Upgrade - 459: I Appreciate Whopping

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Apple has finally announced Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad. What does this mean for the platform, what took so long, and is this the end of the story--or just the beginning? Also, the Wall Street Journal gets into the Apple Headset rumor business.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 459 today's show is brought to you by electric text expander and factor my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snail hi jason hi mike big week this week i feel like a bit of unexpected news that we're going to be talking about before WWDC so that was fun. The ice is cracking Mike. It's starting to crack. Yes. It's cracking. It's like it's going to start breaking off into little pieces. The log jam, the ice jam is going to stop and we're going to end the whole. Is there a log stuck behind the ice? Is that what we're saying? It's a glacier. I've decided it's a glacier.

There are logs on the glacier. Anyway, in this metaphor, things are starting to move after a couple of months where things were kind of bottled up. So the ice is melting and flowing and the river is going to the dam, the ice dam is going to burst and it's going to just like

The ice dam? Ice dam is gonna burst and it's gonna just like the ice dam ice dam yeah there's a lot of metaphors in this locking up the river i don't know i don't even know what i'm talking about yes i i what i'm saying is it's been very peaceful and quiet in the valley there you go wait there's a valley now apple valley right it's the name with a glacier in it yeah at the edge end of the valley there's a glacier and it blocks up the river causing the lake the glacial lake to be there but come late may early june come wwdc time uh everything heats up and then the river flows that's metaphor of the day i have a snow talk question for you comes from sammy who says

now that you work for yourself do you still make keynote presentations and if so what for uh i used to use keynote to do user group presentations especially back in the day where i made them in made appearances at user groups in person what happens is i went out on my own chris breen got pulled inside apple he used to do presentations to at user groups in person. What happens is I went out on my own. Chris Breen got pulled inside Apple. He used to do presentations to Mac user groups all the time. And he basically bestowed them upon me. He said, talk to Jason. Jason could do them now that he's working at Apple.

He could do it. And so I would do that. And those were keynote presentations generally. Pandemic hit. All of those user groups went online. And I did keynote presentations at the beginning. And then I realized I kind of hated it and it was extra work that was unnecessary. And my new official user group posture is I, they're always like, do you have a slide deck? And I say, no, I just, I don't, I'm not interested in that now because I

don't think it adds a whole lot. It's a lot of extra overhead for me. And I might as well use that time thinking about my content and sharing it with them and not having them look at slides that don't say anything anyway. So yeah, I used to use Keynote all the time. I don't anymore. But I still have, I know how to use it. I mean, I love Keynote, but I don't use it as much as I used to, for sure. If you would like to send in a question of your own to help us open a future episode of Upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com and submit a Snell Talk question. I would just like to say at this moment, I want to just extend thanks to all the Upgradians again who have wholeheartedly embraced upgradefeedback.com.

I get so much more high quality follow-up and feedback than i've ever gotten in the entire history of us doing this show so i just want everyone to know i really appreciate it i read everything even if it doesn't get included it has been read um this has been great and i don't read anything except what's in the show doc i should probably rectify that you can just go and peruse at your legend can we get yeah all right i will sure but please i'm gonna make some cms requests later today so watch out for that don't ask me it's nothing to do with oh no there's a channel there's a channel called the neon cms in the relay fm uh slack you can go in there hosts and you can die yes and then steven can no, we will not do that, Jason.

Stop it. Leave me alone. Can I write a little script? Can I write a script that pulls it out and sends me a... And he'll say, no, do not scrape my website. No, no, no, no. I can tell you right now that no one's going to make a script

to send this stuff out anywhere. Just log into the system. It's all in there. Or don't. I can handle it. I'll read there yeah or don't i can handle it okay i do have quite a lot of follow-up today uh first off we're going to talk about pizza follow-up yes subcategory yeah pizza follow-up pizza follow-up uh lots of people lots of people wrote in to let us know that the pizza place that you enjoyed, Jason, in Utah was called The Pie Pizzeria.

Yes, it is. It's got a pie symbol, at least in a neon sign. It's funny because all this feedback came in after somebody asked me directly on Mastodon what one I was talking about. And I went and I looked it up. It's the Pie Underground location, 1320 east 200 south salt lake city utah uh and get the barbecue chicken with gouda it's good that's that's my recommendation but i i love that place too because it was this kind of like dark underground neon sign very college i loved it it was a lot of fun that was a fun experience i took what i will say is my whole family there i won't read this person's feedback in entirety because i'm not sure that i

should but i heard from somebody who was a previous manager of this exact place and they were very unhappy with the company but oh well maybe that you know all i can said a bad time that's an interesting thing to share on a podcast feedback form i will just say that i endorse the pizza there i have no i have no i went there once and i had the best i think it was more just like they didn't like their job right when they were there well again i i'm honestly if i was working in the underground location i really you know you don't see the sun it's also a college place, right? So it's probably unruly college people, college bros making trouble. But I'm just saying, put smoked gouda on a pizza, on a barbecue chicken pizza. It's a pretty good idea.

Also, I should also mention now, a little footnote, not an improved John Syracuse pizza flavor. If you were curious, it's not. Because I made pizza one time at home and i made two of them uh one of them was a cheese pizza i think or maybe a pepperoni pizza and then the other one was a barbecue chicken pizza at a party at which john syracuse was present and he said that's not pizza okay whatever it is it's really good speaking of approval this wasn't shared in the feedback form but in fact via my own uh iMessages from Federico Vatici the pizza segment of upgrade is horrifying i'm sorry but honey in all caps i died yeah oh no all right he died it killed him the honey killed him maybe federico has a honey

allergy i don't know it's the hot part that was the problem but like this is just one of those things where like i love cultural differences i love syracuse nobody can tell me that they own pizza no one can tell me that no if if anybody out there is an at member, there was the frozen FedExed pizza episode. Bizarre. Member special. Fascinating. Bizarre, but fascinating. And it really gets down to the nub of it, which is John Syracuse loves the pizza that he had when he was a kid. And Casey List loves the pizza he had when he was a kid. And Marco lived in Ohio, so he didn't love anything and that's and there we are maybe a hot pocket at that place in new york john's a bleaker yes and it is excellent and casey did one of the did something to me it was one of the best things that any human has ever done to me so he bullied me to go to this restaurant right yeah like he would not stop so i think me and adina were there and he was just like constantly bullying us so we went we ate there it was wonderful and i tell you this is fantastic and i asked for the bill and he said sir but your friend casey called he paid the bill. That is a classy move.

That is a classy move. Let it be known. That is the power move. I love it. Excellent. Because he will not get off my case about this restaurant. He's been taking care of it. Well, no wonder.

So that's the message to all the upgradians. Go to John's oblique or order pizza maybe casey will pay for it maybe maybe but i i mean i just the larger story there is that i think there's some people who want to be authoritative and say um you know this is the only way but what they really mean is this is the way that they like it and love it and have come to know it and it's the this speaks to them and it feels like home to them or is like culturally a certain thing right like pizza is a seems to be a meal which a lot of cultures hold on to the laugh out the laugh out loud moment

in that episode is our feedback for a member's only special but anyway the laugh out moment in that episode is when john is describing the brugers bagels i guess location that he goes to in massachusetts because they have acceptable bagels and he says they also have stupid things like blueberry but other than that and i was listening to this on a car trip with uh lauren and uh she just laughed out loud what he said the stupid things like blueberry because like, again, blueberry, not canonical. You look askance at any place that has a blueberry bagel. It's like blueberry bagels, you know why they make them?

