Upgrade - 319: I'm Gonna Drive My Ferrari Into the Sunset

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

It's all about what's next at Apple this week, as we discuss the ramifications of some early A14 speed tests and ponder the challenges of succession planning at Apple. And what's next for us is an interview with two Apple executives, so it's time to get in your #askupgrade questions.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 319 today's show is brought to you by squarespace kiwi co and sanebox my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell hi jason hi mike how are you i am very good my my friend. Very good indeed. And I have a hashtag Snell Talk question to open this week's episode that comes from Marlies, who asks, do you always hit the lock button before you put your phone away?

Yes. Yeah, I feel like I do this too. I tried to not do this when I was in the store the other day because of masks. Oh, because then you have to unlock? Because then I have to unlock it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

Can I ask a more personal question? Oh, no. Well, I mean, other than the sheer terror of not unlocking your phone and then, like, do you put it back in your pocket and it receives touches there or you have to lay it down somewhere and now you have an unlocked phone that's unguarded that's just laying on the, you know, on the trolley, on the shopping cart. Like, okay, sure. Anyway, no is the answer to that.

How complicated is your pin? So it was an alphanumeric pin. And then at some point I shifted it back to numbers for mask unlock. And then I decided that I hated that it was numbers and i went back to my alphanumeric pin so you have a quite complicated one huh i mean are you trying to hack me now it is this is why it's private i mean i'll say like i uh i have a four digit pin i know that that's bad for so many reasons well that's the thing is i shifted to that and and then i decided I couldn't

bear it and so I went back to the other. Let me just say, if I was out in public with my phone and a mask all the time, there's no way I could keep the pin that I've got. I would have to go to a four-digit pin because it would drive me bananas. But I am, you

know, a hermit so I don't have to do that generally yeah i uh i really want touch id i really want that today but i do i do lock my phone always before i put it away and i also am very um i think fastidious is the right word here uh to make sure that my phone is on the first home screen before I lock it. So whenever I put my phone down, I always want it to be back to home page one before I lock it. That is interesting. That reminds me of my mom back when she had a laptop.

Now she just has an iPad. But back when she would have a laptop, before she would put it to sleep or shut it down, she would close all the windows in the finder. And I always thought like, is that to keep like dust from getting in the windows or something? I don't understand why you're doing that. And I'd say it's a similar thing. I know. I get it. You probably want it to be nice and clean and fresh and open to the first screen

and not have one of those moments where you open it up and you're like, oh, who got in here? Why is this all messed up? You want it the way you want it. I don't know if there is a reason, but now it's just one of those things that I can't stop myself from doing, you know? You could get dust in those other screens.

You really could. You got to keep them out of there. You only want to wipe down the one home screen, which is number one. Can you imagine the horror? You open your phone, you're on the second screen. What am I going to do? Where are my apps? Yeah, you unlock and you're like, oh, how disappointing.

Oh, right, there are better apps. It's over here. Thank you so much to Marlies for sending in that question, which spurred many other questions. If you would like to send in something to help us open a future episode of the show, send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk. I'll use command question mark SnellTalk

in the RelayFM members Discord. We have an exciting production note. Oh, this is about as exciting a production note as they get, because most production notes, not exciting. But this one, I'm very excited about this. On the next episode of Upgrade,

we're going to be joined by Tim Millett, who is the Vice President of Platform Architecture at Apple, who was featured in the keynote two weeks ago talking about the A14. And Tom Boga, who is Apple's Senior Director of Mac and iPad Product Marketing. So that's going to be on our next episode. We're going to be talking to them about a bunch of things.

So the A14 Bionic, the new iPad Air, and Apple Silicon. going to be on our next episode we're going to be talking to them about a bunch of things so the a14 bionic the new ipad air and apple silicon so they're kind of the the things that they are the topics of discussion but here's what we're going to do something we haven't been able to do before we want your questions because usually our our apple interviews that we do are like surprise there's a new product there's an apple. And this time we know about the product. It hasn't shipped yet, but we know about the product. But we're giving you warning that it's coming. And that means we can do something

we've never done before with an Apple interview. Which is to ask your questions. So you can send in questions as you always do by using hashtag ask upgrade or question mark ask upgrade in the RelayFM members discord. And we'll be able to get some answer during the show. You don't need to preface it in any way. We'll know what they're about. Just ask the questions about those topics. So the things we're going to be talking about, the A14 Bionic, the new iPad Air and and apple silicon as well so that's going to be on our

very next episode our next episode so i have some follow-up for you microsoft have begun beta testing via test flight their trackpad support for word and excel so this feels like a million years ago that the um magic trackpad was, but it was March of this year. Well, a lot has happened. Yeah, it had started to happen at that point. It had. It had started to happen at that point. But now a lot more has happened. So this was something that Microsoft promised in the fall that they would be releasing Word and Excel support for the trackpad.

So I'm excited to try this out, but really I just want it to be in Google Docs and Google Sheets. They did just add dark mode to Docs and Sheets, so maybe next March we'll get, if we're lucky, support for it. Honestly, this feels more important as a feature to me than dark mode and multi-window for something like sheets and docs like being able to actually do good text selection but yeah you know this is the problem and the reason it took microsoft this long the reason google haven't done it and they might do it and i hope they'll do it is like both of these

applications use their own text rendering engines so that's a lot of work right like apple were able to do the work and they'd started to do the work like remember ios 13 came out and ipad os 13 the text selection barely made any sense right what they'd done to it like they made a bunch of changes and it just was way worse which is because it was laying the groundwork for the far superior support that would come with trackpads so apple working on it for a long time it's going to take a long time for companies like microsoft and google to implement it properly with their own rendering engines so so i looked at these um this morning yeah and the Word one looks pretty good. It's a good implementation. And I've tried Word on like the surface on Windows,

and this feels more natural than that. The Excel implementation is pretty good, but the thing I've noticed about it is that one thing that Microsoft at least hasn't done yet in their betas is custom cursors. And custom cursors are actually really important, I think, in Excel, where you get like the crosshairs instead of just the round finger circle thing. And they haven't implemented that yet. So when I'm mousing over a corner of a cell, I don't get the cursor that I expect to see, that I see on the Mac. And I think that that's probably something that they need to do.

But every time I use Excel on iPad, like you, I am reminded of how terrible Google Sheets and Google Docs are on the iPad. It's a shame. It's like they are the best at what they do of how terrible Google Sheets and Google Docs are on the iPad. Yep. It's a shame. It's like they are the best at what they do in the sense of real-time collaboration, but their applications are just bad.

They're real bad. Yeah. You have reminded me of the WWDC sessions Design for the iPadOS Pointer and Build for the iPadOS Pointer. So if you're unfamiliar with what Jason's talking about of custom cursors, just go watch these sessions because super good. They were so good.

And they really kind of gave a good foundation for what it takes to really implement the cursor well. Yeah, and developers don't need like the little dot, the little circle that we see on iPad cursors is a default. But like as a developer, you can do a a custom cursor whatever you want it to be like that's part of the beauty of the system that they built is that you can you can build a custom cursor uh for certain states in your app and i've seen some apps that do it and it and it makes sense and they and they they all kind of morph from one to the other. Like there's animations that happen and stuff that the system is doing. But anyway, so that part's missing from Excel. But I would imagine that they probably will add that at some point to make it feel more like Excel, more like real Excel.

