Upgrade - 391: They're Great Uphill

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Myke and Jason discuss the mysteries of Apple's car project, and express confusion about Apple's 2022 product release schedule. And at last, France makes a big box-related move.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 391 today's show is brought to you by squarespace capital one and memberful my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike i have a hashtag snow talk question comes from walk fake name interesting do you use the same siri voice on each of your home pods or do you give them their own voices so they have unique personalities well first off i only have well okay i have a home pod mini it doesn't i don't ever use it with siri uh i have pairedPods. I do use them with Siri sometimes. They have a voice that is not on my other devices. We have taken, actually we followed Mike's advice and we have made him

a British gentleman who is our butler who lives inside toucans. Not the bird toucans. The actual two HomePods. Wouldn't it be something if a butler lived inside a toucan? There's like a whole children's book there. Anyway, yeah, so the butler

is the one who will, while we're watching TV, suddenly say, I don't think I got that. And we look at him with scorn. But it's kind of fun to have a different character to play Ciri from place to place. So I recommend it. I actually think it's a lot of fun to have

different Ciri voices in different places because you can personify them differently. What I also like for that, for me personally, is that my American friends stop referring to Siri as a specific gender or not. Like, because for me, Siri has always been a, like, well, what's called the male voice previously, it doesn't have that assigned to

it anymore but people have always referred to siri as she in america for that reason and that's not accurate to my even like my uh blinkered worldview at all so yeah it's uh yeah i prefer it when people you're gonna mix it up and i like now that it's part of the processes you choose, right? That's like a thing now. I don't think that was a thing before. I think if you were setting up a device from nothing, it's like, choose this. So there you go.

Thank you to Mork for that question. If you would like to send in a question for us to open an episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or you can use question mark SnowTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. Nanu Nanu. I was waiting for

some kind of thing. What I thought you were going to say is where's Mindy? That's what I thought you were gonna Could have done that too. But you didn't. I have some follow-up. Where's Mindy? I have some follow-up. Oh, there it is. First comes from Nathan.

Nathan has written in with a screenshot that shows that there was once more animals available for profile images in Mac OS X. There were a bunch of cats, which is one I was also a dog and a dragonfly. A dragonfly, butterfly, a goldfish.

Be a goldfish. We also, I think Stephen Hackett pointed out that there was at one point they were all of these images and they were in low resolution and then I kind of wonder if maybe when they went to a higher resolution image they didn't have those images in high resolution so

they dropped them and the ones that remain are the ones that they did have. But yeah, this was great that there used to be more animals other than the now traditional four birds um and uh what was the and a zebra yeah four birds and a zebra isn't that a richard curtis movie yep that's a less successful sequel the um when they left the cat names behind i think they also left the cats behind, apparently. That doesn't make any sense to me. And a dog. And a goldfish.

Speaking of Stephen Hackett, he let me down. Did he? Because after the episode, I went to Stephen's macOS screenshot library to see if I could find it, and he doesn't have any screenshots with the profile images in them. I was hoping he would have that. All right, Stephen, we're laying the challenge images in them. I was hoping he would have that.

We're laying the challenge down right now. I didn't lay this challenge down. We are laying the challenge down. Stephen, your library, look, it's not for us. It's for your library's completion. You know you love to complete things. You need to get the options for login icon over time in screenshots for every version you need to we've uncovered it's like a news alert we've uncovered a missing piece of the

512 pixel screenshot library jason there is some very important news let me do we have music for this is there like a song for this in theory theory, there could have been, but now it's too late. I have read this aloud to Adina today because these two sentences might be my favorite two sentences I've ever written in our show prep document. So here we go. Apple will no longer include free AirPods with new iPhone purchases. French lawmakers now feel that reducing environmental impact of e-waste is higher than the risk of exposing children to radiation.

Long-time listeners may be aware that this is a thing that has come up a bunch on this show in the past. It came up from a long time ago, like when they stopped including the earbuds in the box. In France, they had to continue doing it because of some law, because of exposing brains that are still forming to radiation. That in French law, apparently this was a concern

that holding a phone to your head was going to, we thought it was like a hands-free kit thing in the car, like driving. But no, it wasn't that. It was a brain radiation thing. And then Apple would continue to do it. And we were wondering when they stopped putting the charger in the box, will they still do this? And yes, in France, your iPhone would come in another box that inside of that box had a set of ear pods, not AirPods,

ear pods, the wired ones with it. Well, now the law has changed, and this law no longer exists anymore, and Apple has confirmed they will no longer be doing this in France because this is now an environmental concern of the additional paper and resources required for these hands-free kits that nobody wants, I'm sure, in France, and just throws away, right?

Because who wants this? Every single time you get a phone that you also get wired earbuds like who doesn't have their own at this point that they would prefer to use please stand for the national anthem of france of brain radiation uh yeah i mean well the truth is this is and we talked about it a lot so we might well talk about it one last time as we put it down in the dirt, which is people used to be really worried about cell phone radiation, even though I think there were never really any, there was any direct proof. I think there's skepticism about it, but the thought was, oh, we got to protect people. You should use hands-free instead of putting a phone up to your head. use hands-free instead of putting a phone up to your head.

And so back in the day, they made it a rule that if you were selling like a candy bar phone, basically, that you needed to have a thing that you could click in and stick on your ear so that you didn't have to hold the phone up. And that stayed on the books as we went to a world where it's not really an issue anymore for the most part, and that headphones are all readily available and wireless headphones are readily available and all of these things. And France was like, nope. As the EU is saying, you need to stop e-waste with all of these things like chargers. And France was like, no, no, no, no, no.

You got to put it in the box. So which, as we learned, was gotta put it in the box so which which as we learned was not truly put in the box it was put in a box that was with the box in a larger box so there was also actual waste right of like all these extra boxes anyway uh uh bon voyage adieu Something like that. I am kind of sad about this because I loved talking about this story every year. And I will also say, I am really surprised that this was a story that I found myself on MacRumors.

Oh, interesting. I had somebody tweeted it at me and I put it in our little notes doc because I was very excited. And I said, oh boy, we got to talk about this one. I hope Mike has seen this one. Yeah, I think I'd put it in there as well like but what i'm saying is i'm surprised nobody tweeted at me because every year when mac rumors puts their post up about the included earpods or someone someone sends it to me unfortunately this post on mac rumors was wrote by sammy fatty

usually it's just joe rosigno writes this story on behalf of upgrade i think uh so listener nathan tweeted to the upgrade uh twitter account uh and that's where i saw it i imagine you already saw this important french earpods follow up right here's a link so i hadn't seen it okay so it had been sent but okay so that so i i will apologize maybe i didn't check the upgrade account uh quickly enough but it's big news though big news this is very important news for the show i would like to congratulate the marketing department at apple tv plus for an ad that they have produced called everyone but Jon Hamm, which there will be a link in the show notes. If you have not watched this ad, treat yourself for a one minute

and eight second ad that I have so many questions about and I adore it. Basically, the conceit of the ad, Jon Hamm sitting in an incredible apartment somewhere in LA. And he is just complaining about the fact that Apple TV Plus has so much content, but none of it is including him. And he's looking through and he's saying, Ted Lasso, I could have been in that. And he's complaining about all of the different things. He's leaving voicemails for Tom Hanks.