Because people like them and they sell. That's why they make them. You might not like it, and that's fine. Anyway, barbecue chicken pizza is a pizza. If you say that this place is the best bagel place and your best bagel place also makes the type of bagel that you like, it means it's still, like, you're endorsing the bagel place right so like they make it so yeah so so you gotta put some asterisk if you've got to accept bagels you don't like i yeah i don't know anyway what i'm saying is barbecue chicken pizza is good and i enjoyed the pizza i had in salt lake

city and i'm sorry if you work there. I don't know. I don't know what to say to that. Claude wrote in to say that they were perusing Trader Joe's new items being added to the Trader Joe's lineup and they found hot honey. And so they wanted to share that with me,

which I thought was funny. Yes, hot honey is an ingredient that is available if you didn't know. We mentioned it last time. It is available. You can get it. I've gotten it in my meal box several times in the last year or two

and i will say uh it always felt like an unnecessary additional ingredient to me where we would lauren would usually say something like there's hot honey if you want to put that on there but i don't think it's necessary and i would look at the food and i'd be like i agree this is totally unnecessary so we still actually have packets of hot honey in our pantry then put it on the pizza jason maybe i will maybe i will this very weekend i had a pepperoni pizza with induya which is a spicy sausage and honey honey. That thing was incredible. So they didn't have pepperoni at that place, or I would have put it on there, but they didn't have it. Isn't it andouille?

Do you mean andouille? No, I don't. It's a different thing. N-D-U-J-A, andouille. Oh, it's a different, oh, well, that's confusing. Totally different thing. Yeah, andouille sausage is a different thing. That's very weird. Anyway, hot honey, huh? Okay, well, so noted. a different thing yeah andouille sausage is a different thing that's very weird anyway hot

honey huh okay well so noted and that ends our pizza follow-up no more pizza follow-up we're gonna talk about iphone pricing now all right let's move on a few people wrote in with a version of this i will read gaurav's feedback because it was the most complete regarding iphone prices in india so we were talking about this a lot when talking about um the earnings last time and the growing sales market for apple in india gaurav says the reason prices are a problem is due to import duties put on electronics not made in india an iphone 14 Pro base model here is priced at what would equate to $1,588, which is 50% higher than the standard US sales price. Many of us get our iPhones via friends and family living abroad for this reason. Previous year non-Pro models have been made in

India for a while and have similar or lower prices than in the US. While still too expensive for the majority of the Indian population, even a small percentage is a decent absolute number. So this to me was the biggest reason of like, oh, Apple's making things in India. Yeah, because they want to sell them. The idea of the diversification is like, see, I don't know if I missed this, but I just always thought it was diversification. But no, this is also because they want to sell the products in these countries.

No, this is literally why they make iPhones in Brazil is because Brazil has a huge tax on that stuff brought in from outside Brazil. And they're like, okay, well, maybe we should just make a factory in Brazil. And India, if it's got a huge potential market then making phones in india it since they've got a huge tariff is a way to do that so yeah that's part of the equation for sure that's also probably what they tell china right it's like oh no no it's the it's the taxes that's what it is

yeah taxes but that makes more sense to me because when we were talking about that report a while back of like the the like what they're going to likely be doing, I was saying that it seemed strange to me to still be Foxconn, still be the same companies you've been using. If the idea was you were going to diversify your business, but maybe it's not so much that as it is diversifying the revenue of the company a bit more. So interesting. Yeah. Good. Thanks, Gaurav. And so also some follow-up on data and ads.

We were talking about that in last week's Ask Upgrade question. Adrian wrote in with just some thoughts on on-device processing for us to consider. Adrian says, I think the question about on-device processing is complicated, especially because we don't know exactly what Apple means by on-device. It could be a gradient from no data

collected at all by Apple to either raw or processed data, all the way to collecting some data, like processing on device, sending it away, or sending it back. Because you can only process data on device, but then upload the results back to Apple servers. And to this, there is a component of Apple

whose business is ad services, not as large as Google, for sure. I think Apple should clarify it more clearly. Do you feel like you fully understand, like when Apple say on device, they mean it is 100 say on device, they mean it is 100% on device never leaves or what? I read it as the model is on the device and the machine learning model runs on your device. So it's not sending your data to be analyzed on

Apple's server and then the information returned to you. Instead, your data stays on the device. Now, I agree, it could be read as nothing leaves your device, but what's actually happening is the data is being processed on your device, and the results could potentially be stored in the cloud, right? Or sent to Apple servers. And in some cases, they may indeed be doing that. It's also possible that they're, you know, they're processing the data. And then we have another piece of feedback here that's like, it's local processing, but then it uses that to request specific information from a web service, right? specific information from a web service, right?

Which is not the same as sending them your data and having them build a profile of you up in the cloud. Instead, what happens is it's personalizing you on your device and then asking for the right ad or whatever to be sent to you, which is not quite the same, but it's also not like this Mac is an island or this iPhone is an island and no data ever leaves an island and it's not

no data ever leaves it like that's not what's going on necessarily right because like you know they say siri is on device right but it can't all be like if you want the sports right my iphone doesn't just know what the sports score is right yeah it's it's querying data querying data sources out there but it's doing it after having processed your command on device to then go and do that and this is like this is what we went into last time is that there are a lot of different ways to consider on device as a pro or a con um and yeah apple i mean apple is using a lot of this as marketing and then there's this question of sort of like well what what do they actually use it for

and um i i honestly i i feel like apple just needs to be better at disclosing it i think that generally they do they are right i mean they're they're they're not trying to to pull one over on you when they say that they value privacy i i i do genuinely believe that but i think that there are probably areas within apple where there needs to be more disclosure. And we also had somebody write in, an anonymous individual. Oh, is this a Mike secret? I wouldn't call this, no, because they're just quoting me something from something which is publicly available on the web. Okay. From Apple's ads policy, it says, we may use local on-device processing

to select which ad to display using information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open. So this was a thing we were talking about last time. And it's the thing that Apple does actually do. We were wondering, do they or could they target ads

based on the apps that I use? Yes, they 100% can. And do, in fact, which I don't think is good. And do it locally on your device so that your device doesn't say, here are all my apps, send me an ad. Your device looks at your behavior and says, I would like this ad, please, or an ad in this category please and do it that way so it's sort of like your device is doing that it's a little bit different which if you ask me like in some ways kind of worse bear with me here because what apple is doing is this is still using your usage data to target ads at you and and then also saying that it's fundamentally wrong for anybody else to do. Well, what they say is it's fundamentally wrong.

This goes back to the classic example, which is like, if it's a first party, it's fine. So Apple considers itself to be the only party. Right, which is flawed. That assumption is flawed. Right. flawed that assumption is flawed right so so apple doesn't apple is it since it has the app store it has the app data and its first party and therefore it's okay whereas facebook does not have that app data and you know when you share things with a another party then it's oh then it's different but what's the party right is that because i would say that like it should be

Because I would say that it should be the App Store, not my entire iPhone. Right. Right? I feel like the App Store, knowing about things I have bought on the App Store and searches I have made on the App Store and using that data to show me more apps, that feels fine. But Apple using the information about the apps that I open to serve me ads on the App Store, that feels like an overreach. Yeah.

