Upgrade - 448: I'm Choosing Optimism

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Myke is joined by Casey Liss to discuss Mark Gurman's report on Apple's 'Moonshot' efforts. Also, what is that 'ComputeModule', how thick will the Pro Max camera bump be, and how does Casey fare in a brand new segment?

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 448 today's show is brought to you by rocket money uni pizza ovens and zoc doc my name is mike hurley and i am joined by my guest co-host mr casey liss hi casey The time has finally come, baby. I am so excited. I am so very excited. I'm excited that Jason is getting a well-earned vacation. I'm super excited to be here with you. I've got to confess, a little nervous.

It's a lot of pressure, but I am here for it. I am stoked. Well, I know the upgradians are happy because, oh boy, did I get a lot of questions for you. So we're going to start off today with a Listalk question from Peter. Peter wants to know if Apple released a new version of your beloved 12-inch MacBook with Apple Silicon and cellular, but the only color option was pure white, would you buy it?

So I feel like I need to channel Jason and go on like two or three tangents before I answer the question. First of all, I... Unnecessary burning, but I'm here for it. I actually didn't mean that as a burn, but I think it did come across that way. I really honestly didn't, but now that I play that back, I think it might have come across that way. Sorry, Jason, I love you. Anyway, so my first Mac, my very first first mac literally my very first mac was a uh white polycarbonate uh macbook which uh i affectionately referred to as a polybook which

infuriated our mutual friend steven hackett probably still does it started to annoy me now you know at first i was all on board and now i'm like please stop so you know okay well so the the white polycarbonate MacBook, which I loved. I really wanted the black one, but I was too cheap to spend the 50 or $75, I forget what it was, to get that one, which was, I think also marginally faster,

if memory serves. But it was my first Mac. I didn't know if I would like it, you know. Yeah, I think the black one came in a specific configuration. Right, exactly. And so I had that machine. I love that machine.

The problem with that machine, though, is that it would get a little discolored from your finger grease slash oil slash just, you know, the things that are part of your body to keep you alive. That would rub off onto the white polycarbonate material. And so more so than any other computer I've ever owned, I needed to take like a Mr. Clean magic eraser. I't know if the uh scrub daddy would have worked in this capacity but the magic eraser the magic eraser was very good at cleaning all that off but i had to do that

like a couple of times a month because even though i'm not that precious about my computers it still would look like brown and gross and i really dislike that but um i i loved that machine nevertheless also you know i don't need to belabor the point but i freaking adored my 12-inch macbook adorable um also known as the macbook one i adored that thing it's still in service as aaron's computer although it's getting quite long in the tooth at this point you've got your own law incorrect there why what's oh no the macbook one was no i thought the macbook one was one. Wasn't that one the 13-inch MacBook Pro? The Escape.

That was the MacBook Escape because it had the Escape key, right? I thought. Yeah, yeah, that's it. I mean, I wouldn't put it past me to be wrong about this. No, I was wrong. You were right. I was wrong. All right, see, all right, we're off to a good start.

I'm still cruising. So anyway, I love that computer. It's so tiny, so small. It felt no bigger than an ipad it quite clearly was bigger but didn't feel bigger than an ipad but it was completely crippled and had like 17 different achilles heels the moment we bought them uh and and i still miss that machine and i still love it well my dad just recently got the m2 macbook air i don't know if you've heard about this machine mike but people like it aka best mac ever made

is that what you're talking about? That is the one. And I was helping him get it set up and so on and so forth. And I got to tell you, that is a nice computer. It really genuinely is. And so the thought of having that computer, just shrunk down just the teeniest bit, not that it's big now, but if you could shrink it down just a teeny, teeny, teeny bit, and oh my word, if you could put cellular on it, that thing could be as yellow as a Rivian R1S. And if you're caught up on ATP, you'll understand that joke. And I would still buy it because, oh my word, a computer that size with cellular, I'm in, baby. I'm in 100%. Absolutely. I would like to thank Peter for sending in that question. If you would like to send in a question of your own,

you can do that by going to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in your, well, usually they would be Snell Talk questions. You can do that there. Indeed. Now, may I interrupt the flow here? May I do a very brief Hurley talk, if possible? I would love to throw one. You've probably discussed this in the past, and because I'm the most forgetful human alive, I don't recall if you have or if so what the answer is. But I was curious. I adore the USB Type-C SEA beach towel. That is my preferred beach towel. Oh. And as with so many things that happen on the show, I was so jealous and annoyed that I didn't come up with it. And so my actual Hurley Talk question for you is, leaving aside Cortex Brand, which you should check that out. It's excellent. Would you like to plug that now, Mike? You can go to cortexbrand.com or buy yourself a beautiful sidekick notepad.

There's a video on the page if you're interested. A very well done video. Thank you. So leaving aside Cortex Brand, what is your favorite upgrade merch that you have sold over the years? It's probably the beach towel. Is it? Okay, good. I mean, I was thinking about this recently. Like obviously the OG Dongletown t-shirt,

like the orange one, it's a classic, right? But the beach towel is so ridiculous and I will always be thankful to Cotton Bureau that they did it because at first they were like, we don't really want to do this and we can't. It's not a thing we can do.

I don't think our machines can even handle that size. But we worked together, we got it done and that's a classic. It was part of the, it was the surf club range, the Dongletown surf club range had had the beach towel so yeah i i love that one it is it is easily my favorite because it it just works and lands that much better as a beach towel because didn't you do a shirt with like similar

stuff on it and a tote bag okay there you go see to me the the beach towel, that's the pro move right there. I mentioned a moment ago the form that we have. I'll just say it now. If you go to upgradefeedback.com, you can fill out our feedback form. If you now wish, you can designate your questions as Snow Talk, Ask Upgrade, Follow Up, or Feedback. We have like a new type where you can just click and choose from a list. You don't have to do this, but if you want to, and I'll say for me, it's really nice to be able to just get the Sneltor questions and just get the Ask Upgrade questions in our backend.

So it's up to you if you want to do that. We'd appreciate it. I would appreciate it, especially if you did. Yeah, that's excellent. I'm super jealous of this for ATP. And I don't remember, are we using this for analog? We should, if we're not. Yeah, we are. Yeah. Okay. I'm super jealous of this for ATP because we had a system which, I don't know if it was identical to what you guys were doing, but was spiritually the same

as what you were doing for Ask Upgrade, especially since Ask ATP is stolen, borrowed from Ask Upgrade. especially since ask atp is uh stolen i borrowed from ask upgrade and uh and so we were you know crawling or we had uh if crawling twitter and you know adding things to a google sheet and fediverse wide search in mastodon doesn't seem to really be a thing doesn't um yeah so a listener has actually written something up that i haven't had a chance to look at yet uh that might accomplish this for us i need to dig into it and see what the situation is there, but I'm very jealous of your fancy-schmancy form. I'm maybe going to have to

put something together, or maybe Marco put something together for ATP. Or maybe we'll just steal yours. Very happy with the form? Yeah. I'm jealous. Are you ready to saddle up? Is it rumor roundup time? Oh boy, is it rumor roundup time. Yeeh, is it rumor roundup time. Yeehaw, I'm ready.

9to5Mac have discovered references to a new, quote, compute module, or one word. Is that CamelCase when it's like there's a capital letter in the middle? Well, it could be Camel or Pascal if memory serves. And now I'm either confirming that I know what I'm talking about or confirming that I'm a dope. I believe that is PascalCase because the first character is capitalized and camel case would be lowercase C, uppercase M. Pascal case is uppercase C and uppercase M. Well, anyway, it's... The more you do...

9to5Mac have discovered references to a compute module device class in the new Xcode beta. They are pontificating that this could either be referencing some kind of module that the Mac Pro could use or some kind of processing device for the upcoming headset. It runs a variant of iOS in some capacity. If it was for the Mac Pro, this could be an answer to expandability.

So you could have this module that could provide expandable and upgradable graphics, for example. It could plug in different modules that have different graphics capabilities, or maybe even a way to swap in a new M chip completely in the entire package. What do you think? I just really was very excited about the possibility of forcing you to talk about the Mac Pro with me for a minute or two. See, Jason's coming back around, just like that. I saw this, and I spent a lot of time thinking about this this morning as I was prepping for today's episode, and I'm really not sure what to make of this. So I was trying to think to myself, well, what makes Apple Silicon unique and what makes Mac Pro unique?

Separately, two different unique things. And then, okay, let's suppose we're going to mash them together. How are we going to handle that or what are we going to do? And what makes Apple Silicon so cool or one of the things that makes it so cool is that it has this whole unified memory architecture thing. And you've talked about this on Upgrade and on your other shows. We've talked about this on Upgrade and on your other shows, but in case you aren't familiar people, listeners, the idea is in most computers, the video RAM is separate from the traditional RAM. And in order to move stuff from one to the other, you have to actually spend the time to do that. And one of the things that makes Apple Silicon very different is that they're all globbed together. is that they're all globbed together. It's just one big, big, big bucket,

which has some advantages. Like, for example, you don't need to move stuff in memory from, you know, system memory to video memory or vice versa. It's all the same memory. It's all already there, which is great. Another thing that's different about Apple Silicon is that for the most part, it's an entire system on a chip. It's an SOC, you know, so all of these different components that may be in disparate modules or really in disparate physical pieces of hardware, they're all kind of squished together onto one platter, so to speak. How are they going to handle any sort of expandability for a thing that, by definition, one of the primary advantages of Apple Silicon is having the entire system on one chip? And I think what you had said, Mike, it does potentially make sense that maybe the compute module is the entire system on a chip and whatever associated sundries that need to be right next to it. And then you take out this maybe big or maybe not big, but you take out this box and you throw it away because your M1 is useless now.

