Upgrade - 343: Don't Call It a HomePod

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Myke's on a quest for new TV speakers as we ponder the misfire of Apple's high-end speaker and the potential fate of Apple's high-end headphones. Jason runs with his Apple Watch, and more apps go native on Apple Silicon. Thanks for following Upgrade!

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 343 in today's show it's brought to you by express vpn devin think and spokes my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason snow hi mike hurley it is daylight savings Time Day today in America, which is exactly why we have Hashtag Snow Talk, so we don't talk about things like that. And Corey wants to know, Jason, have you ever attended San Diego Comic Con? Corey

has apparently not been following my work long enough. Yeah, in fact, the story is that I, first of all, I went to college in San Diego. I had a lot of friends in San Diego, So any opportunity to go back to San Diego is great. When the iPad was announced and people started talking about how maybe the iPad would be the perfect digital comic book reader, I registered for a press badge for Comic-Con. I was like like i have a reason to go to comic-con now excuse for my work excuse yeah and and so you know we can put some links in the show notes but like i wrote a piece in 2010 about how uh people in the comics industry were viewing the coming of digital

comics because digital comics had existed before but you had to like read them on your on your laptop or read them on uh a phone screen and it was not that great and then the ipad came out and i was like oh this is this is potentially something much more interesting i went back it's kind of like ebooks before the kindle right there there are things you can read them on but there's something that might propel this and the ipad i read a bunch of digital comics on my laptop and let me tell you it was terrible i i would take a macbook air and like lay it on its side on my lap and read it because you have to get the shape of the comic which is sideways on the it's not anyway it was not great

i went back the next year um i went back in 2014 um one thing i learned about comic-con is uh the best way to go to comic-con is when you can register for a media badge and not have to try and get an actual badge. That's really great. Uh, and, uh, let's see, what else did I learn? Uh, the crowds are, are terrible and, um, I don't particularly like crowds and the crowds just kept getting worse. And even on the light days early in the in the convention like the thursday uh it was still ridiculous and and if anybody has ever been in downtown san diego by sort of like by the ballpark like literally the whole gas lamp district there is wall-to-wall

people just entirely full of people it's uh it's not just in the convention center it spills out there are like weird storefronts one year i went and there was like uh an anti-mutant uh demonstration in fake promoting an x-men movie in front of a fake storefront like they spend money to rent out like storefronts and stuff that it is it's cool but it but there's so many people there so uh what after 2014 i haven't been back since then but the next couple of years what lauren and i would do is we would go down to san diego either right before or right after comic-con and stay by the convention center and you can watch them putting up all the all the stuff or tearing down all the stuff but there's nobody there and i would walk around like both the times we did that

i would walk around and we and we stayed right down there and i'd be like all the people it's so once you're used to it being completely packed with the comic-con crowd it's so strange to not have them there but i do love san diego and i love that neighborhood i had that experience when uh adina and i went to san francisco on our honeymoon and we i was kind of walking through the kind of the area around mosconi so there's nobody here i've only ever seen this place when it's absolutely teeming with nerds and there's nobody here I've only ever seen this place when it's absolutely teeming with nerds and there's just no one around so yeah it's a funny kind of thing Ian of Earth in the Discord says

it's like downtown San Jose during WWDC and I'd say it's not because although that was it is in the sense that it takes over the downtown that is true the difference is for every person you saw in San Jose at WWDC, imagine they're 10 people or 20 people.

I'm not kidding. And they're mutants. I'm not kidding. And they may be mutants. It's true. They may be. Anyway, Corey, yes, I have been. It was awesome.

I don't think I'll ever go back because the crowds are too much. And I don't know what it'll be like in the future, really, post-pandemic. Because of the crowds and how severe the crowds were. I'm not quite sure how they can make an event like that happen until we are back to zero spread, essentially, of COVID. Because it was, yeah, if you didn't like crowds before, boy! But I'm looking forward to going back to san diego at some point because i love san diego if you'd like to send in a question to help us open an episode of upgrade just send in a tweet with the hashtag snell talk or use question mark snell talk in the

relay fm members discord and you can be cool like cory is some follow-up for you jason photoshop and da vinci resolve have both gotten m1 updates I saw you post about this on Six Colors. Photoshop, there was a beta for a while, but now it's official. And a spokesperson at Adobe said that Photoshop runs about 1.5 times faster on comparable M1 machines than it did on Intel machines, which is not surprising. But this was something I saw. I was like, okay, I wanted to just mention it because that's cool.

But it did make me think that I never consider Rosetta on my M1. Like having now used these machines for so long, and I'm using mine every day, I really never have to feel like I never have to think about it. It wasn't like the first time around. And I remember when I would download software, I check like oh make sure to check oh am i going to get the universal version because it's going to be that much better i don't even think about looking um because it's yeah you know yeah i had several updates this week on my macbook air

and i was like well that's great I guess but like the the only thing that I wish was running native on Apple Silicon right now is my you know high-end audio processing stuff isotope because that's always the faster the better with that and that is uh some of those functions are slow in Rosetta but generally it it's just fine. They've released a Photoshop beta the day that the M1 Macs shipped, basically. So it's been in beta, but they've gone final. And so if you do an update and you're not on the beta, you can get the update and it just works natively. It's funny, there are a couple new features that they added that are not on Apple Silicon yet because it's like it was running in parallel. So they're like, for those, you just need to run it in Rosetta instead.

But I doubt anybody's really built those into their workflow because they're new features. And, you know, I wanted to highlight DaVinci Resolve just because that's a great, you know, it's like a free high-end audio or video editing app it's actually quite impressive and and they've updated that as well and you're just seeing you know everybody is getting on the uh getting on the m1 train which is good because um not this is the future but also there's going to be more macs and and every day there are more people running on apple silicon so the more the better the better. Ming-Chi Kuo has said that AirPods 3 will not be launching until Q3 of this year. This is contrary to some other rumors that are suggesting they're ready to ship now.

I have also seen, because we spent some time a few weeks ago talking about what AirPods, the regular AirPods version might look like, this new version. And it seems like from other rumors and leaks or what have you that it it would appear that the new airpods will be shaped like airpods pro mostly but without the rubber in ear part so the part that you put in your ear is going to change shape

a little bit from the way that the airpods are currently uh but it's not going to have the part that goes inside of your ear so right we'll see how that ends up yeah on the outside of your ear there yeah so if minchi quo is correct and i would assume that he is here because it's this is a pure supply chain thing right and that is where the strength of these sources are um i guess what he's saying is if there is going to be an Apple event this month, which I think the expectation is that there still could be, that we will not see them

as part of that event. Yeah, I mean, it would seem weird if they aren't going to be out for a long time and yet they're going to announce it. in this report as well there was a kind of like a throwaway line uh where quo states that apple is expecting to sell just a million airpods max in its first year now a million of anything is great but not for apple

i don't know how many i would have assumed but what this immediately reminded me of was the sales expectations of the headset that we were talking about a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I was also thinking about the idea that the iPhone mini being a disappointment because it doesn't sell as many units as the other iPhone models. So there's a real question here about what apple's expectations are right because lots of products can be not expected to appeal to everybody right like for the price of the airpods max did they really think they were going to sell an enormous volume of them i mean we speculated think, even at the time that pricing it the way they did might have been a way for them to get this product out when they couldn't make the volume that would be required for it if it sold to more people. And they reduced the appeal of it.

