Upgrade - 380: Hey Self, Don't Do It!

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

Now that the M1 Pro and M1 Max have arrived, we turn our attention to the future of Apple silicon in 2022 and beyond. Will there be new chips every year, or is that too rapid a pace? Also, we've spent another week with the new MacBook Pro, Google makes a daring legal move in Korea, and we take the long view on Apple's record fiscal year.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 380 today's show is brought to you by amazon music capital one and hunter douglas my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell what's in your wallet mike we'll find out later on in the episode. You just wanted to say it, but I get to say it later on. I did want to say it. And Upgrade Plus people won't hear your delight in being able to say it.

So I thought I'd bring it up to the capital ones. You get to be Samuel L. Jackson for a minute. It's very exciting. I have a hashtag Snell Talk question for you. It comes from Zach and Zach wants to know, so this is follow up from last week. So last week's Snell Talk question, right, was how long do you give it before you get rid of a book? You know, if you're not enjoying it, Zach wants to know how long do you give a TV show before

you'll bail on it? It really depends. This is a great question, but I don't have a hard and fast answer here. I am guided in part by like reviews, whether it's from TV critics or from friends. in part by like reviews whether it's from tv critics or from uh friends uh sometimes like i i'm not a fan of the idea that you have to wait until episode five until it really gets good because you're like i don't want to sit through four episodes where it's not good just to get to where the good part is like i don't want to do that and yet if i get that impression from people like this is really good you need need to, you just need to kind of like give it, be patient a little bit. I'm willing to give something a little more slack. I would say traditionally it's all about the second episode. I used to talk about this on TV talk machine

podcast all the time that like, I always think that episode two of a show is the most important episode of a show because the first episode is you may decide it's not for you right away but it's it's usually i mean this is less true now than it used to be but it used to be the pilot episode so it was sort of like the setting the premise of what the show was going to be which meant that the first episode wasn't really representative of what the show was going to be because they need to set up because they could also be like these self-contained things right like that just go out and that's it i mean in some instances because well they only shoot the one and then they wait traditionally they only shoot the one episode and then they

wait like six months to get approval to go shoot more and then they have to shoot you know the rest of the season and so episode one isn't always representative. So if I really get turned off by a first episode, and modern shows are less like this, like I said, but if I'm really turned off by the first episode, I will bail. But I feel like the second episode is often the crucible for a TV show, because if the second episode where they've gotten a chance to get the band back together, if it's a traditional pilot, then you'll know whether it's for you or not in a lot of cases. Back in the day when I had a DVR, I thought the most telling thing was I would always set the shows to record the whole show when a new show was coming on that I was interested in because the last thing you want to do

is not get around to episode one to decide if you like it or not. And then episode two airs. And so now if you watch episode one, you can't watch episode two because it already aired back in the day. But the telling thing is when you abandon the show and the episodes start to pile up. And that doesn't mean you've actually decided to dump that show,

but you haven't gone further. And I guess the equivalent today would be you end up in the situation where you are an episode or two into a show and it may even be in the like upcoming um in the tv app and it just gets further to the right and further to the right because you're not motivated to go back to it and that that so a lot of tv shows self-cancel zach is what i'm saying is a lot of stuff it really just comes down to there's so much out there and if i don't ever think i'm in the mood for that show then there goes that show it's gone but um there's usually

a moment where you you either buy in or get out and that's definitely happened to me um on some shows where sometimes it's just a lack of enthusiasm, but other times it is literally like, oh, no. I just did that with, what was it called? Home Before Dark, Back Before Dark, that show about the little girl who solves crimes on Apple TV+. And I didn't like the first episode, but I watched the second episode, and the second episode made me angry. And I was like, oh, I can't watch this show anymore.

I need to stop watching this show. second episode made me angry and I was like, oh, I can't watch this show anymore. I need to stop watching this show. So you got to listen to the universe when it tells you nobody's nobody's giving you points for watching something you don't like. You got to get out of there. If you'd like to send in a hashtag Snell Talk question, you can do so by sending out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk or using question mark Snell Talk in the RelayFM members discord. I should just note before we continue because people will always ask jason is not recording at home today i'm not i am in i'm in the desert location so uh yes using a macbook pro which we'll talk about in a minute but i am uh i'm not at home today so yes thank you for

your concern you wrote a really great post and put together some wonderful charts and six colors uh in the last week kind of in review of apple completing their fiscal year you know we spoke about apple owners last week but kind of looking at the last how many years did you look at over this period like the last oh i've got data back to like 1999 for some stuff so some 20 something years in some cases and then in terms of apple's product lines since the, you know, the Mac since the 90s and the iPhone since basically right after it started and likewise for the iPad. So there's some really like kind of fascinating stuff in here. I recommend people go look at the entire, look at all the charts and read the whole article. But there are a couple of things that were just wild to me. So one of them is, you know, like we look at

quarter to quarter and we compare quarter to quarter right but when you look at the entire year encapsulated 2021 was unbelievable for apple in terms of revenue it was like you know up down up down a little bit here and there kind of like in the 200 range since 2014 like 200 to 300 uh billion right billion yes uh in the year and then this year it just shot up to 366 i think looking at this chart it's the largest year-over-year revenue jump like from a full year to full year that apple's ever had it looks like in terms of in terms of dollars yes in terms of percent no because the rocket ship really did take off between 2010, 2011, 2012. Because they went from 65 to 108, right? Yeah, in 2009, Apple made $43 billion.

In 2012, it made $157 billion. So in a very short amount of time, it shot up really fast. And there was another big bump in 2015. But in terms of pure numbers, and you look at the chart, it's sort of like Apple's just very slowly going up, and then it goes up real fast. And then this last year, it goes up way faster.

And that's probably not, that rate of growth is not going to sustain. Oh, no. probably not uh that rate of growth is not going to sustain but if if it's like previous stuff with apple it's not as likely to come back to earth as it is to then sort of plateau at that new high level right where it's it's gone from being 200 something so the last six years was 200-something billion dollars in revenue. And now we had a $366 billion year. Well, I think it would not be surprising at all if the next five years were all sort of 300-something billion in revenue. Yeah, but the expectation, looking at the data that you have, is that it will probably be smaller in 2022, you know, maybe down to 320 three we don't know i mean 300 something right it's not necessarily all the way up but uh but yeah that there's some feeling that probably some future sales got pulled into fiscal 21 um but then again there was feeling that future sales

got pulled into fiscal 22 and yet 21 is that much better so uh but yeah it's possible that if you put covid and apple silicon together you've got a and throw in a uh redesign physical redesign of of hardware for the iphone uh that you may have a pretty remarkable year and that the next few years are going to be lower because so many products that might have been deferred and purchased in 22 or 23 or 24 all got pulled back into 21 for one reason or another but your iphone chart shows you know the iphone chart shows the iphone 6 the iphone 10 and the iphone 12 all big redesigns you see it you see you can see we talk about seasonality and we talk about like the holiday quarter but here on an annual scale you can see this sort of iphone seasonality which is the redesign year

and you see the spikes there's 2015 spikes 2018 spikes and 2021 spikes and that's all hardware redesigns of the iphone driving a new wave of iphone sales and. And then the level stays high, but you can see that spike that is the year that they changed the look of the iPhone. Yep. And then there's a Mac chart. And I want to see if I can get your help on this because from 97 to 2006,

it's kind of in the $3 to $5 billion a year range. Then from 2007 up to 2011, it just steadily increases to the 20-something range. Then from 2007 up to 2011, it just steadily increases to the 20-something range. Is this the iPhone that did this for the Mac? I think it's a couple of different things, right? So it's the iPod Halo effect, which starts in the early 2000s and then continues to accelerate. So you've got the people who've never bought an Apple product before, but they buy an iPod and they really like it. And Apple retail is out there too. And so people are able to see Apple products for the first time, maybe in their lives, because they just haven't been around Macs before,

because the Macs are such a niche computer product at this point and they have an affinity for the apple brand now because they like their ipod and the apple store is right there and they've heard that you know oh apple also makes a computer and maybe they knew it um also it's the web is more um more relevant at this point so fewer people say i can't buy a mac because of pc heart pc software that I need. The Intel transition then happens in 2005, 2006, which was a very popular thing to do in that era. My uncle did that. My uncle had always used a PC, and he bought a Mac, and we set him up with Parallels and Windows for the one app that he used on.

