Upgrade - 320: Apple Silicon and the 2020 October Event Draft

Episode Date: October 10, 2020

Bonus episode! Jason and Myke interview Apple's Tim Millet and Tom Boger about the new iPad Air and Apple silicon. Afterward, it's time to fearlessly predict what will happen at Tuesday's Apple media event in the only way Upgrade knows how--via a competitive draft.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 320 and today's show is brought to you by hover and hello my name is mike hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason. Hello, Mike Hurley. What are we doing back here? Well, I have a hashtag Snell Talk question that I hope can shine some light on that. And it comes from me and it's to you, Jason. Why are we doing this extra episode today?

All right. Well, on Tuesday, and, you know, Upgrade is, as you know, Mike, traditionally a Monday show. On Tuesday, which is traditionally the day after Monday, Apple announced that they were doing an event on the following Tuesday, seven days notice. And that would mean that we would do an episode on the 12th like we did the last time, a Monday episode that would be the draft, immediately followed by a Tuesday episode that would be the post-event shenanigans. And we swore last time, we swore a lot actually for a lot of related things, but one of the things we did is we swore that we would try this time to space out the draft episode a little bit for our sanity, but also to give listeners a chance to listen to the draft

because there's nothing worse than recording an episode that will be invalidated less than 24 hours after you recorded it because you know people listen to podcasts it takes them a little while usually to listen so this is our interim episode this is what was the monday episode last month and it's our interim draft episode but that's not all that's not all. That's not all, as they say. Because we also, as we teased last time, have an interview with two Apple executives. And, of course, that interview is here taking place before whatever Apple announces on Tuesday. And we wanted to get it out in that context. So this is not just a draft episode. It is also an Apple interview episode, which is very exciting.

Yeah. And whilst I am, of course, itching to get to the draft, I think the best way to start today's episode is to roll that interview. So here is our time now with Tim Millay, who's vice president of platform architecture at Apple, and Tom Boga, Apple's senior director of Mac and iPad product marketing. And to help you distinguish between their voices, Tom will be answering the first question. All right, Tom and Tim, thank you so much for being on Upgrade. It's great to have you here virtually. It's great to be here. Good to see you guys again virtually.

Very great. Nice to meet you. On a podcast, everybody is a disembodied voice. Exactly. I want to start with a big picture thing. 2020, it's been a pretty big year for the iPad. I know we're going to talk about the new iPad Air a little bit more in a moment, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts, something you could touch on, on just kind of all the stuff we've seen in the iPad product line the last 12 months.

You know, the new iPad Pro with the A12Z, we added, you know, there's trackpad support and the Magic Keyboard. iPad OS 14 has shipped and the iPad Air. As somebody, you know, Mike and I are both big fans of the iPad. It's been, when you think about 2020, it's been a huge year for iPad. It absolutely has. It's been an amazing year for the iPad. You know, well, first of all, let's just talk about how important the iPad has become in people's lives, right?

People are using it to work from home, learn from home, healthcare workers are beginning to use it. People are doing all kinds of new things with the iPad. It's just amazing. And I think it's a testament to the versatility of the iPad. And if you look back on the year, it's been incredible. So first of all, we were celebrating our 10 years of iPad, right? That's a big milestone for us, right? And we also announced we sold our 500 millionth iPad, right? It's one of the most successful consumer electronics devices ever, right? It's incredible. So that's kind of like the really big picture. And then look at what we've done with the product line. We've given the iPad Pro a huge upgrade back in March with the A12Z processor, the LiDAR scanner, Magic Keyboard, etc.

And then most recently, we came out with a big, huge performance update to the entry iPad, along with a completely redesigned iPad Air. And amidst all of this is iPadOS, which has just elevated the whole experience of iPad to a completely different level. So Jason, you're absolutely right. It's an incredible year for the iPad so far. There's a lot going on. Absolutely. I was having this conversation with somebody a couple of days ago that I cannot believe that it has only been like since March of this year that we got the trackpad support. Like it feels like so far long ago now.

Yeah, it's just it's just and I think it's and people are loving it. They're embracing it. And it's just a really natural way that we brought that support to iPad. we brought that support to iPad. It just feels, you know, if you're going to bring trackpad and mouse support to the iPad, you know, what we're hearing from customers is that the way we implemented it just feels really natural and just really complements the touch first interface of an iPad. Yeah, it has gotten to the point where it just feels like the way I have always used my iPad. Like I'm so used to it now. And that was a very, very quick thing to learn. So with the new iPad Air, I think what we're definitely seeing is a lot of features that are found on the iPad

Pro making their debut. So like it supports the magic keyboard with trackpad, the design, and there's a lot of interesting things that are coming down the line there. How do you decide which features are best to trickle down the product line and when the best time is to do it? Yeah, so you're right in observing the fact that we've brought some of those great pro features from the iPad Pro down to the iPad Air. And, you know, really, with the iPad Pro, this is where we push the limits of iPad, right? And bring in the latest technologies and, you know, the highest performance, etc. And the most leading-ed features. And with iPad Air, what we try to do is pick those features that we think are going to resonate in terms of just making some of those features more accessible to more people.

They're really excited about the new design. They're really excited about the new colors. I don't know, Hallie, what colors? Do we have a blue? Do we have a green? What colors are you guys, is your favorite? I love the blue. I would love a blue iPad Pro as well.

Just putting that out there. I was going to say, that's not a feature that's trickled down from the iPad Pro. Yeah, or up. If you're taking feature requests, that's one from me. Yeah, and so then we also brought USB-C and put the speakers in landscape mode and we did a ton of things to the new iPad Air.

But I think one of the most exciting things is the A14 Bionic. And to debut this new chip in this new Air is really exciting for us. And it just takes that great iPad performance and ratchets it up to 11 and just gives people that really rich, unique iPad experience like they've never had before on an Air. It's interesting to see the balance of what goes, because one of the things that we've talked about is how aggressive Apple has been in taking features that you might have sequestered away in the iPad Pro for longer

and instead been much more aggressive saying, we're going to make new iPad Pro features down the road, but we're going to bring Apple Pencil and now Apple Pencil 2 on the iPad Air down. And I think that's an interesting way to go. You do see cases. So the new iPad Air has Touch ID. It does not have Face ID. It doesn't have that sensor that's in the iPad Pro, but instead it's got a reinvented Touch ID button. So what goes into making a decision like that to say, well, we're not going to bring this feature down. Instead, we're going to engineer a new Touch ID sensor and have that be how we authenticate on the iPad Air. How do you make those calls? accessible and so what we really wanted to do was you know bring that new design to the ipad air that liquid retina display have that display extend in all sides and uh we decided in in with

this ipad air that we will re-engineer touch id right into the top button it's it's a really incredible feat of engineering in terms of you know know, making that sensor much, much smaller. It's the smaller sensor we've ever done right in there in that top button. And, you know, it's more efficiently read your fingerprint data. And it's just a really great experience in terms of being natural. And people love Touch ID. It's fast, it's secure, and it's really easy to use. So we had the opportunity to get to ask our listeners, who are called the Upgradients, to send in some questions for you both.

And Jay Mush asks, what role does the iPad play in your own lives, both personally and professionally? And also, have you seen in and around people that you work with at Apple, do you find many people who spend a majority of their day working on the iPad? Is that a normal thing to see at Apple Park? You know, I wouldn't mind jumping in on this one. As an engineer, and I do a lot of technical work, most of my day is spent doing whiteboarding on a normal day, sitting in my office with colleagues, working with my team to try to think about the future.

