Upgrade - 445: Headwinds

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

How you read Apple's financial results really depends on what you want to see in them. We break down the numbers, ponder the state of Apple's design group, and reconsider what Apple may or may not be folding in the near future.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 445 today's show is brought to you by rocket money electric and capital one my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley i have a snell talk question for you. It comes from Wes. Wes wants to know, Jason, are you on Mastodon? And which of the six accounts is Jason? I don't know why search on Mastodon works the way it

does, where your accounts that are redirected to other accounts still show up in search. You'd think that they would say, no, no, no, you can't find me here i don't know and i don't need to be written nobody write in with an explanation of why this is that good actually anyway uh as it says on all the pages that refer to me now basically it's uh j snell at zeppelin.flights i brought it back yesterday or sat, inspired by Stephen Hackett,

who created eWorld.social. That jerk. So good. So good. All these good server names, I'm like, ooh, do I want to, do I have a good, you know? I like the joke of it all,

so it's like it's tempting me. You might have to get on social media. Well, you could also do, I will say you could also get on and make your own little novelty domain and all of that. And then just set up automation to autopost for you and you wouldn't actually be there. That would be something you do bots. But anyway, I'm there.

I was on maston.social. I decided that I was going to revive zeppelin.flights, which was in a weird, I shut it down. But the Fediverse doesn't seem to know that you're dead. But the Fediverse doesn't seem to know that you're dead. So it still listed Zeppelin.Flights, even though it had been shut down since 2018. So when I turned it back on and created my account and hadn't redirected anything from Mastodon.Social yet, I started picking up all these followers. And it was literally, I think, servers had been asking Zeppelin.Flights to talk to it since 2018. Mike, I didn't just shut it down because it was running on Masto host, which it is again. I didn't just shut it down.

I shut it down. I let the domain expire. Whoa. I repurchased the domain like a month ago. I turned on Masto host again for Zeppelin.Flights on Saturday. And remember, they nuke the configuration. So it's like a completely empty server. I create a new user with my name.

And suddenly the Fediverse is like, you have 73 followers. Like what? Amazing. So I guess that's how resilient it is. But also pretty funny. There is a iMic mike on zeppelin dot social or zeppelin dot flights i should say sorry i must have signed up at some point on zeppelin dot flights i don't know when that was august 2018 apparently well what you should do

i'll say i can send you an invite link what you you should do is reclaim that name. And then if you ever set up a Mastodon something somewhere else, you can then forward that. Because right now, those are all like ghost users because they have to be recreated. Ooh, ghost users. Anyway, it's super easy to use this Mastodon. It's not complicated at all. Also, I will say the process of transferring, people are like, oh, yeah, you transfer your followers and it's not a problem. Like, okay,

well, when you've got whatever I had, 10, 11, 12,000 followers, I don't know. It's not so easy because I do the transfer and it's like you have a thousand followers and I'm like, what? And then I spend the weekend watching the activity view and it's like a whole, like everybody at this server is now following you. Everybody at this server is now following you. So obviously the way a transfer works is the server checks mastodon.social, mastodon.social says, oh, Jason moved. And then it, then it looks for Zeppelin.flights and asks it. And so then the server got real slow because although I'm not paying for the cheapest masto host i'm not paying for the most expensive masto host either um and it uh it's got it got slow and and then but i kept checking and it was like now you've got

3 000 followers now you've got 7 000 followers now i've got about 10 so it's sort of caught up but in the meantime dan also transferred his stuff dan moran transferred his stuff and that slowed the server down again so we're going through it again but it's uh it's working and uh and in the long run i decided that yeah if i it feels it feels to me and this is what steven hackett told me it feels to me like our community generally just sort of this community of of apple and tech and stuff like that that stuff seems to have moved to mastododon. All our engagement on Twitter is dropped to nothing. And people seem to be on Mastodon. It's funny because there are other aspects of stuff that I follow on Twitter.

Like that sports list I talk about, it's just going on like nothing happened to Twitter. Seriously. It's kind of amazing. But they don't care. Why would they care? It's just us that cares. But our community cares and has moved. And I thought, well, you know what? steven's right i think our community is here um i do kind of want

to own my own uh place in this fativerse in the universe of of alternate socials um i already had zeppelin flights why not it's, it still appears as a ghost. I'll just bring it back. So I brought it back. So it's for any of my collaborators at The Incomparable and Six Colors, which are all part of the same corporation. We have a Zeppelin. It's zeppelin.flights. And that's where I am.

Yeah. It was over the weekend, like stevens and seeing yours i was like oh this is this looks like fun but right i don't really know how realistically how fun it is to move it the bots i mean stevens stevens using a different method than me i'm using make.com he's i forget if he's using if this then that or something else um we were using make.com for a bunch of automations on the incomparable and six colors and adding mastodon to those automations was really easy and that's why that's why i suggested if you really wanted to you could you could set up an instance in a in a user and just create an auto post thing that posts the it's essentially like if you'd like to

see what i'm doing, follow this account. It's not you really. It's your podcast. When your podcast goes live and when your podcast posts and when you're – it would be that stuff. When you're selling a new something and it wouldn't be so much interactive as sort of a live stream for Mike Hurley. You could do that if you wanted to. Do people want that though? I don't know.

I don't know if people want that to be honest. Well, I mean they wouldn't follow that if you wanted to want that though like i don't know i don't i don't know that to be honest well i mean they wouldn't they wouldn't follow you if if they didn't want that but i guess like that's the question is would they follow you yeah but the the issue for me though is like if i have a like an active presence like that i am going to be reading it more and stuff and that's like kind of what i'm trying to not do right now because i just get sucked in forever so like i don't know i need to think about it but i haven't you know where i am right now i'm happy where i am right now i don't have an active presence on any text based social media sure maybe it will change because i'm starting to get like i don't know i'm like looking what you guys are doing listening to app stories they're talking about all these cool new apps and it's just like, uh,

feeling a little bit left out, but one way or another, there's something I'm not going to like. I just haven't decided which one it is yet. That's okay. I mean, I, I, um, it's all part of a process, right? And there's, and there's no right or wrong, uh, process. I, I am using Mastodon, but way less than I use Twitter. And I'm almost, I'm not essentially posting on Twitter anymore, but I am reading mostly that sports list, and that's about it.

Maybe occasionally a mention or something. So I'd say my net brain space devoted to social media has gone way down, which I think is a good thing. If you would like to send in a Snow Talk of your own to help us open an episode of Upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com and submit it. You can click the link in your show notes to do so. I have some follow-up for you, Jason Snell.

Most of this, as usual, coming from the wonderful Upgradians who write in to upgradefeedback.com, which I very much appreciate. We get so much great follow-up these days, more than we used to. So I'm very thankful for people sending that stuff in. Anthony wrote in to say, regarding the entry-level Sonos speaker recommendation from AskUpgrade last week, Anthony says, I got started with the $119 Symfonyisk that is a Sonos and Ikea collaboration. I had forgotten about these products. Anthony says, they sound great and work with the Sonos and Ikea collaboration. I had forgotten about these products. Anthony says they sound great and work with the Sonos app,

though I just use them via AirPlay. So Ikea and Sonos have a selection of products. Some are lamps, some are speakers, some are picture frames with speakers inside them. It all works with Sonos. And, you know, it's kind of maybe to try and make these products a little bit more integrated into your home stuff so I haven't used these but it's a good recommendation if you're looking to get started with Sonos this is an even easier cheaper and maybe less intrusive way to bring Sonos into your home. Steve wrote in in regards to the AR headset and controllers and

says a lack of controllers would limit the headset but also keep developers focused on the end goal of glasses worn in public throughout the day, not a gaming device. What do you think about that as like a reason to not have controllers? Okay, so what I would say is you don't buy a product for the end goal.