And you know what? He never used it, and it became irrelevant. But it got him to buy the Mac, and then they've had a mac ever since so i think i feel like uh ipod halo effect intel transition and then the iphone comes in and the iphone is just doing what the what the ipod halo effect did again which is get more products from apple in the hands of people who had never used an Apple computer before, or maybe hadn't in a long time. And once you're in the family and you're going to the Apple store, and of course, across this time, the need to use Windows software is not only can you virtualize it, but it's decreasing because more and more stuff is on the web, or there's a

Mac version of it, but a lot of it is just about the web you put all that together and the barriers come down and i think that that's why there's that moment in like 2000 it it looks like not a lot happens between 2004 and 2005 but it did go from three to five billion that year right yeah and it never came back down but it was also five in 2000 you know like right it kind of jumps around a little bit right but then it's five five seven ten fourteen seventeen twenty two right like say okay uh the mac business uh what quadruples in six years yeah it's yeah and now it's gone from there yeah we're like 22 to 26 and then it goes like you know that's kind of it's like from this is from the year 2011 to 20 2019 is from like 22 to 26 billion it goes up and down um and then 29 2020 was 29 billion so

2021 35 so the last time i did these charts was new year's 2020 and i thought it would be a good time to look back on apple's last decade but i chose the fiscal year and not the not the the calendar year for that even though i did the the story in the beginning of january or end of december um so the last two years weren't in those charts so i revisited those charts because i thought okay well the fiscal year's over let's look at the year-by-year charts and it's really funny because i wrote at the time in january 2020 i said the mac's been kind of sort of sedate in the in the decade of the 2020s it had that huge growth spurt in the in the 2000s or in the decade of the 2010s right so it's huge growth spurt in the 2000s and uh that took it

so 2010 you're at 17 and then it goes up to 22 billion in 2011 but then in the 2010s it just kind of goes around it kicks around in the 20s it it it exits the decade at 26 but it's like 22 23 21 24 25 right it's just it it had this huge growth to go from 3 billion a year up to the 20s, but that was all sort of in the previous decade. And in the 2010s, it grew, but it was pretty kind of sedate. And that was my take in January of 2020. um but in in 2020 fiscal it went to 29 billion and then it went to 35 in 21 so this the who knows where it's going to go from here but the sedate it hanging around in the 20s of the last decade i think pushed by the apple silicon move and covet again yeah but it has uh it has sent the mac to what Apple said

and we talked about a couple of weeks ago, which is it's the four best quarters of Mac sales ever were the last four. The iPad chart gave me a statistic that I didn't know until I saw this chart. Do you like roller coasters, Mike? I love roller coasters. Up, up, up, wee, down, back up.

Obviously we knew that the iPad was just having a great year right the quarter of a quarter is always great but this year 2021 is the biggest year of ipad revenue of all time and i didn't expect that that was the case i'd still assumed that those monster years between 2012 and 2014 they still hadn't beat those we we went eight years right where we were talking about how the i we living in a world where the ipad was down from its previous high yeah because it was 2013 when it hit 31 billion so it we and we had that period of what one two three four five straight years where it was down every year and so we we really got in this mindset of like well the ipad's

doing better remember when we were waiting around for a sign that the iPad was doing better on this very podcast for quite a while? Anything we would take. But it turned it around. 2018 really kind of was the low, and then it's come up the last three years. And that's good, but it was always still kind of the narrative was the iPad was fast out of the gate, and then it kind of cooled off. And now it's trying to find its way to a new place. But 2021 fiscal was the iPad's best year ever. It was 32 billion. So it was more than the 31 billion in 2013. It was at the iPad is, you know, we're back, never say what

the future holds, but right now 2021 is peak ipad which you know again for eight years that was not the story with the ipad so the ipad has kind of gotten back to where it was in that really hot first couple of years of its existence and then the last thing that i kind of noted was just the rocket ship of services. It's like, it's on this trajectory where, I don't know, like, I feel like maybe, I don't know what's going to happen next. But, you know, we spoke about this last time, like, could services touch iPhone revenue? And there's no way to know for sure.

But, you know, you look at the charts, you've got like an annual revenue by product line. It's the only one that seems like it could if it was going to happen yeah it's uh quite a thing to look at it and see how services continues to grow and how impressive the growth has been in the wearables category but how still still services just keeps climbing and my last chart is the one that i have fun doing because i put them i chart them all together and it's this ridiculously tall graph because otherwise you can't see the others because of the iphone um but the services if you look at that graph you're like services is you know it's it's the services has lifted up above the other three

categories let's put it that way and now it is in the great void between all of apple's other product product categories and the iphone and it's it's kind of charting its own course in there and that's pretty impressive actually given given everything because all of these other products um you know like mac and ipad like we'll find out if and maybe even iphone if they're going to dip a little bit right but like sales can dip but the way that services works, it's unlikely, it's incredibly unlikely that next year will be less than 68, right? Like you would require like millions of people, millions of people to cancel their subscriptions,

which is unlikely to occur. No, there's churn, but it's unlikely that everybody's going to abandon Apple's services en masse. And so it will keep jumping away. Also, there's nothing like putting everything in perspective. All of the praise we just gave to the Mac and the iPad. And then you see it on this chart and you see that the iPad at 32, all-time high, and

the Mac at 35, all-time high. And then there's wearables at 38 so they're already the wearables category is already bigger than the mac and the ipad and then there's services at 68 and then there's the iphone way up there where you can't even see it so it does and this is why we talk about the mac business and the ipad business separately because they are big businesses that should not be discounted but But let's keep in mind also that put together there about what services is. And I'm, you know, like, I really wish they would break it out. I wish they would do a headphones category. Because I'm very confident that the vast majority of that wearables category is AirPods,

right. And when you think about like the mac and the ipod ipads like all these you know we love these we talk about all the time but they could they could be getting beat out by airpods you know i don't think so i i think i think who knows my just off the top of my head my guess is that it's probably um you know 20 billion in airpods and 15 billion in apple watch or maybe it's the maybe it's reversed um i think it's smart of them to put them together because they i mean obviously it's worked for them they've created a category that's roughly the size at least for now of the mac and the ipod and it's or ipad and it's got other stuff in there um guaranteed by the way if you ever mention the ipod on a podcast, you will say iPod for iPad later or iPad for iPod.

Yeah, I just did it. Once you break the seal on the iPod, it ruins everything. Anyway, thanks iPod Halo Effect. Your halo continues in podcasts just saying the wrong words. So yeah, bundling the wearables all together is smart for them because it's creating a box that's about the size of the Mac box and the iPad box. But you're right, I do wonder. And the analysts will tell you their estimates about how AirPods are doing

and how Apple Watch is doing. But we don't get to see that in the numbers. They have cleverly... Those businesses would need to get a lot bigger for them to have to break them out. And obviously they would prefer not to. I feel like unit sales-wise for the company, it probably goes iPhone and then AirPods. And maybe depending on the quarter, that could flip around, would be my feeling. Yeah, yeah, I think you're probably right.

