Upgrade - 382: Hey Car, Stop

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Apple's car project is back in the news, but is the company's ambition in this area unrealistic? Also: Qualcomm spoils Apple's modem move, Apple employees get a new date to return to work, and there's some good news about the repairability of Apple products.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 382 and today's show is brought to you by zocdoc memberful and doordash my name is mike curly and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason hi mike how are you i'm good my friend i've got a lot of stuff to talk about today. Oh, packed show today. And I am recording from an undisclosed location, so please don't write in and wonder why I sound different. It's because I'm in a different place. That's all.

I have a hashtag Snell talk question. It comes from Chris. Chris wants to know, what is your screensaver? My screensaver is called ariel and it is literally the ariel screensaver from the apple tv um put on the mac and we talked about this a while ago and i acted like it was um the bill normal yeah and then people pointed out that you can't actually get that on the mac and so you have to go to aerial screensaver.github.io and there's a github project and it's a screensaver module for the mac and then it loads all of the

aerial uh imagery imagery that's on the apple tv so you know this is different the last time that we did speak about this it was all just like just took to a github page and that was it but now they at least have like a download thing well it's a git it's a github hosted right page but it's like the project page and it's all pretty and stuff now so with yeah it looks it looks more like a normal piece of software and not just a github project but yeah it's uh it's uh that's what it is it's it's just taking that imagery and i don't really understand why it's not available on the Mac via an Apple thing. But that's what I – I did that ages ago, and I'm probably still using an ancient version of it, but that's what I have on my iMac. So if I – it doesn't stay on for very long, but if I wander away from my iMac for a while and then come back, there'll usually be some sort of a flyover happening.

Where does it get the videos from? Apple, there is a... You can download these videos. There's a known URL that is the... I believe there's a JSON file or something that shows you... It's the stuff the Apple TV downloads. Because they do pull them

down from the web, right? So they are existing on the internet somewhere. It's just weird to me that Apple didn't lock that away, you know? But hey-ho. It's great that they didn't. It's a known URL, so they just load that and it gives them a list of what's available and then they pull from there.

I think I'm going to put this on my MacBook Pro, I think. On my iMac I use the Hello screensaver in the matching color of my iMac. I don't know if that one is available on non-M1 iMacs. I don't know. It's the one that like draws the word Hello.

I think it's in Monterey. Okay. I think before Monterey, it wasn't available. It might be. That's right. Probably available now. But at least on mine, it's in yellow. It's like this is the default one that it shipped with,

so I just like it. I like it. I think it's fun, and it reminds me of how much I love my little yellow computer. Thank you to Chris for that Snow Talk question. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer and for us to open an episode of Upgrade where we will answer it, just send out

a tweet with the hashtag Snow Talk or or use question mark SnellTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. I have a couple of follow-up things that we can go through, Jason. The first is that Qualcomm have divulged to their investors on an investor call that they expect 80% of their modem chip

supply to Apple to fall away in 2023. What they have now, what they're currently supplying. They're expecting to just be supplying 20% of that in 2023 and onwards. So I think it's clear that we can assume from this, as you wrote about in Six Colors,

that we can expect that this is the time when Apple will be making their own modems, which was something that was expected as a refresher. You may remember Apple were in court with Qualcomm over a payment dispute for patents and stuff when they, at that time, in one fell swoop, bought

Intel's business, like their modem business, and settled with Qualcomm. And part of that settlement is that they would maintain a relationship in the meantime, probably at whatever price Qualcomm wanted them to pay, but Apple didn't want to pay, and it will come to an end, and it seems like

it's going to be coming to an end in 2023. And they have some agreement in there about what patent payments are owed and all that, because just because Apple's not going to be, in the end, a customer of Qualcomm directly, they're probably going to be in the end a customer of Qualcomm directly they're probably going to still pay them for whatever patent licensing although Apple's got some patents too that were part of

the Intel thing like it's I don't recall exactly the details and I'm not sure how much of that is public but I would imagine that there will be some amount of payments that Apple's still going to have to make to Qualcomm because Qualcomm has these patents. But in terms of buying the silicon, buying the radios from Qualcomm, I enjoy that this story came out in a Qualcomm event because Qualcomm doesn't care. That was the thing that made me laugh about this story. This story is not unexpected at all. But Qualcomm saying, oh, yeah, Apple's, you know, and they're telling people they're warning about losing a customer, a big customer saying, okay, yeah, by fall of 23, 80% of their their modem chip business or 20% of their modem chip business will be Apple and the rest will be gone. And the whole idea there is they don't care. An Apple partner that wants to keep Apple's business is going to keep quiet, right? That's the rule.

You know this. This is the rule of Apple is don't cross me. Secrecy is the word of the day. Well, Qualcomm doesn't care. Qualcomm doesn't care. So Qualcomm is happy to go out and say, oh yeah, Apple's going to be using their own chips in the new iPhones really by 2023.

And they say they'll still have some. I imagine that that is their estimate about how many they're going to be supplying for older products that are not yet discontin discontinued a new a brand new legacy node so here's our time frame for apple doing 5g and and you know we may see or 5g using their own silicon we may see it in products before this it's a little unclear too they're talking about qualcomm's fiscal year so there's a question of will it be next fall that they start this process or will it really not be until 23 will it premiere in maybe a laptop or maybe an ipad before it goes in the iphone that's sort of up to apple to decide how it wants to do it um honestly it would i can sort of see

it make sense that it might debut in a non-iphone product just to i really hope they don't debut their first ever modem chip in an in their iphone in an iphone in a big high volume iphone this is something that's new for apple right like it will be new they might have done a bunch of testing but it is going to be new and this like the modem that is a cannot be an error there is no room for error in the modem of an iphone right remember when there was the there were intel and qualcomm chips and one of them was like faster than the other one and every people were like trying to figure out if they could shop for the the iphones that had the faster chips in them and all it's no good so uh yeah i i would not i mean who knows apple could do whatever it wants but i wouldn't be shocked if it's in some

lower volume product and literally everything that's on the iphone is a lower volume product for apple that it show up in an ipad or something like that before beforehand but qualcomm's basically like yeah this is going to happen and this is the only time you get kind of this long-range thing it's when a a supplier who's not going to be a supplier anymore is happy to say, yep, Apple's taking their business elsewhere or in this case taking their ball and going home with it because they're going to build these things themselves. Or we assume maybe integrate them onto the chips, although that's not necessarily the case. So Apple's going to build them. It's going to happen. And Qualcomm says that by fall of 23, it will be in full swing.

So that gives us some extra data about what Apple is doing building its own modems. Thanks, Qualcomm. Yeah, thanks a lot. It's great to have someone who just doesn't care. And Qualcomm, which is funny because there's that interview with the CEO of Intel who, it was almost the reverse of that where, you know, Apple has gotten away from Intel and the CEO of Intel is like, well, we just got to work to get their business back. And like, really?

