Upgrade - 450: Funko Classicals

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Did Apple's designers want the company to give up on its dreams of augmented reality and just wait it out for a few years? We ponder that baffling report and try to make sense of conflicting rumors about the arrival of the new MacBook Air. Then we get mellow about yellow, and Jason exposes his limited knowledge of classical music and his comprehensive knowledge of 1980s novelty pop hits.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 450 today's show is brought to you by express vpn and capital one i'm mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike hurley i'm back two two in a row for me look at that making a streak here in episode 450 we're starting a new record can you go what would it be so you went to you got like 447 so now you have to get to 448 episodes even then i cheated by recording segments and doesn't matter you know doesn't matter but we've broken the glass now. So now when I go on vacation again... It's going to be a full time. We'll just... Yeah. See, here's the problem.

My lovely wife has a real job and limited vacation time. So I could just go whenever. Whenever you want. But I can't. So, yeah, exactly. I have a Snell Talk question for you. It comes from David. David wants to know,

what device do you use the most for iMessage? I feel like this is really just a proxy for what device you use the most, at least for me, because I am usually using a device. And so I'm going to disappoint people, I suppose, or at least I'm going to once again say what I've said on the show before, which is I am not your typical Apple product user in the sense that I don't use my iPhone very much.

I don't go outside. I don't like, right. And when I do go outside, I often I just bring my Apple watch. So the answer is probably my Mac, but maybe my iPad because it's all contextual and I'm usually either on my Mac or my iPad. And if I'm not on them, the iPad is close to me. The phone generally sits on its charger. So it's usually not at hand at any point unless I'm out and about. So I would say, you know, it's either my Mac or my iPad, depending

on context. So that's the truth of it is I just don't use my iPhone very much. For me, I'm not sure the exact answer. It's probably my iPhone because of weekends, right? So like I'm not sitting in front of the Mac or at my desk on the weekends, right? So I'm not sitting in front of the Mac or at my desk on the weekends. So I'm texting now on my phone. But I know that recently I've come to want to more frequently send iMessages at my Mac because I like to use my actual nice keyboard rather than the iPhone keyboard. I'm less likely to have autocorrect issues and stuff like that. But I think realistically, it's probably my iPhone because I am only at a Mac whenever I'm at the studio.

Outside of that, I'm going to be using my iPhone. If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question of your own, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can tick the box, fill it out, and your question may be answered

on a future episode. We have some follow-up. Jason Snell. Okay. Julian and Michael both wrote in to suggest, we were talking about two-factor codes and SMSs and stuff like that, that they create a contact for their two-factor codes and then add all of the numbers that you get

codes from to it. I've heard, I think, John Syracuse recommend this before. The reason i've never done this is because i'm too lazy to do it to be honest is the real reason uh the if it was simple fine but the idea of having to do that all the time i've just never done it plus up until very recently i had significant issues with my contacts and like them saving across devices to the point where maybe this is a few months ago i exported my contacts on my mac and i deleted them all i ran and then i ran them back in again did a de-duping thing and busy i think it was busy

contact i used de-duped all my contacts because they had triplicated over time uh so i de-duped them all put them back in and now it's all perfect if i had a contact on one device it syncs up on another this would be years this would be going on for so these are the two reasons i did create a uh a mr two-factor contact and i'm trying that out but i think our larger point was it would be nice if the the system knew that these were just two factor codes and kind of hide hide just hid them right or did more right because we know that they do

we know that they do I think maybe Android does that out somebody said like after a couple of weeks Android kind of like suppresses them because they know that they're just not important and I just I feel like that's an area that Apple could explore I do have a funny thing in my found, this is a tangent, but a funny thing I found in my contacts. If you'd like to,

if you'd like to see it. Yeah, I'd love to see it. So this is like stupid contact tricks. So when I go to Arizona, my mom lives really far outside and I used to rent a car, but car rental now is incredibly expensive. And I discovered that there's this real cottage industry in my mom's community out in the middle of nowhere where people from that community make money basically picking up people at the airport and driving them back or driving people from that community to the airport. But it's really kind of like a transitory kind of job. People get other jobs. Like the first guy who drove me, he was also selling real estate on the side.

And then the last time he took me, he was like, yeah, I'm stopping. You set this up, so I'm driving you. But I'm out of the driving business, and I'm in the real estate business now full time. And so they keep moving around, and sometimes they're not available, and they recommend other people. And as a result, at the bottom of my contacts list, I have this collection that I sent you the screenshot in the Discord, this collection of people who are all first names followed by a car emoji of some sort. So I've got, you know, Dan car, Dan blue car, Ryan blue car, Chris red car. And then yesterday I put in while I was trying to find somebody to take me to my mom's house Bart, Carol and Mary taxi

emoji and that's how they live. They're all, I have a little car fam down there at the bottom. Do these people do like Uber and Lyft as well? Some of them do. Right. Some of them do Uber and Lyft as well.

Absolutely. Does your mom live in like a village kind of because this feels very villagey to me it it is uh so she's more than an hour outside of the phoenix airport in and and it's in a town but it's actually not in that town it's it's out yeah i mean basically it's like a housing development where there's there's just a a load of houses and on one side of the street it's the 55 plus community and on the other side of the street anybody can live there and there's like pools and and you know pickleball courts and whatever else like there's all that stuff is

there um so it is a little bit like yeah like she's in a community that's been plopped down not quite out in the middle of nowhere, but real close to the middle of nowhere. So that's contact. We've spent some time recently on this show, on my other shows too, talking about live activities and where they're popping up and where they're not. And I saw on one of my favorite web blogs,

sixcolors.com, that the MLB app has been updated with live activity support, which I'm sure you're pretty jazzed about. For the baseball, yeah. It's spring training right now, so the data is not consistent yet. I assume that when they get to the actual stadiums and the season begins, the data will be more consistent.

So right now it's a little inconsistent, but the way it's supposed to work, and it works in some cases, is you, in the MLB app, you set your favorite team or teams. And then those teams, when you're in the mlb app you set your favorite team or teams and then those teams when you're in the game view on the iphone uh there is a highlight for uh like under the game that says track this game and a little blue track button that you can tap and at which point when you close the uh the app you get a live activity that is spawned that is the the information about the game and people have said you game. And people have said,

you know, sometimes some people have said that it's delayed a little bit. It's not really current. Other people have said that that's not an issue. I imagine again, that this is all actually major league baseball working this stuff out too, because again, they're not playing real games now they're playing practice games as they get

ready for the season. And so we'll see how it goes during the regular season, but it's a cool idea. Also, I can't find it in the iPad app, which, you know, technically has live activities, right? Like, aren't there live activities on the live screen in the iPad? Or are there not?

