have to have all the taste because you don't have it.

00:26:13   And he's the boss.

00:26:14   So, if his lieutenants say, Alan, I don't like this.

00:26:16   I don't like where we're going, Mayor.

00:26:17   That never reaches Tim Cook, right?

00:26:19   Because he's in charge and he's going to make those decisions.

00:26:22   And, again, I'm reluctant to entirely personify it on Alan Dye.

00:26:26   But, certainly, culturally, it feels like the stuff that came out – like, it's hard not to look at liquid glass and sometimes think, was this designed by designers who assumed that the technical proficiency of the coders at Apple would be so great that any legibility problems could be solved programmatically?

00:26:44   You guys will fix that, right?

00:26:46   You'll obscure things when they need to be and whatever.

00:26:48   I do wonder about that sometimes.

00:26:49   If it was like, did they solve the whole math problem or did they solve the best case and then say, well, our geniuses will figure out the rest of it?

00:26:57   I don't know.

00:26:58   But there's – something is missing in the flow there.

00:27:01   It doesn't seem quite like they got the whole picture.

00:27:05   Or maybe they didn't care.

00:27:06   I mean, that's the alternative.

00:27:07   Maybe they thought, look, all that matters is that it looks cool and usability is for suckers.

00:27:11   It's possible.

00:27:12   I think what happened is that during the jobs era, it could all flow through jobs and actually it was clearly more efficient that way.

00:27:20   And I don't think there was – jobs was going to have it any other way.

00:27:22   But what happened was the user interface designer stopped reporting up through software engineering, which is where they used to.

00:27:32   That group used to report up through software engineering and it was treated as effectively another engineering discipline.

00:27:40   So was that an effect of Johnny getting promoted?

00:27:43   Is that what that –

00:27:44   I think it was before that.

00:27:45   I think it happened like when Aqua was designed.

00:27:49   I think it happened like in 2000.

00:27:51   They started reporting to Steve and not reporting up through software engineering.

00:27:57   Which is okay when Steve's there.

00:27:58   Right.

00:27:59   And then even when Steve died, it was fine for a while because they could drift on the work that was already there.

00:28:09   And I think a lot of those – going back through Stephen Hackett's excellent collection of Mac OS X screenshots at 512 pixels, you can see it up through right about the time Alan Dye got hired.

00:28:21   And it's not dependent on him personally, but I think that part of Alan Dye getting hired also coincided with Johnny Ive.

00:28:28   Who hired Alan Dye?

00:28:30   Symptom.

00:28:30   It's a symptom.

00:28:32   But that's where Johnny Ive's attention was on shipping the watch, the Apple watch, and the architecture of Apple Park, which yada, yada, yada, five years later, he's out of Apple.

00:28:45   I would also say – I mean, my CliffsNotes version of this is with Steve gone, Apple needed to invest visibility in people that would allow the markets and everybody else to trust that Apple still had talented people there, even with Steve gone.

00:29:01   And so they gave Johnny a lot of responsibility and titles and things to reassure everybody that Apple was going to be okay.

00:29:08   And I think in some ways it was the right decision at the time, but it inscribed a bunch of power into Johnny that maybe he didn't deserve in that moment, but he needed to have it because they needed to elevate him.

00:29:20   And that meant more of his software thing.

00:29:22   And to your point about, like, the watch and Apple Park and all of that, personal opinion, I think Johnny Ive was burned out on making gadgets and just wasn't that interested in it.

00:29:31   And so it falls to his people to do that work while he's off looking at handrails for the Steve Jobs Theater, which is a beautiful – I mean, it's a beautiful piece of work.

00:29:39   Don't get me wrong, but, like, it's not an iMac.

00:29:41   And I think what should have been done when Steve left was instead of putting it under Johnny Ive as the whole discipline, just the graphic design and the style of the icons and the themes, like gizmo and platinum and whatever.

00:29:59   The theme of the UI could have remained under Johnny's team, but that the overall structure, the blueprint, the wireframe of the UI and the principles of things like, hey, should every menu item have a little icon next to it or not, or is that a bad idea?

00:30:16   Regardless of what the menus look like and how transparent they are or what the system font is or anything like that, just as a general principle, should have gone back to where it was before 2000 or the return of Steve Jobs and become a discipline – an engineering discipline under software engineering.

00:30:33   With – and this is an important point – with the ability for them to have an equal weight in the arguments about what was right and wrong.

00:30:42   Because you can have a whole group that is in that software group who cares about that stuff, but if they lose every argument to the designers, it doesn't matter.

00:30:49   And I think that just stopped happening and that they lost that.

00:30:54   And, you know, well, then how did Alan Dye get away with it?

00:30:57   How did he succeed for so long?

00:30:59   How was this a surprise to the senior leadership?

00:31:01   And how was senior leadership thinking this was a terrible loss to the company?

00:31:06   And I think it – you know, I heard this.

00:31:09   I reported this out and heard this firsthand was that it's not that Alan Dye is or was unlikable.

00:31:15   I've met him a few times.

00:31:16   He's a fine fellow to have a chat with.

00:31:18   You know, and the other thing, too, is people have written to me like, well, then how did cool things like the Dynamic Island ship under Alan Dye?

00:31:25   Which they did.

00:31:26   Entirely came out under Alan Dye.

00:31:28   And it's a very cool feature that I've sung the praises of right from the first time I saw it.

00:31:32   And I was lucky enough to run into Alan Dye and the team that designed it literally in the hands-on area after that iPhone event.

00:31:38   So, like, ten minutes after we got out of the Steve Jobs Theater, I'm talking to Alan Dye about the Dynamic Island and congratulating him and his team because I was already in love with it.

00:31:48   And how could some cool stuff ship under Alan Dye?

00:31:52   Nobody, including me, perhaps his most public critic, nobody is saying that Apple's user interface design was a zero on a scale of zero to 100 under him.

00:32:03   And there are super talented people still in the ranks of Apple's human interface designers.

00:32:10   And hopefully, Stephen LeMay, the new head of user interface design, will exemplify that and sort of bring them back to the forefront.

00:32:18   But they were there.

00:32:19   And the people like that were clearly the ones driving the Dynamic Island.

00:32:24   And the Dynamic Island has a very nice whiz-bang, looks-cool, we-could-feature-this-in-ads-and-keynotes aspect to it that pleases Alan Dye.

00:32:35   And the other thing I heard from so many people within Apple was that as likable and as personable as Alan Dye could be, he was clearly, first and foremost, a political operator.

00:32:45   And it kind of doesn't fly within Apple's rank-and-file culture.

00:32:49   And, of course, there's politics in any company.

00:32:52   And there's always been politics at Apple from when you and me were kids all the way through now.

00:32:58   I mean, the politics were what got Steve Jobs exiled from the company in 1985.

00:33:02   Every company has politics, and once you get to the size of a publicly-held corporation, of course there's politics.

00:33:09   But I'm just saying that for a publicly-held corporation, Apple and the rank-and-file levels of designers and engineers, it's kind of frowned upon to be a political player.

00:33:20   And by political player, what I mean is I think that Alan Dye is very adept at figuring out how to keep the people above him happy, how to keep Tim Cook happy, how to keep Craig Federighi happy, how to keep Jaws happy, how to keep Eddie Q happy.

00:33:36   And you see that in the reports that they were taken aback by his departure.

00:33:40   Although I do have a theory there, which is that one of the reasons you look around for another job is that there was some promotion that he thought he was going to get that he didn't get.

00:33:47   Or who you're going to – with all the rumors about him retiring and all of that or becoming the chairman and all that, like I just – my spider sense went off.

00:33:55   Just one of the things that happens when you're at a fairly high level is you start to have an expectation of who you're going to report to, who's going to report to you.

00:34:03   And it's a huge part if you're a political operator especially, but it's a huge part of like what it represents.

00:34:09   It's not just the money you get paid.

00:34:11   If you've been reporting to Steve Jobs for a while and then Steve Jobs leaves and Tim Cook becomes the CEO, is it time to leave?

00:34:17   Because you're going to have to build up a new rapport.

00:34:20   And that was my spider sense kind of feeling about Alan Dye was that maybe he was looking for another opportunity, but I do wonder if not that they wanted him out, but that he felt he deserved more than maybe they were willing to give him.

00:34:33   And so he started looking around.

00:34:34   And there are reports, I think, oftentimes, and a lot of these guys, they truly do – it's why your site's named what it is.

00:34:42   They bleed six colors.

00:34:43   This is why Apple senior leadership is so steady and that people get in there and spend the rest of their careers there.

00:34:50   And a guy like Phil Schiller, even after he retires as senior – or steps aside from the position of senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, whatever his full title was, is still running the App Store and running Apple's events.

00:35:05   Right.

00:35:05   It's not for the money.

00:35:08   Phil Schiller does not need another year's salary in 2026.

00:35:12   None of these guys need any more money.

00:35:14   They are doing it because they like to.

00:35:16   And there have been reports, especially it comes up with AI and AI researchers and the seemingly absurd sums of money that other companies are throwing at top researchers.

00:35:27   There are reports, I think, again, oftentimes this all goes back to our friend Mark Gurman, that Meta had poached people from Apple and offered them $100 million or other companies $100 million bonuses to come and join the company.

00:35:42   And that at Apple, that is like, no, we're not going to do that.

00:35:47   Craig Federighi is like, I don't make that much money.

00:35:49   Why in the world would we – you either want to work at Apple or you don't.

00:35:52   And if you don't want to work here, you don't belong here.

00:35:55   And I kind of feel like maybe part of it is that Alan Dye got an offer like that to go join Meta because Mark Zuckerberg thinks that.

00:36:03   And then I'm hopeful – I don't even want to believe that you're right because I think to extrapolate on your theory that he kind of smelled which way the winds were blowing within Apple would mean, if the rumors are right and Ternus is the next CEO of the company, that maybe he knows that Ternus is not a fan of his work in UI design.

00:36:23   It could be. It could also be as simple as that guy. I'm going to report to that guy.

00:36:27   Or it could be something like, I want to be chief design officer like Johnny, and I want to control all of that stuff.

00:36:32   And they're like, that's not going to happen, Alan.

00:36:34   And I've seen that time and again where there are people who are valued a lot by the people they report to.

00:36:40   But there's a mismatch.

00:36:41   But you're right. It could also just be as simple as he's tired of playing those games at Apple and there's a big paycheck dangling somewhere else for more glory.

00:36:48   I mean, everybody's motivated by different stuff.

00:36:50   It's just sometimes it's surprising, I think, what motivates the people flip side of that is I have heard that, you know, Apple senior management initially was surprised that he left surprised that anybody in that position would leave to go to of all companies meta.

00:37:04   Yeah, and sort of had a wow, we had that guy pegged wrong.

00:37:09   And then after in the initial days or that first week where it was all a big surprise, they were also surprised to find out that other than the inner circle around him, who either all left with him for meta or also just left Apple, like Alan Dye's whole inner circle, like I would say up to about 10 people probably left with him or left Apple.

00:37:32   But the rest of the designers at Apple, they were like partying that he was gone.

00:37:38   And that took Apple senior leadership by surprise, too.

00:37:42   And you can take it as a sign of dysfunction that they didn't know or that those people who are happy to see Alan Dye go couldn't get themselves heard and that the senior leadership had that wrong of a sense of the rest of the software designers at Apple.

00:37:57   And I do think it is, to some degree, a sign of dysfunction, but that took them by surprise, too.

00:38:02   But I think it hit home and they're like, oh, and to their credit over the years, all the way back to Steve Jobs, they they it's not that they never make mistakes.

00:38:13   It's that Apple at its best recognizes when they've made a mistake and they correct it.

00:38:18   And I think that we hopefully, knock on wood, are going to see that with software interface design.

00:38:24   I really hope so.

00:38:25   Again, it's not neither or.

00:38:27   I just, you know, yeah, you want a healthy environment where all of that stuff gets considered properly and it doesn't feel like that that's been the environment there for a while.

00:38:36   So, yeah, also maybe something about what a great political operator he is, but he's keeping everybody happy above them.

00:38:41   They are never going to know that.

00:38:43   And they don't know.

00:38:44   And that it's therefore politically not.

00:38:46   Yeah, exactly.

00:38:48   That he was so successful as a political operator that he kept them happy and kept them from recognizing how unhappy the people under him were.

00:38:54   And that explains why he was successful.

00:38:57   Anyway, I'm going to take a break here and thank our first sponsor of the show.

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00:41:03   It's a really good post and it really does get right to the heart of it where he just sends bookmarks into Notion and then the custom agent does all the work of categorizing them and like, oh, this is something about this.

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00:42:14   So going back to the report card, we don't have to rehash everything because you and Mike do it on that Upgrade annual show.

00:42:21   I forget this.

00:42:22   Every single year I forget it.

00:42:23   So now I just want to mention it.

00:42:25   Maybe by me mentioning it on the show, it'll finally get into my head.

00:42:29   You don't vote in the report card.

00:42:30   I do not participate.

00:42:32   I just compile it.

00:42:33   My numbers are not in there and I don't even think of numbers until Mike makes me talk about it on Upgrade.

00:42:38   Well, I couldn't hear you talking that much about the Mac one because my ear.

00:42:42   Yeah, I know the red haze.

00:42:43   Yes, yes.

00:42:44   Was the bees in your head were buzzing so much that.

00:42:47   And my eardrums were popping out.

00:42:49   But for the rest of the categories, I could hear you thinking it through on the fly, which is amazing.

00:42:55   Even if you did vote, there are, I think there were 56 voters this year, panelists this year.

00:43:01   So your vote wouldn't sway the numbers that much, but it's an interesting philosophy.

00:43:05   And I guess at this point, I'd like to be able to point at it and say, it's not me.

00:43:09   I like the clarity of that because in the early days, especially people would see things that they didn't agree with.

00:43:15   And they would write me angry emails.

00:43:16   They're like, how dare you say this?

00:43:17   I'm like, not me.

00:43:18   Other people, not me.

00:43:20   I get to deny.

00:43:22   It's deniability, John.

00:43:23   That's what I'm going for.

00:43:24   Deniability.

