Upgrade - 452: Schrödinger's Killer App

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

With WWDC (presumably) a couple of months away, we take time to list some of our wishes for iOS 17. There's also a lot more noise about the forthcoming Apple VR headset, and the entertainment industry and Apple are having communication issues.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 452 today's show is brought to you by zocdoc electric and setup my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike how are you i'm pretty good i'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. I have a Snow Talk question for you. Oh, good. It comes from Sims, and Sims wants to know, Jason, what is your go-to fast food restaurant,

and is this different on road trips? I don't eat a lot of fast food, but my current, there's a small California chain, uh, called Starbird that does like chicken tenders and chicken wings and stuff like that. And, you know, fried chicken sandwiches. And there's one, one exit up the freeway from here. I, I, I've been there a lot lately.

So, uh, so Starbird may be my favorite right now, just of the moment. Um, it's good. Just of the moment. Looks nice. Enjoy it. It's good. It's really good. And they've got like, you know, you can order ahead and or you order like with a touch screen when you get there or you can sit outside on a nice day. Like, yeah, that's good. So sometimes we'll get that coming home from curling. See, dropping the curling references again. Just on the way home. Because we curl over like lunch. We get over and it's lunchtime. So you got to... There is, however, also near the curling place, an In-N-Out. And since Sims asked about road trips,

In-N-Out is my go-to In-N-Out burger, which is mostly a Western US phenomenon. It's my go-to for road trips. Partially, I mean, I like it a lot. We actually have one in Mill Valley, not far from my house, and I almost never go there. But when we're on a road trip, it's a nice, it's a fun treat to get a burger. It's road trip. In and out.

It's road trip. Indeed, in the truest sense of the word that in and out during the like life-giving episode where we recorded outside uh we had in and out for that right yeah yeah that was our that was from our in and out of course from that in and out from from the uh the the outdoor bird chirping episode of upgrade last last June. Yes, absolutely. Probably my favorite episode of Upgrade ever because just what it meant to me in that moment. It was like we salvaged a little something out of your terrible, terrible trip.

Yeah. And I think we can say this, exclusively announcing it here, if we get a chance to record an episode of Upgrade at my house again we will probably record it outside just because we're gonna do that because we can yeah we're gonna do that this is the hope uh you know if i'm planning on going out and we're planning on staying a little bit longer in san francisco afterwards so we'll i'll come down to you and we're gonna record

outside again i think that was just good memories maybe this time we can make Starbird the official lunch of that episode it's pretty good, it's pretty tasty just need Apple to put those dates out there, come on this is Tim, Mike, I was very

busy last week, I wasn't able to announce it but I'll take it under advisement for the next time, Tim out if you would like to send in a snow talk question of your own to help us open an episode of upgrade just go to upgradefeedback.com and submit yours i have some follow-up for you jason snell we had quite a lot of people write in which is not typical for follow up for the show like sometimes we get little bits of Bob's and links and stuff, but I've got a lot of people who had some things to say about our previous episodes.

I want to go through some of those. The first was Roman who said, over the years and now recently again, there's been a lot of discussion about the iPad as the future of computing. We spoke a lot about it on last week's episode. We did. Roman goes on to say,

why is it that the industry isn't giving Microsoft the recognition for already introducing and the future of computing with their Surface products? What makes the iPad different? All right.

Snarky answer is, why isn't the industry giving Microsoft credit for Windows Phone? It was there way ahead of the iPhone. It's kind of the same, though. I mean, it is kind of the same.

The answer is surface. Because I also got this comment in a sort of different direction from somebody who was talking about our complaints and said something like, have you used a Surface notebook where it's detachable? It's not a good experience. I'm like, okay. My response to that person, they took it in stride and actually reacted positively was the ipad pro with a magic keyboard on it seems like a pretty good convertible laptop to me right part of the problem with those convertible surfaces where they're like the surface book which i think i don't even think they make anymore or like oh you're right it's the surface

but surface laptop's just a laptop it's like it's the one that's got the weird multi-thing hinge and they're trying to... Where you can take it out. Yeah, because you got to put in a detachable tablet. Let's just set the terms here. You have to, if it's a laptop

that also can be a tablet, you have to have the processor and battery, at least some, in the thing, in the screen because you toss away the keyboard. The best way to think of it is the iPad, right?

The iPad has everything it needs to do its thing in its little slab keyboard or slab display. And then if you attach a keyboard to it, and the physics are tricky, which is why there's the cantilever thing and why they've done, Apple now has done a kickstand on the low-end one, and Microsoft has experimented with kickstands there's there's weird physics at work there in terms of

getting the forces to all kind of align but i think one of the things that has made those products really difficult and not work very well is that they were running like intel processors and so they just couldn't be efficient enough and i think that's the difference between what some of the stuff microsoft's done and what apple has done with the ipad is that it's incredibly powerful in that box i'll take it a little further too i i do think there are engineering challenges and like well we can't can we put one brain that's low powered behind the screen and then put another brain and we switch and like there's lots of discussions like that probably going on. I'd say the other, though, to get to Ramon's core question, I think the difference is that Microsoft struggled to create one version of Windows that would work in both modes. And I think Apple has had it easy by having iPadOS and macOS be separate.

Yes. And that's because Apple had the iPhone and it was separate from the Mac. So Apple, that was an advantage. Microsoft's great advantage is Windows, right? That they have Windows. The disadvantage is they were trying to adapt Windows for touch, but also recognize that most Windows users

will never use it as a touch tablet, right? So you don't want to subvert the Windows experience, but you want to have a good touch experience. And at least in my experiences with these things, and I do have a Surface. Like my Surface, I find almost unusable as an iPad, right? Like you can kind of fake it for some very similar stuff, but basically no. But if I, if I snapped a little magnet keyboard on it, it's a PC. Good to go. And you can use it as a PC. So I think that's Microsoft's challenge. So when, when we were talking about like what, my idea of like, what if there's a, an iPad mode that a touch Mac goes into or a Mac mode that an ipad goes into like well what happens there i mean the beauty of it is that apple has already built the ipad interface that's a touch first

interface i don't i i agree with the people who argue that blowing the mac interface up to making it like a touch first interface isn't gonna work work again, like with windows, you can get by probably like I've done that on, on screen sharing with a Mac, with my iPad, I can kind of drive the OS. It's not great, but you can kind of do it. But like,

but the iPad OS interface is a great touch tablet interface. And, and that, that was why my argument was, you know, not that it would be easy, but the smart thing to do might be to consider it essentially two different modes.

And when you either, you snap a keyboard and a trackpad on an iPad and say, let's go into Mac mode and it becomes a MacBook Air, or you pull the screen off of a future Mac laptop and it becomes an iPad more more or less uh in that moment and again what does that mean is it running ipad os is it just running ipad apps i mean there's there's a lot of hazy like to be figured out but i as people who listen to this show regularly will

know i have very little patience for people who seem to simultaneously think that apple can do anything but not that one thing that you suggest i I'm not saying Apple is perfect, but I'm thinking they're very capable of doing a lot of stuff if they put their mind to it. Nothing should be considered out of bounds and impossible for Apple to do, especially since it's adapting their own existing products. Anyway, so I think that Microsoft's challenge was always that, I mean, it's an echo of the Steve Ballmer era challenge in general, which is Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows. And so they did that Metro interface that they unveiled way back when was like a really awesome touch prominent interface. And I remember I was there when they unveiled it at the D conference and I was like, Oh, wow, Microsoft is really coming hard for the iPad. And the end result was that they, they started walking it back almost immediately

in the demo, literally, literally, they're like, let's flip over to office, which is just in a standard Windows interface. And I'm like, Oh, guys, what did you do? And they spent the next few years walking it all the way back, because Windows was too important. And so that's my take on Surface is that it isn't, you can give them credit, like you can give Bill Gates credit for saying, let's put computers inside phones, but it's not quite right. And the iPad had the advantage of coming out of iOS

and being just a pure touch interface that didn't have to serve the Mac OS audience at that point. I will say to Ramon's point, like, I think it does make sense. Like, if we're going to have that conversation we had last week, I actually do wish I would have mentioned Surface at some point of like, here is how well they're doing. It kind of doesn't matter for me it's like this is this is more what the type of area i want apple to push towards sure i i did mention pcs that have been experimenting with different you know use cases and design styles for the last decade plus so that was my that was my nod because it's not just Surface, right? It's not just Surface.

