Upgrade - 432: Upgrade (With Special Offers)

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

The strong dollar is helping to drive up Apple's prices around the world, but is it teaching the company that high prices don't matter? Also, Apple downgrades our favorite tvOS feature, Apple gets into the TV ad game, and iPhone production grinds to a halt.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 432 today's show is brought to you by capital one hover and trade my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike how are you i'm pretty good my friend how are you doing okay uh you know i had a took a trip over the weekend i know you were um you were sleeping inside a cardboard box for part of the weekend but now we're all fine we're all better that makes it so much worse than it was oh sorry you were sleeping inside a cardboard box inside the house that you bought so yeah there yeah so congratulations thank you i'm glad that the boxes are mostly unpacked now. Yeah.

I have some home automation discussions that I want to have on the show in the coming weeks. I'm redoing all of it. We are going to dig in. This is great hashtag content for us. So excellent, excellent. If you've been wondering, why is Mike so focused on matter? Well, that's why. I've been thinking a lot about smart home, right?

That's been a lot of my thoughts over the last couple of months. Should we refer people to analog? Because I think there's an analog episode where you talk a little bit about moving stuff, right? Yeah, I spoke a little bit about it on analog. Yeah, there isn't really a definitive yet because I haven't spoken about it yet.

But I had moved, when me and Casey recorded. I'd moved the day before. And so that episode is a bit like I'm kind of out of it and I sound pretty down. But, you know, I'm feeling good. Everything's good. It's all fine now. I'd moved 24 hours earlier. Yeah, we didn't record our episode last Monday because Mike was literally between homes at that moment.

So we were smart and pre-taped. But that means it's been 10 days since we talked. So I guess we should get to it. I have a hashtag snow talk question comes to us via Ron who wants to know, Jason, have you ever tried maple syrup in your tea? You know, I love maple syrup, but thumbs down to this idea. Okay. No. No, thank you.

I have inadvertently put olive oil in my tea. Oh, how was that experience? Well, sometimes the honey and the olive oil are both out on the counter, and it's the morning, and I haven't had any tea yet. And at least one time, I think I put olive oil in the tea on the counter and it's the morning and i haven't had any tea yet and they're they're at least one time i think i put olive oil in the tea and i have to dump the tea because nobody wants olive oil in your tea but i don't want maple syrup in my tea thank you

appreciate the question implied suggestion that maybe i should not going to i know not interested but i guess you don't put sugar in your tea, right? So it makes even less sense that you would put something else. Well, no, I put honey in my tea, which is a thick viscous sweet thing. So you could argue that maple syrup would go in there, but that is not a flavor I want in my tea. It would be overpowering.

I might as well just, I don't know, just drink maple syrup at that point. I don't think it would be that bad. No. No, thank you. If you'd like to send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk

or use question mark SnellTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. Follow up, Jason Snell, we have some follow up. First comes from Nick who writes in to say, as a follow up to the last episode, my theory as to why you notice ProMotion more on smaller devices is because you are hands-on with them, expecting the screen to respond to your touch

as opposed to a mouse or other input devices. Nick, I had a friend of mine write to me personally to say this kind of thing too, of like the idea that you've got the device in your hand and you're touching the display is why like with smaller devices like that you may be more more likely to experience the promotion yeah I think there's truth in that I mean the way Nick phrases it here is a little like smaller devices I was

trying to read that as like the smaller the device the more you notice and I don't agree with that but I do agree with the idea that if it's a direct manipulation device, so an iPad or an iPhone, you're going to notice it more than if it's one level removed where you're using a pointing device or something on it. I think that's probably true. Yeah. Apple have issued a statement about the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro and some manufacturing slash production issues. So we spoke on the last episode when we were talking about earnings about Apple saying that they were already unable

to meet the demand of the, like people's demand for pro phones, right? This has now gotten a lot worse. So China has a zero COVID policy, which has led to factory shutdowns in Zhengzhou. But this means that Apple is working at a severely lowered manufacturing capacity. So coming from their statement,

we now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated, and customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products. So a statement like this, so they put it on their newsroom blog and it's got like a bunch of legal stuff

at the bottom. You have to issue this kind of statement if something is going to severely materially affect your next quarterly earnings if you're a public company. If you know about it, you have to disclose it.

Now, I don't remember what it was, but I can't remember off the top of my head. I've been trying to think about this all day, but this came up in, I think, the book about Johnny Ive and after Steve, there was another one of these, but I don't remember what it was where and i know apple's done this in the past like something's happened so you have to disclose it like it's a thing you need to say hey this happened so it's going to affect us so

what we've been talking about like this happened with the mac but the mac is not as material to apple's business as the iphone. And these are the pro products. The pro products are the most popular iPhones. And they're going to have a shortfall of availability for them during peak iPhone season, which is really brutal. a pretty severe warning sign about Apple's ability to, uh, materially affect, you know, iPhone revenue for the next quarter.

Like this is a, this is rough. Like this, this is the fact that this exists at all is a bad sign. Yeah. And, uh, the details of it don't really make it seem any better.

It only seems to get worse. So this is a big deal, and we're going to see people trying to buy iPhones and find out that they're out a month or two. Yeah, so when we were talking on our last episode about our expectation that they're going to have a storming quarter, well, you can forget about that now because who knows what it's going to end up being like but i think it's probably safe to say ample think that this is a non-result potentially non-resolvable situation by the end

of the quarter i like when it matters for the holidays um so they feel like you probably can't get caught up and the idea here is that is that the the one the the zero covid policy means that they do shutdowns and they they in some cases they keep people in the factory and they're quarantined and that limits the factory because even if you keep the people there you've got a limited ability to move uh stuff through and then there are reports about people like uh escaping out of the factory and walking 100 miles home because they didn't want to be locked up in the factory which i mean kind of makes sense um but then they're also breaking the quarantine which isn't great so there's a lot

of stuff going in here but the bottom line is that iphone production is going to be severely hampered and that's just apple is going to have severely hampered. And that's just, Apple is going to have to deal with that. And Matter has officially launched. So there was a big launch event for Matter in Amsterdam last week. I'm going to put a great article from Jennifer Patterson. Tuohy?

Tuohy? Tuohy? Sorry, T-U-O-H--y that is a name that i have never uh had to say before i apologize um but the old jpt yep og jpt oh you know what it is it's two e because we jp2e because their twitter handle is at jp2 number two e so jenn Patterson 2E. There we go. That is smart. We're calling her JP2E from now on. That's just how it goes.

JP2E at The Verge, who has been doing great reporting about MATA. Great work, yes. And this article is fantastic. It kind of talks about the entire event, a lot of the products, and basically is what you kind of expect. Lots of companies announced new products.

Lots of companies announced their kind of rollout plans. Like one of them, the big one is Amazon. The Echo lines, it's going to take a while. Like they're starting on just Android this year and just a select amount of devices that will work. But then iOS is coming next year. There was, what is the name of that company that oh david likes akara they're they're doing a software update to their hubs to support thread um i think

it was level locks who's like oh by the way there's been a thread radio in our products the whole time and so i just never told anyone um and eve are going to be supporting a bunch of this stuff which is great eve because eve have been historically like basically just home kit right but now because the underpinnings of matter is home kit they're now going all in on matter and their products are going to be available to android users for the first time so a lot of stuff is starting to to happen and they announced like the next set of device types that the MatterStandard is going to support. So there's a ton of stuff going on.

I'm pretty excited about it. So yeah, we'll see. Yeah, it's going to take time, though. It's going to take time, and there's going to be frustrations where there's things that the update isn't out or they're going to declare it incompatible. All that stuff's going to happen, too.

But I have high hopes that this will settle down and be much better than our current situation. Yep. We mentioned tea earlier. If you want to hear Jason talk about tea for a really long time, you can go and check out the latest episode of Thoroughly Considered.

