Upgrade - 256: The Billion Dollar Show

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

The trouble with Apple sending Siri audio to human beings, macOS Catalina's overly aggressive approach to app security, and the possibility of Apple introducing a $3000 laptop cast a little bit of a pall on the Summer of Fun this week. But cheer up--we've also got some interesting Upstream news about Disney and Amazon, and a summer-themed version of Ask Upgrade!

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 256 and today's show is brought to you by pingdom same box and texas band and my name is mike hurley and i as always have the pleasure of being joined by the man behind six colors mr jason s. That was a very long introduction, Mike. I thought about making it a little bit longer, but I bailed because nobody cares about long introductions. Hashtag Snell Talk question comes from AJ. AJ wants to know,

do you use spaces in your file names? I do sometimes. A lot of the things that I do are things I'm posting a a server somewhere as a file name like on a like a podcast download and i don't i don't in there right because that can get a bit wonky right yeah because you got to escape out the filings and stuff like that percent 20 and things it's just not worth it um i do have spaces in many file names. I have folders that are of projects, and I have spaces in them, and it's just fine. The little stories folder that I have where I have my stories,

those are often... It's my active thing that I'm writing stories about. Those often don't have spaces, but that's, I don't know. Again, it's partially because I think I'm concerned about where they're sinking to and if I'm going to end up with trouble. But that's mostly just a habit, I think, that comes out of the olden days when I worked at a magazine and there was a workflow where you had to name things a specific way. But I do not all the time. Sometimes I have, for my stories, I have a little slug of like where it's going followed by a dash, followed by what the story is about.

So there's no space there. But yeah, I use them in other places. So a little bit of both. I name my files like a human being. So you can read them. They're words, sentences. I think that's reasonable. They've got spaces in them.

You know, I understand the idea of like either stuff not working in some places or it's just like a thing that you've always done because it wasn't always possible to have computers understand spaces. I never lived in that time. So all of my, you know, I use little sentences sometimes, right? Like a three or four word sentence. Very nice. The Mac always has that, right? Mac always has had spaces and it's never been a problem. So yeah, I, I, I encourage people to use spaces and, uh, and punctuation and whatever else they want in their file names. Um, and, and when I don't do it, it's mostly out of a concern that this is a thing that's going to end up on a web server somewhere.

And I'm going to need to, you know, and then it's just not worth it. But I do a lot of the time. Thank you to AJ for this hashtag Snell Talk question. If you'd like to submit a question for us to open the show in the future, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk. And it may be considered for opening the show in a future episode. We have some billion dollar follow up. This might be the most expensive follow up we've ever for opening the show in a future episode. We have some billion-dollar follow-up. This might be the most expensive follow-up we've ever had on the show before. It's also such a strange thing to have as follow-up,

but we have a lot of other stuff we want to talk about today. Apple have acquired Intel's modem division. Apple have paid a billion dollars, or at least this acquisition is valued at a billion dollars, provided that it all gets approved by all the regulatory bodies. Apple will be getting themselves a ton of patents. That's patents. We call those patents.

Otherwise, you might think that they're just getting a lot of paint. Lots of painters are going to be joining the team over at Apple. It's the Intel colors, though, which is weird. Yeah, it's just all blue. I don't know what they're going to do about that. But they're going to be getting a lot of patents and 2,200 employees, which is a lot of people. But that's kind of what Apple's going to be bringing over. This is really interesting because this is like a weird piece of follow-up from episode 242 of Upgrade back in April.

There was a 242 of upgrade back in April, where, if you may remember, that Apple struck a deal with Qualcomm for licensing of their patents and kind of to settle things they were getting out of the modem business for smartphones. The smartphone modem business, I should say. They're still in the other – they're still in the modem business for other devices. It's just for smartphones is what Apple's applying for or buying, I should say, what they want. So, yeah, this is kind of where we are. I mean it seems pretty obvious, right? Apple just want to make their own chips. They don't actually want to be working with uh qualcomm forever so they are buying up the intellectual property that they need uh buying up the people that they want and they will move forward with

their own project to to kind of push them into the future is how it would seem yeah it it this is a mike and the modems was that episode was a classic where you got to talk about modems because it's your favorite thing to talk about modems. Oh, I love modems. I love them. Nothing better. Yeah, I think it goes back to those, it's the classic lines about Apple wanting control.

Apple's talked about how they, repeatedly about how they need to have control of key parts of their technology. Right. That is that is the it's a thing that Steve Jobs learned really early on and has imparted to everybody else who works at Apple. And, you know, that is what motivates this. It's Mark Gurman actually had the line from a Bloomberg article, believe it or not, in 2004, an interview with Jobs. Jobs said, I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do. And Tim Cook said, we believe we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make.

So it's the old primary technology thing. And I wrote a whole thing at Tom's Guide about this, because you can trace this back to things like the Mac got beat up because its web browsers were too slow, but the web browser was Internet Explorer. And so they did Safari because they wanted to take control of that thing. They were getting beaten up about a thing that they did not control because Microsoft had a bad web browser on the Mac. And so they took control of it. You go back to when Steve Jobs stood on stage and said there was going to be a G5 with a three gigahertz processor because IBM had told him there would be. And there wasn't. And they were getting beat up for PowerPC not

being as fast as Intel and they switched to Intel. Like this goes back a whole long way. Apple wants to control it. Apple wants to invent it if they can. And since they bought PA Semi in 2008, they have ended up being a spectacularly good chip development company, which is simply not something that usually happens for the maker of computers or smartphones or whatever. But Apple said, no, no, no. If we want to do this, we need to own this and we need to control this. And as a result, they've got these advantages in their chips over the competition

and the competition can't use their chips because they're only for Apple. So the modem thing, they got stuck, right? Intel was not delivering and uh and qualcomm was had terms for their patents and terms for their licensing that apple found unacceptable so they had that whole lawsuit for that period of time it was very clearly another one of those cases where you know an illustrative moment right of um why you need to control this stuff, because now here you are, and you've got these two vendors and one of them you hate, and the other one is doing a bad job.

And what do you do then? And so this is the last part of that. I said on Twitter, this is the dog bites man story, which is the obvious story. Everybody's talking about man bites dog. The whole idea there is that that's a story man bites dog that's what a what a table turning thing but dog bites man it's literally um oh intel is not doing modems anymore apple's doing modems now um apple wait you say apple bought intel's modem business what a surprise like i think we all figured this was the most likely scenario and here it is and there still won't be an apple design modem for a few years yet. This is a long lead time kind of thing. But I do wonder in the long run if it might mean Apple being even more aggressive in kind of integrating cellular connectivity in more Apple, where they don't have to take a piece off of somebody's price list. Are they going to, you know, in glasses, if they're still going to make AR glasses in AirPods? In ARM-based Macs.

And in laptops, yeah, right? Which they haven't done up to now for various reasons, I think. But once they control and design all that and put it all together in one place, I think it's much more likely now because it's their stuff and they're not going to have to pay a licensing fee. And they might have to pay, depending on Qualcomm, they might have to pay some patent licenses. But by picking up Intel's licenses, that is, I think, going to be at least somewhat defensive where they're not not i don't know the nature of qualcomm's patents versus intel's patents but it helps in that kind of jousting i think for intellectual property of who owes who what that typically is more than one way to do

things right so i mean you would naturally assume that intel were doing things slightly different to the way that qualcomm does them so that they didn't interfere with each other. That just seems like the logical thing. But as I say, we have literally no idea what the difference is between them. No. But if Apple was still going to be paying the same amount of money to Qualcomm after buying Intel, I can't imagine they would have done it. This definitely feels like a play to assist them in making this stuff on their own. I don't know.

