Upgrade - 314: Beta Tourism

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Jason dives into macOS Big Sur and has to podcast from exile, Apple gets excited about Emmy nominations while prepping for fall product launches, and the release of "Mulan" leads us to discuss which movie theaters are worth saving.

From RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode 314. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Pingdom, and KiwiCo. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley. How are you? I'm very well. I'm expecting you to make some kind of pie reference now. 3.14 and this is episode 314. So I guess multiply pie by 100 and then round it. Because you spent those episodes, like it was a stint of episodes a while ago where you were just picking the numbers and like they weren't very relevant facts i think but i was expecting you to jump right in with with relevant pie content today

um who doesn't like pie pie is tasty hashtag snow talk question this week comes from steven and steven wants to know jason do you add individual songs to your apple music library as well as albums or do individual tracks get saved to playlists? So like if there's a song that you like, do you just add it to the library or does that song get put somewhere? This is kind of a weird question, but the way I handle it generally is if there's a song that I'm finding that I really like, I have a playlist of recent, like for this year, songs that I've found that I like. And I add it to that playlist, which adds it to my library. I rarely will add an individual song to my library because if it's not in a playlist, it's just kind of a stray and it's in the library, but I'm never

going to find it and I'm never going to play it. So usually they get added to my library as a part of adding it to a playlist because I literally have a playlist that is my collection of songs that I like from a given year. And as I'm listening to the Apple Music curated playlists and stuff like that, and I find something that I really like, that's a big moment. Sometimes I will listen to it for a while. And I'll either go on a kick where I'll say, oh, I haven't promoted any of these songs from the alternative playlist into my playlist, and I'll drag a few of them in. Other times, it's literally I hear a song and I'm like, I really like this song. it'll be like in a small ceremony, small private ceremony, that song is inducted into my playlist of songs that I like from the year. But that's how it happens. Whereas adding the

explicit like add to library thing, I do that as Stephen suggests for albums. That's something, if there's an album that comes out that I'm interested in, I just add it and it shows up in the recently added and that's very useful. Yeah interested in, I just add it and it shows up in the recently added. And that's very useful. Yeah, see, I don't like adding just like songs to my library that way for that reason because I use the recently added and then you end up with just too much stuff in there that's not albums.

And I like to use that to find albums. So most of the time, if I have a song that I like, I just won't add it to my library typically. And I don't listen to like the curated playlists like you do. I'm very much like a, I like the music that I like I just want to add it to my library typically and I and I don't listen to like the curated playlists like you do I'm very much like a I like the music that I like and every time every now and then an album gets added to that but and then I'll just pick from my albums for the stuff that I want to listen to um so I don't really like adding the the singles I will wait until the album comes out and then add the whole album yeah i mean these days they do a lot of putting the albums in in advance so you can add like when the 1975 album was like last fall that new 1975

album was posted on apple music and it was like one song and then uh unnamed great out tracks right but i added the album and the way that works is that when more tracks drop they automatically drop in there and then when the full album drops the whole thing drops in there and that's what happens so that was uh that was great so uh but i i do use the um curated playlist that's that's how i discover new music is through the curated playlist which is great because i like to discover new music that's one of my favorite things about being on a music service and then but i want I want to, I want to sub curate that, right? Like, because what happens is those, those Apple music playlists are like, I don't know, 50 songs, something like that. A hundred songs. I think it's 50 songs and they, they rotate out, right? Like eventually those songs drop out

and new ones come in because it's a, it's like the, the latest music. And so what I want to do is capture the ones that I really like and store them away somewhere to listen to later, even after they've scrolled off. And then I will sometimes listen to, you know, my favorite of the year or favorite of last year, or I also have like a mega playlist.

That's all the favorites that I've collected. Thank you so much for Steven for that. I think really great snow talk question. You can send in a tweet with the hashtag Snow Talk or use question mark Snow Talk in the RelayFM members Discord to submit a question for a future episode. This September, join RelayFM in support of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital during September in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Every single year, between 180,000 and 240,000 children are diagnosed of cancer worldwide, and St. Jude's mission is to not stop until no child dies from cancer. Childhood cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease for children under the age of 15,

and children undergoing treatment for cancer and other life-threatening diseases often need transfusions, physical and cognitive therapy and so much more. But the great thing about St. Jude is no family will pay for that treatment if they are treated at St. Jude, which is unbelievable. Your gift can help St. Jude provide the best care and treatment for patients. Go to stjude.org slash relay today

and help save St. Jude kids. That is stjude.org slash relay today and help save St. Jude kids. That is stjude.org slash relay to donate right now. Thank you again to everybody who has donated. Please continue to go to the page because there's always fun stuff updating there. And anytime you have any more money you can kick in, please do it. We've raised $141,000 as of the recording so far. I'm absolutely blown away by the generosity of the RelayFM community and our little world here.

You've really, like, me and Stephen are completely blown away by the support that we've seen so far. But we still have a long way to get to our goal of $315,000. So if you're listening to this show and you have that money to give, please, please give what you can. This is an incredible charity that does incredible work. The hospital takes care of children, but it's also a research institution. And St. Jude's Cancer Research is shared throughout the world. And they really does incredible things. It's a magical place that I've had the honor of

visiting a few times and really some amazing stuff happens there so please continue to go to stu.org slash relay to donate now yes and the podcast-a-thon is coming up and that's going to be great me and Stephen had a call today we were talking about it and we were both in absolute horror that it's next Friday yeah I'm horrified too I have to uh kick off the first the first phase of the two phase uh game show is kicking off today so i gotta do some work today and then i gotta do some work next monday and then i gotta put it all together for friday so yeah it's it's all coming together now so we spoke a little bit about keyboards and keycaps on last week's episode and i recommended that you buy a set that i like um called the dummy key sa dolch orange keycaps which i'll put in the show notes and i wanted to follow up because you sent me a picture of them yeah was that was that an upgrade plus thing that we talked about those

no i think it was in regular Ask Upgrade. All right. Well, either way, surprise. If you didn't hear it last week, then you know what you're missing now. Yeah, I bought them. They looked good. You said these look good. And I said, yes, they do look good.

And I bought them and they came. And yeah, so they're pretty and they're orange and gray and black. And they're orange and gray and black and they're nice i put them on my keycrun k6 which is a 65 i think keyboard um it's little no function keys but um and i use that with my ipad and i did actually use that the other day but i might move them to another keyboard i don't know i you know the the truth is i i am i should get rid of some of my keyboards because i have a bunch of keyboards i don't use because i've decided those aren't keyboards I like. But the primary things I have is I have my Mac keyboard and I have an iPad keyboard when it's in a stand.

And I haven't really settled on which one of the Keychron keyboards I prefer for that. When I do that, I'll probably get rid of the other one, but I'm still kind of shopping around. I'll probably get rid of the other one, but I'm still kind of shopping around. It's, you know, you never, I don't think I'm ever going to settle on exactly what keyboard I love, but I think that I need to come to like a,

a standard set of like these right now, this is where it is. And then I can get rid of some of the keyboards that I don't want. Yeah. You can settle on like the home, but things change. It's like any of these kinds of hobbies, right? Like new products.

It's a product-driven hobby. They appear and different things become interesting to you. Some people are asking in the Discord, and I'll mention it here anyways, that the keycaps are in a profile called SA. And there's a couple of things about the SA profile that I'm aware of so far. They're taller yes and they have the large capital letters in the middle like you like um right because i think they are more kind of evocative of like old terminal style keyboards um and that's that's

the kind of profile yeah and they've got sometimes they've got key labels like Super, which is one of my favorites. You can get that on... I have Super on other different keys. That's just basically so they don't have to print Windows keys and command keys. They just put Super. Well, it's from an old terminal, I assume, where that was a thing. But the retro keyboard thing is something that I enjoy. I like feeling like everything ancient is new again. And that's the kind something that I enjoy. I like feeling like it's, you know, everything ancient is new again. And that's the kind of vibe I want.

And yeah, I mean, you were talking about how keyboards was more of a kind of a hobby for you. For me, I feel like, and this says a lot about me as a shopper, I would say, which is my preferred mode of shopping for anything is have a plan get in get what you want and get out and there's a degree of that in my keyboard desire which is i decided i wanted mechanical keyboards um i but it was very much a find what i want find the features i want get what i want get settled and get out and although i will be tempted by a pretty set of keycaps like this one again i'm not super interested in going beyond that because i i basically i learned enough to find the tools that i like and that i like to use and now i other than the keycaps which is that terrible thing that keeps pulling me back because some of them are very pretty um i i've sort of

moved on from that because it was a great learning experience to find a product that I'm comfortable using as my writing tools. So that's what I do. Well, see, that's the difference between me and you is like, I like these things for the joy and the challenge of finding new. Yeah. Oh no, I got that last time too.

