Upgrade - 309: Ancient Mac Archaeologist

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

The summer gets a little more serious as we discuss Apple's newest iMacs, Phil Schiller's job transition, Apple emails disclosed by the House Antitrust Subcommittee, and Apple's surprisingly strong financial results. Also, Jason launches his new "20 Macs for 2020" project.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 309 today's show is brought to you by squarespace pingdom and door dash my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i'm fine and, my friend. We have an action-packed upgrade episode today. But considering it's so action-packed, I'm sure that there'll be many listeners who will have lots of strong opinions about this episode. So our hashtag Snell Talk question from Marlies, who submitted this in the RelayFM members' Discord,

ties into this perfectly. Marlies wants to know, Jason, do you ever talk back to podcasts well I think yes any good podcast that engenders some connection and then you end up talking back to it from time to time yes I do that I just did that the other day I joke about how I agree with almost everything that Marco says on ATP, but Marco was talking about Big Sur the other day while I was listening and I was in the shower because I listen to podcasts in the shower. And if you'd been standing outside the shower door, you would have heard me say, no, no, wrong. So, yes, I do that.

I absolutely do that. I tend to also just when I speak speak back to podcasts exclaim in some way good or bad sure right yeah well i do a lot of laughing and all of that but yeah and i occasionally do like a you know oh oh elliot to you know the flop house or something like that but occasionally there'll be something like that where i don't want to single out marco i also said that john was wrong on that episode but i'm you know that know, that's fine. It's their podcast. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna swoop in with, uh, with some follow-out about how I disagree with some of the things they said. That's fine. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. We'll talk about Big Sur

at some point, but yes, I absolutely do talk back to the podcast. I don't try to tell a story or something because they're not there. They can't hear me. I will say also a privilege of being a RelayFM host is that I also just send messages to hosts as I'm listening to their podcast in the RelayFM Slack. That happens all the time. I'll pull back the curtain for a little bit to our listeners. I think nobody does this to me more than John Syracuse. John is an active, as you can imagine provider of follow up yes yes indeed

surprise surprise the creator of follow up likes to give follow up he is both the creator of the concept of follow up and the creator of lots of follow up summer of fun summer of fun what could be more fun than a new Apple device i that is the tenuous link for

our summer fun topic today uh let's talk about a brand new imac jason snell that was okay let's do it shown off and goes on sale today now there are ramifications for the uh rest of the imac line but the majority of the news is focused around a 27-inch iMac. You had a story go up today, so you were clued in on the information as it was coming out from Apple's press team. Nothing like getting briefing about a product you don't know anything about and then having to write a story about it in less than an hour. But that's what you're so good at, Jason. That's my job sometimes sometimes yeah so i'm gonna run through uh some of the features of this 27 inch imac and we can kind of stop and talk about

them uh as we as we want to and it answers the question of well one i think everybody knew there was going to be some kind of imac update right i think with intel chips in it does has intel chips let's get that one out of the way. It's not Apple's first ARM Mac. But I think, you know, Tim Cook said at the end of WWDC, we have Intel products coming still this year. It's in the pipeline. Exactly.

The iMac was the obvious candidate because it's been, you know, waiting, feels like it's been waiting on an update and it's a popular machine. And so they did it. Yeah. But it has the same visual designs this is an intel chip inside of the iMac design that we know and have feelings about yeah well I mean it's just it's a classic and it's been around that means that it's like what we're used to and also means that it's been around a very long time and I think for the last couple of

revisions we've expected that we thought you know are they going to make that change to the iMac, and it still hasn't happened, so I'm just going to push that chip forward again and think maybe they are saving it for an Apple Silicon iMac, and that will be a redesigned iMac because these are no different on the outside. They are different on the inside.

It's really the 27. The 24 got some changes to, or 24, 21.5 got some changes to the base configurations. Yeah, that's all. But it's basically not any different. But that's Apple's low-cost leader. I mean, it's just not that exciting. And they still have the non they still have a super cheap one too so you know it's it's it's they have to keep that around but

the 27 inch is where they kind of made this investment and they've they've upgraded a bunch of the tech inside it's interesting it's getting closer and closer to being an imac pro um but it's still not an imac pro yeah well we can talk about the iMac Pro comparison in a bit when we talk about some of the specs. I would say that, like, we're going to go through this, obviously, in more detail, but this machine received more of an internal spec update than I think I would have expected at this point before visual design change did you think the intel iMac was ever going to get a t2 at this point like it's the last it's swooping in here is like the last Mac to get a t2 I mean except for the 21 and a half inch iMac which is untouched but like almost

the last Mac to get the t2 but it seems so late in the process that it is kind of funny right like again late in the process because we know the transition is happening. The fact is people are going to buy these and they're going to be fine and they're going to work for years. And they're going to be, I mean, there is a little bit of fallacy among people who are very tech savvy that, oh, I don't want to buy an iMac now. It's the worst time to buy an iMac because the chip transition is happening. It's like, well, yeah, but if you need an iMac now, it's not like this thing breaks in six months right like it's gonna work and be fine for a lot of people this would actually be the best time to buy before there's uncertainty before there's uncertainty I have a close friend who said oh this is the time for me to buy because my iMac is getting a little uh a little ratty and I

think that uh his feeling is I'd rather go now with this stable Intel architecture and then spend the next five years watching everybody else deal with Apple Silicon. And then, you know, when that's all settled down, it'll be time for a new iMac. So I think that's a perfectly valid. It's not valid if you want to be on the cutting edge, but so many people are not interested in being on the cutting edge. So, you know, what you do get out of this is possibly the last intel iMac and so at the height you know it's got the new uh 10th generation intel processors it's got a new version of a Radeon Pro AMD Radeon Pro GPU which has more larger VRAM option. There's a 10-core i9 processor, which really is... Last year, the 8-core high-end iMac was basically at iMac Pro levels

with some caveats, right? Like the cooling isn't as good, which means that there might be more throttling and it didn't have the T2, but now it does. And as far as we can tell, the cooling in these is the cooling in the old iMac, which means thermal capabilities are not the same as in the iMac Pro, which redesigned the thermal system. So there are reasons to get an iMac Pro even now, but it is interesting that alongside this announcement of the up to 10-core iMac, Apple took the 8-core iMac Pro, which is my iMac Pro, and it's gone. It's a goner. And they actually took the 10-core iMac Pro and slid it down to the entry price of the iMac Pro. So I

think that's Apple. I think Apple is comfortable with there being a little bit of overlap between the high-end iMac and the low-end iMac Pro, but not that much overlap. So that's a little tidbit that it did. With comparing these, it's interesting. I'm pleased that Apple have actually done that. It was like understanding that the iMac Pro is losing some of its competitive edge here and is like reshifting a little bit because now this new iMac at the 27 inch has features the iMac Pro doesn't have which could be considered great for people that use it I want to talk about the one that I'm the most interested in which is the nanotexture display option coming to a Mac device so it is a $500 add-on,

which is when I found out they were adding the nanotexture, I thought would be much more than $500. It's not cheap, but I would have expected it to be like $1,000 because that's how much more the Pro Display is, right? I think it's $1,000 more for the nanotexture option. This is a thing that I had hoped we would see that apple would learn this technology and would understand

it completely and would end up bringing it to other devices so i am actually really pleased to see that because i could imagine a future computer that I may want, I would want to add this onto. So like, for example, in my studio, I have large overhead lights like those. I don't know if they're like the tube ones you get in offices. The fluorescent lights, yeah. The fluorescent ones. Thank you.

