Upgrade - 456: The Official Journal of Journaling

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

As rumor season kicks into high gear, we discuss Apple's potential new app, more reports about its VR headset, and some updates about forthcoming Mac hardware.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 456 today's show is brought to you by zocdoc ladder and factor my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley where where am i you're at home we're gonna talk about that later on jason's had a busy morning but that's gonna come up in follow-up because right now yes i have a snell talk question for you comes from kevin who wants to know jason if you're working on a document of some kind that features formatting do you apply the formatting as you go along like bold text underline text etc or do you do everything afterwards this is a weird apologies to kevin but i react to the idea that you write everything

first and apply formatting later as almost like like an coming from an alien yeah yeah i can see how maybe if you're writing uh first off i I mean, most of the formatting I do is just the occasional link or bold or italic. And I just do that as I write headers. I do those as I write because I'm writing in Markdown. I can see how you might from time to time end up having to go back through a document and put some structure to it. And that might be a reason to format it after the fact but for the most part to answer the question directly for the most part no um i am doing the formatting as part of my creation of documents and that it all just kind of comes out as whatever

format it needs to be in i knew the answer to this as i started writing entering this information and i bolded kevin's name in the Google Doc before I wrote it. I pressed Command B and then wrote Kevin and then pasted the document like his question into our Google Doc. I was like, yeah, I know how I am. This was one of those questions to me too where I was like I didn't think there was another way people did this. I may go back once a document's done and add some stuff, but as I'm going through,

if there's formatting I know I need, I'm going to add it. This makes me feel like Kevin is one of the former rather than the latter, you know? That Kevin applies all of the formatting at the end. Yeah, maybe so. Maybe not. Maybe Kevin thought somebody else is a formatting alien and not him i don't know i just i i find it again i think they're probably workflows where it makes

sense to do your work on the document because there's complex formatting things to do afterward but um i never even consider that for the stuff that i do if you would like to send in a question of your own to be featured to help us open an episode of upgrade in the future you can send in your snow talk question by going to upgradefeedback.com or clicking the link in your show notes and you could submit your question there. Thank you to everybody that does. We have some follow-up, Jason Snell, including something new for the show. We've been talking about this mostly on Upgrade Plus maybe over the last month or so.

If you wonder what that is, go to getupgradeplus.com. You can sign up and get additional content every single week. But we are experimenting with making short video clips of the show that we're posting on various social media outlets. Upgrade is not becoming a video podcast. In fact, we have cameras recording us right now, but we do not see each other. We don't have them turned on.

They're just making local recordings so that the podcast remains an audio-only experience. You know, it doesn't feature me saying, hey, Jason, take a look at this, and none of you an audio only experience you know it doesn't feature me saying hey jason take a look at this and none of you can see it you know um so we thought long and hard about this and this is how we've been doing it and trying to test it out so we don't want to change the experience for you but what we're trying to do here is to see it seems like this happens more and more these days that people make clips out of their podcasts. Does it actually work in helping the show find new people? That's what we're trying to find out.

Yeah. We don't know. We don't know. It's fun right now. I think people who listen to the show are having fun seeing the clips. I know the podcasts I listen to that have started doing this. I think it's kind of fun to see the clips, but they don't release the whole episode. Yeah.

And maybe down the road, we'll help us find some new people. And that would be nice too. But we're just, yeah, experimenting with it. This may be a best practice in doing podcast promotion. And we want to try it out in a way that doesn't actually impact the way we do the show. So unless there's, I mean, it's possible we'll do like a summer of fun episode or something where we do a special something and there's a video of it. But we're not planning on, like, this is not going to be a video podcast because we do not want that to be what it is.

But we'll try to post short clips of things on social media, TikTok and Instagram. I almost said Tic Tacs. Which is like, what we're going to do is we're going to make breath mints. That's our pivot. Pivot to breath mints now. Upgrade your breath. Yes, upgradebrand.com. Upgrade breath.com.

I love it. No, we're not doing that. You can find, we're posting these to Instagram and TikTok. You may have been given away the fact that me and Jason don't understand how to use TikTok. It's just, look, I've been up a long time and it's still Monday morning. Friend of the show, an official video consultant, Jeremy Burge is helping us out with that. Yes. For those who don't know, Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia, currently a gentleman of leisure, I believe, after selling Emojipedia. One of the things that he has done is he is a TikTok star about boats, about his boat in particular, his canal boat that he drives around, or pilots, I don't know, in the canals in england and he has learned a lot about um posting little video

clips to the socials and he's uh providing us advice and help and we thank him for that so i'm currently producing all the clips in the long run that will probably have to go to someone else but for now i'm trying to figure out what i want them to be like and i I would like at some point to add to your list of things, Mike. Note where you think there was a thing that happened that was fun that might be worth a clip. That's good. I could do that while I'm taking my editing notes. While you're taking your notes,

that would help me. We're just experimenting with it. We're doing them as vertical videos because again, the kids on the Tic Tacss on their breath mints what this is one of those things where seriously like to be for this to make any sense it has to hit algorithms like that otherwise there's no there's if we're doing this to try and help new people find the show you've got to be in the places where there's algorithms right now we're

trying instagram and tiktok maybe we'll try youtube in the future as well but that's i like how you said that too the places where there are algorithms we need to find the algorithms where are they get them get them in here post this to mastodon and that's fine and like existing listeners will see them right but like that i don't think that's going to help us potentially grow the audience find new people right like by putting them on master i've been posting them there as an experiment and also because it's kind of fun but yeah i think the idea is what you want is to find people who who will be inclined to discover the show because the algorithm has sort of said this is this kind of content you might be interested in and um and get some new listeners just because i think it's fun and also because i think we're

also doing this because we don't want to be the kind of people who look at a thing that seems to be a new way of doing podcast stuff and be the people who are like, no, no, no, no, no. Surely it is the children who are wrong, right? We don't want to be those people. I want to be open to this. This may end up being impractical for us.

It may not have a real benefit and and it may be too much overhead. But I think we need to experiment with it and not just poo-poo it. So we're going to give it a try. Yep. And I appreciate you pushing it. Without ruining the audio podcast by having that like, whoa, Mike, what's that? Look over there. Oh, can you believe that thing?

There's someone behind you. Whoa. Yeah. We're not doing that yeah we're not doing that we're not doing that so we mentioned you've had a busy morning uh we're recording this at what's 10 a.m for you but you've already been on a plane today yeah i i got up at i mean the alarm was set for 4 45 i was up at 4.30. We were visiting our kids. Our kids would go to college at the same college for this year only because my daughter's a senior and my son's a freshman. And so we visited them. And it turns out that the flights back and forth between Eugene and the Bay Area are limited. And there seemed to be no Sunday night flight.

So we decided we would just have the very early morning, Monday morning flight. And so we got up and took a cab to the airport and then waited at the airport and got on the plane and then had to get the Lauren to her job directly and drop her off and then come here. And then just before we started, I made some tea and, um, not my first tea of the day, but I made some tea and, uh, and made some, uh, some, uh, English muffin with peanut butter. So I would, uh, have protein in my body and be more, be as coherent as one might want on a podcast. Podcasts need protein. Everyone knows that. Yeah.