I mean, they were working with Intel. Intel's got the business. It's not just the patents. It is these 2,000 employees, right? So it's a huge kind of influx of chip design talent and modem design talent coming to Apple. So it gets them. But I'm sure you could buy the people and the technology without the intellectual property right like they wanted all of it you would assume for a reason like i

i don't know i don't want to make that i don't i don't want to make that claim i feel like i feel like there's value in both of these things sure in the intellectual property and in the and the people and they're a kind of a package deal here from Intel, which is good for Apple. And in the end, it may just be literally that Apple still pays Qualcomm some sort of fee, but they're no longer buying chips from them. And the fee is on very specific things,

and it's less than they're doing now. And who knows? Maybe Qualcomm start paying Apple a fee as well, right? Maybe. Well, I mean, you negotiate. But what it does mean is that in the end, Apple's going to be able to make a modem chip itself on its own standards, on its own time.

With their own features, all the things that they want, not the things that Qualcomm wants. Yeah. All right, next week we're going to be recording on Tuesday, just as a programming note, and we will, I'm sure, be talking about Apple's results, the Q3 results, which are going to be out on the 30th of July. So that's tomorrow as we record this episode. This is the third fiscal quarter, which, as Jason has written in the notes, is typically the quiet one.

Yeah, it's the smallest quarter that Apple has every year. So it will probably not be super interesting but you never know well my perspective is at this point in time there is no boring quarter because apple's in so much change so i'm i'm really intrigued to see what it what this quarter looks like right will iphone sales still be down right this is stuff that i want to see so i'm i mean i am very intrigued as i You know I like the results. I can't tell you why. I don't know why, but I enjoy it. I like looking at the charts like a weirdo.

But I'm intrigued. I'm going to keep my eye on this tomorrow. So I'm excited about it. So we'll talk about it next week for sure. Yep. All right, we've got some upstream news. We're going to tag team this one this week. Do you want to tell me about Amazon?

Sure. So there's a lot going on right now in L.A. The Television Critics Association is having their summer press tour, which goes on for like three weeks. It's what my podcast pal Tim Goodman has referred to as the death march with cocktails. Lots of cocktail parties, lots of shaking hands, lots of of presentations and it goes on for a very long time uh amazon did their presentation this is uh you know a chance for amazon to talk about what they're up to and they did make a lot of news as a part of it not everybody makes news sometimes it's sort of like here are things we already announced, but meet the cast or whatever it is.

So they talked to Jennifer Salke, who runs Prime Video now. And for upstream purposes, I thought an interesting thing that she said, because she says she knows that Prime Video is a different kind of service, different kind of product than maybe some of their competitors because it's a part of the larger Amazon Prime product. And she said, we have a very unique business in the sense that our entire North Star is to entertain and delight Prime customers all over the world. We're not in the volume business. We're in the curated business. And that is setting them off from Netflix a little bit. But I do think that there is something to this.

setting them off from Netflix a little bit. But I do think that there is something to this. And this is the argument all along about how do you analyze Prime Video? Their charter, at least as Jennifer Salke views it, is to entertain Prime customers. So what they do is not as tied to the total number of Prime subscriptions that Amazon has as Netflix's is to the total number of prime subscriptions that amazon has as netflix's is to the total number of netflix subscriptions because yes with netflix the programming is everything and with prime video the programming is one of the things that ties you to prime because most people that are watching any prime video content are watching it because it's just a bonus

that they have yeah i mean would i pay for prime video as a standalone service i don't know i might there's a bunch of stuff on there that i like but i but my point is i've never considered that no right because it's wrapped up in prime which i do pay for and which I do like as a whole. And the video is an important part of it. But I've never really considered like, what's my value in Prime Video as a standalone? No, because it's not. It's not a standalone service.

It's a thing I get with shows on it that I like. And that I might consider as a streaming service in some other context, but I literally never have. And I think that she's right, that they're playing a different game. She's not saying that they're lesser or greater than Netflix or any of their other competitors, but she's absolutely right in that the game they're playing is different because of what the product is. And when Jeff Bezos has his declaration

that I want worldwide hits and I want all that stuff, that is all part of what is guiding her process here in terms of creating this, whatever she said, the entertainment and delight of Prime members. They did announce some stuff. So they're signing a lot of first look deals with actors and actor producer and, you know,

writer producer types actors. You may know Forrest Whitaker, Connie Britton, and Lena Waithe all they announced first look deals. So they bring them projects and Amazon gets the right of first acceptance for those projects. They unveiled the Lord of the Rings creative team. We heard some of the names and it's nobody you've ever heard of. It's people, it's the writers and the producers

for the most part. Interesting tidbit in the Lord of the Rings series information. The Hollywood Reporter said, commitment is believed to be for five seasons plus a potential spinoff. Once production budgets, casting, writers, producers, and visual effects are factored in, the total for the Lord of the Rings series could hit a billion dollars. Yes, a billion dollars for a TV show. I feel like it has to be though, right?

Yeah. Like if you really want to do this, like Amazon, you bought the rights to the Lord of the Rings, right? Like, you picked something very, very expensive here. If you want to make it what it's going to be, you've got to put the money in. And this is Jeff Bezos again saying, basically, I want the next Game of Thrones. I want that on our service.

And if you want the next Game of Thrones, you know what you get? Money. You put a lot of money in. That's what you need to do. And so they know that. You put in the money, and then you take your chances that's the trick right i know i know that that doesn't guarantee it but i mean to create something like you know like to come out of the gate and be like you know how game of thrones ended we want to be like that from the beginning

that's going to cost a lot of money and then it's like irrespective of how good it is you're still going to put the money in because this show will be a very strong visual show and that costs money i think there's an interesting question and discussion for another time about whether about how big budget tv is uh is going to happen on streaming services and are we going to see a similar sort of thing as we've seen in the movie industry? Where in the movie industry, the big budget stuff has kind of crowded out everything else, but a lot of that stuff has gone to streaming.

And I think it's at some point we're thinking about what does it mean for TV that there's a billion dollar TV show that's being made? Like, is that money going to crowd out the smaller stuff or is the smaller stuff? I feel like streaming is a perfect place for the smaller stuff. But I do wonder about that sometimes if there's almost a natural drive in the entertainment industry if you're looking for a big hit to push some of the cheaper stuff to the side. Because how many mid-budget dramas and

comedies could be made for what they're making one lord of the rings out of well this is the amount of money that apple put in to start their entire service and we know that there was more money spent in this but like that's the same amount of money so that's a lot of money yeah yeah so that's that's the question and i get the reason is sort of like you can make um you can make 10 different uh patriots sad spies which got officially is not coming back by the way which is so disappointed even even sadder because that's such a great show don't let the name fool you patriot is a great great great great show about a sad man in a suit but like they can make 50 of them and nobody's going

to watch them right uh or they can make lord of the rings so i think it's an interesting uh uh just a business uh question about about shooting for the huge hit which amazon is definitely doing uh and which apple may be doing too with some of the the things that they're trying to produce and uh versus flooding the zone with lots and lots of content which is what netflix does netflix is looking for big hits too but netflix is also doing a lot of volume and and touching a bunch of different areas um they did another interesting thing about amazon and i i don't know you know we talk about netflix having all of their data and all their all their statistics and using that to judge. There was that one report that said that within two weeks of a show being dropped on Netflix,

Netflix basically knows its entire lifespan. It knows. It can take the analytics of the first couple of weeks and say with a high degree of accuracy how many plays it's going to get for the rest of time. Now, yeah, occasionally something will kind of like bob up later and people discover it and it'll be a surprise, but very rarely is that the case. And they use this data to decide whether they want to invest more money in it, what it means for them. I think it's interesting that Amazon, in some contrast to that, has announced that they just renewed two shows whose first Amazon produced seasons haven't aired.

