Upgrade - 469: Bring in the Boffins

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Myke's summer is a lot less fun due to his concerns about a bill advancing in the UK Parliament that could potentially drive some Apple services out of the country. Also we try to understand just what's happening at Apple regarding AI products, and we have issues with services that push algorithmic timelines.

From RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode 469. Today's show is brought to you by Factor, Vitally, and Ladder. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley. How are you? Oh, you know what, Jason? I'm okay right now. You're going to get angry later.

I'm going to be very upset. This is a summer of unfun happening later today. I'm going to share, before we get into it, I'm going to share with you a little brief glimmer of the summer of fun, okay?

Yeah. Glimmer of the summer of fun. We went to, we visited friends of ours in the in the midwest in the american midwest and uh we went to a a family that it's been in their family for decades cottage on a lake on a bunch of lakes and there's like a boat and there's a boathouse and there's like some chairs on a deck and it was warm and at one point there was like a boat and there's a boathouse and there's like some chairs on a deck and it was warm. And at one point there was like a brief thunderstorm that blew through and then went back out and then it wasn't rainy anymore. It was a quintessential summer Midwestern experience.

I loved it. Now I'm going to give away where it was by saying I had some fried cheese curds. I had some local beer. A. I had some local, a local beer, a lot of cheese in this place. It's America's dairy land, you could say. Is there cheese in the beer? It's Wisconsin. It's Wisconsin is where it is.

Beer you can only buy in, no, but no, there's no cheese in the beer, but there's beer you can only buy in Wisconsin. It's sort of like an attraction. Anyway, it was, I've heard them talk about, we've known these guys for like 15 years and i've heard them talk about this family place and it always sounded amazing and i had never gotten to go there and i got to go there this weekend it was amazing it was it lived up to the hype so that was my summer of fun and now i'm completely exhausted because we got in at like 1 30 last night but it's okay upgrade comes first

and i'm gonna chew your air off for 20 minutes later night, but it's okay. Upgrade comes first. And I'm going to chew your ear off a 20-minute later run anyway, so it's going to be okay. I was actually not too far. There's a cheesehead in our Discord now. I was not too far from Green Bay. I did not go to Green Bay. We didn't go quite that far. I was relatively close to Green Bay, the home of the famous Green Bay Packers, but I didn't go that far. Speaking of American football, I have a snarl talk question for you, Jason. I'm ready for some football. Okay. And Daniel says, if Tim took you up on your ticket offer,

what would have been the one question you would use this opportunity to ask him? Okay, now the question says what would be. You may have been as if this has already failed. Keep hope alive, Mike. Keep hope alive, Tim. Sorry, I thought maybe the game had passed. I didn't know when it was. Oh, no, the game.

No, the game. Mike, the game is not until september okay why would i know that did you say that i did i did say when it was okay it's september 9th there were a lot of things said in the snow talk for us or that follow out for the last episode september 9th uh just to recap for everybody i have uh i have four season tickets to Cal. We have three that are reliably spoken for. We use the fourth for guests and things like that. And I offered it to Tim Cook last week. Haven't heard from Tim yet, but Tim, still open.

Haven't put that one up on StubHub or found a friend to go with me yet. Because Tim, it's there for you. It's there for you. And Daniel's question will be the one question you would use this opportunity to ask him okay daniel american football games are extremely long if tim took me up on my ticket offer we would have we would we would be chatting throughout the entire game right but no here's the thing we had a long free-flowing conversation what we're not asking here is like you're only going to get to say one thing to him.

Because you're going to be like chit-chatting, right? Just nice. But what is the burning question? That's what's going on here. You're going to be with Tim the whole time. You're going to be like small talk, get to know you. Oh, what about that pass?

What about the interception and all that kind of stuff? Defense, defense, all these kinds of things. But there's going to be, be you're gonna get the opportunity when you know you've you've like the walls come down a little bit you can fire one at him what's it gonna be so here's the thing um there's a the realism of this which of which there's very little precious little but there is a little bit is you know tim's not gonna say stuff to anybody but certainly not to somebody who writes about this stuff uh that's going to give anything away so what i would be probably most interested in rather than saying hey how about that car project is i would ask him about uh some personal stuff i'd ask him like that's that's how he him how he uses his Apple Watch.

What's his routine? What does he use at his desk? Is he using an iPad more or is he using a Mac more now? How has the Apple Watch changed how he views fitness? I want to know what's on his home screen. Has he changed his approach to fitness because of the Apple Watch? Has he changed the Apple Watch's approach because he can do that? What's on his home screen?

Yeah, that's a very interesting one. Like, what are your go-to apps? Although even then, you know, the truth is that somebody like Tim Cook, even a version of Tim Cook who would show up at the five- yard line on a football game and sit in a row with the regular people, even that version of Tim Cook would be incredibly circumspect about what Apple is doing. But yeah, that would be the stuff that I think might be interesting is the human stuff of like, I always kind of want to know what makes him tick and what's his day really like and how does he actually use the tech and how does that inform how he charts the course? Because, you know, he's not going to, I could say

like, so you were totally going to kill the Mac and just build up the iPad until you did that thing, right? Like I'm not going to do that because he's not going to talk about it, right? This is not this is me taking Tim Cook to a football game not me giving a truth serum to tim cook while i have him in my basement evidence dungeon or something right like

that's not what this is i mean it's the it's the same as like you know every time anybody interviews an executive and they're like why didn't you ask because they're not going to answer it so it's pointless asking and so why are you asking it's wasting everyone's time why it creates an un like welcoming atmosphere to everyone it's just like not good i would love to to if i if i had tim cook in the cone of silence you know of course i would say this china china is really a difficult problem isn't it right like what are you what are your thoughts about how you approach this but he can't say that stuff publicly because China will hear them. So he's not going to say that. So it's very difficult.

But I don't know. Yes, my opportunity, if I was going to ask him about Apple-specific things, would probably be more about, again, just like one human being talking to another. And we both have spent a lot of time thinking about the technology that this company makes, about how it impacts him personally and how that's informed his job and stuff like that look i you know i just spent um four hours each way in a car with a friend of mine uh and we had wide-ranging conversations about what my job is and what his job is and observations about the world and like that's sort of the stuff that happens at the football game too is that you you know you chat about light stuff and personal stuff and observational stuff and it's just that's just sort of the stuff that happens at the football game, too, is that you chat about light stuff and personal stuff and observational stuff. And that's just part of the tapestry of it.

So in this scenario, yes, I would just enjoy chatting with Tim a little bit and getting a better sense of who he is and what makes him legitimately excited. And it would be personal stuff like that. I look forward to tracing the path of this until the game in september oh yes the path yes as we get closer and we and you know and tim's people call my people which again is me yep um we'll see they could call me and i could act as your people they could actually if you uh work uh work with tim and work with the executives at apple call me i just want to point out Mike has an anonymous informant network. It could be activated for this purpose.

You could contact Mike and send out feelers about the possibility of a meetup. We could do some security groundwork stuff. Exactly. We could work out extraction plans and those kinds of things if needed. You know, it's all available. You can send that information in the same way that you can send in a Snell Talk question

for us to open the show with, like Daniel did, by going to upgradefeedback.com. We have some follow-up. Jason, would you like to start? Yes, this is Mike's way of saying, what is this thing that you pasted into our document? No, I mean, I've read it, but I'm also kind of like...

So we talked about the photo picker in iOS 17 and changes to the photo picker and changes to the way apps use the Photos app. And I heard from several people, including our friend Casey Liss, who did an app that uses Photos permissions. And from somebody, this is, I guess, an anonymous informant, sort of? I don't know. From the photos team who said there are actually

a bunch of the things that we talked about, about having the photo picker that the app doesn't see. That's been around a long time. The difference is, there's a couple big long time. The difference is, there's like a couple of big things that have happened. One is better privacy information about the system picker. There's a banner in the picker itself and a new UI in the settings that educate users about what private access for photos is.

So Apple's trying to do more disclosure. And the idea here is there's a push pull. It's like users should know this and developers should know that the users are going to know this and that maybe developers who want more photo library access need to back off unless they really need it. And the app I always think about is Slack because Slack has like its custom UI where it shows you the last few photos on your camera roll. And it's like, that's totally not necessary. And now I'm in a weird limbo state on my phone with Slack where I try to add a photo and it says like, do you want to add photos to the list of photos I can see or pick photos? And it's like, I just get out of my way, right? Like you should just get out of my way. But anyway, that the functionality of sort of like walling off

your photo library from apps has been around a while. What's happening is there's a lot more disclosure and a lot of stuff that's pushing users and educating users about how they handle the permissions. And then there are also new APIs that allow apps to embed a compact version of the system picker, which means that apps now never need to ask for library access theoretically, because one of the reasons you do it is that you had a smaller photo picker that you wanted to use. And so you'd build a custom one that required complete photo access for your app to build it.

And now you can just opt into that. So I'm sure there are apps that are like, no, no, no, we really need full photo library access. But Apple is trying to, basically it's providing some tools for developers and it's talking to users about this. And that's all Apple cranking up the pressure to get apps to really stop asking for full library access.

