Upgrade - 311: Summer of App Store Problems

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Epic takes on Apple and Google's dominance of smart phone app stores with an app update and corresponding legal filings and publicity campaign. What's Apple's next move, and more importantly, what do we wish Apple would do to change its App Store policies? Also, Apple releases a bundle with the promise for many more, which leads us to get a little bit sad about the state of Apple's current service offerings.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 311 today's show is brought to you by mint mobile pingdom and bombas my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snell hello jason snell ahoy mike hurley how are you today good got a lot going on this week big episode again oh boy this summer is uh summer of news this is a purely 2020 uh phenomenon summer of news it turns out nobody has anything else better to do so here we all are i have a hashtag snow talk question that comes from the harbor masterormaster, which sounds very official. The Harbormaster desires to know, Jason, do you set your calendar to view day, week, month, or year? I assume he or she, the Harbormaster, means my computer calendar.

Yeah. The paper calendar on my wall is set to month yeah because it's what do you use the paper calendar for uh we have it posted in the living room and it's sort of like quick reference and you can write things down on it and we put down like when we need to give the pets their pills and it's like the family calendar and it's got right and it's got pictures of uh of the family on it from the previous year which is going to be a problem the 2021 calendar is which is going to be a problem. The 2021 calendar is going to need to be a greatest hits calendar.

Although I suggested that the 2021 calendar be the four of us sitting on the couch in the exact same pose. Oh, that's good. But with different clothes for every single month. And I'd be like, yep. Or there's a collection of things building, right? I don't know, like seltzer cans or something on a table over the the year i think it's a great idea personally we we do have that and uh on my computer i i always use a weak view because i want to see what's coming up not just today i don't have enough uh especially now that i'm on my own here i don't i don't have enough

stuff to need to like laser focus on what's happening today. I want to know what's happening today, but I also want to know kind of like what I've got for the week, what the traffic is out there for the week and the stuff I have to do and prepare for and be ready for. So weak view for me. I kind of have a hybrid approach.

So I use Fantastic Halon on my devices, right? And I have a a like on the side on the left hand side is i think what they call kind of like list view or agenda view sure uh which just lists all of my tasks over the coming days and then in the if i'm using a version of the app whether it's on the mac or on my ipad with a larger uh canvas i'll then have month view and i don't really look at that side, to be honest. Like I focus pretty much all of my attention on the list view, but the month is there if I need it.

And for me, like the week view doesn't help me too much because I use the list thing, because I get most of my week just looking at the list view. So what I like about the week view is that it shows the blocks of time so it's definitely good and again if i'm trying to as you know schedule sort of my life through what the time is having an entry in a list which and the month view is like that too it's just a list each day has a little list on it doesn't have served the purpose of saying here's a big block where you're doing this no if you are someone who thinks about their calendars which i assume most people do

in that way of like there is a block of time and things don't overlap like i mean for me i kind of i have a base idea of everything that goes on my calendar like it's always expected to be an hour unless I know it to be otherwise but the yeah that makes it makes a lot of sense to have weak view for that reason right because as you say you can see what's bumping into each other and if you actually have the space to put something in

so yeah thank you to the harbormaster if you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show, you can send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or use question mark SnellTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. I want to give a bit of follow-out. Tomorrow,

which is August 18th, is RelayFM's sixth birthday. It doesn't feel like it's that time because usually around this time I am somewhere, whether it's in Memphis or somewhere else, you know? And you're nowhere now. So it doesn't really have the typical birthday feel to it, but it is now, it's happening.

The RelayFM members bonus specials are starting to roll out. We'll have more to say about that for this show in the coming weeks. But myself and Stephen will be hosting a live stream on Twitch tomorrow, which is August 18th at 11.30 a.m. Eastern Time. We're going to be doing a RelayFM Q&A, so we've been taking questions from listeners. If you want to submit one of those, you can send a tweet with the hashtag RelayQA.

We've been taking questions from listeners over the last couple of weeks, and we have some great questions there. I'm also making a great announcement. I'm very excited about something important that we have coming up soon. So you can check that out at twitch.tv slash RelayFM, and it's 11.30 a.m. Eastern Time tomorrow. So you can go and check that out. We appreciate it if you'll join us.

I have some upstream headlines for you, Jason. Okay. will join us i have some upstream headlines for you jason okay uh martin scorsese has signed a first look deal with apple tv for both film and television projects it's quite an individual to get a first look with moddy moddy martin scorsese has been doing a lot of interesting development stuff lately i think because he wants to make movies the way he has always made them. And these days, getting involved with companies that have lots of money for that instead of sort of the traditional film route

is how he is able to keep doing it. But there's a lot of prestige that goes in working with Martin Scorsese. And I think it's interesting that Apple now, first look deal means that Apple gets first chance to say yes to it and if they say no he can shop it somewhere else but apple gets the first pass and you know same you say like one of the reasons that martin scorsese's last two movies have ended up one going to netflix

and one going to apple is he did it was it paramount that he was working with previously i don't remember i don't remember whatever studio it was i think it was paramount who previously had a deal with uh scorsese basically was just like we can't afford neither do we want to spend the money you want to spend and you're right it's paramount paramount is where he was great but uh the the tech companies the streaming companies have the money and want the content we we'll spend it. So it makes a lot of sense for him to do this. Like when you think about it, really, like it's probably just a matter of time until he ended up signing this deal with someone. Apple has the deepest pockets would be my assumption. I think I missed this. I saw it in the deadline report talking about Scorsese,

but Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, has also, in August, signed a first-look deal with Apple. But this is just for TV and documentaries. Ah. So, you know, I don't... When I saw this, I was like, oh, wow, movie... But no, not movies.

So, you know, it's just more and more huge names being attached to Apple, which is, I'm sure, very important to them. Apple is also going to be adapting the children's novel Harriet the Spy into an animated TV show. I was a big fan of the Nickelodeon movie as a kid, so I was kind of excited to see this. I don't know if literally anybody else remembers the Harriet the Spy Nickelodeon movie, but I really did. I actually, for whatever age I was at the time, Jason, it was my birthday party that year.

I was to go see that movie in the cinema. And I went with my family, and everybody hated it except for me. And to this day, I'm still teased for this because I was the only person who could stand it probably because i was the exact right age range well so that was that was 1996 so how old was i in 96 i don't want to know i was stephen hackett was 10 i was eight i was eight years old boy i actually have a very vivid memory of seeing that movie i i don't know why it's such a big movie for me, like why this is such a thing for me as a kid, but it was. And lastly, for Upstream today, we're going to talk about Apple News.

The Wall Street Journal, apparently very happy with the Apple News deal at the moment. News Corp CEO Robert Thompson was quoted by the New York Post as saying, the Apple News partnership allows us to focus on a tier of content and bring in a significantly new audience that we would hope to graduate to a paid Wall Street Journal subscription over time. And it is a genuinely different audience. It's actually of late more women than men. For the Wall Street Journal itself, it's more men than women. I found that kind of interesting. This is like a similar thing that I know that I've seen and other podcasters have seen with Spotify, that the demographics of Spotify listenership are different to typical demographics. So add to the overall pie,

you know, like a lot of people said that. Like Spotify isn't particularly stealing from other people for their podcast stuff. They are adding to the podcast listenership. So it's a similar thing. So like for whatever reason, the demographics picking up this content via Apple News are different to the typical demographic that is signing up for the Wall Street Journal independently. that is signing up for the Wall Street Journal independently. I just found this funny because it's the first time I've ever seen anybody positively talk about Apple News. Yeah, right.

And for those who don't remember, Wall Street Journal is doing like a subset of content that's available. So it's not... The argument was going to be like, well, why don't I cancel my Wall Street Journal subscription and subscribe to Apple News Plus? And the answer is you're not going to get the whole Wall Street Journal. You're going to get some articles in search and some articles that float to the top,

but there are going to be things that are there. So it's interesting. It's like the idea of doing a subset in Apple News Plus. I wonder, it's probably more work than it's worth for most sites to do that. But it is interesting that this is an approach that's working for the Wall Street Journal, given that we, like you said, haven't had a lot of companies say, yeah, Apple News Plus is great. So maybe this hybrid approach where they give some premium content into Apple News Plus, but not the whole thing, is a more successful approach. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile,

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use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. You just ditch your old wireless bill and start saving with Mint Mobile. Jason, I know that you got sent a SIM from our friends over at Mint Mobile. Could you tell me about the activation process? Yeah, it couldn't have been easier. You pop out the little SIM, put it in, in this case, an iPhone that is unlocked, and they have an app you can use, or you can go to their website and you basically put the code in off the card that contains the sim and put in your information and activate and it's live like it couldn't be easier i think this is a great time to be thinking about the prices that you're paying especially if you're at home more right you might not be using your

data at all so now might be the right time to consider if Mint Mobile is right for you. To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month and get that plan shipped to your door for free, go to mintmobile.com slash upgrade. That's mintmobile.com slash upgrade. Go there now, cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at M-I-n-t-m-o-b-i-l-e.com slash upgrade thanks to mint mobile for their support of upgrade and relay fm summer of news this is a big story really i think what we need to come up with some name here to try and tie these last couple of months together because really it's been the summer of app store problems it feels like this is becoming a hotter and hotter issue all the time uh and now epic have entered the fray in a pun intended quite epic way honestly so i want

to give an abridged history of what's happened over the last few days, in case you are unaware, and also just to set the stage for the conversation. So last Thursday, Epic activated a new feature in the Fortnite app that allowed for players on iOS and Android to choose to pay in-app via Epic's payment system for V-Bucks, which is the game credits inside of Fortnite, and they would get a 20% discount for doing so. So if you used Epic System instead of Apple's or Google's, they would give you a discount. This is obviously very clearly against the rules for the Play Store and the App Store, and they kind of snuck it in, right? So the app had been approved by like multiple days, and then they updated it. You you know one of the things about games

compared to other applications is you can update some of the content in the background this is a thing that happens a lot with lots of games especially large games apple even supports the ability for developers to do this especially on the apple tv is another great example of them doing this so you can effectively update stuff that's going on in the background or maybe they hid it i hope one day we do actually find out exactly what they did here because it's interesting to say the least there is also a possibility that fortnight just doesn't get reviewed astringently because it's such a big deal who knows anyway uh fortnight no well epic actually had a bunch of press releases about this. They wrote news articles about it.