I mean, sure. Everybody needs protein. Podcasts especially. But why is this related to technology, Mike? So you sent me an iMessage this morning, which is a rare occurrence for me and you to iMessage. I don't know why we do this, but we always just talk in Slack. I think we just got used to it. We talk all the time, but we just talk in Slack. But you sent me an iMessage. I don't know why we do this, but we always just talk in Slack. I think we just got used to it.

We talk all the time, but we just talk in Slack. But you sent me an iMessage of a flighty link for me to track your flight, which was a great experience because I had a live activity on my iPhone

that I was able to monitor through the morning as you were flying. So I knew when you were landing so I could kind of plan my day out a little bit. I loved it loved i was able to take advantage of the newer feature in flighty which is to designate a flight as a friend's flight so it doesn't show up in your stats and it's in a different part of the app exactly and the iMessage experience is really

good because you sent me the link i tapped the link and it just opened the flighty app for me which i already have i'm a big fan of Flighty. If you don't have it, you get a web page that's got the information in it. Yeah, which is even better, right? That they actually have that. It's not like a... I mean, I'm sure it's like if there's a button and here's a view for details. And I'm sure that on the web view, I'm sure that takes you to like,

hey, you should get Flighty. But it's not like the web view is just like, you can't look at this without you know like which is right it's because it's meant to be shared with people that's the that's the point of it right it's like hey i'm traveling and you text your your you know person you're going to see or family member or whatever it is and say here's my flight info and they can actually see like they got off on time they're going to get on in time and all that i mean then then it took me like an hour plus to to drive plus the the shuttle to the i mean there was a lot more after we landed it took another yeah it took another uh hour and a

half to get home so yeah i was tempted to text you it'd be like five minutes to go like i'm not gonna leave you alone i'm'm not going to be alone. But the Flyte live activity I think has gotten even better since the last time I used it. I looked at it at one moment and it was giving a countdown in minutes and seconds until you were going to land. I didn't even know live activities could do that. I hadn't seen one other than the the um like the official one do like a

countdown like that just the design of the live activity is so good flighty is a like top tier application it was just another experience i'd had of it today that was uh really cool it's not cheap um and so you know it's not for everybody but it is so great so So yeah, I'm a little discombobulated today. It's because it was a very unusual morning. But now I'm just sitting at my desk doing Upgrade. So now it feels like every other Monday morning. Well, allow me to take you on a rumor roundup, Jason Snow. Maybe that will help out.

Let me give you a lay of the land, what's been going on over the last few days. Although there is a lot more bigger rumors we're going to talk about later on in the episode today we are fully in rumor season right now where the roundup has broken free and it's all over the town you know 9to5Mac is reporting that the iPhone

15 and 15 Pro may feature a frosted glass back these were leaks posted to Weibo, which have given them the indication this would occur. There is a question I have for you here, is could we be seeing a glass finish swap? So the Pro phones have had frosted glass for many years now,

and the regular phones, I said 15 Pro, I meant to say 15 Max. The iPhone 15 and 15 Max. That is my correction that I'm giving you there. 15 Plus wouldn't it be? Plus. That's the one. Plus. See I don't remember. Nobody remembers the name of this phone anymore. It's too confusing. The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus

may feature a frosted glass back. So the Pro phones have had frosted glass the regular phones have had a kind of like a matte texture regular glass i'm wondering if they're gonna flip i wouldn't call it a matte texture it's it's it's shining glass grippy and glass and it's and it's bright well okay so here's the question is the reason that the iphone uh lower models lower price models have been more colorful is because it works better with that glass? And the reason the ones on the pro models have been less colorful is because they had the frosted glass?

Or is it more just Apple's differentiation between them? Because what I don't want to see is that the low end phones get boring like the high end phones are in terms of color. Although it would be nice if the higher-end phones had color as well. But it's all a mystery, right? It is the stated opinion of the upgrade program that Apple's products should all be more colorful than they are. So if they do this, I would hate for it to mean that the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus are muted in some way. iPhone 15 and 15 plus are muted in some way that there are more, uh, that there isn't an option for something with a brighter color that Apple said, you know what? We let our color excitement get away from us. And we actually made nice colors and we can't have that. So we're going to make,

we're going to dull it all up a little bit. hope that's not the case i still don't quite understand apple strategy with color and the iphone um but i will say i'm interested in how this plays out because i have felt for this entire generation of iphones the 12 13 14 that the low-end model has been nicer looking i prefer how they look to the high-end model has been nicer looking. I prefer how they look to the high-end model because of the colors and because of the nature of that glass back. So what's it going to be? I don't know.

I mean, this is the problem is these colors. I feel color rumors are some of the worst rumors because I don't know. It just feels to me like that shaky ground like apple can make decisions color is one of those things that apple can decide later on in the process they they just need to manufacture they could have eight colors going in

and then decide on four or three when they actually ship them we don't know but yeah it's an interesting idea i mean they gotta do something, right? They want these to feel a little bit different. Otherwise, it's the exact same phone for three or four years in a row, and that's no good. So I'm remembering the pro phones are expected to get titanium frames. So there was 9to5Mac questioning

if there could be something going on there that maybe they're changing the way that the glass looks on the line in some way, maybe it will match up better with the titanium or they're just trying to potentially make the phones, as you say, but the question would be also how does titanium coloration work, right? Like if there is an anodization-like process for titanium that allows them to have it hold bright colors, then that would allow them to do bright colors on those phones. then that would allow them to do bright colors on those phones. If there isn't, and it really just needs to be shades of gray with a very subtle tint, then we're going to be back where we've been all along with those pro phones. I remember an Upgradium wrote into us a while ago, because we quick questioned that, that like titanium can be,

that color can be added to it. I remember that vaguely, yeah. What we don't know is like how much you know like yes you can add color but like is it bright or is it dull like i don't know the answer to that and we also don't know what apple will do you know because they they have their own ways of metallurgy i used my very clever upgrade search engine to see that that was in episode 441 when Josh wrote in to let us know that titanium can in fact be anodized and the colors can be quite vibrant. So maybe, dream here, dare to dream,

maybe we'll get some pro phones with brighter color options on the glass backs and on the anodized titanium or or equivalent thereof titanium frame main qqo is reporting that the 15 inch macbook air will only offer an m2 chip it previously been suggested that maybe an m2 pro would be available in this model but now is saying it will just be two configurations of the M2, probably one. This is my conjecture.

I assume this will be one with a bin graphics, some description, not a surprise. I don't think. No, if this is, if this, this computer has been described as a MacBook air.

