Upgrade - 467: The Least Important Mac

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

We struggle to balance empathy with reality as we try to explain why the Mac Pro is the way that it is, and why that's unlikely to change. Also, the Summer of Fun ends up taking on the future of social media, and Myke asks Jason to talk him into installing the iOS beta.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 467 today's show is brought to you by express vpn and fitbod my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley it's good to be here as As always, I have a Snell Talk question for you. It comes from John. Okay. John wants to know, Jason, how long have you enjoyed football

and when did you realize or decide that you were an Arsenal fan? You know, in our document, it says football slash soccer and you decided not to. I wouldn't allow myself to say it.

I figured you would do it like you just did and I decided not to do it. A word from England short for association football. Doesn't make a difference to me. Therefore, a perfectly valid word that I decided not to do it a word from England short for association football doesn't make a difference to me therefore a perfectly valid word

that you could use to describe this sport yep decided not to un-American football the answer is is lost in the mists of time

but I would say well you know Jason Upgrade Plus listeners from last week will know that I'm an American citizen now yes well as bestowed upon

by me. So go to getitgreatplus.com. I could tell you that the, so Nick Hornby is one of my favorite writers. He wrote High Fidelity, but he's not a one hit wonder. He's written lots of other great books, including Fever Pitch,

a basically a nonfiction. It's like an autobiography. I'm sure I've mentioned it here before. It is the single best explanation of the psychology of a sports fan I think you'll ever read. It's a wonderful book. Nick Hornby is an obsessed Arsenal fan. And the book, which is the most unlikely book to have ever been made into a movie, it's been made into two. What? The American version is about the Boston Red Sox. But the book is great. And he's an Arsenal fan. And I was listening know I'm reading along and I'm just like oh this is very interesting I'm learning things about soccer and then if I'm going to be exposed to the Premier League at that point which was coming on TV more and more in the U.S. in the late 20 late 2000s I want to say um mid to late 2000s more and TV. Well, one team I've heard about,

and I know some of their history, and I know about their long-suffering fans. So I started to pay attention to Arsenal. That's the only reason. So it's Nick, blame Nick Hornby. He lives in North London. I've walked past his house. My friend Simon lives right across the street

from the Arsenal Stadium and right around the block from Nick Hornby's house. When I walked by, somebody was delivering a pizza. I guess Nick Hornby wanted a pizza. Anyway, he's a great writer. His fiction is amazing. His music essays are great. And Fever Pitch is a wonderful book.

So really, that was it. It's Nick Hornby's fault that I'm a fan of Arsenal, which I came in right after they were incredibly successful and have watched them, you know, finish various places between second and eighth over the course of 15 years. But they had a great season this season. I loved it. I had a good time. Famously, for those who don't care about sports, they famously led the league for the longest of any team to ever not win the league. But Manchester City was behind them the whole time and everybody knew what was going to famously led the longest led the league for the longest of any team to ever not win the league

but manchester city was behind them the whole time and everybody knew what was going to happen and then it happened because everybody knew manchester city was going to win because they're a team made up entirely of frankenstein monsters and uh it was a great season and it was a fun ride because i think in the end sport is entertainment. And people who get really angry about their team not winning the championship every year, I think are deeply misguided. And that what you need to do is have a little bit of perspective. Like my team and your team, Mike, the San Francisco Giants baseball team. Yes, the San Francisco Giants.

They won 107 games a couple of years ago, which is a lot, Mike. That's a very lot. And they won their division. And then they lost in the playoffs. And you know what? Losing the playoffs was sad, but it doesn't take away from what a wonderful year that was that was the most fun uh full-on baseball season i'd had in a long time and uh i'm just looking to be entertained i i i don't have to become a monster who's like if they didn't win

everything it's a failure it's like arsenal had a great year too so anyway long story short blame nick hornby uh or order a pizza and have it sent to his house. It's like, you know, I will give you on the sport thing. I'm a Mercedes fan. I'm a McLaren fan. Formula One, mostly Mercedes. It's a tough time to be a Mercedes fan. Okay.

You know, things are rough right now. I had a moment there where I was wondering why you liked German cars. Well, the British teams. That's not what you mean. You meant Formula One. Mm-hmm. Okay. And so I'm a Mercedes fan.

And it's a tough time to be a Mercedes fan, but that's just how it is. And now I will revel in when they can just get on the podium or they can get even midway. It's like,

oh, this is fantastic. This is exciting to me is when they would win. So that's sport. Sport is entertainment and nothing is guaranteed. You and Adina and Lauren and I went to a Giants game. Yes.

When you were out here. And we had a great time. And you guys are now Giants fans. Go Giants. We saw a great game. The Giants scored like 13 runs. There was a splash hit. It was amazing.

The next game we went to, Lauren and I went on the 4th of July. It was a terrible game. The Giants got like a couple of hits. The pitcher on the other team basically pitched the entire game and shut out the Giants. And it was awful. And then we just went yesterday and it was 1-0 and the Giants won and they hit a home run. And their best pitcher pitched his best game maybe of his career. And it was very exciting.

The fact is, buying a ticket and going you never know what you're going to get sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad that's the that's it's that's if you if you want a guaranteed good time don't go to sports if you would like to send in a question for us to open a future episode of the show just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in a snell talk question of your own right there. We have some follow-up, Jason Snell. First comes from Steve today, who writes in to say, regarding fitness apps on the Vision Pro, do you think that only a restricted set of kinds of exercises

could be approved via App Store review? Or do you think that any common VR fitness app would be? For example, something like stationary biking or stretching could be okay, but what about something more active like boxing? I see Apple being concerned about videos or reports of the headset flying off and breaking, then people seeking replacements for something that is highly expensive and highly constrained. I don't know what to say to this. What Apple does, it's like asking me what the app store rules are going to be.

What do you think though? Do you think that there could be something around restrictions on the types of exercises? Apple could do whatever they want. I think it's possible that Apple will say that certain kinds of movements are not advised. And if they do that, then they would reject apps that try to do those things. It's possible. It's possible that they,

they'll, they won't care. You know, I don't know. We'll, we'll see the, the, the confabulating is sort of like videos of the headset flying off and

breaking like, well, that's going to happen anyway. Yes. But yeah, if they, if they were really concerned and honestly, the headset flying off and breaking like well that's going to happen anyway yes but yeah if they if they were really concerned and honestly i don't think it saves them to reject an app that would have helped the headset fly off and break because if apple's headsets are flying off and

breaking uh it's always going to be apple's fault right it's always going to be apple's fault yeah one way or another so the apple needs to make sure that that doesn't happen regardless, right? Because of moving things around. So I think it's a, I am not willing to go down the path of a hypothetical where Apple ends up in a situation where everybody's downloading this app that is making people make motions that break the headset. Oh no, what do we do? Like, I don't know. That seems unlikely.

