Upgrade - 480: Never Do a Deal with the Preference Daemon
Episode Date: October 9, 2023...
Transcript
Discussion (0)
from relay fm this is upgrade episode 480 for october 9th 2023 this episode is brought to you
by wild grain express vpn and text expander my name is mike Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike Hurley. How are you?
Good. Happy new start of a week. Happy new month, although we did already record in October,
but it didn't feel like October for me, genuinely. Today feels like the first day of October,
so I'm very happy. I will just say, again, thank you so much to everybody that donated to St. Jude.
We raised an obscene amount of money. Thank you so much for supporting what we do
for another year. Until next time.
I have a Snow Talk question
for you, Jason Snow, to start out this
week's show. It comes from Ramon
who asks, Jason, do you like
orange juice with pulp or no
pulp?
No pulp.
I don't have a lot to say about
this. As a a kid i absolutely hated
orange juice with pulp as an adult i kind of don't care but if i had to choose i'd probably
choose without if given given the option but i probably don't care. That is exactly how I feel. Where as a kid, I would not handle this.
Like I couldn't handle it.
And I still stand by the reasoning that younger Michael said,
which is if I want a liquid, I want just the liquid.
I don't want solids in the liquid which i still stand by as a
reasoning for not wanting pulp or like any kind of pulp in any kind of juice but now uh i actually
realized this recently that i just i was i don't even remember where i was i think i was in a hotel
oh i was in a hotel in memphis this is just like a couple of weeks ago and i ordered some orange juice and they gave me the orange juice and i drank the orange
juice the orange juice had no pulp in it i didn't even think about it until i was halfway through
and i was like oh i've grown up now and i can handle the pulp uh but yeah i i would also have
given the option would choose no pulp yeah i i don't know i mean mean, like, yeah, as a kid, it really seemed disgusting to have little bits floating in your drinkenser in the door that crushed ice.
My favorite drink for a long time was orange juice with crushed ice.
Okay.
So you'll take the ice pulp.
I'll take the ice.
Well, yeah, it's bigger though.
And then you crunch on it.
And it's just like, oh, crunchy orange ice.
Like large chunks of orange in the orange juice.
Would that be acceptable?
No.
No, but ice has a totally different texture from oranges.
Frozen orange.
Frozen pieces of orange.
No, because then you just, you end up eating pulp.
If I wanted to eat an orange, I'd eat an orange, right?
Like I'll eat my one of my
favorite my favorite fruit is mineola tangelo so it's a you know tangerine but it's an orange um
and like i'll bite into those i'll eat those and you know what is an orange but orange juice and
pulp right like they're mixed together if i want that i'll eat an orange if i'm drinking it i don't
want your pulp i'll take it but I don't want it what is this
what is this
it's a
tangerine orange
hybrid
or tangerine grapefruit
hybrid I think
it's great
it's my favorite
fruit
I've never had one of these
it's a little like a
it's like a tangerine
it's like a satsuma
it's in the ballpark
it's just a different
particular kind
and it's available
generally in February
I love it
didn't know that
I like mandarins but yeah it's all in the ballparkbruary i love it didn't know that i like
mandarins but you know yeah it's all in the ballpark those are good too that's my daughter's
favorite fruit is a is a mandarin see the thing is like we have oranges it's kind of funny right
so if orange juice it's like the juice of pulp right but when you think about eating an orange
it's like something with juice you know because oranges are so juicy it's interesting it's pulp
with juice is what it is but it's a it's a whole thing but that's the choice yeah yeah juice is not a
fruit juice is juice i'm glad we cleared like we covered some serious ground here serious ground
everybody's walking away with something if you would like to send us in a question to help us
open an episode of the show just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snell Talk question.
I would like to remind everybody
that we have a Peculiar merch sale
going on right now
over at upgradeyourwardrobe.com,
which includes upgrade hoodies
and a selection of summer t-shirts
you can get in time for the holidays.
If you want to celebrate the summer
of fun this Christmas,
go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com.
Hey, Southern Hemisphere, it's your time now.
Yes.
You know what?
Actually, you're always complaining, all right,
that it's the wrong time of year.
Well, now it is.
We did it for you.
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So go buy your merch, upgradeyourwardrobe.com.
Should we do some follow-up?
Yeah, we should. We got a lot of it. should definitely do it b wrote in and asked jason is the color of your wacky inflatable children
delighting air dancer tube man actually international orange well i haven't gotten a
colorimeter out to measure its exact shade maybe that's a to-do item for when I bring out the Tube Man
this year.
But I can tell you,
I can report here
for the upgrade program
exclusively
that according to the packaging,
the color of my orange Tube Man
is orange.
That's all I got.
Well, you see, we've learned that like what is orange you know
we actually started out this episode like yes what is it i don't want to talk about it whether
they're whether you like pulp in your orange tube men or not by the way the answer is no
i feel like that that orange juice question may have been a tie-in to international orange that i
i didn't realize until right now until just now
well that's how yeah it's a real twist there i put a link in the show notes to a very good uh
instagram real short clip video thing that we did from the show i believe chip edited this we have
editor chip who helps us out with video now and it includes lots and lots of photos of jason and
the tube man it's it's almost like like some kind of scene from a rom-com or whatever where like
jason and the tube man are like forlicking around the world and you should go watch this it's so
good yeah chip basically texted me on on monday or tuesday and he said i need pictures of the tube man send me all the two men all right all right it's really good so our upgrade video team is uh yes editor chip and
social media maven jamie and they're working together it's a whole crew now it's a good crew
yeah we're built upgrade uh upgrade brand which by the way uh in case you missed it we did publish last week's episode to youtube in full
which is a thing that we're experimenting with now so if for some reason you would prefer a video
version of this show it is now on youtube we're at upgrade relay on youtube i'll put a link in
the show notes we've done it a few times now and we're gonna do it a few times more at least so
yeah we're gonna try it no guarantees no times more at least. Yeah, we're going to try it. No guarantees, no promises. If it falls
apart one week, you know,
I guess we could say we're in beta
with it. We're not committing to it. We're experimenting
with it. But it is there. We've heard from people.
I mean, it's not just finding new
people where it gets surfaced via the algorithm
where people make clips or things like that. It's also
that, you know, some of our listeners are like, oh yeah,
I'd listen to that. That sounds fun.
So, and you get to to that. That sounds fun.
And you get to see us.
So, yay.
Again, like as I said before,
we were talking about this a little bit in Upgrade Plus last week.
I am one of these people.
The majority of podcasts that I consume these days,
I feel like is by,
well, I was like, yeah, actually,
it's by Kind of Funny.
They're mostly video games and pop culture.
I do not have them in my podcast app i just subscribed to the youtube channel so you should yeah well so and we want to reach the goal here and we've said this on upgrade plus a lot but
we'll say it here too the goal here is uh make existing upgrade listeners happier and find new
people who might love upgrade if only they knew that it existed and could have it work in a way that they want to listen to this, listen slash watch this.
What we're not doing is changing the show.
Exactly.
So as a reminder, we do not see each other.
We cannot see each other.
This is not a video call.
We just have cameras on us recording us.
That's been the way since we started doing the clips. And'll be that way going forward and the cameras are off to the side
so we're not looking at them unless you know i mean occasionally i'll do like a little wave at
the camera when we're literally talking about recording ourselves but that's about it so it's
not and you can't see it you don't know the only thing that's changed about the show mike is now i
reliably take a shower on monday morning before the show that's it that's good news that's good news i mean hygiene's important
start the week off right so last week we spoke in during our mac os review about the high
performance screen sharing mode which you really liked from mac to mac and i wondered if this might
be the technology that apple uses for the Vision Pro because-
Yeah, there's that moment where I said,
you do it to a laptop and the laptop screen goes off
and you're like, oh, that's like the Vision Pro.
And that maybe that they're building it in there
because it's kind of what you would need.
Well, we had an anonymous informant get in contact
who said, you're mostly correct about how screen sharing changes in Sonoma are for the Vision Pro.
When you use a Vision Pro near a Mac that's signed into the same iCloud account,
a little pop-over button appears above the computer that, when picked, initiates screen sharing.
The laptop screen goes dark and the virtual screen appears in front of you,
which, of course, you can then move around, resize, et cetera.
It's glorious.
So we nailed that one, it seems.
Not all, I mean, I assume this is somebody who knows and it isn't, I mean, I feel like this comment
goes more or less with what's been announced and shown.
I don't remember seeing this little popover button.
You know what I mean?
Like there's some detail here, which who knows, right?
It's an anonymous thing, but it makes sense.
But yeah, it does feel like this, right? Like I i was thinking of it when you had that moment of realization i i was backtracking it and
thinking well sonoma is going to be the version that's out there when the vision pro ships
so whatever this screen sharing mode is it's probably built for vision pro as well as for
the mac right because this is the version that's going to be out there.
And they'll probably say,
I mean, they could use older versions of screen sharing,
but it wouldn't surprise me if Vision Pro is like,
must be a Mac running Sonoma to run this feature.
Would not surprise me.
Yeah, we're actually going to get into a little bit of that later on.
There's some interesting stuff around like Macs and Vision Pro.
But yes, I would expect if you want to connect a Vision Pro to a mac you will be running sonoma to do it uh i put this in
because we spend a lot of time talking about on the show but i also feel this like sense of
obligation now just to make sure you know that apple's q4 earnings call is coming on october on
november 2nd thank you yes i just added it to my calendar
thanks to you oh good i am actually happy that that was helpful because well you've done you've
done this early enough now that you've beaten my note that i do right to myself that says check on
apple earnings um because there was that one time and maybe like a year ago and you forgot that it was happening
until the day before and so now i worry about that for you and so uh here it is this will be
covering the july august and september months i believe um so it's not the big quarter of the
year which is the holiday quarter which is tech what apple calls their q1 because that's their
financial year but this is the one that will give us the early indication on the success of the new iphones
mike you mentioned earlier that we're in october new month it is we are now in
the holiday quarter we're in the holiday quarter whether you like it or not we are in that we are
in it now let me tell you jason i don I don't like it. I love the holidays, but I get scared about how busy the holiday quarter is for me these days.
Mike, isn't it less busy now that September is over?
