Upgrade - 497: The Poison Pill

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 497 for january 29th 2024 today's show is brought to you by notion and ud pizza ovens my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason snow hi mike hurley how are we so close to upgrade 500? I know. I have a little task, which is like check the 500 draft. Yeah, really? Doing that soon. Wild.

I have a Snell Talk question for you, Jason. Comes from Eli, last name withheld, who says, Jason, did you enjoy the Flophouse live on Friday? I hope I wasn't too much of an overbearing fan of upgrade. No, Eli was very nice. I did very much enjoy the Flophouse live on friday i hope i wasn't too much of an overbearing fan of upgrade no eli was very nice i did very much enjoy the flop house live on friday it turned out although eli did and his wife chatted with me and my wife uh briefly then um then merlin and his kid sat down at their table and then we didn't speak to them again because they just talked to Merlin and Merlin's kid after that. That's pretty great.

That's pretty great. Did you speak to, did you see Merlin? I gave a little hug to Merlin. Yeah. I mean, he saw me. He spotted me. And because I think Eli said, oh, you know, we were just talking to Jason. And then our eyes locked across, you know, two tables.

And he came over and gave me a hug. And we chatted a couple of times and made jokes about John Syracuse. You know, as you do. As you do. As you do. Basically, when any of us us get together there's always jokes about john well you gotta can you believe by the way can you believe the mac pro i just like i feel like i can't believe from the john picked the the current mac pro as the as the hall of shame yes i just i can't i can't accept i can but i can believe it because it's john no no i just i can't uh in the show notes to one of our video clips uh so you can see my reaction uh for when for john's john's pick because we're not happy no i wasn't happy did

the two times people flipped off the camera make it into the video version? Do we know that? I don't know if that happened or not. I don't know. There were two times when people got sniped for pics and gave the finger to the picking person. Anyway, I was a little behind the scenes. Wow, look at you now. Throwing it out there.

If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question of your own to help us open a future episode of Upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send it in. We were talking a little bit about the 40th anniversary of the Mac draft just there. That's what we were referring to. Jason spoke about the video. This is, I think, the best video episode of the show so far. Certainly. Maybe you want to see what it's like. Maybe you want to see what a video version of the show so far so certainly if you've been one you know maybe you want to see

what it's like maybe you want to see what a video version of the show was like um wonderful video editor chip did a great job with this episode but we have video of every participant in the draft and so uh people can people can go and check that out i'll say i also just wanted to thank so many upgradians who said so many nice things about that episode um it was i was terrified about that episode i didn't think it was going to work i thought it was too many people and i was worried that it wasn't going to work uh but as we were doing it i was like oh this is working and so jason you were right to to push for that episode it was a good idea from you like i said it's uh the one the funny thing i also heard from some people who don't know what a draft is and i had

to explain what sports drafts are. Oh, okay. You pick, and then once somebody picks it, nobody else can pick it, and you pick and sequence. They clearly don't listen to Upgrade, these people. Yeah, well, or they just don't understand. It may be that they were new listeners to Upgrade, which is great. We welcome them. So I had to explain that to a few people, but what I've learned in the incomparables many drafts that we've done over the years is that while I am deeply reluctant to have a large panel on a regular episode, our panels are large enough as it is.

Right. But, uh, for a draft episode, I'll put 10 people on. I don't care because although people do chime in and all that, the fact that it's a turn-taking format makes it a lot easier. It's more manageable. It's not perfect. It is hard, but it's more manageable.

And so we had a smaller group than an incomparable draft. And I know it was a lot and terrifying to you, but I thought it would work because of the turn-taking. And it did. So, yeah. Yeah, it came out really well and if you do want more on the 40th anniversary of the mac jason wrote a bunch of stuff on the verge and the six colors i'll put links to all that in the show notes i was actually hoping we could talk about some of this today but we got some other stuff that we need to cover other stuff to talk about but But yeah, I mean, we also gave,

did a long episode about the 40th anniversary of the Mac. So this podcast has fulfilled its need. But yeah, I wrote 1,500 words or whatever about it at The Verge. Always nice to see an article I've written at the top of The Verge. That's fun. And then I wrote another 1,500 words or so at Six Colors about it. And then I have a piece where I talk to Greg Joswiak a little bit, just very briefly about it, because that's what I seem to do every 10 years is check in with Apple executives about where they reassure me that the Mac is not going away. That's a trend I've discovered in how I apparently live my life.

So, yeah. One last piece of follow up here. Apple has not been successful in winning the many appeals that they've been going through with the apple watch and the blood oxygen sensor and so it now has decided to continue selling both the app watch series 9 and the app watch ultra 2 with the blood blood oxygen sensor disabled That's what they're doing. So they've just disabled it. It doesn't work.

It's still in there, I believe, but it's not happening. And they're going to continue down the lawmaking process and the legal process here, which I find the whole thing to be very strange. But there you go.

