Upgrade - 444: Greg

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

This is the episode where our brains break as we try to process wild rumors of folding iPads and Siri-driven VR app development. Also, proving the raw interactive power of UpgradeFeedback.com, Myke hears from many listeners about why they choose to use the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Jason, meanwhile seems to hate plants.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 444 and today's episode is brought to you by zocdoc my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snow hi jason snow hi mike hurley how are you i'm very good i have a hashtag snow talk question or just as i should say a snell Talk question. I mean, we can hashtag whatever we want in our lives, right? Like, theoretically, couldn't we? We could be like, you know, hashtag Hello Mike. I mean, who cares?

Isaiah says, do you have any plants in your office? Interesting question. The answer is no. I also, uh, we, Lauren was saying how we should probably have more plants in our house. We do have some, but we don't have that many. And I left that to her because I'm not a big plants in the house person. Although somebody got us a cactus, like a little thing with cactuses in it that i kind of i thought that was kind of cool yeah but um my memory of this is that i also didn't ever have plants

like in my office and um at some point i don't know they they hired somebody or they redesigned something or i forget what exactly it was but um one day i went into the office and somebody had like brought a plant into my office. This isn't my home. Uh, yeah. And no, it was no, no, a random person broke out of my house and left a plant on the, oh, the plant bandit is here. I mean, the plant giver, I guess they break in and put plants on desk. Anyway.

And I just remember that moment where I saw the plant and I was like, who put this here? And, and I, I had it removed from my office. Get it out. Out. I want it out. So the answer is no, but it's like no in italics. No with an exclamation point. I don't.

Okay. I don't really. I know that people say, oh, they bring you oxygen and they're pleasant and it's just like they don't do anything for me sorry not a not a plant person just not i like the idea of being a plant person but i don't want to be one and when i say a plant person i just mean like having plants like you can become like a real plant person like i know people you go into their living room and it's just like a jungle i don't mean like that. That's extreme.

That's extreme. I know. That's like, if I say plant person, that's what I'm thinking of, you know? But I would like the idea maybe of more plants. We've just never been very good at keeping them alive. Idina has an app, right, which reminds her to water her plants. It has, I think, the best name for an app which reminds her to water her plants

it has I think the best name for an app ever this is a plant watering app so you put the name of the plant in you put some information about the plant in it and you put it on a schedule the app Jason is called Greg

and I just think that's hilarious it's just called Greg the app's name is greg and there's just something about that it tickles me every single time like greg would like you to want would like you to i don't know it's plant person stuff i guess so people know the plant people get it they get it i don't know i don't get the plant people know what they're talking about there i don't have a problem. Like I said, Lauren was saying we should have more plants in the house. And I was like, great. I support this.

Implied in that is, great, you're going to have to do it because I don't care. But I'm not against it. And we have had plants. And we continue to. I mean, there are some. And we could have more. And that would be fine. I don't care.

But it's not a thing that I like would choose to do i think we plants outside right where plants go where plants are supposed to go sure in the outside that's a different thing yeah but the plant people interesting well greg shout out to the plant people and to greg whoever you are thank you to isaiah for that question if you would like to send in a question of your own to help us open an episode of Upgrade, go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snell talk question. I have some follow-up for you, Jason Snell. Okay. Since we recorded last, there's been a controversy.

Oh, there's a gate. There's a new gate. Yes. It's true. Well, it's the return of a gate. Yeah, you're right. It's M2 storage gate. Yes. a new gate. It's true. Well, it's the return of a gate. Yeah, you're right. It's M2 storage gate, part two. M2 part two.

The base model MacBook Pro, the M2 MacBook Pro, and the M2 Mac minis both have slower SSD speeds than the M1 models that they replace. This has happened before. Yep. Was it the MacBook Air? Yeah, yeah. So basically what's happening is apple is reducing

the amount of like nand flash storage chips that go into the machine so like what they would usually have previously used two chips for 256 gigabytes of storage they're now using one uh and in doing that there is a speed drop half the pathway therefore half the speed because they only have the one pathway and not the two the second pathway so there's the a drop in the maximum speed of the ssd in the lower storage configurations that use only one chip instead of two and this is something that is not mentioned by apple in its details about its storage configurations which i think is the key point. Why would they?

They should, in theory, but why would they? Well, I mean, you could make the argument that they mentioned that the MacBook Pro with the M2 Max has a double the memory bandwidth, for example, of the lower end model. And they boast about SSD speeds, at least a little bit. So I feel like it could be a simple bit of disclosure of these are really fast and these are faster and do it like that. But they don't. And personally, I think that's the problem here because again, it's a gate. Everybody's going to get upset last week there was a great story on connected about how a civilian told what federico that like oh i saw a tick talk about

apple scamming people again and it's like what it's like well it's really easy to get engagement and clicks and anger saying that apple did something and so people will find literally anything that apple does and sometimes you, people ask us on this show, like, why wouldn't Apple just do this? And you and I both immediately think of all of the gates that would happen if they did that thing, right? And I don't know if Apple makes their choices based on gate avoidance.

Clearly not entirely because there's always another gate. But this one, you know, Apple has decided to save money, presumably, by only putting one larger chip on instead of two smaller chips. And as a result, on those lower configurations, the storage is a little slower. I think it's a little slower. It's not like unusable slow. It's just a little slower. My wager is, first off, that most people probably don't use the maximum SSD speeds of these things. And second, that the people who do really push their systems may be buying a higher end configuration where they're not going to see this. But I do wish Apple would disclose it or make a better decision, which is just to do the thing that's slightly less convenient and let the storage be fast on all of them. Also, I saw some comments that were basically like, it's outrageous that because this wasn't

the case on the M1, they didn't configure them this way on the M1 MacBook Pro. It's outrageous that the storage on any configuration of the M2 should be slower than the M1. And I thought, outrageous, again, kind of an extreme view uh to say outrageous and also i would say who's upgrading from a low-end m1 to a low-end m2 almost nobody right they're coming from intel yeah i don't understand that person oh but like even someone that would do a year-over-year upgrade but would do a year-over-year upgrade from base model to base model yeah and for those people i think and that's why i think this is good information and why i wish apple would disclose it because because of course apple seeds the reviewers with higher end systems than that um i think that's i think that's all all

valid but then there's the freak out and it's like you know again i i just have very little time for the people on tiktok and youtube who are just trying to make trying people. And then, yes, at least I try to be understanding when somebody says this is outrageous and unacceptable, that that's probably somebody who was inflamed by somebody. They got played by that person who wanted to stoke some anger in order to get engagement. And it's like, this is not nothing. It's not a big deal. And the real crime here, I think, is that either Apple cheaped out on this, you know, when they should have just dealt with it. They're trying to optimize this thing to have bigger profit margins for them. Or, and or, it is just not disclosing it. Like failure to disclose.

It is just not disclosing it. Like failure to disclose. If you put it in the hands of the consumer that this SSD configuration has this speed, which they would call fast, and this SSD configuration has faster, and let the consumer decide if they want to spend. Because saying you have to spend more money for a faster SSD is not on its face unacceptable, right? money for a better for a faster ssd is not on its face unacceptable right it's that it's a stealth speed penalty slash boost that is the issue here so they could either not do it or they could just disclose it but the fact that they did it and didn't disclose it yeah that's dumb they shouldn't do that um is it is it a gate i mean i guess it is they're all gates i kind of wanted to include this here to just say that like i wished as you said like i wished apple would say it so we didn't have to have these things

because there are so many valid reasons to be frustrated at apple for various things that they do which we do i think a pretty decent job of chronicling on this show this one to me is just so, I find it tiring in a way. It's kind of like one of those things where you can say it's happening and it's true, but the amount of people that this will actually affect is infinitesimal. Yeah. Right? Well, and that's why the real story here would be Apple has done this. It's good information.

Yeah. Here's what it means in terms of real-world performance, which is not, you know, it's something, but it's not enormous. Here's who it affects, what kind of user this would affect. And here's how you should be aware of this if you're in the market for an M2 MacBook Pro. Yep. Like that's the news you can use right there, right? Like that's what it is. That's the way I wished that this reporting just was, right? Rather than like, I think the TikTok that like Federico

kind of translated it a bit of like, Apple is scamming you again, right? And it's just like, oh my God. Like it's just so tiring. It's exhausting. If there's one thing that I think they don't do is scam people, right? Like, they do a lot of things I don't like,

but I don't really, I don't feel like at least that Apple are out to scam you. But I guess your interpretation of it may vary, right? If they don't disclose at all, maybe you consider it a scam. But I just kind of look at it of like i mean i would like them to but of course they're not going to right like of course in the marketing for the new product not going to say oh bt dubs is 50 slower read write speeds on ssd

storage well like like i said i think the way you phrase it is that these are fast and the and then and this is faster and you just close disclose it in a way that is marketing, but it also does make it clear that there is a difference when you pay more, you're not just getting more storage, but you're getting faster storage. I also wonder if they don't disclose it because they don't want to be specific.