But what we described last week about how Apple does offer this thing, that thing's been there for a long time. What's changed is the disclosure to users and some sort of like Apple leaning on app developers and giving them, there's like a carrot and a stick here basically. And I'll have a link that I'll put in the show notes to a WWDC 2023

session. That's all about what's going on here. Oh, and there's in the picker, there's an option sheet now that lets you do some, like take the location information out and stuff like that. That is, it's tidied up or control.

Cause I feel like the prompts are really confusing before of like yeah allow access to some photos allow access to all photos add more photos to the access list it was like a whole thing it's interesting and i wonder if this is a future direction but like apple it's clear to me i think apple does not want apps to ask for full library access for photos unless there's a very compelling reason for it. And there are still apps out there probably for legacy reasons, right? Probably because there was a reason five years ago and they did this, but like there are apps out there that ask for everything and they just don't need everything and they need to just stop. Right. So anyway, thank you to the person from the photos team who wrote in. Thank you to Casey.

Thank you to the other people I heard about this. So not a new feature, just Apple is using, I think actually maybe even TipKit. I don't know. Apple's using like got little disclosure things that are like, this is, you know, this is, your app has access to everything, right? Like they're labeling all that stuff now

and that's the new thing. So it's drawing, I guess basically it works as intended in that we're talking about it now. And that's what Apple's really kind of wanting to do is put a spotlight on this and say, hey, you should know that apps are looking, are able to look at everything in your photo library and maybe they shouldn't.

So do you remember my complaint last time about the LOL emoji, like when you typed LOL on the keyboard and the emoji that was suggested in the quick type bar? Yeah, ROFL. Indeed. I had a variety of people write in with different things going on.

Most people were sending me screenshots that they were on the iOS 17 beta and they were seeing the existing emoji, the correct emoji the ones that are mostly just laughing emojis i ended up working out this change exists on the british english keyboard the american english keyboard has the correct previous emoji from ios 16 and before so if in ios 17 for some reason apple believes that british people do not laugh like normal people and have changed the

emoji accordingly so this is one of those things where this is very weird and I have seen I've had a couple of people write into me who were in the UK and so they had this set to British English and it was showing weirdly like mine were but I could test it myself by just changing my

dictionary on the iPhone and then when I typed lol it showed me the correct emoji. So this is one of those things where I guess I will see what happens when the next beta comes around, and then I will file the feedback. Do they not know, like, does LOL mean something different in Britain? Loss of love. Lords or ladies? Well, this is that thing, like, you know, I had this with my mom. Lots of parents think this, like, they think LOL means lots of love lords or ladies well this is that that thing like you know i i had this with

my mom lots of parents think this like they think lol means lots of love but uh no the emoji do not seem to indicate lots of love either so a lord lords or ladies uh what was the other one i thought like limeys over lemurs is that a i don't know anyway it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense i don't know i don't know why this happened unless that was my best guess there's somebody who's in charge of the British keyboard who's like no no no these emoji are wrong

here for cultural reasons or someone's just pranking me right someone at Apple is pranking everyone in Britain well I mean that's another segment. I have some follow-up about the Burgies. So the Burgies, as we dictated last week, is where we look at each other's recently used emoji.

David wrote in to say, As the only show with its own penance system for the keynote drafts, so we have the penance behind us, which designate Champion and Challenger, please note that in some contexts, your pennant could be mistaken for a burgee. A burgee is a type of flag that are parts of recreational boating organizations that are pennant-shaped.

Okay. So if we had a boat, an upgrade boat, we would have a burgee on our boat and we could put an emoji on the burgee. Yes, we could put an emoji on the burgee. This is a yacht club thing, so we'd have to start a yacht club. Makes me kind of want to have a boat now.

Yep, the SS upgrade. Unity has launched their beta program for vision os game development tools so that's out there and available now they had some like showing off some examples i think the what the golf developer uh was making a game which is interesting to me jason because this uh tri-band that company they have a vr game it's called what the bat so it was very peculiar to me to see them bringing a non-vr game to this rather than just using their vr game but who am i to criticize yeah it's a uh apple did a uh whole thing where they're like working for years with unity um because they knew they weren't going to be working with the other 3D tool developer because of all the lawsuits.

And now you can sign up as a developer to get access to the Unity tools for Vision OS and build stuff. And they had some samples from different developers. And it's just all part. It's very clearly part of the development story rollout plan for Vision OS. It's very important, right?

Like if they do want any game experiences, especially any VR ports to Vision OS, which I'm sure they do want uh any game experiences especially any um vr ports to vision os which i'm sure they do want um they need this and so i'm pleased that this is available again like now like way in advance people can go and try it out and there was one last thing i wanted to mention i just saw it i thought it was interesting we've spoken a little bit about pass keys on the show uh later this year, 1Password will allow for unlocking your vault with a passkey. Nice. Which I just thought was an interesting thing to do, right?

I feel like it could maybe allow people to have even more security over their actual 1Password. So this one to me seems like, oh yeah, you know what, I might do this. Because it's not something I need to share with anyone. Right? And so I thought, yeah, this one kind of makes sense to me. I hit last week

the thing that I've been dreading for a while now, and it actually kind of enraged me. Which is, I got somewhere where Apple said, oh, you can unlock this with a passkey. Do you have your phone with you?

Right. And I thought to myself, no, I am on a Mac with Touch ID. Oh. And I don't have my phone with me. Why do I need my phone to log into this thing on my Mac? Is there really no way to do it? There's no way to do it.

You can't even set it up on a Mac to use like separately? I don't know. I don't know. I hate it. Yeah, that's less than ideal. Yeah. I just, if somebody knows the reason, you know, I guess let us know.

But like, I don't, I kind of don't care what the reason is in some ways. Right. Like I have a biometric authentication system on my Mac that allows me to log in to things and identify who I am. I don't understand why you won't let me use it on the Mac and that my Mac is incapable of using this thing unless I happen to have my phone with me to scan it. It's my Mac.

It's not a guest Mac. It's my Mac. Why are you having me do that? Because that is a step back because if you use iCloud Keychain, then that would have worked, right? You could have used your thumb. There are places where you can use your finger

to authenticate on the mac and log into things yeah but apparently not apple id stuff for whatever reason i just and i don't i mean i can see somebody saying well the reason is because there's a chain of events this and then this and then and i was like okay there's a reason that's why i say i kind of don't care about the reason because i this should work right it should work yeah and if it doesn't work fix it right like find a way to make it work because there's no way that a mac user sitting at their mac trying to do something should be told go get your iphone and scan this code if you if i was logging into the apple id website one of the times that i might want to do that is if I lost my phone. Yeah.

Well, then my phone's not with me to log in with my passkey. So then what do I do? Yeah, yeah. I know that there are steps, but it's like, that's not... Yeah, interesting. Okay.

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Every now and then a topic will come to the show or will come to mind or like a thing will happen and we've got to talk about it. And these things are like I don't want to talk about these things. I know you feel it too. We had this a lot

with the CS yeah c-sam scanning yeah um you know things that i've like i or you know like we've spoken about it with like oh some of the apple lawsuit stuff was like that and it's the it's like i don't want to oh i don't want to talk about i don't want to get into it it's but they're important not fun but they're important to do it talk about it but you're not gonna have a good time and we're in the summer of fun and this is just not fun no not so and and as well i feel like i should talk about it because of where i am in the world and you know yeah so here i am okay so this is a thing that i would expect most listeners aren't aware of or very recently became aware of we have something happening in the uk right now called the Online

Safety Bill. So it's going through the final stage of the lawmaking process in the UK. So just as a very quick thing, we have two chambers of government, right? We have the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Commons is made up of our representatives, right, our members of Parliament. They, you know, they represent the voting of the country. They will work on laws and they careers, they are then appointed to the House of Lords. They are a second check. They debate and argue, make revisions, maybe will sometimes actually send something back to the House of Commons. They're like, nope, do it again. is in the House of Lords right now. It's being debated. It's most likely going to go through in some fashion. I've had some conversations with some people who I trust and know these things, who have said, this is going through. It's just a case of what shape it takes. This bill, the online safety bill, started work in 2019. And it was ostensibly a bill to make the internet safer for children and has a lot of that stuff in it. The problem is a bill that's been in the works for like four or five years,

it's almost like rolling a snowball down a hill that it has picked up so much stuff on its way through the four prime ministers that have been a part of this bill at this point right so yeah it was ostensibly about things like to try and make you know uh age verification stuff and trying to keep like harmful content away from children like that was what it was looking at. Then age checks, mandatory age checks for adult content got wrapped into it. Then identity verification for social media websites got wrapped into it to try and stop anonymous online trolling.

