Upgrade - 369: The One With How Titles Are Made

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

As Jason and Myke wait for the announcement of an iPhone launch event, they discuss Apple's curious set of incremental changes to App Store policies, what those changes mean, and how they inform Apple's possible future strategies.

From RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode 369. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom, Membleful, and Gabby. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. How are you? I'm good. Wow. Pregnant pause there. If you asked me how my weekend was, I would say it's going well so far because, of course, we're recording this on Labor Day, a holiday. I'm informed a holiday

in America for people who do not work for themselves and pay attention to the calendar. But I've been informed by my school-going son and my working wife that they aren't working today. But, you know, upgrade soldiers on. I wonder if it's worse that today I thought to myself, isn't it a holiday today? Definitely not here, it isn't. No. That's what I've got going on. It's one of those American holidays. Isn't it a holiday today? Definitely not here, it isn't. No. That's what I've got going on.

It's one of those American holidays. But Upgrade, often, even as a Monday program, we could often be preempted by holiday programming. But we rarely are, unless one of us is going somewhere for a long holiday weekend or something. We generally are just going to blow right past the conventions of people taking time off and just continue to grind out, upgrade. We have a Hashtag Snow Talk question for you. It comes from JD. When and why did you decide to make show name quotes as opposed to the topic?

So the episodes of every show we have as a quote from something said in the show. Why do we do that? I feel like podcasts have done that for a long time. And I mean, right? Like podcasts have done this for a long time. So that's part of it is there's sort of a convention. And the other thing is, so I had this with The Incomparable

because The Incomparable does the same thing. And I had a guy who wrote to me and said, why do you have these titles that have nothing to do with the show is about? If you're talking about a movie, your title should be the name of the movie. And I thought, well, one, that's boring, right? It's boring. It's boring. But we did create in The Incomparable CMS, there is now a field called boring title or sorry, it's title underscore boring for that guy. And I still will fill it in. And it shows up in the RSS feed and it shows up in a bunch of other places. So after the clever title, like below it as a footnote, it says what we actually talked about. talked about but in general i just i find it boring and for some a show like upgrade i don't know like we're not going to do a title with a list of like all eight things we talked about right and if you only make it about one or two of them you're not being fair to the episode because the episode is about more than those things yeah this goes back to twit i think like so many things

not just in technology podcasting in in podcasting, go back to Twit, and they would pick out a title based on something said. And then for 5x5, they started with an audience submission-based and voting system, which is what we also do. So mostly now, I believe it's all in our members' but as we are talking people are suggesting titles there's a bot that collects them and then afterwards if you're listening live people vote on the titles and then we use that voting to help us pick one we have a little hand in it ourselves it's also as well on this show though we do break from this rule on occasion so drafts on occasion. So drafts, if we have interviews, stuff like that, there are specific episodes that we name purposefully. There are also some of my shows I don't do it on either. So like on the

Test Drivers, Austin picks the title because Austin's a YouTuber and comes up with titles for things all the time. So I just say to him, what do you want to call it? Plus as well, it's harder with the shows that aren't recorded live. Yes. I'm not very good at writing the titles down as I'm recording. So it's better when we record live because people just suggest lots of things that we say. Yeah, it's true. And so I appreciate the idea.

Like the reason I added the boring title field in The Incomparable is I appreciate appreciate that people want to we have an index so like you can find it anyway but the people want to know wait a second what is this episode about and so i i i realized that enough to do that but i also didn't i thought it made the show really boring um if we did that but yeah when we when we really are doing something very particular a very special kind of thing like a draft or an interview we be we're sure to mention it and then otherwise we just kind of let it go. Because the alternative would be like, what I do for the Six Colors podcast is it's the date. That's it, right? Like that's the alternative is you could just give it a date or something or just the episode number. And that would be super boring. So if you don't want to label it as something very specific

and you don't want to be super boring, what are you left with? And I thought that it's a smart convention to just sort of have it be something fun and interesting and maybe makes you curious about what the episode's going to discuss or as you're listening, wonder what that thing means.

When you hear it, you go, oh, there's the episode title. And that's about all. Also, I think a lot of people who listen to podcasts don't even know about episode titles or care. So there's that too. Maybe we should adopt a friend's style. You know, be like the one with app store guidelines.

A lot of TV shows do that. Like every episode is sort of phrased the same way. Could do that. Probably won't. The one with the new iPhone. Repeat every year. The one with how titles are made. Hey-o.

That could actually be the title of this episode. We'll find out. If you'd like to send in a suggestion to help us open a show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or you can use question mark SnowTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. I would like to remind our listeners about our St. Jude campaign. It is September. We are fully in September now.

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will receive an exclusive RelayFM sticker or thanks pack at the end of the campaign. And if your company matches donations, please send us a note and we can have that amount routed through to the campaign. Just email steven at relay.fm. And the Relm podcastathon for saint jude oh my god it's happening so soon next friday september 17th from 12 to 8 p.m eastern time uh that is us eastern time at twitch.tv slash relay fm we We are having an increasing amount of meetings

and calls and getting everything put together starting this Sunday. I'm going to be breaking down Mega Studio and rebuilding it in its podcast-a-thon glory. So tune in and help us support St. Jude. Donate today at stjude.org slash relay. Let's cure childhood cancer together. And I will be on that podcast-a-thon with a game show.

We recorded, we actually have so many people who wanted to be involved, so many relay hosts that we're recording two game shows. I'm not quite sure. One will probably go in the podcast-a-thon and one will probably be posted as a bonus somewhere else. Not quite sure about that, but we recorded the first one this weekend and it went pretty well, I thought. So I'm looking forward to editing that together and

getting it in podcast-a-thon shape and appearing on the podcast-a-thon. Biggest ever. Of course. Stjude.org. As a programming note, so it's Monday the 6th,

right now. I think it's fair to assume that there is going to be an iPhone event next Tuesday. I think the most likely scenario is that tomorrow, as we record this, tomorrow or Wednesday, people are going to get emails saying, hey, you're cordially invited to watch a video stream. And at that point, we have a problem because we don't have an episode until the event. And we always like to do a draft.

And so during COVID times, we've basically been put in this position where we have to get to do an extra special bonus draft episode of upgrade so if that is the case if invites go out this week and the afion event is going to be on the 14th of september which is the expectation we'll be releasing a bonus episode with a draft uh probably on friday of this week so the 10th if that doesn't happen this, it will happen the week after probably. Unless, of course, Apple give a two-week notice, but that's unlikely. Wouldn't that be nice? So basically what we're saying now is if you hear that Apple is doing an event next week and you're wondering about the upgrade draft, just check your podcast player

starting sort of later on Friday or through the weekend or even Monday morning, and you will get that draft episode. And then assuming that they're doing the event on Tuesday, we will be back on Tuesday after the event to talk about what Apple announced. Yeah. Well, a little scheduling, a little housekeeping for podcasts, you know. Just there'll be a bonus episode because we don't get two weeks' notice anymore. It will be live-streamed as usually we would do with the draft.

We'll be live-streaming that. And, of course, we'll be live-streaming usually we would do with the draft. We'll be live streaming that. And of course, we'll be live streaming with the post event coverage. You can always listen live at relay.fm slash live. And the chat usually occurs in the Relay.fm members Discord, which you can get access to. If you sign up for Upgrade Plus, go to getupgradeplus.com. You get access to the Discord along with tons of other benefits, including longer ad-free episodes of Upgrade every single week. week it's true we talk about all sorts of wacky stuff and all sorts of stuff bonus content last week i think we did a really good job of our call-in episode i was really happy with how it came together and you wrote a really good article on six colors about all of

the many many tools that we use to put it together most Most of which are by Rogamiba. Yeah. I heard from several people and I've had this question before about like, how did you put that together? And so I detailed it in that post. There's a lot in there because we are, I mean, the short version of it is I have to use Farago, which is their soundboard app. I use Loopback to create a virtual audio input that is both my microphone and the output from the Farago app. And I have to set Zoom to use that as my microphone so that you can hear the sound effects, or in this case, the clips, as well as my voice. And then I use Audio Hijack, which we use normally to record the show, but I have a special block of Audio Hijack recording setup thingies

that records my audio on one track and the sound effects on another track. So that instead, and in fact, this is what happened after the show. You're like, oh, oh no, your file doesn't have the sound effects and I'm going to have to drop in all three, you know, two dozen questions by hand.