And one of the things that we know that actually is good about VR and AR right now is gaming. So if the goal is everybody keep your eyes on the prize of what it's going to be like in five or ten years and nobody do anything that would work today, I mean, that won't work, right? That won't work. And what you need to do is make a product that appeals and then evolve it over time

and let the appeal evolve over time. But what you can't do is say, we're going to make this as bad a gaming device as we can because we want people to be using, toning the right muscles for where we want to be in 10 years. Like you can't you can't do that. So that's why when we talk about controllers, they don't have to be in the box necessarily. Although that might not be bad. There's a lot of things you can do with controllers that are very precise in ways that I am skeptical that that camera based hand tracking is going to be as good at ready to be proven wrong. I'm sure Apple's implementation of this will be very impressive.

But you can't keep developers focused on the end goal, right? Developers don't get paid by the end goal. They get paid now. And to convince developers to work on something for what's going to be in five or ten years is not good enough. So that's why we talk about it. It would limit the headset. Limiting the headset, which Steve says, would limit the headset. That means it's going to limit sales of the headset, which is going to limit motivation

developers have to develop for the headset. That's exactly what Apple doesn't want. Ultimately, it would be incredible, right? If the hand tracking was flawless, it's going to be unbelievable. It's going to open and unlock so many new things. it would be incredible, right? Like if the hand tracking was flawless, it's going to be unbelievable. It's going to open and unlock so many new things. It would be amazing. But even if it was flawless, it's still not going to be good for all types of video games, for example. So just having controllers is an additional good thing.

Prioritize hand tracking for everything else if you want to, and you'll still get to that end result, right? Like, if you know, like, you're not going to necessarily need hand tracking, sorry, a game controller for your calendar app, like just use hand tracking for that. And you can, people can then advance that for apps, utilities, that kind of things. But for some games, controllers will always be really helpful um so why not do both i guess right and we spoke on last episode about a potential of a folding ipad that ming chi kuo was talking about in 2024 there were a few stories that came up afterwards mark german and ross young said they hadn't heard anything about folding like no in 2024. They're like, no, whoa, whoa. This was the rumor reporting equivalent of somebody saying, I heard a thing.

And everybody else being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We didn't hear that thing. We didn't hear about that thing. Fascinating to see that in action, right? Mark Gurman's like, nope, haven't heard a word about this. Which doesn't mean it isn't going to happen. No.

But I think the implication there is that if he hasn't heard about a word about it it's probably not uh quite right and ross young says that he heard that there was a 20.5 inch screen being prepared for a foldable notebook on the cards for 2025 i just pedantically like to point out every notebook is foldable yes jason every notebook folds a folding screen notebook how about that in a yeah i think that's i think that's the idea here so his his idea is it's a 20 inch screen that folds up into one and i haven't done the math uh of exactly what that would be when you folded it but imagine folding it into something that looks like a laptop configuration. What would that be like? And I had that same thought, which was like, I had a moment where I'm like, oh, this is a Mac, not an iPad. And I wonder if that's what Ming-Chi Kuo has gotten wrong is assuming based on his supply chain sources that this product is being tested.

And that's what's going on here, right? Is this product is being tested. And that's what's going on here, right? This product's being tested. And he might have some guesses based on when they're expecting to ramp up production, that that suggests late 24, and Gurman's like, that's not going to happen.

But right now what's going on is that Apple is getting tests from manufacturers to try things and see if they want to do it. And so maybe he just saw this screen and was like, well, that's an iPad. Whereas Ross Young says, no, it's going to be a laptop

and it's going to be later than that. Would Apple make a weird convertible laptop thing, tablet thing? Well, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about this idea that one, if Apple does touchscreen Macs, it gives them the ability if they choose to get weird. And this would certainly be a weird product, right?

And I was talking at the time about like convertibility and how you could create essentially, call it an iPad mode, but it's a tablet mode for Mac OS. There's so much work that they've done on the ipad side here uh that i think it's something that they could do if they really wanted to do it um and there are lots of arguments against it and i've heard a lot of arguments that are like well but how would it work it's like well uh yes i'm not saying it wouldn't be hard but i'm saying that um i'm i i i don't appreciate the arguments that are, oh, it's too hard, Apple will never do it.

Because if Apple wants to do it and thinks it's important, Apple will do it. And most of the people who say, oh, it's too hard are the same people who think that Apple never makes a wrong step. It's like, well, what are they? Are they the greatest company ever that can do whatever they want?

Or are they incapable of solving a problem? Which one is it? So maybe this is evidence that apple's going to get weird because honestly if that's an ipad or a laptop still if it's ipad os or mac os still a weird product right it's weird either way it's weird either way so and then and then mark german was like i don't know what they're talking about like nope so because because the report I think Mark Gurman made was that touchscreen MacBook Pro just a more conventional thing in 2025. So it's all kind of out there. But I love the idea that that that Apple's maybe potentially thinking of getting weird. Like, yeah, let's do it. Let's honestly, like I like Apple's in a great product place right now. They don't need to destroy the products they've got. The products they've got are very successful.

But it's been a while since Apple did something really different. And I would love to see them try to reinvent some category in the next few years. Well, I mean, they're going to do it with a headset. It's the plan, right? That's true. That's true. That's the expectation. That's obviously what they're going for do it with a headset. It's the plan, right? That's true. That's true. That's the expectation. That's obviously what they're going for.

Otherwise, don't bother. Maybe this is just like a headset you wear, like a hat, like a hat set. A hat set. You just fold it up and put it on your head. Yeah, notebook hat. And walk around. Yeah, hat book. In Upgrade Plus today, we're going to be talking about our results on the latest Upgrade Plus challenge.

Jason and I have been using the Arc browser from the browser company for the past week. We're going to be giving our thoughts on that. If you are not a member supporting Upgrade Plus, go to getupgradeplus.com and you will get longer ad-free versions of the show and you will hear all about our experiences with the Arc browser. And also probably by the time you're hearing this sometime on Monday, the Six Colors Report Card for

2022 will be published. This is where Jason goes out and talks to a bunch of people in the community and asks them to grade Apple's year in various categories. We're going to be talking about this on next week's episode, which I'm excited about.

