Upgrade - 257: The Amount of Money Available on the Planet

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

Commerce is in the air as Apple reports more money for wearables and services and less money for the iPhone, and begins to roll out the Apple Card. How does Apple react strategically as a company to financial incentives, and does Apple's success in the category formerly called "Other" suggest a new emphasis on wearables? We also follow up on Siri surveillance and Catalina security and then make a bet to be settled in 2031, assuming money will still exist in the future.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 257 today's show is brought to you by warby parker squarespace and lumen5 my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hello mike hurley how are you i am very well, Jason Snell. Hashtag Snell Talk. To start the show comes from the son of Michael, Upgradian Michael. Michael asks, when a podcast comes to an end, do you unsubscribe from the feed or do you keep it around in your subscription list? Oh, this is a great question. I have heard from a lot of people that when a podcast ends they keep it around sort of nostalgically the nice thing about most podcasts is when they end it's not like the feed goes away it's all still there and so i generally don't if i've listened to it all i generally don't keep it in my subscriptions list because i know it's it's gonna go back there there. If I want to go back, I can resubscribe to it.

But I generally will do a ceremonial deletion of the podcast after a brief tasteful period where we honor it and we thank it. And then we do a ceremonial consigning of that podcast to the depths of space. to the depths of space i don't do it because there have been too many instances where some of my favorite shows have just like ended and then multiple years later an episode appears yeah and so i'm too scared in case i'm gonna miss it so like there's a couple of shows like one one of my very very favorite podcasts of all time is a video game show called The Besties. And it's basically a bunch of now mostly ex-writers from Polygon. It was like Polygon's official podcast for a while, like many, many years ago, or at least one of them. And it's like four or five, and it's like five best friends talk about video games, right?

It's just like, I love that kind of thing. And it's got a couple of the McElroys on it. And they stopped doing the show, and then they randomly started it again, and then they stopped it again. And then every year, they publish a Game of the Year episode. But they never told anyone they were going to do any of this. So, like, you've got to keep it around.

Or You Look Nice Today. Remember when You Look Nice Today came back for a little bit? Like, you know, you've got to keep these things around because you never know these wild podcasters might just throw something in the feeds i i i will i've got two things one is um download i did i have been tempted a couple of times to drop a fuzzy puppy update in the download feed you see you just because and um and a bigger issue and this is my counter argument, is a podcast that I listened to and really liked this summer that just ended. Actually, there are two of them that I found in the last six months.

They end, and then like three months later, there's an episode in the feed, and the episode is, we have other podcasts you can listen to. Where it's very much like, oh oh this podcast has a lot of subscribers but we're done with it what can we do well why don't we put an ad in the feed at the end to say you should subscribe to other podcasts we're doing and it's like no nope i don't like that at all thumbs down yeah that that feels to me like i i feel like i don't listen to a lot of shows that i think would do something like that like that feels like a thing that would happen on a show that um is made by a large company

you know yeah and i don't i don't like a large media agency or whatever and i don't really listen to a lot of those types of shows well yeah and you when you say those wacky podcasters you never know what they're going to do i think that's the the difference although i will say that one of those uh shows was done by a very large uh media corporation and the other one was done by a kind of like small media corporation right okay and it had the whiff of uh it really had the whiff of desperation about it like Like, boy, no other podcast we do is, and to be fair to this podcast, which I'm not going to name,

it was by the same producers on a different subject, but it was very much like our new project that follows this project is now out and you can listen to it. And so I understand it, but on another level, I'm like, no, I don't like this. I get why they do it, but it is, it is just kind of desperate. So anyway, I see both sides understand it, but on another level, I'm like, no, I don't like this. I get why they do it,

but it is, it is just kind of desperate. So anyway, I see both sides of it, but for me, upgrading and Michael, I generally just dump them. Although I suppose you're right, host Mike, that if it was a, I don't know if I didn't trust them. I'm like, yeah, you say it's over, but I don't, I'm not sure I believe you. I would keep it around for sure. Thank you so much to Upgradium Michael for that question. You can send in a question to start an episode of Upgrade just by sending a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk.

It can be about literally anything at all and you can maybe get included. Now we have some follow-up from, as Jason has listed, former intern blair i don't know what that means he was our uh he was our mackerel did turn former intern blair former intern blair has written into the tv talk machine a few times okay this is his first uh i believe um upgrade upgrade uh former intern blair and this is regarding we were talking about catalina and security warnings last time and I'm going to read the feedback

and then I believe you have some rebuttals and some points to make. I do have a response. After listening to your conversation last week, I wanted to push back a bit on the idea that Apple's solution to the aggressive warnings in Catalina should be to provide pro users of a switch that says,

don't bother me about this app or don't bother me at all. I'd argue that pro users are going out and installing all manner of software that requires deeper access. And Catalina's default behavior should be to pay even closer attention, since we've seen several attackers attempt to commandeer personal data by hijacking applications that users already trust. Those people who are most likely to say, don't bother me about this app, are, I would argue, at the greatest risk for an attack in that way. Now, that being said, I do agree with you that the avalanche of dialog boxes isn't the right way to address this on first startup after the upgrade. I hope there's some way for the app to communicate to the system, hey, this user has provided me with this access for the past umpteen years so don't bug them about it but personally given the very real threat to end users i think that a rocky post-upgrade experience is arguably better than

leaving people open to attack i do like this follow-up by the way i think it is very well written and i appreciate a point like this it's why former intern blair is very good um i i don't entirely agree i think he makes some very good points um. One of the things I will say is I'm not sure targeting pro Mac users is ever going to be a particularly strong malware vector because it's a fraction of a fraction of an audience. And so I'm not sure I completely buy that it's like the pro users, but we have seen like transmission is a good example. That's not a pro app, right? But we have seen like transmission is a good example.

That's not a pro app, right? It's a BitTorrent app, but it's an app that you can only get in kind of murky areas of the internet because it is of murky legality. It is legal. There are legal uses of BitTorrent. There are lots of not legal uses of BitTorrent. And that's the kind of thing where you might see it in a vulnerable population. So saying pro users might not be the right way to approach it, but I get what he's saying here for me.

So the, the key security issue Blair is talking about is when apps want to do things we don't expect that are sort of notably dangerous. And I think that is an important aspect of security. That's why I would prefer, I would prefer not to have a switch that shuts off all protections on my Mac, right? I would rather it be a little more granular than that. But at the same time, I don't want the death by a thousand cuts every time I want to do something.

By the way, parenthetically, there is a terminal command, I believe. In Mojave, there is a terminal command. I hope it will be there or is there in Catalina. I haven't tried it because I want to experience the official Catalina experience. That will let you set that sort of app security launch thing to its lowest setting, but even though it's been taken out of the UI,

and I heard from several people about that, and it's true. I just have chosen not to do that because I think most people, I want to have that real experience. I can shut it off later if it's really driving me crazy, but I'm trying to write about the core catalina experience and not sort of a what happens after you've issued this secret terminal command i will say as well like i don't think i mean i i get what blair is saying but i don't think that the way that apple is approaching

this would actually solve it for pro users so let's use transmission as an example if the system was bothering you about whether to use it or not you'd still say yes right like that doesn't necessarily take away the idea of their of it somehow being tampered with and really the the notarization and the ability for apple to be able to cut off an app on their side, that's the part that is more important. And everyone still gets that anyway. In fact, transmission, the story behind transmission, which for those who don't know, a legitimate app that had somebody hacked its, I think the server that its update was on, and took the app file off and put stuff in it. And then put it back up. And it basically sort of inserted a hacked version of the app on the update server. And so a hacked version went out for

people who downloaded that update. And that's actually why the notarization process exists, is stuff like that. Because if the notarization changes to the app bundle break the cryptographic signature and the system goes oh this isn't right like this is this is wrong this is bad and that's that's great i mean that's a that's a great feature it's uh and that's part of the challenge of talking about this is there's a lot of different stuff going on and for a lot of different reasons and um i i don't let me give you an example of something like i don't be when i talk about like dangerous notably dangerous things that we don't expect like i don't mind being warned about using my camera microphone because those are basically like very privileged surveillance

hardware devices that are inside my mac and if some some random apps suddenly wants, and this is true on iOS, but it's also true on my Mac, suddenly wants microphone access. It's like, I want to be able to say, no, why would you want to use my microphone? That's super gross. I don't want you to do that. I get that. But I wonder where you draw the line for notably dangerous versus stuff that's assumed to be just part of using a computer. And I know this is what Apple and their security people are probably struggling with. Because, like, personally, an app I install and run, accessing files in my desktop folder, is business, right? It's not dangerous. It's not a security violation.