Because it may also be that it turns out they want to be able to put a single 256 chip or a single 512 chip. I'm not sure exactly whether, is it two 256s and then one five? I'm unclear on exactly where this comes into play and not. And it's also difficult because you actually have to survey all the different configs to see. But let's just put it this way. It's possible that Apple wants to leave it open, that if they have an availability of the smaller chips for a good price, that they would build them using two. And if they don an availability of the smaller chips for a good price,

that they would build them using two. And if they don't, they would build them using one. It's possible they don't want to disclose this for internal production reasons, which is just like we're just following the available or affordable version of the chips. It's entirely possible. Still, though, in my mind, you might want to disclose this, just to not

have this happen. Just say it the way it is, which is, guess what? You pay more, you get more. The Ivory for Mastodon app is available now. We've been chronicling a little bit of stuff going on with third-party developers and Mastodon.

This is the Ivory app from the TapBots developers of TweetBot. That is now available. I've been playing around with it. I logged in and followed a bunch of people. I just wanted to see what it was all about.

Everyone was like, this has been the story of the week, I feel like, last week. Everyone was talking about it. Have you been using Ivory at all? Yeah, I've been using it since it was in beta. Funny story, because I'm on MacBreak Weekly on Twit every week, and it's kind of fun to be one of three people and not to have, like, this is the whole show right there. I'm just like one of the people when the peanut gallery and I used it,

we do a pick of the week and I made it my pick of the week because it came out. And along the way, I might have said something about how I wasn't very impressed with most of the Mastodon apps out there. And I felt like this, this is a very good product from a company that knows what it's doing. And it's sort of is being excited. People are being excited about it because, uh, it's so good. And that the Mastodon client market is kind of wanting, and that a lot of the apps out there are not our kind of hobby projects and they're not that great. And, oh, I made a lot of people angry. I made all the, all the Mastodon, uh, NIMBY people angry at me where it's like, you Twitter people, you come in here and you, with your, we got lots

of apps. We got lots of apps. And it's like, some of those apps are fine and a lot of them are growing and I think it's great. I just, I feel like Ivory rolling in is a message to Mastodon apps to up their game. And some of them are, right? I'm not saying that there aren't other good apps out there

or there aren't other apps with lots of potential out there, but bottom line is there are also some apps out there that, and I'm not naming names because I don't want to be mean to them. And that's not the point of the conversation. The point is to uplift a thing that I think is good, which is ivory. open source apps, especially in like 2018 when the first little move to Mastodon happened. And I mean, they were like, well, at least there's an app. But when you've got something like Ivory, and there are a couple others that I think are very promising too that I've been using over the last few weeks too. Not ready

to talk about yet. Some of them I think because they've got promise, but they're not there yet. But it changes the game. It forces people to up up the game and what's exciting is this is what happened with twitter 12 years ago or whatever which is there were a bunch of them a lot of them were mediocre and then you started to get ones that were really good that served different people's ideas like i like twitterific other people like tweetbot and there were also a bunch of other ones that like dan frakes always liked what it was a night hawk or something i think was what it was eventually called like there were lots of uh cool different takes on a twitter client and

i hope that's what happens with mastodon because like when i re-entered mastodon as twitter was dissolving the last few months i looked around at a lot of the apps and they felt um felt like they were in stasis. They were the apps that were there in 2018, that they were kind of pokey and not very good. And like, if you love them, then that's great. But my job is not to praise mediocre apps because they exist, right? And I think Ivory is a step above. And so game on for Mastodon apps now. Of developers that have been making an app that's kind of like this one for like 10 years or something,

so it would be good, but it's an important step for a lot of people in their moving from Twitter to Mastodon, so I think it's put a lot of attention on it. And I was just listening to an episode of App Stories today where John and Federico were running through a bunch of apps that they've been trying on iOS and iPad. Some that are coming out, some that are out already.

And this is incredibly reminiscent, right, of that. I don't even know what time it was. Like 2010, 2009, 2010. Yeah, it's that UI playground era, right, where there are like a bunch of Twitter apps with different takes on it. playground era right where where twitter there are like a bunch of twitter apps with different takes on it and that's the beauty of it too is there's the i'm gonna make a generic app for a social media platform and then there's like there was one that i it's not my cup of tea but i saw it the other day where somebody said i've decided to do an app that makes mastodon look like a bunch of text messages yeah like i loved the look of that. What a great idea. Not for me, but like, yes,

that's the kind of experimentation we should be seeing. And then what you got with the Twitter apps was innovation where somebody would do something and everybody would look at it and go, oh, and I don't mean that in a copycat kind of way. People can sometimes like, uh, mock that kind of thing. But like when somebody nails it and goes like, oh, this is it. And everybody else looks at it and goes, oh, that's it. That's the right interaction. We should all, every app should do that.

And that happens sometimes. And that's magical too. Where like the whole platform realizes, oh yeah, yeah, that's the way to do it. And that's what happens when you've got a whole bunch of different smart people developing these apps

with their own unique take on it and they give stuff a try um and they're not all going to be great and in fact sometimes you'll get a really brilliant thing in an app that's not that good or is frustrating in some way that's okay too but like that's the beauty of this sort of scenario so i hope it keeps going yeah yeah i'm finding it really interesting um to see people sharing this stuff around as i say like um i've logged in Ivory and I just took a look at it and followed some people so I could kind of see what it looked like and how it was performing. And it's kind of what I'd hoped and expected

an app from TapBots to be like, but it seems like there's still a lot of work to go in the app, which they're very open about. It wouldn't have launched now, right? I think that's pretty clear. If TweetBot was still an ongoing concern, I don't think Ivory would have been made available

when it was made available, but I think from TapBot's perspective, this is probably the right way to do it. Something I also saw on 9to5Max is that Phil Schiller has officially joined Mastodon, and this highlight is something really interesting to me, which is the verification system.

So it is easy to verify yourself, quote unquote easy, to verify yourself on Mastodon. You could just post a snippet of code on a website that you own and you verify that that url is yours to control so like for example i'm sure you've done this to six colors right so then people going to your masternode page it says a little verify tick so people know it's you how does phil schiller do

this right like he can't post this piece of code on apple.com, right? So this is super interesting to me. Well, he's been taken off of the, is there an Apple Fellows page somewhere? I don't know. Probably, I think so. But this was just like a funny thing where a couple of people reached out to Phil. One of them, I think, was Zach,

and they also, at 9to5Mag, and they also published a screenshot from Slade Watkins, who emailed Phil Schiller at Apple.com, like the Phil Schiller email address, and Phil confirmed, yes, this is my Mastodon. I love so much that Phil Schiller incorrectly spelt Mastodon in the exact way that I do, which is M-A-S-T-A-D-O-N, because that's the way it sounds,

and I can never get it right. And so it just led to me this interesting thing of, like, verification is, like, technically easier than Twitter, but is not achievable, really, for someone in a position like Philil schiller's right we're like how can he verify himself he doesn't have his own like outpost and to put a mastodon link on the apple leadership phil schiller page would probably require you know development work and a lot of approvals and all this stuff that he's not going to do and And it's a, it is a funny, maybe there's a business opportunity here for some company to be like, you know,

verified dot plumbing. And they're like, we are a private investigators who will verify the identity of people who plus then, and also scammers. Yeah. Uh, because all it verifies is that you,

you, uh, can control what's on a particular page on a particular website but sometimes that's enough right sometimes that's all you really need yeah it was just like an interesting thing to me of like it's more available to everyone but the human element of twitter's verification system meant that someone like fooshiller could be verified so it's just intriguing he should get the apple pr people to like some post that he's uh that he's quoted in in a press release just have at the bottom among the apple pr contacts say are also

phil schiller's mastodon you can link to that a newsroom post that's his verification the url i just you know it's it's interesting to me that she'll has done this. I'm intrigued to see if anyone else does anything. It's kind of like in his position now, he's definitely much more, can be more mavericky, right? Because he isn't so active anymore. So I guess he can kind of do a little bit more of what he wants to do. But it will be, I'm very interested to see

if and or at what point Tim Cook joins Mastodon. Interesting. Elon going to have to go walk around the park. I don't know. I mean, I don't even know if it would happen, right? But it's just an intriguing thought. All right, Jason. Yes.

Who uses the 16-inch MacBook Pro is a question I asked. Okay, I'm going to go get a drink now. Apparently everyone does. Let me know. You asked this. You asked it. You asked for it. I did.

This is one of those things where I did a thing and then realized I have not learned my lesson because I've done this kind of stuff in the past. And I have an element in my mind of what I think's going to happen and it never goes that way you know like I think oh I'm gonna get some some feedback on this uh it was over 350 people wrote in to upgradefeedback.com to give me their reasons for why they use a 16-inch MacBook Pro. And this was fascinating to me. It was interesting. When I was getting ready to sit down this morning, I did have this feeling of dread

because I've been keeping my eye on it. I was like, I've got to go through with it because I did want to go through it all. And I was like, oh God, this is going to take forever. And it took a while. It took about, I don't know, like 45 minutes longer than I would normally prep for upgrade today to get to go through it all.

