Upgrade - 394: Historic Dongletown

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

This week Jason and Myke both revive some classic hardware that hits them right in the feels. Also, there's a confusing set of Apple event rumors, and Apple tries to address AirTag security concerns.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 394 today's show is brought to you by new relic doordash and memberful my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley happy valentine's day oh happy valentine's day to you too i have a hashtag snell Talk question for you. It comes from Doc Zandrus who asks, given, Jason, that you have mentioned that you do not wear red because of, was it Cal Games? Yeah, because Stanford is red, so we don't wear red.

What color of Arsenal shirt do you own or would you put on for a match? Okay, so Arsenal's colors are red and white just like Stanford and it makes me very sad. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance there. I do have an Arsenal shirt. Okay. I have worn it occasionally. It's a red one. It's a red one.

Don't love it. Don't love it. But I do have it. I wore it. I went to a 49ers game once, and they're a red team. So I wore the... I didn't have any other red shirts. I was like, oh, Arsenal, sports, I'll wear it. Why don't you get the away kit?

We're very confused. Well, that's what I... I also got this shirt a long time ago. I literally, I got this shirt in the Caribbean at a shop that was selling bootleg soccer shirts, three for $ dollars or something like that and so i got myself an arsenal one and then i got a england team one for my friend kurt and i got a chelsea one for my friend phil because it was three for ten dollars and uh and so yeah it's it's served its purpose i actually have an arsenal scarf and it's the bruised banana, which is their black and yellow, which is their kind of like classic alternate color set.

So, yeah, that's probably if I do buy an Arsenal shirt at some point, it will probably be an alternate like that. I have an Arsenal mug. It's blue. So that makes me. And also it's a mug. You don't wear it. But I do have an Arsenal mug. But I don't have.

That's my only Arsenal bit of... Well, the scarf. But the clothing-wise, it's just that red shirt. And I don't really wear it because it makes me uncomfortable. Right now, Arsenal's away kit is a not nice yellow, if you ask me. I know, that's the problem. I've been waiting for a good alternate kit. You should get the third shirt.

The current third shirt looks really funky. It's like this blue, black, hint of red, very hint of red, like a jagged line type thing. Looks funky. It's got a little bit of red, though. I don't know if you can accept that. I don't know. But I think it looks real fun. You should get that one.

Well, I'll think about it. Well, now we know. This is a very good question. This is good respecting of the Jason Law, I think, from Dogs and Puppets. I also wanted to say that I find it very strange the color schemes of soccer teams. Because in the primary for American sports, teams basically have a color palette okay so they've got two colors maybe an alternate is in there like an accent color and so all the uniforms are like either white with the colors or they're gray with the colors or they're the colors. Like those are your choices.

And some people might say that was boring. We can, maybe it is, but beside the point. But it's the team identity is the identity of the team. Like it is like, you know what it is. So I, as an American sports fan to have Arsenal, which is a red and white team say, yes, but sometimes we wear yellow and other times we wear blue. It's like, what?

What if the other team is red? That's the issue. Then you wear white. Right. That's how it works in American sports is that there are very rarely color on color matchups of any kind. They're generally not allowed,

occasionally is allowed and they look great. But generally one team, so like the Super Bowl yesterday, kind they're generally not allowed occasionally is allowed and they look great but but generally one team so like the super bowl yesterday um one team wore white and one team wore black basically but it's orange and black for the bengals and it was white with with yellow and blue for for the rams but the primary color was white versus black because you end up with like somebody has to pick. The home team gets to choose their colors and then the away team has to contrast with that. It's basically how that works. And so anyway, I just as an aside, as an American sports fan, I find it becoming a fan of an English football team.

Very confusing about the fact that arsenal is red and white and yet if i want to i can get uh they wear another shirt that i could also buy that is a totally different set of colors and that just is how it is so i'll flip on tv and i'll be like that's that team because they're wearing a weird color but the answer is that they don't really care so much they've got they cycle through their alternate colors. They've got the primary set, but then they just kind of like throw it. So much so, Mike, in fact, that it used to be you couldn't buy baseball caps that weren't in a very strict set of colors. And that changed in the last 10 years. Where now, like, you're a Giants fan, you can buy a blue Giants hat.

Ooh, get out of town. Dodger fan, you can buy an orange Giants hat. Ooh, get out of town. Dodger fan, you can buy an orange Dodger hat. No way. Doesn't make any sense, but you can. No sense. Anyway, I find these alternate colors weird, but it is a great opportunity for me to get an Arsenal shirt

that's not red and white, and I thank you for that suggestion. I love it. I'm going to do that. That's great. But in the meantime, I have my Bruce Banana black and yellow uh arsenal scarf thoughts on the super ball thoughts on the super bowl lots of ads um lots of ads for uh things that you could watch the rest of it online which i always think is really funny like there's a movie trailer that they want to show you but they can really only show you 30 seconds of it so then they say watch the whole

trailer online and you say what did i just watch the answer is not the whole trailer this is something else a lot of a lot of a lot of crypto saw a really fun comment who said that you know the thing about all these ads for crypto is that i never see ads for money uh it's money it's money it's like well yeah money doesn't advertise super bowl is brought to you by the euro that's right just think of it as money because it's money so a lot of that a lot of a lot of nostalgia but that always happens at these things a lot of electric cars i think i only noticed one ad for a non-electric car i thought that was a clear trend there interesting um the game was entertaining the whole nfl well the first round was bad but the last three rounds of the nfl playoffs were all

very entertaining so if you do like american football um they put on a good show um the rams are owned by the owner of arsenal i i i don't i'm not a big fan of that guy but you know billionaire's gonna billionaire and uh yeah that's about it. I'm glad it was entertaining. Thank you to Doug Zandris for that hashtag snow talk question. I think I pronounced your username about six different ways. Maybe I got it right one time. If you would like to send in a question of your own, just send out a tweet with the hashtag snow talk or use question mark snow talk in the RelayFM members Discord. I believe it was last week that we spoke about the possibility of tap to pay on the iPhone. We did.

A couple of days later, I think quite surprisingly, Apple announced it. Just one of these random out of the blue announcements. I saw somebody say that this reminded them of when Apple announced the Find My Network before they announced the thing of their own? I don't know if this is going to be the case, but it at least was reminiscent of that, of kind of like, hey, we're working on this thing. You can't use it yet. No one can use it yet, but eventually someone will be able to. I'll give you a couple of quotes from Apple's press release. Tap to pay on iPhone will be available for payment platforms and app

developers to integrate into their iOS apps and offer as a payment option to their business press release. Tap to pay on iPhone will be available for payment platforms and app developers to integrate into their iOS apps and offer as a payment option to their business customers. Apple will work closely with leading payment platforms and app developers across the payments and commerce industry to offer tap to pay to millions of merchants in the US. Tap to pay on iPhone will be available to participate in payment platforms and their app developer partners to leverage in their software developer kits SDKs in an upcoming iOS software beta. Stripe will be the first payment platform to offer tap to pay on iPhone to their business customers, including the Shopify point of sale app this spring. Additional payment platforms and apps will follow later this year. Any thoughts on this? i'm happy that this is part of a partnership

thing and doesn't seem to be like a straight up apple like play to control you know we have we have unique access over this hardware and so we're gonna control it entirely it does look like there i wonder if it was always conceived this way or if they thought you know we can't really play this game right now where the scrutiny is on us i'm looking forward to seeing who their other partners are going to be um you know the truth is that the there was a hole in the market that was iphones can't accept taps so we're going to build things like you know square built their readers and all of that that are like to accept this stuff but the truth is like most i mean a lot of this stuff has moved to terminals now the actual terminals it was kind of a hack and for people who are like really small businesses you're just

starting out and aren't going to go buy a terminal having your iphone just work as that when you're selling stuff at the farmer's market or at a at a like a artist at a convention like a comic convention or something like that where they're not going to set up a whole kiosk but you can just tap and pay them with a credit card um like you were doing it at a business that's got a big kiosk i think that's a good thing um and i think apple working with stripe is a big you know a winning move to start out so like i'm i'm fairly positive about this i don't think this is going to be revolutionary because this isn't like casual payment between friends this is a credit card transaction being

accepted so you gotta have a stripe account um or a merchant account of some kind like you gotta have that infrastructure behind you it is for businesses but i definitely think it's going to be good for a sliver of business that is no longer going to have to like attach a little dongle onto their phone in order to accept credit cards that's a that's a nice thing yeah i could imagine this going to different places i think i read somewhere that apple said they were going to bring it to their stores which makes sense i could imagine this being a thing in restaurants retail and stuff like just as not needing to bring the card terminal to the table anymore you know bring a bring a phone right the phone could be the card terminal that's true yeah and so i could imagine little things

like that you know uh as ways to make this stuff a little more modern and because you know you could get software instead of needing to on you know everybody's devices rather than needing to get these hardware things, which slow to update and are expensive and, or have a bunch of fees attached to it. Like if you want to have one, so there could be stuff like, yeah,

I think this is cool. I am with you that I'm pleased that Apple is announcing. This is a thing for people to work with them on rather than them trying to be like, Hey, we've made this incredible new thing for everybody to sign up for and give us money for. Apple will make money from this. You know, they will.