So Dan and Tom, they do like an off off week so I record that show with them we talk about product design and stuff like that and we do that once a month and then on the opposite it's basically the show comes out twice a month it's not really fortnightly every other episode is a new thing

called the last detail where they bring on a guest and talk about a specific product that they love and you went on to talk about your t-robot so if you want to hear jason talk about the t-robot i was listening to it before uh i sat down today i haven't finished the episode yet but i'm enjoying it oh there's a big twist at the end there is not a twist yes i talk if you want to hear me explain the T-Robot. Talking to those guys is fascinating, right?

Because they think about product design. They think deeply about product design. And so it was fun to get their reactions to the product and what needs it fulfills. And we ended up talking about Breville, the company, a lot, and the different kind of products that they make and their brand promise and what they're trying to do. We had a moment of unexpected bonding about a particular button on a Breville toaster. That was fun. So yeah, it's a fun episode if you want to hear me talk about my robot. And it's not a robot, by the way. John Syracuse, I asked him, he said, it's not a robot and never fails. There's always somebody who immediately, helpfully chimes in and says, I love that you're enthusiastic about this. I just put a teabag in a cup and boil water. And it's like, well, yeah, I do that too. I did that this weekend when I was traveling. But

at home, I don't want to wait. I don't want to wait for the water to boil and then wait for the tea to steep and stand there while all that is going on or forget and have bad tea. I want to press a button and walk away. And then the tea just sits there ready for me, which it did this morning, by the way. So, yeah, an hour about the tea robot. I like their products. They're called Sage. Yeah.

All the Bravo-branded kitchen stuff is called Sage. Yeah, called Sage. sage yeah it's good and I have one of their coffee makers and I love it why don't you just put Sanka in a cup with some hot water Mike why do you need a machine to make coffee because I have espresso beans

I can't just put the espresso beans in a cup you don't have to mash them in there you get a mortar and a pestle you just mash those beans and then pour in water and then drink it. It's going to be great. And while we're in the follow-out segment, don't forget there's always merchandise available.

We have a selection of t-shirts that are available all times on our wonderful store, upgradeyourwardrobe.com. There's some upgrade logo t-shirts, there's a draft t-shirt and a rumor roundup t-shirt. You can go and get those at any time from our friends at Cotton Bureau. And if you enjoy this show and you want longer ad-shirt, there's a draft t-shirt, and a rumor roundup t-shirt. You can go and get those at any time from our friends at Cotton

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the show, too. Thank you if you do. Let's do some rumor roundup before we move on today, Jason. Okay. All right. Settle up. Got a few things. So Mark Gurman has confirmed no new Macs will be coming this year. So we'll be waiting for 2023 for the next M2 Macs, I suppose. Yeah, there were a whole bunch of people who were asking me about this they're like really really is this really true because they're wanting to buy a macbook pro

they're like but there's a new macbook pro coming right i was like well not until next year now so you can hold on until early next year you should probably hold on until early next year so uh i guess maybe march maybe earlier i guess it depends how much they've got yeah german german says march because he says oh apple traditionally doesn't do events and he's looking at the calendar of like when apple traditionally does events i don't know if i really believe that apple used to announce products in january all the time in macworld expo period and then even after that still announced products in january i think it's possible that if they've got these products and they've just decided to take their foot off the

gas a little bit, it might be earlier in January. It is also possible that it could be later. But when Mark Gurman says it, he's just using the calendar. He doesn't seem to actually have sources telling him that. I think that we could be open to the possibility that they might be January or February, if not maybe March. And then likewise, unless there's a larger story to tell, it'll probably be like the iPad launch and be a press release kind of thing. Mark is also reporting that Apple is looking to drop the hey from the Siri trigger phrase within the next two years.

And additionally, Apple has also been engineering further changes. It will integrate the voice assistant deeper into third-party apps and services and improve its ability to understand users and take the correct course of action. So this feels like a WWDC 23 or 24 announcement of like, we've made Siri brand new and blah, blah, blah. And so they're currently testing it

with a bunch of Apple engineers and employees to get some data about how often it's going to misfire, which I expect to be quite a lot. But personally, I hope that they do this, that they find a way to do this, because I would like to use less syllables to invoke the system. Sure. The problem is that to do this, you're increasing your chance of it misunderstanding. And I will tell you, my Amazon thing accidentally triggers way more than my Apple things do. Way more. And that is the one word trigger instead of the, although I guess it's the same number of syllables, right?

So they're trying to get this down to a two syllable trigger. I always wondered if there was a minimum syllable amount, right? I don't know. Because Google has theirs, right? I think they're like four syllables.

Or three. Because they have okay and hey, so you can Google has theirs, right? I think they're like four syllables. Yeah. Or three. Because they have okay and hey, so you can do either. And I'd always wondered if like, there was like a, if you do three syllables, you're more likely to have less of a error rate or something like that.

I think this is true. I think that what they're trying to do here is use whatever, you know, machine learning and whatever else to try and get it down there in a way that also reduces i this seems i mean i'm okay with the idea of making it simpler um i think it's funny like this is not the problem with siri right this is not the problem with siri but i can i it. I'll tell you, you know, one of the challenges that I found in activations is I get a lot of activations when Apple is trying to bypass this and instead use other data. Like, you know, the raise your Apple Watch and then talk thing?

I accidentally activate that all the time when I happen to raise my arm and speak and it's decided that I'm giving a command. I'm like, really not. I just moved a body part while talking that's all that was but i don't know it's it's i like that they're pushing forward it's just that you know i think the biggest challenge with the with apple's assistant is is uh what comes out of it not not activation issues also german pointed out in his newsletter, which I thought was really good, and he admitted it's a nerdy kind of feature request, but it would also be kind of nice if you had a little bit more of an ability to address particular devices for certain tasks,

because that's the other thing that is a problem with Apple's Assistant, is if you've got a constellation of Apple devices, which, of course, Apple wants you to have, sometimes you end up with these mistaken activations where I'm shouting out to home pods and my iPhone answers. It's like not talking to you, but how does it know? Because there's also like,

I know that you can, you can ask like a device, you can say like, turn the lights off. And what it should do is turn the lights off in the room that you're in but that is relying on it correctly picking up the right device first which isn't right right so like i never feel confident saying that giving that phrase in that it was going to turn off all the lights which isn isn't what I want it to do. So, yeah, it would be good if you could, like, name them yourself or, I don't know, give some kind of different way of naming them.

Like, Siri Kitchen, do this. This is great news because not only does it make it harder for us not to accidentally activate, if this happens, accidentally activate people's devices. accidentally activate if this happens and accidentally activate people's devices um but also uh it it means it's a big moment where ahoy telephone will simply be telephone just telephone or like telly or something like that it's like you know or ahoy there's only so much trigger phrase ahoy because a moment ago someone in the discord said that i triggered their home pod but like i didn't actually say the words together so i don't you know what i mean yeah what am i supposed to do about it i feel like there's only so much i can do hey everybody i hope we're having a great time talking about siri shouldn't trigger anything right shouldn't but we'll find out if it does emily burn bomb at bloomberg is reporting

that apple is talking with advertising companies to show ads during their major league soccer games that they're going to be doing from next year. Birnbaum is reporting that you will see these ads even if you're a paying subscriber. Yeah, it'll be across all of their free and paid versions of MLS because there will be free and paid versions. There'll be ones that are in the MLS package. There'll be ones that'll be available to all Apple TV Plus subscribers, and there'll be ones that are available to everyone. There'll be three tiers for this thing.