It's not a security violation it's not a privacy violation i expect my desktop folder and probably my documents folder to be pretty much open fair game for apps i install and run on my computer right and so to have every app that wants to access that without my explicit permission to have to be granted access to me it feels too far. And it also makes me question, like, did anybody consider that the per request feature for some of this stuff is a bridge too far, and that the right thing to do is something like letting the user say, you know, desktop and documents folders are okay. Just blanket, not per app, but like those folders are not privileged for me. And maybe they are by default. And you have to say, yes,

I actually am okay with my apps looking at my files on my hard drive on my Mac. But what they do now is, you know, is just constantly ask you for these things. And I think, I think that's part of this bigger issue, which is the system gets in the way, gets in your way when you know what you're trying to do. And at some point, there is another line that has to get crossed, which is people have to take responsibility for their own actions. At some point, Apple has to say, all right, you can do whatever you want here. You know, jump off a bridge if your friends do. Fine. See if I care.

Every parent has to do that. There has to be a moment where you can't be the nanny anymore. You can't be the parent of this user. You have to say, if you want to do this, you're going to do it. Otherwise, I would argue it's not the Mac anymore. There has to be that place. And what I would say is that in Catalina, it feels to me like that line is not being drawn in the right place, that they're like a little overprotective of getting in the

way of people doing the right thing, doing the wrong thing because they want to and that they might want to rethink that. I totally get you want to create a system that informs users and raises those initial barriers in the right places to get the users to think twice before they do something. But at some point, you have to just say, as Apple, I'm no longer responsible for the dumb things you do. Because the counter argument in here is always going to be, but if you let users choose, they will install malware. Their privacy will be violated. They will let users choose, they will install malware, their privacy will be violated, they will be hacked, their data will be stolen. And my answer to that is, yeah,

at some point, that's true. But it's you, you, it's that's their problem, like that you at some point, you have to let it go, you can put as many safety features into a car as you possibly can as a car manufacturer. But at some point, if somebody wants to get into a car as you possibly can as a car manufacturer but at some point if somebody wants to get into a car and smash it up for various irresponsible reasons whatever they might be that's they're you know you that that's just they don't attach a breathalyzer to every car right like at some point it's like no that's on you don't drive drunk that's on you and uh and for this that's a bad analogy but it's the idea right like beyond a certain point of product being used responsibly is the responsibility of the person who bought the product and it's not

the responsibility of apple you know to make it that it's impossible for them to be harmed by installing bad software there has to be a point where it's drawn and i i feel like it's it's impossible for them to be harmed by installing bad software. There has to be a point where it's drawn. And I feel like it's being drawn a little too aggressively here. And, you know, again, like I said last week, super hard problem, right? I don't think they're wrong to try to make the Mac safer by default. I think that the Mac and the PC, Mac OS and Windows were envisioned in an environment that was not as dangerous as the environment we exist in now. And iOS was and is much safer as a result. And Apple's trying to bring that goodness to the Mac. I totally get it. I just think in the Catalina betas, I don't think the user friendliness of it and some

of the assumptions about how people use their computers were taken into account. And, you know, I do hope they do better by the fall, whenever this thing comes out. We'll see. We'll see. But thank you to former intern Blair, because, you know, I agree with all that. This is the challenge here,

is you do want to protect users to a certain point. You don't want to make it super easy for them to just flip off the switch. The danger is that one single button that you click that turns off all security is bad. So is a thousand buttons that you have to click to remain security because everybody will just stop clicking them with, you know, other than just blindly just like click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And both of those solutions are terrible. So, you know, it's a hard problem. And I hope they they i hope apple is

continuing to work on it because i think what they've got right now is not good enough so we're going to be doing a live show on august 22nd as we've mentioned before in san francisco and uh we need the help of relay fm listeners because we're going to be playing a game of relay fm host family feud this is known as Fortunes in the UK and maybe in other places. The way that this game works is that the competitors of the game have to answer a series of questions with the objective of to try and guess the most popular answer as given in a survey. That survey will be conducted with RelayFM listeners.

So, for example, if the question given by the quizmaster was name an operating system the competitors would have to guess which operating system would be the most frequently answered by RelayFM listeners so we need your help there is a survey in the show notes fill this survey out

give your answers to the questions and it will go towards helping us build the questions out for the game itself if you can't make it in person to our live show you're not going to be there this will be posted in the connected uh feed on a couple of days after we do the live show so everybody's going to get a chance to listen to this our big fifth extravaganza there's going to be a lot of real afm hosts there and so a lot a lot uh and there's gonna be four individual teams playing this game it's a whole big thing we have a wonderful quiz master that you might know very well um who could it be and uh yeah and so we get we need your help because uh the way that family food works is we need we need answers to a series of questions. It's not too many. It's like 20 questions.

It's pretty simple stuff. So you can... 16 questions. 16 total questions. And you can find a link in the show notes to the Real AFM 5th Anniversary Family Feud Survey. If you could fill that out, that would be wonderful. Thank you very much. Should we do a couple of pieces of upstream news?

Sure. A couple of quick things. There's a little bit going on, yeah. Apple is remaking an israeli tv show called false flag um this is a thriller which is originally broadcast in hebrew and focuses on a story of five people who find themselves implicated in the kidnapping of an iranian defense minister it's actually anthology show this is like the first season and there will be future seasons in with the original creator where they're going to be looking at different situations like this uh this show was successful enough that it was eventually

aired internationally with subtitles it was actually on hulu as well in the u.s um and it got enough fanfare and enough interest that apple has bought the rights and they're going to be remaking it to air on apple tv plus this is actually the second project that apple has ordered from this particular production company that are called Cachette. The first is a remake of another series called Neverlot that will star Richard Gere, which I'd forgotten about

until I read the synopsis and then remembered oh yeah, that sounds really weird. The synopsis of this show is two elderly Vietnam vets and their best friends who find their monotonous lives upended when a woman they both loved 50 years ago is killed by a car their lifelong regrets and secrets collide with their resentment of today's self-absorbed millennials and an act of self-defense

snowballs into a series of tragic events i remember like i didn't remember richard gear but i remember that description because that sounds like a very weird tv show um so i'm intrigued to see what what comes of those but yeah so that that's another another tv show for apple tv plus okay yeah and also hulu's svp of originals craig owich has announced at the television critics association uh at their event that disney plus will be available as an add-on to hulu it's unknown what this bundle pricing will look like but you would assume it would be cheaper than the 5.99 a month disney plus will cost standalone you would i'd actually be surprised i don't think they've announced this but i'd be surprised if they didn't also sell you espn plus within hulu

just you know the disney use the disney bundle uh basically build the Disney bundle by building add-ons inside Hulu for these other features. And as somebody who pays for Hulu, yeah, great. That sounds great. A little related about this guy, because this is a guy who's in charge of originals at Hulu. Now that Disney owns Hulu, they also did something last week that was kind of interesting in that he now reports to the head of Disney TV and ABC and Disney TV Entertainment Studio, which is, I think, probably a good move because Hulu's original development has been kind of a mess. And this is basically Disney saying, we're in charge of this. Yeah.