Then to try and get rid of scam ads, that got pulled in. This bill is huge. And I think it's one of the reasons why this genuinely like i just didn't know this was happening right now neither do like a lot of people in the uk like even aware that this bill will pass through commons because it's been going on for so long and it's now so big that people have just kind of ignored it like it is truly shocking to me this like how little it's been reported on until like it already passed through commons and it's with the house of lords but this is recently start and i

will include there's a bunch of links in the show notes to some good articles there's a great one on the verge by uh john porter where john has gone through and created a timeline of this bill and it was very informative to me of like where it started and where it is now and all of the things it's picked up along the way. But this has recently started to cause a bit more trouble due to provisions in this bill for, you guessed it, scanning encrypted messages for child sexual abuse material, terrorism activities, and abusive content. Essentially, our government wants to give our regulatory body that's called Ofcom,

let's just say that this is closest to... What's the... Like the FCC? Yeah, the FCC. My brain was saying FTC, but that's not it. The FCC is what it's kind of closest to. It's like our regulatory body for communications,

and it covers like television and the airwaves. It's effectively to give Ofcom the power to demand a company, a company like Apple or WhatsApp, right, so Meta, to create a backdoor into their encrypted messaging and communication apps to allow for this stuff to be scanned for and reported it has led to exactly apple whatsapp and signal saying that if these

rules come to pass they may have to exit the united kingdom completely so the issues that we are encountering here is companies are either going to... So basically, the law is complicated in such a way of like, if this law is passed, it is not saying that Apple, from my understanding, it is not saying like, from day zero, Apple need to create a backdoor. What it's saying is, we as the government may be compelled to ask you at some point to do this. So they could pass the law, but nothing changes until the time it does. And there are some amendments being proposed now about what is the chain of events that need to occur for that to happen. None of these are still very good, but these are the things that are being argued.

So when and if that occurs, that the UK government will go to Apple or go to WhatsApp and say we need the backdoor, the only solution, realistically, is that

these companies will have to say no and they will have to say no for two reasons. One, we won't do it. Two, we can't do it. Right. Which is what these companies are saying. So the only solution then is they would need to literally leave the United Kingdom. Right.

Or build a feature that would back them back into something like, was it Facebook that does this? Back into a, you can opt to be in not encrypted mode or whatever, but even then, if people opt to be encrypted, the UK law would basically say, no, no, no, no, we want it anyway. And there's no way to do that, right? There's, this is the, we've talked about this a lot.

This is the math part, which is, end-to-end encryption means they can't break in. So what this law is basically saying is don't do that. Don't have end-to-end encryption. We're outlawing it functionally because you can't, and they may not even think about it this way. Because remember, there's this magical thinking that happens in a lot of governments where they think, oh, these tech wizards will just figure it out. But if you look at the math of cryptography, that's not how cryptography works. It's just not how it works.

And like this is, you know, just there is obviously a little bit of posturing occurring right now. Right. Which is where we are right now. Everyone's posturing like Apple could just create a version of iMessage, which is unencrypted. Right. I'm not saying they would do that, but they could do that, right? And so- They could.

And then just basically in the UK, no iMessage was encrypted. And you get a warning if you were texting with somebody in the UK saying this message is not encrypted. I don't necessarily, well, I don't think they should have to do that. I'm not sure if they would do that, but they could. But everyone right now is just saying, we will have to do that i'm not sure if they would do that but they could but everyone right now is just saying we will have to leave kingdom and it kind of seems like at the moment that the government is hoping somehow that tech companies can find a way to do the thing they want them to do which is like do one of these as you mentioned right oh those those those boffins over

there they're gonna work it out right good word they probably use the word boffins right i thought i might as well go uk is the home of wizards yeah but boffins is even better right because boffins is i don't understand it but they they they they talk their little blah blah blah blah blah and and then magic things happen so they'll work it out they always which is what all governments think right it's this is just like it's just like oh they're all politicians and governments yeah we'll we'll we don't need to worry about it. We'll just deal with this. I mean, and I guess this is one of those things, though, where I understand why people feel that way

because there have been so many times where these kinds of things have happened, right? Where it's just like, we need to get around this problem. We'll just sort it out. We'll just work it out. But this is one of those ones where there isn't a way to do it and stay true to what encryption is all right right they're they're like the they're whistling past the graveyard here they're like yeah yeah yeah uh i'm sure it'll all work out and because like don't forget i'm sure this didn't

help it was only a couple years ago where apple was saying they were going to have this right like yeah we all went mental right but i have no doubt that like i mean i'm a little bit mad about this because i i genuinely believe that apple kind of created this bed a little bit where they made it clear that there was a process there was one and they were gonna do it right to handle at least the c-sams stuff so then you got to think if you're in government then like well if they gonna do it right to handle at least the c-sam stuff so then you got to think if you're in government then like well if they could do it for that they could probably do it for anything and the answer is yes right like they could cryptographically create any of these things like oh there's a bunch of words that we look for for terrorism activities right just create that

list and have it scan iMessage right so? So like... And then send the results, right? Yes. So there is no... Apple did this whole thing. They had this whole plan, right? And I have no doubt that... Because there is one thing that I put at the end of my notes here. I'll just say it now. This is happening here, but listen, wherever you are, this is coming for you too, right? Every government wants to do this. Every government wants to do this like and this goes back for so look at the patriot act right like every government wants to do this and they will use they will use the most frightening and dangerous examples yeah in order to force you to agree because the last thing you want to do is say and i'm sure there are people out there listening to this who are thinking this right now, which is like, what's the big deal? They're looking for child sexual abuse material, terrorism, and other abusive content. This is bad

stuff. Why would the government not want to patrol it? And the answer is once it's there, and we've seen this again and again throughout history, including the stuff that happened after the Patriot Act. Once it's there, the government will use it for whatever they want to. All they need to do is get it through. Because now they've cracked it open. And what they hate about end-to-end encryption is that it means that the government can't spy easily on whoever it wants to. And I know there's legal reasons, but we saw certainly with the Patriot Act that there were all sorts of things that they were looking at because they decided to, but they scared you. Including other governments. Why do you want to protect terrorists? Why do you want to protect terrorists? The answer is,

I don't want to protect terrorists. But I also don't want you to have carte blanche to spy on everybody's communications in your country like that there is there is a a privacy issue here too i would argue a right to privacy um and and and then there's the fundamentals of the math like i said of of cryptography which is uh companies can make it so that everybody can talk to each other and the government can't spy on them and the government says whoa now we want to be able to spy on them. And it's a little like, I know I've said this before, but I'm just going to say it again. It's a little like when the Miranda decision came down in the US in the early seventies and the police said, oh no, if we have to read people their

rights, they will never, we'll never solve crimes. And the answer was they, guess what? They figured out how to solve crimes while reading people their rights. They were able to manage that. But in the moment, you'll get your government to say, oh, no, we're helpless. We just can't do it. There's no other technique we can use for this. All crimes will just occur, and there's nothing we can do. And the flip side, yeah, more difficult maybe.

um but and the flip side yeah more difficult maybe but like the flip side is you're you're breaking privacy and making it so that anybody including the government doing bad things and including bad people doing bad things will be able to view what people send and the thing about this bill right and its size is and the reason that it's here right now is because this was the bill to keep children safe online and who's gonna argue with that and that's why they rolled it into this that's how it got past us because there are things in this bill i agree with like there's so much in the online safety bills like this is good stuff that I agree with. But there's also this ugly part of it. Well, somebody in some shadowy

department inside the UK government leans into one of their friends in the House of Commons and says, slip this in there. Yes, that's been happening constantly. It's still happening. This is what we really want. This is a great vehicle to get us this thing that we want, which is to break encryption. Also, I'm sorry if this touches a sore spot for you. But what's also interesting about this is it's different. The way it's being covered to and the way it's being reacted to by companies is different than some of the EU restrictions that we've been talking about on this show for years and years because of Brexit.

Like this is a relatively small country. I know it's like the sixth biggest economy in the world. It's not nothing, but like it's just the UK and just the UK doesn't carry the weight of all of Europe. It just doesn't. And if this was a Europeanan regulation to break encryption it would be a much bigger deal and i don't think anybody would would be as seriously talking about we'll just turn it off in the uk but in the eu but in the uk it's actually it's easier to do that it's easier to do that now and yet this bill makes it seem like oh well they're gonna do what we what we want they're gonna do what we say because we carry all this weight.

And they don't carry the weight they used to. We still carry our weight, right? Like the UK is like one of the largest. Sixth biggest economy in the world. Like for technology companies especially, right? Yeah, for sure. No, it's an important market. I am struck by the fact that there is a power imbalance here versus the stuff that we hear about with eu regulations yeah it annoys me um there's been a lot of talk about this over the

microsoft thing right with microsoft and activision and a lot of people including like people in our sphere just like we'll just cut off the uk it's like well i mean i'm gonna have to say no on that one right like i don't agree with that right you can't there's a lot of just conversation of like well it's just the uk we why who who are they to say that an american company can't well the american company wants to do business here so if they're going to do business here we do have our own rules and we do have and like we are allowed to look at this and judge on it. They can decide not to do business here.

But if they want to do business here, we get to say what's right for our people, whether we agree with that or not. The implication here, I think, is that when companies like Apple are playing hardball with the UK, and that's what this is, this political hardball. What they're saying is, okay, you want to do this and we don't want you to. Let's follow a scenario here, which is we break our services in the UK and blame you. How does that play out? I'll also point out, it's a Tory government that is going to lose the next election. So maybe they don't care. I think they're laying themselves up for the next time. But also, Jason, this has got cross-party support.

Oh, I'm sure it does. Everyone wants this. And Labour won't get rid of it. I'm convinced of that. Well, that's true. But it doesn't pass without the majority passing it. And so I don't know what that political calculus is. But anyway, the hard ball is Apple says, play this out.