And then iPad, because iPads have a lower revenue per unit than the Mac does. I mean, look, AirPods are like between $100 and $200, right? So it's like the cheapest dish product. And to get to $38 billion, I mean, because look, there is a cap. I feel like there is a much stronger cap right now on what the Apple Watch can do, even though they still, I bet the Apple Watch continues to grow and grow and grow, you know, but I feel like AirPods is not as much. And its revenue per unit is a lot higher as much. And it's revenue per unit is

a lot higher than AirPods so it's gonna do that way. And that's the same with the Mac, right? They don't sell as many Macs as they do iPads but they cost more. So that's pretty good. This is a really great thing. You should do this every year. Thank you. I will. I mean I should have done

it last year. Was anything happening to distract us last year? But that was a fun thing to do, and I will try to do the yearly wrap-up from now on. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Music. You're listening to the show, so you love podcasts. You'll find tons of binge-worthy podcasts on Amazon Music, including this very show itself.

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the whole back catalog or then I have my weekly tech shows. I can maybe go and check out some D&D podcasts. It doesn't matter what I want. I can just go in and find it. I love listening to podcasts all the time, wherever I am. So having an app in my pocket opens the world to me for whatever I want to listen to. And all of my favorites are available in Amazon Music. The app is really easy to use, and you can very easily listen to your podcast wherever you want. If you've never tried out Amazon Music Unlimited, now's a great time because for a limited time, new customers can try Amazon Music Unlimited free for three months with no credit card required. Just go to amazon.com slash upgradefm. That's amazon.com slash upgradefm to try Amazon Music Unlimited free for three months. So once again, go to amazon.com slash UpgradeFM to try Amazon Music Unlimited free for three months.

So once again, go to Amazon.com slash UpgradeFM. Renews automatically cancel anytime terms apply. Our thanks to Amazon Music for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So let's do some upstream headlines. We've got a few things going on with Apple TV Plus that I wanted to touch on. So John Skipper and dan levitard levitard dan levitard so these are let me let me explain who these guys are so dan levitard was a radio host uh and he did a very popular uh like radio show that was simulcast on espn and they

had a podcast and all this stuff that uh dan levitard did and um he was inter i'll do the short version but he was basically interfered with by espn and felt like espn didn't appreciate the work that he was doing um and at one point they wanted him like espn laid off his assistant um and he personally rehired the assistant and paid the assistant himself. Oh, boy. Because he felt he was like, no, you're not going to take my person away from me. That's not a good working relationship. No. And so what happened shortly thereafter is that he left ESPN. John Skipper used to run ESPN.

So they got the band back together. John Skipper, basically, he's an executive and generally thought of as a very smart executive. And Skipper and Levitar basically got together and said, hey, digital media, let's do this. Let's make a company. And they created Metal Ark Media, which is where his show is. And they're doing a bunch of different podcasts there. One of my favorite podcasts, The Pausecast with Joe Posnanski and mike schur is now a metal arc podcast and they're building a content a digital content company that they control so it's a guy who was one of the people who ran espn for a long time and they are a kind of sports but also other culture kind of stuff uh company um and they're

going out on their own because they are tired of you know they were tired of the interference at espn and thought we can do this ourselves it sounds real familiar but this is somebody who's coming from a you know a pretty big place in uh in traditional media and uh they didn't like how they were being treated so they they went and they did a new thing and that's what this is and now you can tell people what uh the apple part of this story uh they have now got a first look deal with apple for documentary and unscripted series so you would assume sports related that isn't said but you would naturally assume it would be sports related content um so sports documentaries and unscripted series for apple yeah i and i wonder this is really interesting because

it's first look which means that if apple says no they can take it elsewhere but they they get the first look on it and um i think that this company may do some interesting things we know apple is sort of interested in sports that you know apple wants to span a whole bunch of different demographics with their stuff that's why they got kids programming they got adult programming they got all sorts of stuff that they're doing they're looking at sports in various ways this gives them another kind of connection to people who are savvy about sports i wonder if one of the reasons that they were interested in making this deal is to be you know to be able to talk to john skipper about strategy a little bit um it's not a bad

deal to sign and i i like i like these guys like their their partnership with the hbo guy what's his name uh oh richard plepler plepler right you've got to assume this is a similar thing right it's like we will uh do a first look deal with you you know anything you want to bring in like the john stewart thing was a part of it um but you've got to assume for apple it's like we want to have these people in our rolodex yeah exactly i was trying to avoid the rolodex metaphor earlier but that's exactly in my contacts app which doesn't sync probably with icloud but that's exactly what i mean is it is old school in a way of sort of relationship building but in a way where it's like basically

they're like we want metal lark on our team and we may not say yes to every project but like we want them to develop projects with us in mind basically as the as their partner and make deals with with good people and i would say that these uh these guys seem at least from what i've seen to be in the good people in sports media category and let me tell you there are not a lot of those people. There's a lot of unpleasant people in sports media. And there's also a lot of gambling money stuff in sports media these days. And so I think this is interesting in the sense that this is an independent media company.

And Apple TV, presumably Apple you know, presumably Apple is, it's a different business model. Um, so who knows what will come out of this, but I think it's a really interesting partnership for them. Uh, and I love the story of how metal art got founded, um, because it has resonance with the kind of stuff that people we know, including us have gone through, uh, with this added level of drama of being kind of stuff that people we know, including us, have gone through with this added level of drama of being kind of treated poorly by your big media employer and just deciding I'm out of here

and I'm taking my audience with me, which is a fun one. So it's not just sports. Apple seems to be on a bit of a kick with documentary and unscripted stuff. Another thing that they've done, along with the many things they're doing, they just signed a deal with Eugene Levy

to host a travel documentary series. It's called The Reluctant Traveler. It reminds me very much of the show that, oh, Ricky Gervais' previous co-host. Oh, yeah, yeah, with Carl Pilkington's show, right. Idiot Abroad, yeah. Sounds kind of like that, where Levy is basically not a very good traveler,

and he's going to travel around the world to interesting places, because the idea is he wants to broaden his horizons, is kind of like the pitch of the show. I mean, honestly, I'm just super into this. This just sounds great. Like, I love Eugene Levy. I bet it'd be hilarious.

Like, I really love the idea of this show, and I looking forward to it it's a great idea the way they describe it is brilliant in in the article that i read about it which is um he travels to various hotels around the world and then explores the area around the hotels and i thought well that is the way to describe a show about a reluctant traveler it's like look you'll be in the hotel it's okay and then we'll explore you won't have to go too far right you can always go back to the hotel and get food you understand if you really are desperate but why don't we try this other food so yeah that's uh that's fun and again all of apple tv's like this is just it's making relationships with people you want to be in business with it's a very interesting thing to see them build this this business yeah i think everyone wants a piece of

the levy business right now and so trying to get into that is good right and i feel like at the moment dan levy has something like this too kind of like where it's people will take whatever they want right whatever eugene and dan levy want to do right now like people will take it because somebody wants the next schitt's creek you know somebody should really just get everybody uh who's involved with sctv uh back in the day to do projects right like let's just roll this out it's not just eugene levy but let's get k O'Hara and Rick Moranis and Andrea Martin. Is Joe Flaherty available for something? I just watched the whole season of Freaks and Geeks again for an incomparable episode that we posted this weekend.

And, I mean, he's 80 now, but, you know, none of them are spring chickens. Eugene Levy is not a spring chicken, but, like, get them all out there. They're all so great. And apparently now is their time, late in life, to be stars again. So get Joe Flaherty out there too. They can go on trips together. Let's do that. Let's do that.