And we've been restricted from that in the last few months. We've been in our houses working from home and iPad has become an essential tool for me. I'm on my iPad pretty much from 6.30 AM talking to folks in engineering teams we have overseas all the way through 7 PM with the local folks. And it is the workhorse for our remote meetings for logging in. And it's my engine for collaboration. I can pull my pencil out. I can share my screen with others and draw the whiteboard pictures that I used to be able to do in person. And, you know, it's the thing I wake up reading the newspaper with. It's the thing I go to bed doing the crossword with. So, I mean, it's, you know, it's a whole, it's a whole day. And this, this time period especially has made it even more so. Yeah. I couldn't, I couldn't have said it better. It's, it's a whole day,

right? Everything from when you wake up in the morning, obviously a lot of us are spending time, uh, most of the day video conferencing, working on the event that we just had. And it, for me, it's a, it's an incredible tool as well that i use you know all throughout the day i guess one of the great things about the ipad is it will last the whole day as well right like the battery will get it will get you through the entire day which is one of my favorite features absolutely well and i think that's a great segue into the silicon right tim tim can talk to this but we have a an a relentless approach with our silicon in terms of efficiency and and power consumption and and and you're experiencing that when you have

that great battery life in your ipad so so i'll turn it over to tim and he can talk more about that yeah there was something that i wanted to ask about this actually because i think one of the one of the things that i know that tim in, in the presentation in September that you really pressed on was going to a five nanometer process. And for people who follow processes and keep their eye on this market, they know that's a big deal. But for people who don't, it just seems like another number or they may have never even came across this term before or could understand why it's important. It's too smaller. It's's not seven it's five now and it's like why not three right like if you can just right so could you explain a little more broadly why it's important that process sizes keep shrinking and why going to smaller process sizes can make the a14 better

than what it's replacing yeah absolutely uh so as So as a silicon architect, and I've been building chips for about 30 years in the Valley, this has been part of the essential toolbox that we have in building chips. We do a lot of work to try to architect the blocks in our chips, the CPUs, the GPUs, neural compute, with the toolbox that we have.

And when we get a new node, when it's available to us, it's a huge, huge win for us in a few dimensions. The first one is really just the size. I talked about this in the presentation about how small the features of these transistors are getting. You know, you can measure these things in atoms and it's true. It is a big win for us because it allows us to put more transistors down in a similar space. If you think about a piece of silicon, the chips are diced out of a wafer that's about 12-inch wafer, and you imprint a large number of chips on that thing. Well, the smaller the chip, the more

parts you can get per wafer. And so what this allows us to do is to deliver more features, which in a lot of cases also allows us to improve the energy efficiency of the solution because we can go wider and run the clocks a little bit slower at a lower voltage. That translates to lower energy usage. So things like a GPU, for example, we can enhance the GPU. We can run those four cores at a lower voltage and still deliver amazing performance. We can also take those same transistors and raise the voltage and boost the performance of that GPU way, way up for brief periods of time when a game or a UI transition demands something really, really snappy. You know, the transistors are really the fuel we use to be able to enable a lot of the new features.

It gives us space to put new things down at the same silicon investment. And it allows us historically to, again, get better energy efficiency and improve the performance of the transistors. So the performance of the transistors is where the CPU really depends on it, because it wants those transistors to really snap. And the faster we can get those transistors to switch, they're like small switches, like zero and one. Faster we can get them to switch, the higher the peak performance of our CPU. And the other piece of it, because we work super closely with our foundry partners, we make sure that those transistors are operating at the peak efficiency.

We help them dial it right in because there's lots of choices they can make. They can go for ultimate peak performance at any power. That's not the way we design our chips. We're trying to find that balance. It's all about energy efficiency because we know when we build our chips for these really beautiful works of art, I like to call them these thin, beautiful iPad Airs,

you know, our job is to fill up that enclosure, to be able to deliver at the most efficient point, the most performance anybody can deliver inside that beautiful work of art. Yeah, that's one of the advantages that we have, right? Where we build our silicon for our products. And so we have a very clear objective with our silicon in terms of what we're designing for. It's funny that you mentioned sort of the collaboration within Apple, because that is absolutely Apple's, I don't know, secret sauce, something like that.

There's a thing that Apple does, integration. I'm curious how that works in the sense of when you're designing a processor, surely there's some sort of give and take between sort of people working on the product side who might have some specific functionality that they want your silicon to enable. that they want your silicon to enable. But also I imagine that you're thinking of the trends that you're seeing in your work and how they might be able to be leveraged by new things in the product. Within Apple, how do the teams work together and communicate sort of when you're planning an attack?

Because it's gotta be quite complex to say, you can't just wake up one day and say, I know what I wanna put in the next iPhone. There has to be a game plan and there has to be conversation between the teams about what's possible and what's wanted. Yeah, that's Apple in and out, inside and out. You nailed it. I mean, you described the complexity, but that's how Apple is structured. We operate in a network. I've got teams who are sitting down every day with the display team to understand what's coming down the pipe. How do we get the silicon ready to be preparing for the next HDR display, the next retina display, the 120 hertz refresh? This is all stuff my team has to know about. When we built the chips

in the early days, when we delivered retina for the first time on the phone, we had to make big adjustments when that decision got rolled down. And that's our job. We get notified, we work's our job. We get notified. We work closely. We do our best to stay in front of it, though. Same thing with things like the camera. The camera has become a huge feature. We did a big upgrade on the iPad Pro in March. And my team works in close concert with our camera module team and our camera software team to make sure we've got all the right plumbing for the amazing camera systems and all the right compute at the right energy efficiency to allow us to enable those cameras and all the great products. So there's definitely a give and take. It's,

you know, everybody's sitting down and sharing, here's what we're doing, here's what we were wanting, and then you plan it out together. I mean, I would say we as the silicon team have the, Tom talked about it, we have this amazing advantage in that we don't have to guess what to build. Right. We know we work so closely with our software and system teams that we know if we're going to put transistors down, they're going to get used because the folks who are using them were helping us design and make sure enabling capabilities that they needed to enable the product. And it all comes down to the product. Yeah. And that's not just hardware and software as well. You know, machine learning is a great

example. You know, Tim and his team worked with our advanced mathematics team and others in terms of looking at the future and in terms of machine learning years ago. And here we are with the, you know, one of the great things in the A14 Bionic is the Neural Engine, which is 16-core design now. It's incredibly fast. So it's not just the Neural Engine, but the entire chip is an amazing platform for machine learning. Yeah, we think machine learning is a really interesting space. The breakthroughs that have been happening in that space are very visible. You see them all over the place, and you see us doubling down on it for a lot of the features that we're putting into our products. I think iPad is becoming a really great platform for a lot of third-party applications as

well that are taking advantage of it. And so when my team looks at the compute associated with it, we recognize the amazing performance and power efficiency of our neural engine as if you have a really big, heavy machine learning job, that's a perfect place to put it. But we also appreciate that machine learning is a moving target. Lots of people have new ideas, new algorithms every day. We want to make sure we have a flexible engine. So our GPU is tuned for certain machine learning algorithms that are a little bit less. is tuned for certain machine learning algorithms that are a little bit less, you know, when you think about somebody wants to try something new,

it may not fit exactly on the neural engine. Or if somebody wants to tinker and they want to experiment with the new algorithms, well, the GPU is a fantastic platform for that. But on top of that, somebody might want to do a very lightweight thing, maybe some kind of application around audio that doesn't require the kind of big bandwidth requirements that a neural engine or GPU would use. Well, the machine learning accelerators on the CPU are fantastic. I mean, it was a huge, we wanted to make sure that the CPU, the GPU, and the neural engine, if you think about it, it's a bit of a waterfall. We make sure we have an appropriate place, that there isn't a performance cliff in any of these three compute engines.

So there's a natural way for folks who to find the right compute engine for the application that makes sense. So you mentioned with the A14, the Bionic name, we had a question from a listener, Ben, who says that you had previously used the name Fusion, and you've been using the name Bionic with the chips in iOS devices for quite a while. What is it that makes you continue to use the term Bionic for these chips? And do you think that there is a possibility in the future that the name could change again? Well, the future, there's always possibilities in the future, as you guys know. No, the Bionic name is in reference to this amazing capabilities that we just talked about from a machine learning. It's that melding of the mind and the machine.