Was that on purpose? Because that is one way you you deal with a constraint in in supply and your ability to make them it's just price it higher and then fewer people buy it and then and then you're good so i'm not sure whether to read this as a disappointment or not i'm just looking on the u.s site right now and practically all of the models are two to three week shipping time. So this product is selling well based on how many can be made at least, right? So this could have been one of those things

which we were talking about that like sometimes they maybe just want to do a thing or they want to do a thing but they can't do it the way they expected. And it's still selling as many as can be made and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. And it is that idea, like with the iPhone mini, maybe it isn't selling as many models

as a Barclays analyst thought it would. But what did Apple want to sell? That's the important number. And they look at the supply chain sometimes and say, oh, well, they cut back on their order of this and you can read the tea leaves. And like, they actually thought there would be more, but we don't know for sure.

I would say though, that the other possibility here is that Apple went out with these and said, oh, these are going to be big hits. And then even despite everything, or they weren't thinking about that and closed, like it's only going to be about a million. That's their expectation now. Are they happy with it or not? It's not being reported reported here but i think it would be the other side of this is what if apple

thought that despite the price they'd sell a lot of these and that would be interesting because they would have to rethink the product and it's not unusual we have some recent history about apple coming out with a product that everybody thought was priced too high and it never really sold well. And Apple eventually just killed it. It just happened. We'll probably talk about it in a little bit. So that's, for me, is like the big question is, do they look at the AirPod Max and say, yep, that's about right. That's what we thought. Or do they look at it and go, hmm, hmm, what did we do wrong? Why know, why aren't people buying this? I don't know.

All right, we do have a little bit more follow-up to do, but I think it could be long discussion follow-up. So why don't we take our first break now and we'll thank Spokes for their support of this week's episode. Spokes is a communications agency. If you have a brilliant idea that you think is going to change the world, Spokes knows that whether you are pitching investors, selling products or services, or a compelling story is the difference between your business struggling or thriving.

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slash upgrade 21 and mention this podcast for a 25 discount that's spokes.agency slash upgrade 21 says upgrade to one and mention this show for a 25% discount. Our thanks to Spokes Agency for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So we've spent a bunch of time in the past talking about why someone inside of Apple may want to leak information to the media, right? Because we know that there are some rumors, we're talking about Ming-Chi Kuo,

we would believe that Ming-Chi Kuo is getting the majority of his source information from the supply chain. And that's, I think, much, much harder for Apple to stop. But it seems like people say like Mark Gurman has they must have some kind of

sources inside of Apple because they find out things really soon. You know, even sites like 9to5Mac would be a similar thing. And we spent a bunch of time wondering like why maybe someone would want to do that. Well, there has been a bit of a, there has been a story in the past couple of days

about somebody called Simon Lancaster, who was a former product design architect at Apple. They have been accused of selling trade secrets and details about unreleased products to the media and Apple has filed a lawsuit with them. And I just thought it was really interesting because this is very public right? Like this is like a very

public thing and I can't recall something like this in recent history like that there there have been some uh similar things but this is this is a very interesting one and also right we always talk about consider the source why do they want to do the leak and this according to this story and these allegations why do they want to do the leak and this according to this story and these allegations it's the strangest this guy seems like he was deluded into thinking that he could barter favorable coverage of his startup that he was doing for leaks about apple that seems to be the allegation here

is that he was sort of talking to a media member and hoping that they would get positive coverage of their thing if they leaked this stuff to them so strange and was bragging about it because we could talk about the ethics of i mean there's a question about whether you're trying to induce somebody to break the law or break their contracts in order to give you information. Inducement is sort of a line you're not supposed to cross. You're not supposed to go up to somebody and say, hey, you work at Apple. Give me what you know. You're supposed to sort of need to be a little bit more on the receiving end of something they want to give because you don't, as a journalist, want to be basically convincing them to break their contract

and to get themselves in danger. You sort of just want to be there for them if they want to disclose. I know that that's a weird distinction, but it is a distinction that a lot of journalists make. But let me tell you, it is a whole other line to cross to barter favorable coverage of an unrelated story we'll write this story about your thing if you give us this leak about apple that is beyond the pale and i think there's no evidence that that happened but it is a weird motivation it seems like that there are some stories in the reports that have come out about this effect, Lancaster saying it to people. And he may have been under that impression, or at least thought that he would get a favor

back, you know, like down the line could be like, hey, remember, I gave you all that information. Will you do me a solid kind of thing? like hey remember i gave you all that information will you do me a solid kind of thing this is just a very strange story but it shows one of those reasons right this guy was leaving it seems like he may have been going on wanting to start his own project project in the future and hope that he would make connections in the media because of his influence to help him later down the line yes because of his influence which would no longer be useful yes the moment he left apple yep and then the way he goes about it where he's like do do do do i'm just going to download all this stuff yeah do do do do no oh uh i am giving my notice and then like an hour before he's getting his or a couple hours before

he gets his uh access shut off just downloading more important documents no problem and apparently going to some meeting that he didn't need to be at about some project known as project x which i don't know might be ar vr could be anything who knows could be could be a chimpanzee fighting flying a fighter plane we don't know it could be anything uh but they somehow apple somehow found out about this guy yeah like i wonder is this one of those things where maybe they weren't sure about him so they planted some uh some odd info with this guy like they found him somehow like in the sense of like what he was doing and maybe that he was giving stuff away. But it's super, super strange stuff.