But it was interesting to me in thinking back on it of how i'm happier that i asked for the feedback there like if i would have got these as tweets it would have just been like an entire week of my life where every time i open twitter or mastodon or whatever i'm using where i would just be getting this stuff over and over and over again right right? Just everyone, it would feel like the entire world was telling me that they use one of these computers. Nevertheless, thank you to everybody that wrote in. What I'm not going to do is read all of these things, but I have aggregated some of the reasons for why people choose to use a 16-inch MacBook Pro,

and I would like to impart them upon you. But I did, Jason, I was fascinated by the varied and cool jobs that Upgradians have. So we heard from, and this is just a smattering, doctors, developers, designers, live tour managers, PR managers,

audio engineers, video editors, special effects artists, photographers, architects, artists, painters, creative directors, theatrical sound designers music producers film directors and podcast editors one of those podcast editors is our podcast editor who told me in slack thank you jim for why you use the 16-inch macbook pro yeah it's true and

this is just the 16-inch macbook pro users who are upgradians amazing way more students than i would have expected to loads of students so students. So these are the reasons. For a lot of people, straight up, bigger display is better. They just want a bigger display, especially if using it as a laptop. Sometimes this can be for screen resolution and display quality reasons, which can be vital for design work. And by and large, especially if they do it given this machine by their company, the 16-inch MacBook Pro screen is going to be better than

whatever external display they might be plugging into at the office. If you're on the road a lot for work, there is no display to connect your laptop to, so you just want the biggest display that you can get. This was one that was fascinating to me, and I think it's something that might be happening more now. If you're used to, when you're in the office, plugging into an external display, but now you're in the office for three days a week and you're at home for two days a week, if you're going from like a 24, 27-inch display down to a 14-inch display, that's like a big jump where 16 at least gets you something that's a bit bigger. So I found that kind of interesting.

For people that use their external display with their laptop open, bigger screen is better for that. And also we heard from a bunch of people who have eyesight issues and found the 16-inch, again, like you can just, the scaling can be bigger. You can make everything bigger if you have eyesight issues. We heard from some people who just want the most performance possible for specific use cases that they have. Now, so I have a question about this, which is the MacBook Pro in Apple Silicon,

the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 are basically other than the battery life, the same in terms of performance. Correct. So what's going on here? We got a bunch of people who were telling me why they chose their laptop when they got it. So not everybody is using the latest and greatest. So they may be on an Intel machine or

something like that. Or are so used to Intel maxing out a 16-inch or 15-inch before that on intel that they're now just in the habit of having the larger laptop even though it's no longer the case that they that it's the only place they can get that performance yes that was that's one of i'll bring this up now which is uh so a lot of people just said have it from when the smaller machines couldn't cut it right that was like a thing that i got from people too. This, especially for people using it in clamshell mode,

like if they're getting a laptop and always are planning to use it with an external display, they just want to get the most laptop possible. So when there were performance differences. One of the biggest answers that I got about why a 16 inch, it was just like most people that seem to have it got it from their employer and so when they're given the choice of what laptop do you want they're just like I'll have the best one biggest screen biggest battery in some instances biggest

performance and so they just they just go with whatever because obviously employers tend not to give desktop machines to people, but will give laptops, and then you can come into the office and plug in your screen. And if you're just going to live that way, just get the best one possible, because it's not your money. I heard from some people who say that the 16-inch feels better to them on the lap, especially I heard from a couple who said, I'm a bigger person, bigger laptop fits me better, because it covers a greater surface area many people who've prescribed to the idea of one computer to rule them all so they only want one machine and they want something that is both

a laptop and a desktop right so bigger makes it closer to something like a desktop so they'll go that way i'm uh i'm gonna do some real-time follow-up from uh from our friend zach friend of the show zach from nine to five mac who points out that there is high power mode on the 16 inch model which essentially just runs the fans even louder so that if you're at the very very top and you've made the chips so hot that they have to scale down even on the macbook pro in high power mode, the fans will run even faster and are even more annoying in order for you to get the maximum amount of power. Not sure how many people are using high power mode, but that would be technically a speed difference.

It's not what our people were talking about, but it is a good point that there is high power mode, a hilarious mode for people who love fan noise. There were some people who told me about the idea of just wanting portability at home they don't care about portability on the go so like moving a 16 inch laptop around your home is fine but you wouldn't put it in a bag right and also this kind of goes into the last one which is limited space so if you don't have a desk at home and you need to set up your laptop in a common area or whatever closest you can get to an iMac exactly so I get it these are the other reasons I had a few people write in to ask why me

as the founder of plus club and lover of large iPhones wouldn't also want the largest laptop. I understand this. I have back issues and carry my laptop every day. I'm going for smallest, lightest. Like I don't want a big, heavy laptop. I want to throw in here. I was a one Mac person, laptop plugged in at work and using at home in my backpack every day for like a decade.

Mm-hmm. And that's why I pushed further and further down as you know, to the, to the, ultimately the 11 inch MacBook air. And I don't mind it down there because I still enjoy the lightness of it. And the, and the small screen doesn't bother me, even though I primarily am using the, you know, this 27 inch display every day, but that was what got me to prefer thin light laptops. But I totally see this case that like, I'm judging it based on, oh boy, do I want to carry this thing around? And it's huge, but I get like, if that's your computing device and it's the only one you get and you don't have a 27-inch display to dock into and you want to have that big display, totally get that. I totally see that.

It's a, I know, you know, we have friends who like use them docked on desks, right? Where maybe even lid closed. But there are also people, there are also people who don't have an external monitor. They work at a desk with a laptop maybe they've got external keyboard and and mouse but they they just put it on their desk maybe in a little stand and if you're going to do that then you have it i mean a 16 inch it's going to be a nice much

bigger display and that's better i get it i get that so that's why people use 16 inch macbook pros all these things thank you to everybody that wrote and genuinely i appreciate that so that's why people use 16 inch macbook pros all these things thank you to everybody that wrote and genuinely i appreciate that so many people took time out of their day to send me in that feedback and help educate me as to why somebody would want a laptop so humongous and unwieldy they are very very they're very large i don't like them but i'm glad like again they they don't have to be that's the beauty it. And this is the thing that I get this sometimes with Apple, uh, Apple aficionados where they're like, I don't like this product cause I don't want to buy it. And they're like very offended that there's a product that Apple makes that, that is not,

does not appeal to them. Uh, which I always have found weird. Uh, and this is a good example of that, which is like, you know what? I love that there's a 16 inch MacBook pro for all you weirdos out there who need a giant display. Like, great. That's awesome. I don't want that computer.

But that's the beauty of it is they make other computers too, right? They make vanilla, chocolate, and other ice cream flavors are also available. So, yeah, it's all good. It's all good. But it's not for me. And knowing that it's not for me. It was fun, actually, to have the 16 inch, because this is where this started, the 16 inch be my review unit from Apple instead of the 14 inch,

because it's been a long time since I held the large Apple laptop. You know, the last one I got was the 14 inch MacBook Pro, the M1. So it was a good reminder of just how big that computer can get. it was a good reminder of just how big that computer can get. This episode is brought to you by ZocDoc. When someone is just exceptionally good at what they do, could be a waiter, chef, or a doctor, you know you're in good hands. It's like seeing one of those waiters who balance five trays of sizzling fajitas on one arm. You're confident in them. They've got their stuff together. And when you find the right doctor, you can feel it. You feel heard, you feel at ease. And on ZocDoc, finding the doctor that's right for you is seamless. The quality of care you need is just a few taps away with the ZocDoc app. ZocDoc is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient reviewed,

take your insurance, are available when you need them, and treat almost every condition under the sun. There are no more Dr. Roulette available to you scouring the internet with questionable reviews and trying to work out what's going on. With ZocDoc, you have a trusted guide to connect you to your favorite doctor that you haven't met yet. Millions of people use ZocDoc's free app to find and book a doctor in their neighborhood who is patient reviewed and fits their needs and schedule just right one of the things that I love and that's one of the things I think is great about ZocDoc is the idea of being able to have calls with your doctor like video calls audio calls that kind of thing I don't need to go to a waiting room I had a doctor's appointment today and the doctor was running late,

but it was over the phone and I was in my office. So I wasn't waiting for 15 minutes extra in a doctor's waiting room. I was able to just continue doing my work until my doctor called me. I love that kind of stuff. And that is something that ZocDoc can offer for you if you are like me and want that.

Go to ZocDoc.com slash UpgradeFM and download the ZocDoc app for free. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash UpgradeFM. One last time, ZocDoc.com slash UpgradeFM. Go there and download the ZocDoc app for free. Our thanks to ZocDoc for their support of this show and RelayFM. Jason, it is time for a rumor roundup.

All right. Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that Apple will release a foldable iPad in 2024. Okay. Kuo has said that there are no other new iPad models expected within the next 9 to 12 months from Apple. The foldable iPad will feature a carbon fiber kickstand. Your favorite. Oh, yeah. Kickstands are the best. uh ross young had previously reported that apple was testing a 20 inch display for a foldable ipad but said that 2026 would be the earliest time frame that he would expect for such a device

i do not know what to think about this this doesn't seem this doesn't pass my logic test at all but i don't know yeah i, I mean, look, they, I could, okay, and didn't he say it's 20 inch? Ross Young said 20 inch. Ah, Ross Young said 20 inch. I don't believe Ming-Chi Kuo said 20 inch. Yeah, he just said that there's a foldable.