Apple is reportedly working with both Sony and Microsoft to get Apple TV, the Apple TV app, and all of its TV plus content onto the next generation of games consoles. So the Xbox Series X and S and the PlayStation 5. There is also, according to some sources, the possibility that there could be HomeKit support for the consoles added as well, which I would really like.

Now, this makes sense because we've seen apple do this right they want to be on all of the popular streaming uh platforms and the the games consoles are legit like you know like you'll see netflix and all these kinds of video streaming apps on the consoles because for a lot of people they do become like a good um home theater type thing, right? And especially the PlayStation because it's also a Blu-ray player, right? So lots of people,

as well as wanting the games console functionality, also use these as home entertainment devices. But here's my question. I wonder if this deal could do for Microsoft what the Amazon deal did for Amazon, which is could this open the door to actually make game streaming work the way that Microsoft wanted to work and not the way that Apple wanted to work? I doubt it, but you never know.

It's big companies. Apple seems to have put a stake in the ground that this is just how it has to work um my guess is that they'll find some other areas where they can work together and there's probably a benefit to having apple's uh entertainment stuff on sony and microsoft's consoles and you know my my guess is not my guess is it's more like what they already have which is in-home streaming being supported and allowed um and maybe working better. But out of home, they seem to be putting their foot down and saying, no, we're not going to let you do this. But it's something to watch.

And I think it's interesting that Apple has... Remember when we used to debate, would Apple TV Plus be available anywhere but Apple hardware? And we thought probably, but it was like a risky question. And now very clearly Apple's strategy is that they want that tech everywhere. They really want Apple TV, the app everywhere. Plus they want AirPlay in as many places as they can put it. Plus they seem to be thinking of HomeKit being able to run, you know, I assume like a little mini HomeKit server on devices as a thing that they want to move out so uh what a change in approach i know they've got new people in charge of the the home stuff especially in the last

year or two but uh it's a real change from what kind of everybody thought apple would probably do yeah that the tv division is run so differently to the way that so much of apple has been run in the past you know like every part of it right like the fact that there's of Apple has been run in the past. You know, like every part of it, right? Like the fact that there's no secrecy in that division, right? Like the new projects are announced constantly without them having any say in the matter, right? Like they are open, like the platform is as open as they can possibly make it

in the sense that they want to get it everywhere and will do whatever it takes to do that. It's very different. It is the right approach, but it's just a very counter approach to the way that we usually see the way that Apple does things. But this is them fitting into that world and doing it right. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace and create a website for your next idea or project. Squarespace gives you all of the tools

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Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. as it tends to happen jason benchmarks for the new ipad air which as of right now has not been released to the public have been found in geekbench who did that can you explain a little bit about how this happens like from your perspective like how does this occur you so somebody out there has an ipad air and it may even be somebody at Apple or it could be somebody who's a reviewer, but I doubt it. But somebody has one and there's Geekbench or it could be a fraud, but let's just assume it's real because I think it generally is. There are pre-production units that are out there or in this case, maybe production but not released units and you can run Geekbench scores and you can submit them to the Geek database where they're browsable you don't have to but you can and sometimes people do that accidentally

i possibly possibly true it's a little different from when they see um uh browser logs right on web servers where the web server will you know the the browser will say like here's the version of software that i'm running and it like, here's the version of software that I'm running, and it will reveal, haha, the next version of Mac OS is now available inside Apple, because we found five instances of it in our browser logs, right? This is, you actually need to submit the data to Geekbench. But it does happen frequently that in advance of a product being released, you will see an unknown device ID from Apple come with some numbers. And the suggestion in this case is that this particular iPad that submitted these numbers seems almost certain to be the iPad Air.

And of course, this one is particularly interesting because the A14 is the base for Apple Silicon benchmark so like the starting point for what we'll see in future ipads and ipad pros in the next iphones and also as the starting point for what we could see in the mac that's why like all eyes have been on this maybe you wrote that great post which we spoke about during our wonderful outgrade episode during the summer of fun um where we were in a lab talking about it now the scores themselves is 1583 single core and 4198 multi-core that's the the benchmark that has been found for the a14 bionic so i wanted to ask you jason how does this stack up against your previous expectations it's actually higher so i made a chart and we'll put a link in the show notes to an article I did called Fun with Charts, entirely speculative charts about Apple Silicon. I did some extrapolation based on the pace of speed boost from A10 to 11 to 12 to 13 about what 14 would be.

And this number is higher than my admittedly conservative guess about where apple would go next these numbers are higher uh so that's good it suggests that apple is more than keeping pace with itself from generation to generation i mean and that's again like you were extrapolating out I mean that's kind of like not you're being realistic but the fact that it has achieved that is very promising so the A13 Bionic scored in at 1336 and 3569 so I wonder a little bit because we were talking about this after the announcement you know the way that Apple kind of showed off the A14 is they made comparisons to the previous iPad and not the A13 chip.

So they were comparing, I think, the A14 to the A12 because they were showing it off alongside the new iPad Air. Exactly. Do you think that Apple may have buried the lead a little on this chip? think that apple may have buried the lead a little on this chip well i i mean in the sense that a dog buries a bone or a squirrel buries a nut um purposefully right like i think it's great that we're gonna have some people from apple on to talk about it i will tell you from conversations that i've had previously when they announced this thing that they are real on message and they message. Everybody out there who wants to submit a question asking about a future product, good luck. They're not going to answer that, so we probably won't even ask it. But they are focused

on the iPad because I think that they're saving some of the powder for the iPhone, right? I really believe that they want to have some A14 boasting when they launch the new iPhones. And they can't do that if they use all of that boasting on the iPad. And I don't think the iPad was meant to be a month before the iPhone. I think it was meant to be simultaneous with the iPhone. So there's more to be done here. We also don't know what an A14X or Z, however they want to brand it, iPad version of this would be. Nor do we know whether there is a Mac configuration based on this same technology and what it might look like. But that was what my story was back a while ago, back in July about, um, the speculation based on this. And, and at that time I, I very immediately said, wow, uh, a theoretical multi-core A14 version running on a

Mac might actually be like faster than the fastest iMacs, which is really interesting for an apple silicon mac so um it doesn't it's all speculation but at the same time like these numbers fit that speculation i think it shows that our speculation about all of this was not wild speculation and that apple hasn't done you know it could have been possible that the a14 came out and i was, well, it's okay, right? It's fine, but it really isn't as continuing Apple's pace of speed boosts to these processors per generation, and that's not the case. the weekend and I had a couple of quotes from him I thought were interesting to discuss one is I personally expect even the thinnest and lightest devices to be out almost all of the 2020 iMac lineup in performance and push very close to the high-end i7 and i9 so Steve is very optimistic based on this right based on these results of like this is just what this A14 chip is doing in an iPad Air. And it's got these kinds of numbers. So yeah, I think Steve is quite optimistic for what this

could be like in a Mac and doing what we think is like, even if they just go for the basic version, which we're expecting, you know, like a MacBook or whatever, that it could end up being much more powerful than most of the stuff that Apple's providing today. I really enjoyed seeing Steve's Twitter thread about this because I felt like he was making the same kind of extrapolations that I was making as guesswork in July, but making them based on that Geekbench score. And it's fun. I mean, based on that geek bench score yeah and it's it's fun i mean mike ever since the announcement in june about apple silicon i feel like it just keeps building like the anticipation and like my optimism my excitement for what they're going to be able to do just keeps growing like yeah it's it's the more you see of this now steve tron smith makes the point that um we don't know the graphics story yeah because you know the a14

