Upgrade - 324: The 2020 November Event Draft

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

Surprise! Jason and Myke predict what will happen at next week's Apple media event, in the form of an impromptu draft. There's a lot of speculation about Apple silicon, but we've thrown in a few wacky picks just to keep things interesting. Also, Apple TV+ snags Jon Stewart, "Ted Lasso" is a word-of-mouth hit, and the Mac has its best quarter of sales in its 36-year history.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 324 and today is a surprise draft episode we're going to get to that a little later on in the show. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Squarespace, KiwiCo, and SaneBox. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by my partner in crime, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Whoop, whoop, whoop. Red alert. And to crime, Mike, to crime.

To crime. So, yeah, a few minutes, very few minutes before the show recording began uh apple sent us both a little invitation to an apple event next tuesday the 10th yep so this was uh i i thought that it would be on the 10th uh which it was. I thought we would get an invite maybe on Wednesday. We did not get an invite on Wednesday. We got it today instead, which makes sense in hindsight. A friend of the show, Carl's the Gray, me and him were having a conversation about this earlier, and he was right and I was wrong.

But this makes perfect sense because obviously the election's going on this week in America, right? So you maybe want to get your invitation out before that, and that's what they've ended up doing. They did, yeah, get out of the way of it, and don't wait until the week before Thanksgiving, because there's been a lot of speculation about whether Apple wants to push. The reason you want to announce things not too late is because it gives you a little of a holiday buying season

for whatever those new products are if you really do intend them to come out before the last day of december which apparently apple does and that's that's great so um they're gonna they're gonna clear out the decks this has been a an apple product release season like no other in that we are going to get three distinct online but three distinct events with three distinct product rollouts pretty wild and um and yes because we love you upgradians because we love you we just uh spent the last few minutes before beginning completely rejiggering the show and uh adding a draft where because there should be a draft and there is because apple gave us one minute of warning uh we're gonna draft now

which is great because i like having the draft be in a regular episode not an emergency episode that drops some random day that is not our usual day yeah jason says now he means later on in the show we still have a bunch of other stuff that we do want to says now he means later on in the show we still have a bunch of other stuff that we do want to get to i mean now is in the mp3 file that you're listening to now as a part of a larger part of this complete podcast breakfast uh it's the nutritious part at the end or no is it the dessert it's sort of a dessert yeah we'll say that so we've obviously got a lot of stuff that we do want to do with the draft, but we'll get to that a little later on in the episode.

I do want to start this episode of Upgrade the same way that we start every episode of Upgrade, by asking you a hashtag SnellTalk question. This week's come from Stitch. Stitch wants to know, Jason, what happens to your old phones and other devices when you upgrade to new ones? What do you do with them? I have bad bad boring news um oh the devices never get get returned they either get rolled down to other family members or they get put in my big drawer oh old tech that I keep around. I have many old iPhone models in a drawer in my office.

Sometimes I keep them for photography reasons or nostalgia reasons. Sometimes, you know, you never know when you're going to need to take a picture of the original iPhone. And then also for recent models, the truth is I keep them around for comparison reasons. So, like, I did my iPhone 12 review last week. We were talking about it before it posted. And in that review, I've got shots of the 12 next to the 11 and the 12 Pro next to the 11 Pro. And you hold on to phones like that so you can do stuff like that. Or you can run speed tests on old models and compare.

Like there's lots of reasons like that. So I can't, I can't be one of those people that's on the iPhone trade-in program and gets a new iPhone every year because I kind of need the old iPhone. So instead what sometimes happens is my iPhone that I bought will get rolled down to, let's say my wife, and then I will buy a new one. And I'll also be able to occasionally use hers or her ipad or her mac for uh testing as a reference system an older reference system and that's a thing that happens in our house like she currently is using the uh 10 inch um ipad pro that i bought because i wanted to test both and uh the apple review unit that i got was the larger one. And I wanted the

smaller one. And then I bought that one. And then I had that one and I didn't actually want to use it. So now she has it. But every now and then I go back and I'm like, I need to run something on this because she was running iOS 13 when I was running the 14 betas. And I was able to test something on her. It's, this is the life of a tech writer so I would say it's abnormal there's some rollback, there's some stuff stashed in drawers that's just how it is if you'd like to send in a question

to help us open a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag snowtalk, I use the command questionmark snowtalk in the RelayFM members discord. I expect today is going to be a show that is on the longer side of things. If after that show,

you want another two and a half hours of Jason Snell, go and check out this week's episode of the talk show. Yes, I'm there talking to John. It's one of those things where I had my Friday afternoon free. I was like, oh, what am I going to do?

I could work on a long-term project. I could get ahead on 20 max for 2020. I could clean up my office. And then I got a text from John saying, hey, would you like to be on the talk show? And that was my afternoon. It's a good conversation. We had a good time. I always like talking to John. And it's episode 299. So I missed the 300th episode spectacular by that much. Oh, I guess now the 300th episode will be reactions to this apple event so that's kind of cool that feels you know monumental enough for john either that or it's going to be reactions to the election with maybe merlin oh yeah that would be the other way

to do it but either way good point uh we talked about baseball and not keyboards so uh sorry mike one star yeah five baseballs one star there is like so some of the things that we were going to talk about and some of the things we will talk about today we're gonna there'll be more detail in that episode because we're going to blow through some of this stuff or maybe a bit faster than we were planning on uh because we have a draft added to the show i do have some upstream headlines that are actually really interesting so one is a bit of follow-up uh apple tv and tv plus is going to be coming to the new xbox consoles uh last time we spoke about the fact that they've come to playstation um this seems obvious and is again as we mentioned last time we can reiterate those points uh a very smart move from apple to make

sure that they are everywhere that their customers would want to watch their content. Jon Stewart is appearing that he is going to sign a first look deal with Apple TV+. That includes a new current affairs show for the service. The show has been signed for multiple seasons already with the format being hour-long episodes focused on a single subject. It doesn't seem to be like a daily show, neither does it seem to be, because when I read this,

it's like, well, that's John Oliver. But John Oliver is weekly by and large. Yeah, the report says it won't be daily or weekly, which makes me think that it may be somewhere in the range of somewhere in between a John Oliver show and a David Letterman show where, you know, David Letterman does, although it's Netflix, so they release them in batches. But, you know, he does a handful of shows a year. My guess is that it'll be something in between that Jon stewart will do a you know maybe a a monthly or something like that roll out it seems weird to me because like that i'm only uh i'm not as familiar with john stewart as americans would be right but i've i've consumed a lot of his content

especially towards the tail end uh of his run it was the daily show right the daily show right the show that trevor noah hosts yes and towards the end of his run was when these uh shows started to pivot to focusing on social media so i would see a lot of john stewart clips you know especially around like the 2016 election kind of time and knowing the type of stuff that he is good at which is that like newsy stuff it seems peculiar to me that they wouldn't put it on a schedule because what is he going to cover that you could release in batches well you could i don't think it's going to be batches because it's it's apple so it'll be it'll be you know one at a time because apple has really embraced the one at a timea-time format. I think you could argue that a show like John Oliver's show, other than the top segment that is a news deconstruction and really is why they call it Last Week Tonight,

the bulk of that show is this, it's timely-ish, but it's something that they've spent many weeks researching that's an extended piece about a single subject. And so if I'm trying to imagine what Jon Stewart's Apple TV plus show looks like, it's that it's, it's essentially like almost, almost a mini documentary in a way, like something that is like those John Oliver segments, but more and probably with more groundwork, you know, more like people in the field and stuff is my, it's just my guess about

it that that's what they'll do is that it'll allow him to dive a little bit deeper. And maybe if you think about like the Letterman Netflix show where it's not just the interview, but also like, uh, pre, you know, a taped segment out in the field somewhere, like in the latest season, he goes to, to the drug store with Kim Kardashian, right right like stuff like that so i i um that my guess is it something like that but it may be something totally different i have no idea it is though for those who don't know an enormous coup um apple brought bringing john stewart back in any form because he was he had a deal with hbo that was supposed to generate like an animated show and they had like lots of technical problems because it was going to be a timely animated show, and they couldn't get it to work right, and they pulled the plug on it. Space ghost coast to coast.

