Upgrade - 390: 🦓🦅🦜🐧

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Apple's rumored VR headset might not ship until 2023, but will it be the best VR headset ever made? And if so, at what cost? Also, Apple seems to have a settled on a strategy for handling demands to open up payment processing and external web links, and we're frustrated by the decision. Following a silly Wall Street Journal article, Android's SVP got a little too angry about iMessage. Also, we take an unexpected dive into the Users & Groups preference pane.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 390 today's show is brought to you by memberful new relic and doppler my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell doing great mike hurley how are you very. Very well, indeed. I have a hashtag Snell talk question for you, as I always do. And this one comes from Nathan. And Nathan wants to know, Jason, what do you use for your profile picture on macOS? Oh, Nathan, I have auto login set up. So is this the thing that comes up when you have to put in your password? Is that what this is? Yeah, you see a little icon, right? Or if you go to what is it? System? It's in System

Preferences. Oh, well, I have a... It's actually the same picture that I have on Twitter. It is, at least on my iMac, it is an illustration of me, a profile that was done for all the speakers at the UL conference one year.

And I liked it and I put it as my Twitter pic and it still is. And it's also my picture for login purposes on my iMac. That's it. I have a question. This is one of those things. But I say like sometimes people ask us lots. We get lots of great ask upgrade questions and snow talk questions.

But sometimes these questions are like, why doesn't Apple X? Like a thing we could never answer, right? Right. So a lot of the times, most of our answers would be, I don't know. So like I don't put them in the show, but they are legitimately good questions, but we just have no answer for them. But here's one of them where it's like, in system preferences, there is a picture for me, right?

Which is my Apple ID picture. But that's not the same picture as my user picture. And when you try to select your user picture, you're not given that one as a suggestion. You have to add it again. And it's just kind of like, why do we have multiple photos, but none of them talk to each other?

Yeah, and it really wants me to use a Memoji. Big time. Big time. Like it's an entire category of the user image selection part. And I hate Memojis. I'm not'm not into it no i don't like the art style um the the uh lex who did the um the ricky's website yeah added memojis for me and john vorhees and james thompson for reasons and um i think it's legitimately the best memoji of me that he did a better job than I have done.

It's the same for everybody. Lex did a better job for everyone. Your internal idea of what you look like versus the idea of someone else about who you are, that's like a way better picture. That was a way better job. But I don't want a Memoji as my Apple ID icon. You're right about the login thing

what i find funny is that my login um user image for my laptop is something totally different because they don't have it together to get those things all to be connected the thing that like memoji it's always remained a frustration for me and i just can't understand why they haven't found a way to do it which is is like, why can't it just be like emoji? Like my emoji just can be my face, which is what we always thought they were adding in the first place. Right. So like I could send you what is actually an emoji, but it's actually me. Like all of this stuff is would be doable if they wanted to do it, but they just didn't do it and they didn't want to do it.

Right. Right. I just checked on my laptop. I have a photo of me, which I know what happened there. It's actually a photo of me from WWDC that John Gruber took. And the reason that it's my photo there is that I had to go to the user because I got tired of looking at like a baseball.

And I chose edit. And then it's like, okay, now you've got to pick a file, and I search for Jason as and image, and I've tried to find one that was a picture of me, and I put it in there, and then I've left it. And it's just dumb. But on my iMac, it's the Twitter illustration of me. The images that they have, the default images, are really weird, right?

So we've got a bunch of flowers like there's a rose a dandelion sunflower another sunflower then there's like a gingerbread cookie the yin yang a lipstick kiss fortune cookie some equations on a chalkboard a chalkboard yeah a number one like a medal then a lightning strike I think that's like fruit of some kind. And then a globe. A snowflake. Some like sand, I guess. Sand ripples. Like in a zen garden.

A leaf. A sand dollar. Is that what that's called? I accidentally just selected as my own. That's fine for me. Eggs in a nest. Blue eggs, right? Like robin's eggs some bowling pins a dart

board tennis ball a football soccer ball and then a baseball basketball a basketball of a weird looking texture yes then a american football a eight ball from pool table hockey but like the hockey puck and the stick which is the stick out of context with the rest of them because it's just the circular parts well so is the american football because the whole idea here is it's cute because it's a round icon and then they get the american football and they're like yeah it's on grass okay is that a violin or a cello violin a golf ball a golf ball violin yeah an lp like a record piano keys a guitar drums uh an owl a zebra an eagle a parrot and a penguin that's like yep one that selection is madness it's bananas right like it's just madness until it's never changed like for as long as i've

been using the mac that's the selection and i don't know why they hang on to it i uh so i have a server right i have my mac mini server i whenever i it generally comes up when i'm upgrading or i'm in a dialogue or something but occasionally i am prompted to have to change that right like i did an upgrade or i did a restore or something like that and i i always change it to random things. And so I'm looking through here and it's like a history of my server. It's like, Oh,

water on a leaf. Yes. I was water on a leaf on the server for a while. Hmm. Gingerbread man. Oh, gingerbread man. Good times.

Good times. I don't. Yeah. It's, it's super strange. Um, I guess they decided people like balls so they would like do a lot of balls and people like music so they would do a bunch of musical

things and birds and a zebra you know the usual birds owl eagle parrot penguin zebra bird? Sure. Someone just got very confused. If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question for us to open an episode of Upgrade, just send out to it with the hashtag Snow Talk or use question mark Snow Talk in the RelayFM members Discord. Some follow-up items for you. Jason joined me on stream last Friday

and we modified his Keychron keyboard that we built together previously. There is a stream archive of this available on YouTube. I will put a link to that in the show notes if you want to watch it. It's there if you want to see. We basically stuffed Jason's keyboard full of packing

materials and it sounded a lot better. Yeah, the screams of teddy bears but it sounds are they're very quiet um and that's going to be coming to me right yeah it's being packaged up and it will be sent out to you probably this week and we'll probably do hopefully another stream where i uh i receive it and we put it together that'll be fun uh dan moran of six colors uh put together a podcast note workflow like yours that we spoke about last week but built in shortcuts oh okay so first off it's a great idea and i i i'm kicking myself not to think about it and i think this is really an instructive point which is

i so i've been spending a lot of time writing scripts in python and then this came up and i had to get like the the the creation date of a file in the Finder and all of that. And I thought, okay, well, I'll just go to AppleScript. And that was my problem, because I need to start thinking about doing it in shortcuts, not in AppleScript. Because it's actually much more accessible, and you don't have to know all the stupid finder scripting that you have to know for Apple scripts. And it's a very, actually quite easy to do this same thing in shortcuts. And so Dan did a great job of doing it. And then, and there's a link to it on Six Colors. But also what was funny is when he posted it, he and I had gone back and forth about the best way to format the time. Because in the end, what you get out is

you're trying to find the difference between the current time and the time you started recording. So which is the creation date of the file. And you can do math on dates in shortcuts, and you get a result that's basically the number of seconds between the two, which is great. But like number of seconds is not a great thing to put in your show notes. You want hour, minute, second in your notes you're taking about your podcast. So Dan and I went back and forth. I'm like, what's the most efficient way in shortcuts to do it? Because in a scripting language, you can do a one-liner. In Python or in just shell scripting, you can do a one-liner and format the number of seconds as hour, minute, second.

And in shortcuts, you can't. So he did one method where he went to Python, and I was like, I think I can do it in shortcuts, but I had to add like 10 steps where it did all the division and all of that. And then he figured out a way to do it using, there's a calculate action, do calculation basically in shortcuts

that you can do some stuff that, Dan got it down much closer that you can, you can, you can do some stuff that Dan got it down much closer, because you can do things like floor, which is basically, give me the result of this division without the remainder. And then, you know, there's also the command that lets you do just the remainder. And so he was able to do math and get it down to fewer steps, which as an aside, by the way, boy, shortcuts needs to be better documented by Apple because they have that calculation action and it is incredibly powerful, but you need to know how to use it. And there's a get info box in shortcuts that for each item and you click it and it says you can use this to do a calculation.