I think it is possible that there will be certain, certain sort of features or types of apps that Apple will say, we're not comfortable with that on our platform because they do that. But I have a hard time imagining to take the other extreme that Apple's going to say, no, anything that could remark that could even a little bit raise your heart rate is not going to be allowed on this device. I have a hard time believing that too. So where, I don't know where it'll end up i i think it's more likely that it will be things in the operating system that preclude this stuff right like we know that there are that pure virtual environments they want uh they want you to be still

and not move around so you know and AR environments, there's a question like, will they approve it if there's AR boxing? Well, I don't know. I mean, probably, I would think. I'm not quite sure of a scenario where AR boxing gets you, gets the headset thrown off of you because it's not a real boxer hitting you in the headset.

But I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I think the only potential thing that I've seen is in the headset i but i don't know yeah yeah i think the only potential thing that i've seen is in the human interface guidelines um these aren't the rules right these are just like the best practices uh but one thing that they've said is avoid displaying motion that is overwhelming jarring too fast uh like and prioritizing comfort helping people stay comfortable and physically relaxed. They're focusing a lot on that kind of thing. I feel like they're really encouraging you to maybe not move around too much,

but I have yet to find a particular rule of like, we will allow this, but not this. Maybe, but I'm not sure. And I think really they would have to come out sooner rather than later if they're going to be like no fitness applications on this device yeah even if they're not the ones to do it people are still going to want to make them right right even if they're not like beat saber is not explicitly a fitness app but i know people do it to get their aerobic exercise i know they do and so if your apple unless short of what you just described a version of that which is essentially

don't get excited this is a calming product it's not meant to be exciting movies that raise your heart rate will also be banned right like they're not gonna they're not gonna do that so i i'm not i'm not too worried about it. But yeah, it is definitely, they have some level of control of what goes on the device because they control the App Store. I get it. I feel like they're going to probably take a light touch with that. Yeah, I feel like that there will be types of apps

that they won't allow, right? That's just going to be natural. But I, like you, I don't imagine them not allowing some kind of application because they think that people might drop their devices or whatever because i think if they're gonna try and restrict in any way apps that require some kind of movement it's just about a non-confidence in the technology's ability to handle that more than anything else exactly that that whatever imagery is going on and moving

in the in the ar space they are uncomfortable with the ability of the device to keep up yeah or something like that that could be uh apple is going to be streaming the first episode of foundation for free on youtube ahead of the season two premiere i'm trying to add this in as follow up for last time with the silo on twitter well now foundation is going to be free on youtube on youtube and then this is the i mentioned that like paramount had put the whole first season of strange new worlds on youtube for a limited time it's the same idea like give you a little taste hope you fall you know get intrigued and then follow on and then you get the whole first season and then season two. I'm looking forward. I think Foundation has gotten

beaten up because it's so expensive which, I mean, who cares, honestly, on one level. I hear people describing it like it's terrible. First off, it's beautiful. You actually can see every dollar

that they spent. It looks great. And I liked it. i didn't love it but like is that the bar that if you don't if you don't absolutely love it you should destroy it i don't know i don't understand the hate for that show i think it's actually um good not great but good and i will absolutely watch season two so yeah i've avoided it like not like actively but like i haven't well yeah it feels like it might be a touch too hard sci-fi for me i mean i don't think it is actually but um but it definitely has you know big it has some big sci-fi ideas in it but as always they're really trying to make it about the about the characters right in the end it's it's about the characters test flight submissions are now open for vision os apps which is just a very funny thing that has occurred like it's interesting

this year test flight seems much more together than normal you know like i've known from previous years like developers have things they want to submit so people can test on the base and it's like months into the cycle when they allow for that to occur it started basically immediately with ios and probably mac os too that like you could submit as a developer for test flights so people could test things it is very funny to me the idea of people being able to submit test flights of vision os apps when no one can try them now my question would be are they maybe getting ahead of the suggested July dates for developer kits and also for allowing maybe for the developer sessions that they're doing

where people can go to Apple? Maybe if you have it in TestFlight, it's just an easier way to get the app onto that hardware. You might even be asked to provide a test flight invitation so that your app can be on the device. Yeah. So maybe this is why they're doing that. Rather than making it like a thing

where they have to manage builds directly, like to and fro, especially if they're going to be trying to scale these things up. But yeah, also if developer kits are going to start rolling out soon, test flight's needed. Yeah, and that would allow different developers to look at different developers' apps, which is interesting too.

Oh yeah, that could be interesting, right? Like if I was a developer and you were a developer, I could give you a test flight for my app and you could try it. That would be really great. Sure. Thank you, Mike. That's very kind of you to say that you would share your app with me. Oh, and I want to see your app. We're just trying to build good apps. Really? I mean, it's just i'm not really okay all right no you can see it it's

fine oh you you want you got some be gentle i'm a little i'm a little reluctant i don't want to know i just i don't know how good it is i'm just you're some trade secret down to myself as a as a vision os developer right now but no i want your feedback i do okay speaking of feedback you have some follow-up i do have some follow-out um a couple of things uh i listened to atp uh 542 last week i had some comments there and of course monica chen at the verge wrote a story about like the apple mac pro m2 ultra who is using it they're all using laptops instead and i just as i was listening to and it's not just this episode of atp but it's lots of conversation about the the mac pro i wanted i feel like maybe i could provide a short summary of what's going on with the mac pro so i i thought i would attempt it here here's my

attempt at a mac pro summary the mac pro for apple Silicon was intended to have a quad chip M2. For whatever reason, Mark Gurman reported on this, they couldn't make it work, or they decided not to make it work, or they decided to kick it down the road. And so they didn't have the chip they were going to put in it, and they really wanted to complete the Apple Silicon transition. So they put the same chip that's in the Ultra in the Mac Pro. I don't think it says anything about the future of the Mac Pro. I think it's a product that they didn't really choose to ship, but they felt they needed to ship something. I would actually be very surprised if there weren't a quad chip in the M3 or M4 generation. I think that that was always the plan

is to have this be something more than the Mac studio and i think that's still the plan so i wouldn't get too caught up in the rest of it because i think the most important thing based on the reporting of mark mark bloomberg which is not his name mark german at bloomberg we shortened it to m bloomberg now um according to m mb uh it's a it's just it's the chip didn't go the chip didn't work and so they pushed they kicked it down the road but they had to ship something because they really wanted to get that intel mac pro off the price list that's it i think i feel like that answers lots of questions about why this product exists if you believe olambi's uh reporting i gotta say it was a good take sheriff mb i hadn't considered that but

that is a good take it's not that like they have changed course on the mac pro but just for the m2 they just could not get the m2 extreme out the door i mean i can i can a little sub little sub note to that would be apple doesn't have to have every product for every person. And if Apple decides that there are certain areas of the market that they don't want to serve or they can't really serve well with their hardware, they just won't. And as a critic of Apple, you can say, I think that this sub market is important and they shouldn't abandon it. But I have over the last, you know, whatever, 20 years, definitely seen that happen where Apple just turns their back on a market and people are

in the market are very upset about it, understandably. But Apple as a company is doing pretty well, right? And a lot of these markets are very niche markets and it's not unreasonable from a business standpoint to look at it and say, I understand why they might not prioritize that. I think it's actually a good sign for the future of Mac Pro for people who care about it, that they're still making it and that they still shipped it,

even though according to Sheriff Gurman, they didn't have the chip that they were going to put in it. But I choose to believe that they actually do want to do a quad chip m series processor because think of all the cores and think of all the gpu cores and cpu cores and memory and like wow wouldn't that be something i think that that's probably still something that they want to do you know unless we hear reports otherwise and that the Mac Pro is the place to put it, but they couldn't get it there this time.