That's what that reminds me of. Yeah. Yeah. So he made that deal with our friend, the Pleb, Richard Plepler, who is the head of HBO in that era. Of course, the Pleb left HBO, as did many executives when AT&T turned it over and made HBO into a feeder for HBO Max. Well, Plepler's got a deal with Apple. Stewart now is going to have a deal with Apple. Apparently, Plepler is an exec producer on the project. So it sounds like this is the fruit of Apple making a deal with Richard Plepler,

sounds like this is the fruit of apple making a deal with richard plepler and then he's using his contacts to get people he knows in touch with apple um and this all fits in to something that we've been talking about for a long time which is that apple tv plus is sort of playing hbo's classic game which is not a huge amount of content, but very high quality content, especially since HBO is not playing that game quite as much anymore because of the focus now on expanding into HBO Max. So we're going to talk about a press release that Apple put out about Ted Lasso recently, but they put some wording in this press release that 100% says this. I'll read this to you. After its launch in November 2019,

Apple TV Plus became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world. And its premiere had more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service. That is HBO. They are saying they are HBO now, right? Like, we are all originals.

That's all we are, right? And so I think that Apple have found the ability that they can call themselves that now, and it's because it's what they want to do, and it's because HBO just isn't HBO anymore. So this is where they are. This is what they're focusing on, and it's a good strategy. Now, something that was in this report from the Hollywood Reporter that I've not seen reported more widely, but I want to mention because it's very uh pertinent to the stuff that we talk about so quote a showrunner for the forthcoming series for which apple is expected to offer a companion podcast is yet to be named so the showrunner yeah is going to have a podcast

that focuses on the show itself that is super interesting to me yeah this is this is uh i think a natural i think you need to do this and this is we've seen again hbo not to bring hbo back but hbo did this very successfully with chernobyl and then they also did it with watchmen a little bit and i think i think honestly that a podcast if you're not going to do a video basically after show you at the very least you need to do a podcast and you probably need to do one regardless of if you do an after show i think official tv series if i was at a streaming service or a tv network it'd be like we have to do a podcast with our creative people because it's just part of it it's like the there are never too many episodes of any of these things right but whatever you have you've got to have the the extra stuff for the for the super fans for people

who just are starved for more so that'll be part of their strategy i think for everything uh they do going forward to be honest apple has ordered a third season of ted lasso before production has even begun on season two. Apple are touting critical response and Rotten Tomatoes ratings in the press release. This is very clearly the hit that we believed that it was. Yeah, they even, I mean, there's a deadline report that breaks out some stats and they're good. And it's interesting to see stats for Apple TV stuff. But it's funny, Bill Lawrence, the executive producer of the show who did scrubs and cougar town and a bunch of other stuff he said on twitter like a week or two ago that they were working on

season three two and three um so he he kind of got ahead of this but you know what do we talk about here the entertainment industry is always ahead of the official announcements for this stuff but apple did officially announce it. And that's what I kind of find fascinating is Apple officially announced that it's season two is in production. Season three has also been ordered. And they are apparently seeing really great metrics from Ted Lasso, which is, it's funny. This is a show that nobody really expected.

But I think you could almost have written this script, right? Like, Apple's going to spend a lot of money trying to get buzzworthy shows, and then it's going to be some show that is not the one that they spent all the money on that emerges, because that's sort of how it happens. Well, because it has that real feeling to it in that way, right? Yeah. It isn't all glitz and glamour. Yeah, well, and honestly, the morning show was so hyped that did it have a chance to emerge

as a success? No. Because it was so heavily promoted that even if you watched it and liked it, and I think people did, it's never going to be a breakout emergent hit because it was so publicized. Whereas Ted Lasso had to get there on its own. If something's overhyped, it's very difficult to live up to it. Yeah, clearly the word of mouth is great. But this deadline report says 25% new viewers,

growing overall viewership by 600%, new records for completion and engagement, which is interesting because Netflix plays this game where they do a lot of like, this movie was watched by a lot of people and it turns out it's the first five minutes or first three minutes or something. And their metric is really they watched long enough for it not to have been a mistake.

But it's not watching it right. It's it's having chosen to start it, which is not the same. So I find this interesting that this report says records for completion and engagement. I would imagine engagement factors in like watching the next episode and how quickly do you go on to the next episode. And then completion is you watch the whole thing, right? Which is actually what watching a TV show is not watching the first two minutes. So yeah, it's great because we love it and we've seen the word of mouth happen for it. And as we mentioned last time, Mike and I were both on an incomparable episode about it that people can check out.

It's great. Yeah. Great show. But it's also nice to see that that thing we thought we were witnessing is actually true. That this is a word of mouth growing, spreading success for Apple TV+. And I, I was, it's funny, I was scrolling on Twitter the other day, and I saw somebody with a real contrarian take who said, nobody knows that Apple TV plus exists. And anybody who's talking about Ted Lasso being a word of mouth show, or any of their shows being word of mouth shows is in a tech bubble. And, uh, and

it's not true in the real world. And, you know, honestly, the, their proof of it was that their, their mom or something hadn't heard of it, which is itself just an anecdote and itself, just a bubble. The irony is while I was scrolling, Lauren was texting with a friend of hers who was asking, how do I get Apple TV Plus? Because she wanted to see, she had heard about a show, actually not Ted Lasso, it was Long Way Up. She'd heard about that show and said, we want to watch it. How do I get Apple TV Plus? And the truth is they had an older Samsung TV that didn't support Apple TV Plus stuff because they had heard about a show on Apple TV Plus. So it's, you know, Apple TV Plus, there's still a question of like, how do I get it? And that's hard. And Apple is working on it by making these deals

with Microsoft and others to get on every platform they can possibly be on. But, you know, something is happening. Definitely there have been some breakouts, and that's sort of how you have to grow the service apple one has launched um it was announced on the earnings call which we're going to talk about uh here in a little bit what a world we live in mike bundles apple's bundling now we live in a bundle world it kind of launched a little bit unceremoniously in a couple of ways one no fitness plus yet i'm not sure why they launched without fitness plus if fitness plus is coming but to be honest fitness plus is only available in a couple of territories i think like three or four it's not

many um so maybe that's part of the reason but it still just seems interesting to me like i don't know why there was a pressure to do it now. The fact that you have to do it through like the subscriptions thing, like you go into settings and all of that. I would call this a soft launch. That's what I would call it. Okay. I feel like this is a soft launch.

Yeah, this is fitness plus isn't out yet. And it's not, you know, because I hope this isn't their plan is to do it this way. I assume that Apple one is going to get a lot of promotion and you're going to be able to go somewhere and click and sign up for Apple one. And right now you, you know, you're going to get a red badge and you're setting push. Yeah,

exactly. Right. But the soft launch is the nerds know that it's there. Yep. And, uh, not all of it is even there yet because the fitness plus portion of the bundle isn't actually even there.

So, you know, it's a soft launch. And I think that maybe is the right way to do it, right? Like work maybe some of the bugs out now before major Apple One marketing push happens. Did you sign up? I did. I actually signed up this morning. Oh. And the reason I did it, I was thinking, well, I got the free Apple TV Plus that goes until February.

So do I want to wait? And then I did the math. And I know I did the math on a previous show, but I had to do it again to find out that I'm already paying $30 a month. So what I'm paying now without Apple TV Plus is the price of Apple One Premiere. Apple TV Plus is the price of Apple One Premiere because I'm paying for two terabytes of storage, family music, and Apple Arcade. And that's 30 bucks right there. So now I'm paying the same price. I only get billed once. Apple TV Plus will remain no extra price forever. And I get Apple News Plus, I guess.