And they said, no, there's also, look in there, there's another track that's just the sound effects, which is great because then you put that in and they're all synced up. And so we, you know, it's a whole thing we had to do in order to get to it. And if you've ever wondered what one of Mike's logic projects looks like for Upgrade, there's a screenshot of it in there too because you were very kind enough to

send me a screenshot of your your logic project that i was actually benefited from my new weird and wonderful system for this so um i now since i since i started recording at my studio i have this worry that i'm gonna record the show i'm go home, and then there's an error in the show. Right. And then what am I going to do, right? What, am I going to come back and then fix it? Like, you know, I don't live within walking distance. It's a trip to get here.

It's a commute. So I have created since a new system where all of my recordings get saved directly to dropbox everything is in dropbox 100 like including like what i'm recording right now is being saved by audio hijack into a dropbox folder so it's constantly uploading everything just stays in dropbox so when i when you asked me that question, I was at home. And so I was able to just go to the project in my Dropbox folder, just open it up and take the screenshot because it was all there for me. That's very nice. And the other thing I detailed in here, just for people who are curious, the way we did the call-in show was with a Dropbox file request,

which is a feature that they added a few years ago. And I love it so much. It's such a great feature. I think it's kind of unheralded. But the idea is you can take a Dropbox folder, basically, and make it a file request. Or maybe it's the reverse. You make a file request, it makes a folder in your Dropbox, and it gives you a URL that you can give to people. And when they go to that link, they get a little box that says, drag your file in here or click to choose it. And it uploads the file and puts it in that folder in your Dropbox.

And I use this for all of my podcast file transfer now. It's really, instead of having to deal with like inviting somebody to a shared folder or something like that, you just give them this link and they upload the file and so we used that for the questions or like hoping someone will upload their audio and then remember to send you the link when they're done or anything like that you know right this this is the most efficient way by far to do that um and it's a feature that i really love and it's one of the features really keeping me on

Dropbox is this feature I would not I don't I don't want to give it up so I'm not going to yeah and what was really great about it because it just creates a folder in your Dropbox account Jason could invite me to that folder so I also got all the clips that's right and then so we were doing a real Dropbox kind of workflow there where you were editing the clips and then I kind of denoised and de-echoed a couple of the clips and then I put them in Farago and it was all just kind of happening in Dropbox. That was a lot of fun. So that's the behind the scenes of how that worked. I wish it was simpler to do something like playing audio on a podcast. It's not, but we've kind of got a system now. So that's good. one of the apps that i used it's in the post made by rogan beaver is an app called fission f-i-s-s-i-o-n uh like nuclear fission it is a very lightweight

um mp3 editor it does a couple of interesting things it's it it does but you can do a bunch of mp3 editing without needing to re-encode which is surprisingly rare as a feature that's the biggest feature i would say is that everything else, if you have an edit you need to make to an MP3, you've got to go back to the original. Or if you don't have the original, you have to convert it into a lossless file and then edit it and then save it back out. So you're double encoding it and it's no good. Fission just edits the MP3. It never converts it into another format. So you're not going to change the quality of the

audio or anything and it's an it's an app that i use for very like just very quick lightweight editing tasks like for what i was doing with the clips it's just like cutting the ends off them or you know like cutting out maybe a gap or two right well audio roger meba just announced that this application which was their last app is in the Mac App Store, will no longer be available in the Mac App Store. I'd like to read a quote from Ruggamiba. Despite a decade of feedback from countless developers and users, Apple has made scant few changes and the store remains beset with issues. When you couple the many shortcomings and issues of Apple's restrictive policies that preclude most of

our software from appearing there, the Mac App Store is clearly a poor fit for us. With the removal of fission, we no longer have any products within the Mac App Store. Yep. It's like Apple was making an effort to get some people in the Mac App Store, but it didn't really seem to change the trajectory. When the Mac App Store started, I think all of us thought it was going to follow the trajectory of the iOS App Store

and it was going to be a big deal and it was going to drive Mac software sales and it was going to be a great place for Mac developers to go. And it's turned out to not be that. And in fact, after the last few years, maybe even the last few months, but definitely the last few years, I'm starting to think that the lesson the Mac App Store has taught us is that the only reason anybody puts

up with the iOS App Store is because there's no alternative. And when there's an alternative, nobody puts up with the App Store. Right? Like, you could interpret the reaction the Mac App Store has gotten to be an indictment of the fact that the iOS App Store is only successful because it's the only game in town. They should do what Microsoft's doing, I think, with Windows 11. Just everything can be in the App Store is only successful because it's the only game in town. They should do what Microsoft's doing, I think, with Windows 11.

Just everything can be in the App Store. And you can use your own payment processors. It's just this is the place you go to get apps. Well, they basically turned it into a catalog of Windows software. Which I think is great. Instead of a curated, hosted by the vendor store, they turned it into a catalog they're still doing curation though like that microsoft is doing curation there will be a curated part but the idea is just like no matter who you are like what type of app you make i mean it's eventually going

to be android apps as well you can just put it on the on the windows uh app store i think it's called the microsoft store i don't remember what it's called. It's one of those names. But it's just available and you can just go there and get it. Adobe's putting all their apps in it. But they're going to continue using their own payment processors. I think that's the right way to go. This is the one place

for software. But Apple's not going to do that. Nope. This is slightly follow-up, but also a topic. Apple have delayed their CSAM detection tools. This is a quote from Apple, like a press quote. Last month, we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them

and limit the spread of child sexual abuse material. Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect, input, and make improvements before releasing these critical, important child safety features. Did you see this coming? Well, it's hard. It's always hard to say exactly what Apple is going to do with issues like this and whether they're going to just kind of grit their teeth or whether they're going to delay it and not tell anybody or whether they're going to actually delay it. So I was a little surprised, but at the same time, this was the thing they should have done. So I'm glad that they did it because this rollout was a disaster.

Like it was a disaster on all fronts. It was a disaster because they got their messaging wrong. They conflated features that they shouldn't have conflated. And that led to confusion. And they had to do the many FAQ files and continue furnishing various executives up the chain to explain how it worked. And then they have all these groups who are experts in this field saying the neural hash thing has a lot of problems. And we are skeptical that you can actually use it in this way.

And, you know, users being upset about the idea of Apple having software on their device that looks at their looks at their images, even though Apple was like, no, but it's in the pipeline. It's in the pipeline. Right. Because there's a disconnect between what Apple, as we talked about a few weeks ago, what Apple views this feature as being and what it is, or at least how many other people view this feature. So I think it's really smart of them to basically say, not yet. We're listening. We know this is a problem. What they didn't do is say they aren't going to do it. They said they're going to wait and collect input and make improvements, right? So that's good because all they've been doing is damage control since they announced this thing. It is an indictment of the fact that they could have done this in a different way

and been, instead of just surprising everybody with this feature that did not need to be a surprise, they could have announced that they were working on this and they could have worked with people in the field, both on the technical side and in the CSAM field in general, to get more ahead of this. But instead they took so many people by surprise,

which seems totally unnecessary. So it's a good thing that they're unwinding it, but why did they get in this position to begin with? It wasn't like a cool product, right? Like, wow, so cool. So thank you for keeping it secret. Surprise. As you say,

they should have engaged with people on it or they should have positioned this as a thing that they were looking for feedback on. And like, I've seen some people saying like, oh, they, you know, they were looking for feedback. No, they weren't. Apple considered this done. Yeah, it was done.

When they showed it off. They were not expecting feedback. They were expecting, like we talked about before, they were expecting- Look how smart we are. Yeah, they were expecting praise for how they did this amazing technology that totally eliminates the idea of scanning on the server and therefore is a huge user privacy win that still stops the bad guys and everybody let's praise Apple. And it was a swing and a miss, right?