we don't we i don't think we know a graphics score for the a14 but of course the a14x would have more graphics cores and a Mac would presumably have more graphics cores. So we have to see like what that side of it is, but it's just, it's really interesting that, um, that now when we think about this, now that we see the A14 for the first time, instead of saying, oh, well, what does this mean for iPad performance in the future? Now we say, oh, what does this mean for iPad and Mac performance in the future? Because I think the assumption is that whether they call it A14 or M14 or A14M or whatever they do, or whether they brand it as something totally different, that the next, the Apple Silicon Mac processors will probably be based on the A14 architecture in some way, even if they don't name it that. And these numbers, if they're real, not only do they

kind of match and slightly exceed kind of what you'd expect, but they're really good. Like, that's the other part of it is that they're really, really good. If you put this in a Mac, because of the pace of Intel's speed boost, it starts to look really good purely from a speed perspective and leaving aside the fact that this also brings lots of energy savings, which means better battery life for laptops. So talking about the graphics,

Steve gives some numbers that are interesting. So he says that Apple has to get from a 9,000 or so metal compute score, which is in the A12X. That's like the previous chipset. Yeah, the iPad Pro 2018, the 7-core iPad Pro. Wait, is that the X or Z, though? Well, the Z is this year's 8-core.

Ah, yes. The X is the previous 7-core. So it's a little bit weaker on graphics. But still, the point there is that that's about a 9,000 score. And the top-end iMac today has a 38,789 from a Radeon Pro 5500 XT. So we look at the single processor and multiprocessor and like, wow, Apple's got it in the bag. But as Steve quite rightly points out, the big wild card is graphics. It is because we need to see like the graphics scores, the graphics power that a Mac can have up in the high end, not on like a low end laptop with integrated graphics, is pretty far out of what we've seen from apple and the thing that we really

just don't know yet i mean we there's you can have a theory on every side is what is the graphics story for now do they just work with the existing cards like you will you still use amd radeon pro in there or will it be an Apple-made graphics chip? And I think going into the future, smart money would be on the fact that Apple will just have their own graphics, whether it's integrated into the A series or they have a separate graphics chip

that goes into these machines, which is customizable. Or if they do continue, you know, that seems like the smart money in the future. But in the near term, they may want to have other options. They might want to have multiple options if, you know, being able to work with the existing cards for optimization reasons. That's the thing we don't know.

The speculation that Steve Trout and Smith makes is, you know, quadruple the cores. And that may be it. you know quadruple the cores and that may be it like the answer may be that whenever they do release a higher end mac maybe not an initial release with lower end models but if they release a higher end mac maybe that chip has an external graphics card maybe that chip has 24 cores on its graphics uh on its gpu and it uses them dynamically and it only, you know, really powers them when it absolutely needs to for heat reasons and power reasons. But like they could do that. They could build a high end chip based on this that had 20 cores or 24 cores of graphics if they wanted to scale it up that way. And it could scale pretty much that way in order to to make this work so

that'll be kind of fascinating to see so we were talking about the a12z before which is what's in the 2020 ipad pro right and saying that it was very likely that it would still be faster it is but not by much and only in multi-core so the single core score was 1118 compared to 1583 and the multi uh core score on the a12z is 4 45 64 so 4564 compared to 4198 so it's close yeah the you know my extrapolation was that an an a14x that scaled the way that the a from the A12, sort of the way that this, again, just trying to follow the line, you know, that A14X, so just a, or Z, whatever you want to say, but like a 7, 8 core, you know, more processor cores, all of that stuff going into it would be faster than the 16 inch MacBook Pro and with eight cores and would be just a little bit slower than that fastest iMac, the eight-core iMac.

And that's the iPad chip. And the A14 scores don't do anything to make me think otherwise. And then if you imagine a Mac chip that had more cores and more GPU cores too, but more cores, processor cores, it wouldn't take that many more to make a Mac that's faster than the fastest iMac. And that basically means that the only Macs it would be slower than, it's fairly easy, I think, for a Mac-based chip based on the A14 to be faster than anything except Apple's highest end Xeon based computers. So basically the Mac Pro and

the iMac Pro at the highest end, which is amazing, right? Like that's amazing. That's Apple reaching way higher up than I think any of us expected them to be able to at the beginning of this transition. That's what they said, two year transition. And we're like, well, in a couple of years, they'll be able to reach up there. I think with this A14 generation, if they want to, it depends on what they want to do in terms of a Mac-focused processor based on this generation. But depending on what they want to do, they have reach to make Macs that are faster. They can make iMacs and laptops that are faster than any existing iMacs and laptops. I've said this before and I'll say it again.

I think that's goal number one for the first Apple Silicon Macs. They need to show that this is the right move and speed is an easy way to show it's the right move. Everything else is beneficial in the long term, like energy savings and that kind of stuff. You'll get some anyway and they can optimize for that later. But they need to show that this is the right move

for people to get their work done no matter what it is. And if they release these chips, and even if they have greater battery life but they're slower, that's going to be the news. You want to make sure that you can provide something which you can show like hey we've been held back and now we're you know we're going for it but we're shooting yeah this is this is the thing that we've talked about a few times here which is apple's pride yep apple is so proud of these chips.

And I'm sure we'll hear it in our next episode, right? They're so proud of what they've done with Apple Silicon. And they should be. Like on the phone side, they've basically lapped the competition. It's amazing how far ahead they are. There's no way that Apple is going to do a chip transition to their own processors that makes them look bad. The only way they're going to do it is if they know that they can look good and they're confident that they can look good. And in fact, again, looking at the numbers and imagining them building chips with more cores

for the iPad, as they've always done, and even more cores for the Mac, which I think they probably will do, especially on the higher end, they're not going to even need to exert a whole lot of effort to get there. But I will say that if they're planning, you know, and again, this would have happened a year ago, probably, but planning what these chips are going to be as a part of this transition.

And they're like, well, we could do this and we'll be about par with what Intel has, or we could do this and it'll be more expensive, but it'll really put Intel to shame. I firmly believe that the decision would be to put Intel to shame, right? Even if it means

pushing it a little harder than they would, and maybe even if it means that the next year or the next processor generation, they back off a little bit and the improvements aren't quite as great. If you're following me here, to make a splash, to make the effort and make the tech decisions, to put Intel to shame, I got to think that that is part of this strategy, right? Why would you go out with this thing that you built that shows

your superiority and makes your platform better at a moment when you couldn't. Like, it doesn't make any sense. They wouldn't. They wouldn't. They wouldn't do this until they were ready to really say, Apple Silicon is not a compromise in order for us to take this in-house. Apple Silicon is us doing you a favor by making the Mac better. Like, they would not be doing this if that wasn't going to happen. And so it absolutely is going to happen. I'm just kind of curious about exactly how and in what way.

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talking about what the future of Apple leadership may look like. I think this story went a little bit under the radar because it occurred, I think, the Friday before the Apple event. So I saw it, I liked the look of it, I saved it, and now I wanted to talk about it because I think the Friday before the Apple event. So I saw it. I liked the look of it. I saved it. And now I wanted to talk about it because I think this feels pretty unprecedented to me. I don't know if I've ever seen an article like this before, naming a lot of people inside of Apple

that I've not heard of before. And I thought that was pretty interesting as a thing to have vision on. I, uh, I enjoyed this story. I did laugh about it because I, I can just see the assigning memo or conversation from whoever Mark

Gurman's editor is saying, Mark, I want a story. You write about Apple, you know, about Apple. I want a story about succession. Like, okay, like for Tim Cook.