September is not part of the holiday quarter.
That's true.
I mean, by a few days, it tends to be.
But it's a different kind of busy.
It's a different kind of busy.
Actually, you know what?
It's not busy. It's just high stakes. That's actually you know what it's not busy it's just high stakes that's uh yes you're doing cortex brand stuff and
so it's just like i don't have to like you know put in a bunch of extra hours but i just have it
there in my brain you know it's just like oh i get it i get it i'm starting to do all the you
know we're doing all the logistics for our holiday travel and all that.
I'm starting to realize, oh, when are we going to record this?
When are we going to do that?
Yeah, that's how it goes.
We had a very fun...
We won't share it, but we had a very fun
conversation about the Upgradies, didn't we?
We have some fun stuff for later on
in the year for the Upgradies.
The Upgradies and a potential
Christmas special special too.
You published
your iPhone 15 Pro review
over the past week.
I had fun reading through it. It was very good.
There was a couple of things that I liked
specifically that we hadn't really spoken about
previously.
One was you had a very good experience
with the ultra wideband
feature to find Lauren when you were at a sporting event, which I thought was kind of cool.
We were at a Cal football game a couple of weekends ago and we separated.
One of us had to go to the bathroom.
The other one was like looking for food.
And then she texted me and said, where are you?
And I think she had walked past me and not seen me.
And she said that she was further down and I didn't know which way it was. And I had that
moment where I realized, oh, we both have iPhone 15s. Let's try this feature. And I tried it and
it worked great. It, um, she gets notified. Jason is looking for you, which is hilarious,
but good. And then, and I think, And then you can just basically open Find My.
And I had Find My open.
And I was sort of like headed in one direction thinking she's probably down there.
And then it said, you know, suddenly it was like 10 feet ahead or 15 feet ahead or whatever.
And then it was like, yeah, that's cool.
It was fun to do that.
That's a fun feature.
You just have to have two iPhone 15s to enable that.
feature you just have to have a knife two iphone 15s to to enable that but the eventually everybody will have absolute you know precise positioning of you know of their friends if they want because
eventually this this tech will be everywhere you also uh shared some images that were like i don't
know like 20 times zoom or whatever right when you go to like the five and then just keep going
keep going yeah there's some artifacting in them from
the processing or whatever but it's kind of weird because it makes them look like ai generated
images like there's like a piece of a saxophone going into someone's face it's very strange
i think i think that may be what's going on i think apple may be doing some machine learning extrapolation at the super low down level.
And I say that because like,
and there were some that I didn't put in because there's some of like people in
the stands that they look like horror movie monsters,
right?
Their faces are all weird,
but I did zoom into full pixels for a few of these things where like the the name on the
back of the jersey i know what that name is and i can sort of see what it's trying to do there but
it's generated multiple things and maybe that's part of its image fusion as well that with the
because i'm holding it and it's 20x but whatever it's doing it's generated something that that at
a distance looks fine but you're looking close and like the letter forms are weird and wrong the the cal logo that is uh is a straight line is wavy
there there's like junk on the bottom of the of the letter c that's weird and then the the band
person has uh i mean they're they're playing the saxophone but like it looks like the grass
field is going into their face too and i think this is all just i mean what i i'm not creating
a gate here what i'm saying is that if you're apple does a pretty good job of those extreme
close-ups looking good yeah but what you need to not do is zoom in on the extreme don't zoom in on
the zoom because you will it becomes kind of obvious they're they're
doing some cleanup but it's just not it's not meant to be looked at that close and i i do wonder
if that part of their process actually is some machine learning based kind of like guesses about
what is there in order for it to look not just like purely pixelated and it has these effects so if anything i assume that
it's like trying to you know maybe draw in every other pixel or something like that like we're
looking at these two things together and we're trying to make an approximation of them because
things are moving or whatever you know some strange stuff is clearly going on absolutely
that's what's going on and and again it's fine um but it was a thing i noticed
that very clearly they're they're doing some yeah they're doing some some work there that um
isn't your average everyday uh you know pixely right like it's not it's not like that this is
it's showing if nothing else it's showing the image pipeline going on here yep having now kind of looked at the iphone in full on review mode if you had any
different takeaways or any kind of things that you were thinking before like fully reinforced
about this lineup of phones not really um i like them yeah they are new iphones uh i i closed the article with
a version of my um here's what you should you know here's what you should should do if you're
updating from last year or the year before the year before that you know right right because
that's the truth as most people are not we get lost in the increment from year to year, but so many people don't do that. So, um, you know, it, it, incremental
progress is the name of the game. That's just what it is. They focus on the camera. I really
like the action button. Um, you know, the UWB stuff is very, continues to be interesting,
but kind of under used. I do think there's going to be a moment where it kind of boils over and is everywhere i think i i can foresee a time you
know five years from now where our cars and doors and and smart home stuff all know exactly where we
are at all times and you can do some very smart automation once the system knows where you are
right that your your door lock knows you're walking up to it.
And so it unlocks.
If you're on the other side, it doesn't go,
oh, you're close to the door, I'll unlock
because it knows you're on the inside.
It can do stuff like that that Bluetooth cannot do
because Bluetooth doesn't have positioning.
So then CarLock's the same way.
They use Bluetooth now, but with ultra-wideband
instead of Bluetooth or NFC.
NFC, you've
got to be right up against it. Bluetooth, it's making a guess, but it can also be hijacked.
Ultra wideband can't be hijacked because it's got a timer in it. So if somebody tries to
rebroadcast your Bluetooth from the restaurant out to the car, the time codes won't match
with ultra wideband, but with Bluetooth, they don't do that. And so it works because it's all based on amplifying the signal to make it seem like you're close to the car.
There's lots of reasons that that'll be cool, but it's underused right now.
But I thought it was worth a piece.
Really, having not gotten the phone under embargo and then also being in Memphis for the podcast and all know, sort of like everything, it feels like everything's been said about the iPhone.
So I ended up kind of taking the approach of,
after a couple of weeks with it,
do I have some observations or thoughts about these products
or also what Apple's doing in general?
I did, Lizard's Upgrade will not be surprised.
I said, titanium, yes.
Colors, bad.
And that's, I mean, you know, natural is really nice, but make no mistake, it's just gray.
I mean, it's a nice gray.
It's a really nice gray.
But I did a mini rant about the fact that wouldn't it be nice if they gave us choices and that some of those choices were colorful and not dull because as a spread of colors i don't think anyone cannot can can deny that the
iphone 15 pro is just boring but yeah it's it was it was good to get it off my back too because it's
one of those things that i know i have to do it and i struggle with thinking about what am i going
to say what am i going to do so you know i did my I did my best. I was just saying on the iPhone 15 Pro Max again,
like this is my favorite build of any iPhone.
I find it such a joy to hold.
I just think it feels so great.
Like it's that combination we spoke about already,
the lightness and the rounded edges.
Like I just really, really, really like it.
And I do, I know a lot of people don't but i do like the
design like the overall design of the flat edge stuff like i just think it looks really good
um so yeah i'm a big fan uh i did drop my iphone this is i never did this is kind of incredible
where i had a conversation with anina because i was selling i was giving selling my alpha phone
to my brother and was remarking about how it was in good condition,
my iPhone 14 Pro Max.
I was like, look at that.
You know, this is great.
I don't put a case on my phone.
And I was like, it's not an issue
because I just don't drop my phone.
That night I dropped my phone in the bathroom.
And it didn't break at all,
but I kind of bent the frame a little bit from the the back which is kind of interesting so there's a
very there's just a kind of kind of a sharp point i will say at the top corner of my phone near the
camera but that's just the the the whole uh experience of it all now did it activate okay
oh the what like what do you mean when you came home, were you able to get it activated and everything? I did it as soon as I landed.
It was very simple.
Beauty.
On the plane?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The issue was just what I thought it was,
which was like,
I couldn't activate it before I got home
because it couldn't contact my network, you know?
You're right.
Yeah.
Because it needs to phone home to actual home
to do the activation.
It's very simple.
Very, very simple.
Nice.
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Jason, I believe you have received a box of wild green goodness.
Box of bread and pasta.
Yes, I have.
What more could you want in your life?
You know what I mean?
Just like, here's a box of good bread and pasta.
I did not know that I needed this.
I was like, I'm packing the box and it's like, there's pasta, frozen pasta here and frozen loaves of bread. Um, and then, you know, what do you do? You pop the bread in the oven and you got basically hot, fresh baked bread. Uh, that's real good. Like really good. And, uh, the pasta you're like, well, why don't just get dry pasta well this is frozen but it's
frozen like fresh pasta so it's uh like all soft and very high quality fresh frozen pasta is
excellent like that that's the way to live your life it's real good so it's like you know having
made pasta in the past like it's very different to have the fresh pasta than the dry stuff. Would you say you made pasta in the pasta?
Sorry.
Sure.
I wouldn't because I speak with an American accent.
Pasta in the pasta.
No, not pasta in the pasta.
Pasta in the pasta.
Well, you see, I'm trying my best anyway because I would say-
Mary?
Mary.
Before I was speaking to so many Americans, I would say pasta, right?
But now I say pasta.
Because it's a little-
Pasta.
Pasta and the beaters.
Yeah, so it was really good.
Lauren actually did the bread, and they keep it until it's dark brown.
And it was like the outside was super crispy, and the bread was really nice.
So it's interesting. They don't send you dough. They send you a loaf outside was super crispy and the bread was really nice. So it's interesting.
They don't send you dough.
They send you like a loaf of sourdough
and a bunch of loaves actually.
And so you're thinking, well, wait a second.
You're just heating up frozen bread.
I don't know how they're doing it.
I don't know.
Are they under baking?
I don't know, people.
All I know is that I popped it in the oven
or Lauren in that one, Lauren popped it in the oven
and we waited for it to be brown and we brought it out.
And it was so like, seriously, instead of having extra
helpings of, uh, of the pasta, I had extra helpings of the bread and we saved the pasta
for leftovers. Cause the, the, the bread was, then the pasta was great too, but the bread was
so good and you know, nothing beats that fresh out of the oven bread, honestly, like in that
moment it's is the best.
So yeah, it's really tasty.
Yeah.
Yeah, I got a little more, right?