Like that's not what happened at all. And they're having a similar bit of pushback right now I've seen to the ID card thing that they're starting to roll out. I've been seeing some people, I've seen Nilay Patel has been having some great, I've been seeing him talk about it on Twitter a bunch, just saying the idea of putting your ID card

on your device seems like a concerning thing to many people. So I'm a little more skeptical of this one, of the backlash to it, because first off, Apple announced this in June, and it's like people are bored and they're trying to gin up something now that it's september um because i think it comes from a potentially deliberate misunderstanding of how this feature works because my understanding is that the id card feature is an NFC feature. It's a tap to present feature.

And that there's nothing on the phone itself that is that you have to hand your phone over and you don't have to unlock your phone. Like this feature seems to have been built to address all of the criticism that's coming two and a half months later after the announcement about the feature. And so, you know, you got to look at the details. And I understand the idea of like building a feature where you have to unlock your phone and hand it to the cops. It's like, well, that's terrible. You shouldn't do that. But this feature doesn't appear to be that. This feature appears to allow you to present necessary information. And it's only, it's a limited set of information to prove your identity and through a tap. And so in the end, the cop that pulls you over isn't going to have an NFC

reader. So you're just going to need to show them your actual driver's license, but you may be able to tap to do this at the airport. That's sort of what they're going for here. So I thought it was interesting because a lot of the criticism I saw about the ID feature seemed to be stuff that is actually not what's happening. But again, it's similar in the sense that maybe Apple didn't do as good a job as they needed to do to address potential issues. And I don't remember if there was a WWDC session about this or not. That would also be on them, That if they didn't detail all the ways that they've anticipated all of these issues, then that's a mistake. I saw a piece that speculated about whose fault this is. I forget who wrote the piece. I don't know if it was Mark

German or somebody else, but it was speculating, or maybe it was Ben Thompson. It was basically, is this a communication failure? Because they've got a new head of communications at Apple. Or is this a technical failure, it about the driver's license thing, I think is like they could have done a vastly better job if't think the job of the head of communications is to be a nice conduit for whatever the people on the inside of Apple want to send out through the tube to the people outside of Apple. That's not the job of a head of communications. The job of the head of communications is to say, you need to understand how this is going to be perceived. We need to do this rollout in a very specific way so that we anticipate what's going to happen and prevent it from happening. And they aren't doing that. Like the CSAM thing, that's a communications failure. It may also be

a technical failure. Is it the fault of the new head of communications? I don't know, because I don't know if the new head of communications was like waving their arms and saying, no, no, no, no, no, don't do it like this. And they were told, no, we're doing it like this. Or whether they were like, yeah, sure, great. We'll roll this out. Nobody will care. Because that would show, if that's the case, a fundamental misunderstanding of how Apple announcements are regarded by the world. So I don't know. I'm a little more skeptical about the ID thing because I feel like that's a little bit of just trying to make,

while we're getting on Apple for stuff that they announced in June, let's get on them for this. Whereas it may not be that big a deal, but still, regardless, this is an issue. Yeah, I don't want to get lost in the weeds on that. That was an aside from me i i put a link in the show notes to what nila patel said people can read it and make their own uh mind

up about it but getting back to the c-sam thing itself i'm happy they're doing this like if they do genuinely believe that they can make the system better um honestly i think that they're gonna go away and try and find a better way to communicate it i think that's what they're gonna do here yeah i think they want to lock down the technical issues right because that it's unclear to me like there's somebody who wrote a paper about neural hashing of photos and stuff who said that they felt like Apple's system was ignoring all of the things that they wrote about how the system didn't work. And there's a real question about like, what's the truth about the people who say technically this is problematic? And when Apple says it's fine. And is it because the people who

technically say it's problematic don't understand fully what Apple is doing here? Or is it because it is problematic and Apple didn't anticipate it and wasn't paying attention to the researchers on the outside who are writing about this stuff? And so that's part of it too. It's not just about re-communicating this and rolling it out in a different way, but it's also about engaging with these experts and trying to, even if they disagree, understanding what their argument is and being able to counter it. And ideally you get them on your side and say, oh, well now we've seen what Apple is doing and they made a couple of changes and we actually think that this is a good approach. That's the ideal end goal is to kind of co-opt your critics and have them say, well, now that we've seen it, we actually like it. I will say again, you could have probably brought them in. There's no reason you couldn't have done this before you announced it or as you announced it in general before you gave out specifics. But we are where we are now.

So we'll see. But I think it's more than just a communication challenge because they do have some technical criticisms of how they did it in terms of false positives and things like that. I do wonder with this feature if it's one of those situations that like the lid has been lifted. So there's kind of like, you know, like the jar has been opened. Now you can't put it back in because is it always going to be considered like no matter what way they talk about it like this is the thing that apple's using to spy on us right there has it gotten away from them in a way that they wouldn't be able to control even if it comes back comes back later with like hey look at all these great things that we did instead what do you think i I don't know. We've talked about this so much. This is a misstep. They're resetting. They have

the opportunity to run and hide if they want to, right? This could be one of those things that just disappears. And when it comes back later, it's a totally different solution. And then, and the way they'll spin it is, well, we listened, right? But I don't know what they're going to do. And I don't know where they're going to go with this. Because honestly, because the root of this also seems baffling, right? When it was announced, our response was like, why now? Like, is this in anticipation of some other move that they're going to make or some regulation that's going to come in? And so I don't entirely understand other than speculation about it, the root of this whole thing. So now they've pulled it back.

Where do we go from here? I don't know. Yeah. I have no idea, but they, they messed it up. Yeah. Oh yeah.

This is a, this is a complete unforced error, I think. And, and again, the, the fact that this is not a secret product, this is not an iPhone.

Like the rollout of this just, it didn't need to be this way. Like for them to, I think it shows you that they're still within Apple, a lot of these super secretive, we're going to go our own way, we're not going to look at what anybody else is doing, this attitude that they've got. And in this case, for completely unnecessary reasons. And it bit them. So are they going to make changes because of that? I don't know. It would seem like you probably should, but I do think it goes back to probably a level of hubris about like, they're just so proud of how clever their solution to this problem is that they want to spring it on the world. And then they got laid low because it wasn't maybe as clever as they thought. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our good friends at Memberful,

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for your business. Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and RelayFM. So there's been a bunch of App Store related changes that I want to go through.

Well, there was one big one. Everyone knows what we're talking about. It's the change in Japan. We're going to talk about that in a little bit because there's some other stuff that we need to get through before. So I wanted to give just a quick recap of the thing from last week just so we can set the stage for the many changes to the App Store that's being demanded by many governments and institutions around the world.

So last week's thing, the thing we spoke about on our last episode, is the US developers thing. This was the class action lawsuit that basically changed nothing. Apple made a bunch of clarifications and confirmations, like, hey, you're allowed to email your own customers if you want and offer developers cash

to prevent them from suing Apple in the future, right? So that was that thing. Yeah. Then five days later, the government of South Korea passed a law that is intended to force Apple and Google to allow for third party payment options in third party apps for in-app purchases. So once you've downloaded an app from the App Store, if you want to pay for something inside of that application, you should be able to use any payment service, either Google or Apple's, or you can use your own, right? Like think Fortnite, right? Like what Fortnite did, that whole thing. One of the reasons we're here, right? Because of everything that Epic did. Companies that do not comply with this rule will be fined up to 3% of their South Korea revenue. So everything the company makes in that country in a year, they can be fined 3% of that total.

This is a quote from Apple about this ruling. The Telecommunications Business Act will put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud undermine their privacy protections make it difficult to manage their purchases and features like ask to buy and parental controls will become less effective we believe user trust in app store purchases will decrease as a result of this legislation from this quote doesn't seem like they're going to fight it, right? Like, I was expecting Apple's quote to be like, you know, like, ah, you know, as they will do sometimes, that they will say that they will try and push back on something. But it doesn't sound like

that's the case. Maybe they know they don't have the opportunity to do it. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it does show you that, like, if a law gets passed, they're they can complain all they want, but they have to follow it. If they want to continue doing business in that country, right? Right. And there's limitations and they can push back and they can negotiate. But I guess what I would say is I think this is not as big a deal. It's also interesting that this is a law that targeted Google primarily. Yeah.

