Upgrade - 473: I Can Talk About the George Foreman Grill Now

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

The iMac turns 25, Relay turns 10 (next year in London), print magazines apparently still exist, and listeners have questions about why Apple would ever want to buy Disney.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 473 for august 21st 2023 this episode is brought to you by factor electric and text expander my name is mike hurley and I am joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. When you wish upon a star, this is our Disney podcast, right? Yes, welcome back to Disney Grade. Uh-huh, sure. Yeah, we are going to be talking more about Disney today because we got... Just a little bit more. We got so much follow-up and questions that it felt like we needed to come back around to it. So that's going to be later on in today's episode.

But we will begin this episode, as we always do, with a Mickey talk. No, it's a snow talk. Sorry, sorry, I got lost into Disney again. Hi, everybody. Mickey's here. Preston says, I was at a bookstore the other day

and was surprised to see that a great many magazines still exist. Clearly, if magazines did not make money, they would cease to exist. But in 2023, Jason Snow, previous editor-in-chief of Macworld Magazine, why do you think there are still so many print magazines being published?

Well, there are way fewer print magazines than there used to be. The economics of print has always been a challenge. There's a certain number that you send out, and then the ones that don't get sold basically get recycled, and

nobody pays for them. Back in the day we would like we would only sell like i don't even remember the number 10 of the ones we put on out on news no way yeah what happened to the rest of them the north they get they get chipped chipped i guess you know they're they're yeah deeply inefficient especially not so so much in Europe where you have a newsstand culture or at least have had one. In the U.S., the geography, it's so spread out that you end up with sort of like you're shipping magazines to a truck stop in Wyoming, right? And you ship three there and one sells. It's that kind of economics.

It's bananas anyway over time um the so first off subscriptions drop and they're a huge um percentage of the revenue so the subscriptions drop and it makes it very difficult for the magazines to survive regardless of what is on the newsstand however newsstands do exist i i haven't looked at a newsstand in a while this is part of the problem but the way that it seems to have gone is that a lot of stuff that used to be a successful print magazine like look there are still print things that sell right there are still like tabloids and gossip magazines and things like that that i see at the checkout line that they still exist but a lot of what i see out there is this move to, there are a lot of stupid phrases in the magazine industry. One of them was bookazines.

But the idea here is you create something that is a little more like a book. It has a higher price. It does not have a real expiration date, or at least it can sit on newsstands for months therefore therefore it's more efficient so like i go in my checkout line there's things like somebody famous dies there is a time magazine or people magazine commemorative for the life of what whoever or or it's a celebrating 50 years of this thing. They're usually designed to appeal to older people who remember buying print products, and they are higher list price.

Instead of it being $5, they're $15 or whatever, and they can sit there for months instead of being refreshed every week or month. Yeah, I feel like I see a lot of these, like, 20 tips for your Mac rather than, like, Macworld. Yeah, the computer magazines now are mostly how-to things that can sit out there for three or six months. They're also priced...

Like, if you wonder where computer books went, because the computer books, a lot of them just kind of went away. but this is a place where they found at least some pickup and again they wouldn't do it if as preston says they wouldn't do it if they weren't making money at it but what you're doing is you're taking a bunch of how-to content probably sourced from the web and then dressed up with photos and stuff and you put it in a thing for 15 20 dollars whatever it is and then you put it out there for six months and then you replace it for another one. So the economics change.

There's more money. It's out there longer. You don't have to print as many of them. You don't have to pay editors to do as many of them. And you get some stuff like that. But it's just not what it was. That's the bottom line. It's not what it was, but there's still...

This is the thing. We talked about with the Disney conversation about linear TV and ESPN revenue and things like that. It's like, they're not shutting off your cable company tomorrow, right? That's not going to happen. media take a long time to die, if they die at all. And as they're dying or shrinking, anyway, we could say shrinking instead of dying if we wanted to. What happens is the people who are trying to find a way to eke out a profit in that shrinking market, they learn lessons about this kind of content works and this kind of content doesn't. And then over time, either it will find a new place where it can live or as its audience that's used to it ages out, it will slowly, you know, fade away until there's nobody left or almost nobody left. Magazines are like this. Linear TV is going to be like this where like cable and satellite, you know, first off, cable and satellite is going to be like this, where cable and satellite...

First off, cable and satellite are going to become internet sources. They're already becoming that. But there'll still be TV packages you can get, because there are going to be people, even like my age, who grew up with cable TV, who'll be not willing to cut the cord and happy to just keep paying for the cable bundle. And those people will get older and older and older, and there'll be fewer and fewer and fewer of them as they get either they die or they get pushed out and to finally cut the cable because they see value in it. And it'll fade away or more likely slowly

transform into something else. In fact, like our conversations about sports rights, one of the things that's happening in some markets is that they're putting sports that used to be all on cable on broadcast TV in local markets in the US. And part of the idea there is it's a wider addressable market. It's anybody, whether they've got cable or satellite or an antenna, there's no special deal to be made. It's just on the over the air. And they don't get money for people having access to that channel, but they get a big audience and they can sell ads into it. So you may see things like that where it's like, oh, we thought local channels were irrelevant.

It turns out that local channels are actually super relevant for local sports rights because of the changes to the regional sports network system. So like things move and change. The other example I'll give is like radio. Radio used to be,

before television was like a medium for drama and comedy and all these sorts of scripted entertainment things. And TV came along and killed radio right except we still have radio it's just that what's on radio has changed dramatically it's a lot less profitable than it used to be and they found some things they could do like sports talk and news headlines you know and and that has been enough to keep like am radio alive even though it's not as successful as it used to be. It's not as widely listened as it used to be. It's still, they found a place to do it. So magazines are going through that now where there is some value to be gained out of them existing, but mostly they're not what they used to be at all. They've been completely... You could even say they're using the newsstand channel to put other kind of products in it

because it's an existing channel that are easier to make and stay out there longer and are more profitable because they have a higher label price. And that happens a lot in media transitions, I think, where you've got an existing

infrastructure built up. So you're like, okay, well, we can't do this anymore, but could we do something else? Sometimes I think that if they weren't trying to cut our staff so much, that that would have been a way forward for IDG, for Macworld and PCworld, would have been instead of killing print entirely, it would have been, and I'm sure some people advocated for this,

the idea that you'd use that bipad that you basically your your place on a newsstand and put in something that was more we did some of those like total os 10 and all of that like there might have been a way forward for a print product but it wouldn't have been a monthly magazine you know you're saying about like the the shrinking day businesses i think something that's key in those as well is when it's hard to imagine a future that even if the business is good right now but the writing is on the wall right we're like cable tv very good business right now still but we all know it won't be in the future we yeah we exactly and that's the um when we talk about disney this came up but it's come up in a bunch of different contexts especially on downstream

where we talk about media changes is there are sort of two mindsets and i am not a financial analyst but there are sort of two mindsets that you see one of them is investors who want um who want growth right they they are investing in your stock and they want your company to grow and they want their stock to go up because that's their investment, right? That's one way to do it, which is like grow, grow, grow. We want to see growth. The other approach, and you see this a lot from some, you know, like private capital, private equity companies, they're looking for profit and extracting profit from products. And so that's what has happened in the newspaper industry in the US is private equity buys them out

and lays off lots of people and cuts all the costs and really reduces the product. But their goal is not to have a good product, right? Their goal is just to extract as much value out of this declining asset as possible before there's nothing but a husk left. And that's really unfortunate if you're somebody who works there or somebody or a society that relies on that sort of thing. But that is the other approach. And with linear TV, that's sort of what we're talking about here is that it doesn't have a lot of growth potential left, but it's got money in it. There's money in it to be managed on the way down. And that is not a particularly exciting place to be, right? I mean, the last place that I think you want to be is in a dying industry,

watching as it, I mean, I felt that way a lot at IDG, right? It's like you're watching as it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And it takes a very particular mindset to say, well, yeah, this is a dying industry and it keeps getting smaller, but you know what? There's still money to be made here, so let's make it. And that's one approach to that sort of thing. Yeah. Thank you to Preston for writing in. I thought that we would have a good conversation about this topic. I felt like it was chiseling into a part of Jason that we get every now and again, but try not to push too much on the magazine. Well, so as not to make him sad.

