Upgrade - 141: I Export My Voice

Episode Date: May 15, 2017

With WWDC only three weeks away, Jason and Myke delve into the latest rumors about what might be announced at the conference, and then discuss Apple's billion-dollar initiative to invest in American business--and the potential motives behind it.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 141 today's show is brought to you by encapsular squarespace and fresh books my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i'm good i believe you're coming to us from an undisclosed And I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley. How are you? I'm good. I believe you're coming to us from an undisclosed location today. I can disclose it if you like, but I'm not at my house. That's for sure.

Okay. You can't disclose it. It's just undisclosed to the point in which you disclose it. Well, if I disclosed it, then that would be what we call glenning, which is talking about somebody you know in the style of Glenn Fleischman, who knows everybody and um so i will and say i'm in glenn fleishman's office thank you very much to mr fleishman for providing a mobile studio for upgrade this week yes well this is his usual setup so uh i'm just i'm just speaking to you from the seattle bureau of the incomparable is basically what's happening but as as is tradition, Jason, nobody wants to know about any of this.

They just want to know Snell Talk questions. And today's hashtag Snell Talk question comes from Tyler. Tyler asks, which internet personality that you've never met in person would you most like to hang out with? Yeah, this is a tough one. I have met a lot of people, so that makes it harder. A lot of people who I enjoy on the internet, and then I have met them in life. I had that moment where I went through all the tech people, and I'm like, you know, I met all the tech people. And then I thought, maybe it's somebody like, who's on Twitter and posts things on the internet that I like?

And I thought, oh, like Wil Wheaton. Oh, I met Wil Wheaton. So where does that leave me? Where does that leave me? Uh, and I just decided, is there somebody on Twitter or somewhere that I see their posts? And I think I'd like to,

I'd like to meet them and chat with them for a little while. And this is going to seem totally random, but, um, I, uh, I'm going to say Stephen King because I think he's very interesting as a writer. And I've read his book about writing, and I would love to talk to him about writing a little bit.

And he's a Twitterer these days. He posts his thoughts on Twitter like most humans. And so, yeah, I'm going to say Stephen King because I would like to talk to him about writing. Good answer. Good answer. Because internet personality is very broad. Anybody on the internet is an internet personality. And he has a personality.

And he's an interesting one because he's so welcoming, like in his writing book, on writing, which I recommend highly to anybody out there who is a writer or thinking about being a writer. It is a very, very good book. But in it, it's very much like Uncle Stevie tells you about the secrets and all that. And you get to the end and you're like, oh, I want to talk to Uncle Stevie. And the answer is, no, he is an author of all the bestselling novels and is not available for contact from people anywhere. Like, you cannot send him a letter. You cannot talk to him.

He is at remove. So I would like to, yeah, I'd like to sit down uh have lunch with him talk about writing that'd be awesome that's that that's great question great question thanks tyler if you want to send in a question to open the show just tweet with the hashtag snell talk and we will see it thank you so much to tyler for the suggestion this week and i look forward to reading the suggestions of people in the future you'll see it it, Mike. I won't see it. That's part of the glory that is Snell Talk, is I don't look at the

hashtag Snell Talk. But I do, and I love all of the responses. We're going to make this three for three, Jason. I'm going to mention my time zone widget clock again, K-L-O-K, because in between the last episode and this episode, it received an update, and it now has

a widget design which is more consistent with ios 10 so it worked it was fine do you remember like the widget style kind of changed to like the like the more like the dark backgrounds or the see-through backgrounds well clock has been updated now i wanted to mention it because i love this application and it's been updated and now people people, glad people seem to be, oh, I'm not sure about using this app because it hasn't received an update in a long time. Well, now it has. Great. It's like you made it happen.

I like to think that. I like to think so. My ego will tell me you made this happen, but logically, I'm sure I have nothing to do with it. Jason, you have picked your flight tracking application this is some real long-term follow-up now yeah which one did you land on i oh see i see what you did there that was totally unintentional i'm so proud of myself you have no idea the um i chose flight update pro which is ten dollars and again it's not the best i guess but it's not as good as the old flight track was but

it seems to fit my needs the best and it works and it's not super pretty but it works pretty well um there's another app that is more polished called app in the air which i'm very impressed with and people people can give it a try the challenge there i think is that a lot i feel when i'm using it like i'm kind of using it at their, at their pleasure while they try to upgrade me to their, um, their subscription plan. And for the amount of travel I do, their subscription plan is too much money, more money than I'm willing to spend for a flight utility that I use a couple of times a year, but it is a great, very impressive app. And so if you travel a lot, I think it's probably the one that you should go with, but I'm going to, I'm going to

focus on flight update pro for now and travel with that. And if I have issues with it, then maybe I'll revisit this. But I'm going to give it a go. And then the other thing I mentioned in the Six Colors article I wrote about this is I discounted airline apps early on because the early airline apps were bad. But I must have had some sort of bad experience with them and i just discounted them and a bunch of people when i wrote about this say look at the airline apps for the airlines you use and in fact yes they've gotten better if you're flying on an airline you should get that airlines app because they have they're wired into their flight data

and they can do things like also show you your boarding pass and things that maybe the others can't. And I think it's worth, um, if you're flying on British airways, get the British airways app, and you can have another app too. If you're mixing up all the, um, all the airlines you use, you don't fly on one airline regularly. Having this general purpose app is really great. But if you're on a trip where it's all on one carrier, then having that carrier's app can be very valuable. I have taken nine flights using App in the Air since we last spoke at all about this. Yeah, that's a lot of flights.

And I will say that this is the application for me, and I'm happy I paid the money. It has all of the features that I want. My problem with App in the Air is it has more features than I need and it really wants me to use all of those features. It's not extra for me to pay. It's like just the features that they have of the application

but they're always asking me to use the features and you can do some customization of the interface but one thing that you seem to not be able to remove is the ability to share your flight status with somebody else which is really good like as a great feature to be able to like share the all of your flight information with another person which you can just do that in the application but i don't want to do that um and it's annoying that i can't get rid of it and also they have this like they can do check-in for you and stuff which also sounds awesome i just

don't want them to do it. But they keep wanting me to do those things. But for everything else, honestly, some of the features of this application are better than... What were we using before? Was it FlightTrack? FlightTrack, yeah. The updates and the push notifications and everything, I'm really, really impressed. For me, the mark of a good flight tracking app is that it gets the data before the airport can communicate

it to you. That's how you know you've got a good app. You're getting push notifications before the screens update. That's when I know that you've got something good, and App in the Air does that. But it is expensive. If you do not fly a lot, I mean, don't get it. I think I'm at

the bottom level the people that should buy it you know like i'm i am having an i'm having a lot of i'm traveling a lot this year i'm not necessarily spending more time or making more trips than usual but i'm taking a lot more flights than usual so i'm happy i did this but if i weren't taking the amount of flights that i take which might be kind of in the region of like 25 30 this year um i don't know if i would say that you should go for it i would say to try out jason's app first yeah yeah i i agree and your uh and your airline apps i always used us as well like i always have them also but i like to have the application that just has all of the data in it.

Because sometimes you're switching airlines and stuff like that. Sources have told BuzzFeed's Joan Pakzowski that Amazon's Prime Video app is going to be announced at WWDC this year. Talk about long-term follow-up. Yeah. This will not go away. But there really isn't honestly anything more to this story than what we spoke about last week except for a date right paksowski has no more information yeah no it's just it's just that this is not going to be something that that lingers

it's going to be a wwc announcement which makes sense but with a summer release of the application though so like they'll bring amazon out on stage someone will say hey look at this it's coming soon to the app store on apple tv and then that's done there's more uh more rumors this week for other stuff at wwdc which we're going to get to in a bit but that's one thing so that's something to account for yeah we're starting to fill in our um i was going to say our WWDC bingo or our draft, but to be more decorous, I guess I'll say, we're starting to fill in what we think the agenda of WWDC keynote is going to be. It is worth pointing out at this stage, Jason Snow, that we are two weeks away from the keynote draft. Oh, that's a good point. Two weeks away from the keynote draft and three weeks away from the keynote.

Is that right? That's correct. So I put a note in Todoist two days ago to start picking out the keynote draft stuff. So our draft list is starting to fill in with all these rumors and things like that, which is good. Yeah, start sending in suggestions

for our draft picks, like the sensible stuff, right? The rumors that we're expecting. So we can start getting those. So send this to us over Twitter and we can start filling that out and we can explain also so on the monday of the keynote i will be at the keynote in san jose 10 a.m i'll be there earlier than that but at 10 a.m that's when it will start well did you did the invites go out or are you just assuming invites went out last week oh i totally how did i miss

that well there you go it was low key it was low you know you know how you missed it is that the or are you just assuming? Yeah, invites went out last week. Oh, I totally missed. How did I miss that? Well, there you go. It was low key. It was low. You know how you missed it is that the invites were sent by, I mean, it wasn't personal. I'm sure that there was a batch email to everybody who got invited,

but it wasn't one of those big graphics with a, you know, come see what we're whatever. It was, I got an email from an apple pr person who said hey jason i want to invite you to the keynote which is going to be on this date in this place and you know be here by this time and all of that and that's all it was so nobody took a screenshot of the fancy graphic that's why i didn't see it that's right interesting yeah maybe you got a secret invitation jason it's just you you know no i think know I think everybody got one I don't think it's just well if it's just me and the developers there

then that's fine but anyway afterward we will get together exclusive exclusive between me and the developers and Tim Cook afterward we will get together in the afternoon in San Jose at the Relay FM

compound right? In the afternoon in San Jose at the Relay FM compound. Right? Someone's Airbnb or my hotel room. Or my hotel room. But yeah, one of those. And we will call it though. We will call it Relay FM Global Headquarters for WWDC. That's what we'll call it.