So this is all going into court right now. Apple is making all these accusations. But, you know, we'll see. Weird. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, we will see. If this continues on, then maybe we'll get some more details about

this but yeah it it is it's a obviously it's apple also making a lesson out of this guy although how can you not how can you not when somebody breaks your confidentiality agreements like this you this one seems particularly bad right like and this is egregious. Yeah. And it's another kind of reminder to people who work at Apple that, and on one level, you know, I would say as an employee, it's probably scary. It's like, oh, wow, they're going to try to lock that guy up. On another level, though, you know, your employer entrusts you with secrets and you agree to keep them. And that's kind of the terms of employment. And you't have to you don't have to be employed there you could leave but um and what he did here is kind of be on the pale right like it is this is an extreme okay alleged to have done um the allegations are really extreme and weird so i'm not sure that this

is i'm reminded of that line about um i'm gonna get it wrong now but about watergate and the idea is that these are they're not very bright guys like sometimes sometimes the the objects lessons you get are um are not very clever people doing a very subtle thing it's uh somebody bumbling and stumbling and doing something incredibly dumb and at least these allegations seem kind of more like that especially downloading stuff because i mean my assumption is that's all tracked like if you're downloading files like if it's a confidential files it will be trackable traceable at least like when I worked in a bank, it was.

If something was marked as confidential, everyone that downloaded it or printed it, it could be traced as to who did that. Exactly. And they do that with screenplays, all have watermarks on them. In fact, I get a chuckle about this. I've been watching For All Mankind season two,

which Stephen and I got screeners of and Dan Morin has screeners of, so we're in advance. And we're recording all of our podcast episodes about episode by episode through For All Mankind Season 2 in advance. We're recording them sort of two at a time,

which means I'm using Apple's screener process. And again, you could theoretically capture the video of season two of for all mankind and release it on the internet for all to see except it's watermarked and where i noticed this is sometimes there'll be a very dramatic scene and somebody will walk into a room and they're about to say something and suddenly right next to their face the word j period snell appears and i'm like hey that's me my brain is like oh it's me oh right it's the watermark but for a moment i'm like oh how do they know and they're like well

they know because it's the screener but i hope at some point they put up like a sign up sheet you know like to who's getting on certain mission it's just your name yep yep How do they know? It's like it's just for me. Apple is amending the wording in Apple podcasts in iOS 14.5 to say follow rather than subscribe for when you add a new show to your library. Apparently, 47% of people think that subscribing to a podcast means that you have to pay this is being used a lot i keep seeing this in reports to suggest why

apple might want to do this i don't think that this will do any like i so here's the thing i don't think changing the word from subscribe to follow is going to make any meaningful change in people signing up to like getting a podcast like i just don't think that that's that there is a real cause and effect here that in meaningful meaningful numbers i don't i think meaningful i don't know i think it's an interesting example i mean if we back up for a minute of uh nerd tool builder culture because the nerds who build the tools name the tools right and sometimes what that means for big stuff there's like apple has marketing department

they come up with names and even those names are occasionally you know pro max so they don't always do a very good job either but a lot of times it's the nerds building the tools and then it's the nerds naming the tools and uh sometimes the user experience, the labels are not the best because the people who are building them are really good at building the tools, but they aren't necessarily good at coming up with the names. And this is an example where we have RSS feed culture dating all the way back to Dave Weiner, presumably. And the idea of subscribing to an RSS feed, the subscription model, it's not a bad

example. It's not a bad word to use necessarily. It sort of explains what you're doing. But from that, you end up with it being repurposed into the podcast model. Again, not a bad choice at the time, I would even argue, because I think it really describes, it is a subscription model. It's very much like, I say to people about podcasting that as somebody who worked in magazines for a long time, I feel like the relationship between the podcaster and the audience is very similar to if you're a magazine or a newspaper, because there's an expectation that you're going to be getting new installments every so often.

It's very different than if you're just putting articles up on the web and hoping people come to your webpage. It's a totally different kind of feel. That said, subscribe on a button in an app has got a different context now. So I don't mean to blame the nerds who build the tools. I kind of get where they were coming from. It depends where you're coming from, though, because as Kate pointed out in the Discord,

YouTube has subscription and it's free yeah right yeah which is arguably a bigger market than the old newspaper market but they also have follows right like so now you've got a button and a bell that you have to ring in order to like one's notifications notifications here's the thing the other part to my point of why i don't think this is going to help, because I actually think step two harms it more. Because probably the reason Apple's done this is not because 47% of people think you have to pay for podcasts. It's to set the points in place so you can actually have paid podcasts in Apple Podcasts. podcasts and if you introduce paid podcasts to apple podcasts more people will think you have to pay for podcasts than the amount of people that thought it before so i don't really think that this is helping anything i think you make a valid point i don't know if i'm entirely convinced but i think you make an important point which is even if they're not doing like paid podcasts per se but maybe there's some other kind of,

there's things that you get with your subscription or whatever, and they don't call it like, there's no button that says buy this podcast. You still want to separate the concept of connecting to a podcast to a term that is often perceived as being a payment relationship. As a podcaster, I think this is great because i think it makes a point i'd never really considered before which is that uh people may not be

wanting to subscribe to my podcast because they're afraid that it causes some sort of liability on their part and follow is a social media term it's not um it. It's something people understand. And honestly, a lot of the way podcast apps are designed, right? So many people are listening to podcasts and they're streaming them. They're not even downloading them in advance. There are a lot of podcast apps that don't even download in advance anymore. They just stream the podcast. And so you tap and then what you're really doing is subscribing. You might be downloading it. You might just be having it appear in a list of new podcasts for you to listen to, which is actually pretty close to a social media follow, right? So I'm okay with it. And I think that maybe there is a little bit of a benefit and I'm tickled by it because I think it's a great example of looking at a terminology that makes perfect sense from one angle, from a different angle and realizing that all of us who have been working with RSS feeds for a long time and understand the subscription relationship and

call it a subscription, then you look at a poll or a survey that says almost half of the people misinterpret the word. And I love that because I had no idea. And yet when prompted, when given that piece of information, I think to myself, oh, actually that makes sense. Yeah. Like, oh, oh yes, this has been miscommunicated or at least it's less clear than we might've thought. So I'm fascinated by this. I don't think it's going to revolutionize podcasting. This is going to do it, Mike. Finally, people are going to get podcasting now that there's one word different on a button.

I had to one follow a vast amount of people, like more than three people who were reporting on this news with that. It's just like, I'm done with these bad takes. Like I follow a lot of journalists. Do you reply to them and say unsubscribe? No, I was just done i because it's just like i i'm kind of fed up now of the finally this is the thing that's going to mean that that everybody gets into podcasts like this is what i mean about like this 47 survey it's like i don't know if these if these are the people that would have even been listening

to podcasts anyway right like and i don't mean that in a bad way it's just like these are people that clearly had never really looked into it it was like it made hey do you pay for podcasts uh yeah and then move on right like i don't i don't know what the intent of these people is neither do i really think that changing this wording is now going to make people go like finally oh i didn't think i could get this content like i just i i find this stuff frustrating a lot of the time of like i've made a point and here is the survey to back up my point like okay but what is what was this survey nevertheless i don't like follow as a phrase for podcasting i just don't like it it doesn't feel right to me i don't like hey follow upgrade in your podcast app of choice i don't like it because also i mean it's not going

to work unless everyone now adopts it so which we'll we'll see we'll see what happens i think they'll have to because like i think spotify call it following i believe if apple do it too all of the other apps are gonna have to start to do it and i'll just get used to it whatever like i'm not that stuck up on it i'm not gonna do like the net casts model here um but i just personally i just prefer the word subscribe to the show than follow the show because follow i don't know like i like to think that there is a personal element to the shows that i make and it's a choice that people make to want to listen to the content. And follow just seems too passive to me, to the way that I think about podcasts.