I don't think it will be a lot, but they will make probably the same kind of money they make on any Apple Pay transaction, I would expect. Now, this isn't an Apple Pay transaction, right? It's not. No. Right? So I don't know. I assume that they are giving a little tiny piece

they will get a little tiny piece of the transactions but um it's not the same you know it's not it's not the same structure as something like apple pay so or apple card so i don't know enough about the financial aspect of it but i do like the fact that they're working with partners like that's the whole point. They probably maybe take a slice of the cut that the partner was taking, you know, I don't work out some deal together or whatever. Yeah.

That could, it could be that they are in there with stripe and stripe is putting a little tiny fraction that they used to take and they're passing it on. And it's part of the, you know, part of the process. I honestly don't understand that part of the business, so I don't know. But I like the idea that they're working with partners.

I don't think there's room to put on top. I mean, it could be that if you sign up to this, so you can say to Stripe, hey, I want to be in this. But Stripe could charge you a little bit more and that goes to Apple you know what I mean there could be a slight amount more because if these are the companies that would otherwise have you be paying them

yearly for a terminal fee or whatever they'll probably still make you pay extra but it'll be a lot less than having a terminal so I imagine look, Apple's getting paid here somehow how that happens I don't know. I feel very confident they're going to get some amount of money, and I expect it will be

some kind of slice of the fee that the payment merchant thing, or like the payment provider will have. It's not going to be like 30% or whatever, because it just can't be, right? There just isn't room in this, like no one would work with them, but it's going to be like 30 or whatever because it just can't be right there just isn't room in this like no one would work with them um but it's going to be some kind of fee i'm sure yep coda and the tragedy of macbeth land apple a total of six oscar nominations uh these include best picture best actor best supporting actor and much more yeah apple got their best picture yep apple's press release was calling this historic and so was tim cook i couldn't find anything that was historic except it being history for apple i

think is their history that's that's what they meant which i find is very funny in apple history historic you know it's like i was like are they the first streaming service no like i was i really i spent like 15 minutes today doing a bunch of Googling trying to work out what the history was and ended up being like, oh, they're just saying it's history for them. This is good for them. They want this. You know, do you think they are likely to win any of these? Probably not. But I think the best supporting actor has a shot um and you know never bet against denzel

washington so maybe but um but really for apple it's a win to be in the conversation that is they they've won already yep they really want that has denzel washington ever won an oscar i think so yeah okay didn't he win for like training day or something a weird weird uh weird win but i think he i think he has this just in like he's won two oscars training day and glory two oscars okay because the the article noted him has having 10 nominations which is a uh the most nominated ever and the most nominated black man in history yeah training day is it was his best actor and then of course way back in 1989 he was best supporting actor for glory it's a really good movie um but yeah training day i just find that funny because training day is a movie that i'm

like really that's what he won best actor for but he did yeah because i figured maybe if he hadn't won it that would maybe clinch him a win you know know, of like he's got to win it at some point. But if he's already won it, I don't know. But yeah, I'm sure Apple are very happy. So I assume unless the rules change, that meant that these were in cinemas for a little bit? Or did they change the rules? The rules are different than they used to be, but not what they were last year. are different than they used to be but not what they were last year i believe the apple now does the thing that netflix also does where they do some amount of screening that qualifies them and

then they immediately put it on their streaming service after that but right yeah fair enough i'm sure they'll be very excited if they if they win one can you imagine oh boy there'll be a lot of apple.com stuff if they win one of those oh yeah well i i look forward to seeing what tim cook wears on the red carpet for your consideration this episode is brought to you by new relic if you're a software software engineer you've been there it's 9 p.m you're unwinding from work but in your phone buzzers of an alert something's broken and your mind is racing with what could be wrong did you introduce a bug in your last deploy? Is it the network? Is it the server? Is it some kind of global issue? Who knows?

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One last time, newrelic.com slash upgrade. A thanks to New Relic for their support of this show and RelayFM. Room around up, Jason. Got some stuff for you. Yeehaw some stuff welcome to rumor roundup that's right i've been fixing to find some rumors so prospect to jason uh at least that's what i hear oh man this is good i've been wondering if we could have some kind of theming around rumor roundup and i've've landed on it now. It's western.

That's it. It's going to be cowboy themed from now on. Mark Gurman is the fastest in the west when it comes to rumors. Yeah. Fastest draw out there that I've ever seen. But he's not in this one today. He's sleeping. He's sleeping.

This is the weird Mark Gurman. He's not sure about all this stuff. Digitimes is reporting that a MacBook Pro of an M2 chip is likely to be unveiled in March. Aside from the new chip, they expect this to be a majorly unchanged 13-inch model, which differs from what we were talking about, about the fastest gun in the West,

Mark Gurman a couple of weeks ago, who reported on the removal of the touch bar my question to you jason would it be weird to see the m2 chip in a macbook pro before the macbook air yes i was assuming so okay there there's this report is very weird um m2 i at least had been assuming would come a little bit later yeah and that what we would get in the the m in the macbook pro would be like an m1 pro right now that those chips are out there that you could go back and sprinkle them in some of the models that previously only had an m1 without making big changes. This

DigiTimes report suggests that no, what they're going to do is just drop an M2 into the current M1 13-inch MacBook Pro and not change anything else. Keep the touch bar and everything else, which is not what Mark Gurman reported. Although again, there could be two things happening here, right? There could be an M2 MacBookbook pro 13 inch and then later they remove the touch bar although it seems like why would they want to touch that product twice right why would they why would they do that so it does it this is a very strange report i am assuming that there's only going to be one update to the 13 inch macbook pro um and that there will be a chip change in it um but having it be an m2 i mean i don't know it's a

macbook pro to me honestly i feel like it's an m2 oh like when they do eventually do this it would be strange to me to put the m1 pro into this product which i think they're trying to keep cheap that's true that's true i mean and distance it from the 14 but it wouldn't have the good display and it wouldn't have the ports and it wouldn't have well maybe it maybe it has magsafe probably has magsafe right i don't know i don't know i imagine this big this computer being a macbook air with a touch bar which it kind of already is. Yeah, and they're going to redefine the MacBook Air anyway, right?

Yeah. And so my thinking is from a spec perspective, that's kind of all it is, which would suggest to me that whenever they do update this computer, it would get the same guts, basically, as the MacBook Air, which I do think would get MagSafe, by the way,

but I don't think they're going to add it to this way, but I don't think they're going to add it to this MacBook Pro because I don't think they're going to change it unless all they do is just remove the touch bar. But even then, I don't think I expect... Maybe if they removed the touch bar, they're already in there, maybe they would add MagSafe.

I don't know. While they're in there. While you're in there, just throw that in there. Move some things around. Look, the touch bar is super close to where you could just stick a magnet. So just get some tweezers, put that in there. They open it up. Move some things around. Look, the touch bar is super close to where you could just stick a magnet. So just like get some tweezers, put it in there. Drop the magnets right in. When I read this report, Jason, I was like, this doesn't make any sense to me.

Like you're saying, why would you bring the MacBook Pro and put an M2 chip in it? But then our favorite, the Eurasian regulatory database has been updated. I love a Eurasian Regulatory Database has been updated. I love a Eurasian Regulatory Database. It's been updated to register three new Macs in the Eurasian Regulatory Database. One of these is described as a laptop. Now, here's a quote, by the way, in case you're not familiar with this. It kind of is in my mind a lot. I see this reference because a couple of weeks ago,

it was updated with a new iPhone, which is probably the SE, and a new iPad, which is probably the regular iPad that we're all expecting to come in March. But 9to5Mac... Yes. iPad Air. Yes.

9to5Mac had a good explainer here, just in case you need a refresher. Apple must register any devices that rely on encryption technologies with the Eurasian Economic Commission. And hence this database has become a very strong indicator of Apple's short-term roadmaps

in recent years. I had forgotten why they needed to do this. I thought it was something about radio waves, you know, like every time a new device is coming online. The FCC has to do that. But it's not the FCC. It's not about that. It's not what the FCC does. do that but it's not the FCC it's not about that it's not

what the FCC does this is about encryption fair enough so also I want to just point out the short-term roadmap is a very fun idea it's like that's like saying I have a map here of how to get from here to around the corner like it's right like it's it's a short-term roadmap you just drive down the road it's like you know when you just you know it's one of the things you know the way to work but you just want to know the traffic you know that's kind of a short term roadmap thank you okay it makes perfect sense now so i was surprised here because they're saying one of them is a laptop now three max is a lot of max right now however if we're going to get a Mac Mini and iMac Pro, which we're hoping for but we're not sure about, maybe, a laptop?