Last week, Apple debuted its first kind of standalone original podcast series. It's called Hooked. It is a nine-part true crime series, of course. It's available in the Apple Podcast app, but also via an RSS feed provided by Art19s. They're like a hosting platform. It seems to be where Apple hosts all this stuff, but they have an RSS feed. It's just available. Currently, this show, this podcast is a standalone thing but it is kind of shown to be published via quote apple tv plus um so this could mean that maybe they adapt it but i reckon organizationally the podcast content team sits with the tv plus team that would be my expectation it wouldn't surprise me and art 19 hosts all of all of apple's podcasts so this isn't like a new strategic system

but it is like all those other ones where it's sort of an apple podcast original but you can get an rs feed of it and put it in overcast if you want to and that's fine and yes and as zach points out which in the in the discord which we mentioned before which is funny that art 19 is now owned by amazon amazon yes it is so our hi lex this is we're going too many layers deep at this point uh but yeah this is this is notable because the stuff that apple's done in the past around but that's not um they do their news show but like stuff like this has also all been related to tv like they had that something lying something that i don't remember which was like simultaneously a podcast and an apple tv plus show but this just kind of i mean from from my perspective came out of nowhere it was just like all of a sudden like here's this thing that we have um but they're continuing to

move into this business too. Let's talk about Apple Silicon. So the Information published an article talking about some of Apple's next generation chip plans, kind of talking about what their next kind of processes are going to be. Do you want to run through some of this for me? Yeah. I mean, some of it's confirmation of things that we've already heard from Mark Gurman, and some of it is new, and some of it's confirmation of things that we've already heard from mark german and some of it is new and some of it is i think that this report lays it out logically even though it's not anything that's going to be a huge revelation i think most of it is not so it mentions that there are going to be second generation chips which means m2 i'm guessing due in 2022 they're going to use an

upgraded five nanometer process this is sounds like it's basically they're going to use an upgraded five nanometer process. This is sounds like it's basically they're going to use the process they already used to make the A15. So this is essentially, yeah, there will be an M2 and yeah, it will be based on the A15. And so it will use the upgraded five nanometer process that the A15 uses over the A14. So okay, great. We it tracks, it's sort of what we expected anyway but they are reporting it as well um they did report that apple plans for at least some of these chips to feature two dies which is interesting because it it means that you might have a situation where what they suggest is you might have some desktop macs down maybe at the lower end that would have two m2 processors in it

and i i don't know whether this is like, would that go in as an option in a 24-inch iMac or in a Mac mini, but that's an interesting idea, right? So I read that, and I think this might be one of those things where somebody heard a thing. It's a game of telephone a little bit. Because technically,

if you look at all of the diagrams that John Syracuse has made and Ars Technica and stuff, right? Like the way that some of the M1 pro and m1 max chips it's like it's just like two of this two of the chip on the same die right is that the way that you describe it and so i think it might just be that yeah and the report it's unclear right the report gives this some credence that it may not deserve but i i'm intrigued by the idea that one way apple might offer um speed improvements on lower end systems probably as an upgrade

is to if if they could have the ability to basically put two m2 processors down if you can think of it that way just double the core count and just seem so confusing and the gpu count like i don't know from like a from the way that you would talk about it you know like they would say it's there's an eight core and you can upgrade to the 16 core with you know with 20 gpu cores or something like that but it's still a relatively low power thing i don't know i don't know like i mean again i don't know how this stuff works but it seems like two processors seems complicated when you could do what they've done then you have what aid efficiency cores and it's weird right it's a little bit weird really makes sense to

me fully i think it is that whole and david and the chat has helped correct me the two dives on the same package thing i think it's another version of that but with m2 chips that that's how that reads to me i just i can't get my head around we've put two processors in this wait why what do they do you know it's that seems very strange to me i can't get my i mean it gives you more cores it gives you more cores that's and and more uh and more memory possibilities and it might allow them to scale that product while it's still a fairly lower cost product. I'm open to the idea, but yeah, it is a little bit baffling.

Of course, you know, yeah, Mark Gurman already reported that there's going to be a Mac Pro replacement with two or four chips and 20 or 40 cores. And that's a sooner than 2023 was the suggestion there. So we'll see. Yeah, I don't know.

Anyway, they also talked about what the third generation ship so if you if i think this is our first official m3 conversation that we've gotten to have so that's exciting oh no this is too soon uh this report says as soon as 2023 i love as soon as as a construction right because basically it's no earlier than 2023 but might be later what it means is yeah it's 2023 and beyond i prefer that than as soon as like i don't really don't like that phrasing um i don't know if that comes from bloomberg or if bloomberg uses like because this is the information right but like i don't like what i don't like the as soon as like everybody it's

it's it's almost marketing like where you what you really you know want to say is no earlier than 2023 or targeting 2023 but it might it might slip anyway the point here and i think this is also kind of putting together just what um taiwan semiconductorctor is doing because what they're saying here, the point of this is there is going to be a new three nanometer process that Taiwan Semiconductor is going to do. And obviously Apple is going to do it and they will use the third generation chips

with the new process. And there might be as many as four dies, which connects to the Mark Gurman report about how they want to do this thing where they have multiple uh chips in the uh in the mac pro and the high-end chip so up to 40 cores per chip um and then they say this process will all but also be used on iphone chips which is like of course it will right this is the whatever it might be a17 maybe i don't know or maybe it's the a16 but it won't reach the mac until a year later it's all kind of speculative but it really what they're saying is obviously

tsmc is working on this other process and it's coming and the mac will use those chips too because of course they will and from our conversation with tim and tom last week obviously you know these plans exist because they're thinking many years out so uh this information article is sort of saying here's kind of what the roadmap is for now what i wonder is um does this give us a sense of what apple would like its mac chip paste to be because i think it's kind of interesting to see like is there really going to be a one-to-one generational thing with the m1 m2 m3 and the a14 15 16 where you know obviously the a15 is out now and we just had the m1x comes out but if we think of like the the the chip year really kind of starts with the

a15 and then it's in an iphone and maybe it's in an ipad and then next year there'll be an m2 which is kind of based on the a15 and does it work like that where then there's an a16 next fall and then the following you know either later that fall or the next spring there's an m3 is it going to be a one-to-one kind of thing kind of makes sense that it would there are moments where I think, are they really going to do Mac chips in an annual cycle like they do? I don't think so. The iPhone?

Yeah. So I think what it will mean is they will have the opportunity to, right? But I can't imagine every year, right, they're going to make new chips for every Mac. I mean, it is hard to imagine it. And yet I think to myself, at some point, if you're Apple and you're making your own chips or you're having your own chips made for you and you're looking at your Macs, you say to yourself, well, why should I keep? Like once the A15 is up and running, I do wonder if there's a point where you say, why should i keep like once the a15 is up and running i do wonder if there's a point where you say why should i keep making the m1 why shouldn't i just switch

over to the m2 why why shouldn't i do essentially the a15 version of my macbook air chip why don't i switch to that now because if if the work's already done um and also if you would like to release a new model, but even if, which that's the rumor for now, right? Is that there's going to be a new MacBook Air, but even if it's just an annual speed update,

if Intel's not your supplier anymore, I can see the argument that's like, well, once we're on A15, we should flip everything over to M2 because why would I keep making M1 MacBook Airs when I can make an M2 MacBook Air and sell it as an upgrade and it'll be more power efficient

and it'll be a little more powerful. And then you end up in a annual replenishment cycle where it's the old speed bump thing, right? Where it's just like, well, the new MacBook Air is just using the M3 and it's a little bit faster than the M2, but I could totally see them doing that, but it would be a change in Mac strategy for them

because they have not been as focused. And the iPad doesn't do that either, right? Generally is the annual cadence is really only for the iPhone, but you got to wonder a little bit now that the chips are from the iPhone, essentially. Yeah, I feel like the iPad is a really good analogy to how I think it's going to work, where every year there's new iPads.