If you would like to send in a question of your own to help us open a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in your own Snow Talk question. I'm going to do my footnote here about magazines, which is, I got my job in magazines because I needed a job that paid me. When I was in college, I was publishing things on the internet before there was even a web, right? I was trying, I was like the internet, it's going to be, I was one of those people. I was like, it's going to be big. It's going to be big. And, uh, but then, you know, your mom says, are you getting a job? And you're like, uh, oh yeah. And, and those days the, the you know print media was where you got the jobs

basically and so i i never i learned a lot about the magazine business and there were things about it that i really appreciated especially the kind of uh leisurely pace of a monthly magazine wow let me tell you that like it was there were deadlines all the time because you were producing the magazine over the course of the month, but there was something to be said for something, some news breaking and you being like, okay, we'll cover that in our next issue, which will be in three weeks. But that said, I, I, you know, I entered the magazine business knowing that the internet was the future of publishing. So while I got to grind through a declining business for several years, which was not fun, it was not a surprise to me. And it didn't really hit me

emotionally because I always, my entire career, I knew that the magazine business was not going to make it and that the internet was going to beat it. But that's where the jobs were. So that's where I went. We have some very exciting news. Upgradians. This is the most exciting. Yeah. We are asking you to assemble on July 27th, 2024 in London. As Relay.fm will be celebrating its 10th anniversary with the biggest live show we have ever put on.

Live in London at the Hackney Empire. Tickets are on sale right now. You can go to relay.fm slash London. This is going to be our first live show ever outside of the USA. And we are coming to my hometown to celebrate our 10th anniversary next July. So we're giving you tons of notice.

If you're in the UK, you should come. If you're in Europe, you should come. If you're in America, why not plan that trip to England that you've always wanted to have I've been hearing from so many because we've had these tickets on sale to RelayFM members for a few days so by the way if you are interested please go fast because we sold I think twice the amount of tickets to members as I was expecting we would so tickets are selling quick because people want to see this live show. If you have seen or you were there for our fifth anniversary live show, we did a family feud style game. We're going to be doing that again with a selection of hosts.

For this show, there won't be video. And we are aiming to have an audio recording of the show. But we are putting this show on for the people that can be at the Hackney Empire along with us. 1,200 people can fit into that theater. So Family Feud, or as it's called in England, Family Fortunes. Family Fortunes, yes. Game show.

So who's hosting that one? Who's hosting that game show? It's going to be... Is it available? Do I have a resume? Can I do a CV? Because it's England. To host that thing if you want to well i mean if you're willing to announce that you will be in

town then we can announce that jason snell will be on stage oh so if i'm willing to announce that i'm absolutely going to this event and we'll be hosting no no we're not saying you're hosting we say you're gonna be there because there's gonna to be a fight for it not to be me to host. So I want to be the host for this show. Oh, you are a quiz master, aren't you? I'm a quiz master. You can't see yourself a quiz master. And it's my hometown.

Well, I'm not willing to announce that, so we shouldn't talk about it. All of that is TBD. So all we're saying right now is I will be there and steven will be there and a selection of relay fm hosts it's so far in advance that i can't wait to be selected though i hope i hope you are you've been pre-selected i'm happy to let you know jason you've been pre-selected but it's just a case there are a lot of logistics for people to work out all right so we're not ready to announce exactly who's going to be there yeah it's on my calendar yeah it's on my calendar and i hope you will be there i hope you will be there yes

but we have a bunch of people in the uk already um who i know it will be easier for them to attend and i much easier i have tentative uh uh yeses we have tentative yeses from a selection of hosts who need to be traveling in um so all of that will be tbd but you will be able to experience a really fun time for some of the favorite relay fm hosts playing some awesome games uh it's going to be an incredibly fun time and we're going to be celebrating a decade of this podcast network so if you want to come and join us in i mean straight up as well the most beautiful venue we've ever been in like just go just google images of the hackney empire it's just unbelievable it looks amazing the reason we're there is like i went to an event there a couple of months ago and i was like this is the one because

we've wanted to do this for a long time um like and we've been thinking about it for a long time to do our 10th anniversary show in in the uk and i was at i was at an event i was like oh this one's really nice and like you know and like a lot of show a lot of theaters like it wasn't thousands and thousands of seats right which would have been harder yeah um so it felt achievable and uh we were very nervous but now i'm feeling considering how many tickets we sold so far i'm feeling pretty confident but we're giving people loads of notice that was the whole idea of this basically a year in advance so if you're interested go to relay.fm slash london pick yourself up a ticket and we'll see you next july so now if you're the game show host first off i'm gonna have to give you some

tips because i feel like i am oh i 100% mean you're gonna be the game show host of relay.fm but but you have the home field advantage right so it's your network and it's also your home so i'm gonna give you that however if i can't be the game show host in that context i hope you'll find something else for me to do like coin flipping challenge or something like that. I don't know. We haven't spoken about it yet, but this is the first conversation we've had. But for the fifth anniversary show,

you were the host and I was in charge of the scoreboard. That's true. Now, if you want to be there, you have a choice of whatever you want. If you wanted to be in charge of the scoreboard, then I would love you to be in charge of the scoreboard. If you want to be in the games, if you want to be in the game, you could be in the game, you know?

Okay. Well, we'll work it. We got a long time to work this out. We have 11 months to work all of that out. We sure do. But get tickets now. Now. All right.

So I have some chip follow-up. It came in from an anonymous source. Oh. I choosing to believe is it chip yes i don't know what we can call this person chip if you like because they listed themselves as anonymous uh i believe this is the person who wrote in to us previously about the mac pro stuff oh interesting but not identified as such not identified because this is good this is this is this is good is good stuff that I obviously did not know, so please, go on, Jason. The way this was written, it feels like it has an element of knowledge, and so I'm just, in my mind, choosing to believe it's the same person, but I have no way of knowing that because they just left the field as blank and anonymous.

So, on last week's show, Jason posits that the Pro chips, the Apple Silicon Pro chips, are binned Max chips. And based on Mark Gurman's report, the M3 will have separate designs. In fact, there have always been separate designs for each of the M, the Pro, the Max,

and then the Ultra, which is two Max chips. Yeah. The design of the Pro can be overlaid exactly on top of two-thirds of the max with the lower section of the gpu sliced off but it is made like that not cut like that right they don't chop it they don't chop it off that's fair certain other blocks may also be excluded from the pro design based on the feature set. Some background on chip design. Each block is basically designed once, regardless of the layouts. A separate physical design team takes the single logic design

and lays out transistors to fit together like Legos. In most cases, those same Lego blocks are reused across variants, but sometimes size constraints mean certain blocks need to be reshaped. The internal logic of the block doesn't change just the physical shape of it so what's interesting about this and i appreciate this feedback this is great um is it it's german's report still suggests a change in approach from the m1 and m2 but it sounds like the right way to phrase it would be that previously they seem to have a design where they where the pro was overlaid on the max and there was a lower section of gpu sliced off uh in the design not in the actual chips right what seems to be the case Is that some CPU cores are also omittable. Because the CPU cores used to be the same between the Pro and Max chips.

