Upgrade - 453: At Large at Apple Park

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

WWDC has been announced, but when will the Apple VR headset be ready to ship? Also, CarPlay gets the cold shoulder from General Motors, watchOS might be in for some major changes, and the iPhone could be getting its own action button.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 453 today's show is brought to you by squarespace and fitbard my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by my co-host in crime mr jason snell hi jason mike you weren't supposed to talk about the crime. Whoops. You're not supposed to say that part out loud. Should we just start over again so nobody knows? I just, hello, perfectly legal co-host. It is good to speak to you about perfectly legal matters. I have a way to get us out of this legal trouble water, which is to ask you a Snell Talk question. Oh, thank goodness for that. Well, we've got the savior of the snail talk question this one comes from greg greg submitted their question like you should over at upgradefeedback.com if you have a question you would like to hear us open an episode of upgrade with so we don't talk about crimes go to upgradefeedback.com and greg asks maybe this is crime related i don't know

stop talking about crime sorry why i've got it in my head today. What do you have your iMessage keep messages set, setting set to? 30 days, one year or forever? I feel like people who know me would know the answer to this. The answer is forever. Why would it not be forever?

Why would I not keep messages forever? Unless I was like committing crimes. Oh no, you've got me doing it now. Forever is the answer. Forever. Forever and ever and ever. Yeah, I keep mine forever too. I don't have all of my messages going back to forever,

which makes me feel like at some point, I don't know when, but at some point i must have had some kind of failed device migration or i decided to set a device up as new like my messages don't go all the way back to the beginning of the iphone do yours oh i i have no idea if you scroll to the bottom of the messages app mine for some reason oh this is even worse mine only go back to j July of 2022. I don't know what happened there, but that's my oldest message.

I don't know. There's messages in the cloud, and when did that come in, and what's that going on? I mean, I don't rely on it, but I thought it would be useful if you have search, right? If you have the ability to search through that stuff why not keep it there right and i have a lot of icloud storage space and it's like it just seemed like uh like my devices have enough space and i just i i didn't worry about it no i just scrolled back to a text message thread with a friend and it goes back to november 2012 that that thread oh on my mac they go back way further i don't know what my iPhone was doing. I'm just looking on my iPad here.

I just keep scrolling and they keep loading. Maybe I didn't give my iPhone enough time to load. You have time to just keep loading further back in time. 2014, that's my earliest message that I have. Forever, baby. Forever is the answer. Yeah, but I also have my...

Unless you're committing crimes but even then even then i don't know maybe okay well i've got that end-to-end encryption on now oh i see i see that's good well that's good for when you're committing crimes exactly no one can catch me can't catch me if you would like to send in a question to help us open the show to go to upgradefeedback.com and you can select snail talk right there and send us a question to help us open the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com, and you can select Snell Talk right there and send us a question. I do want to say, since introducing those categories, I want to thank the Upgradians, Jason, because every Upgradian sends in feedback having ticked one of those boxes.

Oh. Which you don't need to do, but I appreciate that you do because it makes my job so much easier when I'm going through the... We appreciate it. What I would say is hundreds of pieces of feedback that we get per episode which I'm also very appreciative of I like that people have things that they want us to talk about things that they want us to say that would actually start with follow-up so Paul wrote in to say Mike stated that the original iPhone did not have a killer app but it did and was even mentioned by

Steve Jobs in the 2007 keynote Steve said making phone calls have a killer app but it did and was even mentioned by steve jobs in the 2007 keynote steve said making phone calls was the killer app i will tell you steve jobs was wrong that's what i'll say yeah it was not that no it was he could say whatever like i i think that there's there there are books that have been written and podcasts that have been recorded entirely on the subject of that keynote, right? Like, that keynote is really interesting, but it's not right, right? Like, it's one of the great moments of tech keynote history and tech product introduction history, but it's not right, right? Like, it is, like, the breakthrough internet communicator is the big moment and that's the one that falls flat whereas touch screen touch screen ipod and you know phone or whatever like things that don't

matter got a response the things that did matter didn't and i think steve is trying to justify in that keynote why you would use this to replace your phone but what a killer app is is like the thing that makes the product huge the thing where the product finds what it's meant for and making phone calls is not what the iphone was meant for and it's not what made the iphone successful because it can't be a killer app if literally every product in the category does it and then one product comes to differentiate itself from the category, right? Like logically that would make it not a killer app.

It's it, it's table stakes, right? It's, it's the lowest common denominator of making phone calls. So I, I would, uh, I would argue that,

that as we did last time, uh, respectfully to Paul, the app store itself might have been the killer app and the apps that it, um, and if there was something on the original iPhone that I would consider arguably a killer app, it would be Safari because it was a full web browser on a phone for the first time. All of the other web browsers back then were crappy. However, Mike, as you pointed out, they didn't have an App Store then. So Steve Jobs was really quick to be like

yeah sweet solution you can save web apps to the home screen but it that actually wasn't the killer app in the end it was it was the app store that that did it i mean i could even argue that the killer app today still was safari like having the ability to access the full web on yeah of devices in your pocket i think is yeah is truly the breakthrough part and i think they knew that i do not believe that steve jobs thought that the killer app of the iphone was making calls he was just trying to say that like look this phone does like a lot of weird stuff right but it can still just make the phone calls that you think you want. Yeah, he's reassuring people that the phone,

that it's a phone and it works like a phone and it's not too weird, right? I mean, I do think that a lot of this was like, this is not too weird. Don't worry. It's still a phone. You can just use it.

Because number one rule of iPhone was get people to replace their phone. Yeah. Right? Get people to replace or for the first get people to replace their phone. Yeah. Right. Get people to replace or for the first time add a cell phone. That was job one. And so you had to make the point that it did texting and calls, right? Like as job one.

And then that's why the app was SMS, right? Like at that point, the app was literally called SMS for texting because they wanted to reassure people it's a phone. It's okay. It's a phone and an iPod and an internet communication device. But that's not the same as saying it's a killer app. So we also got some feedback from Tim on the headset who says, you've commented that it makes sense for Apple to ship a headset so they can start iterating on it and see how people use it. On the other hand, Apple is famously the company that says a thousand no's for every yes and waits until it feels like the product has real value to add. Why do you think the headset is different from, say, a foldable phone or any other new

tech they may have in development? What is it about the headset that means it should be a yes right now instead of a no uh by the way a thousand notes for every yes was like 10 years ago at least so i i it's not as if every apple ad says a thousand notes for every yes i would say that that in a in a self-serving video uh decade ago uh they did that. But I'll take that as it is. And I will say, I feel like it's about the journey more than it is... They're trying to get somewhere with this. So there is an ulterior motive, and it could be skewing what they're trying to do. But they're trying to get somewhere with this. They're trying to get to a place where there's a product that replaces the iPhone and make sure that if that happens, if that happens, that they're the ones who are there competing for it. I think that's the number one reason this product exists.

I will also say, so they need to start iterating on it, right? But I'll also say that they probably could have shipped this, what, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, one year ago, and they still haven't shipped it. And hopefully, maybe they'll ship it this, I mean, there's still a question about that that we'll get to in a little bit, maybe. But so I would say there have been many thousands of no's, clearly, already, right? So they have had many thousands of no's to get to a yes. I mean, we talk about them right like the idea that it would be attached to a mac or a box or it would talk to your phone like these were things that they did like you know the processing would come from your phone and it would just stream information from the phone which doesn't seem like it's doing either like there have been as you i think rightly point out there

have been thousands of no's but again it's like we're not this isn't like doing something some new drastic thing like a foldable phone in that sense it is more like what they already did with the apple watch of like you get to a certain part where the technology is is good enough and you've got to see how people want it how they want to use it how they're going to use it how developers are going to use it like you you you've got to see how people want it, how they want to use it, how they're going to use it, how developers are going to use it. You've got to take a moment where you take a leap of faith, which if you go back to what we just spoke about,

the original iPhone did not have an app store. The original iPhone did not have an app store. They didn't think it needed one, or they wanted not to have one. Or they couldn't get the app development even internally to the point where they could show it to anybody else. But they decided to ship the product anyway with a fixed number of apps on the home screen. They chose their moment. And you're right.