Like, you're still the guy at Hulu, but you report to our development person and we're in charge of you. What I'm surprised by is that John Landgraf, who's in charge of the FX networks that they bought as part of the Fox deal and who is very well thought of and the content from FX has been really successful. They are not, he's not involved in Hulu. So I'm not quite sure what their strategy is there. Maybe their strategy is just going to be to let him continue programming the FX linear networks and just know that John Landgraf's content that's good. It's all going to go on Hulu, but it is not an original because it starts on the linear program channels and then moves to Hulu. So maybe that's going to be the distinction there, but I think it's a little bit weird because they've got this, uh, very, uh, smart, powerful executive. Uh, then again, maybe he doesn't want to be, you know, given Hulu like, no, no, no, to keep it away. I don't know. I don't know that much. Yeah, maybe, maybe so anyway, it's,'s uh they're they're it's going to be

a fascinating kind of year plus for disney because they still have to deal we know when we talk about apple buying to uh intel motor business and getting 2 000 new employees like that's going to take years to to settle down because it's just that kind of an influx of people it's going to be a mess and there's going to be a lot of turmoil and there'll be people leaving and there'll be new jobs and new people in charge and new directions that the old Intel people are not used to. You know, I've been through combinations of org charts many times like that, and it's really complicated well that's like even at a far greater scale what's going on with disney and fox and will continue to as they try to shake out their strategy so um there'll be

more to come i'm sure it's uh as we record today as well it's also disney's quarterly earnings call later on so i can i expect there will be more disney plus news to talk about next week on upstream yeah and i think they have do they not have their Disney, they have an event too that they do, that they sometimes do. They've become masters of rolling out little tidbits about all their stuff very slowly. So, you know, maybe we'll get some more

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quarterly earnings time oh boy money money money money because it was about a week from when the quarterly earnings came out i'm not going to do my usual number breakdown we're just going to talk about some of the key key things that happened um what i will say is apple did meet their revenue guidance which is something that i was hoping would be the case but i felt is not something that we can necessarily bank on all the time now and and wall street really cares about two things right did you meet your guidance and what's the next guidance because they all of you know everything in investing is uh guessing about what's going to happen next and making your purchases,

making your bets because of that. And so they want to know what's next. And it's like, it also shows how well do you know your business? Exactly. It should be very well, right? Like you should say your guidance, you should get it right.

You don't want to be too over, you don't want to be too under. Yeah, being surprised, it's not good. So they met the guidance and the guidance that they set for Q4, it's effectively flat year over year yeah which is is what it is um we'll see but there are a couple of big stories that have come out from these earnings there are some interesting trends that will come from them as well so probably the biggest one the one that i've seen the most headlines about is that the iphone dipped under 50% of Apple's overall revenue.

So if you imagine all of the revenue, all the money that Apple makes, for the first time in seven years, the iPhone made up less than half of that. So that is a super interesting thing. I love this from your Macworld column because I hadn't seen this anywhere else. If you, I love this from your Macworld column, because I hadn't seen this anywhere else. If you take the iPhone out of Apple's revenue and just look at everything else they make, it is up 17% year over year. But then with the iPhone's decline,

it brings it down to about flat, right? Year over year, which is where they are. iPhone sales were down 12%, which is, as Apple liked to point out, a better decline than the last quarter. Yep. So it's going down, but down less. So I wanted to get your opinion on the 50% thing.

So what does this mean to you? Like the fact that the iPhone now only equates to 50% of the revenue. Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Well, I think the truth is that everybody who writes about this stuff, especially if they want to generate excitement, they talk about it in dramatic terms.

So when the iPhone was two-thirds of Apple's revenue, there are people who are like, oh, look at the iPhone. Or they would say, oh, look how dependent Apple is on the iPhone. That's really dangerous. And then it goes under 50%, and there are a bunch of people who are like, oh, look how dangerous this is for Apple that it's under 50%. Which is it? Can you have it both ways?

But I'm going to give you probably a more boring response, which is, what's the deal here? The deal is that they have two product categories that are rapidly growing, and one that is down a little. And that's why, right and percentage is going to be the it's not just where did the revenue trend happen where it was down 12%. But it's like, overall, if every part of Apple's business dropped at the same amount, the iPhone's percentage would stay the same. But what's happening is wearables and services continue to trend way up and iPhone trending down a little bit. You know, it's math at that point and it's under 50%. I personally, I feel like Apple will be a healthier company if the iPhone is not two

thirds of its revenue. I just think that it is a, I wrote a column about this a couple of years ago, the idea that the iPhone distorts everything. Like it distorts how we view Apple as a business because you lose all of the other businesses that they do that are very profitable and very successful because the iPhone is so huge that it just sort of casts a shadow on all the rest of it. It also potentially distorts Apple's decision-making because Apple starts making decisions that are just to favor the iPhone because it's such a

huge part of their business that it would be kind of malpractice for them not to favor the iPhone. Like the iPad languished for a while with very little attention given to it, really because all the iOS features were about propping up the iPhone and making it better and keeping it in a great state opposite Android and adding more features for phones to be better. And as an iPad user, I was like, come on, Apple. But you look at their business and you say, well, I mean, it's 70% of their revenue. How could they not do that? So I think in the long run, I do think that it's a more healthy Apple would have a bunch of other stuff that would contribute to the bottom line so that the iPhone wasn't quite as the 600 pound gorilla on Apple's balance sheet, because it makes Apple make more well-rounded decisions.

And it means that the success or failure of any particular iPhone or iPhone buying trend cannot make people lose sight of the rest of Apple's business because it's the only part that matters. So in that way, I think it's good. But the truth is that this is just all about wearables and services coming up and the phone trending down a little bit.

So let me actually want to come back to that point so let me give the details about services and wearables so like we usually talk every quarter about services being the big mover and it was up 13 year over year massive but this quarter apple's i think crown jewel was wearables 48 year overyear revenue growth after 10 straight quarters of double-digit growth anyway so it's been steadily rising for years but this quarter has exploded probably airpods probably it's a big part of that but not all of it but a big part of it it's airpods and apple watch yeah i mean i'm sure that it just feels like the airpods are part of the zeitgeist in a way the apple watch isn't like we're considering we don't actually know the numbers

i assume airpods have helped a lot but who knows so wearables is now 10 of apple's business bigger than the mac and ipad so jason what kind of company is Apple now? The Mac actually was bigger than wearables this quarter. Okay. It's bigger than the iPad. Yeah. But to think about it this way, it's 11% Mac, 10% wearables, and 9% iPads. So they're all right around there.

Yeah. But this is a category that just keeps growing. Like the services revenue is up, and we've talked about that a lot, but wearables, it just keeps going up. The last few quarters of wearables revenue growth, almost, well, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. There are 10 quarters of wearables growth in a row. Nine of those ten quarters have been 30 year over year growth or more just enormous growth in this category and the one that wasn't 30 was 23 right like so they have been on a tear in transforming this category

that used to be called other but is now you, you know, what is it? Wearables, Home, and Accessories. I think we all feel, and Apple definitely wants us to feel, that the wearables business, especially Apple Watch and AirPods, are the drivers here. But it is a category that does include things like HomePod and Apple TV as well. So if you think about that, you think about the growth of wearables, services, it's like, what is Apple, really? Like, if you're looking at the balance sheet, what kind of company are they? Right? And it's like, if you think about the wearable stuff, it doesn't get as much attention as the Mac. Right. It doesn't get as much attention as iPad is getting.