And Gurman's reports say the Max chips will have more CPU cores. So it may be the case. Unless they're worried about yield to the point where they're putting the same number of CPU cores on both the Pro and the Max and then just deactivating them for the Pro. But using the same design because they're worried about the yields. Or some of the CPU cores are sort of like down in the design and omittable. Because the CPUs used to be the same. And then in the m3 according to german they're not they're going to be more cpu cores as well as gpu cores on the max so there's a design change going on here but it's not a change from like they were bend and now they're not because according to to chip uh which is who i what i'm calling this anonymous person

according to chip that is uh is would all be in the design and not in the you know they're not they're not taking a saw and like hacking off part of the the chip maybe they'll they'll go like the electric car route and let you like pay an in-app purchase to unlock the other cores oh i hope not can you imagine that oh man that'd be so terrible you know you know i can yeah it's not outside of the realm of possibility but i can't imagine it that's how bad it is that i can i can't imagine that yeah thank you chip for that follow-up thank you chip anonymous chip anonymous chip informant chip for short how about that i love it this episode is brought to you by factor

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That's true, the original iMac.ge put together what they referred to on The Verge cast as a package, which was an interesting term to me that I'd not heard before, but feels like a publishing. We're very publishing focused today on Upgrade. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it is. The first half is publishing. The second half is Disney. That's where we are today. Okay, that's what we're all about. This is a publishing and Disney podcast. The publishing and Disney crossover that we're all hoping for. Uh-huh. Some Kindles occasionally. So they put together a package of articles celebrating the iMac

and the impact that it made on personal computing. And you contributed to this. I believe was the only person outside of The Verge who wrote a piece. And they had like a bunch of different pieces written. And you kind of focused on the impact that it met that the imac made on the industry yeah so i uh at actually in the work area at wwdc i saw this i saw this conversation happening i remember yeah i was talking so the verge guys were there so they came over to the table where i was working i stood up and i was talking to them and it was

it was neilay and dan and david um from the verge i think there might have been somebody else there i don't remember um and uh i i like those guys like they i wrote something for them like right after macworld uh exited print and i left um i've written a couple of pieces for them over the years they like obviously they think of me as a person they can go to who remembers things that happened deep in the past of apple which i am that person it's not my specialty but i am that person um yeah i like those guys so um dan who has very similar he was uh he was doing a keyboard thing and he was talking about struggling with e-ink uh android e-readers and stuff like dan and i have a lot in common about this stuff it's kind of funny dan is

a listener of this show because i've heard him talk about his dongle town show in the past so hi dan so hi dan um dan said hey i mac anniversary in august uh would you like to write something for that and i said great and it was like you know that was back in june so speaking of magazine deadlines being told here's an article that i would like you to write in two months i gotta say that that's also pretty like um that's that's good like i've i will you know i've seen for some of my friends in this world before where an anniversary rolls around and we go oh there's an anniversary it's tomorrow or like Or like, ah, I checked the Apple hardware calendar and next week is the anniversary.

No, they knew two months in advance. They're not, I mean, technically, you could have known this 25 years in advance, right? But certainly, you could have, and it shows that they do some planning and they're looking at things that are coming up and trying to do this. And that's how you get a whole package together.

Funny story is that one of the things that I wasn't supposed to talk about is the, is the impact it had on other design. Cause they were going to have a piece about like all of the other translucent blue, green plastic products that came out there. And I, I, I submitted a draft of my article about a week before it was due and said, here's where I am right now. I sort of reached a stopping point. It was like a Friday afternoon. And I said, you know, it was supposed to be about 2000 words. It's only about 1200 words.

I'm just wondering if there are things that you missed and if you like this direction. I just wanted to give, since I had reached a stopping point, I was like, let's let him say, you know, this is not what I wanted or I want something else. And instead he came back and said, oh yeah, that story we were going to do about the design fell through. So you can talk about that now. And I was like, yes,

I can talk about the George Foreman grill now. And now, and I honestly, with that and a couple other things, I got actually got to the word count of 2000. So in the end it all kind of worked out. And it was great. I, you know, I definitely am aware of writing for that very large audience that is a different audience from mine. But it was fun to revisit that era and think about what it was like to be in that era and where it took Apple after that. Yeah, I was happy that even then it still felt like Jason. You still had you came through in the article. Yeah, there's some first person in there. I had some first person stuff in there.

It was not, I tried to do, I made a Princess Bride reference. You know, I did some stuff and they left it all in, which is great. Because I also working with, you know, an organization like The Verge. I'm like, you know, I don't know. They could rewrite it and move things around and all of that. And it pretty much came through. So that was nice to see too. assume i mean obviously it's information you had a lot of this information you lived a lot of this but i would assume that some of the 20 max research

probably helped or at least had this some of this stuff a little bit fresher in your mind than maybe it was otherwise maybe i mean honestly i didn't i did go back and listen to the podcast i did about it yeah but mostly this was just me kind of like thinking about um about the that era but you're right i i did go through this process three years ago two and a half years ago as well and so it was it was definitely fresh in my mind so some of those thoughts that I had in that piece were thoughts that I had already had, if not during 20 Max or 2020, then during one of the 20th anniversary of the iMac or something.

But the more time, honestly, the more time you get, your perspective changes. And also there are those moments where you have an observation and you think, I don't know if I made this observation before, but I'm gonna make it now. And the one that really stuck out to me was that I was thinking about how,

I don't think I mentioned anywhere just how wild it was that the iMac shipped with OS 9, right? It did not show, OS 10 didn't exist yet. They had brought Next into Apple andve had taken over and they were working on os 10 but like os 10 wasn't out it wasn't it was just a glimmer in steve jobs and avi tovanian's eyes at that point right um but if you look at the imax design with its blue green color and the fact that the the plastic on it has this, the white plastic has this kind of vertical,

like ribbed texture on it. It's literally the aqua texture from OS X. The iMac was, and it was just a moment that I don't think I had written about before, which was just the iMac was so popular that Apple based the interface of its next generation operating system on what an iMac

looked like. That's wild. That's wild. There were three things that I wanted to talk about today that were, I felt what they felt new to me or like, like different to me than the things that I've heard you or others talk about, about the iMac before. And that was one of them where like, it maybe is one of those things where like, you know, kind of internalized to me having seen that. Cause you know, I used iMac G threes with, I was 10 on them. I don't,

I don't think I ever used one with is eight, right. Was the, what, what did they ship with or nine? I think it was always not. I don't think I ever used an iMac with, with nine on it.

I think I only used a iMacs with, with OS 10 on them. I don't know why exactly but that just would have been where i came to that makes sense i mean it wasn't it was very quickly right in i guess you know over a few years those if those were lingering around they probably got updated to os 10 sure and i used them in like educational environments i didn't have a exactly like i i would use them in school and and i um i did a work experience placement where i was at this like computer lab in east london and my job was to update

all of them to some version of os 10 like that was and there were like 100 and something computers and i basically spent a week updating these imax like that was my job, which I loved. So 8.1 is apparently the shipping version of the original iMac was 8.1. And then, I mean, you could classic Mac OS, it definitely, we could say, so if it was 8.1 and then rapidly, you know, went to 8.5, 8.6 and then 9, but it was not an OS 10 computer. And keep in mind that OS 10 went into beta, but like didn't even ship, you know, a usable version until 2000. And this thing shipped in 98. So there was definitely time there where it just ran classic Mac OS.

But there is so true that like in my mind, I guess I'd kind of just internalize the idea of like, this is what Apple stuff looks like. Like the Aqua interface, right? That like, oh, it just, this is just Apple, all of it. Like the hardware and the software just all looks like, like the Aqua interface, right? That like, oh, it just, this is just Apple, all of it. Like the hardware and the software just all looks like this.

You know, you could even say like where some of the plastic look like and the pinstriping is like, there wasn't massively similar from each other and like all of it tied in together really well. And so it's just like an interesting thought that like, yeah, they obviously, they would not have come up with the Aqua bubble interface without the iMac.

Right. Like you have to go from one to the other. It was literally Apple saying, what do people think of us? What should a computer look like? And the answer was, let's make an interface that basically matches the iMac. And those design details didn't just appear on the iMac. They appeared on the G3 Power Mac. They appeared on the G4 Power Mac, ultimately. They echoed throughout the line. They were on the iBook, some of them. It was part of the family, but it all started with

the Bondi Blue iMac G3, right? That is where that was set down. And the reaction to it was so strong that they wrote it, right? They went with it for a long time. I had a friend who had a Power Mac G3. That was like the coolest thing. And he had the, whatever the display was at the time as well,

the cinema display. The weird tripod display, display yeah i had like a little tripod base and it was just this big yeah is it the one where like kind of like the front of it kind of stuck out a little bit like over the edges like maybe it might have been a later one but i might be thinking yeah i don't know display maybe so yeah that that was just like the he's just had the coolest setup to me it's like oh man look at this thing look at all the stuff it does and look at how it looks. It's got big handles on it.

