Upgrade - 470: Magic Titanium

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

This week we wonder if Apple will profess further mastery of the Periodic Table with this fall's iPhone Pro release, and if Lionel Messi will conquer the world with Apple's help. And for the Summer of Fun, Myke asks Jason about his writing process and tools.

From RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode 470. Today's show is brought to you by TexExpander. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Avengers Assemble! Okay. Or something. I don't know. Summer of fun! Summer of fun't know. Some are fun!

Some are fun indeed. Some of we had a conversation before the show about the Avengers. Yes, and about Banana Man. Yep. UK superhero Banana Man. Who I had never heard of. Okay, so quick primer. Banana Man

was a superhero-like character from a comic called The Dandy. Banana Man was a boy, and when he ate a banana, he turned into a superhero called Banana Man. Yeah, potassium. We were talking about that before the show. It's good for your kids. I mean, it feels like maybe there's some Popeye in there a little bit. you know? Maybe this was like financed by the banana board or something. That's exactly what I was going to say. It feels a little bit like some money from the banana sellers went toward this.

I want to be an adult and lose that innocence of childhood. There's always money in the banana stand. In the banana stand, it's true. There always is. I have a snow-tall question to open today's show correctly, rather than what we just opened with. It comes from ramon who asks what is the first thing that you do to decompress after recording a podcast oh i i i'm

curious about your answer here too but i'll answer first um a lot of times when i finish a podcast there's ancillary work to be done so i'm not allowed to decompress right so like for an incomparable podcast when i finish I collect all the files. I have to upload the bootleg. If it's a TPK or something, we have video. I have to take the video file that was done on the live stream and encode that and post it for the people

because members can get it as a video podcast. There's a whole, pass it on to the editor. Like there's a whole bunch of steps that happen before I can even step away. Um, and then for those, which are usually in the evening,

what I do to decompress is, you know, walk out like a zombie into my living room and my wife and I will watch something on TV that does not require much of my brain. And that's about it for upgrade. Lately. It's been really tough because of our new video venture that we're doing when I'm done with upgrade. I mean, I will get up and and like move my legs around and maybe get a cup of tea or get something to drink or something like that.

But then I come right back here and get Mike's video file and my video file and put them together in Final Cut. And I look at the show notes to see what we've got as our markers for clips that we might want to generate. And right now I'm generating those clips and then passing them on to Jamie, our social media intern. So yeah, probably usually after that, it is like I'm making lunch or I'm walking the dog or some combination thereof. But it is true. And I wonder if i'm walking the dog or some combination thereof um but but it is true and i wonder if you find this mike that after doing a podcast and having that kind of intensity um my brain needs a break after that it really does like you can feel like i need to do something else for a little while because uh my brain's a little melted um i i have that feeling sometimes but rarely i think i've been

doing this for so long and so often i just carry on with whatever the next thing is in my day like it doesn't there are times where you know like some cortex episodes me and gray are like on the phone for like six hours right and after those i need a little bit of a break but like when we're done with upgrade today what i'll do is i'll go uh do my journal because it's time for journaling i'll pack up my bag and i'll go home like that's a that's a reasonable break that's like me getting up and and going and making myself lunch or just getting a drink and then coming back and jumping back in because i can't i mean i have to work the rest of the day so that that that much is that much is true. I don't know. There's something about the incomparable. Maybe it's that it's in the evening and also that I'm doing the, you know, I'm doing the hosting and arbitrating between

many panelists, but that, that one seems more strenuous than, than, but this one, I still, you know, I still want to take a little bit of a break. I don't want to remain seated and then just begin the video. I at least try to stretch my legs and and like i said you know have a get a soda or whatever just something to to break the yeah i think for me like most days where i record a podcast i am recording multiple podcasts so it's like i just i've gotten used to that i just go to the next one that is that's a lot that's a lot i've done it this way since the very beginning so like for me this is it's just normal but i do know that like and i understand like it's it's like if you have any long meeting like if you have like a two-hour meeting yeah like it's just a little taxing you want to you want to take a you want to take a little refresher

so usually for me that'll be a know, something like walk the dog or make some lunch or just something to have, like, because also working at home, a lot of what I do is sort of like trying to create little gaps, little refreshment gaps, where it's like, okay, I'm going to stop doing this. I'm going to take a little tiny gap and it doesn't have to be long even. And then I'm going to jump into this next thing because I want there to, I don't want to feel like I've just stayed on the treadmill. I want to have a little bit more beyond that. Yeah.

I mean, there are lots of productivity thinkings that subscribe to that fear, like the Pomodoro technique or whatever. Right. That you're supposed to work intensely, take a break, work intensely. Honestly, after sitting here for two hours doing this podcast the i know that that final cut task right now is going to take some time yeah and i want to give myself a little bit of a gap before i sit back down to do that you know five minutes even because having that going from one level of intensity to another level of intensity all without a little bit of a gap is is a bit much so um yeah yeah it's a good question it is it's funny and and you're right mike to point out that the the level of difficulty

can really vary between podcasts right like i don't i you know if i talk to scott mcnulty about a star trek episode or something like that's not that not, that's like not even work. It's not a problem. But if I'm, if I'm wrangling five panelists on the incomparable or, you know, spending two hours in front of a video camera for twit for Mac break weekly, right? Like that's the,

those are more intense. That's a different thing. Because there's a more focus and, and you're on. Yeah, exactly. If you would like to send in a question to help us answer a future episode of the show,

just go to upgradefeedback.com and send us in a Snell talk. Thank you to Ramon for that great question. I have some follow-up for you, Jason Snell. I have quite a few items of follow-up for you today. I have more on the LOL emoji, if you could believe it. Great. Anthony wrote in and said i use

an australian english keyboard on ios and it seems to suggest the same thing mike is getting for british english i get the same three emoji that mike is getting so it's not just the british english keyboard it's the australian english keyboard as well so it seems like there's like some kind of anti-non-american english like rhetoric going on here with the emoji i did want to give an update that in the newest beta i guess this is kind of a detail but uh the the the ruffle you know we had the rolling on the floor laughing emoji that has been replaced now to face with tears of joy which is one of the original that should be in there so we are now just two down one to go so what we're still hoping for here is the winking face with tongue emoji

to be replaced with grinning squinting face and then we'll be back to normal so slowly getting there grinning squinting face is the goal that's what i'm wanting yeah that that's good the old gsf the the one with the the like the winking face with the tongue it's just it's just not good it's just not lol or all it just that is not an lol in the least neither was a rolling on the floor laughing no, it's got its own thing. Raffle is raffle. Lol is lol. That's just it.

Raffle is raffle. Raffle is raffle. Lol is lol. And GSF, the grinning, squinting face, is GSF. GSF. Everyone knows GSF. GSF or GTFO, okay? There we go. We got it.

