Upgrade - 489: The Future Is on CompuServe

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

from relay fm this is upgrade it is december 4th 2023 this is episode 489 today's show is brought to you by squarespace memberful backblaze and vitally my name is mike hurley i have returned and with me as always and with you as always jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley you have returned it's good to have you back i missed you last i had a great time talking to james thompson but i missed you you were you were gone gone gone gone gone i have some follow-up about that later on you did a good job of not being around too i didn't hear much from you while you were gone either.

No, I was trying my very best to be away from the internet as much as possible during my vacation. And I feel very refreshed from my vacation, even though I only arrived home yesterday afternoon.

So, oh, wow. I got a good night's sleep though. So, but I'm starting to get into that phase right now. Like I can feel it i can feel i'm getting a little bit like airheaded you know like oh boy my body's not really sure where it is right now so we'll see where we go over the next hour or so i have a snow talk question for you though jason as i always do now that i'm back we can return to snow talk and this question comes

from michael who wants to know do you keep expired passes in your wallet app and is there anything specific in there that jumps out to you i do keep some expired passes in the wallet app not too many but some and the one that i treasure the most is i have my ticket from game five of the 2014 world series very cool which was a you know people have souvenir tickets and things like that and i don't i my ticket was an electronic ticket so i don't have a souvenir of going to that world series game and so my souvenir is my wallet pass so it's still in there i have taken at some point i took a screenshot of it because i kept being concerned that apple will destroy it at some point but instead apple created a whole sort of like expired archive that you can they don't all go in there though i feel like no they

don't which is a weird thing yeah i have in my expired passes i have are the giants game that we went to but my most treasured pass is won't go into expired it just sits there forever and it is my pass to wwdc 2023 ah very good so that just sits there that's my that's my little treasure that's it's good i like that they let you do that and not don't just coldly uh destroy all older passes after a while i wish that they would let you archive them to the expired though right like if something right doesn't have an expiration date that it you could move it into there but right now you can't do like if something right doesn't have an expiration date that it you could move it into there but right now you can't do that if something doesn't expire it just sits there forever uh but

to be honest i like seeing that wwc one yeah you remember the shredder yes it was amazing the shredding animation that's a little bit of whimsy that that was lost it was it was like the whole thing shakes and the and the thing gets put through the shredder goes into the little pieces it was yeah fantastic that was fantastic ui design if you would like to send in a question of your own to help us start and open a future episode of upgrade just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in a snell talk question i would like to remind our listeners that we currently have a special deal running for Upgrade Plus.

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at checkout, and you can get 20% off an annual plan. But this could also be if you want to gift it to somebody in your life, you can do that. It's very easy to do so. Go to giverelay.com and you can find out more information about that. But if you want to get it for yourself, HOLIDAYS2024 is the code that you want. You'll get 20% off. You'll get access to the Discord. You'll get tons of other wonderful content. But the main thing that you should be thinking about as a listener of this show is longer ad free versions each and every week thank you if you consider it and thank you to everybody that has signed up as well we appreciate it let's do some follow-up i have a couple of follow-up items about last week's episode okay so this is actually kind of fun for

me because like i said i posted about this on mastodon when i'm on vacation i like that i get to be a listener of the shows that i'm usually on i think that's really good because i really like the shows that i'm on right there's like why i like to make them is i think they're good podcasts and so i like it when i get to listen to those shows and i don't know what's going to happen to them so i had a great time listening to you and james talk last week so you were talking about spatial video quite a bit yep i took a bunch of spatial video clips on my vacation which is not really a thing that i would do and it wasn't like i i liked what you said about like if it's an important moment maybe you don't want to do that because the video quality isn't as good like it's really noticeable um now when you see an sdr video on an iphone like

it looks yes yeah but i thought i would tell what i was doing is in moments that i was enjoying myself you know was at disneyland i took a bunch of video clips at disneyland because i thought that they might be pretty interesting for a lot of things going on, right? Which I think would probably be pretty interesting. But also like I was looking for what could be good memories and these would be like quite evocative of good memories. So I'm still really not sure what I think about the spatial video stuff.

Like there is something in me that's like, I think that these clips will just make me feel sad more than anything. But I'm not sure. Sort of melancholy about the past being the past. I think so. It's a good question. Apple keeps talking about how it evokes emotion and it feels like a memory. And those can be good and those can be bad and i i wonder about that too i i keep thinking i think in the end it will be great

to capture things this way but um like i said i think to james last week ultimately what you really the goal is that it should be full quality right it should be 4k hdr uh maybe even 60 frames a second right and it's just they can't do it right now so this is better than nothing um but it is you know i wouldn't start shooting everything in there but i like the idea and this is what i've been trying to do too is i like the idea of capturing a few things that feel like one it's it's a memory that i might want to keep. And two, has a reason why depth is going to be more evocative, right? Like the idea that you've got stuff in the foreground and stuff in the background

and kind of the composition of the shot is going to make it more evocative because as the analysis of the video shows, if everything's in the distance or you lose the 3D effect and then all you're getting is a low quality video because like what i was thinking about for this trip specifically was not necessarily moments but environments so like one of my favorite places at disneyland is the uh like the with my one of my favorite places to eat is like the hank pym restaurant lab

oh i love that place right because they do such great food but also you're in the avengers world and the avengers themed music is playing and i love being in that environment because i love marvel movies so much and so there's one moment i just took a video clip of me with one of the huge like just me sitting on a table um edina had gone to get food and so it was just me and i had the big pretzel which i love and the avengers theme was playing and spider-man was walking by and it was like i feel like if i want to live that moment again could be very interesting because i i enjoy being in that environment but i do wonder like if it provides something which feels like

the environment is it not just going to make me sad that i'm not actually there like i this is i don't know what it's going to feel like but i tried to take like video clips of things that made me feel good in the moment and i'm going to see how they make me feel sometime next year when i look at them on a headset all right i also just wanted to say that i love james's optimism about a 40th anniversary mac right the whole time i was sitting again james i love you but that ain't gonna happen no the only the my best idea i don't know if i mentioned this last week or not my best idea was what if for the 40th anniversary of the mac they do the new ipad pro that has a that has the mac os mode which would be great, but that's also the worst way to celebrate the Macintosh. Happy birthday, Mac. You're inside a different

product now. For what reason did they make that special Mac font? Do you remember that? They had a website and they created a font that people could download that had all of the Macs in it that you could

use it as a text font. Do you remember that? No, I don't. It was for Apple's 40th is what Zach said. Right, which is what I said to James is the 20th anniversary Mac was for Apple's 20th, not the Mac's 20th. This is going to be the 40th anniversary of the Mac.

I've spent a year wondering what I would do for the 40th anniversary of the Mac and my answer is nothing. I have nothing. I got nothing. I mean, you kind of did the biggest thing you could do right 20 max honestly and i can't do 40 max for 40th anniversary that's not gonna happen so maybe i'll maybe they'll be here here this is what i'll say maybe we'll do a special episode of upgrade where like we get steven hackett on and we we pick we draft 40 max for 40th anniversary oh that's a good idea right

that went down uh anyway but that's about it i i don't i don't know what else to do for that and also when we were on my bachelor week week in austin something happened then what was that it was like an it was a an anniversary of something oh i don't remember that at all there was some kind of mac anniversary then so that would have been like may 27 wait what year did i get married in uh 20 uh-oh it's happening to me right now you're hearing it live on the show 2018 i got married in 2018 okay uh there was something going on then because i remember we recorded a show and i was very hesitant to record i didn't want to record anything but there was because i remember also recorded a show and i was very hesitant to record i didn't want to

record anything but there was because i remember also we're sitting in a hotel room and you and steven were furiously working on something because there was some kind of uh anniversary going on then uh but yeah this is another thing i was remembering oh it's mac os 10 became as old as classic mac os when it was uh replaced that happened that month i don't know i don't know there was something going on that week and everyone was working and i didn't want to work but all of this is to say i don't think apple's going to do anything product related for the 40th anniversary mac no it doesn. It doesn't sound like them at all. No. Let's move on to a different follow-up.

Apple has announced a partnership with US company Amcor to package its Apple Silicon chips that will be produced in TSMC's Arizona plant. So Amcor is an American company. They're based in Arizona and they're opening a new facility to package the chips that will come from TSMC. Amcor is an American company. They're based in Arizona and they're opening a new facility to

package the chips that will come from TSMC. My understanding is that the original plan was going to be that TSMC, any chips that were fabbed at the TSMC fab were going to be sent to Taiwan for packaging. So this is a definite improvement. I remember Ben Thompson talking about this, that this is one of the ridiculous things about the TSMC fab is they didn't have the facilities. TSMC did not have the facilities for packaging a chip. I did some reading today to understand what packaging a chip actually meant, because until now, I genuinely thought it just meant putting it inside of a plastic box. But it actually is, you get the silicon from the fab, right? The actual silicon on the chip itself. You can't put that silicon directly into a computer. It needs to be protected. And so the packaging facilities will put it inside of

something, and maybe along with some other chips that aren't necessarily on that chip itself, to be installed into a device, like say it's in glass or in plastic or something. But that needs to be done. And TSMC'srizona plant is just a fab it's not a packaging facility but amcor are building a packaging facility and so apple are going to be from the chips that are made in arizona they will now stay in arizona which is definitely best beneficial to shipping them all the way across the globe to be repackaged up again so the packaging material it looks like plastic metal or ceramic and the idea there is that they've got all these little parts and sometimes they got

chiplets and all that and and they're all you could build it so that each of them is installed on like a uh like on a circuit board but that's not what you want you what you want is for the whole package since it is a system you know on a chip basically to be one thing because then you've got units of the one thing that can be plugged in and and that's less complicated for assembly so you put them all they're all meant to be together and so you package them together in one unit and then the units get installed in the devices instead of all the little bits yep i think that's the idea. This is a quote from Apple.