What happens and who will they blame? Will they blame Apple or will they blame you? And I think it's a case where not that the UK isn't important, but that a big company like Apple might look at it and say, we're willing to break some stuff in this market for a while. for a while because we think in the end it will bounce back and hit the people making the laws and not Apple. And that's a risky calculation, but I think it's an easier one for them to make a little bit, not easy, but easier for something like the UK, for something like encryption versus Apple saying, take that EU eu we're not going to put usbc on our phones and just not sell them in the eu right that's a lot harder for them to say so they won't say it i would say this one is a bit easier because it won't be just apple like

if this was a law that just impacted apple right but like the big air impact is whatsapp like whatsapp here is the dominant messaging service like none of my friends want to speak to me on iMessage everyone wants to use whatsapp like it is all whatsapp here and that will be actually the big fall right like i'm focused on apple because it's what i care about but the one that will have the biggest impact is whatsapp and whatsapp have also said that like they will just leave right and meta have a history of this right like you can't get meta services in china like they didn't do the deals that apple did threads isn't in the eu yeah threads isn't in the eu like they will just not be in a place yeah um i wanted to read this like this one thing that was, again, just makes me so angry.

So this is a quote. Speaking in the Lords, so the House of Lords, Baroness Fox of Buckley says, the government has exempted text messages, Zoom, and email from the provisions of the bill, and has also accepted messages sent by law enforcement, the public sector, or emergency responders. So the government

has carved themselves out of this ah yes law enforcement and the government don't can't be spied on just everybody and it's and she goes on to say zoom it seems that the target of this bill is uk private citizens and residents and that the public are seen as the people who must be spied on i wanted to say two reasons one i just think it's like it just makes me more angry but also just to be like i know when i say things like the house of lords people get like a thing in their mind about who these kinds of people are but just to prove that there are actually smart people who understand this stuff and who like it's not just like a a thing that like ah it just goes up there and flies through it like they're arguing it through which i just i don ah, it just goes up there and flies through it. Like they're arguing it through, which I just,

I don't know. It just makes me happy that people are actually making an effort there. This bill is going to pass right. In some form. And no, this, this is all about what form it is. And,

and, and I will also say exemptions, right? Like loopholes and exemptions. And here's, here's, okay. I was going to say,

here's the real story here, but there are multiple real stories happening. One story is the government wants to look tough and say that it did something. That's part of it. Part of it is there are parts of the government that really want to do, in my opinion, overreach in terms of access to people's information. overreach in terms of access to people's information but in this kind of scenario you end up with this question of like could we put in some loopholes that will allow us to look tough but not and not look bad like we drove these right because the calculation is they want to do stuff that will be done yeah because they don't want the end result to be that these companies abandon the UK. That makes the UK look bad.

And in fact, I mentioned Brexit earlier, but it really does make the UK feel off, feel broken. It's like, oh, it's available everywhere in the world, but not the UK because you know. And they don't want that. They don't actually want that. world, but not the UK because you know, and they don't want that. They don't, they don't actually want that. So there's this calibration of like, how far do you push it? Uh, and, and the danger is what you said about the boffins. The danger is that they throw in the boffin variable and they're like, Oh no, boffins will figure it out. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't make that calculation. You're doing it wrong. But that that's, that's what they're trying to find here.

I think is a way that makes them look good and maybe gets them some of what they want, but doesn't explode in their faces. And if they essentially outlaw all sorts of services by all sorts of companies by doing this, and maybe they don't realize they're doing it, but I think they've been told and they can just believe it or not. doing it but i think they've been told and they can just believe it or not they know that that if they just do that it's probably going to make them look bad so it's i think it's a fascinating political calibration of like like zoom is a good example right like okay why is zoom exempted doesn't make any sense why is email exempted why are text messages exempted but not i guess encrypted messages via an app like these are the, and it probably all has to do with that push and pull of like, well, okay, we'll put this in here, because I guess somebody at Zoom has really good lobbyists who said, you'll break Zoom if you do this.

And they're like, oh, no, not Zoom. I use Zoom. But the government uses WhatsApp. This is what so... Right. That's why they've exempted themselves, right? Yes, but WhatsApp won't be there anymore so like they they i think what they tried to do is exempt themselves so they could use whatsapp not realizing that whatsapp would say by i would also say not realizing that what they're really

legislating in that scenario is a two-tier encryption policy for apps yeah where there is end-to-end encryption for some, but not for others, right? That's the only way that the public sector carve-out works, right? But it's also not a thing they're going to get, right? Well, no, they're not going to get it, but I think it speaks maybe to a level of delusion about what they can make. It's a little bit like the FBI saying,

we would like Apple to create an entire software department that builds versions of their OS for us to use. Right. Which they did. They legitimately said, we think that this should be a thing where if you're an OS vendor, you should have a bunch of engineers who basically work for the government to do backdoors or break things or do special builds to be loaded onto evidence phones and things like that. And it's such a spectacular overreach, but I mean, they're not, they do it. It's not a new concept to try to ask for stuff like this. So this is all just so, and I don't know what it means for my career ultimately, right? Like if this bill passes and Apple pulls out of the united kingdom like i don't know what i will do like it's it's complicated like because what would they pull out like would they just stop selling phones here i don't think so i think i think it would be that they would break

you like you they would break my message they just like sorry no i message just take it off the phone maybe yeah yeah i think that's i think that's likely what they would do because they want to They're just like, sorry, no iMessage? Just take it off the phone? Maybe? right? Yeah. So part of your calculus of your Apple or WhatsApp or whoever is, look, if they get away with this, everybody else, like you said, everybody else is stepping up to bat, right?

Everybody else is going to come in with their version of how do we break encryption? Cause we, we want to spy on our people too. Um, and so Apple and WhatsApp and the rest may look at the UK and say, well, they're the ones pushing this now. If we don't put our foot down right now,

the rest of them are all going to say, oh, well, the UK did it. We can do it too. So the UK may end up feeling the pain of that, right? Of just saying like, we need to do this now or we're not going to ever be able to stop this rolling around the world. What about the China example? Yeah.

Apple's already made an example, right? But isn't it that all iCloud stuff is stored in servers in China and they have the key as well? It's not just Apple that has the key, right? If I'm remembering that correctly. I believe that there is some truth in that but that it's not part of their end-to-end encryption story right they said the end-to-end encryption is going to be available uh and i think they said china too right and everybody went well that's not

going to work and we don't know how that's going to work but um but yeah this is the i that seems it's a little bit different because i think that's about iCloud data being stored and there being a decryption key. I don't know. I mean, it's not quite the same, but this is, this is the question is like, do you want to let this, do you want to let this go? Because we know that's fuzzy. That's just like a fuzzy thing. End to end encryption means there is no key. There is no server key

that Apple can share with China. They can't because there isn't one. And that's what these laws and bills and whatever these want to do is they want to say, no, no, no, no, no.

There's got to be a key that you hold that we can get to. There has to be or it's not legal. Which has taken us back to the bad old days in the 90s when encryption was a munition and couldn't be exported.

And Bill Clinton wanted to do like the Clipper chip, which had a backdoor that was immediately discovered. And it's bad stuff. But that's what they want is essentially what that China story was about, which is if there's a key to be had, then we can say we get to have access to it. And that's what the governments want. Ultimately, that's what governments want, is they want a decryption key that is held by the service provider that they can access on demand. So I don't know. I mean, I'm not a betting man on this. If I was, but here's how my imagination of how this plays out, just as being a realist,

is that this will pass. But a lot of these bad things won't happen because they'll work out a bunch of carve outs. Because I think realistically, that would be my prediction. Everyone's going to realize this is an untenable situation right like yes there are conversations behind the scenes where like apple is saying like we will do this but we want

you to know we don't want to do this right like which is a different message to how they will play publicly they're also going to bring in the boffins and explain, like, we can't do what you think we can do. Let's show you why. The only choices are we have a key and anybody else can get that key, theoretically. Or we don't have a key and I can't give you access because we don't have the key. Yeah. I think you're right. If I had to guess, and, you know, we live in strange times.

It may be that we see companies shut off their services in the UK. It's also possible that they'll pass the bill and there'll be a date for it. And the companies will start announcing the shutoffs and it will become like a thing. And they'll be like, oh, we have to fix that. And they fix it. But I think you're right. The most likely scenario is they carve out enough that the government can declare victory and it doesn't break the internet for the UK. That's the most likely scenario because in the end, they're politicians.

Whether they're going to get reelected or not, but they all want to be reelected. They're politicians and they want to look good and they want to look like they're protecting the country. But they also don't want to look like they broke the country. And that would be an overreach and a misstep. And I don't think they really want to pick fights with big tech companies. I think they just want to look tough. And that's where the carve outs that are already in there came from. So more of those. Yeah, probably. And it might even be something like the, you know, that companies have also agreed to do these other things to protect and Apple, you know, they'll, they'll maybe they'll

even put in there something like language about scanning for child sex abuse material. That is literally what Apple's already built. Right. Like there's right. There's there's there's ways that they can mitigate this to make it look like they're tough, but also not look bad when people's phones stop working right. Just before we wrap up i will just throw in just like a closed bracket on the bracket i opened earlier i actually don't think that microsoft should be allowed to buy activision blizzard um i don't think they should be allowed to brute force their way into having a successful platform uh i think a lot of people are not aware of the fact that microsoft bought already bought a billion game studios.