And so what we end up with is something that's a compromise. And I get that it's disappointing, but I think that the simplest, it's that Sherlock Holmes thing. You eliminate all the other things and the simplest answer, you know, no matter how unreasonable, okay, let's say Occam's Razor instead. Forget about Sherlock Holmes. It's Occ's occam's razor the simplest example is it's a it was made for the quad chip they didn't have it so they shipped it with a dual chip and shrug and move on uh and come back to it later so i think that's pretty simple but that's that's my answer it's like the short version i think is the real version which is they didn't get that chip so they made do i mean i i have a shorter less charitable version which i know will upset people which is just like the mac pro is not important anymore it just isn't and you

gotta let go you just gotta let go please let go it's true it's the least important mac and there are people out there who argue it's the most important mac it's the least important no it really is it it doesn't stand the dream idea right like it's the least important Mac. It really is. I understand the dream idea. I get it. I understand the idea. But at this point, the Mac was pushed forward by the iPhone, right? So, can we argue maybe the

iPhone is the most important thing, which then led to the current Apple Silicon chips that we have. The Mac Pro is not leading anything for Apple anymore anymore no matter what you do to it everything funnels up they will down yeah and the bottom yeah and the bottom line is the the mac pro that everybody's dreaming about will never exist it will never exist even if they do the quad version of the m series chip it's never going to be what everybody wants because

apple is all of Apple's success. And Apple Silicon, sorry, this is becoming something. It's a TLDR with like 90 footnotes. But all of Apple's success on the Mac recently with Apple Silicon is based on the fact that they're using chips that evolved out of the iPhone chip. And it gets them all of that power efficiency. It gets them power, but, you know, low battery life, low power usage. You don't have to cool it as much. All of these things, the memory is integrated.

The GPUs are integrated. All of those things are advantages that make the Mac better than it's ever been. One of the trade-offs is that strategy doesn't work at the extreme high end. The best you can hope for is put four of them together interconnected and maybe they'll do that sometime but if that isn't enough like they're not going to do more than that they're just not there's no reason that you know arguably there's no reason for the mac pro to exist at all but i think the reason it still exists is because they do want to make that quad version and have the thing that can go in recording studios well there's

my question to you if they do that quad chip would they put it in the mac studio too i don't think they can i don't think it would fit i don't think it could be cooled i think it's huge okay i think i think the mac studio was not made for that right and that would be again a reason to have a giant mac pro case is that it would be yeah I'm not I'm not convinced it would fit in there I mean maybe but my initial thought was like it's not made for that second little bit of follow-up and this is this is more um I should say Monica Chin's article is fun it's basically anecdotes but it's good anecdotes from people and the the you will not be surprised to know that the answer to the story is basically Apple's laptops are so good the macbook pro is so good the macbook pro 16 especially is so great that a lot of the pros

who used to use mac pros don't need to because they have a laptop that does everything they need and it's a laptop so they can take it with them wherever they need to go well that's a true story in your backpack right yeah yeah that's what i said that's what i said that's the true story here, right? Well, as you said, a Mac Pro in your backpack, right? Yeah. That's what I said. That's what it is. So yeah. Marco did a little thing about scrolling on the Vision Pro and he actually asked me about it. There's this question about like scrolling on the Vision Pro and how does that gesture feel? Because we have all gotten, I think, really used to the fact that you're holding a device, a phone or an iPad, and you kind of scroll with your thumb idly. And on the Vision Pro, you're not resting your thumb against a surface and scrolling it.

You don't have that gesture. Instead, you're just sitting with your hand in your lap and you put the finger and thumb together and then you move to scroll. And there's this question of like, will that gesture be as comfortable? will that gesture be as comfortable? And having used it, and you've used it, my thought was it probably will be fine, but it's all down to how subtle the gesture can be detected by the cameras on the Vision Pro. Because it's not that different

if you've got your two fingers together and it's sitting in your lap or next to you, and you're just kind of like rotating your wrist as if you're scrolling, if it can pick up that level of subtle detail, it's not really any different from scrolling something on an iPhone or an iPad. If you've got to make some larger physical gestures in order to get the scrolling right, I could see how scrolling on a Vision Pro might be less delightful than it is on an iPhone or an iPad. But I've got to think that it's a high priority for Apple to get that to work.

And that if they can't get the subtle gesture to work, I would think that they might even have some sort of other shortcut that lets you scroll or page down. But I think that they're going to be able to solve it just in watching your hand making a fairly subtle gesture and i don't think that there's a uh john went on atp went on a like a whole level of like the chain of complexity of like oh and then if it's if it's too big and too small and you can't and i i honestly i love john but i think he's overthinking it we scroll on a trackpad in a very small space and it works just fine. And if they can get that same kind of gesture to work with your hand that's in your lap or next to you, it'll be fine. So my impression was that it worked okay. And that the only

question is if you try to do something subtle and it just can't pick that up because for whatever reason, the camera just can't detect that level of subt for whatever reason the camera just can't detect that level of subtlety and turn it into a gesture then it might be an issue but it wasn't an issue for me when i was using it yeah i the jury is out for me on the comfortability of that gesture but realistically if i'm going to be scrolling long web pages i'm probably not going to be doing that anyway right like you're maybe more likely to do it with a trackpad at my desk or something than like to just like scroll scroll i would say that the subtlety is maybe not as important because the windows are so large that like a small movement would be much more of a movement than

a small movement on an iphone screen that like this idea of like if i want to move a little bit i think that it's not going to be a tiny movement like you might do on an iphone screen right where the screen's way smaller right but if you want to do a precision movement that might be a different kind of gesture too where you're you're you know you're you're making a very precise movement to move it just a little tiny bit versus just sort of like idly doom scrolling yeah right yeah we'll see we see. I'm not worried about the subtlety of it. All I'm worried about really, or the only question I have is the comfort of the gesture. Over time too, right?

Because there's a, you end up, we've all ended up with a, I think a natural hand position for scrolling on an iPhone or an iPad that you can, you can get in a very comfortable position where all you're really doing is just sort of like moving that thumb or whatever and and scrolling and when you don't have that device in your hand and it's just your hand all by itself can you get it in a position ergonomically that allows you to very gently scroll through content without having it be that you're holding your arm out or up or whatever right that's the that's the question and we only had half an hour with it i would i would certainly hope that everybody at apple has been spending years already thinking about this and thinking

about getting that nailing that good ergonomic gesture for uh idly scrolling through content yeah yeah because i i think it might be a little bit more of an arm movement, like in general. And so I just wonder what that comfort will feel like. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. You may have heard by now that you want to use a VPN when you're connecting to the internet, but adding in an extra step to anything every day can kind of feel like a hassle.