So if I want to read some random articles from the Wall Street Journal or a magazine, I can do that too. It's just thrown in and I'll get Fitness Plus when it launches. So for me, it was a no-brainer because I happen to be somebody who's got family plan music, two terabytes of storage, is paying for arcade because that's literally the price of apple one premiere how about you oh yeah i went with the premier one like again i'm already playing for like music and arcade uh and we'll be paying for tv plus and i pay for icloud storage so it's all on the family plan like i had the family plan anyway and this is all rolled into the family plan this is a thing like um me and adina were paying for apple music separately i

think we didn't got the family thing so now we have that all together uh one thing that i actually did like is when i went into my subscription settings um it labeled apple arcade as it kind of says like oh now this is in Apple One so it will be cancelled at the end of the month which I thought was kind of cool I didn't see that for Apple Music but I assume it will be handled similarly like that they're just going to take care of it

and I'm not going to get charged multiple times it is now possible to pay for more than two terabytes of iCloud storage because you can add on additional storage of supplementary charges. This is one of the interesting things that's come out of this. And to try and answer the millions of Ask Upgrade questions we have got and will continue to get, Apple has a support document that tries to assist if you have different accounts for Apple ID and iCloud and how to make this work. I will put a link to that in the show notes. Neither me or Jason, I believe, run our iClouds this way. So we don't have any more information

on how you can make that work or how effective it is, right? Like I just have one Apple ID. Do you? I do. Yeah. So I'll put a link in the show notes to a support document. Hopefully it will be of assistance to you. I think the main thing is you just get to say like,

hey, put my storage here and it will do that to you. I think the main thing is you just get to say like, hey, put my storage here and it will do that for you. So Apple has thought of at least some way to help you through this. This episode is brought to you by SaneBox. Look, when you're thinking about the biggest time waster at work, you don't have to think about it. Most of the time it's email. In fact, a recent study found that almost 50% of the time that managers spend tending to their inboxes is spent on emails that probably never should have been sent to them or that didn't need an answer in the first place. We've all seen these emails, right? You get an email. It's like, why did anybody ever send this to me? What if you could

just press a magic button and never see those time-wasting emails again? Well, that's what SaneBox does. With just a few clicks, SaneBox automatically gets your email under control, filtering out the messages that don't need your focus or your attention. And you don't have to switch email apps to get it to work because it works in whichever email client you're already using. And SaneBox has nifty features like Sane Black Hole, where you can vanquish senders you never want to hear from again, and same reminders for sending email reminders to your future self. One thing that I love is the Sane News filter, which is fantastic. I mean, I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters that my friends and colleagues produce, and I like to read them, but I don't want them in my inbox because I have lots of email that I get on a daily basis,

and I don't want things to get all cluttered up. But with my Sane News filter, it finds those newsletters and moves them for me. And if it doesn't pick something up for whatever reason, or I want something to be put in the Sane News folder, I can just drag it in and then that teaches the system. And then those emails will be automatically sent there in future. Really, really clever stuff. And I love how easy it is. And I love that it follows me around no matter what app I'm using. If I get wild and want to change up my email apps again, everything that I do with SaneBox is going to be there and it's going to be working. See how SaneBox can magically remove distractions from your inbox with a free two-week trial.

Visit SaneBox.com slash UpgradeFM today to start your free trial and get a $25 credit. That's S-A-N-E-B-O-X dot com slash upgrade FM. Our thanks to Sanebox for their support of this show and RelayFM. Okay, so let's talk about Apple's Q4 financial results. Let's do it. Everything is happening at once. Everything is happening. Well, this one seemed like a foregone conclusion until it wasn't and now it's even more interesting than it could we ever could have imagined when this one was already going to be really interesting but it's interesting in a bunch of ways that we never thought it would be this is the quarter where we were going to uh apple was going to take it on the chin

because of covid right no iphone right like that was reason. And no iPhone shipping in a period. And so, of course, it was their largest fourth financial quarter in history. 64.7 billion in revenue up. Only 1%, just a little smidge over last year, which was previously the biggest fourth financial quarter. But yeah, they blew it out. So iPhone was down 20% year over year. It was at 26.8 billion. This was obviously going to happen, right?

There was no iPhone. Apple talked very clearly about how sales of the iPhone were actually up until mid-September, year over year. And what happened in mid-September, again, you have to think about it this way. Year over year measurement means how do we do, obviously, but just to be clear, how do we do this time this year versus this time last year, same time last year. And mid-September last year, Apple sold new iPhones. Mid-September this year, didn't happen, right? The iPhones didn't come until October. And so what they're really saying here is until the point where you have a, what they didn't use the phrase this year, but they usually do, a tough compare, where it's unfavorable to compare this year to last year,

because something big happened last year that didn't happen this year. And that was the release of the iPhone 11 last year. So they didn't do that. And then iPhone sales went down because last year they had new iPhone sales in the last half of September. And this year they didn't. So what they're really saying here is just you wait. And it was going great until then that that until mid September, iPhone sales were actually up from the same time last year. So it's a bad number that's actually not nearly as bad when you look at it. But let's also remember this for next September. Because if Apple releases a new iPhone next September, it'll be a, I don't know, what's the opposite of a tough compare, a good compare, a great compare, because they'll be comparing this year where there was no

iPhone to next year when possibly there will be an iPhone and they'll get a big bump. And I will bet you money that they won't apologize and say, well, this I know the iPhone looks like it did great, but it really didn't do as great as that because of last year. They never are going to call attention to the reverse of the tough compare. But it is true. It seems like the iPhone sales were doing pretty well until they and they were doing pretty well, period. But the comparison to last year uh fell apart once last year's iphone was released mac nine billion dollars up 29 to make an all-time record quarter in 36 years of the mac being on sale 144 quarters this one in 2020 has been the best one just to be clear nine billion dollars in mac

sales is not just an all-time record but the previous all-time record for mac sales was 7.4 billion they beat it by 1.6 billion so this is uh i mean as big a blowout quarter as you could possibly imagine for the Mac, for this platform that is entirely on Intel for the last time. And yeah, big, big Mac quarter, the best. It's kind of nice to see that as somebody who likes the Mac, to see the Mac do this well after 36 years of life, to still have its best days ahead of it, perhaps. And Apple actually said that they were actually supply constrained, and are supply constrained, right?

Yes. Yeah, they couldn't make enough Macs or iPads to sell this quarter. Talking about the iPad, $6.8 billion up 46% year over year. Yeah. I think it's the largest growth, right? Largest percentage year over year growth of any... And I feel like after our several um several years where we were wondering you know we were seeing ipad sales go down and we were wondering sort of what where's it going to land and what's what's that business going to look like going

forward it feels to me like we've got a pretty good idea now that the ipad is a 20 to 30 billion dollar business for apple you know and there's some it's going to be cyclical in some ways right you're going to have new models that come in and drive sales and then it's going to calm down for a little while but if you look over the last like three plus years um i think if you pick any kind of four quarter run it's between 20 and 30 billion and uh so what i want to say is 25 that's the's the average I think it actually is more variable than that but it's basically if you want to average it out a $25 billion a year business and that's a pretty good business for the iPad

pretty good services $14.5 billion up 16% another all-time quarter I think they're going to be set in all-time quarters for a while. Services just goes up. It's going to be news when they don't go up. Yeah, that will be like the iPhone news, right? When the iPhone turned its corner and stopped,

not necessarily going down, but stopped going up so much. You have that debate of where does the growth come from now because it isn't coming from services. Services is not just up every quarter year over year. I believe services for years now has been up sequentially yes which is every quarter is bigger than the last because it's not it's not a seasonal business like most of apple's business because you don't pay a big subscription fee in at christmas and then not pay the rest of the year right you just pay it pay it every month. And so it just kind of continues to grow.

