Upgrade - 400: Draft of the Ages

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

It's episode 400! We evaluate the forward-looking predictions we made back in episode 300, and then draft stories we'll be talking about over the next hundred episodes! Also, an Apple TV+ movie won Best Picture and we round up an awful lot of Apple rumors.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 400 today's show is brought to you by fitbod uni zocdoc and theragun my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason snow episode by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Episode 400, Mike. Episode 400. 400 episodes. That's a lot of episodes. That's 399 more than one. Wow. It ends in two zeros. We got 10 fingers

and 10 toes, and that makes this a milestone. It's amazing. I have a hashtag Snell Talk question for you. We're starting off in epic fashion. It comes from Sava. Jason, do you have a hashtag snell talk question for you we're starting off in epic fashion comes from salva jason do you have a favorite mug of course epic fashion yeah well i mean we do talk about like i'm drinking tea during upgrade upgrade for those who don't know upgrade is recorded on a monday morning and so i and or a monday, depending on where you are in the world. Well, that's true. But in this case, I am fueled by tea for upgrade because it's Monday morning here. So, yeah, I do have a favorite mug.

It is a, I mean, I have several that I like a lot, but the one that I would call my favorite, I think clearly, I have a mug that I got. It's actually a duplicate of one that I got because it broke. And I had them send me a replacement. At the Louisville Slugger Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, which is fun. That's where they make baseball bats, obviously. Although it's complicated because they're... It's very funny to me that you said obviously. That is not obvious to me at all.

Louisville Slugger is the famous, well, it is a famous maker of baseball bats. Okay. Although I read a story recently about how there's like a beetle that's infested all of the trees, the ash trees that, it's an Asian beetle that got imported to America

and is eating all the trees. And so they're migrating all of the bats that were traditionally ash bats. Now a lot more of them are maple, I think. Oh, get out of town. And that changed Louisville Slugger's supremacy into something else. And there was actually kind of an interesting article about how this thing that is just a beetle has completely devastated this other industry. Anyway, it's a mug from the Louisville Slugger Museum,

and it's got baseball seams on it. So it looks kind of like a, it's a mug from the Louisville Slugger Museum and it's got baseball seams on it. So it looks kind of like a baseball turned into a mug and I like it. And then it broke and I was very sad, but they offer it on their website. So I just got another one. I can't find it on their website. I'm clicking around the website now. Maybe you bought the last one. So take care of that thing. Well, that was a little while ago, so I better not break this one or I'm in real trouble. But yes, Louisville, Kentucky. I have some

family who live near there. They live in Indiana, but they live across the river. I've been through there a few times and it was a cool museum. Sluggermuseum.com. Thank you so much to Salva for that question. If you would like to send in a question of

your own so we can help open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or use question mark SnellTalk in the Real AFM members Discord. We have a very action-packed full show today. It is a gigantic show. This is really one for the ages. We've got a lot

going on today, but I do want to start with some follow-up. Friend of the show russell levanovich wrote in to tell me that after updating to mac os 12.3 he was no longer seeing flickering lights caused by uh like his overhead lighting on his mac webcam i can confirm apple's appeared to have fixed this i tried with both my iMac and my MacBook Pro and i no longer see the flickering caused by the 50 hertz polling rate on the lights you know like we had to 50 out of 60 hertz is different in the uh in Europe UK and other parts of the world to America there's like different places do these things differently. This is like PAL and NTSC. It's like one of these things you see on televisions.

Anyway, it seems to have been fixed. So whoever it is in Apple that I can only assume Jason heard my complaints because it just seemed to have got fixed out of the blue. So I will take 100% credit for this. It appears to have been fixed and I am genuinely

very happy. So when my studio display arrives at some point in the near future I'm expecting that camera to work too because it seems to have been repaired so I'm very happy about this because it now makes I now have been able to remove the terrible Logitech camera that I had on top of my beautiful iMac

and put it back in a drawer, very happy it's a victory, I wonder what update solved this. Was it 12.3? It was definitely 12.3, yeah. That's what Russell said? All right, great. But as normal, nothing in any release notes. I've been searching around through release notes,

through the detailed release notes. No. Nothing. Imagine if they actually did that. Did you file a feedback? Have you checked to see if they sent you a thing that said this feedback has been fixed? I was planning on filing

a feedback after I tested it on the studio display. Now you can't. I've just denied you satisfaction of your feedback. Oh no, Jason. I'll tell you now. Every time I don't have to fill in one of those feedbacks, I'm happy because that process is terrible. It's a lot. Speaking of my studio display,

it still hasn't shipped. My arrival window starts this week, but it hasn't shipped. And I did note that I like poking around the App Store app, seeing what's going on. And as of like a few days ago, I think tailing the last week, in both the UK and the US, there were more build-to-order options at the display in Mac Mini. Like previously, you'd fill out, oh, I want maybe more storage and it would be like not available to collect in store.

And then I noticed, oh, the 29th, you could start getting a Mac studio if you wanted with like two terabytes of storage and more RAM. And it took me a minute to realize 29th of June is the date that they are talking about there for in-store collections. So Apple are allowing you to do an in-store pickup now on many configurations of the Studio Display and the Mac Studio, but in three months from now. Well, my Studio Display VESA mount standard glass is still listed as April 6th to April 13 13th and it's in processing mode right now not preparing to ship so i am in there processing between the 30th of march and the 6th of april and they haven't charged my card yet so it's i'm thinking i'm it's not going to be this week probably probably not well i'm happy that it's just coming so i mean i have one in front of me but this is the apple owner and i'm looking forward to getting the face amount so i can i

can put that arm back on my desk and see what that's about and probably have to spend 50 on a thunderbolt cable in order to get it to be oh i have a a side note and i'm going to mention it now and i'm afraid that people are gonna pay money for this thing um and they might not want to do it well they could they might not want to do it until i i get mine and try it out but i um i bought from other world computing i bought this thing let me see if i can find the name of it i know i sent it to you last week yeah i can find it you can explain it i know I sent it to you last week. Yeah, I can find it. You can explain it. I know. I got it.

I got it. It is the newer tech new shelf. It is a mount so that you can put two Mac minis or a Mac mini and their Mac mini sized like hard drive or whatever. Two Mac mini shaped things in a stack under your desk it's basically like a lucite um uh thing that you screw under a desk and basically it's a mount for multiple mac minis guess what sure looks like it'll fit a mac studio so this is the first thing i've seen that looks kind of like an under desk mount for a Mac studio. Yeah. And so I'm going to try it out.

So they're selling them. It's like for old Mac minis. So it's literally like on clearance. So maybe people will buy it and they'll sell out of it and they'll realize they need to make a new one. But it's 8.1 by 8.1 by 4.4. So it should fit fine on a Mac studio. Um, and I'm kind of intrigued by it. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I ordered one and I'm going to give it a try and I'm going to see if it's any good. And, um, my biggest concern there honestly is the length of that Thunderbolt cable to the monitor, because I don't think it's going to be

enough. And I'm going to have to then go back to other world computing and spend $50 on a Thunderbolt cable in order to stretch it from under my desk, up the monitor arm to my display. I'm actually pleased that you mentioned this. You sent this to me and Steven and Slack a few days ago. And at the time I was concerned, I just, this whole thing concerned me. So now I can actually share some of my concerns.

Yes. So one, the weight is an issue, right? You've got to put that thing in there and hope that it's A, that the plastic is strong enough to hold it, and that B, it can be screwed into the desk with enough strength, right? Right. I mean, it looks like it's thick lucite, and they did make it for multiple Mac minis, basically. So I would think that it would be okay, but yeah, I think that's a fair point. My other,

uh, under desk shelving that I have for my audio interfaces is metal. It also means it's thinner. Um, and I think it's stronger and that's what I really would like is a shelf like that. That's in Mac studio proportions. Yeah.

Metal. I would prefer to plastic just in general. Um, my second thought was how are you, what are you doing anything to stop it potentially slipping right out of there uh that's a great question because they they sell a product it's linked on this page called the new pad base it's like an anti-skid mat yeah it's a non-skid rubber foot for mac mini but I don't know if the dimensions would be right for the Mac studio as well.

But if you like it, I implore you to find something like this because I would be worried that, you know, it's just, I don't know, like maybe you could pull on a cable too hard and then the Mac studio just flies out of the back of that thing. Like flip up my desk into standing orientation and there's a taut cable somewhere and it just yanks the Mac studio out of the back of that thing. Like flip up my desk into standing orientation

and there's a taut cable somewhere and it just yanks the Mac Studio right out the back. Which could still happen even with the bass, but that would be my worry, that that thing is, you know. I think these are all good questions. And whoever is out there, I assume, and I haven't heard from them,

but I kind of assume that 12 South is going to build an actual series of mounting solutions for the Mac Studio. And they'll be pricey, but they'll be really nice because that's what they do. And then I also assume, yes, that these companies that I find on Amazon that do the bent metal, put your PC under your desk kind of mounts will make one that's the right shape. But it's early days yet. And I'm curious about doing this thing as an under desk mount. So I'm going to give it a try,

but I make no recommendations. This is all in the name of science. I love it. Science is great. Have you had any more observations or any experiences you wanted to share in the past week when using these products?

Like, has anything popped out for you or have you been mostly enjoying it? Not really. It's been, I mean, I was gone for a big chunk of the week, so I've only used it a little bit, but I had been using it for a long time before that. And it's just, they're pleasurable to use. Like, I mean, they're fast.