There's an art to that, right? Because it's never the perfect moment because you could always do better. it's never the perfect moment because you could always do better. So when's the moment where it's close enough that you can ship it, knowing that you really need to ship it to get it to where it needs to be. And you can't, arguably you shouldn't wait until it's done because it'll never be done if it's not out there in the world, getting beat up and criticized and used by people who are going to go,

Oh, why doesn't it do this? Or I really like this one thing that you thought was an obscure thing, but it turns out is super important and you got to ship it for that. So they've judged maybe that this is the right product to ship. I think we will, I was going to write in our notes that we've argued about, but I think that that's premature. We will all be arguing about this for the next few years, right? About whether they were right or wrong to ship this product in terms of the timing. I would make the argument that since they don't have a product that can ship in volume

because of the price and that it's not a product that appeals to even the interested masses, potentially, based on the reports, that it's going to be so expensive that they're going to ship under a million units of this thing. And there's a lot of spinning going on. It's like, oh, it's like the Apple Watch. It seems more extreme to me than the Apple Watch. But I could argue that this is,

since Apple seems to be a company that's never going to release a product that's just for developers, maybe this is what a developer kit from Apple looks like, which is this, which is we got to ship something and most people aren't going to get it, but don't worry, we're working on something else down the line. But I think Apple feels like they need to ship this. What's the impetus for this, right? It's like, oh no, is Meta eating our lunch? I don't think that's the case.

But I do wonder if what Apple feels is like, we've taken it maybe as far as we can really take it without getting it into the world, number one. And two, that they look at the competition and they look at what Meta's doing and they say, we are so much better than anything that's out there in terms of defining this for now and for the future. And we want to reset the category, which is what the iPhone did, right? Which is say,

we are going to redefine what this kind of product is. And yeah, and the Apple Watch, exactly right. We're going to set the standard. And you know what happens after that is that then everybody else looks at Apple and says, oh, we need to do that. And then game on. Then whoever it is, Google and Meta and Samsung and whoever else is going to go, oh, right, let's be like that. And then the game is on. yes, is that Apple feels like they've reached a point where they can't go much further without being turned open to the world. And also that there's a risk in the category sort of stagnating and that there's an opportunity for Apple to define this category. But again, like I said, I could argue that this is not the right product to ship only in the sense that it seems like a developer kit. It seems like something that, you know, we're basically being told, wait a year or two for the one that people are going to buy. And that's troubling to me because that makes me feel like they maybe did get it wrong a little bit.

But I understand they're under impulse, which is we got to get this thing out. We got to get it shipping. Developers need to see it. We need to have, because the other thing is Apple secrecy, right? right apple secrecy works against itself here because this thing needs to be out in the open right like they need to start building a platform here and if they can't start building the platform until a product is announced right like this os this reality os thing like if if we can't start building that product uh in public until we announce something, we need to announce something. I think that there is an argument to be made on that side, too.

It needs to be out in the open, and people need to start picking it apart, and developers need to look at it and say, here's what we need that you didn't provide, so that they can start making it potentially into something. Not that they'll succeed. start making it in potentially into something, not that they'll succeed, but like, so that's anyway, Tim, that is my, that is my answer about this is that I feel like there have been a thousand no's or, or several thousand no's, but they've also reached the point where they feel like it can't really go forward and become anything more until it goes out the door. But that said, it gives me pause that it seems priced, like it's going to be priced so high that it's going to be a very, very, very limited appeal. And I feel like there's some danger in that.

But at the same time, they want to define what this category can be. And this sounds like they didn't skimp on features in order to get there. So it'll be fascinating to watch what happens. But those are the dynamics at play, I think. Before we move on, I want to put something out into the world that I'm hoping the Upgradians might be able to help me with. So I am a stage manager user on the Mac.

Still am. This is how I live my life. Feel free to judge me as you please, but I like it. At some point between 13.1 and 13.4, I don't know where because I don't know what version of macOS I like it. At some point between 13.1 and 13.4, I don't know where because I don't know what version of macOS my MacBook Air was on before I updated to 13.4. When you click the desktop, it shows the desktop. I don't want this.

They didn't used to do this. My MacBook Pro that I'm recording on right now is on 13.1. If I'm in a stage manager stage and I click the desktop, it just makes all of the windows in front of me just non-active, but doesn't show me the desktop. On 13.4, if I click the desktop, it shows the desktop. I don't want it to do that and I can't find a setting to change it and I don't know why that default behavior has changed. And you may say to me, Mike, why do you do this? I'll tell you why i do this it's a habit like if i send a message say an iMessage or whatever i tend to click the desktop so iMessage isn't active anymore so if

somebody sends a reply it's not going to immediately be marked as read muscle memory muscle memory now and so i'm finding when i'm on my macbook, which is where I'm doing my work all day, I'm seeing the desktop hundreds of times a day where I don't want to. And so I don't know why this has changed. I don't know why the default changed and then there was no setting. And I also don't know why this is a thing

that people would want. At some point they made it so that you could see the files on the desktop. And the idea there was if you leave files on the desktop you can click on the desktop and then start a drag or double click or whatever in order to get your files and i think that makes sense but i think i think this is a good question like shouldn't the behavior be that if you can't see files on the desktop well oh okay there's there's two behaviors right even if you even if you can't well no i can see files on the desktop now on 13.1 and if i click the desktop nothing happens which is what i want to happen okay

right so you have to make space well that's weird right because like either you need access to the desktop or you don't i would say right like so what they're doing is they're saying you can make space for the files on the desktop so you can see them in either mode but you could argue that that maybe it should just be like either you can see the desktop stuff or you can't and you know so it's either that or they should add a setting that basically says ignore you know what ignore clicks on the desktop i don't know or just like when i click the desktop show me the desktop. That should be the setting and then it's just on or off.

That's what the setting should be I feel like. But it's just very strange to me to change a default like that and there's just no way to change it back. It's just impossible to change it back. File feedback on that one. Well, I'm doing it verbally to make sure I'm not missing something. So, gradients, file

a feedback. No, if I hear nothing from people about this, then I will file a feedback. Because that could be something I'm missing. Because I can't understand how to use the settings app anymore. I can't. That's fair. You can. Nobody.

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upgrade. And then when you sign up, use the offer code upgrade to get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. WWDC. Mike, this is Tim. Hi, Tim. This is Tim.

I have good news for you. As I said when I appeared on your upgrade program last week, we had to delay it a little bit. But as I said last week, we did announce WWC. It's coming back the same time that it always is. So enjoy. Bye. Tim out.

You sound a little like Elvis, Tim. Yeah, I was getting a little Southern with Tim. Well, Tim is Southern, but I felt like I was a little more Texas there than I should be for a guy from Alabama. Maybe he watched the movie. I watched that movie. I liked that movie. The Elvis movie? I did felt like I was a little more Texas there than I should be for a guy from Alabama. Maybe he watched the movie. I watched that movie. I liked that movie. The Elvis movie. I did too.

It was a good movie. I liked Elvis. It's long, but you know what? I liked it all. Exactly, yeah. It's good if the movie's long if you like all the long movie. It's only a problem if you don't like all the long movie. This is my biggest endorsement of the Elvis movie is that there's a moment in that movie where they blast through one portion of his life which is like when he's in the army and stuff and i was actually a little disappointed

i'm like oh but why don't you talk about the army a little bit more and when you're watching a 90,000 hour long movie and you're like i wish it was a little bit longer you're probably enjoying that movie so yeah i liked it anyway that was austin butler was robbed of best actor that's all i'm gonna say thank you very much this is this is tim that was awesome now listen now listen mike things are gonna be i don't know what i'm doing i don't know wwdc is not all shook up at all it's basically the same june 5th to 9th there's going to be a special event at apple park on the 5th which is going to encompass this is like a busy day like if if you go to if you're a developer and you go to that special event that is a busy old day you've got the keynote in the morning state of the union and the apple design awards ceremony all on june 5th it's just going to be busy old time uh but it's going to be

again at apple park i think we basically spoke about this that our expectation was imagine last year but maybe a little bit more involved and I still think there will be some more to come because they kind of talk about that on the page. Like, keep your eye on this page. And also more organized in that we know well in advance that it's going to be a bigger affair, I think, on the June the 5th. And things just seem to be a little bit more like, hey, we're doing this thing and we know what we're doing and here it is.