No, they're not there at all. Okay, well then let's just file that. Like, why are they not there? Well, this is that thing, right? You do widgets one year. I use the live screen on my iPad all the time. Then you do widgets on ipad the next year right you do app library and then the next year so live activities this one i don't

like it i know there's no dynamic island but there's still a lock screen that i'm on all the time for my ipad well because there are live activities on phones without dynamic islands right but not on the ipad there's no reason why they just didn't do it. And so it will be the big thing of iPadOS 17 or whatever. So, okay. So I'll then say, this is exciting, but again, I just said earlier, I don't use my iPhone that much. So when I'm out and about,

but then again, live activity, when I'm out and about, and this live activity is on my phone for like the Giants game uh that'll be great right here's a question it's not the primary use case that i would have for it unfortunately because that would be on the ipad what about live activities for apple watch why doesn't that exist i know well i would use it i would love to have it on my apple watch too that there was a way i don't know how that would work like just sitting there on the the notification thing, you pull down, get your live activity?

Well, I mean, you could argue that, I mean, there's like an MLB complication you could use, but I think there's some challenges there with data refresh, right? Like that's my feeling about a lot of complications on the Apple Watch. I mean, and visual, like the amount of visuals you can have, right? Like, because what I'm thinking is you could fit in basically everything that's in the dynamic island into a notification on the Apple Watch that just lives in a notification drawer or whatever. Yeah, just swipe down and see what's going on. Yeah.

Interesting. I mean, there's a real UI challenge there, but I would love to see them find a way to use this infrastructure of live activities. Which feels, all this stuff feels like it sort of maybe even started with things for Apple watch. And then they're like, Oh, we could do this on the phone. It was like, okay,

but there's also the Apple watch. That might be a good place to, to put that sort of thing too. Like, um, I don't know. It's, it's an interesting challenge,

but I'd like to see more of it. Anyway, the MLB thing, I'll, I'll see how it works in practice in terms of like how up to date is it and all of that. But I love the idea. And I know that,

um, you know, some of our friends who have like stephen hackett follows the nba and so he's been using an app to do uh nba tracking for the memphis grizzlies and like it's a it's a cool idea i actually got uh uh my first uh carrot weather um i can give you a live activity for the rain oh i get these all the time obviously well i appreciate yeah london uh but i got it today because we're in we have lots of rain here right now and uh that was uh that was kind of fun where it's like yeah i'll just put up a little live activity that tells you how long the rain's gonna last and and uh you know in 18 minutes it'll stop

raining theoretically um and that's that's fun I mean, I really do like, um, live activities. You know, the thing I use the iPhone the most, really honestly is podcasts. Cause I, I just do all my overcast. Like when I'm, even when I'm like taking a shower, that's like with the iPhone. So I, it's not like I'm not using my iPhone. I should say I do use my iPhone in very specific circumstances, but if I'm just sitting in the house, it's usually not, not with me. Not always. It's with me right now, actually. So I guess it does end up on my desk a lot where I'm looking down at the always-on display. So, you know, somewhat. But again, if somebody sent me a text, I would use my Mac because keyboard. The Oscars were last night, Academy Awards. And Apple TV Plus won the animated movie short for so let me re-say that the apple apple tv plus animated movie the boy the mole the fox and the horse won the oscar for best animated

short that is a clearer way of getting that across so this is the movie that you may remember that johnny ive was an executive producer on they picked up, Apple's now picked up their second Academy Award. I don't think they were up for anything else of note. There was a Best Supporting Actor nomination for an Apple TV Plus movie, and that person didn't win.

Congratulations to the boy, the director, the mole, the writer, the fox, the producer, the horse, and Johnny Ives. Woody Harrelson was also. This one just had a ton of people attached to it, like Bad Robot was producing it, and Woody Harrelson

was executive producing it, and Johnny Ives too. That's a, you know, I don't know. There's a lot of people involved in the, that category often has like, it's like one person's labor of love, and then in comes this thing that feels like it was a very expensive star studded production. And it wins the Academy Award. And I'm like, on one level, it's like, great.

And on another level, I think to myself, come on, let the guy in his basement who's been making a movie for five years win his Academy Award. But no, it was a big budget and johnny that it's that johnny i have magic that's what it was yep probably yep yeah it was originally a longer full featured movie but johnny just took scenes out until it was a show that's right it's minimalism yeah that's what he goes for that's right they they we took it into the white room and we edited it down. It used to be the boy, the mole, the fox, the dog, the chicken, the farmer, the ox. The horse and the hound and the fox. The horse and the horse's best friend who is also a horse. And Johnny's like, there's too many things.

Too many things. Too many. Can we cut it back? And they originally set it at sea, but he didn't want there to be any ports in the movie. Oh, hey, Zing. Also, I wonder how he'll, if he gets his hands on that Oscar.

Nobody let him get his hands on the Oscar because he's going to be like, can we make this minimal? And how about all white? What's the deal with Johnny Art? Anyway, so the Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card has been released. I saw you also linked to this, the six colors.

This was kind of an adaptation and progression of the six colors report card, but into a very specific area of apple related technology i will read from applevis.com we are thrilled to unveil our inaugural apple vision accessibility report card which provides valuable insights into the experiences and opinions of visually impaired community members who rely on voiceover braille support or the low vision features on apple devices it is a great idea right like take an area that you know if you are knowledgeable about and rate it in the same way that the six colors report card does too i think

it's really smart i love it yeah yeah i love that they're taking i think they asked every now and then i get people who are like you know could i do a report card i'm like yeah like that there there is nothing about that format that is owned by anybody. So be my guest to do that. It's like, as you mentioned, wasn't even your idea in the first place. Right. So like this is a community affair. Koi Vinh suggested it to me.

He said, somebody should do this. And I said, okay, I'll do it. My first year. And, and now I do the enterprise report card too, which will actually be coming out in a few weeks. And now I do the Enterprise Report Card 2, which will actually be coming out in a few weeks, where I ask IT professionals in the Apple space how they're feeling about Apple's IT efforts. And so that's another spinoff of the premise. So I'm glad that AppleViz.com did this. It's a very cool idea. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN.

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back there with ExpressVPN. And you had that moment where you connect the VPN and you're like, okay, well, let's see how bad the video streaming is. And it was full quality and beautiful. And I was even able to preload some stuff for my return flight into those apps from New Zealand, which was great. And that comes down to ExpressVPN's speed. It's also super easy to use. You don't need to read manuals or have any specific technical skills to set it up.