Apple and Amcor have worked together for more than a decade, packaging chips used extensively in Apple products. With a shared desire to manufacture in the US, Apple and Amcor developed plans to build the largest outsourced advanced packaging facility in America. Amcor will invest approximately $2 billion into the project, and upon completion, it will employ more than 2,000 people.

And I think I read that Amcor got some money from the CHIPS Act to help them do this. I'm sure they did, yeah. This is really interesting though, and like genuinely, like I see something like this, and it's like, yes, this is, in my opinion, this is exactly the kind of thing that government should be doing. I right you want to increase the your the capabilities the technological

capabilities of country you need to incentivize that and they are now doing that in such a way that they are incentivizing all of these companies to make stuff in america which is like not really a thing that happens anymore for technology so right there's a there's a debate to be had about whether it it it puts down roots or whether it's just artificial but if the goal is and i think you could say either the goal is to make things in america because apple's an american company and they feel pressure from um politicians to show that they're putting jobs in America, which is why Apple talks about the number of app jobs and things like that. But it's also why Apple does demonstrations about

we're going to build this plant here and we're going to do this. And chips has become a big thing. So the Chips Act comes out and says we want silicon chip things to happen in America. And Amcor is an Arizona-zona-based company i believe so the idea here that apple you know is working with tsmc to build that plant and i know people are like well but it's not for the cutting edge chips and it's like that's all true but you could see either way either it's an investment that the government and these companies are making in america that will put money in the economy or, and they're hoping that it will have some follow-on benefits where over time there's more chip manufacturing.

It doesn't always go that way, but I think that that's part of the goal here is, well, how, if the whole supply chain is somewhere else, how do you ever get a, you know, try to react to that?

And one way is we put some money in and see what happens. You can't start at a hundred percent. You can't just be like, I'm just going to make all the Apple Silicon chips there some money in and see what happens you can't start 100 you can't just be like i'm gonna make all apple silicon chips there yeah you just you just can't do it you have to start somewhere this is a start and from my opinion this kind of thing makes more sense than just putting like uh restrictions on the chips to and from china like from my in my opinion right actually having an in like encouraging manufacture that is a good thing to do in your country if you can do it and so i think this is an interesting idea i also like the idea that this is a a thing that instead of doing that when we make the chips here but then we send them to taiwan and then we bring them back that it's one of these things is

like no no no now we can package chips in america and it makes me wonder because i was thinking about they have talked about other portions of their global supply chain and assembly and like the glass from corning and all of that that if you have a good a packager partner in america you have the option of not only packaging your chips in america but even like taking chips made elsewhere and bringing them to America and having them packaged here and being able to say, look what we did. This chip was put together in America, even though it's not all from made in America parts. So it is, you know, is it political? Yeah, in a way it is.

But Apple is so huge now that Apple impacts the economies of most countries, many countries in the world. And this is an example of in their home territory, how they're trying to thread the needle. And I guess we'll see what happens, right? I mean, there's no way to tell whether this will be successful or not. Even the people who are well-versed in the chip industry, you know, I think don't know for sure, although they probably have opinions. But it's an interesting wrinkle that Apple now has a packaging partner to go with their fab partner in Arizona. Even from a political perspective, this feels better to me than what I consider to be the ridiculous show of the Mac Pro being made in America. Right. Yeah. Which was pretty artificial and it was only a small volume and the rest of them were still being made elsewhere, but it allowed for a photo op with the president. With Donald Trump. Right.

This is like, that was stupid. Like this feels like an actual, like a continued investment. It feels like it. In other companies, which can employ more people. And then those,

like this kind of investment could allow for Amcor to increase their growth. Right. In America and employ even more people rather than just like we're going to create this one factory for sure and build some mac pros in it i think this is good and again i'm sure somebody out there will say oh well yeah but the chips the stuff that they're getting out of here is not going to be the stuff that's cutting edge it's going to be in sort of secondary products it's going to be in home pods and apple tvs and things like that it's like that's the case so be it right like so be it that it's it's it's a

start it'll be interesting to see what happens yeah okay we'll see i also saw some uh odd i think odd but then maybe not surprising news uh before we started recording today killers of the flower moon will be available to rent or buy this week tomorrow, actually, as we're recording, but there's still no word. And when it comes to TV plus, and this includes other platforms, not just on iTunes, like you can buy it on prime video.

Uh, so I, I guess they got to make some of the money back before they want to put on TV plus I assume. Right. And they, they have a distributor. It feels like this is...

Paramount. Yeah. So it feels to me like what they're doing here is they have, either with Paramount or with Martin Scorsese or whatever, they have agreed that they're doing a standard film rollout. So Apple's bankrolling it, and it will ultimately live on Apple TV Plus for free for everybody who's a subscriber, but they're going

to do the full-on movie theaters, digital rollout, probably expedited, but digital rollout, this first round of video on demand where you pay to rent or buy, and then it will go to TV Plus. And that will still happen, presumably, you know, early next year, I would guess. But it is in contrast to Napoleon, right, which is still in theaters. And isn't that already on TV Plus, I think? No, Napoleon isn't. No, it's not yet. Napoleon's not yet either. I think Napoleon's probably going to be a similar thing.

Yeah, it might be. It might be. This might be what they're going to be a similar thing yeah it might be it might be this might be what they're going to do when they put things in theaters uh yeah napoleon what they've done is they put it at the top of the tv app and said add it to your list and it will come in a bit so so yeah they're but they're doing a they're doing a film rollout and then at the back end they're they're doing what netflix does not do because netflix does the like obligatory release because some artist wants it or for awards reasons and apple with these movies is doing a real theatrical release including all the steps even the digital step uh of sale

and rental and then it will show up on tv plus at some point i do feel like because they did what they did with what they mentioned they did with napoleon they also do with colors of the flower moon i think you can't have everything like don't tell me about the movie in the tv app if it's like months until it's on tv plus my guess is that it's not my guess is that this timeline is really shortened and that by they did a 45 day window for the movie to now this yeah which is pretty pretty standard but yeah i guess how long is this part we don't know is it going to be another 30 days or is it going to be yeah that's that that's my guess is that this would be on tv plus in january but yeah i don't know it's interesting though right because they could choose

to say no no no once it's out of theaters it's just on tv plus and that's a thing that they they haven't done. I wonder if there's some psychology here that I wonder about sometimes. Because Disney, I feel like Disney's really gotten beaten down with this now. That during the pandemic, they put all the Pixar movies direct on Disney+. And they put Black Widow on Disney Plus. Yep. And I think one of the reasons that the Pixar movies and other Disney animation

and that Marvel movies do not do as well in theaters as they did before the pandemic is that Disney has trained a lot of people to just wait for it to show up on Disney Plus. That's why we're paying

for Disney Plus, apparently, is you wait a little bit and your Marvel movies and your Pixar movies will just show up there. And it removes some of the impetus to get out and get to the theater. And I wonder if this is one of the ways you try to counter that is to say, we're going to treat Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon as movies. We funded them and we know where they're going to go eventually, which is TV+.

But what we're not going to do is say, oh, if you see Apple's logo on an ad for a movie, don't go see it. Because it'll just show up on your Apple TV later. I think they don't want that necessarily. So it's a cut. I mean, and also, yes, and your relationship with the directors and your distributors theatrically and all of those things are in the mix too. But regardless, it's a much more traditional film release then because disney changed too right where now they do this too so movie comes out oh yeah yeah goes to rent and buy and then it comes to disney plus yeah it's just that a lot of people have been trained to not go see those movies you just wait um i did

that with what quantumania i think i just i never got around to seeing it. I did not feel the desperate need to catch a Marvel movie because I knew it would show up in my Disney Plus app. I've seen the others, but that one, I just let it go by. That's probably the one to let go by, to be honest. Probably so, right? I did see it in the cinema. But still, yeah. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace,

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of your first purchase of a website or domain that is squarespace.com slash upgrade and the code upgrade when you sign up and you will get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of relay fm i have a couple of rumor roundup items for you jason that are kind of follow-upy the things we've spoken about in the past

so really the first one is just a thing that i wanted to just mention just to kind of follow the thread line through a little bit so there were a bunch of reports last week that Apple is winding down its modem development project due to the poor results that they've seen so far. So these were some reports that were coming through from the supply chain, and I saw them in a bunch of places. Well, in Power On this week, Mark Gurman's email newsletter, he said the following, I have zero reason to believe Apple has abandoned this effort. The team is still functioning. If the work was shuttered, that would mean Apple would waste billions of dollars and would probably need to lay off hundreds of people.

Yeah, I feel like they would have, we would know, right? We would have heard if it was a bigger, because this would be catastrophic, right? Yes. Of them throwing away and they'd probably shut down their uh operations in san diego and i mean maybe there's somebody out there who's got some intelligence that this is happening but my guess based on what mark says here too and based on where those rumors are coming from is that this is more apple retrenching and saying that project we were we said we were going to do next year we're not going to do now because of the delays that we had already heard about that

makes a lot of sense like it's more likely that if it's like a supply chain thing of like oh we're halting production on this but it doesn't mean it's done right it's just that they're not going to continue it for the time being or like in in a sense of like we're not going to go into production on that thing but that doesn't mean that they're not going to do it at all it's just maybe they've missed their timeline again which is the thing that we already kind of knew, right? They kept missing their timeline on this project. And also the Apple card. So a month or so ago, I think we spoke about,

there was a big report that the Apple card relationship with Goldman Sachs was in jeopardy. And it kind of seemed like everybody wanted out of the deal and that Goldman Sachs was trying to find somebody to give the business to. Well, the Wall Street Journal is saying that Apple is ending its partnership with Goldman Sachs within the next 12 to 15 months,

that they have kind of gone to Goldman Sachs and said, we'd like to get out of this. And now there'll be a conversation about how and when that's gonna happen. This not only is the Apple card, but also the Apple savings account. Mark Gurman also wrote about this in his newsletter, and he thinks they will move to Chase.