Well, anyway, follow us on iTunes. They'll hate that. Subscribe to us on iTunes would be the better one, right? Follow on Apple Podcasts, subscribe on iTunes. Subscribe on iTunes, yeah. Talking about podcasts, you put something in our document that just says,

Jason, in capital letters, loves this feature. And you're talking about the new Overcast Watch app. As somebody who doesn't use an Apple Watch, can you explain to me what's so great about this feature? So a new version of Overcast came out

and it has a brand new watch app. And Marco did a really good job i i am somebody who runs several times a week and i run with the airpods in my ears and the watch on my wrist and i leave my phone at home and because i don't want it like wiggling around in my pocket right like there's no it's freeing to not have stuff weighing down my pockets when I go for a run. And on ATP, Marco always talks about how nobody uses that feature. Like it's so depressing. He's like, oh, it's just, it's a tiny fraction.

Like more people use this other obscure feature in Overcast more than they use the watch app. But I do think, so I despair about him updating it and he didn't update it for a while. And it does feel like this is like the third time I've heard like there's a new overcast watch app yeah like i feel like it's something he struggled with well the first time it was really just like a remote for the phone and then the second one it can do standalone but it's limited and the third one really is a standalone app and it kind of parallels the evolution of what an apple watch app is supposed to be because they were originally just phone apps that displayed on your watch. And then there was this weird middle point where they were supposed to be independent, but they kind of weren't, and now they're much more independent. So Marco finally built this, and I think it's interesting because he must feel like there is

a competitive advantage to do this, because like he keeps saying, not that many people use use it but it is important to have a podcast app with this feature because people think they want it or they're shopping for a an app and you need to be able to say yes we have an apple watch app but he did a great job it is truly independent you it's got a reload button on it mike like literally you can be somewhere without an iphone with just a cellular Apple Watch and tap the reload button and it will talk directly to the Overcast servers, find out what podcasts are new, put them in your playlist. And then if you tap them, it will play them. Now, some of that the old app did. But what I always found was the old app really wanted to talk to the Overcast app on the iPhone. And that was the definitive source of what podcasts talk to the Overcast app on the iPhone. And that was the

definitive source of what podcasts existed in the world, right? So it could, once a new episode of a podcast came out, but it didn't have it locally and I was out running, it would stream it, right? Because it knows what the URL is of that podcast file. So it would stream it and I could listen to it. But if a new episode came out and I hadn't synced up my iPhone and my Apple Watch overcasts together, the Apple Watch wouldn't know about that new episode. Ironically, it was off an ATP. Go for a run and be like, the new ATP episode dropped and it wouldn't be on my watch, wouldn't be listed. And there's literally nothing I could do at that point. Because if it's not in the universe of what's on the Apple Watch, it can't play it.

The new version doesn't talk to the phone. Like it doesn't talk to the phone. It talks to Overcast's web service. And so now it will, you know, I still, I built up this thing where I would launch before I go for a run. I launch Overcast on my watch and on my phone and I let them sort of talk to each other a little bit. And now really what I need to do is just launch overcast and tap the reload button before I go out the door. So I'm on my Wi-Fi and all of that. But anyway, it's much more stable. It's much more freestanding, which is important for me because I'm using a cellular watch and I'm leaving my phone behind. It's got chapter skip now. It's got variable speed now, a bunch of

other really nice stuff. He did a great job. It's a really good app. So for me, when the Apple Watch was announced, I had this idea that, oh, wow, I could go out with just the watch and go for a run with just the watch and some headphones and leave my phone behind. And the truth was, in those early days, that was not a possibility. But it's gradually become that. And this software update just pushes it forward that much more. So I'm grateful. I'm glad that he did it.

I use this feature so much that I actually stayed off the Overcast beta for quite a while because I was afraid it was just going to break my thing. And my thing was working pretty well. But I finally dove in and it's a lot better. So I'm glad he did it. And it's an app, like I said, I use several times a week when I'm running. And I'm very happy that it is a real app now. So I love it.

I do. It sounds cool. I remember when I only ever had one LTE watch, which is the Series 3. I think a later watch, I think the most recent one I have, the 5...

6? 6. It has cell connection, but I've been struggling with my carrier to move over from one to another and i just gave up in the end um but i remember when i was trying to really you know use the series three it always felt like even though it has a connection the watch desperately every app i used wanted to find the phone just like even when they were not connected you'd get the little phone with the line through it or whatever and all the watch

wanted to do was find the phone that was the real growing pain part of the Apple Watch as a platform so it starts out and the only way they can get it to work is to make every watch app essentially subservient to the phone it's just a littleervient to the phone.

It's just a little sidekick to the phone. The phone is the source of all knowledge. You got to go back to the phone. If the phone's not around, the Apple Watch is essentially useless. And Apple realized that was a problem, but that's where they had to start. They felt they had to start right there. And then you end up in this period in the middle where they're like, well, start right there. And then you end up in this period in the middle where they're like, well, kind of, you know, it's kind of standalone. It can do some stuff when it's away from the phone. And the Overcast app is a perfect example, right? Which is it won't sync to the web service, but if it syncs the data, it'll stream it over the internet. Like that was the compromise and every app was different. And some of the apps didn't do that. And some of the apps did do that. every app was different and some of the apps didn't do that and some of the apps did do that it's very frustrating and i feel like the apple watch is now creeping forward into a world where

it's really expected that your app is going to work without the iphone around and that you should build the app like if you've got a calendar app it should talk to your calendar servers not check with the iphone whatever your app is it should go out to the internet itself on wi-fi or cellular if it has it to do that rather than go back to to mommy say please give me the internet now and and so we're getting there but i understand i understand why they didn't make that decision at the beginning they just couldn't in order to do it. And it is, given that they made that decision, it's not surprising that they had those growing pains. But it was very painful, right? Like, there was nothing.