No, for everybody. Go through the list and just give me names of everybody at Apple. And so this article is good, but at moments it's absurd because it really feels like they're just, you know, he went down and he's got great contacts, so he gets names and stuff. It's very impressive. And what people think,

and it's sort of like the people he talked to, what they think the, the conventional wisdom is about who is, you know, who would step up to replace somebody if they left Apple. And, uh, but it does also feel like he literally went through the,

the list, the executive list on the webpage and then, um, or the editor did and said, I want a paragraph about every one of these people. Mark Kerman's like, all right, okay, I can do that. And he can do it, and he did it, and he did a good job. But I find the premise a little bit funny because in some of them, it feels a little like a teacher gives you an assignment, and you realize that they've made a mistake and that some of the parts of the assignment are dumb and you shouldn't do them. realize that they've made a mistake and that some of the parts of the assignment are are dumb and you shouldn't do them like when he gets to retail and he talks about like they literally made a

change at retail and put deidre o'brien in charge and he's like really there's nothing to say here uh there are people right like and there could be people from outside there are people that are good at the bottom inside yeah maybe like uh but I think it's also, the problem is that, so the premise is really great. And I think Mark makes it, so I'm not trying to pick on Mark here. I think Mark is a pro and he does a great job. I can see where he was asked to do stuff where he's like, all right, fine. But that's the job when your editor tells you to do something. He makes a great case at the top of this article,

which is something we've talked about here too. And I know other Apple-focused podcasts have talked about it, which is a lot of these people have been at Apple a long time. They have made a lot of money. They have made even more money in stock. And they don't need to work anymore. It doesn stock and they don't need to work anymore. Like they don't, it doesn't mean they don't want to work because a lot of these people are true believers or are Apple lifers and they care about it. And like, I think Phil Schiller is like that.

Even when he steps back, he doesn't really step back, right? Because he's just too into it. I think Greg Joswiak is actually kind of like that. He's been there for 30 years now i think 25 years it was his first job i think out of school and he's still there like he he and he's a pro um like but i think the premise is still true that like as much as you love something if you have um proverbial it's called it's called retirement money um you could just leave right you're working hard at a super intense you could just leave and buy a a house on the top of a private island and go on with your life um and and so it's worth talking about because even if

they're not near retirement age it doesn't mean that they won't leave and you do need to know who comes next. So I think the framing for this began at the fact that Tim Cook has done his decade now leading for Apple, which is bananas to think it's been that amount of time. So of course there is a succession plan in place for him i mean considering apple's history i'm sure that this has been a thing since the beginning for them no no one knows better the importance of succession planning than tim cook right yeah there are many companies that have had to deal with what Apple had to deal with in looting Steve Jobs way before his time. They are quite, I'm sure, positioned to want to consider this always for most of their important people.

Apparently, as well, the current leadership team at Apple has made this a priority. And I expect, again, Ive and Schiller leaving, I'm sure has only served to highlight this for them right like that this is a thing that they need to be constantly thinking of yeah it's it's i mean it's just it's a real issue that they have to deal with and it's unique in the sense that it's not about stealing people away from the competitors or having their people be stolen away from the competitors. It's about their success, making them, uh, if not complacent, right? Like making, making it easy for people to just leave because they aren't interested anymore. And like, that's a brain drain of a different

kind and it's kind of a good problem to have, but it's still a problem and you still got to have people um you want to step up and then also i will i will say the truth of it is that sometimes they want to stay and but they also don't want to work as hard right because they got all the money and they're they you know they're getting older and as a as a manager or an executive i think you do have to look at that and say you know below a certain level of work from you you should just become an apple fellow and i'm not saying that happened to phil schiller but like it may have just been the case of like well probably what did happen for schiller is like look i don't want to stop because i love this job and i love this company but i no longer need to or want to deal with all of it yeah to with all of it.

Yeah, to do all of the things that you want from this position. And I think that that's not unreasonable from any perspective. And Jonathan Ive was an example where he wasn't coming into work, and then he was in San Francisco, or he was in London and all that, and they did it for a while, and then they dropped it. So I think that that's another part of it if you're Tim Cook, which is, if I need super focused leadership in this area, that's another part of it if you're Tim Cook, which is if I need super focused leadership in this area and this great person who's been here forever doesn't want to do it because they don't have that much to give anymore, then I need to find a way to move them out and either find them a reduced thing to do or just tell them it's time for them to step aside and let their deputy or another management thing you could do if you're Tim Cook or any other

senior manager is you go to the person and say, hey, this is what I'm thinking, which is you're great and you do a great job and you've been here a long time, but you got all the money and you're getting to an age where you probably are thinking about retiring. I need, I need your, your, a big part of your job from now on is building up your subordinates, building up your direct reports to take your job from you because you're not going to be here forever. Just like, I'm not going to be here forever. And I feel like we're getting closer to that point. And so, uh, if you are feeling more, And so if you are feeling more, you know, like you don't want to give 200%, continue giving 200% to Apple, I get it. This is where we need to go next is you need to start handing things off to these people, watch them step up, tell us who can be your replacement, and we'll start that process because you will leave at some point and we want these people,

right? It's, you know, and you can couch it in different ways, but it's basically like, look, you're great, but you're not going to be here forever.

And you could quit whenever you want now and buy that Island and build that house. So what I need you to do is, is, is have your people step up. I watched the death of Stalin last night, which is a really good movie. Like everybody has been the past few days. Well, up. I watched the death of Stalin last night, which is a really good movie. Like everybody has been the past few days. Well,

right. I mean, there is that scene with all the doctors that they, it's amazing. Anyway, uh, I had to, I was like,

let's watch the death of Stalin. And my wife is like, why? I'm like, well, you'll see. Um, but one of the big stories in the death of Stalin,

and it's a funny movie, is, is, uh, if there was ever someone who didn't do succession planning, it's Joseph Stalin, right? Cult of personality. It's just me. Um, and, uh, I was thinking about it just in those terms, which is, um, you can't do that. Right. Like, and Tim Cook knows this, like, I'm sure in the early days when Steve Jobs came back, there was no succession planning happening. And then there comes a moment, and I think in Jobs' case, because he survived so long with pancreatic cancer, right, an unusual length of time, that they had time to consider the mortality of their leader and figure

out what to do. But I do think that that's probably imprinted on Tim Cook. And it's important for any, I mean, I always was taught in every management course I ever took that part of your job is to develop your, your people so they can do your job. And the argument is not so they can do your job so they can replace you, which is sort of the Stalin argument, right? Which is no, I need everybody dependent on me so that nobody, nobody replaces me in a coup. But as a manager, ideally, you want to advance and grow and change. And the only way you can do that is by having your people be brought up. And a good organizational structure values managers who grow their people. They see that as an asset. We can promote you and put you on something else because you cultivate good people in your group who then go on to be contributors.