So I keep trying to think, what is this, right? Why, Mike, why? Yeah, yeah yeah yeah so and there's so few details here so one idea was what if you made a foldable ipad so that it could be small when you wanted it to be small and then big when you wanted it to be big right like that a huge ipad might be unwieldy for a lot of uses but you could fold it and then have it be more like iphone like um and then open it up when you really need the real estate that's that you know and then there's the question of is it an in-ear and audi that's a great mystery they have to go in right they have to go in but that means that if you want to use it

there are only you either have to have another screen on the backside or the folding is only for a different kind of mode. And the kickstand would suggest this. And it folds that what they're really trying to do is create an, a big, beautiful iPad that if you fold it, it becomes the magic keyboard, essentially. That it becomes a laptop where you've got a software, essentially, probably input layer down on the bottom part. That is like where your keyboard would be. That is like where your keyboard would be. And then an upright part that is the rest of the software interface so that you end up basically you can convert it by folding it into something with a keyboard plane and a display plane like a laptop. That's my best guess. And that's, I don't know what the logistics and benefit are of that. I'm not sure. What if this is actually the touchscreen Mac? You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah. Well, then when I can boot into Mac OS, it just becomes a keyboard and trackpad down there. And problem solved. Right? Something? I'm just not... I can't get my head around this one yet like i

can't yeah yeah see and it could be late 2024 this could be a thing that like quo is i mean quo has been very reliable but quo's information comes from the supply chain and i do wonder if this is one of those things where i mean he's positive right that suggests that there's orders are in for this he's got information about companies that will be involved with certain parts of the carbon fiber process that's where this has come from yeah yeah which is also interesting because you know you can make a carbon fiber kickstand help lord help us all uh on any ipad right it doesn't have to be a folding ipad for the kickstand to exist but you know he seems very confident so whatever is going on here like okay i mean

apple's been experimenting internally with folding iphones and ipads for a while now i just am still trying to get the details of like what the benefit is here if it's not just pure portability that this is a giant ipad that you can fold up and tuck away and then open up and is it this sort of like well yeah but you can also hold it like a book and have left and right or or put it down with the kickstand and have it be like a laptop um you know maybe this is your ipad studio mike i don't know so like i want apple to make a foldable ipad and i think they will i don't know if i 2024 maybe feels soon for me unless they've done something they're doing something i can't conceive of and just like this this report is weird to me because like there aren't the details that I want in here, right?

Which is what we were talking about. It's like, is this just an iPad that's got a really large screen and you just fold it up and put it in your bag because it's so big? Or like, is it what I want, which is like it's an iPad mini on the outside and an iPad Pro on the inside, right? Right, right. Well, that's one of the use cases that makes sense for any folding thing, like you said, that it's got to be an any, is you take the big,

beautiful screen, you fold it over, and what you've got is on one of the back sides is also a screen. And so now you've got a little tiny iPad mini slash giant iPhone, basically iPad mini, that you could use. And it it's a little thick it's a little heavy but you can use it and it's small and you can hold in your hand and you can read with it at night and then and then you unfold and it's like boom now i can draw things and it's super you know huge and beautiful um and then and then if if that's but that requires a screen on the back which is pretty wild and adds to the expense. And I am skeptical that they would do it. So the alternative to that is this idea of like, well, it's multiple modes, right?

Whether it's a horizontal or vertical, you've got like a book view and you've got like a keyboard view. And then, I don't know, and then you close it just to fold it and put it away. I don't know. I mean, you have used foldable devices and I haven't. So, I mean, you have a better perspective on this than me, but it seems like, you know,

that for Apple to do a folding device, they must have, like Apple standard is that they must have a reason why you would pay for it, right? There needs to actually be some appeal for it. And maybe that's in clever things they do in software but like there's got to be some reason for it folding isn't enough in and of itself it needs to print to bring benefit yeah i could imagine

that a big thing that they do is somewhat similar to the original iphone which is just like this thing exists but it's clunky everywhere else and we found a way to make it really smooth and fluid and like the you know the way that you transition between outside and inside is it works really well you know because other devices do this and they are now for like you know you're doing one thing on the other screen you open it up and it's there but there is an element of clunkiness to some of it. And maybe they found some, maybe they just work to make that smoother. But I still want to see something hardware related from them, which is the key part, as you're mentioning,

of like, what is your reason other than everyone else is doing it? That's not a good enough reason, I think, for Apple right now. Right. I think, like I i said i think one argument would be it is uh an ipad that is its own magic keyboard right yeah um yeah i mean i i'll grant you it's a touch screen and not a physical keyboard but if it's if it's a big

display and you can bend it basically so that it it suddenly goes on a table and you're doing work on it um interesting idea i'm a little skeptical of how that would actually work and whether that would be any good but i'm sure that they've tried all that stuff out um and we've talked about a lot about a larger ipad being great for artists and stuff but you know the folding part of it suggests that again But again, it's large, but also you can fold it to do something better. And what is that? And that's all missing here because, again, this is what happens when you get something from the supply chain. I have no doubt, though, that if Apple is going to do something like this, it's not just going to be, look at us, we think our folding is good.

It's going to be, we did clever things with our software yeah combined with the folding to do stuff that makes it great right like that that has to be the pitch for apple i mean the base i mean in some ways apple's done a lot of the work here because a folded thing is split view basically yeah so they've done some of the work here already but like what is that what is the the secret sauce sorry to use the secret sauce metaphor but like seriously what is the thing that's apple's combination of some maybe some hardware that's a little bit different or better in their in its approach than some of the stuff that's out there today and the software that underlies it that makes it make sense as a product.

A supply chain report isn't going to tell us that, so we just sort of have to sit here and scratch our heads. The information is reporting that Apple is working on a way for users to make their own AR apps using Siri. This is another... The rumor roundup today is there are two stories that everyone's reporting on

that Mike can't get his head around. This is the next one. I'm going to read you a quote from the information. Apple hopes that even people who don't know computer code could tell the headset via the Siri voice assistant to build an AR app that could then be made available via Apple's App Store for others to download. The tool, for example, could allow users to build an app with virtual animals moving around a room and over or around real-life objects without the need to design the animal from scratch, program its animations, and calculate its movement

in a 3D space of obstacles. This is, no offense to the information, this is nonsense what you've written here yeah it's either nonsense that they've written or it's nonsense that apple believes or somebody at apple wants to believe like it's a little like this is mike this is the headset equivalent of we're gonna make a car without a steering wheel right but like i feel what mean, okay, I may be being a bit harsh, but the way this is written is very strangely worded. But also, I just feel like you've got to know that, like, what is being said here is...

This isn't how it's going to be. No, you're right. It's nonsense. It's like animals moving, virtual animals moving around a room and over around real life objects. What kind of example is that? Like that's not an app. Out the need to design the animal from scratch.

Yeah, it's an app where animals move around. Animal movement app, come on. Here's what I think this is, if it's anything. This is some form of like a playgrounds, right? Potentially, it could be one. But the other is potentially it could be one but the other is this could be apple is trying to work on something akin to like a horizon worlds right that matter have which is essentially roblox in vr right yeah where people can make their own games and experiences and share them with others i think this feels like a tech demo like that that was you could even do this with siri and that has been seen

by somebody who's leaked this to the information right because i can see that right where it's like okay we're in a world we've mapped we've mapped a world um we've used our, you know, our interface to sort of like set the scene and we've dropped in some furniture or whatever. And you can even create custom elements using the voice assistant. And they show something about like put in a tiger and there's like, oh, there's a 3D model of a tiger. And you're like, make the tiger purple. And like, I can see that that would be like a demo. And I think you're like make the tiger purple and like i can see that that would be like a a demo and i think you're right like calling it an app is doing a lot of work here for something that feels more like a configuration or content or a playground or something that's a little more like

roblox right but but even then the the siri part of it seems a little more aspirational than anything else right because i have no i i have no doubt that they will want to do stuff like this, but creating it via the Siri voices is like, well, probably not, right? Like probably you could do that, but it would be a custom thing that's more like a wallpaper or an interface plugin or something like that. That's just like sort of very abstract and then sell it or give it away or distribute it somehow somewhere. Right. Like that's that that sounds like more. You're right. These are both

sort of us trying to interpret baffling reports into making sense and i don't know i don't know if the tea leaves are functional today or not but that's yes animals moving around a room it's just app app i don't mean to like i don't mean to to bag on people. The information do a great job. This just doesn't feel like very good reporting to me. It doesn't feel like it's passing just a general common sense test

that these are apps available in the App Store. It's not that, is it? I'm sure it's something. I'm sure you've heard something, but it's not that is it like i'm sure it's something i'm sure you've heard something but like it's not an app is it right made available downloadable content from somewhere that maybe you can message to a friend but like no one thinks seriously that you will be able to tell siri make an app and then with everything that is needed to distribute apps on

the app store that that's all it takes that that is not a thing that apple's going to do right right so there's there's i i think that this is a telephone game problem no 100 it is right right and then and then the uh the, you know how Mark Gurman has to say, like, the people said? Yeah. So this is like animals moving around a room, the telephone said, is what happened here, right? Where it's like, no, no, that's not what, no. And again, yeah, I don't want to fault the information. They have a source.

But again, as we often do here on upgrade we start to ask like well how did that source get their information and what does it sound like and in this case it sounds completely ridiculous so i think we have to assume that there is some super aspirational some demo that happened that somebody saw that has some things in it that when described became this paragraph, these paragraphs that are so bizarre in the information because it's a lot that got lost in translation, I think is what's going on here. And I will raise my hand up and say, I have gotten this from a 9to5Mac article

that's quoted this. Maybe I should subscribe to the information and read the whole thing. I should probably do that. But I'll just say these quotes to me, they don't, it doesn't make any sense. Information does great work. I think that they're trying to,

they got this detail about this product that everybody wants to know about. And they try to make sense of it because that's all they can do because it's a source giving them information. It's not their fault really that it's bananas. It's just bananas. That's like, it's just source giving them information it's not their fault really that it's bananas it's just bananas that's like it's just what it is um yeah yeah we should yeah we should subscribe to the information i i don't subscribe to the information either and it's mostly because like the articles

that they publish because they do a lot of really good work but the articles they publish that i'm interested in is such a tiny fraction. That's the thing. It's not necessarily what I want to do, but they do, they do good work. You know, this is a scoop, which is nice.

