Upgrade - 329: The Stale Hot Dog Industry

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Warner Media is moving all its 2021 releases to HBO Max, but what will that mean for the future of the movie industry? Will streaming reign supreme, or is there a future for movie theaters? Meanwhile, a new Bloomberg report gives some shape to the future of Apple's M-series processors--it turns out the M stands for "more cores."

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 329 and today's show is brought to you by doordash kiwi co and uni pizza ovens my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by the one and only jason snell hi jason snell it's me me the one and only me hello mike. Hi, Jason Snell. It's me. Me, the one and only me. Hello, Mike Hurley. It's good to join the one and only Mike Hurley. Do you know what I've realized? I've realized this because I edit Upgrade Plus, right? So I go in and I remove the ads from the episode.

So when I do that, I get to hear a lot when I start a new topic with you, right? And I have noticed that i typically will say like jason snell and then introduce the topic i don't know why i call you jason snell all the time i don't know i don't know either it's just a thing that you're one of those two name people to me you know like that's just like it's like a thing um i don't know why i do it uh i don't know why I do it I don't ever think of you as Jason Snell I'm one of those two name people I think

when we have kind of regular conversation I call you Jason Snell no I don't I call you Jason I just did it then so who knows I don't know why you do that Mike Hurley very strange who could tell we have a hashtag Jason Snell talk question

thank you hashtag Jason Snell talk question. Thank you. From SirHat. Hashtag two-name people talk. Which new color do you want or which color should return to a model of iPhone, iPad, or MacBook? So if you could choose, Jason, which color would you pick to appear on a future product? which color would you pick like to appear on a future product uh i would i just bought a space gray macbook air and i've said this before i'll say it again i want a blue computer i want a blue computer maybe an orange computer would be good too i would like colors to return to the computers like the macbook air would be fun just blue anodized aluminum. Do it.

It's done. I would take that in an iPad as well. And they already make a blue iPhone. So I'm pretty good there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I just, and other colors are available, right?

You know, if you like green, sure. Apple can make a green. I'm not going to use a green computer, but you could. And that would be fine. I just think, again, I just want colors. But if I had to choose, blue and orange are going to be the ones i choose because i like those colors the best everybody gets their own colors i like those i'm gonna cheat a little bit i i want them to bring back the nanochromatic color line which was a i think apple's favorite selection of colors which was for one of the ipod nanos and the campaign around it was nano chromatic that was the wording that they used and they had

they had a black and a silver but they had a purple blue green yellow orange pink and red and they were fantastic colors they kind of covered all of the classic iPod mini ones and added a few more in, pumped up the vibrancy on all of them. I really loved those colors. And it's also, they made a great ad for that, actually, which I will put in the show notes in case you want to see it.

But yeah, that's the colors I would love to see personally. Really go for it. That's a lot of colors. It's a lot of colors, but why not, Jason? I don't disagree. I love it. If you would like to send in a question to help us open a show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk,

or if you're in the Real AFM members Discord, question mark Snell Talk. We'll get you into our document for future selection. I have some follow up for you, Jason Snell. Oh God, I'm so in my head about that now. I don't know why I said it. I knew I did it. If I

would have just kept it to myself, I wouldn't be thinking about it so much. But here we are. Applications are open for the App Store small business program, which was something we spoke about last week. And Apple have basically opened the program up now so people can get their applications in in time. So all of their revenue will be counted at the 15% cut from January 1st. They published an FAQ on the website. What I like is most of the frequently asked questions that I have seen are not at all dealt with

in the frequently asked questions section, which is funny to me. One of the main ones being, right, something that we spoke about a bunch, which is like, what would you do or what are you going to do if you get close to that million dollar line and will you pull your app and all that kind of stuff.

I think people were hoping Apple would provide a little bit more clarity to try and tidy that up, but they haven't and I don't think they will. I think that this is a thing that just needs to be put back on the developer. You plan your business that way. And I think that's kind of the way that Apple's treating it. Yeah, I think so. Right, like you know it's a thing, right? So you kind of just have to deal with it.

I don't know. If you are one of those developers, and there are probably not a lot who are right at the 1 million line, yeah, you're going to have to figure out a strategy there. Do you, I don't know, sell one of your apps? Do you buy some apps and just go for it? I don't know, sell one of your apps? Do you buy some apps and just go for it? I don't know what happens there, but it's an interesting problem to have,

and I feel for those companies that are in that little cutoff area. But I would also say making close to a million dollars a year is a great problem to have. Yeah, I mean, it depends on the business, right? If that's a couple of people, it's great. If it's 10 people, it's not great. Yep, but if it's 10 people and you're making a million dollars a year, you have a lot more problems than Apple's 15% cut. True, true story.

We have one more rumor, kind of a clarification really for Ming-Chi Kuo. So Kuo issued another kind of note in the last few days, kind of revising some of the predictions that we spoke about last time. So the two new MacBook Pro models that Ming-Chi Kuo has been talking about launching in 2021 will now both feature mini LED displays, Kuo was saying, which is interesting.

We don't have any refinements on timelines but it seems like it could potentially these products might come sooner rather than later as Quo has increased his forecast for how many of these products will get sold in 2021. So there's a couple of reasons you do that. One, if they're going to be really popular which could be it

or two, if you're selling them sooner in the year rather than later in the year. But these products getting mini-LED is cool. It seemed possible, but this is now kind of drawing a line there. But there was one other note which was of great interest, saying that there would be a more affordable MacBook Air with a mini-LED display on sale this year as well. More affordable. on sale this year as well.

More affordable. It's already Apple's most affordable laptop, right? At which lowest price is what we mean by more affordable. I wonder what he means here. But yeah, does that mean the MacBook Air is going to be $899 or $799 or something? That would be great in terms of reaching a broader audience and selling MacBook Airs. Interesting contrast with also adding a mini LED screen at that time, because this is mini LED being, you know, not OLED, but more capable of doing kind of OLED-like quality

in terms of contrast and HDR kind of stuff. I don't know. Interesting, starting to take focus. And I know we're going to talk a little bit more about another report later on about this. But now that 2020 is almost over i guess it's time to start talking about 2021 and what's going to happen 20 we're basically in 2021 now at this point pretty pretty close i mean i don't know mike are we i mean do we really know for sure that apple's done releasing new products no so this is fun this is weird uh okay so depending on when you're listening to this

episode this will or this might make varying levels of sense so there is a rumor circulating this week boy in the past few days, that Apple will be releasing something on Tuesday the 8th at 5.30 a.m. Pacific time. So depending on when you're listening to this show, you will even know if or if not this has happened. This came from a couple of different sources as a reliable Twitter leaker who goes by the handle I love to dream,

who's been talking about there being some kind of Christmas surprise and then there was an internal memo to the AppleCare team which was picked up by 9to5Mac and others that is saying that AppleCare representatives need to quote prepare for new product SKUs

new or updated product descriptions and new or updated product descriptions, and new or updated product pricing. So I thought, considering I reckon most of our audience are probably listening to this after it's happened, that it would be fun if we made predictions of what we thought that this might be. Okay. We are all waiting for an upgrade to the apple tv box itself right everybody's been waiting for that seems like a strange time to do it but i mean on the other hand maybe it doesn't matter