Like that's how it all works. So anyway, not to get too far off of Mark Gurman, but like that's what I think is important about this kind of story is that any of these people could leave at any time. And the question is, who are they cultivating? And, you know, there are some great answers where it's like this looks like a person who's ready to go and there are other answers where it's like that's a that's one to watch so let's start to get into this a little bit um obviously we'll start at the very top we'll start with tim so the succession planning for the ceo all signs point to jeff williams and have done for a while. So Jeff Williams had been running operations for quite a while. So coming from a very,

still the exact same background as Tim, um, and then took over development of health and watch the Apple watch in 2013. Right. Last year gained oversight of all software and hardware. So he kind of seems very much like how Cook was to jobs, really, in like taking a lot of the roles that had previously been seen as the Apple CEO or a CEO's job. Right. So like picking up a lot of quite large oversight in large areas. So everyone's always thought, yep, Williams, definitely CEO.

But Williams and Cook are the same age. definitely ceo but williams and cook are the same age so if cook wants to keep going williams might not get the chance this reminds me quite a lot of the british royal family uh bear with me here uh the queen clearly got it does not want to go away yeah And so Prince Charles, I believe, personally, may never get the chance to be king, because I think that there is a strong possibility of it just going straight to our full royal family.

So looking at Prince William and Kate, Catherine, and their whole unit. I can call her Kate, because, and their whole unit. I can call her Kate because I don't care. Yeah, the idea there is that Charles, if Charles takes over as king, he will be so old at this point that it will be a brief reign, right? Presumably. Even though they've got some great genes, boy, they just keep on living.

But I see your point too. And that's actually one of the things in this that I thought was a weird part of the story, which is like, you could read it as being like the obviousness of succession planning that everybody's going to need to get out of there. But I look at Tim Cook and I don't think he's angling for the door, right? Like I look at Tim Cook and think that guy thinks he's got the best job in the world, right? And so it's always good to have somebody in waiting. But I think the truth of the matter is that an exec in waiting either is super happy with their job and willing to be in waiting,

or will, after a certain amount of time, they kind of have an expiration date and they go somewhere else to be CEO. And an example from recent history is Disney, right? Where Bob Iger decided to step down and he chose one of his lieutenants to be the new CEO. And the other guy who had launched Disney Plus left to go to TikTok. Anyway, that was a bad choice. But you see the point there and so so jeff williams like it's always good to have a vice president who can step in in case something happens to the president but uh a lot of times that nothing happens to the president and the vice president just

is around and that's not a great job, but it happens. I think there are people that come up throughout this conversation who could step into this role. But Williams really seems to be kind of like the person there if something did happen to Tim Cook. Jeff Williams would be the person to pick up the mantle. But it does seem like there are many people throughout the organization that could take the reins. I will just say like one potential i think could be craig federighi if he decided or if it was decided it was something that he wanted to do purely from the like the the kind of jobs idea of the creative person being a ceo um it does seem like at least that federighi has so much responsibility at apple that maybe but i doubt it but maybe so the next kind of roll down which actually makes a lot of sense at apple is marketing

so uh jaws has just been put in place in fact jaws has just got uh his his place on the apple leadership page in the last few days you made it to the web page so it's efficient uh greg jaws jaws we act is what it says on the page i think it's very funny um nice and uh phil schiller is actually still listed on the page but at the very very very very bottom underneath the line all the way down he's in the fellow zone yeah uh apparently the person most likely to take Josie's role is Kyan Jones, who was recently appointed as the vice president of iPhone marketing. I think you're going to see this. We're going to talk about this throughout the entire conversation today. Anybody that seems to be someone who may take a leadership role is given the iPhone role. role is given the iPhone role. Like there are so many people that we're going to talk about that,

like that, that are important. You're given the iPhone because you're effectively given the keys to the kingdom. And if you can run the iPhone, you can run anything because it's the business, right? It's all of it. You know, like so much of the business is driven by the iPhone that if you can run the iPhone part of the business successfully, that is a very good indicator for you being able to run the whole kit and caboodle. Right. And so. It's the most important business unit. And it's not a unit, but it's the most important product line at Apple, if you want to call it that. And we have seen kind of trance in a bunch of stuff.

And, you know, what we see from the outside isance in a bunch of stuff and you know, it, it, what we see from the outside is not, uh, what the details are on the inside. And so there's, you know, reading into the black box, that's the, that's the value of Mark Gurman talking to people inside Apple, right? Because they have internal perceptions that we don't have. And, uh, yeah, I think this is really cool. It's also funny for a lot of us and cool for a lot of us on the outside because we know her husband. Her husband is Matt Trance.

Oh, I hadn't put two and two together. Yeah. Interesting. It's been in and out of Apple, and I've seen and met a bunch of times, and it's just kind of funny. But so the first time she appeared on Apple's stage, it was like, oh! And now she's a mover and shaker at Apple. That's awesome somebody considered important in this area. And Susan Prescott, who we've also seen on stage recently, runs Apps and Enterprise. These are also considered potential kind of candidates to take over the role. But also, Jaws literally just took the job. And although he's three years younger than Phil Schiller, like... He's going to want to attend you.

Exactly. So this is one of those where it's like, well, yeah, I mean, here's some people who might be up and coming. It's like in sports, I'm going to use a baseball example, but there are minor leaguers who are prospects, and you have 15 of them, and two of them will end up becoming major leaguers.

It's a little like that, where there's a bunch of prospects, and that's great. But the horizon here, the time horizon here is such that it's going to be a while probably before any of them would need to step up. So moving to software engineering, turns out that at 51, Craig Federighi is Apple's youngest executive. He is a young, young man. And I say that as somebody who is only slightly younger than him. He is a young, young man. And I say that as somebody who is only slightly younger than him. It's Jason's birthday tomorrow.

It's true. October 6th is Jason's birthday. So wish Jason a happy birthday, everybody. I accept all of your happy birthdays. And let's just say it's a special birthday for Jason Snell. So make sure to give him- It is a milestone birthday for me. It's true. 30.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine? So also, I think Craig has been around for a while, but not as long as some of the other people in the roles. Like you look at someone like Eddie Q, you know, I feel like Eddie's been there forever. And, you know, Federico mentioned is like, seems quite important. Apple, but there's a Sebastian Maranume, I'm going to say. There are names I'm definitely going to. I've tried to learn some of these names out of Sam properly,

and I'm going to butcher some of them. It's the Vice President of Intelligent Systems Experience, which I don't even know what that job title means. And John Andrews, who was named Vice president in charge of the core OS last year as seen by people close to Apple's most likely to be promoted quote if necessary I think this is a role where one of the roles here was like they don't have anybody else other than Federighi that they will put in charge because they don't want to make any change yeah so moving to services Peter Stern is currently at the top of the list

to take this role from Eddie Q. Stern currently oversees the business side of TV Plus, as well as leading news books and iCloud. Stern feels very close to moving in here, to be honest. Eddie Q would be fairly high up on my list of people who seem pretty, seem to have done a pretty good job. And well, I mean, we, we can't tell how serious or checked out Eddie Q is at all. Like from the outside.

I spoke about this quite a while ago on an episode of connected where I think Q is seen and I'm poking fun at him and I shouldn't, but he's seen as someone who, who maybe isn't that important, but in doing some research about him a while ago, it is seen by many and written in books and stuff that Q is, if you need a deal done, Q does the deal.