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That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n.com slash upgrade. One last time, that is expressvpn.com slash upgrade to learn more. A thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and RelayFM. Saddle up, Jason Snow. It's room around up time. Yee-haw. So we're going back to the well of MacBook Air,

which I feel like there is so much smoke around these MacBook Airs right now. That's right. But is there fire? That's the question. Is there fire? We'll find out. 9to5Mac has published a report of their own sources that say that the upcoming 13 and 15-inch MacBook Airs

will be both announced together and will feature an M3 chip. So we were questioning about whether they would, whether they'd maybe release one and then the other later, you know, like M2 in the 15, M3 in the 13, but lay it down the line. They're saying that they will both be announced at the same time

and will feature M3 chips. 9to5 also say that the M3 chip, the CPU will have 8 cores, the same as the M1 and the M2, but I guess what we're expecting is an increase, potentially is a increase, potentially a significant increase, right,

in the actual speed of each core because of the jump to 3 nanometer. We'll see. I mean, who knows? And power efficiency, too. Those are the things that we'll get with that. The current 13-inch MacBook Pro will also apparently be getting an M3 upgrade. I don't know why I hadn't thought about this,

but of course it's not going to go away. Of course. Apparently they said there was an internal discussion, which ended up not progressing, about just renaming this to MacBook. I'm happy they're not doing that because if they ever do a MacBook again, I want it to be an actual product that

they've created not just like a this is a product and we've just renamed it a sad strange product that also the macbook pro is like literally um and i don't know this for a fact but all evidence suggests this product exists specifically so they have something that corporate buyers can buy and fulfill their policy of only buying professional systems by having this be a macbook pro even though it doesn't make sense for any regular people to buy this thing so in nine to five's reporting the one thing that they weren't sure of is when exactly these products will launch like they were trying to kind of these products will launch like they were trying to kind of pinpoint potentially june right wwc but ross young is again saying that he believes that the 15 inch is expected to be launching in april now the reason he would say that and the reason i can understand why he is targeting that

specific machine is that's the change you can see in the product, in the factory lines. The supply chain. Supply chain, that's the phrase I was looking for. Because the 13-inch is just going to keep looking like the 13-inch if you're a display analyst, right? Like, there's no new panel. But the 15-inch panel's new, so if he is aware, he seems to be aware of the fact

that it is in a specific part of the process which would indicate to him, April is going to be the launch for this machine. So these reports are kind of at odds. Yes. It's fascinating to me. I still don't know quite what to think. Ross Young being confident that the 15-inch is launching in April, I guess, and 9to5Mac being confident that they're going to launch together with an M3 chip. I guess the question is, is the M3 chip going to premiere in April?

Like, less than a year since they premiered the M2 chip? That is a scenario, I guess. It's one that I had sort of discounted. I've been assuming all along that they would debut the M3 chip in June with the MacBook Air. But what if, you know, that was a delayed product last year? What if they're already at the point where they're ready to move on to the M3 and Ross Young doesn't have any visibility into the 13 inchinch because that's the same panel, as you said, and so therefore he's not going to be able to detect a change there. He can just see that the 15-inch panel is there. The 9-to-5 Mac, thinking it will be later, is a tougher one. I guess what that would suggest is maybe that what Ross Young is seeing is a supply chain that's cranking away on these things,

but that Apple isn't going to put them up for sale right away and they're going to hold them for a little while? Yeah. Just to be clear, 9to5 don't have any sourcing on when. They're just saying that that's when they expect is WWDC. Right. And I can understand it from everything we've said about, but last year, so isn't it too soon and all of that?

What's in Ross Young's favor here is that he's, he is looking at Apple and saying Apple doesn't produce computers in volume and then just sit on them for months, right? I mean, they could, they could produce them and put them on a slow boat and save some money and then have them ready to go. But it would mean that the M3 is producing now, right? It would mean, which I've seen reports that suggest that that's not the case, that that process is not necessarily generating chips yet. So the logic here in some ways is to say what Ross Young is really saying is there's going to be an M2 15-inch and then later there'll be an M3 13-inch. But that's not

what 9to5 Mac sources say, which is they're going to launch together. So they're a little diametrically opposed here. I suppose the simplest solution is yeah turns out the m3 is ready and then in april they're just going to say new macbook airs and also that macbook pro that we don't talk about uh and their m3s yay moving on and now now we've got two versions of the macbook air like that that could be it it would certainly if they did that it would certainly eliminate the weirdness of having you know a 15 inch that is an M2 that's trailing the 13-inch that's an M3 by months, by a few months. And therefore is, you know, lagging behind and that would potentially suppress. I'm not sure that many people would really care, but it would be, you know, potential suppression of sales because it's the old chip and not the new chip.

So it's mysterious, right? I wonder what the sources are here and why this is happening this way. If I was going to put my cards on the table with this one, I do not think this is a product we see at WWDC. I think they should not have anything at WWDC that isn't 100% needed because it should be

by our current expectations an absolutely packed keynote and so spending time talking about a new MacBook Air doesn't really make any sense. If you do have a Mac there have it be the Mac Pro but I agree the MacBook Air is not a good fit and the only reason they did it last time is because it was delayed quite a while. So I mean, that is definitely a good working theory, much internally that they announced it you know months

after they wanted to according to reports that maybe they're back on track with this and there's no once you've got the m3 ready to go like there's no point in sticking around like especially since you've got that macbook air design ready to go the existing one which none of us are expecting anything other than the m2 macbook to become an M3 MacBook Air. And maybe they'll tweak the colors or maybe they won't at all. But it'll be basically the same because they just redesigned it. So that design is going to stick around for a while. And this is probably the basis of the 15-inch design, too.

So, I mean, that would be great. I would love to see MacBook and bring on like M3 MacBook Air next month. I'd love to see that if uh if they can make that work but it is a little funny that you know these these uh sources are are again they seem to be colliding but there are scenarios in which they actually do make sense together they're just surprising i think scenarios that we weren't necessarily expecting this is a short one ming chi kuo is reporting that apple is set to launch a redesigned HomePod with a 7-inch display in the first half of 2024. Yeah. Please.

Yeah, I'm excited about this. This is the idea that, and I think Mark Gurman has reported about, they are working on a lot of different, this is like Apple's new home device strategy that they're actually working on and that this would be the first thing we'd see. And I know I detailed, I think an upgrade plus a few weeks ago, how I, um, got rid of my echo show in my kitchen and replaced it with a Google nest hub. And, uh, I wrote about that last week on six colors. It was great. It was was it was a success um i was uh you know it i was frustrated by all the junk that had been collecting on on the amazon echo that amazon kept shoving things onto the

home screen and kept having the voice assistant interrupt me uh basically at any time i would ask it anything it would it would tack on to on to their answer an ad for some other thing. You have a notification. Would you like to read it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we are delivering or have delivered a package to you. Or, by the way, did you know I do this thing? And it's like I got very frustrated.

I've been very happy with the Google device, which, while not perfect, does the limited things that I want to do without getting in my way. perfect does the limited things that I want to do without getting in my way. But the truth is that in that moment of despair where I finally said, let's just get the Google thing and see if it's better. I definitely had that feeling of like, I wish Apple would, would do something here. Now we'll see what they implement,

right? Like there's a lot of mysteries about what does a HomePod with the display look like? Like, is that, is it, are there widgets? Is it TV OSC? Is it iPad look like? Like, is that, is it, are there widgets? Is it TVOS-y? Is it iPadOS-y? Like, what is it? I think there's some real questions there, a little mystery about how they decide to do that, but I'm hopeful that it will be a better fit

than what I've, you know, what, what I've currently got. And I'm really happy that Apple seems to actually care about that category of the the smart speaker with display which they have thus far not been interested in came downstairs this morning and my echo show was showing to me why don't you ask what is the dog breed of the day the problem is for me I find that infuriating. There is at least one person in my home that loves that and always asks, what's the dog breed of the day? Loves it. And so this is the issue that I'm in. I don't want any of that anymore, but we're at odds here.

