Upgrade - 431: Charty Charty Money Charts

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Apple and the Mac had another record quarter, but there are some serious questions about slowing growth in services and what it means for Apple's future strategies. This leads naturally into a discussion of Apple sticking ads all over the App Store and changing its App Store guidelines again. And Myke has taken Stage Manager for a spin on macOS Ventura.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 431 today's show is brought to you by capital one clean my mac x and zocdoc my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike hurley how are you i'm very good i just want to say up top so we don't have to say it ever again during this episode we're recording this episode a few days before we usually would it's being recorded on friday the 28th of october uh just in case anything changes between now and episode release probably one but you never sure i never like to record this far in advance for upgrade no because news breaks but we have so much news um last week see uh professional that uh we figured we could do it and there's some uh we couldn't record on

monday this week for personal reasons um not business reasons and so here we are a couple days early so yes if you if you say why didn't they mention that terrible thing that happened on sunday now you know this is why and you know this this is one of those things we were talking So yes, if you say, why didn't they mention that terrible thing that happened on Sunday? Now you know why. This is why. And, you know, this is one of those things we were talking about in our discussions as we tend to. And I was like, oh, I don't think I can make the episode on the 31st. And Jason very rightly pointed out, but Mike, it's results time.

And I was like, let's do it early, baby. Yeah. I'm in. It's episode 4, 31st. So, right? It's like the date. And it's Halloween, so spooky. Ooh.

I have a Hashtag Snail Talk question for you. Mark wants to know, Jason, do you use web bookmarks? If you do, how often do you tidy them up, getting rid of dead or changed links or whatever? I save bookmarks if there's a place that i'm going i know that i'm going to say where where is that bookmark or where is that site later and have forgotten about it honestly i haven't used a bookmarks menu in a very long time i do have like a toolbar favorites

that i have like the stuff that i use every day but for other stuff i literally i save it and then i type in the safari bar like the word that i think is in the for other stuff i literally i save it and then i type in the safari bar like the word that i think is in the name of the bookmark and find it that way i don't go down the menu looking for it i just type a word or two like that that are the words essentially i search in the uh in the safari bar for the name the title tag why have the bookmarks? Because all of these web browsers now, they just autocomplete based on your history, right? So that's what you're really doing. Yeah, but when you bookmark something,

you think, I may need this in four months. Right. Right? Or I need to get back to this, and I don't want to remember it, and I don't know, so I'm just going to save it. You're right. If it's just history, although I don't think history syncs across devices so there's some advantages of bookmarks there too but mostly I just do iCloud

actually does sync does sync history level of history sometimes you know it's iCloud you know what I mean my point is my point is I basically toss it in a little pile that is I probably am going to want to look at this again someday and I'm not going to be able to remember what it is. So I'm going to bookmark it, and then I'm going to type a word that appears in its title. And I'm going to go, that's the one, and I'm going to go there. And to answer the other question, how often do I tidy them up? Mark, last year, I edited my bookmarks file and I deleted, I would say, hundreds, if not thousands, that had been there for over probably a decade. So not very often.

But I do, because again, you're basically just cleaning out the coal bin at that point, right? Like, I'm not saving that stuff in a brilliantly curated list. I'm literally, it's a save for later in case I need this URL kind of thing. It's one of those things where you see a product. I guess I could have them open in tabs or something, but I don't really want them open. Because if I think I'm going to act on them soon, I might send them to a tab. But a lot of this stuff is like, I might need this later. I'm going to save a bookmark so that I can find this site later, because otherwise I'm never going to

remember it. And that's it. If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk, or use question mark SnowTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. I have installed Ventura. It happened after the episode no i wanted to to install it

and talk about it in upgrade plus but it didn't happen in time one of the things i just wanted to mention as a piece of follow-up was my experience of continuity camera it's exactly what i wanted because i now have a can have a webcam that doesn't flicker like madness because of my overhead lighting and the way that i worked it out is i'm using because i don't have a mount for the studio display right there isn't one yet so i had an elgato flex arm which is like it's like an arm system that you use i use it for some of my lights i bought a few of them during podcast time one year and i had a spare one so i've hooked that up to kind of hover over the back of my lights. I bought a few of them during podcast-a-thon time one year, and I had a spare one. So I've hooked that up to kind of hover over the back of my

desk, and then I put a glyph from Studio Neat above it. So I could just put my phone up there, clip it in, turn on, and then the camera comes on. Fantastic. And I took Jason's advice, I turned off center stage, and it looked fantastic. It's the best I've looked on a video call in a long time.

However, I want to add something in that I knew was going to happen. And Apple tried to tell me they were super smart. Not didn't tell me, tried to tell everyone, oh, there's no way we have algorithms. I was on a call with Stephen yesterday. I had my phone on the desk in front of me, camera down, and it went, ba-ding. Yep. And it connected. So not really that smart, to be honest. As I knew this was going to happen, it's going to keep happening. That's just life.

But when it works, and it does work, fantastic. Yep, I agree. I agree. Have you ever had it happen to you where it turns on when you didn't want it to? So I did a live stream with Dan Morin after the Apple results came out last week. And I opened Ecamm Live and I wasn't using it as the camera,

but my phone was on my desk. And the moment I opened Ecamm Live, it went, da-ding. Yep. It looks like, essentially, it looks like you're using cameras now. I'm one. I'm like, okay, all right fine uh joanna stern had an interview with uh

craig vittorigi and greg greg joswiak as part of the wall street journal tech live event which is pretty cool actually i still have it saved in my youtube to watch the whole thing but i've seen some clips i wanted to bring it up here because during this interview, Jaws confirmed that Apple will be moving to USB-C as they have to, but it's a confirmation. As a quote, this is like the clip is long.

I'm going to put in the show notes the full video. It's like a two-minute thing. And his answer is interesting. I think it's very Apple-y and honestly, I could like, whatever. But what he said is, we will have to comply with the law, but it would have been better to not have a government be that prescriptive. So Greg kind of like, he

talks about innovation and all that kind of stuff, and how government's standards can impede innovation. But I'm not sure I fully agree with him when it comes to USB-C specifically, like he brings up micro USB but that was always bad we never liked micro USB as a connector right nobody wanted all

phones to go to micro USB but people are more happy with USB-C because it is a much more universal convenient and good connector so I still stand by it but it's interesting to hear and talk about it yeah I mean it's it's very much like a talk show, John Gruber talk show, WWDC interview. You've got Apple execs. They're on point. They're not going to like blurt out things that they don't plan on saying, but they can provide a little more detail about their way of thinking that we've, in this case, it's a perfect example actually of how we've got the rumors, we've got the news reports about Europe, rumors that Apple's doing a USB-C iPhone. All that is out there.

So anybody who's observing knows what's going to happen. But it's different at least to have the person from Apple say, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, we were going to have to. And that's what we got. Speaking of rumors, how about a rumor roundup? Sounds great. Let's do it. So there is a report from Wayne Ma at The Information that Apple is working on a 16-inch iPad Pro to be released next year. Could be released next year. Probably 2024. Anyway.

Quote, a 16-inch iPad would likely be geared toward creative professionals such as graphic artists and designers who prefer a larger screen. We had previously discussed the rumor of a 14-inch iPad Pro. So, here's my question to you, Jason.

16-inch? 14-inch? Do we get one of these or both of them i wonder what the source it sounds like these are both pretty decent rumors and so this is a question is what is apple really going to just supersize the ipad pro or the supersize the ipad right i assume they should be called ipad. There's that iPad Studio idea right out there that these are more arty kind of things. But at the same time with Stage Manager, you could also use them as laptops, basically, like a 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros.

And so 14 and 16 inch iPad Pro, MacBook Pro. And then what happens to the rest of the product line? I think it could happen. I think it's entirely possible it will happen. How many different iPad models does Apple want to make is the question, right? Now, right now, the fact is that they make an almost 11 inch iPad, an almost 11 inch iPad, an 11 inch iPad, an 11 inch iPad, and a 12.9-inch iPad and the iPad mini, right? So there's room for more variation than we have right now in the product line.