And now you plug in your M2 or your M3 or what have you. I don't see any reason why that couldn't work, but it just doesn't feel like that's what they would do. That doesn't feel like an Apple-y thing to do to me. Like, can you, I can't recall a time, and I know we really need Stephen for this kind of question or Jason for that matter, but like, was there ever a time

that you could realistically and semi-easily replace a CPU in a Mac ever? I don't think so. Not in a way that they would have allowed. I mean, maybe during the lost times, right? Let's say under the like steve johnny error of mac design no i i don't think that's ever been possible see that's what i thought and so even though that's the thing that makes the most logical sense because again as i've been as i've

been you know hammering on for the last few minutes it's a system on a chip and you could put that chip in a box and then that box becomes a compute module. It conceptually makes sense, but I just, I don't buy it. So then I started to ask myself, well, okay, let's put that aside for a moment. What do you really want to swap out in a computer, particularly a Mac Pro? Like what are the things you would want to change? either add more, change what's there, or maybe even add spinning disks for time machine purposes or something like that. And from everything I can tell, there is no reason that wouldn't work in even an Apple Silicon Mac Pro. That should be no problem.

But everything else that you would potentially be interested in changing, the GPU, you know, the graphics card, so to speak, the RAM, the video RAM, if such a thing was relevant, which again, in the Apple Silicon world, it isn't really relevant. But all of that is integrated, right? But it doesn't have to be.

And it doesn't have to be, and you're right. But I would be surprised if Apple spent the time and engineering effort to unravel this thing that they worked so hard to put on one chip, the whole system on a chip. I'm not saying you're wrong by any stretch. It is certainly possible, but I would be surprised. Do you think I'm bananas? It's complicated because, I know this isn't particularly helpful for your question, but I really do see both sides of it. It looks like where they're going right now indicates that everything is going to be contained within an M, we'll call it

module, right? It's all in the one package. So it seems like the possibility of you can add more RAM to this so you can have a more powerful GPU, swap in another GPU.

Seems unlikely. But then what's the point of the Mac Pro, which makes me feel like there is something. Whether it is we have these cards that are kind of like afterburner cards, but now they're full graphics stuff or they're full RAM stuff, and it's these weird things you can plug and play or it is this idea that like you buy the enclosure and then you can get an m4 system on a chip in two years time and an m5 and then they just never have to worry about this quote unquote never have to worry about designing a mac pro again because i just got this one thing and they just every two to three years throw out a new chip that you can plug in.

Do I think that's going to happen? No. But I also didn't think the 2019 Mac Pro was a product that could have existed. That on its own just seems like a weird product because of all the things you could do to it and how easy it was to get in it and swap stuff around. So really, in this era that we're in now, it seems logical to stop at the Mac Studio.

So what's the point of the Mac Pro if not for something like this? I agree, I agree. And I also can see both sides of this. So to go back to my mind journey, my walk through the woods, if you will, I got to thinking, okay, so we said we can do the SSDs, no problem. GPU, RAM, VRAM, maybe not.

So what else could you put inside a Mac Pro? What else would you really be interested in? And I could think of a couple of things. Number one, the Afterburner card, which is available for the current Mac Pro. And this is a thing that basically, if I understand it properly, does hardware video transcodes, particularly for like ProRes and ProRes Raw. So it makes things like Final Cut Pro a lot faster. Well, maybe there would be an Afterburner-like thing for particular industries or...

They put that on the package now. You're right. No, you're right. You're absolutely right. Which is kind of wild. Everything that entire unit used to do is now just in the chip. Shoot, I didn't even think about that.

You're 100% correct. I think you're on the right sort of lines, though, right? Of like, well, they did that before. What if it's something like this? If it's not like a full thing but it's like plug this in and you can do accelerated ai stuff but then it even the afterburner felt niche so like yeah it's weird i don't know maybe like a neural engine like a secondary neural engine or something like that the only other thing i could come up with which i will be the first to tell you is a bit of a stretch it's like maybe you would want to swap out wired networking you know you would maybe it comes

with like a gigabit card that's not enough right like it's not enough i mean and that's and that's really stretching compute to its breaking point right like that's not really a compute module by any reasonable definition yeah but also it's like you wanted modularity. You can change from one to 10 gigabit ethernet on this thing. Enjoy. Right. I mean, or maybe you could plug in like an SFP for fiber optics if you're a lunatic like I am, but I agree with you. Like that's really, that's a stretch. So I just, I'm struggling in the same way. And we'll be talking about this momentarily in the same way. I'm struggling to understand what is the purpose? What's the value add of this mythical headset? Like, what is the purpose of the Mac Pro? If it's not going to be, you know, the M1 Extreme or M2

Extreme or what have you, you know, if the point is not simply, let's put the biggest, both in every sense of the word, you know, physically biggest, figuratively biggest, let's put the biggest chip we can in this box. And other than that, what's the point? I mean, yeah, you could mount your SSDs or spinning disks internally. Yay. But like what? I just don't get it. I don't get it. And maybe the answer is exactly what you said earlier, Mike, that maybe they do make it possible to add extra RAM. Maybe they do make it possible to add a different GPU or VRAM or something like that. But given all the work they've done to make it all right there and all the work they've done to physically put these things close together, even within the package, so that there's less space for the information to travel internally within the chip, I'm hard-pressed to think that's what they would do.

But who knows? And just to reiterate, as 9to5Mac said, maybe this has nothing to do with the Mac Pro or it's something to do with the headset. But who knows? The other thing I loved is somebody theorized it might be a NUC, like a Raspberry Pi or something equivalent, which would make me very happy

and make me laugh quite a bit. But there's no way. That did not make it into my write-up. I don't buy it at all, but it would be funny. It would be very funny. Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that the iPhone 15 Pro will feature an improved LiDAR scanner.

This new model is more power efficient and could therefore benefit other camera features of the upcoming iPhones, like night mode or autofocus. I wanted to test you. Have you ever knowingly used the LiDAR feature of your phone? So maybe I'll be stretching knowingly to the breaking point here. I think yes or at worst, yes asterisk. So like portrait mode, for example, to the best of my recollection,

I thought that that used LiDAR in most circumstances as well. Probably. And also the camera's already using it for uh autofocus and stuff but that's my point of like you don't know i don't know and like neither do i care i'm not like oh let me let me fire up the light off of this portrait mode you know yeah that's totally fair um but i think i have a couple of examples where it is knowingly um the measure app which i'm pretty sure is a first party app now isn't it it's an apple app it always was yeah okay yeah so because i knew that there for a few years before apple embraced

it i thought that there were some third-party ones that did similar stuff that stuff and then they developed one when the lidar came out i think there you go so the measure app i use it very rarely but i do every great once in a while if i just want like a thumb in the wind kind of measurement it's not you know for complete Um, I will use the measure app from time to time. And then I've done this a few times. Mostly it's just an interesting party trick, but there's an app called poly cam P O L Y C A M. Um, I'm sure Michael put a link in the show notes and that will let you take a 3d scan of a room or a floor of a house. And so as an example, I did this. Some friends of ours just recently moved within the greater Richmond area. And just for grins and giggles, while the new house was empty, I did the polycam scan and so on and so forth. And I got a pretty cool 3D scan out of this.

What either us or the family that moved into the house will do with this 3D scan out of this. What would I, what either us or the family that's had moved into the house will do with this 3D scan? I have no idea, but it was cool. So we have that. It's a fun demo. It's a very fun demo, but other than measure and polycam, uh, I can't think of anything that I have knowingly done with, uh, with LIDAR, or I guess, uh, the, the three times in my life that i've done the ar visualization with an apple product right like see the mac pro in your office which i think i tried once just to say uh oh there it is and again i don't even know if they're using lidar like are they even using those ar models i'm not even sure if they are i had assumed so but you very well could be right

are there times that you have done it or are you like not not knowingly using lidar at all it's the same thing as you like i've tried some of these apps that that have like some kind of like oh look at this you can map out a room like just to have done it but i'm not doing it frequently i'm sure there are people that are but it's not something that i ever really think about yeah so on the last episode of underscore we spoke about some cad models of the iphone 14 pro i know you're talking about an atp as well well there was something missing which was the iphone 15 pro max and nine to five mac is reporting more information from a cab model this features everything we spoke about on the pro uh last time so-C, thinner bezels, curve from the display to the body.

So it's the same on the iPhone 15 Pro as it is on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, on this model, the thickness of the camera bump has gotten smaller from the 14 Pro Max. It's a miracle! Along with a reduction in the overall thickness of the device.

Now, these are both tiny reductions, but the thing that's surprising to me is, you know, the rumors are talking about periscope camera. I just expected it would get way larger, but it hasn't. Maybe you don't need as much. Maybe one of the reasons I'm thinking aloud right now that the camera keeps getting bigger

is because they need, they could put in a larger optical sensor in there, right, for the zoom. Because, you know, we've got like 3X now rather than 2X. But if they go into the periscope, maybe they don't need that amount of space because it's going along inside of the body of the phone anyway.

I don't know. Well, see, I'm not sure. And I say that not as a kind way to disagree with you. I literally am not sure. My understanding was that the sensor for the 1X camera, what they previously called the wide camera, was physically largest. And I thought that the size of the plateau, as my co-host John Syracuse likes to call it, you know, the camera bump, I thought that that was more about the glass, more about the lenses than it was about the sensors or anything like that. And then I got, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about, well, how is this Periscope thing going to work? And again, if you're not familiar, the theory is,

and I guess this is happening, you would know, Mike, this is happening from time to time in Android phones. It's been happening for years in Android phones. Okay. So the idea is, you know, you have the light come in the lens in the back of the camera, just like it always would, but then you reflect it internally within the phone. You reflect it, you know it down the body of the phone so that somewhere else you have more physical space

within the body of the phone such that you can put a larger sensor or something like that. I have also seen that this Periscope idea seems to be about having an improved zoom. I think I'd seen somewhere somebody citing a 6x zoom. That's the point of the periscope. Yeah, see, but... I think I don't understand why a periscope is necessary for this because I don't think it's a sensor issue. I think it's a glass

issue, isn't it? Yeah, so they put lots of lenses, right? You have to stack lots of lenses. And so you need vertical space in theory. You need physical space. So to save the camera from getting three times further out of the

phone, they turn it on its side and put it into the body. So it's not actually the sensor you need space for, it's the glass. And so it has to go somewhere. So that's why I'm wondering if maybe it's gotten smaller because they don't need as much glass for the three times because it isn't three times anymore. It goes up to five or ten.

