Upgrade - 392: The Whimsy Committee

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Apple made a ton of money and released a ton of betas with new features. Face ID works with masks, Universal Control causes the soul of the Mac pointer to leave its body, the iPad relies on legacy nodes, the iPhone may take on Square, Dutch regulators are unsatisfied, and we tried to warn Spotify but it wouldn't listen.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 392 today's show is brought to you by text expander capital one zoc doc and member four my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell happy birthday mike hurley thank you very much Jason. It's very kind of you to say. It is, in fact, my birthday today as we're recording this because that's just how the world moves. Yes, if you listen to this a different day, it's not his birthday anymore. So sorry, you missed out.

No, unless you just, everybody decides to observe my birthday at the time when they listen to this. To upgrade 392. Yeah, it's always your birthday in this episode when they listen to this. To upgrade 392? Yeah. It's always your birthday in this episode. Uh-huh. I have a question.

Hashtag SnellTalk question from Zach. Zach wants to know, Jason, do you use the genie or scale effect when you minimize windows on the Mac? I was actually surprised today.

I don't know why it surprised me because I was checking this, that you choose between one or the other. That was kind of a thought to me where I was like, oh, isn't there just one where there isn't an animation? And the answer is no.

Which one do you use? Genial Scale. So this is a classic OS 10 lore. This is that thing where Steve Jobs demoed the genie effect and he did it like 10 times and he held down the key, the option key to make it go slow so you could

see how cool it was and um that's great and then everybody else was like uh it's kind of a lot how about just a simple scale effect and uh they they put that in there as an option it's like you can choose the scale effect you want i choose the scale effect i i don't like the genie effect i i agree with the people who said it's kind of showy and it's unnecessary. I rarely see this effect regardless because I very rarely am minimizing a window into the dock on my Mac. But if I were to do that, I would see the scale effect. I also, I just want to say this is like such a classic Apple bit of, of weird whimsy. And I'm not sure whether this was like, I think Steve Jobs loved this stuff. I think it's like cover flow. I think Steve Jobs had stuff that he just got a kick out of and he's like, yeah, let's put it in there. And I'm not sure Apple has whimsy quite like that anymore. I know Marco Arment went on a tear about whimsy a while ago about Apple. But I think Apple wants to do things that are whimsical. I just feel like today's Apple, it's probably more of a process, the whimsicality process, where they get a committee together, the whimsy committee, and they have some scores and they have some analysis. They get some people in there to run the numbers about whether this is too whimsical or whimsical enough.

And then sometimes whimsy comes out, but it's manufactured whimsy in a way that maybe back in the day it was really just like if you made Steve Jobs laugh, you got to keep your wacky thing in the product. And Genie, I think, is one of those. Also, it's showing off because they had every window as a texture um because they were using uh what it was display postscript and then it was quartz but it's like they were using their compositing engine which was at the time state-of-the-art best in the business um and so you could do things like apply these wild effects on windows and so it was also showing off on their part. But that's a long digression just to say that I have no whimsy in my settings. It's scale. Minor or Genie, I think that might be the default.

And I've just never thought to change it because I never minimize Windows. It's like a little memorial for Steve Jobs in every Mac, that thing. I really, seriously, because I think Steve Jobs just loved it. And so it's just, it's part of the lore. And why change it? As we know from observing Apple over the years, if Apple doesn't have to change an aspect, like the images in the login screen,

if it doesn't have to make changes, it just leaves things there for decades. So that's the genie effect. If you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or use question mark SnellTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. Please send them in. I would appreciate

them. This one I pulled from the archives. I would love some new SnellTalk questions. Oh yeah, please. I have some follow up for you, Jason. Chris wrote in to let us know that the UK Warner store has Ted Lasso merch now. All right, get in there. Unfortunately, everything that I wanted was out of stock.

I got an off-brand Richmond t-shirt for Christmas. Okay. Lauren wanted to find one, and she actually found, ironically enough, she found the one that John Maltz makes on Cotton Hero. I was about to ask if that was the place. And she didn't realize it. And then she's like, oh, you know this person, right? Like, yeah, that's John Maltz's off-brand one.

And I was recognized on the street. I wore it walking the dog the other day. And somebody was like, hey, Ted Lasso. So they're out there. Anyway, you can buy your, you can cannot buy it because everybody in the uk has already purchased ted lasso merch apparently yep so i put my name like they have like an email thing and so i put it in and then once they restock i want the sweatshirt like the afc richmond sweatshirt that they have it's as it says on the website they're most popular uh and i'm not

surprised so i want one of those and uh so as soon as it goes into stock i will buy one and then i can i don't know shave off my beard wear a mustache and walk around as if i'm ted lesser i wouldn't have a good enough mustache like my mustache wouldn't be no no one does that's the that's the beauty of it is nobody does that's a real mustache right yeah he grows that it looks real i think i saw a picture recently that seemed to suggest that they were starting shooting again someone on instagram i think it was uh the guy who plays coach beard they were all getting on what looked like a private jet which kind of looked kind of cool did you do you think that it's possible that sometimes somebody's

gonna either buy like a lower division uk football team and and just turn them into the richmond greyhounds or that there's going to be some sort of promotion where somebody wears the richmond kit for a game or something like that do you think somebody a stunt like that i could imagine apple doing something like that like convincing a team to call themselves uh afc richmond because they do stuff like this and they've done stuff like this funnily enough mostly in the u.s right where they like take over a store or something and it's like they sell the the shortbread um i could imagine there being some kind of stunt in a off-season game or something of afc richmond right something like that and maybe having jason sudeikis there something like

that i could imagine that happening honestly i'm actually a little surprised that a lower division maybe they have and i just haven't heard about it a lower division team in america hasn't done that like in the second division here just hasn't said i know we're the tucson whatever's but um apologies to my friends in tucson who are actually supporters of the tucson whatever's i can't remember their name and they're like no no no now we're afc richmond for a game maybe i mean they're the discord is mentioning which is a good point ryan reynolds and um the catholic mythic quest oh my god he's blanking on his name now uh from always yeah they bought a football club in wales called rexham yes they did and they're doing a they're doing a little show about that yeah it's fc tucson by the

way so of course they're the tucson whatever it's because they don't have a name they're just fc tucson so they could be fc tucson and now like oh surprise we're a we're at afc richmond for a game fc tucson sounds like a star wars droid i see i was gonna say it's a rapper fc tucson yeah and i mean like mc tucson mc like mc tucson yeah yeah uh apple has made the first episode of their new show the after party available for free on youtube this is a uh chris miller and phil lord lord yeah production is this is chris miller's like solo thing i think but they're both executive producing it like he's written it and is directing it like create it so it's the the lego movie and they're both involved 21 jump street and loads of other things yeah so the first episodes on youtube they dropped the first

three this seems to be apple's model now right as they drop the first three if they can of a new show this show needed it this show needed the first three at once and they put the the youtube i watched the first two yeah um but yeah you do need that you do need it because the premise is kind of like it's a murder mystery where there's a sort of a locked room with a bunch of guests in it and one of them is the murderer um but there are it's not quite what i thought it was where they were like every episode is its own genre It's not quite that because there's lots of framing sequence stuff. Yeah, that's how they kind of pitched it. But it's like there's these two things going on at once.

There's like the crime trying to be solved and then the interviews that are occurring. And the interviews are then all told from that person's kind of imagination and memory. And they are then set within different kind of imagination and memory and they are then set within different kind of tv and movie genres so right tiffany haddish is the is the lead basically and she's the detective who's got one night to solve the case because then they're bringing in some fancy detective to solve it but she's the local detective and she's going to try to solve it um and so she sits people down and she's like, you know, tell me, tell me your point of view. Cause she's very knowledgeable about like every, everybody's got their own movie that

they are the star of. And that is the premise of the show. So the first episode is, this is a romantic comedy. And the second episode is, this is a fast and furious movie essentially. Um, and, uh, she's great. The third is a musical. Awesome. And the cast is kind of

amazing there's a lot of people in there where you're like wait what yeah the class is absolutely incredible you're in this i had a funny moment where uh there's a guy the character's name is brett isn't there's kind of the star of the second episode which is just incredibly good and the whole time i'm like i know this guy know this guy. And he really reminded me of a character in the show Superstore, NBC Superstore. And it's because it's his brother. It's his brother. Yeah. And I was going to say, I also know this actor because I refer to him as not Wahlberg.

Yes. I mean, I think that's why he was cast, honestly. He looks like a Wahlberg. As soon as I saw him, I was like, oh, I know who you are. Slightly melted Wahlberg. Yeah. Yeah. He looks so much like a walberg as soon as i saw him i was like oh i know who you are slightly melted walberg yeah yeah he looks he looks so much like mark walberg but also like his brother who's who's the big dummy in in superstore yeah this is a very fun show but the first episode is is okay it's okay it's the second episode and then it gets even better with a third episode i think they kind of ramp up because you got to understand that the premise is that they keep cycling through these different everybody's

got a different view of what happened and it is it is a rashomon thing i mean it is literally you keep seeing the same events for that night through everybody's film genre perspective that's the that's the big idea but um after two episodes i can say i'm three for you that it's a pretty well executed it's a fun executed it's a fun idea I like when these things are done well it's like you see how it's the same goings on but they're different

they're slightly different in important ways from person to person my understanding of this show is like the way that it was pitched is it is possible for us to work out who it is before the end like that's that's how i was reading about that's how they were pitching this is like the clues and apparently are there and you can try and come up with your own idea before the end

that's my hope i really hope that this isn't one of those ones where they kind of cop out and it's a thing you never could have worked out you know what i mean where it's like oh that it was this person which is a character that wasn't in the show and they did it yeah they seem to be playing fair because they have to go they're crossing over the same time iterating over the same time again and again and although it's all from individuals perspectives there's a limit to how much you can cheat on that so i think they have to have it all locked down about exactly what happened. And then it's just in the ways that it's revealed. I want to throw out another show, by the way, that is not on Apple TV Plus. It's on Peacock in the US. It was a BBC show. So you already, I guess, saw it or missed it.

