Upgrade - 388: The Year of the Headset

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

We spend our first episode of 2022 discussing what we think Apple will do this year. Is it finally time for an Apple product you put on your face? Jason and Myke also discuss changes they're planning on making in their working lives for the new year.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 388 my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell this episode is brought to you by bombas fitbot and doordash happy new year jason happy new year mike we're back we're here it's. I don't know how this happened. Who allowed this to happen? Sorry, it was my fault. Oh. Are you Father Time? Uh-huh. I have a hashtag snow talk question for you from Sims, and Sims wants to know, Jason,

what did you do to ring in the new year? Oh, boy. Nothing that interesting. Watched some movies as is traditional. Watched some TV shows as is not traditional. some movies as is traditional watch some tv shows as is not traditional um we cut the cord and what i found is that some combination of having fewer channels to watch and also the complete lack of uh new year's eve coverage on tv that is fun to like count down the new year it was all bad it was all really bad stuff i wanted to just put on a thing that was like light you know jollity and japes for the new year as we counted down i really

wanted something from like a ballroom in london or something and instead it was just like people gyrating in miami and people gyrating in times square who were freezing to death. And it was not that interesting. So, yeah. So the televised entertainment part wasn't that good at the end. So we just kind of shut it all down. Waited for the new year to arrive and said happy new year. And then we went to bed. And that was actually, you know what I did?

Let me rephrase this now to what Sims is really not expecting, which is, you know what I did to ring in the new year? I checked to see that all the scripts that I had written for my weather station that I tried to intuit would break on January 1st, unless I was careful, actually worked after midnight. I ran them all to see. And the answer is, no, they were broken. So I fixed those scripts because I didn't do something right in them. I was very clever. I was aware it was going to be a problem, but I fixed it the wrong way. And then I fixed them and then they worked. And then I went to bed. That was, in the end, that was how I rang in the new year is I fixed my own particular Y2K22 issue. Amazing.

And then I went to sleep. Very nice. We watched Queer Eye. All right. That's nice. The new season. Oh my God, it's so good. We did When Harry Met Sally,

which is kind of a New Year's Eve tradition for us. We did not get to the Marx Brothers this year. Lauren was like, I feel like we just watched Duck Soup. And I said, well, we didn't. We watched it exactly a year ago. She's like's like well i don't want to watch it again um and which led me down a rabbit hole where i found that a night of the opera which is maybe the best marx brothers movie um is other than duck soup perhaps is has a just got a restoration and came

out on blu-ray so So I ordered that on Amazon. That's one of the things I did to ring in the New Year is ordering a Marx Brothers movie from whatever, 90 years ago. But yeah, that was, it's, you know, stay up, watch some stuff, have a nice time. I had a big bottle of Lambic beer that we opened. You know, it's married people New Year's in the time of Omic beer that we opened. You know, it's married people New Year's in the time of Omicron, I suppose. Thank you to Sims for that question. If you'd like

to send in something to help us open an episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk. We'll use question marks SnowTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. I have a few items of follow-up for you, Jason Snow. Okay. I wanted to just say that i watched no time to die over the break the james bond movie you found time i found time to watch

no time no time to die it was incredible i would have included it on my uh upgrades nominations that's what the gradients were right is what you're saying it was so good so good it's just a great movie and it's an especially great movie for a James Bond fan it was really really great right Daniel Craig is the best I haven't seen the last two James Bond movies which is funny

because I've seen I hadn't either I hadn't seen Spectre so we watched Spectre and then no time today very good recommend to it big recommend um mela the m-e-l-a mela yes the uh recipe app got the library sharing that we spoke about oh that's uh that's now public it's out of data yeah oh good so yeah i immediately enabled that and now i'm able to use it with all of the shared recipes that, uh,

and you know, and I have, cause she had kind of gone in and added a bunch of stuff and that, and I didn't want to have to go and do it the same. Right. Cause she was using paprika and moved from paprika to Mela. Um, and yeah,

I love it. I've been putting some cocktail recipes in there. Yeah. I want to get a break. I want to get a bunch of the, we've got a, uh, in one of our, um, shelves shelves we've got a big stack of recipes that are like cards from meal services and printouts of things and all of that and i really would like to get them in there because i like cooking with um the ipad actually on the counter it's nice one thing i'll say about

like the meal kit rest like you know like the hella fresh is the blue aprons of the world most of their recipes they also publish are on their website yeah that actually what i was thinking is what i'm going to do is i'm going to because i did this with one that we were that i was about to prepare what you do is you get the card that you saved out and you search for that recipe find it on the meal prep site, and then Nella grabs it from the web page. That's the trick. And then you throw away the card. Super good.

Very nice. Very good app. If you are looking for the list of every nomination we mentioned on the show, because we had quite a few people contact us and say, what was the name of this thing? What was the name of that thing? Yeah, the ones we didn't end up settling on as runners-up.

Jason published basically a copy and paste of our document, which also has all the percentages in for the Upgradians votes in case you ever wanted to look at them. For next year, I'm going to try and find some kind of way of making this

non-spoilery and available i wonder if we can get our uh our dear official uh upgrade uh what is his official title uh as the keeper of the documents yeah zach keeper of the upgradies if we could if we could ask ask Zach to add an also mentioned or something just on Upgradees.com going forward. We're not going to go back through the whole history of the Upgradees, but maybe we could add something like that going forward. These are the other ones that Mike and Jason mentioned that didn't

end up. It's an honor just to be mentioned. We'll think of something. I don't know what the right thing to do is yet. Usually we'd put all that sort of stuff in the show notes right but i don't want to put all the stuff in the show notes because then it spoils it if you look at the show notes so all the nominees like so like the runners up and the winners are all on upgradies.com but not all of the nominees so we need to think of a way to do it because as well it's like really it's only apps and podcasts that that needs to be right that's true you don't need to for like because the thing is what i was

thinking a lot of this stuff is googleable but not all of it right and like but like you don't need if we say all the new james bond movie like what could it be right like you can work that out on your own yeah it's i mean it would be something too if like there was a story that one of us thought was the story of the year and then we ended up not going with it and that the link might be valuable but yeah it's it's mostly here's a product with a name and what we heard from people especially as people who are not native english speakers especially we'll say the name of something and they'll be like i have no idea what they just said no so i get it so we're gonna we're gonna i think about it whether it goes on the website or whether we find somewhere else to to put it you can check in the meantime i'm i've been using my micro blog

which i had not ever used before uh to post this along with a connected thing that i posted you posted the original pickies uh rules this that's right should we do it should we tell people that the picky the pickies have their own website uh well it's definitely going to come up on connected because okay we we haven't gotten to speak about the triple j takeover on connected which if you have no idea what i'm talking about i'll put a link in the show notes to this but like i don't really think it's going to help you but there's a good episode of connected uh that came out a couple of weeks ago that i hijacked with john voorhees and james thompson because we had been we had been uh sort

of become a running gag of threatening to take over connected and that like there was a succession plan and all of these things which led to one of my favorite things i've ever seen in the discord by the way which is uh i think it was kate in their notebook wrote down succession plan don't make one just that is which i think was john vorhees's advice was the trick is not to make a succession plan because then nobody will be in line to succeed you and then you will survive this culminated in the christmas week episode which had no ads and was originally just going to be a skip week and several months ago we had the conversation among all six of us which was like should we and it ended up i mean the answer was we probably shouldn't and so we did it anyway

it's amazing and it it's there but really it it's going to make the most sense for people who actually listen to connected because it is sort of a loving a loving uh satire slash real episode of connected from from a Parallel Universe. So yeah, we're doing the annual Rikis this week. Yeah, this week. But I think we haven't had the ability to talk about, because we pre-recorded our year in review episode before that year we even recorded.

I kind of love that because it meant that for a week the Connected audience is like, they're not even, they're pretending, did I hallucinate it? episode before that you even recorded so i kind of love that because it meant that for a week that the connected audience is like they're not even they're pretending it did i hallucinate it did that really exist it really exists yeah uh the draft pennant that uh you lovingly made that we spoke about recently your gift to me uh has found its home um i've posted it up here in the studio i've put it in a place, I'd originally put it, so the kind of the way I have my studio set up,

I have this kind of like sound insulated, like blankets and barriers that go around my recording desk. And I had put it on the inside here. So it was behind me when I'm recording. But then I thought to myself today today wouldn't it be fun to put it on the other side which is then in view when i stream on twitch so now what you'll put people from this week's twitch stream will see it i've put a link in the show notes to an image of

what it looks like and i think we've got one for you too, right? Yeah. And what I also like you can see off in the corner is my connected mag tricky as well. I saw that, I noticed that. Stuck to a little metal cabinet. So yeah, that's now people will know at all times whether I am the challenger or the winner. So the champion, yeah. I'm so happy about it.