And I was going from that um until iMac Pro so um i've had a uh pretty good experience i haven't had any you know restarts of the monitor or anything like that um the the Mac has been fast i have uh i i enjoy the experience of listening to podcasts about these products that i spent time with by people who are still trying especially people who don't have them and are still trying to figure out what they all mean where i've had it well look jason we can't all be as lucky as you right well you know yeah but i i guess what i'm saying is it's just funny to hear atp uh last week debating like the noise from the mac studio display or the mac studio, but they don't,

um, they've never heard it. And it's just kind of funny because there's this back and forth and there, what I like about it is them detailing what the conflicting reports, because I have my experience, but there are conflicting reports. So they're like, well, Jason says it makes noise, but somebody else says it doesn't make noise. And it made me laugh because this is one of those things that I'm not like, like with the camera on the studio display, I have this, like, did I get a weird one? Am I not seeing it? Is it my lighting conditions? I don't really entirely understand why I've had a better experience than a lot of people have had with it. Mac studio, I have no doubt about it because I literally wasn't expecting it to make any noise. And I was sitting in my office and I went, what's that noise?

And it was the Mac Studio. So if somebody tells you that it's inaudible, I would say, well, I could hear it. Maybe that's a difference in what frequency ranges we can hear. But I could hear it for sure. And it was like I wasn't expecting to hear it. I was surprised to hear it. It wasn't one of those things where I tested it And it was like, I wasn't expecting to hear it. I was surprised to hear it. It wasn't one of those things where I tested it and I was like, all right, how do I feel about this sound?

I literally expected it to be silent. And then I was sitting in my office and I went, what is that sound? And it was the Mac Studio. Not a loud sound, but a sound that wasn't there before. Yeah, a sound that, yeah, as you say, a sound that wasn't there before. sound sound that yeah as you say sound that wasn't there before i've been thinking a lot about that like we were talking about it last week

um on the show and we were talking about it on connected a little bit too where i kind of feel like it's just like really interesting to me that this machine has clearly been designed for the ultra and it does things that the Ultra needs. But even the Pro version does them too, right? And I've just mentioned again, like, you know, like the fan, is it not consistently audible in my MacBook Pro? Like I don't ever hear it, you know what I mean?

So it's just, it's intriguing to me, the decisions that they made. You know, like someone wrote into us and said, like, it's probably because of the power supply, right? That they want to put air through the power supply. But the power supply is way bigger in the mac studio than the m1 pro needs to right so like it's just these interesting things that they've done when clearly this is a machine that they're going to use for the next 10 years i'm repeating something that's not connected anyway now but like they're going to use this for like maybe for the next five or ten years so the chips that are going to be in it then are going to be way more powerful so they built it with that in mind like i don't disagree with it

but it's just intriguing to me after the trash can mac pro apple is going to build thermal headroom into every every new enclosure they build right if they're intending it to last even like yeah because that for sure but like it's just smart design right like to do it that way. Indeed. Yeah. All of these, the enclosure thing is why the Mac Pro is going to look like the Mac Pro, right? The one that they did, this is how it's going to look. I don't know what they're going to put in it,

but I can't imagine it's a one and done design. I think the iMac Pro is one where you could maybe argue, oh, that wasn't a new design, but they did some stuff around that. But the iMac Pro is one where you could maybe argue, like, oh, that was like, it wasn't like a new design, but they did some stuff around that. But the iMac Pro is an aborted timeline, remember? They intended to upgrade that thing again and again. Yeah, that was supposed to be the plan. So like that is the outlier,

but I think for clear reason we can see, and I'll be intrigued to see if I'm proved wrong in the future. Gareth wrote in and said, you were talking about apple charging more for colors during ask upgrade apple already charges more for colors with the imac there's a choice of four colors for the base computer but if you want yellow orange or purple you have to pay 200 more that was interesting this isn't exactly as uh clean as we were talking about last time of like you can get a silver um say like

get a silver macbook air but if you want a colored macbook air you'd have to pay a bit more but basically in the imax there are certain colors that are only available if you go for one of the higher specced products yeah i so the reason i don't consider this the same is because it is not color you're paying for. You're paying for specs, but at the higher rating, there are different colors. And Apple has done that, right, where you have to pay a little bit more to get out of the base model to get a bigger color selection. It's not quite the same. I mean, they do this with the iPhone, too, right?

You want certain iPhone colors, you've got to pay more money. Because my argument was that that theoretical was about you're paying more for color and that's like the black macbook which was the literally the same specs as the white macbook but cost more because it was black the imac at that level all of the colors are the same if the base level imac was only silver right like you could only get the silver one as the base level and then the rest of them are more expensive then that this would maybe count more i thought this was a good point that gareth made right that there are certain colors that are locked behind prices but it's not all colors when it comes to the iMac you can still get one with color yes this episode is

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Theragun for 30 days, starting at only $199. Go to therabody.com slash upgrade right now and get your Gen 4 Theragun today. That's therabody.com slash upgrade. therabody.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Theragun for their support of this show and RelayFM. Saddle up, Jason Snell. It is an episode 400 rumor roundup. Oh boy, this is,

is there a powerful dog involved in any way? No, there are no powers. There are no dogs. Not today anyway. iPhone 14 rumors. It's that time again. YouTuber Max Weinbach has shared some leaked schematics

of the new pro phone that show that, guess what? The camera module is getting bigger. All of those potential rumors that were being shared around of, oh, the next iPhone is going to have a flat back. No, it's getting bigger. And the iPhone Pro models will actually also be getting a little thicker. Ming-Chi Kuo saw this report. Ming-Chi Kuo, I love that Ming-Chi Kuo's on Twitter now because you get loads more from Ming-Chi Kuo.

What would Ming-Chi Kuo be like? We need to think of a title, right? Because I feel like Ming-Chi Kuo is almost as important as the sheriff of Rumortown, Mark Gurman. We need to think about that. Okay. Ming-Chi Kuo says that the thickness and the camera model change

is due to the main camera, aka the wide camera, being upgraded to feature a 48 megapixel sensor and the sensor being larger overall. The sensor size is being increased by 25 to 35%. I'm pretty excited about this. You know, the iPhone camera sensors have been 12 megapixel for a long time, like a long, long time, many, many years. And so an upgrade to that, I'm looking forward to it. I'm hoping

that it will help reduce the need for some of the deep fusion processing that Apple do, which sometimes, I've said this before, I think impacts my photos negatively. I think some of the sharpness boosting that they do can make a photo look too dark, like too grainy for me, in a way. Not grainy, but I don't like the way it looks sometimes. And I'm hoping that the additional detail that they get from a 48 megapixel sensor could help with that i'm excited about that but i can't even imagine jason i cannot conceive of the camera module getting larger yeah it does seem i mean there are lots of rumors out

there that apple is working hard on on switching to a more um like periscope kind of approach right where they lengthen the light travel by turning it 90 degrees and that one of the reasons you might do that is or in order to prevent these modules from getting bigger and bigger it also allows you to get the bigger zooms i think that's probably going to be the biggest thing that they do for that. So I think the optics are important. I mean, actual optics, not like metaphorical optics. People want good cameras, and I'll tell you, people who care about the cameras are more

prominent than people who care about the size of the bump on the phone. Oh yeah, as well, because like, you know, said many times before, but most people put their phones in cases, and cases level out the bumps, so like, it doesn't matter, ultimately, you know? That's what in cases and cases level out the bumps so like it doesn't matter ultimately you know that's what they do they level out the bumps that's exactly 100% what they're for these days apple has acquired a uk banking startup called credit kudos

they are essentially a third-party credit checking company their whole aim their whole thing was to provide users with a better understanding of financial health and credit opportunities. Like, oh, you know, this is how good your savings are. Maybe you could get a mortgage for this amount, that kind of stuff. To do this, they leveraged something called the Open Banking Platform, which exists in the UK,

where there's an API that all banks have to agree to. This is kind of cool. Maybe I don't think this exists in many other places. I doubt it anyway, but I'm pretty, I love it here. So banks all have to agree to this API. So let's say you bank with bank A and also bank B. You can log in bank A's app with bank B's credentials and see all of your bank accounts

and all of your credit cards, no matter who they're with in one app. It's really cool. You have to renew this every little while, which isn't great, but you do get that. And then also there are these companies that pop up that then you can give all of your logins to, and they can look at all of your stuff for you and give you suggestions, maybe suggest other deals to you, that kind of stuff. It's a cool thing that we have here. And credit kudos, their whole thing was analyzing this to help you understand your credit score a little bit better. Many people, including the Engadget article that I will link to in our show notes, are suggesting this could be a precursor to the Apple Card launching in the UK. I don't think this is the case, Jason. So if Apple are going to launch

Apple Card, they still need to have a credit card partner like Goldman Sachs, right? Right. Now, Goldman Sachs do their own credit checking. Apple do not do the credit checking for Apple Card. Goldman Sachs do it. And if they were to partner with someone in the UK, that credit card company would also want to do the credit checking because they are providing the credit. So there's a possibility that this is part of the puzzle. But honestly, I would expect this is more likely that Apple maybe acquired this company because they want to make their own financial planning tools or something like that. Right. Expanding the idea of that app,

the wallet app that's got all your accounts in it and all that to provide a financial health. I wonder if they'll move that stuff out of the wallet app at some point or whether it's all just going to go in there. It does seem like it's doing too many things already. And I think this could be part of that. I do expect Apple to roll Apple Card out to other territories, but I'm not convinced that this is part of that puzzle because as I say,

like Apple do not do the credit checking. I looked through support documents today to confirm this. Like in the U S the credit checking is done by Goldman Sachs. They use it. Apple do it. And so I can't conceive of any way that that would be different anywhere else. Like no bank is going to be like, okay, Apple, we'll trust you with our credit. and so i can't conceive of any way that that would be different anywhere else like no bank is going to be like okay apple we'll trust you with our credit like apple do not

have the risk here it's the the credit card companies it's the partner well kudos to apple for this acquisition literally yeah kudos to apple oh oh sorry that took me way too long to get i'm like oh jason's really happy about this. You really should have started with that. Kudos to Apple. No, literally. Well, this is why we need you around because I can't think of these things. Okay.

