Upgrade - 438: Holiday Antitrust Special

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

It's the most wonderful time of the year, but the news doesn't stop! We discuss next year's Mac lineup, the end of Apple's NFL Sunday Ticket negotiations, and reports that Apple is planning to open up the iOS app ecosystem in response to new rules from the European Union. But before we're done, we also take a little time out to re-tell our Apple origin stories. Happy holidays to all Upgradians!

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 438 today's show is brought to you by text expander fitbod and zocdoc my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason claws snell oh mike happy holidays Claws Snow Oh Mike Happy Holidays Merry Christmas To you and to everyone And this is our holiday special I guess it's not This is our holiday antitrust Special Too much news this week

Too much yes We got you a present the present is news The present is news. The present is the Digital Markets Act has been wrapped and put under a tree for you. We're going to talk about it. Oh, no, no. I think it's in a stocking. It's like you're very bad and you got a Digital Markets Act in your stocking this year.

Yes, Apple has been given a bag of coal, and that coal is legislation. And we as podcasters burn that coal. Turn it into fuel. Fuel for podcasts. Wow, this is a wonderful metaphor. And it's a Christmas miracle. And it's Hanukkah, so also that coal, it's really only enough for one night. But it burns for eight.

That's the real magic. Yeah, this should only be one episode. We're going to get eight out of it. And that is the true Hanukkah miracle. Oh, man. Yeah. I have a hashtag Snell Talk question, which I'm actually going to start transitioning this to just becoming Snell Talk.

I have a Snell Talk question for you, Jason. Oh, wow. You just blew my mind with that. Okay. I have a Snell Talk question for you. It comes from Chris who wants to know, if you close all of the windows of an app on the Mac, do you also quit that app? So I don't have, I mean, my policy here is not like if all the windows are closed,

then you quit the app. First of all, I'm going to recognize that people who come from Windows probably have a very weird relationship with the way the Mac handles Windows in that you close all the windows of an app and the app doesn't close automatically, except for some apps that do now, which drives me crazy. So the answer is generally no, because if I'm closing all the windows, well, I mean, it depends. Sometimes I just quit the app, right? And you leave the windows open and they come back. Sometimes you close the windows and you don't quit the app because you're going to come back to the app and it just doesn't have any windows right now. And other times you close all the windows and then you quit the app because you're done with your job and you're not going to go back there. Like if I'm in Photoshop or something and I finish, I'll save it and I'll close it and I'll quit it.

And yes, maybe that's muscle memory from 1990. But so it totally varies based on like my intentions toward that app. But I don't do a thing. I'm not concerned about having kind of extra apps running without windows open just sitting there. Also, all the running processes are in the dock so if i do leave leave something open and then i look over later and i'm like oh why is zoom still open i'll just quit it then but um but a lot of times i'm coming i know i'm coming back to that app so i won't worry about it i'll just leave it open i typically like if i'm quitting an app i reflexively command w command q interesting

i just don't want the app open and i sometimes it's this is thing it depends on the app but sometimes i wish that quitting the app closed all the windows but sometimes i don't want that to happen also you know so like it's i'm just used to doing both yeah the um the like bb edit like i write in bb edit and i do lots of work in bb edit i don't quit bb edit i close windows like bb and it's open right now with no windows open because i i'm gonna be over there right like i'm gonna make more windows so like i'm just gonna leave it open i have lots of ram i don't care i could i mean honestly we're at the point now where it where for a lot of apps it really doesn't matter there are apps that take forever to load but for the most part

like the difference between clicking on the dock for an app that's not open and clicking on the dock for an app that is open is insubstantial right it doesn't matter and i think apple would like it to be that way but like photoshop's a great example where like, if I'm doing things in Photoshop, I'm going to keep Photoshop open because when you open Photoshop, you sit there and then the window comes up with a picture of the lady from the Lord of the Rings show who's dressed like Captain Marvel. And then you wait and you wait and you wait. Photoshop people know what I'm talking about. And then finally it opens. So that one you want to keep open unless you are done. But I do love, and it used to be back in the day that launching an app took forever. And so you really wouldn't want to, although you didn't have very much RAM,

but like if I'm going to use this later, I'm going to keep it open now because, but not too much later, because I don't want to have to sit through the launch again. Today it doesn't matter so much, right? It doesn't matter so much. So I'm a lot less concerned about it. But if I figure I'm going to use it later, I just leave it open because I don't know why. Because why would I close it? What does it matter?

If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question of your own, you can use the RelayFM members Discord with the question mark snow talk command you can send in your question uh you can currently still use twitter you can use the hashtag snow talk and send a submission that way too and if you don't have either of those at the very least you could go to relay.fm upgrade and click on um click on the what is the what is the link called contact it's called contact and it'll send an email i i really don't want it but if you got to do it like go for it you know but we're working on something better yeah here's our message is that is that right now that's how you do it but in the near future there will be a way for you to send we might even say tweet length feedback about the show snell talk ask upgrade all via the relay fm website because we know what we

we know a lot of people are not on twitter a lot of people are now even more people are not on twitter yep and um not everybody pays for upgrade plus yeah and that's and and you're not shut out of these other ways so we realize that you know just having the discord is not enough and um just having twitter as a vector is not enough it never really has been enough but we're trying to find a better way to we're gonna we're gonna have some get that stuff in a couple of things on it one we can't really use the way the way that we pull questions from twitter doesn't work on mastodon because there isn't like a global search function in the in the automation tools that we use so we just can't do it uh and if and what i'll say is like oh yeah i'm not i'm historically and publicly not a fan of email but if you do want to email uh snell talk and ask upgrade questions

go for it but please keep them tweet length like just keep them one question you know like that's all i ask and but yeah feel free to use that uh related fm sesh upgrade but we will we will get something better that will hopefully like auto auto feed into our spreadsheet and do all of those things we just we aren't aren't there yet we need a little bit of time for that because things have been changing rapidly. Got some follow-up. So you had

Sam write in who was on the Verticals episode, right? Yeah, Sam Abu El-Samid, who was one of our Vertical guests, sent a very nice email after our upshift last week. I feel like we got a lot of it right. He did point out in another little bit of follow-up

that I'll throw in here. You know, I kept talking about level four and level five for like levels of self-driving. And what he said is the truth is those are bad definitions because they're like definitions from computer people about how this works and the way humans and drivers especially think about this is doesn't really map to it very well so sometimes i was referring to like full hands you know hands off the steering wheel eyes off the road driving

as being like level five and he said like technically i think level four if it's on a highway level five on regular streets. But his point was, for most of us, the best way to think about it is eyes off the road, hands off the wheel. Like that level of I don't even need to be looking. I can be reading my email or watching a movie and the car will take care of it. That is the that is the like the pinnacle. And then the level down from that is hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, but it's doing the steering for you. And so that was good.

It's a complicated subject. But the other thing that Sam suggested that I thought was interesting was he said, you know, you guys were talking about, you know, Apple buying a car company like Tesla or something like that. Apple buying a car company like Tesla or something like that. And he pointed out Lucid, which makes the Lucid Air, which is a shipping electric car that's in the sort of price range of what Apple's car is rumored to be. And a lot of the reviews are saying this is like a legit competitor for like the Model S. People seem to really like this car. For the high-end Tesla, which shows you the squeeze

that the Tesla's facing, by the way, is that their high-end cars have competition from companies like Lucid. And their lower-end cars have competition from all the other car makers. And then they've got a truck coming out, but they've missed Rivian and Chevy are already out there. Ford. Chevy? No, Ford. Ford is already out there. Chevy? No, Ford. Ford is already out there. So anyway, Sam suggested Lucid, current valuation, like Apple could buy Lucid with a small portion of the cash that Apple has. And it's a product that is shipping. They have cars now. And I'll point out that just from my own personal

connections here, their head of PR used to be Apple's head of PR. And they worked at Apple for a couple decades so there's even a connection there uh so you know tim could get on the phone so it's interesting because like that would be a big move right but and i do think there's a not invented here kind of approach but if apple really said no no no we're dedicated to be a serious player in cars they could there are there's at least one electric car company out there that's not tesla that they could also potentially snap up it's complicated though right because and it was started by the guy who designed the model model s i think yeah yeah like if apple roll up and like we're buying

lucid i mean you kind of can't ignore it then roll up hey like park alongside that you you know what like they can't be like hey we're buying this car company. Forget about what we might be doing with it. No, then the cat's out of the bag. Isn't the cat already out of the bag except for Apple pretending that it's not? I mean, yeah, but they... Everybody's talking about it. Everybody's talking about it, but they could just say, oh, this whole thing

was just for car play. You know what I mean? Not that they would say that, but we could be like, you know. I'm sure they've talked about it, right? I'm sure they've had that conversation of should we and they haven't. I'm sure they consider buying everything. You know what? Like, why would you, you know, every time they sit down to start something, I'm sure there's at least one person around the table who very rightly says, like, you know, okay,

we want to do Apple TV+. Hey, should we buy Netflix? What do you think? You know, that's got to happen every time. Yeah. Yeah. We want to make an Apple TV. Should we buy Roku?

They probably said that too, right? Yeah. right like and a lot of times the right thing i mean it's not just not invented here syndrome it's also um what do we get out of it and is that better than us doing it ourselves right because sometimes the answer is uh they don't really have anything unique we could build it too it's all we'll be buying is their people and their design and, um, and making it like our own. And at that point we should do it. It has happened occasionally.

Apple music is a great example where they use the foundations of beats for that, but it doesn't happen more often than it does. Apple music is the perfect example. The perfect example. I also think of, um, Intel's modem division.

Yeah, right. Right. They weren't going to spin up their own, but that one was available and they took

it. Or at least they maybe tried, maybe started and was like, you know what, might be a good idea if we

just acquire all of this. Yeah. Tim Cook is back on the road. This time he's in Japan. Tim has been

visiting schools, developers, practicing his golf putting visiting castles meeting paralympians seeing music presentations at apple stores meeting the japanese prime minister and more uh one notable stop was to visit sony now the reason this is notable is tim cook publicly references you know he posted it on twitter and such uh that sony are apple's partner for the camera

sensors in the iphone this is a thing that we've known about forever but they never talk about it and i just thought that was an interesting little thing that happened yeah and i i think it's okay right this is one of those things where sony is a respected company and has a respected so they're like yeah these are these are our partners for the camera that is in the iphone that's amazing and uh we we met with them um but but yeah there were no no i don't think eddie came on this one so i know jaws was there but i don't think eddie came on this one so there's no like later hosen equivalent for this and it's just one of those like perfect photos that tim cook does and my my favorite is in the Verge article.