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Right now, go to expressvpn.com upgrade and you can get an extra three months of express vpn for free that is exp ress vpn.com upgrade to get three extra months of express vpn our thanks to express vpn for the support of this show and all of relay fm that is express vpn.com upgrade room around up time yeehaw got a couple of things from uh mark bloomberg no no it's just uh he just goes by mb now sheriff mb sheriff mb had a report of of bloomberg marcus von bloomberg sure this is we're expanding the law uh mr german had a report last week on how Apple is going to be managing the purchasing experience for the Vision Pro. Many of these things are stuff we would have assumed to be the case, but Mark says he's spoken to sources. I'm assuming inside of Apple retail have been able to confirm some of this to him. Apple is planning to sell the device in all of their stores,

but some select stores will get special areas created to handle the fitting process and appointments will be required for this. This is all very reminiscent of the Apple Watch as you remember. You could, I think, get an Apple Watch from basically any Apple store, but if you wanted to go and try it on, you had to book appointments. And at first, appointments were limited to, I think, their bigger stores or their flagship stores, you know, places where they maybe thought they would sell more or places where they had the space to dedicate, you know, a corner of the store to let you try on Apple Watches. There will be very limited number of demo units where there are demo units because there are going

to be so few Vision Pro sold. You know, it's like every Vision Pro that is a demo unit is three and a half thousand dollars. Apple is not making. So they are going to be selling as many of these as they can. Online sales are still going to be a thing. And there'll be some kind of face scanning feature, probably, I reckon, in the Apple Store app. This is what me and you experienced, right, where they're trying to understand your fit for the light shield. Mark is saying that international rollout is likely to not occur until the end of 2024, starting in Canada and the UK. Tough times for me.

Mark appears to indicate in his report that Apple stores will actually be carrying prescription lens options. Yeah, interesting, right? Yeah. This is not what was expected. The power of Apple, I guess. But he says that they'll have to have thousands of them in order to keep the stock if they're going to do it that way. But I get why they're motivated. They want you to walk out the door.

With the whole kit. With the whole thing up and running and ready to go they don't want you going to their vision partner and having a crappy experience right they want you to to be able to you've gotten the experience that they want for this whole thing and i wonder what will they will do to make that happen legally in terms of i don't know exactly what is required if they will have a machine or if they'll have you bring a prescription with you or if they have like registered opticians on call so that they can you know look at your results you know from some remote location look at your results and approve it and put it through whatever they have to do to go through that. I'll also point out, we are a very long way from these things being sold.

So while this is the report of what they're planning right now, things can change, right? I mean, the product is still in development, so it's possible that they will get down the road here and they got to start working on it, right? Because it's going to happen, they've um they may change direction at any point between now and and release time and it's probably going to change a ton right like they might be like oh actually we can't do the prescription lenses or oh you know what we're going to do this we're going to do that like there is going to be a lot of change in this for we don't have enough units and we're gonna only sell in five stores yeah well like in the in the, I mean, that's one of the interesting things about this is how good are their remote measurements are going to be? Are they really going to want to drive people into Apple stores? How many stores

will that be? How confident? I think their level of confidence about the quality of the online ordering system will go a long way here, right? Because if they think that the online ordering system is not going to be a great experience, they're going to try to push people into stores. If they think it's good enough, they'll probably only have limited supply in stores and they'll push everybody online, everybody else. And also if they don't have enough of them, they may not have them available in all 200 or something Apple stores at first, right? Certainly. I think that that's part of the story is depending on the amount that they've got, one way you can gate that and control that is just have it available in a

few stores and then everything else is online. The only challenge there is you got to be confident that your online ordering process will be good enough. And if it's not, and you really need to get it fit in the store, then they're going to have to make that decision. But it is a weird thing because they're going to be so limited that they, you know, not everybody who wants one of these, even if you think that not very many people are going to want them, the number of people who are going

to want them is going to outnumber the number they can make. So they're going to have to figure out a way to handle that. Mark Gurman has also reported that Apple is indeed testing a 32 inch iMac story that will never die yeah and and he says it's around 32 inches so you know maybe it's 31.9 32.3 who knows but around 32 so that's the that's the idea very interesting you know what is that and uh who wants that and you know it's it's a story that goes back

to the you know original iMac and even before the idea of an all-in-one Mac the downside of it is that the display is made with the computer and the display will not age as quickly as the computer does so there's always this concern that it's you this concern that iMacs are potentially wasteful because you're sort of wasting the display. It would have a longer life without the computer attached to it. And they've got a Mac mini and a Mac studio. But what we know from when Apple does revise the iMac is that people like iMacs, they do. And they must think that there's a market for this. I think it's really interesting because that's a big computer. I don't know.

I still think whatever this computer is, it's also tied to a display that they're going to make. That would be my feeling on this. So if they have a 32-inch iMac, there'll be some kind of 32-inch studio display. Probably. Let's go back to the details. Oh, yes.

We have new betas out. Beta 3 is now out for iOS 17. I misspoke a couple of weeks ago. This is probably the one that will be the public beta. The public beta, yeah. Almost certainly. Unless there's a late... It's funny because the public beta thing is really,

Apple releases a beta that they think will be the public beta and then they wait and watch. Just in case. Is it? Could it? Is it? And my experience in the past has been very much like they wait and watch and you get to that point where they're like, sometimes they're like, oh, it's okay, and they roll it out. And other times they go,

there's something in there we don't like. And they do another build. And sometimes that's another beta build that is developer and then public. And sometimes it's just that the public beta comes out and it's a slightly different build than the last public or developer beta. There are lots of scenarios here, but it does feel like we're, historically, we're very close to when they usually release a public beta. So beta 3, I think, is the odds-on favorite to be, if not the public beta, close to the public beta. And as a piece of beta follow-up, you are now on everything, correct? I am. I have iPad, iPhone, watch, and Mac are all on the betas. I am living the dream or the nightmare. It's actually been fine. My biggest problem is the usual, which is that our software that we rely on to do podcasting won't launch on public betas or developer betas, certainly early in the process. And as a result, all the podcasts I do now, all my automations are broken. I have to use my, I'm using my laptop to record this and to talk to you. And then separately, you know, sitting in front of my monitor, it's in a screen sharing window. I hate that part of it, but that's, you know, I got to use this stuff so that I can write about it. And that's the

bottom line. I have people say to me, you should really install it on a production system or not a non-production system it's like i can't i can't i have to use it i i have to use them to write about them because if i'm just doing it on a test system i'm not using it not really instead i'm just kind of walking through um the features but you're doing the reverse right it's like there are two machines yeah so i i have exactly i have a system that is running uh release software that i can use it's just really inconvenient but it works so that's what i've got is i've got a stable i actually have a stable ipad too so you know if something catastrophic happened i could i could pull back to that but for the mac it's the most important thing and i just have my macbook air is solid it's just staying on ventura no i said beta 3 is my time i think i might be chickening out jason i haven't done it yet why why are you chickening out

steven put it on and he was complaining about battery life on his phone Stephen put it on and he was complaining about battery life on his phone. And I don't really want to deal with bad battery life on my iPhone. I haven't really noticed issues. Do you think I should do it? I don't know if I want that amount of guilt if it goes badly for you. If you tell me I should and it goes bad, I won't blame you. Oh, I don't know. know i mean i feel like you need to take that step i haven't had a problem with it i'll put it that way okay the worst problem i had

was i had a bug where mail or not mail uh music would crash sometimes so i ended up i think it was music would crash especially if i was attached to a bluetooth device, but I could play music by using the music app on my watch. It would work. It was something in the UI, but only some of the time. That's like about the worst thing that I've run into so far. But I mean, what are you getting out of it?