00:43:24   Yeah, but you do collect the quotes.

00:43:27   It's true.

00:43:28   I do.

00:43:29   I do select the quotes.

00:43:31   And that's an interesting task.

00:43:33   I now have an editorial assistant who tees up a bunch of good quotes for me.

00:43:38   That's Claude.

00:43:39   Because the worst thing in the world is looking, trying to do like the first couple of years,

00:43:45   I did like a Scott guide style thing where it was little quotes here and there.

00:43:47   And it's just, it's so much work.

00:43:49   It makes it untenable.

00:43:50   So now I have an AI analysis where it pulls out like a load of possible quotes.

00:43:56   And then I end up throwing half of them away, moving a bunch of them around, pulling ones

00:44:03   out that are in the original that I felt weren't being reflected.

00:44:06   It saves me some time though.

00:44:07   And then, you know, yes, because it's AI, I also make sure that everything is verbatim,

00:44:12   which it was.

00:44:13   To the credit of the AI, when I said, do not invent anything, only direct quotes, following

00:44:18   journalistic practice, it actually did it this time.

00:44:20   But still, I had moments where everybody's praising Apple's hardware and three separate

00:44:25   people made the same joke.

00:44:26   And I made sure to get all those in there and line them all up about how whoever's in charge

00:44:30   of hardware might need to be the next CEO.

00:44:34   So yeah, yeah, there's a lot.

00:44:36   There's 32,000 words.

00:44:37   Christina Warren always writes the most of anybody because she used to be a tech blogger

00:44:41   and now she's not.

00:44:42   And so I think she feels like this is her time to shine.

00:44:44   Although she did just have surgery and she left me a note at the end of her thing that

00:44:48   said, I did this all high on painkillers.

00:44:51   It's okay.

00:44:52   Fair enough.

00:44:53   But it's still good stuff.

00:44:54   So I read it.

00:44:56   I forgot the thing about painkillers, but I left the rest of it.

00:44:59   I should get her on the show soon while she's still on them.

00:45:03   It might be fun.

00:45:05   Yeah, she had a spinal surgery or something.

00:45:07   So it was definitely pretty serious, but she didn't stop her from writing like several

00:45:10   thousand words just on her own.

00:45:12   It's a very fun disclaimer.

00:45:14   I thought I read it from top to bottom.

00:45:17   So I got to the end after seeing like Christina's writing thousands of words again and I get to

00:45:21   the end and she says, hi, Jason.

00:45:22   I did this on painkillers.

00:45:24   Okay.

00:45:24   Well, explanation accepted.

00:45:27   I thought one of the interesting meta commentaries from the upgrade episode

00:45:33   was on the renamed.

00:45:36   I actually, I just realized I need to rename my own subcategory on my own published report

00:45:41   card.

00:45:41   It used to be called social and societal impact.

00:45:44   Right.

00:45:44   Now it's just called Apple's impact on the world.

00:45:47   I guess impact on the world.

00:45:49   Yeah.

00:45:49   Whatever you want to.

00:45:50   Yeah.

00:45:50   Yeah.

00:45:51   It's the grab bag that is based on Apple always says they want to leave the world a better

00:45:55   place than they found it.

00:45:56   And they've got these various initiatives.

00:45:57   And when I started doing this in 2014 or whatever, the idea was how they doing based on everybody's

00:46:05   own interpretation of that, how are they living up to the stuff that they say?

00:46:08   Because we all know it's a giant corporation owned by, it's a public corporation.

00:46:12   Shareholders care about the stock price.

00:46:14   It's there to make money.

00:46:15   But they also do talk about these other aspects of what they believe in and how they want to

00:46:20   leave the world a better place, et cetera, et cetera.

00:46:22   And I thought it was only fair to have a category where people could say, how do they live up to

00:46:27   that?

00:46:27   Now, I admit I didn't really expect it going quite where it's gone the last few years, but

00:46:31   that was always the intent with that category.

00:46:33   And Brent got me going to force me to.

00:46:39   And I'm not afraid to write.

00:46:40   As anybody who reads the site knows, I'm not afraid to wade into the Trump 2.0 administration

00:46:46   politics and Tim Cook's role in it and the way he's dragging Apple into it with things

00:46:52   like the goddamn 24 karat gold trophy with an Apple logo on it.

00:46:57   Yep.

00:46:57   So, you know, which is compare and contrast with Tim Cook personally paying a million dollars

00:47:02   to get a good seat at the inauguration or whatever the hell that racket was, as opposed to Apple

00:47:09   paying a million dollars, donating, I'm sorry, donating a million dollars to the inauguration

00:47:16   committee.

00:47:16   But once you're giving trophies out with the Apple logo on, you are clearly bringing the company

00:47:21   the company into it.

00:47:22   And the panel did not like Apple's impact on the world this year.

00:47:27   It did not.

00:47:27   That's a straight up F.

00:47:29   It was a straight up F.

00:47:31   And but I thought it was really interesting.

00:47:33   And I think it's probably true that what you say on the show with Mike, that the vibe in

00:47:38   the room, the sort of just read the room.

00:47:41   And yeah, yeah, because that's the goal of the whole thing is I don't think anybody who's

00:47:45   following what people are writing and saying about Apple should be surprised by anything

00:47:48   in the report card.

00:47:49   Because what it's reflecting is those feelings that you all felt during the year.

00:47:52   It is like to put a number to whatever that vibe was that we were feeling.

00:47:57   And definitely the vibes were bad about that.

00:47:59   And I do wonder how they were reflected in other scores.

00:48:04   I don't know that for certain.

00:48:06   Although I know a friend of the show, Kieran Healy, the sociology professor, is doing, he

00:48:12   does for every year.

00:48:13   He just takes my numbers and does some analysis and make some fun charts.

00:48:16   And I know he was interested in looking into that actually directly about does the sentiment

00:48:21   about the world impact, is that something that sort of drives other scores down too?

00:48:25   Because people are just grumpy.

00:48:27   They're just grumpy about Apple right now.

00:48:28   And I think there's some truth to that.

00:48:30   But I haven't looked at Kieran's numbers to find out what he says.

00:48:32   Yeah, Kieran is both a talented data scientist and a very talented author.

00:48:36   I've read, I don't have the titles off the top of my head, but I've read at least two of

00:48:41   his books and they're excellent, excellent.

00:48:43   Just a great writer.

00:48:43   Data visualization and the Ordinal Society, yeah, too.

00:48:46   Excellent.

00:48:46   Data visualization is truly excellent.

00:48:48   He's a professor at Duke.

00:48:49   I know.

00:48:50   I try not to hold that against him.

00:48:51   I know.

00:48:52   Same.

00:48:52   It's the Stanford of the Carolinas.

00:48:54   Yeah.

00:48:55   I mean that pejoratively.

00:48:58   You don't have to be a world-leading data visualization scientist like Kieran.

00:49:05   And I mean that sincerely.

00:49:06   He really is.

00:49:07   To just sort of think, oh, yeah, it would be interesting to take the people who gave Apple

00:49:13   particularly low scores on Impact on the World and the people who didn't amongst the panelists

00:49:19   and see, oh, amongst the people who gave them a grade of this or above, I don't know where

00:49:24   the line would be.

00:49:25   Let's say three, three and above.

00:49:27   Did they grade everything else a bit higher than the people who gave them a two or a one?

00:49:32   And one, not zero, is the lowest score you can give on the report card.

00:49:36   Yeah, that would be really interesting.

00:49:38   And I would bet money that, yes, that the people who gave Apple a low score, that this one category

00:49:44   informs more than any other category how they graded all the other categories.

00:49:49   And I ran into this, and I think, yeah, no surprise, Groob's, there were some teachers

00:49:55   growing up who really liked me, and there were other teachers who did not.

00:50:00   So as a child, you were a polarizing figure is what you're saying.

00:50:04   I was a very polarizing figure.

00:50:06   And I know what it's like to have a teacher who does not like me, and you don't get any

00:50:13   slack on the grading, none.

00:50:15   I know, and it is exactly that sentiment.

00:50:18   And they don't, not that they took points off unfairly, or unjustifiably, it's a better

00:50:26   word than unfairly, unjustifiably.

00:50:29   They could find justifications for why this was wrong, or I got a full point off as opposed

00:50:36   to a half point off, or whatever.

00:50:38   But I wasn't going to get any slack, because I was being a jackass to this teacher.

00:50:44   Yeah, when there's an art to it, you're like, why would I give the benefit of the doubt?

00:50:48   And yes, I think that there is, it's a small sample, who knows?

00:50:51   But I think Kieran would probably agree, having looked at his report a little bit, that yes,

00:50:56   people who gave really bad world impact scores tended to give other lower scores.

00:51:01   That doesn't necessarily mean maybe they're just grumpy people.

00:51:03   That's also true.

00:51:04   I don't give any guidance for how to score.

00:51:06   Like, somebody could do all fives and fours.

00:51:08   Somebody could do all ones and twos.

00:51:09   Like, I don't tell them, this is what a three means.

00:51:12   It's literally rated from one worst to five best, and that's it.

00:51:15   And then we go from there.

00:51:17   But certainly, the vibes were bad.

00:51:20   And even, I would say, I think some of the panel's comments were interesting in that there

00:51:27   is nuance here, right?

00:51:29   There's nuance about the motivation, like, to try and prevent tariffs from killing your sales

00:51:36   figures and your profits and all of that.

00:51:37   Some people were like, I get why you would do this.

00:51:40   I had several people, like John Syracuse, I think, just went to the fundamental, what's

00:51:44   the point of having FU money if you never say FU?

00:51:46   That's really good.

00:51:47   And then what I keep thinking is, I keep coming back to the reason that category exists, which

00:51:53   is that Apple has always tried to, like, use.

00:51:56   I don't mean this, that it was empty PR.

00:51:58   It's PR that serves the company's image.

00:52:01   I do believe there's also corporate culture that supports it.

00:52:04   This idea that we want to make the world a better place, and we want to leave things better,

00:52:09   and that the environmental stuff matters, and that all of this stuff is like, we do believe

00:52:13   stuff, plus we want to make a lot of money.

00:52:15   And that's, I think, a nuance of what happened in this last year, which is, and this is how

00:52:22   I feel, certainly, is we, leaving aside the mechanics of the rest of it, really hard for

00:52:28   Tim Cook to post a thing about Martin Luther King, or a tragedy that happened somewhere in

00:52:33   the world, where you could be like, ah, see, Apple, it's not just about selling computers,

00:52:37   it's also about this other stuff.

00:52:38   And I think, for a lot of people, that aspect of Apple just got stripped away in 2025.

00:52:44   It's like, don't even try that stuff anymore.

00:52:46   Your impact on the world is obviously to make as much money as possible, sell as many phones

00:52:51   as possible.

00:52:51   Why are we pretending that it's otherwise?

00:52:53   We've got a lot of that this year.

00:52:55   Yeah.

00:52:55   And as a side note, I noticed, because Apple did, as they, I think, have done for at least

00:53:01   over a decade, probably much longer than a decade, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, dedicate

00:53:07   the homepage of apple.com, the front page of apple.com to Dr. King.

00:53:13   They did it again.

00:53:14   And I think that if Tim Cook and Apple had played year one of the second Trump administration,

00:53:21   administration differently, that there would have been more people saying, hey, and look,

00:53:27   Apple is still doing this, too.

00:53:29   I didn't see anybody give Apple any credit for the fact that they're still doing that, even

00:53:33   though there are other companies.

00:53:34   And I'll just throw meta under the bus who have explicitly changed their political stance

00:53:41   explicitly once Trump was reelected to say, oh, yeah, I think Zuckerberg said something like,

00:53:46   we need more masculine energy and all sorts of coded terms like that.

00:53:50   Like, what the hell are you talking about?

00:53:51   You know, but right there in line with Trump cracking a joke on the phone to the U.S.

00:53:57   men's hockey team for winning a gold medal that you guys know.

00:54:00   He said something like, you guys know now I got to invite the women's team, too, because I'd get impeached if I didn't.

00:54:05   Which it's like, hey, I'm really happy and I got really into the Winter Olympics this year and I watched the men beat Canada in the gold medal game and I was very excited.

00:54:14   But that's the first time the men have won the gold medal since 1980 and the women win the gold medal every frigging year and are one of the biggest juggernauts in international sports.

00:54:26   Like the U.S. women's ice hockey team is so much better than the U.S. men's ice hockey team as an institution.

00:54:34   It's not even funny, let alone even if they'd only won on the same pace as the men, like once every 46 years.

00:54:41   How insulting a comment that is.

00:54:44   And that's exactly where Zuckerberg explicitly went at meta with this company needs more masculine energy.

00:54:50   And Apple and Tim Cook aren't saying any nonsense like that.

00:54:53   And they're still doing things like dedicating the homepage to Martin Luther King on Martin Luther King Day.

00:54:58   And they haven't changed any of their H.R. policies surrounding lowercase diversity, equity and inclusion within the company.

00:55:08   And they've always had weird terms.

00:55:10   They call it like I think Deirdre O'Brien's title is director of people or something like that instead of H.R.

00:55:17   And they've always had weird terms that aren't like D.E.I. explicitly in capital letters, but that they still had they didn't change anything.

00:55:24   They also recast a bunch.

00:55:26   So some a couple of people mentioned this, that there is.

00:55:28   I mean, look, I think it's very clear that they've decided that if they keep quiet about it,

00:55:33   maybe it won't become a thing where Trump will freak out and they'll have to change it in some way because he's demanded that they do it.

00:55:40   They like they just or they change the terms.

00:55:42   I think the Detroit engineering and manufacturing thing that they've got, like in a different era,

00:55:49   they would talk about the diversity of the people of Detroit.

00:55:53   Right.

00:55:53   But instead, they cast it in this era as American manufacturing and the power of the automotive and legacy in Detroit and all of that.

00:56:01   But it's that's nice and all.

00:56:03   But like in the end, it's all coded and they've made the decision to go along and not stand up.

00:56:10   And we could argue maybe that that was a good business decision or not.

00:56:14   I think it's arguable because you give and they just ask for more.