We heard from somebody else who said that this Apple monitoring, if you do the telemetry approval, basically setting, that that is giving it explicit approval for Apple to receive the information about what apps you're using and how long you're using them and things like that. I'm unclear because this is we may also use. I'm unclear whether that is controlled by that switch or whether there is another flow

that's happening here. But you're right. This is apps you frequently open and presumably the length of time you spend in apps, right? Because that's the, that's the, the magic formula. And only Apple has access to that because they're the platform form owners. So they can see every tap and they can also, um, using, I mean, they use it, it's exposed in screen time, right? They know how long you're in every app too. And so they know a lot about you and what games you're playing and what productivity

apps you're using and, you know, whatever about you and what games you're playing and what productivity apps you're using and, you know, whatever else you're doing. And, and so, yeah, this is, this is the,

I think, I think we're not necessarily saying this is wrong. I think what we're saying is a disclosure is good. And also that as a caveat emptor kind of thing, just because it's happening on device doesn't it on device isn't a on device does not mean you're not being profiled and watched and your behavioral data is not being used to generate content that is targeted on you what i think is wrong is that Apple makes such a big thing about third parties, like an other, like, you know, they have app tracking transparency to, like, completely hollow out the advertising market

for all of these different apps and services, but they kind of just get to do whatever they want. Like, they could just build the rules around however they want them to be built, and no one can argue with it because they control the platform and have the app store and have in-app purchases and then make the rules to make everyone use that system. I don't like the playing field that's being created. I don't think it's fair.

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Our thanks to Electric for their support of this show and RelayFM. Saddle on up. It's time for a room around up. Yeehaw. The Wall Street Journal has published a report of what it is expecting from Apple's upcoming headset. It treads a lot of ground that we have

heard before in general yeah um like again but like this stuff can be important we're going to talk about a few things that are that they've specifically reiterated from reporting from mark german and others but in general the article is like it's going to cost this is going to be a battery pack the whole nine yards that we're aware of. One of the things that they talk about is that while Apple is still planning to announce the headset at WWDC and of course devote a significant portion of the sessions at the conference

to the headset and its operating system, production of the device is still suffering from manufacturing delays and is now expected to begin in September, which is very late for selling it this year. Yeah. Yeah, very much. So I would not be surprised

if even when this thing goes on sale, that it might be one of those things that's hard to get for a while. I think it's going to be very limited numbers, even in the fact that it's already going to be limited. You know, like it's limited to start. And if they're producing it this late in the day, it could be even more so.

The Wall Street Journal reiterates what Mark Gurman has been saying that the expectation of the device is to be positioned kind of publicly around FaceTime, fitness, and gaming. So probably Fitness+, probably apple arcade and these being the core use cases for this iteration of the hardware like from apple and then you know building the whole platform people can do whatever they want with it i think this is this i find this very encouraging jason because if someone said to me,

Mike, you have the ability to market this device however you want, how would you do it? I would do it around FaceTime, fitness, and gaming. Anyone who's had any experience with VR will tell you these are the three areas where it's currently most compelling. And I was concerned that they weren't going to focus on that, especially around gaming. I'm still intrigued to see what their story is.

But if this is where they are going with it, I think it has the best chance of being something that people could conceive of, whether they have or haven't tried VR before. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. There's not a lot new in this report at all, but it is the Wall Street Journal, which funny, I mean, Bloomberg is a very important, reputable, asterisk, right? But like generally reputable business reporting organization, but it's not the journal involved here, it definitely carries more weight to have them essentially reiterate Mark Gurman's reporting. Also shows that, you know, there's nothing else there. Mark Gurman did it. He nailed it. He got it.

And the journal's like, yep, that's what it is, which is kind of funny to see. Mark definitely leading the way there. I have to say, because it's the journal and because they've got a lot of you know according to people familiar with the matter and all of that I do wonder if this is Apple doing some expectation setting especially since they talk about at the very head of the article there's a lot of talk about how this product isn't going to ship in volume.

And there are other products coming. And the early part of the article felt very much like, I can't say whether Apple was directly involved in having the journal do this story or not. But it really feels like the beginning of this article is trying to set proper expectations for this product in advance of it being announced and so if it's not and we said this about some of mark german's reporting too if it's not it's doing apple's job for it anyway because they need to set expectations that this is not something that everybody's going to want at first and it's going to be you know mostly for developers and really you know specific kind use cases, because it's going to cost $3,000. And it's going to be all of that. So it has that feel to me of very useful for Apple expectation setting, because they don't want people to be surprised, thinking this product is going to be the thing they're going to rush out and buy and comparable to other stuff that

is in this area. And by doing it this far in advance, one of the advantages also is everybody who is going to be covering that event is already going to have the bar set for them. And so people, it's less likely that people are going to get misled by poorly informed sources who are like, I'm really excited to see this. We're all going to rush out and buy it. And instead they're going to be like, don't get too excited. This isn't going to come out until the end of the year at the earliest. And it's very expensive. And it's really just the start of something that's big, bigger, like that serves Apple a lot better to not have it be a disappointment because people's expectations were unrealistic given what we know this product to be now.

However, it is interesting to also see the other side of it which is um the the the hype that is in this article and some other places that is but it's also really good yes so they say uh the capabilities are expected to quote far exceed those of competitors offering quote greater levels of performance and immersion yeah and uh and the ocular former former oculus guy palmer lucky who is not my favorite person but he did a tweet recently that basically said the apple headset is so good it's like uh which spawned um this was yesterday it spawned obviously thousands of articles that tried to make an article out of a single tweet with no additional information. I always laugh when I see that. But my point is

that is the other narrative that is forming here now that I see, which is don't get your hopes up because it's going to be expensive and you're probably not going to want to buy it and it's not going to come out for a while, but it's the future. And there are other versions coming that are going to be more affordable. The journal says that the makers of this version are going to build a, they're already working on the next version of the high-end headset, but that Foxconn is also going to be manufacturing a more affordable headset based on this platform. So that's all in there, right? Plus you get this other piece, which is, but also it's very impressive. Like it is way better than even the high-end meta headset. And that, that honestly, that is one of the ways that Apple

gets away with this $3,000 product. That's going to ship in low volumes, which is what this story repeats. And again, I think that's useful for Apple to say low volumes, low volumes, not expecting this to be a hit. It's just a starting point. Um, is the, you know, being able to say, but you can see the future here. This is the best that's ever, if they can make it. So it's, this is the best headset that's ever been made. It does things that VR products have never been able to do at this level before.

It totally changes the game. This is what VR and AR are going to be like in the future. The future starts now, now that Apple is here. Everything before is a prologue. Everybody else is going to have to catch up to Apple's level. If they can impress people like that with the hardware, that'll give them some leeway with the fact that it's expensive and um not available for a while and let them sort of tout the future um with this product which would serve them well i think do you think paul malucky actually saw it i don't know

i mean i i think if anybody could have seen it i think it's plausible that he saw it he but i don't know. I mean, I think if anybody could have seen it, I think it's plausible that he saw it. But I don't believe a word he says. I don't believe it. I'm fascinated because, yeah, and he may be trolling, right? And yet, I look at that and I think, this is part of what's going on right now. Whether he believes it or not, whether he saw it or not, it feels very much like it's part of what's going on right now is we are in the hype cycle about the technology that apple is building here and i i was struck by the fact that that he tweeted that out at around the same time that the wall street journal came out with their story that said far it far exceeds the capabilities of its competitors i'm like okay well something is going on here whether he's really a part of it or he's trying to parody it or insert

himself in it or whatever it is it's all part of this same drift that i'm starting to see now which is uh you know like i said phase two of this is apple you know apple apple getting by on but we're changing the world, right? It's yes, it's very expensive right now, but it's going to be the best. Yeah. Which it's, I don't know. I don't know if it's real. I don't know if any of it is real, obviously.