You're going to get some of these new features like the contact cards and stuff like that. So I'll tell you the things that I'm in, that I'm intrigued about. There are a bunch of widgets that I want to try. So from Apple's widgets and also third party widgets that have interactivity in them. Um, I'm really keen to see what the autocorrect is all about and to understand

what that is. Um, and also the messages features, stickers, um, replies. Well, some of the messages features aren't there yet.

Okay. And the interactive, well, I have not, I was able to make an animated sticker responding with an emoji I have not been able to do. And what was the other thing? It's not all there, is what I'm saying. Some of it's just not ready yet. Oh, I was going to say your interactive widgets.

Not a lot of that yet. And then, of course, if you have a third party, you're going to have to get a beta that supports that. Well, the main one that I want. I have. I see. I can't use it. I already have the one, really the only one I care about. In which case you can.

Alright, I'm going to do it right now. I'm going to do it right now. Actually, it's kind of cool that you can just do it in settings now, right? Yeah. iOS 17 developer beta has been checked. Download and install. I'm doing it live.

You're doing it live. Good luck. Anyway, anybody else there who doesn't want to be on the developer list, hopefully they'll be public beta soon and you can try it out. Or choose to be patient and wait for the fall. If I do it, I always go developer beta and not public beta. If I'm going I do it, I always go to the upper beta, not the public beta.

If I'm going to do it, I might as well get... Just go all the way. Yeah, it's like, don't just dip your toe in, go all the way, or don't do it at all. Nothing worse than running a beta that you know there's already a new beta and you don't have it. Exactly. Okay, well, what's the point of doing it?

That's how I feel. I'm not recommending it to other people. For me, it's like, if I'm going to do it, I want to be like on the the edge otherwise why am i dealing with the frustration i might as well just wait until september three minutes remaining good luck this episode is brought to you by fitbod when you want to change your fitness level it can be hard to know where to get started that's why i'm so happy to let you know that fitbod is both an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan just for you. Everybody has their own fitness

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that is more fun than anything else? What? A new social network. That's fun, right? To have a new social network? Summer of fun! Summer of threads! That's where we are. It's the summer of threads, everybody.

Since the last episode, we have gone from there being no Facebook Twitter competitor to there being one. And oh boy, is there one. I think yesterday. There is one. It does exist. A hundred million users have signed up for threads by meta which is quite an

achievement um i think what is the fastest app to ever get there i mean obviously it makes sense right like if anyone's going to do it go to the place that has the largest networks and spiral something off uh what is your initial impressions here you You've signed up? Yeah. I mean, this is the thing is that there's more than a billion Instagram users. Yeah. And you just say, I'm an Instagram. In fact, I think it even knows. It's like, you're already on Instagram.

So are you here too? And you go, yep. And it goes, all right. Very easy. It's the only way to sign up right now. You have to have an Instagram account. That's the way to do it right now. Yeah. So, you know, it it is i don't know i hate that it only has an iphone app and that there's

no web version i mean i would like a mac app obviously and if they do end up federating with mastodon it won't matter but right now the only way to look at it is to be logged in and they only have an ip app and my iPhone as people here know my iPhone is my third most important Apple device maybe fourth depending it's just you know and so I'll

read it sometimes on my iPad but then it's in stupid iPhone compatibility mode and so like Blue Sky I don't love Blue Sky's app Blue Sky's app is also an iphone only app but blue sky has a website that you can log into and use um for those who don't know it's staging right staging.bsky.app oh geez and it works sounds like you're supposed to be able to use that definitely that is their that is their their website so that that i don't like because

the truth is that i check into social media on my mac because i work on my mac all day and so for me i i hate that there's only the iphone app and then you know of course you can't use an iphone only app on a mac and anyway uh so i don't love that um i don't love the look they launched they obviously launched it fast because they since an opportunity when twitter was having all of its problems last weekend right so um there's a lot of missing features that i'm sure they'll add right like that they know they're going to add they talked about um supporting federation so that you can follow accounts on threads from mastodon and vice versa um it doesn't let you control reposts,

you know, retweets, which I posted about this. In fact, I consider that a, a stupendously important feature because there are people I follow who are compulsive reposters, retweeters,

whatever you want to call it. And I end up seeing in my timeline, a bazillion things that I don't care about that are being boosted by this person. And all I really care about is what they have to say. There are other people who will, will judiciously repost things and it doesn't bother me, but some people I care about them, but I don't care about the stuff that they think they should pass on and you know on some services you can say i don't want to see their their reposts i only want to see their posts and uh threads doesn't do that yet and it is a killer because i've had to just unfollow people

it's just like i can't i can't even right um so that that's an issue but you know and i you know everybody's talking about how but it's meta and meta is a bad company it's like yeah they are i mean yeah uh however i'll point out that lots of people use instagram who think meta is bad but they use instagram because they like instagram yeah um and also there were some posts that were again misinterpreted i think willfully by people from the guy who's in charge of instagram who basically they said oh um because i think he said something like we're not gonna chase like news traffic yeah like we're not gonna optimize for news traffic and he actually said something like because facebook has made meta has made mistakes

in the past about dealing with news it's like no kidding but yeah good good that they're aware of it and they're like we're not saying you can't post news which people were saying that they were saying that's not what they were saying they were saying we're not going to optimize our service to boost news and to promote news and to make it like we're not gonna do that because we did that in the past and it was a bad idea that's great mike hurley says that's great because the worst thing about twitter is it was all news all the time whether you wanted it or not yeah and like it was too much not everybody wants that which i will also say and this is a little bit like me saying like not apple doesn't have to make a Mac to serve every audience.

We are entering an era. We have entered an era. Not every social media product needs to serve every vertical of everything. We are entering an era. I feel like what, what meta is saying with threads, what Instagram is saying with threads is essentially, you know, there'll be new stuff on it, but we're not focused on making it a news thing.

And maybe where we end up is that's what is remaining of Twitter is it's, it's much more newsy and new source because Twitter cares about it. And thread doesn't threads doesn't care about it. Uh, and maybe not, but like, I I'm okay with i'm okay with meta of all companies saying we're not gonna really invest in a lot of news algorithms

for it's like not because realistically good you know i think there are a million things for this obviously meta as a company has a not great relationship with news organizations for many reasons in both directions, right? Like news organizations don't like Meta. Meta doesn't like news organizations. Governments don't like when Meta deals with news. They make them pay, right? Like it's like a whole thing.