Oh, no. There's nothing I can do about it. Someone finds it adorable. I find it maddening. But here we are same same i just all that like all the junk that it puts on the screen that i don't like you can't you can't avoid it even when it's putting good information on the screen usually at the bottom it's got like say this phrase and it's just like it's so aggressive with its marketing and i just got tired of it but the the thing that put me over the top was the by the way interruptions right where it's just like it's so aggressive with its marketing and i i just got tired of it but the

the thing that put me over the top was the by the way interruptions right where it's like by the way i just i just want or would you like me to enable that i i i heard i've heard that several times where uh lauren's in the kitchen and she's asked for a timer or something like that because she's cooking dinner and it says by the way i can do this thing would you like me to do that and and she's like no right like it's like no get out of my way that's not what i'm doing right now it was my biggest issue is that if i'm cooking right that's when i'm usually saying you know so when i'm using it the most i'm setting timers and stuff i'm cooking i have my airpods pro in on noise cancelling mode because i don't

need to hear the cooking i'm want to listen to a podcast or whatever yep so i say like hey set a 10 minute timer and i hear and i was like i don't know what's happening right like what is happening to this thing over there oh i hate it but nevertheless this is where i am let's see what apple does yeah here's a fun rorschach test for you. The Financial Times is reporting that Tim Cook sided with Jeff Williams on pushing Apple to launch their mixed reality headset this year. This is against the wishes of the design team

managing the project, who have concerns that the product is not yet ready for launch. They have said that they would prefer to wait until a lightweight AR product is possible. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so like 2027? Yeah. Quote from MacRumors via Financial Times, the company's industrial design team cautioned that devices in the category

were not yet ready for launch and wanted to delay until a lightweight AR glasses product had matured several years later. Williams' team pushed for the mixed reality product even though it would be more limited than what they could achieve in the future speaking to the financial times former apple engineers who worked on the device described the huge pressure to ship so yes you're right this is a real rojac test um, you know, maybe depends on what you thought of that book that I didn't like about, Oh, the design team,

the heroes of the design team. I definitely raised an eyebrow at the idea that like, cause this story is not design team caution. The product was not ready to go and they needed to make some more tweaks and they should push it back a year. It's the, the design team rejects your premise of a mixed reality headset and says let's not ship anything until we have created the perfect form which is lightweight ar glasses

which will take another five years or or longer that that seems to be the the story here right and and it is absolutely within the the realm of reason for tim cook and jeff williams to be like oh no we're gonna ship we're gonna ship the mixed reality headset first we'll get there but we need to ship this we need to ship a real product here even though it's not because i read this is almost like this is not the idealized product that you dream of, but we need to ship something. I mean, I don't want to get into, you know, real artist ship Steve Jobs-isms here. But at some point, somebody has to decide, is this a product or not? And this sounds, this one little passage is so weird because it's basically the industrial design team didn't think they should do a VR product. Just said, we don't think you should do it.

We think you should wait for the ideal product, which isn't going to happen for another five years. And that is so weird. And I ranted about this when I ranted about that book, Tripp Mikkel's book, a little bit. That I appreciate the veneration that a lot of people feel for Apple's design team and for Apple's design centric culture. Um, I've been following it forever, right? Like I get it, but you know, they also can get way too precious and it, you gotta be able to say, you gotta say, no, they don't run the company and they shouldn't run the company. And I actually would say this is the perfect example of why whatever the design team says is right is the wrong philosophy for any functional company.

Because the design team here seems to have, is living in an idealized space where it's like, we don't need to ship a product for years. We've been working on it. We have been spending a lot of money. We've got something that is a little bit clunky, like first generation products often are. Why don't we just not ship it and continue to sit here in our space, iterating and having you guys continue to work on new technology and spend

more money and then you know call us in four or five years when you've got something that meets our standards it's it's totally ridiculous so if this report is correct it's like and the way it's i've seen it passed around is like oh no they overrode the designers what a disaster and it's like how could you it would be i mean it would be malpractice if you didn't override the designers when they just try to tell you yeah that product you've been working on we don't like it you should just not ship it and uh wait years until you invent something better it's unbelievable yeah we're in complete agreement on this one like i think this is the right move we haven't seen the product right but

if the you know it's all in the marketing, right? But you've got to do something at some point. You can't just keep developing a product forever. You're never going to get to the great product if you never ship a product, right? Please show me the product that benefited from being delayed five years and then when it came out, it was perfect.

That's not how it works. You've got a ship and you've got to get it out there. Like they need to get it out there so that the software can be picked apart. Right. Like, and that first, the first version of this thing, it's probably going to have buggy software. It's going to have lots of weird limitations. And you know what? That's part of the process.

Part of the process is saying this doesn't work right. And they're like, oh, wow, we didn't think of that. And then fixing it. And people really hate this thing about the product oh we learned a lesson there we'll make it better but you got to get it out there this is not the same thing as designers saying there are fundamental flaws in the headset in the vr mixed reality headset that need to be addressed and i'll point out that it has been delayed a while. It's perhaps those things also went on, but it's one thing to say, we need to fix things before this product ships.

And another thing to say, don't ship this product, wait for it to achieve its final form because the final form doesn't get achieved by not shipping a product. It just doesn't. Look, there is obviously the asterisk of, it could be atrocious,

but I think we're just assuming that's not the case, right? Like it might, it probably will be, I expect good at a bunch of things, probably not great at any of those things, but that's a version one. Like this is a, this honestly feels like with everything that we know about it currently,

that this is the biggest kind of risk product that i can remember apple taking in the sense of like it's super expensive they're going super high end because they just feel that they gotta get started yes and so i you know i agree with this idea of like at a certain point you've got to draw a line in the sand and be like as you say you need to ship it and see how people react and then move on from there which i would argue is probably what happened with the apple watch right yes because they shipped a product that is aside from industrial design completely different in idea and scope now to them like yeah yeah and and so they had to get it out there they had to get it out there they had to iterate completely different in idea and scope now to that. Yeah, yeah.

And so I figured they'd go to stock. And they had to get it out there. They had to get it out there. They had to iterate. They had to get the feedback about, they shipped that where the apps are running on the phone and all of that. And they knew that that was not going to be there

in the long run. And they could have waited another year, I suppose. But again, you're just waiting to get started. You should probably just get started. And I'm not advocating for shipping a product that is, there is a bar, right? There is a bar to clear of like, is this a viable product?

Is this a product that is worth getting out the door and having the public see it? But that's not the, the bar can't be set at perfect or at a different product. Because this doesn't even seem like an issue with Apple's product specifically, but in the idea that a mixed reality headset is inherently the wrong direction, which I don't agree with fundamentally.