I'm satisfied now. It's not quite the same as the the the the ricky's trophies and that's okay but it is it is a the trick yes the short tricky for short thank you uh but uh it is exactly what i uh what i want i think is just a little a little flag there to signify the current draft champion status excellent what i like is how big it is yeah this is how i feel that you you know you're a certain dominance here it's so much larger than any trophy that i have but it's but it's two-dimensional it's flat so in terms of volume i don't know but it's it's literally i got it to be just the size of the

other pennants that i have that are my like that were on my childhood wall that are still on my wall here in my office. It's pennant-sized. Exactly. Actually, by default, it was going to be bigger, and I asked the person who made it, can we make it this size? And she said, yeah, I can cut it down to that size. That's fine. I also wanted to do a bit of follow-out to our friend David Sparks, upgrade-y winner for Mac Power users. uh upgradey winner for mac power users uh david today announced uh that he is going fully independent and giving up his law practice so many years ago david left his law firm and

kind of went semi-independent right created his own law practice continued practicing law and running max barky and he has now given up the law practice and is going full on Max Barkey and has created something called Max Barkey Labs, which is a really cool membership program. So yeah, I just wanted to put a link in the show notes to David's announcement of this and also to the most recent episode of Mac Power Users

where he talks about it. Because I love David. David's one of the nicest people on the planet. And I really want him to succeed with this. so i just wanted to mention it here too i have signed up to become a member of max barky labs uh and i i encourage you to also checking out i uh when he told me about this i was very excited i feel like he's been he he was talking about how oh i gotta do this and i gotta do this and i'm thinking about this because I saw one and I was down at Thanksgiving. I saw him and I know you saw him shortly thereafter. And it was funny because he's so agonizing over it, right? Because

he wants to take care of his clients. And also it is this huge step, like many of us have taken to be, you know, he already took the step to be independent, but he brought, you know, he kept a law practice going. He was independent, but he was Max Barkey plus, you know, Max Barkey Esquire. It was kind of weird because like he was independent, but still doing the thing he was doing before. Yeah, still doing two jobs. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly right. So it was, you know, like I understood completely why he was agonizing over all of it. And yet from my perspective, and I think the perspective of everybody who knows him, it's absolutely the logical next step in his career. Um, cause the truth is that, you know, you, how it's the same story we've all told is how can you focus on building this thing that you want to do if you've got this complete other thing. If you think about how great a job David does with his Max Barkey stuff, it's not his 100% focus. It's not been up till now.

It's been a partial focus with this whole other job. And now it's his focus 100%. It's going to be great. And he's going to succeed wildly at it. And I know that, you know, it's easy for me to say, because I'm not the one making the risks by shutting down part of my livelihood, but, uh, you know, I am extremely confident that he's going to do great. And, uh, and, uh, Max Parkey labs, you know, we had all of us who have done memberships had conversations with David. So I hope that he has really kind of taken to heart a lot of feedback from a lot of people in different kinds of membership systems and really tuned that thing. And I'm looking forward to see what comes out of Mac Sparky Labs. Yeah, like I've seen various iterations that he showed me of like what he was going to be offering. And as it's come down to where it is now, I can feel everybody's hands on his shoulders.

You know, like it was very much like, let me promise the moon. And we're all like, no, no, all like no no no no just scope it out it's just stuff we can do later on and it's it's good it the end result is something that i think and like i think everybody else i am so incredibly jealous of the name max sparky labs is just a great name for a membership program. It's just such a good name. And I'm really jealous that he has such a good brand on it. It's really, really nice. And I'm super excited about it. And so I just wanted to mention it here.

And there's a bunch of stuff that you can go and read and check out what David's up to. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Bombas. Bombas' mission is simple, to make the most comfortable clothes ever and match every item sold of an equal item donated. So when you buy Bombas, you're also giving to someone in need.

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purchase that's b-o-m-b-a-s. com slash upgrade for 20% off. One last time, that is Bombas dot com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Bombas for their support of this show and RelayFM. So let's talk about Apple in 2022. So you wrote a couple of articles for Macworld, kind of detailing some things that we could expect and things that you're looking for. And I kind of wanted to go through them and pepper in some. There's been some reports from Mark Gurman as well over the weekend about maybe some timelines

for some of this stuff, which is exciting as we look towards the new year. So let's first, let's talk about the Mac because there's still a bunch of stuff to come. So I guess the expectation is we will be completing the Apple Silicon transition in 2022 fully, right? Yeah, that's my expectation. I'm not sure about the timeline. Mark Gurman seems to feel like they're going to wrap it up soon, which I'm sure was always their intent was to wrap. When they say it's going to be a two-year transition, I know we've talked about this,

but when Apple says that, they want to beat it. They're trying to be coy. They want to beat it. But we have all to be coy. They want to beat it. But we have all of the supply chain problems and all the product delays. And so I'm not entirely sure. I feel like everything's going to be announced and that there'll be an Apple Silicon version of everything. There is a rumor, by the way, floating around there that there's going to be one last revision to the Intel Mac Pro. Mac Pro. And I think that may be true because they may want to have like one Intel system that they can still have. That's like for all their, especially Mac Pro customers, institutional

customers that'll like last a while. It's like, if you really need to stay on Intel for a long time, you can buy this and it will stay for a long time. But I don't want to, um, quibble about that because I think there will also be an Apple Silicon Mac Pro, right? I think we will be able to say that, yes, there's the last Intel Mac might be a revision to the Mac Pro, but I think they're going to do an Apple Silicon Mac Pro and that's going to complete the transition. The question is sort of when and how, but I feel like they're going to do it. I think they're going to get under the wire, whether it's mid-year or it's really like in December, I think they're going to do it.

I think we're going to be in a case where all of the primary representatives of every Apple model will be at Apple Silicon, even if there are a couple Intel legacy models just kicking around in the background for a little while longer. So Mark's report in the Power On newsletter was saying that his expectation is that they will finish the transition as early as June.

So WWDC. And that will be Mac Pro and iMac Pro. I don't think he mentioned anything about a Mac Mini, but I guess maybe that's just not of the most importance. As early as is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, right? Because as early as June, or it could be December, right? It literally could be any time after that i think oh yeah i always get that one messed up in my brain when i see it for some reason when he says as early as i think it means no later than but that's the exact opposite yeah it's it's you know it's like saying you could save as much as as five percent or you

know you could save you could save as much as 90 right it? It's like, well, you could, but it'll probably be 2%. It won't be 90%. We have sold over 173 units. Yeah, well, you mean 174, you're saying. So, yeah, I like that. We've been in business for more than 27 years. Okay, so 28 then. Got it.

Got it. Good timing there. So, here's my prediction, since we're in the prediction business here. We don't compete on predictions like you do on Connected. Well, we do, but there's just a one-week window on these things. Yeah, I suppose so. So I think that they will announce something at WWDC, assuming that they're confident that they can ship it by the end of the year, maybe even before that. But WWDC is the right time to announce the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, and it doesn't have to ship.

I feel very confident that that's what they're going to do because they've done that two times before with this product. Okay, so they did it with the Mac Pro. With the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro. But as we said before, that iMac Pro was the Mac Pro, right? It was. You know? And so, yeah.

And there's no, nobody is going to be like, well, you know, I was going to buy an Intel Mac Pro, but now that they've announced this Apple Silicon Mac Pro, it's just not going to happen. Right? Because like every time they've done that, they keep the old product around. Like the trash can Mac Pro, you could still buy yeah i think after they started shipping the other and it will be the same i am a believer in this rumor about the updated xeon intel mac pro i think that they're going to keep that thing around in the background

for a while because they know that they've got customers are going to be like oh but i need this card or i need this driver and it's only i need this thing that's only on Intel. And they're going to be like, all right. Especially because they're expecting it to be a different body shape, right? Like the rumors are saying it's going to be a different case, right? So I think it would make sense that they will then keep the older one around,

I would expect for a pretty long time. Kind of like the way you would see it in the laptops, right? Where like you can still get the Touch Bar MacBook Pro if you try hard enough. Right. Well, and they're kicking around and they have inventory and they have refurbs and like Intel,

because there are people, believe it or not, who are going to need Intel. They're just going to. Like, so there will be ways for them to get it, but Apple's going to move on. And in terms of what that Mac Pro is, you know, I think it's going to be just that compact rumor makes sense to me, especially if GPUs outside of the processor are not an option. There'll be storage and maybe some other places where you could add connectivity. So internal storage and connectivity options

to bulk it up, and that's why it's a big desktop tower kind of thing. I think that's reasonable, but I think Apple's not going to do external GPU support this time. I think it's going to be exactly what we think it's going to be, exactly what the rumors say it's going to be, which is they're going to offer those M1 Max processors

in 2X and 4X configurations. And so the GPUs will scale and the cores will scale, but it's just going to be, I think we know exactly what this is going to be. I think you could predict it. I'm actually most curious about if they build in a bunch of storage and expansion stuff inside, what that looks like. But I think that's what the expandability is going to be, is storage and expansion. And maybe they'll do something else wild, like put the processors on a daughter card or something like that, so that you could actually swap out the processors later. I wouldn't put it past Apple for them to say, since we control this platform, we can build

it the way we want. And that includes some kinds of swappability that pros desire that maybe weren't there before. But it's not going to be like it was. It's going to be a totally different kind of take on it. Considering this product is going to debut do you think it will be an m1 like i do yeah i do i i think that um although there will be an m2 this year and and mark german has that report and it's exactly what we thought which is basically it will progress just like the A14 to A15. M1 to M2, it'll be a little bit faster, right?