If you're in the US and you don't have an Apple Watch and you want one, well, that feature's not going to work for you um and that's that's the way it is i uh have some breaking okay follow-up okay i'm gonna put it here is it follow-up i don't know but i'm gonna put it here because we have so much to talk about today i'm just gonna say we do this podcast on zoom yeah breaking just now zoom has announced they are doing a Vision OS app. It will support personas and it will support

a spatial experience to make meetings immersive. So, will there be a immersive version of Upgrade in Zoom on a Vision Pro at some point? Only time will tell, but this makes it, I'd say, a little more likely.

Huh. Yeah. So so it was reading from the verge uh zoom says it's planning on bringing more features to the app later this spring including something called real world pinning this is supposed to make calls feel more immersive by letting vision pro users pin up to five zoom meeting participants in a physical space while removing the caller's background. Hmm, yeah. Well, they have some weird tech in Zoom now where you can like have a, it's like a fake meeting room

and it'll cut out the people's, just their body, not the background and like place them in that space. Yeah. So it's kind of, they're already experimenting with stuff like this. So I imagine there's going to be more of that going on. But I don't know.

It seems like people are starting to announce their Vision Pro apps. Hooray. Is what I'm saying. I like, yeah, this is all starting to happen. I have multiple app announcements in my mailbox. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

Oh, boy. Well, that's exciting. I'm excited about that. Mm-hmm. This episode is brought to you by Notion. There is no shortage of helpful AI tools available today. But using them means switching back and forth and from one tool to another tool,

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My plan for today's episode is we were gonna we were gonna like we're gonna do some rumor roundup stuff yep i'm carrying some things over um details yeah some details we could have done and then also i wanted to talk about the vision pro we are still going to talk about vision pro today because we are just a few days away but then uh over the last over the last thursday i think it was? Yeah, big week. Apple published their response and their kind of plan for how they're going to deal with the European Union's Digital Markets Act, the DMA. And inherently, they have upended tons of what the App Store

and what iOS could be to, they have proposed a series of upendings to this for their plan for how they will work within the European Union's new rules, guidelines. So I'm going to give a disclaimer to this. All of this stuff that we're about to talk about is incredibly complicated. We have both worked for hours to try and understand this the best we're about to talk about is incredibly complicated we have both worked for

hours to try and understand this the best we can but it is going to take longer than today's episode to fully comprehend it so for sure i expect you will hear us say things today that may be wrong or may be misunderstood i have already listened to many podcasts of many of my favorite creators who are doing that too right like they're saying something and I'm like, I know that's wrong. And this is just where we are right now, because the complication of this is kind of massive. So what I am going to try and attempt to do here is to go through the salient points of Apple's response to the DMA. of Apple's response to the DMA, and then we're going to talk about them. And Jason, I'm just going to start reading this stuff. You can jump in wherever you want,

but other than that, we're going to have a big conversation about it at the end. But I feel like we have to kind of try and set the table for this, because I also know a lot of our listeners are interested in this, but don't want to spend the three hours reading it. So that is what we provide you today. So Apple is making we provide you today. Apple is making a series of changes to iOS and the available terms for developers

who distribute their apps in Europe. The changes to iOS, they're more simple. So there will be the introduction of alternative app marketplaces. These are other third-party app stores, but Apple doesn't call them that i think because

app stores is a term that apple owns and so they don't want that's their intellectual property so they will be called alternative app marketplaces as a communicator of technology i like that it has a different name because it's easier for me to shorthand it effectively what users can do they can install them they can so you install them from the app store i believe or from websites i think from websites right from websites you can install the marketplaces then you can install apps from those marketplaces and even as a user set one of them as your default marketplace for applications. Yeah. It doesn't have to be, but you can.

Yes. Any apps downloaded from a marketplace do not have things like screen time restrictions applied to them, which I do think... Yeah, like shared family things. There are other app store niceties. Well, I mean, that stuff's obvious, right? Like the stuff that the app store...

Which, by the way, Apple's talking about refunds. Has anyone ever successfully like the stuff that the app store which by the way apple's talking about refunds has anyone ever successfully just got a refund from oh it does happen i but it's really i know it's possible but it's very hard to do right there isn't like a process for getting refunds you have to like speak to apple support and then sometimes i help you although actually in europe there is a different law, but nevertheless. I think the most important thing about this is there is a line in the DMA that is that companies like Apple that are found to be gatekeepers have to allow sideloading or alternative marketplaces. And Apple has taken the or and run with it. And I got to be honest, I hate this. And I think this is why Apple's doing it. So Apple could have fulfilled the DMA by saying, okay, we're not going to let anybody create their own app store, But you just go to their website and you click and you go through the process and you get the app.

And Apple has said, nope, we're not going to do it that way. And I understand Apple's perspective here being by concentrating availability in alternative marketplaces, there's a little more visibility, understanding. And honestly, there's a company that has to be responsible for posting that app instead of it just being willy nilly. Some company with an alternative marketplace has to say, yes, we are going to put your app in our marketplace that's not an app store. Don't call it an app

store. But what it means essentially, and so I think Apple is making a smart for Apple move because Apple's goal here is to make it as unpleasant as possible to get outside of Apple's restrictions. We're going to see this time and again. But the no side loading, because there's no side loading. There's alternate loading through someone else's store.

