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628: Conspiracy to Steal Trade Secrets

 

00:00:00   From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 628. Today's show is brought to you by FitBard, ExpressVPN, and Sentry. It is July 13th, 2026. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason.

00:00:24   Hi, Mike. I looked for you throughout the coverage of the Wimbledon finals, and I just didn't spot you. I saw some royalty. I saw some Hollywood stars. Didn't see the most important person to me in the UK.

00:00:37   You know, about 15 years ago, I was at a Wimbledon semi-final between Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal.

00:00:44   That's pretty awesome. I've always dreamed of going to one of those.

00:00:48   I was a seat filler, though. So I only got to see a few, like, I only got to see very small amounts of the game, I'd say.

00:00:57   That's okay. From different perspectives?

00:00:58   From different perspectives.

00:00:59   That's nice.

00:01:00   And the thing is, even though I was a seat filler that you needed, every time the person came back to the seat, they were always really mad at me.

00:01:05   But I'm only here because you didn't make it back in time. Like, I'm here to fill your seat. It's a good time, and one day I hope to do it properly. It'll be lovely.

00:01:14   For realsies, yeah. I would love to do that sometime. That's on my list, still.

00:01:20   But I have a Snell Talk question for you, Jason Snell.

00:01:22   Okay.

00:01:23   It comes from Tony. Tony says, with the popular TV time service and app announcing that they're shutting down recently, it got me thinking, does Jason use any service and or application to track his movie and TV watching?

00:01:39   It's funny, I didn't do this with television for a very long time. I tried stuff. I could never get anything to stick. And I finally got one that sticks. And the good news is, it hasn't been discontinued. The bad news is, it sounds like the name of the app that got discontinued.

00:01:57   And that's because RIP to TV time, but television time lives forever.

00:02:04   Yeah, it's called television time. And what's worse, when you install it on your iPad or your iPhone, the little app says TV time.

00:02:12   Yep.

00:02:16   But it's television time. It's very good. I had it recommended to me by John Syracuse and Dan Morin.

00:02:21   And so it's got multiple layers of approvals. And I like it. It's pretty good. There are complaints. There are things about it that I don't like. But it is the only one that I've ever had that sticks.

00:02:34   And then I can look at my iPad when we're sitting down to watch TV and see everything that's sort of like in my I should watch this queue. It means I can add things when I hear about them. And then they just kind of go in the list. And that's what I've been using for that. And then for movies, it's Letterboxd. I just I will log movies I watch to Letterboxd. And that's not that interesting. But there it is. I do that.

00:03:01   Does Letterboxd not do TV?

00:03:04   Uh, no.

00:03:05   You feel like it should.

00:03:06   Not to my knowledge.

00:03:07   I feel like they should do television.

00:03:08   I mean, they might have stuff you could log, but the important of a TV tracker is an Up Next tracker to me.

00:03:13   Right.

00:03:14   You need to be able to say, where am I in that show? You know, which season did we finish? Are we starting season three now? Or what episode are we up to now? Or, oh, that is, I just used television time last night to see when is this show coming back?

00:03:32   And it says, like, it'll be back in 14 days.

00:03:36   So, it, it, that's what I use for it.

00:03:40   Yeah.

00:03:41   Very nice.

00:03:43   Uh, so you actually mentioned this in the last Upgrade Plus, uh, where we also spoke about some TV recommendations. And I want to give follow up to that right now to tell you that Ludwig is amazing.

00:03:55   Uh, thank you for that recommendation. And I would like to recommend it to anybody else. It's so, so good. We watched it all in the last week.

00:04:03   I know. It's good. Second season is coming and they've already commissioned a third season, which is great. Cause I, I think the story is they commissioned season one of Ludwig and didn't know what it was going to be.

00:04:14   And then it did incredibly well, like to the point where I was reading about, uh, the ratings for, um, small profits, which is a fun show Mackenzie Crook did. Um, and it had good ratings. And they said, these are the best ratings for our original comedy since Ludwig. And I was like, oh, I guess Ludwig did really well.

00:04:34   Um, Ludwig, like I just, I read this and I just checked it now. Ludwig was, uh, the BBC's biggest launch for a comedy since 2018 for it. So, yeah. Yeah. So, so they didn't realize that. So after it had this huge launch, they're like, we would like more Ludwig. And they're like, well, great, you know, we'll get it to you in two years.

00:04:57   So I think the good news is they've already said that they're, um, they've commissioned a neck, a next series. They've reached, it's reached the point now, you know, they do the first year on spec and then it's like takes years for them to get back to speed to do another season of it. But now they know that they want it. So they're, I hope that season three will happen faster than season two did because they know that it's a hit now, but it's so good. So yeah, highly, highly recommend it. I mean, I love David Mitchell.

00:05:23   Um, I love the Mitchell and Webb look. It's one of my favorite, all-time favorite sketch shows. And, um, I love that in the, in the, uh, announcement about them doing season three, they mentioned that it's a co-production with, I believe it's called that Mitchell and Webb company, which is funny. Like that, that, even though those guys do so much work separately, they still produce stuff through the company they set up, which is cute.

00:05:48   That's a nice, I like that too. That, that, that warmed my heart when I saw that.

00:05:51   Uh, if you would like to send in a question of your own to help us open a future episode of upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your own Snell talk.

00:06:00   We have some follow-up. So on last week's episode, we were wondering, and Jason, I think you specifically wondered aloud, who is still using FileMaker today?

00:06:11   Yeah, I knew I was going to regret that. We got so much.

00:06:13   I don't think it was a regret. I thought you knew you were going to do this.

00:06:17   Well, I, I, I didn't quite, let me put it this way. I didn't quite, I answered my own question, which is it's legacy, a lot of legacy systems.

00:06:27   Yeah.

00:06:28   But we heard from everybody who, yeah, we, I mean, we may have heard from literally everybody who uses FileMaker.

00:06:32   So I'll start off with Sam who says, I'm a TV producer in the UK, specializing in quiz shows.

00:06:38   Last year, I worked on a new international production, which uses FileMaker as its default questions database.

00:06:44   This is Jeopardy UK, maybe.

00:06:45   I mean, it's similar, right? So it's definitely not just limited to 20 year old productions.

00:06:50   In over a decade in the industry, I've never used it myself, as there is a company specializing in making databases for quiz shows, which has cornered the UK market.

00:06:59   But I wouldn't be surprised if that bespoke system started off in FileMaker, given the similarities between them.

00:07:05   Of course, of course.

00:07:06   Brian says, I had to chime in and say that FileMaker Pro is used by, used by most Broadway productions to keep track of every element of a show's sound system.

00:07:15   Each cable, mic, speaker, sound processor, et cetera, is planned out via FileMaker databases with different teams, custom styling their information and functionality.

00:07:24   We even use it to put labels on everything, printing custom labels on every return and shipping address stickers.

00:07:31   Yeah.

00:07:32   Patrick says, and they carry on.

00:07:35   We've used it at my office since 1990, when the FileMaker manual was still a hardcover book.

00:07:41   I have a number of databases I've developed since the 90s, and I'm still using some made by former co-workers for compiling ski condition reports and registration at a trade show that we do, too.

00:07:51   It's just so much easier than anything else out there.

00:07:54   I also use it for our Christmas card list, says Patrick.

00:07:57   Sam says, a big chunk of my early web development career was building FileMaker apps hosted with FileMaker server on an XServe.

00:08:05   This sounds familiar.

00:08:06   On a prestigious university in southern Connecticut, I'm going to say CT.

00:08:11   Okay.

00:08:11   It's an Ivy League school you may be familiar with.

00:08:14   Yep.

00:08:14   As I was listening, I was thinking, please mention Lasso, please mention Lasso, and there it was.

00:08:20   I wrote dozens of web apps in LassoScript that talked directly to hosted FileMaker apps.

00:08:26   The web has surely moved on.

00:08:28   Anyway, thank you for the nostalgia bomb.

00:08:29   And this is my favorite.

00:08:31   It came from an anonymous follow-upper.

00:08:35   I'm a FileMaker developer working with exactly the kinds of systems every day that you talk about on your show.

00:08:40   They're old and they work, and my team keeps them running.

00:08:42   I feel compelled to remind you that the Apple gift card database, as well as AppleCare, is all run on FileMaker systems.

00:08:50   It is my most fun modern FileMaker fact.

00:08:55   Yeah, I also heard from somebody who said that they work at Apple, but I think they work at Apple, and they're right across from the FileMaker building.

00:09:05   And they had wondered for a long time, basically, really?

00:09:09   And so we kind of gave the answer of why.

00:09:14   Are they doing things over there?

00:09:15   So, yeah, this is the answer is there's a lot of legacy stuff out there and needs to be supported.

00:09:21   And again, for anybody who has ever dealt with one of these kind of systems, like, everybody knows that it's not cutting edge.

00:09:27   Everybody knows it's not the latest and greatest.

00:09:29   But the amount of effort that would be required to disentangle you from this thing that you've built that works perfectly fine for you.

00:09:37   And it doesn't have to be cool.

00:09:38   It just needs to work.

00:09:39   The amount of effort required is enormous.

00:09:41   And the benefit is probably zero.

00:09:43   It is, I'm going to say, a little bit like why I still use movable type 3 for the incomparable.

00:09:51   It's because we built a very complex system.

00:09:55   It works fine.

00:09:57   It's not cutting edge.

00:09:58   It's not cool.

00:09:59   Uses an old version of Perl.

00:10:01   Like, all of these things about it.

00:10:03   But, like, it works.

00:10:05   And the amount of effort to rip it apart and replace it with something else that might not really be much better means you just keep using it.

00:10:13   So, I kind of get it here.

00:10:15   Also, to the person who said they use it for the Christmas card, Liz Patrick, also, once you have FileMaker and you know how to use it, it's like, you know, it's that hammer that you're looking for nails.

00:10:25   Like, if you've got a functional database and you know how to build stuff in it, then you just use it because you've got it and you know how to use it.

00:10:32   So, yeah.

00:10:33   Yeah, I get it.

00:10:34   So, this is why, this is the answer to the question, why is FileMaker a wholly owned subsidiary, or now it's back to being called Claris, a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple.

00:10:43   It's like, there's a business there.

00:10:45   So, they just keep it running.

00:10:46   My favorite thing, I put it in the show notes, Claris.com, right at the top it says, Claris and Apple Company, which is just, I don't know why this is such a fascinatingly weird thing to see.

00:10:57   But it really is just so weird.

00:10:58   But there you go, Claris and Apple Company.

00:11:01   I think it's only Claris and Beats, right?

00:11:05   That we would call Apple Companies.

00:11:10   Oh, I'm really stretching my thinking here.

00:11:13   No, I think that's it.

00:11:14   They have investments in other companies, right?

00:11:17   No, but I think the wholly owned subsidiaries that are separate is, I think it's Beats and Claris.

00:11:24   Yeah, I don't, I cannot think of it anymore.

00:11:27   So, yes, I think you're right.

00:11:28   And let me just say, Claris, I love you.

00:11:32   Claris and Beats, they're not, they shouldn't be mentioned in the same, they shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath.

00:11:38   But nevertheless, here we are.

00:11:40   I don't know.

00:11:40   What is Johnny FileMaker and Dr. Dre have in common?

00:11:44   That's true.

00:11:45   Claris and Beats.

00:11:47   The Financial Times is reporting that Apple is now moving ahead with testing the DRAM chips from banned Chinese suppliers.

00:11:55   So, they're now doing the testing.

00:11:57   So, I think at this point, it feels like they're either A, confident they're going to get the exemption from the U.S. government, or B, have decided they don't care.

00:12:06   I don't know.

00:12:07   I think they're poised.

00:12:07   My guess would be they're poised.

00:12:10   They're poised.

00:12:10   They want to be ready.

00:12:11   If they get the okay, they're going to spring into action.

00:12:13   And so, they're trying to do everything they can in advance of that.

00:12:16   I think that that's as far as it's gone.

00:12:18   I don't know if they're confident, but you can imagine Tim Cook saying, well, be ready.

00:12:24   If I get them to say yes, we should be ready to jump on this immediately, and they're like, okay, well, we're going to start.

00:12:30   What's left for us before we could go into production?

00:12:33   It's like, well, we've got to test them.

00:12:34   He's like, we'll do that now.

00:12:35   Do that now.

00:12:35   Just in case.

00:12:36   Let's do a little upstream.

00:12:38   A quick moment here.

00:12:40   Apple has received 89 Emmy nominations.

00:12:43   Seems like a lot.

00:12:44   Jason, it is a lot.

00:12:46   It's a lot.

00:12:47   The stat that Apple is touting the most is that they are the network.

00:12:53   I use the word network.