Maybe, I don't know. I mean, I was going to say maybe if there's an Apple TV Plus with ads tier at some point, but I think that wouldn't actually affect how they're doing MLS. So Major League Baseball, what they're doing is they've got MLB Network is selling the ads and producing the show for them there, right? And so there are ads on their baseball games, but someone else is selling those ads. And there's probably a rev share and all of that, but someone else, the Major League Baseball, whoever is producing that, if that's, I think that's inside of MLB. I think they've got their own sales force and

they're not using some other company to do it. And I wonder if in the long run, this might be a change or whether that's a condition of Apple's deal, whether Apple can come in and say, we want to sell these ads now so you guys get out or not. But for Major League Soccer, they are building an infrastructure to sell these TV ads and place them in Major League Soccer. to sell these TV ads and place them in Major League Soccer. And this is, I would, so this is the guy, the vice president of advertising at Apple that we've been talking about in a lot of other contexts. This one to me on one level feels the most natural,

which is television is built around ads. And so having ads on television sort of makes sense. I will point out that soccer is actually notoriously one of the hardest sports to advertise because it doesn't have breaks. Baseball and football have breaks. Soccer doesn't have breaks. There's just one big one in the middle, but you can't do like 20 minutes of ads. Right.

do like 20 minutes of ads right and so like in american commercial broadcasters they do things like drop logos onto the screen uh while the match is going on and stuff like that but it's not quite the same as running a commercial i think it's interesting like i've definitely seen pushback who says uh if i'm paying for uh apple tv plus it's too bad that i'll see ads and i can see that i i feel like apple TV Plus is not currently being sold as an ad-free product per se, right? It's just you pay and you get access to the videos. But down the road here, I wonder if we'll get in a scenario where there is, like there is for almost every other streamer now, including Netflix now, a cheaper Apple TV tier with ads. And if that's the case, then I get a little more grumpy about the fact that if I'm paying

for the version without ads, you're still potentially burning the ads in. But it's incremental revenue. They spent a lot of money on this MLS deal, and they want to make that money back in a few different ways. And so, yeah, so get ready. This is also interesting to me because this is a co-production with MLS. I think MLS is doing the video production work, but it shows you some progression on Apple's part in terms of what they want to do with sports. And I don't know whether in the long run Apple would, I don't think Apple's going to set up its own sports video production group, but having them be more hands-on in the product i think is fundamentally a good thing because i'm disappointed by how the major league baseball stuff was really just an mlb network game with uh new labels on it uh for the most part they have a few new graphics and stuff i would expect

they will because you know if they're doing baseball and soccer and if they get sunday ticket like they're gonna need a team of people to oversee that i don't i don't think they necessarily will i mean mls like because soccer is not baseball football the sunday ticket thing is totally different because they're using the feeds from the networks they aren't producing their own games there at all but wouldn't they do their own like analysis shows or something well they do and that's that's where i think the innovation will be we were talking about this on on downstream the other week and somebody wrote in to say you didn't mention that sunday ticket has its own red zone channel and i was like i

think i did but but i used to get that red zone channel and that is the channel where so there are two of them direct tv has a red zone channel red zone channel is i i'm a host and i show you all the games when interesting things are happening so you you can tune in on Sunday Ticket to a particular game or you can just watch the Red Zone. There is also a Red Zone channel that people who don't have Sunday Ticket can get. It's a different channel with a different host doing the same thing. And that seems weird. They're both NFL Network employees. Why are there two of them? And the answer is that the DirecTV one is integrated into Sunday Ticket, where he'll be like, that's on channel 782, right? Whereas the guy on the NFL Network doesn't say any of that because there is no integration. You can't tune it to that game if you want to watch it. And I think about Apple getting Sunday Ticket or Amazon, honestly, and think, well, there's a real app opportunity here, right? Where you could have like the guy and he could be like showing you the games and the games would be maybe even interactive tiles where you could actually then just like click on

the game. DirecTV did this years ago and kind of badly because their hardware platform isn't very good, but they had the ability to do that where they'd be like, oh, and look over there, this one's going on and you can just literally click and switch to it or switch to its audio, but keep the guy up. It's an interactive experience. It's actually kind of interesting. So they could innovate there.

But in the nuts and bolts of production of like baseball games, where you've got to use the local cameraman, you've got to have a truck and you've got to have all this stuff going on, right? Having MLb network be your partner for that is probably a good idea just because you know it's a very specialized sort of thing there are rumors that apple or amazon is going to buy in to college football as well that

would be a case where they need to uh get somebody to produce those games um but like one of the net one of the conferences that's out there that is the one that is currently looking for TV partners is the Pac-12 conference. And they currently have a cable network that produces games. So presumably that's the same sort of thing where Apple or Amazon would come in and say, yes, you conference, you make the games for us.

Maybe we'll sell the ads, but you make the games for us. So where they draw those lines is going to be interesting. But what's interesting here is that Apple is drawing a line in a different place than they drew it for Major League Baseball, which I think happened so early in their process that they weren't really ready to step in and say, we'll sell the ads. So Major League Baseball, you sell those ads and roll them in there. And for MLS, they're like, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to do it. We're going to sell the ads. We're not going to have a middleman taking a percentage of the ad share. It'll be them, presumably, I don't know, maybe they'll split it with MLS or maybe they get to keep it

all because they're paying MLS. I don't know. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. If you ever hit a technical snafu while shopping online, have filling out payment fields given you I don't know. 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 quickly detect suspicious activity to make it faster to alert federal investigators. And they identify how mobile app outages happen with causal models. Keeping their mobile app up and running doesn't happen by accident. Anomaly detection and incident response help determine why app outages happen so engineers can remedy them quickly. Capital One speed up online shopping with machine learning at the edge. This makes shopping with virtual card numbers smoother and more secure. This technology is based on what's called logistic regression models and with running inference in the browser.

It identifies payment fields and this makes using those virtual card numbers easier and faster, which is great for everybody. The potential of machine learning is so big. See how Capital One is using machine learning to create the future of banking. Search machine learning at Capital One. Capital One, what's in your wallet? So you wrote an article over at Macworld about Apple's kind of rising prices. Would you like to give an overview of what you're thinking about here? Yeah, it was something that just hit me from the analyst call. And I was going to write it up. I write up a post-analyst call piece for Macworld. And I had it in there. And I was like, no, no, there's too much here. I'm going to save this one, write it up next week.

And the idea was, OK, Apple stuff is not cheap. Apple's not the low price leader. They start up at a higher level. I think they provide pretty good value at those levels, but they're definitely not looking to make the cheapest thing possible. And we had that rumor item the other week about that plastic iPad. And they're like, we're not going to make that. we're not going to make that. So what, what I wonder, and what we've seen as like the MacBook pro got more expensive. I mean, the Mac pro originally got more expensive. The MacBook pro got more expensive. Um, the iPad pro got more expensive. We've seen like the MacBook air and the iPad come out with a new version while keeping the old version in the price list,

because the new version is more expensive, this kind of elevation of Apple's prices. And I've thought for a while now, like, well, how would you know if you're Apple whether consumers will accept higher prices? How do you know what the availability of like price increases is in terms of how it dictates how it results in sales how do you do that you can't you know you don't really want to test it but if you're apple if you're somebody inside apple you're probably like we could sell this for more and it would still sell which may be what you're seeing with things like well let's sell this macbook air m2 version for more than 9.99 and we'll just keep the old one around. And people will want the new one, and boom, you've just made an extra $200 or $300 on that thing. Okay. Well,

the strong dollar has allowed Apple to treat the rest of the world as a lab to test this theory. to test this theory. And they made a statement about it in the call that the result was that outside the US, Apple products were priced higher and they were delighted to discover that they still sold really well. And I had that moment where I just thought, oh no, somebody told them they can raise their prices and people will still buy their products. And if we know anything from Apple is that it doesn't really want to leave money on the table. This is something that I feel like philosophically has actually been going on for a while, but I think it's fascinating to see a situation where you have the strong dollar leading to Apple products being, as you know, living in the UK, being way more expensive