They weren't quiet about it. So Apple booted them from the App Store. Epic immediately filed a lawsuit and started a marketing campaign which featured a spoof of Apple's 1984 commercial. They called it 1980 Fortnite, positioning Apple as big brother. I watched the commercial. I think they did a very good job of it uh it's funny and it fits their brand and when you hear the stuff that the like big apple big brother is saying i think it's kind of hard to argue with like whether it's

whether it's correct or not the position that they pose is difficult to argue with i think i've seen some people say that they thought it was clever um i don't think it was clever i think it was really obvious and hacky and if you had told me that epic games was going to be releasing a video later in the day about what they had done to apple i would have been able to literally write the script for the video that they've released it was i don't think that super dumb and super obvious clever and obvious can't be the same thing like it is the clever move to do like it's the move you do right like if you want to show apple as being a tyrant you just position lazy lazy we're gonna disagree a lot on this over the the next 45 oh yeah yeah we are. We are. It's going to happen.

Epic, just to be clear, the way you recapped this is it comes across potentially as being a sequence of events, but it's not. It's one event. Epic decided to break the rules of the Play Store and the App Store, knowing they would get kicked out or locked out or shut off or whatever you want to say about it and then they immediately had lawsuits ready to file and they immediately had a viral video ready to go unfortunately they don't seem to have done the obvious don't be evil video for google play i don't know what happened there did they not have that one ready in time because it's not so it's not as interesting it's this is their this is their uh this is their campaign and and you know the issue is an important one but i rolled my eyes at the at the 1984 thing because i just think

that's uh super obvious and lazy and i don't appreciate the i don't think it's clever i think it's i think it's a i think it's an easy shot and worth taking if you're epic i will say that but i don't think it's clever i think it's literally the most obvious thing they could have done google also then booted them from the play store and epic immediately followed with a lawsuit for google too uh i will i'm not the way you said like it though i'm this is the state of events of course they had all this ready they had to have it already they knew this was going to happen it was the point of doing it, right? Like Epic was not surprised that this chain of events unfolded. This was the plan. No, this is exactly what they expected and it happened exactly as they planned. I think this is a very well orchestrated and coordinated campaign to try and force the hand

of Google and especially Apple. That's my feeling on this. I think it's a very clever chess move. I can roll my eyes eyes at it feels to me like epic wanted to have their cake and eat it too in the sense that they wanted to play the aggrieved party um and get some of the credibility that you've seen by other kind of app store outrages where companies do things kind of innocently and are swept up in the disaster of apple's opaque uh store process. I got the feeling like they wanted to have some of that outrage accumulate to them, and they don't deserve any of it. Because this is a chess move, and it's a very clever one, and it puts Apple in a very difficult position. I think that's all smart. But I roll my eyes at the kind of like, is Epic the aggrieved party here? No, this is a

shot that they fired. They're not like other, like a lot of other companies have had serious problems with Apple regarding the App Store and they've stepped into them. And it's an example where Apple is incredibly powerful and doesn't explain itself and its rules are arbitrary and people's businesses are put into jeopardy because of it and i feel like epic was sort of like playing that part but that's not the point of what they're doing at all i mean i don't feel that way about them like i feel about this the same way that i feel about x cloud last time like my the reason that if you know i i kind of look at this and like i think epic should do this is because i do not believe that apple are in a position right now where they should get to dictate to every company in the world the way that the rules are played yep not not disputing that

that's what i meant when i said that i thought that this was a smart move on their part strategically. I just, I think that they also want to wrap at least initially want to wrap themselves in the, you know, essentially they played like they were a victim and then did the big reveal that they're ha ha, but we are not, this was all part of our plan. And I,

as somebody who has written and spoken too much about the people who actually get rolled over by Apple with these policies, I didn't love that. But, you know, it is what it is. All right. I mean, I slightly do disagree with you because I just think that, like, they had a lawsuit. Like, if they wanted to just be like, oh, look what they've done to us, they wouldn't have, like like thrown their money behind this lawsuit like it's a i think it's a different situation to the previous examples like hay for example right like i don't think like you know that hey base camp were leaning on the fact that they were hoping that people

would get outraged on their behalf to try and make a change uh epic are doing a thing where they are forcing it to happen via a marketing campaign and a lawsuit i think it's i i see it as a different thing nevertheless also publicity probably more than marketing because they're not really marketing their product here they're just trying to get publicity for their uh policy change that they want to happen sure so the situation is slightly different on android it's like it's actually very different on android and i'm not saying this is a case of like epic should target apple but i think it's worth bringing it up in case people are not aware of it so everybody knows that android has side loading which means you can install apps from other places and alternate payment methods exist

on the play store but not for games so google make any game use the play stores in that purchase method for things like credits in a game and so when fortnite launched they actually created their own fortnite launcher and tried to basically make it work that way. They did some partnerships with some companies like Samsung and tried to really kind of force people to get Fortnite from there. But it didn't work out the way that Epic wanted because Google tries very hard to persuade users not to turn on side loading features. They put warnings in and stuff. So they ended up putting... So for 18 months, they tried the sideloading thing.

And anybody who's used a Mac where you try to launch an app and it says, Oh, this app wasn't signed. Or tries to turn off certain security settings to launch unauthorized apps. There are apps that aren't from the app store or whatever and and you get one of those scare warnings scare dialogues i was like watch out this is you know it could be it could be dangerous and and catalina has actually ramped up the language there of like you know potentially we can't check to make sure this isn't evil basically and so after 18 months fortnite uh epic said you know we have to be in the Google Play Store because essentially we can't get enough customers on Android because we have to walk them through this complicated process and tell them to avoid all these scare warnings. And it isn't effective. like even though we despise this we're going to be in the play store because we can't make side loading work which i think is actually super relevant because i think it undercuts one of

the counter arguments about like what apple could do which is what if apple turned on side loading and i i think that epic's argument is it would be worse a worse experience even than sideloading on Android is because it's Apple. And they tried it on Android and it didn't work. So I think it's an interesting perspective that the idea is that Google as a platform owner put up a lot of barriers for good reasons, I would say, but a lot of barriers to the sideloading thing. And so even though we view what happens on Android and what happens on Apple's platforms as different, it's not as different as you might think

because you kind of really have to have the Play Store and you kind of really have to be in the Play Store. And as a result, Google doesn't have quite the level of control that Apple does, but it has a lot of control. And then for games, as you said, they want 30%. And they want you to use their payment system. And there are some,

they're very similar reasons, right? The argument is, one, that there's a lot of sleazy kind of game stuff out there that they want to not have happen through alternate payment methods. And two, it's a lot of money that they get so these are both reasons that they do it i think it's money i think it's more money i i think i think it's both i think it's both because early on in the app store if you recall um there were lots of issues about abuse of even in-app purchases for games and And I think, so I do think that there's an aspect of, we're worried about shady digital goods, you know, factories that are gonna steal,

you know, a kid's money, basically. And so I get that argument, but I think you're right, that that argument is then used to be a moneymaker. Because I don't really see how that has like played out you know like you all of this credit business to speed up time and all that kind of stuff like all of that exists in apps in both the play store and the app store like it's still sleazy it's still shady but it's just in the stores right like so you know i agree that like they position both google and apple positioned it that way but i don't think they followed through

on that yeah um epic still offer fortnite outside and they have their own game store on the pc and the mac and it seems like they are still planning on bringing a version of the Epic Games Store to Android, which would then be a third-party store, which again, you can do on Android. Like it's possible to do that. But as of yet, they haven't done that. And Google and Epic have had an increasingly difficult relationship

in the sense like it's been, this actually came out in some of the antitrust stuff from a couple of weeks ago, that Google has been forcing device makers to not do deals with Epic to preload this stuff. There was some news of them,

OnePlus was going to work with Epic to preload Fortnite, and I think a version of the epic game store onto their devices and google kind of stepped in and was like you like the play store right and put the end to that yeah so i think clearly epic is focusing more on apple for two reasons i think reason one which is minor is there are no other workarounds you know like it's it's apple's way or the highway. It's a more extreme example than Google,

so it's easier to understand. You don't have to have what I just spent two minutes describing of like the barriers to sideloading. You can just say it doesn't have it. And also, I think for a lot of people, a lot of customers, Google is actually removed in their mind from the Android discussion, right? Because there's so many device makers who

run various versions of android some have the play stores some don't um but i think the bigger reason is epic of focusing their eye on apple because it works for publicity yep you know people are willing to believe it because a lot of it's true and apple is an easy company to hate for a lot of people right like it's it's an easy thing to do they are an easier target and there's a clearer story to be told i'm actually surprised that they made the move on the play store and sued google on the same day because it does it broadens their case in a way that i think is really interesting and i think maybe we'll be uncomfortable for google honestly yeah but it does dilute their message a little

bit yeah it does i think they would have preferred for google not to do it um but i think it was kind of like they had to follow suit, right? Because I think Epic want to do what they can to minimize any bad feelings towards them. And that it might have gotten a bit awry in the press, especially if Google did the same thing and Epic didn't retaliate in any way. I think they would have preferred to get a little distance on it because spreading it out to Android as well as iOS dilutes their most important message that they can get across, which is monolithic Apple, big brother Apple, doing the thing you know they're going to do. when I saw this starting to unfold is that this is the end of a negotiation, right? That you've got to assume that Apple and Epic have been talking, right? Like, you know, it's like any of these big companies, they will be having conversations, especially because Epic's been very public about their feelings towards app stores and taxes and all that kind of stuff.