But I would be surprised if Apple goes all in on big iPads and comes out with two different size models instead of sort of testing the waters. This is what these reports being in conflict is kind of fascinating to me. I also wonder if there's a detail we're missing here. This is what these reports being in conflict is kind of fascinating to me. I also wonder if there's a detail we're missing here. Like, are these iPads, is there an accessory we don't understand or don't know about? Or are they kind of more, I wanted to say, are they convertibles? But I think Apple's answer to convertibles, like on the PC side, is accessories, right, for the iPad. I think their answer is, if you want your iPad to also be a laptop, you snap on a thing, and now it's a laptop.

You don't flip it around and pull it off and stuff like that. It's a separate accessory that you buy. Interesting because, again, I have just not felt like Apple's level of enthusiasm for the high end of the iPad line would lead to them saying, well, heck yeah, let's just go 14 and 16 like the laptops. And the artists will love it. And the people who use the keyboards will love it because it's basically the size of a MacBook Pro at that point. People that use the iPad for work will probably love it. that point people that use the ipad for work will probably love it i have my vision jason is five or six ipads no size variations or with their own unique name right oh that's the dream right that's that's this is what i could see here so you got ipad right we know what the ipad is we spoke about it ipad air right right? iPad Pro, and then iPad Studio

and or iPad Ultra. You can choose, right? And so iPad, we know. iPad Air, we know. No 11-inch iPad Pro anymore. Get rid of that. You said all the same size. Yeah, all one size.

As in like each name has one iPad. See, okay. Because I thought you were saying as a joke, it's like, what I think they need to do is they need to release, are you getting it yet?

Five different 14-inch iPads. But technically, technically not though. It'll be the 13.9-inch iPad, the 14-inch iPad Air, the 14.2-inch iPad Pro, and the 14.25-inch iPad Studio. Yeah. No, okay. I get what what you mean which is the name means the size instead of it being um like what it is now where there's three different names for

products that are almost exactly the same size because i really think that the 11 inch ipad pro that we have now is the last we're going to see like i think that apple's put that writing on absolutely absolutely i think now the ipad air is so good like basically i'm like imagining them like if okay if the ipads are like the max now how would that look and work and so i don't know if honestly if they would do a 14 inch and a 16 inch but if they do i think the ipad pro just comes in 14 and then they have a bigger one which is studio or ultra and it's 16 and it's different in some way like you know like maybe the pro gets like the oled screen or whatever and the 16 inch gets a lcd screen or whatever mini led or whatever it is but it's like it's not necessarily the most specs even though

it would be the most expensive because it's the biggest like i think the line might get weird but the idea being like these are your products and you choose which one you need based on your use case which i think is much more like how you pick a mac right and the idea i mean first of you could parallel the Mac line in a bunch of ways with the names, right? Where there's a MacBook Air and then there's a MacBook Pro 14 and 16. And then you've got the big beefy one

for specific use cases. Right. And then I start to think, I mentioned that you wouldn't do a convertible if you're Apple. Like I wrote those articles way back when about like they should do a laptop. And the answer was, well, no, they did the magic keyboard.

And I think that's true. And I think that this vision that Apple has that I think Federico has done a really good job of writing and speaking about and defining. It's the idea that the iPad, the point of the iPad is that it's what you want it to be at any given time. And it starts with a touch tablet and then it goes where you want. You can add a pencil. You can add a keyboard. You know, you can plug it into a monitor. You can sort of do, turn it into other things. And it's the same device.

And that's the point of it. Whereas a Mac is a Mac. It does its thing. And that's the thing it does. It's not a transforming device like an iPad can be. And the next step, once you accept that about the iPad, is that the iPad is defined as much by its accessories as it is by itself as a product. And so when we talk about a 14 or a 16-inch iPad, I start to think, well, yeah, what are the accessories? Like a keyboard thing that makes it a laptop, a 14 or 16 inch laptop like the MacBook Pro is one of those

things. But when you talk about like, maybe the 16 would not be the ultra iPad, but could be, one thought that I had is, could be the iPad Studio where the selling point is that it is for artists. Big drawing canvas. Exactly. Well, you could see maybe there's a different setup for that where there's a different ergonomics for the size and leads to a different kind of case for it where you're using it on a lap or on a table. kind of case for it where you're using it on a lap or on a table. With Stage Manager and external display support and all of that, I do wonder if a larger iPad Pro might even have like a dock kind of thing where you put it on a desk and it docks with devices that are on a desk,

like a desktop dock. They could do that if they wanted to. And Apple expresses its vision for the iPad as a platform through the accessories. It's not just that, you know, I said the accessories define it, but the other way to view it is it's also Apple. Like we, over the years, have attached all sorts of weird things to the iPad, where it's like Federico is running it in mirrored mode and attaching a keyboard and you still have to use the touchscreen

and stuff like that. And over time, there comes that moment where Apple says, here's the magic keyboard. This is okay now. Like we now say, yes, the iPad is meant to be used like a laptop with a pointing device and a keyboard. That's one of its uses. Or when everybody had the little rubber styluses and then

apple said apple pencil like that was apple saying yes now our vision for this product includes that so what does that mean for a 14 16 a change at that at the upper end of the ipad um i don't know but it's really interesting to think about it because probably the accessories are part of what defines it. Also, not just on the high end, right? Because I know that there's been a lot of discussion about, um, I know you guys have talked about it on connected, the idea of that Google tablet that has a dock that turns it into kind of like a home, uh, like, like an Amazon. What is that called? Echo show. on what is that called echo show yeah where we've been talking on this podcast about the idea of what if apple made a thing that was kind of like an ipad but kind of like a home pod well one way

for apple to do that is to literally make a dock for the ipad that is a home pod and so you could drop an ipad in and now it's an iPad and a thing. So it's got a screen and a speaker and all of that. And you could also just lift it out and it's an iPad. And that's interesting too. So there are a lot of rumors, a lot of speculation. These are baffling enough to me, the idea that they will be working on a 16 and a 14, that it obviously led me down this path of kind of talking about all this stuff. But it's because my instinct is if they're doing this, there's way more to this story than is visible above the waterline right now. Like there's something going on

beyond just, yeah, we're going to make a couple of bigger iPads, right? It's not going to be enough for that to be the story. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Have you ever hit a technical snafu while you're shopping online? Have you ever gotten a headache from having to fill out a bunch of really confusing payment fields? Has a mobile banking app ever been down when you most needed it? Well, Capital One believes everyone deserves better banking, and this means easier access to money and more security, which is why Capital One is investing in machine learning. Machine learning allows Capital One to do things like fight fraud of random forests. These are models that will quickly detect suspicious activity and make it faster to alert federal investigators.

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but we can't stop. We can't stop because it's charts time. Money, money, money, money. Money, money, money, money, money, money. Money and charts, charts and money. Money charts, money charts. Charty, charty money charts. Apple's Q4 2022 results

are out if you remember obviously apple has their financial year and it doesn't match up completely with the calendar year so the q4 results and the end of september and then yes they do the holiday season is q1 right so that's the next one. Yeah, Q1 of 23. Which, you know, very confusing, but finances. Yeah, think about it when they report it instead of when they have it is the way to think about it. Oh, look at you.

In January 23, they'll report on Q1 23, which happens in 22, but don't think that far. Just leave it at when they talk about it. Go on from there. Let me do some top line, and then't think that far. Just leave it at when they talk about it. Go on from there. Let me do some top line and then we can dig in. Okay. The revenue for the quarter was $90.1 billion. Billion.

Billion of a B dollars. That is up 8% year over year, making it a record Q4 for the company. And they brought in $20.7 billion of profit. The Mac was at $11.5 billion, up 25% year over year. This was a record all-time quarter for the Mac. Is that right? Yes. The biggest Mac quarter ever. Incredible. The iPad, $7.2 billion of revenue, down 13% year over year. The iPhone, $42.6 billion of revenue, up 10% year over year. I believe this is a Q4 record for the iPhone.

