Upgrade - 352: Living Inside an Orange

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

This week Myke and Jason debate the form of future Mac laptops, discuss Apple and Epic's first week in court (complete with angry emails!), and then imagine what's next for iOS and iPadOS.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 352 and today's show is brought to you by pingdom express vpn and uni pizza ovens my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how you? I'm doing okay. How are you? I'm very good. And I have a hashtag Snell talk question for you coming from Zach. And Zach wants to know, Jason, do you use night shift on any of your devices? And if so, at what intensity?

And if you do use it, it's a secondary if you do use it question, do you feel like it helps you wind down in the evening? Now I'm going to add a little bit of color to Zach's question here, which is that there were some stories this week about studies that suggest that the, I would say, already quite tenuous idea that not having blue wavelengths late in the evening helps people sleep. Which, when Night Shift came out, I was actually really careful about this because a lot of people were like oh yeah it helped it'll help you sleep and there's no there was really no good solid evidence that that was true and uh there's more solid evidence that it's not true now um so that's the background that said on my ipad and actually on my e-readers on my kindle and Kobo e-readers I do have their orangey light feature turned on and so on my iPad at night after after sunset it turns on a little bit it's not

super intense but a little bit this is not because of any belief really that I have in blue light making it not as easy to go to sleep or anything like that. It's more that I kind of like warmer colored light. Most of the lights in my house are warmer. If you could see me now in my office, my office, I have a wall that is painted orange and i have a wall that is painted white with an orange tint um and i have a bunch of lights that are also warm orangey colors it's like i'm living inside an orange um and and that's the way i like it but uh what i'm saying is i actually kind of like it when things are kind of that warm color. And also I feel like, you know, the warmer, the redder, oranger wavelengths don't light up a room as much. They don't do that. And that is good if you're sharing a room with somebody who's trying to go to sleep. I've got some reasons for it.

I do it a little bit. I don't do it on my Mac. I don't do it on my iPhone. But because the iPad and the Kindles are the things that I'm reading in bed with, those are the ones that I have it on just because I find it kind of more comfortable. But it doesn't have anything to do with any expectation that it's helping me in any way medically because I'm pretty sure it is. I use Night Shift on all of my devices just because I find it more comfortable to have the orangey light than the blue light in the evening. I just like the way it looks more like you.

I never really thought that it, I mean, I wasn't, I never really put much thought into the science of it. Like it kind of, kind of didn't really care honestly, because I feel like it's probably better to use no devices late in the evening, like if we really want to go down that road, you know. But like I don't, I don't, I like the way that the orangey light looks.

I have it do the sunset to sunrise thing automatically. I think it's really nice. I guess I have, I mean have true tones so in my living room for example or even in my bedroom with the lights on i think the color would be more you know yellowy yeah they work nicely together the problem is that then you turn the light off and there's no light and i did this as a test knowing that this question was coming i actually turned off a night shift briefly last night and i was like ew yuck and I turned it back on. So I just like it.

It's purely aesthetic. I'm also not doing anything that requires serious color fidelity in any context where Night Shift is on. It's not about that. So I'm not worried about it. If you'd like to send in a question to help us answer and to open an episode of the show, just like Zach did, just send in a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or use question mark SnowTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. We have some color-based follow-up.

This is all color, this first section of the show. We spoke about night shift. Now we're going to talk about colorful computers. So John Prosser, who previously was correct about the iMac being released in a variety of colors, has another report that a future MacBook will get the same treatment. This computer is expected to be a consumer laptop,

probably an Air, but maybe a new MacBook. Now, I'm actually going to put my kind of like flag in the ground here and say this is a MacBook, not a MacBook Air. That's just what I think is going to happen. There was a previous report from Ming-Chi Kuo, and there's been some other reports, that there would be a new MacBook of some kind

released in late 2021, early 2022, with a refresh design, maybe an M2 chip, if that's where we are, and the mini-LED XDR display. I think it would make a lot of sense to be like hey macbook again you know the way it was supposed to be yeah this is something that's been hovering out there i know we've touched on it before when they did the retina macbook air it was kind of a surprise right because the feeling i think all of us sort of felt like apple was really trying to get rid of the macbook air and failed. And so they said, fine, we'll do an update to the Retina MacBook Air. I'm not clear that, remember, their idea was to do a MacBook and a MacBook Pro and it just didn't work.

They were too expensive and people resisted and they kept buying the MacBook Air. And so now you have to ask yourself, like, is Apple really committed to MacBook Air as a product in the long run? Is Apple committed to that particular design as a product in the long run? Is Apple committed to that, that particular design of MacBook air in the long run? I don't know. I honestly don't know. I think the, the scenario you describe where they're sort of like replacing the air with

something that's more like a MacBook and it's a, it's a thin light thing, kind of like the old MacBook. They kind of like playing the game they already played, playing that game again. I get it. I get it. However, it gives me some pause

because that's what they tried the last time. It didn't work. There's a few things that I would expect they would learn in my scenario. So one is it's not overly expensive, right? It has to come in at the same kind of price that a MacBook Air comes at. Not if it's got a mini LED XDR display. Well, I mean, they've got it in the iPad, right?

Like, you know, this is what I'm saying, right? As well, all of the devices are going to get these XDR displays. They're going, this is going to be eventually across the entire line. And again, who knows if it'll actually have the XDR display. That's one report. But this is my kind of scenario that I'm painting here. You wouldn't bring in

a new MacBook and price it more than the MacBook Air because you've learned that it didn't work last time. Make sure that it has enough IO on it. We're going to talk about that with another product in a minute. Make it look really cool. Come in a bunch of colors and people will buy it. I personally don't believe that there is a particular affinity for the Air part of the MacBook. It was just the MacBook you could afford and it had the ports that you wanted. Well is this is my problem with this my problem with this idea because i think it's i think it makes perfect sense to say why don't we just make it

the macbook and we we're going to retire the air name but it's going to fill that slot the problem is are they really going to do it that way because you one way yes you're right you're 100% right the way to fix this problem is to say MacBook Air is gone and in its place is the new MacBook and it costs the same starts at the same price however

Apple in modern times tends to do a lot of this stuff where they're like we're going to keep the old model around because it's a little bit cheaper and it's a little more affordable. And if they do that, they're back where they were before, where people are going to be like, yeah, but the MacBook Air is fine. I'll just get the MacBook Air for $999. I don't need to get this new MacBook. So, Mike, I think that's the real question is, is Apple going to attempt to do a switcheroo?

Because you talk about a new, potentially a new Apple Silicon chip. Like, I kind of assumed that the M1 MacBook Air would stick around for a while. But unless, like, again, okay, nicer screen, better processor, color options. Great. That's all great. I just keep thinking, but if they keep the old one around at a cheaper price, I feel like they may be stepping into the exact same situation they were in before where by keeping that other one around, it's literally all people need.