But it may just be somebody's Airbnb. And we'll break it down. So that will be a little bit later than we usually post a podcast but we're going to do a day of it will be as close to an instant reaction as we can do yeah what typically tends to happen is i find jason in the street we grab a sandwich and then go and record yeah it's funny you know after a keynote i am just so excited that i go lay down in the street and you have to pull me out i pick him up i have to i have to usually troll the streets of San Francisco and then pick up Jason.

But this year... San Jose, the streets are wider, they're cleaner. It'll be much easier to spot me. Perfect. Perfect. I'm excited about that. Jason, we didn't talk last week, or we glossed over some of the Mac stuff in the earnings. And after the show, you were frustrated that we didn't touch on the MacBook Pro.

Yeah, well, I just wanted to mention that. In fact, I promised in the show, I frustrated that we didn't touch on the MacBook Pro. Yeah well I just wanted to mention that I in fact I promised in the show I said we'll get back to that well you know we'll bookmark that for later and I guess the bookmark leads to today instead but one of the things that we didn't mention was that Mac average selling price went way up and the and the Mac sales went up And there are different ways to view that in terms of what it means, because, I mean, fundamentally what it means is that Apple sold a lot of MacBook Pros because those MacBook Pros are higher priced

and the average selling price went up and the volume went up. So the MacBook Pro launch has been a success in that sense. Now, that's in a pure sales success sense. And I think the argument would be, what does it mean? And you could take two different paths there or in between, right? But path one is to say, look, there was a lot of pent up demand and people are angry, but people still need to buy a new laptop. And so, of course, they went and bought these laptops anyway, but they're not happy about it.

And that jeopardizes Apple's long-term relationship with its users. That's the one way to view it. The other way to view it is to say Apple sold a lot. They made a lot of money. Apple's happy and people are buying them. And so maybe everybody's frustration with the Mac in general and those laptops in particular was a lot of noise, but not reflective of reality. I think the truth is in between. I think Apple did some lasting damage to some portions of its market with that product and will need to redeem itself with products that make that part of the market feel better about what Apple's doing. But at the same time, I also think we get so focused,

especially those of us who talk about Apple as what we do, we get so focused on the noise of people who are upset that we maybe overemphasize that and miss the larger picture, which is that MacBook Pro launch worked. If you look at the numbers, they sold a lot of MacBook Pros. And you look at the revenue and the average selling price, and you can see it. They sold a lot of laptops. What we can't measure is the mood of the people who bought them and whether they bought them sort of in resignation because they feel trapped by Apple or because they're enthusiastic about the touch bar.

We can't measure their customer sat afterward. Only Tim can do that. So we'll see. But it was an interesting data point that just from the pure numbers standpoint, Apple sold a load of MacBook Pros last quarter. Yeah, I like that you put both arguments ahead. And I agree with basically everything that you said, right? Like that we do have the ability to get caught up in what is essentially perceived wisdom, right?

Like that we would just assume that because people we know that like these things, don't like these things, and maybe they're bad, right? And then kind of if you say something often enough it comes true right like in your mind like if you keep saying something over and over again then you just assume that's the truth so there is more than i'm sure that there are a lot a lot of people that love these computers i know people that don't like them i know people that like them but not as much as they would like to like them and i know people that really like them right like it's a spectrum and i don't know if i can adequately remember if all apple computers are this way right like when they come out or do they like like them did they yeah yeah and and and

you see people i think one of the things and i've mentioned this before but i think one of the things Or do they like like them? MacBook Pro and roll it in there with the Touch Bar models. And it makes it seem like the weak model, like it's sort of a laggard, a behind the curve kind of model. And only as time has gone on, I think, has there been more recognition of the fact that in many ways, it's the new MacBook Air, and it's more expensive, but it's not much heavier, and it's Retina, and it has a lot going for it. I would say that was a marketing mistake on Apple's part, that that product is a pretty great product, and it got lost in the Touch Bar stuff. And maybe they could have chosen a different way to market it that made it not seem like an afterthought. And maybe they could have chosen a different way to market it that made it not seem like an afterthought. Because a lot of people we know, including, I mean, Marco Arment is a good example of this, like really like that laptop. And that's interesting to me.

But it got lost in all the hubbub about the Touch Bar stuff. So, you know, it's funny that it's sort of taken time and perception of some of these products has changed over time. I think perception of the Touch Bar has changed over time where there was more enthusiasm for like, oh, I can't wait to try it. That sounds like an interesting idea. And now there's a lot. Everybody I talk to who uses the Touch Bar regularly is like, yeah, it's interesting. I wish it did more. I hope that there's more in the future where it's, you know, kind of gotten pushed off.

that there's more in the future where it's it's you know kind of gotten pushed off like using it didn't make people convinced it seems to me as much as it made people um hopeful that it could get better in the future which is not great yeah i think irrespective of how good or bad the products actually are i think apple made a lot of mistakes here like just from uh how long it took them to actually put these things into existence right and then kind of how the marketing was. I don't think that, as you say, it was completely clear about what these machines actually were. And, you know, one of the things that frustrates me a lot is like, if you really believe in something, go for it.

Like the existence of the MacBook Escape undermines the Touch Bar. Right. You have basically said that you might not like this, so here's another product. Those things, whilst they're good that you give people choices, sometimes that stuff can frustrate me because it's like either do it or don't do it. Well, that's the problem with messaging, right? It should not have been seen as this kind of dumb fallback for the Touch Bar. It should have been seen as its own thing. Now, I get their problem here,

which is they don't want to call it the Air. They already have a MacBook. And so what do you call it? And they're like, well, we're going to decide that those systems that have Thunderbolt and have the i5 and i7 processors are Pro. So we're going to call it a MacBook Pro. And in the end,

yeah, I think it's a mistake. I think it's a mistake, not just because you shouldn't have two 13 inch laptops that are have the same name that are released at the same time that have totally different feature sets, but that you're, you're making decisions that have implications for both that product and the products above it that you don't want. Like that product's a great product on its own. Let it stand on its own. And not only not be overshadowed by this other product, but also make you question the other product and your commitment to it. It's just not, yeah, they, it's a tough, make no mistake. This was a tough call on their part because I think it was an easy call, they would have made an easy call.

And instead, they had to make this difficult call and try to finesse having him be in the MacBook Pro line. And so maybe all their other options were worse, I don't know. But it does seem like this was a... We can see all the problems with this decision. And you would think maybe in the end end a different decision would have been better. But I don't know what those other options are that they felt that they had. To give it a new name, to release it at a different time, I don't really know. It's a weird one.

The problem is that that would have been called MacBook, but that name had already been taken. Right, right. If the MacBook was the MacBook Air, then this would be the MacBook. Yeah, because there is, you know, it may have been, honestly, there was just no other name for it other than creating a new brand. And that would have been crazy because it would have four brands, right? Like MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, MacBook, and then something else. They could have called it the 13-inch MacBook. They could have.

They could have and said, we've got a 12 and a 13. I think they don't want to take away from the specialness of the MacBook as this super thin, light thing. But it's this, what is this product? I mean, or really, they should have stopped selling the MacBook Air and replaced it with this thing, but hey-ho. But yeah, and this is actually why I kind of like, I don't love a lot of these cutesy names for products,

like the MacBook Adorable and all that. But I actually really like MacBook Escape as a name only because it separates it from the MacBook Pro. It makes it this weird new MacBook that's in between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, which guess what? That's actually what the product is. So, yeah, yeah. It's a tough one. I feel like this would be a great assignment, great debate in a marketing class because there really is a – there are not a lot of great answers here. It's just a question of exactly what do you want to do that has the ramifications you're most comfortable with. There are no great answers. There's just a list of bad answers and you've got to choose the best bad, which I think is what they actually ended up doing.

