Upgrade - 353: Orange iMac in My Orange Office

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

Jason's been using an orange 24-inch iMac for the last week and we've got his review. Also, Apple Music goes for high quality and spatial audio, WarnerMedia is on the move again, and Jeff Bezos is a t...elevision genius.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 from relay fm this is upgrade episode 353 and today's show is brought to you by squarespace doordash and uni pizza ovens my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by the one and only jason hi jason snell i'm mike hurley how are you? I'm fine, my friend. Big show today. Lots of stuff happening. Lots of stuff going on. But we must stick to format and begin with a hashtag Snell Talk question. This one comes from Stitch. Stitch asks, Jason, how many apps
Starting point is 00:00:35 are currently installed on your phone and do you think that it is more or less than Mike's number? I can tell you the answer, but even before I looked, because I really don't know, I'm going to assume that there's more apps on your phone, because that seems like something you would do, is have more apps than me.
Starting point is 00:00:54 If people want to find this out for themselves, rather than counting every app, which could take a long time, you go to settings, general, and about, and there's a bunch of information there. I actually thought it might be fun to compare some of these stats anyway. but how many applications do you have installed in your phone jason's now 186 yes okay 408 uh-huh i don't know why i have 408 apps on my phone i don't know why i have 186 apps but but the fact that you have more than twice as many as me, that part, I do understand.
Starting point is 00:01:27 You're a little more free and easy with the apps also that you do a podcast with Federico, so he's feeding you apps all the time. That's true. I just let him ride, baby. He's a neighbor of apps. Do you have any of the app offloading stuff turned on? I don't think so. I don know i don't i honestly don't know do that okay so let's look at some other stuff then how many songs do you have on
Starting point is 00:01:54 your phone 892 okay i have 746 i did come to realize a couple of days ago i was trying to listen to some music and i went into an area that had no uh cell coverage and i realized that i hadn't downloaded a bunch of music onto this phone because i got this phone during covid and i usually only need to download music when i'm like on planes and stuff this also is one of the things that i really hate that you can't make apple music download a bunch of songs and then always download those songs when you start getting the next phone you have to do it manually it clears it every time i hate that yeah videos what are these i don't know i assume it's every kind of video right like i'm assuming it's more the videos that you've taken with your phone but maybe also if you have stuff in the TV app that must be it
Starting point is 00:02:46 it says I have 2413 videos I don't know how I don't have any movies downloaded I don't have my guess is that that's every video in my photos library I'm assuming mine's 580
Starting point is 00:03:02 yeah I don't know what those are but there you go. Photos. This has got to be bananas. Photos, how many you got? 90,909. 9-0-9-0-9. Now this is maybe similar to the apps thing. I knew you'd have more.
Starting point is 00:03:20 I didn't think it would be that many more. I'm at 13,172 photos. Oh, 13,000 photos. That's so cute. In a couple of years, you could cross 100,000 photos. Yeah, and in fact, that number is the number of photos in my photo library. So those are not actually on the device. That's the number that is in my iCloud photo library.
Starting point is 00:03:40 So those videos are, yeah, those are the videos that are in my various libraries. But yeah, 90,000. I will. So so mike i do this book about photos every year no i know i know i know and and every year i have to update the i think it's in the introduction where i mentioned how many photos are in my photo library so every year i'm like oh now it's more than 80 000 now it's more than 90 000 it keeps on happening take control of photos from take control books go buy it if you want to i don't know if you want to take control of photos it's got a lot of things about the photos app if you don't want to take control of photos don't ask me don't don't don't yell at me about how dumb the photos app is believe me i know i've written a book about it sometimes i get those
Starting point is 00:04:20 things it's like why does it do it this way why do you you know it's like i don't have anything to do with it i'm just reporting the news here people I don't have it can you do this no you can't can you do this no of course you can't do anything that you want to do with photos it's an obstinate app but it is what it is if you would like to send in a question to help us open the show you just send out a tweet with a hashtag snow talk or use question mark snow talk in the relay fm members discord that was a very good one I enjoyed that you know the thing that really up on the show, you just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or use question mark SnowTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. That was a very good one. I enjoyed that. You know, the thing that really surprises me about this is that
Starting point is 00:04:49 I have 256 gigs of capacity and I have 193 gigs available. Okay. So I'm not using any storage on this phone. I put mine away now but I'm basically the same. But I have a 512 phone and I'm halfway full on that. I don't know why. Probably because there were so many apps. I'm using 63 gigs. But I have a 512 phone and I'm halfway full on that. I don't know why, but probably because there are so many apps.
Starting point is 00:05:06 I'm using 63 gigs of storage on this phone. So I don't... Actually, this is a good tip for everybody out there when you're buying a new iPhone and you're like, I don't know how much storage I need. Look and see how much storage you're using. You've got a big 256 storage phone and then you realize you're only using 50 gigs on it you
Starting point is 00:05:26 you're probably okay on last week's episode in ask upgrade question we were talking about app clips and we said that they seem to have not really taken off where are they where are our clips australia a few australian upgradians which by the way aust Australian Upgradian is almost the perfect. Australian Upgradians. They found the app clips. We got some great feedback, the most detailed from Mungo, who wrote in to tell us that Australia's contact tracing system has just started using app clips as a way to check into locations. So if you're going to a restaurant or something,
Starting point is 00:06:01 so we have it here, you have to open the NHS app and scan it. And so you've been to that restaurant or you've been to that venue or something. So we have it here. You have to open the NHS app and scan it. And so you've been to that restaurant or you've been to that venue or whatever. But in Australia now, they now have it with the app clips. And so Mongo said people here are seeing and using the app clips almost daily. Even with the app downloaded, the QR code now triggers the check-in action and making the whole thing seamless. So you no longer need to actually download an app to do the whole thing because it just uses the little QRr code instead it's great even if the app is downloaded the qr code still works to do the action so either way it is like a quick thing we also heard from a bunch of people in texas in texas very specifically get on your cowboy hat
Starting point is 00:06:41 in texas uh oil country saying that uh exxon is using app clips at their gas stations so that may be a interesting like test rollout for them or that's where they decided to start uh but people in texas reporting exxon using app clips at the gas stations and somebody also sent in a message that they saw one at a five guys burger place that you could like uh do the app clip outside and do like an online order and then go in and pick it up which seemed reasonable to me so they're out there but i think what we said last time is not that they weren't out there but that this is a long game yeah that this is not going to be something that succeeds or fails in year one
Starting point is 00:07:20 because uh it's all about putting things in an infrastructure. It's about rolling it out. Like the Exxon example, it's like rolling it out to every gas station in your gas station network. That's going to take a lot of time. But I do think that App Clips will ultimately be all over the place because the example I always give is like,
Starting point is 00:07:40 you got to pay for a parking meter in a city that you're visiting and you need to download their app. It's a city that you're visiting and you uh need to download their app it's like i don't have their app i don't want their app and now you'll be able to just like tap it opens the app clip um you pay and then you get on with your life and you don't need to have that city like the example i use is i have in my purchased history forever the salt lake city parking app like okay i parked in salt lake city twice one on two days and that's it now i now i've got that app in there forever i mean there's just you know as we said last time
Starting point is 00:08:13 like the the thing that's going on here is that really the opportunities that people would have had for this haven't arisen because it's this is a retail and dining thing primarily and the last year there just hasn't been a lot of that opportunity available yeah but i could tell you about another one in a moment but before that let me tell you about the 2021 apple watch pride band which is just which has been unveiled It is a combination of a new watch face and there's two watch bands, a braided Solo Loop and a Nike Sport Loop. The design of the watch face and the Solo Loop
Starting point is 00:08:53 are intended to evoke various pride flags now to represent the broader LGBTQ plus community. And now Apple is trying to incorporate kind of as many colors of these as possible for various parts of the community into one band. And I think that this band is absolutely stunning. I think that they have done- Yeah, the braided solo loop is gorgeous.
Starting point is 00:09:16 It is amazing. And I think I've said this before, but I just really appreciate that Apple makes such beautiful watch bands to support these kinds of causes and um like for people to be able to express this because also i think it because they're so beautiful it draws other people to them and i think can help highlight things to people that otherwise wouldn't be in those communities so i kind of really like that and as well this was announced on the international day against homophobia
Starting point is 00:09:49 transphobia and biphobia so it's like the perfect time to show it off the nike sport loop is the more traditional pride flag but it's got some like reflective materials woven into it so it's good for like nighttime running or whatever and apple is actually using an app clip in the packaging of the watch band to help customers easily install the matching watch face so there you go all ties in somebody in the app clips seems like we could use app clips in our packaging they're like all right okay it's like if we have to here we go everybody evidence that app clips are a thing is that apple is using them. No, that's evidence of nothing. I'll stick with the Australian of gradients. I absolutely adore this
Starting point is 00:10:30 watch band. It's the braided solo loop, so I'm not going to buy one yet. I want to wait until I can try them on. I want to try them on, because I have no I don't want to deal with the whole paper sizing thing. So I will pick one of these up at some point, though, because I just think it's stunning
Starting point is 00:10:45 if you've got any with the little notches on them you can just use those and get your sizing oh yeah it was the whole thing that gruber did and it works yeah i've bought multiple bands for me and for lauren using that technique works great okay i'll dig into that then i'll dig into that but it's really cool it's beautiful. I think you did a fantastic job. So I want to tell you about something special. It's membership special time. So it's double special. Every year around August, we have had extra bonus episodes for RelayFM members.
Starting point is 00:11:17 We are now doing this earlier. So one of the reasons we're kind of splitting up the time that we have is because we would go straight from our specials into the podcast-a-thon. These are two huge projects that we have been doing around the same time of the year. And we have decided that's a bad idea. It's dumb. Don't do that. Don't do that. So we're now going to be doing our membership specials earlier in the year, kind of around May time.