Because I got a whole box.
So I got some more bread to bake up and some more pasta.
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Our thanks to Wild Grain
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and RelayFM.
You have some follow-out
about Connected.
Yeah.
Would you like to share?
One of my favorite
technology podcasts
is the Connected program
here on RelayFM.
Yeah, what you guys talked about,
this is a follow-out
and it's also just
sort of a mini-topic,
but Google Pixel event.
Google announced
all sorts of new stuff for the google pixel
one of the things they did was they say they're guaranteeing seven years of software updates which
is interesting and i've seen a lot of people play it as being like take that apple but it's really
weird because it's really take that past Google, right?
I was thinking about it.
I have bought multiple Google phones over the last 10 years because I want to have something
that runs the latest version of Android.
And it's shocking how quickly you have to buy another one because even Google doesn't
support its own operating system on its phones after a couple of years.
It's ridiculous.
Yeah.
So I love this.
I have some skepticism, right?
Like, what does this really mean?
And I think the answer is it probably essentially means security updates for seven years.
They said feature updates, too.
I guess what they said.
All feature updates?
No, they said feature drops. Feature drops. Which is what they said all feature updates no they said feature drops so like drops which is
what they call them so it won't get everything but it's still gonna get stuff like it's gonna
get new versions of android but they might not have everything is what they're saying right i
that's my assumption is is it will reduce over time but it will be that you'll get some stuff
um and great like great because i actually had a moment
while i was listening to connector where i thought oh i could buy the new pixel and know that i could
actually stay up to date on android i said again for a while which is good i mean but but i'm and
i'm not an android user but so my use case is very weird but like i like that idea i think you guys made the point
quite rightly that pixel buyers are probably not the kind of person who buys a phone and holds
onto it for seven years but i do wonder if some of what what uh google is doing here is just shaming
the android phone business right i think i feel like that's part of what's going on here is just
google saying we should do better and we're gonna put a flag in the ground i think that this is more as you say that they are trying to make this a stronger thing throughout
all of the their partners right that i don't really think that they're gonna sway a bunch of
iphone owners now to the pixel because it's going to get them,
uh,
eight years of feature updates because Apple gets basically close to that.
If not hitting that,
you know,
with certain models and we'll continue to,
I think ultimately this will hindsight will say this was a mistake from
Google.
I think that this is just going to be one of those things where they'll,
they'll regret it later.
This was,
yeah,
they regret it. Or there'll be, well, I gotta be honest. The first time I heard about this is just going to be one of those things where they'll regret it later. This was, yeah, they regret it.
Well,
I gotta be honest.
The first time I heard about this,
I thought it's going to be really interesting in five years where Google announces that this pixel will not be supported going forward.
And that everybody who bought it can get a coupon toward a new pixel.
Yeah.
Which something,
which it would not surprise me if something like that happened. I just think that you don't need to promise this up front you can just do it
and i don't think it makes that much of a difference this seems like an extreme
promise so much seven years i i feel like if they had been five i might have been like oh okay seven
feels extra enough that i look at it and think one yeah they're going to regret it two they're
probably going to try to weasel out of it.
And three, who's it even for?
I do wonder, like, weaseling out of it,
it's that same thing, right?
Which is, you could do this.
What's the minimum amount?
On year six, what's the minimum amount we can do
and still be considered kind of like
up to the letter of the promise here?
Because they're just like
there are things that you know maybe people will hate me for saying this i don't know but i'm
gonna say anyway like the idea that like this is better for the environment people aren't keeping
their phones for seven years people that buy pixels are not keeping that phone for seven years
the only way it's better than the better for the environment is if there is a good resale market for Pixels, right?
Because that's what happens with Apple phones, right?
Which a seven-year-old phone will not have a good resale.
Yeah, I know.
But after two years, you could sell it back and somebody else can sell it to a market that is not going to pay full price for it.
And Apple does this with iPhones too.
There's a lot of reused, refurbed, resold iPhones that hold, you know, they have some value because
they're able to be kept current and the Pixel will be like that. I agree. I think that it's
just too easily overstated, but at least let's just say, I think an android phone that can't run the latest android is worthless almost
but a pixel five years from now while not great will if it's running the latest version of android
and it's secure and all those things be have some value so i'll give it i'll give it you know
fractional credit for that i i want to say though
apple has been so good at this for so long but i do wonder if apple standards are slipping a little
bit here and the example i want to give is i don't understand why the iphone 10 is obsolete
i don't understand it iphone 10 should should run ios, and it doesn't.
The XS does, but the X doesn't.
And that's the first time in a long time where I've looked at a phone that is not allowed on the current OS and thought, that doesn't seem right. That phone is not that old, and it was so much more advanced than what had come before it.
And so for them to drop the portcullis right
there, it seems weird to me. It seems a little weird, but generally Apple is very, very good at
this. And I don't think Apple is going to be pressed into making promises because Apple doesn't
like to talk about the future, but I think Apple's track record is pretty strong. And they have that,
of course, they have the OS update thing. and when you fall off the os update train you're still on the security update train for a while um so i think that's good i do wonder
if in the long run i had this theory that that that apple silicon max may stay on the os update
train for a very long time um i wonder how apple feels about this. But like in the long run, wouldn't it be better to keep everybody using their Apple hardware secure and just move to a model where everybody's on the current OS, but they don't get these features instead of having to leave them behind?
I don't know.
I don't know what they're going to do there.
I'm looking into this iPhone 10 now.
I'm intrigued because the XR is still...
Well, XR was the next year.
It's that year, the 10 year, the 8 and 10 year is obsolete now or, you know, not supported.
Like, so the A11 in the X and it was the A12 in the XR.
I guess that's the cutoff point, maybe.
Yeah, I guess that's the cutoff.
I just, it's,
that one feels a little wrong to me.
Yeah.
It's like seven years old.
That doesn't feel like a very long time ago.
Yeah, seven years, right?
That's the Google guarantee.
Yeah.
But the 10, I don't know,
the 10, it seems weird to me
because it felt so,
such a leap forward
and yet it still just gets cut off i don't know but it was the fact is it was a long time ago
and i guess that shows how well apple has handled this overall is that cutting off a seven-year-old
phone feels premature because that's a long time right but but i guess
what strikes me about it is the iphone 10 is the first of its kind of the phones that we still use
today right if you think about the body class of the iphone and the fact that like there was the
early iphone era there was the four and the four and five era of design then there was the six to
eight era and now we're in the 10 era where the phones look more
or less the same it's very funny looking at the ios 17 compatibility list and then seeing the
iphone se in there and it's like there's got to be designers at apple that are like please please
please do something with this because like from a design like a user interface design
perspective like that thing is just still out there doing its thing you know and it's and it
is now the only one that doesn't and you should say the 10 still could have too but like just
looking at that list it's the only one that that doesn't have that new silhouette, edge-to-edge silhouette.
Yeah.
So I do.
So six years for the iPhone X,
but I don't know.
I mean, that's the one that struck me.
And I do think generally Apple has done a good job,
and nothing has changed my opinion about this
or formed my opinion about this
more than buying a couple of Google.
I don't think I've ever bought a Google Pixel.
I think I bought the Nexus models,
the late Nexus models. But you buy one, and like all right I set it up now and every time we would
write about something regarding Android and I'm like oh Apple Music's on Android let's check that
out and all that and then all of a sudden you turn around and it's like it feels like like two years
later and they're like oh yeah this new Android doesn't run on that I'm like that is outrageous
that is just outrageous and I know google has done a bunch
of stuff to roll things into like play services where they can update a bunch of things without
updating the os yeah i don't know like so so i'm glad that they made this even though i think they
will regret it and they overdid it um i feel like apple i am very rarely outraged at apple's rolling
uh incompatibility list although i definitely know people
and shout out to editor chip here who use older macs with with newer os's and just do the thing
where you install the software that lets you install it and it runs fine and it makes me think
that apple sometimes apple just doesn't want to go back and qualify their operating systems on
older hardware it's not necessarily that they wouldn't even work it's that they just don't want to bother but but they do generally let them live a very long time
and that's good and also i'll point out uh because this comes up sometimes your computer doesn't stop
working when it stops doing updates from apple right it still works and as long as there's
security updates they're also it still works and it's still secure um and so you can
still use them your older computers and phones and stuff and it's fine uh you guys talked about
the google ai photo editing thing too we did do you had a version of that same conversation that
a bunch of people had i know neil a patel over the verge talked about this a lot it's like what
even is a photograph anymore a super good episode of the verge cast which is about that too what even is a photo anymore i think okay so first off google's a very engineering driven company
like there's two drives at least in my history of dealing with google um internally there's two
drives at google there are the people who are the engineers and they are driven to do cool stuff
and push the cutting edge and then there's the suits whose job is to get you involved in onerous contracts and charge you lots and lots of money
and maximize revenue. It's a fascinating company because it's sort of like having been through that
process once you're dealing with all the technical people and they're just like, oh man, let's just
do this. It's going to be awesome. And you work with them on a project and then everybody's really
happy. And then all of a sudden the business people start to talk and everybody is very sad because
the business people are playing hardball because it's Google and they want their money.
Fascinating dichotomy.
So I look at this and I think Google is just flooring it on what if we just did every AI
feature possible in editing your photos?
Like you take some photos and if this person
isn't smiling on this photo, but you did a burst or you did a bunch, we'll just take their head
from another shot and put it here. Now I'll tell you, I have done that in Photoshop when I get
three family photos that I took and none of them are quite right. I have done that. And it took a
lot of work in Photoshop. There is in in fact a poster in a frame in my living
room of our kids on the uh one of the lions at trafalgar square that is absolutely composited
from three different shots yeah so it happens but uh part of the point in connected was um but
you're making it real easy too easy in my opinion and there's this question of like what is real and
and that at least at least expressions make sense and you know how cameras have like done the thing
where they won't quite snap the photo until everybody's eyes are open and all that and
that's all good there's a bunch of good stuff there but i do think when it starts to be like
oh you can you can kick a kid on the trampoline and erase the trampoline. And you're just like, well, but that's not what the...
My point here is that contrast that with Apple.
Apple seems to have a real ethos
about honoring photography
as a way to collect information about reality
and depict it.