That's what I was looking for. And on my Dell display that I have my Mac Mini hooked up to, it gets quite a bit of glare. So I will say this makes me even more hopeful that an Apple display that may come out in the future, which I'm still hoping will happen, would include an option for nanotexture on that, right? So yeah, I'm just like really pleased to see that apple

has found a way to extend this new technology out to somewhere else i mean would i love a nano texture ipad in the future yes apple i desperately would but maybe we can look at that somewhere down the line yes the question is what what they would charge you for it because it is a $500 option for nanotexture display on the iMac. But, you know, there are people who will want that level of glare reduction, right? Like, absolutely. And it may come down to your workplace, right? Like, in fact, it may open up new options for you in your workplace. new options for you in your workplace.

Like I literally can't move my monitor from this or my iMac from this place because there's too much glare in every other direction. And maybe that is a thing that, you know, with a nanotexture display iMac, you could be like, oh, now I can put it over here. I can move it here. So that would be great. So yeah, it's fascinating to see that rolled out here

and who knows where else it might go. New 1080p webcam in the iMac. Yeah. So this is, I think, basically the iMac Pro webcam. And what it gets is not just the webcam hardware, but because there's a T2 now, the T2 does all of the image signal processing, on the iMac Pro which means that it's a it's going to be a better webcam experience it's not a 4k webcam or anything but it's going to be a better webcam experience not just because the hardware is better but because the the T2 is doing all the controlling in terms of face detection and adjusting the camera settings

that's all happening uh on the T2 and so that'll be a big upgrade versus the previous iMac. Oh, also up to 128 gigabytes of RAM you can put in one of these machines. It's quite significant. You can really get a lot into this. And did we mention the 16-inch macbook pro professional microphones system is ah yes the uh is in here too the podcasting microphones that nobody studio quality yeah studio quality or whatever it may actually i was thinking about it it may actually be better on the iMac wouldn't be typing on it yeah well that's true and the 16 inch macbook pro you know it's

a laptop so it's moving around and what we found is that it can sound good, but it also can sound not great, depending on where it is. My guess is that the iMac, because it just sits in one place, it's probably, you know, not going to be pressed up against a, you know, a comforter or, or weird, you know, in weird places that you might put a laptop, just sitting out on a desk, and it may be optimized for that and may actually sound better. But it's two microphones in the in the front in the chin, and then one in the back. And so it can do noise cancellation and echo cancellation and all those things. And it's, it's basically the, the mic system that is in the 16 inch MacBook Pro as well. And I'd imagine that over time, that will go on all Macs. But this is the second Mac to really get that.

and all Macs, but this is the second Mac to really get that. So SSDs are now standard on every single iMac. All of the starting options for every iMac now includes an SSD. They do start at 256 gigabytes, though. But I know you've been very upset, rightly so, about spinning disks being a standard option in any machine now. You can choose to add one which i think is fine like you can choose to make your 256 gig you can bump in like a fusion drive right to that which i think is a great option to offer for people yeah i should say that the the two

high-end configurations of the imac are 512 not 256 it's the base model uh 27 and all the 21.5s that are 256 SSD. And on the 21.5, you can, for the same price, order a one terabyte Fusion Drive instead. And the idea there is, if you're somebody who doesn't care about speed as much, but you really have a big photo library and you want that size and you don't want to spend more money on a larger SSD, they're still going to give you the option. So we can't say the spinning disk is totally dead it's available as an option but um but that's it it's like a base it's out of all the base models now these default imac 21.5 and 27 now both are just ssd and then on the highest end iMac you can actually go all the way up to eight terabytes so you can do one two four or eight terabytes um and that's you know again

it's Apple's got their all all their little slots and you can order different things in little slots so you can upgrade the the uh two uh retina 21.5s to up to a terabyte SSD. But that, again, that 1099 non-Retina, sad little 21.5-inch iMac, you know, it's going to have either a 256 SSD or a one-terabyte Fusion Drive. Those are your only options. That is a sad little computer.

It is. It needs to go i there are rumors that apple is working on kind of a 24 inch imac redesign right that rumor has been floating out there and that would actually i wonder if the first new imac we see on apple silicon is replacing the 21 inch in show that's 21 and a half, the sad, unupdated iMac. I think they've only shown today that that is more likely because they added a lot of things into the 27-inch. You could keep that one alive for a while. Arguably, some of them could have come to the 21,

but they have not done that. And the argument is also that Apple, even though I'm very optimistic about apple silicon um and i've done the in you know made up charts to prove it to quote unquote prove it um i think it's worth saying that it's probably going to be harder for them to hit performance at the high high end than it is at the low end where they're already there. And this might be the case where Apple is taking the 27-inch iMac and saying, keep that plate spinning, update it to the latest Intel processors. Look, it's really fast. And then that means they can

leave it there. And it can be part of the later part of the Apple Silicon transition. They can just sort of let it sit there. And then they take the 21.5 inch iMac and they're like, all right, tap it on the shoulder. Like, you got to go like this is your cut and bring in on the low end. Because if they, if they do a redesign and it's of the 24, let's say, so they bring in the bezels and it's not, not much, not much bigger than the 21.5, but it's a bigger screen and all of that. And it's Apple Silicon. And whatever processor they put in there, I think there's no doubt they've got a processor ready to go for that. Even if they wait on the bigger iMac for a little while. Totally a reasonable scenario that seems more likely today because the 21.5-inch iMac is more or less untouched for a couple of years

and is kind of sad and bad, and that's why. I mean, it's there because it's cheap. That's it. It's there because it's cheap. It's not great, but it's cheap. And that seems ripe for an Apple Silicon replacement. Do you think that this will be the last intel mac of any kind that gets a significant update i okay so without getting into details because apple gives us these briefings on background and that means not for attribution and no direct quotes and all that what i'll say is i get the distinct impression that they they that tim cook's statement they're letting it ride

right like there was no statement that this is the end and what tim cook said is we still have intel machines in the in the pipeline so i'm gonna say there probably are more Intel updates in the pipeline. I don't know if there will be any substantial Intel updates in the pipeline. I'm skeptical of that. said about keeping some of the high-end plates spinning while dealing with the the ones you want to target as your first apple silicon max means that like what if they announce a 13-inch macbook pro or 14-inch macbook pro with apple silicon which is a rumor for this fall yeah maybe when they do that they say oh and the 16-inch got new Intel processors. And that's it. They literally are like, we're not doing that today. Those got a refresh or a

configuration change, but we're not doing that yet. We're doing this now. That, I think, may happen. And who knows, there might be a Mac mini Intel Mac mini bump where they're like, look, we're not going to do this now. We're just going to rev the Mac mini. Like I think it's a priority thing. Like you can see Apple's prioritization because they can't ship everything at once. So if the Mac mini gets an Intel bump now, that's Apple saying it's not getting Apple Silicon for a while. If it doesn't, then perhaps it's toward the front of the Apple Silicon train. So we'll see. But my gut feeling based on the fact that they seem to be letting Tim Cook's statement

just be there and letting it ride is a suggestion to me that there are probably some more Intel Macs. This is probably not the last Intel Mac, but it sure feels like it's probably the last notable Intel Mac update. Might not be, but I think there's probably not a lot left in the pipeline for them. I would agree with you that if I was going to assume, if I was going to put my money on it, agree with you that i if i was going to assume if i was going to put my money on it i would say that this is probably the last update for an intel machine that is notable is significant it has more than just we're keeping this one alive for a while right because that's kind of what they've done with the 21 in a way like they've made some changes that make it make a little bit more sense in the product line but that's not notable in any way i would say like

that this or the last time that they did the the iMac update like this one is much bigger than that you know like the last iMac update was mostly like you know put a new chip in it that kind of thing like i could imagine doing that for a while but this adds some like actual new features that didn't exist in the iMac in the iMac line before so it really feels like this is a big one you know because I could imagine right like especially the Mac Pro I don't know about the iMac Pro but especially the Mac Pro I can imagine that one is going to be one of the very last to move to Apple Silicon I'm probably not alone in my thinking there so they'll have some new stuff that they'll be putting into the Mac Pro line over time, but