um but i don't know if they could use it to promote apple tv plus or something uh we've got fitness still to come and apple tv is one of the ways you integrate with you can integrate with fitness so i wonder if they might be doing something as a sort of one-two punch so you get an apple tv and you get the fitness plus thing i don't know it's possible like it's been hanging out there the prospect of new apple tv hardware for a while if they've got a story to tell it's always what we say about apple like it's about the story that they're trying to tell a lot of times product releases and the the timing and and what gets released together is about apple trying to tell a story not just say here's a new box to buy

i also still think it could be possible that it would be airpods related it it could for sure and there are all sorts of other wacky things. I mean, Christmas surprise. I mean, it could be over-the-ear AirPods. It could be AirTags. It could be all the products that they haven't shipped that we say, why are they not shipping? Or it could be something unexpected and not what we traditionally think of as a product, right? I think whatever it is, like, if you listen to this before Tuesday to kind of set people's expectations it's going to be a small thing whatever it is I think

because there's no event I haven't heard anyone that knows anyone that knows anyone that has any products this seems like if it's going to be anything I would say it's accessory related or kind of small yes in that

regard i think that's right like small revision to a thing like apple tv's not going to be that different no matter what they do to it i expect well it might even be more about an upgrade for hardware and then the lower end hardware changes price and it's really the story is that you can now get into the apple tv for this price or you know it's little stuff like that or or it's an accessory product i think that's right anything else though any other wild predictions you might want to make i'm going to make a dumb prediction based on the snell tuck question earlier and say product red macbook air ho ho ho interesting right something like that is what I was getting at with things

that aren't quite products but are announcements something like that where there was like a you know a holiday edition of something or something like that that's another way you could go and just roll something out I don't know my only other would be some kind of magsafe battery case

sure because that's the magsafe stuff I don't know. My only other would be some kind of MagSafe battery case. Sure. Because the MagSafe stuff, oh, sorry, the battery case stuff and headphone stuff, like AirPods and stuff, these are things they have released late in the year. We've just press released this in the past, if there's even a press release at all.

But I would love to see a product read more. And they just did just double down on their product red campaign stuff, right? Apple just released a big thing about that. So who knows? Voting nominations for the 2020 Upgradies is still open. We've had over 600 Upgradians making their nominations so far. Make sure you join them by going to Upgradians making their nominations so far. Make sure you join them by going to Upgradees.vote and there'll be a link in the show notes to the

nomination form. Go in, select the things that you want to nominate, maybe for your favorite apps, your favorite media, some of your favorite tech stories of the year, your favorite products of the year. You can vote for as many of these categories as you wish, so please go and check it out and help us prepare for the 7th Annual Upgradees,

which is going to be happening on Monday, December 28th. It's going to be the 7th Annual Upgradees. So we will either close voting either the 18th or sometime in Christmas week. So make sure that you get it in now. Probably on next week's episode, I'll announce the closing date for votes. It kind of depends on how many we have, because the more votes we have, the longer it takes for me to bring it together. So, you know, it's kind of like, I would really love it

if everybody could get their votes in sooner rather than later so I know exactly when to close voting. But that's kind of, we know it's going to be on the 28th though.

So you have that to look forward to to round out your year. And on a high note. Indeed. How much higher a note could it be than the Upgradies?

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Our thanks to Ooni Pizza Ovens for their support of this show. So we're going to do a bit of an extended upstream, I think, for this week. More in talking about a large topic rather than news, which is that HBO Max is getting all the movies, all the movies. Warner Media announced that all of their 2021 movies will appear on HBO Max on the intended cinematic release dates.

I worded this very particularly because I kept seeing this headline, which was very funny and confusing, which was that Warner Media would release all of their 2021 movies simultaneously on hbo max which makes it sound like all the movies are coming at the same time wow binge watch so 17 movies we're dropping them on april 4th and uh good have fun kids one month do it um but no they're going to be coming out on the same days that they either will be in cinemas or expected to be in cinemas depending on where you are in the world each of these movies will

spend 31 days on the service from when they are premiered this will be at no extra charge for hbo max subscribers these 17 movies include the suicide squad Squad, The Matrix 4, Dune, Godzilla vs. Kong, Space Jam A New Legacy, Tom and Jerry, Mortal Kombat, In the Heights, which is a musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda and turned into a movie, and The Many Saints of Newark, which is The Sopranos prequel, which is a movie I didn't know existed and I'm very excited about. Yeah, this is huge news. It's complicated, right? And there are a lot of simple takes out there. And I think upstream listeners know that it's complicated because we've walked through

so many of these points before. There are a lot of things going on here, right? So first off is the destruction of, especially in the US, the theatrical market. It's gone. And with the current COVID-19 stats, it's not going to come back very fast. Even with vaccinations, I think what they said is they were looking at calendar 2021 and trying to guess what percentage of normal would the box office be in 2021? And, you know, even if there are places

that are coming back and vaccines are going out and things are going down, they try to imagine, well, how many people are going to go to a movie theater in the summer of 2021? And the answer is still like 50%, 30%, 60%. I don't know, but it's certainly not 100% or 90% or even 80%, I would think. I think it's going to be a long build. And I think they decided to just say, we're going to write off 2021 theatrical. There will be some, and we will play to whatever is there. But they've decided that they're going to instead use their 2021 slate plus Wonder Woman to build HBO Max, which they want. They've invested a lot of money in and they want to be a real player in the streaming space. And they've had a struggle

launching it. I think the stat that I saw that was the biggest struggle is that some enormous number of Americans with cable pay for HBO and they get HBO Max with their cable subscription to HBO. They get it. I get it. I pay Comcast for HBO and I get HBO Max. There's a huge number of those people, like 60, 70%, I forget the number. It's very large, who have never signed up for HBO Max. So that's a challenge, right? Like they can't even get people for whom HBO Max is free to make an effort to get it. So this is an interesting move, right?

Because this is HBO and Warner saying, if you want to watch all of these movies, all you have to do is sign up for this streaming service and we're going to roll out, you know, full on theatrical releases of movies every month throughout from Christmas 2020 through 2021 and use that as a driver to make HBO Max more appealing. And then once they're there, the whole idea is, yeah, some people are going to just subscribe for a month and then cancel, but a lot of people won't. And that's the goal is to build up people and let them see the rest of the service and grow HBO Max and set it off in a direction. And so they're going to spend a lot of money basically buying out the theatrical side in order to, and losing money on these movies frankly in order to build up what they hope long term is this uh big subscription base for hbo max so it's it's a it's a it's a huge move but the pandemic makes it an easier move than it would have ever been right

like you and i have talked before about the question of how do you do this how do you make the move and say we have to be more aggressive with streaming and i'm not sure if theatrical releases make as much economic sense as they used to it's a very difficult thing it's a lot easier when you look at calendar 2021 and say there's no way that theaters are going to be in the u.s at least are going to be any even a fraction and do we want to hold all of our movies till 2022 well we don't and we just launched hbo max so now is the time let's just do it and it's an aggressive move and they're going to spend a lot of money on this but if they really want hbo max to be a thing

i think they need to do stuff like this so i understand why they're doing it there will be no more free trials of hbo max uh it was only a seven day trial anyway um but they've they've nixed that uh before wonder woman comes out you know just to make that look i get that it's like yeah it's probably a good idea yeah no it makes sense they're this is their strategy now this is their not their original hbo max launch strategy but it's the one they found which is we got a movie studio we have a movie studio. We have a pandemic where movies are not really able to be released in our home market. We're just going to roll this out and we're going to use our movie studios releases to drive subscriptions to our streaming service.