It's just so strange that we, we all have to like process, like, what does that mean? Um, and you know, sometimes what happens is that our friend Mark Gurman does a thing like the next week who's having, having gone to his sources and said,

what's the deal here? And get, he gets the like refined version where they're like, well, here's what's really going on. Um, and that might yet happen with this one. I wouldn't put it past him.

Yeah. Speaking of, we have a big report from Mark Ehrman. Mark Ehrman. He's been busy, busy, busy boy. He's done one of his,

I feel like, so this is his flag in the ground. I am telling you everything I know about a product now. Yes, including previous reports and current reports and here's what it all is about the headset. There's a bunch of quotes

I want to read in this one, so this will be a bit text heavy, but this one was one where it felt like trying to summarize some things weren't right like there's a lot of interesting detail so i'm going to go through each part and we can we can stop as as we would like to uh i do pay for bloomberg by the way i don't pay for the information i just pay for bloomberg because me too if we're detailing what we pay for we use mark's work every week that i kind of felt like it was the right thing oh yeah no i i absolutely pay for bloomberg plus i want to read like obviously everybody does great work in in

summarizing but sometimes i do actually want to read exactly what he said yeah and so oh i i find it and i i get other value out of bloomberg there's a bunch of stuff in there that a bunch of their newsletters that are great and so i found myself going hitting the paywall at bloomberg all the time me too and then mark started his newsletter where he was putting extra stuff in the paid version of the newsletter and i was like okay well if i'm ever going to subscribe to bloomberg now is the time and so i absolutely have for more than a year now i'll tell you once you subscribe to bloomberg absolutely have for more than a year now. I'll tell you, once you subscribe to Bloomberg you have to spend about a week tuning

your email preferences. Oh boy, there's a lot of emails. They want to send you a lot of email. I think I got it away now. So, first up is Mark Gurman is really doubling down on Reality Pro as the name. Now I'm assuming it will be called Apple Reality

Pro. Yeah, sure. I think maybe from now we can just call it that instead of the headset or we can use it interchangeably as we wish. Quote number one. Its core features will include advanced FaceTime based video conferencing and meeting rooms. The headset's

FaceTime software will realistically render a user's face and full body in virtual reality. Those avatars will allow two people, each of an Apple headset, to communicate and feel like they're in the same room. The technology differs from virtual meeting rooms on Meta's headset, which creates a more cartoon-like avatar of the user. Because of the immense processing power necessary for the feature, the headset will only support realistic avatars during one-on-one video chats. It will still allow for FaceTime sessions with several people,

but additional users will be displayed as an icon or Memoji. So what is an advanced avatar? What is that going to be? I feel like this is trying to communicate that they're going to try to make it seem like it's you right like human body proportions not cartoon body proportions and something that's based on your actual face um whether it's a face model that they build uh or they're looking at your expressions and trying to adjust i don't know right and it could be uncanny right but what what he's saying here is that the attempt is to have it

be less cartoony than meta which is you know their little blobby emoji like kind of uh kind of characters and more realistic that they felt like um because meta meta stuff does make it feel like you're in the same room in a way, right? Because it puts you in that virtual environment. There is some realism to it, but this is Apple trying to say, we want it to be even more like you're in the same room with the person you're talking to.

However, if you want to talk to more than one person, the rest of them will be cartoon avatars, which is a funny move. That's a funny quote. For processing power, probably more than anything else, right? Yeah. But like, I wonder, are we going to hit an uncanny valley here?

Memoji exists. It's weird to me. Just go with Memoji. Why overcomplicate it? I think they're trying to do better. I think that's what it is. Can we make it so that it's more you? And if they go down that path and they feel

like, actually, this is good, right? Like this is better than the all Memoji experience. I could see them going down that path. It's interesting that they went down that path and realized that it takes so much processing power to do it, that they have to limit it to a one-on-one conversation. But still, I mean, the truth truth is i think a lot of the applications for this stuff are going to be for groups of people um to be together at which point it's not going to be like this it's going to be memoji uh which is fine um i do worry about the uncanny valley thing right like if you take a scan of my face and and then you're trying to map map my expressions or stuff it's going to get real lawnmower man very like really fast i expect

there will still be a almost like a character creation kind of tool but it will be more human like i don't know like i can't imagine that i'm gonna use my my phone scan my face and then that's like imposed on a body like i just that's i can okay all right i can i could see them doing that they've got uh they've got your face already they got your face and face All right. I can. I could see them doing that. They've got your face already. They got your face and face ID, right? Yeah. They can put dots on your face and they can use their depth. I guess.

And stuff and make a model of a creepy life, you know, like death mask model of Mike. And then they map it and then they've got their cameras on the thing that are taking images of your face while it's in the headset. And then they do, right? Like, I think they could do it. But the question is, like, how weird is that? How's it going to look? Yeah. And also, like, there are many features that we'll talk about here where this feels like a 1.0, like, and this is it, right?

Like, you can only do it with two people. Now, you know in the future that will change. But it's like also being realistic they know that they can if they know they can do it with two people just do it two people because for the for the foreseeable future not a lot of people will be doing these calls with more than one person and they want to show it off right so it's like if this is if this is dazzling they're gonna be like oh you knowoji is great and all, but look at this. It's like you're really there with another person.

Whoa. And then everyone's like, wow, but it's just for one. But later, it'll be for more. Because it's 1.0. So you try to dazzle them, but then you've got that moment where you're like, but not completely yet. Everybody else is in Memoji, but your best pal can be human. All your second tier pals are memoji that's just how it's going to have to be uh german states that hand tracking is going to be the

primary interface this is something that we've heard before uh but a lot of pinching tapping pointing that kind of stuff yep yep it's going to be a real minority report going on there. I get it. Like I, again, with the quest too, I've got the little handset thingies. They are nice because they allow for a specificity of input that the hand gestures, which the quest actually does have don't provide, but they are abstract. And I can see that you know apple doesn't want you to have game controllers in your hands when you're using this they want you to feel natural and that means um that means

gestures that means gestures so they better be good right because that's the that's the danger of relying on gestures is you've got to be really good at recognizing physical gestures in order to use them quote gaming gaming is expected to be a popular offering from third-party developers so i don't know how those two things go together there will be some games that will be able to use hand tracking so my guess is that there will be controllers that is my guess is that is that they'll the apple will either have a partner or apple will make their own it sounds i mean apple has never really made a game controller so it may be that they are going to use you know have a third-party standard for third-party vr input controllers maybe they'll make themselves i don't know but like having used the quest having those little grippy things in your hands makes a big difference when you're doing certain kinds of game input.

But I can also see them saying what we really want is using gestures for gaming. I just have a hard time believing that that's going to be all there is. So they're going to have to do controller support. Right. Because both things can be true. Right. both things can be true right like they could make a controller but not put it in the box or they could spec out a controller to somebody else and not put it in the box or whatever right as you're saying which and but there'd be some games that would and could work with hand gestures and that would be great but then some that you would need a controller for like if you want to do something a little bit more specific

or for a lot of companies that would want to port their existing VR game over, they will build controllers in mind. And so that's not going to fly for a lot of those games. Apple are developing VR video content of their own. And they're also pitching other companies like Disney to actually make video content you can be involved in like feel like you're in but also they're working on creating environments for watching traditional

content in a 3d space which we've spoken about before yeah i i actually think this is a winner um one is the idea that they're going to try to do i think vr like sports is a good example where their mls partnership might be a good example or their major league baseball thing where and i can see them working with other uh other companies um because yeah immersive especially for live sports is interesting right like the nba has done this a little bit on the quest where you can there there are a handful of games they do every year that are in the Horizons worlds and you can go and sit courtside. And it's 180 degree camera.

So basically it's like you're sitting courtside and you can turn your head and you can watch the players go by. And that's kind of cool. And then the 3D stuff, I know we have talked about it before, but the idea very quickly is that the advantage of it over something like a 3D movie

is that a 3D movie, they have the projector and you put on the glasses and it's like dimmer because they have to take half the light from the left eye and half of the right and 3d content in a headset, you're wearing the headset already. So it's just 3d content. And not only have there been lots of 3d movies made, right? So they can put all of those in Apple's library or on streaming apps or whatever, you know, try to get the 3d content to have another use for it outside of the movie theater. That's kind of cool.

Um, and then you can do other stuff. You can do virtual, uh, movie theaters with your friends and stuff. So it, which is basically share play, taking up a level,

like all this stuff has been worked on in the background. I think, uh, in part to add that stuff to iOS and Mac OS, but also to get it ready like shareplay is a great example of something that's probably um prioritized because of the headset thing and i think that i think that there's a a market having watched a couple movies entirely wearing the quest 2 and it seems like oh you're wearing a headset for the two hours and it's like yeah but it's

it's not a bad experience and with what the specs of this thing are meant to be i think it will be actually a really nice experience so uh so yeah it's this one again not enough to sell it on its own but it's a i think a good feature that could be popular the headset will be able to serve as an external display for a connected Mac, says Mark Gurman, and replicate many functions of iPhones and iPads. The headset's operating system, internally called XROS, will have many of the same features as an iPhone and iPad, but in a 3D environment. That includes Safari, Photos, Mail, Messages, and the Calendar app. And it will also have apps for the company's services, such as the App Store to install third-party software, TV Plus, music, and podcasts. The company is working on health tracking functions as well.