And they said there were a bunch of things related to this all time number of subscriptions ever in Apple for various subscriptions. And that includes all their services and all subscriptions in the app store. Like all of those records also set because services just keeps going up for them. And wearables $7.9 billion of revenue up 20.8%. Yeah, so wearables is bigger than the iPad now. And it is the fastest growing segment.

I said this last quarter, but I'll say it again. It is the fastest growing segment in Apple's product segments. It's, yes, I will grant you about half the size of services, and that's why everybody's looking at services. But if you look at the last couple of years of growth, wearables is growing faster than services. So where does the growth come from for Apple? Services, it's coming from there, but wearables is on the way up. And that is, you know, there's a bunch of stuff in there because it's wearables home and accessories so yeah you know iphone cases are in there and the home pod will be in there but it's

really primarily as far as we can tell driven by airpods and by um by apple watch yeah so you know like this is the story had already written itself right right? Oh, this quarter's going to be a disaster because iPhone. But it's like, what iPhone? Unbelievable that they have managed to swallow the loss of

arguably some of them, maybe their second most important few week period of the year, right? They'll have this one, and I'm sure that there is a couple of weeks around christmas which is we don't know the dates but apple will know it's like these are our two peaks right you would assume for iphone sales right and iphone was 41 of the revenue for this quarter so like it's kind of incredible i mean look this isn't this wouldn't have happened under regular circumstances. Like, if for some reason the iPhone was three weeks late last year,

they would have just had an absolutely horrific quarter. But what's going on here is iPad and Mac sales are booming for a bunch of reasons, right? So you have good, compelling and new hardware in these categories. You have schooling at home, working at home. And one additional thought that I'd had, Jason, is that Apple Silicon could be forcing some companies to make larger buyers now because they want to make sure they get Intel machines for a while. I was talking to somebody on one of the million podcasts that I do. I can't remember, honestly, if it was John Gruber or if it was Dan Morin on Friday, but it was last Friday. And the Osborne effect came up. And what I said was,

and the Osborne effect is the idea that if you pre-announce anything, sales stop on your current thing. And I don't think Apple Silicon has an Osborne effect, or at least if it does, I think it's split between motivating some people to buy now before a transition and other people to wait because they're very excited. In fact, I would wager that most buyers, well, first off, most buyers don't know about Apple Silicon and don't care. And second, those institutional buyers, if I'm buying laptops for my whole staff because of COVID, first off, COVID is probably the prime mover there if you're moving people out of the office. But the secondary mover may be your IT guys like, you know, they're about to do a processor transition. And do we really want to have, you know, these new laptops

that we have no idea how they're going to work? Why don't we just buy them now? It's like if we want to buy a MacBook Pro in three months, is it going to work for us? Yeah. What's it going to be? There's more uncertainty there. I do think this is... So if you want to question Apple's 2021 financials, the question to ask is, how much iPad and Mac sales that have happened this year are deferred purchases, are purchases that would have otherwise been made in 2021 and have been moved forward into 2020 because of COVID-19. That laptop that you weren't going to replace for a year or two got replaced now because all of a sudden it's important that you have a

good laptop at home because you're working at home or because your kid needs a laptop now. And that laptop that your kid used occasionally is not good enough. I think there's some of that. And the question is how much? I think though that the other question is, has COVID-19 changed the world in a way that creates more laptops and iPads in use than they had before. And the reason I say that is just, I can also imagine that there are people who used to get by with one computer at home that was shared,

that they now have to buy more because everybody's at home. Or the kids used to use your computer and you didn't need it much for work, so it was fine. But now you need it for work and they need one for school. And what are you going to do? And so you buy a computer for them. And it increases the total number. Even there, though, you're probably going to be looking at a reduction in sales. I think it would not be unreasonable to say that at some point next year, iPad and Mac sales are going to look bad year over year, even if they're actually pretty good historically, just because I do think that a lot got packed into this year where people are like, oh, geez, I really do need this laptop for my home because of my kids or because of my work or whatever. So we'll have to see about that. But it's really great for Apple right now. And what's also interesting is the analysts on the phone call asked Apple if they thought that those sales would go down in the holiday quarter because of the phenomenon I just described. And Apple said, nope, we think

we're going to grow double digits in those categories next quarter, too. So if there is a fall coming where Apple, you know, we're all going to point back to 2020 and say, yeah, you know, it's natural to come down off that high. They couldn't keep selling that level forever. That may happen, but it doesn't seem to be happening in the holiday quarter. No, like Apple seem and like from comments that tim cook was making as well right like they seem to believe that this will not be a fluke and that we're going to stabilize to a different normality afterwards you know like i don't remember the exact words that he used but as long as like we're just going to bounce back into the regular working patterns that people had like that's just not going to be the way it is anymore

there will be an element of working from home or working from different people had. That's just not going to be the way it is anymore. There will be an element of working from home or working from different locations that we didn't have before because people are going to start to get used to that. Companies will get used to the cost savings that they can see. One of the longer lasting effects from COVID-19 is going to be working patterns

for many people in office environments. There's going to be significant long-term ramifications from that. We can argue about how many, and nobody really knows, but I can't see the argument that it's all just going to go back to the way it was. That's not going to happen. It will not. I mean, because there have been so many companies, especially in the mean especially in the tech space right that have already said like all right we've changed our policy going forward and now people can work from home if they want to which was not a thing that they had before even apple right have been making comments around the fact that this has worked better for them than they thought it would and here's my quick argument because i i know there's

the argument and i've made it before which is there's some boss somewhere who's like, but I want to see my people. And I get that. And that is definitely going to be a thing to pull people back into the office and stories about the magics of collaboration and serendipity, which I admit is a thing, but also can be a thing online. But what I wanted to say is never underestimate the power of the CEO and the CFO looking at the money they're spending on rent and saying, we don't need to spend money on rent anymore. That because rent, especially if you're in a big city somewhere, rent is super expensive. And I say that as somebody who worked South Market in San Francisco, super expensive. And I say that as somebody who worked South of Market in San Francisco. Super expensive. And if, I mean, I was making these arguments 10 years ago at IDG, but if they're looking at their office space in downtown San Francisco and not saying, why are we doing this again?

And then I would be surprised. And I think in a lot of cases, the CFO saying, no, we need to do remote work because do you realize how much we're spending on rent? May trump the argument of the manager saying, but I want to see my people because serendipity at the coffee machine. So we'll see. But I think, you know, the answer is going to be some change will happen. We don't know whether it's 80% or 20%, but, you know, somewhere in there. So we'll see how that affects Apple's business. But it does, I think, affect the profile of what kind of products get sold.

All right. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at KiwiCo. While the holidays may look a little different this year, the season of giving is in full swing. And if you have a child, grandchild, niece, nephew, or little cousin on your holiday list, you might think it's impossible to get a kid to put down the video game console that they really want, you know, maybe to do something different for their brain, a different activity. Well, it's possible thanks to KiwiCo. KiwiCo delivers hands-on science and art projects for kids of all

ages. Everything needed to spark curiosity and kindle creative thinking, which makes KiwiCo the perfect gift. With KiwiCo, kids can engineer a walking robot, design a paint pendulum, conduct bubbling chemistry experiments, and more, all from the comfort of home. Your kid can get hands-on science, art, and geography projects

delivered to their door every month. While they might be unable to go to fun places for the holidays, you can gift them an awesome experience with KiwiCo. It's hard to find new creative ways to keep kids busy or stretching their brain, but KiwiCo does that work for you. So you can spend more quality time tackling projects together and get real high quality engineering science and art projects for children and the kids at heart as well, because KiwiCo have boxes available for everybody. One of the things that I

love about KiwiCo is how well everything's packaged, laid out, and how the instructions are put together. So you're not spending time being frustrated about the project that you're supposed to be working on together. It's actually something that you can enjoy whilst also having a little challenge. And I think that's super awesome. And I've loved putting these together with a little one in my family as well. KiwiCo is redefining learning with hands-on projects that build confidence, creativity, and critical thinking skills. There's something for every kid or kid at heart at KiwiCo. Give 50% off your first month plus free shipping on any crate line

with the code UPGRADE at KiwiCo.com. That's 50% off your first month at KiwiCo.com. That's K-I-W-I-C-O.com and the promo code UPGRADE. Our thanks to KiwiCo for their support of this show and RelayFM. It is time for the event draft. Surprise! It's a draft. So we'll start with the rules. We're going to do eight rounds, 16 overall picks,

five rounds on Mac picks, three rounds on non-Mac picks. The winner of the previous draft gets first pick. Surprise, surprise, that's Jason Snell. For an item to count, it must be either clearly announced on stage or on a slide during the presentation. Stephen Hackett will adjudicate in case of a scoring stalemate between the two of us, but we will score ourselves. No half points are awarded. No points for pre-announced or incredibly obvious items.

