Upgrade - 359: Hi Everybody... Pineapple

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

The Upgrade Summer of Fun kicks into gear with new beachwear, a very special summer-themed edition of Ask Upgrade, dreams of larger iPads, and a bunch of streaming news. On the less fun side, we discuss why Apple has reacted the way it has to threats of new laws and regulations that might change how it does business.

from RelayFM this is Upgrade episode 359 today's show is brought to you by Bombas, Instabug, Privacy and ExpressVPN. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snell. And Jason Snell, you know what time it is, right? Mike, it's the Summer of Fun! It's started. Jason Snell, I'm very aware of the fact that we may have new upgradients. And they have no idea why we keep shouting that. So Jason Snell, what is the Summer of Fun?

Oh, um... It's a special time that happens ideally once a year. I mean, we've talked about it before, but just as a recap, what happened originally is we got to the summer doing Upgrade. We started Upgrade in the fall. We got to the summer, and there was a lot of travel going on. Mike was going here and there and here and there, and I was doing a little bit of traveling too. And we ended up in this question of, like, what are we doing for the summer?

Because we end up having to have guests, and we're going to have to pre-record episodes. There's various choices, right? When we're not available on Monday or Tuesday or like somewhere very close to our recording date, you don't want to record an episode of Upgrade three weeks early because things change and we talk about current events. So what we ended up doing was adapting. And your choices are get guests or pre-record. And if you pre-record, you can't do something timely. So you have to come up with a concept or a topic or something that you can pre-record that is not going to be invalidated by the events of the next week or two. So we kind of fell into this concept of the summer of fun, mostly as a way to explain

to listeners why the summer, why upgrade in the summertime gets a little bit weird, like weird, okay, weirder than it usually is and and it has taken you know sometimes it's pretty simple like it's uh you know we did like a panel from an event once and i brought on guest uh guests to talk to me when mike is traveling we've done like conceptual episodes that we pre-recorded. A bunch of different stuff like that. It's a grab bag. Every week is different. Not every week is going to be a complete rethinking of the podcast

format, but we do that occasionally. We did an episode a couple years ago where we did the entire show backward. We started with goodbyes, went into Ask Upgrade, and then we ended with the Snell Talk question and hellos, and that was the end of the episode, and we called that that Downgrade because it was the reverse of Upgrade. We did Outgrade last year which was High Concept. Because we were all locked in and so we did an episode where Mike and I were like in a soundscape where we had background noise and we were walking around

as if we were out and about taking a hike. Some people complain. They're like, why does it not sound normal? And the answer is, well, we were trying something different. So summer fun, that's what it's about. It's not always going to be something that blows your mind that is totally different, but it's really us sort of turning on the light that says things are not going to be your average upgrade for a little while. Also, usually there's not a lot of, there's not as much news and there's not as much breaking stuff in the summer, usually, because Apple sort of takes a break after the developer conference and doesn't really come back until the iPhone event. So there's sort of a natural part where like the betas are out there

and we do talk about them and all that, but there's sort of a slacking off of Apple-related news as well. So that's another motivator. Last year was weird because of the pandemic. There was no break in the sense of just news kept happening, things kept happening, which is unlike the other years. I mean, as you say, we did start this initially because how do we explain why uh we're having so many weird episodes in in the summer because of our vacations exactly but then it has actually become a thing of like well we want to do this show every single week that's what we want to do but we are mostly news focused and so when there's no news we need topics and there's less news during june to september and we usually end the summer of fun

the week before so the draft episode for the iphone event and again last year it went all the way to october it wouldn't stop and again we have no idea when it will stop this year as well now on today's episode we're kicking off the summer of fun with an extended Ask Upgrade of all summer-focused questions. It's true. Because I asked for them on Twitter via the Upgrade Twitter account, and we got a lot of questions, so we're going to be doing a bumper episode today. But just because it's the summer, we don't completely eschew our typical traditions of the show.

I have a hashtag Snell Talk question for you, Jason. This one comes from Tim, and Tim wants to know, do you still buy movies and TV shows on physical media? I don't very often. I did. So once I got my 4K HDR TV, I got a 4K Blu-ray player player and i have bought some movies on 4k blu-ray um because at the time it was really because that 4k stuff wasn't really streaming commonly now of course every streaming service has at least a 4k option although again how how compressed they are with the bit rates that they're streaming is is up for grabs so uh but already that was sort of it was is this a movie

that i want to watch a bunch of times and i think will really benefit from being in glorious kind of like full quality 4k hdr high bandwidth on a disc um and the truth is those all come with digital copies that are in iTunes at 4K at this point. So I get a convenient kind of portable version as well. My guess is that I'm not going to do it very often now because the fact is like, do I want to buy that Marvel movie when I know it'll just be on Disney Disney plus forever in 4k. And is that, is that enough? Is that good enough for me? And the answer is for most movies, probably. Um, so very, the answer is yes, but it is dramatically decreasing to the point where I may be done with it at some point, other than occasionally there's a special example of

something that I think, like I bought into the spider-Verse on 4K Blu-ray, and I thought this movie is so beautiful, and I want to see it in its absolute best form possible. But it's fading away. in any form, streaming or a la carte, and you have to go buy the DVD. Or maybe you have to go buy the DVD if it isn't pirated on Dailymotion or Vimeo or something, which sometimes we actually did that for a podcast. We were looking for an episode of a TV show for another podcast I do that I was thinking I was going to have to buy the DVDs like I did last summer for Murder, She Wrote, I think. We needed an episode of Murder, She Wrote for the Magnum PI podcast going to have to buy the dvds like i did last summer for uh murder she wrote i think we needed an episode of murder she wrote for the magnum pi podcast because there's a crossover and i ended up finding on amazon i could like well i can buy the complete second season of murder she wrote for 14

dollars on amazon and just on dvd and just have that sent over and so i did that but this latest yeah i do oh we're going to give it to scott mcnulty who is a murder she wrote fan i keep threatening to just send it to him one day a murder she wrote dvd set is going to show up in his mail and he'll probably be happy about it but this latest one that we're doing um i found the entire episode on vimeo so it's like oh don't have to buy a dvd of this random show just for one episode of it but But for the most part, I'm down to just these 4K Blu-rays where it's like the super high bandwidth, high quality. And that's pretty much all the stuff that I'm buying

and I'm not even buying much of that anymore. If you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or use question mark SnellTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. We have something else for the summer of fun. We have merchandise!

We do. Go to UpgradeYourWardrobe.com and you can peruse our line of t-shirt designs. We've not had any merch on this show since 2019. It's been a while. Now's the time. We are bringing back two previous designs. The original Dongletown t-shirt which has been a while now's the time we are bringing back two previous designs the original

dongle town t-shirt which has been a big success um one of the reasons we're bringing this back is i have a hole in mine i want a new one so if you want one uh thank my shirt for having a hole in it it's the truest reason to bring back merch is that the podcasters need a new shirt although i'll say there's a danger there which is every time I do an incomparable robot or a Skeletor, I buy one figuring, you know, my other one is going to, uh,

going to die. But I am kind of infamous about kind of wearing my shirts beyond their welcome point. And I have, I have like three robot shirts waiting to go now that I haven't worn. So, you know, there is a danger there too,

that eventually I'm just only going to be wearing my own podcast t-shirts so we also brought back the dongle town surf club shirt that was our last merchandise that we released in 2019 summary and it's in some new colors there's a there's a green and a purple the purple is beautiful very The purple is amazing for the Dongletown Surf Club, if you're into that sort of thing. Purple shirts and all. Love it. So there's those two. They're coming back.

But we have a brand new Summer of Fun inspired design. It is the Upgrade Summer of Fun t-shirt designed by Jason Snell. It did a very good job. Help from the people at Cotton Bureau. It's based on the Summer of Fun design by Simon, our former designer, and my friend Anthony Johnston, who is sort of, he's a video game writer and novelist and a comic book writer, but he used to be a graphic designer and still does some graphic design work to help out his friends.

And he helped me out with the concept because I was struggling with exactly how to do a kind of limited number of colors t-shirt design that got across the summery, almost 80s vibe, summery, summer of fun t-shirt that I wanted to do. And he made a very specific suggestion with Simon's artwork that was perfect.

And so I'm pretty happy with it. It looks pretty good. And then Cotton Bureau fixed all of my terrible problems with trying to figure out how to do vector art properly and clip vector art. And Affinity Designer kind of let me down, but Cotton Bureau, they're pros. They took care of it.

This shirt is available in a selection of blues, beautiful blues to match with the ocean and also for the boring amongst you a black yeah i i like the irony of somebody wearing a black t-shirt that says summer of fun so it's there if you want it and you can just picture that the sun is setting into a backlit silhouetted ocean of darkness. I probably will buy one of the black ones because there is something kind of

heavy metal or goth about that in a way that I enjoy. There's also a tank top version as well of this one. It's summer, so if that's your jam, we have that. Thanks to Mrs. Soup of the chat room uh kathy campbell who suggested that we had to do it as a tank top and uh so it is there it is tank top available

so that's three t-shirt designs they're available for two weeks two weeks 14 days there you go so just two weeks we'll remind you next week about the summer of fun and you can get your Dongletown t-shirts and get your Summer of Fun. I love the Summer of Fun t-shirt. I'm really excited about it. It was, I had that moment, right, where you and I were talking and I said, I think we should do a Summer of Fun t-shirt. And you're like, okay, go for it. And I had to figure out like what fonts Simon used and where the design design was and all those things but uh i'm happy about it i'm going to be wearing that one this summer for sure yeah i can't wait i really can't

wait to get mine so go to uh upgrade your wardrobe.com or you can click the link in the show notes and you can pick up your merch enjoy it and you'll also be helping support the show as well so So thank you so much. I have my very own 24-inch iMac now. Yeah, so you returned the Apple loaner. My review unit, yeah. And replaced it with itself. Yeah, I have a yellow. I fell in love with this computer. You know, I think I said this at the time. I'm not surprised.

If anybody listened to the episode where I reviewed this thing a few weeks ago, it was very, i'd already bought it i i fell in love with it immediately uh and i also i found i think some really great uses for this machine so like right now it is my recording machine and i really love it i have it the monitor that i was using when i make mini before i have set off on the side and that's where i put all of my audio hijack and zoom and all that kind of stuff when i record i think this the screen then what's left is perfect for me um size wise for now like if i you know if i have all this other stuff on the other monitor then i have more than enough space for my web browser and stuff like that um It performs way better for me than any Intel Mac has before when using programs like Logic.