Would not surprise me. I'm not 100% on that. But yeah, I think you're right. I did some digging. And again, it's hard because of charts and stuff. As far as I could tell, yes. Because really, it's bigger than any when the iphone 6 was around and if it beat that it'd be everything exactly services is 19.2 billion dollars which is up five percent but we'll get into this in a minute down again on the

previous calendar quarter which is an interesting thing for services it's the thing i don't feel like you pay attention to for anything else but services is a interesting thing for services it's the thing i don't feel like you pay attention to for anything else but services is a little bit different because it's all just like in theory should be additive if nobody's canceling but maybe they are wearable home and accessories 9.7 billion dollars up 10 i believe this is also a q4 record as well so you can see where they were shining but there were some places where they weren't but overall led to an increase year over year this was higher than they forecasted right that 90.1 well they don't forecast anymore but it was it was more than was expected i would say

yeah yeah let's talk about oh let me do the just one last thing in numbers uh the revenue by category for the quarter iphone 47 services 21 mac 13 11 for wearables 8 for ipad pretty similar to other uh quarters frequently i feel like yeah it's a little lower than like next time iphone will be 55 or 60 percent but because it but yeah basically the same so i think the services are interesting remember on last week's episode uh there was some breaking news that they're putting up services uh by like they're putting up the bundles a little bit yep do you reckon this is related okay it is related but in a complicated way right so um well i actually had to do math yesterday as sometimes happens which is think about so one of the things that affects services more than other categories at apple is exchange rates so

they talk a lot about foreign exchange headwinds that's their metaphor everyone's this is the new headwinds is the new like business speak it feels like yeah every c-suite executive yeah either owns a sailboat or fancies that they own a sailboat everyone keeps talking about it like headwinds is like it's it's a way to say declining without saying declining just like oh we got some headwinds you know the head i mean what what they mean is that the environment is against them, right? And I think that this is accurate. So when we talk about foreign exchange, and Apple will say that foreign exchange really hurts them, and you might be saying to yourself, how does that happen?

Well, services is a great example of how it happens, because the dollar, as they said, is stronger than it was against essentially every currency right now. The dollar is very strong. And if you're an American, that's great because it means that when you go to any other country, your money goes further than it used to. That's great. It's bad if you're any other country and you are buying products from America because they're more expensive than they used to be.

Where it hits Apple in services is, if you think about a product, Apple doesn't shift their prices too often, but until last week, they didn't shift their services prices at all. And more to the point, your services prices every month or every year, you just get charged for it. And the price stays the same, right? Until they raise it, the price stays the same. So theoretically, if you go buy a Mac, in two years from now, they might raise the price of that Mac. Apple tends to not do that, but they could. They do do it. And actually, outside of the US, they do, right? Outside of the US, they do it all the time. They adjust. Every time they release a new product,

they adjust the prices. Right. For this reason. But services, they don't do that. So, you end up in a situation, I'll give you an example, and you know this example, Mike. been a situation. I'll give you an example. And you know this example, Mike. Apple TV Plus debuted in the UK at £4.99 per month, right? At the time, that was $6.41 in American dollars every month coming back to Apple. Today, because the dollar is stronger against the pound, it would only be worth £5.73 per month for them. And this is true everywhere in the world. Everywhere in the world where these services are at a fixed cost, over time as the dollar has gotten stronger, all of them have generated less revenue. Now, what Apple will tell you is that services grew double digits year over year.

So at least twice as the 5 percent that it grew overall in local currency wait what does that mean can you explain what does that mean local currency that means that means that if we if i look at how much money i made on apple services in the uk in great british pounds uh last year at this time and then this year at this time it's up more than you know up 10 or more percent they didn't say they just set up double digits but then you throw then you convert it to dollars and last year the the exchange rate was better yeah and so now it looks like it's down or flat even though it actually in great britain pounds is up so that's what they mean And I know it's esoteric, but the services gets hit by it more than a product here and there because they can adjust the product prices, but they don't

generally, I know they just raise the price everywhere around the world for their services, but what they don't do and haven't done is every six months change the Apple TV Plus price in all countries to be different in order to fit with exchange rates. They just eat it. Right. So anyway, that they're saying,

if you're trying to, if you're trying to see how we're doing on services money, what you're seeing is being swamped by weird foreign exchange things that are happening. And, and there is absolutely truth in that. So when they raise the prices, is this one of the reasons why? I think it is. Although they, in their press release and on the call, they both, Tim Cook made the point of saying,

basically they blame, as we said last week, they blame the record companies for the Apple Music increase. Their licensing fee went up. And the way he said it, because we were laughing about blame as we said last week they blame the record companies for the apple music increase their licensing fee went up and the way he said it because we were laughing about it last week about the uh you know it it does mean your favorite artists will be paid more but we you know it's the the our licensing fee went up and that's why we're raising it so we blame the record companies but we appreciate that this money will be going at least in part to your favorite artists on the call what tim cook said is something like at least artists will get paid more so that's something i guess it was really reluctant okay there you go so i mean that's

telling you what we were saying it's like it happens but we don't actually don't care yeah it's like this them raising our licensing fee sucks but at least the you know at least the artists will get more so whatever whatever. Whereas the Apple TV+, he gave an argument for raising Apple TV+, and what he said was, well, when we launched it, there wasn't anything on it, so it was cheap. But now we made a lot of stuff, so now there's

more stuff there, so now we have to raise the price. Well, no, you see, but that's the wrong argument though, isn't it? Because the actual argument is when we launched it, we gave it away for free because there was nothing on it because we knew that 5.99 a month was too expensive right but then three months in or whatever we we charged you 5.99 because uh there wasn't a big catalog but we built up a big catalog strange like that argument of like i feel i feel like their answer

should really be uh we're making a bunch more stuff now and so we're gonna i mean nobody's gonna say the truth which is like the disney plus thing right where they started it low and everybody knew they were gonna raise it and they did and you know the right answer is well we started low because we wanted to get people to used to it and now we want to increase it so we get more money i mean that's the answer but they're not going to say that so okay that's a really good putting it in context for me because i was looking at the services thing was like that doesn't look good right because it's like you it keeps going down sequentially which is you know again it's up year over year but you can't keep that up right you do you go down once you go down

four quarters sequentially guess what you're not going to be up year over year anymore. You're going to keep going down. You can only do it so much. And services is the rare thing where, in theory, if you're doing everything right, it continues to go up forever because you're keeping customers and acquiring new customers. But at least it seems like what they're saying is they're giving that rare piece of detail because it helps them, right? Because they don't give these kinds of details. Yes, of course. No, we definitely had user growth, but the money has changed.

So now, I mean, we're probably going to get a real nice jump up for the next quarter, right, as the prices go up or whatever. But that's interesting. I would think. It depends on foreign exchange. I would imagine that in the long run, I mean, there's this question of like, well, what does this do for us? Right, but all of the U.S. money is added. Yes, and everything else, it'll be padded by the fact that there's an increase. But I guess what I'm saying is in the long run, there's also the fact that I think Apple expects in the long run a reversion to the mean, right?

That like when the dollar gets strong, at some point the dollar's going to get less strong and it'll all kind of come back around. But in the short term, that's not the case. And so, yes, adding as little as it seems it is to go up a couple of dollars. The fact is, if you go from five to seven, it's a 40% increase. So, yeah, I mean, I think it will have a substantive benefit. How much of the services piece is Apple Music, Apple One, Apple TV Plus,

and the rest versus the App Store and App Store advertising and all that? Although Tim Cook, we may talk about advertising a little bit later, but Tim Cook sort of said,

you know, our ad business is very small. It's very small compared to everybody else's ad business. But anyway, that's a question. They're getting bigger all the time, though, eh, Tim? They are. They do seem to be. Actually, one of the things they also blamed services revenue shortfalls on was

softness in the advertising market and in the gaming market, which is something that they've said a few times which it sounds like uh in the height of the pandemic uh there was a lot more gameplay and go figure these days there's less of it and that means there's less game revenue coming into the app store from all of those games and all those in-app purchases and and that hurts them too. Ben Thompson makes the argument, which I like. He was talking about this in regards to, I think, Facebook.