Starting point is 00:11:42 And here we are. in the year, kind of around May time, and here we are. So on this show, we are going to be teaming up again with C.J.P. Gray of the Cortex Podcast for our annual special that we do. For the last, I think, four years or so, we've been doing text adventures. Jason has been our text adventure
Starting point is 00:11:56 parser, and me and Gray have been going through the world. But this time, we're doing something different. So instead of a text adventure, we're going to be stepping things up a notch and doing a full rpg adventure instead yeah it's a full role-playing game so not a text adventure but something a little more it's not dungeons and dragons but it's like dungeons and dragons and i think the most important point here is that i am no longer in the safe comfortable position of being
Starting point is 00:12:27 snellatron 3000 instead i have joined you and gray yep as a player when we were looking at this kind of changing it i think it was something that we decided that it just felt right for you to be on our side now rather than playing against us it's like the shoe was on the other foot on that way and then also we're expanding the expanding the world and expanding the way we do it so the logical step would be that now the three of us who've done all of these specials together would now have to join forces in you know in a new adventure so we're gonna be part of the same team navigating a space-based adventure and we've brought in our ringer, Tony Sindelar, who is the Dungeon Master slash Games
Starting point is 00:13:09 Master of the Total Party Kill podcast to help us. We needed an experienced Game Master to create the world for us and Tony has done an absolutely superb job. This special is going to be published on May 21st. It's this Friday, if you're listening this week.
Starting point is 00:13:25 It'll be for Real AFM members in the crossover feed. Otherwise, it's already published. Otherwise, it's already out. This is where you get all of our annual bonus specials from this year and past years. If you are already a member, you can log into Memberful and you can get this feed from your podcast page.
Starting point is 00:13:40 But I'll also put a link in the show notes of this episode so you can just tap it, log in, and subscribe to it straight away. If you haven't signed up yet, go to getupgradeplus.com right now and you'll not only get the RPG special, you'll also get access to Upgrade Plus, which has longer episodes of Upgrade every week with no ads. We really love putting this special together.
Starting point is 00:14:02 Came out great. There's a lot of work from everyone and I think it's really come, it really shows. And we hope you enjoy it. We're going to have a trailer at the end of the episode today. So you can hear what it's going to be all about. Go sign up, getupgradeplus.com and you can get all of it. Yep. Come for the bathrobes, stay for the squirrels.
Starting point is 00:14:19 Indeed. You'll understand what that means if you listen. Should we talk about some upstream headlines before we move on today? Yeah, there's so much going on with Apple, but we need to do a little check-in on Upstream. Because I keep sending you links and things keep happening. And we need to talk about them. But I wanted to start with Jeff Bezos as television development executive because it made me laugh and laugh. This is Jeff Bezos. This is a tweet we'll put in the show notes from Peter Kafka talking about Brad Stone's new book, Amazon Unbound,
Starting point is 00:15:09 and about why Amazon's original attempts to launch a TV service were maybe a little bit off kilter, because in part it was Jeff Bezos who had decided that, I'm just going to quote it here, look, I know what it takes to make a great show. This should not be that hard. All of these iconic shows have basic things in common. And then he, off the top of his head, began rattling off the secret formula to making a successful TV show, including a heroic protagonist who experiences growth and change, a compelling antagonist, wish fulfillment, moral choices, diverse world building, urgency to watch next episode, oh man, I'd love me some urgency, civilization high stakes humor betrayal and positive emotions like humans feel love joy hope etc boy jeff bezos has solved television anyway yeah it's like okay like yeah you're
Starting point is 00:15:56 right on those things but you can't it's not like a recipe no it's not how it works what i love about this is that it's the like an archetypal version of the suit of the studio like the overseer yeah say giving notes to creative people saying look this is simple people why don't you get it i have a list i'll just rattle it off off the top of my head i'm a guy who runs a uh an online. But even I know you got to have those positive emotions and the moral choices and the diverse world. Come on, people. This is it's easy. So stick those things in there.
Starting point is 00:16:48 prime video shows and people would be challenged about, did their thing fulfill all of the checkboxes of Jeff Bezos' map to successful television? And if it didn't, they had some explaining to do. Unbelievable. This book seems like it's probably getting pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so Jeff has got it solved, everybody. Shut it down. Just listen to Jeff. Can't wait for the Lord of the Rings show. That's in production now. They've actually started. Yeah, well, so I'm unclear on the timeline of this, but what happened is that they actually replaced
Starting point is 00:17:13 the development executive, the head of Prime Video, with a new development executive who is much more, well, I don't know more, but who is very highly thought of, who's Jen Salke, I think is her name. And I suspect that they have changed their planning a little bit. But still, you know, Jeff wants what he wants.
Starting point is 00:17:33 So if he says, bring back the Expanse, they're going to do it. And they did it. So anyway, it made me laugh. Billionaire has opinions about TV. Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast is going to become a Spotify exclusive starting July 1st. As well as this, they're going to be doing a first look deal with Spotify.
Starting point is 00:17:53 Because the Armchair Expert podcast is now kind of like they created a whole network of shows from it. And they're going to get a first look deal with Spotify. Armchair Expert has an estimated monthly audience of around 20 million it's a huge show and it is a show that i feel i see apple promoting a lot on the podcast store because it's one of these shows that you know they they they talked lots of famous people i think the last episode they had prince harry as a guest right like it is a huge huge show um i mean you know probably getting up there alongside something like joe rogan and so uh spotify have bought it well i think you mean it was a huge huge show yeah now yeah it's going to be because just to be clear um this is a
Starting point is 00:18:40 spotify exclusive it will be available to listen to for free. You don't have to be a paid Spotify member. But you're not going to be able to get it in any podcast app. So, there you go. Another one. Another one bites the dust, I suppose. Uh-huh. Yeah, I mean, it will be interesting
Starting point is 00:19:00 to see, as it is with all of these things, how much of their audience comes with them and how much of their audience is lost. And I think Spotify, from Spotify's perspective, maybe not from Dax. Okay, how does this work? Dax Shepard and his people, they get paid by Spotify, right? So what they get out of it is more money from Spotify than they're getting on the open podcast ecosystem. What's Spotify?
Starting point is 00:19:22 Why is Spotify overpaying? Well, Spotify knows that they're going to lose some percentage of the 20 million audience, but they're going to keep, they're going to gain a percentage of that. A lot of whom are not currently using Spotify for podcasts and they're going to convert. And so Spotify is really just spending money to acquire people listening to podcasts in the Spotify app because then they podcasts in the Spotify app, because then they're in the Spotify app and then they've got them. That's the idea. And so good for Dax Shepard, I assume, at least in the short term, because he and his crew are going to get paid, probably overpaid by Spotify in order for them to do this, because they're
Starting point is 00:20:01 going to give up audience in order to take money from Spotify. But the danger is that in the long run, Spotify doesn't want them or they don't want Spotify, and they're going to have to emerge from the cloak of Spotify and who's left in their audience at that point. That's the downside of it. So I hope the check is big. I guess the benefit that they have, as opposed to Gimlet and Joe Rogan, is they're not selling everything. So they have other shows, right? And they will still have those. They're still going to be openly available. They have that first look deal for new shows, but there is still a collection of things that they can produce on the free and open podcast market. It's just that one show. If Spotify doesn't want other armchair shows, then they can just put those out there. That's true. Good point. But they are,
Starting point is 00:20:50 and it's the whole catalog too. So the whole thing is going to go, going to duck back behind the Spotify wall, whatever you want to call it, and not be available in Apple Podcasts or Overcast or any other podcast player. And it keeps getting bigger. AT&T is going to spin off warner
Starting point is 00:21:05 media and merge it with discovery so discovery ceo david vasla zazlav uh will run the combined business according to the announcement hell of a scrabble word he's got a z and a v in his name i apologize executives from both companies will be in key leadership roles jason kallar who is the ceo of warner media is not mentioned in any of these releases. So he's out. Although this isn't going to close until next year sometime, but he's out. And I feel for all the people who are longtime Warner employees because they just got through this AT&T transition and a bunch of hard changes. And here they are, they're back in the washing machine again for another year where they're going to get buffeted around
Starting point is 00:21:45 by who knows what the deal is going to be. But this is interesting. This is AT&T saying oops about what they did when they bought Warner Media. They already got rid of DirecTV. Now they're kind of getting rid of Warner Media. But to be clear, I've already seen people sort of say,
Starting point is 00:22:06 well, they're selling it at a loss and that's it. That's not what they're doing. They're actually, they're going to own like 70 some percent of this combined company. And I would imagine that over time they can sell that off if they want to, but they're structuring their debt differently and they're getting it kind of off their books and discovery media, which is the, for those who don't know, that's like the home of the Discovery Channel and they own the Food Network and they own a bunch of other cable channels and they have a Discovery Plus streaming service that they just launched. And David Zaslav is actually fairly highly thought of, I believe, as an executive at this relatively, trying to navigate the waters with this relatively small company and now he's
Starting point is 00:22:45 apparently going to have a much larger company to to run um but it's interesting because i think discovery was too small on its own i think discovery was just kind of floating out there especially discovery plus right like especially yeah the stream is yeah it was not not that they didn't have some good stuff on it but again like again, it was not going to be a must-see. And I would think that, you know, I think in the long run it's obvious that this is all going to get mushed together into one streaming service. It's a little bit like, honestly, it's a little bit like how Disney Plus has National Geographic. They may bundle. They may do, you know, HBO Max and Discovery Plus like Hulu and Disney Plus in the short run. But they're going to be combined in some way or other that benefits them.