That's right. That's the great thing about the MacBook Air is the reason it sold not Retina for so long and still sold well is because for a lot of people, it was like, look, this is the base price Mac laptop that I can buy new and that's all I want. And all these other fancy features that cost a few hundred dollars more, I'm not going to even worry about it. And so that's my worry about this is that if you keep the MacBook Air around, people will still buy it. if you keep the MacBook Air around, people will still buy it. So is Apple prepared to wipe the M1 MacBook Air off the price list and replace it with a new, whether they call it an Air or just a MacBook, a new low-price laptop? I don't know if they're capable of that, like mentally capable of it. Like can they manage to not do the tim cook

doctrine just keep the old one around at a lower price kind of thing yeah i i've my hope would be that they do what they did with the imac where to to get the 21 inch imac which is still available on apple.com you have to really really hunt for it like it and i expect they're only really keeping it around but at the moment because they're in a bit of a chip transition so they want to just make sure that that's available in one configuration for people so i'm kind of like i'm putting my hopes on this because i this is what i want them to do right like i want them to get rid of the MacBook Air and replace it with a comparable in kind of all of the IO that you'd need.

Plus it's going to look cooler and it's going to be nicer and truly built around the M1 the same way that they did that with the iMac. And it's just treated with the iMac. You go to the iMac page, the only iMacs you can find are the 24-inch iMacs. And if you go all the way to the bottom of one page,

you can see a tiny link, which lets you find the old one. That's what I hope that they do. I could see them doing it, but I understand where you're coming from because history has shown that they really do struggle. But my hope will be that Apple will continue to be so proud of the machines that they're making right now,

like more than they have been maybe in years, that they will be willing to do the shift that should have happened a long time ago. You know, every other product has product and pro, right? Like product and pro. This is where they're going. But then when it gets to the Mac laptops, where it should be the simplest,

because they have a MacBook Pro, but there's no MacBook, right? And it's like that line doesn't really make logical sense anymore. And I think, you know, the MacBook Air has stuck around for so long just because when they tried it, they tried it wrong. They did it wrong, right? Like the MacBook was the wrong product for that time. And it wasn't just that it was more expensive.

It was also less capable. It had a retina screen, but it was a slower processor, and that was you know that was the killer you that thing i mean i had one for a bit it was very easy to get it into a situation where it was draining battery when plugged in faster than charging which was a thing that i used to have with that machine like if i was you know like if you're doing anything intensive like exporting audio exporting video not only did it take a long time it also would burn through battery faster than you could charge the thing up like that machine was just beautiful and really cool and one of my favorite mac designs like visually but when it came down

to using it it just it just couldn't go the distance but that really is that product that kind of physical size and weight. That's what the consumer laptop should be. It should be thin and light and incredibly portable, more so than the current MacBook Air is. I think the current MacBook Air is too big. I think 13 inches is too big for that product, personally. Let me throw out a scenario here, which is what if Apple has a new laptop design that is a little more like that MacBook, a little less like the MacBook Air. It's a little smaller. Maybe it's a 12-inch display instead of a 13-inch display. And we've had some rumors that that might exist,

but there's also a lot of wish casting from people who remember the old MacBook. I could see a scenario where maybe what Apple does is replace the MacBook Air with a MacBook, but what they're really doing is kind of having an old MacBook Air and a new MacBook Air. And follow me here. Imagine a scenario where introducing the new MacBook. Oh, isn't it amazing? It's got the new M2 processor. It comes in all of these colors. It's got this beautiful Retina, LED XDR 12-inch screen.

It's state-of-the-art. It's amazing. And it starts at the old MacBook Air price of $999. And then we go to the product page, and we find that, well, the $999 model only comes in silver, and it has the M1 in it. And you're like, oh, you just took the guts of the old macbook air and put it in the 999 macbook and then the fancy stuff with colors and a new processor and and maybe even the better display but maybe not that's in the more expensive models that's in the 1299 that they might as long as it has the new design, maybe not the colors, but it has like

new design and some of the new features, again, not all of them. Maybe it has the display and the new design and an M1, but instead of an M2 and doesn't come in other colors, or maybe it's got two colors or something like that, like they do with these iMacs that are coming out, that the base model doesn't get all the great stuff, even though they're all M1s. So that would be a scenario where they could maintain the MacBook Air price point without giving away all of the... Because that's what my stumbling block here is. They're like, XDR display and an M2 chip and all these colors. And I think, okay, but now it sounds more expensive than the MacBook Air and people are still just going to buy the MacBook Air. But they could do a little switcheroo kind of thing, deprecate the MacBook Air, but replace it with something that is the MacBook Air-esque at the base of the...

And then you don't have two models, even though you really do. You just have different configurations of MacBook. And that is a very modern Apple thing to do. So while we're talking about the new laptops, on today's episode, actually, there's a bunch of stuff that I want to catch up on that's been happening over the last few weeks, but we've been completely in new product territory. So some stuff is about the other laptops in Apple's lineup. So there are supply chain reports coming from Taiwan that suggest that the upcoming MacBook Pro would also feature the same XDR display that we've seen in the new iPad Pro line. So I mean, that was something I guess

we kind of assumed, but now we know more about it, right? Like, I think when we were talking about mini LED before, I kind of didn't really know much about it and i'm really keen to see the displays because i remember like i think it was the the pro right with or the iphone 12 or maybe it was the uh 11 one of the things was like oh and the display is so much better and it was kind of i didn't really see it so i'm really keen to see what the xdr display looks like on the new ipad pros but that should be coming to the new laptops. And there was a really weird story where some schematics were stolen from a supplier that Apple uses called Quanta Computing. And this, I think it's ReEvil, ReEvil is this group, and they were kind of putting these schematics to ransom and Apple didn't do anything about them, so they started releasing them.

And it confirms some of the previous reports about what the ports are going to be like on the upcoming MacBook Pros. So these schematics seem to suggest that the new MacBook Pro line, the 14 and 16 inch, will have on the right hand side, a HDMI port and an SD card reader and one Thunderbolt USB-C port on the right side, and two more Thunderbolt ports and a MagSafe charger on the left-hand side. The current 16-inch, so the newest design, has four Thunderbolt ports. So on the new models, you'll lose one Thunderbolt port, but you gain HDMI, SD card, and MagSafe. So really, if you're charging, you're at the same amount of ports, right,

with the additional ones. Because if you had to charge on the current ones, well, you've just lost a USB port, right? The schematics also seem to confirm that the touch bar is going to be removed from the laptops. Not too much of a surprise, right? And again, I feel like we need to say this about a lot of these things. Sometimes we condemn something.

We're not condemning you liking it. I know there are fans of the touch bar out there. I like it. I think the problem here is that Apple essentially never updated the software. No, they didn't do enough of it. No, you could hack it with better touch tool and stuff like that. But really, if Apple wanted it to succeed and for a lot of people to love it, they needed to really support it properly. And they never really did, which I find mystifying.

I think that this is one of those cases where if you're going to do that, you need to do it right. Otherwise, why did you bother? And obviously, somebody made a call that they thought they were going to be able to make this work. And they either thought it was perfect as is and never needed to be updated, which it wasn't, or they thought they had sway over software choices that they didn't have sway over. But it's not surprising to have it be gone, I think. And my personal bet is that I bet you get Ethernet on the power brick. I bet they do that. It wouldn't surprise me if they did that. That's an interesting idea, right?