Yeah. I mean, you're definitely in a different place with them in terms of sort of finding new. Yeah. Oh no, I got that last time too. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're definitely in a different place with them in terms of sort of fandom than I, I have. And, and then that's, that says,

I think that says a lot about both of us as people that you're super into like the experience of it. And for me, it's a, I'm a little more just sort of in it for the practical aspect of it, but I do have a little bit of the aesthetic part with the keycaps too, because I like that idea of having like a keycap

for the season and my winter keycaps and my summer keycaps. That's kind of a fun idea that I have tried. I've investigated to various degrees of success. Well, as I find new things that I think you might like, I will send them your way. So I can be that first filter for you. Thank you for costing me money. So speaking of keyboards, actually, so one of the things that we've been doing, which is different for our St. Jude campaign this year, is as we

have been hitting different milestones, we've been promising streams and content that we will release. And one of the milestones that we hit last week was for me to do a keyboard focused live stream. So at 10am Eastern at twitch.tv slash RelayFM on Thursday, so this coming Thursday, which is the 10th, I'm going to be doing a stream where I show off the keyboards that I own and the keycaps that I own. And I'm hoping that I will have something arrive in time so we can change some key switches out on the keyboard together, which might be fun. I have got a camera which I've suspended over my head and everything, so I'm setting some fun stuff up.

So you can come and hang out at 10 a.m. Eastern on Thursday at twitch.tv.relayfm, and we'll hang out, we'll get a bit of show and tell, and we'll spend some time together on Twitch. Some more follow-up because I feel like I've just got to touch on it anyway. Epic has requested that a court will grant an injunction on Apple to allow them to put Fortnite back in the store.

So this was something that the original temporary restraining order didn't work out for them, but they're going to another court now. Epic is saying that they will suffer irreparable harm from the fact that Fortnite is not in the App Store. A quote, this was a clear warning to any developer that would dare challenge Apple's monopolies.

Follow our rules or we will cut you off from a billion iOS consumers. Challenge us and we will destroy your business, is the thing that Epic said in their court case there. Yes, it's a clear warning to anyone who would challenge the laws against bank robbery. Follow the law or we'll put you in jail. I mean, they're literally like, this is a clear warning that you need to follow the rules. Yeah, it is. And it's very clear. So here's the thing.

Anything can happen in court, but I feel like, and the lawyers have to do what they got to do. It's their jobs. Yeah, they're pushing it with this one. I feel like the judge in the temporary restraining order, her reaction was pretty much, my guess is, the reaction they're going to get for this argument. It was spot on. Which is, you did this to yourself. You could undo it at any moment. You did this to yourself.

You could undo it at any moment. If it's the removal from the app store that is threatening your business, you can solve this by removing your payment system. If the larger issue is that it's actually they can't run the business without building their own in-app purchase system, which is bogus. That's not a thing. Then that's a different argument they can make. Anyway, I wish them luck i don't think they're gonna get back in the app store unless they take their own thing out but you never know any every judge is different they could change their mind but it feels to me like whether you agree with them or not i i think this is a ridiculous request right to say basically

we want to stay in the app store and not follow the rules because we don't like the rules. But that's their take on it. So good luck to them. Yeah, there's part of the statement, that statement, which is very dramatic, overdramatic. But there is some truth to that statement where it's not like about following the rules, but it is that if Apple do not feel like you're following the rules the way that they want and that is the type of stuff that we've seen um over the last couple of months right that like apple has decided that now they want a cut for this and sure you know but in epic situation it's not this is you know this is this is of their own doing that's the lip service of their larger argument which is fine again lawyers get

paid to write things like this but the truth is they've got the lawsuit they're fighting for what they believe is a bad behavior on apple's part however is it entirely unreasonable that since they very specifically broke apple's rules knew they were going to get kicked out and then basically said what are we to do? Well, you could go on with your lawsuit while putting it back in the store using Apple's system. And you could even ask for all the money in the in-app purchase system to be put in escrow or something so that if you win your case, you get it all. And if you lose your case, you give Apple 30% of it.

But they're playing the game here if you're going to argue for a restraining order this is what you should say i just roll my eyes at it because i don't think they're going to get anywhere there's very repairable harm right like you can repair the situation if you want to you literally this is not a case where apple has rolled into your thing that you worked really hard on and decided capriciously to destroy it. It's like you did this to yourself in order to make the point. You don't want to deal with the consequences of it. There's a simple solution without dropping your lawsuits, but you don't want to do it because the truth is you want to be a martyr. That's the truth is you want to be a

martyr. You want to make a stink. You want to make all your customers angry at Apple. That's the truth is you want to be a martyr. You want to make a stink. You want to make all your customers angry at Apple. That is the goal here. So they're succeeding at that. This episode is brought to you by KiwiCo. We all know that this school year is unlike any other, whether your kids are going back to school or they're logging into a classroom from home. And as parents, it can be time consuming

to give your kids the extra help that they might need for their schooling right now. Well, here's a bit of help. Hands-on science and art projects that you can get delivered to your door. The company KiwiCo can deliver a science fair and art class right to your home. I, as an adult, loved building the KiwiCo set that we got sent recently. Well, in helping out, we're building it too. So they break these sets down into really easy to understand instructions. I love that they give you everything you need in the box, but anything extra that you need,

I love that they were very clear, like, hey, before you get started, you're going to need this and this. And oh, by the way, this one might get messy, so you might want to take care of that, right? Like they do a great job of breaking it down for the adult before going into a project, right? Like what are you going to need? And they also do great for breaking it down for kids of like, okay, here are the instructions. We're going to help you get through this. So rather than it just being a case of the parent having

to walk the child through, the instructions do a great job of doing that. And I think it's really, really awesome. Your child can get super cool hands-on science art geography projects delivered to your door every month and they're going to be so excited to see this arrive in the mail especially at a time when they might not be able to do as many things as they might want to do especially like educationally stimulating things like museums and stuff is tricky but this is the stuff that can come straight to home provide a little bit of variety there's no commitment You can pause or cancel your KiwiCo subscription at any time.

And there are different crates for kids of all ages. So there's something for every kid on your list. KiwiCo is redefined in learning with hands-on projects that build confidence, creativity and critical thinking skills.

There's something for every kid or kid at heart at KiwiCo. You can get 30% off your first month plus free shipping on any crate line at KiwiCo. You can get 30% off your first month, plus free shipping on any crate line at KiwiCo.com slash upgrade. That's KiwiCo.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to KiwiCo for their

support of this show and RelayFM. Some upstream news for you, Jason. Apple signs a deal for five days at Memorial. This is a new limited series from Academy Award winner John Ridley, known for 12 Years a Slave and American Crime, and Emmy Award winner Carlton Cruz, who's known for Jack Ryan and Lost.

Carlton Cuse, yeah. Did I say Cruz? He's not a Cruz. Carlton Cuse. I don't know why my brain read Cruz. Sorry, Carlton Cuse. You have a great name, nevertheless. It's a Mission Impossible thing, maybe. I don't know why my brain read cruise. Sorry, Carlton Cuse. You have a great name, nevertheless. It's a Mission Impossible thing, maybe.

I don't know. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. This is based on a novel that chronicles the first five days of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. This is one of the rare projects that Apple announced themselves of a press release. Interesting. Usually this stuff gets out in other places,

but this one, they announced that one straight up. Yeah, and John Ridley is well-known for winning the Academy Award for 12 Years a Slave, but American Crime was a very good sort of anthology series on ABC, I believe, that was, yeah, it was really good. So he's done some really good TV work, too. So he understands understands this kind of format I think it's a good fit for him I think they I think that uh cues and Ridley worked did they work together on Jack Ryan or no I don't think so

actually I don't think so no I love Jack Ryan though do you what did you watch Jack Ryan I I did it's it's. I watched both seasons. They've got things to commend about it, but it's not as good as it should be, I think is my feeling about it. It's okay. I like it as like, I found it like an easy bingeable show.