So every year some Macs will be updated, but it won't be every Mac every year. It will be every Mac every year. It will be every Mac within an 18 to 24 month cycle. So here's my question though. I think that's probably true, right? Because, you know, poor old Mac Mini and all that. But let's talk about the MacBook Air for a second. So M1 MacBook

Air came out November of 2020. Rumor is M2 MacBook Air redesigned, but also using a new chip uh spring you know spring to mid next year 22 okay that's that's an 18 month thing maybe there's legacy node issues and it they wanted to be sooner but it's not um okay then apple in the fall comes out with the next iphone chip that they're going to lay everything else on so we get the a16 so now it's 2023 and the macbook air has been out for a year

and they've got the a16 out there and it's on on the new 3-nanometer process from TSMC, let's say. Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. But let's just say. And you're Apple, and you're looking at the MacBook Air, and you're like, we haven't updated the MacBook Air in a year. This is the question I have, is, do you let the MacBook Air lay there for another year, or another six months, or another nine months,

with the M2, even though you've already moved on in your iPhone chips, do you just let it lay there so that you've got a system with a chip that is your chip design, but you haven't updated it in almost two years? And that's the question is, is that okay or not? Because I can see both sides sides i can see both sides there i can see you saying well like but if but if so here's the thing so do they forego designing an m3 at that point or do they or do they not or do they say you know the m2 is fine the m2 will take us for two years you know and the m2 may be so the m1 so impressive that maybe the m2 will be so impressive that they're like it's fine um we don't need to bother and and we're going to focus on uh our pro systems for this generation maybe i i think that your argument is is perfectly valid but i can see the counter which is or they could just seize complete control over

their chip production line and say every year we'll do a and m and m pro but they would never benefit from like the scale right because if you continue to make m1 chips for on an 18 to 24 month period by the time you get towards the end you're producing them much better from an efficiency perspective sure if you're changing them over every single year you're not getting that benefit anymore yeah like and if you're thinking about margins you know they make more money on those machines the longer that they have them around and i just feel like it would just logistically that just seems very complicated like every single year changing it over especially when like oh well if you're not going to change the chassis well what if you need different cooling probably not i'm

sure that they're not going to develop it but you know what i just think it's a lot and it's just i look at the ipad right that's what for me is really like that's what solidifies it in my mind like the ipad pro they update it every two years and that's fine like the fact that the iphone gets a new chip every year it for me it doesn't matter because you can't like it an iphone and a mac do different things and like just because the iphone gets its new chip every year doesn't mean the mac is going to then it's not like oh now the Mac's being quote left behind like when they're so incredibly powerful already well and nobody's saying the M1 Max is a an embarrassment to Apple because the A15 exists exactly like nobody nobody's saying that I wonder if the truth

is that to get all these new Macs out on Apple Silicon, there's this transition strategy where year one, which is M1 and M1 Pro and M1 Max, is followed immediately by M2, and that's going to generate the M2 chip that will run with four in the Mac Pro, and they may update the laptops to an M2 Pro, M2 Max at that point too next year, but that the long the long

term plan is to settle down but maybe because they're in this transition now they're going to step it up a little bit because they need to clear out everything and get everything on new systems and or on new chips and get the intel stuff out and that maybe they settle back to a cadence where it's every other A generation is a Mac generation. Every M chip is actually every other A chip. Eventually. Yeah, that's what I think. It will end up going. Honestly, that's one of the things that surprises me about these second generation chips in 2022 rumor.

Because, and that's been a, I mean, Mark Gurman german said i believe new macbook airs with a new chip coming next year and honestly i part of me is surprised that that's the case and that they wouldn't just make a new looking macbook air with an m1 well i think that the idea is that macbook air will then be with an m2 for two years for two years but, I think that the idea is that MacBook Air will then be with an M2 for two years. For two years. Because it's like, for example, we got a MacBook Pro a year after the first one, but they've got to get

these new designs out, and so they'll put the best that they can put in that new design, and then they will live for a period of time. Let it rest. Yeah, that could be. This report made me have a question in my brain. The Mac Pro, right? Yeah.

Will we get a third brand name for a chip? And I was thinking genuinely M1 Pro Max. Pro Max. I don't know. I think... M1 Max Pro, M1 Max Max. Will there be a third name? Because it's not going to be the same

chip right in theory from a marketing perspective at least if if it is truly two or four m1 max chips or m2 max chips if you want depending on the generation if it truly is m1 extreme i i think that yeah but they could also very easily just say it's got two M1 Macs. It's got four M1 Macs. M1 Macs times four. They could just do that. They could just, it's not because it's not a new chip.

It's four of them. In the Mac Pro, at least, that's where I, you know when I was saying that earlier thing about the two M2 chips, I think that's too complicated. But in the Mac Pro and just the Mac Pro, I think you could get away with that. They may also just just call it by cores that's how they differentiate so many of

these chips now is just by core count um and so like the the cpu cores and then the secondarily the gpu cores so they may just simply say m1 max 10 m1 max 20 m1 max 40 core right like just call it by the core count you're right they may just say like the mac pro comes with an m1 max chip like that's just it right but it's but it starts at probably the highest configuration of m1 max now but then can also increase but they're all m1 max yeah i think that m1 max chip sorry i forgot they're all m1 max chips but then you just get the core counts with m1 max chips because they have kind of run out unless they did do which i don't think they should but unless they did do something like m1 max pro which would be horrible well they have to pro max because that's already what they have but i i don't think they

will i think that they've used pro and max and that that it will be more likely be either it comes with four or it'll just be the core count right this is the 40 core version and if and this is the 20 core version and you can also get our super awesome binned uh 16 core version or whatever it is yeah i don't know this episode of upgrade is brought to you by hunter douglas with hunter douglas's range of innovative window shades, you'll be able to outfit your home with fantastic fabrics and advanced control systems, helping your home become more comfortable, stylish, and relaxing any time of the day. Hunter Douglas' shades diffuse harsh sunlight, instead casting a beautiful glow across your room. With their adaptability, you can enjoy the view outside of a window without needing to

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Stephen Hackett's review of the 14-inch MacBook Pro, genius. Every now and then, someone comes across like, oh, I have a little idea, and then the way you realize that review, perfect. Basically, in a nutshell, Stephen reviewed the computer as if the 2016 macbook pros never existed and it's a different look comparing it to the macbook pro that looks a lot more like it in terms of ports and things which is the the last before the usbc switch over that's good stuff it's an interesting approach what I like about the review is that it's saying different things.

He was showing some stuff to me during it, and I really loved it. I loved that it didn't... It's just not talking about the keyboard. It's not talking about ports coming back. It almost makes me think of when we were talking about iPhone blips earlier on. You have this blip where all of a sudden there's a ton of revenue and it's like really if you just plot these macbook pros on a trajectory back from the power book to now like the the 2016 era ones were just a blip where everything went wrong but if you remove that this one is just on a similar

trajectory to what the 2015 or before MacBook Pros would have been like. And it's kind of fun to look at it that way. Yeah. Now, you've taken your MacBook Pro with you on your little trip. Yeah, on this trip. I actually had the... I extended my review length so that I could take this on this trip

because I thought it would be at least a little bit instructive to travel with the MacBook Pro. And it's, you know, it's bigger and heavier than the MacBook Air that I usually take on a trip like this, but it's been fun. You know, it is, it is big, although that the screen is nice and beautiful and big, like it always is, but now I can take it with me and work from elsewhere. I think what I would say is it's more like my whole imac is with me yeah then when i bring the macbook air with me yeah where it's not my because this is not my computer and it's not migrated from my my stuff and i've been you know all weekend i've been like

oh i need that app i better go install right? It's not migrated at all. So I'm slowly kind of been adding some stuff in that I didn't need when I was using it at home that now I realize I need for whatever I'm doing this weekend. But it's been a long time since the computer that I brought with me was essentially as capable or was the computer that i use at home it's been at least since um i switched to the 5k iMac because before that my MacBook Air was my primary for a few years and so although it was a MacBook Air it had all of my stuff and it was i wasn't losing capability by traveling it wasn't greatly capable but it was was capable. And I wasn't feeling that loss. So it's been at least since then, since 2015, 14, something like that. So it's been a long time. And that's the thing that struck me the most about it is, although it is not my computer from home,

it's as capable as my computer that I use every day. And that's a different feeling, right? Than having it be, well, this is the road life that I'm leading now. And that means everything's not quite as good. And yeah, the screen's not 27 inches. I'll give you that. But otherwise, I don't feel like I'm working in a make do with a compromised device. And everybody's going to have a different feeling about that. And I'm not going to go out and buy one of these to replace my M1 MacBook Air. I'm

not going to do it. I keep telling myself that I'm not. I look in the mirror every time I say it. I'm not going to do it. Not going to happen. No. Hey, self, don't do it. Don't do it. Does somebody in my family need a M1 MacBook Air that I could hand down so I could buy one of these? No, no, they're fine. They're all fine. But it has been delightful, honestly, to have such a good screen and such a powerful computer when I'm not at home. Yeah.