It's like, guys, it's not good enough. You got to actually document these things. It would be a real help to people who use shortcuts if you would actually document how all the actions work. So anyway, we post the story. Great thing happened, which is we had three different readers come up with three completely different ways to get it to be even shorter. Oh, good. come up with three completely different ways to get it to be even shorter oh good um in ways that show you how i mean it's this thing about how computer programmers think like they don't think like the rest of us but in a kind of a brilliant hilarious way my favorite one that got it down

there were two that actually got it down um to uh like two steps fewer than Dan's. But the one that made me really laugh is there's a way in shortcuts to say, to take a date like that modified date and say, give me the date and time at the beginning of this day. So it basically takes, you can take like December 3rd at 1.22 PM and it will come back with December 3rd at midnight.

Right. Just the beginning of the day. And then you add the seconds to it. And now you've got December 3rd at, you know, 2.18 a.m. But if you use shortcuts to format that as a time, you get 2. 18 and number of seconds, which is the timestamp you want. And it's referring to an actual time during the day. But if you format it as the time of your thing, it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter that it's a date because all you really want to do is get the time out of it. It'sious. And also at the same time, dumb because there ought to be a better way to format times in shortcuts than it. But it was,

it was a fun little thing. And, and not only did it teach me that there are like 10 different ways to do something in shortcuts. Um, and the reason we went with something inside shortcuts, instead of going out to a shell script or something like that is mostly because, I mean, theoretically, it means it works on the iPad. Um, I also just like the idea that it's portable in that way. I sent you a different macro last week and it didn't work for a while because it was like using scripting stuff that's not installed in macOS

and other stuff is deprecated. And it's like, if you can stay inside shortcuts, it will just work, but you've got to do some extra work. And major tip of the hat to Dan, which is I really need to start thinking about, can I do this in shortcuts before I ever go to some other thing for a Mac utility? Because shortcuts means it's probably, if you can figure it out, it could be simpler. And it means that you can hand that out to anybody and they can just run it in a way that Apple script is a little more complicated. So that was a fun little incident that happened, especially the one-upsmanship of everybody trying to find a different way to solve the problem. Well, I guess luckily for you, the person who thought to write it for shortcuts also publishes on your website. Yes. It's perfect. Synergy.

We just, yeah, we were talking about it and Dan was like, should I post this? And I said, Dan, any work you do that's in any way related to computers or things we've written about on Six Colors, you should plumb those for posts. That's how I live my life. It's like, oh, I did a thing. Let's write about it. You also did the Jason Snell special, which is taking a topic we spoke about and then thinking about it some more and then writing an article about it. And you did that for the iMac versus external display decision. And you wrote a really nice article about that on Six Colors. So if you're interested in that discussion from Ask Upgrade last week and you want more of Jason's thoughts on it, then there's a great article for you to go read. Yeah, I thought that was a really great topic. And it emerged from an Ask Upgrade question. And I didn't want to just leave it as that. I thought that would probably work as a post.

So I went and found the post. I think it's going to be something we will come back to. Oh, boy. A lot over the next six to nine months, I think. And if you listen to our discussion last time you'll see that my feelings have evolved a little bit in the story and that's just the difference between talking about it off the cuff and thinking about it when writing an article and you're right i think my feeling will involve more because the end of that story is basically like look i can

tell you what i would do today but uh if you told me that I'm going to, you come from the future and say, I actually did the other thing. I'd be like, man, okay, I can see that. Like I'm not super baked into this. The one thing that I think I really, when I went through the thought process that came back to me is that same idea, which is if you want to live the one Mac life, because the truth is having two Macs and getting them out of sync, like we talked about is kind of stinks. If you can, if you can do it with one Mac, those MacBook Pros are amazing. If you don't need more power than a MacBook Pro and Apple comes out with an external display, that's pretty good, right? To not have a laptop and a desktop and have to go back and forth between them, it's pretty good. Assuming that display is good,

you're going to put more money in up front, but you're only going to need the one computer instead of if you have a desktop and a laptop. And I'm reminded every time I travel with my MacBook Air now of what it was like before I lived the kind of one computer life when I had a MacBook Air as my primary back in the IDG days. And now with the iMac Pro, which is you open it up and you're like, oh yeah, this version of software is old and I've got to reauthorize this and I've got to run this update and this file isn't here. Is it on Dropbox or is it on my hard drive at home? And it's a lot easier when you just have a computer and it's with you all the time.

So that was my big lesson there is it makes me think that it's possible, depending on timing, that what I might choose to do is get a MacBook Pro and an external display. I probably won't. But again, if you came back and told me that's what I decided, I would not think it was ridiculous. There are lots of options out there. And thank you to listener Karen who wrote in about this i i i ran out and got karen's tweet and put it in the article which was uh which was fun the morning show has been renewed for its third season um apple tv plus i'll get around to watching season two sometime it's really good season two is really good it's better than season one uh they've got

some changeover in showrunner. Charlotte Stout is going to be the showrunner. This is part of a multi-year overall deal that Stout has done with Apple. Carrie Aron, who was the showrunner previously, is going to be a consultant for season three whilst developing new projects for their Apple deal as well. So they're making some changeover. Instead of grinding on a third season that's probably good to keep it fresh keep it fresh yeah and so but but also still involved right so hopefully we'll continue to keep its tone um so yeah i'm really excited because i i

think that in season two the show really worked out what it is and so now i'm very excited with the hope that they're going into season three understanding that that like the biggest benefit that this show can actually have is if it actually mirrors the real world and the time frame that it's in like in season, it kind of accidentally did it. And then in season two, they really lent into it. And so I hope for season three, they create the show with that in mind and don't feel the need to completely rewrite the show again. Charlotte's stats credits

are Fosse Verdon, House of Cards, Homeland. She's worked as a producer on all of those and as a writer. That's pretty, especially for this show, that's a pretty great track record for this show that's like the pocket of what the morning show is all about I'm pretty pumped for it

and I'm really pleased that they've done it Apple is requiring that retail and corporate employees must submit proof of receiving their COVID vaccine and booster or face frequent testing. Apple have still not chosen to follow along with some tech companies in requiring vaccination for their employees.

But they are now just... Because I think previously they had, if you don't get vaccinated, you've got to get tested a bunch. And now they're saying, if you don't get boosted, you've got to get tested a bunch. And now they're saying, if you don't get boosted, you've got to get tested a bunch. I remain really surprised that they are not requiring vaccination, at least at a corporate level. So this just, you know, I keep seeing headlines about this,

and I'm like, oh, there it is. Oh, no, wait, that's not it. So this is just another of those situations where they're doing something but i don't think they're doing enough yeah well well there are so many different ways that the ongoing pandemic could go that it'll be interesting to watch that i threw an item in here just to mention because I want to just get everybody's head thinking about this. There was a New York Times article yesterday about how there are some more COVID lockdowns happening in China. And it's all speculative and it's sort of very much a we'll see what this does.

But the idea there is that that may lead to another ripple of supply chain issues down the road right because sometimes these things are immediate and sometimes they it doesn't surprise me at all yeah like because really we didn't hit supply chain stuff until now and that's coming from the 2020 yeah beginning of this you know so i I just say keep an eye on the supply chain. There may be ongoing issues with supply chain stuff. And I'm interested in seeing Apple's results are late next week. I'm interested to see if they make any statements about sort of the state of the supply chain, either during their statements or during their Q&A.

They have to, right? I mean, because- Right, yeah. And maybe they'll say, no, we're looking good. Or they may say, well, we're concerned about this thing over here and not that thing. And that's actually the kind of thing that you can get out of an Apple results call that is informative, right? They're not like, tell me what an AR advisor says, what, Tim?

It would be like, I don't know what you're talking about. But if you say, Tim, supply chain, what's going on? I think that's the kind of thing where they actually will disclose something about how they're feeling because that has to do with what analysts want to know and investors want to know, which is kind of long-term issues affecting the business.