We landed on it. I wanted to talk more about the less fun thing, the online safety bill that I was talking about on the last episode. Oh, yay! I was both saddened

and understanding of how many people wrote in to tell me that they live in the United Kingdom and had no idea this was happening, which was my experience too, right? But it makes me sad that this has gotten by so many people. And in the last episode, I posited a theory

that this might be Apple's fault with the CSAM scanning. I have received some communication from my local member of parliament who says i do not believe that the legislation impacting private messaging will damage this encryption as a variety of technologies are emerging that could allow for scanning on issues such as child sexual abuse material while retaining the privacy benefits afforded by end-to-end encryption. So after reading this, 100% in my mind, like they saw the on-device CSAM scanning and that unlocked for them of like,

oh, no, this can't be done. Now, like this wasn't Apple's intention. I understand that. But even without this technology having been implemented, it unlocked the Pandora's box that we thought it was going to this was the when we were talking about this whether a couple years ago or whatever

it was with this kind of stuff in mind that once you show that there is a way to do on device snooping you have highlighted to anyone in around the world that this kind of technology is available and what pressures that may then put on Apple from worldwide governments. And even though they never implemented it, I believe it's one of the reasons why our government feel like they are able to implement this

and be able to say, hey, we're fine with encryption right as long as you're yeah as long as your software is snooping on you before it gets encrypted yeah we're okay with it yeah this is the we talked last week it was the title i think about the that bring in the boffins moment which is this belief that the the you know tech wizards will solve anything and something like this gives more ammunition to the bring in the boffins argument right which is uh we look we didn't say you have to not encrypt things we just said you have to find a way to do what we want while also encrypting them is fine you could do that but you got to be able to do what we want

and uh yeah well i guess we'll see and i just want to you know this is a point my member of parliament is a member of the labor party like this is a cross party thing right like there this isn't just like a tory thing right? Like this is my main concern about this legislation is that once it's done, it's done because all governments are going to want this because of what it could allow them to do. And there is no good or bad in this scenario. And if you're the minority party seeking power,

which Labour absolutely is, you're also trying to search. We talked last week about how politicians don't want to ever be seen as, as being, uh, they don't want to ruin your, your phone, but they also don't want to seem weak on, you know, fairly easy issues like protecting us from terrorism and things like that. If you're the minority party running for power, the last thing you want is to hand your opposition something like they're soft on child sex abuse materials and terrorism yeah and that's right and that's just like an easy thing there but but then also it's just like i don't believe we have good and bad um like political act like parties they everything's a level of gray and yes they would love to be able to snoop for

whatever it is they need to snoop for when they're in power the same as whatever government might want it now and I think that we shouldn't have this technology implemented but I fear that we the genie is out of the bottle now could be Lionel MLS-y

do you like that? yes that's pretty good right because it basically just is lionel mlsc now the entire major league soccer organization is just spearheaded by by lionel messi uh and it seems to have started well i think i got a push notification on my phone of like along the lines of like from apple tv of like watch lionel messi against whatever team yeah he's just he's he takes him on himself now he's that good it's been going very well i've got reporting from the verge here he says while apple did not release specific numbers

in a statement apple spokesperson tom new mayors suggest explained that the week of July 19th to 26th had the, quote, three most watched matches ever on MLS season pass. I like ever. I feel like ever's doing a lot of work here on a thing that's a year old. Ever dating all the way back to February. With viewers in almost

100 countries and regions around the world and the fans for those matches were roughly split between the mls season pass in english and spanish language yeah a lot of people in uh in in argentina especially i would think watching that yeah uh and i saw like it feels like apple was continuing to double down on the recent success with like the multi uh platform yeah uh of mls that they now have a new uh podcast an mls podcast called offside of taylor twelman who was a mls player some time ago and a commentator one of the more popular i think tv commentators taylor Twelman. Yeah, I think so. So this is similar to like, the way that I look at this is like similar to their behind the scenes, like TV plus podcasts, where, because this is produced by, I think it's Apple and they're working with a production company as well.

They can just have access to, I guess, kind of anyone. Like the most recent episode features, is it Jorgeorge mas jorge mas is the is the owner of inter miami owner of inter miami yeah and and yeah this is like he's a partner of apple yeah taylor twelman is one of apple's top i think uh commentary people for mls season past uh so now you do a podcast it's all you know it's all this is this is what's really interesting about this deal even for people uh who roll their eyes at mls and people outside the u.s who roll their eyes at it because it's a smaller league a lower quality league and people inside the u.s roll their eyes at it because it's soccer but what's really interesting about it is you've also got this case where you've got a streaming platform in total alignment with the league and what does

that mean like and they're just starting to try they're trying stuff and they're they're figuring it out and it's very interesting and i'm i will tell you i'm sure every other sport league in the world is paying attention to this right just like, what does this mean for the future of this sort of thing? And I've been reading this book actually about soccer by Rory Smith called Expected Goals. That's about sort of like the impact of money ball kind of thinking on soccer. And one of the points in the book is the truth is that in any of these sports um there's a lot of followers so they want to people don't want to be an outlier they don't want to be different and so they're going to be resistance to change resistant to change until the moment when somebody else does it and if somebody else does it and it looks good, then they feel free to do it and they'll immediately do it.

And this MLS deal with Apple feels to me like a really great, now somebody's doing it moment. And everybody else is going to pay attention to it. And if it works, they'll rip off the stuff that works and they won't do the stuff that doesn't work but i i think that's what's so fascinating about it is that the the apple is a streamer um and mls as a league and they're like tightly integrated right they are shoulder to shoulder on this product this is this is both of those companies and the company in the league working together to make this happen which is you say like we've and we spoke about it at the time we spoke about it multiple times this is just a thing that's not really ever happened in this way before like getting rights is very different like what apple is doing with the mls here where they are

like they are in lockstep with each other over the like the way things are presented the movement of the sport right like they are actual real partners rather than just like a provider of something, you know, like whether you're the provider of the sport or the provider of the cables to put it out to the world on, which is typically how these things are done. But Apple and the major league soccer are effectively together on this one. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, there are rumors out there that apple is

talking to other soccer leagues too of course um it's going to be smaller ones i don't know whether they're still rumored to be um talking to the dutch league um but like they're you know they're interested in this and there could be synergies there as well um and as they learn things about dealing with soccer for mls they may go to other places too it's it's yeah it's this is look sports broadcasting is not going to be the same in 10 years or 15 years right it's going to be radically different and i mean but how different in a year right it could be i mean it's changing rapidly yeah yeah but but it's going to but where where does it lead? What is its more final form? Remains to be seen, but this is something that is definitely worth everybody paying attention because it's going to give us some clues about where this is all going.

says addressing the mls board of governors just days before the world's greatest soccer player lerno messi would debut for into miami eddie q smiled at the group and told them boy did you deliver and nearly five months into its first season with apple holding its media rights mls executive and owners both publicly and privately said they are very happy with the results so far yeah speaking i'm just gonna put this out there because I thought it was such a great piece. Rory Smith, who is the soccer columnist who wrote the book that I'm reading, soccer columnist for the New York Times, an excellent writer, just a really good writer. And he wrote a column right before the World Cup about the messy signing and what he said was everybody in america keeps talking about and jorge mas talked about this uh that this is the moment like oh this is the moment when america gets soccer and the the beckham signing was this is the moment that america

gets soccer and um rory smith's point was um that they're all missing it and that we've already passed that point. Not to say that there isn't much more growth possible with MLS in terms of money and in terms of teams and in terms of professional soccer in the United States, The idea that people in soccer confuse primacy for success. And the idea there is everybody else in the world doesn't understand why soccer isn't the number one sport in America. And isn't the number one sport in Australia. And isn't the number one sport in India. And can't get over that to realize that they're successful. In fact, more Americans say that they're a fan of whatever that means,

soccer, than hockey now, right? So it is moving up in the ranks. Plus, it's the second most popular participatory sport in America behind basketball. So Rory Smith's point is basically America has already embraced soccer. It's got a league with 29 teams and the quality is growing, even though it's not at the level of even like the French league at this point, it's growing. And a deal like the Apple deal, what I would say is it only helps that case, but it's also a, I would say a soccer expert saying look everybody who's waiting

for that magical moment when the u.s got soccer like the u.s got soccer putting all of the uh the major european leagues they're all available in the u.s on tv now and have been for the last few years like the soccer culture in america is growing by leaps and bounds. And if you're waiting for that magic moment where it's bigger than the NFL, let me tell you, it's never going to happen. And it doesn't need to be how it's judged. So I think that the Messi stuff has been a little overblown, but it's good for the league and it's good for its visibility and it's good for the sport in the US and potentially out. I would would imagine i really am waiting for that story of like people in latin america who are who are getting to watch messy at a better time of day and and uh and uh in and how they like

apple spanish language broadcast people in argentina how are they feeling about it um i haven't seen those stories but uh we'll keep watching it, and they'll keep playing soccer. Partner, do you want to saddle up? Oh, let me see. Yeah, okay, saddle. Yep, all right. Ride them, cowboy. We're going to ride on down to the room of Roundup.

