Upgrade - 471: A Technological 23rd Century Star Trek Thing

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Jason has the painful details about Apple's comeback bid for college football TV rights that fell just short of the goal line. We also discuss what Apple's rich-but-middling quarterly results say about the importance of this fall's iPhone launch.

From RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode 471. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Vitally, and Ooni Pizza Ovens. My name is Mike Hurley, and I have the pleasure, as always, of being joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hi, Mike Hur hurley how are you summer of fun welcome back to the summer of fun i'm gonna start out today's episode of a snow talk question that comes from martin who wants to know when you're listening to a new album do you shuffle for playback or listen in the order that the artist intended?

How dare you, Martin? Yeah, I'm flabbergasted by this question. Do I shuffle? Okay, back in the era. Okay, kids, pull up a chair while Grandpa tells you a story. Back in the CD era, the compact disc era, when we put little plastic discs into devices in order to listen to music before we had the ipod you may remember them as the thing you used to stick into your computer to rip mix burn and put on an ipod

but originally back in the day there was no ipod and you just listened on a cd player to the music on the compact disc in this this era, there was a shuffle button. And you know what? After you listen, and so you listen, follow me here, to one album at a time. One album at a time. If you're very lucky, you had like a CD changer. And what that meant is you could put like five discs in and it would shuffle between them.

Yep. And you could, or play straight through, but you could shuffle between them. So you could have like a song from one disc and then the next song would be from another disc. Usually accompanied by the sound of a mechanism. I was going to say, was there like a delay as well between the songs?

Yes. And the sound, and the sound of the discs moving around. So it's like you always know you're going to get something from another album because you hear the thing going on. Absolutely. But if it's a five disc changer or a six disc changer don't know which one but yes absolutely and there's a and then

there's a gap between them and oh those were the days anyway now that i've explained that so i'll say when you're listening to a disc in the disc era you might eventually say yeah let's just take us let's shuffle it just do do something different because everything you ever did was listen to things linearly. However, in the digital music era, in the era of playlists, I always shuffle playlists. Almost always. Unless there's a playlist that I've

carefully curated to go in a specific order. There are a lot of rules that's a reference. Then I will shuffle it. So unless I i like you will play this beginning to end and it'll blow your mind okay but otherwise i'll shuffle those playlists playlists i just throw songs in them and i'm like it's a big bucket of songs i like of a certain kind matching a certain characteristic and then boom shuffle it's great i'm gonna listen to an album i'm actually

gonna go to the trouble of navigating to a specific album. I'm going to play it start to finish in order without shuffling. In fact, I filed a bug at some point and I don't know if they actually fixed it or not, but I filed a bug at some point where the music app, if you had shuffle turned on and you pressed play on an album cover, it shuffled the album. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Do not do that. Because it treats it as a secondary, like as a like, no, this is permanent across everything, unless you, because there are buttons that play and shuffle, right? And if you press shuffle, it will just do it for that one thing, whether it's a playlist or an album. But if you turn shuffle on in the actual UI, where you also see repeat and stuff like that,

I think shuffle just remains on. Yeah, and I feel like if you're specifically looking at an album and you've got the options of play and shuffle, play should play straight through, always. Shuffle should shuffle, right like that that's regardless anyway my point is in this era where everything is shuffled in playlists if i listen if i actually pick out an album to listen to i don't want to shuffle it i want to play it straight through otherwise i'll just listen to a shuffled playlist but i can't unless there was some album

that like literally didn't matter but that's like the point of an album is that um it's a collection of songs put in a specific sequence for a reason and so I would prefer to listen to that in that order if I'm listening to an album so there so I am trying to check if this what this so I'm going to shuffle an album I've just shuffled an album here right now I'm going to go to another album. I'm going to press play on that album. And then we're going to see what it does. Press play on the other album. And it hasn't shuffled it.

So they have fixed that issue that you've had. That's the right way to do it, right? Play implies strongly don't shuffle this, right? Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I just confirmed that here too that i had it in shuffle mode but when i press the play button the shuffle mode actually comes off yes on music i think that's the right way to do it i think that's a good way so i will say what i'm

going to say is the the thing for me of martin's question that i think is wild is a new album when listening to a new album do you shuffle oh a new album that's what he's that's even more monstrous i i didn't even notice that that is that is even worse because i don't know why you would do that the artist has has dictated like a list a record like a listening you know but what i did you know did you know that at one point prince released an album on cd um and the entire album or or like maybe both sides of the record or whatever was one track and that was so nobody could shuffle it you had to play it straight through which was really annoying actually but also i think it sends the message right yeah which is no no no no listen to it the

way the artist intended but here's my my personal asterisk on this right so i always listen in order right because i think that's the way you're supposed to do it but if i've become like really My personal asterisk on this, right? So I always listen in order, right? Because I think that's the way you're supposed to do it. But if I've become like really familiar with an album, like I've listened to it a ton of times, I may start shuffling the tracks so I learn some of the later tracks more because I find that like typically-

Oh, that's good. I end up learning like the first half of the album really well, but the latter half not so well. You don't always get to it. Exactly. So then I'll start like, if there's the album really well but the latter half not so well you don't always get to it exactly so then i'll start like if it's an album that i love and i want to make sure i know all of it then i will start shuffling it on occasion to make sure i get a lot of the album but that's after i really know the album is when i will make right that's that's what i was saying that is the essentially the same effect as what i was saying about cds where after you've listened to it for a while maybe you listen to it shuffled to change it up and yeah you'll hear the

the ones at the end more and you will also it'll juxtapose the songs in interesting ways but like that's like going back to a book you've read and and reading a section of it that you really liked or you think you want to think about again but you read the book um and and so listening to a new album like you know listen to it in the order the artist intended yes absolutely 100 even if you just even if you change it later um i'll also mike here's another thing i'll do i will uncheck or remove depending on where the what the music source is tracks from albums eventually right where i'm like i don't like the song and i'll just remove it and then i'll listen to the album with some of the intended tracks not there but only after i've decided that no i skip this every time this is not for me this this track's gonna go yeah because it's like some or sometimes it's

like a music like a skit in an album and it's like i don't need this right like i appreciate what you're trying to do here but like this 15 second skit in the album is not exciting to me so cut it out cut it out thank you so much you can list by the way you know but we have chapters on this show you can listen to them and shuffle if you like shuffle them does any summer of fun let me know all right listeners do any podcast apps do this did they let you rearrange by chapter oh my i'm telling you we need to do an episode where we shuffle the chapters afterward oh wouldn't that be terrible and great oh man write it down write it down okay because like we did this thing on connected once where we had a bunch of topics and steven rolled the dice

and it was a disaster but we knew it was happening in real time the difference here would be we wouldn't know till afterwards right like exactly we would shuffle the show afterward and we shuffle it differently for the for the upgrade plus oh i like it i like it write that down that's gonna be we'll do that at some point this summer i think um but i know that there are some apps that let you like untick like certain chapters when you want to listen to them which breaks my heart but I understand

not everyone wants to listen to everything but the idea of shuffling it's like a whole different thing if any app does this let us know go to upgradefeedback.com write in and that's where you can also write in

with your Snell Talk question if you have anything as monstrous like Martin Martin thank you very much hope you're a good sport appreciate your question jason i have some equally i think unhinged follow-up okay oh boy okay let's do it this is one of the greatest pieces of follow-up i've ever received okay so on last week's episode we had an ask upgrade question written in from mustafa who was asking how would it be possible for apple to know if someone was to leak information about the vision pro either the headset or the like developer labs or whatever like do you remember that we're like how would they even know and we were kind kind of talking about, well, they kind of isn't unless they've tried to trick you, right? I got this written in from another person called Mustafa who says, in the latest episode, you speak about a

certain Mustafa and some people are sending me a clip of that recording thinking it's me. And a certain somebody called me asking whether it was me i have a lab appointment for the discussed hardware and it's being mistaken for me i know they shouldn't assume it's me but not a lot of mustafas are active in the community so they think it's me any chance you have uh the ability to clear my name incredible there's different spellings right yes is that what i'm picking up here is that although they're both mustafa they are differently spelled last week the person who wrote in this was via the upgrade feedback form spelled their name pha and this week it's spelled differently i figure maybe i won't give all of the letters, right, for everybody.