Yeah, our chips, if we make better chips, they'll come back to us. I was like, I don't think that's ever going to happen. And then he sort of hedged and like, or, you know, maybe, you know, if we can make their chips for them, right? It's like, oh, okay, well, that is more possible as a scenario that if you catch up to TSMC at fabrication, that you could compete with them for Apple's business. But it was just this really kind of cockeyed, optimistic, unrealistic,

kind of like, we're going to compete for their business. And Qualcomm's like, yeah, they're gone. Bye. I feel like that's surely something that they said to make a positive message to shareholders. They know that surely they know there's nothing they could do. I don't think Apple necessarily cares about having the fastest chips on the market. They just so happen to have them. Well, I mean, it could become having lived through the PowerPC era.

It can become a burden for your platform, but it would take a while, and Apple would still have their control. And there's no sign of that really happening. Qualcomm did make some, speaking of Qualcomm, make some statements about they've've got a next generation processor coming from the company that they bought that was founded by people who used to work at apple doing chip design and that that is targeted at a pc level kind of performance thing interesting but like let's and they they may be able to match or beat apple or or it may change the game in some way. But thus far, Apple's already been

more than a year ahead of Qualcomm's chips on smartphones in terms of performance. And we've seen where Apple's chips on the Mac are compared to Intel. So right now, Apple's just got a big lead. And it may change, but I think the Intel CEO ceo first off i think maybe learned his lesson when about that whole lifestyle company from cupertino joke that he made but also i think that he's sending a message that intel is gonna try right like intel intel is gonna keep working at it and uh they're gonna be able to compete with apple and even if apple doesn't we're going to be competitive, which I'm not sure anybody believes right now. But take the long view, you know, give them – they're going to try. Good for them.

And then more realistically, Intel, which famously wouldn't fab chips for anybody else that weren't Intel's own chips. I think that is a major area of growth for Intel. I think that is a major area of growth for Intel and that Intel would love to be able to take chip manufacturing business away from TSMC in terms of Apple. Like that's an area where Intel could really grow. So Intel is talking like a company that wants to do business with Apple in the future. And Qualcomm is not. South Korean lawmakers are unhappy with Apple's efforts to meet their ruling over third-party payments. So this is the thing we were talking about a few weeks ago, where Google created their

system where you could have third-party payments of other providers, but you'd still pay Google. So Yeo Seung-lae, who's one of the lawmakers in South Korea, got a great quote from them. Frankly, we are not satisfied. Apple's claims that it's already complying is nonsensical. Excessive fees take away developers' chances for innovation. Parliament is to be closely informed as the government's draft detailed regulations to make sure there is accountability.

This is coming into effect pretty soon next year. And it is kind of hilarious, really, when you look at what we were talking about with what google did to comply and apple has so far said they are already complying and i don't understand uh i don't get it i don't know what they're particularly hinging this on um but that's kind of where they are and understandably south, South Korea is pretty peeved about it. Yeah, it's like a weird game of chicken where it was like, all right, we passed a new law.

You got to do it. We already did it. They're gaslighting. What? Which is so strange as a thing to do. I don't really know what the plan is here, but this is where they are right now. Amazing. Well, I think our notes from last week can be replayed here.

Basically, if Apple is forced to comply with alternative payment routes, we know what they're going to do. They're going to do what Google did, which is they're going to charge a fee regardless of whether you use their service or not for payment. And it's not going to save anybody any money. And so nobody's going to do it. That's what's going to happen. Do you think they will do that? They're going to have to try something else. Yeah.

Yeah, I think if they are forced to do alternative payment methods, I think that's absolutely what they're going to do. Because they could use the developer account as a proxy and charge people for their annual developer thing but i feel like the simplest thing to do is just say um by you we've changed the terms of service of your apple developer agreement and if you use an alternative payment mechanism in a country where that is available then you owe us this percentage as part of your developer agreement done right and uh and that may know what that effect will be which is

everybody will look at the cost of implementing an alternative payment mechanism and realize it's as expensive or more expensive or only very slightly less expensive than using apples and most people will just give up and not do it and then there'll be another round of legislation that'll say you can't charge more than this for your fee. And that'll be argued. And, you know, but that would be the next round. And you have a orange HomePod mini. I do. I wrote about this on Six Colors last week.

It's been in my office for a little while. Apple sent me an orange HomePod mini. I mean, HomePod mini is not new. They never sent me an orange home pod mini i mean home pod mini is not they never sent me a home pod mini to review by the way but they sent me an orange home pod mini to look at the color right uh which is interesting i appreciate it because i had i bought a home pod mini i have a space gray home pod mini and so i was able to do a HomePod mini stereo pair for the first time. I have two HomePods and in a stereo pair so I know about that but I hadn't done it with the HomePod mini before and so I hadn't really been able to hear how it performs as a stereo pair and so that was fun.

It sounds pretty good. I tried it out in place so I have a Sonos One pair that I used to replace my iPod Hi-Fi, which was wired into my iMac because I wanted to get the iPod Hi-Fi off the desk. And it gets a little more stereo separation to have the speakers on opposite sides of my office instead of sort of just kind of off to the left of my iMac. And the Sonos has sounded good, but I have had problems.

I've been bedeviled with airplay problems where sometimes it loses the connection. Sometimes it can't see the speakers briefly. Sometimes when you press play, one starts playing and then the other one catches up after a second or two. So every song starts off in the left and then becomes stereo.

I've had it where you pause it and walk away for a while and you come back and you press play and it won't play. And until you replay the song, it just won't play. Lots of frustration there. And I've been unclear on whether that it was Sonos' fault or whether that was AirPlay's fault. And I can report now that I've used the HomePod minis that it's AirPlay's fault. The HomePod minis are probably, I forget how I phrased it in the article. Basically, they're more stable a little bit maybe than the Sonos' but not a lot.

And it's still not great. Is this an issue you are finding on the mac or on all devices on the mac it is the worst right there are issues and i think last week atp talked about this marco talked about it a little bit and i hadn't listened when i wrote my piece and it was it was sort of like we were thinking along the same track at the same time it's pretty funny um there are airplay issues airplay has and it has gotten worse and i noticed this with my regular home pods too where and i don't know if it's a new version of airplay or ios or whatever but i've noticed on my other home pods my big home pods that

sometimes it just takes the the playback away from me so i'm playing it from my phone and then i go to my phone to pause it or go to the next track and my phone is I'm playing it from my phone and then I go to my phone to pause it or go to the next track and my phone is no longer playing. It's no longer connected to the HomePod. So, you know, because they get in this weird synergy where like you're on your phone, but the now playing is the HomePod

and you can pause it and go next and change the volume. It's very nice when you initiate that from the phone that you get to control it. But I found that increasingly the HomePod basically disconnects from my phone. And now I have to either go try to find the HomePod and reconnect to it, which is a challenge and doesn't always work. A lot of times I'll press what I think is pause, but it's actually play. And what happens is it's going to play that same thing that i'm playing on the home pod on my iphone at the point where that disconnected so i often get like two versions

of the same song shifted off by 30 seconds one's playing out of my phone and the other still playing on the home pod um very weird home play or uh very weird airplay stuff going on. I will say, though, that clearly it is more reliable to play things on the HomePods, mini or big, or the Sonos's, honestly, from an iOS device. On the Mac, it's really weird. And there is this, like,

system output setting for the Mac that lets you use your HomePods or any other AirPlay device, theoretically, as a system output setting for the mac uh that lets you use your home pods or any other airplay device theoretically as a system output but i don't and first off that's not reliable either but i also don't want that because that means that every alert anything else that is playing out of the mac is you know two second delayed playback via airplay And I don't want that. I want that stuff to come through my iMac speaker and be instantaneous. So it's a weird situation. I like the sound of the HomePod Minis.

