Upgrade - 334: Tina, If You're Tuna…

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

It's January and the avalanche of 2021 Apple product rumors has already begun. But we also take time to reflect about the first decade of the Mac App Store, have a difficult discussion about when tech companies should deplatform those planning political violence, and Jason exchanges helpful messages about buying late-model Intel Macs with someone who is a friend, a fish, or both.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 334 and today's show is brought to you by express vpn bombus and hello fresh my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley i have a hashtag snell talk question that requires context the question comes from steven and it is what is quote letterama l-e-t-t-e-r-a-m-a context is i was streaming uh last friday and jason uh appeared in the twitch chat uh whilst i was streaming and his username was letterama and Jason tried to explain this to me in the twitch chat and I didn't understand it so Jason what is uh your twitch username is letterama why is that and where does it come from letterama is a fallback username that I use when I can't get

the normal usernames that I I want for a service because nobody ever takes it and the reason that it exists is because when i was in high school my friends and i made movies we made videos and you made like a bond movie once right we made so many we made bond movies we made a we made a kung fu movie we made a noir detective show we made a spy series we did a dumb superhero thing you name it we made it um and in that era that was the era where i had uh i had an apple 2 and we wanted to do like credits for our movies like titles and credits and things like that and in that era there was no way to do that essentially without like expensive hardware. So what I could do was attach my VCR to my Apple II and use a program called Fontrix, apple 2 and then you could save those out as as uh as files as like image files um and then you could run through like a little a little script or

do it manually uh with the vcr running and you could get like a credit it wasn't credit rolling because you couldn't make them roll but you could get them to sort of like go from one credit to the next credit to the next credit and i ended up doing that for every single person in my high school video production class which we had and all my friends and like everybody i was the guy for a while you did until the very end where i sort of stopped doing it and another guy who was younger than me who was still there after i went to college he kind of picked it up from me so we did all of that and i decided i i was amused by the idea that the title as is true with regular like productions that people who do the titles get a credit and so i invented letterama as the company that makes credits because it's just a bunch of letters right so letterama it seemed like a seemed like this would be the name of it it was just a joke essentially but i kept

at it and then by the end um we kept joking about the letterama credit and i created i eventually created a titles by letterama credit that was the entire screen and like the letters were in different colors and literally it was the um letterama egomaniac credit screen because again i thought it was just funny it was all jokes within jokes within jokes anyway so i had that name and uh it it does not exist i mean there is a company called letterama that prints signs or something somewhere on the internet but basically it doesn't exist in social media logins or other account logins so if i can't get my go-to ones that involve my name i will just give up and do letterama because it's always available that's the story so apple 2 credits yeah i need to get a little bit of clarification because there's something I don't understand.

Which is, so how did you get the files you created on the Apple II onto the tape? So the Apple II had a composite video out port. Right. So you plug an RCA cable, composite video out cable, into the Apple II and you plug it into video in on the VCR. And then you press record. And instead of recording what's on the TV, it's recording from the video input. And it's recording, essentially, it's a screen recording of whatever is on the Apple II at that moment.

And then you go into graphics mode on the Apple II, which makes the text completely disappear and all there are graphics. And you can still type on the Apple II in graphics mode. So you can type in the background, load this file and display it. And it goes and it sort of fades in kind of. It's not. It's like interlaced lines, but it appears. And so that's what i would do

is i would have a stack of those on a floppy disk and i'd start recording and i and i'd run through the individual things and then that tape would go and be used in the uh in the editor if you had we had an editor at the high school so that was back in those days editing videotape was literally like um two vcrs attached to each other and you know you'd play on one and record on the other and that's how you'd go from your source to your final yeah it was very um oldest of schools uh but before that we were just literally bringing to like my friend would bring their vcr over to my house and we'd stick our two vcrs together and that's how we would edit our movies together was just playing one VCR and recording on the other.

So suffice it to say that I enjoy iMovie and Final Cut to this day because I remember what it was like before we had nonlinear editors. Yeah, because I figured you knew that you could connect VCRs together and cassettes like I used to do with audio cassettes. I used to connect two things together to be able to transfer music from one to another. I just had no idea that you could do this with the Apple II. Yeah, that was the standard way you connected. If you wanted higher quality image, you could get, like, I had a video card, basically, that attached to the pins on the motherboard,

and I had a color monitor, but the stock composite output was color, but it was so low quality that you really, for text, you really needed to just be on a monochrome monitor. So most of those Apple II monitors, like the green monitors that you see, those are just attached via an RCA cable, essentially coming out of the video out port on the back. So that was the, before there was a VGA and things like that, there was just a composite video app port on the back. So that was the, before there was VGA and things like that, there was just a composite video output port on those computers.

If you'd like to send in a question to help us begin an episode of Upgrade, you can send in a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk. You could use question mark SnellTalk in the RelayFM members Discord, or if you are Stephen Hackett, you can write it into our show document yourself, which is what Stephen did.

And that's how I knew that his question existed. Somebody did send it in as a Snell talk question after that. Oh, really? I noticed. That's the more official way of doing it rather than attempting to hijack the show. It is. But this is the like you're just, yeah, you're just sneaking in there. And we see that.

But somebody did it. Somebody knows the right way to do it. And that was listener matt so thank you listener matt i have uh two very quick pieces of follow-up that are both upstream related uh we spoke about roku potentially acquiring the rights to quibi's content they did it and it cost them less than 100 million dollars yes substantially less than 100 million i think is what i saw what does that mean two dollars eight dollars yeah i don't really know like are we is it more than 50 like where is the lower end of substantially and why does 100 million

need to be in the conversation at all um but nevertheless um and also warner brothers is going to be guaranteeing payments to filmmakers regardless of box office and will, quote, increase the odds of performance-based bonuses. So if you remember, there was a lot of furor about the fact that Warner Brothers basically pulled the rug out from their filmmakers and actors and actresses, cast and crew,

when they took their movies that were supposed to be in cinemas and put them on HBO Max without any warning to them. And there was a lot of upset about what was going to happen to all of the people expected to be paid and what box offices would provide them. So they're going to be doing a bunch of things. Bonuses for good performance in the box office are going to be paid out now at one half of what

the original trigger was so you make this movie makes x millions you'll get your bonus it's now been cut in half and they're going to be reducing it if movie theaters close down more so they'll keep reducing the point so like i guess it's i don't really know why they're doing it that way but they are and also uh so this is one of those funny things where companies paying themselves money, HBO Max will pay Warner Brothers a fee for the 31 day exclusivity

window which is apparently they're saying going to be a lot of money and that money will be shared out with cast and crew so that's how they're going to make it happen that'll all be in the various lawsuits yeah we'll see how this is taken to they're going to make it happen. That'll all be in the various lawsuits. Yeah. We'll see how this is taken

to by people in the movie industry. Jason, last week, the Mac App Store turned 10 years old. Wasn't a ton of coverage about this, which made me want to touch

on this a little bit with you to get your thoughts on 10 years at the mac app store i mean it's been a bit of a bumpy ride to say the least and ultimately maybe hasn't done what anybody would have really expected it to do so i kind of wanted to get your feelings like 10 years into the mac app store what do you think about it um i was very optimistic about it at the time because right we were we were dealing with the wild success of the ios app store the iphone app store from 2008 on and so then we get to 2011 mac app store and the thought was like is the app store existence of an easy to use easy to find bundled with the operating system app store the reason that the

app store on the iphone was so successful that brought the idea of paying for and downloading software out of the kind of nerd realm and into just a very easy mainstream understandable thing and had the iPhone trained people to think about getting apps using an app store. And so was this going to be a revolution for Mac software? That was the thought. And, you know, I would say that the trajectory of the Mac App Store has not been as bad as the worst case scenario, but it's also not been the best case scenario. app store exists and there's stuff in it and people do buy stuff in the mac app store and i'm sure you know apple probably could come up with some self-serving stats about the success of the mac app store and and uh put those out there but what i would say is that first off i think apple shot itself in the foot apple decided that their policies, Apple thought this was going to be such a wild success that they decided that they could dictate

policies to Mac developers in the same way that they dictated policies to iOS developers. And there's so much difference, right? Like first off, iOS developers only really came into existence in the context of an app store. Mac developers had been around forever. For ages, they'd been writing Mac software and selling it themselves. And they had their own business models. They had their own, they could do whatever they wanted. And they got to do that. Whereas the Mac App Store came in and had all these rules that the iOS App Store had. But the iOS app store had them from the start as like, these are the things you're not allowed to do. Right.