No, probably not for Google, I think it was. Like a bunch of companies, early season's time, you know. And he was saying that, yeah, like it does seem like there is a softness in the gaming market now because people are not spending money on in-app purchase gems when they're struggling to pay their energy bills right like that's happening more but i will say because he makes the other point which i do think could be a part of it right like there is less advertising spend

happening post app track and transparency in gaming because it can't be as targeted as much which could have brought down the amount of new acquiring customers in gaming because it can't be as targeted as much which could have brought down the amount of new acquiring customers in gaming which apple would feel on their cuts right you following what i'm saying right like yes right because less people now are downloading new games for the first time because they're not being advertised to them it would reduce the amount of gems and whatever that were bought which apple would also feel if that was happening which is an interesting thing to come back around again on but the difference between apple and meta and google and all these other companies or whatever they're gonna hit they're gonna be hit harder because it's a bigger part of their revenue than

it is apples right because Apple has all the hardware. Yep. Super interesting and I want to see how that all shakes out because this is the thing of actually trying to understand the true impact of either of these two things is too complicated. Is it the economy? Is it app tracking transparency and advertising

stuff? We actually don't know because it's all happening at the same time. So we can't really work it out right now yeah there's a lot there's a lot going on here but that's one of the things apple noted a substantial expected drop in mac revenue next quarter now it is a tough compare right that's what they said that's what they said also we have to say that the mac the mac uh quarter this quarter was high uh and apple said there were there were the three reasons why right one is demand but two is fulfilling all the demand from last quarter where they didn't have max to sell people and then three was filling the channel and if you remember they basically had a factory showdown

factory showdown you and youdown. You and you fight. The winner gets to make Macs. Gets to make Macs. That's right. And they both shot each other and they died. So that took a while to fix. And they didn't have Macs for a while. See?

Seamless. So they spent this quarter and part of last quarter catching up. And the point is the reason the Mac quarter was so great is because they didn't just sell a lot of Macs in the quarter. They didn't just have the MacBook Air, which is their most popular computer. And there was a new one of it that people liked. But also they fulfilled all those orders that were outstanding from last quarter and made a bunch to fill the channel so that people could walk into stores and buy them. So they said, look, that Mac number is a little bit inflated because of that. And then, yes, next quarter will be a tough compare because they had the MacBook Pros

and stuff coming out last year. And so it's not going to be the same. It seemed like from what Luca made this statement and then also something that Tim said seemed to hint that there weren't going to be any more max new this year right yeah they said that you know something about retail and they said you know our our uh product line is set going into the holidays which strongly implies that there aren't going to be any new max this year um i don't think it's a hundred percent like no you know these two pieces could maybe suggest that but it could also mean it is set. We have plans. We don't really know what set means, I suppose. And it could mean that we don't think the products we're going to... I mean, look, we're wishbook pro these are not part of our holiday lineup per se right they're nerdy macs uh that are great but

like they're not and they're and they're filling existing parts of the ecosystem and we're not spending a lot of marketing on them and you know they're coming out in the next couple of weeks so they will be there for the holiday season you can rationalize it a lot i think if you take it on its face what they're saying is no more product announcements until next year. And also, as expected, Apple cannot meet demand of the pro iPhones at the moment. They're struggling to meet demand. Yeah, I thought that was interesting that they are trying to get in balance and hope to get in balance this quarter. But it's one of those things where the pro phones have done really well. And please note, they did not say that

the non-pro phones were doing that well, but that the pro phones were doing that well. And again, not ideal, right? You want to fulfill everybody. If they want an iPhone, the platonic ideal of Apple's production process is if you want it, we have it and that's all we have we we have one for you and one for everyone else who wants one today and then we have none and then tomorrow we get a new shipment and we sell every single one of those that's the dream yeah um and right now they're not there did they give any kind of aside from the mac thing did they give any kind of hint towards the holiday quarter what they think it's going to look like because i know that they don't do forecasting but they have been making some statements right in

the past year or so a couple years i guess about like if they're like like with the mac thing if they're expecting something good or bad did they give any kind of like we think the next quarter is going to look good or bad or anything like that? I don't think I have. Okay. I mean, I'll give you what he said, which is we're not providing revenue guidance. We believe total company year over year revenue performance will decelerate during the December quarter as compared to the September quarter. And what that means is overall performance. That means total revenue.

Total revenue was up 8% year over year. It will be less than 8%. Will it be above zero? We didn't say. My guess is if you were putting money down, you'd say, yeah, 4%, 5% year over year, which by the way, again, last holiday quarter was the biggest holiday quarter for Apple ever.

But they're not saying that. They're not saying they're going to do that. They're saying all they will say is it's going to be less than 8% year over year growth. I'd forgotten. I know, $123 billion. I'd forgotten that. My God. What would they eat in that one?

Do you reckon they're going to beat it? You reckon they're going to do like 125, 126, something like that? I have learned not to underestimate Apple's capability to break its own records. So I would probably guess that it'll do 4% year over year, 2% year over year, something like that. I'm betting the iPhone's going to do really well for them this year. like that i'm betting the iphone's going to do really well for them this year i think so especially if they can get those pro models out of the you know and into people's hands uh this quarter i think that they'll do pretty well and it is the iphone quarter but they have it's a right tough compare as they say uh last quarter's growth was uh the for the q3 was two percent year over year

so and then this was eight uh and the previous quarters were like 11, 9, 2, 8. So saying it's going to be 2 or 4, if it's above zero, it will be their biggest quarter ever, regardless. Because I'm thinking people are going to treat this like it was a new redesign. That's where I'm kind of thinking. Could be.

That's where I'm coming from. The marketing really shows the dynamic island a lot and i think that they might be betting on that as like hey people will look at this and be like that's a brand new iphone you know and and it sell uh like that would now what they say about foreign exchange is they think it will be nearly 10 percentage points of negative year-over-year impact right so what they're saying there is in a neutral foreign exchange environment, whatever number they hit in a neutral world, it would be 10% higher than that of year over year growth. So they're really setting the expectations there that if they're up 2%, it would have

been 12 if it weren't for foreign exchange headwinds. Or if they're down 2%, it would have been up 8%. And so they've laid that out there. We'll see what they say. But they also cite the challenging compare because they had the MacBook Pro with M1 last year, which is why they made that decline substantially claim about the Mac. And they said services they expect to grow, but again, they will continue to be impacted by the macroeconomic environment, which is all those things we talked about.

It's not just foreign exchange, but soft digital advertising and also people not buying tokens for their game because they're instead paying their heating bill. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by CleanMyMac X. You want to make sure that your Mac is a trusted tool, something that we use for our

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This product is stable, safe, secure, and I think we should show them the support. Go download this fantastic app. Try it out for yourself today. Our thanks to CleanMyMac X for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Money, money, money, money, money. Money. I want to talk about, you gave the title for this chapter, which I like.

Yes. Apple does awful stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, originally I had two separate segments and I thought, well, I can lump these together as stuff Apple does that we don't like, right? I can do that. A little while ago, we spoke about Apple adding some new ads to the App Store.

And at the time, we spoke about a new ad unit going to the Today page, which is the kind of the homepage of the App Store where it has like Apple's editorial teams giving you recommendations. Like if you go there now, it's usually the second block is an ad. Now, I didn't like this at the time and I really don't like it now because I have gotten used to that homepage being a curated list of stuff that could be interesting for me to check out. But now Dragontail Hunter World is there. Earlier it was Candy Crush for me.

And I don't feel like Apple should be selling their influence in this way i don't think that they really need to do that well i there look there's a couple of things going on here right um the there's the macro level and then there's the detail level for this so on the detail level i on the detail level i think this is just bad technology right like what they're really doing is they've and bad i mean

it's everything it's bad it's bad technology it's bad policy but on the detail level i think the the big objection is it's allowing advertisers of apps to now enter into places where they're not relevant. They're like barging in. And for all we say about ad personalization and ad tracking and all of those things, relevance is important with ads. And if you don't have a lot of signals about who the person is, then the other signal you have is where the ad is placed. So if you're on a kid's app, the signal you've got is this is a kid's app. Advertise kid stuff here because the person who's looking at this is buying kid's apps. And one of the issues that has come up here is these apps are just barreling in like the Kool-Aid man. Going like, oh, yeah.

Kids, how about gambling ads? Candy crush. Yeah. Right. And that is, so that's a problem that part of the features of this ad unit is as an advertiser, you can basically press the Kool-Aid man button and say, I don't care, just put it everywhere. And if you're an app developer or a user, I would say, who is there having a totally irrelevant thing that also is probably, or has a strong possibility of being something that's kind of unpleasant and that is not related at all to the experience that you want, that's bad, right? That's bad. And people were using lots of examples of like kid stuff with gambling ads yeah can i just just step in real

quick to add a little bit of context because i didn't say earlier and we are moving into it there was also a second ad unit that i think we missed or i didn't notice or didn't realize oh yeah potential implication of which is in uh you might also like so if you go into any app page there's like a you know if you like this you might like this right which is i don't know it's like a good information thing to have like people that downloaded this app probably also downloaded these other relevant results right relevant results and so in the area of relevant results you now have irrelevant results which is the first of these is an ad. Yes. And it's a bad ad.