Yeah. Oh yeah, it is that. It's just, and the second season I just thought was kind of a letdown after the first season. The first season was better. Yeah. But Carlton Cuse, he did Lost with David Lindelofof they they did lost which is one of my all-time favorites don't email me apple is celebrating their 18 emmy nominations of a home page takeover of apple.com

right now right now you can go to right now as of right now and you go to apple.com and you'll see all the nominations quote and we're just getting started it says on the page i think this is quite a big statement to take over the apple homepage they usually reserve this for quite important things and so clearly apple think this is quite important yeah well we said here listeners to upstream already know that one of the big things that any tech-ish company that enters the entertainment industry wants are awards because the awards are validation and apple's got their emmy nominations which is very exciting and uh and so of course they are proud of it and they want to make a big deal out of it i'm sure also there's a level of serving the tv group where they're like we don't get enough love on the apple home page why don't we get a little love and so

this is their way apple's way of giving them a little love now you may be asking yourself well the emmy awards aren't until september 20th so why why are they choosing this moment to pat themselves on the back for all their emmy nominations and i'll just say it's possible that there will be other things that will be featured on the apple home page between now and then maybe we'll get to that later on so maybe it needs needs to be today. That's all I'm saying. The Morning Show leads with eight nominations. Beastie Boys Story, the documentary, has five, Defending Jacob has two, and then Central Park Home and The Elephant Queen

have also picked up a nomination each. Yep. Yep. So good luck to Apple on September 20th, I guess. For your consideration. Yep. The UK cell carrier EE has launched an Apple services bundle in partnership with Apple.

So they have a new plan. It's called the FullWorks plan. And it gives you access to Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, and Apple Arcade at no extra cost as part of the plan. But listen to this plan as they describe it. The FullWorks package offers an iPhone 11 Pro with unlimited data, calls and texts, Apple Music, Apple TV Plus and Apple Arcade

for 77 pounds a month. The same plan about the bundled services costs 68 pounds. So you end up saving about 11 pounds a month when using this compared to buying directly from Apple. I got that from 9to5Mac. What I found interesting about this is this is kind of what people want Apple to produce themselves, right?

Like when we were talking about the Mark Gurman report a couple of weeks ago, it's like, okay, do all the services, but I would love to get some hardware along with it. This is that, right? You get an iPhone, you get unlimited calls and texts. And I will say for 77 pounds a month, and it's probably over like three years, two or three years,

that's actually for the UK, a pretty decent price for that entire package because it includes a phone, right? So you're basically paying like what, you're paying nine pounds for those services instead of 20 pounds for those services. Yeah, there or thereabouts. Yeah. I think it's actually it's interesting i thought ee have done stuff with apple in the past like you would

get a free year of apple music and stuff like that um and i just found it really interesting that they've they've gone ahead and done like a full-on bundle with ee before they did one themselves maybe they were supposed to have one by now jason there there are some of these things that have happened in america i haven't seen them all the services bundle with an iphone i mean that's a really interesting idea t-mobile in the u.s has done a lot of that where it's it's done um in fact i was talking to somebody who said that they got their they got their netflix from one from their from their cell phone carrier, and they got some other streaming service through their cable company bundling it in. And they had assembled streaming services without actually joining the services because they got them as part of other deals.

I know T-Mobile has offered a bunch of those kind of bundles or even freebies where it's like, if you sign up for this plan, you get this service for free. So I think this is an interesting thing for us to watch because we keep talking about Apple's direct to consumer bundle, but there are other ways for Apple services to generate revenue for Apple that involve them piggybacking on another existing relationship. I'm sure that Apple would prefer to keep all the money and have it all get channeled through them. But this is a great example where, you know, Apple is getting all of these subscribers who sign up for this plan. And these are the most Apple focused people

by a wireless plan. And the wireless subscribers think that they're getting a deal and Apple is getting subscribers. And presumably this improves ee's marketing so it potentially works for everyone so something to keep an eye on is how apple tries to bundle its services into other plans yeah it's like you know i could easily imagine them changing the way this is marketed to be like oh you get the apple subscription service not all of them right like at the moment they're just saying like oh we give you these three things but if apple have a bundle maybe it just swaps out and become hey is the full works package you get apple's apple one bundle along with your phone right i can imagine that happening too mulan is now available on disney plus um it currently costs as we've mentioned before 29.99

for premiere access uh we have learned a couple of things now. It will be made available to all Disney Plus subscribers in December. So if you don't want to see it now, you don't want to pay for it now, you can wait until December if you're a Disney Plus subscriber and you'll get the movie as part of your regular plan. And to answer a previously asked question that I had on this show, Disney are using the iOS in-app purchase mechanism if you

want to buy the movie inside of the app. So that's kind of where we are right now. It's not available anywhere else. That was another thing I was wondering, like, could you get it on iTunes? No, it's just in Disney Plus in a quite short window, a three-month window, I think is really great. Yeah, it seems to me like they're they're hyper compressing the windows here so it's disney plus premiere access i would bet you that sometime between now and december it will show up on you know itunes and in amazon prime and all of those places for this same kind of like high price right but they're but they've created this kind of premiere access window where it's exclusively available, essentially exclusively available to pay for on Disney Plus. And then eventually it will become available everywhere to pay for for $29.99.

And then it will go on Disney Plus. going on here, but I'm interested to see if Disney does this again, because it's possible that a Disney Plus membership may end up being a first access plan for the opportunity to see Disney stuff before anyone else gets access to it at home. Even if theaters reopen and we go back to a more theater-centric approach, I'm interested to see if Disney uses this as their rollout. So basically like Disney plus people always get access to buy these Disney movies before they end up on the other for purchase services by a couple of weeks, even just to make Disney plus feel important to them.

I mean, it's a good strategy, right? Yeah, I mean, we'll see. It depends on how interested people are in paying on top of paying for Disney+, but I think the idea here is that these are the most committed Disney fans. It's unlikely that people who are super into Disney movies

are not Disney Plus members. And so giving them, they're in the club and so they get to see it sooner it's not a bad idea really it's interesting because as a disney plus subscriber i look at it and i think do i really want to play pay 30 now for something that i could see for free in december i'm not sure i want to see this movie anyway but i did have i am going to get it right so there there is that part of it which is like yeah but i'm just going to get it in three months you're you're paying to see it sooner i'm paying 30 to see it sooner but i i think for a would i do that for a marvel movie let's say right if that was a black widow maybe which is coming out if they said okay well you can watch black widow at home for 30 and it'll be on the plan

you know on the on the program three months, but you can just buy it and watch it tonight, and it's a premiere. Would I do that? And the answer is, yeah, probably. My whole family would sit down and watch that movie. So, I'm intrigued by this. It'll be interesting to see if this is a one-off, or if Disney is going to build this up as a

system and an inducement to be a Disney Plus member. I would totally, I mean, i was thinking about doing it for mulan and then when i saw it was december i was like i'll probably just wait like if i really feel like i want to see it between now and then i'll do it but i'll probably wait but if that's if it is something like black widow which i'm way more interested in because i'm more involved and more like invested in that universe then i probably would do it if anything because I would want to not go to the cinema because like cinemas are open here in some limited capacity but I wouldn't want to go to one like I

was because this is like something I noticed like I was seeing everyone talk about the Bill and Ted movie being really good and I was like I'll watch that but I can't I can't get it here like you can in America. Oh, because it's in the theaters right now. Yeah, it's in the theaters. I mean, they're bringing it to digital services sooner than they would normally for that reason. But there's still a theatrical window.

And so it's kind of like, no, I don't want to do that. So we're going to say, I mean, look, frankly, I mean, we talk about this the whole time, but frankly, if this works for the studios, this is the model now. I think so. Something you mentioned that I've also felt is the real question here, which is how long is it going to take? And is it ever going to happen that theaters really bounce back? and is it ever going to happen that theaters really bounce back? Because right now, theaters are reopening in some places, but I would imagine there are lots of people like you and me who are like, well, I'm not going. Just because it's open, are you kidding? No, no, not going to happen. But yeah, I agree with you. Let's also say, we've talked about this briefly,

the idea that the consent decree got dropped in America, the idea of a movie theater that's owned by a movie studio was not allowed and now is allowed. Because I keep thinking, if I'm the movie theater, or if I'm the movie studio, do I really even want to share any of my revenue with theater owners? And they take a lot of it, but they still share the revenue with the theater owners. And I mean, maybe they don't want to own a lot of theaters, but I had that moment too, which is like direct to consumer is awfully powerful. I think the truth is going to be, again, something that you just said, which is I suspect the final result is that we're still going to have movie theaters, but they're going to be maybe fewer of them. But the window between movie theaters and home is going to get compressed even more.