Okay. And so it's probably a pro Samsung kind of thing. Anyway, it hits Apple. However, I'm not convinced about the implications of this being enormous, mostly because it's just in Korea. And while the ball may continue rolling, I can see ways... So Russia said, you got to pre-install apps. and Apple didn't pre-install apps. Apple brought up a thing during the launch process that says, here are Russian apps. Would you like to download them? And then you can just not. And, and Russia's regulators apparently decided that was good enough, right? Like that's, that's all they were looking at. So I, which I think is kind of impressive that Apple convinced

them to be okay with that and not be like, no, they have to download. They have to preload. So what does Apple do in Korea? I think it's going to be some more of this kind of very careful, artful implementation that makes it makes them within the law without it being something that's easy on developers. without it being something that's easy on developers. So, like, for example, I don't think this law says anything about what, like, Apple could say, hey, developers, there's a new law in Korea. If you want to implement your own outside of Apple in-app purchases for Korea, here's what you need to do. You need to turn off your app in Korea and make a new app separate that implements your out-of-app purchasing system and submit that for only Korea.

And then we'll approve it and it'll be limited to Korea. And you also have to, I mean, it's unclear. It's like, you also have to have in-app purchases as an option because the law doesn't say we can't require that, but you also can offer out-of-app purchases, but only because the law doesn't say we can't require that, but you also can offer out-of-app purchases, but only in the Korean version of your app, which you need to keep separate, right? Now that's jerky and makes the job much harder for developers, but Apple's not limited. My understanding is Apple can do that, right? They can make it as painful as possible for you to take advantage of this law in Korea. And the net result, what I'm saying is the net result is probably going to be that most app developers, unless they've got an enormous amount of in-app purchase revenue in Korea,

are just not going to bother. And they're going to keep it the way it is and keep their app in the Korean store. And those who want to go through this, Apple's not going to make it easy for them. Apple's going to do the letter of the law and nothing more. That's my guess. Unless Apple thinks that this is going to keep happening. But even then, if another country passed a law like this,

Apple would say, okay, everybody, hey, developers. Now that app that you've got in Korea, you can also make it available in this other country because it's the law there. Or maybe not. Maybe they would say,

hey, app developers, make another version of your app that's just for this country. Because again, they don't need to go along with this. And their attitude seems to be very much that they're not going to. So I'm not convinced this is going to be a huge deal, right? Because it's in Korea, it's this one very particular law. And I feel like Apple has enough weight to put on their app store processes that it will be an unpleasant thing that you have to do in order to get your own payment system in. That's my theory. So I agree with you, but here's the question I'll pose, right?

My understanding, and especially it's come from the US thing, is that most of Apple's money from in-app purchases is generated by a small amount of companies. Yeah. Because there are a small amount of companies that make the most money. Yeah. I would assume that all of those companies

would be the exact companies to put the effort in to do this thing. Yep. And so I don't know how much App Store revenue is generated by South Korea. I'm sure it's a chunk. I don't know how big a portion. But they could start to feel it from there.

And my expectation would be if Apple are going to have some level of infrastructure in place to make this the case for South Korea, or a rule or whatever, right? They're going to put something into effect to make this possible for people to comply with in South Korea. Other countries could look at it and be like,

yeah, we'll do that. Well, that's possible, but I would say I don't think Apple has to build anything here. This is essentially a policy decision. This is not rejecting apps that go outside for payment. It is possible that they'll be like, oh, well, look, Apple's complying in Korea, so we can do it here. And they'll just do what they did in Korea. And that's probably true.

And they probably will do that. So if other countries want to do this, we potentially have a template for what it would look like. I guess what I'm saying is Apple's not going to make it easy on anybody, I predict. No. this stuff so uh it's possible that they won't you know maybe they'll be bigger than that and be like okay well you can make it so that if your locale is korea but my guess if i were i mean honestly if i were employed to do this at apple i would be like no separate korean app um walled off we want to we don't want to see any of that code that could potentially be used anywhere else in the world separate approval separate approval you've got to flag it that you're doing it for Korea and then we'll go through our process and then we'll approve it.

But yes, I mean, if you're making millions and millions and millions of dollars equivalent in Korea, then of course you're going to do this, right? If you can claw that money back. I just feel like what Apple will try to do is make it that everybody who makes a little bit of money in Korea within that purchase is going to be like, nah, it's not worth it. It's not worth going through it. And I feel like the Apple will make it so that it's not worth it for most developers to even follow this approach.

on this rule this law is just for in-app purchase doesn't have any requirement for other purchases so if you are a paid upfront app you use apple and google's payment systems if you're a paid upfront app that uses in-app purchase you pay on google or apple's system but then the in-app purchase can then be from a third party same if you're free right in some ways ideologically i think i agree with this ruling like it's also not asking for third party absolutes or anything okay there's always something that i get stuck on which is like after the initial purchase after apple was delivered the application you know why should they have the rights to any purchase between what is now the customer of this company? Why do they continue to keep getting a cut if they're not providing anything for these developers? A lot of times they're not providing anything for these developers.

Stuff is coming down from the servers of Epic or whoever. is coming down from the servers of Epic or whoever, right? Why do Apple have the right to continue taking 30% of every in-app purchase? Well, I mean, what you're really doing is saying, why does Apple have the right to take money out of transactions on the iPhone? Because the truth is the business model today is largely your app is free

and then you pay inside the app so if you make in-app purchases free it is going to potentially take a huge amount of revenue away from apple now so then the question is like what is what is apple what rights does apple have to skim all transactions that occur in its universe? And, you know, Apple would tell you that they created all this value with the iPhone. I would argue that the iPhone's value was also created by the app developers, that without an app store, the iPhone isn't a success, or certainly not the success it's been, that Apple takes 30% or now sometimes 15% of what developers have made for the last decade plus.

But imagine a world where developers took 30% of iPhone revenue for the last decade plus, right? It's more. And they don't get that. So even though that they're a huge participant in this, and it comes back, like what we were talking before, it comes back to the fact that Apple has an attitude. And I think it comes from the corporate culture. And I think it is based in Steve Jobs and the post almost going out of

business Apple, which is take every dollar off the table. And developers are lucky that we tolerate them and that Apple creates all value and developers are... And this was Steve Jobs' attitude about third-party developers way back before the App Store, which is developers are, and this was Steve Jobs' attitude about third-party developers way back before the App Store, which is developers are kind of parasites living off the goodness of Apple. I've said this before. It's absolutely with Steve Jobs' attitude is everybody who's involved in the Apple ecosystem that isn't Apple is just taking money away from Apple that belongs to Apple

because Apple really created everything that is good and that everything that remains, it's just like you get some scraps, you should be happy that we're giving you your percentage here because we could take even more because really it's all about us. And that attitude still exists within Apple. And the only reason they're changing it at all seems to be because they're feeling the pressure. So why does Apple charge Like, I think Apple's in-app purchases system is really good and that Apple should compete with alternatives based on when they say, look, the reason we do it the way we do it is because we want to keep our customers safe. And they said this in another thing that we're going to be talking about in a minute. They said this. They said, like, people like the safety that they feel in the App Store and working with Apple.

Well, that's true. But there's also no alternative. Like, you could compete on that. You could compete as Apple and say, our way is easier. Our way is safer. You've got your credit card at Apple. Apple charges your credit card. Apple doesn't leak your information to other people.