I mean, a lot of the criticism was not only is it an ad, but it's a bad ad. Because this is where you get, in the gambling recovery app, you get ads for gambling. Or you did. Apple paused this program. We'll just cut to the result of this, at least for now. As they said, they paused this program. Because they developed it a little bit. But in the gambling, trying to fight gambling addiction there are gambling ads uh in uh in podcast apps there

are gambling ads and programming apps there are gambling ads they're everywhere and the reason there are gambling ads so like and when we say gambling these are actual like uh gambling companies like sports betting companies and also games that feature these types of mechanics, like casino games and stuff like that. And the reason that these apps are so prolific is that you can choose as an advertiser, you can say, I want it to be targeted or just like, just scattershot, put me everywhere.

That's the Kool-Aid man button. Yeah, the Kool-Aid man button. And these kinds of, where it's this kind of gambling they have the most money to play with they're gambling on it right but they have the most money because they make the most money and so they just put their ads everywhere yeah right so that that is the so new ad units we can talk about that is the other issue here but like we can talk about apple's ad unit strategy in the app store but this one in particular where where it's like now, because remember, Apple already has a policy where app developers are very limited in their communication with their customers because Apple considers them Apple's customers. And so, you know, the developer's app page is kind of important, right?

It is the storefront that they are allotted by Apple. And now this is an extra piece of junk on there. And it's not even relevant. I think that's the part that like, I don't love, I'm trying to parse this out here. I don't love ads in the app store at all, honestly. And that's the separate issue. But like, if you're going to do it,

I feel like you got to do it right. And that means you got to have relevant ads or you've got to have policies that, that if, if some apps are allowed to push the Kool-Aid man button, some apps in some categories can't, or if they do push it, it's,

it's barred from certain areas, but Apple seems to have just opened the doors wide and said uh mr kool-aid man please walk through this door and kool-aid man said oh yeah because that's all he ever says and we ended up where we are so that i mean like there's nuance here which is could this ad unit have been done better? And the answer is absolutely yes. And then there's the larger issue, which is ads in the app store. And the problem with me giving a nuanced take about this is that somebody who wants to respond will say, yeah, but you don't want ads in the app store at all. And my answer to that is kind of yes. I don't want ads in the app store. I don't think ads need to be in the app store.

I just don't think it needs to happen. I really don't. I don't think it needs to happen. Oh, I agree. I agree. I mean, here's the thing. Apple is having its cake and eating it too here. Apple has made the app store a place that everybody has to go on iOS and iPadOS. It's mandatory. It's the only one. They've fought very hard to say, oh no, we need this experience to be curated and whatever. But what they're also doing is they're building a platform where they know everything that you've bought and everything that you've looked at, but it's not tracking because it's Apple who knows. That's first party data, Jason, didn't you know?

Yes, it's first party data. It's not tracking if it's first-party data. Everybody has to be there. There's no alternative. And we've argued here on many occasions about the positive aspects of Apple's policies and good things about the App Store. But Apple has built this system that everybody has to be a part of and that Apple has all the data of and then has said, and what we're going to do is we're going to put ads in it too. And then also shut down the ability for other people to do it, right? Without tracking transparency. Yes. Yeah. So all of that is going on here. And I think that's, I think that's the challenge because what I always said also, forgive me, but like I used to be an editorial person at a media company. I used to be an editorial person at a media company. And my last few years where I was very unhappy and didn't like my job, most of what I did was have fights with salespeople who were trying to bring some other piece of garbage onto our website in order to generate incremental revenue.

And one of the challenges with this, and this brings me back to that. And the reason is what you want is somebody in a position of leadership who is looking at the big picture. Because if a salesperson, if an ad person comes to you and says, I can bring you more money, you as a business that's a profit-making entity are going to say, great, more money is great. And you need a leader who says, what does this do to our product to get this money? Does it make our product better? Does it make our product worse? Does it make our partners angry? Does it make our partners angry? Does it make our partners happy? You need somebody who is at that level. Now, I had a lot of presidents and CEOs at my former job who all but one of them came up through the sales side. And I would say the good ones knew that the job of being the boss was not a sales job and the bad ones never made

that connection um and i say all this to say a leader needs to look at possible new revenue and say we can't do that it hurts our product too much right a? A leader needs to say, this is too far. It's not worth it. A bad leader says, I don't care how bad it makes our product. Just give me the money. And I spent the last few years of my career in corporate media trying to convince my leaders that the asinine things that were being proposed by the sales staff made our website terrible and that the true value of our company was the product and the readers who cared about the product not our ad revenue ad revenue is a spinoff of the product. It's not the product.

And so to wrap this up, what I'll say is it sure feels like there's nobody home at Apple who is a leader in the app store to say this degrades our product. Who has the power to, at least, right? Well, yeah. No, I am sure there are people there who are saying this is outrageous. I mean, in fact, I know that, I'll just put it this way.

I know there are people at Apple who think this is outrageous and who said so. How about that? But whoever is in charge, like, I don't know if the ad guy is just in charge and he's been, cause they have a guy who's like in charge of ads at Apple. Now he's like their, their ad.

Maybe we were talking about him a while ago. Right. When it's a grow by a thousand million percent or whatever it was. Yeah. That was a Mark Gummum report. Right. Exactly. And at the time I was like,

Oh boy. Okay. What does that mean? But here's the problem. I don't know whether that, that guy just gets to put ads wherever he wants and nobody cares or whoever is enabling that guy doesn't care or doesn't think it's a problem. But personally, given that there's no alternative to the app store, I hate the whole thing. And I think the whole thing is rotten. And the reason it started as being rotten is remember where this started, which is, oh,

you've got Overcast, but I'm Spotify. And Apple says, guess what? Everybody who's searching for Overcast, we're going to show an ad for Spotify. And Marco, the author of Overcast goes, well, no, I don't want to. And Apple's like, well, then you got to outbid Spotify for your own product name. And who wins in that scenario? Apple wins. Because what's happening is Apple is creating this grand system where they take a percentage from all transactions in the store and some places outside of it, it turns out. in the store and some places outside of it, it turns out. And then what they do next is they come back to you and they say, of the percentage that we allowed you to keep,

you now need to fund us even further with ads so that you can do better. And Apple sells it as being this great opportunity for app developers to see new, you know, reach new audiences. But it's like Apple's algorithms could be good and could do that. They could surface apps that generate sales that generate more money for Apple, but they've decided to weaponize advertising as another way to extract revenue from app developers. And this is, you know, this is so far down the slope from there, but I think it is a, a core

rot at the center of Apple's app store that I would feel, again, I would feel a little differently if there were alternatives, because then if Apple ruined the app store, everybody could go somewhere else, but they can never go anywhere else. They are stuck. Apple has them under their complete control and whoever is in charge of advertising looks at it and goes, well, they're not going to tell me to stop and they've got nowhere to go. So I'm going to make this as, as gross as possible.

That's what's happening. You know what they'll call that internally. That's a competitive advantage, right? That's their competitive advantage. Sure. And that's why I, and I know that people are probably,

there's some people out there are like, Oh, editor types are so naive. It's like, I'm a content person, but I'm also, I would like to think I'm somebody who thinks about the bigger product. You're a businessman. And in all of my time at IDG, what I found shocking was the bad leadership at times. And I also had good leadership, I will say.

But the bad leadership at times where it felt like the CEO or president didn't care about the product. I cared about the product. And the only thing I could do was fight with my boss about the quality of the product versus revenue. And they were not there. And dying media companies, I get the pressure that they're under to hit their numbers. IDG was very much, you can do whatever you want as long as you give us your money at the end of the year. That was the way they worked. But this is Apple, right? And if we want to say, well, that's what Apple is now.