That the studios are going to have the upper hand and they're going to say, look, I'll put my movie in your theater for three weeks. But then I'm putting it on home access for 30 bucks. And if you don't like it, too bad. That's the business model now. i think that's going to happen i don't and if you're a theater owner i know the theater owners the chains always complain and they say oh we're not going to do this but i just i think it's inevitable i think it's inevitable that and i don't think it's going to kill movie theaters so what movie theater like you know like there's this weird thinking and by the movie theaters like they're the ones with any power in this situation.

They don't, you don't have it right. Like you don't have the power. Like if you say to Disney, because they're doing this thing on Disney Plus, we don't want Disney movies anymore. We'll say goodbye to your business movie theaters because you're in the Disney business. Yeah, exactly. yeah exactly so i think that movie theaters will survive because i think there's a great business to be run on having a great theater experience hopefully at some point when people want to go to them again for new release movies with loud sound and big screen and choosing not to watch it at home i'm not entirely convinced that the ability to watch a movie at home even

day and date with it being in a theater is going to prevent people from going to the movie theater. I think some people, as somebody who had, you know, my kids are older now, but when my kids were little, like, we just couldn't go to the movie theater, right? It wasn't that we didn't want to, it's that we literally couldn't. So first off, there's an audience you're going to get who it's not convenient or it's not playing near them or for whatever reason they can't go to the movie theater. But if you make a good theater experience, who it's not convenient or it's not playing near them or for whatever reason they can't go to the movie theater. But if you make a good theater experience, especially if you've got this artificial sort of month or three week long boundary where you can't watch it at home,

people will go if the experience is good. I think the truth is a lot of movie theater experiences, especially in the US, are bad. Yeah, like I would see more new movies in a year if this was the norm, like there would still be movies, the movies that I really care about. I would still want to go to a cinema and see them. Right. Like, like the James Bond movies, the Marvel movies, you know, like these big blockbusters. I want to have a better audio visual experience than I have at home. But there are a lot of movies that come out where I'm like, I want to see that, but I don't like my work schedule is so strange sometimes that like, I don't really get good windows that I feel like I can definitely go and spend that time.

Let me pile on there that the marketing is so focused on the release. And when it comes out on home video, there is some marketing about it, but like all the marketing is basically pushed on the release, which means if you can't, for whatever reason, go out to see it in the movie theater right away, you, that marketing is wasted on you.

Even if it's made you want to see the movie by the time it comes out on home video, do you remember, do you know that it's out? So there is, I, I would argue too really good value in trying to convert all of those people who aren't going to see the movie into

watching it at home and and get them now get when and and as a viewer i want to i want to see the movie when people are talking about the movie i want to have an opinion about that movie i don't want to wait to video but i can't go see it and so i'm kind of stuck so i think yeah it's i feel for movie theater owners and a little bit although a lot of the movie theater chains are crappy and i don't feel for them too much but like i i do think that movie good movie theaters are not going to die and that there is a market for that but it's got to change and i think this is the thing that's going to change it and that's great because i'm like you there are certainly movies that i would pay movie what i would pay to go see them in the movie theater um but i i can't go to the movie theater for whatever

reason schedules and and the like but we could watch it at home and i would i would love that because there is a movie experience which is nice which is like you know like in america it's like the alamo draft house alamo draft house we went yeah we saw avengers uh infinity war yeah in austin and it was a great experience so nice and we have um i think it's i can't remember the name of the there's like a chain in in the uk that's doing some stuff like this too which i've been to and like that is a really great experience which i value much more than the typical movie experience right where i'm going and i feel like i'm being treating myself to something for not much more money than it costs to go to a regular theater like that's the type of stuff that i want

to exist and the stuff that i think will exist because it's like you are making it more of an event rather than i'm gonna go sit in a different chair with a bigger screen right like yeah we're gonna sit in like a sofa and there's gonna be food and drinks and like it's exactly thing you know and so that's the kind of stuff that i hope will and should continue to exist post-pandemic. But I think that there needs to be change in the typical model now. We did, there was a blog on the San Francisco Chronicles website for a long time that was for parents. And they would do screenings at a movie theater in the East Bay where they serve food and beer.

And I went to a couple of those. we brought the kids we got pizza and you're sitting in like big couches with and there's a table and we're eating pizza and we're watching like kiki's delivery service and it was so great so great and not not what we think of as a traditional theater experience but it was so much fun like there's so many different ways to do it but the fact is yes if you're a faceless corporate theater chain who has a bunch of shoe boxes tied together that people, you know, are ushered into by surly teens, and then they sit in an uncomfortable chair and look at a not really that great screen with not really that great sound system. A crap popcorn.

You, your business is in jeopardyy but i don't think good movie theater experiences i think people will still pay for a good movie theater experience in the long run i do really believe that even after after all of this is said and done i think they will but it's got to be way more alamo draft house and a lot less light than a boring faceless chain the chain i'm being uh reminded by by Emma in the discord is Everyman. It's a chain here called Everyman Theors and it's a similar thing. You sit on much nicer chairs and they bring you food and drinks and stuff. It's nice, really good. Before we started recording today, you referenced your Mac mini, which I know means that you are,

you're currently running Big Sur daily Big Sur has come to my life yeah I installed Big Sur on my iMac so so because the audio stuff isn't really working very well reliably on Big Sur you are recording from the Mac mini right it's actually not a reflection on Big Sur's reliability um Big Sur changed some stuff and Rogue Amoeba's software, which I rely on for all my podcasting, doesn't work on Big Sur. They are working on it, but it doesn't work. And yet I need to experience Big Sur

and there's only so much, I've talked about this before, there's only so much as a reviewer you can do by having a separate system off to the side or a thing you reboot into where you can say, I am using the beta now because you're not using the beta, right? You're're exploring the beta i'm going to have a little bit of fun i'm going to poke around and then i'm going to leave when it annoys me it's not basically and i've moved into the beta now i live in the beta emigrated right you see you're not a tourist

my passport has been stamped i live here now you got a visa so how do i do a podcast if i don't if i can't use my podcast stuff in big sur and the answer is about five feet away from me in the corner of my room is a mac mini attached to a big hard drive rate array that i use as a server and i was thinking like how i thought about like putting a laptop on my desk. I thought about using a recorder separate from my computer. I thought about all these things. And then I realized what I need to do is use the Mac mini that I'm already using. And the beauty of it is I bought on, I think, Monoprice. I bought a 15 foot long USB cable, powered USB cable.

They're like, this will work. It will. And, and I ran it behind my furniture and over to my desk and unplugged my audio interface from my Mac and plugged it in to that long cable. I have all the Rogamiba software on the Mac mini. The Mac mini is running Mojave,

by the way, not even Catalina, which I had some weird audio quirks that I haven't had since i moved to the mac mini which means it totally was catalina in my personal opinion mojave was the last good version yeah well so so now when i want to do a podcast i open my i click i have a and i've've always had this, an icon in my dock that is a screen sharing link to my server. So I just click that and the screen sharing window opens. And then I do the stuff in there.

So yeah, I'm sitting in the same place, talking to the same microphone. Everything is exactly the same, except the iMac in front of me isn't actually doing any of the work here. It is the Mac mini that's doing it. And I generally just, I keep that window in the background that's got Skype and audio hijack running. And I'm using Google Docs, and I've got Discord running in the foreground here. So it's a funny solution, but I like it. And the other thing that I've had happen, not with podcasting, but that I've been doing a lot is with the magic keyboard in my iPad the um, the last couple of weeks,

cause we had a heat wave and it gets very hot in my garage is that I've been using my iPad with the magic keyboard as a, as a laptop, a little bit more using screen sharing with the Mac mini where I can just do things on the Mac mini. And it sort of, I know Federico has written about this a little bit, but like it sort of turns your, your Mac into an app that your iPad can run and it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. So I've been doing that a little bit but like it sort of turns your your mac into an app that your ipad can run and it's not perfect but it's pretty good so i've been doing that a little bit too so a lot of screen sharing with the mac mini and that's the uh that's a great thing about having that extra extra mac in my life is that now that i'm in big sur i can i don't know what's the right metaphor here i can

write home i can i can phone home to mojave it It's your Mojave escape hatch. Yeah, something like that. So how long have you been running Big Sur on your iMac? Week and a half. This is on your iMac Pro, right? Couple weeks, iMac Pro at my desk, yeah. And had you used it on a big screen like that before, or were you testing it on a laptop?