15-inch MacBook Air. Display analyst Ross Young is reporting from supply chain sources that Apple is planning a new variant of the MacBook Air for 2023 that would have a 15-inch screen. The smaller of the two would also get a little bit bigger as well at 13.6 inches. What do you think about this?

Well, it'll presumably be based on whatever the new MacBook Air design is, and so I'm kind of interested in that. I think you could creep up the 13-inch MacBook Air a little bit without making it that much larger. And Apple's done that in the past with iPads where they've made the screen larger, but they've tried to keep the dimensions very close. So that's okay. Big iPad, I think it's great. I think this idea, they're obviously doing it,

all the reports say this fall, where there's going to be an iPhone Max that is the lower cost iPhone in a bigger size. I think there are a lot of people who desire a larger screen. The argument would be that if you can get them to pay a pro price to get the larger screen, then that's great. But there's also an argument that they're not going to pay like as the pro products get more and more expensive, more expensive than their non pro counterparts. It's a it's a harder sale to get somebody to pay all of that extra money just to have the bigger screen.

And people do like big screens. I don't want a 15-inch laptop, but I can see how people would. And so they used to do this. There used to be big iBooks and smaller iBooks. And so I think that it's a good thing to give people choice like this. Yeah, I agree completely. And Ming-Chi Kuo added to this one saying that the product may not even be called MacBook Air. And this got me to thinking with what you just mentioned, right? That the expectation is there's going to be an iPhone 14 and an iPhone 14 Max.

So there's a larger one that doesn't have Pro. So I was wondering could this be the macbook max and they drop the air name completely macbook and macbook max i think not because primarily because there's a max chip and i think that that would be a lot of confusion good point i do wonder though so there's this rumor about macbook and macbook air macbook air we've been talking about a long time. We talked about it in episode 300, right? Now it's 400.

So we'll probably be talking about it in 500 too. The MacBook Air name, like they tried to kill it, but they couldn't really kill it. And so they've kept it around. I do think that MacBook as a name makes sense and that there will probably be a MacBook without a name in it. There were some rumors that that's what the 13-inch MacBook Pro will turn into, right, is a MacBook that is appreciably different and not as thin and light as the MacBook Air. So it would actually make sense that the Air is called the Air because now there's a MacBook

that's kind of in the middle. Whether this would be a 15-inch MacBook Air or whether it would just be a 15-inch MacBook, I think it depends on marketing, but also like what they base it on. Do they base it on that new MacBook Air enclosure? What happens to the 13-inch MacBook Pro? Does it turn into something else? It's all kind of like hovering out there. They got a lot of choices to make here, but I feel like the MacBook Air name now probably isn't going to go away, but maybe there's a space for a product in between. I would really struggle with a 15-inch computer called Air.

It doesn't really follow, right? No, it doesn't work. So having it be a MacBook and having it be in that kind of like intermediate state. Again, we have to make assumptions about what this new MacBook Air is going to look like. But I can see a scenario where what Apple says is, look, we're going to keep the MacBook Air around. And the goal there is it's thin and light. And maybe it's even thin and light and low cost.

And then we're going to make the MacBook. And the MacBook is going to be similar. But the idea with the MacBook is we're not as worried about size and weight. We want it to be kind of less than the MacBook Pro in terms of price, but the goal there is not the size and the weight. The goal there is just to have a good, solid Mac for people to buy. And the people who want to opt for the Air will opt for the Air, and the people who want the MacBook will get the MacBook.

And that makes more sense. Oh, Jason, I've just thought of something which is maybe the worst of these and might actually be the way that they go. The new one is called MacBook, and it's the colorful one, right? Yeah. What we're thinking is the new MacBook Air, and it comes in two sizes, and they keep the current MacBook Air around as the MacBook Air for a while. Huh.

I mean, it's possible, right? It's possible they would keep the old one around. Well, that would let them do it. Because I think, ultimately, they should drop the Air name. I think it's only stuck around because the MacBook that they released, that was clearly supposed to be the new one right nobody liked it and it was more expensive it was overpriced so they couldn't get rid of the macbook air right and the macbook air was still selling at 9.99 yeah you're right i mean and once you start and again

keep in mind what happened here too which is when they did revise the macbook air they they literally said in that that was the brooklyn event They're like, we're playing the hits here. Like we kept the wedge shape and we kept the curves. And like that, they redesigned, they designed that new version of the MacBook Air to be as much like the old version of the MacBook Air as possible,

which is funny. They're like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Just give them what they want. Give them what they want. But I, and so that's what they had to fight against is the question of like, do people love this thing so much that we should just keep it around? But I think you're right. One way to go is I know I said this in another context, so it's whether they call it error or not. I really think it's possible that they will keep the MacBook Air M1 around at $999.

And this new MacBook Air that's coming out won't be $999, right? It's going to be $1299 or something like that. And they're going to have two of these MacBook Airs. They're going to have the colorful, fancy one. The other way they could do it is they could just say, no, this is the new Air. It's $999 and that's it. But that's part of the mystery here is what is the target for that product?

And then what do they do beyond it? And that's, I don't know. But they could call this MacBook and use it as the opportunity to get rid of the name Air. Mark Gurman is expecting the next iPad Pro to feature both an M2 chip and MagSafe charging to be released in the fall of 2022. I can't get my head around

what the MagSafe would look like on this thing. What is it? I don't, I mean... around what the MagSafe would look like on this thing. What is it? I don't, I mean. Is it iPhone MagSafe? Is it MacBook MagSafe? Is it a third MagSafe? Third MagSafe. That I don't want.

Here's my thing, Apple. If you're going to introduce a third MagSafe, just don't do it, would be my recommendation to you. We don't need that. I mean, iPad Pro already being kind of mac like in some ways i could see them doing it as just a magsafe connector on the side and they should do that it would be awesome right that'd be really great if they did that i would love that yeah and then the usbc port would be like you know even you know you know people always said

oh you should add two usbc ports on these things. Well, now you won't need to because you can always have one free. So I think that'd be pretty cool. I don't want another MagSafe, right? Like don't create another MagSafe standard. And I don't think the iPhone one is the right bet here. So I would agree with you that I would love to see the Mac style MagSafe.

Yeah. And we go back to Mark Gurman for our final rumor in the rumor roundup today. Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple is working on a new subscription service for hardware products. This would allow a customer to pay a monthly fee to get new devices. The expectation is this would lower the barrier to entry for many customers, allowing for more people to get the newest products more easily, increasing not just Apple's recurring revenue,

but leading to greater overall revenue. I read from a quote from Mark's Bloomberg article here. The program would differ from an installment program, like I will add in, like the iPhone upgrade program, in that the monthly charge wouldn't be the price of the device split across 12 or 24 months. Rather, it would be a yet-to-be-determined monthly fee that depends on which device the user chooses. And I'll add in, it's very possible that you would probably then be able to upgrade automatically to the new version when it becomes available. If this happens, it will probably be a 2023 thing and could possibly be bundled into Apple's existing bundles.

Yeah, upgrade, how this relates to the iPhone upgrade program is interesting. My read on this, and I don't know, just my first read on this is, this is Apple saying we want to convert this kind of loan program that we do where it's a loan and we've got partners and we just want to convert it to something we own entirely that's a straight up bit of services and we're gonna and so that it would be for the user it might not be structured very differently but internally the way the program was was uh financed and uh accounted for would be um different I mean, they'd probably stop working with like a third party too, right? Which I know they currently do now and maybe want to set this up themselves. Like I think of Microsoft. Microsoft's had a lot of success with the Xbox in the past couple of years where they

bundle them with Game Pass. They charge you a monthly fee, but it doesn't cost you any extra. Like you're not usually with these things, you're a premium right like you're paying some kind of interest but that isn't how it works here so you just you're paying them every month anyway because you're paying for game pass so you add a little bit more and you get yourself an xbox and this has proven very well for microsoft over the last year so maybe this is where apple's going to go to yeah i mean I mean, Apple loves training people to give them money monthly, right? And this would be, have some interesting options too

in terms of saying, you know, when the new iPhone comes out, you basically just choose your level and they give you, they can literally just say, here's what the prices are. And those prices are in monthly fee. It also, you know,

also means you're not buying it. You're just getting it as part of your service. I know Microsoft has that thing where after a while you own it or something like that. But like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you do own it, yeah. It may not structure, it may not feel in the end as a user, if you're on the upgrade program,

like it's that different. It'll be interesting to see how they structure it, but it may feel very familiar. I wonder if the benefit here is more to Apple and give some flexibility to maybe change the pricing based on your participation in other bundles or bundling it with other services and being able to alter the pricing that way

rather than keeping it separate like they do with the upgrade program. I don't know. This episode of Up upgrade is brought to you by zocdoc no one knows what you're looking for in a doctor better than you and no one's better at giving you the tools to find the perfect doctor than zocdoc the people who created zocdoc found the major pain points in health care and made booking a great doctor surprisingly pain-free zocdoc is a free app that shows you doctors who are patient-reviewed,

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I absolutely love this. We're all busy. I don't always have the time to go into the doctor's surgery and waiting in line and that kind of stuff. But if I can get a meeting all set up and just do a call or a video thing, it's awesome. And ZocDoc allows you to do that. I just think it's so awesome. It's one of the great uses of modern technology. So we're able to all do these things a little bit more on our own schedules. So go to ZocDoc.com slash UpgradeFM and download the ZocDoc app for free. Then start your search for a top rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. Imagine that. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash Upgrade. One last time, ZocDoc.com slash Up.com slash upgrade one last time ZocDoc.com slash upgrade FM

our thanks to ZocDoc for their support of this show and all of RelayFM well they done did it Apple done did it Jason they did it I can't believe this happened

I cannot believe this happened Apple TV Plus becomes the first streaming platform to win best picture yep so Coda we've mentioned Coda Best Picture. Yep. So Coda. We've mentioned Coda a few times on the show.