For Tom Hanks. Saying how many movies have you got on there? Yeah, it is a really, really good ad. And I have a bunch of questions about it, right? Like, one, why Jon Hamm of all people? Two, why did Jon Hamm do this ad? It's excellent. It's very funny.

Jon Hamm, by the way, very funny. People only really know him as... People mostly know him for being don draper and madman but he's also a very good comedic actor he was in 30 rock he's been a bunch of comedy things he is a very funny comic actor and people don't give him enough credit because he's mr handsome and he was in madman but he is actually really a funny guy um Canadians will know that he is in a commercial ad campaign that had a very similar tone to this. I actually wonder if that was the inspiration here

for a delivery service called Skip the Dishes. And my Canadian friends send me the YouTube links to those ads and they're very funny. Like he's really good at those ads. So I think the reason he did this is because they paid him. But also the reason they wanted him is because they paid him but also the reason they wanted him is because he is somebody people know and he doesn't take himself too seriously and is happy to poke fun at his own self-image in ads and um and then in the back of my head i'm also

thinking do they have to get this ad out now because they're about to announce the john ham project i mean they've got surely right like surely that that they must have said to him hey john if you do this we will put you in something right like that feels like it's got to be the eventual end to this like what i hope genuinely this is a campaign and then it ends with finally the john now we're announcing the john ham show um yeah uh zach point out uh unbreakable kimmy schmidt he's in that too. Excellent in that. He's the cult leader in that.

No, he's, he is a very fun and his Saturday Night Live appearance is not, he's a very funny actor, um, who a lot of people only know for being Don Draper. Um, but, uh, this is, uh, yeah, this is, it's a great ad. It is a legitimately great ad. I saw a lot of people, you know, people have opinions about Apple ads. We haven't talked about those ads that they've done for the apple watch that have been running during football games especially here in the u.s that are the ones that say you're going to die unless you have an apple yeah these all these people would have died but they had their apple watch which i actually

think are incredibly effective ads and we can debate whether they should exist but i think they're very effective oh yeah they exist for the reason that I find them weird. Like there's the reason they should also exist because they make me uncomfortable. Right. TV and entertainment who said, this Apple company, it's like they're pretty good at marketing their products. Actually, they are, but it's a good ad. Very good ad. I really love it, and I hope that they do something. Jon Hamm is awesome. My favorite thing about most of Jon Hamm's comedic appearances

is they are unexpected or surprising. Because he pops up, right? Like he just pops up and stuff. You know, what's John doing here?

Why is John Hamm here? The, um, my favorite moment in the, in the ad, by the way, is that he says, Hey,

Tom Hanks, I saw Finch. That was really great. Um, and you, you have this other one too, right? The,

the like a Greyhound or whatever. And I thought that was really the way it was phrased because we know like Greyhound was going to be in a theater and then the pandemic happened and Apple bought it and they put it on Apple TV plus. I think Finch was a much earlier purchase by Apple. And it's more of an Apple original than the, than, than Greyhound was.

But I liked, I thought that was a very funny little realistic detail where he's like, Oh yeah. And you were in that other one too um and like only people who do uh upstream would really yeah get that but i appreciate my favorite part funny is when i don't i don't know much about swan song which is what is uh that stars maha shahla ali right yeah apparently two uh two of him. That's what I like. They got two of him. I could have done one of those. It's just so good. It's really good. It's a

really excellent ad. Next week we're going to be talking about Apple's Q1 results. That's coming out on Thursday? Yeah, you thought this episode was packed, and it is. But next week's episode is going to be packed too. The Apple results are Thursday the 27th? Yeah, you thought this episode was packed, and it is. But next week's episode's going to be

packed too. Yeah, the Apple results are Thursday, the 27th. So we'll have a conversation about that here on Monday. Going to do the usual Six Colors coverage and maybe some extra stuff. I'm toying with the idea of doing a little live stream.

Doing a little live stream, a little video live stream after the call where Dan and I will break it down and show some charts and do all that stuff. So people should stay locked to Six Colors for your great coverage. We'll continue being locked to it, yes. We'll break it down on Monday.

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easier and faster. The potential of machine learning is so big. See how Capital One is using machine learning to create the future of banking. Search machine learning at Capital One. Our thanks to Capital One for their support of this show and RelayFM. Rumor roundup, Jason. Coming in from Mark Gurman, Apple has lost another key member of its self driving car project. Joe Bass, who was the head of software engineering for the project, they left to join Meta. This is a quote from Mark Gurman.

With Bass's departure, nearly the entire Apple car management team in place just one year ago is gone. Dave Scott, Jamie Wado, Dave Rosenthal, and Benjamin Lyon all left in early 2021. Doug Field, who ran the car team, headed for the exits in September. Michael Shueskuch, I'm sorry, I've done

a terrible job of that, who was in charge of hardware for Apple's project soon followed. Then top engineers bolted. Bass had reported to Field before moving under Kevin... Before moving under kevin before moving under kevin lynch the new head of apple's car team now mark gilman's the way he writes for his newsletter is much more fun for me than um but so this is interesting uh you've put

a good note in here do you want to ask this question yeah um i wonder if this is a sign that things are getting real or a sign that things are not going well and i actually can't decide because i can see both of these scenarios right where they assign uh kevin lynch to do this and we kind of assumed that this is that moment where uh uh, I think Tim Cook is saying to Kevin Lynch, all right, you got to find out if there's a product here and we got to move it toward it existing. Otherwise, why are we doing this? Right? Like let's get real with this thing and either, uh, and stop messing around basically let's stop messing around and let's do this. And I can see a bunch of people who've been working on this project that they've been toiling and it's just sort of been this theoretical thing. I could see somebody coming in from another part of Apple who wants to ship a product being something that they don't like.

being paid a lot of money to tinker around with stuff, but not ship a final product might leap to somewhere else that is also going to allow them to tinker around. Like that's a pretty good gig, right? That you never actually have to ship. You just kind of get paid a lot of money to, to, to do some development work and then, and then go somewhere else. So I could definitely imagine a scenario and I'm not saying this is definitely what happened, but I can imagine a scenario where Kevin Lynch comes in and says, okay, what are we doing? We're going to drop this. We're going to do this.

We're going to get this thing out the door. And the people who were managing it are like, yeah, I'm out of here, and I'm going to take some of my people with us, and we're going to go over to Meta where they're going to pay us, and they're not going to maybe require the level of results that we're suddenly being asked here. Or the approach changed. You know, like that Kevin Lynch comes in and he's like, no, I want to do it this way.

And they're like, no, I don't want to do it that way. So I'm going. I think those go together because I think that if Kevin Lynch is coming in, my guess, again, my read would be he's coming in because Tim wants this project to get real. And I'm sure people didn't appreciate that. That is a new approach, right? Regardless of whether they thought they were real or not, they were kind of confronted with like,

no, we're going to do it this way and they may not like that. I think it is also potentially a sign that things aren't going well. And it's a flip side of that same story, which is Kevin Lynch comes in and says, we want to do this. And everybody's like, are you kidding?

And they're out of there. So I, I can't based on all of this, like limited information, I can't decide whether this is that moment where it's like, ah, yes, this is the inevitable shakeup because they're getting serious and they're

going to ship a product or whether it's the proof that they are never going to ship a product. It could be either one. I don't know. I do think Tim Cook wants it to be real. Yes. I mean, I think they do. Yeah. And whether this is, I think maybe, you know, who knows whether Kevin Lynch has gone in there and said, this needs to be real and has discovered we are going to make it real or has discovered, oh, it is not real. But like, I could totally see after all this time and all this money and all of these people, Tim Cook taking Kevin Lynch, who basically got the Apple Watch across the finish line and said, Kevin, you need to get this thing across the finish line.