You dock and... Well, okay, so Magsafe is the rumor right um and i think that's the question is i've said this before i'm just going to throw it out there again what else is on the magsafe connector because it could just be power but magsafe to just do power is a very apple of a decade ago product right like? Like this is Apple introduced it that way, but I don't, I still don't think we should think of it that way. If I'm going to have a magnetic connector, I want more stuff on it, right? Like I want at least, yes, you said we have this with the IMAX now you can put networking on the brick because the ethernet adapter, otherwise you've

got to have an ethernet dongle because the ethernet plug is way too big for a laptop, but you could put it on the brick. You could also put USB, you can make to have an Ethernet dongle because the Ethernet plug is way too big for a laptop. But you could put it on the brick. You could also put USB. You can make the brick a USB-C hub. Like you could put ports on the brick. That would be great, especially if you're losing ports on the device because you're adding MagSafe. What if you're losing ports on the laptop when you're plugged in, but when you're plugged in, you're gaining ports on the plug? I would love that.

That is actually pretty nice, right? So I'm going to hold out hope that they do something like that. And the fact that they did it on the iMac is a good sign. I don't think that they would have gone through the amount of work that surely they had to go through to make that work just so they could put ethernet on the iMac power brick right like because you you know I feel like you would want to do it for more than one product right like you know but we'll see we'll see right so yeah there's a lot of uh intriguing stuff I'm really I am personally really looking forward to these new macbook pros they sound super cool as excited as we all were about apple silicon which was the right thing

to do right chip transition what does it mean apple's prowess in making chips on ios devices coming to the mac like that's all great but the 2020 apple silicons are reruns with new chips in them, right? Like the whole point was like, we're not going to change the computer. What's exciting about 2021 Macs is I'm getting the feeling that 2021 is the year where we see redesigned hardware. That it's not, you know, this is the great opportunity. It's always been something that we've talked about regarding Apple Silicon, you know, transition to Apple's own processors as they can revisit fundamentally what it means to be a Mac. Like they don't have any Intel constraints. They can build their hardware and, and guide the chip design to the place they want it to go. And I also get the sense, like the iMac is a good example where they held off on making changes

because I'm like, look, we're going to do where they held off on making changes because they're like, look, we're going to do that after the chip transition. If we do it now, we have to make it work with Intel. Let's not bother. We'll wait. It'll make our chip running on Macs look better because it'll also be on a bunch of snazzy new models. And won't that be great? And so this year, we seem to be getting a whole bunch of new Mac designs. The iMacs were one, but these laptops are another. And that's great because Apple's Mac designs

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Our thanks to Uni Pizza Ovens for their support of this show. So we referenced this a little bit last week. We're through to week one of Apple versus Epic. I'll put some links in the show notes. There was a really good kind of breakdown of each day on 9to5Mac. They kind of just pulled out some of the more interesting things that happened on each day. Were you keeping up with this story actively at all during the last week? Actively, no.

Passively, yes. I'm not interested in covering this story directly. Honestly, I feel bad for people that have to listen to the whole thing. Yeah. Oh, apparently it actually sounds terrible. Yeah. The audio quality whole thing. Yeah. Oh, apparently it actually sounds terrible. Yeah. The audio quality is terrible. I think one person said that it sounds like these people are testifying while a pillow

is over their face, basically. But I did, you know, again, this is a good use of Twitter because people who are paying attention will say, oh, well, this is an interesting thing that somebody said, or here's a document that came up or something like that. And that stuff is fine. But, um, yeah, I, I have no interest in, in investing time in, in listening to the live, uh, trial stuff. Not, no, thank you. I will, uh, recaps are good.

Uh, people, you know, people who it is their job to listen to the whole thing and report back that's great that's great but i've decided it's not my job yes exactly yeah because it was like one of the things where i was thinking do i want to and then i tuned in at one point and heard how bad it sounded and then kind of i was like i don't want to do this right now and then honestly as the week was going on i was kind of realizing that it wasn't really important to listen right now. I mean, that might change throughout the time. I believe Tim Cook is testifying at some point, and that might be intriguing. But the thing about when they're on the stand and they're being questioned, they speak like we hear them speak all the time right they speak like executives and they're

everything is polished and not only are they speaking like it's a marketing exercise it's also a legal exercise right it's like buttoned up you know that kind of thing but the things that have been really interesting for me the stuff that i've actually enjoyed is seeing a lot of the emails that are being shown that are in evidence so i saw i think both ben thompson and elia patel say this in different ways and i really liked the thought that one of the biggest risks to apple through this process with epic is that their dirty laundry is being aired in public. We are seeing how the executives talk to each other and about things and other people. And I feel like with this kind of thing,

the veil slips a little bit and we see that Apple are a regular company staffed by regular people doing regular business things. But they like to pretend or show the world that they're not that. It's not the picture that they paint not that it's not the picture they paint like my favorite thing so far has been the phil schiller emails like phil schiller sends angry emails about scam apps with a ton of exclamation marks and there's loads of them

and they're all fantastic i love reading them it's like is nobody approving this stuff it's so good some of these things are so good well and it this is something that I've found, you know, over the years talking to people who work at Apple, but yeah, first off it's a big company and it, they don't, I think for good reason, they don't want to have that stuff pour out into the public, right? They like, Oh no, we have our, we have our policy. And really the truth is that Apple is more disciplined than almost any other company or government in terms of messaging. That's the trick. This, however, is the problem.

I liked the fact that it's not just us on the outside and people writing stories about Apple needing a bunco squad and all that. Like, Rupert's been doing that a long time. And there's that guy on Twitter who has done such a great job of finding all these scam apps. I really like seeing Phil Schiller send angry emails, too, about, like, why is this thing in the App Store? It's a ripoff. Of course, then he would go out publicly and say,

oh, no, we are very carefully curating. But behind the scenes, he's yelling at people because they allowed this stuff to slip through. And I think the broader question is, why after more than a decade and with all of this money at your disposal, does this stuff still get through? I think that's an ongoing question that we all should be asking, especially when Apple talks about the benefits of its curation of the app store, that it's not doing a good enough job even now, but yes,

it is nice to see executives and PR people. Like there was that, that moment of like, well, should we communicate this? One of their PR guys is like, should we communicate this? And it's like,

well, no, we shouldn't. And it's like, but we're doing this. And they're like, yeah, but we shouldn't communicate that we're doing it. it's like well no we shouldn't and it's like but we're doing this and they're like yeah but we shouldn't communicate that we're doing it it's like okay yeah that makes sense that's but it was also a question of like well why not why not communicate this it would solve this problem it's like yeah but we're not going to talk about it um michael

gartenberg who used to work at apple and is on twitter at gartenberg um and uh i would say friend of the show michael gartenberg, he tweeted, he worked for Phil Schiller. And at one point this week or last week, he tweeted something to the effect of, this is why they told all of us not to ever put anything in writing. Don't ever put anything like this down in email. So he was kind of amazed that people put this stuff in email, which that's the other part of this, right? It's like, these are the outliers. These are the ones that got in email. Presumably, this is a teeny tiny amount, a little bit of a view into what happens inside Apple.