Apple doesn't care about product quality. They care about money. Okay. But somebody at Apple should probably look at this and say, oh, this is too far. This is against our values. And again, Apple takes great pride. It has a huge ego about how they make the world a better place. We just heard, as we do every quarter, Tim Cook talk about their vision for the future and helping communities that are disadvantaged and going green and all of these things. They talk about Apple making the world a better place. They talk about

Apple caring about this stuff. Only Apple can do this. But actions matter. And the actions on this front are not the actions of a company that cares about that stuff. They're the actions of a company that cares about product quality less than they care about incremental revenue. Incremental, by the way, because how much money is this really throwing to the bottom line versus the stuff that matters? And I would argue it's probably not very much. And so they're junking up their product. And for what? Like if the ad stream was more than iPhone revenue, we'd be like,

okay, you got me. It's all for Wall Street, right? They just need to pump the services revenue so that the markets don't think that they're out of ideas. That's true. And I'm still not convinced as Tim Cook said. But I don't think that's a good thing to do. But I think it's part of the reason they do it. But as Tim Cook said,

their ad business compared to, I think, essentially Facebook and Google is very small. And he's right about that. Maybe they dream of it being bigger. But in the end, is this the button you push? Is this your choice about the lever that you can pull in order to boost your services revenue? Speaking of boosting. Yeah. There's another place they want to they want to get make

some money from as other people's ads so apple made a couple of changes to the app store guidelines one was banning nfts from being able to unlock experiences or content within applications nfts qr codes any way in any way that somebody could authenticate to get some kind of digital good they banned that straight up which i which i on one level i understand it because it's them saying i think people are getting around the in-app purchase system by offering these other other kind of confusing but ultimately other paths to unlock features in their apps but the problem is it runs into all of those like reader apps and stuff where it's like yeah but i can go buy i can go buy netflix on the outside and watch it on the inside and it's like well yes but

not these not these yeah oh not nft readers no no no but the thing that i think is the most egregious uh is that so say your instagram Facebook, inside of these applications, you as a user can pay to boost your posts. So it will get more impressions, more people will see it. And you know, it's a sponsored thing, an ad thing, that kind of thing. Apple has now said, any boosting that occurs within the social media app, so in the Twitter app, in the Instagram app, Apple now wants, well, Apple now requires that these transactions occur through the in-app purchase

model, and they want their 30% for it. So, yeah. I'm less offended by this one than the other one, honestly, because this one, I mean, it's dumb, but this one is basically like, well, if you're in the, because it, if you're in the app. So if there's like a Twitter advertising app and then there's the Twitter app and you make posts over in the Twitter app and then you go to the Twitter advertising app and you boost the post, I think that's allowed.

It is allowed, but I just don't understand what the difference is again. They're just drawing these lines lines it's gerrymandering right like they're just like oh you can do it here and it's fine and you can use a credit card but like oh no this feels like somebody saw something that they were getting away with and they're like well we'll show them and they made this new rule because somebody was you know was getting away with extra extra revenue within like yay you made a social media post. Would you like more people to see it? That's the thing about Facebook that people don't remember.

And by the way, Facebook is evil for doing stuff like this. Facebook encouraged everybody to create pages for their businesses and their personal stuff and all of that. And it used to be that your pages, you posted a thing on a page and everybody who followed your page saw it. And Facebook was like, in a move very similar to Apple's moves in this space, Facebook was like, yeah, now only 10% of the people who follow your page are going to see that unless you pay us. That was the shift that they made. That was terrible. So this is the next part of that, which is the next part of the grift is now pay us.

Just press this button and pay us, and then everybody will see your post. That's how we're going to do it it like it it beats the algorithm basically right like you met their algorithm doesn't means that you not your stuff's not going to get shown to everyone so this way you circumvent the algorithm right subscribe and click that bell icon yeah i want to read two statements this is the first is from a meta spokesperson apple continues to evolve its policies to grow their own business while undercutting others in the digital economy. Apple previously said it didn't take a share of developer advertising revenue

and now apparently changed its mind. Apple spokesperson. For many years now, the App Store guidelines have been clear that the sale of digital goods and services within an app must use in-app purchase. Boosting, which allows an individual organization to pay to increase the reach of a post or profile, is a digital service. So of course in-app purchase is

required. Emphasis mine. This has always been, and I'll do it again, this has always been the case. And there are many examples of apps that do it successfully. As you can tell, Apple's statement rubs me the wrong way. Because I just think there are multiple issues with it right where it's like again what we were just saying like they're saying oh it

must have an app purchase but if you use the meta ad manager to do the same thing they don't require it there so that doesn't make any sense based on this role and there's always this this always been the case this has always been the case but here you go we've just changed the rules so like it obviously hasn't always been the case because otherwise this wouldn't have been able to occur would it which is clarifying what was always the case but now it's clearer that it's still the case this fact this just frustrates me so much this one like because it's pointless why do they need to do this and several several people pointed out it is breathtaking to think that with all of the conversations that everybody's having about about tech companies overreaching including apple that they would still be going down this path and you know i think it's only fair when we parse the

words and behavior of apple in order to guess at product stuff that's going on. I think we need to be fair and do it for other things. I parse this behavior as Apple not being concerned about this stuff hurting them. Yeah, they think they can just breeze right past it, right? I think they think that they're bulletproof or that if a bullet is coming for them, it's coming for them regardless.

And so they're just going to continue on their path and not back down until they're forced to. Right. I think that's, and not, I think they seem to not have a view that every log on the fire, right, like makes it worse. That perhaps they ought to be steering away from stuff

like this. But again, my, my other view is what I said earlier about the ad thing, which is it feels like a lack of leadership to me. Either the leadership is very misguided about what Apple should be doing strategically and just doesn't care. Or the people in positions of leadership are not paying attention to this stuff and think it won't. It's like they're either endorsing it or they're not paying attention. But either way, it's criminal as a leader of a company to do this kind of thing because they're putting their company at risk and they're also separately making those revenue decisions that I think. I think in both of these cases, in the end, it is about money. And Apple not wanting to leave every dollar on the table.

Which I get. I get why they are there culturally. I get why, you know, I think that there is strength in that on one perspective. But on another perspective, I think it goes back to, and I know I've said this before, a fundamental issue with the way Steve Jobs thought of Apple. Which is that all value related to Apple is created by Apple and should belong to Apple. And every bit of value that's in any way related to Apple's products

and platforms that doesn't go to Apple is theft. That is fundamentally what Steve Jobs thought. I can tell you stories, some of which I probably can't tell you, about things that he said. I know for a fact that Steve Jobs never forgave Macworld for being named Macworld without paying Apple

for the license to Mac as a name, right? And he never forgave Macworld Expo for building a conference business on the backs of Apple's greatness. And when the knives finally came out for Macworld Expo, it was made very clear to everybody that that was because Apple didn't want the business relationship to continue because why should anybody do that when it's our greatness and it's our money? And the App Store has always felt exactly the same way.

Now, Steve Jobs' attitude really served Apple well when Apple was about to go bankrupt. But Apple is now one of the most popular, or one of the most successful companies and one of the most profitable companies and has one of the biggest cash hordes in the world. And they still act like this. And now they're just,

I don't even know what metaphor to use here other than to say it's unseemly. Like they don't need to play this level of hardball, but their attitude is everybody else is a potential enemy. They're getting away with theft and we got to lock it down. And, and on the side, we're also going to add a bunch of ads in because we get more money that way.

And it's this whole enterprise that has been set up to do revenue generation. And either nobody understands how corrosive it is to Apple and Apple's products and Apple's developers and Apple's customers, or the scariest part is nobody cares.

Just disappoints me. I love this company. I have for the majority of my life I love the products that they make I love what they stand for this stuff upsets me makes me mad

because I feel like they're squandering what makes them so good sometimes and I don't really know what for other companies I would be more willing to forgive but we just spoke about how much money they made in their hardware and i and i just don't you know i don't understand it you know like social media companies are more willing to forgive these kinds of ad stuff for or whatever like you know we're an ad supported company by and large we spend a lot

of time trying to make sure our advertising is the best that it can be and is as relevant as possible and we work with advertisers that we like and we turn down a lot that we don't but i don't have a problem with ads i have a problem with the way that apple goes about it like they could do it so much better and they could just leave other companies alone i don't know why they need to do what they do. I don't know why they feel like they need to reach inside of the pockets of every single company that they possibly can to extract 30% of the revenue. It's like,

you know, you talk about like, Oh, we made this incredible economy for all these developers and for us. And I can, I just don't, it just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah. Well, it's, it's, I mean, Apple, having been very close, up close to Apple for a long time, I will say, I don't always appreciate Apple as a company.