There are a lot of PC companies that make convertibles in all sorts of super weird ways. And so Surface is an example of a convertible. And yeah, it's the platform owner. So it's important, but we can cite them. But there are lots of PC makers

who've made super weird, mostly not quite right, but interesting convertible devices that run Windows. On the same topic, the iPad topic, Mathouse wrote in with something a couple of people wrote in with this. I saw some comments like this on Mastodon as well. It says, I think you're stuck with the idea that Pro in iPad Pro means more akin to MacBook Pro. For many artists, the iPad Pro is a critical tool for their work. Other auxiliary features like file management are just that. They're to enable the artistic workflow of moving with images. So my initial read on this is like, I make the same criticism here when apple seems to suggest that the most important

pro customers for the mac are video producers right like that oh here's the macbook pro and it does this for video and this for video and for final cut for video like it annoys me like similarly when apple does a lot of marketing around the ip Pro as like for artists, like for illustrators. Like I think tailoring your Pro product to just one customer segment, either in features or marketing, doesn't really make it a Pro product. Like it would make it instead of iPad Pro,

like iPad art or MacBook video, right? Like just because there is a type of Pro that uses it, that's fantastic. But the point that we're making is the same that we make for the macbook pro of like this needs to serve developers as well as it serves video producers as well as it serves writers artists and on and on and on yeah it is i think that that part of the challenge is apple doesn't want to segment, and this is what you just said, doesn't want to segment a product so that it serves a tiny market, right? It is meant to be more broad than that. Also, I disagree with the idea that we're stuck with the idea that Pro means MacBook Pro, especially since I kept referring to the iPad Pro as having the same hardware as the MacBook Air. By the way, you can do professional work on the MacBook Air. My point was more, what is Apple spending time on? Because if Apple wanted to spend time on features for artists, like offering a Mac,

the advantage of the iPad Pro is that it's got the higher refresh rate and the nicer screen. And so it's going to be nicer for artists than the iPad Air. But I feel like there are a lot of advanced iPad features that, again, are trying to get toward the Mac, but not quite getting there. And like, are artists really served by stage manager and external display support? Like, I feel like if you were arguing for artists, you could say, what if they made a better iPad Air that had a nicer screen with a faster refresh rate for the Apple Pencil and for the screen itself. And that is an interesting product. I would also say there's a little bit of a taste here of, but I like it. It's like, well, great. That's great. I'm not trying to think of me personally

and saying, why don't they make the perfect product for me? I'm really not. But I am using my experiences to say, I'm wondering if their strategy here has led them to a place that, again, yes, people use the iPad Pro and like it, but was this the right progression? I'm also not saying maybe, when I say that maybe the iPad Pro was a mistake, I'm not saying maybe serving artists with a nice tablet was a mistake. It's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I wonder if Apple's original plan was that the iPad was the future of computing and the iPad Pro as a name was the vehicle for that. And then very rapidly, they realized that the Mac was going to be great and on Apple Silicon

and it was going to go on forever and that the iPad, well, what is it now? And I think the iPad Pro suffers from Apple not really quite knowing what the end point of the ipad pro is but um i'm not saying that the ipad i got i got a lot of feedback from people who seem to have not heard us or read like they read federico's summary on mastodon of what we said and didn't listen to what that was the issue we got like a lot of tweets because federico replies posts wave you call them because federico said something honestly those people even know upgrade existed so like yeah so so that's that's my overall comment is i think we were pretty clear last week about the fact that we're not saying that the ipad is bad i love my ipad i'll say it again i love my ipad pro and i use it

every day and i do use it to get actual work done. We're trying to think about the bigger picture here about sort of like this feeling that the iPad at the high end. And again, there's literally in that Macworld column, because I also got feedback from people who didn't read the Macworld column, but were tweeting about it or posting a Mastodon about it. In the Macworld column, I specifically say like, even if Apple were to try a merger of some kind where there's a device that is Mac-like and iPad-like at once, I don't envision the Mac going away or the iPad Pro, right? It's people using the iPad and the iPad Air. And that I don't think is going to change because that, in fact, my argument is sort of, if the iPad isn't ever going to be the future of computing, maybe Apple should focus more on making the iPad Air awesome as a just-a-touch tablet with, yeah, you can attach a keyboard to it, but it's not the future of computing. The stakes are a lot lower rather than continuing to sort of like build these big software projects that are making

sort of Mac-like features. Like I love the idea that the iPad drives the external display now with Stage Manager, but like who's using that? What tiny percentage of the iPad user base is using that proper external display support for multiple windows with a keyboard and a mouse. Not just like attaching it to a projector, but like the real stage manager thing. And that's an example. Or putting more into files, which is not the Finder, but it is something. Like, is it worth doing more investment in that? That's sort of my big picture thing. But yes, I think a lot of people didn't listen. And I'm not saying that Matthaus is one of them, but I'm saying we got a lot of feedback that was like, but what about the iPad? Why do you hate the iPad? And it's like,

we didn't say any of that. But I did hear from people who basically said, I love the iPad Pro, and I'm glad they have these features, but I don't want it to be a Mac. And it's like, they have these features but i don't want it to be a mac and it's like uh and i appreciate that i appreciate that again i'm not i don't think i agree but i don't strongly disagree i think i'm more trying to ponder the lost it's almost like the opportunity cost of if you would if apple had had known at the moment that it started work on the ip Pro that the Mac was not going to be a legacy platform that faded into obscurity, but was going to go to Apple Silicon and was going to be very popular.

And I have heard more that, because again, I said last week, we didn't actually know that. It's just a feeling. I have heard more hazy, vague suggestions that that is true, that they really did not think about the Mac as anything more than a legacy product. And then there was a shift. So the opportunity cost of the iPad being put up as being the future and that the iPad Pro being this vehicle that they would invest a lot of effort in

on the hardware side, but especially on the software side to sort of make it more Mac-like. If they had known at that moment that that wasn't the case and that the company was never again going to be behind that as an idea, right? That I think they would have made different decisions. And I think that a lot of the people who have been working on the iPad the last few years to keep pushing it upward and upward are doing it for an organization as a whole that doesn't share that enthusiasm

that the people working on the product do about this product. Because I do think there's a disconnect, right? I think people working on the iPad Pro are really excited about the features that they're working on for product do about this product because i do think there's a disconnect right i think people working on the ipad pro are really excited about the features that they're working on for the ipad pro but i feel like culturally the company kind of moved on from that and is really excited as they should be about max running apple silicon instead so i don't know it's complicated and a lot of that new way nuance vanishes on social media so be it a couple of other items to follow up before we move on as comes from ken who says regarding the braided

solo loop stretching out over time it does shrink like other fabric you can wash it and then while wet it dry it for a few minutes with some heat uh ken says i used a hair dryer for five minutes and that was enough to shrink it down so it fit more snug again. I'm concerned that the elastic is actually stretched, and I've tried this before and didn't seem to have much, but I didn't put the rapid heat drying step on there because there's always the fear that you're going to ruin it. But at this point, my beloved orange Solo Loop is too loose for me. And I wore it on my whole trip to New Zealand. And it was just the whole time I was like, it's a little too loose now. And also, they do as, I think I was listening to a podcast.

I can't remember. Was it connected? They pick up dirt. Light bands pick up dirt. And so that orange band looks kind of dusky and dim right now. So it needs a proper wash. So I think I'm going to follow Ken's advice

and give it a proper wash. And then I'm going to give it a proper heat dry and see if that will contract the fibers, the cotton fibers at least, and pull it together so that its base is a little bit tighter so that maybe it'll be not as loose on my wrist. We'll see. I'm going to give it a go because honestly, at this point, if I ruin it, so be it. It's not really wearable. It's at the very extreme edge of being wearable because it's so loose uh and also uh apple is adding local

announcer support for the next uh season of friday night baseball um and it is no longer available for free if you want to watch the friday night baseball games you now need an apple tv plus subscription right we knew this was coming i'm actually surprised they went through the whole year for free last year but now first one's free, I guess, season. So TV Plus subscribers will get access to Friday Night Baseball. And I should mention Friday Night Baseball, again, it's not going to be on local TV. It's a national and international exclusive for Apple, which means it won't be like the cases where, oh, one of my local teams games is on ESPN, but it's also on my local channel. It's going to be Apple only, just as it was last year. However, what they're doing, which I think is great, and it shows that they listen to the fan criticism of their program,

is they're going to do the game with their national announcers. It's people, basically, it's MLB network announcers who are going to do the commentary. A lot of people, that makes them sad because they love the voices of their local team. Apple is going to provide, as they're doing for home teams on MLS, they're going to provide for home and away teams radio audio. So your home radio broadcast of the baseball game will be optional instead of the announcers that Apple is providing. So if I want to watch a Giants game on Friday Night Baseball and I don't want to hear their announcers, I can flip it over and I'm going to get the Giants radio broadcast with Apple's beautiful picture. So that's an option.

I love that they added that. There's a weird restriction, uh, Texas Rangers games. It'll only be home games. I don't know why. I don't know why. It's very weird.

And if you're in Canada, uh, cause this is us and Canada only, I should say, but if you're in Canada, uh, you only get the blue Jays radio audio. The other radio is,

is not available to you. So if you want to watch a game featuring the Giants and you listen to the Giants broadcasters and you're in Canada, you're out of luck. And the rest of the world doesn't get this feature. Me in the UK, I can't choose to listen to. You don't get this feature. It seems to be a licensing thing where they have the they basically have the ability to they've licensed this to Apple. Maybe Major League Baseball actually stepped up and said, we'll give you access to this, but only in the U.S. And only the Blue Jays in Canada.