They caption this photo, which is Tim Cook being shown an iPhone. It's like these images where someone at Sony is showing Tim Cook an iPhone, and Tim is looking at it like he's never seen one before. Interesting. What is this phone? Where did you get this incredible device it has cameras cameras yeah wow i love it so funny tim cook being shown an iphone belkin made a mount for continuity camera for the laptops right so the little thing you clip

onto the top of your laptop screen i have one in my left hand right now and you could attach your iphone to it and there was a hope that they would make one for the monitors for apple's monitors and then it was said that they would and now is in the u.s at least available for ordering yeah it's in my right hand right now tell me what you think about it it's uh i had i've had a uh pre-production unit for a while now which i've sort of kept a light touch on a little bit because it's like pre-production it's not final uh i got the shipping one it's identical to the pre-production one i had there you go and i should i should be clear it is a it is essentially a universal magsafe continuity camera mount yes because it's like you can kind of clip it on right i was pretty intrigued about about yeah so it's got it's got a flap that comes down

that you put on the front um on the so okay it's got the the horizontal thing there's a perpendicular ish but pivoting magnetic puck there is a thing that comes out from that uh perpendicularly that is a uh rigid plane with a little uh little like a hook at the front of it, little shelf at the front of it, pointing down. And the idea here is you put that on the top of your monitor and the little hook prevents it from falling off the back, right? You can actually slide the little MagSafe puck forward a little bit if you want to, to get a little bit closer. And then there's a second pivoting thing below the thing that goes on the top of your monitor and that goes on the back, right? And so you, and you, so you bend it and you end up in a position where it's basically got, it's holding

on to the front of the monitor via the little hook thing. And the weight is being put onto the back of the monitor by the little leg and you've got it you've got it. And it's so deep that it can fit on a very large display and it's adjustable. So it's not one of these precise fit kind of things, and that means that it can be available for all sorts of different displays. And then that little foot that you put on the back of the display

has a tripod thread in it. So you can also put it on a tripod and use it that way. So it's versatile, works pretty well. If the only thing I'll warn people about, it's not much of a warning, but like if you've got a studio display or something like that,

you know, it's not, like I said, not custom fit for the studio display. It's not what it is. It's more like a universal fit thing so it will over it will overhang it will you know it's it's much the mount is much deeper than the actual depth of the display but that's fine because this is better this looks like a better product it's good it's much more versatile than the one for the the macbooks right which is a very small thing this is a much more much more versatile and i'm assuming that it doesn't make your studio display fall over

you know it doesn't although it's much heavier than that mount but it can afford to be um and then having the tripod thing i think is a nice little extra too that that you do. So if you want to attach a MagSafe phone to a tripod, it works for that too. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at TextExpander. When you work in a small team, every moment counts. You don't want to have to be wasting your time finding video conferencing details to send to a new client. You don't want to have to track down the same FAQs from the company website. These are the kinds of things you want at your fingertips so you can get your work done faster, and that is why you need TextExpander. With

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Got a few little things here. Got some display stuff. So display analyst Ross Young is reporting that Apple is readying a 15.5 inch MacBook Air for release in spring of 2023. Production on the displays for this device is expected to be occurring in Q1,

so then this would launch a little later on. This product is expected to be a larger version of the current M2 Air, right? So, yeah, so 15.5-inch MacBook Air. I think this is great. I just wrote about this for my preview, basically, of next year for Macworld. And I know we've talked about it here, too. The idea that Apple's most popular Mac only comes in one version.

I mean, two if you count that the old version is still for sale and they're both 13 inch laptops so there's a lot like the macbook air could and then and then if you want a bigger one you've got to buy a macbook pro which seems like and then we know where those start at right those those are those leaving that weird 13 inchinch model aside, like, now you're up at $2,000. So creating a, I don't know, $1,500, $1,600, somewhere in there, big MacBook Air, I think it's incredibly smart. Because the Air is incredibly popular. People who might want more screen space don't necessarily want to buy a pro laptop. And so why make them?

Why make them do that? Yeah, there is such a huge price delta between the Air and the MacBook Pro. And I know the answer is going to be, well, you make them because they pay more, but I would argue that they won't pay more. I would argue that most of those people will just get the MacBook Air then.

But you might be able to convert a certain number of the MacBook Air people to pay more for a larger macbook air and i don't think that it's going to result in a lot of lost sales for the macbook pro now that the macbook pro is so expensive yep like to get anything bigger than 13 inches it starts at two thousand dollars yeah and that's the beginning right that's just the base model uh so yes i think this is a great idea in the past apple has had this they used to have the big macbook and all of that and i i would imagine thinking about the design of

the 13 inch macbook air the m2 that um this will be still pretty thin and pretty light but with a much larger display and i i think display size is not like, okay, here's my nutshell argument about this is one, the M two is so powerful that almost nobody needs an M two pro or an M two max when the, when those come out or even the M one pro and max, like almost nobody actually needs it. It's so powerful.

Yes. It would, you know, there's stuff that I do that would be slower, but like almost nobody needs it. And we've talked about here, like we love it, even though it might be slower for a few things. Like it would, you know, there's stuff that I do that would be slower, but like almost nobody needs it. And we've talked about it here. Like we love it, even though it might be slower for a few things. Like it's, it's, it's fine.

It's great. So that's number one. And number two is they don't need screen size and, and processor power to be differentiators to sell MacBook pros. Anyway, I feel like the number one reason, sure. Everybody needs the processor power. We'll get a MacBook Pro, but the number one reason you get a MacBook Pro now is the other stuff. It's ports and ProMotion and super bright display that's super HDR, right? Those are the reasons, right? It's all the other niceties that are not on the

air that are the reason you do that upgrade plus the power. Like there's plenty of differentiation there. So I think they can make a larger MacBook air screen and it's not going to hurt the MacBook pro, but I think it's going to make them a lot of money from people who are buying larger screen. If the MacBook air is truly as popular and like takes as much of the market as apple says it does then they should apply the iphone thinking to it right like make the popular one bigger as well you know and like hey maybe it will be people will they'll be like well i want to get a macbook air because it's the one that's the starting price and it's the one that people get and i don't need a MacBook Pro.

Oh, and hey, I could spend an extra $200 and get a bigger one. I'll do that. And that's what they're going to go for. That's what this product's for. It's for that purchasing decision that people might go on. So, yeah, I think this is an interesting idea and I'd

like to see them do more with the MacBook Air because I think that the macbook air is fantastic and uh more max more max and it actually kind of fits in with the uh iphone or the ipad when you think about it right like that there's there's in that case there's base model and then there's air and there's pro so we have air and pro leaves you know leaves the door open for a MacBook down the road but

there's a question in the Discord about why not just call it MacBook then and the answer is because MacBook Air is a popular product it's their most popular product

that's the name of it why would you change the name of it in fact they sort of tried that and it didn't work like this is you go with what works

it's like why it's called iPhone even though it should be called Apple phone now it's because everybody knows it's the iphone it's the most popular product they're not going to change the name macbook air they're not going to change the name yeah i think you're right i would like them to just call it macbook but uh the macbook air is it's a powerful brand i mean the 15.5 could be called macbook or it could be called macbook plus or it could be i mean they could call it could be, I mean, they could call it something else. They could.

I will take this from Ross Young, though. Whatever they call it, I think it will be functionally a 15.5 inch version of the M2 MacBook Air, right? Like, that's what it'll be, whatever they call it. But MacBook Air is a nice name and it allows them to say, we have two sizes. And that's really convenient rather than saying we have another confusing product in the middle of these other two products that are already a little confusing. And so why not keep it simple and say, we've got MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, MacBook Air. They're all the same except for the size. Same specs, same options. That's better.

That's clearer than adding so so i i can i can see why people might say doesn't this add complexity i would say it doesn't if if they're if they're basically the same except for the size you should name them the same thing young is also updating an existing report to say that he now expects apple to switch to oled panels for the MacBook Air and iPad Pros in 2024. Yeah. 2024 is probably the time we'd next expect an update to the iPad Pro line anyway. Right, 18-month cycle. So spring of 24 and then OLED MacBook Air in 24.

OLED MacBook Air is interesting, right? Because what about the MacBook Pro? Well, it's already on mini-LED. They already took a step, right? So I imagine they start to upgrade the displays in all of the products, and if one of them's already got a good one, it's different. OLED's

different. It's better in some ways or whatever. Then you do the MacBook Air and then you come around to the MacBook Pro because the MacBook Pro is going to be updated between now and then. And if that's on an 18-month cycle, then that's also got a slot in. Like there was a,

it wasn't originally in the rumor roundup, but I see a rumor over there and I'm throwing a lasso around it and I'm going to bring it in. Bring it in. Which was that Mark Gurman was suggesting that there would be new macbook pro models in early 2023 uh with new chips in it most likely probably not much of a difference but then you know then where's that the next one if it was going to get oled that's now got a slot back in

and you know you see what i mean like this is like where it's in where it's going to hit my only question is sort of the larger angle about how apple views what should be on displays right because the the oled like on ipad pros suggest that they think that oled is superior to the mini led they're using now and it is in some ways right because it doesn't have the the um little small illum they're small but they're still illumination zones. Yeah, the blooming. And every pixel is its own. But there's also the rumor that they're working on like a micro LED thing and all that.

I think it's funny because OLED seems premium. And so if the MacBook Air ends up for a little while with a better screen than the MacBook Pro, that's a little bit weird. But Apple does that sometimes. Things are out of sync. Look at the iPad 10th generation. You know what i mean like yeah no i just want i just wonder what their overall strategy is for the macbook pro then in terms of what display is it like better oled or is it is it micro led or is it something else because you will want to get the macbook pros then to leapfrog the macbook air yeah i think in the last couple of

years they have stumbled with displays like i think that they are working on too many display technologies at once and it seems like apple's unable to decide which one is the best i think they're in between technologies i agree i think i think oled has issues and and micro led has those blooming issues and they all the or mini led and they're going toward micro led and i think they don't even know right like what's going to be the best solution for them or at least a year or two ago when they were starting to do this go down this path they were unclear and maybe hedging like is is the best solution going to be very very small backlight on led or is it going to be oled i don't know i don't know that that is probably

above my pay grade but it's interesting to see that that's where they're going and i think that that's a uh you can see the ipad pro product like when's the next ipad pro it's like the answer is 18 months right it's going answer is 18 months, right? It's going to be 18 months again, which means it's spring of 24. So more than a year. That makes sense. I do have a, I'll just throw it out here as a wild idea. I think the one thing that might happen in the iPad line next year that might be interesting is there were those rumors about a larger iPad Pro.

Oh, yeah. that's a product they could release without updating the other ipad pros yeah so if so maybe there could be like a you know mega 15 inch whatever ipad pro or ipad studio or something that comes out next fall or something like that but but i don't expect the existing ipad pros to get an update next year mark german uh had a report about the Mac Pro, which is a product that we should have, we were expecting to hear more about by now, right? They gave a little wink to us at WWDC, I think it was.