Starting point is 00:23:29 I don't know. It's really interesting. There's a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff here too, like Jeff Zucker, who runs CNN, said he was going to leave at the end of the year, but it sounds like he didn't like Jason Kalar, but he's good buddies with the guy who owns Discovery so is he going to stick around and what does that mean? I find
Starting point is 00:23:52 CNN being a part of Warner Media and yet not being in any way on HBO Max. Another interesting thing of what do they do with their news properties and how does that connect? I don't know. Already it was kind of messy and now it's even more messy but in the end this might be uh this might be a pretty good
Starting point is 00:24:12 combination i think that there's a lot of um i've seen a lot of speculation about some other company sweeping in and kind of like eating this company or putting its assets in with this company in order to bulk up to fight disney and i i don't really see that and i i say that only you know and i'm not a media industry insider and it's hulu too that would be a point right yeah electric hulu hula blue um the uh the problem is that at some point here this consolidation can't go on because you end up with like multiple US TV networks involved. And that's not like the competitive issues get bigger and bigger and you have to sell off more stuff. And I've definitely seen speculation to that effect. But is it possible that this is just a way to set this thing out there so that NBC Universal or Disney can come in and swallow it all? I guess anything's possible, but I don't know. Anyway, the streaming wars continue, and this is another big thing where two big companies are going to squish their streaming stuff together. But it also is AT&T sort of saying we don't we don't actually
Starting point is 00:25:25 want to run a media conglomerate we will they'll they'll own it or at least they'll own a big chunk of it but they don't actually want to run it john stanky the ceo of uh of at&t doesn't actually want to run that business and uh and david zasloff wants to run that business. And John Malone, who owns Discovery, likes that business. So this is an interesting way for AT&T to kind of like push it at arm's length in the short term and probably sell off chunks of it in the long term in order to get their money back. Very sad for HBO. This just feels very sad to me well the only positive thing is that is that i think casey bloys is still at hbo right that who is the the creative director of hbo and hbo max um and that's i i think that maybe is a positive now in the sense that maybe hbo will have a little more stability with the at&t guys kind of out of the way but but still i feel i feel bad i think overall this will be better for hbo but i just feel like hbo has such a good history track record pedigree to have just been pushed around like this for a few years that
Starting point is 00:26:33 that's what makes me sad what's going to be left when this stabilizes and is hbo still going to be hbo are they going to have any value um having done all of this i also wonder like hbo max just because we love talking about the names of streaming services i wonder if this will be an opportunity for them to come up with a new name for that service that does not use the hbo brand and allow hbo to go back to being just hbo uh i don't know i mean i don't think discovery is a great brand either, to be honest. I think it's kind of confusing, but we'll see what they do. But it's a big change in the streaming world. And AT&T, for those who care about getting HBO Max with their AT&T plans,
Starting point is 00:27:18 I don't know what's going to happen with that in the long run, but AT&T is going to own most of the company in the short run. If this all gets approved, which will take a year. your door and you can get the grocery essentials that you need with DoorDash too. You can get drinks, snacks, and other household items delivered in under an hour. Ordering is super easy. You just open the DoorDash app, choose what you want from where you want, and your items will be left safely outside your door with their contactless delivery drop-off setting. They have over 300,000 partners in the US, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Australia. You can choose to support your neighborhood go-tos or from some of your favorite national chains as well, like Chipotle, Popeyes, and Cheesecake Factory.
Starting point is 00:28:11 I know that you're a big fan of DoorDash, Jason. Can you tell our listeners what they can expect when they order from DoorDash? What I like about DoorDash, well, first off, I like about DoorDash that my daughter drove for DoorDash for a while and that was pretty cool. And she would sometimes bring us food, which was nice. She's always been our personal DoorDash that my daughter drove for DoorDash for a while and that was pretty cool. And she would sometimes bring us food, which was nice. She's
Starting point is 00:28:27 always been our personal DoorDash. You can pre-order stuff. That's one of the things I really like about it that you can, when you're not hungry, you pre-order. This is my technique. I've told you about it before. Order when you're not hungry. Tell them when to deliver it and then your food will show up at that time and you will not do what I do
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Starting point is 00:29:22 upgrade2021. Or for our Australian upgradians, just just use upgrade aus that is upgrade 2021 for the us upgrade aus for the upgradian australians for 25 off your first order with doordash subject to change terms apply our thanks to doordash for their support of this show and relay fm mike there's something here with me right now i'm so jealous of you. Something I haven't revealed until now. I couldn't reveal until this very moment that we post this podcast. It's an orange iMac. Are you recording on it right now? I'm not. It's right next to me. It's next to you. Okay. It's over on the side. It's been watching us as we record this, remaining silent until now. How does it oh it looks good it looks really good
Starting point is 00:30:05 images are fantastic orange iMac in my orange office yeah oh it's so good yeah I love the bright colors they're so they're so great I appreciate we joke about it I appreciate they're not for everyone and I'm glad that Apple makes a uh silver one so they've got one that's neutral that was not the op not an option you had in the early days of the iMac right remember when Apple turned everything blue they blue power max and blue iMacs and all of that like they they uh but to give the option to not have it be neutral and have it fit into your your uh color scheme of your room or just delight you with a color and it is it's it's delightful the back of that thing too because it's flat now, it doesn't have the kind of taper to the bulgy part in the middle. It's just completely flat and it's got that big Apple logo on it. It's quite striking from the back
Starting point is 00:30:55 because it's so bright. It's quite a thing to see. And your office, you actually would work with this computer because you don't have your desk to the wall, do you? I don't. And so I was writing do you i don't and so i was writing this review that is now up at six colors i actually plopped it down i used the arm on my iMac pro and swung it away and then plopped it down and attached my keyboard oh very cute and just sat here and wrote on it and and then yeah you get the from the side and and from different angles you see the bright and then you see the bright color also on the,
Starting point is 00:31:25 on the stand, right on the little foot that it's bright there. Even if you're in front of it, that part of it is bright. And one of the things that I, in terms of just using it that I hadn't really thought of. And then as I was using it, I noticed that Apple,
Starting point is 00:31:37 I think had done a really good job with is this idea of creating a, it's almost like a, a gradient where you've got your bright stand and then you've got that the lighter you know almost in this case peachy part that's above it that's on the chin and then you get that neutral gray border and then you get your screen so that when you're working on it you can you can focus on the screen and um not get distracted by the color but the color is is also there but it's not in the center of your vision so i can't imagine that that they didn't do a lot of thought and a lot of testing about creating this kind of a thing that would allow
Starting point is 00:32:19 them to bring color to the experience of using an iMac without having it be so in your face that it became maybe even unpleasant to use it because it was just screaming at you from all over your vision. You really kind of lose it when you're focused on what you're working on. Obviously, the iMac, it is a screen, right? Like the whole computer is a screen. Now, this screen is 24 inches. How did you feel about this because you're used to 27 on your iMac Pro what did 24 feel like you know it's a little smaller but I'm not sure I'm the best user of a 27 inch screen like I have had one for a long time now since the 5k iMac came out but 24 is is nice it's a four and a half k so it's it's more than the old 21 and a half inch iMac came out, but 24 is nice. It's a four and a half K. So it's more than the old 21 and a half inch iMac,
Starting point is 00:33:09 but less than the 27 inch iMac. So yeah, it's a little bit smaller, but I didn't find it small at all. It's a very nice, large, bright screen. It's sort of like, one of the things I was thinking is that Apple gives us these screens now and like they become almost old hat. Like, yeah, they're bright and they've got wide color gamut and night shift and all that stuff yeah and they're so good that they've got yeah it's got true tone
Starting point is 00:33:36 right it's like it's you know what screen this is you know what it looks like it's really good but unless you're out there trying to find like third-party monitors that do what Apple's displays do, you may not realize, no, they're really good. They're very good at what they do. So, yeah, I didn't find the – it's smaller. It's way smaller on my desk. That was one thing that I found really funny about it. But it's still a – it's a really generous screen. You can fit a lot of stuff on it.
Starting point is 00:34:04 What's the resolution? Is it 4.5? Is that what they said? 4.5, yeah. And I assume that that gives you more than enough screen real estate for stuff. 4480 by 2520 in terms of pixels. It's a lot. And then you can go to the displays and make it more space if you want to.
Starting point is 00:34:21 And it will shrink everything down a little bit and give you more space if you want to. And it will shrink everything down a little bit and give you more space if you want that. Like, again, if you're somebody who wants the biggest possible display, this is not the biggest possible display. But for somebody who is buying the low-end iMac, it's more display than has ever been in the low-end iMac. And it's a very generous display. It's something that just, you know,
Starting point is 00:34:40 not too many years ago would have been an enormous display, not to mention the fact that it's also retina, so it's high resolution and enormous. Like that was TV sizes not too long ago, right? Yeah. The actual physical size, you mentioned it's smaller. Is it the thinness of the computer, does that strike you as impressive? Do you really feel much about that when you see it? I absolutely think it's impressive. I used it all over my house, right? I used it at a desk,
Starting point is 00:35:11 at my wife's desk. I used it at my desk. I used it at a table in my office and I used it on the bar, actually, bar top of our kitchen and sat on a bar stool. And a things i noticed so like when i was at the bar i stood for some of it and sat for some of it and when i stood i was higher up and i would reach and tilt the display up and anytime i positioned it like that tilting the display or something you can feel first off the fact that on a on a intel iMac it's it's narrow at the edge but then it immediately is trailing away and it's curving away and this is not like that this is a an absolutely flat surface it feels nicer to touch it and then positioning it is like um I mean because it's less than 10 pounds so positioning it is is actually really easy so I do notice it i i i get what people have have
Starting point is 00:36:05 criticized out before and making um ipads or not ipads imax thinner and lighter like it's a big ipad which is kind of what it is now and saying well you know you just put it on your desk and then you don't worry about it anymore so why do you care if it's big and heavy and stuff it's like well yeah that's true although setting it up is easy moving it around is easy i feel like they've also designed this thing so that you can move it around. So you can say, why don't we put it over here? Why don't we put it over there in a house? Something like that, where you can change the context if you want to. But you can also, when you take it out of the box, it's less than 10 pounds. It's not bulky at all. And you lift this thing up and put it on a desk and then tilting it to adjust it. I imagine that if you put this on a, on a visa mount and put it on an arm that it would be,
Starting point is 00:36:51 it would adjust like a dream that way too. I like that you moved it around a lot because it gave you the ability to see it in those different spaces because I mean, honestly, color color wise, it like, it looks different in those environments, right right like it suits different environments differently and i think that it was refreshing to see it in different places also it's fun because you get to test out
Starting point is 00:37:13 the weight of it but you mentioned about the vesa arm what was the what's the viewing height like in practical terms like how do you feel the ergonomics of the machine are having used it uh i think yeah i don't know i mean it depends on your setting right like so at my desk here it was lower than my screen usually is um so i was using it um sort of tilted up a little bit i would probably if it was on an arm i would probably float it a little bit higher on my desk and that's one of the unfortunate things about it not having an adjustable arm is that they can they can tell us that they looked at ergonomics and all that and that's great but um it different bodies need different height for good ergonomics on that and because it's not adjustable this beautiful orange
Starting point is 00:38:01 thing in some circumstance or or whatever color you choose is going to be on a dictionary or something, which is just like, it's not great, but that's what people do. So it's too bad that it's not adjustable. I think that that's a failing of it, but, um, you know, but I use it and it was, it was fine in the long run. I would have wanted to be higher. Look, we know there are things you can do. You can put it on books or whatever, or you can put it on a stand thing that you can buy to raise it up, which is what I do with my iMac Pro and I've done for a long time. So I have something that sits underneath the foot. I think I already said this, but like 12
Starting point is 00:38:32 South will undoubtedly come out with color-matched aluminum stands for every one of these iMacs, right? And that's fine. It's just Apple could have solved this by building a better stand and they chose not to it's the same imac stand more or less that they've had all along i hope that the imac pro
Starting point is 00:38:51 honestly has some kind of option akin to the pro display not a thousand dollars right not a thousand dollars no but something yeah and an option would be fine right just to say that you could you can get this with the adjustable height or the standard height or a vase amount and you could choose that would be great and people who care about the the height could pay extra for it i think that would be fine i want to read a little quote from your review that i loved okay at least for the moment apple's essentially selling five different computers that are technically the same it just matters if you want a fanless 13-inch laptop a 13 13 inch laptop with a fan a 12.9 inch touch tablet a small headless computer or a computer with a built-in 24 inch display they're
Starting point is 00:39:30 all basically the same product in slightly different shapes and sizes if you read this five years ago you would assume that the worst had happened that apple has put like ios and everything you know what i mean like You read this out of time, and you would assume something bad had happened. But in our timeline right now, the M1 is so good, this is actually a very good thing. Yeah, it is.