Just on this one, though. Just on this one. Can you promise me not to do a victory lap, please? Can we just be adults about this? Oh, well, when I get the great phone and you don't? Mike, I have a bombshell to drop. Okay. I'm really thinking about the big guy oh i think

this will be the year to do it it's going to be different again and i think it's going to be different in ways that could be interesting and also you'll give yourself like the ability to get used to it before they bring out the ultra phone and then you've kind of got no choice right so i don't know i i've always been i i haven't been such a proponent of smaller phones that i like ever had an sc or a mini or anything like that even though my word those small phones feel so good in hand but the i currently have a 14 pro and i love this phone i really really do i am a super fan of the dynamic island i i agree with most people it hasn't been quite as revolutionary as we had hoped yet but my goodness when it is doing something like a sports score or a timer or what have you it is

extremely cool and extremely convenient but this phone is already darn big and at that point like is it really that dramatically different for the for the super big for the super big one. And if I can get a better zoom, that might be worth it. Because I was thinking to myself, why do I still have my micro four thirds camera? You know, a quote unquote big camera. They're small as big cameras go, but nevertheless, it's still a big camera.

Why do I have it? Well, I have two lenses for it that I use regularly. I don't remember the statistics offhand and honestly, it's irrelevant. But basically one of them is a prime lens, which means it doesn't zoom in any way. And so if you need to zoom, you need to move your feet. Um, and it's a really, really good lens with a huge wide aperture. It's like one F 1.8, I think, or something like that. So you can get really good bouquet or however you pronounce it. Uh, and I love that lens, but it's only really good like outdoors

in good light, you know, inside it can work, but it's not great. But most times if I'm indoors, I'm going to grab my iPhone because the camera is probably going to do a better job of taking that picture. The other lens I have for the Micro Four Third is a zoom lens. And I forget exactly how deep the zoom goes,

but just thumb in the air, I would say it's like maybe a 1X a 1x to 5 6x something like that roughly and so if i can get like a 6x zoom in my phone do i really need to carry my big camera like really ever and i don't even do it that much now but you know if we go on like a beach vacation or something like that maybe i'll bring the big camera and I usually get phenomenal pictures with it. But golly, I would really, really be interested in a big honking 6X zoom or something like that. And if I can get a 6X zoom out of my everyday carry phone, is it worth getting the little bit bigger device?

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, I was at my parents' this past weekend and when I wasn't playing with dad's new M2 MacBook Air, have you heard about those? I hear they're good. So when I wasn't playing with that, he has a iPhone 13 Pro Max, and he was carrying on all weekend. I don't know what brought this on, but he was carrying on all weekend about how amazing the battery life is on his phone. And this was his first Max phone.

I was like, well, dad, these things are related. The Max has effectively infinite battery, from what I understand. phone and this was his first max phone i was like well dad these things are related like the max has effectively infinite battery from what i understand and again jump in when you're ready mike but the battery is just phenomenal and so i'm looking at this big honking battery and i'm looking at this big honking zoom and i'm wondering myself is this year the year i have been so vehemently anti plus phones and max phones but'm really, really wondering if this year might be the year. It should be. Mark Gurman is reporting that the upcoming headset that Apple should be releasing at some point this year would feature in-air typing as the text input method, using a combination of

both the eye and hand tracking to make it work effectively. but this feature has been described as finicky you don't say so there you go government also states that the headset will be able to work independently from an iphone including the setup process if you so choose that is good news to me i think um you know there was i have the concern that it's like gonna be like reality kit right you know like rather than an actual os we don't want to go back to apple watch 1.0 so if they are expecting going to be like reality kit, rather than an actual OS. We don't want to go back to Apple Watch 1.0. So if they are expecting it to be independent from day one, that's good news, I think, for the headset.

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree that independent is the right way to do it. In the article that you had linked, the MacRumors post, they had mentioned something about how, you know, maybe a lot of your iCloud data would be pulled down directly to the device.

You know, some of the things that you could grab from your phone for sure, but the device would just go and grab it from iCloud, which I think is really smart. And as more and more of us are turning to, you know, Apple one and whatnot, a lot of our stuff is an iCloud.

So in that sense, it's super convenient. not. A lot of our stuff is an iCloud. So in that sense, it's super convenient. I'm super skeptical of this just type in the air thing. Like I don't see that as working. And I'm sure this is where Jason would say, you know, I type 130, 160, whatever it is, words per minute. I don't think I can type 160 words per minute, says this hypothetical Jason in the air. And I'm not as fast as Jason, but I'm pretty quick. And here again, like, I don't think I could get that fast from something that's just relying on my fingers in the air and a little bit, my eyes, I am, I'm super skeptical, but as with all

things, Apple, so often they come out with something that works way better than we expect. Maybe even to the point that you can shrug off, you know, an error here or there. And I mean, heck, autocorrect has gotten so bad on the iPhone recently that it's probably no worse than that at this point. Well, I guess that's what they're hoping, right? That like by the time they release this thing, they will be able to wow us with features like that.

Like it will just work, trademark. Yeah, you know, and also in this article, I thought there was an interesting little aside thing that they mentioned. I'm reading from the article. While the first generation model will contain the M2 chip alongside a secondary chip for AR and VR processing, you know, come to think of it, actually,

I wonder if that's your afterburner we were talking about earlier, like having something specific. You don't think so? No. I mean, you know what, though, Casey? Maybe, right? Like that is an interesting point that you've made up.

It's like some other chip. Yeah. Yes. So maybe a normal person wouldn't care about it, but if you're a developer doing work for this headset, maybe you would want that. I'm going to call it an afterburner. You can offload some stuff.

So you know what? We just fixed it. That is a full circle, like lasso circle rumor roundup, where from rumor one to the final rumor, we actually solved it. Good work. Yeehaw. Anyway, so I'm sorry. Going back to this quotation.

So while the first generation model would contain the M.2 chip alongside a secondary chip for AR and VR processing, it is apparently not powerful enough to output graphics at the level Apple wants. For example, FaceTime will only support realistic VR representations of just two people at a time rather than everyone in a conference call with a first-generation headset. I don't know. I just found that very interesting, that even with this thing allegedly pending any minute now, it's still going to be... I'm going to use the word crippled. I think that's more negative than I intended. But limited is a much better word for it.

Thank you. Also, not a great word anyway. But like... Oh, good point. I didn't even think about that. Thank you very much. We point it out. It's language. This has been referenced

before. Mark Gurman was talking about how Apple was working on some high-quality representation of you that wasn't Memoji, which I was surprised about, but that's for one-on-one calls.

And if it's more than two people, then it would fall to Memoji instead. So that might be, again, that's what he's referring to again. But that still surprises me. I wish that they would have just found a way to make it high quality. Or just not bother.

I don't know but i think a lot of this is i think the whole point of this device is going to be like hey this is what we can do now we're releasing it now with the idea that by 2025 2026 it's going to be incredible yeah yeah i mean i'm super interested to see how this turns i mean i know i'm not the only one but i just this is so out of left field you know in a way when we were thinking about the ipad it was okay it's just gonna be a big phone and that's kind of how it's been the watch was a little bit more interesting like what are they going to do with that but looking at it today maybe not the original one but the the watch of today okay it's kind of like a fitbit but better yeah all right that makes sense but with the headset like i really just don't know what they're going to do with it

and and i'm really excited to see this episode is brought to you in part by rocket money the average person has around 12 paid subscriptions i could i actually think that's above your ability to remember them all so like you could be subscribed to a handful of services but maybe it's even more maybe your brain's tricking you you want to double check that with rocket money you can quickly identify and cancel all of your unwanted subscriptions rocket money formerly known as true bill is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills all in one place. Over 80% of people have subscriptions they have forgotten about, like that streaming service that you bought to just watch that one series of that one show,

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That's R-O-C-K-E-T-M-O-N-E-Y.com upgrade. That's R-O-C-K-E-T M-O-N-E-Y.com upgrade. One last time, rocketmoney.com upgrade. Our thanks to Rocket Money for their support of this show and RelayFM. Let's talk about moonshots. In a pair of reports

this week, Mark Gurman spoke about Apple's moonshot team and their progress on Apple Watch glucose monitoring. So I'm going to read a bunch of stuff Casey and we're going to talk about it. So this team is called the Exploratory Design Group,

aka the XDG team. They are even more secretive than any other design team at Apple. I'm going to read from Mark Gurman's report. The team originated several years ago and was long led by Bill Athas, one of the few people to have had the title of engineering fellow at Apple until he unfortunately passed away unexpectedly at the end of last year. Athas was seen by the late co-founder Steve Jobs and current CEO Tim Cook

as one of the brightest engineering minds at the company. Functionally, this team sits within the hardware technologies group. So this is the group that's led by Johnny Cerugy. And this is interesting to me. Their offices, so the XDG's team's offices, are at Apple Park, but outside the ring. They're in one of the buildings. There's these buildings on the outside, right ring. They're in one of the buildings. There's these buildings on the outside, right?

And they're in one of those. Which kind of, they are almost like a Skunk Works project. So they operate kind of, if they're a separate entity, they have this kind of management style, the way that this has been employed for the XGG team. It means that they don't have to go through the typical rules and bureaucracy that other teams in Apple might have to go through. So're less constrained they're able to they've got a lot of

money in the team so they're very heavily funded and this will allow them to more easily think outside of the box i kind of think of move fast and break things is the mentality here right that's kind of the idea of this so the xdg team consists of a few hundred people this is considered small for a team at apple working on any kind of product development like they are apparently significantly smaller than the team that's working on the car project titan so we have become instantly familiar with this team now because uh this is due to mark german reporting on apparent breakthroughs that the team have made on a non-invasive glucose monitoring system for the Apple Watch. The aim of this technology is to measure glucose levels in someone's bloodstream without the need to prick a finger or insert any kind of probes into a person's skin.