All right. Mark Gurman has published the article that I look forward to every year, which is his What Can We Expect from Apple in the fall and so usually these things we've heard some level of them um we've heard things that may or may not be in what mark german is talking about in his newsletter but this is i always feel like a real good like this is the yardstick for what we can and cannot expect to come from apple in september i agree with regards to the iphone and the apple watch so i'm going to go through some of the things that mark spoke about so with the phones with kind of screen stuff we're going to see the dynamic island across all the phones

so the 15 to 15 uh plus pro and max will all have the dynamic island now but the pro phones are going to get a new a new display made it from a new kind of process called low injection pressure over molding lipo when i originally read this i was like isn't this they are no ltpo is what's in them right now which is about the which is a different thing it's ltpo it allows the always- always-on display. It's an acronym like that. But that is a completely different thing to what this is, which is how the screen is made. Basically, the reason Apple will move to this process

is it allows for the bezels to shrink. Currently, the bezels on the Pro phones are 2.2 millimeters. This is going to bring it down to 1.5 millimeters. So all the time getting smaller and smaller and smaller if this becomes a thing can we rename the room around up the liposuction we most certainly can jason okay just well just in case in case we have a whole segment that's just about low injection pressure over molding i want that segment to be called i think liposuction

the segment you are currently in in rumor roundup it may be the only time we ever talk about this so we will say that right now this is the lipo section of rumor roundup okay thank you thank you uh this screen technology lipo uh was first used by apple in the apple watch series 7 and it was there again to like help them make the bezel smaller and smaller on the screens and Mark Gurman is also saying that he expects that apple will use this process with the ipad it was there again to like help them make the bezel smaller and smaller on the screens and mark german is also saying that he expects that apple will use this process with the ipad as well in the future it's all just about like less and less and less border required around a screen that's that's bottom line here is apple hates the lead of his piece was about this too which i've

thought for a while now which is what is Apple's vision of the ultimate iPhone? And the answer is no bezel, no cutouts, just screen. And so the reduced cutouts and the dynamic island and all that is part of it. And then always, always just trying to get the bezel to be smaller. And I know there are people who will say, come on, it's fine. But Apple just doesn't think it's fine. Apple keeps thinking that the less bezel, the better, and is spending a lot of time and resources trying to engineer new methods of mounting these displays so that they can get that bezel down from like 2.2 millimeters to 1.5 millimeters, which those are both very small numbers numbers but one of them is

a lot smaller than the other one yeah and apple cares right apple cares and i think people care i think i think if you look at a back at a an older phone that you use with a bigger bezel you would say chins you know you would say ew gross right like even you might not you get used to it real fast but i think going backward you see it yep and you know this is like one of those things like i could really appreciate of like well when you're a designer at apple you know you have all of the resources in the world available to you and if you have a goal that you want to achieve you just keep taking chunks out of it until you get there and this is another one there's still a bezel but it's smaller and then maybe in another five years they'll come across that you want to achieve. You just keep taking chunks out of it until you get there. And this is another one.

There's still a bezel, but it's smaller. And then maybe in another five years, they'll come across another process and they make it even smaller, right? They just keep going and going and going until the edge of the phone screen is the edge of the phone. And that's it.

Because who wouldn't want that? It would be beautiful. The 15 and 15 plus will get, quote quote major camera improvements as well as the a16 chip which is in the 14 pro remember the iphone 14 did not get a processor upgrade at all right like it actually just stuck around but this is going to be putting the a16 into there no detail on major camera improvements do you think it's going to be the 48 megapixel sensor i mean it might be it could be just rolling that in to

the lower end model and then upgrading the higher end model even further like that could that could be my hope with that is they put the 48 megapixel camera sensor everywhere and then actually unlock the true potential of that. Because I don't feel like we got it, right? With the 14 Pro, like the sensor is there and you can take an image in certain circumstances or using other apps where you can get the full sensor and it can look amazing. You can get some great detail out

of it if it's processed correctly but i feel like i and many others were hoping that it would make some kind of leap in the in like the overall image quality and i don't think it has i will actually say i've been kind of frustrated recently with the the 14 pro by adding that sensor in they they need to enable the macro sensor way too often for me and and the you know the macro quote unquote which is the ultra wide it doesn't look as good and so there are times where i'm trying to take a picture of something close up and it has to switch over and then they end up with a worse photo because of the fact that i have the higher sensor so like i don't really feel like i'm getting the benefit most of the time for a lot of the things that i want to take pictures

of so i i wonder if i wonder if what they might do is put that high end um sensor on the lower end phones but only have the two cameras like they have before and then use you know so there would be a wide and a normal um or a right or an ultra wide and a wide i don't know even know what how they define them anymore but imagine that and then they would essentially have a virtual third camera sort of like how there's a virtual fourth camera on the Pro models now. Oh, by the way, I said last week I called the 14 Max instead of 14 Plus. Remember iPhone Math? Anyway, there are two. One of them is bigger than the other.

iPhone Math. iPhone Math. That was great. Because it was the iPhone Plus, but it was mistranslated as iphone math it was amazing that was back in iphone 6 that is one of the great rumors man iphone math that's what it's going to be called like not even apple is dumb enough to call something iphone math um pro max sure math not so much so anyway i do wonder if they might take that 48 and put it in the lower end phone, but the details of like, how does that, how does that get used? And is there

only one other camera on that unit? And how did, you know, does it look like it's a more, you know, they do the virtual camera thing where it uses all the pixels or it bins them and all that. I don't know. Interesting idea. Major camera improvements is very vague, but I think that would be my guess. Like I kind of doubt that they're going to invent a new camera for the 15, right? More likely that it's a recycled camera from another device. Which, and as well, like it would make sense to me then maybe why you would

want to put the a16 in there because you've got to imagine that there has to be some kind of like linking between this higher quality uh camera sensor and the processor right yeah so it can fully like work these two things in tandem so and if it's two cameras instead of three they you know it's a little bit decontented it's a little bit cheaper um but they're still using the chip and they're still maybe using that sensor and and like because again uh apple is great at recycling things right that's how apple is able to do everything that it does is that it reuses it reuses a lot of the technology that it's got so if it's been making that that sensor or buying that sensor and integrating it and it's got the a16 and like it knows how to

do all of that stuff and and has been doing it for a year and now can roll it down into another product because then it's got the high-end stuff going into the pro instead and especially you know it would make sense this year because of the expected changes to the Pro camera that you could get away with. Although it's only been a year, you can put it in the regular one. Now, this is where I'm going to quote this. On the Pro phones, there will be, quote, major rear camera upgrades, including updated lenses and the ability to get a much wider range of optical zoom on the largest model now i don't know why mark isn't saying periscope lens here but but like that's what we expect this to be but this could be like one of those things where no one is yet really sure how apple's doing

it right but like they've got their own funny way you know of making this work that nobody else has done before or maybe they're just doing a periscope lens but they won't call it that it could be a periscope lens or it could be like oh we thought it was going to be a periscope lens but it turns out it's this other esoteric thing that nobody's really doing but they decided to do it and they're happy with it so they're going to ship that like yeah there's the hedging here or he knows some of the back end specs of it but doesn't quite know the details of how they get there it's like i know that there's going to be a wider range of optical zoom on the largest model but i can't tell you how like we can all presume

it right we're all presuming it but if you don't you know you like you know the output but you don't know the process of getting there but for people who don't know what we mean by periscope lens this is how do you get a thin ish phone to have more optical characteristics because usually you need a longer lens to do more zoom and how can you have a longer lens i mean they already have the camera bump and there's like the camera block with the bumps on top of it right like they you can extend out and you can get some of that but ultimately you can't have a phone with a giant lens sticking out of it so what they do is they they have a a mirror that turns the light sideways so that you can run some of the length of that optical path down the length of the phone inside instead of the thickness of the phone.