And this is the stuff that isn't redacted. Yeah, exactly. So think of it that way, too, which is this is the stuff that somehow got in email by people who were not as disciplined as they should have been about it. Because as Michael Gartenberg pointed out, everybody at Apple knew the kind of stuff that gets subpoenaed, you never put it in an email. They can't subpoena your voice in a meeting or on a phone call. voice in a meeting or on a phone call. So that's what you need to do to talk about this stuff, because otherwise it gets down in email records and then the public sees it. And that's not so great because it does eliminate some of the... We talk about Apple's product magic and the black box approach to this stuff. And it's just magic stuff comes out of the black box how do they do it we don't know it's a mystery um but this also punctures this just it punctures apple's whole um the way that they're the way that they're viewed by the public uh it punctures some of the little fibs little lies that they can tell about even that is a little bit too mean the story they tell

about a particular product or policy or something they create a narrative that is a pr narrative and it's not always based entirely in truth it's also not entire usually entirely a lie although some pr narratives are just generally but you do this and it's like, oh, well, you know, like the jig is up to a certain extent and it's not an existential crisis or anything, but these are wounds. These are wounds to the way Apple refers to itself and the way Apple portrays itself. And when we talked last week

about Apple winning the battle, but losing the war or, you know, that both sides were going to probably come out wounded um this is the kind of stuff we're talking about where is is this stuff going to matter in terms of epic winning this court case like every all the observers i've seen looking at it seem to think that it's still a very difficult case you never know what might happen but it's very it seems unlikely to them that epic is going to triumph here but apple is not gonna walk away unscathed which i think is kind of epic's point friday the 3rd of february 2012

privileged and confidential from philip schiller subject urgent temple jump exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark exc mark! What the hell is this? Remember our talking about finding bad apps with low ratings? Remember our talk about becoming the Nordstrom of stores in quality of service? Clearly, Sheila loves Nordstrom. How does an obvious ripoff of the super popular Temple run with no screenshots, garbage marketing text, and almost all one-star ratings become the number one free app on the store?

Can anyone see a rip-off of a top-selling game? Anyone see an app that is cheating the system? Is no one reviewing these apps? Is no one minding the store? This is insane! Seven exclamation marks afterwards.

I love it so much. Phil loves Nordstrom, but doesn't know that it's not called Nordstroms, by the way. So, I guess my kind of point on this is this stuff still happens. If there's a big popular game that's out on a console,

something like Among Us or whatever, or Fall Guys was a good example, you give it a week or so and you go to the app store and there's a bunch of ripoffs in the top charts. It's still happening. So the other one that is good is from 2015 from Phil Schiller. And it is, Tim received a complaint. I love that, right? It goes from the person to Tim to Phil.

Tim's like forward phil well also that that is the evoking the boss thing in in a corporate environment right but like if the boss got this complaint you have to deal with it yeah tim tim's asking why this is so so we need to deal with this tim received a complaint about this app being a scam doesn't do what it says promises bonus features for five star reviews creates fake marketing videos etc it is a great example of the stuff we should have automatic tools to find and kick out of the store i can't believe we still don't it's been three years at this point many one-star reviews many mentioned scam and fake then i look at the

developers other apps and see the same issue repeated. Please look into this. I expect we need to remove the developer from our program. And please, all capital letters, develop a system to automatically find low-rated apps and purge them to exclamation points. I just want to say, for the record, Phil Schiller went on to take over the app store, and they didn't develop a tool then either, it seems like. So, you know, can't be as easy as you think. The fact is with Apple's growth, it's possible that they did develop a tool and then the scammers just move to a different,

uh, move to a different approach. But yes, I look at this email that is to among other people at EQ, uh, and Greg Joss, we act, uh,

but also Philip Shoemaker who ran the app store, uh, Ron Akimoto who recently left Apple, a bunch of people. Um, I look at this and I also think, all right, Phil, why don't you run it? Somebody said that at some point. Maybe Tim. It's like, all right, Phil.

That's why he got the job, because he wouldn't shut up. You care so much about this? It's yours. Because keeping in mind, although he runs the App Store now, and make no mistake, even though he's on the roof, he runs the App Store now. Phil didn't go anywhere, people. He's still around. Keep in mind, though,

he didn't back when these emails were sent, which I like thinking that too because it's somebody who's thinking, he's thinking big picture about how this affects Apple, but it's not what he's directly in charge of. And knowing that he was later put in charge of it like either that's a

Phil you know nobody else is doing it and we know you care about it you fix it or it's a okay Phil stop talking about it do something about it you're in charge of it now the third is that he said I'm sick of this I want this part of the business now you know I'm just gonna take it over

it's like they're not doing a good enough job. Someone needs to go in. Who are these clowns running this stuff? I'm going to clean it up. And honestly, seeing how much he seemed to care about it, I wouldn't be surprised if that was what happened. You know, like him and Tim had a conversation one day. It's like, I think the only way to make the change

I want to see is to go do it myself. So Phil Schiller, okay. Phil Schiller is like a character in the Apple story now, right? And we all have seen him at events and he's been interviewed by like Gruber and like, we've seen Phil around. So there's that Phil. And then there's the Phil, and he's a spokesperson, right? He was the head of communications for the longest time in product marketing. The most polished. Of course, he is somebody that everybody knows from his public appearances and public statements and all of that.

However, he's been at Apple for more than 20 years. He once gave a demo of a version of OS X to us in the conference room at Macworld. He goes back a long time. And one of my colleagues made him really angry at that meeting. He never came back to our offices after that. Anyway, so this is what i want to say about phil schiller like there's phil schiller the character who appears and makes public pronouncements and that's his his outward facing job and then but in these emails you see yeah he's a he's a i i would say opinionated uh

marketing executive and there's there's stuff that is in these emails that you're like, oh, wow, he's really mad here and all that. My perception of Phil Schiller over the years is that he really cares. He really cares. I think that you can see that. He really cares about Apple. He gets really mad when there's bad stuff. And depending on if you're the person reporting the bad stuff, sometimes you get a little bit of a, oh boy, somebody inside Apple is really mad about this now or that I wrote this or that I said this. You get that sometimes.

And it's an adversarial relationship sometimes, and that's fair. cares about the products he cares about the company and he gets he gets mad when bad when like bad stuff happens to the company especially if it happens because we can all tell somebody did something dumb on the inside and like i and i only say this because you know not every executive at every company really cares like this right like they care more about their their own standing or ego or or or their their uh golden parachute or their stock price or right and i'm he may care about all those things too i can't say we can sympathize because we can to this degree too and this is this is the thing is there are and i'm not saying that every apple executive doesn't care about this stuff i don't know i haven't interacted with enough of them to tell.