Now, I'm not expecting that MacBook Air anytime soon. That feels like a much later-in-the-year product. So are we going to get this MacBook Pro with an M.2 chip? I don't know. Okay, so what I find very weird here is we've gotten some reports that Mark Gurman seems pretty certain about, and now we get these reports that contradict. And I like Mark Gurman's reports. I think that they're generally quite accurate. and a big iMac and a pro Mac mini, that's actually the scenario that makes the most sense.

If you don't look at any of the reports, the problem is that Mark Gurman's like, that's not what's happening. So I don't know. I like, I mean, and also we've, we've talked about the idea that the Big iMac is just a mystery right now. Like, is that what this is?

Is it Pro Mac Mini update to the MacBook Pro and the Big iMac? Is that what they're rolling out here? What I'll say about the iMac Pro is I think Mark Gurman seems to have been very unsure about that product for a while. Yes, for a while. In that he has said it's coming this year, but hasn't really given any kind of window on that. No, it seems like it's a blind spot for him that he does not have good information on it.

And it makes me wonder if he's got, whether he's had a source that is no longer, does no longer have the vision into it or what is going on here, that maybe Mark Gurman doesn't have as clear a vision into what these products are as he maybe felt he did when they were in process last year. And so it's all unclear. Because I agree completely of what you just said, is that from a logical perspective, we would expect that product now. If you are thinking about you have 10 months left to do this, the whole product line,

it makes a lot of sense to have an iMac Pro with the chips you just announced a few months ago, which are clearly going to be in that product, to occur now. If all logic would assume that if there's going to be in that product, to occur now, if all logic would assume that if there's going to be a Mac Pro, that is announced in June. Probably won't ship until way later, but... And let me... I know you are on the M2 potential train for that 13-inch model, but I could make an argument that this event is going to be the end of the M1 generation.

And what we're going to get is three Macs that use M1 and M1 Pro and M1 Max. And they are that 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 27-inch iMac or whatever size it is, large iMac and the Mac mini. What about the Mac Pro? They're all going to be, and well, because the Mac Pro is going to have the quad thing, right? Mac Pro is a whole different deal. You don't think that's going to be called M1 something? Well, okay.

Well, I mean, I don't know, but if it is, it's going to be like M1 quad or something. So don't get hung up on the end of the M1 generation because I think the Mac Pro is a completely different beast. And let's just put it aside for now. Well, just, I don't want to, just real quick, before we put it aside, I did suggest this a while ago and I still think it could be possible

that the Mac Pro actually gets an M2 Max. That's what it gets, M2 Max and M2 Pro because it's way late in the year. But anyway, carry on. Yeah, I don't on yeah i don't know i don't know but uh if we leave that aside what i'm trying to get at here is maybe they've decided to have this thing come in waves and what the last thing they want to do is put this new now that they've got the max and pro chip announced that it fits in some of their high-end products

so fit it in right and that they want they want it available in the iMac. They obviously want it available in a Mac mini because they've held that slot open and kept the high-end Intel Mac mini available. And I think it actually kind of makes sense to make it an option in the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but we can debate that. That's a weird product

and I don't know what they're doing there. So we could see that. Maybe it's just an M1, maybe it's an M2, but I'm thinking, what if this is an M1 crescendo, right? Where it's like, now the M1 Pro and Macs are in other systems too. Remember that from the MacBook Pro, wasn't that great? Well, now here it is in these systems. Yay. And then they move on. And then the next thing. Well, now here it is in these systems. Yay. And then they move on. And then the next thing is like, now we're going to talk about M2. And maybe that is a June kind of thing. So that's my best shot, at least right now.

I don't know if it will withstand a huge amount of scrutiny because I agree the 13-inch MacBook Pro is kind of just completely baffling to me. scrutiny because I agree the 13-inch MacBook Pro is kind of just completely baffling to me. But the fact that there are products that want the Pro or Max chips that are as yet unimproved, that would seem to be the most logical next step. Not rolling out an M2, but actually rolling out other computers that use M1 Pro and M1 Max. References to Reality OS have appeared in Apple's open source code and App Store upload logs. What do you think about this name? Obviously, this would be around a headset. I believe this name has been reported before, so this was more like confirmation of the name's existence.

You know, it's a name for an OS project that's probably been going on for some time, and I don't think they pick OS project names, especially for pre-release versions of an OS, with any... Personally, I don't think it has any clues about what the actual product names are. I've seen several people say, well, that's it. The product's going to be called Apple Reality. I don't think this is evidence of that. And I don't think that's going to be the product name. But it is another sign that we're getting a lot closer to Apple making a VR, AR announcement. Let me tell you right now, the name reality with apple just sounds way too dystopian to me i know it's it's somebody uh i i saw said maybe this is like an homage to the reality distortion field i'm like wow um why

would they do why would you do that do you think apple would ever own up to reality distortion as their business like come on no i really don't like it i look because look ultimately we don't really think of ar and vr too much as like augmented reality virtual reality like we don't i know that's what they mean but at a certain point ar and vr just become what we call these things and we know what that means and reality as a word is kind of devoid from it but the eye to me the idea of apple making something called apple reality is just it just sounds really wrong i agree i don't like reality os like it doesn't it doesn't work for me um i don't know that's because you don't have any hardware to run it on yet oh yeah well it's just it's not booting i don't know what the issue is um but yeah i don't i don't i don't know. Well, that's because you don't have any hardware to run it on yet. Yeah, well, it's just it's not booting. I don't know what the issue is.

But yeah, I don't particularly like it. It feels like a code name to me. Not sure it's ever going to be a marketing name. It's going to be one of those things. release ROS or VisionOS or the OS that runs the product, everybody's going to look in the source and be like, or look in the Xcode downloads and be like, teehee, I found RealityOS, or it's referred to internally as ROS or whatever,

but outside it has no name. That may be the case, at least initially, or they may give it branding. Just because they're working on this in-house doesn't mean that the branding that ultimately is going to live on this thing is Reality OS anyway. And if it does, I'm not sure people will care so much about it. Find a replace.

The product has a different name. And if the product has a different name, then it's not going to matter so much anyway. Branding around this is going to be difficult, I think, for them. Yeah. I think this is going to be difficult i think for them yeah i think this is going to be a particularly tricky branding exercise that i'm really intrigued to see what they land on for both product names and uh like product names and the the operating system because we all know

whatever this product is is not what they want right well it's the first it's it's it's step one it's step one towards what they want like the hardware they really want to make right which is stuff you can wear outside and this is not going to be that so like they're probably not going to call this like apple glasses which is like you know like apple watch apple glasses you know like easier you can just see that but that it would be weird to call this like apple glasses which is like you know like apple watch apple glasses you know like easier you can just see that but that it would be weird to call this that because to imagine this product evolving into that seems odd to me like and honestly they will probably i expect still make a home version like like you have iPhone and your computer, like your Mac.

I could imagine there always being these two products because AR and VR, I think for a very long time, probably always, will have this like there are distinct use cases for both that doesn't really match up. I think we've had this conversation before in the way of like you know power and blah blah blah blah so I don't know so it's going to be intriguing to me to see what this product is called I think I've seen

I think you've mentioned this too I think you said this to me in Slack Apple Vision as one which I think is a reference to a previous thing right? Well it's a product that previously existed from Apple. So they've got some amount of, I guess, ownership of that namespace. But also, I like that name. I think it works for them. It's better than reality, that's for sure.

It is definitive and yet sort of meaningless in a way that allows them to bend it where they want it to go. It is talking about a vision and visionary and all the things that go around that are much more in line with kind of the language that Apple wants to use. I think, whereas reality is super weird. So yeah, I'm at this point strongly in the Apple Vision camp. I think Apple Vision is a name that they could put out there and apply it to a VR headset and apply it to a set of glasses down the road. And it's all just part of Apple Vision. That is not, I mean, I don't know. And I'm prepared to have people suggest names that are better. But I think Apple Vision right now is by far the best that I've heard.

I have a breaking news tweet for you. The fastest gunslinger in the West. Hold on, everybody! The rumor roundup is back! As I wrote, new Macs incoming at Apple's March 8th event. Also hearing there will be multiple new Mac minis this year, assuming regular and pro plus the new MacBook pro between new air and the 14 inch also in the works.