Coda is notable as being a movie that both features stars and crew who are all hearing impaired. And this is basically what the entire movie is about. I haven't actually seen Coda. You've seen it, right? I've seen it in one of my favorite movies of last year. It's a movie that... It's on our list. It's a good...

It's a good movie. It is structurally, I think, a very familiar story, and I think that a lot of people have issues with the fact that it does read... The synopsis of it reads very much like a made-for-TV Lifetime movie or something like that. It's not... But what I like

about it is all of the details. I think all of the details are good. I think it makes some really good creative decisions in every moment of the film. I love the setting. I enjoy the characters, the family. They're so clearly drawn and memorable. That's the beauty of it to me so plus yes it is um uh deaf uh mostly deaf crew our cast and and and uh and i think crew and and yeah the the writer director

is not but um and troy kutzer who plays the dad uh won best supporting actor as well and uh sienna hater who was the the writer and director won best best adaptive screenplay screenplay yeah so so that basically as well like this day they i think it's called they ran the board i don't remember the phrase but every oscar they were nominated for they won so it was three so apple now has three oscars under their belt but the big one is the fact that they want best picture they're the first streaming platform to do this netflix have been trying yeah i think going into the oscars up until maybe like a week ago everyone fought the big dog movie with called the power of the dog with uh benedict cumberbatch there are dogs visible in it but it

is not about those are not the titular dogs. No, they're not. Okay. I saw it this weekend. So now I know all about the power of the dog. I have felt the power of the dog. Everyone thought that was going to win. And then there was like a turn in Hollywood, right?

Where then all of a sudden Coda was the front runner. A lot of people I saw who follow Hollywood stuff closely, who were tweeting before the event were saying the vibe is so funny because the vibe is very much like they don't want Netflix to win and they do want Apple to win, which is funny because they're like, we don't want this giant tech company invading our movie industry. Do you know about the other giant tech company that's invading our movie industry um do you know about the other giant tech company that's

invading your movie industry but the difference is that apple first off all of these people in hollywood they love apple they love apple's products they're all using apple's products and i think apple and apple's executives are perceived as in some ways as doing it the right way that they are not viewed as a disruptive force like Netflix is. They have done a really good job, I think, of setting themselves into Hollywood now. Yeah, they hired Zach and Jamie from Sony, and they brought in a bunch of people to do their movie side now,

and they're perceived as being friendly to talent in a way that Netflix is not, and friendly to the movie industry in a way that Netflix is not and friendly to the movie industry in a way that Netflix is not. Which is not to say that there aren't issues. Like there was a story, I forget where it was. There was a story about the history of Coda

this week that I read. It was in Puck News. You sent it to me. Oh, it was Puck. That's right. It's behind a paywall. It's a paywall, but it was a really good story

about how Apple wants to own everything worldwide. And when they bought, That's right. It's behind a paywall. It's a paywall, but, but it was a really good story, um, about how Apple wants to own everything worldwide. And when they bought, so they bought, um, Koda at Sundance. So it's also, I think the first Sundance movie to win best picture.

It's, they bought it. Huh? But the, I think so. But anyway, regardless of that, like of these movies that got that,

that was some, somebody said that, I don't know if that's true or not, but it was a Sundance movie. And you know, then they go to the film festival with these indie movies and then people bid for them and Apple bought it, but they had already sold some of the rights to overseas distribution. They'd bought some European, I think, countries, people had bought it to theatrically screen there. And Apple said, well, that's good, but we got to buy it all back because we want it all. And that that's one of the challenges that Apple has. And then Apple has changed it because people were kind of grumpy that they're like, and it makes it hard to sell your indie film

if you're afraid to sell parts of it to earn your money back. Because what if a streamer comes in and buys the whole thing? And then when they started to put things in the contract that said, well, we're selling you the rights, but if a streamer comes in to buy the whole thing. And then when they started to put things in the contract that said, well, we're selling you the rights, but if a streamer comes in to buy the whole thing, you lose the rights and we give you your money back. And the people who are buying rights were like, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to agree to that. And it sounds like Apple has adapted and has been more willing to not buy every single country or to work with a rights holder to come up with some sort of way where they screen it in their country and then they like they're working about it but it's interesting that this was more complicated than just apple writing a check at sundance for coda they actually had to unwind yeah they bought

this one a while ago this is one of their earlier purchases i think but they're positively thought of in hollywood and i think that's really interesting that netflix is seen as this big bad disruptor and it's and and apple uh just, because Apple was sort of later to the game and its ambitions are a little more constrained. And also because it's Apple, honestly, and Apple is viewed positively by the people in Hollywood because they make the products that the people in Hollywood love, right?

And that is an advantage for Apple, even though it's, you know, the people designing Macs are not the people who are buying movies, but it's still all part of that kind of gestalt for Apple. So people were much more positive. And I got to say, I think that's one of the reasons Coda 1 and Power of the Dog didn't, is that the people in the Academy have much more positive feelings about Apple than they

do about Netflix. Even though, yes, Apple is a giant tech company company because what apple represents to them is not what netflix represents to them yeah netflix came away with one oscar apple had three i think i saw that so this is netflix walked in and walked out i think feeling very differently it went very strangely for them i will say like one thing that i think from our perspective which is just like an interesting parallel is this whole situation plays into apple's typical playbook so well arrive late do it best now what i will say is i don't think this is holding out for the long term but like for the story of right now like as of today that's the way it seems to have occurred right because there's been lots of stories and like

lots of the talking about the fact that netflix have been working on this to get best picture for years right like they had was it roma they had the irishman um and then this one i think there might have been a couple more as well but like they have been very specifically targeting because of course you would best picture at the oscars is a big friggin deal right and so right everyone targets it if you're in this business it's what you want right yeah and we've been talking about since apple started to get into this we you know obviously we talked about it when it was all just rumors and then we've we've seen it kind of come to fruition now it's really kind of funny that that event where they launched apple tv plus was three years ago where they had steven spielberg and jason momoa come out on stage and all that that

was three years ago and here we are they won best picture but we talked throughout and i know we talked about it 100 episodes ago that one of the ways the strategy is validated and it makes the company kind of like feel good and say see we're not just hemorrhaging money here. We care and we make good content. Like it is, uh, it isn't something that goes directly to the balance sheet, but getting recognition matters. And you could see how much getting recognition matter to Apple. It's why the, those very early nominations for the Morning Show were a big deal. And that one, remember, Billy Crudup won a supporting actor award

from somewhere, SAG or Golden Globes or something. And we were like, oh, Apple's really gonna make hay with that. And then Ted Lasso happened. And Ted Lasso ended up being, strangely, the thing that was like the big deal where Apple was like, see, we dominated. And I'll just, so now there's this,

and it's meaningful to Apple and it's meaningful to all the other streamers. It would be meaningful to Amazon and to Netflix. I think it's also funny to think that now there's a, Apple is the reigning champion of best comedy at the Emmys and best picture at the Oscars on Apple TV Plus. What? I mean, but like, this is that thing, right?

Like where it is too early to call it, but this is the situation. This is what they do. Like in technology, this is what they do, right? Like it's the old thing of like Apple arrives late to the game, but they always do it better than everyone else, you know, asterisk, asterisk. Well, it's hard because they're going into an area

that they didn't know. And I think that this is the key where they did their stuff where they were tinkering around with video content, right? Planet of the apps. And so Planet of the apps, everybody brings it up. And when they hired, what, Jamie Ehrlich and Zach Van Amburg, Zach and Jamie, the pair from Sony, when they hired them, everybody was like,

oh boy, more Planet of the apps. And I was like, no, no, no. This is Apple admitting that Eddie Cue is not going to make great TV and movies. Right? That it needs to be people who understand the business and understand the people. And they set up their offices in LA with Zach and Jamie. And they got to work. And they hired a bunch of respected TV and film executives from all over the world.