And my expectation is Epic have come to realize that they are not going to get what they want. So they chose to be very public with it because I think it's clear at this point that if Apple don't want to do something, no company is going to make them do it. They might meet you halfway. We've seen them literally meet companies halfway. what epic one is clearly more than halfway right and so i think what they've done it was i think this was pretty obvious right that they are hoping that they can get either public or legal pressure to force apple's hand to move the way they want them to move right so the lawsuit is is interesting to to look through but there's one kind of key paragraph which i'll read for the sake of having it in here which kind of clearly outlines what

epic are wanting so it says but for apple's illegal restraints epic will provide a competing app store on ios devices which would allow ios users to download apps in an innovative curated store and would provide users the choice to use epics or another third party's in-app payment processing tools so they are asking for alternate payment methods and alternate app stores I think the latter is a bit of a push and epic knows that but you always ask for more than you want you ask for more than you want right yeah and so I think what so look it's easy to read that paragraph and i see a lot of people do it and they go epic wants all my money they want an

alternate app store and that's that right like and i see it right they would love it but they know they're not gonna get that right like realistically they know they're not gonna get that unless a government forces that and i don't think we're at that point yet but i think that we are with this lawsuit especially getting much closer to apple not being able to force people to use their payment system yep so d so like should epic get what they want here what do you think um well i mean ultimately what epic wants is as much money as it can possibly get because this is all about money um and again you know they're not there are so many issues that we talk about on a regular basis here about the opacity of the approval process and other things that really can hurt, especially smaller iOS developers.

This, although the 30% cut does hurt them, I also know a lot of people who've made it quite sustainable business, even with Apple's 30% cut and they get the advantages of being in the app store and all those things. And even if it changed, they would potentially just stay with it as it is

because it's so convenient. If you're a big money generator with a huge amount of cash flowing through the app store, then this is the issue, which is, you know, if your business is entirely based on in-app purchases, then this is the issue.

And that's what it's about. Should they get what they want? You know, I don't, for me, the big issue here is basically who owns app stores and who controls them and what should the rules be. And that's a big issue. And there's a lot to go on, a lot to process there, right? Because there's the fact that Apple made it and it's theirs and it runs on their hardware.

And you could argue that it is like a video game console. It is a thing that's completely controlled. And I'm, I am sympathetic to the idea that Apple made it, Apple owns it, Apple can do what they want with it. Um, because it's theirs and they own, they own it. It's theirs. They made the whole thing. It's not, not even like Android where it's open source and then different manufacturers have different phones that run it and all of that. Like the iPhone and the app store, it's like of a piece. It is what it is. It is a single kind of thing. It's not hardware. It's not software. It's not service. It's everything put together. And that's what Apple does. On the other hand, you know, when we look at the importance of smartphones, and this is where I think bringing Google into it, even though it dilutes their argument a little bit, is smart. Is it calls the question of the importance of smartphones in world society.

And the fact that people are, it's the most important device anybody owns. Everybody has one. And the access to everybody in the world who uses a smartphone is controlled by two American, by the way, companies, corporations,

they have built a bridge and now they are manning the toll booth, right? They have the toll booth and they're going to charge you for it. And I know that this is the, is it a console or is it a general purpose computer argument? But I think it really does matter as a society, because I think that there's a strategy issue here, which is if you're Apple, we can get to this about what do you do if you're Apple? but i think the larger question is um what do we think as a society about having apple and google have this level of power where essentially everything that flows through a smartphone is controlled and taxed by two for-profit corporations. And I find that troubling. And I know that it's a case where maybe Apple and Google are a victim of their own success. You've built something that's yours and

you own it, but it's now so important that it's indispensable to the world. And as a result, it's not quite yours anymore. That's a really uncomfortable place to be. But that feels sort of like where we are right now. I also keep thinking, and I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here, but I keep thinking about how it didn't have to be this way. And this goes back to something we said last week when we were talking about the Xbox streaming services, which is it didn't have to be this way, but Apple has this part of its culture and its personality that is very much the, we almost died. It's the Steve Jobs. We almost died. We're never going to do that again. We're going to get our money. We're going to get it so that

we can stay alive. And now that they're a giant and they control, you know, they have so much money and they control one of the two ways that anybody can have access to a smartphone. They are those policies that were like, I the money we need to stay alive as well as the we need to please wall street by growing services revenue that doesn't come off as well it doesn't work as well because we're in a different context now and it leads them to make decisions that are probably not in their long-term best interest so that's the other thing i would say right now is it should epic get what they want that was your question it's like well not everything but behind epic's question is a fundamental thing about how apple has decided to police and monetize and uh tariff its platforms and i think that these are all symptoms of a larger problem so should epic get what they want in part because apple probably needs to do something to counter something to counteract the fact that there's

another one of these every week now. What exactly they do, they've got some decisions to make. But in the end, we didn't have to get here, but here we are now. And with every passing day, Apple is going to have to make an increasingly difficult decision about changing its policies or letting it ride and risking the, and I'm not being overdramatic here, the possibility that it will destroy Apple as we know it. I don't think it's overdramatic by any stretch of the imagination. Because you get a government involved, you get a regulator involved, you get a legislature in the u.s or you know to pass a law that they think does one very specific thing we've seen this time and again with technology

legislation right the dmca or you know so many of these different laws and then two years pass and everybody's like oh it did you know it would do this thing and the answer is maybe somebody knew somewhere but like no the legislatures didn't know, the president didn't know. And whether it's that or whether it's a regulatory, a mandated breakup of a large company through antitrust, like there's so many different ways that once it gets in that world, that you could tear apart Apple's business. Like Elizabeth Warren basically said when she was running for president that Apple shouldn't be allowed to run the App Store. Like it should be removed from Apple.

Like when I say the end of Apple as we know it, it's like literally imagine parts of Apple's business being removed from its purview. Like that could happen if you get the regulators and the legislators involved, which is why if you're Apple, I would think you have to look at that and say, we have to do anything we can to prevent reaching that point.

But then you look how they handled the books thing, which was a catastrophe for them because the book business didn't matter. But like they pressed that to the limit and they lost at every stage and they lost completely. every stage and they lost completely i think there's a lot of time being spent on like a conversation of picking sides when it comes to this debate like i feel like it's a thing that i'm seeing old people talking about and like and i just think that it isn't about like Epic and Apple, which team are you on?

Like, right. Because I have said many times and my line stays the same. I think we need to see some unwinding of the app store a little. Like something's got to give because the situation that we have found ourselves in right now is not good, right? Where every week we're having another conversation about the fact that, oh, I don't know if I agree with what Apple's doing here, right? And I think that we continue to go round and around with this point. Like, I kind of don't care which company is in the right or which

is in the wrong the situation has to change because ultimately the situation as it is right now is bad for customers like and an example of this of like epic has now created for themselves which is people that are using uh a smartphone to play fortnite they're not going to get the new content, right? Now, this is a situation where like, well, it's frustrating if you're if you enjoy that game. But this is because these two behemoths are like smashing against each other, like action figures, right? Being like just bashed against each other by a kid until one of them breaks. But I think at the moment, and I said, I will say this again and again, I think Apple has to break because I do not feel like that we are in the same situation as we were

in when Apple launched all this stuff for multiple reasons, right? Like, yes, when Apple started the iPhone and started the App Store in 2008, fine, you built it. You got to set the rules. People came. But where we are now is so different. If Apple had decided to not move into services, maybe we could have a different discussion, right? And still say like, no, they are still the arbiter of what they believe is right and wrong. But at this point point they are making many services and products that directly compete with the companies that they enforce rules on without in a lot of cases benefit right so like let's imagine that apple are still taking 30 from epic for every transaction in fortnite how much does epic have to owe Apple for making their business, right? None, really,

because Fortnite became popular outside of smartphones, and then they created smartphone apps because it became so popular, so people wanted to play it everywhere, right? So the original 30%, as it was kind of positioned, which was like, hey, it's like a department store and we're going to put your software on the shelves and people are going to find it and we're going to build your business. Everyone knows we're not in that world anymore. But the rate never changed. It's still 30%. And this is true for Basecamp and for Microsoft and for Epic, which is what value accrues to the iPhone by your being there? And what value does your business accrue by being on the iPhone? Yeah.