I Mac pro M two 24 inch. I Mac new Mac pro. I don't think knows what's coming, right? That's just like a lot of information. There kind of isn't really any pinning on this. Yeah, that's not breaking news. That's Mark restating what he's got reported,

but it doesn't give us new information. It was more I wanted to make sure this was in the show because we explicitly said that he didn't say anything about it. Well, he said something, but what he said was nothing new. Yeah, so he has his prior reports, and now he's linked to the MacRumors story about the regulatory stuff and said, here is,

let me point you to my prior report in which I mentioned. I think he knows there's Macs, but doesn't know which Macs. That's what it sounds like to me. Yeah, because he keeps talking about this year, right? And so he doesn't know all the details of when. I also assume that if this March 8th event really does happen, that

we'll probably, in the next few weeks, Mark Gurman will probably get a better idea of what's at that event. But right now, he doesn't seem to know, and we don't know, and it's just floating out there. So once again, he's the sheriff, Mark Gurman. He's the sheriff of the rumor roundup.

All right, partner, saddle up. We're leaving the rumor roundup now. All right, see you next time, buckaroos. Over the last few months, there have been plenty of stories of people either being concerned about the possibility of AirTags being abused or actual stories of people

who have been unknowingly and or unwontedly tracked with an AirTags being abused or actual stories of people who have been unknowingly and or unwontedly tracked with an AirTag. So now Apple has published a statement about this, detailing kind of what has happened, what they are going to do about it in the immediate, and also what some stuff that they are working on to try and address this situation. So let me go through some of these things and we can talk about it. So Apple, in their statement,

condemned the misuse, of course, and state that they're working with law enforcement agencies to identify people that are doing this. Step one is, because this is a weird document, right? It is announcement and damage control and spin and a whole bunch of things

going on together. I like the fact that step one is remind people it's illegal. Yep. And we don't think people should do this. Say that they're going to add more warnings to the device to remind people that it's illegal and you shouldn't do it and remind people who might be thinking of using their products in this way that that your apple id is tied to it and apple is happy to work with law enforcement to discover the identities of the people who are leaving these track these unwanted trackers so it's the it's the sort of a three-pronged approach of um don't do this it's, and we know who you are. So Apple have kind of committed on two strands of working here.

So one is to make AirTags and Find My Service better for receiving unwanted alerts. So like if I was to borrow Jason's keys, it would be bug, the AirTag's going to bug me, right? So they're trying to make that part of it better. And also working on better ways to alert people in situations of misuse. So this is going to be for right so they're trying to make that part of it better and also working on better ways to alert people in situations of misuse so this is going to be for his combination stuff as you as jason mentioned new warnings during setup that using an air tag maliciously is a crime which is like that feels like a legal thing like this is like a weird thing like oh i didn't know you

know it's it's intimidation right it's saying yeah you know you do not do this um you know psychologically somebody who's committed to it's going to do it but like it is a it is a an attempt to put it in there that it's very clear that that um apple warned them and then if somebody goes oh i didn't know that that that people can say actually it's it put up this dialogue box and you you saw it and they've also found and are going to be addressing a bug which i hadn't seen or heard much about this has happened hasn't happened to me but apparently a lot of people have been getting uh warnings of an unknown accessory detected like this is like a thing that your phone is pumping up and saying like there is an unknown accessory detected and it's with you apparently this is airpods causing this majorly um and they are going to change the alert to say that there

are airpods detected yeah this sounds like literally it's just a bug but that people were using it in throwing it in the barrel with all of this air tag related stuff and it's actually just a bug that apple did not was not properly identifying that it was airpods because I know I've seen some stories from people that were like, I've got this warning, or I've seen these viral tweets, and I don't know what this is, but it turns out it was probably AirPods. But with the news about AirTags being an issue, people were worried that, has someone put an AirTag on me when it seems to have been some kind of bug?

I mean, of course course that could have happened, but what they're saying is, you know, it could be something else. They also, what I really appreciated this is they laid out a selection of things which they have not announced. They are not features, but they're trying to see if they can make them work.

And I think this is the perfect way for them to try and work on this because it's not Apple's way, right? To be like, we're going to try a bunch of stuff because they do not commit to any of these things definitely happening because they might not be able to get it to work in some cases but they're working on them and i appreciate that so they're investigating precision finding so if you allow so this would allow a recipient of the unwanted tracking alert so like something pops up and it's like, hey, an AirTag is with you to be able to then use

the precision finding feature as if it was your AirTag to be able to locate it. So I think that's really clever, right? Because if it's my AirTag, I can use the, if you've got a modern phone with the U1 chip,

the precision tracking to find out exactly where it is. So they would then be allowing this for if you've got an air tag that's with you that's not yours it's an unwanted one you'd then be able to actually find it like where is it like is it in my bag like what's going on when an air tag would start making its alert noise when it detected movements you know like you've got an air tag it's with you and eventually it's going to start bleeping i don't remember the time period but there's like a time period where if it's with you,

it starts making an audible noise, right? When it does that, an alert will also appear on nearby iPhones that you can take action on in case the speaker's been tampered with or something. They're working on making the system better in general at alerting people sooner to an unwanted device with them, and looking at tweaking the sound to an unwanted device with them and looking at tweaking the sound that an air tag makes to make it more recognizable making the sound louder right i mean this is a tricky subject right like there's i think there's a lot of really interesting debate about this because it is a genuine concern but i also see a lot of people saying that like people that are going to do this are going to find a way to do this but then there's also other genuine arguments have a size

like we have but you shouldn't make it easier so this is a complicated product yeah and and i think it is uh it's the case where like tracking is going to happen like we have tracking technology in a lot of different places apple's has a lot of advantages because of how they built the find my network yeah but there are other ways to do it so what apple is really trying to do here is say look we are going to do everything we can to make it um harder for people to use this as a tracking device because that's not what it's meant for. And, you know, in the long run, I wonder how well AirTags will sell. And if Apple decides that it's not worth it, it doesn't mean that there aren't, I imagine that this Find My technology is going to go in

all sorts of Apple products. And the truth is that if you, if you've got a, an AirPods case, that'll do Find My Network or, you know, or any other Apple device that does Find My Network, you could use it as a tracker too. In the long run, the trackers are out there and then there are the tiles of the world and other things like that. The issue here is whether Apple participates or not, that this is going to happen. But what Apple is trying to do, And I also think it's not fair.

A few people have said, you know, Apple didn't anticipate this. It's like, well, if you look at how AirTags are built, Apple did anticipate this. They just didn't anticipate it enough. They didn't anticipate all of the nuances of it. They always anticipated it because they added some of these features in, but they didn't go far enough. They did not go far enough. And I wonder if that was a push

and pull of like, we need to ship it. I honestly wonder now if the AirTag stuff, the reason the AirTags got delayed as long as they did is because at some point somebody at Apple said, you can't release this

without a whole structure of people misusing this. And I wonder if that was one of the reasons they had to kind of go back to the drawing board a little bit. But what they came out with was obviously intended to prevent this, but didn't really anticipate all of the issues with it. And now they seem to be trying to make it better so you know so this this thing that they posted is a fascinating combination of sort of like warnings and expressions of care and saying that they will change some of the things to for it to be better um all just kind

of rolled into one um and it happened about the same time that the what new york times did a story about a writer having her husband walk around or go around manhattan with a bunch of trackers including an air tag so like these stories will continue to happen yeah it's a kind of a i find the air tags and this whole thing a really fascinating kind of thought experiment about the promise and danger of technology because I love AirTags for me

excellent product I have a bunch of them, they're really simple and they give me peace of mind but it can do the exact opposite that because they're so simple and because they work so well, they could be a horror for people in different situations. And I don't know if there's been something so simple

that has been able to have this argument on both sides in a really long time. Because you can make that argument about smartphones, but it's a much more complicated product than the good and bad of it. This is a hegemonic blob with Bluetooth in it. It's a piece of plastic with a little bit of metal on a battery inside of it, right? And so Matt in the Discord has mentioned

that Apple's done more than their competitors at this, which I understand. The thing about that is that they have to because they're Apple, right? They have to go further for multiple reasons one because they need one because this is a much better product in its good and bad ways than any other company has been able to produce right because the air tags tap into literally every iphone as their way of having location tracking, right? So their tracking is way better than Tile,

than Chipolo, I think is the name of another company. I think Chipolo uses Find My, though, don't they? They do now. I don't know if they have made it before. Anyway, you know, like all of these companies doing this stuff. But Apple did it better. See, that's the thing, right? It's like these technologies exist already,

but then Apple was like, oh, we're going to gonna make it really good but like when you make it really good you make it really new york times the new york times article points out it's like um you know tile to find a tile you have to find it has somebody with the tile app on has to like walk past it whereas to find a find my device it just needs to be near an iPhone. And guess what? They're everywhere. Literally everywhere. And so it totally changes the equation.