Right. Cause it doesn't exist yet, but it does feel like we're, we're entering. I just, listeners just pay attention to the hype cycle and note, note the little, like it's not playing one note, right? There's a few notes out there. There's the don't get your hopes up investors. It's not going to sell millions of units out of the gate, but also watch what we do. It's going to be very impressive. Like that's what's going on out there right now. I just, the Palmer Lucky thing, honestly, the thing that amuses me the most, other than its positioning similar to the Wall Street Journal

story is, I just laughed because I was searching for the Wall Street Journal story and I found a thousand crappy news articles that crafted an entire narrative around literally one sentence from one dude on Twitter. Amazing world we live in. Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple has increased internal testing of their M3 chips, even as they're getting ready to launch more M2 Macs. Once again, we spoke about how he did this before. Mark Gurman has discovered this information from Apple having tested these chips on third-party apps as part of the validation testing for these chips. So there have been people that have used it.

testing for these chips. So there have been people that have used it, like people have used an M3 Mac or a Mac with an M3 chip in them, inside of Apple on a third-party app. Those apps, no, because they have logs. So

the chip is expected to be the chip that Mark has found is expected to be an M3 Pro and it, quote, at least one version in testing has 12 CPU cores, The chip that Mark has found is expected to be an M3 Pro. And it, quote, at least one version in testing has 12 CPU cores, 18 graphics cores, and 36 gigabytes of memory. And it's six high-performance cores, six efficiency cores,

or P and E cores as we know them around here. This compares to the eight CPU cores in the M1 Pro and 10 cores in the M2 Pro. So it continues that line. The M1 Pro had 14 GPU, M2 Pro had 16 GPU, and also that 36 gigabytes of RAM is a 4 gigabyte increase on what the M2 Pro could be. Quote from Mark, If the M3 Max were to get a similar gain as the M2 Max got compared to the M1, that would mean Apple's next high-end MacBook Pro chip

could come with up to 14 CPU cores and a whopping 40 graphics cores. By the way, I really enjoy Mark in Power On because he says things like whopping, which I don't think he would put in an actual, like, one of the official ones. Yeah, I don't think you'd say whopping. I appreciate whopping.

Continuing speculating even farther, it could mean the M3 Ultra could top out with 28 CPU cores and sport modding 80 graphics cores up from a 64 core limit on the M1 Ultra. And all of this, if they are actually going this route, and if Mark's extrapolating can be

believed, this is because of the three nanometer process change so they can fit all of this in because they have in a very simplified way of saying this more stuff they can fit inside of the same size yeah so this is basically nothing really surprising right it's the progression what makes an m3 more than an m2 in part is going to be more more cores i mean i'm sure that those cores are more advanced cores right the cpu cores and the gpu cores i'm sure there's other details that are going to be interesting about the m3 and the m3 pro but also it's more right and every you know the cores are faster but they're also more cores even as a base and then in the um if they're doing the die shrink then it's right that they benefit from that because everything is on the smaller process you could have the same amount

of high performance cores but they could be more powerful as well so it's just very interesting that's true so i think this is interesting too because he's using you know some third-party developers logs who are squawking on this or revealing what these chips are uh but also that it's uh the pro models and i i wonder because the m3 because he talks about this being like end of this year early next year but like this iship, right? This is not the M3 chip. This is the M3 ProChip. It's different. I would imagine we're going to see the M3 chip before we see the M3 ProChip.

And I know Mark has reported on that before. But this is interesting because it's more some telemetry that suggests that these are, you know, that the ProChips are going to be configured like this. So it's just another little addition to the palette of what we already know about M3. All right, moving on. Apple has lost another key executive in the Apple TV Plus division. Pete Distad has departed the company, a quote from Bloomberg. In his current role, Distad oversees the business and operations side of the Apple TV app and the TV Plus streaming service. His division negotiated deals with Major League Soccer and

Major League Baseball and turned the Apple TV set-top box into a hub for video content, both from inside and outside the company. Distad's departure follows Peter Stern and Michael Abbott, who both had key roles at the company and left recently. Stern was Distad's boss and Abbott oversaw all of the cloud services. And you may think, why are we bothering to talk about this? There's two reasons. One, the person who oversaw the sports stuff is leaving. That's interesting. But for me, the real key of the story is where this continues so uh peter stern and michael abbott right so michael abbott was in charge of cloud services he is now joining general motors to oversee the in-vehicle software plans that they have post carplay Post-car play. Boo. It's perfect. I love it. Moving forward, Apple's going to be split in the role that Distad had in half. Jim

DiLorenzo will head up a new sports division, and they're looking for a replacement for the TV side of the business. But this is the business part of TV+. The content part remains the same, still handled by Jamie Ehrlich and Zach Van Amburg. Yeah, down in of tv plus the content part remains the same still handled by jamie erlich and zach van amburg yeah down in in santa monica or wherever they are i know um the way i think mark german reported

this in his newsletter was something like um something's going on and i i mean maybe not maybe i part of me wonders if there's like a succession like thing going on where everybody is jockeying for position around eddie q um i don't know but um also i have to be honest the way this guy's um role is described kind of doesn't make any sense to me because they are going to have this guy jim di lorenzo heading up their new sports division and then they're going to have this guy, Jim DiLorenzo, heading up their new sports division. And then they're going to have somebody as the exec who's in charge of the TV side of the business, which to me makes more sense. But I mean, as we've said many times about executives leaving Apple, very hard to tell from the outside what it means. Like we don't know enough about the way it's structured on the inside. We don't know their reasons for leaving.

Sometimes people leave Apple because they're fired. Sometimes people leave Apple because they are bored and want a new challenge. Sometimes they've got so much money that they just don't need to stay and work the hours or work the grind. They have family issues. They've got other personal issues. Who knows? But I was surprised that, you know, yeah, I mean, that it's his division negotiated deals. But like the fact that it's the business and operations side of the TV app and the TV plus streaming service and the result is going to be they're just going to put somebody in charge of sports and somebody inside of the TV part of the business. Yeah, kind of makes sense. It feels a little bit like they're just not. Kind of makes sense.

It feels a little bit like they're just not, this guy was a higher level of management that is leaving and they don't need to replace him because they've got people in place or they've got at least the one person for sports in place and then they'll find another person at a lower level. Sort of makes sense. I don't know.

What this feels like to me is that Distad's been there for long enough, potentially, where sports didn't even exist. And so then when they wanted to do sports, they went to Distad's been there for long enough, potentially, where sports didn't even exist. And so then when they wanted to do sports, they went to Distad because he was already handling the business and operations side. And they brought in Jim DiLorenzo to do that. And now he's just going to report up to Eddie or whoever. But it's like, as the service grows, it's like, well, realistically, it would be better to have multiple people do this. But how do we take this away from the guy who's already doing it right like yeah that's almost

like a demotion for them so now they left it's like great now we can split this in half and we can have a more logical uh reporting structure as this these two parts of the business continue to grow i think so this episode is brought to you by our friends over at TextExpander. When you work in a small team, every single moment counts. You don't want to have to waste your time finding video conferencing details to send to a new client. You don't want to have to dig through your company's FAQs, probably on your website, to find a question, an answer to send to somebody.

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Check out TextExpander today at textexpander.com upgrade and you can get 20% off your first year. That is textexpander.com upgrade to say goodbye to repetitive typing. Our thanks to TextExpander for their support of this show and RelayFM. So out of nowhere, last Tuesday, Apple announced that both Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro will be coming to the iPad. These longstanding Mac professional apps for video and audio creation. professional apps for video and audio creation. These are apps that me and you use. They are apps that me and you especially have been calling on Apple to release for years. There has been absolutely zero sign of them, and then all of a sudden, here they are.

Here they are. Well, they'll be out next week, right? Yes. But they announced them. Yeah. How about that? How about that? How about that? On one level, I want to celebrate.

And on another level, I want to say, what took them so long? Right? It's a little bit like saying, do we praise them for replacing the Butterfly keyboard? Or do we point out that it's been a long time and they didn't replace it until now and that they're rectifying their own mistake? out that it's been a long time and they didn't replace it until now and that they're rectifying their own mistake. This is not quite like that, but it's similar where they announced pro iPad hardware a very long time ago. And I think the real turning point was in 2018, I think, when they did the new iPad pro design and they pointed out that it was faster than more than 90% of PC laptops sold in the previous year or that year or whatever their stat was.