But there are a few of them who are, they are lifers. They legitimately care about this stuff. It is not just their job to communicate or to run these departments. But I know for a fact that they obsessively care about it. And Phil Schiller is one of those people. And so separate from his role as a person who's going to extol the virtues of the various products that he's marketing,

these emails are fun because they show that, yeah, Phil Schiller thinks the App Store sucks too, or at least in 2015, and that Apple should do a better job, which is what we were all saying at the time. And Apple is, of course, like, no, no, it's all fine. But internally, it better job, which is what we were all saying at the time. And Apple is, of course, like, no, no, it's all fine. But internally, it's like, this is not good enough. And I like that. I like to see somebody actually concerned that their company is not doing

a good enough job. That's, yeah. I mean, I think we could have all expected that this kind of thing was happening, but here we get to see it. A couple of, just a little handful of details that came out that were of interest, I think, over the week. Apple's app review team consists of 500 people. I think that feels small, maybe. I'm not sure if I feel like that's a lot of people. It's a lot of people, but they review a lot of apps. Not when you consider the volume of apps in the store yeah uh when asked tim sweeney said he would have accepted a special deal with apple if they offered it this got a lot of uh saw a lot of people talking about this um as if to try and undermine the whole argument but i don't see i know the point they're making here which is that

epic has wrapped themselves in this kind of cloak of being a freedom fighter and that they've they've gotten other people to join their coalition for app fairness and they're like oh this is we're we're fighting the good fight because apple is doing this and it's wrong um but i mean really seriously he's the ceo of a company and if apple cut them cut him a deal to get him more money he would take it of course he would so they made him say because i see both could be true right they could take the deal and still feel it's wrong. I'm not saying that that is the way they are. Sure, sure. But you know, they're just trying to puncture Epic's

PR blitz here a little bit because one of the points in this trial is that this was a calculated PR move by Epic. Epic could have gone through this in a different way but they decided to have their video ready to go and their lawsuit ready to file and then performatively release a thing that violated the rules so that

they would get pulled off the store so that they could release their video and file their lawsuit. And so this is just another little puncture of that, of like this, you know, you say you're a freedom fighter, but if Apple would just give you more money, you'd stop fighting. And the answer is, well, yeah. I mean, he is the CEO of the company. Ultimately, the thing that his job is is to make Epic Games as successful as possible. That's it. Because I think one of the things for me

that is intriguing in this is there are also like a lot of emails that Tim Sweeney sent to various people including tim cook and he's asking for apple to be more open so it's not like it's a new thing for him to feel this way but as you say he's still the ceo they would have offered him a special deal they would have taken the special deal because this is job uh sweeney also confirmed that 30 is a similar deal to what epic have with the games consoles which again is like another thing that people keep pointing out of like oh well look it's you know why aren't they taking the similar deal to what epic have with the games consoles which again is like another thing that

people keep pointing out of like oh well look it's you know why aren't they taking the games consoles to court too uh and my kind of feeling it's a very different relationship um i wished i could remember what episode of atp it was but i don't remember but john syracuse went into it in a really great detail once of basically just saying like these are corporate relationships like you can if you get something in return from the business that you're working with, you might be more happy to take 30%. And it seems like Apple give nothing in return, right?

Where, like, games consoles, they will pay for marketing for your game if you have that kind of relationship with them. Apple's not doing that. So Apple's argument would be that Apple does a lot of App Store marketing in the App Store app and highlights apps and those drive sales and therefore Apple's control of the App Store front end. Which in a different story, they talked about how like if you pull all your in-app purchase like Netflix or something out of the system, we're just going to not feature you on the app store anymore. And the fact is, there's an argument to be made that at least for some apps, maybe not for apps at the scale of something like Netflix, having promotion in the app store matters. And then we know that that's true for smaller apps, but even for large

apps, it may matter. Even if a lot of us don't use the App Store that way, people do, and it does actually make a difference. So that would be the counter argument. I think the argument about what the business model is of the hardware being sold is ridiculous on its face, because I don't think there are any laws about how you should only make a certain percentage of profit from your total environment. And that if you make a certain percentage of profit from your total environment. And that if you make a certain percentage of profit from your hardware sales, it means you can't make a certain percentage off of the sales of the software sold on the device. Like,

I just think it's a bogus argument to say, Oh no, consoles are different. And because consoles are sold, uh, without a big profit margin, they have to do it this way. Uh,

I just, I don't, I don't think that there's any show show me the law that says well the if if you don't make money on hardware then you can do this but if you do make money on hardware you can't it doesn't exist but similarly it doesn't exist that there isn't like a law that should say that just because you take one percentage from one company that you should have to take the same percentage from another. Right.

Like there's no law about like, oh, because they have a 70-30 split with Sony, Apple were allowed to do a 70-30 split with them. Right. No, this is true. But I think the point of saying, if your argument is 70 is too much or 30 is too much 70 is too little and then you point out to all these other places where you participate where it's 70 30 and your response is well yeah but that's different because i have sympathy for them because their business model is executed on the premise that that that's the only money they get so they have to take it from me like i just don't buy it i just

think that that's a dumb argument like it's sony because of the competitive nature of the hardware it's sony's choice and microsoft's choice to uh if if it is even true and nintendo's choice to sell the razors at cost and make it up on blades but i don't see the law somewhere that says uh razors must be sold at cost and blades can be marked up so but if you reverse it though like so i'm a little bit more sympathetic to it i think than you it's just fine everyone we're operating on a spectrum of our opinions here like i think if you reverse it so the business model of 70 30 set say on playstation because because Sony don't make any money from the hardware. Because Apple make so much money from the hardware, should they also

make all of the money that they want from the software when arguably the apps drive the sales there too? I just don't think it's like one business model means that all business models should be the same. Well, I agree with that. But I would say back to you, who says? Who says it needs to be this way? Like who measures this? And that's the absurdity of this argument is there's this absurd argument that – and I'm not talking about what business models companies should do. I think companies should be free to do whatever business model they can do in terms of competition. Competition is the reason why there is that Apple isn't a very competitive smartphone market. And other people would say, yes, but there's no competition on the iOS app store. It's like, okay, you're defining the world of competition very narrowly there. It's literally Apple's own platform.

I don't think that competition in smartphones is even nearly as strong as competitions in consoles. Maybe not. But I mean, my point here is, I don't see where there's any legal standing of any kind here. I just don't. I just don't see that the margins on different parts of your business is somehow... I mean, correct me if somebody out there, if there's a law that specifies this, but it seems like in America anyway, you don't get to tell companies where they put their profit margin, how they make their money. It doesn't really happen that way. And so, you know, if I'm a company that makes,

has decided that selling razors at a huge profit and making the blades cheap is a better business model for me, I don't think anybody's going to step in. Or if somebody is like, wait, like let's say that Sony very carefully over time has increased the

margins on the playstation are they can somebody sue them and say well now you're making open your books show us your margins oh you need to reduce your cut now because now that you're making a little more money on your hardware we need you to make a little less money on your software yeah it just it doesn't make any sense to me. So I think it's a, I think it's a really stupid argument and that the, there are much better arguments to be made here about Apple's total control over its platform than the fact that, uh,

consoles do it or don't do it. And that's different. It's like, I don't think, I don't think it's different. I actually, but see for me, I just don't think that we should be talking about any other platforms.