And they had a strategy. And we can see the strategy now, right? The strategy is be like HBO was. The strategy was be a little picky and come up with some like, and pay for quality and pay for high profile talent. And not everything's going to be a hit. And of course, everybody who's waiting to feed the narrative that Apple doesn't know what it's doing in Hollywood is going to pick on the stuff that does not become a great success and make jokes about it. But the truth is nobody has a track record of perfection in Hollywood. You pick your spots and then if you create a good system where you're picking the right stuff, some of it's going to hit. And Ted Lasso hit obviously coda has has won best picture i would say that you see it with some of the other stuff that's coming on

apple now there's a huge undercurrent of um of severance fandom that i i keep hearing people discover severance which i've only seen episode one of and I loved it, but that's the Adam Scott TV show. Oh, I haven't seen that yet, but it's on the list for me. Directed by Ben Stiller. Yeah. I keep seeing people discover it and say, this is amazingly good. I'm scared of it because it's, you know,

it's like a little bit thrilling. I'm like a little bit like, I want to see it, but like, I'm nervous. So anyway, there's a lot of this stuff. So like, this is, I think, could Apple TV Plus have been a colossal failure yes are they spending way more money than they're taking in for for this yes but i think it's it serves a larger strategy for apple and i think one of the things that they really wanted was validation that like they are serious about this

and they are not going to be falling all over themselves making crappy content like planet of the apps or something like that and carpool karaoke like that was not what they're doing once they hired um jamie and zach this is what they were going to do and this is just a uh you know they have arrived this is you know we can talk about like what role they play in the streaming future and whether there's room for a more niche player like Apple is right now. But when you look at the Emmy nominations and the Oscar nominations and the wins

and all the trophies that they're picking up, it sounds like they have a way to be relevant even if they're not producing at the level of something like Netflix. So it's a, I mean, they should take a victory lap. They should be doing some power sliding on Infinite Loop, right? Like this morning, get out there. I mean, it's early in the day. They should be doing some power sliding on Infinite Loop, right? Like this morning.

Get out there. I mean, it's early in the day for us, but I'm thoroughly expecting an Apple.com takeover of the web page at the moment. Currently, it says Academy Award nominee, best picture, Coda. Like halfway down the page, I'm expecting that the Apple.com web page will look very different at some point today. Probably. Something I wanted to just touch on a little bit.

I've been seeing some people talk about this online, saying, oh, this isn't an Apple original, like some of the TV shows, as if it's like they didn't do the work for this. This isn't how the movie part of this works. Yeah, I mean, you make a deal at various points. And Apple is spinning up their own know production shingle where they can produce movies themselves but that feels like that's going to be more tv than it is movies but like the movie like so i looked into this a little bit so the one that we're talking about the power of the dog the netflix movie that wasn't a netflix original they bought that like this happens a lot like the

movies get there's like a lot of production companies and they make the movies and they take them to film festivals and they get bought. But like the difference, which I will understand is when a movie wins Best Picture, people don't usually focus on Universal Pictures as part of the story. Right. But this is the first movie that was basically exclusive to a streaming service to win Best Picture. And that's why it's notable. Remember when we were saying like Apple was like, oh, the historic nominations for Coda. And we're like, what are they exactly? And the answer was because it's a primarily

deaf cast and all of that was what they were, what they were going for. Well, here's another barrier broken, which is streaming service movie wins best picture. That's a big deal. No, but you know, they bought it at Sundance this is true but at the same time this is a movie that premiered on Apple TV like it's on Apple TV it's domestic it's reported US domestic box office is $0 and it won best picture it's pretty wild

so and again they get the credit not for making the movie but for buying the movie and also for promoting the movie and spending more than $10 million on their Oscar campaign and they got the trophy for it yeah that's how it works right this is how it works but this is how it works the difference is they say like usually we don't focus on it like who who is behind it it's usually like we focus on the cast the crew that kind of thing it's not so much uh however you know i'm sure that there are pockets of this right so like if it's a Marvel movie we focus on that

you know if a Marvel movie is to win best picture oh wow Marvel movies won best picture so there are these little fiefdoms I'm naturally going to assume there will be an Oscars focused episode of Downstream I would think we'll talk about it at least quite a lot but that'll be next week

at least quite a lot yeah I look forward to it so if people enjoy this conversation going on they want more of the what yeah there sure is and they want more of the wider context of the effect of uh the oscars you can go check out downstream here on relay fm uh featuring jason snell and the very wonderful julia alexander who does a fantastic job you two i really love it i just ask her the questions and then she talks and she gets paid to think about this all day like that's what she does. So it's great. She has such a great perspective on it. All right. I want to thank our next sponsor of this week's episode, and that is our friends over at Fitbod. I really love Fitbod and I use it all the time because balancing between work,

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it's really great how their app will walk you through it. Personal fitness isn't about competing with other people. You don't have to look to others and try and stack up against them and do what they do. You need something that will work for you because that's when it's going to stick and it's when you're going to see the results that you're looking for. So FitBud uses data to create and adjust your dynamic fitness plan and you'll have instant access to your own personalized routine in their fantastic app so you can make progress on your goals from anywhere because everybody's fitness path is different that's why fit bud does so much work

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fitbod.me slash upgrade. So go now and get your customized fitness plan at fitbod.me slash upgrade and you will get 25% off your membership. One last time, F-I-T-B-O-D.me slash upgrade for 25% off. Thanks to Fitbod for their support of this show and RelayFM. Okay, so there's episode 400. Yeah, happy 400. So we're going to be scoring a draft. We are. Surprise, surprise. I think we forgot we did this for a while.

I did, and then it came up in my to-do list a couple of months ago as a thing that I needed to check. And I was like like what does that mean and then i went to the wonderful upgrade.cards which is put together and maintained by friend of the show zach knox on episode 300 of this here upgrade program uh which was many moons ago when exactly was that let me see upgrade 300 it was all the way back in june of june of 2020 2020 june 1st 2020 uh we did a draft in episode 300 of things that we think may or may not happen in a hundred episodes time right here we are today 100 episodes later so here's the funniest thing about this is because apple because of the

pandemic which we were already in when we recorded episode 300 but because of the pandemic apple ended up changing its way that it announced events to be a week's notice which meant that that this episode is actually happening like a month before we thought it would yeah because we had to do so many bonus episodes in order to do our draft. Like luckily I had prepared against myself there by setting that task way in advance. And today when I set my task for episode 500,

which is obviously 100 weeks from now, all the way out in February of 2024, because we're going to be doing another draft today. I set it in like January. Yeah, in January 2024 to remember because we're going to be doing another draft today. I said it in January. Yeah, in January 2024 to remember that we got it. You never know how many episodes of Upgrade you're going to do. We will start by scoring the episode 400 draft that we did in episode 300.

And then we're going to be making more draft predictions today for episode 500. Now, before we get started, I just want to point out, I listened to some of this today. Because, of course, we record these and then have no memory of them later. And I listened to it and I asked you then. And it's funny because I was thinking this now. And I actually asked you about it then, which is, does this count toward the winner of the overall Upgrade Draft champion for the year of 2022?

Or is it more of an exhibition and your response was i think it's an exhibition unless i win it yes i stand by that today and i will say for now the episode 500 this is purely an exhibition okay this does not count uh either way uh just for fun because it's weird right like it it doesn't act like the other drafts and it's in its own way like the pricks are very different it's a lot more nebulous and plus to me like i mean we'll talk about this maybe but when i was thinking of my picks for uh this draft we're about to do in a bit i was picking things that initially thinking it's like this is going to be in like

2025 it's like yeah like really far it's like no no no no it's only two years back that that happened 100 episodes ago too where uh you said at some point you know you you were reminded that it was only two wwdcs between then and now and so you gotta you gotta restrain yourself a little bit i'm like oh this is five years away from it. No, it's not. It's not five years away. Okay. Can I tell you what my first pick in round one in episode 300 was?

Yeah. I think we should go through them. We'll go through all of yours. Go through all of mine. We'll score. Apple receives an Oscar nomination. So good. This is so good.

And I say in the episode, I don't think I can pick that they're going to win an Oscar. If I had to pick an award, I would say that they would win an Emmy, which they also did. Yeah. But can you imagine if I picked Apple receives an Oscar and we did the episode the day after the Oscars? Can you imagine? But all I did was the nomination. So I get the point. I would have laughed you off the episode if

that would have been uh like yeah that would have been ludicrous genuinely ludicrous to pick back then that that they would win uh an oscar what was your second pick uh oh are we gonna do mine straight up yeah i think we should just do all of them my second pick was a macbook air name this is what we were talking about earlier mac MacBook Air name still exists on a product. It's a good one. That's a good one. It was really a question and I just thought

they're not going to be able to kill it. And then we had this discussion earlier today where you said, well, maybe they'll kill it. And I thought, maybe, maybe not. Maybe they can't kill it. So I get that one.

iOS app development possible on the ipad it is it is we don't think about it a lot because it's a little bit constrained but the swift playgrounds on ipad now you can you can develop and submit straight to the app store then yeah i think at one point we did talk about some apps that are out and available in the world that have been made this way. Yeah, for sure. So that came true. All right. Some of these picks, and I'll probably do this this time too, are the spirit of the age. So we were talking a lot about encryption stuff and law enforcement not wanting to be boxed out of reading people's text messages via encryption. And so I guessed Apple would be targeted by specific encryption-related legislation in the US. This hasn't happened.