They don't sound quite as good as the Sonos's, but the Sonos's cost twice as much. And honestly, for my use, where they're sitting on basically the edges of my desk, the HomePod mini would be good enough. It can't get as loud as the Sonos is, but the loudest of the HomePod mini is good enough. Again, good enough for my use sitting on my desk in my office. I've had a bunch of people write in and say, well, what you really need is a USB amp and wired speakers, wired bookshelf speakers.

It's like, that's not what I want. Wired would be better, but I don't want wires. And I don't want big speakers sitting on my desk. So I'm trying to find some other method here. Not entirely successfully. Successful enough that I haven't bagged it and got back to the iPod Hi-Fi, but it's not as good as I wish that it was and you know i think the bottom line is the software isn't is a little messed up right now and the fact that it's the mac is not a first class citizen of airplay and even on the number one platform ios airplay is kind of sketchy right now um it's we're in a we're in a weird place i know you've've complained about HomePod issues with yours, too. So you've seen it, too. I've seen it, yeah. And I agree with Marco that I feel like the HomePod, the big HomePods, were more stable. There was a really nice era of stability that I had with them last year, but that now things are really weird. Mine have been completely rock solid since—

Since you did the tvOS update? Yes. Yeah, but you've got them locked as tvOS speakers, right? Yeah, I mean, I can play music on them whenever I want. By talking to them. Like as you normally... And talking to them is a different thing, right?

Because then it's not AirPlay. Then it's them playing for themselves. And that would be the other argument is i could just forego controlling my music on my mac at all and just use voice but i don't wanna like i don't want to do that you can still on ios you can still control them even if they're playing on their own but you can't do it on the mac right and um i will also say the sonos thing like there's a sonos app on the mac i could go all in on controlling my and it's got apple music integration so i could go all in on controlling my stuff on the mac using

the sonos app the sonos app is a weird app too i don't really want to use it i don't like its interface it's kind of unpleasant it is more stable with the Sonos speakers than using AirPlay. There's no doubt about it. But again, I don't want to, right? I want to use the music app on my Mac. It feels like what the Mac music app needs is something like the Spotify Connect thing, where Spotify Connect, you can just tell any connected device, where Spotify Connect, you can just tell any connected device,

play whatever I'm asking you to do, but it's not streaming it to it. It's pulling it from the web. If I were giving advice to somebody at Apple who's involved with this stuff, which I guess technically I am because I am a person on a podcast, but probably not with a direct line. Anyway, my advice would be a version of what you just said, which is you need an airplane mode in the music app on the Mac that just says, use this as my speakers. And that is solid. The challenge is you can go to the AirPlay icon and choose an AirPlay speaker and say, okay, here we go. And it is persistent across quits unless it goes through its thing where it decides that it can't. You

press play and it goes, I can't find it. And then you press play again and it goes, now I can find it. Which is, you know, great. So if you get in a mode where I can say, look, these are my speakers, always play to them, and now I'm playing to them, I would be happy. The problem is that that very basic scenario doesn't work. It just doesn't work reliably. uh really frustrating to me um as somebody who listens to music on my mac all the time and wants to embrace airplay because i really like the fact that i can put speakers on the far walls of my office i can get really nice stereo separation it's really quite pleasant and in fact getting speakers off my desk also means my desk doesn't vibrate when something is vibrating in the music right i like it i can play things louder without it bugging me. But I can't. I mean, I'm doing it, but I'm suffering and I get frustrated because multiple times a day I have to click on the little AirPlay thing and like go back to my,

it's like it's playing, but I can't hear anything. And then I click on iMac speakers and then it starts to play, even though it said it was playing before but it's playing nothing to no one and then I have to click back and maybe it will go sometimes I also get in a position where it's playing to multiple speakers I've had several hilarious moments where the Sonos's and the HomePod minis are all playing which I guess is a thing you could do you could get that quadraphonic sound of four little speakers in two stereo pairs playing at once. But it's not what I want.

It's not what I'm trying to do. It's just I end up there because the AirPlay experience is so frustrating. This week's episode is brought to you in part by ZocDoc. When you need a doctor, you need a doctor now,

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Like when I want to see a doctor, I want to see a specialist or something like that. I never, one thing is I never really know where to start. Like, where do you go to find these people? How do you know if they're any good? How long are we going to have to wait for treatment? And what I think is super cool about ZocDoc is that you get this information,

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Yeah, Zed or Z, whichever you prefer. Apple have announced to employees that they are once again pushing back their return to the office plan, and they are now expecting this to be February at the earliest.

They had mentioned before, I think January was the plan with a one-month notice. So now they're saying February, and the notice is now. But could be February, could be later, but won't be expected to be any earlier. For month one, so in the month of February, employees will be expected to be back in the office two days a week. And then from March, it will be Monday, Tuesday, in the office two days a week and then from march it will be monday tuesday and thursday for the majority of employees apple is going to increase

remote work allowance from two weeks to four weeks a year so this is like four weeks in a year where you'll be able to work but you can work from wherever you want you don't need to come into the office for those three days a week. Some employees will have different requirements if their work needs more in-person time. You know, there will be some members of different teams that will have to be in every single day. Hardware engineering. Yeah.

And design, I'm sure, is another one. Probably, yeah. All of that kind of stuff. Apple has not yet, on top of this, mandated vaccinations that are employees. A bunch of tech companies have done this. Apple has not yet done this apple has not yet done this it's unknown if they will require this when people are expected to be back in the

office uh frankly i am a bit surprised about that that like this hasn't become a thing that they've mentioned or as or have not already required so yes this is where they are this is a bit better right to they've doubled the remote work allowance from two to four weeks it's better than two weeks so I would understand many people would say still not enough there will be a lot of people now that as we said before that have spent this last two years working from home and have realized that they don't need to be in the office for their job and would like the ability to not be in the office for their job. But that seems to not be a thing that Apple's doing. I will say I'm at least happy.