That's just, it's the same sort of thing. I think Apple's probably using the M1 as the basis, right? They do the M1 and then they do the M1 Pro and Max. And then the Mac Pro will have multiple M1 Pro or Max chips in it. And probably Max. And it'll all be based on the m1 because there seems to be like a real sort of amount of time that they need to build up to that point and honestly i'm not sure m2 max would be enough of a thing to try and right yeah and also they're probably have they have some

thoughts about how they want to take their chip architecture for the Pro line going forward in terms of dual and quad. And probably M1 has some of that in it, but they probably got some other things that they want to do, maybe including having scalable graphics or something like that, that will be in a future version that they're working on. But I think M1 will deliver what they want now. they want now. And I don't think anybody's going to look at that M1 Mac Pro and be like, ah, it's a lightweight because it says M1 on it, because it's going to be M1 Max Quad, and people are going to lose their minds. So I think that's what it's going to be. From a design perspective, obviously, we've got some new design stuff, right? We've got the iMac and the MacBook Pros. They are new. They have stuff that's interesting and different about them. Are you expecting any more surprises in 2022 from a hardware design perspective on the Mac?

I think, I mean, a surprise is the question. Gurman has reported several times, so I'm going to take him at his word, that the new MacBook Air is going to be a serious redesign. They are going to redesign the MacBook Air for essentially the first time since the MacBook Air as we know it was introduced back when. Because remember, they brought it back essentially after they kind of left it hanging. And the modern new version of the MacBook Air is a dead ringer for the old MacBook Air. I think that they now are going to do their new take on MacBook Air. And so it is going to look different.

And what is that going to look like? And I do think it's going to have colors. So I think that's great. I think the MacBook Air is going to be, you know, the M1 MacBook Air is really nice, but it is indistinguishable. Take it from me, somebody who lives in a family of MacBook Air users. We have so many MacBook Airs in this house. My daughter was home over the break and it's like

everybody's got their own MacBook Air. There are four of them and all of them are from different model years, but they're all MacBook Airs and they all look exactly the same. And the 2022 Air won't. It'll look different. You'll be able to tell at a glance that it's the new Air. And I'm excited by that, just like I was excited by the M1 iMac because it is not that common when Apple takes a product, a Mac product, and completely changes its exterior.

Usually it sort of, it does it and then it keeps it for a while. And we're starting to see with Apple Silicon the opportunity for Apple to finally get some of these changes out there. So I think that'll be the new MacBook Air. Otherwise, I'm going to, and it's boring predictions, but I think that there will be a big iMac and it will be called iMac Pro. I think it will come in boring color options and not the bright color options because that's a very

Apple thing to do. Maybe they'll have some colors, but there'll be boring iPhone Pro kind of colors. That's the old, you know, midnight lemon kind of thing where it's just all forest green and, and, and, you know, midnight blue and other things that are almost the same. Maybe it'll come in black. That would be great if it was truly in black and not just a space gray. But I think that they'll use what they call pro colors, which is to say not colors that that are very interesting but i think they'll i think they'll call it a pro and it'll offer the pro processor options that are in the um in the macbook pros and maybe even offer like a dual maybe not a quad like the mac pro but maybe even a dual m1 max option that'll cost a fortune but it'll be super powerful. We'll see. And it'll look

different. I think it'll look more like the M1 iMac, but I don't think it's going to be all snazzy like that. And I do believe they'll replace the Mac Mini with a Mac Mini Pro too, that that Intel Mac Mini will get replaced by another kind of dark gray Mac Mini that has a better cooling system and options for Pro and Max chips for people who want that. Obviously, we've mentioned it. It's been mentioned everywhere to death, I think, at this point. But displays, yay.

Yes. Yeah. It's going to happen. It's going to, again, in these Macworld columns, one of the things that I love is that I end up picking the same thing, predicting the same thing year after year after year. I predicted the year of Apple Silicon three times in a row before it happened. I predicted that external display three times. So I'm just going to keep predicting it until it happens.

But I really do. Before it was sort of like tinted with wish casting. And now it's just straight up. It's going to happen. I mean, also, it was just like, this is logical, right? Like it was like, they should do this. So I'm going to predict it because if I think they should do it, surely they should think it too.

Right. And that doesn't always work out. But I think this year, and Gurman again here has said they're absolutely doing this. I don't know what, if I had to guess, my guess is going to be that they're going to do two. I think they're going to do a 27 that is essentially the same display that's going to be in the iMac Pro. It's going to be a micro LED. And I think Gurman said half the price of the Pro Display XDR. So we're talking about a $2,500 display. Not cheap, but better. Makes you wonder

what the price of the iMac Pro is going to start at. And my guess is going to be probably like $2,500, $2,700 is where it's going to start. Somewhere in there. It's not going to be cheap. I mean, that was never a cheap computer, right? Like the iMac Pro. The 27-inch. Even the 27-inch iMac was not like, that's not your low price leader. And quite honestly, the 24-inch iMac is gorgeous. And so I think that that will exist. And I do think they're going to update the Pro Display XDR to be a micro LED, you know,

basically to do all the things that it is lacking now that are in its laptops where the laptop has a better screen than their $5,000 monitor. Do you mean mini or micro? Mini is what we have now in other tools. Because I think that is also a standard. Micro LED is in

the Apple Watch I think they're working on. That was a rumor that they wanted to do that for some other devices. But yeah, it's a mini LED. It's the MacBook Pro display technology. I think they're going to roll that out everywhere. Yeah. And it's going to cost.

So I do think they will end up with a Pro Display XDR replacement and a 27-inch standalone that everybody will complain about how much it costs and then everybody will buy it that's bold prediction but let me say right now uh maybe i'll see if i can promise this i won't complain about how much it costs because i know it's going to be expensive so if i buy one i know it's going to be that's what it's going to be right so i won't i'll promise you not to complain about it yeah this episode is brought to you by our friends at DoorDash. No matter what type of food you're looking for today, maybe you want pizza or maybe your flatmate wants Chinese, it doesn't matter what it is, it's something for everyone on DoorDash. DoorDash will connect you

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then you get 25% off your first order with DoorDash subject to change terms apply our thanks to DoorDash for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. I wrote down in the document, a quiet year for the iPhone, because that was kind of a thing that you were mentioning in your article, right? It's not going to be the bigger. But then I started like thinking about it and looking around. I don't think this is going to be a quiet year for the iPhone.

So here's, there's three things here, right? One is we're going to see another shake up in the product line because the expectation is that a iphone 14 max will enter the line replacing the mini which is kind of hilarious really because it's not really replacing it but it's taking the spot that the mini will be leaving as the mini leaves the product line um which is interesting to me i mean it's going to be kind of fascinating to see really like will the iphone 14 max sell more units than the iphone 14 iphone and iphone 14 mini would i think the answer to that is yes

personally probably um which is why they would do it otherwise well you know because i think i heard someone say this recently i don't remember where it wasn't and i thought it was smart really of like at the moment if you want a big phone you have to spend the most amount of money that's my that's my counter argument is how many people buy the pro max not because they want a pro but they want a big phone and how much are they losing and that's the calculation there is if you do an iphone max that's not pro yeah you are gonna get some people to buy it who would otherwise not but you're also going to lose some people who would have bought the pro max and now feel like they don't need to but that i mean i would wonder if that is the same amount of people that will buy it because they also want whatever features the pro one gets of it and with i don't know we're

going to assume that there are people smarter than us at apple who are making those decisions and it's their whole job there are literally people it's their entire job to make that calculation there are teams of people right teams upon teams of people whose entire jobs are the workers out so if they do it you've got to assume and i know i know i know like i can already hear the sound of emails being opened i know that every single person who has an iphone mini is going to be really mad and upset about it hello jason's one of those people yeah in an email to me but the thing is apple's a business sir they do not do these things for your pleasure personally you. No one's buying them, relatively, right? If they were selling, like, hundreds of millions of iPhone minis,

they wouldn't get rid of them, right? Like, it's a product I think that has underwhelmed an expectation, and they are, like, going back and thinking, hey, we used to do this non-a-billion-dollar big phone and sold so many of those, so why don't we bring that back into the line? Well, I suspect that the sales performance of the Mini opened up the conversation of, like, could we try something else in that fourth slot?

Especially if you think about it this way. And when I talk about a quiet year for the iPhone, one of the reasons I talk about that is iPhone design is on, like, a three-year cycle at this point. So, and you see it in the sales charts. We talked about it in terms of when you look at their sales over time, there is actually an iPhone cycle and it's the design cycle where the iPhone 12 comes out and there's a huge sales spike because it's a brand new look for a phone. And then 13 and 14 will be less. And that's why it's a quiet year in a sense is that it's not going to look any different. And so you're not going to have that huge pent up demand. Because I think a lot of

people are just on the it's a new iPhone look buying cycle every three years or so. So that leaving that behind for a second, your Apple, and you look at the mini for the iPhone 12. And you look at the sales and you're like, it's not great. great. And you say, well, it's too late for 13. We're already locked in because Apple is working way ahead. We're already locked in for 13. Let's do an experiment for 14. Let's see if this other approach would work and we'll get some data on it. And then they're still going to have to be working on whatever the 15 design is before they get that data probably. But I think they looked at this as an opportunity to do something different. I wonder if in the long run what they're going to decide to do instead is make the iPhone whatever a little smaller than today's iPhone whatever. Oh, the regular?