So there was a two-week period of when I'd returned the iMac to Apple and mine had arrived. And going back to the Mac Mini for editing was real rough. I hated it. But it was just not responsive in the way that the M1 Macs are. So I can't imagine that I would be getting another desktop Mac until way later in the year,

maybe next year, you know, when Apple actually releases something that I would want to replace the iMac Pro that I have at home. And then I've decided now my kind of future computing needs are becoming clearer. This machine would then become our home computer. And I would swap in a professional grade quote unquote machine. And then this machine would

become the home machine replacing the iMac Pro, which is in kind of like my home office now, which is just not used. And so as we move forward, we're hoping that we could maybe move home next year. We would have a kind of more general room, which would have a home computer in it, right? And this would be that machine. And as I said a few weeks ago, I think that's what this imac is like perfectly made for to be that kind of like home computer so that's where i am right now and i am super happy with this uh and one little thing that i've done i think i may have mentioned this at the time

um i love having touch id right but i also love using keyboards of my own making. So I have used sticky Velcro tape and I have stuck the Magic Keyboard underneath my desk so I can reach under to use Touch ID. You have a little sneaky place that you can put your finger under your desk and magic happens. Yep, it's really great. And only on a couple of occasions,

I've bumped the button and locked my iMac. But most of the time it's awesome and i really like this kind of uh when i get to uh when it asks me hey use touch id i can just reach under the desk you know like like i'm like a panic button do you have it oriented so it's just the narrow side so it's like running away from you so it's it's or is it wide it's uh wide with the like with the back facing towards me so the button is closest to me physically right interesting i was thinking you could also mount it you could also mount it uh with the narrow side on that corner where the button is and then you'd have to put it on your right i have it on my left you see that's where i wanted it on my left so yeah this this took some time because what you need if you're going to do this is the button to be like closest to you physically so you can easily reach

for it otherwise you're pressing all kinds of keys uh so i have it on the left side of the desk facing towards if you had if you had press problems, you could also probably use something like carabiner and lock out all the keys on that keyboard other than the power button. I mean, you could basically lock out all the keys where it would just be using Touch ID. I bet you could do that. But that would really only happen if you accidentally twitched your leg and you typed a bunch of things on your underside keyboard there's there's a couple of reasons i put it on the left side where it is one if i had it on the right there would be more chance of me doing that just with the way that the desk's oriented um and also i have height controls this is the sit stand desk and the height controls are on the right side i would have naturally wanted this on the right side

but there wasn't a way for me to put it and orient it in a way that was comfortable. So I moved it to the left. That makes sense. No, this is great. I still have my review unit here. It's due back in a couple of weeks. I've been using macOS Monterey on it, and I'm probably going to ask them if I can extend my loan for a little bit because it's really nice to have a modern Apple Silicon system that is running macOS Monterey beta that is not like the laptop that I have to take when I travel because then I'm on a beta when I travel and I don't like that idea. That does not make me comfortable at all. So, and yeah, they're great. I, I, my reluctance in, in buying one is just that it is not a suitable replacement for my iMac pro. Um, it's just not, there are too many things that I'm doing with, especially isotope. The people, good people at isotope make some

amazing sound plugins. A lot of them are not multi-core enabled and it's really sad or not properly multi-threaded and it none of them are um running on native on ample silicon right now and as a result going from intel with eight cores down to a uh an m1 it for a lot of those plugins it's just terrible like i can't i can't go to the current M1s and do what I'm doing, but the temptation is, is real. So I'm just going to have to bide my time. Having the MacBook Air also really helps because I do have an M1 Mac. I can, I can do stuff on that and it's delightful, but, but I, I'm just going to be, I'm in the position of, I think a lot of our listeners, which is I'm waiting it out because what I really want is the stuff that's enabled by whatever the next Apple Silicon chip is, whether it's an M1X or an M2 or whatever they call it, that kind of more cores, more capable for more pro applications kind of thing. these intense sound plugins that I use to get their button gear and actually release an Apple

Silicon version because I don't know what their problem is. Last week, Windows 11 was shown off. Microsoft. Yes, it was. And Windows 11 looks really interesting. I want to give a bit of follow-out because, so I host another podcast on RelayFM called The Test Drivers with Austin Evans, where I guess it's kind of like my other shows, but not really focused about Apple so much. We talk about all the technology, right? So we'll, and gaming too, is a bit of a crossover. So, but we had the opportunity to sit down with Panos Panay, who is Microsoft's chief product officer for Windows and devices like Surfaces and stuff. If you've seen any of the Surface presentations in the last couple of years, you would have seen Panos.

Most notably, I think, for a lot of people, he showed off the Surface Duo and Neo, the folding devices, a couple of years ago. This was actually one we got to sit down with him. We had a great interview, a great discussion, which I was very pleased that we got to sit down we had a great interview a great discussion which i was very pleased that we got to to talk to panos so i'll put a link in the show notes i would really love it if you go and check it out because i'm really proud of the way the episode came together i would say this is the microsoft equivalent of what uh grouper did getting greg joswiak and craig federighi like Panos is their demo guy.

Apple doesn't really have a demo guy. I mean, maybe like Phil Schiller or something used to be that, but like he's the guy who demos all the new hardware, especially at Microsoft. I mean, he also ran the Windows 11 presentation. I would say like...

No, no, he's their demo guy now. He's their presentation guy, right? Like Satya Nadeel is not going to do it panos does it and panos is so good at demos um like i i've said this before i got the chance to speak to him so there's no bias here i think he is the best in tech right now giving a presentation because nobody makes you believe how much they believe something's good than panels penne like he like has the ability to like make you feel genuinely emotional about the things he's talking about like i'm watching the windows 11 presentation and i'm like yeah man the pandemic was hard you know it was he's he's so he's very very good um and you know like you were mentioning like he he's very high up at microsoft

i think his boss is the ceo so i was really honored that we got that microsoft reached out to to have us have the interview and i really wanted to recommend people go and check it out because if you are wondering, hey, what's this Windows 11 thing about? I think this episode will help you understand. And we're not going to talk about Windows 11 here yet, although some are fun. You never know what might happen.

But I think one of the things that I took away from it, like it's interesting. They did a bunch of interesting stuff. They're trying to, the interface looks good. I feel like maybe Microsoft has reached a point where they're okay with making changes and and breaking some compatibility in a way that microsoft has never been before and you see it in a couple of ways first off is the interface really does look genuinely way better than it's ever looked before and i you know i think they're to be congratulated for that um and then the other

thing is that they announced the hardware support for this, and they're requiring essentially this hardware security chip to be present. Yeah. And it's the equivalent of the T2 essentially on an Intel Mac, and they're requiring that to be present. And it's breaking compatibility with all sorts of old hardware. In fact, I have a Surface Go from not too many years ago, and it just won't work with Windows 11 because it doesn't have that stuff in it. And it's just like, nope, it won't work. So we'll see if they stick to it because traditionally what Microsoft has done is come out with big, bold announcements and then all of their partners and their enormous user base and all that sort of revolts, and then they sort of backslide. But I don't know. I feel like this

time their answer is going to be, just keep using windows 10 windows 11 is about the future so i i like to see that because that's been the tragedy of microsoft for the last decade plus is that they hold on to too much stuff yeah they have great ideas and then they are basically trapped to not really implement them or backtrack from them because everybody's demanding that they just remain compatible with everything in the past. And I think they've reached a point with Satya Nadella where Windows is not the point. It's hard to believe, but like Windows is not the point of Microsoft, which with Steve Ballmer, Windows was the point of Microsoft. And with Nadella, it's not like the Azure is and Office 365 is, But Windows is important, obviously,

but it's not like the point of Microsoft and Microsoft doesn't revolve around it. And I think that maybe gives them some freedom to do things like say, we're going to build a next generation Windows that breaks compatibility with a bunch of stuff. And Windows 10 is still around for people who are still,

for those of you still using Windows XP, Windows 10 is upgradable but windows 11 is going to be new and different and uh yeah really interesting what microsoft is doing so good for them and i'm glad you got to talk thank you you and austin to panos that's great yeah it was the the one frustration i have about the interviews we didn't know at this point about the compatibility thing because we recorded a couple of hours after the microsoft event and the tool to check wasn't available so we didn't know about just how many devices they were going to cut out and so you know it's something i want to dig into in the future a little bit more as well yeah and i guess the only other thing that i think is worth mentioning

because it will be um i think helpful context for some of the conversations we're going to have later on in this episode one of the things microsoft announced was some pretty big changes to the business model of the microsoft store which is their app store basically where now they are taking a 15 cut from developers that use microsoft payment platform but you can also list your app on the Microsoft Store, use your own payment processing system, and give Microsoft nothing. Right, so it essentially becomes a catalog of available software for Windows, which is a different model, right?

It's interesting because originally their model was kind of an App Store model, and they're backing off of that. And I think some of that is reading the room, right? And being like, aha, we can do this. But also I think it's less painful a decision for them to make. There's a lot of stuff that's not in the Microsoft store that now they can just sort of say, yeah, we'll list you. It's fine. You can do whatever because the goal there is just to make it easier for consumers to find software.

Yeah, and this is something that you can do if you don't have any apps in your app store, right? This is something that you will do. I mean, but it could be argued that maybe the Mac App Store is in a similar boat.

So, yep. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Bombus. Pride is a time to celebrate all things LGBTQ+. And pride also means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And that's why this year, Bombus is choosing to be proud in every way of your sexuality, your gender, your culture,

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another item will be donated to someone affected by homelessness in their LGBTQ plus community. Homelessness disproportionately affects the entire LGBTQ plus population, but people of color and transgender individuals within the community are even more at risk. That's why each donation will be going to one of three organizations working specifically with transgender and BIPOC communities. To shop the collection and learn more about the organizations your purchase will be supporting, go to bombas.com slash upgrade and use the code

upgrade to get 20% off your first order. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash upgrade. And let me tell you, as somebody who wears Bombas clothing, I wear Bombas socks every single day. They are incredibly comfortable, really great. I love that they stay up. They have all the padding that I need. They are the most comfortable socks I have ever worn. So not only will you be able to show your pride, you'll be able to support some organizations. You're also going to have really comfortable feet. Our thanks to Bombas for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Let's do some upstream headlines. Upstream is where we recap some of the stuff going on

in streaming digital media. I have some Ted Lasso-related follow-up upstream for you. Follow-up stream. ScreenTimes.net spoke to someone at Warner regarding international sales of Ted Lasso merch. You'll remember last week, I was elated that there was Ted Lasso merch. So you'll remember last week,

I was elated that there was Ted Lasso merch and then disappointed that it was not shipping internationally. And Warner said that they are, quote, looking at possibilities. This means to me it's never going to happen. I'm very used to these things by now. When big American companies say, hey, we're looking at possibilities, it means, no, it's not going to happen. And Bill Lawrence has also said that higher quality jerseys are going to be available in September. So if you're unhappy with the t-shirt that they've got for the football jersey shirt, they're going to have actual, what he has said, professional looking and feeling shirts with personalization available later on this year yeah it's i don't know what's going on here right

like we announced we announced that this was open but it's not international and we the honestly the uh the merch is underwhelming there's i saw somebody say in our chat room uh last week were recording, they were going through, they were combing through the Ted Lasso merch site. And somebody said it was very much a design is my passion, graphic design is my passion kind of vibe where it felt like, I mean, honestly, some of the items feel like somebody took a mug maker from Zazzle and just put in a Ted Lasso thing and said, good enough. And it's too bad because you look at the stuff that fans generated and it's way better. And it makes me wonder, I know that there are some sites that do this, but harness the creativity of fans to use your IP to make stuff where they get a little tiny kickback from designing it,

but you take, obviously, the bulk of the profit. Like you get better merch that way. And this stuff is really uninspired. Like literally there's vastly better Ted Lasso merch on Etsy and Cotton Bureau and Redbubble and places like that where they're unlicensed than this stuff that's in their store and and then you see bill lawrence say that they're going to actually have they apparently have a deal with some like some somebody to make actual pro style jerseys uh i also wonder if that some of that

delay so this is a very very very minor season two spoiler out of the trailer which is that they they clearly have changed the club the fictional club has changed its sponsor its kit sponsor for its next season in the in the in the league so um and i kind of assume that's going to be a plot point but it might not be um either way i wonder if one of the reasons that it's coming in September and all of that is they actually want to have it be the season two kit and they don't want to spoil the fact that they changed their kit in season two. So we'll see.