Yep. doesn't get as much attention as iPad is getting. And do you really feel like it's getting what would be the same percentage when you look at the iPhone? If the iPhone's half of the business and AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Apple TV are 10% of the business, do you feel like all of that shakes out?

I think that it is a very interesting situation when you look at their balance sheet now to see like from a revenue perspective where should they be putting their attention and considering apple does care about this stuff they care about their the revenue reports right like they they they give a lot of detail it's obviously being a publicly traded company they have to care i wonder if this stuff is going to further shape the company, right? I feel like we saw and have seen that the probably accidental mostly growth in services has driven Apple to become a different company, right?

So you would assume that like the original growth in services, which is we have so many iPhones, that we're going to have a lot of people sign up for iCloud and give us a little bit of money. And over time, that is going to grow without us doing really anything. And so let's now get a music streaming service. Oh, look how many customers we can just accidentally get purely because it's already installed. So then it's like, all right, now we're going to become a media company. So then it's like, all right, now we're going to become a media company.

Don't forget one that I think doesn't get talked about as much as maybe it should, which is AppleCare shows enormous growth. And I would phrase that as, oh, we raised the average prices on all of our models of all of our products. And now they're so pricey that you really are motivated to buy a service plan. And also, our phones are so complicated now that it has become extremely expensive to replace the glass on them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is my point is that an untold part of the average iPhone costing nearly $1,000 or in the high hundreds is the more expensive those phones are and the more expensive they are to replace and repair, the more likely you are to buy AppleCare. And AppleCare has shown enormous growth. So that's part of the services line. We don't talk about it a lot, but they called it out on the analyst call that AppleCare growth is also really large. So that's a big part of what's going

on in services. I would say that, and this may be a little counterintuitive, but I would say that the way that analysts view Apple is not all analysts. There are a lot of dumb analysts out there. But I think in general, the way Apple is viewed is not that far off, which is it's a company that has a primary product, which is the iPhone. It has a growing services business that's tied into people who use their products. And then it has a collection of other products that do pretty well, but are not at the scale of the iPhone. And right now that's exactly what the pie chart shows, right? It shows iPhone 48% services at 21%. And then these 10 ish percent businesses of wearables, Mac and iPad.

10-ish percent businesses of wearables, Mac and iPad. And so, you know, I think, doesn't that pretty much align with how we think of Apple? Like it's, you know, the iPhone is the most important product. There's a lot of services and it's super important for them. And then they've got these other businesses that are pretty good,

but are not a massive portion of Apple's revenue. Put together, they're a third of Apple's revenue. My thinking is just like, where does it push them right did i see that like okay maybe we should be pursuing the ar glasses maybe we should be pursuing different headphone models maybe you know yes i i i think i think you are right that the moment they changed other to be wearables, home accessories, that indicated something about Apple's feeling about this category. First off, they didn't want everybody saying, wow, other is going great for Apple right now. That's no good. So they call it wearables, home accessories, and they emphasize the wearables, which makes it sound cooler. But I do think that internally, they've got to be looking at the apple watch and um and they

talk about it the apple watch and airpods as being these big success successes that although a lot of people in in the larger world don't think of them as like the apple watch is a great example like the apple watch has been an incredible success but if you ask people about it, they're like, yeah, the Apple Watch, whatever. It's actually within its category. So many other... Tim Cook actually threw shade at other competitors on the analyst call by pointing out that many of their competitors in the wearables category have given up and shuttered their smartwatch

businesses because they just didn't make it, whereas Apple has been number one and is number one and is doing very well at it. It's a little unfair, but I get his point, right? It's just like no one could compete with them anyway, just by inertia. But yes, it's correct what he's saying. But Android Wear, there was a scenario

when the Apple Watch was introduced five years ago where we can imagine, well, there will be in five years, because it's coming up five years since the Apple Watch was announced, not shipped, but announced that where you'd say, oh, well, there'll be a competitor platform from Google and there'll be 70% of the market of smartwatches and Apple will be 30% because that's sort of what happens. And that has not happened. That has not happened. It's not like there aren't Android Wear watches out there that sell. But Apple Watch has been very successful and most of those other products have not. And in fact, you could really argue that the only product that is really strong in the face of the Apple Watch are Fitbits. Because Fitbit has really upped its game.

And they had an existing market and they have done it well. And I know a bunch of people who choose Fitbit over Apple Watch. And they have done really well and have weathered that storm. But it is surprising. So I guess what I'm saying is, yeah, I think Apple is looking at the numbers and saying, yes, wearables is a huge push forward for us. And that given that all of their miniaturization skills that they have from building the iPhone, I mean, it benefits them there. They can build little processors and put in little batteries and do everything else they need to do.

So does that mean the AR glasses are a sure thing? It doesn't, but I think it makes them realize what the potential is for something like AR glasses, given how well wireless earbuds have done for them. Yeah, I don't think it necessarily makes anything a surefire thing they should do, as you say. I don't think it necessarily makes anything a surefire thing that it should do, as you say. But I think that it definitely, when they're sitting around the table and they're looking at their pies, they're like, all right, what areas can we see growth in?

So when they're looking at, these are all the projects that we have, looking at our track record, what our customers seem to be interested in from the stuff that we make, what could we seem to be interested in from the stuff that we make what could we do to help us pick up the iphones falling and clearly services and wearables are two areas that they have not had to do much to and they're seeing incredible growth like arguably they work a lot harder on the mac and the ipad they are not seeing that growth

right right and so it's like well they can they should continue to focus on the whole thing right that i'm not arguing that they should stop making macs and start making headphones right like they should be a company that can handle the scope they should be a company that can handle all of it um i know that sometimes they don't necessarily show that but they they are they they more than any company in the world should be able to handle everything because they have all the money so you know i i would expect to see continued push in those areas whilst also continuing to handle everything else but yeah it was an interesting as i think i said this a few quarters ago right that i know revenue stuff could be drier but i think the next couple of years are going to continue to have these little interesting never we haven't seen these

before stories because the company is changing the way they're making money is changing and it's i'm keen to see what the next quarter is going to be like well when i when i talk about the distortion of the of the iphone when it's enormous i think the the reverse is also true that um apple as a public company especially like apple's motivated by growth apple's always looking for growth and i think apple is in a different way maybe a little bit than what Wall Street wants, Apple is always searching for the next thing, right? Like AirPods and Apple Watch are not products that had to exist. But Apple pushed in those areas and have gotten success out of it.

I would say especially AirPods. The watch seemed like an inevitable product right that there would be a smart watch wrist computer it felt like an inevitable thing that they would try but little wireless headphones that have no cable on them i mean that that that kind of came out of nowhere a little bit more but the idea that you have to create those those product categories and apple always has to be looking for those product categories i think that i think there's truth in that and then you get into this nice cycle where you're like okay now we we got we got the hits we're gonna grow this thing and now they're and now they're growing that thing and giving it more attention and they should give it

more attention service is a similar thing where they realized wow you know there's a huge opportunity here in terms of subscriptions and services and and that needs to be a part of the the revenue engine for apple and then in the background they are doing r&d for whatever the next thing is because they know that uh services and wearables are also going to slow their like the that wearables category is doing great but it's probably not sustainable because it's never sustainable to do 30 growth year over year forever it's just it's not possible so because just the they will exhaust that category and they will go to they will go down a little bit and they'll go flat and and

it'll be very profitable right but it'll be flat and and flat isn't bad but except in if you're looking for growth i mean and as well it's, it's like, in theory, the iPhone, its cap was the amount of people on the planet. But services and wearables, its cap is the existing amount of iPhone users, right? Yeah, I would say services, the cap is the amount of money available on the planet. Yes, yes, that's a good point.