00:12:54   I don't know how else to call it.

00:12:55   Company.

00:12:55   I don't know.

00:12:57   With the most nominations in both the major drama and comedy categories.

00:13:02   Okay.

00:13:03   There's a lot of exceptions there.

00:13:05   I know.

00:13:05   They did not get the most nominations, but they did get a lot of nominations in the major categories.

00:13:09   I think what they're saying is, it's the categories you care about, right?

00:13:12   Like show and people, not necessarily, you know, should go down the list.

00:13:17   Like for example, like I will just mention, you can go down the list where like my wife,

00:13:22   Adina, took great pains to point out to me that, what is her, Palm Royale got quite a lot

00:13:31   of Emmy nominations or got some because she's maybe the only person in the world that enjoys Palm Royale.

00:13:39   So she wanted to let me know about that.

00:13:41   But as I reminded her, they canceled that show.

00:13:43   I got eight.

00:13:44   It got eight.

00:13:44   But they're all like production design, costume, hairstyling, stunt performance.

00:13:50   That show is beautiful.

00:13:53   Like it is a really great period production for a period that is not touched very much.

00:13:59   Like the 80s, I think it's like, it's very, it's very beautiful television show.

00:14:03   But from my perspective, then kind of like falls apart on literally everything else.

00:14:07   I did not enjoy season, I watched season one with her and I did not enjoy, I have not watched

00:14:12   season two.

00:14:12   But anyway, they got a lot, but they're not the major categories.

00:14:16   But the big winners are Widow's Bay and Pluribus with 19 and 18 Emmy nominations, respectively.

00:14:23   Shrinking got 10, Slow Horses got nine, Margot's got Money Troubles got eight, and then the list

00:14:29   goes from there.

00:14:30   Apple had 15 titles in total getting Emmy nominations.

00:14:34   So I'm sure they're pretty pleased about this.

00:14:36   I think they are.

00:14:37   I think they're very pleased.

00:14:38   This is, this is why they do it.

00:14:39   Yeah.

00:14:40   Although I, I mean, you know, kind of like Emmys in general, I think Hacks is going to probably

00:14:45   sweep the comedy this time.

00:14:48   You never know.

00:14:49   But I mean, Hacks got a lot of nominations and the Academy really likes to do big send-offs

00:14:54   for shows that aren't coming back.

00:14:56   And yeah, so we'll see.

00:14:59   But, but Apple got to be, they got to be happy.

00:15:02   This is, and it shows, I think the breadth of it also shows, I think that one of the reasons

00:15:06   they're happy is it's so many different Apple shows that did really well.

00:15:10   Yeah.

00:15:11   Your, your show, Your Friends and Neighbors was nominated for Best Drama?

00:15:15   It should get more than that though.

00:15:17   Like I was actually going to mention this.

00:15:18   It's literally only, only nominated for that.

00:15:21   Jon Hamm didn't get nominated.

00:15:22   I don't know how a show could win Best in its category and then none of the actors get

00:15:28   nominations.

00:15:29   Like, I mean, I know why it's called The Pit.

00:15:32   The Pit is the problem, right?

00:15:33   In this scenario where everyone that's in The Pit is getting nominated.

00:15:37   So, but I think that Your Friends and Neighbors is fantastic.

00:15:41   I love that show and I'm happy that it got a nomination, but Jon Hamm should also be getting

00:15:45   a nomination.

00:15:46   I also, I mean, this is one of these things with the bear where they could put this in,

00:15:52   they could put that show on comedy if they wanted to.

00:15:53   It's a dark comedy, like, but it's like, where are you going to put it?

00:15:58   And they decided to put it in drama.

00:15:59   Well, the truth is if you, if you run over 30 minutes, you're a drama.

00:16:02   And if you run under 30 minutes, you're a comedy.

00:16:04   And that's just how they've decided to do it.

00:16:05   Those categories don't make sense anymore.

00:16:08   No, they do not.

00:16:09   But yeah, good work for everybody over at Apple TV.

00:16:13   They continue to crush it.

00:16:14   Absolutely continue to crush it.

00:16:15   It's true.

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00:18:26   It's time to lawyer up, Jason Snell.

00:18:28   Yeah, it is.

00:18:30   Clunk, clunk.

00:18:30   Clunk, clunk.

00:18:31   It is the classic.

00:18:33   I almost brought the jingles back for this because I had that jingle in my head all weekend.

00:18:37   Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot.

00:18:39   So it's time to lawyer up.

00:18:42   Last Friday, Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of the theft of trade secrets.

00:18:51   Apple is saying that employees who leave them to join OpenAI are stealing secrets, quote,

00:18:58   for the benefit of OpenAI.

00:19:00   So I want to start this conversation by reading the full statement that Apple gave to various outlets,

00:19:07   including Chance Miller at 9to5Mac, who wrote a great article breaking down a lot of the legal filing,

00:19:13   which was very helpful for me in planning today's episode.

00:19:16   Because what I don't want to do is read an entire legal brief.

00:19:19   So I'm very thankful for all of the people who did.

00:19:21   I read it.

00:19:21   It's very entertaining.

00:19:22   Excellent.

00:19:22   I'm pleased that you have done it, too, because I didn't want to do that.

00:19:26   I didn't need Chance Miller and his useful, helpful breakdowns that are good and does a good job.

00:19:33   I didn't need that.

00:19:33   I was very happy to have Chance and Mark Gurman.

00:19:35   I read their articles.

00:19:36   Get out of my way, Chance.

00:19:37   I don't need your help.

00:19:38   Help Mike.

00:19:39   Get in my way, Chance.

00:19:40   Help people who need your help.

00:19:42   Anyway, Apple said.

00:19:44   At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world,

00:19:50   and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously.

00:19:55   Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple's secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products.

00:20:07   We will always defend our team's hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.

00:20:13   So, this lawsuit names four parties as defendants.

00:20:18   So, OpenAI, IO Products, which is...

00:20:24   I mean, this one's hard.

00:20:25   It's like...

00:20:26   It's the startup by...

00:20:28   Johnny Ive, Evan Tankey, and Tan Tan.

00:20:30   And Tan Tan.

00:20:31   And they throw shade on it in the brief.

00:20:34   They basically say, we should just consider this basically an owned and operated by OpenAI operation.

00:20:39   They basically say it's a shell company.

00:20:41   It's a fake company that was always intended to be and was completely controlled by OpenAI.

00:20:46   Yeah.

00:20:46   Which is fine, because, you know, there's Love From, and there's OpenAI, and then there's IO.

00:20:50   And so, Apple's like, for the purposes of this, you should really even consider just IO as OpenAI.

00:20:54   Because really, it seems like IO was created just so Johnny Ive didn't have to go to...

00:21:02   Like, they weren't going to buy Love From, because Johnny didn't want to sell Love From.

00:21:05   I think that's it.

00:21:06   So, they created a space for them to do this work, and then OpenAI said, we're just going

00:21:10   to buy you for stock.

00:21:11   Because remember, Johnny is not actually an employee of OpenAI, like a lot of people are.

00:21:16   He still works at Love From and advises.

00:21:20   It's complicated, but complicated in a way that is done specifically just so everybody

00:21:26   gets what they want.

00:21:27   Yeah.

00:21:27   Apple's basically saying, you know, this is a...

00:21:30   Don't pretend that this isn't just OpenAI again.

00:21:33   Which I just thought, I enjoyed the shade of that.

00:21:35   They're like, yeah.

00:21:36   There's a lot of shade.

00:21:36   Not real.

00:21:37   As well as that, two named individuals.

00:21:40   So, former Apple Vice President of Product Design, Tang Tan, and a former Apple Senior Systems

00:21:47   electrical engineer by the name of Chang Liu, he isn't mentioned in the suit specifically.

00:21:53   But to me, like, what a terrible state of affairs to have Johnny Ive embroiled in all

00:21:58   this.

00:21:58   Like, I just find this so...

00:22:01   Like, we're going to get to all of it.

00:22:02   But to me, it's just like, this is...

00:22:04   I'm just so disappointed.

00:22:05   They didn't name him.

00:22:07   I think it's very funny that they didn't name him.

00:22:08   He's not mentioned at all.

00:22:09   They took great pains not to name him.

00:22:11   Yes, they did.

00:22:12   Yep.

00:22:15   Like, if this goes...

00:22:16   So, Apple wants to take this to a jury.

00:22:17   If this goes to jury, he'll surely be called, right?

00:22:21   Could be.

00:22:23   As a witness?

00:22:23   Could be.

00:22:24   But, nevertheless, no matter what his involvement or not in all of this is, I just find this to

00:22:30   be so...

00:22:31   I mean, the whole thing is so gauche anyway, but that to me is ridiculous.

00:22:34   It makes me wonder when you talk about Johnny wanting to be a step removed from all of this.

00:22:39   You know, my feeling is that he got burned out on all this stuff.

00:22:42   Yep.

00:22:42   And that's why they let him do cars, and he was designing Apple Park and all of those things.

00:22:47   And now he's got love from, which is almost like his...

00:22:51   Playground.

00:22:52   ...fun project where he can mess around and do luxury items and all that.

00:22:56   And then he does this, and they create IO, and like you said, he's sort of not...

00:23:01   He's an owner, but not really a...

00:23:02   He's not an open AI employee or anything like that.

00:23:04   I wonder if part of it is that Johnny Ive just kind of wanted to keep everything at arm's length.

00:23:12   Yeah.

00:23:12   And that you look at this and you're like, is he like, this is why?

00:23:19   Yeah.

00:23:20   It's like...

00:23:21   Keep it away from me.

00:23:23   Should you have been close to it or should you have been two arm lengths away from it?

00:23:27   Like, is the...

00:23:28   Sure, Sam, I'll help from over here.

00:23:30   Yeah.

00:23:31   I'm going to just stand over there.

00:23:34   It's really...

00:23:34   All right.

00:23:35   So, I'm going to try and lay this out the best I can.

00:23:38   Okay.

00:23:39   So, the timeline and then talking about things in detail.

00:23:42   So, Apple says that they contacted OpenAI in February to voice their concerns, their belief

00:23:48   that this was happening, essentially, and to ask OpenAI to investigate it.

00:23:52   They say OpenAI did not respond to this complaint from Apple.

00:23:56   Now, there are a lot of things in this where it's like, how much of this is the stuff you're

00:24:00   supposed to do and everybody ignores it anyway?

00:24:02   Like, I don't know, right?

00:24:03   Like, I don't know enough about these kind of legal processes, right?

00:24:06   Yeah.

00:24:06   There is a statement from Apple on the breadth of this issue.

00:24:10   This is in the legal case.

00:24:13   This is the tip of the iceberg.

00:24:15   Apple lacks visibility into what's been happening behind closed doors at OpenAI, where such

00:24:20   misconduct is normalized and exemplified by leadership.

00:24:23   This much is clear, however, at every level, from members of its technical staff to its chief

00:24:28   hardware officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing

00:24:33   Apple's trade secrets and confidential information.

00:24:35   As a natural result, OpenAI's nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations

00:24:40   rotten to its core by illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.

00:24:45   Man, that's a good writing.

00:24:49   I like that writing.

00:24:49   Yeah, rotten to its core.

00:24:51   And that's them sending the message, like, we think your entire hardware operation is part

00:24:58   of this lawsuit because it's based on false premises and theft of secrets.

00:25:04   Yep.

00:25:04   By the way, it is important to note, chief hardware officer, is that code for somebody?

00:25:09   It's actually Tang Tan, who's also named.

00:25:12   Tang Tan is the chief hardware officer, yeah.

00:25:12   Yeah.

00:25:14   A job that he...

00:25:15   By the way, according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, and Gurman talked to people who said the design

00:25:23   side wanted Tang Tan to get the job that John Ternus got.

00:25:26   Yeah.

00:25:26   And this is why I always say, like, never forget that stuff happens sometimes because someone

00:25:34   didn't get the job they wanted, didn't get the title they wanted, didn't get the promotion

00:25:38   they wanted.

00:25:39   And I'm not saying that that's exactly what happened here, but I think Gurman's story,

00:25:43   it's a strong implication that one of the reasons Tang Tan left is because he wanted the job

00:25:49   that John Ternus got five years ago.

00:25:51   And then if you extrapolate that out, now, again, I don't want to trip up too much on this,

00:25:56   but, like, we don't know about the truth of any of this, right?

00:25:59   Like, we don't know.

00:26:00   And it's all...

00:26:01   But I don't want to keep saying allegedly.

00:26:03   If you extrapolate that out, you can see a scenario where somebody who didn't get the job that

00:26:09   they wanted being annoyed and upset enough that they may do some things they shouldn't.

00:26:15   Sure, if they're really bent out of shape about it.