Another thing you mentioned, and they spoke about this specifically on the Verge cast, is like a thing that was surprising to them too. So this is a quote from your article. After Windows became dominant,

the Mac's greatest liability was simply its incompatibility. But the rise of online services and the internet in the mid-1990s gave Apple a unique opportunity. On the internet in the mid-1990s gave apple a unique opportunity on the internet nobody knew you were using a mac right and i linked to that on the internet nobody knows you're a dog yes um because that was yeah the the thinking about it this time like you have to talk about the perfect timing that apple had with this that they were down

trodden right they were falling apart um they they had one shot they had this diskless workstation project that was going on um that got appropriated and turned into the iMac but the iMac alone like it played on all of Steve Jobs's things about like it's an appliance it's a it's a computer for the rest of us it's a single you know it's a standalone item that you just plop down on a table like that was jobs going back to his original mac playbook absolutely and they they had the design flourishes and all of that great great it was an era of beige computers attached to beige monitors crt monitors with a bunch of beige accessories hanging off of it. That is what that era was. But I think the thing that went over the top with the iMac was it was an era where you could buy an iMac to get on the internet, right? Or an online service like AOL or something. That was a thing that was

happening in that era. And so Jobs was savvy enough to name the product for that, right? iMac, the I stands for internet. And to do that no step three ad with Jeff Goldblum, which the whole idea there is, here's how you get on the internet. You plug in an iMac and then plug it into the phone line and you're on the internet.'s it there's no step three and as an incompatible operating system with windows riding high like didn't matter what computer you used for your email didn't matter what computer you used for the web and it gave the Mac a little more oxygen and And on the verge cast, what they talked about, and I think they're absolutely right about that is the internet didn't just enable like the Mac to succeed. Like the internet and the web was an injection of standards into a world of

computing that was entirely proprietary and basically owned by microsoft and you know over the years that has led to an incredible diversity in devices using the internet because it's not just windows pcs right it's max but it's also android phones and iphones and ipads right like in the in that era everything was just a windows pc it was completely locked down but the internet was like a little wedge like you could be on the internet and you anything could be on the internet and anybody could do it microsoft tried really hard to break the internet and had everything be like Internet Explorer with a plugin that only ran on Intel processors on Windows. So you couldn't go to that website if you're on anything but a modern Windows PC. And fortunately, they failed.

They couldn't push that one across and keep completely dominant. And as a result, lots of things opened up because any device as weird or incompatible as it wanted to be, if it got on the internet and it looked at webpages, you know, you could make it work. And that's what allowed the iPhone to work as well. But it started with the Mac because the Mac was so incompatible. Like you could run Office on it and Microsoft kept, you know, became committed again to keeping it on the Mac. But like the real story there is it was a cool, fun solution to get it on the internet. And it didn't really matter if it didn't, you know, use the same software as your computer at work or something.

It was just, I'm interested in the internet. Is there an appliance I can buy to get on the internet? And that was Apple's answer was like, yes, the iMac. Isn't it cute? You put it in your house. I'm interested in the internet is there a an appliance I can buy to get on the internet and the and that was Apple's answer was like yes the iMac isn't it cute you put it in your house you aren't embarrassed embarrassed by it you don't have to put it in like a back room somewhere where this beige monstrosity lives and you just plug in a couple of things and it works you don't have to you don't have to worry about the rest of it it's just it was incredibly smart but it was also a very particular moment in time where they had that opportunity and it was incredibly smart but it was also a very particular moment in time where they had

that opportunity and it was almost like the product embodied what the internet was as well like interesting and new and fun right and like a thing you want to go out and see what it's all about and it's exciting and and like the iMac did that where they became synonymous right in that way of like not only was it so easy it also kind of embodied what it was to be online then and then did the weird thing of like then the iMac probably then ended up going on to change the way the internet looked I suppose like as well as everything else around it. And while Steve Jobs' vision was a computer for the rest of us, sort of like an iMac in every home, one benefit of this approach was in education because these were pretty good education systems because, again, there weren't monitors to come unplugged and accessories

to come unplugged. They were pretty much just these, they're like, they're like tanks, right? They're these just big 40 pound blobs that sit on a desk. There is a handle. You can lug it around if you need to, you can take it off the cart and put it in the classroom or whatever, but you plug a couple of things in and you're done, right? Like, and, and it will just sit there and be the computer in the classroom or in the computer lab or whatever. Um, got Apple into a bunch of schools and classrooms and got people their first taste of using a Mac, which was a trick that Apple pulled with the Apple II back in the day. They gave an Apple II to every school in California, was one of their promotions, and

made a whole generation of kids who used the Apple II as the first computer. So this was sort of repeating that, where the iMac was pretty good in some of those settings. Even if it wasn't necessarily for everybody, it had some advantages, and then Apple pushed those advantages. The third point that I wanted to bring up was you said, upon its release, the iMac became so well known that it may have even eclipsed the Apple brand for a little while. Yeah, I went back and forth on may have even because I think you could argue that it did. But the Apple brand was strong, even though Apple was not particularly well liked and seen as sort of a dying failure. People still recognized it right but i think the imac started the rehab of apple and and apple's branding yeah um and then the apple store is also

contributed that and the ipod is is i think the one that did the most rehab of the apple brand because for a lot of people the ipod was the first apple product that they bought ever and they're like oh this apple stuff i like it and the brand like spoke to them in a way that a a non-compatible people the iPod was the first Apple product that they bought ever. And they're like, oh, this Apple stuff, I like it. And the brand spoke to them in a way that a non-compatible computer was probably never going to do. But if you look at the naming of the iMac's successors, I think that is the thing that says, iMac is the brand that has the resonance. So let's just repeat it with iPod and iCal and iSync. And it goes on and on, like all of those iLabels that Apple finally did turn away from. But the reason those were slapped on those products is because the I followed by a thing was synonymous with Apple. And for a time,

that was the brand recognition was I something. And that Apple was like along for the ride. And it's hard to imagine it now when Apple really is one of the top brands in the world. But there was a time when the little I was the branding for Apple, not the Apple logo. Yeah. And the Apple logo. And the Apple logo never went away. It's very prominent on all of these designs from the Jobs' return. Like Jobs really liked it and he got rid of the rainbow, but he like kept that logo

and he wanted that logo to be prominent. But like when you're selling and naming products, like now it's Apple Watch, right? But back then it was all put an eye on it because then people know that it's us. You know, just to go back to what you're talking about a minute ago, like I had a thought about the Apple branding.

Even Apple's logo was influenced by the iMac G3 for a while, right? Because it had that kind of like, it was like a bluish color and it had the shine as if it was 3D plastic, right? Like it even went as far as they changed the logo of the company to look like what it looked like on the top of that computer

and the other products that they made around that time. Yeah, it became monochromatic and that allowed them to do sort of like on the pro products, it could be monochromatic white or black and then they added sort of like the other colors just as they added to the iMac line. But yeah, that was part of the rebranding

was really saying Apple is going to be, uh, the Apple logo is going to be a single thing. And then, yeah, for a long time, it really was the, um,

Aqua blue embossed plasticky shape look like, and that was part, this was the Aqua era, like, and, and that Aqua era was influenced by the design of that original iMac. I have two questions for you with all of this in mind. Okay.

First one is, do you think the iPhone had as big an impact on the industrial design of products around it as the iMac did? Products around it? Yeah. I'd say no. Because even like of the competition. Sure. I mean, every smartphone looks even like of the competition. Sure. I mean, every smartphone looks like an iPhone. Yeah.