Just go forever selling new services to people who already have it but you're right they are generally limited to within Apple they both have saturation points that are iPhone customer size where the iPhone in theory they could have just kept selling it to everyone in the world in theory I am really intrigued

for the next quarter because Q4 well should have the first few weeks of iPhone sales and I don't know about you but I feel like because Q4, well, should have the first few weeks of iPhone sales. And I don't know about you, but I feel like all of the, you know, information is leaking out about the next iPhone, and the general rhetoric is not good. Like, people seem to be not excited.

All of the, like, general kind of technology press and like more the mainstream media saying not good you know like you know when you being a person who's interested in technology people like to tell you their thoughts and all the thoughts that i'm getting from people in the wider world which is admittedly a small sample size it's like oh you've got to skip the iphone 11 right and so i'm very intrigued to see if apple's going to be right yeah it because it feels very much like this is going to be the iphone 7 which is the third step in an existing product cycle yes it's the second for the 10r but like for the 10 concept the third year of iteration of that product yeah and while they will still make a lot of money and they'll

still sell a lot of iphones it's not going to drive if it's like these other things we've seen in the apple uh in the iphone buying cycle it's not going to drive growth in the iphone because the 10s didn't work for this exact reason right and so we do it again the same because they're only coming out with a really new iphone i don't know. So that's why I'm really interested about what Q4 is going to look like for them. Like how they're actually going to get where they think they're going to go. We'll see.

Yeah. All right. Today's episode is also brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace will let you easily create a website for your next idea so you can make your next move with Squarespace. They give you all of the tools that you need in a wonderful all-in-one platform. No matter what type of website you want to build, Squarespace has the functionality. There's nothing to install or patch or upgrade.

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So after the very lackluster initial response that Apple gave that we spoke about last week where they were kind of just like trying to wave this away. Like, yeah, sure. It's all fine. They have now spoken to Matthew Pew pazarino at tech crunch and have told him that they are going to be ending the program they're going to review their process and add an opt-out for having your serial requests reviewed in a future software update this was like a like friday night news dump right like just get it out there um i saw nina patel say and i actually kind of agree with him that like it feels like a very facebooky way to announce something like this like just i

don't really know why apple's being so they were so strange about their initial response and then a few days later kind of dumping this news it's all a bit weird to me but they have at least done what we consider to be the right thing here which is to do this properly to stand up and own up for the type of stuff that they're usually beating drums about and making this a more privacy focused process uh yeah it's it's a much better response than the initial response but you know what they say is we're going to conduct a thorough review and we are suspending this globally. So we're suspending Siri grading globally. So my questions are, well, suspending means you're not eliminating it. You're going to turn it back on, potentially.

It's suspending Siri grading, which makes me think, are there things they're not eliminating it you're going to turn it back on potentially yeah um it's suspending siri grading which makes me think are there things they're not suspending are they suspending the one thing that got reported in the guardian but not other things that we don't really know about because that's not they didn't say until we review our policies and figure out a way to go forward humans aren't going to listen to your audio they didn didn't say that. They said, we're suspending Siri grading globally. And then they mentioned, I think this is actually a positive thing. It's often reported, and you mentioned it, that people will be given a chance to opt out. What they said was, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading yeah which could be an opt in rather than an opt out which i think is the right thing to do i expect it will be part of the

setup process you know like when you're asked like do you want to give analytics and when you set up siri they'll probably ask you that then which is fine that's perfect that's what i want right that's exactly what i want because i'll say no i usually say yes to this stuff, but I will say no to this one. This one just makes me a little bit more uneasy than other things. And I would have no problem and have no problem with any of these companies reviewing things that seem to have gone right or wrong, but there was a conversation. I have no problem with that. My problem is reviewing accidental activations. That's what I don't like.

I mean, I feel like we spoke about that last time, but I wanted to like reiterate and make very clear my issue with this. Like if there was a way for me to choose between those, I can say like, you can review my successful requests or requests where I got frustrated, but it was a conversation for me to choose between those, like and say, you can review my successful requests or requests where I got frustrated, but it was a conversation between me and the device,

I would say, yeah, that's fine because that's going to make it better. I'm not keen for review whatever the heck I'm talking about when you thought I called you. Because that's two very, very different things. You know? Right. Yep.

Because I don't know about you but in our house if somebody's talking to one of the assistants the other person doesn't say anything right right like it becomes like a thing where we know the technology is listening and in our homes and it's and i think it's purely like it's not like we're freaking out but it's just like oh there's something happening i will let that occur and then we can go back to whatever you know so so like i don't like the idea of of these of these devices being able to hear me whenever i whenever whenever it feels like they want to right which is sometimes accidentally and um and i heard this pointed out on atp last week and i think we mentioned it as well. In many ways, I'm not concerned with

these agents not understanding a command I give them. I think that's a great example where I would like to improve the quality of the service. I think for me, the challenge is when there's a mistaken activation where we're not aware because there's no chime the moment that they get the wake word. And so there's a mistaken activation from the TV, from conversation going on in the room, who knows what. And at that point, you passed to a random person and i i you know that needs to not be there and maybe they could get granular about it maybe they could say you know we want to we want to understand uh commands or we want to understand accidental activations maybe they can't do that but you know the the accidental activations are the one that is just i can't approve that yeah i completely agree and and i i have we have a lot of problems with siri um with the home pod

setting off it's an almost daily occurrence i have it all the time which is why when the story came out i finally finally just decided, what if we went back to touch and hold to give a command to the HomePod? Because quite frankly, I was fed up with the HomePod accidentally triggering all the time anyway. So I'm pleased that Apple have at least, they're going to do what they should have done.

This should have been the initial response that they gave to the Guardian, in my opinion, which I find a little bit disappointing from them. This feels like another company that gave this response, right? It doesn't really make sense to me. So we'll wait. We'll wait and see what they do with it afterwards.

But this whole thing has been kind of frustrating, I think. Yeah. And also now the Apple Card is available. Jason Snell, are you excited credit cards come on credit cards i i'm sorry i guess i'm contractually obligated to say money money money money again thank you yeah i mean this is so they announced this back in june and we should talk about it because i think everybody was focused on all the other things that they announced because you may not remember.

I didn't remember this. It was during WWDC. I was like, what? It's very confusing for me now to think that this was part of the developer conference, but it was. So now that it is available. I'm interested in this because more than anything else, I would say I'm not generally one of those people who is always like chasing the best credit card thing where it's like, I'm going to have this card and I'm going to use it on these purchases. And for these kinds of purchases, I'll use this card because I'm maximizing my rewards because it seems like

a lot of work. And I think most people are like that. And the interesting thing about the Apple card is that it's potentially a really good deal for people who don't, who pay off their, you know, again, pay off your credit card every month if you can, and who are buying Apple stuff. It's potentially, in general, a good deal for people who are not going to actively be chasing. Like, there are better deals out there to be had, but you have to work at it a little bit more. So I think that is, because this card is all about being super convenient for people who have iPhones, basically. Yeah, I wanted to kind of run through some stuff again. There was also some more details given today

about kind of how Apple and Goldman Sachs are working together. Goldman Sachs is the company providing Apple with the underlying technology and all of the agreements and all the cards, like just allowing them to create a credit card in the first place

because you need licenses for that kind of stuff. There was a preview rollout that's starting today. So people could sign up to say they were interested and they're going to be notifying a random selection of people to say, yeah, you can do it. With wider availability across the US by the end of the month.