Starting point is 00:39:54 It is important to keep in mind, as we did last fall, that the M1, although it has caused sort of leaps in performance over the computers that it's replacing that were from Intel, it's a low-end processor. It's Apple's first Mac processor, and it's going in low-end models. This is the low-end iMac. It was going in the Mac Mini, the low-end version. They still sell the Intel
Starting point is 00:40:19 version. It was going in the MacBook Air. It was going in the the lesser of the two 13 inch macbook pros right this is the low end mac processor uh there's more to come right but this is such a leap for those low end systems that it's yeah it is a good thing like all of them if you if you compare this the performance scores of this to the 21 even the specced out 21 and a half inch iMac that was using the fastest processor intel processor you could put in it it's faster like it's faster and it's cooler and I can't get the fan to make noise because it doesn't make noise it doesn't it doesn't make noise. It doesn't have heat problems. It's the same story you've heard before. If you've read about those other M1 Macs, this is just that.
Starting point is 00:41:11 Except the big story here is that they also redesigned the outside, which they didn't do for the other ones. Let's talk about the peripherals a little bit. Because they are very exciting. There are so many. They look so good. Oh my god. they're really good rounded corners and stuff i'm still mad about the that they didn't every other keyboard they've introduced in the last two years has brought back the inverted t keys and these compact keyboards
Starting point is 00:41:35 didn't they they still got full-size left and right arrows i don't understand it but um the fact that they're color matched even down to the just the little metal band that's around the back and the sides of the magic trackpad. Like that they went to the trouble that that's color matched aluminum. The underside of the mouse, so when you plug it in by stabbing it with a lightning port, it's very colorful. Color matched lightning cables. And yeah, it's a... Oh, come on. and yeah it's it's a so it's an orangey uh you know woven cable braided cable yeah cover it's clearly the nicest lightning cable ever made by apple and it's peach mine's peachy they're
Starting point is 00:42:17 gonna go for good money on ebay those cables well yeah and this is this is yeah you wonder about the future and we have more to say about this later, but you wonder about the future of Apple's color plan and if they've got, this is going to be rolling out everywhere and this is where it starts. curved corners and is a little bit lower than the old magic trackpad right because it they matched the height and the angle of the keyboards they're all exactly the same so if you put the trackpad and the keyboard touching each other they are the same kind of profile now exactly are they the same depth yeah huh it's like why you know just because we're apple you know like that's one of those things it's like why did you do that looks nice looks nice i i can't imagine that all of the reasons ergonomic sizes all that kind of stuff would mean that you should have those two things the same i could imagine them being different for different reasons and they had to rebuild
Starting point is 00:43:18 the magic trackpad right which hasn't magic back pad 2 which they haven't and it's it's largely the same you wouldn't really tell the difference. It's just, but they still had to make it different. And they all have to be in all the different colors. I want to mention the Touch ID because what they do with the Touch ID is really clever. We've been speculating for a long time about how do you do wireless Touch ID with a Mac? How would you do that? And the answer is, and there's a tech note up about it now,
Starting point is 00:43:44 but the answer is, it says, okay, you want to set up the Touch ID. Here's what you do that? And the answer is, and there's a tech note up about it now, but the answer is, it says, okay, you want to set up the Touch ID. Here's what you do. Double tap on the power button on the back of the iMac. What? Wait, what? But that's what it's doing. So to do Touch ID, what it needs to do is verify it pairs that keyboard with that Mac.
Starting point is 00:44:03 You double tap. Double tap on the power button and that doesn't turn the computer off no because i guess you have to hold it right to go off yeah yeah right so they built this other thing in weird so you double tap it and then it pairs it with the touch id sensor on it and then what happens is the touch id sensor is only sending back what it's reading it's all processed in the secure element. So the keyboard doesn't know your fingerprint. The keyboard just knows what it sees on your finger when you lay it on the Touch ID and sends that back to the Mac. Presumably that's encrypted and that's why you're doing the double tap is that you're getting them to pair. But the analysis of it that verifies that it's your fingerprint is happening inside the secure element inside the um the m1 i think it's just strange to me that plugging in the cable wouldn't do the pairing no because they i think the idea there is that it's a bluetooth keyboard so the idea is that it's going to be um wireless probably and they want to have faith that it's the right keyboard that is for this
Starting point is 00:45:07 mac and that they're connected together and and that they're they're not inseparable but like this is the thing that verifies that that is my keyboard and that we are talking to each other and that sets up i believe their secure connection to one another for touch id purposes and do you only do this once yeah okay i mean presumably if you added a different keyboard or maybe if you wiped the drive or something you'd have to redo it but basically yes that's so yeah it's pretty it's pretty wacky also the we talked about the the lightning cable with that braided lightning cable uh the setup process has you which i think they've been doing for a while now but it's it's very much like why is the lightning cable there well
Starting point is 00:45:44 the lightning cable is there to pair the keyboard and the mouse of the trackpad with the device so you boot it and it says plug in the cable now plug it into your keyboard now you have a keyboard now plug it into the trackpad now you have a trackpad right like that's how that's how that works so you need to have that one cable
Starting point is 00:46:00 because they want to do the easy pairing with the plug to pair but they also made it this very pretty I mean then it's yours to charge right you've always got it to charge them up yeah yeah and you do an initial charge and all of that yeah it makes sense when you plug it in it's going to look good while it's charging which i really genuinely appreciate that's right because it's it's going to be orangey if it's orange or greeny if it's green the other braided cable of course is the power cable that goes on the back that attaches magnetically, which is not mag safe because remember mag safe means it's easy to tear it off.
Starting point is 00:46:28 And this one is hard. It's, I would, I would say it's actually harder to pull it out than it is to pull the power plug out from my Mac pro. This is mag safe max or mag safe pro. Yeah. It's well,
Starting point is 00:46:38 it's not, it's, it's un mag unsafe. It's mag attached. It's super attached. Well, that makes it actually, it's safe,
Starting point is 00:46:44 but in a different way i guess so so you pull so when you when i've got the little screen tilted and i pull on that power plug and what happens is the screen comes all the way back to fully vertical at which point it can't pivot anymore and only at that point if you if you pull hard on it will it disengage the magnet you really have to give it a real pull to disengage it. Apple says it's as much, I think it's more force than the friction that's in a standard power cable in my iMac Pro. And I've accidentally pulled out the iMac Pro cable more than once. And I would feel more confident with this cable being robust.
Starting point is 00:47:25 It is a very powerful magnet. You tried the Ethernet? I would feel more confident with this cable being robust. It is a very powerful magnet. You tried the Ethernet? Yeah, it sped up all of my transfers when I plugged in Ethernet into the power plug. I do say in the review, I love that this is a direction for Apple. I love the idea of getting things off of desks and making the desk more, especially if you've got this pretty colorful iMac, getting things off your desk. A lot of us nerds do this anyway, where we try to route things off our desk. I've got a USB hub attached under my desk so that I can reduce the number of cords that are running from my computer across the desk. And I have a bunch of other stuff
Starting point is 00:48:00 hiding under my desk, right? So I like this idea of getting power and ethernet off the desk, and you just have the one cable. I want them to do more with this. This is the place where like, in the long run, I want them to do data on there too. I really want them to put USB ports on there. They don't have to be Thunderbolt, they can just be USB. But like, if you've got other stuff, if you want to plug, you know, a keyboard in or something, you run it under the desk. If you want to plug really anything you can think of, a UPS power supply, you could do it that way. You could do my little podcast microphone. There's all sorts of things you could plug in that way, and it would all happen under the desk because cable management is a thing.
Starting point is 00:48:43 And this could be even more than it is. But what it is, is pretty impressive. And again, I'll say, because it's not MagSafe, you're not unplugging this thing. It stays attached. So I don't think there's the worry about like, if you have your backup hard drive attached to the power brick, I don't think there's a worry about data loss because this is, you're not unplugging this. It's different with MagSafe, right?
Starting point is 00:49:06 If you have a hard drive attached to a power brick with MagSafe, that's bad because MagSafe is going to pop off when there's any force attached to it. That would be the idea. But that's not the idea of this thing. So I like it. It's pretty nice. It is true. I gave it a try.
Starting point is 00:49:24 Depending on exactly how I wire it, when I put my desk in a standing configuration, it kind of barely touches the ground. It's really close. And if the cable is kind of off to the right just a little bit, it doesn't touch the ground. But the truth is, if I were to have an iMac like this on my desk, the power brick would probably be attached to the underside of my desk, not laying down on the floor. That's the truth. You've got to talk about the webcam. How is it? How's the quality?
Starting point is 00:49:58 Well, it's the same webcam as in the 27-inch iMac and my iMac Pro. It's the 1080 webcam. Which is the best that they've done. Best they've done on the Mac. Best they've done on the Mac. And I want to come back to that point because I have some complaints here. But I also had them side by side.