And you have until April 4th, which if you're listening to this and the day it comes out, is tomorrow. So it's a very short timeline to put your application in. And they've got a bunch of ways in which you can put in an application.

They put out the imagery too, which... You're submitting an application to come, not like an app. Yeah. Like for the App Store, right? Yeah. You say application, I mean it could

be either one. Well, send in your app. If you are one of the student Swift challenge people, then it's kind of both. I guess you do have to send in your app, right? It's both. It's true. It's an application and an application. Can I make a prediction? I would love it. This is, I mean, if we don't learn anything

between now and our draft, because we should say we were doing some scheduling planning for late May because I'm going to take a little trip on Memorial Day weekend. And Mike, your response was, oh, that's the draft. We know months in advance. Which is beautiful. When the upgrade draft is going to be. This is what it always used to be like.

I know, right? It's luxurious now, though. It feels very luxurious. So we'll pick this if we don't know by the time the draft happens. But I'm going to make just an early off the top of my head prediction here, which is I think they're going to take the developers to where we were last year, which is Cafe Max, all wide open, lots of seats, and all the developers are going to be there in front of the big screen watching the event. And I think they're going to take the press to the Steve Jobs Theater. Now, Mike Hurley would like that because I'm hoping that I get,

I've booked my travel, like I'm going to WWDC. I'm not applying to do the developer thing because I'm not one. And I'm hoping that an invitation will get extended to me like it did last time. And that would be great if it was the case because I would quite like to go to the Steve Jobs Theater. Yeah. I mean, they could do it exactly like last year.

But I'll remind you, the iPhone event last year was in the Steve Jobs Theater where they played the videos. And then we came back out and there was a hands-on area like the old days except nobody on stage except an intro from tim but like then they just rolled the video so it would not surprise me at all if they if they bifurcated this and they had pr doing steve jobs theater with the press and they had developer relations doing cafe max with the people who won the developer thing which also means that there'd be more room for developers. Yeah. Right. And they could still stage there.

I mean, it's, it's extra complexity to do two different locations inside Apple park, but I think they could probably do it. In fact, where you come in at the Tantau. So across the street for those who have been there, this might help you,

but like across the street from the Apple store, that's at Apple park. Cause the Apple store at Apple park is not at Apple park. It's across the street from Apple Park. You can see it from there. That's all you get, everybody. That's all you get. Enjoy this AR Apple Park. The viewing platform that they have at the Apple Store, you can't see all of Apple Park. It's not possible because it's so large. You can't look at it and see all the entire... They need a very tall building for that. And there's Not possible because it's so large. No, but I mean, you can't like look at it and see all like the entire.

They need a very, very tall building. Yeah. And there's height restrictions there. Anyway, so across the street from that, across Tantau is like a gate almost, but it's like a building. It's like a little glass reception area with gates. It's like a little glass reception area with gates. And you pass through there, if you're going onto the campus as a civilian, as I have. And then it's a very natural bifurcation.

In fact, the building even has two sides. So you could even bifurcate entry to left and right. But when you pass through, if you go to the right, you go to the ring. And if you go to the left, you go to Steve and right. But when you pass through, if you go to the right, you go to the ring. And if you go to the left, you go to Steve Jobs theater. So it would be very straightforward for them to build up essentially two different versions of the event for press and for, uh, for developers. The only argument against this that I would say, well, there's the complexity argument. The other argument against it would be that Apple really does enjoy coverage of the developers being excited. And if you don't, if you remove the press from that, you don't get that part of it. But especially if this is a really important product in, you know, product release or whatever they're doing product announcement for the headset, then I can see the benefit of

pouring the press into Steve Jobs theater and then pouring the developers into the other side. So I'm just going to throw that out there as if it's not a prediction, it's a possibility that they might actually have us in two different places on the Apple Park campus. But we'll see. We'll see. I'm curious because we can talk about WWDC last year as the model, but they also did do that iPhone event. Yeah. And that was in the theater so i think this is i don't know probably the combination i actually that makes sense this

is the combination of two right where like the model being that like there will be people inside of apple park right like that's large um where everybody goes you know at large now that sounds like crime is happening they're're at large inside Apple Park. That's wild. The imagery is out. The imagery is interesting. It's a lot of colored circles. I saw the Halide camera app tweet something I just enjoyed,

which was the WWDC invite resembles what is called a pancake lens array, which is often used in VR goggles. That's fun. Yes. Yes. It's also a rainbow arch like the arch that's in the middle of apple park but yes maybe this means something the visuals are cool but what i'll say about the visuals um for me i feel like the last many years of wwdc there's been like a design language to the visuals which could be applied across a bunch of media this feels less than like less so like this feels like it would be more complicated you know like when they did like

they did the memoji before they did the neon emoji thing and neon emoji thing and they've done like a bunch of stuff over the years where it feels like they could take that design language and it would be easily applied to things where this is just like they have two versions of it. They have one which is like an arch and then one which is like a visual representation of Apple Park, like in the similar style. And the Swift Student Challenge has kind of got

this look to it. It's got that kind of like bubbled oil and water kind of vibe. And in the past, this art has suggested the art design for the conference as a whole, right? Because it echoes through everything. So we'll see if this carries through

with all their other materials, everything that's on slides, the whole thing they do. You put something in our show notes that I think meant that you were pretty upset, which is a little bit frustrated. Yeah, I'm fired up, Mike.

I'm fired up. I figured. I will read from a Yahoo Finance article. General Motors plans to phase out Apple CarPlay and Android Auto technology, shifting instead to built-in infotainment systems developed through Google for future electric vehicles. Buyers of GM EVs with the

new system will get access to Google Maps and Assistant, a voice command system, at no extra cost for eight years, GM said. GM said the future infotainment systems will also offer applications such as Spotify, Audible, and others. A couple of quotes from people at GM. We don't want to design these features in a way that they are dependent on a person having a cell phone. And we do believe there are subscription revenue opportunities for us. So that second one is why they're doing this. That first one is bananas.

Who buys an electric car in 2023 and doesn't own a cell phone? So look, I will point people back to the upgrade verticals. Last summer, I talked to Sam Abu El-Samid, who's a car industry expert and an upgradian, about this. And the truth is you can't have a car that can't be operated without a cell phone, right? Because there are lots of scenarios. You might lose your cell phone. You might have somebody borrow your car, right? You can't, you can't not, but to have it be sort of like, well, we have to build in an entire thing and block everybody's phone interface in order to

make it all safe is it's BS. Subscription revenue opportunities. I'll point out GM is also the creator of OnStar, which is an old, old, old system where they've charged you a monthly fee in order to have a cellular connection and be able to call for help, and it had a GPS and all that. They're very good at the monetizing of people over time with their cars. So that's definitely going on here. I'll tell you, what I'm not mad about is that they're apparently basing this on Android Automotive, because that's fine.

Android Automotive is a low- low level thing as the story says which is it's it's not android auto they are different things which is always confusing and they're not going to support android auto which is also bananas it's android automotive based so it's a it's open source with google stuff on top of it and it's it's a low level thing that's built into a car it's not it's not mirroring from your. It's built into the car. I like the fact that they say at no extra cost for eight years, that's a suggestion that they're building in, I guess, some cellular data service that you will just get for eight years when you buy your car, which is good. is good, that will have navigation. That's good, right? Like everybody really does rely on essentially internet navigation. And so to have that for eight years when you buy your car, I think is a good, without them having to upsell you or saying, sorry, your in-car navigation now doesn't work, especially since they're going to integrate it with presumably, you know,

self-navigation features of various kinds, right? Okay. My problem. Oh, and by the way, the other part that made me mad is they will offer other applications such as Spotify, Audible, and other services. Okay. Here's the thing. So GM's basically saying, look, don't worry about it. We're going to have all the same stuff that's on your smartphones in our app platform. So don't worry about it. It's going to be fine. This is frustrating because first off, the arrogance of this whole move, right? Because this is, and this is not the first, right? Because there are other companies that are like this too. They're saying, look, we, your car company, are going to be the ones who build the software for your car. It's just going to be us again.