we're not going to see a brand new Mac Pro, I would imagine, for quite a while. But they'll keep bumping some things. You can now put this processor in, this graphics card in, that kind of thing. I think that's exactly the idea, is for stuff like that that's at the high end saying, you know, we're not ready yet,

but we'll give this a new... Oh, are there some new Xeons or whatever? We'll put those in there if there are. Like, I think they're keeping their options open there too. But who knows? I mean, I think it would be really weird for them to say, oh, we've completely redesigned the MacBook Pro 13-inch and it's running on Intel processors i don't know so uh yeah it feels like if we're not at the end i i think we're pretty close to the end now like i think i i would be

surprised if there was a new imac or a new mac running intel processors that was a more substantial update than what we just saw. I cannot stay in one place about my thinking as to whether the iMac Pro will continue. So future of the iMac Pro is a really good question. So for those who don't remember, the iMac Pro, based on all reports from the time, was Apple's replacement for the trashcan Mac Pro. They were literally going to say, no more Mac Pro. We're just going to do an iMac Pro. That's going to suffice. And that is going to be our new Pro Mac going forward. And then they changed their strategy. And they had that meeting and they said, we are going to do a Mac Pro. But the iMac Pro was already kind of like designed and they put it out and it was out way before the Mac Pro was. And I bought one and I love it. I think

it feels like the time for them to have updated it has passed now, given that they're going to Apple Silicon. So now what it feels like to me is they have a plan for the iMac on Apple Silicon. me is they have a plan for the iMac on Apple Silicon. And my guess is that the iMac Pro won't exist anymore. Or if it does exist, it's going to exist, but really just be a powerful iMac. That's my guess. It's just the top of the line configuration of whatever the iMac will become. Imagine, yeah, using the same base design as whatever the 27-inch iMac becomes, which again may be a little while, right? Depending on how they handle the smaller one.

If that one is their target for a redesign for Apple Silicon, maybe these iMacs hang around. But when they do bring the 27-inch iMac over to Apple Silicon, you know, offering a high-end processor configuration is something they could do if they, if they want to keep the idea of a, an iMac pro around, they could offer that and they could even have that be the different colored case, like, Oh, darker aluminum space gray for the high end. Right. And that's sort of a, how do they, do they value that? Do they think there's value in having that? But yeah, the truth is, it's like the spinal tap thing of, well,

you know, why do you make it 11? Why don't you just make 10 louder? It's a little bit like that. It's like, why make an iMac Pro? Why not just make the iMac faster at the high end? If it's a brand new architecture, is there anything in here that needs to be different architecturally for the iMac Pro? And my guess is that they're going to build the new iMac for Apple Silicon whenever it comes with the idea of having a good thermal envelope to grow the processors over time without completely redesigning the cooling system, right? At which point, you know, they would do that once. Why do that twice? They would do that once. There's got to be only one iMac design. So I think, I think it means that essentially the iMac pro is probably dead, even if they keep it around. I think it's much more likely to just be a high-end iMac with

some special features rather than like a completely new design. I'm a little disappointed that the iMac pro design doesn't seem to have ever gone in any iMac and seems like it maybe never will, but maybe they'll take lessons. The dark design, do you mean? Well, I mean that it's SSD only and it's got the whole giant cooling system that is way more capable than what's in the iMac. But I don't know. Maybe the next iMac actually benefits from that technology.

Maybe it'll benefit. And again, I would come back to the fact that the iMac Pro was a conception from the before time in terms of how Apple thinks of the Mac. So it's possible the iMac Pro was designed thinking that not only would there not be a Mac Pro, but that there would not be Apple Silicon, right? From a period where they were just going to get along to go along, put the Mac in maintenance mode, essentially legacy mode, where it was there, but it never really changed that much. And whenever there was a new set of Xeons, they'd stick it on the iMac Pro and call it a day. But really, that was not the future. And then they changed their path. And so it's designed under all sorts of assumptions that Apple has probably cast off like four or five years ago.

And it's still kicking around. has probably probably cast off like four or five years ago and it's still kicking around yeah for all we know they're gonna take a wash on the r&d of the iMac Pro because that future didn't pan out the future of our professional Macintosh is this one yeah and you know so we may never see if that you know it's possible like all that work that we're talking about that incredible calling that the iMac Pro has that literally may never make it to another computer right like you might just live in this one because Apple silicon chips will take a different type of system yeah I think I mean SSD only is the future right and so what they did in pulling all of the space out of the iMac you know that's great but they're going to design a new iMac and they may decide,

well, I want it to be smaller and lighter. And so I'm not going to use that hard drive space for, uh, cooling. I'm going to remove it from the computer, right? So it may be a very different kind of computer, but that's, it's okay. I think, I think Apple knows how many people who have high end pro tasks use iMacs and not just the iMac Pro, but other high-end iMacs, I think they're aware of that. And I think that they're aware of their needs and will continue to have a computer available

that serves those needs, whether they brand it as an iMac Pro and load it up with options that are awesome and a space gray enclosure and all that, or whether it's just not worth it, I think is an open question. It's sort of like, it's their choice about if they think that there's value in branding one of their iMacs as the pro iMac in order to get people to buy it and spend more money. That's a marketing decision more than a technical decision, I think, honestly. Pingdom. Do you know what that means? It means every website because nobody wants their critical website transactions to fail. This means a bad experience for you, your users. It could mean

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and you'll get a massive 30% off your first invoice. That's pingdom.com slash RelayFM and the code UPGRADE. Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their support of this show and RelayFM. Breaking news, Mike. Breaking news. We have more breaking news to report. This is the summer of breaking news episode, apparently. Huge, huge Apple executive story phil schiller apple's longtime senior vice president of worldwide

marketing is getting a new title and a familiar face is becoming the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing so phil schiller has been given the white robe and, and, and which I don't know of being an Apple fellow. He's going to be, are there any other Apple fellows? There have been, I don't know.

It's almost like, you know, did he, did they just let him choose his job title? Yeah. Anyway, Apple fellow, he's still going to be in charge of the app store,

which is very interesting. If you remember, he had that reassigned to him from Eddie Q and has made a lot of positive changes in the App Store since then. Oh, I have a list of Apple Fellows. Would you like to know them? Let me finish this. He's also in charge of events. So he's also in charge of Apple's events.

So these two things, which are probably near and dear to his heart, he's still in charge of now. Before we tell you the rest of the story, Mike Hurley's got a of other apple fellows i've just found it uh believe it or not i'm not kidding this news was announced as we're recording like half an hour ago it's already been updated to include phil schiller this is on an apple.fandom.com wiki sure the list of fellows include Al Alcorn, Alan Kay, Bill Atkinson, Don Norman, Gary Starkweather, Gosha Ansidu, Guy Kawasaki, Phil Schiller, Rod Holt, Rich Page, Steve Capps, and Steve Wozniak. Ah, that's the Wozniak slot. That's what it is. I only know like half of those names.

It's like for distinguished people for service to the computer industry or to Apple. It's an interesting choice to put him in that slot. There's a statement about it where he says he will keep working at Apple as long as they will have me. I bleed six colors, he says, but I want to make some time in the years ahead for my family, friends, and a few personal projects I care deeply about. He turned 60 this year. So there's definitely a suggestion here. He cites that, that he turned 60, that he... Look, my gut feeling in reading this, and again, it's only been a half an hour and who knows what will come out about it, is that Phil Schiller's been at Apple a long time. He's made a lot of money. He's got a lot

of Apple stock. He doesn't need to work for a living anymore. And he loves Apple. So this sounds to me like Phil Schiller saying, look, I i could retire but i don't want to do that but i don't want to work the way i've been working and they're like okay tim probably is like okay how about this and it's like or maybe he said i'll keep these i'll keep the app store and events but let's let's let someone else do the all the other marketing stuff i want to i want a smaller job now maybe then maybe there's a whole other story here but that's my gut read on this at the beginning is a lot of these people who've been at Apple a long time don't need to be there anymore and they can retire.