And it was that, that was the beginning of the real narrative of, okay, the iPad is powerful, but what does it do? The iPad Pro. And one of the questions was, how committed is Apple to this as a concept of a professional level? I mean, because you could argue, yes, Apple uses Pro to mean lots of things that aren't used by professionals, but the ipad pro it was always sort of like boasting about how powerful it was and that it really was a professional tool and there was this impression that like apple really believed in the ipad as the future and yet never committed its own pro apps to its platform and i i feel like the ultimate moment although i also felt like i had already been broken by the time i wrote this was when the ipad um the m2 ipad pro came out and they used they in order to show off its processing prowess they demoed da vinci resolve like i mean da vinci resolve is great and people love it and

it gets used all the time and it's fine and all but it's also like literally you i can think of another product you could demo for video editing on the iPad, but it doesn't exist. And it's your own product. Who's that vendor who's failing to support the iPad as a professional platform? Oh, right. It's Apple itself. Yep. And similarly with like their marketing, right?

So much focused around like most of their products, video and audio creation as being like a key part of the product. their products video and audio creation as being like a key part of the product but the video and audio creation tools that apple made make continue to make weren't available and i'm not saying that like it's the only definition of the platform and i'm not saying they had to do it at all and i'm not what i'm saying is i feel like apple for years was talking the talk but not walking the walk that they they were, no, no, no. It is professional power in an iPad. And the iPad is great. It's got all this iPad Pro.

You spend a lot of money, but you get all this power. And isn't it amazing? And yet, clearly within Apple, it was not a priority because they didn't prioritize these apps. They just didn't. Obviously. priority because they didn't prioritize these apps. They just didn't. Obviously, I do not believe it's been seven years of hard work to get these apps to exist, right? I don't believe that. I'm sorry. I don't know what changed. And I don't know whether this was a long gestating product, and they really have been working on it for four or five years, and it took that long. But even then, I would say they could have done it faster if they had prioritized it and if it mattered truly that much to them.

But they're here now or will be here shortly. And that's great. I mean, they look great. There are some quirks, but they look great. This is my long version of a finally, but yeah, I mean, finally i can i can applaud i'll give you a golf clap for this one but at the same time like i'm glad they're here and i think it does send a message about apple feeling positive about what the ipad pro is for but at the same time like it's a real shame that it took until 2023 for final cut pro and logic pro to appear on the ipad should have been should have been like like i said it should have been 2020 should have been should really should have been 2018 when they launched that new ipad pro and boasted about its its speed but we have spent

this is the story of the ipad recently as we've spent the last five years ish um talking about how it's so capable in terms of its hardware but what about its software and this has been part of it talking about like that that i've probably jumped in the gun a little bit in our conversation but i think where that is exemplified for me the most of like the finally like it took them so long kind of thing i think the fact that it has taken so long and final cut pro isn't as fully featured as logic is in like yeah what i should say is comparable to the mac versions it seems like that is the frustration for me so that the key this is the key thing that i got from your article which i didn't see anywhere until you'd written it which was logic the logic pro version on the iPad and the Mac, you can just pass off a file between the other, apparently,

and it will work. With some asterisks, like plugins and that kind of stuff. Right, you have to have the plugins on both platforms. Not every plugin maker for Mac has those plugins available on the iPad, and if they're not there, just like if you were on a different Mac that didn't have those plugins, the plugins won't be available, but you can save a project on a Mac and open it on an iPad and it opens. And then you can edit it on the iPad and then save it and then open it on the Mac and it opens and it's fine, right? Like they go,

they are round tripping as they say. And Final Cut, you can't, you can't do that. It is very much like the old, you can take a garage band file on the iPad and open it in logic on, on the Mac or in garage band on the Mac, but you can't go back the other direction. It's a one way trip. So you can create your little, I mean, I don't want to demean it too much, but it has a little bit of a whiff of, you can create your little baby project on the iPad. But once it's on the Mac, once it's graduated to the Mac, it can't ever go back. It's for starters, not for finishers. And that's unfortunate. I understand it. Like I was listening to Accidental Tech Podcast and John Syracuse, I found his analysis a little bit odd because he seemed to be saying things like, why would you leave that feature out of the ipad version and therefore by create this incompatibility and i i don't view it that way i think they built this stuff from i don't my suspicion is that this is not a port of the mac version of final cut pro right my suspicion is that although there's probably code that is shared that they had to rebuild final cut pro in order to work at working on the iPad. And that there was certain stuff that they're like,

we don't, we can't do that yet. Or we're not ready to do that yet. We just didn't have time. And they said, well, we're going to ship it now. Um,

but regardless of the reason, the fact is, yeah, there are things that the, there are new features that are in this, that presumably will also be in a final cut pro update, uh, later this month on the Mac side, which is kind of funny, right? But they're pointing those out.

I don't think it's going to be features that don't ever come to the Mac. I really think that they're going to be in sync from now. And I think they will try to add all the features that are not currently on the iPad to the Mac. But it is unfortunate that it's not as fully developed as the logic uh mac and ipad versions are in terms of round tripping and then the other thing that really bugs me as somebody who uses final cut and doesn't use a lot of the super high-end fancy features is like are they using the lack of existence of those features as a reason why it doesn't do round tripping or is it an excuse? Because like my projects are really simple. Why can't they do round tripping? And there's, you know, I don't have an answer for that, but it bugs me because, um, so, so I'm not sure. Maybe they just not file format compatible that for whatever reason, they just, they can't do that yet. So it's an import. And, you know, for all I know, this is a, you know, I just don't know. I don't know quite what the rationale is. Apple isn't really saying, but I do wonder about that because it means that the Final Cut story is not as clear

as the Logic story. And yeah, to your point, after all this time, we can say, send up the confetti, the pro apps are finally here. But there's a really big footnote, which is that this Final Cut is not fully featured. It's, I think, very impressive and has lots and lots and lots of features. But as a Final Cut Pro, it's lesser than the Mac version and lacks a level of compatibility with a one-way import. And that means it's a second-class app, at least for now, which is, it's too bad. As impressive as it is, I want to separate here.

There's the sort of like comparing it to the Mac version and being disappointed that it doesn't measure up is not the same as saying it's not good. Because I actually am very impressed by it, at least the demos of it that I've seen. I haven't had my hands on it. I can't wait to do that. But those are two separate issues, but I do impressed by it, at least the demos of it that I've seen. I haven't had my hands on it. I can't wait to do that. But those are two separate issues.

But I do think that it's relevant that this version just, I think they just wanted to release them and get them out there and do it simultaneously. And the Final Cut version just didn't get across the finish line in terms of that kind of compatibility. It's too bad but like this is the point now i was driving towards which was by leaving it as long as they have i think it makes it more glaring because sure they're also not and i think rightly so they are not pitching these as like final cut for ipad like you know what i mean like it's not pitched as like hey this is the companion or lesser than version no to to their credit they're not they're not saying baby versions yeah but they are but one of them is sort of and that's too bad

um and you're right it would be different if it was five years ago when they said and we're introducing final cut and logic for ipad they're not all the way there yet but we're going to keep adding and they're going to reach parity eventually we promise but they didn't do that they just did nothing or they were silent nothing above the waterline for five years and now and now they put them out and it's still not quite all the way there yet like again i don't want to overstate it, but it is disappointing if you're somebody who is a Final Cut user who expected to be able to go back and forth, or that was the whole reason. I mean, for a lot of people, I had this with Logic, right? Which is,