This is why you should use Apple's system. credit card. Apple doesn't leak your information to other people. This is why you should use Apple system. And they could also very easily, unless a law bars it, and I doubt a law ever would, say if they open it up to third parties, you also need to offer Apple's method. So choose. You can use Apple's method or your method, but you let them choose. And then they're competing on features. They're competing on trust in Apple. They're competing on ease of the transaction, not having to go re-enter your card somewhere because it's already stored at Apple. And developers are going to like that too. So that's my feeling, is that Apple ought to compete based on the quality of their service

and not on just taking rent essentially essentially, on every transaction that exists. Because although the counter argument is always going to be, oh, yeah, but Apple did create this ecosystem. Apple does work on, you know, they build the APIs and they build these phones and all of that. And so why should they not get a cut? My counter argument would be that the developers who created all the apps on the platform

are also a participant in the success of the iPhone and Apple isn't sharing any of its iPhone revenue with them. Right. And so for me, this seems like, uh, that Apple is double dipping essentially. They, they are, they are acting as if they're the only creators of value in the, in the ecosystem and they're not. And so why not? And. And that they're obviously not confident in their ability to compete on functionality, which I think is dumb because I think they can. So yeah, I am not a fan of Apple mandatorily taking, plus it degrades the user experience, right? Leaving aside the fact that we're going to be talking about reader apps in

a little bit. And like that is a terrible user experience too. So yeah, if I have to choose, I'm going to say I don't think that Apple should have to mandatorily take a percentage of sales inside apps. I think they should have to offer their system and compete on merit. John Gruber wrote a blog post about this, and he was talking about kind of cutting into some of the stuff that they were saying around privacy. They're talking about parental controls, that kind of stuff. He mentioned something that I agree with. Apple could just create a bunch of APIs and tools for payment processors to work with inside their own systems if they wanted to

yeah this is this is one of those false equivalencies where where they're like oh but if we did that there would be no security it's like or you could build security but that makes their argument less dramatic right you could build in uh all of the same apis for monitoring transactions and for parental controls and say, you have to implement these for your payment system, right? They could totally do that unless the law bars it, but it doesn't seem like it does. It would be part of like being on the platform. It's like, yeah, you can keep your money, but you have to tell us, you know, you have to check and see if parental control is on this because we're not going to let people who are, you know, kids are

not allowed to drain their parents' credit card. We have a system for that and you have to hook into it. But they would have to do the work, but they could do the work. They could absolutely do the work. So that was South Korea and we were like, oh man, more going on. Oh, literally we know it, it was more coming. Yes. But before we do that, let's thank our second sponsor of this week's episode, Natty Gabby. How often do you notice the price of something increasing? It can happen all the time with gas, groceries, clothes, more. The prices, they kind of like steadily creep up. If you're looking to cut costs and find ways to save, you could start with your auto insurance. And that's

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It's totally free. That's G-A-B-I.com slash upgrade. One last time. Go there now. Gabi.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Gabi for their support of this show and RelayFM. So Apple announced via press release that they have come to an agreement with the Japan Fair Trade Commission to end an investigation about the App Store.

I've got some quotes that I want to read and maybe we can, from this press release, maybe we can stop and talk about them as we go through. The update will allow developers of reader apps to include an in-app link to their website for users to set up or manage an account one do you want to stop already or can i continue single well i think it's an important point and we'll get we can get to in more detail later but the a lot of the people who are saying wow this is a big change i think maybe missed, which is it is a link. So this basically solves the Netflix opening or Spotify or whatever opening screen where it says log in.

And you're like, well, how do I get an account? And you can put a link. The dumbest rule ever of all time where they're like, well, you can link, but not to anything that suggests anything about payment and all that and they're basically dropping that and saying yes you can get one you get one link for setup and managing an account one single link yeah well single comes later at this point they said an it's confusing that they say it in different ways but and and link right it's a it's a singular we're already at a singular here okay continue apple will apply this change globally to all reader apps on the store hooray this was a relief because like let's not continue to make this increasingly more complicated right

let's not let's not make a japan rule you can have a link in japan you can have a purchase in korea you can have a uh installed apps in russia but that's it and you can send emails if you're in america you know yep uh reader apps provide previously purchased content or content subscriptions for digital magazines newspapers books audio music and video yes because developers of reader apps do not offer in-app digital goods and services for purchase, Apple agreed with the JFTC to let developers of these apps share a single link to their website to help users set up and manage their account. I have like 20 problems with this sentence.

Uh-huh. Like, they would like to offer in-app digital goods and services for purchase, but you won't let them. They would. Developers of reader apps do offer in-app digital goods and services for purchase, but you won't let them. They would. Developers of reader apps do offer in-app digital goods, but you have to purchase them outside, and then they appear in these applications, right? And that's where we get the share a single link to their website to help users set up and manage their account.

So the setup is the important part, right? Because it can get a bit confusing. If earlier on it's like they're talking about like, you know, for the manager, all that kind of stuff because it can get a bit confusing if earlier on it's like um they're talking about like you know for the man all that kind of stuff and it gets a bit confusing but basically the way i read this uh is that you know you could open the spotify app and then have a link where you could then go and sign up for spotify then come back and log in right and and right now you could do you could currently do it but what it would do is it would put you on a page that that um you link to that doesn't it cannot not only can it not mention that you can put in your credit card at spotify.com and sign up that way and never pay

apple it couldn't link to any page that links to any page at all, following all links that mentions your ability to purchase Spotify outside of the app store. That was the rule. So this rule is you can just link to somewhere. It's fine. And so it is big in the sense that if you're, I don't know who this person is, but if you're somebody who's like, oh, Spotify, that sounds great. I'll download the app. I open the app and it says, log in. And you're like, oh no, they've outfoxed me. I'm totally confused.

What do I do? I guess I won't use Spotify because I don't have an account and I don't know what I would do. Well, what you do is you go to Spotify.com, but now there'll be a link there that says, go to Spotify.com to sign up for this account. And you'll go there. And then they can also put that link when you're logged in and say, manage my account on Spotify.com. And you click there and or tap there and it will take you to Spotify.com. And of course, both of those links will allow you to pay, put in your credit card and pay as part of the login process. So on that level, it is kind of big because it's allowing developers to put an onboarding workflow in the app again that allows them to lead a user through setting up a username and password and putting in a credit card on the web and then going back to the app, logging in, and they're paying and they're not paying Apple. So that's the big change.

What it doesn't do, and you mentioned it, these are reader apps. So Kindle is a good example, right? And the problem here is that these apps have overhead. They're reselling things. They're the middleman. And then Apple wants to also be the middleman. And Apple's 30% takes out all of the profit of the middleman from that, or almost all, right? And so nobody does it. And what this specifically says

is you know you still can't do that. The one link is there. The one link rule is there specifically so that Amazon can't put up a Kindle store in their app. And when you tap on a book, it opens a web page with that book, which you then buy. And then it goes back to the Kindle app and it downloads it. Apple's not allowing anything like that to happen. it goes back to the Kindle app and it downloads it. Apple's not allowing anything like that to happen.

So for subscriptions, for signup, for user information, but that's it. Before the change goes into effect in early 2022, Apple will update its guidelines and review process to make sure users of reader apps continue to have a safe experience on the App Store. Like this is where a lot of the questions start, right? What can be at the end of the link? Apple going to start reviewing web pages now, right? Will there be only certain language you can use? I'm sure.

I'm sure. Will developers have to create specific types of pages for Appleos customers going to we'll find out apple will also help developers of reader apps protect users when they link them to an external website to make purchases uh-huh what does that mean yeah and make purchases i guess that means essentially signing up and putting in your credit card somewhere. My guess is that this is going to be app review. Like you said, are they going to approve websites? I think the answer is yes. going to want and the question is what are their standards there but they're going to want to approve that link and say yes this is acceptable use of our one link policy um which is weird right because what are the standards by which they judge that link what are the rules that you could

break on that link i don't know i've already thought of a few for you okay lamb you you can get a job rejecting things at apple i guess very exciting go ahead the wording of the link the prominence of the link okay where it takes you yes what's on the web page the wording of the web page how or if it references apple how or if it references Apple? Mm-hmm. How or if it references prices and pricing differences? Yep. That might be it. I'll throw in a few that they could do. Okay.