So in that case, yes. But what it didn't do is make a, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I, you know, the equivalent of a George Foreman grill based on iPhone design, I'm not sure, I'm not sure really exists. It was not quite that trendy, but it's certainly in its category. I mean, it had a vastly more of an impact on its category than the iMac did, right? Like there were some companies that tried to make PCs

that were iMac-esque. They didn't really work. And if you look at the computer industry, like that's not what a computer looks like even now, really. And laptops took over and laptops ended up being, like I would say that

the macbook air is the is the mac that had maybe the biggest impact on its category in terms of industrial design but the iphone certainly like before the iphone every phone looked one way and after the iphone very rapidly every phone looked like an iphone yes for sure but i think it's interesting right that like it made a huge impact on products of its type but not on the world visually well yes exactly i think the that's true of the iphone um and part of that is the minimalism of johnny i right like they they wanted it to be minimal they didn't want it to shout this is this is something that i didn't get into very much in my article on the verge but like that i've been thinking about which is as impactful as the imac was in so many different ways the g3 imac in a lot of other ways it wasn't right in a lot of ways it didn't have an impact and the biggest example is

in its own category because compute you can make the argument i make it in the article that what is a laptop but an all-in-one computer and so in that way job saying like all-in-one is a thing yes that's true but you know was the iMac a laptop no it was 40 pounds it was a 40 pound CRT however I think the iMac so the iMac did not lead to a future where everybody was using little bubbly uh desktop computers that weighed 40 pounds. In fact, after a nice run, they replaced it with flat panel iMacs. They, that was the end. The G3 iMac is the only one that looked like that. And they replaced it other than the iMac, which we don't want to talk about. That was a G4 iMac, essentially that nobody, anyway, Stephen Hackett, ask him about the iMac. Um, but so it didn't,

it didn't even point the future for uh the computer industry and if we look at its design apple very quickly backed away from it so first thing is they put it in their pro product with the power mac g3 and i did this this was research i did do for 20 max for 2020 um you know there were letters in mac week about from professional mac users saying i i'm embarrassed by this computer because it's blue and looks like a toy and i want a serious computer i'm gonna hide this under my desk like that was the response and you can roll your eyes at that but the fact is the g4 power mac was gray and it got paler and paler as time went on uh and then and and the truth is so like uh you look at the iBook, the iBook was very colorful.

But the next generation iBook looked just rectangular and was white. It lost all that color and it lost all that flair. And I think part of that is Johnny Ive kind of like reacting to the success of the iMac and like recoiling from it a little bit. Like, okay, we went too far. And also just sort of entering his minimalist phase where he's like, everything's going to be monochromatic. And we're going to work more with metal and get away from plastic because metal is more premium. And he had great success with that. But as a result, I look at like the iMac styling and think it wasn't until more than 20 years later where Apple, and I'll approach was with the um the ipods right where

the ipods got the multi-color thing in anodized aluminum eventually is where they ended up um so they did get there um in in in one case but like i wouldn't call it influential it's like i feel like it's more like a footnote of the primary design decision that Johnny Ive kind of led the way on, which was, we're going to be pretty monochromatic and ultimately the goal is for everything to be metallic. And that is, you know, with a few outliers, like that's still the case. Now we see a little bit more fun on the M1 iMac and on the lower end iPhones. But, you know, the lesson that they really seem to learn. And I, sometimes I think that this is the greatest impact that the Power Mac G3 had is I think Apple just codified a lesson after the Power Mac G3 came out, which was pro systems shouldn't stand out. They just shouldn't stand out. They just shouldn't stand out. And since then, they don't.

Like literally since the Power Mac G3, the Pro systems don't stand out. They are all boring colors or not colors. And I think that is a lesson. We could argue about whether they actually needed to keep that lesson learned, but it certainly was feedback they got from their customers back in the day was, uh, this blue computer is not what we want. And so they made a version of it that was gray. How would you like it in gray? Yes, please keep it in gray from now on. So, so there are places where I, I think the influence was not as substantial. It didn't rewrite what a computer was and it didn't even

like make it like all computers come in bright colors now that also didn't happen it was that part was was uh more brief and maybe so successful and so copied that johnny ivory coiled when he saw the george foreman grill and he's like we got to get out of this we can't like we led the way there let's go somewhere else now i don't know my other question is so you mentioned the macbook air earlier and maybe that's the answer but i'm not sure do you think apple could ever introduce another computer that would have the impact on the scale that the imac g3 did it depends on what the impact is like apple Apple, that computer, without it, Apple doesn't stay in business. Yeah.

So on that level, the impact is never to be matched. Yeah. If we say a computer, like I can see the iPhone had that impact, obviously, and even more of an impact. Totally transformed Apple's business in the world. Is it a computer? You could say it was. But if you mean like a computer computer, like a Mac. Hey, I'm just asking the questions i i don't have an answer like you know it's like adam in the in

the discord has said vision pro is like maybe that's on the table like i don't maybe i don't know how to to necessarily ask it like do i mean a mac my guess is that the the imax impact is important i'll put it this way the imax impact was important for what it meant for apple apple needed a successful product a lot of what apple did afterward came from the imax success and was inspired by the iMac and the iMac success. The iPod is the product that did the Apple brand rehab, like I said earlier, where people bought Apple products for the first time and were like, oh, I like this. And then that led to the iPod Halo effect where people were buying Macs because they realized, oh, they like the iPod and maybe they want a Mac to go with it. And that combined with the retail stores really was this thing that made Apple relevant to a lot to go with it. And that, that combined with the retail stores really was this thing that,

that made Apple relevant to a lot of people where it was irrelevant before. And then that sets the stage for the iPhone, which was the, you know, basically world changing product, uh, there, the smartphone, but the smartphone was codified by the iPhone and, uh, and the smartphone has changed the world in so many different ways. And, and so that is, if there's a single product that has had an impact on the world more than the iPhone, I, you know, that from Apple, I'm not sure. Obviously the original Mac did just in, in popularizing the graphical interface that led to windows. But like, I would argue the iPhone, like the computer industry was leading to the iPhone essentially that, that, um, and I know I've said this before, but like the idea that we always viewed as the history of the personal computer industry. And now I have a hard time not looking at it as all that stuff was just leading up to smartphones. Like, really, where we were trying to go is where we ended up going with the smartphone. And then all the rest of that was kind of prologue to that moment so could vision pro do it i mean maybe but i would i would probably not bet on

on anything other than the iphone i will say what we mentioned earlier which is macbook air defined what a laptop should be for more than a decade that that one gets a gold star it changed the course of laptops because laptops were trending to netbooks then yeah and they became ultra books and and now they're just that's what laptops are like right i mean there are experiments out there but like what is a what is a laptop i think you just pull out a macbook air and say it's kind of like this right like this is what a laptop today and for the last 15 years has been more or less. Yeah. Because that was their, like the MacBook Air

was Apple's response to a netbook, like to the netbook craze, right? Everyone was like, Apple must make a netbook. Like, and netbooks were just cheaper, smaller, less powerful computers. Like honestly, kind of just like laptops for the, Chromebooks, essentially what a Chromebook is now, right? Like it was like what it was supposed to do

and what it was aimed at. And then everyone thought that Apple would do that. Apple instead released the MacBook Air and everyone was like, oh, this is just better. And then laptops went in that direction and then netbooks went away and then Chromebooks came around. And different market, but same kind of purpose.

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So we've got a ton of questions and follow-up about our conversation about Disney on last week's episode. So considering we didn't do Ask Upgrade last week, we're going to kind of do a double Ask Upgrade now. All Disney and then regular Ask Upgrade. Sound good?

Okay. Wow, sure. Let's do it. So Mark wrote in and said, do you think that Bob Iger's comments about the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, I've never said that out loud before. SAG-AFTRA. SAG-AFTRA. That's difficult for me.

AFTRA. AFTRA. It's like a fancy after. AFTRA. AFTRA. AFTRA. Before. After. After. Before and after. Do you think that the actors and writers strikes and make things difficult for studios?

I'm going to start this again, Jason, right? And this time I'm going to take all the letters out. All right, so here we go. Do you think Bob Iger's comments about the writers and actor strikes and making things difficult for studios had anything to do with the their effect on the valuation of disney in regard to someone buying them does it make disney less attractive to someone like apple especially to apple with its own union problems i mean i don't think so yeah like i i i was actually kind of perplexed by this question like strikes happen it's part of doing business in the entertainment

industry um apple has its own issues with with labor and it's in its stores like i i don't think it would be a decision like i don't think this is why apple makes a decision about a giant purchase like this it's like oh but they've got unions it's like yeah it happens so two things one i was gonna say on this like i don't think it makes them less attractive to apple because apple already have their own anti-union stance it seems with the retail stores so like you know if the idea about like strikes and it's not going to be a problem for them and as like they're not going to care about it and as david points out in the chat they're they're already part of this anyway

apple's part of the amtpt ptp it's just a larger portion it's just a larger portion of their business and am yes but they're part of the part of the producers who are being struck. Yes, that is very true. So I just don't think it's... That's the cost of doing business in the entertainment industry. And Apple's already in it. So, yeah. And also as well, I don't know about the valuation stuff

because a lot of these companies are saving money right now, which Wall Street kind of like, right? Yeah, in the short term jonathan asked i wondered what you thought about espn getting involved with betting with espn bet namely how it could affect any decision apple might make about whether they will not buy disney as a whole or would want to get involved with or spin off espn or ESPN bet. So as a background, ESPN bet is a new, because Bob Iger wanted some money, a new licensing agreement that they have with a,

for ESPN branded sports books. So another company is operating them, but they, in exchange, they will be, ESPN will be promoting the ESPN bet branding. I heard from a bunch of people who said,