It's also true that like there are GPS trackers. Like what Apple has done is lower the barrier to this because you could literally, if you were a stalker, you could get a phone and stick it somewhere and do Find My, right? You could get a GPS tracker and stick it somewhere and do fine mine, right? You could get a GPS tracker and stick it somewhere and see that where that person is going. Like there are lots of other products that do this. What Apple has done is lower the barrier.

And although that is good in an Apple-y sense, it is also bad in the sense that it becomes, it's so easy that it's you know it becomes the stalker's choice and that's the that's the the i think i think you're right this is in some ways a really simple i mean it's not a simple issue but it's a simple product that shows you all of the ramifications of technology in our society. From a PR perspective, people like to write these stories about Apple, right? Of course. So that's also going to open them up, which is honestly, I'm sure one of the major reasons why if they did hold on to it was for that reason of like, what is the public perception of this product going to be?

of like what is the public perception of this product going to be like even if we've already gone far further than anybody else do we need to continue to go further before we can release this because all it needs is one bad story and everyone's going to want to write that story so i'm happy to see that they're going further i would say selfishly for me because i've seen people saying oh they just have to turn off the Find My Network part of this. You know, it's like the only way to get around this, but it just renders the product completely useless. It's like selfishly for me, I'm happy that they haven't like taken away doing absolutely everything that they can to remove as many of the bad parts that they realistically can if they're going to continue this product. So this is a very complicated thing. And of course, it's just worth mentioning that

the type of people that this is used maliciously against, me and Jason are not, right? So we're not the best voices for this, but we just wanted to talk about it. Right, and I mean, it is a serious issue. Like, it is a very serious issue. And I will say this about it too. I like that Apple made this statement because it does show that what Apple didn't do

is take all the criticism and get up on its high horse and be like no we've we've thought of everything right already done it yeah they they have come down off of that platform and said yeah okay we hear you we are making these changes now it's still apple and i'm sure there will still be criticism of this, but my hope is that Apple now has a pathway where it is listening and paying attention to this stuff and finding a way of making this product work better. There are going to be some people who say they should just not make this product, but I think the challenge there is these products are going to exist, whether Apple makes it or not. So all, you know, Apple, all Apple can do, do you want Apple to not make the product because it may, it lowers the barrier for people to use it? Or do you want

Apple to make the product because Apple is a company with a level of scrutiny that is going to create a whole set of understanding and best practices for how these kind of devices work. There's no right answer there. Like it's complicated, but I think it's, I think it's fascinating to watch it. And as somebody who has an AirTag on my son's bike, in case it gets stolen, I have to say all these changes make it much harder to use AirTags for that because it's going to be like, hey, hey, thief. Hey, hey, hey, there's an AirTag. And I'm like, okay, but it's not meant, you know, the goal of it is not meant to be recovering lost, like stolen property.

It's meant to be recovering lost property. Yeah, I think they reiterated that, right? It's for stuff you've lost, not stuff that's been stolen. Like that's kind of the idea of the product. Exactly. But then again, I have that same thought, which is if I've got an AirTag that's screwed into the bicycle and it starts to chirp and maybe somebody who stole it gets a little alarm

and they're like, oh man, I can't get that thing out. And maybe their answer is just, we'll dump dump it and then it's lost and not stolen so now you can go get it again yeah maybe does this make these products really bad for putting on a suitcase i mean it's going to chirp at people i don't know interesting because that's where i have mine and i guess that's like the point of it yeah it's it's it's not going with it i think there's something about it traveling with you but i did actually i worry that it's in the cargo hold and the the person who's up above is getting alerts that there's a there's a tracker moving with them because it's they're on the same airplane or

they're in the same bus i don't know i. I wonder about that. Although, actually, if it sees... I don't know. Because it doesn't know that it's traveling with its owner. Does it or does it? Sometimes, sometimes not. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. I mean, that's the challenge here, right?

Apple is making their own product a lot more complicated. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. I mean, that's the challenge here, right? Apple is making their own product a lot more complicated. Yeah. But they have to. Yeah, we'll see. That's interesting. That's an intriguing one. I'm going to wonder about that one because that's like, I think, the prime use case

of this product is for luggage. Yeah. We'll see. All right. This episode is brought to you by DoorDash. of this product. It's for like luggage. We'll see. This episode is brought to you by DoorDash. Did you forget that one thing at the store? Well, now you can get snacks, drinks, and household essentials in 30 minutes with DoorDash.

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time, UPGRADE2022 for the US UPGRADEAUS for Australia and you will get 25% off your first order with doordash subject to change and terms apply our thanks to doordash for their support of this show and relay fm i saw on twitter that you were doing some stuff to some old max and i can't i'm intrigued i want to know what you're up to over there i got a sledgehammer smashed bunch of old maps i hate these things they know what they did. OS 8, it's terrible. Bang!

20 smashed Macs for 2022. Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, only two survived. 18 died. Yeah, I did. This all started with, I mean, Stephen Hackett is always partially to blame for everything involving old Macs. Yeah. Karen Healy, who is a listener and reader and professor at Duke.

Oh, did they put together the charts? Yeah, he put together the charts that were the Mac report card follow-up charts on Friday. Karen did that. He has an SE30 fully functional at his desk, a Mac SE30, with a printer and everything. And it's amazing. And I was following what he was doing with that. And I was intrigued because I have a bunch of old Macs here. I have more old Macs here than I used to have because of the 20 Macs for 2020 project.

And one of the things that I've been thinking for a long time is that I've got my wife's old Mac from college, which was a 128 upgraded to a plus. So it's got a SCSI port on the back and it's got the, but it's got the, you know, original keyboard without the number pad or the arrow keys and it's got the original mouse and all of that. But it's hard drive that she had for it, which I still have, and I tried last week to see if it still worked, but it's jogging my memory that maybe that was the issue, is that the hard drive did die at some point. So we don't have her old hard drive from back then, but we have our old computer and what i learned from karen healy among other people is that it's uh look technology has come so far in terms of letting people build these like miniaturized devices that are way probably way more powerful than the computers that they're attached

to that bring back life to old computers so i ordered a thing called the floppy emu floppy emulator it's like a it's like a circuit board um in a little plastic box that you assemble the the little plastic box around it and you plug it into the floppy port on the back of an early Mac and it's got an SD card and it's got a screen and some buttons. It's got a little tiny screen. It's like a little raspberry pie kind of thing. And you pick what you basically off of the SD card card using the buttons you pick what disc you want it to be for that moment and the computer it's powered by the computer by the floppy port on the back and it it boots that disc like it was a floppy because hard 400k floppy discs are hard to come

by these days but uh you can put thousands of things on an sd card and have them all be a little you know floppy um disk images so i bought one of those i have another thing called a blue scuzzy that's coming that is a um that is a virtual scuzzy hard drive with an sd card in it. Same thing. So that I can boot these old Macs. So what I did and what I posted on Twitter is that I got my wife's original Mac to boot for the first time in, I don't know how long, 15, 20 years at least. To boot into all sorts of versions of Mac OS and run games and all sorts of stuff. I typed up a few sentences in Microsoft Word version 4.

Just amazing kind of to bring that thing back to life. You've got a writing computer now. Well, and you know, the moment that I turned it on, I immediately thought of upgrade because it makes that beep that the show starts. That's the beep of the original Mac. So it's pretty, it's been, that was really fun. And I want to set it up somewhere

where I can spend some more time with it because it's on a shelf right now and it's not the most ergonomic thing. And I want to put it somewhere else that's fun. But that was really great. And with the Blue Scuzzy, I'm also hoping to see if I've got some other older kind of classic Mac,

the pre-PowerPC Mac generation especially, see if I can get them up and running. And then I also have some PowerPC Macs and I'm working on that. see if I can get them up and running. And then I also have some PowerPC Macs. And I'm working on that. I've got a G4. And the nice thing about the G4s is, depending on which model you've got,

they run a very broad cross-section of operating systems. They will boot OS 9. But they will also run like 10.0 and 10.1 and 10.2 and 10.3. And some of them will do four and five. It runs a really surprisingly broad cross-section of software. And a lot of this stuff is emulatable, but there is something about having it running on the actual computer that is great. And the challenge that I've run into is over the years, and I know this came up when Apple introduced the 24-inch iMac with that magnetic cable on the back

because it's not a standard. It's a thing that Apple invented. And oh, there is such a history of Apple inventing its own kind of plugs for things. And it's great in the moment, but then 20 years pass and you're like, I've got this iMac, but it doesn't have a power cord

what can i plug into it and the answer is well buddy um you can't just find a power cord and plug it in you got to find a 24 inch imac power plug and then plug into that and the whole thing right so in the in history first macs that did video out had the Mac display connector, which was not VGA. It was a different port. And then later on, when Apple built monitors in the G4 era, they wanted to have them super awesomely powered by a single cable. So they built an enhancement to DVI called ADC that basically did dvi and power and usb over one plug um but you know it doesn't that's not a standard port and so you then you have to get it find a converter um and all this stuff is going out to like uh even to dvi it's like well how do i get that in