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by going to rocketmoney.com upgrade. That's R-O-C-K-E-T-M-O-N-E-Y.com upgrade. rocketmoney.com upgrade. Our thanks to Rocket Money for their support of this show and RelayFM. Room around up time. Saddle up, Jason Snell. We're going to go back to our friend Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg, who is

reporting that Apple has decided they will not be continuing with the role of industrial design chief after Evans Hankey departs the company. This is something we spoke about last year, that Evans Hankey was going to be leaving Apple. And there was a conversation of like, well, what's going to happen? Well, quote from Bloomberg, instead, the company's core group of about 20 industrial designers

will report directly to Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer. The company will also give larger roles to a group of Apple's longest tenured designers. So this will ultimately be linking design, industrial design and operations even further. Alan Dye is going to remain as head of software design. Do you have any, like, I mean, a lot of people will say this is doom and gloom. This is a big change. This is bad. What do you think about this?

It's sold. It's sold. Sold. It's sold. Look, it's a black box, right? We don't know what's going on in there. Unless you're one of those small number of people who understand the situation, you don't know what's going on in there. Unless you're one of those small number of people who understand the situation, you don't know what's going on. My read on this, taking off my rumor roundup cowboy hat for a moment and putting on my senior vice president and editorial director hat that I wore for a little while, my corporate hat. a little while um my corporate hat i would say my my best guess is johnny ive and a bunch of his people leaving with johnny i've left a a bit of a vacuum right a bit of a vacuum in terms of

leadership and they ended up with a situation where they have evan tanky and she seemed like a good choice to run this group but that clearly when she said she was going to leave, it looks to me like what's going on here is that they didn't have anybody. And Mark Gurman, in fact, in his newsletter this week referred to this as a failure of succession planning. Maybe. I mean, he's got sources inside who might tell him that. I do wonder if some of the succession planning involved lieutenants of Johnny Ive who left with Johnny Ive, right? Which you end up in a situation where you've got a bunch of people who, like Johnny, want to do something different. And Evans Hankey agrees to or decides to stay for a while, but she decides to leave too. And you haven't necessarily had time to cultivate somebody who steps up. So that's my initial read on this is that there was no clear choice as a

successor or that there were multiple sort of shaky choices as a successor. And maybe they decided, because this line about also give larger roles to a group of Apple's longest tenured designers. Sounds to me like maybe there was a group of people who were kind of qualified, but none of them at the level where management thought we could put this person in charge or potentially we could put this person in charge without losing all the rest of them. Right. Cause that also happens. That's a dynamic where you've got peers and then one of

them gets promoted and the other ones get out. And this is super important, critical to Apple. So my guess, yeah, people talk about them reporting to Jeff Williams. Reporting to Jeff Williams is primarily because there's nobody, they can't elevate somebody. I think this is less about an operations control thing than it is about personnel. Bottom line, this reads to me as personnel, which is there are a lot of personal dynamics there. And maybe it's true that they have not been training up.

Evans Hankey didn't train up her replacement or none of them, or tried and they were found wanting or all of them seem to be about equal. But that seems to be, to me, what's going on here. Now, my guess is that as a part of this process, those larger roles people are going to be prompted and watched as potential leaders of the design group. This also doesn't read to me as necessarily a group that will never go without a leader, but, you know, and if this is the case, I think it's actually, I hope this is the case

because that's the good management scenario, right? The good management scenario is nobody going to step up. Best thing for the organization is to put more power into these individual teams that have these long-tenured designers as their leaders and let them continue to do their jobs without a person at the top level and we're and and sorry um jeff you're gonna have to you know you're gonna have to check in with a bunch of people instead of one person now the the thing about this that makes me tilt my head a little is is not oh does operations has taken over design it's how many people are reporting directly to jeff williams at this point it's not it's not 20 right but it's the the presumably the larger roles people are going to report to jeff williams directly it's like is jeff williams really

going to supervise them um how is that going to work? Are they given free reign? Are they trying to deal with a boss who's being, I mean, I've had that where I've reported to a boss who has a bazillion reports and that can go two ways, right? Actually, even with the same boss, this happened with me where he put tremendous amounts of authority in my hands and let me do, make decisions. He was like, he didn't want to sweat the small stuff at all. But when he rolled in and wanted to have an opinion, he had to get up to speed. I had to manage him because he didn't really know the context of it. And like, that's the problem with that situation is you get autonomy, but you still have a boss and the boss doesn't understand what you're doing.

And so when the boss decides that they want to roll in and do something, you've got to get them up to speed, which can be really hard. And they can have an incomplete understanding of what you do because of it. So that part is a little bit of a red flag here. But I think the answer is that, yeah, we can ding Apple for lacking succession planning here, but this is a group that had a very longstanding leader who left with a lot of his lieutenants. I'm not surprised that they're in this situation, especially since Evans Hankey was identified identified as this and then she has left fairly quickly leaving them presumably with you know a solid design group that doesn't have anybody who looks like the manager or anybody who looks so clearly like the manager that they aren't going to suffer even more

loss of people if they promote them that's my take on it it is is, I think, worth considering. Like what I was thinking about when I read this is these roles, the industrial design chief and the software design chief where Alan Dyer is remaining in. These roles were created when Johnny was on his way out when they were trying to keep him. But he didn't want to work there anymore. Right. Right. And so they created these two job roles to basically be him maybe apple just doesn't want these job roles anymore they were created for a specific purpose and they're not going to remove alan die from the position because he's doing a good job they feel uh but maybe when alan die

does move on he wouldn't be replaced either maybe i don't know i mean it's it's possible my guess is that if you've got somebody who's capable of running the design group and reporting to Jeff Williams rather than having a group of people reporting to Jeff Williams, everybody would think that you would not, unless the goal is, I mean, for the people who are out there who are convinced that this is the case, unless the goal really is to sort of like depower the design group and make them all just sort of like individual groups that all report separately to Jeff Williams. And they don't have any power because they're all just sort of like down in the trenches and there's nobody speaking up for design in general. And maybe that's the plan. But my guess is it's more about the people. And we should say, because I don't think it's come up today, you don't hire outside for somebody like this. You don't.

You don't. Like it or not, Apple is not a company that's capable of bringing in somebody from the outside for a role like this. They just aren't. We've seen it time and again, bringing in senior people who are not from Apple to Apple doesn't work well. The only exception would be if there was somebody who had worked in this group and then left and wanted to come back in that role.

And who knows, maybe they talked to people about that too, but that obviously didn't happen. So it's hard, all speculation, right? We don't know more than these basic reports. But I would think, personally, if I were Jeff Williams, I would prefer to have a head of industrial design instead of having a whole bunch of the former lieutenants now reporting to me directly, right? Like, that's happened before, right? A senior person leaves, and suddenly you're like, okay, I guess all their reports are my reports until we hire a replacement well this is this is them saying all of evans hanky's reports are now jeff williams reports i guess like that's not ideal so there must be a real like again either they're trying

to eradicate all the strength of the design group which i doubt or they just don't have that person and maybe they will someday i don't know i. I mean, most likely scenario there, Mike, is that they try it this way and they're like, oh, God. We can't do it this way. And somebody steps up. And that may even be the implication right now, right? It's like one of the people in this group who are getting the larger roles. Like somebody steps up and Jeff's like, you know what? I like the cut of your jib.

You're now in charge of this. And that may happen who knows that you know if you if you if you know something about this let us know if you're inside an apple uh send us a send us uh the skinny you can send in feedback via the anonymous feedback for warmer upgrade feedback.com and you can let us know somebody did actually send something in and it was under anonymous and they were like, I'm an Apple engineer and I really like listening to the show because I can talk back to you and tell you if you're right, wrong.