The argument here is what, whether what Apple is doing is right. I don't think that we should be talking about any other platforms. The argument here is whether what Apple is doing is right. I don't think that we should start talking about Sony or Microsoft in comparison to this. It's not the same. I think the reason it's relevant is because Epic is making the argument that 70% is an out-of-bounds or 30% is an out-of-bounds amount when there are lots of places that do 30%. I think the percentage is not the argument. The argument is there's no alternative, right? That it's 70-30. But if you're going to say, but 30 is unfair, I think it's fair to say all these other stores do 30 um i because i don't think you should be making the argument that 30 is unfair i think you should be making the argument

that there's no alternative to them taking 30 they could take 50 they could take 70 they could take 90 and we couldn't do anything but just not be on their platform because they control the whole thing that's the argument to make yes yeah i agree i agree so i i don't know how much we're going to come back to this we will come back to this because other stuff's going to happen i mean i don't know how interesting and if it's going to be i mean obviously the main thing will be coming back to how it ends i feel pretty confident as most just listening to people that are smarter than me and talk about this stuff like apple's gonna win this but it's about how they win it and it's about how epic come out on the other side and you know i i as we would i still pretty i honestly i still

feel pretty confident about what we were talking about either last week or the week before about apple basically just their way of getting out of this whole mess which will just keep continuing is just to make some big changes to the app store this year yeah the question is how bloody do they feel how uh how in danger do they feel and what changes do they make how much do you want to keep going through this right and make no mistake they will make changes to seem benevolent. Right. That will be, look at how they rolled out the small business program.

Right. It's like, oh, it's Apple's largesse here. But, you know, it's not. It's Apple moving with the times because the pressure is on. What was it Tim Cook said? That nothing's in concrete? Nothing is cast in concrete. We have to move with the times.

Sometimes there's just this trend where we have to take less money or we get regulated. It's just a trend. It's the zeitgeist. So we'll take a little less money now because that's trendy to not be sued out of existence.

So we'll do that. This episode is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds. While you've been listening to this show, how would you know if your website had gone down? How would you know if your customers couldn't click that buy button or fill out their free trial form? You could stumble across it by luck. Somebody could contact you.

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So we are really turning that corner now I'm very excited it's happening it's happening very I'm so excited like I I wasn't that excited for last year's WWDC for obvious reasons like we didn't really know what was going to happen everything was just very upsetting around that time uh things are in some areas of the world less upsetting now or at least we've gotten used to things and we didn't really know how good or not wwdc was going to be i think we all had pretty calm expectations like lowered expectations over what they would actually be able to have shipped but it was ended up being great so i'm now really excited i'm really looking forward to wwc and so far the i think the most notable rumors have come from mark german he published a report a few weeks ago

not very detailed i'm expecting now maybe over the next couple of weeks we'll start seeing more that tends to be how it usually goes but we'll see yeah presumably the software that's being worked on will roll out in a few more places where more people will see it. And then those are where the leaks happen. Yeah, because I feel like usually, you know, within the weeks leading up, we start getting like the multi-release 9 to 5 max stuff. It starts coming out. But this is the earliest that I've seen what I would consider to be from a credible source is from Mark Gurman. And there's really just a couple of things that Mark was able to touch on.

So one of the big things coming to iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 is more notification preferences. So users will be able to create profiles. So you could create like different profiles with different characteristics and notifications, like how much noise they make, what the prominence is, or maybe you have certain apps on and everything else off, and you could maybe set them up for driving, sleeping, working, and you'll be able to choose between them, apparently from either the lock screen or control center. So I kind of like this, I could imagine setting up like a working notifications and weekend notifications,

you know, and I get different apps allowed to notify me during different times. This is kind of cool. I hope that this comes along with way more customization around notifications in general. I hope that they're not just, which is what I probably are going to do, bolt this on top of the existing system. I would like more. Does this excite you at all, this notification preference thing? I... no. I mean, it's good. It is good. They need more of this. What gives me pause is that the notification system is already so complicated. And my... I need to see this.

Yeah, that's true. I need to see this and see how they implement it and how they make this so that it's not a slog to... Because you've got a lot of apps on your phone and then every app is going to... If you have to go through every single one of them and tell them which place do I want them to be, that would be annoying.

So the idea of profiles i like the idea of profiles is good because then what you're doing is you're saying i want this app to behave in this way and presumably it's going to add that notification preference or variations on it to the different profiles um also you know a more global kind of like this time of day don't do this and this time of day like i want those features because notification is kind of a mess on ios and it frustrates me and i want it to be better but what i don't want is like some of the stuff that i've seen over the years on android where you you know that's always the great thing about android is like you can set every setting it's like oh my god there's too many settings. Like there's already too many

settings on iOS notification. It's too much. So I hope that this is a way to make it easier for us to set these preferences and to get the notifications we want to see. Because the other thing is we know that apps want to just notify you all the time. Like there's no real reason for apps to stop being as obnoxious as possible. So it really is kind of on the platform and the user to control what the apps do. So more control is great. I'm just a little worried about how fiddly this is going to end up being. I'm going to read a quote for the iMessage section because I frankly have no idea what this means. I think this is just one of those things

that Mark was told and he wrote about it, but I don't get it. The company is also working on upgrades to iMessage with the eventual goal of acting as more of a social network and better competing with Facebook's WhatsApp. Those changes are still in early development and could come later. The people said, WhatsApp is not a social network. It's a messaging platform. Yes. So I don't really understand how these things go together. Like there are lots of things that Apple could do to iMessage to make it more like WhatsApp.

Like WhatsApp has way more features and maybe it's easier to find people, especially like who are on other platforms. You just find them by their phone number or whatever, and you can kind of be found anywhere. But these two things are not the same and that very different products. I don't really understand what this could mean, honestly. Well, I will prepare to be surprised, but it's not wrong for Apple to be investigating more things for it to do with iMessage.

iMessage is a powerful tool. I want iMessage to always, or messages, to always get better because it's probably my most used app in general, right? I'm messaging people all the time. I always want it to get better because it's probably my most used app in general right i'm messaging people all the time i always want it to get better you know like i like the replies feature but it's clunky um you know that there's a bunch of stuff like federico always has good lists because he uses more of these apps than me like he uses whatsapp a lot and i honestly like i only use messages too much to the annoyance of my friends and family

here in the UK because like people always tell me that the only person that they talk to through messages is me in their lives because everybody else uses whatsapp you know like I have family groups and stuff in messages and that would otherwise be in WhatsApp. And it frustrates people. I am in some WhatsApp groups with larger extended family, but everybody here and in lots of places in Europe and I think in India as well, a lot as well, WhatsApp is like the tool. And it's got a lot more stuff that you can do in it.

And maybe Apple just wants to continue down that line. I still think that there is a potential one day for them to have messages for Android. I don't think that it's outside of the realm of possibility. I think it's a card they keep in their back pocket. They are continuing to creep outside of the iPhone with their services and make people pay a small amount of money for it, like go wild, right? Like, I don't know. iPad home screen is apparently going to get the most significant changes since its original

debut. The only thing that Mark spoke about was widgets. Well, I think we heard that they were probably working on this for last year alongside the iPhone updates and then decided that they couldn't do both.