Was it WWDC? Yeah. We're almost done, but the Mac Pro's still out there. Wink. Wink, wink, wink. But we haven't got it. So Mark Gurman is saying that Apple still has the Mac Pro is still out there. Wink. Wink, wink, wink. But we haven't got it. Mark Gurman is saying that Apple still has the Mac Pro in development.

They're still testing and adapting and changing the product. One of the big changes is it is now unlikely to have a higher end chip than the Ultra. So we've got M2 Ultra and then there was expected something maybe like the M2 Extreme. A bigger, badder, beefier processor

than even what was in the M2 Ultra and stuff like that. Mark is now suggesting that the Mac Pro will top out whatever the current biggest chip is. So if it's the M2 Ultra, M3 Ultra or whatever, that's what it's going to get. They're not going to create a chip just for this device, which I think is a good idea. I don't think it makes sense

to make a chip specifically for this device unless you really need it, which they definitely don't. Mark's report is really interesting because and I think this is probably a conversation that's happening inside Apple, which is,

does the Mac Pro make sense at all? Right? Like what he's saying is, okay, the Mac Studio with the Ultra is already five grand. So now you're talking $10,000 for a Mac Pro. And what do you get for that? Well, you're not even getting the four times chip. You're getting the Ultra. So it's Mac Studio level performance, essentially.

Okay. Which is great. It's the fastest Mac ever. Great. And expandability, which is good and people need it. But his point is also how many people really need it. And this is, I know this has been the Mac pro conversation for a decade now, if not two decades, which which is it is not ever going to ship in volume it's just never going to do it especially you there was a time when the pro max were like the go-to max for lots of power users but that time is long gone it's a very very high-end computer and who like justifying it based on the sales you're never going to be able to do. So it becomes much more of a statement, which is we admit that we care, like they did in that famous roundtable way back when. We admit that we care about the highest end users.

So we're going to make this product. make this product but i can see people on the inside at apple who look at it and go boy we are spending a lot of engineering time on this thing on adding this expansion stuff that has never been in the mac before and maybe are on on never been in apple silicon before and maybe it'll benefit the platform in other areas but it sure feels like a lot of the stuff is just for this mac pro and nobody's gonna buy it it's gonna be like a few thousand people buy it or whatever, and it's not going to be ever worth the amount of time we put into it. And now on top of that, it's not even going to have that extra chip benefit of being twice as fast as the Mac Studio. So the benefits are going to be expansion. And Gurman did reinforce, I think, something that we all wondered about with Apple Silicon, which is they expect it to be expandable.

And he specifically says additional memory, storage, and other components. So it'll be an Apple Silicon Mac you can add memory to and you can add storage to on the inside, which storage isn't as much a thing as memory. He doesn't say graphics, by the way, but other components, you know, probably like networking and maybe there'll be something like the equivalent of an afterburner card in there to boost performance. I don't know. I mean, I do wonder if that might be the reason that they're not going to do a 4X Ultra is that maybe they'll have like a plug-in card card that has an another ultra on it that will be

addressable in some way i don't know but i just found it fascinating that i i get through mark german's report the sense that inside apple there's an admission that this product is more of an idealized product than a product and they're putting money into it and it's like but nobody's gonna buy it because it's gonna be incredibly expensive and that's the story of the mac pro all along it really is like it's a product that i do think needs to exist and there are definitely customers for it but i also understand that if you penciled it out inside apple it doesn't make sense whereas something like back in the day that iMac Pro and more currently the Mac Studio actually fits in better the Mac Studio is is continued and has I think taken a huge bite out of

the potential addressable market for the Mac Pro and I think Apple knows this right and it might be why they're doing a bit more work on it like really trying to make if they're going to do this make this statement machine that they're going to do it for a reason. And it's going to have a point to it. And it's like, you know, Mark says in his piece that like probably going to start at 10 grand, which I think makes sense now again.

Right. Because like the studio sitting right there for you, it's right there, you know? Yeah. So you're, you're paying for this larger thing and they're going down the road. I mean, they kind of promised and they kind of need to do it. And maybe it will have benefits. But it is fascinating because I feel like we're getting that Mac Pro, iMac Pro story all over again with the Mac Studio and this Apple Silicon Mac Pro where there's Apple behaving as Apple doing the math and saying, well, here you go.

Here's an incredibly powerful computer with no internal expansion because we don't do that. Go to town. And that's the Mac Studio. And then there's Apple being the company that has, you know, it's making a it's a legacy computer platform. And people who've been using computers a long time really do demand tower computers with extra storage and et cetera, et cetera. Right. There's a whole story about it listen to every episode of

ATP for the last 10 years or whatever however long they've been going since episode one one to present to hear that whole story writ large but they do exist but it's one of those things that like it's not I think it's not logical it doesn't make business sense but it's almost like they have to do it because they're

the steward of the platform and their platform needs to have it but all that conflict plays out in this um in this report from mark german it really it really is right there which is like this product kind of doesn't make sense and nobody's gonna buy it but we're gonna do it and like okay i actually my frustration will be if they do it and don't ever update the Mac Studio again. Because I think the Mac Studio is, for even most high-end users, a better choice. Because most people don't need what a Mac Pro delivers. But I think they've decided culturally that they've just got to do it. They've got to have that tower computer at the top of the product line.

No, I think the Studio is going to get a lot of love. I mean, I imagine that they'll do this mac pro you know however they do it and then they do very little to it ever again you know like well i think there's an argument that once you've created one of these computers on based on apple silicon yeah that there's there's not a lot more they need to do for years and years and years right so once they've got a mac studio and a mac pro you know you update the chips right like yeah you could ride on that for a long time and the beauty of it is since they design the chips they can probably keep unlike previous mac pros they can probably keep doing revisions that drop in a new apple silicon processor every 18 months or two years they can control its physical size. They can control

its capabilities and requirements. They have the ability to do all that. And they can keep an eye when they're doing their chip design. They can keep an eye on the Mac Pro and be like, we also needed to go in the Mac Pro. And it's like, okay, and the Mac Studio. We can do that. It might be a better situation, but I do think you're right

that I think the counter argument that we have to do this is, look, we only have to do this once yeah and then we just keep it out there you know i mentioned presentation a couple of months and john tannis is on stage and he's like here's the new mac mini wait what did you think i was talking about yeah you know when i said i had one left it was this mac mini we're done the Mac Mini now. Done. He said it by name, though. Did he? Remember the, yeah, they said, we still got the Mac Pro, but more about that later. It was something like that.

They actually did say that. But here's the other thing I wonder sometimes. Mark Gurman has had that, you know, the new Mac Pro is going to be a tall Mac Mini rumor, and also there was the new Mac Pro is going to be a short Mac Pro rumor. And it turns out that he was talking about the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro is going to be a tall Mac mini rumor. And also there was the new Mac Pro is going to be a short Mac Pro rumor. And it turns out that he was talking about the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro. There is part of me that wonders though, even now, if the Mac Studio was like,

people were like trying to slide that in there and say, no, this is the Mac Pro. And then they're like, no, we're still going to do the Mac Pro, but we also did the Mac Studio. I don't know. I can't wait to see how this plays out and what the details are.

But I think that Gurman is making a point that is real and that people inside Apple have to know, which is just like the Mac Pro is an awesome top of the line thing to mark the prowess of the Mac platform or whatever. but it's hard to imagine a scenario where it actually pencils out in terms of how much effort they put into it, what they'll get out in sales. The only way you can make sense of it is to say you need to do it because otherwise certain classes of user and company will abandon the platform if you don't offer it. And they're mostly not buying it. They're buying other things, but they're also buying that. And if you don't offer it, then they're not going to buy any of our other things as well. And that's probably the strongest argument

I can make here. And the second strongest argument is, look, the stuff we are doing for the Mac Pro is going to benefit the whole Mac line, or at least the high-end Mac line. You know, we'll work it out. Canceling that four-ing that four processor variant though that is a sign of them saying that's that's a lot of effort we don't need to get that specific and that can you imagine that that requires all four of those chips uh on the like together to be without without flaw and like that's got to cost a fortune right like that that that got to cost a fortune. That configuration would cost a fortune. So I can see why they throw it away and be like, no, it's not worth it. We're not going to do it. Dylan Byers of Puck News reports that Apple has exited discussions for

NFL's Sunday ticket. Quote, I'm now told that Apple, once seen as a frontrunner for the rights, has also backed out of those negotiations, not because they out of those negotiations, not because they can't afford it, but because they don't see the logic. So it's down to Amazon and Google, and there's certainly a logic there for both companies. Amazon can use it to drive Prime subscriptions. Google can use it to fuel its YouTube TV business.

I want to ask you, Jason. I mean, I struggle with this one a little bit because, I mean, of struggle with this one a little bit because, I mean, there is, of course, there's a logic to, I mean, isn't the logic to Apple the same as it is to Amazon and Google? Like looking at this example from buyers? I don't, yeah, I don't agree with his statement about the logic because I think that Amazon's using the same logic as Apple. Yeah. And there is, in the context here, I think, I think. I think I see the point, but not with those examples.

There was also a... Well, yes, exactly. So there was also a report that what Apple was really pitching, there was a report that Apple was pitching that it would be free for people who are TV Plus subscribers,

which also doesn't make any sense given what they're doing with MLS. This was never going to be free for TV Plus subscribers. This was going to be an add-on just like the MLS thing is an add-on neither would it be like worldwide and you know I'm I kind of imagine they probably wanted a similar arrangement to what they have with Major League Soccer in its in its in its availability its simplicity and the NFL was not willing to give

that none of that was going to happen. And this is, this is what I think is the bottom line here is that the NFL, again, for international listeners, trust me, the NFL is the most successful entertainment operation in America. I mean,

the tell the highest rated TV show in America for the last decade plus has been a football game. They're huge. They have all the power. This is the weirdest and worst of their rights packages because it is a product that was built for a different era, but still exists. And the carve-outs and the contracts are all dating from that previous era.

And Apple, very clearly based on the reports that we've gotten, has been trying to push the NFL to change the product. The NFL doesn't want to change the product. And I think it can't change the product because this is the last rights deal in this cycle to be signed, which means that maybe over the next five years, Apple could work with the NFL to come up with a strategy

for a product that would replace Sunday Ticket that would be more amenable to them. But if you're the NFL, if you're going to go through all that effort, maybe you keep that money for yourself and don't even have a partner for it in five years. So the NFL really just wants somebody to pony up more money than it's worth in order to, for ul ulterior motive reasons to get this product that was really kind of built for direct TV. And, um, it's us only, and it's got all these limitations of like, not your local markets. You need another product for that. There's all of this stuff to it. So I would argue it never made sense purely from an Apple strategy perspective. The only reason you do it is you've got all the money and it gets you in the door with the NFL and you're interested in sports as a way to drive people into your platform.