And if it's a MacBook air, I think that implies that it doesn't have a fan. Yep. And therefore it's not going to have a pro chip in it. I think the, I think a lot of people got like ran away with this story and they're like oh it's not gonna be an m2 it's gonna be an m3 because the m3 is gonna come out and and then maybe it's gonna be the pro and all that by far the most likely scenario here is they're gonna put this thing out and then three months later or six months later they're gonna come out with an m3 macbook air and people are going to go oh no who will buy the m2 macbook air if there's an m3 macbook air and the answer is

going to be people who want a 15 inch laptop will buy it that's the answer and it'll be fine and they'll sync it up maybe at some point down the line but yeah the 15 inch will have the m2 the 13 inch will have the m3 there's also a 13 inch that has the m1 that might stick around so like they make it work uh and if if there was any computer that i thought might get the m2 pro as a config it would be the 13 inch macbook pro right because that's got a fan so they could probably put the m2 pro in it and that would at least differentiate it from the MacBook Air in some way and make it actually be a MacBook Pro in a way that it isn't right now. That would be the one that if I had to guess, if they were revising anything to have the M2 Pro in it, it would be that 13-inch MacBook Pro. It might fit there. Mark Gurman was recently a guest on the mac rumor

show podcast where he shared that he believes that while the mac pro is likely to be released this year he does not expect it to be shown at wwdc sorry mac pro fans okay i mean there's a lot going on like having them say they probably aren't going to have room for that product or if it's going to be late in the year. They're probably eyeing another. I don't think the Mac Pro is going to be an event kind of thing, right? But like, or is it going to just be a press release? It might be. If they're not ready to show it now, the other possibility is that there'll be a fall.

Yes. A fall Mac event. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the question I have then is if you wait too long, you're going to start rolling out M3 MacBook Air. And would you put out an M2 Max Mac Pro at the same time as an M3 low-end MacBook Air? Would that be too weird? I don't know.

But they could do whatever they want with the Mac Pro. Honestly, it's such a i know that it takes up an outsized part of our imagination as mac aficionados but they could do it with a press release and a little video and it would be fine because the people who care are gonna care and nobody else will care because it's the lowest selling Mac, and it's not important in most ways. I know the ways that it is important, but I'm just saying, like in terms of Apple's Mac business, it's important as a flagship

and maybe as a point of pride about where Apple Silicon is, but it's not something that needs to be, like Apple, I mean, nothing needs to be in an event other than the iPhone, I suppose, but certainly the Mac Pro doesn't need to be an event. If it was, it would be WWDC.

I still would hold out some hope that they might tease it because it's been so long since John Ternus. I wouldn't do it again. That's another story. I wouldn't tease it again. Well, you know, they could. I mean, that's how they released the, was it the trash can? Oh, you mean like a full-on? Like a video with a silhouette and like, here it is. And it's coming later this year and we have more to share later and nothing else, right?

Unless they have a video like they did with the trash can, like they did with the iMac Pro. Like, I wouldn't. Because they made a mistake. Like, we spoke about this last week. Like, John Ternus never should have done that wink at the camera. right because they made a mistake like we spoke about this last week like John Ternus never should have done that wink at the camera like that was a mistake right it was over a year old now yeah or or they changed the path right and that got it delayed so that would make it a mistake again it's that classic like maybe this is why you shouldn't ever pre-announce literally anything if you're gonna if you're gonna wink at the camera like that and then there's nothing.

I'll take Mark at his word here that Mac Pro, not a WWDC, it may just be like they're looking at the lineup and they're clearing the decks and it doesn't fit. And so they'll do it later or it's not ready and they'll do it later. What we've got to talk about later on with his kind of report on what the headset will be doing. I don't know how there'll be time for anything else during the WWDC presentation. But we'll get to that later on. One last thing, Mark Gurman, also on the MacRumor show, shared that he believes that Apple will only be enabling the ability for third-party app stores on iOS in regions that require it. So right now, they would be building this feature potentially into iOS 17 just for the European Union due to the Digital Markets Act. And that will be the only place

where you'll be able to, quote unquote, sideload applications in some form. Yeah, that would fit Apple's behavior. Yes, it would. Yes. It would only do the letter of the law and no more. That said, and I said this before when we talked about it, because we talked about this a while ago, and I think we got some feedback saying, but you're talking as if this is going to be everywhere, but wouldn't it just be in the EU? But you're talking as if this is going to be everywhere, but wouldn't it just be in the EU? The answer is yes, perhaps, but I don't know. I just feel like the moment that Apple opens this door somewhere, first off, the door will never close.

And second, the door will just keep opening wider and wider. And it will be, how do I, you know, right, download this thing, or I'll sell you an account I made with a gift card in it for an Apple ID from the EU, or here's a spoofing thing you can do, or use a VPN to enable this. And I imagine that if you're in the EU and you enable this, they're not going to kick out all the apps when you travel to the United States, right? So they can lock it to an Apple ID or they can have it be... There are ways that they can do that. And I realize that it might not be mainstream, but once the door is open, people will keep kicking it wider and wider open. keep kicking it wider and wider open yeah plus it does actually give apple a bargaining chip everywhere else in the world where they can say if you would like us to turn this on if you know if you regulate us to do this we'll do it for you too but because it's there but we're not going to do it unless you tell us to yeah that's what i would assume when you say about like the door

being kicked open that it's governments around the world kicking that door open right when they see that yeah we can ask Apple to do this I mean they already did it so let's just do it just do it yeah yeah so I think it will make it easier for everybody to sideload apps because there is a pathway and it will be found and exploited. And then secondly, it opens the door to legislation that is a lot easier because they can look at Apple's feature and say, do that, essentially, and know that it's already being done. Or they'll wait a little bit and watch and see what happens in the EU. What we said before that bears repeating too is that Apple's claim that sideloading is the devil and that it would be a disaster because curation in the App Store and et cetera, et cetera.

Like if it happens in the EU, either Apple will be proven right, which would be very interesting. Or I think more likely Apple's entire argument will be shown to be utterly toothless. But we'll find out one way or another, right? Like if they do this and they say this is the road to perdition and then it happens in the EU and it's fine, then that's the end of that argument for Apple. No, no, we meant in America. Only in America is it bad. Anyway, so we'll see.

But yeah, I think this is inevitable once it starts. The avalanche will continue, but it has to start first. So we'll see if that happens next year. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Factor. This spring, you need nutritious, convenient meals to energize you for warmer, active days and keep you on track to reaching

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breakfast items like egg bites smoothies and more jason did you go for protein plus because podcasts need protein i actually did chef's choice oh i'll have the chef's choice if you don't which is um because none of those things particularly were appealed to me and like, well, that's what I want. And so I decided to go with Chef's Choice of like, just, you know, send me your best, send me your good stuff and we'll see. I've been especially, Lauren works on an evening. So I've got one day a week where it's just me for dinner. And then I also have frequently the dilemma of what I do do for lunch so i'm looking forward to trying these out oh yeah and i guess as well like in those situations it is it can be

like if you're used to cooking for multiple people if you're cooking for just one person it's like a lot of effort right to cook a whole meal and like it's so difficult to cook yeah for just one person right because you have too many ingredients, you end up with too many leftovers. That's awesome. I look forward to, in future episodes, hearing what the chef's choice provided you. Plus, Factor focuses on sustainability. They offset 100% of their delivery emissions to your door,

plus they source 100% renewable electricity for their production sites and offices, and they feature sustainably sourced seafood in their meals. Head to factormeals.com slash upgrade50 and use the code upgrade50 to get 50% off your first box. That's upgrade50, upgrade50 at factormeals.com slash upgrade50 to get 50% off your first box. The link's in the show notes. Our thanks to Factor for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is developing a journaling app

that could possibly be unveiled with iOS 17. A quote from the journal. The Apple journaling app, oh, the journal, do you think it's a coincidence that the journal got information about the journal app? Well, I mean, it is the official journal of journaling on Wall Street, so that makes sense. So maybe this is an app for Wall Street journals to journal?