And we all have talked about many times how Apple has set up a lot of rules and we'll probably talk about them later in the show too. A lot of rules for apps that are in the app store. You have to follow what Apple, for Apple to sell your app, essentially to resell your app, you need to follow a lot of rules. And they, I think Apple really believed that there would be a gold rush. People, Mac developers would be like, oh man, we're going to make money like Mac, like the regular app store for in the Mac app store. So they were going to

say, we're going to also set all these rules and, and sandboxing and, you know, all these things that are very iOS like, and you're just going to, you're going to do that. And that was wrong on a huge number of levels, right? Because it was wrong because they didn't have that leverage. There never was a point where Mac developers were like, oh man, I'm really missing out by not being in the Mac App Store. It really never happened. It really never got the ball rolling to that point. And all of these apps for the Mac had been conceived of in an open software development ecosystem where you just made your app work and then you sold it and then people bought it. So a lot of the apps that were the best apps on the Mac couldn't be in the

Mac App Store because Apple had set these incredibly restrictive rules. And I would argue that if Apple had made the Mac App Store something that was essentially just a front end for Mac software of any kind to be installed and updated, rather than it being a curated rule-based thing. And I know why they did that. They wanted it to have Apple's stamp and all of that. But let's be honest, they also just were accustomed to the level of control that Apple had over the iOS app store. And if they had done something that was a lot simpler and was basically like, no, if you've got an app that runs on the Mac, you follow these basic rules and we'll sell it and you get the money and we take our piece. And I think it actually would have been way more successful. But they nipped that in the bud and they basically said, no, most apps are going to have to change and jump through some

very difficult hoops that Mac apps had never needed to do before. And so there weren't that many apps and therefore it was never a place that it needed to be, you know, everybody needed to be. And by the time Phil Schiller took over app developer stuff and app store stuff and made a bunch of changes, and you saw this a few years ago where they made that statement at WWDC where they're like, BB Edit's going to come back in the store because BB Edit had tried to be in the store and Rich Siegel had announced that Bare Bones was at the Singleton conference, actually, I think the last one, that they were getting out of the store. And he gave a whole presentation about why the Mac App Store was just a failure for them because they couldn't make it

work. So Apple makes this big deal, oh, Bare Bones is going to come back in and Panic is going to come in and there are Microsoft offices in there and look at all the things that are happening. Well, I think that was helpful. And I think in the last few years, what we've seen from Apple is an actual attempt to make a whole bunch of new entitlements, as they call them, that basically allow an app developer to say, I need to do this in order to be in the Mac App Store. And for Apple to say, we're going to create a special flag that is ability to do that thing. We're letting you in

the side door here basically yeah well and it's well it's like we're gonna we're gonna make another rule here that is you can do this thing if we say it's okay and then the developer says is it okay and apple says for you yes for you no right and and it's good because they're trying to evolve it and expand it and let apps and really look at like what apps can't get in the Mac App Store and why. And can we get them in the Mac App Store? And so that's all good. And I do buy apps on the Mac App Store.

Some apps are only on the Mac App Store. But I think the Mac App Store has had a very difficult time ever really transcending the original sin of the Mac App Store, which is Apple kind of arrogantly brought the iOS App Store model to the Mac and expected the software to just shoehorn itself inside. But it wasn't exclusive.

You could just not use the App Store. And that's why the iOS App Store was successful is you couldn't not use the iOS App Store. And that's why the iOS App Store was successful is you couldn't not use the iOS App Store. And because the vast number of pieces of software that were out there for the Mac were written for an environment where they could do whatever they wanted and they didn't fit inside the rules. So, you know, that original sin, I think, has basically made the Mac App Store what it is today, which is it's around and people use it and it's got stuff on it. And you could be a Mac user and just use the Mac App Store and be fine. Right. But there is a huge amount of rich stuff that is outside of the Mac App Store that is not going to go in the Mac App Store.

outside of the Mac app store that is not going to go in the Mac app store. And that's, uh, you know, it never did that. Like, I have not seen a, an amazing get rich quick story, right? Where it's like, Oh my God, you have to put your app in the Mac app store. Cause then you get featured by Apple and the ball starts rolling and your app is worth a fortune and you make a lot of money. And now you've got a business or whatever like those stories i don't i haven't seen any and and if if there is one it's the exception that proves the rule for the mac app store so you know i think it's unfortunate that it played out the way it did but um that's on apple it's apple's fault at mac mac app store is what it is because of the decisions apple has made over the last decade yeah like one of the ones that always sticks out to me was the sandboxing requirements right where it was like

they introduced the store it was already not a great deal but some people went for it and then they were like oh yeah starting from now there's a bunch of stuff you can't do anymore it's like yeah like read that read that part of the drive and they've again they've got like full disk access and stuff now that they didn't have right back then. Where it was like, no, you can only look in your sandbox. It's like, but I'm a backup utility. Well, you can't then. You can't do that there.

And like, yeah, should SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner be in the Mac App Store? Should they have been there from day one? Heck, yeah. You know, having a full disk backup, that's a great Mac utility. No, sorry. We're not going to allow that great Mac utility. No, sorry. It's not, we're not going to allow that because of security. Well, no, that's a terrible, a terrible thing. And, and the, and the pricing part, which I didn't mention, but, but you put in our show document.

I mean, that's the reason that bare bones, one of the big reasons bare bones said that they were out of it is that, you know, the difficulty with Apple's App Store model is the same one that we had already known about on iOS, which is all these Mac developers, they do a milestone version. Traditionally, they do a milestone version, 3.0, and then you buy that. And then you get 3.1 and 3.1.1 and 3.1.5 and 3.2 and 3.3 and 3.5. And then they say 4.0 is here. And if you buy it new, it costs this much.

But if you already have a license for 3.0, it costs this much. And you can't do that on the Mac App Store. So if you look at what got bare bones back in the Mac App Store, if you buy BBEdit on the Mac App Store, it's a subscription. You just pay them an annual subscription. If you buy BBEdit on the Mac App Store, it's a subscription. You just pay them an annual subscription. If you buy it from their website, you can just buy it. And then you get upgrade pricing for the next version. So the business model of a lot of these apps doesn't fit. The whole approach doesn't fit the way that the Mac App Store is built. Because the Mac App Store is built on the iOS App Store,

which is built on the iTunes Store, which was a model to sell you songs and albums. And it still is, kind of. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at HelloFresh. With HelloFresh, you get fresh, pre-measured ingredients and mouth-watering seasonal recipes delivered right to your door. HelloFresh lets you skip those trips to the grocery store and makes home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. And this is why it's America's number one meal kit. HelloFresh cuts out stressful meal planning, which is one of the worst things,

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of this show and RelayFM. This is the one we use. It's really good. It's great, right? That's my promotion. Lots of selection. You can always find

things you want if you're a picky eater. That's, it's, yeah. It is wild, like, just over the last,