The points awarded on the episode are final, and there will be a tiebreaker question as well. I believe we're probably going to redo our tiebreaker question from last time but we'll get to that in a moment 2020 results so far have been wwdc september and october all taken home by mr jason snell so uh in this november event your boy here is fighting for some honor to try and not have this be an absolute whitewash for the year. Yeah. No, it's good. Is it good? I don't know.

I mean, it's great. It's great. But also, I like that you, I appreciate, one, that you get a chance to reclaim some honor. And two, that if you do, it will leave me as still being the winner. I'm sure you also appreciate the opportunity to take four for four. You know, that would be great. But honestly, I am also concerned. I'm not going to throw it or anything.

I'm going to compete here. But if you get it, I'm going to be happy for you because this isn't the rookies. We're gentlemen over here. There has never been a November event in the history of the draft. So I cannot go on previous results. This is a first. Uncharted territory.

Yep. The winner of this event has the title of the only winner of a November event. The November draft champion. Chairman? No. No. No. Tiebreaker question.

We're going to do an over-under. Yeah. And I think that we decided that you would pick the duration of the event, that you would pick the number, and then I get over or under. Yeah. 60 minutes, Mike. Gosh darn you, Jason Snell. You picked the absolute worst.

That's my job! I'm going to say over 60 minutes. Okay. All right. All right right i'm looking for like 61 minutes here it might be it might be just exactly like that that's kind of what i'm going for over over 60 minutes so so if it is more than 60 zero zero mike gets it i'm actually gonna go out on a limb here this is not a prediction so i actually think this will be the longest of the three because I imagine many more demos and much more technical information

than we have seen in any of the other events. And more software demos and stuff like that. And even going over Big Sur again, I can imagine doing so. That's kind of what I'm thinking. But just to be clear, 60 minutes and zero seconds. So if it's, when I say it's more than 60 minutes, if it's 60 minutes and 10 seconds, you get it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the 60 minute mark, right? Like that's, that's, that's where it's at. That's right. I don't want to win this one with 60 minutes and 32 seconds because that was not the intent. That's more than an hour.

You get it. Okay. Should we start? I guess we're going to do so. Yeah. So five Mac, three non-Mac. That's what we decided. That's what we decided.

And you get first. And I get first pick. Oh, boy. We're just making this up as we go along. So just for some clarity, this clarity a little behind the scenes we have had a document that we have made reference to over the last couple of months of like this big document that we create which is full of draft picks that we put in and then we pick from those and the thing that's been interesting this year is we created a document three months ago and have been reusing sections of it because we have had some version of these Mac picks since September in this document, right?

Because we've been waiting for this to occur. So we were about to start the show today and the Apple event – we start at 9 a.m. Pacific. The Apple event invite came out at 901 so we had enough time to go in so we basically spent half an hour putting and fleshing out these picks um and to get to where we are right now uh so this is this is the least preparation we've had for a draft ever and we'll see what that will end up doing. So with my first pick, I'm going to go, because it's the first pick, with one that's a pretty easy one.

Although, again, there's a chance that it's wrong, which is first Apple Silicon Mac is a laptop. This was my first pick too. Yeah, that's why I had to do it. Had to do it. Yeah, I think there are rumors about an Apple Silicon iMac, and I think that makes sense, especially since the small iMac is in desperate need of an

update. The idea that Apple is going to refashion the iMac and we're going to get a new iMac design and it's going to happen with Apple Silicon. It's going to be a different size, like a 24-inch iMac or something like that. Great. Love it. Rumors suggest that's a 2021 thing. I think it's possible possible but it's more

likely to me that this is going to be a laptop of some sort it feels to me like that is um for a first release apple's work with apple silicon up to now on the ipad suggests that making something that will work in a laptop design should be uh well within reach for them so that's my that's my guess and people who say that the developer uh kit was uh the first apple silicon mac it doesn't count no it doesn't count but uh that's that's what i mean here it also means i suppose that if there are if they announce two if the first one is not a laptop i don't get it but if they announce two and the first one is a laptop i do i don't know if they have an iMac and a laptop and they show the iMac first. But like, I think it's pretty clear.

I mean, it seems like a foregone conclusion that there will be an Apple Silicon laptop. What that's going to be, we'll find out. But it's very clear that that's going to be in the first selection because it makes so much sense. Yeah, it feels like it to me. My first pick is that Apple's Silicon Macs are significantly faster than what they replace. Now, significantly, you know, we may have to have some discussion around that, but I

think we can come to a decision on that pretty easily especially because look as we know uh all apple have to do is put the current a14 in uh like a macbook and you know it's going to blow it away especially i mean like if if they do create a macbook i mean no matter what they put in in there it will be faster than what it is replacing, which is the now dead 12-inch MacBook. Yeah, but even if they... The way I'm reading this is they're going to make some speed claims. Yes. And they're not going to be minor.

No. And since this isn't the Rickys, we're just going to leave it at this and we'll agree what's significant next time. Because I think we'll know. And honestly, I don't see how apple would not do this they're not going to make claims that aren't significant right they're going to say this is 20 faster than something yeah they're not going to be like oh this thing it does about as much

as the last one because if they make no speed claims at all you don't get it right but i think they will make speed claims and uh yeah because i. If they don't make speed claims, I think they maybe need to reassess what they're doing. Cancel the event. Cancel. Cancel. Yeah, exactly. I'm not sure that that would be the right move. I mean, because look,

this is the coming out party, right? For what they can do here. They need to make sure that they're picking whatever it is they're picking to ensure that they can say, don't worry, this stuff is so much faster it's so fast that when you run it in emulation it doesn't even feel any different

we're good to go here yep, makes sense which is the second pick oh boy I am going to say Apple Silicon Mac has the same design as the Mac it replaces. Now, let me explain what I mean by this. I don't think what we're going to see is a new Mac with a new design. And the MacBook is the one that we keep talking about because there's the old

MacBook and the new MacBook. What I really mean here is I think this is going to be a reassuring product that looks like an Intel Mac but isn't. Yeah. And not a we've totally rethought what a laptop could be.

Like even if they announced a MacBook Pro and it was a 14 inch macbook pro you would still get it as long like it's basically what we're looking for here is that the first apple silicon macs have the same design language no big design deviation right that's that's like a 24 inch iMac with a new look i think we're going to know it when we see it here right like either it's going to look like any other Mac and you would never know that it had Apple Silicon in it or Apple has said, nope, the Apple Silicon Macs are totally different. And I'm picking the first one for this first round that there'll be a little more reassuring.

Again, maybe not. These are not guaranteed, but I think that that's more likely right now. As much as I want big, bold, and new design changes, I'm not confident we're going to get those right now. So I'm following along with you here, which is why for my second pick, I'm going with Apple Silicon Max has significantly more battery life. Yeah. Because this is one of the reasons to keep them looking similar and not making something that deviates because then you can have these things look similar but have different internals.