Yeah. than today's iPhone whatever. Oh, the regular? Yeah, and make the iPhone Max, if they decide to keep it, bigger but more like XR size so that you have two sizes but they're not exactly matched to the Pro sizes. Or if they're going to just say,

like, let's just keep this easy. They're literally the two phone sizes. What I would say is I could imagine maybe like the 14 year is a test for the 15 year as to whether they adjust it again. Because that's a redesign, you know? And that's like what you're saying. Like they maybe try and keep it a few years so they can get the most out of each design.

If they start changing the physical sizes again, well, you may as well just go back to the drawing board because you've made it way hard of yourself, we'll find out but here's something interesting mark german says hole punch display and probably the pro models now that's going to be a big deal that's no notch anymore yeah i mean i don't think it's i don't think the notch is a big deal so i don't think it's a big deal i mean but just from a visual perspective right like you know like when they're from from it's they're going to make a big deal out of that right like look how incredible our gorgeous display you know like it's going to be they make a big deal out of everything but that's going to be cool i think and so the the face id sensors will be going under

the display um is the expectation there and ming chi ku Kuo says that there will be a 48 megapixel camera on probably the Pro. Now, this is interesting because Apple has been using a 24 megapixel camera for a really long time, like years and years and years. They've kind of been pretty stuck on 24 megapixels. And I'm happy that they will go up because I sometimes want a bit more sharpness

or a bit more detail out of my uh out of my iphone photos and so i would welcome this change so that's going to be pretty cool i think yeah okay so again if this is all predicated on me saying it's a quiet year for the iphone um which i think is a simple way of doing it it's not going to be depends on who you're talking to right yeah there's not going to be, depends on who you're talking to, right? There's not going to be a revolutionary new iPhone. Everybody who follows the iPhone closely knows how this goes, right? They change the outside.

Everybody freaks out. They're like, oh my God, it's a new iPhone. I'm going to buy it. And then the next year they iterate and it's a little bit better. And the next year they iterate and it's better. And somewhere in those two other iterations, you know what happens is

there are huge internal upgrades. Because I've already got a bunch of people saying and I just want to try and stop before again more tweets, 12 megapixels, not 24 that they've had for years and now we've got 48. That'd be a big difference. Big difference. And this is what they do, right? This is what they do.

It doesn't change on the outside and then all the reviews come out and they're like, I know it doesn't look any different, but this is a huge change to the camera. And that's what they do. They don't tend to put all of their massive changes in one revision, including the exterior, and then let it not change at all for two years. Right. Instead, it's all kind of coming in sequence. And so a much better camera in the third year of the phone body, not surprising.

And actually, I mean, it's great. Like, that's great because in some ways the camera is the biggest motivator for some people. Some people, it's the outside shape and some people it's the camera. that 48 megapixel rumor, because the other thing that's happening, if we want to talk about 2023 for a moment, is the iPhone 15 seems to be where they're finally going to do the periscope thing. Yeah.

And that's going to require a huge redesign of the phone. Entire rethink. I mean, I can hear them talking about it now, even though it's going to be fall of 23, but it's an entire rethink of the interior of the iPhone because they want to increase the focal length, which means they have to bounce the light off of a mirror and then run it down to the camera in the body of the phone. And that's going to be really good, I think, in terms of really changing what Apple can do with photography on the iPhone.

But that's a 23 thing. In the meantime, what can you do? And the answer is, well, presumably that phone is going to have an amazing sensor on it. The sensor is going to happen maybe this year, right? We'll get the sensor, that awesome sensor this year. And the next year they will upgrade the optics and it's just more Apple iteration going on. But even in the existing phone design, having that new sensor will be... And I'm sure they're going to... If it's a 48 megapixel camera, they're going to do all sorts of very clever software stuff to it where they can say, well, it's not just about the megapixels.

It's really about how we use those pixels to process the image, et cetera, et cetera. Deep focus, sweaters, et cetera. Yeah, this is going to give me the opportunity to just say something that's been annoying me. I think deep fusion, whatever it's called. Sorry, deep fusion. I mean, it could be called deep focus. I don't remember because they also have fusion drives.

That processing where they increase the sharpness is ruining some photos of mine, like just ruining them. It adds like a darkness to images or over it's like over sharp it's like over sharpening them and this has been going on for a while and i'm just really unhappy with some images like i i take a photo i look at it and i'm happy with it and then a split second later it does the processing and it is just really ruining some photos of mine. And I can't do anything about it, right? And so I would really love the 48 megapixel camera

because I think they will then have to rely on this less because that's all about adding detail and sharpness to images. And I think sometimes it's doing that at the expense of color and clarity. So I'll be excited for an improvement there. Anyway. Quiet year. That's the iPhone. iPad, mini LED for the 11-inch iPad Pro

would be the expectation, right? And that might be the only real big thing for iPad hardware this year. You know, Mark Gurman talks about updates to the iPads and he seems to say it in a way that he's more enthusiastic about it than I am. I think they're going to not change what they look like at all. They'll probably get the M2 processor that's also in the MacBook Air, and that may enable some stuff that is not currently enabled. I do think the standout thing, and there'll probably be an iPad Air update at some point this year because it's time, it's a little long in the tooth.

But I think the really big development on the hardware side for the iPad is going to be that that 11-inch model gets mini LED. iPad OS to get a windowed mode is a thing that you seem pretty in on. I keep saying it and it also still hasn't happened. This is a little less certain than the display one, and a little more like wishcasting is involved. But I feel like the evidence is there. And I know you talk to Federico about this a lot, too. The evidence is there.

Evidence is there. The multitasking and windowing and pointer support and keyboard support and keyboard shortcut support. And like Apple keeps heaping stuff on to iPad OS that is required if you're going to do a multi-windowing external display kind of feature. And that feature doesn't exist yet. And they got Thunderbolt. It's right at the precipice. So the question is, are they going to actually do it? I feel like the release of the display, external display,

would be a great time for them to announce this. I don't know if this is an iPadOS next-gen feature or whether it's more like the pointer and it comes in the spring or something as an update to the existing iPadOS. I don't know that part. But I feel like they've been pushing this all this time to get to this point and i do think ipad os needs to be unchained in this way i do think that we need to reach the point where if you're if you you can attach an ipad to an external display look we've already got a pointing device we've already got a keyboard we've already got a multi-window support. And we've already got floating windows in some apps. Like all the pieces are there. So they just need to take that last step,

which is I plug this into a big screen and I can drag around a bunch of iPad windows and run it from my iPad. I do think they, like all the evidence is there that they're going there, but they have to take that final step. So I'm going to say this year is the year just because they've gotten everything aligned and they're going to do an external display. And I feel like that's the perfect time to talk about it is here's your iPad Pro and here's your new Apple Pro display and boom.

One of the things I just read to put this as a quote, because you seem to say this as if you were very confident of it. One of the major features of iOS 16 will be a new version of Notes that allows cross-linking. Yeah, I think it's going to happen. I just, I think the Notes team,

which is pretty active and paying attention, has seen all the excitement about Notion and Roam and Obsidian and all the rest, all of these fancy note-taking apps that let you interlink your notes. And I think that Apple is going to do their take on a knowledge base like that. And I think it will be something that will frustrate all the fans of those apps because it will not be as complex as that for lots of reasons. But that's Apple's stock and trade really with this stuff is how do we bring the desire to do that to the masses in a sort of a simplified form? But I think it's going to happen because it's just laying right out there.

If you're on the notes team and you're looking at the trend in your world, which is notes apps, how could you miss this one? So I think they're going to do it. And it makes sense. I should be able to link from one note to another note. Even if you don't know anything about those other apps, it totally makes sense to say this is in that other note and be able to create a little link to it. So I think that's going to happen. I totally agree with your thinking that it's like, this is the thing now that, you know, you do if you're in one of these kinds of applications and then VCs pour money all over you. So it's become like a thing that a lot of these applications are doing, but that means it's becoming a standard of the space. So probably it makes sense for Apple to do it too, right? But in a less powerful way,

they will do it in the most basic way possible it's not going to be Sherlocking right it's going to be once again what Apple really does which is they make a kind of popularization of a feature

that is never going to bring the power that the other apps have but it will give the masses who don't use those apps, but just use the Apple notes app, a little taste of that goodness. Or people like Mike who find that feature interesting, but really complicated in every app that he's tried it in. Yeah. Yeah. And I do so much in notes already and I would love that feature there. And yet that's not enough for me to go to a different

notes app. So I stay in notes, but if notes added it, I'd be like, Oh yeah, I'll probably use that for, to interlink some notes. Like that'll, that'll be great. So I think they'll do it. And you also refuse to give up on your Mac qualcomm column of predicting a new pro app for the iPad from Apple. It's going to keep on doing it. This is the year. So it's going to find its doing it. This is the year. It's also going to find its way into three drafts this year. It is. It is. I think it's

got to happen eventually. I really do believe that there is probably at the very least Final Cut Pro for the iPad happening. I just have to believe. I have to believe it. So I'm going to choose it. Do you think this year we are going to see anything new for the home from Apple?