00:26:17   And some of the worst behavior in this lawsuit is, it feels kind of like that.

00:26:22   Yeah.

00:26:22   Like, there are people who feel like they're either petty or they're out for revenge or whatever.

00:26:28   And what Gurman said, too, is it was like, it was the designers felt that he should do it.

00:26:33   Like, he's not a designer, but, like, they...

00:26:36   And we know Mark Gurman talks to the designers.

00:26:39   That's his best source of leaks.

00:26:40   We could...

00:26:41   You could just see it.

00:26:42   And so, of course, he would say that.

00:26:44   But, like, you know, you're going to have camps.

00:26:45   You're going to have people who are, like, grumpy about it.

00:26:47   And I think that some of this behavior maybe can be explained in part by that,

00:26:51   by people who were inside Apple feeling adversarial toward Apple

00:26:56   and wanting to do max damage on their way out the door.

00:26:59   Let's talk about the two named individuals.

00:27:01   So, Tang Tan, Chief Hardware Officer, as Jason mentioned,

00:27:05   Apple says that he used his insider information of Apple and their processes

00:27:10   to extract information from job candidates from Apple

00:27:13   to get information on what the company was working on,

00:27:16   going as far as asking for them to bring samples of components for, quote, show and tell.

00:27:22   Mark Gurman notes this.

00:27:24   About 400 people have left Apple to go to OpenAI.

00:27:27   It's one of the bigger kind of exoduses of staff to a single entity that has occurred.

00:27:33   So it is significant.

00:27:35   And there is that pipeline there.

00:27:38   I've seen some stories saying that, look, if you're in certain groups,

00:27:43   being asked to bring samples of your work is not unreasonable.

00:27:47   The questions for me are, were these components considered secret?

00:27:57   And what was the purpose of bringing them in?

00:28:02   Apple is going to say the whole plan here was that he was trying to spy on Apple's operation after he left

00:28:09   by having people from Apple come and then deposing them essentially about what they were working on at Apple right at the moment

00:28:16   so that they could get a sense of what Apple was doing and that he had them bring these products.

00:28:20   If it's, you know, if it's fairly standard Silicon Valley practice, this isn't actually that big a deal.

00:28:25   If he's inducing them to bring secret stuff so that they can look at it and study it,

00:28:33   then it's a pattern of behavior.

00:28:34   And that's that's just one of the things that will have to be argued.

00:28:38   Yeah. But I, you know, kind of reading on the face of it, that isn't all he did, though.

00:28:42   Right. So it's like, OK, I can see the argument in that.

00:28:45   But then also Apple says they have evidence of candidates for positions taking screenshots

00:28:50   and downloading files related to confidential projects.

00:28:53   And they know that Tan then asks for additional detail about these projects in interviews.

00:28:58   Apparently this became an established pattern.

00:29:01   So one of the things that we can read out of this that I think is fascinating, how do they know?

00:29:06   Well, the answer is some people at Apple interviewed with OpenAI

00:29:11   and were deeply uncomfortable with what they were asking and told somebody at Apple.

00:29:19   Yeah. Yeah.

00:29:20   That's what happened.

00:29:21   Because if if if every one of these people then just goes over to OpenAI, nobody's squealing.

00:29:26   Right. Nobody's talking.

00:29:28   But they obviously talked to people from Apple and asked these things.

00:29:32   And and it's either people it's it's people who did the interviews and people who know people

00:29:37   who did the interviews and they talked about what they were doing.

00:29:39   And then I would absolutely, absolutely not rule out a scenario where then some people were

00:29:44   asked to apply for the sole fact of get the info.

00:29:48   What is this tactically?

00:29:50   Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:29:51   Because that feels like something like, you know, the things that we know that they do with

00:29:55   their security teams, like this feels like something that they would then start to do.

00:29:58   Like send out phishing expeditions of like what is asked.

00:30:01   Yeah.

00:30:01   Before someone would leave Apple to come and join Tan's team, he would share with them an

00:30:07   internal Apple document that would tell them what the departure security protocols would

00:30:11   be. Right.

00:30:12   So when he says, you've got the job.

00:30:13   Oh, by the way, this is what is going to be asked of you.

00:30:17   Yeah. When you when you tell Apple you're leaving, they're going to give you this document, which

00:30:22   we've spirited out of Apple, this Apple, presumably confidential document that we just took.

00:30:27   And so here's what you need to do in advance to protect yourself from Apple protecting its

00:30:33   intellectual property, which is, again, not great.

00:30:36   To me, this is the smoking gun.

00:30:39   This to me is the is the ever like, I don't know.

00:30:43   There's a few.

00:30:43   This feels like guns laying around.

00:30:45   I know.

00:30:45   But for him from him, because you were mentioning about like, oh, maybe this is like standard

00:30:50   Silicon Valley practice or whatever.

00:30:51   This to me feels like the thing that would suggest that there is a malicious intent for

00:30:56   all of it, where like you're saying to someone, you need to get as much information as possible

00:31:02   before you leave.

00:31:03   And again, if everybody does that, fine.

00:31:06   Then everybody's stealing trade secrets from each other.

00:31:08   And yes, at a certain point, though, someone's going to say, hey, you shouldn't do that.

00:31:12   So I think this goes to the core of one of the issues here.

00:31:16   And I want to be sympathetic because trade secrets, trade secrets are more complicated.

00:31:22   So like in California, you can't there's no such thing as a non-compete.

00:31:25   Yeah.

00:31:26   In California, you can't your employer can't say as part of your employment, you agree not

00:31:31   to work in this industry for five years, which I think is great because non-competes are evil.

00:31:35   And I don't say that lightly.

00:31:37   They're evil.

00:31:37   They're basically saying we don't want to compete for your talent.

00:31:40   We don't want somebody else to pay you for the work you do.

00:31:43   That's good.

00:31:43   So we're going to make it so you can't.

00:31:45   You literally can't work in your chosen profession if you leave here.

00:31:47   You can't leave.

00:31:48   You're trapped.

00:31:48   It's evil.

00:31:49   Pure evil.

00:31:50   Anybody whose company has non-compete, I'm sorry, you're doing wrong.

00:31:54   Rethink your life.

00:31:55   Illegal in California.

00:31:56   Great.

00:31:57   Trade secrets.

00:31:58   So here, for me, one of the conversations that we have to have, and I think that there's

00:32:03   a level in this that I think is absolutely debatable, is Apple would prefer that people

00:32:11   who worked at Apple and became incredibly knowledgeable on the process to build amazing pieces of hardware.

00:32:17   They would prefer those people not work elsewhere against Apple.

00:32:22   Yeah.

00:32:22   Right?

00:32:22   Obviously, they would.

00:32:23   But that's just like a non-compete.

00:32:25   Of course, you'd prefer that your people can't go anywhere and can't do anything.

00:32:31   But people have skills, and they should be allowed to apply those skills elsewhere.

00:32:35   Yep.

00:32:35   So the problem with trade secrets is there's a very weird, hazy line between the skills of

00:32:45   the people working there and the trade secrets that are sort of like intellectual property that

00:32:51   belongs to the company in question.

00:32:54   And I, you know, I am not a lawyer, but the way that I've always read that is people's

00:33:01   innate skill doesn't belong to the company that helped them build the skill.

00:33:06   Yeah.

00:33:06   But the detailed processes, documentation, all of that, blueprints.

00:33:15   Yeah.

00:33:15   If you can't replicate that yourself using your talent and skill, you are stealing trade

00:33:23   secrets.

00:33:23   That's where it goes across.

00:33:25   Yeah.

00:33:25   I think it's pretty simple.

00:33:27   Anything you can write the word confidential on, that's the trade secret part.

00:33:32   Yeah.

00:33:32   So if Tang Tan is hiring brilliant people from Apple, and then they're replicating what they

00:33:37   know at OpenAI.

00:33:38   Because they've built knowledge that's in their brains now.

00:33:40   I think it's okay.

00:33:42   I do too.

00:33:43   And I think that would be one of OpenAI's arguments.

00:33:44   I think that that is okay.

00:33:45   People should be free to apply their trade wherever they want.

00:33:48   However, and this goes to what you said about this being a smoking gun.

00:33:52   If you have built an entire system that is designed to spirit technical documents and information

00:34:02   about secret projects out so that you can take that information.

00:34:07   If you built a system of how to spirit things away before you let Apple in on the fact that

00:34:13   you're leaving, to me, that looks like a conspiracy to steal trade secrets.

00:34:19   Yeah.

00:34:19   That's the theft part.

00:34:20   Like, you're taking something.

00:34:22   Like, what's in your brain?

00:34:24   No one can take that away from you.

00:34:26   But if there's a document that you can download, a piece of paper you could print out, that's

00:34:31   company property that you've taken now.

00:34:33   Like, that's just the fact of it.

00:34:35   Justin in our Discord says, the rule is pretty simple.

00:34:38   And this is someone who's prosecuted trade secrets cases.

00:34:41   Justin says, you show up to your new company with an empty briefcase.

00:34:45   Your knowledge and experience can't be trade secrets.

00:34:47   Yes.

00:34:47   But you can't take the work you did with your company to another company.

00:34:50   This is pretty simple.

00:34:51   And this is where, look, we've only heard one side of this.

00:34:56   Again, I want to be aware.

00:34:58   We have only heard one side of this.

00:34:59   Other than, like, OpenAI saying, well, we don't need trade secrets.

00:35:03   We're just innovators.

00:35:04   And Mark, or what was it?

00:35:06   Sam Altman's like, oh, we're not afraid of Apple.

00:35:10   We don't hate Apple.

00:35:11   We just are doing our own thing, man.

00:35:13   Okay.

00:35:13   But basically, they haven't responded with any content.

00:35:16   It's just Apple's lawsuit here.

00:35:17   But that said, this is really, I think it's really, really damning because it's, it's,

00:35:25   I think it's institutional arrogance.

00:35:29   I think the people involved here decided that as far as they were concerned, they owned the

00:35:34   trade secrets at Apple because they were wronged by Apple because they'd put in the time, whatever

00:35:40   it was, because like, I could even understand some wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

00:35:44   Oh, I happen to have this document from Apple, which would be effective trade secrets, but

00:35:47   it would be kind of like a thing that happened.

00:35:50   This is alleged to be systematic.

00:35:54   This is, and that's why I don't use this phrase lightly.

00:35:57   It's a conspiracy to steal trade secrets.

00:36:01   It's not the, you know, oh, this piece of paper was stuck to the bottom of my shoe when

00:36:07   I walked out the door.

00:36:09   It's, we have a plan to slowly steal everything they've got by exfiltrating it from Apple as

00:36:16   we hire new people.

00:36:17   It's really bad.

00:36:19   I mean, these are, these are incredibly serious allegations, I think.

00:36:22   Let's talk about Chang Liu.

00:36:23   Chang Liu had been exploit, exploiting a bug in Apple's engineering system to continue accessing

00:36:30   files after leaving the company, to which Apple has records of messages sent to a colleague

00:36:37   saying, quote, LOL, I found out I can access the network storage.

00:36:42   This colleague, who this was sent to, Alyssa Peng, then helped Chang obtain confidential information,

00:36:50   who then also left for OpenAI.

00:36:53   Yeah.

00:36:54   So, so this is, this is, this guy's in trouble.

00:36:57   Yeah.

00:36:57   This guy's in big trouble.

00:36:58   Yeah.

00:36:59   Because this is, I mean, this is kind of cybercrime.

00:37:03   Yes.

00:37:04   This is, so, and we have to ask the question, like, how does he have an Apple laptop after

00:37:08   having left the company?

00:37:09   I haven't said, Apple says that Liu did not return his company laptop and has downloaded

00:37:13   one of his, one of his, one of his company laptops or whatever.

00:37:16   And has downloaded over a thousand pages of technical documents detailing the work he completed

00:37:21   at the company to take to OpenAI.

00:37:23   Yeah.

00:37:23   Liu allegedly also conducted, conducted applicant coaching for the information to bring to a

00:37:29   job interview.

00:37:29   And I would say also damning here is, Alyssa Peng, who was an Apple employee after Chang Liu

00:37:35   left, who then later left for OpenAI.

00:37:39   In the interim, and Apple has documentation because these are Apple systems that she was

00:37:45   using.

00:37:45   In the interim, she funneled confidential documents to Chang Liu, according to Apple, alleged, we'll

00:37:54   just say allegedly, but this is a serious allegation as well, because now you've got somebody

00:38:00   who was accessing Apple secret information after they left, not even just emailing it to

00:38:05   themselves, which they also allege while they worked there.

00:38:08   But then after they worked there, continuing to take documents.

00:38:13   And then after that, getting their friend who worked at Apple to take documents.

00:38:19   And then eventually that person gets pulled out.