Privacy policy of the website. Yes. Payment processor used by the website. Just throwing it out there, right? Like this, Apple could use this as a system to whitelist very specific companies and payment processors and say, we don't think that this payment processor is secure. Not saying they will do that, but they could absolutely do that. And privacy policy, I think, is an interesting one, right? Where there would be like, the website needs to, we need to protect our users. the website needs to, we need to protect our users. So if this website has a permissive privacy policy and it's leaking a bunch of information, I'm sorry, you need to change your policy or we're

not going to let you link to your own website. It could happen. Like I can imagine there's going to be a bunch of applications as well, like large companies that are currently offering in-app purchase that stop now, right? Like I think about like like youtube like you can buy youtube premium with an app purchase i actually think they charge more money if you do but you know yeah this is all like that right this is this is essentially not solving the problem of per item digital purchases in an app this is solving the problem of reader apps that have subscriptions because they had to pretend that there was no way unless you did an in-app purchase, which nobody really wants to do. And it's not that great. It's a difficult business model for if you're Netflix or Hulu or anybody

else to do it that way, or even YouTube. It's hard because a lot of your content, your margins are such that it's a very hard thing to do. So you probably don't want to do it. But pretending that there's no way to get to your account is not a great experience. So that's the win here is being able to say, not buy a Kindle book in an app, but to be able for, even for the Kindle app to say, my know, my Amazon account, like not allowed until now to tap and go out there. So it's, you know, I don't consider this a big win at all. I know that there are a lot of analysts out there who are sort of like, wow, this is a huge step on Apple's part. This is like the bare minimum that Apple should have done many years ago to say, wow, the user experience where

there's just a login screen and no explanation of how you get an account if you don't have one, because Apple wants to get an in-app purchase in this app. And otherwise people are just going to have to wait and figure it out. Well, they should have done that ages ago. So it's the bare minimum when what they should be doing, in my opinion, is allowing reader apps to do what those video apps do. Because they did change this for one class, right? If you go to Amazon Prime Video, that app, you can rent movies in it from Amazon and it works. So they lowered the bar for that one particular class, but they haven't done the same here.

I don't know. So it seems like a very limited win for people here. Well, then, you know, you mentioned about reader apps. I think first we have to get rid of that term because it's an incredibly arbitrary set of applications that Apple have decided they want to give this access to because there is absolutely zero reason that this could not include gaming subscription services when you're not even allowed on the app store right well that that's

one of the i think ironies of this is that reader app has been so distorted because i always viewed a reader app as an app in which you're reading media that included potentially a for purchase option and they've diluted it to mean like media consumption apps but not games which is like yeah to your point how is a subscription to a game streaming service appreciably different than a subscription to netflix like i can you, reader apps means strategically beneficial classes of application to Apple, is what it means. Because they put whatever apps they need in there to help them, right?

Like Spotify's giving them trouble, now music's a reader app. We want Netflix on the Apple TV, we want Amazon Prime on the Apple TV, these are now reader apps. It's just whatever they need it to be. Right. And games is not because they want to not have game streaming services

on their platform, and they make a lot of money from game in-app purchases and stuff like that. So it's strategically beneficial for them not to have games classed as a reader app. Like, I just feel that any type of application that offers a subscription service that is cross-platform should be allowed to take advantage of this so this goes to like spotify it goes to microsoft right if they want to do x cloud

it goes to an app like Todoist, which is a multi-platform tool, but it's a subscription app that you can pay them in many different ways. I pay for my Todoist subscription on the web. They offer an app purchase, but I signed up on the web and I pay there because it's cheaper. It used to be, and that was how I signed up for it. It's cheaper. It used to be, and that was how I signed up for it. Like, I don't, you know, without the iPhone, Spotify would suffer just the same as any other,

like, as Todoist would suffer. Like, I think it's way too complicated for anybody to try and say, like, oh, this certain application needs this type of system where others don't. I just don't think it's fair to categorize apps in this certain way. I just think if a developer wants to create a cross-platform outside of App Store system, they should be included in the ability to add this link if they want to. I don't know why there has to be this very specific type of application that gets classed as reader,

and that means they get benefits to other stunt yeah plus the they're not a perfect match because some of them are like kindle although there is a subscription kindle unlimited but basically like something where it's you're buying a book and it's a or a comic book and it's a one-time purchase of something a la carte is very different than being a subscriber and being on for for everything like that you just get it you sign up and get it and yet they've defined it this way and and apple's attitude toward these categories that apple defines is very much like so much of apple's um uh responses in this space which is like um look i don't make the rules again reader apps are

reader apps, right? We all agree on that. It's like, well, no, you defined what the reader apps are. And you define what those video apps are, where you actually are letting people rent movies or buy movies from Amazon using their Amazon account and their Amazon credit card. You're already doing that for digital goods. There may have been a time where reader apps could have been classed as like types of applications where they are catalogs of content that the business model cannot work because of licensing fees, right? If they have to pay the 30%. But the problem is now all of these companies make original content too. So that doesn't work either, right? Like you can't say that for Spotify now

because they want you to listen to the podcasts that they own. You can't say it for like Amazon and Audible because they make their own podcasts as well. Netflix make all their own TV shows, right? Like, so they control and own everything. So they are, you know, it doesn't work like that anymore. This is, we will make a rule that allows certain kinds of apps that we decide do this, but not anything else.

That's really literally what it is, right? It is, we have decided, and the Japan Fair Trade Commission has agreed, that for certain classes of apps, we will do this very limited thing, and that we'll get them off our back and make us look like we're listening to regulators. Well, I just think it should be that the rule should be pretty simple. Hey, if you want to offer your own payment service and deal with all of the mess that that takes, you can put the link in. Simple as. But we recommend that you use ours for these 20 great reasons. Yep. I think it's pretty clear that wagons are circling around Apple. Like I know that this has been a thing where like it's been expected this was going to happen.

You know, like there's been, you know, everybody's sat in front of Congress and all that kind of stuff. And we've been talking about it before then that, you know, like in the community that we're a part of, people have been very aware of these kinds of issues for a long time

because it's smaller companies and that kind of stuff. But I am wondering now more than ever why not just make larger changes rather than dealing with these like two-bit cases in every single country right like going through every court in every government across the world and having this consistent headline after headline of apple giving in or apple like having to change this rule or is this fair like i just saw india's opened a case now and they want similar similar to what south korea has asked for so they are actually your next example india is your next example after south korea of like the 30 thing for in-app

purchases right and i just think like why like i don't know why we got we should never have gotten this far and now why are they playing every small game so we have discussed for a while now like the the risk apple has which is in having its business model broken because the momentum gathers and the business model gets broken. At this point, I feel like they're not so proactive and so afraid of that, that they're willing to just roll out a bunch of changes and say, we've listened and we hear you and we're going to do this. And maybe their calculation there is that if they do it, it's just going to result in a, oh, we got them on the run now, boys. Let's get them for other stuff, right?

Like make it worse. I'm not sure I believe that, but I think that that could be an argument there. I feel like though, we have one of two paths ahead of us here in terms of what Apple's going to do. One of them is that Apple is doing all of the small potato stuff because Apple is readying, whether it's planning on rolling it out or it's an in case of emergency break glass kind of situation, Apple is readying their offer of app Store reform, and they're not ready for it yet. So they're going to make incremental agreements in the meantime while they ready that. Or a slightly different version of that is Apple has decided that their best strategy is to essentially buy off every regulator with a negotiated minimal change and that they feel the net result is going to be less than the emergency break glass version that they're better off and so far i gotta say so far i think

they're if they're all like the tone of these i think they're kind of right these settlements the lawsuit settlement that they did which was basically a win for them the settlement in japan uh even even the korean law we'll see how it gets implemented and and all that but like oh, we'll see how it gets implemented and all of that. But like, there's something to be said for the attitude that they're better off moving incrementally in individual cases that they won't have to make as big a change as they want to. Okay, fair enough.