Why would you even go down that route? And I would argue even though, yes, Meta is the owner of Instagram, Instagram has its own sensibility. It is ultimately the same company, but it does have its own sensibility that Facebook doesn't have. And I think Threads is coming because there's a reason it's attached to Instagram. It's not attached to Facebook. They want it to be kind of a child product from Instagram. I think it brings that approach, which is to be kind of a child product from Instagram. I think it brings that approach, which is a little bit of a different approach. Now, also, I saw a lot of people

complaining about the fact that it has an algorithmic timeline. Masari has said that they absolutely want to have both kinds of timelines, but again, they launched with one. But what I did learn is the same lesson I learned on Instagram and I hate it, but this is the lesson you learn on Instagram, which is if you, if you haven't read all the posts that you currently have, don't reload because the act of reloading tells it that you want to see something new. And that's for me on threads. That's when my list goes from being mostly people i follow

to being random crap it's because it's because and it's their fault but it's their fault because they built it this way but but when you hit that reload thing if at the top if you pull to refresh what you're telling it is i'm done with this timeline give me a whole new timeline and that's gonna be an algorithmic nonsense generator right like but if you're very careful and it's like don't don't do it just very gently scroll down don't reload i think that the timeline is okay um but yeah obviously there should be uh there should be a non-algorithmic timeline option as well. And they said that they will do it. So like, I don't know.

I mean, on one level, I think it's okay that this product exists because if you're an idealist and you're like, well, these are both run by, and you know, Blue Sky 2 is kind of problematic. Like, okay, Mastodon is for me. It's like, okay, like that's fine. A lot of my of problematic like okay mastodon is for me it's like okay like that's fine a lot of my people are on mastodon i find mastodon the most fulfilling of all of the social media sites that are out there right now but if you're a twitter person who's getting increasingly unhappy with how unstable and weird twitter is getting i think we it's gotten to the point in my opinion we're jumping from twitter to instagram while choosing between the lesser of two evils. Let's be clear.

I think it's the lesser of two evils. So, okay. I mean, it's fine. I don't know. I don't want to keep up with multiple social media timelines. I hate it. I don't want to keep up with multiple social media timelines. I hate it.

I'm really hoping that we get to the point where I can see people who are on threads from Ivory. And there's that blue sky thing. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But it's a blue sky bridge for Mastodon, for the Fediverse. I would love that. I hate that that blue sky which is kind of interesting just decided they're gonna do their own thing and be in their own silo and i i wonder if uh if the reds goes really well if they're gonna have to like backtrack on i think blue sky's over like i know that's gonna upset but blue sky's done like there's only space for one right like there really is i think i think

you're probably right i think most people are not going to check five timelines right and so unless blue sky has carved out a niche that works for for a particular audience right like i think it's okay if mastodon look if threads became dominant twitter faded away blue sky faded away all the others faded away and mastodon remained where all my tech people are i'd be okay with that right like i i think that would be fine but um but yeah it's it's this is meta going for the jugular right that's what this is this is we're gonna launch this thing so fast yeah it feels so satisfying to me don't forget that instagram built its social graph on twitter

right you linked your twitter account it pulled over all your follows and now they've they years past they cut off they cut them off very quickly because they realized what was happening and now they are just taking the instagram social graph and turning it into a new twitter yeah it's yeah yeah i'm very excited about threads. Like I love Instagram. It's my favorite social network and has been for a long time. I like the vibes of Instagram and I'm hoping that those vibes

will be able to carry over to a text-based social network. It's not going to be perfect, but I'm hoping it will be less like Twitter, to be honest. I have liked that Mastodon doesn't feel like twitter to me either and i think that all of that's good right um i am excited about the possibility of the uh like them supporting activity pub and maybe that means that we can have some different

experiences and still read all the timelines that we want to read and like i know there's a lot of conjecture about all of this stuff i'm just choosing to believe what they're saying because they're saying it so i will just believe it unless it changes right like there's a lot of people like oh you can't trust them they're not gonna do it but they're saying they're gonna do it so if they're telling you they're gonna do it just believe them and if they don't do it then you can say ah you lied right like this is a great interview on a podcast that I like called Hard Fork, which is Kevin Roos and Casey Newton, the platformer. They had Amnon Mossieri

on the show, and he was talking very earnestly about why they want to support ActivityPub. Now, I think the fact that they've got 100 million users in four days is going to make this significantly more complicated, but I don't think that that's changed their plan, personally. It saves them a lot

right this is the brilliant thing and this is what he said in that interview is it's different if you own everything versus if you you have these release valves yeah so they can say like if you don't like our policies about whatever it's fine you can go somewhere else and it's all interconnected and like that's the part that i think people miss when they're like oh they're never going to do it like maybe maybe they're lying or whatever but i think what what they're trying to do is find a way to make the fact that they're federated with other social services serve them, not that they're trying to take them over, but because it means they don't have to control the entire widget. I have 100 million users.

They know probably 99 million will say using the Threads app. They have like a million people that then might use Threads in a federated app or whatever. But then what it does is it allows them with legislators to say hey we're open i don't know what you're talking about right like and there's nothing but benefit for them exactly we're we're using open standards it doesn't people don't have to be here yeah no we've this is one of those areas it's funny because on um downstream julia and i talk about how the whole streaming era flipped from everything has to be on our service that we own to being like oh no no no let's sell our stuff to other people and for

money because we also like money that's a little bit of what i think is going on here which is these monolithic standardized services where it's like you can only be in our app you can only be on our website there are advantages to that in terms of your power and control. There are also disadvantages to that. And I feel like, I almost feel like Threads is a good example of meta showing that it has learned from all the things it did that burned it. Or at least some of the things that it did that burned it. And trying to do this in a different way in order to. And sure. I mean, from their perspective.

Yeah. In the end, they're going to want to make money on ads and they're going to. And, you know, I get that it's meta and ads and data and things like that. But I think they, yeah, they're going to approach this from a standpoint of like, we actually don't want this to be a completely monolithic thing because it, I mean, you talk about like being criticized. If you, I was saying this about the app store a while ago, that one of the advantages of, uh, if sideloading becomes a thing on iOS is it actually makes Apple running the app store a lot easier for Apple because right now an app store rejection is the kiss of death for that code. It literally can't go anywhere else. But if they have a side loading option, Apple can just say, well, you know, we don't want it,

but you can just sell it yourself. We don't care. We're not going to put it in our store, but it's okay. We're not destroying your product. We're just saying it doesn't fit in our retail store, essentially. And there's a little bit of that with the Fediverse, right? There's a little bit of that saying, look, we're not the only game in town. We're the biggest game, but we're not the only game in town. We interoperate. If you don't like what we're doing, but you still want to follow this news service that is on our platform, you can follow it from somewhere else. It's fine. And they're okay with the level of not controlling everything

because it gets them some other benefits in saying, we're not the whole thing. We're just a big player. Whether it's true or not. I think Threads is part of a... Facebook's trying to adapt its public image you know like they've done all the things that they've done they've taken the beatings that they've taken you know both in the press or for whatever it might be and they've set a new landscape for themselves that they now have to try

and fit within like look at the you know the fact this thing can't launch in Europe because they're saying they need to do a bunch of work to make that happen like they're deciding it seems like to not just charge in right right um and i think that people have in general i think people have good vibes about this and bad vibes about their competitors like more bad vibes right about twitter than this and i think that they are taking this as an opportunity to be like hey people like us right now why don't we try and just like carry on going down that route you know like and so i'd be intrigued to see how this ends up turning out as as a long time big proponent fan of instagram i am happy that this thing exists it makes sense for me personally

it makes sense for my businesses i think to like look at this as like you know you have this it's kind of like one network of two sides which i think is really cool right that like you have a lot of instagram followers you might then get more threads followers and like vice versa and then it's like one handle and it's like these both places i think just makes sense to me and i actually really like that it's its own thing but there's still that link there so people can choose to get one or the other or both if they want to like i think that this is cool i'm excited about it and i'm it also feels fun to see this thing growing and evolving in front of our eyes like they did kind of launch it in a half-baked state

and now we're going to get to see how they adapt it. I think this is fun and I'm happy that it exists because there are a lot of people who I followed on Twitter that were never coming to Mastodon, but they're on threads and they're posting on threads. And that makes me happy because there are people that I want that content from. I want to see them.