And it's something that really is inside baseball in another sense where it's not about an Apple product or anything like that. It's just about like, how are you weathering this? And I'm looking forward to what they will say because it is a really complex thing and it's affecting different companies differently. And this article made me raise an eyebrow basically and say,

oh boy, you know, here, here's another wrinkle. Here's another thing that may add more churn into the, into the already kind of messy situation with the supply chain. I mean, like this was the quarter where, you know, their pre-guidance was like, hey, we know we're not going to sell what we want to sell.

Like, it's kind of as simple as that. Yeah. This is the holiday quarter? This is the holiday quarter. So it should be the big one. Like, you know, as history has gone, this should have been, in theory, the biggest quarter of the year. They have said it will

be probably their biggest quarter of all time, even though they're going to not sell as many things as they thought they were going to sell because of the supply chain. So we'll see. That's next week. I think that's a week from Thursday? Yeah. And so obviously then we will talk about it on the January 31st episode of Upgrade.

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we could see like they had a discord integration so it's super easy to manage. And we were able to just write everything in a way that integrated with some services that we were already using. And then over time, they've just added more stuff, so we don't need to use external services. Like they have their paid, or like their newsletter thing, I should say, which, you know, you can have a paid newsletter now if you've been before, but we have a newsletter as part of our membership program and we can just send those out. So like we had to have an external provider previously, now we just do it with memberful. So you don't need to connect with that party email provider,

which also saves us money in the long run because we were already on one of their, they have a pro and premium plan. I don't remember exactly which one we're on. Stephen handles that part. But if there's no additional fee, if you're on one of their, they have a pro and premium plan. I don't remember exactly which one we're on. Stephen handles that part. But if there's no additional fee, if you're on one of those plans, we were already on it. So we ended up saving money because we could remove the newsletter provider that we were on. So it's super awesome. We love Memberful here. They are a wonderful company to work with. They have really helped us have more confidence in the business over the last couple

of years. And we also get to deliver more great content to our most engaged listeners. So I think it's awesome. So get started for free at memberful.com slash upgrade with no credit card required. That's memberful.com slash upgrade. Go there now, check it out and see what it could do for your business. Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and relay fm rumor roundup jason oh i love a rumor roundup and again thank you to a friend of the show mark german for um dropping all of his juiciest rumors on sundays so that upgrade is not just mark today though we're gonna spread out a little bit we're gonna start with a lot the well-known Apple rumor publication, the New York Post.

Ah, of course. Classic. The New York Post is saying that Apple is said to be in serious talks to acquire some of the broadcast rights to Major League Baseball for Apple TV+. I'll read a quote from 9to5Mac. Exact details of the deal were not disclosed. However, the sports package believed to be on the table is weekday national games that were previously owned by ESPN.

Right. So the idea here is the way baseball works, and I know you and I have talked about how baseball works in the past. They open the gate, they roll the balls in. That's how it happens. That's how it happens. ball works in the past they open the gate they roll the balls in that's how it happens um uh the espn has had a package where they basically show games to their entire national espn audience that are um if you're in a local market you see your local teams games but these are national

games so they are uh showing games if you're if you're in a different market and you don't have like the MLB TV package or something like that, it's your opportunity to see games from other cities and games that maybe your team isn't playing and there's another baseball game on. So it's not exactly an earth shattering kind of package, but it does provide some content i would say it's it's about on the level as the amazon deal with the nfl where they're where they've been this is actually changing and it's it's getting improved but amazon's had a deal for a while where they're basically like simulcasting the same game that's on the nfl network. So it's not like super exclusive, but it's interesting. And I think that this makes sense in a way, because we've been talking for a while about how Apple

has been investing in this idea of doing live sports as one of its things. I wonder if this, we talked about what would be the next Apple subscription service i wonder if this is not apple tv plus but is bundled in and is also available as a separate like apple sports kind of subscription at some point i don't know let's see what their plan is but even if they just roll it into apple tv plus um this is a start right and it might actually help get their get their uh their feet wet get their toes wet on on doing this thing. Because live streaming infrastructure is different. You've got to serve everybody immediately. And the demand is essentially 100% at one moment. Whereas anything you do on streaming, you put it on a CDN, people watch it

whenever. And demand is smoothed out over time. Live sports, it's all at once. And so it's very, very different. And this is, yeah, this is not an earth-shattering thing. This is not like the playoffs are going to be on Apple TV+. That's not where you want to start, though, right? For that exact reason you just mentioned. You don't want the biggest, most popular sports as your first thing because you're going to get in trouble. Right. And this lets them say, you know, and lets them promote in their app,

you know, the Reds are playing the Diamondbacks on Tuesday night at six o'clock. And, you know, you can watch it for free on Apple TV Plus. And that's regardless of if you have cable, and it's regardless of if you have ESPN or your local sports channel, it's just on Apple TV Plus for you to watch. And that's fascinating to me. I also wonder about, and this is similar to Amazon, will they have somebody produce it for them or will they have like an Apple TV Plus crew? I don't know how that ESPN package works and whether they built their own broadcast or whether they sort of reared the local i think they built their own broadcast for that so they

might potentially need to be like apple tv baseball announcers and stuff which is kind of wild to think about i could imagine them doing it similarly to how they've done before where the first thing someone does it for them and then they bring in their own team afterwards they might hire somebody to do it i mean the way baseball is configured you have um you have a feed coming out of the stadium so that would be something that would be produced in the stadium by the local uh local crews but um what amazon ended up doing was doing their own play-by-play and analyst on top of that and and that could be produced. MLB actually has its own media arm. They could produce it if they wanted to for Apple. And that's probably all part of the deal. But again, this is just the start. And Apple is going to be playing in sports at least a little bit.

They may decide it's not for them, but right now they're in exploratory time and they are going to make some deals, I think. Yeah. This aligns with a report from an investment firm called Wedbush that says Apple is on an aggressive hunt for live sports content. So it seems like if there is a deal being done right now, they are at the table trying to make that deal. Mac Otakara is reporting that a new iPad Air is set to be unveiled this spring. It would feature an A15 Bionic center stage 5G and the same overall design. Yep. Makes sense. Not surprising at all,

other than to say, yeah, the iPad Air needs to get on sync with like the mini. And the regular iPad. Yeah. And say this spring is when they're going to do that, and they're going to bring it up to speed, A15, center stage, 5G, all the things that were missing,

because the iPad Air, remember, was ahead of the game, but now it's been a little while, so this makes perfect sense. Or, no, it was ahead of the game. Yeah. When it was released, it was ahead of the game. Now it's behind the game. Yes, the game has left it behind.

The game has overrun Apple TV Plus now, apparently. The game has left the station, I think. Yeah, they rolled the balls back out and closed the game. Yes, the game has left it behind. The game has overrun Apple TV Plus now, apparently. The game has left the station, I think. Yeah, they rolled the balls back out and closed the door. Friends of the show, Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple is considering delaying the announcement of its mixed reality headset

by at least a few months. This is from Bloomberg. The headset was targeted for unveiling at WWDC in June, followed by a release later in the year. But development challenges related to overheating, cameras, and software have made it harder to stay on track.

This delay would see a late 2022 announcement with product release in 2023. Prior reporting from Gurman suggested that this product was originally scheduled to be announced in 2021, so this would be the second major delay that this product line would see i i told you the maxim that we came up with on liftoff which is whenever anything is late in the year that means it's going to be next year and here we are with late in the year um also my my initial reaction to this

was oh i know what all the developers will be doing over their holiday this year. They're going to have an announced VR product that isn't shipping yet. So they'll be putting in all of their work late in the year and early in the following year. So it might be a year out before they ship this thing. But I think what Gurman is saying, at least right now, is that they're still going to do what you, I think, have suggested is probably the most likely scenario, which is they'll do an event maybe in August, maybe in October, or maybe even as part of the iPhone event,

which I think they might do because all eyes on that event, even though it would be, the Apple Watch was launched in an iPhone event, for example. So they might do that, but they're going to do that fall, late summer or fall event. But in this scenario,

probably not ship it until early the next year. Yeah. One of the things that Mark mentions is like this was similar from what he was hearing with the original Apple Watch that the product kept getting pushed. Yeah. And, you know, it's kind of like

this is the second time that Apple's tried to introduce a new category and is struggling to get it over the finish line. It's hard. It's hard, right? Like, it's hard to put out a new product and you have to balance all those things too. Like, is this something that's good enough to ship? Do we need to fix this?