And we're going to get into some of the details of what you have to do to become a marketplace. And in addition, then, apps that would be in that marketplace have to go through a whole other process. So it's extra complicated and not like what it is on the Mac and how they could have implemented it but have chosen not to, which is I'm a developer. I wrote about this last week on Six Colors. There's a great iTunes or it's music, sorry, the music app for Mac. There's a utility for it called Sleeve that does like a little floating palette of the currently playing album and it puts in shortcuts and it does scrabbling and it does all these things. It's a great little app. And if you go to their website, you'll see download on the Mac App Store or just buy it from us.

And it's like, you can't do that with this. You can't do that with this. It could be downloaded on the App Store or downloaded on XYZ store. Sorry, 123 store. But I mean, sorry, 123 Marketplace. Let's get the terms right here. Get it right, Jason, please. 123 Marketplace. But what they can't, please. One, two, three marketplace.

But what they can't do is say, just get it from us. You can't. Even with this freedom in quotes that's happening, you cannot sideload independently as a developer. You have to go to some gatekeeper. This is essentially the way Apple has interpreted the DMA. And I think they've done it correctly as far as I can tell for the words in the dma not necessarily the intent but the words in it is the solution to having one gatekeeper is to make more gatekeepers which is if i was an independent developer or honestly as a user, I hate it.

I understand why Apple's doing it, but it's like, Oh, good. Like you can kind of see a little bit though, right? Cause like that breeds competition. Competition may breed different rights and that may help some companies,

but it's not simple. Right. It's not the simple move, but it's like, it is a move that could at least change what there currently is, where Apple sets 100% of the rules. Sure. I'm not saying it doesn't address issues. I think what I'm saying is you and I know enough developers that we know that one of the issues is the existence of a gatekeeper intermediating the relationship between the developer and the user.

the relationship between the developer and the user. And the DMA, as implemented by Apple here, to the letter of the law, I think, is essentially saying gatekeepers are not the problem. In fact, they're still required. I just think that's hilarious because it's the first, and I assure you in this segment, a long series of things where everybody goes,

oh, oh, and it is disappointed. And I guess from the iOS slash user side, another part about apps from marketplaces is, let's imagine you have the Spotify app from the App Store. Spotify moved their app to a marketplace. You can't just download the Spotify app over the place of the existing Spotify app. You have to remove your current Spotify app from your phone and then download the new one. I see why that's the case, right? Like, well, that sounds annoying,

but I also kind of like, from a technological perspective, understand why that might have to happen. Even though I think there's probably, there could be ways around it, but they haven't got them. Anyway. Yeah.

Staying on the, what is changing in iOS, web browsers can use engines other than WebKit. So you'll be able to have a web browser on the iPhone that is Chromium, which I think used to be the case, and then it changed at a certain point. I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

And European users will be given an option to choose a default browser for their iPhone from a list of options on the first use. Yes, a randomized list of options, no less. And there is a defined list of which browsers will be shown in each country. It actually differs country to country. Mac Stories has that list if you're so inclined to want to know.

Apple will also use a new system to check if you're in the European Union so you can use the marketplaces and all this other stuff as a user. It features a combination of checking the billing address on your App Store

account, the current location that you're in, the device, the region your device is set into, and the class of device, because all of this only applies to the iPhone, the current location that you're in, the device, the region your device is set into, and the class of device, because all of this only applies to the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac, everything else does not get the app marketplace stuff.

And I guess one other thing, which is, I just think really feels categorically good, where everything else is a little murkier. Worldwide now, Apple is going to be allowing game streaming services to exist on the app store which is fantastic right but that's everywhere that's not just in the eu it's everywhere so it's a different change that that apple is making so no longer do they need to split the games into individual apps which apple wanted them to do

uh this is just a thing that will exist and so now now Xbox Game Pass can have an app on the iPhone. And that's that, which I'm excited about that hopeful future. So that's the simple part, I think. That's the simple part. So that's like if you're a user in the European Union, these are the things that will become available for you, asterisk, sometime in March, right? So in 17.4, this kind of functionality will become available for you, asterisk, sometime in March, right? So in 17.4, this kind of functionality will become available for you.

If you are a developer, this is where it gets significantly more complicated. So everything that we're going to talk about here are part of new business terms that Apple has created. And as a developer, you have the opportunity, if you so want to, to opt into these new business terms. You can stay with the opportunity, if you so want to, to opt into these new business terms. You can stay with the current system if you want to, which we know. We know everything about that system already.

But you can opt into these terms if you want to. It changes the agreement. It changes what is applicable to you. But if you opt in, it's a one-time thing. You cannot go back. And if you're asking yourself yourself why would they opt in well there's we're going to get into the details it's required that they opt in if they want to take advantage of specific new eu only features right so you can't say oh here's a new freedom i have

in the eu i want that but i want to keep the old business terms. That's not how it works. You either are in sort of like plan A, which is the way it's always been, including all the rules, or at least most of the rules, or plan B, which is all these new openings, but you have to agree to these new terms as a developer. Yep. Top line, new commission.