It seems like the best home for them, but it actually is unknown at this point, it seems, where the company will land. Yeah, and there was some talk about MX, but the problem with that is that you're converting MasterCards into MXs, which is going to be a problem for a lot of customers who don't want an mx they want a master card that mx isn't taken as many places and all those things and uh so chase is not a

bad i mean i don't know whether that's mark having some behind the scenes skinny or whether that's even it didn't feel like it with the way that he wrote it, but I don't know. Or if it's a plant. I mean, I wonder if it's maybe wish-casting a little bit of sort of like somebody saying, you know, who would be good as Chase? Like somebody inside Apple saying, you know, Chase might be good. Like, alert. Bloomberg, mention this so that Chase pays attention because businesses pay attention to what is on Bloomberg, let me tell you. Bloomberg, let me tell you. And so maybe something like that is happening there where there's someone somewhere who's kind of hoping that the Chase-Apple thing is the right partnership. I would also, you said Apple, everybody wants out of it and Apple wants out of it. It sounds to me

like Apple's got a deal with Goldman Sachs and it's a pretty sweet deal that Goldman Sachs wants out of. And I think Apple doesn't want to have a partner who desperately wants out of the deal, but I read this as being that Apple has decided to let Goldman Sachs off the hook. It does feel that way, but because of the way that the deal is written,

Apple have to ask Goldman Sachs if they can leave even though Goldman Sachs wants them to leave. There's like this grace period point where they can ask to go, and if they do, there's I think a 12-month kind of winding down of the project.

But because the deal was extended, they kind of need to tiptoe around each other a little bit. But yeah, I guess Apple knows, I'm sure knows that Goldman doesn't want them, but they're locked into an arrangement. And so I guess this is kind of like moving through the process and they're just like, I guess they found someone else or they're going to try and at some point they're going to do it themselves, which I think is the more complicated thing. I would expect Apple probably didn't want to move to someone else unless they had to, because eventually I'm sure they're going to try and just like work this out on their own um but they need a partner for now well you don't want

to spin up a whole bank of your own if you don't need to and you don't you're not sure that you are going to need it in the long run i think that typical apple doctrine of we'll do it ourselves it uh only it it's only sensible once you decide that it's a key thing that you want to control. It's much better in a highly regulated environment to have a partner. Yeah. Uh, and so, yeah, I'm sure that they would prefer a partner and an engaged partner. Right. And the problem is that this isn't a bad business. It's the Goldman Sachs doesn't want to be in this business because, um, this was a like experiment for them to take on consumer banking, and they seem to have almost immediately regretted it.

And I don't get the sense that this is something where no one will touch it because nobody wants to do business with Apple in the banking sector. I don't think that's the case. And so, yeah, I guess we'll watch it. But as somebody with an Apple card, I'm kind of curious about what happens down the road. Because at some point they're going to have to say, this just happened with us. Our mortgage got taken over.

We got a letter that was like, hey, we sold your mortgage to this totally other group that will now be contacting you. And then you'll need to give them your payment information. And there was a whole legal chain that had to happen to pass that through. And I imagine it's been a long time since my bank was acquired. I had a bank that got acquired by another bank, and it was the same thing where you have to kind of go through these steps, and it's a little bit weird because of the regulation. So I guess all the Apple Card holders will have to deal with that.

An interesting note on this, I saw some people talking about this in Discord. So Apple Pay Later, that's something that Goldman helps with, but there is a company called Apple Financing LLC that is responsible for it, which is different to the Apple card where Goldman Sachs is responsible. So I don't know if they're going to continue trying to scale what that company can do, but I'm sure they would like to at some point. And there are those

savings accounts that are like, I think, a different bank. That is Goldman. Oh, is that Goldman? Okay, so there's, this is confusing.

The Apple Savings is Goldman, but you know they have like the Apple Pay kind of card thing, like Apple Pay Cash thing. There's like a card for it that you can use right your apple cash you can right pay for that is from a company called i think green dot huh so apple cash i'm looking at the the t's and c's apple cash services are provided by green dot bank now i had read in my kind of research about this topic today that green dot

is not like particularly reliable apparently and so apple would actually quite like to with whatever partner they find move this to that partner as well which is one of the reasons that mark german said that chase could work because chase offer debit card stuff where goldman doesn't Chase offer debit card stuff where Goldman doesn't. So if they were to move to Chase, they could move the debit stuff, which is Apple Cash, and the credit stuff, which is Apple Card. Huh. Interesting.

But we'll see. Guess so. Software Applications Incorporated, which is an incredible name. Sounds very mysterious and generic. For a business. A report from and an interview from Alex Heath at The Verge with Workflow founders Ari Weinstein

and Conrad Kramer they have joined up with ex-Apple product manager Kim Beverett to launch a new company focused on bringing AI tools to the desktop they all left Apple this year and have embarked on this new venture together. Obviously, Ari and Conrad,

they were founders of Workflow, became shortcuts. They moved to Apple. They have both since left Apple and Beveritt has gone with them. I want to read a quote from the interview because I just think this is kind of fascinating what they're looking to do.

So, the ultimate goal according to Weinstein is to is to recreate the magic that you felt when you use computers in the 80s and 90s if you turned on an Apple II or an Atari you'd get this basic console where you could type in basic code as a user and program the computer to do whatever you wanted nowadays it's sort of the exact opposite everybody spends time in very optimized operating systems of pieces of software that are designed to be extremely easy to use but are not flexible sometimes you've got a browser window open with a schedule on it and you just want to say add this to my canada but there's no way to do that we think that language models and ai give us the

ingredients to make a new kind of software that can unlock this fundamental power of computing and make everyday people able to use computers to actually solve their problems so this is what ari and the team are thinking about i guess they're looking at bringing large language models to the desktop the website which incredible domain name software.inc is basically just mac os 8 is their website it's like the theme of their website. What's your feeling on all this? It's not just a theme of their website. Literally, it's an emulator running. And all the information is inside the apps running in the emulator, which is hilarious. I mean, first off, if you

are leaving a big company after having sold it, which is what happened with Workflow, then you stay leaving a big company after having sold it which is what happened with workflow then uh you stay for a while and you vest and then you get out of there and that's what they did which is sad for for shortcuts but and then you're trying to do another company and get investment and ai is a thing that you should probably say for your startup so there's some of that going on here too but i like the idea on here too. But I like the idea a little less cynically. I like the idea as well that what they're saying here is, you know, these are people who've thought about user automation and customization for a long time,

and when we talk about it, nerdy computer people do, and I count myself in there, do automation and things. But the challenge I think that they may be faced with shortcuts is that most people, even with something as friendly as the little shortcuts blocks, where it's not code that you're writing, it's still super intimidating. And so their premise here, I really like the idea. The premise is, really like the idea. The premise is, why don't I just tell the computer what I want to do? And it knows what that is. And it's this idea that like there is, and I don't want to say necessarily intelligence, but like there's an awareness of the context of what you're doing on your computer that currently doesn't exist. And the example is so great, which is

you've got a browser window open with a schedule on it, and you want to say, add this to my calendar. The idea there is that your agent knows what that window is that you're looking at and knows what's in it and understands what it is and understands what about it would get added to a calendar and is capable of asking questions if it isn't quite sure what you mean. And like, yeah, that is powerful, right? Because even though computers save us time in so many different ways, the fact is you get in a situation where what you have to do is look at data that's in a window that's understandable that says, how about we meet at this time or, you know, look at data that's in a window that's understandable that says, how about we meet at this time? Or, you know, look at this schedule for what we're going to do tomorrow. And you end up going like, okay, I'm going to move that window over to the left and I'm going to open my calendar

to the right. And then I'm going to make a bunch of entries and enter all the events back in. I'm like, you know, that should, you shouldn't have to do that. But it's also not something where you could, even if you're an automation person, you could look at it and say, ah, I can automate this. Because how do you automate random emails that say, here's some stuff, right? You need something like a language model that's aware of what's going on in the system and the context of it to sit there and parse it and sort of like understand what that context is it's a it's a cool idea i'm not quite sure like the apple 2 or atari thing it's very much like that was a hobbyist you could get the computer to do whatever you wanted i i don't agree that nowadays it's the exact opposite i feel like you can still get the computer to do a lot of things and i don't think their company is here to say aha we're gonna let people now all of a sudden program the computer to do whatever you wanted in a way that is like locked down. Like I don't, I don't entirely agree with that

premise because the whole idea of the second part seems to be that you can get the computer to do what you want it to do by asking because it understands it. And that's a little bit like, I'd say turning on an Apple II or an Atari was super intimidating and that's not what they're going for here. But I like the idea that there's stuff that, that, um, you know, can you create not user automations, but like an assistant that will help solve the problem? Because this is taking it back to user automation like the number one reason that i started using apple script is that i had different apps that i wanted to talk to each other and they don't talk to each other like my email program didn't know what this database knew and what my calendar knew they didn't know and the and and they weren't built to know that so i had to write

scripts that looked over there and grabbed this and put it over here and all of that. And that's still sort of true, right? Like a lot of the stuff we do is in a silo. And the only entity that is looking at your screen and all the windows in it and knows about what you're doing is you, the user. And from this statement from ari what i get is the idea that wouldn't it be nice if your computer also understood the context of all the different things that you were doing and could do something with it and that's really hard that's a real challenge but that is one of those frontiers of computing which is we're still on this app model where there's not a lot of information shared and everything has to be done explicitly.