These headsets can be really great when done well, but it seems like that there are at least some people inside. And again, as we always say, you hear about this stuff, you've heard about it from the people that are the most angry, right? Consider the source. Consider the source. Financial Times specifically says

former Apple engineers who worked on the device. So these are people who left Apple and are like, oh. So first off, how recent is their knowledge of this? But they're like, oh, they wanted to do this. But it feels very much like what they're saying is I never liked the idea of mixed reality. I'm in love with the dream of those lightweight glasses that again, lightweight AR glasses. I just want to be clear here. The technology to make them doesn't exist, right? Like the reason Apple isn't making them

today instead of this headset that's going to come out in the next few months which is mind-boggling when you think about that um that we're very close to that the reason is it doesn't exist yet like it needs to be invented it is not ready the the to do a lightweight pair of glasses that actually do proper ar like they can't do it and so you've got a that's why I'm saying you've got to ship and you've got to iterate and you've got to build the next thing. You can't just sort of wait around for the, we're pretty sure this is the future, but it hasn't been invented yet. So we're going to wait around until we invent it and then we'll ship it is not a viable solution. But it sounds like that's what's happening by a bunch of former engineers who had worked on the device and

probably fought their battles and maybe fought some battles about the existing headset and are frustrated about it but the ideal headset you know those glasses that those are perfect right because they are just an ideal and don't really exist so uh yeah consider the sources here this this story doesn't suggest whether the product that's going to come out this year is good or bad, right? Like it is being read that way, but that's not how I read this at all. I read this as being like designers didn't want to ship it because they prefer the elegance of a product that doesn't exist. Yeah. And like something that Kate mentioned in the live chat is like about what the expectations and reality of the product is and it may have been that when this project

was first started the idea was let's try and make some ar glasses but then along the way realize as you mentioned oh it's not physically possible to do that right now so if you started in that place maybe you had these grand ideas of what it would be but you've had to make a concession along the route and i continue to maintain about ever seeing this product this is the right move to go down because you've got to start somewhere and it's best to just get it going and see what people say and see what people like, see what people don't like. There is 100% a world in which even when AR glasses exist, well, I actually believe this is the case, even when AR glasses exist,

there will still be a desire and use case for a mixed reality product because AR glasses will never be able to isolate you from an environment. And that is still an interesting thing to do for gaming and even for just immersion. And so I can still imagine Apple continuing to make some version of a mixed reality headset, even once they've developed the technology for AR glasses. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you could maybe make AR glasses that also have a VR mode, but at that point it's a little bit like, uh, you're,

you're spending a lot of money to make very expensive things that are light and pass through and then covering them up. You would need to like have these attachments, right? Like it would be, it's like flip, flip down VR mode or something. And so you might just continue to have that separate product.

I will, I will recommend to everybody on connected. Was it last week last federico so mike and i have have been using vr for a while now uh federico is sort of new to it and he's he's going through a a phase of his life where he's trying new things which is great and he got that he got the old time vr religion uh last week connected, like to the point where he's like, I want to work in VR. I'm just,

I don't even need a display anymore. I can just use a VR display on my Mac and things like that. Right. Which is pretty wild, but I think that there's some, there potentially is some truth to that. And so I'll recommend that because I think his enthusiasm is fun, but also because I think he details pretty well all the different possibilities for this and why it's exciting that Apple's doing this.

And I think you can believe that this is an interesting category that is going to push things in a lot of interesting ways. And that Apple, because it's invested so much time and money, Apple is trying to have the experience be the best one we've ever seen. You can believe that and also believe that it will be very expensive and not do as much as it should and be frustrating in a bunch of areas. Because I think that in the end, that's kind of what you're going for, right? You're kind of going for a first generation product that shows off how amazing this technology can be while also recognizing the fact that it is version one and that there's a lot of learning to do before we get to the point where people feel better about this and that it feels better as a product. Like both of those things can be true. And I think if you do it right,

that's your best case scenario. I think there's no scenario where Apple releases something and everybody goes, oh, they figured it out. It's fine. This is what it will be like from now on. I just don't think that'll happen, right? It's a first version of the operating system and the app platform and all of those things.

It's not going to be done. It's going to be a start. But if they can nail the other part, which is everybody sees the potential, that's what you build on. improves fraud defense of machine learning, and helps businesses manage data challenges in the cloud with Slingshot, the first solution from Capital One Software. Search technology at Capital One to learn more. Our thanks to Capital One for their support of this show and RelayFM. Capital One, what's in your wallet?

So we're going to talk about a yellow iPhone now. Oh boy. Upgradian Adams suggested that this segment should be called color grade uh-huh which it's clever i love so that's what we'll call it color okay there's a yellow iphone it's true boy boy is there i have it right here. A great job of making something not exciting, like interesting by producing a live stream wearing yellow with lots of yellow things. Like bravo to you on that one.

Yellow. I had that moment where I thought, boy, if only I had a banana and a lemon, we could really go to town here. And I laughed and laughed. And then I thought, you know, I should probably do that. And I didn't have a banana or a lemon, but I did have a can of tennis balls and a play date and a barrel of monkeys in yellow. And so, you know, we made and a yellow T-shirt, a hypercritical T-shirt and a yellow cow hat.

And so we made it work. We did a dumb. I did a dumb thing for 10 minutes where I and the people like you should compare it to the play date. And I had to go. I literally like got up and left and ran to the back of the house and got the play date and ran back and put it it's just a very dramatic moment anyway yes there is a yellow iPhone uh it is a yellow iPhone like you know I mean we talked about it they obviously see value in refreshing in adding a color and refreshing their, which I think is a big part of it. And getting another opportunity to talk about the iPhone midstream when it's been a while since we something new about the iPhone because it sits there for six months. So, and then they refresh it a little bit

and then that has to keep it going. So it's the smallest of updates, but like they keep doing it as the spring update every year. So obviously they find value in doing it this way. And when I asked them sort of like the big question, which is, well, you know, why not just do all the, why do it now? Why not do it it earlier and their answer is something like well you know now now our line is complete it's like a non-answer right because the answer is even mean like there has been a long delay on the yellow one it was missing a color and now the color is there and it's like

okay but you could have done the just never mind okay fine it's like j okay, but you could have done the, just nevermind. Okay, fine. It's like, Jason, you don't understand the order of nature. Yellow phones take longer to make. Everyone knows this. Everybody knows it. So anyway, here they are. And they got us talking about it. Literally, there's nothing new about it except that the iPhone is in a yellow color. And there are some new, it's their traditional thing, right?

There are some new case colors and there are some new watch band their traditional thing right there are some new case colors and there's some new watch band colors and that's where we are yeah i will say it again just i have to say it like i'm legally contracted to say it why can't we get a pro phone in any of these colors i would love a yellow iphone pro like just but that color though right like that color i don't want mid-blue. Midnight Lemon is what it would be. It would be like gold except not nice.