That's right. And that is an important person to have. And this is going all the way back to Jobs this time. Yeah, that's how he has gotten where he is. I'm more saying that Eddie Q seems like a guy who's been at Apple a long time who has a lot of money and enjoys having fun and enjoys life right i think right yeah yeah so so he's on the what board of ferrari um we see him at basketball games back when they had people at basketball games which they don't anymore um And I only, I mean, and again, that's all surface stuff,

but I walk away from that thinking that's the kind of guy who would choose at some point probably to walk away and say, you know what? I enjoy life and I've got enough money to enjoy it for the rest of my life. So I'm going to walk away now. And again, that's just tea leaf reading.

It's Apple criminology, but to get it back to Stalin. But like like that's honestly i think that i think that having money and the ability to enjoy life is the biggest threat apple poses or apple faces for losing its executives right i mean that's the truth of it is if you've got all the money you can imagine you could possibly spend and you can come imagine what life is like and this is the key imagine what life is like. And this is the key. Imagine what life is like when you don't have a super intense job at Apple every day. Then you're a candidate to get out of there. I do think that there are certain people at Apple, because there are certain

people in all of life who cannot imagine not working in that intense climate, right? That's how you get there. Yeah, you got to be commended and a workaholic or whatever. And you hear those stories about they're the people who like golf, the retirees who like golf every day. And they do it because they need something to focus their energy and their mind on. And I totally get it, right?

But anyway, when I think about Eddie Q, I do think about like, think of all the basketball games he could go to and all the concerts he could go to and like all the places he could drive a ferrari if he didn't have his job anymore and i think like at some point don't you make that decision like don't you say i have conquered everything and i'm gonna go drive my ferrari into the sunset now and you know like this one uh when looking at stern it kind of seems like he's running a lot of what we thought eddie was running you know like at least the day-to-day so like looking at all of the business side of tv plus newsbooks and icloud like it's pretty much eddie q's division and like i mean in this i'm sure it's

just the case for many of the executives it's like they have a division that they oversee but it's pretty much Eddie Q's division. And like, I mean, and this is, I'm sure this is the case for many of the executives. It's like they have a division that they oversee, but it's run by many other people. But it seems like Stern has his hands in a lot of this. All right. Operations. Sabin Khan is currently in charge of this division. Khan took over from Williams

and Williams moved into being more of an oversight role. So again, we've just, we've just had the person step up into the role. But Priya Balasar Brumanian is the head of operations for the iPhone. Again, we're most likely to be the person taking over here because the iPhone operations are the operations. Yeah.

Everything else is okay. And this is one of those cases where it feels like it's a job that just got filled so it's not a big deal but i enjoyed this specifically because i didn't know about priya balasupramanian and uh she sounds super awesome and important and i'd never heard of her before so that was great like because there's this whole story about like the facial recognition sensor was broken and and at south korea and she had to like go and like fix what the challenges were and like i love a story like that right like those are those are the kind of stories that the operations people uh tell which is like if they

keep they went in there and they fixed it and we shipped it right it's like yay hooray so that was that was cool to hear about uh Somebody I had not heard about before who seems to be very impressive inside Apple operations. Yeah, you can imagine that doing something like making sure the iPhone X shipped on time, otherwise it wouldn't have. You can imagine why this story is told because clearly Priya Balasubramaniam

is considered inside of Apple as like a person who gets it done, right? Which is like like that's the type of like uh in these types of environments you want to be seen as that person in a corporate environment oh yeah priya she gets it done she gets done something like she's 46 right so she's also an example of real up-and-coming um relatively young in terms of apple's executive ranks and being responsible for shipping probably apple's second most important iPhone ever after the first one on time.

And most important product period, right? Like in terms of Apple's money that's coming in. That's a sign. Yes, as you said, it's a great sign of confidence in you as an Apple worker that you're involved in important parts of the iPhone. Right, look, again, we're talking about people here that by and large are very hungry, very focused.

Everyone wants iPhone, right? There are lots of exciting and interesting jobs to work on at Apple, I'm sure. And depending on the type of person you are, you may want a specific thing, right? But if you are someone who wants to get ahead there, I am sure you want to have some involvement in the iPhone line because that's where the focus is, right? And if that's what you want, I'm sure that you want to be in that stream somewhere.

Hardware engineering. This one was really interesting to me. So John Ternus is currently expected to be in line to take over from, is it Dan Riccio? Riccio, yeah. Yeah. Google Docs did a horrific order correct on me here, which is why I confused myself. Ternus has been appearing more and more on stage and in interviews over the last couple of years. So he does a lot of the presentations around Mac and iPad, because that's what he's running. But he actually comes on stage and does the presentations. And a quote from the article says, a person who knows Ternus called him a well-respected manager who understands the technology and despite his rising profile has remained unassuming all characteristics of a potential future division head or even ceo

now i would say from seeing john turner speak and hearing john turner speak i could imagine him as a leader of apple like he gives that kind of feeling right interesting yeah i mean i i don't know and again behind what's fascinating is that behind the scenes we've seen his profile rise in you know on stage but behind the scenes it's interesting to hear how highly he's uh he's thought of that that means a lot hardware technologies this is where it starts to fall apart currently run by by Johnny Cerugie. There's not many people that are said to be seen as having the, quote, clout to run such a demanding division.

So there isn't anyone. Sribalan Santhanam is currently the person most likely to step up. I mean, again, purely because I think we've seen Santhanam recently as part of the Apple Silicon introduction. In this division is an important person, but it seems like Cerugie is Silicon introduction in this division is an important person but it seems like Sruji is like well embedded in this division which is and we already mentioned it

the same for the retail and HR is that Deirdre O'Brien's role is solidified here it is still expected as I think continues to make sense that eventually they should separate these two divisions again but maybe there there is something to be said right now during COVID-19 to having this all run by one person. And it ended up just being lucky for Apple, really, that they ended up putting one person in charge of a role that would have an awful lot of interconnection right now. That retail being like Apple's frontline needs a lot of human resource now, maybe more than it's needed as like transitioning these employees to different roles inside of the company. But yes, this is a role that nobody has been specified for. where the diversity of the people that are being suggested as taking over roles

is far different and better than what we have seen currently inside of Apple's leadership. So lots of non-white men, right, that are being put in line, it seems, for future top roles, which is fantastic. It's great to see that. And I think it's something to be said

for the efforts that Apple have been saying they've been pushing on. But the key is to keep them because how long do these people have to wait because if you have someone in these roles who is like is a woman is a non-white person how long are they going to need to wait before they're going to either leave or going to be poached by somebody else to run a company somewhere else right like the danger is the only people who stay who are who are the people who are apple lifers who've been there for a very very long time which means that they're older and that the younger

up-and-coming talented people like they need advancement in their careers and if they don't get it i mean and apple i'm sure can afford to pay them whatever they need to pay them to make them stay but ultimately it's not all about that and if google or facebook or you know microsoft or whoever has a more senior role for them they will lose them and i and this brings me back to what i was saying earlier about if you're tim cook one of the things you need to do is be paying attention to the long time people on your team who have lots of money and lots of stock and have been at Apple a very long time and are getting up there in age where maybe they're thinking about retirement or easing back and all of that. And you have to look at that and think about the people that you're going to lose. Like you could have a senior executive who's happy as a clam and they're

doing their job that they've always done and they're fine. But you know, as Tim, you know, maybe that's the conversation Tim Cook has to have, which is basically like, we're going to lose this person and you got all the money. So at some point you have to make decisions like that, where it's not like I'm not firing you. In fact, you could be, again, I don't know the facts about Phil Schiller, but like, it's a good example of I'm not firing you. You can still be part of this and you can still do stuff, but like, I need to bring up your, your lieutenants or I'm going to lose them. And then we got nothing because you don't, and this is part of my sales pitch to this imaginary Apple exec,

you don't want to have to start from scratch at training a new generation of people to replace you because you did too good a job at this and they all left because you wouldn't leave. So like, I think this is, this is a great challenge for Tim Cook and a great challenge for Apple is how do you keep this great well of talent that's up and coming? How do you keep them advancing? If you have this group of people who've been at Apple since the nineties and have been on this ride where Apple has gone from being almost dead to being on top.