00:38:22   Like that is pretty serious, serious stuff, serious allegations there.

00:38:28   I'm not surprised that Apple found this out, but I'm surprised that it got to this scale

00:38:33   before they seemed to.

00:38:34   So like if employees were sending confidential files to personal email addresses, which is

00:38:39   something that is alleged in the complaint.

00:38:41   I don't know how they didn't know.

00:38:43   Like, so when I worked at the bank before my life became much better, anything labeled as

00:38:50   confidential would flag if an email, if it was emailed to an external address.

00:38:56   And I know this because I once got a corporate warning because I sent a presentation that I made to my

00:39:04   personal email so I could demo it at a client on my iPad.

00:39:07   I did not uncheck the confidential box.

00:39:11   It was not a confidential document, but it was marked as confidential.

00:39:14   And so it immediately flagged when it went through the system.

00:39:18   And like maybe Apple's systems aren't so draconian, like in a way that these were, although that

00:39:24   would be surprising to me.

00:39:25   Maybe.

00:39:25   Also, these are technical people.

00:39:27   These are computer nerds.

00:39:29   Yeah, they just know the way around it.

00:39:31   Yeah, screenshots maybe or whatever stuff as opposed to the documents themselves.

00:39:35   But it is just surprising to me that this seemed to occur at such a scale before it was

00:39:41   recognized.

00:39:42   Why email it to yourself?

00:39:43   Can't you just put like a thumb drive?

00:39:46   Print it.

00:39:47   Like, yeah, I don't know why.

00:39:49   Look, basically as well, like you said, the technical people.

00:39:52   I also think some of this, like some of these things are technical people who think they

00:39:57   know better.

00:39:57   Like they, and then they end up getting caught out.

00:40:00   There is a massive streak of arrogance running through all of these allegations.

00:40:05   With Cheng Liu, he's like clear in this scenario.

00:40:06   Thought they could get away with it.

00:40:07   Didn't care.

00:40:08   Like, ha, ha, ha, I found this.

00:40:10   This is so funny.

00:40:10   And it's like, so funny.

00:40:12   Also, last thing.

00:40:14   Apple claims that someone at OpenAI was able to trick one of Apple's manufacturing partners

00:40:19   to divulge information about a proprietary metal finishing technique and also approach

00:40:24   the battery manufacturer to attempt to do the same.

00:40:27   Basically saying, Apple said we could do this.

00:40:30   So this is fraud.

00:40:31   Yeah.

00:40:31   This is, this is, this is just fraud.

00:40:34   And in our chat room, people are saying, well, why, why aren't they going after these individuals

00:40:37   for these other crimes?

00:40:38   Like, well, give them time.

00:40:39   I think the purpose of this lawsuit primarily is to, is to get a judge to tell OpenAI it's

00:40:45   on, you know, you know, prepare all your documents, do not throw anything away.

00:40:50   Uh, you know, you, you are, you are going to have to deal with this now.

00:40:54   And then they can proceed from there.

00:40:56   But this allegation, like this allegation is very serious.

00:40:58   This is somebody misrepresenting themselves to a manufacturing partner.

00:41:02   I think also Apple wants to go for the head here.

00:41:05   Apple, Apple believes this goes to the top or close to the top at OpenAI.

00:41:11   Apple believes that OpenAI's policy is steal as much as you can from Apple.

00:41:15   That's what they allege in this document.

00:41:17   And so you start by saying we are suing OpenAI for a systematic, I mean, and they said it at

00:41:23   the intro of the, of the lawsuit for a systematic attempt to steal Apple's trade secrets that covers

00:41:30   all of these bases, including lying to suppliers and claiming that Apple had given them their

00:41:37   okay so that the suppliers gave confidential information out.

00:41:40   This is the, and so you start with the top, which is their allegation here is that this

00:41:45   is a systematic strategy by OpenAI to steal as much knowledge from Apple as they can so that

00:41:52   they can hurry up and get their hardware out faster.

00:41:57   Now, look, there was a piece in the wall street journal about this.

00:42:00   Yesterday that was totally in the bag for OpenAI that was basically like, Apple, it's not fair.

00:42:06   Apple steals stuff all the time.

00:42:07   Haven't you heard of Sherlocking?

00:42:08   Which I could, I had to take an hour to roll my eyes back out of my head after I saw that.

00:42:13   Just what a stooge that Wall Street Journal reporter turned out to be.

00:42:17   Definitely in the bag for OpenAI.

00:42:21   But look, it is an argument that Apple has been wrong-footed by AI, right?

00:42:31   And that they are concerned that AI might challenge the smartphone.

00:42:36   AI devices might make Apple's iPhone product harmed down the road.

00:42:42   And that that is bad for Apple.

00:42:44   And that that is one of the reasons they're reacting here.

00:42:46   And I would say, okay, sure.

00:42:49   However, we also have to say, nobody does it like Apple in terms of hardware.

00:42:55   Nobody's really even that close.

00:42:56   Samsung, I guess.

00:42:57   Like, there's very few.

00:42:59   OpenAI is starting from nothing.

00:43:02   OpenAI, while I would say is mostly should...

00:43:07   One of the problems with OpenAI is they have no focus and no discipline.

00:43:10   I think they have enormous amounts of arrogance and no focus and no discipline.

00:43:13   So, they're focused on what?

00:43:16   Everything.

00:43:16   They got their models over here.

00:43:18   And they're like, no, we're going to do hardware.

00:43:20   Sure, we're going to do hardware, too.

00:43:21   Okay.

00:43:22   But they want a shortcut.

00:43:23   They want a shortcut because building up this level of knowledge and skill to make a product

00:43:29   that could rival Apple, they're looking at it and thinking, well, if we take too long,

00:43:36   Apple's going to have a chance to get up to speed on the new stuff that we're doing in an AI world.

00:43:42   And because they've got the skill and the resources, they'll beat us.

00:43:45   So, we need a shortcut.

00:43:46   And I think that's the allegation here.

00:43:48   Let's not just say this is about Apple being caught flat-footed on AI and being worried about the iPhone.

00:43:53   That's part of the story, no doubt.

00:43:55   But the other part of the story is OpenAI had no hardware skills at all.

00:43:59   And according to this lawsuit, what they decided to do is hire a bunch of Apple people away

00:44:05   and steal the trade secrets from Apple as a shortcut to get them where they wanted to go.

00:44:10   And that's why Apple's attorneys are happy to say this entire thing is the fruit of a poisonous tree.

00:44:20   That they have built the shakiest of foundations for all their hardware because it illegally relies on misappropriated trade secrets.

00:44:28   And again, I'm open to the idea that OpenAI is fully within their right to hire, to give those people better jobs for better pay, to start a new business for them.

00:44:39   Absolutely fine.

00:44:41   But if there's been a decision made, either by the higher-ups or by the people they brought in who feel like they're asking too much, we can't do this, I need my stuff from Apple,

00:44:51   that they've decided our whole thing is going to be, we deserve that stuff.

00:44:56   We're just going to take it from Apple.

00:44:58   It might as well belong to us.

00:45:01   That's the problem.

00:45:02   Because then what they're saying, again, and my argument would be, they did this because they didn't want to do the work that would have taken longer to do it.

00:45:11   They wanted shortcuts.

00:45:12   And the shortcuts were, find out Apple secrets, take their documents, lie to their suppliers when necessary, so that you can ship that product in a year instead of five years.

00:45:24   And from OpenAI, it's going to be very hard to argue this if one of the people named in the case is at a C-suite level.

00:45:32   Like, it becomes, I think, very difficult to be like, oh, we had no idea what he was doing.

00:45:37   It's like, well, this guy is one of your top executives, right?

00:45:40   Like, he is the chief hardware officer.

00:45:43   Chief hardware officer.

00:45:44   Like, and he's, like, running some renegade team inside of the company.

00:45:48   It's like, you know, it's like, that's not great.

00:45:50   It doesn't really hold water, right?

00:45:51   Yes.

00:45:52   It doesn't really hold water.

00:45:53   Oh.

00:45:54   Now, I don't know, I don't know what the, what the result of this is going to be.

00:45:58   Yeah.

00:45:58   I mean, presumably the goal here, number one goal here is excruciating levels of discovery.

00:46:04   Which will be, I think, for OpenAI, like, amazing.

00:46:08   Like, the discovery process, if this goes to jury case, jury trial, getting these documents out of OpenAI will be, I think, fascinating and horrifying.

00:46:19   I mean, the way, I mean, and maybe, again, Apple's going to portray it in the worst light possible.

00:46:24   Yeah.

00:46:24   But Apple's whole thing here is to say, we don't have a lot of visibility into what's been going on.

00:46:31   Yeah.

00:46:31   What we've seen suggests an enormous conspiracy.

00:46:36   And we're filing a lawsuit.

00:46:38   We want to see those records.

00:46:39   We want it proven.

00:46:40   Because we want it proven.

00:46:42   And, like, if this is what we can see from the outside, what do they have on the inside in terms of their strategy to steal these documents?

00:46:50   What are they using these documents for?

00:46:52   What was their plan?

00:46:53   How do they work it out about how they were going to ask different people to bring in different things?

00:46:58   Like, what's the strategy here?

00:47:00   And Apple's saying, we don't even know.

00:47:02   But they're saying, we think this is, like they said, the tip of the iceberg.

00:47:07   That there's an enormous plan here to bootstrap OpenAI's entire hardware development system by stealing Apple's intellectual property.

00:47:15   Which, again, again, we only hear Apple's side of it.

00:47:19   And I think hiring people and giving them more money to do their job is fine.

00:47:23   My thing that's the red flag here, the flashing sirens, is their plan seems to have been step one, hire good people.

00:47:36   Step two, get the good people to steal all of the proprietary documentation they can from Apple.

00:47:43   Step three, profit.

00:47:44   Right?

00:47:45   Like, that seems to be step two.

00:47:46   And step two is your problem.

00:47:47   Step two is your problem.

00:47:49   So, I'm going to read from Mark Gurman here.

00:47:52   Like, what is Apple hoping to gain from this?

00:47:55   Apple is seeking monetary damages in an order requiring OpenAI to haunt the alleged conduct and destroy any proprietary materials.

00:48:03   Legal remedies could take months or years to materialize, but the consequences to the lawsuit itself are likely to be felt more immediately,

00:48:10   with the legal fight potentially putting a strain on recruitment and product development plans.

00:48:15   Okay, so, they want to put the hurt on OpenAI.

00:48:19   They want them to do a lot of documents.

00:48:21   Stop, you know, don't destroy anything.

00:48:23   Prepare all your documents.

00:48:25   We want to see all the details.

00:48:26   But, yeah, like Gurman says, part of what they're doing here is also, I think, creating a chilling effect.

00:48:34   Yeah.

00:48:34   Which is, Apple employees, we're watching you.

00:48:38   And OpenAI, we're watching you.

00:48:40   Like, stop this behavior.

00:48:43   Because I think there's two things here.

00:48:44   There's, is there any remedy that can be done?

00:48:47   Which, you know, in the end, I don't even know what that would be.

00:48:51   I don't even know how you remedy this, beyond penalizing some of the people involved for committing specific criminal acts.

00:48:58   I don't know what that is.

00:49:00   But what you can do is, is create a chilling effect and also essentially send a message to all the people at OpenAI saying,

00:49:10   you got to stop this, because this has been going on for a while, which, to the point of, how did this go on for so long?

00:49:16   The, I think the answer is, you let it go on for a little while, because it's like, look, they're free to leave.

00:49:27   And then you get the sense from somebody, like, actually, this is more than that.

00:49:32   They're asking these questions.

00:49:33   So, at some point, it ticks over into, let's pay attention to this.

00:49:38   But you don't stop it right away, right?

00:49:39   You investigate it, and you see what they're doing, and you gather that information, which allows them to have the information they can use in a lawsuit.

00:49:47   So, I think it went along for a while as like, look, this is just how business works, and we've got to deal with it.

00:49:53   And then it was like, no, this is starting to feel weird.

00:49:55   And then you get some information that says, oh, do you see what they're doing here?

00:50:00   And then you have to make the decision, like, we've got to go to the lawyers.

00:50:02   And then you've got to do a full investigation and gather all that information, and then you file the lawsuit.

00:50:07   So, I think it just took time.

00:50:08   But I think one of the things that they probably hope to get out of this is to send a message to OpenAI that this has to stop immediately.

00:50:13   And that Apple employees who are talking to OpenAI need to be aware of exactly what's happening.

00:50:22   And that Apple, you know, basically, like, Apple is not okay with this, and Apple is watching you.

00:50:29   Which, you know, is, I feel like that's, once you get to this point, that's what you have to do.

00:50:35   Yeah.