So you already, I guess, saw it or missed it. But speaking of mysteries, it's just on Peacock now. It's called Vigil. And it's a six episode, I think, series about a murder on a submarine. A British Navy submarine. submarine and because it happens in uk territorial waters they actually send a police officer to the submarine while it's on its mission to uh to uh find out the truth and it's kind of a it's like a locked it's a really locked room mystery right because it's everybody's on the submarine and uh and the reason i wanted to mention it is that there's a really locked room mystery, right? Because everybody's on the submarine. And the reason I wanted to mention it is that there's a moment in the second episode, I think,

where you wonder if they're playing fair or not. And then you realize that it's that reveal of like, oh, this is more complicated than we thought it was kind of thing. But I'm loving that show. And people should check that out too. So Vigil. It's on Peacock in the U.S. that show and uh people should check that out too so vigil it's on peacock in the u.s and it's probably available somewhere readily available in the uk because you know it's from there yeah bbc's a bit weird yeah i don't know i don't know whether they go away or come back or go to some strange uh streaming service or what even though i pay for it because it's basically a tax on the

uk people uh after a certain period, things come off iPlayer and they go to BritBox and I have to pay for them. So, you know, gotta get them on both ends, I suppose. Dutch regulators are unhappy with Apple's plans for allowing third-party payments for dating apps. So you remember we were talking about this. This is one

of the things that Apple then published, the support documentation, developer documentation for how to get the entitlements to be able to be a offering third-party payments or links out to go and pay if you're like for people to pay you if you're when he's a dating app well the regulator is unhappy with the way that Apple is doing this they are saying that it's against their rules that they've set out that developers must choose between whether they send customers to a webpage or integrate a third-party system.

Dutch regulators say they should be able to do both. So Apple has set out this thing where they're like, hey, you can apply for an entitlement and you can either A, integrate a third-party payment system or B, send your customers out to pay on the web. Dutch regulators are saying no, they should be able to do all of these things this wasn't in the ruling but i wouldn't be surprised if they're also going to contest the uh separate binary thing but we'll see how that goes um the regulators are also unhappy that the system hasn't actually been implemented it's

kind of just been announced and right put your email address in here maybe we'll get back to you and then they're finding them they're finding apples five five million dollars a week for 10 for the maximum of 50 million dollars which you know is this is that classic thing which is that if you're if you've got all the money in the world um a fee a fine is just a fee and you can just keep doing the thing you're doing because apple how much is it going to pay for us to do this how much yeah can we just write a check to make you go away at that point like and i know that that's not what the purpose of the dutch government is and that they can change their their finding structure and they can do whatever but i think it's interesting that it is a find that i would say Apple is not going to care about.

Apple is worried more about the big picture, about what this means internationally than it does in this one market. I mean, that find, though, it goes up to, then what happens once they've got that? I mean, then we might start getting into even murkier legal waters, right? It's like, okay, we find you the maximum amount, you still haven't done it, so now we're going to go through this all over again. I think it also shows Apple's going to be put on its own pace.

It's not going to be put on someone else's pace and they don't like that. The Dutch regulators are like, no, no, we told you to do this. And I think there's an argument to be made that a regulator coming down and saying, change this technical thing right away. I have no doubt that Apple is dragging its feet,

but also it's unrealistic to say, do this thing we told you to do it. It's like any of these court orders that say you have to do this. I think even if Apple is trying to long play it and drag its feet on it, there is to a certain degree truth in the fact that this is highly technical and I can't just flip a switch. No, they're making part of this more complicated than it needs to be. You shouldn't need to have an entitlement to go outside of the app store.

Oh, sure. Like I said, this is what I mean about dragging their feet, but I don't think it's as easy as just saying, okay, we'll just accept it now. The integrating of third-party options is complicated, but the idea of having a link where someone could then just go out to the app store and then come back, That doesn't require anything. They're just making it more complicated than it needs to be

so they can try and control it. Sure. We're just going to say to everybody who didn't believe us, we told you so. Back in episode 299 of Upgrade, when Spotify bought the Joe Rogan experience, we said, this is going to be a problem for Spotify. And we were right.

It is, finally. And without getting into the whole debate, because there are a lot of people out there like, of course this was going to happen, and Spotify's business strategy. All we said was, by funding a very controversial podcast, they are going to bring trouble onto themselves that they didn't need to do, but they've chosen to do by funding this very popular, but also very controversial

podcast. And we predicted at the time that there would be things that Joe Rogan would say or do that would lead to controversy that would then reflect badly on Spotify and cause Spotify to have to deal with the PR mess of it. And that that was the price they were going to pay beyond the money of funding Joe Rogan and making him a Spotify exclusive. And we heard from a few people, one in particular, and I don't actually even remember who it was now, but one in particular stuck with both of us. They were like, no, this isn't going to happen. They will never regret this. It'll be fine. And every time something like this happens,

you and I send messages back and forth saying, no regrets. It's all fine. But it's really exploded in the last week. And again, in the long term of Spotify's business, will it matter? Will it not? I don't know. It just feels to me like they made a decision that was their big, bold business move to say, Ha ha, we own the most popular podcast. And maybe we're not properly estimating all of the cleanup they were going to have to do again and again and again. But here they are.

So, yeah, we told you so. Let me tell you the mistake that they made, which I think is a mistake that we knew was the issue at the time. Joe Rogan hasn't changed the type of content that he's making. No, the show is the show. This is what it always was. It's not like, oh, you know, Joe Rogan was just a normal guy, and then he got that Spotify money, and he got all wacky. No.

The problem is, like, there was people that didn't like him. They had nowhere to go, right? Because, like, he wasn't really doing things that could get him thrown off of Apple Podcasts like Alex Jones was, right? Likelex jones is just way worse you know like he was it was like lots of uh hate speech and racism and to my knowledge at least joe rogan's not in that boat otherwise people would be asking apple podcasts to take him off He just says lots of things that are very controversial, not very well thought out, and

most of the time are not based in fact. It's like you can question then whether he should be taken off of every single podcast platform around, but the issue here is Spotify employ him, basically.

Yes, that's exactly it. They fund him. It's not a, am I going to be, because Spotify wants to have it both ways. They want to say, oh, we're an open platform, and so we let everything on, and you know, there's weird podcasts on Apple's podcast, too. But it's not the same, because he's funded specifically by Spotify. It would be different if he was on all the podcast services including spotify and then everybody would be like should joe rogan have a platform and all

the platformers would say you know we're not gonna intercede here but it's not that argument the argument is spotify owns him and they pay him yeah and so that that is a higher standard that they have to answer for. And then it gave people the ability to write articles and to complain to this company. And now it's like Spotify's Joe Rogan. And now we're into different waters now, right? I mean, if you had an axe to grind, you could grind it and attack him with it. But then also, just more people are paying attention and the more people that pay attention, the more stuff we can pull out and say like,

this guy says wild things. Does this match with Spotify's corporate guidelines? And so now Spotify have made some really kind of laughable, I think in some places, corporate like speech guidelines. Again, as if like, the really funny thing to me about this is

they have created a series of things you can and can't talk about, kind of like YouTube has. But YouTube doesn't own the content. Spotify owns this content. That's the difference. They put out in there, again, because the point here is that

they're doing massive damage control over Joe Rogan because they decided to fund Joe Rogan. Yeah. Despite the fact that it was clear this sort of stuff was going to happen. Yeah. Clear to us anyway in episode 299 almost 100 weeks ago now. So, but the issue is also they're like, oh, well, we've got some new guidelines in place and we're going to look at every podcast. And like, okay, what does that mean you're going to look at every podcast are you going to have somebody listen to every podcast on spotify is it only the ones you fund or is it all of them because they're like we're going to

put labels on about anything that covers covet 19 it's like well are you now analyzing every podcast that seems unlikely that you're actually going to do that or is it just the ones that you fund and they don't need to do this like they don't this is the thing like they don't i don't think they need to do this part right like now they've gone too far now they're like youtube all anyone's asking them to do is focus on the content they own and then outside of that just respond to people's complaints right like this is how everybody else works in because it's no one owns this content youtube has to go the extra step because they make money from all the content right and so they're they only have these rules in place because they want to

have rules to say you broke the rules and advertisers complain to them that this content's on the platform right so like spotify is doing this this huge run around just to try and quell the anger that people have it's a distraction. It's damage control. And our point here, by the way, is not to reopen this whole issue of platforms and whether Joe Rogan should have a platform or anything like that. It's really not. Our point here is to say,

Spotify made what they thought was a galaxy brain move to take the biggest podcast on the internet and make it a spotify exclusive and a bunch of people were like are you sure you want to go down the path of owning and operating what this guy says because this guy says a lot of kind of wacky stuff and makes a lot of people really angry and you're gonna have to justify it because you own it now like literally i know i know they don't really own it. And when it's done, Joe Rogan, I think walks away with the content, but like metaphorically,

you own your actions. You own this podcast. And I think Spotify probably, you know, you could give them credit and say that they just were clueless. But I think the truth is probably that they were just arrogant and they're like, nah, it'll be fine. We're great. It'll be, it'll be fun. It'll be they were just arrogant and they're like nah it'll be fine we're great it'll be it'll be fine it'll be great he's gotten by this far we'll be and this and you know and this is not the first blow up it is the biggest blow up they

will continue to happen because joe rogan bless his heart it's not changing he's gonna do what he's gonna do it's made him wildly successful he put out this this thing which i cannot believe and he's just like i don't even prepare for these conversations. It's like, you're not surprising me, Joe. I'm not surprised that you don't do even the basic level of work for your massively successful podcast. It's hilarious to me

how much more work we do for this show than he does for his show, but hey-ho. So the fact that he says that and he's kind of proud of it is like that means he's never going to change. I was thinking about this a bit over the weekend. Amazon have got this right. Amazon are smart.

Amazon are smarter. Because what they're doing, when they just did another one of these deals with My Favorite Murder, they don't own the content. They just have exclusive first rights to the content and sell all the ads. That's the better way to do this because then you don't own it.

You're just distributing it like everybody else. You distribute it just earlier. And I think that that is a more separated thing and you're still benefiting because people that love the show will want it a week before everybody else gets the show. So maybe they'll check out Amazon Music for their podcasts. By the way, Amazon Music has been a previous sponsor of the show.