And your calendar doesn't look at your email unless the calendar app and the email app have been written to talk to each other. Otherwise, it just doesn't happen. That's up to you, human. You need to be the one who's operating us, apps, and do what you want. And what Ari is saying is, what if the computer knew what was in your apps and do what you want and what ari is saying is you know what if the computer knew what was in your apps and could do things from take things from one app and put it in another app and that's that's uh it's not quite the same as what we think of as user automation but um it gets to

i think a an important point about uh a weakness with how we use computers yeah i wouldn't even i'd see where you're going with the automation right because that's where they come from but like this just it to me feels like the logical way that a computer should be able to work right that you should be able to make give it instruction and i will say this kind of idea is giving me hope because i've had this like bubbling concern about apple and advanced siri. So let's imagine, because we've heard that they're going to do this, right? That Apple's going to create their own advanced large language model that can interact with your email, your notes, your calendar. Are they going to do this for just their apps? Like for me on my iPhone, will I only be able to get my calendar and my email to talk

together if i use mail.app and calendar.app like i use spark and fantastical am i going to be able to use this advanced siri to get these things to communicate and like i'm worried that these that the operating system versions of these types of tools are going to become even stronger platform lock-ins for operating system developers i would say not even necessarily nefariously but more like it's so hard to do this stuff that they say well we're just gonna you know we're gonna build it into our apps first because that's what we're doing and and i believe an api could be built right like i do believe that it could be and but i don't know if that's the route they're gonna go and so i see tools like this and the mac as like the savior of that because a tool on the mac has way more ability so i think the issue is going to be closed platform systems like the iphone and

the ipad you're not gonna be able to have an app like this from Software Applications Incorporated, but it will work on the Mac, right? And this is just a concern that I have, that if Apple are going to do this, I want them to create an API that developers can write to. And then, of course, you have the problem

with big platform companies, Microsoft, Google, maybe not working very well with apple's apis but i'll at least want them to try right that like it will be possible to plug into whatever system they're building but i'm concerned that won't be the case let me back out for a second though because i think that there's another way of viewing this and i don't know if Apple is doing this. I suspect that this group is doing this, which is what if you didn't have to rely on all of those APIs? And it's a challenge, right?

Because you've got things in the cloud. You've got an email database in the cloud and all of that. But I was thinking like one of the great advantages of a large language model and the system trained to understand how to use a Mac, let's say, is, and apps can do this now, right? With accessibility settings, you can ask for UI control and you can ask to see the screen. And so the power of a piece of software being able to understand by looking at your windows and what

apps are open and what apps are on your system from that understanding how to use your computer and what's in it and what the data is without having to be like oh you're trained on fantastical you can use fantastical now but have it be oh, there's a calendar app here. I understand what that is. That is potentially really powerful, right? To just to back it out a layer and just say, what we're training is an AI system that understands how to use your Mac and what's on it so that you can just say, take, you know, the stuff that's in my browser and put it in my calendar and it knows what your calendar is. And it can, you know, basically it can figure out how to make a new thing. It doesn't necessarily need to know that it's Fantastical versus calendar. The challenge with that is what you said before. And it came up when I was thinking about that humane AI pin, which is for this stuff to be really powerful, what you want is for it to have access to your personal data so that it knows, you know, it knows everything that's on your calendar and can write directly to your calendar wherever your calendar is being served. that just knew how to use your computer could be a real winner just in the sense of being able to,

you know, it, right? Like it knows my apps and it knows what all the windows are and it knows what all my bookmarks are and it knows what my email is that's in my email app. And from that, if I tell it to do a thing on my computer,

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We had an interesting Ask Upgrade question that I wanted to maybe turn into a little bit of a story time with the two of us. Ooh, story time. Maybe for people that don't know necessarily our history, if maybe, I don't know how long people have been listening to the show, but Brayden wrote in to say, how did the two

of you become Apple reporters slash content creators? Do you have any advice for how someone could get into the same line of work? So there's kind of two things here. Maybe we could talk about our histories first and then talk about some advice. What do you think? Sure. Sounds good. I will ask you to go first. I will also ask you from those two how do you define yourself apple reporter apple

content creator i don't i don't think i define myself as either of those but what would you define yourself as i don't i don't know journalist what am i you're a journalist i mean if i if i was asked to give my occupation i would say technology journalist okay and podcaster probably that would be the how would i be introduced on jeopardy mike okay a technology journalist and podcaster from mill valley california jason snell that's what it would be there you go there you go although i have sometimes in conversation with people when they ask what i do said i'm i guess i'm a content creator on the internet now i guess that's what we call that. I would say, look, I don't want to take your journalism away from you. I would say you're a content creator now because I just think that

that's the definition of what you do. That's the word we use now. Yeah. But I wouldn't say that on Jeopardy, I would say technology, because it gets across what I do and what area I do it in better than content creator does. Do you think the typical Jeopardy audience would more easily take journalist over content creator? Yes, I do. Okay. I think so.

Content creator doesn't say anything. A person who does things on the internet. It's true, but it doesn't say anything. Technology journalist gives you some flavor of what I actually do. And pod what does podcast i mean you know what i mean anyway what's your story jason um i because so i was a uh uh my how far back can i go my elementary school teachers got apple twos and and i got super excited about computers because it was an era where the personal computer was just starting and in college i went worked in my college newspaper and they had just switched to all max um and by the end of my college time

i was the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and the person who was updating the software and running the network so that we could all print to the printer at once instead of having to move our files to the computer attached to the printer. It was a whole thing. So I was always interested in both of those things. The job market was really bad when I graduated from college. uh college so i went to grad school thinking that that would be a way for me to stall having to get a job and maybe get a better paying job which did happen i don't necessarily endorse the idea of journalism school but um and and i learned everything i i really needed at that point by my college newspaper i didn't really need the journalism instruction but i did learn some things including like that i didn't really want to do TV and I wanted to write

and that I also met one of the instructors there worked at a computer magazine and she worked at Mac user and I was a huge Mac fan and a Mac user reader actually. And so I got, I badgered her into letting me be a summer intern and then they hired me, uh, that's how I, that's how it happened. And then everything else is just sort of my career ride. But that was that moment where I was like, I would love to do that because it was literally a thing that I loved that, um, because I, I poured over those issues of, of computer magazines back in the day. And, um, on top of that, it was working in publishing and in journalism and also about a subject that I truly loved. And what I found later as a Mac user crew, they all pretty much loved it. Um, what I found out later is that, um, when they merged Mac world and Mac user that a lot of the Mac world people did not love it. Some of them did, but a lot of them were in it because they wanted to be in magazines and not because they wanted to, they cared as much about computers. That was just the subject matter. And there were a few people like that at Mac user too, where, you know, they went

from Mac user to vanity fair or something like that. I don't know, like that did happen actually. It's kind of weird. And I never got it because I was, I was committed to the subject matter. I really was. And so from there, I just, you know, we came over from Mac user to Mac world and I rose through the ranks and ended up as the editor in chief and editorial director, and then didn't got promoted again and hated my job and quit and, and went off and decided to do my own thing because I'd been working and seeing my friends and, and peers doing things on their own for a while and really wanting to do that. So like, you know,

I got John Gruber, his first bylines in Mac world, originally writing how tos and then eventually writing some, some columns. And, you know, all the while I'm thinking, I really love John's site.

What would it be like to do what John does? And, you know, and eventually I was worried that it? And, you know, and eventually I was worried that it had been a little late, but eventually that's what I did is between that and, and all the podcasts that started to come up that I also really appreciated thinking, this is what I want to do. And so, um, and now that's, that leads me to now, but it really was, I mean, the number one reason I did, uh, I did journalism in school and worked at college newspaper and did a summer internship at a daily newspaper and all those things. So I learned the fundamentals and then had an opportunity that I then focused on and kind of pushed on, didn't let slip by to go to a place that was doing stuff that I was interested in. And once I was in there, I made myself indispensable, I guess, enough that I made myself hireable so that they hired me

after being an intern. And then from there, I just worked at it. So it's a scene from one direction, from one perspective, it's sort of a straight line. I had this conversation with Lauren a lot where it took her a very long time to figure out that she wanted to be a librarian, with Lauren a lot where, you know, it took her a very long time to figure out that she wanted to be a librarian, um, like essentially a mid, a mid career change to being a librarian. Um, and for me, it was always pretty clear. Like I wanted to do media stuff and also I love computers. So doing this for a living is pretty much, uh, it's funny. I went to a high school reunion. This was a while ago now 10 15 years ago and i expected everybody to say oh yeah of course you are of course you're a technology journalist and

podcaster right of course you are and what i found is that most of the people there thought of me as a uh as a media person very few of them thought of me as a computer person, which I think is interesting. And then other people were just like, well, you were a good student. I thought you'd be like a professor or something like that. It surprised me because I feel like, at least in my inner life, what I'm doing now is not surprising at all from even when I was like eight. It's not surprising in general, right? right oh is this kid gonna be doing things with computers yes is he going to be doing things with media yes and that

was yeah i am i think of everybody that i work with you're the person who has done the thing they've wanted maybe for the longest right like if i think about pretty much everyone else that i work with the thing that they're doing now podcasting or writing was the thing that they started doing on the side right of a thing that they were doing in their lives like whether that other thing was originally a dream or just a career that they moved into but you just like very early on was like i want to write about apple right like that was you're still doing it right yeah i'd say the the place that i have a similarity with those other people all of our colleagues

doing this is when i was in college and this is the thing like because it's like oh i'm in my 50s it was it was the 90s and people like every now, like, cause it's like, oh, I'm in my fifties. It was, it was the nineties and people like I, every now and then I get this little like, oh yeah, the guy from magazines. When I was in college, I started an online magazine. And I had to distribute it via like a list serve in text format. And there was a PostScript version that I laid out in PageMaker that you could print from anywhere in the world. And we took submissions. It was short stories, took submissions from all over the world. They were not very good. We picked the best ones that we could, but like that was a thing that I was so excited about the potential for the internet for publishing. This predates the web. I didn't get

the web until I was in grad school. And I remember when I could finally get the web. And so the one thing I would say is, and I've told the story a million times, but like I went to Mac user and I was like, we need a website. And I was told the future was on CompuServe. And we were not going to do a website because CompuServe was a service where they paid to be online.