So on that level, I think engaging with the NFL makes sense. I think where maybe the breakdown in communication was is I think Apple, I've said this on this podcast and other podcasts before, Apple and the NFL are both used to getting what they want. And I think Apple was really motivated to kind of like push the NFL and say, look, we're Apple. Listen to us. We need to change what this product is. And the NFL is like, no, you don't understand. This is the product. You can bid for it.

And that's it. And they're like well no we want the local and they're like you can't have the locals fox and nb fox and cbs at the local games in market you can't have them and apple's like well can we have but can we have them and they're like no you cannot how about international no we have a product for that you can't have that either so i think that this was one of those cases where it's like, if you're Apple, you need to talk to the NFL about this, but walking away totally makes sense. From Amazon and Google's perspective, I think I would make the same argument for Amazon except for one difference that, it would probably be an Amazon channel. Again, he says drive Prime subscriptions. I have a hard time seeing even Amazon eating the billions of dollars that this thing will cost and just using it as a value add for Prime versus being

a Prime channel that you have to pay extra for. But maybe, or maybe they would put Red Zone, but maybe, or maybe they would put Red Zone, which is like a summary channel that you get with NFL Sunday Ticket. Maybe they'd put that in Prime, but then you'd have to pay for Sunday Ticket. I don't know those details, but the Google thing is really interesting, though, because Google has YouTube TV, which is what's called a VMPVD. It's a cable package. Sorry, I had to learn it. Julia Alexander made me learn it. It's a ridiculous term. Sorry, I had to learn it. Julia Alexander made me learn it.

It's a ridiculous term. What does it mean? I don't know what it stands for. Virtual premium video distribution? Yeah, it's basically a cable package that comes in an app. So I've got Fubo, Hulu, Plus Live TV, YouTube TV, Sling, are all of these things that are basically you get a cable bundle,

except it just comes via streaming. Virtual multi-channel video programming distributor. There you go. VMPVD. Learn it, love it. Learn to embrace it. Embrace the VMPVD. I learned these from downstream.

SVOD, I learned. Fast. Fast is the new one I new one that's free at supported television yeah tv oh you got to have a program to keep up with all of these things so so youtube tv is one of those you pay youtube or google or whatever 65 or 70 a month and you get all the channels you would get with cable basically except they're streaming so it's like you've got cable again yay except you can cancel it whenever you want your internet doesn't go down yeah so so google's got that business that's interesting in the sense that it's already a live tv business it means you've already got your local channels so for google it would potentially be like you also get this and it works well with YouTube TV. So they can take Sunday ticket and say, you can buy Sunday ticket, but you're not

going to get your locals. But if you also get YouTube TV and we've got a package for you, then you'll get your locals and you'll get Sunday ticket and you'll have everything plus other TV shows and stuff. I kind of can see that as a better fit. The truth is the NFL is going to make a lot of money here. What else is new? But they're not going to make as much money as they would have if they had made it a sweeter package. I think though that they don't want to make it a sweeter package. They know that they're going to get a lot of value and that somebody is going to pay over essentially what it's worth to get it in order to drive people into their ecosystem. And if that wasn't the case, they would just roll it into their own streaming service, right?

Because eliminating the middleman is a thing the NFL could do. They could be like Disney and say, we're going direct-to-consumer. In fact, they already have a thing called NFL Plus that doesn't have the out the out of market games, but they do have that. Which means technically, I guess if you got Sunday ticket and NFL plus, you could probably see everything. So it's a, it's, it's a way for the NFL to extract more money from the middleman who has, who values it for things beyond what it is. Great. So somebody will do it and it's still going to be the frustrating product that it was, but maybe there'll be some tech innovation.

I think Apple is probably wise to walk away. Although it's good to be in business with the NFL. I think that product is kind of broken. I would, I would say Amazon again, not for prime, but because of its synergy with its Thursday night football, that it's already in business with the NFL. And I think Google is a great match here.

I think Google is a great match because of that VMPVD service that it has. I would say that other VMPVD services should probably also bid for this. I think it's kind of funny that Disney has dropped out of the bidding for this, not for ESPN+, but for Hulu plus live TV. And something like Fubo, that's a sports-based or sports-focused VMPVD, they don't have the money to do it, right? But that would be a perfect thing for Fubo to do because it would be them doing the direct TV thing, saying we're going to pay a huge amount of money in order to get people to subscribe to our thing in order to get NFL Sunday ticket. But, you know, in the end, this is going to be actually a little disappointing. I think whoever gets it, cause they're going to, it's not going to be a great fit, but it'll be like,

okay. And the NFL is going to get a lot of money, but maybe not as much money as they hoped. Still a couple billion is nothing to sneeze at. And money, but maybe not as much money as they hoped. Still a couple billion is nothing to sneeze at. And what I would predict in the future is that, uh, I think the NFL's engagement with Apple has taught the NFL a little bit about what this product, how the products need to change in the future, how their, their, their, their licensing, licensing uh deals with all the tv companies will need to adapt a little bit because this product isn't actually a good fit for the market of today we'll see this episode is brought to you by fit bud between balancing your work life family life and everything going on in your life it could be hard to make fitness a priority what you need is

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Mark Gurman. Oh no no it's him again he's escaped the rumor roundup oh yeah but i by the way i have i'm regretting so much not having more um football references in that nfl segment i did not prepare right to i mean they would have been lost on me, man. Immaculate reception, or are you ready for some football? I mean, that's not a reference, really. That's just you telling me, like, are you ready for some football? I know what that one means. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has reported that Apple is working on a series of initiatives to comply with potential antitrust law in Europe,

which will result in, among other things, third-party app stores being on iOS. The Digital Markets Act is the thing that we're talking about. It's an incredibly complex piece of legislation that includes a bunch of stuff. Yep. Kind of... Lump of coal.

Lumps of coal. Lumps of coal. It could start having an impact potentially in 2024, but then there's also the member states ratifying it and the complications of all of coal. Lumps of coal. Lumps of coal. It could start having an impact potentially in 2024, but then there's also the member states ratifying it and the complications of all of that. I, shorthand, have been thinking of the Digital Markets Act as kind of like GDPR. And just bear with me here,

and you don't need to correct me, all right? What I'm saying is GDPR is a big sweeping set of rules, right, that exists for data privacy. But it's really hard to necessarily know as a company how well you're doing at implementing any of these exact things because there's not a lot of case law yet. So there's still a lot of interpretation around some of the law. And I have viewed the Digital Markets Act

as a similar thing, that the European Union is going to request a bunch of things. Because of that, a bunch of companies need to do things the way that they think is right and hope that they cross their fingers and do it. That's kind of how I look at the Digital Markets Act.

Yeah, you know how people say, I-A-N-A-L, I am not a lawyer. I just want to say, I-A-N-A-E-L-E, I am not a European legislation expert. Same, same. So it's complicated, but I think Apple has lawyers. Yep. Apple has European legislation experts. Yep.

As lawyers. Yep. Apple has European legislation experts. Yep. And according to Mark Gurman's report, they have all looked at this and realized that if it's going to be required that they have to open up iOS to third-party apps or app stores, and it's going to really come down in 2024, that means it's in the iOS 17 cycle, which they're starting to work on and plan for now. I know it seems like it's a long ways away, but like WWDC is in June. They have something to show you in June. Yes, they work on it over the summer, but there's like a beta that comes out in June with the pieces of what is in iOS 17, which means the first half of the year, they're putting together iOS 17 if they're not already working on it the previous year right now, right?

And so, according to Mark Gurman's report, the lawyers and the experts at Apple have said to the software team, basically, if you need to start now in order to comply with opening this up in 2024, then start now. They have been given the red light has come on and it's like, yes. And Mark Gurman's report says they're grumbling about it. And I totally get it. And I totally get it, right? It's like engineers who are usually excited to be working on great new features of iOS 17 are instead working on compliance features in order to open up APIs and open the app store. And I totally get it from an engineer perspective. Like, I want to build a new thing. And they're like, no, you need to work on this thing about sideloading instead, because we may have to turn it on. And I'm sure that within Apple, they're like, maybe not. We'll watch it. Maybe this work won't be something we actually have to do. But I think they have to, they've been told by their experts, you better be ready because the downside is an enormous fine from the EU that we will will not pay so you got to be ready for the eventuality that we're going to have to open up a bunch of our apis and access to our platform to outside

app developers and stores yeah it's like going back to us saying about like the interpretation thing or whatever like mark's report focuses on a few different areas. There's app stores, which we're going to talk about. There's APIs, and there's also messaging. And it seems like Apple is not doing the messaging portion, that they are going to seem to abstain from changing anything to iMessage to make it interoperable. I just find that interesting, right? Because that's where this digital market sack seems to be focusing on these areas. But it seems like Apple just like no we're not we're not doing that part and i wonder

if that is based on their analysis of the of the legal ease of this because none of these things are things apple want to do right it's not like any one of these three is is better than the other sure but combine that with the fact that it's also technically impossible it's like yeah i know interoperation of different encrypted messaging systems is technically impossible because of the way the encryption works. So, yes, obviously they seem to think that's defensible, but that this part of it is not defensible, or at least not likely to be defended, and requires an overhaul at such a level that they have to start working on it now yep so the biggest change here is the ability potentially for apps outside of the app store to find their way onto your iphone with potentially two ways of doing this. There would be sideloading, where you could just, like on a Mac, right?

You download an app from the web. Actually, just use the Mac, right? We'll just talk about the Mac. On the Mac, you can download software from the web and you can install it. And you can download apps from the App Store and you can just use them, right? So this would be what we'd be looking at.

And also, App Stores from other companies, which also works on the Mac. You can download the Steam store, you can download games, and you can run them. So this potentially would be looking at bringing in all of these ways of being able to run apps. Right? Right. And I think the question there, and I wrote a big, I wrote, I sat down and wrote 3,000 words about this in six colors. I think the three scenarios here are Apple just opens up sideloading. You know, the ability, and we say sideloading, but like every iOS device has a browser with a downloads feature, right? Like, and a file manager. So sideloading isn't like plug it in via USB and move a move a file over side loading is download a file and install it right that's what it is there is i guess my question is um well okay let me boil it down to two which is is it just as simple as there's a switch like there is on android for side loading and then it's like good luck or do they feel like the the this this legislation will require them to like put other app stores in the app store

and my guess is that that doesn't make sense my feeling is like it's one thing to say you have to open the platform but the platform is the operating system and not the app store and i don't think the european legislation is basically saying you must put anything in the app store right yeah so i think the most likely scenario is they will have a side loading switch when if they're required to and it'll be like the one on android and we we covered this in an episode uh a few months ago called This App May Kill You. Yep. We were talking about the Netherlands dating thing, right? Yeah. This App May Kill You is a reference to the scary warnings that will come up, right?