Because they want that first product to be viable, right? They don't want that. Like, say what you will about the original Apple Watch. You only get one shot, the first impression. Yeah, exactly. And the original Apple Watch, as limited and primitive as it seems now, it did work, right?

And that's a judgment call of like, you know, can we ship this? And it demoed well. Is this good enough to ship? Right? It demoed well. And that's an important part of the whole thing. When we all saw it for the first time, it was like, well, this looks cool. And they've got to do that again. I mean, my personal read on this is similar to what i've been saying as you mentioned for months now you know maybe it isn't exactly where i would want to be and they can't announce

it the way that they would want to which i think is in-person event they don't know when they're going to be able to do that let's just take more time on it could be too like i mean once you're on the treadmill for lack of a better metaphor um and you've the product's out there and you're releasing updates like you can't you're on it that product's live now you're iterating this is the one time in a product's life where you can just say we got time yeah like just wait wait for it. We don't have to rush this because once we ship, once we announce really, like the clock starts ticking. So if we need to take our time so that we don't stumble out of the gate, now is the time to do that. So that's, I think it's, I think it's fine. I'm not really surprised.

Everything has slipped, right? Like we've seen all sorts of things slip often for availability reasons you've got a brand new product it's obviously shooting to be a very high-end product with lots of technology packed into it if if this was a lesser product it would be easier to ship but they are setting the bar pretty high for themselves so i'm not surprised but i i still at this point um i feel like based on what mark is reporting that this is probably an announced fall product um and they may even say that it'll be shipping by the end of the year but it definitely feels like it's not going to be shipping for the

holidays and in quantity until next year so on the um like the the hardware, the components, the price, Gurman says that he expects the headset to be priced above $2,000 due to the high-end components being used. We'd heard previously $3,000. I reckon it's probably going to be between $2,000 and $3,000. I just don't know how they could do higher. I mean, because even $2,000 is astronomical, right? Well, think about that. This is,

uh, what he says is, um, M1 pro level performance because they need the GPUs and it's got the two, what? 8k panels.

Like how is that product? Not 2,500, $3,000. I understand, but this is like one of those things where it's like, it's as expensive as you decide to make. They've made the decision. It didn't naturally grow this way.

And I know why you would go to this level, but for me with the price thing, I'm kind of putting it to the back of my mind until I try and get a sense of what their strategy is because if their strategy is we make a two thousand five hundred dollar headset where apple hello this is what we do it's not a great strategy ultimately right and we can believe that the strategy is as we've expected and as has been rumored and pontificated on many times that like this is the first one so they can you know right get some enthusiasts in the mix

and get some developers in the mix and like you know try and work it out and bring the price down and honestly at this point ship it after the holidays when they might even have another version available for the next holiday season right so it's like just don't like this is not for everybody i think though this goes back to me saying that they set the bar for themselves very high. Like, this is, I think, what Apple is doing here, which is we're not going to ship an Oculus Quest 2. We're not going to do it. We have standards, is probably what they're saying. And, like, if we can't do it with this level of GPU performance and this quality of display in the thing, it's not even

worth being a product. And that will set the price much higher. They could have made a cheaper product, but it does allow them to go on stage. Presumably we'll see what their competitors do in the next year, but it allows them to go on stage and plausibly say, this is the single best VR experience anybody has ever made. And I think that's what they're shooting for. I think they want to come out and say, you've seen the rest now, see the best. This is the best VR thing ever. It's got M1 Pro power. It's got dual 8K display. It is the closest thing to reality that you can possibly find. And it's going to blow everything else out of the market and whether

that's true or not remains to be seen but i think that's what they're going for whether that's true or not by the time they announce it is to you know well that's that's what i mean about their competitors right like we know that that meta is working on a quest follow-up that is probably going to be the quest pro but i think it's project cambria that's the name of it at the moment yeah but wherever it might not even be Quest. Honestly, I would expect it will have a different name because Oculus had different product names depending on where it sat in the market before.

Right, and this is a high-end thing, so they may want to retire Quest. We'll see, but that's coming, right? And that may be, that's the risk of it slipping here is that Apple, I think, is staking out the high ground and saying we have the best experience. But by the time they ship this thing, that may be a harder argument to make. We'll see. And I would expect from a strategy decision, because I think they're already doing it anyway,

Matter will be willing to take a loss on the hardware in a way that Apple I don't think would. And that's where then the price and specs could all start getting jumbled up because of the time that it takes them to get the product out there because this is you know I think more important to Meta's overall strategy they changed the name of the company right like right because of this so like if they can get it in under a certain price point and take a loss on it but they're banking on all of the games that they own to sell well, this is basically taking the Sony and Microsoft

and Nintendo model, right? When all these consoles are released, they lose money at the beginning, but they make it up later and they also make it up on the games that they make, right? So maybe Facebook meta could take that route where apple right could also but won't right my guess my guess is that the project cambria uh quest follow-on will be like keep in mind the oculus quest is what 300 bucks like So I think that they're probably shooting for like a thousand dollar headset

that is much better than the Quest. And you think about like, the Quest is priced like a console, but a thousand dollar headset is not priced like a console. It's a totally different thing. I think that's what they're shooting for. And that's going to give Apple

an interesting position to be way more expensive and presumably have way better technology in it. Again, the argument is going to be that Meta has got a better platform with an existing app store for VR and Apple is going to have to build that, although they've got their huge existing iOS app store. It's just an interesting way to go. I think in the long run, those companies are going to get more in sync with their products. But from this perspective, before those products exist, I think it's fascinating to see what their different approaches are. And one of them may prove to be more successful than the other in the short term, and it might be different in the long term.

But I agree in the sense that what Meta is going to do will probably be a very different approach than what Apple is doing. And it may be successful because when you think about the Quest being $300, a $2,000 Apple headset's like, what? Like, what are you doing?

And yet, if you think about the specs, I think they could justify it. I think the question is, does anybody care enough about having the best VR experience ever or not? And that comes down to execution for Apple, right? And what is Meta's execution? And is it so good that the difference between what they're doing and Apple is doing is kind of not that much and yet the price is so much more and that's a threat to Apple. And it's also worth remembering that PlayStation will be in the mix

by then anyway. And the PSVR 2's hardware is amazing. I don't remember what we talked about on this show but like the specs that they've given 4K HDR 110 degree field of view with foveated rendering this is where is it wireless now uh it'd be one usbc cable to the playstation 5 well that's better than much better than ridiculous yes

than the set of boxes and cables that the because i have a psvr and i like it but honestly i haven't played it since i got the quest because it it's clunky, super clunky. It's so clunky. Yeah, and also, I mean, the Apple's is probably not going to be wireless, right? Oh, Apple's will be wireless, yeah. You think it will be? All right, maybe.

It's entirely self-contained. Okay, cool. Well, anyway, the foveated rendering, which is where it's using eye tracking to just render what's in front of you this is we've spoken about this it's like this is something apple probably do uh oled display um 90 to 120 hertz inside out tracking so it no longer needs a camera um and they have new really cool looking controllers uh that like right you know

kind of similar to Oculus like controllers. Exactly. Instead of my old PSVR, because I didn't use the little magic wand Sony things. And so I ended up playing all my PSVR stuff with just the PS3 controller or PS4 controller, I guess, which was fine. It was fine. But I will say this about Sony. Their software is better because they're a platform. They're a gaming platform. They're going to have the best.