I think there was a prediction in that episode of Connected that we're not really talking about this. And I like the idea of predicting a new home product from Apple. you keep it, and we're not competing here on this, but that idea, I think Apple does have a home strategy. I think they have found a home strategy, and I think we saw the beginning of it with the HomePod Mini. with this, between this and being part of the Matter Alliance. And I know that's been slow to come to fruition, but like, I do think they are getting their ducks in a row regarding the home. There have been reports, including from friend of the show, Mark Gurman, about this. I think the most likely home product from them

is a HomePod with a screen and a camera that lives, you know, I guess lives in your kitchen, but really can live wherever you want. And the reason I say that is, look, they've got tvOS, they've got iPadOS, and they've got iOS. They've got Center Stage. They've got the HomePod. They've got photos memories. They've got photos memories. They've got widgets. They've got FaceTime. They have every single, it's a little bit like my comment

about the iPad external display thing. They have FaceTime. They have, and they have app developers, right? So they, which is something, as somebody who has an Amazon Echo, like, oh boy, like they're so, the Amazon App Store on their Fire devices, their Fire TV devices, has everything. and it's fire os that runs the

amazon echo and uh they have nothing almost nothing they did i saw they added like zoom the other day but it's like all curated and i think apple has every opportunity to get in here and make a product that using a lot of the building blocks of what they've already got, probably mostly tvOS, and build a HomePod with a screen that will let you do FaceTime, that will let you set up widgets that will all sync via iCloud with your other devices, that will be controllable via the lady, but also via the touchscreen, and it'll have a center stage camera on it so that you can, wherever you are, you just place it there and it's your FaceTime appliance. I really think that product is going to happen because again, all the pieces are there and it's a natural new direction for Apple to go in the home that I think could actually be a good, successful product. Plus I think Apple's whole privacy

promise and all the people who are in Apple's ecosystem saying, well, you know, you're not going to have to give your data to Google, Amazon, or Facebook, but instead we will protect your privacy when you have this microphone and camera in your home and it works with all your other stuff and it lets you call your friends who have, you know, your family members who have an iPad or an iPhone, they don't have to get set up with Amazon's thing or Google's thing. So I think that that, I want to hold out hope that they're going to do the soundbar product that I've been complaining about for a long time.

It's basically an Apple TV with a speaker and a center stage camera that you put by your TV and now boom, you've got this same thing, but you've got it on your TV. I think that's less likely. It is much more likely that they make a HomePod screen because that has so much in their wheelhouse. And it stands, yeah, it stands alone in a way

that an Apple TV speaker thing is a new thing and they have to check what they want it to be. Right, like, is this a category we want to be in but like a home pod with a screen like it's it's just sitting right there and they've got i i personally think center stage was built for this product i think center stage is going to be everywhere it's going to be on max i think it's going to be it's just on ipads right now but i think it was built for this product like it feels like it was built for a product like this because you need, iPad you can pick up and move around, right? But one of these things is going to be sitting somewhere.

And what you really need with a device that is static like that is a dynamic widescreen camera that can pan around. And so I think that center stage, we saw it first on the iPad, but I think it's built for this product. I really believe that. So maybe I'm wrong, but I'm outside the black box. I don't get to look inside and see what's going on at Apple. I just have to guess, but it feels very strong to me that that's the product. And finally, is 2022 the year of the headset? I say yes. I think Apple will release something that you put on your face in 2022. I do. I am really skeptical. So our friend James Thompson went all in on that episode of Connected with AR stuff.

I'm a little, like, I'm a believer in this product. I think it's going to happen. Whether I'm a believer in its success, I don't know. But I believe it will happen. You believe that Apple's going to make it. I think the goggles or whatever it is, I think it'll be 22. I think it's going to ship.

I don't think it's going to be pitched as a product for everyone. I feel like it's going to be so expensive and so early days that they're going to pitch it for developers, that they'll announce it at WWDC and they'll say, this is coming. It's a developer kit. We want you all to write apps for it. And then next year there'll be one for the masses. And that next year, it won't be that one. It'll be another model that's for the masses.

It's certainly possible that Apple will do that and say it is for the masses. And developers can get their hands on a developer kit. Maybe the developer kit is just a thing that you have to plug into a Mac. That is a, you know, it's like part of it, but not the whole story. And then they'll ship the real one in the fall. But if I had to lay down money, I would lay down money that that first one is not going to be, like people will be able to buy it, but that it's not going to be pitched for regular people. Because I think it's going to be too early days. And I think Apple's not going to want to try and say put this

under the christmas tree right i i think it may be going to be a little too early for that could be wrong about that um but i i so i'm going to try to stake out this middle ground where i think it is going to happen but i think it's going to be not quite ready for for the masses until 23. i can't decide on this like just hearing you talk about it like I can't yet put my finger on what I think they'll do because anything they announce it will be the thing that people think is for everyone. Doesn't

matter what they do or how they say it it just does not matter. If they release a thing and they're like this is an early days product for us it costs $3,000 they will just be like Apple's headset Oculus's cost $3,000. They will just be like, Apple's headset, Oculus competitor cost $3,000. You know,

like there's no way around it. That's not entirely true though, because if they announce it and say, we're announcing this, there's a developer kit hardware that's going to be available this summer. We love our developers. And next year we will,

we will be shipping a product to consumers and they completely just say, this is a developer kit we're not selling this to the general public they could get away with it but yeah i agree the temptation is going to be strong the other part of what i didn't mention is i just i also struggle to like because again i just can't decide can i imagine that they would announce it that way or would i imagine that they would only be able to announce something like that or they only would announce something is they also showed off what the consumer product will be right well this is i can't decide their classic way of doing it would be that right which is the challenge is

how do you get your developers to write really what need to be new apps or at least dramatically changed apps to support ar and i know they've been doing it on the iphone for a long time and so those things will be able to be picked up. But the question is really, how much do the developers think they can get something done without really having access to this until it's essentially on shelves for the general public? And that's a tough one, but it's certainly possible. And the way you do it, if you're Apple, honestly, is you pitch it as an Oculus Quest, right? You pitch it as a VR gaming thing and say it's the start and this is going to be great for games.

And we've got all these developers who are working on games and more game demos for Apple events. Games and experiences, right? Like that's going to be V1. Yeah, but it'll be expensive. experiences, right? Like that's going to be V1. Yeah, but it'll be expensive. And what they're really kind of doing is they're hedging and they're saying it's, you know, it is out now, but then they'll iterate and iterate and iterate. And that's very Apple. I think that's the most like what they've done in the past. I just, I do wonder if they will get to the point where they're like, we cannot ship this to the general public. They will kill us. Let's call this the

developer kit. Because we know that they're already developing the next one, right? Mark Ehrman has that report that he's reporting on specs for the 23 version of the AR headset, right? So the question is, is the 22 version a developer kit or is it a product for consumers? And I don't know. If I had to pick, I want to be a little conservative here and say developer kit because I'm not entirely convinced that Apple is going to have a product this year. But they might. They could do it.

It would be very Apple to put the burden on all developers to just figure it out. And I still wonder, again, I go back and forth on this, if they'll even show this off at WWDC, I kind of feel like they might take the Apple Watch approach of two events that are absolutely focused on,

so that they did the Here's the Thing event, and then six months later, here is the We're Going to Remind You and Actually Launch the Product and Show You What It Is now event. So let me give you a scenario that might, this might be, this might be the actual scenario, which is what if at WWDC, they announced that they're going to do an AR product and they show off the AR product and they say the AR product is shipping this fall. And they announced it at WWDC or or or maybe before then or maybe after then but they announced it at an event let's just say yeah they announced it at an event

and as part of that event what they announce is developers can get something um and maybe that something is the hardware in advance or maybe that something is like i said earlier in this conversation a not quite the hardware but something you can attach a htc vive you can plug in i mean it could be something like that right yeah right something where you're basically like we're going to give developers something that they can plug into a mac and develop their apps with? Because that's the part that keeps coming back to me is how do you launch this product without having developers actually be able to use this product or a thing that is meant to emulate this product? So that's my question is, you know, and maybe it's as simple as they're going to ship products to

developers, and there's going to be like a $3,000 deposit. And that gets refunded, or they get store credit or whatever at the end of the process, and it's locked to their ID. And, you know, they could do it that way. And it's not quite the final, but it's something for developers. I don't know, like, it's a good, it's a good question. Like, we'll have a limited number and you'll have to qualify and they could do it that way too. But I get hung up on the developer part of this because I don't think they can just dump this on the world and say, hey, developers make great AR apps on the iPhone and they'll just work. Like, I don't think that's going to do it. So I need the rest of that story because they want to launch this platform with good apps on it and they can't surprise

the developers and do that. So that's the thing to watch, honestly, in all of this is if they're launching a brand new platform, what is the developer story going to be and how do they prime the pump with developers,

assuming that their AR kit demos the last five years are not seen as priming the pump? Well, the only thing we have to compare this to is the Apple Watch, right? Like in recent times, like the only product, like brand new product needs development, new operating system, the whole nine yards. And with the Apple Watch, you said they did those two separate events. And they also did the thing where they brought developers in for a few days you remember that

right oh sure sure and that was how people got to try out their software on apple hardware right because the reason i'm saying is because like james is saying in the chat you know be kind of like how they did the dtkK, not the fastest chip, but functional. But there isn't, like, the DTK was a Mac Mini where they put a different, Apple do not have. So here's the one thing, and David pointed this out in the chat, and I think he's right, which is the other way they could go is they could say, we're going to do a little iPhone holder that you put on your face, like the Google Daydream, and you can build your apps on that. And then they'll be great on the new hardware because it'll be more powerful than your iPhone.