These are currently the way that you have to do that. Like if you have to monitor your glucose levels, like if you a diabetic or for other health concerns it's inconvenient painful uh just you know not awesome basically obviously if apple are able to do this which is why they've been working on it for years this would improve the lives of diabetics immensely and provide another incredibly compelling use case for wearing an Apple Watch. I'm nearly at the end of this setup. So this is how the system works, according to Mark Gurman. It uses lasers to emit specific wavelengths of light into an area below the skin where there is interstitial fluid. I don't like that phrase.

These are substances that leak out of the capillaries. I don't like that either. This can be absorbed by glucose. The light is then reflected back to the sensor in a way that indicates the concentration of glucose. An algorithm then determines a person's blood glucose level. This team has been working on the project for 12 years and has now entered a proof of concept stage. The team believe they've made the project viable,

but it needs to be shrunken down to actually work with an Apple Watch. Mark Gurman says engineers are working to develop a prototype device about the size of an iPhone that could be strapped to a person's bicep. That would be a significant reduction from an early version of the system that sat atop a table. This is how this

stuff goes, right? Like it's always huge and massive and they get it smaller and smaller. Mark Gurman states that Apple has visions for the system that could warn someone if they're pre-diabetic as well as helping them monitor their glucose so the way that i've read this too this seems different so if they're going to go ahead and do this they i think they will take more of the approach of the heart monitoring stuff than the vo2 or the temperature sensors.

So these are like the VO2 sensor, the blood oxygen sensor, the temperature sensor for ovulation, what do they call it? Retroactive ovulation or something like that, where it can just tell you afterwards, yes, you ovulated. Those two sensors,

they're not like they're not preventative they're not in your face you know it's like the idea of like you can't use it to take your temperature and it can't warn you if you know they could never tie the VO2 sensor to COVID for example

right these were things they didn't go through government health approvals for these so they can only be kind of like hey you know maybe where the heart stuff is way more in your face right like something's wrong with you right now or like you can do the full ecg to get that to work apple have to go to health bodies in all of the different countries that they're in and like get the approvals which is why it's a system that's rolled out more slowly over time i expect if they're going to do this with all the time effort money they've put into it this is the route they're going to go down

because if they're like hey in the last week your glucose might have been a little bit high it's kind of not worth it, I feel like. What they want is the ability to say, you are pre-diabetic, or you are spiking right now, or your blood sugar's too low, because that's when they take the Apple Watch and double its audience again because it can now do this other thing.

Now everyone wants them again. What do you think? Yeah, I think you're exactly right that this would be a, like your heart rate, you know, oh, your heart rate's been high for a little while. You should look into that. You know, it would be kind of like a, hey, what about this? Yeah, something's wrong right now. Like you might want to check this out.

They're not going to say i don't think oh you're pre-diabetic they're just going to say well based on trends this is looking abnormal or this is unusual for you do you want to look at that you know and and i think that's the ekg or ecg whatever it is i think they're more direct about it you know they're very clear to say this won't detect a heart attack not for heart attacks just af just AFib, just AFib, not a heart attack. No, we don't know. We don't know. Just AFib. Well, they're very particular about that. When they introduced the temperature stuff for ovulation and the blood oxygen stuff, you know, especially the blood oxygen stuff, all of us were waiting to be like, okay, so you're going to warn us when we have COVID, right? And they were very

clear that that's not what's going on. This is what you were saying earlier. It's more about, you know, looking at trends and just noticing if something's different. And we already see a lot of that in health. We see it with heart rate. We see it with walking pace, if I remember correctly. There's a bunch of other trends in there. VO2, you had mentioned earlier. And it seems to me that that's what it would be is, look, this is trending in a direction that you may not expect. Do you want to take some sort of action on this? And, you know, as David Schaub is saying in the chat, nobody ever fired for telling you to ask your doctor or going to IBM. But nevertheless, you know, it's not going to be bad if they just ask you to look into it. And I suspect

that's where this is going to go. And as someone who writes software, at least occasionally, it's a very far cry and the stakes are much lower if you say, hey, look into it, look into this, rather than, oh, your current reading, and forgive me, I know nothing about this stuff. Your current reading is 100 and it should be 50. And that is a much more explicit, more concrete thing or goodness if you're you know plugging this into a um an insulin pump or something like that like you need you cannot mess that up in the way and then i think that's not the normal sort of thing for apple like project titan if it's real those are things you can't mess up but that's about it almost

everything else is just hey would you look at yeah and and that's as far. Almost everything else is just, hey, would you look at? And that's as far as I think this will go. Well, Gurman does report that one of Apple's goals for the technology is to create a preventative measure that warns people with their pre-diabetic. Like that is something they are actively trying to do. And their regulatory teams have held early discussions

about getting approvals. Like they want to do that. They want, you know, like I know you said, like it seems heavy, but that's what they want to do that they want yeah you know like i know you said like it seems heavy but that's what they want to do and i guess they seem to see this similarly to like we think you're having a heart attack kind of thing and like i'm not saying like this isn't i believe this is amazing stuff that they're doing but again like how great is it for them if they release this and then a year later they have another of those videos where like seven people were able to change their lives and avoid diabetes right like it's not

the reason to do this stuff but it's another it's one of the many reasons you know um i was listening to you guys talk about this in atp and something john was saying was about the cost stuff which i just thought was really interesting. So he was referencing the idea that they would need to create a cheap, he feels they would need to create a cheaper model if they're going to have this technology. And I just don't think that's the case at all. Yeah, and it's funny you say that because some of the feedback we've gotten, which has been tremendous based on that segment, is a lot of people say, well, particularly Americans saying, look, we're already in an obscene amount of money for insulin and supplies and whatnot. So what's another shot?

Well, that's a terrible choice of words, actually. But what's another dose of another- Why do you keep using these phrases? Oh my gosh, this is going right off the rails. What's another few hundred bucks gonna do? What's another prescription? No another few hundred bucks no way yeah right no not that either oh man you're never having me back are you well it's been fun you know so anyway so if it's a few hundred bucks even a thousand bucks like whatever if it makes

my quality of life that much better i will pay infinite money for it you know and this is like a four hundred dollar charge every three years you years when you upgrade your watch rather than like, I'm going to pay X amount of money every month potentially for the medication that I would need if I wasn't somehow looking at this information. And also it's one of those things where I don't know if I would find, like, I don't have any immediate use for this in my life, I believe, but I don't know if I would find, like I don't have any immediate use for this in my life, I believe, but I don't know that to be the case. So like for me, it's like, this is just another reason to wear an Apple watch every day. You know, I have many reasons where I would much prefer to watch,

sorry, to have like a watch, which is a mechanical watch. Like that's what I want i have a selection of mechanical watches that i bought over multiple years and i love them but i wear the apple watch every day because i like tracking my fitness and i wear the apple watch every day for this reason and that reason and apple keeps making that list of reasons longer and longer and longer and that is what they should be doing that is the thing and this health the health stuff it makes it a no-brainer it also it kind of in a way it's like if you have an apple watch or you have the means to get an apple watch and you don't it

almost feels like irresponsible yeah because you have the opportunity to have all of these health things in your life monitored, right? Like if I'm ever unfortunate enough to have a heart issue, I want to be wearing an Apple watch just to make sure I have, I know I have two personal friends who have potentially had their lives saved by wearing the apple watch for hot stuff it's becoming it's slowly becoming like in a different form of insurance right and and like fall detection is another example like what if something just catastrophic happens and you hit the deck and and you're unconscious and your apple watch could potentially help you call a call for help i mean it's i i can agree with you a hundred percent.

And another piece of feedback specifically around glucose monitoring, and this is coming back to what you were saying about health. Uh, we got a few people writing in saying, Hey, I am super into health and fitness. And it seems I am talking way out of turn right now, but it seems just based on the feedback we're getting that it's becoming in vogue, from what I can tell, to have at least some amount of awareness of what your blood sugar and glucose level is for the purposes of health. So these are people with no insulin problems, no diabetic problems whatsoever, but they are just trying to pay attention to this in the same way that a health conscious person would pay attention to cholesterol or something like that, just because they want to try to make better decisions for their body.

And they are not in risk currently of becoming diabetic or anything like that. They just want to be healthier. And apparently it is becoming in some circles kind of useful or in vogue, like I said, or interesting to try to keep track of this stuff and consider, oh, well, I just had a sugar bomb. You know, I had Froot Loops for breakfast or whatever. Maybe I should have something not so sugary for lunch, or whatever the case may be. So yeah, I think that there's a lot here, even for those of us who are not actively in need of this, which is exactly what you were saying a minute ago.

So the Moonshots team as well has been working on next generation displays. I expect potentially foldable displays, AI stuff, headset features for the VR, the VR, AR headset that could help people with eye diseases, as well as low power processors and next generation battery technology. Yeah. I mean, you said something about eye diseases. I'm here for that because I have a very unusual disease called keratoconus, which basically in summary means my eyes are trash. And when I wear hard contact lenses, I actually see pretty well. But it is possible that one day in my future, I will need to have a corneal transplant,

which I'm not looking forward to. So yeah, when you talk about eye diseases, my ears perk right up and my eyes get even bigger. And I say, tell me more. I think having a team like this, it is not surprising that Apple's done it. It is slightly surprising that this is really the first that I've heard of it. I mean, obviously, the whole point of this is to be extraordinarily secretive. So, I mean, I guess it's not that surprising. But yeah, I think having this moonshot group is a very smart, very savvy, very reasonable thing to do. And it's funny because earlier you were reading something about how having this group kind of be off on its own, off on an island, some of that is to get rid of the bureaucracy.