I know there was that brief moment where your cell phone operating system platform owner was building the great interface for your infotainment system. But we don't like that. We want it back. So we're going to build it. But don't worry, it'll be best in class. Everybody's going to be not falling over themselves to build an app for the GM EV platform. They're all going to be there. And I think to myself, well, I use Overcast for podcasts. That's not going to be there. And I think to myself, well, I use Overcast for podcasts. That's not going to be there. I use Apple Music, not Spotify.

Is that going to be there? And the larger point is, like, I can get behind the idea that, well, look, for the best experience, and if you're using our auto navigation, you really ought to use our navigation system, which is based on Google Maps. It's like, great. Fine. And Google Assistant. That's all fine. But to block CarPlay and Android Auto entirely, not only is that frustrating because I feel like me and everybody else in the world, our smartphone is not only a thing that we update way more often than our car, but it's a very personal thing. It's got our data, it's got our settings, it's got our preferences, and it's got

our apps. And we choose apps based on it being on our phone generally, right? That's why we choose it. And the beauty of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto is that when I'm in a car and I've got a thing that's playing in an audio book app of my choice or a music app of my choice or a podcast app of my choice, I can control it in a nice way instead of having to reach for my phone. And there's a let them eat cake moment in this thing, too, where they say basically, like, for other things, use Bluetooth. And it's like, Bluetooth sucks, right? Like Bluetooth is, I don't have CarPlay on my cars. So, you know, this is, so I've never, I've never had that. Jamie's got it on hers, but now that car is with her in Oregon.

So I don't get to use it anymore. But like, and I've used it on rentals and all that. And it's really nice. The problem, then I come home and our cars don't have it, is like, oh, you're listening in Overcast and you'd like to choose a different podcast or you'd like to skip a chapter or, and it's like, well, too bad. Too bad. Bluetooth will let you skip 30 seconds, maybe, if you're lucky. And we might show the album art depending on when your car was manufactured. And then a 2012 car, it's a little shaky, might not show the album art. So the fact, like, this is GM saying, we're better than Apple and Google at this.

We're going to say what apps you use in your car. And we're going to make, essentially, what they're saying is our interests are you use in your car and you're, we're going to make essentially what they're saying is we're, our interests are more important than your interests here. And the navigation thing is a dodge, which is, is that a GM? I think that's not a GM. I think that's Chrysler.

They're, they're dodging the issue. They're, they're, they're saying, oh, but we need it for navigation. It's like,

yeah, you don't need to prevent me from listening to my podcast the way I want to listen for navigation. You don't need that. You could very easily say, if you want to use our in-car navigation things, you can't use, you can't use Apple maps on your phone.

You need to use the in-car navigation. You could just do that and it would be fine, but you're like, no, they must never see it. They must never see something else. And like, you know, so chances are they're basically saying, look, do you want to listen to podcasts and buy a GM EV in 2025? You're going to need to use the podcast app that we decided was okay and that somebody put on our platform.

And otherwise you can't. so infuriating um and arrogant because again this is i'll bring in tesla and rivian as examples of car companies that are like won't do carplay uh and won't do android auto and the arrogance is sort of like no no no no no we're the best who who better at designing a touchscreen-based software platform than a car company and that's the whole point of Android Auto and CarPlay is not you. My cell phone provider that I get a new phone every year or two and is updating the software all the time and has a rich app library, that's who I want to go with and who I care about. And I appreciate that you're my car and you want to do stuff for me. And if you do stuff for me in certain ways, that's great. But my smartphone

means something to me. It's important to me. And when Apple did their weird next generation CarPlay announcement at WWDC last year, they had that statement about how like what 75% of the people who buy new cars in the United States said that carplay was a must for them, essentially. That they needed to have carplay. Or was important. It was important to them in some way. This is GM saying, yes, but if you want our cars, you've got to give it up. Which really seems like a self-inflicted wound here.

But again, this really has the scent of two things. It is a somebody somewhere in the corporate structure said, we want to lock this down. We're going to lock them out. We don't want cell phones are competing with the car for people's interests and the car should win. Which is bananas. And then two is

how do we upsell them if it's all on board their phone? We want to control that like we did with OnStar. We want to build that like we did with OnStar. We want to build in all sorts of things. So when a person in their seventies, who's not even driving their car anymore, but it's a Pontiac or whatever, and it's in the garage, and this is what happened with my mother. And they're paying OnStar $30, $20 every single month in case they get in a car accident. And it's like, but your phone does that now too and they're like all right we need to refresh this technology and find

another way to suck 20 or 30 dollars or 40 dollars or whatever every month out of everybody who buys our car you know we want that money and that's the other motivator here so it's very frustrating i feel like it didn't need to be this way. It immediately makes me not interested in buying GM vehicles for GM EVs, right? Like immediately. It's like, it's such a self-inflicted wound because all you need to say is, sure, you can bring in your phone for that. But like for the nav and for some other amazing innovative things we're doing, you're going to need to use the onboard.

But yeah, you can plug in your phone for your music or your apps or whatever. Like we don't care. And instead of like, no, stay away. We're more important than your smartphone. And that if I have to boil it down, that's the thing that drives me crazy about this for GM, for Tesla, for Rivian, for anybody who says we don't want smartphone platforms in our car is they're so delusional that the car, the in-car experience not only is going to be as good as those phones, because it's not, but that people have more affinity for their car screen than the phone that they carry with them all day and all night and like it's just it's delusional so what i'm saying is good luck gm but uh it's bad that's my rant i guess it's

terrible what are they doing what a step backward i thought we had gone beyond this but apparently not i was wondering like where is next generation carplay like when i was preparing for the show today and like i found an article which i maybe i'd forgotten about this or probably wasn't paying attention to it specifically because i have no car that would would have no intention of a car that would support next generation carplay uh that they're not shipping until late 2023 but they are car shipping this year from a bunch of brands like acura aldi the list goes on there's a bunch of 14 automakers will be shipping cars by the end of this year with the next generation carplay i actually expect we

will see more of this at wwdc this year they'll show it off in a little bit more detail maybe with some actual this is what it's going to look like in this car as opposed to here's a car concept. And we speculated about this and when Sam was on last summer we speculated about it too. There's sort of two ways that this could go.

I think the most likely scenario is that there's like either there's an API of some kind or Apple has literally done the work to connect with every single carmaker that's a partner to get access to the low-level data that's coming from the car and display it in this next-generation CarPlay. I feel like that's the way they should do it. I feel like it should be a collaboration between the two companies

because there's only a limited amount of companies that it can be. They could build like an Android automotive sort of low-end thing, but Sam was very much like, it doesn't sound like Apple and it would be a lot of work and they're not going to do it. But what you could do is have, you know, so you go to Audi or

whoever else, Nissan, and you say, can your in-car car real time operating system provide, um, provide data live, you know, to us for us to display. Or the,

the other thing Sam talked about is, or it's a theming thing where like, we're going to put up a box here with the speed and you're gonna tell you're gonna put the speed there right where it's like working with the cars in car system there's some different ways that they could do it but that's my guess too is that it's like it's mega car play where it's like car play that's super integrated but it's not like running on the low level which means that if your phone's not there it still works. To GM's point about we don't want our car to not work when there's not a paired smartphone with it. Like, totally.