They may also do a thing where they say, and some of you can apply to come to a kitchen and we will let you load it onto pre-release hardware provided you signed a 25,000 page embargo, like NDA. Because this is my issue with the the it's what they're announcing right like yeah are they actually going to be announcing something that will be available for anyone to buy at the end of the year if that's the case they're not

sending those to developers six months in advance because it's not done so I don't know how you see like I'm struggling with this this balance that's why I mean but it could be done. So I don't know how, you see, like I'm struggling with this balance here. That's why, I mean, but it could be done. The hardware could be done and the software could be broken and it could be very much a DTK kind of situation where it's just for, it's non-final hardware, but they're building 2,000 of them to send out.

All the DTKs were like, they were existing hardware that they put new guts inside and apple doesn't have existing ar headset hardware yeah well this is so this is the thing we're gonna argue this like for the next six months sorry this is the conversation of the year because i do think that i do think there will be something you put on your face this year the question is what form does it take and what the developer story is about it? That's the great... And Apple has options here. I think in the end, it comes down to Apple's

confidence level in two things, confidence level in the quality of the product and confidence level in the developer story. And they could be misguided about those things, but I do think in the end, those are the two things that will decide this, is do they really think this product is enough of a product to sell it to consumers, you know, and to take the hits of it being judged

as a regular old consumer product? Which they might. They might be like, you know, we always iterate. This first one is going to be great, but the next one's going to be vastly better, just like the Apple Watch.

You iterate for a few years and it gets way better. But the question is, is it enough yet? And I think the truth is that Apple cares more about being seen in public than it cares about developers. Sorry, developers, you know it's true. And so I have a hard time imagining that Apple wouldn't announce something and ship something the same year because everybody would be talking about it and they wouldn't announce something and ship something the same year because everybody would be talking about it and they wouldn't have a product. So yeah, I think the truth is the biggest, the best scenario is they'll have some story to tell developers, but they're still going

to ship it by the end of the year. Yeah, I think it's true. This episode is brought to you by Fitbod. It's really normal for people to start considering their health and fitness around this time of the year. But between balancing work, family, and everything else that you have going on, it can be hard to make fitness a priority. What you need is a program that works with you, not against you. That's why you need FitBud. FitBud's algorithm learns about you, your goals, and your training ability and will craft a personalized exercise plan that's unique to you.

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get that 25% off your membership. That's F-I-T-B-O-D dot me slash upgrade for 25% off. Thanks to FitBod for their support of this show and RelayFM. So we spoke about Apple in 2022. Let's speak about what we're doing in 2022. Yeah.

Let's do it. People might be familiar, you know, like if you listen to one of my other shows, Cortex, like new year planning and new year thinking is a pretty important part of my life now, like for many reasons. And so me and Gray do a thing called yearly themes. We've been doing it for many, many years now where we come up with kind

of like a word or a phrase that acts as a guide for us throughout the year. It's like something that we can look towards and be like, this is something that I want. If I focus towards this thing, it will improve something in my life in some way. And then I work out for me, like I work out a bunch of things that I can do that can ladder up to this idea. So for me, my theme of 2022 is called the year of structure. I really recommend episode Cortex 123. We spoke speak about all this in more detail. Yes, highly. I found it incredibly inspirational. It's a really good even if you don't normally listen to Cortex, I would say listen to this episode. It's very good. I appreciate that. Thank you so much uh like basically for me in 2022 um i want to have a better structure in place to handle the various responsibilities

that i have across my businesses and in my personal life but also allow for unstructured time because i want to have more time in my work week where i have big chunks of time where i can work on whatever thing is pulling me at that moment and really have like clear runway for things. But this is also at the same time, we're balancing the things that I want to need to be worked on. Usually for me with a yearly theme, I start the year and I just do all of what I want to do. So like, you know, I'll be like, okay, I've, my theme is X. And that means all what i need to do is this this this and this and i'll get what i want but the difference for me this time is i'm starting this year i know what i want to achieve out of this but i don't know exactly how to get

there and so i'm going to be spending a big chunk of the year working out all right some stuff's going to get cut down or reorganized or moved around. How am I going to do that? I actually don't know. And also, I've said this to some close friends recently, the end of the year is a terrible time to do this because you've already started on next year's planning. So I have too many times made wrong decisions or quick decisions or pulled back on decisions for things that I want to cut down

because I'm making these decisions on like December 15th. So I'm going to be spending at least the first half of this year working out what stays, what goes in 2023 for all of the various things that I do and then spending the time actually putting those plans in place to make sure that it's good for next year. So there's going to, there's like a bunch of little things that I'm going to do to help with the immediate, but then it's also about the future. I would argue that this is actually in keeping with the whole concept of themes. In that what I like about themes, and I had to explain themes to Lauren because we had brunch with you and Adina and you talked about your themes.

And then we got in the car and weina and you talked about your themes. And then we got in the car and we were in the car for a very, very long time driving back home. And she was like, what is this themes business? And the way I like to think of the themes is it's a framework rather than being like New Year's resolutions. It's a framework that you commit to to analyze everything you do it's a it's a a rubric to use to grade every move you're thinking of making in a year it's like remember structure yeah and the beauty of that is that instead of it being you in you know sort of saying here are some goals for the year in january and seeing if you live up to them. Instead you say this year, really think about how you want to structure it or whatever your theme is.

And then everything that comes up during the year, you begin applying that. And I think it's, first off, I think it's easier to internalize that, although it does take a little time and that it also means that it is living with you because instead of having a thing that you said you would do and you failed at it, instead you have don't have your whole plan worked out but you're going to spend the year analyzing everything you do yeah using the theme of structure yeah it's

just it's for me the ways that i've been doing in recent years it's coming coming from the opposite side but it is it is still as you as you very rightly point out in keeping with the idea of like i've referred to it as like a North star for a while. It's like, it's, it's something that just guides you. So yeah, this kind of where I am,

where I'm like, I basically, I just noticed in 2021 that I just felt like I was just, I had way too much stuff going on and I don't want to have as much stuff going on. Uh, you know, I,

I was talking to Stevenven about this recently i'm sure you won't mind me saying because he's cut down on some stuff too going into the year and one of the things that we were talking about and we can i think like i was kind of coming to the realizations we was talking about it and it was something that his wife had said to him of like the two of us, we're kind of working still. Like we're trying to get our business off the ground. Right. Like we're very much still like, like we're trying to be like we're scrappy and it's like,

but we're not, we have a very established well running business at this point. And maybe that the two of us do not need to be running ourselves into the ground as much as we do um when we have a pretty well-oiled machine and it was just like a really interesting thing that i've been thinking about a lot so all of us you know you you and me and steven and some other people we know it's been seven or eight-ish years that we've been out on our own. And that initial phase is very much, how do I establish myself? How do I build things that I can do to have it be my career? How do I make it happen? It's this building phase.

And it's also a scrambling phase, right? Because it's like, I got to put food on the table. I got to, you know, I'm going to have to not go out on my own anymore. I'm going to have to leave and go back to what I was doing before if I can't make this work. So you end up in that phase. And then, you know, but the thing is, you leave that phase at some point. You need to leave that phase, I should say. And stop thinking about it in those terms and evaluate it in a different way. Because the danger is that you build yourself a new prison, right? The danger is you escape the old prison. There's a cartoon I have from webcomic name, Alex Norris, and it's about a freelancer. And it's like, I am free. And then they build a new

prison for themselves. Oh no. Right. But there's so much truth in that. Like you need to not build your own prison. The goal is to be able to continue to adjust and adapt. And the last thing you want to do is be free and build your own business and then burn out on the business you built. The last thing you want to do. And I've obviously been thinking about this too. I have tried, and I talked about this back when I was doing free agents with David Sparks about the importance of saying no, because I also dropped a bunch of stuff for the new year. And it's very much, that's sort of, I don't have a theme, but that's sort of what I've been trying

to do. It's very much like you can't do anything new if you're always continuing to do everything you've been doing up to this point. You have to say no and close some stuff down. Otherwise, you will never be open to new possibilities. Your theme is called the year of opportunity, Jason. Okay. Thanks. Great. No worries.