I'll just say that. This has got absolutely zero to do what I'm talking about right now. But then they sell all the ads, which is where all the money comes from anyway. And because they sell all the ads, they're going to get more listeners. They get more money in, right? Which is where Spotify are kind of locking it down. I think that Amazon's just a smarter way. It's all distinctions, right? Amazon, you've got a business relationship

and you can put pressure on that. But it's not the same as saying, this is a Spotify exclusive. We own it. It is our baby. It's a different thing. And again, their issue this last week has been with musicians pulling their music off in protest of Joe Rogan being on Spotify, which comes up with another thing, which is, again, I have to ask the question, is the opportunity to own podcasting worth it to Spotify to have issues with its core business which is music you've got to imagine

there's some very um tense meetings between division heads at spotify right now right like the head of music and the head of podcasts they're probably not friends at the moment yeah yeah and it's funny too because this is a very different kind of business for spotify because music doesn't really have as we said back in episode 299, music doesn't really have exclusives in the same way. I mean, yeah, there's live sessions and stuff like that, but for the most part, releases just are released, and they're everywhere. And this whole thing was an idea of, we're not going to just put podcasts in Spotify. We're going to force some podcasts to only be in Spotify, and you're going to have to get them there. By the way, before we move on from this topic, I want to mention another couple of things. One of the top five, no, it's probably

top 15 podcasts in Apple podcasts is a podcast with a picture of Joe Rogan on it and the words Joe Rogan experience in the name of the podcast, but it's actually a podcast about what happened on that week's Joe Rogan podcast. It's the Joe Joe Rogan Rogan Rogan experience experience. It is. And it is in the top charts because people are looking on Apple podcasts for Joe Rogan and not finding it. It's number nine at the moment. It is the Joe Rogan experience review podcast with a big fat picture of Joe Rogan right

in the center. Oh my God. with a big fat picture of Joe Rogan right in the center. Oh my, how? And like, good for the guy who does that because that is the ultimate search engine squatting going on there. So, yeah. They got Joe Rogan Experience Review Podcast

is one that I see. There's probably quite a few of them. That's the number nine podcast on Apple Podcasts right now. That's just something. Because people are looking for it, right? them that's that's the number nine number nine podcast on apple podcast right now that's just there's something because people are looking for it right and that's what they're getting so one thing i don't think the story is over uh the question really the question is if there's going to be a musician big enough right no offense to um neil young not big enough not not uh important enough in spotify's eyes i mean like look because the point the point too you know their point is not to look neil young

very smart what neil young did here i think neil young knew that this wasn't going to make a difference but what neil young has gotten is exactly what's happened which is it was it started a fire yep that's it and so but the question now is will there be an artist big enough right like if taylor swift is like this is one everyone uses but like this is you know that's the ultimate leverage that everybody has over spotify which is spotify's business is a music streaming business and if spotify deciding we're going to spend money on exclusive content in podcasts is if their decisions there are so questionable that they're harming their music business appreciably, this becomes a much bigger problem.

And I doubt there's going to be much of a change here, but there is a scenario where Spotify just decides, you know what, we're not going to fund. This is similar to the argument about Substack, where people are really angry about some of the content that's on Substack. But what intensifies the argument is that Substack chose some people and gave them essentially funding to launch their Substacks. And it changes the conversation because then you're not a platform anymore now you are funding the content you're a publisher of that you have more responsibility and so that that would be my question for for spotify is yeah at what point do you say this whole exclusive podcast thing turned out to be too much uh and with too much potential harm to our music relationships. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Have you ever hit a technical snafu while shopping

online? Has filling out payment fields given you a headache? Has a mobile banking app been down when you wanted to use it? Capital One believes everyone deserves better banking, and this means easier access to your money, more security, And that's why Capital One is investing in machine learning. Because machine learning allows Capital One to do things like fight fraud with random forests. These are models that quickly detect suspicious activity and make it faster to alert federal investigators. They identify how mobile app outages happen with causal models. Keeping their mobile app up and running doesn't happen by accident. Anomaly detection and incident response help determine why app outages happen so engineers can quickly remedy them. Capital One speed up online shopping with machine learning at the edge. They make shopping with virtual card numbers smoother and more secure. This technology

is based on logistic regression models and running inference in the browser. This identifies payment fields, which helps making using virtual card numbers 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 and you can find out more. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Got a couple of stories for our rumor roundup, Jason. This has become a new segment in my brain. I think this is probably obvious to everyone at the moment.

I like doing rumor roundups. And we said before, especially because Mark Gurman seems to always publish something over the weekend. And I have a couple of Bloomberg stories for you today. The first is that Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is working on the ability to allow for iPhones to natively accept card payments via the built-in NFC reader, removing the need for something like a square reader. It's unclear whether the payment acceptance option

will be branded as part of Apple Pay, though the team working on the feature has been working within Apple's payment division since being brought over from a company called MobiWave, which was a credit card payments company like for phone for this exact thing that Apple acquired in 2020 for around $100 million. This is an interesting one to me, like, because my feeling is, right, this feels like a strategic play not a technology play which is why they bought this company because i feel like apple could have worked this out like if it was just if the if they were creating say an api which is like we're opening up the nfc reader then they can leave it for the other tech companies to work out how to make that a thing that they can

charge from right because nfc is a pretty known technology at this point. Yeah, although NFC is really locked down on the iPhone. I mean, what I'm saying is they could have, if they were just going to be like, oh, hey, Square, I know you want to be able to do this about the reader. We're just going to let you do that. Yeah, no, this is strategically, they're like they wanted to all go through Apple Pay, right?

Yeah. And so my fear on this is like if apple does this the logic in my brain would be like this is just going to be an apple pay thing and third parties will not be able to use this technology yeah i think that's a good question right like will will it be that would be my guess my guess and and i wonder how much of this gets calibrated now thinking of future regulation and court cases and things yeah uh for apple because there are two ways that apple could do this apple could say we are making this an api uh for approved apps who want to accept payments

or they could say all payments go through apple pay which is probably what they'll do because this sounds like very much part of their financial building, their financial empire that they're trying to build and saying, you no longer the, you know, the person down at the farmer's market that is currently, you know, struggling with a square terminal. Now, all they need to do is just hold out their iPhone and you can tap and you can accept payment and it's done and you don't have to do anything else. payment and it's done and you don't have to do anything else. So, um, I, I, you could argue that, that they missed their chance and that they should have done this. You know, I don't think they have the hardware to do it, um, years ago and that now, um, more entities have built like little terminals and stuff where you can tap and all of that. And that's, you know, tapping on a payment terminal is a better experience than some dude handing his phone holding his phone out to you and saying tap here man so i don't know but uh but i'm sure apple views this

as being a way for them to kind of insinuate themselves into another part of the financial picture my hope would be at least that they could offer it as some kind of technology that third parties could integrate with like apple could still process the payment. They're still going to make the money. But at the same time, then I don't know if a company like Square, I mean, they make money from processing the payments. So why would they give that to Apple? This is just, remind me, do iPads have NFC chips in them?

No. So I have to wonder if this is going on, if one of the other conversations that's going on inside Apple is maybe we need to start putting NFCs in NFC chips in iPads so we can sell them as terminals. Because right now, I could see them saying cellular iPad, NFC terminal built in, iPad Pro for your business. There's a sales pitch there, but they don't currently have NFC stuff in iPads. Also, Apple Pay Cash, I want to point out that when we talk about this, and I know that you and I talk about this a lot, like Apple's got all this financial, you know, services plans, but like Apple Card and Apple Pay Cash are like in the US,

right? Yeah. I just saw there's a link from matt in the chat some might have nfc chips i don't know anyway um that are unused oh yeah apparently the ipad air 2 has an nfc chip that's hilarious so that's that's from a long time ago so but that was probably like they put it on the board because it was cheaper to put it on the board with something else if they have them apple doesn't talk about it uh But yeah, so there's a breakdown. Apple Pay is worldwide, not everywhere, but in many, many, many countries. And this is the ability for you to use your phone

and your watch as a card. But Apple Pay Cash, which is the, I want to send money to somebody else, that's US only. And Apple Card is US only. Because they require other things. I'm still really surprised that Apple Pay Cash has not left the US.

Me too. Even if they just kept it as inter-country, like not international, this seems like a strategic play. For me to be able to send money in the UK, I mean, what I'll say is, maybe the reason is, the UK's payment system is very advanced and very good and free. And like, you know, I can send money to anyone in the UK using

my banking app and it's immediate, you know, like we have a better system here. I maybe, I don't know what your system's like there, but everything I've ever done with an American bank seems vastly more complicated. Oh, yeah. No, it's our system. I had somebody when we were learning how to do payments to people for our business that were direct payments. We have to use a system called ACH for that. And a bunch of other stuff like Zelle has been created, which is like a bunch of the big banks trying to create their own Venmo.

And there's Venmo. But ACH, I was told by somebody who actually has worked at the place that does the ACH payments. What this person said to me was, your vision, my vision of it being like a big windowless room with a bunch of people dressed like they're accountants from the 30s, and they've all got adding machines and little green eye shades this person was like you're really not that far off it is an incredibly outmoded system that for whatever reason has not changed and that's the u.s like so yeah the u.s banking system is so slow to change and uh and but and yet apple is doing these things in the u.s which i find i i find that fascinating because there are other countries where you think it would be easier to deploy this stuff. Then again, those countries also probably have more advanced alternatives, so there's less of an opportunity there.

But still, wouldn't you think that when Tim Cook goes on a financial call and boasts about Apple Card and Apple Pay Cash, that he would really like to be able to boast about how they're in other countries and they're not. Yeah, Apple Card is the biggest surprise to me than Apple Pay Cash. Are there credit cards in other countries? I think there are. There are. And just for that one, it's like it seems like much more of a longer term strategic move.

And they could find credit card companies in most countries around the world that would be willing to partner with them on that but they have yet to do it so this is an interesting one to me honestly this feels to me like they could do this anywhere that um apple pay is accepted because that's all this is it's just a credit card or debit card transaction via nfc i'm not entirely sure because you need to be able to accept it which is why i was thinking Because that's all this is. It's just a credit card or debit card transaction via NFC. I'm not entirely sure because you need to be able to accept it, which is why I was thinking my gut feeling is that the way this will work is that it'll take the money and put it in your Apple Pay Cash.

So it'll only work in the US because it'll work with Apple Pay Cash. Because you've got to take... Oh, right. Because they're not going to want to do the work of having people sign up. Right. And you can't do like a reverse Apple Pay where it charges on one card and debits to the other card. Instead, you have to have a linked account, and that is the Apple Pay Cash infrastructure. Good point.

Maybe if they do this, that might finally be an impetus for them to roll out Apple Pay Cash elsewhere. Yes. But that's my guess is that it'll be like you can take a payment for your bread at the at the farmer's market and you just ended up with Apple Pay Cash on your phone. And then at the end of the day, you can transfer that back to your bank account. That's my guess about how they're going to implement this. If they do this, the interesting part is nothing new is needed. Like every device that has an NFC chip in it, a software update would turn this feature on. NFC is a very

simple technology that does a lot of complicated things. I remember when I was first thinking about when the Apple Watch and the iPhone got NFC, got Apple Pay, I was thinking, how's it going to work on the tube? I'm underground. I don't have any reception. I was like well neither does my debit card my debit card

has no reception uh you know as we know from like apple explaining it to us all these years ago it's basically just creating a fake card that's all it's doing it's just like changing the numbers and giving it a weird number thing lauren was asking me about this because she took her she didn't have her phone with her and she was at Whole Foods. She was like, can I pay? My Apple Watch isn't cellular, she said. So can I use Apple Pay? And I'm like, yeah, because it's just a credit card.

It knows what the credit card is. It's stored on the device. It isn't calling home to the internet to do anything. It's literally just providing the digits to the receiver. Mark Gurman has also given some details on the larger iMac that we've been pontificating over. So Mark is saying it will be the iMac Pro. It will feature an M1 Pro and or M1 Max processors

as an option with a similar design language to the 24-inch iMac. Yeah, yeah. I think it is going to be what we thought it was, right? I don't think... There are going to be some surprises, maybe. Like, is it going to have a better webcam? Is it going to have Face ID or something like that?