So what we consider is the 15 or 30% that we've had for a long time now has changed. It is either 10% for small developers, down from 15%, or 17% for everybody else, if you're not in the small business program.

This also counts for digital goods and services. These are at 17%. This is the base commission. If you use Apple's in-app payment system, you pay an extra 3% on top of this, making it 13% and 20%. Right.

Yeah. So if you do the math here, by the way, if you think of it as 13 and 20, so let's assume that you're using Apple for payment processing because you don't have to now. Let's not get into that just yet because that will probably also be roughly 3% if you go with someone else. You'll be paying it to someone who isn't Apple, but you're still paying it. Okay. So the small business program for companies that have less than a million dollars in sales a year, so indie developers and things like that, are already 15%. So this is not really much of a deal for them. If you are a larger developer and you're currently having Apple take 30% of everything you do, 20%, including the credit card fee, is a much better deal. So on this one level, if you look at this, you can see that this change is not much of an incentive for a small developer.

And there's more to come there. But that it does provide a bit of a financial incentive for some larger developers who want to take more money away from apple and i want to this is something that we had this question in discord just now and i've confirmed i've struggled to get the exact answer for this but i think I understand it to be the case, which is developers all around the world can opt into this, but it just applies to your European Union-based business. So you can be an American developer, but then this will apply to the customers

and money made in the European Union. I just wanted to double-check that. I thought that was the case, but that was something which I struggled to 100% confirm, so I'm happy that you read it the same Union. I just wanted to double check that. I thought that was the case but that was something which I struggled to 100% confirm so I'm happy that you read it the same way. So we mentioned payment systems. As a developer you are now able to use your own

payment system either in app or linking out to the web. You are still expected to pay the aforementioned 10 or 17% commission to Apple if you remain in the app store. There is no longer a requirement to use Apple's in-app purchase

if you opt to use your own. Right. You don't have to use Apple's system. You can use your own credit card system. And if you're outside of the App Store, some different rules apply, but this is even if you're in the App Store, you can use your own payment system. You're still paying Apple this fee, so why do you do it? And the answer is

you're not doing it to save money. And this is an important point because this comes up a lot when we're talking about this. I believe because in part, a lot of the developers that have been pushing for this talk a lot about freedom and competition, but what they really want is to make more money by not paying Apple as much money. And that's not the same. And so this is a case where you have freedom to use your own processor. You're still going to essentially be paying the same amount of money, including a portion to Apple. What it does give you is control of your credit card, customer credit card data, which means that you could then, they're your customer,

you could email them, you could track them, you could sell their information, you could do whatever, I mean, is allowed under the rules, but like you would own that transaction in a way that you don't when it goes through Apple.

So there still might be a reason to do it, but it won't be, in this one scenario where you're in the app store and you're using your own payment system. It's not actually going to save you money. But there are things about control and data and information that could be attractive to a business to do it this way. Could be. If you are in an app marketplace, those commissions, the 10% and 17%, you don't have to pay them.

So if you are not in the app, these commissions, the 10% and 17%, plus the payment, 3%, these are only applicable if you as a developer choose to remain in the app store. If you decide you want to go out to an app marketplace, you are free of the commission. There is no more commission for you.

You pay from Apple. to go out to an app marketplace you are free of the commission there is no more commission for you from pay the yeah from apple you obviously you're because you're doing whatever you're doing yeah anyone who's running an app marketplace is probably going to want their cut too yes but we don't look we can assume this is the case but these cuts could be much fairer they could be different sure there might not be any at all like you know what because there could be reasons that some companies want to have a marketplace of their own and they just need more apps in it because they can't you can't just have a marketplace of your own which will get rid of it as well right but the core technology fee i think this is the biggest part it is maybe the most confusing and probably has the largest ramifications the core technology fee in essence is like a license it's essentially a per active user license of apps it's it is and there's been a lot of confusion about like oh it's per install per update all of these things

but the way it works is it's per Apple ID and it's one. And once it's one, that's it. So essentially, if you have an app and you update it or download it during a 12-month period, you're essentially considered an active user. But that's all they're really tracking is that download or update for it. And Apple is then saying, okay, so now we know how many people are active annual users of your app. And you will pay us half a euro for each. Yep.

I'm going to do it. I'm going to explain it again. Because again, very complicated, right? It is 50 cent fee for an individual. The threshold is calculated on a rolling 12 month basis. This is a fee for using iOS, essentially. Yeah, it's for access to Apple's. It's the same argument that they've been making all along,

which is it's access to Apple's platforms, to its intellectual property, to its developer tools and to its APIs. They feel that they are entitled to a payment that was previously embedded in the percentage they took from the App Store. And now they're going to take it a different way, which is by charging on active installs. So for example, rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, if you're Spotify and you have maybe 40 million iPhone users in the EU, something like that, they would be paying Apple not 20 million euro, but 19.5 million because the first million is free. After that, though, it's 50 cents per user. And that would be, even if they were a free user,

Spotify would still need to pay 50 cents a year for that free user. Yep. It is inclusive of new downloads, it is inclusive of updates, but it's tied to the individual, as Jason said, right? The first million is included in your developer program fee.

