Upgrade - 344: Let's Call It 'Motorcycle'

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

This week we consider the future of the iPad Pro, watch as the 21.5-inch iMac begins to fade away, and ponder what the HomePod mini means for Apple's overall home strategy. Myke gets recommendations for soundbars, and Jason explains the NFL's new TV deals.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 344 and today's show is brought to you by squarespace linkedin jobs and literati kids my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley i have a hashtag Snell talk question for you. And it comes from Landon. And Landon wants to know, to help us start this episode today, do you stream or download your podcasts in your podcast app? Well, I have bad news for the dynamically insertion of ad people, but I download all my podcasts.

So if I downloaded that podcast, I actually was just listening to some episodes of Dragon Friends, but I download all my podcasts. So if I downloaded that podcast, I actually was just listening to some episodes of Dragon Friends, which is this D&D podcast that I listen to sometimes, although only when I've got extended driving or something to do, which I have not for a year. I was listening to some of those episodes and literally, you know, I downloaded them. I guess I re-downloaded them when I got a new phone. I don't know if they migrated, but basically they've been sitting there ready to go for ages now. So yeah, I guess I re-downloaded them when I got a new phone. I don't know if they migrated, but basically they've been sitting there ready to go for ages now. So yeah, I guess I'm old school in that way.

I download my podcast mostly because there are occasionally moments, especially I would say back in the travel times when you find yourself in a place with no internet, like on an airplane and you go, oh no. And so I have a couple of like playlists and apple music that i download and i just have my podcasts auto download to me i have unlimited data so it doesn't matter and uh occasionally i suppose it will stream on my apple watch but even there overcast tries to pre-load stuff onto the apple watch instead of uh instead of having me stream it.

But again, I have unlimited data, so it wouldn't matter. It's really just a hedge against losing your data connection because you're on an airplane or something. I am a stream person purely because of the way... Are you a streamer? Yeah, only... A streamer? Like a leaker? You're a streamer?

I am a streamer. Only because of the way that Overcast handles streaming. So you might... People might not know this, but with Overcast, once you press play on an episode to stream it, it downloads it. So-

Yeah, in the background, right. I'm not always streaming. Like as soon as you start listening, it just downloads. And the reason I do it, I mean, that works really great for me. I have some back catalogs of shows downloaded. And if I was going to get on a plane, I would download things.

And I would always do that because it's super quick. And I always have fast internet because I, you know, I have good LTE coverage and I have fast internet at home and at the studio. So I never feel like I will, I'm ever waiting for any podcast that I want to listen to. And I just don't want the storage space taken up. So I just stream everything. But it's not streaming in the sense of like, it's not downloading. They do download, but I don't download in advance or automatically my catalog of shows. Think back to when you were flying on airplanes. Did you, for those purposes, did you preload some podcasts to listen to on the plane?

Yeah, yeah. I would just like open up Overcast at one point. Download, download, download. And I'd just be like, okay, here's the 10 new episodes of like shows. I'll just download all of those. And then I have, you know, like all of the Adventure Zone is downloaded just always. And, you know, like I have a few shows where I have like large catalogs that I just download and leave them there. And so that's just how I work. And it's

really, it's like a storage space thing, and just because I just don't really feel like I need to have them all downloaded. Talking about the ad insertion stuff, so I'm still listening to the West Wing Weekly. I'm halfway through. It's basically the only podcast I'm listening to right now. I'm just keeping that West Wing dream alive

after watching it all for the first time. And every single episode they say, okay, now we'll take a break and they play the music. And then the music starts again. And we're back every episode. And there's never an ad. I don't know why. I don't know if it's they don't have ads for me or they're just not putting ads in the show anymore. But I just find it frustrating.

I don't know why the little music part can't also be in the dynamically inserted portion so that I don't have to hear that, right? I just find that to be just so annoying. It's like, okay, we'll take a break. And we're back. It's like, this is wasting my time. So I have a 60 Minutes update. Oh, great.

Please do. I can't tell you, because i didn't look i was actually started watching some 60 minute stuff when it was still airing on the west coast which means that i can't tell you if we are now at 27 27 27 27 right 26 26 26 26 or not or whether they fixed it i didn't check however good news in the extras they have started putting their clips again which is the idea that they don't just post it's a it's a show with segments, and each segment is its own story. It's like a mini news reporter documentary, usually three per. So that's not going to be the episode title, people.

We did that already. So first off, it's a laugh because you go in there to extras and it says 3,000 clips. It's like, hmm, so I'm going to have to scroll through 3,000. Fortunately, the latest ones are at the top, so that's good. I still think they've got some navigation issues to work out there, but they're at the top. The reason I bring this up is, again, those post before the show airs on the West Coast, which is great. If I'm sitting down at 7.15 and they're not going to put the show on Paramount Plus until after 8, I can just pick and choose the ones that interest me and watch them right

then and then I'm done with 60 Minutes. And it's fun. It actually has made me more interested in 60 Minutes as a show than I've been in years because I can pick and choose and watch it when I want. It's great. It's actually a great example of a show that was originated like 50 years ago being made maybe a little bit more relevant and watchable because it's on streaming um here's the thing though so paramount plus has uh like cbs all access before it has an ad tier as well as an ad free tier so i pay for the ad free tier because i'm not interested in the ads i don't know want to see them. However, like your podcast, those segments, they're like, oh, but it's one segment. Where are we going to put the ad break?

And so what they do is the correspondent introduces the piece, as they do on the regular show. And then, before they play the piece, there's an ad break inserted. Before they play the piece, there's an ad break inserted. And what they've decided to do is on the correspondent piece, after they do the introduction, they insert this standard thing that's on every single one that's at the wrong volume. It's much louder than the volume of the show. And it's their announcer with a little logo saying, that story after this break. At which point, there's no break and the story and the story plays because i'm not i'm paying to not see the ads so my question again this is low on my list of 60 minutes complaints right now paramount plus complaints very low on the list but you should probably put that in the ad roll,

not in the content so that the people who are paying to not see the ads don't get the thing that says, we'll be back right after this at four times the volume of the rest of the content. Anyway, that's my, that's my, I hear you.

That's the problem with the dynamic ad insertion. Among the problems with dynamic ad insertion. Among the problems with dynamic ad insertion is it's not particularly artfully done in terms of how it works with the content. If you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or use question mark SnellTalk

in the RelayFM members Discord. We should do that more CBS style, though. It should be like, for more, send to hashtag SnellTalk right after this. I got lots of feedback and follow-up about soundbars, which was great. It was what I asked for.

You asked for it. You asked for it. I asked for it, and I got it. So I'm pleased to have gotten it. The overwhelming feedback, if I'm going to replace my HomePods with another product, is to go the Sonos route. That seems to be...