On the 13-inch PowerBook, or PowerBook, God, I'm living in the 90s right now the 13 inch macbook pro the latest one i got a review unit of that and right and then without apple's permission i installed big sir on it so i sent that back a couple weeks ago and then surprise you got big sir on it good luck um and what is do you have any refreshed experiences like renewed opinions i should say on big sir using it on a bigger screen does it change any of your feeling about the overall look no i'm getting used to it um i'm i'm more noticing all the things that have cosmetic problems because they haven't been updated for big sir yet um because there are enough

this is the thing if you haven't lived through applications that are old, right? Yes. See, this is the thing that if you, if you have not lived, it's been a while since Apple has made such a radical change in the Mac OS interface. And if you live through any of those past iterations, when they make a big change, what ends up happening is all of the assumptions that were made by the apps that existed on your Mac before that worked, the assumptions just worked because everything looked okay. And like, well, it looks okay. I guess it's fine. And then you see Apple adjusting the size of the menu bar and windows and things like that. And it exposes those apps because they were doing it in some way, not their fault, but like they were doing it in some way that worked fine that doesn't work fine anymore. And you go through a period over the summer and probably into the fall where you open an app and you look at it and you're like, what is happening here?

And the answer is, well, that app has not been updated for Big Sur yet. So there's a little bit of uh of that that i'm noticing is the kind of cosmetic stuff but otherwise i'd say it's actually working okay um it's buggy there's apps that quit and sometimes it feels a little bit slow but it's a beta that's that's uh not surprising uh the big thing with any beta is just the compatibility stuff like there are apps that i use that don't like the audio apps that don't work. I use Bartender to clean up my menu bar and they're working on a beta,

but last time I checked, they hadn't released a beta for it. So my menu bar has got a lot of junk in it. And of course, every little piece of junk is more spread out now because that's,

so it fills up even more of my menu bar with junk. But yeah, it's going okay. It's interesting because like, you know, I mean, I i think we're thinking spending a lot of time thinking about big sir is a big visual change right but there's clearly a lot of under the hood stuff because you know the rogue amoeba apps are not not working or bartender's not not working just because it looks different they've clearly made significant changes to the underpinnings of the operating system that is meaning that a lot of people have a lot of work to do yeah yeah so they're doing it i'm sure and it's not their fault

that their their apps don't work with the beta because it's a beta right like it's fine i know what i was getting myself into when i signed up for this but it is we're in that point now where it's just it's a what ends up happening is that I'm doing my job, doing my normal things. And then I'll click on something or I'll try to do something and I'll go, oh, right. And it's like something doesn't work or doesn't work right. And I'm reminded, right, big sir, right. And the good news is if it's something I desperately need to do, I have that Mojave Mac Mini that will run 32-bit apps, which Catalina didn't. It has a lot going for it.

But I do hit those every now and then. But it's generally been okay. I'll tell you, the one thing that I have had to change from the default, because I try to use the default because I want to write about the default experience of the OS when I when i when i review it but i had to check reduce transparency so that i could read the menu bar yeah transparency in mac os is a bad idea it's been a bad idea since they first introduced it i hate it and i always turn it off i really don't like it i don't i don't get it yeah and the menu bar is just it's bad like i i have lots of text that i put in my menu bar yeah and i just i can't read it um i can't it's not it's not good i don't like it plus i have um i have a satellite image in the background i actually use

an app called downlink that puts satellite images live satellite you know every hour satellite images as as your desktop which is great changes it frequently yeah every hour with a new picture of what's going on right now um and but as a result the you know the corner of my screen is outer space essentially and uh and therefore big sir reads that as well that's a black background so i'm going to put all of the text of the menu bar on the left side of my screen as um as white text on a black background or a you know a mostly black background i don't want my menu bar to be white i i'm not using dark mode right like i'm not in dark mode i don't want my menu bar to be white text on a black background so reduced transparency turns all that stuff off and it makes it a much

better experience um but i don't know what apple is thinking about legibility of menu bar items um with that it just seems like a mistake to me i hate it this is an interesting year to have so much change to the just the operating system because like so developers like we're picking on not in a mean way but we're singling out rogamiba here today because it's a developer that we use a lot of their software for and is really important to us like not only do they have to get their software ready and everybody does but their software ready for big sir they also have Apple Silicon in the back of their minds because these Apple Silicon Macs are going to sell a laptop, which we spoke about, just because of what it is. And it's going to be quite peculiar to have maybe some apps not working for that machine. You know, because as well, like, there might be a lot of people that buy an Apple Silicon Mac

that haven't updated their main Mac to Big Sur at that point, right? Because there's some wonkiness to it. So yeah, it's just an interesting thing that you have to consider all of it. Well, I know James Thompson's in our Discord chat right now and is saying, and I know this from talking to James, that Apple Silicon has been no problem for him. But if you're dealing with that and your app already doesn't work in big sir it feels like quite a big uh a big plate you've got to deal with right of stuff yep there's a lot a lot going on a lot going on i would argue that it seems to be that being compatible with big sir is

more important than being compatible with apple silicon at this point because not only if if everybody's apps are like James's apps, it's James is going to hate this. James Thompson said it's not a problem. Why is it a problem for you? Are you not as good a developer as James Thompson? But so, you know, it'll run an emulation, right? It'll use Rosetta.

So like, it's not a must. It's not like your app won't work. Oh yeah, of course, of course. Yes, yes, I forgot that. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, very good point. It really is about Big Sur. But if but if you look like i mentioned bartender which is one of my favorite uh little utilities because it lets me hide a bunch of menu bar items it's funny because it's sort of doing what the control center icon is also doing in big sir which is i suspect why

uh the developer has had to say i have to rewrite i had to rewrite my whole app and it's in beta now but not publicly yet because it's brand new and there are a lot of bugs. But they're working on it, but they completely overhauled the menu bar. And so bartender doesn't work. So there's going to be stuff like that. If the software update touches on a place where you play as an app developer, that's the part that's going to get you, whether it's a security change or a visual change or whatever. And the menu bar is a great example of that,

where, you know, bartender, what I really think is the bartender needs to be like Control Center. I wish Control Center and Big Sur is really interesting, right? Because it's a drop down containing a whole bunch of different stuff from different places.

And you can actually even add and remove things to it, but it's all Apple stuff. I feel like a long range approach for apple is going to be to let third parties put their items in control center and get them out of the menu bar i think that might be a place that they go eventually but a a short-term solution for Bartender might be to be like Control Center and be a little drop-down that sequesters little things in it. But probably he'll just implement it like the current version where basically you click on the Bartender icon and your existing menu bar items kind of go away briefly. And instead, the ones you've chosen to hide appear and then you can click on them. appear and then you can click on them.

But anyway, also bartender's a utility that's less important on Big Sur in some ways because Apple itself is allowing you to collapse a bunch of its menu bar items and just put them in control center. So anyway, life in Big Sur, it's okay, but

I had to turn off transparency because transparency is bad. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Pingdom from our friends over at SolarWinds. Today's internet users expect a fast web experience. No matter how good your content or how effective your marketing, people come to your website and it's loading too slowly or not at all, they're not going to stick around.

And with real user monitoring from Pingdom, you can discover how website performance issues affect your visitors' experiences so you're able to take action before your business is impacted. How people experience your website will differ depending on the browser, device, and platform that they're using. So you want to identify how people are visiting your site so you're able to make informed optimizations to deliver a great performance to the people that matter most to you. Real user monitoring is an event-based solution so it's built for scalability. This means you can monitor millions of page views without having to compromise the fidelity of your historical data or break the bank in the process.

You can get live visitor insights today with real user monitoring from Pingdom. Go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM and you'll get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the code UPGRADE at checkout and you'll get a fantastic 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their support of this show and RelayFM. So Jason, there is a rumor which may only last for 24 hours or so from us talking about this. Yes. Hello, listeners from the future. You know the answer. You might have to skip this part. But we're going to talk about it anyway. So John Prosser, who is a relatively recent or a newcomer to the

rumor mill reporting, leaking as I don't really understand what the difference is in the media between people that report rumors and people that report leaks. They seem pretty much the same to me. Nevertheless, John Prosser is referred to in the Apple media typically as a leaker, which I just don't like. I just don't like calling someone that. It just seems mean. Anyway, Jon Prosser claims that there will be some form of news from Apple on September 8th at 9 a.m.