But, um, but it's, it's a little bit baffling that they've kind of booted this. And I, I give them a little bit of credit for the fact that nobody expected Ted Lasso to be a merchandise machine. But this is it's not great stuff. So, oh, well, there's maybe there's more better stuff coming. quote for offering the perfect counter to the enduring prevalence of toxic toxic masculinity both on screen and off in a moment when the nation truly needs inspiring models of kindness yeah it's great it's an out of left field award but an award nonetheless and for a good reason yeah p buddies do that that's a that's a very peabody peabody awards are all over the place trying to honor good stuff i mean like uh just as if you were imagining uh as part of apple tv what your awards

were going to be for your tv show maybe this isn't what you would have naturally expected but it's great nonetheless right yep uh last week apple sent out an email to subscribers letting them know that the fact that their free trial period was ending. And they also used this as an opportunity to promote some of their upcoming shows. So there's some dates for stuff that we already know about or reiterations. But this email confirmed that The Problem with Jon Stewart will premiere in September as well as Foundation. Foundation and today Apple released a new trailer for Foundation and confirmed

that this was going to be premiering on September 24th and I watched the trailer I have never read and kind of honestly know nothing about the Foundation series books by Isaac Asimov and so I don't really

understand what is going on in the trailer, I don't know if you need context or it helps to have the context, but it looks beautiful, and I'm intrigued. Honestly, it looks like a movie with the quality of special effects and stuff. So Foundation was written like 70 years ago, and I read it for a podcast a few years ago. I read the books. There's an original trilogy, and then he kept writing Foundation books.

They're full of interesting ideas. I would say that in terms of being the basis for a TV show or a movie now, it's actually about the right level, which is it's more concerned with the ideas and the big sweep of the plot than it is with the characters. So in some ways, I think that might be better because it allows the modern writers to flesh it out from there and just sort of honor the big points without having to worry too much about the individual characters. But the big idea of Foundation is that there is a galactic empire and there's a guy who's invented this technology that enables him to accurately predict the future. And he says, oh, the empire is going to collapse. In fact, it's already started. It's

going to collapse. And we have a choice to make, which is, do we work to reduce the amount of chaos that comes to the galaxy? Do we work so that we recover in 500 years instead of a thousand or a thousand instead of 2000? Get out of the dark ages. But what he says is the dark ages are coming. It's going to be really bad. But are we willing to work and sacrifice now so that future generations feel less pain. And as I was watching that trailer, I was thinking, oh man, this could not be more applicable to modern society. That's kind of amazing, given that this is a core story from 70 years ago. And Jared Harris is that guy, is the visionary guy, Harry Seldon. And this trailer focuses also sort of like

on the emperor, basically, who's a chain of, I think, cloned emperors. And the idea of you've got people in power who are being threatened and are probably also pretending that their empire isn't crumbling, but it is crumbling. And it looks great.

Very interesting stuff in there. So, you know, you never know until you see it but um i could see how this is actually a going to be relevant and and a winner and it certainly looks like they spared no expense like you said it's so we have a date for it september 24th so not too far away dan harman and nathan pile are teaming up to create an animated version of Pyle's Strange Planet comic for Apple TV+. This is going to be produced in-house at Apple Studios with animation production from Shadow Machine, who worked on BoJack Horseman.

Yeah, I enjoy that comic. I think it's very amusing. I don't see how this is a series, but that's their problem. They'll figure it out or they won't but yeah it seems very much like a one joke thing and i enjoy the individual jokes but i just as i wouldn't expect an animated series based on alex norris's webcomic name where every episode i guess ends with them saying oh no i don't know uh strange planet feels the same way to me but obviously like you could take the idea of these aliens that come to Earth and try and understand it, and that's the story, right?

Yeah. I think that's what you have to do. Is you have to really expand the canvas. And so we'll see. I mean, Dan Harmon obviously got this gig because of Rick and Morty. Because it's sort of a, you know, he's done the animated comedy thing and knows how to do that and knows how to run shows.

Of course, he ran Community, which was one of my favorite shows of all time. And Nathan Pyle is the cartoonist and they're going to give it a shot. And it's all Apple. It's Apple Studios in-house. It's, you know, it's an Apple TV Plus joint. So we'll see how it goes.

They actually have a history too the the hollywood report mentioned this and i was looking it up today too um abed used to wear like t-shirts on community the character abed that were nathan piles designs ah so assuming that these things don't happen you know randomly uh're maybe they're familiar with each other from before i i have it's funny um i there's a an official list of abed shirts like there's an abed shirts subreddit of course um and i i've i bought a couple of those so yeah it's it's uh they're good they're good lots of good uh lots of good obit shirts i think they all came from threadless when threadless was the thing yeah i think that's

right so we're outside of upstream now moving on uh friend of the show mark german has gotten into the newsletter game over at bloomberg uh he's now writing a newsletter every week called Power On. And it's focused on technology. There's some basketball thrown in there too. The first issue has been published on Bloomberg's website. I read it today and it's really interesting because it has his personality back into it

where Mark's Bloomberg writing doesn't feel like Mark Gurman is writing it. If that makes sense. It's not in his voice. Where this is in his voice. And for one, I just found that good. Right? Because I think this is one of the things

that is different from, say, someone like Jason Snell. To if Jason Snell... Maybe as well, the stuff that that is different from say someone like jason snell to if jason snell maybe it maybe as well like the stuff that you write for macworld is less jason snell to a point but i'm a columnist and it's it's not really but yeah you're right if i wrote at bloomberg um it would be substantially different the people said the people say there was no the people say in this no article no it's it's super chatty and you know he's gonna launch it with a with a tidbit right so he did yep so he did and they published this one uh so you know you can go and subscribe i'd subscribed anyway because i was just into it

like i like this idea it's free i think too i don't know what what honestly i don't know what the point of that is like i'm seeing more companies do this these days. They have free newsletters written by columnists. I think the idea here is that they're attaching people to the columnists and then there are links in the article. And the idea there is that you're sort of making them find the value from Bloomberg as a source. And ultimately that will lead to some conversion to Bloomberg.

Maybe there could be ads in those newsletters in the future too. Sure. But it seems like now there are loads of newsletters that are paid. Larger media companies are getting into newsletters that are free. It's just really interesting that we're moving around like this, but this is kind of where we are. So yeah, in this first issue, Mark talks about how much he's using his

ipad pro now and then just casually mentions that apple uh testing larger ipad pros in the 14 to 16 inch range and if they're released could be sometime in the next few years yeah not he says sort of they're still working on it and figuring out what the right size is so this is not a they're planning it for next year as much as they're testing out larger iPads. It's interesting because I've been reading... Who was it? Somebody on Twitter that I saw that said that they've settled... Oh, here's Harry McCracken, who was the editor-in-chief of PC World for many years.

And he's an iPad-first person. And he settled on the iPad 11 inch which is interesting right because I think he was a 12.9 inch user before and I'm using the 12.9 and he said I think the 11 inch is perfect just like the 11 inch MacBook Air was perfect and I was thinking about that because on one level, I really see the value in going down to a smaller iPad. Like it's a, especially the M1 version is just, it's big and heavy. But it would be hard for me to give up that screen. But I also see the other side of it, which is for certain tasks, you really do want more.

And like, I think the challenge, I'm sure we're going to talk about this a lot over the next couple of years, Mike, but I think the challenge of having a very large iPad, a 15 or 16 inch iPad, is all ergonomics. Because, you know, you're not going to be waving that thing around with one hand. Like it's going to be everything that is difficult about the 12.9 taken up several levels. So the question then is, where do you use that? Is it on a desk? Is it, you know, what does that magic keyboard look like if it can even have one? You know, what is it if you're using with Apple Pencil? How does that work? Like, I'm sure that's what they're struggling with when they look at this. It's sort of like, what are the ergonomics of a great big iPad? Because we already have the debate about the two iPad Pro sizes really attracting different people and having issues there.

So I don't know if you have any thoughts about kind of big iPad ergonomics yet. Because, again, we will revisit this undoubtedly over the next couple of years as rumors percolate. But, like, I'm fascinated by that because I'm not sure. over the next couple of years as rumors percolate. But like, I'm fascinated by that because I'm not sure, I mean, they're going to need to come up with some new thoughts about how people hold and use iPads if they're going to try to sell a 16-inch iPad.

Well, I think they've already started that. It's the magic keyboard. Like that's the start of that. That's, you know, because at that point, your ergonomics are the same as a laptop, you know, by and large. It's in this thing and you open it up and you close it again right and better than and you have more adjustability so i think that's the start of

this and i think to go further to go to 14 and 16 inch they need to have another accessory i don't know what it is right but like another accessory that goes along with it, because I really think that if you have make this iPad, you kind of need to say this iPad works great here, here, and you can also hold it. Like that's, you know, like that's not like you hold it in your hands and when you're ready, you put it in the magic keyboard, right? Like that's how we think about them now.

It's more like the ads are going to show people like using an Apple pencil at a table or in their lap or something, right? Not just like holding it up and being like, oh, a movie that I'm holding this heavy thing for a movie. Like you hold it in transit and then you put it down onto something that it lives on. Like it's, we're now in a kind of like a different space. And personally, like where I am, I would like bigger on the higher end with the 11. Like I think the 11-inch, I'm one of these people,

I think the 11-inch iPad Pro is the best iPad Pro. The best iPad, I just think it's the best iPad. And then 12.9 is really great for certain circumstances, but for most people, the 11 is the one that you would want. It's the one that you should have. I always say this when people ask, like to own a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, you kind

of need to know you want that first. If you're like, hey, I would like an iPad, don't know which one to get, you probably want the 11. It would be my recommendation to you. The other thing that I, because this is the I want to believe thing. I actually wrote a piece

about this at Macworld this week or last week, which is the I want to believe thing. I actually wrote a piece about this at Macworld this week or last week, which is the continuing drumbeat of all the reasons why, as I've talked about on Upgrade before, the reasons why I believe Apple is going to a windowing system or something with iPadOS. And I actually did a mock-up of what a 5K display with iPad stuff on And I actually did, I did a mock-up of like what a 5K display with iPad stuff on it would look like using existing,

for the most part, existing iPad user interface stuff from iPad OS 15. And the answer is, it looks kind of good. It looks kind of like a Mac, but not because it's an iPad. And like,

I will throw in this idea of a 16 inch iPad, like at some point, full screen or even split view apps, when the screen becomes large, become not just kind of ridiculous, but inefficient in the use of space on the screen. And although I know there are people who like you open Photoshop on your Mac and your 27inch iMac and you put it in full screen mode and you've just got the content there. Well, that's great. But 99.9% of the time I use the Mac, I have multiple apps and multiple windows up. And that's how I can be efficient. efficiency to be gained by allowing you to interleave several apps and have them all visible or partially visible in terms of having it be a visual way of understanding that multitasking is going on. And I think the iPad is going to have to grapple with this in some way, whether it's

full-on floating windows or it's a tiling system, like what Microsoft is experimenting with a little bit more with Windows 11, like whatever it is, I think Apple has to do something. Otherwise, there's a point at which the iPad OS concept breaks down. And like the concept came from the iPhone. The concept came from the fact that the iPhone screen is so small, it can only run one thing at a time.