And although there is a real strong argument to be made
about how photography fundamentally is not in context because it is a moment in time. Absolutely true. I do think Apple
has a professional photographer's, in many ways, approach to why photography is the way it is,
and it's to depict reality. And that those pictures of your family where you erase the trampoline or whatever, like, is that, that's not what happened, right?
And so I think it's an interesting contrast.
I think Google knows it.
And so Google's like, put the pedal to the metal here.
Let's just AI all the things because they know Apple.
It's not like Apple can't do it.
It's like Apple doesn't want to do it.
it's not like apple can't do it it's like apple doesn't want to do it i'd say to a fault because there are places where i think apple's software and uh photo stuff should be better it i just i
recently set a bunch of um slides from they're actually my mother-in-law slides from the late
60s and early 70s and have them all scanned in. And they're beautiful. And we recovered a
thousand photos that were basically in a box that nobody had really seen in decades. But they're all
a little dusty. And although the photo scanning service did a pretty good job of cleaning them up,
there's still little specks here and there. And I realized that to fix that, like Apple Photos
can't fix that. On the Mac, it can sort of, but not very well.
On iPad and iPhone, it can't. You really need another app. And you could use a machine learning
based thing that tries to detect the dust and stuff and remove it. A lot of the traditional
dust and scratch removing is literally just a blur. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not what I want. I don't want to blur. Or you do the little thing where you take a fix tool and you like click on the blemish or in this case, the dust and it fixes it.
And those are now machine learning like Photomator from Pixelmator does this.
And you can use it for all sorts of things, right?
You can use it to fix weird blemishes on photos or dust or whatever else.
And the one on the Mac in photos isn't very good. And on iOS, they just don't have it. And I don't understand it. I don't. So I feel like
Apple is maybe a little bit too far down its own rabbit hole on this one, and that they need to do
a better job of thinking about how people are using this stuff but i think google it strikes me as google may be going a little too far in
the other direction but i'm fascinated by the contrast between the two companies and how they
approach photos it's really interesting yeah i'm worried that google stuff is too far but i feel
like also this the train has left the station yeah i think it's google basically saying look
it's inevitable so we're going to make it easy i'm like i don't know i mean as a platform owner yeah you're making really like it's are they going
to do a deep fakes next right like why not maybe there's a place where you should draw the line
and say you know you could do all sorts of stuff but we don't want to enable people to do this
thing easily because then everybody will do it and we're not happy with it. And I
think that there's, I don't know. I don't know if Google has necessarily crossed that line,
but I'm glad people are asking the question. I also don't know if people want these features.
That said, I wrote a thing about after the iPhone event where it struck me that
we may soon enter an era where instead of taking photos at all, you literally like hold out your phone or you even have something that you wear that takes it continuously is taking high resolution images.
And it's just picking the best things and putting them together.
And after the fact saying, here are photos of what you did today.
Like we're not that far off from something like that, which is wild because that's not photography at all, but it sort of is.
But it's more like a life memory in stills and short videos and stuff.
We were close to that.
So there's interesting stuff going on,
but I'm,
I'm kind of glad everybody at least got a little bit of a pause from Google's
announcement,
but it's so different from Apple.
It's really striking.
I don't think either of them are right.
I think they're both maybe a little too extreme in either direction, but I can see it. One last item. I know it's a lot of follow-up. You and Federico are on one side of the Mac widgets. I don't even think it's true. I just want to say this. So Mac widgets, I was critical of them last week and in my review.
of them last week um and in my review uh but not saying that they're bad and not saying that they're boring just saying that they're a little less special on the mac because the mac has so
many alternatives whereas on ipad and ios like i don't think if only the mac existed people would
be like i got this idea for widgets and it's going to be great i think that the the decision
process would have been really different because of what already exists on the Mac. That's sort of, if not duplicative, it's a little bit like that.
Like it's a little in the ballpark.
Federico said that you said they were boring,
and I don't remember you saying they were boring.
And that's what I disagree with.
I don't think that they're boring.
I understand the idea that there's a bunch of different ways to access that stuff,
but I do really like it.
And as I mentioned, as a stage manager user,
I find myself seeing the desktop
and getting to the desktop
to be quite a frequent thing.
Right, because it's cleaner.
Yeah, I'm finding myself
hitting my shortcuts buttons
that I've put on little widgets
like quite often where I would have,
like I'm doing that
basically exclusively now
rather than using the shortcuts menu bar
because it's just just
visually simple and easy and most of the time like with some of the shortcuts where that i set them
up i can actually just see the shortcut window all the time i can just click it and it doesn't
even go to the desktop it just activates it right and so it's like that's awesome i'm a big fan of
that i think it's really good yeah so the thing i wanted to call out and this is i'm not i'm not
trying to play gotcha with federico here i love by the way that that he listens to the show right
because that's not a given um i love he's like oh on upgrade this week i'm like oh and then uh when
uh marco and casey and john do it too it's like oh that's so sweet so hi guys um podcasters
listening to podcasts who knew here here's the's the thing that struck me as an interesting
kind of like a quirk of how you view the Mac and how you view Windows on the Mac is that Federico
said, I don't agree with Jason about his comment about reminders. Because what I said was, you can
have a reminders widget on your desktop. But at that point, you could also just have reminders running
with a window open. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want a window with reminders
in it open all the time. I just want a little thing on my desktop with reminders in it.
And I get what he's saying, but my response to that is they're the same or almost the same, right?
Like I, and perhaps this is just different ways of perceiving how you use a Mac, but
I often have reminders open to the list that I use all the time.
And it's off on the far left side of my display down in the corner, usually covered by something,
but not always.
And it just sits there.
And then I will sometimes go there. Sometimes I'll hide it. Sometimes I won't, but often it
just sits back there. It's basically a widget. Now the counter argument would be, no, I don't
need to do that. I could just have a widget down there. And that's true. It's cleaner.
But at the same time, I do have that thought, which is is it's still a reminder list sitting back in the corner of your
screen like yeah and that was my point is that there is a difference but it's not a revolutionary
difference right it's like oh now finally we can have the to-do list visible i feel like you could
do that before because you could just leave reminders open it's just a little smaller and
simpler now me and federico are in this camp and I'm not sure why we both are, but no overlapping windows.
I don't like my windows to overlap.
That's fine.
And so there's something about the widget, which is different.
It's like this permanent thing.
It's just stuck there rather than having this little window just cluttering up the place.
Yeah, no, i get it and and
that's that's what i mean is that different people use the computer in different ways
and therefore i'm and that's why i didn't say widgets are pointless right i didn't say that
i said they're just they solve they're not as revolutionary in some ways because on the mac
you can just leave reminders open there and it's like you could even set it up to be super minimal and it would be like a widget and and and what the point i was
trying to get at is in a one app per you know one app at a time interface like like by default the
ipad and like the iphone you it's revolutionary to be able to peer into multiple apps at once on the Mac. It's not,
and that's all, that's all, but it's a good feature. I like it. I think it's a cool idea.
I just, I had a couple of funny moments where I thought, oh, I could put reminders down here.
And then I literally stopped and thought, but why? And right. Why, why put something that's
a little less flexible?
But I get the,
that you guys want it clean,
although I'll point out
that it's not clean
if there's a widget there.
It's a little less clean,
but it's clean enough
for you to have it there.
It becomes part
of the wallpaper.
And that's the solution.
You know?
It's fine.
It's different.
It's different.
Do you desaturate it
when it's in the background?
I do, yeah.
Okay.
I think that's the way to live,
to be honest.
That makes,
yeah,
I turn that feature off too, so they'll show you where my head is. But, all right, that's the way to live to be honest that makes yeah i turn that
feature off too so they'll show you where my head is but all right that's it thank you for indulging
me in follow-up pleasure happy to listen to the show you know first time caller and all that
nonsense thank you that's right thank you for listening the b-tails are back jason snell didn't we say goodbye to them last week goodbye but they're
here i told you not to i told you not to i told you we were gonna be right back in there you're
right there's a new vision os beta out and there's a couple of things in it that i just wanted to
mention because i thought they were interesting one is that as of this beta you need to run apple silicon for development
i saw this from c tron smith so as steve said a line in the sand has been drawn and so now
if you want to develop for vision os you need an apple silicon mac uh obviously this is one of
these things that i've seen a lot of people being very upset about because that is just the way that all these things go.
What are you come on-ing?
I don't know.
Like complaining about Intel systems not working on the cutting edge.
Like, come on.
Again, what I mean by come on is I have absolutely zero feeling about that.
Like, of course like oh but they're it's artificial and i should still be able to like the whole every the whole platform is on apple silicon now um get with the
program and i thought like you want to develop for apple's next gen uh operating system, next-gen device, but do it from an Intel Mac, sorry. Like, sorry. I have,
sorry. It's over. I have sympathy for you because you're going to need to get a new Mac. I get it,
but like, it's not unreasonable to me. So sorry about that. This is, yeah, come on. Move on.
Time to move on. Intel is over. On all Apple's platforms, it's over.
on. Intel is over. On all Apple's platforms, it's over.
So my feeling on this is a little bit similar to you, but I think maybe
a little different. Just in that, like, we are
not super far away
from macOS being Apple Silicon only. Maybe
two years, right? But it's not very far away i
don't know when i don't know what will cause it but i don't think we're very far away from that
and so i do feel like specifically for vision os
why maintain the tools on a different platform yep yeah these These are brand new tools. The fact that it ever worked
on non-Apple Silicon Macs
is interesting to me.
I find it peculiar
that they have done this
during the cycle.
I feel like it would have been
easier and cleaner
if it was just always
Apple Silicon only.
That is like the weird part to me.
But for this specific thing,
I feel like i understand it
yeah and yeah i don't want to say hey everybody everybody who's using an intel mac sucks right
that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is yeah hot take says boo yeah what i am saying is
if you are a professional software developer who wants to develop for Apple's next generation
operating system and platform, having Apple say you need to develop it on a system that
is running the same kind of hardware as the new platform is not unreasonable.
That's it.
That's what I'm saying.
So if you're like, oh, but I have a MacBook Air that's three years old and it's still
running on Intel and I should feel shame about this.