But there are, these names are spelled differently. I have no other way of confirming this information, right? Mike, I just want to say nobody at the Upgrade Program is liable for these people's identities. But what I will say is that this person wrote in, their name is spelled one way, another person wrote in, their name is spelt one way, another person wrote in, their name is spelt another way,

and they seem to be quite concerned. They were both sent in via the feedback form. I delete the things out of the feedback form, so I have no more information than that. But this was just one of these things to me where it's like I read it and I was like, oh man, I feel bad for you, but also this is very funny to me.

It's just like a thing happening like this. It's just Ask Upgrade, man. There's nothing more than that, you know? So anyway, attention, Apple Global Hardware Security team who is monitoring this either by listening or probably through some sort of AI flag. Should I say things to get them to pay attention to this?

Secret Apple Vision Pro leak hardware information. Probably through some sort of AI flag. Should I say things to get them to pay attention to this? Secret Apple Vision Pro leak hardware information. Okay. Now that you're listening, I will say, please pay attention. There's two ways to spell, at least two ways to spell Mustafa. And last times Mustafa isn't the Mustafa you were thinking of probably, as far as we know. This is not the Mustafa you were looking for. Exactly. as far as we know this is not the mustafa you were looking for exactly i also have more lol

emoji suggestion follow-up just because this one is like a perfect like mixture of a few things right so people will probably remember by now that uh there is some i think an issue with the emoji suggestions when you type lol on the ios 17 keyboard juan wrote in on the Spanish keyboard one of the LOL suggestions is the laughing cat which is from the worst emoji set. So.

Yeah. So we I don't hate it like you do but we discussed this in a previous episode as well that the because i said my mom uses the laugh the cat emoji set uh-huh and uh i'm you expressed your hatred for it it's terrible that's why and our social media manager jamie um expressed that she likes it and suggested perhaps liking the cat emoji set skips a generation which i thought was a perhaps liking the cat emoji set skips a generation, which I thought was just right over me.

At least in the Snell timeline, it does. I mean, who knows? Who knows? Does your mom like the cat emojis? I don't think so. Okay. The problem is, for me, I think my mom uses emoji quite a lot but i think by and large she uses emoji that is recommended to her so maybe if apple includes the laughing cat emoji in the english

keyboard then i'll probably start seeing that one okay all right saddle up partner it's time for let's do it so between mark gorman and nine to five mac it seems that we have some consensus for when we can expect the iPhone to be announced and released this year. Mark Gurman is saying that an event on either the 12th or 13th of September seems like the best, seems like the time that he's expecting.

With the launch date of September 22nd, 9to5Mac is saying September 13th for the event. I will also say, by the way, that there has been a Mike AI, you know, an anonymous informant out there in the world that also suggested to me that the 13th was going to be a date. So this is based on like the same as nine to five Mac companies in the smartphone space who are asking their employees, please be available from this day or like no no vacation on this day or whatever the so what's interesting about this is it's been labor day week in the u.s the last few years

and that would put it a week earlier but it seems like they're not going to do that they're gonna they're gonna do it the following week. That's interesting. A little bit interesting to me. It's sort of, I think, better to not have it come right after a holiday weekend, give everybody a little bit more time. This is also, the 13th is a Wednesday, and that was a Wednesday last year as well. Yeah, but it was a Wednesday because it was following Labor Day on a holiday Monday, and so they didn't hold it on the Tuesday. They hold it on the Wednesday. I'm not, I mean, Gurman says it's the 12th or the 13th. I'm skeptical about it being a Wednesday only because. It might be that like people are being told like, don't, don't take the day off because

it's the 13th. Right. But like, which is the day after or something like that. I don't know. I don't, I don't know. But yeah, that sounds, sounds right. But that's very interesting. Right. Like, that sounds right. But that's very interesting, right? That's just like, that feels about right.

You know, like that kind of week, a release that week, feels about right with the way the things have been going the last couple of years. Here's a weird one. Ming-Chi Kuo is saying that Apple is expected to launch a new AirTag in late 2024. I'm going to read from MacRumors.

Kuo believes the new AirTag will have better integration with Apple's upcoming Vision Pro headset as part of a spatial computing ecosystem, but he did not provide any additional details. I don't even know what this means. You could see where your stuff is with the Vision Pro? Yeah, I mean, if it's

ultra-wideband, it allows you to put a tag on something and see exactly where it is in space, right? Yeah. But the current chip has the, or current AirTag has the U1, so. Yes. I don't really know what it could mean, right?

Like more. More wide. Let's talk about the AirTag for a moment. Do you think Apple regrets making an AirTag? No. No. I think it's been a pain for them, right? Like, I think it has been a...

It has not been a difficult road, right? Where they've had to... There's been a lot of articles written about them, and they've had to do a lot of work to get the product to where it is. But I feel like it's calmed down now like they you know they did a bunch of work about like making the the devices easier to find and it seems like a lot of those stories are stopped but ultimately it's like a super easy add-on for people like this is the thing i find lots of people just in my

regular life who have either bought them or they hear about them and like, oh, that's a great idea. I've got to get one of those. Like, it's not been easy for them, but none of their products are easy anymore, right? Like, every product Apple releases, there's always a bad news cycle about it. I just wonder if it's such a headache for them.

I mean, I don't know. My question is more, has it been worth it financially for the amount of effort that they've had to put into dealing with all of these issues and having these stories written about it? And this is a case

where there were a bunch of, a bunch of pieces of hardware in this category. And then Apple rolls in, which is sort of like they want to throw some elbows. They want to get everybody else out of the category. They want to own it.

But was it worth it? Would they have been better off sort of like building a works with Find My spec and allowing third parties to support it rather than building their own hardware? I mean, I guess they still would have gotten some headaches from issues with tracking, but it's different when it's specifically an Apple product tracking them.

I don't know. I just had that thought that like AirTag is an interesting product, but it's very easy for me to forget it exists and it hasn't changed the world. And so sometimes I wonder if Apple looks back on it now and is like, wow, we put a lot of effort and got delayed a bunch of times and now we have to keep updating it because there are bad stories about bad people using this badly uh if if it was really worth it for them or not but you know the technology is cool i'm just i sometimes i wonder yeah um i see that is a product of this with this price at this level is it worth apple's attention i don't know it's fine it's a fine product. But I wonder sometimes.

Also, the New York Post is reporting that Bob Iger is looking to Apple as a potential strategic partner for ESPN. Disney is looking for some help with ESPN. They keep talking about they're trying to get new ways of getting their content out there and they may be looking for a partner to help them it's being expected by a lot of people it's going to be a tech company maybe apple's the place there's a lot of talk about this so bob eiger did gave an interview where he basically said that they're looking for a strategic partner for espn the challenge with espn espn actually still makes a huge amount of money. It's one of the great financial engines that fuels Disney.