I think for the feedback that I got, the people that seemed happiest with their products owned Sonos products. And Sonos have two soundbars. They have the Arc and the Beam. Now, really, I need to make some decisions, which I haven't made yet which is like what features do i want like i've had some people suggesting me that atmos which is in the beam

is not worth it for the upgrade in price and size if i'm just going to be going with a smaller system but at most has some very particular characteristics about it that it's unclear whether a soundbar is really gonna yeah right like it's and i appreciate that yeah it's nice that they have it but it's not necessarily something that you're really going to be able to take advantage of in that sort of setup especially if i'm not gonna go with the whole thing like i don't want a subwoofer for example because i live in an apartment building and somebody said that to me is like you don't want this if you're in an apartment building right because that's the that's just going to make your neighbors complain. Yeah, and it's already a thing that I don't like. Our TV is on the wall.

It's next to the wall that's next to our next apartment, right? We have it on an adjoining wall. And now that we have the audio coming from the TV and it comes from the back, I'm much more aware of this. Our HomePods were on the opposite wall, which the adjoining wall is my office, so it doesn't bother anyone. So I definitely want something, and I like the idea of a sound bar because then the audio is back towards us, right?

Like it's being fired towards us. It's been a long time since I lived in an apartment building or anything like that. And that is right. That's part of the issue is you have to worry about the people around you. And I try to be a good neighbor. If you lived in a bungalow, it would be different, right? It would be completely different. If you want to have any idea why Jason just made a reference to bungalows, go to getupgradeplus.com

where we play bungalow or not for a few minutes. Getupgradeplus.com after the break. After this break. So one of the things, though, that I need to work out is I haven't measured all these products up yet because I think that both of these soundbars are going to be taller than my TV stand, right? Like the stand on the TV.

Yeah, see, that was another thing that you had in your list of of uh complications was you don't want it to be too big because you've got the size of your tv stand and the width of your tv stand and all of that and i will i will note that all the people who came back with sono stuff you know well not all some of them noted the size but it was definitely one of those things where it's like i don't think that these actually fit in what you really want because they're a bit too big but they may be what you're left with regardless yeah which i think is probably going to end up being the case and then it might just be since like i saw some people doing this you just put the tv on top of something and like you know

like so you buy something to put the tv on top of, which gives it enough clearance. So all of this stuff is stuff that I'm going to look into. It's not the top of my priority list. I want to do something because also now I've realized that TV audio, it's just not as good as having something that's dedicated, right? Having something that was splitting the sound out a bit with the two HomePods is fantastic compared to the audio coming from the TV. So I'm going to wait a little bit longer because I'm not in a big rush here and I want to really weigh up my options properly. If I'm going to buy another product, I'm going to go with one of the Sonos ones and I'll probably get the Beam, which is like half the price and half the size.

I did have somebody recommend to me that they were having the same issue and they did a factory reset of their apple tv as well as their home pods and i've never done that i've done just the home pods so sounds like a pain but i may just try it out because i am also so people like eric said this is the second time eric's giving me this feedback he gave it to me earlier and in the discord and he's giving it to me again to put mount it above the TV. I have no interest. Put it above the TV. Above the TV.

Galaxy brain moment again. I have no interest in mounting things on the wall. I don't want to mount anything on the wall. Again, I live in an apartment building, right? We're not going to be here for that much longer, ultimately, in our lives. Oh, see, I was thinking somebody makes a very clever mount where you like attach it to the Visa screws or something on the back of a TV and it actually puts a,

this would be like something 12 South would make. It puts a shelf above your TV on which you can lay a sound bar. Yeah, I don't like it. I don't like the idea of the sound bar being above. Just visually, I think that something looks wrong about that. Okay, and that is what Ian is suggesting. It's a thing where you actually mount it on the TV and then

it attaches and it lives above your TV. Maybe I'll look into that then. It might be better than below, but you can see why some companies, including Sonos, have made those sound bars that are like TV stands because they've realized that these TV designs don't actually fit a soundbar beneath them or even in front of them.

My TV is the same way. I've got a little bit of space under it, but none of these soundbars will fit. So I'm going to try redoing everything. Like, resetting everything. Right? And then I'm going to see where I go from there. Alright. Well, consider the shelf. Who doesn't like a shelf? It's also like the perfect

objects. I apologize to Eric. I hadn't seen these particular products. They're really quite aggressive looking, but I guess I could give them a go. I wish this was easier, seen these particular products they're really quite aggressive looking but i guess i could give them a go i wish i wish this was easier but you know this is the and soundboards are clever because they are trying to be cleaner than having a whole thing with a bunch of speakers in a bunch of places yeah but you know my um my tv i so i have a 5.1 uh setup so i've got five speakers and a subwoofer um and i've got

two bookshelf speakers on the side for the front right and left but i will the reason i mentioned this is that the um my uh the piece of furniture that my tv sits on actually in the center it's got this like secret compartment that's where the center channel lives but again it's too small for a sound bar which is the problem it's like a it's like a little speaker fabric speaker thing and you lift it off and you can put a speaker back there and uh and power strips and other wiring and stuff back there and then you hide it and it looks perfectly clean but the sound comes out of that and it works great but again it doesn't it's like too small for a sound bar because the sound bars are trying to spread sound around your whole house so they have to be

big that's the trade-off with having them replace all of those other speakers that are that otherwise would be in your room the other thing is i think i might just wait a little bit and just i just want to double check that apple's not going to release a new Apple TV that's also a soundbar. Because if they do do that, then that might just be what I get. Because if it's built in, it's probably going to be less of an issue. But this is on my list of things to do. I'll look into more at some point. But I just want to thank everyone for their follow-up and continued follow-up going through today's episode.

A couple of things about Upstream, which is where we take a look at some of the news in streaming media and technology companies. Ted Lasso has won more awards. Best Comedy Series and Best New Series at the Screenwriters Guild Awards. So,

congratulations for more. Ted Lasso wins. I think that's pretty cool that they not only won the best comedy, but they also won just the best new show. It feels pretty good for them. This is a good one. I mean, it's a writer's show, but I feel like the writers have good taste. This is a really good thing.

And Amazon is going to be buying some nfl rights in the big football news the nfl announced all of its uh rights renewals yeah and it's huge like it's huge amount of money billions of dollars um the biggest story in terms of streaming is that amazon which was previously a partner of the nfl and for those in the rest of the world let me just say american football it is the number one sport in america and it is often basically the number one tv in america is american football it's a huge driver of ratings so So this is a big deal. This is a lot of money, a lot of eyeballs. This is big for the future of streaming. And Amazon previously had a deal where they were going to stream games that were on Thursday nights that were mostly on

the NFL network. And it was sort of a, they were rebroadcasting. They would occasionally add their own announcers, but they were using an existing telecast being produced by a different company. And as a part of this deal, they are getting games that are exclusive. Thursday nights, football will be on Amazon Prime only, Prime Video only, produced by them with their announcers. And if you don't have Prime Video, unless you're in the market, the TV market of the two teams playing, you can't see it. That's one of the deals that the NFL has always made, is that if your team,

your local team is playing and it's on cable or streaming now, it will also be on a local TV broadcast station because they don't want to make it so exclusive that the home team fans can't see it. But everybody else else this is a big deal because this is a streaming only game uh every week which is a it's a it's a huge deal um but larger than that are the deals that came for the other networks so cbs fox and abc espn they also made their new deals, and they all include streaming. So apparently CBS's games will be streamed on Paramount+. Fox's games will be streamed on Tubi, which is Fox's streaming platform of choice, apparently. Tubi.