And they said, we'll just finish this job next year. So this is one of the least surprising things to be in a next version of iPadOS is adding, you know, updating the home screen to be more than it is currently and allowing you to place widgets arbitrarily on home screens and presumably add app library in some form and all of that kind of thing. I'm curious about how they implement it because with the iPad, you really have orientation widgets arbitrarily on home screens and presumably add app library in some form and all of that kind of thing. I'm curious about how they implement it because with the iPad, you really have orientation issues that you don't have on the iPhone. There's horizontal and vertical and how does that work and how do they move around? And that's something that they have to figure out. Although there

have been a bunch of mock-ups on the internet that have said you could do it like this. And I'm sure they've worked through all of those things it's just maybe a little more complex than they have on the iPhone and I'm looking forward to that because I do use widgets on my home screen and right now I've just got my little sidebar widget-y thing that's the only place they can live for me

over time only more widgets have found their way onto my iPhone home screen like over the last year I keep at I'm like you know what this might be kind of cool and I add another one right like and I feel like I would love to have that flexibility just on the iPad honestly I think we said it at the time the iPad screen it's kind of better for this than the iPhone screen honestly like you could have your yeah like status board like that app that panic used to make right like you could just make that um i was talking to a friend of the show mr widget himself underscore david smith

and he was saying he kind of expect they would do different sizes maybe larger there would be a larger size maybe for the ipad which would be intriguing or just maybe different sizes in general uh but yeah i'm super into this but I am still hoping much more for iPadOS than what Garmin is suggesting. And I'm hoping that one of the reasons that they took a year for widgets is because they're changing the way that multitasking works and stuff like that.

Like they wanted to make a much bigger change to the way that like what Apple calls springboard, which is the way that you look at the home screen and everything kind of works and you launch apps and manage apps. I hope that there's been some bigger changes there because I would like to see that. Yeah.

And then finally, the last part that Mark mentioned was privacy. So a quote is more privacy protections are coming too. One new feature in the works is a new menu that will show users which apps are silently collecting data about them. I'm not surprised that Apple is going to continue down this train. It seems like app tracking transparency has really worked the way they wanted so far. There's been lots of reports over the last week or so that everyone is turning off tracking.

And this is what Apple wanted. And I wouldn't be surprised to see them continue going down this route because this was a a thing that could have been quite contentious for them and there were a lot of companies that tried to make it so and it seems to have so far worked completely the way that apple wanted it to so i wouldn't be surprised to see them continue going down this route it's awfully consistent of them to do this, right? To just keep pushing on this point and adding more features. And I do wonder what those privacy protections are.

I've theorized for a long time now whether Apple might add a VPN service on their own, which would be very bad for other VPN services, including ones that sponsor upgrade. But I could see them doing it. other network related service kind of things. And then adopting obscure but emerging standards for privacy in various areas in the Internet and like saying, well, we're going to adopt this and use that to sort of drive the uptake of those things. Like that all sounds like something that Apple is going to just continue trying to do, that they're going to keep pushing forward on this because they know that it's an advantage and they use it in their marketing, but they know that it's a product advantage and that people buy their devices in part because of this perception that they're more secure and more

private than other devices. So I'm not surprised by that. That all said, this is a very limited number of things to start, as you pointed out at the beginning. And so I look forward to there being more, because this isn't a lot. So there's got to be other stuff going on. I did see somebody reported, was it Steve Troughton Smith? It was somebody who reported a sighting of some sort of virtualization, something that is suspicious, like there is something going on here. I feel like, and we'll, you know, we'll draft these at some point, but I feel like virtualization, I've heard enough rumblings about that, that there's going to be something there, but I wonder if it will not be something as exciting as people think it'll be, because there's definitely, there's an undercurrent of oh well now that the ipad pro has an m1 it could run like a mac virtual machine you could run m1

on or mac os on ipad pro and uh maybe but you know more likely it's going to be something like you can do uh linux you can run docker you can do like it's pro for developers and stuff um and not something bigger than that but it's all just kind of speculation at this point so i look forward to more leaks although if there aren't more leaks then our draft is going to be amazing the fewer leaks there are the better the draft is because then we're just making wild choices yeah it's like i look forward to it to talk about it but if there isn't none i'm not going to be upset about it i'll be excited about the fact that i know nothing going in right like for me personally i'm cool with either right i either feel like i know a lot of stuff and then wait to see if it comes true and i still always

delight in the details or i know nothing and i look forward to the surprise like for me personally they both come with their own positives and negatives like so i'm i'm just now we're like on that train we're like on the road now i started today like moving shows around right to make sure that i was as free as can be that week because i made a terrible mistake last year and didn't do that so i'm now just recording the things i need to record like i'm starting to get into the mode now like all right we're in wDC preparation time. I'm excited. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. How did you choose which internet service provider

you wanted to go with? The sad thing is for so many people, ISPs have a bunch of control in the regions that they serve, so they can't choose. And then you might be going with a company that would put on different data caps with you, put like different streaming throttling, and you might just end up with something

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Go there now and learn more. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Brant wants to know, is Jason still using the 12 mini? If so, what has been the biggest pro and biggest con of using it a few months in

um france yes i'm still using the 12 mini the biggest pro is that it's small and the biggest con is that they might not make it down the road and i'll be super sad because i love it that's it i love it i pick up other iphones and i think this super sad because I love it. That's it. I love it. I pick up other iPhones and I think this is ridiculous because they're all larger than the 12 mini. I love it. It's all I need in a phone. I have nothing bad to say about it. Do you think that this could change if you're traveling? Do you notice the battery? I always hear people say that the battery just isn't as good as you would want it to be. notice about or i always hear people say that the battery just isn't as good as you would want it to be i you know if i'm in one of those times where i'm out and about and not having any opportunity

to charge for a long period of time which is really rare then possibly but i don't know i that that doesn't happen very often i always think think back to like XOXO back in the day, where there'd be like a day where I would literally not be able to charge from 8 a.m. until 1 a.m. And that's bad, right? Then you got to bring a battery pack or something like that anyway. But most cases I'm in and out of a car or whatever. I have someplace where i have to charge so for me it's not something that i've noticed or or cared about um but you know i'll leave myself open to that possibility but like i just like the size of it too much it's great all right next up comes from john and john wants to know going forward do you think that air tags or u1 devices could work with home kit or shortcuts for more precise geofencing.

So like when I enter the living room, do this. So like I was thinking about this is kind of interesting to me. Like imagine if you have your HomePod mini in one room and you've got your iPhone with you. And if you walk into the room, the lights come on. Yeah, I think the idea behind ultra wideband is that that sort of thing should be possible. The problem is in order to do it, because ultra widebands range is not enormous. What you really need is a constellation of ultra wideband sensors or something. And this is the challenge, right? This is the, this is the issue. I think in the future, that is the idea, right? Like if you've got an Apple TV, that's got a,

an ultra wideband chip in it, or a HomePod that's got an ultra wideband chip in it or something like that, you will be able to say when I'm close to this object, when I'm within this range of this object. Or maybe even like build a map like how the Roomba builds a map. You know, the Roomba goes around and it builds a little map. And there's even a beta feature where it looks for Bluetooth LE devices and it puts them on the map too. So you can sort of like map out your house. That's the thing is you need to have the ability to build kind of a map in order to do this kind of automation. But that would be the nice thing about it is if you're carrying your phone and you go into a room and it knows you're in that room, so turn on the light or whatever. Yes, that would be, I think that's the end stage of this, but it's going to take a lot

because it takes multiple devices to get to that point. You can't just like a phone with a U1 chip and it doesn't know where it is. It knows its relationship to other objects that have ultra wideband chips in them. And so you need to know what that object is and where it is in order to do anything. But that said, yeah, I think this is one of the futures of home automation is going to be having your devices know precisely where they are in your home. One of the things I'm looking forward to is smart locks, because I have a smart lock that's based on Bluetooth LE. And so it has this whole thing that it goes through where it has to see me leave and know that I'm gone. And then it says, okay, now Jason's gone.