But as people stop doing traditional cable and satellite, as they cut the cord, ESPN is losing money. Because ESPN is so valuable to the cable bundle that every single person who buys cable in the U.S. is paying like $8, $9, $10 a month for ESPN and not like as a choice. It's literally just straight out of their cable package, which as you might imagine is very lucrative because you're getting 100% of the cable subscribers giving you money. And any product that is a direct-to-consumer product, right? Like a lot of people don't want ESPN. And so they wouldn't pay. Whereas right now in the cable bundle, everybody pays. Incredibly lucrative. And you can't not have ESPN on your cable system because people won't buy it. People will demand it. And what Disney says is you either pay us for every single person on your cable company or you can't have it. So they do. Great business to be in if you're ESPN. However, it's all coming down now and that's bad. So they're looking at this

and thinking sports rights are very expensive and we need to find a way to manage this. They want to do an over-the-top version of ESPN. But again, you're not going to make the same amount of money, even if you charge a multiple of what you're making per subscriber, because a large percentage of people won't subscribe to it. And those people are lost revenue, entirely lost revenue. So a lot of people want to put Disney and Apple together because there is a relationship there, you know, the dates back to Steve jobs and, and the sale of Pixar and all of that. And Bob Iger appeared at the vision pro event and like, okay, it's there.

And so I think it's worth thinking about whether Apple would want to be a strategic partner of Disney, especially regarding ESPN, given Apple's interest in this. However, you know, they have their own over the top service that's supplementary called espn plus like are if apple was involved what does that look like what does apple get out of it does apple you know is that an apple exclusive apple tv exclusive

at some point like i i'm not sure how it fits other than the fact that the entertainment companies here's the here's the big that the entertainment companies, here's the big dynamic. The entertainment companies are looking for money because they're going to lose a lot of money here. And who has all the money? Tech companies have all the money. So that's sort of the motivator here is like, how do we salvage this business that is going to be going down? salvage this business that is going to be going down. One way is rather than finance our transition to streaming ourselves, we have a partner. I think though, there are more reports out there that what Iger really meant when he said a strategic partner was a sports league or two or

three, like the NBA and major league baseball and the NFL invest in ESPN as a part of that. Now, would they do that? I don't know. Would anybody do that? I don't know. What do they get out of it? And I think what Iger's trying to do here is find a way to get a cash infusion into ESPN and Disney without just outright selling ESPN, which is the other option. So we'll see. But like Apple, and we're going to talk in a little bit about Apple and sports, Apple's very interested in sports. And right now, all they've really got is MLS. And they're a couple of baseball games on a Friday. So they're definitely interested. And a lot of the rights are out there are like kind of already locked in place for a while. So if Apple wants to explore this more,

one way to do it would be to create a strategic partnership. What does that mean? I don't know. Maybe it means that they infuse some money or they pay Disney and ESPN and some of the content that currently is on ESPN or ESPN plus ends up on an Apple platform instead or in addition to, but it's all in the details. There's so much money involved here. The question would be, what's something that makes sense for both parties? So I wouldn't be shocked. I honestly wouldn't be shocked if Disney and Apple did some sort of strategic partnership. It would not surprise me because they are kindred companies and, and Disney is looking for money and Apple has lots of money. So it would not surprise me. But as we'll discuss a little later on in the show,

one of the challenges here is that Apple is only going to spend what they think it's worth, right? Like Apple's got lots of money, but Apple doesn't spend money foolishly apple you know apple's got whatever 40 some billion dollars in cash right now but that does not mean that that means that you can just make a deal with apple where they give you free money right like they're not going to do that so that's the challenge is finding the right kind of deal. I know this has been often said at this point,

but one of the best parts of the Vision Pro demo experience was the sports part. And I'm sure that Apple would like to be able to have some sports stuff, but again, it's got to come at the right price and the right terms that they would be interested in. If at all. Yeah, yeah. So we'll see.

I'm not sure this New York Post report like, look, I'm sure Bob Iger has talked to people at Apple about it, right? But I'm not sure that when he was talking about strategic partnerships, that was primarily what he was thinking he also may have had nothing in mind and literally was just saying it so Wall Street could hear it

that is also possible this could have been nothing same as putting out the forced sale sign on all the TV networks it might have been a nothing he's just trying to get people to chill. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Vitally. Customer success teams today are 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, an all-in-one collaborative workspace

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mentioned on on downstream a little bit i mentioned on six colors there so the pac-12 conference which is a West Coast college conference, not just football, but football is entirely driven by TV at this point. TV money pays the bills for everything else. And this was the last of the five major conferences to have an open TV deal. So Apple has been in conversation with them for a while as one of the possible partners because it allows Apple to experiment theoretically with the most popular sport in America. The NFL is the most popular, but college football is essentially, it's the same sport, but it's the second most popular sport if you want to rank it that way. So it's an opportunity for Apple.

been negotiating with them for a long time and everything came to a head uh at the end of last week where basically one of the colleges in the pac-12 left the conference to a different conference because they were impatient and the conference commissioner kept saying no no no we're going to have a deal it's going to be a good deal wait wait wait and they got tired of waiting can i try and just get this into terms i understand so like sure is that effectively like that team just joined another league yes okay yeah that's essentially what's happening here right so these are conferences a collection of universities that have these different sports teams in them um leaving aside the whole thing about what way does it why is it a university that has a sports team where they're making decisions driven by money? You know, that's a topic for another podcast.

I don't, not this one. So that other rival conference was circling around other members of the conference and saying, you want to come with us? We've got guaranteed money. We can guarantee you money. We can guarantee you however many million dollars a year. Putting pressure on the commissioner of the PAC-12 to provide them with a deal because there was a feeling like they were going to leave. More teams were going to defect and it was going to become, he was going to lose whatever deal he negotiated because those teams would all be gone. So there was a presentation and the presentation was thought apparently by a lot of these university presidents to be two, they were going to get two options. And one was a more traditional option that involved

a partner like ESPN or Fox or Turner Sports or something like that for broadcast. And then also a streaming piece. And then a second offer that was a more forward-thinking streaming offer. And then they were going to be able to sort of discuss those and choose what they wanted to do. It turns out that first composite offer did not ever get made, never got presented to the university presidents. Instead, what they got was a single presentation, which was about Apple.