And some of the reasons they're there is because they love Apple and they love what they do. It's really true. When he says he bleeds six colors, Phil's been there a long time. He really does care about this stuff. But at the same time, you're looking at the fact that you turned 60 and you're working at a very intense company at a very intense job. It would be, it would, it seems entirely reasonable that a human being in that position would go to their boss, in this case, Tim Cook and say, Tim, I just want to cut back.

I don't, this is too intense for me. I'm turning 60. There are other people who can do the rest of this job. I want to, I don't want to go, but I don't want to keep doing it at the level that I'm doing it. I think that's not unreasonable at all. So I'm going to, that's my gut read on it is, I think it's interesting because he's not stepping away, right?

From like the app store. That's a huge thing that he took the reins of and has made substantive changes to and it sounds like he gets to still be in charge of that part which either that's him saying i don't want somebody else to mess up the work i did in this area or it's somebody like tim cook saying i can't lose you from the app store because you really got a good grip on that and i want you to keep on that and events you know events is is his thing and he's been behind those all along and yeah this press release says that he was uh responsible like ultimately for the online wwdc so that was cool yeah yeah so so whether it's phil saying these are my favorites or it's tim saying i can't lose you on these things or whether

it's them saying we've got a new executive who can be in charge of product marketing but what we can't do is load all of this other stuff on him too it's too much and let's let's let him succeed in the one job without taking on these other jobs well my other thought would be is like you just don't want to rip the bandaid off too fast. Well, sure. I mean, I think there's a logical thing there that like, how long does he do this job? And the fact is, I mean, he says, as long as they'll have me, maybe if this all is going well, you know, he's, he's around another 10 years doing just this stuff or five years or however long he wants to be before he truly, really retires. And maybe,

you know, and again, this is not one of these, like, oh, it's all a sham. He's actually out of there. I think there are a lot of scenarios where what it really is, as an organization is, I'm going to take a step back, and we're going to let other people take a step forward. And we're going to train people up. Maybe he feels like there's nobody who can take the job of running the App Store or running events yet. But as he steps away, those people fill those spots, and he trains them up. And when he truly wants to retire or become just an Apple fellow where he has no responsibilities, he just walks around the campus wearing the white robe. I made that up, by the way, there's no white robe. I don't know. I just, I like that idea that there's been like a ceremony

and he's been inducted. You know, he'll have those people will have come along. And then because that happens sometimes, right, where you get these people who are super high powered, and they've been there a long time, and they know what they're doing. And then you say, well, what happens when you leave? And the answer is, there's no one like will scramble. And one of the things you do, I think, if you're responsible, especially if you're 60, and you want to step back, is you say, can we, you know, move to everything's a transition, right? It's not like a transitional job. Everybody, you know, has their time and then they leave. So, uh, even Phil Schiller. So this is a good opportunity for him

to take, you know, this part off of his plate, but also presumably to develop other people so that when he leaves, leaves that those people, that there are people who can step into those jobs. We haven't even talked about Greg Joswiak who has been, who is an Apple lifer. He has been there so long. I think he came, I think he left at one point and he came back,

but like Greg Joswiak, he was, he was like a power book product marketing manager of the original power books. I think. Like, he's been there a long time. And we've seen him on stage a lot more lately, although he's always been kind of around and on stage occasionally. And he is the new Phil in the sense of being the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. So all of the marketing and PR presumably all now report to JAWS. And I have known him at least a little bit for a long time because I've been covering Apple a long time and he's been at Apple a long time. And I really like him. I mean, I think his personality comes across. He's very disciplined as a speaker on stage and things like that. But I think he's a good guy

and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with product marketing. But it's a big moment. Also, another thing I wanted to throw out there, which is like Johnny Ive, I have to wonder if this is one of those announcements that is following the actual disengagement. Like if that makes sense,

that maybe JAWS has kind of been doing this job increasingly over the last year, and Phil has been... It does feel that way. Stepping back. Publicly, I feel like I see Jaws way more than I see Schiller these days. It's been like that for a while.

Yeah, I think so. Jaws has definitely... I was going to say, in the last two or three years, we've seen way more of Jaws than we used to. And we have seen less of Phil. And it's funny, too, because back when we were doing in-person events before now, there would be people, you know, so I go to an event and on the live stream, I'm like, oh, there's no Phil. What's up with Phil? And it's like phil's there i talked to phil afterward like phil's there it's just i i think that maybe that was part of the conscious kind of like getting other people involved and phil doesn't have to be on stage for everything um even though he's in charge of the event and in charge of the product marketing doesn't mean he has to be on stage now that goes hand in hand with a general trend Apple has had since Steve Jobs died of getting away from the single or very limited set of presenters and trying to show lots of people. Because Steve Jobs, especially in the early days when he came back, Steve Jobs and Katie Cotton, who was the head of communications during this period, it was very much like Steve is our spokesman.

communications during this period, it was very much like Steve is our spokesman. Steve, and he's got his sidekicks like Phil Schiller, but the message is Steve and the message is Apple. And Apple is a monolithic force. And you don't even know who all those people are that Steve's is thanking at the end for not seeing their families because they were working on this product. You don't know who they are. And the Tim Cook Apple, for lots of good reasons, is about showing the faces of all the people who work at Apple and getting to know those people and having it be this cast of people and saying, look at all these brilliant people we have working at Apple on all these products. And so it's a natural part of that process, too, for Phil Schiller to step back. And I'll point out, he's the guy in charge of events. So he was probably driving that process. So it's a, you know,

I think it's not just that Phil is seen less often because he was stepping away, but also sort of by design that he wanted some, some different people in there, but it's still a big deal. And we'll have to, we'll have to watch it and see if things change. But the fact that Phil Schiller is still around and still in charge of

things, that's the, that's the big one I, in terms of the headline here is that he's got this title of Apple Fellow, which seems super amorphous. This is different to Johnny, right? Johnny just left. Johnny just left.

And it's different to Waz, right? Who gets a paycheck, but doesn't do anything. Sorry, Waz. But he's still in charge of App Store and events, right? So that's the part of this that I find fascinating. It's like, well, Phil has ascended into Apple Fellowhoodhood but he's also in charge of the app store and events still so you know he he's left but he hasn't left at all whereas johnny ive like was already gone and now he's really gone but i think it's fair to say fair to assume the things that he is in charge of they are looking for people to to fill those roles

like i said i feel like the things he's in charge of presumably one of the things he's doing is identifying the people who can replace him to do those things well you know and it could be well jaws will take this over later or it could be you know it's not really a product marketing job in the same way. Phil did it because it was Phil. Like, because that's the other truth here is that there are titles and then there are like what the people do. And if you've been in an organization long enough, sometimes you will accumulate roles

that are not your job. Because like, as it's defined, but you're the person who knows, I mean, this happened to me all the time where I was like, it's not my job to do this, but I'm the person who does that because I'm the one of all of us that was the best fit or whatever. And it's like, okay, well, why is that your job? I'm like, I don't know. It's my job. I think Phil Schiller has done that over the years. And I think this is a good example of that where like some of these jobs are probably not SVP worldwide product marketing jobs, but they're fill jobs. And so ideally, yeah, he would be looking at people within the organization to take over those jobs down the road. And that's the job. Honestly, that's the job of any responsible manager, right? You should

always be cultivating your replacement. That's being a good manager is you want your people to continue to grow and either replace you as you go on to do your next thing or ultimately if they are if they hit a brick wall you give them the opportunity to go somewhere else and do this thing and that's part of being a manager and letting your people progress so i would hope that he's doing that big day wild day we spoke a lot about max we spoke a lot about people instrumental in max uh but it's i'm really trying to segue into 20 max of 2020 here jason you probably have to save me at some point i have a project everybody that i've been working on all year and it's finally out which is 20 max for 2020 it's a multimedia extravaganza it really really is. I'm writing an essay. So this is how it started. I am writing an essay about the 20 most notable Macs ever as defined by me

arbitrarily one a week, uh, counting down from 20 to one. So counting down from the 20th most notable to the number one, most notable Mac. Uh, this was my 2020 project got a little sidetracked because, you know, of the world. But here it is.