And so it's a name that we love and we continue to use it with A14. You almost called it a fusion there, but that would have been confusing. You said melding instead. Well, and actually, speaking of fusion, that's another architectural element of A14 that makes our silicon very distinct. That's this whole concept of performance cores versus efficiency cores. So, Tim, how about we talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. I can talk about chips all day.

You know, when we started this whole thing, we recognized that the performance that we were achieving in the phone every year was just moving us up and up. And it was super valuable to the software and the applications running on the phone. But we also recognized that as we did that, there was this, you know, we do a lot of workload analysis. We take a look at what's running on the phone on a given day. What's the typical user actually doing? And we saw that there was a lot on the, you know, we think about power and performance. There's a lot of low power, low performance

use cases, background tasks, things running on the phone all day. And as we, as we wanted to really enable the bigger processors to keep moving up, still maintaining efficiency at levels, you know, that are better than anything else that was out there. We still, we saw an opportunity to build a core specifically for these smaller tasks, these lighter weight tasks, and recognize that we could do a dramatically better efficient core in those space for those important things. So the way we rolled that out is we, you know, we began with that fusion concept that allowed the processors to look kind of seamless. You transition your workloads without really identifying it. And then we, we increased the number of these cores and we built a lot of scheduler technology. We built some in my,

my team, we, again, through the workload analysis, we work super closely with the folks in the software team that write this the os scheduler for ios and we figure out a way to seamlessly move find those really really efficient those tasks that really want to be on the efficient core and we move them down there aggressively because we know at the end of the day the users want the battery life through the day to work on maybe the fast UI, the games, the other things that they're doing, the amazing scrolling performance on the iPhone. But they don't care if there's background work

that mail is doing on the background, that it has to be running in real time. They want that to be super efficient so it saves the battery for the stuff that they care about that's front view applications. So while, of course, the A14 is part of the Apple Silicon lineup, the family, a lot of our listeners are very excited for what Apple Silicon is going to mean for the Mac in the future.

I wanted to kind of allow you to lay the groundwork a little bit for this in the sense that Apple Silicon is not a new thing, right? We've just spoken about the A14 chip and the chips that have powered iPhones and iPads for so long now. So I wanted to kind of give your chance to explain, because I would love to hear it, a little bit about the scale that Apple operates at

with your own chip production across all of your product lines. I would love to try and put that in context a bit to kind of really underline the point of like we make silicon well it's an interesting story i mean i've been here from day one i was one of the first couple people working on the original iphone chips obviously to build the chips at the rate we are you have to scale the org you have to grow and and and build it and i think you know you you saw Johnny Sruji at the, he's my boss at WWDC give the announcement on the Mac chips. He has built an amazing organization, probably top class chip

design team in the world. And really the way we, the way we move is his guidance is he wants us to build things in a scalable way. So when my team does the architecture, develops a new feature, a new capability, we're not just thinking about one product. We have a broad set of products in front of us. It started with the phone. Then we added the iPad a few years later. We added the watch after that. And in every step, we embrace this new product. We figure out what's special about the product. What needs does it have? And then when we're working out the chip architecture, product? What needs does it have? And then when we're working out the chip architecture, we're always looking to try to figure out how to build scalable technologies so that when we introduce a new chip for a new product, it looks familiar to our software teams. It doesn't require them to do

a complete rip up and replace. So something like a GPU, you've seen us build bigger versions than iPads. You've seen us build smaller versions in the watch. But ultimately, the GPU software team just sees it as, that's the Apple GPU. Same thing with Neural Engine. We introduce the Neural Engine in the phone. We scaled it down to build something more appropriate for the watch. But it's still architecturally consistent. The programming, the way software teams write software to it. It's the same. And the virtue of doing this is that it

allows us with a relatively small team to actually target a larger number of products. And we pace ourselves. We want to make sure that we don't jump into a product before we're ready. But the nice thing about the energy efficiency, that's been the guiding light from the beginning, really. It applies to every one of our products in the same way. An energy efficient CPU is important in the watch. It's important in the phone. And you heard Johnny talk about it. It's important in the Mac. And that's a beautiful thing for us because we don't have to split our focus. It's great. I think we've got a few listener questions about Apple Silicon because I think our listeners are as interested as we are in finding out about this. needed to go, that was the moment where it was clear that this could run a Mac and not just the

mobile devices that currently existed. Was there a moment, was there a benchmark, a summit that was reached where you're like, we're here now, we can do this? I mean, I don't know if there was a moment. I mean, I think, you know, our product teams and our executive teams are always looking to how are we going to move the ball forward? How are we going to enable new capabilities? And I think we reached a point when, you know, the executive team of Apple just looked at the success we were having in all the other products and asked the question, hey, is this something that we can apply to the Mac? And, you know, this is not something that you just do lightly. I mean, obviously, you know, everybody at Apple is going to

be very thoughtful about a decision this major. But it needed to come from a place of confidence, right? I mean, given the track record with Apple Silicon, obviously, that decision is made with an amount of confidence in the capabilities of the processors that you guys all build. I can speak to the diligence through which we in the tasks that we've been doing our work and demonstrating through things like iPad, an iPad Pro, which really enabled us to really show off a little bit. That was that moment, right? I think that was the moment where we all realized what was happening with Apple Silicon was the iPad Pro in 2018 and the factoid about how it was faster than almost every laptop that was out at that time.

And that was that moment where we all kind of looked at each other and we're like, oh, that's a serious performance claim that was backed up. I mean, that's an incredibly powerful chip. The A12X was an incredibly powerful chip in the iPad Pro. That was that moment for me. Yeah. And when it comes to Apple Silicon, you know, Tim said it earlier, there's a couple of guiding lights, if you will.

Scalability is huge, right? The scalability of Apple Silicon has been there, a goal from day one, you know, and as you bring it to a thermal envelope like the iPad, you know, the benefit of that scalability shows itself. And then this relentless focus on performance per watt, right, from the very beginning carries through everything the team does. And so now you have a scalable architecture, you bring it to iPad, and you see the performance that it can do in its thermal design. And as you said, it's faster than, you know, over 80% of PC laptops out there,

this incredibly thin like design. So, you know, that is the magic right there of Apple Silicon. So this was a very popular question. Listener Andy submitted it and many people have backed it up wanting to know. Tim, is the underground lab that we saw during the event that you presented in the actual lab that you work in or is it a place that you can present from? Well, actually, I'll jump into that because as you know, it is an undisclosed location.

So we cannot... Is it real, though? Is it a real location that people in the chip design team work in? Occasionally. All right. That's all we wanted to know. And how about, there was an ad there, which was also about all those MagSafe connectors that are plugged in. Is MagSafe still in active use when you're testing hardware inside Apple?

I think maybe one way to answer your question is when we're putting together our labs and the environments we work in, we're going to take advantage of every good idea Apple ever had in making our lives easier and simpler. And I think everybody appreciates MagSafe as a very clever, useful thing. And yeah, if you saw it in the lab, that must mean that it serves some purpose. Well, I think we have one more question, and this is a very special question. This is from Upgrade listener Richard, and this is specifically for Tim. It's Tim, a little bit of a scandal here. I heard your first computer wasn't actually an Apple. It was a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. Please explain yourself. This is, oh, did I not mention it's richard listener richard malay your brother oh my goodness

wow set up someone's gonna be in big trouble there's gonna be some conversations at thanksgiving i think yeah yeah uh okay um yes that is actually true and and but but just to finish that story, this was the computer that my father bought us. My brother and I, we moved to California. We were taking a computer class in the middle school at Walnut Creek, California. And it was all Apple II, and we were mesmerized. We just thought, this is the most amazing thing. We've got to get one of these at home. And then, you know, this dodgy dad, who's a civil engineer, we're going to go to Radio Shack, get yourself a real computer, none of this funny Apple stuff. Well, yeah, he brought it home. We played with it for about a week. And our mom walks

into the room one day, and my brother and I are just kind of sitting on our hands. And she's like, what are you doing? I thought you loved this. And we're like, well, it's not really the computer we wanted. Maybe we could, you know, and she's like, well, which one did you want? And we said, well, we wanted the Apple II. And she said, well, let's go get you one of those. So we took the TRS-80 back to Radio Shack, got our money back, took it across the street to the computer store that sold the Apple II, and we bought ourselves an Apple II, brought it home, and yes.