They're probably going to. They have the best games. They may have the best games. It's going to be between them and Meta really, depending on what Sony is able to put out there. Can I just,

my experience with the ps4 or the psvr my favorite thing about it was the astrobot rescue game i love that game so much they'll make a huge version of that now so that that game though is so successful i have to say and i don't know if there are any rumors i assume there aren't any rumors about this and i assume they're going to be eight years behind but what the astrobot rescue game when i think about it i'm like can you imagine nintendo vr can you imagine if they yeah it'll be great because astrobot is very nintendo like yeah and i love it so much but you know it's nintendo so they'll be you know the nintendo headset will be here in 2030 it will come out in 2030 and it'll be 1080p right like you know because it's just what they do, but the games

will be the best games, if they do it. I mean, Nintendo are fine, right? Nintendo, totally good. They're just going to keep riding that Switch train. They're good. Nintendo works at a very different speed, but yes, from a game quality perspective,

it would be amazing. I want to talk about alternate apps alternative app store uh payment stuff oh yeah you have a little update honestly this was a story that i feel like i could have blinked and missed it but it is a story that without all of the hubbub of the last six months, is monumental. But it kind of was just like, I think we're so jaded about this discussion now. Yeah. That it kind of just went by.

So Apple has finally confirmed they will comply with the South Korean law for allowing alternate payment methods in the App Store. Now, they're going to basically do exactly what Google did. Apple just waited. They saw what Google did. They're going to copy it. They're going to allow for developers to submit a specific build of their applications for South Korea that will give users a choice of how they would like to pay in-app. But Apple will still be expecting to take a commission. They are calling it a reduced service charge. Now, all of this at the moment has basically just come from a set of quotes given to the Korea Herald. That's basically as much as happened. It was like, oh, okay, super interesting.

I want to see where this goes. Then a couple of days later, Apple announced that this will also apply to dating apps in the Netherlands due to another legal case there. So we have more details now for this one. I'm not sure why they gave the details now. Maybe it's like the date at which it has to be implemented was sooner. But Apple's going to be

creating a special entitlement that developers of dating applications will apply for. This is similar to like CarPlay. So if you want to be a CarPlay app, you want your app to work in CarPlay, you have to like apply to Apple and they confirm that you are the right kind of to be a CarPlay app, you want your app to work in CarPlay, you have to like apply to Apple and they confirm that you are the right kind of app for a CarPlay app. If you're approved for this special entitlement for dating apps, they will be able to,

developers will be able to integrate this functionality into another Netherlands specific app release. So we're going to have something called StoreKit External Purchase Entitlement, which I think that makes sense, right? This is the ability for you to have the external linking like the Korea thing. There's also going to be something called

StoreKit External Link Entitlement. I think it's fair to expect that the link entitlement is what's going to also be used to appease the Japanese Fair Trade Commission ruling, which is the first one of all of these. Undoubtedly, yeah. In this instance, at least, when talking about the apps, dating apps in the Netherlands, Apple will still be requiring some kind of commission, no matter which you choose. Now,

this is intriguing, right? Because I don't remember anything from the japanese fair trading commission thing where apple was saying hey we're still gonna make you pay us like that was never spoken about we all just kind of assumed you'll just be sent out if you're a reader app and you can just go do the thing but apple will still want some kind of commission but also are going to say like they're not going to help customers with any kind of refunds etc etc etc what we don't know yet is how much how it may differ between these two entitlements if at all what are they doing i think we have now seen our the apple strategy i i texted you when these things were going on and i said this i feel like like we discussed this scenario exactly and that there's actually nothing surprising here. Apple has, remember they said, well, we need time when the US ruling was being appealed.

They're like, we need time, we need time. Clearly they are now building these two entitlements for store kit that they will allow certain apps to do the external link or allow certain apps to do the external purchase. And you can now see Apple strategy, which is they are going to build very specific rules about when you can use this. So they're going to limit this to where they have to make it available. They're going to, and I know we talked about this a few months ago, they are going to make it as painful as possible to implement, which is, I was laughing when I saw that the Netherlands dating app will have to be a separate binary with a separate app store ID.

You're not going to be able to do this per region. You're going to have to say, here is the Netherlands version of our app that lets you use this external service. Technically, Match.com could end up with four versions of their app because they will do it in the Netherlands,

they will do it in South Korea, because why not, and then Japan. Right? Possibly. Possibly. Depends on what their rules are, but it sounds like it's it's possible that that'll be the way in theory you know you can see where you can see what i'm going for with that yeah so they're not going to make it easy for you this and this is where it comes uh the the dramatic vision of like epic and people like that about freedom from apple's tyranny is hitting reality, which is where they're winning cases and where the

regulators are putting pressure on Apple. It's all about options for other payment methods or options for links. And so Apple is going to abide. They have a plan. They are going to abide by the letter of the law, but they're not going to repent, right? They're going to do as little as possible and make it as difficult as possible because Apple wants control and Apple wants money. And so you can see it here that if you believed that by going to an external credit card provider, you were going to be free of Apple's tax on you, Apple has made it clear that that's not the case. Google has made this clear to Play Store developers that it's not the case, that as platform owners, they feel they have the right to charge users of their platform for access to their platform and they and so the way they're spinning the percentage that they take is now now although i could argue that you saw this from the beginning with the app store because steve jobs talked a lot about how like we hand we build you

the apis and we're running the app store and we handle the bandwidth and we take care of all that stuff. And we're going to grant you for free apps. We're just going to give it to you. That's great. But if you pay, we want to take our percentage. And so now what they're both saying is, look, if you want to avoid that, that's okay. Avoid the credit card charges. But you're not going to avoid being on our platform and paying

us a fee for being present and making money on our platform. That's, you know, if you want to separate those two, that's fine, but we're still going to charge you. So presumably these entitlements will include a requirement that they, they announce to Apple in some way, what the size of the transaction is. Apple will probably bill them for Apple's percentage of them. And so anybody who thought that they were going to escape paying Apple money by using an external credit card provider is going to discover that they won't. They're still going to have to pay Apple. In fact, depending on how it goes and how bold Apple wants to be, it may be the same or worse to use an external provider. My guess is that in order

to keep these regulators at bay a little bit, it will be a little bit better. And what the argument Apple will make to developers is, okay, you can do it this way. It will be worse for your users, and you're really not going to make much more money. You decide. And figuring that most people will be like, it's not worth it for me. And where does this all end up? It ends up with this, which is unless a government or a regulatory body of some kind is willing to say that the owners of software platforms cannot legally charge for access to the platform in some way, Apple and Google will continue to take their cut. And the challenge there is that, and I think that's coming, that conversation is coming, but that's a tougher argument to make, right? Because you're basically saying every platform that exists has to be wide open

and that the constructors of the platform have to give everything away for free. And the risk there is depending on how that stuff is written and how that rule is organized, you may end up in a situation where what ends up happening is to become an Apple developer, you're going to have to pay a lot more money, Right? Like to have a class of app that is allowed to charge money, you have to pay Apple a large amount of money. And again, the risk there is that you're going to end up in a situation where you basically say, platform owners can't charge for access to their platforms at all. That's a big step because that's basically saying your compensation for making a platform for developers is nothing. You can't do it. And that would be a huge change across all platforms.

I'm not saying that it might not happen or that it might not be an interesting wrinkle, but what Apple and Google are doing here is saying, basically, you're going to have to go that far if you want our money. Can you believe, like, can you imagine thinking this is the right way to go about this? Like you sat down with all of the options and you come to the decision that this is the way you want to go. I cannot fathom this. It's the same thing that we've talked about before, which is I can understand the mindset from Apple's perspective. Because Apple's very much shown we want our money. We want our money. It's part of Apple's culture.