But like they've been, over the last five years, been hammering away at the idea that the iPad is different and it's got that bigger screen and you can put more information on it. But at some point here, they're going to have to go beyond full screen and split view. And the fact that they're experimenting with center floating windows and quick note, which is literally a floating window on top of other content from a

different app. Like it's literally this one almost Mac window that escaped to the iPad. Like they're obviously experimenting with this stuff. So when I hear about them experimenting with a 14 to 16 inch iPad pro, I think that's yet another like challenge for them that could potentially be solved by the same things that they're hopefully doing to try and solve what happens if you attach an iPad Pro to a large display and allow apps to just run on it instead of using it as a secondary. Because you've got to do something. Because, you know, I love my iPad apps, but I don't want any of them to be full screen or even split view on a 27-inch monitor. That's ridiculous. monitor that's ridiculous. In this newsletter, Mark Gurman also talks about changes that Apple have been making to their still-in-existence and working self-driving car team. They've removed

some people, they've made some changes, but one of the key hires that they made recently is Ulrich Kranz, who helped oversee the i3 and the i8 at BMW and has held key positions at companies like Faraday Future, which is a new electric car company. So they're continuing to do something. Does this consist of, is this an upshift segment or is it too small to be an upshift segment? I think it's too small to be an upshift segment.

At some point, we'll come back. It is going to come back. We have a car segment that we can do. But anyway, this guy got hired, so you wouldn't hire somebody if you weren't working on a car. So there you go. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Instabug. Building mobile apps presents some challenges. Bugs, crashes, and performance issues can be a nightmare for developers. But what if you could not only detect all of these issues,

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Breaking news. Okay. Breaking news. Mont. Breaking news. Monterey Beta 2 was released just now. Okay. And late last week, we got Beta 2 of iOS and iPadOS, if you're keeping score. So everybody was sort of saying, where's the Mac? What happened there?

I don't know what happened. The Mac engineers have to work over the weekend or something. But that beta is out now so uh the beta summer of betas summer beta fun has finally reached the mac thank goodness let's talk about oh boy i i have this i have this titled as Apple Legislation and Sideloading. And there's quite a lot of stuff going on here. And I guess we'll kind of just try and attack it as much as we can today. So there were just a lot of things happening last week. I mean, there have been a lot of things happening anyway,

but it started again last week. So the New York Times had a report that states that Tim Cook has been reaching out to various members of Congress to talk about how the potential antitrust legislation currently being debated in Congress could have serious effects on the way that the company does business. Cook is concerned that the legislation was rushed and would crimp innovation. The bills that Tim Cook is concerned about are pretty wide ranging. They came out of that antitrust commission committee that was bringing all of the tech CEOs in over Zoom to talk to a matter of months ago.

So it's very unlikely that the five bills will all be passed. I mean, mostly because I learned all this stuff from Ben Thompson. You should read and subscribe to Techery. But really, a lot of the bills, they overlap in weird ways. And it's likely that maybe only one of them will get passed in its entirety of all. But there is a strong possibility that something will get through Congress as a result of this, which would likely have an effect on Apple's business in some ways. It could be stuff like limiting what apps are pre-installed on devices

and making users choose. It could limit the types of businesses Apple are allowed to get into. It could force them to give up some of the businesses that they're currently in and could require them to make changes to app store economics or have rival app stores available for the platform. It is also worth noting, this isn't just an American thing. There's a lot of stuff happening in the European Union as well.

I mean, it's gotten further in the European Union, where really with the thing with Spotify that I think we touched on a while ago, it's just a case of waiting to see what are they going to say Apple has to do. It's not, you know, they've already come to that conclusion, really. So this is just another of those things. I mean, you would assume naturally Apple cares most about what happens in America. So that's kind of where we are with that part of it. My kind of take on this part is if any of these laws do get passed, it kind of feels like

Apple's greed and or desire for control could result in the iPhone being worse for its users, right? I think, again, Ben Thompson put this really nicely. Apple's best feature is its integration in the operating system with the apps and services that it makes.

But because they so harshly limit and put in such peculiar and I think wrong seeming rules and limitations of some parts of their app store business, they actually risk the ability to keep this integration alive. And that could not only make things worse for them,

actually ultimately could make things worse for Apple's customers as well because they won't let go a little bit. Yeah, I mean, imagine a world where you get an iPhone and it has no apps on it. Yeah. Or like, you know, you look at something like QuickNote, right? Apple wouldn't be allowed to do that

because unless they said every other Notes app to do that because, unless they said every other notes app can do this too, which would be kind of great, but they're unlikely, honestly, to even make that feature if that's what they're told they have to do. I think the general idea there is that you need space to innovate

without being told that innovation has to be checked by a court or that, you know, or you have a lawyer say, no, you can't add that feature, even though it would make people's lives better because we're not allowed to do that. And so nobody does it. And, you know, I think, and this is going to be true when we talk about Apple's white paper that they released last week as well. But I think there is an argument to be made that it's not all doom and gloom. If you end up in a scenario where every time Apple announces...

So let's talk about this, the feature in iOS, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey where your messages content gets put in other apps, right? So when you're in news or Safari or where else? Photos. Anyway, it surfaces content that's been shared with you via messages. And we talked about it after the keynote.

Like on one level, that's cool. On another level, in the context of a developer conference, my immediate reaction is why is it only for Apple's apps? Why is that not an API? And so, you know, you could make an argument that what ideally, if there was going to be legislation like this, it wouldn't be you can't do it. It would be you can do this, but you need to let other people, you need to build an API that you use that is public and available to other developers, not something that's private and just for Apple. So the model changes. The model becomes Apple has to build this thing with an API. And the goal is

to make the platform better, but not to lock people into its apps, but to instead make the platform better and all of its competition, third-party add-ons could also take advantage of it. That's the ideal and I think is not unreasonable. However, the problem is anything like this be motivated to build these things if they have to do more work. And also, it doesn't benefit their apps as much as it did before. Even if the right thing to do is always to open things up. Also, keep in mind, sometimes Apple's strategy is they build it, and then they iterate on it, and then they release the API for other people to use it. And they use themselves as a test case and they use themselves to explore. And then they, then ideally they then kind of release it for everybody else. And what a law like, like that would suggest if they constrain that would be, you can't do it that way. You have to sort of go out with the first one, which might delay features or kill features altogether. Plus they're all this with the acts that happened during the Clinton administration that were

various sort of like early internet laws that had all sorts of weird spinoff issues that were not intended. And that's the other concern about something like this. I don't want to poo-poo it entirely because I think there is an argument to be made. But I think that as with a lot of this legislation, And that's who you're supposed to be protecting, right? That's the challenge is, have you really made life better for third-party app developers? Have you really made life better for users?

And on a macro level, the reason that I think a lot of this stuff is probably not, bet on it not changing, is I'm not sure any politician wants to be seen. I know they want to be seen as standing up to big tech. At the same time, these are American companies that dominate technology and industry all over the world. And I'm not sure any American politician ultimately wants to be seen as the people who killed

America's strongest companies. So I'm a little skeptical of it. So you think, I mean, if you were going to just maybe make a bet, you think that this stuff wouldn't get through Congress? If I had to predict, and I'm glad I don't have to, but my guess is that a lot of it will get watered down. I'm glad I don't have to. But my guess is that a lot of it will get watered down. However, because what politicians really want is they want to look good. They don't necessarily want to change the world. They just want to look good and get reelected and be able to use this as a way of getting reelected and ultimately you've got democrats in power who who are uh generally you know the democrats want one thing the republicans want a different thing the republicans um don't even talk about a lot of this uh business regulation stuff because they're they're fundamentally they're kind of against it they're really all talking about like why are conservative voices

silenced on facebook and twitter yeah that, they have free speech concerns more than antitrust. Whereas Democrats are more skeptical of big business to a point. Can they find some common ground? There's not a lot of common ground to be found in Washington at all. And where they find it is a mystery. But here's the thing that baffles me about this is, sure seems to me like this is at a point now where if you're one of the big tech companies, yes, you need to be calling people and expressing your concern. more contrition than at least a level of understanding that perhaps the way you've done business up to now is not conducive to the way that the public wants this business to be conducted or that the politicians want this business to be conducted in the future. And I see very little evidence of that from Apple. The fact that Apple released a white paper with lots of illustrations and a lot of hypotheticals that's kind of on point and also kind of really missing the point suggests to me that they're still not like if we expected Apple to come out and be like, all right, let's make a deal here. I don't think I would have expected them to react like this. And that's the part that gets me is, I think the one way you can guarantee

that they're going to move against you is if you're completely obstinate. Are you going all in? Is Apple going all in and saying, try to change us? That seems like the wrong tack to take here. But maybe they figure nothing particular is going to pass. But the challenge is that some legislation could really break apart the fundamental secret sauce of Apple, and that's bad. That's really an existential threat to Apple. So the white paper that Jason's talking about, it was published a couple of days after this New York Times report came out, or maybe it was even the same day. This is also last week.

This white paper is talking about the risks of allowing sideloading of apps on the iPhone. So this would be having an ability to install apps from either outside of the App Store, directly from the web like you can on the Mac, or from a secondary store, also like you can on the Mac, like Steam or something like that, right? And Android has these functionalities.

So Apple state that this would be a serious risk to the security of the iOS platform. They cite malicious software and malware being 15 times higher on Android. A couple of quotes, allowing sideloading would spur a flood of new investment into attacks on the platform and users would have to constantly be on the lookout for scams, never knowing who or what to trust. And as a result, many users would download fewer apps from fewer developers. My initial thinking is like, if Apple know that, like, why don't you just create a secure operating system to account for it and my thinking is you already do don't you right so like one of the things that they reference they give all these as jason mentioned these illustrated examples that are

like meant to like scare you i honestly feel like they've written a picture book for me, which is really patronizing. They talk about an app being able to hold all of your photos ransom unless you pay up. And that makes sense if an app had free reign of the operating system. And my expectation is photo permissions should stop this. Otherwise otherwise like an app could do this anyway if i gave it the right permissions on ios right like provided it got through app review like i don't really you know their their whole this is one of my big complaints and i i i am wondering what the motivation is for this because also of all the topics sideloading is the one that out. Maybe it's just that they had this thing that they were working on in the background and they decided that they would add it to the pile. I think they say this is the most likely outcome.

building a straw man that is this spooky scary world of side loading so that then they can offer a counter proposal which involves them changing some of their policies right okay like so you set up the side loading it's like who specifically said what we're going to do is force side loading i'm not sure it's really that it's more like Apple wants to raise this monster so that then it can say, hey, we've got some other options. But in building this straw man, yes, there's all these questions of like, you know, they don't talk about how on macOS they've built in all of these solutions involving notarization and developer certificates that have to be signed. and notarization and developer certificates that have to be signed. And it's not the Wild West.