And as I was doing this and I wrote, I think, the first 10 essays and I thought to myself, I'm going to regret it if there isn't a podcast component. Because you're a podcast guy. Yeah. And then I thought, I'm going to regret it if there's not a video component so people can see these things. And so it's all of those now.

So in addition to writing an essay, 20 essays, I'm going to make 20 videos and 20 podcast episodes about these 20 Macs. So, yeah, it's a lot. So I'm doing the videos in collaboration with Stephen Hackett on 512 Pixels. And the podcast is going to be on RelayFM. And the essays are on Six Colors. And then as a bonus for Six Colors members and Upgrade supporters at RelayFM, those people will have access

to an early feed of the podcast. You'll get the episodes on Monday instead of Friday. The public podcast feed is on friday so everybody gets to hear it the supporters of upgrade or of six colors get it sooner does that make sense yep we'll talk in upgrade plus about how you can get it because it's like a separate feed which you can grab we'll talk about that in upgrade plus but what made you i know the numbers are good right 20 20 20 you know but what made you want to put this together now? You know, like you could have done 19 max for 2019 if you wanted to.

Honestly, I was thinking of that 20 was a, again, this is before everything went bad, that 20 was an opportunity for a list of 20 of something. And I wanted to do an extended project. My friend Simon Jerry, who works at IDG, he used to be the editor-in-chief of Macworld UK. He was my counterpart for many, many years. He wrote a column every month. His column in Macworld UK every month was something called Apple A to Z, which was every month he would discuss like everything related to Apple that starts with a certain letter. And he went through the whole alphabet. I thought, always thought that was a really clever project. And I told him he should turn it into like an

ebook or something. And that never happened, but I thought that was cool. And then there's a sports writer I love named Joe Posnanski, who did a series that recently finished that was called The Baseball 100 where he wrote an essay about the top 100, basically most notable, I would say, because people argued about it, baseball players of all time. And that was a fun idea. And I thought, well, maybe that's my – and I wanted to give myself a project for 2020. I wanted to have – we, our jobs that we do, but a lot of it is kind of amorphous. It's like six colors, especially it's just like, I write about whatever is going on. And I thought it would be nice to have some, something to kind of focus my time. That is also not a commitment to do it forever.

Um, and, and I put all that together and I thought, well, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to, I'm going to play on the fact that I've got, I don't write a lot about like history, even though I've been covering Apple a long time. I don't do that. It's not my, I'm not your nostalgia blogger, right? Like that's not my goal. You're not Steven is what you're saying. I'm not.

But the difference is, I guess, between Steven and you is Steven researches it, but you were there for most of it right right right yeah yeah so i decided to leverage the fact that i've been around a long time and have some of these stories that have kind of there is an amnesia before mac os 10 basically there's a real mac amnesia so uh some of these stories are predate that And yeah, so that was what I thought is that even though I'm not going to be your nostalgia blogger all the time for this, why not tap into that and do a little sort of celebratory kind of project? And that was the origin of it. I really wasn't trying to burn Steven, but that is what he does, right? He writes articles about products all the time that's what 512 is about right like old computers about old old old stuff yeah as well

as new stuff but like the thing that makes 512 different is he is he talks a lot of mac history as well as mac present i guess what i'd say is as somebody who's 16 years older than steven i feel like the writing about old things is a bigger trap for me than it is for him because for him it's like i'm burrowing down into the layers and discovering what's down in the archaeological dig of the mac and like i'm in the archaeological dig so it's a little harder for me to do that this is gonna sound like this might take a long way around to give you this compliment but please just stick with me for a moment a conversation that i have quite frequently with friends of mine about you is that you are not stuck in the past right you are as you said you are 16 years older than jason which means that

no that's me no you're jason i'm exactly my age so it's there's a couple more years of difference between us or one i don't even know how old steven is i don't know what i am most of the time but okay you are very like you're just as modern as anybody right like you are not because i don't ever think of you as being older than me in any way and nor do i think of you as like the old timer mac guy so like you are definitely a modern writer for computing but that is a skill that you have of you do not get stuck in the past you do move forward and you stick with the times you know you're not like a oh back in my day kind of thing like in this even i think comes through with the coverage that you've had about big sir so far of welcoming

the change of big sir but this is the risk because i this is the risk about writing about old stuff is that is that i do try not to do that like i do try i i do it occasionally but i try not to do it and so you know that that's why i don't do this a lot but i thought i would do it this time right but this is what i'm saying you have i think the the ability to do this now because it's it doesn't date quote unquote date you because this is just a special thing that you're doing so basically what i'm saying is you are not like i don't ever think of you i don't think anybody does it's like this ancient mac archaeologist as you would say part of the fossil or whatever but like so it gives you the ability to do it because this isn't your thing, but you do have the knowledge, so it should be shared.

Yeah, there are those moments where somebody like Steve, and especially, is like, oh, there was this video about Steve Jobs and the coffin. That's a great video. And I'm like, yeah, I was in the front row. Yeah, you were there. I was like 10 feet away from there. It's like, oh, but that's ancient history.

Yes, it is ancient history. It is, it is. We watched some old keynotes for connected or the prompt and like we were watching the ipod one and we were kind of talking about that as like a historical moment and you're just sitting there you know baby jason's in the in the fourth row or whatever you know so you have this knowledge and it's worth sharing because as well like what i love i've obviously i've heard the first episode i've heard some parts of further later episodes of 20 max in 2020 is it's but it's not just you right there the the great part about it is interviews with many people who were around them people you used to work with so the great thing is like it is a a for the for the podcast especially i think like a really great oral history of these max in their time from people that use them not just a case of like oh i looked it up on wikipedia and like let me tell you about it like there are stats there are things to hear

about which are interesting but i always find it more interesting to hear from people who have the actual context of being around them like you know like when you look at the history i'm sure like the 20 max of 2020 will touch on computers that were released at a time when apple nearly went bankrupt and as of this week apple is the most valuable company in the world. So people that have only been around like me for 15 years caring about this stuff, I can't accurately give the context

of what it was like for to be a Mac user 22 years ago. And so I think that that's the thing that I like about this project is it's giving more people as well as yourself who were around then to share those stories because it gives additional context to these to the history of these computers so it's cool well i and i neglected to mention that

so the podcast is a scripted podcast um with me talking to i'm telling a story and I'm also weaving in the stories of a bunch of people I know. And so like some old timers like Adam Angst and Andy Anotko are in there, but also like Stephen Hackett's in there and John Gruber's in there. And there are a bunch of people coming up who you haven't heard from yet who are in, and'm gathering more and so it's a different it's a very different feel the essay is just me the podcast is the voices it's me telling a story and also the voices of other people who have other things that are their priority and i let them say that part and then the video is actually a little more like a podcast in that it's me and steven hackett just talking about it and then showing you pictures of the old Macs.

Oh, I guess Stephen has a lot of them too, right? Well, this is one of the reasons that it's a collab, as the kids say, is because he's got so many of these. Not all of them, by the way. He doesn't have all of them. But he has so many of them that I said, if you can help me out with the pictures and the video of these things, and we'll talk, and we'll make it collaboration and we'll put it on 512 pixels. And he was up to that. So that's helpful because I don't have most of these, although I have a few more than I used to because I've been buying things on eBay. Was that because of this project? Did it make you want to buy some? Well, it's also because I realized Stephen doesn't have it. And I'm like, well,

I need one to shoot for this project. So I have bought a couple of computers specifically to take pictures of them and video of them for this project. So that's a little tidbit. But anyway, so you'll get something different out of the video, which is me and Stephen talking about old Macs, and you can see them, than out of the podcast, which is lots of different voices, including mine, and then the essay, which is mine. So pick your poison, use them all. Or pick one.