The way that approval works, you just sign up in iOS and then it takes a few minutes and then the card immediately shows up the way that approval works you just sign up in ios and then it takes a few minutes and then the card immediately shows up in your apple wallet if you are accepted they then send you the titanium card remember it's like the card is made of titanium and send you that in the mail and just like a cute little feature the envelope that they send you has an nfc tag inside you tap it with your phone and it activates the card. Which is just nice. That's just like nice, right?

So you don't have to call anyone. You don't have to go to an ATM or a website. Like it just does it for you. So another little tidbit, you have three card numbers attached to the credit card account. You have the digital one that goes in Apple Wallet

that you use for contactless stuff. The physical card has its own number and then also the you have a virtual number and the virtual number is what you use online so when you're buying things online and you can so this is like when it pops up to pay by apple pay it uses a different number and you can request a new virtual number at any time. This is useful because then when your card information is compromised by a big supermarket chain because they didn't have enough security, just change the virtual number and you're good to go.

And you don't have to wait for a new card or anything like that because it's separate. So this is like we're talking about that convenience angle. That is fantastic. So if your card number is compromised because somebody's separate. So this is like, we're talking about that convenience angle. That is fantastic. So if your card number is compromised because somebody wasn't looking after their protection stuff, you don't need to do anything other than get a new number, which I love.

So the way that data works, Goldman Sachs sees the purchase data. This is something Apple confirmed today to The Verge. But Apple have a, they have said that they have a special agreement with Goldman Sachs this data cannot be sold to third parties or used for advertising purposes so Goldman get the data but they can't really do anything with it which is interesting it reminds me of the AT&T relationship right like Apple got a bunch of special deals with Singular to launch thehone that were against a lot of the way that

the industry was working at that time and this is the same thing i don't really know what's in this for goldman sachs like they must really want this business for some reason because it seems like they're giving up a lot of what a credit card company typically gets value in which is the data that they can get about you my guess is that this is like the singular deal for the original iphone yeah which is you know what apple brings a lot of ideas and they bring a lot of customers and even if we give up a lot of our traditional things we're gonna we're gonna get this huge influx just based on it being with apple and that's worth the trade-off that some some partner i think when apple it doesn't always happen right but when generally when apple comes into a a group of potential partners and

says we want to do things a little bit differently somebody in there is going to go all right let's try it like let's we'll give up we'll give up the things we usually do because it's apple and we need that business like you know they win a lot they have a lot of volume and even though it's a business where we're not going to make what we usually make, it's still a business that we want to be in and that if we don't do it, someone else will. So all of the stuff that Apple spoke about earlier still applies. There's like no fees on it. You get the immediate cash back, which is what you were referencing earlier, right? So like they don't do airport lounge stuff.

They don't do points that you can do for other stuff which can be really good if you chase that type of thing in your life i think matthew panzerino at tech crunch described it as you know if you just want cash to buy things as opposed to like turning in points for um you know bottles of champagne at airports which is i thought that was funny but there is some truth in that. Like, you know, we've got cards where you've got to ask for a, uh, a redemption thing. And then you get a certificate that then you can go to certain stores and cash. And like, there are lots of different cards with lots of different approaches. And like I said, some of them are, are, uh, are good and

are going to be a way better deal than the Apple card, but you're going to have to work for it. Whereas Apple literally just puts money on an Apple Pay Cash card for you to spend somewhere else. And frankly, a lot of those cards have yearly fees. Yeah, I mean, some do, some don't. But yeah, that's right. And Apple Pay Cash, putting it on an Apple Pay Cash card is brilliant because that means the money that you get back,

you're once again spending using Apple's system. So it's a double win for Apple. But it's also immediately available, which is something that you don't get anywhere else, right? Like you just get the cash immediately. So I'll talk about the interest rates a little bit. So this is something that was like really contested afterwards when people were digging into it.

So the APR rate starts at 12.99% and goes up to 24.4%. So Apple, we're talking about like being the cheapest around, right? These rates are not the cheapest around. They're like okay rates for US credit cards. But the thing that Apple are actually doing is interesting and I can kind of see what they were getting at. They are saying that their goal is to be among the lowest possible rates that you can qualify for.

This is a very important distinction. It's the cheapest for you, not necessarily the cheapest. So based on your credit score, they want to try and give you the lowest rate that you would be able to get from any credit card company. So, like, they're doing something. It's not giving you a 4% APR, which I think was like a lot of people were hoping.

It's like, oh, cheapest around is going to be a great deal. No, they're just trying to give you the best deal they can possibly give you based on your credit history. So, you know, there you go. We have the answer now. That's the answer to that. Apple also said that they're working with Goldman Sachs' support team

to provide an Apple-like experience because when you need to contact someone, you're talking to Goldman Sachs's people, you're not talking to Apple and they're doing training and wording and all this kind of stuff to make it more Apple like. So maybe they make you wait behind a tree for a while when you call up on Goldman's line, a big virtual AR tree pops up and you stand behind that.

But yeah, so that, that's, that is everything we now know about uh apple cod yeah so we'll learn more i mean there are the some people in the press and some other people being seated with it and um i think it's an interesting thing and for me since you asked at the top of this and i didn't really give you an answer um i'm gonna try it because i feel like i have to try it i'm not sure whether i will keep it but i like the idea i feel like there may be some other cards i've been thinking about switching

what card we use to something that that has a particular set of cash back uh things or points back that that would would really benefit my family and so the apple card may not be the best there may be another one i may put that limited amount of effort into it to choose another one that would really benefit my family. And so the Apple card may not be the best. There may be another one. I may put that limited amount of effort into it to choose another one, but I will definitely try it out. And it may be that it's just such a nice experience that it stays as some of my other cards get canceled.

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road huh yeah this is good uh for both of us. A little podcasting question. You know, try to avoid rooms that are super echoey. Like I once did a podcast where somebody invited me to use their office instead of doing it in other spaces. And then I discovered his office was completely glass walled and it was the most echoey space I'd ever been in. I know people who record on the road by going into a closet and under a blanket in order to just eliminate all echo. Cause that's what you're, what you really are trying to avoid is echo and a continuous room tone. Although that could be, they can both be removed by software, but it's a lot of effort. So you got your air conditioner coming on and off. Maybe you got people outside. That was one of the things we experienced atwdc is there was music playing in the background and there were people outside

those are like variable noises they're very hard to remove from audio so you know some of it is luck hotel rooms are often pretty um soft and turn off the air conditioning and you turn off the ac yeah close the close the drapes and you're typically good there's lots of soft things in hotel rooms which help remove the echo, but that also means, like, if you say, you could throw a blanket over your head if you wanted to and get very hot and sweaty,

but it would help with your acoustic conditions. Also, using a microphone that doesn't pick up a lot of external sound is a big one. These things tend to be more expensive, but finding a good microphone that, you know, like, what is the type of microphone called i can never remember the the differences like dynamic versus a condenser yes and and they they're made they're made differently but this is the thing so like i used a blue yeti for a long time and i loved it and the rooms that i recorded with the yeti it sounded. But the Yeti picks up a lot of room noise.