They can move like 75% of the way rather than 100, you know, by the time it's all done. What I'm saying is their attitude seems to be that rather than going to 100% of what they're willing to give and say, we heard everybody and we're reforming and here's the new way, and isn't it going to be great? Apple's attitude very much seems to be, we will scratch and claw if it means that we only have to give up 75 of that instead of 100 because and and if it's uh you know a new settlement announced on a on a friday afternoon um every week for a year to incrementally change app store practices like

that my concern with that strategy is that they are taking a real risk by doing this, that they're going to end up, what's the over-ender on that 100% that's their opening offer, right? Are they going to end up at 75%? Are they going to end up at 125%? Yeah, are they going to lose one? Like a big one scratching and clawing of this lead to them ending up in a worse position than if they had just made a bunch of app store reforms and put them out there but i just you know again i don't think they're capable of it i don't think they're capable of saying we're going to change uh and we're going to leave money on the table because we've heard you and this is the right thing to do i just don't think that they've got that. They're not wired up that way. They don't have that bone in their body.

And so instead they're playing this other game, which might benefit them or it might hurt them, which is why I think it's kind of dumb and that they might be better off playing, you know, trying to throw themselves on the mercy of public opinion and say, okay, we've worked with everybody and we've heard your concerns and here's our answer. But like, throw themselves on the mercy of public opinion and say, okay, we've worked with everybody and we've heard your concerns and here's our answer. But it seems like instead we are in for a year of a grind of weird country-specific app store rules and various settlements that just incrementally

adjust app store policies instead of them just saying, you know what? We're the richest company in the world and we make billions of dollars. And even if we lose a little bit to our developers who make our platform what it is, that's okay because we make a lot of money and we want everybody to be happy and we want the platform to be successful. And they could do that and probably skate away, probably skate away from scrutiny, but they don't want to. Bottom line is that they don't seem to want to do that. Everything is a, you got to grind to get any little thing out of Apple. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom.

If you have a website, what does it serve? Brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom. If you have a website, what does it serve? Whether it's driving people to your products, collecting sales leads for your company, or providing customer service with a contact form. When these critical transactions fail, you lose out on business,

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You want to be the first to know, and it's so easy to get started. Just go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM for a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you're ready to buy, use the code UPGRADE at checkout, and you'll get a huge 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their support of this show and RelayFM. Let's do some hashtag askupgrade questions. So I have the first one actually. I think this is going to introduce

an interesting, I don't know, maybe unknown to you English-American pronunciation thing. So I would say this word is nougat. You would say it is nougat. Nougat Machine asks... Nope.

Nougat Machine... Nougat Machine. Asks, As Apple's size, political importance, and controversies continue to increase, doesn't it feel like the pace of the news is increasingly relentless as well? Is it difficult to decide how much time to spend on a show or what to spend it on with so many options? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I, yes, absolutely.

It is hard. I would also say, and you know,, and I think you probably agree with me, but I would like to hear what you have to say too. I feel like we got into this to be enthusiastic and interested in what, and talk about products, talk about hardware, talk about software, talk about the experience of using these devices that matter to us, talk about ways to use them better and accessories and all of that kind of nitty gritty stuff. to do political and regulatory analysis. It's part of, I feel the responsibility to do it. But it's, so what I'm saying is when we spend an hour talking about that stuff, one of two things is true. Either we felt the responsibility to do it because it was such a big deal, or it's because there isn't something else to talk about that we would rather talk about. And it's a little from column A and a little from column B today. But that's my feeling is, yes, the pace is relentless. It has picked up.

And I would really much rather talk about the devices and how we use them and how they matter to us than about policy and regulation. But as Apple has become this enormous force and scrutiny has been focused on it, that's what we end up talking about sometimes. Yeah, I think an easier way to put it is as Apple has changed, so have we along with them. You know, in the same way that that we talk about streaming media services, because Apple's a streaming media company now too, and has their own content. So as Apple has become an increasingly political force,

or a force that draws political ire, the show has changed along with it. I think I maybe take a little bit more enjoyment from these conversations than you do just because i have always been and continue to be just interested in the ways that big companies do business with each other and outside you know like i think i like i describe it as i enjoy the machinations of large companies right so i just like when uh you know when big company a and big company b go to war and the war of words between them i find that to be interesting to like pick apart what they're

saying and why they're saying it that's what i like about upstream really mostly is like how these big companies are interacting and not you know but i do have to share the same I was thinking as we were talking I cannot wait for next week because we might get to talk about an iPhone instead because that's ultimately what I want to talk about more but I also won't if I believe that I have something to say

about this stuff I want to say it if I didn't have, or you didn't have anything to say about that last topic, we probably wouldn't have spent any time on it or just a little, you know? Sure. Like we maybe would have just said like, hey, this thing happened this week

and we're going to move on if I had nothing to say. But I have something to say, so I want to say it. But I do agree with Nougat Machine in the way of saying that like, it is becoming at certain points difficult to decide what exactly we're going to talk about on the show because there's so much like there are a bunch of rumors like rumors are relentless and like how do we decide which rumors to talk about can be a whole thing not just the the political stuff yeah i mean

we haven't talked about the like the if I'm going to buy an Apple Watch, but we got time for that. Yeah, I mean. I'm totally going to buy an Apple Watch. And that's fun. That's a fun conversation. But also we talk about new products. Those rumors happen so far in advance that sometimes those are also just kind of floating out there and

are we restating ourselves? Whereas this was something that's new. And I think for people who use Apple products, you know, it's really, ultimately this show should be about things that affect the lives of its listeners. And so although there is a sort of a layer in between you and this,

which is the developer, like how apps behave and what changes in that and how Apple changes its policies, which impacts how your apps work, it does matter. So it is worth talking about. And it is also, I think this whole story has been troubling because we've been dealing with sort of what is Apple's mindset here? And is this going to, you know, are they, because in the end, none of us get, well, okay, there's probably some Apple employees

out there, right? Most of us don't get paid by Apple doing well. That's not quite how it works, right? What we do care about, though, is, is Apple's business model going to change? Is it going to be broken? Is the App Store going to get really weird? And why? And how do we come to that point? And whatever happens next, at least we have talked it through and we won't be surprised. It's a little bit like when we were talking about in the early days of Upstream about all the changes that were happening in the entertainment industry. When news breaks now about new things that Netflix is doing or that TV companies are doing or anything like that, I feel like all of us, Up and you and me, uh, are less surprised about any of that because we've been thinking about it and talking about it.

So there is value in it. It's just that, I guess what I, what I wanted to say to Nugent machine is I am always going to be more like what I did there. I always am going to be more enthusiastic about the stuff that's about like the devices that we're holding and the software that runs on them and stuff like that than I am about regulation. Um, but I also, we, we can't not talk about it. Thank you to Nougat Machiné for Nougat Machine. No UGAT machine. Can you imagine if it was no UGAT? Mac Ein.

That's the, that's the Spanish name. Mark. Mark. Ein. Ein. Mark in E. Anyway, Hunter asks. Hunter.

Hunter. Hunter asks, Apple's rollout of their CSAM announcements have widely been panned as poor PR strategy even by those that support the policies. What does this say about Apple's new PR chief? When you started talking about that later, I was like, we're going to move on because it's

coming up later on in the show. Apple did hire a new PR chief after having no PR chief for a very long time. I think it was over a year at least, Steve Dowling left and Apple left the role vacant.

And then they hired Stella Lowe to replace Steve Dowling. This was a number of months ago. I think it's fair to say the last few months seem to have shown some differences in PR strategies from apple i don't know if they're like bad or good but different like the c-sam thing didn't go well

and then there was like you know a lot of people were talking about especially with the um u.s developers thing interesting like timelines given on the announcement, which was actually a pretty shrewd move because it initially came out as like, look how great this is because that's what Apple told the press that it was super great. But when you started digging into it, it kind of wasn't that great

because no concessions were actually made, even though it was made to look like concessions were made so i mean i don't know i think the c-sam thing is was very clearly uh pr blunder i don't know if cellulo was involved in that at all i don't know you know maybe it started before i have no idea this is the problem with the black box of apple right is that and i said this earlier but just to restate it i don't know if this is stella lowe's problem if it's the people who work for stella lowe who who have been there a while and they made bad decisions or if this comes from you know tim or somebody else who basically is saying you will

communicate this i don't know so i it's very hard to place blame but i will say the communications have been poor the c-sam thing was botched it was not you know things should not have been announced the way they were they shouldn't have conflated those features that are totally different from one another they like they rolled them all together like, ah, we're going to tell a story about all this stuff. It just led to more confusion. They then had to do lots of damage control, and then they pulled it out. Not great. Some of this other stuff has been, like you said, it's been tough.