Muddy gold. Dark muddy gold. Here's the truth. The truth is back when they did the design decisions for these phones. So the, what the 12, they decided that the pro phones would have the,

uh, frosted glass back and that the, uh, the camera bump would be matte or would be shiny. And they decided that the inverse would be true for the low end model. And as a result of that decision you can't really make bright colors with that glass the way it is you could i mean it would be okay but i think i think the truth is that it wouldn't look very good and um and therefore

they're kind of i mean that that decision has meant that the iphone pro has been really boring and sedate the whole time and And I think this whole generation, the low-end model looks better. The whole generation. So I hope they address it when they redesign the iPhones because I hate it. Again, when we talk about this, this color stuff,

we're not saying you shouldn't be able to buy a sedate phone. It's just like when we were talking about the iMacs. They make silver. You can have a sedate phone right it's just like when we're talking about the imax like they make silver right like you can have your sedate or we say boring but like you can have like something that's neutral that doesn't you know call attention to it because for whatever reason you prefer that that's fine but some of us would prefer a little color and apple is not willing to do that on pro devices and i i don't understand it yeah i mean you can buy just like a black regular iphone and a white one right like so even though they have the colors and the regular ones you can still just buy

standard right and then you get red a blue that's the don't really like. That's the iPhone I have right here. It's black, basically. It's like the very dark gray back with the black camera bar. It's fine. Anyway, yellow iPhone. Yellow. Apple Music Classical. Let me give you a bit of history for those that are not deep in the classical lore.

In 2021, apple bought a company called prime phonic and this was their thing i think they were a classic music streaming service and with this when they announced it promised a new apple music classical app by the end of the year 2022 so it wasn't going to be an integration into Apple Music. It was going to be like a brand new app by the end of 2022. That did not happen. Apple has now announced

a pre-order in the App Store for the Apple Music Classical app, which will be launching on March 28th. Excellent. I'm so proud of you right now. Some details about Apple Music Classical. A lot of these came from a post on Mac Rumors

with information that I'm not sure how they got unless somebody at Apple told them this information, which is good, right? Because there was no press release, so information about this application, hard to get. It is going to be available at no extra cost to Apple Music subscribers. It will support spatial audio with Dolby Atmos

and high-res lossless, which makes sense. I think the high-res lossless makes the most sense. Visually, it looks like Apple Music, but they're using the Serif New York typeface rather than the San Francisco typeface, which I find very funny. It is going to benefit from complete and accurate metadata

to make sure you know exactly what and who you are playing, which is a very fun way to phrase that. That was actually from the App Store page. Learn while you listen with thousands of composer biographies, descriptions of key works, and more. The app will offer

over 5 million tracks, hundreds of curated playlists and thousands of exclusive albums apple has commissioned unique artwork of famous artists for apple music classical using color palettes and artistic references from their relevant classical period the uh yep just like that that's that when you open the app it just plays that constantly the classical music fans out here are like oh yeah what i love fifth and ode to joy the two most obvious classical music selections i'm sorry i'm riffing here okay such a normie uh what i really like is that in the apple music

classical app store page they have one of these images of beethoven where he does not look happy to be inside of apple music classical that's beethoven he looks real mad he's real mad about being locked inside of this application and he doesn't want anything to do with it and he's not happy about it at all so this is really interesting because the thing cheer up beethoven this app is interesting for me not because of what it is it's more like what it's not doing so like it will not have a mac app it will not have an ipad app it will have an android app yeah the ipad so it shows up on my ipad so i keep thinking that what's going to happen is it's going to launch and it's going to have the mac app running on the ipad which is you know not not

so great but it does show up but they've said i've seen people saying that they've had confirmation from apple that there is no ipad on mac app it is iphone only that that's fine except it shows up in the in the app store on my ipad which leads me to believe that i'll be able to run it on my oh yeah i mean in In the iPhone compatibility mode. But that's so sad, right? That's no good. That's so sad. Well, okay.

So, yeah. And no Mac app. And that's not great. The positive thing here, and for people who are wondering, like people who love classical music, they tend to listen to music in a very different way than people who like popular music do, right? Like the pop music.

And that's what iTunes and now Apple music is based on is pop music, singles and things like that. It's like you get an artist in a song and it's kind of canonical and that's what it is. Whereas my understanding is classical music. You're not, you're not saying find me some Beethoven, sweet,

sweet Beethoven fifth symphony. Let's do it. You're like, I want to listen to this performance by this orchestra, right? Like lots of details about specific performances of works because the works are performed a lot. And you want to drill down and get like a particular one.

And pop music, you know, there are cover versions and stuff like that. But basically, it's like the version, give me that song. And so you need to have something like what Prime Phonic tried to do, which is a good classical database and also a different interface, which is why it's a different app. And I know I've heard from people who are like, why not just make classical experience inside the Apple Music app better? And I think the answer is, yes, that would be great. I suspect that Apple Music's architecture would have required lots of changes to the music app.

And they probably had a code base from Prime Phonic. And they're like, let's just leave music alone. I mean, I expect this is just like what happens with Beats. I expect the team that is working on this is Prime Phonic. Like the old people that made Prime Phonic have been sucked into Apple and they made this. Like, that's what I expect has happened here. So, but I just find the like, not having an iPad app is just weird to me. It's just weird to me.

It's like, I feel like you just should. Like they should just be taught. No, like, because you can, if you, you know, if they have just be taught no like because you can if you you know if they have this whole thing of like a bunch of information maybe it would look really nice to read composer biographies and descriptions of key works on a bigger screen like on an iPad like I just find it it frustrates me because it's like it just looks like they don't care about it right and it's just like well I don't like that like the Mac fine just looks like they don't care about it, right? And it's just like, well, I don't like that. Like the Mac, fine, whatever, right?

Like they don't want to make a Mac app, don't make a Mac app. But like, you know, like whatever, right? Right, but you make an iPhone app and you make it a Catalyst app. Again, that's probably all coming. That's my guess. My guess is that part of the the product uh pathway here because remember they missed their deadline already and now they're shipping this thing right like the product pathway is probably yeah and but i don't know we mentioned it apple music if you're an apple music subscriber

you get this it's not an extra anything and although weirdly unless you're in china japan korea russia taiwan turkey afghanistan or pakistan yeah because they're not licensed or whatever yeah so the the product pathway probably is that there will be an update that supports the ipad and that and then they will probably have a catalyst version beyond that that you'll be able to run on the mac that really helps that's almost certainly where it's going but they clearly like couldn't get it done in order to get it out by the end of, of March, which is already three months after their self-imposed deadline slash promise about this. So I think this is great. I love they're,

they're like Costco music people. Like we talk about, we talk about how the app store is distorted by the fact that it's based on iTunes, which means it's based on the single hit single model. Um, and how that is affected so much about what the app store is because they, they took took uh

off off their own shelf they took a music sale engine and turned it into a software sale engine but it's also worth thinking about the fact that there are kinds of music that don't fit the pop single model either and classical is the best example of that. I do wonder if there are other, I was talking to Dan Morin about this. I wonder if like soundtracks, you know, other stuff like that, that's not quite classical, but it's not a great fit necessarily for Apple music. If there'll be some of that in here too. I don't know. I just don't know, but I'm glad that they're doing it. The technical details are perplexing right this is an apple fundamentally apple is launching a new service with an app that only runs on the iphone and that is wild right like if you're an

ipad user if you listen to music on your ipad and you're like well wait a second what about me and the answer is sorry not yet at least it will be available this is an app that i mean i'll download and look at it but like i don't know what i'm doing in there you know what i mean right i'll give it i'll give it a whirl hopefully there'll be some content in there for for beginners right to say like here's here's a style to try or here's a thing to try and it's like for for jason it'll be like beethoven will be there and it'll be like j, don't tap on Beethoven. The only music that you seem to be able to generate that's classical out of your brain for some reason is Beethoven. Try.