And before I started talking about this stuff for a living, but I was still interested in Apple, I had always been told, oh, Apple, small team, small team, small teams. It's a small company, which at the time, you know, 10 years ago it was, now not so much, or at least was smaller. But now over the years, I've gotten friendly with a handful of Apple rank and file engineers and a few product managers and things like that. And what's become clear to me, and I don't know, Mike, if you feel the same way, because I know you also know a bunch of people on the inside, what has become clear to me is there's a big company. It's like any other big company. And there's a lot more bureaucracy and red tape and process than you would expect for a company that

allegedly is move fast and break things. It's the biggest company in the world. They can't not have it. Everything that leaves Apple has to go through a system of checks to make sure that it's okay for the public, right? For the millions, billions of people that use their devices. But this team doesn't have to worry about any of that

because nothing that they do at their stage reaches the public. They get done with it, I'm sure, and pass it on to another team who will then go ahead and implement it. So they are kind of and should be freed from some of the checks and balances that would otherwise be in place.

And I think it makes a lot of sense for this kind of stuff to happen. Definitely. And man, if there is a team of just superstars at Apple that is basically given a blank slate and saying, go build something cool. First of all, how fun would it be to be on that team? And secondly, I can't wait to, in 30, 40, 50 years, read the tell-all memoir about what happened and what came out of the XDR, or excuse me, XDG team.

Because I bet some of the stuff is so cool. I'm so pleased that I didn't, well, to my memory, never said XDR today because I was convinced I was going to say it. I'm happy that it was you that did it. I'm here for you, Mike. Always. This episode is brought to you by Ooni Pizza Ovens. Ooni is the world's number one pizza oven company. They make surprisingly small ovens that are powered by your choice of either wood, charcoal, or gas, letting you make restaurant quality pizza in your own backyard. Uni Pizza ovens are incredibly easy to use and portable. They fit into any outside space. They can reach temperatures of up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit or 500 degrees Celsius, letting you cook restaurant

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I think it's in early March. I think maybe end of this week, start of next week, they're going to have a new model, which I'm actually pretty excited to see because I'm in the market to get a new uni myself with the new garden. So I'm pretty excited about that. Because we have an uni.

We gave it to my brother because when they got a house, they got a new garden. We learned it on loan to them, but now i know they love it so much i don't want to take it back so i'm letting them keep that man the pizza that comes out one of these things so good just so incredible you can go and get an uni pizza oven of your own and get 10 off by going to uni.com that's ooni.com and using the code upgrade 2023 at checkout they also have all the accessories

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Oh, no. That's where we are. So I have 10 words slash phrases that I'm going to throw out at you. Okay. phrases that i'm gonna throw out at you okay and i want you to give me the first word that comes into your head for each of them okay and then for some of the interesting ones we're gonna double back on and i'm gonna probe you a little bit more on them but we're not gonna stop and talk about each of them because then you'll start to fill your brain up with other words and i want the just like pure word association

that you're going to give me. All right? Okay. So this is like lightning round and then we may or may not have a revisit of some of these in a minute. Exactly. So maybe some of the maybe more interesting ones

we'll double back on. Or maybe if there's any that you will want to take another crack at, I'll let you double back on them. All right? How does that sound? Are you ready for this? Casey didn't know what I was doing to him today. No, at, I'll let you double back on them. All right. How does that sound? Are you ready for this? Casey didn't know what I was doing to him today.

No, no, I didn't. I am. I'm deeply nervous, but I am ready. My body is ready. Hit me, baby, one more time. All right. Clear your brain. All right.

You're going to clear your mind. And I just want you to give me the first word or words, but short sentences at most. You ready? Headset. Silly. WWDC 2023. I hope I get to go. Apple Watch Ultra.

Too big. Mac Pro. That's it. That's all. That's perfect perfect that's it 15 inch macbook air also too big periscope lens i hope not because i'm gonna be real jealous tim cook uh getting older app store just a total pain in the hindquarters ipad pro i love it but i don't know why apple uh getting too big as well actually this is great i actually want to touch on all of these sorry i know i repeated the same, that's fine. This is good. This is good information. All right, so headset then.

You think silly. Yeah, you know, so here's the thing. One of the things I love so much about Upgrade and something that I've been thinking, and I've talked to you about it privately a handful of times, what I've been thinking a lot about is I wonder, and I'm worried, and now we're getting into analog territory,

but I wonder and I'm worried that I'm getting to be too much of a curmudgeon as I get older. And I wonder and I worry that I'm not being enthusiastic or perhaps open enough to new things. But that being said, the first word that jumped into my head was silly. And as I, I think that's because as I said to you before, I just don't get the point. Like, I don't think I'm going to want to cut myself off from the world from the world and put on this headset, probably look like a dummy, even though I'll just be in my house and it's just my family. But still, um, I don't know, sitting here today, not having been sucked into the reality distortion field, it just seems silly. It seems like they're doing it just because they feel like they should, not because they have something to say. But I hope that when

the time comes, I bring an upgrade level of enthusiasm. I hope I upgrade my enthusiasm, but I hope I bring an upgrade level of enthusiasm to this product because I admire so deeply that both you and Jason do such a good job of really just giving everything a chance and really kicking the tires and seeing if it's for you. And if it isn't, at least you gave it an honest shake. And I hope that when the time comes, I do the same. I'm just choosing optimism, right? Like that's kind of where I've decided. And I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, but like, because there'll be people that are like, oh, you shouldn't just trust that everything they do is going to be great

and I'm happy to do that because I think I have a long history at this point of really saying when I don't think something's great and so my choice is just like I believe this is going to be really interesting and they have something I keep saying this I think they need to and I believe they have something. I keep saying this. I think they need to, and I believe they have

the opportunity to have an iPhone, original iPhone-like keynote. I think it's possible. I really do think it is. And I keep thinking back to when the iPhone was first released, and I forget what phone I had at the time, but when the iPhone was first released, I remember talking to people, not just nerds, people and being like, Oh, are you going to get a smartphone or are you going to get an Android or a droid is what they were calling them at the time here in America. Are you going to get a droid or maybe an iPhone? I was like, no, why would I want that? I don't want to stick a brick next to my face to talk on the phone. And quickly it was made apparent that I could not have been more wrong about this. Like I was just

deeply and utterly wrong. And so here's a time that before I really gave it an honest crack, my natural reaction was, ah, it's not for me. And I really want to get better about choosing optimism, exactly like you said. And, and my natural gut reaction was, oh, that's silly, natural gut reaction was, oh, that's silly, but I'm really trying very, very hard to be at the very least cautiously optimistic, if not genuinely enthusiastic. So one of the things that made the original iPhone presentation so good was the sound of the audience, right? Yeah. So WWDC 2023.

Mm-hmm. yeah so wwdc 2023 is there a possibility here that it's so good they're willing to show it in person live in the keynote rather than a product producer oh i didn't see where you were going with this at first i do now i just had this thought you know i think if they really are releasing the headset i i could see them doing it i'm just now thinking of this it wasn't the show notes so neither of us cheated we didn't have a chance to really have a have a think about it i think it is certainly possible because you you're exactly right like so much of what made the iphone keynote so a keynote so amazing was hearing and to some degree seeing everyone's reactions to what was happening on stage. And for better or worse, and I'm not here to get into this conversation, most of America, from what I can tell, not all, but most of America seems to have

come to the conclusion that COVID is over. I'm not looking to pass judgment one way or the other. I'm just telling you that's my observation. And so with that in mind, doubly so if they could do something that's like indoor-outdoor like they did last year, it wouldn't surprise me if they did perhaps some sort of hybrid presentation where maybe they do an opener live, they play a bunch of videos for the less important segments, including maybe even iOS and macOS. But then perhaps they come back and do the middle portion live or something like that. I don't know.

I mean, I've petitioned this as like a question, but I still don't believe it's the way they're going to do it. But it just popped into my mind. Like for me, WWDC this year, I think will be a more organized version of 22 where they do everything they did in 2023 but with notice of more than a week for most people right everything they did in 2022 right yes so like when they announce it which i actually think is probably due within the next two weeks

um i it's my expectation for when they'll be announcing wDC's date. It will be with a kind of breakdown of exactly all those things. Like you can apply to come. And if you do, here's the stuff. And they will, maybe we'll do a couple more things in the week for the people that come in, maybe like on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I don't expect it to be.

And I, you know, if we're looking at a spectrum here, that spectrum with WWDCc 22 and wwdc 2019 we are vastly over towards the 2023 with like a slight kick back up but like i don't think they're ever doing this in the convention center again and i think most of them are just most likely to do a little bit of what they did in 2022 but but with a little bit more structure and notice. So I don't think they're going to bring out the headset on stage and do like,

they're going to keep doing the videos because also if you've got something, which is by all rumors, suggesting still needs a bit more time in the oven, don't show it live when you can show it. That is a very good point. That is a very, very good point. Yeah. The more we talk about it,

the more I'm convinced that you are correct, that it's just going to be like 22 but better and maybe slightly bigger but i mean if they really are confident enough that this is the real deal in the same way they were with the iphone or surely it seemed to me like they were with the iphone i could see them doing it live in person but yeah the more you talk the more you're convincing me that they probably will just do a repeat but what they will probably do is have the ability to let you go and try one on which is also funny right like this but like they can clean it down they'll find a way to do it um but that's probably what they're going to do all right so i want to jump a few ahead because i think i already know how you feel from some of these for tim cook you said older getting older. Getting older, thank you. Yeah, or whatever,

but I wrote down older in my notes, and I think that makes much of a difference. Tim Cook is 62 years old. What do you mean by this? How are you feeling? Expand on it a little bit. How much time do you think we have left with Tim Cook? I like Tim Cook. I don't have any particular problem with him. I think he's made mistakes, as any human is going to do, but on the whole, I think he's done a great job. Tim Cook is Apple's best CEO. There's no question in this, right? Certainly, by any normal measure, he is their best CEO.

Every measure. Every measure. I don't know if he could have brought them back from Brink like Jobs did, though. But I don't... Whatever. You know what I't, I just, whatever. But you know what I mean? Like, I mean,

yes, obviously that was an incredible thing, but that was like the, the one thing that made Steve Jobs a good CEO. Like if you look at every other measure, Tim Cook is a better CEO. Yeah. Yeah.