I just can't see Apple being involved in gambling in any way. And I'm sorry. I heard from a bunch of people who said, I just can't see Apple being involved in gambling in any way. And I'm sorry. I feel like this is the mixture of what ideals do we want our big companies that we're interested in to follow? And what do they actually do? I'll first say Disney cares a lot about their identity too, and they made this deal. So what does that say about Apple? And I would also say this is such a big deal that if Apple thinks the right thing to do is buy Disney, a licensing deal for ESPN with a sports book is not going to change things one way or another. sports book is not going to change things one way or another. Also, I'll point out that on the MLB network produced pregame shows for Apple's baseball on Friday nights, they had a betting

sponsor. They had a whole segment. I think they have a whole segment about like betting stuff involving baseball. So, you know, Apple has already done some of that stuff, whether it was produced by somebody else, but the fact is it was on their air. And so I just think I got a lot of these that are sort of like, ah, but what about this? This will obviously be the thing that means that Apple can't buy Disney. It's like, look, if Apple wants to buy Disney, these things are footnotes. They could pay to make it go away. They could just grin and bear it. I don't think it's going to make any difference. And I, and I would just, again, I'm not trying to say, yay, uh, isn't it great? Cause I'm not a big fan of, of betting in general sports betting in particular.

It just doesn't interest me at all. And I, I, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of it, but I don't think that it's going to have an impact one way or another. Um, it's all over the place. It's everywhere. And Apple's going to be involved in sports if they want to be. They seem to want to be. And so it's going to keep coming up. And I just don't think I believe that we can say, well, we know Apple. Apple will say no to this. It's like, I don't know. Do we know Apple that well that they would say no to something like that? They put it on their MLB broadcast.

It's clearly not a hard no. So if they're like really wanting to buy Disney and part of the Disney sports business is ESPN and its relationship with a sports book, I just, I can't imagine it being an issue or a deal breaker. It might come up, but like, I think we're overthinking it, honestly. And I think that we're also maybe giving big profit-seeking companies a little too much credit. Because again, Iger at one point said he wasn't really comfortable with betting relationships being a part of Disney, and he made this deal. So what does that say? Look, if Apple today hated gambling so much, then they wouldn't have allowed gambling apps

on the App Store. Like, there was a time when there were no gambling apps. Services revenue. But I actually had a question for this. I was trying to do some digging. I don't think that apps like FanDuel use in-app purchase. Yeah, I think you're right about that. I don't think they do.

Like, I was just poking around and I couldn't see anything. Just the gambling games for children. Yes, but yeah, you're right. But like there was a time, I'm sure I remember this, like gambling apps were not allowed and they allowed gambling apps at some point.

Like unless my memory is failing me, but nevertheless, if Apple hated gambling so much, then they would just block gambling apps. They just wouldn't exist. Where like there are types of application that you just cannot cannot put in the app store gambling is not one of them again i want to joe rose and steel in our discord just said kudos to apple that apple fans think they're very classy

i mean this is i i want to say because a lot of this has to do with your view of what apple is and this is why i said last week, you might want to reconsider what Apple is today because Apple's a very different company. And I know we've got a question about that, I think coming up, Apple's a very different company, but saying what Apple would or wouldn't do, like, I don't know, Apple's done a lot of stuff that I would have said that they wouldn't do because they're changing and they're growing and they've got a lot of motivators in terms of money and investors wanting them to make more money. And like, that is the fact is, although Apple goes their own way in a lot of ways,

it's still going to go in places. I think that people who've been paying attention to Apple and have an idea of what Apple is in their mind, it's going to go to some places that they aren't expecting. And, and, and so a lot of this sort of like, I can't believe Apple would do this because this business X doesn't fit with Apple. It's like, well, an Apple that buys Disney is fundamentally an even more changed Apple than it was before. And those businesses that we would think like, well, Apple's certainly not going to ever create the Disney Vacation Club, the Apple Vacation Club. Can you imagine a timeshare business run by Apple? Well, no, I can't imagine that. But as a part of Disney's suite of kind of customer experience things that's in a division that's designed for that, that's still probably branded as Disney.

Probably, maybe they would stay in that business. Some stuff isn't going to fit. But like if you can pick out these little examples, like the cruise ships, because we got a lot of feedback about the cruise ships which are essentially theme parks on the water um and and uh that's why disney does their own cruise ships as they were unhappy with their licensees and they thought we need to do this ourselves sounds very apple to me and they're like oh apple and cruise ships well that'll never happen it's like i don't know right like if it makes sense and their business that's growing and they're going into different areas they might not have chosen to do an Apple Cruise Line, right? But if they're buying a Disney business where the cruise line is part of this virtuous cycle that's been created involving Disney and its intellectual property and the revenues it generates in various customer experiences, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

My point is if they buy them, they're a very different company or a changed company already. I don't think you would say, oh, but they won't do that, which is I think that there is a level of I don't want to insult anybody here. So let me see if I can phrase this right. That's all about sort of like discarding the unfamiliar. I'll put it that way. Discarding the unfamiliar. So you're like, well, if Apple buys Disney, they really just want the streaming service and the intellectual property and they'll drop the rest of the stuff like, you know, Hot Rocks. They'll sell it off and they'll get rid of it because it doesn't fit with your vision of what Apple is. But what I'm saying is Apple's vision of what it is itself has changed dramatically

and it can continue to change. Apple's vision of what it is itself has changed dramatically and it can continue to change. And if they made a Disney acquisition, they would do it with the idea that it would change their business, right? It would not be the same Apple as it was before. Fundamentally, if they spend that much money on Disney, they would be a very different business. But if the executives like what business they would become and they think it's an improvement, maybe they do that deal. I don't think there are very many things that would be deal breakers. The real deal breaker is analyzing the value of buying Disney's streaming service and its intellectual property and the other stuff that you find value in and creating a new business inside of Apple

that benefits Apple and that Apple's cash and its cash flow can make more successful. Those are the decisions, and that would be the deal deal breaker is if they look at it and say, no, it doesn't really work for us at this price. But otherwise, a lot of this little stuff, it's just going to come out in the wash. And don't say that business doesn't make sense for Apple because the Apple of today is probably not the Apple you're thinking of. And certainly an Apple that bought Disney would be in all sorts of businesses that you would not expect Apple to be in, just like Apple TV Plus is not a business any of us expected Apple to be in 10 years ago. Andrew says, regarding the theme parks, I've been seeing folks suggest that Disney could do what they've done with Tokyo Disney Resort since it opened in 1983. Let the theme park be

run by an outside company which licenses all of the Disney properties and Imagineering projects. What do you think of this as an option? I look, I'm going to leave it to the experts on Disney's theme parks. I will say that based on what I know, I don't see why theme parks couldn't be part of the core business. It's a very successful business. It's a creative business. It's a technology business in a lot of ways. It's a customer experience business. Apple and Disney are very good at that. I would say if they had a good reason to license and have an outside company run it, and I don't know the reason that Tokyo Disney does it that way, then they could do it. But I

just, I do not believe that you look at a Disney acquisition by Apple and say, well, the first thing they got to do is how to extricate themselves from their parks business. I just, I think that that kind of attitude is born out of what I was just talking about, which is the, I, my personal image of what Apple is as a business can't be reconciled with the idea that they would own theme parks. It's like, well, yeah, but they would own Disney and they'd be Disney theme parks. And as I said last week in one of my favorite moments where I was like, oh, you know what? Disney Imagineering is at the corner of the humanities and technology, right? It's already there.