So it was a deal with apple that they were working on um that uh and we'll put a link in the show notes to a story on the athletic about it there's a great story on yahoo sports about it there's a story in sports illustrated about there a bunch of a different uh coverage of of what went on here but the idea was apple offered the pac-12 a five-year contract at 23 million dollars per school plus incentives. And this is like the messy thing. This is where we get back to sort of Apple wanting to do a deal that's not just cash. Because most of these, it's just a cash outlay. And Apple's deal was not that. Apple was saying, you're going to be our partner, just as they did with MLS and with Lionel Messi himself, right?

just as they did with MLS and with Lionel Messi himself, right? So they said, we're going to give you $23 million per school, which was later, there was some back and forth and some threats and things like that. And the counter apparently, counter offer from Apple was $25 million per school. And incentives based on subscribers to a special Pac-12 streaming product that would be like the mls league pass okay interesting but not guaranteed money well there's there is a guarantee a number but it's way less right but it's less than what they were expecting i think they were expecting sort of like 30 million a year 32 million a year just to put it into what what the uh what the other conference

was offering for people to switch um so there was it was going to be a a partnership right instead of just give me the money and and that puts it on a little bit of the onus on the on the league and the members to sell this product but it was interesting and and it turns out that originally i was thinking this was going to be a story about the league not speaking the language that Apple was speaking. And this is what I was talking about earlier about this idea that Apple is not just going to give you money just because they have all the money. So Apple was willing to give, again, this is maybe a $250, $300 million guarantee per year for a five-year deal, that's a lot of money but what they

weren't willing to do was guarantee above that they were instead like above that it's up to you it's gonna it's gonna it's up to you to help us sell this product yeah and if you're uh if you're a league selling sports rights that mostly doesn't happen right that that generally isn't done generally you just pay this is so wild to me this story right because like from the outside of like i mean okay maybe you'll get another couple of years at that guaranteed 30 million but like this kind of deal from apple this seems like the way this is going, right? And you either jump in now and get $25 million a year, or you give it like another three years and maybe you get $15 million a year. So this all, just a little foreshadowing here, this all fell apart. But I'm going to tell you,

it's actually, I would say Apple was successful here. So here's the story. Apple, they did that counteroffer where they got them up to $25 million per school, plus the incentives. And at that point, the schools that were teetering said, let's do it, which got reported. But here's what happened in the background. Which got reported. But here's what happened in the background. In the background, Fox TV, which has a very, very expensive deal with the second biggest, I think, second highest rated conference, which is the Big Ten, which is based in the Midwest, although now they've got schools all over the place. And they started all of this by taking two of the schools from the Pac-12 last year. Apparently, they swooped in at the last minute

and by they, it really is Fox, because Fox is the TV partner and they basically run that league and sweetened the deal to peel off the two best teams in the Pac-12. At which point, being with the bigger league

for a lot more guaranteed money, those two teams backtracked, Oregon and Washington, pulled out, went to the Big Ten, at which point the whole thing fell apart. But what I think is interesting from an Apple perspective is Apple's, everybody, like Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, they're all ready to go to this other conference, the Big 12, which is not the Big 10. And neither of them have 10 or 12. It's complicated. And the Big 12 isn't the Pac-12 either. Yeah, no, nor is it the Big 10.

Anyway, let's leave that aside and just say there was a moment where Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah were like, you need to put a deal on the table now or we're gone. We're going to go to this rival conference. And Apple sweetened the deal. And they said, you know what? Good enough. Let's do it. We would rather stay with the teams that we've been playing against, in the case of Arizona and Arizona State, for almost 50 years. This is a conference that's more than 100 years old. There's a lot of tradition here. And that's when Fox and the Big Ten kind of went up to Washington and Oregon and was like, okay, we'll give you more money. Just come with us. At which point the whole thing fell apart, detonated the whole conference.

As of right now, last time I checked, there are now four members of the Pac-12. Because the three, Arizona State and Utah went to the Big 12 and Oregon and Washington went to the Big 10 and the Pac-12, which as of this year will have 12 teams in it. As of next year, if it exists at all, there are only four teams that are committed to being in it. So these teams that are going to other leagues. Other leagues, yes.

They are from next season. It's not this season. From next season. So there's a sports angle here. But I want to, from the Apple angle, what I think is interesting is Apple wanted to do a football deal that was kind of like the MLS deal. And they got really close.

In fact, I would say they got so close that the linear tv giant fox which runs the big 10 because they have all the money the linear tv giant had to had basically panicked and had to pony up way more money and add two schools to the Big Ten that the Big Ten was not intending to do because they were ready to swoop in and pick off all these teams cheap. And Apple closed the deal, basically. Apple closed the deal,

but what happened is the next step was that the Big Ten went in and grabbed Oregon and Washington. And if you were Oregon and Washington, you look at that offer and you're like, you have to accept it. It was so much more money to play. It's such a high profile thing. But they didn't make that offer last month or last year. They only made it because Apple came in with a deal that got all of the schools that were teetering to say, you know, we'll go with it. And I have a quote. This is one of my favorite quotes of the year.

This is from Arizona State University President Michael Crow, who said, we were offered a media contract by the Apple Corporation, which was a technological 23rd century Star Trek thing with really unbelievable capability that we were very interested in. We thought there was some risk but huge opportunity wow wow wow oh my word okay technological 23rd century star trek thing anyway

okay the the let me tell you let me tell you academia is a weird place. It's a weird place. And here you get this fusion of academia, very highfalutin academia, university presidents, and TV money. And they don't even speak the same language. So weird things happen in college football is what I'm saying. Very weird things happen. Anyway, I think it's interesting as a show covering Apple that this is how Apple approached another sports negotiation. And there was skepticism, but it seems like they had actually turned the table, turned the tide of doing a deal at $25 million plus incentives, feeling like they were fairly comfortable that in the end this would be a good deal for them. And they would be seen as a West Coast conference.

So ties to Silicon Valley being seen at the forefront of technological innovation. And as you said, it's probably where this is all going anyway, right? Yep. However, I will say one of the big hitches with Apple,

and this is why Apple probably does need a partner, whether it's ESPN or something else, is no guarantees for simulcast on a linear network. And linear TV brings in the big numbers. And if you're a college and you're recruiting and you want people to see you and want to go to your school and play football at your college, you need to be on ESPN or CBS or NBC or Fox.

You need to be on one of these places where you're not paying behind a paywall or behind having to set up a streaming service. You need high profile. We talk about this a lot on the Downstream podcast, but the model going forward probably is a combination of free linear with ads that gets a huge audience. And then everything else beyond the marquee matchups is on a paid streaming service. And you create a mixture of the two. This Apple offer might have led to some linear deals down the road, but they weren't in the deal at the moment. And I think that for your Oregons and Washingtons of the world who have real aspirations, the risk that nobody will see your games except your existing fan base was a major risk. And I think Apple with MLS had a linear deal. I don't know when they had it, whether they had it after the fact or not, but they've made a linear deal.

Some of those Apple games are rebroadcast on traditional TV. but they've made a linear deal those games some of those apple games are rebroadcast on traditional tv but it was not in the deal as presented to the pac-12 ceo group so and neither would i could assume neither would apple guarantee one or guarantee that they'd even look for one right because it's like it's not necessarily in their interest necessarily but they might do it if the deal is right but i can understand why they wouldn't be like oh yeah you we can do that for sure well i think my guess is that just a guess here not based on anybody's reporting my guess is that apple probably was like sure we'll look to we'll look at making deals to get some marquee games on um on linear tv and the schools are like well look is not we made that we closed the deal. And keeping in mind their

competition here. So does ESPN even have the money to offer a linear deal for a certain number of games? Or do you go to Fox? Who do you go to for that deal? And how much extra money does that bring in? And without a guarantee, like again, this whole deal was not guaranteed money, right? They didn't come in and say, look, we'll just write you all a check for $30 million every year for the next five years. Done, done. Good. Okay. Done. They didn't do that. Um, I don't, you know, in the long run, my guess is going to be that I don't think the story here is Apple's going to learn its lesson. It needs to write a big check. I don't think that's the lesson learned here. I think the lesson is going to be, if you want Apple money, you got to carry some of your own weight.

Apple's not going to, and I suspect this is the way sports rights are all going to go in the future, is you got to be our partner, strategic partner. You got to be our partner. And some of this is on you. You're going to take some of the risk with us. We're going to give you a lot of you. Like you're going to take some of the risk with us. We're going to give you a lot of money, but you are going to take some of the risk and be motivated to help us market and sell this product.