I would, I would, I would, I would say that's great. Even when you go down to like charity matching oh it's not even question right do you know what i mean like apple didn't have a policy for charity matching and so like all these kinds of little things but then also the huge things and like yeah steve jobs saved the company from going out of business tim cook took it to become the most successful company in all history

yeah yeah right so like that that you know that is steve jobs great thing but and then he was great at product but there has been this i think warped thing over time because of steve jobs with the idea that the ceo needs to be the product person yeah but i don't think that's accurate. Like, this is that idea of like, now all CEOs believe they should be the one standing on stage producing their products. Like, that was just a Steve Jobs thing. It's not what a CEO needs to be.

Yeah, I completely agree with you there. Yeah, you know, I think you're right. He probably has been Apple's best CEO. I, again, I like Tim Cook. I don't have any particular problem with him. So I, again, I like Tim Cook. I don't have any particular problem with him. I think the thing that jumped into my mind,

I have no idea why, is he is getting older. He's by no means old, but he's getting older. And what did you say, 62, something like that? 62, yeah. He strikes me as the kind of person, having interacted with him once at the Brooklyn Apple Store for literally 15 seconds, he strikes me as the kind of person having interacted with him once at the Brooklyn Apple store for literally 15 seconds. He strikes me as the kind of person that would get to the point where he said, I'm good. Not in a bad way, not in a nasty way, not in any particular way. Just I'm good. I've

accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. I'm good now. And I feel like that could happen at any point. Now, he seems like the kind of person that will have quite the plan around it. He will have all of his T's crossed, all of his I's dotted, but that sort of thing would happen internally. We wouldn't necessarily get wind of that. And especially since it would presumably be happening mostly within the C-suite, right? I don't know that anyone outside the chosen few at apple would necessarily need to know about a succession plan or whatever the case unless they're in it right well right that's my point is that you know the you know the c-suite and whoever else may be affected might need to know um i believe at this at his level you know once it becomes serious he would have to talk to the security and exchange

commission and so on and so forth so there will come a time that he would have to make a formal announcement if he's looking to retire. But I just feel like that time is coming and coming sooner rather than later. I think... Well, I mean, we're on a timeline, right? Like, it's closer than it's ever been because it will happen. I, from everything that we've read about him in books and stuff, I, from everything that we've read about him in books and stuff, I don't think he's... will plan to retire until he literally can't do it anymore.

Whether he's told to go or... The only real account that we have of him is that book that we read, right? What is the name of that book? The Trip Mikkel one? Yeah, the Trip Mikkel one. And that Trip Mikkel book indicated all he does and all he cares about is his job.

Like, he has nothing else that he does. And, like, I don't think that that is a criticism. I mean, honestly, in his position, like, isn't it better to feel that way? Like, if you're the CEO of Apple, that is your entire life no matter what you want. Right? Yeah. Like, realistically, how could you... You can't get away from your job because... If you're the CEO of Apple, that is your entire life, no matter what you want. Realistically, you can't get away from your job because there's always something going on.

You are like politician level of needed, right? Yep. You can never be like, all right, gang, I'm going to take a week off. Nobody call me. It's just not going to happen, right? If you are the type of person that you live for that, great. You are now the right person for this job because you're going to

be able to handle it better than other people, I think. Yeah, I agree with everything you said, but didn't we see, like, wasn't there a news article like six months, maybe a year ago, where he said he's going to be out the next five to ten years or something like that, Or am I making that up? He said something along the lines of like someone asked him, when are you going to retire? And he said that he didn't imagine it being even five years or something like that.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about, but I don't know. I mean, I agree. Like we were talking about earlier you know i see both sides of this coin right like on the one side he has poured a significant portion of his life into apple and he strikes me as a man who wants to make a difference in good ways and in not bad but different in capitalistic ways i think he wants to make a difference with the rights of LGBTQA plus people. He wants to make a difference with the environment. He wants to make a difference socially. He also wants to make a difference by helping build a company that makes products that makes our lives better,

we think. So I think he wants to make a difference. And obviously, the best way to do that, better, we think. So I think he wants to make a difference, and obviously the best way to do that, one would think, would be to be at the helm of the good ship Apple, but there's no reason he couldn't take what I would assume to be his considerable wealth and pour that into charity like Gates did, although

it's unclear to me whether or not Gates was particularly successful at it. I genuinely have no idea. I don't know. I wouldn't. I don't know that about Tim Cook. I've never gotten any sense from him that he is uh does things from like a philanthropic like he seems to do good via his role in apple like i don't think it's clear to say that he's going to join the wealth pledge he could have done that already he doesn't need to have retired before he does that yeah that's a very good point. I don't know.

He strikes me as a reasonably decent and nice guy who I think, I guess I just want him to have more to his life than just Apple. And maybe he doesn't. Maybe that is his life. But I don't know. I get the vibe check. The vibe is that he is slowly on his way out. I can't really justify that in any concrete way. It's just the vibe I get is that he is slowly meandering on out.

And last one I want to talk about is Apple too big. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, my job nominally is to be enthusiastic about Apple and Apple related things. I don't know. I'm my, my job nominally is to be enthusiastic about Apple and Apple related things. Um, I don't know. I, I don't think it's bad for Apple to be as big as it is necessarily, but I've gotten the feeling in the last year or two that they have reached a

size that has either brought, it has come with a level of hubris that I think I'm getting uncomfortable with. Like what's going on with the app store and regulation in several different countries around the world where Apple has had every app opportunity to rein themselves in. They've had every opportunity to make a concession here or there. And given that it's Apple, dummies like me would cheer from the streets and from the rooftops and say, oh, look at what Apple did. They're so kind to us. Oh, they did this extremely tiny thing that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Oh, that was so kind. It's so much better now. And they haven't done it. They, they're just marching down this road of,

we know best. Everyone else is a dummy. Nobody should listen to anyone but us. And I just, I don't, I don't love that. I don't love that at all. And I think that's always to some degree been the case,

especially around the app store and, and the butterfly keyboard for that matter. But I don't know. I just feel like maybe I'm just having less tolerance for it and i'm misconstruing it as apple being too big and maybe the problem is is inside the house so to speak but um i don't know it just it just feels like they're they're getting a little big for their britches and i don't love that feeling does that make any sense at all well i mean at the point where they're brought into courts around the world for having too large of a market and putting a stranglehold on it, I think that would indicate that you're too big, yeah. Exactly. I don't know.

I'm getting a little nervous that, you know, are we the baddies is starting to happen, like for real this time. Well, I mean, that's interesting how it plays into what you're just talking about with tim cook right yeah exactly it's it's because of tim cook well i don't love this whole everything is the ceo's fault thing that all of us can do from time to time and i just did it just a second ago uh eventually the buck starts with him yeah when it gets to a certain point right so like a lot of this stuff around antitrust and like, he has the ability to steer the company in a different direction if he thinks that it's wrong. Yeah, exactly. And that's not happening.

That's not happening. Yep. That's what I got. How did you enjoy your segment? Did you like it? It was very stressful, but I enjoyed it. Yeah, I'm not sure i don't love my answers because i i really tried to play honest i really tried to come up with the first

thing that you know say the first thing that came to mind but um i don't know if i'm ever lucky enough to come back let's do it again even if you don't do it any other time let's do it again let's see if i do a little better i especially feel guilty i repeated the same thing like two or three times but uh you know what are you gonna do i mean if it make you feel any better you could ask me them that's true so you get me on the record if you want yeah well okay so do you do we have the time for this game because i'm happy to play this game we don't have to dig into them i can just give you the words because i think if anything it's the words that you feel like oh did i ever use the right words did i say the wrong words well now you can get me you the words. Because I think if anything, it's the words that you feel like, oh, did I use the right words?

Did I say the wrong words? Well, now you can get me on the record. I love this. See, this is why you're such a professional podcaster. What can I say? So you've got the words here, right? I'm not going to look at them. Yeah, I was going to say, look away from the show notes

because I'm going to just jump around. And if you see my cursor, it's going to be obvious. All right. All right. All right. 15 inch MacBook Air. Exciting. That's the most Mike is. This is what I was talking about.

That's such a good Mike answer. Dub dub 2023. The same. Okay. Mac Pro. Smack Studio. Sick burn. iPad Pro.

Snooze Fest. Oh, that is an even sicker bird. iPad Pro. Snoozefest. Ooh, that is an even sicker bird. Now we're getting aggressive. Periscope lens. Give it. Oh, yeah. No, I don't want it because I'm going to be so jealous. App Store.

Monopoly. Yeah, that's the truth right there. Tim Cook. Influential. I'll allow it. right there. Tim Cook. Influential. I'll allow it. Headset. I was going to say exciting again, so I'll just be like New Dawn or something like that.

We'll go with that. Okay. All right. That's fair. Apple Watch Ultra. Tantalizing. And then I believe this is the last one. Apple.

Monopoly. I mean, I don't know what to say it's how i feel like i think i think the app store is that they have too tight control over it and they're doing things that don't make any sense to me and like it's just going to be a problem for them and so really the app store is apple apple is the app store like yeah it that for some like the app store is like this perfect market cosm if like if apple had its way this is how it would do everything that's a good point that's a very good point if apple had its way they would only sell their products in their own stores right their own retail stores they would never sell them products in their own stores, right? Their own retail stores. They would never sell them outside.

They would put the prices up even further if the market wouldn't, if only they could control the entire market. Like, this is how they would do it, right? But unfortunately, they had to inherit the retail and being in retail and selling products before they could create their own market. That is such an excellent way of looking at it, and I could not possibly agree with you more.

If they had their druthers, if such a thing were really possible, this is exactly how they would do everything. And I agree. And that just feels gross to me, because I don't agree with the way they're handling the App Store. They're not going to be able to do it forever. It's just going to be how they go down or if they go down kicking and screaming.

Yep. Couldn't agree more. That was fun. I enjoyed that. It's much easier on this side of the table. I appreciate you being willing to trade places with me for a moment. Anytime. This episode is brought to you by ZocDoc. So you're trying to find a cause for this thing you're going on, some symptoms you have, right?