in other countries than in the US. And yet they still talk about growth and demand and are thrilled with the response, including in emerging markets where their sales are growing a lot. And that gave me this thought, which is, this is kind of like the classic, I believe the economic term is inelastic demand. The idea that instead of the classic demand, which is you raise prices and demand goes down, this is you raise prices and demand doesn't change. And if that's the case, as a business person, you raise prices, right? Like if, if, if I can sell a thousand of these for a hundred dollars and I can sell a thousand of these for $200, I'm going to sell them for $200, right? That's the idea there. So I, I, I thought it was an interesting, like, I'm sure this has been a data point inside Apple for a long time now, but I thought it was the

first time that I felt like they really, uh, to my ear, said it out loud in the context of the strong dollar, allowing them to, or you could argue forcing them to raise the prices elsewhere because they don't want to give back their profit margins in foreign exchange. But having just the delight that Luca Maestri had when he said, and it's gone really well, right? Like, he's very excited about it. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh no. Okay. Somebody told them that they can raise their prices. And we know that that means they will. And they are. I mean, they have been. The whole idea that it used to be, they would not release a new MacBook Air, I would say. They would try real hard to not release a new MacBook Air until they could hit the previous price slot and now they don't

they're like no this one's just more expensive and you can still buy the old one at the old price slot and that's a difference for them I don't know how you feel as somebody who's on the outside somebody who's in the lab as Apple raises prices I'm frustrated about it because as we've spoken about before prices were just higher here anyway. Like, and they kind of always have been.

Always have been. I remember when I worked at MacUser, I used to get letters from people in Australia who were very, very angry about how expensive everything was in Australia. And that was like the late 90s, right? It's been that way in many markets that apple stuff is just so much more expensive than it is in the u.s and that is even taking into account sales taxes right so like in the uk our sales tax is called vat is value-added tax and it's at the moment is 20 it varies varied over time but at the moment is 20 and it's included in the sales price like i know in some places in america at least this was a big shock for me the first time that i went to

america where they did this like you see the price and then tax is added on at the end and like you have to kind of work that out on your own in some states which i just think is like a wild thing to do if the tax rate is a fixed rate why not just anyway um so i know you know and so but even in a lot of cases this was the case before the recent currency fluctuation stuff you take 20 off the price you're still way over the dollar price like the converted pound to dollar price apple have done this for a really long time and you know as we spoke about before they will say and maybe this is the case that some of it is to um kind of mitigate any of this you know these these kind of currency swings but i think a lot of it is just like what will the local market pay right i think is a lot is a lot of it and like

some one of the things i've always kind of said is like even though the pound on the dollar have different values a lot of the time our economies are pretty similar right so what is a dollar is basically a pound and like people just think of it that way right so it's you know if something costs a thousand dollars it can cost a thousand pounds and people are kind of like fine with that even if a thousand pounds is fifteen hundred dollars if you actually did the conversion right because it's usually that the the um the pound is um more the exchange rate is you you end up paying more in pounds than you would in dollars is that right yeah yeah so like it you know it's usually like 1.5 dollars to a pound or whatever. I mean, it's much lower at the moment. It has been as much as 2 to 1. Yep, I remember that.

And recently, at one point, it was 1 to 1. Yeah, basically. So it's really fluctuated between double and parity. And right now, a pound is about $1.15. Like right now, the iPhone 14 is... I'm just bringing it up. It starts at $799. That's before trade-in, right?

So it's $799 or £849 is the starting price. And £849 is $976. So the iPhone 14 is nearly $200 more expensive in the UK than it is in the US. Now, one reason that Apple does this is that they price in additional price so that if there is a

major foreign exchange change, they don't end up losing money without without repricing um which because that's the other way you could do it is you could be continually repricing and today the iphone is this but in two months the iphone has a different price and they try they generally don't do it at that at that kind of a pace but um so what they end up doing is they're saying well we, we don't want that to happen. So we're going to make this $849 iPhone $975, and that is going to cover us even if there's a major fluctuation in the exchange rate. Yeah.

I think at the moment, I don't know, it bounces around a lot, right? I think maybe with the sales tax, it's pretty close right now. But nevertheless, it's expensive. The thing that i wanted to get to with this is because i agree with everything you're saying they keep they continue to keep pushing this but this put me down a different kind of route today when i was thinking about this for the show i was thinking of kindle with ads right so yeah i mean do you mean special offers is that what they call it now they special offers is what they call it okay yeah Special offers is what they call it. But this is the Kindle.

There is a version of the Kindle. Can you still get this? Like, is this the thing that Amazon still sells? This is the base model of Kindle. Every Kindle starts with special offers. And then you can either buy it for more or unlock it and turn it off by paying $20, I think it is, afterward. So they basically cut $20. It allows them to sell that $199 Kindle for $179 with special offers. And then it's $20 to turn

it off or whatever. Joe Stu in the chat is killing me right now. iPad with magic offers. iPad with smart offers. iPad Pro with smart offers, smart offers folio, which is literally a cover that has an ad on it, but you can pay them and peel it off. But I was thinking about this, right? So like, can Amazon sell this product forever as a slight discount, right? If you're willing to have an ad, I assume for other books and or Amazon products on the front of your Kindle, which is just genius, right? Because it's an e-ink display, right? It's connected to the internet.

You can just push an ad to it and it's just going to sit there, right? And sits there, right? Because when it's off, the screen is on. And so there's an ad on the screen when you're not using your Kindle. Yeah. And now you may be saying to yourself, this is one of my favorite little features of this, but Jason, they make Kindle cases with covers. Doesn't that remove the value of the ad? Guess what Amazon does? Amazon, if you have the special offers version, when you open the cover, it doesn't wake up. It makes you press the button so that you have to see the ad when you open the cover. You have to see the ad when you open the cover. If you buy out of special offers, when you open the cover, it just turns on the Kindle.

But it won't do that if you've got special offers because they want you to see the ad. So the reason I started thinking about this is for what we've been talking about in the past couple of weeks and in the rumor roundup segment of Apple and ads, right? Yeah. We were talking about it in the App Store. There of like apple and ads right yeah we're talking

about it in the app store there have been rumors for a long time that they're going to bring suffering ads to maps they're going to bring ads to podcasts they're going to bring ads to books right right and mostly the rumors are like in in the apps right like they're not gonna they're not gonna roll a an apple pre-roll ad in front of your podcast probably but on the podcast page um well who knows but on the podcast page they may have um the ability for people with podcasts to advertise their podcast like i mean overcast does that right like that they might start doing that too where there's a revenue opportunity to meet be made app store style in dropping ads inside of the podcast app interface

but you know you're saying about the pre-roll audio ad where they're going to start doing Apple TV ads. Maybe they would do Apple podcast ads at some point. If it's one of the ways Spotify makes money, it's on the free plan. So what this got me to thinking is Apple is clearly continuing to add more and more ads, which is like just a thing that I find funny as they continue to increase prices. But it did make me wonder that like, what if if they just add they continue to put all of these ads into all the different apps that they make and then all of a sudden one day say hey if you

have iCloud plus we get rid of those maybe although so here's here here's the the challenge there as you know I look um this is one way you can do a premium product is have ad removal as part of it. So upgrade plus is available. Yep. No ads and extra content. It's not just no ads. We did a thing at Macworld where you could pay and the ads would go away and you got some other stuff too. Same thing.