00:56:19   But I think it's I think it does eliminate the possibility that you can say, oh, we're different.

00:56:25   We're better.

00:56:26   We care about bigger ideals.

00:56:27   That seems to be like, come on.

00:56:30   I don't think I am not one of those people who believes that they like it.

00:56:33   I think they've just decided that in terms of being executives at a public corporation, they this is what they have to do.

00:56:40   And my personal theory is that after Trump spent all that time complaining that Tim Apple wasn't on the plane with him to Saudi Arabia.

00:56:46   Right.

00:56:47   Which I think Cook specifically was like, I'm not going to go to Saudi Arabia.

00:56:50   That's too far.

00:56:52   And Trump complained and complained that Tim didn't show up.

00:56:55   And obviously, somebody at Apple, including Tim Cook, were like, OK, we're just going to say yes to anything he asks now.

00:57:00   And that's on them.

00:57:01   You mean too far, too far by miles or too far figuratively?

00:57:05   No, I think Cook didn't want to go because of MBS and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and all of that.

00:57:12   I thought that was like a bridge too far and that you don't really need the CEO of Apple to take a tour around Saudi Arabia.

00:57:19   So we'll just beg off of that.

00:57:20   And I think they got hammered and they decided we're never doing that again.

00:57:24   And that's why Tim Cook shows up at every single thing he's invited to now.

00:57:28   And again, I'm not saying I agree, but I'm saying I suspect that's what happened is that they took a little step out of line and were beaten on it until they got back in line.

00:57:38   And that's where we are as a country right now, unfortunately.

00:57:41   Yeah.

00:57:41   And next thing you know, he's showing up at the premiere of Melania's propaganda documentary, even though it's not on Apple TV.

00:57:48   It's on Amazon.

00:57:49   On the day that federal troops murdered a guy on the streets of Minneapolis.

00:57:53   Boy, if ever there was a time for you to say, ooh, the clams, they didn't agree with me.

00:57:57   I got to go.

00:57:58   I feel ill.

00:57:58   That was the day for it.

00:58:00   And he didn't do that.

00:58:01   Yeah, something came up and I'm not feeling well.

00:58:03   And I'm already on my private...

00:58:05   Yeah, some bad dates.

00:58:05   Already on...

00:58:06   Yes, bad dates.

00:58:07   I'm already on my plane.

00:58:11   I'm in the can on my private jet flying back to Cupertino.

00:58:14   I didn't want to get the carpets filthy at the White House, so I...

00:58:19   I had to fly back.

00:58:21   Appeal to Trump's germophobia.

00:58:24   That's right.

00:58:25   You don't want what I got.

00:58:27   Yeah, you don't want what I got.

00:58:28   Bad dates.

00:58:30   All right, let me take a break here and thank our next sponsor.

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01:00:34   All right, you mentioned earlier some of the functional reasons to like Tahoe, and part of it, though, and part of what I keep saying, why I'm happy staying on Sequoia for the year and just waiting it out, is that while I like all of those, and maybe the triggers for automation, maybe that's where I'm missing out.

01:00:55   But like the improved Spotlight and the clipboard history, part of the reason that it's like, yeah, if I only relied on the system for that, ooh, that would give me like the itch.

01:01:05   Maybe I can put up with those goddamn icons in the menu bar.

01:01:07   But I've had a clipboard history for like 20 years.

01:01:11   Of course.

01:01:11   And I've had a better Spotlight launcher for 20 years.

01:01:16   I used to use Quicksilver back in the day when it first came out.

01:01:20   Remember Quicksilver?

01:01:20   I do.

01:01:21   And there's a guy, I guess I'll put it in the show notes.

01:01:23   I forget his name.

01:01:24   Oh, yeah, they're doing like a rethink of inspired by Quicksilver.

01:01:27   I always preferred LaunchBar.

01:01:28   The Quicksilver people always were really mad because I always liked LaunchBar better than Quicksilver.

01:01:32   It's called Tuna.

01:01:34   I'll put a link.

01:01:35   I swear to God, put a link in the show notes to Tuna.

01:01:37   But when I, like when Quicksilver sort of withered on the vine and I looked around for a replacement and I switched to LaunchBar, my thought was, ah, this is good enough replacement.

01:01:47   My thought was, ah, crap.

01:01:49   I should have been using this one all along.

01:01:51   This one's better.

01:01:52   So I've been using LaunchBar ever since.

01:01:54   I was going to ask you, what are you using?

01:01:56   But you've switched to the system.

01:01:58   So, yeah, I mean, LaunchBar, I do wonder about the trajectory of LaunchBar.

01:02:02   It feels like its development has really slowed.

01:02:06   I see other launchers doing things that I'm not sure LaunchBar really is built to do or wants to do.

01:02:12   But my purpose in dropping it originally was just to live with, when I was preparing my review of Tahoe over the summer, just to see if I could live with Spotlight.

01:02:25   And the funny story about a lot of Mac OS X features is we had a lot of great third-party utilities in the early days of Mac OS X to extend the system because it was a brand new operating system.

01:02:35   They were lucky to get Spotlight or Search to work at all, let alone work in the way that you wanted.

01:02:41   It wasn't really a launcher.

01:02:42   What happened is when all of us started using third-party apps is all that stuff in the background got better and we just never saw it because we never used it because we had switched.

01:02:53   And, like, Spotlight got to be a much better app launcher than it ever was.

01:02:57   And it has progressed over time.

01:02:59   And I figured, okay, if I'm going to review this operating system, what I don't want is a blind spot, which is these apps I use to cover up the holes in the operating system.

01:03:07   So when they did a new Spotlight, I was like, all right, I'm going to quit LaunchBar.

01:03:10   I'm just going to use Spotlight.

01:03:12   And I use LaunchBar as my clipboard manager.

01:03:14   So I was like, okay.

01:03:16   And they've got a clipboard manager, which when I went through the process of thinking what's left that Apple has not put into the core OS that really should be there,

01:03:26   clipboard manager is the one that I came to.

01:03:28   That is a feature that is fundamental, useful for productivity, will change your life.

01:03:34   It's like when they put layers in Photoshop.

01:03:36   It's like, wait, I can have multiple things and they don't disappear when the marching ants go away.

01:03:41   I can still get back to them having undo as a thing that you could do for the clipboard.

01:03:46   It's huge.

01:03:47   So they did that.

01:03:48   And I thought, I'll live with it.

01:03:49   And what I found is, other than the fact that I had to do a macro in Keyboard Maestro to bind to a single keystroke,

01:03:56   keystroke for clipboard history, because they want you to hit command space and then command four, which, why can't I just hit, assign a keystroke to that?

01:04:06   So I assigned command backslash, which is the LaunchBar keystroke.

01:04:09   When I hit that, Keyboard Maestro does command space, command four for me.

01:04:12   And I used it.

01:04:13   And I kept waiting to go back.

01:04:15   And I never did.

01:04:17   I mean, that's the one feature that I miss.

01:04:20   The thing I miss the most from LaunchBar is you used to be able to call up an app and then drag a file onto it.

01:04:26   And you can't do that in Spotlight.

01:04:27   And I hate that because that was really good sometimes when you had a file that wouldn't double click open in that app.

01:04:32   But you could bring up the app in LaunchBar and then just drag it in and it opened.

01:04:35   I miss that feature.

01:04:37   But otherwise, it's good.

01:04:39   And again, I know I could go back, but I've been having some issues with LaunchBar where it was bogging down.

01:04:45   Sometimes it wouldn't be responsive or it would get caught in a loop indexing my hard drive.

01:04:50   And I would report those to objective development, but there never seemed to be a solution.

01:04:56   And I thought, well, if this is working, why don't I just stay with it?

01:05:00   And third-party apps that extend the system are great.

01:05:03   Hazel is another great example.

01:05:05   Hazel is a great app that does a lot of automations that act on when things change on your Mac.

01:05:10   But isn't it nice that the system now, it's sort of like folder actions back in the day, but they've done a modern version of it.

01:05:16   You can say if this file changes, if an item gets added to a folder, an item gets edited in a folder, all of these different things,

01:05:24   plus the sort of ones that are on iOS in terms of launching a shortcut,

01:05:28   you can kick into an automation automatically and have it be just built into the system.

01:05:32   That's great.

01:05:34   So on one level, I'm just trying to think, is a third-party app really required here?

01:05:40   Third-party apps are great, but I am a firm believer that there's some functionality that should probably be in the system

01:05:46   and that Apple should not just say, we never need to build a clipboard manager because those in the know will buy one.

01:05:52   It's like a clipboard manager is so useful.

01:05:54   If you have a friend who just has a stock Mac running Tahoe and they're like, oh no, I copied something over this super important text that I had in the clipboard and I can never get it back,

01:06:03   you can say, command space, command four, and it's there.

01:06:07   That is so good.

01:06:08   It needs to be in there.

01:06:10   So I did have some issues with LaunchBar.

01:06:12   I would go back to it if I felt like I really needed it, but I am living that part of it, which is Spotlight has gotten a lot better since the last time I took it seriously,

01:06:22   which was admittedly like 10 years ago.

01:06:25   I think they have been incrementally improving it, but this is a big update and I don't agree with everything.

01:06:30   They took some shots with like actions and stuff that I think were all there for app intents that didn't ship.

01:06:36   Yes, I think so too.

01:06:38   Right.

01:06:38   I think they got out over their skis on that one.

01:06:41   Yeah, a little bit.

01:06:41   You can see the signs of the things they thought would be there that aren't there, but like, it's pretty good.

01:06:45   And again, is that enough?

01:06:47   I have an uploader.

01:06:48   This is on Mac and iPad for images that I'm putting in six colors.

01:06:53   And on the Mac, I literally just drag the image into BBEdit and it runs, it's a classic Apple script thing.

01:06:58   It's an attachment script.

01:07:00   So you can basically attach a script to an action in an app if it's a super Mac app like BBEdit.

01:07:07   And it's a shortcut that I can run on the iPad as well.

01:07:10   And it uploads, I've had it for ages.

01:07:12   It resizes my image to the right specs for six colors, uploads it, gets the, using an API in WordPress, gets the URL back.

01:07:21   And in BBEdit, it inserts the HTML that includes that image.

01:07:26   Well, in Tahoe, it goes to private cloud compute.

01:07:30   It resizes a small version of that image.

01:07:32   It's not even the full size version, a smaller image.

01:07:35   Puts it in private cloud compute and says, write alt text for this.

01:07:38   Puts the alt text in the HTML.

01:07:40   And it's, you know, I edit it sometimes, but it's so good that I've got a computer to basically like, write your descriptive text here.

01:07:47   Because I want to have descriptive text, but I don't, I really don't want to write it myself all the time.

01:07:52   Because it's just more work when I'm ready to post the story.

01:07:55   If I'm posting, if I'm putting the image in the story, I'm done.

01:07:58   I am trying to get that story up.

01:07:59   And on the iPad, it doesn't just do that.

01:08:02   On the iPad, because file names there, if I've taken a screenshot, it's just a weird series of numbers from photos.

01:08:09   It actually asks private cloud compute, give this a name, give this a file name that's human readable, that explains something about what it is.

01:08:16   And those file names are really good too.

01:08:19   So like, that's a feature of Tahoe and the 26 OSs.

01:08:22   And I know we make jokes about Apple's AI models for lots of good reasons.

01:08:26   But like, the fact that they took their cloud model, which is not available to third party developers.

01:08:30   And if you write a shortcut, you just get it.

01:08:34   And you can use it basically.

01:08:35   I mean, Steve Tratton-Smith, I think, found that after a while, they will say you can't use it anymore today.

01:08:41   And of course he did.

01:08:42   In reasonable use, which I think I'm doing, it works really well.

01:08:47   I wish their on-device model took images, but it doesn't.

01:08:51   So I have to use the cloud model.

01:08:52   But like, that's a really cool feature that right now it feels like only people using shortcuts get it.

01:08:57   And like, shortcuts, look, again, that's really great.

01:09:01   Then Dan Morin and I were talking today about how he, occasionally he gets, and I get too,

01:09:05   private cloud compute errors, where it's just, I can't do it right now.

01:09:08   And I said to Dan, well, the good news is you can just put in an error handler and shortcuts.

01:09:13   Shortcuts doesn't know about how to do errors.

01:09:17   It just stops.

01:09:17   And that's the end of it.

01:09:18   So like, it gives with one hand and takes away with the other.

01:09:21   But like, it's pretty cool stuff in there.

01:09:22   And often just fails silently.

01:09:23   Yeah, absolutely.

01:09:25   But that's cool stuff.

01:09:27   And that's why I got so excited about functionality in Tahoe.

01:09:30   Because as a Mac user, I mean, we went through that period where the only new features that got added to the Mac were features that were brought over from iOS, usually a year late.

01:09:39   Right.

01:09:40   And that's gotten more in sync now that they've got the code bases in sync and they can do Catalyst-ish stuff or Swift UI stuff.

01:09:48   They can get that stuff to be more aligned.

01:09:50   But it feels like it's been a long time.

01:09:53   Then somebody at Apple was like, could we do some things for Mac users to make things better?

01:09:58   And they did.

01:09:58   So like, that's my positivity about Tahoe.

01:10:01   They didn't have to do that.

01:10:03   They've spent the last decade kind of not caring about a lot of this stuff.

01:10:06   And I love that they added some of those features, including some Mac features.

01:10:10   Like, Clipboard History, I really want that on the iPad and the iPhone.

01:10:14   So badly.

01:10:15   Like, maybe this means that'll come, but it's on the Mac now.

01:10:18   That's great.

01:10:19   And again, yeah, there are third-party apps that do it and that can hit the edge cases and do a better job.

01:10:22   But like, that is, I mean, they should have done Clipboard History like 20 years ago.

01:10:27   Who are we kidding?

01:10:28   But they did it.

01:10:28   They chose in 2025 to do it.

01:10:30   So I'm glad that they did.

01:10:32   The right time to do it was 20 years ago, and the next best time is this year's OS.

01:10:35   It's this year.

01:10:36   One of my favorite features in LaunchBar, and maybe there's a way.