I had Logic on my Mac and Ferrite on my iPad. And the biggest problem with that is once I started a project on one, I couldn't take it to the other. And there are times, not a lot of times, usually I stay on one device for the whole process, but there are times when I'm traveling or whatever, and I have to offload or I'm traveling and I come back and I want to now pick it up on the Mac. And not having the ability to do that is really annoying, right? That you're locked into this one device. And more than that, once you commit to starting in one place that you're locked into this one device and and big more than that once you commit to starting in one place you're you're limiting what your capability is after that it's like if i start this project on my mac in final cut and i've got a trip coming up like i know i can't do

it on the ipad or i will have to bring a laptop or i can't work on it. And that's, it just, it hangs over you. And I think it's unfortunate. Yeah, you know, but I do go back and ask myself the same question of like realistically how big of a problem this is. And like realistically, probably not. Right, like my assumption is the majority of

Final Cut Mac users are going to keep using the Mac version, but now there is a pro-level iPad app from Apple for video. That's the headline. Right, right. And it imports into the Mac version so you could start your projects there. But realistically, I mean, that's nice, right? But realistically, for this thing to be actually true,

both of these, to be true to what they should be, that shouldn't have to be a prerequisite. That, like, this is only good if you can eventually move it to the Mac, right? Like, you should be able to start to finish, have a professional-grade project on the iPad. Like, that should be able to start to finish, have a professional grade project on the iPad. Like that should be the goal. Sure. I guess the problem is that if you're going to call it Final Cut Pro and it can only go one way, that you're putting a barrier in terms of portability. And one of the ideas here is that it's portability, right? One of the ideas i can take it to an ipad and continue working and you can't do that and that that is a barrier you're right it's not

it's not the only use case it is a use case um it's but you're right the other use case is you're just working on these projects on the ipad and that's where you start um and maybe that's where you finish and that's fine right like that's great but because these are these brand names i think there's at least some level of expectation that you might want to have flexibility. And Apple's built in one-way flexibility for Final Cut, and it's two-way flexibility for Logic. And it's just, it's a difference. It's notable. I've definitely been in those situations with Logic and Ferrite in the past where I've realized that I'm locking myself into one platform. And it's better if you have

the freedom. It's better if you have the flexibility. But your point also gets to something that I want to say, which is, as far as I can tell, these aren't apps where it's, you get started here and then take it to the Mac for the finishing touches and the real work begins there, right? That's not what they're doing here. These apps should be able to be used to their fullest just on the iPad and produce professional level output, right? Like you should be able to export a project from Final Cut on an iPad and choose what encoding it does for the output and, you know, to detail and it will transcode it and save it and like all the stuff that final cut does without having oh well but the last mile you got to go back to the mac that's not the intent here with these apps which i think is coming from a good place but that is a

there is a missing puzzle piece which only on final cut so like we've spoken about that so we'll park that a second for logic fantastic you did it yeah right like again we haven't tried it but like on the face of it you did it you made a version of logic for the ipad which is fully featured it seems and seems so offers the ability for me to be able to move these files backwards and forwards. Like that one, fantastic. I'm really intrigued to see what it would be like to edit a podcast on Logic on the iPad. Like I have no idea. We don't even really know if it's possible, but we expect so.

So I've spent like six or seven years now editing podcasts on FairRite using the Apple Pencil on the iPad. It's a great experience. I, you know, the truth is I look forward to trying it out, but I can't imagine that I'm going to abandon FairRite for Logic. And the reason is Logic's a music app. FairRite is actually made to edit podcasts. Logic is a music app. I'm skeptical. Some of the stuff, I'll put it this way. Some of the stuff I'm going to look at when I review this is going to be beyond the, you can use it with your fingers kind of approach. Because what Apple is basically

saying in their marketing is you can use it with your fingers. And if you put it in a case, you can use it with a keyboard and it's got all the keyboard shortcuts. What I didn't hear and what I don't see in a lot of the videos that they've done is the stuff that actually has made it a quantum leap in terms of usability on the iPad when I'm using Ferrite, which is things like multi-touch gestures, the two finger down play pause. In those Apple videos, there's an awful lot of reaching all the way up with your right hand to the upper left hand corner of the screen to tap covering the screen with your arm to tap pause or play. Let me tell you, gets old real fast. So what did they do? Mike.

So my concern is that there are invisible things that show how far behind they are with these apps. That's the way I might put it, is they look great. They seem to have a lot of stuff. But I will say, in the early days of pro apps on the iPad, they also looked great and had a lot of stuff. But over time, those app developers learned that there were usability issues with the touch interface that needed to be addressed. And my favorite example is two-finger play pause in Ferrite, where I don't want to reach up to a button on a touchscreen, moving my eyes away from what I'm working on in order to touch a thing way up there and then come back and work and then go back up and do that. You start doing that all the time. It's really annoying.

And the moment where I was like, no, no, you just tap with two fingers and it plays or pauses and you continue with your work. Like totally unlocked it. Similarly with a pencil, they show a feature in Final Cut Pro where you're drawing, you can actually write something out on the screen

and it becomes a track where the actual animation of you writing it out is part of the track. It's cool. It's fun. But for me, the productivity enhancing features of pencil are things like gestures down with the pencil to cut a track in ferrite or bringing it across to do a mass select or a mass delete. There are things like that. Or multi-finger swiping to do a mass select or a mass delete. There are things like that, or multi-finger swiping to do a mass select or a mass delete. And all of those things make my life easier. And Apple didn't show any of them. Doesn't mean they're not there. I haven't used

it yet. But my concern is that what we're going to get with these apps is the apps that are there functionally and there if you're using basic touch, but have not learned any of those lessons that all the other apps that are trying to do pro stuff on the iPad have learned over the last few years in terms of additional usability and functionality that's enabled by, you know, multi-touch gestures and various pencil gestures. And the fact that they didn't show you editing either of these things with a pencil, it was really just the drawing on the screen with the pencil. I'm a little concerned. Maybe it's all there, right?

And it wasn't the focus of their marketing. But the fact that they didn't show it makes me a little concerned that this is going to be a case where we're going to now spend the next few years waiting for them to catch up in terms of a lot of the niceties of using a professional media app on the ipad so five dollars a month rather than a multi-hundred dollar upfront purchase yeah um you know i got uh i got the two platonic ideal replies when this was announced on Mastodon. One of them was, how come it doesn't work with this specific model of iPad? Let's investigate how many cores there are

and how much RAM there is and whether there's a reason why this one is not compatible. Logic isn't compatible with this one, but it is compatible with that one, which takes us back to a year ago. And boy, I am not interested in that at all. And the other one was, OMG, Apple's doing subscriptions. It's the end of the world. Which is fine. I know people hate subscriptions, but for professional apps, I feel like not only is this fitting, but it's a good deal.

So Final Cut costs $300. So at $50 a year, six years. $200, $50 a year, four years for Logic. This is... And yes, they haven't charged a new fee there for a while, but part of that is because of the App Store, right? But I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people to buy a new version of Logic every six years, right? Like that seems reasonable. $50 a year for a professional application seems reasonable if

you are a true professional. And something that I know Federico brought up on Connected last week that I think is absolutely true, which is, let's talk about this for the people who can't afford to buy a $300 piece of software. For $5 a month, they could work, they could see, first off, they can do a 30-day free trial, which you can currently do with Apple's Pro apps anyway. But like, let's say you've got a project and you're like, well, I need to work on this project for three months in Logic or in Final Cut. Well, it's $15. It's $15. Whereas before, after the 30-day trial, you're either in for $200 or $300 or you're out. So I think it's better for the apps and for users who might potentially use them to be able to try them out or use them on certain projects without

having to come up with $300 in a lump sum. I think that that's, I mean, not everybody can pay $300 for a piece of software without flinching, right? It's just the truth of it. I know that a lot of our listeners maybe can, but a lot of our listeners can't. And it's a high price. So taking it down to a $50 payment for a whole year or a $5 payment for a month is, I think, important. But the larger issue is these are professional media creation tools. $5 a month or $50 a year is a bargain. I pay $120 a year for Photoshop, right? If you buy the whole Adobe suite, it is a lot of money every year. These are, they're not, they're tools made for professionals to use. That's why they're there.