It's an interesting approach. stuff too. Same thing. It's an interesting approach. I think a lot of people would say what actually the guy who ran IDG for all those years said to me about the Macworld plan, which was, well, you know, why not, why not take their money and show them ads? It's like, then we make more money. And that's why that guy made a lot of money. And this is, this is the argument, right? Is on one level, you've got an ad business. And if you allow people to pay, to not see the ads, there is an argument that you're degrading your ad business. I think they're, I think they can handle it. I think they're, they're, they're tough enough that your ad people will be able to explain that, that we, I mean, in streaming media, ad people will be able to explain that, that we, I mean, in, in streaming media, we, we've seen that ad tier ad free tier. Those are all, they all coexist. It's fine. But there is that counter

argument that, that, um, why is your status as a paying customer? Um, why does that fundamentally mean you never see any ads? Because in the old days, you would buy a magazine and it would have ads in it. They didn't just give away. There were some magazines that got given away for free in order to do the ads and newspapers and all that. But there was not the ad-free version. Like, oh, we can't mix paying customers with ads. That's not a thing that we can do. Well, you can do it. So I think they could do it, but you're right. It is an interesting approach. I would feel kind of disturbed if Apple started dropping ads everywhere and said, but if you pay us, because then, yeah, you're right. It's iPhone with special offers at that point. If you pay us, then you don't see the ads. Apple will also make

the argument for something like Maps that is even more so, I think, than the argument they make for the App Store, which is, but ads are content. We're allowing people to find relevant things from the ads. The ads can be helpful too. And theoretically, they can. Often they aren't, but theoretically, they can be. So I don't know. I feel like if Apple's going to go to the trouble of putting ads in podcasts and maps, that they probably will just put them there and not offer anybody a way to sort of extort them to turn off ads by giving them money directly. Although, you know, I think a lot of people would love that, right? Because they don't want to see ads. But like, if you're going to put them in there, you can put, you put them, more people will see them if you don't limit it to people who

aren't paying for iCloud plus but then I go back to the idea of the special offers thing which is like you get a bit of a discount for seeing Amazon's ads all right and you don't get any discount for seeing Apple's ads at the moment. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's true. Also, I'll point out, like, I don't know. It's been a while since I used to Kindle with special offers. I just buy it with that stuff turned off now. that they actually were special and that you, there were good deals on that ad and that it, you were actually kind of motivated. They, at least for a while, Amazon seemed to make the effort to make the ad worth looking at. Right.

Um, because like somebody pointed out at one point, I think Dan Frakes told me about, there was a Kindle special offer that was like, you could get, I don't know whether it was an Apple gift card or whether it was an Amazon gift card. I think it might've been an Apple gift card, but it was basically one of these things where it was spend $40 for $50 in credit or something

like that. And that's literally the special offers were saying, we will give you $10 if you commit to spending $40. Like, well, that's actually a pretty good deal. And if I turned off special offers, I'd miss it. So, like, you can make them valuable, but I think they probably wouldn't do anything like that. I assume maybe this is us being cynical here, sitting here, but, like, we know what the situation is with ads in the App Store. I have a hard time believing they would be a cut above in, like, the podcast app. Maps, if they could do the relevance right like i could see it because google i think does some of that you know the problem with ad placements is then you don't know what the most relevant thing is because a good relevancy algorithm is across purposes this

is the problem in the app store right yeah like if the search is really really good and customized suggestions are really really good it makes the apps the app advertising less helpful or relevant because you would never look at it because the algorithm has done such a great job and and and so you know is maps gonna get worse if there are ads in it because like why would we make this better when we want to have people drawn to the ad unit? Well, but then you end up in a situation like I think with stuff like Google, right? And I think it's honestly with like the absolute search ads where it ends up just being a case that the best stuff pays the most money to advertise anyway because they have to. And so it kind of comes out.

But if they don't, well, then they're going to lose the placement. So you end up with- It's extortionate in effect. And just let's back up. You mentioned Google. Let's back up a moment here because I'm not against advertising, right? Our podcasts have advertising. My website has advertising. My old magazine took advertising. I'm not opposed to advertising. I think that there are bad ads and good ads. And I understand that people don't love ads. And I hear from a lot of people who are basically allergic to ads. Like, I never want to see an ad anywhere ever. Like, okay. I mean, I think that's not realistic. For $5 a month, just go to getupgradeplus.com.

You know what I mean? No ads. You're good. But I also can appreciate that there, as I said about the special offers, there can be good ads and bad ads. Back in the day, in the 90s, when I read magazines, paper magazines, some of the ads were junk and some of the ads were good. And there can be good advertising. So I'm using that as a preface because I think it's very easy to hear us talk about advertising and think, oh yeah, people just hate advertising, but it's not realistic. But I will say this, which is the moment you start comparing, as you did, Google and what it offers to what Apple offers, I think we have a problem because Google is an ad company. Google makes money from advertising. Apple's great differentiator is that it's not an ad company. And so I think

fundamentally, this goes back to what we talked about last week, you lose part of the Apple brand promise if suddenly Apple is also putting ads everywhere. Because one, part of the Apple brand promise is it's not Google, it's not an ad company, and it's not going to litter everything you're doing with ads because that's the only way it really makes money. And second, Google's always going to be better at it than you.

Google's always going to be better at advertising than Apple. That's their business. Fight me. Google is the supreme advertising entity in the universe as far as we know. There may be a black hole out there somewhere that's got an ad on it, and I want to meet whoever sold that ad. But on our planet, Google is it, right? So Apple's never going to match up.

They're never going to match up, and they're going to lose what makes Apple unique versus its competition. So why would you go down that path? I just think it's fraught with peril that they're going to end up being a second-rate Google offering a second-rate service. And at that point, it's like one less reason to get an iPhone. Hmm. Anyway, if you're listening to to this it's upgrade with special offers i i admire i admire amazon for that right like i just i love that phrasing it's so it's so orwellian in a way and yet it's kind of kind of hilarious the uh it's special offers it's

what you do is there's an ad you can't not see. I didn't know that they did that with the covers, by the way. It's amazing. Because their two big ad spots are on the interface. Not when you're reading a book, there's no ads when you read a book, but on the interface where you have your list of books, there's an ad. And then there's on that lock screen. And if your cover is covering the lock screen, you know somebody was like, oh no, can we not make covers and somebody's like oh i got an idea what if we make the covers with the little magnets so they turn on and they're really great and then if they have special offers they don't turn on how about that fantastic or they turn on but they're in a mode where they light up but it

doesn't move and you have to swipe i think that might be what it is now but like you have to make an extra gesture to get away from the ad because like we got to show them the ad folks i mean sorry we got to show them their special offers one of the special offers of this episode is brought to you by our friends over at hover have you ever thought about starting your own business creating a brand or sharing your wealth of knowledge with the world what about using your years of experience to create something for yourself? Hover wants to help you take that first step in getting your ideas off the ground. If you have a brand that you've always dreamt of building or a business that you want to start and take online, the first step is finding the perfect domain name. And Hover makes this incredibly simple with a clear and straightforward

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There was a couple of articles going up on Six Colors. One from you. I do publish things there, yeah. But about the same thing, which is that's a rarity. That's true. One from you I do publish things there but about the same thing which is that's a rarity one from you and one from previously mentioned in this episode Joe Steele, friend of the show about

something that Apple appears to be testing with some changes to the watch now tab of the TV app on Apple TV and with this change when you now open the TV app I've tried this by the way and it's not app on Apple TV. And with this change, when you now open the TV app, I've tried this, by the way, and it's not on my Apple TV.

When you open the TV app, there is a dedicated row for featured content. I think it's in the beta. I think it's only showing in the beta version. In 16.2? Not 100% of that. I don't run the beta of tvOS, even though I'm a tvOS guy.

Even though you're on the cutting edge, I know. Yeah, but I'm a big TV user. I don't want to mess up my tv with bait i see so with this change when you open a tv app oh wait a second imagine if you were on the beta and you saw beta episodes of tv shows what about that cool that i would do that like no special effects and just people in front of a green screen but you could try them out like out in advance because we're beta testing the shows. Aren't some of the screeners kind of like that a little bit though sometimes? No, that's exactly what they are.