And not the Rangers away games. I don't know what that's about at all. But something happened because they're able to do that. But it's a U.S. only essentially feature. But I think for me, the interesting observation part of that is what you just said. Because one of the things we've spoken about is like Apple maybe shies away from sports stuff because it gets complicated rights wise right like if like with the mls stuff and with the friday night baseball it's like they can get it and show it worldwide um and so we wondered like you know i saw a rumor that

apparently they're going after someone saying they're going after the rights for the english premier league and someone said that and i wasn't sure if that would be possible again because like they're only going to get it in certain markets but while this isn't that this is an example of like apple's willing to do something which has very weird restrictions from a rights perspective and so maybe this is them dipping their toe in that water which if they want to keep moving into sports they're not going to keep getting deals like the major league soccer deal like they are going to worldwide all rights yeah they're going to get with because that's really the only one that exists right and that's right so the rumor about nfl sunday ticket which ended up going to youtube tv was that apple

wanted to do like stuff and uh that that the nfl was not interested in doing. Here, I can't decide whether this was an expediency thing of like, well, the rights are complicated, but we can get the US to work for you, like Major League Baseball would say to Apple. And Apple's like, okay, let's try it. And it might even be, let's try it. And if there's a lot of uptake, then maybe we'll talk about doing this worldwide. But let's just carve out the rights. Let's write the check or make the amendment for the US for this season, and we'll see how it goes. Something like that. There was another story this week that I want to at least mention in passing, which is related to sports rights, which is that Apple and Amazon are both rumored to be talking to the Pac-12 conference about their TV package. They're the

last college football conference right now to have an open contract for the rest of the decade. And so they're talking to ESPN and apparently Fox and Apple and Amazon. And there's a story there about how Apple and Amazon are negotiating, but I forget what the actual quote is. It's something like, yeah, here it is. The discussion about how each week's Pac-12 football games are drafted by the media partners, typically, which is like who gets what games for a given week and in what time slots,

typically only takes about an hour with traditional partners like ESPN and Fox. The same conversation apparently took a week with the streamers, Apple and Amazon. They went back to their lawyers, returned with questions, went back to the lawyers, returned with questions. You get the idea. That's a report from johncasano.com.

Also, there's a story that we didn't get to that was originally in our notes here, which is about Apple doing theatrical releases of movies and needing a distributor. I got it later on. So rumor roundup. We're going to get to it in rumor roundup. And it's the same story again so we'll get there but like this is the this is the challenge with apple and amazon is they're like um weird right like i mean that's the bottom line is these entertainment companies are like what are you talking about and but the tech companies have their own take on it so i'll save

i'll save those details for a rumor around it but i pulled up since we're talking about sports rights i'll just mention here like this is a an ongoing interesting thing where the leagues the entertainment partners are all talking to these tech companies like apple and the and and like they don't they don't speak the same language quite so in in Apple's case here, it is fascinating, like you said, that this is a US and Canada-ish only feature, which I'd say is counter to what Apple wants to do. But obviously they felt, well, this is our most important market. Let's just do it because they want to try it out. And it's been a big source of criticism. And now they can blunt that criticism. I also wonder long-term based on viewing stats, if they might consider doing

other languages for their broadcast, right? Like if it's very popular in Japan or in Korea, would they consider having a Japanese or Korean broadcast team or just audio overlay of those games? I don't know. I don't know how popular it is because it's what saturday morning baseball there but uh i don't know let's kind of see how things go as different markets get more popular or not see how they yeah we'll see how it's like with sports in general we'll see how the season goes this episode is brought to you by ZocDoc. When someone is super good at what they do,

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As was rumored. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. Yee-haw. There. As was rumored earlier on in today's episode. We'll start with this one now because I know you were ready to jump the gun on it. I was jumping in there. We're just rolling right in from the last segment at this point.

Perfect. Beautiful. I love it. Thomas Buckley and Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg are reporting that Apple is planning to spend a billion dollars a year to produce movies, and they are planning on putting them in theaters. This includes some of the high-profile movies already in production. They're going to put those into theaters. They already promised the director.

In some cases, like with the Martin Scorsese movie, they closed the deal by promising to put them in theaters. Netflix is like, we're not going to do it. We're just not going to do it. And Apple's like, we'll do it. If that closes the deal, we'll do it. We'll figure it out. And that one was with Paramount, and Paramount's going to handle the distribution for that one, which is good because, as Buckley and Shaw point out in their Bloomberg article, Apple has no idea how to do this. They don't do this. So one of the reasons that they found this information out is they are going out to companies, distribution companies, and being like,

can you help us do this? Because it's complicated to put movies into thousands of theaters, which is apparently what they're doing. A quote says, the company has pledged to put movies in thousands of theaters for at least a month, though it hasn't finalized any plans. So kind of assuming here, Oscars, right? They got to do it for the Oscars anyway, so why not do it and make a bit of money?

Apparently as well, the focus here will also to kind of use this as a marketing tool for tv plus yeah absolutely because you do so the beauty of it is and this is lucas shaw sort of made these points in his excellent media column at bloomberg um is economical because you market the movie in theaters and then you put it on streaming and so awareness is already there people have heard about it people know about the movie now julia alexander and I have talked about this cycle on downstream a little bit. The idea create a lot of awareness when that thing is going into theaters, not just to drive people into theaters, but to also make it so that when

it comes on your platform, they're like, oh yeah, I meant to see that movie or that movie looked interesting. And that has great value because you know this, Mike, right? Like there are movies that happen and you're like, what? That was a movie that happened and they're completely under your radar. If you're not looking at the Netflix app at the right time on the right day, that movie has disappeared. Or you're like, that movie went to prime. I have that. And I didn't even know that movie was there. That happens to me all the time now. There was an Oscar nomination for a movie on Apple TV Plus that I had literally never heard of. It had been sitting on my Apple

TV all that time. I could have watched it, but I didn't even know it existed. So, one way you can change that for your Martin Scorsese movie or whatever is by releasing it in theaters and doing a marketing campaign for the theatrical release.

So there's lots of like it's a it's a good move not just for theatrical to do the uh marketing for the theatrical release and then the thing we talk about a lot is which is very important and it is that idea of like who does apple want to be makes the creators feel good you made a movie put it in cinemas got big posters uh do the whole premiere the whole nine yards and some of that stuff is done just so the people that made the thing feel good about the thing that they made which is very valid um but it helps and if apple want to continue to pull in people like martin scorsese uh that this is a way to do that. Like, oh no, don't go with such and such. We're going to put your movie in theaters.

And no, we're not just going to do the two weeks that we need for the Oscars. We're going to do it for a whole month. A whole month. Six weeks, whatever it is. Yeah, and they're closing deals. They've definitely closed deals because of this at some point but there is also

a strategy in general that and again we've talked about it a bit on downstream and we'll be talking about it more over there too but like it's this idea that theatrical like what what lucas shaw says is perhaps the biggest change in thinking over the last six months is what kind of movies can work theatrical before the pandemic studios were struggling to get people to show up for anything but superheroes coming out of the pandemic people started to worry about animation but the solid performance of films like elvis cocaine bear and the woman king has changed people's minds there is a feeling like theatrical to, it's not just for superhero movies. There are other movies that can do well there. So that's part of the strategy with this, because

the fact is every dollar you spend on that movie and marketing that movie, like you got to get it back, not just in the value to your streaming service, but it's also like, if you can get money on theatrical again, you've, you've made that movie more successful by having it have the theatrical release where there's box office and if you get a hit you got really good box office results that's good for for you um it is funny and now to get me back to what i was saying before about dealing with streamers is weird what lucas shaw reported. I thought this was a really nice way to report it, which is that the Apple is shopping

some of its projects on a one-off basis, but it is looking for one of these studios to distribute, to step up and be its distribution partner for a slate

for all of Apple's movies. It doesn't have any deals yet. And here's the key line. Executives at some studios have expressed reservations about Apple's approach, which I feel like, again, that is tech giants are weird to entertainment giants. And entertainment giants are weird to tech giants. Their priorities are so different. They come from different places.

And as we talked about a lot, Netflix is Netflix. They have to make money as Netflix. That's their business. Apple sells iPhones. And then they also have their entertainment business. So Apple's priorities are not the priorities of most of the partners for the entertainment industry. And so it's weird, right? It's weird, but it is interesting that Apple has gone. They haven't made the deal yet, but they have shifted gears from one-offs because we got to make Martin Scorsese happy for a theatrical release to just saying we're shopping for a distribution partner. theatrical release to just saying we're shopping for a distribution partner.

That suggests to me that in the future, many, if not all, Apple movie releases will actually get a theatrical opening before they go on Apple TV Plus. I mean, I wouldn't trust that idea anyway. It's like when they started TV Plus, they were working with production companies and then they're like, oh, we'll just set up our own production company. Honestly, if they think this is something for them in the long run, I could imagine them just hiring some people to do it. I don't think Apple wants to get into theatrical distribution as a business. This feels to me like the kind of business,

this is like some of its other suppliers where they're like, well, they're just going to work with Corning. They're not going to make their own glass. They're going to work with Corning. They're not going to make their own glass. They're going to work with Corning. This feels like a very specific thing where there's pre-existing deals with theater chains from these distributors. And it's like, they don't want this business, I think.