It is an app for Wall Street journals. It is a journaling app. It is reported by the Wall Street Journal. Are you getting it yet? It's an app. journaling app. It is reported by the Wall Street Journal. Are you getting it yet? It's an app. The Wall Street Journal is

reporting that Apple is developing a journaling app that could possibly be unveiled of iOS 17. The Apple journaling app, says the journal, codenamed Jurassic Jurassic Journal, is designed to help users keep track of their daily lives

according to the documents describing the software. The app will analyze the user's behavior to determine what a typical day is like, including how much time is spent at home compared to elsewhere and whether a certain day included something outside of the norm. So it seems like what they're going to be doing here is combining a bunch of data from across the system, right? From like maybe screen time, find my maps, fitness, like all these kinds of areas. And it references later on as well that this, they also, what does it say about,

according to a report, Apple's app will have the ability to gather much more user data than third party journaling apps, and will have access to text messages and phone calls, but privacy and security will be central to the software's design. The analysis of the user's day will take place on device and journaling suggestions will remain in the system for four weeks, after which they will be removed. And as well as the automatic stuff, it is actually supposedly acting as a journal. So it brings in this data for you to look at, and maybe you can add it to the app in some way. But it is also prompting you to reflect on and write about your day. So you will have the ability to just write what you're feeling,

write what you're thinking based on this information. Does this surprise you as an app that apple would want to make yes and no it struck me a little bit like conceptually a little like freeform right when we talked about freeform freeform is an app that's kind of built out of a bunch of constituent parts that Apple already had. And then they got kind of like put together with some new stuff on it. But it was some features that sort of Apple already worked on a lot of this stuff. They had the components.

They could put it together and do some extra work and build an app. And this feels a little like that in the sense that Apple has all of this information already. And so on one level, it's like, well, we, you know, Apple already knows how you spent your day. So it can really help with everything else that's going on. And I could see the pitch being that, right? Which is like, well, you know, journaling apps are are fun but we can make a very simple one because again it's apple if they do this as an included app um it's going to be the one to reach the

broad audience they're going to want to reach instead of like the really dedicated journal journaling people but they can pick out like what apps did you use where did you go today um you know any anything that the phone knows about you uh what notifications you got i mean there's a question of like what what can they intercept and catalog even if it's all on device you still have to ask yourself that question i'm intrigued by that but it is your phone is a very personal object and it does know things about you and it could probably contribute those or offer to contribute those to this. And then maybe there's an API or something where, you know, apps are going to be able to contribute events of like you listen to this podcast or, you know, whatever. You listen to this music.

They know, right, if you listen to Apple music, but you set up some events APIs where apps can sort of log things that you did during the day, and then they're also presented to you. It's an interesting idea. I think that there's probably already things that developers have to do that this would be able to pull from, kind of like how Shortcuts works, right? Where Shortcuts is taking advantage of an API, which is named, I can't remember, to be able to recommend things that you do frequently on your device, right? And so they can then be incorporated into shortcuts. It's how kind of like the Siri shortcuts thing started off, right? Of like, here's a thing that you do frequently. Why don't you turn this into a shortcut?

So I think that this is a fascinating idea. Like Vidit in the Discord is saying Intents API, which I think is what it's called now i think it used to have a different name it was something else but now i think it's intense this idea is fascinating to me obviously i care about journaling i make a journal right and i think because i i believe in that idea of like reflecting and writing out for someone who's already a journaler i could imagine myself wanting to take advantage of the data part but i'm still going to write it down on pen and paper because that's just what i care about

um i would love it if i could you know maybe take a picture of my like my theme system journal put it into this app right so like what i write down i could add it in and it could you know be something like that i know that uh our friend david sparks does something similar right like he writes out a journal and takes pictures of it and saves it in day one right so like you could you could do that but you'd benefit from all this information i mentioned day one so i will say here this the thing that surprises me about even approaching an app like this and the way that they're building it. It's like, it just kind of feels like they're asking for trouble.

Like, because Apple will now make a journaling app with features that only they're able to access. But an existing apps that do this kind of stuff, they can't get all of the information about your text messages, your phone calls, your proximity to other people, which is a thing that it will be able to work out to try and suggest that maybe you spent time with Jason today

because you were both in the same place based on five-mile length. Third parties aren't going to be able to access this data. So whilst this could be a good feature, it could end up just being another kind of place to hang a hat on of how apple is anti-competitive and for that reason i'm kind of a little bit perplexed by this idea because i can't imagine this will be a set of apis for journaling apps to be able to use well that right i mean so this is i i think this makes the counter argument which is the privacy argument which which in the Wall Street Journal report, that's what they say, is that privacy and security will be central to the software's design.

I think that's the counter argument, which is Apple is going to keep all this on device and it's going to be encrypted and in your iCloud account, et cetera, et cetera. device and it's going to be encrypted and in your iCloud account, et cetera, et cetera. And that's, and, and that anything that Apple's doing in terms of analyzing your behavior, it's just going to go to this place and it's just going to stay on your device. And, and then Apple, the stuff you choose to save is only going to sync encrypted to Apple, and it's going to be super perfect, right? The reason that they're going to say that is because honestly, can you imagine saying we've got an API now that's going to collect all the behavior of everything you do on your iPhone and third, Oh yes. Third-party apps will be able to read it all. No, like you can't, you can't do that. Right. Because there's essentially zero trust with third-party apps. We've been down this road before.

Yeah. And even if there's, I mean, there are clever ways they could do it. They could have it be like, okay, it is an API. We're not non-competitive. Day one can use this. Other journaling apps can use this. But here's how it works is they use this API and they never see what is offered to the user. And the user chooses what to add from an API that's running,

kind of like that Photos API that brings up a photo picker, but the app doesn't see the photos in your library. It just sees the ones you pick and pass to it, but it doesn't see all the photos in the library. And that's Apple's approach to privacy. They could do something like that. And maybe they would, but it would have to be at that level, right? Which is we've created an event picker that's based on the events that happen on your phone. They stay on the

device and third-party apps can have access to it if you allow them. But even then they only will see the events that you choose to share. And it won't be like a, yes, share all my music with this app. It'll be choose the music that you listen to. Here's a list that you listen to today. Pick the songs you want to share with this app. Maybe they could do it that way, but it's going to be tough. And often what Apple does is they release the app and then the API comes later. It's like just this time it's just us.