At some point, you have to start having all of those people, you know, you play the victory music and you have them exit and then go out into the world and become philanthropists or drive around in their fancy cars or whatever they want to do. Because not because they're doing a bad job, but because they're now standing in the way of the next generation of people. And it's, it's probably worse to have a brain drain at that second level, right? Because then you've got a person who's been there forever, who now is connecting with people who are way younger than them and way less experienced at Apple. And maybe they're kind of like easing off on how intense they are about working. And

they have to train in another group that they already mentored this group. And that mentorship is now providing value to one of your competitors. It's tough, right? It's a tough thing. So I like seeing these people in these places. But like,'s part of the the challenge here is how do you keep those people who are really great and have a potential big trajectory ahead of them at Apple? How do you keep them at Apple? I think I've said this for a while and I stand by it. I think they should create more positions at the top. Apple seem to want to do this when they want to do this. They consolidate, they expand.

I think that there is space for more top positions on that leadership page, even more C-level positions, freeing up a VP position or two, or VP positions. I think this is something that they have the ability to do when they want to do it. I don't know why they don't do that. Well, I mean, some of it, I would imagine some of it is, I'm in charge of this and I don't want to give it up. I think that that is a challenge and that's a management challenge.

I think some of it is when you promote somebody, you want to give them a feeling that they're actually in charge of something. And there is this potential to have the hollow promotion where you're promoting somebody to be in charge of a thing, but your boss is the same because they're actually in charge of both. So I'm in charge of A and B, and I decide that I really love my lieutenants in A and B. So I'm going to make them senior vice presidents of A and B. They still report to me. And their job was to be in charge of A and B, and it still is to be in charge of A and B,

and I'm still in charge of them. That's great, but it's also nothing, right? That's the danger. But I think you're right, and this is a place where, as we mentioned about Deidre O'Brien, that there's potential is at some point, does a lieutenant step up in HR or retail? And Deidre O'Brien says, I'm not going to do retail anymore. You're going to do retail. And it's a real promotion. Or at some point, are you a very senior person and you've got two people who are in charge of these two groups? Are you a very senior person and you've got two people who are in charge of these two groups? At that moment where you decide to enter into fellowship and go to your island, do those two people, rather than them fighting it out to see who gets your job, you basically say, no, now you're separately in charge of these things.

And you both report to Tim Cook. these things. And you were both report to Tim Cook. The challenge there is that also, whether it's Jeff Williams or Tim Cook, like there's only so many people who you can have report to you. You can't have a structure where there's like 50 people reporting to the CEO. That it doesn't work. So it's tough. I mean, that's why they pay him the big bucks. But that is a challenge that they have. but that is a challenge that they have. This episode is brought to you by SaneBox. When thinking about the biggest time waster at work, you know, I don't have to think about it.

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It's like that snoozing stuff that a lot of email apps do, but across applications, which is fantastic. I use SaneBox and have for many years for a couple of email apps do, but across applications, which is fantastic. I use SaneBox and have for many years for a couple of things. So I use two filters. I use SaneNews and SaneLater. So SaneLater is like it basically, SaneBox is looking at my email

and is filtering out stuff that it thinks I don't need to see. There's people I don't interact with. There's people maybe that are emailing me for the first time, that kind of stuff. They have some really clever stuff that's going on behind the scenes. And then once I've replied to that person for the first time, or I've picked that email, or maybe I've moved it to my inbox, SaneBox learns from that.

And then I'll see that person in my inbox in the future. And it's just a way to try and keep my inbox to the emails that I need to see immediately. And then I can dig into other stuff when I want to. And Sane News is filtering out newsletters and stuff like that, which is really great because that's stuff that doesn't need my attention immediately. I'll get to it when I want to get to it. That's like a different function. And that is the type of stuff that SaneBox does for me and can do for you.

See how SaneBox can magically remove distractions from your inbox with a two-week free trial. See how SaneBox can magically remove distractions from your inbox with a two-week free trial. Go to SaneBox.com slash UpgradeFM today to start your free trial and get a $25 credit. That's S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com slash UpgradeFM. Our thanks to SaneBox for their support of this show and RelayFM. It is time for some hashtag Ask Upgrade questions. And the first today comes from leovin who asks which blogs do you read to stay on top of streaming media news for upstream well i blogs is not my answer i mean i do i follow some people on Twitter and I follow including the Hollywood Reporter, which is not a blog.

It's a major industry website. But they have a reporter, Natalie Jarvie, who used to be on Download when we did that podcast all the time. And she's great. And she is their tech their digital reporter yep um and so i follow her and also look at that site and i get a lot there and then there's you know there's variety and then honestly the apple blogs um like uh 95 mac and mac rumors like they do a pretty good job and even mac stories actually from time to time, we'll have, have links to this stuff too. It's a little bit out of what they usually focus on,

but like a lot of those places will, we'll have noted a, you know, an Apple signing that got reported somewhere else. And I'll, I'll, I'll see that sort of secondhand, but,

um, a lot of this stuff is it's, it's Hollywood, it's industry stuff and THR and variety Deadline are the sites that cover that industry. They're all now apparently owned by the same company, which is really bad, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.

The entire industry's entire voice is now consolidated in one organization. And people are going to lose their jobs. The industry is not going to be covered as well. It's a company that actually, one of the owners actually makes TV shows and movies. So they're going to, there's going to be like interference and it's so bad. But anyway, I still go to those sites

and Natalie Jarvie does a fantastic job at covering the tech industry uh inside entertainment so yeah so her out thr.com i agree with all of that um and it used to be when we started doing this you had to follow hollywood to get the stuff that apple was doing especially so you know i follow variety variety uh have an rss feed somewhere somewhere that is just their tech stuff um which is good and i also follow natalie jarvie and lucas shaw and todd spangler they're like the three people so like natalie lucas and todd are like three people that always have good reporting on this stuff because they all come at us from a tech angle as well which

is interesting to me but these days most of my information about Apple TV comes from, as you said, Mac Stories, Mac Rumors on 9to5Mac, because they're all following it now because it's important. You know, I'll just say we were there first, right? I think everyone can agree on that at this point that we were there first. But yeah, these days, I don't need to go to variety and deadline to get that news. But typically, when I see it on 9to5Mac, I do click through to whatever source they're pulling it from. Because it tends to be deadline variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and they will have more information as is typical with that type of article. Martin asked, do you think that the icon customization trend that we've seen will bring more people to actually use shortcuts for automation? I think yes, because I think that there are a lot of people now that didn't even know this app existed and may dig around. I don't