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It really is great. All right. So I've got a bunch more product rumors for you, Jason. There was seems to have just been an explosion over the last week and there's just so many things we'll go through them. We'll stop and talk about any that interest us along the way. But it's just I like doing these earlier in the year,

so it sets up kind of where we're looking at aiming at over the next 12 months. So DigiTimes is reporting that Apple is about to enter the, quote, second phase of development on AR glasses. Second phase testing takes a couple of months. Then there's third phase. Then there's about phase, then there's about six to nine months of engineering validation. So there's about a year at least before they would

be happy to even think about a product. Apparently both weight and battery life are being focused on most right now. But it is worth noting that these are AR glasses, while many rumors have suggested that there would be an AR headset announced before glasses. So all of this is to say, if these supply chain rumors are true, something's happening. And the idea that we will hear about something in 2021, which I think is what Mark Gurman originally predicted, like a headset in 2021 with glasses in maybe 2022, 2023, a headset in 2021 with glasses and maybe 2022 2023 it's feeling more and more likely all the time uh because unlike the apple car rumors which at some point we will get to it's not today uh the timeline on these things seems much closer to where we are now and where it is in the process feels a little bit more real yeah i'm gonna um given the the ming chi

quo uh saying that in that they would ship something in 2021 i'm just gonna throw out there again what i mentioned i think in the upgrade these episode which is what if the headset is a developer kit yeah and then there are glasses that will come later but that if you want to like do a mixed reality ar kind of thing you know what if there's a headset i have a hard time seeing apple sell a headset as a consumer product although it's possible like i bought an oculus quest 2 so sure but um i could definitely see it as a as a developer pitch device that they then you know follow up with a device that actually is consumer-friendly

that goes down the road. But something is happening with AR. I think that makes a lot of sense because what would Apple's pitch for a headset be? Sit in front of your computer with this on your face and look at your computer? It seems weird because I can't really imagine gaming

being the thing unless they're hoping a lot of ios developers will move to some vr gaming or ar gaming platform that they've created because but i don't really imagine how it would translate over unless they you know like the current ar games on your iphone working but it just doesn't feel like a compelling product like this is a product that you know i think that they will probably try and pitch like they pitch the original apple watch right which is like this product does everything right which is not the pitch for the Apple Watch now, but I can imagine maybe something like glasses you wear on your face being able to provide that experience

more seamlessly than the original Apple Watch. Like, you know, the Apple Watch is also the key for your hotel room, right? Like, that was the kind of stuff they were originally promoting. And they don't really focus on that anymore. But maybe this is that kind of product. And a headset isn't that kind of product. But AR glasses, more so.

Yeah, I do wonder what... This was the clockwise question last week. One of them was, was what's the killer app for Apple's AR glasses. And that's why I keep talking about developer kit, because I feel like Apple probably has some ideas of things that are extensions of Apple's existing structure, whether it's fitness or maps or whatever. But I don't know if you're Apple and you're going into this space,

you've been trying to prime the pump with ARKit and all sorts of iPhone and iPad things and I think one way to discover what the killer app is would be to lean on the developers to because Apple's developers have a history of embracing new platforms and coming up with good ideas. So if you can open it up to the developers so that when you launch a consumer product, you've got a whole bunch of apps ready to go. If you think back to like the iPad launch, when there were so many iPad apps ready to go on day one, it might be a strategy that they would take on to do something that's not quite a product.

Like just like HoloLens is not quite a product, right? And use that and get that out there, but not, you know, by phrasing it as a developer something, it's not a consumer product. They're not trying to convince consumers yet this is just a run-up. It's version zero, right? And then they go to version one. It's just an idea. zero right and then they go to go to version one i i it's just an idea um they could you know like i've i've said about that that oculus quest like apple could make a vr headset that did gaming and

some other stuff easily if it wanted to it's got all the technology to do it it's just like it seems like a weird product for apple to do so So I keep thinking that the AR stuff is better. Is there effectively phones, pretty much? It is. It's an iPhone that you wear on your head, right? That's what it would be. And that's what the Oculus Quest is, is it's an Android phone that you wear on your head and play games on.

So they could totally do it, but I have a harder time seeing that as an Apple product than an augmented reality product from them and maybe that's just a lack of imagination on my part um or some skepticism about what's available in the iphone as a platform that would make you want to use uh you know play iphone games and like like you play oculus quest games or something i don't know and you know like this does fit the idea of them pre-announcing a product in this way right like with they've done this kind of stuff in the past when there isn't

an existing thing that apple does that will be cannibalized they do talk about these things in advance they did it with the apple watch i've done it with the ipad as you say right like yeah apple tv which is just 10 years old now, they pre-announced that in the fall. Didn't even give it their final name. They called it ITV. And then they shipped it in the spring or they shipped it in Macworld Expo in January.

So when you're not cannibalizing existing products, you can pre-announce all you like. Or do developer kits like the Intel and Apple Silicon developer kits that existed that were pre you know those products existing they made special hardware and got the developers really excited so there's lots of ways they could do it if they did create that hardware they're announcing a product they're doing right like you can appear hey we've created this ar headset don't worry about what it's for just make apps for it

right but I don't think that would stop them from saying you know we've told you a lot about the importance of augmented reality and we're serious about it and in 2022 we're going to ship an augmented reality headset but we want you developers to get started today and everybody's like oh my god Apple the thing we already have been talking about for two years

that is Apple working on AR they've confirmed the thing we already knew for talking about for two years that is Apple working on AR. They've confirmed the thing we already knew for a year from now. I don't know. I think Apple's game plan has changed enough that they recognize that they could do something like that, and it literally wouldn't make any difference. Makotakara

had this vast selection of rumors and supply chain info. The first is that an iPad mini refresh is in the works. So this is half, I think, of what a lot of people wanted. So this is a big change to the iPad mini, but bringing it more akin to the most recent iPad of last year, not the iPad Air. So shrinking the bezels iPad of last year, not the iPad Air.

So shrinking the bezels down on the sides, resulting in an 8.4-inch display, but still with bezels on the top and bottom. So there's still going to be a home button, still going to be a lightning port, and looking at a March kind of timeframe for a release. So interesting, the iPad mini is still around, but kind of making really like a release so interesting the ipad mini is still around but kind of making really like classes of ipads now really you know like if they do yes you've got the ipad and the

ipad mini and they look like older devices and then you have ipad air and the ipad pro as these more uh they have their own design language and you can see how obviously a year or two hence two years maybe then the ipad and the ipad mini get the touch id button or something and they get a little bit smaller but like they're always going to be behind because they're the low-end models yeah makes sense makes sense to me fans of the ipad mini probably yeah i don't know happy that it still exists and that it's getting an update sad that it's not getting like face ID or something but yeah and like it is the low edge yeah screen would be beautiful but this is something this is looking for a March time frame uh MacTakara is also reporting a ninth generation iPad so the brother of the iPad. Now what's going to happen here is some dimension

changes. It'll basically look exactly the same, but it's going to get thinner. It's currently 7.5 millimeters. It will go down to 6.3 millimeters. This is still not as thin as the current iPad Pro. It will get lighter from 490 grams to 460 grams, but the biggest thing is this will also apparently bring a price drop now this is the part that i'm less convinced over right because pricing is not set in the supply chain if that's where this information is coming from but we don't know where it's coming from but this would apparently drop the price from 329 to 299 a sub 300300 iPad is a cool thing to have. And see why they'd want to do that, right? That's obviously one of the goals of the iPad, the just no name iPad is to have it be relatively cheap compared to the rest of the line and get

people to buy it at that entry. It's the entry iPad. And also you could use it for education and getting the price down for education is also good i mean i don't know like it maybe gets closer to like 250 260 in education could be that'd be wild all right and then so that's march and also in march so i think we're looking at an event in march jason that we can kind of put our eyes to. New iPad Pros. Or Pro. All right. So there is apparently going to be new iPad Pros, but they're going to be, it seems like they're going to be different. So the 12.9 inch iPad Pro is going to get half a millimeter thicker. The 11 inch iPad Pro is going to be the same thickness. So I guess what we're looking at here is the larger iPad Pro getting some kind of new display technology, and we're expecting that

to be mini-LED. But the 11-inch, maybe not so much. And we've seen this in the past, right? The bigger iPad Pro pro getting or at least ipad pros being on different um kind of release cycles for technology and it looks like that might be what's happening here right well the remember the larger ipad pro came out first and then the the smaller ipad pro came out later with some features that weren't in the larger but the larger had features that weren't in the smaller and then they synced them up so this would be an interesting thing if a few years later on they decide to make you know are they going to call it the ipad pro max oh god i hope not the rumors don't seem to suggest that there will be multiple 12.9s but there could be well i'm just saying if the 11 is the iPad Pro and the 12 is the Pro Max, I don't want to own a Pro Max. Mini LED is this technology that's supposed to dramatically improve the control of the backlighting on the display so that you could probably call it an HDR display, which they can't now.