You don't want that. But then you want to have it be this upgraded experience. And, yeah, I just, I find it fascinating the GM, again, I think they're high on their own supply here, is like, no we don't need we don't need uh carplay and android auto and this isn't just about carplay it's like literally we don't need anybody to connect their smartphone we have built our own bespoke automotive stack and people are gonna love it it's like even and here's a prediction even if it's good when they ship it the other thing that's gonna happen is it's never to advance at the same rate as every other computing platform does. And so it's

going to become old and boring and bad when everybody else is zooming forward with new apps and new features and stuff that you would get to upgrade your car. When you upgrade your phone right now, you upgrade your car, right? With CarPlay or Android Auto, and that won't be the case with this. So

I don't know what they're, again, they're chasing incremental subscription revenue. And also they just believe that people just love their car platform, which is bananas, but there it is. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by FitBard. Getting fitter is one of those things that can have knock-on effects in other areas of your life that you might not otherwise expect. Maybe having more energy, sleeping better. Honestly, for me, being able to play video games for longer was like something that I

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Our thanks to Fitbod for their support of this show and RelayFM. Room around up, Jason Snell. Yeehaw! room around up jason snell yeehaw ming chi quo is not very optimistic about whether apple can create its quote iphone moment with the headset and subsequently delayed mass production to the middle to end of q3 because of this quo believes that this adds uncertainty as to whether apple will be debuting the device at wwdc seems i mean we've been saying for a long time that in some ways wwdc is the perfect place to unveil it because it's a new platform and they want developers to get on board and that because it's a new product that is not replacing an existing product, they can pre-announce it.

So I'm not sure. I mean, at some point, maybe we were expecting that they would announce it. I don't know. Announce a huge product like that and then ship it immediately. I sort of always expected that it would ship later. So if it doesn't ship until the fall, not only is that not unreasonable, but it actually gives them, like with the Apple Watch, it gives them a second event to introduce the product. I think that this has always been the plan. I think that Kuo has a piece of information and is extrapolating

and I don't think he's extrapolating correctly. The information that he seems to have is, this isn't going to ship in volume until later in the year. And that doesn't seem unreasonable to me, but then he's extrapolating, oh, maybe they won't announce it. And it's like, I don't know. I don't think that makes sense. It seems like this is the right time, the right time to announce it. And then they say, look again, for those who have forgotten the lesson of what was

that 2014, um, Apple announced the Apple watch in September and shifted in in, what, April of the next year? So you can do that. Like, you can only do it once, right? You can't undercut that product the next time. They've always done it. Every time they've had a brand new product category, they always do it that way. Because you can.

There's no... Because you can. What is the Sinclair effect? The Osborne effect. That's effect? The Osborne effect. That's it. The Osborne effect. So that was the idea. There was the Osborne computer, and they had one available, and they showed off a better,

more powerful model coming later. Our company's survival depends on you buying the Osborne 1. By the way, next year, we'll have a much better computer, the Osborne 2. And everyone's like, well, we'll wait for that one. And it's like, oh, no. We're going to die. So that's not a thing. Considering the things we've been talking about recently,

like Apple showing it to the top 100 and that kind of stuff, I can't imagine that something has happened in the last couple of weeks where they're like, well, we've got to change our plans completely. I was talking to a friend of the show one true john john vorhees about this and he mentioned i can make a good point of like when they showed off the original iphone like all the stories that have come since of like that thing was holding on with string and good wishes that like if steve did things in the wrong order the demo would fail right like absolutely no they were sitting in the audience going like, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.

And then, you know, it didn't do that. But, and they undoubtedly had multiple backup phones on, right, for like, oh, well, let's go to this next one. Right? Because, yeah, it wasn't, well, I mean, I got to get my hands on one the next day or two days later and several of the apps just weren't there right like my my big memory is that i tapped on the notes app and an image a screenshot of the notes app appeared

i was like oh i expect if press get to see the headset which i still think is an if that's what it will be like like you might not even be able to use it. I think it'll be, my guess is that it will be a demo. Even if we get to try it, which is, I agree is a big if, because of the, it's not quite the same thing as like walking up and, and picking up a phone,

right? Like it's actually, if we get to try it, I suspect it'll be like, you have a 15 minute window at 345 to come and try it for, you know, for those 15 minutes. And it's going to walk through this set path.

And it's going to be put it on and you're going to be in an environment where they tell you to do stuff or you turn around and look around and they're like, okay, we're taking you to the next environment. But I don't think it's going to be, maybe it'll be a totally, again,

scripted walkthrough kind of thing. Like when the Apple Watch, that first Apple Watch thing, they're like, oh, but don't touch it. And one of them was like, you can hold it. scripted walkthrough kind of thing. Like when the Apple Watch, that first Apple Watch thing, they're like, oh, but don't touch it. And one of them was like, you can hold it. And it was running a loop.

It was like running a demo loop. So you could see what it looked like on your wrist, but it wasn't interactive. It'll be something like that, right? Where it'll be like, well, I tried it, but because it won't be ready. Yep. And don't forget the demo pre-recorded,

edited, right? Like, yes. It's like, even if, because it won't be ready yep and don't forget the demo pre-recorded edit right like yes it's like a even if i'm even if they wanted to go back to like presentations i don't think they'd do it with this one no you have you have so much lenience available to you in the demo yes for this product nothing can go wrong because you can just edit it like let's talk about what mark german had to say about this but he referenced when uh the iphone 10 demo and the face unlock didn't work right and and craig had to change phone which i completely forgotten about until we mentioned that well like that wouldn't happen with this because it would be a pre-recorded video that they would have made you know probably

even the next couple of weeks or whatever and exactly then you don't have to worry about any of that so speaking of which mark german um in his power on newsletter suggests that you know well he still sounds very confident that wwdc will be the debut quote from the newsletter the showcase at wwdc will likely include the headset itself but also its onboard xros operating system accompanying services and perhaps most critically a software development kit and platform that will let developers write new types of apps i feel like that this is it like i feel like if they're not doing this now i kind of don't even know why they're doing wwdc this year um this is is it. I would be flabbergasted if there is no headset

because they can just say, as I'm sure they will, shipping later this year. That's it. Or we'll have more to say later this year and that's kind of how they'll leave it. But there'll be the development kit available. It also means they may,

because remember the Quo report is mass production. When Mark says a software development kit available it also means they may because remember the quo report is mass production when mark says a software development kit and platform it's possible that there will be limited quantities of headsets available with with a version of you know maybe they're the real headsets hardware that developers will be able to attach to a Mac and do development over the summer. And you're like, well, won't that get out? Well, it's like, well, sure, it'll get out. But if they aren't running the OS, if they're literally set up to just run things on a developer unit, then you're not getting the full experience.

So they could go down that path and still keep some delight for when they actually ship the product. So there's lots of options in play here. Because I wonder about that too. We've talked about it. How do you develop a VR app without a VR piece of hardware, right? Ultimately, you do need something, whether that's there. And it's a hard time, since their hardware is so advanced, it's a hard time since their hardware is so advanced it's hard time i have a hard time imagining that they're going to say oh yeah just use someone else's hardware in the meantime it won't work everything we've heard about what they're doing nobody else is doing it the way they're doing it no one else has if it works right if it works how

it's supposed to nobody's got hardware that is as good as this yeah so that'll be something else to watch the closest might be playstation in some things if you did like a which obviously would not work right because the processing's on the ps5 but like yeah so like there isn't there isn't really anybody that's that can do this so there's no other way to test it no he's not tested fully so basically like i expect ninji quo is correct in what he's saying that there is a potential they want to hold it a little bit longer before producing them maybe they have something else they want to do to the hardware to make it more reliable make it better or whatever but i don't think that changes apple

showing it all off during wwc mark german is also reporting that watch os 10 will feature quote notable changes to the user interface marking a fairly extensive upgrade for the apple watch interesting and he says because the apple watch itself isn't going to change very much so which i just can't do something it hurts me i've decided now when I get my next Apple Watch, which I will get a new watch in September, I will go to the Ultra. I'm hoping and expecting there will be another Apple Watch Ultra

and then I will upgrade to that one. Because at this point I have to have something different because I just can't keep I can't stand the same design of the Apple watch consistently forever. It's driving me mad. I know that about you.

So I really, I really want, I would, I would, I want an ultra now, but I'm just not going to do it in like April. Like I'm not going to do that. So I'm just going to wait.