And I think that is the core of Apple's maybe disparity with most other non-Apple observers. They think that everyone's business is made better because they make the iPhone. Yeah, they, Apple, I think Apple, and this goes back to that kind of Steve Jobs cultural thing. doesn't consider the trade of all of these apps make our phone better and therefore people buy our phone, which has huge margins and we make billions of dollars on. And that's a fair transaction. Instead, Apple's like, oh, that's not enough money. We don't make enough money by selling iPhone hardware, the most profitable and successful product in the last 30 years, right? we're the most profitable and successful product in the last 30 years, right? That's not enough. We also want all the money that's on it, or 30% of all the money that's on it. That's what we want.

And they get offended when somebody like Basecamp builds their business using a free iPhone app and not giving Apple any money. And it's like, okay, but you sell iPhones that make a fortune and Basecamp being on the iPhone helps the iPhone. Like there's a very strong argument to be made there, but Apple can't either can't see it or won't see it or part of Apple doesn't want to see it. And I think that that's the big challenge is even if you admit that there's this balance, what is it? And that should be a negotiation, right? That should be a negotiation between Epic and Apple or Microsoft and Apple or Basecamp and Apple, which is how do we make a relationship here where we are giving you your due for providing a payment platform that's super

easy and a software platform that gives us access to all these users. But that allows us to run our business because we built our business and these are our customers and not really your customers, or at least they're both of our customers. And I keep coming back to the fact that I think Apple looks at it and says, no, our policy is the policy. And that's the thing, right? Is that there's no alternative. We set the policy and that's and that's the that's the thing right is that there's no alternative we set the policy and that's it that's apple's attitude and i just really do hate this console computer argument discussion thing i think it's i actually think it's very important to make

it because it's a discussion of what what do you want a smartphone to be do you want the smartphone to be considered a completely locked down system that is completely controlled? Because that's what consoles are. Or do you want it to be a PC that's completely open? And right now the debate is, and the app stores make it kind of like, it's a little bit of both. And Epic saying, no, a smartphone should be like a PC. And Apple's essentially saying, no, it's a console. And the reason I find it useful is not from even from this specific argument, but I think from that, when we look back at like, what do we want? How important is the smartphone? If we stop talking about this particular fight and say, how do we want the world to work? What do we want our governments to do? Are our government regulators that are supposed to be protecting us as consumers from these big corporations and creating a market that is free to have competition. Do we want the smartphone to be

treated like a console by all the rules? Or do we want it to be treated like a PC by all the rules? And that's the only way for me that I think it's valuable is not to say, well, is it or isn't it? But to say, do we want this to change? Do we want our governments to say, the smartphone is so important that you can't treat it like a game console? Because the alternative, and I'm actually okay with this. I'm actually okay with this, but we all have to be prepared. The alternative, one of them anyway, is to say, you know what? Epic is right. And nobody can have a closed platform.

And there are a lot of ramifications to that. But that would be a consistent argument, right? Which would be Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo, you also have to open up your platforms if Apple and Google have to do it. And that could happen. It probably won't, but it certainly could. Yeah. You see, it's just so like the issue that I have with the complaint is like with this argument is like because Apple treats the iPhone like a console. Because Apple treats the iPhone like a console, therefore it is one, and all other games consoles should be treated just like the iPhone.

And I don't like that logic, because it doesn't make any sense to me. The iPhone, the smartphone, too important, too prevalent in our lives right when i start getting my nintendo switch out on the train and communicating my family doing my work on it we can then maybe come back to this discussion but like i'm not arguing that the apple tv should be opened up, right? Like, that's fine. But devices like iOS devices, iPadOS devices, these are general purpose computers. They just are, right? Like everything that people do that the average person does on a Mac or a PC, they are doing on these devices.

Like if Apple decided that they wanted to just allow you to install Mac apps from the Mac app store and said, that's how we want to run this now. We wouldn't accept that because we would say these devices, this is where I get my work done. I should be able to choose. Like just because something has been set that way doesn't mean that it is the way it should be right like and i just i have this real problem with this idea of like oh apple treated this way so it has to be this way and games consoles are exactly the same because they're also closed platforms i i agree with you i'm just saying that i find it so you don't like it because you don't like the argument that uh that the iphone is a console

that's not what i'm saying i'm saying there's consoles and there's general purpose computers and what do we want the smartphone to be i know i know you're not saying it like i we are closer in our thinking here yeah but i i get your But, you know, I want to talk, before we wrap this up, I want to talk about what Apple could do. Because I think that's the, for me, I hear a lot of people are like, oh, I'm here for the drama. I'm getting my popcorn ready and all that. It's like, oh, I can't, I don't feel that excited about it

because it's going to be a lot of endless, this is. Yeah. We're going to have to live with this for years and it's going to be kind of boring and also annoying, but it's super important. But I am fascinated by the idea of what will Apple do to respond to this? do to respond to this because they have some very specific paths and i'm really curious and i'd like to know what you think they're going to do because it seems to me that apple's options are to um make a policy change right they could do that that's the that's like the last thing they could do they could let it ride and just fight this and see what happens. But hanging over all of it is this possibility that this will become an important cause and that an EU regulator or an American government is going to make their business, forcibly make their business change. And that's the huge risk that at least I see in all of this. So I think that's the question is, does Apple just say, look, it is what it is. Our rules are our rules. We choose to make them and now you must follow them or get out, period. And they fight it on that level. or do they find some way to make a change that they don't want to make because it'll stave off a bigger change forced upon them from the outside

i think like logically you would can only come to the conclusion that they will make some kind of policy change, right? Because that just seems like the very clear, logical thing to do, that you do something to try and take the heat off. That seems logical. And if you're inside of Apple, in theory, nobody knows how hot that heat is more than them because they must be aware of it but the problem

that i have with that argument or that that kind of thought process is every public statement apple has made shows that they don't know this and that's what i find so weird about it because they are choosing to make these public statements right like they don't have to say what they're saying, where they keep talking about the fact that, like, oh, poor us, everyone's making money on our backs, and we never asked for any of it until they needed to charge for it, right? Like, they keep making this argument, and I feel like you surely know, right? Like, you must know, and you're just saying this. Like, I feel like I can't believe any other route here, because that would be really wild to feel like if you genuinely believe this, and you're not aware of the risk that could fall upon you. Because if they don't make a policy change, and by policy change meaning, right meaning right like they change how people can pay

for stuff on the app store someone's going to come in and make them do it yeah and there are ways also here's the thing because because it could be seen as that we're arguing the same thing right like option a is option b and it's not and the reason it's not is because being told by an outsider whether it's a judge or a regulator or a legislator legislature to change your business in a certain way is way worse than you get to write your own mitigation and because it's the difference between somebody saying um okay apple you have to allow all outside payment systems now and anybody can use whatever they want. And you can still offer an outside payment system, but anybody else can do whatever they

want. And Apple saying, good news, everybody, we're changing some of our payment policies in the app store. And then you get to set all these things. So you can see like, you can use a different system, but it has to follow this rule or it'll get rejected. It has to follow this rule

or it'll get rejected. You can only do it if you're a company that has been in the app store a certain amount of time or has a certain amount of revenue passing through the in-app purchase system. Like they,

if you come up with a mitigation yourself, you can have it favor you if you're Apple. And that's why you want to do it now and stave off the rest of this. You want to do something that makes Epic drop their lawsuit because Epic gets more money and that's what Epic really cares about. And yet still gives Apple control that they might lose if they are forced to do it by a court or by a government of some sort. So that to me is, they need to get past though that, and what you said, Mike, is exactly right, which is the books thing. I keep coming back to the books thing, but the books thing,

the Samsung thing, the Qualcomm thing, honestly, we've seen time and again that there are certain things that Apple just does not let go of and And it doesn't always work out for them. Right? So, but this one I think is so potentially catastrophic that I think at some point they're just going to have to let it go. And the funny thing is that by doing it, they can create an environment that one is better for consumers. And the two doesn't preclude them from making a lot of money on the app store. That's the thing that really gets me is the in-app purchase system that Apple provides is super convenient. And I would like them to continue to compete on making it as easy and frictionless as possible, because I do believe Apple can make

that product so convenient that most people are happy to give Apple 30% or maybe 20% or whatever, because they'll have to compete rather than using some manual system that is less friendly, especially if Apple mandates that that's how you do it, right? Apple mandates that you have to go to a web page and enter in a credit card number, and you can't say, like, they could make all sorts of restrictions to make it less, and they probably would if they could, right? Because they want to make it so that they have an advantage because that's the story of Apple, basically, in a nutshell. So I feel like that is the smart thing to do and that they could still make a lot of money and it would be better for consumers. But there are times in my darker times, I remind myself that it's kind of amazing that Apple didn't