It was a really bad experience. They're going to the right place, but you end up in this weird middle ground where you can't tell before you leave home if this app will work or just cease to function because the iPhone is not around. It's better now. And those kinds of feelings, that sets a bad long-term precedent in the user, right? Like, if it doesn't work, and you have a big failure point, you might not use it again for a while, you know? Like, oh, this sucks, and then you just stop using it. for a while you know like oh this sucks and then you just stop yeah exactly and and that was a that was a tough time but now you know obviously this

has been a real push at apple like last year or i guess two years ago they did the app store on the watch right and like the app store on the watch is kind of silly but it is part of a message that the watch is its own platform and that it can do stuff itself. Because the end goal is that you should be able to buy an Apple Watch without an iPhone, right? Like that's the end goal. Yeah. Is that it should stand on its own at least. Yeah, better with iPhone for sure. But that you should be able to just do everything on the device.

And I don't know if they'll really get there. It would be a weird experience. A lot of it seems unnecessary because most people are going to have a phone that they can use to manage it. But I appreciate the drive for that because you don't want to leave the house with just the Apple Watch

and realize that some key piece of information is probably in the cloud, but the stuff on your watch doesn't understand that and will only look back at its phone and it can't talk to that phone because the phone's not nearby. So that has to end. But the good news is it does seem like all that stuff is getting shaken out of the platform. This episode is brought to you by Devonthink, the flagship product from Devon Technologies. Devonthink is the most professional document

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So Apple has given a statement to TechCrunch, which reads as following. HomePod Mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control, all for just $99. And you're thinking, oh, this sounds great. They just love the HomePod Mini. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod Mini. We are discontinuing the original

HomePod. It will continue to be available while supplies last. Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and service and support through AppleCare. Goodbye to our friend the big HomePod. We consign this home pod to the deep

so two weeks two products going away uh it's pretty fair to say that uh the difference between the imac pro and the home pod uh it is like the grand canyon in between these two things and yet boy it feels like apple settling all family business, right? Doesn't it? Like, this is the going to the mattresses. They're like, all right, you're out. You're out too, HomePod. Get out.

Get out. I find it fascinating that they said we are focusing our efforts on HomePod Mini because that is such a strange little phrase that I think probably is only intended to explain that homepod mini continues to exist right which is why that they have added all of you know they add this two sentences about homepod mini before mentioning they're discontinuing the homepod um i i don't know if i will take it as evidence that there will only ever be a homepod mini and there won't be any other HomePod like products from Apple I think that's debatable but it is watching Apple grapple with product discontinuation is just it's a fascinating thing at least they didn't put it on ice like the G4 Cube so there's that. Do you think

that the HomePod is a failed product is it a failure I know obviously it's going away but like the imac pro wasn't a failure and it's going away is the home pod a failure i mean yeah yeah i i i mean i cannot tell you how hard apple pushed the home pod in when it when they released it like it was a at wwdc it was a blitz like that was where they put me in the room where i could describe oh my god yeah the grove or whatever where i could i could you could talk about i could listen but not describe that yeah yeah i could talk about how it sounded but not any of the details of of how it was used because it was it was so early and it and they you know And they were obviously really pushing it hard and it's so brilliant. And everybody immediately said,

whew, that price is too high given the competitive market there. And Apple's response was something like, but it sounds good, which it does. I actually think the HomePod sounds great i have a stereo pair and i think they sound great but it did cost a lot and when they cut the price it still cost a lot the price never got cut to a level that it was sensible for most people yeah and i think i think for a good reason which is it was over engineered right like they made this thing and it was almost like money was no object. They over-engineered the product.

They created essentially like a Sonos kind of product, except more expensive even than Sonos. And it was a mistake. And you can't cut the price beyond a certain point. You're losing money on every one, right? And the HomePod Mini is the answer. The HomePod Mini is Apple going back and saying, what if we make one that we can sell for a low price? And people generally seem to like the HomePod Mini. It sounds like, I don't have one, but it sounds like people generally like them. They're not a HomePod, but the key is that they are priced

very differently than the HomePod and that that makes a difference. Now, whether the HomePod mini will work or not, I don't know either, but it certainly seems to be a case where Apple realized that they just, they overshot. They made this over-engineered, super high quality, all of these speakers and all these sensors and then it was a price that they could never, they could never cut enough

to make it be worth it. So what do you think from here, then? The HomePod Mini is obviously a product that they believe in, and it seems to be doing fine. Will they make any other products? Is it just going to be the HomePod Mini? If it is, is that really the best name for it like what where does apple go from here yeah i think it's a great question i think homepod mini that's the part we're focusing on homepod mini which itself conjures up

the homepod right like it's like the ghost of the home pod hovers over it this is the small one of the one we don't talk about right like you can't it's like junior was much more successful than his father exactly exactly so it's like don't don't think about don't think about him think about me uh and it's a little bit like that i feel like there's probably room here although i wonder if apple is wary that they are continuing to make products in this category and haven't seen a hit because their hits are headphones their hits aren't speakers like is is the problem that apple's competition is too strong here that siri is too weak i think seeding the uh home speaker space on one level seems like a mistake for Apple because the competition is

fierce and their competition in terms of voice assistance and all of that, they're all in here and they're all playing and playing hard. So Apple needs to be there too. On the other hand, if you think about Apple's home strategy and their complete lack of participation in huge swaths of the smart home world. You look at the HomePod mini and you think, really? That's your product? Is a little speaker? You're not doing mesh Wi-Fi.

You're not doing all these other things, but you're doing a little speaker that looks like a candle. That's an interesting choice, right? Like, so it comes back to something that I know we've talked about before which is what is apple's home strategy and i don't i don't know like not knowing what their home strategy is i can't answer the question is this you know the only home pod that we're ever going to see i would like for them to make maybe a better sounding more capable home pod that was a little more expensive than the home pod mini but not the HomePod, or like a soundbar version that's sort of an Apple TV HomePod Fusion, which I've written about a few times now. It's like, that would be an interesting product. There are a bunch of ways that they could go, but I'm not entirely convinced that Apple is convinced

that this is a market that they can excel in, right? Like that's my concern is that with the AirPods, they got immediate feedback that it was a hit and they leaned into it. With HomePod, it was a flop and they had to re-envision it. So how is that going? Like, I don't know if we really know whether HomePod mini is a footnote or if it's showing

signs of being, if not a hit like the AirPods, at least a strong product. Because until I know how Apple thinks about this category, it's very hard to predict what they're going to do here. And I'm kind of baffled. Like, I don't really understand. Either they need to say, nope, we're just out. Other people will play here.

We're going to focus on the stuff that we're good at. Or they should probably commit to doing more stuff in the home. And instead, they're just in this weird space where they've got an Apple TV that's kind of mystifying. And you've got the HomePod Mini. Don't call it HomePod. What's the story here?