01:10:39   I would say the big three in third-party launchers.

01:10:41   The longest standing and my favorite, the one I use is LaunchBar.

01:10:44   And then there's Alfred, which I know a lot of people use.

01:10:47   And then the newcomer, but it's not that new.

01:10:50   And it's kind of maybe got the most momentum, and it's Raycast.

01:10:52   Raycast, right.

01:10:53   But the one thing that LaunchBar does, and maybe there's a way to do it.

01:10:57   And Alfred and Raycast, and I've tried every once in a while.

01:11:00   I just, that's a category of apps where every once in a while I'm like, well, let's see what this other command space launcher has going on right now.

01:11:07   But one thing LaunchBar does is for apps that have files like BBEdit, and any app where you go to File, and there's an Open Recent menu, and it lists the recently opened files.

01:11:19   In LaunchBar, if you type BBEdit to get BBEdit, there will be a right arrow thing in the list, and you can right arrow into BBEdit, and it shows you the recent files.

01:11:30   So if you go to, or type OO, for me, that brings me to Omni Outliner.

01:11:35   And I can go right arrow, and it lists all of my recent Omni Outliner files, just like the file Open Recent.

01:11:41   So right there from my launcher, I can do it.

01:11:43   The new Spotlight in Tahoe has that to it.

01:11:45   Now, it's not right arrow, it's tab.

01:11:47   It's tab.

01:11:48   So you type BBE, and then you type tab.

01:11:50   And that's a choice, that's a totally valid choice.

01:11:52   I mean, and I could, in theory, get used to the, you know, I'm not that, my habit for right arrow isn't that hard.

01:11:59   But it's really a great feature, and it's, I don't think, I never found quite a way to do that in Alfred or Raycast quite the same way.

01:12:08   And I know that people within Apple are longtime users of LaunchBar and Alfred and probably Raycast at this point.

01:12:15   They know what those things do because they use them.

01:12:17   The thing about clipboard history, I really do agree that it should have been a feature 20 years ago.

01:12:24   And it really, because it is destructive.

01:12:25   It's a loss, right, that you can, and it's, at this point in time, it is ridiculous,

01:12:32   given the memory of computers, that you only store one thing at a time, like it's 1984.

01:12:39   Like, it's very obvious why the 1984 Mac only kept one thing on the clipboard at a time and didn't have a history.

01:12:47   I mean, we were lucky with 128 kilobytes of RAM that it could copy anything.

01:12:52   But if you cut something instead of copy, which is like a copy and then a delete,

01:12:59   and then you accidentally forget, and then you copy something else,

01:13:03   you just lost the thing that you cut that was there.

01:13:07   It's gone.

01:13:07   I mean, and in theory, you could go back to the app, you cut it from,

01:13:11   and hopefully undo would bring it back.

01:13:14   But like, for example, in Apple Notes, one of my most used, a favorite app,

01:13:19   if you switch notes in Apple Notes, you lose the undo stack for that note when you switch notes.

01:13:26   So if you only have two notes in Apple Notes, just a very simple example,

01:13:31   and you're in note A, and you cut something, and you go elsewhere, you copy something else,

01:13:37   you can go back to notes, and if you're still there, you could hit undo, and what you cut will come back.

01:13:42   But if you switch to the other note, note B, then whatever you did in note A,

01:13:46   if you go back to it, you can't undo to go back.

01:13:48   It's just gone.

01:13:51   That should not be – you should not be able to lose what you copied.

01:13:54   And the fact that's how iPadOS and iOS still work is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

01:14:00   And it would get me – I use – what's it called?

01:14:04   PasteBot from our friends at TapBots.

01:14:07   There are so many clipboard managers.

01:14:09   It's such a crowded category of dedicated ones.

01:14:12   And then there are so many utilities that offer a clipboard history as a secondary feature,

01:14:19   including, I think, all of the major launchers, like LaunchBar, I know, has a clipboard history.

01:14:24   Alfred and Raycast probably have them, too.

01:14:26   There are so many – Keyboard Maestro has one.

01:14:30   It's unbelievable if I counted how many apps that I use that have a clipboard history.

01:14:35   But I like PasteBot so much that I actually run a dedicated clipboard history.

01:14:41   One of the great things about it, though – and other ones might do this, too –

01:14:46   but PasteBot will sync my clipboard history.

01:14:49   So I can copy something on my Mac in my office and then come down here to this podcast station

01:14:54   and type a keyboard shortcut, and it shows me all – my entire history of clipboard items

01:15:01   from the Mac that I use most of the time in my office upstairs.

01:15:04   All of them.

01:15:05   I have it set to – my preferences for PasteBot are to keep 1,000 items.

01:15:10   And that's the maximum it was allowed.

01:15:12   If it would allow me to keep more, I would keep more.

01:15:14   I actually – I think I've registered a complaint to the developers at PasteBot

01:15:19   that I don't think 1,000 is enough.

01:15:21   And I know that was one of the things Apple tweaked with Tahoe over the summer.

01:15:24   It was like, hey, how much of your history does it keep?

01:15:27   And at first, they were very conservative.

01:15:29   It was like, I don't know, an hour.

01:15:30   Yeah, three hours.

01:15:31   And now it's – there's settings for more?

01:15:34   I forget what they are.

01:15:35   Yeah, I think you can do 12 hours and 24.

01:15:39   I mean, yeah, you can go – it's all time-based, not a number-based.

01:15:43   It's eight hours, seven days, or 30 minutes.

01:15:45   So you can depend on that.

01:15:48   Well, the thing you mentioned, this is – even to this day, people talk about Sherlocking, right?

01:15:52   And the stuff that I was just praising, you could say that a lot of that is Sherlocking.

01:15:55   You're Sherlocking Hazel and LaunchBar by doing this.

01:15:58   But I never believed that because I do believe that the OS vendor has a duty of care to provide

01:16:04   base features without requiring – the last thing you want to do is be told that when you

01:16:09   buy a Mac, the first thing you need to do is buy $150 worth of shareware in order to get

01:16:13   it to work right.

01:16:14   That's bad for Apple.

01:16:15   Apple needs to make it, like, good out of the box.

01:16:17   And I think Clipboard Manager in the box – there's not a box anymore, but, you know, is great.

01:16:21   But what you described there about Clipboard Managers and Pacebot and all the rest of them,

01:16:28   that's why Sherlocking isn't a thing.

01:16:32   Because Apple's never going to do the edge cases, right?

01:16:36   Right.

01:16:36   Apple wants to get that sweet spot where, again, it's like your cousin, oh no, I copied

01:16:42   a thing, and now my thing that I copied that's got grandma's will on it is gone.

01:16:47   And it's okay, it's there now because you've got a clipboard history.

01:16:50   We can get it back.

01:16:51   Like, basic use.

01:16:53   If you've got more use, that's what the third-party apps are going to be able to give you.

01:16:57   Hazel can do way more than the stuff that Shortcuts can do with Actions now.

01:17:02   And LaunchBar can do way more than Spotlight can do.

01:17:06   And all of the Clipboard Managers can do way more than the base one.

01:17:10   And that's good because nobody – we know lots of third-party independent developers in

01:17:16   the Apple ecosystem, and they all know, like, Apple could squash their main idea if they're

01:17:20   fitting – if it's an obvious main idea that Apple just hasn't gotten to, they could squash

01:17:25   it.

01:17:25   And in the early days of OS X, this happened all the time.

01:17:27   But, like, if you design your app for people who really care about it, and what they really

01:17:30   care about is the stuff in the edge case, it doesn't matter if Apple takes the center.

01:17:33   Because you've got the whole edge where Apple is never going to be so nerdy that they're

01:17:38   going to offer a thousand things and have them sync and have them do, like, Pastebot will

01:17:42   do, like, rewrites where it'll do a modification or a conversion or, like, a markdown conversion.

01:17:48   All of this stuff.

01:17:49   Like, Apple's never going to do that stuff.

01:17:51   Right.

01:17:51   They're never going to allow custom filters.

01:17:53   That's what Pastebot will allow.

01:17:54   No, that's so nerdy.

01:17:56   That is your classic third-party opportunity.

01:17:58   Right.

01:17:59   You would understand, listeners of the show would be like, what?

01:18:03   But there's four reasons on the server side, my CMS with, you know, movable type, which you

01:18:11   don't use anymore, or you do for something.

01:18:13   I do.

01:18:13   The incomparable, right?

01:18:15   The incomparable is a movable type, yeah.

01:18:17   So it's, in modern parlance, you could think of it as 20 years ahead of its time in its

01:18:22   static site generator.

01:18:23   But it generates files with .php extensions.

01:18:27   But you'll think, well, the articles on Daring Fireball don't have .php extensions.

01:18:33   And there are times, like, when I copy from MarsEdit, it gets the URL that movable type

01:18:39   thinks it's generating.

01:18:40   But I've used Apache rewrite trickery to make sure that what gets published to the world,

01:18:46   you don't need those file extensions.

01:18:47   And if you try to use one, it'll automatically redirect you to the same article without the

01:18:53   .php.

01:18:54   But I have a keyboard maestro macro that every time I copy anything, the macro runs and looks

01:19:00   to see if it's a Daring Fireball URL that ends in .php and just clips the .php from it.

01:19:06   You can do that on the Mac.

01:19:08   You cannot do that sort of thing anywhere else.

01:19:10   And Apple's built-in stuff is never going to support that sort of thing, right?

01:19:15   So if you can say, and this is my stance, I think you and I share this, my stance on Sherlocking

01:19:19   is even if you've invented a new idea or something that hasn't, it's like, wow, I can't think

01:19:26   of anything that's done that before.

01:19:28   If the answer to the question, hey, should Apple build that into the system for everybody or

01:19:32   a version of that, a simpler version of that into the system?

01:19:35   If the answer is yes, they probably will eventually, even if it takes until 2026 to build clipboard

01:19:42   history into Mac OS.

01:19:43   But if they should build it in, they will.

01:19:46   And if your idea is so simple that even a simple implementation that Apple adds to the

01:19:52   system for everybody kind of obviates, your utility is kind of eventually going to be obviated.

01:19:58   And you need to find, you know, like BBEdit is not going to get obviated and hasn't been

01:20:03   obviated by TextEdit, even though TextEdit is a very credible text editor for opening text

01:20:08   files.

01:20:09   Yeah, it's not.

01:20:10   It does slightly more.

01:20:11   It's the nerdiness and the edge cases and the fact that, yes, it's a little bit like people

01:20:15   saying, I've got an idea for a book.

01:20:17   I've got an idea for a novel.

01:20:18   I just need to find a writer to write the novel.

01:20:20   It's like ideas.

01:20:21   I know it feels good that you've got a good idea.

01:20:23   Ideas have no value.

01:20:24   Execution has value.

01:20:26   Every writer, they don't need your ideas.

01:20:28   They got their own ideas, lots of them, but they have to execute.

01:20:31   That's part of the story.

01:20:32   And I feel like this is very similar where if all you have is a basic bit of functionality

01:20:37   that should be in the system and then Apple puts it in the system and it completely, just

01:20:43   completely blots out your app because that's all it did.

01:20:46   Your app was just an idea.

01:20:48   It was not executed right.

01:20:50   Because the execution, you should be listening to your customers because they care enough to

01:20:55   get a third party app to do this thing.

01:20:57   They probably have desires that are going to be way beyond what Apple wants to offer them.

01:21:01   And that's your market ultimately because Apple will blot out the center, but you've

01:21:06   got the edge cases.

01:21:07   I don't remember every single post I've ever posted to Daring Fireball, but I don't see

01:21:12   how I could, but some I do.

01:21:13   And one I remember, I just looked it up.

01:21:15   I posted it in August of 2008, but it's linking to a post from Derek Sivers that he wrote in

01:21:22   2005.

01:21:23   And it's just one of my favorite little sentences or two sentences ever.

01:21:26   Derek Sivers wrote in 2005, to me, ideas are worth nothing.

01:21:31   Unless executed, they are just a multiplier.

01:21:34   Execution is worth millions.

01:21:36   Yeah.

01:21:37   And that's it.

01:21:38   Execution times the idea.

01:21:40   But if the execution is just a one, you're not getting any multiplication out of it.

01:21:44   I'm trying to think what else with the Tahoe features.

01:21:47   I don't think there's anything else.

01:21:48   But the triggers on automation, I do.

01:21:51   I guess that's the one thing I'm maybe missing out on, but I probably, I can't think of any

01:21:55   places where I need them to kick in.

01:21:56   But, and I'm so happy Apple's going in that direction, right?

01:22:00   Otherwise, if I weren't so upset about the things I'm upset about in Tahoe, I'd be so

01:22:03   happy because there was a long stretch.

01:22:05   And I know you and I have talked about it on this show.

01:22:08   Oh, yes, we have.

01:22:08   About, hey, does Apple care about automation anymore?

01:22:12   And when, you know, Sal Soyahan left the company and it looked like, and it's true.

01:22:17   I mean, again, the automation things never really go away because they know people rely on them.

01:22:22   And if you built a thing in Automator, they're not going to break it.

01:22:26   And, you know, AppleScript still is there.

01:22:28   It's amazing.

01:22:29   And they still are adding it to, like, one of the things I was like, because I have some

01:22:34   AppleScripts that, not many, but some that work with messages.

01:22:38   And when they were like, hey, we're going to rewrite messages as a, not continuity, a

01:22:43   Catalyst app based on the iOS code base.

01:22:46   I was like, well, there go my AppleScripts because no matter how good of a Catalyst app

01:22:50   they make it, they're not going to bring back the whole AppleScript dictionary.

01:22:52   Well, guess what?

01:22:53   They brought back the whole AppleScript dictionary.

01:22:55   And at least everything I use scripting wise in messages still works, which is awesome.

01:23:01   Yeah.

01:23:01   I have an Automator services plugin for the Finder that I use for every podcast I do.

01:23:09   And it still works.

01:23:11   I've, could I rewrite it in something else?

01:23:14   Of course I could, but this is the one that's integrated with the Finder.

01:23:17   So it's the best one.