I think that's almost certainly what's going on. I really, based on the tea leaves here leaves here I would think that I just don't know whether the result is oh Tim or no it's not gonna happen or whether it's like yeah we'll make it happen I wouldn't be willing to put money on this but I don't think this product's ever real yeah I

if I think there's too many problems inherent with creating self-driving car that Apple would not be willing to approach with push come to shove. I think you're probably right. that it builds as a part of this project and tries to turn it into something else maybe by finding a partner maybe by selling it off but but yeah i i wouldn't i wouldn't say that it's more likely than not that there's an apple you know powered car out there yeah i don't even mean just like the issues of building a car i i i can i'm not saying you're saying this but I don't even mean just like the issues of building a car. I'm not saying you're saying this, but I mean like even if they partnered with BMW and, it's entirely possible that it goes nowhere or isn't very good because it's been boiled down to just like this last little part. And it's sort of nothing or somebody makes a deal with Apple because it's Apple, but it turns out that it amounts to nothing.

I mean, there are lots of ways that could go. I'm not saying they couldn't do it. I'm just saying that it's really hard. My product line about this has always been Apple looks at the future, sees that the future of automotive includes things Apple is good at, and thinks, why not us? And puts money into it to investigate it. Even after all of that money, all of that sunk cost, it's not bad to say, oh, we learned why it's not us, right? It's not bad to say that. But I also understand-

They should investigate every area. Sure. But also they miss their time, right? I mean, like their time would have been to either buy Tesla or to do a Tesla-like or Rivian-like product back at an earlier point, because now all the major auto manufacturers are on board, and it's actually going to be a lot harder to enter this market. And if they're really thinking that they're going to just develop autonomous golf carts for college campuses or something like that, that's not much of an Apple project. I don't know why they would even do that. So I don't know. They may have missed their moment. I think

when all is said and done, if this amounts to nothing, I think they absolutely should have done it. They should have taken their shot because I think it is true that there are a lot of things that Apple does very well that might translate to the future of automotive. But for whatever reason, it just doesn't seem to have panned out. I'm not sure it's going to pan out for Google either, to be fair. I mean, yeah, right? Well, maybe.

So going back to what you were just saying, I think the thing you've hit on really nicely there is it also, I think, couples with Mark Gurman's other reporting that we were talking about a few weeks ago of like Apple wants to leapfrog everyone and make like this incredible car that doesn't even need a steering wheel which we know is just unrealistic for so many reasons if that is their case however i can see that that's what they're

going for because apple's whole thing is we've made something that's so much better than everyone else right and the only thing that can be better than all of these car companies making really great electric cars which do a bunch of interesting but not completely full self-driving stuff is to go to that level now if they would have started this years ago they could have produced something that's like how people what people think about tesla and that would have been all they needed to do and it would have leap leapfrogged what everyone else is doing. But they're too late. So if they needed to do that now, the level they have to go to is so far.

And so what I was going to say about Google is Google doesn't have the reputation of doing that. So they could settle in the middle. I don't think Apple would. And I think what they would have to do to be so far ahead of everyone else is honestly, I think might need two large scale infrastructure changes that any modern society could actually handle. I don't know. good point, which is this is to differentiate themselves at this point, they kind of have to do a moonshot. And that's probably where that whole, we're not going to have a steering wheel thing comes from is almost like a pep talk to the people who work on it that like, this is our opportunity is in a, you know, we, we can't just come out with a, a Tesla, right. Because there already is one. And now there are all the big

automakers are doing it too. So what can Apple add that will make this product a product that's better than any other product that's in existence in this category? And you start perhaps to come down to, well, we've got the silicon and we've got the sensor data and we can build something way better than those amateurs over at tesla who who've been trying this for years and still haven't gotten it right it's like okay all right apple apple oh all right uh we'll see but uh it the problem with that is it may be impossible or nearly impossible or it may be something that kevin lynch goes in there and goes yeah we could in 20 years. Or in one city. Right.

Right? Like, you know, this is just, I think that this is a really, really complicated problem that we're a long time away from having a solution to. Like a long time away.

And so I'm, and I honestly, I think the only way to get that solution is a Tesla-like approach, which is building it as the cars are driving around. Yeah. And that information is being poured back in.

And then we're trying to use that to map it all out. I don't know if you can just be like, bang, we did it. Here you go. I just can't foresee how that's a possibility. It seems too complicated. It is hard to imagine it. I'm never going to say never because the fact is if you had told me some number of years ago that Apple would have that Jon Hamm ad listing all those people and that Apple won an Emmy. I think that's a less hard problem, but sure.

No, but this is what I'm saying is not that it's an easier problem to solve, but that our conception of Apple, Apple is so huge and has so much money that I think you make a mistake if you say, oh, Apple will never do that because. And I see people write this stuff all the time where it's like, well, oh, Apple will never do that because. And it's always because I have such a limited view of what Apple is, and I don't think there'll ever be anything other than that. And Apple has changed what it is so many times now that I don't want to say Apple's never going to sell a car because 15 years where actually some of the highest end cars that are being sold that are popular in parts of the United States are Apple cars? That seems bizarre. And yet, is that any more bizarre than some of the other moves Apple has made? I don't think so. I think the challenge is what you said, which is, can Apple be so far ahead that they can enter and blow people away? And what they may need to accomplish to get to that level may not be possible, given the state of roads and road technology and all of those other things.

So that's the challenge. I can imagine. Apple making a full self-driving, fully autonomous car straight out of the gate? No, I can't imagine that. more expensive but super high-tech car. It would have their sensor technology and their silicon in it. I'm not, like, there's nobody, is there anybody out there who owns a Tesla who says, you know what Tesla's really good at is software and user interface, right? Like, they release new software betas and people complain about them and their UI is weird. And when I drove a Tesla Model three last year for a week, you know,

they're like, it doesn't even have text size controls for people who are, who have, uh, are nearsighted. Like it's so like, they're not, there are lots of things Tesla's bad at that Apple is good at.

So like, do I think Apple could in five years make a car that was basically kind of like a Tesla, but had Apple's OS and silicon and software and a few differentiating features? I think they could. The question is, is that what they want to do? Is that what they want their approach to be? Is we're really just kind of making something that's kind of like a Tesla, but it has the Apple logo on it instead of the Tesla logo. And if that's what they want to do, I think they can do it.

I'm not sure. I mean, and do you think Tim Cook and all his operations people are like, oh, we could figure out car factories, and then they'll find out that they can't. But, right, like, I think they could totally do it. I just, is that what Apple wants to do? Is that a product that clears the bar for Apple? And maybe it does, but it seems to me that they want to really make their mark

and not make a product that's kind of like Me Too, but a little nicer. But maybe that'll be their approach. They've done that in the past. The factories, I'm actually pretty confident they could do it because I don't know how much harder it is to manufacture however many millions of cars versus hundreds of millions of iPhones.