Because I haven't had that, like, again, not like that MacBook Air that I was traveling with was powerful, but it was always the level of performance and functionality that I expected day to day and so when i took it with me it was no change and with this uh it's the first time since then

where i have not felt like i was compromising i guess to travel yeah i uh saying about the imac pro thing um mkbhd published his review. And he's known for, if he was going to a WWDC, an Apple event or whatever, he would take his iMac Pro with him because the render times were that important for getting his videos out quickly. And he was saying now the MacBook Pro is faster than that. He doesn't need to do that anymore.

Now he can replace the travel iMac Pro with a 16-inch MacBook Pro is faster than that. He doesn't need to do that anymore. Now he can replace the travel iMac Pro with a 16-inch MacBook Pro. Like that's the one he's going with because it's, you know, the fastest of the fast, right? Travel iMac Pro. But this is, I, WWDC 20 something, I don't remember which one,

I saw him. He was waiting for a taxi on his own and he had two suitcases and a massive pelican case and in that pelican case was was the iMac pro and i've never seen somebody look more flustered than he did because he was just waiting for an uber like surrounded by luggage on his own i have no idea how he managed to move all of that stuff around. It's kind of incredible. So my MacBook Pro, a couple of other observations. I've been using it as a laptop more and it's similar to you. It's just fantastic. It's just such a beautiful screen. I have succumbed to the screen real estate. I've gone from the more space i use the scaled mode i use more space you've left

2x scaling behind i know i've always done more space because for me a mac laptop it's just i can't fit enough things on the screen if i use it in the native uh resolution like i mean that's the one thing that i noticed right going from a 27 inch iMac down to this thing is that everything's really cramped. And if I was in a scenario where I really needed more space, I would do that. I mean, and more space looks good. Everything's a little smaller. It looks better now than it did previously. It really does.

To my eyes, anyway. But I just can't deal with the native resolution. It's just it's not – I just can't get enough on the screen that i want i get it all of my ram issues have been completely solved and that's fantastic like i've really been putting it through its paces and i have not once gotten a warning that i didn't have enough ram which is something that would happen to my me on my 13 inch uh macbook pro quite a lot and i am% used to the size difference of this machine. Like, I don't notice it anymore. It just feels like what a laptop feels like.

You know, I know it's not a ton different, but it's just like a thing that it's not a thing at all. And I continue to just, I love the design. I love the design so much of this computer. I think it looks so freaking cool. I really like it. I get every time I open it up, I'm like, this is fun. Yeah. I'm like this is fun yeah uh big time i just

computer big time as you were talking i switched to more space yeah and now i can see the discord and the show notes yeah side by side and it's like oh yeah this is why i do it i i i know it's not ideal and i know people are going to be so bad that i haven't got retina but uh the screen looks great it's just not it's just scaled it is yeah that's the beauty of it yeah it's not the native retina or whatever but it's not native resolution 2x right it is it's scaled and so it's not going to be as perfectly crisp and all that like every apple laptop uh up to now basically it took a bit getting used to because at first i was like oh no now the text is too small but but i i got used to it pretty quickly yeah i can see that um let's also we've got a couple of stories to follow up on uh around app store legality stuff like antitrust and all

that kind of stuff so the first is kind of not apple but will be probably at apple at some point which is google in south korea So you remember that the South Korean government made a ruling that to be able to sell apps in South Korea in an app store, they were going to require both Google and Apple to have alternate payment processes in the app store. So far, Apple has kind of just waved their hand at this, which I'm intrigued to see how this is going to run.

But maybe they were waiting to see what Google did because really, weirdly, I think, this whole thing was focused on Google mostly, which was always strange to me, but they called it like it was known as the Google law in South Korea. So Google have published what they're going to do, and they've done a couple of things. First is they've created a user-friendly user interface

for people to be able to choose how they want to pay. So you want to buy an app or you want to buy a subscription, it will pop up with Google Play always as an option. And then any other option that that developer may have asked for, you know, if they're going to use like, I don't know, say Stripe or whatever for their payment processing. But what Google has done which i don't think anyone saw coming was they're still going to charge you as the developer but they're going to reduce their fee by four percent which they say should be enough for payment processing might not always be. So you could end up paying more money overall,

depending on the size of your transaction. So you can use whoever you want to process the payments, but you still have to pay Google. I expected this move, but I expected this move from Apple. And in fact, at one point there was a, some sort of maybe testimony where Apple described a scenario where they said, how would we get paid? Yeah. If we can't get paid by taking our percentage

for all of our largesse and providing a development platform. Again, it's that, it's that Apple argument that we want money from developers because we give them the tools and we give them the platform, which is true. But again, we have talked about how developers and their apps also provide fundamental value to Apple's products that they sell, and that Apple has decided that's not good enough. And they also want to have a tariff on all of the money that developers make. Okay, so they said this, and they said, well, you know, we could do that. But then we need to make our money somewhere else. And here Google walks in to Korea and says, all right, just to be clear here, because, because you may have heard it and you may not

have understood it. I'm just going to say this again. Google says, okay, if you don't use us, you don't, we won't take our 15% transaction because you're not using us for payment. However, because you're using Google Play, you owe us a percent of the transaction you make independently. That's what they're saying. They're saying because you use Google's APIs, Google's operating system, which we give away for free and everybody gets to use it because of all of our largesse for developers. If you're not going to let us take a cut

right on top of our payment system, we'll let you use a third party system. You still got to give us our cut and we'll make it a little bit less than it normally was because we know you actually need and for eBooks and stuff, it's a little bit less than that even, but it's still you got to give us our cut and so the

argument here is basically you can lose us as a payment processor but you cannot escape the money you owe us and that sounds so much like something apple would do and look google did it google went first incredible really like it's genuinely incredible because if you did find and replace google for apple you'd be like yeah that makes sense that this is just not i honestly i was expecting google to just be like okay but i think for them like the more i thought about it after reading this was like well they do offer side loading right so it's like for google it's like well you can just do this other thing if you want to. And I think in Ben Thompson's daily update, he made a good point where it was like, clearly

developers don't want to because they just want to do that, right? You want to be in the Play Store and Google's done lots of stuff in the last few years to make the Play Store more enticing. Like I noticed this recently when i was in the play store you get points when you download apps and stuff and you can use those points for money off apps right so you get like loyalty points basically stuff that apple doesn't have to do because they're not competing against anyone for stores right but google maybe feels that they want to do these kinds of things to just make sure that

people stay in the play store but something also to know is google also recently reduced their fees for basically every type of subscription-based payment in the app store they're all fit in the play store they're all at 15 now some media services can qualify for 10%. This is like eBooks and streaming music because Google recognizes that the margins are smaller and there are no earning thresholds or anything. So I think that there are some instances where just consumables, I think, or like upfront purchases can be a bit smaller,

but don't quote me on that. But basically Google is pushing towards 15%. But the idea being that if you said, hey, I want to use Stripe for processing, Google will say, well, we expect 11% of that back. Yeah. So here's what this means. This means that everybody who thought alternate payment processing meant getting away from giving up 10 or 15 percent or 30 percent or whatever of your revenue to the platform vendor plus credit card transactions um they're saying no it doesn't it doesn't actually mean that this is not how you get to keep more of the money for the software you sell um because the platform owners feel like you thought you were getting, you thought you were paying them a percentage in exchange for being on their store.