Eastern Time, which is tomorrow as we record this. Prosser had previously claimed that there would be some news related to the debut of the Apple Watch and a new iPad of some kind. So we can assume that that is what Prosser will be saying is going to be happening. Mark Gurman countered this by saying there will be no hardware releases this week, but if there is any news, it will be the announcement of an Apple event date. So the date when they would be showing off the iPhones. So there's a couple of questions here. And some of this stuff is definitely relevant, whether the news occurs

tomorrow or not, but it just gave us a way to talk about it. So the first part is, do we think it is likely that Apple would release hardware before an event, specifically something like the Apple Watch? My thinking is, would they not have to release iOS 14 and watch OS 7 if they want a new Apple Watch? Well, not necessarily, right? Like you could, there's a couple scenarios here. First off is they could release the new Apple Watch and have support for it in the existing, in like one of these recent iOS updates, support for that OS version, right?

They could do something like that. It's probably more work than is necessary, but I think they could if they wanted to, if they put their mind to it. The other thing is they might announce an Apple Watch and release iOS 14, right? When by the time it shipped, release iOS 14. I find it a little peculiar, like why not give the Apple Watch? What is the benefit of announcing an Apple Watch in advance of an iPhone event? When you could announce it, it gets a little bit of sunshine on its own, but then you're going to

just talk about it and say, oh, by the way, yeah, we released the Apple watch already like at the event. So to me, could they do it? Absolutely. And maybe it would be an interesting experiment to say, what if we did it this way? But I think there is the opening question that, you know, is what about the OS release? How does this dovetail with the OS release? Do you have to have, because you can use an Apple watch with a phone that's not running iOS 14, right? Can you do that? Do, if you buy an Apple watch, do you have to have the latest version of iOS to run on it? Well, I think if it's running the latest version of watchOS, I'm going to assume the answer is yes.

Well, if I wander into an Apple store, which, you know, mostly not open where I am, but if I go to an Apple store and I say, I would like to buy an Apple watch, I have a phone that runs iOS 12, would they say, well, you'll need to update it? Probably they would. So it's a complication. I don't know. I think they'd get around it if they really, well, you'll need to update it? Probably they would. So it's a complication.

I don't know. I think they'd get around it if they really, really wanted to. But my question is, why would they really want to? Unless they just thought that they were experimenting. Zach in the Discord is confirming that to run watchOS 7, you have to be running iOS 14. So that's it. Unless they did some engineering work to make it a built the ability to go run the new watch OS on the old version, which why would they do that?

Well, the reason they might do that, Jason, is last year. Do you remember last year? We talked about it, right? You know, it would be wouldn't it be nice if you built new hardware with the ability to run an old version of the hardware just in case you had the old version of the software just in case you had a software problem right like the idea there is what if we what if ios 14 this isn't happening but what if ios 14 is such a disaster that you can't ship the iphone like that's that's catastrophic for apple so do you make it so that it could run on a late build of ios. And the same could be true of the watch. The watch could ship with watchOS 6.

It could. But yes, but they also could say, you know, like this week or next week, oh, hey, we have these new products. And also this is your one week warning for iOS as well. By far the more likely scenario would be that. I would be very, very surprised if Apple did have new hardware

that released that any of that hardware would run the old version of the operating system. When I think it could be argued, I would be willing to make the argument that iOS 14 is basically ready to go. Like you could, the current version of iOS 14,

I think you could release it. Like it's way better than last year's 13 was when they released that and i'm talking 13.1 right and as far as we know it's entirely possible that the one that we're the code that we're running right now is the one that's going to be loaded on iphones yeah or that the one that we get this week is going to be loaded on iph. Like we're at that point now where if they're going to ship iPhones at the end of the month, we're either using or about to receive in the next week or so. What's effectively the final master. Yeah.

Right. Which doesn't mean they stop working, right? They immediately switch over to the emergency bug fix update version of it. But at some point they do have to put the software on the phones so you've got to draw a line in the sand and and that you know you you can always like you know you can have like updates on day one basically right that will come when the but yes you're right like the phones you would assume are in production at some point the software has to go on them right like you you kind of have to do that so i mean i i

guess that the biggest the the other question is this particular set of hardware an apple watch and an ipad could you imagine them announcing them before the iphone event and if that is the case what what does that say about this hardware and the other hardware apple does have to show well i i find it a little bit weird that it's the you know we don hardware apple does have to show well i i find it a little bit weird that it's the you know we don't want to have the event be too long argument because you could do that right you could do that i'm not sure taking a brand new apple watch and a brand new ipad that has you know if the ipad air rumor is to be believed you know, if the iPad Air rumor is to be believed, you know, has some interesting changes to it, and tossing them out with a press release or maybe a short video, that when you've got the

iPhone event, like, what is the trade-off there? The trade-off is that your iPhone event, if you're doing it as a video, is more focused. It's not as long. Well, I mean, the argument might be, Jason, four new iPhones, at least one new Mac, which has a brand new direction for the Mac, over-the-ear headphones, potentially some other AirPods thing. Hold it with the Mac thing, because I think the Mac is a much bigger outlier than the existing products we're talking about, the watch and the iPad. Like a Mac, you won't do the Mac at the iPhone event. Like that would be, I mean, they could, but that would be to me the first thing to go. Because just first off,

Big Sur probably needs more time to cook. And second, just do another event in late October. Like do another event for Apple Silicon. Why rush it? Why do that now? These are a little bit more in tune with the iPhone and we've seen them before. But yeah, I will take your larger point, which is there's a lot. If there are four iPhones, especially, there's a lot to cover.

And that's when I talk about like experimenting. and that's when I talk about like experimenting that's what I'm really saying is why do a two hour long video about the iPhone and an iPad and an Apple watch tradition but the tradition is based on in part getting a bunch of people in a room and doing an event that way and we're not doing that anymore so it's worth asking the question would it be better to give the apple watch its own launch video or launch press or whatever would that be better or not i could see arguments on those and then you stretch it out you get the because they can't if apple want there to be the hands-on videos which i think they definitely do otherwise the hands-on area wouldn't exist um Like they can't, it's going to be, it would be very difficult

and there will be a prioritization thing from especially people in the YouTube space. Like if you're going to sell, send them the new iPhones and the new Apple Watch, that watch might not get videos, right? And so- My counter argument is that they also have to do like press review programs for all these products.

And it's more work if you have multiple waves of product releases. Sure. Than it is to have one wave where you do one set of briefings and one set of mailing out review units and all of that, right? It's more work. Not that they couldn't do it, but they're making more work for themselves. And that's what it comes down to to me is it's more work. It's more complicated. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to do it that way instead of having it just be a segment at the beginning of the iPhone video that is, before we get to our main attraction, let's talk about the Apple Watch and doing it in a more traditional way.

Anyway, I think the biggest argument actually against it is Apple Watch is a hit product. It does really well. The wearables category is going great. If you release it via press release or minor thing, what does that say about that product? That it got yanked off of the iPhone stage where it's been all along. So I think that's an argument to keep it in the iPhone event. But Apple, in the end, I think it's going to come down to, does Apple want to go with tradition or does Apple want to experiment with some things and just see how they work? But I wouldn't put money on it.

You did mention hip product and wearables going great. Maybe they also might want to get some of those sales in this quarter. Maybe. It's not a big reason, but it's another reason. Yeah, I mean, it's not going to be... A lot of Apple Watch sales also happen in store and in store is problematic right now so um i don't know so i don't know what they're gonna do that's the hardware uh argument but if we go with mark german's argument

that if we're likely to hear anything this week it will be a date for an event we could say i mean you would probably assume they're only going to announce it if it's soon um so then would maybe be looking at like the 15th or the 22nd right as our apple events yeah with a phone shipping on with the first wave of phones shipping on the 25th or october 2nd which a few weeks later than usual is what they said in the analyst call. And, you know, take your pick. It would not be unreasonable to have them do a September 22nd event and have the first phones ship October 2nd, but instead of in September, but they could also do it shipping

October or September 25th. I do think it's going to be that traditional span of time only because you don't want to make people wait too long. You want to get people excited and then you want to open the pre-orders and then you want to be able to ship the products and have them all arrive on the following week. So I think that they'll keep that. And so the date that they select is going to be the date that is backdated from when they are going to be able to ship the product. If I was just randomly pulling numbers out of the air i would say event on the 22nd uh with the second as the first round of iphones second of october is the first round of iphones

i would err on the side of of pushing it back you know luca said, the CFO who made this statement, he said a few weeks, didn't he? So I think more than one week later than traditional. Although you could argue that, yeah, if this was a normal year, which it is most definitely not, the Apple event would probably be Wednesday this week because it's the, you know, not the the day after labor day but the day after the day after labor day is i think they've done that before so pushing it back to the 22nd or something like that is not unreasonable at all given the circumstances but who knows again the beauty of it is we don't know we've seen wwdc's so we have some idea of what something like this is like, but they could do something completely different. They could release a product every week, but I don't think they will.