way which they can't now um i don't know interesting idea to bifurcate the line like that i think that's been a quest an open question especially when the um the ipad air was updated it's like okay how is the ipad pro different and how are the two models different are they different other than in size yeah i would find it a shame if they do rev these out of sync again. Because I, at the moment, am using the 11-inch mostly. That's the iPad Pro that I'm using most of the time is the 11-inch. Right, because you're in trouble. And I also think it is the best one. So I think it would be a shame to not rev them at the same time.

There have been many other rumors citing like larger, sorry, like better processors, all that kind of stuff. But this thickness rumor would seem to suggest something's going on. I can't, I don't really imagine a scenario where they have to make one of them thicker

and one of them can stay the same, but they both get the same technology. That would be weird to me. So it seems like that there is going to be some kind of split. Weird. and one of them can stay the same, but they both get the same technology. That would be weird to me. So it seems like that there is going to be some kind of split. A redesign of the AirPods Pro case for a second generation model is apparently coming. And also a second generation of iPhone SE, both due for April. No more real detail shared than that.

I wonder what it means, redesign of the AirPod Pro case for a second generation model. Does that mean that they're going to redesign the case now for the first generation model so it will also fit the second generation model? Does it mean that they're redesigning the case and there will be a second generation model, but they don't know what the second generation model is, only that they're redesigning the case? I don't know. So I have my theory. All right. redesigning the case i don't know so i have my theory all right so the case is getting on me uh same thickness but it's getting a little um taller and wider i think it's a magsafe so it fits on magsafe like and connects uh because you can lay one on a you can lay the airpods pro case on a magsafe now and it works but it doesn't connect so i'm wondering if it's that they're making the surface area like

bigger okay weird would they would all right i i think it's well they did with the airpods original they did update the case but and they updated the model later and it was the same shape so that you can have the chi charging case with the first ones or the second ones. So I guess they could do something like that. No idea. I have no real idea. That's, you know. The last thing, the iPhone 13 yes, iPhone rumors

is to feature a narrower notch, but the phones will get 0.26 millimeters thicker with a slightly thicker camera bump. But it said that the design of the camera bump is going to change. So no longer having those tiers,

it would just be covered, the entire camera unit covered in one piece of sapphire glass. Interesting. So the idea there is you'll just have a presumably like square camera bump instead of what we have now, which is a bump with little bumps inside it. Yeah. And that set of rumors also predicted what you were saying, I think it was maybe last week or the week before, that the iPhone 13 Pro is likely to get the sensor shift.

Yeah, there you go. So that might be part of the reason for thickness changes as well with the phones it's going to be a busy year again i think i think so i i think we're all we're going to spend the year waiting to see what where the signs of the sort of reduced work because of covid have hit apple's plans but it's going to be hard to see them. They seem to, you know, possibly because they work so far out in advance that they're able to disguise that and ride it out a little bit better. You can spread stuff maybe, right? We know the Mac is going to have a very interesting year, but the iPad Pro is really due a proper update. And then they don't leave the iPhones laying there for a year.

That doesn't generally happen. And so there you go. Now we're in a busy year. So do you think, let's assume that we're, I mean, I expect that even the AirPods and the iPhone, if they're for April, I expect that they might be getting and that like announced in march kind of like all this stuff together potentially and this they maybe do some press releases in

april for those products do you think that they would do uh the macs and the ipads together in march at an event a mac and ipad pro event ipad pro especially in march but macs and ipads in march like they've done Mac and iPad together before. That was the Brooklyn event, was Mac and iPad. So they could totally do that. I think it makes sense. Yeah.

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We're going to talk about something that's super delicate right now. Oh boy. With a lot of ramifications, but it's important to technology, so we're going to discuss it, but I ask you to bear with us as we try and get through this. Basic timeline. Last week, President Trump and his cohorts arranged a protest on the day of President-elect Biden's confirmation, which incited violence and anger.

Trump's followers stormed the U.S. Capitol building in what can best be described as an insurrection. Trump did not firmly condemn these actions and, in fact, chose to tell these people that he loves them and they're special. Twitter and Facebook used this as a reason to suspend Trump from their platforms. Facebook then decided to permanently suspend him until at least after he leaves office. Then Twitter followed suit of a permanent suspension and said that he cannot be on the platform in any guise. After this, many assumed that he and his followers would leave Twitter to the Parler social network, and this is a thing that people were trying to drum up.

Google and Apple removed Parler from their app stores due to the content on Parler and its lack of moderation or plan to change that. Then Amazon's AWS hosting service terminated their contract with Parler, rendering it useless, and it's very likely now that Parler will not be able to recover from this

within any reasonable time frame. And then today when we were recording uh some people were basically stripped a bunch of information and personal information out of parlor because of bad security practices and services like shopify terminated agreements for fundraising reddit and discord and others closed down forums of discussion against against uh amongst sorry the most extreme supporters of donald trump so kind of all the cards fell right um it took the attack on the capital to be the thing that would push at least one company uh over the edge and then once once one company could do it, then the rest can follow suit.

I think this was maybe a thing that was always waiting. Everyone was waiting for somebody to take the first step. And kind of between Twitter and Facebook, they were basically egging each other on to the point that then all of these other companies kind of not just moved against Donald Trump specifically, but also the most extreme of those who follow him. So I want to have a conversation about this because it's really big news for technology because there are a lot of ramifications from this. And I think there are a lot of questions about it, right? Just at a very basic level, is it okay to remove the president of the United States

from social networks? Is that an okay thing to do? It's a difficult thing for sure. I wouldn't want to have to make that decision well right i i think i've been reading a lot of ben thompson's writing about this and and what i appreciate about ben writing about this is that he makes a point that i think doesn't get in lots of dialogue does not get um said enough which is it's complicated and hard. And for people who are like, oh, there's an easy answer here.

I don't think there is an easy answer. And his argument is, and this is so complex, but his argument is basically that in general, what you probably don't want is big companies controlling what people can see. Because the more of that there is, the more control and power is invested in big companies, largely who answer to no one. Like what Facebook, his point, especially about Facebook is, Facebook is structured in such a way that Mark Zuckerberg can do, I almost forgot his last name boy what a

world it would be if i could forget who he was do that um mark what's his name mark rutherford as i'm calling like i'm gonna call him from now on uh mark zuckerberg he could do whatever the hell he wants with facebook like and no one can stop him short of laws no one can stop him yeah he he really is one of the most powerful founders of a company because he's retained enough control of his company to be able to make his own decisions investors don't get to tell him what to do he just does whatever he wants and they can't throw him out and ben's point is not that Trump is great, but that do you want somebody who has nobody who can tell them what to do, an unelected person, control discourse? Because there are lots of bad ways that could go. And you could argue that the history of facebook is a history of all the

bad ways that it could go in fact um and and so it makes it really scary to talk about these companies uh exerting this control because they are not democratic institutions. They are just profit-seeking private corporations. That said, I've been a community moderator for a lot of years in a lot of different places, and I know for a fact that communities have to have rules or they descend into madness. Yep. Almost like the real world. Just, yeah, you need rules or it descends into madness and i'll put out there another thing which is you know who can't in the united states anyway you know who can't set the rules the government because the first amendment very specifically says that the government cannot