But certainly the counterargument would be there are already journaling apps out there. What are you doing? Why are you privileging yourself here? Why don't you just build the API and let all the journaling apps use it if you think it's such a great idea? Yeah. use it if you think it's such a great idea yeah yes like my counter argument to your original counter argument which is like the one about safety and security is apple don't have to make a journaling app like this isn't a business they need to be in at all like it it right this is not something that is expected of phones right like it's not like a a temp hole feature that they should have to be able to meet

their competition like this would be a really interesting app that they could do some really cool stuff with and i would be really interested in it as a user like i don't use something like day one because i don't have a personal need for it um it would just be i would be doing what i'm doing on pen and paper which i prefer i will be typing it which i don't want to do but this app would be intriguing to me because it may be able to surface things to me that i wasn't even aware i did right because it's collecting up data from my phone and then i can use that in some kind of way of reflecting on my day it'd be like here's a bunch of data that i have and I can use that. And that's all fine.

Also, I will say, if it's all on device, I have a question too, which is, is it going to be as useless as some of Apple's other stuff where their commitment to on-device privacy means that if I'm journaling on my iPad and I've been places with my iPhone, that my iPad doesn't know about it because it's only on the iPhone. That's stupid. But Apple does that with the health stuff and I hate it. So I would wonder, is this a thing where really you're only able to do this on your iPhone because only your iPhone knows these things and it would be maybe iPhone specific. I can imagine them making it. There doesn't need to be an app to do this, but it's also possible that they think that this is a nice bit of functionality that they have I can imagine them making it. with apps that you trust, as I described, right? Which is you bring up an event picker and you choose the events and they get sent to whatever app

you choose to send them to. Maybe that's the idea. But yeah, it is difficult, right? You can see the thing here where there's Apple. Apple has access to some very specific data that apps don't have. And so on one level, you're like, well, this is interesting. Maybe we should make an app.

But if you do that, then you have now built this app from a privileged position that potentially hurts all of the apps that aren't in the privileged position. But at the same time, you can't give them access to privileged information because who knows what that app is going to do with it, sync it back to somewhere, mine it for information, whatever it is. So then you have to erect security. And this is why Apple gets in trouble, right? This is why. Because there is a legitimate argument, and it varies in how legitimate it is, but there is a legitimate argument that the reason Apple holds onto this stuff is not anti-competitive. It's because it's protective. And, you know, I think that's true to a certain extent and then not to the extent that Apple pushes it. But you can see it right here in this idea.

And your argument is also a strong one, which is like, maybe just don't do it. Right? Maybe just don't step in another one. But here it is. Again, watch. If this does come out in iOS 17, I will say again, watch for the nature of that. Is this an API that other apps get access to,

or is this Apple building something just for itself that only Apple can, can see because that's a little bit tougher to, you can understand why they would do it that way, but it's also a choice that they've made to keep that that keep it for themselves instead of building something that any app could potentially use in a secure way and it's like it's frustrating to me because i would like this application to exist i am sure that there are people inside of apple who wanted it to exist so they've made it right it's like a cool thing that they've made but there's this part in the middle where decisions have been made about how apple runs its business that makes this like a it can't just be a celebration of like a cool thing that they've

made right that there will be like wordpress right who owns day one like automatic i should say who owns day one yeah we'll be like hang on a minute like i actually think in the wall street journal article if i'm remembering rightly they spoke spoke to paul main the founder of day one and you know he was kind of just like here we go again yeah well i mean and and sherlocking as a concept is most often applied to things that feel like they're part of the core. Yeah. And that allowing that thing to just be on the third party, that at some point it's like, well, no, that needs to be first party. We need to bring that on the inside.

This feels so outside of that. And I totally can hear the pitch from inside Apple about it. And I think that there's validity in that. i totally can hear the pitch from inside apple about it and i think that there's validity in that but you are like there's no driving impetus to doing something like this this is literally literally like hey uh journaling apps are uh popular but we could do way better because we have access to better info let's just make a journaling app it's like okay but you're not supposed to do that no uh it's always the worst thing to have to hear that you're not supposed to do that. No. It's always the worst thing to have to hear that you're about to be Sherlocked.

Day one founder Paul Main told the Wall Street Journal after hearing about Apple's plans, it would definitely give us some competition. Yeah, right? I mean, and then the counter argument is Apple validating the category matters. Yeah. Apple getting people interested in the idea matters.

And I do think it gets overstated. Often, Sherlocking does have the effect of validating your market. And while the most casual users are pleased with what the platform vendor can offer, there's still a big opportunity in all the stuff that the platform vendor will never offer because Apple is going to keep it simple because it's a stock app. So it's dangerous, but also an opportunity depending on the details. Yeah. I think that for me, the Sherlocking part becomes more complicated when and if, right? Apple has created something in their system

to allow just them to do this part of it. Like, we're going to make the same app in the same category as you, but ours will be able to do a thing that we will not allow you to do. Right. Nobody else has access to this data. It's privileged, but we get it. And that's why ours is the best.

That's more complicated to me. Yes, I agree. That's why I think looking for, is this part of a sharing API, or is this literally only Apple will provide this information, and that's it. No other app can get this information in any way. That's shakier.

But like, as someone, in case people are wondering about conflicts, right? As someone in the journaling business, like this for me, for me is good, right?

Because I don't make a journaling app, but I make a journal. And this will put journaling in the minds of more people. So to me, it's like a good thing, right? Because I make something so different to an app that you have to want to do it. So this might do that thing, right?

Exactly what you're saying, where people find out about journaling more and then I can be like, oh, hey, have you seen this really nice paper version that you might want instead? But if I'm making an app, right? If me and Gray were making the Theme System Journal app, I'd be pretty upset about this, right?

Because that's more of a direct competition. So I'd be interested to see. I am genuinely very intrigued about this. I think it would be great to be able to have applications where they're able to pull in more stuff across the system, right? I think that would be great. And I would love it more if there was some easy API

or like some easy way for this journaling app to be able to pull in things that I'm doing in third party apps. I think that stuff tends to fall down quite a lot, right? Like shortcuts is a perfect example in places where it'd be great

if developers actually did more right to like really truly support it so we'll see but i am intrigued this episode is brought to you by zocdog you might be trying to find you've got something going on right you know you're not feeling your best you want to try and find a cause for these symptoms and then you end up stumbling down a rabbit hole online and now you're a bit more worried than you were before. There are better ways to get the answers that you want rather than Googling or being on TikTok. The care that you deserve from trusted professionals and not random people on the internet. That is the better way to get these answers. ZocDoc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care that you need to deliver the type of experience that you want.

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when it comes to rumors. 420! Woo! Oh, interesting. We did celebrate 420, I guess, if that was your thing last week. I don't know if this was related but who could tell then i went to eugene though so in in if you're present in eugene oregon you're

sort of celebrating 420 all the time oh interesting is that the case i don't know anything like in like in downtown san francisco yeah there's a oh okay yeah i actually actually a little side story since that people weren't expecting this. A little side story. I went into a marijuana dispensary when I was in Eugene. Why? Why? Because I have been told that it was an amazing sci-fi themed office. And it was.