Apple didn't become the most profitable, valuable company in the world by not taking its money. But also part of it is the Steve Jobs instituted kind of cultural thing, which is everybody owes us for how great we are. And anybody who's touching our platforms owes us. And so we want our money because your great product is actually because of our greatness. And that is just a thing that has been instituted and the success of the app store reinforced it. And it still is there. So I can understand them thinking that. The part that you and I have talked about before that kind of blows me away is what I just said about what they're doing is challenging governments and regulators to make it impossible for platform owners to monetize their platforms in any way, right? They're like, okay, we, okay, we'll give, we'll do this, but we're still going to take

our cut and we're going to keep taking our cut until you make it illegal for us to take a cut on our platforms, which is a really like they're raising the bet there. And I look at it and I think, yeah, but what if they take the bet? It could be catastrophic to your business. If, if you're barredred further, where you might get them off your case if you eased up a little bit and you'd still make a lot of money. But the downside is that you're going to lose everything and the quality of your platform is going to go down and all of this downside. And I'm fascinated by what those arguments must be like inside of Apple and

whether they have a plan of like, well, if this becomes a problem, we have a solution. But somebody decided to say, rather than kind of backing off of this all the way to a point where we think we can escape and not have to do more and give up a little bit of revenue, but really we escape from this whole situation. Somebody inside Apple was like, nope, we'll take the bet. We'll dare them to chase us, you know, chase that revenue somewhere else. Because that's essentially the move they chose to make, right? Which is we're going to risk our platform, our app store, by doing the minimum possible to comply, not realizing that the forces that are out there are probably not going to be quieted by Apple doing the minimum. I don't want to tip my hand for our next topic too much. But I believe that a company can and should have competitive advantages.

It's a part of doing business and doing business well. You work out what's best for you and you capitalize on that. But I just think the app store has gone way too far. Just from a fundamental level. for you and you capitalize on that. But I just think the app store's gone way too far. I just think, you know, like, just from a fundamental level, right, we can pick apart this stuff as much as we want, but just from a fundamental level,

like, I think the thing that kicked all of this off is, like, Spotify, right? Apple compete directly with Spotify and set the terms at which Spotify is allowed to compete backwards. That is not fair. Right.

Like it just isn't fair. There's no fairness to this. Like I think that this one is a better example than Epic, than anyone else. Like I think Spotify is the best example of this because they make the same product in the same business. And Apple can let themselves make more money because they make Spotify give some of their money to them. Yeah, I mean, and that's one of the weaknesses that clearly the lawyers have probably written down, which is, well, one place where we might be weak is we may be barred from enforcing these rules in areas where we compete. And then we're going to have to have a conversation about our video streaming service and our music service and our fitness service and all of those, because all of

those services where we have an advantage by being the platform owner and having to dictate terms to everybody who is not us, the risk there is that at the very least we may be forced to comply for those categories and i would say i agree with you i would say that's probably right right like when apple like the reason why why can't you buy books from amazon on ios or comics from amazon and comixology why because ibooks that's the reason. And it's the most unfair thing possible. It's like Apple can do in-app purchases because Apple's the middleman and Apple doesn't take from its cut.

Amazon has to give Apple a cut and it's the middleman so it loses almost all of its cut when it does that. The business models don't intersect. The result is that Apple has a huge user experience advantage with books, formerly iBooks, with books over Kindle.

Also, it hasn't worked, which is kind of funny, but I'm sure they make some money at it. But it's also degraded the whole iOS experience for people who do use Amazon's things. And like it, it's not fair. amazon's things and like it it's not fair apple is competing in a way that the competition can't do what apple does um and apple's argument would be well yeah but it's our platform yeah okay you're saying that's the risk though right fairness is a good point because fairness in these kinds of things is mostly a feeling until someone makes it law, right? So at the moment, it just feels unfair. And I think the argument that I have to make when thinking about the feeling of unfairness is like, who is winning?

Who is winning here? Who does Apple think is winning here? What is their intention? Do they want to be this company? Like, doesn't it just make everything that they do worse? Like, they're a customer experience company and they make the customer experience worse due to the choices that they continue to make.

And I kind of just like, I just don't get it. Well, I think it comes down to, are you willing to trade some of your perception as being a good player for money? And I think where a lot of the friction happens with a lot of us when we think about these issues

is that Apple seems to be willing to trade more of their perception as being a good actor, a good player in the game for money than we think they should. And we are informed, they are informed by their profits. We are also informed by their profits. We look at the amount of profit that Apple makes and say, you're playing awfully hard, hard ball here for a company that is so rich. The counter argument is that it's business, baby. Maximize profits, play hard ball. Where it comes into intersection is people's views of your company, consumers' views of your company, third-party developers' views of your company, and regulators' and lawmakers' perceptions of your company. And that's the part where I think they're tone deaf. That's the part where I think Apple's attitude tends to be, I don't care about those developers. They're making money on our

platform. Again, off of our greatness, they're making money. And consumers love us. It's customer sat, customer sat. They don't care about this stuff. Okay. Well, I agree with that to a certain extent. And then you get to the regulators and like, oh, I don't know, like tech in general is seen as a bad guy and you are not acting like a good guy and that there's a lot of danger there. But, you know, that's their calculation in the end is, and what I think a lot of us find disappointing is, I don't expect Apple to say, no, no, we're a charity now, right? I don't. But I do look at what they do and think wait a second what are you taking risks with your your entire uh corporate identity um for a relatively small amount of the money that you make that's the part that i don't get

right is they are coming off as a bad guy and and as like super greedy and nobody's asking them to become a charity if this was 60 of their revenue i wouldn't fight this point so much right because then it's like okay i understand why they want this money i think maybe they need to loosen it a little bit but this is what the company's based on this is not what the company's based on I understand why they want this money. I think maybe they need to loosen it a little bit. But this is what the company's based on. This is not what the company's based on. I know. And that's what it always comes back to. I find it a strange thing to add this level of risk and to potentially anger various other parties for something that doesn't really seem core to your business.

for something that doesn't really seem core to your business. But Apple clearly thinks much more about, much more aggressively about this than we do. And it's a little bit baffling from our perspective. But that's clearly their strategy, right? Their strategy is to do as little as possible and dare those regulators and those government officials to make it basically making money off of software platforms illegal because they i think they figure they're never going to do it that that's a step too far and

that they're willing to go in the name of freedom to things like choice about payment systems but maybe they're not willing to say this profit-making corporation is not allowed to charge people for this thing because that's a step they may think is a step too far. The risk is that it's not a step too far and that they lose a much bigger chunk of their business and are under just brutal regulation in certain markets. And I'm not sure that that's what they want, but they've done the risk assessment and they think it's okay. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by New Relic. If you're a software engineer, you've been here.

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forever, no credit card required. Sign up at newrelic.com slash upgrade. That's N-E-W-R-E-L-I-C dot com slash upgrade. That URL one last time is newrelic.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to New Relic for their support of this show and RelayFM. Tim Higgins at the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about how iMessage is becoming a lock-in for Apple and a sales driver for iPhones primarily amongst teenagers because of the green bubble effect in iMessage, ultimately suggesting that there is peer pressure to get an iPhone and stay on an iPhone because of iMessage group chats.

Oh boy. This is, look, look, this is a dumb story. John Gruber wrote a piece to- Just a great, super good, like a classic John Gruber eviscerating takedown, which is more entertaining to read than the original story. There are a lot of these stories. There's a lot of lazy journalism where you basically take some anecdotes

and string them together and try to use it to make a point. This story is really unfortunate because it is, you know, is it true that green bubbles get crap from blue bubbles in group texts probably yes but not like yes consistently right like it means it happens sure and i i would actually argue that that they talk about peer pressure like your green bubble get out of here i what i have heard is that it's way worse to be a green bubble in a group text because then every emoji every uh tap back becomes a text message there was a viral did you see this tweet around the holidays where it was just like 25 layers down of like such and such person like this like this like this because if there is a a somebody who's using sms in an iMessage thread

you lose a lot of the iMessage functionality for everyone even if they are an iMessage thread, you lose a lot of the iMessage functionality for everyone, even if they are an iMessage user, because it breaks the continuity of the thread. Yeah, exactly. So it's bad on all sides, right? I get it. I get it. And I'm actually a little surprised

that Google hasn't done more in Android to mediate this experience, right? They have from their side. Well, the message... You want your SMS app on Android to mediate this experience, right? They have from their side. Well, the message, you want your SMS app on Android to read those messages and convert them back into metadata. That's what you want.

You want to, does it? Yeah, so they enabled this. So if you use SMS on Android and you're working with people on iPhone, say you did a tap back, it shows up as a little thumbs up emoji for the Android users. It's iPhone users to still get the poor experience. Oh yeah.