Starting point is 00:50:18 The same lighting conditions, side by side, my iMac Pro and the iMac 24-inch iMac. Apple talks about like how Apple's image processing helps the image be better. They are not kidding. The image out of the iMac is way better than the image out of my iMac Pro. It's way better. And that's not because of the camera. It's the same camera.
Starting point is 00:50:43 It's because of the image processing, that they're able to do better things in terms of dealing with low light conditions and having the tone be more even. It's still a 1080 webcam, but they're doing a lot of smart processing and the quality of it is pretty good. But it should be better.
Starting point is 00:51:00 Well, that's the thing, right? Is Apple announced this product along with the iPad Pro. And the iPad Pro has a 12 megapixel ultra wide camera on the front. And it has center stage, which auto crops and follows you around and uses that image processing to recognize faces and zoom in and out and all those things that we all saw in the demo right if ever there was a feature for the iMac it's that feature what makes you say that that's interesting the thing is if you if you need to adjust where your iMac where your iPad is for doing a video conference you just move it because it's an iPad but an iMac if it's sitting on a desk or sitting in the corner of a room or
Starting point is 00:51:46 something, you're probably not going to do Zoom with grandma and grandpa. And even though it's relatively easy these days with this light, you know, less than 10 pounds iMac to do it, you're probably not going to disconnect all your peripherals and unplug your iMac and lift it up and move the papers out of the way and then put it over where the family is sitting and then run an extension cord and boot up the iMac and get into Zoom with grandma and grandpa, right? You're just not going to do that. The iMac is going to be by its very nature, less mobile than a mobile device. And yet center stage is on the iPad, a mobile device. And I'm sure Center Stage is going to be great. I'm sure. But why is it not on the iMac?
Starting point is 00:52:36 And I think this is just, honestly, this is that Apple is not, I don't know whether it's Apple keeping things a secret or whether Apple is getting its product releases kind of out of step and the iMac was being built too soon, or they prioritize that software on iPadOS. But like, it can't be the camera because this is an iMac. I'm sure they could fit the camera that's in the iPad Pro in this iMac. I'm sure they could. And it can't be the processor. It's the same processor. I guess it could be the software, but not only, you know, could it be the software, but now the hardware on these things is locked in. It's a 1080 webcam. It's not the ultra wide thing that allows the iPad Pro to do all that center stage stuff. So it's kind of a missed
Starting point is 00:53:22 opportunity. And maybe we'll see that camera in the bigger iMac. That would be great. But like, it's such a missed opportunity. Like this is a perfect, the low cost iMac put in a family room somewhere and have center stage as a feature. Like it would be perfect. And it's just not there. So it's a nice webcam. They're probably right in saying it's the nicest webcam on the Mac ever because of the combination of the hardware and the software. But it's also,
Starting point is 00:53:51 it just strikes me as being a huge missed opportunity. Like they've got the technology. It's in the other product that they announced the same day, but it's not on the Mac. It's on the iPad. And I just think it's bad for the Mac that Apple made that decision.
Starting point is 00:54:05 And it also exposes something about Apple's product development that they had a feature like that and they either chose not to put it in the Mac or they were so out of sequence that the Mac just couldn't get it. And it's too bad either way. And it hurts more when you see these new webcam features, right? Going into other products yeah this continues to be an issue it's going to continue to be an issue for a while um i expect that this stuff is going to start improving because they're getting so much pressure from people about it right like we're talking about it here and every um review is going to talk about it as well this has always been mentioned but it's not really
Starting point is 00:54:45 been much of a thing it's like oh and this is what the webcam looks like okay we'll move on but the last nearly two years 18 months i should say uh like this is what this world has really shown that we need this stuff to just be better and we want it to be better it cuts both ways to the uh the m1 by putting the m1 in macs and ipads it does make us i think more fairly ask apple why does this device do this and this other device doesn't and it cuts both ways in the sense that we're doing that a lot with the ipad right when they announced that ipad we had a lot of conversations about, and really since 2018, about the stuff that iPad OS doesn't do, that the Mac can do. And it's not the power because the processor is the same now, but it goes both ways. And here it is cutting the other way, which is why does the Mac not
Starting point is 00:55:39 have this feature that's in the iPad? It's better for the Mac. It's a better fit for the Mac than the iPad. The iPad, that's a really really whizzy feature but the ipad you can move it and point it in the right direction you can't really do that with an imap maybe like there's something i mean like you know if i was gonna argue the other point is like maybe people like those kind of times with family video calls and more done from mobile computers than fixed computers. And that's why you might want it. I don't know. Nevertheless, this is a feature that should be everywhere
Starting point is 00:56:09 because it's just really good. Yeah. And that brings me to a larger point, which is just about how Apple views the iMac. And we've been seeing this, and Upgrade listeners have been seeing it, since we talked the first time, since I interviewed Colleen Novielli,
Starting point is 00:56:23 because that was the first time since I interviewed Colleen Novielli, because that was the first time I really noticed Apple trying to put the iMac in a different kind of context, right? When the iMac was first created, home computers, you would have a computer in your home. That was the idea. It was still in the era back in 98, where really you wanted a home computer, you know, for everyone in the home and you park it somewhere and that's the computer and everybody uses it. But today, and you know, even a few years ago, when we had that first conversation with Colleen, everybody's got mobile devices, right? Like there are tablets, maybe, you know, you got your iPads, you got phones, two thirds, three quarters of the max Apple sells are laptops. So what's the role of the iMac? It's obviously very different than it was back in the day.
Starting point is 00:57:12 And over the last few years, talking to Colleen, seeing how Apple puts this in context, you get the idea that Apple really is trying to show you sort of like the scenarios where the iMac is used or can be used. And so it's tidbits like in hotels and offices and public spaces where they need a computer. And this is a pretty computer, now even prettier because you can choose your color, and it goes at the front desk and people see it and it says, you know, we have a sense of style and we're, you know, we're not a fly-by-night operation because we could afford a computer, whatever. But, you know, in the home, it's like, well, how do we do this? And I think the answer is, you know, they're pitching it as things like you can have a big screen because sometimes you want a bigger screen than your laptop or your ipad or your
Starting point is 00:58:05 iphone can give you like which is weird to think of the the reason you buy an imac is because it's got a big screen because you can do multitasking right but like there is some truth to that and i think apple hopes that the imac will fill a niche in terms of kids who don't have their own devices or families that have some other devices but there there's work that is better done on big screen rather than on a laptop screen. Or there are contexts where having a home computer, a desktop computer, is a better fit for you than using your laptop or using your iPad.
Starting point is 00:58:43 Some of their examples, like a kitchen iMac or something, it's like, I don't know. I wouldn't do that. I would use my laptop or my iPad or my phone in the kitchen. I probably wouldn't put an iMac in the kitchen. But there are other scenarios where I think it makes sense. And that's where the center stage conversation comes in too, is if you do have an iMac in your family room or living room or something like that um it's got the big screen it may actually be the best place to do a FaceTime conversation or a Zoom meeting or whatever because it's got the big screen but it doesn't do the center stage part so I don't know it's uh it's interesting to see Apple kind of try to find its
Starting point is 00:59:21 way of like what are the it has to explain what are the scenarios where you would use an iMac. And that's something that we didn't ever have to do back in the day. But today it really is like, well, I've got all my mobile devices. Why would I buy an iMac? And the fact is only a little fraction of the Mac market is the iMac. It's probably, I don't know, 20%, 15% of the Mac market is all the iMac. But it's still a valuable, as we know from talking to Colleen, still a very valuable and important part of Apple's business. And with this iMac, it feels to me like they're leaning into those scenarios. They're like, okay, we know that the iMac isn't everywhere now, but where is it being used and how can we make a better iMac for that? So the fact that it's lighter and the fact that it's colorful those all kind of factor in the fact that it's got a bigger screen
Starting point is 01:00:08 probably too because it helps differentiate it from your 13 inch or 15 inch laptop screen or 16 inch laptop screen that you're using do you feel like there's anything missing from this iMac um well I mean it's a first cut at it so presumably they'll iterate and some of this stuff will come in um I wish there were the ports on the power plug I think that would's a first cut at it, so presumably they'll iterate and some of this stuff will come in. I wish there were the ports on the power plug. I think that would be a fun way to expand the cleanliness of the top of your desk. How do you feel about the I.O. in general? Yeah, the port situation on the back is weird.
Starting point is 01:00:41 The low-end model only has the two Thunderbolt ports, which is probably fine. It's not great, but it's fine. It's the low-end model the higher-end model has the two additional usb3 usbc ports um which leads to that weird situation where two ports are labeled for thunderbolt with little lightning bolts and two aren't and apple generally in its history it's been very rare that you've seen a mac that has two ports that are identical that do different things it happens but the fact that they have to label them, it's been a long time, I think, since they've had something like this dramatic, but that's how they had to do it. It's the M1. The M1 can't do more than two lanes of Thunderbolt, so here we are. I'm glad it's still
Starting point is 01:01:20 got a headphone jack. I'm glad it still supports supports ethernet even though it doesn't support it by default on the low end you can you can pay for uh on the low end model you can pay for not just a better keyboard with touch id but the low end model you can also pay to get the brick that's got ethernet on it if you want that but you know uh the webcam while good i think could be better um but it's it's pretty great like it's an M1 computer and it's all the great things we said about the M1 computers last fall is true for this one too. Plus it's got this new design that it's just, it's so nice. I know people are skeptical about the gray. It's not white. It is a light gray border around the screen, but I think they did a pretty good job with it i will say it is more of
Starting point is 01:02:07 a light mode experience than a dark mode experience it's it's it's fine in dark mode but in light mode it really works having the neutral gray around the border right um but again presumably there is another imac the high-end imac that has not been touched yet, that is also to come and will perhaps be a variation on this. But it's, you know, if you're in the market for a desktop Mac, like, and you're not a pro, obviously this is the product for you. And the fact that it's here and it's got that M1 power that's going to make it so much better, right? Like it's not designed for spinning hard drives anymore. So that's out. It's all SSD as it should be. It's quiet. It's light. You know, I don't know. There's a lot of really great stuff about this computer, even though I can quibble. The quibbles are good because it gives Apple something to iterate on, right? You're never going to get everything in there on the first iteration,
Starting point is 01:03:05 but it's still a pretty impressive display. If you think about it, Mike, this is the first Mac redesign we've seen in the Apple Silicon era. This is the first M1 Mac, if you would think of it that way. That's how I kind of think of it. The other ones, they were Intel Macs and M1 chips. Yeah, this is the first Mac designed for M1, clearly clearly this is the first one of this new generation of products and i suspect they're all going to be like this from here on out i don't think we're ever going to see a retread of an intel
Starting point is 01:03:35 product again maybe there would be a mac mini update or something like that but it sure feels like from here on out they're gonna be mac mini so cool like tiny just like minuscule like apple tv size you know what i mean like people have wished for something like that for years just because why not they could do will they who knows but it does feel like we've we've reached the uh there was a break point between last fall and this spring where we've shifted from the first ones get out the door and they look like the old ones. And now we're going to start seeing those redesigns that it really is the computers that were made for Apple Silicon. They weren't made for Intel.