It had a TARDIS door that took you into the back there was a like there was like a star trek uh label like was on the walls of the enterprise in the original series on the wall at one point they had like they had star wars stuff it was really good like really good super nerdy memorabilia um and then i walked out because not interested in purchasing their purchasing their wares but i did go in um and it smelled less like pot on the inside than it did on the streets that makes sense there was that too they're not blazing inside not inside no you take that outside clearly but uh yeah so anyway it's it's just i i was laughing because um having worked in denham san francisco um going to eugene was like oh yeah yep pervasive anyway well the product's like sci-fi named like did they have like funny names oh yeah i think so i think it's all i think it's

all themed like the whole thing the place is called space buds this is now an ad for space buds in eugene oregon space um Oregon. Just go in. I'm not endorsing the product. I'm just saying their decorations are awesome. Space Buds. Yep. Was it with an S or with a Z? Space Buds, Oregon.

I'm gonna let people find it themselves rather than put it in the show notes. I feel like that's just gonna open us up to a whole new set of uh email spam that we you know to add to our current collection of email spam that we get based on the information in our show notes okay people can go to space buds the dispensary.com which is not a great domain name to be honest it's not that great it's not as bad as 1-800-Flowers.com but it's pretty bad yeah but even that domain like you remember that one you just said it right like what you're gonna remember after today space buds

well yeah but it's a phone number as a domain name is a bad idea anyway they have a billboard as you get off of i-5 and are headed to eugene uh there is a billboard by the side of the freeway for space buds we were dispensary the dispensary.com yeah not to be confused with space buds the florist oh there is i see what you're saying yeah that don't want i didn't i didn't know where you were going with that but now i get it anyway mark german has more reports over at bloomberg on how apple's headset is shaping up and how they plan to launch this product to the world. They're going to be focusing the product on a few key areas. Gaming, fitness, collaboration, entertainment, and kind of creating a work environment for yourself.

This seems very broad, right? But it appears that they are packing this feature, like packing this with features to appeal to as many people as possible, see what sticks, move forward. Apple is planning on iPad apps to be a, I think, surprisingly big component of the headset. It appears that Reality OS,

which is based on iOS, will draw from the iPad app store for applications, as well as apps that are made kind of primarily for AR VR. But you'll be able to search for apps and you'll find anything that's available for iPad. Apple's going to be optimizing a vast array of their core platform apps that are on iPad for the headset. These are messages, notes, photos, the list goes on and on and on. Every app that is considered to be

core to the platform, which is usually installed, they're going to optimize to be available here in VR versions, as well as pages, numbers, keynote, garage band, and iMovie are all called out in the report from Mark. There will be a selection of

experiences that are fully tailored to the VR capabilities of the device. Apple Books is in this part, which I can't get my head around the VR Apple Books experience, like what that is. I don't know.

Do you think it's going to be like you'll hold your hand out and there'll be a book in it and you'll just like turn the page like what is it for for a coffee table book is it maybe it's audiobooks and then you can listen while you're doing something else i don't know i don't know that one i this is you should go on and read the rest of these but like this is this is the part where i think is is fascinating which is what apps need to be in VR other than like as a floating window or windows containing data. Cause that makes sense, right? But when you put this on, you basically have an iPad or iPhone, uh, power. And so you, you can run those apps and they all

sync with your iCloud account. So if you want to call up your notes, you can just do it when you're in there and you have them float over here. And they'll probably be something like Stage Manager. There'll be sort of a windowing system that'll allow you to have multiple items floating and then switch between items. I don't think it's going to be the case that, as was suggested on Connected last week, I don't think it's going to be the case where you're on a calendar and you have to run to the right day and then jump on it. Climb in the calendar, man. Yeah, and then the day emerges

and then you can touch the... I don't think it's going to be like that. There'll be a window with a calendar. Someone is going to make the VR calendar app that you climb through. Yeah, someone made the podcast that didn't have a recording and only had show notes too.

There are bad ideas exist in the world. So I wish them all luck. Oh, my God. I've forgotten about that. You've transported me back like sense memory style. What if we didn't record a podcast, but we just talked and posted the show notes? Great idea. Yep.

But there are other apps that Apple are making which do make more sense i think like when you just read them uh rather than books so a meditation app great right like you can create a serene environment right and you can also be like you know locked away inside of the app well yeah because it's sensory right you right? You've got the audio and the visual to try and create a pleasant place for meditation. Right? Makes sense. It's like the Breathe app. Is the Breathe app now the meditation app?

Anyway, it makes sense. Yeah. Freeform, which will, quote, let users work on virtual whiteboards together while in mixed reality. I actually imagine free form will build part of the new facetime experience like i actually think that they will work together uh yeah because you'll be in a virtual meeting conference room with a shared whiteboard essentially i think that those two things will go together and or you remember how um in ios 16 there was like hey all of these apps have new collaboration features, right?

Like I could imagine any app that they added this like iCloud collaboration to could also be pulled into a VR meeting and be worked on all the time together. Just a share play will be like that too. Just a share play, yeah. It's the same kind of thing that'll be there. So yeah, I think most apps are going to be like, again, not running across a calendar, not like having to, you know, take an adventure to move from one tab of a numbered spreadsheet to another. Like those will be things that maybe they'll be like little VR affordances, but I'm really thinking of it as it's a computer that's already running and it's on your face. And so those apps will be there.

So if you want to bring up Keynote, you can do that. And you'll be able to do some level of productivity in here. I think the question is always going to be, why am I doing this on a headset and not on an iPhone or an iPad or a computer. And maybe the reason is that they want you to think of this as a productivity device where like you can go, this is that famous concept of, you know, what if I go on a business trip and I don't bring my laptop, instead I just bring the headset and I can sit in the hotel room and I can do work with a big monitor and everything, but I actually am just using the headset. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see the there's a not a very heavy lift to bring these apps in their basic form to the headset the question is which ones deserve more and that's the

that's a little bit of the mystery here on that note about like kind of going back a little bit talking about these apps like ipad apps a quote from the Mark's report, the device will be able to run multiple apps at the same time floating within the mixed reality interface. The product will remember where you were physically when you were using the app. If say a user runs the web browser from the kitchen, goes to another room and then comes back,

the browser will reappear. I like that. This feels a little like Sirii intelligence almost which is like except for spatial right where it's like oh i know that this time of day you do this this is i know that you know when you're in the kitchen you had the web browser up so i'm going to do that so yeah or imagine uh stage stage manager that's geotagged what i would like in this is like you know we both have spoken about mela the recipe app right if that was just pinned to my wall always in the kitchen right right like because that's what i that's the place where i need it it's the place where i want it so that kind of thing could make

sense with a headset on i mean we also have to think on one level this all is seems a little we're going to have some questions where it seems ridiculous. Like, why am I doing the headset there? And I think we're going to be able to analyze this when this thing is real and say, what's Apple thinking here? Because something like web browser in the kitchen, like, okay, you're using your VR glasses in the kitchen. What's that about?