I think there have always been great people who work at Apple. I think Apple's philosophy, when it's going well, especially, they have made great products that I love. philosophy when it's going well, especially they have made great products that I love. And that lots of people who've been using these products for, in some cases, decades, in some cases, only a few years, love. The company itself has always been more complex than that. Sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Obviously, as a journalist who works with Apple, I've seen periods where they were the worst. And a company like Microsoft was amazing and great. They're not always connected to the products they make. So I have always loved Apple's products. The company, it's complex. It's complicated. How about that? And right now

in this area, I feel like they've completely lost their way. But then again, somebody like those sales guys I used to fight with who say, no, no, no, we gotta, we gotta bring in the revenue. It's like, it's different if the company's about to go out of business than when they, they just need another extra billion on the pile of $100 billion that they brought in. It's different. And you can't tell me that it's not. You can't tell me that it's not when a company is scraping to survive versus when a company is padding its already enormous earnings at the cost of its users and its developers and the quality of its products. You just can't.

It's not the same. This episode is brought to you by ZocDoc. ZocDoc makes it easy to find quality doctors in your network and in your neighborhood. Plus, with real verified patient reviews, you can find the right doctor for you. ZocDoc is a free app that shows you those doctors, those patient review doctors that are going to take your insurance and they're going to be available when you need them. You can find every single specialist under the sun, whether you want to straighten your teeth, fix an achy back, get a mole checked out, or just about anything else.

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and book a quality doctor. Go use ZocDoc. It's their go-to whenever they need to find and book a quality doctor. Go to ZocDoc.com slash UpgradeFM and download the ZocDoc app for free. Then start your search for a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash UpgradeFM. One last time, that is ZocDoc.com slash UpgradeFM. A thanks to ZocDoc for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. I would like to talk about Stage Manager on the Mac.

Ah, yes. Okay, great. Because I've had my first experiences of it over the last week. And I was excited about it, right? I've been talking about it the whole summer. I've been really excited about it. I was like, I think Stage Manager might be for me. I will say, overall, I still believe that to be true.

Maybe I'm the only fan of Stage Manager on the Mac, at least I think in maybe our circles. It is flawed. In some areas, deeply flawed, but the overall idea of it really works for me. I want to talk you through what I'm thinking about. So some things are really missed. Keyboard shortcuts, trackpad gestures, as you mentioned on last week's episode, I completely agree with you. Completely. I miss them. I'm finding myself swiping on my trackpad to switch spaces. Nothing's happening, right?

Better Touch Tool, and it seems to be adding some stuff for this. What is the other app that the Better Touch Tool developer makes? Did I make another one? Oh, I don't know. Touch Tool and... Anyway, they're kind of making a hacky way around it of assigning a swipe to an app that's in a stage so it would move between them, which like kind of making a hacky way around it of like assigning a swipe to an app that's in a stage so it would move between them it's kind of interesting i might play around with

this i'm not sure but apple should definitely add keyboard shortcuts and trackpad gestures to stage manager on the mac where you know it is wild to me that ipad os actually has more of them more keyboard shortcuts especially yeah it is wild yeah you know iPadOS actually has more of them. More keyboard shortcuts, especially. Yeah. It is wild. Yeah. You know, that's, I, you, you, I mentioned this in my review, but it's absolutely my frustration and the things that they need to fix at the top of my agenda are getting

around. I mean, it's like, yeah, keyboard shortcuts, gestures, being able to customize that stuff, being able to automate maybe some of that stuff, get, you know, give it a shortcuts interface or something. It's just, it is baffling that the iPad has that stuff being able to automate maybe some of that stuff get you know give it a shortcuts interface or something it's just it is baffling that the ipad has that stuff and the mac doesn't and that's that's at the heart of my problem with stage manager on the mac right now is that i don't feel like i can um control it like i would want to in order to use it effectively there should be a shortcut of some description to open an app or window and have it remain in the current stage. There's an awful lot of times like I click an app, it just opens a new

stage every single time, right? I want to be able to easily open something new and have it appear in the stage that I'm in, like from the dock, for example, right? I would love the ability to shift click on an app in the dock and it open in my current stage. The place where this is worse is Finder. So you're in a stage, you want to get a file, you click on the Finder icon on the dock, and it takes you to a new stage. and all that stage has in it is one finder window it's like that is bad because usually when i'm opening finder i want a document to refer to something or to open in or to drag into an app that i'm already using right so i would love to be able to shift click on the finder icon in my dock and open the finder window right there like that one feels really

simple to me. Irrespective of any other kind of options, that feels like an option that should 100% exist. Because on the iPad, you could just drag an app into the current stage from the dock. Nothing like this exists on macOS.

But then there's these weird edge cases where in some ways you can do this. So this is where it gets even weirder. Stick with me here. You've got a stage and it has two Safari windows in it. If you're in another stage,

maybe you've got the Notes app in it, and you would like to bring in one of those Safari windows, what you do is you go over to the sidebar. What is it called? The strip, right? Where all the apps are. Yeah.

If you click on the Safari icon, it opens up a separate view where it separates those two windows from each other, still in the strip. It's like you go another level into the strip. And then you can drag one window one of these Safari windows that is separated into your current stage. Great, right? It's a good way to separate stuff out. But if a pile

within the strip has multiple apps in it let's imagine it's Todoist and Apple Mail. You can't do this. If you click on the icons, it gets rid of everything else but keeps the grouping together. So it doesn't separate them so you could drag one of those apps in.

What you can do is shift click on the pile in the strip and it will bring in one of those apps but the one that is actually the foreground app yeah so if you want the second app you now bring it in two of them i don't understand why this shift clicking exists at all if it only does that one thing like i don't know why like if i click on the icons why doesn't it separate all of the apps why does it only do this for windows right so like i could be in a stage and be like oh i would love it if i could actually have notes in here notes is currently in with this these other two applications let me just click on the icons and then i can drag that like but it doesn't do that or if there's something

you could do like i keep thinking about like and maybe they need to rethink all of their keyboard like, yeah, option click on notes in the dock and it brings it in or shift click on notes in the dock and it brings it in or something like that. And they just don't have that. They just don't have it. Or that like when you do that icon clicking, it separates them and then you can just drag stuff. Like, I don't know why it doesn't do that. Something I found out today, Stage Manager does not persist after a restart. something I found out today, stage manager does not persist after a restart.

I had to restart my Mac and stage manager came back, but all of my apps were in single stages on their own again. It's like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Spaces doesn't do this. Like Spaces remembers. Stage manager did not remember. So every time you would restart,

now luckily I don't do that on my MacBook ever much, but I had to, something was going weird with my computer. So I did a restart and it fixed it. But that meant that I had to rebuild that on my MacBook Air very much. But I had to, something was going weird with my computer, so I did a restart and it fixed it. But that meant that I had to rebuild kind of my stages the way that I wanted. And the window placement is not remembered either, so I had to do all that.

On a secondary note, it seems like now, when I plug my studio display in after a restart, I have to authenticate it. I have to unlock my Mac first before my studio display will work. It says on my Mac screen, unlock Mac to use accessories. Now, I'm just going to say, Apple, my studio display is not an accessory. It's my display. So now if you restart your Mac, you have to authenticate your Mac before your display will

work. If you've been wonderingicate your Mac before your display will work if you've been wondering why your display isn't working that might be why this is on Ventura the animation for switching between stages is maybe a bit much like I think I would like something that's a little less aggressive than this

because I have to see the animation. I've always liked the spaces animation. It's very quick. This is like a little slower than I'd want maybe. I would also like, we're talking about visual stuff. I wouldn't mind it if the strip was just app icons. Like I don't need the windows. Like I know then it's kind of just like the dock but like whatever leave me alone uh I like overall I would say like I really like this way of arranging windows on the Mac in general like I find it easier to have five stages than having five spaces so I tried this for a while I've always used two spaces I have one where I have like Safari and when I'm on like recording or whatever, where I might have other recording things.