It's like, well, no, you shouldn't.
But if somebody is going to develop for Vision OS, Apple saying you need Apple Silicon, you need an M1 Mac Mini, and then you're golden.
Come on.
Again, what I would say is it's not an unreasonable barrier.
I understand why they might do it.
And the people who are complaining about it are either complaining because they want to complain about Apple.
Or they're complaining about, I don't want to invest anything in developing for Apple's new platforms.
In which case, Apple has basically said, okay, then you can't. And
I don't think it's unreasonable. So I'm not biting on this one. I'm just not.
So in the Discord, people were surprised at me saying the two-year thing, which was something
that I heard David and Steven talk about on Mac Power Users on the macOS Sonoma episode.
So I just went to the macOS Sonoma page and the compatibility
is for machines from
2018. That's where it cuts off.
So we're only
two years away from that compatibility
potentially being 2020. That's when
Apple Silicon started. I do
believe we're about two years away
from macOS versions
being Apple Silicon only on some
machines. Yeah, two or three yeah i think
you're right it's it's really not very far away and so vision os being still you know a couple
of years from being a a real serious platform if if that at all it just seems like why you know
like why why put the effort in to maintaining it but as i said it's just strange
to me that it even started that way um also from steve trounce smith steve is very good at sharing
stuff from the simulator so he's a good follower on mastodon um he included it so he had a video
about a a new um sample project game like sample code game that apple is is has in the new uh beta called swift
splash it's like a little mixed reality game where you build a uh water slide from pieces like you
can build it from these little components and then run it and see how this little fish goes down the
water slide i think that this is a feels to me like an indication from apple of the types of things
i would like to see people build right that like these mixed reality games that yep you can build
in a space you can move around them and watch them do a thing like this feels like to me at
least an indication of hey we would like to see this kind of stuff it's a also a logical extension think back to all of
those mixed reality ar kit demos that we got um in the last five years yeah yeah this is clearly
they were a lot like this right where it's like oh it's a game you can play on a table and the
answer was well you can play it on a table but but you got to hold your iPad the whole time. Yeah. Right? But this is why they were talking about that, is that Apple thinks that this is an entertainment use case for Vision Pro, is software in a mixed reality mode.
And yeah, it's cool.
And the idea is not complex here.
It's that we're not trying to immerse you in a magical world.
We're trying to put things that look like solid objects in front of you that are generated by software.
And on some levels, that is kind of a subtle distinction.
Because I'm sure you could play something like Swift Splash on something like a quest, a meta quest.
on something like a, uh, a quest, a meta quest, and you would be in a virtual world,
but it wouldn't really matter because what really mattered was the object in front of you.
Um, and Apple saying, well, no, like so many of these things don't need, you don't need to be in a virtual world. You can be in the real world and have the thing floating in front of you.
Um, it looks fun as somebody who spent way too much time playing pipe dream um
i looked at this and i was like oh that's really cool connect all the little things and see where
the little fish goes and it's a cool idea so it's very clearly apple sending a signal very clearly
and steve moser at mac rumors found code in this beta that indicates that it will be possible to
enable screen mirroring via airplay or facetime when using the Vision Pro so you can share with somebody what you're seeing.
Yeah, that makes sense, right?
Screen sharing, essentially, for Vision Pro.
Because there was a question about it because when we did our demos, that was happening,
right?
So there was somebody in the room who had an iPad and they could see what we were seeing.
Like it was a part of the demo.
And I heard some people like questioning it as if that would be a thing or saying the
other thing, which is, oh, yes, it will work.
I've seen it happen.
But I think I wasn't convinced that it would ship that way.
Is this just a thing of the units or the software that we are using that enables that
but i'm i'm pleased that they will do it this is a thing that other platforms offer but the ability
to like you know be doing a thing or playing a game and sharing the screen with somebody who's
with you and like that's part of the gaming experience you know you can see what someone's
seeing can be fun and it's especially fun for someone who's trying it out for the first time
you know and they're like whoa and they're freaking out you can see what they're seeing it's like being
shared to the tv or shared to an ipad like that's a fun thing in the vr experience i'm intrigued to
see what the longer term use cases will be for that but i'm happy that they'll have it even if
just for like that thing of being able to see what someone's seeing because they're having some kind
of fun experience and you want to share it with them. I think that's
cool. So it's good that it's in there.
Yeah, sure.
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support of this show and relay fm you put a note into our document that says simply jason had to
delete his user and rebuild his life i don't know what this is talking about so could you please
explain yourself i had a thing happen last Thursday.
Okay, I have to back up a little bit.
So for maybe a year, certainly for many months, I had this situation where, so I pay for Photoshop.
That's my Adobe Tithe is an annual payment for Photoshop because I've used, please don't send me anything about alternatives.
I have all the alternatives to Photoshop.
I've used Photoshop for like 30 years.
Sometimes you just need Photoshop.
Sometimes you're working with someone
and they send you a Photoshop file
and you've got to open it in Photoshop.
It's just life.
I even, I mean,
I have been using Photoshop since I was in college.
It is, I know where everything is.
I know how to think in Photoshop.
I can't imagine not having Photoshop.
And I use those other tools.
And I'm like, it is good.
The other tools are good and cheaper
and all of those things.
But I've just decided that I would rather pay Adobe $120 a year
and not learn something else ever, right?
Because it's been
with me for so long. They will need to do more work in order to get me to stop using Photoshop.
However, last year at some point, because Creative Cloud is great, you just get the new version. And
I don't have Creative Cloud startup at launch or anything like that. So I don't know. I checked
for an update and it was like, hey, we got a Photoshop 2023 update
and I installed it.
And the number one thing I do in Photoshop
is save out JPEGs and pings
to post on the web
or to send to people.
Sure.
And that's using a command called export as.
They used to have a thing called save for web.
It's still there.
It was better,
but the export as has gotten a lot better.
Also good settings in that view, I think. Yeah, it's better but the export as has gotten a lot better lots of good settings in that in that in
that view i think yeah it's it's better um it's it's a little weird but it's okay it's i've come
to accept it and i i choose export as in the shiny new photoshop and it says photoshop could Photoshop could not complete this command because of a program error.
Program error.
Oh, well, I mean, it's a program.
It had an error.
I guess it's not informative in any way.
But yes, a program error, a program error has occurred.
And therefore, I can't do my job.
The buttons below it are okay, or maybe it's dismiss.
That's the default.
And then below it, learn how to fix.
Okay. Okay. Learn how to fix. I click on that. It's fascinating. This is your first line of Adobe
support. And you know that somebody has run the numbers here. It's like, you just got to put a
button in the interface when there's an error saying, learn how to fix. And it'll put in the
error information behind the scenes and it's going to pop up a solution.
And so it took me to support pages for a support page for the program error.
And it's like, try this in Windows.
I don't have that.
Try this in Windows.
I don't have that.
And it says, one thing you can try, which is uncheck the graphics acceleration.
So I do that and restart.
Okay.
Same error.
Mm-hmm.
The other thing
on the support document
is literally,
or you could search for this
in our forums,
which is just...
Oh.
Can we just say, like...
No.
There is a line.
Like, having support forums
is not fundamentally evil.
Viewing your support forums
as an important part of the support process yes
is is a mistake that's unpaid labor as well you know what i mean just like yeah talk maybe
it could be really bad i mean i don't know if you've done this i've definitely done this where
i've searched for something for an apple problem and there's been an Apple support forum thing, and you click on it.
And first off, they're not very helpful.
But I'm just going to anger a lot of people today.
I'm going to just say this. The Apple support forums are populated by people whose apparently entire self-worth is their level on Apple support forums.
And I will tell you, they think they're being helpful.
They are know-it-alls who don't answer correct questions correctly,
and then close the thread before somebody can give a correct answer.
They are a bane on the existence of Apple support forums.
And those power users of Apple support forums are make the whole thing
useless,
almost useless.
I'll say, I hate hate them i'm sorry i'm sure
you're lovely people in your regular life jc simultaneously oh my god uninvited from every
mac user group i'm sorry like who are these people and they're like they're like they think they're
apple support but they're not they are unpaid labor i assume who've got like these high rankings because
they're like i'm just i'm just going out there every day on the internet and helping people
and it's if they were right it would be okay but they give bad advice there's a lot of this on
reddit too right like reddit yeah oh it's the internet but like it's different if it's reddit
because it's just reddit right okay but it's the apple support forums like apple should not one should not be relying
on these people and two should not be giving them any veneer of credibility let alone power to do
things like close discussions because i solved it they did you did not solve it sir you did not
solve it anyway uh adobe support forums you will be surprised to discover not helpful i saw a meme
recently that i enjoyed and i can't remember exactly but it was it was like a screenshot of
like a support forum or a reddit thing and it was like the question was like hey everyone like
happy to be i just have a quick question about this piece of software like i'm wondering if
you can help me with this and then like top comment and like and then like thread locks it
says you have simultaneously broken every single rule of the support forum we have therefore deleted your question you know it's
just like that's what it feels like sometimes like there is these rules and you don't know what they
are because you have like one question i'm not part of your community whatever that is it's a
community of people who sit on the internet complaining about bugs in software that's your what is the
community there it's not a community it's people drifting in across the transom who are are need
help they need help and that's i think that's fundamentally i didn't expect this to go in this
direction but that's the fundamental problem with your customer support forum is that you are, maybe I'm changing my mind.
Maybe they are evil because here's,
here's what it is.
The problem is it implies a level of lack of care unless you're,
you are actively as the developer participating in the community.
And,
and if it's a part of a larger community of users of your product who are
also sharing tips and stuff like that,
great.
But some of
these things, it feels like all it is, is a place for people to come because they have nowhere else
to go and say, help me. And then you get a community in there. And that is the community
of the know-it-alls who say you're doing it wrong and are not helpful. And I've definitely had that where there's a piece
of software I use that we've talked about here before. I'm not going to go into it, but it's
very kind of old software, but it works for me. And it has a support forum. And the developer
kind of comes and goes because I think he's got other priorities too, but he chugs along and
there's a new beta every few months and it's fine. But I've had some issues with that software where
I've gone to the support forums and it's very clear that there've, I've had some issues with that software where I've gone into the
support forums and it's very clear that there are some, I think, self appointed people. And if
they're not, they're like, they're not involved in the, maybe the developer has given them moderator
power, but they're like not involved in the production of the software. And they are making
all the classic customer service mistakes, which is they blame the user.