And ABC and ESPN, it's kind of a complicated thing. ABC is going to broadcast some games currently. So Monday Night Football, which was a big thing for many, many years, was on the broadcast network ABC. And eventually, they moved it to ESPN because they're both owned by Disney. ABC is going to pick up some games of its own. ESPN also has games. They're getting some playoff games. They're getting a couple of Super Bowls that they haven't had in a while. And they are getting some espn plus exclusive games plus they're going to have the contents of the abc and espn games also will be on espn plus so it's a lot here and what's uh i'll throw in out there something else that we've mentioned before which is that there's also the

nfl sunday ticket package which is about to, which is a satellite only where you get all the football games. And the question that I've got, the open question is, what's the relevance of that package? Because if I read this right, CBS is going to offer every game that they're broadcasting to Paramount Plus subscribers, which is that's half of NFL Sunday ticket there. And Fox is the other half. And if they put all of their games on Tubi, then I'm not sure there's a reason to have NFL Sunday ticket, but I'm unclear. If I've got one game on in my local market and I'm a Paramount Plus subscriber, do I only get that game or do I get all the games? I'm kind of unclear on that, but this is where this is going.

And it's an interesting thing to see billions and billions of dollars over 10 years by all of these broadcasters to get not only broadcast television rights, but to also roll in their streaming rights, which even two, three years ago was sort of a mystery. And now it's a core part of all these deals. So CBS doesn't just want to broadcast the NFL on their of a mystery. And now it's a core part of all these deals. So CBS doesn't just want to broadcast the NFL on their local CBS stations. They want it as part of the value of Paramount Plus. And I think what this means is the argument is that if you're a fan in a particular market that's served by either Fox or CBS primarily, you're going to be extra

motivated to sign up for Tubi or Paramount Plus just to watch your football games if you're a cord cutter. If I understood it right, the Amazon games, it's 15 games a season, but they're only shown on Prime. Yes, only on Prime. It used to be rebroadcast on NFL Network and they would just sort of pick up the feed, which actually means they have to hire announcers and a production crew and stuff. They were using, I think, Fox, and then before that it was CBS.

So that is going away, and they basically have their own little slice of football television on Thursday nights. So if your team was one of the teams who had a game on Amazon, you'd also have to get the Amazon one to get the game? Unless you're in the local market, because if it's the 49ers and the uh and the arizona cardinals playing it would be on a broadcast station in san francisco and phoenix but if it was on a broadcast station would it also be on the stream no no no so if it's yeah if it's on cbs's channel in san francisco it's not on paramount plus it's a local broadcast deal that they make and that's just a honestly i think it's kind of great that's a fan friendly deal where they basically want fans in the local market to be able to watch the local teams games without having to subscribe to

some cable or internet package but anyway streaming like this is this is so hard billions of dollars like as as a consumer, this is just so... It's just making things more and more and more difficult, right? Like, oh, I want to watch these games, these, like, 20 games, so I need to have this service and this service and this one as well? Yeah.

Okay, great. Well, that would be the argument, I guess, for NFL Sunday Ticket as a product going forward, which is rumored to be in Amazon, that Amazon's very interested in that and turning that into a streaming thing instead of a satellite thing. Because DirecTV used it to sell,

to sign up people for their satellite TV services. They were the only ones that had it. And so lots of people signed up for DirecTV literally. And that's going to continue even though they're doing- It runs out in a year or two years. So that negotiation is going to happen. So what may happen is that Amazon will buy it. And the idea there is if you want to pay once to see every game,

you pay Amazon or you sign up for Amazon Prime and you can see every game. I'm unclear on exactly if that's going to happen and how that's going to work. Is it every game for a specific team? No, it's every game. My gosh, this is confusing, Jason. Yeah, it is. It is. I hope we get some clarity in the next few weeks about it.

But I think it was bound to be confusing because it's the streaming world and the broadcast world all kind of coming together. I think the important point here is you're seeing broadcast companies spend billions of dollars, but they're not doing it to just put it on broadcast, right? They're also putting it on their streaming service and using it to build their streaming service.

And that's important because up to now, most of the money in sports broadcasting has been about tying people to the cable bundle, right? That's where the value has been is live sports. You got to have cable. If you're a cord cutter, you're going to be sad. You're going to have to spend money to get it over the top service because live sports is all about having the cable bundle. And these deals aren't doing that and that i think is really interesting and it shows you just how the pendulum has swung to the other side and now everybody is in a rush to build value in streaming which i would argue is going to accelerate cord cutting

because uh having the nfl uh be available without having cable cable is going to be a big one. jobs finds the right person quickly. And to make things better, your first job post is free. LinkedIn is an active community of professionals with more than 722 million members worldwide. Getting started with LinkedIn jobs is easier than ever with new features to help you find qualified candidates quickly. Post a job with targeted screening questions and LinkedIn will quickly get your role in front of more qualified candidates. You can manage job posts and contact candidates from a single view on the familiar LinkedIn.com as functions are streamlined into one simple screen. And you can do this all from your mobile device, no matter wherever the day takes you, you have it all there at your fingertips. That is how LinkedIn jobs can help you hire the right person faster. I think that that's really great. Like I

could imagine if I was trying to fill a bunch of positions, I might want to dip in and out of that whenever I have a few minutes. And being able to review, rate, and go through applications while on the go seems like something that I would really like to have accessible to me. And frankly, LinkedIn is the first place in my mind, and I think probably in all of our minds, when it comes to thinking about connecting and engaging with colleagues and potential colleagues. So also being able to list your open positions there is a no-brainer. It's like you're going to be where the people are. Like that's it. LinkedIn Jobs makes it easy to promote your openings, your hires to the right people. This is what I would want. You want to meet people where they are. When your

business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now you can post a job for free. Just go to linkedin.com slash upgrade. That is linkedin.com slash upgrade to post a job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Our thanks to LinkedIn Jobs for their support of this show and RelayFM. Okay, so if you remember last week, we spoke about the iMac Pro being like while supplies last kind of thing. It looked like it was on its way out the door. Yeah, supplies didn't last, did they? They did not last.

The iMac Pro has been removed completely from Apple's website. So not only is it no longer for sale, the old URL just takes you to the Mac page. Like it doesn't... It's gone. It's gone. It's completely gone. So those supplies did not last, did they? They did not last.