Bad. Right. Because they all boomerang back anyway. So is there an issue here? Sure. But first off, I, this is,

this story is, is, is trying to make points that it can't back up about like teenagers who are using iMessage groups where we know teenagers are using lots of groups. It's very U.S. centric because this is really only true in the U.S. If you look at other places where the iPhone is successful, group are linked to all these points. If you look at other places where the iPhone is successful and people don't use iMessage, people are still using the iPhone. So it's not iMessage. I think at the core of this is basically like this writer had heard some fun anecdotes and decided to formulate a theory that like, aha, it actually reminds me back in the day of like the, when the iPod especially was

successful and people were like, people only use Apple products cause, cause they're in a cult or then, uh, people only use Apple products because of the look. Cause it's a status symbol. Like that was always the argument. And so Tim Higgins at the wall street journal, I think heard these anecdotes and said, aha, this is the reason why people buy iPhones. Like there has to be a reason. It can't be that they're good. It's that the status of being a blue bubble is the thing that is at the center of this. And it's very silly because it's only in the US and it's not true in other places where the iPhone is successful. So it's a thing that happens, but trying to build this narrative arc on top of this, like this would be better.

And maybe Wall Street Journal doesn't do kinds of stories like this unless it has a business impact of some kind. But like, this is a quirky story. That's like a sociological story about like, like iPhones are from Mars and Androids are from Venus. It's like, why can't our text messages talk? And you could do a story like that that's about the social issues and about the technical issues. And you could really kind of dig down and make an interesting story. This doesn't do that because this is trying to build this other narrative about how Apple is causing bullying among teenagers because the iPhone blue bubbles are the reason you have to buy an iPhone. Even though, like, I know those anecdotes exist. I get it. It's just taking it for more than it's worth.

And then the part that actually made me angry is that the SVP of Android. Hiroshi Lockheimer. Hiroshi Lockheimer jumped in. Went too hard too fast. Too, way too hard. I want to read this tweet in case people missed it. Oh, my God. I think he got a little carried away. Maybe wished he wouldn't have done it. way too hard I want to read this tweet in case people missed it oh my god I think he got a little carried away

maybe wished he wouldn't have done it but like did it and then the Android account kind of doubled down on it but I guess if your SVP is saying it what else are you going to do Apple's iMessage lock-in is a documented strategy using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that has humanity

and equity as a core part of its marketing the standards exist today to fix this hiroshi man yeah you know you went too hard because then the next day it comes out with a much better twitter thread about like uh-huh here are the ways in which this can be better and talking about there's a new standard called RCS. Some people like it, some people don't, but it would in theory help bridge some of this or just saying like, hey, Apple, we would like to work with you, right? And like, that's a cool thing to do

because then you're like, we want to fix this. Ball's in their court, et cetera. It's a better way to handle it than being like, Apple's a bully, man. Like it's like, oh no. That first tweet not only was way too far and honestly just makes Hiroshi Lockheimer look like a jerk. Yeah. But it also feels, actually, it makes him also kind of feel like a cultist of his own where it's like he's been, was he reading the, you know, We're Open manifesto at that point because it was the it was the typical condescension and arrogance

that i feel like google executives involving android had five years ago yeah where it was just it was just dripping with condescension and arrogance and conspiracy theories and like the only reason they're successful is because they are bullies and we're good and we aren't bullies which by the way if you read anything about Google's advertising strategies last week, Google are super bullies and kind of shady or like super shady, like pretty rich that these are happening kind of simultaneously. Not going to get into that, but just you can look it up. Yeah. Anyway, so Hiroshi, I think it's funny that he like super backed off of it to what I think is a reasonable argument, which is, look, the carriers have this new system and it's not as good as iMessage. It's not for a lot of different reasons, including the reason that it's locked to a phone number, which means

that there are some issues involving locking to a phone. I get it. Google's point is it's better than SMS. Could we come to some agreement? Because all the users, this goes back to what we were talking about before. It's a user experience issue for everyone, not just for Android users, but also for iPhone users. It's a user experience issue. You could even argue if you're inside Apple that making iMessage work better with Android is actually good for iMessage because otherwise a lot of these mixed groups are, and outside the US they've already done it, are going to retreat to WhatsApp or Line or WeChat or whatever. They're going to leave iMessage because the experience is

so bad if they have an Android user in their group. And I would argue that that is a bigger impact than bullying a teenager because they have a green bubble. Because I've heard this from friends of mine where it's like, oh God, we got into this loop with the Android thing and it's such a problem. It's like, it makes your iMessage bad. It makes messages bad. So I think there's an argument to be made and Hiroshi Lockheimer eventually made it which is maybe apple should support something like rcs even though it's not great just in order to make the experience with android users um better for everybody um even though it's not great sms right

so like yeah exactly you should you've got to something. And it's hard not to look at Apple's failure to support RCS as anything but kind of a spite thing where they're like, no, lowest common denominator for Android users is what you're going to get. But the UX is so bad that, like, keep RCS as a green bubble. I don't care, right? Like, it's not iMessage. Don't give it all the features, you know? Get a new bubble.

Get a new bubble color. I don't care. But I think that it's sort of a shame that Apple hasn't gotten to that just because I do think this is a UX experience problem for everybody. But I don't think that this is all like, oh, well, this explains the iPhone. It's the green bubble bullying. That explains it. Like, come on. No, it's stupid.

Don't give it up. Because like I said, right? Like, outside of the US, nobody even uses iMessage. bubble bullying that that explains it like come on no it's stupid give it up because i said right like outside of the u.s nobody even uses iMessage like i am an annoyance to everyone in my life because i don't want to use whatsapp which is what everyone in the uk uses they use whatsapp but they're like at least everyone i interact with like whatsapp getting that whatsapp bullying are you a victim of whatsapp bullying mike i was kind of the reverse where you're at you're so you're who hiroshi lachimer is talking about i am the problem because i don't use it like i'm in some whatsapp groups but i don't like to use them and so i kind of you know i have like a bunch of family chats and stuff where the only

time they ever open i message is because they want to talk in the family group that I'm a part of right and you know right as you said right like line we chat facebook messenger they're all popular in certain uh countries around the world in certain locations but then like for teens in the US Instagram messaging discord like Discord, like, these are being used, they're only becoming bigger and more prevalent anyway. So like, look, I'm not saying this doesn't happen, right? We started this conversation,

it does happen, of course it happens. But to suggest that this is the only reason people are buying iPhones doesn't make any sense. It's bananas. Because it's like John Grover pointed out of like, in the reverse on android android messages rcs messages are blue and sms is a green right so it's the same there too right like it's more than just this it's one of the things sure but it's like a whole set of things and so to go back to

what i was saying earlier i don't think that apple should have to support absolutely everything or be forced to put imessage on android or whatever because it is part of their system of like we've made this cool thing you get like a bunch of features like they should maybe adopt some newer standards to make interoperability better i don't think they have to go the whole hog to make it like perfect for android i agree and of course they see ims as a tie-in i don't think that's a bad thing right it's just you know they could bridge the gap a little bit more and and you know the truth is that apple is not in competition with coming certainly not in competition with google's chat things because Google has proven to be hilariously incompetent.

Oz Technica wrote an incredible article about this. I will find it for the show notes where they're like, Google's one to talk. It's a really good article. Google is hilariously incompetent at chat. And so that's fine. Apple's competition is WhatsApp and WeChat

and all the rest. That is iMessage's competition. And so I would argue that Apple, like WeChat or WhatsApp, controlling their platform so they can innovate, which I would argue Apple's done a bad job of innovating, that they need to do a better job with iMessage. They tried the replies thing. It's not great. They're trying, which is good. I think tap backs is the best thing that they've done there in a long time. It frustrates me that they're so limited in tap backs. I kind of feel like tap backs should let you choose emoji and use them as tap backs and have a little broader palette to select from than just the ones that are there.

But the ones that are there are great. I love tap backs. They're a lot of fun. So they've done some good innovation. I message like they need to control it because it is their product and they need to be able to do it and they don't need to open it up and they don't need to bring it to Android because it is their product. If they don't, if they don't want to, it's going to hurt them in the sense that people on Android are going to not want to use that SMS to talk to their friends.