That's what they do.
They're like, you're doing it wrong.
And I'll come in there and I'll be like,
well, I'm not doing it wrong.
But thank you for your feedback,
person who does not,
like is not part of the company
and does not need to be here,
but is poking their nose in when I'm,
like, if you can help me, help me. But like, as a, as a person who uses the software, like I do, but what are you
doing anyway? They're bad. I've decided it now I've come all the way around customer service,
uh, forums are bad. They should be good, but they're not good. Uh, official ones, we should
say unofficial ones. Great, great official ones.
It's an abrogation of responsibility by the vendor,
unless they're in there actively.
Anyway,
Adobe's support forums were no help.
That's what I'm saying about the program.
That's a surprise.
There's years of program error complaints about there about this very specific
thing.
Most of them ended up being reinstall it.
That didn't work. Or they were unchecked the being reinstall it that didn't work or they were
unchecked the graphics acceleration box that didn't work oh my god so i bit the bullet i said
you know what i pay 120 a year for this um my day is free side note my day would soon not be free wide open i was like what am i gonna do this day i got so much to do what am i gonna do this day
was filled his day was completely ruined so i said you know what contact us and they're like
would you like to talk to a chat agent and i said yeah i would and they're like ah robot and i was
like i got a program error and it said, here's a document.
It's the same document as the learn how to fix.
I'm like, nope.
They're like, oh, didn't help you.
What would you like to do?
And it's like, search the FAQs, go to the user forums.
And then the last item is talk to an agent.
I'm like, talk to an agent.
Give me the agent.
Give me the agent.
Give me the agent.
Agent comes on.
Obviously, you know, it's a, a it starts probably starts as pre-formatted
but it's not a robot i think yet um i i repaste my issue in um and they suggest a couple of things
and i i try to make it clear like i've tried all the things it does not work. Oh, I should say as a side note, reinstalling that old, like you,
people may not know this creative cloud. You can go back versions. They've got like a library of
like all the way back to, I think I can go back to like Photoshop 2022 or something. They're all
version numbers, but like old versions. And if I rolled back far enough, I could get it to work.
And so for the last two years I've been using or a year and a half, whatever, I've been using an old version, older version of Photoshop. And every time it's
like, you want to update? I'm like, no, I don't because I can't save. So the person comes on
and I say, and I say, I can't do this. I can't do this. And they finally say, all right,
here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give you a link and it's going to install screen sharing
software.
And I am going to get to the bottom of this.
And I thought,
you know what?
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
So I did it.
And Adobe screen sharing software.
It's actually pretty impressive.
You get it going.
It,
uh,
he's got a little chat window that he can send to me and then I can
see what he's doing.
And,
uh,
and I'm watching it and Mike,
it was like a sports fan watching a sporting event.
Like it was like a playwright watching a play.
I got to watch someone else try to troubleshoot my computer.
And I'm pretty sure he couldn't hear me, which is good.
I muted all my microphones.
Okay.
But it was amazing because it was like,
all right, he's going to the graphics processor thing,
and he's going to turn that off and relaunch.
And then it's like, drum roll, export as, program error.
Ha ha, I told you, buddy.
I told you that wouldn't work.
And then he's like, okay, I'm going to go.
Let's, let's uninstall and reinstall to do program error.
Sorry.
I tried that one too.
Good, good on you.
And I get that he's trying it because people are unreliable, but still, I knew it wasn't
going to work.
So I'm like, this is amazing.
Right.
I'm watching all.
And then he's like, okay, I'm going to go into preferences. And I'm going to change the permissions on all the Adobe preferences.
I'm going to add all the specific users, not just the admin group.
I'm going to set all of them and everybody else to read and write permissions for the entire folder.
It needs a password.
That's the moment where I come in and go put my password.
Off we go.
Doesn't work then he's like okay there's this other set of things i can do to set the the the um the permissions doesn't work
i i don't know i kind of took glee in it because i'm like see see this is hard there is no good
answer here also part of me is thinking is he just reading that tech support document?
Because it's not helping.
That's not what the issue is here.
And I can't decide whether there are certain systems where this thing is broken and they just don't care or whether it really is something involving me.
But I can't figure this out.
So then he says, he comes back on the chat and he says, okay, here's what we're going to try next.
We're going to to follow me here.
Again, I was just all in at this point.
If I had to yank the computer out of the power and boot it off the network, if I had to reformat my hard drive, whatever, like I was just going to let him do whatever he needed to do.
So he says, we're going to go to network utility and enable the root user.
And we're going to log out of your account.
We're going to log in again as root.
Like,
wow.
Okay.
Big guns,
right?
It's not even create an admin account.
It's like,
we're just going to go to root.
And I think this is because he's convinced it's a permissions problem of
some sort or some weird interaction involving file permission somewhere,
or something else is broken in my user.
And so if you go to root,
like it eliminates all of those things,
you shouldn't ever in the long run, have root enabled as a user on your Mac because it's dangerous,
but we did it just, just, you know, for just for a minute. So we do that. And I'm also thinking
to myself, like, how's he going to come back in screen sharing? Like we're going to be in a
different user, but theobe screen sharing uh is installed
for the whole system and is persistent across users so we log in as root eventually i oh he
tried to give he tried to set the root password and i'm like no no no no i i text him like i i
have to do this part he's like yeah okay so i set my root password uh We go over. He comes back, which is kind of magical.
It's like Adobe screen sharing.
He's back.
He just goes to applications, double clicks on Photoshop.
I think I have to log into Creative Cloud because it's a new user.
I'm not sure.
Something like that.
It opens.
He opens a new canvas and draws like with the paintbrush tool, just draws a squiggle.
Does file, export as, does file export as,
and the export as window comes up.
At which point he brings in,
he goes into text and he basically says,
well,
it's your user.
No.
Okay.
To be fair.
That is unsatisfactory.
Well,
okay.
There,
the fact that it didn't happen on older versions of Photoshop makes me think that it's partially at least their fault.
And if we had, or if I had wanted to, we probably could have done a deep dive investigation on everything in my system, in my user folder, to find out why it wasn't working.
And I thought about it and I thought, you know what? I feel like this is a symptom of a larger
problem. I feel like I probably, this Mac is probably the legacy of untold migrations for probably more than a decade, maybe even two decades.
Untold migrations.
I would always find preferences that were from 15 years ago.
I'm like, okay.
So I thought, this is a sign.
I think I just need to bite the bullet here and delete my user and rebuild my
life.
So I thanked the guy,
uninstalled the software,
turned off root,
deleted the root user,
all those things.
And then you have to do the dance where I had to like make a new user,
delete my old user,
then make a new user.
That's me again.
Log in as the new user, at which point this was the rest of my day. The rest of my day was, and I'll point out, this wasn't a complete wipe.
The system level was all still there because it all worked fine and Photoshop still worked and Um, so I log in and if anybody hasn't done this in a while, the experience, first off, you get to experience every default that exists.
So like docs on the bottom minimizes the genie effect, right?
Like literally everything.
Click on the desktop to hide all the windows.
Like in stage manager, it's Sonoma defaults.
Okay. So I have to start moving things around and, and, uh, you know, things are showing up in my
doc that I don't want there because they're like, uh, recommend applications and recent applications
in the doc and, uh, applications bounce in the doc when they're launching. And it's like, oh boy,
turn all those off. So I spent the rest of the day doing two things which is setting preferences and every time the experience is every time you
make a movement on the mac every time i go like okay i'm gonna reach for this now you get
permission dialogue permission dialogue permission dialogue every app wants to
and i've complained about this before but just
say it's terrible right it's like this is my software on my computer and it's like oh now
this app wants to look at the desktop this app wants to look at your documents folder like for
pete's sake if it's in desktop and documents you can have it right like everybody should take it
take it all i i really want a button that says allow every app
to access desktop and documents it's fine i have nothing nothing in these folders you can have it
if if i have it in there you can take it i'll just share it for free on the internet you know
what i mean it's all my god it's so then there's like, oh, and this needs full disk access.
And some apps, they just let the system handle it.
Other apps are like, hey, buddy, you're new here.
Here's a proxy icon.
And here's a little pretend.
You need to, I'm going to click this button and then I'll open, I'll do a thing that makes
another button come up and you need to click that.
And then it opens in the system settings and then you click
on this thing and then drag my little icon in
and say yes
and then we'll be good
and then they'll do it like five times
it's like oh I need microphone preferences too
I need to access your microphone
oh I need to access your screen recording
were you using a Disney app because it sounds like Mickey
is in the chat at the moment
Mickey's a little higher than that okay jason you got a new computer it's not new mickey i don't care uh so
so the so i i hate all the permissions i i hate it i really wish i understand why apple does it
i really wish apple one would let power users say please stop and two i'd really
like what i'd really like is don't ask for the next hour or something right like don't ask for
the give permission for the next hour for everything i do i understand the security
implications of that i understand that it's bad because what if there's bad stuff and all that, but like, oh my God, to have every app you use, ask you a billion questions. And I know it only
happens when this sort of thing happens, but it is infuriating. Anytime there's a new install or a,
or, or a migration or anything, I have to do this. I also have to look up the serial numbers of
every app that I bought outside the app store. And there are lots. Fortunately, one of the first things I do is install my email app, which has the receipts for every app I ever bought. So I
can search on there and I, and I do one password very quickly so I can get all the passwords that
I need to re-log into and do all of that. But for the rest of the day, it's literally like
I was doing a podcast later in the day. I press a button on my stream deck. First off,
the stream deck's not there.
Second, the Stream Deck preferences are in a weird place.
So you have to find where the Stream Deck preferences are and copy it over.
I have a backup.
So I have my old user folder in a backup that I can drag things out of.
So I do that with some apps, but I don't want to do the whole thing because who knows what's lurking in there.
The thing that breaks Photoshop is in there somewhere.
I don't want to do that.
I'm trying to be good here.