like on a tv with hdmi or to a monitor and is also a challenge. So there's a lot of a challenge to just like, see if you can get these things. Like the nice thing about the original Mac is it comes with its own screen. So you can just see it, but like this Mac 2 CI I have, I have no idea if it works or not because I have nothing that plugs into its monitor port on the backside. So there's just, there's a lot, there's a lot going on here. I think what my goal in doing all of this, and I did buy, I bought an SSD that plugs in from Otherworld Computing, their Legacy Edition, which is basically, it's an SSD hard drive that you can stick in a PowerMac G4, legacy edition which is basically it's an ssd hard drive that you can stick in a power mac g4 and which is nice because you know these hard drives and these things if they're not dead are

going to be dead soon yeah um and what i want to do ultimately is i want to be able to get video out from something like the g4 into a form where i can um capture it because i would love to do some just for fun really do some live streams where i explore old mac software because i think it would be fun um like on youtube but yeah i have to get to work first and that's not going well so far so we'll see so the keyboard and the mouse are they all working and using the original ones the original mac uh the keyboard and the mouse are they all working and using the original ones the original mac uh the keyboard and the mouse so i actually have two original macs i have an original original mac that someone sent me uh-huh i haven't tried that one and then i got lauren's mac original mac updated to a mac plus um so i have two keyboards and I have two mice.

And the keyboard and mouse that are attached to Lauren's work, all the keys work, the whole thing works. So input isn't a problem. I have an ADB mouse and keyboard, which for the next generation,

I don't have an SE, but I do have that 2CI. I was able to power up the 2CI by pressing the power button on the ADB keyboard. What happened after that is a mystery because I can't get video out of it. I'm still trying to figure that one out. I've got an adapter

and it's got a bunch of dip switches on it, but I haven't been successful with it. And I'm going to have to do a process of elimination thing and see if I can figure it out. I did discover that my TV that I have out here, the flat screen TV, that was the first flat screen we ever bought. It has a VGA port on the back and

it has composite video on the back and it has component video on the back. So it's actually the last device in my house that will play, um, like that will do like easily like direct VGA or something. Anyway, there are lots and lots and lots of adapters out there um anyway and then you get to the g4 and it has usb so like literally anything can plug into any of these g4s the i also have a g4 cube right behind me and a uh and a imac g4 and those both boot just fine and um and those have and those have, uh, again, USB ports on them. Once it gets to the USB era, it's actually really easy. Um, the other thing that's terrifying is that I realized I kind of need a mouse pad. I haven't, I haven't needed a mouse pad in so long, but it's

got the little rolly ball mouse and you kind of need a surface that grips the ball and lets you mouse around so that's that's a little bit weird so you're like firmly lost in old dongle town right now you know you get like the the old town you know you're like that's where you are this is this yeah it was bypassed by the great dongle town uh bypass uh but uh it's still there historic historic dongle historic dongle town and yeah like some of these ports again I understand it and I'm just like

Apple what are you doing like ADC because I have two ADC monitors and you plug them in it like could not be easier you plug them in and they just work and they have

they're powered and they've got USB ports on the back and it's like it's great but if you try to attach anything else to that computer it's like I don't know what to tell you ADC it works great with ADC monitors and that's about it.

So I bought a bunch of adapters. I bought VGA adapters. I bought DVI adapters. I bought an ADC to DVI adapter. I got lots of adapters, but getting it all to work out to ideally to HDMI is it's a work in progress. But it's been fun. And I'm hoping that at some point I'll be able to sort of share that. If I have to go to the classic Mac, I'll have to figure out like a way to set the frame rate so it doesn't do the weird, you know, scan line thing. If I want to just shoot the screen, screen basically and people can just watch the screen with me but I figure I lived through that era and there are a lot of people out there who didn't or if they did like I also for the OS 10 days the G4 days I worked in Macworld that whole period so

it might be fun to explore some of the old software and old games and stuff so maybe I'll do a little bit of that just more for fun it's a little like my keyboard club maybe a little bit i would say though from a streaming perspective me as a viewer i would want to see you using it more than i would want to see the output of it that's fair i i just want to have the ability to shooting um shooting the screen is bad it like it looks really bad right so what i want to do is be able to have a thing where you can see me and you can also see what's on the screen yeah but that's a that's a detail i actually would have to get video out of these things in order to go down that path but um we'll see we'll we'll see what happens there i could also emulate this stuff

and that would be super easy because then it's window capture. It's less exciting in that it's not old hardware, but it works. So that may happen. That is less fun though, I will say. It is a lot less fun. It doesn't have the sounds.

The classic Mac keyboard has a sound. It has a sound to it that is very specific. Oh, there it is. is god those spring sounds are rough pretty wild you send that to me i'll take care of that thing for you real nice oh yeah great i'll send that back like you wouldn't believe oh man you're gonna lubricate every switch on the original mac keyboard. Are they Alps switches? I imagine that they are. Yeah, but you can do it. It's like a whole subculture of people harvesting those things because there are newer housings that you can put.

What was the original Mac keyboard? Man, I would have a great time with that. You wouldn't believe what that thing would come back like. I'm trying to find out now. I'm not sure what they were actually built with. And I've got my Apple extended keyboard as well. Similarly. The big one.

The big one. It's so big. It's way, way, way, way, way too big. I know John Gruber swears by them, but it's enormous. It reminds me every time I look at it of why i don't want a big keyboard i want a little compact keyboard we're gonna talk keyboards today yeah

in upgrade plus by the way so you go to get upgrade plus.com not only do you get ad free episodes they're also longer with bonus content and it is the conclusion possibly conclusion part one uh upgrade keyboard club because jason has the keyboard that I built on stream and sent him. It's right here. So we're going to talk about that. So you also have been delving into history. I have. So kind of greatly for me, out of the blue, surprising,

I have an analog pocket now. Do you know what the analog pocket is? This is that like it's a new handheld gaming thing but it will play uh cartridges from old handheld games right looks really cool if i had any nostalgia for that era which i don't because i was too old then it passed me by but um i would be on it because it's such a great idea because it's playing because it's not an emulator it's not an emulator because it's hardware and then you put the actual cartridges in it yes so to play games on an analog pocket you need ostensibly game boy games if a game boy game boy color or game boy advance they also have little

adapters so you can play uh game gear and neo geo um on it. But really, this is built for Nintendo Game Boy games. It does not work with an emulator. You cannot emulate games. You have to have the cartridges. Now, I missed this when it initially went on sale. I missed it when they went back up on sale again. And these things are backordered for an unknowable amount of time. But a listener got in contact with me a week or so ago.

They had an extra. They ordered two because they weren't sure what color they wanted. And they sold theirs to me. I would like to thank Blair for that. Very nice person. They did me a real solid. Because this was kind of something that I kind of wanted, wasn't sure about, didn't want to

spend aftermarket prices on and didn't want to wait years for. So it was kind of like, well, this thing's lost to me. And it's kind of funny because I was also cleaning my office out. Well, Adina's been helping me a lot of cleaning out the old office because she's going to take the home office because I don't need the home office anymore.

By the way, didn't even mention this, I sold my iMac Pro. It's gone. Yep. Gone. Wow. Yeah. End of an era.

Yep. It was one of those things where we sold it and I let it go. And then, you know, as it was being taken away, I was like, I don't think I was ready for that. Like I did a clone of it and everything, right? So like I have my time machine back up. I have a clone of it and everything right so like i have my time machine back up i have a clone of it but now it's gone like but it was kind of like this is maybe i can sit on this show people get it i felt like i wasn't emotionally ready yeah for it like because you know so we bought

we went this is a long time ago now this is uh 2010 but we went we were thinking about buying a new car and we were curious we were going to do a test drive and you know what happened which is we did the test drive and they said we can get you out of here with this today and before i knew it i was pulling all of the stuff all of our possessions out of our station wagon and putting it in the minivan and it's like this is the this is the car we brought our children home from the hospital in. Yup. It's like so many memories in this car. And like in 10 minutes,

it, we were out of there and it was gone and never to be seen again. And I had that exact feeling, which is, I know that this, I knew this might happen and I agreed to it and I'm not surprised by it, but I am not emotionally prepared for it. And like once that the iMac Pro,

not at bringing children home from the hospital levels, I've been using it for a really long time. Yeah. And I did a lot of important stuff on it, and it was just like, it's gone now. And I wanted it gone, because it was just a big thing that I never use, and honestly, it was just like a hassle. But it's gone now. And I wanted it gone because it was just a big thing that I never use. And honestly, it was just like a hassle.