The idea, I don't think that's how I would brand it, but maybe. Well, we'll workshop it. But the idea there is you need to be, it's opportunity cost, right? It's not just the work you put in on X. It's also that if you're doing X, you can't do whatever might come along and be a new thing. whatever might come along and be a new thing. And I think we also tend, all of us, to overwork ourselves because it's hard to keep a balance when you're, first off, you're doing something that you like, which is great,

but you're also, you know, you are working all the time. And especially if you're working, at least you have an office to go to, but like Stephen and I are working on the premises and it's a challenge. So reevaluating, taking, taking a moment to reevaluate what you're doing. I, you know, new year is totally arbitrary. It is just the earth passing through a particular part of its orbit around the sun. It could be any time, but I think it has some, uh, it has some advantages, not only just, it is a reset time, but also for us, it comes not only after the holidays like it does for everybody, but it comes after that kind of the peak of the Apple year in the fall. It's not a bad time. This is when we've got some runway to do stuff before the kind of wild Apple stuff that starts in June and really goes through November. So now is a good time to do it. And so, you know, I actually in December had a similar thing where I, I realized I needed to do, I used to, when I worked at IDG,

I used to do these things. I'd go over to somebody's house. One of my editors, one of my managers lived in, still does, in Berkeley. And I would take a couple senior managers and we go to his house and like sit at his dining room table for the day and get you know and talk about like it's just good to get out of your headspace and go somewhere and sort of think about what you're wanting to do and I realized in in December that I hadn't done that and that I actually I wanted to do that and in my house is where I. So I can't get out of my own headspace in my house. So I had that moment where I'm actually going to go away. It's not quite a

greatcation, which is what CGP, well, it is kind of a greatcation, but we're just driving like an hour away where our friends have a rental house and there's nobody- It doesn't matter where it is. The. The idea, the great occasion being, you go somewhere else. And since our friends have a rental house and, and nobody is using their rental house in, in the week after new year's, right?

Like nobody is. So they're like, yeah, yeah, you can go there. So I'm going to go there for like three days, starting to starting this evening actually. And I'm going to have a couple of days where I am just focused on that,

that sort of thinking big picture stuff, because I do think that's important. And I think one of the challenges of working for yourself and working from home is that you're in your own head. You're no longer, it's harder. You have to work at it more to kind of step out of the day-to-day and think about what you're doing. And it's so important to be able to step out of it. If you, if you can manage it to step out of that context and not have the day-to-day going on and try to think bigger picture thoughts uh and and focus on you know on stuff that you don't give yourself permission to focus on most of the time this is like something it's just like i'm trying to build some of this in more generally into my life right like to have that unstructured time because it's very valuable.

And it's like to go back to something I was saying a minute ago, I think one of the reasons that I've really noticed and been feeling this feeling of like the kind of like starting out mentality is that me and Gray started a business together. And we're working on various products currently the for the theme stuff we have a thing called the theme system journal it's a journal that's built around this idea and you know that's the thing and we're working on multiple various product things and that's like very much in that i can't think of

a different word so i'm just going to say it that hustling phase of like we're trying to make it happen right and that takes a lot of energy and effort and so it's now having brought a new one of those in i'm starting to realize how much i'm still doing that in my very established business yeah uh and so you know balancing those two things together over the last year or so is really making me realize that to be most effective to both i need better structure one of those things is was like one of the ways i tried to do with this was i'll take no time off terrible idea and was was really really bad on me towards the end of the year and i've remembered the value of it uh kind of taking my really long vacation and then like we take it a bit of time

over the holidays and i'm feeling way better now yeah you know that's another thing about the new year's thing is it is a pretty good time i always feel pretty refreshed at New Year's because I've come off of a few weeks that are low to no effort. And that means it's a vacation, essentially. It wasn't a vacation per se. We didn't go anywhere. But my mom came and visited. I cleared off my schedule so I could spend more time with her. We prerecorded some stuff. So the amount of stuff I had to do was just so much less than it usually is. That's a really good opportunity because your batteries are a little more refreshed. And then you had your vacation on top of that. And I think that's all that primes this to be a pretty good time.

It's not, it doesn't have to be, you know, it's not the best time for everybody, but you're looking for a proxy. You're looking for something to hang your hat on about this. And if I, you know, was in a different business with a different kind of calendar, I might look at it differently. But January is not a bad proxy because it really is. I feel like the, you know, the Apple year heats up in June and then September and October and part of November are the peak of it. And then December is sort of a cooling off period of kind of retreating and healing. And then January is like, okay, what are the new things?

It's a perfect kind of fit. I want to mention, you mentioned Stephen doing fewer things. Some of that impacts me, but it's always a good time to reevaluate stuff. And so I'll just mention the things that I'm doing to try and take care of myself, not only to open myself up to new things, but also things that I felt like I needed to do that I've decided I don't need to do anymore. Because it's a, I don't need to do this and I can hand it to somebody else. And it gives me either one of two things, which is either more opportunities to do something different or more time to use in a way that is healthy for me instead of it being more work. So it's either taking work off the pile or it's opening a space on the pile for a different kind of work.

Those are the sort of two things. So Stephen and I stopped doing liftoff regularly. That was a decision that we made in December. We're going to do, we're not killing it. We're going to do specials when we, when the mood strikes, essentially. Which for us is, you know, we love space stuff, but the fact is it's not our primary job. There are a whole other podcasts where people in fact, a podcast that's very nice. Just Anthony Colangelo,

who's the host of that podcast Miko he quit his job and he's going to do space stuff full time. And it's like, well, I, first off, that's great. But also like Steven and I are not going to do space stuff full time. And it's like, well, I, first off, that's great. But also like Steven and I are not going to do space stuff full time. And it was a little podcast. It's not a big portion of what we do, but it was a grind of Bill doing space news several hours every other week. And we just decided to stop and we're going to keep doing the part that is really fun. But we're going to stop doing the other part because one, I don't think that we are ever

going to be the preeminent space podcast because we're not going to devote that much time to it. Like we can't, we can't justify devoting that much time to it. It's not our primary job. It's never really going to be, we don't really want it to be our primary job. So it makes sense to have it be this thing that we maybe we can still do for fun. But neither of us, both of us had a conversation where we were sort of like, liftoff's kind of at the bottom of the list. I think I said to Stephen, Stephen, the reason I do liftoff is that I like talking about space with you every other week. And he said, same.

And then two weeks later, he came back to me and he said, let's not do liftoff anymore. Which I think is the right call. And it's sad because people liked it, but it doesn't really fit for so many reasons what we want to do. And I had that moment where you decide to do it. And I'm like, oh my God, that burden has just lifted. It's just because it was a grind and it was less fun because it was a grind. So I'm happy to be done with it. And then the other big one is the incomparable where I am, um, two things there. I hired basically an editor to edit both the incomparable and downstream, the new podcast that I started. Uh, somebody else is going to edit those. I take so much pride in being a podcast editor,

Uh, somebody else is going to edit those. I take so much pride in being a podcast editor, but, um, I don't need to edit those. Like, like I take pride in it. I take pride in having, uh, editorial oversight and being like, I can fix this thing and I can fix this thing. I need to not, I need to not do that. I need to just hand that off. That's something other people can do just fine. And I don't need to be involved. And then in terms of hosting The Incomparable, I got to the point, and I talk about this in great detail on our year-end episode. I have exhausted, because if you think about it, I've been doing that podcast for 11 years. It's weekly. Every episode has me on it, essentially, every episode has me on it, essentially. Almost 600 episodes.

And that means I have to come having read a book or books, seen a movie or movies, watched a whole season or seasons of a TV show, read a whole graphic novel, whatever it is. I have to have done the homework. And nobody else has to do the homework every week because it's a rotating panel. And I cheated by using stuff that I'd like already read or already seen for a long time. But a few years ago, I ran out of ways to cheat. So it was really a grind. The homework was a grind. Having to have a new thing that I had to watch or read or whatever every week. And then I would have to schedule a panel and host an episode and then edit the episode myself. And so I got an editor to edit it and I committed to only doing an episode every other week. So cutting the frequency back,

it will be more than that because there are times of the year where my desire to consume media is a match with the schedule. And TV shows are finishing up and all that, and I want to talk about them. But there are going to be other weeks where I'm not committing to releasing an episode on the off weeks. I'm hoping my panelists are going to step up and fill those weeks with stuff that they're interested in. And it's like, finally, they'll be able to talk about video games that I'm never going to find the time to play. But I had this realization that the comment from listeners that made me the crankiest about The Incomparable was people asking us to cover things. And they made me angry. And I thought, well, why am I so angry about this? And I was angry about it mostly because I think people don't understand how much work goes into homework. They'd be like,

well, why don't you talk about this show? It's like, oh, it's 10 episodes. So I need to watch, you're basically assigning me a whole TV show that I have not chosen to watch, but I'm going to have to watch it for homework. And I have to find other people who are also willing to do the homework so that we can have that conversation. And it's a lot, whatever it is. Read this book, watch this movie. that by not editing those episodes and only committing to doing about half, it'll be more than that. It'll probably be in the thirties that it will be more, um, reasonable workload for me. Uh, because what I don't want to have happen is have it be,

uh, have it burn me out to the point where I don't want to do it anymore. That would be terrible and sad. Yeah. It's, uh, I want to keep it going and I have, there are so many panelists now that I'm,

I'm, I'm hopeful. This goes back to the thing that we were saying before the show. I'm hopeful that those other off-week episodes will be filled. I might need to tap somebody to be the scheduler of those to sort of prod everyone. Cause I don't want to do it, but somebody, we may need somebody to like prod them so that there's that those off week episodes are filled, are filled. If I really want to do that. Um, I'm still thinking about that one. I'm not quite sure how it's going to go, but I mean, last year I put in some skip weeks for the incomparable. Cause I just couldn't take it. So there were, there were like three or four that I was just like, we're not doing an episode. It wasn't even that many. It or four that I was just like, we're not doing an episode. It wasn't even that many.