The rest is history. Yeah, the rest is history. That's great. Your brother's email was signed with his Apple employee number because he used to work at Apple II. That's right. He was at Apple for several years in the 80s. So anyway, I'm just saying, you're right, it was a setup.

Well, that was a good one. Tim, Tom, thank you so much for taking this time out to be on Upgrade today. I can speak for all of us. We are really, really excited about all of the stuff that's going to be coming from these chips and everything that's powering them. So thanks from our listeners. And we really look forward to seeing you again soon.

You're welcome. It's your listeners and it's our users that inspire us every day. It's why Tim and I come to work every day because what we hear from our customers and how incredibly important our products are in their lives, especially right now, is so inspiring for us. Absolutely, and it's been our pleasure. This episode is brought to you by Hover,

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with Hover. Our thanks to Hover for their support of this show and RelayFM. Are you ready, Jason Snell? We're drafting again. It's been like three or four weeks and we're doing it all over again. I'm not ready.

We should say that the morning of our recording of this, Friday morning, a bunch of stories came out. I'm going to get to some of those, Jason. Don't worry. I'm going to write some headlines for you. Rumors and all of that,

which takes the fun out of it a little bit. But you know, we're always going to draft a mix of the obvious and the weird. And sometimes the obvious all get checked and the weird don't. And that's how the drafts are decided. And so it's good.

I'm in a very privileged position here, Mike, because I've won both of our drafts this year. Yes. So the worst I can do is tie. So I'm feeling okay. How are you feeling? How are you feeling, Mike? Because I'm spoiling your thunder here.

So how are you feeling about drafting again so soon? So soon is is quite disorienting um because doing another one so soon after the previous one where the previous one we kind of had to keep switching around as to what we were actually going to be picking right like at first like well of course there's the iphone event and it's like oh wait this might not be the iphone event and that made things very confusing um but doing it again now, it's a mix really, because we'd had a lot of this stuff pre-prepared because we'd written most of the draft picks out for the iPhone already. But I do feel like, again, I was like, right, going into this, I'm going to

do all iPhone picks and all Mac picks. And now I'm not really doing any Mac picks because the trends over the last few days have been suggesting that this isn't the Mac event. So I feel about as disorientated as I did last time. But I'm raring to go, Jason, because we'll get to this. I'm disappointed that you got dissuaded from the Mac only because

I was convinced there wouldn't be a Mac here and I was going to put my stake in the ground. But now the reports have convinced you of it. So, oh, well, I'll have to try to win another way. There are many paths to victory in the draft. There are 10 rounds in this draft, 20 overall picks. We are doing what we did last time and we are grouping them. There will be five iPhone picks available to each of us

and there will be five non-iPhone picks available to each of us the winner of the previous draft gets to first uh gets first pick and that is jason for an item to count for it to be able to be scored it must either be clearly announced on stage or on a slide during the runtime of the presentation only in case of a scoring disagreement, we have Stephen Hackett as an adjudicator, but as always, we prefer to score ourselves. No half points. No points for anything pre-announced. So if somebody picks something now and it happens

tomorrow, or it happens Monday morning, or whatever, doesn't matter. You will lose the point. You won't get it. The points awarded during next week's episode are final. In the case of a tie, there's a tiebreaker question. Loser gets to pick the tiebreaker, and in a new twist, the winner gets to make a pick of the tiebreaker.

We'll get to that in a little bit. Here are our draft results. We've been drafting for four years now, Jason. In the history of event drafts, there have only been two October events. We have each won one of these. So other than WWDC, October is the only time I've ever beaten you.

You won in 2016. Your event included the introduction of the TV app, the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and Touch ID, and the LG Ultra Fine, aka the Cursed Event. I think you will refer to that. That is a cursed event right there.

I won in 2018, which was quite an incredible event, introducing the new MacBook Air with the good keyboard, the new Mac Mini, and the new iPad Pro. That's what I got in 2018. That's a good event.

Or was that the MacBook Pro with the bad keyboard? I don't remember, but it was the new MacBook Air and a new iPad Pro and a new Mac was a good event. Oh, was that the MacBook Pro with the bad keyboard? I don't remember, but it was the new MacBook Air and a new iPad Pro and a new Mac Mini. Good event. Yeah.

2020 so far, Jason has won both the WWDC and September drafts. So I could either be going for a win of honor or at the beginning of attempting a tie. Only time will tell.

Who knows, though, the way this year goes, that even if we get a tie, there could be another event in December, for all we know. For all we know. So the tiebreaker question, we are sticking with the format of last time, and we are doing our tiebreaker around event duration.

So we're going to do an over-under on an X amount of minutes of event. But this time, Jason is going to pick the runtime, and I will pick if we would go over or under on that. Yeah, it's like the idea where you have to cut a sandwich in half, and so you have one person cut the sandwich, and the other person picks. And so from that, you try to get a good guess.

person picks and so you try to from that you try to get a a good guess i'm i'm motivated here to pick a very difficult over under number for the runtime of this now last time we did 90 minutes and you picked under and it was 60 minutes um so now my challenge as picking this is i think 90 minutes having seen that hour-long presentation, I'm a little worried about 90 minutes, even though there are iPhones, especially with some of the rumors that are swirling. It concerns me that Apple has taken a two-hour event and chopped it into two one-hour events. But I'm not going to send the over-under at 60. That would be silly.

I'm going to set the over under at 80. Okay. 80 minutes. Yes. One hour, 20 minutes. For those of you that are slow at math, I am going to go under 80 minutes,

Jason. All right. I think, I think that's, you know, I had to find a number where i was like whoa oh well that's an easy but is it and 80 75 felt too low and so i landed on 80 but uh it could be 60 it could easily be 60 or it could easily be 90 and i think that's the real uh challenge here

and it's a tie break it's it's kind of a fun game to play in addition to it being a tie break. Cause we really talk about something we don't know about these new 2020 video, Apple events. Uh, length of time is a great mystery. So, and I think it still is. I think that they will,

uh, we will see a trend of them being shorter because they can be edited. I agree with you. And also if there are more of them, they don't need to be as long. Yeah. But even if they just introduced the same amount of products, I bet an in-person event would be longer, a little bit at least. I'm just not comfortable for two reasons. So my rationale here, I'm not comfortable with an iPhone event being short just because it's the iPhone and it's a big deal. And if the rumors are true, they've got lots of iPhone

announcements to make. And also because the iPhone event is such a big part of Apple's calendar and it draws so much attention. It is by far the most, we've said this before, but I got to keep repeating it. As an Apple fan, you look at all these events and say, all of these events are equal in terms of the outside world and press coverage. All events are not equal. The iPhone event is triple quadruple. I don't know what the multiplier is, more focused on by the world and the press of the world and the people of the world than any other Apple Media event. So if you're Apple and you're doing an iPhone event, there is some pressure there to have other things you want to push right along with the iPhone in order to get more publicity for those things? And so will they stop and will they be super focused on product or are they going to be a little more expansive and talk about some of the other stuff they're doing? I don't know. I would

guess it would be more like last time's, but there is going to be a temptation to be a little more expansive just because you know you're reaching a bigger audience if you would have asked me yesterday i would have said 18 minutes right i would have gone over but there was as we are recording on friday tons of rumors come out in the morning uh which has made me think that this may be basically just iphones and some services stuff i don't think we're going to get other products so i we're not going to get into these made me think that this may be basically just iPhones and some services stuff. I don't think we're going to get other products. So we're not going to get into these in detail because the draft, I think, is more fun, but I'll put them in the show notes.