That's why I say actually opening up to RCS might help iMessage be sticky for people who are using text messages with Android people in the group instead of them abandoning it for another chat system. So, yeah, this is is, it is silly. I think it is a side effect of Google having been such a failure that obviously the people at Google are really angry about the whole thing and about RCS. And the reason they're angry is because Google has never made it work. And so they have this terrible situation on Android right now, or you use a third party app. That's just how it is.

And Apple has had some success in some markets with iMessage, and they hate that. But in the end, for me as a user, and I would think for Apple as the platform owner, the issue should not be, are we going to give something to Android users? Because don't put iMessage on Android. It's fine. Maybe you should look at what's going on with these green bubble, blue bubble problems and the work that Android is trying to do to cover some of it up and how it affects your users and say, you know what? We could do better here. And maybe implementing RCS support as a gateway for talking to Android users is something that would work. Maybe not.

Maybe there's some technical reasons why it would actually be a worse user experience. That's fine. But that's the solution, right? Is how do we make a better experience here for all our users? Not, oh, Apple's so mean and not putting iMessage on Android

and they're facilitating bullying. It's just dumb. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Doppler. Thousands of companies from startups to enterprises use Doppler to keep their secrets and app configuration in sync across devices, environments, and team members so you can say goodbye to those.env files.

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I downloaded it and I looked at it and i haven't done more than that this isn't really a thing that we do i do i understand the significance of it right and i think you know i kind of feel like maybe we give some of this stuff a short shrift because it is a cool thing that they've added we spoke about it at wwc and that's not and then it hasn't come back up again on this show because what are we going to do with it? But the idea, in case you've missed, is that Swift Playgrounds 4 is the first time that you can create an app on iOS

and submit it to the App Store. My understanding is it's a lot faster and it's people who are developers who've played with it are very impressed with it. I don't write things in Swift. My focus is on other languages that I am using for scripting on my Mac primarily and for shortcuts on iOS. So while it's interesting to me on that level,

it's not, this feels, it's a little too developer-y beyond that. I did already did a lot of the Swift introductions. I've been meaning to go back to that. There are little lessons and all that because that's kind of fun. And I was kind of interested to see how they work in the new version. But like beyond that, I would just say it's beyond the scope of us as people to do that.

But I heard good things from developers about it. And people that are into Swift seem happy too, right? Like, and I've already seen, I'm sure you have too, like the first apps that have been made, they're shipping. You can buy them. People have shipped apps now that have been purely created. I think one was called To Don't or something.

Right. Is the name of the app, which is like, I'll see if I can try and find a link for that in the show notes, but it's like a list of things not to do which is a cute it's a cute little idea you can name but the the one of the reasons that have been circulating in our community was because it was made uh and published straight from uh swift playgrounds from swift playgrounds which i think is is really cool so it is a great thing that this exists uh but we don't really have much more to say about that. Nope, not at this time.

Maybe we'll dream of being app developers at some point. My guess, by the way, I'll just throw it out here. The reason that I would learn to use Swift is if Apple decided to create a light version of Swift that it was going to use for scripting apps on its platforms. Because I feel like that's one of the missing pieces now that they've done shortcuts is, is there going to be something that's a replacement for AppleScript? Because you can't do everything with shortcuts. There are things that you really kind of need a scripting language to do. And what would that be?

And it probably should be JavaScript, which I don't love, but it probably should be. But, you know, Apple invented Swift. So is there a Swift script essentially waiting in the wings? If something like that happens, then yeah, I will learn that portion of Swift because I'll be interested in doing things with that. But in terms of like fundamentals of programming,

I've learned a lot of that stuff and app development is not something i'm really interested in so here we are so that app to dump was written by cephalopod studio and they wrote an article called lessons from developing an app on the ipad and swift playgrounds from start to finish so i put the link in the show notes as well so if you want to read for someone who's actually done it uh where the you know what what they thought of it and maybe whether you should do it i put the link in the show notes as well. So if you want to read for someone who's actually done it, uh, where the, you know, what, what they thought of it and maybe whether you should do it, I'll put that in the show notes for you. Michael asks if you have the option to customize your iPad home screen so that the dock is on the left or right side instead of on the bottom, would you do it? Oh, that's weird. No, the answer is no, and I'll tell you why, for me.

Usually the iPad is in horizontal anyway, right? And so, with the iPad dock, I want to have the maximum amount of space for the tap targets in a way that is not necessary on a

Mac, because the screens are bigger, by and large. So that's my thinking on that. That's why I don't really want that as such. I would also say no. I am a side dock person on the Mac. But on iOS, the dock doesn't work like that. The dock is a flip up from the bottom kind of thing.

Yeah. I mean, I guess it wouldn't matter because I don't tend to use the dock in that way. But since the home screen is oriented in the way it is, the bottom is the best place for it anyway. So, yeah, it would be different if the dock was always visible or something like that but that's not the case on the ipad so it's a it's fine where it is if it was if it was a different interface you know like it is on the mac i might make a different choice but as it is no otto wants to know what is your favorite iphone color of all time i'm gonna go oh well i have a blue iphone 13 mini that i like a lot but i am going to go with the coral iphone 10r interesting

which is this orange thing it's's great. I love it. Before I tell mine, I'm just going to say them before people say, you must have forgotten about this. Why would you not pick it? Actually, the black, black, black iPhone 5 would be my honorable mention

because I loved the look of that one. That was it. I was going to say Graphite 5S, but then it wasn't. It was the Black 5S. Piano Black, iPhone 7. Sure. Etc, etc. We remember them all, but me and Jason like a little more excitement in our

lives. More color. Mine is the current Gold Pro. So, the gold that they have had in the iPhone 13 Pro and in the iPhone 12 Pro.

It's good. There have been some good colors out there. I can't believe we didn't do an iPhone color draft. Maybe later. What you're saying is we just haven't yet done an iPhone color draft. My iPhone XR review unit was the Coral. That Coral one is amazing.

Oh, it's so good. Yeah, it's amazing. It's so beautiful. And then I really do like my blue iPhone 13 mini. I'm very happy with it. It's a lot of fun. It's not super bright, but every time I see the blue on it and I don't use a case, I smile like, ah, blue phone. It's my blue phone.

But that coral XR was really sweet. So we remember many of the colors. We remember the special finishes. I always liked the white 3GS. That was fun. Sure. Remember that white iPhone 4 that they didn't ship for seven months? Because the adhesive was going yellow or something?

It was too yellow, yeah, yeah. And that was not up to spec for Steve Jobs. But they got it? The adhesive was going yellow or something? It was too yellow. Yeah, yeah. And that was like not up to spec for Steve Jobs. But they got it out with the launch of Verizon. Yeah, that's a classic. Somebody was talking about that. It was like,

when was the last time that Apple did an iPhone launch without an event? And I said, I think it might be the Verizon iPhone 4. Well, the SEs though, right? Or do they slide those into events? Maybe so.

I don't know. Anyway, we didn't forget about your favorite iPhone color. We just don't like it as much as ours. We just picked our own. You know, I was about that thing like the yellow iPhone 4S and the Verizon. The amount of useless knowledge that I retain about this stuff is frustrating to me

when there's important things in my life that I can't remember. But I can remember well, which one was it? When did they announce it? Like, I can remember that stuff, but I can't remember, like, family birthdays. Anyhow. Thank you so much for listening to

this week's episode of Upgrade. If you would like to send in a question of your own, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you can get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com. You get longer ad-free

episodes of Upgrade every single week. Access to many wonderful perks at RelayFM. In my personal opinion, the best is access to our members Discord, which is an awesome community of like-minded folk. Of Upgradians. It's the Upgrade Discord.

Yep. If you listen to Upgrade Plus, you know why he called it that. That's right. So, yeah, go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up for $5 a month or $50 a year. Our thanks to Doppler, New Relic, and Memberful

for their support of this week's episode if you want to find Jason online go to sixcolors.com Jason is at jsnl I am at imyke and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye Jason Snell happy bank holiday to you

and all the other banks are you a bank now? I guess you are. Bank of Mike.