Don't like the plot of this episode? You know, file a feedback. Anyway, sorry to interrupt you. No, it's no problem. I just was, you know, the idea of... You just get too excited. I understand. Extra betas inside, TV betas.

You fill a T. So when you open the TV app now on the Apple TV, on the beta, if you see, instead of the up next queue, it shows you like, these are the shows you're watching. There are new episodes and it's like brought in aggregated

from all of the apps that sign up with Apple to be in the TV app, right? So not Netflix. Not Netflix, yeah. Instead of this carousel that would show you the content that you choose to watch, this has now been demoted

to the second level. So it's small tiles now, not the big tiles. And the big tiles all feature, hey, why don't you watch this? Is it all Apple TV content? No, it's not. It's curated from across

all of the things that are on Apple TV, the OS, on different apps. So it would be like, hey, you could get HBO Max and watch The White Lotus, for example. Okay. That's the big banner that's up there right now. Which is interesting. But this is the problem.

So what happened is the up next view is now below the fold. Basically there's a giant image and then there's a set of tiles of featured items that is basically for everybody. Everybody sees the same featured items. It's somebody's curating it somewhere. It's not algorithmically generated just for you. In fact, it knows nothing about what you subscribe to or what you've seen already or what you might be currently watching.

It just shows some stuff that somebody in an office somewhere picked. And then you have to scroll down to the part that isn't even visible to see your up next queue, which is literally everything that you've been watching and what the next episode is or something you stopped halfway through. And I use that feature every day. I watch all my TV on the Apple TV and I use that feature every day. do i i watch all my tv on the apple tv yep and i use that feature every day in fact my opinion when this feature came out and i'm sure you could go back and find it in this very podcast was this thing's not going to work because it doesn't have netflix in it yep we both said that i think right and the net result is it is such a good feature that i use it

and i forget that i'm watching things on netflix Yep. We are in the exact same boat, right? Or like I check Netflix now. I check it way less than I used to. And this is on Netflix. All Netflix has to do is agree to be on this thing, but it's like, no, no. And it's on some other boxes,

but not on the Apple TV. No, no, no. We're not going to share any information with Apple about this. So I use it all the time. And now basically Apple is, is seems to be saying in this beta,

um, yeah, what you want to watch isn't that important. Um, what we want to do is show you this list and like i have so many reasons why i think this is bad number one is it prioritizes them over me i would also say related to that is this is a thing to the idea is to provide discovery did you know the white lotus came back right like that's season two of a show that was very popular well reviewed people watched it did you know that season two is there well first off if i really watched white lotus and liked it it would be in my up next queue and it would have popped up and said hey white lotus is back but i still discovery can be valuable

that's what the shows you don't know about by the way right like if if you've watched a show before and a new season comes up like it will show you that, even though that show hasn't been actively watched by you because there's been a season break. Because it's in your Up Next, and so it will now show it to you because there's a new episode. So I don't disagree that Discovery is important. I'll put it that way. Discovery is important. Like discovery is important. I'll put it that way.

Discovery is important. However, to prioritize discovery, which I use sometimes over the up next queue, which I use all the time, I think is user hostile. I think it's Apple saying, don't watch what you want to watch. Watch what we want you to watch. And like, I want to choose to go into discovery mode,

but up next is the thing that matters to me. So that bothers me. And I wrote about that. I have a question for you that i don't know if you know the answer to this but so you've kind of got two places where up next shows right you've got the home screen of the apple tv if you use the apple tv that way and if you set the setting to show up next yes yeah do you know it's bigger tiles and they're not as many of them but yes because that's how i use it do you know if it shows okay use it in the tv i use it in the tv app and i think that they will keep that you know out if you're out on the like app list and you move and and tv app is at the top level and you move your cursor over the

tv app it will then show a bunch of big tiles above that show you your uh stuff however you can't all you can do is sort of launch into them from there you can't like mark it as played if it's like a marvel show that's got five minutes of credits it shows is still you're still watching it because you haven't watched all the credits about who translated it into french and Turkish. I think Turkish is always last in that. I always think that's kind of funny. So yeah, you can do it from there. It's more limited. In the TV app, you have a lot more. You can remove the show from up next. You can mark it as watched. You can do all sorts of stuff from it. Also, before I get to Joe's point, which I think is a good one, I should say the battle between featured and what I want to watch has been going on a long time because most of the streaming apps have downgraded what you are

watching on their service below featured items for a while now. And that's a lot of feedback I got when I wrote about this, but Hulu does that and Disney does that and Netflix does that. And so why shouldn't Apple do that? And I actually heard, I have a Twitter follower who is the, who is a, I think head of product at Peacock. I'm like,

wow. Okay. Very impressed. And what I said to her was the difference is this isn't the Apple TV plus app, right? Exactly. On the Apple TV on TV OS, it's a platform app. And the whole purpose of it is to showcase what's available on the whole platform.

And I think that means the bar is higher for giving the users. First off, this feature is like, this is the, in my mind, best feature of tvOS. Literally the best. Because it is watching my viewing habits everywhere, rolling them together and I can get a list of like, hey, I was talking to Lauren about this last week and I said, do you know what day the peripheral comes out? And she's like, no.

And I say, do you know what streaming service is on? She's like, no. I'm like, well it's, whatever, it's like Wednesday night at 9 on Prime Video. But the fact is, we don't need to know. We go to Up Next. And at nine o'clock on Wednesday, a little tile comes up and says, the new episode of The Peripheral is here.

And you click it and you watch it. And it doesn't matter what app it's in or anything. It is the best feature of tvOS. And so for Apple to say, well, we're going to be like all those streaming apps and downgrade this and make you have to go find it. Because what's more important to us is that you wander through featured stuff

and we want to essentially advertise all the other services that are on the platform. So I admit that this is a trend. I think it's a bad trend. I hate going to Netflix and not being able to find the episode of The Great British Bake Off I was watching yesterday. Why do they make it like three levels down?

It's never the same one either. Sometimes it's the next time. Sometimes it's three. I know why they're doing it, but I don't want that. Yeah, because they've hooked you on that show and they want to hook you on other shows and that's their priority. And it's user hostile. And I don't like it, but I think that it's even more user hostile when you're the

platform vendor, which in the case of the TV app on tvOS, Apple is. The other point, and this is the point that Joe Steele made, I think, so well, is not only is this user hostile, but the implementation is poor. And this is the other part of it is, it's not an algorithmically generated list of shows you might like. It's something somewhere, and I actually have a friend who does this for another platform who curates a movies list, right? Like it's somebody in an office somewhere picking shows to be on that carousel. It doesn't adapt to what you've already seen. It doesn't know stuff you're already watching. And that's just as offensive as moving the up next down is that it's also not a

smart list like if an algorithm said hey you know i know what you're watching over here this show is for you and it just came back i would be like okay you know i see what you're trying here but instead what you end up with is a featured carousel that features like stuff you've already seen and it doesn't say you've seen it it doesn't hide it it does it knows that theoretically it knows that the next row down is that tile on the up next list with the next episode but does it do anything to show that in that top level no it doesn't it doesn't bother it's just the same for everybody everywhere no matter what they've watched or who they are it's's dumb and lazy and bad. And yet Apple was like, oh no, put it at the top. Put it at the top. I wouldn't like it at the top if it was good. I would like to choose what goes at the top

because up next is most important to me. But if you're going to do something like that, you should stand behind it. And when I talk to people about this issue, what I've found is I think these days, a lot of people assume algorithms and personalization are things that are happening. And one of the dirty secrets of a lot of what Apple does is it isn't. Apple is just, there is a person in an office somewhere with a probably lousy web interface who's putting in content IDs and pressing save, and that's what's on there. And then it's not doing de-duping. It's not doing after the fact personalization. Oh, they already watched this. I'm not going to show that tile.