Like I feel like you know but you have to have a partner you do have a have to have a manufacturing partner but they you know they have i'm sure that foxconn could help them do it you know they're they could absolutely do it i i agree with you i think in five years they could do it for sure one of the first things that i was like no way would they do this is how would you sell them but tesla don't have showrooms you just buy them online right like i mean you can go and like and they could set that up right like you know you see like the tesla places in the mall they could do that oh sure because that's not like they have a place in the mall yeah they already have it yeah and then you know they just rent out some car parking spaces downstairs so people could do test drives if they

really wanted to but like when i first heard about that, I was like, oh no, Apple are not going to have dealerships. But they could do what Tesla has done, which is a surprise the way that they've ended up doing it. So yeah, it's an interesting way that Tesla has done it, that Apple could crib if they wanted to.

But I just think that the reasons now is just I'm not sure that they could differentiate the way that they would probably want to. So here's my counter argument, because I like this way of thinking that Apple wants to come in and be the best. And I think that's what's happening with the AR stuff and VR stuff, is that Apple's going to come in with a product whenever they do it, later this year maybe, and they're going to say, well, we've got the best because we've got the best screens

and we've got the best silicon and it's going to be the best this metric that you've never heard of and like there's all this stuff going on that uh that makes it like we're taking it to the next level like what do you do in a car can you do that is it full self-driving what is it but let me just let me just say apple has history here, which is the history of picking the right moment. And coming into a market where everybody's like, look, we already did that. And then Apple comes in with something and says, yeah, but we waited until the moment where it could be just good enough that this is the moment when people are really going to start buying it. And if you believe that electric car sales are even now, they're ticking up, but they're still a small percentage of the market. But there's some thought that maybe 2018 or 2019

was peak internal combustion engine sales, and it's all downhill for ICE for now, and it's all uphill for electric cars, which is great because they're great uphill. If you ever drove one uphill, it's a good time. So you could argue that. You could argue that now is actually the time, just like when Apple did a music player and there were already music players, but the iPod came out and they're like, oh yeah, I know there were already music players, but this is better. Or when they supported Bluetooth. Bluetooth had been out a while and people were like,

why won't Apple support Bluetooth? But Apple waited and waited for its moment and then it put Bluetooth everywhere. And people were like, yeah, none of these are perfectly analogous. But like Apple, one other aspect of Apple personality, if a company can have a personality, is the kind of like picking your spot and picking the sweet spot. And while I think Project Titan, this car project, has probably missed the sweetest spot because they seem to have been delayed a bunch of times. I could make the argument that even if what they can't offer is, you know, Tesla, Tesla claims the full self-driving, which Tesla can't offer either, by the way. It's interesting stuff, but it's really not quite all there. If Apple came out and said, well, we can do better. Like our, our our thing does does more and better than what tesla or anybody else offers in terms of driver assist plus all

of these other things full of self-driving yeah yeah fullest it's the fullest self-driving with a big asterisk there anyway i think you could make the argument that that that is an Apple-like approach where Apple is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Tesla, sure, but Apple, right? And whether they are confident that they can have a product, what they won't do is enter with a product that is a Me Too product that is lesser, right? They're never going to do that. They need to be able to have something to say, we could do this better, but they could lower the bar to being like. Better than Tesla. Instead of it being. We don't have a steering wheel.

That's a higher bar. Turns out this wasn't the rumor round up at all. It was an upshift. Yeah it's upshift. This episode is brought to you by Memberful. They are our very good friends over at Memberful. They are the easiest way to sell memberships. To your audience used by the biggest creators

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the start of something exciting. Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and RelayFM. Now we'll do the rumor roundup. Yeah, well, I mean, it's thank you for Mark Gurman for making us deeply consider Apple Car again.

Like, it just emerges. Well, we'll go back to Mark. Apple is preparing for their widest array of new hardware products in its history this fall. German expects this to consist of four new iPhones, a low-end MacBook Pro, updated iMac, Mac Pro, MacBook Air, AirPods Pro, three Apple Watch models, a new base-level iPad, and new iPad Pros. Mark says, given the more significant changes in the pipeline for this year, I'd expect the new iPad Pro to come later than the spring. So this is the overall lineup that Mark is expecting.

Yeah, I don't know what to think of this because it feels like there should be more in the spring and less in the fall and i don't i don't know whether i'm skeptical here's the problem i don't know whether i'm skeptical that there's going to be so many products held till the fall or whether i'm skeptical that all the products will... You have to accept the idea like, oh, well, products are going to be delayed till the fall, but the products in the fall aren't going to be delayed even further back so that late this year becomes next year as is so often the way i i don't know also am i alone or did you feel this too you saw this report and saw how much stuff he thinks is going to come out in the fall and just have that that twinge of like oh god it made me feel really upset my my fall my fall there it's gone now there's two things for me one is that that's not one event, right? This isn't just one event. No, it's three.

Are you getting it yet? We're doing three events this fall. Are you getting it? I prefer it when they spread things out more throughout the year because that's more stuff to talk about throughout the year, right? Rather than between September and November, there's six product lines to talk about. That's too much stuff.

Mark Gurman does still expect a spring event to feature an iPhone SE, iPad Air, and a new Mac, either a Mac Mini or iMac, featuring the M1 Pro. I would just say, this is in my opinion, too much stuff for one three-month period.

It just feels like it's too much. It's just logistically, realistically, this feels like too much stuff. Maybe more than they need, but I couldn't tell you what you would kick down the road. Okay, so SE Air and a new Mac with an M1 Pro is a modest event, but I could see it.

I feel like there is that one report that says that they put a lot of iPads through regulatory approval somewhere, and it may be a different signal, but Mark sort of says, meh, but it probably is going to be the fall. Reading this, though, the thing that really jumps out at me is we've kind of been expecting that there will be new ipad pros with the m2 along with a macbook air with the m2 that the m2 generation is going to hit and they'll still be doing m1 high-end models but they'll also kind of push out an m2 that's based on the a15 okay but he's got that slated for fall. And I do wonder if, is that, and you got to read between the lines here. Is this Mark having his sources at Apple basically say, yeah,

none of that stuff is going to ship when we want. It's all going to be later. Just clear out the summer. I mean, there, there are sort of saying that Apple's going to, other than, you know,

WWDC, like OS announcements, Apple's going to do very little other than a spring event until September. And then they're going to unleash this. They're going to open a portal to a dimension full of products and just, blah! There they are!

Oh no! Right? Like, I guess they could do it this way. I mean, and he has a whole thing about how they're seasonal and a holiday quarter and all that it's like that's true but they don't usually do it quite to this extreme and so that's why i keep thinking is this really about products that they wanted to come out in the spring or the summer that they just can't ship them in time or they decided it's not worth

it because they got to prioritize using those parts on the stuff that they're already shipping so that they can fulfill those orders and right because it's not just do we want to release a macbook air it's do we want to create demand for a new macbook air when we're having trouble shipping our macbook pros or our ipads that's the trick because looking at this list stuff like the macbook air the airpods pro a new ipad and new ipad pros doesn't make any specific sense to release those in September. I'm also sad because I want that iMac and I don't want to wait till fall. But now I'm really fearing that the big iMac is going to be an October announcement. That could be what Mark's saying is spring though.