Starting point is 01:04:12 They wouldn't have worked with Intel. And they had to wait for those designs to be on M1 or whatever comes next. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to build your online presence and run your business. whatever comes next. online and make your ideas a reality. Squarespace has everything you need to create a beautiful and modern website. You start with a professionally designed template and you use drag and drop tools to make it your own. You customize the look and feel, the settings, even the products you could have on sale in just a few clicks. And all Squarespace websites are optimized for mobile,
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Starting point is 01:06:09 and all of RelayFM. Oh Mike, there's so much Apple news! So much Apple news! Music is about to change forever! Like it did when the Beatles came on to iTunes, remember that? That was a day I'll never forget. You'll never forget, Jason!
Starting point is 01:06:24 It's been rumored over the last couple of weeks that there was going to be some kind of high resolution Beatles came on to iTunes. Remember that? That was a day I'll never forget. That you'll never forget, Jason. Never forget it. No. It has been rumored over the last couple of weeks that there was going to be some kind of high resolution audio tier or something. And there was, this is kind of strange. Night before Apple announced it, they put a little teaser in Apple Music saying, music is about to change forever.
Starting point is 01:06:41 It was like, okay, it's coming. It's coming. And then within, I don't know, 12 hours or so, we got a press release. But I don't really know what to change forever. It was like, okay, it's coming, it's coming. And then within, I don't know, 12 hours or so, we got a press release. I don't really know what to call this. They haven't really given it a name. No. Higher quality music tiers
Starting point is 01:06:55 or music content available within Apple Music, because it's not an extra tier. It's not going to cost anything extra. I think what we would say is, and I wrote a piece about this in Macworld in February, and I totally nailed it. I just want to say that. I got it exactly right. Because Spotify announced the high-quality tier, and it left Apple alone as the only one that didn't do a high-quality tier. And I thought, well, that's not going to do it. But then I thought about their spatial audio stuff,
Starting point is 01:07:20 and I thought, well, what they really should do is lean into doing some some multi-channel spatial audio kind of audio uh content because that's nice that's i i have some you know 5.1 albums i've got like five or six of these dvds that are albums mixed in in multi-channel and they sound great um and i thought well with the with the spatial audio stuff apple's been doing with with uh movies they could do that with music too and that's exactly what they did so it's um it's spatial audio with support for dolby atmos my understanding is you know on an apple tv if you if you've got a dolby atmos system on attached to your apple tv and you play this music once this launches you know you're gonna get full surround music which i think is really cool um but they're also doing um various levels of lossless
Starting point is 01:08:09 which is interesting they're gonna do they're gonna do lossless using apple lossless uh which starts at the cd quality 16 bit 44.1 but they they say up to 24 bit at 48 kilohertz and you can opt you have to opt in because it eats so much bandwidth, but they have a super high-quality 24-bit, 192 kilohertz, and you actually have to attach an external USB DAC, a digital audio converter, in order to get that because otherwise you couldn't hear it because Apple's DAC doesn't support that level of quality. So if you're Federico, you're fine. If you're Federico, this is perfect for a high quality audio fan like Federico. I can't wait for Connected this week. He's going to be so excited. It's going to be Federico mania on Connected this week.
Starting point is 01:08:55 So I think this is cool. Again, I think a lot of people can't tell the difference between lossless and not, but some people can. And Apple just offering it and saying, yeah, if you want to listen to it that way, you can, I think is really good. There are certain circumstances. I think the spatial audio, you really can tell, and it's beautiful. It's not for everybody, and it's a different kind of experience, but I can say for the handful of 5.1 audio DVDs that I have, I don't listen to them that often unfortunately because it's just the workflow isn't great i'm hoping all of those will also eventually get in there everybody's rustling
Starting point is 01:09:30 through their catalogs of music for anything that's multi-channel so that they can put it out here but i love it um listening in my home theater where i've got stereo speakers a center channel and two rear channels is all i've got i don't have a whole dolby atmos setup but um you know you end up with the vocals isolated on the center speaker and then you've got uh instruments left right and then you've got more instruments rear left and right and it's like you're inside the music it's you even a familiar album sounds totally different partly because it's been mixed for multi-channel but partly because you can hear things you just couldn't hear before because now every speaker is playing a different portion of separate whatever it is you're listening to it's it's really good and i've got what i've got the first crowded house
Starting point is 01:10:13 album i've got a glenn phillips album i've got the beatles uh giles martin did that 5.1 mix of a bunch of beatle songs for the the cirque de Soleil show, Love. Love, yeah, that's a great album. And it sounds amazing. And then he's done several other Beatles albums in multichannel that sound great. Maybe if we're lucky, we'll get that one. Yeah, well, and it'll be a day we never forget. So there are some services that have done multichannel so far, but Apple is going to be really...
Starting point is 01:10:46 I think Apple's weight will really drive this in the music industry and getting these things into the catalogs. And I'm curious. I actually kind of wonder. I don't know if this was detailed. All they said was that it'll work with all Beats and Apple devices that have the... H1 or W1. This is really interesting. So Apple have said in the
Starting point is 01:11:06 press release, Dolby Atmos will play by default on all devices of a H1 or W1 chip as well as using built-in speakers on other devices. Right, like the iPad Pro has the four-speaker system and all of that. But right now, spatial audio
Starting point is 01:11:21 is only available on AirPods Max and AirPods Pro. So I don't know what that's going to be like. Is it going to be different quality? Are they going to bring Now, spatial audio is only available on AirPods Max and AirPods Pro. So I don't know what that's going to be like. Is it going to be different quality? Are they going to bring spatial audio to all of the H1 and W1 products? My guess is yes. And my guess is that it's even more than that. Because my understanding, and again, we'll find out more as this rolls out.
Starting point is 01:11:48 we'll find out more as this rolls out. But my understanding is that the current Bluetooth implementation for Apple's wireless headphones won't generate lossless quality audio. It's compressing it. So one question I have is, is Apple going to do a firmware update for H1 and W1 chip headphones that enables a higher quality audio stream for certain Apple hardware, right? Have they been holding in their back pocket a lossless or at least less lossy Bluetooth mode that it's all part of that you know apple airpod secret sauce stuff like i wouldn't put it past them but it is also possible that if you're really going to want this you're going to want it on wired headphones and you know there's an argument that the airpods aren't going to really benefit and they all use in their own codec and that might be why right so yeah so well right is there a is there an Apple lossless stream that's possible? Do they have the bandwidth to do that?
Starting point is 01:12:47 I don't know. But this is going to be complex. There are going to be different things on different devices. But yeah, I would imagine... I'm looking forward to listening to multi-channel interpreted by AirPods Pro, which I listen with, because I think that'll be kind of a fun thing. But I think in a lot of cases, you're going to have lossless audio via really high-quality plug-in headphones, perhaps depending on the level through an outboard USB DAC, whether it's
Starting point is 01:13:19 on a Mac or an iPad or whatever, just to get the highest quality if you want the super high quality. And then, like I said, I'm also really thinking that this can be a great thing for music listening in an Apple TV setup where you've got really, if you've got really good speakers that do surround, whether it's a soundbar or a full-on surround system, that's actually a pretty great place to experience music that is multi-channel. So there's lots of different things here that, this is not one announcement, right? It's like many different moving parts for different devices. It's two different things. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:13:49 And that is worth remembering. The lossless audio and the spatial audio are two parts of Apple Music now. And the lossless is three different levels of it, including one you have to opt in for that is mandatory that you have to have an external DAC to use. for that is mandatory that you have to have an external DAC to use. So it's, and then you've got the H1W1 chip thing where, what's that look like and all that. This is obviously going to be
Starting point is 01:14:11 in a release that comes out around WWDC, right, into the next release of the current version of the OS. That's what they'll do to roll this out. But I'm excited by it. Yeah, it's 14.6, which will be coming in June. I guess it will probably be the last major 14 release.
Starting point is 01:14:29 So there is a potential that not too long after this episode comes out, maybe there's a beta that actually has it. That might be something that happens. It's also worth, just again, the way that they're rolling this out is different. So the Lossless Audio, they're rolling this out is different so the lossless audio they're putting out millions of tracks and by the end of the year it'll be all 75 million songs will be they'll have lossless audio for the spatial audio is going to be thousands of songs at launch they're
Starting point is 01:14:57 going to be updating previous tracks and then new stuff's going to be coming in and they're going to keep rolling it out and also doing like playlists and sections inside of apple music to highlight the the best kind of experiences for spatial audio ian in the discord says that that apple confirmed that bluetooth streaming streams ac and so you know you won't get lossless on on that i i had kind of hoped that they would have a especially for airpods max they would have a story for that this is what they've said right now i'm still holding out hope like you said they could they could do something there's like a rabbit that they could pull out of their hat for some of their devices it would be really silly if airpods max didn't support high quality audio unless you plugged in a cable but yeah i also understand it because the whole infrastructure of bluetooth audio
Starting point is 01:15:40 streaming is not built around high quality audio because you got to stream a lot of data and that kills your battery. It may be, and the way that I'm thinking about it, I think for most people, a really good implementation of spatial audio will be more of a fun experience than lossless. And I think that that's probably what they're going to bet on. That the spatial audio experience on AirPods Max is going to be the best one because they have more control there. And I bet that it's going to sound fantastic. And I would expect that that's probably
Starting point is 01:16:10 what Apple's betting on. Yeah. The space gray peripherals that were introduced with the iMac Pro, so the Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard, they've all been discontinued. They're being sold on the Apple Store now while supplies last,
Starting point is 01:16:24 which is the same as the iMac Pro. i went to the Mac pro page today and it says that when you buy a Mac pro you will still get your peripherals in silver and black yeah they're kind of different aren't they because they're that they're silver with the black accents but the iMac pro is just all space gray yeah so i guess they're reducing this is this is so transparent right like they're clearing this out of the pipeline because they've got those seven different colors of, or sorry, six colors and then silver, of the magic products from the iMac, right? And those are clearly going to ultimately be available. I mean, how could they not be? I would think, especially since they've got a Touch ID thing.