Maybe. I mean it's hard to see from this perspective because we can see what's bad about it but it is it is possible that if we really sat down with all their other options we would come to the same conclusion that apple did which is this is the best of a bad yeah lot at least they released the product right they could have just not released the product it's not and said touch bar or that thing and there's nothing in between and then everybody would have been screaming about how why is there no macbook air class you know processor kind of product and the answer would be well you know we just decided you can get the touch bar because i tell you this is not what the marketing team wanted to happen they didn't you know they they

would say we'll get rid of the air right but it probably wasn't the marketing team's decision certainly not okay and have you seen the blade runner trailer i have blade runner 2049 what do you think of it uh looks great does right like beautiful as well as in the looks great department look looks looks yeah that i mean it looks great that's what i mean is it looks great. What's the story? I don't know. I like that Denis Villeneuve, who did Arrival, is the director of it because I really liked Arrival. And Harrison Ford is in it. And I think that's interesting because I'm kind of curious about how they deal with the passage of time and what's happened in that world. I should also say, by the way, just as a side note, that I feel like there is a podcast that could be done where John Syracuse and Anthony Johnston just dissect our discussion of Blade Runner. Yeah, I just don't want to be involved in it. And why we were totally wrong. Well, I encourage those two gentlemen to record a podcast about how wrong we were. And then I'll just tack that on the Mike at the movies version of our conversation on the incomparable and which we'll have,

by the way, the mic at the movies version will be the director's cut where you'll hear us discuss the movie further after we were done with the episode. So just get ready for that. Oh, you got listeners. Oh, I,

yeah, I got that. I saved that. Um, but maybe Antony and John would be persuadable to come on uh you know just on their own and record about how terrible we are you should do two appreciate blade runner do the director's cut and then the final well then there'll be the final that that's that's it i'll do the director's cut which will just have my additional material and then when anthony and

john weigh in i'll do the final version of the blade runner commentary because that's the incomparable.com slash mike by the way version of the Blade Runner commentary because that's how I roll. That's at the incomparable.com slash Mike, by the way, that feed. Yes. It's like a dedicated feed that we have where it cuts out all of the Mike at the Movie segments that we do across all the other shows, including some standalones. Me and John Syracuse are

going to do one over the summer as well. Oh, that's good. And including you and Casey talking about Firefly, which is technically not a movie, but we're going to roll it in there because why would we not? Which is going on now. Yeah, people should check it out because I actually had somebody ask the other day, like, which episode of Upgrade had Mike talking about this is Spinal Tap or something like that? And I just said, well, it's Mike of the movies, too. I mean, that's the way if you're like, I remember when Jason and Mike were talking about or Casey and Mike were talking about that thing. If you're like, I remember when Jason and Mike were talking about, or Casey and Mike were talking about that thing, go to TheIncomparable.com slash Mike.

Because that's where they get just the conversation about the movie a month after the episode comes out on Relay. It's just the pure, unadulterated discussion of movies. So people should check that out. But Blade Runner 2049, I'm really excited about it because it has the look which is exactly what i love the most out of blade runner it's a modern action movie right uh the music is very similar which i'm a fan of because i think that fits plus i love ryan gosling he's one of my favorite actors and the story looks like it makes no sense if you watch it but i guess that's the point right like right now you're not supposed to know jared leto better that way yeah so i'm looking forward to that i'll go see that in the cinema i saw guardians of the galaxy oh yeah i loved it

yeah i liked it yeah i really really really enjoyed it very funny and that's why this week's uh this week's incomparable you can you can check it out the one that's already already live 352 i think okay that will be in the show notes as well. I should take a break. Okay. I think we're done with follow-up. I think so. Thanks, John Syracuse, for inventing follow-up.

Yep. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at FreshBooks. Now, the internet has created a bunch of new jobs for people. Like me and Jason. We have our jobs because of the internet, right? Like it has created the ability for somebody to talk into a microphone and put it out there and make money from that or to type on a keyboard and make money from that. The working world is different. And because of that, there are more self-employed people than there's ever been

before. And when you're self-employed, you still need to make money. And the way that you do that typically is by invoicing people. And invoicing people is a really tricky and annoying thing to do sometimes that is unless you use freshbooks because they have created a system with you and me in mind people who work online they have found ways to build their system to make sure that it fits this type of life for example we're all used to seeing notifications in the applications and services that we use. So FreshBooks built that in there. And every time you log in, you will see what's changed of your business and what needs your attention. So it's giving you a real kind of bird's eye view of what's going on with your invoices and your payments and stuff like that, which is awesome.

It's like a little helper that you have right there, like a little assistant. You log in, you get a little assistant. They say, hey, this person's late on their payment. Just so you know. It's awesome. Their invoices are super easy to send. You can create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. I will say we've sent over 1,000 invoices to FreshBooks now in RelayFM's history. We use this, both me and Stephen use this, on an almost daily basis.

FreshBooks is the hub for how we make our money, and I could not be happier with it. It is absolutely awesome. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to listeners of this show. You should go and try it out. If you send invoices to anyone, just go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and try it out right now, that 30-day trial. Then when you sign up, please type in upgrade in the How You Heard About Us section so they will know that you came to them from this show. Thank you so much to FreshBooks for their support of Upgrade and RelayFM. So Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI is reporting that he believes Apple will launch

both a Siri speaker and the 10.5-inch iPad Pro that has been heavily rumored, mostly by Ming-Chi Kuo, at WWDC. What's funny? I like that you pointed out the self-dealing that's happening there, where it's like, that iPad I told you about, now I'll tell you when. I mean, maybe he's got good he's maybe he's got good good uh i mean he gave it chances right he didn't say it's definitely gonna happen he was like 50 50 for the speaker and 70 30 for the ipad pro so it's 100 not 100 but they're increasing odds right like

and i say that because he's been talking about this stuff for a long time. Now, my understanding is that Quo's sources are the supply chain, mostly. So wherever he is getting his stuff from, it's coming from the supply chain, which really is probably one of the best ways to get your information. Well, once they start cranking up the machine and building products, you, you, you know, you can't hide that.

Yeah. Once the machines are booked, right? Like it's like, okay, you can get an idea that something's going on. The other thing though, about Quo's stuff is Quo knows things,

but Quo doesn't always know everything. Right. So like, he may be aware of something that's happening but i have seen him in the past like he's like 60 70 right like yes it was that but actually turned out to be a different thing right it's like do you know what i mean right it's like oh you thought those screens were an ipad turns out they were a macbook but you were right something was coming limited information and then he's trying to guess and when he says 50 50 or or 70 30 i i think some of it is right i mean you product announcement is marketing it's not it's not the product and unless the only way to collapse it so the product marketing is is a product is if every time you announce a product, it's shipping immediately. But that

doesn't happen. Like the Siri speaker and the iPad both potentially could not ship right away. Or one of them could not ship right away. And in fact, my guess is that that's where his, a lot of his uncertainty comes in is that he knows that the Siri speaker thing is being built, or they're planning to build it. it's it's it's not far enough along that he can say with confidence that it will be announced at wwdc i think what he's hedging on is like well they could announce it and then have it shipping later in the summer which is why it's so uh you know it's not super advanced in terms of where it's going to uh you know when where they are in the production process.

Or they could announce it in the fall and have it ready to go. And so he just doesn't know which it is. And with the iPad, I think his confidence level there, because he's been talking about it for a while, is higher. That they're like, they've got this thing ready to go. It's just a matter of announcing it and shipping it. So they could not announce it and hold on it even longer. But his feeling is that they are far enough along in the production process that it's unlikely or it's less likely that they would do that. But, again, he's ballparking all of this because he doesn't know the product launch details.

He only knows sort of like status points of these products and is then trying to guess at what that what that status equates to in terms of an announcement i appreciate the percentages honestly because far too often people will say oh it's definitely happening right because it makes you sound smarter right but it's just like well you know i've i've pretty good sources and my sources are giving me this info so um there's the 70 on the ipad pro is because of leaks from accessory makers and rumblings from the supply chain so that suggests that the manufacturing for this product will begin in q2 with the with the the likelihood of an actual product rollout in june yeah so i mean so you know apple has a big event in june

right so why why would you not mention this product and launch it when you're doing that? Especially since you're going to also talk about all the great features it's going to get with the next version of iOS, right? In theory. We'll come back to that in a moment. Quo also states that the Siri speaker will... And this is obviously an Echo or a Google Home competitor. The speaker will debut alongside an announcement of software development details for Home AI at WWDC. Quote also states that the speaker will include a touch panel,

almost like the Echo Show. So let's look at these products a little bit closer, right? Because I don't think me and you have spent much time actually on this show talking about either of them. So the Siri speaker. This is apple's attempt to put siri inside of a box for you to put in your home right jason why would apple get into this market well the i think i wrote a big piece on macworld about this more than a year ago

and i think the most obvious reason is that Apple's got voice assistant technology. Apple's got a company that is making audio products. And Apple's got a streaming music service. And Apple's got a home technology smart home initiative. Like, add it up. They've got all the tech to build this product and reasons to do it. So it seems like this should be a product that exists. It should be your HomeKit hub.