And in fact, you could even say that if Apple had to do, it's very much like if we were caused, oh no, if we were told to do sideloading, it would be very bad because we would be unable to stop it. But the truth is that if Apple was mandated to do sideloading, but still had some latitude, what it would do is do something very much like what happened on the Mac, which is they have built up all sorts of structures that aren't quite App Store approval, but do limit what gets approved. They do have a kill switch. They could very much say like, you can't use these APIs. We will scan for those. Those will be turned off. It's not as scary as they would have you believe. And I'll also point out that we've seen on Android that although it can happen, it happens on the Mac, too.

They talk people into turning off security and installing malware. Like, it can happen. It would be an issue. But I don't think it would be necessarily the dystopia that apple portrays it and this is actually a huge reason why most people would stay in the app store if sideloading was allowed because even epic discovered when they did sideloading for fortnite on the google play store uh initially that it was it wasn't good enough and they complained about it.

And they said, oh, it's all these warnings. And they keep reminding you that it's a danger and it's too much trouble. And so they went back in the Google Play Store with Fortnite because it was too much of a problem. Like that would probably happen. So it's a very peculiar thing where apple is describing something that is more extreme than i think it would actually be that it's it's assuming that apple wouldn't take measures against it which i unless they were precluded by the law to take measures against it they would

add a lot of similar security measures to what they have on mac os and it makes me wonder again if what they're really trying to do here is just throw the you know make everybody terrified about the um about the the risks of of uh of side loading so that they can offer an alternative that's an interesting point i mean there is the parallel of you know this is also i'm sure help is is a thing that they also want to have out there for the Epic case, right? Because this is one of the things that Tim Sweeney wants is not in the App Store. But this paper is definitely doing multiple jobs for them, I think, or at least is their attempt. On this idea of like, they focus a lot on malware, right?

Right. But scams is also a part of this, and it may be a bigger part. I want to read a quote from John Porter at The Verge, as I thought this really nicely summed it up. Critics have pushed back against Apple's claims about the security of apps in its store. Despite Apple's assurances that it has a 500-plus strong team reviewing around 100,000 new apps and updates every week,

there have been numerous examples of scam apps slipping through its checks, including some that hide casinos and kids apps or others that charge extortionately high subscription fees. It's like, this is it, right? Like side loading. Sure.

You may stuff would get through that you wouldn't want, but app review doesn't protect it either. So that is, there's just yeah there is a a whole line through this of how some of apple's arguments i feel would be more convincing if apple was behaving differently in the real world right right? And this is a good example. If Apple could point to the App Store and say, we have spent a lot of time over the last 10 years

ensuring that there's no malware, there are no scams, we patrol that App Store, it is squeaky clean. And I know that Apple has put out things, John Gruber linked to something the other week about the sheer volume of accounts they disable and apps they kick off the store and the rejections they do and all that. But like it doesn't change the story, which is and yet all sorts of scam apps are on the store so much so that if you make an effort to look for them, you can find them easily.

Right. Like there's that guy who was out there on Twitter, basically listing off scams of the day. And it was relatively easy to find them. And they don't seem to be punished probably because they make money for Apple, but maybe because they're just not paying attention. It doesn't really matter. But I think it's a lot harder to make this case if you're Apple, if you can't point to what you're doing now and say, Make this case if you're Apple, if you can't point to what you're doing now and say, look how safe it is, look how clean it is, look at why you want to stay with us on our App Store model because we're squeaky clean. And they're not like they're not. They haven't made that enough of an effort to do that. effort to do that. And the same way goes for a lot of areas where it's not about scams. It's about Apple wanting to protect what it has or make more money. Again, most people would stay in the app

store. They wouldn't go. There would be warnings about installing other stuff and they would scare people away. And it's exactly the effect that Epic talked about in the Google Play Store. Most people aren't going to want to go outside the App Store. Most people are going to not want to go outside of Apple's payment system, I think, because it's super convenient and much better than bringing in your credit card and putting it in an app or in a webpage, right? I feel like Apple's, but they'll have to compete. And that might mean they have to change their terms, but they could do it. They just choose not to. You put in our show notes, this quote from Eric Neuenschwander, who is the head of user privacy at Apple, talking to Fast Company saying,

you know, sideloading actually eliminates choice because right now you're you you are uh tricked or duped into a dark alley and so then you're just not going to do what i don't know what you want to do this is one of the the like the most like you you said because right you said because there is no because in this quote like he doesn't actually ever really like no a bow on that state he just says it and moves on eliminates choice it's free well freedom is strength and or what is it uh this is strength it's it's we have always been at war it's double double speak

it is it is it is nonsense and in fact what it reminded me of is steve jobs who once said about the ipad um uh what do you mean we don't offer you freedom? We offer you freedom, freedom from programs that steal your data, freedom from porn. And anybody who tells you that by preventing you from getting something, they're supplying you with freedom, don't believe them. That's nonsense. That's doublespeak. That's just bizarre madness. So what I want to bring up is what Apple doesn't really talk about is like Apple, just like Apple doesn't patrol the App Store enough. Apple also doesn't want to talk about the fact that they just suppress kinds of apps that they don't want to exist on their platforms. And, you know, they can sometimes cloak it in the idea of protection. platforms and it you know they can sometimes cloak it in the idea of protection but the cloak varies in its coverage let's say sometimes the mask slips a little bit more but like if you

think about xbox game pass right apple views streaming games as an existential threat so they're just not going to allow them on their platform. Now they can get around it in the browser, but like Microsoft one had an app and they were ready to roll that out on iOS. They beta tested it in test flight and Apple said, nope. And, and their reason, they gave a reason, but their reason was ridiculous because the real reason, yeah, the real reason is they don't, they don't like the idea of, idea of people playing streamed games on their hardware because it's going to make it harder for them to have their own Apple Arcade and their own game library in the App Store. They don't want it. They don't want it. Well, that, I guess, is their right as the platform owner, right?

But let's not kid ourselves. One of the reasons that Apple doesn't want sideloading is because Apple wants to control everything that's on their platform. And it's not always for the user's benefit. Users would benefit by having Xbox Game Pass on the system. Users would benefit. Apple does not make that decision for users. It makes it for its own personal gain, whether it's on hardware sales or whether it's on app, their cut of app money, Apple makes that decision that way. There are also all sorts of categories

of apps that don't exist on the iOS app store because again, not because they don't work, but because Apple doesn't want them there. It used to be a lot more strict than it is now, but there's still very limited ways to implement development tools. You can't do emulators or there's a very limited set of emulators that you can do. Also, the developers of those tools that are on the store have to feel like the sword of Damocles is hanging over their head at all times because Apple can change its mind and say, oh, we said that was okay, but we had a conversation at a high level about Apple's long-term strategy and what benefits Apple, and we're going to take it off the store. Is it because of a user benefit?

Not really. Not generally. It's not. And so that's my frustration with this white paper is it's Apple saying, look, we control everything to protect you. But what is true is they control everything to protect you and to exert whatever control they need to do to make more money for Apple. And again, if that wasn't the case, Apple's arguments would be stronger. And so I come back to the fact that I wonder, is the goal here to set this up so that Apple can then come in and say, well, what we propose is a little more opening up of things in the

existing app store structure instead of blowing aside in the app store, because that would be bad. But like the, I think sometimes about a decade plus of iOS development, app development, and a lot of great apps out there. I love the platform. How many apps groundbreaking, life-changing, maybe world-changing apps, don't exist because either Apple wouldn't approve it or it would require a level of investment not knowing if Apple would approve it or kick it out after they had approved it. And so there's a chilling effect and they just don't do it. And that's where we are with the app store being the only path forward.

And there's there, you know, sideloading is not the only solution here. The other solution is that Apple changes its policies, but Apple is very self-interested up to this point in not wanting to bother changing its policies. and you know, the only option is not sideloading.

The other option is Apple opens up the App Store to more kinds of apps. I know for me, I would argue on Apple's side of sideloading because it does open up potential risks, right? Like there is a potential for things to get into the store that wouldn't, or get onto people's phones

that wouldn't be good, that would pretend to be something else, stuff that would get caught by AppReview, right? I would be on their side if the App Store rules were fairer. But considering I don't think the App Store rules are fair,

considering where we are today, if Apple refuses to make changes to those rules, then I want the ability for there to be sideloading so there can be increased competition. So Apple can have their feet held to the fire to do a better job. And so when I talk about fair, I think 30% is too high considering what developers get

um i think people should be able to use their own payment methods if they want to why should they not be able to why is apple pay or like apple's payment system the only way that things can be done basically what we were talking about what microsoft's doing right um i think app review is mostly fine you know i think there needs to be changes. But, you know, it's like, I agree with everything you said, by the way, right? Like, I think that the rules need to be clearer and they need to open up the types of apps

that they'll be let in. But honestly, so many of the problems that we have of app review are actually not about the rules of app review for the sake of why apps need to be reviewed. The issues are the money part. It is like the app review rules that are written to ensure that the in-app purchase is maintained.

That's my main issue with app review. And that's the issue with Xbox Game Pass, for example. The whole argument about sideloading, like, I appreciate that I can run any app on the Mac that I want. And I have to go through some security settings and all of that, but I can do it. I appreciate that.

I wouldn't mind that on the iPad and the iPhone. However, I do understand the size of the market and the fact that it's a lot of even more non-technical users than on the Mac and the iPhone. However, I do understand the size of the market and the fact that it's a lot of even more non-technical users than on the Mac by a lot, that you risk having thousands or millions of people who will be taken through similar kind of scams to what we've seen on the Mac, where they're asked to lower their security and install a thing, and they get talked into it because they don't understand it, and they end up in a place that's bad. And that even if Apple makes every effort to stop that, that that is going to happen. I get it. I think that Apple's white paper is a little bit disingenuous, but there are serious

security issues with sideloading. But why are we even talking about sideloading? We're talking about sideloading because there's no other option and Apple's so restrictive on what happens in the store. So you're not left like if you're an iOS developer and you want to do something and Apple doesn't want you to do it, you literally can't do it. You can't go to another platform. Not easily. You're basically saying retrain. You need to retrain for a different industry because this industry doesn't exist anymore or doesn't want you here anymore. And that's the challenge here is that I think the standard in a completely closed environment like the App Store for flexibility for the developers who are in it should be higher. Like one or the other, if you don't want to do sideloading, that's fine. What is your other offer? And you, you detailed it. And I, like I said, I think this may be kind of part of a ploy. It's an initial gambit for them to ultimately offer an alternative to sideloading that allows them to kind of back off on some of this stuff. It may even be a negotiating tactic with the legislators to say, what, you know, basically, what can we give you to not do this sideloading thing? Because it's really bad. But I, and you know, it might change in ways that developers don't like to, I want to make that point, like, okay, well, what if they reduce their cut? It's like, okay, well, they

could do that. But they may do some other they may start, okay, let's take Xcode Cloud for an example. Xcode Cloud is going to be a service that developers have to pay for. They have to pay Apple to do their hosted stuff. It's not covered in your developer account, as far as we know. Pricing to be announced later, but it's not going to be covered in your developer account. Well, that's an interesting precedent to set, right? That is another place where Apple is going to charge its developers. We've talked a lot, and I know you've talked about it on Connected as well, about the idea that Apple bought Dark Sky and they've extended the Dark Sky API a year. But there's the thought like there are a lot of sleazy weather apps out there. There are a lot of great weather apps out there. Weather data is complicated. Dark Sky is

buying data and then offering people access to that data and there's a business model there and we've talked about what if they offered a weather kit to app developers and said this is how you do your weather and you use the dark sky api which is now instead it's weather kit and but as we know um and have been reminded by some upgradians there is a cost to that data. It doesn't just appear out of nowhere. Dark Sky gets it from data providers.