But basically, we've had details of the iPhone line talking about cameras. There seems to be that in the largest phone, there's going to be some changes in the cameras again, with that maybe getting a different camera to the rest of the line uh we and also the thing which is wild is the release schedule seems to be spread out all the way from mid-october to mid-november of when these things will be put up for pre-order and shipped which is i'm trying jason i'm trying to find a vacation at some point. I just took a couple of days off and it's not looking easy. But so yeah, that's that.

HomePod mini apparently coming in at less than $100. The availability of the AirPod Studio, aka HeadPods, has been called into question as to whether that will actually be shown off at this event or not, that there will be a Mac event in November, that AirTags have been delayed again to potentially 2021,

and that MagSafe will be returning in the form of a magnetic charging accessory for the iPhone. So that is the slew of rumors. I will put links in the show notes to all of them. So if you're interested, they will be there. But that's not the draft. That's not the draft at all.

We're going to, I will tell you, Jason, with all of that that came out, I made one change to my picks. So, you know, it wasn't like I read all of that and made a ton of changes i made one change and we'll get into later on exactly what that change is because it may still appear but just lower down in my list there will be an interactive scorecard for the draft as always so you can play along at home during the event next week which is lovingly crafted by the very wonderful, very talented Zach Knox,

who other achievements under Zach's belt is being a fine moderator on the relay FM members discord, along with our many other very fine moderators. And also the, the proprietor creator. I say proprietary. He handed it to me, but the creator uh and person behind

upgrade.com so zach made that for me so zach is a zach is a very fine human who puts this stuff together and i appreciate it but should we get into our picks and we are beginning with the iphone round which is picks one to five jason what is your first pick for the 2020 upgrade draft for October? I am going to pick the biggest iPhone is bigger than any current or ever but current iPhone. This is that megaphone. This is Mike's mega iPhone. Yep. This is the iPhone Pro Max Plus Pro Max Plus Plus.

This phone seems like it's going to be so big, I'm a little bit scared of it even. It might crush you. It might just crush you and knock you over. It's so big. Break your hand. There was a part of me that was like, will I want this massive phone?

And then I was like, I guess I'm going to have to buy the massive phone. But then hearing that there might be a better camera in the bigger phone again will make me so happy because i get to be the person who's like haha my camera's better than yours right and i like being able to be that person because people like to mock the big phone person but then i will have a better phone big phone better phone that's what i say yeah i that. Well, anyway, that's why I picked it is because I know that you're happy about it. And that seems to be where it's trending.

And I think it's good. I think providing a lot of size options is a good choice by Apple. And we have not yet found a phone size that's too large for the general public to want it. And I will say, I have always stood by this, not just because I am the person who buys this phone, but I have always thought that the larger, most expensive phone

should have features that are exclusive to it, at least for a period of time. Because it is the very tippy-top of the line. It's bigger and it's more... It's always made sense to me for it to at least have something. And it looks like it is certainly getting that that's an interesting start jason that is not it was in my list um but it's it wasn't my first pick my first pick is that apple introduces four iphones sure that is what i'm going with uh this is not an exciting pick by any stretch of the imagination.

Except for the fact that, like, I know we're getting used to this idea because we've heard that they're going to be doing this for two years. This rumor has been around for two years that Apple would go to four iPhones. But this will be quite monumental for them to release four new iPhones at the same time with varying sizes, sizes we've never seen before on the top and the lowest end of the size spectrum there. It's going to be quite a thing. And I am very intrigued to see exactly how Apple go about positioning these phones against each other and kind of inclusively. Like what features do they share?

What features do they not share? Maybe we're going to talk about some of these in the draft today. Colors, visual design, all of that kind of stuff. I think it's going to be quite wild and I am genuinely very excited. So I will say like on that note, I was not excited about the last event.

I was super stressed out. It seemed like it was super weird, right? Like it was the same week as the podcast-a-thon, so I felt like I couldn't focus on it. I'm really excited for Tuesday. It's somebody in the chat pointed out, Jay Remling, that for extra style points, you should pick Apple introduces at least four new iPhones.

Yeah, that would sure be interesting. Could be seven. Who knows? Any number, four or above. No, this was actually the top on my list, and I didn't pick it because I thought it was super boring, but I'm happy to give it to you. This is the difficulty of this segment of the draft, is that a lot of this stuff we kind of know is coming. The first couple of picks, they are some more boring, but you know. They're gimme picks, and then there are some risky picks, too, that you can make that are not as clear in the rumors.

Yep. I'm not going to make one of those picks, and I'm instead going to stay safe for my next pick, which is LiDAR, which we know is coming because it's already in the iPad. 2020 is the year where the iPad has just sniped the iPhone at every turn, and it will be really interesting to see on Tuesday how much of this stuff is, you know,

thunder stolen from the iPad or from the iPhone where they're like, oh, LiDAR. And everybody's like, yep, got it already. Oh, A14, yep, already saw that. Or who knows, maybe there's just so much that it doesn't matter. Or like, oh, look at that design, right? Like, oh yeah, we've seen that already.

Yeah, oh, flat sides. You mean like the iPad. So how much of this story may be new iPhone is basically the iPad Pro as a phone. But that's fine. So the LiDAR sensor, I think, you know, obviously this is, we're going to get AR demos. I mean, I guess that's available.

AR demos are always available. But like LiDAR sensor is actually great for AR. AR is better on the iPhone. It's a better feature for the iPhone, in my opinion, than even on the iPad. But I think we'll get it. It's heavily rumored. It's been rumored for a while,

but I'm going to pick it. Give me a pick. Well, I am going to pick something that no Apple product has so far. At least one new iPhone is is 5g compatible yep this is the you know there are a lot of features that people are saying they want this year um for the iphone you know like high refresh rate display uh that kind of stuff 5g is the thing that if they don't add they will look bad they will look worse in the general press, I think.

Yeah. And you know what's funny? Is I feel like there was this huge, you know, so the cell phone industry and the cellular industry really pushed 5G. 5G, 5G, 5G. And it's still in the ads and stuff. But what I find funny is that there was this initial flurry and it's all kind of dropped off because the fact is as everybody reported at the time 5g kind of isn't there yet no and it's kind of not that relevant to most people like do i think oh man i want to get a new iphone so that i can have faster

cellular data downloads no i'm fine i'm actually fine with l. It's fine. So this is kind of 5G is kind of a technology that is not as interesting to consumers as I think they want it to be, which is why they've marketed it that way. But I do think you're right that at some point, you know, if Apple doesn't do it, Apple's going to get beat up by their competitors for not having it. And, and I think they've gotten to this point and I don't, I don't think it's mattered. And I think they've gotten to this point, and I don't think it's mattered. And I think that's actually kind of funny. But we all said this last year, that Apple doesn't need to rush here.