Multimedia extravaganza. Well, you talk about me wanting to be current. This is an example where the old way of thinking was, I shall write 20 essays, one a week, and that'll be it. And I thought, that's wrong. I should do more than that. And that's why I have made a vast amount of work for myself. So see you in mid-December, everybody.

I think this is a great project. I love that you have gone to the lengths that you have, because it feels to me like even more of an event because of it. Like, you know, there are things where you, when you can see the amount of work someone has put into something, it elevates what you think of it in your mind. Right. So like the fact that I know I can read an article, listen to a podcast and watch a YouTube video and the three of them do have differences in content like that is that seems amazing to me that's like a big thing so i congratulate you for doing this project i urge people to go and consume it i will also say i'm super happy because i'm not a big article guy and love that there's a podcast version so i can consume in my preferred medium which would be to listen especially for me considering it's lots of different people. I like to hear them. You know, that's just my preference. But that's the great

thing about having so many different forms of media available is you've given this project to people in whatever way they want to consume it. So you can find all this stuff at Six Colors, or if you want to listen to the podcast version, it's relay.fm slash 20 max. Or if you're an upgrade plus subscriber or a six colors member you get that feed available to you so you can get them in advance this is a great project i'm very happy that you're doing it um and i will be here to cheer you on over the next 20 weeks jason because i have no doubt that by week like 17 it's going to be tough. Yep. I am ahead.

I will say I am ahead. I'm starting this project. I launched this project with stuff in the can. So I am ahead, which gives me some slack time. But the moment you press the button and announce it, you think, oh boy, here we go so here we go this episode is brought to you by squarespace make your next move with squarespace they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project no matter what type of site you

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Okay, so there was last week, you can't have avoided this, the Congressional Antitrust Hearing where Congress brought in a bunch of tech CEOs, right? So we had Zuckerberg, Pichai, Bezos, and Cook asking a bunch of questions. There were also some statements beforehand that were enlightening. The questions themselves were like, you know, pick your poison on that one.

We are not going to talk about the antitrust hearing itself. There's a lot of great content out there that will do it way better than we will. I would recommend people listen to the most recent episode of the talk show with Nilay Patel from The Verge, along with John Gruber. It's an excellent episode of the talk show because you get both sides. You get the tech angle, and Nilay is very well-versed in the legal side too. So I really recommend that episode to people

to go and check out if they want to kind of get a good breakdown for what this hearing was like. The thing that I wanted to talk about with you, Jason, is there were a bunch of emails that came out afterwards as kind of like the thing that I wanted to talk about with you, Jason, is there were a bunch of emails that came out afterwards as kind of like the evidence that was collected as part of this investigation. And there were two main parts to this that I wanted to touch on that tie up some things that we've been talking about on this show for a while. And they actually include both Apple and Amazon in both instances.

One of them is why you can't buy Kindle books in the iOS app. So this one goes back a long, long way. So this one is actually referring to emails that Steve Jobs was in the thread of back in 2010. Because I've forgotten this until i read this you used to be able to do it right you could buy kindle books in the in kindle ios app way back at the beginning and it would just be processed through your amazon account and then apple started introducing more functionality to the to the app store including in-app purchase as a thing but you know it was still like an opt-in thing you know the the old rules of the app store are very different to where they are now you know like for example when it began there were no free apps at all right

like every app was paid so like stuff changed over time and basically what this breaks down to from looking at the email chain between uh like ph Schiller previously mentioned, was in this chain, Jobs was in this chain, Eddie Q was in this chain. Basically, Amazon made an ad which showed customers switching to and from their iPhone to get their books on the Kindle app. And they were switching to Kindles and to Android devices. And they didn't like it because it kind of showed that,

you know, basically the iPhone was just another tool in that chain. And also, by this point, there were more users of iOS, like on iOS with the Kindle app, than Kindle devices from Amazon. So the argument that they were making to each other was that basically at this point, Amazon is making money from the iPhone more than they're making to each other was that basically at this point, Amazon is making money from the iPhone more than they're making from their own hardware. So they started looking at what we have today, which was basically they either use our in-app purchase model or they don't do it at all. And there are a couple of interesting quotes that I just wanted to pull out. One is from Eddie Q, which is saying, this is going to be a huge decision for us, which is very apt. And it goes on to describe a little

more by basically saying, if we do this, we are making massive changes to the App Store for everyone. But they did it. And this is a quote from Steve Jobs in that email chain. iBooks is going to be the only bookstore on iOS devices. We need to hold our heads high. One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy, rent, or subscribe for iOS without paying us, while we acknowledge it is prohibitive for many things. So there's a couple of interesting stuff here,

and there's funny stuff here. The funny stuff to me is that like that did not pan out. iBooks is not like the destination, right? Like I'm sure books, the books app is used by many people. But I think if people think about e-books, they think about Kindle books, right? Like that is pretty much where that's landed at this point. The books app exists. You can go there if you want to, but it's definitely not as Apple imagined. And then the other thing, I just find it so interesting that

we are still dealing with the ramifications of this today, right? With people choosing whether to use the in-app purchase model or not for their devices, for subscriptions, you know, all of this decision went out into all of that right so talking about like hey a few weeks ago or netflix now right like that that you you cannot sign up there all of that came from this one decision which was that because there was an ad that amazon made which showed it was easy to switch away from the iphone yeah yeah i not my favorite trait of apple this stuff this is the uh i think that steve jobs email from 2011 is just so clear it's um this is pretty simple ibooks is going to be the only bookstore on ios devices we need to hold our heads high one can read books bought elsewhere

just not buy rent subscribe from from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things. This is Apple saying, we want our money, and if that means you can't sell it on our platform, so be it. But for me, it's funny. This week's ATP, which is already out, they beat us because they recorded it last week. This week's ATP, which is already out, they beat us because they recorded it last week. They had, I thought, a really good discussion, especially what Marco said about the advantages and disadvantages and the criticism Apple gets for aspects of its platform on iOS and all the convenience that comes from Apple's payment platform. Like for me, similarly, I would say, my big criticism, I mean, I don't love the fact

that Apple is making developers jump, who have outside stores, jump through hoops or makes customers who use apps from companies like Amazon to jump through hoops like what I do. If I want to buy a comic on Comixology or a book on Amazon, on the Kindle bookstore, I have to open up a web browser, right? Like I can't, I have to use Safari. I can't use the Amazon app.

I can't use the Comixology app. I have to go to a web browser. It's stupid. It's a waste of my time. Makes it much less convenient for me. It is the worst user experience. Yeah. So I think it's a bad policy.

And I think, I think what Marco said is essentially all they have to do to fix this is let, well, what he said is let the app say, or go to our website. I, I would go further and say,

Apple should let apps link out to the place you need to go in a safari window in safari right like not a not not a secret hidden web view that is tricking the user but apple could define it that way and it would be a better better customer experience um i feel like you should just be able to buy books and comics inside the kindle and comiXology apps. Like I feel like it's stupid that Apple doesn't let them do that. But the thing that puts it, puts it over the edge into offensive to me is that this is a strategy to get people to buy books from Apple and its bookstore. It is Apple building a competitive product that leverages apple's platform control

and let's be honest would the ibook store have any traction at all if it weren't for the fact that it's the only place that you can sort of tap a couple of times and buy a book on Apple's platforms as opposed to Kindle, which is a decidedly worse experience because you can't buy books. And that's the part that's always offended me the most about it is that Apple's taking. It's not just that it's guidelines lead to consumer hostile behavior. It's also that it's got a horse in the race. consumer hostile behavior. It's also that it's got a horse in the race. It built a bookstore to eat Amazon's lunch and crack down on Amazon so that it would win, which it didn't do. I mean, that feels like a textbook definition of anti-competitive, right? Yeah.