That's why they exist. A professional who is making their living, at least in part, from using Final Cut Pro to edit video, if they can't afford $50 a month for that, are they a professional who's using Final Cut? I mean, it is part of your job. It is the material you use to make your job happen.

It's perfectly reasonable. And I think in this case, as Apple has shown a commitment to updating these products, as a Logic user, we get Logic updates all the time. They have been updating Final Cut Pro over the years all the time. They have been updating Final Cut Pro over the years all the time. I feel like subscription is actually a better fit than this really awkward, every so often when you least expect it, we are going to hold your software ransom for $300. Like, what is that? I remember when Final Cut 10 came out and it was like, oh, guess it's time to pay $300, right? So I just think this is better in all ways.

And for people who are directly against the idea of subscription, the truth is, unless you are willing to unplug your computer from software updates and take it off the internet and just use i'm using a 20 year old computer with 20 year old software and it all works for me unless you're that person who's kind of a digital hermit um the truth is you gotta update your software every so often and this is just the the nature of things uh this is not that disruptive in terms of the business model. Like I said, $50 a year is, is four or six years of these products. Is it not reasonable that every four or six years, your key professional tool would ask you for more money? Well, you know, for two or $300, $400, whatever it is, it's, of course it's reasonable. So now you just pay, you pay it. And if you're not using it, don't pay it. And then your subscription lasts. I have run out, if you haven't noticed already,

Mike, I have entirely run out of patience for the people who say, I will never get software on a subscription. I have no patience left for them. I think it is purely dogmatic. It's purely political. And honestly, I think it's old thinking. I think it's thinking of software in a way that was never realistic because of updates. This idea that I'm just going to be a hermit and never update my software. And if you are that person, I don't know what to tell you. This is better. And the people it serves by lowering the barrier to entry are important and and grow the product base so so yeah i i and by the way i'll just put it out there i said this in my story

absolutely apple's going to do this for its mac pro apps too yeah they just absolutely they just need a new revision and they'll add some stuff i feel like they're going to sync they're going to sync it up yeah and there'll be a new revision and maybe these will be unified subscriptions which would be nice but if not i would want that i feel like even if it was like um you know you paid a little bit more on got both right so like it wasn't like ten dollars a month but was like seven all right would be would be cool but i would do it if i felt like i needed to like i feel like the subscription, like to go on what you were saying, one, if you are the type of person who will never get software on subscription

in a certain number of years, you're going to run out of software. Like this is not going to be any software for you anymore. Like, because everything, especially professional tools. And it was always a subscription because you were always paying every so often. Yeah.

And if you got into the fantasy that like, oh yeah, but I didn't update my computer for two years and ha ha, I really showed them. Okay. And then two years pass and you update your computer and guess what? Then you pay. So like, what were you even saving then? I think it's similar to the whole like, I got to buy a system that's a mini tower with upgradable ram slots and a processor card because you never know i might upgrade my stuff and then they never do it's that same sort of thing where it's a frame of mind of like yeah but i want the option yeah i'm a i'm gonna game the system in some way and

it's just it's i don't think it's even realistic no and also like i feel like if you're in the situation where it software is being updated on that every couple of years, we have a big new iteration, we make you charge for it. It means that there are features that they've held off that you haven't been able to get until they were ready to put it in front of you. And you could have been more productive and have more cool stuff coming out more frequently and not held to that idea of waiting for the next big revision. Adobe is adding stuff to Photoshop all the time because we're all subscribers, right? And so they can just roll it out. And one thing they do that's very good, I don't know if everybody knows about this, but also Adobe keeps a library, a catalog of versions. So if you don't want the latest version, I actually just had this

happen where a bug in the latest version of Photoshop bit me. And you know what I did? I uninstalled it. And then I went to the Creative Cloud app and I picked an earlier version because they're all there. You know, you want to install Photoshop 2021. It's like, yeah, okay, it's there. And then you install it. And that keeps people on older systems available as part of their subscription. And Apple doesn't have that in the App Store right now, which is a problem, I will grant you. But I love the fact that Photoshop updates just happen when they happen, instead of having a monolithic... Right now with Final Cut on the Mac and Logic on the Mac, Apple has two choices. They either just release the update

with big new features and give it to everybody who's bought Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro in the last seven years or whatever. Or they don't. And they hold it. Or they deprioritize it because they're like,

well, yeah, but what's the point? Everybody who's using this app has already bought it. In a subscription model, you actually have to serve the people who are your subscribers, and you can do it whenever you want instead of holding it for an artificial release like so much software used to in the past. So I'm sure you're going to be reviewing these, at least one of them, probably, you know, doing some kind of like big coverage when they're available. Probably both. I mean, I can't review them from the perspective of a professional video editor or a professional musician, right? But I can at least, I know enough about both of them and use both of them regularly that I should be able to understand more about how they work and how they work on the iPad too. And so will you be assuming to like take the approach of these

of like thinking about it in terms of this is the software that justifies the iPad Pro? Like, is that the kind of thing that you think you might be considering when, when looking at these apps? No, I,

I, I think there are two things here, right? There's the meta story about it that we've already talked about. And then there, how are they as apps? Right. And I think those are separate issues.

Like I do think there, there is a story and I kind of already wrote a bunch of it in my post last week, which is just, what does this mean for the platform? In the end though, the apps are the apps. The apps don't represent the platform. The apps are apps that run on the platform and how are they? And there is a larger story, like if they're disappointing or if they're successful or they do interesting things that reflects on the platform but that's not the same as saying like like for example if the apps are great it doesn't excuse the fact that they're so late in terms of the meta issue but it also doesn't matter if they're here and they're great because that's what people i think want to know is can i use this

thing so i do think those are separate issues. And I'm very optimistic. Like I said, I've got my concerns that maybe they haven't learned some of the lessons of the iPad Pro experience. You could read Apple's marketing to be, we tested it with touch and we threw in some keyboard shortcuts, good luck. And you can draw things with a pencil. If that's all that's there and it's not just simplified for the marketing, I'm kind of concerned. But again, that's down to the nitty gritty of the product. I love, and this is phase one, right? I mean, now they're on the platform. Now they're a subscription model and on the platform. So here we go. In a way, this is the beginning of this process. I'm glad though that the platform owner has finally put its stamp on the platform. I guess what's left? Xcode?

Yes. it is important that the platform owner has taken its professional level products and put it on its professional level hardware that matters it really does this episode of upgrade is brought to you by factor springs here and who doesn't want wholesome and convenient meals to energize you for warmer more active days and keep you on track with reaching your goals. Factor is America's number one ready-to-eat meal kit and can help you fuel up fast with ready-to-eat meals delivered straight to your door. You'll save time, eat well, and tackle everything on your to-do list. If you're too busy to cook this May, you can skip the trip to the grocery store, skip the chopping, skip the prepping, skip the cleaning. Factor's fresh, never frozen meals are ready in just two minutes,

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some factor meals, right? I got a box. Absolutely. Lauren and I were eating them. They're good. We have used other, how should I phrase this? Just say other services, we'll say. We have used other services that are similar to this in terms of providing sort of ready to eat meals that you heat up. And this is a cut above, I will tell you. I have used some other services where they were salty and weird and bad. And like the factor stuff is good. It doesn't feel like some sort of like, you know, when you're eating it that you can, you can taste the convenience and it doesn't taste good. It's not like that, right? The, the, the chicken dishes were, the chicken was so good like high quality chicken breast and the chicken dishes um just yeah i was very impressed and lauren too um she took them to work because

it was convenient to have something she can microwave and eat at work um i have i'm here at home by myself and make myself a lunch same story very, very high quality, very impressed with the quality of all the ingredients and that they didn't taste like, you know, like how much sodium is in this thing. I just, I don't know, in competitive products,

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Stuart wrote in and asked if XROS is going to be gesture based. Does this mean you would effectively be using a touch-based interface for a virtual Mac? And if so, could this be the spur for the rumored touch-based Macs? I mean, I expect them to behave like macOS does today and that there aren't macOS updates for this. So when macOS supports touch, I think you might be able to use it for touch.