And then we will both reap the rewards of that. And I think that is just Apple's given what they're did with league pass. I think this is Apple's structure for how it's viewing sports rights is that they're not, they're clearly not playing the same game as everyone else, right? They're clearly not just going to write a check. They want it to be a partnership. Now, will that work? I don't know. I mean, we'll see. I think that in this case, they found an organization under enough pressure that they were willing to consider it. I will also say, though, that if they had just dropped $32 million a year for all the member schools

offer on the table, I think they would have all said yes, probably, right? I mean, unless Fox, again, unless Fox panicked, realizing that they were going to have to sweeten their offer in order to detonate

this whole house of cards that they had built up. So I think it's fascinating because I think in the end, what this, what this is really about is people who are not TV industry executives, they're college presidents and they got used to deals of a certain kind. This is a deal of a different kind.

It was a hard sell. They almost got there to the point where a competitor had to step up their offer in order to peel things off but in the end so leaving technological 23rd century star trek things aside for a moment what happens now is unclear it's possible there is a scenario where the four remaining schools in the pac-12 invite two, six other schools to join them, reform the conference. The conference has access to the college football playoff. There are political reasons why having a fifth major conference is actually preferable to some of the other large conferences because they like having some counterbalance to their bigger rivals. um so that's possible if that happens it's

possible that they will make an apple deal after all it won't be for this much money because they will have lost a bunch of schools that were higher profile um but uh it's still out there and it's still a you know still a a power ish five ish conference if they can rebuild it. So we'll keep an eye on it in case that happens. But I think it's fascinating to get, and because a lot of these are public universities and people are talking and this all came out as part of this realignment and implosion that happened, it gives us a little bit of a perspective of how Apple's approaching sports rights and that they're not writing the checks, They want partners. But that it's a challenge if you're Apple to talk to these people who are not used to thinking like you are. And they don't speak the same language.

So anyway, that's fascinating. And I'll just do a footnote here, a personal footnote. Cal, which is one of the four left by the side of the road as a part of this implosion uh you see berkeley cal stanford oregon state and washington state are the four that have been left in the cardboard box by the side of the road i've been going i've been going to cal football games since i was eight my dad had season tickets starting in the 60s we still have them uh every year you go in the fall you see the same teams it's all part of the pack 10 then the pack 12 it's been a real tradition no matter what happens going on like literally this is the end of an era that force depending on your age like has been part of your life for your entire life for 50 60 70 80 years uh because the conference has been there for 100

years um and after this year, it's over. Like, it's over, no matter what happens, no matter where the teams go or if they reform or if they make a deal with Apple or not, the thing that was part of my life is gone. I'm really sad about that. It does suck because it's money, right? Like, that's the thing that sucks the most.

I'll take the high level view here, which is where is this going? In the 2030s, there will be a Premier League. There will only be 30 or 40 teams that will get all the TV money and all of the other teams that are not at that high level will take a step back.

It'll probably, football will probably be uncoupled from all other college sports because the big problem with this is they make the deal for football, but the volleyball team now has to... The University of Oregon, where my kids go to school, their volleyball team used to play in Seattle and in Pullman, Washington and in Corvallis, Oregon and in Berkeley and in Palo Alto, California and in LA, right? That was where they played their games and in Salt Lake City and in Phoenix and in Tucson, all in the Western U.S.

The University of Oregon volleyball team and softball team and basketball team, they're now going to play in State College, Pennsylvania. And they're going to play in Maryland. They're going to play in New Jersey. That's less good. They're going to play in Ohio. And they're going to play in Michigan. And they're all going to have to travel there. Now, there's more money, but they're all going to suffer because of that.

going to have to travel there. Now there's more money, but they're all going to suffer because of that. So hopefully in the long run, college football, which is the moneymaker will be uncoupled from what all the other sports have to do. It's really messed up. This is, this is the, this is the case where the sheer money because of the ratings and because of the success of this one product is completely destroying like all the other, all the other traditional connections between the universities that have been built up over 100 years. And that's unfortunate. I think it will probably all resolve itself, but I think it's going to take another 10 or 20 years for that to happen. And in the meantime, this is the way it works because money talks. And the truth is, they are building... Again, for people not in the U.S., you don't understand this.

The NFL is supreme in the United States. It makes so much money. The ratings are the best. The top rated primetime TV show every year is Sunday Night Football, which is an NFL product. It is number one. Number two, essentially by rating, is college football. So they're building another nfl a young uh affiliated with universities but only tenuously mini nfl because they can play those games on saturdays and make lots and lots of money and if they would just say that and do it and leave

everything else alone it would probably be fine. But that's not how it works. Instead, you've got an ESPN group and a Fox group, and they're both building their conferences up. And they've got their TV deals. And we know where this is going. But it's going to take a decade or more of destruction before they get to what they should, you know, what will be perfectly reasonable, I guess, which is there'll be 32 teams or whatever that will, uh, that will square off against each other. But anyway, so Apple, Apple will be a player here in sports stuff. It's, it's going to happen. Um, but as for this deal, uh, I want to say swing and a miss, but I can't like, I think Apple actually

like ended up making a really compelling deal and they almost pulled it out. And in fact, their deal was so compelling. This is what I will walk away with on this story. Their deal was so compelling that the competition had to make an offer. They didn't want to make no choice. They thought they were going to be able to, to,

to detonate this thing, um, without, because people would walk away from the Apple deal. Apple sweetened it enough that they had to resort to something that they weren't planning on doing, which is pay more money to the Big Ten to let in Oregon and Washington in order for them to do that.

So I guess that's sort of a win for Apple. Anyway, if this debacle has a follow-up, I'll follow up in a future episode. But in the meantime, I got tickets for Berkeley this fall. Tim, still got a seat for you for the Auburn game? Let me know. Maybe it's bittersweet now, Jason. Maybe you would have done it

if you would have bought it. Well, this whole season's gonna be bittersweet. This whole season is basically a farewell to my childhood. So, okay. Goodbye. Go Bears? Yeah. Anyway, that's where we are. Just keep in mind, if you forget everything else about this conversation, please focus on a technological 23rd century Star Trek thing. I love it. It's amazing. Okay. University president, whatever you say.

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and the code upgrade. When you decide to sign up, you will get yourself 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. So we were talking about money. Let's cheer ourselves up and move from money destroying sports

to more money with Apple. Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. Summer of money! Money! Money, money, money. Money, money, money. Summer of money. Money. Here we go. Earnings time. But it's not a fun one for Apple. It's not fun.

Yeah, you know. It's not fun. It's not fun. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. I always have this problem when I'm talking about Apple where the question is always like, how's Apple doing?

I'm like, you know, it's complicated. First off, it's complicated if you're a Wall Street analyst or whatever. But on another level, it's not complicated. Right? Like, it's, let me break it down for you, Mike. How's Apple doing? Well, they made $20 billion in profit in the last three months. That's how they're doing.

That's pretty good. They're doing pretty good right but well we can pick apart the numbers and there's like lots of things to talk about here but the the answer is uh 19.9 something billion dollars in profit and that number is up uh from the year ago quarter even though their revenue is down one percent from the year ago quarter and that's where you start to get into the Wall Street analyst thing where it's like, what is it in constant currency versus what is it in US dollars and the strong dollar and financial headwinds? Or you talk about how the street thought it would be down 1.5%, but it was only down 1%, so it's better than expected. Is that good, even though it was down, that it's better than expected? But the bottom line for all of us to remember is also Apple made $20 billion in profit. And so is Apple okay?