And this one, they're in episode five. So I'm going to show them the thing for episode five here. No, they're not going to do that either. So it's just that part of it is a letdown. It is Apple pushing something that's kind of mediocre to lousy on top of the thing that they built that is again the best feature of tv os which is aggregating everything i'm watching except for netflix in one place it's just ridiculous i have no problem with them wanting to do this as a thing right like if you want to like because already right for me if i go to the tv app there's a uh underneath my beloved up next queue it says what to watch right and i'm assuming it's the same thing because there's like a bunch of content in here some stuff i've seen some stuff i would never watch like

if no algorithm would ever pick some of these shows and movies for me because it's like nothing else i watch there's somebody in an office at the battersea power station apple offices who is going click but like yeah yeah my point is i don't mind that that's there but it shouldn't be number one in the like if they want to make like if they want to make a second carousel which is as large and put it underneath my up next fine right fine i can live with that because i'm still getting what i want and you're getting a bit of what you want and sometimes these things might overlap but like don't if if like the question that i would ask the person who's making this decision is like point one is like do you think that you're doing a good job of up next like do you think that that

is a good product made well your answer is inevitably going to be yes right so if that's the answer why are you now making it harder for me to access that right and if your answer is no up next is poor then one why is it still there then and two shouldn't you do something else about that shouldn't you shouldn't you make it better yeah and the feature the featured stuff, and I talk to people who are like, oh, all that stuff is ads. And again, it's that ad allergy thing.

It's like, yeah, sort of, but not quite. And as the platform owner, what Apple's trying to do, especially since Apple made the decision to sort of make the TV button on the remote by default launch the TV app, which you can change, but it is by default.

That's what it is. By the way, when you restore it, when you get by default. That's what it is. By the way, when you get a new Apple TV, because I got a new Apple TV last week, among the things that it doesn't remember even if you bring over your settings is that setting. It goes back to auto-launching the TV app and then you have to

go into settings and turn it off. Also forgets all your logins. It remembers where your apps are, forgets all your logins, so you don't have to spend 20 minutes logging into everything. Not great, Apple. that would be a thing to work on iphone like a restore for apple tv but um but like it's just it's so frustrating because it is useful although it could be more useful and the featured stuff is not dynamic in any way. But I do appreciate the fact that as the platform owner, they are what I was saying about the button. They are kind of like saying, well, you don't really see the app store when you're in this mode. They were like, no, the future of TV is the TV app now.

Well, how do we float up new stuff on the platform if you don't see the app store unless you go out to the app screen? And the answer is, we'll put a thing in there from HBO Max and we'll put a thing in there from Hulu. And I think in that, Apple's actually done a pretty good job of not just pushing Apple TV Plus stuff, right? Like they are, I think, doing what is their responsibility for the platform and saying, this is not an Apple TV Plus delivery platform. This is an Apple TV and tvOS. And what makes it great is it's got our stuff and HBO and Netflix and Hulu and all the rest. And we're going to show you all of it in our interface. And then there's an Apple TV plus tab for the Apple TV plus stuff. Now, do they weigh the Apple TV stuff a little heavier? Sure, they do. But there's like White Lotus, that's an HBO show. And that was at

the top. So I think it is, you could call it advertising for the other stuff, but I also think it's kind of a consequence of Apple making the TV app kind of the default and also saying like, look, you may have heard about the White Lotus, but you don't even know what streaming services it's on. Here's a tile for the White Lotus. And if you click on it, it will either take you to HBO Max or it'll take you to the app store and let you download the HBO Max app and log in and pay for it and whatever. I don't think that's unreasonable. That part of it doesn't bother me so much. I actually think that it's good that Apple is trying to show us a broader world inside that TV interface on tvOS. Is the TV app doing too

many jobs at once? Yes. Yes, it is. That's another discussion. But if we focus on just the little things, it's like, it's okay that it's there, but to eclipse my viewing sessions is not okay. This episode

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with some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Ian asks, in the studio tour that you shot with Ian, can you... What are the slippers that you were wearing? So there's a couple of things to this. One, somebody asked this question to Ian in our Discord,

and then Ian submitted it as an Ask Upgrade question. I see. But my friend Ian came to London. This was recently, before we went on a trip. It was just before the podcast was on. That's when it was. It was in September. And we went on a trip. It was just before the podcast was on. That's when it was, it was in September. And we hung out a bit and Ian shot with me a tour of my studio space. So a mega studio, which is something I was pretty excited about.

It's just something I wanted to do for a while, but I didn't really know how to do it myself. Right. And it just felt like difficult, but we kind of got to do it crib style. So Ian followed me around and we kind of got to do it crib style so ian followed me around nice and i kind of went through everything it's 33 minutes long yeah one of those that i didn't know how long it's gonna take him but i put a link in the show notes i recommend people watch it if you're interested in kind of like the environment that i work in every day there's an exhaustive tour of it but the slippers that i'm wearing in the video are by mojave's i think that's how you

spell it and they're called the curve slipper so i uh in in the studio i don't like to wear my outside shoes i like to wear different shoes because whatever this is something we started doing like in the beginning of covid it was just like everything you just don't want to touch anything with anything right so i had some slippers from mojave's like they the beginning of COVID, it was just like everything. You just don't want to touch anything with anything, right? So I had some slippers from Mojave's. Like they're kind of regular ones, but something that I noticed is that the kind of the toe area would wear a little bit for me.

And I think it's because of the way that I kind of sit on my chair. I kind of kick the ground a lot. I don't know why I do this. It's the thing that I'm doing right now as I'm talking. I can't tell you why I do it. It's just how I am. But Mojave's, I think maybe this happens to a lot of people because now they make a version of their slipper which has rubber going on the bottom and all the way

over the toes Mojave's whole thing is like these are slippers you can also wear to walk outside in right like it's kind of like their whole thing that they've always been I love these things I love that they have like a back that you can collapse down. It's like elasticated. So you can wear it as like slip-on slippers. But then if you do need to walk outside or you can pull up the back and they can be more secure on your feet.

So this is my number one question for you because I think you're going to sell me a pair of these slippers today. Incredible. Jason, what is it going to take to get you in a pair of these slippers today? Well, what it're going to sell me a pair of these slippers today. Incredible. Jason, what is it going to take to get you in a pair of these slippers today? Well, Mike, I have a problem. Maybe you have a solution for me.

I like to wear slippers, but I hate it when they don't attach to my heel and the whole back part flops off so that I'm supporting it entirely with my toes. I need the back and the heel to remain secure yep can you help me is there a solution for this problem the solution is exactly this oh so what is it is it's like a little neoprene or something uh heel thingy and it's it it completely keeps them on like like like a pair of sneakers honestly but still feels much more comfortable than a pair of sneakers like it doesn't give you ankle support, right? But it keeps the shoe on. So they're not going to slip off. But that's what I want. If you do ever want to just slip them on, you can also do that.

And like, I do the slip on most of the time, but then pull up the back when I want to. I don't want to do that. But why I will also say Jason, I'd be intrigued. Like I, want to i don't want to do that but why i will also say jason i'd be intrigued like i these slippers they have a kind of a a ridge at the back anyway which keep them on for me but yeah you can you can pull them up and it's still more comfortable than say putting on a pair of sneakers right like it kind of sits between a regular pair of slip-on slippers and a pair of sneakers i really like these uh i've i've been a very i've i wished mojaves would sponsor the show uh so i'm putting that out there into the world mojaves if you're listening please sponsor us be a special offer but i've been a very very happy customer of theirs

for like two years two three years all right i'm gonna be real sad if i buy these and then it's a sponsor and they want to send me a pair but that's okay then you have two pairs and then i'll have two pairs i'll choose a different color um so my other question for you is the curve versus the classic now you mentioned the the classic uh doesn't have kind of the uh the tread goes over the toe in the curve and not in the classic is that the only real difference there as far as i can tell yeah i mean i recommend the curve of the classic i'll just have to choose color then. Because otherwise, they're basically the same. But yeah, they also do like they have ones that are like they breathe, right? Because they're kind of like wool.