But it's gone now. And got a decent price on it. Honestly, I was just happy to get rid of it. And so it's gone now forever. I'm hugging my Mac Pro right now. Get ready. Get ready. Any time is coming for you, my friend.

The rumor roundup may be coming for you soon. But in doing that, i actually found some old game boy cartridges and i was like i don't want to get rid of those things and then out of the blue black got in touch with me analog pocket so now i've got it so i've got some of my old cartridges some of them work some of them don't some kind of work so some old game boy and game boy advanced games require battery replacements because they're really old. Some of these cartridges need batteries to work at all for saving. Wow.

Some of them need batteries for accessing certain game features. Like for example, I have a Game Boy Advance Pokemon game. It works and it has the old save on it and stuff but there are features in the game that require a

battery to keep the clock running so these cartridges are so sophisticated yeah that they have batteries in them that they're where you do the do your saves yes is that the premise of the whole analog pocket is that the cartridges basically are the thing that the hardware boots off of so that if you duplicate the hardware you don't actually need the software because they're all on the cartridges is that how that how those those systems work so the the analog pocket has its own operating system and it's doing a bunch of things but everything is on the cartridge you don't save to the analog pocket it's like the same as the game boy right so it is ostensibly just acting like a game boy but it's got a layer on top like some of the stuff that it's doing is like the screen

i think is a forex of the original game right so it's scaling and it looks incredible but what it doesn't have to do so it's but it's acting as a bridge and it's booting in maybe in a vm but whatever it is it's booting the software that's on the cartridge it's not that a bridge and it's booting in maybe in a vm but whatever it is it's booting the software that's on the cartridge it's not that and that's how this is legal is they don't have to put like a knock off of the game boy operating system on the device because it's on the cartridge yeah because i don't even really know how much of an operating system the game boys had on them like it all loads from there like there was no saving on them or anything. Right.

That's amazing. And so some of my cartridges, they need the battery replacement. So I've ordered some batteries. I'm going to be doing some replacements. But some of the cartridges, they just needed to be cleaned. I spent some time with some isopropyl alcohol today and I got my 30-year-old version of Tetris working.

I played Tetris today. i could not believe it i remembered watching my mom play that cartridge it's quite emotional really that was the first game i played on the original mac in fact when i booted it up and i i texted lauren a picture and she said does it have tetris and i had to go to the Macintosh Museum and download Tetris and copy it over onto the SD card and then put it in. And then I played Tetris. And it was like, oh, my God, that is the video game probably that I've spent the most time in of any video game ever was Tetris on the Mac back in the day. Playing that today, I got up to level 11. Took you back 30 years, huh? Big time. Big time. playing that today I got up to level 11 big time now I don't remember

Tetris has a leaderboard and I don't remember if you if it saved that or if it was just whilst it was booted I don't remember because it wasn't remembering it from save to save so I have some batteries and I've got

some more batteries coming because the game boy advance and the game boy color games had different batteries inside of the cartridges so it's it's really simple like from my perspective you just gotta desolder the battery and solder a new battery on it like that's the kind of thing i have no issue with but for me now that's easy like i can do that right you know i know how to sort of things i'm very confident with it um and also the i fix it kit has the bit needed to get the screw out because it's like a weird screw um so i was pretty pleased i like i have all the stuff i just need to get some batteries so i'm going to be putting some new batteries in my my out pokemon alpha sapphire in my pokemon sapphire

game i'm going to play that i was pretty bummed though i found my original pokemon alpha sapphire in my pokemon sapphire game i'm gonna play that i was pretty bummed though i found my original pokemon cartridge like pokemon blue the original one and i booted it up and it worked but it had my younger brother's save on it when i was like oh no why did i let him play it i could have revived my old pokemon save god that would have been amazing it's like my damn younger brother why didn't i let him play it did you text him no i think it's my own fault really i would there's no way he would have done that without my approval uh and you know because it's like i never thought i would want to go back to it right like why would i want to do that yeah you were too cool for that i was like oh

babies i've got like an intent no no no no i was just playing the more modern version i i oh i see okay i play all the pokemon games why would i regress in platforms i got pokemon yellow now what do i need pokemon blue for i mean like jason i've been spending a bunch of time over the last couple of weeks playing the brand new pokemon game which i love so you know there's i'm fine with that but yeah it, I don't know. It's really fun. I didn't really think that this was for me because I don't really tend to like to play old games.

I prefer new games to old games. Sure. Because they're better. But there is a particular charm in playing my original cartridges. Right. particular charm in playing my original cartridges right which i am finding vastly more endearing than playing an emulator on an android phone there's something about this looks like a game boy this acts like a game boy and these are my old game boy games so there's just something about that whole mixture which which I'm having a lot of fun playing around with, which I assume is similar to you. I bet it's way more fun to boot up that

software on old Mac hardware than in virtual machines. Yeah, exactly. I have had mini VMAC running on my Mac here for a while, and it's actually proven to be very useful in mounting those disk images and copying new files to the SD card and then putting it in the actual thing. Like that's great. But in the end, what you really want is to kind of have that physical experience of feeling like you're using the original hardware. And so getting that Mac up and running, I mean, I wish, I wish I had my Mac SE that I used in college, but it died. I gave it to my parents and it ended up having a problem where it would spontaneously restart, which is really bad, right? Like you're just sitting there and it goes beep and it's restarting and you've lost everything.

And so I actually still have the motherboard. I've been meaning to hang it up somewhere on my wall. I will do that at some point. I still have the motherboard from my SE that I had when I was a kid, but it doesn't work. But still, even with Lauren's computer, which is not the same, the keyboards, you know, it's not the same. I didn't have that keyboard mouse. I had the later model keyboard mouse.

Still, the nostalgia power is strong. And this is actually the reason that I bought, although I've got to set it up again, I've got to get a good ergonomic setup for it. I bought one of those arcade, X arcade tank stick consoles, which is like, it's,

it's like from an arcade console. It's like a giant, like the buttons and the track ball and the big joystick from an arcade machine that you would have at a video game arcade. And then you run emulation software on a Mac or on a, on a Raspberry Pi or something like that. And it's great. But what I really want to do is get a stand for it and have a screen and

have it feel even more like you can buy these things where it's like a whole arcade cabinet. Right. And then you're like using an arcade cabinet to play an arcade game. And that's ideal, right? Because again, there is something it,

I can play joust emulated on my iMac pro here with my keyboard that you made for me. And it's fun, but it's not the same as hitting those buttons on an arcade console. So there is something hard. Emulation is amazing, but there is something about having hardware involved in it. Hardware was part of the process, right? It was part of the experience. It wasn't just the software part of it. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at Memberful. We really love Memberful here at RelayFM

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to finish out today's show kevin asks on ios with ios notifications do you clear them out when you see them come in do you let them stack up until they notifications, do you clear them out when you see them come in? Do you let them stack up until they roll off? Do you clear all occasionally? Do you have a system, Jason, when it comes to managing your notifications? I don't. I don't. I see them when they come in.

Basically, I use notifications as if a banner pops up while I'm doing something, I see it, obviously. And on my lock screen. In terms of like notification center and going there to see what's going on, I basically don't. I basically just never use that view. I'm really either getting it in the moment or I'm seeing it on my lock screen. And I've never, I just really have an out of sight, out of mind experience with notifications. Like I don't have that moment where I'm like, oh, let's go check my notifications. If that makes any sense. Okay.

I think we're pretty different in a way. So I'll kind of describe. Story of our podcast. If notifications come in and I see them, I will sometimes take action on them or just remove them. Like just get rid of them. Like swipe them away, press X or whatever. And I check my notifications a lot throughout the day.

Either by swiping down or swiping up on the lock screen. And I do kind of like periodically sort through them and leave the stuff that's there for a reason. Like I want to go in and check it. Like I do manage my notifications throughout the day. Now I am a, I mean this is

totally in keeping with who I am and how I do this stuff is I am opposed to notification maintenance. I just don't want to spend the time on it. And also the out of sight, out of mind thing. This is the reason why I never really used Facebook, even when I didn't think Facebook was bad for humanity. I didn't really use Facebook is that like having the Twitter app open was something that I could check on. But to go to Facebook, I had to open a web browser and go to Facebook, right? And so I never did because it was a step too far.

And notifications are kind of like that. It's like, do I want to go? I was like, oh, this would be a great time to look at my notifications. It's never really grabbed me. And if there's something that comes out of notifications, it's like, here's a thing you need to do. And if there's something that comes out of notifications, it's like, here's a thing you need to do. I will do it or put it in a list or do something else with it to remind myself that I need to do it.