The sites of Congress have gone in other places in terms of regulating big tech and not to encryption. And my final pick, which I am going to say is is arguably wrong although if i really cared i could make the argument that it's right but i think it's not in the spirit of the pick which is four different products exist with the name airpods now we have airpods pro and airpods and airpods max and you could argue that there are apple still selling two different AirPods, but they have the same name. Yeah, their website has four things on it. Yes. But they are basically the same thing.

Also, I said that they could sell like a little charger, which they do sort of for like laying down the AirPods and laying down your iPhone. But I think this is probably arguably, each of us has a pick that's sort of like, you could try to lawyer it into being right. But I think in the spirit of it, what I was saying is they got to keep on churning out new AirPods products. Holding around the last generation doesn't feel like it's for different products, right?

It feels like it's three different products, one of which has the old version and the new version. So I'm willing to let that one go. And that gives me three points. Three points. Okay. So my round one, Apple services bundle unveiled. You were a believer.

I was skeptical because it had been rumored for so long and hadn't happened. And look what happened. Pick two. I pay for it. Apple by Johnny Ive collaboration. Nothing what happened. Pick two. I pay for it. Apple by Johnny Ive collaboration. Nothing ever happened. Yeah, you thought that they were gonna do a collab on like a... I thought they would

do one thing just to say that they did it, which was because they always said, oh, we're gonna continue working together. Nothing happened. There is, like, it's not a collaboration but it was known that, like, apparently he was, it was reported anyway, that he was still helping out with the Colorful i um that was a report I think wired had that report but I don't know about that one uh three apple hardware product focused on AR is unveiled not yet Mike Hurley

not yet uh no you're so close but not yet pretty close but not yet so close uh round four consumer max transitioned to arm-based processors i love that it's such a funny little thing like there's a lot of hedging in there you know like well you know it was it was before apple silicon transition began or was even announced it was right before it was announced and we were like how long are they going to do the transition and are they really going to be able, there's a lot of, are they really going to be able to make pro level Macs with their chips right away? And so you constrained your pick to the consumer Macs will get there. is my response to this pick was to say that one of the things on my list was only the mac pro will remain on intel which is like wow wow yeah i was i think i was pretty lucky because i think i could have easily gone with apple transitions of their max like and it wouldn't technically be correct right because there's still there's still one out there yeah and the intel mac mini is

technically still there although i think i could probably again litigate that they said very specifically they only had one left to go when it was the mac pro yeah that if i had picked that we could have said it was right but you backed off of it and i think that was a prudent thing to do and uh yeah thumbs up that was a good one and then my final one is the iphone launch schedule is staggered uh for example spring and fall now the iphone is out, but that's not what I meant. What I meant, which they haven't done, but I still think there's a possibility that one day they may do this, is the regular and pro phones come out at different times. To do this, though, they do need to take the Samsung approach, which I'm now a bit more shaky on it's like that the regular and pro phones are

really different the only time i see this happening now is if they do something which is a like a very different kind of iphone like a foldable iphone or something like that well i will say the rumor that they're not going to update the processor in the low-end iPhone this year in the fall does make me want I don't think they're going to do it either but once they do that like what's stopping them from only releasing the other way they could do it let me put it this way the other way they could do it is they could release the pro phones in the fall and then with the a16 and then in the spring release the regular phones in the a16 right they could do that and they might even do that this time right they release those regular phones with the a15 in the fall i don't again i don't think they will but they could and

then in the spring they could be like oh and now they're they're up great updated with the a16 or something like i don't think it'll happen. I'm just saying you're seeing a bifurcation of the two iPhone models, the two iPhone lines that wasn't there before. And if one of them has a different processor than the other one, so it's not even on the same processor cycle. Because the processor cycle has been what has been driving this, right? It's like new processor, A15. It goes in the iPhones. And then it goes in other stuff.

And versions of it exist. And there's an X. And there's an M1. And whatever else. And if that's not true, if this falls, iPhones have the old chip in it for half of the models, it's not an unreasonable second step for them to just say, we're not going to release them at the same time. an unreasonable second step for them to just say we're not going to release them at the same time and you could put them on the same chip generation then but stagger their release again i don't think

they're going to do it i think the problem is always going to be design like if they're going to follow the same design and mostly feature the same like features they can't do it but the designs are diverging a bit too right so like i guess that's my question is how divergent are those two models going to go again i think they get you know they get plenty of attention releasing all the iphones at once so that's probably what they're going to stick with but i i i've never really bought your iphone launch stagger theory but the more that they make them different the more i think it's possible that they could do that down the road because if they're identical it doesn't make sense like

it flattens the logistics and it flattens the revenue a little bit more and i think that there's a lot of benefits to that yeah you spread it out a little bit and honestly also i will say if you roll out the new chip generation in the fall with the pros and then the the non-pros follow in the spring, you will also, if you're Apple, pick up some people who will want the newness and the hotness. And those are the people, first off, the people who are buying right away when a product gets announced are the kind of people who are buying a pro product because they care about the new specs. If the other phone model is not as new and doesn't really have new specs anymore, it's kind of trailing behind, it's a lot less important that it be announced at the same time. Because those buyers, like the SE,

those buyers are kind of trickling in over time. I guess you could say that there are holiday buyers who want to buy a new iPhone for the holiday season. And so putting it out in the fall is the right time. And that's true. But I don't know. I guess I'm saying I don't think it will happen, but it's less unlikely than it used to be, I think. I would say, so 3-2 to you, I would say we did pretty well between the two of us. Half? Yeah. You know, that's not too bad, actually.

Yeah, 50% of our predictions for 100 episodes out came true and two more that were you know arguable in some ways I like the airpods thing the spirit there was really more airpods products and they are selling four airpods but they're not it's really more like three and a half so I didn't

quite hit the threshold but yeah we are we did okay I think yeah i'm pretty proud of us yeah good for us oh um i wanted to mention something else i found before we shift gears to the future i wanted to mention one other thing that we mentioned in episode 300 that i thought was funny is one of our uh stories about what was being acquired films that were being acquired by Apple TV we talk about the Oscar and all of that was Killers of the Flower Moon

the Martin Scorsese directed film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro and Oscar nominee Jesse Plemons by the way and what I think it's funny is it still hasn't come out its release date is November.

So 100 episodes ago, Apple acquired a film or decided it would be producing the film. And we are checked back in November. Check back eight months from now. Weirdly, I'm not surprised about this, honestly, for a Martin Scorsese movie. It takes a long time to make a movie. But it was just one of those moments where I'm like did this fall through

and the answer is no. No it's coming out in November but it was 100 episodes ago that it was announced that Apple was going to bankroll it. I mean and it's

obviously because they signed the first look with Martin Scorsese. Yeah and this is an Apple Studios what I said before about them getting further up in the

chain right. Like there's buying a movie at Sundance where you're just buying a movie that was already made and you saw it and you liked it and you wrote them a check. This is Apple Studios. So this is way further back, obviously, two years ago where they put down their money and said, we want to be in business with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio and we're going to make this movie and we'll see it all in November when it will be primed for Oscar season. You know, and,

and so it goes. All right, let's take our final break and then we will do our episode 500 draft. I would like to thank Ooni for their support of this week's episode. Ooni pizza ovens. They are the world's number one pizza oven company because they make surprisingly small ovens powered by your choice of either wood, charcoal, or gas, letting you make restaurant-quality pizza in your own backyard.

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powered oven that can cook up to 16 inch pizzas and has an innovative l-shaped burner at the back to give you even heat distribution this is the one that you have right jason yes it is and what do you can you tell the upgrading and something that you love about your uni pizza oven i mean at first it cooks fast so if you have people who are like picky and want different pizzas you just make a bunch of pizzas and it cooks in like a minute or two. Um, and you get that really crispy crust because you can get the heat much higher than you can in a regular oven. And so you, uh, you know, and it's, mine is fueled by the same propane tank that I would use for a gas grill or for, uh, like a little heat lamp outside. They are all interchangeable, which is

also really convenient because I have, I keep a couple of them around and I can attach one. And yeah. And so my son, the picky eater, he just gets a cheese pizza and then I can put all sorts of wacky toppings like pineapple and pepperoni on mine. And in a couple of minutes, they're all done.

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backyard go to ooni.com and use the code upgrade fm22 and you will get 10 off our thanks to uni pizza ovens for their support of this show and relay fFM. So the episode 500 draft we turn our attention to now. Here it is. Now, in our document, you have put me as picking first. Are you just being kind to me here? I have decided that the challenger in the draft of the ages should go first i like that name i just was calling it in my mind the episode draft but i like draft of the ages so this is remember february 2024 my first pick is in february 2024 there will be no apple car you stole my number one pick I had it at the top of my list

for people that are draft historians people that really know how we play our drafts there is something we're doing differently here usually we have a shared draft list we always talk about that and we pick from that we were having a conversation and I suggested considering this is so far in advance and we could pick literally anything why don't we keep these lists secret from each other

i regret giving you the first pick now because that was gonna totally be my first pick it's a it's a what do they call it on the ricky's uh website it's a it's a downer pick it's a uh-huh it's a it's a bummer pick but uh but i think you're right it's not gonna happen right no it's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen i don't think it's ever gonna happen it's definitely not happening in two years time right it's the buzz killer pick that was a buzz killer pick but it's a smart pick whose buzz is being killed by me saying you know what i mean like who's out there is like really into it. Predicting a thing that doesn't happen is, all right, I am going to say an iMac larger than 24 inches will be released. Okay.