If they can't make it work at this point, that's on them. Buying Activision Blizzard isn't the way that they should be able to try and make their console competitive. They're throwing around money from a different part of the organization that's not coming from the Xbox organization to brute force themselves

into being competitive with PlayStation. I don't think they should be allowed to do it but that's neither here nor there i just yeah i've never really said that on a show or many shows but like that's my opinion on it i don't think they should be allowed to do it i get i get the um i get the counter argument which is that sony is so successful and that there would be more competition is probably better but i also hear your argument which is mike's been buying studios for years. They've done everything

they need to do. Yeah. If they can't get these games across the line, that's on them. They shouldn't now buy Activision as well. Like, Microsoft have,

like, I think people aren't aware they own so many game studios. There's an Indiana Jones game coming out on Xbox. It's going to be Exosonic because they bought the company and it's going to make it. Starfield, one of the biggest games, one of the most anticipated games

in this year. It was a Bethesda game that is only going to be on Xbox because they bought it with ZeniMax. There are so many games that Microsoft have already bought to put on their platform that they have everything they need to try and be competitive against Sony. They just haven't made it work yet.

They don't also need to own Activision like it's not a thing that is required like i believe it is anti-competitive no matter what deals they sign there is no reason that they should own activision blizzard like but there you go there's there's a little bit on the end there that i'm just adding for the sake of it uh i think that it's stupid okay fair enough well some are fun this episode is brought to you by vitally customer success teams today they're facing a problem how do they connect customer data back to their work vitally changes that it's a new kind of customer success platform as an all-in-one collaborative workspace that combines your customer data with all the

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and RelayFM. Do you want to talk about Apple and AI? Why not? Maybe see if that can change the mood that I'm in right now. I mean, realistically, probably not. Talk about a few things that I don't really... Anyway, Mark Gurman is reporting in Bloomberg

that Apple is working internally on their own tools to combat the likes of OpenAI, BARD from Google, and LLAMA from Facebook. They have apparently built a framework to create large language models inside of the company. This is code named AJAX, from which... Is it AJAX or is the J soft?

I think it's AJAX because it's based on JAX, which is a Google Cloud thing. I didn't know that. What's JAX, Jason? It's in Mark Gurman's thing. I'd never heard about it before but it's like a it's an extensible system for transforming numerical functions okay you know what i read the machine learning framework for transforming numerical piece of information just fell out my brain because i don't understand what it means

uh from which they have made a apple has made a chat bot of their own from this Ajax project. This is internally being referred to, I'm assuming as a joke, as Apple GPT. Sure. This Ajax project was originally started as a way to unify Apple's disparate machine learning projects into one kind of thing.

But now they've started to do all of this. This team has grown it's become like a cross division team which was the thing that mark was reporting about a couple of weeks ago that we didn't end up covering on the show that like the vision pro team is different like the actual makeup of the team is made differently to the way that apple's teams have been made up where like they have their own head of software engineering and their own head of hardware engineering, which is interesting. Craig wasn't overseeing the software part. It was somebody else. I'm sure they link together, but anyway.

So that was interesting. And it seems like this is maybe a similar thing, where it's like they're bringing in their own... Anyway, this is a quote from Mark's piece. In recent months, the AI push has become a major effort for Apple, with several teams collaborating on the project, said the people who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The work includes trying to address potential privacy concerns related to the technology.

Apple employees are using AJAX to assist at product prototyping. It also summarizes texts and answers questions based on data it has been trained with. But Apple are not currently permitting this to be used, like the output of talking to AJAX cannot be used in any customer-facing features due to security concerns. Yeah, the line that jumped out at me was, the chatbot app was created as an experiment at the end of last year by a tiny engineering team. Just let that sink in a little. Remember, we were talking about all the chatbots,

and it's like, oh, what's Apple doing here? And I'm like, oh, do they have nothing, or are they working on something, and they just can't tell here? And I'm like, oh, you know, are they, do they have nothing or are they working on something? And they just can't tell us about it yet. Well, according to this report, late last year, somebody at Apple was like, hey, let's do a chatbot too. Okay. And then its rollout within Apple was initially halted over security concerns about generative AI, but has since been extended to more employees. Still, the system requires special approval for access and any output from it cannot be used to develop features bound for customers.

Okay. One thing that I found interesting in this article was that Apple considered signing a deal with OpenAI to use their tools. They conducted a corporate trial of the technology and decided not to do it. It's wild to me that they even considered it, honestly. It's a real not invented here kind of thing there. It's like, oh, we can do that too. Unless they were looking to buy them, right? And like, unless this was like before the Microsoft thing and maybe they wanted to do this as a way

to see if it was worth doing what Microsoft did. So the way I read this is that Apple has a lot of overarching technology that they use machine learning for. We know that. It's everywhere. And whenever people say, well, Apple didn't pay attention to AI, it's like, they built the neural engine. They've been scanning your photos a billion times for metadata for years now, right? All of that is true. But it does seem like this natural language thing caught them by surprise or alternately the popularity of the natural language thing caught them by surprise. I could see a

scenario where the machine learning people inside Apple look at the chatbots and they're like, that's stupid. And they're like, they've turned their noses up. And I was like, that's stupid. And then the public is like, oh, did you see see that that's really exciting and and that inside apple they're like oh people like this um do we have anything no let's let's work on that let's put something in there what baffles me more is like what is going on with siri like what is going on with siri that all of these sorts of things are because like language models is not new to apple The transformer model that they're using an autocorrect in iOS and all their OSs this fall, right? That's a transformer model.

It's like GPT, but it's targeted on autocorrect, right? Like the chatbot part. Okay. Maybe they didn't want to do that, but like, what is the Siri group thinking about this? Right. Are they thinking, no, no, no, no, no. The way we do it is best. Are they thinking, well, we are doing something that's no no the way we do it is best are they

thinking well we are doing something that's like a chatbot but it's a little bit different or or what like that's that's the part that keeps on hovering over my head when i see that they made a chatbot app late last year is what about siri right because we all all our thoughts go there when we think about these chatbot apps and and personal assistants and all of that is like okay series powered by machine learning i guess or whatever but like the experience is poor and we look at the output from these chatbots and we think oh that's siri like except like remembers what you said and tries to help you and yeah there are issues there they make things up and all that but like there's something interesting there and this report is like in december somebody at apple

sat up straight in their bed in the middle of the night and went oh we should do a chatbot like really that's when it was late last year i don't know quote while the company doesn't yet have a concrete plan people familiar with the work believe apple is aiming to make a significant ai related announcement next year bravo bravo probably the line of the piece and it's so troubling because basically what it is is the company uh doesn't know what it's got i i i chained together in my little link post on six colors it's like they don't have a quote strategy they don't have a quote consumer angle they don't have a quote concrete plan but they want to they want to ship something next year or at least announce something next year it's like what what what are you announcing what are you announcing if you don't have a concrete plan or a strategy or a like why why in the world that that's a that is a red flag right that is a big red flag of we feel we need to make an ai announcement we don't know what it's going

to be and we don't we don't have a plan but let's plant a flag let's plant a flag it says like the chat bot is like not ever expected to be a consumer product right like that it is like super bare bones it's like really basic it's like hey we're just trying out this thing it's like yeah but like are you not do you not have a siri one like do you really not have siri working with this technology like really surely really? Surely they do, right? That there is a version of Siri somewhere inside of Apple that is using a transformer model.

Like, we can't be the people that are making that suggestion. No, no. I mean, like I said, I think that what probably is going on is either there's a group inside that's like working on something and they don't want to share it,

or it's a group that poo-pooed it right and so then and that's not for us we're we're too good for that sort of thing it's bad it hallucinates things it's not it's not going to be anything and then it becomes a big hit and everybody's like oh should we do that um and then they're behind because they kind of poo-pooed it now i'm open to the argument that the the current chatbot kind of tech is just not suitable because it does it. You can't have Siri making things up. But we're already starting to see the fact that if you if you have a conversational model that can talk to people, glean information and then connect it to data sources that it can summarize, that you can get a pretty good experience. And it's just, you know, not only is that baffling,

but again, if you don't have a concrete plan, why do you have a date? Why do you have a date to make an announcement? Because that, it just, that's such a bad sign, right? That is a company saying, we need to be seen doing something in this area. Well, what do we got? Nothing.

Well, let's slap something together because we got to make an announcement, whatever it is, however we figure it out. And that's a little too speculative for my blood to have it be that we don't have a concrete plan or a strategy but we're gonna try to announce something we don't know what next year not so great there's something it feels very dysfunctional it feels like this is an area where either i don't think it's an area where Apple's not paying attention. That's why I keep going to the fact that it's like it was considered and discounted because they're doing a lot of machine learning stuff. They really are. They really are.

But this one, I just, I don't know. Is it people on the Siri team? Did they decide to do something else? Is it people in machine learning? He says that there's some real disagreement inside Apple about the value of some of this stuff. And that's where I start to get those vibes of, no, that's no good. We're not going to do that at Apple. We wouldn't do that sort of thing out there. And then, so you kind of say no. What Gurman reports is that John Gianandrea and Craig Federighi haven't presented a unified front. Gianandrea has signaled that he wants to take a more conservative approach with a desire to see how recent development from others evolve.