And as you and I both agreed last time, separating your customers from their money in the most efficient way possible is very Disney and very Apple. So like, I don't know, I just, I can't say no about theme parks. I mean, I guess they could if it works, but that's more like an executive doing a business analysis of whether it makes more sense to have it on the ledger or to have a licensing arrangement but i don't know i feel like if you're going to have a product like that you'd want to control it and you'd want to control the creative aspect of it and and that goes for disney and apple also i think like that whole thing about like you know because they have these similar relationships with disneyland paris and uh disneyland and shanghai like i don't i think there kind of wasn't a choice yeah that may be i

mean depending on the way that it's operated right there are some places where in in that country you need to operate it in a certain way and so you have a local operator but you basically have the control and again that would be a illegal reason but i don't think of it as sort of a get the get the cooties away from apple by having some other third party because if you own disney's intellectual property like how is how is how that manifests in theme parks not core to your intellectual property it's a huge part of it and has been for more than 50 years and will continue to be so i i just don't i i think it's part of the flywheel for disney and that i i have a hard time seeing anybody who owns Disney's intellectual property giving it up and never say never.

But it would be a very different... Again, this is me saying again, if Apple were to choose to buy Disney, one of the things they would be choosing to do is to change their business and transform what Apple does and add a whole portion of the business that they weren't doing before. I don't see it being a, hey, nice streaming service. We'll take that and let's dump the rest. I don't see it as being that simple. But, you know, I'm not also we talk about this a lot. I'm not sure it's the best move for Apple to do this. I'm not saying that.

I'm saying that a lot of the arguments why apple wouldn't do it don't ring true for me an anonymous person wrote in but we got a bunch of people ask us some flavor of this question looking at market caps would it actually make sense to buy uh disney for over 150 billion dollars or to buy nintendo for around 50 billion dollars With Disney, you're buying a lot of baggage of different businesses of mixed potential. But with Nintendo, there is a lot of opportunity to grow their market based on integrated hardware, software, services, and IP.

Do you mind if I take this one? You start. I can't believe we're back to Apple buying Nintendo again. Look, it all comes around. Disney, Mike, I think i wrote about apple and disney like 20 years ago it still comes back around there was this whole conversation before the switch that apple should buy nintendo because nintendo were failing and like people like me and federico who knew something about nintendo knew that that wasn't going to happen because nintendo were

going to do okay again and then nintendo created what will probably be the most successful games console of all time and prove that they know what they're doing. But here's the thing. Nintendo don't want anyone to buy them. Like they're not interested in that. So if Apple wanted to buy Nintendo, it would have to be a hostile takeover, which is like a whole different thing, not going to work. And I guarantee you would not end up in a good place. Nintendo have intellectual property, right? For sure they do. We've seen it, like the Mario movie, absolute smash hit,

and they're going to make more of these now, right? Like Nintendo are now for the first time and actually understanding the value of their IP outside of video games and leveraging that, which is a very interesting time for that company, the same as the theme parks, right? But what Nintendo doesn't have is everything else I would want from Disney, like studio infrastructure.

Like I don't believe Apple is on an intellectual property buying spree. Like the intellectual property is awesome alongside all the other stuff that they would want. First off, shout out to Nintendo. I was actually just thinking about this um the other day it was my son's birthday because my son son's birthday is also relay's birthday by the way um six years ago on his birthday we got him a nintendo switch he had a birthday party on friday a couple of his

friends came over and they played a bunch of party games on his Nintendo switch on hooked up to our TV in the living room. And he plays on it all the time to this day. I mean, he, he does a lot of PlayStation gaming and all that, but the switch is still an active part of his gaming life. Six years later. I, I, I don't know. I I'm amazed by the longevity and success of the switch. It blows me away. Um, and since I, I am able to put a, a specific tag on it, it was six years ago.

Um, Apple buying Nintendo. I mean, I can't believe we're there either. Uh, I would say Apple's got lots of money and if they felt like it made sense and that it would be a good thing for the whole, I'm sure they would have a conversation about it.

I'm not sure for the reasons you listed, it actually makes sense, like strategically. Also, one of the reasons that we're talking about Disney is, as mentioned in that Hollywood Reporter article, the idea that we may be in a period now where because of the move to streaming, the entertainment industry is now sort of an ancillary portion of a technology industry that includes streaming. And if that's the case, then the entertainment businesses, which are harder to run and harder to be successful with on their own, may end up all being sold out to tech companies that can use them because they have more value as part of an integrated whole than as a standalone company. That's the argument, right? The argument is Disney's really struggled with Disney plus because they've had to put a lot of money in it. And now they are

losing money and they have some debt and there are all of these issues going on there. Whereas Apple can spend lots of money and lose money on Apple TV Plus because they're viewing it as part of the big picture of their ecosystem. And if that's the case, then there's pressure put on Disney to sell because their value is greater inside another organization instead of as a standalone. If that's true. If that's true, it's a question. Nintendo, it doesn't feel like that pressure is being put on them no they got the world in their hands right now i think apple would destroy the magic of nintendo right i think apple would would you either leave them alone in

which case why uh other than to protect them from somebody else selling them or buying them or you you ruin them apple apple and disney is a better fit than apple and nintendo just like what the companies are what's special about the companies and what is likely to be affected and there's this question my favorite question i don't know if this is a serious question or not but i love that it finds a way like love finds a way you know as does the mac pro chris asks in a world where apple owns disney along with all of its computer-based creative production special effects work does the mac pro get renewed attention incredible i don't know if this is like a performance art from chris or not but like i mean it's that is the encapsulation of about

400 hours of podcasts in the last year it's incredible this is like just the last month of my life you know like this is like apple disney my bro like all smushed into one just brought just great work from chris uh no it's the answer. Nothing's going to change it. The creative, hey, that creative group inside Apple would get some new members. Yes. Yep. Yep. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at TextExpander. When you work in a small team, every single moment is important.

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Now it is time for some Ask Upgrade questions. The first comes from Kevin. Now, this is a longer one, but we'll get through it. Okay, I'm ready. The new standby feature in iOS 17 extends the utility of iPhones as displays of ambient information when not in use as a portable device.

But this feature is severely hampered on pre-iPhone 14 devices that do not offer an always on display where the standby display turns off after a few seconds and must be tapped to wake it similar to how apple relented and shipped stage manager on pre-m1 ipads pro should apple support always on standby on iphones 13 and earlier. No. Next question. I mean, I'll... No, I agree. Always On display is a different feature.

The display is meant to remain on for a long period of time. Other displays, especially these OLED displays, they're not meant to do that. It's not just about the ability to stay on, right? They can obviously stay on forever. It's the life of the screen. It's burn-in. It's other issues with the screen and the power usage of it. They're not designed to do that. Whereas the always-on display is designed to do that. So if you want an always-on standby, you need a phone with an always-on display. I think that that makes perfect sense. They would have to, I don't even know what they would have to do

engineering wise to enable it on other devices and try to prevent the devices from having bad, the other iPhones from having like bad display problems. Like this is a feature conceived of for devices with an always on display. That's the whole point of it. So this is, I would say this is even more extreme than that stage manager example

where it's like the hardware very clearly is not intended to be used in this way except for the always on display so no yeah i feel like as well like the stage manager thing i'm still not sure that they made the right decision there but they did it and you know such is life but i the thing about the standby is like it's also one of its one of its main use cases and the way that apple is positioning it it's like oh it's really nice to have by your bedside and it's helpful for that because the always-on display doesn't light all the pixels well on the old iphones like wouldn't it be too bright like there would be an ambient amount of light that would come from the display, right? Yeah, they would step it down, the backlight, all the way down as far as they could.

And they would shift it in red. And there are ways you could do it. But again, I think the big reason, the number one reason, is that it's potentially going to ruin your display. And they didn't design it to do that. And they're not going to create some weird sort of like, how do you design those so that they shift like they take up a lot of the screen but you don't want them to burn in so then you're moving them around and all that it's like that's why they didn't design this feature for that at all in the future all iphones are going to be always on displays so they're just designing this for the future that's just what it is and i expect that there is an

amount of shift that's going on with those widgets like i remember that being a thing when the always on display was introduced that like when the OLED displays in general that Apple was finding ways to like subtly move the stuff. But this is all part of like what it takes to have an always-on display and that's what it's built for. And they've built it for OLED displays.