When they have different internals, you could maybe make the battery bigger or keep the battery the same and now it's much more energy efficient. But we've even heard about it on this very show that Apple Silicon is about energy efficiency, right? That's one of the things that it's good at and one of the things that it's best at, right?

We've had Apple tell us that on this show. And so I think that that is going to translate into the laptops having much, much better battery life than what they currently have. I think it's completely logical. I guess my only question would be, what if Apple... We don't know how macOS runs on these. And we don't...

I would expect it to. I think it's a good choice. The reason that I don't think it's a gimme is because it's Apple and battery life. You know, Apple makes claims. They make all sorts of different claims. reason that i don't think it's a gimme is because it's apple and battery life you know apple makes claims they make all sorts of different claims it's possible that they focused on performance and not battery life it's also possible that they focused on both or that they focused on battery life over performance we don't know but i have a hard time seeing them go to arm laptops and not um and not pump up the battery life claim.

I have a hard time seeing it. Because it's right there. So I think it's a good pick. Yeah, it is. Yeah. All right, round three. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

I'm going to go with a visit to the chip design lab. Okay. Seems like it's going to be one. This was in our Mac list, even though it's a little bit of a stagecraft thing i i think we're going to go back into the chip design lab place that we've seen before and hear some talk about apple silicon and specifically what they're doing with these systems and how it's building on the legend of apple silicon or whatever i do think that that we're going to go back down there just seems like a natural to me. We've been down there a couple of times already, so I feel

like we'll go back. But again, no guarantees of that, right? They did that at WWDC. I would like to believe that they're going to do a deep dive about Apple Silicon, but who knows? And they could do it outside on the rainbow stage or something, and then I don't get it.

It seems like they're going to go to the lab, though. Yeah, I would think so. iOS app on a Mac demo is my third pick. I think we're going to see a lot of this. I think this would be, personally, I think this would be a more extended demo of showing iOS apps, a bunch of them, iOS apps running in conjunction with Mac apps. You've got multiple windows.

You know, I think this is going to be a probably Craig Federighi-led decent demo, something maybe more akin to what you would see at like a WWDC or a more typical event, right, where someone would go and do the demo on the side of the stage type thing. I think that this is something that deserves it. And if they really want to sell everybody on, they should really show this running well.

I expect we'll see some third parties here and stuff like that. But, you know, in the same way, like this isn't it, but like I bet they're going to have someone, you know, they'll do a demo, they'll go to the same way, like this isn't it, but like I bet they're going to have someone, you know, they'll do a demo. They'll go to the app store. Right. They'll download like, oh, look, all of our apps are all in one place. You just download them so quickly. And then, you know, like they're going to I think they're going to do the whole nine yards when it comes to this, because this is monumental. This is monumental. This is so incredibly important.

Like for me, personally, like this is one of, if not the most important thing that they would show off at an event like this, because it completely changes what a Mac is capable of, right? It can do anything at that point. I'm very excited about this feature, Jason.

Like really, I am. And I think they're going to give it a lot of time. Sounds good. I think so too. This is one of our late ads that we did before the show when I was trying to think of things that would be in the presentation. And I liked this one.

I think that if you're going to have iOS apps running on Apple Silicon Macs, you need to show that. Be the first one to show that and how it works. And I think that's a natural, great pick. All right. silicon max you need to show that be the first one to show that and how it works and i think that's a natural great pick all right i am going round four to pick i want to do one about the about the processor branding okay but i i don't know what the processor branding is going to be there's been some rumors and stuff about about some namings so like i'll just lay these out there in case people don't

know there was a china times report um citing supply chain sources uh about the the chips being based on the a14 um and that there would be three overall variants of the A14, two of them would power the Macs. The A14X would include the iPad Pro and a laptop, most likely the MacBook, and an A14T for an iMac, with reports that this would also get an Apple-made GPU, but may not be available until the first half of 2021.

I'm saying all of this, but it may or may not affect the draft right now. But yeah, so, but you know, the thing that is interesting for me from here is if they make a MacBook Pro, what chip does that get? Does that also get the T-chip, but it just doesn't have the discrete GPU? I don't know. But yeah, that's what I wanted to just get that out there in case people aren't familiar with that report. And I think my struggle with this is what I want to have happen versus what I think will happen. And what I think will happen, and this goes into some of my other picks too, is I think Apple is going to set a lower bar for itself this time out and release a laptop that's using the A14X, which will also be used in an iPad Pro. So I'm going to pick that. Not high confidence here. I just like it better than

my other options, which is that Apple's going to throw away the A14 branding or that it's going to be like an A14T or something like that. So I'm going to say A14X in that it's a concept that we're comfortable with and that it will probably also be in the iPad Pro, whether that's introduced next week or in the spring. For those who don't know, the A14X is the iPad chip. It has traditionally had eight cores, four cores that are performance cores and four that are efficiency cores. That's more cores than are in the iPad Air and the iPhone versions, the A14. So more cores means more power. And Apple with the A12X boasted about how the iPad Pro in 2018 was already faster than almost every Windows laptop.

So an A14X in a Mac laptop would be faster than almost every laptop that's out there, including most of Apple's. And that's probably good enough. And then they save some space to unveil an even more powerful Apple Silicon chip next year sometime. So not super confident, but confident enough to pick it over the other options. And I did want to pick a branding choice here. I think one of the things that will be important to remember and like just to think about going forward is to not refer to the X chip as the iPad chip that the Mac is also getting, because that's obviously not what Apple will be doing. It is the chip that the iPad chip that the Mac is also getting, because that's obviously not what Apple will be doing. It is the chip that the iPad Pro and an Apple Silicon Mac will get.

It's not like they design it for the iPad Pro and then move it over. It's just like, no, this is a really powerful chip and we put it in a couple of different machines. It's the legacy and the X basically means, you know, more cores and then there may be other means. I think it's entirely possible that Apple is going to unveil new branding for the A series or the A series on the Mac and call it something other than Apple Silicon. But at least I would like that.

I think that would be fun to have some new brand name. I think Apple Silicon is a thing that's going to remain just because they have started calling all of their chips apple silicon yes i i feel like it feels a little bit more like this is yeah like this is what they've decided and they like it and it's got their name in it and they made it so why wouldn't they do that yeah it's apple through and through so yeah anyway what do you have all right i'm gonna make our first pick for what we actually think one of these Macs is going to be. Yeah.

Return of the MacBook. Return of the MacBook. Now, so you mean... A non-pro. It's going to be named MacBook. This is where I struggle. This is where I struggle, right? And I don't know if you've been...

I'm sure you've been thinking about this too yeah but like this is that that classic like conundrum we get ourselves into on this show where we say surely now if you're ever going to rebrand these things would be the time to do it and the reason that made me think of this was i was listening to a really excellent recent episode of mac power users where they, I think the episode was called Grading the Intel Era, where David and Stephen were looking back at how the whole Intel era went, culminating with the transition.

And that was when they changed the names, right? Or am I thinking back further? Nope. It was Intel intel transition and everything went from powerbook to macbook and power mac to to mac pro yeah so everything changed then and so history could dictate that now would be the time and i could imagine apple book but i'm not convinced of that well i i think you've got two ways to go with this pick. You can either hinge it on the MacBook and that that name is coming back, or you can

take the name out of your pick and make it about a, uh, you know, a light, you know, a light laptop that's smaller than the MacBook Air. Like return of a MacBook style computer. Style return of a MacBook style laptop. Yeah yeah that's what we know what that means that means that if it's a macbook air you don't get it if it's just a macbook air you don't get it and i don't think that that is it right i think i don't apple no uh they look they tried messing around with the macbook air before and it bit them badly leave that computer i would like to believe that and it's put up the x files i want to believe uh i would like to believe that all of our wondering in the

last five years about the macbook turns out to be absolutely true that the macbook was always going to be the vehicle in which apple brought an ARM chip to the Mac because it always looked like it. It always looked like it shouldn't have an Intel processor in it. It should have an ARM processor in it. And I would love for that story of a product that I always really liked, but was always disappointing. I would love for it to come back around and suddenly make sense with a new 12-inch MacBook that is powered by Apple Silicon and is faster than any existing... Imagine a MacBook that's faster than all currently shipping MacBook Pros.