I mean, if they found, ultimately, if they felt like this was core to their business, I think they would do that. But this feels like kind of ancillary, part of a larger strategy. So they'll probably just make a deal at some point, although it's fascinating that everybody is, I think they would do that, but this feels like kind of ancillary part of a larger strategy. So they'll probably just make a deal at some point, although it's fascinating that everybody is speaking a different language now. So it's unclear, but it will be interesting to see.

This is the real big shift that's happened. Once that quarter happened where Netflix lost money and subscribers and everybody panicked and it became the sort of like the end of the just spend as much money as you want for streaming uh world and we ended up in sort of a new act this is this is very much a piece of that which is oh we're not going to just do streaming we will do theatrical because it brings in some money and at this point a little more money coming in for all of these projects helps it helps the business make sense And although Apple could just keep spending money and losing money on all of its deals, I think it's better for Apple if it loses less money on those deals by having some theatrical revenue. So yeah, don't be surprised when you start seeing ads for movies from Apple in theaters now.

That's going to be weird, but i think it's going to happen shifting gears but still in roundup mark german at bloomberg is reporting that apple demoed their headset to the top 100 highest ranking executives i think they call this the top 100 in the company last week at the steve jobs theater quote i'm to read a few quotes, actually, and we'll talk about it. The demonstrations were polished, glitzy and exciting, but many executives are clear-eyed about Apple's challenges pushing into this new market.

The device will start at around $3,000, lack a killer app, require an external battery that will be needed to replace every couple of hours, and use the design that some testers have deemed uncomfortable. It's also likely to launch a limited media content.

It could follow a similar trajectory as the Apple Watch. There will be little to no profit at first, given that the components in the device are so expensive and Apple won't be seeking its typical margins just yet. So a few things on this. There's a lot of stuff we know here, right? We feel like we've heard before. From Mark Gurman and from the Financial Times, both, yeah. But just seeing it again

kind of stated in this way starts to make it feel more like it's truth rather than, you know, like that it's been heard enough. But, you know, the key part of this report is when it gets shown in this way, it's super close. They've shown

other stuff related to this this but they haven't they haven't done it at this level this is the level where it's like it's gonna it's gonna ship right this is the level where it's it's very very very close instead of it like little being little parts it's like literally we're gonna do this i did laugh at the detail that this is the top 100, and they usually go to a fancy place. And I think they did. I think they went to like Carmel or something, according to Mark Gurman, after this. I think it's literally, well, we're not going to demo our unannounced product off campus. So everybody pack your bags, hand them off, we'll load them on the bus and then go to the Steve Jobs Theater and we're going to show you the thing and then get on the bus and we'll go to Carmel. But like they're not going to take the headset to a resort outside of Apple and show it, right?

Like that's – they're not going to be that – I mean, again, not open, but like they're, they're secret enough that this thing is, you know, not part of the event. That's the offsite. It's like before the offsite or after, uh, because they're not going to let it leave campus. I just found,

found that amusing. Um, while we're talking about, because Mark Gurman has been reporting about this a long time. And so this served as a summary of what the deal is with this. I want to mention that, uh, Quinn Nelson's,

uh, Stancie labs Labs YouTube channel had an excellent summary of all reports about what's in this product and what it means. I thought he did a great job of doing the work of finding out all, you know, he basically got all the details of everything that's ever been reported about this thing

and then tried to put it together in a way where it's like why is this relevant with some details about like the optics and stuff it's a really good video i i recommend it highly really good summary of it we'll call it i think so on the same vein trip mickle and brian here we go stop it trip mick i knew it. I just, Trip Mickle and Brian Exchamp. Did Trip Mickle use his disgruntled Apple design sources to set up a narrative? New York Times are reporting that some employees are skeptical

or flat out against Apple releasing the headset. They have said that it's seen some employees depart the teams that they've been on because they're upset about it. And Trip Mickickle not the only person to report like this we've had lots of reports like this i think on last week's episode we had a similar one yeah i i think i mean i said at the time and now i'll say it again here i think trip mickle was a little mad that the financial times got his disgruntled design sources from his book uh on the record at the ft before he could get it in the New York Times.

So here they are. They're here now. A few quotes from this New York Times article. Apple is focused on making Excel for video conferencing and spending time with others as avatars in a virtual world. The company has called the device's signature application co-presence, co-presence, co-presence co-presence a word designed resents cop resistance a word designed to capture the experience of sharing a real a virtual space with someone

in another place this makes a lot of sense to me as a thing this is that will create a virtual person but only one we only have power for one. And you'll be in the space with them. Me and you in a co-present world together. Oh, man. Summer of fun. Summer of fun. The device will double as a tool for artists, designers, and engineers,

tracking them as they draw freely in space in image editing applications and tracking hand gestures for the editing of virtual reality films. Lastly, it will function as a high-resolution TV with custom-made video content from Hollywood filmmakers such as Jon Favreau. Okay. Interesting to get a name, right? Yes. Yes, a name. Maybe that came up in the top 100 or something.

I don't know. That is fascinating. Such as Jon Favreau. And others, you know. Maybe that came up in the top 100 or something. I don't know. It was fascinating. Such as Jon Favreau. And others, you know. Jon Favreau. Uh-huh. The headset looks like ski goggles. It features a carbon fiber frame,

a hip pack with battery support, outward cameras to capture the real world, and two 4K displays that can render everything from applications to movies. Users can turn a, quote quote reality dial on the device to increase or decrease real-time video from the world around them i like the way this is described in this piece like again there's some details here but like this to me the way it's described sounds like it came from a demo right more than this person said to me you know like just carbon fiber i haven't heard him say carbon fiber before i haven't read that

anywhere i think that might have been somewhere right in the big pool of stuff i think it might have been somewhere but this is you know like reality dial like the way this is described it's just different right it's no i think you hit on it there which is what's described here feels very much like what has been described by others especially mark german but other people but the way it's described suggests that it's coming from potentially like yeah like you said like a demo or something where we're getting closer to the actual verbiage that will be used by apple to demonstrate this to the public that they've reached that point where it's not i've seen a spec or i saw a a test

unit and here's what it kind of looks like to being no no here's what they said they said that we're turning the reality dial and it's got a carbon fiber frame and a hip pack instead of saying oh there's a battery thing that you stick in a pocket like instead it's like no hip pack interesting quote because the headset won't fit over glasses the company has plans to sell prescription lenses for the displays to people who don't wear contacts now i really wonder about that because what does that mean is that like the ski goggle thing it's gonna make a seal over my eyes like i don't i mean it might in order to completely isolate you so i have the prescription pop-on things for the meta quest too yeah and it's great because i don't have

to wear my glasses when i use it and the glasses were kind of weird and uncomfortable in the inside the thing so i think the question is like you could do this like you could do apple watch um apple watch band sizes honestly like they could because it's not like you get the complex prescription from your doctor necessarily. You can do this as a plus or minus whatever fairly simple correction that doesn't require a full-on glasses prescription. Then again, I think it was like $100 to get those for the Quest 2. So I don't know exactly how they're going to approach this. but it is going to be a problem for people who wear glasses. If you have to either get a prescription from an eye doctor or do the, like I bought a pair of swimming goggles, right? And I didn't use a, they're not custom prescription goggles.

I just did an, I ordered the ones with a certain adjustment and it allows me to see if not perfectly like well enough and that may be what they do here my only thing for this is just gonna make the purchasing process really annoying like that's how i see it right like for me it's just potentially gotta go through this whole song and dance potentially we'll say i mean my prescription is not super strong i reckon i reckon I could get away with it and then maybe get some lenses down the line if it was a problem. But as you say, there are,

depending on your prescription, there are things that they can do in software for making the image look clearer to you. But we'll say. Yeah, I mean, I think this is an interesting report. There is definitely a lot. I heard from a couple of friends this morning who are like hmm seems like there's a lot of narrative building on here i think there is i think people are like i said i i am this this story has some

narrative building in it that feels very much like the ft story financial time story last week which is from people who worked on it and left or from people who have left the company in general like the designers who said please don't make this product just wait for the glasses which is from people who worked on it and left or from people who have left the company in general, like the designers who said, please don't make this product. Just wait for the glasses, which again, I feel like is an absurd kind of demand. And so, but like, you can't deny it. Like, it seems like some people at Apple or who were at Apple are looking at this product like, well, you know, what the heck is this thing? Why are we shipping it? And I have two thoughts about that. One is

you're doing it because the higher ups, and I'll refer you to my previous comments about this, because the higher ups look at this and say, we need to be in this space because if anything is going to replace the iPhone, it's something that's going to be downwind of this by 10 or 15 years. And we got the money, so let's invest now because it may fail. But if this category succeeds, we got to be the ones who succeed at it because it's going to replace the iPhone. And if we don't do this, it'll be too late for our most important part of our business. And it might replace the Mac and the iPad and everything else too. So it's too big a risk. So we got to spend the money. So that's number one. Like I could see how if you're working on it and you're frustrated and it seems like

it's not going to change the world today that you would have negative thoughts about it. The second thought I have about it is how did people feel about all the other products Apple has shipped that were in new categories? I would bet that, and I know there's a lot of revisionism going on here, I would bet that a lot of people were super skeptical of the Apple Watch and didn't think it was ready to ship and thought it was a mistake and why are we doing this? Trip Mickle's book says so. And yet now everybody's like, oh, that was a great success. Well, it's like, yeah, in hindsight it was. a great success. Well, it's like, yeah, in hindsight, it was. What I don't know is like,

were people really unhappy about the iMac and thought this is ridiculous and a piece of junk? And why are we shipping this or the iPad? Probably not the iPhone, but like, that's the other part of this is I don't know whether this is evidence of anything. Maybe this is the most controversial product that Apple has ever made internally. And that people are so unhappy with the fact that the, that for reasons, the executives are like, no, we're building it. Maybe that's the case. Maybe it's not.