So what, what, what does an extensive app, a watch OS update look like? like and i what i keep thinking is it's got to be a major interface change right so we don't know what that what that could like what could you do well i so just off the top of my head and this will be good draft fodder i guess um off the top of my head well there there is the um letting people build third-party watch faces or parts of watch faces right like more dynamic like could you could you build watch faces out of like okay i get the fear of third-party watch

faces and maybe they don't go there but maybe they do but i start to think about like ways you could fudge it where you could say like a watch face development kit and you get and it's like a lego set right where it's like you get to use it's carplay for apple watch and these locations and well it's it's like you can build david smith you can build your own watch face but you need to build it out of the parts that we give you right we're not going to let you use random parts you have to use our parts which would be frustrating but it might lead to better watch faces than the stock watch faces depending on what they do there or they could just say sure open it up to tell me like how different would that be to swift ui like isn't that kind of what swift ui is yeah i mean, I mean, this is the question, right?

I feel like they could just go there. I mean, David Smith is, this is the annoying thing about David is that he has shown us that like, here's how you build a watch face on Apple Watch, a custom watch face. And he builds them as apps for fun because he's like that.

But he shows that you can do it. And I think also he shows that you could do it, but it's hard. And also there's nothing stopping Apple from saying they go in the app store and they have to be approved, right? So if people are like, oh, well, they're going to just do things that violate copyright and stuff like that. Well, they could say, look, we have a very strict policy about watch faces and it's going to be analyzed, but we're going to let you do it or use the watch face developer kit. Those are, those are options off the top of my head. Some other thoughts I had.

Complications, right? What about more dynamic complications? Having the ability to one, have your complications change based on content or based on time of day or something like that. That would be interesting.

What if they were interactive? So the ability to tap on a complication and get like a little quick thing that popped up that gave you more information or let you jump into an app or do a response or something like that. That might be an interesting way to go. I keep thinking about stuff like that, like differences to watch faces, differences to complications, differences to app launching. I don't know. Notifications, I'm not sure. It feels like the core watch experience is the face.

And so if they're going to do an overhaul, it would be like the conception of the face. And the other option is like maybe the apps are going to get a lot more power. That's the other thought I had. Maybe when they're overhauling the OS, it really is like saying we're going to give watchOS apps a lot more ability than they currently have and make it a little more iPhone-like in its independence and its power. But that's just all off the top of my head. I still think it comes back to faces and complications because that's the core of the whole device. because that's the core of the whole device. One of the things that a lot of people were talking about with the original Apple Watch reviews is that Apple didn't really do much in watchOS

to take advantage of the larger screen and the kind of slightly different screen shape. I was wondering if potentially the Apple Watch Ultra was a big enough hit that it prompted them to look at how could we tweak and adapt the watchOS look and feel for that device and or like the apple watch os team maybe didn't know about the about the device like maybe sure some of the ui designers didn't know and then when they saw it they were like oh we could do

this we could do that i don't know if there would be enough time for them to have made those changes but possibly but that could be maybe part of it but yeah i agree with you the biggest changes should be you know in what people are seeing on their watch like that's the main use there is a lot of user interface in the watch right but the majority of it is the watch face and the complications and if they can make changes there because really to the apps i don't know how much you could realistically change there's just not a lot of screen to make a bunch of ui change right but it would be cool to see more i mean i yes watch faces is what i want because i think that there are people in the world that could do a better job and i would like to see what they could do. Yeah. And complications again. I love like apps on the watch are fine.

You're right. Like what more could they do? They can have more power. But what I really love about apps is that apps shine through into watch faces. Right? Like that's the power. That's my favorite thing about the Apple Watch is in theory, you have an app that you care about, but you're not running that app on the Apple Watch all the time. It's there if you need it, but it's not really running most of the time.

But it's shining through a little complication spot on your watch face. That's where, for my money, that's where the magic happens. So anything they can do to make that better, whether it's more dynamic, more interactive, or just updated more, like, let's do that. Because I think that is the real secret sauce about the Apple Watch is picking your own complications and having the data from apps show up in the right place the way you want it at the right time too, which it kind of doesn't right now, right? Like it doesn't do that. And I know that there's a lot of complexity that goes into that. How do you say, I want this thing to show during the day

and this thing to show at night or whatever. But like, I would love the ability to have my complications change based on the data and the complications, for example. Like the classic one that we've we've said before is i want to see my timers when i've got a timer running but i don't want a timer icon on my watch face all the time right that's a context thing but you can't you can't do that i feel like in the western kind of setting that the

river roundup takes place corral it's a kind of corral we should maybe have like a lake which is called like display lake or something like that because we spend a lot of time talking about displays now it's the display meadow yeah like it's right over there it's where the horses are it's the display display meadow looks like the meadow from the Windows XP desktop. That's how those things tie together. Reports from the Elec and Ross Young suggest that while Apple is focused

on an OLED iPad Pro, they are also working on a 13-inch OLED MacBook Air, possibly not shipping until 2026. It's expected that this would be the first OLED laptop. Now, my question on this is, if the rumors we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks suggest that OLED's going to make the iPad Pro

like two times more expensive, what would that do to the MacBook Air? I don't know. And why would they go that route? So Ming-Chi Kuo says, compared to mini LED, laptops that use OLEDs have the advantage of being thinner and lighter

and offering more diverse form factor design options, which like, okay, that makes sense why you would want that technology in that device. But if it's going to make the price more expensive i don't see it you know unless there's this you know there's this rumored breakthrough but even then it was said it probably wasn't going to make that much of a difference so like i just i can't work out why a macbook air would get an oled screen if it's going to increase the price on a device where they struggle when it comes to pricing anyway right in our in our inflationary era it may just be that we will

never see a new macbook air for 9.99 right yeah but i wonder about this one like at some point you can't have a whole stack of macbook airs with various prices ranging from well I mean I guess you can but it seems weird to me prices ranging from $9.99 up to like what $19.99 I think that's the question is the MacBook Air is very popular but one of the reasons it's popular is because it's cheaper than the MacBook Pro and then you stick an OLED in it and it makes it more expensive like I can see that being an option or being a different product. Like maybe that's the MacBook. But like to have the MacBook Air be way more expensive is,

that seems weird to me. But we may end up in a scenario where that happens, right? Where there's like an M3 MacBook Air that looks like the one we've currently got. And then there's an M4 MacBook Air that's's oled but it starts like 400 higher still and that's just how it works from now on is you pay more for the oled model but then what's a macbook pro you know what i mean like at that point i know also the the i get that my thinner and lighter is good right the diverse form factor design options line here fascinates me because the rumor that they're working on MacBook Pros with OLED, that makes more sense to me. With OLED and touchscreen and convertible, maybe there's something there.

But in a MacBook Air, I don't know. Unless, again, thebook air that they're going for is a convertible maybe the macbook air is so thin and light that it's just a screen my concern is that like maybe apple don't understand why the macbook air is so successful and they think people love macbook air but i don't think people love macbook air people love a mac laptop that's under a thousand dollars yes like they're not in love with the brand like they're in like that brand macbook air right they're in love with can i get an apple laptop which i want an apple laptop but i don't want to spend fifteen hundred dollars for it

yep yep i i i agree i i my my fear is that is exactly what you said, which is that Apple's not, doesn't really understand some aspects of its own success. My hope is that these rumors are all about Apple actually making changes. Like these are their next moves on the Mac laptop, which is the incredibly important, most important part of the Mac. Right. And that we're not seeing the whole picture and that there is a real, I mean, right?

Like, I doubt that this is scattershot. There's a strategy here. It's just hard to see what the strategy is right now. You know, there was, um, so David in the Discord is asking, like, I really wonder what the sales split is between the M1 and the M2. There was a story that I excluded from

Rumor Roundup today because it kind of felt like it was really in the weeds um i don't know if you'd seen it but it was that at the beginning of the year apple cut m2 manufacturing for like six weeks they just didn't make any and then it came back in february and they are making 50% less M2 chips than they were before. And that's the entire M2 line of chips. And it's because of there being less demand in consumer PCs. But it doesn't talk about the M1, which is still in the original MacBook Air. Right.