And I have missed them for months now. And now they're back in my life again. And I think that's fun. This episode is supported by Upgrade Plus and the people that support us with Upgrade Plus. If you enjoy this show and want to hear more of it, please consider subscribing to Upgrade Plus. You will get this show and want to hear more of it, please consider subscribing to Upgrade Plus. You will get no ads

and bonus content every week. You get access to the RelayFM members Discord. It's just $5 a month or $50 a year. Go to getupgradeplus.com and that money will help support this show,

supports us. We're very thankful for it. But you get extra content each and every week. I will say last week's Upgrade Plus, we mentioned it earlier on, was a classic. It was so fantastic.

Jason surprised me by giving me the US citizenship test. It was brilliant. If you've been maybe wanting to try, like, hey, what can this be like sometimes? This is a really good episode to try Upgrade Plus on. You can, if you want to go try it, go try it. It's $5, right? You can sign up, you can cancel,

but I guarantee you'd get a month, you'll get a bunch of episodes, then you'll be able to see why Upgrade Plus is a great deal. It's just $5 a month, and you could get more content, no ads, and support the show. It is time for Ask Upgrade. We have questions from Upgradians, as we always do. Starts with Jorgen, who asks, with the iPhone

15 switching to USB-C, according to the rumors, what do you think would happen to the SE? Will that simply see no change until a new model is perhaps released sometime in the future? Yeah, I think that's it. If you're worried about EU regulations,

they're for new phones, not for existing models. So existing models will be untouched and the SE will be untouched. And I expect that they'll probably update the SE to USB-C the next time they update it. Yeah. Because I think this is something

that people are going to miss, right? Like it's new phones and the SE is not a new phone. And so it can just exist out there. It can just exist out there in the ether. Apple will probably want to change it. Sure, sure. But yeah, so the old phones, because Apple still sells old phones,

they'll still be there with lightning. But the new phones will have USB-C. And the SE, I assume, will come along. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to sell it in Europe after they update it. Brianna asks, I don't have a Mac, but I've been thinking about getting one for a couple of years. I've been watching the refurbished

market on Apple's website, and the price range of my ideal setup would be around $3,000. I'm in Canada, but I wondered if you could see the Vision Pro replacing your Macs completely for at least personal usage. I think Brianna's trying to gauge from us as to whether they should wait or not.

I can't see the Vision Pro replacing my Macs completely at all because the Mac is a key part of my workflow. And it doesn't run Mac software. You can screen share a Mac of my workflow and you have to it doesn't run Mac software you can screen share a Mac on it but you have to have a Mac so could could Division Pro replace the Mac completely for somebody like us down the road maybe eventually but no time soon I don't know if it could do it. Because there's just going to be types of apps that I don't expect to exist, right? Yeah.

Audio Hijack is... I don't imagine it existing on the Vision Pro. Who knows? Maybe, honestly, maybe Vision OS is the thing that makes them fully unlock the power of iOS, right? Maybe this is the thing that makes them fully unlock the power of iOS. Maybe this is the one, but I don't feel it right now in a way that I think I could tell you yes. Honestly, I think the more likely scenario is that

in a version or two, the Vision Pro will just run a VM of macOS. And you won't need the physical computer to screen share. It'll just run it in a virtual machine. At which point, you could put whatever you wanted in there because it's just a Mac, but it would be in the box of the virtual machine of macOS. I think that's the most likely scenario is that. Because I do think the rest of the apps will be locked down,

but you could potentially do that. But it's going to be years. It's going to be years. It's just not... If you could do all of your work on an iPhonehone and an ipad you could probably do it on this but uh i've tried that and i can't really do it and so i think this is going to be a nice companion to the mac potentially but um it's going to be a long time before you can just say i'm not going to spend on a mac i'm just going to get a vision Pro instead. It's going to be a while. Yeah, I don't... It makes me sad, but I don't envision

it, you know? I will replace, I could replace a lot of my work, like similar to what I did for many years with the iPad, right? Like, there's a bunch of things I could do on here that would be very comfortable and nice to do. I'm sure there'll be a bunch of experiences which will be even better than any

other device that I have, right? I'm very convinced of that. And so I will maybe prefer to use my Vision Pro over those, but it couldn't be a whole replacement. Like Brianna, if you're saying like, I have a PC and I want another PC, but I maybe want it to be a Mac now instead of Windows. Yeah, that's probably what you should go for. I don't think that you would be able to replace maybe like a Windows laptop or a Linux laptop that you have with the Vision Pro and be satisfied completely. By the way, refurbished Macs are a great way to get a deal on a Mac. And I have bought multiple refurbished Macs over the years. And they're good because you get the whole warranty and everything. And really generally what it is, is somebody bought a Mac and then returned it

because they decided they didn't want it. And they might have even powered it on or if they did they you know they like it they're they're generally very safe and apple supports them so if something is bad about them they'll just replace it yeah so i i definitely recommend looking for refurbished um macs and other apple products on apple's website yeah it's like it's like all these things it's not going to be the best deal you can get, but you'll be taken care of if there's a problem. Right. Hank asks, when is Apple going to make Apple Silicon chips

that do not prioritize energy efficiency? Power per watt is not as important for desktop users, and could this push the graphics performance beyond what is capable from dedicated cards? Boy, I don't want to say never, but like almost never is what my answer is this philosophically is what apple's chip organization is all about and what are okay what's the most important product apple sells it's the iphone power is always going to be prioritized there because of battery life what's the next important product Apple makes? I don't know. Maybe it's the Mac. Maybe it's the iPad. But what Mac model is it? Well, somewhere two-thirds

to three-quarters, probably three-quarters of all Macs sold are laptops. What matters there? Yeah, battery life matters. Power to energy, it matters. The iPad, it matters. The Apple Watch, it matters the ipad it matters the apple watch it matters the only place that it doesn't matter is in this thin sliver of macs that are plugged in all the time uh and so you're talking about a fraction of a fraction of apple's business it's never going to be a priority which doesn't mean that they won't try to do things they have already tried to do things to make good higher end Mac models, but they are happy to use the power per watt, you know, standard that they've been building toward because it does end up making great laptops and other powerful computers. And as long as they can do that, they're, they're not going to change their philosophy just to serve certain tiny portions of the market.