try to take 30% of all purchases in the App Store, including my Amazon orders for physical goods. At least they drew the line at physical goods. But it would be very Apple to say, no, we want 30% of everything. At least they chose not to do that. But I think they're going to need to take a step back. I think that's the thing that they're going to have to sacrifice, is they're going to have to sacrifice mandating that all purchases happen through Apple's payment system. And there are things they could do to mitigate it, right? Like, I think we talked about this last week, but like sign in with Apple and Apple Pay. You can make it so that it's super easy to pay. And you could even mandate if you're Apple, you could say, okay, you can have an outside account that pays for this but that you have to support sign in with apple it's like okay we'll do that right like that and they could grease the

skids in a lot of other ways so i don't know i i not only do i think that that's what apple should do strategically because the the risk of having the government intervene is uh is catastrophic and you just can't you can't that. And so you do have to kind of give Epic at least some of what they want, which is money, because that's really what they want. And that's what I think they should do. And honestly, that's what I would like to see as a consumer. What would I like to see, not what's the Apple, right Apple strategy, is I want the customer experience to be better. As a comiXology user, it's terrible. And as a Kindle user, it's terrible that you have to go outside the store or go

outside the app in order to buy things. It's dumb. It's awful. It is a user hostile behavior. And it's there because Apple has a rule that makes it happen. And there's no way for them to offer an app purchase because they will lose... Their margins are so thin already, they will make so little money that it will not be worth it for them to do it. So they don't do it. That's why they don't do it. So I want it as a consumer too. I think it will benefit Apple because Apple will have to compete, which means Apple's work will be better. And that benefits me as a consumer. And there are alternatives, which benefits me as a consumer. So from a personal perspective, I want Apple to do this. But also as somebody observing this and observing Apple's business, I think they have to find a way and maybe they have to wait a little bit and make it seem like they've, you know, so that they don't seem like they've relented immediately. But they got to get this story out of the news.

And I think they're going to have to make policy decisions and changes in order to get it out. One last thing that I would hope could come from this is like, by and large, I agree with what you were saying about a way they could do it is you kind of have to set some limits somewhere, right? Like you can't have 20,000 payment systems, right? Like they shouldn't do that.

But my hope would be that you would get all the large companies doing it, whoever they want to do it. Then you have a company like Stripe come in and offer a service to third-party developers. Like that's kind of what I would hope to see, right? That like a third party could come in and be like, all right, we have worked

with Apple and worked out this deal and we will compete with Apple. This is the rate we'll give you, you know, like it's 7%, right? Or whatever, you know? That's what I hope we would see out of this. Like, as a user, I don't want to have to sign up for a million different things, but I no longer want to be forced to just using one. I would have no problem just using one if everyone accepted it, but they won't, and they shouldn't have to. In the same way, I would also have no problem if Apple were like, all right, we're going to set some kind of tiering system on the cut now.

You've got this many users, it costs this much. This many users, it costs this much. I would also, in theory, be happy with that as long as people were paid correctly. Ultimately, at this point, Apple was a very different company, and I am very uncomfortable with them telling other big companies or companies of any size, this is how you should run your business. We're a big bully and that's that. And so if you would think from this conversation

that I'm siding with Epic, really for me what it is, is I am pleased Epic's doing this because they are one of the only companies that can. And someone had to start this ball rolling at this kind of level they can afford to right because they can walk away from the app store if they have to because they have so much of their revenue coming from other places yep and i i am like i said i i'm i'm not a fan of theirs but you know are there complaints did their complaints have

some validity yes they do and does it have the possibility that it will force Apple to make some changes that will make the iPhone less consumer hostile? Yes. And less hostile for developers? Yes. And so I would say that they're a useful foil, even though reading their lawsuit made my eyes roll back in my head. lawsuit made my eyes roll back in my head some of the stuff they asked for is so ridiculous but i think that it it's piling on apple at a time when apple is showing a weakness and that uh people are waking up to the amount of power that apple and google have in terms of the control of app stores meaning control of all smartphones in the world or most of the world breaking news breaking news, this just in. This might be the biggest breaking news in the show we've ever done related to a topic that we've just got done talking about. Yeah, this news broke after we recorded the show.

Yeah. But we used a time machine to come back to this point in the show to tell you Apple, according to Epic, has removed Fortnite from the App Store. We knew that. And has informed Epic that on Friday, August 28th, Apple will terminate their developer accounts and cut Epic off from iOS and Mac development tools. In other words, this is the nuclear option. This is the third option, that if Epic doesn't back off of what it's done in its app, it will be presumably... in its app, it will be, uh, presumably, I mean, it, the, if isn't even in this statement, but,

um, you know, presumably they will, uh, be, they will be kicked off their, their, uh, their certificate will be invalidated. And I think that means that on all devices that have Fortnite, it will stop working at that moment. I believe that's the case. See, this is the, you know, this is the problem with with with not as of right now having like a statement from apple like so what seems to have happened is apple have contacted epic have told them and then now epic has added this to their court filing uh or and then also published it kind of publicly but the expectation is this will be like what happened when the uh certificates were removed remember that thing that's the facebook i don't think they ever took facebook out of the app store though did they like that's a like a whole different thing this might be uh i'm

struggling this might be a first time that something like this would have happened apple will probably after we finish recording this, will probably come up with some sort of revision with their side of the story where they say, you know, that the issue is that this in-app purchase system

that Epic put in is still active on people's devices and if they deactivate it, they can stay in the store. But if they insist on keeping it active, they're an active violation

and they're charging people outside of, you know, because that can't go on forever, right? They can't just't just like well if everybody who's already got it just keeps on paying it keeps on working i think that was part of epic's plan where you know like they you know i would assume that they thought they would probably be good uh and they were just like oh we'll just keep making money like no one else can download the app but hey we're making 20 more because you know like we we're not having to give them a cut so uh this is interesting and they actually epic throws in that

um the unreal engine that they offer to third-party developers uh by cutting off their developer account they cut off access to their development tools including the ability to create the unreal engine so you know and it and it's a filing. They're asking for a temporary restraining order and basically asking a judge to say, to order Apple to keep Fortnite in the App Store or at least in the developer certificate valid so that that doesn't get removed and that their access to developer tools doesn't get invalidated. I wonder if they figured this would happen though.

I, they had to think that it was a possibility, right? You'd be really silly not to consider that because like everybody knows that Apple has the ability to not only do this, but to like yank apps from a device. Like they have a kill switch like they can do it um for sure again it's like it's not completely sure as of right now if that's what will happen like if if people will lose their ability to play the game that we don't know that

to be the case i mean give given we we don't know for sure given what we said earlier on in this segment which is that this is a calculated move by epic i can't believe that that this takes them by surprise at all they must have known this was at the very least an option for apple to do this yeah and so i i would think that they would have gamed through everything they did including asking for the restraining order about this but it is a moment of epic being like you know they're retaliating against us for filing a lawsuit against them but you know the counter argument is they're in violation of all the policies this is no different this is just them being in violation

of policies and apple does apple not reserve the right to terminate the developer account of anyone who violates apple's policies not just that's the they have violated them they knowingly did it yes right like the plan was to break the rules so apple would kick them off the store right because then if they got kicked off the store the rest of the pieces got to be played now maybe i mean i can imagine i can imagine a company like epic being like yeah but they wouldn't do that though right like you play it out but you'd be like oh they wouldn't be that silly to take us like to completely stop people from being able to this is this is very confusing like i do want to know more like i want to know what the actual ramifications of this are but it does seem like epic are concerned about it right yeah i gotta think this breaks the the this revokes the

certificate and and breaks the app but it may it may or may not um also something we didn't mention which is that tim sweeney of Epic in the last day has also kind of gone off on a rant about Apple's App Store ads practice, which has never been my favorite. I always feel that that's Apple double dipping, where they take money from developers and then they make the developers then spend money on AdWords for their apps. But he went off on that, too, the idea that if you search for Netflix in the App Store, TikTok is the first hit because they are paying for an ad there.

So this is a full frontal assault. But as we said earlier, I also think that it's take all the shots you can and then hope that it shakes out a result that is desired. so seeing people say that like uh with code signing and notarization on the mac this would shut down epics games on the mac from working so if that's the case well that's interesting it would probably also remove them from people's iphones and ipads yeah i mean you could install a version that was not notarized and go through the process of changing your security settings, but it would be a real inconvenience.

And that's on the Mac though, right? Because the Mac has that other option. Yeah. My assumption is here, I think we can assume here that this is going to cause significant issues. I do wonder if this has ramifications for those who use Unreal.