I honestly don't know. But I do not doubt the reporting here that there are people who are very grumpy and skeptical about this product and this direction that the company is taking. What I think is really interesting, Mike,

and this goes to our classic consider the source thing, which is, have you noticed in the last few weeks the downplaying that is happening about the success of this product? I think that's interesting. That it's like, oh, it's going to be very expensive and they're not going to sell very many of them. And it's really just going to be for high end uses. end uses. And even though there's these portrayals of sort of controversy about it, I've started to sense a trend in pieces that are downplaying its immediate success. It'll be like the Apple Watch and follow a similar trajectory. It's not even going to make money at first. Give it time. It's

a long range kind of thing. And I'm not saying that somebody at Apple is responsible for seeding that kind of attitude in these stories. But again, if it's not, it's doing Apple's job for it. Because I'd want to do that if I was at Apple PR. I would want to diminish expectations for this product. And it feels like that's happening. product and it feels like that's happening even in this new york times story that has got some grumpy stuff in it there's also a lot of kind of like expectation setting for the product well i agree with you i think these are like separate things that are happening like people are complaining yeah and then apple is also at the same time pushing out this narrative to people

because it is starting to become like not even so much like oh it just feels like this is fact now and there is i can imagine this possibility of uh some under promising going on here and i'm not even saying they're going to over deliver there's like under promising deliver right like but i think that that is perfectly acceptable for this product and goes back to things we've been saying for months now of like just be honest about it like that this is the first one there's going to be more but you've got to start like that and that is a perfectly valid route for this product rather than trying to say we're changing the world here now it's like no literally it takes I mean do they have do they

have the guts to put up a picture of steve jobs and say real artists ship i i think it is actually relevant to this because at some point you do have to ship a product you have to get on the treadmill you have to start your path forward you just have to you you can't you can't advance let's wait five years and build this in secret. Like you can't do that. You're not going to get the feedback. It's not real until you ship it, until it meets the world. And then you discover everything that's wrong with it. I was struck by the line in Mark Gurman's piece, that is, it lacks a clear killer app. It's like, well, I mean, first off, the New York Times story talks about this co-presence thing, which obviously some people at Apple think might be something.

We also know that some people at Apple thought that the killer app for the Apple Watch was Digital Touch. Okay. But again, one of the reasons you launch the platform is to find the killer app. And the killer app is not usually baked in the product. And the killer app is not usually baked in the product. The killer app usually happens out in the world where people look at the tech that's inside the Apple headset or anything else and go, oh, you know what we could do? And then they build it and it's something that's unanticipated or it hits just right in a way that the other things that tried to do it just didn't. And you create a killer app.

The killer apps don't always happen. And the platform owner can have a lot of input into sort of like whether they work or not. But like the Apple II, forgive me if I'm getting my history a little bit wrong here, but like, it's not like the Apple II shipped because they knew that VisiCalc was coming out, right? The first spreadsheet app. That's not how it works. You ship the platform and then somebody invents the killer app for it. And then everybody goes, oh my God, I can't believe. And then it seems obvious, and then it all gets kind of retroactively defined as being this genius thing. There wasn't a killer app for the iPhone. It was just like the whole thing was exciting.

I was thinking about this today. I was thinking, what's the killer app for the iPhone? And I could argue that the killer app, I mean, I could make an argument that the killer app for the iPhone is Safari, that like literally you could go anywhere. Yeah, but nobody thought that was exciting at the time. I know. I know. And the truth is the killer app was the App Store, which allowed all the killer apps. Right. Which didn't come for, you know, like there wasn't one. It was just like,

this entire product is fascinating and it does everything a little bit better than how you're currently doing it. It didn't have the one thing when it was announced that pushed it over the edge. You're right. And then 18 months later or so, they announced the App Store, which changed the game

and that did open the door and did lead to more, but it wasn't there at launch. And you could argue came about in part because they shipped the first one and with their sweet solution for development which was web apps and the world said no yeah it's like there wasn't even a killer app it was right software the killer app store right and then everybody had their own killer app like that's actually how you do it exactly exactly but it was not there at launch so i'm not saying again the lack of a killer app is not proof that there will be a killer app that's i mean that's madness that's not true but the lack of a killer app is also not proof that there won't be

right we don't know killer app that's what we're yeah there's a box and there might be a killer app in it or not we don't know and uh you know that's that's yet to be but again until you ship you can't open the box until you ship that's the thing ultimately about all these arguments about this product is like again one i absolutely agree that i think that this is being pushed at the highest levels because of the big terms the big picture strategy of the future which is hard if you're working on the product and you feel like it's not as good as it should be totally see that conflict there right but like two i really believe that some of these comments about like oh i don't know if we should ship this it's like it it just it that especially the ft story last week it just reminds me of how invaluable it is to ship a product like shipping

a product there is only so much you can ever do to a product behind the scenes you have to ship it it's like in in my business of writing articles on the internet it's the equivalent of you you post the article and the moment you post it you see three things that are wrong with it and you have to edit it like there is something about being out in the world that makes things different it's because anybody can see it and they can pick it apart and they will do things with it that you're not used to. And that's actually kind of magical. And that's the number one reason I'm interested in this product is I want to know what it is, but I mean, I'm sorry to bring up the cliche that Apple likes to say, but you know,

there's something to it, which is we can't wait to see what you do with it. That encapsulates it. Like in the end, Apple can do what it can do. But in the end, you got to release it and wait to see what somebody does with it. That's the important part. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Setapp. Of all of the tools that are available to us these days, looking for something new to improve the way that we work can feel like drowning in an ocean of apps and services. There are so many available and not all of them are worth your time and money.

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Thanks to Setapp for their support of this show and RelayFM. Now thanks to Setapp for their support of this show and RelayFM. So Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter, has suggested that iOS 17 will feature several, quote, nice-to-have features that are intended to address some commonly made user requests. You know, they're going to make people happy. Now this is very different to what we had previously been led to believe,

that iOS 17 would just be a bunch of bug fixes because of everybody focusing on the headset. So I thought that maybe today we could talk about what would be a bunch of nice-to-have features for iOS 7. Love it. I got in there at the end.

I forgot the team. iOS 7 uh nice to have feature would be a readable font that would be a good good feature for ios team i was 17 yeah what jumps to mind for you what would you be happy to see added to ios 17 uh home automation but i i feel like that's also right like tv os but um i i am i mean we could talk about shortcuts in general right i feel like more shortcut support in apps uh more capability for shortcuts to do other things they've been so far behind there in fact uh this would be a probably a good time to mention a Hay, the creator of toolbox pro and a bunch of other stuff passed away last week. Um, they,

they did a nice writeup about it on Mac stories. John Voorhees did, um, obviously to everybody who was touched by, uh, Alex in his life and his family and all of that, uh, our greatest condolences.

But I was struck when I read about Alex's passing at how he was doing so much heavy lifting for Apple because like Toolbox Pro, Toolbox Pro is a great example of all of the shortcut actions that Apple just hasn't done. That are, they're right there and that Apple hasn't done that are, they're right there and that Apple hasn't done them. So it struck me this morning thinking about that, that that would be a, that would be a thing that I would like to see Apple do in shortcuts is look

at all the stuff built for things like toolbox pro and do them in the operating system. Cause the problem with an app like Toolbox Pro is you have to have it installed to use it. So handing it out to your friends, a shortcut that relies on Toolbox Pro is harder because they have to get Toolbox Pro and all of that. So I'm struck by that.