Yeah. Maybe you should say will be available, you know? Will be announced or available. Yeah, that's nice. That's nice. I like that. Because I don't want to fall in that trap of being, well, it's not? Will be announced or available. Yeah, that's nice. That's nice. I like that. Because I don't want to fall in that trap of being,

well, it's not, technically it's not available, but they only announced it last week. Who's doing that, by the way? Is that me? No, that would be the pedants on the internet. Bad people.

Bad people, not you. Okay, cool. No, I mean, you're right. The gentleman's agreement here, I could say, again, will exist. And that's all we need to say right that's that works for me right because then we're not arguing about well technically does it exist if not it's only been announced and again that's not you that's everybody else we know that's not me uh the gentleman's agreement it's fine it's it's really it's everybody on uh connected who fights about what the words of a

pick me not me that's who i was doing no not you not me those those three guys uh i probably It's really everybody on Connected who fights about what the words of a pic mean. Not me, though. That's who I was doing there. No, not you. Not me. Those three guys. I probably should update you, by the way, that I have come around. I've come back around to an iMac Pro.

After we spoke about it a couple of weeks ago, I've come back around to that idea. I think that an iMac Pro will exist, but it's sometime into the future. And I do agree with you that I think it will be before February 2024, but honestly might be only just, right? I could imagine that being a announced in December 2023 kind of deal. Who knows?

Yeah, could be. We'll find out. I think that since we're picking here for what will be the beginning of 24 i am going with the idea that by the end of 23 there will be a big iMac yeah all right so my second pick so we're all very excited about friday night baseball coming to apple tv plus Aren't we though? Like very excited. If I'm ever going to watch baseball, I want it to be on a Friday night.

Also, actually kind of funny. I'm going to text you. I'll text you when it's on. It's kind of funny. It would technically be Saturday morning baseball for me, right? So it's funny that they're calling it that way considering it is going to be available. Maybe they'll brand it differently

in places where it's Saturday. Terrible time on Saturday baseball, we'll call it. It's Saturday afternoon baseball in Australia and it's probably Saturday baseball in Saturday morning baseball, maybe in Korea and Japan.

So I don't know, maybe. But terrible time baseball, late night baseball. Terrible time baseball is what we'll call it. But that's not my pick. My pick is that Apple TV Plus will include live programming that is not sports. Ooh. What does that mean?

I don't know. So to be clear here, this isn't like bundling in a cable channel that has it as like a channel. It's like you pay for Apple TV Plus and you get live programming that is not sports. Yeah, it's part of the Apple TV Plus subscription thing, right? Like in the way that the Friday night baseball is, you know? Like I don't want to say like Apple makes it, if that makes sense, but like it's that as an Apple TV Plus subscriber

without any add-ons, unless it comes from Apple. All right, you get what I'm trying to say, right? Like, if you're an Apple TV Plus subscriber, you can get live programming. It's possible that Apple may charge you more for it, if that makes sense. Right, but it's coming from Apple TV Plus.

It's not being shunted from another source. From somewhere else, no. What is this? What do you think this will be? This could be live specials of some kind maybe they go into news right they have that news podcast maybe they do that um i honestly i don't know right but i tell you what i mean we think of this right a hundred episodes ago i don't think i would have expected that they were going to be doing live sports. So my thinking is that there is a potential for stuff for them to do in this area.

They're going to have learned about it from sports. Maybe they move into something else, right? Like James is saying, concerts. Concerts could be a thing that they put on Apple TV+. It could be a whole thing that they do. I don't know, right? But live TV is a thing that exists and there are things that you can do on live tv like a live comedy show right why not like a saturday night

live or something sure you know maybe and it's not necessarily it's like oh they have like so many things like it could just be one show that they do every week but it's live that's that's that's what i'm thinking i'm just thinking that like in two years time from where they are now to where they were two years ago like i'm thinking of the progression of apple tv plus i can see them just wanting to try lots of different stuff and i could imagine a live show interesting i'm gonna go a little more restrained than that and say apple tv plus will broadcast another live sport that is not baseball so i was thinking this but wanted to be a little bit more daring but like i was thinking it too like it could be football um it could be some kind of racing racing uh that was my first pick and

then i was like no let's go let's swing for the fences yeah good for you good baseball metaphor there i like that there will be two more products branded Studio is my third pick. Oh, I had on my list another Apple hardware product called Studio. Again, I thought I could go with one, but like, no, why go with one when you can go with two, you know? Swinging for those fences. I like it because it is a word that was just introduced, but it is an interesting direction for them.

It feels like they don't drop a new word into their product lineup without careful consideration of how they might deploy it. I mean, they're using it in two places already. You know what I mean? Yeah. what i mean yeah yeah and we've seen with max and with pro and with mini and with air that they like to recycle their descriptors right so why would they not do this and it's a brand new name it can mean a bunch of different things you know it's got the creator angle all tied into it and i'm really excited about it particularly i just love it i think it's a great brand so that's why i wanted to pick it and i was like let's just go all studio everywhere like i think airpods max will be rebranded to airpods

to airpods studio it's a good name it's a better name great name it's a great name what's your third pick i'm looking at this list now and i'm just not loving any of them um i'm just gonna go with big products again okay an ipad will have a display larger than 12.9 inches wow are you wowing that pick or wowing that it's such a timid pick because i think it's definitely gonna happen i i actually think that it's possible that 12.9 will get bigger but i think that there'll be a larger ipad yeah ipad studio this is one of those things where it's like do i believe this will happen yes do i believe this will have happened by february 2024 i don't know i don't know because like the rest of my picks today except for one that I have in my little list,

I have like a list of seven here. Yeah. That's kind of where I'm at with a bunch of these, where it's like, do I think it's going to happen? Yes, I do. Will it have happened in less than two years? I'm not so sure,

but okay. I mean, like here's the, yes, I agree this is going to happen. It makes sense, right? But I just, yeah. Okay, cool. Good pick. Thank you. but okay i mean like here's that yes i agree this is gonna happen it makes sense right but i just yeah okay cool good pick thank you i have an ipad related one but it's a buzz killer and then oh i'm really i'm doing it for the memes honestly but dystopian science fiction is happening now right here all right i'm gonna make a pick right now right right? Okay. This is fun. This is fun. It's your turn. I'm going to make a pick right now that I could be wrong about potentially tomorrow.

Wow. Right? I'm going for it. Okay. For those who keep the live scoreboard, you can just mark this one off tomorrow. No, maybe not. Maybe. But it's not a definite.

Because it's something that could be invalidated at any time is what you you're saying so this is like a won't right this is like this won't happen yeah kind of wwdc has not returned to the pre-2020 style all right okay like as we're recording this it's very expected that like within the next couple of days, Apple will announce their 2022 WWDC plan. And they could shock the world and say, hey, everyone, come back. Mike Hurley thinks that's not going to happen, right? And Mike Hurley thinks it's never going to happen. And you think it's not going to happen next year either.

I think it's done. Like the idea of we're going to bring 5,000 developers to San Jose and do like a week's worth of programming, I don't think that's ever going to bring 5,000 developers to San Jose and do like a week's worth of programming. I don't think that's ever going to happen again. And so that's where I'm going with it. I think you may be right, but I think it's interesting. We don't know what the... If things settle down and you get a whole year,

that's the question, right? Will Apple, if things settle down for a whole year, that's the question, right? Like, will Apple, if things settle down for a whole year, say we're bringing it back or will Apple be like, we're never bringing it back? And we just don't know. I think there's a good chance you're right. I said at some point, because you said pre-2020 style, which I think is a good point here, because I've said that I can still envision a scenario where Apple uses WWDC as a media event. Oh yeah, for sure. I think there's a chance they'll do that this year. Yeah, like a kickoff that's at the Steve

Jobs Theater that is a media event with people and select developers that they want to invite. And select developers but it's not a conference. It's a media event kicking off a week of virtual conference. I think that there's a really good chance that that's where they're going to end up.

Because, look, I said it at the time and I stand by it. I think that is a better thing for Apple's developer community as a whole. It is. It is because only a tiny, tiny fraction could ever get a ticket and even afford to go to San Jose for a week. And so for most people, WWDC. And so most for most people, WWDC has always been virtual for most people. Forcing it to be virtual has meant that they've had to open up more opportunities for people that are virtual and build new technologies.

And it works really well and people are pretty happy with it. So I agree as much as I would be sad to lose it because I wrote a piece many years ago on iMore about how it basically took the banner from Macworld Expo in terms of being the place that was like the event, in-person event for our community. The truth is, if you're Apple and you look at it, it doesn't really make sense. So this makes more sense to do it this way. That said, Apple is also the company that is bringing everybody back to the office. When we're like, but you could do it virtually, Apple's like, no, but we really believe that having people in person. And that could extend to WWDC. I don't know. I don't. I mean, I don't buy that at all as an argument. I've seen people making that argument.

It's like, this is an apples and oranges situation here. I agree, and yet I guess my point is not that that would be the logic. I guess my point is that I don't entirely agree with or understand Apple's rationale there. No. And if I don't understand that, maybe I don't understand how they feel about WWDC. Sure. I don't understand how they feel about WWDC. Sure. I don't know. For my next pick, Mike,

I put the first part of it in our document. Somewhere in the world. I'm really intrigued about this. For the last five minutes in our document, it says somewhere in the world. I'm like, what is it going to say? Do you have a guess about what follows somewhere in the world? Somewhere in the world.