I don't know about that. I mean, what they say is that it's because they need Apple's development tools to make it available. But whether that's technically, you know, who knows? I don't know about how much of that is kind of hysteria for making their legal argument for a restraining order versus an actual technical problem without a workaround. I guess I think the thing I say that I find funny about this is like during what we just recorded, we're kind of like, we'll now see where it goes from here. I don't think I expected it to go to this level so fast.

it to go to this level so fast i was kind of expecting there to be a little bit of a wait before another move but apple apple's played a move now um i guess if this does cause issues with unreal this will look bad on apple i'm naturally assuming that would not be the case because i believe there are apps on apple arcade that that are made using Unreal. So I can't imagine this is going to cause problems for third parties because otherwise that is a big shot in Apple's own foot because now the collateral damage that you are causing with this move is maybe more than they would actually want to do. Yeah, it feels more like a long-term thing, right? Like, well, we can't make this available in the long term if i don't have access to the tools not that it's going to

break yeah it just means immediately that it would mean that epic would not be able to continue creating revised versions of the unreal engine because epic as a company no longer has access to developer tools. Right, so, yeah, wow. Okay, well, Apple's not playing around. I didn't expect this to be their first move. I was expecting maybe for them to talk a little bit more publicly about it than they have, you know, like maybe they would write a letter or something you know i wasn't expecting um what i'm seeing other people refer to as like thermonuclear war on epic but this is the big gun that apple has to play in this fight it's like fine yep you're done and

that i would say maybe a little too much a little too soon i think but this is their card to play yeah well we'll see what happens next but uh you know who knows seven days from now lots can change so i mean i've got another hour before i put the episode up so who knows mike this just in this no there's nothing more for now. Oh, dear. This episode is brought to you by Bumbus. The folk make incredibly comfortable socks. Bumbus have rethought every detail of the socks that we wear.

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slash upgrade for 20% off your first purchase go there right now get yourself some wonderfully comfortable socks and give a pair to someone in need that you are one more time is bombas.com slash upgrade our thanks to bombas for their support of this show and all of relay fm oh we did it mike we we we did it we didn't disagree as much as uh as you feared i think i kind of pulled my uh my my thoughts back a little bit because uh you know you know what i think federico will side with me a little bit more uh with with how i completely feel about this so maybe i don't know if we're going to talk about it unconnected this week, but we'll see. All right, let's talk about Apple One.

Apple's finally getting ready to launch a services bundle. We're pulling from a report here from a friend, literal, actual real friend of the show, Mark Gurman. Someone I can actually say is a friend of the show because we had Mark on the show not too long ago so this is planning to launch alongside the next iphone so probably in october there's not going to be any reason to do this other than they want to just show it off whenever they show off the iphone right get the most eyes on it there's going to be a series of options

available under the name apple one which is kind of funny if you think about it, right? It's called Apple One, but there's five tiers. It's like, that's not one. Anyway, the basic package will include Apple Music and TV Plus. There'll be a more expensive option that includes Arcade, another one that adds News Plus, and then a final tier to include iCloud storage. If this is correct, there's a lot of options. But the obvious

idea here is it will cost you less if you bundle them up. There's an assumed savings of somewhere between two to five dollars a month, depending on whatever bundle you end up going for. I really hope that I don't have to get News plus to get icloud storage like i just don't don't want that but i'm not sure it'll make sense i'm not sure it'll make sense if you if if it works like that i like gruber had his line which is like how is this how does this make any sense how is this less complicated than anything else? It's just a, it's, I mean,

it strikes me as being kind of like very small discounts for collections of various collections of features. It's not simple the way it's described here. It's not simple. It's complicated and weird. And you're right. It's not one of anything. And I, the only way I can imagine this making sense is if

if the actual implementation of it is kind of different where it's like you start off with apple music and apple tv plus and then it's a dollar more to add any of them right like that would make at least i could understand that one rather than saying there are five tiers and you pick your tier and because that's too much right like really i think the thing that we've assumed and it should always be the case here is they have one bundle it costs one amount of money and it gets you everything right like that's how i've always imagined a bundle from apple that that's what it is yeah it's the it's the all-in on the ecosystem bundle yep which saves you a little bit of money if you

get everything and then you don't you don't care if you get news plus yeah because it's part of the bundle and it's a and it saves you money because you already had the icloud storage and all that and also the icloud storage at the final tier is amazing like nobody can back up their iphones why is that the final tier like amazing. Nobody can back up their iPhones. Why is that the final tier? Nobody has enough storage space to back up their iPhones with the free storage space. Why would you not throw that in? Put it in way earlier in this pricing structure or make it part of the initial thing to get people in the door. I'm reluctant to pick over this too much because it may not be the actual thing, but Mark's sources generally are pretty good.

And this seems to be what they're talking about now. But yeah, I look at this and I think this is super disappointing and is going to be a mess. And like, I'm, as somebody who is paying for the Disney bundle, I just actually went through this where I have like, I bought Disney Plus and I had a Hulu subscription. And then because I had those two things, it actually was very, very, very cheap to add in ESPN Plus and get the big Disney bundle. Except the way I'm being charged doesn't make any sense. And I think I'm being overcharged. And I actually had to spend time in a chat window with a support person last week because Hulu is still charging me this monthly fee that looks way too big. And I paid for years of Disney in advance. And then I've got this little tiny monthly thing that I'm being charged for the bundle and it doesn't add up.

And it struck me while I was doing this, that bundles are really complicated because you've got existing customers with existing pricing and existing plans. You've got three different products. You've got, you know, Hulu has a couple of different tiers. So there's that too,

which at least Apple doesn't have here. But like bundles, bundles get really complicated really fast and it becomes super unfriendly to a lot of people and mark's report about this bundle doesn't sound like it's anything but kind of complicated and not particularly exciting i understand the issue and the difficulties in trying to create bundles like i run a business that has membership options and bundling can be really hard and adds many complexities but at the same time all this stuff is coming from Apple. And you know what? You're a big enough company, and you really can rest on the making it up in volume thing.

World's largest company, etc., etc. A later version. So this point, this drives me bananas. This is exactly part of the problem I have with Apple leading back to the previous discussion right now. A later version of iOS 14 will include the ability for your device to suggest bundles to you based on the services you already subscribe to. Oh, I'm sure. I have no doubt.

Guess what? More upselling of Apple products and services within the iOS user interface. Yeah. Of course it will. And you know what? I bet it's not just in settings. I bet I'll open Apple Music

and it'll go, oh hey, you should get news. Yeah. Maybe some push notifications, some badges on icons. Look, I love Apple. I love Apple products. Have them forever. But Apple feel like my problematic fave at the moment

because when I read that, I'm like, yeah, I know. I have no doubt about that at all. No. I'm sure they're going to do it. I have no doubt about it. Apple is rushing headlong into boosting its services revenue as quickly as it can, mostly because it needs to show growth to Wall Street. And that is the place that and wearables is where the growth is happening right now. And Apple is willing to some degree to sacrifice user experience. And yes, the whole previous segment of this podcast is probably about the

same thing right which is sacrificing good user experience in order to maximize services revenue the arpu it is the arpu everybody's favorite revenue per user yeah it's like monetization you remember how i said that the word monetize means you take a magic wand and you tap it on a human being and they turn into a stack of coins? ARPU is, I think, the unit that is used to count the coins because it's average revenue per user. It's like, you know, I just want to know how many bags of money are inside that person before I tap them with a magic monetization wand and turn them into a stack of money. You know, the story that really made me angry, and you helpfully put it in the document here, is there are a lot of people who accuse Apple of Sherlocking them, their products, right?

Like stealing their ideas and putting in the operating system. And for a long time, I have, you know, the fact is that a lot of very basic ideas should be part of the operating system. And for a long time, I have, you know, the fact is that a lot of very basic ideas should be part of the operating system. And ultimately, Apple shouldn't keep them out of the operating system just because somebody did an app of it, like putting it and mainstreaming it and making it kind of a simplified version of it. That happens all the time. It's okay. And so I often will take those sharp criticisms of apple

and try to blunt them a little bit like look what do you expect them to do however this one is amazing which is um a rumor that uh comes out in the german story and was rumored last year by mac rumors as well that apple is planning a fitness subscription service and this fits totally fits right mike you would say of course they are of course of course they are there's a place for them to make some money it's fitness related they can make some money they can create a service i guess this is going to compete with like all these all the the bikes that you get on that have virtual trainers and stuff it'll just be through apple um is there an apple x-size bike there are lots of companies that

that do this stuff right where it's like we create videos for you to work out home right like as well as like this story references companies like peloton but it's kind of different to that because peloton has a bike right like i know as you say apple we're not going to make the well i don't know apple bike apple bike it will be like here's a bunch of like home workout things that you can do uh that kind right so like you watch this person in a gym and they're going to do a bunch of crunches and although i will argue like for some of that it's like well more fitness features make sense why don't you do more fitness features but when they start talking about the content first off i get a little bit of a garage band music lessons vibe remember that didn't go anywhere uh it's like well is this

going to be another area where apple like has an idea and they try it and then it doesn't work out but jason you know why it didn't go anywhere because they gave that away for free well no they sold some of them they gave the first lessons away for free but they had like in-app it was like in-app purchases in garage band of music lessons from sting and john mayer it's very weird um but no what makes me angry is there was just that story about how a bunch of fitness companies that had gyms because of covet 19 they were um they were offering online uh classes online exercise. And there were many stories about this. And Apple came in and said, oh, that's a digital good. Give us 30%. And at the time I thought, well, that's kind of crappy. Like this is a pandemic. These people are just trying to have a solution that is not

in person because they need something. And Apple didn't, again, Apple didn't build their business. They're just trying to run their business this way. And Apple saying't, again, Apple didn't build their business. They're just trying to run their business this way. And Apple saying, well, now that it's a digital good, I want my 30%. But then you see this story and it's like, oh, this is like iBooks being built to spite Amazon and try to steal Amazon revenue on Apple platforms. This is because I look at this and I think, oh, that explains why apple is so diligent about having online fitness courses go through apple system and and generate 30 kick back to apple is because apple's building a product to do this and what is a more apple strategy