Because what is that based on? And I think partially it may be based on that they're delaying some stuff being released and they need to make contractual decisions to renew the show or not. It may be that. But I think it may also be just a purely creative thing, which is they like how it's looking and they want to just give them a shot in the arm right now and say, yes, we like these. So Carnival Row, which is a show that has not even premiered yet, has been renewed for a second season on Amazon. And The Expanse, which was saved off of the SyFy channel by Amazon for a fourth season, which will premiere in December, has already been renewed for a fifth season. So I don't know what they're doing over there, but they're're they're canceling shows i like they're renewing shows that haven't aired yet it's they're definitely playing a different game at amazon marvel showed up a

bunch of stuff as part of comic-con um and so if you've been ever been paying attention to the way that marvel has been running the marvel cinematic. They talk about the movies in phases. So like all of the different movies fall into different phases. And we're about to move into phase four, right? So what came after Avengers Endgame. And this includes a couple of sequels, a couple of new movies, right? We could finally get in a Black Widow movie. There's going to be a sequel to Doctor Strange. There's going to be a new Thor movie.

And amazingly, Natalie Portman's coming back and she's going to be female for which is awesome i'm very excited to see what they do with that that was a big surprise but if you want to know about uh what disney is thinking these days you want to take a look at this because the phase four includes a bunch of Disney Plus content, which is very, very interesting. This is a huge, for me, that slide, it tells the whole story, which is when they unveiled phase three, they put up a slide with, and when they do this, it's hilarious because in the moment you're like, oh my God, that's so far away. That's like four years from now. And then you look up and it's like oh they've released every movie

that was on that slide now oh that's interesting four years have passed um but they do it and you're like oh here's all the marvel movies it's two or three movies a year for the next five years or four years and this time there's like five disney plus series on that slide along with all of the marvel movies and that says it all there are more movies that they haven't announced yet which is which is another thing that they've given dates for like four movies but they haven't said what they are and you know that that's just like a thing and you'd expect like guardians of the galaxy three black panther sequel is in there too that they i don't think they've dated it but they we know that they're happening um but the disney plus thing so

a lot of people still have this misunderstanding it's it's a like a little different version of the it's the same people who brought you planet of the apps who are doing apple's tv service you know where it's like no that's not true at all people are like oh but marvel's been making tv shows forever this isn't this isn't new they're the people who did Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and, I don't know, Daredevil on Netflix and all that. And so the really short version of it is that Marvel TV is owned, is operated by Marvel, the same division of Marvel that does Marvel Comics, which is a guy named Ike Perlmutter, who is famously like a cheapskate. And they have a studio that has a bunch of people who are making

TV shows. And Kevin Feige, who does all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, used to report to Ike Perlmutter. And after he made billions and billions of dollars from Disney, Kevin Feige basically went to Disney and said, I don't want to work for this guy anymore. And they said, well, thank you for your billions and billions of dollars. You can work for the Disney studio chief instead of Ike Perlmutter. So for years now, Marvel's movies have been run from a completely separate part of Disney, completely different fiefdom than Marvel TV. them than Marvel TV. What's relevant about these shows, which is Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision, which has got the Scarlet Witch in it, the What If animated series, a Loki series with Tom Hiddleston, a Hawkeye series with Jeremy Renner. Those are not just actors from the movies that you've seen before now on TV playing those same characters, but it's all being produced by Kevin Feige out of his group, not out of Ike Perlmutter's group at Marvel TV. And so this is sort of what we were promised with things like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Daredevil and Luke Cage and Jessica Jones and never really

got, which is those were supposed to be integrated into the Marvel universe, but kind of weren't in the end because it was different people doing them. And these are on the slide for Phase 4. So how it will actually play out in terms of integration, I don't know, because it is actually really hard to integrate all of these products together, although Marvel has done a great job. But it certainly speaks to how important

Disney's streaming service is. Yeah, that yeah that's like oh you want to see what captain america's doing well it's on tv now so go there right like it's like super interesting they all of these shows will be rolling out from 2020 to 2021 they're not all coming at the same time none of them will be ready uh i think for when the service actually launches um no no that'll be the star wars series will be ready there but the marvel stuff's not going to be ready for another year after it launches and all of the you know pretty much all of them except for what if what if it's like this animated show where they're using all of the the voice actors that are like the actual movie stars but it's like a um it's like it's

like an animated show where they take a scenario and change the results. So like, what if somebody died or didn't die and that kind of thing. So they're going to be able to go back. If you think about Avengers Endgame, here's a very, very mild spoiler for Avengers Endgame. There is within the plot of Avengers Endgame, the idea of what if things went differently

in movies you've already watched. I'll just leave it there. That's what the what if show is. It's animated, but it's going to have the same actors as the voices. And it's going to be basically like playing off of things that happened in the movies, which is a fun... It was a comic that I used to love actually as a kid, where they did this with what if this event of this comic book changed, and they're going to do it for the movie. So that could be fun. Hawkeye, which is one of the best, believe it or not, Hawkeye, one of the best Marvel comics of the last decade, Matt Fraction's Hawkeye.

I'm wondering how that will influence this Hawkeye TV series, because the idea of a TV series featuring Jeremy Renner seems really boring. I hope so much. But it's going to have Kate Bishop, who is the young also Hawkeye, is going to be introduced in that show. They're using the logo of the comic as well. I know, right? They are.

They are. So if they integrate some of the Matt Fraction Hawkeye DNA into that show, that'll be great. I can't wait to see a bunch of Russian mobsters in tracksuits saying bro in fall of 2021 i really liked a uh there was like a quote from jeremy renner on stage and he's like it's going to be great to watch somebody without superpowers teach somebody else how to be a superhero like i really like that line it's like accepting who hawkeye is and because he's going to be training the next Hawkeye, Kate Bishop.

And it's just like a funny thing for him to say, but it's totally true. So yeah, I'm actually quite excited about that if they go down the route that we want them to. All right, a couple last things before we move on. NBC has announced that their streaming service will be launching in April 2020. There's no real details, but that's when it's coming.

Yeah, it's unclear. They said they're going to not overemphasize originals, which is, well, we'll see about that. Although I did mention last week that, I think I mentioned that here. Anyway, a show that I like, AP Bio, got picked up. Yeah, I mentioned that here because it was the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. It got picked up by NBC streaming after being canceled by NBC because they don't talk to each other. So that's essentially an original. Although, you know, maybe is this the fate of the NBC streaming services that shows that they cancel on broadcast get saved for streaming. So it's like the leftover channel. I don't know. But they are doing some of that. And they're going to have, of course, all their their catalog content there there because

they are owned by the cable company. A lot of their plan is that if you've got a cable subscription, I think you get access to the free tier of this with commercials. So they're kind of viewing it as sort of not a cord cutter paradise as much as kind of like an add-on thing. It's like we said about Amazon having a different model. NBCUniversal seems to be trying a different model because they're owned by the cable company. So we'll see how that goes. I'm unclear. I imagine like Hulu they'll have a – or like CBS, it's the same thing. They'll have a tier where you pay them money and don't see ads, but that the base level will be an ad service that cable subscribers will get for cheap or free.

And I made the mistake on Twitter last week of telling Tim Goodman from The Hollywood Reporter our joke about how this service should be called Peacock Plus. And he ran with it and actually mentioned it in a piece in The Hollywood Reporter. So I think that means NBC executives now have seen our stupid joke about calling it Peacock Plus. I don't know why you think this is a bad thing.