So I'd rather be right. Uh huh. Um, I'd rather be right. I had somebody, I had somebody say, I need to send you a message on signal. It was good.

It was like background. It was a former Apple employee, but it was on, on Signal. It was good. It was like background. It was a former Apple employee, but it was on background. And in that case, it was very much a, you guys are pretty right, given that you don't know anything. So that's cool. You don't know what we don't know.

That we don't know anything. You can send in completely anonymous to that form. It is also, as well as the feedback, it is a tips line. What if Rumor Roundup, what if we start breaking things on Rumor Roundup? Could you imagine? It's going to happen at some point, I hope. No, I don't think so.

I doubt it. Mark Gurman is also reporting that Apple is considering adding an Ultra phone to the iPhone lineup in 2025, starting with the iPhone 16. The iPhone 15 Pro Max will be named that. It will not be renamed to Ultra, as some believed it would, including me. But the 15 Pro Max will start this trend of further differentiating the product line with features like the periscope lens and stuff like that, which we'll talk about in a minute. Mark says Apple will also further differentiate the product's tiers of a range of materials, processors, and cameras. This is, I think,

stuff we already were expecting, right? There'll be different processors in regular and pro. Titanium was pretty heavily rumored for the pro line, so that will continue splitting them up, but then the pro max is going to get its own feature this year that will not come to the regular pro phone mark is reporting that apple is considering adding the ultra as another phone at the top end the pro max remaining now i found this fascinating because what it says is apple really thinks that having four phones or whatever is the right way to go, five phones, whatever it's going to be, my expectation here is they just drop the plus. Yeah, exactly. And so they still have four, but they have iPhone, iPhone Pro, iPhone Pro Max, iPhone Ultra, because I think what they've maybe come to realize is cutting features in the mid-range is not as exciting to people as adding features

at the high end yeah also i would say they seem to have learned that there is a finite number of people who want to buy the iphone model yeah and splitting it into two models doesn't really net the more sense yeah so why would you not take that effort and then push it up to the highest of the high end? I would say Mike that, although you know, the rumors are that this is not the case, this is the kind of place where you would do a folding phone eventually would

be ultra. It is the, the cutting edge, the, the super expensive, just like those Samsung folding phones are expensive, but at the highest of the high end. Interesting idea, right? Because, and we're going to get to the earnings report in a little bit.

But one of the things, and Mark Gurman noticed it, which is good. Somebody asked Tim Cook about the ability for the market to bear increases in iPhone price and what that says about their possibilities. And Tim Cook was like, we haven't seen any trouble. Essentially what Tim Cook said is, look, we raise the price on these iPhones and people keep buying them. Doesn't matter what they cost. and people keep buying them. It doesn't matter what they cost. And if you're a business person,

the next step is raise them again or come out with another one that's even more expensive because I think there is truth. And we don't like to hear it. I'm the guy who always says you got to find the price you want and then raise it and then round it up, right? Like none of us love it, but clearly in Apple's customer base,

and it's not everybody, it's not everybody, it's not even, it's a smallish maybe portion of Apple's customer base. But what Tim Cook said was, this is the most important device that they own. And they rely on it for everything, for payment. I mean, this is also actually a great way of detailing Apple's whole philosophy about the iPhone and services around it. It's like, it's the most important device they've got. It does their payments. It keeps their calendar. It does their email. It does. It literally does. It opens their, their car door. It opens their front door. It does everything. And so people want, are willing to spend a lot of money on this device. That is the most important device for them. And the message

is clear. And it makes sense, right? Which is, if you keep raising the price of the highest end iPhone, and sales just keep percolating along, clearly, there are people out there who are probably willing to buy an even more expensive iPhone if you let them, which is not the same as saying we're going to take the existing iPhone and raise its price. So we're going to keep that there. And then we're going to put another one above it. And you know what? Some percentage of those people are just going to buy the more expensive phone. And that's and that is why there will be an iPhone Ultra. No doubt about it.

Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that the periscope lens that would allow for better optical zoom will be exclusive to the pro max until at least 2025 you know assumedly if there was a ultra in 24 this would also get that but it's like pro max and above this is interesting this is clearly a feature that will give another jump in camera performance but it's something that requires physical space right right? Yes. So putting it in the phone max makes sense. Yeah, having it on a big phone is logical. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Also in his Power On newsletter,

Mark Gurman suggested that it may be some time until we see an update to the Mac Studio. I want to read this quote in full. Yes. I wouldn't appreciate... I do appreciate. No, that's not what Mark said. Mark said,

I wouldn't anticipate the introduction of a Mac Studio in the near future. The upcoming Mac Pro is very similar in functionality to the Mac Studio and adds the M2 Ultra chip rather than the M1 Ultra. So it wouldn't make sense for Apple to offer an M2 Ultra Mac Studio and an M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the same time. It's more likely that Apple either never updates the Mac Studio or holds off until the M3 or M4 generation. At that point, the company may be able to better differentiate between the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro. This is unclear to me as to whether this is

speculation or information. Yeah, it's hard to say. He doesn't, he doesn't, right? Because Mark does some pundit stuff too and he says i wouldn't anticipate i mean i think what is going on is a little bit of both right where he hasn't heard yeah about it so therefore it probably doesn't exist and then he speculates a little bit about it i'm a little oh i don't know i'm a little skeptical i could see that it happened it happens but i'm a little skeptical about the idea that Apple is afraid that if they do an M2 Ultra Mac Studio and an M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the same time, that they're cannibalizing sales from the M2 Ultra Mac Pro. I guess I can see it, but why are we building a Mac

Pro then? They are actually very different products. I think more likely is a scenario, and I'll be clear here, I have a Mac studio. I want to believe in the Mac studio and they made a new Mac, they should keep making it. I'm wondering if what we're seeing here, and this goes to the iMac as well, is we're starting to see the shape of Apple's Apple Silicon strategy for the Mac, which is some products get every generation and some don't right so m1 iMac m3 iMac no m2 iMac why not yeah they're just it's not it's not a it's not an every 18 month or every year priority so they're just not going to do it i think it's just like desktop laptop like i think that's going to be what we see like desktops get an update every couple of years laptops laptops get it every year it could i that's perfectly reasonable, in fact.

Mac Pro and Mac Studio, maybe the answer is to alternate, right? I think so. Maybe it's M2 Ultra Mac Pro and an M3 Mac Studio. Also, I think what Mark is dangling here is the idea that for the M3 or M4 generation, they will eventually go back and do that quad, you know, whatever it's called M4 extreme, whatever it is chip that will really push the Mac pro out in terms of

performance. Because I actually think that having the Mac pro out there and then still having the Mac studio is a good thing. Otherwise we're going to get in the situation where we don't have an M2 max on the desktop, right? Because the desktop only has the M2 and the M2 pro and the Mac mini. And then,

and then I don't think they're going to make an M2 max version of the Mac pro. That would, to me, that would be really sad, right? Because that would be a very expensive computer. That's not very fast because it's just the M2 max. It's not the, it's not even the Ultra. We'll see about

that. And that's also why I think that the Mac Studio is viable because it's a good place to put the Max or the Max and the Ultra. It makes most sense if there's an Ultra and then something above Ultra, because then it's like, well, Mac Studio will do Max and Ultra, Mac Pro will do Ultra and beyond, right? But maybe this is the answer is that these are desktops the volumes aren't worth redesigning them you know or or even revving them every 18 months and that they're going to do some alternation and so the imac goes every other the mac studio goes every other um the mac mini that's got an update faster but but i wouldn't put money down on the mac mini no getting an M3 version.