And so that was the idea. And Google does this with Android, too. You turn on Allow Untrusted Apps, and the Switch has with Android too, you turn on, you know, allow untrusted apps and the switch has a label blow that says, this is dangerous. These apps may kill you. And then you flip the switch and it brings up a thing that says, watch out. These apps may kill you. And you say, okay. And then it's enabled. And then you download an app and you try to launch it. And it says, this app may kill you. And then you say, okay, and then you're running a third party app store. And then at that point, you can just download apps. And separately, you could also just go to somebody's website and download their app and install it. I don't think the idea here is that the EU is trying to create alternate gatekeepers for software, where it's like well you have to go through an app store but it could be other app stores i think that they also implied in this at least to me

is the idea that it's really anything you can install a third-party app store with third-party apps or you could just install a third-party app if you wanted to yeah it just seems like they are trying to apply the pc model to phones. Right? Like, you can just download software for it. And you can run that software. That's what they're trying to... So, like, if you want to put software on a device,

there's not just one place that you can get it from that has all of the control of all of the money and all of the business and everything. Yep. Now, this is in Europe. Do you think that this would remain in Europe? I guess imagine WWDC rolls around and Apple's like, hey, iOS 17,

we're creating a new way for you to sideload applications only if you're in Europe. First off, I don't think they'll do that. I think if we're talking rollout scenarios here, this is iOS 17.2. Comes out end of 2023 or early 2024, right at the moment where this legislation is going to kick in for them.

Yep. And it will not be trumpeted, right? It'll just be there. Yep. In terms of the regional thing, it's possible. I'm skeptical. Not that Apple might not try it,

but that if I start to think about, first off, I think if they put a switch in there for regions, it's going to be really easy. It's absolutely going to be really easy to subvert that, right? I feel like there'll be a workaround to say, oh, pretend you're in Europe and then turn this feature on

and then leave Europe and you keep the feature on. And I don't think Apple's going to make it that when European travelers go to America, all their third-party apps start working. I just don't think that they're going to do that sort of thing. I expect that they would do it like how they do now, which is buy your billing address so like i can't change my iphone to be an american like to for it to think that i'm in america like i'm american and get like apps that are only available in america like that because this is a thing i can't do here's the problem though is my understanding

is that this this rule affects anybody in the, not just people who have EU billing addresses, right? If I'm in the EU, I think I have the right to do it. Again, I-A-N-A-E-L-E. I think the most expedient solution here is that Apple will just turn it on everywhere because Apple does not want to have an incredibly fractured operating system with a lot of different features in different places and different apps doing different things in different places and people they've got to understand they have to understand this is well one it's the bed they've made for themselves and and now they've got to make that bed because once europe do this it is just a matter of time until it happens everywhere else so

you just take it that far just to be clear they've already made the bed now they have to lie in the bed that's i think how that works well they've lied in the bed and have to get back up again and make the bed again that's well you're right that's that's where i am because i'm just like you know they do the whole thing they've done done it. All right, we've implemented it. What do you think that no one else is going to make you do it at that point? Yeah, right. Just do it. Just get out ahead of it. Yeah.

So I know there are counter arguments here. If I had to pick one, I'd say they're just going to turn it on. Because I have a hard time imagining that they're going to have that completely fractured thing and then have to navigate like, how is it on and when is it off? And they have to build that into the different, like, are there going to be different builds of the software? Or is it going to be a hidden feature? And if it's a hidden feature, people are going to turn it on anyway. And I feel like they're an international, they are the most global of companies. They are going to just need to deal with it. And so I think the most likely

scenario is they'll turn it on. I will point out there is a scenario where they only do it in Europe and it's almost like a gamble that they could be like, well, let's see what happens in Europe. And if it's a disaster in some way, they'll be like, ha ha, see, this is why we didn't do it anywhere else. And if it's fine, it completely undercuts their argument that sideloading is going to destroy the platform. The problem I have is that I don't actually believe that they believe that sideloading is going to destroy the platform. I think they know that when they do this in the EU, it's going to be fine.

And then what's their argument? So again, I think they're probably inclined to just turn it on everywhere. And that lowers, as you point out, lowers the pressure on them in like the US for this. You know, do you imagine this working like the Mac notarization, like that kind of thing? That Apple will still require something? Yeah, I don't know if Apple internally really thought

that what they were doing with the Mac was a test case for what if they had to do this on iOS, but it absolutely was, right? Like it absolutely was. They have a whole system and philosophy built and Mark Gurman references this in his, in his story. They have, uh, you know, uh, already are talking about like a scanning feature he says for apps that would scan them for malware and be signed. And it's like, oh, that's notarization is what they're talking about. And so I think, you know, there may be little differences. Again, I-A-N-A-E-L-E, but there may be differences that are mandated in the regulation. But my guess is it'll work just like it does on the Mac,

that there'll be a default and the default will be only use the app store basically. And then there'll be a switch with the, this, these apps may kill you that will, um, that will flip you into essentially third-party app downloadable mode. And then those apps may come in two forms, right? Uh, and again, this is where I don't know what the letter of the law is. Cause I'm not'm not sure that the law will allow Apple to require that Apple approve and sign everything, right? Like that's sort of the point is that Apple shouldn't have that power. So I think it's more likely that Apple will do what they do on the Mac, which is they will say you're a developer. You pay a developer fee. You sign your app.

You upload it to the service that we notarize it. We sign the notarization certificate. You upload it to the service. We notarize it. We sign the notarization certificate. We send that back to you. You release your app for download wherever. This is what happens on the Mac today. And at our second level of security, what happens is you open that app, and it checks to make sure that it isn't, like, basically malware. And it checks that the signing certificate is valid.

And then it warns you that this app might kill you. And you say, okay, on that screen, and then it opens. And then there's the third level, which people on the Mac, you know, a lot of people may not know about. But there's also, you can still do unsigned, unnotarized apps. But when you try to open those up, it doesn't say this app may kill you okay to continue it says this app may kill you cancel or move to trash and there's no option to open it and you have to do like a special thing to force that app open that is like extra no really it may kill you kind of level of it's the double level of security to get it open the first time. But you can get there.

And that may be where iOS goes. And, you know, it depends on what the letter of the law is. But I'm sure that Apple will try to have that other level, which is we will grease the skids for you if you sign your app so we know it's from you. And that also helps against malware because if somebody takes a signed app that's on the internet and then rewrites it and tries to pass it off as the original, the signature won't match. And you'll know that it's been tampered with. So it's got a real purpose in doing this. And then Apple does some scanning.

And it also gives Apple the ability to flip the kill switch if it's got a real purpose in doing this. And then Apple does some scanning and it also gives Apple the ability to flip the kill switch if it's malware. And again, they haven't abused that on the Mac. I don't think they would abuse that on iOS. They know they would get in trouble if they're just killing competitors, right? But it is good for malware. Yeah, they have in fact used these tools for great effect, right? There have been some apps that have gotten malware inserted into them and Apple's been able to step in. And there's a malware scanner on the Mac that loads things in the background

and can kill those apps on the fly, even if they got through the signature and scanning process. And I'd imagine that would happen on iOS too. So yeah, honestly, the Mac approach here really does solve most of these issues. It doesn't mean that there can't be malware and piracy and all sorts of other things. But what it does mean is, and the Mac has those things too, but they're not very common

because Apple has been so proactive in building this. And also this gets to the truth of this, which is most people won't ever turn on that switch, right? Most people are going to stay in the app store. That's the truth of it. Of course they will. And so, yeah. So it's not going to, will it change iOS forever?

Yeah, on one level. But on another level, for most people, it won't change at all. Because I think most people are not going to do it. The biggest risk is that you're going to get scamware and malware people who are going to set up websites where they walk you through. Or they're on the phone talking you through how or they or they're on the phone talking you through how to disable all of the protections and that some gullible people will do that that happens on the mac today too that that will happen but you know it's it doesn't matter because the the upside is that the eu says people should have the freedom to install software on the devices

they own. Listeners of this show know that we covered the Netherlands third-party payment debacle quite extensively, kind of going through the way that Apple was trying to craft legislation that the Netherlands would accept for third-party payments. One of the things that I really took away from that is Apple wants its money, right? Because, you know, and I think it was in the Netherlands, and I think they did it in one other place too,

where they required like an audit of your transactions, and they wanted 28 of those transactions or whatever the number was so if you use the third party payment provider that's fine but we still want a cut uh ryan in the discord saying south korea which seems right to my memory that's the other one yeah so they wanted you to go through create an audit of all of your transactions that you made through your own payment provider and then give them the money, which is one of the most egregious things I've ever seen them do. And this is one of my points here is that I don't believe the European regulation specifies

what Apple's business model and what its relationship with its developers needs to be. And we've seen the examples of this before. So when I answered the question in my article, like, won't this cost Apple money? It's like, yeah, it will. It will to a certain degree. But don't forget, Apple is going to find every other way to claw money back from these developers. And we've seen it in other places where they want you to, yeah, basically open your books and pay a fee. There's the potential, Mark Gurman mentions in the article, to pay for notarization. I think that definitely you could be in a scenario

where Apple is changing. So Apple's core argument is that they provide the developer tools and the APIs for free or for $100, depending. And if this is going to be the way it works in the future, you could say, oh, they're not going to change that, right? Like it's always been that way. Like, no, if they can get their money, they will change it, right? Like, so one scenario is they will change

developer membership to be based on your app revenue and that your $100 membership that even the largest developer pays will suddenly be a hundred or a thousand or 10,000 or a hundred thousand or a million dollars a year, depending on who you are. And I know we've had this conversation before, but I'm just going to say it again. It's much less likely that governments are going to regulate how businesses charge other businesses for access, which is not the same, right. And like,

I know that seems weird, but like, I think it's a much harder thing to do to say, you know, we're making it not just illegal for you to have a one app store, but we're going to make it illegal for you to charge other people for the products and tools that they need to make products for your platform right yeah because these governments that we mentioned accepted this it's not like they couldn't it's that that's a much harder sell

because you are now getting into the business of saying businesses shouldn't charge more than x for their services or product. Because Apple will come and say, we built this entire platform. I mean, this has been Apple's argument all along. We built this entire platform. We build the developer tools. We build the APIs.