00:50:35   And, I mean, we don't know if OpenAI's potential hardware is a threat to Apple.

00:50:44   Like, no one can know that right now.

00:50:47   I think at a time, it felt like it would be more than it, I think, feels now.

00:50:52   I think especially, like, OpenAI had such a weird week last week where they seemed to just, in their new desktop app, devalue standard chat GPT.

00:51:02   And it's like, if you're going to, if you're devaluing standard chat GPT, I don't know what your hardware is for anymore, right?

00:51:08   Like, if you're now...

00:51:09   Arrogance and lack of focus.

00:51:10   Like, you're a code and work tool.

00:51:12   Like, I'm not sure what we're doing now.

00:51:14   But, if there is a scenario where Apple believes that OpenAI could be a threat to them, this also helps that, right?

00:51:22   Like, if you can make them start over again on their hardware, it's not bad.

00:51:26   It's not a bad result.

00:51:27   Right.

00:51:27   Johnny Ive coming in and having a coffee with Sam Altman in San Francisco and, you know, discussing vaguely that they're going to make, you know, what does ATP say?

00:51:38   An egg, an AI egg that sits on your table.

00:51:41   Like, that's one thing.

00:51:45   And I do think AI in general, Apple's most important product by far is the iPhone.

00:51:50   And there's this risk, I think, of AI making...

00:51:54   If AI makes apps irrelevant and totally changes our interaction with technology, the...

00:52:04   I still am very bullish on the idea of the smartphone because you need a screen because screens are helpful.

00:52:09   We have eyes.

00:52:10   You need a thing with a battery that's got a good internet connection.

00:52:14   That's got a powerful processor in it.

00:52:16   All of these things are true.

00:52:17   So that, I think, does Apple in good stead, even if Apple's advantages as a platform owner are reduced by the rise of AI, which is a debatable thing, but it's possible.

00:52:30   Open AI being involved is a threat, I'd say, though, once they hire 200 of your hardware engineers and steal a bunch of your secrets, they're a bigger threat, right?

00:52:47   Yeah.

00:52:47   Because then it's not, they're making a little, you know, gold egg that is going to be a luxury item for Johnny Ive that's nobody going to really use and is not a threat to the smartphone.

00:52:58   It becomes, oh, no, they've just decided they're going to knock off the iPhone with an open AI iPhone that is AI first in an era where that might be something that actually does harm or replace the iPhone.

00:53:11   And that's serious, and they should take it seriously.

00:53:13   But I don't really get the argument, especially that I saw in the Wall Street Journal, that is, oh, Apple's just doing this because they're scared.

00:53:21   Or, I mean, Ben Thompson did a version of this, too, which is like, Apple's doing this because they feel threatened.

00:53:25   It's like, okay, let me rephrase that entirely by the tone of my voice.

00:53:31   Apple's doing this because they feel threatened.

00:53:35   It's not, like, when you're threatened, when you feel that somebody who's got lots of resources is systematically taking your stuff in order to beat you, you fight back.

00:53:48   Yeah, a threat doesn't mean that you've failed.

00:53:51   Like, they are threatening them.

00:53:53   It doesn't mean they're going to win.

00:53:54   It doesn't mean that Apple's going to lose.

00:53:56   But, like, they are being threatened by open AI because they've stolen stuff and they've taken hundreds of people.

00:54:03   What's the counter argument?

00:54:05   Here, what's the counter argument, which is, oh, you know, if Apple were so cool, they'd just let them steal all those secrets because they're so confident that it doesn't matter.

00:54:15   And, like, that is not it.

00:54:18   I'm sorry.

00:54:19   That's not it.

00:54:19   I am willing to believe that a bunch of this stuff is going to fall by the wayside because there is the eternal argument.

00:54:25   We're just hiring smart people and they have the right to change their employers and work on a new project.

00:54:31   And maybe they feel unhappy with how the hardware business was going at Apple.

00:54:34   Maybe they feel unfulfilled.

00:54:35   I think one of the great stories of Apple in the last 15 years is that there's been a bunch of people who've worked at Apple for a long time and made a lot of money and have been making the same iPhones for all this time.

00:54:45   And they're kind of bored and they're kind of bored and they'd like a new challenge.

00:54:47   And Apple can't keep them entertained, some of them.

00:54:50   And the money is and they don't Apple doesn't keep paying them ridiculous amounts of money like Meta and OpenAI will pay them.

00:54:57   So they leave.

00:54:58   And I think that that's true.

00:54:59   And I think if those people want a new challenge and more money, they should be able to do it.

00:55:03   I don't have a problem with that.

00:55:04   But you've got to unpick that from the rest of it, which is the systematic choice to.

00:55:11   I mean, again, like what part are they supposed to let roll off their back?

00:55:15   What part?

00:55:16   Is it the part where they've gone to their suppliers and lied about Apple says it's okay for you to give us this secret information?

00:55:23   Is it when employees are induced to spirit documents and possibly even hardware out of the company in order to show it to the competitor so that the competitor can build the business faster?

00:55:36   Like, at what point are they supposed to say it's okay?

00:55:39   I'm sorry.

00:55:40   Like, I don't deny the fact that this that OpenAI could potentially be a threat.

00:55:45   I would argue, and I'm sure Apple would argue, that they're made much more of a threat by a systematic attempt to steal Apple's intellectual property, right?

00:55:54   Like, there are trade secrets.

00:55:55   That is, that's way more threatening than game on, play fair, take those people and figure out how to build a better widget, right?

00:56:06   Like, that's not, that's not what's happening here.

00:56:09   So, allegedly.

00:56:10   Yeah.

00:56:12   Is this the end of Apple and OpenAI's relationship?

00:56:16   Sure feels like it.

00:56:17   I mean, it kind of felt like it had happened anyway, right?

00:56:21   Because ChatGPT was so devalued in iOS 27.

00:56:25   I wonder why.

00:56:26   Yeah.

00:56:27   It's one of these things where maybe they didn't need it and they also had the opportunity to get rid of it and nobody wanted to keep it.

00:56:33   But they have a contract in place which says they have to keep it.

00:56:35   So, it's labeled as this extension.

00:56:37   You know, actually saying that as well, right?

00:56:41   Like, Mark Gohmann was talking about extensions so much, right?

00:56:45   Right.

00:56:46   Maybe someone at OpenAI told him that we're going to be an extension now.

00:56:49   But what that, what all extensions really meant was, from Apple's perspective, we're getting rid of OpenAI.

00:56:57   And so, we're like, putting them in a box.

00:57:00   As far as I can tell, they have an exclusive with OpenAI for two years.

00:57:04   And the moment that it, it goes off, that extension thing will get populated by other providers.

00:57:09   And although the way Siri AI is implemented, I'm not sure it's necessary.

00:57:17   I don't know what you'd need it, what you'd use it for.

00:57:19   To have anything, like, you can use those third-party providers with other things.

00:57:23   But, I mean, that's okay.

00:57:25   If I could give, if I've got a Claude account and I can say to Siri AI, why don't you use Claude for this?

00:57:31   Why don't you ask Claude about this?

00:57:33   Like, that's fine and all, but it's not, like, super groundbreaking or anything.

00:57:36   It's not that important.

00:57:37   You can just run the app and do it that way.

00:57:39   So, it's not that big a deal.

00:57:40   But that's what I suspect, is that there's a deal.

00:57:43   It's going to expire.

00:57:44   OpenAI will do what it wants, and Apple will no longer use them exclusively.

00:57:50   And they've got their buddies at Google, and who knows who else, where they'll open that up.

00:57:55   And, you know, I don't know.

00:57:58   It was a moment in time when Apple was sort of desperate to have an AI story, and OpenAI stepped up and said,

00:58:05   we will do this.

00:58:05   Here's the deal.

00:58:07   And famously, in May, Mark Gurman wrote that story that was obviously just given to him by OpenAI,

00:58:12   where they said, we're thinking about talking to lawyers about maybe suing Apple, which was very funny.

00:58:18   Because they weren't even, it wasn't even that they were working on a lawsuit.

00:58:22   It was like, we're thinking of, maybe.

00:58:24   We have concepts of a plan.

00:58:26   Because we're unhappy.

00:58:27   Because it was obviously like, we're just unhappy.

00:58:28   They're just, they don't treat us right.

00:58:30   They don't treat us right.

00:58:31   We were there for them, and they don't treat us right.

00:58:32   And now, it's like, well, I can guess what was going on in the back.

00:58:37   Which is that Apple's like, we're not.

00:58:40   It's war against them at this point.

00:58:43   Game on.

00:58:45   What a terrible track record Apple have here, right?

00:58:48   Of like companies that they embed into the operating system eventually becoming mortal enemies.

00:58:53   So we had Google.

00:58:55   I mean, obviously, they're best friends again now.

00:58:57   But Google was an enemy for a long time.

00:58:58   We have Facebook.

00:59:00   Facebook was embedded into the operating system.

00:59:03   Yeah, it was.

00:59:03   They became mortal enemies.

00:59:04   And here's the third mortal enemy.

00:59:06   I'm sure there's more.

00:59:07   I'm sure.

00:59:08   But that is very funny.

00:59:09   Well, somebody at Apple read that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

00:59:12   And they're like, great.

00:59:13   What could go wrong with having our enemies be close?

00:59:15   Let's have them so close.

00:59:17   We give them exclusive access to things in the operating system.

00:59:20   How close can you be?

00:59:22   How, well, yeah, but you described like social media, like that was an area of weakness for Apple.

00:59:27   And so they were like, okay, we've got to use, we've got to go to somebody who's strong here, which they hate.

00:59:32   But, you know, sometimes that happens.

00:59:35   And that's what happened two years ago with them.

00:59:36   It's a real ramification of them having a complete belly flop on AI, right?

00:59:40   That they had to go to open AI two years ago.

00:59:43   And then, you know, maybe if they would have been more at the forefront, less of these people would have left anyway.

00:59:49   Right.

00:59:49   Like, I think that there is an element of people in Silicon Valley that they want to do something exciting.

00:59:54   And this feels new.

00:59:55   Like I said, I think a level of it is boredom.

00:59:59   Like, I mean, seriously, you've made a lot of money at Apple.

01:00:03   Although you see now that the AI people are now making way more money than you are.

01:00:08   Way more, yeah, yeah.

01:00:09   You've, that's what I said about like Alan Dye and stuff too.

01:00:12   It's like you, in this case, you've been working on iPhone.

01:00:16   You know, you did iPhone 6 and 7, 8 and 10, 11 and 12.

01:00:22   Like, it's just new iPhones.

01:00:24   So it's samey.

01:00:25   Even if you're getting challenged, like, and you're at the top, right?

01:00:29   For some people, it's like, this is an industry defining product.

01:00:33   And I get to work on it every year and, you know, and I'm making good money even, you know,

01:00:40   and I'm happy.

01:00:41   And other people are like, this guy who is not as good as me is now getting paid what?

01:00:46   To work at an AI company?

01:00:48   And I've been making the same stupid iPhone for the last, you know, I want to do something

01:00:51   new.

01:00:51   And, and, you know, people are different like that.

01:00:53   So I think that that is part of the effect is, is some of these people.

01:00:57   And, and, you know, I'll, I will say Apple criminally underpays some of their people.

01:01:05   They do.

01:01:07   Yeah.

01:01:07   They do.

01:01:08   They've always done that.

01:01:09   Not that they don't make a lot of money, but in Silicon Valley terms, Apple has not ever

01:01:15   been generous.

01:01:17   Let's put it that way.

01:01:19   Not that they're like super cheap, but that they're not generous.

01:01:23   Like I wouldn't say that Apple has ever been at the top of the pay scale in Silicon Valley.

01:01:27   You, you take a hit in order to stop selling sugar water and come with me and change the

01:01:36   world.

01:01:37   Right.

01:01:37   Like that's part of Apple's brand from a way back is you, you're, you're at Apple, you're

01:01:45   in the big leagues.

01:01:47   And, you know, if you want to go work at XYZ company and make a little more money, go

01:01:51   ahead.

01:01:51   But you're not going to change the world.

01:01:52   How long is that going to last?

01:01:54   And you're not going to be on the cutting edge.

01:01:56   And, um, this is where it bites them is that suddenly they have incredibly deep pocketed people

01:02:02   who are doing interesting things and, uh, maybe giving those people a new challenge.

01:02:08   And that's how you get here.

01:02:09   And again, I have no complaints about those people saying, why wouldn't I go for a new

01:02:16   challenge and more money and work at open AI or IO?

01:02:19   Like, I totally get it.

01:02:20   The, the, the, the bigger question is when you're asked to bring Apple's confidential

01:02:26   documentation with you as a part of the systematic exfiltration of those documents.