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It's time for some Ask Casey questions. Pew, pew, pew, pew. I wondered what form they would take. That was interesting to me. The first one comes from John who says, Casey is a noted fan of sporty cars with manual transmissions, but the future is electric.

When does he see himself move into an electric car? Would he still prioritize the sporty driving experience or would other factors matter more? Or if he had to buy an EV today, which one would he pick and why? You know, I tie up more of my personal identity with my car than I should, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot, especially as now we're starting to get options that are at least in the vicinity of affordable that are not made by Tesla. I think my next car will be an electric car. I have talked to Erin about this, and she is 100% on board.

I mean, depending on when you buy it, if you want a new car, you won't have many choices. Well, that's true. And that's exactly what I was going to say, actually, is that my current car,'s a uh 2018 model year it's a volkswagen go far for what it's worth um it it is a six-speed manual transmission it only has like 20 000 miles on it um i put very few miles on my car and so i don't expect to need a new car for probably three to six years. But that being said, if something happened to the car where it got like totaled or something like that, what would I get?

Well, the first thing I'll probably look at is are there any good replacements for my car? There is a brand new version of my car, the Volkswagen Golf R. It's still available with a stick, surprisingly, but my understanding is the interior is garbage. And there's not a lot else that's available that's kind of sporty and also has four doors and also isn't a hundred plus thousand

dollars that also has, you know, a six speed transmission. And so that leaves, leads me to electric. So if I were to do it today, I think I would try to find a Kia EV6 GT. So the Kia EV6 is the same as the Hyundai Ioniq, Ioniq 5, I believe. I think I have that right. And it is basically a kind of a crossover-y, hatchback-y sort of thing. But the EV6 GT specifically is like an all-wheel drive, you know, we'll sacrifice range for ridiculous speed sort of version of the EV6. Zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds, which is like almost double as fast as my car today. And my car today is not slow. So I would probably do that. But I would also take a look at the Ford Mustang Mach-E. I don't love the fact that it's called a Mustang. It doesn't offend

me, but it seems silly. But I did drive one very, very, very briefly a couple of years ago, and I loved it. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. So I would take a look at both of those if I were to buy today. They both appear to be very, very good cars. Joe asks, if you were suddenly in charge of developer relations at Apple,

in addition to improved documentation, which you've written about before, what other changes would you make? The first thing I would do is I would burn Feedback Assistant. I would burn it with the fire of a thousand suns. Gosh, do I really dislike, you know, we have two small kids at home

and we've been trying not to use the word hate. And we've come to the conclusion that if you think you hate something, the correct phrasing is, I'm still learning to like it. So let's just say I'm still learning to like Feedback Assistant. Is there like a kid's TV show that taught you this phrasing or something I'm still learning to like it. So let's just say I'm still learning to like Feedback Assistant. Is there like a kid's TV show that taught you this phrasing or something?

I don't think so. This was Erin that came up with this. Okay, that's really good. I don't know where that came from. I think that maybe she found it somewhere. I don't know. I thought it was an original composition. But yes, I'm still learning to like Feedback Assistant.

In the defense of Apple, their documentation has gotten better. But it turns out when you're in a desert and you haven't had water in three days, even the world's crappiest water is still better than nothing. So yeah, I would absolutely improve documentation. I personally would make some amount of documentation a requirement for shipping an API. So you as a developer at Apple, working on SwiftUI or something like that, you cannot release your new SwiftUI code as Apple unless you provide documentation for that code. Period.

No exceptions. I'm not, you know, I don't understand how they're doing this stuff. But that does seem like a, just a bare minimum thing to do. You would think. You should be able to, if you want people to use it,

tell people how to use it. Right? I agree with you. I'm doing the Steve Carell, you know, smack the desk. Thank you, right motion right now, because that's so true. And then the other thing I would really love,

which I think, again, to Apple's credit, they've been getting better about this, but I still think they have a long way to go, is I would love to have more frequent access to internal developers or maybe even product managers. They've been doing these things on Slack for like a week at a time, once or twice a quarter, which are okay. And that gives people access to their internal team to some degree. It's one of those like, oh, throw a question over the wall and you'll see if they answer it sort of things. That's an improvement.

But it would be, and gosh, I don't know how they would make this work. But, you know, it would be cool if I could get the attention of an internal developer or do a better job of like singling out, I would love this team to answer this question. Maybe they wouldn't. And I understand that this has a trillion different problems. It's too many questions. Exactly. No, it's too many. It's too much. There's a million. Maybe they wouldn't, and I understand that this has a trillion different problems. It's too many questions. Exactly. No, it's too many, it's too much. There's a million reasons why this wouldn't work, but if I was waving my magic wand,

I would love to have, some way, somehow, more frequent access to internal developers or PMs. Apple, I got it. Tim, I'm speaking straight to you right now. We'll call it Developer Plus. No, no, please no. You pay $150 a month and you get the ability to ask questions. Come on, just make it happen.

It's what Casey wants. To save you some feedback, there are things, oh gosh, what are they called? They're like instance or something. I forget the term for it. Yeah, you get tickets, right? That you can raise a couple of them a year. Exactly right. That I think it's, you get a couple of freebies and then i think it is actually i'm

doing major air quotes here only a hundred dollars after that per ticket but you can throw something uh what is it uh technical support instant or something like that i can't remember the name of the darn thing but um you can throw something over the wall and allegedly and ostensibly they will actually pay attention to it which which is different than feedback assistant. So I do need to avail myself of this from time to time. In fact, now that I'm thinking about this, I'm working on something new that I could totally use one of these incidents on something I'm fighting in that new project. So maybe I should do that now that I think about it. I had an email the other day about a feedback that I'd raised. Changes have been

released that should have addressed this report. Could you please confirm that the behavior is working as intended? Feedback ID FB8822070 enabling assistive touch changes the size of the iPadOS pointer. This was maybe 2018 when I read this.

And it was fixed in 2018. I don't know why. Wasn, yep. And it was fixed in 2018. Like, I don't know why. Wasn't this what you and Gray were talking about for a long time? No, this was, do you remember before they released the Magic Trackpad,

the iOS version of the Magic Trackpad, there was the ability to have a cursor connected, right? And this was a bug that I found where for some reason the cursor size was changing a bunch. Okay. I don't remember.

I'm trying to log in now to see if I can find my feedback that I raised, which is actually quite complicated to find. Whatever, of course it is. iOS 14.3 goodness that's a few minutes ago yeah it was some time ago

so it taken this was from October 2020 that I erased that so maybe it was something with the trackpad when assisted touch is enabled the cursor immediately switches to maximum size it no longer accepts the size that is set elsewhere in settings is what i said um it's taken them uh nearly three it's two and a half years to get back to me yeah i mean they must receive just a mind-boggling amount of feedback so

i do as much as i grumble and complain i do empathize with what they're fighting but at the same time like this is your job is to manage these sorts of things and figure out a way that works for both of us but I am a known feedback hater, I'm always hating on the feedback and what I've just given you there is one of my reasons, I raised this so long ago

and it was fixed so long ago but it almost feels like it had nothing to do with the thing that I raised totally it's just like I'm not really sure how helpful it is to actually raise these things feels like it had nothing to do with the thing that I raised. Yeah, totally. It's just like I'm not really sure how helpful it is to actually raise these things. I just prefer to talk about them on a podcast instead. Yep. Well, running the press never helps, except it always does. Yep.

Inuk asks, what do you think of SwiftUI and Combine now that it's almost four years ago that it was released? Do you still crawl back to RxSwift? So very, very briefly, a little bit of context. RxSwift is a open source third-party package that you can use to do what's called functional reactive programming. So again, I could go on a tangent of a tangent of a tangent,

but suffice to say with RxSwift, and Combine is like the Apple version of RxSwift or a functional reactive programming. The idea is, hey, if you treat everything as like a sequence of events over time, you know, like a mouse click or a tap, for example, it's going to happen periodically. And if you just treat that as a sequence of events over time, you can do things with it. And I really, really have come to enjoy that style of programming. And I think it's really, really good. I was devoutly and vocally into RxSwift a few years ago. I really enjoyed Combine. It made some different choices than RxSwift, some better, some worse, but all

in all, I really, really liked it. And honestly, once Combine came out, I mostly stopped using RxSwift simply because Combine got me most of the way there. And it was first party, which was nice. So, you know, it's ostensibly well tested and reliable. And so not that RxSwift wasn't, but you know what I mean. That being said, especially over the last couple of years, I've really started to enjoy SwiftUI. And some of that is powered by Combine, but not all of it. I really have come to like SwiftUI quite a bit.

not all of it. I really have come to like Swift UI quite a bit. And, and I've also really enjoyed it in the last year or two, I guess, two years, Swift's async await, which accomplishes some similar things,

the asynchronous side, particularly of combine and RxSwift, but it does it in a very different way. And there's also been some motion with regard to async await. There's async sequence, which is sort of kind of, if you squint just right, it's kind of like a publisher or an observable, which is kind of the main thing in RxSwift and Combine. And there's also Swift async algorithms, which is, if you squint and look just right, kind of sort of combine, but for async await. And so between async algorithms, async sequence, and async await,

that gets me most of what combine and RxSwift got me before. But that being said, in my new thing, I needed to do something called debounce some user input. So users typing in a search field, and I need to go search against some web server somewhere. And I don't want to do a new search every time they type a letter. So, you know, you wait for them to stop for, you know, a half a second or something like that before you send that search across the internet. And what I ended up doing was using Combine for that because Combine has these affordances that unless I bring in async algorithms, I don't have an async await. So that's a lot of words to say. I'm not using RxSwift. I am using Combine, but mostly I'm all in on SwiftUI and particularly async await. I agree. Brad asks, how is Apple Photos treating you? You had to be dragged to the app kicking

and screaming. Do you like it yet? Do you have hundreds of albums and memories? Can we all celebrate Erin having more than 30 days of photos on her phone? Yeah. So for context, what I would do is, uh, I would, and with her full knowledge, you know, I would take Erin's phone every month and I would suck in, uh, you know, the last 30 days of pictures. And then I would leave, you know, only the, the, the most recent month on her phone. And then I would remove all the rest of them. Um, now we're on, you know, I'm on the, uh, Apple photos train happened for a while, and then we jumped on the shared photo library thing as soon as that was available. I got to say, it has been very reliable, surprisingly reliable.