You know, that has value. We deserve to be compensated for that value. And I'm not saying that they're, like the counter argument is you reap the value in the increased value of the hardware that you sell. I get it. But like, I'm just saying governments are even more loath to go to companies and say, okay, you, you have to make your profits on the hardware you sell. Or do they go and they say, oh, well, Sony and Microsoft, you don't make

profits on your game consoles. So we'll allow you this, but Apple, you make profits. Let's see how much open your books. Let's see how much profit you make on the iPhone. Where does it fit? Like they can do that. I'm just saying it's a harder sell because you're going deeper down into the business now. Whereas they can say, look, yay, we opened it freedom. And, uh, and then all the people who thought that they were going to be saving money that they weren't going to have to give to Apple are going to say, no, it's not freedom. Apple still takes their money. And that's when the government's kind of whistle and walk away and are like freedom and they walk away. Uh, maybe I'm being cynical there, but I just feel like apple's gonna do everything it can to get

money out of all the developers and uh the the carrot is that notarization process like if you pay and you're a valid apple developer and whatever the carrot is that that's a lot slicker of a way into the system and again i have a hard time believing that the regulations would outlaw it but it's possible it's not impossible that they'd be like, no, notarization is not, you can't make that an impediment. And does the legislation say you can't warn people about this feature? Probably not, right? It probably allows you to warn them as long as you do it. it. So again, this is the most, for me, this is the most likely path Apple will take is what they did on the Mac, which is it'll be you're in the app store or we'll make it kind of hard for you, but you'll have to go through the notarization process and be an Apple developer and probably agree to pay us money. Or you can be all the way on the outside and maybe you don't have to pay us money then, but it's going to be double hard to get your thing in the store and it's going to be

X or get your thing on the phone and it's going to be extra scary to get your thing in the store or to get your thing on the phone. And it's going to be extra scary. And do you want to do that? And even then, they might say, you still have to pay us. So they're going to try to get their money. So it's been said a bunch of times that Android has its side loading. And it has for a long time. You can put alternate app stores in Android. But they haven't seen great results.

Do you think that this might be a similar answer here? Do you think this would happen in the same way? Businesses tend to not stay out of the Play Store for very long. Yeah, that's the... This is what we've seen, is being in the

default app store is a great advantage. And I'm not sure, again, I kind of feel like, although Epic would love for this to be the case, I think that the regulators are reluctant to say, you have to put, like to tell a platform owner, you can't even be the default. Like you have to not be on like somebody proposed and it was really a stupid proposal in the U.S.

That was like you shouldn't you when you get an iPhone, it shouldn't have any apps on it because that unjustly prefers Apple. And it's like, well, that's a user. That's a disaster for users if it doesn't have apps on it. So I feel like where we've come is the home field advantage is allowed. It's just not allowed to be a monopoly. That seems to be where we're landing on this. So Android has a home field advantage, which is the Play Store is installed by default, at least on many devices. There's no 100% for anything on Android. But their store is on there, and it's real convenient.

And yeah, if you get Samsung, you might have a Samsung store or whatever. But it's real convenient. It's there. You can get to everything. And if you want to leave and then only be on the outside, you now have to walk everybody through turning off that default setting and where you go to download it and how you have to approve it and get it in there. Not that you can't. You know, Lauren just sideloaded an app onto a Kindle Fire last week at her job.

Like, it can be done, but it's more work. And if you're trying to get like the best benefit, also the, the payment system, like you're already on the payment system. They already have your credit card. This is that argument. Like Apple already has your credit card. You use it for a bunch of stuff. You trust Apple with your credit card. It's in the app store. That's super easy. Like that's why that is so powerful. And it's not powerful because I would argue it's not powerful because Apple is the only option. It's powerful because Apple is known. It's the default. They run the platform. And it seems to me that the trend in this legislation is more the, the, the monopoly part. You can't do. You have to open it up to competition, but you can still be number one, right? You're still allowed to be the default. It's better for

the users, and I would argue this very strongly, to have apps on your phone when you buy it, right? It's better for users. What you can't do is say, only our apps or only our app store. You need to let others come in and compete but at the same time that give that is an advantage and that they will have um like most people i think will never turn on this feature because they will be comfortable as it is how do you feel about this like do you what do you think do you want this Do you not want this? Where are you on this? I completely support this. Okay.

I realize it will change the world and there are going to be downsides to it. It's not 100% great. But I use a Mac every day and the world hasn't ended on the Mac now that there are things that are not, you know, there are things that are not the Mac app store. They're not right.

It predates the openness of the Mac predates the Mac app store, obviously, but like the Mac has, has managed to make it work where there's an app store and there's different software levels. And there's this, this, uh, process for, uh, having a trusted developer. And then separately, you can just run completely untrusted software. And it works fine. My feelings are, I don't think this is cataclysmic to Apple's business. I think Apple's going to be fine.

I feel like Apple, it's good because Apple isn't just motivated by money, although they are, they're also motivated by control. And I keep coming back to all of the apps that don't exist because the developers can invest money into developing an app that might push the envelope in certain ways. Because if Apple won't accept it, they have nowhere else to put that app. Yeah. Right? And so it's not just obvious categories of apps that are not allowed. Although it is those two. Like emulators is a great example.

Just no emulators. Like, okay. And I want them. And I want them. And although you can get them, it's really inconvenient to get them on iOS. And it should be less,

it should be easier, right? But also anything that is perceived internally, just inside their own brain by a developer as being something Apple might not like, they go on to the next idea, right? You just go on to the next idea because you've heard too many horror stories about Apple rejecting your app. And if Apple rejects your app,

what do you do? Right now, the answer is nothing. I mean, I guess today the answer is, can you do it in Catalyst and put it on the Mac? But like, it will never be a mobile app because you can't get it in the app store if Apple says no. In the future, if this is the case maybe you still try to be in the app store but if apple says no you've got to fall back and maybe you come up with something knowing that it won't be in the app store but that it's going to be so awesome that people are going to want to download it separately right and that stuff doesn't happen today i think people don't give enough credit to the chilling effect that is Apple's often capricious and arbitrary set of policies about the App Store, as well as being very particular

in some cases where they're like, we're just never going to allow apps like this in the App Store that shut off whole categories of apps. But it's not just that, right? It's not just the emulators. It is anything that might possibly offend an app store approver. You know, the wise developers learned a long time ago just not to develop those apps anymore. And we don't get them. And that's a real shame. And I would argue it makes the platform less rich and that that actually hurts Apple, but Apple has steadfastly refused to change their ways. So here we are.

In the end, I'm for it because it's a net positive and it will let those of us who want to see things that are more than what the app store has to offer to get them. And I do that on my Mac today. And the fact is my iPhone belongs to me and my iPad belongs to me. And fundamentally, what is true about the Mac should be true about those devices. And I'm reminded of an Apple executive standing on stage at WWDC in 2019 and saying, if you want to run code on your Mac, you can, fundamentally. We may put up some walls. We may make it harder.

You may have to turn some things on or off. But if you want to run software on your Mac that we don't know about, that you just want to run, we're not going to stop you. And I think that should be the rule for everything, right? It's my device. If I want to put up all the guardrails you like, but it's my device. If I want to run, I don't want that. I do want that. And Apple saying, no, you can't have it. We're not going to let you have a whole class of software because we've decided it's not in your best interest. It's like, look, man, I bought the iPad. It's mine. I'm going to run the software on it that I want to. And I know it's like, well, no, it's an iPad. It doesn't do that. I'm like, you know, yeah, it should.

It should. It's a computer, like a Mac. It should run the software I want to run. Period. And I appreciate Apple trying to protect its users, but the truth is Apple's protection of its users has been fused to Apple's desire to maximize its money, the money it gets in its market for too long.

So I'm very similar to you on here, right? I want to make a couple of like, I agree with 100% of everything you said and I stand with you on every single one of these opinions. I just want to call out a couple of other little specific parts, right? There are entire types of apps that we're not allowed to have. Like I want to be able to have the Xbox Game Pass on my iPhone, but Apple has said they won't let them do it.

No, but I want that, so why can't I have that? I want that, and Microsoft want that, so why should Apple say no? And the answer is their business model is the only reason. It's the only reason. I'm already a customer of Microsoft. i'm already a customer of microsoft right i'm already a customer of apple apple doesn't also need to take a buyout of microsoft they don't need to do that like to kind of just do what you were just saying right like and i'll say

user protection is not equal to making money right like they are not the same and for too long apple have treated them the same like yes that we protect our users that's great oh but also we we will be a part of every transaction whoa whoa whoa that's not the same thing they they can those two things like you making money and you're protecting users should both exist but separately the issue is for too many years they have treated them as one and the same and and that's why we're in this mess it's been very convenient for them to conflate protecting users and the business models that make them lots of money it's been very easy because why wouldn't you right here's a thing we do that's good it also makes us a boatload of money so we'll just we'll just keep doing it because of the boatload of

money and again that was what made all of that stuff in the Netherlands so interesting, is we got to see them in real time, like changing the language, right? Where like in the beginning, it was kind of just like, well, if it's not us, it's not trustworthy, which was just like a wild thing to say. But you believe that there is parts of the company

that believe this, right? It's the paternalistic nature of it too, which is like, it's Apple's job to protect users from the big wide world. And it is very much the, you know, silo or walled garden or whatever you call it. What's hilarious about it is like, you know, we all live in the world, right? Like not everything we do is through Apple. in the world, right? Like not everything we do is through Apple. People have to live their lives and go to the grocery store and, you know, get on the bus and buy a sandwich. People have to do these things. So it is a bit disingenuous for Apple to say, oh, no, no, no, no. All payments must be through us. And are they like, they're not wrong that if you open it up to anything there could

be a scam app that takes your credit card and it does a bad thing with it and whatever that's all true like in life but apple has made no effort to make the rules like clear more open yet also safe right they've made no steps in that direction because why would they and same like all of this stuff would would hit differently if i couldn't get scammed on the app store but i can also true i i didn't even get into that but yes the the other part of this is that apple has completely abdicated their responsibilities or largely abdicated their responsibilities to have the incredibly clean and tidy safe space on the App Store

because they have scam apps that charge you $60 a week to do nothing. Which are supposed to go through review, which do go through, you know what I mean? So there's no... I'm not safe by using the App Store. But Xbox Game Pass is not allowed. Oh, come on.

That's just crazy. What are you talking about? Yeah. Again, like, I own this thing it's mine and there is i i paid good money for it in fact like and this is like you know i know that people get like they get all upset about the playstation xbox thing right of like they lose money on the consoles that changes the business but my point what i'm going to say is like, I know I paid you more money than it cost you to make this, like this phone.

So you made a profit, right? It's not like that I bought it from you, a heavy discount, and we're trying to like over time balance out that thing so you can make money. No, you're good from me already. You made 30% to 40% more than it cost. You made a tidy margin from me. So I 100% own this thing.

It's mine. Yes. And we're not saying that we're not going to give you more money. We're saying that you need to compete for our business. Right? Because they open this up.