Not surprising, right? Like the ability to run iPad and iPhone apps just in the space. And then Connect, which is actually what Meta does, connect to your desktop. Yeah. It doesn't do it very well, but you know, the idea that if you've got a Mac,

you'll essentially be able to do screen sharing and connect to the Mac and have a virtual Mac. I've actually been pretty impressed with that experience myself. It's worked very well for me. On Meta? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's what I don't, I mean, I think it's janky but i think it was i was impressed that it worked at all um it's low resolution and it's kind of janky but yeah you can sit i mean literally what we're talking about here is you can sit at a virtual desk in a virtual room and have your a virtual version of your mac screen on the desk um which and you might say why but like if you're in a meeting and you want to do, like

the idea here is like you're, it's for serious business, you know, like you're, you're, you're doing a virtual business meeting and you can have your virtual laptop with you while you're talking and presenting or checking a spreadsheet. I don't know, whatever. So that's an interesting idea as well, that, that you've got access to Mac max via a remote connection and then essentially iphone and ipad apps just in the environment um create a you know 3d um apple device dashboard around you in theory with that you could create 10 screens right because it's all virtual so that's cool right exactly you can do that in meta stuff you can just add screens so like you could do you could add different apps

in different places right like put this app here put this app here put this app over here um and then if if their hand tracking is good right then you're then you're doing you know you're doing touch gestures essentially government does say that that there is an expectation that you would just be able to use a keyboard mouse and all that kind of stuff too right sure you could because you can then use it in the ar mode uh like the mixed reality modes you can see the keyboards see the screens think of how many people jason would be able to drop their 16 inch macbook pros if this became a reality. Oh yeah, just put your MacBook Pro in your head, and then it's as big a screen as you need it to be. Okay, so yeah, the experience

quote, the experience should feel familiar to Apple users when they put the headset on. The main interface will be nearly identical to that of an iPhone and iPad, featuring a home screen with a grid of icons that can be reorganized. Users will be able to pin widgets such as the weather calendar appointments email and stock market performance

among their app icons uh what what no i mean come on right that can't be right well you know again i just think about my experience with the quest and like the quest you you wake up you know, again, I just think about my experience with the Quest. And like the Quest, you wake up, you know, in that virtual world in your cave in the Tropic Islands or in space. And there's like a dashboard controller in front of you. And if you tap on one of the things, like a big App Store window shows up. So it's not that far fetched that it would be something like that which is a it's got to be that within something else though right that's my that's my guess is that they'll you'll have a home screen like i assume it'll be more like the quest where you'll have you'll have a

home screen floating in space and you'll be able to put widgets on the home screen or around and then you'll have you'll you'll have some controls to take you where you want to go because that's what meta decided to do and i think it's a good idea i wouldn't i don't think i would want to put it on and then be in like floating in an empty space of just a home screen right or imagine like the home screen is huge and you've got to like fly over it and find the right icon or whatever like these are silly things but i i think i think meta actually is is a pretty good model here which is they put you in a virtual space but it's a virtual space with a a launcher essentially you know and a notification center and all those things that you would have in a phone

or a tablet and instead they're in you know they're kind of hovering in this virtual space that you're you're standing in and that's about right i mean i really i really hope because i just read that and it's like if that is all it is that's wild right i mean i really i really hope because i just read that and it's like if that is all it is that's wild right that like that you've got to have something that feels like you're in a different environment they're just like you've got an ipad projected in front of you like i feel like that's not enough to to truly be like a wowing kind of aspect imagine like a a uh an eight foot high well okay maybe not that uh a uh an 80 inch diagonal ipad floating in front of you while you're at the beach or on a mountain or something that's probably what it is right yeah it's probably an interface an interface

in a 3d environment yes Right? That would be better. You're not going to like this part, Jason. All right? No, I'm not. I've told this already. Quote, Apple made the decision to offload the battery from inside of the headset to an external pack. It rests in a user's pocket and connects via a cable.

The headset can last about two hours per battery pack in line with rival products. The battery, however, is large, roughly the size of two iPhone 14 Pro Maxes stacked on top of each other, or about six inches tall or more than half an inch thick. Now, I will say that's not going in anyone's pocket, right? Like, I expect that thing will have a clip on it because let's be realistic here. So Gurman does say there are still prototypes of an internal battery,

but the issue that they are having is with the powerful M2 chips and all the other stuff they've got inside of the headset. If they have a battery in it, it gets too hot to wear. That has continued to be a problem. So as he is saying right now, that he is expecting there will be an external battery

that you will clip to yourself. Seems inelegant. Yep, but maybe otherwise impossible. If this is, and I know this is the million dollar question for this thing, which is, if this is perceived the the million dollar question for this thing which is if this is perceived as being a tech demonstration and a developer kit having a battery that you put in your pocket is something you could get away with yep if it's you know but judged as a consumer

product that's uh like we've done all this work to make it uh cordless except for the cord that you stick in your you know back pocket like then we all feel like alex cox right we've all got a cable running into a pocket where there's a battery pokemon go related yeah my feeling on this one is if you look at all the stuff we were mentioning before right about what they're trying to do visually they're trying to make things look real they're trying to do this in very impressive trying to make things look real. They're trying to do all this very impressive hand tracking. All of that takes a lot of processing power. Yeah. If it means that version one

has to have a battery attached to a cable, I don't think that's going to be important in the grand vision of the product. That it will demo so well because it will feel so incredible that you won't care that you've got this one cable. That's what I think anyway. You can just buy another battery or whatever.

I don't know. Something like that. Quote, to show off the new headset, Apple is creating a store within a store, their Apple Store concept, an area within its retail outlets dedicated to demonstrating the product. It's like a plexiglass cage or something well i said yeah you know what i have to actually read the i didn't i cut out the full quote i now need to sign into bloomberg just because it felt so ridiculous to me at the time

but now now i'm here i'm like oh no i, I should read it. But this is obviously kind of like the Apple Watch, right? Like in the idea of bringing people in, right? There's not a lot of detail there. The company did something similar when it launched the Apple Watch is all it really says. The part that I'm looking for is that something along the lines of the hope will be that people will come in and buy AirPods. I got it. Yeah, I got it. Apple has acknowledged these challenges internally and it's been trying to set realistic expectations for the product

one benefit of the device the company believes is that it could spur customers to visit apple retail stores not necessarily to buy the product but to try it out they may then purchase another device such as an ipad or airpods whose idea is that you know what i mean all right like oh i know what we'll do here this thing that's cost us this many years in development we'll use it to upsell airpods for people that are coming in to look at it now i imagine i mean and i know this is probably not how it happened but i imagine a cynical meeting where there's somebody like are people going to buy these things nah but once they're in the store they'll buy some other crap you know what this reads to me though jason actually this reads to me as the person in the retail division who is pitching the idea of the store within a store concept is using this

on a slide as an additional reason why they should get their budget right because somebody else is like no no let's just send we're only going to sell a million of them let's sell it online only they're like no no no we got to put it in the stores so people see it and they're blown away by it and they'll buy it and then and then but what will they do they won't buy it so what will they do and it's like uh i don't know the bus and airpods or an ipad or whatever this would be the thing that pushes anyway but you mentioned that apple is expecting to sell 1 million units in year one. And listen to this. In a rare move, it is also not planning to make a profit on the initial version, even at the high price, indicating that the company is taking a long-term view on the platform. That's what we've been talking about.

Yeah. Except that's what's happening at $3,000, apparently. Yeah, maybe. It's if we're tying those two things together which i think we can possibly but nevertheless even if okay let's say it costs three thousand dollars if that's what it costs what it costs for whatever they're doing if i believe that i mean we're never going to know that right but if i believe that they're not planning to take a profit on it, I can at least stomach the idea of it costing three grand more. You know what I mean, right? Like if it costs three grand, but it costs three grand because 40% of it is going into Apple's pocket,

it would annoy me because it's just like, you're not doing a good enough job here if you want people to use it. But if it costs three grand to make the tech the way that they are planning to make it because they believe that it's important and it's a bet that they're making, I'm more willing to accept that as the cost. I think the damning number here is one million units in year one. Just keeping in mind, that's nothing for an Apple product. That's nothing. It's absolutely nothing. nothing this is essentially admitting that this is an advanced technology preview slash developer kit

and that they are going to this is not the product right this is the product that what is the deep thought thing i'm i'm the you know i'm not the ultimate answer i'm the thing that precedes that other thing that asks the question of the ultimate answer anyway it's head checkers guide to the galaxy you You get it. That is what this is. It's like, I am not the popular headset. I am the one that precedes it and I will usher it into existence. But now, no, only a million of me will be sold. But next year, oh, or at a time that we will not announce, but sometime nearly in the future, another product may exist that will be popular. That's, I mean, a million.