But now the 512 gigabyte and one terabyte SSD versions of the small iMac, the 21.5 inch, have also been removed from sale. So just the 256 gigabyte ssd and one terabyte fusion drive options i.e the two worst options are the only ones that are still available it's either the small 256 gigabyte ssd which is unbelievably small for a computer right or the fusion drive which is less than good because you still got a spinning hard drive going on in there so look we're going to talk a little bit later on in this episode

about the possibility of an apple event in april but i feel like this has got to be tied into something somewhere like why are these imax like sure feels like it it's like tim cook clicked his fingers and half of the iMacs have disappeared. Like, what is going on? My guess is that they were originally planning to roll out new computers. This is just a guess, best guess, in March. And you got to think, like, there's a whole chain of events that has to happen, right? You have to start ramping things down.

Yeah, right. Because you want to stop making, and is the is the best person to exemplify this philosophy right yep um you you never want to have more macs than you can sell so as you're preparing to open up the new thing right you shut down the old thing and that's all about timing right it's like it could be that they're running out of parts like i think that was the feeling about the imac pro was maybe that they were run they were running out of zeons or maybe they had bought a certain number of zeons and they're like well we've used them all that's it right um so there's a lot of manufacturing complexity there but i suspect that what happened here is they're like we're going to ramp down the imax we're going to stop building

them and it isn't necessarily the case that they're going to produce the new thing on the same production line, but it might very well be, right? So you shut down, you've made enough Macs to sell until the point where you've got the new thing coming in, but no further because you don't want thousands of Macs that are outmoded that you have to sell at a loss or at a big discount. You want to hit it perfect. You want the last iMac you sell to be the last one in inventory, and then you move on. And then what happens is maybe there's a hiccup. Maybe there's a production line hiccup, or there's a limit of supply, or something else is going on. Who knows what it could be? And you end up

not being ready to ship the new thing or maybe demand is more than you thought it would be i don't know that's also a possibility so that's my best guess about what's going on here is that apple possibly intended to actually do an event in march and launch this thing and launch new imax and perfectly timed it and they don't have the replacement yet um but it does feel that way right it could be a a little hiccup but given that this product is very strongly rumored to be going away it it seems like that's the most likely scenario is that this is you know they stopped producing it and now they've run out i think this is like the first real real true sign of some kind of COVID-related manufacturing issue from Apple's side.

It's hard to tell. I mean, they've had such a great success producing things. I mean, it's very hard to tell what the hiccup is here. But that would be my guess is that there's just been a hiccup, right? That they have had something happen that was unanticipated. It would explain the rumors about march events right it would explain it if they were originally intended because they knew that the supply chains were starting to ramp down at that time it's like and i know the iphones were quote unquote late but

you know they that's one of those things where they could be like well we always intended to like if all of a sudden iphone stopped being available for a month right we'd be like, well, we always intended to. Like if all of a sudden iPhones stopped being available for a month, right? We'd be like, aha, that was when it was supposed to go on sale. But this just isn't a thing that they do, right? Like Apple are more likely to keep old products around than they are to start just like having them all slowly start to disappear. Like it's kind of funny because it completely telegraphs a next move from them, whether it happens right in a

couple of weeks or a couple of months but it is you you can't deny now that they have new imax on the way because they're not selling half of them every now and then it'll happen though where a product will go out of out of stock and people like oh man product's out of stock there's gonna be a new one and then the product just goes back in stock yeah like oh but i i agree this feels unlikely at least with the imac pro they did say it was gone right like they made that statement right and so like now you put all this stuff together and it's like well for whatever reason they stopped doing it but they're not replacing the imac pro right like they're not actually replacing and in fact if the rumors are true they're really not replacing the 27 inch imac right away either they're replacing the 21 inch iMac which is why the 21 21 and a half

being removed from sale makes you think even more that that's the signal here is that there's a new small iMac and they're going to start there right this is the story new small iMac they can use the M1 probably for that but it'll be a redesign and it'll get that out now and it'll be adorable. And it'll probably be larger than 21 and a half, right? It'll probably be a larger screen. That's the rumor. And then the big one is going to hang out for a little while

because they're going to want to put a more high-end processor in it. And that'll come later this year. That's the story that we're all kind of anticipating and this fits perfectly with it so the homepod mini there's an interesting story that came out today so mark german reporting for bloomberg that apple seems to have included a humidity and temperature sensor from texas instruments in the homepod mini german was reporting that apple had reportedly discussed using this feature to allow the HomePod Mini to control smart thermostat products and fans and stuff like that, so it could

be part of your home environment. Right. After learning about this, I think this is actually pretty cool reporting, after learning about the potential for this thing to exist, Bloomberg contacted iFixit to take apart a HomePod mini and find it. And this is a quote. So they found it. They found this little chip from Texas Instruments.

And the quote is, the part is situated relatively far from the device's main internal components, meaning it is designed to measure the external environment rather than the temperature of the speaker's other electronics. Because an easy thing to suggest would be like oh hey they put it in there in case you spill water on your home board mini or whatever right but that's that you wouldn't apparently you wouldn't put this sensor in the place that it is if you were monitoring things that are internal rather than external and i just found this interesting There could be a million things here, right?

It could be they wanted to do it and it didn't work out or they put it in there and they're waiting for a software update or we'll just never know. But I found this to be a really fascinating story and I kind of like the reporting on it. This plus the Thread Radio in there makes me think that there's definitely something going on, right, where Apple is considering what their home strategy is.

And what's the hard part here is to decide whether this means that they considered it and thought better of it or whether they actually have a strategy and this is something that's going to be turned on. This looks to me like a feature that you would use in order to have a thermostat be able to use it as a sensor in a different room, right? Like a HomeKit savvy smart thermostat, you'd be able to say, you know, adjust the heat based on this sensor. Like I was using, when I was testing Ecobee thermostats a few years ago, they had like a little tag that you could put in another room, a little battery operated tag, and then you could, you could target that temperature. And it's a good, it's like a good thing to do because sometimes you don't, the place where your thermostat is, isn't the place that you want to measure in terms of the temperature

of your house. And so this is an interesting idea, right? Like that it just adds that little bit. Plus you could add other home automations to it. The idea that you could, I actually had this in my bedroom for the summertime where when the temperature in the that I can do that. So, which is hard to do right now with the Home app, you have to use, it's a whole story. But I could see that this is all part of a larger thing that Apple is trying to work on here. The question is, is it a part of the thing they were trying and then they like stepped away from it or is it there, but because it doesn't really have any applicability right there and they want to roll it out with some larger strategy, they just got it turned off for now. And I don't know the answer to that, but I'm intrigued just because it shows