01:02:30   That's not so good.

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01:04:20   Rumor roundup time.

01:04:22   Yeehaw.

01:04:23   In his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman lays out the next few iterations of Apple Silicon with

01:04:29   some information of what we can expect from them.

01:04:31   So Mark begins with, I would say, a fun tidbit that Apple Silicon's AI capabilities actually

01:04:39   stem from the work that they did for self-driving capabilities in their canceled car project.

01:04:44   This is the best.

01:04:44   This is the best Mark Gurman content.

01:04:46   This is the best.

01:04:47   This is the best.

01:04:48   This is, and it goes to the fact that Apple is a great reuser of technology.

01:04:52   Apple is so ambitious and yet relatively small for their ambition as a company that they do so much reuse.

01:05:01   Obviously, they reuse their operating system fundamentals across all these different platforms.

01:05:06   And then you hear stories about products that come out of very unlikely places.

01:05:11   I had a story that I can't repeat about where the Mac Studio came from, but like unlikely place.

01:05:16   And then they're like, well, I guess we'll just do a Mac Studio because that was sort of like it didn't,

01:05:23   one thing went in the wrong direction and they're like, well, what do we do?

01:05:26   And they made a Mac Studio.

01:05:27   This is like that.

01:05:29   This is Mark Gurman saying, the reason Apple's been doing so much AI stuff and the reason that they do the neural engine and all of that is mostly because they were working on level five self-driving,

01:05:38   which doesn't exist and may never exist for the Apple car project.

01:05:42   And it's just a fun tidbit of, but again, you've got all these Apple Silicon engineers and you're asking them to build you chips.

01:05:50   And then it's like, nevermind, we're not going to do.

01:05:53   Well, what do we do with this?

01:05:54   And the answer is, well, we're using that in all of our other products too, right?

01:05:58   And it ended up giving them, again, when we have this idea that Apple is so behind in AI,

01:06:04   like Apple's been way ahead in building AI into their chips, actually.

01:06:09   So this is an area, but I love that detail that it's the car, it's Project Titan that led to a lot of this.

01:06:15   It's funny, really, how there were so many years, and I'm sure you could go back and listen to other episodes of Upgrade,

01:06:20   where it's like, what is the neural engine for?

01:06:23   Like, you know, they always would talk about this massive part of their silicon in all their devices,

01:06:29   like in the phones and the iPads.

01:06:31   For machine learning operations.

01:06:32   It's like, why would you need a specific part of the chip to do that?

01:06:37   Like, it was always very confusing to me.

01:06:39   Not that it's necessarily much clearer now, but I at least understand that it can be used for other things.

01:06:45   So Mark reiterates kind of a little bit about what we can expect and then details some stuff going further.

01:06:51   So we're going to see the M6 coming later this year, just the base M6.

01:06:57   The M6 Pro, Max, and Ultra are gone.

01:06:59   They will not exist.

01:07:00   Apple will move directly to the M7 family.

01:07:04   The M7 chip will arrive in the first half of next year, followed by the Pro and Max in the fall, and the M7 Ultra in 2028.

01:07:14   Apple had already been planning for the M7 line to have big leaps in AI performance,

01:07:20   and the result of the work that they did is why they decided to bring the lineup forward.

01:07:25   Mark says that the M7 Ultra, the 2028 chip, is a big deal for them.

01:07:30   It will, quote, bring it closer to the class of dedicated AI accelerators, such as NVIDIA Core's Blackwell.

01:07:37   Which is, I mean, I only know a little bit about this kind of stuff, but that is significant in what can sit on someone's desk.

01:07:46   Like, yeah, Apple is putting their foot to the floor on their ability.

01:07:51   Like, look, they were caught by surprise.

01:07:53   We all know it.

01:07:53   And yet, at WWDC, I got to have an AI experience that included spending time in front of that four Mac Studio node with a terabyte of RAM.

01:08:06   And that was the M3 Ultra, right?

01:08:09   They are leaning into that, right?

01:08:11   Because they're like, okay, you know, they're not, I mean, they are building cloud infrastructure,

01:08:16   and he talks about how they're, you know, these Ultra chips are part of their infrastructure plan as well.

01:08:21   But, like, they see real opportunity, especially when you talk about the cost.

01:08:26   Like, the general perception is all of these AI things, all these AI companies are losing money.

01:08:31   And, like, even if you're paying them $100 a month for your AI tokens, like, you're probably using more than that.

01:08:38   They're probably losing money on you because they're in growth mode now, and they're willing to lose money.

01:08:45   But at some point, there will be a reckoning, and all of those apps you vibe code for $20 are going to become apps you're going to vibe code for $200.

01:08:53   And it changes the dynamic, and I think Apple's pressing an advantage and looking toward the future and saying,

01:08:59   ah, but what if we could run really great models locally on one or two or three or four computers that would cost thousands of dollars,

01:09:09   but then it's all local?

01:09:12   And then for some uses, these models are getting so good, and the chips are getting so good.

01:09:16   For a lot of uses, like, on a Mac, on a well-powered Mac, that you don't even need to go out to the big model most of the time.

01:09:24   Like, that's really interesting, right?

01:09:26   Like, that's, and so they're pushing there.

01:09:28   Whether it's realistic or not, we'll see.

01:09:31   But, you know, they're saying, according to Mark Gurman, like, M7 Ultra is a really serious AI processor.

01:09:40   And they're viewing the high end of the Mac market has been redefined as being for this, basically.

01:09:46   So the M5 Ultra is still on the way, as had previously been reported.

01:09:51   And Mark says they expect that they will be moving their kind of Apple intelligence infrastructure to the M5 from the M2,

01:09:59   but they are looking forward to putting the M7 in its place.

01:10:04   So just to be clear, like, there will, at some point, they will decide to ship, finally, the M5 Mac Studio, including the M5 Ultra.

01:10:13   Yeah.

01:10:13   It will happen at some point.

01:10:15   You know, you can see that they're not super enthused about it, because those are going to be very expensive,

01:10:21   because they have a lot of RAM in them.

01:10:23   But at some point, they will do it, because they're a generation behind now.

01:10:27   Two generations for Ultra, but, you know, that's just how it's working for the Ultra chip.

01:10:32   So it is coming.

01:10:33   We were talking about M7 Ultra.

01:10:35   I just want to be clear, like, M3 Ultra is shipping today.

01:10:38   M5 Ultra is coming.

01:10:39   And then M7 Ultra is the thing beyond that.

01:10:41   But this goes back to what we were speculating last time, which is that Apple pulled the M7 line forward

01:10:46   because they feel like there's a major leap in performance there.

01:10:48   That's why they did it.

01:10:50   Apparently, the M7 Ultra will be able to support up to 1.5 terabytes of RAM, which, I don't know, man.

01:10:58   I was reminded, I did not remember this, that the 2019 Mac Pro could have 1.5 terabytes of RAM in it.

01:11:06   Like, you could spec that.

01:11:07   I did not remember that that was a thing.

01:11:09   So it was the last Intel one.

01:11:11   You could do that.

01:11:12   I guess, I don't know why anyone would have done it then.

01:11:16   For kicks.

01:11:16   For kicks.

01:11:17   Like, it has more of a use now, I think.

01:11:20   And I think it does have more of a use now and more applications than it did then.

01:11:24   With the M7 Ultra, you'll finally be able to hook up four $10,000 Mac Studios and get six terabytes of addressable RAM.

01:11:33   So congratulations.

01:11:34   Imagine what you could do with that.

01:11:36   But Apple aren't stopping here.

01:11:37   So the M8 lineup, also due for 2028, will continue the AI performance push.

01:11:45   And these are planned to be 1.4 nanometer chips that will also deliver efficiency as well as power.

01:11:52   The nanometer thing is interesting to me because I think it's either this year's iPhone or next year's iPhone that will be two nanometers.

01:12:01   I don't know why I just thought it stopped at three.

01:12:03   Like, they got to three and they're like, it cannot be smaller.

01:12:08   They're going to go down into angstroms pretty soon.

01:12:10   They're running out of nanometers.

01:12:11   They're going to go down into angstroms.

01:12:13   I'm not sure if this is a joke or a serious thing.

01:12:18   I don't know that word.

01:12:20   Yes.

01:12:20   Angstroms.

01:12:22   Angstroms is a measure of molecular, atomic and molecular scales.

01:12:27   Okay.

01:12:28   So that's what will come once they start, once they go below one nanometer, right?

01:12:33   Like, it gets pointless to talk about anymore.

01:12:35   So David Chubbs, like, it's marketing.

01:12:37   It is, but also, like, nanometer is marketing.

01:12:40   The problem is that under one nanometer, you're talking about, like, 0.8 nanometers.

01:12:46   Which is just stupid to say.

01:12:47   And, like, so two nanometers is 20 angstroms.

01:12:50   A nanometer is 10 angstroms.

01:12:51   Angstrom is a measure that goes below nanometers.

01:12:55   And so that's where we're headed is angstroms.

01:12:59   Which is, if you took chemistry or physics, chemistry, you know about angstroms.

01:13:05   I didn't.

01:13:05   Yeah, I know.

01:13:06   That's why you thought I was pranking you when I mentioned angstroms.

01:13:10   I really did.

01:13:11   I was like, is this a Star Trek?

01:13:12   Is he doing a Star Trek to me right now?

01:13:14   It's impossible to know sometimes.

01:13:16   Yeah, they're going to, the new chips are going to be measured in Kwatlu's, Mike.

01:13:19   Now, see, I've heard you say that to me before.

01:13:22   Kwatlu's.

01:13:22   So that's how I know.

01:13:23   That's how I know that one is the Star Trek.

01:13:25   Yeah, that's right.

01:13:26   I mean, they're really going for it with chips again.

01:13:29   It's going to be really interesting.

01:13:31   It's their advantage.

01:13:32   That, you know, they've got this M6.

01:13:33   Like, what will the M6 go into?

01:13:35   And then how quickly will it be replaced by the M7?

01:13:37   And I still say, why even do the M6?

01:13:40   But we'll see what they do with it, so.

01:13:42   I think they've already got products designed for the M6, and they're like, you know, an

01:13:47   M6 iPad Pro, an M6 Air, you know, let's just get it out there.

01:13:50   There's no point in, why not turn that over?

01:13:52   There's no point in waiting for those, and then they move on.

01:13:57   You know, but that's my guess, is that they've literally already got designs going for those,

01:14:01   and they might as well ship it, because they're looking out to the M7.

01:14:05   And like, I don't want to wait that long, probably, to ship an M7 after the M5.

01:14:11   Because the M5s are out now, right?

01:14:13   Yeah, yeah.

01:14:14   And if M7 isn't going to come until June, July, whatever, of next year, a year from now, let's

01:14:25   say, and they want to turn over those MacBooks in the fall, maybe, or in the spring, the M7's

01:14:32   not going to be ready.

01:14:32   So they may have just decided, why not?

01:14:34   And so, yeah, we'll see.

01:14:36   Speaking of M5, my laptop's coming this week.

01:14:40   Hey, I thought it would come faster.

01:14:42   I hoped it would, but you can never be sure.

01:14:45   But that would be super great.

01:14:46   I'm very excited to get that computer.

01:14:47   There have also been a variety of reports over the last week from various leakers that the

01:14:54   Pro phones are going to get thicker and heavier this year.

01:14:57   The numbers differ across the models for obvious reasons, right?

01:15:02   But one report suggests that the 18 Pro could be up to 2mm thicker than the 17 Pro, which is

01:15:09   quite significant.

01:15:10   And that the Pro Max could weigh in at 240 grams, which is the weight that the Pro Max was before

01:15:16   they switched to titanium.

01:15:17   So it was like the heaviest that that phone got.

01:15:21   It said that there could be a few reasons for these jumps.

01:15:23   Bigger batteries, a new vapor chamber made from stainless steel.

01:15:28   And my theory is, does this come from, there's also been rumors of big camera improvements.

01:15:34   And I wonder if they need maybe a bit more space in the case for a camera improvement.

01:15:39   So they're like, what else could you throw in here?

01:15:40   Space in the case.

01:15:41   Because I don't really know why you would put a bigger battery in these devices.

01:15:46   Like, I know people always want battery, but do they want it at the expense of a heavier,

01:15:52   thicker phone?

01:15:52   I'm not sure.

01:15:53   Like, I'm not thrilled about the iPhone getting thicker and heavier, personally.

01:15:59   Like, I am a thin and light person.

01:16:01   Like, that's, I like that in my devices, because I also feel that I don't need more battery from

01:16:07   my 17 Pro to the 18 Pro.

01:16:10   Like, I'm happy with that.

01:16:11   So it's going to be interesting.

01:16:13   I mean, we're never going to know exactly why they did it.