Apple has not spent all this money on selling a million of a headset, right? Like, and so this seems to me to be an admission, at least in part, even if they don't market it this way, at least in part that that's what this is. It's like a million. Yeah, it's like, we're not, what I like about this

is it shows some realism, which is, yeah, we know we're not going to sell any of these. Like that's not the point. The point is to get it out there and to demonstrate this and to get people excited for whatever comes next.

And there's going to be a lot of analysis that we are going to do about their marketing because I owe to be a fly on the wall again of how they market this. And if they dare to do about their marketing because i owe to be a fly on the wall again of how they market this and if they dare to talk about the future when they market this because i think they and i know i've said this before but like i think that's what they need to do i think when you come out with a product that nobody's going to buy but you want everybody to get excited about you got to

get you got to get the hype machine going you got to say look this is a start it's for explorers and developers and but we're not stopping and there's more to come even if it's just there's more to come and there's you know we think that this is going to be a huge uh thing in the in the future and we are on it and there are going to be further products in this product line but this is where it starts i think they need to really lean into that because you don't want this thing to be interpreted as, well, here's Apple's entry in VR. It costs so much money. They're not going to sell any of them. So it's a flop.

And they don't want it to be seen as a flop, right? They want to be seen as them priming the pump for what comes next, which is why, even though this, I think, one million thing is probably not, you know, it's probably not something Apple wanted somebody to tell Mark Gurman. thing is probably not, you know, it's probably not something Apple wanted somebody to tell Mark Gurman. I do expect that as we get closer to this thing coming out, that Apple will probably, probably use whatever tools it has at its disposal to set expectations, right? Because you need to manage the expectations of this product. Because by any other product standards, not selling a million in year one for Apple is really not good. Like Apple products, like the Apple Watch sold what? 300 million in year one? I don't know.

30 million? I don't know how many it was. It's a lot. A lot more than one, I think, is the point. So that's my question. Actually, Gurman wrote about this this weekend, too. And there, he was talking more about the risk of the headset. And it was a little more like, it's not going to be an iPhone.

And it's not. And it's not going to be an Apple Watch. And this is all true. It's not going to be an Apple Watch. And this is all true. The question is, you know, how do you get people to view it? Here, I'll quote from it. Apple sold a million iPhones within months of the product's debut.

The iPad topped a million units on its first 28 days. And that's just the start. The company sold more than 10 million iPhones in its second year and 15 million iPads in the tablet's first eight months. Even the Apple Watch made it to over 10 million in its first year. So there you go. That was a product that was sort of, well, not troubled, but like sluggish and a new product in a new category. And it scored, you know, 10 million sales.

And they're talking about a 10th of that for this. So I'm not saying that this product it's fundamentally bad or anything like that i'm saying they need to manage expectations because clearly they now are aware right like this is not going to be the product that sets the world on fire because it's so expensive um but that they're laying the ground work for the future of this platform and that's fine just you know they're going to take their lumps unless they're very clear about that the latter part of this report has actually made me feel a bit more personally more positive about the endeavor that they are facing up to what the task is ahead and what this part of it will be, right?

That like, we know it's expensive. So to make it as least expensive as possible, we'll just sell it for what it costs, right? We know we're not going to sell a lot of these and that's totally fine because the people that this is going to, they're early adopters, the developers, they're evangelists, people who are going to get it and use it and try and understand it and have maybe a higher threshold for understanding it and dealing with what will be some weirdness in places right um the idea of setting up this thing in the store like they

just want people to see it and people to be aware of what's coming and like i feel like the thing that you've been hoping for seems more likely that they would stand on stage and be like this is the beginning of a 10-year plan that we have that everyone will have one of these right and whether that happens or not isn't the point but like if they are up front about that everything else will make more sense everything else will be more palatable but as if they do it however this report kind of makes it feel like they have got their feet on the ground a little bit about what it's going to take to make this thing the way that they want and that's even stuff like the battery pack they're being realistic

right about what it is they're able to make and it be a good experience and so yeah this this report i know a lot of people are taking this report in a lot of different directions. John Gruber wrote a great piece about it, where he's kind of trying to break it down and understand what is this product even and is struggling. And I mean, we're all

struggling with that. But this article, for me, was very good at explaining maybe what Apple thinks this thing is going to be. Actually, I think John Gruber is writing about a different article, but it's touching on the same kind of things of like, what will we use it for?

And it's like, it's hard to really know with this stuff. I think we're going to need to see it. However, this has made me feel more. Enthused to see it. Than I have been previously. So we'll see. Yeah. If you enjoy this show.

And want more of it. Please subscribe to Upgrade Plus. Because you will hear no ads. And you will get bonus content every week. So with every episode of Upgrade Plus. You're getting longer content at the end of the show. Today we're going to be talking about some of Jason's experiences and impressions of using the Google

Nest Hub instead of his Echo Show. And we're also going to decide and set our next challenge topic that we're going to be doing as Upgrade Plus, as the Upgrade Plus Challenge. So we've had some recommendations from Upgradians, and we're going to pick one and then maybe do it in the next episode or in the next couple of weeks. If you sign up at GetUpgradePlus.com for just $5 a month or $50 a year,

you will get Upgrade Plus, which is longer and ad-free. You get access to the RelayFM members' Discord. You get access to tons of content available just for RelayFM members. This is podcast, but also includes newsletters. It includes wallpapers for your devices and so much more. Go and sign up today at getupgradeplus.com.

You'll be getting tons of stuff for it, and you'll be helping support the show as well. Our thanks to everybody who supports us, and thank you if you decide to sign up. I have some Ask Upgrade questions upgrade questions for you Jason to finish out today's episode. Peter asks the discussion of chip binning makes me

wonder if Apple might control the number of active cores in the future of a software license. Could that be a way to provide an upgrade path for entry level Mac Pros where you pay at some later time to unlock more cores or RAM. Now, bear with me here a second,

because I've had this random thought, right, of like, at a certain point, might they just ship the same chip in every machine and you just pay an in-app purchase to get more cores available to you? It seems weird, but not impossible. Well, the RAM has costs, right? So I think it's not likely. The ram ram has costs right so i think that it's i think it's

not likely um the binning happens right because these are these um chips aren't all up to spec and so they can sell a version with the gpu cores uh disabled uh that are ones that were not all the gpu cores worked so it would require them to have a level of confidence about what they were generating. I mean, yeah, again, I think the variation is basically because it's part of the chip production process. But sure, if there was a case where Apple could make a perfect chip that had all the cores working, all the GPU cores, would they consider making an in-app purchase for more cores being activated after the fact? I suppose they would. That would be another gate. People get very angry when you build

features into a product, hardware features, and then you don't enable them unless you pay more money because it's like there is this implicit promise that you're paying for the hardware that you've got and not having it be sort of a completely arbitrary thing but it's a funny thing to think about i mean but i i think the truth is

that this has more to do with the production of chips not being able to generate chips with every gpu core lit up than anything else cliff and said, in episode 442, Mike mentioned if he was the CEO of Twitter, he would remove third-party API access since the business model of Twitter is based on advertising and the necessary analytics can't be provided to advertisers

from the users with third-party clients. Some time ago, Mike also said as an owner of a podcast network, he was opposed to services like Spotify controlling the podcast behind their paywall and collecting valuable user data to help to sell to advertisers. Is this a contradiction?

I included this question to highlight a point of like, I'm capable of holding more than one point of view at a time. Where like, what I was saying was, if I was the CEO of Twitter, but I am not and will never be ceo of twitter i am the owner of a podcast network of a podcast network yeah exactly what i'm if i was given the task of running twitter i would cut off third-party apps differently to how elon did but i would cut off third-party apps because i am now running that business and need to make that business the best

that it can be. And that's what you're going to do. If you had the time, you might see if you could make it so that the third-party apps could remain if they showed your ads, right? But I think we all realize that at this point, Twitter is not capable of something like that. And so the answer would be, you just got to shut them down if you're a ceo of twitter as i said before like social networks no other social network has an apr like this like you want to control your platform it's your platform right yeah it's yours similar to i want to control my platform it's mine which is this podcast network and the idea of people you know spotify buying up shows and putting them behind their paywall and hiding them which funnily enough there was a report in bloomberg this week that jason sent me hasn't done great for spotify

ultimately no no it's it's actually been kind of a disaster and they're retrenching and they're changing their approach and they've lost a lot of money on it and it hasn't really worked and uh it's fascinating although one of the things that is mentioned sort of semi-threateningly in there is about the fact that Spotify, if you're listening to a podcast through Spotify's player, it's not like Spotify gets to insert the ads, right? Like the ads are inserted by whoever is serving the podcast. And the suggestion there is like, well, but Spotify wants to get in there. They want to be like Netflix or YouTube and be the ones inserting the ads. I think, and I'm curious what you think about this. I think that Spotify will end up doing that, but not in the way that is threatened in that article. I think the answer is