I think this is a fantastic thing. If it's called Peacock Plus in the end the end i guess i'm gonna do a victory lap or maybe they'll give me a free with advertising subscription to nbc's peacock plus i don't know today's episode is brought to you by pingdom from our friends at solar winds it is summertime before you pack your bags and set your email to out of office. You need something in place to tell you that everything's running super smoothly on your website, and more importantly, when it isn't. So you need Pingdom because they will let you know the moment that your site goes down. If there is any problems, Pingdom will be the one to alert you. It is an amazing service, and they can tell you exactly what you need to know in whatever way is best for

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you can enter for a chance to win a free out-of-office t-shirt by going to that website, which is pingdom.com slash 000 for out-of-office, right? Ooh, that shirt is really funny. Go check it out website which is pingdom.com slash 000 for out of office, right? That shirt is really funny. Go check it out right now. pingdom.com slash 000. Our thanks to Pingdom for their continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. We have some

frustrating stories to talk about today. So we are going to have a very fun... Summer of fun! Summer of frustration. We are going to have a very fun fun summer of frustration we're going to have a very fun ask upgrade at the end of the show today so don't worry things will pick up there was a report from alex hearn in the guardian stating that apple hires contractors to review siri requests siri requests to grade their accuracy and effectiveness this is something that a little while ago amazon got got really heavily criticized for

from a Bloomberg report, right? That they were having people listen in to Amazon Echo requests and then kind of reviewing them so they could test and kind of mark how well the service was doing. So that's kind of like to set the stage. And I want to talk a little bit more about this and then we're going to dive into it together. So it isn't completely clear in

Apple's policies that the requests will be heard by humans. So like I checked, I took a look at some of the privacy policy stuff. And what Apple says is the things that you say and dictate will be recorded and sent to Apple to process your requests. Now, I'm sure a lawyer could tell me that it means that people could be listening to it, but I don't think that that is clear enough considering how clear the rest of their privacy policy is around this. The rest of it's written in pretty understandable English, but they do not state explicitly that a human being can listen to what you say to Siri. And I don't think that most people would ever assume that a human being is ever listening to what is said to Siri.

Apple responded to The Guardian by saying that these requests are not associated to any user information and less than 1% are being reviewed. So they confirm that this is the thing that they do, but they say that people can't be tracked. However, the whistleblower who talked to The Guardian says that they've very frequently heard extremely private information like medical things, criminal activity, and even sexual encounters. And they say that the requests that they receive include location data, contact details, and app data, which is a strange thing.

I don't 100% know what that entails. Apple say that it's not possible to link back to the user from this information, but the whistleblower says that they feel like they get enough that they could actually try and find people if they wanted to. So I don't know what to believe with that, but it does seem interesting. And here's a quote from the individual who spoke to The Guardian. Apple is subcontracting out. There is a high turnover. It's not like people are being encouraged to have consideration for people's privacy or even

consider it. If there was someone with nefarfarious intentions it wouldn't be too hard to identify the people on the recordings so apple tends to talk a very good game when it comes to user privacy but if they overstep the line yeah they're and famously they did that billboard uh which was what happens on the iphone stays on the iphone yeah um i will also point out and and and our friend which has come back to bite them like three times already that yeah yeah it when you what happens on the iPhone stays on the iPhone. Yeah. I will also point out, and our friend... Which has come back to bite them like three times already, that billboard. Yeah, yeah. When you boast about something, you are calling...

Shouldn't do it. Inviting people... You're inviting criticism. ...to investigate you. So our colleague, Rene Ritchie, pointed out that the Bloomberg story actually says, we talked to Apple and they said they do this to the Bloomberg story about Amazon. That's funny. So that was back in April. And Renee's question was, is it that, you know, the Guardian wrote a good headline and they lead

with the fact that people have heard drug deals and sexual situations? Is that why people are talking about this? I think I think my answer is I think people are talking about this i think i think my answer is i think they're talking about it now because uh the guardian got somebody who works on processing siri requests to talk about it on the record with details about the human beings yes i think the thing that i don't like about this is that quote that i read right that like this individual feels like apple is not doing a good enough job in educating on privacy. Like, yeah, that's the thing that upsets me the most. Subcontracting is a thing that makes me I'm uncomfortable about the whole contracting

relationship in Silicon Valley in general, where big expensive tech companies that have lots and lots and lots of money say, and this part of our business isn't important enough for actual employees that we hire. We're going to just pawn this off to some subcontractor somewhere. And this is like, you know, you see it in Facebook using subcontractors to do content moderation. But like Apple does this, Apple's like, ah, our social media, I mean, just to use a non-specific example here, but like our social media or our documentation or whatever like that part of it is not as important you don't have to be an apple employee and those people then don't get

the benefits of being an apple employee yeah they don't get paid as well they're like all of these things because they're using a subcontractor for something like private user data audio from inside people's homes um to have that be to a subcontractor. I look at that and I say, you're sending a message that this isn't as important because you got people kind of drifting in on the transom. They're hired by the contractor. They drift in, they listen to people's private conversations, they drift out again. It feels to me like it sends a message that this is less important to Apple by doing that. So that bothers me. I've heard from a lot of people since the story broke who say, well, of course you need humans.

It's part of the process to train machine learning. And I would say, I'm sure that there is an aspect of this process that is greatly benefited by human training to say what actually happened here and what went wrong. And you can classify that interaction and you can use that to build a model or improve the model.

But a few things. First off, I think always transparency and ideally giving users options is important. So for example, when you set up an iPhone, it says, can Apple get your data for improving apps and the quality of the system? And you do that at startup and you say yes or no. And if you say no, nothing happens except you don't transmit the data. And it says, can third party developers see the data? And you can say yes or no, and nothing happens

concerning the data. As far as I know, that's not how Siri works. As far as I know, the way you opt out is by turning off Siri or turning off the Siri request. And this is one of those things where I would have a lot less of a problem with this if Apple said, you know what? We may use audio clips that we'll try to anonymize to improve the service. Are you okay with that? And if I say no, then it doesn't send them. But that's not what's happening right now and that bothers me a lot so that's part of this the other part of it is

in the grand scheme of things um what is it that we want these devices that are translating commands to the cloud to do and for me i feel like the goal here should be like apple talks a lot now about doing things on device right like we don't send your things in the cloud we don't send you know we're processing your photos uh on device and coming up with the keywords and doing all the machine analysis like all of these things we do we're doing on device so that you have complete control over it um okay well know, what would be great is if I spoke words into one of your devices that on device that got translated into text and sent to a server without my audio. But, and I appreciate that that might not be as effective in some ways,

but like we need to, we need to go there as well because I don't, I don't want my audio sent out of my house. I don't, you know, bottom line, I don't. And that,

that is, that is something that Apple needs to deal with. And I'm disappointed in Apple here because, and maybe their cultural reasons, like I, I've heard some people say that this may be something that was a part of Siri all along. And so it's just sort of allowed

to continue to happen. But like I look at this and say, you gotta be better than this. And the argument that, well, of course, Apple needs humans to listen to audio. Even if we accept that to be true, okay, be transparent about it.