One of the things we were saying is we want them to listen to their employees. They have shown that they've listened. They've come up with something that maybe still isn't good enough, but they at least, I think, have shown that they understand that people thought that the two weeks wasn't enough. We'll see. What is your read on this? Well, I'll throw in, too,

in terms of listening to the employees, something that is a development that I think Zoe Schiffer, who used to be at The Verge, but now is at NBC News, reported that they had a memo that basically said, you can talk about your compensation and your feelings about Apple, and we can't tell you not to,

and that can be public. And it was an interesting sort of moment of Apple saying, we can't legally stop you. But I think that that's an interesting little thing. I hope I'm characterizing that right. But the idea there is that there's a little more understanding of uh what's that zoe's thing i don't know i'm not finding the uh i'm not finding the link now well it's live podcast updating so that's that's what happens anyway my understanding is that um that they're they acknowledged that discussion of employee issues is allowed and and that's interesting i mean

whether that makes any difference remains to be seen but i i thought that was like an interesting moment too where apple is doing this bend but not break strategy right which is like yeah we'll listen but you're still going to do what we say but we'll listen which i mean that's a management choice i think um i think they're showing some flexibility here. Obviously, you and I have been very strong, I guess, advocates for the idea that not all work needs to be in person. And that Apple is perhaps going to lose good people because they're so limited. And they've always been this way, where there are a lot of parts of Apple where they're like, no, no, you have to be in a desk at a computer in Cupertino.

And that's where this job is, because, you know, of reasons, because of history, because of collaboration, because of whatever. And that after two years, you would think that certain parts of that business would realize they actually get along just fine and they don't need to be in person. And what happens when people don't need to be in person is it's not just that people with Silicon Valley jobs can move out of Silicon Valley where the commutes are terrible and the cost of living is awful. It also means that Apple can hire really talented people who will never move to California or wherever their offices are that they're hiring for. They have a bigger base. So I think Apple is actually stronger when it comes to jobs that don't need to be in person.

And that's the argument, right, is what job needs to be in person. But I would argue that there are lots of jobs, and I know this from personal experience, talking to people, there are lots of jobs at Apple that are sitting at a desk looking at a computer and collaborating using a Slack a slack channel or something that uh don't need to be in cupertino where it's incredibly expensive to live and yet those jobs are there because of those reasons so i i think by doing it this way and saying you can work from home a little bit they're addressing some of the kind of work-life balance issues of like, we don't need to be in the office every day and we know you have a long commute

and we know that you've got kids at home and things like that. And I think in isolation as a humane policy, I think it's good. My problem with it is there's another aspect here, which is jobs that should probably not need physical offices. And the proof is the pandemic, that they have happened fine without. Again, I'm not saying all of them have, but there are some certainly that could be remote forever. forever. So I think, I mean, and again, they don't want to make a blanket policy. So it may be that very slowly in the background, those groups that don't need to be in person are made remote groups, but it's not a blanket policy and it just sort of happens. I do think that by making this policy

the way that they have, the risk is that they're going to turn people off. But I think the reality is going to be that person by person, whether it's retaining an existing employee or it's a new hire, Apple's policies here will still change. They will be eroded person by person, group by group, star by star, as they realize that if they want this person

they're going to not be able to hire them and make them move to cupertino but they really want them and well you know we saw the pandemic this person doesn't actually need to be here and that's or this person we really want to retain this person but they don't want to live in the Bay Area anymore. And their job doesn't really need to be here. So, I mean, that happened. I had people at Macworld move and we kept paying them and they kept doing their job and it was great. Right?

That's not quite, I mean, the truth is that barring some real conversion on the part of Apple's upper management, that's how the change happens. And I think it is going to happen. I think that the pandemic has fundamentally changed how a lot of people view these kinds of jobs. And I think that for companies like Apple to retain talent, they're going to have to make exceptions. They'll be forced to be flexible. And eventually the exceptions will become the rule, which is, oh, you'll turn around in five years and realize that that group that used to have an office at Infinite Loop is remote now. And it'll just happen like that. But I think it will happen regardless, because otherwise they're going to lose too much talent and fail to acquire new talent. And that's just the truth of it. So you were remembering correctly, it was the second Zoey Schiffer story at NBC News, where Apple have sent out another memo saying, working conditions we encourage any employee of concerns to raise them in the way they feel most comfortable internally or externally including through their manager any apple manager people

support people business partner or business conduct and we also have a link to a bloomberg article that says that share scarlet who was one of the people who was involved in this movement is leaving apple but reached a settlement with them and that regarding a complaint she made with the national labor relations board. So these things are probably connected, right? Which is Apple, uh,

reacted in a very aggressive way toward employee criticism and discussion about Apple. And then was reminded that there are certain things that people are allowed to do and sent out a memo saying, okay, just to clarify, probably a condition of the settlement. You have rights.

I mean, I cannot for a moment assume that all of Apple forgot this existed, right? Like there are legal people that knew about this, right? Or like some people in HR didn't know about this, but it may have been a selection of overzealous managers who were forcing people not to talk right who are not aware i think that happens a lot in business it does happen there are the people who are aware of employment law and the rights of the employees and then there are managers and there are the managers

their employees which by and large are not those people right because yeah that's not what they do right so that's that can be the issue there's something i wanted to bring up which i found kind of weird the fact that they're going to make everyone be in the office on the same days it's like wednesday and friday apple park will be a ghost town and i don't understand the thinking behind that like one of the reasons you you you like do this kind of thing is that you spread out your employees a bit right yeah the idea that you do have cross you do have meetings so you want to have common meeting days. I get that. But I wonder if within different groups, you could say, well, we're not going to do

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. We're going to do Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. And other people are like, we love Wednesdays. We're going to do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or whatever. Although Apple has structured this in a way that you can't take a long weekend. And like, again, they're trying to structure this in a certain way. But I agree, it is a little bit weird. But I think in practice, again, they are making a blanket policy here. But it's an enormous company. And it would not surprise me if that within individual groups, there's more variation. But that's not the policy.

But you're right. variation, but that's not the policy. But you're right. If the goal here is to spread out your employees so there's a little less employee density during an ongoing pandemic, this doesn't do that. But all right, I guess you can clean the pool on Wednesday. Apple also announced the self-service repair program last week, which is a program that Apple will be selling to individuals, parts and tools so they can make their own repairs on their devices, starting with iPhone 12 and 13 lines and later on M1 MacBooks. This will begin in early 2022 in the US, rolling out into different territories and potentially different products throughout the year. What do you think about this? I think I actually recycled that Princess

Bride quote from last week about getting used to disappointment when I talked to Micah about this on Tech News Weekly last week. Because I think that we we we get these news this news about apple changing and we're like oh apple changed it's going to be so much different and it's always it's a little bit like my thing about how you get excited about a product and then you got to add money to how much it's going to cost because it's always going to disappoint you it's a little like that which is like it's never going to be quite as liberal a policy as you would like it to be it's going to be a little narrower and it's never it's not going to change the world as much as you want it to be, but it's a positive step. And Apple has been taking these positive steps to get its manuals and its parts in the hands of

independent service people, independent service companies, and now individuals on top of that. Is it going to be something that everybody's going to want to do? No. Will there be... I see two scenarios here. One scenario is the thing that is also true about the independent businesses that do repairs and stuff, which is a lot of people don't live anywhere near an Apple store. I'm fortunate enough to live one exit on the freeway away from an Apple store. But there's a guy there who's who spots me and knows who i am which is very nice i need one of those people right like i got a hole in my t-shirt and i'm wearing a hat because i haven't showered yet and there's somebody who's like jason i don't know