Spotify wants to be a major player in podcast ad serving, which they already are. And that'll be inside and outside of Spotify. And they'll make money that way, potentially, possibly. Yeah, maybe. But I think it's less likely that they're going to say, oh, if you want to be a podcast inside Spotify, we're going to insert some ads in your podcast that that came from outside of spotify without your approval or whatever like that seems like a weird uh place for them to go down but certainly mike if you were ceo of spotify you would have a very different opinion about what spotify should do yeah than if you're running relay fm which is your role yep so it's only a contradiction if i do actually run both of those companies which which i don't

uh the spotify ads thing is interesting to me because a lot of people try and say i want to be like youtube it's like well but yeah but the thing is youtube started their industry the podcast industry existed a long time before spotify and people got used to the way that things are done like if spotify came to us and said hey we want to sell your ads i can tell you it's a worst deal for me i know it is so why would i do it like they may be able to do something kind of akin to what youtube does of inserting ads before the beginning or like randomly in a show but then i don't think listeners would necessarily stick with spotify because it's the podcast app that has all the ads in it like honestly i think the time for that is over what they are more likely to do you were just saying which is like

they could just become one of the larger podcast advertising agencies who offer companies to other podcasters at whatever rates they want to pay which they could do if they want to but i also don't think that's spotify's business they have their own dynamic ad insertion system that they would put together and it would work in spotify but it would also work outside of spotify and it would be you know maybe there are different rates for the insertions that are happening in spotify where they have more data like i could see them doing that but the the bloomberg report was interesting because it was basically saying that this is not, this was an interesting pivot on their part, but it really hasn't worked out. That podcasts are not going to be the thing that saves Spotify. And the challenge with Spotify is

the challenge with any streaming music service, which is they spend so much money uh back to the music licensing that you know they there's not there's not a lot of profit or any profit that can be wrung out of it um which is that's yeah it's something's gonna have to give there but the podcast strategy seems to have been um not the right one and and i think podcasts will remain a part of their strategy but they're going to rethink it it's not the thing that's going to make them a larger profitable company. Producing original Spotify podcasts is probably not going to be their thing. And in fact, I would go so further and to say those Spotify exclusive podcasts also are probably in the long run not going to be a thing because they're probably not worth it for them. They're probably better off having podcasts playing be in their app.

They're probably better off having podcast playing be in their app. And like we said, maybe make money by being a podcast ad network of some kind or platform of some kind. But paying a lot of money to paywall or Spotify exclusivize certain podcasts may not actually make a lot of sense for them because the money they're spending is more than the benefit they're getting. Taylor asks, for those of us that are now new to RSS, what RSS readers do you recommend? Net Newswire is where I would start because it's free and it's new. It's been around forever, but it's new. They brought it back. Brent Simmons and a team of people working on it as an open source project i use the ipad app every day there's a mac app that is comparable to the ipad app works on iphone um there are a bunch of others uh reader i like that's the one i use d-e-r it's very nice beautiful um and i am actually using oh what's this one called?

Unread. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Which is very simple. And I have that on my iPhone. I think they just released a new version too. I'm trying it where my Twitter app used to be.

I have RSS instead. Trying to be a little, see Mike, I'm trying to be a little better about not having my default when I'm bored somewhere looking at my phone to be reading social media. And instead, it's looking at my RSS feeds. One of the good things... Wait, not good thing. One of the things that makes this stuff easier these days is a lot of these apps

don't require that you need to also use an RSS service. It used to be that they did, but a lot of them are doing like iCloud syncing and stuff. I use Feedbin. So do I. But the reason I use Feedbin is mostly because, not because it's a sync service,

but because it's got a bunch of extra features. That's where all my newsletters go. I have a Feedbin email address that I forward all my newsletters to. And so they're in there with the RSS feed. They're all together. And I really like that. So I,

you know, maybe, you know, the next frontier for this is that like net newswire doesn't really have smart lists and stuff. And what it means is that I can't subscribe to very high volume RSS feeds because I can't filter them out. And I mostly just read a today view in net newswire of my latest feed items.

And then somebody was saying, well, you know, you can add Twitter lists as a feed. And you can in feed bin, but then every single post in my Twitter list appears and it overwhelms the stories that are in there. Now there's hundreds of Twitter posts and a few stories and that's no good. So at some point I will probably either they'll bring it to NetNewsWire or I will experiment with using a different service for that because I would like the ability to have sort of like my curated list and also be able to dip into a larger kind of like stream of whether it's Twitter posts or news headlines or whatever. So that's a little complexity.

But I would start with the Newswire because it's free. And then there are, yeah, there are a bunch of others, Reader, Unread and others. Check them out. Chance asks, do you think Apple will ever bring back live musical guests to keynotes? Would you welcome them back if they did uh i would because nothing gives me more cred with my daughter than listing all the famous music artists that i've seen live that she hasn't see it was a question on jeopardy see it was a question on jeopardy the other day and i was like seen her right like seen her at an apple event drake seen him at an apple event the weekend seen her at an Apple event. Drake, seen him at an Apple event.

The Weeknd, saw him at an Apple event. Right? Like it goes on and on and on. But I don't know. I think the question is, is Apple ever going to bring back keynotes? And my guess is no. I think they're going to have videos that they might invite some of us to go see in the Steve Jobs theater

but I kind of feel like those days are over there is a lot of questioning right now again about if WWDC is coming back because I think there was some article that I was sent around I saw that Apple was dropping COVID testing

at their campuses. Mike Hurley says that means nothing for whether the BBC is coming back or not. Zach, by the way, truth check, fast checking me. Drake didn't perform. He just spoke. What is speaking live on stage but a performance? It was actually a poor one. He kind of was confused and rambled.

He was wearing a sweet sweet vintage apple uh jacket but it doesn't matter i saw him live right that's all that's all that matters i saw him live you two most of them twice live yeah i can go on right kanye right after he he made trouble and what we thought was trouble for kanye we didn't know we didn't yet know the scale of what kanye trouble could mean sure saw him live apple event yeah i got the list goes on kind of amazing but i think those days are not that there won't be like um apple i think apple will probably do more like music events like festivals and and stuff like that but that's not the same as like at a product event i don't think that's going to happen again. Yeah, I still think that WWDC will be more like what it was last year going forward than going back to 2019.

I think that's it. I think that's what it is now. Because even at the last WWDC, there were different rules. Apple, two weeks before or something like that, stopped their employees from coming to campus anymore because of rising COVID rates. Right. But then had WWDC. So I don't think you can supplant one rule on top of the other for them. No, I think they're going to,

I think the model now is for big events, they will do a press event that will include some hands-on time and they will be a simulcast of the live streamed video that they're going to put on the internet. WWDC, it will be a simulcast of the live streamed video that they're going to put on the internet wwc it'll be a press event plus a select developers invited to campus event with some ancillary events throughout the week and that's it i think that's what it is now and and it may just be those two uh who knows i don't know it's a different world now yep and Brian asks

is there a Sonos speaker roughly comparable to the new HomePod I'm not looking for portable is there a good start or option it's I think very helpfully named

Sonos One that's the one you want to check out yes and that's what I have in my office I have a stereo pair of Sonos Ones

yep sound great I mean I'm looking at the UK website here but 200 pounds so uh vastly more it's very heavy effective yeah very that's not what you meant yeah it's 200 or i guess it's it's 219 dollars okay right now in the us are they still selling the one sl or whatever that's the one that doesn't have the yeah the one sl is whatever? That's the one that doesn't have the, yeah, the 1SL is $199. Okay.

That's the one that doesn't have the voice assistant in it because you don't really need that. I like it, but it's not necessary at all. Like, I like speaking to Giancarlo Esposito, you know? Did you know he's the voice, by the way? Yes, yes, I did. I actually have a Sonos One and a sonos one sls my stereo pair right um but i never use the voice assistant i have it turned off i like it just because he pulls the music i saw giancarlo esposito getting off a plane when we came back from la

interesting he's so cool looking he's so cool looking if you would like to send in a question of your own just open your browser and go to upgradefeedback.com or click the link in the show notes and please send in your questions for us to answer in a future episode of Ask Upgrade thank you so much for listening to today's episode, episode 444

in fact, if you want to check out Jason's writing at sixcolors.com that's where you should go and find everything that Jason and Dan and the gang are up to you can also hear Jason's podcast at theincomparable.com. That's where you should go and find everything that Jason and Dan and the gang are up to. You can also hear Jason's podcast at theincomparable.com and here on RelayFM.

And you can listen to my shows on RelayFM as well and check out my work at cortexbrand.com. I have a new product. Please go check it out. It's called Psychic Notepad.

I'm very proud of it. You can send us your feedback. It's a psychic notepad? What? Does it read your thoughts and put them down itself? This is unnecessary bullying. This is cyberbullying?

It's only cyberbullying because it's on Zoom. Exactly. That's what makes it cyberbullying. Whenever I say this is cyberbullying, that's what I'm referring to. Go, everybody go buy the psychic notebook then, and it'll read your mind. Sidekick notebook. Cortex brand. That's what the cortex means.

It's your mind. All right. And it's being read That's what the Cortex means. It's your mind. All right. And it's being read by the sidekick note. Do I make fun of your website? Do I do that? You know, like, oh, what about the fifth color?

No, I don't do this. You know? I'm just saying you're selling a product. You should enunciate more. I'm being your mom now. I'm trying not to spend all this time

talking about it on Upgrade, right? But I just wanted to sneak in a little plug there. Notebook. But also, people can go there. They'll see that something new is there, if they know what I'm up to. You're British. Do the British enunciation thing. People love that. Oh, I don't have that anymore.

I lost that a long time ago. You Americans took that away from me. Oh, alright. Okay. You can send us your feedback and questions at upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. Thank you to ZocDoc for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening.

We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye to five of the colors. The sixth one knows what it did. You know what you did.