It was like two. I was like, we're not doing an episode this week. I'm going on vacation. I'm not doubling up in advance in order to cover when I'm on vacation. We're just going to skip an episode. And I had that moment where I thought, okay, I need to make this happen regularly.

You could skip way more of them. Imagine that. Yeah, exactly right. And the fact is, I just went through this last two weeks, where because we'd recorded our clip show episode in advance and all of that, where I had two weeks where the weeks and the weekend had no incomparable work on it. And let me tell you, the incomparable comes from a time when I worked in a job

Monday through Friday. And even though I don't do that anymore and now I'm at home Monday through Friday, I still always edited The Incomparable on Saturday. And let's just say my wife was like, it's better that you don't have that thing hovering over us on the weekend. And it is. So it's already good. It's not just affecting you, right? Yeah. No, I mean, it was every Saturday,

we'd be like, what are we doing this weekend? And I'd say, well, I got to edit The Incomparable. I was like, I can't do that anymore. It has had side effects. Like, and I know you and I have talked about this. There are side effects. So not editing your show and having someone else do it. It does, if you're on the show,

you can take notes about what needs to be fixed. If you're not on the show, you can't. If you're, if you're handing it off to an editor, what you really want to do ideally is give them a heads up. Here are the issues. Here's what to look for. Here's what I want you to change, right? It's not just like, good luck, whatever. If I took pride in editing podcasts because I wanted to do what I wanted to do with them to make them sound exactly like I wanted, okay, maybe too perfection-y. I'm not going to get that from a different editor. But what I can do is commit to taking better notes and giving those notes to the editor so I can say, there's a problem here and I'd like you to do this. So that is a burden that I'm willing to take on that's new for me after 10 years where

I relied on my own brain to do this. I actually spent a day last week, because I sent you the link to it when I was done, building a thing that makes it easier for me to take notes about my podcast as I'm doing them. And that work I put in because I know that I'm, right? It's like I'm letting go of this big job, but I am creating a new little job for myself that I need to do. But it unlocks all of this time.

So it's worth making a change to my process up front so that I can get that time back on the backside. Or the other thing that you do with an edit, which I do on a couple of my shows, is kind of just trust them to get it right. There's trust involved regardless. Yeah. But what i did you

know is build this you know build this note note-taking thing uh that's like a note-taking script that is me um trying to find a way to kind of like make it easier on me to um to hand it off right because like i don't want to hand it off with nothing i know i i know i need to say there's a swear there i i thought about building a version of it the version i've got there's two buttons on my stream deck and one of them just puts down a time code and the other one puts down a time code with a note it asks you to type in a note and you hit return it gets added to the very nice i thought about i thought about doing a version that's literally like a menu of show me in which way the panelists hurt you and it's like they swore there was a bad sound in the background there was

an interruption like i i thought about doing that and i may yet do that like just like the quick quick like which which crime was committed here um but that's that gives me a little bit more comfort in handing it off right it's still not the same right as having complete control but it is enough for me to feel like i can hand it off without, you know, it's control freaks giving up control. Like it is totally that. I have complete editorial control and I take great pride in that and I can't do that anymore. So I'm trying to find a way

to exert a little bit of editorial discretion without having the complete control over it because I know I just can't do that anymore. Well, I'll say real quick, if people will permit me to, if you have enjoyed this conversation, this is very similar to the kinds of conversations we have on Upgrade Plus.

I feel like in its tone, throughout the years, the types of things that we talk about, we touch on these kinds of things quite a lot. We actually have a little bit more of this conversation in today's Upgrade Plus. If you haven't signed up, go to getupgradeplus.com,

$5 a month or $50 a year. We'd really appreciate your support. You get a bunch of bonuses, which is also longer ad-free episodes of the show. Yeah. That's another thing that I'm doing on The Incomparable is I'm taking the Upgrade Plus model and I'm building and having my editor build a special edition, I'm calling it, of Incomparable with the extra stuff and no ads and all of that too. So that's on my list of things for this year. So overall, I would say my retrospective theme that is not a thing for 2021 was learning some new stuff, was trying to go outside my comfort zone and learning some new stuff. You did do a lot of that, didn't you? Yeah, the Python thing.

So my son signed up for an advanced placement computer principles class that they had said, he'll be writing in Python. And I thought, well, that's really exciting. Maybe I should learn Python. And I don't know what he's learning in it. He's done a semester of it. And I mentioned about string coercion. And he was like, I don't know what that is. I'm. He's done a semester of it. And I mentioned about string coercion.

And he was like, I don't know what that is. I'm like, how have you not learned that yet? But I have opinions about Python now because I spent a lot of time using Python, doing new Mac shortcuts as well. I got a Stream Deck Mini in the spring, six buttons, because I was very skeptical about the Stream Deck, but I thought I'll try this thing.

And in a classic Snell fashion where you buy the cheap, you buy the cheap one because you think you're probably not going to want it. And then, and then you go, Oh, actually I'm now convinced that this is good. I, we did the classic Stephen Hackett bought a stream deck XL.

I bought his stream deck and I sold my stream deck Mini to a friend who is going to take it. It's the circle of life. And then that friend will realize that they want a regular size Stream Deck and buy that. Exactly. It'll all just keep going like that. It's multi-level marketing is what it is. It is sort of shaped like a pyramid. Anyway, I embraced that too because it fits in with a lot of my automation stuff. The new Stream Deck fits kind of to the lot of my automation stuff the new stream deck

you know fits kind of to the side of my keyboard it's actually really nice to have those buttons um that are icons um it my argument against the stream deck was always why do i need um any kind of macro pad if i can just do you know command shift control nine or whatever and the answer is because you never remember those things and then then the one time you need it, that it's supposed to grease the skids and make your life easier to have a keyboard shortcut. It doesn't happen enough, often enough for it to be muscle memory. So you sit there going, is a command control one, is a command shift one. And, and it's like the moment passes and it's not, you're not saving time doing automation. And now it's a button that is an icon that you can put on it. Um, that does the thing. Like I, the other day I realized

I would use launch bar to open terminal and then SSH to my server. And I thought, or I could put the SSH command on a button. So when I press the button terminal opens already SSH into my server, it's like, oh yeah. Okay. Like all of those things. So more automation learning Python. I really kind of cracked open the data files on my, on my weather station, which has allowed me to upgrade my, my weather station, which I, which I love. It's fun, but but also i like i like having the power over that to it's it's it's giving me problems that i have to learn how to do solve in python that is fun and also it's allowing me to improve a thing that i can't improve uh like it the app gives me what it gives me but now i can i can break it apart even further than i used to be i used to use php to break apart

some of the output of the weather station and do some custom things. And now I have these Python scripts that I can run that do it. It's very fun for me to do that. And the first Python project I did was actually automating the Six Colors newsletter. So it was an actual work thing that I applied it to. So that is in hindsight, kind of the big thing for 21 for me was challenging my brain to do some new stuff and think in some new ways, which are kind of old ways. It definitely brought me back to back when I was a teenager and learning to program in basic and stuff like that, but at a whole other level.

you know, in basic and stuff like that, but at a whole other level. And after kind of hacking around with JavaScript for widgets and stuff in 2020, using Scriptable, which is fine, but like JavaScript is frustrating and hacking around in 2019 with PHP for six colors, WordPress themes. In 21, I did Python because I wanted to and I liked it and I'm glad I did it. So just trying to keep my brain plastic and learning new things and applying all of that to other automation stuff and shortcuts and Stream Deck and all of that kind of stuff. A lot of fun. So that in hindsight, I'm actually pretty happy with the changes that I made and the things I learned in 2021. That's what I was going for.

All right. Thank you for listening to this, I think, very special New Year's edition of Upgrade. Ask Upgrade will be back next week. 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 Ask Upgrade in the RelayFM members Discord. No, no, no. No, no, no. Next time. Next time. Please, please rescind the lasers. question mark ask upgrade in the RelayFM members discord no no no no no next time next time please please rescind the lasers no the lasers

if you don't shoot the lasers off every so often they break they just explode so those lasers were just released into the cosmos and then we didn't do it last time so it does make sense that you did that yeah it was probably for the best yeah thank you so much to Bombas Fitbud and DoorDash for their support

of this week's episode thank you for listening uh thank you if you are a member and support the show too we really really appreciate that if you want to find jason online you can go to six colors.com and he's at jason allen to the jsn e double l i am at i mike i m y ke i would very much like it if you would take a look at the theme system journal go to themesystem.com and you can find out a little bit more about what that is. Some of this conversation today has been of interest to you. We'll be back

next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.