uh but uh a lot of people live i grew up in rural california a lot of people live nowhere near an independent repair shop let alone an apple store and people live nowhere near an independent repair shop, let alone an Apple store. And maybe they've got an independent repair shop. That's good if you do. But there are a lot of people who live nowhere near, like hours drive away from help. So I think it's good that Apple's providing access to people who do repairs, but also now to individuals, because sometimes that's the best option is help me. I just need to do this. And I'm not gonna, I don't have a time to drive two hours away, leave my phone, not have a phone, drive two hours back, then spend days without a phone and then two hours drive. And like, it's not practical. And I know

there's like mail in, there's mail in service and stuff you can do too, but it drive and like it's not practical and i know there's like mail in there's mail-in service and stuff you can do too but it's not it's not ideal and you're potentially like without your device for some amount of time the second category is people who are comfortable with tech stuff like this and that i guess that would be you and me i'd give it a go for sure i would give it a go depends on on how it depends on how hairy it is i mean so my experience with this is not i mean back in the day i did computer stuff back when computers were a little more open but my experience now is with stuff i fix in my house it's like appliances and stuff where there's youtube videos that say okay here's how you do this and you know i've had this experience multiple times where something breaks in an appliance in my house i figure out

what the broken thing is i order the part on the internet. The part shows up. I look at the YouTube video and I fix my appliance. Yeah, I did it with my washing machine, did it with my dishwasher, did it with my refrigerator. It's great because I would have previously had to try and find a repair person and wait and spend a lot of money. And maybe they would show up and sometimes they call and say, well, no, we're not going to service lot of money. And maybe they would show up and sometimes they call and say, well, no, we're not going to service that particular brand. And you have to be back at square run.

It's really frustrating. And I map that experience to this a little bit and think, well, now if you are so inclined or you don't have any other options, you will be able to get the part from Apple and get the tools and get the instructions

and probably if not already very soon watch the video on youtube we're a very friendly guy in nebraska i think it's the kitchenaid mixer guy in nebraska or maybe he's in oklahoma i did a kitchenaid mixer thing too right very friendly guy who all he does is fix kitchenaid mixers in ok. And like, you'll find that video and be like, Hey, everybody, we're going to take a, we're going to replace this iPhone 13 Apple, uh, you know, uh, screen with the official Apple repair. And here's how it works. And some people are gonna be like, Oh Lord, no, I'm never going to want to do that. And other people are going to be like great that's what i want and i can save 50 bucks by returning my old screen or whatever fantastic let's do it so i think it's

great i think it's not earth shattering in the same way that maybe people had hoped but i think it shows you a trend of apple being more open to this kind of thing i i do think it speaks to the more advanced or stable era we're in with smartphones and with all our devices where there was a period where every single iPhone was engineered with zero tolerances because they were in an arms race with Google and they were inventing this stuff as they went. And we're kind of out of that now. So I think that there's a little more comfort factor in terms of doing this stuff. And I think that also means Apple has also realized how expensive it is to service its own hardware, even in Apple Repair and Apple Care,

and is also sort of slowly making, if you look at the iFixit teardown of the MacBook Pro, for example, they're, I think, slowly making their products more repairable when they can. Yeah, they put poor tabs on the batteries now, which is actually quite a big deal. Because never forget, the number one repairer of Apple stuff is Apple. And that means that if they have to repair something that's under warranty, they got to eat the price of the repair. And they got to eat the labor of the repair. So Apple is motivated within limits to make their products a little more repairable.

And I think that we're starting to see that too. So I think it's good news. I don't think it's earth shattering news, but I think it's good news. And I don't think it's you know earth-shattering news but i think it's good news and i'm not sure i would ever do this but i might i mean i'm more interested in the mac side and they're starting with the iphone but like i've bought the third party batteries and try to put them in and all of that and like would i do apple approved battery repair of my you know macbook air down the road i i would seriously consider that right i would feel very comfortable doing that um because i've done it before and i might like

the fact that it was all kind of like under the auspices of apple and that apple had approved it also you know just i know you i'm sure you're aware of this but just to have a full conversation on it this is also getting out ahead of potential right to repair legislation right like for sure it helps them to expand it because like for all the reasons you mentioned like they are genuine reasons like and i'm sure like we're in the pro column but another one in the pro column was let's not get governments on our case about something else that is actually easier for us to fix and you know actually think it goes a long way. I think a lot of people that were anti-Apple on the right to repair stance,

it was focused around Apple just wants to gouge every dollar out of you. They want you to pay for expensive repairs and or they want your product to break, so you'll buy a new one. And I think that this shows that that's not the case so much, because they are very protective of the App Store, right? We've been talking about it for months now. They are in so much more trouble, and they will not let it go. But with this, they're just letting

it go. And considering how much more money they make in iphones than services right now i think that is a pretty clear indication that the amount of people that buy the buy new devices just because they broke an old one i think shows i would say that apple would believe it to be pretty slim and like i said i think it's more extenuating circumstances that repairability has just not been a priority with them yes um and that they've been more worried about the building of them and getting them out there and the cost of the parts and getting all the parts to fit and all that. And making them look as good as they possibly can. Right. Look as good, be as thin and light and all of those things.

But I do think that these products have matured now, too. And so they've got a little more room to try and say, you know, you realize how much money we lose every time we have to fix a phone under warranty can we do something about that and maybe for five years they're like no no no no no no no and now they're like yeah okay we can make it more repairable we can put that on our priority list too yeah and like the maturity thing is also in the you know the phones get a little bit thicker now for bigger batteries and stuff like that because there's just less of a requirement to to continue going down the same paths you mentioned right to repair the other motivator here i think in terms of external factors in terms of like the pr is apple's commitment to

the environment like the making disposable things is not environmentally friendly and they can talk about they've got a machine that disassembles them and all of those things but you know what really is environmentally friendly is not having to buy a new phone because you can fix your broken phone not having to throw away a motherboard because everything is attached to the motherboard and without it you can't you can't you so you just have to oh we got to replace the whole thing right that's That's not environmentally friendly. And I think that that is something that Apple legitimately cares about as a company, but was in conflict with the other priorities that they had. So that, again, not alone in driving a decision like this or a direction that they're going, but I think it's one other thing on the pile in terms of weighing how they approach this

is it is it because, you know, they can get Lisa Jackson up there on the roof and all of that. But like if you if you make your products so that when they break, you have to throw them away. And I know that they can be recycled and all that. could fix it and keep using it, or you could dispose of it. Even if you've got the best recycling system in the world, it's not as effective as fixing the product in terms of the environment. The best thing to do is to keep that phone in circulation and hand it down to somebody else. And that might lose you a sale in the short term, but Tim Cook has extolled the virtues of the long life of their products and how it increases their install base time and again. So it does fit in with that part of the philosophy to do something like this. So I think that that's the environmental stuff is

also a part of it where they were not really walking the walk with this stuff. Now, it remains to be seen, like if push comes to shove and Apple has to make a decision, do I worry about repairability or do I worry about making this product you know that we absolutely have to make whatever the reason behind that is they're gonna go for the product but i i feel like they're in a place now with the iphone where they're they feel less pressure to do that this episode is brought to you by our very good friends over at Memberful, the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience used by the biggest creators on the web. You can generate sustainable recurring income while diversifying your revenue stream. Maybe your business's financial situation has changed in the past couple of years, and now you need a proven solution that's quick to launch so

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We're going to come back to the rarely used segment, Upshift, where we talk about Apple's car project. Jason's doing donuts in the studio over there. Mark Gurman reporting for Bloomberg. In recent years, Apple have been exploring two paths when it

comes to their car project. One is limited self-driving. This is features that we see on many modern cars. Think of your Tesla Autopilot or, you know, like automatic cruise control and lane guidance and all that kind of stuff. Or full self-driving that requires no human intervention. They have refocused their efforts on the latter. So Apple is now aiming for their car project to be a full self-driving car as the goal.