It's a very clever idea. Some other phones do that too. It's almost like magic to me, like how this actually works. Like, I understand it. I've seen it done a bunch of times. I understand your explanation. Still don't fully know how it works. You know what I mean?

I believe it works, but I don't fully know how it works you know what i mean it's like i believe it works but i don't know exactly how it works light works in mysterious ways it's all optics you see snell's law tells us that refraction is i'm not going to get into it here but you can look it up snell's law it's real oh okay i thought that no snell's law is real it was not was not mine. I didn't make that law. Previous Snell made that law for me. But yeah, light does fantastic weird things and you can do stuff like flip it sideways so that you can have your lens and your optics happening inside the phone body instead of right on the back and samsung has done that and other phone manufacturers have done that and it's like it's a logical progression for the iphone um because apple cares so much about camera quality and beyond a certain point you just can't make the lenses any longer so this is what you do can't wait to see it by the way it's going to be great and if it's in the pro max that is going to be great. And if it's in the Pro Max, that is going to make that phone that much more interesting. If it's really like a groundbreaking iPhone camera, that's way beyond what Apple has done before. That would be, it might drive a lot of people into Pro Max club

is what I'm saying. I feel like it makes sense to me, you know, like in the way we were just talking about the technology going down, that it would just be in the pro max to make it the easiest on them because it would be something new complicated to make and they have the space to build it into the phone more easily because the phone is bigger um and honestly like you know we spoke about this before but this is how i could imagine you know like what you just said about like oh it's such a big change this is how they call it the ultra right that like they're taking a big step like this is now something we've never done before that could be a name you know like that kind of it's the perfect time i i don't know if the rumor is i think it's unclear

in its marketing so it's really hard to get that sense but like yeah if there's a periscope camera and it is vastly beyond the quality of any iPhone camera ever before, I think it does it a disservice to call it Pro Max, right? At that point, you really do want to call it Ultra and say, this is not just a big Pro. This is a whole huge step forward

and you want to differentiate that and probably raise the price even more. But like, go to town, go for it. I think that's great. The Pro phones will get a new three nanometer chip. Right. even more. But go to town. Go for it. I think that's great. The pro phones will get a new 3nm chip. Right. A 17.

All the phones will get USB-C. By the way, I enjoy Mark Gurman struggling like the rest of us in describing the benefit of having a faster chip. Snappier. Yeah, he literally said they'll be snappier. They'll be snappier.

And it's like, you know, God, the power of these chips is so spectacular. Now, like, and Apple is ahead of the competition. They're ahead of Qualcomm's chips here too and all that. But like, I reached the point in the last couple of years where I'm not sure it matters anymore. I mean, sometimes it will matter in detail if there's like some incredibly complex graphics thing the point in the last couple of years where where i'm not sure it matters anymore i mean sometimes it will matter in detail if there's like some incredibly complex graphics thing or machine

learning thing and all of that and obviously the increased power increases the size of the platform that lets the software do not just do things snappier you know but do things they couldn't do before because they would take an unreasonable amount of time or in the case of the three nanometer process, maybe the most important thing is that it will be more power efficient. And so battery life will be better, or they'll, they'll be able to take some of that battery out in order to put the

periscope camera in. I don't know. Right. But like, it just, it is a struggle where he's just trying to say, look, there's going to be a new chip news using the new process,

but he needs to say as a writer you're always prompted to do this right but why right why why does that matter what is the relevance there and so he's like it'll be snappier it's like sure sure it'll be yeah it'll totally be snappier people will get this phone though and they'll be like whoa the snappy so snappy uh-huh uh the pro phones are going to get titanium on the sides so we're moving away from stainless steel to titanium with a slight curve on the back glass so the back glass will have more of a softer feel to it maybe it's nicer to hold maybe it's more slippery to hold we'll find out we don't know they said it's going to hold. Maybe it's more slippery to hold. We'll find out. We don't know. They said it's going to have the frosted glass look,

which is that muted look that I don't really like on the pro phones. So it sounds like they're keeping that. Titanium though. Titanium is nice. I have my Apple Watch is titanium. It's light. It's very nice. And as we detailed in our little science corner a few months ago,

you can anodize titanium. So you don't have to do what apple did back in the day with a titanium power book and paint it and then have the paint flake off you actually anodize it and it's fine and i've had this uh this black titanium apple watch for two years now and it it doesn't have any paint on it and it doesn't chipped and it's all still beautiful and uh what i'm saying is a big fan my question is just, just I'm going to put this out there. Maybe this could be a draft item. You know how Apple talks about

the medical grade, surgical grade, sorry, not medical, surgical grade stainless steel on the iPhone? What is the titanium? Is it like aerospace grade titanium or something?

The aluminum they say is aircraft grade. Right. Like we got a new element. Right. It's going to have an indicator of how, you know, because this is Apple's marketing race. He's like, I know y'all know about the periodic table. I know you look up there and you see your aluminums and your titaniums. Stainless steel, it's an alloy.

It's not up there. But be that as it may, what makes our titanium different? Well, and then they do the thing where they're like, but it's not titanium. It's magic titanium. It's aerospace grade. Impurities have been filtered out. Or it's a unique alloy of titanium and molybdenum. And it makes it so that it reads your mind or whatever it is.

You know they're going to have. Because Apple, masters of branding, everything's got a brand name. And it makes it so that it reads your mind or whatever it is. You know they're going to have. Because Apple, masters of branding, everything's got a brand name. Well, almost everything. But the important stuff has a brand name. They can't just be satisfied with an element that's on the periodic table. A common element. They have to explain why it's amazing.

It's just Apple Watch grade. They use Apple Watch grade titanium on the iphone it's going to be i'm going to tell you it's like this is the same titanium that they use in making the international space station or something right it's going to be that it's going to be titanium from outer space i don't know we'll see but they'll do something mark my words they'll something. If you employ a team of metallurgists, which Apple have, they are metallurgists. They do. Right? Yep. And like, you saw how they made their own gold for the Apple Watch, right?

Oh, yeah. Right? See, again, hey, you look at that periodic table and you see AU and you're like, gold, okay, whatever. Unacceptable. It's like, no, we made great gold. We made the best gold. And now, best titanium coming to you.

Now, do you remember some time ago, we were talking about the buttons on the iPhone that they were maybe going to be going to solid state and be like the trackpad or whatever, where it don't actually physically move? That got canned. But there is something that has remained which is the mute slash ring switcher like the little switch that you've got on the phone

is going to become a button and it will be action button like maybe even called the action button and this is a quote from mark german steve moser at mac room hasors discovered code in iOS 17 that hints at the possible options for this button. It suggests you'll be able to choose among several possibilities. The standard mute switch mechanism, a focus mode like do not disturb, launching the camera, turning on the flashlight,

or opening features for accessibility or translating text. That sounds just like the action button on the Apple Watch Ultra, right? Of like the kinds of things you can do with it. Programmable button. And I'm here for it, right? Like that's, that's cool.

There was all that debate about like, oh, ring switch and people who are the magic ring switch people who can tell in the pocket, whether it's, whether it's switched one way or the other, which I can never remember. I spent, Mike, last week, I was trying to see if my iPhone was muted and I spent a long time staring at control center. Why wondering why there wasn't a mute item in control center. They're going to have to add it. Right. Right.