He's not sure. That updated iMac is the 24. Yeah, this is, okay. Very specifically, he says a new iMac featuring the M1 Pro and he suggests the iMac or the 24. Yeah, this is, okay. Very specifically, he says a new iMac featuring the M1 Pro, and he suggests the iMac, or a new Mac, the Mac Mini or the iMac. I think this is what we've talked about,

which is now that the M1 Pro and the M1 Max exist, they could go in other products. So a Mac Mini, you know, space gray, maybe Mac mini, uh, new design or not new design, but basically adding, um, M one pro and maybe M one max, but maybe it's just M one pro options. Makes sense, right? Like now that they've got that chip, why wouldn't you offer it in the Mac mini? And I have said on numerous occasions, now that you've got that chip, why not offer it in the 24 inch iMac,, right? Like the 24-inch iMac is enough size-wise for a lot of people. And I'm pretty sure they would have designed it with some thermal headroom because they would have learned

their lesson and they know that this design is going to stay around for several years. Like, wouldn't it be nice if you could offer a high-end 24? That's different than saying, here's our brand new big iMac. I hope that they do that in the spring, but the way I read Mark's report is more like they're just going to kind of add those higher-end chips to some existing models. Maybe.

I don't think they would put anything higher than the base chip in the iMac, like the regular iMac, in the same way that they wouldn't put it in the MacBook Air. I just think they could, but they wouldn't. I feel like it's just going to be non-pro, non-Macs goes in the standard product line. The smaller iMac has always had higher-end Intel options, but not as high end as the bigger iMac. And so that would be my argument is that the 24-inch iMac maybe gets the M1

and then optionally an M1 Pro, whereas the 27-inch iMac, you can get an M1 Pro or an M1 Max. I just don't think you need... I mean, like, look, as somebody who uses an M1 iMac, you don't need the power. Like the power that this has

with just the M1 chip is more than enough. It's more powerful M1 iMac, you don't need the power. Like the power that this has with just the M1 chip, it's more than enough. It's more powerful than my iMac Pro. Who's buying Macs with M1 Pros and M1 Maxes in it then? What do you mean? Like, I mean, you don't need more power. Some people do need more power,

but they don't need more screen. Well, they'll get the iMac Pro and like it, or they'll get an M1 Pro Max Mac Mini and a monitor. Right, but I'm just saying, I don't see why offering a top-end build-to-order 24-inch iMac configuration with an M1 Pro and some more RAM and all of that... Do you think that they would add the M1 Pro to a MacBook Air? They would add the M1 Pro to a MacBook Air. I don't because I think that they're going to design the MacBook Air to differentiate it from the MacBook Pro. And they're going to focus on it being an M2 and not an M2 Pro or M2 Max.

But the iMac is a desktop. And I don't think the iMac is... I don't think the contrast between the smaller and larger iMac is the same as the contrast between a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro. I don't. I think that even the small iMac, they let you build to order and crank it up, not as far as the big one on Intel, but you could do it because it's a desktop Mac. So I think that's the difference there because I don't think the Air, I suspect the Air is going the other direction where they're going to do a new version of it that that really is predicated on the low power uh of the of the m1 and m2 base model simple chip instead of what they're doing on the pro line because they want to differentiate those two but i'm not sure they want to differentiate the 24 from the 27

to that extreme right like if you will if you want a smaller imac but you want a little more power and you want to give us more money okay i think they could do that you're right it is less likely than just throwing it in a mac mini and saying guess what mac mini pro is here now uh enjoy but this is intriguing though it's an intriguing report in an otherwise kind of boring, like iPhone SE. It's boring. iPad Air update. It's nice, but it's not going to be that different, right? So it's going to be kind of boring.

And then a new Mac. Like, I'm still struggling to see what the excitement is in this event. And maybe there just isn't any. And it's we got these product updates we need to do. And here it is. And it's an hour on video. Honestly, Jason, I think it's we got these product updates we need to do and here it is and it's an hour on video honestly jason i think it's an imac pro i think that's what that is the big star of that event that's what i think the big star in the spring will be and i'll just say like i understand where you're coming from i think now honestly they will just it is not a uh sensible decision

it is just a just a product decision. The way I look at it is that the iMac is the consumer device, so it gets the consumer chip, and the iMac Pro starts with M1 Pro just because Pro, Pro, Pro, Pro. It's like,

why did they do it on the iPhone? Why did they do it on anything? I think that they're just going to draw a line in it, whether you can do it or not. Although I agree with absolutely everything you're saying, I think it makes more sense to do it that way, to have options in all of the Macs. If you can put it in there, put it in there. I just think my money would be on,

they're going to make it like this is a fit for, like you can't put, what do you want to put a max, like a pro chip and a yellow computer? What are you crazy? Well, I, well, we'll see.

We'll see. We still don't know whether they're going to call the high end. I'm at, I'm at pro, whether they're going to call the high end. I'm at all models pro, or whether they're going to have a non pro and a pro version. You know, we have our guesses, but we don't know what they're going to do.

And Mark Gurman's story suggests that updated iMac happens in the fall. I read that to be the 27-inch, but who knows? I don't know. I think there's a lot still out on the table. But what this is getting me the sense of is that, according to Mark Gurman's sources, expect a light spring and then a heavy fall and nothing in between, which is interesting, but not unexpected, given what's going on with the supply chain. It's not unexpected. There are going to be these bubbles in the pipeline where they're like, we just don't, everything slid back, and these things have slid back, and then we're going to get up to speed, and then we're going to blow it out in the fall. Although I also would not be surprised if we get to fall, and some of this stuff becomes spring of 23, and that's just how it is.

They're giving themselves as much room in the calendar as possible. Also, here's another way to think of it, which is what in Apple's product line has to get replaced? Like, okay, the large iMac is on Intel. It needs to be replaced. I could argue that Mac Mini is on Intel. It needs to be replaced. I could argue that Mac mini is on Intel. It needs to be replaced. So like models that are not yet off of Intel need to be replaced. Okay.

We can do that. Maybe that 13 inch MacBook pro could it get a, a, an M one pro option. I think that's another one where like maybe, but like, and the, and the Mac mac pro they want to do that it doesn't really have to be replaced but they really want to do that but like some of these

a newer version of the 24 inch iMac with the m2 the a newer version of the macbook air with the m2 like nobody those are easy in my mind as much as i want one of those macbook airs in my mind those are the easiest things to push off oh yeah for sure and the air sells really really well i get it the new ipad as well you could you can push that out it's fine the the new ipad pro model doesn't doesn't need to even be on the 18 month cycle you could afford to wait with that one too right like they're they're fine not that a new one wouldn't drive sales and all that but honestly that ipad pro and that macbook air are fine they are good they are current they are fast they're still great they're still good values for apple products down you know the the 999 macbook air like it's all

fine so if you're looking for things to delay um there's there's a bunch of stuff that you'd be the 999 MacBook Air, it's all fine. So if you're looking for things to delay, there's a bunch of stuff that you'd be like, it doesn't matter when this ships. Like that M2 MacBook Air, as cool as it sounds, and as much as I want one, and as much as I want them to announce it next month, if they announced it a year from then,

it would probably not hurt their business. So that's one way to make decisions. According to political website Punchbowl News, Tim Cook is personally lobbying the Senate Judiciary Committee over a bill that has now passed the initial vote to, among other things, in the US, enforce sideloading on devices

and remove a company's ability to favor their own services on those devices. This bill is going to advance to Senate floor now for voting. Yeah. It's interesting because this gets into political details, which is why I put a link in our notes to a report that's actually on Philip Elmer DeWitt's site, but he's quoting a report from analyst Emmett Darianani, who is at Evercore and is a regular on those quarterly analyst calls, probably hear his voice later this week.