Have you tried Mozart? You could try that. Give that a try too. I tried to think of a, a third song that, that I could, I could sing now of classical. And I realized I was like,

oh yeah, I know for Elise. Also Beethoven. Also I realized, I was like, oh yeah, I know for Elise, also Beethoven, also Beethoven. What is it with, you know, I, I, I think I did have a, when I was, when I took piano lessons as a kid, they would give you a little plastic statues. They're like Funko Pops, except there were Funko Classicals, essentially, little statues of classical performers or composers. And I know I had Chopin, but I'm pretty sure I had a Beethoven

where he's scowling because all images of Beethoven, he's scowling. He is a very, just a grumpy guy. The Mortal Beloved, interesting movie. Check it out. Gary Oldman, I think, is Beethoven in that. Anyway, I have exhausted my classical music knowledge now. If you're interested.

Oh yeah, A Hund Namaste Beethoven in German, Anyway, I have exhausted my classical music knowledge now. If you're interested. Oh, yeah. A Hund Namast Beethoven in German. The Beethoven dog movies. You can get those too. Those are great. And, of course, you can do Amadeus. You can watch Amadeus, which we watched for The Incomparable actually last year. And it's a legitimately great movie.

Just an amazing movie. So that's all about mozart folks so what's the connection there i don't i have no idea amadeus is about mozart it's about mozart it's about mozart well it's about the guy who's mozart's rival who's very frustrated with how talented mozart is and mozart's kind of like a rock star he's a misbehaving guy and the guy who has been putting his entire career, who's played by F. Murray Abraham,

who won the Oscar for that role. Like he, he is, he is so angry at Mozart and hates Mozart because Mozart's just so effortlessly talented. And he just is a grinder who has ground his way to being the, the court musician for the, what the, the,

the Austrian empire or whatever. And, and sorry for the impromptu summary of of amadeus but uh having watched it i watched it as like a teenager and i was bored by it but as an adult watching amadeus it's so it's so good so yeah there that could be a double feature amadeus and immortal beloved you'll get your mozart you get your beethoven and then uh download your iPhone app, I guess. And I'm assuming Amadeus, Amadeus, nothing to do with it. Well, I mean, that's about Mozart.

Yeah, but not the movie. The Rock Me Amadeus by Falco. It is. That's the whole idea, right? How does that... Ever so popular? He was a... Yeah, it's like Wolfgang

Mozart was a rock star of his time. And yes, Mike, you've zeroed in on it. Rock Me Amadeus... Inspired by the movie. Rock Me Amadeus themes very similar to the themes in the movie Amadeus. Yeah.

Thalco. Rest in peace, peace thalco i'm naturally assuming upgradians you got what you expected from this segment right like you weren't expecting anything more than this right yeah it's it's we're really experts in this category but uh i'm very excited for my friends who are classical music fans because yeah uh suffice it to say modern streaming services like apple music and spotify not that great like apple music specifically like not that great if you're a classical music fan itunes historically has been not that great we at macworld kirk mcclehern uh wrote i don't want to it wasn dozens, but many articles about how to try to tame your iTunes library for classical use because it was such a mess. So this has been the case for a long time.

So I'm very excited for classical music fans who are using Apple's music ecosystem that they're finally going to get something that will hopefully serve them well. So that part's great. And yeah, go see Amadeus. It's great. 2nd of August, 2016. Got an article here from Kirk McElhain, I think on his own website. Apple is finally making iTunes better

for classical music. Yeah. Well, they progress. I'm looking forward to what Kirk has to say about it because Kirk is a bit of a grumpy guy, actually. This is your time, Kirk. But he cares. yeah well they they progress i'm looking forward to what kirk has to say about it because kirk is a bit of a grumpy guy actually your time kirk but he cares so rise to the occasion kirk mclehorn do it i mean this is this is i can't wait to see what he says about this app when it launches at the end of the month because uh that he'll be a uh he's the perfect audience for this kind of thing

rock me mclehorn for this kind of thing. Rock me, McElhern. If you enjoy this show and want more of it, you should subscribe to Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com. Just $5 a month or $50 a year. It will get you tons of bonus content throughout the year. We have every month,

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People have a great time there. But the reason we're saying this to you now is every single week, you will get ad-free versions of Upgrade with additional content. Sometimes it's challenges. We have our next challenge that we're working on. We're doing that in the next couple of weeks. Today, I think we're going to talk a little bit about video previews as a thing for the show

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Grant wrote in and says, my 2017 10.5 inch iPad Pro has broken. I bought it at launch for £620. What iPad would you suggest to replace it now? The current iPad Pro is significantly more expensive, but the iPad and iPad Air lose features like ProMotion.

Well, look, Grant, only you can decide, but my suggestion, since you're asking, my suggestion is the iPad Air, which I know is not quite as fully featured as the current iPad Pro, but you've got a 2017 iPad Pro, so it's back a little bit. You've got like a home button on that thing. Is that right? Yeah, I think it is. It is right. And does he have ProMotion or not? Yes, it does.

It does have ProMotion on it. I believe that device was the first iPad to get ProMotion. To have ProMotion. Yeah. So I would probably say, unless the ProMotion thing is going to kill you, get the iPad Air. It's a good deal. It is basically like an iPad Pro in so many different ways and yet is cheaper. And so I would say that's probably what you should do.

If you could get a deal on a, on a iPad pro, then, then you could go that way. But I feel like the iPad, and also there's rumors that next year the iPad Pro is going to get redesigned, right? So you'd be getting the last of the existing iPad Pros. You could do it, again, if you can find a deal or a refurb or something like that. But the iPad Air, I think, is the best buy, just sort of in general,

if you can stand to lose some of those very specific iPad Pro features, because you'll save some money. I realized now that there was a story that I should have included in rumor roundup, which is about these OLED iPad pros. We'll talk about that next week. Yeah.