So that's him saying, I don't like this stuff. Let's just wait and watch. Because if we jump into this, we're gonna come up with something that we don't like. So let's just wait and see what happens. And Apple will come in late as it often does with something that is at the right time that they're proud of it.

Whereas it sounds like from this, Craig Federighi is implied to be a little more enthusiastic about, let's try this stuff and see where it goes. And so this is, you know, and if it's Gianandrea saying these things, he's not necessarily wrong, but the risk you take is you poo-poo something, and rather than going down that path and realizing it's not fruitful, you say, let's just not go down that path, you risk missing the important path and being behind.

And there's the question, right? Do they take the existing Apple path, which is what Jim Andrews seems to be suggesting, or do they take the the existing apple path which is what jen andrews seems to be suggesting or do they take the vision pro path which is what federighi is suggesting of like this is not the product yet but we kind of got to get something out yeah right exactly and and is that and does who does that like does that go back to gianandrea's group and they're like all right i'll give you a chat bot um and and are they enthusiastic about it uh i don't know i don't know it just look this article's full of red flags for me that's that's the thing it and i'm not

again i'm not saying obviously this is a thing apple should do they should ship it now why haven't they been there that's not what i'm saying i'm saying this is a thing Apple should do. They should ship it now. Why haven't they been there? That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I'm a little troubled that they were not even trying to build this, apparently, until late in the year. And I am deeply troubled by the idea that they, according to Gurman, don't have a concrete plan, but have decided they're going to make an announcement next year. Because that smacks of desperation, right?

They're like, we look bad. We need to talk about this. Let's get something we can talk about. And you know what? It could turn out nicely. It could be, and I'm just making this up. I don't have any facts about this, but I'm just going to throw it out there.

It could be that the Siri team is stuck in the mud and they've poo-pooed all this technology, but they can't ship something that's good. And they're stuck. And that something like this provides a kick in the pants. It basically says, you're going to do this from a high level, maybe from Tim Cook even. It's like, no, you got to do this. This is important.

And I want something and I want it next year, you know, and it needs to fix this. Maybe that's it. Maybe something positive comes out of this. It's entirely possible. I just, I'm troubled by the idea that Mark Gurman is reporting simultaneously that they don't have a concrete plan or a strategy and that they have a date.

Doesn't seem right. Doesn't seem good. While we were recording today, more information dropped about access to Vision Pro hardware for developers. So it's a couple of things. The applications are now open for developer kits. So you can apply.

As they say, you have to submit an application and you'll provide information about the type of app or experience that you want to build. And you get help setting up the device and check-ins with Apple experts for development guidance. And also the first labs start next week. So apparently there's one in London

next week. James has already applied, by the way. Oh, I'm sure. This came up in the Discord so I did my friendly duty of, I immediately text underscore and underscore text me back and said, I'm already halfway through my application.

So, you know, it's a widget that's a calculator and drops bananas. And it's a, it's just, it's all those things. I mean, it's exciting,

but it won't be anything that we can talk about because nobody would be allowed to talk about anything, but it's still exciting. Right. But still getting hardware to people, which is something that we can talk about because nobody would be allowed to talk about anything but it's still exciting right but still getting hardware to people which is something that we we said all along uh seems like it would be important and here it is remember we used to speculate like is this a developer kit or not and the answer is it's a product and a developer kit yeah it's a little bit of both they're gonna be they've announced the product which allows them this is something i know we went back and forth on this, but like,

this is the real like masterclass kind of move, which is announce the product and then ship a version, a limited version of the product as a developer kit. Because it's, although the product is mysterious and, and you're going to get it out to people and your hardware is going to be in the world and Apple says,

we can have you return it on request. Like, bring it back, bring it back. We don't want you to have it anymore. But it allows them to do this developer kit thing, which they couldn't do if the product weren't announced. So it's good. Mark Gurman's newsletter this weekend

was basically a subject that we've talked about here a lot, especially in the run-up to the Vision Pro, which is what's the development story for the Vision Pro? And, you know, this is part of Apple's attempt to really get developers working on Vision Pro apps so that when they launch this thing, the reviews don't say there are no apps for it. But in the long run, there is this question of what developers are going to prioritize Vision OS when the volume is going to be so low for probably so long, and that there are some developers who will embrace it because it's a new Apple platform and they want to experiment with it. But in terms of moneymaking, is it going to be like the Apple Watch Store or the iMessage store where there's sort of like nothing in there and it's not really it doesn't really make sense i don't think that's true but it's it's a it's a tough sell i think that there is a really good really good story for

indie developers because early adopters will just buy so many apps like they want apps yes and so if you can get something out and you charge like five bucks for it, there will be like half a million people who are like dying to get some kind of app experience. Like that's my belief on this. Because what it reminds you of, Jason, as I'm sure you have the same thought, when the app store launched. Yes. Right.

Which we just had like the 15th anniversary. I was buying stuff I didn't even want. And when the iPad launched, bought a bunch of apps there too. Yes. Also, Mark Gurman said something in his newsletter that I have been thinking about and have not written about.

And so I was kicking myself on one level, but another level, I was happy that he mentioned it, which is what do Vision Pro apps cost? And he basically floated the idea that maybe the $1 iPhone app is a $20 Vision Pro app and that games are priced like console games.

And this is the question is, will Vision Pro, because of its cost and because of the limited size of the market, will you see apps that are much more expensive for Vision Pro than you see on Apple's other platforms? And as somebody who knows a lot of independent developers, I kind of want that to be the case. I kind of want there to be the case. I kind of want there to be a reset here because the truth is, if you're selling a $2 Vision Pro app, guess what? You're never going to make your money back.

You're never going to make your money. Not for a decade are you going to make your money back because there won't be enough people to buy it. So I could see there being some indie apps that are very simple, that are fairly low cost, but I could also see the argument that they're going to try to price this at a much higher level because there's such a limited market. I would love that situation to be true. I fear it might be a little bit wishful thinking.

Feels like wish casting a little bit. Yeah. Because I understand the console game thing, but these games aren't going to be like console games in the way that they operate, and they won't have the cachet. Yes, but I don't think that's relevant. I really don't. I think the idea is a premium custom experience

for a very specific platform. The pricing on the meta quest store is higher than on phone right maybe like there's more paid stuff i mean that's maybe the the real difference is like you know like most ios games are free with in-app purchases and most of the quest games that i've played are uh paid games they're not console prices but they're more than iphone prices and like that might be the case but i just think realistically the like the train has left the station on pricing and if this platform becomes bigger and bigger the price will just

continue to to go i mean honestly the model that i look at here is the ipad like when the ipad launched apps and games are more expensive and maybe that'll be how it starts but it will be a race to the bottom but ipad volume was high and the ipad price was low and volume on this is low and the price is high i'm not sure that the price of the hardware makes a difference personally i i think real realistically in the economics because i i i do i do because it's somebody who not only are you do you not have very many potential customers but this person just spent 3500 on a headset and that that means they've got money to spend and you put those two things together which is you can't sell very many of them and the people that you're selling to have deep pockets. That's why it's a $20 app instead of a $5 app. I'm not arguing that it might start that way, but I don't think that that is the

destiny for this platform. The problem I have with your argument is that it feels very much like an infinite timescale argument. And I'll say, sure, if in five years they're selling it at volume, the prices will go down. Very fair. that's true i will agree with you i agree with you but but for the the products the but the products that launch in the first year of this platform are not going to be part of a strategy for them to lose money for five years right like they're not going to be no no i'm on the same page like i'm not okay i see i see what you're saying but um and i'm not trying to make one of those infinite time scale arguments like but i i i agree with your point which is that to start with like yeah i i hope that developers charge more money i hope that they will because you got to have millions of potential buyers for

the lower price to make it up in volume right because there's a fixed cost which is developing the software and then you got to make it back. And if there's only a few hundred thousand even potential customers for you, like, wow, that's hard. And this goes back to what I was saying. I think that there is a money-making opportunity because you maybe can charge a little bit more money and people will be hungry for content. And I'm more optimistic about this platform

as a market than I think Mark Gurman is. Sure. But it's a tough one, right? And this is, I think, this is the number one reason why it's going to be tough. And I think the advantage Apple has here is it's got a lot of developers

who are familiar with Apple's tools. And this is an exciting new product and that we're going to see, I really do believe they're going to be some platform, big platform vendors who are like Microsoft, who are like, yes, we will support this because

this is very interesting and we want to be on all apple's platforms and it doesn't matter if we lose money on this because it's part of a holistic you know microsoft products everywhere kind of thing and then you'll have a lot of indie developers who are in it because their costs are not as high and they want to make cool stuff and so they can can, they can get in there, but yeah, Mark Gurman is not wrong in saying that there's sort of a middle tier of developer who is not going to invest a lot of money building an app for vision OS. If there's not going to be a return, right.

And it's going to be hard for there to be a return. I actually predict, I don't know about the difficulty of all of this, but like, it sure feels like what you will get is a bunch of stuff that's come over from other VR devices, right? Like some of that stuff, because it won't be as much cost to bring it over. But I don't know, it's going to be, and it's going to be a long time, bottom line, a long time before Apple sells as many of these as are in the MetaQuest ecosystem, right? It's a hard one for that.