Well, I was thinking that's an example where like, and I know this, like, I know this is going to sound wild, but like, well, maybe Apple charges for it. Maybe if you're a developer who wants to use WeatherKit, you have to pay Apple for it. Maybe if you're a developer who wants to use WeatherKit, you have to pay Apple for it. It's an OS framework that you have to pay for access to. Could be. There's all sorts of things they could do that would be radically different, that would be ways that developers might be unhappy, but that would be... And that's part of the unintended consequences of all of this, right? It's going to be messier than you think it's going to be, no matter what happens. But in the end, I can't look at that sideloading paper without rolling my eyes at how extreme its examples are and all the things that it misses and make myself wonder, surely this is part of a larger strategy.

and make myself wonder, surely this is part of a larger strategy. And the best I've come up with is they want to make this so scary that they can put in it in the context of what changes they want to make in order to keep their exclusivity on the App Store. And would I be okay if we never had sideloading on iOS and iPadOS?

Yeah, I mean, we've survived this long and I am really open to the idea that even if Apple did its best work, that you're opening to another level of kind of scamminess. But it's also a solution to a problem that Apple could solve itself, right? It's a solution to a problem

that Apple causes by its policies. And if Apple's proposing that you can't do the solution and it's not going to change its policies, that seems really dumb. So I have to kind of assume that it's don't do this because instead let's just modify our policies. But if they really believe that they can keep their control over the app store the way it is and avoid this sideloading as a as a potential threat it's a huge risk right like they detailed their own fears about it it's a huge risk if they don't change their policies they're risking making their platform worse at some point you gotta you gotta recalibrate and say no that's a mistake honestly at this point i don't even know what they're fighting for anymore. I really, I can't, like,

the billions of dollars a year? Like, is that what you're fighting for? Like, is that amount of money that important? You know, this, whatever small percentage of their revenue every year, like, is that the point? Is it so the services chart got,

like, what is, what's the fight for? I don't understand anymore. Like, it's so frustrating because look, very clearly, we love Apple, right? We love the products that they make. We love so much of what they do. But this is like, it's so tiring to me.

Like, what are you, what is the outcome you're looking for from this like do you think that if you keep like you keep doing this like people are gonna go oh all right then so i talked uh last week i think i mentioned michael gartenberg uh the analyst who used to uh work at apple um i followed him before and i knew him before and then he went inside at apple and uh and then he he left apple and he still doesn't talk about the Apple stuff too much. But something he said that struck me this week was Apple has within it this culture that is the near-death, near-bankruptcy culture of when Steve Jobs came back, right? Because Apple's corporate culture is almost entirely based on Steve Jobs changing the culture when he returned and sweeping people away.

And we talked about it with their work-from-home policies and it all comes from Steve Jobs. And it has benefited them by far more than it has hurt them. However, Apple was about to go out of business and Steve Jobs instilled a lot of... A combination of Apple being in a really rough state and I think Steve Jobs' own personality and his own particular quirks. Apple has a culture which is, we take every last dollar we can. Every last dollar we can. And it's a strategy that maybe doesn't win a lot of friends, but you can understand it

when you are the hard scrabble, almost went out of business, doesn't dominate any market, is scraping by for 8% market share, and they take every dollar. I get it. But does somebody need to tell them who they are? So this is what I'm saying is, now they're not that.

And yet that culture persists. They're the biggest company in the world. Right. So this is, now, hey, changing corporate culture is hard. It is. I did it. You know, I tried. I fought that monster, the corporate culture monster at IDG for a long, long time.

It's very hard to change corporate culture. And so that's my diagnosis from the outside is Apple has that in its culture because of its near-death experience that was, again, 20 plus years ago. And they're now the biggest company around, more or less um but it's still in there and my guess is that these are different parts of apple that are probably fighting each other internally which is there's a part of apple that if you couple it's take every dollar off the table with it's kind of also instilled by ste Jobs' arrogance that it believes that it creates all them on it, would insist that Apple is the one that makes it valuable. Apple's the one that makes the iPhone valuable. You know, Apple doesn't give 30% of iPhone sales to developers, right? But I would argue that without third-party apps,

the iPhone would never have succeeded, right? But Apple can't do it. They can't admit that someone other than Apple shares the responsibility for the success of their products. They can't admit it. That's also a Steve Jobs thing. So when I look at this, I am really seeing a company that is being pushed and the pressure keeps increasing to have to give in to accept that one of the illusions of their corporate culture is no longer valid. And what's terrifying about it as somebody who likes their products is I'm not entirely sure that they won't commit business suicide in order to hold to those beliefs, because that's what it's looking like. It probably won't commit business suicide in order to hold to those beliefs because that's what it's looking like like it probably won't happen but imagine a world where apple is forced to break itself apart

and ship iphones without built-in software or split off its os business from its hardware business at which point it's lost all of the things that make apple and apple's products what they are um so i you know if I could be a fly on the wall in these meetings, I'm really fascinated by this because you can see it. You can see it in the emails. You can see it in that white paper. There is really this belief at Apple that they need to control everything and they need to take every dollar off the table. And even in situations where it's clear that they could have gotten the heat off of them a long time ago, they haven't made those decisions. And even when they make a decision like that,

like with the small business program where they cut the cut of app developers who make a million dollars or less to 15% from 30%, even there, it's so riddled with footnotes. And they didn't just say, we're cutting it to 15%. They're like, well, for the people who are under a million, we're cutting it to 15%. But if they go over a million, then they're out of the program for a year and they've got to apply to come back in. And they didn't need to do that. They could have said the first million. But somebody in there is like, oh, I can't let Epic have the first million at 15%. We can't do that. We got to take that money from them. So yeah, I'm not saying... I do think Apple needs to change. I think that if you're somebody who believes, no, everything Apple's doing is great. The truth is

that have you seen what's going on in the legislatures and with the regulators, like there is increasing pressure and politicians do want to win and something's going to have to give. And, you know, I, I, anyway, I think the challenge really is that there are very closely held beliefs that Apple has that were built up by Steve Jobs. And as much as after Steve Jobs died, they said, um, you know, don't do, don't ask yourself, what would Steve do? The truth is that Apple's corporate culture is Steve Jobs' ultimate product, and this is a tough one to change. Even in the face of all of this, they just can't bear to give back money and give back a little bit of control because that's how they got here. And so they don't want to change it. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Privacy.com.

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Our thanks to Privacy for their support of this show and RelayFM. Hey, Mike, that last segment was sure fun, wasn't it? Let's have some fun. Let's cleanse our palates. Woo, yeah.

Summer of fun. Summer of fun. Ask Upgrade. Brian asks. Choo, choo, choo, choo. Oh, I don't know what that last part of the episode was. It was a summary laser. i don't know what that last part it was a summary laser i don't know very firing off in it was all pinks and and aquas very cute very cute i love it all right summer grilling gas or charcoal

grilling uh i am a i am a gas griller, charcoal is way too much effort and way too much work, like to set up and to clean and all those things. I just have, give me a gas grill and let me, uh, use that. Um, I live in a place where it doesn't get oppressively hot most of the time. And so I don't have to, um, have to resort to cooking outside. It's nice to do, but I don't have to as much as other people do. But I get the appeal of charcoal, but it's just it's just way too much work for for what I want to do. So I'm lazy gas all the way. Mike, do you grill things? Have you grilled things? I have. Charcoal is very much the standard in the uk i don't know

why this is exactly my expectation would be that people don't typically invest in gas grills because there isn't enough time in the year right so a charcoal grill is is the cheapest way to get into grilling and is maybe easiest for if you're doing it infrequently so my personal taste is for charcoal i like that the flavor that that imbues however i would always prefer to cook on a gas grill because it's so much easier so much easier so much easier i'm never in a situation where i'm grilling for a large number of people yeah and the amount of effort to grill and to set up and to start up and all of that to grill for you know two three four people it's just not like again if it was a cookout or something if i was if i was having like summer

parties where i would have eight or ten people over and i was cooking a lot of steaks or a lot of burgers or hot dogs or whatever. Yeah, I could see it, but I'm never doing that. And I do grill stuff all the time, all year round, honestly, with the gas grill because it's super easy to use. So that's my answer. We had a giant charcoal grill when I was a kid. I get it. I get the appeal of it. We had a giant charcoal grill when I was a kid. Like, I get it. I get the appeal of it. It's just simply too much effort for me.

Favorite summer food, asks Matt. Summer food? So, I mean, going across this line, this isn't a summer food, but it's a food I will only eat in the summer, which is a burger from a barbecue it's like a totally different thing right you go to a friend or family member's house and they cook you a burger on the barbecue oh yeah it's like you've typically got like a bun which is cold and right like a cheese

which is also cold and you put the cheese right it's like a different experience well you got you gotta put the cheese first off that they're doing it wrong because you got to put the cheese on the burger toward the end of the process so that and you got to put the buns face down on the grill so that they toast agree with all of this but like what i'm specifically talking about is a thing that i enjoy is that thing from a kid being a kid which is this is not the best way to cook the burger right but this is like that nostalgic flavor yeah and taste and like texture of this type of barbecued burger from say my uncle's house yeah i think i'm gonna go with that too actually i think that the the barbecued the grilled burger uh in on a hot day standing standing outside, sitting outside. I think that is as summery as it gets

for me too. I'm trying to think. The only other answer I would give would be like, is not a good answer, would be like a popsicle or something like that. But no, it's a burger off of a grill. I think that's just right. Jeremy asks, what is your favorite summer beverage? Iced tea was going to be my answer, but I'm going to save that for a future question. Spoilers. No, my favorite summer beverage is, the generic way to phrase it would probably be a shandy, but basically, and when I was in England england my friend simon uh taught me at a at a pub that no longer exists across the street from the emirates stadium my friend simon

who lives in highbury lives in in uh in that area uh introduced me to the lager top lager top yeah right which is literally a beer with lemonade on top but again it's british lemonade so it's actually a lemon lime lemon soda right it's what we call lemonade is closer to sprite it's bright because it's bubbly um but he introduced that to me and i was like you know beer with citrusy sweet in it is pretty great. Now it comes in different varieties. I will sometimes get a, sometimes I just will have a beer that is citrusy. So like a Belgian white with an orange flavor in it. Like I get the,

it's called Orange Avenue Wit from Coronado Brewing Company in San Diego. That's a great summer beer. There's a brewery called Two Pitchers that makes a grapefruit shandy. That's really good. Sometimes I will just take a beer, like a wheat beer, and I'll put lemonade in it. Our lemonade, so not the bubbly kind, but I'll do that, and that's good. And then there are even some citrusy things that are not quite as sweet but still have that citrus feel. There's a Coronado Brewing does an IPA, a hazy IPA that has pineapple.