Well, so, so I had that moment because this is how much I use my iPhone versus my iPad. And I just stared at it and I'm like, why isn't it there? Why isn't the little bell there? And then I, I had an, and after a minute I was like, oh, iPhone, there's a switch on the side. And then I did the switch and then, and then what ridiculous fishing or something started to make noise. And I was like, oh, cause I hate that. I hate how some things honor that the honor the switch and don't play anything unless you turn the switch off versus just honoring the volume setting bugs me. It's inconsistent between apps. Anyway. Um, I had that moment and I thought, well, it won't be like this

soon, right? Pretty soon. That'll just be a'll just be a button and you can choose to have that button toggle mute on and off or have it be something else and just put it in control center. Because as somebody who leaves the mute on all the time, I would really rather just have it on all the time in control center and use that button for something else. Yeah, I mean, that would be the same for me, right? Where like, actually, if they did put it into software then i'd be fine with it because i could just leave it in software and i know it's off all the time like i do like the ring switcher just because it's easy for me to know it's always off but if it's in software it is realistically as simple as that as long as they leave it always off right i mean my apple watch is always off too and i i don't need a right like i don't need to

switch for it i just said because i don't want the volume controls to be messed to be doing this like i don't want that like i don't want that right right but if there's just a straight up mute which i there would be because it's on the ipad that's what it is so for people who are like if you really flip between um noise and not noise all the time then you would apply this button. And yes, I know you wouldn't know the state, but I think it's better more broadly to have it be programmable. All I ask, let me run a shortcut.

I know you can do this in the Apple Watch too. So just let me run a shortcut from that and then I'll be happy. That'd be awesome. Sounds great to me. You mentioned it earlier, but price increases are expected in some markets, maybe the US as well. This is kind of expected mainly in the pro phones, but could be across the whole thing.

Right, and if there's an Ultra, that's a really great moment to increase the price of that phone even more. Right, that's a really great moment to increase the price of that phone even more. There is, for the Apple Watch, a new S9 processor in the Apple Watches, which would include the first significant processor bump since the S6 in 2020. So there's been processors every year, but they've been different configurations

of the system on the chip as to what it can do. But in that time period, there hasn't really been any kind of speed bump to the Apple Watch. The S9 would do that, apparently. Yeah, I mean, that's great. It's good. I feel okay about my Apple Watch,

but I'm sure it could be, you know, I'm sure- At a certain point, it won't be, right? Right, we will reach that, like, I guess it's snappier kind of moment with the apple watch but right now like a faster apple watch especially since it hasn't really gotten a major bump in a while i think that's good because there's more that could be done on the apple watch if it had more capabilities right like that we're still at that point where it's it's very limited because it's in such a small space and so there's more work to be done on the apple watch front and a dark titanium option for the apple watch possibly right he said he said basically like he had heard about it earlier and it seems to still be in as a possibility

but he doesn't really know but it would be weird to me to to rev the the model uh in a year and not offer like something like that because really i mean i will be surprised as to what they would offer at all right like what is the reason to do an apple watch ultra 2 a year after like what will right you know like what are they going to tell you is in this one and like and i feel like an s9 chip like that's not really it you know it's like what is the point of revving it but being able to say, such a success, you know, we're doubling down, da-da-da-da-da,

and it also now comes in black or whatever, it's like, oh, okay. But what I really want and what I hope they do is it actually comes in all of the colors the phones come in. That's what I want.

Oh, that's a nice idea. Right, because they're going to, you presume, because we know, because, oh boy, do we there's you can advertise titanium yeah that's right that they'll probably have multiple options for the phones you know like four or five options for the phones my hope would be that they would then offer this like a selection of those colors for the apple watch. Sure, that'd be neat. Because I would like choices. I would like a gold one

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for their support of this show and RelayFM. So it is the summer of fun. Summer of fun! Which for you does mean the summer of writing. True.

Because you're writing all your reviews. And as we move into review season, I would like to get a lay of the land for your writing setup right now. I'm going to talk about apps, but I also want to start this with two questions.

One is, which device do you currently do the bulk of your writing on, especially when it comes to reviews? So I've been doing the bulk of my writing this summer on my Mac. Okay. Using the keyboard that you made for me. Ah, great.

Which is the what? Keychron Q1? Yes. I'm going to say yes to that. I think so. Yeah. With the Kiwi switches and I got the Severance keys. Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes.

It's like a little blue keyboard. Summer, my beloved memories of summer for the last 20 years really are writing under the redwood tree in my backyard, sitting in a camp chair basically. And so what I'd really like to say is that i've been doing a lot of writing on the magic keyboard on my ipad sitting out in the backyard but it's been uh here in the bay area it's been a cold summer okay and i've got i've i've written out there like one day. So I'm not worried.

August and September and October are usually our hottest months. And so probably I will be hot and miserable and outside writing at some point here. And that will make me happy because I'll be in the shade of the robo tree and it'll be great. But for now, I'm doing most of my work actually at my Mac and not anywhere else. So it's unusual for me. But your ideal for writing this kind of stuff, like your macOS review or something, would be on your iPad instead? Yeah, in the backyard, yeah, for sure. And in the winter, I usually do a lot of writing.

I do writing at my desk, but I also do a lot of writing at the bar, in my kitchen. In the kitchen, right? It's just like Jason goes down to the local warring house. Well, I mean, I used to go to Starbucks and write my Macworld column there and all that. And I don't really do that anymore ever since the pandemic. But I have a little stand for my iPad that goes in. And then I use a Bluetooth keyboard and a Magic Trackpad. And I will sit there on a bar stool or stand next to the bar, depending on how I'm feeling.

And that's really great because it's a shift. It's a mental shift where I'm somewhere else doing something else. And it sends a signal to my brain like Like the only reason you're here is writing. Stop wasting time. Get the words out now. But I just wrote a 2000 word piece last week that is forthcoming for, it's a freelance piece. And I wrote that, I wrote that sitting here at my desk.

And when I do that, to get that signal to my brain that I need to switch gears, a lot of times what I'll do is I actually put my headphones in, plug directly into the headphone jack on the, well, there's an extension cord, but it's a headphone jack on my computer. And I play music and I just, there's something about writing where I've got the headphones in and I can't hear anything else. And I'm just focused. I've got the music playing and I'm writing. I'm usually listening to music on my AirPods when I'm at the bar top in my kitchen, or if I'm outside in the backyard too. It's a cue for me to focus on that. Whereas when I'm just sort of doing other stuff, I usually just have the music on speakers and stuff in my office.

So it's a different, I'm trying to give my brain cues of like again now is the time that you're you did all of these other things because it's time to write now so if you don't write now why did you do all those other things and that is a way of getting my brain to like engage and be like yeah okay now the words are going to come out. Music with or without lyrics? It's a classic. I think we dealt with this in Snell Talk before. I love writing to music that I know by heart, which means it needs to be,

there's a very specific category this is, which is it's music that I know incredibly well. It is pop and rock music with lyrics, but it's the stuff that I know incredibly well it is pop and rock music with lyrics but it's the stuff that i know by heart so my brain is not tracking the lyrics and it's not in it's not like riding along with the song and enjoying the ride and there's a little corollary here so so i don't need to listen to instrumental sometimes i do listen to instrumental stuff or electronic stuff or like stuff that doesn't have words. But a lot of times the playlists that I use the most are ones that are just rock playlists. But here's a funny thing.

If I don't use it for a while, I can't write to it. So it has to be like if it's novel. Like I was playing the other day, I was playing a playlist by a band I like, but I hadn't listened to it in a while. And I realized I couldn't use it to write because it's been so long since I listened to those songs that every time a song would come on, I'd be like, oh, this song. And that is not what you want when you're writing. You don't want to be enjoying the songs you want the songs as a pleasant kind of like driver of you know i'm listening to these the songs are playing and i'm listening to them while i'm also focused and i could do that um so every year uh it used to be on uh on last fm

because i was scrobbling back in the day big scrabble i was big scrabbbling back in the day. Big scrobble. I was a big scrobbler back in the day. Big scrobbly boy. And now it's just the Apple Music charts at the end of the year that they do. But there are certain artists that crop up there that's like, why are you listening to this artist? And the answer is, oh, yeah, that's one of my playlists for when I'm writing. So it's like, why did you listen to underneath days by Bob mold 800 times last year? That's a song from 10 years ago. And the answer is it's because the Bob mold playlist is one of my writing

playlists. And so that song comes up all the time and it gives me energy and I love it. And also I do it long enough that, you know, I've been using it long enough that, um, I'm not really focused on it it doesn't distract me from my writing so obviously i'm assuming that nothing has changed with the app