Now that they've got the higher end version. The Mac Mini was messy and they were dragging along the Intel. They had to take care of that. Exactly. But now that business is settled, right? So maybe no Mac Mini until M4, right? I think it's not an unreasonable scenario to say that, especially since three quarters of the max that they sell our laptops that that should be their priority every time there's a new mac generate or chip generation there should be a new macbook air and a new macbook pro and if you do

other laptops great yeah but that's that's what should be the priority and then the desktops will take care of themselves every other year or so i mean if you think about it, so if we're saying that the desktops are 25% of Macs, right? There are more desktop models than there are laptops right now. Right. Which is, that is a very strange balance. That to me feels like the balance of a company who the people inside it really care about desktop Macs, so they keep making new desktop Macs, which is great. I care about desktop max so they keep making new desktop max which is great i care about desktop max we all do right like it's good to have but you've got to be sensible

about the amount of r&d and development and just that goes into these products and so it means that all right we'll have a bunch of options and these things they do different things they're made for different use cases but we can't rev them every year or in some cases every two years but with some of these especially at the higher end right and even that the iMac where it is placed actually you know obviously all the desktop Macs can handle it based on where they fit so like the i, the M1 iMac doesn't need a new base chip every year because of where it's going to be used, right? Similarly, like something like the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro, those chips are so powerful

that you don't need to do one every time. I agree. And nobody's replacing them right after 18 months or anything. Because it's too expensive. Depending on how you look at it, by the way, it's 4 and 4. There are 4 laptops and 4 desktops. But again, it's 75-25 desktop to laptop, laptop to desktop, so it's still

too much, right, to take these 4 and those 4. The 4 desktops should probably not require anything compared to the attention of laptops. And we also know that the rumors are that there are more laptops. How would you go four of four? Is he doing it by size? There are 13 MacBook Pros and there are three MacBook Pros and a MacBook Air.

Okay. So I was just thinking like brands, but sure, I get you by like models, right? You've got MacBook Air, MacBook Pros too. If we leave the chips out of it, the physical hardware, there are four laptops and there are four desktops. Mac Mini, iMac, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro. It's still there and it will be there presumably. So it's four and four. But still, I mean, again, and that leaves aside that engineering that Mac Pro is a huge amount of work because it has to do things Apple Silicon's never done.

And while that may have some nice spinoff benefits for the Mac and maybe even the iPhone, who knows, right? Who knows? Or the iPad? I don't know. But in the short term,

they're spending a lot of money on a product that very few people are going to buy. So yeah, I think that they feel responsible to curate and keep the desktops alive,

but it does kind of make, as a person who uses a Mac desktop, it makes me sadktops alive, but it does kind of make, as a person who uses a Mac desktop, it makes me sad to say this, but it's absolutely the case that they should be spending more time on their laptops. And this is why when there are all those rumors of the larger MacBook Air coming out, it's like, please,

Apple should be devoting even more time and thought to laptops because the Mac, the definitive mac is a macbook air right it's not a macbook pro it's not an imac it's not a mac mini it's not a it's not a mac pro it's the macbook air that is the definitive mac and has been for more than a decade now that is the best-selling mac model it's still the best-selling Mac model. It's still the best-selling Mac model. It doesn't mean that the only Mac is a MacBook Air, but if you're starting to think about the MacBook Air and you're like, well, could they do more with that? Maybe they are. Maybe they're making a

bigger one, but absolutely their focus should be on the 75% of the market and not the 25%. This episode is brought to you by Electric. When leading your small business, it's not all glitz and glamour. In fact, sometimes it's a matter of spending hours trying to find a laptop lost in the mail for a new hire, or dealing with an untold list of potential technical emergencies, which you're well equipped to deal with, right? You've worked it out on your own, especially if you're listening to this show, but maybe you just don't have the time. The team over at Electric knows small businesses, maybe like the one that you run, face these challenges. That's why they've solved this

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It's that time again. Money. Apple's Q1 2023 earnings, the one we were waiting for because of... You love it. The bloodbath that was going to occur that we knew about in advance where Apple would put out a kind of investor press release, I guess, to say that they were expecting a big decline because of shutdowns in China and their factories. We spoke about this some time ago. It

was going to restrict iPhone sales. And if your Apple and iPhone sales are restricted, things are going to be bad for you. So it turns out this wasn't all that was bad. And also there was some good. So let's do the top line and then we'll dig in kind of product by product as well. Revenue, $117.2 billion, down 5% year over year. 117.2 billion dollars down five percent year over year just as a note can you imagine 117 billion dollars in a quarter and it's a bad quarter like i know we talk about these things a lot but like 30 when you tell these things back to reality profit 30 billion dollar profit 30 billion dollar profit what a disaster also i'll also point out, because again, it does get distorted by Wall Street and the search for growth.

Apple's second biggest quarter of all time. Only last year's holiday quarter was bigger. Yep. iPhone, here it is. $65.8 billion down 8% year over year.

The Mac, $7.7 billion down 29 percent year over year the mac 7.7 billion down 29 percent year over year but don't worry everyone here comes the ipad at 9.5 billion dollars up 30 percent year over year services at 20.8 up six percent and wear wearables, home, and accessories, 13.5 billion, down 8% year over year. I'll read a quote from Jason's Macworld column. During Apple's hour-long quarterly conference call with Wall Street analysts, the word headwinds was used 11 times, slightly edging out the 10 times we heard the word macroeconomic. Can you explain a little bit? This is very helpful to me, again, to get this like recontextualization

of why these numbers are even worse than they would have been otherwise. Sure. I'll give you an example. So you're selling iPhones in China. And you look at these numbers and the iPhone is down and the iPhone is down in China. And you say, oh, they sold fewer iPhones in China. They made less money in China. They didn't. They didn't make less money in China. If you counted up all the Chinese money last quarter and counted up all the Chinese money at the year ago last quarter, and counted up all the Chinese money at the year ago last quarter.

This year's was more. So how could it have gone down? Well, the answer was the way these earnings reports work is you convert it to U.S. dollars. So year ago quarter converted to more dollars than the current quarter did because of uh foreign exchange headwinds as they call it because of a strong dollar and that happened all over the world they they said you know it's like basically eight percent of everything got eaten by foreign exchange um now my i don't believe apple brings every all the money back to the u.s right like i think that part of the game is they keep if it's an unfavorable foreign exchange uh environment they might keep it in the local currency until there's a better time to move it back to the u.s i don't

know all the details there of course i mean especially they don't need the cash right like it's not like they're like oh we're going to bring it back because we we need to we need it in fact famously they didn't bring the cash back because they were going to pay taxes on it for a while until there was sort of a tax deal, and then they brought the cash back. So this is all about the reports, right? So what they say is, look, actually, the sales were strong. Ironically, they stopped reporting unit sales a few years ago, and that would allow them to make that clear. But they hid that. And now it's all in revenue. And so the U.S. dollar revenue is a shortfall, even though they say that this was hugely impacted by the foreign exchange headwinds.