01:16:16   But maybe once we get to these devices are showing off, we can piece it together.

01:16:20   But if the 18 Pro was two millimeters thicker than the 17 Pro, that is quite a jump.

01:16:28   It's a lot.

01:16:29   It's a lot.

01:16:30   Like, what is it now?

01:16:31   It's like eight millimeters thick or something like that.

01:16:34   So like, it is significant.

01:16:37   I wonder, it's funny.

01:16:38   I wonder if Apple's finally like, you know what?

01:16:40   People don't care so much about thin.

01:16:41   Oh, well, because of the air?

01:16:43   Yeah.

01:16:44   Like, you guys don't want a thin phone?

01:16:46   Fine.

01:16:46   Fine.

01:16:47   We'll make it thicker.

01:16:47   See if we care.

01:16:49   And maybe they reached the point with the 16 where they're like, okay, we have battery

01:16:54   issues.

01:16:54   We have heat issues.

01:16:55   And we're trying to get this thing to be thinner and lighter.

01:17:01   And people want battery and they don't want it to be hot.

01:17:04   And like, maybe we just need to rethink this and change our priorities a little bit.

01:17:08   And the camera, right?

01:17:09   Like, there is that issue too, which is like, if you're really pushing the camera and you

01:17:12   need space for the camera bump, at that point, like, you might as well take the space.

01:17:17   Yeah.

01:17:18   Like, if a camera bump requires it to be, you know, a certain level of, sorry, iconic

01:17:23   plateau, to have a certain thickness, then why are you even trying to make your phone thinner

01:17:31   everywhere else?

01:17:32   Because all you're going to do is make the prominence of the plateau greater.

01:17:37   And that's why I think the camera might be the reason.

01:17:41   Because it's like, if the camera is really going to be a lot better, if you make the

01:17:45   phone a little bit thicker, you need a bit more space, then go for it.

01:17:48   And I think people will always take that, right?

01:17:51   As a reason.

01:17:52   But you'll never know that that's the reason.

01:17:53   They won't say that, right?

01:17:55   Right.

01:17:55   Like, we made your phone thicker so we could put more camera in it.

01:17:59   Because it's what variable aperture is one of the rumored things.

01:18:02   Well, and keep in mind, like, what's the pro phone for?

01:18:06   Like, they may also feel like the 17 is becoming much more of a mainstream phone.

01:18:13   Yeah.

01:18:14   That regular people are going to spend less money and get and be happy with.

01:18:17   It's got a lot of pro features now and all of that.

01:18:19   And maybe part of it, too, is, like, the pros, they want more.

01:18:22   They want more battery.

01:18:23   They want more camera.

01:18:24   And it's going to be thicker and heavier.

01:18:25   And that's okay.

01:18:26   Because if you don't like it, there's an Air.

01:18:28   There's an 18 coming in the spring, maybe.

01:18:31   But, like, and there's a 17 now.

01:18:33   And, like, I can see the philosophy here, which is not every Apple, not every iPhone must push

01:18:40   on the same dimensions, right?

01:18:43   And so maybe that's the answer is, like, look, if thin and light is what your priority is,

01:18:46   there are other iPhones for you that you could try.

01:18:48   But, like, for this one, where it's about performance and camera, we're going to make it

01:18:54   thick, we're going to make it heavy, but it's going to be awesome.

01:18:58   And this is the thick, heavy, awesome phone that does everything and is basically a supercomputer.

01:19:03   And if you don't want it, there's an Air, there's a non-pro, go to town.

01:19:07   Yep.

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01:20:50   Our thanks to Sentry for their support of this show and Relay.

01:20:54   It is time for some Ask Upgrade questions.

01:20:59   Darren writes in and says,

01:21:02   With all the foldable iPhone leaks showing only two rear cameras, everyone's assuming that

01:21:07   Apple is dropping either the ultrawide or telephoto.

01:21:10   But what if they're not?

01:21:12   What?

01:21:12   If the cover display has a selfie camera, then when the iPhone is unfolded, that camera effectively

01:21:18   faces backwards, giving Apple, given Apple has steadily widened the selfie camera's field

01:21:24   of view over time, could they use it as the ultrawide, leaving the two rear cameras as the

01:21:29   standard and telephoto lens?

01:21:31   Man.

01:21:32   Darren's on some galaxy brain stuff, Jason.

01:21:35   I don't agree with that.

01:21:35   I like the way you think, Darren.

01:21:36   But I like the way you think.

01:21:37   I mean, it's true.

01:21:39   That is two...

01:21:40   It would be an ultrawide, in theory, yes.

01:21:42   That is two rear cameras.

01:21:44   I guess my question is, when they say there are two cameras on the back, is that what they

01:21:48   mean?

01:21:48   No.

01:21:50   That there's a standard on one side and an ultrawide on the other?

01:21:53   Or are there two when it's folded?

01:21:55   I think this phone will have two ultrawide cameras, is what I think will happen.

01:21:59   People have a regular...

01:22:00   Because the selfie camera...

01:22:02   You put them together, you'd be an ultra-mega-wide.

01:22:04   Ultra-mega...

01:22:05   The selfie camera and the ultrawide camera on the back of the phone are doing...

01:22:08   They're needed for different things.

01:22:10   And so I don't...

01:22:13   Because it's like saying the iPhone Air has an ultrawide camera, right?

01:22:18   You've just got to turn the screen around and just not look at it.

01:22:22   Like, I get how it can work, right?

01:22:25   But I don't...

01:22:26   I just...

01:22:27   That seems so inelegant, right?

01:22:28   For them to say, if you want an ultrawide, just open the phone up.

01:22:31   Like, I don't know.

01:22:34   Maybe.

01:22:34   Maybe.

01:22:35   I don't know.

01:22:36   I wonder if...

01:22:37   Also, it might be a thing where, like, the selfie camera is capable of...

01:22:43   I don't know.

01:22:43   Can you do this?

01:22:44   Capable of shooting in both directions.

01:22:45   So, when it's open, it's also the selfie camera?

01:22:50   Like, they only have one selfie hardware?

01:22:53   Does that make any sense?

01:22:54   Right?

01:22:54   So, it shoots out...

01:22:55   When it's closed, it's shooting out the back.

01:22:57   And when it's open, it's shooting out the front.

01:22:58   Like, it's got a mirror or something that turns it around.

01:23:01   Man, I don't know about that.

01:23:02   Maybe, but that's like...

01:23:04   Let's just put it in there.

01:23:05   It's got four cameras.

01:23:07   It's got five cameras.

01:23:08   Are you getting it yet?

01:23:09   It's got all the cameras.

01:23:10   This one bounces off six mirrors, all right?

01:23:12   Everything has camera.

01:23:14   The Touch ID, it's not Touch ID.

01:23:15   It's picture of your finger camera.

01:23:18   Ha.

01:23:18   Yeah.

01:23:19   I don't know, man.

01:23:21   Darren, I like your thinking.

01:23:23   That's all I'll say.

01:23:24   I do.

01:23:24   I'm not sure that it's going to result that way, though.

01:23:27   E.L.E. writes in and says,

01:23:30   Related to the John Prosser situation we were talking about last week,

01:23:33   if a journalist isn't allowed to pay a leaker for information,

01:23:38   what would be the reason for someone to leak?

01:23:40   Now, we've spoken about this in the past,

01:23:42   but I think this is a classic upgrade thing that we can refresh people on.

01:23:46   And I will say, inducement is the issue here.

01:23:49   I think you could say that if somebody gave you great information that led to a great story,

01:23:55   and then you gave them a gift or something,

01:23:57   it would be hard to prove that that was inducement.

01:24:00   It was the thank you.

01:24:02   I don't think the payment is the issue if it's not considered inducement.

01:24:05   So I don't think it's the actual payment.

01:24:07   It is the inducement.

01:24:09   I'm going to do something to make it worth your while to steal things.

01:24:12   So you're doing it for me is the problem.

01:24:15   What's the reason, though?

01:24:18   You're right.

01:24:18   Classic upgrade question.

01:24:19   Ego.

01:24:21   Boredom.

01:24:23   I think a lot of it is ego.

01:24:25   Really exciting.

01:24:26   You know something nobody does.

01:24:27   You can't tell anybody.

01:24:28   But if you tell this guy, it's going to be in print,

01:24:30   and everybody's going to be talking about it,

01:24:32   and you can sit back and go, I did that.

01:24:33   I think that's a lot of it.

01:24:34   Sometimes it's about targets.

01:24:37   We always say on this show, consider the source.

01:24:39   That's part of it, too.

01:24:40   It's like, ah, this Mark Gurman story suggests

01:24:44   that all the designers at Apple are great,

01:24:47   and everybody else is dumb and won't listen to the designers.

01:24:49   I wonder who told him that, right?

01:24:51   Like, some of it is that.

01:24:53   Or there's a thing that's going on that you don't like.

01:24:55   And so you leak it because you wanted to get out there

01:24:57   so that maybe people get riled up and say,

01:24:59   why are they doing this?

01:25:00   This is so dumb.

01:25:01   There are lots of reasons.

01:25:02   But I do think that some of it is just the ego trip

01:25:06   in various forms of, I know a secret.

01:25:08   Nobody else knows it.

01:25:10   I can change the world by saying it to this guy

01:25:12   because then everybody will be talking about it.

01:25:14   And I can lean back and go, that was me.

01:25:16   I did that.

01:25:16   Aha.

01:25:16   I think that it's one of these things where

01:25:20   there are many reasons,

01:25:23   and it isn't money-related most of the time, right?

01:25:26   Like, someone's got an axe to grind, as you say, right?

01:25:29   They want to see their name in lights.

01:25:32   They like the idea of being close to someone in this world

01:25:36   because they think it's exciting.

01:25:37   It's enticing to them in some way.

01:25:41   It doesn't have to, and I'm assuming,

01:25:44   it's probably very rarely about money.

01:25:47   Yeah, extremely rarely.

01:25:49   For what we're talking about, right?

01:25:52   Almost never.

01:25:53   Almost never.

01:25:54   That's why the allegation of what John Prosser

01:25:57   may have done is shocking

01:25:59   because, you know, Ramashadi is saying,

01:26:01   he said he'd pay me to do this,

01:26:03   and that doesn't generally happen.

01:26:05   Mark Gurman is not writing checks to people.

01:26:10   Like, that's not how it works.

01:26:12   No.

01:26:13   No, people want to talk to Mark.

01:26:16   And I should say, most journalists,

01:26:18   their organization's policy is,

01:26:20   you do not pay sources, right?

01:26:22   Like, that's also part of it is you don't pay sources.

01:26:23   And I guess that's because

01:26:25   you don't want to get into the scenario of

01:26:28   when was the money offered, right?

01:26:30   And it calls into question their reliability, right?

01:26:33   They make things up to get paid, right?

01:26:35   That's not going to work.

01:26:36   So it's just not done.

01:26:38   Because I can imagine a scenario

01:26:40   where it's like the bigger the claim,

01:26:41   the more money.

01:26:42   So you kind of just like start to invent things.

01:26:44   So it's not that they don't have motivations.

01:26:46   It's that they're not financial motivations.

01:26:47   They're other motivations.

01:26:49   They're ego and all those other things

01:26:52   that we talked about.

01:26:53   Hank writes in and says,

01:26:55   with all of the positive stories of AI use in coding

01:26:58   and its ability to build software

01:27:00   and find bugs that developers can't,

01:27:02   should our expectations on the quality

01:27:04   and reliability of software increase accordingly?

01:27:09   Here's the thing.

01:27:10   I think this is a real double-edged sword of,

01:27:15   and this is a terrible thing to say,

01:27:17   but it depends.

01:27:17   Because people that are good at development

01:27:23   using these tools

01:27:24   should increase the quality of their output.

01:27:28   The problem is there's going to be way more software

01:27:31   from people who don't know what they're doing

01:27:33   releasing that to the public.

01:27:36   So I would say from,

01:27:39   and I've noticed this in apps that I use,

01:27:41   where I know people are using AI tools

01:27:44   to help them make their apps better,

01:27:45   the apps are better.

01:27:46   But I'm also have had experience with apps

01:27:50   where these apps are bad

01:27:52   and I know where they've come from.

01:27:53   Yeah, they're vibe-coded.

01:27:55   They look like a vibe-coded app.

01:27:57   They act like they've got weird things.

01:27:59   And can they even fix the bugs?

01:28:00   Are they even capable of doing that?

01:28:02   Because they just have to ask their agent

01:28:04   to fix their bugs for them.

01:28:06   Yeah, I have seen some things

01:28:07   that are very obviously vibe-coded

01:28:09   by people who are first-time programmers

01:28:10   and they put them up for sale in the app store.