on your mac and you're still using bb edit still writing in bb edit yeah what about ios the so my my workflow there hasn't changed very much although i think that if i spent more time on ios like later this summer i will probably i'm always looking around um because my workflow right now is still dropbox based essentially it's plain text in dropbox it's marked down in dropbox so i have a folder called stories and um i can have them in bb edit on my mac and i can have them in whatever text editor app i'm using on my ipad i have been using one writer as my primary for a long time on the ipad and i still use it as my primary it gets out of my way it does what i want um i've even got it you know i've got some scripts hook up to it and shortcuts so that i can post things directly to six colors from there um i'm

always open to other things i wrote an article about this a long time ago and i know we've talked about it like i want i want a markdown text editor that um ideally has shortcuts for things like you know hyperlinks and stuff like that but also i want it to be um i want to see all the code and there are a bunch of markdown editors that do things like you make a hyperlink and it hides the link yeah and i hate that i i don't i can't i know why people like that i hate it because the link what the link is matters to me and i'm like which link is that on that part like oh i have to go in i have to like use the cursor in because if i click on it it opens it and i use the cursor and i can expand it and all that i hate it i i just i don't want that I want to be able to see the code at all times. So, and then automation is nice for things like automatically posting it to the site. The thing I don't like about OneWriter is that it's JavaScript based. And what I really would like is something like Python, where I could build macros that are in a language that I understand better than JavaScript.

a language that I understand better than JavaScript. Unfortunately, that was editorial, right? Which basically got abandoned before I learned Python. Now I learned Python. I'm like, oh, editorial would have been the answer there. But the truth is a lot of this stuff, if it's got hooks out to shortcuts, it doesn't matter because the shortcuts can do the automations for me. And the truth is I'm more, there's an app called Tayo that I've used a bit that is very clever. It's got its own automation system that's like shortcuts except inside Tayo. Also interesting. And I'm open, you know, I'm open to others. But right now that works the best

because there's no BBEdit for iOS, right? I need something that will round trip with Dropbox. And there are some apps that are like, it's great. We have our own little iCloud folder. And like, I don't want that, right? And I'm not, and it's extremely unlikely that some iOS app is going to do a Mac version and make me drop BBEdit. That just seems very unlikely. So I end up really needing it to just be a very nice markdown text editor that can look in a Dropbox folder or, you know, in the long run, maybe an iCloud drive folder. Although my experience is that the iCloud drive updating is much, is still more problematic than the, um, than the Dropbox

updating. But you know, if I, if I can, what I want to be able to do is write my Macworld column, close my iPad, walk into my office, open the column in BBEdit, do a couple of things to it, and then put it in their system. And when I've tried that with iCloud Drive, I will sometimes come in and I'll look at the file and it just hasn't updated. And then eventually it updates, and that's unacceptable. Well, I mean, Dropbox is getting more and more like that these days, for me at least. Hasn't happened to me. I've still got it that it's straight up, that those syncs are happening and they're working really well.

Have you upgraded to the version that is using the file provider API? Yeah, I've been using the file provider API for a long time now, since it was the first beta of it. I mean, I think my problem tends to be that I'm dealing with larger files than a text file, right? It could be. I'm finding issues with audio files quite a lot, where I'm trying to download something, and it's just stuck.

Ah, yes. Well, it's a lot easier when it's just a little tiny text file. Yeah, I've found recently sometimes it's quicker for me to go to the web and download the thing that i want which is just very annoying that's that's unacceptable that's unacceptable for any of these services to do it that way are there any uh apps or tools you tried recently that you've rejected i think you tried obsidian, right? I did try Obsidian. You know, Obsidian is overkill for me. So, okay. So, outliners and note-taking apps. And anything that you build up like a little packet of information,

and it's all cross-linked and stuff. It's just not how I write. Yeah, yeah i was gonna ask it where do your notes and like if you're writing a story you have some notes where do they go so you know you know that one of the things about me is i try to be very skeptical of adding overhead to what i do because it's overhead. It's more work. And my question is always going to be, if I do this extra work, does it save me time or benefit me in some other way? I've tried something like obsidian or, you know, and there are other, other kind of note-taking apps are used drafts and bear and all sorts of other things. What I end up feeling is like, I just don't work in a way where I need to have all of my stuff in different places,

all interlinked. And I'm going to use that as the basis. I just don't do that. Honestly, I do some stuff like if I'm doing an Apple briefing or something like that, I take notes about that in notes, Apple notes, and I look back on it later. But when I'm writing, I'm writing in a text file and my notes are at the bottom. And usually what I will do is I will outline my story if it's a lengthy story like a review. And the way I'll outline my story is I will put what the sections are in the text file. And then I'll take my notes about those sections and put them in the sections. And then I will usually write, it doesn't always happen if I'm really stuck or if there's something that I'm not ready to deal with yet, I'll change it. But usually I will write top to bottom. I will literally, I'll write an

intro and I will then go to the next section and I will look at the notes that are in there and I will write the next section. And as I write, I gobble up the little notes. They just go away. Yeah. Like Pac-Man. I'm like, and the notes go away because the paragraphs are there now. I don't need the notes anymore. And like, if I, if there's a lot of stuff in the notes, that's like, I might want to refer to, I'll also have the notes saved as a different text file that i can go get if i need to but for the most part that's how i do it and so i'll sit down and

i'll write you know a story about next version of mac os maybe the beta or maybe it'll be my final review and i'll put down the structure and i'll put down what i'm thinking and then i will kind of work from there um so i just don't i honestly just don't understand how somebody like our friend Federico works. I don't, I just don't understand it. And I'm in awe of it, honestly, but I don't understand it where he does so much pre-work where he's taking notes and using stuff and building up like a big note library and maybe this is just that i i mean i just i i'm i was bad at this in college even i didn't i wasn't good at taking notes in college um i would take some but not a lot of them and it's still like this today that i'm using the beta and i'm experiencing it and then i get to the end and i'm i make a little outline in my text file and say here are the things i want to talk about that i noticed this year and that's it i don't i'm not like extracting notes that i took back in j June when I used a particular feature and then bringing them in.

I just am not. And part of that is that I'm also not writing a 25,000 word review, right? I'm only going to write 5,000. Yeah, but it probably is, right? That I want it at a very particular level and I don't want to go on for 10 or 15 or 20,000 words. I just don't want to do that. That's not my goal. But anyway, my exception to this is back like a decade ago now, I wrote a little more than a decade ago.

I did National Novel Writing Month and I ended up writing a few novels and I used Scrivener for those. writing month and I ended up writing a few novels and I use Scrivener for those. And that's a case where there's so much you have to keep track of as you're writing a novel in terms of your plan and who your characters are and what has happened that using Scrivener with its organizational features was very helpful to that process. That was a process that was so huge that I had to. But I've tried to use Scrivener for my big OS reviews and stuff. And honestly, it felt kind of unnecessary. It was overkill for that part of it.

So, I mean, there is a place like Dan Moran with his multi-book sci-fi novel series like he he built a wiki which i think is now in obsidian because that's what it is that's what these things are now right they're just wikis really they're basically wikis and he needs that because he doesn't remember this fact about his universe that he wrote you know as an aside in book two but like he needs to remain consistent in book five about what he said in book two and so being able to look that up being able to search it um is very helpful to him so there are lots of ways that and and again like i said i'm kind of in awe of federico and how he does it um and it works for him and everybody's brains work differently

um and and so anyway that's where i am right now it's similar to gray too like the way that he writes his scripts like i've seen some of the like his subsidiary vault and it's like he's referring to pieces of information he's collected so he can make sure that like he's factually accurate you know like so hundreds and hundreds of notes full of pieces of information go right to create in this one script that goes into a video i get it and and and the the sense that i have is that the the stuff i write is not the this stuff that is you know i spent months deeply researching a topic and i have all of

these details and if i did, I would have to do that, right? I would absolutely have to do that. But most of the stuff I write, if not all of the stuff I write, is not that and can be contained in notes and a text file and in my brain. And if I was trying something like that, it would be different. That that said i think also i gravitate toward doing the level that i'm on because it is how i prefer to work i think that is part of it is it self selecting um i've always i've always been the kind of person who thinks about doing months of research and thinking yeah i'm not gonna do that like it's just like I'm not going to do that. It's just like, I don't want to do that. I would be the kind of person who like, like taking it back to college. It's like, oh, we're studying and I'm going to go and study for five hours. We're going to study for this

test. And I would like look over my notes. And after like half an hour, I'd be like, I don't even know what I'm doing here. And I'd be done. Cause it's just not, I just couldn't do it. I just, it's just not, I I'm, I did, I did it. I took the notes. I listened what I'm doing here. And I'd be done. Cause it's just not, I just couldn't do it. I just, it's just not, I I'm, I did, I did it. I took the notes. I listened.