And they have the power to do that because they own both. And we are in a moment where they can do that. own both and and we are in a moment where they can do that it's interesting too because you know some of the theaters have pushed back and and and complained about it and said well we don't know if we'll carry their movies anymore and things like that which makes me roll my eyes a little bit because i one side has all the power here and it's the studios it's not the theaters it's like that's such it's such like reverse thinking too where it it's like, it would be damaging to us. We're upset because it's damaging to us. If you pull your movies out of our theaters.

So now we're also going to ban those movies from our theaters. So we'll see you're double damaging yourself. Also, they're not pulling the movies out of the theaters, right? If there are theaters exhibiting the movies, they will exhibit them in that window and people can choose to go to the theaters,

which seems like not the worst model. You can watch it in home or you can go out to a big movie theater if you're comfortable and you want to see it on a big screen with great sound and all of that and have that positive experience. You can do that. But the truth is they had to make this move, I think. I think this is a smart move i think it's a gamble but given where theatrical is and is going to be in the near future and it does call into question the whole like what is what what is the movie theater world look like in let's say 2022 as things come back especially in the u.s so i think the answer is very different from what it looked like in 2019. That's just going to be a fact. I'm unclear. I'm not entirely convinced that this model is going to persist. HBO says it's not going to persist.

Warner says this is just for 2021. I think what we get to in 2022 is going to be different from 2019, but I'm not sure it's going to look like this where giant hundreds of millions of dollar blockbusters can be seen on day one in a movie theater or on your streaming service i'm not sure that's where they end up maybe it is but uh certainly the windows are going to be a lot smaller uh for if there's any window at all yeah i think the genie's out of the bottle now. I think so. I think it's going to be particularly interesting later this week, Disney have their investors call. And so you would expect them to

do or say something which is also along these lines. I don't think by any stretch of the imagination they are going to do what Warner have done. You know, you've got, it's a very different mix you've got here, right? Like Disney Plus has like 70 million subscribers, so they don't need to try and get more, right?

Like HBO Max, I think is like eight. Well, Disney built its service on that library, right? Especially the stuff that they had previously withheld and they put it all in and that was at the time we talked about it kind of a big move for disney to be like there's no disney vault the disney vault is now disney plus it's all there and and that was a big step for them but um warner doesn't have quite that uh that cachet and then and then they of course have contracts where they've sold a bunch of their stuff out to other

services, and it'll be years before they get it back. But this is something they can try. But I think that once... So here's my question. If a studio makes this decision, so Warner has made this decision, Disney is doing... is dipping

their toe in the water, right? They have Mulan, which you could pay for. They have Soul, which is going to be available for free. I'm sure they'll have others. If you start doing this, can you stop doing this? I think, I mean, so I just said, who knows what 2022 looks like? But I think it will be very hard I think we're gonna and maybe I'm wish casting a little bit but I think the theatrical model of the future is going

to be that movies are available in theaters but exclusivity is either not an issue or a minor issue that the reason you go to a movie theater is because it's a night out and the screen is huge and the sound is good and they'll bring you food and drink and you can have a good time with your friends and you're enjoying a movie with an audience and it's it's a theatrical experience as opposed to and again i apologize if there are any movie theater operators out there but like so much of the movie theater experience in modern times is lousy. It's literally, you can't see this anywhere else. So we've provided a crappy theater with not a very good screen and not very good sound. And it's sort of an unpleasant experience. You want to escape as

quickly as you can. But because we're the only game in town, you have to come and give us money in order to watch this movie. And that was a bad experience already. And I think going forward, it's not going to be good enough. And movie theaters that do the bare minimum are not going to make it. And we're going to end up in a situation where people will still go to movie theaters, but it won't be driven by this artificial exclusivity of the only place you can see it is in our little lousy theater that it'll be it'll be you know you'll have to choose to go it'll the movie theater will be a place you you need to want to go to it i think that's going to be the big difference because i do think it will be very hard for the audience too like i'm gonna watch Wonder Woman on Christmas day in 4k HDR.

Cause they upgraded HBO max is finally going to get 4k HDR support on my 65 inch TV. And not everybody has a big TV like that and everybody's got the difference, but like people have way better stuff, even if it's on your phone. Like honestly, sometimes the experience is going to be bigger and better in all of these cases than it would necessarily be in a lousy movie theater it's going to be hard to go back like i i am a

at home movie person that is my decision i will go to the cinema maybe once or twice a year to catch that movie that i otherwise feel i couldn't wait for it's typically a big disney blockbuster and it's the case of like well if you don't see it now everyone's going to spoil it for you right um so if you if you care about this property you should go and see it and frankly i'm not sure that that is a a relationship that I care too much about. You know, like it kind of, it doesn't really seem like that's the thing, like that particular reason is enough to make me care about going to the theater. Like I appreciate that this is obviously a huge industry

and there are a lot of people who are struggling, but it is an industry that needs to change and has needed to change for decades because everybody knows they're too expensive they charge you too much money for all of the things that they want you to buy and you're kind of and they they actively disallow you from bringing your own food and drink in well that's how they make their money but here's the problem with it is the experience isn't very good. That's the truth of it is.

Not only is it expensive, but it's expensive for one of those hot dogs that's on the little metal roller thing for a million years and stuff like that. But you go to the really nice boutique cinemas where they have food. Great. You and I and a bunch of people we know for your bachelor party, we went to Avengers Infinity War at Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. Talk about Obama. We sat together and we got, well, yeah, I know. We knew what was coming.

We'd already seen it. But like we're an audience and we're all, we got food and we have beer and like it was so much fun. It's like I would love, I would do that. I would do that kind of experience a lot, but the, you know, warmed over hot dog and kind of crappy popcorn for a lot of money to sit in a kind of badly cleaned thread,

bare movie theater that isn't, you know, that, and the sound isn't very good. Like it's not the best. And, and that, and that's, so yeah, I, sound isn't very good. Like, it's not the best. And that's, so yeah, I'm just going to say it. I think those kinds of movie theaters need to go out of business. And I think that the movie theater industry needs to focus on a better experience. And that I do think people will pay to go see it as a better experience. But I think that that's what they're

going to need to try to do. Now, maybe there will be a window like i could see it because you think about marketing too you make you make as a movie theater or as a movie studio you make this huge investment in marketing for your product and then with the windows are so long that you've got to make that investment again when it goes to streaming or when it's available for rent on you know on all the the rental platforms the video on demand platforms it's a lot so one of the arguments about uh making the window way smaller is you only ever have to do one marketing campaign so you say wonder woman 84 or the matrix 4 and it's coming maybe it's coming to theaters and everybody knows that it's in theaters exclusively for a week or two weeks

but that's it and then it's on streaming yeah you get it there i agree with you that seems like probably the way it's gonna go but i think even that kills the theater industry because who cares enough how many movies really do people care enough about yeah that they will go to now like the idea of like the movie theater for dates for for things for friends to do like that kind of thing in theory was in theory will continue but i'm just not sure that this industry is one of the industries that continues in the post-COVID world. Like restaurants, no problem, right? Like once the restaurant industry can get back on its feet again, people are not going to stop going to restaurants. I just don't believe that, right? There will be changes to their industry, like something that's happened in a lot of metropolitan areas and I hope continues,

is like a similar idea, which is they will send you their ingredients and you cook it at home which is like i guess it's like the the only like analogous that i can make of like have it at home or have it in the place but it's still nicer to have it in the place because the restaurant industry is based around providing you a nice experience and taking all of the the work from you, right? But the majority of the movie, the cinema theater industry is providing you that not great experience, but locking away the thing that you want. And the only way you can get it for months is to go to them and i'm not sure that that is a thing that's going to happen i really don't think so yeah i and it it's going to have to obviously it's going to have to work itself out and there's going to be pain and there's going to

be failure and there's going to be success and the industry is going to kind of like change. But I think the truth is you would never invent an industry to look like this. You wouldn't. You wouldn't. No, it's one that adapts over time, becomes greedy. In the chat room pointing out the stale hot dog industry and the people who make the little rollers. It's going to be a tough time for them. It's going to be different. time for them. It's going to be different.