And then the other issues they said is like obviously COVID shutdowns affected them. Generally, the global macroeconomic climate, which is sort of like people really worried about a recession and not spending money and the war in Ukraine having all sorts of follow-on impacts. They threw out a bunch of other stuff there. But I think there is truth in the fact that foreign exchange makes their business. Look, I saw somebody on CNBC because I watch CNBC for an hour every quarter, just because it's fun and weird and another world. And I saw somebody there say, everybody's got foreign exchange problems. They should stop talking about foreign exchange. It's like, okay, here's what I think. If the goal, what do we get out of these things? One of the things we get out of this

is to understand Apple's business. But what Wall Street types want is they want to get a view of where Apple's business is going, right? For Wall Street types, it's all about where's the growth coming from. They want signs that wearables is slow or services is slow or something like that.

Or whether iPad is a one-time and why, and we can go into that because it is kind of a one-time bump for reasons. But the goal of Wall Street is to look at these facts and get a better idea of where Apple's business is going. I would argue that if you're freaking out about the numbers and not taking into account the foreign exchange and going, everybody's got foreign exchange problems, you're losing information about where Apple's business is going. Because it is super relevant about whether a drop in iPhone sales, instead of it being flat, it wasn't going to be up, but instead of it being flat, is because of foreign exchange or is because people don't want the iPhone anymore, right? Those seem like really different scenarios. And if you're a Wall Street analyst, you kind of

want to care about which one of those it is. But I think maybe some Wall Street analysts don't care because they've got their, I don't know what they're doing, but they're obviously the people who are in the bag for Apple and the people who are out to get Apple. And that seems to be part of the game that everybody plays. Anyway, I think the foreign exchange thing is interesting because what it suggests is that I actually would find it really valuable if we could take the foreign exchange out and look at the pure sales figures, but they don't show us those anymore. We have to kind of rely on them to use, to mention it when it serves them, which in this case it did to say iPhone sales would be flat, which is okay. It's not, you know, the iPhone has been sort of flat-ish for a while now. Also, as we've talked about on Upgrade a lot, they go in macro cycles where there's a new, new iPhone, and then there's a huge sales spike. And then there's a couple of years

where it's kind of quiet because the iPhones are out there and they're still selling a lot of them, but they don't get that growth spike that happens and has happened the last like two or three times they've done this, where there's a new, new iPhone and then there's a huge spike of growth.

Which is probably this year. Which this fall will be one of those. Quite possibly. Yeah, because the iPhone, what was it, the iPhone 6 that had the larger? That's the classic. And then the iPhone 10. And then the iPhone 12?

12 or 13. One of those two. And you may think to yourself, right, because we've mentioned it a couple of times, well, to solve the issue of Wall Street, why don't they just, for this time, say what the unit sales were, right? But the reason they won't do that

is the reason they got rid of them is they don't actually want people to know how much money they're making per product. Yes. This is the thing that Apple just don't want. That would give away the average selling price and they consider that, you know, that yeah too much the average selling price and they consider that you know that's information that other people could know and they don't want them

to know that but when it serves them they will say oh well iphone sales were actually flat that's all they're going to say but they'll say it because it serves it serves them because it makes their business look better but in this case that's so there's a lot of headwinds there's a lot of macroeconomic one analyst used the phrase um soft macro which i never want to hear again um anyway yeah there was a lot of talk about that the fact is it was a weird quarter um i actually i mean my overall feeling is that given what we were warned about them not that you know for those who don't remember the bottom line was apple came out in november and basically said we have a factory that makes iPhone Pros and it's shut down and we're not going to be able to fulfill demand for the iPhone Pro during our most important quarter of iPhone sales. Given that, I think they did okay, right? down revenue down 8% when sales were flat from flat from their best quarter

ever. If you, if you take foreign exchange out of it, given the lack of, uh, of supply and Tim Cook said, they're back in, they've got the supply now.

And we cited how the, all the ads came back, right. As the sign where it's like, aha, they have iPhones again because they're advertising the iPhone Pro again when they had switched to the iPhone

and not the iPhone Pro. So, you know, I look at this and I think it's a weird quarter. It's an unusual quarter, but I wouldn't, I mean, I wouldn't overreact anyway, but like it's their second best quarter ever. And there were positive signs and there were negative signs.

And I think their business is incredibly healthy. And I do think that we're seeing a little bit of in the Mac, especially there may be a little bit of a hangover from people buying Macs during the pandemic. But at the same time, a lot of this stuff is more about what they did last year at the same time, right? Because the iPad figures are up so much because the iPad was, they couldn't make enough iPads last holiday quarter, if people remember that. And this holiday quarter, not only could they make enough, but they had the new low-cost iPad and they had the new iPad Pro, the M2 iPad Pro. And anecdotally, I feel like I've heard from a lot of people who bought that 2018 iPad Pro who updated to the M2 iPad Pro. That that was enough of a time.

There's always just natural updates no matter what we say about the year over year, right? Like the people will always do it. Right. But that's the best compare, as they say, right? Which is, it was a really lousy iPad quarter, and now there's been a great one. And the Mac went the other way, where the Mac didn't have anything, right? They obviously deferred the announcement of those MacBook Pros and the Mac Mini until January. And they had the quietest Mac quarter in terms of announcements.

And they had the quietest Mac quarter in terms of announcements. And the sales were down, which is unsurprising because new models definitely help drive sales. So that's not that surprising. And I don't think necessarily, whereas the year ago quarter, they had new MacBook Pros. So I don't know if this, you know, sometimes I think that the black line in my charts, which is that four quarter moving average is the best line to look at because it smooths out a lot of the drama of year-over-year change and seasonality. It just kind of flattens it out. So, yeah, it was the worst MAAC quarter in quite a while. But mostly, it was still, again, if you had gone back a couple of years, it

would have been the best Mac quarter ever. It's just that then they had a run during the, the, the, right after the pandemic started, they had an Apple Silicon came out. They had a huge run of Mac sales. And it's not unreasonable to say that, um, that some of those sales were to people who are now, would have waited longer, and that there's a little bit of a hangover

after they do that big blob of sales. And the good thing is people don't buy a Mac and then never buy a Mac again. It's just that we may have like a bulge. There may be some weird kind of mega seasonality now where due to 2020, there's going to be every three years or so there's going to be a bulge in mac buying because everybody bought a new mac in 2020 and 2021 um and now

you know that we might see an echo of that down the road too yeah i would i would expect that their q2 will probably be their biggest Q2 ever by a nice chunk because the laptop slipped into it, right? Which otherwise wouldn't have happened. One of the reasons that this quarter's Mac sales were down, and if you say there was a bunch of reasons, like one of them is that there weren't any laptops. Like the MacBook Pros missed 22.