I'll also say that Stella Lowe's bio mentions that she's also in charge of employee communication. So I have to say, what does that mean? And does that mean things like Tim Cook's memo where he said, great news, everybody wants to come back and work in the office three days a week? Was that part of her job? Because that also just engendered a lot of anger among at least some Apple employees. So is that, and we don't know. We don't know. It's possible that that was her mistake too, or it's possible that her hands are tied. Like this is the difficulty with any of this is you can't point to somebody and say,

I know they're doing a bad job because they may be stuck in a very bad or even unwinnable situation. I will mention Stella Lowe's background is Cisco, Dell, and EMC, all of which are essentially enterprise tech companies. And again, I don't know anything about her background beyond that, and I don't know anything about her skill set, and they obviously thought that she was a great hire i will say no amount of work at cisco dell and emc will prepare you for what the issues are at apple like i know they're both they're all tech companies apple is not like those companies at all it was very surprising to me that they did not promote from within. Like, I feel like surely,

head of PR at Apple, you should really know how Apple works. Well, what happened is they had two very senior people in PR when Katie Cotton retired. And they picked one, and so the other left. And so then they're left with just Steve Dowling and his lieutenants. And they must have thought that Steve Dowling's lieutenants were not up for the task. But again, we don't know.

We're just speculating on the outside. So I don't know if it's Stella Lowe's fault or not, but I will say their rollout was poor. And either Stella Lowe should be held to account for the bad rollout or Stella Lowe should be using it as an example of why they need to let her handle it. Right. Like one of those has to be true, right? Like either you guys told me to do it this way and it was a disaster and we need to not do this anymore. Or it was, why did you allow this to happen this way? But something did not work right there. So I don't know. It is, it's a pr blunder regardless and i know you know i just i think you can't even argue that it was a pr blunder because the way it was rolled out and

the way they had to do all of these uh damage control things afterwards like you don't do damage control and then throw out a lot of executive interviews and then withdraw the feature if it wasn't a botched rollout. And I do think that if they had understood how it was going to be interpreted, they could have done it differently. That said, what I mentioned earlier still goes, which is part of the fault here is that they seem to have not engaged in some of the experts in this field in advance.

And when you have the people who wrote maybe the only published paper on neural hashing come out two days after the announcement and say they completely missed all of the flaws we found with this. And so why did they do this? You should probably talk to them, right? Like, this is not a secret product. This is not an iPhone. Then the fault lies with, like, I guess the security team or whatever it is not an iphone then the fault lies with like i

guess the security team or whatever it is like not like the security security team and whoever enables that and that's a culture thing and that means it goes up to tim really like they they need to deal with this stuff so i can't call for the firing of somebody because i don't really know who's at fault but somebody blew it here and maybe many somebodies and maybe it's a fault of the corporate culture or as somebody on twitter said to said i don't even know who's at fault, but somebody blew it here. Or maybe many somebodies and maybe it's a fault of the corporate culture. Or as somebody on Twitter said, I don't even know it was to me, said the other week,

boy, there's an Apple University class and all of this, isn't there? Like, yeah, there should be. This should be a what went wrong and why did we do it this way and how do we fix it? Because they messed this up badly. And Zach asks,

this is follow up from our call-in show, what pen should I look into if I want something nicer but not a fountain pen? So this was in reference to you getting in there. All right, yeah, go on, what you got? I don't, I have nothing. Okay, so I'm going to give two things here. One is penaddict.com slash top-five-pens. I'll put a link in the show notes. My co-host at The Pen Addict, Brad Dowdy, put together a top-five-pens list for a vast array of categories.

So depending on what you're looking for, there's a pen in there. But if I was going to make, like, here is a blanket recommendation for you, it would be the Mark I from Studio Neat. That would be my... If you want to up your pen game, you will get two things here. You will get what is undoubtedly my favorite refill, my favorite rollable refill ever made, which is called the Schmidt P8126.

That's the refill that they use. I think I may have helped introduce this refill to Studio Neat, and they loved it so much they wanted to build an entire pen around it because they thought it was super great because it is super great. But the pen body that they pair it with is absolutely fantastic and

includes one of the most satisfying clicking mechanisms, which are called knocks in the pen vernacular. One of the most satisfying clicking mechanisms that I've ever used. I can give you a audio example. Very nice. Fantastic, Pam. Here's the, yeah, Studio Neat. Very good. Very good, Pam. I have two of those. Very good pack. I have two of those. They do black and white.

It's very nice. And if you are in your local stationary store, I would say I bought a bunch of the Zebra Sarasa clip, which you can often just find in a little bag or even just in a little barrel, one at a time at your stationery store. It's a, you know, gel pen. It's really good as a plastic, you know, it's not a fancy pen. It's just a good pen. That's what I used to use before I got these fancy ones. Zebra Sarasa makes it way onto one of Brad's top five lists. Yes. It is a very good pen that you've chosen for yourself there.

Yeah, well, I mean, I talk to pen people about it. Of course. That's actually a really good pen. You have that. Because I was buying, you know, clicky plastic pens, and I thought, well, if I'm going to buy a clicky plastic pen,

I want a good one. In case you don't know this about me, I host a weekly podcast about pens and stationery materials. It's called The Pen Addict. The Pen Addict celebrates its 10th year next year. Can you believe that? Pretty good.

Pretty good. We actually, just out of pure chance, our 500th episode is going to align with our 10-year anniversary to today. Well, that's, you know, it's in the ballpark, right? That's 50 shows a year. Well, we took a break for a while. This is one of the things. There was a multiple-month break in the Pen Addicts history.

But yeah, long time that we've been doing that show for. Long, long time. And I also do host a podcast with the guys over at Studio Neat as well, called Thoroughly Considered. But I absolutely adore that pen and think that you should buy it for yourself. If you'd like to send in a topic question for us to focus on,

just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you can get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. Thank you so much. If you have, go to getupgradeplus.com. We are now, as I'm recording, at $185,474.88.

So we are just about $10,000 away from crossing our $1 million goal of raised over three years for the wonderful St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Go to stjude.org slash relay and you can donate today. Don't forget if there is an Apple event announced, we will be having an extra draft episode

of Upgrade, which might actually mean right now, in this very serious episode, we are ending the Summer of Fun. This could be the end of the Summer of Fun right now. I'm not saying it ain't so. It depends. This could be the end of the Summer of Fun.

It's difficult now. We don't know when to end it because we don't get enough notice. But this could be the last time today that you hear the summer of fun theme song in well it'll i think in its entirety right we do a little transition i knew i knew what you were we do a little transition but yeah it's been a it's been a fun summer we had some fun so we've had a lot of fun i think we've had a lot of fun this summer great we had the guests with with you and the guests with me. Great theme episodes. Yep.

I think it's been a great summer of fun. But, you know, the summer comes to an end when the iPhones arrive. Although the heat started increasing here in London this week, which is very peculiar. The temperatures start going up again. That's the irony of the Bay Area weather is that our best weather is in September and October. So, yeah. But this might be the end of the summer of fun. All right.

Well, you know, it'll be back. It'll be back. Always is. And we've got the holidays. Maybe sooner than usual. Who knows? You never know. You never know. You never know with us. You never know with us. Thank you so much to Pingdom, Gabby, and Memberful for the support of this episode. You can find Jason online at sixcolors.com and

he is at jay snell i am at i mike i am y k e we'll be back definitely next week maybe before until then say goodbye jason snell goodbye mike early Thank you.