And he is quoting an analyst at Evercore as saying that this passing as a law is not likely. And so what this analyst named Tobin Marcus says is the vote 16 to 6 overstates the level of support for the bill. Some Democrats, including the two senators from California, voted it out of committee as a courtesy to Senator Amy Klobuchar, despite expressing significant reservations. Several other Democrats have concerns and changes they want to make. Some of the Republican support looks soft as well. And getting Senate floor time for this bill before Congress shuts down for the midterm elections will be harder than some commentators appreciate. So this analyst says it could happen in some form, but it's also not one of those things where it's like, oh, it's got bipartisan support and so it'll pass. It's got kind of soft bipartisan support, but not maybe in both parties strong support.

So we'll see. But yeah, wouldn't that be, this is like one of those things that we've talked about, about do you want to push this too far, Apple? Because you end up in a scenario where like the government of the United States says, you have to offer sideloading in alternate app stores

and it's the law now. And that's just how it has to be, which is like, that's really bad for Apple. You accidentally created a bunch of buzzwords. Like sideloading is just like a buzzword now in politics, right? For things that tech companies should do. Break them up, right? Well, because politicians want to be seen as being tough on big tech, right?

That's what they want to be seen. Fortunately, politicians also want to listen to billionaires and valuable companies about harming American businesses. And I'm sure that's what Tim Cook was talking about gets on the phone but i i was also reading on axios a similar thing of like if this anything happens to if this bill ends up ever getting through it's not going to look like how it looks now like there's a lot of desire to change it but the thing is you don't know which part right so like sideloading might get i mean for all we know sideloading might not be one of the things that people have a problem with it but the thing is you don't know which part right so like side loading might get i mean for all we know side loading might not be one of the things that people have a problem with like maybe the thing that that like other people in politics have a problem with is the

ability to for a company not to favor their own services because what do you know what i mean it's just like yeah which is why tim cook's on the phone because he doesn't know either and wants to make sure that it's going to go exactly his way but i just thought that considering everyone we're talking about recently, this is a pretty funny thing that kind of came out of nowhere for me. Like this bill was like, oh, hello, what are you up to?

Yeah. Apple has named Kristen Hugert-Quayle as their new head of public relations. Hugert-Quayle replaces Stella Lowe, who's been in the role since may 2021 less than a year lowe was an outside hire for apple once again suggesting cisco that outside hires in high up positions at apple potentially struggle to match culture fit uh john browett is the key example of this the guy who's brought in to run the apple store like the stores retail stores yeah was gone

within a very short period of time and arguably angela erin's although she lasted longer but you know i'm not sure that that was in the end uh the right fit either the counter argument would be something like the all the chip designers and johnny shruji and all of that but i get the feeling like they came in to establish a culture in a part of apple that didn't exist before yeah and so when you're forging a new you know portion of a corporate identity that's different than sliding into a role that's been defined forever and um i remember at the time we talked about stella low being hired out of Cisco and said, that's a weird match. Didn't seem right.

Very technical and a lot of corporate sales stuff. And is that the messaging that you really want? Was she just on a WebEx? And they're like, hey, because Cisco makes WebEx and Apple uses WebEx. And also, I don't mean this to be strange, but Stella Lowe's Twitter account was really weird. It was just like the things that she was tweeting was strange. Her avatar was just like a really low quality image. It didn't feel like a PR person's thing,

especially from Apple. Does she really exist? I don't know. It was just like a thing that is like, for one, the head of Apple PR has never had a public face. Right. And she did. And this is like,

PR specifically, the head of PR is like, probably the most manicured position inside of the PR machine that is Apple, right? Yeah. And the idea of bringing someone in from outside after the position had been vacant for

I think nearly two years? Very strange. Right, which means people who were working at Apple were doing the job. Including, apparently, Chris and Quayle, and yet they didn't get the job because they held it open and they ended up giving it to an outside person, which implies a level of dissatisfaction with your internal people. it is becoming increasingly apparent that you got to be on the inside to understand it and be a culture fit and then grow and then reach that position later and bringing somebody apple is a

weird company i think that's what we've learned is apple is an outlier they're strange they have their ways and just hiring somebody from the outside to come in i imagine you hire somebody like stella low because you want to bring in her skills from Cisco and wherever else she worked to put a new spin on Apple PR. Because otherwise, when Steve Dowling leaves, why would you not hire or promote his person who is basically high up working with Dowling on the executive stuff, which was Steve Dowling's previous job before he was the head of PR when it was Katie Cotton, Dowling was on the executive side. And there was another person, Natalie Karras, who was on the product PR side. And that was which one of them is going to get the job. And Dowling got the job, which I think cynically I could say, oh, you mean the person who was really close to all the executives because he handled executive PR got the job when the executives chose him. Interesting.

But Christian Hugot Quayle also apparently was on that side doing, you know, all things Tim. And so the executives picked her eventually, but not before they went outside. And I just wonder, are they deluding themselves? Are they like, no, no, no, no. We want something different. We want a little fresh blood in the PR department. We want to do things differently. And then somebody comes in and I've seen this.

You've probably seen this too at various companies, various organizations over time. The people in charge think they want change. And then somebody gets hired to bring change. And then all the changes they propose are like, no, we don't do that here. Like I've seen that time and again where somebody talks about wanting change and a fresh idea and then you bring them in.

I'm not saying, I don't know that this happened in this case, but like I've seen that happen endlessly. But it's natural though, right? Like she would have come in with her experience working somewhere else. It's like, I want to do it this way. And you bring the person in from outside

because presumably you want them to do that. But it so often happens that when they get inside, everybody goes, oh, no, not really. We actually want to do it the way we've always done it. And I have a hard time looking at this exit happening in less than a year without saying that that's it. And that's not necessarily her fault. In fact, it's perhaps absolutely not her fault, right? Because it may be that she was told, no, no, I know that Apple is very particular, but we want an outside view of this. The people who've been running this department have been here for years, and we want somebody new to come in. And now here we are a few months later, and she's gone, and they've hired a longtime person who's

been at Apple a long time and was one of of the right hand people of the previous occupant of the position and it's really like a reversion like no no no we actually want the successor who probably should have been the successor but wasn't for some reason but now is and maybe there are personal things you never really know we're on the outside looking and it is also worth just noting they have said apple have said and stella lowe said that she's going to be spending more time with her family but the thing is that is whether that's true or not that's the line that like the cliche line of yeah we're all going to pretend like this was all good yeah which seems like a strange pr move I don't know man the thing is I completely

of the mind that Stella Lowe was brought in told that Apple wanted to shake things up she went in and shook things up and then everyone decided they didn't like that you know like she was always set up to fail it's like I think this is a similar thing with what happened with Angela Ahrens as well.

She was brought in to say, they said to her, hey, but can you just change our entire retail proposition and make it luxury? And so she did that. And then they were like, no, we need to sell our phones on finance. And she said, I'm not going to do that.

And then that was the end of that, right? Yeah, I think that that's the best way to evaluate that one. So this is, I mean, PR is different because it's not public facing in the same way as being the head of retail but and apple pr has done a bunch of things differently over the last few years but the truth is they were doing that under steve dowling too well this is the thing like i would my assumption would be as you said like hug Hugo Quayle was probably the person, one of the people, in charge of this change. Because Dowling's been gone for a long time.