So then I get the Stream Deck up and i press the button and it
goes error like what is happening and and it was this is a shortcuts error so i have to go to open
shortcuts because it launches a shortcut i'm like okay run the shortcut it says oh shortcuts Shortcuts needs permission to automate things.
I'm like, why?
Allow running scripts.
Allow running scripts.
It's like shortcuts.
Shortcuts is nice and all and lets you to automate things.
But if you want to use Apple script or a shell script, you need to go in and check the box in advance.
All right, fine.
Yes, shortcuts.
I do want you to run Apple scripts.
Thank you.
Then I press the button.
Error.
What is it now?
Audio hijack needs permission
to run scripts.
All right.
Permission granted.
Then I press the button
and it works.
I'm like, oh,
but I'm telling you literally
in the first five, six, seven hours
that I was running
is it really ran into the next day too.
You do that thing that you do once a day.
You do that thing you do once every three hours and you're like,
Oh,
click permission,
permission,
permission,
error,
uh,
check a box,
uh,
go to system preferences and allow this extension.
Um,
just restart your Mac into, Oh i i did have to do the restart
your mac at one point i forget what the software was it was a restart your mac and hold down the
button and allow the extension to be loaded uh and then restart it again so it was instructive
and i feel like my user folder is in a much better place now because it isn't
there aren't mysterious preferences and weird things loading that are not things that i needed
to use uh that i need to use right now right i left those all out um but it did involve a lot
of like trying to migrate hazel for example is amazing because to do
migrate hazel there are instructions but it's like um you need to open activity monitor and
quit all the hazel processes and quit the preference process then copy your files over
and immediately restart really immediately well because apparently they're cached
and the preference demon that's why you have to quit it because apparently they're cached and the preference daemon,
that's why you have to quit it
because the preference daemon caches the old preferences
and will overwrite your new preferences.
So then you restart
and then the preference daemon comes up
and sees the things on disk
and it's like, oh yeah.
And then you're back.
You should never do a deal with the preference daemon.
You know?
No, you shouldn't.
No app should.
Never do a deal with the preference daemon.
I asked, there's another piece of software,
and I asked, where are your preferences?
And he's like, oh, I just use the system for that.
So you have to export your preferences
and then import them later, your defaults.
I'm like, well, that doesn't help me.
That old user's gone.
It's already gone, chief.
I have a backup with files.
I was like, well, you can't get to it then.
You just can't get to it.
What?
So what I'm saying is.
I thought it was a bulb move that you deleted the user before you set the new one up fully.
That was a bulb.
I thought that was a bulb move.
Oh, no, I backed it up.
Right.
So I did Carpacabra Cloner on it first.
Yeah, but still, you couldn't get it though, right?
If you said that, you can't get to everything.
I mean, I know you wouldn't have known that.
Oh, that's true.
That's true.
I can't log back into the old...
So here's the problem.
Although macOS has, for its entire life,
as macOS 10 and macOS,
said you can change your username
and your user directory to something different.
Because I want to...
Because some of my scripts are literally coded
to my username and the name of my hard drive.
Ah, okay.
I'm not going to get a different username.
I want my username.
So then I have to change my other user's username
to something different and then make a new one.
And guess what?
It doesn't let you.
Because like, oh no, I'm still doing things over there
and I don't know what it's doing.
Breaking Photoshop.
I don't know what's going on over there.
Slowly dismantling Adobe.
I had to delete it, delete it, delete it, delete it
to make a new user with that.
But I did have it in my Carbon Copy Cloner backup.
So I was able to get it from there.
Yeah, it's a pain.
So what did we learn?
I don't know.
I think if you can manage the pain every so often, not migrating and doing a clean setup is probably smart because it's very painful.
But it's also probably dumb because it's extremely painful.
But at least you get a clean thing out of it.
I don't know.
Photoshop works.
I'm on Photoshop 2024 now.
I'm in the future with Photoshop.
It's amazing.
Big news.
You can export files from it now in the future.
It's great.
But at what cost?
I don't know and and i would just say
the only thing that i really learned from this and i learned this from the sonoma install and
migrating from one mac to another and all the stuff that i've been doing in the last couple of months
is i since i'm making people angry today i'm gonna make people you're really leaning in today
i i yeah i am it's hot i'm not i tell you i i'm not to make people really lean in today. I, I,
yeah, I am.
It's hot.
I'm not,
I tell you,
I,
I'm not a hot take machine.
I don't,
I don't love doing it,
but sometimes I just need to say the truth.
Um,
Apple,
Apple security people,
Apple security people,
Mac OS security people in specific.
I love you.
Thank you for keeping my Mac secure.
You're out of control.
You are degrading the Mac experience.
The fusillade of preference permission windows must stop.
Give me anything to allow to control this so I am not dancing back and forth
between multiple windows and the system settings
in order to get alerts.
Oh, by the way, you've got that thing that pops up that says I'm going to have to relaunch this app for it to work.
And you click later or you click quit and relaunch the app.
I've got news for you.
The apps don't need to relaunch.
They just work already.
They don't need to relaunch.
You say they have to relaunch but i'm
telling you i use them without relaunching them i just click later and it's fine nothing ever
seems to change maybe that's how you break photoshop though jason i appreciate i appreciate
your dedication to improving mac security it's way better than it's been hooray um my computer
belongs to me my software is software that i've chosen. And I need you to get
the hell out of my way when I'm updating or migrating. You are corroding the macOS experience.
It's a little like what we talked about back when upgrading your iPhone was terrible.
Yeah.
When it's supposed to be the happiest moment because you're updating your iPhone and it's
actually a disaster.
It's not now.
Well, macOS is like that.
You run an update, you do a migration, whatever, and then it's just all the permissions dialogues come up.
Stop it.
Stop it.
You are, under the guise of making us safer, you've made the Mac worse.
Stop it.
Stop it.
Time to fix it.
I don't know how to fix it.
You call me. We'll talk about it together i get what you're trying to do you've gone too far you're out of control
stop it but i'm not a hot take person not usually i'm a very considered lava take person yes that's
a good point you don't make hot takes, but when you have a take,
you will allow it to burn down with the fire of the sun.
Well, that's because I hold back
until I can't anymore.
True.
Maybe you should hot take more often
and they wouldn't be so bad.
No, I don't like it.
I don't like hot takes.
I like considered takes.
Molten takes.
That are scalding.
Those are better.
Well, I'm happy that you're able to use Photoshop
in the way that you want. Things are great. I do wonder'm happy that you're able to use photoshop in the
way that you think it's a great i do wonder if it's not worth it but no more program errors
great i do wonder if it was worth it too but uh it's uh what i want to say here is but yeah mike
everything's snappier now it's very snappier it's all snappier now now that i cleaned out the cruft
of my user folder so all those preference files,
all those P lists bogging me down,
holding me back.
Not anymore.
I'm breaking free now, baby.
You're free of the P list.
I'm free.
The P list can't stop me now.
No more P around for you.
The sky is the limit.
Yep.
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Let's finish
up and cool down
with some Ask Upgrade
questions.
James
asks, I'm based in London
and missed the pre-order period for the new iPhone.
The phone that I want, the natural Pro Max, won't be available until mid-November for delivery.
Would you recommend visiting the Apple store in person to try and get a phone or just waiting it out until mid-November?
This sounds like a Mike question.
Well, I mean, I don't think this is london specific it's pro max i mean
um yeah yes sure yeah what here's what i would suggest if you're able to do this this is the
best scenario but i understand if it might be tricky put in the order so you have a place in the queue, but then be checking every day,
kind of like in the morning or late in the evening
for the Apple stores in your area
to see if you can get a pickup.
I've done this before.
So like that exact thing, put the order in.
So I've got a place in the queue,
but then also be checking every day.
And what I also like now,
the Apple store app and on the web
will show you alternate devices
that are available
or alternate locations
to the one that you're looking at
for where devices might be
so like maybe you could travel
for an extra hour and get it
or maybe you could get a different color
or you could bump up
to a different storage tier
and you'd be able to get it sooner
so I recommend checking
often they do get stock in the stores and they seem to prioritize that at points like to making
sure the stores have stock in them which i understand so i would recommend if you're able
to do it put the order in and try and get the the um the order but if you don't have the ability to
do that it might just be best to put your order in and wait because you can drive yourself mad checking the store every day it's just like that hassle or
stress in your life that you might not otherwise want and hey november will be here before you know
it i know that you've done this jason right like that exact thing putting an order in and checking
the stores that's how to do it yeah you make the order it may ship earlier than you think for one yeah and
in the meantime if you can go and try to find it in your in in your nearby stores you may be
pleasantly surprised because there is i don't want to say there's always stock but what what
doesn't happen is that if you can't get it till november online the stores don't have it until
november that doesn't happen there's a certain number of them that are allotted to the stores don't have it until November, that doesn't happen. There's a certain number of them
that are allotted to the stores
so that people can come off the street
and buy the iPhone.
They do try to spread it out
and that's your opportunity.
Run writes in to say
that October 21st will mark
the 30th anniversary of System 7.1.1,
which included the debut of Apple script jason how will you be
celebrating apple scripts birthday i mean cake clearly actually i wasn't planning this and i
didn't know this and i've now put an item on my calendar and maybe i will write something about
apple scripts 30th birthday uh yeah sure it's a, that's a good Apple history thing. And it's still with us. It's still with us to this day. Kind of hard to believe.
I use more Apple scripts now than I've ever used in my life. Cause they will come from you, but I never used them. And now I use a bunch of them. not obsolete. That's the thing is that it's still out. It's great that Apple added shortcuts to the
Mac and it's great that shortcuts can talk in Apple script and in shell script, but the next
step should be that you shouldn't need Apple script and that hasn't happened. So Apple strip
Apple script continues to exist and, and you know, it's, it's fine.
It's there's things about Apple script.
I was just doing this the other day where I was, I needed a,
I needed to parse a date and I used to use a shell script for that inside an
Apple script.
I used a shell script for that and the shell command changed in Sonoma.
I don't understand why. And it failed, errored out.
So I'm like, okay, I guess I'll need to.
And I looked up how to process the dates in Apple script.
And I thought, oh, that's why I used a shell script because it's bananas.
It's terrible.
And it's like Python is easier.
Shell scripts are easier.