And we don't know. I think this is one of those points that is very much open about what the app market on Vision Pro will actually look like over time. And I think that Mark Gurman's opinion is different to mine, your opinion, just due to the types of developers we're exposed to. So we are seeing in our more independent community, like the indie community,

people seem to be very excited about developing for this platform. But I'm expecting in the more corporate, larger scale company that just don't care because it's like, whatever, like, like let's just see we're not going to put effort into this right except for the companies we've already seen you know like microsoft are going to put the office apps on there because apple asked them to and you know and so they're going to do it like they were in the keynote like they'll get around to it

and disney's going to do it because bob eiger loves apple yeah and there's an opportunity i i was so surprised i I read somewhere that, that Netflix says they're not going to bother. And maybe that's the Netflix doesn't believe in 3d content, but like if I had a catalog of 3d movies, I would want to be on the vision pro. And I think maybe what will happen is that Apple will just have a TV app on the vision pro that has access to the itunes store essentially the

tv and movie store and they'll load that up with 3d movies but like if i had 3d content i would want to be on this thing because that's going to be one of the drivers of this is going to be great 3d content and so that that would be if i was netflix if i had a bunch of 3d content which maybe they don't have enough to be be worth it that's what would make me interested in being on that platform we can hope that apple will buy the rights to a bunch of 3d movies and put them on tv plus that's what we can hope for sure but also just in the store right like i would imagine that every every 3d movie that has been released there will be a 3d version of it that you can rent or buy in the vision pro version of the tv app i think that'll happen for sure and so you'll be able to get that but yeah it would be nice if there was stuff on tv

plus and and then disney plus right all those disney disney features at least all the marvel stuff all the star wars stuff that's all got 3d versions too so presumably that'll be there on your disney plus subscription or they'll make you upgrade to the 3D version of Disney Plus in order to get it. Maybe. I could see them doing that, right? Pay an extra $2 to get the 4K 3D version of something. I could see that. Netflix will put a version of Netflix on it.

I'm convinced. They put Netflix on everything, but they're probably not going to do the work to build a full-on Vision Pro. Sure. I guess my question is, if Netflix makes an iPad app and they bring it to the Vision Pro, iPad app running on Vision Pro, can. I guess my question is, if Netflix makes an iPad app and they bring it to the Vision Pro,

iPad app running on Vision Pro, can it show 3D content? I don't know. Or does it have to do something? No, it can't. But does Netflix have 3D content? Well, this is the question. They probably don't have a lot of it,

and that's why it's not a priority for them. But I'm sure many of the feature films that come on and off of netflix are available in 3d yes now my question because i just don't know is 3d a different rights thing i think it depends on the on the contract and depends on this on what you're buying it from uh because there are it's interesting because there were there were lots of 3d they're like 3d blu-rays that were sold but then there were also bundles where you get the 2d and the 3d together when there were 3d dvd players and stuff like that and tvs so that's the question when you package this out again because i'm sure everybody out there is like

who's got a catalog it's like oh finally a we got another place to sell these things for home video. And I, you know, will it be, it's just like upgrading to HD or 4K. It's like, do you get upgraded? Do you have to buy the new version? I don't know. It probably varies. It's probably contractual.

They have to supply them, right? I mean, they're not supplying those 3D versions digitally now, I don't believe, anywhere, unless there's meta. Maybe there's an app on the Quest Pro that sells digital 3D movies. I don't know, but there's some possibilities there. So go apply

for your developer kit. I will just say, last thing before we wrap up, James posted this. I'm assuming it's from some kinds of terms and conditions. You agree that all access to and usage of and storage use of the developer kit will be in a private secure workspace accessible by you

and your authorized developers. Fully enclosed with solid doors, floors, walls, and ceiling and locks that can be engaged when the developer kit is in use. You must ensure that unauthorized persons including family, friends, roommates, or household employees

do not access, view, or handle or use the developer kit. When in use, the developer kit should be in your positive control on your direct or within your direct line of sight at all times. You must ensure it is passcode protected. Never leave it unattended.

When not in use, turn it off and store it inside of its locked Pelican case in a locked space that only you have access to. The developer kit may not be moved from or taken away from its ship to address. If you will be away from your workspace for more than 10 days, consult with your Apple point of contact

about how to keep it safe while you're away. This is incredible. I love it. Do not taunt Apple developer kit. Do not look at the developer kit in a wrong way. Can't even be played. Don't even look at it. It can't be played. Do not say the before you say Vision Pro. It's just Apple Vision Pro. That's how you must call it. Otherwise, the developer kit will explode into a pile of smoke. No, there'll just be a knock on your door immediately and an Apple employee

will be outside and they'll say, hand me the case. Hand it to me. I like that little detail of the locked Pelican case just snuck in there. Oh, so that's how they get it to you. They learn from the big boxes of tools that they would send out.

Yeah. You get the Pelican case. Incredible. Incredible. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Ladder. Let's be real. Look, if you're anything like me,

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The first comes from Sasha, who asks, on your MacBook Air, do you use your screen with default resolution or something else? Default for me. Oh, okay.

Why do you do that? I'm just intrigued. Just because you don't change it it's enough okay i guess which means it's not the one-to-one right because that's too much so it's default that's that's just what i use it feels like it feels right feels enough for me i do more space because why on a laptop i never feel like i have enough space for my windows i always want more space that's fair i sometimes will switch to more space i'll even do that on my desktop interesting where if i'm doing a video like if i'm doing a live video stream and i've got like multiple windows that i'm capturing and then i've got to control it plus i've got to

see the stuff that's a lot So sometimes I'll do that. But I very rarely do that on the laptop. I'm pretty comfortable. I spent so many years using an 11-inch MacBook Air that it feels so spacious on the 13-inch. So for some reason, this is funny. I don't know why I'm doing this. Oh, I see.

On my machine here, I have a laptop plugged into two displays. On my main display, I have a laptop plugged into two displays. On my main display, I'm using the default. On the display that I have to the side, I use larger text just because I actually just need to see audio hijacked larger, right? Because that's just like all I need on that screen. But yeah, on my studio display, on my main desk and my main monitor here, I choose those as the default.

And it looks nicer, right? Like it just looks better the text looks nicer everything's crisper but on a 13 inch display i want more space um i think on my on the 14 on the display of the 14 i did use that the default but on the 13 it's just not enough for me I think I bumped the text up a little bit though because the text was a bit small but I do want more window room it's fair John asks do you think the Vision Pro will work well outside

most headsets of inside out tracking struggle when they're not indoors if so is this a problem yes and no oh no no and no no and no is my answer you don't i don't think it'll work well outside me either and i don't think it's a problem because i just don't think they've made it for that like i just don't think this is a headset for outside and like they'll work it out for when they have other products

that they want to be used outside realistically people aren't going to use these outside like why would you use it outside like i don't know why you well i'll tell you why i'd use it outside is that my house isn't very big and i have a patio that actually has more space i could probably do much better out there with vr than i can do it in my house but but if you're sitting down you know and you just create a virtual world for yourself space is infinite if you're sitting down, you know, and you just create a virtual world for yourself, space is infinite if you're at Mount Hood, Jason. You know? Okay. All right.

Sure. Space is infinite. I mean, realistically, like, I understand that some people maybe don't have the space to play certain games or whatever, so they maybe want to take it outside. But I just don't think that this headset, the main use cases

require space they don't really seem to be optimizing for that like draw your boundary and stuff like that like it doesn't really feel like exactly this is what they're doing right now so I don't think it's a concern for right now and they will just solve

this problem for their technology that they're expecting you to wear all the time right and this isn't that drew asks now that the two of you have been posting clips to tiktok i'm curious if it's given you a different perspective of using the app i know mike has talked about not being a fan of the algorithmically driven timeline in the past but i'd love to know if your opinions have changed at all. Well, we should say we're not posting clips to TikTok. Correct.

We have our people. We have our people do that. Yes, we have people. Tim Cook can call those people. We're on our second person. So it is people. It's true. We have, yes, we have people who do that work for us.

So the TikTok work, the Instagram work, hopefully the YouTube work at some point here, all that posting stuff is going, is not done by us. So it hasn't changed my perspective of TikTok. TikTok. TikTok. That's a new one. What's TikTok? I don't know, but maybe we could start that company.

It's a dance style. It's like a tap dance style. It's a very TikTok. It's a very style. It's like a tap dance style. It's a very tick tap. It's a very special kind of style. Or is it tap dance TikTok? Is that TikTok? I'm sure it is tap dancing TikTok. I have the app installed and I've looked at it.

And the thing that I talk about is not only is it the algorithmic timeline, but I'm also uncomfortable knowing that if I linger on a video at all, it's like, aha, you lingered on that video. And I don't like that. It makes me really uncomfortable that it's like trying to use my non-interaction as a source of a sign of my interest. And I find that just deeply uncomfortable.