01:28:12   And maybe it's just me,

01:28:14   but like, what are you doing?

01:28:15   Like, I decided to put Double Ender up,

01:28:18   not for sale, for free.

01:28:20   Yep.

01:28:20   Because it solves a problem I have

01:28:22   that I know other podcast editors have.

01:28:24   And I used to distribute this shortcuts action

01:28:27   that I, or automator action

01:28:28   that I had secretly to friends

01:28:30   because I didn't have the authorization

01:28:31   to distribute the binary that it was based on.

01:28:34   And so I really like the fact

01:28:37   that this one is entirely the product of me

01:28:39   and Claude the albino alligator.

01:28:41   And so we can just put it out there.

01:28:44   And if it helps those podcast editors

01:28:46   sync their files, great.

01:28:47   But like, I'm not going to charge for it.

01:28:49   And I had somebody say,

01:28:51   oh, it did this weird thing.

01:28:52   I'm like, oh no, can I fix it?

01:28:53   And I fixed it.

01:28:54   And that's great.

01:28:55   But like, yeah, my level,

01:28:57   I'm not a developer

01:28:57   and my level of confidence

01:28:59   that I'm going to be able to provide

01:29:00   like ongoing support

01:29:01   for somebody who paid me for this product.

01:29:03   It's like, that's not even why I did it.

01:29:04   And I'm not going to do that.

01:29:06   So my answer to Hank is your answer, Mike,

01:29:08   which is both.

01:29:09   It depends.

01:29:10   Like there are like Overcast

01:29:12   just fixed a bunch of bugs

01:29:14   because Marco was able to point

01:29:16   an AI at his code base

01:29:18   and say, can you find these bugs?

01:29:19   And it did.

01:29:20   And Marco fixed them.

01:29:21   But also for every one of those,

01:29:24   there's probably like eight vibe coded apps

01:29:26   that are going to come across the transom

01:29:28   and they're going to be garbage.

01:29:29   About 800.

01:29:30   Garbage, yeah.

01:29:32   Garbage, if garbage solves a problem.

01:29:35   Great.

01:29:36   I mean, my video app that I'm doing

01:29:41   for our video editing,

01:29:42   I mean, it's kind of garbage.

01:29:45   Yeah.

01:29:45   But it's just for me

01:29:47   and it does the job.

01:29:49   And it's not meant to be more than that.

01:29:51   So I'm fine with that.

01:29:52   That app that I'm building

01:29:53   to extract audio clips

01:29:55   to use in the podcast

01:29:56   is ugly, really.

01:29:59   Like, but it works, by the way.

01:30:01   I have a name for it now.

01:30:02   Soundbite.

01:30:03   But byte with a Y.

01:30:05   It's referenced in the byte shop.

01:30:06   Oh, man.

01:30:07   Pretty good, right?

01:30:07   That's pretty good.

01:30:08   Pretty good, pretty good.

01:30:09   But like even today, right?

01:30:11   So like I was listening to App Stories

01:30:12   and they were talking about Fable 5, right?

01:30:15   And with my Claude plan,

01:30:16   I have some access to it.

01:30:17   It's like, ah, what could it be like, right?

01:30:19   So I point in Fable at this project

01:30:23   and it's like, oh,

01:30:24   here's a bunch of security vulnerabilities.

01:30:25   Yeah.

01:30:26   Like that the original model didn't see.

01:30:28   It's like, I don't care

01:30:29   because I'm never distributing this product.

01:30:31   This is the classic line,

01:30:32   which I'll say,

01:30:33   it's what John Syracuse told me,

01:30:35   which is every time a new model comes out,

01:30:37   just open your code base in it

01:30:39   and say, find bugs.

01:30:40   Yeah.

01:30:40   And then after it finds those bugs

01:30:42   and you fix them,

01:30:42   just tell it again, find bugs

01:30:44   and just keep doing that.

01:30:45   Because a new model,

01:30:46   I did that with Fable.

01:30:47   I was like, hey, Fable,

01:30:48   look at this app

01:30:52   and tell me what the issues are.

01:30:54   And it's like, oh, yeah,

01:30:55   well, this is a case that'll be bad

01:30:57   and this thing could break

01:30:58   and you should probably change this thing.

01:31:00   I'm like, great, let's do that.

01:31:01   Right, but.

01:31:02   It's a funny time.

01:31:04   You know, I just realized

01:31:07   the logo for Double Ender

01:31:08   is this is a Finder reference, right?

01:31:10   It's a,

01:31:11   the logo for Double Ender

01:31:13   is based on the alert dialog box

01:31:17   in classic Mac OS,

01:31:18   which was a face in profile

01:31:22   and then a big exclamation point.

01:31:24   Okay.

01:31:25   And so I wanted to sort of like

01:31:28   reference Susan Care when I did it.

01:31:31   And then,

01:31:34   and I thought like multiple heads,

01:31:36   they're almost like Eastern Island heads,

01:31:38   multiple heads would also be interesting

01:31:40   because it is about multiple voices.

01:31:42   Yeah.

01:31:43   And then my final realization was that

01:31:47   I could modify them

01:31:51   so that they were even less like Susan Care,

01:31:53   but also actually spell D-E for Double Ender.

01:31:59   And that's where we ended up with those guys.

01:32:02   So it's just these blocky face guys.

01:32:03   It reminds me of the colors though,

01:32:04   a very findery.

01:32:05   Yeah.

01:32:06   I love it.

01:32:07   I mean,

01:32:07   I just,

01:32:07   again,

01:32:08   ATP did the whole thing about like icons

01:32:11   and I'm like,

01:32:11   you know what?

01:32:12   I like my stupid

01:32:14   Yeah.

01:32:15   Easter Island statue guys who spell D-E

01:32:18   because I,

01:32:19   one,

01:32:20   I don't care.

01:32:20   Two,

01:32:21   I'm having fun making a reference.

01:32:23   And three,

01:32:23   did I mention that I don't care?

01:32:25   So anyway,

01:32:26   I like it,

01:32:27   but it is ridiculous.

01:32:28   Yeah.

01:32:29   Conformist has an icon too,

01:32:31   but it's my video conforming tool,

01:32:33   but it's just,

01:32:34   it's basically the old,

01:32:35   it's,

01:32:36   it's another one of these guys

01:32:37   and it's just,

01:32:38   it's the old one of that.

01:32:39   So yeah.

01:32:40   Okay.

01:32:40   And Jack wants to know,

01:32:43   has Jason read any nonfiction books

01:32:44   by Tom Holland or Dominic Sandbrook?

01:32:46   I haven't listened to the rest of his history yet,

01:32:48   although both you and Mike keep making a great case for doing so.

01:32:51   but I did read Tom Holland's book Rubicon

01:32:53   on the late Roman Republic a few years ago

01:32:56   and enjoyed it a lot.

01:32:57   I know Tom has written fiction too.

01:32:59   Have you read any of these?

01:33:00   So just before you answer Jason,

01:33:01   I have to say,

01:33:02   Jack,

01:33:02   if you have read Tom Holland's books

01:33:05   and enjoy them,

01:33:06   my word,

01:33:07   man,

01:33:07   why are you not listening to the rest of his history?

01:33:10   Come on,

01:33:11   get it together,

01:33:12   Jack.

01:33:12   By the way,

01:33:13   as a part of the run up to the Odyssey,

01:33:15   not only is the rest of his history doing the Odyssey this week,

01:33:17   but Tom Holland,

01:33:19   the historian on the rest of his history,

01:33:20   got to interview Tom Holland.

01:33:22   So good.

01:33:23   The actor who he introduced as the real Tom Holland

01:33:27   and Tom Holland,

01:33:27   the actor was like,

01:33:28   no,

01:33:28   no,

01:33:28   no,

01:33:29   no,

01:33:29   no,

01:33:29   no.

01:33:29   The other Tom Holland.

01:33:30   It's brilliant.

01:33:31   But Tom Holland,

01:33:33   the historian pointed out that he can't Google himself

01:33:35   because there's no point in doing that,

01:33:37   which is great.

01:33:38   The answer is I have read,

01:33:42   oh,

01:33:43   now I blanked on it.

01:33:46   I read Tom's book,

01:33:47   Dominion,

01:33:49   which is about the spread of Christianity and how it impacted Western civilization in surprising ways.

01:34:01   And this,

01:34:01   this is a thing that he comes back to on the podcast a lot,

01:34:04   which is how there are some,

01:34:07   he,

01:34:08   he,

01:34:08   he points out the entire idea of,

01:34:10   um,

01:34:11   like there,

01:34:12   there are lots of concepts that we have that are fundamentally Christian concepts,

01:34:15   or they're like fundamentally reformation concepts.

01:34:18   And he says the idea of personal,

01:34:21   uh,

01:34:23   personal spiritual choice of choosing whether you believe in God or not,

01:34:27   all of these things are like straight line from the reformation and Martin Luther.

01:34:32   Um,

01:34:33   and then he talks about things that are like things that we would never consider fundamentally Christian that still come from historically from Christian concepts.

01:34:44   Um,

01:34:44   I thought it was a really fascinating book.

01:34:46   However,

01:34:46   I will also say it was extremely long and extremely dense and,

01:34:50   uh,

01:34:51   not for everybody.

01:34:52   So I,

01:34:53   I,

01:34:53   one of the things I love about,

01:34:54   uh,

01:34:55   rest is history is that they dilute it down and just tell big stories,

01:34:58   um,

01:34:59   that are fun because the books are,

01:35:01   the books are intense and dense.

01:35:02   Uh,

01:35:03   and I haven't read any of Dominic stuff,

01:35:04   although,

01:35:05   you know,

01:35:06   that'll probably happen one of these days.

01:35:08   I'll,

01:35:08   I'll read about,

01:35:08   you know,

01:35:09   seventies Britain and be amused.

01:35:10   I want to at some point read some of his kids' books with Sophia.

01:35:14   Like he,

01:35:14   he does.

01:35:14   Oh sure.

01:35:15   Yeah.

01:35:15   Yeah.

01:35:15   They,

01:35:15   they reference those a lot and they sound really fun.

01:35:18   Like in the,

01:35:18   like the Nelson books.

01:35:20   Yeah.

01:35:20   Adventures in time.

01:35:21   They sound like really fun books about history.

01:35:25   Like,

01:35:25   cause whenever,

01:35:26   you know,

01:35:26   whenever either of them have a book out,

01:35:27   they do a series.

01:35:28   Right.

01:35:29   That is about that thing.

01:35:30   Those books are books.

01:35:31   You can see it too.

01:35:33   Like they're the books they do because they're historians.

01:35:35   Yeah.

01:35:36   Especially before they had this money-making podcast of theirs.

01:35:39   They,

01:35:39   they're historians.

01:35:40   So you had the books they do because they're historians.

01:35:42   And then there are the books you do to make money.

01:35:44   And the adventures in time is the books you do to make money.

01:35:47   Can I make a series of children's history books?

01:35:49   And I can use my legitimacy as a historian to get the books.

01:35:54   And then also then make money selling lots of books.

01:35:58   And that's what adventures in time is.

01:35:59   So that's very funny.

01:36:00   Yeah.

01:36:01   They send some like hero of the seas.

01:36:03   There's Nelson,

01:36:04   the Aztecs,

01:36:05   Alexander,

01:36:06   the great Vikings,

01:36:07   the wars,

01:36:09   the covers are fantastic.

01:36:11   Actually,

01:36:11   the,

01:36:11   the penguin marketing.

01:36:13   So at some point I will read these.

01:36:15   Yeah.

01:36:16   If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode of the show,

01:36:21   or you have any feedback or follow up,

01:36:23   or you have a snow talk,

01:36:24   go to upgradefeedback.com.

01:36:26   I'd like to thank our members who support us every week with Upgrade Plus.

01:36:30   You can go to getupgradeplus.com to sign up.

01:36:32   You'll get longer ad-free episodes each and every week.

01:36:36   This week,

01:36:36   I want to talk a little bit about where we are with designing California production.

01:36:40   Okay.

01:36:40   It's been a,

01:36:41   it's been an exciting week,

01:36:42   I would say around these parts.

01:36:44   You can find us on YouTube by searching for the Upgrade Podcast.

01:36:48   I would like to thank our sponsors one last time for the support of this week's episode.

01:36:52   That is FitBod,

01:36:53   ExpressVPN,

01:36:55   and Century.

01:36:55   But most of all,

01:36:57   thank you for listening.

01:36:58   We'll be back next week.

01:36:59   Until then,

01:37:00   say goodbye,

01:37:00   just as well.

01:37:01   Bye, everybody.

01:37:01   Sleep tight.

01:37:02   Don't steal any trade secrets.

01:37:03   Try not to anyway.

01:37:05   Bye.