It's not like I'm not going to be spending money on the app store not like i'm going to be not doing in-app purchases none of that is i'm not going to be not paying money to apple they're still going to get services revenue from me but they're going to have to compete for my business in some areas they're going to have to reap their existing policies in certain areas where they've, they've crowded things out of the store or broken apps that are in the store because they get in the way of the most of the best user experience, like with buying eBooks and stuff, right? That all they're going to have to, they're going to have to change what they do. And I think that that's a good thing, but it's not like

they're going to like, even saying they make a tidy profit when i buy an iphone which is true it it's not gonna end there it's like it's not like this flips a switch and suddenly apple has no services revenue and has no app store revenue that's not gonna happen but it does mean that there will be other options yeah and like my mac is just as risky, right? And I'm allowed to do whatever I want here. I can do anything. And she'd say, like, Apple have no authorization, but the system will also let me ignore that. Like, I can do anything, and Apple let me. And as you say, I've stood on stage and said,

we're going to let you do it. Now, my Mac has all of the same information my iPhone has on it because Apple makes it so easy to spread that info. My photos are there, my messages are there, my notes are there. Just not your health data, which is super annoying, actually. But yes, okay. But again, it's like, of all of the things that I've just mentioned, my health data is maybe the

one that, personally for me, I know this is different for different people, but I would care less about those things. And I would honestly, for a lot of people, your messages are much more sensitive than your health data. Hence why I had such a bug up my butt about the encryption thing, which I'm happy that I will eventually be able to turn on, right? Because that's what I want to be locked down and no one can see it.

So my Mac has all of this stuff. So this isn't a know a lawless risky playground here right like you're okay with me being able to sideload and download and run anything here on this device which has all of the same stuff on it as my ip. Like, what is so precious about my iPhone? Why can't it do these things? What is so delicate about this device that it can't run applications

that I download from the internet on it? And again, all of this, right, none of this had to happen. None of this had to happen. This could have all been taken care of a long time ago way easier than this, without being so harsh.

But they let it go too far. We've been talking about this for years, right? Years now of like, Apple, you've got to change course on this. You can't keep doing this. Well, because a government's going to come in and tell you what you can and can't do. And now it looks like a government's going to come in and tell you what you can and can't do. And now it looks like a government's going to come in and tell them what they can and can't do.

Yeah. It's a, again, I know we're going to get a lot of feedback. It was like, oh, but what about this? But what about this? Like, trust us, there are going to be downsides and we know what they are. Like I can see it now because we see it on the Mac. There are going to be downsides, but it's going to be fine. That's the bottom line is that Apple has made such a thing about this being the end of the world.

And the fact is that computing platforms like iPhone and iPad have had open software models for a long time. In fact, this is a stronger model because presumably still defaults with the App Store. And people have been trained for more than a decade to use the App Store. Therefore, it's going to be pretty strong and pretty safe. And then people are going to be able to open it up and try other stuff if they want to. And yes, there will be downsides. But I just think the upside here is better. And I think it's better for users.

I don't think it's just better for Tim Sweeney at Epic, right? I think this is better for everybody. I don't think it's just better for Tim Sweeney at Epic, right? I think this is better for everybody to have the ability to choose. The only, I'll say the only downside that I potentially see is if you end up in a fragmented environment where you have to have three app stores on your phone in order to get the apps you want.

But I really believe the power of the app store, the Apple app store is, as the default, is going to mean that almost everybody wants to be in the App Store. 100%. If they possibly can be. Yeah, like all these big apps, they're going to be in the App Store. They're going to be there. Kindle. Let's say Kindle.

Okay, Amazon's going to want to do a version of Kindle for iOS that lets you buy things directly from Amazon, which you can't do now. You have to go out to the web. Okay. Is Amazon going to pull the Kindle app, the Kindle reader app from the app store? I don't think so. I don't think so. Even if they offer another one separately, that's going to be really hard to say, hey, you're a Kindle user with an iPhone. Okay. Here's what you need to do. You need to go into settings and you need to... It's like, no, go to the app store. Like we'll, we'll, you know, I know that it's complicated and it's going to reduce the number of people who are getting that external version if they ever even develop it. But like to have to, to forego being in the app store for that reason. I'll also

point out once this Pandora's box opens, I know Pandora's box is scary, right? But once this Pandora's box opens, I know Pandora's box is scary, right? But once this opens, Apple's behavior is going to change. That's the other thing that we haven't really talked about here. But like Apple is going to be unable to keep their current policies when they're competing with other people.

Like once this is open, I would not be surprised if they say, oh, by the way, Amazon, you can use your own payment system in the Kindle app. Go ahead. We give you permission. up payment within the App Store apps or whether letting people have apps outside of the App Store is sufficient in terms of allowing apps to use third-party payment systems. I'm not clear on that one, but I just want to put it out there that one of the things that will happen when Apple has competition and the platform is a little different is that Apple will be patrolling the App Store in a different way because it will know that it doesn't have all that power and that that will change how it behaves it could also be more restrictive right

they might actually start rejecting more apps saying look if you don't want to follow by our rules just go outside and knowing that it's a lot less of a scandal to reject an app that can just go to the other app stores or just be on the internet. It's actually a lot easier for Apple to tighten up in certain places if it wants to, but it's going to have to compete. And they're probably products that they want on their platform like Netflix and Amazon. And the question is just what the push and pull is there. Who wants it more? How much does Amazon want payment inside the Apple App Store versus being outside it? How much does Netflix want that? Remains to be seen. So yeah, it's complicated. It's going to be a little bit messy, but I think it's these systems are supposed to be. And it's not, it doesn't. And, and all the arguments about user safety, as you just said, Mike, all the arguments about user safety have some truth in them, but that's not why, that's not why Apple's making those arguments.

Come on. Apple's, Apple's not making those arguments. Apple does want to protect user safety, but do they not care about safety of Mac users? Of course they do. Of course they do. But there they can't roll back 30 years, 30 plus years of history. They can't close the barn door there. And so we're fine with it.

So this is how it needs to be on the iPad and the iPhone. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by ZocDoc. Battleship is a fun board game a lot of us played as kids. on the iPad and the iPhone. your needs, fits your schedule, is in your network, and in your neighborhood is easy. ZocDoc is a free app that shows you doctors who are patient-reviewed. Take your insurance and are available when you need them. You can find every specialist under the sun. Whether you're trying to straighten teeth, fix an achy back, get a mole checked out, or anything else, ZocDoc's got you covered. The mobile app is as easy as ordering a ride to a restaurant or getting a delivery to your home. Search, find, and book

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This is it. It is, we are going to talk about our origin stories with Apple, which is a great idea that Jason had. So we could just re-share. You know, we've both spoke about these before, but how do we get here? Where, you know, like we have a lot of about these before, but how do we get here?

We have a lot of criticism for Apple, but we do it because we care. This is a company that we've both not just built careers around, but it's also an important part of who we are as people. We focus on these products. We care about them. So for me,

the iPod Mini was my entryway to Apple products. I'd used Mac laptops in the 90s. Powerbooks. Yeah, it would have been Powerbooks. Yeah, of course. My uncle was a Mac user, but I didn't use them. I used them because they were the computer right like it wasn't like a thing that i ever really thought about about what i was using because i was a young kid but the ipod mini was kind of like

that was a product i loved i loved the colors of them you, it looked super cool. I had a pink one. I had a pink iPod mini. I still have that iPod mini, actually. It is something that I treasure, that I still have that little thing. And then after this, it was other iPods. Lots of iPods would follow for me. I was a big iPod fan. I was also a PC user.

So there was a time where everything changed for me. I had, I think, the iPod had i think the ipod nano could the ipod nano play video or was it just the ipod video that played video eventually the ipod nano could play video one of them right the fat nano and then the and then the really tall next generation nano after that could play video okay like you turn it the the fat nano um which my kids used to watch videos on in the car um had the video the normal orientation and then they went back to the like super tall nano um and it would play video and you'd have to turn it on its side to watch the video so this is kind of around the time of the ipod nano right okay um i was a pc user and

downloaded an app called Confabulator, which later became Yahoo Widgets and was the kind of inspiration for Dashboard. Yes, right, because it was JavaScript-based widgets that would run and put little widgets on your computer. and put little widgets on your computer. It's actually very much like I have scriptable widgets on my iPad now, and they're JavaScript. So they're actually, it's like come all the way back around again.

And also current iOS widgets remind me of Confabulator widgets a lot. For sure. They just have that kind of look to it. Now, I downloaded Confabulator, and they had a bunch of widgets on their website for something called Dignation. Right. I didn't know what this was, but there were loads of them. So I was like, what is this thing?

And I found out it was a video podcast. I started watching Dignation. This opened me up to more tech podcasts. I found out about Twit and started watching all these things. This then started to open me up more to what like Apple was doing. And then I started reading Apple blogs and all this kind of stuff. So my love of the iPod was the Halo,

but then I set my sights on getting my first Mac. Like I wanted a Mac. An Apple event was coming up and I decided I would go with the next iMac. Like, they were going to update the iMac, and I was going to get it, whatever it was. So it would have been the update of the iMac G5, and out of sheer luck, when I was ready to buy,

they updated that machine to Intel. And I was like, great, I'm going to get the Intel iMac. So that was my first Mac. It's a 2006 Intel iMac so it was my first Mac the 2006 Intel iMac I was 18 years old I was able to use some money from the part-time job that I had along with birthday money and I got it on my birthday that was my first Mac and I was in love with that thing you know like the big thing at that time and the thing that everyone loved and I could show all my friends was photo booth that was like the party trick of the mac at that point was the the wild things that you could do

with photo booth and me and my friends would just spend hours taking stupid pictures in photo booth and I would use you know every app that was available. You know, I would download them all and try them all out. You know, like I built websites in iWeb, you know, like you just at that point, it's just like, I'm just going to do everything I possibly can with this machine. I just loved it. I just loved spending time on it, learning it, doing things with it. This was followed by the MacBook sometime later later my second mac was the first macbook like the plastic macbook right i went with the white one this one i spent my entire first paycheck of my full-time job my first full-time job uh so it was when i started working at the bank and i decided like

i'm gonna spend my entire paycheck on that machine and i remember i was on a training course like my kind of like induction training course and that was when i was going to be receiving my first paycheck and i went to the atm while i was at the training course area and i checked the atm sorry it had it in there and then when i was on my way home from the training course i went to an Apple store and bought my MacBook. Like that was like, I love that thing, you know? And it was funny thinking, going back and thinking like, even then with like my first,

like back in the early 2000s or whatever, like late 2000s, where I'm still at that point trying to be like, am I going to be a primarily laptop user or desktop user? Like these same things that I think about now, I was doing them then too. Like which of these Macs is my primary Mac? You know, is it my iMac or my MacBook?

And I kind of would go backwards and forwards over time. The other kind of big landmark for me, it's like there are these three, right? So it's the Intel iMac, it's the iPod mini, the Intel iMac, and then the iPod Mini, the Intel iMac and then the iPod Touch. So like the iPhone was announced but the iPhone came out later here than it did in America.

It came out, I don't remember exactly, let's say it was like six months or so before the iPhone 3G or whatever. There was a delay but we still got the original iPhone in its kind of window. But the iPod Touch came out immediately here when it was available everywhere, and it was before the original iPhone came out.