Also, on the Mac, and I know Kevin mentioned his question says also what about on the Mac? On the Mac, I'm so frustrated by the way Notification Center works. Because every now and then, I'm working on something intently and I notice a notification bubble go away. And I think to myself, oh, what was that? And then I swipe open Notification Center and I have literally no idea which notification it was. It doesn't seem like anything in there

is relevant to me at all. And I actually think, especially on the Mac, I would really rather the notification center literally just be a reverse chronological list of all the notifications that I've received so that I could have a little log and say, what was that last notification that I saw? But instead it groups it and some things don't go there. And I don't know. It's just not for me. It's just not how I work. don't go there and I don't know. It's just not for me. It's just not how I work. Yeah, when it comes to the Mac, I don't

manage them because it's a nightmare to try and manage them on the Mac. It's so bad. So I kind of just let the notifications build up and clear them all. I really kind of just treat my iPhone honestly as my notification system, I guess. Yeah, that works. Jared asks, it used to be a big deal to discuss how much cash Apple had

in the bank after earnings. Why don't we hear much about that anymore? Has there been some kind of change in the narrative here? A little bit. Apple, a few years ago, went to the trouble of saying we're going to try to become cash neutral have a cash neutral position we're no longer going to try to

accumulate cash and and apple's cash flow is enormous so this has actually proven kind of hard for them but they have done stock buybacks and dividends. And dividend is basically every share gets a check. You had an Apple share this quarter, every share of Apple, you get 30 cents or whatever the dividend is, 14 cents. And that's over all their shares, that's a lot of money. And then they spend even more money buying back Apple shares. They retire the shares. So what it does is it increases the value of all the existing shares that are out there because now those shares are worth more of the company

because they've bought back these other shares. So they're using their cash on those things which build shareholder value. And I think the argument there was, in part, they had so much cash that it really couldn't be put to any good use. And, and the truth is that if they really need to make a big purchase, they'll just

borrow the money because their cashflow is so enormous and their profits are so enormous that they can borrow the money. They do borrow some money because, uh, it's just more convenient to do it that way. And then they, and then they pay it off, um, because they've got all the money. And then they pay it off because they've got all the money. So there's that and also the shareholders. There were some shareholders who started to grumble and say, you've got so much cash in the bank. It's ridiculous. You should give that value back to us.

Like, don't hold it in the company. It belongs to us where the shareholders give it back to us. And that is when they started doing the stock buyback and the dividends and brought back the dividends. So that's the answer is basically Apple doesn't have a cash hoarding strategy anymore. Their strategy is, in fact, to reach a cash neutral position where for quarter to quarter, basically their cash does not grow or shrink. But they still have a so much cash flow that it's actually been hard for them to do that. And they still have, I forget what the number is, but it's like, I think tens of billions. They've got a huge amount of money still in cash or short term, but their goal is to become cash

neutral. It was hard for me to find a number. I was like Googling around today. And the last reported number I could find was last year in January of 2021. And it was in total of cash and secured assets or something was $200 billion. $200 billion. The cash was $60. Yeah. So they are trying to go cash neutral and they keep getting more cash because Apple is a cash generation machine right now. But they don't talk about it so much and we don't talk about it so much because, one, the number is ridiculous.

And two, Apple no longer really has cash as its strategy, right? Its strategy is to use its cash to buy back stock and do dividends and give it back to the shareholders because they've got so much cash, they don't know what to do with it. Chris asks, I'm curious, why is it that every podcast host is so quick to mention former sponsor of the show anytime they discuss anything remotely related to a company that sponsored them before? It's disclosure. If you're talking about a company, even if you're doing it completely honestly and forthrightly, the fact is at some point in the past, they gave you money. They gave us money. And so the right thing to do is to disclose and say, they used to be a sponsor or sometimes they're a sponsor. And then what you're doing is saying, use your own judgment

about what we say about this company, because what you don't want to do is hide the fact that I'm saying positive things about Linode, which I use, but also as a sponsor. And you're like, well, you're saying you like Linode because Linode gave you money or might give you money again or because you actually like Linode. And I hope that people who listen to what we say know that when we talk about stuff, we're being honest about it. And the ads are the ads. And what we talk about outside of the ads is truthful. But the right thing to do is to disclose if there is a financial relationship, either present or former. So we do. And other people do too.

And that's why. relationship either present or former so we do and other people do too and that's why and also like you know you end up forming relationships with people at the company sometimes and then you know the people and that can maybe change your opinion of the people of them and it's all there's all kinds of stuff with it so i just think it's worth just saying hey we do this because as well the other thing is if we didn't do it people people would say, hey, we're a sponsor. You don't if you do, don't if you don't with some of these things, Chris. And so we decided to just do it because then it covers us and also helps you take things of a grain of salt if you want to. That becomes your decision then at that point. And Dan asks, are you podcast completionists?

If you fall a few episodes behind, do you just mark all of this and then move on? Or do you catch up? What is your idea on that? that I am very much a drive-by listener where I will listen occasionally to whatever the most recent episode is. Usually if I've got the episodes that I, the podcasts I try to listen to every time. And sometimes I am out of them. It used to happen a lot more than it does now, right? But I am listening to podcasts in enough places that I will sometimes end up with like, oh, my go-tos are all done. What do I listen to next? And then I will pick and choose from something and it won't be a podcast I listen to every episode of, obviously. It'll be like, let's listen to the next, this podcast. So for the favorites, I don't mark all listen and move on. For the ones that are the drive-bys I do.

And then occasionally you'll have that moment where you're like, you know, I've been hanging on to this episode for four months of this podcast and I haven't listened to it. And you're like, I'm not going to listen to it and you move on. But those are kind of mine.

That's kind of how I do it is. They're the ones where I try very hard to listen to every episode. And if it's a very timely podcast, sometimes I will dump it. So like an example, I hard to listen to every episode and if it's a very timely podcast sometimes i will dump it so like an example i listen to connected every week thank you there are occasionally weeks that go by and lots of fun lots of things happen and i don't listen to connected and the and there's now another episode of connected and everything that's in that previous episode of stuff that has has already been talked about by me and everybody

else on every other podcast. And we moved on and you guys are talking about something else now. And that's the kind of thing where I'm like, I'm not going to listen to that episode. I'm going to skip it. That is part of the triage process, but I try not to. So those are my two bins really. And then for, there's a third bin, which is shows that I really like that need to be listened to in a linear fashion. And those I don't skip because I'm doing it in what I like to call Syracuse mode, which is start at the beginning and move forward. So I've got a podcast playlist that is like a D&D actual play podcast and a comedy podcast. And I've got those, those, I just,

they sit there and then I will eventually listen to some episodes and download the next episodes, but I'm not triaging them at all because I'm just going to listen to them from whatever point they are forward. And it doesn't matter. When I started, I might have been 10 episodes behind, and now I'm 100 episodes behind, but it doesn't really matter because that's just where I am in the story. So those are mine. How about you, Dan? Dan. Oh, hi, Jason. I was looking.

Hi, Dan. Wow, that's incredible. It's from Dan, you see. I was looking at the word Dan, and then I said it out loud. Welcome to the Six Colors Secret Subscriber Podcast. I'm going to move a few words down. What do you think, podcast? How about you, Mike Hurley?

You think I'm cutting that out? way jason don't even don't even no that's all right tell me what you think completionists i'm basically the same as you like there are if the show is news focused and i miss a week and it's like so say for example like i'll just use my own shows it's easier so we'll work using connected here so if as soon if i was a connected listener and if it was news news news i would skip it but if it was an episode where it was like the jeremy's or the jeremy's or the rickies they are like these events that really you want to make sure you catch up on them even if they're old news it might still be entertaining i would listen to that but if it's you know if it's news news news like i would and if that's the kind of you know it's a topic of the week kind of shows if i get one or two

behind i'm not going to catch up i'm just going to skip it cut my losses and move on i used to be like this but i'm more like this now but then i also have a bunch of shows that they are topic focused or they are recapping something or whatever and I want to hear them all, I'm going to go in order on those. So I am like, can be a completionist, but also can't be, depending on the type of show. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. But I'm definitely, there's just not enough time. And the last thing you want to do if it's a timely thing is be a month behind, right?

Exactly. So for the specials, I'll actually do that sometimes with chapter markers where I will listen to, like I had an ATP that ended up sliding back, you know, a week or two

and there was a neutral or something, or Marco was talking about a blender. I don't even know what it was, right? It's one of those things. And I went and I listened to that chapter,

but I didn't listen to the rest of it because it was too old and we all moved on with our lives. And I'm not going to be that kind of completionist. If you would 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. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. If you'd like to support the show, you can do it in a bunch of ways. You can support our sponsors like Memberful, DoorDash, and New Relic.

Thank you so much to them for sponsoring this week's episode. Or you can become a member and you can support us that way and get tons of great benefits. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can find out more about that. If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com and he is at Jason L on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L.

And I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell. Goodbye, Upgrade.