So you pay Apple to be a developer. As part of that payment, they give you the first 1 million downloads. That is whether you are in the App Store or in an app marketplace. You only pay the core technology fee for over 1 million. So 1 million and 1. And it's not like... I remember the small business program, basically once you got over a million dollars, I think you kind of lost it. It isn't that. So if you get to a million and one, you pay for one. You don't pay for a million and one. The first million is included as your fee for being a developer. So you only pay for what's on top. The way that Apple bills developers for this is even more complicated. It is billed monthly divided into twelfths.

I have, I felt like my brain was leaking out of my ears trying to understand this part. The, the idea is you're not going to get a bill. So I said, Spotify is going to get this bill for 19 and a half million euros, right?

Um, but they're not. They're going to get 12 bills for 1.6 million euros every month. That's how it's going to work. Well, but it could change. If you get more users, you pay even, it goes up and down. Sure, sure. Because it's a rolling 12-month install thing.

The idea there, I think this is reasonable the idea there is to smooth out yeah this and have it fairly accurately reflect your uh 12 month moving basis uh user base so if you have a bunch of people install your app and you go over a million and then half of them or a quarter of them delete it you're're going to come back down over time. And so there's, obviously, Apple has this stuff. They have lots of stuff about this. They have a good graphic where they've created an app and shown how it would be built.

So you can kind of look at that. But they also built a calculator tool. So you can go in and you can say what type of app you are if you're in or out of the store, and they have all the different options and permutations. And you can plug in and you can say what type of app you are, if you're in or out of the store, and they have all the different options and permutations, and you can plug in a bunch of information, and it will tell you how much money you'll owe Apple over a yearly basis.

It will estimate that for you. Some of these numbers get really high, and it becomes really hard to wrap your head around. Apple state that less than 1% of developers would have to pay the core technology fee if they remained in the App Store. They also say that under the new business terms, 99% of developers would pay less or the same of what they are currently paying to Apple. The core technology fee applies to paid apps and free apps. Educational institutions, government agencies,

and registered nonprofits do not pay the CTF. It is for every other type of app, though. If you're a free app, you have no monetization, you still pay the fee once you go over a million. I think that is the explanation

of the CTF probably taken care of for a bit. I want to talk about it in more detail in a minute, if you're okay with that, Jason. Sure. So alternate app marketplaces, they all need to be approved by Apple before they can be created. They require a 1 million euro letter of credit to make sure that they can pay fees to Apple. This is not as big as it seems. You can get a letter of credit for a smaller fee from a bank. It's essentially

showing your solvency as a company because you're going to have to pay Apple money. You cannot create an alternative app marketplace as a developer to only distribute your own applications. It must be set up as a store that

accepts submissions. You can specialize to a subject area. So Epic have already announced they're going to be bringing the Epic Games Store to iOS in Europe because the Epic Games Store is a game store. People apply to be in the Epic Games Store. It's not just Epic's apps. So that is an example of how that would work but like facebook couldn't create a alternate app marketplace to put instagram facebook and threads inside of they can't do that right they could create in fact i was thinking about this and i don't think facebook's going to want to do this unless they're that we may see some shenanigans where there's like we're going to set up a company or we're going to work with a company that is going to be you know owned

by or partially owned by facebook that's going to be, you know, owned by or partially owned by Facebook. That's going to be an app marketplace. There are ways that they could do it. But I was thinking about this, that if you're Facebook, probably what you want to do is not, you don't need necessarily your apps to be in that marketplace, but I could see it being like a games marketplace that is run by Facebook or a Facebook proxy so that they can get basically people to,

you know, to get back to directly click on a link in a Facebook ad and go and get it from that marketplace. Right. I could see a scenario there complicated though, because we don't know what Apple will do and what will be allowed. And it's, and there's more to this because then you add in how many free app installs does Facebook have. And that means that they're now paying for a thing that previously they didn't pay Apple for. And that's part of the overall thing. But we'll get to it. There isn't an app review, but there is notarization.