And it was just one of those reminders that like Apple script is like nothing else.
There are things that it does that make scripting so easy.
And there are things that it doesn't do that make you want to cry so uh that's the apple script experience in a nutshell don't
cry and steven asks what does the home button on your apple tv remote map to do you choose the
home screen or up next home screen baby yeah i'm home screen too i don't know if i would have chosen home screen if it if
that wasn't the default you know yeah so here i i would and the reason is i so i'm a i'm a cord
cutter i use the apple tv exclusively but i don't just use what's in up next. I use Up Next a lot, actually. A lot.
But if I'm watching live TV, like sports and stuff,
I'm in an app.
I'd rather actually map
the home button to Fubo.
Because that's the live TV
interface. I'd rather do that.
But certainly
I need apps.
And I use
channels
to record stuff off of Fubo, actually, and then play it back later.
And that's an app that's not in Up Next, right?
I have a bunch of apps that I use.
I would prefer to just use Up Next, but that's just not the way that Apple TV works.
Yeah, exactly.
And here's the thing. I know that you've relinquished your post way that Apple TV works. Yeah, exactly. And here's the thing.
I know that you've relinquished your post
as the Apple TV guy.
Well, it was taken from me, so I've let it go.
It was, hmm.
Yes, yeah, but you let it go.
I gladly let it go.
You got bigger fish to fry, you're fine.
But I would say this.
There have been rumors about the idea
of merging the home screen and the TV app
that it comes from a different time and that Apple's priorities have shifted. there ever been rumors about the idea of merging the home screen and the TV app?
That it comes from a different time and that Apple's priorities have shifted?
I don't know if that's a good idea.
That's kind of a lot.
And Apple seems to be way too busy using the TV app to advertise things.
So there's no room for apps in there. But it would be not bad if I had...
I know that you can put the TV app on the top level and then you're
and set it so that you're up next is in the preview stuff at the top. And that's not bad,
but like I could see the value in having the TV app and the, and the home screen merge a little
bit more so that I could like pin my apps that I use all the time and have them right below up next
and all that. I just, at this point I can envision a scenario where that was really nice. I don't think it would be nice if
Apple did it because clearly Apple is going to take the top of the interface and make it ads for
content and not functional. And I hate it. So my, this is another kind of Apple don't get me started
because we know what happens then, but this is another area where I think Apple's lost the plot a little bit because it's literally
at the point where I don't want them to integrate the apps I use into the TV app and merge them
together in a way that might be useful because I know they would screw it up and make it
deprioritize all the stuff I care about and just use it as a way to get more
promo material in front of my face when all I want is to launch Fubo and watch live TV.
Of course.
I have something I want to say about Apple TV.
But I must go back a second to correct something.
Before a terrible disaster occurs.
So in the Discord there was a question of.
Well is this Apple script thing on Stephen's calendar?
So I went and looked at my calendar.
And it wasn't there. But then it was pointed out to me. That on Stephen's calendar. So I went and looked at my calendar and it wasn't there. But then it was pointed out to me that on
Stephen's calendar, it is listed as October 4th,
1993. AppleScript launched the System 7.1.1, which
Apple dubbed System 7 Pro. So,
I believe Ron is incorrect. I believe that it was
on October 4th, not on October 21st.
So that date has passed.
We've missed the 30th anniversary of AppleScript.
Yes.
So you must cancel your plans now.
It was on October 4th, 1993.
It was when AppleScript launched the system 7.1.1.
Delete.
Delete the event.
Delete.
Delete the event.
That's it. We trust Steven, you know? Delete the event. Delete. The event. That's it.
We trust Steven, you know?
Sorry, Ron.
You got your day wrong.
Ron, if you would like to provide
context for October 21st,
go to UpgradeFeedback.com
and you have the opportunity
to redeem yourself.
But we cannot cover
and celebrate AppleScript's birthday now
because it's already passed.
That was System 7 Pro, which it was called Pro because they charged for an update.
That was when Apple system updates suddenly became for pay.
Up to System 7, they were free.
System 7 won.
Apple was like, you got to pay us money for this.
And then they did that for a long time until then they stopped again.
I know I want to go back to the apple tv to say
there's a thing that apple changed with uh tvs 17 that i don't understand which is they moved the
app grid to a six app grid yeah rather than five why did they do that why did they do that now but
why the future of tv is more apps but you know why now of all times why now like i don't understand
it it's maddening and i actually don't want it i want to go back to five because apps but you know why now of all times why now like i don't understand it it's
maddening and i actually don't want it i want to go back to five because now they're all smaller
i liked it the way it was like i didn't they should let you like pinch and zoom on the siri
remote yeah it's just like very strange to me it's like why why now why six right like what's
happened is it just because you wanted to put facTime in the thing? I think that was the reason.
I genuinely think that's what the reason was.
Okay, maybe so.
I think if you've got a lot of apps out there,
it's nice to not have them be as far down when you go down.
But really, I don't know.
No, Jason, I think they made a decision to change the grid
from a 5-grid to a 6-grid purely so they could put FaceTime at the top.
Okay.
That's what I think.
Could be.
Which, if that is the
case that is that icon really stands out too right it's like yelling at you like yes you've done a
facetime yet i know and i find that to be like is it just do it in 20 years the apple tv will be a
600 by 600 grid because they keep adding new apps and they want you to see them yeah but the only
way you'll be able to go from the far left to the far right
is by swiping repeatedly.
Just like if you're trying to watch a late episode of a TV show.
Do like the scrubbing around the little iPod click wheel thing.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh, I had a funny moment.
This is another little Apple TV aside.
This episode will never end at this point.
We're just very discursive today.
FuboTV is a great app
and I was complaining about Google's
Sunday Ticket stuff the other
week on some podcast or other because
Fubo has the Quadbox.
It's a little Quadbox follow-up, Mike.
Quadbox.
And on FuboTV, as with Apple TV,
as with
ESPN, you pick four things and it shows them all for you on your TV at once, four live events.
So it can be NLS games on Apple TV.
It can be anything that's on Fubo.
It can be anything that's on ESPN's channels on ESPN+.
Google got NFL Sunday ticket and they said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're doing a quad box. Remember we talked about that. It's like, Oh,
that's great because you want to have four games at once.
Apparently they couldn't engineer the quad box like ESPN,
Fubo and Apple. So what,
what Google is doing and they're doing this,
they say it's because of a lowest common denominator thing.
They want the experience to be the same on all platforms.
Okay, Jan, whatever.
But what they're saying is they're generating fake channels.
They're like synthetic channels with quad boxes in them.
It's a channel.
You can switch the audio on it.
So that's nice.
You can switch between which one of the four is getting the audio,
but you can't pick what the four are.
They've pre-picked.
Oh, it's the quad box channels.
I see.
And there's multiple ones.
So you can get most combinations, but not all combinations.
And you can't just pick like with the Fubo,
you pick one or two or three or four.
It seems very inefficient.
And it's dynamic. dynamic well it sounds to
me like they fundamentally they they couldn't write the software to do this and fubo to be
fair only has it on apple tv but it's really good on apple tv and maybe google is like yeah we can't
put it everywhere so that we're going to put it nowhere or maybe next year they'll do it so anyway
so fubo's got it it's great um and i was watching it um over the weekend because you
can put up like i had a baseball playoff game and college football and i had a soccer premier
league soccer match they're all going on at once and they have this new thing called widgets where
you can actually put like a little scoreboard down at the bottom and one of the cool things
about that is that if you see a game that's close you can click on it and it'll either add it to the, the, the multi-view
or it'll say, if you have four up, it'll say, where would you like me to put this? So you can
like see it, scroll through the scores and say, oh, that game looks interesting and click and add
it. It's pretty cool. It's got a little tab above it that lets you view the scores by sport or league,
including like the ones that are on Fubo right now, or you can see all,
even if they're not on Fubo, you can still see them in college football or major league
baseball or a premier league or Syria or whatever else you want.
Um, and I was, I was swiping up to the bar cause I wanted to focus it on a different
sport and I couldn't get the little tab to show up at all.
sport and I couldn't get the little tab to show up at all. It would go from the scores and then I swipe up and it would go up to the quad box. And I swipe back down and I was like, how do you do
this? And I was doing all the buttons on the Apple TV remote. Nothing, nothing worked. So bizarre.
And I finally figured it out that you have to go all the way to the left
in the quad box. You have to go all the way to the left in the quad box.
You have to go all the way to the left or bottom left.
And then you go down and then it goes to the tabs.
I just thought, okay, I give Fubo a lot of credit for their Apple TV app.
It's bananas.
Why is it only over there?
There's no good reason.
Just, I should be lucky that I have the quad box i should stop questioning it it was just one of those moments of like
apple tv app interactions how do they work and the answer is nobody knows nobody knows
i have an additional piece of follow-up because the episode continues forever
james thompson john gruber wrote and
it's an amazing apple script is still here article for macworld for the 19th anniversary
what sort of editor-in-chief would commission that good question great question uh 2012
yeah 19 years why
why well the good news it's now now the 11th anniversary of that article.
Of that article, which all the images are broken in, so.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
John should actually, I think he has the rights to reprint everything.
He should update that.
That's a good suggestion.
I'm going to text that to John.
Great.
Thank you, listener James Thompson.
If you would like to send in your questions, your follow-up, or your feedback, go to upgradefeedback.com. Great. Thank you, listener James Thompson. work, go to sixcolors.com. You can hear his shows on The Incomparable and here on RelayFM.
Yes, where you'll find my podcasts here on RelayFM. You can also check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us on Mastodon. Jason is at jsnell on zeppelin.flights, and I am
at imike on mike.social. You can also find the show on Mastodon as upgrade at relayfm.social.
You'll find video clips of the show there as well as on TikTok and Instagram
and YouTube where we are at
UpgradeRelay on all of them.
We're also on threads. I am at
iMike, I am YKE, Jason is
at JSnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.
Thank you to our members who support
us with Upgrade Plus. Go to
GetUpgradePlus.com to find out more.
Thank you to Texas Bandit, ExpressVPN
and Wild Grain for their support of this episode,
but most of all,
thank you for listening until next time.
Say goodbye.
Jason Snell.
Goodbye.
Mike early.