I do wonder. I do wonder about that. $999 is a pretty great price for a pretty great laptop, even though it's not the latest and greatest. So you better keep selling them the M1, which is a fantastic computer. It's just not. And in fact, if you're in an environment where you've got a lot of older MacBook Airs, it looks like them, right?

It behaves like them. It looks like them, even though it's Apple Silicon, whereas the M2 is different. So it actually kind of fits in and it's $999 and education price is even lower. So yeah.

We've spoken about the iPhone 15 Pro possibly losing its physical volume buttons and mute switches in favor of capacitive ones. A MacRumors source is reporting that users will be able to customize the pressure sensitivity of these new capacitive buttons so that they would still work more reliably with cases and while wearing gloves. Quote, the new capacitive buttons will detect presses, holds, and respond to various levels of pressure via the use of a new force touch style mechanism

and taptic engine feedback. This is something I was worried about or thinking about, like it might be difficult for people of like, you know, the home button when they put that capacitive home button, it just didn't work if you had gloves on. Unless you had those like very particular type of gloves,

right? Those like ones that would work that way. Which is dumb because the pressure sensitivity should be enough, right? That it should be. Is that it shouldn't, shouldn't require both a capacitive, like it should be the pressure response should do it.

Although I get, you don't want a false press, but like a physical button can have a false press too. What troubles me about this report is the idea that users will be able to customize the pressure sensitivity. That sounds terrible to me. But it might be a thing that you might have to do. But this is what I'm saying is, but yeah, but if I have to do that, then they to do but but this is what i'm saying is but yeah but

if i have to do that then they blew it right like what what needs to happen is if i put it in a case and the case adds some pressure well like the software should be like even if the software needs interaction the software should be like oh it looks like my button's being pressed down uh you know should we adjust it or it should just adjust it and not even ask you. But if you end up having to go into a setting to adjust the sensitivity, that seems like a real loss. That's a big boo-boo. It won't bother me because I don't use a case on my iPhone. I don't use a case either but we're monsters. You are in favor though

of the idea of the iPhone action action button yeah i was delighted to listen to connected a couple weeks ago and federico went on this path where he was like oh mike i you know they're going to do this thing and what does it mean and i'm sitting there listening to this thinking it means that there's an action button and at the very end of his whole thing he was like yeah or maybe it's a programmable thing like an action button i'm like ah uh federico you got there but i i just decided to write that column anyway because federico didn't write it and i wanted to put it out there basically saying i like i know there are people i saw some people on mastodon who are like but i can reach into my pocket and feel the position of the switch exactly

and know that it's silenced okay well i can never remember which one it is. So I always flip it and then flip it back on and feel the buzz and go, okay, now it's on. And two, mine is always on. My phone is always silenced. So it's kind of a waste for that thing for me to be there. And while I don't want to take it away from people who really care about it, I would love for that to be replaced by something that I could assign something else to instead. I think that would be great. I don't know even what I would assign to it, but I would love to be able to assign a different something to that button. Maybe it's the flashlight.

Maybe it's the camera. I don't know, but something to that button because I never, my phone's always silenced. So I don't need to worry about the ring silence switch. If you enjoy this show and you would like more of this show, which are those two things feel like they go together, you should subscribe to Upgrade Plus. This is our membership that we offer.

You can go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up for just $5 a month or $50 a year and you get a ton of great benefits. So every single week you get longer episodes of Upgrade with no ads. We remove the ads and you get bonus content every week. These are sometimes challenges. Sometimes we talk about some stuff going on behind the scenes. Sometimes we talk about some other things going on in our tech lives. So Jason's going to be talking about some smart home stuff that he's been working on. We're going to talk about that in Upgrade Plus today. But when you sign up for Upgrade Plus, you become a RelayFM member.

Those things are together. So you get access to our wonderful RelayFM members Discord, which is full of thousands of like-minded individuals talking about all manner of things across tech and life. And we have tons of great channels. It's a wonderful moderated place where you can come feel comfortable express yourself talk to people other relay fm listeners people that share interests like you um you also get our special episodes going all the way back to the beginning of our membership so we do these special crossover episodes every single year or special bonus out of the norm episodes from a bunch of our shows.

You'll also get our monthly content, like we do Spotlight, where Cathy interviews one of the hosts here at RelayFM with questions submitted by our Discord members. You also get Backstage, where me and Stephen talk about kind of what we're working on behind the scenes at RelayFM and answer more questions from you as well. So it's all community driven. But the biggest thing about subscribing to Upgrade Plus is longer ad-free content and you help support the production of this show, which means a lot to me and Jason.

So go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you can sign up today. Thank you if you do. Thank you. Let's do some hashtag ask I don't know hashtag. Let's do some ask upgrade questions to finish out today's show. Anonymous asks let's do some hashtag ask i don't know hashtag let's do some ask upgrade questions to finish out today's show anonymous asks could you explain what podcast does currently mean

by saying a quote downturn in the ad market what is going on relative to an average year and has relay fm been severely impacted that phrase I don't know who said downturn in the ad market, but everyone's saying the words like this, like downturn into something. I think a minute ago I said downturn in the PC market, like this just downturn, like economic headwinds. These things have just come together. So I guess I probably be best to talk about this. However, I don't run advertising at RelayFM anymore. We recently promoted Carrie, who was originally my assistant many years ago. She is now the chief advertising officer at RelayFM and is now running advertising, which is great for me because I get to focus more on the content, which is wonderful.

But I am still very involved in the business. So basically, it's kind of weird right now. So advertising is harder at the moment, but not like in a beginning of the pandemic kind of hard. So when the pandemic hit, everybody was canceling their deals because nobody knew if their businesses would still be around. Nobody would know what they should be spending their money on. Should they be using their advertising budgets to pay their people? So it was like cancel, cancel, cancel.

And it was difficult. But at the moment, there is either, depending on where you live, there is a recession or there's threat of recession. And especially like, you know, a lot of our shows and just podcasting in general tends to have pretty techie-focused companies that do the advertising. Even a lot of the direct-to-consumer companies like your mattresses and stuff, they tend to be pretty tech-focused and so are maybe a little bit more hesitant of spending right now. So what we are seeing is it is not potential catastrophe like we saw during COVID, but advertising is just harder to come by right now. And across RelayFM, certain shows are impacted by it more than others, but every show is feeling the impact in some way.

But at the moment, and I don't foresee this changing, this is something that we'll be able to weather perfectly fine. What I will say is membership is wonderful here. And it was why we created membership in the first place, because of the risk and the threat during COVID, where we not created but revamped significantly our membership program. And that helps out a lot of your favorite shows and so please if a show at relay fm that you enjoy has a membership program consider it because it helps the hosts um but yeah we're not we haven't been severely impacted but we have definitely been impacted by this and we continue to work through it so it's a thing that's happening

uh different shows different networks everybody's impacted in their own way. We've done a lot of work to try and mitigate against potential risks over the last few years, which is why I think that even though we're feeling a pinch right now, we're more than fine. But please do support memberships of your shows because it really does help the hosts.

That money doesn't go to RelayFM. It goes directly to the hosts. So, you know, it is something that I know our hosts enjoy, and obviously, and it provides a level of comfort and security, which I know I feel with the memberships that I have. It's made me feel more comfortable than, you know, and I would be a lot more worried right now for myself if it wasn't for the membership stuff so do you have anything to add on this jason i don't

that's fine i mean this is my world right this is your world and and i'll just say uh it happens yeah like this is what happens ad ad markets go up and down and and the beauty of the membership thing is that membership is much more constant yeah and ad markets flow up and down and there are going to be times when we have four ads and a mic at the movies and they're going to be times when we have two ads or fewer. And that's just, we call it seasonal, but it's not quite seasonal. It's just that happens. Although there is also seasonal changes too.

Yeah, that's also true, right? But there's the mega trend of just things come and go and uh it just happens like right like and i've been through a bunch of those cycles and it just you know it it it it happens there's nothing you can do but kind of soldier on we've been running relay for nine years this year and i've seen this happen a handful of times and i've also seen the seasonal stuff like a reason you may be hearing a lot of people talk about this now is like, so we've been running this company for nine years. Every year for the last nine years,

April has been the month where we have the least advertising spend. Like companies buying into ads. I know, I feel like I know where this is. April for a lot of companies is the start of the financial year. So a lot of companies don't have their budget set when it comes to April. But that's something that you need nine years of experience sometimes to understand. So we're doing fine. But thank you for your support.