That is what they want the product to be. Kevin Lynch is now leading the team. Kevin Lynch came over to Apple to run the Apple Watch project. Did a good job there. But this makes Lynch the fifth person in charge of this team in the last seven years. Oh no, Kevin Lynch, what have you done? What did you do to anger them that they put you in charge of this thing or do they want kevin to leave i don't know because

everyone seems to leave i've had people retire yeah kevin congratulations we think the world of you we're putting you in this thankless task it's like okay good luck or maybe it is what what it probably seems to be or like the other option is they're struggling with this project they need something for proven track record internal because they brought in some external hires to run this and stuff

and it hasn't gone very well. Internal to get this thing Take it across the finish line, right? Like Kevin did with the Apple Watch. Yep. Quote from Mark Gurman Apple's ideal car

would have no steering wheel and pedals and its interior would be designed around hands-off driving. They have discussed equipping the car of an emergency takeover mode. Okay. Let's stop right there.

I'm sorry. Do we have to say, Hey car stop because I can't stop it myself. Here's the thing. Self-driving as a goal is great. Like sounds great. Yeah. Future.

That sounds amazing. Right. Yeah. Sounds great. Future. That's great. Sounds amazing, right? And Gurman's report talks about how they're building a processor with like a zillion neural engines in order to do this, and it's going to run hot, so they're worrying about cooling. I'm like, folks, cars are really good at cooling. There are lots of hot things in cars. It'll be fine.

Engines. Yeah. I mean, like, well, our engine is not that hot, but our processor is. It's like we can work it out. We'll put the radiator next to in cars it'll be fine engines yeah i mean like well our engine is not that hot but our processor is it's like we work it out we'll put the radiator next to it it'll be fine um so i'm not worried about that i love the goal being full self-driving now lots of you know google's look or waymo right is trying to do it tesla's been trying to do it elon musk keeps talking about full self-driving they haven't figured figured it out. It's hard. It's really hard. I think it's a good goal. I think, obviously, though, the way... Let's assume that something resembling full self-driving does eventually exist. It's hard to imagine that it's not going to be in stages where it's like, well, on freeways in California and then eventually everywhere, it'll work.

So when you're on the freeway, you can now put it into full self-drive and lean back and relax and do not have to worry at all. It is going to be completely safe. That's a big leap, by the way, but I could see that as a first step. And then the next step is going to be like at certain times of day or in certain areas that are super mapped and we've got all the knowledge, you will be able to summon your car and have it come to you or tell it to go somewhere and it'll drive you there. And then over time, it will grow and it will grow. And maybe someday you'll be able to that all cars will be able to drive themselves everywhere probably not i don't even think this is a maybe

someday thing i think this is an inevitability at some point in the future on an infinite time scale maybe although although even then you would probably need what this story says is like emergency takeover mode in case you get your your wheel gets stuck or something like that right where it's like oh no the computer doesn't know what to do at first but so here's the problem this report saying that their ideal car would have no steering wheel and pedals okay no one's gonna buy that car it doesn't necessarily mean that there wouldn't be controls you might be able to control it with a touch screen or something or a joystick i don't know not a steering wheel and pedals but this is where this report um runs off the road and into a ditch which is the i am open to the idea of self-driving i am and and he's

saying 2025 is their target date for this car i am not open to the idea that self-driving will be so foolproof that you won't need controls in your car. And not to be too aggressive here about this, but let me put it this way. And this is what I said on Six Colors. This, I want to call this kind of idea like a moonshot, except for one thing, which is the other guy who's trying to do this is literally trying to send people to the moon. Shut up. And that's going to happen this decade. This isn't.

So, like, it's, I, maybe it's just a goal. Like, what if we had no steering wheel and pedals? What if we built it that way but i am telling you if apple doesn't want to do a car unless it doesn't have a steering wheel and pedals or other like user controls apple will never ship a car period net or okay never never this decade let's say never in the next 10 years we'll ship a car so apple are targeting targeting this project to be within the next five years, I think. Or within the next, I think it's within the next five years.

I believe, I'll check this. For some reason, I didn't pull this out. I mean, targeting, I think 2025 is what they said, which is really soon. Even if, even if it works, right? Let's imagine it works. Like they have created the technology and Apple have built a car

which unbelievably fully self-drives everywhere on the planet. People would not buy a car in four years from now that does not have a steering wheel. I think you're right, but I don't think it even gets to that point because my point here is I'm not as negative on full self-driving as some people are, John Syracuse.

I think that there are levels of it that are probably going to happen and even happen pretty soon. Even like Tesla. I think that Tesla will ultimately get to the point where they feel confident in saying you can be on the freeway and the car is going to do the right thing. It will probably take them a lot longer than they expect. But I think it will happen at some point, that some degree in certain locations, in certain situations will be drivable. I'm not 100% confident, but I'm like, I think that will probably happen. But it is an enormous leap to say we don't need controls anymore because it's all going to be so good in so many places and we'll have a little emergency

thing that i don't know is that like a little steering wheel like pops out of the dash in case of an emergency and the lights go red and now you're in weird driving mode i just that's that it seems like a fantasy to me and so i read this i read this grumman article and i think to myself well that's interesting and then i get to this point i'm like well that's never going to happen so if they're i it's a mark grumman report maybe it's aspirational but i look at this and i think if you're motivating your employees and be like we want to build this so good that you don't need a steering wheel that's fine but if you really think you're going to make a car and sell it and it's not going to have controls because your full self-driving is going to be so good that people

don't need controls you're you're you're it's a fantasy it's just a fantasy it's ridiculous come on it's ridiculous so i don't know i don't know what to say as somebody who's been sort of like neutral on the apple car i look at this story and like part of this story makes me think oh maybe they'll be able to pull this off and then i get to that part and like part of this story makes me think, oh, maybe they'll be able to pull this off. And then I get to that part and I think this is a joke. I think I agree with you actually.