Starting point is 01:17:08 So yeah, I would think that they're just turning all of this over. I also would think that if they do a color scheme that is not the bright color scheme for iMac Pro kind of thing or a high-end iMac that they would do the color matching for those two so this feels to me more like they're just kind of clearing out the old thing and then making way for the new thing I would I would be surprised actually if like the regular Magic Keyboard isn't doesn't look like the one that comes with the iMac the low-end iMacs right it's those it's got curved edges and stuff that aren't there in the regular one, so clearly the keyboards are turning over. And this is the first step there
Starting point is 01:17:47 as they're getting rid of this bespoke space gray one. So if you want a space gray peripheral, get it now. I just hope it means there's a new iMac Pro coming. That's just like the thing that I'm fingers crossed on. There was a report that the MacBook Pros could potentially be delayed
Starting point is 01:18:03 to 2022. I choose to reject this report personally, because I just don't want to believe that it's true, that they're being delayed. So I choose to reject that reality and substitute it with my own, which is that we're going to get new MacBook Pros and iMac Pros in two weeks' time. That's what I have decided to believe, and we will see in the future. While we're on that note about color, so we spoke about the potential colors coming for the MacBook Air to replicate the iMac.
Starting point is 01:18:33 So John Prosser has now released some renders based on the information that he received, and these were also published on MacRumors. So the renders are kind of suggesting that we'll get on the MacBook Air iMac colors, flat edges, as you would obviously expect, because that's Apple design now. No taper.
Starting point is 01:18:53 So it's kind of like a thinner MacBook Pro, right? Because the MacBook Pro has no taper. It's just that kind of like slab, basically. The keyboard will be white with full-sized function keys like the imax keyboard it's been a long time since there were full-sized function keys on a yep on an apple uh laptop so that seems to have squished down the size of the trackpad a bit which is a peculiar thing so i'm not sure about that myself that part it does feel like this is i think what he said is that they got this from somebody who had seen the aluminum parts yes and only only from certain angles so this is a this is there's a lot of extrapolation going on
Starting point is 01:19:30 here the bottom though super intriguing to me instead of the little circular feet in the corners two long vertical rubber feet down each side of the device i think it looks kind of cool looks like the bottom of a magic mouse except presumably not meant to slide around yeah actually hold it you'd hope so hold it steady the exact opposite it's designed similarly exact opposite uh and then the obviously the bezel is that white gray uh color so from the from the imac for 24 so yeah i mean what we said last week still goes for me which and i wrote about this at Macworld last week too, which is if this is a MacBook replacing the MacBook Air, it's, you know, I think, and that's a marketing decision, what they call it. But if this is that, I'm intrigued by it.
Starting point is 01:20:22 I think the idea that Apple is going to roll out the color scheme of the 24 inch iMac across other parts of its product line kind of makes sense to make them sort of consistent. So it wouldn't shock me if this is what they're doing. So, yeah, more color, I say. Yeah. And fingers crossed for this and everything. I'd take an orange MacBook Air or MacBook or whatever. That'd be really fun. Oh my God.
Starting point is 01:20:49 It's going to be weird when I think I'll probably start making different purchasing decisions based on the colors available on the computer, right? Do I go MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro because I can get an orange one? You know what I mean? That's going to be a very weird time, but I consider it a possibility, honestly. Yeah, well, this is the danger. I mean, I have an iPhone 12 mini. For similar reasons, though,
Starting point is 01:21:12 the danger of having your pro colors be boring or non-existent and your non-pro colors be fun is that you may be inducing people who might otherwise give you more money if you're apple to give you less money because they also want the fun so that's the that's the danger there do a good job please we'll be very happy this episode is brought to you by uni pizza ovens the world's number one pizza oven company because they make surprisingly small ovens that are powered by your choice of either wood charcoal or gas letting gas, letting you make restaurant-quality pizza in your very own backyard.
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Starting point is 01:22:56 Jason, tell our listeners why the Ooni gives you a really great pizza experience. Well, it is hot in there. It gets very, very hot. hot hotter than your oven inside can get which is why you should do this outside where uh you know you're not gonna set anything on fire because it's like 700 degrees fahrenheit in there um but that means you get the sort of scorched edges and the bubbly top and the uh the pizza cooks uh through and gets all crispy and like it's just,
Starting point is 01:23:26 it's much more like what you would get in a wood-fired pizza oven at an actual pizza maker, except at home. And that's what I like about it. So you should go check it out for yourself right now. And listeners of this show can get 10% of their purchase of an Ooni pizza oven. Just go to Ooni.com, that's O-O-N-I.com and use the code OONIUPGRADE21 at checkout.
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Starting point is 01:24:13 for 10% off. Thanks to Uni Pizza ovens for their support of this show and RelayFM. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. First one comes from Anjay who asks, based on the early impressions, do you think
Starting point is 01:24:27 that the Brydge 12.9 Max Plus will be a better buy than the Apple Magic Keyboard? We have not spoke about this product at all. Brydge, we've spoke about them many times on this show, have a new type of keyboard. It's called the Max
Starting point is 01:24:43 Plus. I don't think they had a Max before. I don't know why they now have a Plus type of keyboard it's called the max plus i don't think they had a max before i don't know why they now have a plus for the max but um it's a different kind of layout for them which i actually like they've basically made kind of a laptop without the screen so they've actually got a back case to it now so the ipad pro sits in it with magnets as opposed to using those little clamps that you would slide it into. And so overall, you get this aluminium shell, which has got the whole kind of keyboard built into it. Bridge are now saying that their track pads are comparable with Apple's track pad with its gestures and stuff. They have new firmware for some of their stuff, and they've got a page on their website which shows all the available gestures.
Starting point is 01:25:27 If they're able to do what they're saying they're able to do with this firmware that they've got upcoming, then this looks very intriguing as compared to a magic keyboard. It's $249. What do you think? Well, we talked about it here before before so i'll just say it again apple's trackpad firmware is without compare they've spent decades refining it on their laptops and then with the magic trackpad on desktops as well and um third-party trackpad experiences on ipad os are not as good bridges is as good as the other third-party cases like what is it uh logitech that's got some ipad cases with trackpad and that apple has promoted um and i'll just say that even though Apple has promoted those and mentioned those in press releases Apple has not given them the magic firmware they are still not quite as good
Starting point is 01:26:30 their their gestures aren't quite as good I think that there's hope that they could get better over time as they improve the uh the firmware but um I could not in good conscience say that the any third-party trackpad not just bridge any third-party trackpad is as good as Apple's. Apple's is best in class. Apple's Magic Keyboard also costs a lot of money. And this case is a lot less. So I think that's really the trade-off, is you get something that magnetically attaches. I used a pre-production version of this briefly,
Starting point is 01:27:06 and it snaps on with magnets, which is really nice. It gives you that full laptop feel that even the Magic Trackpad doesn't quite give you because it's got the little cantilever thing going on. The keyboard's nice. The trackpad is big and good. But what you're losing is that Apple's trackpad feels exactly like Apple's trackpad feels on all Mac laptops or with the magic trackpad on
Starting point is 01:27:38 Mac desktops. It's the same experience and the third party trackpads aren't they're they're a little bit lesser they're they're not terrible um they're okay they're they're fine but if you're somebody who has completely internalized apple's trackpad and and uses it that way uh everywhere you go like me it's harder to switch to this that said you can you can't really beat the price. It's remarkable because the truth is that the Magic Trackpad for iPad is a very pricey accessory. Well, I will say there is only $50 difference now. Yeah, that's true. Like it's cheaper, but this bridge is more expensive than previous bridge keyboards.
Starting point is 01:28:21 Yeah, it is. It is. And it's a much larger trackpad, which is good. And you have different function keys and stuff. Actually, you have function keys. Right. There's function keys. And a lot of people didn't like the clip approach that the old Bridge keyboards had, which I liked.
Starting point is 01:28:34 I thought it was fine. But this one doesn't have that. Instead, it's snapping it magnetically. But yeah, you know, honestly, it's about the ergonomics of it, but I have to be honest and say, even though I've supported Bridge's products over the years, the trackpad stuff just isn't as good as Apple's because Apple's trackpad firmware is just the best. That's bottom line. It's the best. And then every now and then with a Bridge trackpad, or the Logitech one, I will make a gesture or something and it will like my click won't be registered or the gesture won't be quite right.
Starting point is 01:29:09 And that's just because I have, I have developed a trackpad using style that works with Apple's firmware, right? And then you take that out of the equation and you start asking yourself a lot of questions about like, where do I put my fingers and when do I click and all of that? I'll also say you can train yourself to use third-party trackpad firmware and have it work just fine. And then if you go back to Apple's trackpad with that style, it'll also work just fine. It's just that in my particular case, there are things that I do on Apple trackpads that do not work on third-party trackpad firmware and so for me it was frustrating to have to have to switch because i had to like
Starting point is 01:29:50 more uh i'd be more aware of what i was doing with my fingers in order to get the the pointer to go where it needs to go and the clicks to happen the way i needed them to happen and also i think the thing that's going to be important really is waiting for reviews to like this product i don't think it's been reviewed anywhere yet. I agree with what you're saying, right? But you have to pair. So that's different as well. It's not using the smart connector. But it's of a similar quality to other Bridge products, except it's big and it's got a big trackpad. And that's really nice. It's going to give you a real 13-inch MacBook Pro feel on your iPad Pro. It's just that the trackpad's not quite the same.