It should be your interface for Apple Music playback and have really nice speakers that they can say are, you know, they might even say are like brought to you by Beats. They've got lots of reasons. And as an Apple Music user, I look at this and I think, I want that. I want the equivalent of the Amazon Echo that has better speakers and connects to my Apple Music stuff because I've got a lot of it. And so I think it's just kind of a natural. I think Apple also has to look at this market and see their competitors in it, mostly because of Amazon having some success in there. And if I'm, if I'm Apple, I'm sure part of it is saying, oh, turns out there is a market here that we didn't really anticipate. And I would also say, if I'm at Apple, I'd probably say, well, our technology is better than that. We can make a

way better product than Amazon can make because we've got so much more skill in so many of these different areas where Amazon has sort of been behind. And so, you know, and it's another place for Siri to go. It's another place for Siri to stretch out into the home instead of where Siri is now, where it's constrained to your Apple remote on your Apple TV or your phone or your tablet. And it just puts Siri in another place throughout your house. And there's validity in that approach. I mean, as an Echo user, I feel that way absolutely, that I choose to talk to the Echo and not my phone, even though my phone can do a lot of this stuff too, because it works in contexts where talking to my phone doesn't work. And it's more pleasant to do it. So, you know, I think there are lots of reasons for Apple to do it.

and it's more pleasant to do it. So, you know, I think there are lots of reasons for Apple to do it. I'm honestly a little surprised that Apple hasn't already done this, that they were apparently either so skeptical of this category or could not get the product to come together that they were out even sooner. But I think they still have, in the end, I think it's early days for this category and that Apple will be able to bring everything they've got to bear and they make a competitive, interesting product here. Wouldn't you say, though, that the timing of this kind of fits apple's patterns like waiting for

people to kind of work out what the market is and the route is and then they come in and leapfrog people i mean that's the thing that is is typical of them right that they'll they'll wait they'll hold it out see how things go and then barge in and make something that makes everyone go, whoa. No, I think so. We'll see what that product is. I think the longer you wait, the more that you need to impress with the product that you release. So I'm intrigued by this product and think that it needs to impress us because the competitors have raised the bar since two years ago and since a year ago. And so now Apple has to sort of meet and beat a higher bar with a brand new product. It doesn't mean they can't do it.

I'm sure that they feel that they've got something that differentiates in a lot of different ways. There are some challenges there in terms of Amazon having a lot of links to third-party app ecosystems where you can drive things from the internet and connect to various devices. And Apple's got some stuff that they can do there, too. They have familiarity with app stores and with home automation products, obviously. So they can put it – I mean, in the end, it's that, which is there's's a product here there's an apple product here that they could do they've got all the pieces they just have to have a vision and they need to execute on the product and hopefully we'll actually see that in june that would be great i'd love to see what apple's take on this category is you said that apple have all the pieces do you think that they have the software stuff do you think that siri is

in a position that it could just be put inside one of these canisters as it is and it'd be enough uh it's getting there right i mean i would imagine at wwdc they're also going to be talking about the next generation of siri extensions like siri kit yeah exactly right so uh for their operating systems but presumably that would also roll out to a device like this in terms of connecting Siri to different places. And Siri's a key part of Apple's strategy. So if, I guess the way I would put it is Apple has all the pieces

in the sense that they've got an assistant. Now, it doesn't mean that they have to just ship whatever they've got and they're good. It means that that's a, let's take it for granted that they are actively working to improve their products in all these different categories right and i think siri um has some issues but it also has some advantages and including the fact that it works all around the world and most of their competitors don't so I think it's got a lot going on. But, you know, it could always do more.

The SiriKit stuff points the way to it doing more. And, yeah, I guess we'll see. One of the thoughts that I have on this is why they would maybe announce this at WWDC, because I think that they would announce it but wouldn't ship it. And that's because I think that they're going to talk about SiriKit and it's going to be so obvious what they're doing like whatever it is they're saying SiriKit will now be able to do, it'll be so

obvious they may as well show off the hardware along with it. And it doesn't ship and it's not replacing an existing device so they can pre-announce it by months and months and months. Apple do this, like Apple avoid the Osborne effect whenever they replacing an existing device, so they can pre-announce it by months and months and months. Apple do this. Apple avoid the Osborne effect whenever they have an existing product, but if they have a new product in a new category,

they show it off. Look at the Apple Watch. It was shown off six months in advance. I think that they would do the same whenever they do announce this product, so they can say, look, here is this thing. Here is this brand new operating system or brand new set of SDKs,

you know, or APIs that we want you to look at, right? You know, this may become Siri OS or something like that. I think I said this on Connected a couple of weeks ago, that they create this whole new way of thinking about this stuff, and then it's for this product, potentially, right? Or maybe it's just an enhancement of Siri across everywhere, and I'm sure it would be like a, probably a little column A, a little column B. But they'll say, oh, and we're doing this because we have this. And it's shipping in September.

We have iOS 11. We're going to have the new Siri in a can. And, you know, but they don't have to worry about it right now because, I mean, one advancement, one reason they might do it is to stop people buying everybody else's, right? Because Amazon's comes out at the end of June,

Google I.O. this week, and there are lots of rumors that they're going to have version 2 of Home. You know, so kind of WWDC rolls around, and they say, like, you know, here is our product, and they show that they have something, considering their competitors in this realm are about to both ship V2 of their product, and it's going to look like theirs in the sense that it has speakers and a

screen on it. Because I really don't imagine Apple putting something out like this and it doesn't have a screen on it, because Apple has screens on everything. Yeah, that rumor about a touch panel on the device, if you look at what Amazon's doing um i and you and then you look at what phil schiller said about how well you know the screen really has value which you know you could interpret as being their defense of keeping siri on phones and things and i i have a problem with that because i feel like apple needs to do a better job of providing screen-free voice control of Siri. It needs to keep pushing forward in that because I don't love it when,

even when I'm on my phone, I don't love it when it kicks back a thing for me to read instead of just telling me the answer. It really bothers me. But it's now a lot easier to look at that and say, oh, what he's getting at there is that when they do this product, it will have a screen on it. And that's okay. Like we said about the new Amazon Echo product with its screen, its 7-inch touchscreen thing that it's got, is ambient information and being able to call something up and show it to you is not bad.

But the challenge is to not force you to look at the screen every time you interact with the product. And that's my question for this, is that Apple has to work on this because Siri needs to be better at not just kicking you to the screen when it fails. And it needs to fail less, and it needs to use its voice more because that's why I'm talking to it is I want to hear it talk. I don't interact. Maybe other people are not like this. I don't interact with Siri expecting the relationship to be I talk and it shows me things on the screen. I expect it to answer me. In all contexts, I expect it to answer me or almost all contexts.

And I feel like it falls down there a lot. So that's my fear about Apple doing a product like this with a screen is if the screen is there to provide extra information and extra context, great. If it's there to serve as the place things get punted when Siri fails and they've got to give up, then I will be disappointed in that product. So we'll see let's talk about a 10.5 inch ipad pro so if ios 11 follows the ios 9 model of an ipad heavy software release which we are secretly hoping showing off a super sexy amazing ipad would

kind of be the cherry on the cake of it all right is that what you british people say the cherry on the cake um we say the icing on the cake yeah i think cherry on cherry on top of the sundae cherry on top icing on the cake but imagine it's so good they put icing on the cake and then put a cherry on top of it that's what they don't but they dump a sundae on top of the icing and then they put a cherry on top of that and it's just okay got it all right that's pretty awesome. That sounds pretty tasty, right? Clear. So that would make sense, right?

Like in that idea, it's like, okay, so they're showing their increased commitment to the iPad with, look how beautiful this device is. But would you show this beautiful device three months before iOS 11 ships? And if you do, when does this product go on sale, right? Quo is saying June. So then you would show off all the amazingness of iOS 11 for the iPad, which I'm sure it's going to be, right? Come on, please, please, please.

And then you say it's going to look great on our new device, but then the new device runs the old software. Do you think that they would do it that way? Yeah, I think it's okay. I think it's okay yeah um i think it's okay i think the reason is just as they um showed off the multitasking stuff and said well this works on the ipad air 2 right and then in the fall they're they're like and this big ipad pro also right i think they could i think they can get away with it because it's part of the larger

story i think they can get away with it because they've got existing products that take advantage of this. They say, look at all these great features for the iPad Pro. Look at all these things that the iPad Pro already does. Here's what it'll be able to do this fall with iOS 11. The iPad Pro is getting more and more awesome. And you know how awesome it's getting? It's also getting a new iPad Pro that that's also awesome and we'll get even more awesome in the fall right in the fall they could release every an updated version of the big one

right they could indeed um so i think that i think it's all one of a kind i mean i yes ideally would you like to drop that brand new ipad and ios 11 together yeah i, I guess ideally you would. At the same time, you know, if you've got it ready now, why not put it out now? And for developers, that'll be great because they'll be able to get it and start working on iOS 11 betas with the new iPad. If there are new features that will be enabled on that new iPad, I'm assuming it will be more or less the same as the iPad Pro 12.9, right? But, yeah, I mean, so is it ideal? Maybe not. But is it – well, I'll put it another way, too, is it's letting them have two things for – I mean, iOS 11 is going to ship anyway. And that's going to to they're going to be

able to make hay with that so they could launch it then or they could launch it now and they're going to get attention to a certain degree either way i don't think people are going to not buy it in june because they heard about this great feature that they're not going to have until september but it may also be that from pure production standpoint they want the ipads being shipped being built now before they start building all those all those iphones i don't know i honestly i think that this product should have been out by now but there's been issues for whatever reason so they have to push it back but then they don't want to do them all in september

yeah exactly right so if you imagine that then then it would have come out in the spring and the case would have been look at all the awesome features we have in iOS already. And then they would come to WWDC and say, and look, there's more. But having a bigger, broader iPad story to developers at WWDC, it's not a bad thing. So maybe not ideal, but I think they would do it. I don't think they're going to hold on to this product because there are features coming in a future operating system that are going to make it even better i just don't think they're going to do it so putting it on this stage one of the reasons a couple of reasons it makes sense to me um one you are enforcing your like the encouragement for developers to to develop for