But what they've decided is that you're actually paying them embedded in your revenue. You're paying a fee for being a developer, for having on iOS, you know, having Xcode, having, you know, whatever the app store infrastructure is, that's, and Google's equivalent. That's what they're saying is, is that the thing you thought was just us skimming off the top, um, more than we take in credit card fees was actually us taking, charging you a fee for being a developer and using our platforms that we built and we spent money on, and so we want some of your money. The fact that Google did this, I think, also shows a supreme level of confidence that while laws may control something like exclusivity of a payment system that it's a lot harder to change the law to say

that a company that makes an operating system can't charge developers a fee for using it and that they will get that fee no matter what and however they want it and i'm not a lawyer but i am observing behavior of large companies who have lots of lawyers and for google to do this because my immediate reaction was all they're going to do like they're they're honoring the letter of the law without giving up any of their money or almost any of their money and and they might even some circumstances take more money um so why so you know they're just going to make everybody angrier. And that may be true, right? This is an environment where everybody's grumpy at tech companies.

But when you think about it a little, it really feels to me like this is a move where they are supremely confident that they're not gonna that they can be required to do things like allow competition for payment services but that what they're not going to be legislated into abandoning is their fee to developers that they charge for using their platforms yeah that that's a different thing and that it got tied we've been all viewing it as one thing and and i think they did too honestly they did too but now that the rubber meets the road they're like oh no no it's two things what are you talking about we always said this and honestly even if there was a law that said you can't tie it to individual purchases in a store, you know what would happen is, let's use Apple as an example. Apple would say, well, great news. We're not going to charge you anything and you can use

alternate payment systems. However, in addition to your annual Apple developer membership, you now need to submit your revenue statement with Apple and pay a fee on your revenue and we will audit your revenue in the app and you need to basically you need to pay your tax at the end of the year like there are lots of ways that they could do this that make it um more onerous actually and maybe even more expensive for developers if they have to but it seems like it's going to be a, at least a much tougher thing. And obviously their lawyers think it's a much tougher thing to tell a company you can't charge people ever for using your stuff. Your operating system is essentially a public utility. Um, so, uh, that's, I I'm fascinated by that. So, so this is, this is a power move by

Google and ultimately will probably be by apple to basically say um if if the only way that you're going to be able to throw the book at us is limited competition and not charging a fee then sure have competition but we got our money either way okay and and so i i cannot imagine that this won't be where we'll end up with Apple too. This could be like as well what they've done here is their opening, you know, and they may get requested or forced to tweak it.

Like the one thing for me that is, I think a little questionable and does reduce any kind of benefit to developers is the fact that the Google Play is always a payment option right that it's not actually possible for a developer to opt out of that that's the sign in with apple move right which is like sure you can you can offer other logins but you must also offer the platform login and google make a compelling reason you know like they can't

confirm that uh they're going to be able to do parental controls etc etc etc uh but what this does is reduces basically the reason for a developer to do this uh alternate payment thing to zero you know because if you had your own if you were just using your own payment system even though google is still going to charge you there could be benefits to it like now you just have one payment processor that you use right and it all goes to one place and it may make other cost savings for you as a business depending on your size for just managing all of your payments going to one place if you have say android and ios apps might make it easier to confirm uh payment and subscription status and all that

kind of stuff but if you always have to have Google Play as an option, I don't know why any user would decide to choose the other option. And so then it's kind of like, well, now we're just adding unnecessary complexity into the whole thing, so we're not going to do it. So I would like to see that not be the thing, right? From a developer's perspective. But from a user's perspective, I don't know. I also just feel like I know what Google's saying.

Like, oh, there's no way, there's no possible way for parental controls to be, like you could make an API and, you know, like. Right. You could, right? Like currently there isn't. You have no interest in doing it because you're putting

resources towards something but that actually it goes back to what i think is the fundamental thing here is the only danger and i they are lawyers obviously think it's not much of a danger and i think they're probably right the only real danger is being told hey google oh no i just set off a bunch of google home there yeah no no it's fine because it's okay that's it's okay oh okay it's okay actually maybe they changed that maybe they added that i don't know let's do this again mr google i know that you have no reason to want to put a lot of extra effort into building an api for parental controls so that you can have people use third-party payment systems with parental controls. But we're now legally going to make you build an API specified in a law.

It's going to be real good folks. If it's in a law, that's going to be a really good API. You have to do it, which means we're now at the down at the level of literally telling you how to use your employees. It actually brings to mind the, was it the FBI Apple thing where they're like, you need to hire, you need to make employees available to us to do this. And they're like, you can't tell us as a private company that we need to hire a bunch of people

to do a thing for you to do work for you. This is similar to that in the sense that it's basically saying, is a law going to say, Google, you need to do this thing, you need to build an API, you have to do all this because we have decided that the government and the laws are going to control what you do with your code and your operating system that you built and that you own. And I think that there is a risk here. But I understand why you might do an analysis and say, ultimately, it's unlikely that a government is going to declare Android or iOS a public benefit that is controlled by the public, and that the corporation that built it

can't run it anymore, especially since, um, there are, there's competition at least between the two giants. That's also their biggest risk, right? Their biggest risk is that the company comes in and says, guess what? iOS now belongs to the people, right? Google Android belongs to the people or Google play belongs to the people. And what Google is saying is like, if, uh, Epic wants to take all the money, that's fine. Build your own damn operating system, but this is ours and you pay us if you use it. Um, interesting thing. Cause practically you can't practically, it would be very hard to do that, to build your own operating system and have it be successful in any way. They want access to

the people who are using Google's operating system and Apple's operating system. And I see the argument that it's a, what, monopsony, the idea that it's these two players and they're skimming all this money out of the market. But I do think that there's the counter argument, which is it's their private property. They built it. They do get to decide what they do with it. And they do get to profit from it. And if I look at what Google's move was in Korea, that's what I take out of it is they seem to be very confident that there are limits to what a government is going to tell Google to do with its operating system. And so, you know, here you go. Here's your competition.

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Let's do some hashtag and ask upgrade questions. First one comes from Stepan who asks just a two-part question part one okay do you use or plan to use any of the apple iCloud plus features and also do you use sign in with apple if it's actually a three-part question this is part 2b if yes do you hide your email so iCloud plus feature where do I fill in the bubbles on this and then who do I send it to with the multi-part to me question iCloud plus is just paid iCloud

so the answer is yes I use I use the extra storage I don't use the private browsing at this point because it doesn't or the what is what is it called magic private relay magic tunnel private relay whatever yeah I don't I don't use that because it doesn't it doesn't work right What is it called? Magic. Private relay. Magic tunnel. Private relay. Sure, whatever. I don't use that because it doesn't work right. Like I tried it and it didn't work right and it slowed everything down and things were incompatible. And so I'm not using it right now. Maybe I'll turn it on later.