Imagine that. And they paid us because we had a special thing where we got money because people didn't just sign up for CompuServe. They signed up for our publishers. It's like CompuServe Plus, essentially, is what it was. And that was a revenue stream. And so I learned that important lesson that companies are very bad at looking at new revenue streams when they have existing revenue streams. when they have existing revenue streams. And so what I would say is,

and then we embraced podcasts really early, really early at Macworld because I wanted to, because I thought it was interesting. And I set up, we had a blog in the 90s before the blog was a word called tv.org where my friends from college and I wrote reviews of television shows in an era where if you were on the internet writing things about television, the people who made the TV shows would just email you. Yeah.

Because nobody was doing it except us and a handful of other people. So like J.J. Abrams sent me an email when I wrote about Alias. The guy who did Everybody Loves Raymond wrote us an email asking if we had seen it because we hadn't written about it yet and he was clearly wanting us to write about it he was reading our site phil rosenthal oh my gosh no way i love that guy i mean i know him from somebody feeds phil sure and uh i i just remember that because it's like hey what do you think about everybody loves raymond which show which i liked but at that point I hadn't been watching it. And I did watch it and then I liked it.

But he was obviously a little needy. Where it's like, why did these guys not write about that? Oh, that's so adorable. And what's the other one? Oh, and Paul Sims, who now is the exec producer of What We Do in the Shadows. But when he was doing news radio, we wrote about how much we love news radio and he was like come watch the show live we would love to have you and afterward we'll hang out and play video games uh which didn't work out i mean we did go see the show live we didn't get to hang out afterward but like those were those the days my point being that

with intertext the magazine with tv i was always doing side projects and they were always about trying things on the internet and the podcast ultimately was incomparable because my paying job was a corporate media job. And the reason is when I got out of college, I couldn't get a job in internet anything, right? Like it didn't exist yet. The only paying media jobs for a very long time were magazines and newspapers in that era. And so that was my paying job. And then I spent all of my time on the side doing experimentation online because I knew where it was going, but I was trapped. So that's part of my story that I always want to mention is, even though it seems like a straight line in that way, there is a sense in which I'm like other people we know who had this thing going on the side. Because I had a media job, but it wasn't doing the right stuff.

So, I did that on the side. And now I get to do it as my job. Finally. Finally, my side project. Maybe this is the curse. It's like, finally, my hobbies have become my job. Oh, no. I've ruined my hobbies by turning them into jobs that's a that's like that's a different story it's a different story yeah so my story is more like everybody else's story i suppose than yours um so i got interested in apple when i was like 17 it's kind of around 2005 i got

an ipod mini and that like sent me through the everything you know i was frequently reading all the blogs and websites i could find including macworld uh but like think about ipod remember ipod lounge oh yeah that website like things like that uh that kind of got me on to then like watching keynotes and stuff like that where like i like i fell down the rabbit hole became obsessed would read all the rumor sites um keep watching all of this stuff got me my first mac which was the first intel iMac that was my first mac um then the iphone came. A couple of years later, I was there day one. At that point, I'm completely in forever, right? My interest continued,

you know, getting new products, that kind of stuff, and apps and reading blogs, listening to podcasts to the point where in 2010, when talking with a friend, we used to talk on the phone all the time. And we would talk about like apple and technology and stuff like that we're like well we like listening to podcasts why don't we make our own and so i did that in 2010 uh as the way that many people go one podcast became many podcasts covering all of my various interests uh i started a network of podcasts to collect basically i needed a website to collect up to like five different shows i was doing within a year uh apple stuff remained the core of it um

but i you know had various things like the pen addict started in 2012 for example um so then in 2013 uh the network that i founded which was called 70 Decibels that started in 2011 then in 2013 we merged a 5x5 we started producing shows there I feel like leading up to that point I'd started to get a bit of a foothold in the community and people were aware of me

and the show that I did I very seldom say its name, but I might as well now. It was a different time. It was called The Bro Show. It was me and my friend, Terry. We were best friends, but basically like brothers.

And that's where it came from. Plus there was assonance in the name. So it sounded good. Obviously, I would not start a podcast called The Bro show in 2023 but nevertheless i did and that was what it was called and i it was it started just as me and terry but then we we got guests on the show that like became a thing um and we would invite people from the community including my co-host right now jason was on the bro show and all my other shows over the time uh we would invite people on and this was like a great idea back in the day of like well we can

have people on we'll get to know them and then they'll promote the show and we'll find new listeners in 2010 that was a thing you could do and it would work yeah today that does not work like that is not really a viable way of growing an audience i've heard people say this before and i think it makes sense that like then the thing was like people like jason people uh like like say john syracuse all these people didn't have podcasts of their own or hadn't been doing podcasts for very long so if you were a fan of that person you followed them on twitter you followed their blog or whatever, you would listen to the guest episode or something they

did because you never really got to hear them very much. And so I think that's the reason. I think Marco said that at some point. So that really stuck in my brain. This is a reason why it worked then, but maybe it doesn't work now because if Jason's

a guest on a show you might not feel that so much of a need to listen to it because you hear him every week on this show for example i don't know that's the case and sometimes maybe people just want to hear the interviews like if someone's enjoying this into this conversation this is kind of probably what a lot of interview shows would be like how did you get started you talk through your story but it made a lot of sense back then uh then so i was in 2013, it was at 5x5. I kind of moved some of the shows I was doing and changed some of the theming of them a little bit.

Then in 2014, Stephen and I decided that we wanted to be in charge of our own destiny because we wanted to actually take a proper run at making our side thing our main thing. And we felt like the best way to do this was to own the company be in charge of the direction so we started relay fm and then just a couple of months later i was like we started in august and i think in october or november of 2014 was when i quit my job and this is what I did. And it's been that way ever since. So then I think like one of the key things

I'm thinking of today, it took 13 years for me to go to an Apple event. 13 years of producing content to attend my first Apple event. And I was also like working as this being my side thing for like four or five years before it could actually be my main thing so that was a long time of like having doing something on the side which if you don't mind me

pivoting straight into the advice chasing i would actually like to do it now so my story is to say it's a tough road like if you want to become a content creator in any way, I hate to use this phrase, but I don't think there's a better one. The grind is the thing that you have to think about, because it's a grind. It takes a long time of hard work for no money and no audience to make something successful. You have to be prepared for that. If you want to do this, Brayden or anybody else listening to the show, if you want to be a podcaster or a YouTuber, a blogger, you want to be a TikToker, you have to – I mean, I guess it's different with TikTokers.

They like to throw views at you in the start so you get that initial peak and then the crash when the algorithm stops recommending you. That's like a whole other problem. But you have to be prepared and basically you have to go in to this project because you want to create something and for the love of creating. Expecting a paycheck or expecting an audience, if that's how you're going into this, you're already starting badly and I'd recommend you don't. If you're like, oh, I'm going to start a side business as a podcast and then I want to get advertisers. No, no. business as a podcast and then I want to get advertisers. No, no, do not think about that.

Because if you go into it expecting to make money, you'll just be sad until the day you may eventually make money and then you'll probably won't get there because it's a hard road of many years. Like I did it. It took four years for me to get there. And that was when it was easy compared to today. And like like it's hard this stuff so if you want to do it if you want to create a thing of your own you should like start a thing of your own share your thoughts but don't consider it as like an outlet a creative project don't think of it as a business and then you know start sharing with people online maybe you're in a community like for me when i started out i kind of got to know people on twitter because people were like it was smaller then i actually think mastodon is kind of

great for this because mastodon feels like what twitter used to feel you could actually meet people because it was because mastodon is smaller and more like focused around technology by and large and i guess we have a lot of the uh federated feeds like you can maybe because back in the day right one of the ways that i found people on twitter is it was kind of possible in a bunch of apps to just like view all the tweets like all of them i know that seems kind of wild right but like you could just view tweets from everyone. Or you could look at a hashtag or a topic and you'd be able to just read stuff. It wasn't like a fire hose.

And I feel like the federated feeds on something like Mastodon is more like that now. You're on a server that's maybe more tech-focused. You can just read stuff and you can find new people and you can build up conversations with them. That's what I did. That's how I met Steven. That's how I met Steven. That's how I met Federico.