think it's going to be like now the whole world is using shortcuts, but I just think naturally through there being more people using it, more people will be like, what else does this do? So I think it's good. I do think, I want to put this out there. I do think we are going to see a more official way of doing this and shortcuts will be the answer. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, my guess is no, but my longer answer is what you said, which is I'm sure that some people will discover shortcuts and think, oh, look at this. I didn't know this was there. And then they'll do more things with user automation, but I doubt it will be a particularly large number. And my gut feeling is that in the long run, I mean, Apple

might just make a change so that when you tap on an icon that runs a shortcut that runs an app, it just launches the app and doesn't show you the shortcut interface. But if I had to guess, my guess is that Apple will instead provide a way for people to do custom icons next year. Yeah. That you paste it in. I agree. I just, for whatever reason, I think that they will quote unquote hide this in shortcuts and it would just be like an official way to do it right if they decided it was the right thing to do they could do that in an update to ios 14 and it would become one of those things

where it maybe slides down the little notification saying i'm opening this app and shows that app's icon or whatever but doesn't open up shortcuts or anything like that because that that feels so arbitrary already right like what there are actions that if you tap on an icon in, uh, in fact, here's a, here's a good one. Those icons, you tap on them in the home screen and they launch shortcuts and then they run the shortcut and then they open the app. But if you put them in a widget and you tap on them, they just open. So like I made a widget called read news that gives me a list of like 10 news sources that I read. And most of them are apps, but some of them are websites.

And I tap on them and it just opens, right? Like in the widget, if you launch it from the widget, there are certain things, certain actions you take that don't open the Shortcuts UI. But tapping on the icon in the home screen opens the Shortcuts UI. So like they could adjust that if they wanted to and said, Oh no, for something this simple, we're just going to put up a little sliding notification thing that says, Oh, I'm now opening this app that you asked me to open. And, uh, that would probably be fine. That would be the easier thing to do. I think in the long run, they, they just need to embrace, uh, this was my macro column a couple of weeks ago. Just embrace it. Right. Like just let people be

able to paste in new icons. Like it's fine. let's do that adrian asks with the next generation consoles are you going with xbox playstation 5 neither both or undecided um my son has determined that we will get the ps5 okay because he says that the the title the software, the titles on it are better. And so even though we've got a PS4 and an Xbox, and in fact, I would say we were an Xbox primary house before, he is more excited about the PS5. And he determines everything in our house. Yeah.

So, yeah. He's the gamer. Mm-hmm. I am PlayStation 5 primarily for the same reason as your son um but i have also ordered the xbox series s the cheaper one because the price is so good it's 250 dollars uh 250 pounds it's kind of like i already do pay for xbox game pass So, you know. I might as well just go for it. And we will probably end up there too because it's not like we don't have an Xbox One X

and a PS4 in our house right now. In fact, I was playing Star Wars Squadrons on the PSVR this weekend. I heard about this on the Secret Podcast. I was very surprised to hear that you got a PSVR as well, but we can maybe talk about that another time but i want to know what you think of squadrons because i'm wondering if it's a game

that i want to get yeah i mean it yeah it it i'm terrible at it because i'm terrible at video games but uh it's fun and i loved x-wing and tie fighter um a million years ago in like the 90s when those were games this game it is hard it is hard but you know what i am a big believer in uh easy mode and short or it's called here is story mode and and it's like oh is it super easy yeah that's because you know what i don't need the challenge i just want to have fun flying around in space and see the story right and and so that's why they make an easy mode a story mode and that's what i what i use but yeah it was fun i've only played the little intro part so i've got more to do there but um but i have played some great psvr games we should talk about that at some point james thompson hooked

me up with the best psvr games and um i have not been disappointed with his selections johan asks when you watch apple events live do you watch them on YouTube or the Apple website? I'm old school, so I use the Apple website. Yeah, me too. I've always done that. So I just keep doing it. I like to watch them on my Apple TV. And the Apple TV app for Apple events is better than the YouTube app is for its purpose on the Apple TV.

I think that's true. And Marlies asks, Marlies opens and closes the show today both Snell Talk and Ask Upgrade. In your opinion, is there value in sleep tracking? I think there's... Oh boy. I've never done it, which is why I wanted to ask.

I've never done it because I don't particularly want to wear a device while sleeping, but I'm open to trying it. I have tried it. I think it depends on who you are. I'm a big life-logging person. I'm fascinated by keeping various stats about stuff, And even I look at sleep tracking and think, like, I think sleep tracking is important if you have an issue with sleep. And you are trying to figure it out, perhaps with a doctor, perhaps not. I think it can have value there. I think that what Apple's trying to do is impose structure on people.

I think that what Apple's trying to do is impose structure on people. It's a very Apple thing to do with the Apple Watch where they're trying to impose a sleep structure on people because there is apparently a lot of medical evidence that the solution to people with sleep problems is you set a bedtime every day and then you awake up time every day. And you do that and you get in a rhythm. And if you're one of these people who kind of meanders and maybe they go to bed at 10 or 11 or 12 or one, but like whatever, it's all over the place and they get up whenever, that's worse for your sleep. And so I appreciate that Apple is making that, using that approach. As somebody who doesn't have sleep problems,

I refuse to live that way. Like I was listening to John Gruber and Ben Thompson talk about this. And again, Ben pointed out, you know, the guy without a job, basically, you know, of course he can go to bed whenever he wants. And I feel the same way, but at the same time, like the idea that I'm going to set a bedtime for myself and that like the Apple watch is going to enforce it. It's like, I generally know when I go back to bed and I generally know when I turn off the light, but I decide when I want to do that. And I don't go, oh no, my watch tells me

I have to go to sleepy time now. Yes. Yes. Watch. I will do what you say. I hate that. I hate it. If I was going to do it, I wouldn't want to use Apple's version of it for that reason. Right. Right. Right. But I get why Apple does it that way. This is the thing is as much as it frustrates me, I know that one of the most primary bits of advice for people who are having sleep problems is go to bed at the same time every day. Like that is actually an answer because your body wants to have the rhythm of it. So is there value in sleep tracking? I'm sure there is. If you're having a problem sleeping, I don't think there's value in it. And like, I crushed my sleep rings, right? Where it's like, I got my eight hours. I'm killing it. I think that is a waste of time.

If you'd like to send in questions for the show, just send an update with the hashtag ask upgrade. But of course, don't forget, send in your questions for Tim Miller and Tom Berger from Apple on our next episode. A14 Bionic, iPad Air, and Apple Silicon are the focuses of the conversation. I will just say this. You can feel free to ask what you want, right? But I have told you what we're talking about. So if you want a question to be asked on the show, keep those rules in mind. to be asked on the show,

keep those rules in mind. If you are going to ask us a question to ask them what the next iPhone is going to be called, it's not going to get asked on the show, right? We're not going to waste our time or more importantly, actually, we're not going to waste their time. You know, like we have our topics of conversation.

So that's going to be what we're going to talk about. You can send those questions in with the hashtag AskUpgrade or if in the Real AFM members Discord, the question mark AskUpgrade. There is a benefit to that because you can ask way longer questions in the Discord if you want to, for whatever reason. Bear that in mind for AskUpgrade or Snowtalk because we don't have the Twitter character limit there. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. If you want episodes of Upgrade with more content and no

ads, go to getupgradeplus.com and become a member. Sign up and you can get access to that. That's at getupgradeplus.com Thanks to SaneBox, KiwiCo, and Squarespace for their support of this episode. And we'll be back next time. Until then,

say goodbye, Jason snell goodbye everybody