So if you want to submit your application to the Epic Games Store, which would be an alternate app marketplace, it still has to be submitted for notarization. Yeah. So let me explain what notarization is, because it happens on the Mac. But it's going to be different for this process. But it's based on the Mac. It's what we said all along, which is Apple has been testing this technology on the Mac, and it's clear that they will use that when they have to do something like this. So you submit your app to Apple. Yes, even though it's not going to go in the App Store, you submit your app to Apple. This happens now with Macs that are not in the Mac App Store or Mac apps that are not in the Mac App Store. You submit the app to Apple. On the Mac, you don't have to do this, but it makes it way easier for everybody

if you do. What Apple does is they have an automated scan, and then they cryptographically sign it, which helps in terms of your security because it means that if the app is then modified later, it doesn't match the signature and the system can say, oh, something happened to this app. So you get, as a developer, some reassurance that the system is making sure your app isn't monkeyed with after the fact for some sort of nefarious purpose. Great. So with this version, what they're also doing is they're going to add some layers of review because they want to make sure that, again, that the app is not malicious. They're barred by the DMA from making kind of judgment calls about the kinds of app they want on the platform, but they can

have some authority in terms of misrepresentation or danger to the user. So they're going to add basically app review, a human version of the scan that is incredibly limited, but still a review that happens. And on top of that, another interesting thing is you're thinking, oh, well, notarization, it's not in the app store. The developer who is submitting to notarization actually supplies description, screenshots, all the kinds of things you would expect would be app store metadata. And the reason for that is that'll all get consumed by Apple and wrapped and signed and then kicked back to the developer to put in the marketplace. But what it means is that when you're in the marketplace, no matter what the marketplace says about that app, when you tap to install it, you see what the description was that was submitted to Apple. And this is important

because Apple is envisioning a scenario where somebody misrepresents what their app does in the marketplace, and it actually does something very different. And in this scenario, what happens is they have to represent what it does to Apple, and it has to match what the app is. And if it doesn't match, Apple can say, no, this is misleading, nefarious, whatever, and block it, even though it's not an App Store app. And that data rides along. So even if somebody were to lie on their marketplace description about what the app was, when you tap, you're going to see what they told Apple.

And that supposedly will give you greater confidence and safety that this app is what they say it is. But what it does mean is that App Store metadata essentially is going to ride along with the app, even if it's not in the App Store. I have lots of thoughts, concerns, questions about lots of things here. I think this is maybe the thing that makes the most sense to me. Because I would not expect that if you are a good faith developer that you would be rejected from this process.

I think that the eyes of the regulator are on them. The language in the regulation is clear that they cannot kind of pick and choose what they want. It's only for bugs, safety, malware. It's trying to steal your information. It's like literally there is a very limited remit of what Apple can scan. And I would also say we've had, what, six years, seven years of notarization on the Mac App Store and a lot of people are on the Mac, not even the Mac App Store, on the Mac. And a lot of people at the time were like, oh, here we go.

Apple's going to take. The fact is Apple's notarization, and it's not the same as it is going to be on iOS and the Mac. And a lot of people at the time were like, oh, here we go. The fact is, Apple's notarization, and it's not the same as it is going to be on iOS and the EU, but Apple has not used that as a de facto app store rejection system. And I don't expect them to do it here. If you submit a porn app or an emulator or any other category of thing that Apple says no we're not going to let you do this um they can't turn you away if you aren't buggy causing harm containing malware

misrepresenting who you are right they're not allowed to do that um and so theoretically they will just pass those apps through i heard something today that they are still enforcing app tracking transparency as part of this which i find to be very frustrating but it's part of what apple considers to be security so right so be it and it's an api i mean it's an api so they're basically saying you need to ask and that's how they've done it up to now right which is you need to ask and then people say no and then they don't get to track and it's an API. So they're basically saying you need to ask and that's how they've done it up to now. Right. Which is you need to ask and then people say no, and then they don't get to track and it's, they're using that API because they're still running on iOS.

Right. So that's a place where Apple can enforce like Apple has looked very clearly. They have mapped out. There's a whiteboard somewhere inside Cupertino where they have, they have very cleverly mapped out like what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do and placed certain features inside or outside that area. With this notarization it also gives Apple malware protections. I assume that these two things are linked

together because by doing this you are giving, like Apple is kind of granting you the ability to run an iOS which means there is some kind of link that the system is aware of the app as it's running. So, for example, if an app became malware, Apple can shut it down, even if it's not in the App Store. This is the case on the Mac right now. If you download an app, a notarized app from an unknown source on macOS and Apple has identified it as containing malware it will not run it and in fact even if it's not notarized apple has a kill switch but they also will do things like they can kill the developer account because the developer account associated with the signed app is known by apple so apple can also say that developer is shut down and all their apps will then not work

on Mac OS. So they have a big hammer that they can slam down. But again, it has to be in the name of an actual security threat. Because we've seen this before on the Mac,

one of the classic ones, there was a, I think it was a BitTorrent app called Transmission. And there was a server hack for them where malware was put into the application, and it was not known by the developer, but because it had been notarized,

Apple was able to shut it down, so when people tried to open that application, where it would probably try and install malware on their Mac, it wouldn't open. So that's the benefit of having this. So it gives them that. That's the idea. That's the idea. That's the idea.