So this is the, you you know you're saying about like uh focusing on what they're good at this should be something apple's good at like they have the pedigree in other areas to create now i know apple have now had two failed large scale amazing audio products. It's kind of hilarious that when the HomePod came around, we all made the iPod Hi-Fi joke and it has fulfilled the same fate as the iPod Hi-Fi, that it was over-engineered, too expensive and people didn't want it. All right, I guess we can assume is what's happened with the HomePod here. But Apple make great audio products.

They make devices that should go in your home. They should be able to produce something here, which is good. And not good's not the right phrase. Works is a better phrase. Because the HomePod, in some areas, is a great product. because the HomePod in some areas is a great product. But they seem to have not been able to deliver what their customers were looking for, I suppose, because people have these products.

Clearly, there are competing products that are vastly more successful. Apple wasn't able to make this one one of those things for whatever reason. Yeah, and some of it, I think, is the challenge that Apple... I think that people inside Apple misread the audience for these things. And the reason that the HomePod is so over-engineered... And I'm not saying the HomePod sounds bad.

It sounds really good. sounds bad it sounds really good i think my point is most people who buy these things don't judge the quality of audio like the people who made the product do and that apple made the mistake maybe out of the pride of like everything from apple is better it's of a higher quality of making like an audiophile home speaker which which was never going to sell in volume, even if it was labeled from Apple, when they should have made something that just didn't sound as good. Like I've played music on my Echo Show.

Sounds pretty good. It's not as good as the HomePods, but the HomePods are sort of halfway across the room and the Echo Show is right in the kitchen. And sometimes I'll just play music on the Echo Show. It sounds pretty good. And the pretty good, what strikes me about that experience is that pretty good is good enough for lots of people. And Apple misjudged it and tried for great. And it turns out that people didn't really see a lot of value difference between pretty good and great.

Plus, you throw in the assistance like Siri's not that good. It's still not that good. And there were lots of issues where Siri would misunderstand things and play the wrong thing. And even if that gets better, like you've got to throw that in the mix, too. But I think ultimately they just miscalculated what this market is because unlike Amazon, which tried a bunch of different stuff, Apple waited a long time

and then probably rushed this thing in that was their one shot and they missed. And then they spent two years before they took another shot because so they were late and they miscalculated and they didn't give themselves a chance to sort of recalculate for a long time

until the mini finally came out. So it's a mess, but you're right. They should be able to make a product that's good in this category. And it leads me back to my statement before, which is what is Apple's home strategy? What is Apple's in-home strategy? For a long time, it seemed like Apple's in-home strategy was we don't need one. Everybody's got an iPhone and an iPad and a Mac, and we don't

really need a strategy because those devices are what's important in the home. And, you know, okay, but your competitors are on the TV, and they've got speakers that are listening in your house and they have mesh Wi-Fi networks and you have, you know, a TV box that hasn't been updated in a few years and the HomePod. So like, are you in or are you out of the home? And I, it feels to me like Apple's home strategy is we've got this spinoff product, the Apple TV that we've kept around and we had this misguided HomePod that sort of led to a recalibration but I don't see a strategy there. I just see a couple of products they dropped. Do you think there is any realistic thought

of some kind of Apple TV pseudo HomePod combo hardware? Is there a possibility sure i think there's a possibility that apple who like a year ago hired a new person to be in charge of their home stuff i can't decide if that person is you know the least lucky person in the world or not but the idea that apple could say now that uh now that the the whole home thing has the home kit wars have been settled and we're all using this this uh chop platform which any more news on this would be fantastic would be nice right i would just is it actually a going concern for these companies are we still chopping is that still happening i don't know but so maybe they're waiting for something like that but like i i think apple could say we have a home strategy now here's our vision for the home as somebody said in the uh in the discord they built

that big home set where they cut they have a set of like a home cut in half that they did that video of it's like well you built that like what why what are you what are you putting in there right so i would love for apple to be like apple home is here and here's what you got we got a new apple tv we got home pod mini we're gonna do uh we're gonna do apple tv that's also a soundbar so you literally just plug it in once i think they got the tech for it they could do that if they wanted to we are gonna do mesh networking uh the all of our other home stuff also is mesh network so you add this mesh network thing to your router and apple can secure your internet and it's super easy to use and all your other apple devices join

and spread the mesh network. And isn't that great? They could go all into this if they wanted to. Do I think they're going to? It's possible, but I see no evidence that there's any impetus at Apple to actually press in this category. Honestly, other than that they built that set. So I have a problem i'll say it's time for me to replace my home pod pair with my apple tv because it continues to be a horrific experience

for me and i am at breaking point with how bad this feature is like It's in the past couple of days, I'm trying to watch a 45-minute show and it pauses four times. And one of those times, I get an error telling me it can't connect and I should change back to my TV speakers. So I hate how bad this feature is. I now have absolutely zero faith that it will ever be fixed for me

because I just assumed, well, obviously they're going to keep working on this, but now I just don't think that's the case yeah so there'll be software updates anymore i need to move to something else um and i want to move i have a couple of requirements i do not want to run a speaker cable literally anywhere right i'm not up for a wired home cinema system neither do i want seven speakers you know i want something simple we have a small living room um i know sound bars are things that people like i don't know if it will be ideal for how we have our arrangement because our kind of tv cabinet is more to the left of our living room than where we sit on our sofa so we kind of tilt

the tv a little bit so i feel like potentially a soundbar depending on the size of them because i think they could be pretty big if we set it up right in front of the tv it would probably hang off the cabinet a little bit less than i do so i mean and we could rearrange things if i really found the right product i just don't know what to go for just very cursory googling led me to the uh warm embrace of sonos because it seems like they have lots of arrangements um from there like they have their beam systems and then you can put two of their little other systems behind you. And that could work pretty nicely for us. But really what I'm looking for from the Upgradians is suggestions.

Do any Upgradians use some kind of home cinema system or home audio system that they really like? And I would like to have features like Dolby Atmos support because especially with stuff that i watch on my apple tv i get a lot of that and i know sonos is airplay too i do think i'm probably just walking straight into the arms of sonos here right like already the discord is exploding with sonos suggestions but i just want to hear from people if they have any other suggestions i'll say again keeping in mind mike limitations, you will be instantly disqualified if he's running wires all over the place.

Yeah, I won't do that. I'm not going to do it. So, like, don't tell me how good it is to use wires because it's just not happening. I would tell you that right now. I want a wireless system. And I guess the benefit that I would get here, though, is if I use, say, something like a Sonos, to my understanding, it would work with everything connected to my TV, right? Yes. I wouldn't just be, you know, because that's always been a thing for me.