Apple will get there. But it's not that big a deal that they don't have 5G, and I don't think it is. I have not heard stories of people who are like, well, I want to use an iPhone, but I got to have 5G. I don't think that is a thing that happens. But still, they need to get there. They need to be able to check the box and basically say, do not use this against us. Here's 5G. And I'm, I'm matching with the high speed, uh,

invitation that they sent out that they will boast about how great their, um, their 5G implementation is and how fast it is. But I feel like it's kind of a an almost irrelevant feature that they have to have to put in the box because of the competition comparing the 5g rollout to 4g is not going to work 5g is going to take a longer time it's there's more infrastructure needed it's like there's also different types of 5g but it's got to start and so they're going to start it. Like Apple can't just not do this and keep waiting for the industry. Like I think it is best for them to dip a toe in

so when it's really ready, they're also really ready. I mean, by that time, they actually might be making their own chips. Right now, they'll be using Qualcomm's 5G chips but they bought all that Intel stuff, didn't they? be using Qualcomm's 5G chips. But they bought all that Intel stuff, didn't they? So, by the time the 5G is really good, Apple

will probably be producing their own modems. And it is future-proofing, as pointed out in the Discord. There is a future-proofing aspect of it, as with something like the U1 chip, where it means that in a couple of years, you're going to be on the fastest network and

isn't that nice and all that but it's just it seems much less uh relevant than one might have thought from all the hype when they were rolling it out when qualcomm was you know inviting journalists to a junket in hawaii and showing off how fast 5g was because they had 5g towers right at the facility and stuff like that uh it's still it's a it's going to be a long rollout and it's not that 5g won't have benefits it's just that it's a long rollout and and apple has gotten there and it's it's just fine um i'm gonna pick uh the the delay as my next choice at least one model will not be available to the public until november yep and it's available to be in their hands um if it's if you can order it on halloween but it doesn't come to you until november that's what i'm talking about like that that they

may have some phones available and that's a pick that's out there you might be able to get a phone in october sometime maybe um i the you can pick that if you like but i'm going to pick the reverse which is that there's some phones aren't going to ship until November. My next pick is that the smallest iPhone is smaller than any current iPhone. So this is the opposite to your first. Yeah. The iPhone mini, as it's being called at the moment. And I, or the iPhone 12 mini, I can see that I can see that as a name. Um, I don't know if it's the best name. I don't know what people will think of that name. Like, will they think it's the small phone or will they think it's the lesser than phone? I haven't worked that out yet. I mean, I don't know if we will know.

And do you mean physical size or screen size? Well, what do you mean with the biggest? Everything. But I was thinking screen size well what do you mean with the biggest uh everything but i was thinking screen size let's go with screen size i think screen size is the easiest one for us to be able to guess from the presentation because they won't talk about physical size of the phone during the presentation right but they will talk about the size of the screen. So let's judge that on screen size. Okay. And by current iPhone, what's the definition of that? Oh, that's a good point because the SE, isn't it? SE is a current iPhone.

Let's say the smallest, let's say this for both of them. The smallest iPhone is smaller than any iPhone 11. And I will change your one too, to be the same. So the biggest iPhone is bigger than any iPhone 11. You can keep mine. It's sort of that at least four new iPhones kind of pick because I think that they're both the same. But this is, by the way, listeners, dear listeners, this is how gentlemanly this draft is. Because I looked at this pick and thought, well, it's not going to be smaller than the SE. Yeah. And I could have held that in reserve and then litigated it with you later, but I'm

not going to do that. That would have been mean. I'm not going to do that to you. It would have been. That's more of a connected thing. The mean picks. Those are so mean. You guys are so mean.

I know, Will. Especially Federico. Oh, he's the meanest. We're competitive, but in a gentlemanly way. Yeah. Federico is almost nasty with his competitiveness. But that's what makes it a very, very different set of picks. It's true.

I'm going to go with the pick that it's going to make me boo, but I think it's true, which is No Charger in the Box. Why is that going to make you boo? Because I think that Apple's going to claim that it's because they care about the planet but they're actually just saving money and making people buy accessories later yeah it does seem that way doesn't it really and and this is the thing like we spoke about this when they uh introduced the the ipad if apple were to give you a discount of any description,

then, you know, it's like, hey, look, this is $10 cheaper now because of that. And they may still do that with the iPhone. They didn't do it with the iPad, but they may still do it with the iPhone. Or offer the coupon in the box or buy it when you purchase it. You can add it on

for free or for cheap or something like that. That's what I would advocate. But given that they didn't do that with the iPad, I'm a little skeptical about it. And I will just clarify, and I put this in our document too. Really, I'm going to say with at least one iPhone, if the super high-end giant one comes with a charger, but the lower-end ones don don't that's what i mean is that they're going to take the step of having at least one iphone not ship with a a charging uh plug in the box because uh they stopped shipping them with the expensive watches that was like a story at first it's like oh we buy

the expensive watches you get it but that's not the case i don't know if they changed course or if they just uh they accidentally left them on the product pages. I think they had some extras and they had built those that way or something like that. I don't know. But anyway, just in case it comes up, it doesn't have to be in all of them. It just needs to be in some of them. I expect it will be in all of them. That was going to be my fourth pick.

So I will now pick what was my fifth pick. New colors in the iPhone line. Yay. Personally, I think we're going to see new colors in the iphone line yay personally i think we're going to see new colors across the board um you know like i think we'll probably get one color to replace green on the pro and that will probably be blue to match the apple watch uh and we'll maybe get some some brighter or different colors uh in the 12 line the 212 phones so the iphone 12 and the iphone 12 max will get a couple of colors i reckon and then the 12 pro and the 12 pro max will just get um we'll just get the blue

maybe i get something else but the blue i have a bunch of people saying do you think apple will actually say in the video that there's no charger in the box it's a good question yes they will we'll see but i think they will i think given what they did with lisa jackson before i think they're going to do one of those like we care about the earth if you're mad at us for this it's because you hate the earth exactly i mean i think they will do it not because they think that they have to tell anyone i think they will do it because they will re-trumpet that environment line um because they love they like to do that for some good reasons and some maybe not so good reasons. So I think they will do that again.

They will say, look how much waste we're saving because that number was so big for the iPad. Can you imagine how big those numbers are going to be for the iPhone? They talk about the tons of e-waste or whatever they're saving. Exactly.

All right, I'm going to go. I know this is boring but i do think it's still fifth and final iphone pick i still think it's slightly risky because it's a marketing question i'm gonna say they are called 12 right the we got the pickers the name of all of the models contains 12 yes okay i had on mine. It was a little lower down. There's a little bit of risk involved. I have a bunch here that when we get into what we didn't pick about the iPhone, I think there are some, there's still some risk that remains.

But of course, we're so competitive that oftentimes we choose to pick boring things to win instead of exciting, wild ideas, risky, you might say, picks that might make us lose. Because we always talk about iPhone naming. We actually haven't really had a time to talk about it in advance of the event this year. No. But if they are introducing kind of at least one new phone to the line and rejigging the sizes,

they could just call it iPhone Mini, iPhone, iPhone Pro, iPhone Pro Max, or iPhone Max or something. You know, there has got to be a time when they get off the number, right? I agree.

And they are approaching that very fast. Don't get to iPhone 16, right? Like that's too far. And yet they keep going like this. I agree. By the way, I'm going to hedge and say some models are the 12th. I don't think it's necessarily all the models, but I think it probably will be.

It's the same sort of thing. Because I do think there is at least a slight chance that they will call the iPhone 12 mini the iPhone mini. That would be so annoying if they had one product that was called iphone mini and then the rest of iphone 12 something but it's so like apple that's why it would be so annoying to me because here's the thing jason next year is the iphone 13 do you think they really want to call it 13 the unlucky iphone Because if anything goes wrong with that phone, right, any issues at all,

ah, look, the unlucky iPhone. And I know they did iOS 13, and look how that went. It was a nightmare. You know, and their opportunity, you know, was if they had numbered it differently, if they had gone from 10 to 11 to 12, they could release the iPhone 5G this time

and not call it 13, but they didn't do that. Yeah. I liked what Samsung did, honestly, going from 10 to 20. I liked it because it just sounds better. 20 sounds better than 11

or 12. It just has a better sound to it, I think. iPhone 2000. iPhone 12 is just like we just feel like we're on a treadmill at this point. Which we are, but you're right about 13. Some people don't like the number 13. I don't know a treadmill at this point. Yeah, which we are. But you're right about 13. Some people don't like the number 13. So I don't know.

I don't know. Anyway, I'm going to throw it out there. I think there's slight risk there that they actually don't do it because Apple has done weird things before. But I think they probably will. My fifth and final pick is that some new iPhones are updated with flat sides like the iPad Pro. I also changed the wording of this pick, the same as you changed the wording of your pick. Yep.