Hi, everybody. Pineapple. And I found a bunch of other kind of hazy IPAs that I don't like IPAs, but the hazy IPAs are more citrusy in feel. And that for me, and I love dark beer and I still drink dark beer in the summertime. But for me, a light citrusy beer on a hot day is perfect, is the perfect summer beverage.

Now, Mike, what is it for you? Is it a Pimms cup? I hear those are big. Oh, yeah. We do love a Pimms here. Right. In London. My wife, Idina, has a weekly comic that she does on Instagram, and she just posted about this.

We enjoy Pimms very much in the summer. I also will say that I do enjoy a fruity IPA as well in the summer. Yeah. But for me as well, a cold Coke. Yeah, that's a good one. Just a cold Coke in a glass bottle. That is so different. It hits so different in the summer.

Got a real sense memory thing about that. Yeah, I have, it's Coke Zero, but we have that, keep that in the fridge. And Julian is mostly drinking that, but I will drink that occasionally on a hot day. And it's just, or coming back, we came back from a walk. We did a three mile hike through the hills and it was pretty warm day yesterday. And I came back and I was like, I'm going to have one of those cold Coke zeros. Cause there's something about it. It's a, and it's also feels like childhood a little bit. And, and it's just got that feeling that sense memory of summer, but in general, thank you, England for the lager top,

not the pimp's cup. I don't like the pimp's cup. I don't like that at all, but the lager top, uh, which is, I'm told not a very manly thing to do, but my friend Simon was like,

who cares? It's great. And he's right. It is great. So I'll, I'll put lemonade in beer. You make it manly. And also what does that even matter anyway?

Right? No, no, I think it's dumb, right? This is, that's my point is that people judge you if you put lemonade in your beer. You make it manly. And also, what does that even matter anyway, right? No, no, I think it's dumb, right? That's my point, is that people judge you if you put lemonade in your beer. And it's like, well, too bad. You're missing out on good things because you're dumb. So there, yeah, that's right.

Maxel asks, do you feel comfortable taking your devices to the beach? I always worry about sand on or in my iPhone or iPad if I use them while I lay down on a beach towel. I'm okay with it. It's not great, but I'm okay with it. I don't bring my iPhone or iPad to the beach generally. I bring the iPhone sometimes. And I figure I'm not too worried about the sand.

I think if the sand gets in it'll probably get out um the i do a lot though with my my watch so uh i'm not worried about i'm even less worried about it with a watch and i also bring the kindle to the beach a lot and it's the same thing it's like yeah the kindle might get a little sandy but i I don't care because that's why I have it. Most of that stuff is pretty waterproof now. So I don't get too worried about it. What about you, Mike? No, I don't think about it. I don't really care about it.

I mean, I have AppleCare. I'll just deal with it later. This is like a general thing for me. I think I'm not particularly precious with my devices because that preciousness means I'm just not going to use them. I mean, and this is similar to, like, my watches. Like, I don't get too precious with them. Like, if I bumped them into a wall and I scratched them a little bit,

like, okay, like, that's what I've done to that now. Like, that's just part of it now. Fine, right? Like, it's kind of how I feel about this kind of stuff. I try not to worry too much you're going to enjoy your things you know you buy things to use them yeah and i'll i'll put in a plug kindles or or any kind of e-ink reader those are like made for the beach or poolside they are made for it because the no matter how much backlight there is and how much anti-reflective coding

apple puts on an iphone or an ipad like it's still kind of hard to read in the sun and a kindle or a kobo i have a kobo now um but like those ink readers are so good because they're reflective like paper so you look at them in the sun and they're just crystal clear. And you know, you don't want to be bothered with notifications and stuff when you're sitting poolside. You want to just be reading your book. So definitely worth it. Instantiate This asks, does Jason ever turn to iced tea? Yes, is the answer. In fact, last week I made some sun tea where I put a big pitcher out with a bunch of tea bags in it and let it sit in the sun for a few hours. And then when I'm ready to go from the tea to the iced tea, it is available.

We also have an iced tea maker, which is this gadget that basically makes a lot of tea and dumps it in a pitcher that's full of ice. And it's great. And so on a hot day, that is absolutely what I will turn to in the afternoon. Iced tea is great. Also, sometimes I make a second pot of tea and it doesn't get finished. And it's the afternoon and I will just pour that into a glass with some ice. And, you know, that's how you make iced tea. Can you explain sun tea? Sun tea, it's like, you know, cold brew coffee?

Yeah. It's like that you know, cold brew coffee? Yeah. It's like that. It's cold brew tea. It's out in the sun. Do you add ice to it afterwards? Yeah, you add ice to it afterwards. Right. It's the sun part that was confusing to me.

Unless you like drinking warm tea. But the idea is the sun tea is like cold brew tea, except you use the power of the sun to heat it up so that it brews a little bit faster. But it's not brewing in boiling water. It's brewing in warm and so sun tea is a thing i don't know i grew up with it the idea that you take a big uh plastic or i mean not plastic a big glass um jar usually with like a little dispenser on the bottom but not necessarily and you put in like a bunch of tea bags and you just sit it outside and the sun heats it up.

So it's kind of cold brew tea, except a little faster than that. And, uh, and then, you know, you, you bring it in and you drink the tea.

It's, it's, it's pretty simple, but it's kind of a fun thing to do. I enjoy sweet iced tea, but it's like only a thing I'll have if I'm like in Memphis or something. Right. I'll get like a sweet iced tea.

So sweet tea is just, you know, I mean, sweet tea in the South is they just add, they don't ask. You have to ask to not have sweet tea. They just put sugar or syrup in the tea to make it sweet. It's an ungodly amount too. I love it, but it is a ridiculous amount. It's so good, but it's also too much.

I put sweetener in my iced tea. I do. I want it sweeter. I put honey in my tea in the morning. I sweeten tea. I am a tea sweetener. But the sweet tea, the southern sweet tea, although it is amazing, is also, I couldn't have that every time because it would kill me. And also, it's too much.

But it's so good. It's too much. It's so good it's too much it's so good kim wants to know what my preferred summer coffee is so i like uh iced lattes um so it's effectively the entire all of the contents of a latte right but just without any of the heat so it's like a bunch of milk and stuff it's not firm milk obviously because it adds the heat. So it's just like espresso with milk. I do not sweeten coffee, hot coffee. I do like my iced lattes to be sweet. I don't know why. I mean, a lot of the time,

and especially for me, the way that I do prefer an iced latte is with cold brew, which is stronger. So I like to put a bit of sweetener in that. But just in general, I prefer to have sweetener. I don't know if there's something about, honestly, the, I don't know this, like the heating of the milk, which might make it sweeter,

that when you add hot milk, like a hot milk coffee drink, that there is more sweetness in that milk. So I don't know if that's the case this is a theory that i am just creating uh right now top of my head yeah i like an ice latte marley's asks what is your go-to drink to cool off on a hot day we already answered this with our favorite beverage i feel like we've already covered this ground which is it could be a cold coke it could be an iced tea or it could be a a beer with some sort of citrus flavor like a lager top or a shandy. I mean, I would just also drink a bunch of water, like a bunch of cold water.

Oh, sure. Do me nicely. Just put a 32-ounce big giant plastic tumbler with ice and water. Kate wants to know, what is your favorite ice cream? I'd probably say mint chocolate chip although that's how I know we've had this question before because it's mine too I love mint chocolate chip as well yeah I also don't sleep on vanilla like vanilla is great and I know vanilla is a synonym for boring but like literally I just made some homemade vanilla ice cream last night very nice um if you've got a KitchenAid mixer, by the way,

a little tip here, a little Summer of Fun tip. If you have a KitchenAid mixer, get the Ice Cream Maker attachment. It is the best ice cream maker I have ever had, and I've gone through a lot of them. But the bowl just goes where your mixer bowl would have been, and there's like a little paddle thing that goes on it, and you let it run on the low speed for 20 minutes and uh and then put the result in the

freezer for like an hour or two and you got great ice cream so i highly recommend homemade ice cream is the best it's it's just because it doesn't it not only was it not made in a factory but it's like also not been transferred in various trucks that may have melted a little and then refrozen it a little it's got more air in it so like good homemade ice cream is amazing um so i'll throw that out there and especially if you've got a kitchenaid mixer get the ice cream maker so good i will also say like so uh mint choc chip is my favorite like going to like a store and getting a cone or whatever but i I also love many Ben & Jerry's flavors. Oh, yeah. I mean, we had one.

Like I love peanut butter. So peanut butter and cookie dough is good. And chocolate, chocolate brownie. Chocolate fudge brownie was a go-to Ben & Jerry's flavor for me for a while when we had a, when we lived near a Ben and Jerry's retail outlet, right? That was pretty great. And then we have a great ice cream chain that just went out of business during the pandemic called Three Twins, and they had some really great chocolate flavors, especially.

So I love all ice cream, but in a pinch, Mint Chip is just my go-to. My favorite ice cream place in the world, though, is Salt and Straw. And I think I've been to three of them now, or in like three different places. Super good. Big fan. Yeah, RIP Three Twins. So good.

And then they decided to expand into like the... Do you know the ice cream business? The retail ice cream shipping to stores? Not the having your own store, but like shipping to stores. That business is super cutthroat. And these guys tried their best, but it turns out that they're

as nice as they were as people and as good as their ice cream was, you can't compete in the freezer section. That's a shame. It's just, it's brutal in there. It's hard to compete. Like ice cream, it's good, but boy, don't be in the ice cream business. That's a shame. It's just, it's brutal in there. It's hard to compete. Like ice cream, it's good, but boy, don't be in the ice cream business.

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months for free. That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n.com slash upgrade to learn more. Thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM. Next question comes from Simon. Do you prefer sand beaches, pebble beaches, or no beach at all? Hmm. I prefer sand beaches. Very traditional. Like a good sand beach.