Or is it really going to be... My guess would be it's going to be straight up just a big 24-inch iMac. Same look, no colors, probably, or bad colors, dark colors. What size do you reckon it will be, the screen? I think it's 27. 27? I don't think they're going to make it 30 or whatever.

I think that that's too big for most people. So it would be physically smaller, larger screen than the one it replaces, right? Because the 24 is like physically similar size, larger screen. Yeah, that's my guess. And then it'll come in like space gray and maybe silver. And then, you know, again, it's the usual, you know, midnight green and yeah,

twilight yellow. I don't know. Like again, things that are very boring, I think, and not bright and fun, but that are pro. And the black bezels, right? Black bezels, not the light gray bezels, but the black bezels. It's what we've predicted and then it'll have the processors in there. And what I find interesting is Mark Gurman is like really cagey about like what Mac might ship in the spring event. He's like something, and he talks about this product,

but it's still like, when's it going to ship? And I'm going to hold that hope that it's a spring event thing and they're going to actually ship it in the spring event because they want to get it out there. But Mark Gurman doesn't seem to know. He doesn't know. He seems to not know this one, so I don't know. But bring it on.

Almost certainly I will buy this, right? Almost certainly this will be my new Mac, even though the idea of an external display and something like that is tempting, I think it will probably just be this. I've been very happy with my 27-inch iMac lifestyle that I started back when the 5K iMac came out. I'm pretty happy with it.

I think I'll just continue that. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends at TextExpander. Keep everything consistent and accurate of TextExpander. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly and errors in messaging can have significant consequences. TextExpander lets you make approved messaging available to every team member instantly with just a few keystrokes in its right hand, so your team will stay consistent, current, and accurate. With TextExpander, you can get your message right every single time. You expand content that corrects your spelling, keeps your language

consistent with just a few keystrokes, lets you fill out an email, lets you fill out forms, all with just a couple of keys, and you're right there. And the great part is everybody can share it. So your team members always know the right message for the right person at the right time without relying on memory, copy and paste, sending a Slack message, you know, that you don't have to ask anyone, hey, what are we saying for this? What is our messaging for this? It's all right there in TextExpander. We use RelayFM, we use it for these exact purposes.

We share advertising copy amongst the team and stuff. And because TextExpander has some fun stuff, when we're putting this into our system, you can just go to one field in the system, expand the TextExpander message, and it will put everything you need in every field because you can have it go like, you can have it like basically emulate the tab key. So it's like, and then all you can do is press confirm. And that's really fantastic stuff that we have at our fingertips because of TextExpander. As a listener of Upgrade, you can get 20% off your first year. Visit textexpander.com slash podcast to learn more about TextExpander. That Visit textexpander.com slash podcast to learn more about TextExpander.

That's textexpander.com slash podcast. Our thanks to TextExpander for their support of this show and RelayFM. So there are some new betas that came out tail end of last week. Big beta time. That were a bit chunky, I think. So we've got iOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3.

I'm not 100% sure how that happened, but it did. They rushed out a iOS update, a 15.1 update while macOS was still kind of spinning, so they got offset. Ah, yeah, because it took a while, didn't it, to come out? Yeah, I

forgot about that. Probably the biggest thing, the most attention-grabbing thing, because it's a new thing, an unexpected thing, is Face ID while wearing a mask. No Apple Watch required. So this uses, quote, unique features around the eyes as the way to authenticate you.

So you can be wearing your mask and you set this up as a separate process. It's like you go in and redo face id again because you have to make the choice um i would assume it's safe to assume this is less secure and i mean apple say it's less accurate uh but like it's got to be less secure right then i don't think so right because you got the full face or half the face um I'm wondering which of these is better from a security perspective out of this or the watch unlock. What do you think?

Well, watch unlock is probably better because it's a pure password. You've got your watch on your wrist and as long as it stays on your wrist and you've entered the passwords, it knows that it's you because it's still on your wrist. So I would probably call that higher security. entered the passwords it knows that it's you because it's still on your wrist so i would

probably call that higher security i also would think that apple wouldn't do this if they weren't fairly confident in the level of security of this thing yeah i i i wonder sure i want to what i wonder about is like where does touch id sit so like? So, like, if you've got, like, if you imagine we've got four things here. We've got Face ID, Face ID with watch, Face ID of a mask, and Touch ID. What is the security spread across these four things? I would think that Touch ID would probably be the highest security. That's my guess. I thought they said Face ID was more secure than Touch ID would probably be the highest security. That's my guess. I thought they said Face ID was more secure than Touch ID.

More secure than Touch ID. I believe they did. I believe they did. I think they said that Face ID was more secure. It's less likely to misidentify somebody as you than somebody's fingerprint as you. I'm just going on what I remember. I might not be accurate about that.

Yeah, the Watch Unlock, I mean, the beauty of the Watch watch unlock is it's biometric based on your knowledge of your own passwords. So that's pretty powerful. But beyond that, then you're just back to biometrics and saying, this is the person that I recognize. Yeah. Yeah. And the truth is Face ID, the whole idea is convenience. And now they've got Face ID in all these phones. So they need to do, even if Apple spent the last two years trying to get back to Touch ID, they need to do something like this.

Because there are so many be lots of situations where people are masked uh or have uh like a a scarf around their their mouth or something i don't know it's always been an it's always been a thing masking has always been a thing of an issue with face id around the world prior to the pandemic i remember right i remember the first time i read face masks and my initial thought was like the things that you wear at a spa like a beauty face mask and i was like i don't understand why are we talking about this and then it took me a while to realize oh no because there are countries in the world where they wear face masks like when they're sick this was like a very long time ago by the way zach is uh letting us

know in the in the relay fm members discord by, Touch ID is claimed to be one in 10,000, Face ID one in a million. Well, that's pretty good. So assuming that this new Face ID is, if it's less, it's probably still better than Touch ID. But then my thing about the watch on lock is I expect there is a massive variance of security depending on what kind of passcode you have. Because you can have a four-digit passcode on an Apple Watch, right? Sure.

Although I think you have to have entered the passcode on the watch and on the phone in order to enable the biometrics. But yeah, there is an interesting kind of scale. It's just funny, I think, to consider the path that Face ID has been on when you look back at Touch ID. I mean, look there is a the pandemic has kind of upended all of this right like i don't think that either the watch unlock or like the watch unlock feature would never have been introduced in my opinion no and it was a it

was obviously a a rush attempt to get that out there while they worked on this in the background which is something that's this is this is literally the feature that we were talking about during the pandemic yes like the beginning early days of the pandemic was can you do this was can you do face id with a mask on based on the parts that of your face you can see yeah and the answer is yeah give us two years and we'll get right back to you i'm not surprised though honestly like you gotta do the security work on this yeah and really be comfortable that what you're you know because you've got to do the security work on this and really be comfortable that what you're, you know, because you've got base. I would expect that to make sure this worked, they had to go back to like the very beginning of testing

for like they did with Face ID. For sure. Right? And so it's going to take a really long time. And honestly, I say like hats off to them for the interim solution of the watch unlock. Like I think they obviously knew that this is something that they wanted to do and like all right but that's going to take us too long

what can we do in the meantime oh we can do this um so there is a little bit more to this so also they have introduced the ability to do a face id scan wearing glasses to improve scanning for if you wear glasses and they recommend doing multiple scans if you wear glasses. And they recommend doing multiple scans if you wear multiple pairs of glasses. This is also better for sunglasses. However, the face ID while wearing a mask feature specifically will not work at all if you wear sunglasses because it cannot look at your eyes, right? It needs to see your eyes, which is not something face id required because it had your entire face right so when i was reading this i was hearing about this it's like yeah i'm not

going to enable this i'm fine i wear an apple watch every day if i if it was the only reason i was wearing an apple watch it was one of the main reasons when i started wearing an apple watch again uh then i would maybe consider it but now i wear an apple watch for a bunch of things you know as i'm back in kind of that life. So I was like, no, I'm fine with the Apple Watch authentication. So I'm just going to stick with it and keep what I expect as a higher level of security. But then I read this following quote from MacRumors

and it changed everything in my brain. Unlike the Apple Watch Face ID feature, Face ID of a mask is fully identical to standard face ID in terms of what can be authenticated. You can use face ID with a mask for Apple Pay purchases and in lieu of a passcode in third-party apps. So if you do the watch thing,

you still have to put a passcode in for Apple Pay and any app that uses authentication. So that would suggest to me, Jason, that Apple believe face ID of a mask, I expect is more secure than the watch version because otherwise, why would they let you do this?

Yeah, I do wonder about it. So this is exactly what happens to me when I'm in the store or somewhere because that's generally right. The only time I'm ever inside wearing a mask is in stores. And Bay Area has a mask mandate. We wear masks inside. So I'm in a store, and I need to look something on 1Password.

Guess what? I need to put in my password because it won't do watch unlock. Or I'm paying something at the register, and occasionally my Apple Watch will be like, I can't do Apple Pay right now. I don't know why it does that, but occasionally it does that. It's like, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, well, I guess I'll use my phone.

And then I go to my phone and it says, please put your password. Oh, gosh. I just habitually use my phone for Apple Pay and never think to use my watch. Like, I think that I wore that habit out in the time that i wasn't wearing an apple watch and it's just never come back to me right yeah that's you know even if you have apple watch authentication this is a superior method of authenticating because it unlocks everything that face id does and the apple watch authentication does not do that so it's a it's a big deal i think people are going to be really excited about this when

it comes out. Keep in mind, it's just developer beta. They'll probably do a public beta this week or next week, and then it'll be like a month or two before everybody else gets it. But it's great. I am surprised that this exists, and I'm very happy that this exists. And in the long run, like I said, in the long run, i said in the long run we are probably certainly certainly in many countries the public beta is out now jason public is out okay so in the long run there are lots of places that have masking culture and there are probably more now than there were before the pandemic uh and i i fully expect that there will also be periods where something will be going around and they'll say okay everybody should wear masks inside now and um and again there are also other uses in terms of

people covering up parts of their face because the weather and stuff like that like this is great it's like a face id for your eyes and you're probably not you know going outside like completely covered uh if you're spider-Man, face ID will not work. Sorry, Spider-Man. I think there is a version of the suit where he does show his eyes, so maybe that would work. He could just retract them.

Generally, it's a whole face thing. He's going to have to do touch ID, and touch ID is hard for him. Oh, I don't know. Because he wears gloves, too. He'll stick to it. But somehow his stickiness goes through the Oh, I don't know. Because he wears gloves too. And he will just, yeah, he'll stick to it. He does. But somehow his stickiness goes through the gloves. So maybe his, I don't know.

Anyway, don't be, if you're Spider-Man and you need to unlock your phone, you're going to have to swing to the top of a tall building and take your mask off. The whole way, not just that halfway that he does sometimes. Because it's still not the right part of the face. It's the right, yeah, that's right. It's not mouth ID. They've also in 15.4 added the ability to add a note to a iCloud keychain entry.