And legalese is not transparent. And let me opt out without a penalty to me or ideally let users opt in to improve the service because they don't care but none of that seems to be happening right now yeah and one of the things that the report hinges on a lot is uh like accidental activations and the fact that that, you know, the problem, and I actually think this is the bigger problem. I don't care if people are reviewing the questions I ask to Siri. What I care about is when Siri is listening to me

and I didn't ask. And that data goes to... Depending on your settings, all of these things, if they get triggered, they get triggered silently. And you don't know that it's listening to you until you get like a chime or a i don't know what you said or i don't understand yeah and at that point that audio is is gone it's gone like that's it it's it's it's out of your house and that so you make a good point that one way to one way to do it would be to frame it around um accidental activations and saying i don't i want to opt out

of sending that information to improve the service because i'm not comfortable with um 30 seconds of random room noise from my house being sent to apple to be processed by a subcontractor who's going to um listen to whatever happened in my house and then tell their friends about it because they don't care about the privacy or the confidentiality agreements they signed because it was just a temporary job and etc, etc, etc. It's like it's too much. It's like, you know, we are in this world now where like this is what's happening to us, right? And it's kind of like it can be awkward you know and and i talk about a lot of these things of like trade-offs right like privacy is a trade-off in 2019 you

know like if you want to use certain products you have to kind of accept a level of you're going to give up your privacy but i never really felt like i had to do that with apple you know like i felt like that's how i feel with google that's how i feel with amazon and i've always kind of felt like there are there are naturally things that they do that people aren't going to like but we just don't know what they are right like i'm talking about apple like this is one of them right that like there's only they are still going to be doing things that we criticize other companies for because sometimes there are there's only one way to do it. And I think it can be a problem for us to just assume that Apple does everything perfectly when it comes to privacy. And we shouldn't assume that we will get 100% privacy from them

just because they act to be better. And I think that this is an example of that. This is not a grab your pitchforks go down to cupatino and start going wild moment right that's not what i'm attempting to say here it's more a case of just like don't assume that apple are completely perfect of this stuff everybody put your pitchforks down please because they i'm just like they are doing the same things that other companies that you apparently don't like their privacy for do as well, because sometimes it's the only way something can be done. Now, there's an argument to be made that, well, you know, Google and Amazon do this.

And why are you holding Apple to a higher standard than this is just how it works with these things? And to that, I would say, this is kind of on Apple. I hold them to the standard that they set themselves to me publicly. Exactly. Apple holds itself above its competitors, especially Google and Amazon, when it comes to privacy, period. And do they have to do that? No, they don't have to do that.

If Apple would like to back down on privacy, I guess they could go ahead and do that. But if they're not going to do that, then this is part of what that entails, which is they've got to do better than Amazon and Google, not just act at their level. If they're going to hold themselves above the competition, they got to behave like it. They've got to change how they do it. And that means for something like Siri, they have to say, oh, boy, this is going to cause problems here. And we're going to have to change this. And we're going to have to do this. You have to do it.

You have to do it. If you're going to put that billboard up, if you're going to say in an ad campaign that privacy is the most important thing on Apple products, campaign that privacy is the most important thing on Apple products, then you have to, when something like this comes out, you have to look at it long and hard and say, you're right. This is not to our standards. And Apple's response, which was on a Friday afternoon, it's perfect timing for Apple, right? It's like, this is when news gets buried. And that's when the Guardian posted the story and it got passed around. But Apple needs to do better with their response than what they did which was well you know yeah it happens but we don't we don't link the apple id so you can't email the person that you're hearing um which is not a great response all right today's episode is brought to you by same box i am sure

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snooze your email, and so much more. I've been using SaneBox for a couple of years now. One of the things that I love about it, I use a couple of different, like I say, I use SaneNews is one of the folders that I have. And basically everything that is a newsletter or an announcement or something like that from a product that I use or a service that I use automatically gets put into the SaneNews folder. So it keeps that stuff out of my inbox. So I can open those at my leisure without needing to sift through all of that stuff. Cause there will be times when before I was using the same box, I would like, I have a lot of like email newsletters that I subscribe to that I like to read, but my email inbox is too full. So I would have to archive them to get them out of the way. But now I don't need to do that because they're just there in sane news when I want to get to them.

And I really like that. To help you get a little more organization in your inbox, we've worked with SaneBox to get you a great deal. Just go to SaneBox.com slash UpgradeFM today and you will get a two-week free trial and an extra $25 credit just because you listen to that show. You don't have to enter your credit card information unless you decide to buy so there is nothing to lose. Check it out today and get your email finally under control. That is S-A-N-E-B-O-X dot com slash upgrade FM, U-P-G-R-A-D-E-F-M. And the link is in the show notes as well, samebox.com slash upgrade FM. Our thanks to Samebox for their support of this show and for keeping my email inbox under control. Jason, I want to talk to you about something

that I've seen you tweeting about, something that I've seen you very upset about in our Slack, which is the security changes in macOS Catalina. Can you give me a breakdown of what is going on from a perspective of what is apple trying to do and what is the actual result here well so i installed the story is that i installed catalina last week on my main uh my main drive i have a i i have a duplicate of it as Mojave on an external SSD. That's where I am right now.

But I write about this stuff and I need to live on it because there's a difference between using a pristine beta that's empty of Catalina or any other beta and using it with the apps you use you won't get the results right you won't actually understand how it works unless you're really properly properly using it right exactly so i um so this is the idea is I use that and I learn things about how Catalina works with my real apps and my real data.

Great. this, what I discovered is things that I knew about because I actually attended the session about Mac security at WWDC. And there's a bunch of new stuff in Catalina for Mac security. They changed a lot of things. The new Mac developer certificates need notarization to pass through Gatekeeper, which is the app that or the piece of the system software that checks to see whether you're allowed to launch an app. All new software requires notarization. Notarization is the system where even if you're outside of the Mac App Store, you have to send your app to an Apple server and have them scan it and then approve it. And then they cryptographically sign it and send it back to you. And the idea there is that it's been approved by Apple in an automated way, Apple systems, and is tamper-proof now. If people make changes to it, the signature breaks,

and therefore it's tamper-proof. All existing software before June 1st, basically, that was built will pass. But anything built after June 1st has to pass, has to be notarized to pass Gatekeeper. And then there's a bunch of specific things that also happen. Gatekeeper is scanning everything, regardless of whether it was quarantined or loaded. All the malicious stuff can be spotted that way. So they've cranked everything up on this and they've also added more user consent requests. And you may remember some of these from Mojave where like you wanted to use automation or you wanted to use the microphone and you'd get a thing saying this app needs to

use this. It's a very iOS-like kind of thing. In Catalina, screen recording, keyboard input monitoring, file access to the desktop, to documents, to iCloud Drive, to cloud storage, to removable volumes, to network volumes, all of those now require user consent. Not if the user opens the open dialog box and chooses something because that is implied user consent. But if the app wants to scan your desktop folder to see what's there at some point without asking you, in Catalina, it has to ask you. So there's a lot going on here. There's a lot going on here. The motivation is good, which is they want to take a system that's open, not like iOS,

and make it safer because they feel like it's a really scary vector for bad software and spyware to get on a Mac if it's not something where more permissions are requested from the user. They want to put up more barriers so that your average Mac user out of the box is more secure, which I think is good. The challenge is if you're using older software, if you're somebody who is not a regular user, but a bit more of a power user, in those scenarios,

the out-of-box experience of a Catalina upgrade is at least based on what I see in the beta, which I will grant you is a beta. It could change. And the software that I'm using is largely not updated for Catalina yet and may be modified to not trigger this stuff as much. but with all of that preamble, I install Catalina and every time I turn around, I've got like five dialogue boxes popping up saying, can I look at the desktop? Can I look at documents? Can I show you notifications? I can't launch this app because it might contain malware. Can I open the desktop can i open the documents and um it to me it crosses a line where it feels like my mac is now actively trying to get in my way and prevent me and judging me and preventing me from doing things i wanted to do and um the fact that apple has a dialogue box in the catalina

beta that says basically if something isn't notarized uses the word malicious yeah apple can't scan this thing for malicious intent and that you have to go to system preferences and and click the lock and put in your password and then click a box that appears to run software that doesn't get apple's approval is aggressive. But that route of going to system preferences to say, I want to open this app is not actually shown to the user in any way either. You have to work it out on your own. Yeah, well, for the malicious software warning,

yes, it doesn't tell you where to go because what it wants to do is prevent you. This is apps that aren't notarized, right? Like this is what that is, okay. Yeah, so this is a hard challenge um they want the mac to be more secure especially by default and i get it i so i appreciate their security motivations here i feel like they need to be better this isn't me telling apple it needs to be better again i guess that's a trend today today. Apple needs to be better at how this is presented to the user.