01:23:18   So I use it and eventually it'll be a shortcut maybe, but yeah, some of those automations,

01:23:23   I mean, I've got like, the thing about it is some of the simple ones are really cool.

01:23:28   And I wish that they were more discoverable for people because like I realized I was dragging

01:23:33   images out of my web browser and they were saving as that cockamamie Google format.

01:23:38   What?

01:23:38   I don't even remember what it is now.

01:23:40   I forget what it is too.

01:23:41   Web P or something.

01:23:42   Web P.

01:23:42   That's it.

01:23:43   And I literally have an automation that is when a file is added to the desktop, filter

01:23:50   the files where the file extension is web P, convert them to a JPEG, save the converted

01:23:57   image to the desktop and delete the web P.

01:24:01   It's four lines and shortcuts automated.

01:24:04   And when I drag a web P to the desktop, it goes away and a JPEG appears that people can

01:24:09   actually see.

01:24:10   And I've got a bunch of stuff like that.

01:24:12   That's just like super basic.

01:24:13   And I, yeah, I had some of it in Hazel before, but like, I really liked the idea that the Mac

01:24:18   will let you do not just things like time, which it'll also let you do right every at

01:24:22   two 30 on Tuesday, sweep up a bunch of old files and put them in an archive folder.

01:24:27   You can do that too, which is really great.

01:24:28   But the fact that you can use shortcuts and through shortcuts, you can use anything, right?

01:24:32   Cause you can use a shortcut to run a shell script or do whatever based on a file changing

01:24:38   or a folder, having something added to it.

01:24:40   My automation for solving the same problem where you drag, it's funny, we ran into the

01:24:47   same problem and we solved it with different automations for the same thing where you,

01:24:50   on some websites, you, you drag an image out and you get a web P and I never want

01:24:57   a web P my automation was, I asked Jeff Johnson, the author of a bunch of awesome utilities,

01:25:06   like stop the madness.

01:25:07   It's an extension for Safari that does so many cool things.

01:25:10   I asked him and then he showed me how to, uh, he did it for me and showed me how to, I think

01:25:17   he might've even added a feature to stop the madness that does it.

01:25:20   What he figured out was that it's the way Safari sends the request to the website for, Hey,

01:25:26   images I'll accept and it lists web P in front of ping and JPEG.

01:25:32   And so if the server is capable of serving the same image in multiple formats, it'll serve

01:25:39   the first one in the list.

01:25:40   And because Safari says that, and I think Safari says it because web P's tend to be smaller or

01:25:46   that's the whole point.

01:25:46   And so Jeff Johnson either added a feature and showed me how to use it, or he just showed

01:25:55   me how to use an existing feature and stop the madness.

01:25:57   I will put a link to stop the madness.

01:25:59   And maybe I've explained this on daring fireball somewhere, but it's a, it's sort of a old school

01:26:06   AI.

01:26:06   I asked a smart developer friend, Hey, how do I stop doing, how do I stop getting these

01:26:11   web P's?

01:26:11   And he showed me.

01:26:13   And now I, I never, I haven't seen one of those in forever because I don't want them.

01:26:16   Yeah.

01:26:17   Yeah.

01:26:17   Well, that's the point I have a, I think I have an automated thing that literally looks

01:26:20   at my downloads folder and says, if there's like a DMG in there older than 30 days, put

01:26:26   it in the trash.

01:26:27   Right.

01:26:27   Like just little stuff.

01:26:29   Yeah.

01:26:30   I was losing my mind because it was like, I viewed source on these web pages and the image

01:26:36   tags in the HTML were specifying like JPEGs.

01:26:39   Yeah.

01:26:39   But when I dragged them out, I'd get the web P.

01:26:42   I know.

01:26:43   It's the worst.

01:26:43   It's, and it's like I said, if the browser says it'll accept it and the web server is like,

01:26:50   Oh, that's an alternative for the same image.

01:26:52   I'll send that one instead and save some bandwidth.

01:26:55   It works for most people, does not work if you're a blogger who wants to download an image

01:27:00   and maybe reuse it without rejiggering or resaving the file.

01:27:04   Let me take a break and I will thank our third and final sponsor of the show.

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01:29:27   Creator Studio.

01:29:29   Now, here's one of the traps.

01:29:31   And a couple of people have mentioned this to me with the report card.

01:29:35   They're like, I can't believe you didn't complain about this, that, or the other thing with Creator

01:29:38   Studio.

01:29:39   And I wrote to them.

01:29:40   I was like, ah, you fell into the trap of writing your report card in January or early

01:29:48   February for the last calendar year.

01:29:51   Well, guess what?

01:29:51   Creator Studio was announced in January.

01:29:54   That's right.

01:29:54   That's a 2026 thing.

01:29:56   Everybody put that on their to-do list for next year's report card, which I'm going to,

01:29:59   I have slid it enough.

01:30:00   I mean, I had a bunch of stuff come up that I had to, I ended up unexpectedly pushing it

01:30:04   back.

01:30:04   But I think nothing happens in December.

01:30:06   So I think I'm going to try to get people in early to mid-December this year.

01:30:10   At least that's my goal right now.

01:30:12   Put the AI Siri category and get it a little earlier in the calendar.

01:30:15   Well, it's funny that you didn't have the AI Siri thing.

01:30:18   And I mentioned it last year.

01:30:19   You said you forgot to take a note of it.

01:30:21   But if you had, they didn't do anything this year.

01:30:23   Oh, it would have been brutal.

01:30:24   It would have been brutal.

01:30:25   Quite rightly so.

01:30:27   I mean, everybody knew that that would have been.

01:30:29   It's the argument.

01:30:31   People are going to be like, I can't believe you had it this year when they finally shipped

01:30:34   something.

01:30:34   That's not fair.

01:30:35   It's like with Tahoe is like the bad student who came in and turned in trash assignments

01:30:40   and failed the test.

01:30:41   Siri and Apple Intelligence is like the kid who never showed up to class.

01:30:45   They just never showed up.

01:30:47   Nope.

01:30:47   Still enrolled.

01:30:48   We don't know why they're still enrolled.

01:30:49   They enrolled in 2024.

01:30:51   They're still not here.

01:30:52   Yeah.

01:30:52   Yeah.

01:30:54   So Creator Studio.

01:30:56   Yeah.

01:30:56   That was in January.

01:30:57   I'm glad that you mentioned it because the more I think about it, the angrier I get

01:31:03   about it.

01:31:04   And it's not, again, it's complicated, right?

01:31:07   Actually, it's so complicated.

01:31:09   It is.

01:31:11   Well, let me, let's start there, right?

01:31:12   Why is it the way it is?

01:31:15   And I think the answer is the app store is so limited as a place to sell software that even

01:31:22   Apple itself can't get it to be better for the launch of their suite.

01:31:27   And so they have this ridiculous, like they renamed, like I have Apple scripts that do things

01:31:33   for my financial charts in numbers.

01:31:35   And I ran the Apple script and realized it was running on a different app now because

01:31:39   they had to create new apps.

01:31:41   They're the same apps with new names.

01:31:43   It's not numbers anymore.

01:31:44   It's numbers creator studio dot app.

01:31:47   But that's what it is because I think what they did is they fused the iOS and Mac apps in the

01:31:55   app store that used to be separate.

01:31:57   They fused them together, but not even Apple can find a way to merge them.

01:32:02   Even Apple had to just make another app that's the same app in order to do a bundle in order

01:32:08   to get this stuff to work the way they did.

01:32:10   And then they kept the old Mac apps around because they're going to just grant you use

01:32:14   of those, even if you're not a subscriber to this new suite that they've done, this new

01:32:18   subscription.

01:32:19   But so you end up in the app store also with these stupid looking app names where like

01:32:24   pages, the old non creator studio version of pages is now called in the app store pages

01:32:30   14.5, which is again, a throwback to the classic era.

01:32:36   You'd get Photoshop three and yeah.

01:32:38   And the idiom that we all used at the time is we would name Photoshop Photoshop three and

01:32:44   it would, you could either keep it a long shot alongside Photoshop 2.5 or wait and see if

01:32:49   you liked Photoshop three and then trash Photoshop 2.5.

01:32:53   But we put the versions in the app names for a long time as just sort of an idiom of being

01:33:00   a Mac user.

01:33:01   And now it's back because it's like pages 14.5 numbers.

01:33:05   If you, if you launch the old versions, which they were also auto updated, they say you

01:33:11   should get the new one from the app store, but you can still use it, but they're like

01:33:14   the on launch every time you launch it every time you should get the new one from the app

01:33:18   store, which is, it's so terrible.

01:33:20   And I think it's really funny in a way because this is developers have had to deal with all

01:33:26   the terrible things about the app store and the backend and the limitations of the app

01:33:30   store for years now.

01:33:31   But here's an example where Apple wants to do this, right?

01:33:34   And I'm sure they had ambitious plans and that I'm sure they didn't want it to go like

01:33:38   this, but this is what they're, even Apple is reduced to, which it does make me despair.

01:33:43   I was talking to some developer friends of mine about this.

01:33:46   It does make you despair a little bit when even a major initiative like this couldn't get the

01:33:52   app store to fix some of the things that are wrong with it in the app store backend.

01:33:56   Apple couldn't even get Apple to do it.

01:33:58   So what does that mean for the rest of us if Apple can't even get itself to do it?

01:34:03   So that, that part is ridiculous.

01:34:04   The suite itself, like I think they needed to do it and I think it's good.

01:34:10   I think having final cut, I think for what they're charging, which is about what I pay for Photoshop

01:34:14   and Lightroom in a year, you get final cut and logic and pixel mater on iPad and on Mac.

01:34:21   I think that's pretty good.

01:34:23   I think it's not for everybody.

01:34:24   I understand.

01:34:25   And you may not need all of those like motion and there's some of the compressor compressor.

01:34:31   You get all the ancillary stuff too.

01:34:32   And main stage, if you're a live performer, like it's all good.

01:34:36   I understand if you only use one of the apps, you're being asked to pay $130 a year or whatever

01:34:41   for it.

01:34:41   But that's, that is literally, I don't use Lightroom.

01:34:44   I literally, I'm just paying for Photoshop and it's fine.

01:34:46   And there are free alternatives to all of this if you want to do that instead.

01:34:50   But I think that these are good apps like final cut pro.

01:34:52   It's a good app.

01:34:53   I use it not a lot, but some, I use logic a lot.

01:34:57   It's great.

01:34:58   And even though I'm misusing it, cause I'm not using it for music.

01:35:00   It's still, it's great.

01:35:01   The iPad apps are very impressive.

01:35:03   I think there's a lot of positive things to be said about the creative aspect of the creator

01:35:09   studio.

01:35:09   I have problems with everything else that happened, but the main part of like, they

01:35:15   should make it because the idea you used to have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars

01:35:18   to get logic or a final cut.

01:35:20   And now you could buy a month and do a final cut project and then turn it back off.

01:35:25   Yeah.

01:35:25   I think final cut was like $399 when it first came out and it was cheap compared to nonlinear

01:35:31   video editors of the time, but we're both getting it wrong.

01:35:34   If you go by the app store, the new name of final cut is final cut pro colon create video.

01:35:39   Again, Apple is reduced to the same stupid things that app developers have been reduced

01:35:44   to because the app store is so bad.

01:35:46   Numbers, make spreadsheets.

01:35:49   Yeah.

01:35:50   Keynote, design presentations.

01:35:52   And then my favorite, pages, create documents.

01:35:56   All right.

01:35:56   Create documents.

01:35:58   Yeah.

01:35:58   I'm going to know.

01:35:59   Now let's open the app pages, create documents, or as we like to know it, pages, creator studio

01:36:04   dot app.

01:36:06   Yeah.

01:36:07   So this is, you're teeing me up here.

01:36:09   They added iWork apps to this suite.

01:36:12   Yep.

01:36:13   And I think part of it, if we're talking about the app store being limited, I think part of

01:36:17   it is that kind of like there's only one way to do this kind of a thing.

01:36:20   And so they made their one suite and they put all their apps into it.

01:36:23   And that's what we have now.

01:36:24   But it's been a long time since Apple has made a decision that has incensed me more than

01:36:35   this because those aren't creative apps, John.

01:36:40   I mean, I know their argument is, oh, but creators might need to do it.

01:36:44   Creators might need to make a keynote presentation.

01:36:47   A creator might need to do an invoice in pages.

01:36:51   I get it.

01:36:52   But you've put apps that are general purpose apps that exist so that when you buy a Mac or

01:36:58   an iPhone or an iPad, it's not an empty bag.

01:37:02   Like I was saying earlier that you then have to purchase apps in order to use it.

01:37:06   You just get a document editor and a presentation app and a spreadsheet and you just get them.

01:37:12   And like that was the purpose of them.

01:37:13   It's for everybody.

01:37:14   And now you've shoved them for everybody.

01:37:18   You've shoved them inside here.

01:37:19   And yes, it's free to use.

01:37:21   But now that it's inside this thing, there are like upsells everywhere.

01:37:26   There are like you there's UI in the toolbar by default that is content that's only available

01:37:33   via the subscription.

01:37:34   And I'm sorry if I just use numbers, that one 2090 year does not make any sense, nor is there

01:37:42   any way for me to say, I mean, you can edit the toolbar and remove those things.

01:37:46   But like the template picker at the beginning when you do command in has a bunch of premium

01:37:51   upsell stuff in it just to remind you the there's a the browser of objects that lets you drag

01:37:56   like a circle or whatever into your keynote presentation has a whole row of like clip art

01:38:03   that if you drag it in, it's watermarked because you don't get it until you pay.

01:38:06   It's just so it's so cheapens the idea of why those apps exist and for what end because

01:38:16   it's to what end it's in a creative suite that it doesn't belong in on.

01:38:20   I might feel differently a little bit if there was also like a $29 a year iWork suite that

01:38:27   got you that stuff.

01:38:28   And I appreciate that the features are based on AI.

01:38:30   There's a bunch of open AI stuff that they're doing that has a real cost.

01:38:33   License and clip media has a real cost.

01:38:35   I get it.

01:38:36   But this is the wrong bundle for it to be in.