I think they're doing okay. I think they're doing fine. Right now, right? It's fine right now. But if it's down 1% revenue this time and then 10% next time, it's probably not going to go like that. But it's like, you know, like... Well, look, yeah, I mean, what if there's a war between the US and China

and Apple's cut off from all of its factories? Well, that wouldn't be great. No. Then they'd have to use that 50 billion in cash that they've got and do it that way. People make takes, right? And like, maybe your take will be right this time. Like, maybe you say like,

this is the beginning of the end and at some point your take will be correct.'m on your side with this like argument of like this was just one of those quarters but like ultimately they prepared for it and it's fine and and it's not even i mean it's not even one of those quarters their revenue is down although they pointed out that they're in constant currency their revenue is up so basically their revenue grew in net you know across all countries yeah but uh but the dollar is well they said that like it ate like three or four percent of their revenue was was conversion to dollar. And I can imagine that it's frustrating if fluctuations in currency are the difference between you being up or being down,

but regardless, we could say it's basically flat. And this is, I think what is, what is the mega trend with Apple is that they have, um, they set new plateaus for themselves every few years. And then they are on that plateau for a while.

So in fiscal 2021, they had four straight quarters of double digit revenue growth. And then in 22, they had three quarters of, it was 11, nine, two, eight. It was kind of middling. And this year it's been minus 5, minus 3, minus 1. And this is kind of like the mega cycle for Apple where,

and it's tied to the iPhone essentially, which is they hit a new height and then they kind of flatten out. And then presumably they will, if it goes like it's been the last few, they will do something else that will push them to a new height. Because although it is an absolute excuse for them to say,

oh, this is a tough compare, classic word, tough compare, hard to compare it to last time. The truth is that when you go up 36% and then in quarter three of 21, and the following two quarter threes are up 2% and down minus 1%, what you're doing is retaining all of the 36% growth you attained in year 21. That's what you're doing is you didn't give back because 36% up is a huge number, right? And you're like, okay, well, it's up, but they're going to give that back. They're surely not going to maintain at that level going forward.

And the answer is they absolutely did maintain at that level. They haven't gone beyond that level or they crept last year. They crept a little bit beyond it. And then this year they've kind of receded slightly, but in the net when they went up in fiscal 21, they didn't go back down. This is the new level for Apple. And so that's the thing to keep in mind. Like I want to double down on that point a little bit right okay it's just a different way of like so you're saying right 2021 was just a bananas year like absolutely bananas right

they did 21 year-over-year growth in the first quarter 54 then 36 and 29 just like obscene growth numbers and then a year like two years later, right, from that huge jump, there's still kind of single digit percentages off of those numbers. So as you say, right, like, they grew massively one year. And it's not like they then two years later went 36% down on those figures. Like they're just sticking around, around about what we considered was a huge increase. They've just leveled out at that point until something happens. Maybe it's the Vision products, right?

In maybe five years time where they have another huge jump of like 36% because now they're selling these products at scale and people are super excited about them. Generally though, what happens is there's a redesign of the iPhone and that ratchets them up to the next level, right?

Like if I look at my chart and I only, my chart only goes back, I've got charts that go back way, way far, but in the ones that I publish, I generally only go back, um, what to 19 in this case.

So four years, four or five years. Yeah. yeah yeah and you can see it if you look at the total apple revenue chart that like they were chugging along and and and a outside the holiday quarter they were just chugging along at 83, 90, 95, 82. Like the numbers aren't close. They have thrown an extra $20 billion a quarter into their revenue engine and don't seem to be going back. don't seem to be going back. So, you know, that's, that's the question. My question is,

cause we talk a lot about the vagaries of iPhone product line management, which is a thing that we talk about that I like, I, you know, the idea of that there used to be one iPhone and then there were two iPhones and now there's like five iPhones, but the iPhone is the driver. five iPhones, but the iPhone is the driver. So my question is with all these iPhones, can they hit upon the product that is the, that takes them to the next level with the iPhone again? That's always the question. And the pundits, there are pundits out there who are like every year, like, Oh, it's just like the last iPhone. it's like you know what they don't reinvent the iphone every year but they do sort of reinvent the iphone every three or four years now it's it's not every two years it's now more like every three years but they do reinvent the iphone every three years and it drives sales because it gets a lot of people to buy a new iphone and probably those iphones are more expensive so they generate more. So I think that's always the question. I wonder if that's this year's iPhones, right?

I don't know. I don't know if we know yet, right? We know what is being rumored, right? We can hear the rumors and we hear the specs as we were talking about last week or the week before from Mark Gurman. But there is a thing about the look of it right and like we're hearing like oh maybe the bezels are going to be slimmer and maybe the back is going to be curved like it could look quite different and with the right product like additions and naming potentially like this could be that year or if it's not this year it's probably next year timing wise i would think it would be this year but we don't know we just don't know yet well we're we're getting closer to knowing but um but that's the driver

of so much of what they do we talk about all this other stuff yeah service is growing helps lift the tide and all that but i feel like that moment when they do that phase change it's because there's a new iphone model that sells really well it might might be this time. If we think about the Pro phones, which are the driver, right? We know that. We've heard this many times. We're talking titanium, different back glass,

thinner bezels on the front, potentially a new name for the big phone, and a new camera system with a completely new camera, right this yeah periscope lens this could be that year like the pro phones this year could be the like oh this is like an iphone oh and usbc right as exactly yeah this is it this is it like this is going to be the one right like it's this year huh so my question is you know when we're looking at the revenue figures for q2 three and four of next year on a button the button and a new button yep so okay so this is i think this

is the thing for people to watch is what do the q2 three four numbers look like next year because if they're in the 80s again they didn't have their mega cycle bump yeah but if they're in the 90s or hundreds then they will have done it yeah right and that traditionally that has been the pattern is they a new iphone model that's pretty massive in terms of change comes out and they get a year of double digit growth. And then year two is slight growth and year three is flat or down a little bit. And then the cycle continues. So I think that's what we'll have to watch for over the next year is, and you can get a hint from the holiday quarter, but holiday quarters are hard, but you can get a hint from the holiday quarter. If it's another record holiday quarter, that's going to be a good sign for them.

I wanted to double back around to that thing you were talking about with currency. And then I want to just hit the headlines real quick of the numbers. Just to say those things frustrate me. When they're like, oh, if currency hadn't fluctuated, we would have grown. It's like, you can't just make up a reality because it's not like you're always reporting when currency is good for you. That's true. They don't play fair.

But the reason I think it's relevant to talking to Wall Street analysts is because it allows them to say, we're not down because we're down across the board. Actually, in most countries, we're up uh but then we take it back to the u.s yeah but if that's so important give us your unit numbers like if you want to prove to us right that you've sold more tell us how many you sold again well they they will talk about they do that in the call right they'll say oh we actually we had record numbers

in this country and they listed off like 10 countries and all that they do that in the call, right? They'll say, oh, we actually had record numbers in this country, and they listed off like 10 countries and all that. They do that. And it's 70% new to iPhone or whatever. It's like, yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. Right. And they did those numbers.