regulate speech now there are exceptions to, including things like inciting violence, which is what happened last week. That's not protected speech, believe it or not. But people seeking the government to, it's like, oh, these big companies aren't democratic and we must let the people decide. It's like, well, no, in the United States, at least, you can't do that. You can't have the government say what do a moderation policy like it's not constitutional to do that. So the problem I see here is largely that there are there is so much power invested in these individual companies. The beauty of it is there are other places on the internet you can do stuff,

but I think you could argue when you look at what happened with Parler or Parlay or whatever it is, that, and I would say corporations should be able to decide

who their customers are. And if somebody is radioactive, because, not because they have a political view, but because they've advocated for the violent overthrow of the United States government and the invalidation of actual valid elections

because they didn't like the result. That's a really good reason for a company to say, we're not interested in doing business with you. We don't want your service, which allows people to plan insurrections to be on our platform. That's bad for business. Bad for business, right? That is something that should be allowed. If you're worried about the power that Twitter or Facebook has, I would say the problem lies with the regulators allowing them to be so powerful, because that's what has gotten us where we are, is that we've allowed these giant companies to have so much power that there aren't necessarily that many alternatives

although i suspect just like 4chan parlay parlor will find someone somewhere a server in russia or something that allows them to get back online yeah but i mean i've seen a lot of of people who seem very smart say like even if like the the the kind of resources required to change a hosting platform on a moment's notice is not an easy thing to do so like it could take them a long time before they were able to come back if ever because they may run out of money during this period and that's what happened with 4chan and and all of its you know successors is that they're like you know you squash them here and they end up popping up somewhere else but it can take time and it's like bit torrent sites it's the same thing right it's just like well they get squished here oh look they're back but they have a slightly different domain name

and that different host well now that host has shut them down and now they've moved to somewhere else and that that's things that are kind of renegade things on the internet can find places to go. But, you know, and I would say this as a larger thing too, is a society's got to have its standards. And there is a place that you have to draw the line between political viewpoint and something that goes beyond that. political viewpoint and something that goes beyond that, something that is a view that is not considered valid in a polite, legitimate society. And I would say advocating violence. I would say racism, white supremacy. Those are on the list of things that businesses should look at and be like, no, we don't want to be involved with those people at all. We're not interested. But also inciting violence is a pretty simple one. And that was, I thought, the most interesting thing of the whole

event last week of the tech part. I'm not going to talk about the rest of it right now, but of the tech part was the end of Twitter statement. Because they banned Trump for 12 hours and then said he can come back, but if we see any more behavior like this of inciting violence, that we consider inciting violence, we're going to turn off his account. And then they did.

And what they said in their statement was, the tweets he sent out not could be interpreted, but we can see them being interpreted by people as a message to plan more violence and whether he intended it that way or not if you're twitter and you're saying i the tweet that says i'm not going going to the inauguration, but I love you and you people should keep up what you're doing, not only could be interpreted as it's okay to commit violence at the inauguration because I, your leader, will not be there. But that they were seeing on Twitter and elsewhere, people absolutely taking it to mean that. absolutely taking it to mean that. And I have very little sympathy for the people who say,

oh, woe is me. I no longer have a platform, whether it's the president of the United States or the junior senator from the state of Missouri, because you're famous politicians. You got lots of ways to get your message out. I think it's fascinating that Trump hasn't done more since getting kicked off Twitter to communicate to people. I think maybe that says something about the nature of how he used Twitter and how maybe they got it exactly right, which is Twitter was a way for him to lob some bombs into the public discussion and send messages that his supporters could read how they wanted to. And going to a podium and giving a statement while the press yells questions at him is not something that he wants to do, but he can do it. He can get his message out

in lots of different ways. There are plenty of ways for him to get his message out. So I roll my eyes at the idea that you're suppressing the communication from some of the most powerful people in the world. They can get their message out if they want to. So it's a difficult situation. It's a very complex situation. But I do think that if you want to talk about the big, and there's a lot of Republicans who are talking about like, oh, we got to change the laws the laws about what uh what platforms are responsible for anybody who knows anything about platforms will tell you what will happen if if you change the laws like that which is the platforms will disappear or they will be so moderated that

nothing will get through it won't become a parlor like free forum where people can say anything including uh advocate for assassinations, because they're not going to be able to withstand the legal scrutiny of that. So instead, you'll get less speech, not more speech. But that's not really what they care about. That's not really what they care about. They're mad because a lot of politicians have made hay, stoking up fear and anger, a bunch of group of people, feeding them lies, making them believe things that are just not true and act on them because it benefits them politically, not thinking that the consequences might rain down on them. And what we saw last week is that a violent mob

approached the Capitol and went inside, including a lot of those politicians who did that. It turns out that the mob was turned back on them, the mob, the monster that they created, the vampire that they invited in. So there are a lot of politicians running for cover now because they stoked all of these flames and don't want to deal with the consequences. And then there are also, as you were saying, a lot of the complaints from people about thinking that these social networks either have kicked them off or will kick them off for something like this is they've made a business over the last few years

of creating this type of anger and upset, and it's performed very well for them and i assume that they don't want to uh think that they're going to be in a situation where they're not allowed to do that anymore if i have one hope of of what will come out of this and i i have more than that but i'll throw this one out there which is i would hope it might teach some politicians politicians the lesson that lying to people and telling them that essentially uh our democracy has died and the only response is going to be an armed uprising is not just something you say because it's politically expedient to feed your base it's something that has direct ramifications and if what you're truly advocating is a the dissolution of democracy in the united

states then i guess you'd nailed it but if that if you were just mealy-mouthed you know lying about it in order to make your uh your uh throw some red meat to your constituents you bear responsibility i mean you do either way but that way you you bear it as a as a fraud so yeah you didn't get away with it well no i mean we've seen it now that that and that was the sea change in the last week is that trump has been saying he didn't lose the election and saying lies about how he won by a lot of votes for ages now and everybody's just rolled their eyes because let's be honest he's been doing it for four years. The last election, which he won in the electoral college, even then he lied about how many popular votes were cast because he was embarrassed that Hillary Clinton beat him in

the popular vote. So he just said, oh, those votes don't count. Those were illegal votes. So he's questioned the voting, democratic voting in America for four years now, more than four years now. So this is not new, but people went along with it saying, well, this guy, yeah, he's a liar and an egomaniac, but he's our liar and egomaniac. So we're just going to go along and he'll go away. And it all came to roost last week. All of those things. Because racists and conspiracy theorists and and other kind of disaffected people who believe it's true and you know honestly it's sad because if you believe let me put it this way if i believed that the election had been stolen and that Trump had not won, you know, but he had gotten, let's say it like he had gotten all of the places where he lost to be invalidated and

declared himself the president when we all knew that it wasn't true. Would I be outraged? Would I say now is the time where we as people have to go into the streets and stand up because we can't allow this travesty of democracy to happen? This undemocratic thing that's going to destroy our country? You're damn right I would. The difference is not subtle, though, which is it didn't happen. It's not true. Every single court case, every single attempt to ask them to provide evidence, they don't have any. It's all sophistry.

It's all lies. There is no evidence. The people who are angry are angry about lies. I would say that people who commit violence are responsible for their actions, but also the people who lied to them to make them angry are responsible for their actions. actions yeah so that is and and last week it all came home to roost and last week it was very hard for the social media companies to deny their participation not only in the promulgation of those lies over the course of years but in very specific planning of these people radicalized by their services planning violence and they should have should they draw have drawn the line sooner yeah yeah i think so but at least they drew the line finally like and i and i think honestly i think

the biggest thing twitter and facebook are doing now is trying to make it harder for people to plan more attacks in the not not about not about looking back about looking forward that more attacks are being planned by these radical people and they need to deplatform the people who are coordinating or inspiring and planning those attacks The question about should Trump have been removed sooner

is one that I've seen a lot and it's it's quite a complicated one really like because there are many arguments you could make for why you know he should have been taken off of social media a long time ago but this also does feel like a really good time to have done it so ben ben thompson's argument that that he got a lot of pushback from including from john gruber on their podcast is this idea of of dust in the light it's the idea that when your public when your public officials say things there's value in having them be out there because it allows it to be criticized and you end up with people on Facebook and Twitter and places like that saying, you know, Trump said this and then people quote it and they say, this is a lie. This isn't true.