Like, when I play games, I have to use the TV speakers, which are fine, but I would love to be able to use whatever system is the best system for me. So, I reckon it will be Sonos, but I would, you know, I'm talking about this now because I want to hear from people who like it, but I will also, I assume, if there's big problems, inevitably hear those as well, which is always important. But I feel like now, for me to get what I want, it's not the HomePod, because the HomePod's barely doing what I want now. So it's definitely not going to do it into the future

considering it is now a uh a product in the lineup so frustrating look i think i think you're going to end up with probably having a bar thing in front of your tv i think you're going to need to do that yeah i mean depending on the size of the bar it would work i just need to do some i just have some measurements done i should like you know so like once i work out a good product then i just need to find a way to make it fit and i'm sure that we could find a way to make anything fit but i just have to make some little adjustments it's not not the worst thing in the world but like you know i the the sitting in front of the tv thing is not a deal breaker i i expect that there is a way around that like if we could move the tv further back on the cabinet you know and that would give us

the space like whatever but yeah r.i.p home pod i really wish i wouldn't have spent all that money on you now i haven't felt this feeling in a while from apple of being annoyed that i made an investment in something that they've abandoned but i definitely feel that way uh with these products because they are expensive and i did buy my pair when there wasn't deals and i feel like that they've they've moved away from this one much quicker than i would have expected them to without ever really i feel realizing realizing what the product could have or should have done. I feel like there were potentially a lot of areas that we were hoping to see Apple expand into with the HomePod

that they kind of didn't with this one. And maybe now they will with the smaller one, but I just do not, by any stretch of the imagination, imagine this software support is going to be more than just making sure the thing still turns on every day I don't imagine a lot of features coming to the HomePod

and yeah, I just feel kind of frustrated about this one I feel like they've abandoned it too soon probably unless they can show me otherwise. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. You know about ExpressVPN.

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Expressvpn.com slash upgrade. Go there right now. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. First one comes from Mark. Is it, quote, screenshot one word or screenshot two words? Oh, boy.

It's a style question. Mm-hmm. two words oh boy it's a style question i i write so ap style is screenshot two words but writing for a technical audience and not being a newspaper um i prefer screenshot as one word i think because screen space shot sounds very much like you're trying to explain a screenshot to somebody who doesn't understand what it is yeah which is probably the right thing to do if you're a newspaper using the ap style but um you know the it looks like i have used it both ways on six colors so the six color style guide inconsistent as ever hey that is the style guide it's inconsistency i i think though that i have been um i have been progressing to one word with screenshot i think my you know i i i'm not being

consistent with it but if i had to pick one and settle on it would be one word especially for technical audiences home screen um home screen unlock screen two two words two words because then you're describing you're describing a screen unlock screen home screen you know that's that's what kind of what screen is that um i would say also here's my funny thing is when i was at mac user in the 90s we didn't call them screenshots we called them screen dumps which is funny because people would say things like seriously would say things like can you take a dump of that so then i went over to mac world and um i said the first time i said screen dump at mac world the editor looked at me like i was a monster basically yeah because that is a monstrous

thing to say we call it a screenshot yes yes it's a much better thing to say don We call it a screenshot. Yes, yes, it's a much better thing to say. Don't call it... Kids, don't call it a screen dump. No one's going to. This isn't a PSA you need to provide. Nobody was doing this except you all the way back in the 90s. Brian asks, when do you think we can expect an update to the Kindle

Oasis and what new features would you like to see, Jason? Oh man, we're going to have to get Scott McNulty back to talk about Kindles. Oh, that's a deep cut. Woo! We did that. Honestly, Brian, listen Brian. It's Brian Hamilton. It is. The Kindle Oasis, which I love, which is the high-priced expensive Kindle.

I assume they're going to update it. I struggle to come up with things that Amazon needs to do with the Kindle hardware, other than that they should put physical turn buttons on all page turn buttons on all Kindles, because page turn buttons are good, and you shouldn't have to tap the screen. You should be able to press the button to go forward and backward. It's better. it's nicer but um i so i don't have a lot i would say always making the screen nicer is better always make the screen nicer that's that's my number one thing i still think that the font rendering on the kindle isn't very good like even now i don't think the font rendering on the kindle is very good i have a kobo e-reader and the font rendering is so much better on that so i don't know whether this is just you know i think they're using the same kind of screen so i think this is a an amazon

rendering problem but i would say always improve the screen i'd like a clearer prettier screen and you know increase the battery life, I guess, but I don't really care. It lasts a week. Having it be light is always good. I feel like the Kindle is already pretty great. So I would hope that, especially the Oasis, which is the high-end one,

I would hope that they would just keep bringing those features down to the cheaper Kindles because I think Kindles are great and they should be cheaper. And I'm actually disappointed. I thought we would reach the point where Amazon would essentially be giving away Kindles to Prime members because they want to sell books. And I'm disappointed that what they've instead done is they give away books that I don't want to read to Prime members as a way to sell Kindles. It's not right, Amazon, that you went the wrong way to sell candles it's not right amazon that you do

you went the wrong way there but um that's what i want is i want and they've done a pretty good job like the base kindle is way better than it than it ever used to be um so keep it up but um the oasis i honestly i don't know what they could do with the oasis i look forward to seeing it um the last thing they did was add the color temperature adjustment, which is just such a minor feature. It's already waterproof. It's already got page turn buttons. I'm very happy with my Kindle.

I'm not sure what Amazon could do to get me to buy a new one, but Amazon probably does. What about color? Would color be something you would be interested in? Color e-ink kind of isn't there right like color e-ink is a thing but it kind of isn't there and i just read text i i actually want them to avoid color as much as possible because i don't i'm not really interested in degrading my reading experience in order to get some color because i'm not really in it for the color yeah and and the size of amazon's kindles like the the color you like it's not good enough for comics or something like that so i guess you could

have like if there were photos and things you could see them in color do you remember the kindle dx the big one yeah wow you know i think the way color e-ink works is that you can do it but it's at a lower resolution so you'd you'd you'd click through from text to a picture page and the picture would be color, but kind of crappy. And then you'd go back to the high resolution text the next time. I'm not sure it's worth it, but I'm open to it.

I love, I love the e-reader, you know, format. I love it. It's not, um, the problems that the e-readers have is mostly the software and not the,

not the hardware. So I, I, I look forward to whatever Amazon puts on sale so I buy one because that's almost inevitable, but I'm a little doubtful. Ryan wants to know, do we think the AirPods Max are destined to have the same fate as the HomePod? Destined. Don't ever believe destiny. I think...