And there are different things, right? Like if you are in a small town or something like that, like you're not going to have that super high quality theater necessarily. Although I grew up in a small town and we had a five screen movie theater. And originally it was a two screen movie theater. And they added three tiny awful screens. And I keep thinking like maybe in the end, the story is that

that movie theater ends up having two really, two better screens. So people can have a really nice experience. But the other thing is, it does provide access

to movies, and streaming has already done this, to movies that you wouldn't otherwise see because you don't have a movie theater nearby or you don't have

a good movie theater nearby. And now you can just watch the movie instead of this weird monopoly where the cheap movie theater owner for your town has two screens and they're the only place you can see the latest Marvel movie for six months. And so you have to go and give them money, not because the experience is good, but because they're the ones who have the exclusive on it. And that is not great either. So the problem that we detailed before is if you don't have a theatrical market that is driving sales. And we live in an era where we can talk about how bad the movie theater industry is for customers in so many different ways.

But we also live in an era where we had a bunch of movies make more than a billion dollars at the box office like they're they're blockbusters and that's why they make blockbusters is because those are the ones that make a lot of money at the box office so here's the thing i don't think anybody any movie is going to have a billion dollars worth of worth if it if it goes direct to streaming, right? That's the problem. The theater market is a very lucrative, important market for studios too. So they don't want to abandon it, but they probably need to change their approach. I honestly think that we're going to not see as many blockbuster movies and we're going to see a lot more mid-priced movies where the budgets are going to come down and they're going to be aware.

Because once you know that you can't make $3 billion in theatrical, you're not going to spend as much money making the movies. And so, you know, maybe the next round of Marvel movies after the ones they've already greenlit, maybe they're all about half the budget they were before or something like that, because they know they're not going to make as much money theatrically, but then they're going to make, you know, they're building the value of Disney plus and Disney plus throws off this amount of money and that makes it worth it. Ultimately, this is massive amounts of disruption, but this is the kind of thing that the pandemic time is going to do for many industries and so it's like you know like just to recap this in case we're not being clear i feel for people whose livelihoods are affected by this but what we're saying is that the companies that own these movie theater chains need to change the expectations that they have

of what they can get and how they can charge their customers, right? Yeah. But just the practicalities of it is that the public either won't feel safe, won't be safe, or change their habits in such a way that they won't want to go to the theater anymore.

And ultimately, you can't force people to do it. I personally can't imagine going to see a movie in a cinema for years, years, because I wasn't doing it that much anyway. So why would I do it, right? And so it's because I don't feel comfortable with doing it now well they closed the good movie theater in my county so now i would have to go to a bad theater or go uh drive a bit to go to a good theater and you know maybe i would do that at some point but you're i think if you look at the introduction of home video this has been this has been a long very slow motion car

crash right like the availability because what you want is people want to see movies people do want to see movies to the credit of everybody in the movie industry people love watching movies they really do and and there's a lot of money there there's a lot of people there there's a lot of interest there we see it with the marvel movies and star wars and you know there are all sorts of things that people like to see in these movies, but people love to go to the movies. Okay. Or they love, they love movies. Let's say that people love movies. Over time with home video, things have just, the window gets closer and closer and closer and closer because people want to see that movie. And the movie industry has kept the exclusive theatrical window because it lets them charge per person.

And they didn't have a great delivery mechanism anyway, but it lets them charge per person at a fairly high rate. And then the theaters are making money on the concessions and things like that. But even so, it just keeps getting smaller and smaller because people want to see the movie. And the opportunity to let people see the movie in other forms is greater and greater and now you have trained the audience and covid frankly has trained the audience and modern flat screen tvs and sound bars and like there's so many technologies that have changed the balance that what you've got is like a uh here in california we have a lot of up in in uh forests we have this uh oak sudden oak death that kills the trees and the oak trees are standing but they're dead and then a windstorm or a fire blows through and if like the fire just sets them all on

fire because they're already dead it's just dead wood ready to burn it's it's that moment or or if you think about the radio telescope in puerto that collapsed, like it was a slow collapse and then it was all at once. Like this is what the standard traditional theatrical movie industry is right now is it was teetering and all of the prevailing winds were pushing against it. And then COVID happened. And then you're WarnerMedia or even Disney, and you look at your streaming platform that is the future of your company, and they all say it. Movie theaters are not the future of Disney.

They're not. They've said so. Movie theaters are not the future of Disney. Streaming is the future of Disney, and it may take time to get there, but they've already said theaters are ancillary. So they're not going to prioritize the thing that's not the future. So that's it. It is the thing that probably didn't make a lot of sense already, but hung on because there was momentum and nobody wants to be the person to change it. And then a pandemic happens and that's it. It's going to change. So I can't predict what 2022 movie theaters are going to look like, but the fact that we will have gotten all of these releases from Warners and some releases from Disney, right? Soul will probably not be the last one that will just pop on Disney+.

That is going to change. That's going to change things. And let's not forget Netflix is spending a lot of money on original films too. And people, and so many people have Netflix. So that's, you know, that, that's actually, I think the strongest headwind for, for the Warner medias and Disney's of the world is, you know, are they really competing over movie theater stuff or are they competing with Netflix for attention? So I don't know. I'll tell you this though. I'll tell you this. I am so looking forward to watching Wonder Woman on Christmas day, right?

Bottom line as a movie fan and somebody who liked the first Wonder Woman movie a lot, like that's an event. That's our Christmas night. I'm so excited about that because I like movies. I just am not going to go see one in a theater and neither are you. Maybe you don't need two movies a year that make a billion dollars

if you have 100 million people giving you $5 a month. I don't know the economics of it but if you can get enough people giving you money every month rather than once or twice a year maybe it's enough i don't know i don't know i've got to assume that they think it is if disney is saying stuff like like they have like the future is streaming they must assume that's the case or maybe they wouldn't do it. We'll find out.

The one thing I do want to point in this, because I have to, there is obviously no international story for HBO Max here and all of these movies. There is a rumor that Wonder Woman may see a release on Sky TV here. But if it does, it's either going to be as part of Sky, which is an incredibly high barrier to entry. You're in because it's basically cable and not everybody has a Sky.

Most people, I think, don't anymore have something like that because there's so much streaming stuff now. Or they may put it on a premium video on demand. Maybe you can buy it yourself. But I really... I look at Disney's numbers,

you know, like the tens of millions of subscribers, and I know a lot of those are international, and I think that HBO need to work out what they're doing, Warner need to work out what they're doing with this, because if you're trying to, like, you know, they have this American strategy of we take it and we own it. But their international strategy is like, yeah, whoever, I guess. And I don't think that those two things match up in the long run.