I know a lot of developers and a lot of our friends writing reviews and stuff are concerned about this because of the timing, but really the big concern is when's the draft going to happen? I know that's what everyone should care about and when does the summer of fun end right yeah i mean that's the last the summer of fun ending who knows when that's gonna be because it's like when are the phones gonna start arriving right you know because really the summer of fun i mean we always say it ends with like the iphone thing because the iphone iPhone event because then the phones start coming out. We start doing our first impressions and reviews of the phones. But that might stretch on. So the Summer of Fun might actually end up going past the drop.

Who knows this year, right? Nobody knows what could happen next. So yeah, I hope that we'll get at least notice. I think we will get at least a week's notice, I would expect, to the event. I think they will still do that even though they don't need to. I think they will still give a hey in a week's time because they did that for WWDC too. They still sent out an e-invite basically a week or so before

for the WWDC keynote, even though we all knew exactly when that one was going to be right so i still expect there will be because i mean look apple want it to be covered by the press like they need to get it on people's calendars so they can do that right like it's kind of important to to get that in so you know that and also as i'm sure everyone uh apple cares about what about the draft and they you know, and also I'm sure everyone at Apple cares about the draft and they don't want to have us have no draft. But we said we'd come back to the first Apple Silicon Max because I think they will announce it at the iPhone event,

but I'm getting a sense from you that you do not think so. If I had to bet, I would say that it will be a separate announcement whether it's an event or not we can debate that because they're not really events anymore as much as they are sort of just announcement streams um i would say late october early november along with big sir just push it all back they don't need to ship all that stuff simultaneous with ios and they have it in the past my argument is that they will ship this stuff together but you'll think they'll announce it together i don't think they will i i it's possible but i think that there's enough going on in the

mac that the mac is not going to be um joined to the iphone in that way i think i think it is a better fit in a separate event. And they've shown that again and again, that they treat the Mac stuff sort of separately from the iPhone stuff. So I would definitely bet later if I had to bet. Yeah, I mean, I understand that, right? Like the idea of giving it its focus, right?

Like I totally get that argument, but like my thinking on it is right like the reason that i think that they would maybe do them together is so you get the majority like the most eyeballs on it as possible that that's been the argument but they haven't done it right like they haven't done it instead they have a late fall event they have a late october you know halloween right but i think that like it's not been necessary for the mac in in previous years to to do that right so like but they have they have done it with less exciting like they did it with the mac mini and the macbook air return right

that was that and the ipad pro was one event i mean they they have done these mac events that are are you know the other products we do that are more about productivity and less, you know, and aren't iPhones, and they've done them later. And launching Apple Silicon and boasting about how great Apple Silicon is and what all the amazing things they've done with Apple Silicon, it seems to me that there's more material for that kind of an event as a standalone event than there's ever been for a mac event before so i i think it's even more likely that they would uh spread that around and let that be separate part of it i think that would give me continued pause on it is is when does the iphone event actually happen because there is only so much time left right like if we start pushing towards october even if the iphone event is on the 22nd of september like we've had we've had those late october early november kind of apple events before i think that's just fine i think it's just fine yeah okay i'm i'm not married to it it's just

like if i was going to put money on it i would say they do it all together but i see i see lots of i see and agree with lots of the things that you're saying here as to why they would want to have them separated i feel like we really need to have a draft to settle this oh yeah no i'm not draft picking it i don't think i don't think i'm i'm so confident that i'm willing to lose a draft pick all right on it we'll see because that because the thing is about the draft it's like i would be burning really good picks to pick the max will be shown off like i've got all the iphone stuff to lose at that point right like all of the various iphone picks i'm saying you talked you

talked a big game there but now you're not going to pick it. I talk a big game when there's no stakes. Yeah. But like what I'm saying is, right, if we're drafting, like say next week, right, I will have it on my list, but it will be before all of the things that I'm way more confident in, right? Like I know it's going to be an iPhone. I know it is going to be four of them. I know I'm confident about all of the features that i think those iphones are going to get

and i would want to pick all of those before i get to the mac right you know what then on me hey mr draft maybe you pick that there won't be max and you pick that early and i'll pick there will be max and. And we'll make those number one picks. Maybe that'll be our tiebreaker. Maybe. Ah, interesting. Interesting. So, yeah, maybe by the time you've heard this, you'll know that Apple isn't doing anything on September 8th. But what we won't know, maybe, or who knows,

is when the event will be. But nevertheless, we're ramping up towards it now at a breakneck speed. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. You can make your next move with Squarespace because they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project. No matter what type of website you want to make,

Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you do it. You don't have to install anything, you don't have to patch anything, you don't have to upgrade anything. You don't have to patch anything, you don't have to upgrade anything. You don't have to know how to code a website of your own. I don't know how to do that. I don't want to learn either.

I want to use fantastic tools like Squarespace because when I have an idea, when I have something I want to get online, I want to go to just get it online and do the thing. I don't want to have to spend a bunch of time getting the website put together. And with Squarespace, it's so easy to do. You can pick from beautiful award-winning

templates. You can register a unique domain right there. And you can integrate all of the tools that you need. Blog functionality, portfolio functionality, online store functionality. They have so much stuff that you can drop in. And if you want to expand what your website will allow you to go for, like if it's a business that you're building, you want to expand it. They have email functionality now, so you can send out email campaigns and stuff like that. Squarespace really is an all-in-one solution for you when you're looking to put your project online.

And they have award-winning 24-7 customer support. So if you need any help setting up your Squarespace site, they will be there to help you. I love Squarespace. I have been using them for over a decade. I have multiple projects there now. And just a couple of days ago, I was like, oh, I need to set up a website for this thing. I know where I'll go to Squarespace. And so you should too. Go and try it out for yourself. They have a trial, no credit card needed. When you sign up for the trial, go to squarespace.com upgrade you have full access to building your website and then when you're ready to launch it to the world you sign up one of their plans and you can get 10% off your

first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show when you use the offer code upgrade so go to squarespace.com upgrade and the code upgrade to get 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Now, Mike, before we get to our last segment, I want to say one last thing about events. Okay. And this is in collaboration with some good people in the Discord. I'm going to throw in one

reason why you might be right after all okay it's election day in the u.s on november 5th maybe if you're apple you don't want to try to launch a product during the last couple of weeks of the election campaign in the u.s which are sure to be super weird and unpleasant so i will throw that in there that that is i could see how apple might have a strategy which is let's do our event late in september get it out before the election hysteria gets to a fever peach by By the way, I think you said fifth. Sorry, November, yeah, the fifth is Emma's birthday in the chat room. It's an actual holiday here. So if I'm Apple and I look at that and I think, well, okay, we're going to be late with our iPhone event and the election's coming up.

And do we really want to collide with all the talk about the election? People are going to be distracted. I could see that argument as to just blowing it out with one big thing instead of doing that little later event in late October. So that's just a thought. Should we do some hashtag Ask Upgrade questions? This is possibly the longest Ask Upgrade question that we've ever done,

but I think that the preamble to it is important to understand the question. So this comes from Bridge, and Bridge asks, I have used a Mac since System 7 came out on my Power Mac 8600- 300. What is the 8600 slash 300? The 300 was the megahertz of the processor inside the Power Mac 8600. Okay.

Oh, we're back in the 90s now. It's great. Wonderful. While I'm working with an app, I regularly press Command S to save. I've done it for so long, it's a muscle memory action that I don't realize I'm doing anymore. My kids, who generally use iPads in school, ask me, why do I keep pressing these two keys? When I try to explain that it's because you could lose your data if the machine turns off unexpectedly, they just respond that it's always saved. You just restart the iPad or Google Docs and it always keeps the work. Jason, since you're an old time Mac user like me, do you use Command S for save a lot, even though most programs autosave now

and we have a more robust operating system that doesn't crash as much? And Mike, as a relative newcomer to Mac OS X, I don't know why people think this, do you use Command-S while you work or just let the program autosave until you are done with the work and then save it then? I just want to clear up this point.

So I have been using the Mac for 15 years. that i used pcs which also need saving i mean i've been using computers like 20 years at this point like i'm not a relative newcomer by any stretch of the imagination but now we've made that point that's you're thinking of casey liss yeah i mean i have been using i have been using the mac longer than casey and marco he's they're relative newcomers they're just confused as with atp is yeah like think about that everyone all right i have been using the mac daily for longer than them too come on that's right so uh do i reflectively reflexively command s yes absolutely i do i absolutely do not as much as i used to it used to i would sit in whatever program i was using and i would just sit there and go s hold down the command key with my thumb and just do s s s s s all the time yeah i i do

that thing like when i do that i don't just press it once. I'll do it like two or three times. I don't know why. I just do that, right? If I'm going to save, I'll do it more than one time. Yeah, for sure. So I do that. That is a nervous habit. I still do it.