this platform right like you're like look how great this product is people love the ipad you should make great ipad apps right i think that that's part of it the other would be um by kind of having having the ipad pro debut at this event bundles it into a bigger event that has more eyes on it which is exactly what they did for the 12.9 they they announced it with an iphone event um it was out of cycle for for when they would release ipads right like six months before we would have expected it and i believe they did it then because they wanted more people to see the product and i think that they'll do that here there's a chance to do it here which is this is not that this is not necessarily the place for ipad hardware wwdc but if you want a lot of people to see it well that's a way to do it so yeah it's a big stage why not why not use it so it's not unusual for apple to show hardware at wwdc it's not uh every

time but it has happened before and in the nine to five mac article which i've put in the show notes they detailed a couple of times that they've done this like in recent times like the retina macbook was unveiled in 2012 and actually went on sale uh the mac pro of course famously was previewed in 2013 so apple does have a history of showing off hardware that's relevant to this audience so as i said right like if you're trying to get people to develop for the ipad showing them this ipad might be a good way to do that. And also, you know, if you are wanting to have people develop for Siri, showing them a Siri speaker, same kind of deal. Yeah, exactly right. The best way I can put it is that hardware is never required at WWDC. And

when people get really excited about new hardware that's being rumored, and they see WWDC on the schedule, they're like, oh, well, that's when they'll announce it see wwdc on the schedule they're like oh well that's when they'll announce it and it's not no it's not required no never required but it's always nice but if you've got it ready that's one thing and if it's something that you can fit into the story you want to tell the developers yeah exactly so fingers crossed we're only oh my god we're just three weeks away three weeks away i know it's hard to believe it's really creeping up on me this week's episode is brought to you by squarespace enter the offer code upgrade at checkout and you'll get 10 of your first purchase

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All right. Two weeks ago, Tim Cook had an interview with Jim Kramer on CNBC. And in that interview, he announced that Apple will be investing a billion dollars into a U.S. advanced manufacturing fund. This is what Tim said. We're really proud to do it. And by doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around, those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up. Also, whilst talking about all of this stuff,

Cook couldn't help but mention his favorite topic. He says, it's $1 billion of our US money, which we've had to borrow to get, but that's another whole topic. He's talking about tax reform because Tim can't help himself, right? If you put Tim in a financial situation, he will complain about tax reform. And then, last week, Apple announced the first recipient of money from its advanced manufacturing fund, and that's Corning. Corning is the company responsible for Gorilla Glass, and Gorilla Glass is what's in all of the phones everywhere, right?

It is the strong glass that doesn't break and doesn't scratch, to a point, of course. Corning are going to receive $200 million of the $1 billion fund. And from Apple's press release, they say that this is part of the company's commitment to foster innovation among american manufacturers talking about apple there and that this investment will support corning's r&d capital equipment needs and state-of-the-art glass processing right for people who don't know the gorilla glass is made in kentucky and the product

exists basically because apple wanted uh glass and and Steve Jobs wanted glass and not plastic on the first iPhone. Yep. And this was a concept technology that they put into a real product, I think, for the first time with the iPhone. And so that is all made in Kentucky. It's one of these examples of a U.S.-sourced part for a product that's in China, but actually has a bunch of pieces that are from the US. Yep. And now Quanning is huge because, you know, Apple helped and, as I say, like all phones, all tablets, you know, so many computers, like so much stuff is used in this glass now because it's that good. Now, I've been digging around for the best that I can out of this, and it doesn't

seem like Apple actually get anything. So the word investment is interesting to me here. Well, yeah. Because it's not an investment in the sense that we know, and I think investment is being used quite generously here. I think it's being used, what strikes me is it's being used in a politics sense. Yes, it's an investment in the country. it's being used in the in a politics sense which is it's an investment in the country we need to make an investment in education we need to invest in our

future and how do we do that we we spend money we pay for things yep and think that it will come back to us in some way that is beneficial but it's more it strikes me now two things so it's so is it maybe more of a metaphorical investment than that they're buying companies or investing in companies yeah or is it that they will get something out of it but it the point is to show that they're laying out cash in the u.s that they're spending a billion dollars in cash in the u.s and i think i think that's exactly right i think it's i think it's they want to be publicly seen as spending a billion dollars on on stuff in the US billion US dollars. And they want to make that part of their long standing sort of like, look how many jobs we create and look how important Apple is, because Apple wants to keep reminding people in the United States, that they are an American company and that they generate a lot of business in the United States. And that just because they their phones in in asia does not mean that they are not generating jobs at home and that's for political reasons to keep the heat off or make people a little less angry when apple does other stuff

and then also yeah i assume that for the 200 million that apple's giving to corning that that corning is doing something for Apple. Yeah. Right? I mean, look, a company walks up to you with $200 million. They don't get any of your company in return. What they do get is something special. Well, it's something like, okay, go build that factory.

Here's $200 million. Go build that factory for our product. Yeah. We're going to tell you what you're spending this on, and you're spending this you know or you know that idea that we spoke about a long time ago that new type of glass we want to make that wraps around people's faces this is what this 200 million dollars is for and and you'll pay us back over time after it's up and running but this will give you the money to go build that huge capital investment that you're building for us i I mean, I think that happens a lot in chip manufacturing, too, where you have, you know, a company will say, and Apple did this famously with a bunch of computer-controlled tools

for building iPhones and things, where they basically told a company, here, build all of them. And that company couldn't build them for anyone else because they were building for Apple, and sometimes Apple does that, where it's it's like here build a factory for us and they're like we can't afford to build a new factory and they're like here's the money go build us the factory there was that sapphire company right who oh yes the famous falling apart the in arizona the the sapphire uh the the artificial sapphire where it was this deal apple i think came to them and told them we want to use this thing build all the stuff they couldn't make it to apple specifications that an apple just moved away yeah and then the company

i think went bankrupt because they couldn't afford the machines that they built and nobody wanted the sapphire because it wasn't good enough so i mean i assume that as you've kind of said what this does is it it puts apple around the table of corning in an enhanced way right it's like we gave you all this money so now we're going to work on this new project together and also at the same time they get to look good in the eyes of washington and really i i mean you look at it right it's like i'm interested to see where the rest of this money goes but a huge percentage of it has gone to corning it's a it's a billion dollars and they've just received two hundred million of it is it corning and i expect that there will be maybe

one or two more of these and then a lot of little ones maybe maybe there'll just be four more of these it could be i just don't know if there are enough companies that in the u.s that apple used so extensively that it could give such huge amounts of money to right that that's one like i can't think of what they are maybe i don't know enough but i've seen some speculation that apple is trying to create um is trying to use this money to create supply chains little baby supply chains in the u.s there's nothing to say that this money actually has to go to other companies either right like they could say that we're spending 500 million of this on our own factory right and and

then we expect that well and i think that's the the also the issue is like the idea is if you put some money in and say okay there's money in this location in Kentucky or in Austin, Texas or wherever, there's money here. If you're trying to build up a supply chain of other companies, just like with car factories and things, if there's money there and opportunity to feed the big factory, other businesses will start to pop up to take advantage of it. And I think that that's one of the, one of the at least political speculations that I've seen is, this is a way to counteract some criticism of Apple building so much stuff in Asia is to say, you know, they've said there's no supply chain in the US, this is a way to say, look, we're investing in the US and trying to get some sort of supply chain starting to develop here, and that involves education. But what's the goal of this?

The end goal of this is not just a blunt criticism of Apple politically, but it's also to get Apple to make its case that they want that corporate tax holiday so that they can bring their cash back from overseas at a lower tax rate. And their argument is, if you bring it back, we'll spend it in America. Because right now what they're doing is borrowing money in the U.S. rather than move their money back and pay taxes on it. It's like, oh, we just built this facility, but we can't run it. We can't afford to run it because of our money. We can't bring it back. Let's bring our money back. Apple have also created a new page on their website.

It's called apple.com slash job hyphen creation. And they're touting 2 million U.S. jobs have been created by Apple and counting. And this is the page opens of this kind of paragraph of text. Apple is one of the biggest job creators in the United States, responsible for 2 million jobs in all 50 states. Last year, we spent over $50 billion of more than 9,000 US suppliers and manufacturers. Since we launched the App Store in 2008, US

developers have earned over $16 billion in App Store sales worldwide and we're just getting started. They have a ton of information on this site, including a quite cool breakdown, state by state, of all the people that they employ and people in the App store ecosystem. So,

you know, these, these 2 million us jobs, then Apple employees, right? Like these are Apple employees plus people who make money because of Apple. Um, they should maybe include me and you in this,

but I don't think that they are. Uh, we are a part of this. You're not a us job. Come on. You're a company. I know it's a company. It is true. Relay is a US job. Come on. You're outsourced. It's a US company. I know. It's true. US company.