How about that? Oh my God, can you imagine? That would be the biggest troll move. I'd love to see that. You didn't like? Well, now it's the best one. Oh my God, Jason, that would be so much fun i would love that i would really really love that seems possible seems possible seems possible oh man that you've just put a really fun idea in my head now i like that i like the thought of that very very much

all right what's your this is your final pick in the Mac round. In the Mac round. I, oh boy, there are some choices here. None of them. I love, um,

I am, um, oh boy. Let's say big sir. Release date named. I had this, I had this, say Big Sur release date named. I had this. I had this.

Right? That they'll say, you know, and they'll have Mega West Big Sur, which is great, and it's shipping on November 27th or November 20th or whenever they say. November 25th. Happy Thanksgiving. November 26th.

You get a turkey and Big Sur. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but I feel like this is the time to say, Big Sur's coming out. Yeah. All right. I think that's going to happen

because where is that operating system? 11.0.1 is now in beta, right? This operating system has spent a very long time in the oven. It's on the MacBook. Yeah, it needs to come out now. I've seen a lot of developers talking about this, which is really interesting. And I believe that you and John Gruber

were talking about this too, that these types of gaps between iOS and macOS might not be possible anymore if iOS apps will run on the Mac. They may have to release them at the same time or much closer. Or they may be mandatory in some ways for the initial release because you might want to batten down the hatches on iOS first. And then my point, and I was just thinking about it the other day,

and then I talked to John about it, is once macOS can run iOS apps, macOS development is directly tied to iOS development in a way it never was before. Because you're running apps that are requiring a specific version of iOS on macOS. And that means that even more than before, they need to run in tandem. That doesn't necessarily mean macOS and iOS get released at the same time, but it does probably mean that macOS has to move in lockstep with iOS and would want to, right? If there are iOS bugs that need to be fixed, those are bugs that need to be fixed in essentially the version of iOS that's inside of macOS that runs those apps. So I would think that we're going to have a lot of weird compatibility conversations about that,

but it's just something to keep in mind that they are sharing an app platform as of Apple Silicon. They are running apps, macOS, Big Sur on Apple Silicon, and iOS are running the same apps. So they're sharing that platform. And that has ramifications for OS releases. I think, though, it also may mean you see what we've been seeing all along, which is you put it out for the phone and the iPad. And then you also are working on macOS, and you make sure that macOS gets the compatibility updates. But you could leave that a os gets the the compatibility updates uh but you you could leave that a little bit and then mac os people just be sad like oh i want to use that new version of that app it's like not not yet and app developers are going to have to think about that

too right so it's it's going to be a new world but it's something to keep in mind that that they are they are interlinked in a way that they they't been up to now. My final pick? A new Max ships in November. I was really torn on this one. I don't think they would do it now if they weren't shipping until December. Well, okay. So it's an event on November 10th. So the normal thing would be a Friday pre-order and shipping on the

20th. Although with Max, sometimes it's not even that. Sometimes it's just like they're shipping Friday. Yeah, it's like, off you go. Available now. I think your choice is the most likely, but we did have ships in December, and there's a part of me that thinks everybody's

going to get really excited, and then they're going to say, and congratulations, you'll be able to get them December 4th. And be like, oh, all right. Okay, I guess. But I hope you're right. I hope that it's a November ship for this stuff. And if, again, if there are multiple ship dates, the pick here is something has to ship in November. That's all.

I just think that, like, if they were doing December, they could have also just done this in December. Like the usual rules do not apply here, right? Like they could just run this event whenever they wanted to. And I think you're right. I think they chose it now for a reason. I think it's more likely than not that this Apple Silicon Mac that we're assuming is going to ship no later than November 20th. assuming, is going to ship no later than November 20th. Because I could have imagined them just as easily, if this is coming out in December,

announcing the event next Tuesday, running the event the 17th, right? I think they do it now so they can have them out before Thanksgiving. That's kind of like my, that's the assumption I've been working on this whole time. So it just makes sense to me that they would ship something in november yeah makes sense this episode is brought to you by our friends over at squarespace you can make your next move with squarespace they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project you can grab a unique domain name customize a beautiful award-winning template and so so much more. No matter what type of product you want to make, Squarespace is the place for you to put it available to everyone. They are the all-in-one platform that lets you put your next website online. It's so simple to do. There's nothing to install. There's nothing to patch or upgrade.

They take care of all of that stuff so you don't have to. Squarespace have got you covered, and they have your back with 24-7 award-winning customer support. If you need any help, they've got the people there on hand to help you out and get you sorted. I've been using Squarespace for over 10 years now, I think.

It seems about right. I think longer. When I have an idea for a project, I just want to make it available for people to check out. So I will just set up a Squarespace website. So easy to do. I have complete control. I can customize it however I want. I can use their great iOS apps to manage and edit all this stuff now. It's super fantastic. If you want to make a blog, portfolio, an online store, site for your business, site for your brand, site for an event, no matter what it is, they have the tools there. You can customize

one of their templates so you can start from there. You can customize one of their templates, so you can start from scratch. You can use it as just a way to get some ideas. Whatever you want to do, it's a super flexible system that allows you to go in, make it look exactly how you like, and publish it to the world. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can sign up for a trial today with no credit card required

just by going to squarespace.com upgrade. When you decide to sign up, use the offer code upgrade to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash upgrade and the code upgrade to get 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Okay, so we now go to our three rounds of non- Mac picks.

Yeah, that's going to be hard, but it's also going to be wacky. So that's okay. Yeah, because we both feel pretty unsure of anything other than Macs at this event now. Yeah, that's one of the we both feel pretty unsure of anything other than max at this event now yeah i think that's one of the things is would there be a a different ipad i think probably not because we already had ipad at an event uh but it's not possible i mean it's not impossible there are no rumors about it but you never know there have been rumors about some other products

that could get rolled into this event or not um i'm going to start with some stagecraft though because i like the stagecraft and i am going to say craig federighi presents that there will be something related to mac os and big sir and how it works that we'll hear we'll hear craig's voice yeah i i had this on. I've even already spoke about the fact where I think he's going to be, right? Like, Craig is going to be a part of this. I am very confident of that. We have not seen him at any of the

other events recently, other than just, like, in passing. But I think this is going to be, like, big software time. There's going to be a lot of stuff that are going to be showing off, so I expect Craig to be here. I'm going to be a lot of stuff that are going to be showing off so i expect uh craig to be here i'm going to pick a similar pick uh i believe that we will see the return of johnny sruji um to speak or present at this event that was my other choice right was was johnny sruji you know they could have someone else representing the chip team but i feel like

on a launch like this how could you not have the guy who's in charge of apple's whole chip team yeah i've been thinking about this move i think the reason that they've had other people talking about the a14 is so they will have johnny back um to do the apple silicon unveiling you know so they're actually spreading it around giving other people the opportunity to to show off what they've been working on but i think for something as monumental as this, Shuriji should have his time. He should have kind of what he deserves. Like I run this thing forever and now here we are. I want to be the one to show it off to the world.