Max says, my wife and I recently purchased our first home. The garage is going to become my new office, studio, game room place. I was wondering what advice and recommendations, Jason, you had for working and recording in a garage or non-ideal acoustic environment. Well, my garage is actually a pretty good acoustic environment. So I don't know if I have a lot of advice. We have, it was bare wood at the top. We, we insulated and the insulation is actually in with these kind of like, it's almost like tarps. It's plastic material

that's taped. As a result, there's no reflection off of the ceiling and the ceiling is high. I have some curtains that I hung mostly just to, so I don't have to stare at the storage that's the other part of our garage, but curtains are great for this. Putting stuff, furniture, stuff on the walls, anything that like makes the echo deflect or soften, you know, books on bookshelves, things like that, that all helps. Carpets.

Yeah, carpets on the floor. All of these things are helpful in doing this um and then uh i mean for and that's the acoustic environment that's not necessarily for podcasting that's also just to make it less echoey and kind of annoying um beyond that i i don't know i mean it depends do you have a insulated garage door or you're going to be hearing everything from the street mine is lightly insulated if i had known I was going to work out here, I would have had it be max insulation, but I didn't. I have a door. Door is important. I can close the door. That's a big, important thing. I don't know. I don't know what else.

You have any thoughts about this? Well, I did think I am in a horrifically poor environment for acoustics in my studio. It's just a very big room with concrete floors and brick walls and it's perfectly square, like rectangular, right? So it's terrible. And I mitigated this in a few ways. One, you turned me on to the idea of carpet remnants. So there were these companies that like they they have these large pieces of

carpet which had turned into rugs effectively and they could be you know off cuts from fitting out an office building or something and so we were able to get a very very large rug made to our specifications which which helped a lot and also just comfortable um but for me i mean you probably don't need this max but for where i record i use acoustic blankets on my left and right side and that makes a huge difference for why you don't hear a ton of echo in my recording where if i took these blankets away you would i mean i even hear it if the because the blankets kind of they kind of box me in on the sides and if one of them is angled a little bit where in the way it shouldn't be i can hear more echo so that's the thing that i use but you probably don't need that and also these are they're super ugly these acoustic guns a larger

piece of advice for anybody who's living in or working in a converted space like this so like we could have a lot of people in this neighborhood um convert their garages and they just turn them into rooms right they turn them into rooms, right? They turn them into rooms or multiple rooms in the house. And we didn't do that. We didn't want to spend the money on that. We didn't want to do that. But what we did do, so it's bare concrete floor, right?

So what we did do is something that Mike mentioned in passing there. a local carpet store that specializes in remnants and we got like a 12 foot by 12 foot or 12 by 10 it's an enormous carpet remnant that right so they they carpeted an office building or something but they're left with like large amounts of carpet so i got a pad that they cut to that size and that remnant, which they stitch up. So it's like, it's an enormous rug. Essentially it's stitched up on the ends. It's not ragged on the ends. It's really nice. And it's got backing and then it's got the pad underneath. And as a result, my part of the office is carpeted, even though I'm on a bare garage floor and it improves the quality of life so much to have something that, so if you're not going to convert, cause this is the, this question seems to suggest that, that it's going to be the garage still. I would say that's a big quality of life

improvement. If you've got ways to like, I painted the walls, a color that pleases me. We actually put up some sheet rock because there was some bare exposed wall, but like the carpet was really important because my first few months working out here, I was working on bare concrete and it was cold and unpleasant. And, you know, it just being in a carpeted space, it feels more finished and real. Even though I, I could, you know, spend a weekend and pull everything out of our garage and park a car in it i'm not going to do that but i could because we didn't decide we decided not to spend the money to permanently convert it into part of the interior of the house and so i want to give people an idea of this because i think it explains that the why these things are a good deal i don't necessarily endorse

this but we found a company called designer carpet in the uk i got a six by four meter carpet rug for 350 pounds which is just like such a great deal it's like it's huge with delivery they delivered it so that's like 18 by 12 feet that's it's a very very large huge very large but again you could also pick it up and take it somewhere else. It's not permanent, but it feels like you're in an actual nice carpeted space. So yeah, big remnant fans here. Recommended for all rental accommodations, this idea. Because you can just put it down, take it up, and they cut it to size.

It's fantastic. Yeah. And Ben asks, how much storage do you use on your iPhone? I'll start here so you have the ability to go and open the part of your phone. I don't have my phone with me.

I'll just go. I'll be back. You go on. I'll tell people about mine. I have a 512 gigabyte storage size on my iPhone. I upped to 512 because I like to keep all of my photos on my device. And I was getting to the point a few years ago where I was starting to get close to the 256. And I have passed that now.

So I decided to go up. So I use 287 gigabytes of storage on my phone. The vast majority of that is my photos. And I just like to have my photos library all there. So if I ever want to pull up an image, I can do that and I don't have to go elsewhere. And I expect that for me, I will just keep over time increasing like i can stay on the 512 for years now because i'm at 287 now so i reckon i've got like got a good amount of time before i would need to upgrade to a larger potential size i don't even know if apple does i don't remember a larger iphone size in 512 but they will eventually because that's just the way

these things go there's a there go. There's a terabyte. So I have pulled it out now to get the exact number, but I think I'm like 161 gigabytes of my 287. It's just photos. Makes sense, right? Where are you at? 48 gigabytes.

Of total storage used? Yeah. So you don't keep your photos on device. I think you said you can't, right? Because it's just too much. Yes. They don't make an iPhone big enough even now for everything. And so it's managing that storage for me. Although it tells me there's 18 gigabytes of photo data on there.

Yeah. But it's not the whole library by a lot. And then I have some music on there because that's the thing you listen to. I mean, I went to New Zealand with this phone, right? So I loaded a lot some music on there because that's the thing you listen to. I mean, I went to New Zealand with this phone, right? So I loaded a lot of music on there that I could listen to on the flight. But I didn't load a lot of movies because I put that on my iPad.

Of course. So it's, I don't use a lot of storage is the, is what we've learned here. And then, and then, yeah. Presumably I got a lot of podcasts on there.

That's about it. Yeah, I have, for some reason, four gigabytes in YouTube, two gigabytes in Overcast. Marvel Snap is two and a half gigabytes. And then for some reason, I have 2.2 gigabytes of email in my email app. Don't know what's happening there.

I just found a game to uninstall because I don't want it anymore and it was taking up 1.8 there. I just found a game to uninstall because I don't want it anymore and it was taking up 1.8 gigabytes. I just saw a game. I mean, it's useful to do just for that, right? Which is like, oh my goodness, that's a game I haven't played since I tried it out when somebody said try it out and then I never played it again and yet it is

holding down, you know, 800 megs or something. I was like, it's got to go. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can fill in your own ask upgrade question thank you to everybody that did and does i really appreciate it please go and fill in one of your own if you would like to send us feedback or follow up snow talk questions or ask upgrade questions they all go to upgradefeedback.com you can check out jason's writing at sixcolors.com and hear his shows on the incomparable.com and here on relay fm do you have anything going on on any of your shows you'd like to mention jason

like anything special happening anything special happening not really it's it's a you know it's a quiet time um julia a Julia Alexander's about to go on vacation, so we're going to do downstream this week and then pre-record an episode for while she's on vacation. Can I make a request for downstream? Yes. I would love to know. Would you like to guest host with me? No, I don't think I can this week.

Oh, when Julia's away? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we can talk about that. It would just be upgrade. Okay, we'll talk about it. We'll negotiate. Yeah, that's true negotiate but I would like Julia's opinion on the WWE UFC merger acquisition thing I just want to know what she thinks about that

you can listen to my shows here on RelayFM and check out my work at cortexbrand.com Jason and I are 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 of Upgrade Plus. Thank you to Squarespace and FitBod for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, as always, thank you for listening and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.