Yeah, we have been watching them for a while, right? Like not just struggle with having an international rollout. And this is a case where Netflix got there and Apple is there and Disney is there. Their strategy is interesting because you have pointed out a few times the hole in it, which is they're going to do theatrical release of these movies everywhere where theaters are open. And they've got HBO Max in the U.S. Okay. What about places where there aren't theaters open or people don't want to go

to theaters and there is no HBO Max, then what happens? And the answer is, I guess it looks a lot like 2019 in that scenario where it's going to come out in the UK. If there are any cinemas open, you're not going to go see it. And there's going to be no alternative to that. Maybe the window for purchasing it is 31 days right so that 31 days later you can you can buy it or rent it and that's a lot less than it used to be but you're not going to be able to do it same day because they don't have it and it's not your fault right it's because they don't have an international strategy for hbo max like which they probably should have right like you probably should have that but they sold all of their international rights for all of their content to so many different rights holders that they uh can't put the pieces together yet wild

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based on an article that you'd written over the weekend about trying to guess the performance of the M2 chips. So you've done one of your farm with charts. Yeah, you know, something to write on a Friday afternoon. They're great. It was fun.

That is trying to work out like, oh, what could the M2 be? So I finished that. I pressed stop on my timer. I went over to Twitter. I scrolled to the top of the timeline, and I saw a tweet from Mark Gurman talking about these chips. I went back to the document, deleted all the stuff, started again.

Friend of the show, Mark Gurman, once again, released a big report right before Upgrade. Thank you, Mark. If Mark's going to do it, I prefer it to be done at the exact time that he's doing it because if he did it afterwards, it would be way worse. I don't mind spending the time working on the notes and then going back to it

if I then get a report as juicy as this one. I'm going to read some quotes and we can stop and talk about them all because this is a very focused report but a very good one. It's a lot of interesting information and it comes from Mark Gurman and Ian King talking about a new series

of chips that could be introduced in 2021. Several successors to the M1 are being developed that quote, if they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips. Now this we expected, right? This is what we've been expecting,

that everything that Apple introduces, now that we've seen what the M1 can do, should beat whatever it's replacing. Hold everything. Hold everything, people. It turns out Apple's not going to just make the M1 and then never make another processor. Wait, what? I thought that they only made phone chips.

No, no, it's true. They're going to make several successors to the M1. They're going to keep making chips, and they'll be better than the M1. The company's next series of chips plan for release as early as the spring and later in the fall are destined to be placed across upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, both entry-level and high-end iMac desktops and a later new Mac Pro workstation.

All of this we kind of had expected, but that timeline seems more aggressive. It's interesting as early as the spring and later in the fall this it the fact here seems to be apple has two waves of these that mark is able to report about that that somebody was willing to pass on that information two waves because like again as early as the spring it might not be the spring it might be the summer it might be the fall and later in the the fall and later in the fall, might be later in the fall, or might be 2022. Right? They have to make some product decisions and things slide around. But what he is saying here is that there

are two sets that are that are being targeted. This is not just sort of like a next year's model, but it's like a couple of models that might happen next year, which is interesting. The fact that they mentioned a Mac Pro later, whatever that means, as well as MacBook Pro and iMac. Interesting. I have thought for a while now that while Apple said that they were doing a two-year transition, it wouldn't surprise me if they finished by the end of 2021, just so they could say, oh yeah, we're done. And we're being conservative when they gave themselves two years to make the transition would not surprise me at all they've done it before well i also um to add to that i've been thinking about this too they announced that it would be a two-year transition in june of this

year when apple also said no no no like i was they said when we start it in the fall it will be a two-year transition but what what i mean is you i've miss said that you thought i was making a different point okay in june of this year there were lots and lots of issues around producing anything and nobody knew how long it was going to take for product production to stabilize so even more reason for them to be conservative with their claims. They may have given themselves a little bit extra time in case that they felt that there were going to be more significant issues around product manufacture over that 24-month period or whatever. And maybe they feel better about it now. Also, presumably they're getting samples of stuff from Taiwan Semiconductor and they've seen how the process of the M1 being built at scale is going, and they've gained confidence there. Although I do want to point out again,

Mark's report definitely is saying this is what they're thinking, but Apple could make, you know, Apple is still waiting and seeing, and there are decisions they could make, and these things could get delayed. And people always roll their eyes at that and say, well, he's hedging. But it's like, well like well no the future is unknown until it happens this is he's what he's reporting is what is currently the thinking within apple right which is not a prediction it's what they're what they're shooting for what they're they think they might be able to achieve and they may change their plans or something may happen exactly right yeah but Yeah. But here's this next part. I feel so vindicated in this part.

The next two lines of Apple chips are also planned to be more ambitious than some industry watchers expected for next year. For its next generation chip targeting MacBook Pro and iMac models, Apple is working on designs of as many as 16 power cores and four efficiency cores. So that's 20 core chips, 20 in the MacBook Pro. While that component is in development, Apple could choose to first release variations of only 8 or 12 of the high-performance cores enabled depending on production.

So this is binning. Enabled, that's binning. Yeah, that's right. The idea that they may have an M1X or an M2 that they're targeting 16 P cores, right? That's what they call them. E cores and E cores. Well, upgradians know this.

Like four E cores is sort of the standard, which is that, you know, I feel like the four E cores thing, they have modeled what like boring average usage is. Yeah. And are very confident that the four ecores thing they have modeled what like boring average usage is yeah and are very confident that the four the four ecores can do all of that like low level stuff and then the p cores jump in when you need i think it seems when you're doing a job it seems like now she's saying that apple have worked out that there is a maximum amount of tasks that would ever be needed on eCores. And they're just, as you said,

they've just optimized for those four and that's that. And maybe in the future it will increase, but if it does, it will be like, they all get six now, right? Like it's unlikely that different machines will get more eCores than others is how it seems. So in doing my silly chart spreadshe spreadsheets and stuff what i found is um performance scales with p cores um because remember the intel just has cores and so i was

doing for ios i was like looking at like do i add the if i'm trying to get like a a geekbench score per core how does that make sense and what I found was it makes most sense if you just ignore the efficiency cores and you just, the power cores are where the scale comes from. And this bears that out, which is there's a base model of performance that they want to run efficiently.

That's the thing that runs when you're sitting idle. It runs when you're just typing an email. It's what happens when you're, when the lid is shut on your laptop and it's just doing some things in the background. Like it's all that stuff is handled by the efficiency core and it's the equivalent of a MacBook Air, an Intel MacBook Air, right?

Like they said. And then you lay on the power cores and that's to do everything else. And when you get to work. And so it is interesting to see them say, well, what we're going to do is design a variant of this chip that's got, instead of four or eight, it'll have 16 power cores. And then they could bin it, depending on the yields that they get. So they might come out with like an eight or a 12. and that would also allow for that like configure-to-order experience. Yes. Where in the end, what they're going to do is say, new iMac or new 16-inch MacBook Pro, and it comes with eight cores, but you can get 12 or 16 if you pay extra. And that's a perfectly kind of understandable computer buying kind of thing.