And then another space where all my other apps are. And it was loads of apps all layered on top of each other, like loads of them. And I tried once splitting it out into a bunch of spaces that were like, this is where communication is. This is where task management is. Like this is where, like like but then i had five spaces and if i wanted if i was on space one and i wanted to go to space four and i would just naturally

swipe i'm like swiping forever and i hated that what i like about stage manager is those like stages which are effectively spaces right like just like different desktops they're just all there visually and i've come to learn that i think i am like a visual person when it comes to arranging my windows it's like similarly like i like to have all my apps open and i can kind of see them peeking around each other and i can click around and i know i can get there by using alfred or spotlight which i do and i also sometimes will use command tab and sometimes i use the dock, but I also really like to just have everything visually available to me.

And so stage manager does that. Like I can go over and I can see like these applications are there. And maybe for that reason, I do sometimes kind of like that I can see the windows. So like I actually, you know, I think it would be a nice option to be able to like minimize that. It's a bit big, you know, like maybe shrink it be a nice option to be able to minimize that.

It's a bit big, maybe shrink it down a bit. But I do, and I like that if you put an app over that area, it kind of hides it and you can go over there and it will come back, like you move the mouse over. But I think the visual component of seeing them all there and being able to just mouse over and quickly get to the fourth stage in my little list. I really like that. And so I can easily see what I have open. I can easily switch. I can have my apps be bigger

on the display now because I haven't got like 12 apps in one space. I've got like three apps in one stage. Fundamentally, I think this actually fits way more with how I want to work on my Mac, having bunches of apps open, and I can just go and get more with how I want to work on my Mac, having bunches of apps open, and I can just go and get to them when I need them. And they're kind of like put together in what I consider to be logical pairings for those apps. I would just really like to be able to deal with some of the edge cases easier. Like I usually have notes just on its own because I use notes like that. But sometimes I would like to quickly bring notes and Safari together.

I would like it to be easier to do that, to have quickly just bring it in and quickly break it out into its own stage again. And a lot of that would come with shortcuts, which at the moment is a bit lacking. So I'm going to continue using it. And I'm also now pretty keen on upgrading my MacBook Pro that I do all my recording on in my recording area of my studio. I want to update that to Ventura so I could put Stage Manager on here. I'm really keen. I don't know how Stage Manager works on two

monitors. I haven't seen that yet. I don't know what that's like. I'm intrigued to see what that is like. I think it might be a bit of a disaster but we'll find out but i i really like stage manager for the way that it helps me visually arrange the apps on my mac but it feels pretty unfinished especially when you compare it to ipad os which has more functionality even though it's like broken in a bunch of ways but it has it's the same feature they announced them at the same time, shipped them at the same time, but one version has more functionality than the other. And that's wild to me.

They're the same, except they're not. Exactly. But I do like it. And it's more useful to me on the Mac than it is on iPadOS, honestly. Yeah. I mean, my review says it. I feel it's unfinished. They need to keep working on it because it could be useful, not for everybody, but none of their window managers are for everybody. We learned already, everybody arranges windows differently. But you want to give people tools so they can find a work system that works for them yeah and this one for me i feel like it's just losing it doesn't

have enough of the niceties to make it to give you the control that at least that i feel it needs to have and it has exposed to me the fact that some of its other stuff like spaces also lacks a lot of those same sort of niceties and those have been there for a long time but like spaces should get those niceties too right like this yeah it just it feels like if you're going to do this you got to do it properly and that they're not at that stage yet which is why there needs to be more we've run a little long today tons of stuff to talk about do you want to finish out with a couple of ask upgrade questions just for fun just for fun you know yeah brantz asks do you think the touch bar would have gone over better if it had haptic feedback it's an interesting idea i think i think not just haptic feedback right it's haptic feedback you touch it and it

does something but the problem is i think think, with anything that's in that plane down there with the keyboard is if you have to do it by looking instead of by feel, you kind of have lost because ideally you're not staring down at your keyboard. The ideal would have been something which feels like it wouldn't happen,

which is having little keys with LED screens in them. Well, there are a couple of ways to go. Would that be the touch bar? I would say no, but yes, right. A programmable kind of set of keys that the keys change based on time. If you're going to do haptics, I would say you need to do pressure sensitivity too, and combine them because then you could move your finger over them and maybe even feel, feel like where your finger was based on the haptics and then press or something like that. But I think, I think the answer is probably no, probably this was an idea that was not quite right. And, uh, it also,

the touch bar was never really going to be anything unless Apple really made some effort to get the software to be good and to integrate with apps and all those things. And Apple never did any of that. So it starts and ends with the software, but sure, they could have made the ergonomics different and it maybe would have gone better. But again, only if the software had, I haven't even mentioned this in this context, but when I talk about Apple shipping things and then not ever improving them, the Touch Bar is in that category too, right? Where it's like they shipped it and then it just sat there. And could the Touch Bar have been salvaged? Maybe if they had put some effort into updating it and spreading it out and making it essential, but they literally, they shipped it and forgot about it. And that's my fear with Stage Manager and some of the other features that they've shipped, the system settings

app and all that, is that are they going to really do the work? Are they going to take responsibility for their actions and actually update these things? Or are they going to ship it and forget it? Because, you know, don't ship something that's not done and then forget about it. And the Touch Bar is like that too. Touch Bar was not done. touch bar so clearly needed more work and they never ever gave it any live asks is promotion a deal breaker for either of you with speculation of the 11 inch ipad pro being axed i can't imagine myself buying another ipad until promotion is added to the air i will say for me the smaller the screen the more i notice and the bigger impact that it has so my iphone it does make a big difference to me my macbook pro don't notice

it so much my ipad mini i just wish i had a better screen in general but so that would maybe be where it starts to tip over for me like on the iPads, I forgot that feature existed. I don't know why. I can't tell you why. I've seen some other people say this too, that the smaller the screen, the more likely they are to notice the higher refresh rate. But that's kind of how it is for me.

Smaller the screen, the more I notice it. I notice it maybe on really big screens, like on my Windows PC, I have a high refresh rate monitor and Windows supports that and i do notice that like the mouse cursor just looks way nicer than apple's mouse cursor like on on my non-promotion machines um but for me generally the smaller the device the bigger the impact well i have two thoughts one is having used the iphone mini going to the iPhone pro, I definitely noticed

the promotion and it was nice, but I also know that I spent more than a year or spent a year at least. And I will go back to it at some point. I'm still using the review unit for now because dynamic Island, basically, cause I want, not just because I love it, but because I need to see how apps use it. Right. And, and the only way to be up on the Dynamic Island is to have an iPhone pro at this point, but I didn't miss it when I didn't have it. So on the iPad, the iPad, when I'm not sitting at my desk, I am, you know, the iPad is the computing device for the rest of the, of my life and the rest of the house. And so it matters more to me. It's the opposite of you. The iPad matters more to me than the iPhone for that reason. And for lots of reasons that said, knowing what I know about the, the mini, I would say it's not a deal breaker. And in fact, when I was using the iPad,

regular old 10th generation iPad, like it's fine. Right. And so I think the truth is, is it, is it nice? Yes. Is it a deal breaker? No. I think for anything promotion is a nice to have, but I don't consider it a deal breaker anywhere. Um, yeah, for what it's worth. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord

that you get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. $5 a month or $50 a year and you will get longer ad-free versions of every single episode of Upgrade and a ton of other benefits for being a RelayFM member. Thank you so much to everybody that supports us

with an Upgrade Plus membership. Go to getupgradeplus.com. And thank you to our fine sponsors of this week's episode, ZocDoc, ClearMyMacX, and Capital One. We very much appreciate their support too, making this show possible. But of course, the most important support, the most important reason for why this show is made

is for every single one of our wonderful upgradians. Thank you so much for tuning into this show every week as you do. If you'd like to find Jason in the meantime, go to sixcolors.com where you'll find a bunch of great writing. And of course, Jason hosts many shows here on RelayFM, as do I. Go to relay.fm slash shows, find something new for yourself. And if you want even more Jason Snow in your life, go to TheIncomparable.com

and you'll find a ton of great pop culture podcasts there too. We'll be back next week. Who knows what wonders will await us. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.