Like they had competition and decided they would fix that. Now, when we say that, I mean when we say that i mean we're not lawyers and we're not talking about the law we're not talking about what's legal or not i'm saying what feels right wrong this is this is apple using its power as a maker of computer operating systems to build a new business that mirrors a business that someone else has. The only reason for it to exist is to scoop up more money because it's got the platform power. That's what the iBookstore is. And, you know, apologies. I know a lot of people who listen to this show, a lot of people who read my writing, they use the bookstore and iBooks or books now, and that's fine.

It's a really nice app. Like it's, it's fine. It's nice, nice app. It's fine. It's nice. But I feel like it's irrelevant because it's only available for people who are entirely in the Apple ecosystem. If you ever want to be somewhere else, good luck to you. I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm saying that the genesis of it was this behavior, which is we're going to build our own thing and take all the money. And everybody else is not going to be able to build our own thing and take all the money and everybody else is not going to be able to have a good experience because we own the store. And I just,

it's bad. And it's counter, you know, this is one of those classic Apple things where it's like, oh, what we really care about is that people love our stuff. But the way that they define that is so selective. And it's a little bit like if you remember what they said to Basecamp about, hey, where they said, you know, you've had so many apps on our platform and all that money you keep and we've gotten nothing of it. And the implication there is you built a business on our greatness and we didn't see anything of it. But what they don't say is the way to flip that, which is how good would the iPhone be

if it didn't have any third party apps? The answer is it would have been a flop and died. So the value goes both ways. Apple makes an enormous amount of money on phone hardware, enormous amounts of money. And its platform is more valuable. Its product is better because it's got those apps on it. It works both ways. But when it serves Apple to make it seem like everybody else is just trying to make money

on Apple's back and Apple should see a cut of it, that's where it seems really distasteful to me. And I wrote about this on Six Colors briefly, but let me tell you, this is absolutely from Steve Jobs. This is a cultural artifact inside Apple that comes from Steve Jobs' attitude toward all third parties. And that means journalism. It also means developers where they are participating in Apple's greatness. And they're lucky that Apple lets them participate at all, but never forget that it's Apple that creates all the value, and Apple should get its share.

And that was very much a Steve Jobs attitude from the beginning. I can tell you as somebody who worked at the company that did Macworld Magazine and that did Macworld Expo that Steve Jobs felt absolutely, he was infuriated by the idea that some company built a business on a product with the word Mac in it. And that we had whole people with jobs and businesses about Apple's stuff and Apple didn't get a piece of it. He hated it. He hated it. Because that was his attitude was, this is my greatness and you're a parasite on my greatness. And you see it today. This is, I think, one of the ugliest parts of Steve Jobs' legacy. And you see

it in cases like this. So, I mean, these emails just brought it all back to me. It was like, yep, look, it's Steve Jobs saying all those things. And a lot of these policies still exist today. And it's like, they're not defensible from a user standpoint they're not they're they're just because the user experience is worse it's worse and and the fact that they've got a competitor well why don't you just buy your books on our bookstore well anyway it's it's very frustrating and and of course none of this came up in the hearing but thank you to whoever subpoenaed these records. Yeah, I mean, and this stuff is not for the hearing. It's like for the investigation, which will produce the report.

And the hope is that the report will be better for what it's supposed to do than the hearing was for what it was supposed to do. What is clear and has been clear for a long time, and after beating up Apple about iBooks, I will say, What is clear and has been clear for a long time, and after beating up Apple about iBooks, I will say, the iBooks ruling against Apple, where Apple was found to be colluding with publishers, that was a very clear signaling point. That U.S. law to protect consumers from companies having too much power and engaging in anti-competitive behavior is broken. from companies having too much power and engaging in anti-competitive behavior is broken. Because as we all know, the net result of Apple and the publishers being found guilty is that Amazon got stronger, right? It was the opposite of what those laws are supposed to protect. So one of the arguments is Apple isn't doing anything illegal. I think what I would say is some of the stuff that smells bad,

you know, the result is what we think of as, as antitrust is not what they thought antitrust was a hundred years ago. And you, you know, this is why if I were Apple, I would be treading lightly and they're not, they're still not doing it. I would be treading lightly because all that needs to

happen is for the US government to have the will to pass some laws that redefine what anti-competitive behavior is. And depending on what they do, that could really break Apple's business and make their products worse. And some of it is probably avoidable by Apple behaving a little bit differently. And if I have a fundamental frustration with today's Apple and their attitude toward this, is a lot of times their excuse is, well, look, we're just enforcing the rules. It's like, I don't make the rules. Oh, wait, I do make the rules. But no, no, I'm just enforcing the rules. It's like, well, it's their their rules you could change them to be fairer but you've chosen not to one other thing that is interesting for this show specifically

is the apple amazon deal that occurred a couple of years ago that did two major things. One was to bring Amazon Prime to Apple TV and for Apple to bring their products to sell on Amazon. So I'll put a link in the show notes to a couple of tweets from Mark Gurman. So the former is basically the terms of the deal for Prime TV service. And it is effectively what we expected. They got a 15% flat cut on all users who signed up in-app. No waiting period. They don't have to wait for a year before it converts. They got straight.

Anyone that signs up, they get 15%. So this proves two things. It proves, one anyone that signs up, they get 15%. So this proves two things. It proves one, that this happened, and two, that there is a clear policy for cutting that 30% where it feels necessary, which I think I've said on this show many times in other places, which I think is the policy I would have if I were Apple, but I wouldn't pretend that I didn't have it. Right? Like Netflix, Amazon, any of these companies, they have millions of users. They are bringing value to Apple as much as Apple's bringing value to them.

It is business, right? Like that you would negotiate. But this idea that all developers are treated the same and they all pay the same, it's not true. Just stop, yeah. Stop trying to either saying it or giving that impression which they are um so the terms of the deal were that they would only pay 15 but amazon had to support all of the tv os features then there was a second

uh slide which showed and this is wild this one is bananas that this got put into this overall package, right? There is a forecasting sheet for revenue of Apple products sold through Amazon for a year. Now, the thing is, my expectation on this is it is multiple years old. This is probably a two-year-old slide. So don't try to draw too many conclusions from it. But even then, you see some really interesting stuff. Like, so a couple of years ago, we basically found out that Apple TV revenue is minuscule compared to the rest of the product line. Like, so they had a $26 million total revenue expectation

for Apple TV. Apple Care is $66 million, right? So very small. But again, this is sold through Amazon. You can't extrapolate this out to Apple as a whole, but it's still a slice. The watch was worth more than the Mac in revenue, at $440 million to $432 million.

And Beats at that time was selling more than quote accessories which you'd assume included airpods but again this is before the airpods cultural explosion i think so there's just some interesting stuff in there to see right that like they expected in a year to do a billion dollars of revenue like billion dollars of sales of the iphone through amazon um so it's it's kind of interesting to see consider we don't get these numbers anymore we're going to talk about apple's revenue uh they're two or three results in a minute um we don't get these kind of breakdowns anymore right jason they don't show us this now no they don't no it's uh look apple sells a lot

of products and amazon sells a lot of apple products now that they have this deal yeah it's it's a fun when we get little disclosures that go outside of what we usually get but are we surprised that apple and amazon i mean we we know they made a deal yeah like we we know they made a deal and that this was part of it and um i don't know it it's uh i think that there are aspects of this that apple gets criticized for and aspects that they don't get criticized for that they should. And that's just it's just kind of a funny situation. I just you know, I want ultimately I want Apple's behavior to generate a better user experience because Apple talks a lot about caring about its users. But some of the decisions it makes, which are business friendly, are consumer hostile.