And if you're in an echoey room, it sounds really bad. And there are other... People should just read Marco's microphone review thing, which is old, but microphones don't change that much. And yes, microphones,

people like me and Mike, we carry microphones these days that are better at suppressing room noise and that they're really only listening to you straight into the microphone. And that's great because then if you have a weird noise that's happening off to your left in the hotel room, guess what? It can't hear it or it can't hear it very well. And that helps a lot. So before people ask, what microphone are you using, Jason? I'm mostly traveling with the Audio-Technica.

ATR 2100? ATR 2100 because I travel with an iPad, and I just record that straight into my iPad, or it'll even work with an iPhone. And because it's got an XLR, I can actually record on an external recorder as well as use it by USB, which is very convenient. I also have used some Shure microphones, the Shure Beta, what is it, 58A, and there's the knockoff. 87A as well. Oh, and there's that knockoff, yes. It's very high in Marco's list. I have two of those knockoff, what are those called?

two of those uh knock off uh what what are those called the pile pd mic 58 which is super cheap and i i suspect is made at the same factory as the sure beta 58a and they just in the middle of the night they switch over and they make these and uh sell them for sell 150 microphone for 15 bucks but they're really good. So there are a bunch. At home, I use a different microphone, but it's a home studio mic, and I wouldn't recommend it, and I don't travel with it. So I typically travel,

or have traveled in the past, with the Shure Beta 58A. Yeah. But I now travel with the microphone that I use at home, which is the Neumann KMS 105. Yeah, the super expensive microphone. It's a very expensive microphone, but this microphone sounds to me as I sound in real life, and that's why I love it so dearly. It's like you're bringing your voice with you.

Yes. But I agree. The Beta 58A and those pile knockoffs, like I have, I think I have four or five of the 58As and a couple of the pile knockoffs. And they all, I mean, they sound great. And, and that would be, I would say if you've got a USB interface that you're using, um, you should, and you're thinking of getting a new microphone, you should buy one of those $15 pile mics on Amazon because, um, it may, it may be all you need and they're super cheap. And, and even though they're super cheap, I have not had one fail yet. Jason, not Snell, asks, I just got my first MacBook. What do you recommend as some apps that you cannot do without? I thought we very rarely get a question like this. So I thought it was fun.

So I'm going to go over a few alfred alfred is like a launching application so like you you know i just press command and space and instead of spotlight i get alfred come up i think alfred is faster it remembers my preferences and reorders them in a way that i really like but it also has a bunch of additional features i use its clipboard history like it has a bunch of stuff that I'm not even nearly going near, but I like it a lot. Text Expander, they're a sponsor of the show, but I use it constantly. 1Password for my passwords.

Dropbox, I know people tend not to like Dropbox at the moment. I have no problems with Dropbox. I'm not seeing any of the issues that Marco and Casey are seeing. Dropbox for me just works like Dropbox always has. There's no weirdo app. It's just the menu bar thing. I don't know what people are complaining about, Jason, because I'm not seeing it. I don't know why this is. But and also as well, like Dropbox can do whatever they want.

I don't care. It works. And I'm not moving away from that. And I use Hazel as well. Hazel was a utility that you can have look at files and folders and do things. And I, Hazel as well. Hazel is a utility that you can have, look at files and folders and do things. And I, for example, I have a lot of audio files that accumulate on my computer and every few weeks or whatever, Hazel gets rid of a bunch of them. So they're some of the apps that I use

as a professional Mac user. Oh yes, oh yes. So for me, LaunchBar, which is the equivalent to your choice of Alfred, I feel like just not at home until I have LaunchBar installed. And it's similarly thing. It's going to index all of my apps and key files on my Google Docs. That's how I get to the upgrade document is I use LaunchBar. I type upgrade and I don't even need to get to the end of the word upgrade and I can hit return and the upgrade document opens.

So I use LaunchBar to get around my Mac. I use one password. So likewise, Mike, I use Dropbox. Yes. Likewise, Mike. And I'll throw in BB at it, which is the text editor that I use to write most of my stuff and on the Mac. And you can use it for free with most of the features, uh, functional. And then functional. And then there's a bunch of features that are only enabled when you pay, but you can use it for free too. And that's when I get set up on a new Mac, because I will do that when I'm like reviewing a Mac or something like that. These are the first like four things that I put on my Mac. I believe that those Dropbox things are happening, by the way, but I'm just, I don't know what it is, but'm not i'm not seeing any of it well they rolled it out by accident but it did turn out what i found heartening and that everybody else is like oh they did this thing by accident so how can we trust them it's like all right well that's an opinion you can have uh i think sometimes accidents happen

uh i was i was encouraged by the fact that it seems what they haven't done is built this whole giant app that runs that everybody has to use. It seems like what they've done is built a helper app that embeds Google docs and all of that stuff in it. And it is not running unless you want to run it. And if that's the way they implement it, that's great. Cause I'm never going to run it and then I never have to see it. So yeah. But anyway, they unrolled it out to most people, which is smart. They're like, whoops, nope, nope. You weren't supposed to see that. Look away, look away. But I'm okay with Dropbox right now. My frustrations with Dropbox are that their eye is not on the ball, the ball being my kind of workflow and that their eye their eye is now on, you know, cushy enterprise money.

And if they can manage to pay, pay attention to both kinds of users, then we'll be fine. And if they're too focused on the enterprise business and, you know, but it still works for me for now. So I don't have a problem with it today. And I would say as long as they continue doing things like updating to

support the new features of the new OSs, because like Catalina actually adds a bunch of stuff so that companies like Dropbox can more directly access what they need to access without doing really hacky things in the system. I actually think that that will solve a lot of complaints that people have about Dropbox on the Mac, but they have to do it. And likewise, on iOS, there's a whole new set of things that they can do to be a better citizen in iOS 13, but they have to do it. So we'll see if they do it. I will be very happy if they do. And if they don't, that will be another nail in their coffin for me. Then we can start asking some questions, right? Yeah. Because then it's like, like oh so you are purposefully skirting around these security measures then yeah exactly that's a different measure because essentially what apple has done is they built features into their operating systems to get dropbox to stop

hacking their system they've been doing it for a while because like the badges used to be hacked and they're they're like okay we'll we'll give you an api to put badges on files okay stop doing that and so now they they're they're adding new features in mac os and ios that are definitely for cloud storage providers which is great because they could not do that and make it all just icloud drive and and they haven't they've said no if you're one drive box google drive dropbox use these features and now it's in their court. And Dropbox's history supporting this stuff, it's not been great. It's been okay. Especially in the US.

It's been okay. We'll see. They're slow and some stuff they don't want to do, but they do eventually do it. So I hope they do that. Sam has asked, Mike, how do you charge, store, and use your Apple Pencil while using the ClearLook stand for your iPad?

So the ClearLook stand is a stand that I talk about all the time because it's my favorite stand. But one of the things that it does when you put the iPad in, it grips it on the long sides, right? So if you have an Apple Pencil, I take it off and I put the Apple Pencil on the little foot of the stand and that's it.

I don't ever use my iPad in the stand for so long that the Apple Pencil's battery dies. My Apple Pencil's battery dies. My Apple Pencil's battery has never died in the second one, where the first one used to be dead all the time. So because when it's off, it's not connected. It's fine. Then I put it back on again and it will recharge again. And that works perfectly fine for me.

So then whenever I take the iPad out, I just put the Apple Pencil back on it. It's easy. So I used the Clear Look stand the other day, and you kind of pull it up, and it goes up nice and high. And I put my iPad in it, and then about 15 minutes later, I noticed that it was a lot lower. Oh, no. I'm upset now.