So some of the new iPhones will have flat sides like the iPad Pro. That was on my list. This is, we spoke about this, this is not just, and it's quickly becoming, just the ipad pro design language it is the 2020 ipad design language sorry 2020 apple design language the phones are going to get it um i expect new products like new imax new macbooks to also have this uh slightly revised like completely flat design boxy like design it It looks good. It still looks futuristic. You know, like the iPad Air is looking, is going to look fantastic for this.

I think that they've kind of landed on something that works really, really well. And so I expect to see many products that Apple makes get this kind of treatment. That's the iPhone picks. That's it. Did you have anything else on your short list? Yeah, I had the no high refresh rate display, no promotion. That's going to upset me though. Yeah, well, boo, it's another one of those. There were rumors that they had it. There were rumors that they don't have it. There's been a back and forth about it. I think probably the answer is the simplest one, which is that they don't have it. So that was there. And I thought about picking it a little bit risky. The mini name, again,

any branding stuff is dangerous, I feel like. But calling it, instead of it being like iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Max, calling it iPhone 11 Mini and iPhone 11, which I think is probably right. And so then you basically, imagine if you will, that there's mini and regular and regular and max, you know, with a pro and non-pro. That sounds right, so I thought about picking that. The one model available by October, so some in October, some in November,

those were split into different ones. I'm not entirely convinced that they'll ship them in October, even if they announce them. I think something's coming in October, at least one of them. I think, you know, ideally it's coming on the 23rd or the 30th, right? Like, so that's why that pick is there. But I think there is a risk that it might even be later than that. And the other one we had that I thought about picking is camera hardware updated or upgraded. And that's just something.

It's not the same cameras. And LiDAR doesn't count for that. Those are the ones that I didn't pick. I was thinking about picking that one because of the rumors now. But to be honest, I've read one rumor that gave any information about this. I have not seen this referenced anywhere else to my memory

that there was going to be significant upgrades to the camera hardware this year. information about this i have not seen this referenced anywhere else to my memory that there was going to be significant upgrades to the camera hardware this year so i wasn't going to pick that um i was the only ones really that were otherwise standing out to me as things that i would like to see made possibly touch id uh maybe maybe it seems jury's still out for me on that one yeah i would love it but it's a huge, huge gamble, right? Too big of a gamble for this draft, I'll tell you that. What if we added a whole level of picks that were more risky and there was like a complicated point system?

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So give it a try. If you love it, you keep it. If you don't, just send it back as h-u-l-l-o-p-i-l-l-o-w dot com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Holo for their support of this show and RelayFM. Okay, Jason Snell, then let's move into the non-iPhone picks because it seemed like it was all going up in the air. We weren't sure what was going to get included, what wasn't in this event.

It wasn't as easy as the last one even, even though that was difficult. So we are going with non-iPhone picks. We have five, and these range across categories like the Macintosh, audio, software, and a very large miscellaneous bucket as well. And hey, if you're feeling wild maybe you want to put an ipad pick or two in jason would you like to start us off with the sixth pick in

the upgrade 2020 october draft sure i'm not going to wait around i'm going to just jump right in new home pod for under 200 dollars okay tell me what you think jason snell this product might look like well uh smaller and cheaper fewer fewer speakers apple will say it sounds good enough uh you know clearly the story of the home pod is that it was overpriced and over engineered and they really want people to have they want they want a beachhead in people's homes, but they need to make it more affordable. It can act as a home kit hub as well, which is nice and enables a whole bunch of other automation stuff as well if you don't have an Apple TV. And, you know, so I think that they will try to find a reasonable price. Their rumor is about $99.

I don't know if I believe that. Again, take that and then add money to the price because you always have to add money to the price. I would be surprised if it was under $149. Yeah, let's say it's $149 or maybe even $199, but it'll be smaller and cheaper and not sound as good. But they won't say that, of course. They'll say, you know, we've gotten a lot of feedback

and we want to have even more of these out in the wild or whatever they want to say about it. But that's my, I'm not setting the over under of home pod pricing at 99 i'm saying 200 so anywhere under there i will consider it a cheap new home pod i think i would maybe be interested in this product for the for my studio i don't know for home home kit like stuff um but my home pods have been annoying me recently. They've not been reacting to the wake word. I don't know why.

I think what's happening is it's allowing another device to answer, but the other device is allowing the HomePod to answer, so just nothing happens. This happens every now and then for me, and then it just starts working again which is very frustrating because I never have these issues

with the Echo devices that I have at home but Apple can't seem to get it right. I'm going to go with our new friend over at Apple making a presentation in his new role. Jaws will present it during this event. Oh, you took my pick. I put that on the list

and then I was going to pick it because Jaws will present is a good one. Greg Jawswiak recently elevated to head of marketing. He's often on stage for things like iPhones. And so how would he not appear and present? So that's a good choice for StageCraft. I'm really keen to see exactly who and how present these iPhones are presented because

it's like, that was always Phil's thing. Like for years, Phil has come, has done this, right? Like, especially when there's a lot of camera stuff, because it seems to be something that he, he really cares about. And I wonder like, will, will Phil appear at all? I don't know. Will Jaws and Phil maybe share some of the plethora of iPhones we have? Or is Jaws going to be jumping in at the deep end with four iPhones

to talk about? I don't know. But I think he will be involved somehow in at least one of the parts of the presentation. And it's Jaws Presents. He's not going to be like a cameo. We're not talking about just seeing him walking around. Like he will have a time.

We have a couple of those on the list. We have Phil and Craig appearing on the list, but this is Jaws Presents. Oh, Mike, things are getting tough here. I'm going to go with Mack Not Mentioned. Oh, Jason. Wow, that's a big one for the second pick mac not mentioned wow i just don't think it's gonna happen not mentioned i just don't think it's gonna happen i think this is not a mac event and i don't think they're gonna mention the mac

mac not mentioned but like not at all i don't think there's going to be new Macs at this event but Mac not mentioned is the historic risky pick for the upgrade draft I think we've had this one in here it's come backwards and forwards it sometimes brought great joy sometimes brought great heartbreak for the picker

well alright I don't really have much more to say about that my friend because you've blown me away going for that so early so should I go for my second pick? yeah it's your turn another Apple Silicon A14 boast segment down in the chip lab ah yes

so maybe we'll see new friends of the show Tim Millett down there maybe back in the chip lab but this one feels a lock for me i know we've already got details about the a14 you know we spoke about them last time but this is an important part of the iphone apple is very proud of the speeds that they can get their phones to work at and i still think that there is there is more information about the a14 that we don't have yet

and so i think that we're going to see a more extended presentation about this. And I do believe it will be back down in the chip lab because that is a super cool place to present from. Yep. I agree. I think I put this on the list. You sure did. And I have taken it. And yeah, I feel like that's a pretty good guess that they're going to boast about the A14 some more because how could they not? And so just to be clear, this is a boast segment down in the chip lab. So if it's just Jaws up in a lobby somewhere saying A14 is great. Look at these numbers. And then he moves on.

It doesn't count. We got to go down in the lab. That's why I liked this pick because it is a little bit trickier. There are some qualifiers to it, and I think that's the right way to do it because Apple talking about the A14 chip just seems a little too obvious as a thing to have, I think. I agree. I agree.

Well, with my next pick, I'm going to make some upstream fans excited because I think it's a real question if Apple is going to talk at all or very much about Apple TV. And yet I think they can't resist it. I do think that there will be some Apple TV content in this presentation. There doesn't have to be. And the big one and the one that I think that they're not going to be able to resist mentioning, at least in passing, is the emmy awards because apple tv plus won an emmy award and so i think they will mention the emmy awards the emmy awards are mentioned is my pick i was really considering this one

the only reason i haven't picked it before now is it was it was kind of like on the lower half of my my personal list that i put together here the things that i want to pick was because they only won one they They got lots of nominations, right? They got like 19 nominations, and I think they were maybe hoping they would get more than one Emmy, but they got one Emmy. But still, Emmy winning the morning show. It's still great, right? Yeah, like, you know, yes. Because I'm going to go for my pick. All I have to say is Emmy. Let me pick my pick, because I think these go together, which is we will get trailers of Apple TV Plus content during this.