Apple making another attempt. Like the Thread radio alone intrigues me in terms of them maybe having a bigger plan for the home with the HomePod mini as the first wave of new products that actually have a better kind of integration with the home. But this might be that, or this might be a sign that they actually thought of it and of integration with the home. But this might be that,

or this might be a sign that they actually thought of it and then thought better of it. You bought a HomePod Mini, didn't you? I did. I bought it. I got it. It's really tiny. Like, I thought it was tiny,

and it's smaller than that. I got it was tiny, and it's smaller than that. I had a Sonos Play 1 in our bathroom, if you want to listen to music or whatever, play podcasts or whatever. And I thought, well, I could replace that with a HomePod Mini, and it would get me a HomePod Mini that I could try. And yeah, it doesn't sound sound spectacular but it sounds pretty good and uh it's adorable and tiny and wasn't that expensive and i uh i i kind of i it feels like a much more reasonable product than the full size home pod did i have been to my studio a couple of times over the last few weeks and I had a HomePod mini, like I bought one and I put it there and I just never used it because we were just like,

oh, here you go HomePod, see you in three months. And I realized, and I've been using it as the speaker for my Mac and it works great for that because it's just on the desk underneath the monitor that i have and it's just a much nicer speaker for listening to music or watching videos or whatever when on my mac it's just like this nice little thing for it i got it to be a home kit hub basically oh yeah and to control lights and stuff at the studio um but then realized like oh that's actually really good for that the only thing that annoys me is uh it's whenever i'm using my phone at my desk it keeps alerting me to send the audio to my home pod when there's no audio uh it's like hey hold it here hold it here i assume that i i haven't looked into it but you know what i'm talking about right when you that has the u1 functionality and you can hold it close to it and it will send the audio.

Yeah, I haven't tried that yet, but yeah. It just keeps telling me to do it. It keeps bugging me, right? And so I assume there's a way to turn this off, but I haven't looked yet. If there isn't, it's going to be really annoying for me because if I'm just sitting at my desk and using my phone, it's constantly giving that little notification from the top. You know how the HomePod one, it's constantly giving that little notification from the top you know like how

the homepod one it's like that little pill notification uh where it's when sorry like the airpods one when you're using the airpods device switching and it gives you that little notification like hey your airpods are connected or you can swap them back to the device it was previously on it's one of those for the homepod mini and it's just it's giving you a uh haptic to like to try and get you like ha's giving you a uh taptic to like to try and get you like haptic to try and get you to move it like hey bring it closer and send the audio so i need to look into that because it's a little bit frustrating but great great little speaker for a clamshell laptop right because that's how i use my laptop i just plug it into

a monitor and it's in clamshell and so the speakers are okay but it's even better you've got this little little speaker ball there and it does a much better job definitely feels like the product they always should have made yeah it does doesn't it yeah it's a much smarter idea does most of the things that's needed it's much more cheaper uh it's just it really is the the we can see now main home pod bad idea i guess in 10 home 10 audio devices for 30 10 uh sure can be in that list as a weird one this episode is brought to you by literati kids great children's books open up a new world for discovery and with literati kids your child can explore uncharted places every month with spellbinding stories handpicked by experts. Literati Kids is a try-before-you-buy subscription book club. Each month with your $9.95 monthly subscription, Literati delivers five vibrantly

illustrated children's books to your home, bringing the immersive magic of reading right to you. You get seven days to keep and read the books from each box, and it's super easy. You send them back of a prepaid shipping label. But if there's any you want to keep, Literati, you can buy them with Literati, and they will match or beat Amazon's list price so your child can read them over and over again. I had a box of these books sent to the Hackett family, and Stephen and Mary gave me some feedback to deliver to the Upgradians. So they found that the books were from several different genres, talking about diversity in different ways, which is a really interesting theme. They had different styles of books,

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of learning. That's literati.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Literati Kids for their support of Upgrade and all of RelayFM. So Mark Gurman also published a report for Bloomberg talking about iPad Pro refresh. So Apple is planning on announcing some, quote, new iPads as early as April. I love that so much. It always makes me laugh. The iPad Pro refresh is the biggest one. He also references the regular iPad and the iPad Mini, but they seem to be later

in the year. But the iPad Pro is the one that's most on the horizon. So, a better processor on par with the M1. I guess we know what that means, right? Yeah. It's A14X. But it's basically the same chip, effectively. Which is essentially the same. Yeah. Which is, you chip, effectively. Which is essentially the same.

Which is, you know, I mean, we had assumed this. I can't wait to see benchmarks and stuff like that and how these things compare. I wonder if there's any comparable benchmarks. I guess maybe Geekbench could be done on an iPad and a Mac. And just if there's any differences, I would just really keen to see if they could perform differently in any way I don't

know but that's going to be really fascinating to see how they stack up maybe if there's like some real world things that can be done as well like I don't know better cameras working from home machines right like that's kind of what this Bloomberg article

has pitched around. But I mean it's true though the iPad has been pretty successful for Apple during the working from home period and I know that this is going to be a thing that people want from every computer is better cameras for Zoom calls and the like now right? It's like become table stakes I think for Apple this year is they need to put better cameras in their devices because, you know, like these, the M1 laptops,

I think, were the last ones that they could have gotten away with without not upgrading it because also it became like a story, right? That the cameras sucked. And I don't think it's a thing that they're going to be able to keep doing because it's something that's become more important to people than ever before. The front-facing cameras are good, right? Like, really good. I know I want them to be oriented a little bit differently, but we'll see about that. The look will be similar to current models.

What do you think about this? I mean, personally, I'm fine with it. I don't need a design change. The current look is great. Yeah. We got this look. It's it. I don't need a design change. The current look is great. Yeah. We got this look. It's great. There's no need to change it.

Like, I couldn't even tell you what I would want, right? It's like the laptops, really. Like, I don't particularly want a lot of changes to the laptop line. Just a little bit more modern looking. But it's not like I need a new industrial design. No, these led the way in in sort of defining apple's next wave of designs and it's a great design and i have no complaints at all it's like similarly with the iphone like i don't want any you know like the physical industrial

design keep it as it is like the only thing that i want is to just make the notch smaller or whatever like but you know the look of the thing i thing, I don't need any changes on that. Even with the iPad, I don't think I want the bezels to get any smaller. I think they're just about right for it to be comfortable to hold. But one of the big changes seems to be coming most likely to just the 12.9- ipad pro which is the mini led screen you know this is better contrast better brightness that kind of stuff i think the jury's out right and what that's actually gonna gonna be like from um like a usability perspective like

how good is that actually gonna be we don't know yet right uh and so it's going to be it seems it seems very unlikely that the 11 inch is going to get it but the proof will be in the pudding for just how much of a benefit it really is right you know that apple will make a big deal and say oh it's the first blah blah blah screen with the hdr and the dynamic range and blah blah blah right like, blah, right? They'll throw out their buzzwords and their numbers and all of that. And then as you put it, let's see it, right? Let's see how it really is appreciably better than what was there before. Because Apple may make a big deal out of something that in the real world is not that big a deal, or maybe it is. I don't know.