They do it in newspaper websites. They do it on the services themselves. should be given a little bit of leeway to say those things publicly and not suppressed by corporations. Because in the end, what you really want is not the corporations making that decision, but the, forgive me, marketplace of ideas to be able to say, he said this thing, it's dumb, here's why. And I get that argument to the point, but I think the big problem with Donald Trump is he was being treated, the weight given to him was that he was the president of the United States, which does bear weight, but there wasn't enough weight being given to the fact that he's a troll and a liar and was using social media in a way that no previous senior government person has ever had. He is because, okay, I'm going to insult Donald Trump a lot, but let me give him a little credit here. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is a master social media troll. I've kicked these people off of so many message boards in my years. He is a master social media user and troll. He absolutely is. And that's

the part that didn't get enough weight, I think. I think that in the end, they're like, well, what do you want us to do? He's the president of the United States. It's like, yeah, but this president of the United States is not doing president things all the time. He's doing bad stuff using your network as an engine. But's no easy answer here again come back to it i think there's no easy answer here however i will say uh incitement to violence pretty starkly changes things and private corporations should be able to always decide who gets to use their platforms use their services and if you have a problem with that, I would say, look within yourself and say, what are you willing to give the government power

to do? Because I suspect a lot of the conservatives who are very upset about Twitter and Facebook and Amazon aren't big fans of the idea that government can just take what any private corporation does and stop them from doing it there was a a tweet that went out last week from a conservative politician who said um getting you know kicking them off of these services is like something that happens in china i think it was nicki haley who said that and somebody else said well no actually the government demanding that a private corporation send out the messages of the government's leaders is what happens in China

yep it's like this time that all of this stuff happening at this time is a good time for it to happen as he is in his final days to stop him having a time afterwards well i think that that is another calculation here right is it turns out that the real danger

that they see is a president who's about to lose power, increasingly encouraging violence and unrest for him to steal back his power. Yeah. And constitutionally, his power ends in nine days. And so there's definitely an idea of sort of like, we got to get through this part. And then also stopping him from being able to sow doubt in who has power after those nine days.

Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's I'm sure what he wants to do is to continue to call himself the president. And honestly, if it was just Donald Trump bleeding about how he is, the life is unfair and he didn't lose um it would be okay the problem is that the entire right-wing media sphere has amplified they're they're deathly terrified of going against him um i saw one report that said that um a reporter talked to republican members of congress who had voted in Trump's favor on all of this election stuff and said, of course it's not true, but I'm afraid that if I vote the other way, my family will be in danger. That's tyranny. That's tyranny. And that's the difference here, right? Is him having his lie about him losing because he feels bad because he's a egomaniac and a narcissist um is one thing but it's the whole rest of it which is convincing millions of people that

there's been some sort of uh shenanigans and he really did win and not just win win by a lot just it didn't happen it didn't. And then having them react with violence. And even if it's not overt violence, also the place that leaves the United States where you've got millions and millions of people who believe that the government is illegitimate, and what is that going to spawn in terms of future behavior?

So, yeah, it sucks. It's a bad situation and i would say again i think it does point out that uh some of these tech companies do have too much power and don't answer to anybody but in this case they did do the right thing you know if we've learned anything about corporations over the years and i've worked in a bunch and you worked at a bank you know this too it's like they don't do stuff unless they really, really have to, unless they're really put on the spot. And guess what? Last week put a lot of corporations on the spot. And maybe it's good in the end that there was a little bit of a refresher about the difference between we support

politicians from both parties in the US to the people we won't support are the people who are lying to their constituents and advocating the abandonment of't support, the people who are lying to their constituents and advocating the abandonment of democratic norms, that those people are not part of the conversation anymore. There is another side to it though, right, where the events of maybe even the last four days, this has been a very long week. Oh, wow. It's been a long year.

It's not even January 15th yet. The events of the last few days, like watching all of these companies use this as their excuse to act, you end up with this domino effect. This company shuts this down. This company shuts this down. This one does.

This one does. This one does. You could argue aws would not have shut parlor down if google and apple hadn't kicked it off the store right right that like there's a there's a domino effect right we didn't even mention this like we we talk a lot they'll be like oh apple and google they're so bad and they've closed the door well first off first off, there's the web. There's always the web. But secondly, how many times have we talked about Apple having exacting standards and kicking apps off for no good reason, right? Well, you look at Parler and you're like, how did they stay on so long? And I think the answer is they were trying to not be seen as being biased, even though Parler was probably in violation of a lot of its rules that would have kicked almost any other service off they're like yeah but if apple would have done this on

their own right it would have looked it would have been covered very differently and yeah you know all of these tech companies are all trying to skirt around these antitrust lawsuits that come in their way and so like they they would have been they would have seen it as politically difficult to do it right but this this kind of like domino effect i wonder if it makes like the situation worse in some ways because to people that feel affronted it's like all of a sudden they're all like clamping us down like now biden's coming in they're all like now they're exacting their control over us right like and i'm not saying that it is it was the right i mean it's to say right like a lot of this stuff should have been

done a long time ago it is the right thing for these companies to take this time as the time to make these changes because it really has gone too far now like it's been too far for a lot of time now it's like really too far but there is this concern i can see of like does this make some stuff worse in the short term well and i. I think the way I would phrase what you just said is I think a lot of these hosts and services gave them latitude and said okay, it's politics. We're going to let it go

because it's politics. And I think what has happened in the last week... And we don't want to control politics and all that. Yeah, I get it. That is super important is you've got to draw a line and say beyond this point, it's not politics anymore. Beyond this point, it's trying to conspire to commit violence to overthrow an election. That's not politics anymore. That's not acceptable. That is, you lost an election and now you're going to attack

the people whose job it is to go on with government because you're unhappy with the results. That is a line that I think a lot of people didn't want to draw. Or, and I guess I think there's cowardice here too, right? It's like, I just don't want the bad PR and I don't want them making speeches about me. And so I'm going to let this one go. And they let a lot, they let too much go. And now they have to redraw that line it's just like i saw a uh was it teespring this morning put out a press release saying because they found out that the uh anti-semitic uh pro-holocaust t-shirt being

worn by at least one person photographed in the riots was a teespring shirt i believe and uh they were very apologetic and like, we've shut this person down and we've deleted all the things and we feel really bad and we do have a lot of moderation, but stuff gets through and we're sorry and we're going to make donations

and all of that. And that's probably true, but it's also probably true that they let a lot of stuff slide because they don't- Oh, there's just so much like copyrighted stuff there. It's just terrible.

Yeah, right. So they just, they don't want the, they make money and they let it slide until there's bad publicity and then they have to tighten it up. And there was a lot of that in the last week to make no mistake. There was a lot of, we let this, we let this stuff go. And I think it was the boiling frog a little bit. Like you could ratchet it up more and more and everybody just kind of let it go because they knew that they were going to get screamed at for suppressing speech on their own platforms until and it took a violent mob trying to get into the succeeding to get into the capital of the united states during the congress trying to do their constitutional rights to verify a free and fair for them to all realize, oh, yeah, that's too much. Yeah.