So I get people being uncomfortable with the idea that this system that makes Apple no longer a gatekeeper immediately reinstalls Apple as a gatekeeper. I totally get the optics of that. it's saying look we're not saying that platform owners don't have the authority to shut down things for security privacy safety reasons and i think that's sensible right this is not quite the wild west here apple has some authority to protect its users on its platform but it doesn't have the level of power in this scenario that it does on the App Store. They don't get to make decisions about content, which I think is like,

or like what types of businesses can run. Yeah, we don't like this app because, and we've seen so many App Store rejections that are also things like, we just don't like this app because it doesn't do anything we think is valuable. Yeah, there's not enough features. Yeah, it's the old no fart app rule that has been extended to all sorts

of apps that are actually useful uh plus it's things like we don't want emulators we don't want you know we don't want pornography we don't want i mean there there are classes of apps that they're just like like if somebody wrote a really great ios and sadly not on the iPad because it's not covered here, emulator for macOS, let's say. Apple's going to go, nope, uh-uh, no, we're not going to let that in there. But that's not,

they can't reject that under these agreements. They would have to let it go, just like they do on the Mac. There's all sorts of weird Mac apps that they notarize because that's not what it's there for all right final few things and then we can talk about we get more conversation about this so uh developers have access to using the nfc chip for banking or wallet apps so you don't have to go through apple pay if you don't

want to um so apple doesn't take their cut from every transaction. I think the most nebulous thing out of all of this is the creation of what is called an interoperability request where a developer can submit requests to Apple to ask for access to other iPhone hardware or OS features. I expect this email address just goes straight into a trash can. And you can also enable, and to enable all of this functionality, so everything we've spoken about here today,

there are over 600 new APIs available for developers, which includes, as you would imagine, lots of new warning screens that Apple has designed if a customer wants to choose to use any other system in Apple's payments, marketplaces, stuff like that. Shout out to Mark Gurman here. 13 months ago, in December of 22, he reported that Apple's OS group was gearing up to do a major update to iOS that would address the DMA. And we see now with over 600 new APIs, this is what he was talking about.

And it's funny, I would argue this might be the biggest unannounced iOS feature rolled out in a dot release ever. Because I had somebody ask me, what does this mean about the next version of iOS? Is it going to be scant because they had to build all this stuff for the EU? And my response was, no, no, no. This was always part of last year's iOS development cycle. They knew they didn't have to ship it until March because that was their deadline. But based on Gurman's reports and based on the scope of this, clearly last year's iOS development cycle included all of this planning and work because it's huge. And there was no way they were going to do sort of just a late cycle kick in to get it to work with the DMA. It's a much more expansive set of features. It is, in fact, and I think Apple knows this, there will be other places where things like this will be necessary. And so they might as well build it into the operating system and in their mind, do it right. Not have it be a hack, but have it be like, no, there's a whole

API for marketplace apps and here's how it works. There's a whole API for apps that are outside the app store and a whole system for submitting them. And here's how that all works. And they've built it now. The rules may change. The laws may change. In fact, if some country said, you just have to allow sideloading, I think all those APIs are in there. I think you could do that in a different country. If South Korea said, just turn on sideloading, it's the law now. Apple has done that work, even though it wouldn't behave exactly like it's behaving theoretically in the eu with the marketplaces because they've done all this work work they didn't ever want to do but now they have to do and they've done it and i think that is also interesting because now that work is there yep it's you wouldn't do it you wouldn't

do all this work and only work in this one instance, right? Like, well, you got to hope. You really got to hope that they put the, this is like the foundations are in place for all types of things being split up into pieces or in all different types of regions. All of this would go into effect in March, provided that it meets what the EU want. My understanding, though,

is that they don't get told this beforehand, and people are submitting their objections to the European Commission right now about what Apple has put out there. So while this may all look very final, it is actually Apple's proposal for how they would comply with the Digital Markets Act. And if there is one piece of writing about this that I think is the perfect sort of chef's kiss, it is, John Gruber wrote a very, very, very long piece about this.

I know for a fact he talked to a lot of people inside Apple about this to get their perspective on it. But the last section of Gruber's thing is so good because basically what he says is, well, look here, just as developers over the years have submitted their apps to Apple and hoped that they would be approved by a somewhat untrustworthy, capricious, you just never can tell with those guys what's going to happen. Now Apple has effectively submitted their work to the EU and the European Commission and said, what do you think, sirs?

And they are in the same boat, right? Which is they might get rejected, right? Just like a developer gets rejected and that is a very funny uh and i think trenchant observation by mr gruber yep so how how do you is it too big a question to ask how do you feel about this? Let's talk about the feels. I'm surprised by some of it. I sort of thought that they would go with the approach that they've done elsewhere where they've said, okay, you can use your own thing, but you still owe us 30%. And it must be that they're reading of the

dma that they can't i think they know they can't get away with it otherwise they wouldn't have done this because they've made it quite clear what they think they should have everywhere else in the world but this time they've changed that right the commission the commission is different and for some people as apple Apple have said, lower. Yeah. So I think that's interesting that they have done more than I thought. But what really has struck me in reading it and thinking about it and writing about it is that this is Apple, like I said before, it's Apple very carefully mapping out what they're required to do and what they're not