I am annoyed by when I'm in an app that you do Command-S and it doesn't. It throws up a dialog and says, this is being saved automatically. Why did you type that key? It's like, shut up. Yeah, don't do that. Just you type that key it's like yeah don't do that just shut up i don't i don't do it uh i i'm pretty good at not doing it in places it's not to be done like i don't do it in google docs you know i i don't really do it on i don't think i do it on any ipad app it just happens accidentally sometimes um that i i just get into that kind of mode but um so yeah i do that also not all apps auto save and i do have those moments where i where something crashes i actually just had this

happen with an ios app that i was working on an ipad app and it hard crashed it locked up that thing where you know you just basically have to wait for it to auto quit and i thought oh boy and it doesn't have a save command like uh because instead of having a save command you play the game when was the last time it auto saved unfortunately i didn't lose anything because the truth is most stuff does a good job of auto saving because at some point in the last 20 years people realized that it was really lousy that you had to save all the time and there was a period where computers it took there was a period where using microsoft word if you did command s you had to wait like 10 seconds for your file to save right and then

they invented fast save as a way to make it a little bit faster but like there's a reason why autosave didn't exist because it used to be very intense to save but now it's not so um generally things are pretty good about autosaving momo asks will either of you consider uh more of an investment into the android ecosystem to try out microsoft project x cloud i'm assuming that you will not you do not care i do not care i do not care i have more consoles at my house than i know what to do with and i don't play them for the you know in large part anyway so um so no well see this is the frustration for me with the possibility that this won't be coming to ios is i do want to try xCloud. So this is the, it's, I think it's called Game Pass Ultimate now. So it's part of the Microsoft Game Pass service.

And it's basically what allows you to play Xbox games on other devices. And they're streaming over the web. Now, I would like to try this, but I really find this to be more of a tablet experience than a phone experience. Like I have Android phones, but I really find this to be more of a tablet experience than a phone experience. I have Android phones, but I'm not interested in Android tablets because typically they're not that good. The Samsung stuff, the Samsung Tab is considered to be the best, and they have some good features.

On a show I do called The Test Drivers recently with Austin Evans, Austin switched to using one instead of his iPad for a week, and we spoke about that. If you're interested in listening, it's episode nine. I'll put a link in the show notes. But I'm not, I don't really want an Android tablet, really, because like the Android tablet experience is not that great. So, you know, this is like the frustration is I want to try this service out, but I don't want to play console games on a phone because I know it's not going to work that great because the UI is going to be too small. So it's part of why I would really love

to be able to take my Xbox controller, pair it to my 12.9 inch iPad and play like Forza wherever I want. Yep. So I really, I mean, I continue to hope that that is a situation that can get worked out, but I don't have a lot of hope at this point because apple must review every application single on its own no because apple's afraid of game streaming yeah that's it that's the real reason that's the

real reason yeah sims asks how much storage do you actually use on your phones and how difficult would it be for you to switch to a 64 gigabyte phone so i will answer the second question first by saying i mean i could do it anyone can do it but i would have to give up a lot of the way that i like to use my phone so i will tell you i have a 256 gigabyte phone i'm currently using 252.7 gigabytes of that phone. On what? Now, the reason is 106 gigabytes is my photo library because I keep all of my photos on my device.

The reason I do this is because I had grown frustrated with wanting to look at images and then they do that loading thing that iCloud photo library does so I find it frustrating so this does mean I will be going up a storage tier for my next phone but yeah so that's the main reason is like half of that used storage is my photo library oh I don't use most of the storage on my phone it would be okay if I switched to a 64 gig phone what I would lose probably is I will occasionally

there's not a problem right now but if I'm taking a trip I will preload like movies to watch on the plane I will preload music so that I can listen to the music on the plane mostly that or if I'm going someplace that doesn't have reliable internet,

I will, you know, some of those playlists I mentioned earlier, I'll download those to my device. But that's about it. It wouldn't be that difficult. I'm not exactly sure why the Dropbox app is taking up 12 gigabytes of space for me on my phone, but it is. And I have 55 gigabytes of space for me on my phone but it is and i have 55 gigabytes of messages because i see that auto delete old conversations thing right and i could enable that and the phone

is telling me i'll save 29 gigabytes if i do it the message is in the cloud if you have that on you shouldn't need to have it locally but like i'm i'm concerned because it says automatically removes all your messages and attachments that were sent or received over a year ago. And I don't know if I trust it. So if I enable that, is it going to save the messages and attachments in the cloud? How easily can I get to them? I get a little nervous about that. Most of my messages, not important. Some of them, very important to me, and I wouldn't want to lose them. I get a little nervous about that. Most of my messages, not important. Some of them, very important to me, and I wouldn't want to lose them. Yeah, I don't want to delete messages on my phone. I just want them to be synced to the cloud and then removed as necessary. Yeah, I have that

on, right? Like I have messages in the cloud, but I haven't done the automatic deletion thing of like a removal thing. Cause I, I don't know. That's it. That just, that, that warning concerns me, Jason. I don't like the way it's written.

So it's, it scares me from tapping the button. So it will be very difficult for me to go down to a 60. My messages wouldn't even fit. Okay. So that there's the answer is bad for Mike. Not bad for me. Bastion asks,

I heard Mike say that he ordered some Bento keycaps, which have Kana characters on them. Is this solely for aesthetics, or is there an intent to learn Japanese? So I'll include a link in the show notes to a different keycap set that I ordered, Jason, called GMK Bento, which is very nice looking. And I will get it currently in March,

even though I ordered it a couple of weeks ago, because that's what you're getting into if you want to get in on keyboard group buys. That's how it works. That's how it works. Aloha. This is purely for aesthetics. I have no intention of learning Japanese right now, or especially learning how to type in Japanese,

like to type with Japanese characters I just think it looks really nice and I already have a set of keycaps on a different keyboard that have kind of characters on them but I just think aesthetically I really like the look of it and this this keycap set in particular the bento keycap set which I'm excited about but yeah so I as with many keyboard related things which you will find out if you tune into the live stream at 10 a.m eastern on thursday for me is aesthetics stuff so final question today alexander asks do you think that the apple silicon max will see any cost savings for the user if i had to guess i'd say no it could

be because apple's gonna save money on them my guess is that apple likes its price points where it is i think it gives apple movement if it wants to move down so like a small laptop might get if they could go down to 8.99 or something and still make a good profit i think they would be happy with that but i think higher up in the line they're more likely to soup up the features and keep the price points because those price points have been tested and and uh stressed and checked but it's possible they they have the leeway to do it but if i had to bet i'd say they mostly won't just because they like money i am in agreement with you except for one asterisk which I think you will agree with me on, is that I don't think that the MacBook, if it came back, would cost the same as the MacBook

did before. And that's sort of what I'm getting at with having a lower price. It gives you the ability to price something like that. The MacBook was overpriced. So having the MacBook come in at $999 or $899 would be perfectly reasonable, or even $1099. We'll see what they do. But they have the ability to do that, I think. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade, or just use question mark AskUpgrade

in the RelayFM members Discord. If you want to get into the Discord, you should sign up for Upgrade Plus. That's a great way to do it, to become a RelayFM member and you will get additional features from the upgrade program. So if you go sign up at getupgradeplus.com, you get more upgrade and no ads. And also you get early release of 20 for 20 Mac episodes as well. That's an extra perk for Upgrade Plus subscribers. And thank you so much to everybody that has done that. And if you do, thank you so much. And also do not forget, please, please, please donate to St. Jude by going to stjude.org slash relay and you can sign up there. Jason, more money has been raised

as we are recorded today and we're now $142,000 raised for St. Jude. So please keep that donation going. We've had an incredible week, especially. Thank you so much to everybody that has shared the campaign and has donated to the campaign. It means an awful, awful lot to all of us. If you'd like to find links and information about this episode,

you can find them in your podcast app of choice or at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 314. If you'd like to find Jason's work online, including the 20 for 20 max articles and essays go to six colors dot com where you can find those jason is at jay snell i am at i mike i m y k e thank you to kiwi co pingdom and squarespace for their support of this episode and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye just as now goodbye mike hurley Goodbye, Mike Hurley.