I think it's not holding its height. You have a failed one. Yeah, I would say I've had products that have done that to me from the stands that I've used. My original Clear Look stand, that is not happening. So yawn has a fault in it and maybe i'm just lucky and i have a unicorn one but i've this is my concern with it because it doesn't have like a thing you clip to lock it in place it's just tension yeah and i thought really it's going to stay up with tension and not just kind of sag and now it's uh it's sagging so it's letting me down and by that i mean it's literally lowering down my ipad pro yeah i haven't had that happen to

mine but i do agree eventually it's going to happen because it's just tension and attention will weaken but if i got a couple of years or even like a year out of it it'd be fine because the thing is like what 27 and i use it every single day yeah i so i wish they just made a little bit larger um i think they might now. I need to actually ask them of the Viazon stand that I have because I really, I prefer how solid the Viazon stand feels to the Clear Look stand. But you're right. The Clear Look stand just goes up higher and it's more ergonomic because of that.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be using these stands forever though. Because I might just want to plug my iPad into a screen now maybe because if I'm using a mouse and I'm using an external keyboard I've not decided it's still nice to touch the screen from time to time it is, it is, but yeah Logan wants to know, have you ever engraved an apple device well have you well i yes my apple pencil is engraved with michael's right on it

which was inspired by marco doing it so i did it too because i felt like if marco's gonna have one i should have it yeah that's fair that's fair i got i i don't usually do this because the devices get handed down they They get moved around. I also have a lot of Apple devices that they come into my life because it's an Apple review unit. And then they go out of my life. So those are never engraved. I did try it out one time. I think it was the Phat iPod Nano that I got with my wife's name and our phone number on it.

And it's in a drawer behind me now because I wanted to go through that experience. And she was going to use it. And so I put her name and our phone number on it. And it's in a drawer behind me now because I wanted to go through that experience and she was going to use it. And so I put her name and our phone number on it. And, you know, it was engraved. That was great. But as a general rule, I don't do it because these tech products get handed around. And so any engraving kind of means

you can't get rid of it really or you get rid of it and your name's on it which is also super weird so yeah it does ruin resale value yeah maybe you should put like a like a redirect url on it and then if you sell it you can give that redirect url to the new owner and then they can change it so it's always going to whoever owns it or a domain name register a weird domain name and then when they when when you sell it you say this comes with a domain name that feels like too much work at that point probably probably especially for an ipod nano and the last upgrade question today is a brain teaser this is this one from over do you think we're closer in calendar time to the first iphone or the last iphone by

that i mean the brand name iphone so are we when was so how many years what would this be in calendar years uh 2031 okay so do we think apple will still be making a product called iphone in 2031 what do you what is your call on this one i do i don't oh oh okay well you're on you can try to collect this bet with 60 year old me we'll still be doing the show in 2031 oh yeah we just have to figure out how many uh what what episode will that be anyway why why do you think that that it won't be there anymore uh i i just think that there will be a different brand that comes to them at some point right like let's let's imagine my favorite foldable phones what if they just give that a brand new product name and then over five years that just becomes what everybody has and then it becomes something else like like let's imagine just like for simplicity's sake that they call it like the apple something

rather than the i something and they give it like a different name right yeah and then over that period of time that just becomes the the product right like that just is like oh this is now the product everybody buys and it's a completely different form factor. You just imagine that over the next 12 years, Apple will have enough time to consider its branding of products and either decide or hit upon something that allows them to kind of fade the iPhone name out because everybody will still know what it is. I think they've already worked out the branding and it's not i something. Well, that's true. That's true. And yet iMac and iPhone and iPad are still around.

Because these are just product lines that they can't... Why would you call a product that looks like the iPhone something else? That doesn't make any sense. But if you replace it with something, Why would you call a product that looks like the iPhone something else? That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. But if you replace it with something, which I think eventually will happen with all of this stuff eventually. Well, so I guess what I would say is I feel like the term phone has become, you know, in 2007, it basically started getting hijacked by smartphone. And now we think of phones and phones don't mean what they used to mean. We have literally changed the definition

of what a phone is. Which is crazy, right? Isn't that wild? Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, a phone means a computer now. A phone means a computer in your pocket. That's what a phone is,

which is just strange. But that's how language works and that's how the world works and that's how technology distorts the world. And that's great. But what I'm saying is the iPhone is such a powerful product and it's such a powerful brand and that the phone as a concept i feel like in 12 years is not going to have left us completely it's not going to be like when the ipod went away and the ipod lasted a lot longer than you would

have expected to i think the idea of a phone has so much strength and the idea of the iPhone as a brand has so much strength that it will be hard for Apple to shrug it off in 12 years. So my gut feeling is Apple will make a lot of other things, but there will still probably be something we call a phone because otherwise what we're saying is in 12 years, technology will have advanced to the point where you no longer need to have a thing that you carry with you that has a screen. And this is the thing is I can believe you will no longer have to have a thing that you carry with you that has an Internet connection because you'll be wearing something with an Internet connection. unsure is, is everybody going to go to some kind of smart glasses, smart contact lenses, display system that does not require them to carry a display in their pocket that they look at. And I don't think that in 12 years, technology will have advanced enough so that everybody

will not need a screen in their pocket because of the human body, because it's so hard to get a heads up display in front of everybody's face because of the people needing glasses and people who can't take contacts and people who don't want things in front of their face. I think it's going to be hard. So I think that it may be a niche at some point, because most people will say, why aren't you wearing glasses? Everybody wears glasses now because that's how you see the world in augmented reality.

But I feel like there will still be a product in 12 years. And if you disagree with me, Mike and I will settle this bet on upgrade episode 900. I do want to say, like I will say hearing you say that has shaken my feeling. But I did want to say though, I didn't say they wouldn't call it phone.

No, I just mean that because people will think of a class of device as a phone, and the iPhone is such a strong brand, if phones are still a thing and Apple still has the name iPhone, I feel like they will just stick with that name. As long as it's a thing that is considered a phone, why would you change from the name iPhone? I've always just wondered if they would eventually want to call it Apple phone.

I hear you. And I think that if they were naming it today, that's what they'd call it. But that it's called the iPhone and everybody calls it that. And so now it's like, that's what that is, called the iphone and everybody calls it that and and so now it's like that's what that is is is the iphone i don't hold my opinion very strongly okay well we'll check in in 2031 and episode 900 yeah episode 900 i mean we're nearly episode 300 it doesn't feel like

it's impossible thing to get to we'll find out Maybe we'll be one of those shows that dies and then pops back up in 2031. Oh, I like it. We've wrapped it all the way around. So if we cancel Upgrade, just keep it in the feed and then maybe there'll be an episode in 2031. Well, I guess it'll be like January 31st 2031, right? We'll come

back and settle the bet. Somebody needs to put that in their calendar and they can remind us later on someone's now done this so that's fine I think December 31st 2031 right you gotta wait till the end of the year that was what I meant no matter what I said I meant December I don't know what

now I don't know what month I said but I meant December put June 4th 2031 in your calendar and yeah okay thank you so much for everybody that sent in a hashtag Ask Upgrade question. You can send in questions for us to close the show by sending out a tweet with the hashtag Ask Upgrade. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com and theincomparable.com. Jason is at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L.

I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And both me and Jason host many shows here at RelayFM. You can find your next favorite podcast at Relay.FM slash shows. Go and pick something new from there. And I actually met a... I was at a wedding over the weekend and met a Liftoff listener, Jason, so there's something that's happening.

Hooray! So that was nice. It's like, oh, RelayFM. I like Liftoff. That was the thing. That was the thing that actually happened to me over the weekend that's amazing space thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade thank you to Warby Parker, Squarespace

and Lumen5 for their support of this show and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye Jason Snell goodbye Mike Hurley.