They missed it. So they're into the 2023 Q1. And there will be, you you know there will be a lot of people whose iphone sales are lost forever you know are lost for years right because they went with somebody else over the holidays yeah but there'll be a large selection of people that will have waited to buy their iphone so they could get it and they can get it now exactly yeah they'll put up their order and wait and they got it in January and that'll show up and it'll be, yeah, I think you're probably right. I think that that's the, Apple said that they thought that the next quarter would be kind of in line with this quarter,

but right, like, look, sometimes I feel like we overread this stuff. I think clearly the biggest value we have in looking at this stuff is to understand sort of like the shape of Apple's business and how it drives them and how it affects the decisions they make and can be an early warning sign of something going wrong. This isn't it, right? Like this is a company that can throw out a $30 billion profit and have people think that it's not a very good quarter. This is a machine built to make enormous sums of money. All of their businesses look in pretty good shape. The Mac is shaping up to be a, what, $36-ish billion a year business. The Mac is at a level it's never been before. The iPad seems to have settled in.

A few years ago, we were thinking that the iPad was going to settle in at $5 billion a quarter, essentially, so a $20 billion a year business. Now they're more like a $32-ish billion a year business. So the iPad is the best it's ever been. And that iPad quarter, by the way, I had to look it up. It's like seven years since the iPad sold more revenue than the Mac and nine years since the iPad had a quarter this big. This is, I believe, the second largest revenue quarter the iPad has ever had.

Only that one huge quarter that they had very early on that was over 10 billion. So the iPad's got the best business it's ever had. The iPhone is, you know, honestly, you know, it's not throwing off those 66, 50, 47% year over year growth, but like the following quiet year was nine, five, three, 10. And then this is down 8%. I think it's fair to say, because even smaller growth is still growth, that that that little black line that shows me the four quarter moving average, like this is about the most the best the iPhone has ever been. Services. And this and this is where I think it is a little more debatable about apple's future

services revenue seems to have slowed although again apple would say it's really affected by um by foreign exchange because they don't change what you pay like they don't charge all their all their customers worldwide in u.s dollars right and so if you're paying X amount a month and the dollar gets strong, you're still just paying that in whatever country you're in. Yeah. I don't know about that one. I think they might be hiding a little bit there personally. Well, no. Services clearly need some attention, I think, from them because the days of the 30% growth are over. But I guess what I want to say is that when we see 5% and 6%, it's probably more in line with what we saw the two previous quarters, which is in the teens in terms of the actual

services with the financial taken out of it. But it's gone down. But it certainly is the case. The growth. It certainly is the case that they're not in the 25% every quarter growth. I think they're more in the 10%-ish. In terms of, what do they say, the constant currency? It's probably, that's what it is, 10%, 15%.

And so that's where you point and say, maybe not as dramatic as it looks on the charts, but services growth has slowed. And then wearable home accessories is another one of those examples where it was kicking off you know 20 30 40 percent growth year over year in the and then it slowed down to in the teens and we've had two out of the last three quarters where the growth has been down um eight percent so uh some questions about wearables they said that the they said that the apple watch ultra did really well. AirPods Pro did really well. But this feels a little bit like a category where they did, again, maybe because of pandemic sales or something like that,

that maybe they had some explosive growth and now there's not as much room for them to grow. Yeah, the wearables one is the biggest question mark for me because the Ultra is more expensive and it's new. And AirPods Pro are more expensive than the regular AirPods and they're new, both in the quarter leading up to the holidays, right? That's a surprise to me. I would have expected that those two products

would have been quite hot ticket items. I understand that we've got the you know the many reasons why things can go down i just wasn't expecting a year-over-year decline on wearables with those two products right let's say that maybe it was flat but still i mean i i the counter argument would be maybe it was flat and it's still the second highest wearables home accessories quarter ever and one of the not to bring out the old tough compare, but their last Holly quarter, they blew it out. And so you, that can hide a very good quarter.

That's just not the, but the fact is the holiday quarter grew 1920, 21, 22, and then in 23, it didn't grow. And so it's, it's one of those things where, again, I think you can overreact to this, but what it does suggest is that there certainly, they seem to have exited their big inflationary growth period of 30%. And, and why is that? And that's hard to say, like, because like you said, the Apple watch ultra, uh, seem to do pretty well and is an expensive product so presumably also very uh profitable but definitely going to generate a lot of revenue

you know they they also talk about like how they they brought in a lot of people who you know a huge number of the apple watch sales they got were to people who've never had a smartwatch before so that's that's a good sign you sign. That is a tidbit that they're sharing with Wall Street because it is a good sign. I don't know. I think if I was somebody who was only concerned with growth in these categories, I would be looking at this saying the days of the 40% growth are over and now these are going to be more incremental categories from here on out, unless Apple rolls out a wearable that can drive revenue and different services offerings. Those are the places where they could goose this more. This episode is brought to you by Capital One.

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with some Ask Upgrade questions. Matthew wants to know, do you frequently use universal control? I have an iPad Pro sitting out here on my desk and I guess I would say yes because I have this iPad pro sitting out here on my desk and I, I guess I would say yes, because I have this iPad pro out here. I will open it up.

Uh, sometimes I'm controlling it directly, but a lot of times if it's sitting next to my studio display, I will just control it using universal control. So, so yeah, I would say, I would say sure.

Frequently, not all the time but frequently yeah i don't uh my the status board ipad that i had you know like i was i talked about spoke about on the show i had widgets and stuff on it this ipad has actually gone back home it is now a media ipad because in the in our new house in our our old apartment. You know, sometimes we, most days, we want to eat and watch TV, right, at the same time. And we could do that very easily in our old place, but in our new place, where the TV is

and where our dining table is, it just doesn't match up. So I was like, well, an iPad would be really good for this to watch something for 10, 15 minutes before we go sit on the sofa. I have an iPad at the studio. It's 11 inches, the iPad Air. I'm just going to bring it home.

So it is now a media iPad. It's now just full of media apps. And we use it for that when we're sitting at the dining table catching up on an episode of something while we eat dinner. I also now don't have an ipad here at the studio which is like interesting to me i did today have a thing where i wanted to mark something up i was like an apple pencil would be great for this i don't have one here so i had to do it in like text you know i gotta keep like i had to like annotate something and we're using just a different color

it was just like this is not the way like you, this is not the way I want to do this, but I didn't really have another way to do it. But yeah, I don't have one here now. This isn't like a thing. I use my iPad Mini. I adore my iPad Mini. Use it all the time. Love that thing.

But I just keep it at home, and it wouldn't do for what I wanted anyway. But yeah, just an interesting thought. But universal control, I wasn't a super big fan of it anyway, because if you did have a device open all the time, I would just find myself accidentally moving my mouse over to that device when I didn't want to. But I understand why people like it. Mark asks, regarding Phil Schiller on Mastodon, do you think Apple should have their own Mastodon instance?