So you can go into passwords. It's passwords, isn't it, on the iPhone and iPad. There's now the ability for you to add a note field in there. Getting closer and closer to that full password manager. Yeah, I'm starting to think that one of our ios 16 predictions should be that passwords will be an app because it's so fully functional and yet it's in the settings app and i wonder if they might actually break it out even if it's literally the same functionality into a password app just so that there's something on

your home screen that says i do think we are getting closer i mean we're always getting closer to that eventuality i think it's speeding up because i think the impression i get from conversations with and also seeing the output of people that work on passwords and security at apple they are very passionate about this as a as a project and have done just some truly incredible things like the um the way it pulls in the authenticated text messages and stuff like that like really truly like just like life-changing things in software yeah you see ricky mondello on twitter um they talk about this a lot. And the idea that they are working very hard to integrate sort of like the messages come in and then they autofill in Safari and like all of that stuff.

Yeah, they are very proud of it. But also, I think that there came a point where they realized that this was a platform feature that like Apple security of users should not be left to third parties, right? It is that moment. You could say, yeah, they're eating one password to lunch and all the rest. But the truth is... They're not even nearly doing it yet. But I think they're right.

I think you have to do this in the operating system. Like, this is not an optional thing. People have passwords. Just say, hey, passwords, it's your problem. It's not my problem. It's your problem. I don't think you can do that. So they have to do it.

I'm glad they are doing it. This is also why companies like 1Password that have their own password manager are pivoting to be enterprise solutions, right? It's because just serving regular users, and I know people are angry who are regular users of 1Password. They're like, why aren't they listening to me? The answer is because they see the writing on the wall, which is the,

the way you use one password when you started using it, that's going to be an operating system feature. And it may not be exactly what you want, but it's going to be the base operating system feature. And it's going to prevent them from having a rich market for people who want this because, uh, the,

what Apple provides will be good enough. And so they got to pivot to something that like businesses care about for their business information. And, um, the good news is what Apple's doing in this area is really quite good because it would be different if Apple was scaring everybody off and that what they were providing was bad,

but it's actually quite good. And I'm very impressed with it. I wonder if I wonder with one password, like how much has Apple got to do to start eating into these things? Because like one of the big things is they don't do, there's no like sharing,

there's no like group stuff, there's none of that. And if you, if that's the thing that you care about, which I do, I mean, you're kind of, you're stuck with a bigger solution. Certainly iCloud family sharing

of password information is a frontier for them, right? I would imagine that they might get there down the road, but you're right. If you've got, and Lauren and I have a shared thing that for one password stuff. So that would be a thing that if we dropped one password, we would need to figure out another way to do that. But anyway, it is like in true Apple style, I feel like they are going to cover most of the bases here. They're going to get most of the needs of people and it's getting better all the time. Federico Vatici, friend of the show, found that you could run shortcuts automations without getting notifications anymore. So if you have some kind of automation that

happens for timed or some kind of action triggers a shortcut, you would get a notification for it. They don't appear anymore. I'm pleased about this. I have a focus mode that when it detects exercise activity, it sets a focus mode for me. And then I get two notifications from the shortcuts app where you won't get those pop up anymore. They still show in notification center so there's like a summary of all the things that have happened but they don't like pop up and get in your way anymore as it stands right now you will still get them when launching from the home screen so you put like make your own like home screen thing and you press it and you get like

hey opening this app i expect they'll probably change that i'd be surprised if 15.4 came out with that still was the thing because they've done the other part of it and i saw on mac rumors that third-party apps will now be able to take full advantage of the 120 hertz pro motion there was a we spoke about this at the time but there was a bug in core animation where some animations were locked to 60 hertz. This has now been fixed, and developers don't have to do anything. It will now just do this automatically, so some scrolling stuff was being

kind of constrained, and that won't be the case with 15.4. Mac OS 12.3 has universal control. Yeah. Are you surprised about this? No. Okay.

Because I was wondering, honestly, I thought it might come back around again in 16 and 13. No, I assumed that this was going to be. They promised it for the spring. They promised it for the spring. Oh, yeah. I forgot that. I forgot that.

Yeah. And so this is the logical place for it. I think we were all, I mean, originally Yeah. Yeah. And so this was, this is the logical place for it. I think we were all, I mean, originally 12, two turned out to be a, um, and,

and, uh, 12, two and 15.3 turned out to be like a, they wanted to get some, a bunch of stuff out like bug fixes and all that and saved their new features for this round. Um, this is the mid year feature update.

Um, year feature update. So they seem to have held a bunch of this stuff for this set of releases. And so, yeah, so here's Universal Control. And I wanted to test Universal Control. So I installed betas on my Mac and on my iPad just so I could test Universal Control. And it is real and it works and it's a beta. And it lost my keyboard at one point. And I was like, okay, I guess I can't use the keyboard over there anymore, but it's a beta. But it works as advertised until it doesn't

because it's a beta, but I'm very impressed with it. I'm sure, ergonomically, I'm not sure it's the best fit for me although that said being able to prop up my ipad and be able being able to mouse over to it instead of reaching over and and tapping on it when i want to have the ipad open to something is nice and they're definitely if i was traveling and i had my a laptop on my ipad it would be great because i would have like a little control system and I wouldn't have to have two keyboards and two track pads and move my hands around.

I'm impressed by it. The thing though, using it that impressed me the most, I mean, the setup is nice. The displays control panel that lets you arrange the height and stuff, just like you would for an external monitor, but it's for this keyboard and pointing device sharing.

That's really nice. My favorite thing is that in doing it, I thought, oh, see, this is the feature that is enabled by the fact that they put the pointer support in a year ago. And since I have a Magic Trackpad on my Mac, I move it over to the iPad and it's completely familiar because it's what using an iPad with the Magic Keyboard with Trackpad is like. It's exactly the same,

all the gestures, everything. And so it's super familiar. And I know for some people who've not used the iPad with a pointing device, it'll be weird it'll be like whoa now my trackpad is over on my ipad but we've had a year now where ipad users and app developers and apple have had this keyboard and trackpad mode available in fact part of me wonders was universal control invented for the pointer? Or was the pointer invented for universal control? I don't know. But they obviously have a plan here. And the pointing stuff from a year ago feeds directly into this.

I guess that was two years ago now. Two years ago. Yeah, it was like, that was a bright spot at the beginning of the pandemic it was like that's right interesting thing to talk about and look at and it really does just feel that natural it is not any different than attaching a trackpad to your ipad to have it be via universal control it just happens and i know one of my criticisms of sidecar at the time when when sidecar came out as part of mac os was i love my ipad because it has ipad apps on it and it's running them on the device as opposed to you know oh i could run slack i move slack over in sidecar and put it on my ipad or i could just run

slack on my ipad right what and the only reason you would use it as an external monitor for something that you could run on your iPad is so that you wouldn't have to take your hands off your keyboard and your mouse. Well, this is way better because you're literally running those apps natively on the iPad. You're just controlling them from your Mac keyboard and mouse. It's really good. And it's not going to be for everybody. There's very certain circumstances where it's going to make sense but i'm uh i'm

really impressed with it even though it is a beta and it's got some bugs but i'm very impressed with it it's it's strange but uh i think it's good so it still does that automatic like it's all on right by default and it does that thing where like you just push off the screen and that kind of is trick it's like a reverse kind of thing where you're telling the computer basically where the device is, but just by logically, where would you go? Like, for example, if you did the opposite side of the screen initially, it would work, but wouldn't make any logical sense. So they're kind of relying on people to be logical. But once you've connected the two devices by doing that, like, pushing membrane thing, I honestly find it kind of gross looking. But in the image, I haven't run this myself, but there's something about that freaks me out a bit.

My experience was it just, like, popped over and I, like, didn't even notice. It just happened so quickly. But then you can, in system preferences, rearrange the placement like it's an external monitor. Yeah, including heights. So I had my iPad sitting on my desk, and so it was below the placement like it's an external monitor? So I had my iPad sitting on my desk, and so it was below the height of my iMac. And so I could make it geographically appropriate that it was down below. Yeah. And then I put it in a stand, and then it was sort of parallel, and then I moved it up to be parallel.

And actually, another way that this is superior to Sidecar is that I am a right dock person. And if I put an iPad to the right of my iMac and I use Sidecar, the dock goes all the way out to the right side of the iPad. Which is terrible. I would have to use Switch Glass by John Syracuse in that case, by the way. But instead, with universal control, the Mac still ends on the right. And so when you move your mouse over to the edge of the Mac screen and move it over onto the iPad, the dock is still right where it is because there is no Mac to the right. It's just this iPad. A funny thing that happens, though, is that it does a little creepy. I don't know if they're going to the right. It's just this iPad. A funny thing that happens though is that it does a little creepy. I don't know if they're going to change this. As you push the cursor over to the iPad, it

sort of leaves the dead body of the Mac cursor behind. Oh, I don't like that. You can actually see the edge of the pointer off on the right edge sort of ghostly. And in fact, if it's hovering over a dock item, the dock item stays with its name

highlighted uh which is again i think this is something they probably need to address in the beta that that cursor should sort of disappear from the mac and not just have its astral you know body be cast over to the ipad while its physical body remains uh a shell on the mac it's it's a little weird but uh but maybe they'll fix that i had a got a very funny um text message from a friend of the show one true john vorhees today he said um top tip don't restart your ipad when it has control of your max trackpad and keyboard he said it was fine once everything was back up but it doesn't currently kick the input devices back to the mac so oh dear oh dear he just turned up his ipad and then his mac couldn't do anything

because it does work both ways if you've got an iPad with magic trackpad and you want to sit on that and then you've got a Mac next to it you can use the keyboard and trackpad and it'll work the other way too I would expect it would be easier to deal with with the iPad in that situation I bet if you took it off and put it back on the trackpad that would like kill the

trackpad and restart it because you took the power away yeah I don't know but that was just very funny to me of like well you could just you know bye-bye bye-bye mouse yeah yeah oh oh did you need a keyboard well uh we don't have one anymore it's gone i don't know what happened to it is this tight do you know is this tied to your apple id in some way it's only in the sense that it is a proximity feature, like AirDrop. Continuity, I guess they call it, right?

And continuity only works with devices that are logged into the same Apple ID, I believe. Okay, cool. Because I was going to say, imagine you're sitting at the library and you accidentally just pushed... Sorry, ma'am, that's my cursor. I'll get it out of there immediately.

Okay, there you go. Back to you. Yeah, I don't. That's my cursor. I'll get it out of there immediately. Okay, there you go. Back to you. Yeah, I don't know. This is fun. I'm very... Does this work Mac to Mac too? Yes, it does. Yeah.