sorry sorry everybody out there for being so cynical about apple these days but like what is a more apple strategy it It's hard not to be. Because this might not be their thing. But you know what? It ties in with everything else they're doing, so it probably is what they're doing. It does. It seems very plausible that what Apple has decided is we're going to do a fitness subscription,

and then anyone else who wants to do online fitness courses is going to have to follow our rules. And we have to be sure that we're diligent about enforcing those in advance. But in the end, what it looks like from the outside is Apple wants to make the 30%, not just Apple taking its cut, but Apple making it impossible for other companies to compete with them because they have a product that's launching a service that's launching i hear your blood boiling mike i don't blame tim cook in the way that a lot of people do right like this is just the situation that they found themselves in i just kind of wish that they would stop, right? Like, I can see how we got here,

but, like, let's just calm down a bit, right? Let's pull back a bit and rethink this. Like, Apple, be in these businesses if these are the businesses you want to be in. Like, totally fine right like sherlocking is a thing that's always existed right which is the idea of apple uh creating a business which which is just like a business of somebody else right and it is a frustrating thing but a thing that has existed for a long time and it goes goes to the core. Again, it goes to Apple's core, which is,

aha, oh, Apple core, that wasn't intentional, which is if it's something that's adding on to an operating system and it's an obvious feature that benefits users, guess what? The maker of the operating system probably should put that in the operating system. And sometimes, not all the time, they do it better, right?

So it's a net win for the user, but it's unfortunate for the company. Or they do it for mass appeal and there's still nerdy appeal that that other product often will continue to exist because it does things that the stock Apple thing doesn't do. And so it gets overhyped a lot of the time. But you're right.

Honestly, Mike, we've argued for years now about how Apple spending billions of dollars on Apple TV Plus because Apple feels like it's going to get left behind in this changeover from traditional Hollywood to essentially tech companies running the entertainment industry. And, okay, like there's an argument to be made there. We've talked about it. There is part of me that looks at all of this and says, you know what? Why does Apple have to have a music service? Why does Apple have to have a bookstore? Why does Apple have to have a, is Apple the company that needs to make a virtual fitness thing?

Or are they really just doing that? Do they really have something new to contribute here? Or is it really that they've got a platform advantage? And by putting this on their platforms and advertising it by sending push notifications to everybody who owns their devices they're going to make some extra money on a thing that's probably not as good as the competition but they have their platform advantages and it's and it's just so wearying to me because iBooks isn't best in class. I don't use Spotify, but everything that I've heard,

it's not like, I mean, I'm glad Apple Music exists, honestly, because otherwise I think it would just be Spotify or there would need to be some other service. At this point, it would just be Spotify. Every platform owner has a music service and then there's Spotify. I guess that's how we're doing it.

But does it need to exist? It doesn't. It doesn't need to exist. Does Apple TV Plus need to exist? It doesn't. It doesn't really need to exist. Apple has done so many things that are additive, that are not about Apple's core business at all, other than that Apple can use its core business to make this other business successful against competition that doesn't own their own platform.

And the further afield they go, the wearying it is for me that to see them like this fitness thing just like could it be good i guess but why and somebody else whose entire business is built on it is going to care more about it and probably do a better job and now and they may fail because they don't have billions of dollars in the bank like apple does and if they're gonna do this stuff if they decide they want to do it fine right like if apple decides they that this is what they have to do they really believe they can bring something new to the virtual fitness description space all right like but don't also take 30 away from everybody else don't do both i i just i mean i just don't believe bottom line is that i look at this and i think it's not gonna be

it's not gonna be great it might be okay yeah but like how many how many How many Apple services are we going to see that are okay and are there because Apple wanted to try them? And like we beat up News Plus a lot and Apple News because it's the weakest of them. But like there's a lot of stuff that Apple does in services that's okay. It's fine. in services that it's okay. It's fine. But does the world need a Peloton competitor that is paid for by Apple?

I mean, maybe they'll be devoted to quality and it'll be great and all of that. But it feels like the motivation there is not to bring a wonderful, groundbreaking new concept for fitness to customers, right? It feels like it's to skim more money out of the

out of the ecosystem and increase the arpu and i increase the arpu like because like well in like a year in two years how much dead wood are they going to be carrying like all of these things they keep starting to add into what will become apple one right i assume this will be part of apple one yeah do you keep doing it forever what do you kill the ones that don't don't work out or or do they are they zombified and they just kind of continue on as half that that's the thing that gets me right is like apple has so many things i know it's got a lot of money and it can do a lot of things but it has so many things at its core that it needs to focus on. And that I don't feel like it does like, like even its own apps, it doesn't always focus on. And yet it is happy to spend money building more of those things that are not at its core. And

they're not at the most important to them. I don't know. I just, it's, it's, it's, I don't know. It's very frustrating because it's not as if, here's the thing. It's not as if we look at all of Apple services and say, you know what? Apple brought to this what they bring to every product they do, which is this intense focus on quality. And this is what they say on stage, right? Intense focus on quality and on the user experience and all of those things. But a lot of these things just aren't, like, they are Me Too products. So they're mediocre products.

And meanwhile, the existing products have issues that could probably get some more. And I know that the money, you can't take a person who's working on Apple TV Plus and have them fix bugs. That's not the case. But there is this organizational spread that is happening. And if they had proven that every single one of their things is executed with Apple's famous, meticulous attention to detail and consumer delight, I would be like, great. I can't wait to see what they do in fitness. But I've seen Apple News Plus. So, I think I would be able to more easily accept it if every single one of them was fantastic. I actually, at this point, Jason,

genuinely believe that TV Plus will be the best, but it's going to take time. But I think that they are teeing up enough people, enough content now, that they are going to brute force this one. They will get to a point where it will be worth signing up for apple one because you'll get music and tv plus i'll we'll put a link in the show notes to this ben smith piece in the new york times um

that uh is i don't entirely agree with it it's called the week old hollywood finally actually died it's a great time and it has to do with like the at&t layoffs and at warner media and all the all this stuff i don't entirely agree with this premise i think it's i think it's a little bit too simplistic where he says things like well hbo max only has two million subscribers or whatever hbo max only has this many subscribers so that's it disney one and all the rest of these are doomed to failure it's like um no i think that's i think that's simplistic and and it's too soon and this is a very complex market and there's a lot more to to fight uh about but i will say that if you buy ben smith's premise what he's essentially saying is old hollywood is dead and now it's a whole bunch of companies with a lot of money trying to find out what new entertainment industry is. And if you read the article,

the strong impression you get is, who do you think is going to be better at this? Netflix, Amazon, maybe even Apple, or AT&T and Comcast. And I think that there's a good argument there. I think there is an argument to be made that if we are, if there is no, and Disney is the only traditional entertainment company that is actually fighting this fight is one of his points. And I think it's a good one,

which is it's not Disney versus Warner versus Universal NBC. It's Disney versus AT&T versus Comcast. And when you put it that way, it's like, well, it's really Disney's the only entertainment company out of that group. The others are phone companies and cable companies that have an offshoot. And if that's the game now, other than Disney, then why would you not bet on Amazon and Netflix and even Apple in a scenario like that? Is Apple any worse positioned than AT&T in terms of building an entertainment product? I'm not sure it is in the long, long run.

Yes, AT&T owns WarnerMedia, but is AT&T going to be better in terms of strategy i mean maybe with their the the guy jason killar who's the ceo now who used to be the hulu guy in the early days maybe but you're gonna put money down on at&t so that is so when you say that you think apple might get there i think you're right apple might get there even though it's sort of way out of bounds for them. Like that, that is where the entertainment industry is going. It's like,

it's anybody's game. So I want there to be a bundle for the same reason I always wanted there to be a bundle. So I'm just paying one amount of money in the family sharing plan and that's that job done.

Yes. Right. Yes, please. Every time, do you get the push notifications? I get them now because I'm paying for all my Apple services with apple pay and so i get push notifications whenever i have an apple pay payment which means i get emails so i get push notifications every time i

make an apple pay payment which happens for all of my recurring apple things and it makes me laugh every time it's like now i've been charged for this apple service now i've charged for this it just keeps happening stop it and i would really like for that to be it's like yes i have all your things except for apple news plus because it wasn't very good but like i have all your things if you can give me a bundle that puts it on one bill and saves me a little bit of money but i'm committing to all your things let's do that let's for my family let's do it i'll sign up give me give me that but uh i'm not sure that's what we're going to get. We'll see. Or at least it's not going to be wildly compelling to people that don't just want

what we want, which is just one payment. Right. But I think that there is definitely a class of Apple's customers that are the all-in on Apple's ecosystem. And that's what that plan is. It's the all-in on Apple's ecosystem plan. It's Apple all-in. They could use that title if they want. All-in plus premium. We should mention, by the way, some news that just happened while we were talking,

which is that there is an Apple bundle. It's a TV bundle with ViacomCBS. This is so strange. If you're in the US, you can get CBS All Access and Showtime for $9.99 a month if you are already an Apple TV Plus subscriber. Yeah, so it's a subscription within a subscription.

It's a hat on a hat, as Merlin would say. So yeah, so if you are an Apple TV Plus subscriber, you can then get CBS All Access and Showtime as a bundle inside the TV app for $10 a month. So it's like a bundle inside a service, but it is interesting that they've cut this deal. But it's not, so like if you don't get Apple TV Plus, I guess you don't get this.