And when I was complaining about this on Twitter, I saw a bunch of suggestions. I don't know. I mean, my gut feeling is that the security people are on it for Catalina. And maybe they are so on it that the people who are concerned about the user experience are not being empowered to say, wait a second, your improvement of the security experience on the Mac is degrading the user experience on the Mac. It seems to me, at least in these betas, that the balance is way over on the security side and that the user experience is degraded because of it. So people on on twitter suggested i saw one suggestion that was very

clever that was could you do like a per app permission thing where you could say you know what i trust this app just let it do what it needs to do um that uh that john gruber mentioned the idea and it's something that i wrote about a little while ago of like a developer mode essentially where as a power user i can go in somewhere and say, just let this stuff have access, right? Like, I don't care. I don't want you throwing dialogues up in my face. I try lots of stuff that you're not going to like, computer. Let me do it. Because it's, you're my computer, let me do it. And, you know, like, when I first had a Chromebook, I found out very quickly, there's a developer mode that turns off a bunch of stuff. But like Apple has removed the just let me do whatever option from the security system preferences.

It's not there anymore. It's sort of like Mac App Store only or Mac App Store and verified. And that's been the case for I think I think it's in Mojave. It might have been even a version before. So I can't say no, no, no, I'm cool. Let me do whatever. I also think some of the security measures that they've got here seem a little too much to me. And I get what they want to do here, which is say, you know what? An app shouldn't be able to rifle through your files without you knowing. That's what they're saying here when they ask for desktop and documents and iCloud and cloud storage is software shouldn't be able to look at your files without you either

giving permission or you picking a file for it. I get it. And yet, as a Mac user for 20 years, Get it. And yet, as a Mac user for 20 years, I kind of feel like if it's apps I installed and apps I ran and it's looking at the desktop or the documents folder, that I could not be more clear with what I allow, which is if it's my app and that's my desktop, I'm okay with it because that's what the desktop is for. Now, again, I get the motivation here, but there's a part of me that just thinks, get out of my way, that the system needs to get out of my way. And if you are really concerned about apps doing bad things by reading the contents of your desktop folder, then we need to find another way

to secure a Mac user without making your Mac fight you. And I feel like what Apple has done, at least in the beta, is they've moved over into what is essentially like a dark pattern, where when they throw up a dialogue box with scare words and don't tell you where you where to go next they say throw out this file they literally it's like you tried to launch an app that's not notarized what we'll tell you

is it could be malicious and we won't tell you where to go and you should probably throw it in the trash that's it that is an attempt by Apple to degrade the user experience to the point where you give up and just do what they say. And for me, while I appreciate that maybe as a default behavior, that's okay. And maybe even a good idea for people who are not advanced computer users to not install malware on their computer and realize what they're doing. For me, it's unacceptable behavior. And then let's go to the other part of this, which is, okay, what about those regular people? Well, if they're getting pummeled with dialog boxes, Microsoft learned this lesson with Vista.

If they're getting pummeled with requests to approve this and approve that and approve this, you know what happens? They just always say yes. And there's no security. prove this you know what happens they just always say yes and there's no security so what is the situation if you're an at mac app store app you're great you're a mac app store app i think i think you may have to ask permission for certain entitlements anyway but it's a lot easier because you've been approved and checked and the App Store apps are a cut above,

but they may still have to ask for those same permissions. It's the idea of like granting full disk access and things like that. And what seems to be happening here is like desktop and documents are like more granular versions of full disk access that aren't as scary because they don't need the full disk but um you know but the goal here is really

apple wants to bring all of the um as much of the app store experience to out of the app store as possible because they know the mac app store is not um the only game in town on the Mac, unlike on iOS. And they said, somebody from Apple stood on stage at WWDC and said, we're not going to prevent Mac users from launching the software that they want to launch. So what I read that was like, oh, well, that's good. You're not going to make it impossible for me to launch software that I want to launch. Turns out what they really meant was, we're just going to like make it impossible for me to launch software that I want to launch. Turns out what they really meant was we're just going to make it really painful, but you can do it, but it's not, it's not going to be easy. We're going to get in your way.

We're going to shame you. We're going to make you guess where you need to go to make it work. And then eventually we'll make it work. And so as a result, you know, if for all those rebels who don't want to be in the app store or, or can't be in the app store because their apps don't fit the guidelines, essentially, and this is one of these kind of not widely discussed stories, essentially, if you want to distribute Mac software at this point, you have to have a Mac developer account and you have to submit your binary when you do a build and it has to get notarized which means it's being scanned by apple and if apple doesn't like it for some reason you know it doesn't get notarized then and that's uh really bad i think my biggest problem here is that like people will upgrade to catalina and they will think a bunch of their software is broken yes and and that that's the thing that i think is difficult

here yeah because the developers are I think is difficult here. Because if your app is kind of lazy and scans the desktop or scans the documents folder and triggers that warning, why are you doing that? Why are you scanning the user's disk without checking? And the answer may be a very good answer. And this is my problem with it. answer. And this is my problem with it. Is it also from Apple's perspective, um, they're, they're the mal worrying about malware is meaning that apps that are trying to improve the user's experience by scanning their disc now are triggering a security warning. I don't like that either. Um, and I don't like the fact that when you open a non notarized app, not only does it say it could be malicious, it throws the developer under the

bus and says, you should contact the developer. There's something wrong with them, basically, is what it says. It says, you talk to them. It's their problem. It's not our problem. It's their problem. And I don't like that either, because that means that people are going to be complaining. And let's pile on one more thing. What if you say no? What if you say no when it asks for permission to access something? Guess what? That app is going to break in all likelihood in some spectacularly weird way. And that's going to lead to more communications with support for that software developer. And now they're going to have to walk you through how to go into system preferences and find the right pain in order to grant access again so that it does work.

Yeah, nobody said this was easy. And I appreciate that Apple security people are really trying to make the Mac more secure in a world where the old way of doing computers is being exploited by bad people. That's the bottom line is the old computers used to be really, really open. And it makes it really easy for bad people to exploit them in a way that a mobile device is a lot harder. But at the same time, the Mac still exists because it's the Mac and it's the old style device. And those of us who use it, you know, otherwise, why do we still have the Mac? So there is a limit to that. There's a limit to that.