Nothing in the story about how they are going to handle memory configurations, which is one of these things that everybody keeps asking about. But just imagine a 16 core plus the four efficiency cores. So 20 core MacBook Pro, like you said, or iMac. So when I said I felt vindicated, So 20 core MacBook Pro, like you said, or iMac. So when I said I felt vindicated, it's in that there have been many people in this arena who care about technology and Apple

who have just been like, these are just iPhone chips. And these are just, this is what Apple's going to do. They make iPhone chips now. And one of the things that we've been talking about and I've been saying like my feeling on this, it's just like all that is similar about them is kind of how they look.

But what Apple is doing is completely different. And I think at the point, I mean, we haven't even got to the rest of the story, but at the point that like here is a 20 core chip, it's like, all right, we have to all agree now that these aren't iPhone chips, right? It's just, this is the way Apple knows how to make their own chips. So in theory, they look similar.

But I do not believe and I have never thought that what is the M1 is an A14X. Like, I don't think that that's how they think of it. I just do not believe. I've never thought that. But it's just they look like they would be similar. And I'm sure that if an A14X they look like they would be similar. And I'm sure that if an A14X comes out, it will look similar. But I don't think that Apple has ever considered them that way.

And I think when we're seeing this kind of stuff, we can see that they don't. Everything they're doing to evolve, right? The M1 is not just an A14X that's capable of running mac os it's also the start of of like it's the it's the base camp for whatever they're going to do from there on the mac side right so presumably they have strategized in building it they know where it's going from there and it's going um it's going up and now we've seen this chip and we see what the future looks like i think the reason that it looks like an iphone chip is that they're just so this is all that they needed look how powerful these machines are they didn't need more than that right if anything they put too much in there i'm sure what in the many times somebody sent a link about us talking about our max in like episode 100 or

something of this show which is like it's been a long time we've been talking about them but like the i think the assumption all along was that they were essentially going to be able to take something that was like a glorified iPad chip and put it in Macs, and it would be an incredibly fast, low-end Mac. It would be incredibly fast, much faster than your MacBook Air, you know, or Mac Mini would be. And although, yes, the M1 is not an A14X, but it is potentially, in terms of performance and profile, kind of a glorified iPad chip. It is the first step. It is a logical first step. They're not going to jump to the 20-core monster. They're going to start with the simplest thing.

It's their dipping their toe in the water of Mac chips. And it's exactly that. It is exactly that. It is not that different from what they've done before because you've got to start somewhere. But they know where they're going from here. And that's what this Gurman story is about. Like, this is the most modest. That's the thing when I see people who are generally PC industry skeptics who don't think that Apple's all that and look at what is going on on the Windows side. When I see them criticize it, it's very funny that a lot of times the fact

that this is a low-end processor on low-end computers gets lost because, you know, but what about the high-end? It's like, well, yeah, this isn't that. This is the low-end. Now we're starting to get a sense of what Apple's playbook is from here. And that playbook keeps getting bigger. So look, I just feel like we need to just point it out again. 20 core, 20 core processors in laptops. I wonder when we start ignoring the efficiency cores

and just talk about the performance cores. The power cores, the P cores, some point. But like that is absurd. Yeah. For higher end desktops planned for later in 2021 and a new half-sized Mac Pro planned to launch by 2022. This is Mark doubling down on this now. So we can all assume that this is going to happen.

Apple is testing a chip design with as many as 32 high-performance cores. That would probably mean maybe 36. Maybe this machine doesn't even get them. Who knows? I doubt that. But let's say, let's just assume a 36-core machine. 36-core.

Yeah. Now, higher-end desktop computers, we can assume that this would be the highest-end iMac, right? Yeah, I imagine higher-end desktop computers we can assume that this would be the highest end iMac right yeah I imagine right higher end desktop computers that is whether we call it an iMac pro or just a very high-end iMac that's what maybe mac mini maybe right maybe maybe but we would assume you gotta earn the space gray you gotta earn that space gray because he says and a, so that, you know, it's like, so there's, and this half-sized Mac Pro, I don't,

I'm really puzzled about this. Like, is this the Mac Pro now? Or is it a new Mac Pro alongside the other one? We don't know that, right? But it seems like there's something going on there,

which is really interesting. But that is, that's massive, right? 32 high-performance cores. That's a lot of cores, Jason. I don't know if you know. Because like, what are we up, like what's the top, 10, 12 for the Mac Pro pro right now is that as high up as it goes at the moment oh no mac pro mac pro goes way up okay on there okay i know that the i mac pro is 10 right

or is that the base model the base model is 10 they all go they all go way far up above they're saying 28 in the chat at the moment which is is where it goes. So, you know, this is more cores. Apple engineers are also developing more ambitious graphics processors. Today's M1 processors are offered of a custom Apple graphics engine that comes in seven or eight core variations. For its future high-end laptops

and mid-range desktops, Apple is testing 16 and 32 core graphics parts yeah i mean again not surprising so what we're saying is that for a higher end macbook pro and for the imac you're not going to get what you have with the m1 where you're you've got a smaller number of cores and seven or eight GPU cores. Instead, you're going to get a system with, let's say, eight performance cores and 16 graphics cores on that processor as the base model, something like that. And that would make it a MacBook Pro, right? Or an iMac. That would make sense. And that would make it a MacBook Pro, right? Or an iMac.

That would make sense. And then you've got your configure to order options where you go up to 32 cores or 16 performance cores and all of that. That is, that's, it's fun to see Mark Gurman report this because he's reporting this with information from people on the inside. But it's also kind of something that follows logically. This is, of course, this is the kind of thing that you would do. It also does inform a little bit Apple's strategy with the M series processor,

which seems to be more cores, right? That's what the M stands for. More cores, more CPU cores, more graphics cores, probably more neural engine cores, just more cores. Just add more cores and and they must feel very confident about the ability for their architecture to scale with that many cores like 32 cores of graphics 32 high performance cpu cores that's a lot that's a lot right but they are testing it so i i think i think they've they've proven that they know what they're

doing but this is this is another level from what they've done up to now i'm not done for later in 2021 or potentially 2022 apple is working on pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 dedicated cores aimed at its highest end machines, the people said. Those graphics chips would be several times faster than the current graphics modules Apple uses from NVIDIA and AMD in its Intel-powered hardware. There is a possibility that you would be able to get this little baby Mac Pro with a 36-core processor and a 128-core GPU. How big is that system on a chip?

Do they, like, wheel it in for you, right? Like, if that's... I don't know enough about this. You know, like, I hear ATP talk about it. But like, could that all be on one chip? All of that? Or do you, because it's not clear to me, at least the way that I read in Mark's article, as to whether Apple is working on integrated or discrete graphics here. Now, I know that there have been previous articles that reference discrete graphics cards, so separate graphics chips from Apple. And maybe these 64 and 128 core GPUs would be like separate chips that maybe you could upgrade in the Mac Pro anyway, which might make sense. But nevertheless, that is just an unbelievable offering. Like within the next two years, the next 18 months, this is what we could be looking at. Well, it shows you their ambition, right?

Like, if they can pull this off, what they're going to get is the performance boost that we've seen in the low end across the line and by that i mean um you know one way this plays out is that the other products in the mac product line get slightly upgraded m1 kind of stuff and the uh m1 you know macbook air is so many times faster than the previous model but by the time you get up to the high end they're they're not they're like in the ballpark or a little bit faster. That's the sort of really gentle approach to transition. A more aggressive approach is to say, no, we're going to, every time we upgrade a model, we're going to do our take on the chip that should be in that model. And it's going to be more aggressive. And every one of these is going to be that much faster.