Now it's just kind of funny that it's like, oh, no, no. I know you were doing this job before and then we hired someone else. But can you just do it now? It's strange. Yeah, right? Like, there are personal dynamics at work here and there's, you know, it's inside a company who knows we're just on the outside looking in and these people are all kind of cardboard cutouts to us, but they're also people with, with allies and enemies

and quirks and all those things that we just don't know about. But it does seem, uh, really interesting that they went out, they're like, left it out there for years um ended up going with an outside hire which is almost like they were trying to see if somebody would step forward from the inside and felt like that didn't happen and maybe it takes a bad person to come for you no i want to do it instead now i've seen the other option yeah then you do the outside hire and you're like oh no um no we were wrong. I mean, good for Kristen Hugo Quayle. Like, we were wrong. We should have hired you all along.

It seems to be what happened here. But I don't know. It's weird. I will say the big change was Katie Cotton leaving. Katie Cotton, and I've talked about her before. She was, I would say, as close to Steve Jobs jobs my perception was she was as close to steve jobs as anybody at apple and we don't talk about her a lot because we don't talk about pr we talk about products and so we talk about phil and johnny ive and tim cook but i think katie katie was always

there next to steve katie was the message of Apple, all of the Apple PR, everything they did, all their messaging, Katie controlled it. And I think Katie worked for Phil, I think, but Katie worked for Steve, right? And she, don't get on her bad side, she was real scary. I was terrified of her at various points. And everybody will have their Katie story. And she can also be very charming and nice. You mean PR? You got to be able to do that. Just like Steve Jobs, right? Exactly. But I would say Katie had her way of doing things and it was really Steve's way of doing things. And she was able to get what Steve wanted out of it. Obviously, when you work

for Steve Jobs that closely, if Steve doesn't like a step that you made in terms of PR or whatever, you'll know, and you'll know not to ever do it again. So Steve passed away. Katie retired with probably all the money. One of her two lieutenants gets the top job and the other one leaves. So Steve Dowling's down in charge. That was the moment. That was the Steve Jobs to Tim Cook kind of moment of like, somebody new is in charge who can make some different decisions. And I think probably part of Dowling's pitch in trying to get hired was we're going to do things different. So Dowling really did lead a lot of the PR changes that have happened. And, you know, sorry for the inside baseball, everybody, but like for those of us who cover Apple,

like the way they roll out products and they've got YouTubers involved and they've got different ways of doing product briefings and they've got like, they've, after a period where they really didn't change for a long time, really, like from the early days of Steve until sort of Steve Dowling was in charge, Apple PR was basically always the same playbook. And I don't know whether that was

because the people in the PR group wanted it to be that way or because that was the playbook, because Katie said that's the playbook. But they did did change and um and and i think dowling and his team like felt the freedom with katie gone to make some of those changes and i think that there were a lot of positive changes and i think there were a lot of like you know creative things that we could debate whether they're good or not but they were like trying new things and i think you've got after so much time of it being static them trying new things it's a great thing like just you should do that as just, I'm not talking about self-interest here.

I'm saying as a person in a business, you should probably try different things once in a while, right? Not just follow the same playbook from 1998. So in this, so they had the gap and then they had the new person come in and in less than a year, she's out and they've elevated somebody from the team. Probably should have done that to begin with, but maybe they had to go through the process, right? Sometimes you got to go through the process to know what you, you think you want one thing and leave like what happened with Natalie Karras, who when Steve Dowling got the job, she was out of there. And she was great.

She had a product PR. So I dealt with her a lot for years. She used to work at FileMaker. I dealt with her for 20 years. I mean, a lot of time, but the moment that that choice was made, she was out of there and Kristen Hugo Quayle didn't get the job. I don't know if she was up for it or not. It would seem that she would have been, uh, and she was doing the work and they didn't kept not hiring a replacement, naming a replacement. But she's got the job now. So I think that Apple may be fortunate that she didn't press the eject button

when they hired this person from Cisco last year. Maybe she was just biding her time. Sometimes that's what you do is you get passed over for something and you think this is going to – and you think this is not going to go well. Like I've seen this. I've absolutely seen this where you're like, well, and you think this is not going to go well, right? Like, like I've seen this, I've absolutely seen this, uh, where you're like, okay, that person doesn't realize what they're going, what they're getting themselves into. And these people don't realize what they've just done.

Everybody's going to regret this. And this person isn't going to be here for very long. And maybe that was what she did was like, I'll buy my time. This isn't going to work out. And maybe that was what she did, was like, I'll buy my time. This isn't going to work out. And well, if she did, then good on her because she was right. This did not work out. It turns out hiring a new head of PR from Cisco, not a fit. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to build your online presence and run your business.

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support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of Upgrade and RelayFM. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. To finish out today's episode. Gregory asks, how do you keep track of your books across multiple services, Jason? I have Apple Books, Kindle, Physical, and a bunch of Audible accounts, and I often find it difficult to remember where I bought something. Short of just checking everywhere, do you have an easier way? I don't. The truth is I buy mostly, I buy almost entirely eBooks and I used to buy them all on the Kindle store and now I mostly buy them on the Kobo store. And so I don't have that many places to look and it's not a problem. So I don't really have a good answer here. I don't know if there are book tracking services. I don't do Audible.

answer here um i don't know if there are book tracking services i don't do audible um i mean i'm sure there are i don't buy physical books i don't do apple books i i don't know i think i think they all are geared toward you buying just from them right nobody wants to help you so i don't have an answer here nobody i mean like you know like you get these like tv tracking apps yeah i know but i don't think they're like honestly i'm I'm not sure Gregory is the most common case here where it's like I buy Apple books and Kindle books and physical books and two different Audible accounts in different regions. And it's like, I'm not sure that that's a real edge case. So I don't know if there's a way. Can you like tag things on Goodreads based on where it exists in your house? I don't, or in your digital accounts.

I don't, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question, but I can't help. I'm keeping it simple. We've done this before, but I'm going to do it again. Nougat machine, if you would say. Nougat.

Do you use contacts metadata to identify family members, or do you instead have a contact named, say, mum, to display the familial relation instead of the proper noun in notifications? This is so interesting, right? So if you didn't catch that, do you say, for example, have a contact that says your mum's full name or do you have your mom's name like just say mom right or or do you add like i think you can add a nickname as well if you want to yeah you can add nicknames but also like siri will make an actual link to. So if you say, like, if I said,

my dad is Jason Snell, then if I say, call dad, it would be Jason. Yeah. This is interesting. What do you do? Oh, I just have mom, and it's my mom. I don't have, like, my mom's full name,

and then that's my mom. I don't call her by her full name. What do I need that for? I have her full name. I have my mom's full name and then that's my mom. I don't call her by her full name. What do I need that for? I have her full name. I have my mother's full name. Is that how you refer to her too? Mrs. Snell. Yeah.