And then more broadly than sort of like better integration with shortcuts and on the iPad, which is not, you know, I've had iOS pretty much the same. Keyboard support for shortcuts is a good example, but like more actions. And then the home automation side, which you can get to in the home app,

which is like shortcuts, but pretty weak at what it's capable of doing and has been weak for a long time since they introduced it. I would really like to see a more sophisticated set of home automations that can run on tvOS or wherever the home hub is to do more sophisticated things because it's pretty dumb right now. Even though you can do, yeah, you can build like home automation shortcuts, but they're kind of dumb. They just don't, I need more, I need more conditionals. I need more, you know, if it's within this range and this sensor is above this,

then do that kind of thing. And you just can't get to that level of specificity. So that would be one of mine. I will mention here, as I've mentioned forever, I love tap backs on imessage use them all day every day i wished i could just have all of emoji available to me same with slack discord whatsapp um it's fine that there's a few that are preset there but just let me add emoji to messages uh rather than just those preset five things you know i would love would love that. Yeah. Oh boy. That's one of my favorites. And I know, I know why you might want to keep it constrained, um, to the five or whatever, but I just, I want more of a lexicon and the emoji set is right there. And I get that you might want to have them be, first off, people are comfortable with emojis. People are comfortable

sending emojis. So having emojis is tap backs and let it be settable or let it be that it's those five. And then you, you know, they're, they're the five most recent ones you've used maybe, but then you can add others or, um, you know, have a, have a, a more button that lets you pick from the emoji picker. And then that one gets put in your most recents because, slack and discord have shown us that emoji responses are a lot of fun and i love tap backs and i wish i had more expressivity with them and that feels to me like you talk about like a commonly requested feature that's got to be one of them like people must be looking for that unless there's some very complex way that tap backs are handled within the iMessage system you would think that this would be a thing that they could not not that

there aren't challenges to the interface i just described one of them but like you would think that would be a a pretty if not easy a fairly doable thing that would be a win and would be a crowd pleaser because people love emojis i will say as well as a similar while we're at that they're going to change that i do not need a full i message notification for tap backs i don't need it uh yeah i'd love to be able to turn that off yeah yeah jason said ha ha like i don't need that okay no i don't ha ha ha ha you always say ha space ha ha ha ha i've said this before but i'll say it again. That's how Jason... Jason doesn't say LOL or anything like that. If Jason thinks something's funny, HA space, HA.

Very unsettling. Sometimes there's three HAs. It's very unsettling. I don't know. HA, HA comes across to me as ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And that's... I find that unsettling in my head.

Yeah, but nobody goes ha, ha, ha. Like, that's not... Ha, ha, ha. There it is. Yeah, but I feel's there's no space there ha ha see it's upsetting uh widgets widgets everywhere we want more widgets on the lock screen different sizes big ones small ones uh we want maybe we want some level of interactivity i think the jury's still out i don't want it i don't particularly feel like i need it but maybe the occasional thing might be helpful yeah loads more widget stuff that would be good for everywhere that there's widgets yeah i want um i want more widget space on the lock screen and then i was thinking about it and i was thinking you know i want to just put widgets on the lock screen. And then I was thinking about it and I was thinking,

you know, I want to just put widgets on the lock screen. I just want to put any widget on the lock screen. Like a, like a home screen widget on the lock screen. Right. Why, why,

why are, am I limited? And I know there's like, Oh, well, but your picture and we're creating a frame is like, well, you know what?

I'm a big boy. I want to put a widget on my home screen and have it cover up the background picture or on my lock screen let me do it right let me do it let me choose to do that if widgets are more important to me than the pictures on my lock screen i should be able to make that decision so i would like to see that because i think the lock screen would be a great stage on which to set some home screen widgets too. Anything else that jumps to your mind? Oh, let's see.

I was thinking, I had a vague idea. So just to appear behind the curtain, I woke up this morning and to a text from Mike saying, we're going to do this iOS 7 wishlist, so you might want to put some work in there. iOS 17. All right. Sorry, team.

You said 7 as well. I was going to say something as a mind virus. Are we going to do this for the next year? Team, I'm going to change our topic to 1-7-T-E-E-N, just to be clear. The problem here with iOSos ios 7 so iconic i would say the most iconic ios release of all time like whether you like it or not it's like if you were around then it's like emblazoned on your mind and so i feel like i'm going to be calling ios 17 ios 7 constantly now and i didn't

realize until today that that was a problem but i think it's going to be a problem for me i was ios 7 14 it's like yes so more widgets um anyway i don't even know what i said so so after all of that the the of like getting up on a Monday morning and thinking about things, one of the half-brained things I wrote down was smart notification center. And let me just tell you what my thought process is here. It's one, I don't love notification center. It's never been good.

It's never really been good. It's full of garbage. And I thought, and I know that sometimes they try to's full of garbage. And I thought, and I know that sometimes they try to do some of this, but I thought, I thought, cause you wrote down for another thing that we haven't talked about AI, machine learning and stuff like that.

Are there features that you could do there? And I thought, I wonder if you could do a machine learning based summary of your notification center that would appear when, like since the last time you looked or maybe it would appear as a notification since the last time you picked up your phone well they do have that notification summary thing but that's not they do have that it's not good though so this is what i'm saying is i i just what i literally wrote down and have not got the details because I just thought of it like an hour ago, is what if we used AI machine learning

summarization or something? Could we put that on Notification Center and make it better and useful? Because I probably don't need to know everything that's in the Notification Center, but I wonder if there's a way to like for you to boil it down for me in a good way i don't know or or or throw out ai or just something else better because it's just not it doesn't work for me something i wanted to write down but i didn't

know how to express it was just notifications right that like the system isn't good fundamentally and stuff could be done here like this is especially in my mind as a mac power users they're talking about like digital distractions and stuff this week like so it was in my head but something like this is like yeah just make it better with machine learning somehow right and this is like you referenced something that i've written down is is a large language model powered siri i don't think that's going to happen in iowa 17 necessarily but i feel like that is just inevitable so it's just about when they do this and so like the idea of a revamp of siri feels like it would be a commonly made request like quote make siri better right and i'm assuming at some point that

is going to be a gpt like thing right where however apple makes something like that it feels like they've got to do this because everyone's going to do this and siri will only become more and more of a joke over time if you can't have a conversation with it and it do stuff for you, whether that stuff, wouldn't know about what the quality of that stuff is. We're on a ticking clock, right? Until either Amazon, Google, or Apple puts this into their smart speaker assistant. And I get that you don't want the hallucinations and misinformation, but it is so tantalizing, the idea that I could have a conversation with Siri

where it would be a conversation and where I could ask a question and get an answer and then ask a follow-up and get another answer. And again, I think a lot of the AI demos that we see out there are bad, right? It's write a screenplay or give me a fact is good, right? And a lot of times, I did that last Um, I was talking to a couple of friends who were Dr. Who fans and I was like, I'm going to have chat GPT for hallucinate. Uh, and I asked it to hallucinate, but like,

even when I asked it for facts, I asked it anyway, I asked it to invent a Dr. Who season, which was hilarious and cliched as they always are. All the answers are cliched. It did the job. But it did it. But then I asked it for facts, and it hallucinated horrendously. And it's like, this is a problem. But that's the part that they need to get right. I don't need Siri to invent things for me, even though it's fun.

And I don't need to have long conversations with Siri where I talk about my, you know, the, my feelings and it, it tries to get me to leave my wife. Right. I don't need those kinds of stories, but I would like it if I could talk to Siri and try to get facts and get them in context. I would like to see, uh, I would like to be able to say, Hey, you, when's the next Giants game? And for it to say, well, it's Thursday against the New York Yankees. And then I would like to be able to follow that up and say, Oh, who are the starting pitchers? And have it give me the answer and then say, what about the starting lineups and have it say intelligently, the starting lineups won't be posted until the morning of the game. So I don't know. Like that's the dream, right?

Where it's just, it's just better at context and at giving me information in ways that I can grasp. And it can do again, it can do the wins the giants next game today. And so can Google. And so can Amazon's assistant who I fired and sent back to Amazon in a box last week which was very delightful. She's in a box. Alexa's in a box going back to Amazon. Bye. So yeah, that's the dream, right?

Well, my dream, Jason, is that I can say to Siri, hey once me and Jason were talking about something of iMessage about about baseball can you find that for me that's what i wanted to do yeah like i don't need this thing to talk to the internet i can i understand how to use the search engine i can just do it myself what i'm excited about is being able to take my information and put them into these models and like siri on my iphone should be able to tell me about anything that siri on my iphone should be able to tell me about anything that's happening on my iphone like just forget searching emails right like i you know

i just want to say can you find that email about that one time me and jason were talking about what the name of upgrade was going to be like that's the dream right yeah and and i mean on the mac too because remember siri's on the mac too like i i I know they've done some experimenting with this, but like the dream is that it knows that I've got Google docs and I've got files on my hard drive and I've got things in iCloud and I've got all that stuff. And when I say, you know, when did Mike and I talk about this thing or Slack or discord that it would

be capable of looking at all my things that are logged in and say, oh, it was in Slack on this date or whatever. And here's a link to that and you can go see it. I know that that's a ways off because it would have to catalog everything that was happening everywhere. And there's that app out there that does that, right. Where the catalogs everything and records everything you say and, you know, and does all of that. But like, but I agree with you on a simple level. It is, if I could, if it's got the corpus of the essentially spotlight search, right. And I give it a command saying, when did Mike and I exchange email about this thing? Or when did I exchange email with

somebody at Apple about this thing? And I don't even know who it is. That it would be able to look at my query, figure out what that meant, make a spotlight query, get the results back, look at the results, see what the most likely scenarios are and respond with an answer. And it might be, well, it could be this one or that one. And then you say, I think it's this one or tell me what that one is. And then it would give you an answer, right? You can see the applications here. The challenge is there's a reason why none of these assistants are doing that now.