It is true. Relay is a US company. Yeah, I export my voice to the United States. I'm an import. I'm an import. I'm surprised they haven't taxed your voice yet. They do. Why are they doing all of this then, right? I think that this job creation page says it maybe even more than the billion dollars is that they are maybe trying

to keep Trump at bay here. President Trump has said in many avenues about keeping things in America, right? Like he's very incensed on keeping things in America production-wise. Are they maybe trying to do this to look favorable there? Maybe are they trying to do it to get a favor in return? In the Cramer interview, Cook spoke about his relationship with Donald Trump. He said, you know, my view on working with any government in the world

is that there are things you will agree upon and things that you will not. I think with each administration in every country of the world, there are things you disagree and things you agree. And you look to find common ground and try to influence the things that you don't. If you don't show up, I think that's the worst scenario, because then you're quiet and this doesn't do your cause any good or your point of view any good. Roughly translated, this says to me, we're given a little to get something back. Yeah, and that we're

engaging with somebody who we disagree with on a lot of issues because if you just abandon the field, you will not be able to play the game and influence policy. And I think that's true. I think also as a business, you can't just make your political views destroy your business because you've spited the people in power. It's a challenge. So he's trying to walk that line of saying, look, this allows us to, if we version of their operating system that can decrypt information on phones. And Apple says no again. Does it help if Apple has a working relationship with the administration and can say, look, we're playing ball with you guys. This is too far. Whereas if they spite them, then they don't't have the relationship they don't get the chance to

make that case i think that's all true i do think that at the end of the day this is apple uh making it's it's uh yes we're a good citizen and also please let us bring our money back into the u.s at a lower tax rate i think that that's just it's part of the game because that's a lot of cash they've got out there outside the u.s and they would like it back and they would like to spend it in the U.S. but they would not they do not like that enough to pay the tax current tax rate on it and that's true of a lot of companies right now so I don't know it's it's this is complicated stuff Apple this is one of those cases where we have to look at the size of Apple as a company and its importance in the world economically and how it is in all these different countries and

has to navigate all of these different issues and this is one of those cases where apple is trying very hard to navigate the american political waters so i think ultimately ultimately this is this is a good thing i think um if it's helping basically it's it's apple putting some money that it has in its insanely large war chest back into helping people and helping other companies which is probably a good thing and if you know we can take cook's comments at face value let's remove the tax thing from this because I'm not actually sure if that's good or bad

from a regular person level I don't care how much tax Apple pays it doesn't affect my life but if they're able to try and get a better relationship with the government so they can more easily ward off these FBI type things, right? That's a good thing in my kind of column of good and bad, right? Yeah, I think it's, I suspect it's more about the money. But so do I. But like, my point on that is like, it's okay, good for you. Like, I really don't

know. This really upsets Tim, but I don't think that it behooves him to keep talking about this so publicly it's like oh oh no you had to borrow like you look you borrowed that money because you wanted to you definitely have a billion dollars on hand in the u.s yeah i will not believe that right like you you borrowed that to make a point i don't know they know it's they they do borrow money in the u.s regularly that's one of the things that they do you can hear it on the analyst calls they bought they borrow it and all companies do this right like whether they have the cash or not there are benefits and it's probably tax related but this is one this is one of the reasons is that they wouldn't have to borrow it if that money was in the u.s's cash

but a lot of it's outside so they just borrow in the u.s it's not a big deal but it is something that they do um i i do think it's uh it's largely about the money. But I think it is also about public perception of Apple. And all those stories. I think it's about the stories about the Chinese factories and the conditions of the factories and all of that, because that not only does that reflect negatively on Apple, in the in the sense of the bad conditions there that that get reported every now and then. But I think it also reflects negatively on Apple, because it reminds everybody that Apple is making things in China. And when you've got people in America who are upset that jobs are leaving the United States, then it's a reminder that Apple is one of those companies that's doing that. Now, of course, I would say, obviously, like Apple has so many

people that they employ in the United States building these products making these products designing these products but that's so it's pr right i mean at the end of the day it is pr for a few reasons it's to make customers feel better about apple it's to make politicians feel better about apple and it's about apple being able to be seen as an upstanding citizen so when they say like just like when tim cook talks about how much tax they pay they say you know we're one of the biggest taxpayers in the United States or the biggest taxpayer in the United States. When they're being bashed for hiding money in Ireland and keeping money overseas when they could bring it home and pay taxes, it allows them to have a counter to that. So it is a marketing and PR kind of front for them in terms of political and consumer marketing.

That's just – yeah. And that's what they're – that's the game they're playing because they really, really, really want to repatriate their money at a lower tax rate, which is a game that the current administration – I mean, this is the thing. It's a game the current administration, I think, probably wants to play. probably wants to play uh but they're they're um and honestly this is this is the sort of thing that allows the current administration to say see see the progress we're making because apple has announced this one billion dollar fund and that's part of the game too politically i'm gonna say a thing oh i'm gonna say a thing when say this thing, don't take it at face value. Do you have an idea of what I'm going to say here about this whole thing? I cannot see this happening under Steve Jobs.

All of this, I just don't see it. I'm not saying that it's bad or worse. I'm just saying, like, bad or worse i'm just saying like looking at apple doing something like this i just cannot see steve doing this well i i think the look at how altruistic we are thing is more a tim cook thing than a steve jobs thing yeah i mean i've said in many many places and i'll say it here again apple is a better company like as what a company should do and be under tim from charitable to just playing the company game which it should it's better under him the changes they made like as soon as steve was gone in terms of uh corporate giving and things

like that right where i think steve either didn't care or he was just like no let people give on their own we don't care right and and he didn't care so much about necessarily being a good corporate citizen i think that that's true for whatever distractions right yeah i i don't know the reason you know psychologically why he he had that attitude but it seems to me like he had that attitude in a way that tim cook doesn't he wants to be seen as being an apple being seen as being a positive force in the world in a lot of different ways i will say that there was a pragmatic streak in steve and so when you say i don't know if this would have happened with Steve around, I will say that some of this in terms of the politics and trying to get the money back, I could see Steve playing games about that stuff.

Because I think that's the kind of stuff that as a pragmatist, he would have realized we need to do this politically. In fact, it might not have been cloaked in we're making the world a better place as much as it is. I think that's kind of more what I mean is that it would have been a letter on Apple.com explaining everything and him kind of saying, screw you, we're doing it this way. Thoughts on taxes. Yeah. As opposed to these games that Tim plays. And he plays the games that a big CEO will play. It feels like it's a lot more,

I can't think of a better phrase and this makes it sound worse, but like a lot more cloak and dagger-y. Like it's like, we're doing this one thing, but we're hiding it under another thing. Like this job creation page, right? It's all like saying a thing, but really you're doing this other thing.

And again, it's like, this is, I'm not attempting to criticize tim cook because he is doing what he should be doing this is what the ceo of the largest company on the planet should be doing you should play the game this way because this is the way you play if you want to get what you want right he would probably prefer to play a different game but this is the game yeah i honestly the um that how that job creation page and to a certain extent the environmental page too um but the job creation page especially i roll my eyes at it a bit because i feel like it's

greenwashing the the the idea that you are you are the statistics that they are including in that they should not include in that, or you plant a forest in order to, that's going to absorb CO2 and put out oxygen and makes everybody happy. And everybody's like, wow, look, giant oil company cares about the environment, but they spent a million dollars on that. And meanwhile, they're spending billions and billions of dollars on all of this other things. And it's a drop in a bucket to them. And the reason they're doing it is not to change the world, but to tell the story. They pay for the program so that they can do an ad that shows you how great they are while in order to take your

eyes off of this other thing that you might not like that they're doing. That's greenwashing. It's using these heartwarming stories as a big corporation to sort of move your eyes away. And I always thought that about the jobs page that it was initially like, no, no, no, don't look at the Chinese factories. Look over here at the happy app developers and the Apple store employees. That's what we want you to focus on. And now you've got that added political element. And you're absolutely right.

They are a huge company. This is the way the game is played. All I think as people who use their products, we have two things. One, we want the products to be good. And two, we want to not feel bad about the company we buy the products from. And it's a complicated feeling. And everybody's got personal relationships with different companies. People will do personal boycotts of companies that they don't like because they heard their CEO said a thing and it's bad.

And that's fair. You can do that. Although, if you take that to an extreme you will run out of products to use i will tell you you will run out of products if everybody has to vote the same way you do and believe the same religion that you do and all of those things you will run out of products because every don't don't try and look at how your food is made every company contains masses everybody contains people with lots of different philosophies. I think as a CEO of a big company like Apple, Tim Cook is trying to navigate and say, look, we've got some principles that we follow. But you could very easily point to like China and say, Google doesn't want to participate in China to a large degree because of all the censorship of information. And Apple will never worry about that because Apple makes too much money in China.

And that's a place where Apple has decided, as Tim Cook said, well, we'll disagree, but you still have to work with them. And I think that's always a challenge because what you don't want to be perceived as is a company that is evil and is working with evil people on evil things. But you also, as a corporate executive, you need to not ignore big markets where your company can grow and have profit. And so it's a tough one. It's a really tough one. And I think Tim Cook is trying very hard to navigate it and doing a pretty good job. But I will say that by talking about your corporate principles, you do open yourself up to criticism for not living up to them. And if you act as if you don't have any corporate principles, people will complain, but they're not going to call you on hypocrisy. And that's the dangerous

game that you play when you walk down this path. But that's what it's Apple, it feels very Apple-y to do this. So I feel like it's, you know, Tim Cook is not changing Apple into something else. I think by having these beliefs and getting them out there, it sort of fits with their brand. It's a tough job. I wouldn't want it. No. And as I say, I think he does a great job. I just think it's different. Yeah, certainly. I think there's lots of stuff Steve just didn't care about i think steve jobs never wanted to be the ceo of the biggest

company i think in fact i'll go further i think if steve had had not had a recurrence of his cancer i think that it would have only been a matter of a few years if if it wasn't already happening, that Tim would be de facto CEO in the sense, perhaps just remaining COO. But I suspect at some point he might have even become CEO and Steve would have been, as he was right at the end of his life, the chairman of the board and basically like working with Johnny Ive on products. Because ultimately, Steve Jobs was a product guy. He's a product guy. He never wanted to be the CEO of the largest market cap company in the world. Not his thing. Like corporate stuff, totally not his thing.