I wrote the papers. I reviewed the material and I'm done. Whereas other people I knew would be like, Oh, study session. I did, I did eight hours of studying for the final. And I've never understood that.

It's just not how my brain works. So I think that an aspect of that is the self selecting could i could i do what gray does in terms of that level of research and that level of not making your content but just spending time investigating all of the back story and all of the references so that after a long time you would get to the point that you would make your your thing. I don't think I'm built that way. I don't think I could work that way. I mean, I could do it, but it would be very painful

for me to do it because my brain doesn't work like that. If you enjoy this show and would like more of this show, you should subscribe to Upgrade Plus. You'll hear no ads. You'll get bonus content every single week. You get access to the RelayFM members Discord and so many more benefits. You can go to getupgradeplus.com.

It's just $5 a month or $50 a year. I feel like the conversation we just had, like talking about Jason's writing process and stuff like that, that isn't like in vibe similar to what Upgrade Plus tends to be. And so if you would like that kind of conversation, I am convinced that you will enjoy Upgrade Plus tends to be. And so if you like that kind of conversation, I am convinced

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time, right? This episode publishes on the 30th of july and so that tends to be if we're ever going to have uh days where you know episodes where we have fewer ads it's then but me and jason don't freak out about that anymore because we have the support of people who subscribe about great plus so we're not asking for you to support the show, but that is a way that the show is supported. But what we're asking is for you to choose to sign up to get more content because that's what we provide you. So no ads is like a benefit, but what we want is for you to enjoy the content and we work to make the shows fun and enjoyable and there's lots of wacky and wild stuff, thoughtful stuff. There's good content in there. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up today.

Thank you so much if you do. All right, let's finish out today's show with some Ask Upgrade questions. First one comes from Ryan who says, have you played any of the games that are currently featured in the Playdate catalog? Oh, I have, but i'm not even sure i remember what they are i have played some my playdate update is the same as it was the last time we

did this which is i love it every time i play it i have a great joy i am a person who who has a great difficulty finding time to just sit down and play a game on the play date, especially since because of lighting conditions, you really need to be in a well-lit place. And so, yeah, so I still play Hypermeteor all the time. That's the one I keep coming back to is just the little Asteroids game. I love it so much, but I have downloaded some of the stuff in the catalog.

I can't remember it. I played it a little bit, but mostly for me, I'm still like just do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Hyper Meteor is the best. I love it. So that's what I play most of the time. But I bring it with me. I live in hope, Mike. That's the funny thing about me in the play date is every time I go on a trip, I charge the play date and I bring it with me and I think, oh, maybe I'll play it on the plane or I'll play it, you know, go to the lake in Wisconsin. Maybe I'll play it there. You know, go to the mountains in Colorado. Maybe I'll play it there uh you know go to the mountains in colorado maybe i'll play it there and i usually don't but i i live in

hope because um i do love the little thing and i enjoy playing the games on it but games and me and finding the time to play games like i've been meaning to play playstation spider-man for ages and i still haven't played it because spider-man 2 is coming soon i know i know and it's just it's very i i don't i got a lot going on and what i found is that i just don't prioritize every time i play a game i think why am i not doing something i've got so many other things i could be doing and it's very difficult so what about you you have uh any any new uh playdate catalog games now you can buy because now you can buy games and download them straight to the playdate that's what the catalog is i think the thing that i wanted to mention here is my favorite Playdate game is a game called Bloom.

I spoke about this when the Playdate came out. And they were having the ability for you to buy games on itch.io. And Bloom was one of those games. And it is essentially like a kind of a very story-driven game where you are managing a flower shop but and interacting with people but it's much more about the story that you're living through with the text messages that you're seeing there is a day night cycle it's really a very fascinating very interestingly built game that kind of keeps you hooked and and it's one of these games that i feel like it just gives you uh little bits every

day like it is in real time like day by day like you have to play you know multiple days to get the full story um it is now in the playdate catalog and it has more content um i have yet to play the additional content because there's like a it's possible to do but i have to do kind of like a save transfer thing by plugging in my playdate to my computer and like you can move the files over from one to the other you know whatever doesn't matter but I really really recommend Bloom like it's actually you know I've had multiple

people say to me I just got a Playdate what games do you like as in like and I think they're meaning like which from the catalog but I say go get Bloom it's so much worth the money it was one of my favorite games in the year that I played it I just absolutely ad adored it was such a beautiful experience yeah and i'm also currently playing a few different games and i'll play eight games i just started playing a game called dave the diver which is just so good it is a combination combination between a like you have to go fishing but like you're diving fishing to catch fish and

that's one part of the game the other part of the game is a sushi restaurant management sim it is such a weird game it's like half fishing game half restaurant management game and it's really funny and it's weird and there's lots of mini games and there's intrigue like it what it reminds me of the most is something like a stardew valley like if you enjoy stardew valley you are going to love dave the diver it has that same idea of like just one more day just one more day kind of vibe to it so if you like those kinds of games uh you should check out dave the diver and that i think dave the diver this is not like a very original thought but i believe it too is going to be a um it's going to be a what like a kind of a a dark horse on game

of the year lists it's not going to win them but it's going to appear and which is interesting for a game of its type especially in a game like this where if you are a gamer this is 2023 is potentially going to be the greatest game of the greatest year in video game history for just like the pure quality of the video games that have been released from like legend of zelda final fantasy diablo we've got Starfield coming this year, Spider-Man coming this year, and many, many, many. The list goes literally on and on for high quality games this year. Armored Core, Lies of P,

like so much stuff. Generally, there's a game, Jason, I think you'll get a kick out of this. It's called Lies of P, is the name of the game, like the letter P. And it is a very brutal, are you familiar with Dark Souls

or Bloodborne? have you ever heard of these games before yeah or elden ring right right these are games where they're incredibly hard and the combat is really hard like and it's it's it's kind of created a a genre of game called souls like so it's like dark and dingy and very tough combat lies of p is based on pinocchio in this style it is one of the weirdest like mashups of of things that i've come that i've ever come across but yeah it's the pinocchio intellectual property because i believe it's in the public domain now and uh they've made a it's a very very tough game called Lies of P coming out. And it's based on Pinocchio.

There's a Jiminy Cricket. It's in there and everything. Very strange. But people seem excited about it. It's not a game for me, but people seem excited about it. Mustafa says, seeing the secrecy requirements by Apple for Vision Pro developers,

like we spoke about last time, right? We would like, because the developer kits came out and there was all of the text that I read out about kind of like what you're supposed to do with your developer kit mustafa asks what is it that prevents a developer from revealing details to the press under the condition of anonymity how could apple find out if their identity if it's hidden by the press outlets well this is this is the question with any secret like how does apple um do this for

when people leak inside apple right it's the same it's the same question so i think the answer is if apple wants to try to find who they are apple could do stuff like reveal different things to different people and see if the things get out, if they really want to do that. I think the truth is that what will happen here is Apple is trying to make developers not do that by saying, please don't do that. Well, way more than please don't do that,

right? They're like, they make you sign a bunch of documents to say you want to do it. Yeah. But in the end, what they're, what they're saying is don't do it. And they're sending that message you want to do it. Yeah, but in the end, what they're saying is, don't do it. And they're sending that message.