And so I ran to an Apple store to get an iPod Touch because I could use iPhone OS on this thing before i could get an iphone and so like i would just i remember like i would just spend tons of time just just entering contacts in and just like marveling at this thing it's like that is like i have such memories of my original ipod touch because it showed me the future of computing and I was just enamored by it. And so these three things for me, like the iPod Mini, the iMac, and the iPod Touch, they're kind of like the three devices

that led me to where I am right now. Yeah, cool memories. Wow, that's great. So young. I know, man. Actually, the origin stories is where i really feel old i gotta say yeah this is this is it because i gotta go i gotta go back to elementary school the so there was a teacher at my elementary school who was who was super into computers

he was sort of like a an ex-hippie type, cool guy, really related to the students. And he got, there were a couple, we had a couple of Commodore pets. It's a very old computer before the VIC-20 and the C64 in the school. And they ended up in his classroom and there was a computer club and we would go to that. And he was actually the dad of my best friend too.

So like we were super into it. My best friend made a basic program that basically told the plot of Star Wars. You could run it and it would like, he drew like a TIE fighter and a Darth Vader and the little symbols that were available on that computer. Oh man. So we were, we were super into it. And then they got, um, we got a Commodore PET and that was great. And I, I learned to type really fast and I typed in basic programs and, and it was, it was awesome. But my friend ended up getting an Apple two plus, and we spent a lot of time playing on the Apple two Plus and then the Apple IIs also came to the schools.

California actually, Apple gave like an Apple II to every school in California at one point. And so their Apple IIs were everywhere. And I, in something that actually kind of is a recurring theme, I ended up really gravitating to the Apple IIs and that Commodore computer was sort of less and less. I was less and less enthusiastic about it, but we shall we say, um, and in eighth grade,

I think, I think it was before my freshman year in high school, we got an Apple two E and I use that computer through my sophomore year of college. So this predates the Mac. This is not my Mac origin story. It really is my Apple origin story. Just like you didn't start with a Mac. You started with an iPod. So we got that Apple IIe.

I took it to college. I actually took, my parents had saved money for me for college and I took some of the money out of the money saved for college to buy the Apple IIe that I was going to use in college. But I used it through high

school and my first two years of college. I had dot matrix printer. I don't like that sound of the as the dot matrix printer goes. I got talked to by one of my eighth grade teachers because I turned in an essay and it was not handwritten. And it was handwritten. It was, and it was not typed. It was dot matrixed and they didn't know what to do with it. They're like, you can't turn this in. And I go, what are you talking about? I typed it. They're like, no, you can't. And they, I think they made me handwrite it for a while. And my handwriting was atrocious. I can't remember the resolution of that, but it's like, dude, it's the future. You're going to, you're going to take my dot matrix printed paper and you're going to like it. So I used Macs in high school, but only very peripherally on our high school newspaper.

We had a Mac that had like MacWrite. And it might have been Word, an early version of Word. And it had like the margins for how wide the columns were on the newspaper pages, you know, like, cause it was a multi-column thing. So it would be super narrow. And that's where we would type in our articles. And then we would take a disc down to the, like the yearbook room or something. And they had a laser printer and we print the articles there. And then you cut them out and you put wax on the back and you paste them up. So that was a Mac, but I really just use it as a word processor. In fact, the Mac, when I started at my high school newspaper, we didn't use a word processor,

or we didn't use a Mac. We used an IBM Selectric word processor typewriter thing. Whoa, that was not good. My sophomore year, I joined my college newspaper. My freshman year, there was a little newspaper on the on the little um revel college ucsd the little sort of sub college at the university and uh they did all their newspaper stuff in in uh on a unix system in a terminal using vi i don't even know that's possible i guess yeah you could do it and there's like formatting you could do and then it prints it out. So I learned how to use VI, which has served me well since I still use a computer with a command line to this day. But I didn't have a moment my freshman year when I was working on that paper where I said, aha, Unix and VMS and the command line are the thing for me.

I did not have that. My sophomore year, I went to the University Wide newspaper. It was their first year of their all Mac-based newsroom. And that is where it happened. They used Mac SEs and they had a Mac 2CX for page layout. Writers, just to be clear, this is like late 1989, early 1990. Writers would come in with disks if they had a Mac or if they used a Mac that was in a computer lab, they could come in with a disk and we would import the file off the disk and edit it and put it in Pagemaker to lay it out. Or sometimes writers would come in with their notes, like after a meeting on deadline night and we had a room in the back where there was just a Mac SE set up where you could just

go in there and write your story. Or, and this blows me away when I think about it, a lot of stories, people would just come in with their story on paper, either printed off of a computer that was not a Mac or written with a typewriter. Gasp. Even at the time, I thought that was archaic, even at the time, but they did it. And then, and that was my first job at that newspaper, typist. My job was to take the stories that people brought in on paper and put them in one of those Mac SEs in Microsoft Word so that we can put it in PageMaker. I am a fast typist as has been established and it served me well. However, I started fixing the stories as I typed them in.

I started editing the stories as I typed them in. And I appreciate the fact that the people there did not say, no typist, don't do that. And instead say, perhaps you should not be a typist, but instead should possibly be a news editor. And so I became a news editor and then the news editor and then the editor-in-chief. So anyway, that sophomore year, that's when I fell head over heels in love with the Mac. I stopped using my Apple II as much as I could in my dorm room. And when I did use it, I would take the files and then I would go to the paper and load the files up there in Word and print them out and turn them in from a laser printer instead of printing them out on my dot matrix printer anymore. And at the end of the year, my spring of my right before I left, actually, for the summer. So late spring of my sophomore year, they had a sale at the campus bookstore in the computer section on the Mac SE, which is what we were using at the paper.

It turns out it's because that fall the Mac Classic came out. So they were around and were being replaced. So they had that sale plus it was the education price. So it was a super sale and suddenly it became like a moment of like, oh, maybe I can buy a Mac. So I bought that Mac SE. I took my Apple II home over the summer and sold it. And at that point, I mean, the rest is kind of history now that I had my first Mac. I was already pretty much obsessed with the Mac from the newspaper office, but now I had one of my own.

I spent that summer. I got to go. Actually, that was kind of the impetus for it too, was like, well, I'm not going to go home without a Mac with just this Apple two, if I can help it. And I was like, aha, they're having a sale. And I was like, I'm going to do it. And so I did, I went home with that Apple two and the SE sold the Apple two. Um, and then like I was down the rabbit hole. So I was reading Mac user magazine. Um, I got a power book when I went to grad school. I got, and you know, when I go into grad school, I got an internship at Mac user magazine and really it was all on from there. It happened very quickly. I will point out my college girlfriend's father was a Mac world subscriber.

I should have known the relationship wasn't going to work out because I know people think of me as a Mac world guy now, but I was a Mac user guy. And I was like, Macworld? What? Oh, the irony. And so when I was in my college newspaper, it wasn't just like my Mac SE. I mean, all my friends were newspaper people

for the most part, and they all had Macs. And even my non-newspaper related friends pretty much all had Macs. Lauren had a Mac that's actually right behind me right now because we still have her old Mac, but not my old Mac. Actually, the motherboard of my old Mac is right behind me too, but it died. because I didn't have the budget for it, but the newspaper did. We got like a parade of new Macs every year. So we got like, we got a 2FX and then we got a 2SI. We got the first grayscale Mac monitor I ever saw.

And then the first color Mac monitor I ever saw. And we use Photoshop and we started, we got a scanner and we started scanning our photos in instead of shooting them with a halftone camera. And like, anyway, that was it. The being at a college newspaper in 1989, 1990, when they had literally just gotten Macs for the first time and converted to all digital, that was the perfect place for me to walk into because not only was I useful instantly, but it also just completely blew me away, all those Macs being there.

And really, honestly, the rest is history after that. So that was, then it was pretty direct to grad school and to Mac user as an intern and then everything else. Start with an Apple II. Ho, ho, ho. Ho. Ho, ho. This is kind of a little ghost of Christmas past. there it is but in a good way nice way nice ghost good ghost nice ghost oh by the way a little sidebar i watched um spirited which we talked

about like two years ago when they made the deal for spirited i watched spirit i liked it it's basically a broadway musical go in knowing that it's basically a broadway musical great um uh but uh i thought it was fun and i thought it was a fun take on the christmas carol thing uh that was uh not not the same christmas carol story i have seen before uh and there is in fact a line in there that where a character says oh you're not doing christmas carol again has that not been done enough that's like yeah okay yeah i do want to see it It's like, it's, but it was on my list to watch over the holiday break. Right. That was kind of now-ish, but it's on my, I put it in my up next queue, Jason.

So it's in there. Yeah. Great. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. We took a week off of Ask Upgrade so we could fit everything in that we wanted today, but we would really love your AskUpgrade questions. You can use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord. You can use

hashtag AskUpgrade on Twitter and you can also send them to us over emails we mentioned earlier on in the show. I'd really appreciate some more. I think that the Twitter exodus, we have less AskUpgrade questions than normal, so please send them in to us. We'd appreciate it.

And as we said, we're working on some other stuff for that in the future. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com. Indeed. And if you want to find me online. Listen to this podcast. You can listen to my shows. I mean, I do other things, right? You go to themesystem.com.

You can find out what I'm doing there and what that's all about. That's something interesting that I work on. I'm working on that. What is my new sign-off? Don't know yet. I'll work on it. I'll think about it. What you need to do is create a website, a new version of your Mike website that says

all the things you do. Yeah, I have a MikeHurley.net bio page, but I want to refresh it. I want I have a... Just put people there. I have like a MikeHurley.net like bio page, but I want to refresh it. I want to give it a new coat of paint, but that's like a thing. I've got a task to take care of that at some point

and have to say like, hey, go there and you can find out about everything that I do. So yeah, I'll probably do that and I think I might just make it a little bit more visual than it is currently.

Yeah, I think that's a way to do it. Because I left Twitter. We're going to talk about that in Upgrade Plus today if you're interested. We've been just make it a little bit more visual than it is currently. Yeah, I think that's a way to do it. Because I left Twitter. We're going to talk about that in Upgrade Plus today if you're interested. We've been talking about it a lot. So I'm on MacBreak Weekly every week now too on Tuesdays. I mean, they release it on Wednesday, but the video, we stream it live on Tuesdays and we record it then. And one of the funny things there is Leo always wants to point people

to where all my podcasts are, and he actually guilted me into making like a sixcolors.com slash podcast, which also has Dan's podcast on it. And I need to clean that up. But it's the same thing where it's like, where do I point people to say, here's what I do. And I'm thinking I might actually need to do what you're doing, which is have a concise, just me. What are the things that I do kind of site somewhere or page on six colors or something. It's a, it's an interesting question. I'm going to think about it. I'm going to work on it.

Yeah. Just have something. Yeah, and have it be a place that we control. Yeah. That's what I'm all about these days. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. Hope you have a lovely holiday break.

Merry Christmas to you if you celebrate. Yes. We'll be back on Boxing Day with the 9th Annual Upgrades. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Good afternoon. ...

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