More than half the iPads sold were new to iPad. Slightly less than half the Macs sold were new to Mac. And three quarters of the Apple Watches sold were new to Apple Watch. I will say, though, when we talk about the pandemic and Apple Silicon driving sales, maybe outside of a normal buying cycle. I think although Apple is quick to trumpet those numbers of people who have never used before. of people who have never used before, think about it the other way, which is when those numbers are high,

that is a sign that a lot of your usual reliable buyers aren't buying. So I think that actually is a sign that, right? Like if I bought an iPad a little early to refresh my iPad or a Mac a little early because I wanted to refresh Apple Silicon, I'm not in the pool of buyers this quarter. And that is going to drive the first time buyers number higher because it's a percentage. And those numbers were high. And I think that's why. Apple Watch is different. I think that they were right to say that Apple Watch selling three quarters to new people is encouraging because that's like a barometer of how how

into the apple ecosystem are you because it's an iphone accessory so getting 75 of apple watch sales to be the new apple watch users they're kind of saying at least some of those people were like had one apple device and now they have two or whatever it is. It's a plus one to the Apple ecosystem for them. It doesn't surprise me though, because I do feel like the Apple Watch is a, you have one for multiple years kind of product. They're like, I would never expect that number to be different. And that is one reason that that number is high. But I can see Apple looking at it and saying, but this is good because that's all incremental to the install base and there there are more apple watch users

out there and like again part part of what they're talking about here is trying to speak the language of wall street and explain their business model and explain why they keep adding active devices and active users and adding more devices into their ecosystem, and that that's all part of what makes Apple so successful. So part of this is, some of it is to obfuscate the disappointment and being down 1%, but a lot of it is also just trying to give positive signals to Wall Street people who are looking for signs of growth and of future growth, because that's what they're most interested in. Quick headlines.

So revenue, $81.8 billion, down 1% year over year. iPhone, 39.7, down 2%. Mac, $6.8 billion, down 7%. iPad, $5.8 billion, down 20%. This was a tough compare, though, because there was a new iPad last year at this quarter. There wasn't one this time. And there was nothing.

Wearables, home, and accessories, which would include the Apple Watch and AirPods, is $8.3 billion, up 2% year-over-year. And services, $21.2 billion, up 8% year-over-year. Quote, Apple announced that it passed a major milestone during the third quarter. It's reached a billion paid subscriptions. That was a quote from your article, but it's also quoted everywhere. And this is a year over year doubling.

So there were half a billion last year, right? And now there are a billion, which is wild. No, I think there's half a billion three years ago. Sorry, sorry and 15 up in the last year to say i'm sorry i wrote that down wrong but something i wanted to just clear up which i think is the case is that these aren't like you know you can read that and be like oh man that's a lot of pieces people subscribe to apple music and apple tv it's like it might be but as far as I understand it, this is all subscriptions, right? All subscriptions. It's just one of those things, it's like, Apple

doesn't, I don't think very clearly, they don't really state that, and I understand why, but like, because as well, there's this thing of like, they believe every subscription is their subscription, even if it's got nothing to do with them, really, they just provide the mechanism. But what I want to say is don't read that number

and think there are a billion people that have Apple Music because there aren't. Right. Yeah, services also includes, yes, and those subscription totals include your subscription to that app that you like. That's also a subscription. If you're a CallSheet subscriber, by the way,

a fantastic new app from our friend Casey List, friend of the show. It really is a wonderful app. I've tried CallSheet subscriber, by the way. A fantastic new app from our friend Casey List, friend of the show. It really is a wonderful app. I've tried Call Sheet for months. If you ever look up movies and TV and that kind of stuff, and you're like, hey, who is that person that plays that thing?

What else were they in? Call Sheet is a really lovely app that lets you do all that stuff. You can subscribe to Call Sheet. And if you do, Apple will include it in their numbers every year. So if 100 million people get Casey's new app, then Apple will be really happy, I suppose.

Yeah, because it's 100 million new paid subscriptions in the Apple world, which is how they count it. I can see their argument because, yes, from their perspective, it is in their ecosystem. It is another paid subscription. They have built an engine that generates all of these subscriptions, and that's true but also don't be misled into thinking that that is a billion people paying for apple tv plus because that's not what it is nor is anyone choosing right

like this isn't a choice right like they have the mechanisms and the mechanisms work great. And a lot of developers love them, but you have no choice. But anyway. Yes. So that is Apple's revenue and earnings and all that kind of stuff for the quarter. I think an interesting one. We've had a really good conversation and now me and you will be looking eagerly

as to whether this next iPhone is going to make that big jump for them. I think that's the real question because they have become reliant on that as the way, how do you, instead of growing gently, how do you take it? They don't grow gently. They are relentless, but they make these quantum leaps. So is there another quantum leap coming that takes them out of the 80 billion, the measly $80 billion in revenue a quarter up to 90 or 100? I guess we'll find out. Oh, before we move on, one more item I wanted to

mention, which is just how do you go from 1% down on revenue, but 1% up on profit year over year? How do you do that? The answer is, well, there's two answers. One is very favorable conditions for profit margin. Their profit margin was basically a record, 45% nearly. It was a third quarter record. It's one of the highest margins Apple has ever shown. Services is a huge component and they are incredibly profitable, but all of their stuff is very profitable. And Luca Maestri, the CFO said that income, remember legacy nodes? Well, right now he said the component world is very favorable so now everybody's like built back up in supplying components and the component costs are

apparently pretty cheap and very profitable for apple to take those components and put them in their devices so that's one thing but the other thing that they pointed out is they cut costs and this is the we didn't hire people you you know, we, we, we did attrition and we, and we closed, you know, they didn't do a hiring freeze per se, cause they still hired some people, but they hired fewer people than they were intending. And that's catnip to wall street, but that's how you get up in revenue when you're down or up in profit, when you're down in revenue is they have some favorable profit margin stuff, but also they cut costs.

That is a thing. And the message they kept sending to Wall Street was, you know, we continue to invest in R&D, but in the other parts of the company, we cut costs. This episode is brought to you by Ooni Pizza Ovens. Ooni is the world's number one pizza oven company. They make surprisingly small ovens powered by your choice of either wood, charcoal, gas, or even electric now, so that you

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That's just where the pizzas are made. So yeah, we've got it out there. We've had a bunch of, it's been a cold summer, but it's just heat, heat it up. And that's the,

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a very specific question. It's the final segment of the show. But almost like chapter shuffle, I moved something. And it's really, to be honest, this is kind of an ask upgrade question, but I just wanted to mention we're back for the details right now

because we have... Thank you. We have amazing new chapter artwork for the details, now because we have thank you we have amazing new chapter artwork for the details courtesy of our designer JD and so I wanted to be able to have that in today's episode even though I don't actually have a detail for you

but we did have a beta related question that came from David that I thought we could talk about in this segment where David says with all of the talk about the betas from Apple I'm very tempted to jump on the bandwagon, but I wondered how you manage your iCloud accounts. Do you have a separate iCloud account for your betas?

What happens if you have a phone on the new beta and your other Apple devices are on the standard releases? Okay, so I love listening to podcasts. We're very sober and careful technology journalists and enthusiasts talk about how they very carefully curated their iCloud account and they've got one that they use in the beta, so they don't want to mess up their iCloud account. And then scrupulously when the fall comes, they will then log out of that and log into their real account, but they don't sully their regular iCloud account with beta stuff.