web browser in the kitchen like okay you're using your vr glasses in the kitchen what's that about i think the answer is imagine the future product that is always not as cumbersome and that's ar and that you would wear and is augmenting all aspects of your life i think part of what apple is trying to do with this in the long run is that. And so some stuff might make more sense in the near term. And some stuff might be like, well, this is great, but I'm not going to actually cook with this thing on. And the answer will be, no, but in five years you'll wear something and you will use it to cook. So we're starting that process now it'll be interesting to see that because some of the stuff will seem a lot less practical than other stuff

will mark calls out a few things that we've mentioned around video so we've been kind of worrying wondering about this for a while like watching movies in a vr theater which is a thing that we've both done uh with oculus products in the past um and then also like kind of sports and live events that you would actually be able to have some kind of presence within that event which was you know there was a company called next vr that apple bought many years ago and they were doing this exact thing so they would set up at a sporting event record it and then you could use their tools to watch it back and feel like you had some kind of sense of being there in fact i i think even

more than that we're going to see this into um mls and friday night baseball where it's live where they're you know they've got a vr uh rig or two or three or whatever and allow you to be um you know present at a sporting event in a way that you're not currently and that's an interesting uh since they've got rights now to some sporting events that's an interesting approach for them uh one of the big one of the ones that i think is actually going to be a very big deal if they get it right is fitness plus if you could do vr workout and you've got someone standing in front of you doing the workout but you can kind of really like better see how i think that could be a really big deal if they get that i agree and as a as a bike uh as a bike rider i

would really love having the extra because i do I have a stationary bike that I use sometimes, especially when the weather is bad. And it's so boring. Yeah. Even if I'm watching TV shows, it's just, it's real boring. And if I'm watching an Apple Fitness thing, which I do now, it's still kind of boring, right? Like, I like those trainers fine, but it's still kind of boring. is fine but it's still kind of boring i think that in a circumstance where i could be maybe riding with them maybe riding through a landscape while they're floating above me and giving me instruction whatever it is i think there's some opportunity for some immersiveness there beyond

just you're in the apple fitness studio with the trainers, although even that would be kind of interesting. Yeah, but you could, as you say, right, the rowing workout. Why can't I be rowing on a little creek somewhere? A little lake. Yeah. Why not, right? Why not do that? Yep. And then this part was fascinating to me. Mark Gurman is saying now, contrary to basically every report that has come before, gaming will now apparently be a central piece of the product. Quote, the company has been working with a small number of developers for months to help them upgrade their resistance software for mixed reality. There you go.

Yeah, and it's going to be who y'all know, right? It's going to be, this is very clearly developers of games that are on iOS probably Apple Arcade games right like there are some existing developers there was a game that I loved called What the Golf that was one of the early arcade games they have a VR game called

What the Bat which is hilarious and fantastic where you have bats for arms and so like there are already existing developers that they're aware of that you know have vr titles that could be one way to do it um and and there could also be uh they could be working with people to create virtual reality versions of their existing games etc etc um but i still remain intrigued about what the control mechanisms are if it's all going to be hand tracking i don't know yeah this device will have biometrics in the form of eye scanning it's a iid oh god i hate that i guess it would be retina id right retina id yeah something like that

retina id right retina id yeah something like that although if they call it iid incredible right like just i would be flabbergasted but maybe it's one of those things everybody's written down nobody said it out loud until it's too late might be irises i don't know if it's irises or retinas or what they're scanning but maybe maybe it's just your eyes and your face so maybe it's just your eyes and your face so maybe it's just face id mark german followed up and so this was all a piece on bloomberg and followed up in his uh newsletter spoke a little bit more about this and kind of referred to the approach of scattershot uh this morning our friend to show steven hackett wrote about this approach and kind of he compares the product launches over time of like

iPhone, iPod, Apple Watch like these big things and kind of like how they were perceived at the time how they were spoken about and you know like everybody knows the iPhone presentation right the three things and then Apple tried to redo this a little bit with the Apple Watch but that presentation ended up being much broader um and he says the thing that i like says every new product needs to be broad now because consumers assume that everything is a computer that can be do computer things splashing cold water on the headset's upcoming announcement because it appears to lack a killer app feels premature to me doing a bit of everything is mere table stakes now. So this whole thing that Mark's talking about

is like, hey, it does everything but we've been talking about this in previous weeks of like the killer app and what is a killer app. Realistically, the killer app for this headset is just using it and it feels good.

But it needs to do it all. Or it'll emerge, right? they'll give a sense of a thing where it's like oh that thing is what everybody loves about it and these other things don't matter but i agree with steven it's table stakes at this point and you've got the other thing is apple's advantage here and this is actually what i wrote about in mac world last week yep um apple's advantage is apple has built because apple is the only company that has a zillion different bespoke hardware or software platforms for hardware that they make, right? They don't just have one.

They have a half dozen of them. The only way they can do that is by recycling. Everything is basically based on iOS, except for macOS and even that. They share code and history. And so this product is going to be based on iOS too. And the apps are going to be very much like iOS. The great advantage is what we talked about earlier. You can just bring in your iOS apps and say, you know, do people want to use notes or pages

in VR? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know, but you can. And then let's find out. And they can do that at a cost that is so much less than if you had to build everything like that from scratch. Like Facebook can't do that, right? But Apple can do that. And then they can see.

And then they can focus in other areas and place some bets. And I do think that that's what's going on. And as Stephen points out, like the Apple Watch did that too. And I think there's... I don't love it because the ideal product launch is a product where you know exactly what it is and why it's going to be a hit.

But the truth is, modern computing platforms are so varied that you kind of just need to fill in the table stakes and then place some bets and then see what happens and go from there and follow your users. If you're going to build an operating system, like if you're going to say this thing has its own operating system, in 2023, there are 15 things it needs to do, right?

Yeah. It needs to be able to access all your photos, your messages. You've got to be able to access your email, your calendar. It's got to have all of that. And Apple gets that for free. If not for free, Apple gets that for real cheap. And that's one of their huge advantages with this, is they get it for cheap because it's an iPad on your head, right? And so it can run that software unmodified probably, right? Just as a window. Probably doesn't even need anything. They're probably gestures that are equivalents

and all of that, right? So that gets them that. And then they add extra stuff. It's how you interact with a touch device on a virtual screen and how you move around to different apps and different windows and different apps. And that layer of it matters a lot. And what these individual kind of like apps

that go beyond like the wellness app, that's a good place where you need to figure it out if there's a meditation app or whatever it is. So that's the trick, is you place your bets, you do the table stakes. Sorry, I'm mixing my gambling metaphors here, but you do the table stakes. And then you have areas of interest where you kind of add on. And really, you ship it it and see what happens i'm a firm believer in that that like that that's what they have to do is they have that's why this product has to ship because they gotta they gotta start going and they gotta start getting legitimate feedback from the world about the decisions that they made on the inside that were right and the decisions that they made

on the inside that were wrong so that they can change direction and you just won't know that until you ship it marcos has a few details about the battery pack to wrap this one up today it will feature a magnetic connector so there will be like a cable coming from the battery pack that will have a proprietary magnetic connector on the end that you'll attach to the headset and you twist it so it locks so that way it won't come out and cut your power right right you'll just twist it disconnect easily the battery pack will look similar to the magsafe iphone battery pack but will be bigger and should give about two hours of power so mark expects which would make sense that you would have

the ability to buy extras of these so you could you know have three of them and keep charging charges by usbc the battery pack itself the headset also has a usbc port on it so maybe you could just plug it in if you're seated and just power it that way right like you'd have the option potentially but yeah that's how it's going to run i think they're going to need to do that if they're really talking about doing productivity things i feel like they're going to need to have the ability for you to plug in directly yep why not right and that would maybe that's an extra you know hundred dollar a six foot cable that does that. I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Special VR cables.