And I understand that. I think now we're getting into crazy town. So do you want to just like what you got? Yeah. I'm going to say, oh oh boy it is so hard now um i'm gonna throw i'm gonna throw the over the ear headphones in oh okay yeah i'm gonna throw them in why not it might happen i want the most and it would be a product they could sell a lot at the holidays, right? Which might be a way to get it. I also am not entirely convinced that this is not 100% a Mac event,

but these events are new and they've done split events before where they've, you know, HomePod. And so maybe again, maybe again. So I'll throw them in there. I have no great confidence about this, but we're not allowed to pick more Mac picks. So there we are. I did just have the thought that this event

will run before the iPhones come out. The new iPhones, that's true. That's true. I don't think anything of that, but it is just something that I've realized. Like that's kind of like just a funny thought really to me. So much going on. I'm gonna pick the apple tag product to be unveiled yeah there we go i mean we'll pick this forever until they do it i like that you you and i both have like the mystery product these are like cryptids they're you know bigfoot sighting of oh it's the

apple tag there it goes oh Oh, over ear headphones. Will we be right? Will we be wrong? Flip a coin and the coin will land on its side and we're both wrong. What I want the most is the over ear headphones, but I keep seeing reports of delays on that product, which makes me nervous that it's going to be now. But it is what I want. And I do believe if this is a product they have available they will put it on sale because it will do well for them I think

if they can do it for the holiday season oh so I feel like we should have put more people in this category of predicting people I have two possible picks and I don't believe either of them so yeah I have two possible picks and I don't believe either of them. Actually, there's a whole set of stuff that I've just thought of that we haven't

included, which is anything services or anything Apple TV related. We didn't even consider that when we were putting together our hasty draft selection. I just don't think it's going to happen. Honestly, that could be like a February event at this point. If you want to pick a services related thing um let's say i i'm gonna

oh no i i'm gonna i'm gonna put jaws i think we've heard from Jaws and we're not going to hear Jaws again, but I'm going to put Jaws Presents down that Jaws will say a word. Presents by presents, I literally mean we will hear Jaws' voice, Greg Jaws' voice at some point. He is the head of product marketing. I actually don't think we'll hear from him. Although I do know he loves the Mac. I think they'll use other product marketing people to talk about this. But I'll throw JAWS in there. I'll take a flyer on that for my keynote bingo. Here's a question for you. Yeah. Because I'm seeing Carl is mentioning Lisa Jackson in the Discord.

Do you think they'll include power adapters with the Macs? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do too. Because you need more power for those. But if you want to pick a Lisa Jackson appearance to break some news to us gently, you can do that. I would be fine. I'm going with new AirPods model.

Okay. That's AirPods, not the over-the-ear. Yeah, it's everything but over-the-ear, so we don't double up on our picks here. But this is like a new AirPods, you know, a new model of what we, kind of the stuff that we've seen in the past. Basically anything except the over-ears.

I just can, you know, AirPods Pro 2, new AirPods 3. Also, there is, there's been some rumors and some interesting reports of like an airpods case that can be charged by magsafe from a phone did you see this there was an fcc report that apple had filed saying that a future apple accessory could be powered by magsafe and wouldn't that be interesting if it was like reverse charging for AirPods? So I could imagine that as a product.

And so I could also imagine them doing what they did when the AirPods went chi and they had a new model and they also introduced a new wireless charging case. Fascinating. So that is the draft.

Do you have anything else? Probably not. But did you have anything you didn't pick? Yeah, you know, so one that I put in that made us both laugh, because again, we were just assembling this on the fly this morning, is Intel not mentioned. Like, what if they just don't mention Intel? Just don't.

Like, say, we're moving on. We're never looking back. I don't think this will happen't like say we're moving on we're never looking back i don't think this will happen probably because of rosetta which we actually had on the list of demo of rosetta 2 which i think is also a pretty good bet that they'll probably mention that this is compiled for intel and look it runs great but you know i think it's worth saying would they even mention intel maybe maybe like that would be the ultimate uh out, right? Like we've moved on. We don't even say its name anymore.

It's like the John Draper thing, right? The John Draper meme. Like I think about you all the time. I don't even think about you at all. I was thinking that we might see, and I believe we will, but I just didn't pick it, demos of apps running in Rosetta 2. Yeah, that's when they'll talk about Intel probably. I think there'll be a game demo too, right?

Yep, I have that. The inevitable interminable game demo that shows you how impressive performance is on the Mac. Look how great these Apple Arcade games that are made for iOS run on the new Macs. So the thing that I want desperately and that I didn't pick is touchscreen. Because I think once you're running iOS apps, it really makes you ask the question, why not have a multi-touch screen for the iOS apps?

And I think that the Mac may yet get a touchscreen, but this feels early, right? feels early right this feels like maybe this is the continuity uh rather than introducing new modes of working uh phase of the apple silicon transition and that we'll have a chance to open up the can of worms on that later yeah i i you know i feel like the person who might be the most upset if this is the case is actually john gruber now because i keep hearing him mention like this is going to be the most upset if this is the case is actually John Gruber now. Because I keep hearing him mention, like, this is going to be big. This is going to be really big. And I don't know how big it's going to be at first, right?

I think it is going to be big in a long sweep of history of the Mac. Yes. the thing that keeps coming back to me is this idea is apple going to make this transition this big sweeping move where suddenly everything is different or is apple is the two-year period incremental the two-year period is not just we're going to release systems over two years that replace intel but the two-year period is also we're going to roll out new things, new tech that transforms the Mac. But we're going to do it over that period. And so even if touchscreen Macs are coming, maybe you don't start with that. Now, that adds complexity later where you're like, oh, touchscreens are on Apple Silicon Macs, except for the ones that it's not at the beginning. But I do think, and maybe they won't come at all, and that'll be Apple just sort of frustrating everybody.

But I do think that they are probably coming sometime, somewhere. And the question is, is it going to be on every Mac or not? And is it going to be right away or are we going to have to wait? But if that MacBook has a touchscreen, then that will be awesome. And I hope it does because, again, it's running ios apps it'd be awfully nice if you could reach up and scroll those apps that would be cool i think i think big big big big changes are coming but i i i can imagine a like sliding scale over the next couple of years. And we already have cursor interaction on iOS, right? With the iPad and therefore using,

having that be essentially what's happening on the Mac in the meantime, makes sense. You could do that. It would be fine. So that's the draft. That's it. As always, we'll have a scorecard in the show notes. Scorecard might not be available straight away, again,

because we have to get our wonderful Zach Knox to put that together for us. And Zach had less, I think, less notice than we did even about the event today. But it will be in there before the next episode. So you can maybe go pick it up before the event. before the next episode so you can maybe go pick it up uh before the event uh obviously we will be recording on tuesday the 10th um and we'll be streaming live on tuesday the 10th yes after the event time to be determined but after the event it might be right after the event it might be a few hours it will likely be with a bit of a gap uh in between like it was last time at least um we'll see it's a very busy time and and there are a lot of other things in between like it was last time at least. We'll see. It's a very busy time

and there are a lot of other things going on post-event that sometimes force us to be not hot right after but after a few hours. It will be that day. It will be within a few hours. Yes, it will be post-event. Keep an eye out on Twitter and the Upgrade

Twitter account and on our Twitter accounts as well. We'll be publishing that. We're in the RelayFM members Discord. We'll post it there as well when we're about to go live. But if you don't want to listen live or can't listen live, that episode will be out on Tuesday. Mere hours after the event has ended. Basically, we will do

the thing. I'll put it together and post it. So you will get our fresh takes as soon as possible. So yeah. Wow. We did it soon as possible. So yeah, wow. We did it, Jason Snell. We did it. Emergency draft. Can't believe it.

Handled. Okay, so if you want to find show notes for this week's episode, you can go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 324. Of course, Jason will be following along and reporting on everything over the next couple of weeks that unfolds. You can go to sixcolors.com and you can follow Jason online. He is at Jason L, J-S-N-E-L-L. If you want to follow that, I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

Thank you so much to Squarespace, KiwiCo, and SaneBox for their support of this show. And if you are a member and support this show as well, thank you so much. If you would like to get ad-free longer episodes of Upgrade every single week, go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up there. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley. Thank you.