And your computer that you own and that you use should not be aggressively getting in your way and shaming you into not using software you want to use. There have, and that's, that's why I feel like I understand the motivations of Apple security people, but whatever is going on in Catalina right now, it's not good enough. And I hope that by the time Catalina reaches us in the fall, it's better and that they're working on this to improve this process because nobody wants a repeat of Windows Vista. And if you look at what happened to Microsoft, they had to do a whole rethink after Vista because it was too much and it frustrated users and it led to terrible security because users just gave up and approved everything. Let's switch gears a little bit. Talk

about the never-ending story of the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Oh, did it get announced? Okay. Economic Daily News said that it's coming october and it will start at three thousand dollars digitime says in set that it will be launching in september and it will be a bigger screen in the same size as the 15 inch body right they'll put a 16 inch screen into the same size body as the 15 and ming chi roger quo is sticking to his guns partly saying that the 16 inch with the new keyboard is still coming in the fall, likely October, but he has now adjusted his prediction about the MacBook Air and the Pro with the keyboard,

saying that this will be in 2020 that they will get the new keyboard now, not this year. But it seems like there's a lot of smoke to suggest that we will still see the 16-inch MacBook Pro this year. All the facts of these reports are kind of converging. And part of me, when I see Ming-Chi Kuo say, okay, maybe not, maybe it'll be 2020 for this other stuff. I worry a little bit that it's echo chambery, where everybody looked at all the reports and said, oh, this doesn't make sense. And now they're trying to make sense of it.

I hope that it is refined based on facts on the ground that this is actually what's happening because it does seem to be converging on the idea that this fall, there will be this 16-inch MacBook Pro that's the, you know, like what happened with the iPad. When you reduce the bezels, you can make the screen bigger. So it won't be a bigger computer, but it'll be a bigger screen. And the 15 inch, what we think of now is the 15 inch size for three grand, which is, I believe, the highest sale price for a base model of a Mac laptop ever.

So what does it say about that? of a mac laptop ever so what does it say about that well i think and i i did i wrote about this last week at mac world um and it took me down an interesting rabbit hole that led to a great conspiracy theory but love a conspiracy theory you know i love them i think apple really believes that if pro is on the label it's uh it should be a product for professionals and professionals will pay a lot of money for the product that they want and that they need. And that that's good for Apple because it allows them to create these amazing cutting edge products that have lots of expensive components in them. And the people who are in those markets where they absolutely need that professional level gear

are happy to pay it. It's just like the people who are going to be happy to buy that Pro Display XDR because they don't view it as a ridiculously overpriced monitor. They view it as a ridiculously underpriced studio monitor, which is a different perspective, right? Different industries have different things. And what the Apple's approach to the Mac Pro has taught me anyway, is there was a time when Power Macs, which were the Pro Mac desktop, were used by all sorts of people, power users, not just pros. And the iMac was a toy for consumers. And that's not true anymore, right? Like if you look at it today, the Mac Pro has been redefined as this incredibly high-end system that is for these people who will pay for the super high-end.

And I've got an iMac in front of me. I have an iMac Pro, but even the regular iMac is a very, very powerful computer. Most people don't need a Pro desktop from Apple, right? So I look at this 3000 for the 15-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro, and I think, well, that's what they're doing. They're saying, if you want this super awesome system, it's going to cost you. It's, it's $3,000. Now I imagine it'll come down in price a little bit over time and that there

will be a corresponding 14 inch model, presumably to replace the 13 inch and that'll happen next year. And that'll be cheaper still. And there'll be a, like a base model of that, or maybe that, that low end 13 inch will stick around for a while and eventually be replaced. And eventually you won't have 3000 to get into the, the MacBook pro just, you know, high two thousands to get into the 16 inch MacBook pro that, and that's, I think what Apple,

I'm not trying to make a value judgment here. I think that's what Apple wants. Apple wants its Pro line to really mean it. And they're okay if people who like the idea of using a Pro Mac but don't actually need it and aren't really willing to pay the high price for that kind of a product. I think they're okay with those people being turned off a little bit by it. The problem is, where do they go and that's the other part of this there's like well okay what other laptops are there there's the macbook air like literally the consumer laptop if those are pro laptops the consumer laptop is the macbook air one model and that yeah so that. So that's weird. I feel like they can do this. They can play this

game again at the high end with the Pro, but where is that mainstream iMac essentially of consumer laptops? And is it the MacBook Air? If so, the MacBook Air probably needs a little more variety than it has now. One model for everybody else. And this is where the conspiracy theory comes in. I had a moment while I was thinking about this where I thought, oh, this is where ARM happens. This is consumer laptops using ARM processors from Apple. And that in the long run, that may be the definition of what a pro

versus a non-pro laptop from Apple is, is we've got our light, long battery life, not super powerful, but powerful enough. I mean, the power that's in the iPad Pro is already whatever they said, 90% of laptops sold last year or something like that. It's like, it's already pretty good. And then if you need more, well, pro.

We have the Intel Pro processors over here for you folks. So I can see what they're doing here. Now, there's lots of judgments we can make about like a $3,000 laptop. And is this, are developers who are the, one of the primary Pro user groups in the Mac world going to like this? I think there's a lot to be debated there.

But once I thought of it in the context of how apple treats pro products i had that moment where i'm like oh yeah that's what they're doing here i i can subscribe to this conspiracy theory i think i can jump on board of you all right welcome welcome to the conspiracy bandwagon i get it right like i think that apple have recently realized that they can print money with the pro name and they're doing that now and it's a slice of the market that's willing to pay for the highest end cutting edge most awesome thing with the high profit margins and why make a product why handicap if I'm Apple my argument is why handicap my product why limit my product by making it hit a price point that's

lower so that my kind of mid-range customers can buy one when now I'm losing out on having a higher end product that's more profitable and that I can put more high-end expensive stuff into as well. And on the desktop, that's worked pretty well for them. Today's show is also brought to you by our friends over at TextExpander from Smile. TextExpander will let you insert words, phrases, form, templates, and more of a couple of

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Just go to textexpander.com slash podcast right now. Our thanks to TextExpander from Smile for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So we had some summer of fun, hashtag AskUpgrade questions today because we wanted to end on a lighter note after what has been an upsetting episode for everybody. So our first question comes from Kate.

And Kate wants to know, Mike, what was driving Jeremy's boat like? Now this is a deep cut here, so I'll put a link in the show notes to some Instagram posts from a friend of the show, Jeremy Burge, who is the chief emoji officer at Emojipedia and the creator of World Emoji Day. I usually introduce Jeremy to people that I know

as the creator of emoji, which frustrates him immensely because that's what people think he actually is a lot of the time. I think it's hilarious. Jeremy did not create emoji, but we all know Jeremy Burge, right? Emojipedia. But anyway, Jeremy lives on a narrow boat now and sails the canals in the UK. And over the weekend, me and my wife, Idina, we went and we spent some time on the boat and we, I drove the boat and it was wonderful, Jason. Boat life is quite a thing. it looked great i i love those i love the little little boats and the little canals and stuff in england and there's a whole like english boating culture where you just kind of move your boat and then you sleep on your boat and then you go to the pub and you go back to the boat and move the boat again yeah well what a way to live what a way to live that's part of my summer fun casey wants to know do you have any summer music recommendations

i don't know do you well i really like uh the new taicho album taiko album taicho i don't know uh but it's very chill you know like if you're looking for some chill uh on your on your summer playlists, I recommend that immensely. I don't think I have anything that I'm going to put up for this summer. I spend a lot of time with Apple Music playlists. And I like the alternative genre. There's an alternative chill playlist. There's the A-list alternative playlist.

The alt-pop playlist is nice for those kind of poppy songs of the summer there's a lot of good stuff in there so i just uh i just use the apple music playlist they're great thomas wants to know what is your favorite beach activity frisbee volleyball surfing something else jason what's your favorite beach activity uh reading that's perfectly fine for me my friend uh and then and then you walk into the water and let the let the the water go on your on your feet and maybe more of your body and you cool off and then you go back out i do uh often bring a frisbee to the beach i have done that um and that's fun too to throw a Frisbee around. Or a Nerf football. It's another thing. It's an American football. Or a brain ball.