I just don't. I mean, it's probably a legacy of when my dad was alive. It was both of their names in there, but it didn't say mom and dad. It said Ron and Sue Snell. So, yeah. I don't do that for anybody um my wife's full name is in there it's not a nickname or or wife or so wife is calling out of my children or their full names i'm a bad boring person i guess um jamie you wouldn't you wouldn't like if you like son like you know that would be weird like because you don't yeah that would be call him son you know like yeah second child is calling favorite child um jamie has i know that jamie has me in her book as daddy snell

i forget what she's got if la Lauren is Mommy Snell or not, but she's done that. And then Jamie also edited in Lauren's phone, she actually edited her own contact and put a bunch of heart emojis around her. So whenever Jamie calls, it's like heart, heart, heart, Jamie, heart, heart, heart is calling

because Jamie decided to be her own hype man there. I have a great one now. All right, I'm putting my mom on blast here. So back in the day, I used to have two phones because I bought a new, I had like my iPhone or something and I still was on an old contract, which was a Sony Walkman phone.

And that was the number that I ended up carrying over, but I had to change network to get the iPhone. So I ended up having two numbers for a little bit, but then I was able to swap that over. So still to this day, we are talking over 15 years. My contact in my mom's phone is Michael Walkman. And I say to her, mom, should we change this? And she says, no, I like it like that.

So to my mother, I am the Walkman, I guess. So this is a thing that still exists. I am the Walkman. You are the Walkman. That's amazing. And I cannot tell you how much restraint I showed to say I'm going to put you as Daddy Snow in my phone too. But I feel like enough time has passed

from when you said that to now where I feel like I can constantly say that. I may put you as Daddy Snow in my phone. What is the energy we're bringing to the show now? Sebastian asks... There's japes. Thereames there's happening all of a sudden a new display from apple would feature a built-in webcam now of course to set the stage for this all of apple's macs have webcams the pro display xdr does not have a built-in webcam

and apple even went so far as to work with logitech to create a specific version of their brio webcam that had a magnet on it to go on the top. Yeah, well, it's because they couldn't afford to put it in and keep the price down on the XDR. It's another $1,000 for a webcam. I actually think that there probably, so I think it should, and I think that there should be.

However, what gives me pause is the XDR and the fact that I think they probably heard from customers who said we put these things in places where we don't want a webcam and don't make us put a piece of tape on your beautiful five thousand dollar display right that that there are places where they don't want a webcam but i would i would hope so i would hope that there would be a webcam and maybe if they're going to do Face ID, put Face ID in there or something. It should be a great webcam and center stage in there, right? Like that's what it should be. And quite frankly, I will be disappointed if it isn't there. But that doesn't mean they're going to do it. They don't just release products to please me, unfortunately, if only.

I do think that they will. I think the Pro Display XDR, looking at the Pro Display XDR as reasoning for any future decision, I think is a fool's errand. Like that is a one-off thing for me in the way that the Mac Pro was a one-off thing. It's like it existed for a very specific, like the iMac Pro, sorry, existed for a very specific purpose

in a alternate timeline that got broken and we came back to reality. Like, why did they not put a camera in that? Well, because they just didn't. Because this was meant to be like a replacement for a reference display. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I just think it's like looking at that

as any reason for future decisions. I don't think it's like, I don't think Apple's ever going to charge separately for a stand on a monitor ever again. Yeah, I think you're right. It was just this one thing. Yeah, the XDR should not be, hopefully, a proof of any future plans for monitors, but who knows? Do I think it'll happen? I mean, I hope it happens.

I don't know if I have an answer, do I think it'll happen? Because Apple often will vex us with their product choices for something like this. But like a modern Apple display external for people who have got a Mac mini or, you know, whatever that device is that they're hooking up. Are they going to want a webcam? Yes. Are they going to want center stage? Yes, they are. Why would you not do that and make them put something on the top of their monitor? Like, don't do it.

I mean, if they're worried about security concerns, you know, make it available without or sell a $15 piece of tape that you put up there or whatever. I don't care. But I want it and they should do it and they should feel bad if they aren't doing it. I want it and they should do it and they should feel bad if they aren't doing it. And Splendid asks, what do you use to synchronize files across your laptop and desktop other than just drag and drop?

I found myself starting to learn to use terminals so I could work out how to write an rsync shell script, but I don't trust myself to not delete anything. Splendid, stop. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Why would you do that? There's a feature in iCloud to do this exact thing.

Yeah, that's my number one piece of advice is if you got to pay a little more for iCloud, do it. But like, don't do that. Sync your desktop and your documents folders with iCloud and just do that and see how that works. Because that is why that feature is there. Yeah, please stop. Or you could do what I do

and have like a bunch of things that are actually inside of Dropbox and pay for Dropbox and use that. But, and investigate because some of the apps you use may actually have a feature that lets them sync their settings across. Like I use BBEdit and I've talked about it a lot.

I've written about it a lot, mostly in BBEdit. They, you can put their application support folder inside iCloud and it just uses it. And it's not, it's documented, but it's like, there's not like a preference for it, but it works. And so, you know, if that's what you're frustrated about is like app preferences you should check and see if your app preferences have a way of syncing

to ask the developer and if they don't you should say please do this but like i don't recommend writing janky scripts or maybe your scripts would be pristine but still like don't do it like use the cloud services that have been provided to you, please. I'm so pleased that you stopped doing this and wrote in because that meant that you had the peace of mind, like foresight to be like, this is probably a bad idea. Because there are lots of people that do not stop at that point. And then they end up going to the Apple store and saying, please, can you help me get my data back?

And the Apple store says, no, I cannot do that. I use dropbox basically if we're talking about file storage it's all dropbox i use dropbox as if it is finder like that is when i open a new finder window it goes to my dropbox because that is where i keep every single file that i care about although i will i will say you would be surprised at what's in icloud drive because apps more and more apps are supporting iCloud drive for their syncing. And so they put it in there. Yeah.

I use iCloud drive syncing when a, when a, when a, when an app forces that. So like I have a bunch of numbers documents or whatever, and they sync of iCloud. However, if it's something that I consider to be important,

I will save it out to Dropbox and I will just open it from Dropbox. Like I kind of treat the iCloud syncing as if the app is just basically what it is actually intended to do. Like how you would have any app

just having its own data inside of that app, you know? I could kind of treat it like that. But if it's an important thing, it will get saved out as a file. If you want to hear more about some of the weird and wonderful things that me and Jason are doing with Dropbox,

we talk about that in today's Upgrade Plus. It's not related to this question, Splendid. You're not going to get more out of it. We're not hiding your answer in Upgrade Plus. We talk about some other Dropbox-related things. If any of you want to get that, you can go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up, $5 a month or $50 a year. You get longer ad-free episodes of Upgrade, including a bunch of other wonderful perks of being a Relay.fm member, including access to a wonderful Discord,

which houses our live chat, which you can, if you listen to the show, we record live, by the way, if you ever want to check out the show live Mondays at 9am Pacific time, anybody can listen for free at relay.fm slash live. We also have that in the Discord, but the live chat, which is a wonderful group of people who provide us lots of great follow-up and feedback as we record, they are in our RelayFM members Discord, which you can get access to at getupgradeplus.com. Thank you so much to everybody that has signed up.

It really helps support the show, and we greatly, greatly appreciate it. We also appreciate our sponsors of this episode, Squarespace, Memberfort, and Capital One. But most of all, we appreciate every single one of you for listening, as you do every single week. And we'll be back next time. If you want to find Jason in the meantime, and you especially do with the Apple results coming up,

go to sixcolors.com, and Jason is at Jason L, j-s-n-e-l-l. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Merci, France. Merci beaucoup.