They're like wool on the outside. And they have ones that are like a mesh, like the body is like a mesh, which I guess are more of a summer slipper. And they do full, if you care, I know this isn't for you, Jason, but for other people. They do full slip-ons, right? But they don't have any back at all. Because even the regular one, as I say,

has a kind of back to it. So it holds. Big fan of the Marvy slippers. All right. Eric asks. Hold Eric asks hold on this is me growing as a person we're going to all witness it together I am not

going to go buy these because it's November 7th and instead I am sending a text to my wife yep I want these slippers I am sending a text. Good idea. To my wife. Yep. I want these slippers.

Uh-huh. And also, because it's also November 7th, maybe in three weeks they might be on sale, right? Maybe. For Black Friday. But yeah, this is a good, like, yes, this is a good Christmas gift for Jason. I have sent that text to my wife. So, see, that's me

growing, because the problem is, we get into this part of the year, and then I'm like, oh, I'm going to buy that. And then it comes in, I'm like, oh no, that should have been a Christmas present gift item list. Let's just be clear, like, if she doesn't get it for me, that's fine. I'll just buy it afterward. But we're looking

for presents to give each other and so i'm i'm growing okay thank you to ian and whoever told him this thing that he had submitted and to you mike for wearing slippers in your office thank you eric asks do you think live activities will come to the apple watch interesting idea um i still want to talk about live activities on the show by the way but i'm still like not as many apps have updated for me as i thought would so i traveled this weekend and i got to use flighty with live activities i'm excited because i was taking my flights and it was really good like it was really. Yeah. And it made me think this is, this is it.

Live activities is a, is really a thing. Uh, Apple watch, uh, where's the space for it? Um, but I could see.

I'm reminded the Siri watch face, right? So the Siri watch face used to have those little tiles. So, you know, you could maybe have a special kind of like always on display but i had a thought jason of adaptive complications right so like maybe like a version of a live activity where it's just a complication that is updating more visually than they do currently maybe maybe so like that it

it is yeah that it's updating it gets the ability to update more aggressively in certain scenarios or there's just like that one large complication space that might be able to be overridden by a live activity for example right that most of the time it's just whatever you put there but you have the option to put a live activity there if something is happening that'd be interesting It's an interesting idea. But yeah, I would like to see them on all the platforms because I think live activities are great. Like I only have a couple of apps that I use frequently that have them.

And I think a lot of them is like, maybe I just don't know yet. I just haven't gotten into a situation where the live activity will do its thing. But yeah, I'm excited to use Flight is one when I'm going on a trip later on this month. So I'll be using that for the first time. But it looks really good. I did a test. It was fun. thing um but yeah i'm excited to use flight is one when i'm gonna trip later on this month so i'll be using that for the first time but it looks really good i did a test it was fun like

the app lets you test it which is kind of cool you just like get a random flight and like you can just test it out but like i want to i want to help myself it was just so great to pull my iphone out of my pocket and have like that live activity sitting there with all the details of what was our what's our uh our gate number and how much time is it until boarding and like all of those things were on there it was really convenient i liked it a lot and it looks great too having used them a little bit and like there's an app called city mapper which is like a transit app right it's in london that i love and their live activity is unbelievably good right like you can, I can look at my phone and I can like watch a little dot moving

in like almost real time. It feels like across like a train map, right? Like these are all the stops. But like using these kinds of live activities where like some of them are quite rich and detailed, it really has confirmed to me the idea, I think, of why Apple designed the always on to be the way that it is like they want it to be rich with information visuals and color to benefit the fact that the live activities that they're doing their thing

i can see more now what we thought might be the case of why it's not just white text on a black background. Because the phone should, in theory, be doing stuff more often. So I am still a fan of the always on. I think it looks good. Brantz asks, do you tend to prefer taking ultra wide or telephoto shots with your iPhone? Do you have a preference? I have been. So I've been using the 14 Pro.

And I was traveling this weekend. I took a bunch of photos. I am using the 2X a lot, actually. Which is the center-cropped 12 megapixel of the regular camera. cropped center cropped 12 megapixel of the regular camera and i so i don't know if that answers the question of ultra wide or telephoto uh i i like that a lot in terms of cropping i i think and the quality is really good i have taken some zoom shots recently that I was very impressed with the quality like that that I could get out of there whether it's the the sensor or the image pipeline or whatever I did some zoom ins to sort of like see if I could see it was actually at a football game and it was like can I see what

they're doing over there there's people a whole bunch of people with the same color shirt sitting somewhere like is there a logo who are they why are they there and I zoomed way in and I was I was like wow that actually looks decent not great great, but like decent. And I can see, you know, their shirts and what logo is on it. So that was really interesting. I don't use the ultra wide that much only because there is so much lens distortion. But if I'm in a, you know, beautiful outdoor setting or something like that, the ultra wide can be great. What about you? I mean, for me, me is the kind of the question of what is the image so telephoto i tend to use these days more for like a specific utility reason

like you just described right like i want to take a picture of something but i just want to zoom in on it for so i can see something clearer or whatever it might be. Rather than it being like a stylistic preference, because stylistically, or like just sometimes to get a better photo, I find myself using the ultra wide more and more. Like these days, I feel like, you know, I can get more, like actually get more into an image if I use the ultra wide.

And the fact that now that ultra wide camera has gotten so much better, I can take photos of it indoors, in restaurants, that kind of stuff more than I ever would have been able to and get a good result. Because up until this phone, I feel like I was never getting a good enough quality result. And one of the reasons Apple had to do this

and like make that lens better is for a feature that kind of annoys me which is how often now the iPhone will switch to the macro mode, right? So it uses the ultra-wide because the focal length of the main camera is further now. So if you want to be close to something and be able to focus on it it typically has to switch to the ultra-wide now even if you're to be close to something and be able to focus on it, it typically has to switch to the ultra-wide nail, even if you're not really close to it,

because the main lens can only actually focus. I don't know what the exact distance is, but it's not really important. But you'll notice if you have the 14 Pro, you'll find that it is doing that switch. You know, when you've got the little macro, or maybe you don't even see it, you can toggle it as a preference. It makes that switch way more often because of the focal length, the distance. So I find it a little bit annoying, even though the picture quality is still good, like the shots are good, but I don't know why, but it just bugs me that it's having to make that

switch every time. But yeah, anyway, I tend to find myself gravitating these days towards the ultra wide more and more, but the telephoto is still fantastic. But it tends to be like the stuff that I enjoy taking photos of. I take photos for fun rather than like for a reason. I'm using the ultra-wide more than the telephoto for that. If you would like to send in a question of your own for us to answer on the show,

just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord. Thank you so much. If you sign up for Upgrade Plus, you get access to the Discord and all of the other wonderful benefits of being a member. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you can sign up. Thanks to Trade Coffee, Capital One and Hover for their support of this week's episode. And of course, thank you for listening. We genuinely really appreciate that you choose to spend some time with us every single

week. If you want to catch up with Jason in the meantime, go to sixcolors.com. He is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L, and he hosts many shows here on RelayFM and on The Incomparable as well. So if you want more Jason in your life, there are places where you can go to get it. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, and I also host a bunch of shows here at RelayFM. Just go to relay.fm slash shows and pick a new show. We don't have to be on it. There's tons of great hosts, tons of great content.

Go enjoy yourself. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. They're all special offers, Mike.