I don't really have anything else to say on this. Well, so what I would say is it'll be interesting to see where this goes from here. Yeah. Because you are in a place where a lot of different people's political takes are torn up and thrown into different places. So like I said,

now you've got conservatives complaining about private companies exercising their rights about what happens on their platform by complaining that it's a violation of free speech, which of course, the First Amendment doesn't guarantee speech on private platforms, only that the government doesn't regulate it. So now you've got people who are theoretically sort of no government control over businesses people saying, oh, we got to stop twitter and facebook right and then you've got democrats who have taken a different tack to big tech uh who applaud these moves and so i think in the going forward all of us expect big tech

under the biden administration to get looked at for new regulation. The Democrats are going to control Congress. He's ultimately going to be able to nominate people to the various commissions. What happens in the next four years and beyond in terms of what that big tech regulation looks like? Because I would argue it's a place where right now, it seems, a lot of the old standard lines have been put in a blender. And I don't know what's going to come out of there. Because it would be very interesting, as it's been the last few months, to see senators and representatives advocating for governments to tell private companies what to do on the Republican side, because that's supposed to be their thing not to do that, but they want to do it in this instance. So I don't know where that's going to

go in the long run. But I do hope that this gives a little more of a backbone. You know, we had this Macworld had message boards for almost the whole time I was there. And we had Chris Breen was tweeting about this this weekend, because some of the people involved in this remind us of the people we had to deal with back then. It's very much like, oh, they're at the Capitol now. Okay. are going to break it and they're going to try to avoid your rules and i think this last week has reminded a lot of these companies that have public platforms and that profit off of having platforms where the public can come in and do things that their line of what is acceptable and their methods of determining who's violating their rules is not in the right they're not in the right place and that they are responsible for things that happen on their platforms and let's just say it if there's a lot of responsibility to go around but if twitter

for example or a facebook group was responsible for coordination that led to, I was going to say the, the murder of a member of Congress, but let's say the murder of a couple of police officers. Does that social media platform that hosted the conversation bear responsibility morally for that conversation being allowed to happen? I'd say yes. I'd say yes i'd say yes that's difficult and i think the solution is they need to look at their standards they need to look at their standards and they're not going to say you're not going to stop everything you're not going to stop everything and i'm not saying they should be held responsible by government for it as much as that

they need to look within themselves and say we can't be a party to this level of planning of violence that we need to we gave them I hope the lesson from the last week is we gave these people a little bit of slack and they

took it and they pushed it and they went to very bad places. However let me give you the converse now which is none of these companies have proven that their uh moderation policies can be consistent or effective in any way so i mean what will what will they do with that knowledge start getting into the conversation around end-to-end encryption and then we're off to to the races right like yeah it's different though it's just as different as trump not being able to tweet like creating end-to-end encrypted uh message groups that that or messages that are uh secret

that are doing bad things it is a realm for law enforcement, but it's also not public anymore. It's not public. Just like, you know, Klan meetings aren't public either. Right. Which makes it less likely to spread. It doesn't mean it's not a problem. It doesn't mean law enforcement doesn't have to be involved and find informants and worm their way into those groups just as they do now. But it does make it harder for it to just be out in the open for

people to find and for it to be recommended to your grandma on our facebook feed right yeah because you have to know or get invited by the person to join it it's not like this is just spread out into your social graph because your friend liked it and retweeted it or reshared it and now you can join it because you're a little bit annoyed too and then you end up getting radicalized from seeing this group and everything that's in it shared to you all the time

you already have to have gone over a certain level to walk into a closed door kind of thing as you say I imagine probably very rare for somebody to to stumble their way into a clan meeting right and then sit down and join in i'm reminded of a uh buck o'neill the legendary um negro leagues star uh told the story about how he was a he was a

scout after his playing days for the Cubs, I want to say. And he was scouting a player. He was trying to find where a player was playing in this little town in the South. And they said they were out at the baseball diamond. And he got the directions to the wrong baseball diamond. And it was this baseball diamond that was down a country road. So they drive down the country road and they pull into the parking lot and the baseball diamond was being used for a Klan rally. And there were, so these two black guys drive their car into the parking

lot for the Klan rally and one of the guys who's sort of at the entrance of the parking lot was like probably not what you're looking for. And they're like, indeed it's not. Thank you very much. And they drove the other way. So I'm just saying you could stumble into a clan meeting but probably not but you're not going to take a seat is probably not going to take a seat yeah probably not all right this episode is brought

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Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM. Alright, let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions to finish out today's episode of the show. Dcats asks a question that kind of goes back to one of our opening topics today.

Do you think that we'll see a shift towards properly universal apps across iOS and Mac now that this is becoming more of a possibility, or do you think that developers will stick to multiple versions on multiple platforms? What do you think? I think that newer apps,

yes, especially companies or individuals that maybe grew up in from either age-wise or in their business through the ios model that they may just be like this is a known entity for me i know how to deal with apple's platforms i know how to deal with the app store and all of the business stuff i know. And also my app is a subscription app because this is the easiest way maybe for me to make money on iOS. So I'll just have my Mac app be a universal app built with these same underlying technologies, put it through the app store. It's a subscription anyway. Easy peasy, right? I can imagine that. And I'm seeing that. I see that more and more now.

You see applications that are new, and they're on every platform, and they're using maybe Mac Catalyst, or they're using SwiftUI, or a combination of all of them, and they have a subscription that underpins the whole thing. So they can be on all those platforms, and it's easy for them. I do not think this is going to push companies that have separate iOS and

Mac versions towards this model unless they've already decided that they want to go the subscription route. I don't think it's going to change a lot of behaviors. Yeah, I agree with everything you said there. I think going forward, people are going to look at this and new apps will be more likely to be built this way. And there are probably some developers who have a Mac app that's kind of obligatory, but their focus is on iOS, where they're going to be able to, over time, drop the Mac app and just base their code base. They'll still have a Mac app, but now it'll be based on the iOS code base. I think that's

absolutely going to start happening where why should we develop two in the long run when we can develop one? I think there are some places where you're going to say... We should also say, you can actually keep them separate if you want to. You could develop a Mac app based on iOS You could develop a Mac app based on iOS and just not connect it to the iOS app if your business model doesn't work that way. So there are ways to do it that way if you really wanted to. But yeah, I think in the long run, this is going to be a more likely path. And then as we see Swift UI come along and all like, I think it's going to just continue happening. The end goal is that Apple will have one software platform across all its devices, but it's going to be, you know, I think for maybe forever, almost that the Mac is running all sorts of different kinds of apps, native Mac apps and Mac apps brought over with Catalyst and some iOS apps with, you know with iPad flavoring and other stuff. I think that's just going to be how it is going forward. And the stuff that's incredibly complex and based on AppKit, the original Mac stuff,

it's just going to continue kicking around as it is until it can't anymore. And that may never happen. Tuna asks, when Jason reviewed the upgraded 27 inch iMac he recommended that if you had to have a new Mac then it was a good buy now that you've had a chance to use the M1 Macs thoroughly

would you still recommend this Intel iMac or should I wait? I had a friend ask me this not named Tuna this week because her iMac is dying. And what I said was, can you wait? And she said, I might not be able to wait. I said, all right, well, first off, I said, I'll look at your Mac if you want, bring it over and we'll decontaminate it.

first off, I said, I'll look at your Mac if you want, bring it over and we'll decontaminate it. And then I'll look at it and I'll see if I can figure out if it's the drive or if we can just wipe it and it'll be better. Or what is going on with this Mac? Is it something physically wrong with it? Or is it just that you've got a slow old drive that's dying? But when she was saying, I don't think it's going to make it, I'm like, well, you could get an iMac, but you really shouldn't because we're in this transition now. And what I actually told her is, if you can't wait, I don't think you should buy an iMac. I think you should buy a monitor and a Mac mini. And, you know, everybody knows their own use cases.