Gold-lined VR cables. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Ladder. Look, we all have a tendency to put some things off to the very last minute. I know I do this all the time, right?

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who says, I'm curious how you do your show notes for the show specifically. Does each episode get a new file in Google Docs, or do you have one single document that you update every single episode? And is this the same for all of your shows? One single document that we update each episode. And for all of my shows that have show notes that is how we do it yep the upgrade document there have been three of them in total because it gets to a certain point where the document becomes really unusable on ios like there's just so much history in the document we

had to change it quite recently because it just would not open for me on my iphone so we set up a new document but we keep those old ones so this is from like episode 450 onwards this is how i do for all of my shows like just the same google doc all the time i know that on mac power users they use a new one every time and i cannot understand that it doesn't because they're monsters um i will say that incomparable and we have this now with our, our Google sheet. I have a planning sheet. Yeah. Mac Mac break weekly and twit and also clockwise have a Google sheet with new tabs for every episode.

And what they do there is they have a generic tab that they duplicate. Or if you don't have that, you make a duplicate and then you delete everything from the previous episode and put in the new information. But that works better if you've got something where it's sort of like the format is we're going to talk about these links. Or the format is everybody brings a topic, like clockwise. What we do on Up upgrade is much more detailed and doesn't fit that format um so you can't outline in google sheets right so it's a google doc and then we just delete it and i mean you you basically just delete it and put in the new sponsors and the new number and and then new content in between the headers because i can

always go back to the history and see any episode that I want, which I love. If we need to, we can go to the version history and it allows us to put a bunch of stuff down at the bottom of like, here's an extra thing and here's an idea

and that all lives down at the bottom of the document. Yep. Jack asks, what are your favorite Safari extensions and are they different on macOS and iOS? I have just three and they're the same on all of my devices. One is SuperAgent.

SuperAgent is a fantastic app that basically means that I never need to see cookie notices anymore. You set some preferences in SuperAgent, and then every time a cookie notice comes up, it just applies those settings to whatever the cookie thing is. So it can turn off tracking cookies. It can enable functional cookies only. And then I just don't need to see them anymore. 1Password is one of my extensions. I really like it on iOS a lot. I think it does a great job.

And then Honey. I use Honey. This is the one where it can save you money as you shop it's like why not just have it there I've used it I have it there I haven't saved a lot of money with it but I've saved some so why not right it's just there whenever I'm checking out it will check to see if there's any available codes

for me and apply them I'm using one blocker I'm using which is an ad blocker that's also content and custom i actually what was it i was on a website that i won't name but it's a tech uh website and they have a new template where in the middle of the article they insert a top comment oh yeah i've saw this recently i i have i have block comments turned on but that is inserting uh a comment in the story text essentially and i yeah i hate it and one of the things one blocker lets you do is custom blockers where you if you can find the the the like css you do

inspect element in safari and you you find this find the css of like the element that's in there and you just turn it off and it goes away so you can build your own custom content blocking. So it's blocking ads, but it's also blocking comments and trackers and widgets and other stuff. So I use that one password, obviously. And I am using, I wrote about this a while ago, Redirect Web for Safari, which basically is an app that lets you, and Stop the Madness, I think does this too. You can basically put a URL pattern in and say, take this URL pattern when you see it and redirect it to a different webpage. And I actually use that because there are a bunch of local newspapers in the Bay Area who are owned by the same company, and they all have the same URL scheme. And I subscribe to one of them,

but the subscriptions don't cross. So it's set up that if it hits a URL on the one site, it rewrites that URL to the site that I subscribe to, which is pretty cool. Yeah, that's it. James asks, do you often use alternate icons for apps on iOS or do you stick with the default ones? an app has a a picker i will usually choose something yeah and then i generally just leave it there forever after that i'll always take a look right and like most of the apps that i like the most i i've chosen something uh custom for it just because they're fun usually for me it's usually a color like i've chosen a bunch of orange ones yep but um yeah i'll give it a shot i don't change them at all but if if a if an i don't do the thing where you make a shortcut and have a

custom icon i don't do it no but i but i do if the app lets me pick i will choose and and i'll do some of them if it's a they've got like a six colors uh rainbow apple thing i'll do that because on brand right um i do that in some so yeah a lot of the six color ones because they look good yeah okay used to pick out one that way um i use the purple slack icon which is the only good one in my opinion um which a lot of people don't know that there is an icon picker and it's like it's not great but you only get three options i use that too because it's harder to think that it's the photos app yep the white one is is not great on the iphone because it looks like so many other apps that are just just white with all the primary colors yeah i use a few where i have the option

to do so but there are some apps that i wish had better options to say like Todoist has a bunch of options, but I don't like any of them. So I just use the default one, but I would like to change it, but I don't like the options that they give me. A fun piece of trivia in the Discord. James says the six color p-calc icon is the most popular one.

That's fun. Love it. And Brock says should Apple bring back the glowing logo on the lid of macbooks we've added we've asked this or we've answered this before this has been asked before it's been answered before but i'll just say it again yes absolutely apple should and if it takes more engineering or if they have to do like a custom led on the back or whatever like yeah they should in fact wouldn't it be amazing if it was a custom thing and you could control it separately?

But whatever reason, I'm sure there were some very good engineering reasons why it went away, but they should absolutely bring it back. It was great. That's it. That's the answer. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no.

What you said about if it was customizable in some way maybe like if you could do something fun with it but like if it's just gonna glow white no i prefer my color matched midnight apple logo than if it was lit up oh no so this is like what they should do instead is more colors right because then you can get a yellow one or an orange one and they're matched like you don't need it to light up oh i like it when it glows though it just is so pretty no that's old school thinking so no it's so pretty it's new it's so old it's new again because in the dark no one knows you're using a MacBook. In the dark, no one knows. Like, I don't want that.

You could have sent out a beacon. Like, here it is, the Apple logo. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer in Ask Upgrade, you can go to upgradefeedback.com. You can also send us in your follow-up and your general feedback for the show there. You can check out Jason's writing over at sixcolors.com

and hear his podcast at theincomparable.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to my shows here on RelayFM and check out my work at cortexbrand.com. We're on Mastodon. You can find Jason as at jsnell on zeppelin.flights. You can find me as at imike on mike.social. And you can find the show on relayfm.social as at upgrade. If you want to catch clips of this show, we are at upgraderelay on Instagram and TikTok.

Thank you to our members. And also Wrigley Spearmint Gum. We're also upgraderelay on there. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. Today on Upgrade Plus, if you are a member, you're going to get to hear us talk about the results of our RSS Exploration

Challenge. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up. Thank you to our sponsors, Ladder, ZocDoc, and Factor for their support of the show. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.