Apple opens another campus no okay because they are doing that so that would be somewhere in the world apple will let users sideload ios apps oh jason we might talk about this next week by the way i have some links for maybe for us to talk about next week okay Okay. This is me putting down that someone's going to make them. I couldn't squeeze antitrust into this episode today. I just did not have the time. But I've got a lot to say again. I know. But that's going to be my choice is that somewhere by the beginning of 2024, somewhere in the world, someone will have forced Apple.

Well, I don't know. See, here's the thing. I would guess the EU. Yeah. But the thing is, I didn't know what was going to happen in Korea and Japan and the Netherlands specifically. For all we know, it's going to happen in the Netherlands in three weeks' time. You never know. It'll be like, well, you know, it turns out that in Italy we have to do this.

But just in Italy. And Federico's going to go, ha ha! But right before he realizes that all of his accounts are American. So we'll see where it is in the world. I'm not going to tell you where. I'm just going to tell you somewhere out there in the world. If it's on the moon, it doesn't count. If it's in the world and Apple is forced or decides, but probably forced to let users

sideload iOS apps. Okay. We're having fun, right? Yeah. It's only an exhibition, not a competition. My last pick. iPadOS will not have better support for external display. Oh, you know I had this pick, but I have it the other way. Yeah, of course.

No, external display support for iPad won't happen yeah you say yeah it's just like we're we always want it it's not gonna happen well look at the same time for longer we've been asking for them to improve audio routing you know that never happened right i i mean look here's the thing i don't know if they want us to do this yeah i am inclined to believe that they will because the hardware supports it. I mean, I really hope they will, right? So the hardware supports it. They've been iterating on multitasking.

If I had to predict this point, because my pick was going to be external display support for iPad, will happen. You said won't happen. for iPad will happen. You said won't happen. If I had to predict though, what I would predict is, and I highly recommend what two weeks ago, episode of Connected where Federico got really sort of despairing about the future of the iPad in an intelligent way.

It was very, very good. And I really, I liked how he discussed it, his frustrations with where they're going. And that's what I would pick. I would probably predict that they will support external displays, but it will be in a way that is limited and disappointing and doesn't really solve the larger issue of how you handle multiple things displaying on an iPad. That would be my prediction, but you're right. Like they could just say, no, no, that's not what it's for. We don't, we don't want to do that. And I mean, what, what could you say, no, no, that's not what it's for. We don't want to do that.

And, I mean, what could you say to that? Like, that's been their behavior up to now. I don't know. It's similar to me of, like, touchscreens on Macs. Right. That should have happened by now, I feel like. This is easier because all the pieces are there. All that is required is will.

I think that, I mean, and a little bit of multitasking improvement, but it's way easier to get external display support on the iPad than it is to get touchscreen on the Mac. Because they would need to make some serious changes to the Mac to do that, I think, in a way that they don't need to do for the iPad. Well, I mean, re-architecting the multitasking system could be pretty big. They already did a lot of it, though. That's the thing is they already did so much. Yes. Yeah. They've got Windows.

They've got the new little controller at the top of every window. Like, it feels what they did with the last version of iOS felt to me like they were positioning themselves to do more with windowing and positioning of Windows on iPadOS. So, but will they? But will they? I will tell you this. I had a moment with a studio display where I had, I was trying to do, I was doing my MacBook Air on the studio display. So I had all of my stuff that's plugged into the back of my iMac that's now plugged into

the back of the Mac studio, plugged into the back of the studio display so that I could test out the sort of like one cable thing with my MacBook Air. And when I was done with that, I plugged it into my iPad Pro. And you know what I got? I got a really weird blown up pillar boxed iPad screen on the display. But what I also got is my keyboard and trackpad that were wired and plugged in to a USB hub that ran to the display just worked. And I was sitting there driving a cursor around on the screen. And I thought, you know, so close. But do they even want to take it across the line?

So I think it's a fair point. I guess we'll find out in 100 episodes or sooner here's one of those things where i hope i'm wrong and if i'm wrong then it will be a gift to myself because i will have got a thing that i want you know but i don't have complete faith in them to do this yeah well complete faith can't you i i get it what's your final pick oh what's your final pick oh so many to choose from here i'm gonna say a product we haven't talked about here an apple watch gets a new design new design new design i don't know what that design is i don't know if it's going to be we're not doing the old look anymore or it's we're doing in addition to the old look or maybe it's that much rumored like, oh, we're going

to make Apple Watch Sport and it's this weird rugged thingy. But it's like Apple will sell an Apple Watch that doesn't look like every Apple Watch that's been sold up to now.

Yep. Well, I don't know. That makes sense. I think it's worth putting a, I mean, like pros for this pick are there's been rumors about some of this

and don't you think it's time? I thought it was time last year. Cons, they've never done it. So why would they do it in the next hundred weeks? We'll see. I got two release cycles to be proven right there. So we will find out the answer to this draft sometime on or before February 2024. Sometimes February 2024. 2024, sometime February 2024.

I think technically we'll probably know before then, right? Because all these things will happen or not. But that's the fun of it. You can just set a monthly timer to go check the page on upgrade.card and score where we are right now in the grand scheme of things. I did that like two months ago

when you reminded me we did this i went and i scored it and i was like oh i think i'm gonna win but um it was kind of funny because again completely forgotten that we did it uh we're running out today's episode jason with a couple of hashtag ask upgrade questions yep michael asked given that the studio monitor contains basically an ios device and given that Macs can control iOS via universal control, what are the chances that Apple will activate a mode in which the monitor becomes an iOS device controllable from the Mac? Now, I will just say, we have been getting lots of questions like this. So I just want to answer it so we can stop getting them. Zero. Exactly. So

like there's been, what about if it's an Apple TV? What about if it's this? They're not going to do any of that. This is not going to happen. There is zero reason to do this. So is it possible that somebody will hack into this thing via the connection? I'm convinced that's going to happen, and I can't wait to see the YouTube video. And get it to generate something on screen,

whether it's iOS or it's really just like a Darwin something or other. Maybe, but like actually creating a mode where your monitor becomes an iOS device for your attached Mac? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. And honestly, even if you said, well, what if Apple thinks that there's value in having taken the iOS simulator and making kind of a broader thing for the Mac users? It's like one catalyst that they already have that path for people who want to have apps on it. And two, even if they wanted to have like a virtual machine of an iOS device in a Mac today, they would run it virtually on the Apple Silicon that's on the Mac that's way more powerful than the Apple Silicon that's in the display.

Does it even have a Wi-Fi radio inside of it? No, it doesn't have any of those. The only way it could communicate is over the wire from the Mac. So no is the answer to all of these questions of could they do this? No. The Studio Monitor is a monitor that you plug into another device and it generates and shows you what's on that device and that's how it's going to stay. And John asks, is the

13-inch MacBook Pro, rumored to drop the pro name, going to be the Mac equivalent of the iPhone SE? I could see that scenario of prices raised on the new MacBook Air. So this is like, you know, do we think it's going to remain in the product line for a while and go cheaper? Basically, I included this because I thought, what if they just call it the MacBook SE and just leave it at that? Oh, yeah. Great history of SE products on the Mac.

Maybe, but I don't know. I mean, it's a weird one right because i think that this is the problem is that is the macbook air the cheap uh mac or is the do they take something else and and decontent it down to be the cheapest mac because you want a laptop under a thousand that's what you want and um i could see them would that product be the macbook pro or it would just be a successor called macbook and would we really be able to call it the same thing would be based on the same stuff i don't know i i think it's i think it's an interesting question um because apple could rejigger things so that the macbook air is a little more expensive but then there's a macbook that's cheaper that's not as light and fun but is is available um not sure they're going to do that, though.

They've done the MacBook Air down at the bottom for so long, they may not be able to do it. I think the similarity will be that this product will fill a price gap, like the iPhone SE fills a price gap, but I don't think it's going to fill the same one, not the lowest. It's hard to say. That is a MacBook Pro.

It costs a lot more than a MacBook Air, so they would really need to like rethink it at which point if they're selling it for 999 it's not even the same product anymore if they do that right so i don't think so if you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show just send out a tweet with a hashtag ask upgrade or use question mark ask upgrade in the relay fm members discord which you get access to if you sign up for upgrade plus go to get upgrade plus.com and for five dollars a month or fifty dollars a to if you sign up for upgrade plus go to getupgradeplus.com and for five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year you can sign up and support the show

and what a greater time to celebrate our 400th episode than by becoming an upgrade plus subscriber and you can support the show and you get tons of bonus content today in upgrade plus we're going to talk about some of the things we didn't pick in the draft. What were those things that we thought were maybe a little too out there for our 2024 episode 500 draft? And, you know, obviously, we say this every week and we mean it every week. Thank you to everybody that subscribes

via Upgrade Plus, but also thank you to everybody that tunes into the show every week. We are now, you know, celebrating another milestone for 400 episodes. This show is a joy to do for me every week and so thank you jason and thank you all uh for choosing to spend your time with us every single week it means the world to us thank you mike onward to 500 i know that's gonna be great episode 500 i mean you know what i would love to do, Jason Snell? What? In person? Record it in front of a live audience.

Oh, wow. Well, let's see. We'll see. That would be wonderful. That would be really good. Wow. Thank you so much to our sponsors of this week's episode, FitBud, Uni Pizza Ovens, ZocDoc, and Theragun. Thank you so much to you all for listening, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.