So at some point, if he had lived, I think push would have come to shove and he'd be like, I don't want this crap, Tim. You do it. Yeah, Tim probably would have become CEO and then Jobs, they would have created like CPO or something for him. CEO and then Jobs, they would have created like CPO or something for him. Well, he would have been chairman of the board and chief creative officer or product officer or something

working with Johnny on product strategy. You're probably right, Jason. I think you're right because you could see it anyway, right? That as time went on, illness or no illness, Cook was doing more than a coo does sure i mean he was he was doing the he was doing all the jobs of a ceo that steve jobs wasn't

interested in right i think that's probably accurate which is why he was a logical person to step in on on leaf of absence stuff it was why he was always on the conference calls ready yeah i mean he did all the all those financial calls that tim tim is on tim was always on those calls like it was rare when steve would appear on the financial analyst calls tim would appear on them and he still appears as ceo because that's part of the job he was always doing that's honestly right jobs was not a ceo like what we think of as a ceo now has been molded by Steve Jobs. There was a time when he was the CEO in the turnaround because he needed to be, because he had a vision for what the company was. But once he got the company up and running, you know, and it started to get big, big companies are different from little companies that are about to go out of business if you don't save them.

They do require sort of different management. And yeah, in the end, would Steve Jobs, would that not have been a waste of his time? I'm sure he felt it was already a waste of his time, which is probably why Tim Cook did all that, you know, all that work, because Steve didn't want to do it. I don't think that the CEO of a company historically has been that closely connected to the creation of the product. Like, I don't think that historically a CEO has been that closely connected to the creation of the products like

i don't think that historically well a ceo has been your company spokesperson you had company spokespeople if you're small and you're a startup you are right and and that's when steve came back to apple that's what he was but you're right in the long run apple was becoming something very different and if we take steve's illness and death out of the equation and try to imagine like, what would a person like Steve Jobs do when Apple changed and grew? I think he would gravitate toward the areas that were, that were him at his best as the chief spokesman, as the figurehead and as the product guiding star, right? And not all this other, all this other junk that Tim do this, Tim, tim come on help me out here tim so i think that's what happened and uh and it would have continued if steve had lived i think it would

have continued down that path yeah just being an observer of apple in 2017 is very different you look and think of things totally different you didn't do before like even back from when i started right in 2010 looking at this stuff seriously and and as an amateur here's the way to here's the way to think of it 20 years ago steve came back 10 years ago the iphone came out yep so even apple of 10 years ago was not anything like it is now. It was a very successful music company at that point, really. And 20 years ago, it was a company that was falling apart

and its death rose and needed to be completely rebooted. So today's Apple is very different than even 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago when Steve came back. So there you go. It's a very different world. We talk about politics on the

show now we yeah that went no direction i wasn't expecting but i thought it was interesting i just you know whenever i see these things i just can't help myself and and i really don't mean it as a criticism when i say like what was diva done in the way that like most people do when they invoke that phrase no it's just an observation that that it seems like this would be a different person would have a different take on this kind of thing and it's as i say and try to really underscore by invoking that phrase i don't mean and don't even think that tim is doing it wrong or like that that different is bad because honestly i think so many things about this company are so much better under him.

A lot of the political stance that they take are done with, with I think a lot more grace and then ultimately more impact. So, yeah, but, but it's, it's just, I think it's interesting to just see the difference between the company between now and then.

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you can send us your questions with hashtag AskUpgrade for us to talk about at the end of the show. It could be what you want our thoughts about things. They can be technical support at times. We will do everything and everything that we can,

especially purchasing decisions, to help answer or ask a grade. Vic has written to say, regarding stickers, does Mike put them on his luggage? I can't believe I didn't mention this. I don't cover my luggage in stickers, but I do put stickers on my luggage. And everyone should do this, especially with luggage, because it's so hard to find your bag.

I put stickers on my luggage, and I think I came out very clearly as being relatively anti-sticker last time. I put stickers on my luggage. When I got my Away suitcase, not a this week uh the the first thing i did was put stickers on them i have a an incomparable zeppelin on the front and on the bottom hiding lurking is skeletor and that way when it comes off the the baggage claim even if there's a bunch of away suitcases which there probably will be who are we kidding i will be able to find mine because it's got my stickers on them and it could only be me so yeah put put identifying marks on your luggage for pete's sake you gotta do that you don't want somebody else taking your bag in my away case is black and i forgot to put a sticker on it on my first trip

it was a nightmare uh also your away case is green it's a very very very dark green yeah it looks black though right i know no we just bought another one and and lauren was like why didn't you get the green and i said i said it's like black it's black and she says oh like the one we've got and i said no this one is blue can you tell though jason i can't tell you can i can so we got a red one instead so yeah i uh ended up putting a big pineapple pepperoni sticker yeah there we go because we had those made stickers gotta put them on your yeah or something right like Because we had those made recently. Stickers. Got to put them on your, yeah. Or something, right? Like we had a bag that we had. Or tie a ribbon around it.

We had a little cat collar that we got. Actually, when our dog, our first dog was a puppy, she came with this little cat collar, a little pink cat collar. And we just tied that on there. And, well, she was so little, the dog collars didn't fit her. So they had a little cat collar. And so that stayed on that. I think it's still on that suitcase. So you can see there's this little pink thing hanging down and you're like aha that's ours

so something identifying characteristic on your generic bag please stickers are great though perfect this is a good question here from adam i'll shortly be giving my first conference talk any tips oh man yep big deal Adam. This is a huge deal. So I've only done like one serious conference talk, which was at Release Notes a couple of years ago, which is a great conference. I'm looking forward to attending again later on this year. My advice basically is rehearse past the point that you think you need to.

So rehearse your talk to the point where you feel like you know it all and then keep doing it um and also this uh was not advice that i knew until i was told to do it and then forced to do it is to rehearse your talk in front of one person in a room and film yourself doing it Because this adds two times the pressure, because you will definitely... It's way harder to talk in front of one person when that one person is just looking at you, right? The only person in the room. I find it harder anyway.

And the filming of yourself means that your mistakes will be captured forever, and you can go back and watch it cringingly. I rehearsed my talk in front of gray and it's one of the hardest things i've ever done in my entire life because he just sat there stone face watching me so uh i wouldn't necessarily recommend that but do it in front of uh do your talk in front of one person and film yourself all right no greg got it got it yeah and i would uh i would throw in those are those that's great advice i would uh recommend uh in terms of building the presentation um think about i'd say i'd say from the start you know think about an

outline i would say in terms of building slides if you're going to do slides just keep in mind keep the words on the slides to a minimum because there's nothing worse than a presentation where you read you read slide bullet points don't do it don't do it will be reading instead of listening to you exactly so if you if you must use slides try to use images try to use single words try to use short bits of punctuation don't put up big bullet points if you can help it because it's bad on two levels, because of your audience paying attention to the bullet points and not listening to you and because you read your bullet points and that's no good.

If you use the presenter's notes and you can do that, there are great, like you can use an iPad or a laptop or even a phone to do your presentation and leave yourself presenter's notes in Keynote or PowerPoint or wherever. I find that valuable. Sometimes I will write what I want to say word for word. Other times I will just bullet point myself, and then I can read from my bullet points and not sound scripted, which is even better if you can do that,

especially if you're somebody who sounds really scripted when you read a sentence. When it starts reading like this, because you are reading the sentence, right, maybe go to bullet points so that you have to phrase them naturally but don't put them on the slides please i beg you don't do it that's a a major uh no good kind of thing and the other thing i throw in is if you can rehearse or even just plug in and stand there in the place where you're going to give the presentation in advance, like a tech rehearsal. Do that because you will find mistakes. You will find that they've got your setup wrong,

and you can get them to fix it if it's a couple hours before instead of five minutes before. And it gets you comfortable with the room. You realize how you're entering and where you're standing, and it won't be a surprise when you get up there to actually give the talk in front of a full room because that's not a time you want to be surprised. So that's my advice. Okay, I have more now. From a technical perspective, have multiple versions of your presentation. Have the keynote file or the PowerPoint that you want to give,

but then also have a version where everything is a PDF. Because the computer that you're operating on will probably not be your own, and they may not have the fonts that you need. So if you use special fonts, include those files, like, you know, everything you can put on a thumb drive. Let's follow that up by saying if you've got multiple devices with you, put a copy of your presentation on all of them. Yes. And on a thumb drive that you bring with you. Dropbox and on iCloud.

Yes. Everything, everywhere, all the time. Everywhere. And then you'll be safe because we have all had that. The one thing you don't want to be worrying about is where it is. We have a PC here with no fonts. And yeah. Oh, well, we don't have your adapter for your MacBook or your iPad.