01:38:38   And you took a free thing and made it an upsell.

01:38:45   You made it freemium and it's just crappy.

01:38:48   And you just reported your highest revenue and most profitable quarter in the company's

01:38:53   history.

01:38:53   One of the most profitable quarters any company in the history of the world has ever reported.

01:38:59   Maybe that's number one.

01:39:00   I don't know.

01:39:01   So it's not like...

01:39:02   It's them and some oil companies pretty much.

01:39:03   Yeah.

01:39:04   And they made the decision to stop selling the major updates to the iWork apps and just

01:39:10   say, you know what?

01:39:10   You buy a Mac, you get these apps for free.

01:39:13   That's table stakes for the platform.

01:39:15   Yeah.

01:39:15   They're the ones who decided to do that.

01:39:17   And maybe there's a line to be drawn.

01:39:21   Oh, I mean, I so badly want to be rascally and just say that I love the pay wall.

01:39:28   I love the pay wall they've added to the iWork apps.

01:39:32   But I can't do it, Jason.

01:39:33   I'm going to be a bigger...

01:39:34   That's the wrong kind of rascal.

01:39:35   Don't be that kind of rascal.

01:39:36   I'm going to be a bigger man.

01:39:37   And I hate it too.

01:39:38   I hate the confusion over the SKUs.

01:39:41   I hate the way that their own unwillingness, like, hey, we're not using these features.

01:39:48   And again, they're all kind of tied together.

01:39:50   Where one of the things developers have wanted from the app store from the beginning are ways

01:39:56   to sell version updates.

01:39:57   Hey, if I sell my app and then I come out with a major new version, the way that my company

01:40:03   has always made money is by selling an upgrade version, right?

01:40:08   So that if you're a new user, it's $50.

01:40:10   And if you're upgrading from the last major version, it's half price.

01:40:15   It's $25.

01:40:16   And if you bought the last major upgrade in the last X months, and X varies by developer,

01:40:24   maybe it's a year, maybe it's six months.

01:40:26   But if you bought it in the last year, it's free so that you don't have to feel.

01:40:31   And then it sends a message in the future, like, hey, this app hasn't been updated in

01:40:35   two or three years.

01:40:36   But it looks like the developer updates it every two or three years.

01:40:39   I don't want to buy it right now.

01:40:41   Because what if a major update comes out and I have to pay for it?

01:40:44   Oh, the developer has a history of if you bought it in the last year before a major update,

01:40:49   you get the major update for free.

01:40:51   This sort of logic is not that hard.

01:40:54   And the app store can't handle it.

01:40:56   And Apple was like, well, we sold Final Cut Pro.

01:41:00   And if you bought it once in the year 2007, we've just given away all of the updates for

01:41:07   20 years for free to you for having purchased it once.

01:41:11   And that's fine for us.

01:41:13   I think they did a Final Cut 10 and they did a Logic 10 X, whatever.

01:41:18   Right.

01:41:18   And I think they charged for those.

01:41:21   Maybe.

01:41:22   But, you know.

01:41:22   And I think that's the one time in all of the years that I've used those apps that I paid

01:41:27   for them.

01:41:27   If you bought them a very long time ago, you've gotten a large number of years and a significant

01:41:34   number of both compatibility, just updating for Retina and updating all the various things

01:41:40   that have happened over.

01:41:41   Yeah.

01:41:41   Features.

01:41:42   A huge number of features.

01:41:43   Absolutely.

01:41:44   That Apple can afford to effectively give away to existing users for a one-time purchase long

01:41:51   ago.

01:41:51   But a company that is, or a small independent developer, large or small, cannot afford to

01:41:57   do because it's their frigging business.

01:41:59   Exactly.

01:41:59   It's their only business.

01:42:01   And that developers want the flexibility to create bundles and stuff like that.

01:42:05   And to bundle apps together in a flexible way.

01:42:09   And all of these things that Apple was like, well, we don't do that, so you don't need to

01:42:13   do it either.

01:42:14   And now Apple, oh, now Apple wants to do it.

01:42:18   And it is kind of, it sucks for us as users because it's all, it's not good, but it is kind

01:42:23   of, what's the German word?

01:42:25   Schadenfreude.

01:42:26   Schadenfreude.

01:42:26   Schadenfreude.

01:42:27   Yeah.

01:42:27   Yeah.

01:42:28   They've been hoisted by their own petard here.

01:42:30   Right.

01:42:30   Which is, you're now, oh, now you're the app developer in the app store, aren't you?

01:42:35   Right.

01:42:35   Ha ha.

01:42:35   And now your spreadsheet is named Numbers Make Spreadsheets.

01:42:39   Numbers Make Spreadsheets.

01:42:41   I mean, what else would numbers do but make spreadsheets?

01:42:43   That's what they do.

01:42:44   That's what numbers are for.

01:42:45   So this is funny because it's connected.

01:42:47   I feel like these, this has been a really nice thematic episode of the talk show here.

01:42:51   I do.

01:42:51   Because I wanted to say, we were talking about Sherlocking, right?

01:42:54   The idea that I feel like, I know there are a million clipboard utilities out there, but

01:42:59   I do think it matters that Apple puts it in the system.

01:43:01   That's a good thing.

01:43:02   There are features that should be in the system and you shouldn't need an add-on for.

01:43:06   And I feel like the iWork apps have always been that.

01:43:11   The origin of that is Steve Jobs basically being like, why do we sell this thing?

01:43:15   And then everybody has to get Microsoft Office.

01:43:18   Yeah.

01:43:18   And they don't do a good job making Mac apps.

01:43:20   Is bad on the Mac, then that reflects badly on us.

01:43:23   So let's just do it.

01:43:24   Just like making their own web browser.

01:43:25   They're like, let's make our own apps.

01:43:27   And so they made these apps and the net result is the Mac and the iPhone and the iPad are

01:43:32   all nicer because it's not just an empty computer that you can add, you can buy apps for, but

01:43:39   some stuff is just, it comes with, it's those base OS features.

01:43:43   You don't have to buy an extra to get a clipboard.

01:43:46   The clipboard comes with the system because you have copy and paste.

01:43:49   You don't have to buy a document editor.

01:43:51   Pages comes with, you might not want to use pages.

01:43:54   You might want to use Word.

01:43:55   That's fine.

01:43:55   You can go buy Word.

01:43:56   The pages will work and it will open Word docs that your friends send to you without

01:44:00   making, there's so many reasons to do it.

01:44:02   The analogy, I made this analogy, I forget where, on some podcasts, but I'll make it here

01:44:07   really quickly, which is I went to Hawaii last month and we stayed in a nice resort-ish, resort-ish

01:44:13   kind of place.

01:44:14   And it's nice.

01:44:16   I mean, we often will just rent a condo when we go on a vacation like that.

01:44:19   And then you do your own shopping and all that.

01:44:20   But this time it was like, we want it to be a little nicer, a little closer to the beach.

01:44:23   It was a little more expensive.

01:44:25   And I had a moment while I was in the room where I was thinking like, this is a corporation.

01:44:30   It's Marriott.

01:44:31   It was Sheraton, but it's owned by Marriott.

01:44:33   They have whole conversations about the towels they buy, the furniture they buy, the soap that

01:44:38   they stock for your, the facial soap bar in the sink.

01:44:42   All of these things are decisions they make.

01:44:44   And because they're charging a premium, this is a nice place to stay.

01:44:48   They have to make decisions that balance their profit motive and their brand promise, right?

01:44:54   You can't have a Motel 6 experience for Sheraton Resort Club prices.

01:44:59   You can't do it.

01:45:02   Otherwise, nobody would stay there, right?

01:45:04   So you've got to make those decisions.

01:45:05   And yes, I am the sicko who was thinking about iWork apps while I was on vacation in Hawaii.

01:45:11   But there I was.

01:45:13   It's the same thing, which is, I know you can make the argument that there's always more revenue

01:45:19   to increment and another place to get more out of your users.

01:45:24   But if you do that, you always have to balance it.

01:45:28   This takes us back to talking about who gets, whose argument wins about design and usability

01:45:34   and things like that.

01:45:35   In the end, if you are making a little more money, but eroding your brand, which is, I would

01:45:42   argue, the most powerful and valuable thing Apple has is what Apple means and what Apple

01:45:50   products mean.

01:45:50   If you make decisions that hurt the brand, but make a little bit more revenue, you did

01:45:56   it wrong.

01:45:56   Like, you did it wrong.

01:45:58   You are turning your resort into a Motel 6.

01:46:01   And the downside of that is people won't buy your products anymore because you aren't living

01:46:07   up to your promises.

01:46:08   And putting, I think they backed off of some of this, but like launching the new pages and

01:46:13   having in the sidebar where you do formatting, a big ad that says you should buy this subscription

01:46:21   for apps you don't use so that you can get clip art.

01:46:25   It just makes everything crappy.

01:46:27   And that is, that's why I think the whole idea that you would turn these things into freemium

01:46:31   is a mistake.

01:46:32   Let them be their own thing.

01:46:34   And then if you want to sell an add-on or put it in a bundle somewhere else, that's

01:46:39   fine.

01:46:39   But to take the base thing and use it as a, an upsell opportunity, like you're really making

01:46:46   the niceness.

01:46:47   Like you always say this, right?

01:46:49   Like at the end, what is Apple's product promise?

01:46:52   It is.

01:46:53   It's nice.

01:46:54   These, they make good things.

01:46:55   They make nice things.

01:46:56   The more junk there is that gets in your way.

01:46:59   The less reason I have to pay for a nice thing.

01:47:02   Cause it's not nice anymore.

01:47:03   And that's what I feel like that's, I work inside this suite with the upsell and all of

01:47:08   that.

01:47:08   I feel like that is part of this same fundamental disconnect that Apple is having where like

01:47:13   we all want in our businesses to make more money.

01:47:16   I get it.

01:47:17   But you've got to have somebody to say, no, I mean, this is what I used to do back in

01:47:21   my publishing days is they'd be like, well, let's put more crap on the website.

01:47:24   And I'd be like, no, you're hurting the product.

01:47:26   And they're like, but there's revenue that's, yeah, but we don't have a product to sell.

01:47:30   If we drive everybody away, we have to have, we have to meet the promise of what people expect

01:47:34   from us.

01:47:35   And with this, Apple just is falling short.

01:47:37   This is a, it's just a huge mistake because they're taking a thing that, that the goal of

01:47:42   I work is not to make money on I work.

01:47:46   The goal of I work is to make buying an Apple device that much easier and nicer.

01:47:52   I'm always surprised now I stay at like, I don't know what you, four star hotels, not

01:47:57   five, but four.

01:47:58   And I'm always disappointed.

01:47:59   It happens sometimes where I'll get in a hotel room and they don't have like free bottles

01:48:03   of water.

01:48:03   Just, just a couple of bottles of water.

01:48:05   Or worse, they've got a bottle of water with a tag on it that says, this is $8.

01:48:09   Exactly.

01:48:10   What am I even doing here?

01:48:11   And it's like, that's what Apple has done.

01:48:13   And it's like, you stay at a nice hotel.

01:48:16   You expect, you get a decent kind of shampoo and soap in the shower and imagine.

01:48:20   Exactly.

01:48:20   Which is not to say they can't do upsell.

01:48:23   Like a mini bar is fine, right?

01:48:25   Right.

01:48:25   I can choose to use it or not.

01:48:27   The Sheraton, I'm just another plug here for the Sheraton, Kauai, Poipu Beach.

01:48:31   And it's very nice.

01:48:32   It's on the beach.

01:48:33   It's great.

01:48:33   They had two water bottles for us every day.

01:48:35   Little plastic water bottles, free.

01:48:37   And then there was like a giant water bottle that sat there and said, this is $9.

01:48:42   Right.

01:48:42   And so it's like, take it or leave it.

01:48:44   But they didn't say, if you touch the refrigerator, we're charging you for the mini bar.

01:48:48   Like, not part of the deal.

01:48:50   And mini bars are a great example.

01:48:53   They've always been paid.

01:48:54   Like, you know, and there's a reason for that because, you know.

01:48:56   They have cost and it's a profit center and it doesn't make it feel.

01:48:59   I always felt like a mini bar doesn't make it feel crappy.

01:49:02   Right.

01:49:03   But the shampoo in the shower and the conditioner and the body soap.

01:49:07   And it's like, if you pay a little more for a nicer hotel, you expect nicer shampoo.

01:49:11   And then there it is.

01:49:12   And well, now it's like, if you lift the shampoo off the thing, it's like, you can go out to

01:49:17   the store and buy your own shampoo or you can use ours, but we're going to charge you.

01:49:21   And it's like, what?

01:49:22   I'm already paying for a premium hotel.

01:49:24   Tap to pay for your shampoo.

01:49:25   That's exactly it.

01:49:27   Yeah.

01:49:28   Well, at.

01:49:28   And this used to be free.

01:49:30   You used to, I used to stay here for years and get really nice shampoo.

01:49:34   I didn't think to pack it.

01:49:36   I get a cheaper condo rental and they don't have the stuff that they provide because it's

01:49:42   a Vrbo or whatever, an Airbnb.

01:49:44   And you know it, you know what you get coming in.

01:49:46   Because you get what you pay for.

01:49:47   I got to bring shampoo from home.

01:49:49   That's just part of the deal.

01:49:50   But you got to know what you are as a product, as a company, as a brand.

01:49:54   And I cannot believe we even are having a discussion about how Apple doesn't understand

01:49:59   its own brand.

01:50:00   But this is a move where I'm like, do you not understand why these products exist?

01:50:05   They're not just there to be thrown into an inappropriate, on top of it, bundle.

01:50:09   Like, they're part of your brand promise to make it so that maybe they don't remember this.

01:50:14   But it's really important that when you buy a Mac and somebody sends you a Word file or

01:50:19   an Excel file, you can open it.

01:50:21   Like, it's really important that you can do that right out of the box.

01:50:26   And I'm quite certain it was when I was preparing for the show, it was one of the articles you

01:50:30   wrote about it where you pointed out that part of what you get with the Creator Studio bundle

01:50:34   is better templates for pages and Keynote.