I'm intrigued about this feature. I wonder if it will be a pain in any way. I haven't put the betas on. I am not a mid-cycle beta person i never install these like i only ever install like the big point like the big like tempo releases like 15 16 that kind of thing um it's very very rare that i will put one of these on because the the features tend to be like interesting but not like, oh, I feel like I have to run this. Because it's not really my bag.

I don't really like to be on debaters, to be honest, but I kind of just do it for the WWDC one because it's so important. But I'm intrigued to see if universal control would be something that I would like or whether it would annoy me i don't know yet as a you know it's like a virtual kvm well not kvm but like a keyboard mouse switch that there if you're somebody who has two macs at your desk for some reason or a mac like desktop and laptop or whatever yeah that that's one of the use cases of this too this is super edge casey in a way that we don't always see for Apple features, but it is built on all of these other features that it's been working on. And yeah,

I think what, what happened is that they built it and they're like, whoa, this is actually really cool. They made it a centerpiece of WWDC and then they didn't ship it until a beta in January. But, um,

but it's cool. I, I, I, is it useful? Like you really need to be somebody who's got two devices at once, but I occasionally will set up my iPad even at my desk to stream video or do something else while I'm working on my Mac. And the idea that I can do that and then just sort of mouse over in order to control it, it's great. That's really nice. I like it.

in order to control it. It's great. That's really nice. I like it. I'm wondering when this is going to come out. Because sometimes they have these point releases in beta for a while because they're also going to include, here's information about product you haven't seen. Two things.

One is this is the big feature release, so I feel like the beta cycle will be longer because they added so many new features, essentially, to the operating systems that we just have detailed in this segment. In the past, it's been kind of like a March thing. Yeah. I will also throw out there, are they going to do an event? Is that event going to have something that's enabled by an OS update? Might this be tied to that?

Maybe? Maybe? Maybe. I don't know. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Memberful. Memberful is the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience used by the biggest creators on the web to help you generate sustainable recurring income while diversifying your revenue stream.

We here at RelayFM, we use Member4 to power the RelayFM membership program. They make it so easy for us to generate the extra revenue that we're able to get from people who want to get extra content from us. And they've removed ads and stuff like that in some cases. And really, it's the whole package for us now. We're able to send newsletters out to our members because Member4 recently added this you can do for existing plans or you can set up paid email newsletters directly now through memberful you don't need to connect to a third party email provider or anything like that you can even publish this newsletter content to a hosted members on the website so they've got like a

good archive there this is something we didn't have before and steven had to do this thing where he kind of like hacked it together from like here's a pdf it was like a whole nightmare and now it's just all on our website so people can go and read all of the previous issues of the members newsletter there's no additional fee if you use memberforce pro or premium plans and you'll save money compared to other popular hosted newsletter platforms for us it was great because we didn't need to have this other service that we were also using so we had to bring it all more in-house. But of course, for us here, especially on this show as well, the biggest thing for Memberful is we're able to create private podcast feeds for people so they can get our episodes here of Upgrade. They get Upgrade Plus, they get longer content,

they get no ads, that kind of stuff. And that's all managed through Memberful's system. So if somebody pays, they get that. It's really easy to subscribe from the login. They have these links or QR codes you can use. Just go and subscribe in a bunch of different apps. And then if they cancel their membership, they stop getting the content. It just makes it really easy for us to manage because we don't have to do anything. It's wonderful. Maybe you're already producing content and relying on advertising or other means of income.

Memberful makes it so easy to diversify that with everything you need to run your own membership program, including custom branding, gift subscriptions, Apple Pay, free trials, there's private podcasts and tons more, while leaving you with full control and ownership

of everything that relates to your audience, brand and membership. If you're a content creator, Memberful can help you monetize that passion. Get started for free at memberful.com slash upgrade with no credit card required. free at memberful.com slash upgrade with no credit card required. That's memberful.com slash upgrade.

Go there now and check it out. It could be the start of something exciting. Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and RelayFM. Apple's Q1 2022 results. Obviously top line. Money, money, money, money, money, money. Cha-ching.

It's that time again where we talk about inconceivable amounts of money money money money money it is yeah 123.9 billion dollars of revenue that is of course an all-time record for apple as anticipated 11 year over year increase Anticipated. 11% year-over-year increase. And that was the previous record holder because Q1 is actually the holiday quarter. So it's the end quarter of last year, but it's just about the way these things are done from financials and stuff like that. That is $34.6 billion of profit,

which of course is also an all-time record. Of course. $71.6 billion in profit, which of course is also an all-time record. Of course. $71.6 billion in the quarter for the iPhone. This is the largest quarter ever for the iPhone. I can't remember, Jason, if that's a surprise or not. Did we expect this? Yeah, I think they... So they don't forecast.

During the pandemic, they have not been forecasting. But they said it would be a winner and they said that most of the um stuff that they had that would not be sold because they couldn't keep it in stock that demand outstripped supply would not be like the iphone and we know that that's the big iphone quarter right because it's the iphone release quarter well but it was the iphone 12 everyone expected would be a massive one because it was a new design and there were new sizes and stuff. Because there was a bigger version then, right, of the big phone. If you look at the last sort of three-year cycle, it was a big year, then a step back, then a little bit of a step forward.

And then they did the new design and we got a big year. And then instead of a step back, we got a step forward. So it is a little surprising sort of cyclically in terms of the life of a particular iPhone model. I don't know how much the pandemic has affected it. Also, there's just this general growth. Like the in-between quarters between last holiday quarter and this holiday quarter for the iPhone were way higher than the in-between quarters any previous year. So I think that's the rising tide kind of lifting all boats, that the base of the iPhone continues to grow,

even though we're in a sort of secondary year. I mean, not that people aren't buying iPhones all the time, but there is like an impetus for a lot of people when there's a new look on an iPhone to buy the iPhone then. And so that's usually, you usually get a little bit of a spike and then it slides back. And that did not happen this time. So that is up 9% year over year,

which is in the iPhone over the all time high, which was set last year. Yeah. I just, when I read it, I was like, hang is in the iPhone business. Again, over the all-time high, which was set last year. Yeah, I just when I read it, I was like, hang on a minute. I don't know what I was expecting specifically, but I wasn't expecting that it would be bigger by a

margin, like a chunk, because it was like, oh, I thought that this might be a bit of a calmer iPhone. Yeah, but what's going on? Six billion more in sales than a year ago. $10.9 billion for the Mac. So once again, the largest Mac quarter ever.

The previous was $9.2 billion, which was last quarter. Which was last quarter, yeah. And the six highest Mac quarters of all time are the last six, the six most recent. But this one is shot up, though, right? Like it went up to nine and then was just hovering around nine. And now we're basically up to 11. Exactly. whatever that is, 1.7 billion in sequential from their high, from their all-time high to this number. 25% up year over year.

If you look at the four-quarter moving average, again, biggest ever in the Mac. Apple lays this at the feet of the Apple Silicon transition, right? They're like, this is about the M1. And I'm sure it is to a certain extent. It's also about the pandemic maybe pulling some people forward and saying, oh, geez, I really need to buy a new Mac because I'm

working at home. But they also said that in China, half the people who bought Macs were new to the Mac, right? This is that rising tide too. Apple is not just cycling through people. They say they set all time records in their installed base, which is not the sales figure, right? That's the how many devices they feel are being actively used at any one time.

So when something gets retired and recycled, it leaves the install base. A new model adds to the install base. And Apple says their install base continues to grow. And their install base, in fact, was all-time highs in all product categories. That means there are more people, more Macs in active use today than ever, according to Apple. Which is not surprising given the sales, but it's something to keep in mind. So that's part of the rise here, too, is now you have more users in the ecosystem who will then buy a new Mac when the old Mac retires, or they'll roll that down to somebody. So yeah, this is the highest the Mac has ever been. Again, not bad for a product

that is pretty old. This is a product that's 38 years old this month. And it's at its highest point now. But Apple Silicon, right? Like the Apple Silicon transition certainly did not hurt that. But not only is that forcing people sort of like, oh, well, I'm going to get rid of my Intel Mac, but it also is telling a great story.

Like that MacBook Air is such a great product for that price. And it's aided by the fact that it is running that M11 chip i guess this is just people getting laptops for christmas right like that's well it's the macbook pro right it's a lot of people buying the new macbook pro yes the macbook that's and that that is an expensive product so it's going to drive more revenue yeah and we don't get to see unit sales anymore right so it's all that but it's like the mac is just um the mac is firing on all cylinders right now and apple is aided here probably by the fact that these new apple silicon designs

probably don't rely on some of the older tech that is the stuff that is supply constrained and they make more money as well right yeah exactly because you know i just feel like we got a big bump right we got the working from home bump. And that's surely over, right? Like anyone that needed a computer for working at home, by and large, has already gotten one or been given one. Probably. You know, like in the large scale, right? I feel like we've had the large scale purchases.

Like that happened, you know, throughout 2020. And so it's just, I, again, was not expecting such a jump. I mean, if you would have asked me, I would have said, yeah, it's probably going to do the highest ever again. But I wasn't expecting, you know, close to or not far off of a $2 billion

quarter over quarter change as well. So yeah, that was a surprise to me. The iPad, $7.2 billion, is down 14% year-over-year. And again, you'd be like, oh, that's a shame and a surprise. It's the only one here. But I believe from reading your analysis, they actually specifically said the biggest product that they'd struggled with with

the supply chain was the ipad was that right yeah the ipad is apparently built out of legacy nodes yeah it's just loads of legacy nodes the tim cook phrase for um the older this is the stuff when we talk about like semiconductor shortages and supply chain issues and people aren't building cars or like tesla is shipping cars without USB ports in them and stuff like that. This is why, right? It's this stuff. And for whatever reason, the iPad has more of those. An astute analyst asked, is it because of that or is it because you prioritized all the parts to be in the iPhone instead? Because it's like the iPhone launch. And Tim Cook sort of said, he didn't quite say a little from column A and a little from

column B. He said, primarily not. He said, we could do a little. He had a very funny line where it was like, we could do a little, but we can't do a lot. And so when you look at that behind the curtain, you could say, are we back there? And we are back there, but we're not, but not that much, right? It was sort of like a little bit, but not. back there, but not that much. It was sort of like a little bit, but not. I'm sure that there was some prioritization of parts to fulfill iPhone orders, but it sounds like it's more than that.

It's also just like there are iPads in their lineup, maybe not all of them, but at least some of them that are using kind of the older technology that other people are also using. And it's constrained because of the pandemic causing the factory shutdowns and then restarts and all the things that have led to these supply chain issues that we see everywhere. And so they warned that they were going to sell about $6 billion less than they could have in this quarter. This record quarter could have been $6 billion higher than it actually was and that the iPad was going to be the most constrained by that. And so you could chalk that up to that, that the iPad just, they couldn't make them fast enough. And that's what they said is that the iPad sold pretty well, given that they had some

severe constraints. And, and I heard from a couple of people when I tweeted that out who said, yeah, I ordered an iPad mini in November and I got it, you know, the first week of January. I knew people similar. Like I have a couple of friends who ordered them like a couple of weeks after they came out and just got them. You know, the iPad mini seemed to be pretty hit by that along with, you know, maybe some of the others, but that one. So I don't, I mean, we used to do on this podcast, we've been going long enough now that it used to be the, is the iPad going to hit bottom? And we've reached the point now where my chart doesn't even show that era.