So like I'm sure it doesn't work the same. And also, look, I know people aren't going to like this, but I'm just going to be the one to say it. Like Apple's a company that sells devices. I think they made a bad precedent in relenting to this idea of going back on a decision that they made

to put a feature on previous hardware because now this question is asked about everything. I don't want to be too mean about it, but the answer is, if you want this feature, get an iPhone with an Always-On display. Trade in your old iPhone for a new iPhone that supports this feature if you want this feature. an iphone with an always on display trade in your old iphone for a new iphone that supports this feature if you want this feature that's how this works software and hardware go together and they have to move it together and they will always they've done this forever and

they'll keep doing it right like this is just the way stuff goes like i understand if you want this feature and you find it annoying but that means that next year it's the time for you to upgrade like it's time for you to upgrade now if you want that feature. I mean, I think it's actually surprising to me that standby exists on phones without always on display. Like I think that's a surprise that they did it at all. Like this could have easily been a, this is something for always on displays only.

Right. But they made it available and you just have to tap to wake. Yeah. Right. And so at least you can tap to wake. Right. but it's clearly conceived of as an always-on display feature yeah and so just like the lock screen stuff the lock screen's there you can tap to wake the lock screen too right but like it's there is an always-on component to it that is limited to the always-on display and that's i mean that's why it's there that's that's a feature of the always on display so if this is a feature you want so much the answer is to trade in your old

phone for a new phone get that credit uh put it toward the new phone and then you'll get this feature otherwise wait it out until you end up buying one down the road but like i i just i the yeah the answer is no if this is an always on display feature period richard writes in to say jason mentioned current apple being quite different from the apple of a decade ago and this is on the six colors podcast i think that you mentioned this i think i cut i mentioned this i mentioned this on upgrade too okay and that the long-held assumptions about the firm's behavior may not always apply what period would you mark as the rough start of present-day Apple? Is it as simple as the January 2016 earnings call where Luke O'Meastree first explicitly

mentioned the services strategy? Or another milestone like reaching a $1 trillion market cap? Present-day Apple. present-day Apple. Well, the idea that Apple is changing rapidly, you know, depends on why you're marking eras. It would be fairly straightforward to just say there's the Tim Cook era, and then there's the Steve Jobs era,

and that Apple has transformed in the Tim Cook era. Yeah, I think Tim Cook's had two eras. I think, well, I say Steve Jobs probably did too, but that was like pre-leaving and coming back. But like Tim has been CEO for so long that there have been kind of two eras. Sometimes there are long eras, but yes, I think a key point, and Richard mentioned it,

is that earnings call where they said, we have a strategy to grow services. We're going to grow it by, you know, I forget what it even was. We're going to double it in two years know, I forget what it even was. We're going to double it in two years. And they doubled it in less than that. It was, it was a dramatic marker of like, we're going to increase our services growth and they blew past it and they've continued to grow that business. Um, so, you know, I think it's hard to say where that dividing line is right now because we don't know where they're going. And I think it becomes

clearer in hindsight once you've seen the fullness of where they're going of like, oh, that really kind of, you could kind of draw the line here. But that earnings call is not a bad place to do it. The launch of Apple TV Plus would not be a terrible place to do it or the Apple One bundle, I think you could probably draw the line in there somewhere where the idea was they're very serious about services as a part of their business. So it could be that January 2016 earnings call, or you could wait a little bit and say like, this is as they started to roll out those services, what that looks like. But I think if we split the Tim Cook era into there would be something that would be based on sort of the services aspect of it. And roll out those services, what that looks like. But I think if we split the Tim Cook era into,

there would be something that would be based on sort of the services aspect of it. And they're kind of like enormous growth that has happened. Yeah, I think that the services part is the change part. Like I believe that. And it's just about where you draw that line. Like, do you draw that line when they set it? Do you draw that line at like the iPhone 6? Because it was like, that was whenhone growth started to shrink after that like you know when iphone 6 nine years

ago because the iphone 6 came out simultaneously with me leaving heidi g starting relay with steven like all that happened nine years ago um and the iphone 6 was a huge revenue boost for apple right it actually started the kicking the iphone revenue up into the stratosphere because they had the larger phones so there are lots of lots of places we could draw the line i think but um somewhere or you could use market cap if you wanted to or you could use a revenue number but like somewhere in the last five years eight years something like that where you, where you could say they're just of a different size than they used to be. I think it is that services stuff. I think a lot of the good, a lot of the bad, a lot of the interesting, right?

Like, you know, they were a product company, but now they're a services company as well as a product company. You know, now they're wrapped up in Congress, right? And this is services stuff. You know, it's like, oh, they've been antitrust around the world right like this is all services focus it's telling different stories but they're still like you know it's not like they've left the product behind but you've got to like got to expect that there are product decisions based on services too you know like would spatial audio exist without services i don't know but like does it all go together maybe yeah david asks do you think apple script is going to stick around

on the mac or should i be looking at shortcuts only so david last week I wrote an article on Six Colors about using folder actions to trigger an event using shortcuts where I was using folder actions to do an AppleScript folder actions, a feature. I looked it up, a feature introduced in like 2002, 2003, that kicks off on a watch folder, an event that happens and then it runs an apple script and my apple script runs shortcut right all it does um i use this as an example to say there's lots of stuff hanging around in mac os that is it's a little this takes us back to the beginning of the show in fact we're wrapping all the way back around things that are in decline. They're going away, but they, they kick around longer than you'd expect.

I feel like Apple script is like that. It would be so dramatic and it would break so much. If Apple script died on Mac OS and they haven't announced that Apple script will die on Mac OS, they've announced that shortcuts is the future and it'll be a many year transition i have because of how badly it would break things and i still rely on apple script to do stuff even inside shortcuts to this day so unless apple script forms a barrier in some way and like we're in the we're in the 64 bit applications, Apple Silicon world and AppleScript and folder actions and automator are all still here.

So my guess is going to be that AppleScript well, and also most apps that ship now don't support AppleScript, right? So AppleScript is already there in the somehow it is stuck around to this point. And if you pull it out, it will break a lot of workflows. And it's not the future. And it's got conduits to run shortcuts and shortcuts has conduits to run AppleScript. So I think I personally wouldn't invest a lot of time in building things in AppleScript unless I absolutely have to. I personally try to build everything in shortcuts if I can.

I use my existing AppleScript stuff. I use AppleScript as necessary as a bridge or to do something that I otherwise can't do. I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon just because it would have already. And it's useful to keep it around. And I don't think there's a lot of effort going into keeping it alive. I think it's just kind of there. So, you know, maybe they'll make a change to automation, but I feel like shortcut stuff is basically on top of Apple script. It's, it doesn't, it it's, it's doing its own thing and it's not going to break Apple script and automator. So my guess is that they will continue to sit around there as old tech. That's not really expanded upon and we'll continue to do that, um, for the foreseeable future. But like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't starting today. And this is actually starting when shortcuts was added to the Mac. I try to automate everything in shortcuts

first. In fact, folder actions, that piece I wrote about folder actions, that was one of the fundamental things in it was it feels dumb to write an Apple script because folder actions triple trigger Apple scripts. It feels dumb to write an Apple script to run a shortcut. I could just write an Apple script to do what the shortcut does. You know what? I don't want to. I don't want to do that. I want to write it in shortcuts. I can use it everywhere in shortcuts. And the Apple script just says, run that shortcut. And done. Problem solved. So, you know, I would try to do everything in shortcuts on the Mac if you can.

But also, if you have to go to Apple script, do it. Shell scripting is also out there. And that's definitely not going to go away. So you can also just run things, you know, terminal stuff and do it that way too. And I do that too. But shortcuts is the default now for me. It has changed over. I try to build it in shortcuts if I can, even though I don't think Apple script is going to get shut down. It's obviously at the end of its life and is not going to be anything more than it is. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode of the show, go to upgradefeedback.com. It's where you can send in

your Ask Upgrade questions. You can also send in your follow-up and feedback and your Snow Talk questions there too. That's upgradefeedback.com. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com. You can hear his podcast at theincomparable.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to my shows here on RelayFM and check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us on Mastodon. Jason is at jsnell on zeppelin.flights. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E on myke.social. You can also find the show on Mastodon. We are upgrade at relaysnll. Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com to learn more. Don't forget to get your tickets for the RelayFM 10th anniversary extravaganza

at relay.fm slash London. Thank you to our sponsors this week, TextExpander, Electric, and Factor. But most of all, thank you for listening, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.