Just to continue and then we've got a little bit more, I've got a little bit more I want to say on that. Naturally, an Apple car product would feature touchscreens to be heavily integrated as existing range of products

and services, right? It's said that, as you mentioned, they've finished the groundwork for a CPU and they're actually planning to equip the current fleet of lexus vehicles that they're using for testing with this cpu they're going to retrofit and apple are continuing to hire lots of people from all across the auto industry to make this project work so one of the things for me like building

on what you were saying is i'm not sure that any company could all of a sudden offer this kind of product, a self-driving product. Forget the wheel. Imagine they put a wheel and pedals in it, right? Sure. The wheel and pedals are hidden behind the dashboard, and you press a button, and they come out, and you're in emergency mode, right? Like the Batmobile.

Yeah, exactly. Even if all of this existed like and worked i just can't imagine people would buy apple's product look and actually i don't even think it's possible for apple to all of a sudden be like here's our full self-driving car because like a company like tesla would be first to be able to do something that is in theory because they already have hundreds of thousands of cars driving on real roads collecting data for them. Apple currently has 69 Lexuses driving in California. Yeah, this is the, I think this is one of the big questions, which is Apple's MO is don't ship it until it's ready. And don't do your research in public. I mean, they do ship it eventually. And then obviously, like the first Apple Watch

was very limited, and then they iterate. But there's this feeling philosophically at Apple that there are certain products that are so early in the lifespan of the technology that you can't subject the public to it, and you can't charge them for it. And this is when we talk about the AR stuff, uh, AR and VR stuff. That's why we had came up with our idea that the first one will be more like a developer kit is because they may not want to subject the public to

this thing or subject the product to the scrutiny of something that's not really ready and doesn't really fulfill all of Apple's goals, but've got to start somewhere the challenge is with the car that i i think you're right you kind of do need to learn a lot out in public and i don't know if apple could pull off just saying well you know our test cars are now at 100 and so here's the product and enjoy here it is uh and and are people going to first off people are going to need to see it work and they're going to need to find trust with it which is why i keep thinking the most likely scenario here is they will get to a point where they will think their technology stack is so amazing including this processor that they go to a partner and and they either build a traditional

electric car with a partner or you know or something like that they have to partner with someone right i have to but it's someone it's hard to imagine that their first step is not getting a car body from essentially from another manufacturer and doing a special version of it that's got apple's brains in it that is either branded as an apple car or is branded as a lexus with apple inside saying is they're gonna make a motorola rocker on wheels no because they would control the inside it would you know in a way that the rocker wasn't but yeah but it is although that's a terror a motorola rocker on wheels is terrifying and don't even try to imagine what that would look like um it is like that is the logical step and i don't know whether they

will get there or not but it clearly the first step if you're going to do apple uh cars is to is to put it out there in something that's more like a traditional car and get time with it. And if that doesn't need to be an Apple-branded car, and it's more like an Apple brains inside this electric car from whoever the manufacturer is, that seems to be the next approach, which is why this report is so perplexing, because it's talking about this. It's just, not to mix my transportation metaphors, but it's putting the cart before the horse. It is not the full self-driving horse.

The cart before the self-driving horse, yes. Full self-riding. It is the end point. It is the end goal, not the beginning goal. The beginning goal has to be something that's less ambitious. Not saying kill your ambition. I'm saying start, be a little less ambitious because it's never going to happen if the way you get this product out there is with no controls in it.

It's never going to happen. So be realistic. Like I'm all for setting goals. Yes. But like writing this on a whiteboard in the design room, right? And it lives there. And it's like, it's like, believe, right? Like this is what we are going for.

But this is not version one. No. It's way too much. Way too much. That's how it feels to me. I will never discount Apple's ability to surprise me, right? Like over the last, I don't know how many decades now I've been following this company,

maybe 15 years for me, right? They've always, every now and then, many times they have surprised me with their ability. But this is a big leap. This is a big, big leap because ultimately an iPhone going wrong doesn't kill someone yeah i think i want to give you know mark german says apple's ideal car and the way he phrases it it makes it sound like

that's what they want but it may very well be that it really is like they know it's the ideal and they know they're not going to be able to do that but they want it you know the the way we motivate our engineers to work on this self-driving thing is imagine if nobody ever needed to use a steering wheel that's okay for motivation but the way it reads in the in the german story is a little more like they might actually believe that they could do it and if that's the case it's a fantasy and it's ridiculous but it may just be the believe sign right like you said every time they leave apple park on a monday or a or a wednesday or a thursday or what is it monday

tuesday thursday they they they leave and they tap the sign of the driverless apple car on their way out it's slightly askew it has no steering wheel they tap it and they go on their way but the reality is going to be a little different this This episode is brought to you by DoorDash. Maybe you're hungry for Chinese tonight. Your flatmate wants pizza. Someone else is craving for you. Well, there's something for everyone on DoorDash because DoorDash connects you

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with DoorDash subject to change terms apply our thanks to DoorDash for their support of this show and RelayFM let's finish up the show today with some hashtag ask upgrade questions first one comes from Martin how often do you take screenshots by accident with your iPhone

when you just want to hit the power button? It seems to happen to me every day to cite someone. I might be holding it wrong. It's endless. I do this all the time. Oh, okay. Like all throughout the day? Well, not throughout the day, but there's certain, it just, it happens. It happens. When I'm reaching for the phone or I'm trying to do something in particular, sometimes it's that I'm trying to adjust the volume, but I unwittingly have my hand on another button. Or I need to squeeze the phone a little bit so that my volume button will be registered. But I unfortunately am squeezing it on the other button. And so you end up with a screenshot.

I wish there was a gesture that was forget that screenshot. Right? You've got the gesture to tap and bring it up, at which point you can delete it. I wish there was a gesture that was forget that screenshot, right? You've got the gesture to tap and bring it up, at which point you can delete it. And you've got the gesture to just get the little floater off the screen. Oh, you could just swipe it away, but that saves it. That saves it, right? So I want, I wish there was some sort of a gesture. I don't know.

I grab it and I like spin it around and chuck it off the side or something. I want the like away with you screenshot. No, be gone with you gesture. But failing that, yeah, it totally happens. Again, I remember when the first iPhone shipped and it didn't have a screenshot shortcut. And we had to like jailbreak the iPhone and attach it to a cable. And when you got the screen the way you wanted it you had to issue a shell command on the iphone which would grab it and then you had to use a file transfer thing that you had uploaded to the iphone to basically ftp it back across the line uh to get screenshots

so what i'm saying is uh i'm glad we can take screenshots on the iPhone. I just do it by accident a lot. I tend to only do it when I'm trying to turn my alarm off. Oh, interesting. So you get a lot of screenshots of your alarm. I get a lot of screenshots that just say alarm. You know, like the alarm screen? I get a lot of those ones because usually I'm just grabbing for my phone and just squeezing it that's that's my uh typical task yes make it stop make it stop oh god make it stop

rajiv asks this is actually a tangential question do either of you use sleep tracking of an apple watch if you do what benefits or metrics do you get out of it? I tried it. Okay. With the new watch that I got, which has longer battery life and it has the fast charge and all of that. I've tried it. I use the, I turn on the sleep thing, so it now buzzes me. It's sort of at 10 at night and says,