Because my chart only goes back to 2017, the normal one that I publish. And the iPad has been on the upswing since then. upswing since then and to the point now that even with this lower quarter you know the ipad is basically turned into an eight billion dollar a quarter business when um when it was sort of stabilized it was a five billion dollar a quarter business so a big upswing in just a handful of years for the ipad and i i suspect that that's where the ipad will live now is in that $7, $8, $9 billion a quarter range. Services at $19.5 billion, up 24% year over year. The most boring chart I could possibly do because it's just a bunch of purple bars that go up. Oop.

Every single time they go up. They went up again. It's an all-time high. 24% year over year increase. went up again it's an all-time high 24 year over year increase they are they have done five straight uh quarters with a 24 or higher year over year growth rate which is wild and that's coming off of a period where they were in the 17 18 19 year over year uh so it just keeps going up this is and it's not seasonal of course it's because it's just a subscription service. And they talked about it

and how many subscriptions they have now. And that does include App Store subscriptions. They include subscriptions on their platform, aren't just Apple TV Plus subscriptions, but they are if you pay for care at weather. I had some thoughts on this. So 785 million paying subscribers is the number that they gave.

Yep. Which is, that number specifically is up 27% in the last year. Mm-hmm. The amount of people and value are not going to be the same. But as you say, it includes all subscriptions. And so, like as you say, Carrot Weather, Tweetbot is the same in this number as Apple TV Plus, iCloud. And this was like another reminder for me of why they do not want to give any of these people up. You know, why they want to keep everyone in their system.

Because Wall Street at the moment really, really, and have done for a couple of years, but really care about this specific number for Apple. And that's why Apple pushed so hard on it. Because this is their, like, we know we're going to grow here. I mean, look, we're talking about the numbers the iPhone's seeing. That stopped happening for a while, right? And it was like, well, they've reached the top with the iPhone. I mean, we now know they haven't. But everybody, including Apple, I think,

thought that for a bit. And so they started pushing on their services more and they want that chart to just keep going up. And I mean, to me, honestly, like, you know, so basically Apple choose how they want to slice these numbers and serve them up in a way that looks good for them because they could also break that out, right?

Of like, this is what we get through the App Store and this is what we get for our actual services that we provide, that we talk about. Because, you know, when Apple were talking about their services revenue, I'm sure they talk about all of their own ones and not like, hey, an X amount of these are for this thing, which has got nothing to do with us.

And for me as well, I think what actually really matters is Apple's own stuff. And that should only be, in my opinion, what actually matters to Wall Street, because Apple can't change that, positively or negatively, the number there, because they are actually not Apple's customers. They're the customers of the third-party developers or whatever. Yeah, but that's not how Apple views it, right? Apple talks a lot about the subscriptions on their platform and the revenue on their platform. And that gives you an insight into why Apple behaves the way it does with regulators. Yeah. I mean, but it's what they choose is what I mean. They choose that. I think

realistically, they're aware that it's not that customer relationship is provided by somebody else, but they also just want the money, you know. I think there's that dual part of it. They do. I find that weird. Honestly, I find that a little bit weird, but here we are. And $14.7 billion of wearable home and accessories. That is up 13% year over year. The largest ever quarter in that as well.

AirPods 3 maybe? Driving some of that and additional growth. And I think Apple Watch doing pretty well. I always forget Apple Watch is in this category. They didn't have an Apple Watch Superlative, right? So it may not have been the best apple watch quarter ever i wouldn't be a surprise for this one i feel like breakdown iphone is 58 services 16 wearables 12 mac 9 ipad 6 as like percentage of overall revenue yeah the mac that shows you

too the ipad is growing even though they didn't have a great quarter and so it's down a little little bit there. But the iPad is growing, but it shows you the Mac growth. When I was doing the pie chart a year or two ago, the Mac and the iPad were at this basically the same size for a very long time, the Mac and the iPad were the same size. And now it's Mac nine, iPad six, like they are appreciably different parts of Apple's revenue composition. And that's because the Mac's done so well. And the iPad is doing well, but it's not growing like the Mac is growing. And then services. And then you talk about like, put them together. And what does that add up to? 15%. Well, services is 16%. So the Apple services business is now greater than the Mac and the iPad put together. And wearables is at 12% too. So it's, yeah, there's a lot. And then iPhone 58%, because this is the quarter where iPhone is always like way over half of Apple's revenue. One of the things that they didn't give was any guidance, right? So this is how I've decided to interpret Apple. Apple did a lot of stuff back in the day because they decided this is how they're going to report.

Maybe there were some regulations. And at some point in the last few years, somebody at Apple, maybe it was Luca Maestri, the CFO, when he took over as CFO, somebody said, you know, we disclose more than we're legally obligated to. And you would think that would have been a Steve Jobs thing, but it's not a Steve Jobs era thing. It is this Tim Cook era thing where they're like, okay, let's not. Let's not disclose more than we're legally obligated to.

So what did they do? They stopped talking about unit sales because they weren't legally obligated to talk about them. They just stopped doing that. The calls that they do with analysts got more and more scripted, fewer questions and answers. The answers have been less informative because they're much more disciplined about staying on script and not disclosing more information. And the only information that they do disclose that goes above and beyond is the stuff that they've decided makes them look good. Like you mentioned, subscriptions and install base are figures that they don't have to quote and they don't report legally, but they mention them because they make them look good. When we talk about guidance, Apple has always traditionally given guidance. And I think that

it's a best practice to give guidance. But the moment the pandemic happened, Apple said, we are unable to give guidance because guidance should moment the pandemic happened, Apple said, we are unable to give guidance because guidance should be made with confidence. I think that that's probably one of the, again, best practices of this sort of financial stuff is if you're going to tell investors something about the future, you need to have some confidence in it because otherwise there are some legal issues if you tell investors things that you don't actually believe. So, OK. And famously, Apple used to sandbag their numbers and they'd guide to something lower than what they actually were thinking. And they stopped doing that.

They started being much more accurate with their guidance. Pandemic happens. They stop guiding altogether. And instead, they give these things that are like fake guidance where they're like, well, we're not going to guide to a number, but we do think it's going to be a record, which they've done several times. And they did this time. They didn't give guidance, but they said it will be a March quarter record, but growth will decelerate. That was the other thing they said, which means that they're not going to shrink, but the growth rates will be lower year over year than they have been recently. they have been recently. And they gave some reasons for that, including continued supply chain issues that will not be, again, without specifying a number, will not be as bad as they

were last quarter, but they will still be bad. And so again, this is just, it's all part of the same thing, which is, I think Apple has decided they're going to milk the we're not giving guidance as long as possible. And so even though they could, you know, the pandemic is changing and they probably have a better gauge of how they're doing than they did when they stopped giving guidance, but they're not going to go back to giving guidance, specific guidance of what their revenue number is going to be next quarter

until they absolutely have to, because why disclose something you don't have to? Or maybe they'll just never do it again, you know? I mean, maybe. I think they will have to at some point, because I do think that Wall Street kind of really does expect that as a publicly held company, and that when they are more confident about it. And I don't think that they're lying about it.

I think that there is more uncertainty than they're comfortable with. But they are comfortable enough to say it's going to be a record quarter. It's going to be the best March quarter ever. They were comfortable enough to say that, but just not to put a number on it. Because I would expect it's also like, you know, some of the guidance is based on stuff, oh, we know we're releasing this thing. But I would expect at the moment, don't know they're releasing anything at the time that they want to release it, you know, or they have to make that decision late. And keep in mind, when they do to release it, you know, or they have to make that decision late. And keep in mind when they do this conference call, they've already got figures for the first month of the next quarter.

So they actually do have some idea of how that quarter is going and they know what they're going to be announcing and they know what the, you know, do they have extras or are they having trouble building things? They have a lot of data and that allows them to make a guess about it. But as to what that actually is, I mean, I guess all we really know is that it will be more, it'll probably be 90 plus million just because their record is 89.6. That was last year. And it will be more than that. So you could say they're guiding to above 90, but we don't actually know what that

means. But anyway, Wall Street will take that. And I'm sure it's already built it into the price of the stock, which we don't care about because we don't invest in Apple, but there it is. Money, money, money, money, money. This episode is brought to you by ZocDoc. Finding and booking a doctor who's right for you doesn't need to be a terrible experience. Look, we're going to take your insurance. They're going to understand your needs and what you want. And they're going to be available to see you when you want to see them. With ZocDoc, the answer can be a refreshingly pain-free and simple yes. ZocDoc is a free app

that shows you doctors who are patient reviewed, take your insurance and are available when you need them. You can read up on local doctors with verified patient reviews and see what other real humans had to say about their visit. So when you walk into that doctor's office, you're set up to see someone in your network who gets you. Go to ZocDoc.com, choose a time slot, and whether you want to see the doctor in person or do a video visit. Just like that, you're booked. Find the doctor that's right for you and book an appointment that works for your schedule. Every month, millions of people use ZocDoc. In the chaotic world of healthcare, let ZocDoc be your trusted guide to find a quality doctor. I think it sounds great. I love this. I mean, it's always so

frustrating to me when I want to see someone and the hours are just bananas or you call the doctors and they're like, yeah, we've got an appointment for you. It will be in six weeks from now. It's like, well, the thing that I want to talk to you about is right now. Can't we talk right now? No, can't do that. So I think this sounds really cool. Go to ZocDoc.com slash UpgradeFM and download the ZocDoc app for free.

Then start your search for a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours that's zocdoc.com upgrade fm that you are one more time zocdoc zocdoc.com upgrade fm thanks to zocdoc for their support of this show and all of relay fm let's finish up with some hashtag ask upgrade questions. First comes from Zach who wants to know, do you use any specific DNS servers like Google's 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1, for example? No, I don't.

I actually, at one point I tried, I think Google's and I found it unreliable for me, less reliable than using my ISP's DNS server. So I am currently using my ISP's DNS server. And I actually had to figure this out because I had to manually configure it when I changed my home network around. And I thought about using one of those, but honestly, my ISP is the closest to me on the network, and it's done a pretty good job, so I've accepted that for now. If it displeases me, I will try those out,

but like I said, I tried them in the past and actually wasn't happy with them. Maybe this makes me a bad nerd, but I don't even know why I would want to use any of these things. And you know what, Jason? I'm fine not knowing. It's okay. You know, I think on this one,

I just let it go. I don't need to know. I'm good. I've never needed it. I'm fine. My internet's great. You know, my only complaint, honestly, because I switched to AT&T for Fiverr, is their DNSs do that thing. I wonder if I can turn it off i bet i could turn it off in my account their dns does that thing where if it doesn't find a domain name record it redirects

you to like a search page that it manages and i don't like that i like don't like you're not the domain you're a you're 18 t don't pretend to be the domain when you fail when you type something in wrong i don't like that part but anyway i'm just i i i'm also a bad nerd and i know more about it than you but i also don't do it so shame on us i guess shame shame brantz asks do you feel that apple should offer face id on an ipad model that doesn't start at eight800 with the 11-inch iPad Pro? I don't. I mean, maybe they'll get there at some point, but should?