But in the meantime, you're going to be remote controlling a Mac using the Mac input methods, right? Yeah. I would expect for if you are looking at a Mac screen, right, which could be a thing that you could do in this headset. You know, it's let's just say you could either virtualize it or you could, which is not what they're going to do. let's just say you could either virtualize it or you could, which is not what they're going to do, or you could do like some kind of screen sharing, right? Like an airplay kind of thing to the headset. In that scenario, my imagination would be that you would either A, use some kind of like hand-tracked pointer, right? Like you're not going to be touching, but you would move your finger and click, but you're clicking a pointer that you'll see on the screen or more realistically as you say you will be using

an actual physical mouse in your hand and clicking it like the pseudo touch interface that stewart is suggesting i reckon will be what we'll see in the ipad right like the idea of these ipad apps being able to run on the headset that like you would be reaching out with your hand and virtually touching interface elements on the iPad apps, but not on the Mac. Does that make sense to you? Does that track of what you think? No, I mean, bottom line,

you'll be able to touch on operating systems that support touch. You will not on ones that don't like right it's just you will these are virtual devices that will follow the rules i mean also i don't believe these the uh headsets going to run mac os so it's basically going to be like you're connecting over screen sharing to a mac in in one way or another right it's not going to run mac os it may run ipad apps natively but the mac it not going to run macOS. It may run iPad apps natively, but the Mac, it's going to be a screen sharing window anyway. But yeah, I think iPad apps will have touch just because they do. And maybe it will be

translation-like, catalyst-like in some way where there'll be a gesture you can do that translates on the iPad to a touch gesture or something like that. I don't know what that would be like. But fundamentally, I don't think this is the spur for touchscreen-based Macs. But if they do touchscreen-based Macs, I would imagine that the touches will be a part of the interface at some point because it will be an additional input method. Yep. A new friend of the show, Ramon,

from last episode, wrote in to ask, after watching Google's Pixel Fold announcement last week, I was wondering, with smartphones fast evolving into even more highly capable computers, should we stop categorizing them as phones and transition the category to something

like portable computers or a new name altogether? Too late. I feel like we missed the boat. I was wondering if foldables would do it, like if that kind of form factor change would enable some kind of like new name to emerge but everyone just calls them folding phones so even though like there is equally

folding tablets as they are folding phones right like it just depends on like which one you think of mentally is the primary um i think there's nothing we could do and like realistically the name doesn't matter because as we continue through history the word phone will mean pocket computer more than handset with a rotary dial right like this is such a prevalent device type that as people continue to age that word phones actually just means pocket portable

computer anyway yeah that's what phone means yeah that's what it means now basically everyone in the world really like if somebody said to you can you pass me the phone and there was a cordless telephone That's what it means now. Basically, everyone in the world, really. If somebody said to you, can you pass me the phone, and there was a cordless telephone and a cell phone next to each other,

which one would you give them? If Jason said to me, can you pass me the phone, or pass me my phone, and I was in his house, and there were these two things next to each other, I'd pick up his iPhone. I wouldn't pick up his, like, cordless phone.

What's he going to do with that thing? Make a call? No way. Not happening. Yeah. Mufi asks, now that Google has turned on pass keys for their accounts, how long until we get the same for our Apple accounts?

I don't know. This is a challenge, right? Because you can't use your keychain for your apple id either right it's you got to log into it manually anybody who's gotten that that thing that's like oh you need to enter in your apple id password you know oh my god my apple id password is very complicated and now i have to tap it in on a oh on a little touch screen it's uh i hate it so yeah great i i wonder what all the security ramifications are, right? Like that's the thing is Apple has put so much into the Apple ID. The question is like, how do you secure the

Apple ID so that you could use something like pass keys to get to everywhere in your Apple ID? And is Apple comfortable with that? Because once, as we've talked about before on the show, once you have a certain level of authentication, you can run off with all the data and, you know, right? It can be scary. At the same time, imagine how much easier life would be if you could log into your Apple account entirely using biometric authentication all the time or most of the time using a passkey. I would love that. So I just, I feel like there's a complex security issue here that probably requires an understanding of how Apple's Apple ID system works on the inside that we don't

know. But I have a great confidence in the fact that Apple is behind passkeys, knows that they are a user experience win, and would like to do them everywhere they possibly can, but it might not be in all the places that we want it for some good and esoteric security reasons. I'm hesitant of passkeys for now. Like, I don't know if I fully understand the ramifications of using these. I am using passkeys for my internet service provider. So when we moved, I set up a new account with this company,

and they offered a passkey. And I was like, okay. This was months ago. I was like, fine. And I would say so far, trying to log in on Safari on my Mac has been complicated, I think is the best way to put it. It hasn't been super smooth.

I think this is really the way that this company has implemented the login on their website has been the biggest issue where like on the iPhone, it really understands pass keys, but on their web version just wants me to put in my password. And like it took quite a lot of digging around to find the way to do the biometric authentication as they were calling it, which also isn't what it is. You know what I mean?

Like it's a pass key is it sounds like to refer to it as biometric authentication as they were calling it which also isn't what it is you know what i mean like it's a passkey is it's not like to refer to it with biometric authentication made it complicated but i did it for me it's just one of those things where i kind of want to see how it shakes out like i believe in what they're attempting to achieve but i know this is going to cause so many problems for so many things just because of the practicalities of making this move. It's like in the article that Dan wrote in Six Colors about this Google thing, he made a great point of like, what about shared passwords? Like, here's the thing. We all know we shouldn't do it, but sometimes you have no choice. You know, like, for example, me and Jason have some shared passwords, right? Like, there is, for all of our social media accounts,

for our hosting of the show, like the audio, these services don't have multiple accounts. So we have to share the password. Sharing a passkey, I don't even know if it's possible right now, but it's complicated even if it would be so like it's early days yet right and i think that goes in if you're apple and you're talking about the gold standard the apple id the thing that unlocks everything you want to get it right i wouldn't you know be surprised if they do something to interconnect pass keys more even at wwdc they might start

offering it maybe right but like it's gonna take some time yeah i will say that is one of the um one of the the the passwords i would change last. Right? Would be my Apple ID one. I'm going to have to, I'm going to go very far before I change that one to a passkey. Like if you think about how many devices and how many accounts touch that, super,

that one feels very dangerous. If you would like to send in a question of your own for a future episode of the show, you can go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in your Ask Upgrade question. You can also send in your feedback, your follow-up, and your Snow Talks too. Until next week's episode,

if you want to catch Jason online, go to sixcolors.com. You can also hear Jason's podcast at theincomparable.com and of course here on relay fm you can listen to my shows here on relay fm too and check out my work over at cortexbrand.com you can find us on mastodon jason is at jay snell on zeppelin.flights i am at imike on mike.social and you can find the show as at Upgrade on RelayFM.social You can watch video clips of the show posted to Mastodon but also on

TikTok and Instagram where you'll find us as Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. Thank you to our sponsors Factor, TextExpander and Electric for their support of this week's episode but most of all thank you for listening Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

Goodbye.