Put down a towel, put up a little umbrella or something, some other kind of shade. Ideally, it's an ocean where you're getting the kind of the waves pounding a little bit i love it you know there's a reason i love hawaii mike one of the reasons is that the beaches they're really good so i like i like that this is where john syracuse would pop in and say something about mud beaches at lakes. I don't do that. I'm a sand beach kind of person. I'm going to roll this up with David's question. He says, for a summer vacation, lake house or beach house? So I'm assuming you're beach house. I've never had a lake vacation. We don't have big lakes here right like lake tourism is i have had a lake vacation in the uk i've had two because i've been to the lake district twice and the lakes there are beautiful and wonderful and you take a little boat out and it's it's great but i i ultimately choose i want

to be by the beach and and so that would be my choice yeah like the lake district is like its own thing here right like people don't go to the lake district is my expectation in a way as if this is kind of like our beach vacation right which is my understanding at least from people i know in america that that is a thing that you can do right like you can go to a lake and you're basically at the beach well yeah if you're if you're at um if you're in like minnesota or something like i have people i know in minnesota and they go you know they go to their cabin in the lakes and and they're on a lake and it's it's fine it's great but like what's my preference uh my preference is definitely uh the beach like that's just that's just how it is

there's nothing wrong with lakes. Lakes are fine. We used to go to a family camp up in the Sierras by a lake and would use a little paddle boat and go hike around the lake and then paddle on the lake. And it's all great. That's fun. But if I had to choose, I'm going to go beach. I like sand beaches.

I don't know who prefers pebble beaches. I don't know why you would prefer that. I mean, I grew up with pebble beaches. It's very normal in the UK. I don't know why you would want to sit on a pebble beach. I read a great story. I think it was in the New York Times. And it was about how British people are vacationing in the UK this year because they have no other choice. who are now not

because everybody in the UK now goes on vacation to Spain where they can have a sunny beach. And one of the things that struck me about it, it was Bognor. Bognor Regis was the town that they went to. And it's like... Oh, I love hearing you say that, Jason.

That's so fun for me. How do you say it? Bognor Regis? No, no, no, no, no. It's not that, Jason. That's so fun for me. How do you say it? Bonior, Reggie? No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not that different. It's just like Bognor Regis. It's just like the Bognor, like the way that, I don't know. Well, so Bognor used to be Bognor and then the king, and then the king came there and they're like, oh man, the king came here.

We're going to rename the town with Regis on the end for king. Cause this is like where the king's place. And there's apparently a rumor that on his deathbed, they're like, no, no, no, you'll get better.

And you'll go to Bogner. And he, and his last words allegedly were, I don't want to go to Bogner, which is, they've been trying to live that down. The point is they got a beach. It's pebbly.

The whole story is sort of like the people here are very happy that people are coming, but also we can see all the reasons why people don't go there anymore so there you go bogner enjoy i mean a uk beach holiday is its own like thing you know i guess that's how i did all my holidays growing up got a black pool or something yeah and it's like amusements which is an arcade and very particular types of donuts. Boardwalk kind of thing. I love all that kind of stuff. It has a special place in my heart, you know,

but I much prefer a real beach in a hot place. But yeah, I'm not an all-day beach person. I don't do very well in the sun, right? Like I burn very easily. The British people have that. But I like it and I love the ocean. You know, like I like well in the sun right like i i burn very easily right uh british people but i like it and i love the ocean you know like i like getting in the ocean so the anyway the um the headline in the new york times uh is next year brits will fly abroad but for now it's bogner bingo yep very good because bingo is also a big thing. Yes. Well, that story starts out with people playing bingo. Yeah.

And yeah, it's, you know, everybody's vacations got a little weird, you know, because of the pandemic and are still a little bit weird. So that's just part of it. So good for the people of Bogner that they've got, you know, people visiting. But what hit me about that story was when they got to the part where they're like, there's a beach but oh it's really not good i thought oh no the beach isn't it's a rocky beach that's no good no no who who wants to go there patrick wants to know favorite baseball park food hot dog yeah it's a hot dog there are lots of you know we have great food at ballparks these days they like the the um food and drink at american ballparks is generally so much better than it

used to be there are some great um food options i've had a great barbecue sandwich at the at the giant stadium i've had a fantastic uh there's a they have a rice a hot rice and bean bowl the cha-cha bowl that is uh amazing but like and then the garlic fries are famous like there are all these all these things you can get that are good i had shake shack at the met stadium right like there are options my favorite favorite. I mean, and that I still get, we went to a game a few weeks ago, our first game this year or last year. And in the end, what did I have?

A couple, a couple of little all beef hot dogs from the hot dog stand. It's like, cause it's baseball, like a beer and a hot dog. I sometimes get those fancy baseball pretensions and I go get a cha-cha bowl or a barbecue sandwich or something like that. But most of the time just got to go got to go with the hot dog and beer.

Brantz asks, prescription sunglasses, sunglasses with contact lenses or no sunglasses? I refuse the validity of this question. Okay. I have glasses, prescription glasses, and little sunglass things that I clip onto them. Oh, you do a clip-on. Yeah, yeah.

You do good clip-on. Your clip-on's good. Yeah, because I don't want to have an extra pair of glasses when it's bright and then take them off when the cloud goes in front of the sun. So I just have the little clips

that go on my regular glasses what about you this is so difficult for me like i would prefer prescription sunglasses but then i also have to carry the glasses yeah it's so frustrating i don't do contact lenses i don't want to i have no desire um most of the time i would do no sunglasses uh but like i will never wear sunglasses in the uk because it's just like i just don't do it but if i'm going on vacation i will take my prescription sunglasses and we'll just try and get around that um but i much prefer to to both, but it's annoying. Maybe I should look into some cool clip-ons too, like Jason's. Jason has cool clip-ons. Yeah, I had to buy...

Basically, if I want clip-ons, I have to shop for glasses that come with clip-ons or that you can buy clip-ons for. Because otherwise you're retrofitting it and it never fits right and they don't look right. So I just put that in my list. Because I don't mind carrying the clips around. I mean, it is an extra something to carry around, but it's a lot less of a problem than bringing a whole other pair of glasses with me.

People in the Discord are upset that I don't, as if it doesn't get sunny in the UK. Look, get sunny in the UK. I know that, right? And lots of people wear sunglasses here, but then I have to also carry my glasses. And like, if I'm in the UK. I know that, right? And lots of people wear sunglasses here. But then I have to also carry my glasses. And if I'm in the summer, I don't want a bag, right? Because it's hot.

So I don't want a bag, right? So I go with just my regular glasses and have no sunglasses. Nathan asks, in the areas where each of you live, how many months does summer feel like it lasts? And is that enough summer, not enough, or too much? Wow. Great question. I think it might be easier for me to answer this.

Go ahead. About three months, right? Kind of starts in June, ends in September, by and large. That can shift. But we're looking at about three months and also like British summer varies right like today it's like 18 degrees but that still feels summery to me because it's a little bit rainy in in the way that summer is rainy which is different to winter rainy fun summer rainy is way worse It's so much worse And

I would say For me Here that's enough Like just enough Verging on too much Yeah So This is a complicated question because of where I live

I would say that we get summer in, in September and October and then interspersed from May through the end of August, which is four months. There's a month or two worth of summer in there in those four months so on one level like on one level honestly from may to the end of october is the dry season here and it's of a kind but like for for where i live feeling like it's summer down here by the bay only really happens for two months plus a handful of weeks scattered throughout the rest of the summer. And my answer is going to be, I don't think that's enough summer. I would like, you know, I happen to live at a place that has a little too much fog for me. I wish I was a little bit warmer here. And my wife disagrees. She likes this level. She doesn't want it hotter. I would like it a little hotter. I grew up where it was very hot and we had very hot summers and I miss having

a little bit more warmth. Oh, the good news is just wait around and it gets hotter. So, uh, and in terms of, of the overall health of my state, I would say it's too much summer in the sense that we need more rain and it doesn't rain here in the summer. So in that way, the summer should be shorter, but I don't get to control the weather. Not yet anyway.

Not, I mean, give me time. My weather stations are more for measuring than controlling so far. You're just learning right now. Dave asks, what are your favorite gadgets or tools that you only use during the summer? Well, for me, a lot of the stuff that gets pulled out of the storage in the summer is like the cushions for the backyard furniture and the hammock. We do use the grill all year long. So, and then also we've got string lights over our patio now, which is really nice. And that's

a nice little gadget that, you know, in the winter, it's less likely that we're going to be hanging out outside. That's more of a summer thing. And even then only on summer days where it's not freezing outside after the sun goes down but uh i would say the string lights the the you know the backyard furniture the hammock stuff like that is i actually also put a um i have a sonos speaker that i put outside in the summer and it just sits out there so i can airplay to it when we're out there that's it what about you my dyson fan yeah oh yeah i've got i've got a one of those and i only use that in the summer that's true i mean it's like i'm kind of cheating a little bit we have we have a couple one of them we only use in the summer uh the other one it's one of the hot cool

fans so we do use it in the winter as well but mine is just a cool only fans that this and it sits on my um ever since i bought i used to have a floor one and then Jamie took that off to college. And I was like, all right, I got to get a new fan. And I thought, I'm going to get the Dyson fan. They really are the best. They are expensive, but they're so good. Yeah. So it sits on my desk most of the time.

Although on a really hot day, I'll carry it into the living room and we'll run it in there. But it mostly just sits on my desk sort of very quietly circulating the air in here on a warm day. It's nice. And Kim wants to know, jason how's your garden furniture from ikea holding up the uh the ikea furniture is great i mentioned the uh cushions that's all part of frozen quest back in the day one one cover still i know it came from Norway. Thank you, Norway. Episode 213 of Upgrade starting at around 45 minutes for Ozon Quest.

But it's great. You know, I was always reluctant to get you know, it's plastic furniture basically but it's woven and it's sort of rattan-like and I was never really a fan of that material. But the fact is it's held up really well. The cushions are great. We take them, you know, when it's going to rain, which really doesn't happen unless you're really in the sort of beginning of spring. Otherwise we put them away for the winter.

But so they just basically stay out there and I've got to clean them off and, you know, occasionally a bird will drop on them or we'll get a bunch of leaves and stuff and pollen you gotta brush off but basically they're really comfortable it's really nice having a couch outside essentially and then um we have some uh not from ikea but we have a a table and chairs and stuff that we bought a while ago that is falling apart. And I am, I ordered new, a new table and chairs and stuff that I'm really looking forward to, because I think that's going to kind of be the final, if anything can be considered final, upgrade to the backyard ever since we poured the concrete and really redid our backyard. And so you put the new concrete, the string lights, the Ikea furniture, and then this new table that we're

going to get. I feel like we'll finally kind of completed our project to make our backyard nicer because our house isn't very big. And so when it's nice out, it is really nice to be able to use. The house gets bigger. And I'll tell you, last year during the pandemic, when we had four people stuck in our house, it was really nice when the weather turned better to be able to spill over out into the outside. It's good to have that space, and I like using it. Thank you to everybody who sent in a summer-themed Ask Upgrade question. If you would like to send us one in for the future.

I mean, if you really have some summer question that we haven't asked, you can feel free to send them in, but usually they're tech-focused. Just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. You can go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you will get longer ad-free episodes every single week. If you need a longer episode than this one today, go for it. You can get it.

We did it. And that's, I salute you. Also, go to UpgradeYourWardrobe.com where you can pick up a Summer of Fun t-shirt or a Dongletown t-shirt or a Dongletown Surf Club t-shirt available for just two weeks. Please go there right now. UpgradeYourWardrobe.com. Click the link in the show notes too if you would like to. Thank you to ExpressVPN, Privacy, Instabug, and Bombas for their support of this show. If you'd like to find Jason online,

you can go to sixcolors.com, and he is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.