Like Face ID, that Face ID sensor stack is expensive, and it's really good, and it differentiates their products. And they chose to make the iPad Air have Touch ID. I think the iPad Air might get Face ID at some point, but you do have to do a lot of like redesigning to get that. And I think the whole point is you're differentiating between the different models. So I don't think they should or that they need to. They could. And forgive me if I'm reading this wrong, but it reads to me like Brant's is like saying, why must we pay so much money to get Face ID?

And I think the answer is embedded in your question, which is because Apple wants you to pay them money for Face ID. But also, the sensor stack is not cheap. It is pricey, and it's on their premium products. The experience is so much better. I use an iPad mini all the time time now and i get really annoyed having to touch the sensor i actually was thinking about this today because we're thinking about the face id thing for um 15.4 i think where i've drawn the line is face id is better for ipads and macs and touch id is better for iphones because you already have the phone in your hand, right? Your hand is on it. Like you

can't use it not in the hand, right? Where those other devices are further away, like you can or can be further away or a bigger. So like your hand might not be in the natural place. So I've kind of come down on that. I think that it's easier for an iPhone. Pressing the space bar to open my iPad when it's in the magic keyboard case and having it just read my face and open, it's really nice. And then I do it with the MacBook Air and I have to reach my finger up and do Touch ID. And it's like, it's not as nice. It's not an incredible burden, but it's not as nice an experience. I would say I like Face ID on the iPhone because there are scenarios where people are wearing gloves and things,

and I think it's good for those. But that's why I think in the long run, they probably should do both. I think they should do both. Yeah. I think they should do both. I think they should go back to that. Man asks,

now that podcast subscriptions have been out for a while, have either of you tried any premium content in Apple podcasts? What would it take for either of you tried any premium content in Apple podcasts? What would it take for either of you to create your own premium podcast of Apple? Just kind of two questions in there.

Part one, have you tried any? No. No, never have I because none of the shows that I listen to do it. And I use Overcast. So it would create

a de facto Spotify situation where I would have to get a custom app, the podcast app, in order to listen to a specific show. And not only, yeah, do those shows not exist, but I don't want to use an app that's not my podcast app. And that is also kind of the answer to the second question. Like, I mean, I can speak for me, you can speak for you.

I'm not interested in, it's kind of the same as when we spoke about it the first time i'm not interested in offering uh paid content that is walled off to one application because it limits the amount of people that could consume that content and also with the way that apple system works is two things one you have to do a bunch of additional work to make it work, which is not something I have to do for any other podcast app, including Apple's podcast app. If people just sign up on our website, they can just subscribe. Right. And then also, I don't believe that Apple should get 30% of the money. Yeah. So I have a similar answer. So the incomparable, we just started doing a, essentially the equivalent of upgrade plus on the incomparable, the incomparable special edition. And I made that available to incomparable members. All of the members get it. No special kind of thing to do. You just, if you're a member of the incomparable, you can subscribe to that and you get it. And like upgrade plus, it's got extra content, no ads.

It's longer ad free, which wasn't a thing that the incomparable main show had before, right? No, we hadn't done it before, which is funny because I should have. And somebody asked why we didn't. And I thought, I have no good answer to that. Maybe we should do that. So, okay, great. I could put that on Apple Podcasts too. And I've thought about it.

First thing you have to look at is who are your listeners? And unless your listeners are predominantly Apple Podcast users, it doesn't make sense. The incomparable has more of that than the tech podcasts do, right? Because the tech podcasts tend to be people who get a third-party podcast client. But a general entertainment podcast, you have more people who are not as techie and they use the platform podcast app if they're on iOS. On Android, it's a whole thing, but on iOS, they do that. So I could do that. But then as you said, I would have to go to Apple's website and upload a special version of it every time.

And so it's extra production work for me or somebody I pay in order to get it up there. And also there's the complexity of it, which is I already have a membership program. It's at the incomparable. You can go there and give us money and get stuff, including podcasts. So even if some people might buy it via Apple instead of at the incomparable, what happens then?

Well, first off, what's my messaging? Do I tell people that it exists or do I just let them find it? How do I communicate that we have two different subscriptions? There's the one on Apple's site and then there's the one on our site. And then the big one is, they're Apple's customer. Not only am I sharing my money with Apple, but I don't know who they are, which means that if they pay on Apple's podcast platform, they don't get any of the other benefits of being an incomparable subscriber.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that because one thing for us is one of the other reasons is the Discord wouldn't work. Right. So Spotify has this API thing, the OAuth thing they're doing where you can link your paid account with Spotify. Apple doesn't even offer that yet. Maybe they will in the future and that would be good. But then it would also mean that Apple was allowing you to know more about these people who they sort of perceive as their customers. So would they do that or not?

So, yeah, it means you're paying for this content, but you don't get it all. You only get the one thing. And it's extra complexity for the messaging of like, what do you offer? And it's more work. so it doesn't make sense if i would love to try it out if i had something where it made sense but at this point nothing i do the ui is really nice and the way they deliver the episodes is really nice and like all that kind of stuff like they've done a really good job with it but they did it too late and then everybody right that wanted this and was going to hope,

you know, most people that would have been able to make a success out of it had already done it. Now, like there are companies that do it and there are companies that are at the scale where it makes sense to them, but I don't think there's many. And we should say that we relay an incomparable, both use Memberful, which is a sponsor of this episode today. But just to say it, but there are other options out there too. That's what we use. I would say if Apple supported external authentication or something where I could sell a podcast subscription on the podcast app and make them a subscriber with all the other options. I would consider it. I'm not sure I would do it, but I would consider it.

But to have it be this weird standalone thing, you really would just have to have, it would have to be worth your while. You would have to have no other options and an audience that's almost entirely listening on the podcast app. So no, no and no is the short version of that. And SuperHappy asks,

what do you think about using a HomePod as a de facto replacement landline? Our kids are too young for their own phones, but it would be cool if they could use it to ask Siri to call or FaceTime their grandparents or even make emergency calls. Is this even possible? I did some research today.

Yeah, I see that that so it's not accidental it's yes but so you can do this but there has to be an ios or ipad os device that the home pod can run the call through it has to be there to do it it's like a it's like a and this is a weird omission from the home pod there's no reason it shouldn't be able to do it it's like a it's like a and this is a weird omission from the home pod there's no reason it shouldn't be able to do a facetime the the landline call like the phone because it could do phone calls that i get but the why can't it do a facetime yeah it's got intercom now but it doesn't have facetime so so anyway it doesn't it doesn't make sense it should but that's how it works so you need to have a phone in order for it to make a land a phone number call right you need to have a a basically an iphone within

your network so that it can use it to do the call but if you've got an ipad that's connected again it has to be the ipad that's connected to the home pod you can then say to the home pod ahoy home pod call grandma or fate no you have to say facetime grandma you can't say call or it'll try to use a phone facetime grandma and it will place that call on the ipad and pipe it back to the home pod so this should be this should be way easier than this you You should be able to just... And it's weird to say FaceTime, right? Because FaceTime is... Like, it's just weird to say FaceTime when there's no faces. Because it's FaceTime audio.

There's no faces, but FaceTime audio is a thing. It's a thing. There is an interesting caveat when it comes to emergency services, which is one of the parts of the question. So it will first try to do what you expect it to do, which is it will look for the phone or iPad on the same account connected and try and make it. If it can't find that,

the HomePod will start looking for any iPhone on the same Wi-Fi network. So for example, me and Jason live together and the HomePod's on my phone and then I've left and taken my iPhone with me and someone wants to call 911 it would then make the call through Jason's phone even though he's not registered to the HomePod

which is kind of cool, as long as we're on the same Wi-Fi network I wouldn't want to rely on that so basically my answer to this for you uh super happy is if you do not have like an ipad that is always at home don't do this actually no because the ipad wouldn't call the emergency services would it so if you unless you have a a device like a phone like an iPhone there all the time, I wouldn't rely on this as a thing for, this is how you call the emergency services as a way to teach your children.

So yeah, that would be my recommendation. This is, I don't know, I understand what you're trying to go for here, but would you assume as well that every call should be a loudspeaker call, right? That you wouldn't have that with a regular landline. Yeah, but I like the idea. The way I would phrase it is using the grandparents as an example. set it up so that your you know your ipad is attached for personal requests for the home pod

and there's a contact called grandma or grandparents or whatever and you train your kids to say the right phrase and it gives them a call then great right i would i would treat it like that which is can i set this up in very specific circumstances so that this works? And if you can, then great. Like, that would be how you do it. But it's not – I will come back to my previous thing. I get it. It's complex because you have to, like, say, well, what are the contact lists?

If I'm going right on the HomePod, what contacts list am I using? And it's like, okay, I get that, but it should be able to do this. If I've got my Apple ID and it's got my contacts on it. And honestly, if I've got my Apple ID where it can recognize different users and know different people have different devices, like you should be able to use their contacts. And like it should be able to do this without having to resort to another device, but it doesn't right now. So interesting hole in HomePod that maybe they need to fix. If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord,

which you get access to along with longer ad-free episodes if you go to getupgradeplus.com. And thank you so much to everybody that has done that. And we really appreciate it. I bet you're going to love it. It's more upgrade, no ads. It's amazing stuff over there. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com.

And he's at Jason L. I am at iMike. I am YKE. Thank you so much to ZocDoc, Memberful, TextExpander, and Capital One for their support of this episode. Next week's episode, what are we going to be doing, Jason? I'm going to be giving out grades. Well, okay.

My panel is going to be giving out grades. It'll be the Apple Report Card for 2021. Well, I'm going to set you some homework. Uh-oh. I want your grades as well. Okay. Because that's the thing that you don't do. I don't do that. That's going to be an upgrade exclusive. That's what it's going to be.

My grades are only going to be on an upgrade. Yeah. And I saved my grades too. So we can look at the overall and I have my grades. I want you to bring your grades. Oh, I have your grades. I know you have them. I have your grades.

But I have them. And we're going to talk about how a large community of Apple observers have graded Apple's 2021. And we're going to talk about um how a large community of apple observers have graded apple's 2021 and we'll talk about that it's going to be yeah a very interesting episode uh to get into the weeds on next week uh thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of upgrade and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye jason snell goodbye everybody