Should any large tech company? They could have more control over their content and it would also serve as a sort of automatic verification as well. What do you think? I'm surprisingly going to say yes. Okay, that's not what i thought all right go on that's why i said surprisingly here's why if if you are if you as a business decide that

mastodon is worth supporting which i think is an open question right but let's just say it that if like in addition to twitter and instagram or whatever, like, oh, well, we've got people on Mastodon, let's try that. And you're using it for your corporate voice. I think you should own your own instance because then you control your own instance. And it's clear to anything that gets posted on there that it is in the voice of you as the corporation, as an authorized representative of the corporation. Now, there are people who have those, you know, opinions are my own accounts, and those should not be on, if you have an account like that, you should not have that on your corporate instance, right? But there are also those accounts like Jaws' Twitter account and Colleen Novielli's

Twitter account, right? Where it's just like, the only posts are really about Apple products. And it's very much a, I work at Apple and this is a very friendly, you know, here's the thing that we're working on at Apple thing. Like if you find from a PR and marketing perspective that having that sort of thing is valuable, I would say you should own it, right?

You shouldn't be relying on somebody else. If you're going to have an official-ish presence of employees on Mastodon, own it. And that makes it clear that it is the business of Apple, let's say. And that if you're posting there, it's very clearly you're under the aegis. Otherwise, it shouldn't be there. I'm not sure any company would want this, but if I, as a company, decided it was strategic, that we wanted to do marketing on social media that included Mastodon, I would want my own instance, I think, because it would be mine. I agree with that. I think the issue is where the line is

drawn as to who gets to use that instance right like if apple set up an instance and well they only let c-level executives sign up on that instance right because like what if like an engineer wants to sign up on that instance but now you're responsible for anything this person says in public right like there is more of a a link to it there so i think it's complicated but if you're but if you're so again i am i am uh uh james thompson in the discourse this is a rank and file employee it's a bad deal it is but as a company right which is the question here as a company i would mike i would like that engineer to know that if they get an account on this service, that they got to keep it to business and they got to follow the social media rules and social media

policy and say like, we'll let you tweet about the work you're doing under the, under this, you know, like you, or, you know, like you do on Twitter, we'll let you post about it on Mastodon, but you got to follow the rules. Or maybe, yeah, maybe it's just an instance that has a C-level account on it or not. Or maybe you say, oh, no, no, no, we're part of the community. We're on Mastodon.social. You could do that. I just, I, but what I'm, I guess what I'm really saying is whatever it would be, it's not what you're thinking, right? It would just be a PR vehicle. It's not going to be a thing that they set up and they're like, Hey, everybody join and talk about whatever. And again, if you're an employee and you want to talk about whatever, uh, really whatever, then the last thing you want to

do is have it tied to your employment. Because then if you leave that company, uh, you are going to lose your social media identity. So as a personal account, I would not recommend it, but as a PR strategy by a company, I would absolutely recommend it because it gives you complete control over it. Do you think they are going to join Masterbond? I doubt it. If it happens, it will be because Apple or another company,rosoft you know developer focused companies if their if their audience is among the people who have sort of left twitter or a big chunk of them have left twitter and gone to mastodon i would i would put a presence there i'm not sure that there's anybody

like i think it's more likely that there'd be an official Apple Mastodon account for developer relations than for selling iPhones, right? Tim Cook or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, that's what Twitter's left with. What is Twitter for today, if anything, is broadcast pronouncements from Jaws and from Tim Cook and all of that. Absolutely. yeah jaws and from tim cook and all of that absolutely not not you know the conversational stuff necessarily but like uh and a lot of us have have have turned the dial down or off but

uh for those broadcast elements of tim cook saying it's it's great it's great to be in london today we visited with people at the battersea apple offices like that's a that's a twitter thing right that's that's where that goes yeah i think all of the main accounts like they don't it doesn't really make it doesn't necessarily make logical sense right now to just bring them to mastodon right like yeah so the community is but tim is not like tweeting john syracuse you know like he's not do you know what i mean it's just like that's not happening yeah and that's actually different with phil schiller right because i feel like phil schiller actually used exactly yes he did right so like phil phil is making that choice right as an individual like that is a pure because he would tweet people in our community right it's a thing

phil would do right because he was maybe the most like engaged in that way um or is most engaged in that way and like i just feel like tim cook's like big tweets and like the apple account is basically just used for twitter advertising well that's not on mastodon um you know like all of these things and they are they're not going for the people in our community they're going for the every person the masses that's right who's not on mastodon also right so like i don't know if it i don't know right like i think as things as they are right now i would say no they probably don't have some corporate presence on mastodon but i don't but you know i couldn't have imagined what the last three months were, so who knows what the next three months will be.

Rob asks, do you use photographic styles with your iPhone camera, and if so, which one? So this is where you can make choices as to how you want your images to look just as they straight come out of the camera. Do you use a photographic style on your iPhone? the camera do you use a photographic style on your iphone i believe i have it turned on and it's i don't remember which one it is worm something warm vibrant warm i use vibrant warm which vibrant warm for me is i i adapted the vibrant style and it named it vibrant warm so i think it does that sometimes too like if because. Because you can change the style. So I started with Vibrant and I changed the warmth.

And so I use Vibrant Warm. And it's always turned on to that one because I like my images to be a little more vibrant and a little more warm. There you go. And Carl asks, what do you think the chances are

that the next iPad mini has an M-series chip so it could gain features like full external display support? It seems like the iPad mini has the potential to be the Mac mini of the iPad lineup. Bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse for a full desktop experience. What do you think the chances are? I'm going to say 72%. That's good good so you're feeling pretty positive on it i am mostly because all attempts to make the ipad mini a low-end ipad have failed it's not that it's a

small ipad mid-range it's a small ipad air. And if that's the case, it would have an M-series chip on it, wouldn't it? Yep. So that's why, you know, 72%. Those are the chances. I think they'll do it because I think eventually all of the iPads will be M-series chips. Will they do it?

I don't think they will necessarily do it for the idea of external display supports being the thing. I just think that like m series is coming for the ipad in general i don't know i mean if the a series is cheaper and you can put it in the low-end ipad why wouldn't you do it the whole goal there of that thing is to make it as cheap as possible but the ipad mini has never been the goal to make it cheap as possible i don't know i mean the the additional percentage there is that they decide that the iPad mini going forward

is just the low-end iPad. And that's just how it's going to be. But I just don't, I don't feel like they view it that way. I kind of feel like they view it as being a smaller iPad Air. Yeah, well, I mean, it got that design and all of those kinds of aesthetics

way before the iPad did, which is just the way it looks. I just, for me, I don't care. I just want them to keep doing things. Like I don't care what they do with the iPad did, which is now just the way it looks. I just, for me, I don't care. I just want them to keep doing things. Like, I don't care what they do with the iPad mini. Just keep doing something. Keep it around. I want a better screen

more than I want external display support. Make the internal display better before we move to the external display. Thank you so much to everybody who sent in a question. You can send in your own by going to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in an Ask Upgrade question for us to

feature on a future episode. And that was this episode of Upgrade. You can check out Jason's work including the report card. Big thing. I've already skimmed through it. I'm looking forward to reading it in full. Over at sixcolors.com So many words.

You can also hear Jason's podcast here on RelayFM and at I'm looking forward to reading it in full over at sixcolors.com. So many words. So many words. You can also hear Jason's podcast here on RelayFM and at theincomparable.com as well. You can hear me here on RelayFM and you can go check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can send us your feedback, follow-up, and questions by going to upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. Thank you to our sponsors to fine folk over at Cap1, Electric and Rocket Money for their support of this episode. But most of all, as always, thank you for listening.

And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, everybody.