So I don't like it. I don't use it. I don't do a lot of video stuff. I don't leave the sound on my devices very much. Like for me, video on a mobile device is a very intentional thing where I'm sitting down to watch something and TikTok feels very much like a casual,

I'm just gonna flip through with sound on. I don't like that. I don't like flipping through with sound on anywhere. So it's not really for me. But it's for other people and that's great it's not i don't need i don't need another time suck in my life i really don't yeah i'm not into it either um yes there was an episode of sharp tech recently which is ben thompson's uh one of ben thompson's shows with andrew sharp and they were talking about um

they were talking about threads and yeah and algorithms and like how people want the non-algorithmic timeline like is what they're asking for and ben is saying that it's shown been shown time and time again that there is a difference between i think it's called like stated and revealed preference right and like ben was really like going on about how like people say they want they don't want the algorithmic timeline, but it's been shown time and time again that they do. And this, to me, feels like one of these replication crisis studies, where I don't think that it is as simple to say that because people engage with algorithms,

that they want them i i agree i feel like there's and this is i i get ben's point which is if you put an algorithmic timeline and it drives engagement yeah and that has been proven and it's unequivocal but it doesn't but you i don't want it you could argue part of the engagement is that you're scrolling because you're trying to find your stuff and you can't find it and that that's engagement, but it's bad engagement. But also, it sucks me in, and I don't want that. Like, that's the thing. I, Mike Hurley, don't want that to happen to me.

But it does it anyway. It makes the product less appealing. But then I'm less likely to want to use it. So I tried a couple of weeks ago. Because we've been trying this. Like, what is this all like? And I didn't want to use TikTok because I didn't want to have to like start all over i was like i'll try and say what's what's all this then oh yeah what's all this tiktap i said yep all right so i used i was

trying out instagram reels for a bit liners over lemurs and okay and it did not go in a way that i wanted like it started divulging into like areas that i wasn't interested in like right way too much like inappropriate content right realistically and it's like i don't know why i'm here and there's now no way i can seem to get out of this how can i escape this right and so so that it wasn't like, it quickly revealed to me of like, I see how someone could like, they just get sucked into this and they're just like, well, I'm just going to keep watching

and watching and watching and watching. Like I know so many people do and I'm not judging you. I'm saying for myself, I don't want that. So like, yes, I could imagine a scenario in which an algorithm like this could capture me

and I'm just like watching, watching, watching. But I'm like, I'm saying before that happens, I don't want that. No matter what my brain ends up doing to me my logical brain will say i don't want that and there is a difference between like the logical brain and like the lizard brain right that will just do whatever it wants because it wants the dopamine rather than like sensible version of me who's like no it's the same as like junk food right like i want to eat it when it's in front of me or when it's happening but realistically i know i don't want that because i know i don't

feel good afterwards and so it's like that's the same like i kind of see that like for me my opinion is like tiktok and instagram reels and these kinds of like pure algorithm dread like video things they are junk food and like so all it's like there's no real content to it like i want to be able to choose the people i follow and i watch the videos from them and i like it like in the main feed because i've made that choice but this just like convey about like i always think of uh homer simpson being fed the donuts in hell right yep yep that's what this is of like and just giving it to me just giving it to me and oh i'll just keep taking it because i love the donuts in hell

but like i don't realistically want that and so like i don't think it is as simple to say that like because algorithms show engagement then like that is your revealed preference it's like no it shows that there is a part of my brain that wants it but the whole human of who i am i don't want it so that's how i feel so no i'm not trying it so i i think when somebody like ben says it works like the problem the problem is what does that mean and and what does it mean for the product i agree agree with you, by the way, about it does feel like the endless conveyor belt and this isn't good for me, but it presses all the right buttons.

It's the tobacco industry argument, right? It's like, well, it's super addictive. Isn't that great? I mean, it's great that you have a product that's addictive because your people will always come back, but is it great for society and the people? No, but it's good for your business. I think, though, the broader point would be that it's not, first off, algorithm doesn't necessarily mean what it means as implemented on some of these services.

And also, different users are different. I would argue for when you're talking about threads, for example, like power users, creators, there are all sorts of people who take control of the product and they're important to the product because they make the content on it and they curate content and they have followers. And there are people who use these services

who make the effort to follow people and curate their experience and so first off if they make the effort let them see the results of the effort let them see the stuff they want to see because they made the effort now um a lot of people aren't like that right there are a lot of people who don't know who to like twitter one of the biggest problems with twitter is who to follow and how do you get the timeline to be interesting? And the solution for all of these things, for TikTok and Twitter and Instagram and anything else is you don't have to follow anybody. We just look at what you like and what you're interested in.

Maybe we ask you to click on some subjects that you're interested in. We just show you stuff. And whenever you want to look at stuff, we got stuff for you because it's constantly being generated and we'll just show it to you. And so I get that that's a problem that is solved by the algorithmic timeline, but there are some people who don't want that. And then separately, algorithmic timeline can mean different things to different people. One of my realizations on threads is that if I just loaded threads, I could see people that I know. But if I made the mistake of reloading it, and Instagram is the same way, the reload signal, I know I mentioned this a

couple weeks ago, the reload signal means I've seen all of this, show me something new. And what ends up happening is all the stuff from people you know goes away, and it's all replaced with stuff from people you don't. And I hate that. So, but there, you know, is there value in saying, okay, here are the people you know, and then here's some other content, whether it's in a separate location or it's interspersed in your timeline. Like I loved nuzzle, which was a thing that looked at your Twitter lists or your Twitter timeline or people you follow on Twitter, like second level and like the links that they generate. Like there are algorithmic things you can do to say, here's the thing from a person you don't follow, but somebody you follow follows them and they liked it or they, and this is what

Twitter has done. They liked it or they retweeted it or whatever. And you see it and it's a lighter version of the, of the algorithm, or you do scroll down to the end and there's nothing more. And the goal of the service is to keep you there. So they start feeding you other stuff that's related. Like there are gradations in it. But I personally prefer to take control of my content. And the infinite algorithmic scroll makes me, I just, I don't, I don't like it. And like I said, I also really disagree with the idea that if you're not interacting with the content, you shouldn't like, I get why they do it, but like me pausing on a

video should not be a signal. Me liking a video should be a signal, but I believe TikTok is always watching. So I don't know. If you like it, great. It's not for me. And we're there because we know that people like it. And that's awesome. But I always would prefer services to offer algorithms for people who don't want to do the work. And for the people who want to do a little work and do a little curation, let them. Right? Do both. Why not both?

And to Instagram's credit, threads is supposed to add a view for your you know that is your view that you take control of yeah that's supposed to be coming yeah and that's good because i find threads unusable now yeah i've seen a screenshot of it so like is i think it was possible that adam mossieri shared like a video and you could see on his timeline it looked like the twitter one where you could swipe left and right between like for you and like your following feed. You know, like on the official Twitter app. I don't know if you've seen this,

but you could like swipe left and right. It's going to be like that. It looks like it's going to be like that. By the way, Adam Mossieri finally came out as an Android fanboy. And so everybody who's waiting for an iPad version of Instagram or threads, forget it.

It's never going to happen. Website is the best you can hope for. I mean, did you really expect that that was no, no, but him, him just doing a post and saying Android's better than iOS. I was like, well, forget it. Like his, he, he's not somebody who cares about Apple platforms. So, uh, just get ready for the web and that's fine. A usable web version would make that site i i don't i basically i know in our outro we say that i'm on threads i am but like i almost never look at threads because i can't get it to it through the web and i'm on a mac or an ipad and i don't like using the iphone app on the ipad either it's terrible um i'm not convinced that he was being real with because he uses an iphone i don't know i don't know what to tell you like i know he said it in that thing but like the guy

uses an iphone yeah i i don't know he okay so he's a he's he's a troll or whatever like i don't maybe he just likes it but he uses i took that as a signal i took that as a signal like even the guy in charge is just not interested in apple's platforms and they're only on the iPhone because they have to be. And it's like, fair enough. Like I, I just want to put a stake in the, in the hope in the heart of the hope that there will ever be anything for

Mac or iPad from these companies. Cause there's not going to be. And that's fine. Cause the web is there just make, make it so I can use it on the web. And I will check in a couple of times uh a day on my computer but until then also i want to point out i know why apple does it like i know why they do it but using an iphone app on the ipad is so terrible yeah i know i've been using it at least i have

an ipad mini so it's not so bad but it's still pretty bad like Like, I feel like, could you fake it where you put up the right keyboard instead of the little iPhone keyboard? Because it's unusable. It's unusable. Also, I don't think it's the right size class. Like, they could use the biggest iPhone, and I don't think they do. I don't know. I get why they do it. They're punishing those apps.

It should hurt to use an iPhone app on an ipad but i don't i don't like it if you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in an ask upgrade question but you can also send in your feedback and your follow-up there as well including if you have any anonymous information for us you can check out jason's work over at sixcolors.com. You can hear his podcast at theincomparable.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to my shows here on RelayFM

and check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us on Mastodon and Threads. Jason is at jsnll, J-S-N-E-L-L, and I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can also find the show on Mastodon we are at upgrade on relayfm.social you can watch video clips of the show on our Mastodon

but also on TikTok and Instagram and kind of sometimes a little bit on YouTube but we're working on that TikTok and Instagram are the places to go I did mention it on last week's episode but I do really recommend it there is a really very very funny. I did mention it on last week's episode, but I do really recommend it. There is a really very, very funny video

that we put up on last week of us singing Immigrant Song, which wasn't in the show in its entirety. It was very funny. I recommend people go watch it. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. You can go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign

up there and you'll get longer ad-free versions of the show. And thank you to Ladder, Vitally, and Factor for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next week, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, listeners. Thank you.