you should start winding down and all of that. One night I wore it. And although I think I could probably wear it every night, I'm unclear on what the benefits are too um and it just feels it feels weird to sleep with a watch and and so i would need to get over that i'm open to the possibility of doing it eventually but um but i haven't done it consistently i just tried it a couple of times and it told me that i wasn't sleeping enough and i agreed and you know but i i knew that already so so i i uh i haven't done more than that it did tell

me like it's doing some monitoring of my of my oxygen and my heart rate and stuff overnight and it's logging sort of like when i'm awake and when i'm asleep and it does uh it sets modes in focus right so it puts you in the sleep mode so it doesn't bug you as much when you're asleep which is good um so there are advantages of it but i haven't stuck with it yeah i don't do this it's like a combination of things one i wouldn't want to and i and i would i would hate to sleep with a watch on i would not find that comfortable or yeah it's weird um i would don't want to have to manage the battery of my Apple Watch, right? Like right now, I just take my watch off the charger in the morning

and I put it on the charger when I go to bed. I don't want to have to think about charging my watch through the day. I'm not interested in that. And, you know, people say, hey, just get up and get written up. One of the first things I do every day is take my watch off the charger and put my watch on. That is the way I want to live my life. i don't want to have to not do that that's just how i live my life it's my choice um i also honestly like just from a like if just a basic level i don't know what i'm supposed to get out of the idea of sleep tracking like i don't

know what it's supposed to give me because if it's's telling me like, hey, you're not rested, I can't do anything about that. I'm sleeping, right? Like I'm already sleeping. And I also, like you, I know I have a weird sleep schedule and it's not good enough. The Apple Watch doesn't need to tell me that. I already know that.

So I am not saying it is not good for people. I just don't see why I would want to do it for me. Yeah, I'm a big fan of getting stats about yourself, but having to commit to wearing my Apple Watch every night in order to get sleep stats is not something I'm willing to do at this point. If I was having a sleep problem, I would consider it it but i'm not

so i don't i would be open to some kind of device that one of my sleep i mean like you know i bought a bed it yeah i bought a bed it which is which is a passive it's a little strip that you put on your bed and it basically monitors you and when you're sleeping and all of that and it's just it's totally passive and the problem that i had with with it was you have to place it every time you change the sheets you've got to replace it it's got to have it's got to be within bluetooth range of your phone and as you know i don't actually keep my phone if they did a wi-fi version because the apple watch is on the wi-fi so it talks to my phone when i'm wearing it they did a wi-fi version of something like that or something i could put in a pillow or something like that something that was a little even more kind of fuss-free.

But I used that, bet it, for a little while, and it just didn't kind of work right. Apple bought that technology, so who knows what they'll do with it. But I would be open to something like that, but that's it. This is one of those wholly owned subsidiary companies, and I bet it you can still get it. It's still a thing that exists, but owns it which is very weird yeah and and in the end I was not willing to move where my iPhone lives to be by my bed in order to use the bed it so I just sort of gave up uh Roger asks do you think it's worth getting the AirPods Max dedicated mostly for surround sound movie watching I've got small kids and can't really have my pair of home pods blasting away at

night uh i'll say yeah i really like the airpods max i think they're great and they do a good job of the spatial audio stuff they sound really good uh if this is something that you really care about and you can afford it um i recommend doing it because it seems like an easy recommendation to me yeah i don't i don't have airpods max you can use airpods pro to do this too and they don't leak too badly and um and so and they're cheaper so it really depends on your comfort level um but i i do watch shows at night sometimes with the with the airpods pro in and they're great yeah will also work like it just depends on what you're looking for but they will both do a good job.

And finally today, Sims asks, have both of you been able to keep the same second-gen Apple Pencil since you bought it originally in 2018, or have you had to replace any of them since then? Huh. I haven't had one die. Yep. But I ended up with two.

Yep. And I can't tell them apart. They're not labeled. They're just Apple Pencil. But they float around the house. And sometimes I use one and sometimes I use the other. And I'm looking. I'm like, I know that I left that one out there.

Oh, there's one right here. And so I ended up with two of them. And I just kind of use them interchangeably. And I can't tell them apart. So that happened. They just keep multiplying. That's it, though. They both work fine. And I haven't had any troll. In fact, at some point, I want to write a thing about this. I'm not quite sure what I'll say, because that's sort of the point is the Apple Pencil. I know we said

this at the time, but just I still use it to edit podcasts. I love it it it is the most non-technological tech product i've ever used it feels like a solid object that has there's nothing like the other day it wasn't working and i realized i had to screw the tip in a little bit more it had come unscrewed a little bit that's the most effort that i've ever put toward the apple pencil other than snapping it on the side of my ipad and i i just think it's remarkable i think it's remarkable that it feels so non-technical there's no light on it there's no button on it it's there's just nothing i think it's great but um i have not had a failure of any kind with one same i mean i think the second gen apple pencil is one of the best

things apple's ever made like just from a like hey what is this thing supposed to do and how and like its ultimate execution it's like it's perfect it's absolutely the first one's got weird things about it right with uh with the lightning thing and the tip and all of that but the second generation one is just kind of flawless gen one was for purpose, retrofit into a product that already existed, or like a form factor that already existed. Yeah, how do we charge this thing? Gen 2, they designed them together. Yeah, exactly right.

It's just fantastic for that. Yeah, and my only complaint about it is that I think the accelerometer that they put in it is not accurate enough for me to use those features the double tap thing uh yeah i miss double tap so i basically turned it off where i use it because i i just do it by accident i can't i can't trigger it reliably and i trigger it by accident so in neither case is it worth having it so i would say if they if they update this at some point i would love there to be an alternate gesture of some sort. Um, I would prefer it to be, I mean, it needs to be engineered differently than it is. I don't

know whether that's a button or whether it's a touch sensitive area or whether it's just a, uh, better accelerometer or, or what it is, but I would really like to i like the idea of having a gesture on the device um but the gesture that they built i don't use because it's not reliable yeah i would like to see two things if we're going to go button programmable button yeah and uh touch sense like a a not not touching a sensitive area on the opposite side for erasing. Oh, yeah, yeah. That would be a lot of fun to have the alternate, basically an alternate input side on the other side.

A little two-headed pencil. A little two-headed pencil. But like a great, it's just a fantastic product. You could use it as an eraser. You could have apps could use it as a different type of pen, right? There are lots of different things you could do. Programmable like the double tap thing is. Exactly. Different apps can use it in different ways but like these things would they would just be nice to have for me that they don't need to do either of those like because it really is is so

it's just such a good thing it's made so well simplicity just it's amazing 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 use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord that you can get access to. If you sign up for GetUpgradePlus, go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you will also get longer ad-free

versions of every single episode of Upgrade. So if you enjoy the show, you get more of it with no interruptions. Thank you so much to everybody that has signed up all of you upgradians we really really appreciate your support also thank you to door dash memberful and zocdoc for their support of this week's episode but most importantly as always thank you for listening if you'd like to find jason online you can go to sixcolors.com

the incomparable.com he's at jay snell on twitter I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And we both host here many shows at RelayFM. You can go to relay.fm slash shows and check out all of the great shows that we have to offer for you. So until next week, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.