And I think it's because they lie. They don't work. They don't work right. But I would love to see it. You'd love to see it. Talking about machine learning stuff, I think you put in here, work they don't work right but i would love to see it you'd love to see it uh talking about machine learning stuff you i think you put in here um machine learning editing for photos and you referenced something like google or pixelmator like over the last couple of days i

was taking some images and i was using um i'd never done it before, Pixelmator Pro's machine learning editing tools. They are unbelievable. I've been meaning to do a video, which is, did you know that not only does Google make a phone, but that Pixelmator Photo has been erasing things off of iPhone and iPad photos for years now? Yeah. things off of iPhone and iPad photos for years now. Like every time I see that ad where it's like, oh, look, I erased this person and they're not in my beach shot anymore. And I'm like, I did that three years ago with Pixelmator photo on my iPad. Look, Mike, I write a book about photos every year I update it. Every year I'm looking at what the photos announcements are. I cannot believe that photos on iOS does not have a retouching brush photos on the mac has one

and it's more like the clone tool in photoshop than it is like an ml replace tool but like pixelmator photo is right there it's been there for years it doesn't it will do upscaling it will do an ml based auto mode and for all i know apple's auto mode is also an ml based auto mode so okay fine it's nowhere near as good though it's nowhere near as good it's not as good it isn't which is why i i wonder and then it's got that it's got that replacement tool which again is not perfect but google is making hay on did you know we have this feature and it's like that feature has been on ios for years now but it's been a third-party app and Apple has just not put retouching.

And that would be, again, I don't know how easy it would be, but like it's, there is a version of that on photos for Mac. I just, I would really like to see that because there is nothing like having a beautiful photo of you and your friends or your family on a beach. And there's some dummy walking in the background, just minded in his own business. It's not his fault that he's there, but he's ruining your shot. He's photobombing you. And you literally just go, and he disappears. It is a great feature. It just frustrates me that Google is making so much noise

about it since it's been on the platform for years now. So I know people will be like, oh, look, Apple took Google's feature and put it in. And it's like, do it. Just do it. And anything you can do to make your photo editing on the fly on an iPhone better, do it. Split view on iPhone. I want it. Just let me do split view on iPhone. Just like I've got a big iPhone. Let me look at two apps at once.

They're not getting smaller. No. I would like that. So let me do that. I agree with you. I think that's a good one. I laughed when I saw that you put that in your list because- It is funny.

It is funny, but it's not unreasonable. I'll throw in, how about, hey, satellite SOS is out there now. And I know they're expanding it to other markets and and all of that you know what else they could do uh is actually build satellite communication in and now that it's launched right like charge a fee per message or something tied to your apple account or have you have to sign up for satellite messaging and it would be only for a limited use. But like, I feel like that is a next step for the platform is giving phones that have access to the satellite communicator,

the ability to send a text message over satellite for our fee. iCloud plus baby, you know, maybe, maybe, or it's a whole extra thing. They might have another, I mean, they said that was for two years, right? They may be, I mean,

there's no time like the present to start, but if they're going to get people to pay in two years, then, you know, start building out what they're paying for. If they're paying for just Satellite SOS, or if there's an upsell, or if you pay, do you get more than the basic feature that you get when you buy an iPhone? I don't know.

I just, it was a thought that I had that now that Satellite SOS is out the door, that would be the logical next step, right? Which is, I'm not, I don't need an SOS, but I, sending my location is not, like, I want to do more than that. You can send your location via satellite, but like, I want to send a text message or receive a text message from a particular person via satellite. But like, I want to send a text message or receive a text message from a particular person via satellite. Like, I know that's complex, but like, let me do it and pay for it. Last one I'll mention, Passwords app.

Yeah, I put that in there. Aren't you glad I put it in there? Yeah, aren't you glad? Right? Passwords is so full featured as a thing on iOS. And it's hidden in a settings menu and it's like it's so good like there are i'm not going to name names but like there are probably other apple apps that don't need to be apps but passwords needs to be an app it it really deserves to be an app they deserve to take all that work and put it front and center and say we have a

password manager i try to explain the password manager to people and i say They deserve to take all that work and put it front and center and say, we have a password manager. I try to explain the password manager to people. And I say, you got to go into settings and you go in there like, ugh, it's like, let's not do that. Let's put passwords on the phone. So you tap. And I know that's silly on one level. It's like, well, it's just in settings. You can get there. It's like, yeah, but also if you're going back and forth with your passwords app, you're in the settings app. Just break it out. Make it its own thing. That's what I say.

I want to do some footnotes here. This is mostly about iOS, but like iPadOS. All those iPhone features that are not yet in iPadOS, I would like them. Like widgets on lock screens and editable lock screens and stuff like that. Like, please, can we get that on the iPad now? That seems to be doable since it's literally already on the platform, just not on the other hardware. And my last LOL wish list item is virtualization.

And that's an iPad feature. But like, yeah, let me run a VM on an iPad. Let me virtualize macOS on an M2 iPad Pro. Why not? If we have an LOL feature or a ha ha feature. Ha ha ha ha. Third party app stores. Lots of people are asking for ha ha ha ha ha.

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show and RelayFM. Let's finish up with some Ask Upgrade questions. No hashtag up with some ask upgrade questions. No hashtag, just ask upgrade questions. Shot the hashtag with a laser right there. Indeed. Carl says,

should Apple just make a 13-inch iPad Air? Sure. Why not? I think this goes to the 15-inch MacBook Air question, which is like, are we gating iPad size based on Pro features, or is there a market for a larger iPad? I don't know.

I mean, I wonder what market research Apple has done on this front, because, look, I love my 12.9-inch iPad Pro, but every time I pick up my wife's 11-inch iPad Pro, I think, oh, it's much smaller and lighter than the thing that I use. And so I wonder if there are enough people like me who would want a larger thing, and if those people are iPad Pro users. I think the real question is, The real question is, is the 13-inch iPad Pro $1,500? In which case, yes, they should make a 13-inch iPad Air. I think that's my answer.

The iPad Pros keep going further and further away from the iPad Air. There's more need to have a more affordable, larger iPad, I think. On the face of it today, I say no. But in the future where they are going to make that a very expensive product i think there is value to just having the larger screen right in the same way that we talk about the idea of there being a 15 inch macbook air and why that might make sense for people a larger ipad air at that point would make more sense for people who don't need oled screen etc etc., etc., etc. The list goes on and on, hopefully, which is why they will charge you $1,500, $1,800 for the thing.

Colin asks, have you ever tried to develop contacts with Apple employees in an attempt to gather insider information to create sources like those of Mark Gurman. So maybe you could be in rumor roundup. And if you did this, would you feel that it could harm your overall relationship with Apple? Yeah. So I don't think about it anymore, but there was a time. When I was working in Macworld and Macuser, there was this definite sense that there were the people who reported on, who cultivated rumors and leaks and got people inside with knowledge to talk.

And that it was very difficult. Those people were over here and the people who were like writing reviews and things like that are over on the other side. There was always this feeling like you could do one or the other, but you couldn't really do both. And part of that was the threat, at least, that Apple would not talk to you if you're a breaker of rumors. In fact, I remember being surprised when I saw Mark Gurman at an Apple event at one point.

And sometimes he's there, sometimes he's not. But I don't know if that's the case anymore. And the reason that my answer here is basically not lately is I am, I mean, I can't answer for you, Mike, but I am one person. I have, I am very limited in what I am capable of doing for my job because I am a one human being. And not only would this require a lot of effort, which would mean I would have to stop other parts of my job because I'd basically be, you know, the site that it is, whatever it is now, it is now a, you know, a Apple rumor site and I'm limited. So I'm doing less stuff. I have to focus on this thing. Mark Gurman's already doing it. And quite frankly, I'm kind of happy with the mix of stuff that I have in my life right now in terms of podcasts and writing and stuff like that and it would so i'm not in this era i'm not as worried about oh no apple's not going to send me pr you know review units of

reviews because if i report about their secrets although that might be true i don't know um it's more like this it's like uh i could write about new apps all the time, like Mac Stories, but I don't. I don't have the time. They do a great job with that. I'm doing other stuff. I'm okay doing my other stuff, right? It would require me to stop doing other work that I'm doing, and I think the mix is pretty decent right now. So, for me personally, that's the answer.