But again, it's new technology and so why would you not use that to promote your product assuming that this is uh is what we think it is so like the mini led screen has been the thing that people have been talking about for these ipad pros is like this is the big feature but it only coming to the big one i don't think this is it right so i'll read you a quote i think this is big feature. I think we're probably in agreement on this. So this is a quote from Mark Gummer's article. In testing, the new iPad Pros have used a Thunderbolt connector, the same port on the latest Macs with custom Apple processors. The port doesn't require new charges, but it would enable connectivity of additional external monitors, hard drives, and other

peripherals. It's also faster at syncing data than the usbc technology used in the current models now i saw john gruber suggest that this is probably a usb4 connector which is the same connectors that are on the m1 max exactly which are not that is incorrect in what marcus and they're not thunderbolt connectors they're usb4 which includes everything that thunderbolt has and their usbc shaped but usb4 includes all of that it's the usbc shape but it's also usb4 sorry yes us what is it usb4 is thunderbolt 4 or something like they're basically the same there it's the merging of them where they're they're all the same yeah you know they're compatible with all the things has everything that thunderbolt 3 had just included in the spec so exactly you get everything for free that's probably what's

on these chips because also if we believe that the chip that's going into these machines is at an underlying level the same chip as the m1 by and large the m1 supports usb4 so it just makes sense that so would the ipad now if they do this are they actually going to take advantage of what this technology could provide well that's that's the real question um i think what what i see here because you know again uh unconnected last week you were talking to federico about that uh ipad doc that he reviewed yes and you know there is a long tradition in covering ipads and ipad pros to talk about docs and connectivity and the truth is that there are very few cases where you actually need that level of connectivity, right? It's a tiny, tiny edge case

where it's like, oh, finally I can have an ethernet jack and three things plugged in via USB-C to my iPad, which probably not, probably you're not doing that. That seems like not a real big, important use case to have a bunch of devices connected directly. And so I was thinking about like, what scenarios benefit from having this level of connectivity? And the obvious one is external monitor support, right? The obvious one. And I know that, you know, they could build that into current models perhaps, but the idea that they would come out with a new model that would have a new kind of connectivity and that they would then use it as a driver to roll out a new piece

of a new software update that properly drives external displays via something other than mirroring and supports a bunch of different displays because now that they introduced the cursor stuff last year the little pointer support we are in a place where you could run an ipad and ipad os on a large display with a keyboard and a pointing device and not need the ipad screen at all um so that's the scenario that makes the most sense to me and then also like if you dock and have a and have a screen then you actually do have a and have a screen then you actually do have a scenario where it makes more sense that you would need some other ports and some other high-speed uh peripherals but i don't know it on one level it's like yeah put thunderbolt

on there on another level it's like well yeah but what are you going to use it for because it's not like ipads do are attached to you know raids or you know they're other super high. Although, I suppose if it's an M1, you could make some cases for transferring video directly onto it and things like that. There are things that you could make the case for, but my mind immediately goes to displays. Also, I wanted to mention the Mark Gurman use of in-testing because that's an interesting tell that all he knows from his source

is that, well, when his source saw it last yeah it was a thunderbolt port but they don't actually know with any authority if that is what will ship with the final i like that kind of a little insight into where his source is in terms of their level of knowledge but anyway i'm going to use this to wish cast that we're going to get uh with this release a new feature set on the software side like we did last year tied to the hardware and that it may be display related i want to believe you my i know right we're we're deep into x files territory with this right my concern is that they take the tack that they did when they first put us-C on the iPad Pro, which is that it couldn't

do a lot of the things that USB would do until WWDC when they added those features for the next version of iPad Pro. The reason I feel more positive about it is because of what happened last year. I had a conversation last week with somebody about this where they were

saying the problem is not the hardware, it's the software. So why are you wishing for software things with hardware update? And the problem is not the hardware it's the software so why are you wishing for software things with hardware update and the answer is look at last year last year they did they managed to nail it which is they shipped the magic keyboard and an os update that enabled the features that were on the magic keyboard even though that os update was substantive so much so that we all just assumed we would have to wait until the fall to get it. But Apple prioritized it because it was tied to the new hardware they were doing. And they did a mid-year release with a major new iPad OS feature.

And if they do it again, that would be in line with it, right? Like if they said, oh, and this new OS update has support for multiple displays and with it mirroring off, and here's how you manage it, and here's how you put those apps on those displays, and what better way to do that than with the new iPad Pro, which has support for these monitors? I could see it, right? But you're right. If last year hadn't happened, I'd be like, oh, well, they'll just put it in there, and then we'll have to wait and hope that they add that feature in the fall. oh well they'll just they'll just put it in there and then we'll have to wait and hope that they add that feature in the fall but they're clearly holding the next version of ios and ipad os uh it's like you know this holding pattern it's got all these features right like the mask thing that might be easy to think that it's just in ios now but it's not right like this it's still in

what what is it 13.5 wait which ios are we on 14 yeah ios 100.5. Wait, which iOS are we on? 14? Yeah. iOS 100.5. Whatever the current.5 is. It's 14.5, I think, is the one that they're testing right now. And so I think it's safe to assume

that that version of iOS and iPadOS will be released to support whatever new products get unveiled if there's going to be an event soon. And so there just may be some stuff that's not in that version yet, which supports external displays and iPadOS with more features available to them.

A couple of weeks ago on Connected, we spoke a little bit about what hardware advancements we'd want to see for a new ipad hardware and i wanted to ask you in an ideal scenario is there anything else you would want to see from apple from a hardware perspective for the ipad pro line this gets back to what i was just saying right which is the challenge with this it actually reminds me of when we had that Ask Upgrade question maybe last week about the Kindle. What do I want from a new Kindle? No new Kindles yet, by the way. Still waiting on that. And my answer was, I don't know. I'm pretty happy with it. The software is the problem. And that's how

I feel about the iPad. And this isn't news. We've been saying this for a while now that even as Apple has done some great things in terms of making the software better, the software is the limitation. The software is the limitation. The devices I almost said computer, but what's a computer? The devices have been great for a few years and we're going to get

an M1 class iPad, right? So my answer is, well, what else can I do with it? Can I dock it to an external display? Are there going to be Apple Pro apps on it eventually, right? Which still hasn't happened. iPad Pro has existed for like five years now and Apple's Pro apps don't run on it. The, you know, I had one wacky idea which was um sidecar in reverse like could i just throw my ipad up onto my imac display i guess that would be called motorcycle

right yeah let's call it motorcycle let's call it motorcycle right because then i could use my 27 inch display but put ipad os on it um that would i just like right that gives me a kick to think of uh the mac is the sidekick to the the other way around um uh you know i think i i don't want a larger one i think the size of the 12.9 and the fact that they made it smaller while keeping the screen size the same is it's right on the edge of being too big like i was tempted last time with going down to the smaller ipad and i decided no i actually really like the larger ipad but if i i'm not interested in a 15 inch ipad pro right but that doesn't mean that artists aren't and that other video editors aren't and then people who want a real setup that's computer-like but an iPad wouldn't like it and I'd love to see

Apple experiment there but not at the cost of the current 12.9 because No, it'd have to be a different thing. that is the right size.