Next time I see that phone again, I'm going to unlock because that means he's back. But that's the only way it can work. Whereas with ultra wide band, a smart lock would say, oh, you're at the front door. Unlock. Right? Like that's like with precision. You're at the front door unlock right like that's yeah like with precision i you're at the front door unlock and even with precision oh you're leaving the area of the front door now i'll lock right and that will be great when it finally happens but we're not there yet

skawaka asks since the release of app clips have either of you naturally come across any of them i forgot about this feature because I've never seen them. I don't go outside very much. And I think that's true for a lot of people. So no, I haven't. I could have slowed down the kind of adoption of them in general. I think App Clips was always intended to be a long term thing. I think when I wrote about it originally last summer, I said, this is something that'll

be a big deal in your life when you're trying to pay for parking at a meter in 2025. That's the kind of approach that's happening here. So I haven't seen them, but I'm not surprised by that because I literally, I could probably, if you gave me a piece of paper, I could probably write down the number of places that I've been outside my house in the last year. I could probably write it down and it would fit on a piece of paper and it's just not a good not so i haven't seen it it's just maybe it's been the worst possible like such like world for it to be launched into you know right i mean the idea some of the demo stuff is really great right the idea that you can order from a table at a restaurant by tapping on an app clip, and then

it knows what table you're at, and it loads the app clip, and you can place your order, and then it'll get delivered to you. I think that sort of stuff is going to happen, but restaurants have been broken by the pandemic. And all of this stuff, and updating parking meters is a great example, but that is going to require infrastructure updates. And those happen over the course of years. So I don't think we can judge app clips as a success or a failure based on not seeing them around. Because I think this is a long term thing. Like this is this is Apple saying, if you want to build parking meters with a tap to pay, we have a function to let you do that now, or a tap to

log in or whatever it is. We let you do that now, but it's going to take time for those things to get adopted. And Jamie asks, now that we've seen a new consumer iMac, have reports of the death of the iMac Pro being greatly exaggerated? This is a weird question because a new consumer iMac, and it is in quotes, but like the iMac has always been a consumer product. Yeah, I think what Jamie's saying, and I didn't do a good job of reading that question,

I should have put a better emphasis on it, is basically saying like, it seems like we have the iMac and then there's going to be the iMac Pro which is the bigger one right like it's kind of the way that it would seem to be telling the story of itself I mean that's a scenario but every like literally every iMac has been a consumer iMac except for and the iMac Pro is the one outlier and we still have the 27 inch iMac being sold with Intel, that is a consumer in quotes iMac. So I see no evidence to say that this is the consumer iMac and the larger one will be a pro iMac. It doesn't mean

it couldn't happen. It means I see no evidence for it. The fact that they introduced a smaller iMac and that there's also this larger iMac is not evidence of anything because those are the two iMacs that were there. There's totally a scenario where they could call the larger one iMac Pro. It goes back to what you were saying earlier, Mike, the idea that you've got product and product Pro throughout Apple's lineup. They could totally do that and say, well, Pro iMac is the big iMac and the 24 is already pretty big. So really what we're saying is that this new 27 or 30 or whatever iMac is more of a Pro model. And they could do that. Or they could say, let's not call it pro because some people will buy it and they would be turned off if it

was pro. Or let's do two versions of it. We'll do a regular version and then we'll do a pro version that's got extra features. They've got lots of choices. Who knows what choices they've made? We'll know when they announce it. But I think iMac Pro, as currently defined, is defined by the fact that it used a totally different cooling system because it was using Intel Xeon processors. The existence of the Xeons is why the Intel iMac Pro existed. And those processors are gone. So that premise for the iMac Pro is gone. The name remains available, right? So the question is all marketing. It marketing does apple want to make that larger iMac marketed as a pro model or not um i don't think it really changes what it is

other than it might give them some freedom to raise the price and pour a few more high-end features into it but i think they would do that anyway so it's a coin flip to me because it really it's just in the hands of the marketers how they want to, what they want to call that product. Yeah, for me, I think, I come at this from very similar but slightly different perspective of like,

you know, we were saying that the iMac Pro was one and done, right? Like they released it and they never updated it and then it went away and that that's the end of the iMac Pro. We're not saying it's the end of the name. It's the end of the iMac Pro. We're not saying it's the end of the name. It's the end of what that product was supposed to be. Like that product

was supposed to be the only Pro Mac. Like the top of the line Mac was supposed to be the iMac Pro. Right. There was no Mac Pro in that scenario when it was designed. And it was designed for an Intel era that has also passed. so it's doubly out of date but if they release a mac called the iMac pro which i do think they will it's not going to be like the iMac pro that it quote unquote replaces it replaces the largest iMac right but it's not going to be fulfilling the same place in the lineup that the iMac Pro was supposed to. Honestly, the only way that an iMac Pro, a new iMac Pro would fill that same ecological niche is if they announced we're doing a new iMac. And also there's this iMac Pro variant that's

got a different color scheme and it's got a more powerful processor and it's got more RAM. They would need to like do a loaded version that's very different. And even then it would be a stretch because it's basically going to be the same as the other. So yeah, that's why I've been saying that it's a marketing decision because that's essentially all it is. How do you define your bigger iMac? Do you call it pro or do you not? You can choose, but it's not going to be the same differentiator as the iMac Pro original was. If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag

AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you get access to if you're a member and you sign up for Upgrade Plus. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you can sign up and you will get longer ad-free episodes of every single upgrade every week. Even if we do two in a week, which we do sometimes, you'll get longer ad-free episodes of every single upgrade every week. Even if we do two in a week, which we do sometimes,

you'll get longer ad-free versions of those ones too. That's at getupgradeplus.com. I would like to thank ExpressVPN, Pingdom, and Uni, Pete's Ovens, for their support of this episode. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com. You can also go to Twitter. Jason is at Jasonow J-S-N-E-L-L

I'm at iMike I-M-Y-K-E and we both host shows here at RelayFM Jason also hosts many shows at The Incomparable Jason would you be able to tell me a little bit about another RelayFM show called Rocket? Sure Rocket is not a podcast about space and related subjects No

That's liftoff. No, Rocket covers all the hard tech news of the week in a fun, some would say wacky way, from the latest Apple news to scams with, you know, fake blood testing companies, stuff like that. Rocket is there. And you could be there, too. Ride the rocket. That's what I've decided their slogan is now. Oh, boy.

Really.fm slash rocket. Or search for rocket wherever you get your podcasts. It's not about space, people. It's not literally about rockets. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.