01:50:38   Right, which implies that they're never going to make any effort to do any better templates

01:50:42   for it unless you pay them, ever.

01:50:44   that you've gotten, and that was part of the brand message of Keynote, and Keynote in

01:50:50   particular, which I would argue is the best.

01:50:52   And we can have really good arguments, and maybe Excel versus Numbers is a terrific argument

01:50:57   where Numbers is clearly a better Mac app, and spreadsheet nerds, which I am not, can make

01:51:05   the argument that Excel, because of its specific spreadsheet-y features, is a better spreadsheet.

01:51:11   Oh, well, here's a good argument on two different axes of Mac likeness and adherence to platform

01:51:18   standards and spreadsheet super nerd programming features.

01:51:24   Oh, and you can have a very interesting argument.

01:51:26   But one of the things that made Numbers, and especially Keynote, is it came with these exquisite

01:51:35   Apple design templates that you could use?

01:51:37   And it's like, oh, you could use our templates and make, without any design skills, just use

01:51:42   our templates and have a better-looking slide deck than the people who are using PowerPoint

01:51:48   or Google Docs.

01:51:49   So why are these templates?

01:51:50   This is my question is, why are these templates premium?

01:51:52   Are they using stock photography that they've licensed?

01:51:56   It's like they've decided to stop.

01:52:00   A tangential reference here.

01:52:01   Somebody looked at this, and they're like, hey, we're not making money on these apps anymore,

01:52:05   and they're awesome, so we want to make money on them again.

01:52:06   Why not make nice templates to make the product better?

01:52:08   Why say all...

01:52:09   I mean, because there is a...

01:52:10   They say they're going to keep updating and all that, but there is a vibe here that is,

01:52:15   we've ceased free improvements to iWork.

01:52:18   From this point on, you need to pay us for the Creator Studio if you would like new templates

01:52:25   or anything else we do that's...

01:52:28   Or what is it?

01:52:29   In Numbers, there's some smart autofill stuff.

01:52:31   Right.

01:52:32   And it's like, would you like that?

01:52:33   You need to subscribe to get this feature.

01:52:34   Yeah.

01:52:34   And it's just like, it gets closer and closer to like, why is that not just a feature?

01:52:37   I understand if it's AI or if it's licensed content, but otherwise, why?

01:52:42   Even if that one is AI, that feels like table stakes AI.

01:52:46   Like, that is so low on the totem pole of stuff that AI can do today.

01:52:51   And if, oh, yeah, it's not really like a sequential, like you start a column, one, two, three,

01:52:59   and then you drag down.

01:53:00   Of course, it goes four, five, six, seven, eight.

01:53:03   It knows how to fill it in.

01:53:04   But I'm sure that with AI, you could have like an irregular pattern and it could pick it up.

01:53:09   You could say to ChatGPT, hey, if I start...

01:53:12   With the Fibonacci sequence, it would say, oh, yes, the Fibonacci sequence.

01:53:17   I'll figure that out and fill in the rest of the numbers.

01:53:19   That's table stakes at this point.

01:53:21   It really feels nickel and dimey to say, hey, we've improved a fundamental feature of spreadsheets

01:53:27   and now you have to pay for it.

01:53:29   It really feels like they've sort of just drawn a line effectively, like whatever was in there

01:53:34   before Creator Studio, that's what you get.

01:53:36   And everything we do afterwards, you have to pay for.

01:53:38   And it's kind of expensive if the only thing you want is one of these iWorks apps.

01:53:45   Anyway, bonus round would be talking about next week's event.

01:53:50   We're recording this.

01:53:51   People might listen to it after it starts on Monday.

01:53:55   Well, the event is on Wednesday, or Experience, pardon me.

01:53:58   Experience.

01:53:58   Experience is on Wednesday in New York.

01:54:01   You and I will both be there.

01:54:02   John, will you hold my hand if I freak out during the Experience?

01:54:05   Yes.

01:54:07   Yes, I will.

01:54:08   It just sounds a little bit like we're having...

01:54:11   It's like a happening and it's freaking me out.

01:54:12   It's that kind of very 60s vibe there.

01:54:15   My prediction when they first announced it, based primarily on the Experience being on

01:54:20   a Wednesday, was that they would do the sort of thing, which they've done before, right?

01:54:23   And specifically with New York ones, with iPads and stuff.

01:54:28   And I know you talked about this on Upgrade too, but I think we're thinking the exact same

01:54:32   thing, where they'll do probably, I guess, Monday will be the iPhone 17e, iPhone first,

01:54:39   because the iPhone's iPhone.

01:54:41   Then Tuesday will be whatever new iPads are coming, and it's probably iPad Air going to

01:54:47   the M5 and the iPad No Adjective going to, I don't know, A18.

01:54:52   Some improved AA processor.

01:54:54   Yeah.

01:54:55   But update the base, just No Adjective iPad, update the iPad Air to the M5 on Tuesday, and

01:55:03   then on Wednesday, even though the Experience starts at 9 a.m. in New York, I'm guessing earlier

01:55:09   in the morning they'll have press releases for all of the new MacBooks.

01:55:13   And I probably guess, based on the combination of just their annual calendar and the rumor

01:55:18   mill, that they're going to upgrade all the MacBooks that are left to be upgraded.

01:55:21   MacBook Pros to get the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

01:55:27   MacBook Air to get the M5 chip, which was already out in other products.

01:55:34   And this new low-cost MacBook that will supposedly run an A-series chip, presumably the A18.

01:55:43   Just three press releases for those three products early in the morning New York time, and then

01:55:50   we show up in New York, and there's a dog and pony show where they've got stations, and we get

01:55:56   to experience all these things together.

01:55:57   I think their press releases tend to go out at 9 a.m. Eastern, actually.

01:56:01   Yeah, but I think they might do it earlier.

01:56:03   The one thing, did you notice this, or did I learn this by listening to you and Mike?

01:56:07   I might have actually learned this from you.

01:56:08   I forget which podcast it was.

01:56:09   That because they're doing simultaneous experiences in London and Shanghai, the people in Shanghai

01:56:15   are getting it at 10 p.m.

01:56:17   10 p.m.

01:56:19   I have to admit, even though I am a night owl, I have to admit that I would find it extremely

01:56:25   unusual to attend an Apple event that begins at 10 p.m.

01:56:29   Yeah.

01:56:29   Dinner, drinks, and then an Apple event will happen.

01:56:31   I would be very out of sorts.

01:56:34   But I guess it explains, because they usually don't start at 9 a.m. local time anywhere.

01:56:39   Of course, as any proper American, I feel like this is the real event in London and Shanghai

01:56:47   are satellite events.

01:56:48   Apple events tend to start at 10 a.m., and they're doing this at 9 a.m.

01:56:52   because if they started at 10 a.m.

01:56:54   New York, it would be 11 o'clock in Shanghai.

01:56:56   But again, I think that's their standard drop time is 6 a.m.

01:56:59   Pacific, so it's possible that they will be...

01:57:02   I'm going to guess they do it at 8 a.m.

01:57:04   We did one New York event where they had a video, and they literally just sat us down and

01:57:07   watched the video where they announced the products, and then we went and looked at the

01:57:11   products.

01:57:11   It was literally simultaneous.

01:57:13   It was sort of like, I don't know if they had a projector or they bought the biggest

01:57:17   TV I've ever seen, but it was sort of like a little movie theater that they set

01:57:21   up, but just in a room, in a row of chairs, or a couple rows of chairs.

01:57:25   I think it was an iPad event.

01:57:27   Yeah, I think so.

01:57:27   Anything else that you're expecting next week?

01:57:31   That's what I expect, and I think we're of the same mind that they're going to do it

01:57:34   day by day, product line by product line, not like pro day, where here's the pro products.

01:57:40   Right, because I think that's confusing.

01:57:42   I think Apple announces a bunch of new iPads, Apple announces a new iPhone, Apple announces

01:57:46   a bunch of new Macs is the way to do that and not kind of mix and match, and then the

01:57:50   experience would have all of them, presumably, and then that's probably it for the

01:57:54   announcements.

01:57:55   The one thing I'd throw in, I think German has said that this is probably not happening,

01:57:59   but they could do, if there are new displays, attaching them to an announcement of Mac laptops

01:58:07   is not a bad time to do it.

01:58:09   Now, there are probably some other Mac announcements forthcoming, because there's a Mac studio

01:58:14   announcement, presumably, that will follow once they get these chips out there.

01:58:18   They could announce displays alongside the Mac studio instead, but laptops are a great time

01:58:22   to talk about displays, because most Macs are laptops, and laptops work great when they're

01:58:26   hooked up to displays.

01:58:26   So that's the other thing I guess I would watch for, but German's skeptical about it.

01:58:30   It doesn't mean they won't do it.

01:58:32   I've heard that the studio display is fading away in terms of availability, which suggests

01:58:36   that they're going to replace it, but it might not be next week.

01:58:39   Yeah, and I could see them wanting to do the studio display separately from, presumably,

01:58:45   I mean, whatever the future of the Mac Pro is, I presume they're going to do a new XDR

01:58:50   eventually.

01:58:51   And it's been like five years, I think, since 2019, because it was a live audience.

01:58:57   It was San Jose.

01:58:58   We were in San Jose.

01:58:59   There was a demo area across the street where you could see it.

01:59:02   We all blame COVID for changing to virtual, but it might have been the reaction to John

01:59:07   Ternus announcing the price of the stand for the Pro Display XDR.

01:59:12   Yeah, it was like, and you could buy a stand for it, and the stand costs $10,000.

01:59:19   I don't know what it cost.

01:59:20   It was like pin drop in the audience, and Ternus was like, oh, you guys think that's expensive,

01:59:26   huh?

01:59:26   Yeah.

01:59:27   But yeah.

01:59:27   Very well engineered.

01:59:28   Yeah, so that's six or seven years.

01:59:30   So I presume, and I feel like they would want to announce those separately, because

01:59:35   I feel like in the way that they aren't afraid to announce new MacBook Airs alongside new MacBook

01:59:40   Pros and say the MacBook Pros have brighter screens, et cetera, et cetera, I don't think

01:59:44   they'd want to do the studio display alongside the XDR, but they could say, here's what you

01:59:48   get for a reasonable price, and here's what you get for an unreasonable price.

01:59:52   They might.

01:59:53   If they're coming, I mean, I think it's one of those things where they could do it as part

01:59:56   of this, or they could not.

01:59:58   Generally, it's not bad to put it with another product launch, but the Mac Studio would also

02:00:03   work for that, because the Mac Studio really requires an external display, and there's going

02:00:08   to be an M5 Mac Studio, presumably, and that's not going to come next week, probably, according

02:00:13   to Gurman.

02:00:14   So you could see a March announcement that's just a press release that is new Mac Studios and

02:00:19   new studio displays.

02:00:21   And then, I mean, there's a lot already.

02:00:22   Like, if you have three different classes of laptop, you're refreshing almost your entire

02:00:27   laptop line, other than the one that you did last fall, then I'm not sure you want more,

02:00:33   because that's kind of a lot.

02:00:35   I don't think they're a company to hold back if it's ready to go, but I think in this case,

02:00:38   even if the studio is ready to go, they might hold back for a month and be like, ah, wait.

02:00:44   Just not to overshadow the MacBooks.

02:00:47   Exactly.

02:00:47   So that low-cost, rumored MacBook, I'm excited about it for a lot of reasons, one of which

02:00:55   is that I feel like it's Apple trying to address a market that they couldn't really address.

02:01:00   Talking about their brand promise, I'm going to thread all these things through.

02:01:02   Like, Apple always has a bar that they won't go below in terms of the quality of the product,

02:01:07   and that's why they don't make cut rate stuff, and why there hasn't been a Mac that has been

02:01:13   down at that, a Mac laptop down at that price point.

02:01:15   I would argue that Apple Silicon has totally changed the game when they started doing the

02:01:19   M1 Air at Walmart for a deep discount, because even all this time later, M1 performance is

02:01:26   still so good that it's still a viable product, and I think that was the test for whatever this

02:01:31   thing is going to be, using an A-series processor.

02:01:33   What I think is really funny is, this is a story that goes back, I just looked it up,

02:01:39   it goes back to September, it's actually the late summer of 2023, which was the first inkling

02:01:46   we got from DigiTimes that Apple was developing a low-cost MacBook, which they framed as being

02:01:53   like, to compete with Chromebooks.

02:01:54   And I remember, I mean, I wrote a story about it where I'm like, let's forget about the framing,

02:02:00   forget about that, but like, a cheaper MacBook, given that at that time, the M1 had remained

02:02:06   on sale next to the M2, and then amusingly, the M1 is only now starting to dry up suspiciously

02:02:12   at Walmart, but like, they did that deal at Walmart.

02:02:15   So, because of this DigiTimes report, we've kind of seen this product coming for almost two

02:02:21   and a half years now, and it's taken shape, and then there was the more recent rumor that

02:02:26   said very specifically it was going to be an A18 Pro processor, an iPhone class chip, and

02:02:32   I did some math, I did some Geekbench score comparing, and like, it's totally viable.

02:02:38   An A18 Pro is faster than an M1.

02:02:42   Yep, and they've been selling the M1 until now, and people are using the M1.

02:02:46   Yeah, it's faster than the M1 in single core, it's the same in multi-core, and it's the same

02:02:51   in GPU, and single core for basic use is what you notice.

02:02:56   It's the basic performance of a thing you're doing.

02:02:59   Yep.

02:03:00   Certainly acceptable performance, so if they can, I'm just fascinated by this, what do they

02:03:04   do to make it cheaper?

02:03:04   What does the performance look like of an iPhone chip and a Mac?

02:03:08   And just like, and then we won't get the answer next week, but what does that mean?

02:03:11   Does that mean there are people that are buying Mac laptops that would never have bought a Mac

02:03:16   before?

02:03:17   What does it mean for the MacBook Air?

02:03:18   How do they differentiate it?

02:03:19   There are a lot of questions there, but I think it's, leaving everything else aside, I think

02:03:24   there's absolutely a market that is in this $500 or $600 laptop market that Apple has just

02:03:31   never addressed, or at least never addressed directly with a brand new product.