Yeah, I would love to see a 15-inch iMac or iPad, 15-inch iPad with, you know, for artists

and anyone else who wants a big screen but I don't want it. I don't want a 15-inch MacBook Pro either. Like, no, not interested. So it's just, that's just me. That's my personal preference, but I'd love to see them experiment there. And then, you know, my other thought is they could try different stuff, right? Like I theorized about like do an iPadOS laptop or something like that, but, or a convertible, although they kind of already make it because of the magic keyboard.

So I'm not really holding my breath at that. So I don't know. What do you think? What's on your wishlist here? Well, I mentioned about better webcam and I want in on the horizontal edge if I was looking for a hardware thing. And I just want them to keep making cool new accessories

because the accessories for the iPad Pro have always made the iPad Pro a computer I want to use. Like, if I think back, it wasn't just that the iPad got bigger. I liked that they gave it the Apple Pencil. I liked that they gave it the smart keyboard and then the Magic Key keyboard and the trackpad. Like for me, it is the,

Federico talks about modularity, right? And I know John Syracuse has the naked robotic core, like these ideas of a starting device that you add to. And it's one of the things I've always loved about the iPad is there are a bunch of accessories, some Apple makes, some made by third parties, that make it a purpose computer for different things. And I want to keep seeing them do more of those.

That's the secret of the iPad for those who don't get it, is the iPad is the core unit. The iPad is a touch tablet. That's what it is. And the beauty of it is that it can be more than that if you want. And you can hook it up with all sorts of stuff and then leave it there and it'll be like that permanently. Or you can do what a lot of us do, which is it's a touch tablet, except now it's a laptop, except now it's a desktop. except now it's a desktop. And it will work in all of those different modes with a pencil, without the pencil, with a keyboard and mouse, with just a keyboard. All of those things are there. That's the beauty of it. I would hate for them to get away from that. And I don't think they ever will. I think that that is really what Apple fundamentally thinks the iPad should be, is a lot

of options on top of a touch tablet that's really great. I think that they've found that success because it also i think it helps a product that has a longer refresh cycle keep adding new things for existing customers to buy you know like they did that so fast where they made the magic keyboard available for the older models like way quicker than we would have expected them to do. Before the end of the year they introduced it, you could put it on older iPads or iPads that are lower down the line as well, right? And I think that that was a big surprise to us. But it makes sense that you can sell another device that's nearly the price of the thing to extend the current thing and give

it a longer life and you know they did it with a smart keyboard they did it with the apple pencil they've done it with the magic keyboard so it's again like i want to see apple create i don't even know what it is right because i couldn't i don't think i could have guessed something like the magic keyboard like everyone's doing these docks and stands right now. Well, what's an Apple version of this? What does it do? Why would I want that? It could be anything,

but I want to see them continue to push along that line because for me, that's where genuinely the true power of the iPad as a device lives in all of the things that I can do with it, which aren't just I'm reading a comic on it, because it's so perfectly made for that. And I do do that. I read on my iPad.

I've actually started reading on my 11-inch more and more and making it better for that, and I've been using it there. But I want to keep seeing them do things with these machines that fun and weird accessories can make a reality. Yeah. This episode is brought to you

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Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Napali asks, do you think there is a possibility that a huge change

coming for the iMac could mean that they drop the i? It's always possible. We love talking about names on this show, right? Yeah. I mean, it's always possible, but that is a brand that has been around for more than 20 years, coming up 25 years. So, no.

Like, I mean, it's always possible. They could do it, but I don't think they're gonna i mean i mac and iphone the the the premise here is that starting your product with an eye is um you know is bad like it's cooties they're allergic to it they got to stop it they moved it away from all their software and all that it's like that's possible a little bit now right like the eye it is except in the places where like i don't think i movie is going to become movies um and i don't think iphone the iphone is going to turn to apple phone right we've had this argument before on here like iphone is the name it's the name everybody knows it it's

the iphone like it's too late to change it and i think you hurt yourself for no reason, like for no reason. It's not like the heyday of mocking Apple for having everything start with I, because not everything starts with I anymore, just a few things. And they are the big hits, right? And the iMac is like that. The iMac is, I mean, they could call it the Mac. Is that better? Now it's confusing because there's the Mac generally and the Mac in particular, or are they going to call it something else? Mac Studio or something like that? I just don't think, I think iMac is the name everybody knows. It's the clearest that you're going to get. And so I don't see why you'd change it. So don't put it past them. Let's just say, don't put it past them.

They do lots of weird things like Pro Max and all of that. Like there, there are weird Apple naming things that happen all the time, but this strikes me as them shooting themselves in the foot. If they do, um, if they change the iMac or the iPhone, honestly, it's just like, that's what the name is.

So it, it's, it's so old that it's classic, right? It's moved past. It's moved past the time where it's like, ah, what are they doing with all these iNames? And now we're just, oh, yes, it's the iMac.

It's always been the iMac. I've said this before many times. At a certain point, the name of the thing just becomes what it is, and it's devoid from what it was originally created for. It's just what it is, right? Yes. Because I was thinking about this the other day. Idina was popping downstairs, and I was like you're gonna take your phone and i just had that moment of like this isn't a phone right like all of the you know again this

is not an original thought but all the things that it does and it made me think if apple called the iphone something else it didn't have the words phone in it whatever that word is i think is the word that we would use to describe these devices like if they had chosen a different word i think it would have become like the google it or like a kleenex or hoover type situation but because they call it iphone i just think the word phone stuck around. So if Steve Jobs had said, we can't wait to introduce it to you today, here it is, the hose. Then we'd all just, you know, don't forget your hose. You're bringing your hose with you. Are people addicted to their hose?

I mean, I would have maybe suggested something that made more logical sense for a product name. Okay. But that is what I'm saying. Yes. If they would have told it. I don't know. Why are we just in gardening? Why have trowel i don't know why why are we just in gardening why are we gardening i don't know steve jobs loves gardening are you looking outside the

window right now i am but there's no gardening implements out there but i am looking outside the window right now like imagine if if it was called like i don't know like communicator yeah let's imagine they called it the apple communicator i could imagine that we would just say hey did you get your communicator like it would have been given a different name like because as we said before the word phone we know it as a certain thing and later generations are going to know that word is a different thing and that is super interesting right i know the word phone to me is a home phone, right? That's what that word means, phone at its core.