And that's what bothers me is that they don't get to hide behind loving the consumer experience and then throw the consumer experience away when they can make a little more money. Because that's a bad path to walk down. That is a path that leads Apple to a very bad place where it's not Apple anymore. This episode is brought to you by DoorDash. You've got so much in your to-do list. Laundry, emails, errands, goodness knows what else. Give yourself one less thing to worry about and let DoorDash take care of your next meal. DoorDash is the app that brings you food that you're craving right now, right to your door. Ordering is easy. Just open the DoorDash app, choose what you want

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upgrade our thanks to doordash that i support their support of this show and all of relay fm so let's talk about apple's quarterly results for financial Q3. Surprise! All of it's up! Unexpected, right? Everything up. Expecting that. Everything up. All of it. All right, so let me give you a very quick breakdown.

Record third quarter for revenue at $59.7 billion. This is Apple's largest Q3 of all time, with an 11% year-over-year increase. Mac was up 22% year-over-year. iPad up 31%. iPhone up 2%. Services up 15%. Wearables up 17%.

You wrote a great article breaking this down as you do over at Macworld. And you said, Apple made more money on iPads in the last quarter than any non-holiday quarter in six years and in any quarter since the 2018 holiday season, Mac sales were only slightly lower than during last year's holiday and back to school quarters, which are generally by far the two best quarters for Mac sales. So we knew that the Mac and the iPad were going to do well because Tim

Cook indicated it last quarter, right? Right. There was a tell there. It's the pandemic, right? Their thought was that there were a lot of people who were at home, either for work or for school, and needed to upgrade their equipment to be better equipped to work or learn from home, and that that was driving Mac and ipad sales and you can see why he said that because here here it is this is like the best mac quarter in a while and the best ipad quarter in a long while and but the big surprise though is that everything else followed you know like iphone sales being up two percent year over year would not have expected that. Like it's a lot of really wild stuff going on here.

Like, you know, you could say there are good keyboards and new products in the Mac and iPad line, but I don't think it's just that that's not the reason, right? Like the reason is like they had great products to sell, but they also had a vast demand for people that needed those, which is why I'm sure we saw the biggest growth year over year in the Mac and the iPad, you know, like it was smaller in the other lines. And there was a question during the earnings call.

And I wonder what you think about this. Could this bust damage the remaining quarters of 2020 wonder what you think about this, could this bust damage the remaining quarters of 2020, do you think? Yeah. So they asked Tim Cook this question, like, is the idea here that you're pulling sales that you would have had in back to school quarter or the holiday quarter? Are you pulling those forward? And then it's great that you've got them now, but should we expect the sales to go back down in the next couple of quarters below where they would normally be? Because this is a bunch of stuff that got brought forward. And Tim Cook's response was interesting because, you know, obviously back to school buying is going on now.

He said no for back to school. And he said, as for the holidays, we only predict one quarter ahead, so we're not going to talk about it. My gut feeling is that they're going to have a weak holiday quarter. That's my gut feeling is that you've got all the economic conditions in the world with COVID-19. And it's normally, it will still be a good quarter probably because it is always Apple's best quarter. But given the economic headwinds, I used the analyst term there economic headwinds i used the analyst term there headwinds and uh given the fact that people have bought stuff bought hardware early for the pandemic it's hard not to see this especially given the way the pandemic is going in the united states which is not well um it's hard to imagine the holiday quarter being great for them.

So my guess is that they're going to take it on the chin a little bit in the holiday quarter and that it's not a fundamental part of Apple's business, but really some combination of depression of sales because of economic issues and because of some of this stuff getting pulled forward. I don't need to buy a new home computer for Christmas. I bought it for the pandemic. Did they give any guidance for the next quarter? Nope, no guidance.

Again, they said, we don't know. Things are weird. The world is strange. We're not going to give you any guidance. We don't know what's going to happen. One thing that could help the holiday quarter is it's very possible that all iPhones sold will be sold during the holiday quarter is it's very possible that all iphones sold will be sold

during the holiday quarter there'll be no uh there'll be no fourth quarter which is the actual calendar third quarter iphone sales for new iphones right because they announced that the new iphones would be quote a couple of weeks late which means october uh yeah they were very quick to specify that they shipped in late september and this time we'll ship a few weeks later which i'm going to read i'm going to read well why they didn't i think is in case something really bad happens and it ships in early november they can say well you know we said what does it mean right but it feels very strongly like october is what they actually mean here and there's also the question of like, if there are four new models, are they all going to ship at the same time or would that get spread out?

And that may be where November comes in, right? Like, well, these will be out in early October, but these are not going to ship until November. And that would fall into the few weeks later kind of zone. But it's definitely not happening in September. So it's in October, November, December, fourth calendar quarter, holiday quarter, first, it's actually first fiscal 2021 quarter for Apple, but the holiday quarter is going to get all the iPhone sales.

Because if you think about it, you know, like those first week, those first two weeks, that's when I would expect the majority of what would happen in the quarter is happening, right? Like people will buy it. Maybe not the majority, but it's a big spike and that might help them in that quarter, but it's a big spike and that might help

them in that quarter but it's not going to change the amount sold right it's just like when is it reported right um and as you say right like we could end up with phones coming out all throughout the end of the year because they'll ship these things when they're ready but who knows when they're all going to be ready. Maybe Apple doesn't even know yet completely. And as you say, we may get mid-October going out into November for these four products to start shipping. It's unprecedented. The iPhone X shipped in October when the 8 was announced in September.

I think I've got my times right there. I will ask you, if they're going to ship iPhones in October, do you think the event will be in October? No, I think the event will probably be in September because they announce and then they don't ship right away. It's possible that they could move it. It's usually like a week later. So it's possible that it could be late September or early October for an event. They could also just do it in early September as they always do and say, and they'll

be available in October and just walk away. So I don't think it precludes them from doing the event at the usual time. But we live in this strange year now where perhaps that'll all just get pushed back and that would be um you know my my gut feeling is that it won't but they could if they wanted to i guess we'll have to ask apple fellow and head of events phil schiller what he thinks about it but he's not talking because he keeps secrets. The couple of other things that came out from the earnings call, which is interesting to me, Apple TV Plus production has not restarted yet because of restrictions in LA.

I'm intrigued to see what they're going to do here. But that's that. And also Apple is not going to be asking employees to return on math to the campus until early 2021 at the very soonest which again not a big surprise there really yep but it's a surprising surprising quarter overall like wild to see them up those levels i mean they hit a bunch of goals and services and stuff like that which they were really kind of sheepish they're like we know the world is terrible but we've hit a bunch of goals and services and stuff like that. They were really kind of sheepish. They're like, we know the world is terrible, but we've made a lot of money.

It's like, yeah. So we can't avoid it, but it definitely did happen. All right, so that is it, I think, for a bumper episode of Upgrade Huge. It was even a bigger episode than we thought than when we started.

Yeah, it kept getting bigger. Apple also released thought than when we started yeah so that's getting bigger apple also uh released beta 4 of ios today and denied that they were going to buy tiktok so it's been a really busy roller coaster day which means we waited till tuesday huh exactly which means we're going to skip ask upgrade for this week but if you have questions oh that was the retraction of the lasers you have questions you would like us to answer on next week's show, send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use the question mark AskUpgrade command in the Real AFM members' Discord,

which you get access to if you support this show and support Upgrade Plus. You go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up. It's $5 a month or $50 a year. You get extra content, and now you'll also get early access to 20 max for 2020. So thank you so much if you do that.

You also get upgraded about any ads. I would like to thank our sponsors for this episode, DoorDash, Squarespace and Pingdom. If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com and he is at Jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M- i m y k e and we'll be back

next time until then say goodbye jason snow goodbye mike hurley