Will somebody do it? Yeah, almost certainly somebody will do it. Will they get caught? Probably not. Will it be revealed by the press? Yes. Like, all those things will probably happen. But what they want to do is provide enough fear for people who might be tempted so that they're

like, oh no, I I get in real trouble with Apple if I did this. And if Apple finds out, then you are persona non grata at Apple and that's going to be very bad for you and your career as a developer. So lots of reasons not to, but people do still leak. Like why do people leak things? Why do people do that? We've talked about that here a bunch. There's a lot of like reasons of like, I know a secret, but it's not good unless I can let it out or seeing it in the press and getting an ego boost because you know that was you. Lots of reasons why that happens, but you're taking a real risk. And all Apple can really do is make it clear that if they figure out that it's you, you're going to

be in trouble and try to intimidate people. The people who need to be intimidated. I would say most of these people are honorable, but there are people who are going to be tempted. And Apple wants to make it less tempting for them. But in the end, what prevents them is obscuring it enough that they think that they won't be caught. Because Apple knows who it's shown things to right like and when and what and if it you know if it wants to i'm sure that there are people at apple who will try to figure it out if stuff leaks like who could that possibly be and it's people's job right it is yeah i'll say like i you know i always want to know this information if people give this information out and you know it gets written up

if there's anything interesting we'll cover it on this show you know it's kind of what we do i would just say though like if you are a developer who gets to develop a kit don't it's not worth it like yeah don't it is more worth it to you to keep your relationship with apple the way that you want it to be this is is, I'm assuming, your livelihood, right? Or like at least part of that, or you want it to be. Don't. Just keep it to yourself. It's not worth it. There is probably not going to be anything in this device that is worthy of the information to people.

Like we've experienced it. We see it in the simulator. I just think it's not worth the risk to you and your business or the people you work for to divulge this information i just i think for this device specifically it it isn't it isn't worth it but you do you yeah also um I would say it is, I think that Apple should be encouraged to do stuff like let developers have access and get developer kits out to developers. The more things happen that Apple hates about it, the more ammunition there is for people on the inside to say oh you see we should never have done this we should have never let the hardware out the door we should never have trusted them and um that's not that's not good for anybody i think but i do i mean i think i said this unconnected i do think that apple should allow some developers to talk

about their experiences of using the developer kit freely. Maybe that they work out some arrangements with some people to do that because I think that there is a advocacy piece that could be very important for them. Remember that the stuff like David Smith posting about his sort of rabbit

hole he went down with VisionOS, that stuff used to be not allowed yes it used to be able to not talk about it at all it was 100% nda 100% that all of xcode right like all of the sdk i should say to use it where you had to sign a blanket nda which is yeah hilarious to think back in time to what that you know like the to all of the developer tools were under nda yeah yeah and all the betas yep and even from for me as a member of the press right it was like well you would get it but you can't write about it like uh and then and that changed over time in part because people did write about it anyway but i think you're you make a good point even when i started podcasting i think that was the case like that I would install the betas, but I had to talk about things I'd found online.

I couldn't talk about my... It was very strange. Yeah, so Apple benefits from David Smith writing about these issues and talking about what he learned. He's essentially creating information for all the other Potential Vision Pro developers to read it and think about it and learn what he learned from him. And it's all to the benefit of Apple building this platform and having the developers get on this platform. So what you don't want is Apple saying, nobody talk about anything, right? You don't want that. And maybe when they're in these things, they'll say, look, you can talk about what you learned here. Don't talk about your experience using the hardware, right? I mean, they could set some ground rules.

And I think they should because it benefits them. Like the secrecy, look, what they're trying to prevent is the first sort of like, I got to use a developer kit. And here's what the secret of the Vision Pro is going to be because I use Vision Pro hardware, which is a little bit silly because it's going to be Apple knows that. And so Apple is going to make the developer kits limited and they're not going to have the experience that we had at WWDC, right? They're not. So there are other tactics that Apple can use to prevent stories that they

don't want. But this is a story that they want, right? They want developers to help other developers with their insight into what's going on. They actually want to kind of create that space. So I hope that they will open at least a little bit of space for developers to talk about this stuff. Yeah, because you're right.

Like, it's not going to be the same experience. The experience has already been spoken about. If we hadn't gotten the chance or the other members of the media hadn't gotten the chance to use this thing, then there would be more of, I think, an interest, a public interest for developers to talk about their experience.

Which I think it's part of the strategy that they came up with for this thing. But, and that's why I'm hopeful that this is going to be more open than we think it's going to be. Because I think personally that it's harm, more harmful to Apple and to the vision pro platform going forward, vision OS going forward to create a culture of fear about talking about it,

then any story that could be written about the developer kit or about these developer sessions, right? And I get that there's a privacy angle here, which is Apple doesn't want people writing about the sessions and all that. And that's fine. But in a larger sense about imparting information, you know, Apple benefits from all the developers talking about this stuff. It really does. And I can't conceive of something, you know, leaking that would be more damaging because it's going to be about a beta with limited, it's just not going to be that interesting. And it's so far before this thing ships, they're more, they're going to benefit more from an open policy is what I'm saying.

Then from, then from a closed policy here, there's, I don't think that the press reports about this are going to hurt them and developers talking to other developers about what they've learned will help them in the long run. Yeah. I hope that we have a different experience here in the next weeks and months might include more freely speaking about experiences but at first it's everyone hush hush right and there and there

is danger right there is danger that somebody's gonna say i tried it and it doesn't it it doesn't live up to it it's the simulator is is, but the actual hardware is bad. And everybody will be like, well, it's not shipping and it's beta and whatever, but they can create some clouds. Again, it's so far off. I get it, but, you know, or as our friend James Thompson says,

you know, at some point when somebody gets a developer kit, they're going to be able to use it all day and say, I tried to use a Vision Pro all day and it hurt my head and it made me very sad. And that's going to be bad. use it all day and say, I tried to use a Vision Pro all day and it hurt my head and it made me very sad. And that's going to be bad. Although again, Apple will say, well, but the straps aren't final and yada, yada, yada fitting. And like, they're going to be able to massage all of that too. I just think in the long run, if you play that defensive game, first

off, people are going to say what they're going to say regardless. Like you can't really control it. And what you want is for your developers who do care and are not going to the press to be able to express things that help the rest of the developer community because it lifts the platform, which is the goal. That's Apple's goal. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see if anything changes. I think the developers' lab things are starting now. This week?

I think they've started as of today, I think. And if you've had an experience with it, send it to... No, don't. No, don't. We said don't send it to upgradefeedback.com. We don't want it. We want you to follow your NDA and learn about this OS. Yep.

You can send us anonymous stuff, but we're not going to use it. Send us cryptic anonymous stuff that makes no sense. And we thank you. You can always send that stuff over at upgradefeedback.com. Jason, I don't know if you caught it, but I thought it was very funny to hear on ATP, the discussion of our anonymous feedback sent in to us about the quad. I haven't heard that yet, but that's exciting. They talk about that, which is very funny to me. Anonymous informants. The anonymous informants are out there

and they send in their feedback at upgradefeedback.com, just like you can. You can also send in your questions and your follow-up there for us to discuss on a future episode. You can check out Jason's work, which you've heard all about

how it's written today over at sixcolors.com. And you can hear his podcast over at theincorporate.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to my shows here on relay fm and check out my work over at cortex brand.com we're on mastodon and threads jason is at j snow j s n e double l i am at i mike i m y k e and you can also find the show on mastodon as as at Upgrade on RelayFM.social. You can see video clips of the show there and TikTok and Instagram where we are at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus.

And thank you to our sponsor of this episode, TaxExpander. But most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Justin Snow. I'm always angry. That's my secret.