Exactly. Yeah. Everywhere. Eli asked, do you think that at some point apple could merge the mini and pro lines and making it a configurable product across the board from entry level all the way up to pro no i don't the price would be strange right i think that's a tech well there's a technical reason too because you've got to build this base system and the pro features if you build all the pro features in the speed of the of the the memory and the bus and all that you're using reference probably reference stuff from intel it's like you could build a product that could

scale but i feel like it would be way too expensive for the low end at that yeah because you have to build in all the things even if it's just the enclosure like you have to build in the ventilation and all that for all of this stuff that the the low end's not gonna not gonna use so i don't think there's a one size fits all product here i think they can make a tower with some range that was sort of like mid-range to high-end mac pro like they used to do range to high but but a mac mini no in fact it's funny that this came up because i was talking to uh to russell from the material podcast and who's going to be in uh in mountain view for google io this week i'm hoping to have him on download in fact um and he bought an intel nook those little uh it's like a like a

apple tv sized pc it's like a minimum viable computer yeah exactly right and um and he bought it with windows on it although it turns out turns out you can can run, that can be a hackintosh. You can actually run OS X on it, which is just crazy. And I was thinking, you know, I wonder if that is going to be the next Mac Mini. I wonder if Apple would do that, which is just like, you know what? Because Apple likes to be cool and likes to be cutting edge. And they could probably take that reference system from Intel of that little teeny tiny thing and say, here it is. It's SSD and a little board and an i5 processor and it's the new Mac Mini and it's the size

of the old Apple TV that's even shorter. It's super tiny. This is a Mac. You can plug it in, run it. Good luck. I think that might be more of a future direction for the Mac Mini. It's even more minimal. Here it is. It's a Mac you can stick in your pocket if you want to. Make it cool again exactly

right because that that would be that would be great because i looked at the intel nook thing and i was like wow i i almost want to buy one of those and turn it into a mac mini just because it would be so cool to do that so yeah i'm i'm intrigued that would be fun to even just take what they've built put a new case around it you know put it in a new box and sell it be great steven asked i have amazon prime but stop watching video after a show went from free to paid what is your draw to amazon prime or makes it different from netflix stopped after a show went from free to paid amazon has two services they have prime video which is free and then they've got things that they sell so they're both netflix and itunes at the same time so this is no different so the way it's phrased

it's like oh they really they really screwed with me because it was free and then they charge tried to charge me for it it's like this is no different than amazon or than netflix dropping shows your it went off the free service so think of prime video as separate from amazon video and i know that's confusing and they like to put them together but it's no different than netflix netflix drop shows off hulu drop shows off everybody out there drops shows from time to time as their contracts expire okay um for me though like i don't care about the service that i'm using i care about the content that's on it right totally so like i don't care if it's amazon or netflix like both of the apps are different they're like you know adina goes crazy for the ipad version of uh the prime because it has the pause button right in the

middle you just tap the middle of the screen she loves that like it drives her crazy every other application like the netflix app or the itunes app or whatever she hates it because you have to like tap it and then tap at the bottom where Amazon built their own control. All you do is you just tap in the middle of the screen at any point and it pauses. She loves it. I don't know if anybody knows that that's the thing that it has, but it's brilliant. It is really, really cool.

It's the way that all video pausing should work. Anywho, but on the most case, it's not important. It's about where the content is. So right now we're re-watching seinfeld the only place that i can get that is on amazon prime you can't even buy it in the uk like itunes doesn't have seinfeld like up until it went on amazon prime like uh earlier this year i think you couldn't get it anywhere at all streaming or buying it like it was dvd or nothing so we're watching sign photo we watch parks and rec on it recently like there's just stuff on these services that

isn't anywhere else so i sign up because it's where the content is you were talking about it's on download right about like the cable the cord cutting stuff right like it's just wherever the services are and you end up paying for all of them it's not about the service itself right you're you're following the content and the services hate to hear that because again we live in a world of this of disintermediation where everybody every company wants to add unique value and like you have to buy it from them but in reality it does come down to the content like netflix if everything if you love love love love netflix and then one day all the content that was on

Netflix was on Amazon Prime, and there was only garbage on Netflix, you would not keep watching Netflix because it's Netflix, right? You would be like, oh, it's only garbage here. Wait, all the shows that I like are on Amazon Prime? And you would switch. You would switch. There's no brand loyalty to Netflix beyond the content that they provide. You're loyal because they provide good content, good enough to keep it, but that would go away if the content went away. So in the end, yeah, you're right. Content is king, as they say. Content is king. And finally today, Craig asked, what is your favorite Apple event of the year, attending or otherwise? So for me, it's WWDC because I'm in town and I get to see everyone and take part in some of the fringe events and put on some

events ourselves which I really enjoy but it's also like just from an event perspective it's the most fun for me because it shows the future of all of the platforms like it almost feels like the start of Apple's year right it's like everything changes from WWDC onwards we find out things in advance before they're available almost feels like the start of Apple's year, right? It's like everything changes from WWDC onwards.

We find out things in advance before they're available, which is fun because it's like one of the only places that you do that stuff of Apple. Plus the most surprises are there because it's software and the software can be more surprising. Every other Apple event, we know basically everything beforehand, right? Like if these hardware things get shown off at WWDC, we're talking about early, well, that's ruined now because it's hardware but software they can still surprise us like they can surprise us with swift right like they can surprise us with other software related stuff stuff that's still inside cupertino is a lot harder to uh to leak because sometimes it's stuff that like not even everyone inside cupertino knows about exactly swift right so you know i agree i have the

same answer and it's because this is the only event that is given many months run up and people can travel and it happens for a week and there's ancillary events around it and so it's it is not just because all the these other events are media events, right? I drive down somewhere early in the morning and I go to an event and then I drive home or I rush somewhere and I write and record a podcast and spend the whole evening writing and get up the next morning and do more writing and podcasting and all of that. But it's just like a job thing, right? I'll see people in the line when we're drinking tea and coffee and having pastries and things beforehand. But then we all immediately, as soon as they open the doors, we go in and do our jobs. And I don't see those people anywhere. I'll wave at John Gruber or anybody. Like if I came to town, I'd be super bored yeah because no one

would be there everyone would leave exactly right you'd say hi you'd be like hey i can't go in and then we'd like hey it's good to see you bye and then you wouldn't see us ever again right wwc is not like that so because again oh no ever again yeah that's right you'd never see us we vanish we go into a parallel universe. So this is my way of saying, like, Macworld Expo back in the day was great because it was the same thing. It was a week-long festival of stuff that people hung out and talked and all that. And it wasn't just about the keynote. And I guess Macworld was better because people could go to the keynote if they wanted to.

Well, theoretically, except that the lines were incredibly long. But WWDC, that's the answer. I yeah that's the that is i wrote a whole thing for i'm more about this that is the event of the year for apple stuff and it and apple has now kind of embraced the fact that there will be all these side events around it and they're really creating like a week-long apple fest that's happening in san jose in three weeks so yeah looking forward yes and it is only just a few weeks away so expect the coverage to heat up we'll have one more regular episode next week and then we would be doing the draft picks the week after and then we will be doing our reporting from san jose in person in person i hope you can use your laptop on the flight over.

Please don't talk to me about this, Jason. The anxiety I have over this is off the chart. I don't want to talk about it. We're not talking about it. And when it happens, we won't talk about it either because I'm just going to be too mad. Yeah. It's a family show.

Yeah. I can't. Too much politics today already, and we didn't even really talk about politics like if you want to hear me go off tell you what if you see me in san francisco and this has happened or it looks like it's gonna happen or san jose because if you see me in san francisco i got lost you've got yeah uh you can ask me about this and i'll tell you but i'm not talking about it on the show uh they want to find our show notes for this week relay.fm slash upgrade slash 141 i would like to point our listeners to two new relay fm shows because

can't stop won't stop we have uh roboism and originality so they're two technologically adjacent shows um on roboism savannah and a, so it's Savannah Million and Alex Cox talk about robots and technology and how robots and AI are affecting our lives today, which is an interesting way of looking at things. I think robots are becoming more and more prevalent throughout our lives. And on Originality, Lean Sims and K Tempest Bradford talk about creativity and how we are creative in our lives and they talk about themselves and they have interviews and they have a really interesting interview production style that I think

you might get quite a kick out of so you can go check them out at relay.fm originality and relay.fm roboism. If you want to find Jason online he's over at sixcolors.com and he is at jsnall on twitter I am at imyke don't forget to listen to download

later on this week google I.O. so you've got your first big keynote to cover Jason I hope you're ready what Microsoft build wasn't big enough for you? not really I'm afraid I'm going to say I personally expect I don't know I'm not the producer

Stephen Hackett but I would be surprised if I'm not the producer, Stephen Hackett, but I would be surprised if IO was constrained to just one of your stories. Ah, yeah. I think you're probably right. And a lot of love to Microsoft. Microsoft split it, right? They split it in half, honestly.

They did a product event, and then they built. Yeah, they did two days of build keynotes too, so they split it in thirds. Oh my gosh. So yeah, you can go and check all that out. It's going to be fun to listen to this week. I'm excited about it.

So thanks for listening to this week's episode. Thanks again to our sponsors, the fine folk over at Encapsular Squarespace and FreshBooks. And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye from Seattle.