I already have CBSbs all access and showtime so i'm not going to be able to avail myself of this particular bundle um because i have all the things already but uh it i think what it says more than anything else is that viacom's cbs is a free agent that's willing to make all sorts of different deals because they don't, they don't at least yet even have the aspirations to be what AT&T and Comcast are. They're, they're kind of smaller and they're out on their own and they are happy to

make deals with Apple for stuff like this. Yeah. We've posited the potential idea of what if Apple bought them? Well, yeah, it doesn't look like that's going to be happening anytime soon. Who knows? This episode is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds. While you've been listening to this show,

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Okay, Mr. Jason Snell, it's time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Wolf wants to know, when the first Apple Silicon iMacs are released, what is the likelihood that they will be accompanied by a new mouse? Hmm. I haven't even been thinking about Apple adding,

changing its peripherals, because I think they're pretty good. Now that Wolf mentions it, like could be. Everybody mocks that mouse because it charges on its underside, which is not so great. So I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I think the likelihood is greater than normal, but it's never a very big likelihood so 10 20 i know this is a terrible answer but i think it just depends because it kind of really says like how much are they going to change the design of the iMac. If they really change it, maybe the current peripherals will look out of place. Like, what if

it comes... It's black. Like, that's the color that it comes in. Well, they have a black version of the Magic Mouse, but, like, is it time to change it? I mean, I kind of wonder if, like, really people are buying the trackpad now more than the mouse anyway.

I would think so. And I don't really think they need to do anything to the trackpad. Yeah, I don't know. I don't like the Magic Mouse myself. I find it really uncomfortable to use. Yeah. When I got the review unit of the new iMac imac um i i didn't realize there was a magic trackpad in the box i only saw the mouse there was both uh and so i started using the mouse

i hate it it's so bad like i i rely on pinch and zoom and all these gestures that it can't do and i just i i mean i don't like mice anyway right but uh i got to spend a little time with it and i still hate it and then i found that there was the trackpad in the box and i yeah like the magic mouse i know why i know that people use like it because it does have more like it has some gestures right and that is cool uh but really like you just get a mouse from another company that has a button or two on it and you can you can replicate that stuff by and large like if you have to use a mouse because like then you go to a trackpad for all of the additional gestures the trackpad gets you like pinching and zooming which

i do not believe that the magic mouse can do like i don't think it pitches to zoom so yeah it's not for me this is actually a related question that comes from Nicholas. Nicholas wants to know if we have any recommendations for ergonomic peripherals for the Mac. I have none, so go for it. Oh, I've got some. So, all right. So I have a few.

Some work better than others for the Mac. You know, it's like one that I'll recommend is a keyboard that I'm using right now, which is called the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard. This is a keyboard that was recommended to me by Marco Arment a long time ago. And I know many other people that use it. It is a Microsoft keyboard, so it is a PC keyboard. You do have to kind of embrace that and maybe swap some stuff around.

And you're also going to always have a Windows logo in front of you. But look, it's a great keyboard. It's a part split keyboard. So it kind of basically the advantage to this keyboard is that your hands aren't like completely straight towards the computer. So you're not bending your wrists at a weird angle. An ergonomic keyboard, a split keyboard like this, allows you to kind of place your hands on the keyboard in what I and many other people

consider to be a more comfortable kind of orientation. I don't only use this keyboard or a split keyboard, but I do quite frequently. Like my big thing about ergonomics with peripherals, the thing that

works for me is to use lots of different ones and not just to focus on one thing for one time for a long period of time. So that's one keyboard. If you want to get a what I think to be a nicer experience from a split keyboard, I will recommend to you two products. One is called the Dygma Raise, which is D-Y-G-M-A. This is my favorite keyboard, but it is a mechanical keyboard. It's a clicky keyboard, so I can't use it while I'm recording here. It's the one that I have a Cherry Brown switches on it because it's too noisy. But this is the keyboard that I do the vast majority of my typing on. I think it's fantastic. It has RGB if you want it. You can adjust it.

You can change it. This is my favorite keyboard. I will also recommend or at least suggest the Ergodox keyboards because they are definitely the more popular of the split keyboard. I see this one around, but visually I prefer the Dygma Rays, and I also like the layout of some of the buttons a little better um than the ergodox keyboard um i'm being told by sam in the chat room about silent mechanical switches uh yeah i am aware of them and i'm thinking about it for a future keyboard purchase for maybe to get a different split keyboard that i like more

but anyway i like my the keyboards that I write on the most to have some clickiness to them because that's fun. So they're the keyboards that I would recommend. When it comes to mice, I have three products from Logitech that I will also recommend. One is the very aptly named MX Ergo, which is a trackball mouse. So you don't move the mouse.

You use your thumb to control the trackball. And I use this mouse every day with my iPad Pro. I have it connected via Bluetooth to that. And so when I put my iPad in the stand, I use this. I also will recommend the MX Master 3, which is Logitech's, like, premium mouse. Like, it's the one that everybody knows and uses. But I find it to be a much more comfortable experience to use than say Apple's mouse.

And then another one, which is another product that I'm using right now is the MX Vertical, which is a vertical mouse. So instead of your hand being like horizontal to the desk, it is vertical to the desk in its orientation. And again, like I use a combination of these things and a trackpad. And I also use a Wacom tablet to allow for my hands to my arms to feel comfortable when using computers for long periods of time. But these are my recommendations.

Do with them as you will. I strongly recommend that people look into products like this right now. If you are a new at home worker, I am genuinely very concerned about the ergonomics of people that have found themselves all of a sudden working from home because it takes a while for these problems to develop. for these problems to develop. So please do whatever you can to try and be sensible with your ergonomic environment. Get a good chair,

get a good desk where you can. And, you know, but if that stuff's difficult for you, look into some of these products. Plus the Dygma Rays, the ErgoDucks, they're really cool keyboards and you might have fun with it because then you can start

getting custom key sets and like key caps and you can put them on and you can make it look really cool and then you can have awesome RGB lighting, you know, go wild with it. Janos asks, do you track a room temperature or overall home temperature at all with any technology? Jason, do you, I know you're a weather person,

does that also include the indoors? Yeah. Well the, so my weather console, uh, that's attached to my weather station wirelessly has a temperature sensor in it. So there's an indoor, uh, temperature sensor in that. And I use that. And then my, I have a nest smart thermostat. So that's got the indoor temperature in it. And both of those, I can use home bridge to get those temperatures into home kit. So I have them that way. My understanding is that there are a bunch of smart home sensors you can buy. And there are also some sensors that actually come with like smart home things that do other stuff, but also have a temperature sensor in them that can be read. So there's a bunch out there for that purpose. But for me, since i already have that

uh the weather station console and the nest i already have multiple ways to detect the temperature in my house i use the canary the smart home security system thing like and that actually has a temperature sensor in it which is useful i've found that useful it's been hot because i can get a basic readout of the main room in our house, how hot it is. But I've been thinking about maybe getting something cheaper for other rooms and also for the studio.

I might look into that at some point. Last question comes from Brent. Brent wants to know, Zoom seems to be a particularly bad offender for making fans spin. How do you handle podcast recording when guests don't have an iMac Pro or a fanless machine? Do you just make sure people aren't multitasking?

Jason, I know that you deal with guests and people that aren't in fixed environments way more than me. Do you have any particular recommendations here? No. Do you have any particular recommendations here? No. My recommendation is that I bought an iMac Pro not just because it's quiet, but because I needed the power to denoise all of the audio tracks of all the people in these podcasts who are on my podcast.

Okay. Because there are going to be laptop fan noises, and that's just going to happen and i i remove them and hope it sounds okay and that's about that's about it i don't have a i don't have a really great solution there it's uh you know have them use the app and not the web browser um the you know video is worse than than just audio yeah don't use video yeah it's good this is when brent said they're using zoom i'm assuming there might be a video component obviously video is more processor intensive than audio so turn off video and get your get your microphone away from the computer get the microphone if they have an external microphone that they're using for a podcast or something,

have them, you know, put the computer on the far side of the desk and the, like move, move it as far away as possible. And if you're doing video, there are other issues there, but that's,

that's often the killer is that the microphone is right next to the laptop that's blowing its fans. And that's the worst. If you would like to send in a question for the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you can get access to along with many other wonderful benefits

by going to getupgradeplus.com. If you stay tuned after the theme song, if you're an Upgrade Plus subscriber for more and you also, as well as getting these bonus segments and bonus content, you can upgrade with no ads. Go to getupgradeplus.com to sign up today. If you want to find out more about this episode,

you can go to relay.fm upgrade311. I want to thank Jason, as always. So if you go to sixcolors.com or you go to atjasonl, J-A-S-N-E-L-L, you can find Jason's wonderful content if you want more podcasts with Jason on

there are many more here at RelayFM and many more at theincomparable.com as well I am iMike I-M-Y-K-E if you want to find me online don't forget 11.30am eastern on August 18th at twitch.tv slash RelayFM

we're going to do something fun there for a little bit. Come hang out. Come join. And thanks to Mint Mobile, Pingdom, and Bombus for their support of this show.

And thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you.