We kind of got to know each other because we were doing the same thing at the same time. And then there was kind of like a crew of people that kind of moved up at the same time. And I think that Mastodon allows for that today. But then if you start writing stuff, maybe share them with people that their content you create. Maybe get some thoughts on them. That's how people can kind of get to know you. Don't overshare. You got to kind of play it chill.

Like don't go overboard. But yeah, you have to get good, right? And getting good takes time and practice and effort. I actually think there is a bit kind of having no audience is a great way to get good, right? Because you can be bad in private, which is perfect. And so that's how I started. That's how everybody should start. So yeah, that's my advice.

I don't know if you have anything more to add, Jason. Yeah, just a few things. I think that was all good advice. Side projects came up earlier. And I think that this is dovetailing with what you're saying here, which is this idea do not quit your job and say i'm gonna start being a creator now ready go like like you said um there's a reason why so many of us in this little sphere talk about starting something as a side project

and then it turning into something it not only does that say something about how it's not going to blossom immediately and it takes time. It goes with Mike's statement about needing to get good and doing that maybe in private. I think there's something to that. I was also thinking about like the phrase side hustle has always, um, hit me wrong.

And here's why. The word hustle, I always felt like meant you're hustling for money. You're hustling for another job. It's another thing you're doing. And I don't think that fits my experience and the experience of most of the people I know, because the advice I'm going to give is it's got to be something you love. You can't just, I know I have seen people who are very clearly hustling on the side because they think there's an opportunity to be had there. There's gold in them there hills. Yeah. And what you said about it being a grind is so true. It's like those people don't make it because they don't love it and it's a grind and it's not a gold rush. So you're doing it because you love it and maybe you want it to be a thing, but you got to do it because you love it. I think that's part of it. And I would go further and say, you got to do a thing that you're comfortable with, that you understand and that you love and then also learn from it and the reason i say that is if you get tiktok and that's like the way you think you can express yourself

the best do tiktok if you get instagram do instagram if you get like writing articles on a blog do that if you get podcasts do that but what but But this advice against the hustle also goes for that. If you're like, oh, I feel like I should do TikTok because that's where the kids are, but I don't get it, don't do it. followed and enjoyed had a blog and they all wrote about their opinions. Yes. And I tried that and that ain't me. I can't do it. It's just not you. I found podcasting. That was what worked for me. That was it. And I'm not saying don't like try TikTok and learn about it and maybe you'll love it,

but don't do it because you feel like that's the thing you need to tactically do. You need to find the thing that you understand and can do and are good at. And, and that's different. And, and yes, it is exactly, Mike, I was thinking of you when I gave this example, which is you would think in that context back in that era that maybe the solution was, I will also start a blog and that's how I will get into this. And for you, that was the wrong medium and you found your right medium. So I'd say, but in the end, like you got to be motivated by loving this stuff, I think.

Or at least that's the advice I'm giving because I love it. And you have to do that because, not just because, oh, people are going to know if you don't love it. I mean, they will. But also because of what Mike said about the grind. It's hard. But also because of what Mike said about the grind, it's hard. And, and I would say one of my top pieces of four, where they apologize for not being around for two months, but now they're back, and then they never do another episode. That happens all the time. Mm-hmm.

Because it's hard to be, you know, this is, we're coming up for 500 episodes of Upgrade pretty soon, right? In about 500 weeks. I think a little less than 500 weeks because we've had some emergency episodes and things like that. It's a grind. It's every week. I have to sit here on Monday morning, every Monday morning at 9 a.m.

and Mike has to sit there every Monday evening at 5-ish. Yep, 5 p.m. Every time. And it's a lot. And the fact is, you're sending a signal to your listeners or your audience more broadly that you're going to be dependable. And that matters to audiences. I'd say anybody who wants to work with you, you're sending a message that you're diligent and you'll stick with it and you're reliable. And as somebody who used to hire people, let me tell you, it matters a lot. So you, which takes me back to, you gotta love it, right? You gotta love it. You gotta care about it. And it's gotta be a good fit for you to even get started. I feel like those have to be the base cases and then there's no guarantee,

right? And I do think that it's still possible that you rub up against somebody. I find that this is very open. If somebody does something really cool and we call it out, we may not know who they are, but we just say, here's this person. And there are so many cases where there was somebody who was seemingly random and we mentioned that they did a cool thing or whatever. And then over time, they ended up being who is a a friend or at the very least a friend of the show right yep it happens all the time so it can happen uh but but being make no mistakes that it is hard and that there's no one path but what you really need to do is the uh look inside yourself and find like what are the things that you love and you want to do and uh do those do those things in a place and in a medium that makes sense that you get and that you understand and that you love. And you should know that. And you could try things out because like Mike said, it's great. You try things out and you learn. Even if it's a medium that you understand or you think you understand and you love, you're going to learn a lot about, oh, that doesn't work.

And that's a bad TikTok post or whatever. That's a bad YouTube video or whatever. Literally, whatever it is, you're going to learn a lot about, oh, that doesn't work. And that's a bad TikTok post or whatever. That's a bad YouTube video or whatever it literally, whatever it is, you're going to learn a lot, but you should start being grounded on it being something that you're doing because you love it and you get it and you want to make it. And not because it's some sort of calculation. Sorry to all the business people out there are like, what do you mean? You make a cold business calculation, but for stuff like this, I don't think you can, because you can't fake it. If you got lots of money, you could fake it. But if you don't have a lot of money and you're just doing it, you just got to do the work. You got to learn and grow and improve and show your commitment. And because of all of that,

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Now, last week, Jason, you didn't do any Ask Upgrade questions, so I have a backlog for you. So it's time for Ask Upgrade. Lactum wants to know, how are you feeling about spatial audio two years in? So I have a 5.1 setup, so not full

Dolby Atmos, but I have a 5.1 setup in my living room. And I was just listening to some spatial audio there. There are times when I will put on music really loud in the living room. And I really love the spatial audio because just like with old DVD audio stuff before, being inside the music is really cool. before like having being inside the music is really cool um peter gabriel put out a new album for the first time in like two decades uh last week and there is one of the mixes for it is the dolby atmos mix and i was listening to that really loud yesterday and oh it sounds great so like in that context i really like spatial audio in the airpods context i feel like it's kind of a nothing and in fact i often sometimes it can sound interesting but a lot of times it makes the albums that i know really well from listening to them in stereo uh at my desk sound weird because the mixes the mix down is different and i don't i don't necessarily i mean i don't hate them but i don't i don't go oh yeah give me the spatial audio on the

on the airpods as much what about you i love spatial audio music personally i think it adds something a lot of the time like there's many songs that i've listened to a spatial audio where i can hear something in the song that i hadn't heard before and i think that's very special i like that experience um some mixes aren't great of course before and i think that's very special um i like that experience um some mixes aren't great of course but i feel like that's gotten better now i've i feel like anything that comes out now the mix is really well done and i've gone back and listened to some music that i'd originally listened to and wasn't sure of and the mix has clearly been updated i think this is a thing that producers are learning a lot from and it can be done well.

And when it's done well, it's really incredible. I turned off the head tracking stuff a while ago with movies, especially. I don't like that. Yeah. I hate spatialized stereo. That is terrible in my opinion. So I'm not into that. But generally spatial audio is good.

And I feel like with watching movies on an iPad, that kind of thing, it can be a bit weird. You think you've left the... You think, like, sometimes, you know, I've seen this. I remember we were on a flight recently and Idina pressed play on her iPad and then, like, immediately jumped at her iPad and I knew exactly what was going on,

but she thought the sound was coming out of the iPad because of the spatial audio stuff. The music, I'm a fan of. I will also say, Jason, I am a convert of the adaptive mode on AirPods Pro. You told me to try it out more and I tried it out more and I really like it. I think it is a very good mix and I'm able to leave it on that now most of the time and i'm a fan i will also say that i continue to like conversational awareness i know that not everybody likes that um i like that i can just talk to someone real quick and it

and it just pauses my music or the podcast well all i'll say is it's good for podcasts bad for music because if i start singing pauses it that is i feel like they should do something about that i don't know how but like you if you use conversational awareness and you have airpods you can't sing along and so like sometimes i'm in the studio i start singing along and then my music stops that's not great but for podcasts i love it yeah adaptive mode is really good because it i don't use transparency mode anymore because i use adaptive mode, which allows me to still hear things, but it's less noisy. And I am mostly in that when I'm not actively trying to block sound like on an airplane. I do still use noise cancellation.

So I switch between noise canceling and transparency because Because there are times where I'm in, say, a quiet environment. If I'm cooking, say, right? I'm in a quiet environment, but I don't want to hear the sounds of the cooking. So I'll put noise cancellation on so I can hear my podcast more clearly without the sounds of pots and pans or whatever. Yeah. So I toggle between adaptive and full noise canceling. Yeah.

And those are my two settings. Instead of using transparency, I use adaptive. And then i also absolutely yeah it's or if i'm running and i'm on a on a path and there's somebody working you know and blowing leaves or hammering things or whatever like and i'm not going to get run over by a car i will often toggle it on there but most of the time i'm running on a street and i have the i have the adaptive mode on it works great having just uh taken a long plane journey a couple of them apple please don't drop airpods max like airpods pro the noise canceling is really good but just the natural seal that the airpods

max provide with the noise canceling is fantastic like Like that pairing, it's so good on a plane. It just drops everything out. Like AirPods Pro have gotten better and better, but there's always going to be a natural amount of like sound leakage that will come through because they're just in your ears, right? But over the ears, so good. And like, I really love the pairing that they have

because they have the two buttons, right? And so like, if someone wants to ask me something, I press both buttons at once. It pauses what I'm watching and turns on transparency. Like that kind of thing. I just, yeah. I'm a big AirPods Max fan

and I really only use them when I'm flying. And they're just like, for me, the absolute best airplane headphones. They're probably, no, they are not worth the price for just that but when i bought them i didn't know that was what i was going to use them for but i've had them for a long time now so i think they probably worked out their value for me yeah i hate i hated over ear headphones but i did at one point buy a pair of sony was canceling headphones this is a year like

five years ago now and it makes my ears sweaty and i don't like it but they absolutely do such a great job that whole kind of over your headphones do such a great job if you power if you do that and then do noise canceling you've got the seal and the noise canceling and it really is going to be your optimal experience liam wants to know how do you feel about on-device processing of face data i find myself frustrated that my phone and my Mac don't always have the same information when doing searches for people in photos. So here's the challenge.