I'm going to say... I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes, too. I think the AirPods Max, they may survive, they may become something else, they may get cheaper. But my concern is that they're over-engineered

and overpriced. And then when Apple wants to lower the price, they're not going to be able to. And they're going to end up saying, well, we're going to do a new AirPods Max or a new something that's more affordable. Other cheaper over-ear headphones. Yeah, that this will have been too high-end

for what Apple wants to do. I think they made a series of mistakes with this product that they would have to change. Like the case, you know, everyone hates the case and it is a bad design. They are on the heavy side and maybe that isn't the best. I was having a lot of battery drain issues. They did just

release a firmware update. I think it has improved it for me, which I'm really pleased about because, you know, I was having these two pretty big problems, right, where it was like my HomePods were driving me mad with the TV thing and my AirPods Max were driving me mad because the battery kept dying. And I think they fixed the HomePod Max thing, or the AirPods Max thing. But ultimately, for everything we said about the HomePod, I think the AirPods Max will suffer the same fate, purely because as well, the other AirPods are so good and so popular.

And that's even a thing they don't have on the HomePod Mini. HomePod Mini has been doing well, but it is not the level of success that the AirPods have. And I could imagine very quickly in a meeting of prioritization, that product is getting cut straight out. Ilky asks, with regards to your criticism of the Paramount Plus app, do you think Apple made a mistake by pushing streaming video services to create their own apps for Apple TV

instead of making them go through an Apple controlled interface? No. And the reason is that they don't want to. All you would have on the Apple TV is Apple TV Plus if that was the route that they took. Because none of these companies would have wanted to do it. There are companies who would rather be in the warm embrace of Apple. And I feel like Apple essentially has provided them a template. have wanted to do it there are companies who would rather be in the warm embrace of apple and i think

i feel like apple essentially has provided them a template i mean you could my understanding is you can build an apple tv app fairly straightforwardly if you use the base stuff it's all about um modifying it um the old apple tv was like that though right and the challenge there is that it isn't a development priority and it's very generic and like if if they want to do anything that apple hasn't foreseen they just can't do it because it doesn't fit in what apple wants to do so i i i think that in a perfect world where apple's presence on and the apple tv was so important and so dominant that apple could bend everybody to their wills maybe but that's not the case this could only have been the case if the ipod never existed because it was this was the whole thing at the

time and and apple have continued to suffer this issue in certain areas today apple so controlled the music industry for a period of time that none of these large companies, like media companies, would trust Apple, right? Like, it's the same as the News Plus type stuff. Like, irrespective of the deals and the cuts, you don't want to lose your entire business to somebody else because they end up just controlling the entire market.

Right? Like, it's like Newsstand. Newsstand never took off for this reason. Newsstand never took off for this reason. iBooks never took off for this reason. None of these companies wanted to become what the music industry became. And companies, we talk about this all the time, companies like their own experiences,

whether good or bad. That's the truth of it. Even if they're bad, even if they're bad, they if they're bad they want to they want to control them yeah they want to control all of that and so apple created this idea where they share data with them so you can have the tv app and it launches those apps but also giving them the kind of power to do their own thing um you know so my my realistic answer is i don't think it's a mistake because i don't think it would have worked out for them.

What Apple should have done, and I don't know how they would have done this, is to try and make the TV app more appealing. That's what they should have done. Found some way to do something, some kind of data sharing thing or whatever, to make the TV app more appealing to more people, like to more companies.

I don't know how they could have done that, but I think they didn't do that. But ultimately, Netflix needs to have a Netflix app, YouTube needs to have a YouTube app, and they need to make them, and they need to look the way that they want, because, again, irrespective of what Apple believes or irrespective of what we believe,

these companies think that the best UIs are the ones that they make. That's why they make them and finally today Andy asks can you recommend a keyboard similar to Apple's USB keyboard that was before the Magic Keyboard Andy there is a company for you and it's called Matias M-A-T-I-A-S Matias' whole thing

is making keyboards that look like the various stages of Apple's keyboard design and function similarly. So I think this is the closest you're going to get to that style. The thin aluminum keyboard with the white keycaps is what I assume they're referencing. Mateus Keyboards, these are the ones. This is the keyboard company uh that makes these types of products yep yep they've got a whole aluminum keyboard line that is very much inspired by that last generation apple keyboard yep and if you want something that is like what

what are the the like the that big one that everybody loves the popular one that everybody loves tactile pro yeah they have all of those. They've got these keycaps that are like Alps clicky keyboard caps, like the original Apple Extended and all of that. And they make those in various shapes and sizes. I mean, they're all really big, which is why I don't use. I have one, but it's enormous, and I don't like how enormous it was. They need to really change their design, but I guess it works for them.

If you are interested in hearing Jason and I talk about keyboards in more depth, if that's your bag, that is what we spoke about in our Upgrade Plus segment today. That's what we have for you. Would you say we discussed that with more travel? segment today that's what we have for you would you say we we discussed that with more travel unbelievable that yes okay we can say that if that's what if that's how you want to try and sell this to people yes we can say it's that uh you can go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up and not only do you get additional content for every episode of upgrade every week the episodes are also ad free and you get lots of other wonderful benefits for being a RelayFM member,

including, which is my favorite, the RelayFM members Discord. You have access to that. It's a wonderful place. I spend so much time there every day. It's just full of great people talking about awesome stuff. So go to getupgradeplus.com

and you can sign up. If you have already signed up, thank you so, so much. We really, really appreciate it. I would also like to thank ExpressVPN, Devonthink and Spokes for their support of this episode. And of course, thank you for listening.

If you'd like to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com, theincomparable.com. Jason also hosts many shows here on RelayFM as do I. And talking about shows here on RelayFM, let me take a moment to tell you about another one

that you might want to check out, and that is Material. It is hosted by Andy Anotko and Florence Ion, who are both veteran technology journalists who have plenty to say about what's going on at Google. If you want to follow Google's journey, find out the latest in Chrome OS, in Android as well, go and check them out at relay.fm slash material, or search for material, I guess, and follow material

wherever you get your podcasts. I host many shows here at Relay.fm as well. You go to Relay.fm slash shows to find something new from your list. Start with material. Maybe there's some more. I think that's it for this week's episode. Oh, we're also on Twitter. Jason's Jason L.

I'm I'm Ike. I am Ike. Are we on Clubhouse, Jason? Is that a. Jason's Jason L. I'm I'm Ike. I am Ike. Are we on Clubhouse, Jason? Is that a thing? No. No? No, I have... Do you know, I've never...

I joined one room once, and I opened the app, but I never find anything that I want to listen to. Maybe that's my fault. I don't know. Get a lot of notifications, though, for things I'm not interested in.

There you go. You've got to turn those off. You've got to turn those right off. I think that was one of the first things I did. Maybe that's my problem, i don't know anything who knows we'll be back next time until then say goodbye jason snell that was me typing goodbye mike that was nice i like that