I just, you know, it will take a very different environment for Apple's chip design group and Apple's shape of Apple's business for them to stop doing what they're doing. It's priorities, man. That's just all it is, right? And like Apple's priorities are the chips that rely on batteries. Yeah, you're not going to believe this amid all the Mac Pro discourse. But let me tell you,

macOS not having enough GPU performance is not an issue anyone to a small degree of error cares about. It's just not. In fact, when you talk to Apple execs, like at the talk show, they were talking about this at WWDC

when Gruber was interviewing Apple executives. They're much more interested in the fact that their whole Mac line now has decent GPUs in them so that you can play games even on an M1 MacBook Air. You can play games and the graphics performance is vastly better than back in the day when the only Macs that could play games at all were high-end Pro Macs. That's not true anymore. That's what they care about.

And if you're thinking about how can they push it super high at the high end, I don't think they care. And honestly, from a business perspective, I don't think they should. I think they got it right. And I know there are follow-on effects from that. And it makes people in certain areas grumpy, but like, this is, this is how they got here. And this is how they remain here is following this approach. So unless something dramatic happens that requires them to change their approach for some reason, they're still going to do this. And then, yeah, throw in the Vision Pro. Guess what?

Power matters there, too. So, like, most, all of Apple's most important products, let me put it this way, have a battery in them. So, here we are. You can get a lot of podcasts that have a focus on Apple and the Mac. You can find many of them. This one agrees with this stance other ones might not this podcast is 100 agreement that apple's going down the right path look i already i already came briefly from my good friend john syracuse in this episode i don't want

to go there again i just look oh there i'm not just talking about it i'm talking about i know oh i know i'm just saying like you know. There are lots of podcasts out there. If you're out there and you're like, oh, man, I've been looking for someone who would agree with Apple, this is the one. And if you're out there and you're like, I can't stand that you two agree. I can tell you there's a bunch of shows

that are out there for you, and they're going to be able to provide you what you need. But we are very much like, this is not a problem. I have a lot of empathy for people who feel like apple's not giving them what they want but because we've all been there and we've all been there but if you look at the grand sweep of apple's business um it hurts it hurts when apple isn't that into you but it happens and it's not apple's i I mean, like, hey, Apple, I know your philosophy is

taking you to this, you're the first, what, $3 trillion or trillion dollar valuation company, $1 trillion or whatever it is, some enormous amount. But, you know, it all comes from that philosophy that they built around these mobile products. They're essentially a mobile product company and they're not going to change that. They're just, right product company and they're not going to change that. They're just right. They're just not. This is the question I've always had about the sort of like, could they uncouple RAM and GPUs from the processors?

And like, I think the answer is no, not that they couldn't do it. They could try it, but it would require them to, to basically ditch their whole philosophy of all the chips they make that are a huge advantage for them. So why would you ever spend the time on that when you could just keep doing what you're doing and have some pretty good computers, including the bulk of the Macs that you sell? Yeah.

But look, I'll just say I like the poke fun. It's the same as you. I understand that it's frustrating when you feel like you're underserved, right? No, it's terrible. I've been there with the iPad, you know? Oh, various creative professional markets that apple has basically turned their backs on because it they didn't fit with their priorities and i get it i mean i get the frustration i've been in those

markets i've seen those professionals be frustrated like i totally get it the frustration you feel is real the frustration that people uh have about this like I get it, but I also look at what Apple is, like it's not Apple's duty to serve all markets. And they've made a choice a long time ago about their chip design and the choice to go to Apple Silicon, all the benefits that we reap as Mac users from that choice, this is the other other part of it which is they're not going to stop prioritizing energy efficiency and that's the thing right when apple was not serving the mac pro but was also not serving any mac right go back to the trash can right then okay that was bad we have a problem and you could look at the mac pro as like a beacon of the problem, right? Like you went too far, right? With the trash can. And you thought you were going to be super cool.

And you put all this engineering into the fact that the lights turned on when you turned it around. You know what I mean, right? Which is just like, realistically, was not a thing that anybody could do. Because as soon as you turn the computer around, all the ports popped out.

And I will say this as someone that you may the computer around all the ports popped out and i will say this is someone that you may not you may have forgotten i owned one of those i had a trash can mac pro this is a part of my history that i like to forget because that thing do you remember the problems it used to cause us jason when we'd be recording upgrade and my mac would just would just crash completely and gone and we would have to do things to try and recover my audio like it was a nightmare for months because i thought i would get a mac and i would have it for years and years and years and years and it'd be awesomely powerful i'd get speed because at that time i think i think i may have still been working at the bank so i was

like trying to like you know we i did not relay on the mac comes from the i did not have mike comes for the trash can on my bingo card today but so to come back around to what i was saying okay back then the mac pro was a beacon of what was wrong right and then all the macs were bad the laptops were bad the imac everything was bad now, with a Mac Pro that is maybe underserving the people that want it, that's happening because every other Mac is the best it has ever been. All of them. All of them are. And from a market share perspective, Apple is, I think, actually almost gleeful.

I mean, and they're probably a little deluded because they talk about game stuff and we know about Apple's history with game stuff. But I think what you can read into their glee about like every Mac can play games now. What they're really sort of saying there or revealing there is Apple thinks that it is so competitive with the MacBook Air, essentially. And even more so now that there's a 15-inch model. So competitive that they have a real opportunity to gain market share. And market share gains are going to happen

with the MacBook Air. Market share gains are because it's the biggest market. Consumer general use laptop that costs a thousand bucks is an enormous market. So if they're ever going to prioritize anything, it's going to be to areas where they have enormous market share gain possible because they're going to, you know, if they could increase their, their user base and, and they are, I mean, they're, I think they're more Mac users now than ever. Um, that that's where they're going to find the success. So they're going to, they're going to lean that way

anyway. And, and that, that stinks. I've heard people say this is just you know it's leading to a place where apple doesn't care about uh high-end users they only care about low-end users it's like well i think that's miss a misstatement in the sense so i'm i'm strawmanning it a little bit here in the sense that the 16-inch macbook pro is a very powerful, impressive system, right? It's not like they've turned their back. They created the Mac Studio. Yes. If that's not enough for you,

there are certain markets above that where Apple's priorities seem misaligned. But Apple's game is good enough that it even reaches, which was a mystery before Apple Silicon, it even reaches to that level what we now see for the M2 MacBook Pro, where it's like, that's pretty good. Even just scaling Apple's existing philosophy

from iPhone chips to the MacBook Pro, it gets there. It doesn't get much beyond there, but it gets there. But yeah, if Apple has to turn their back on certain use cases up at the high end in order to fulfill the Mac's success everywhere else, it will make that choice. And you are right to decry it. And we're not all piling this on Hank.

There's a lot of people saying this. Sorry, Hank. But it is, you know, they're making, I think, good decisions that make the mac better than it ever was before and the tough part about it is those decisions fundamentally leave out some people because of the choices they've made but the net result is success so it sucks if you're on the outside looking in but i don't i don't anticipate them changing their strategy at all because it's working and it's working incredibly well for them. If you would like to send us in your questions

for a future episode of the show, or if you have follow-up or feedback, go to upgradefeedback.com. Until next time, you can check out Jason's work over at sixcolors.com and hear his podcast at theincomparable.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to my shows here on RelayFM too and check out my work at cortexbrand.com.

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Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. Thank you to ExpressVPN and FitBard for their support of this episode. And most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley. you for listening we'll be back next time until then say goodbye jesus no goodbye my curly