It's tricky because on-device processing, I don't mind the on-device processing. I think the challenge is syncing data. I think the challenge is syncing data. I don't want Apple processing my photos in the cloud. I don't want that because they would have to look at my photos and analyze them. And so you do that on device. I think the challenge, and Apple's been working on it, is syncing data.

So now when you say to Apple, yes, this is a picture of this person, when you do training, I believe that data now gets synced across your devices, which is a hint to all of the devices about who these people are. But what they don't do is sync all the machine learning analysis info from every photo into the cloud, which they could do. My guess is they don't do it because the data is weird, right? Because then you've got different devices with their individual machine learning models trying to analyze every photo when you take it. And if they're not analyzing your photo database because it's gotten records pushed to it from another device, is it going to be as accurate? I'm sure there's a lot of complexity there.

You can see this idea. So they're trying to do it where if you say, yes, this is this person, that data, I believe syncs now. And so there's a way for it to be sort of more consistent across devices. But yeah, the only other way to do it would be to say, no, no, no, we're doing all of our analysis in the cloud. And that would require Apple to, um, not have your photos be encrypted and that they would do lots of cloud processing. And I don't think Apple wants to do that anyway. So I think their heart's in the

right place and they're trying to make this situation better. But I agree, it would be great if there were even more of this. And I don't know whether the answer is one device scans it and then all the other devices just get the metadata i don't know if that works or not is the is the reason because i think they could do it if they wanted to and there's probably a reason that they don't yeah i want the best of both worlds but i think realistically it just can't happen like i want to have it all processed locally but i also want it to be accurate across every device and i do find it frustrating when things aren't but there's kind of no way around around it and i think i prefer the trade-off of things not being

completely accurate than all of my stuff living somewhere that i don't want it to right necessarily right but they are trying i mean it's very clear that they're trying to make it yeah and that's because all the you know anytime you as a user, as a human being say, this is this person, I believe that gets tagged on the photo and sent out as metadata to all other devices. And then they know that that's that person too, which is helpful. But the underlying recognition algorithm is happening on all those devices. And is it wasteful? I mean, it is. You get a new iPhone and it rescans your library.

I mean, there is waste happening there. Again, if Apple can find a way to do it where it doesn't have to do that and that they're all kind of like sharing one brain, great. But I'm not sure that's how their ML algorithms for photos actually work. So there it is. Otto wants to know, which Apple Watch complications do you use the most? For me, it's weather, which is mostly carrot and sometimes is Apple weather. I have an overcast one because I run and play podcasts on my Apple Watch using overcast to AirPods. That's how I run. Um, I have activity and works at workouts for their activity. So I can see my rings. It's less

important workout so that I can also trigger my running workout when I go out running with my Apple watch. And when I'm traveling, I use the much anticipated and finally here flighty Apple Watch complication. So for me, I'm using Carrot Weather, Dew, Fantastical, Activity, Medications, and Timery. They're on my like average watch face. I use the new Apple Watch Ultra one. What is it called? Modular Ultra. So I have Fantastical.

It's like the big one in the middle, which tells me what my next event's going to be. The rest of them are all the little circle ones. And depending on the app, that's either information or it just launches the app, right? So like with Kara, I have the temperature one.

So it's telling me that. I have a date one for Fantastical because I also just want to have the date on my watch. I'm happy that I have the temperature one, so it's telling me that. I have a date one for Fantastical because I also just want to have the date on my watch, so I'm happy that I have that, so I have two Fantastical complications. I do kind of wish that I could have the date on the large one as well, so I didn't need to have two,

but nevertheless, I do want that information. The activity one shows me the progress of the rings, which I like. Timery, I have showing the current amount of time that's actively been tracking and then medications and you kind of just open their application but that's just because i use those all the time my apple watch like that's effectively all the apps that i use on my apple watch as well realistically i have like a couple of widgets right so i have like um i also have carrot for more information also have Carrot for more information.

I have Timery for more information. I have Pedometer in there as well. And also Fitness. So if I want to get like a little bit more than what the little widget's given me, I can, sorry, what the complication's given me, I can go to the widgets. And I'll also say when I'm traveling as well,

I changed to a traveling watch face, which has Flighty as the big one in the middle, because again useful when i'm traveling what watch face do you use now uh most of the time it is um california because i can make it look like utility but it has the more modern complications it kills me that utility still doesn't have modern corner complications i hate it because i like utility. It's my favorite watch face. And then when I'm traveling and stuff, I will often flip over into modular.

Right. This is the thing where I tried for a long time. I spoke about it a lot on the show, right? That I wanted my Apple Watch to look good. With the Apple Watch Ultra, I just decided to give in and just get as much data and information as possible.

I've given in. It looks like a computer watch, and it is a computer watch now, and I've given up the fight. And I've actually been very happy with this setup that I've got, because it is making my watch more useful to me, so fine, I'm going to be happy with that. You know? Yeah.

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memberful.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and providing everything we need to run membership programs of our own. Back to Ask Upgrade. Can we get more lasers? Oh, fantastic. Love more lasers.

More lasers all the time. This question comes from Nathan. If you had an iOS or macOS developer at your disposal to build an app just for you, what would it be? I think Nathan sent this in for um for last week when james was on and i was going to spring it on him but we ended up not doing it in theory james is the developer who could build things for himself though right yeah uh i don't know if i have a serious answer here. I have told James that he needs to work with me

on building a curling stopwatch app for the Apple Watch. But that's it, though. That is your serious answer. You want that. So, you know. That would be nice. That would be nice. I have an app idea.

I wanted to make this app idea once. I don't think I ever spoke about it, but this is my idea. People can do what they want. It's called Instant Checklist. I just, and I've used apps to like kind of like fake this for me. Just like it is,

you have a bunch of templates, like checklist templates, and you just press a button and then they become active. So your packing checklist, your grocery list, like things that are typically the same, but then you just tap a button

and you then just get them all to check off very easily so like they're just stored now i've kind of hacked this in a way we're using things so i have like a shortcut that i can run and then things will duplicate like a template project that sits in but it's like it's not perfect it's not exactly the way that i would want it but so that that's my idea. If I had an iOS developer at my disposal, they would build my app idea, Instant Checklist. That is now a free idea for the world. So whoever wants to make Instant Checklist, go forth.

You know, that's my gift to you. I actually did, I think, ask Rosemary Orchard about this. And I think she told me that it's not possible. But the other thought that I had is, I would like a cross-platform app, ideally, but certainly a Mac app that lets me write automation either. I mean, not necessarily using shortcuts, but like using Python or JavaScript or whatever, and have those show up in shortcuts as actions. So basically like letting me write subroutines that I can store away and then use as actions. And I think that you're not able to dynamically add actions to the shortcuts library.

But this is one of my frustrations with shortcuts that I thought, it's really like, can I use a developer to do an end around around Apple? And I'm then when you want to share it you've got to like i just it would be fun to be able to to build that in a different way and probably the answer is shortcuts should just get better and solve this problem for me i guess i guess what you're saying is that you would have a library of scripts that you've written but then in shortcuts they just show us like the name of the thing you'd have to worry about the fact that it's a script show us a block like it does the thing and i i built that block and then ideally then another thing that would be i would require shortcuts is ideally then when you share that shortcut having the ability to pick up it's the the custom blocks that came along with it and include them in the shortcut so you don't have to share because

sometimes you share a shortcut and you're like, I actually need to share three shortcuts with you because they're all interrelated and that's not great either. Me and you have that problem. Shortcut stuff where I wish it was better. I wish it was better. The world needs to know that Jason Snell is very helpful to me

when it comes to shortcuts. You're very helpful. Jason writes shortcuts and he shares them with me and then I don't know how to make. Like, you're very helpful. Jason writes shortcuts and he shares them with me and then I don't know how to make it work. He's very patient and he helps me. And then we walk through it together. Because I want you to benefit from the goodness of it and you don't need to become a shortcuts expert. I just need to get

you up and running so that you can do the great stuff that the shortcuts enable. So I'm happy to help my friends with that. It gives me a little taste of what tech support would be like and i'm okay not getting more than that taste because it's a bitter taste it's very bitter jackson writes in and says i've noticed and i noticed this too so i'm pleased that jackson asked i've noticed that some of jason's recent macworld columns have been translated

into spanish how did this come about Has the potential of a new audience changed how he chooses what to write about? And how has working with presumably a translator changed the process? Have either of you knowingly had work published in another language in the past? That's a question, I guess, to both of us. All right.