But at this point, I don't think I would recommend anybody buying an iMac, an Intel iMac, unless they had absolute reason for having Intel features or they're deathly afraid of first generation hardware, which are fine. If you've got those issues, then fine. But for like a regular person, I don't think I can do it. I don't think I can recommend it. I don't think I can do it. I don't think I can recommend it. If I had to buy a replacement for my iMac today, because it exploded, I would get a monitor and a Mac mini. Or I would just attach my MacBook Air to it. But that's just a question.

Do you want a laptop attached? Or do you just want a desktop? But that's what I would do. Yeah, I think you're right. i don't think it's a good there's a good reason to buy any intel mac right now for a regular consumer yeah i mean i have an imac pro but like she she's not gonna buy a high-end imac she's gonna buy a mid-range imac it's going to be so much slower than getting an M1 Mac mini and a monitor. So much slower. So I can't.

I just can't. So that's why I told her is don't buy an iMac. And let me. So Tina, if you're listening, she's not listening. You bring your iMac over. I can see if it's broken or not. Maybe it was. I mean, this person's called Tuna.

So. Oh, maybe Tuna is Tina. Maybe. Oh, man. Can you imagine? Well,una. Oh, maybe Tuna is Tina. Maybe. Oh, man. Can you imagine? Well, Tina, if you're Tuna, why didn't you just text me? And Tuna, if you're not Tina, you're keeping great company. I guess, yeah.

Doug asks, what do you use to track your list of what you want to watch, read etc um i don't i don't you know you don't i don't what really how do you keep track of all of the things i've tried i've tried all the apps to track tv and i never stick with them books generally I either put them on my library queue list or my Amazon queue list, or I just buy them and send them to my Kindle. If somebody recommends a book to me, I will generally just buy it or check it out from the library. That's that. If you're a writer, now you know how to get your numbers up. Just recommend your book to Jason. Well, I'm not going to... A random writer saying, buy your book to jason just well i got it i'm not gonna like a random writer saying buy my book i'm not gonna buy their book i'm sorry but you have to as a random writer convince someone who's a friend of jason's

yes that's exactly that's that's the that's the trick that's the i'm surprised about this i don't i've tried i've tried i've tried and i i'm at a point now where i'm like wow what are we going to watch next on streaming and i think well if i if i had been compiling a list i would know but the fact is i've tried all of those things none of them have worked for me mostly i've tried the ones that that are a lot of work where you have to like log what episode you've watched it's too much work i i just i i get behind and then it's like oh you have 19 episodes of this show to watch i watch them all yeah and i've tried the i've tried the make a note in apple notes with a list of shows you want to watch

and then i never go back there and i find it like weeks later and i'm like oh right here are all these old shows so i don't know i i have yet to do it the right way to do it is to use an interface for it but as we know and i will i will add things as favorites or to my list in various streaming service apps the problem is that they're not unified because on apple tv netflix stuff doesn't show up i have done that more often now with like Apple TV stuff and other stuff where I can see it in the Apple TV interface. And I do add things to my list on Netflix and they show up there. And that's a reminder to watch them. Like we were watching Taskmaster and realized that one of the comedians had a Netflix special and added that to the list. And then it was like,

you know, three weeks later, we're like, oh yeah, there's the comedian from Taskmaster. Let's watch her Netflix special. So that, that will happen too. So I we're like, oh, yeah, there's the comedian from Taskmaster. Let's watch her Netflix special. So that will happen, too. So I guess that's my answer, really, is that I will favorite things that are recommended to me in the Apple TV interface, and maybe they'll float back up. That's it. Me and Adina have a shared Apple note where we put things in. and Dina have a shared Apple note where we

put things in but realistically most of the time we don't look at that note when we want something new because for me I am very like probably annoying when it comes to like

new TV shows and movies because I really feel like i have to be in a mood for something like whether i want like comedy or drama or whatever and i tend to most of the time and especially over the last year via lighter on my entertainment choices i like just nice things simple things things that don't have a lot of stakes to them and so having that list isn't necessarily useful because it's a list of just everything and i don't necessarily know what i'm feeling so for me when it comes to content really it's like what do the streaming services recommend to me knowing my habits

and maybe that's something that i want to watch you know it's like we just started watching uh i think it's called pretend it's the city on netflix um which i'm not surprised was uh was recommended to me because I've watched probably everything that Martin Scorsese has been involved in on Netflix. And this is a series that he directed, which is Fran Lebowitz, who I was not super familiar with, but was somebody that I knew of.

She was on David Letterman's old late night show a i knew of she was on david letterman's old late night show a lot back when you know he was on 12 30 at night you would know because i kind of looked her up i did some research about fran on wikipedia afterwards and saw that she'd been on a lot of uh letterman episodes yeah back when that was a second tier talk show they would have um authors on which you know talk shows don't have authors on much but they would and you know she's in new york so i think she's probably also available but yeah i remember friendly woods from that from the old letterman show so that's great that's hilarious by the way that's a good recommendation it's it's very i wish i wish maybe we should maybe

that should be a new thing that we do sometimes in Upstream is mention things that we've seen that we've liked because people are always looking for recommendations. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. And Joel asks, I'm setting up an old television in the garage. I mean, I assume this is just as like kind of like a den situation. Joel didn't really expound on that. I assume it's probably not for like the car to watch TV or whatever.

And Joel said, should I buy a Roku stick now that comes with AirPlay 2 and HomeKit and wait for a new Apple TV or just spend the money on the current Apple TV? Joel, I have a great answer for you because I was setting up a TV in my bedroom because we, I moved, I have an Amazon fire stick and my daughter came home for about a month, just left.

And she wanted to watch stuff in her bedroom where we put a TV for my son to play video games when she's not here. But then she comes home and is like, isn't it great that you put a TV in my room? I'm like, yeah, okay. So I got her, I had an Amazon Fire Stick on my TV, so I plugged it into that TV. And then I thought, well, what I want is something that does airplay. I should just get a Roku, a little Roku box and attach that to my TV in the bedroom. and attach that to my TV in the bedroom. And so I did. So Joel, that's my answer,

is don't wait for a new Apple TV. Buy one of these $30 Roku boxes that does AirPlay and HomeKit and also has all of the apps that Roku has and just stick that on there because that's the cheapest solution. It'll get you almost everything you want. And unless there's a very, very specific Apple TV only feature

that you need for this old TV in the garage, I wouldn't bother. I think the Roku is a very good deal and it's a better deal than the Amazon Fire Stick, mostly because of the support for AirPlay. The AirPlay thing made a difference for me. That's what always frustrates me when I encounter a Fire TV is that, or a Fire TV Stick is you can't AirPlay to it but the roku stuff you can airplay to i've got i've got a roku tv in our living room and it also has airplay and it's great so that's what i would recommend and then you know go into the settings and turn off all of their like ad options i would recommend also but i think unless you're you know unless you're really worried about roku or or you're really committed to something on the apple tv i would just buy a roku box for a for a crappy garage tv to get all the features you want just do

it that's the way to go seems like a good deal right now especially because it's kind of unknown what a new apple tv could realistically be that would make it that much better than this anyway because the content it's all about the content ultimately and all of the content that you can get on an Apple TV you can get on a Roku TV and it has all the additional functionality you want like AirPlay, HomeKit

so go for that for cheap if you would like to send in a question to help us close out the show, you've got something you want to know, something a question to help us close out the show, you've got something you want to know, something you want to hear us expound on, maybe a topic that you would like to hear us discuss, the best way to get it to us is to tweet

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I would like to thank everybody that does support us already thank you so much for helping us produce the show every week and express vpn bomb us and hello fresh for their support of this episode too if you'd like to find jason online you can go to six colors dot com incomparable dot com and jason hosts many shows here at relayayFM, as do I. You can go to relay.fm slash shows, not only to see the shows that we produce, but we have shows from many talented individuals here at RelayFM, and I invite you to peruse them and pick one out at your leisure. I guarantee there is at least one more show for you in that list

that you're not listening to already. Jason is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L, and I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.