That's how I remember it. It's what I grew up with. But younger people, I mean, do they even have, we don't have a home phone. We've never had a phone in this house. So if we have children, our children will only ever know phones as iPhones. And there's a phone app on the on the phone right which is like what wait what huh there's a phone on my phone there's a tiny phone inside of the phone just keeps going down kevin asks are you surprised that disney plus increase their price

had a price increase so soon do you think this is something we'll expect every 18 months? I don't know about the frequency of it, but we're not surprised. Look back on Upstream from when they announced their pricing. And we said it's very aggressive and they're going to get a lot of subscribers. And then they're going to very, very slowly boil the frog, right? They're going to keep on raising it up. And now all their competitors are out there and all their competitors are charging less than they want to but more than disney and then disney's like all right now we're going to start to crank up the price and everybody else will too and that's what's going to happen so yeah that that was very clearly a price to get lots of people in the door so that they could then

very slowly start raising the prices um to where they want to be. And so not surprised at all was obvious from the moment they announced their pricing. Because I know I'm in the exact mindset that Disney want me to be. What's $6.99 when I was paying $5.99? And that's the ball of the front. They just put it out by a pound every couple of years and I'm probably going to be fine with it because it's just like another pound. If I use it enough and i'm probably going to be fine with it because it's just like another pound right like i don't really i if i use it enough and i'm getting value out of it i'm fine with that 12 pounds a year like i can find that for disney plus if i enjoy the content and in fact they're raising the price at the moment that they are putting all of this content on every almost every week right

so it's like the originals are rolling out now so there is more ongoing value now and this is the time when they start to raise the price yeah like i was paying all of that i was paying 5.99 a month when i wasn't really watching a lot of it right we watched a bunch of movies when it came out and then didn't watch anything for a while and then watch one series didn't watch anything for a while and now they've got weekly content that i want so like yeah i'm making my money back now right like i'm so it's i have this why they would do it and i have no issue with it for me chris asks someone who bought a home pod two days before it became a quote product in the lineup should i return it i like the sound but i'm not as impressed as i thought i would be return it chris if you're

not impressed and it's a product that is not going to get updates presumably at some point and is discontinued send it get it back send it back get a mini cheaper you might like it just the same right and if you do then you're also then have a product that they're going to keep making or get some other smart speaker yes but i would send it back because uh you just bought it you can send it back you're not as impressed as you thought you would be that's the key to me it's like oh i love it it's great should i send it back it's like no no you love it you just told me you loved it yeah if if you're not as impressed as you thought you would be i'd send it back because you're not even getting the main benefit out of it which is that it sounds like it's supposed to sound good. If you don't think that, it's also not going to get stuff.

Can you imagine? It's really like the old lady who swallowed the fly. It's like, well, one HomePod, you're not even getting your best out of it, which is to have two HomePods. Oh no, now I bought two discontinued HomePods. Well, you could buy another pair for the other. This is how Chris ends up with the last 15 HomePods ever made.

I've heard as well from multiple people that refer to me as having multiple HomePod pairs in the last few weeks. Talking about the issues I've had, I feel sorry for all those people. We've invested a lot of money into this product and now it's gone away. And Sahar asks,

do you remember your first experience with the ipod touch and do you feel the second question maybe we can answer the second question first do you feel that the current ipod touch will be discontinued soon so start with that and then tell me if you remember your first ipod touch experience i don't know apple seems to find value in having a an ipod touch around otherwise it would already be gone and they have it on a very slow update schedule so i don't know i mean i guess my answer would be i guess they could discontinue it but they could have done that years ago and they still haven't i think they should make like an ipod at some point and it's just because they could make like a product that appeals from a retro perspective they could just make like a product that appeals from a retro perspective.

They could just make like a little iPod, you know, I think it'd be kind of cute. They made some kind of like iPod mini. Well, I was thinking you take the iPod touch and there was that guy who did the mock-up of an app that emulates the front screen of an iPod. Yep. And I thought, well, that's what you should do. Apple should, okay, Apple should get, as we've talked about here, get on the high resolution audio bandwagon, right? They should do a high quality tier of audio on Apple Music. Then the new iPod or iPod Touch, it has support for the high quality audio, including, you know, sideeloading high quality audio files. So play up the audio quality of the device

and put that app on it too. So that it's like full on iPod mode. Oh man, that's cool. I would be into it. And it makes it a kind of like a modern, yet also retro music player, but also does everything an iPhone does device. That's my pitch.

I would like that. Do you have any particular fond memories of your first experience? I do. I have a very fond memory of my iPod Touch experience. I got the original iPhone and have been on the iPhone ever since. My only fond memories of the iPod Touch are that I think we got one for my kids at one point, but no.

I don't have any. I have a very particular story with the iPod Touch because the iPod Touch came out here before the iPhone did because you may not remember this or know this. Cellular carriers and all, yeah. Yeah, like the iPhone was US only for a while. And it ended up coming here, I think it was the next year,

I think it was like February or something of the next year. So I don't know, maybe six months or something. The iPhone had been out. But they had the Apple Touch Follow not too long after. So it actually debuted outside of the US before the iPhone could because it was easier for Apple to do that, as you say, because of cellular and all that kind of stuff, needing partners. And I remember i was in

central london one day i think i was when i says when i was still working for a bank and i was doing some kind of training in central london and i was near the regency store and as i was walking past there was like this big hubbub in the store and turned out that they had ipod touches available and was selling them this is a few days but I don't know why this happened. And I'm pretty sure my memory is this way, that they were selling it a couple of days before it was supposed to debut. I don't know why this happened. So I obviously went in and bought one because I cared about this stuff just as much then

as I do now. And so this ended up being my original experience for what iPhone OS was and what it was going to be. Because, again, if you cast your mind back, if you were around then, or if you could just think what it would have been like, there was nothing like the iPhone from a visual design perspective. Nothing had existed like it before, and it was completely new. perspective. Nothing had existed like it before, and it was completely new. Stuff like just the way scrolling worked, and the rubber band scrolling, made people gasp when they saw it. We hadn't seen something like this before. It was something truly new. So just using the operating system in and of itself was a treat. And I just spent hours with this thing. I remember we went on a family vacation to Spain,

and I have this memory of sitting in the villa while everybody was out in the pool because I was manually editing all of my contact entries on my iPod Touch and adding in images and changing all the formatting. And that, for me, was just fantastic. So I have very fond memories of using the iPod Touch. I also jailbroke it later on as well, because why not?

And I remember that thing getting really, really hot. So the iPod Touch was a special product to me because it was effectively my first iPhone, really. So yeah, and I have all those same memories, but of the iPhone original. Yeah, exactly. Because it was something truly special and very, very new.

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every single week with no ads by going to getupgradeplus.com. Thank you so much to everybody that signs up. It really helps support this show. And we hope that you enjoy the additional content that you get from that. I want to take a moment to talk to you about another show here on RelayFM.

It's called Pictorial. It is a show about art history for anyone and everyone, and you don't need an art degree to listen. It's hosted by Quinn Rose and Betty Chen, and their next episode of the show is all about NFTs. So if you've been wondering what an NFT is and how it could be affecting the art world, this is a show for you. Go to relay.fm, slash pictorial, or search for Pictorial wherever you listen to podcasts. I would like to thank our sponsors for this week's episode, Squarespace, listen to podcasts. I would like to thank our sponsors for this week's episode, Squarespace, Literati, and LinkedIn Jobs. If you'd like to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com and he is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E, and we'll be back

next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.