My former employer, publisher of Macworld, used to be called International Data Group, IDG, because the whole philosophy was build these magazines and have them be everywhere all over the world. And so at its height, Macworld had editions in all sorts of different countries, including the UK and Spain and Germany and Italy and Turkey and Japan. I don't know if we were in Korea. Anyway, a bunch of places. And the way it worked was as the flagship Macworld in the US, we gave our stories, our files away. There was like a FTP server basically with all of our files

on it. And the licensees, some of them were licensees, some of them were owned and operated by IDG, but the licensees is what we called them. They could take them and do what they want with them. And it really varied because the idea is they know their market and we don't. And so it was not a top down. This is a Pat McGovern, the guy who founded IDG. It was his philosophy was people in the country know what the people in the country care about and we don't. And so you're not going to have a like a brand manager in the U S who's telling macro Italia what to do, right? That doesn't make any sense. Macworld Turkey knows the Turkish market and they know whether it's more consumer or more professional and they, and they adjust accordingly and they

can take all our content if they wanted it. So like the macro UK had a whole staff and didn't take anything from us. Basically macro Turkey took a lot of stuff from us. And so the experience of seeing your work in another language, the ones that I remember the most are macro Turkey, where I don't understand a single thing about Turkish. And it's got lots of weird characters in the language that I don't understand. And there's my name. And I'm like, Oh,

that's me. I'm in there. Uh, so that's the backstory. Uh,'m like, oh, that's me. I'm in there. So that's the backstory. IDG isn't what it was before. And it doesn't even have that name anymore. I think they're called Foundry now. They did what they did. And this is, you know, is it counter to the original IDG philosophy or not? I don't know. Discuss. But they unified on one CMS. They're using WordPress and they built it out for everybody in the world and all their

different brands. And so what used to be entirely separate groups now has one CMS where they publish all their websites that are still being published by Foundry. And at one point that so Macworld UK and US now have the same editorial operation, actually, and they share content. It's fascinating that they've done that. And they brought in Macworld Spain. And what ended up happening was they would pick some of the articles and

translate them. So a few things about this. One, I don't work for Macworld Spain and my editor at Macworld does not care about Macworld Spain. So we write about, you know, I write about what I want to write about. There is a thing in the CMS that now says, the way it affected me is there's a thing in the CMS that says, where is this going and what language is it in? And I have to say English and, and, you know, English global and not Spanish. But other than that, it hasn't changed a single thing about what I do. On top of that, the bad news is I believe they shut it down. So I don't think this is going to be happening anymore. But in terms of like dealing with the international implications of my writing being translated,

it was very much like old school IDG in that I just didn't pay attention to it. And it was up to them. If they liked my article and wanted to translate it into Spanish, go right ahead. I don't have any approval. I don't have any knowledge. It just happens or it doesn't happen. So it was fun because the bylines in the CMS are tied to your users. So I would go into my little dashboard in WordPress for Foundry, and it's supposed to be a list of my articles. and suddenly there are articles in it that are in spanish i'm like okay but other than that it's had no effect on me it is kind of fun though to see your articles translated into another language because that moment where you

see the byline and all the other words make no sense it's kind of great actually do you think it could potentially open up a bit, like a different audience? I, I don't know. I mean, I, it's hard to tell, right?

I, I do wonder, so here's, here, let me re-spin that for you. Um, I wonder if as

AI translation gets better, as machine learning translation gets better, we are going to end up in a situation where every language, every website is available to everyone everywhere assuming they can get to it and that it will be readable in a way that it isn't right like we got translation in safari right now it's okay but it's not great but i do wonder

in the long run if whether it's in browser or it's on the sites that that stuff gets translated so well that there are people like federico had to work so hard on his english and it's excellent yep right but he's a native italian speaker yep but i do wonder in the long run if that won't even be necessary maybe for podcasts right but for writing if it won't even really be necessary because if you're writing something and you have very something very perceptive to say, and you're in Taiwan or you're in Spain, uh, everybody just reads it and they read it in their native language and they all understand it. That would be, that would be really interesting, but I don't know. I, I, I still fall on the Pat McGovern sign a little bit, which is I'm writing about the markets that I know and the field that I know and what I write,

because this happens with us, where we'll say something and somebody will say, well, actually, in this country, that's not true. And yeah, I'm from the United States. I'm not writing about every country and what is true in every country. can't and even if i wanted to the amount of effort that would be required would be enormous and wouldn't would not would not be worth it so um i i do think that there's some truth in in having the value of the people who actually understand what's going on in those countries right like presumably somebody is writing about specific issues that are happening in france and they're doing it in French and maybe they're linking to English language articles too, but I would imagine that they are talking about the

issues that matter to people in France about like that they don't have to have an iPhone in a box anymore and stuff like that that happens in France. Or there are people in the Netherlands writing in Dutch about dating apps with different ways to buy them now. I imagine that stuff is happening, and that's great because there's only so much of that that I can do because I'm not there, and I'm not living it day to day. Something that Spotify is trialing is very interesting to me. They're doing it with just a few shows right now

and very limited episode numbers, but I think it could be cool me they're doing it just a few shows right now and very limited episode numbers but i think could be cool if they can make it work which is they are doing translations with ai using a version of the podcaster's voice sure right so like somebody just translating this show even like speaking it doesn't is oh it's fine but not as appealing to me but the idea that it would be me my voice and your voice talking in french that is cool to me because it's like if it can actually learn my intonation and can kind of sound like me but it's a different language like i would do that i think that that is a cool thing and could allow for more people around the world

to more easily consume the content. The problem is the quality of the transcripts right now isn't good enough because there's so much idiom that's going on and so much of the nature of having a conversation. It is a hard job to do this. Right. But do I think that that will happen?

Yeah, I do. I think even with podcasts you're gonna you're gonna get to the point where the transcription is really accurate and you can on the fly translate it and text to speech it back out in a voice that matches the original speaker yeah that's totally gonna happen That's four bizarre things that all have to become really, really good. But I don't think they're like, you know, step one, we want this step two question mark step three profit. Like I don't see the question marks in a cloud, like in step two, I think it's pretty straightforward that all those things are

happening and will continue to happen and will connect at some point even though like for me i actually think the biggest challenge is not taking somebody's voice and putting it in another language and it's not translating although translating can have issues and needs to get better they all need to get better i think my concern is that they get our um idiomatic conversation style transcribed in a way that actually makes sense. Because that's hard. Not impossible, but I think that's going to be really hard. And Anonymous writes in and says,

I enjoy reading Six Colors on both the website and via Apple News, but I know Jason is not Apple News' greatest fan. I'd like to ensure I support publications I enjoy. So is there a downside or upside for independent website owners to make their content available on Apple News? For example, do you still get page counts if I read on Apple News?

It's going to be different for everybody. I only supply my RSS feed to Apple News, which I think means you get the sponsor messages as well. So it's the equivalent of being an RSS subscriber, which I'm fine with. We have lots of them. That's why the sponsors go in the RSS feed, right? Exactly. And I don't charge sponsors by the page view. That's not how I do it. I can supply page view numbers and I can supply RSS feed numbers to them. But in the end, our sponsors are mostly there to get our audience

in wherever they find it. So if you read on the site, you'll see it and you're not a member, you'll see a text ad, but there's also a sponsor in the RSS feed and there's a sponsor. Thank you on the site. And it's all part of the package and that stuff goes to Apple news. So it's, and it goes into RSS. So I'm trying to make it as, as, uh, neutral as possible because I understand that people, uh, consume content in different ways. And if you're a member, you can get it all wrapped up in an email at the end of the week. That's a thing we do too, is there's a, there's a newsletter at the end of the week with the content of the week. So I'm trying to reach people wherever they want to be. Um, and beyond that, I mean, if I had a page view model, then I would, I would do

RSS summaries and force people to go to the site to read it, but I don't, and I don't want to do that. So I've got a way to put RSS, put the ads, the ads do go in the RSS. Um, and I, you know, I think it's good enough. I don't want to, I I'm happy to be in a position where I don't feel like I need to do stuff like leave content out of the feed in order to drive people to the site. Because that's not a thing they actually want to do. I'm an RSS reader. I don't like it when I have to tap through. So, yeah, it's not a big deal that people are in Apple News.

That said, I also never supported Apple's news markup thing. Right. And probably never will. And I'm unclear on exactly how much. Like, I would be happy for my stuff to be better in Apple News. But the amount, every time I've looked at it, it's like you're turning a rock over and there's all sorts of creepy crawlies underneath. And I just kind of don't want to go there. So for now, I'm just kind of content to, they've got an RSS feed to munch on and that's

what it is. That's where it is. You can send us your feedback, your follow-up and questions for Ask Upgrade and Snell Talk by going to upgradefeedback.com. Thank you so much to everybody who does. You can check out Jason's work over at sixcolors.com. You can hear his shows at theincomparable.com and here on RelayFM where you hear me as well. You can also check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us on Mastodon. Jason is at jsnell on zeppelin.flights.

I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E, on myke.social. You can also find the show as upgrade at relayfm.social. You can watch video clips of the show there and on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We are upgrade relay, at upgrade relay and all of the show there and on tiktok instagram and youtube but we are upgrade relay at upgrade relay and all of those i am on threads i am at i mike i m y k e jason says

he isn't but he is at jason l j s n e double l i listened to the outro last week thank you to our members who support us of upgrade plus don't you can get 20% off an annual plan right now. Go to GiveRelay.com to learn more. Thank you to our sponsors of this week. That is Memberful, Vitally,

Backblaze, and Squarespace. But most of all, as always, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Although, actually, I won't be.

I'm away again. I'll explain it later on. But we've got a great guest lined up. Jason's going to be taking the reins with one of the all-time guests of the show. Thanks so much for listening. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

Everybody get ready. John Syracuse is coming back. See you next week. See you next week. See you next week.