I have not yet known, as I knock on my relay block that you gave us many years ago, I have not known there to be a problem with Apple Photos. Erin, surprisingly, hasn't really said much about having the ability to go way back in time. Perhaps she's just not thinking about it most times, you know, because she has 10 plus years of not being able to do that. So it's still new to her. Um, search is terrible, uh, as compared to Google photos, which I don't love. And this is why I'm so religious about geo tagging my pictures. And you know, even the ones I take with my aforementioned micro four thirds camera, I will make sure that I geo tag them so that if if i if i need to find a picture that i know was taken at mike's wedding i don't remember exactly off the top of my head when mike's wedding was i know

it was early july of 2018 i couldn't tell you the exact date i mean you've already got enough though right yeah well and i probably could that's true but i know you've got enough yeah that was a terrible example but here we are um but you know i but i know i took a picture in london maybe i don't know what what visit of to london it was but i know i took a picture in london well i can zoom in in apple photos on london and and hopefully be able to find that picture and i and that's something i do not infrequently um and and it works reasonably well for the for the most part i haven't done much with albums i only have a couple of them but in the grand scheme of things it's actually going

pretty well and i can say from from my point of view and i have something close to a terabyte of pictures and videos and whatnot in in in apple photos um it's worked pretty well and i can give it my my recommendation i don't know if i go so far as full-th-throated recommendation because it is a little wonky from time to time. I don't think anybody at this point is still looking for a recommendation about the photos app. No, that's true. You were the last to get on board. It was just

me. It was just me. Finally, Apple has achieved it. They can all retire. Tim Cook can retire now. You know what? Actually, we have a mutual friend who is also... I'm not going to name them. I'm not going to out them. They can yep yep they can all retire tim cook can retire you know what actually we have a mutual friend who is also i'm not going to name them i'm not going to out them they can choose to out themselves who is also who is also still a holdout on apple photos and it is mind-boggling to me i don't understand how they live their life uh i mean you think that they could you could have calculated a

different response by now but but who could tell? Victor says, with your professed adoration of the Apple Silicon MacBook Pro, I am curious to know how the iPad Pro hits into your life now and if the MacBook Pro is responsible for any change in your iPad usage habits. So I did get a new iPad Pro whenever it was, what was it, late last year when they refreshed them. My previous iPad was the OG Face ID iPad Pro from 2018. And I got a new one mostly because I just felt like it was time. Like, honestly, I don't have a specific reason for it. There was nothing wrong with my iPad Pro, my previous one. It didn't feel that old.

Like, it definitely felt a little slow here and there. But for most part it felt fine but i got a new one and i i do like my ipad pro i want to love my ipad pro and i just can't get there and i know this is going to sound like me slagging on like federico or something i'm just i'm really honestly not trying to i don't understand federico's board at the moment i think well that's that's also true well jason even jason's also an ipad yeah but yeah you know what i'm saying uh i i don't mean to slag on ipad i was almost going to say apologist but i don't mean that either ipad fans i'm not trying to slag on ipad fans but how do people get serious work done on an iPad? I feel like for me, I'm getting fought every step of the way. And it occurred to me that I'm weird.

I'll be the first to tell you. I do a lot of work, or not work work, but I do a lot of things, oftentimes for pleasure, in the terminal. I do media management. Maybe I'll be adding geotext to photos. Not usually, but it could happen. I do a lot of stuff in the terminal. be adding geotags to photos i not usually but it could it could happen i do a lot of stuff in the terminal i would do anything for like an honest to goodness terminal app on the ipad i know there's

things like ish which kind of sort of get you there but i'm saying like a real honest to goodness terminal app would be amazing and like even ssh you know connections like i do that and i'll ssh into either my mac mini or my maxbook pro as i like like to call it, but it's just not as, it's not the same. I don't like it as much. I haven't really found an, a terminal equivalent app on the iPad that I really like. Um, maybe I should write one. I don't know, but I just, I really wish that I could find more reasons to use my iPad, but all of that being said, oh my word, having an onboard cellular connection is so nice. And if we're going somewhere and Aaron is driving

and we're going to be in the car for more than just a few minutes, just sitting there on my iPad Pro, even if all I'm doing is goofing off, having the onboard cellular connection is so choice. If you have the means, I highly suggest you try it because it is so, so nice.

Yes, I know you can tether. Yes, I know that that's even easier now. and it drills the battery of two devices. Tethering's bad. Thank you. Yep.

Everyone is always, oh, you can tether. Why don't you just tether like everyone else? Because it stinks. It's exactly what Mike said. It stinks. You're draining the battery

of two different devices. It's just, it's so much nicer to have it on board. And that brings us full circle to the, to the list talk question from earlier. I would do anything for a cellular connection on a MacBook pro or even just a MacBook adorable. It would be amazing. Yep.

Last question comes from Dan who wants to know, what are some of your favorite books that you've read recently? So I'm going to say this right up front. He is a friend of mine. I really enjoy him, but genuinely, hand on heart, The Nova Incident by Dan Morin, a mutual friend of ours. I really, really liked that book. I have not disliked any of Dan's books. I've enjoyed them. I've enjoyed each one more than the last one, but The Nova Incident was like, can't put it down level of enjoyment. I really, really liked it.

And I strongly encourage you check them out. I wonder if that was the same Dan asked the question. I didn't even think about that. That's true. Who could know? Oh, if only you knew. It wasn't the same Dan, because that would be hilarious. Yes, it was Dan.

I didn't know that. I really honestly did not know that. That's funny as heck. Because all it says in the show notes is Dan Cole. Now there is the big smiley face at the end. So I guess I should have put it together, but hand on heart. I really honestly did not realize it was the same day.

I knew you didn't. Oh, that's so funny. No, but really and truly each one of them is good. I would encourage reading all of them, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary to get, you know, to start. You could start with Nova instant, but it is so think it's absolutely necessary to get, you know, to start.

You could start with Nova Instant, but it is so good. I'm going to rapid fire a few others. Elder Race, which I believe Jason recommended, actually, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. That was a little outside of my normal genre. You know, I'm usually like an action thriller kind of person. And this was more sci-fi and fantasy, which is weird for me to say both of those in the same thing. But it was both sci-fi and fantasy. I really liked it. Erin read it and she was less enthusiastic about it, but I thought it was really good. Upgrade by Blake Crouch. I've read several Blake Crouch's books. I really liked Upgrade. In fact, on my Goodreads, it might be my

only five-star book so far. It's a good name for a book. Yeah, it is a very good name for a book. I didn't even think about that either. A very, very good book. I really enjoyed it. Nova Instant, I didn't give a fifth star because I am extremely stingy with my fifth star, but genuinely, I really thought long and hard about giving Nova Instant five stars. Now as I'm talking about it, I actually wonder if maybe I should go back. I'll have to'll think about that but anyways um because it really was that good it was really genuinely that good um but upgrade by blake crouch is very good and i also wanted i have a triplet if you will there are three different books that i've read and then since watched the

television show or well actually two of them i've watched the television show based on the book um the first of which is the terminal list by jack carr um i found the book to be way better than the series that was on amazon that starred um uh chris pratt uh the series was okay that the tv series that is i loved the book though uh nine perfect strangers by leanne moriarty uh that was a series on hulu uh i liked that was kind of in the middle like the tv series was good but i thought i liked the book more and then i just a week or so ago finished slow horses by mick heron i have not yet watched the apple tv plus tv series i have heard it's phenomenal good so my parents were my parents were also raving about it i love it i

thought the book was okay i know almost nothing about the tv series i might love the tv series because i will eventually watch it i thought the book was all right it was like half of the book just kind of nothing happened really and i just i personally from the show the show is action-packed beginning to good good good okay so excellent so um so yeah so I only read the first book and I don't know how many there are in the slow, or the, what is it? The Slough, or the, is it Slough House?

Slough House, yeah. Yeah, I don't know how many books are in the series, but I know there's many. I only read the first one, Slow Horses, and I didn't dislike it, but it was all right. And so I do want to watch the Apple TV Plus series because again, I've heard you rave about it. My parents were raving about it. Everyone I've talked to about it

says it's great, so I need to give it a shot. It's excellent. There's two seasons. They're doing a third and fourth season as well. Gary Oldman is just unbelievable. That's not surprising, but yeah, I've heard the same. Mike, what have you read lately that you've enjoyed? If you would like to send in a question of your own to answer on a future

episode of the show, remember Jason will be back next week. You can go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in your Ask Upgrade question. Thank you for listening to this episode of Upgrade. If you want to find Casey's work, go to caseylist.com. You can listen to his podcast, Analog, here on RelayFM, and of course, the Accidental Tech podcast at atp.fm. You can listen to myog here on RelayFM and, of course, the Accidental Tech podcast at ATP.FM.

You can listen to my shows here on RelayFM. You can check out my other work at cortexbrand.com. You can send us your feedback and your questions at upgradefeedback.com. You can find us both on Mastodon. Casey is on mastodon.social. He is at Casey Liss. And I am on mike.social. And I am at im mike i am yke

thank you to our members the supporters of upgrade plus in today's uh edition of upgrade plus i'm going to be asking casey a bunch more ask casey questions because there were so many that came in and if i don't ask him now well when am i going to get to ask him? Because Jason takes one vacation every seven years, it would seem. Thank you to our sponsors of this week's episode, ZocDoc, Ooni, and the wonderful people over at Rocket Money as well. I want to extend a very special thank you to Casey for filling in for Jason today. Thank you, Casey. Of course. The pleasure is all mine.

I am genuinely honored to have been here, so thank you. And of course, thank you for listening. I'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Casey Liss. I'll see you later, Mike.