But I am using all that. iCloud Plus is literally, it's just you're paying for stuff on iCloud. And I have the two terabyte plan. So I am using a lot of iCloud plus storage but that's about it well they also have the like when you die thing right that's oh yes coming this fall we're all dying this fall yeah sure and also they do the hide my email and custom email domain this is all part of iCloud I'm not using any email related things for Apple as for sign

in with Apple I have used it with some things and where I really have used it is there's like a an app that I want to try and they're like oh you need to try this app you need to sign up for an account like oh boy and I have you sign in with Apple for those with the hidden email address so that I can basically treat it as a disposable account if I don't want to ever tell them who I am and I can turn off that email address and say goodbye. I like that. I like not having to give them my email address right away. I have also used it with some stuff where I ended up going with it. My problem with sign in with Apple is that you get your accounts can often get in a very weird state where Apple kind of owns

your account a little bit. And some web apps are better than others at like, can I change my password? Exactly. So that I can just log in normally and not use sign in with Apple. And some of them do. And some of them don't. And honestly,

I get so used to using autofill passwords and stuff that I get to, there's one in particular, the web alternate reality game, Blaseball, where I set up a sign in with Apple account when it announced. And I still look at it and play it and it's fun. But every time I go there, I'm like, oh, right. And I have to click sign in with Apple. And then I have to put in my Mac oh right and i have to click sign in with apple and then i have to put in my mac password in order for it to log me in and it only logs me in for a certain amount

of time and i think to myself i regret using sign in with apple because i'd rather have it be like everything else that i do what we're signing with apple is great is if you're on an iPad or an iPhone and it can just do like face ID and sign you in, like when it works super smooth, it's nice. But honestly, I sort of have decided I, other than for sort of throw away, I don't want to commit stuff. I don't use it because I'd really rather have my account be normal and be able to have control over it. So I have a couple of thoughts on this. So I use all the same iCloud Plus features that you do and don't do. Sign in with Apple, I do really like it.

But I have hit this, I hit a thing the other day where I used sign in with Apple. It's like, oh, great, because I would prefer to use similar to you. It's like, I don't know if I'm going to want this in the long term. I don't know if I want this company

to have my email address. And so sometimes I hide it, but not always. It's like, oh, this is nice and easy. But then I thought to myself, if I need to sign in with this and sign in with Apple isn't working, my account does not exist. Because what I want Apple to do with sign in with Apple is to surface a password that I can get in the passwords section of the settings right

so like if I had to sign in somehow can I get a username and password that I could use if sign in with Apple was broken somehow because otherwise I have this account I me Mike Hurley I do not own the the username and email

and password for that account apple has right apple doesn't yeah why can't i have it too right like why can't you put it in the passwords section of the settings app or system preferences like i would also like to have it. I don't have it. And I find that to be odd. Like I just used sign in with Apple to create an account with a government website, which I thought was awesome

because I could use that. But then as soon as I did it, I was like, I don't have the password for this account, right? Like I don't have it. I have to use Simon of Apple, which is probably going to be fine.

But what if it isn't fine, right? Now I don't have that anymore. Similarly, the thing that I wanted to mention, and look, we're all friends here, all right? So just, okay. My logging in to my Mac password is not as good as my 1Password password from a strengths perspective.

Right. And I expect that now I've said that, about 95% of our listeners have gone, oh yeah. Because now where you, like Keychain is so like, and the password app is like so ingrained, it is really easy to sign into stuff in theory with if you

had physical access to my mac compared to if everything was in one password like my one password password is really complicated my mac password not so much because in my mind as it has been in the past well all my passwords are in one password, and you can't get to those. Now that we're also all saving things for autofill more because the passwords functionality on Mac devices and on iOS devices has gotten better. So what I thought the other day is,

I would like to set a more complicated password when a password is needed for autofill. That's something that I would like to set a more complicated password when a password is needed for autofill. That's something that I would like. That is what I'm throwing out there to Apple's passwords team. If you are asking me to enter a password for autofilling, I would like that to be a much larger password than the one just to get into my Mac with.

So there you go. And for all the people that think they now need to tell me, I need a 25 character cryptographic password to get into my Mac with. So there you go. And for all the people that think they now need to tell me, I need a 25 character cryptographic password to sign into my Mac. Thanks, I don't want your feedback, all right? We're all cool here, you know? Yeah, I mean, that would be their argument,

I think at Apple too, would be you need a stronger password for your Mac. I know, but then I would also ask what they use because I'm assuming that most people are in a similar boat to me. E-Carmony asks, how frequently do you raise and lower your standing desk? It varies. My standing desk is basically a seated desk. It can, but I very, very ever raise. I sit by default, and then I feel like I want to stand. And so then I stand for a while and then, and then, and then I need to feel like I need

to go back down and sit for a while. So I'll do that often when I feel like I need to stand, I actually just go in out into the other room and write on the iPad at the, at the bar in the kitchen. And I can do that sitting or standing, but I usually stand. So I often will just move but it happens it happens when I'm you know maybe my back hurts or something like that or I'm just uncomfortable or I've been sitting all day and I want to do something different and then I'll pop it up I have a little preset button and it just goes up and it's great but mostly it's

sitting and Andy asks I've heard Mike and other podcasters talk about using their MacBook Pro in clamshell mode of an external monitor and just curious why do you keep the lid closed why not keep the laptop lid open and use it as a second display does leaving the lid open cause issues so I can answer for me I can't answer for other people my physical desk space means that the laptop really can only fit underneath the display and the display is not high off high up enough off the desk to have it open i also don't like having two keyboards in front of me like and two trackpads because i use external keyboards and external trackpads i find it to be neater also i have a 31 inch display a 14 inch display next to or underneath

the 31 inch display to me just looks really weird like the size difference is so massive so for those reasons it's not needed and also i have a 30 inch display i do not need a second 14 inch display i don't i don't feel like i need that um in those instances so they're all the reasons that i do it i don't know why everybody else does it the way they do it it's awkward i used to have a stand from ergotron i want to say at work at adg that was i had my apple display and then the stand was um i think it was the the display was on the stand on an arm or like a mount a VESA mount and then there was a tray basically

for a laptop and it was so the idea there was to do just this we just run two monitors and so it was much higher up and it was sort of wider open so that the screen was kind of taller right like not at an angle where you'd maybe type on it but at an higher up and it was sort of wider open so that the screen was, was a kind of taller,

right? Like not at an angle where you'd maybe type on it, but an angle for display purposes to try and sort of get rid of all of the length of the keyboard and track pad that pushes the screen further back. And with all of that, and I used it that way for a while for maybe a year or two, it was awkward. I mean,

it was weird and awkward. That second display really did become kind of just a garbage place for secondary stuff because the first display was so big and the other display was so small that I, you know, I tried it, but it only really ever became kind of an ancillary thing. And then I didn't use it enough for it to make sense. And then I ended up just running it mostly in clamshell after that. So I think that's the truth of it is that laptop screens are so much smaller than external displays at this point and ergonomically to contort your laptop into something. So it looks like a workable second screen.

I don't know. It's a tough one. So that's what I think is mostly it's a nice idea. But then you when you put it in practice, you're like, I really rather just have one display or even really rather have two displays that fit together and are gonna be similar sizes. I like multiple displays as a thing. I just don't really like laptop displays

as my second display. Cause it's like, usually it's a very varied in size. And also I just don't like having the keyboard and the trackpad and all of that there in front of the display. It kind of tends to mean that either the display is further away than you would want it to be. Or now I have like another,

and also then I find myself like, even though I have one keyboard in front, I'm not reaching over to type on the other one sometimes. And then that's not so good for ergonomics. So I just like to keep it, that laptop, just keep it closed. Yeah yeah if you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show just send out a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade or you can use question mark ask upgrade in the relay fm members discord which you'll get access to if you sign up for upgrade plus go to get

upgrade plus.com and you get longer ad free episodes every single week of Upgrade so you get bonus content and no ads. Go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up. Thank you so much to everybody that has. Also thank you to Capital One, Hunter Douglas and Amazon Music for their support of this week's episode but most of all thank you

for listening. If you'd like to find Jason online go to sixcolors.com theincomparable.com and Jason hosts many shows here at RelayFM as do I you can like to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com, theincomparable.com, and Jason hosts many shows here at RelayFM, as do I. You can go to relay.fm slash shows and pick out something new to listen to. Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.