For me personally, that's the answer. Plus, also I'd say in the longer run, that is a job I could have tried to do when I was earlier on in my career to cultivate sources and break news and stuff like that. And I chose a different path in terms of being, I don't know, a happier person. That kind of stuff did not make me happy. It was not the stuff that made me

like working. And so I chose to specialize in other things. So, you know, when I left Macworld and was out on my own and doing this stuff, you know, you do that thing for a year after you, at least a year after you leave, where every time there's a real job that gets posted, you think, oh, maybe I should do that job instead of going out on my own. And it takes a long, for me, it took a long time to stop the reflex action of part of my brain saying you should get a real job. Some of the jobs that came up right after I left were like work in the bureau at the New York Times covering Apple, work in the bureau at the Wall Street Journal covering Apple. And I kept thinking, could I do that job? And I thought, I don't know if they'd hire me to do that job. I probably could do that job. I would not like doing that job.

Not what I specialized in for a reason. So, I mean, so that's my answer is I do occasionally, and you have this mic, occasionally we hear from people who listen to Upgrade and know stuff and they send us stuff and that's great um it's less fun when they know it and you can't write about it which we that definitely happened at macworld where we had cases where we knew a lot about what was to come under the restriction that you couldn't write about it which is like well what are you doing now i can't even speculate about it because i know it's true but if i speculate too close to the real thing, then I'm going to get somebody in trouble. That did actually happen once where I speculated a little too close to something that somebody else on my staff knew was true. And they got

questioned by their source at Apple saying, did you leak this to Jason? And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That didn't happen. But like, that's the danger of that too. So now, now I've shut off, especially if they tell me things that I can't report about, then I've shut off my ability to write my column for Macworld or things on Six Colors or talk on this podcast about it because now I know things that I can't talk about it. And that's not great either. So that's a long way of saying, I do hear things and people do send us things, but it's like, that's not the business I'm in. And if I had be in that business I guess I would try it but I don't have to so I'm not so I think for me this I'll start by answering the second part which is if I truly worried about

my relationship with Apple I there's a lot of things I wouldn't say that i do say right like i wouldn't be as critical as i can be if i was worried about some relationship right like but to me now that stuff i'm not as fussed about that anymore like i've had the experience of having hardware reviews and very slightly pre-released so it's like a thing that i've checked off my bucket list but now i'm not interested in chasing that down like because it's just right not what i want to do and there are layers to it right because like i i have had to make a little mental model which is there's i do have a relationship with apple PR people and Apple has a relationship with me. And as a product reviewer and commentator, you have to build a little wall, which is I'm going to say what I think. And it's not always going to be positive.

And you have to understand that what you get out of it as Apple is you get coverage. And that coverage is good publicity. And when I like something, it's good for you. But if I always liked everything, it wouldn't mean anything. So you just have to ride it. If you're a PR person, you just got to ride it. Like Jason's not always going to be positive about what we do or about these things. And we just have to deal with it because as a kind of creator you can't live your life being like oh geez i hope

apple it doesn't revoke my access because i said something mean about him you kind of can't some people do and i understand how some people can fall into that like but because it depends what you do really easy but like i don't think it's that helpful. The thing that I learned early on is don't make it personal. Yeah. I witnessed people make it personal about people at Apple. Like literally calling people out and saying, you know,

this person is clueless or whatever. And it's like, first off, what I learned is we don't know, right? We don't know what's actually happening inside the black box. We have these characters who are people we know at Apple,

but we don't really know what they do. And we don't really know what their role is. We don't know what's actually happening inside the black box. We have these characters who are people we know at Apple, but we don't really know what they do. We don't really know what their role is. We don't. And there are other people we don't know, and they're probably just as important. But I have seen people kind of trash their relationship with Apple or other companies by making it very personal. And to me, it's like it's not about the people. It's about the products. It's about the strategies.

It's about the services. That's what it's like it's not about the people it's about the products it's about the strategies it's about the services that's that's what it's about so that that is if i do have one flag in my in my brain about like keeping good relations with apple it's it's literally i've boiled it down to professionalism which is yes this is not i'm not making this personal not only is that not my focus the personalities inside apple but like i and i don't know so why would i even go down that path we're not just keep it professional don't make it personal either right so i and i don't know so why would i even go down that path we're not just keep it professional don't make it personal either right so like and i feel like maybe that's appreciated like and also i find it very rare that i've had a complaint where maybe somebody's brought

up and they haven't in some way agreed with me or like giving me some kind of challenge which is interesting like i don't feel like i say wild things same as you right so like that kind of stuff doesn't bother me but to go back to the like the other part of the question because i answered it backwards have you ever tried to develop contacts of apple employees in an attempt to gather insider information so there's a podcaster that i enjoy greg miller he is they do basically what we do but in video games right and they do the kind of funny shows it was the show that i gave as my podcast of the year was one of their shows and he was recently talking about this in a way that i really resonated where he says he knows things

that's going on in video games but it is not his job to break news they report on news right yep and like that was what kind of what you were saying too a minute ago and it's like there are things that i know that somebody has told me that i don't talk about doesn't happen very often but it happens sure it does happen it's not i don't see it as my responsibility here to try and like give you breaking news like i'm more of like uh and the way i look at our show here is like say with rumor roundup things are reported we talk about what's been reported and like right and i think that that makes a lot more sense than like somebody's told me this thing it's just like a little thing somebody's told me most of the time it's like

i can't really do anything with this there's kind of no point i'll just keep it in my back pocket like it's just a piece of information i know but i can't do anything with it what i value for that stuff i agree that's that's exactly it which is like it's not my job to to root out secrets and break them it's like again not saying that isn't a valid job that's not what i have chosen it really is we have a whole segment of this show that relies on people doing we paid for art for the chapter. If you haven't seen it, just look sometime. It's amazing.

Yes, but it's not my job. I've chosen not to do that job. However, sometimes you get information, and it's great when it adds context, right? I like hearing from people who know stuff about what Apple has done or is doing because it helps my understanding because we talk a lot about the black box, right? We talk a lot about that. So when I said I got some inkling earlier in the last week about our talk about like, was there a time when Apple thought the iPad was the future and the Mac was a legacy product

that was going to go away? And I got some feedback saying, yeah, basically, yeah. But without a lot of detail. But again, and it's like, okay, well, that's interesting. It's good to know that we're not completely off. It would have been interesting if somebody said, no, that's absolutely never the case. I'd be like, oh, well, that's interesting. I need to recalibrate, right? Like that stuff can help.

And it can help to know when we're talking about like, are they even going to ship this thing or what's going on with the VR headset? You know, I have heard again from like people in like that the hardware is like, it's done. It's ready. It's ready. They're probably making them. I don't know that for sure, but like that, that is not a question. Like that product exists. And that's interesting. But like before I heard about them showing it to the top 100, so like context can help and it can help your analysis of it, like that's not the same it's not the same but that i do love that stuff i do love the and and if people want to send it to us like go

ahead i was just gonna say and now if you heard this and you work at apple you know we're not going to tell people the information so if you want to just give it to us we'll take it no but but no but no that's the problem though is if it's i can tell you this but you can't report it then everything gets weird right because then you're like if i know if we do a draft and i know that there's a 15 inch macbook air that's coming out i know it hard clear from sources i can't i can't pick it from the draft i can't write a speculative column about what it might be because now i'm burning my sources because i know exactly what it might be i kind of don't want to play that game that's all part of the gentleman's agreement that's the gentleman's agreement right it is i don't want to play that game so yeah it's it's tricky and the answer but

the overarching answer i wanted to give colin is part of it is you you know you choose your career path and sometimes you don't sometimes you're thrown into a particular job and you have to do it but also sometimes you gravitate toward the things you like and the things you want to do. And if you are fortunate enough to be able to do that, it will take you away from other things. And going out on my own, I could literally make my job anything I want. And I chose things that I thought I could do that would allow me to make a living that would be things that would make me happy and fulfilled as a professional person. And some combination of those is why I don't have a, you know, I don't break Apple rumors because it's not a thing that I'm particularly good at.

So it would take a huge amount of effort to try to be better at it. I've got other stuff that I think I'm good at that I am doing. So in the end, that's what I've chosen. And that's like, that's a lesson I had to learn because coming from Macworld, I was like, let's cover everything. I've got a staff. You write about this. You write about that's what I'd chosen. And that's a lesson I had to learn because coming from Macworld, I was like, let's cover everything. I've got a staff. You write about this. You write about that.

We'll cover everything. And then I go out on my own. And then Dan Morin too, but even with two of us, it's like just two people. There's literally not enough time in the week to do everything or even a fraction of everything.

You really have to pick your spots all right thank you for listening to this episode of upgrade you can send us your feedback follow up and your ask upgrade questions over upgradefeedback.com in the meantime before next week's episode you can check out jason's writing at sixcolors.com and hear his podcast at the incomparable.com and here on relay fFM like downstream, which we were talking about earlier on the show. You can listen to my podcasts here on RelayFM and check out my work over 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. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus.

You can go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up. This week, we're going to be talking about our experience of using Raycast for the last week in the latest Upgrade Plus challenge. I want to thank our sponsors again, Electric, Setapp, and ZocDoc for their support of this week's

episode and helping to make it possible. But the people that make it most possible are you. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.