The Mac Pro at each core level is going to be, or at each price level is going to be this much faster than the Intel Mac Pro. And, you know, that seems to be what this report is suggesting is that's at least what they're shooting for. I'm also, again, really intrigued by the fact that it looks like we've got a couple of waves, because that kind of makes sense. And I like that idea. So they're working on step two is hot is deskt and high-end laptops. And then step three is super high-end pro models. And that's going to be their approach. And maybe we'll see those super high-end pro models by the end of next year, or maybe, as he says, potentially 2022.

But in the interim, we are also going to be talking about new iMacs and new MacBook Pros that have this more powerful CPU and graphics processor than what's on the M1. And that's logical. Like, that's why they didn't update those systems with the M1, because they need something more than the M1 can provide. But, yeah. Again, Xeon, you can spend a lot of money and get a 28-core Mac Pro, but 32 high-performance Apple-designed cores in a little half-height Mac Pro is a fascinating thing. And I still wonder about expansion and what that expansion looks like, and there are a lot of open questions there for that product.

But let's be honest, not very many people will buy a Mac Pro, whatever it is. It is an edge case kind of product. But let's be honest, not very many people will buy a Mac Pro, whatever it is. It is an edge case kind of product. I'm more interested in what happens with the iMac and the Mac Mini and the high-end MacBook Pro. What it looks like is a lot. A lot's going to happen.

I don't know exactly what I expected. I don't know exactly what I expected. But I feel like these numbers surprised me. I can think, so the ones that surprised me the most are the amount of cores in a MacBook Pro. 20 cores in a laptop seems like a lot. And I think the graphics stuff. and i did want to mention something that like that mark points out in the article is that these are so much faster than the chips that apple uses from nvidia and amd i think it's worth just noting that the chips that apple uses from

nvidia and amd are significantly slower than the the PC stuff like the dedicated graphics cards like the things that Apple chooses to integrate and use are they're not that great so it's just like I think people see that and they think that like oh Apple's chips are going to be faster than these 38s I keep hearing people talk about um it's complicated the way that the architecture is for these chips, but like the 3080, the NVIDIA 3080 has, you know, NVIDIA say it has thousands, of course. So it's a different,

they look at these things very differently. But, you know, this is also saying that Apple are kind of playing their own interesting game here. And there's not like an obscene amount of cores in my MacBook Pro, but it is significantly faster than anything with the same core count. So, you know, like there's a lot at play here. So, you know, like there's a lot at play here. But what is just worth noting is we can all assume Apple can produce more powerful graphics units and chips than what they are currently using.

Even if they could extend up to what is available in PC architecture and more, there still has to be stuff to take advantage of that, right? And like really powerful graphics tends to mean great games, but it isn't just graphics that brings games. There's a lot in between, right? Like market and development tools. like market and development tools. And it has been long known that that is not really there for the Mac for these big AAA games. Now, if the hardware is that impressive or ends up being so impressive, maybe that changes the gaming story

on the Mac a little bit. But I don't think so, ultimately. I think the graphics stuff for the Mac is about creative software and how that is used right so like how can better graphics provide a better experience for video editors all that kind of stuff you know i don't think that we're gonna see uh you know fortnite not fortnite obviously fortnite's already been on the mac but say like cyberpunk right which is the game that everyone's excited about but seems like it

might be disappointing these are the types of games that people wait for for their consoles and the pc but they don't have a place on the mac but and i don't necessarily think that these chips would result in that but it's just like an addendum that i want to make to people that maybe don't pay as much attention to this kind of stuff um but overall this isn't i'm so excited this this report like i felt like my brain just kept exploding the more i read of it like it really like i'm i'm super excited about this super super excited about this. Super, super excited about this. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's exciting because it shows Apple's level of ambition here.

And I think what you see in Mark Gurman's hedging is internally, you know, not entirely being confident that they're going to get it all in 2021, that there may be issues. They are new to this on the Mac side and they could face challenges, but it sounds like they're being very ambitious and that they've got a game plan and it involves a couple of waves of processors, high-end laptop slash desktop systems, and then a super high-end system

and maybe a binning approach to providing some different levels of performance. And you pay to get the extra cores for the GPUs and the CPUs. And it's all logical. I mean, that's the thing about it is it's exciting, but also it makes sense. Like I get that this would be their strategy.

This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by DoorDash. You have so much in your to-do list from your laundry to your emails to your Zoom calls to goodness knows what else you're getting up to these days. We're all so busy. One less thing to have to worry about is letting DoorDash take care of your next meal. DoorDash is the app that brings you the food that you're craving right now right to your front door. Ordering is easy. You just open the DoorDash app, you choose what you want to eat, and your food will be left safely outside your door with their contactless delivery drop-off setting. They have over 300,000 partners in the US,

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You want to get food from the outside world and you're not going to go out. Let's be fair. You're probably not going to go out. You're going to have people bring it to you. You should have people bring it to you. you're gonna have people bring it to you you should have to go get it to you but you should have people bring it to you and and it's just it's convenient that way and um like i said before my my power tip here is order in advance don't order when you're hungry you'll regret it order in advance get everybody's orders in your house or your apartment or wherever you are get them all all down, put them in the web, in the app, set an order, set a time, and then forget it. And then you'll have the delightful surprise at the time that you set, somebody will knock on the door

and there'll be a bag full of food right there because you can order in advance. So convenient. I love it. So you can get $5 off and zero delivery fees on your first order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and use the code UPGRADE. Go download it now. Don't forget, there's the code UPGRADE for $5 off your first order with DoorDash. Our thanks to DoorDash for their support of Upgrade and all of RelayFM. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Ryan wants to know, what orientation or size of keyboard

do you use on your phone? Do you go full size, squish to the left, or squish to the right? Full size. Man, me too. I forget that the squished thing is a thing you can do. I can see why people that use the phone that I use

might want to do the squish to one side thing. Probably not a great option on an iPhone 12 mini. Probably not necessary for most people. But even though I do full size, I am pretty much always a swipe typer. I do the swipe typing. Love me the swipe typing. I mostly still tap, but I do swipe occasionally.

John wants to know, Jason Snell, how come 20 Max for 2020 is not an incomparable podcast? This is the same version of a question we've answered a bunch of times before, which is the incomparable is a kind of popular culture and entertainment network, and RelayFM is a technology network. And so a tech podcast goes on RelayF and uh 20 max for 2020 is a tech podcast so that's the answer i mostly

just wanted to include this as a opportunity for you to tell people that they should go and listen to 20 max for 2020 well thank you mike hurley that's a great suggestion people should listen to 20 max for 2020 it's available for everyone for free. It comes out on Fridays. relay.fm slash 20 Max, I want to say. And if you're an Upgrade member or a Six Colors member, you can access your member page and get the members-only feed that comes out on Monday,

the same time that the essay and the video with me and Stephen Hackett come out. So this week's selection is uh the macbook air i don't want to tip my hand and i don't i definitely don't want to uh i'm fairly encouraged the upgradians when it comes to voting in the upgradies but 20 max of 2020 is one of my favorite shows this year you do a very good job with it a better job than you need to if that makes sense the editing and the storytelling is really good

no but you you know you make a lot of creative decisions in the show that just add flavor then not you don't need to do them and i think that that is the mark of a very good production like this that's very nice thank you for saying that it is a journey sometimes writing the those episodes where i go to some interesting places but i i allow myself to do those things because that's the whole point is that i i want to explore what that kind of a podcast is like and if something strikes my fancy i'm like yeah let's go with that let's go in that direction then I do it so yeah people should check it out they're short they're not like

a conversational podcast it's a very different kind of thing and they're like most of them are about 15 minutes long every now and then there's a 20 minute long one but yeah they're a lot of fun Josh wants to know do you have any app recommendations for sleep tracking data analysis?