Oh yeah. I'm glad we didn't break that seal. Cause there's a whole thing that spins off of those about what is Apple doing with the iPad pro. So we'll save that for next time. We'll save that for next time. What I'm, what I will say is,

if you can get a good deal, right, on a third gen 11-inch or something, then you should maybe look at that. But realistically, I would say to go to the iPad Air, it's a great device. You'll lose, I think, only like two features. You get stereo speakers rather than the, like, two speakers rather than

the four speakers. I guess they're all in stereo. And it's ProMotion. But that iPad is great. You've still got Touch ID. I would recommend that one, I think, if out of that line right now. It's actually the pick I make to anybody now. Like, I think the iPad Air is kind of just like the best iPad for most

people. The iPad Pro in its current iteration in the 11 inch that's not worth it caleb asks how are those play dates doing great i took mine to new zealand and played it a little bit on the inner island ferry uh and some other places and and uh there's still some games that I really like on it. Now there's a bunch of new games that have come out as a part of the launch of the new, basically, app store for Playdate. You can still sideload things. It's not like an Apple app store,

but they have this new app called Catalog that has a couple of free games and then a whole bunch of games you can buy. And, you know, it's great. I don't play it. Like I've said before, I don't play it as much as i thought i would mostly because of the fact that it's not backlit and so i am sometimes in situations where i think about playing it and there's not enough light and that's too bad that that's the way it is but that's the way it is and nobody has

made a clip on playdate light yet so this is where i am right now but i do um i do love it and and i love the software is obviously done with great care and love by people who are uh who they just love video games and devices like the playdate and so you've got a you know nobody i think nobody is making games for the play date because it's a cash grab right they're doing it for the love of the genre and that comes through too yeah i've uh i haven't touched mine for a bit like i've you know i played a bunch of games a bunch um and then i was done with the games that i wanted to play from the first season there is one or two that i still haven't checked out that i've been meaning to but i uh i've booted

up and downloaded the catalog thing and i want to go in and poke around with some of those games my favorite playdate game bloom uh which i've sideloaded this is in the catalog it's one of the catalog games and they've updated it i need to go in and check like what i would like to be able to do is download this new version and it keeps my save file from my sideloaded version. I really hope that's the case because I don't want to play through the whole game again to get to the new content. But Bloom is an incredible experience of a game. It's like a beautiful narrative game with some kind of farming ideas.

It is wonderful. I love it it and they've made it as part of the catalog which i'm not surprised about because i think it's a triumph of a game on that platform but yeah i love the play date i'm really looking forward to their stereo dock because i just think it'll be really fun as a thing to buy and i really wish that the jack jason they'd just make a clip on life of the thing like like you used to get for game boys i think in a different timeline wherein it was easier for them to have made the playdates because they're still shipping from the original orders like they're still shipping them which is incredible it was this wonderful success but also complicated uh

i reckon they would have made more accessories like that like the bluetooth dot they announced when they announced the thing and they just were like we had to put that thing on hold because we had to actually make these things um and they have now increased the price it's going to be i think 199 which 199 is difficult right you're basically a nintendo switch now but it is a wonderful unique experience i think it's only 20 different like but yeah that's right it's just a different thing it's just a different kind of object. And the people it appeals to, it appeals in a very particular way.

And if you want a Nintendo Switch, I know that they're both handheld game devices, but boy, they're not the same at all. And of course you get games, right? Like with the Playdate, that's like 12 games. It is a wonderful thing that I recommend people check out. If you like games,

I think you'll enjoy it because it's like, especially if you like indie games and you can tell the love that goes into the entire thing. It is something that I adore my little Playdate. I had so much fun with that thing,

but I just haven't tried it. I haven't picked it up in a while, but I'm going to. Mitch asks, do you think Apple, this is the perennial question, will stick with the numbering scheme of the iPhone all the way up to iPhone 17 and beyond? I note this because it would be the first three-syllable iPhone name. So I wrote down a potential name today, which is iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Yeah. That's a long name. Like just many syllables. It is. I don't know how they get off the train at this point, right? Yep. I just, I feel like they're on it now.

I don't know what can be done. Like as long as they're selling old models, they can't just call it the iPhone 2023. They can't do it. They have to specify what model it is. and we're still selling the iPhone 15, and we're still selling the iPhone 14. That strategy where it takes a long time for it to kind of coalesce into an SE is going to continue, I think. And that's the result,

which is they got to name these things unique names, and the number, it is what it is. I would have preferred them to go to the year at this point. Right. So that it would be the iPhone 23 comes out in 23, but they don't seem to want to do that. I mean, it's still,

it's still just an ever increasing number. Yes. It's just a different number. Yeah. It's absolutely true. A couple of points. Zach points out three GS is three syllables. Yeah.

But I think it's different. And David says, hopefully they'll drop the three syllables. Yeah, but I think it's different. And David says, hopefully they'll drop the pro from Pro Max, but if they do, they'll probably make it ultra, which is still two syllables. So we're back to the same problem again. I think the problem is just like 17.

It's just like so much. Like you just keep going on forever. 17 Pro Max. It's just so many. It's just such a big name. It's just so big. But whatever. You know what I mean? Like, they're just gonna... As you say, what else are they gonna do?

Should we call it iPhone? They can't do that. It's too complicated. I know they do it for other products, but it's too complicated for the iPhone. As long as they're not replacing them every year, but keeping them around for longer than a year for cheaper, they can't do that, right? Like, they can't say this is the iPhone and that's also the iPhone, they can't do that, right? Like they can't say, this is the iPhone and that's also the iPhone.

They can't do that. They could, if they discontinued it every year and replaced it with new models, they could do what the MacBook Air does, right? Which is just, it's the MacBook Air. Or the iPad, right? The iPad's the same. Or the iPad, exactly.

But if they keep them around, they can't do that. And they keep them around. That's part of the big iPhone strategy. And they're not going to, I'll put it this way, they're not going to change that strategy just to make the names more satisfying, right? If they change that strategy for other reasons,

they could say, hey, wait a second, we don't need to do the name thing anymore. But I just don't see any signs of that happening. No, neither do I. So we're just going to keep getting those names longer and longer and longer. iPhone 264 Pro Max. And David Schaub points out, yeah, it actually is a problem with the MacBook Air because there's the M1 MacBook Air and the M2 MacBook Air.

That is true. But there they're using the chip basically as a differentiator, but it's complicated, right, because they've left the old model around. But you're right, the iPad is a good example. Even there, the iPad, there's the 9th generation and the tenth generation you see but they don't care about that you know that's how it bites you though is that now we're now we're using parenthetical names that are confusing it's worse than saying ipad 9 and we will always do that though like even if this is the thing it's like even if apple do this they'll drop we'll still

use ways to describe each model year right sure we will but but there'll be there'll be consumer confusion because the consumer will just be like iphone this iphone that right like how do i even do that so i just i feel like they're on this path now and i i have a hard time imagining them changing as ridiculous it is, you know, to say iPhone 17 or iPhone 23. That seems to be where we are. I don't know. It's weird. If you would like to send in an Ask Upgrade question for us to answer on a future episode of the show, go to upgradefeedback.com where you can leave feedback, follow-ups, snow talks, Ask Upgrades, whatever you like. There's also a link in your show notes.

It's right, I think, at the very top or one of the top two links in your show notes in every episode in your podcast app of choice. So you can go there and leave us some questions or follow-up for a future episode of the show. Thank you so much to everybody that does. Much appreciated. This was episode 450 of Upgrade.

Until next time, if you would like to check out Jason's work, go to SixColors.com. You can also hear his podcast at TheIncomparable.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to my shows here on RelayFM as well and check out my work at CortexBrand.com. We're both on Mastodon. You can find Jason on Zeppelin.flights as at jsnell.

And you can find me on mike.social as at imike. You can send us your feedback and questions at upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. If you would like to sign up, go to getupgradeplus.com. Thank you to Capital One and ExpressVPN for their support of this show. And most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.