02:03:35   Right, only in the weird way that they have with Walmart, with years old MacBook Airs.

02:03:40   Exactly.

02:03:41   And I think they've found it to be a success.

02:03:43   I think that was the test case.

02:03:45   I think this idea that some people have that because the chip doesn't start with the letter

02:03:49   M, that it's inferior, it's like, you have no idea how good these A-series chips are.

02:03:53   They've been overpowered, or powerful enough to run Mac laptops for 10 years.

02:03:58   Maybe there are certain features they couldn't handle, but I remember charting the Geekbench

02:04:03   numbers in my reviews 10 years ago, and they were faster at single core.

02:04:07   And if they were faster at single core, they could be faster at everything.

02:04:11   The A18 Pro that's in the iPhone 16 Pro Max, single core Geekbench score, 40% faster, 45%

02:04:23   faster.

02:04:24   It's faster than the M1.

02:04:26   And the other ones are kind of in line with the M1.

02:04:28   And again, I know the M1 is an old chip.

02:04:30   It's five years old.

02:04:31   But it's still perfectly fine for an entry-level computer today.

02:04:37   And single core really is more important, especially for consumers.

02:04:42   What do they do?

02:04:42   They're using web browsers.

02:04:44   And the web, famously, is single core, because JavaScript is by the nature of JavaScript, which

02:04:49   is a long, separate story.

02:04:51   But if most of what you do is surf the web and just use one app at a time, single core is

02:04:56   fine.

02:04:56   It's absolutely...

02:04:57   And it's not like it doesn't have multi-core and GPU power.

02:05:00   They are more in line with the M1.

02:05:02   But I still believe the M1 is a solid computer today, even.

02:05:09   My daughter uses my old M1 MacBook Air, and she edits the upgrade video every week.

02:05:14   It's pretty good.

02:05:15   And that's the thing that's amazing, is the Air is amazing at $999, and then there are a

02:05:20   bunch of discounts out there.

02:05:21   But imagine where they said, you know, we can make another computer even below that,

02:05:25   that is still really good.

02:05:28   And if it's $699 or $599, and then occasionally it gets discounted to like $5 or $499, like

02:05:34   $499 is the cheapest any Mac has ever been sold for.

02:05:38   Well, I mean, they usually leave room to discounts.

02:05:40   I guess the question is, will that initial price be surprisingly low or surprisingly high?

02:05:45   If it's surprisingly high, it's because they're going to discount it.

02:05:47   I think if it's low, it means they're not going to discount it.

02:05:49   So I'm setting my expectations high so that I can't be disappointed.

02:05:53   I think it's going to start at $799, which is $200 less than $999.

02:05:58   That would give them room.

02:06:00   That would give them $699 education, and then occasional specials in the $699 down to $600 range.

02:06:06   My prediction is they say the starting price is $799.

02:06:09   Maybe there isn't even any RAM configuration, and they only charge for storage upgrades.

02:06:14   I don't know what they do.

02:06:15   But I'm going to say $799 to start, the initial coverage will be dominated by, wow, $799 is way too expensive.

02:06:21   We were hoping for $599 or $499.

02:06:24   But then when it gets out in the real world, and maybe not immediately, but very quickly, you'll be able to get it at Walmart or Amazon or places other than the Apple store where it costs $699 or something like that.

02:06:38   That's the game.

02:06:38   You either set the price higher, and it gives you more room to discount, or you don't.

02:06:42   But it would be great if—and I'm going to think $699 would be the lowest.

02:06:46   That would be—that's what I think.

02:06:48   I can't imagine them going—Apple going lower than $699.

02:06:51   Yeah, I can't think it's $699, but $799 with discounts is not a bad guess.

02:06:55   Yeah, and $699 would make me happier because, to me, that's more of a magic number that would get people—anybody who's been just put off by the Mac in general by price.

02:07:06   What do you think they're going to call it?

02:07:07   I think they're going to just call it MacBook.

02:07:09   That's what I think, too.

02:07:11   They've already used that name.

02:07:12   It already was smaller and thinner.

02:07:14   It was smaller and thinner.

02:07:16   I think that this will be remarkably thin, and it'll put the MacBook Air back in the spot of being called Air but being thicker and heavier.

02:07:25   I think it'll be surprisingly thin and an impressive little thing.

02:07:30   Oh, my God.

02:07:31   Even, like, people who are thinking, oh, I don't want Apple's lowest-cost MacBook are going to be like, oh, maybe I do, because look at it.

02:07:39   Plus colors.

02:07:39   Yeah.

02:07:40   That's the other thing.

02:07:42   Gurman says it's going to have colors, and that is very interesting in two ways.

02:07:47   A, we've all been complaining for years that Apple doesn't do fun colors with their products enough, and then they make the Cosmic Orange 17 Pro iPhone, and it's, like, a best-selling product.

02:07:56   And it's, like, Apple is, like, geez, why didn't anybody ever say we should make the Pro iPhones in fun colors?

02:08:03   And all of us are, like, do you ever listen to our podcasts?

02:08:06   Do you know how many cumulative hours of Apple-oriented podcasts have been devoted to how come the new iPhones pros don't come in fun colors?

02:08:14   Yeah.

02:08:15   But I think the really interesting contrast and the thing to think about is, well, how come the iPhone 16e, we don't know about the 17e yet, but 16e came in white and black, no colors at all.

02:08:26   Right.

02:08:26   And that was sort of, like, part of the, well, if you're going to get the base e-model, you don't get colors.

02:08:32   You get white or black.

02:08:33   Orthopedics shoes don't come in fun colors.

02:08:35   What's the difference between a low-end MacBook and the low-end iPhone?

02:08:39   So, I have started to think of that low-end MacBook as being the same as the low-end iPad.

02:08:45   Because the low-end iPad has got a bunch of colors, and it's real compromised in a lot of ways.

02:08:51   But fact is, for a lot of people, they just want an iPad, and, like, they don't need the higher-end stuff.

02:08:57   It's fine.

02:08:58   And they put the fun colors on it, partially maybe because they're trying to appeal to, I don't know, kids and schools and stuff like that.

02:09:05   I don't know the reasons, but they have stuck with that idea of having a bunch of fun, pastel-y kind of colors on those iPads.

02:09:11   And if I think about that product, I feel like the MacBook starts to make sense that it's the Mac equivalent of the low-end iPad.

02:09:22   Mm-hmm.

02:09:23   Yeah.

02:09:24   And I just think there's something a little bit more upsell-y about iPhones.

02:09:30   And not in a pejorative way, like with Creator Studio, which I think we both agree that the upsell-y nature of Creator Studio for things that used to be free like iWork is gross.

02:09:41   But I feel like with iPhone, it is like, hey, this is a product that everybody in the world needs one of.

02:09:47   And we know some of you don't really care about it, but you need a phone anyway.

02:09:51   And so here, it's just white or black if all you want is the base model, and you don't want to buy a refurbished years-old one.

02:09:58   Whereas a MacBook, even a low-end one, if you get this new MacBook, which I think is really going to be the name, and it only costs $699, that's still like a major purchase, and you care about your laptop.

02:10:13   And so it's just like a totally different mindset, I think.

02:10:16   That's what I think Apple is thinking, because I kind of agree.

02:10:19   It might be like for families and the kids, like you've got like a kid in middle school who's been begging.

02:10:26   I would like a MacBook.

02:10:27   I don't want to use Dad's old hand-me-down PC or whatever.

02:10:32   For the terrible Chromebook that we have at school.

02:10:33   Yeah, the terrible Chromebook that we have at school.

02:10:35   I want a MacBook.

02:10:36   And it's like, okay, if it's $699, we'll get you one.

02:10:40   But then it's like the kid wants a fun one, because it's like a really big deal for them.

02:10:45   I don't know.

02:10:46   I think it's sort of, I'd like to see some colors in the 17e iPhone 2, or at least one color other than black and white.

02:10:53   So I'm not saying that that won't be true.

02:10:55   I don't know.

02:10:56   I mean, and rumors aren't saying it.

02:10:57   But I do think there's something different about the MacBook, and I think it's really kind of interesting that's what the rumors say.

02:11:02   Now, who knows?

02:11:03   Maybe we'll go to the event next week, and there's one color, silver.

02:11:06   And I hope you'll like it.

02:11:08   Yeah, I think it's going to be funny, though, if everybody who's got like a MacBook Air looks at those things and is like, where are my colors?

02:11:16   I just got no colors over here.

02:11:17   The role of color in Apple's product line is just endlessly fascinating.

02:11:22   The better your MacBook gets, the fewer colors you have to choose from.

02:11:26   It would be the first Mac laptop that's had appreciable color since the original iBooks.

02:11:31   And when I was back in 2020, when I did the 20 Mac series, I thought about this a lot.

02:11:36   And I think Apple philosophically has said, a laptop is a thing you take with you, especially for business, people who are doing work out in the world with their laptop.

02:11:48   They maybe don't want to draw attention to themselves.

02:11:51   And that a colorful laptop, while a fun idea, is maybe when those original iBooks were out there, they got feedback that they were just too garish.

02:12:05   Yeah.

02:12:05   Whatever reason, they literally stopped making colorful laptops after that.

02:12:10   Other than that, whatever, the blue and the orange, they had a great one.

02:12:14   The difference is that with those iBooks, they didn't have a plain version, right?

02:12:19   You can sell plain colors alongside bright colors, like the iPhone 17 Pro, right?

02:12:25   You could get the titanium-colored one.

02:12:27   Very plain.

02:12:28   You don't need to buy the orange.

02:12:29   You don't need to buy orange.

02:12:31   And that's my feeling, and that was my feeling about when they did the colorful iMacs recently, is they sell it in silver.

02:12:38   I'm sure the silver one is the most popular one, because it's boring and it's generic.

02:12:42   But if you want to put an orange one in your hotel lobby or whatever, you have the option of doing that, and that's pretty awesome.

02:12:48   And they made the color-match keyboards and all of that.

02:12:51   So I hope this is the start of a better trend.

02:12:53   But I would love to see a Mac laptop with color.

02:12:55   It's been so long.

02:12:57   And we'll see.

02:12:59   I mean, Apple will know exactly how many of those things they sell, and maybe we'll never see it again.

02:13:04   But the idea that in a week there's going to be a green laptop out there somewhere, that's pretty cool.

02:13:10   I'm looking forward to that.

02:13:10   Yeah, and I really, you know, I wrote my report card, like one of my favorite things of 2025 for Apple was the shift from iPhone SEs to the 16e and putting the number in there, which implied right at the start, and here we are all expecting a 17e next week,

02:13:28   that they're going to update this phone every year as opposed to every two to five years or whatever the totally erratic schedule of the SE updates was.

02:13:36   And I think that's great.

02:13:38   Like you emphasized just a few minutes ago that the M1 is still a totally credible system on a chip for processing speed, but there's all sorts of other things that are outdated five years later, right?

02:13:49   And it would be nice to keep up to date for matter integration with the home and stuff like that, where if they can use the A series chips and put them in a lower cost MacBook and you get performance that actually beats the M1, but then also get relatively up to date Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and everything else.

02:14:15   That's just like, hey, you can't just expect a five-year-old SKU to have a Wi-Fi standard that came out three years ago.

02:14:24   It doesn't make any sense.

02:14:25   It kind of solves that problem.

02:14:26   Yeah.

02:14:27   I, one of the things I'm curious about is to see how that MacBook's specs look and what they do kind of short of standard and what they do that seems surprisingly like standard.

02:14:38   My guess is that they will lean toward having a little less margin or a little higher price in the beginning so that they can use that same design for a long time.

02:14:46   Yeah.

02:14:47   You put in the chip that's a little more expensive, but it means that you don't have to switch the chip for four years instead of having to switch it next year.

02:14:54   And speaking of next year, like they make a new A series chip every year.

02:14:58   So I'm not saying they would update this laptop every year, but they might.

02:15:02   I think they would.

02:15:03   They are updating most Macs every year now.

02:15:06   Yeah.

02:15:06   Because the Apple Silicon series just roll along.

02:15:09   And that is the beauty of taking this M1 and putting it out to pasture, but having like an A18 MacBook is that you could just do an A19 MacBook and it won't be a big deal.

02:15:20   It'll just be a speed bump and nobody will really care, but it allows them to kind of keep it kind of just keeping pace at the back of the performance line, but still relevant every year or year and a half.

02:15:31   Yeah.

02:15:31   Keep it the exact same form factor keyboard screen for four or five years.

02:15:36   The only way they're going to be able to keep their margins up on this product is to keep it around for a long time.

02:15:41   Yeah.

02:15:42   But they can update the A series chip in it and still keep the rest of it exactly the same.

02:15:47   And that's, I mean, that's how every Apple product works is they do a big redesign and then they stretch it out over four or five years.

02:15:52   Yeah.

02:15:53   Because every month that passes, the profit margin goes up.

02:15:57   Yeah.

02:15:57   And new anodized colors every year.

02:16:00   Oh, let's do it.

02:16:01   I'm there.

02:16:02   So good.

02:16:03   All right, Jason.

02:16:03   Thank you for coming back.

02:16:05   I'm no longer mad at you.

02:16:06   Thank you, John.

02:16:07   We buried the hatchet.

02:16:08   We did.

02:16:09   We buried the hatchet and I'm definitely not going to punch you when I see you next week.

02:16:13   Well, this podcast did its job then.

02:16:17   My thanks to our sponsors, I think, going in reverse order, Squarespace, where you can build a website, Sentry, a developer toolkit that you can integrate in your app for error monitoring and tracing, and Notion, the AI workspace where teams and AI agents, including new custom agents, get more done together.

02:16:37   Yeah.

02:16:37   And Jason is at SixColors.com, a whole bunch of podcasts at RelayFM and The Incomparable, including my favorite of his podcasts, Upgrade, but listen to those podcasts.

02:16:48   And of course, you can follow along at SixColors, where new episodes of all the shows, just follow at SixColors.

02:16:54   Yeah.

02:16:55   You got it.

02:16:56   Yeah.