Not me. No. I don't do this either, but I have two apps that I wanted to recommend anyway for Josh to answer the question. But I am keen to hear from the Upgradians to what their experience is with this. I've wondered if sleep tracking is a thing.

Have you ever tried it? I tried it, like, one time and decided I didn't want to wear a watch all night. It is my thing, too, is I don't think I want to wear my watch all the time. I bought a Bedit, which Apple owns, which is a sensor you lay on the bed, and then it logs it. And that was okay, but i didn't really do anything with the data and it really and it required it really wanted your your iphone to be next to your bed which mine isn't so it got very and then i paid her with my ipad and it didn't work because there's

no health app and it was just a whole thing so i i i've tried it and i would say if i had some sleep serious sleep issues i would make a better effort than i have isn't it weird that you could still buy that bed it thing it is a little bit weird like what i wonder i wonder what they were what they were doing with that like it's i think it's superior in a lot of ways because you don't have to wear a watch and your sleep can be analyzed. That's actually a nice idea. But it seems like such a strange thing. FileMaker.

Why is it an Apple product? Why did they buy it? Legitimately at the bottom of the Bedit website it says copyright Apple Incorporated. That'll be it tomorrow, Mike. It's a sleep tracking tool. Bed at three.

Surprise. Big bed at three release tomorrow. So the apps that I wanted to suggest to people that I know friends that use, so if you want to check them out, Sleep++ and Autosleep, two recommendations that I see a lot for applications to analyze your sleep data.

Marlies asks, why isn't Apple selling afc richmond jerseys now we don't have a reference yeah exactly we don't have answers to questions like this you know i wish they did um they should be doing this uh the reason i included this question in today's episode is because i saw this on uh nine to five mac linked to space explored which is uh this is zach hall's uh website i think zach runs it um it's part of like the overall nine to five thing the apple are selling a for all mankind mission patch set yes and i find it interesting and think they should do more merch and i would so much want an afc richmond jersey yeah yeah no this is this is a place where i think apple has fallen down is working on the marketing angle for some of its shows like there should be it's a network right there should be like a cbs store kind of thing where you can go to the apple tv store or even

in the apple store itself but if they have to set up something on the side whatever where you can buy your you know morning show mug and your uh your stickers or patches or whatever for for all mankind missions uh interesting that this one kind of leaked out it's a strange thing and it's for season two so it's like kind of a spoiler yeah i haven't looked at the patches diet i recommend not looking at them in detail in case there's spoilers in there and then ted ted lasso there are so many people who are sort of like making uh not not licensed shirts and stuff that are referenced ted lasso because people have really loved that show and and yet there's nothing out there like i feel like if you're running a network or streaming service you should probably have a store where people who are fans super fans can buy stuff

related to the shows that that you've got and i'm surprised they haven't done that yeah like beaks in the chat is like i would love a morning show coffee mug like that's like yeah it's just a funny one to have right like they i really would like to see them doing more in this vein because this is how you build super fans of your properties and ted lasso specifically really seems like one of those shows that people would like to have that kind of stuff for because it has this it's not at this point it's not a cult following but it's that kind of feeling you know like you know have you heard the good news about ted lasso kind of thing anton asks what do you think are Apple's options in regards to the iPad mini? Do they kill it? Do they keep it in the same form factor and a chip behind everything else?

Or do they update it to look more like the iPad Air? What do you think they're going to do? It's always a good question because it's unclear how Apple feels about the iPad mini, but they kept it around. So my guess is that the next iPad mini revision will be like the iPad air. It'll be a touch ID on a button and they'll move the bezels in a little bit and update it with modernish chips. And maybe it'll even, maybe it'll even get the sides and support Apple pencil too. Maybe even that, but like, I think they'll, you know, much later than you wanted, they'll update it to be what their sort of state of the art for the cheaper iPads is. So yeah, ultimately, I think it will look like the iPad Air. I hope so.

I really love that product. I think it would be really, really nice. And final question today comes from Ryan. Do you run apps that have Electron versions or do you just use these services in a web browser? So like if a company's Mac app, the only thing they offer is an Electron app, do you use those or do you use them in a web browser instead?

I absolutely use the apps because I hate apps that run in a web browser. I hate it because I use my web browser for the web. And then there's a tab that is lost in the browser and you can't find it or you close. I'm a, I'm not somebody who keeps a million tabs open. So what happens with me is then I close it. I close the window and I'm like, Oh, I just lost that app that was in a tab in that window. I close the window and I'm like, oh, I just lost that app that was in a tab in that window. And I hate that. I hate it.

I hate it. I hate it. I would like to send more web apps out into separate applications. And I know about single site browsing things. Sometimes they don't work right. I'll just say that. Sometimes they don't work right. But so I, of course I run the electron versions because they're apps and they run in their own app space.

And I know when they're open and I know when they're apps and they run in their own app space. And I know when they're open and I know when they're closed and I can control them. I much prefer that. I hate running something that looks like an app, but it's in a web browser. Hate it. I will also just state for the record

that I'm not, I don't think I can tell if an app is an electron app. Maybe it makes me a bad Mac user. I don't know. No, computer nerds like to say, well, yeah, but if you open an activity monitor and you look at the RAM being used, it's like, yeah, you know, I just run Slack. It's fine.

And it's in an app, and I'm glad it's in an app. I don't want it in my web browser. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer at the end of the show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade, or if you are a RelayFM member, just use the command question mark Ask upgrade. Or if you are a RelayFM member, just use the command question mark ask upgrade. You can become a RelayFM member and support

upgrade directly by going to getupgradeplus.com. If you do that, you will get access to a special feed that gives you ad free episodes of upgrade every single week with bonus content. It's typically like 15 to 20 minutes more upgrade for you every week with no ads. And you also get an additional bonus of 20 max for 2020, a few days before anybody else, along with all of the other wonderful perks you get for being a RelayFM member, which includes annual specials, access to the RelayFM members discord and so much more. It is a fantastic deal. Just go to getupgradeplus.com. And thank you so, so much to all of you Upgradians that have done that.

We really, really appreciate your support. I'd also like to thank DoorDash, KiwiCo, and Uni for their support of this show. If you would like to find Jason Snell online, you can... Oh, God! I've ruined everything for myself by saying that at the start of the show. Go to sixcolors.com or theincomparable.com or he is just at Jay.

That's as far as I'm going now. He's at Jay on Twitter. You can fill in the rest for yourself. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. I have been experimenting with Twitch streaming recently. It's all keyboard-related content. If you thought to yourself,

I really liked it when Mike and Jason spoke about keyboards on the show before, maybe you're a keyboard person. If you are, you should tune in to my Twitch streams at mike.live. I'm going to be doing something on Saturday the 12th at 9am Pacific, 5pm GMT. I'm going to be building a keyboard called a Think 6.5 from

scratch, which includes soldering and everything. So you can come and hang out then and watch me do that. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye co-host friend. Fare mike bye mike bye jason smell no