American Nerf. You could use a brain ball, but it would get sandy, and I'm hoarding the brain balls. My favorite beach activity is getting in the ocean. I like getting in the ocean. Yeah, it's great. It's my favorite. As long as you're at the ocean with that beach.

Zach wants to know, what is your poolside or by the beach beverage of choice? That's a good question. Well, I used to say beer, but I can't drink most beer now. So that is sad. So I'm going to, I have a, I'm really liking, there's a cider from a place in Oregon that I really like that's a pineapple-flavored apple cider. Pineapple apple cider. That's very good.

It's all about the pineapple, Mike. So that's a good one for me. And my classic poolside beverage of choice, which I can still do with gluten-free beer is uh a version of the old british classic the lager top oh lovely where beer and lemonade beer and lemonade but not lemonade like american lemonade like sprite yes although you know what american lemonade works great too okay okay cool this was this one a funny thing for me the first. One of the first times I came to America when I was of drinking age, and I asked for a vodka and lemonade, and I was just a very confused bartender.

Just very, very confused. I had no idea that it would be such a problem, but it was. I don't have a specific drink that I like, but I like to peruse a cocktail menu if such a thing is available to me at the poolside area that i'm at benjamin wants to know as fellow glasses boys i like that we're all glasses boys how do you enjoy the ocean without losing your frames i take them off i take them off that's right or you lose them that's that both of those things have happened to me my vision is not so bad that i can't see without my glasses

i can still see with my glasses i can't see very well at see without my glasses. I can still see with my glasses. I can't see very well at all without my glasses, but I can see well enough to know where I am and which degree the shore is or which direction the shore is. I can do that. That has to be it.

When I have tried to go into the surf with my glasses on, you know what happens? The surf comes over my head and knocks my glasses off and then we have to walk around and find my glasses floating in the water or they get like super dirty and you can't see anymore right because the salt exactly water it's so I was actually thinking after our recent trip to Hawaii that I may actually see about getting some prescription goggles. That's a good call.

So that I can just put those on and go out there and I can still see and also not have my glasses washed off. And I might do something like that. By the way, backing up one, Two Towns Cider House is the name of the company that makes Pacific Pineapple. So check that out, cider people. Following question from Leafy. When it gets really sunny, do you rock the shades over glasses look or the shades on contacts look? Or do you just bear the sun with only glasses? Leafy has left out what I think is the best situation.

It's just to get prescription sunglasses, which is what I do. I have prescription sunglasses. And I have sunglass clips that clip on clip ons and therefore i don't need to carry around two pairs of glasses i just have a little little clips i think i've seen the jason snell clip on if you've been outside with me in the sun you have i believe i've seen that brian asked if you could make any piece of tech beach proof, what would it be? So I took this to be quite literal, right? Like beach proof for me would mean that it is impervious to everything that I would maybe have a problem with at the beach.

So for example, I want it to be my iPhone. I would want it to not get greasy from sun cream, and I want to still be able to see it in the sun. That's good. I feel like we've come a long way with beach proof tech like the kindle now being um on top of everything else it's waterproof so it's basically completely beach proof now uh and that's great um the iphone water resistant also good but you're right it could be a little bit better and then i had uh i was uh in the water with my apple

watch and that was really great because it is fine in the water now so i'm not sure i've got anything uh airpods maybe i don't know that's about all like i feel like the beach tech situation is uh pretty decent now all right we have a question from Elizabeth. Lake or ocean? Oh, ocean. Ocean, right? For sure. For sure.

I mean, John Syracuse can make his comments about mud beaches on mud lakes. And you know what? A mountain lake can be delightful, but the ocean is the best, especially if you get a protected inlet or something. But yeah, the ocean is the way to go. And we have a question from Stay.

How do you pick the type of vacation that you go on next? Wow. Well, for us, it is a function of what time of year it is and where have we been recently and do we have a plan and do we have a budget and all of those things. So it is and are, you know, where have we been recently and do we have a plan and do we have a budget and all of those things. So it's a, it's a very complicated process. And then for me, additionally, it's how long has it been since we've been to Hawaii? Because if it's been too long, then I just want to go back to Hawaii because that's my favorite place. But, um, you know, so we'll, right now we're doing a bunch of stuff where I'm going to Oregon like six times in five months because my daughter is going to the University of Oregon.

So we're doing a lot of trips to Oregon. And so that's taking up a lot of our travel time. And then there are family things, Lawrence family especially. They often will do family get togethers. And so that's why I was in Idaho in the winter because they did a thing for my father-in-law's birthday. why I was in Idaho in the winter because they did a thing for my father-in-law's birthday. I'm hoping to do a big milestone kind of vacation next year. So we're talking about that and where that might be. And I have a big milestone wedding anniversary coming up in a few weeks, and we're trying to figure that one out too. So it really is, it's an art and not a science, and there's a

lot of variables. So I don't have a method beyond uh you know you just kind of got to go with it you place and also how long has it been since i've been to hawaii that's the that's the key consideration yeah ours is just whatever we feel like doing like they say art not a science there was a there was a period where a lot of our vacations got dragged around by events and this i know happens to you too, where you do travel and then you're like, oh, well, if we're going to go there, then I guess that's the vacation. That's a big thing for us.

Yeah. And that can be good. It can also get frustrating. So like we did those Mack World cruises for a bunch of years. And it was really great because it was a cheap cruise because like I was covered because I was speaking on it and all of that.

And that was great. The problem was that after a few years of that, literally every vacation we took was just determined by where the cruise itinerary was, and it was a cruise. And even for a cheap cruise, after you do four or five of them in a row, you think, I need to not do this anymore. So I prefer having more control over my vacation life. But sometimes that happens where like we, why did we spend a week in Europe last year or a week and a half in Europe last year? It was because we were coming to your wedding. And so we're like, okay, well, we've got a trip that we're going to, let's build a vacation around it. And sometimes that happens

too, which is great. Last question from noah and noah asked a wonderful question i'm so pleased somebody asked jason how is your outside ikea furniture pillows serving you this summer people may remember frozen quest episode 213 of upgrade how are they doing they're doing great they're outside right now uh you can sit on them they provide a cushion and uh they're they're lovely and when we have uh have people over we can entertain them and they can sit on the on the cushions and it's uh it's nice um i need to buy a couple more and it's one of those things where one of these days i'll go over to ikea and see if they are selling them but i'm not ordering them online.

Thank you to everybody who sent in a summer of fun hashtag AskUpgrade question. If you would like to send in an AskUpgrade question, which is more regular for next week's episode, feel free to do that with the hashtag AskUpgrade on Twitter, and they go into a list for us to pick from. Thank you to everybody who sent one in today and who sends them in all the time. We really, really appreciate it. Don't forget, we'll be back next week but on tuesday and we'll be talking about the uh the apple results among many other things let's see if we can make the apple results a summer of fun topic jason what about that i don't know how we're going to do that yet but

maybe i'll think about it the third financial quarter is the most fun. Summer of financials. You can find today's show notes at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 256. I want to thank our sponsors again. That is Pingdom, SaneBox, and TextExpander for their support of this episode. Don't forget, in case you have forgotten and you want to rectify that, we're going to be doing a live show in San Francisco

on August 22nd. Big Relay FM live show. I'll be there. Jason will be there. We're working on some stuff. We've got some really exciting things going on for that. So still got a few tickets left. Tickets are going to sell out for this. We are moving towards it being sold out.

So if you have been waiting, don't wait. You can find Jason online at sixcolors.com, the incomparable.com. theincomparable.com, and he is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, and we will be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.