Starting point is 01:30:46 So that's a choice that people are going to have to make between looking at something like this or spending a little bit more money and going for the full-on first-party experience. Ryan asks, some software like BBEdit
Starting point is 01:30:58 is available in both the Mac App Store for a subscription and is available from the developer directly with paid upgrades which of these scenarios do you prefer for your software i'd say it varies i like i use them both in different contexts with different tools and i don't really have a preference i think that in the end i am paying a software developer regularly for the apps that I use regularly. And that's the most important thing. I, you know, I don't, I don't want to say that people who hate subscriptions are wrong because I get why they don't like them. That said, I'm not sure that using software,
Starting point is 01:31:42 software that you rely on, maybe, maybe for stuff that you don't care about, but software that you rely on maybe maybe for stuff that you don't care about but software that you rely on you probably want to stay on the current version and you know if you don't stay on the current version you play the game where you ride one version for three years and then you do an upgrade um first off the upgrade pricing kind of gets you away from that right where it's like if it's the latest version your upgrade pricing is less so they they kind of try to game you there but also you're not supporting the makers of that software so i've seen it both ways um i've you know bb edit i i've seen as like well it's just pay for the upgrade when basically you pay when they ask you to they they feel like
Starting point is 01:32:18 they've made enough of a of a change since the last time they asked that they come to you and say we would like you to pay again and it does not renew and you have to choose to pay and if you don't pay you still stay on the old version so it still works like there's a lot to be said for that um but i also pay for photoshop and microsoft office i prefer the subscription model and and i just know that i always have it and it's always the latest version and there's a lot to be said for that it's less of a thing for me to think about right like i don't have to yeah but like do i want to buy this version and then also a lot of apps that i use that have moved to subscription they give me more features more frequently rather than trying to collect them all up and then offer it to me in a package plus as a customer i mean i know that like what i say and i
Starting point is 01:33:07 still say it it's like for people you know it's a shame that i don't think apple should take 30 percent of all these developers i think it should be less but nevertheless as a customer i like buying things from the mac app store because then they're just available on all my machines and i don't have to keep codes in one part like i don't have to you know it's just easy but here's the thing you can get microsoft office on and i think can you get adobe stuff on there i don't know if you can but like but i'm not paying apple for my photoshop or microsoft office subscriptions i'm paying them directly yeah so they're getting the money directly from that subscription i'm not even using the mac app store for that um which if you do it through the mac app store it's 30 for the
Starting point is 01:33:41 first year and then it's 15 after that no bb edit you know they their software model doesn't work in the app store and you will pay a premium in the app store for a bb subscription by the way like it's you'll end up spending more money but for some people uh that's fine they just want it in the mac app store and that's fine i always try to seek out a way to pay the developer directly if i can i will say that's a preference, but I don't necessarily have a preference about subscription versus not. There are a lot of convenient things about, like Mike said, about having a subscription. There's just an awful, like, am I ever going to stop using Photoshop? Probably not.
Starting point is 01:34:16 Probably not. Am I ever going to stop using Excel? Probably not. I know there are alternatives. I have the alternatives, but probably not. I'm probably going to keep spending a hundred bucks a year to each of those giant companies so that their software always is on my computer and my tablets and my phones, and I can always use it. And it's always there. Like I'm just, it's fine. Like I'm, I'm perfectly happy to do it that way. And,
Starting point is 01:34:38 and to have that, the convenience and confidence to know that it's just always there. Also, you could argue that having an ongoing revenue stream is better for software development as well, because you don't with, you don't have like artificial saving a bunch of features for the next big version. Cause you need to use it to sell copies. It just sort of smooths like the Photoshop releases are just,
Starting point is 01:35:00 they're just releases. Like every quarter, a new release comes out. They don't save it up for two years and then do a big, amazing marketing feature-laden release in order to sell copies. That was a distortion of software in a lot of ways for marketing purposes that is a lot less present when you're doing a subscription. Brian asks, do you think Spotify's more magnanimous podcast description offering could be because they don't want to give Apple a comeback on the monopoly ruling?
Starting point is 01:35:29 If they were locking podcasts and forcing podcasters to give them money for using the Spotify app, this would be exactly what they are arguing Apple is doing with the App Store. I'll give a bit of background on here to catch people off because they don't remember. This is talking about like the differences between Spotify's podcast subscriptions where you can pay and apple's podcast subscriptions where you can pay because spotify's whole thing is you can pay and it can be in spotify and it's easy but they'll also give a public rss feed so you can get them anywhere and apple was like you get them in apple podcasts and that's that so brian's kind of asking like is is this like a ploy from spotify in a sense like they're doing it this way because then they either can use this as a way to say apple is being more controlling or to say like
Starting point is 01:36:11 look how much different we are my kind of question on this would be is maybe maybe spotify just believed that the business should be done this way like i don't think it has to be a are they doing this because they're being sneaky you know i feel I feel like that there's like a, I don't know. It's also in the same episode where we're talking about and buying up another big popular show. So it's kind of complicated. What do you think? I think podcasting is like, I think it contains multitudes.
Starting point is 01:36:40 And I think Spotify knows that. Spotify wants to make money always, right? They want to make money from podcasts that are open and they want to make money from podcasts that are in Spotify. And so I don't think I mean, who knows? It seems unlikely to me that Spotify is launching major business efforts because they don't want to look a certain way, maybe in a particular court or regulation case that seems really like a stretch and i think it's more likely is the obvious scenario which is this is an additional way for spotify to make money which is through through ads through their uh through anchor right like that kind of thing like there's it's all about all through the subscriptions through anchor right or or yeah or through the subscriptions through anchor or like right sorry i'm there's two different things here there's ad there's ad insertion and then there's
Starting point is 01:37:32 money that comes in and they get they you know it's it's a way to do money and then it's within and and the other thing is think about this uh spotify wants you to use their app but their app doesn't support your favorite podcast that has a subscription model. So you can't use Spotify's app. Well, by enabling the ability to do that, what are you doing? You're reducing the barrier to switching to Spotify as your podcast app. a tangible benefit to their business to do it. I don't think the tangible benefit is kind of trying to game some sort of image viewed by
Starting point is 01:38:11 somebody who's making a judgment. I just don't think that's what they're doing here at all. So no, I guess that's my answer is no, I don't think that. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or question mark ask upgrade in the relay fm members discord which you get access to if you sign up for upgrade plus go to get upgrade plus.com you can sign up right
Starting point is 01:38:34 now and you'll also get longer ad-free episodes of upgrade and access to our wonderful members crossover special which we'll be playing a trailer for right at the very end of this show today. Before we go, Jason, can you tell our listeners about another show here on RelayFM? Sure. This is a change of pace
Starting point is 01:38:54 that I think you might like. It's Make Do, which is about maybe turning your hobbies into something a little bit more. They're ready to be your cheerleader. This is Tiff Arment and Julia Scott, and they're doing hobbies and maybe putting on art shows and doing other stuff with the things that they make. It's fun. It is different from a lot of the Relay.fm shows, I think, in a good way. Go to Relay.fm slash Makedo, M-A-K-E-D-O, or just search for
Starting point is 01:39:21 Makedo wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com and he is at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you so much to our sponsors this week, Uni, Squarespace, DoorDash, and thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.
Starting point is 01:39:59 Our story begins with three mild-mannered podcasters heading out for a beverage at the local tavern. Little do these three know that they are not about to enter the familiar doors of the old badger and thistle, but are about to be whisked across time and space. Probably going to need to have some ID if you're looking to get far in this world. Spit, my friends, they're without proper identification, you know. Where can I help them get some ID? Sounds like you need to go to the Department of Misplaced Persons. So,
Starting point is 01:40:30 I'm going to apply the Newton effect to my special shtick, and I'm going to try to make the infinity of this building drop away to something that would be actually in a building. Alright, suddenly it is like an earthquake, a great trembling, all the rats look up, and giant kind of steel girders erupt from the ground.
Starting point is 01:40:49 The ceiling seems to kind of lower as the girders rise to meet it. From the horizon, walls start to close in, but it's like a tsunami of architecture. Wait a second, everyone. Jason just changed the freaking world. The whole world rotated around us. Obviously, this is some kind of simulation that we're living in, and or Jason is a god. Look, we're not getting anywhere without our phones. So I'm going to happily insert my phone into the mysterious space slot.
Starting point is 01:41:24 You insert your phone into the mysterious space slot you insert your phone into the mysterious space slot it makes some sounds kind of like a 1960s computer and then a panel on the front of the dispensing machine opens up and a little display prompts you to put your hand into that slot sure i'm you know what we're not getting anywhere without phones so yes i will do whatever the machine wants. A little shield drops down with a little circle kind of holding your wrist in place. And then there's a sound, kind of like a giant stapler. Your hand is warm.
Starting point is 01:41:54 Your phone seems to be now somewhat embedded in your hand. Can you just remind the listeners what the John Doe effect does? It says that I have one of those faces where people constantly think they recognize me as an old co-worker or long-lost cousin, childhood friend, etc. You may also be mistaken for someone who owes money slash is wanted dead or alive, etc. Hey, Calvin, it's me! Oh, right. Hi. The large orangutan person kind of bolts up from the bench,
Starting point is 01:42:30 sending the bench kind of shifting back. A large orangutan person has grabbed both of your arms and is attempting to pull them off of your body. Let's just make a quick strength check here. I rolled a six. So six plus four is 10, which is not enough. I am going to tell you that you are going to take three points of damage. Your arm is really badly hurt, and you are not feeling great.
Starting point is 01:42:55 The horrible orangutan thing is kind of growling in your face. You are drawing the attention of several rats when the seam on your voluminous pocket gives out and cheese starts pouring out of a hole in your jumpsuit onto the floor of the office. Several rats are giving you scandalous looks, Jason. I pretend like nothing has happened and continue moving toward the mailroom,
Starting point is 01:43:21 oiling my bucket. Will our heroes ever get the documents that they need to return to their normal lives? Will Jason stop tormenting space rats? Will Gray's arm heal? Or do worse things lie ahead for him? Find out by going to getupgrayplus.com
Starting point is 01:43:37 and sign up today. Thank you.

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