You know where this is going, right? I just use my account and I don't care. That's it. That's my answer. I just use my regular iCloud account. I have a beta iCloud account, but I have that so that I have an extra account that I can test for things like AirDrop

or anything like that that's that's why i have it is when i need a second that's not me i have it but i i just use the betas with my regular account there was a time where like it was bad like it was like a bad time to use your icloud like and i have a bunch of friends who iCloud accounts got just destroyed in like many years ago from doing this. Or you'd end up with like some kind of issue that would just persist forever. I would say if everyone I know,

OTJ John Voorhees does actually still end up with a bunch of problems. I don't really know why. John, I think does terrible things when he's on the betas and has created some of the things that I found the funniest in my life with some of the issues that he has. But I am like you.

I don't set up anything new. I think these days it's not as necessary as it has been in the past. I would actually say it's not necessary at all. I think once the public betas became a thing, I think they became a lot more careful about not messing up people's iCloud accounts and not tinkering around too much in there as part of the beta process. But yeah.

Look, here's the thing. You've just got to understand this. If you're going to install a beta of any kind you're YOLOing a little bit. So just YOLO all the way. Let's finish up with some Ask Upgrade questions. First comes from Chad who says, The Vision Pro has been pitched

as the best device to watch 3D films. We've all had to talk about needing to see Oppenheimer in IMAX. What is the likelihood that Apple would offer IMAX versions of films, or even IMAX making apps specifically for IMAX films seems like it could be an ideal way to watch IMAX versions of films, or even IMAX making apps specifically for IMAX films, seems like it could be an ideal way to watch IMAX at home. All right, well, IMAX, in terms of resolution,

you know, you're going to get the resolution you get on this. But IMAX, I believe, is also often in a different aspect ratio. It's actually a taller image. It's like square. Disney actually uses some of that Iax thing on the disney plus service to do a if you've got a like a normal kind of letterboxed widescreen film that's more letterboxed than 16 by 9 tv they actually use the imax aspect ratio um content to fill in the screen to make it 16 by 9 which is a weird choice, but they, they make it.

Um, my guess, Chad is that if IMAX is related to vision pro, probably what you're going to get is the ability to watch a movie in a virtual movie theater and have it be the IMAX shape instead of a more letterbox shape. Like if you were at a movie theater, like if you're at an IMAX screen and you watch a movie in IMAX, you see the height. And if you watch a regular movie on that IMAX screen, they don't

have that height. So they don't show you that. They just sort of show you the regular frame. So that's my guess is that, uh, given that vision pro doesn't have a frame per se, uh, that that's what you'll see is that there'll be movies in all sorts of different aspect ratios. see is that there'll be movies in all sorts of different aspect ratios and the advantage of the that um the the more square imax aspect ratio is on a on a widescreen device um it's a bummer because you've got pillar boxes you've got uh you've got black bars at the left and the right but in the vision pro there's no such. It would just be a different movie theater experience. So that's my guess about what it will be. So is it the true IMAX experience?

Well, no. But they might use that extra aspect ratio stuff to make a different version of it so that you can, again, because you might not want on an iPhone screen, you might not want to watch an IMAX clip because the shapes don't match. But in virtual reality, the shapes don't matter. They could do it. Like, 100% they could do it. Like, we both watched a clip of Avatar, like, that was in front of us. And then also it, like, then became the visual size of a cinema screen, right? Which was, like, absolutely massive.

So they could make it IMAax size and be huge it could be bigger than imax but like there isn't that isn't like the full imax experience anyway right there's a crispness of the projection and like the sound and this thing is going to be resolution wise but basically i think the answer just is sure they could right like i actually think yes they could and this could be a thing that hasn't really been possible at home before and like to actually see it in a in a good way right like i guess you could keep pillar boxing until you get the square right of the screen but this you could do it maybe they will do it um which is a fun thing to think about this could even literally be a disney thing right since they've got the access

to their imax versions for their enhanced or whatever they call it versions that they make available would that Disney plus version be like oh yeah and you can you can actually watch it in IMAX now and we'll all we'll all say okay asterisks it's not the resolution and this and that and that but in but Disney will just be like in IMAX like okay all right to be fair though IMAX there's already a bunch of caveats, right? Like something's called iMacs, but there are then different variations of what iMacs is, right? So like, it's already complicated. You know what? Forget it. Put them in there. Just do it.

Put it in there. Just iMacs it up. And Dylan asks, a recent DigiTimes report claims that the sales of the 15-inch MacBook Air have been below Apple's expectations, which is actually a story I've been meaning to mention, so I thought we'd talk about it here. Dylan carries on with, this left me wondering, should Apple have waited to release the 15-inch MacBook Air until it could ship the product of an M3 chip? I'll give a quick quote from 9to5Mac here, reporting on the DigiTimes report. Reports stated that the supply chain's july shipment volume is 50 less than the original

estimate i don't know i mean should they have waited my i think based on what the reports we've heard is originally this was going to be part of the same release as the m2 13 inch and then it got pushed back and then we we heard about like more delays so i think they wouldn't have released it if they went on their original plan but also i wonder if like once you've designed it why not release it especially if you're not going to do an m3 revision until next year why not get it out there on the channel i I would say that this report, the real issue here is that they misjudged what the demand would be, which I think that that's what they would probably take back at this point, is that they would lower their expectations for

how many of these that they would sell. I still think it's going to sell well, though. I think it'll sell well in the fall and the holiday season. And I think regular buyers- I think this one might be a slow gun. You've got to wait. gotta wait i think regular buyers do not say oh but there's going to be an m3 next year they just don't we do yes i don't think the for who this computer is probably mostly aimed at whether it came with an m2 chip or an m3 chip did not like delay sales in my opinion i don't think that's the reason that they're 50 less than the original estimate maybe they just ordered too many or maybe like they think they'll ship that many in a year and it just wasn't at the right time frame. Like maybe this original estimate was when they originally meant to ship the thing,

right? Rather than when it actually came out. Like this is going to be a product that I reckon will do well, as you say, when people are going to the Apple store to buy their next computer and around school time and all of that kind of stuff is like, oh, that's when you expect to see those kinds of purchases. And maybe it just like it just hasn't rolled around enough yet. I don't know. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show, you just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in your Ask Upgrade question, your Snow Talk question. You can send in whatever you want right

there. Some follow-ups, some feedback, maybe some anonymous stuff. You know, you can send it all in to us over at UpgradeFeedback.com. Almost calling on Mustafa's. Yes. If there is another Mustafa who does want Apple to put them

in Apple prison, and you want to clear your name of not wanting to have your name cleared, you can write in at upgradefeedback.com. We're really going to stack this one out there into infinity. And by the way, Mustafa, I am genuinely sorry if we caused you any concern, but all I'm doing is reporting the news, Jason Snell. You know, these things come into me, these questions come in,

and all I can do is read them. UpgradeFeedback.com. Thank you to Ooni and Squarespace and Vitaly for their support of the show. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you can sign up. You get ad-free, longer episodes of the show each and every single week. If you want to send us in some information, like I mentioned, upgradefeedback.com. You can check out Jason's writing over at

sixcolors.com and hear his podcast at theincomparable.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to me here on RelayFM and check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find Jason on Mastodon. He is jsnall at zeppelin.flights. And I am at imy imike I-M-Y-K-E on Mastodon and Threads. You can also find the show on Mastodon. We are upgrade at relayfm.social. You can watch video clips

of the show there and also on TikTok, Instagram. We are at upgraderelay. We're also on YouTube, but like... YouTube, yeah. Go subscribe

to the YouTube channel so we can claim the name because you can't do that until you get to some. Ah. Yeah. Thank you to our members. as I mentioned, who support us about Great Plus, but most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye,

Jason Snow. Goodbye, everybody. you