And I think that these two picks will go together in the presentation, which is why I'm picking this now. I think you're right. There is new content. There is new content coming still this year. We just saw that Apple have done the first part, I believe, of what we've been expecting them to do. They have extended the initial free trial period that people got until February.

So when we were making reference to the fact that, like, hey, that charging period is about to hit for the first time, it's now been moved to February. So it's not actually going to be ending at the end of October for people if they took advantage of it when they picked up the new iPhone. I still believe that Apple will extend this further for people buying new stuff, but it made sense for them to kick this down the way a little bit

because they haven't got the content ready that they wanted at this time to encourage people to become subscribers. So they've moved it out until February. But my pick is trailers of Apple TV Plus content for pick number three. Good pick. Also risky, right?

Both of those picks go together, which is, are they going to talk about Apple TV Plus or not? And I feel like they will. I feel like this comes under the category of it's the iPhone event. Your service is available in a lot of different countries. Now is a good time to flog it a little bit. And so I do think that they will boast about it like they did last year.

Right. We'll boast about it a little bit. Maybe they'll mention Ted Lasso. That would be nice. But that's not one that we have on our list. They should mention Ted Lasso. They should. They should have Jason Sudeikis be in the video.

That's what I think. Maybe that's the opening video. It could be Ted Lasso giving a pep talk to Apple. How about that? It would be nice, but I don't know if they would have had that ready in time. Because I don't know if they thought that Ted Lasso would necessarily be the success that it's been, but I think it's Apple's first buzzy

show. I think it's the first show that they have produced that is getting word of mouth, which they've needed, right? Like this is, we've spoken about this, right? This is what streaming services need. They need the shows that people say you should subscribe for this show.

And I think Ted Lasso is their first show like this. I mean, they've had other stuff, other stuff that I've really enjoyed, but I think Ted Lasso is their first show like this. I mean, they've had other stuff, other stuff that I've really enjoyed, but I think Ted Lasso is the first one that is kind of like getting this word of mouth to it. And I, and I, so I believe they should include Ted Lasso in the presentation, but I don't know if they would necessarily have the foresight to do it. All right. I'm going to go with the ever popular and vague. We details of a feature in ios that has not yet been seen this is the classic hold back feature right yeah so it's it's related to the

iphone but it's not iphone hardware and the idea here is uh ooh but did you know that the camera app now does this and it's just something something that is not in ios now has not been in any of the of the betas is not shipping it's going to be surprise it does this thing and we're all going to be like oh okay and that's that's it that's all i want to try and get our minimum level of acceptability on this one okay so like for example one of the rumors is that one of the phones might have a 5x zoom and another phone might have a 3x zoom is that enough because that doesn't feel like enough to me that's just like the camera zooms more well changing a zoom is not a new feature cool that's cool i just wanted to get the operating system

yeah it is something which is you know the the user interface is brand new i guess for us to see like we've not seen this feature before that makes sense cool my fourth pick is that craig appears that during the presentation we will see craig federighi maybe he'll present maybe they'll just fly a drone past his head again which i really want to know how they did that in the last um uh in the last presentation, because it really did look like they just had a drone flying through the Apple Park.

But nevertheless, I think that I do think that Craig may actually have some part to present here, but even if he doesn't, I think they want to show him, and he's a comedic foil. So I think that Craig Federighi will appear during the presentation at some point in some fashion craig appears a good pick a good pick well gee mike i'm out now all of my picks that i was planning on picking but one that

is the most boring one have been picked so i I don't know what I'm going to do. I could go super wacky or I could go super boring. Is your next pick wacky or boring? I think my next pick, it's like somewhere in the middle of those two things. All right. Well, I already did Mack Not Mentioned, so I'm just going to pick There's a New Home Pod.

Oh, doubling down on the home pod that's starting and ending at home pod okay i had this in mind it was the sixth pick but i'm going with new apple tv yeah could be could be they gotta do it at some point yep and it goes with the other stuff we've spoken about true um and so I think that now might be the time. Do I know what will make it different? No. Do I really think anything will be that different? No, not really.

But I think that they need to update it and get a new processor in that thing at some point. And so I'm going to say there will be a new Apple television. No, no, that's not right. It's just shortened. It's like Macintosh Professional. New Apple television. New Apple television.

All right. So if it's not, should I change the pick to be new Apple television? No, no. We know what TV means. Oh, I see. Okay. Well, I'm going to add box. So if it's a virtual, like a ghost a cloud tv if so if they actually

introduce a television set then i i shouldn't get that pick i guess yeah i think that's right did you have anything else on your uh on your list that you were not on my not on my serious list because again i there were some wacky ones that i thought about that i put in the document and i didn't get you to pick uh phil schiller appearing was one i put in some pics anticipating that they would do the over your headphones but the rumors are that that's not gonna happen so i had apple music hd which is something federico mentioned on connected this week um i think that's an interesting idea hasn't been rumored but like it would be fairly straightforward for them to do it and boast about we have a new audio quality tier. Although there's a conversation to be had there because it also implies that the existing quality isn't that great, and I don't think Apple wants to do that.

So there's a challenge there. I had a famous musician appears, and my thought there was, again, if they're making a bunch of music-related announcements and they've got headphones and they've got maybe some other stuff that they tie in, that they would do a musician cameo. They like to do that kind of thing. That was a shot in the dark. It could have an ad, right, which has a musician in it. Yeah. And I threw in a podcast-related announcement is made. I don't even know what that would be.

Yeah, that one was weird to me. But all those rumors of Apple doing podcast-related things, but probably not. And there was other stuff. Apple Tags is probably not happening yet. There are rumors of that, that it's been pushed back yet again. Apple One, and if there's more information about Apple One, we could have picked that.

That didn't happen. And then all the Mac stuff, but I picked Mac not mentioned. I'll notice you didn't pick any Mac things. so it's a question of is it mentioned but nothing on my short list here i have mac mentioned in passing and promised for later this year yeah i put that one in there too uh i also had um the over ear headphones and multiple variants of over ear headphones in my short list. I know we've heard it seems not likely, but I'm not 100% set on whether I think that's the case yet. And also Apple One to be bundled with hardware. I think that there's more to Apple One than we've seen.

I think the logical thing is to bundle it with hardware. I just think the question is, is October 2020 when they do it? So that's it, Jason. That's the draft. So if you want to score along, there will be a virtual, well, virtual, that's not the right word, is it?

But a digital scorecard, which you can also create a PDF from if you're more old school. And you can feel free to share your picks and your scoring of our picks with us on Twitter. We'd love to see that. Jason is at jsnl. I am at imike.

I am wakee. But, you know, just remember that it is merely trivial because we only try to use our own judgment for the scoring of the scorecards. We'll be back on Tuesday next week, of course, right after the event, as close as we can to it.

So keep an eye out for that. We'll be sharing on Twitter and in the RelayFM members Discord when we will be going live. So if you want to join us for our live coverage, our immediate coverage from the event we will be live

on relay.fm slash live as soon as we can after the event has finished so basically it will be either immediately or about 90 minutes to 2 hours after so if you want to kind of mentally judge it so we'll let you know but that's something to watch out for

but I'm very excited for the event next week this is I think this is part of the one that I'm waiting on I don't think it's going to be everything we want to see but that's part of the fun right now if you want to find Jason online go to sixcolors.com and he's at Jason now on Twitter

follow along with Jason there as he reports on what will be occurring next week as I said I'm at iMike. Thank you to Holo and Hover for supporting this show. And again, thank you to Tim Millay and Tom Boger for joining us as well. It was a wonderful conversation. I'm really pleased that we got to be able to share with the Upgradians. If you want to become a member, you go to getupgradeplus.com

and you get a version of this show without any advertisements and of additional content every single episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Upgrade. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. See you Tuesday. Thank you.