required to do. Okay. So I need to back up and say, we've talked about these issues for the last couple of years here on the podcast. And one of the things that I've said a few times, I'm going to repeat now, because I think it's super important, which is there are regulators and governments that are comfortable regulating specific kinds of behaviors but are much less comfortable telling a company essentially that their product doesn't belong to them anymore that their method of making money their internal business uh costs and calculations that are going to be seized essentially and taken control of by the regulator of government. And I say this because Apple structures a lot of this stuff, including everything they've done here. I mean, if I want to be incendiary, I can

say they're daring them to do this. But I think also Apple has this feeling like there is a limit beyond which the regulators won't step with a company. So what you see here is Apple has built these structures essentially to make it so unpalatable that nobody will want to do them. Or that very, very few people, very few companies will want to participate. And that core technology fee is a really great example of a poison pill. Because I thought immediately, well, Facebook will clearly do this. And Epic will clearly do this. And what will happen with Spotify? And how are they going to handle this? But charging 50 cents for every free install is a shot across the bow of the model most cultivated by the App Store economics, which is the freemium model. Get our thing, use it for free,

we'll make money somewhere else, or we'll upcharge you later. And so if you're Facebook, you got to be confident that going outside or using your own payment processor so you can do more tracking or whatever, you got to be really confident that that's worth it because your business is run on free apps that will now be charged by Apple at a rate of 50 cents per year. Which that amount of money, so okay huge amount of money it can become right 50 cents a year for per customer is not a large amount of money if you have a decent business model right like if you have a business model that is working for you but the the challenge for facebook is there's a part of facebook that's like oh man wouldn't it be great if we could just put those web like in the old days put those web links in facebook to app sales and then we we follow them and we can charge them and because it's our marketplace

and like all of these things about it i'm sure there's a group in facebook that's like yeah let's do that but my question is what revenue does that generate in the eu and does it because it's not 50 cents per user who is buying those apps. It's 50 cents per every user of Facebook and every user of Instagram and every user of WhatsApp, right? And every user of Messenger. It is everybody. It's 50 cents. And those are big apps that are used by lots of people. So the price tag is going to be big.

Can Facebook afford it? Of course it can. apps that are used by lots of people so the price tag is going to be big could can facebook afford it of course it can but my question is do you better be able to offset that otherwise you're better off just staying with the current terms and i think we know facebook can though right we know we know how much money they make we know they can afford that but that's not my not my not my point not my point right no so you're you know. So you're Facebook and you're given two choices. Choice A is stay with the status quo. Choice B is spend 30 million euros a year on free apps in exchange for what you get out of it, which is some reduced terms for payments, which you're not really taking,

What you get out of it, which is some reduced terms for payments, which you're not really taking and some enhanced ability, but not as much as you'd think to track in terms of web clicks and credit card transactions and the like. And my argument would be the group of people that's into that stuff in Facebook is going to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. But if I'm running Facebook and I'm looking at the, whatever it is, 40 million, 50 million, whatever that fee is, I have to be confident that by making this move, I'm going to make that money back and then some. And if I can't, why would I do it? Why would I do it? Right? Like, cause then I'm, I'm losing money to make, I'm making a move to make less money. That's bad business. And that's the poison pill here for a lot of people. Also, anybody who's an indie developer, first off, the terms aren't as good. So your terms will improve by a couple percentage points. It's not really much of anything and you risk any of your free apps and let's face it most indie developers have a freemium model because the app store really pushes you to have that freemium model suddenly our friend james thompson just told us in the discord like even a little sorry james little app like p-calc light is over the threshold in the eu so he would be on the hook for a large amount of money from his free app that is, because it's a free app, not generating revenue.

So that's the poison pill at the center of this, I think. I feel like a company, we'll just keep using Meta as the example here, right? right i could imagine a scenario where if this becomes the worldwide model which i think we both assume it could right that like good governments like the you know governments in america governments in the uk governments all over you know governments in japan might look at this and say that's the model thank you and apple's already built it yeah because it's done already built it so apple can't say oh no that's going to be onerous for us. They built it. It's done.

It's done. So this is the easy way to say we've regulated Apple. If this became the model in, say, 60%, 70% of where Facebook has its customers, I could imagine a scenario in which they are willing to lose or pay the fee to have a bit more control. Yeah, it comes down to the details. I don't know what happens when you tap on an app download ad in Facebook in this model, and you go to a web page, and they track you. Does Apple do some anti-tracking?

Like, I don't know some of the details that probably won't be known until you, you, uh, this gets launched and you're Facebook and you're trying to figure it out. Like I wouldn't, do we think Apple's not trying to make that as hard as possible for Facebook to do on top of everything else? But it, let's say you could get the leverage. Let's say you could get value in it. Then that's your business decision, right? Is it worth it for me to pay 50 cents for every parent and grandma that's using Facebook to look at pictures of cats

in order to be able to monetize somewhat differently with this one part of my business? That's the question. I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying it's not as obvious as you would think. And maybe even like a better, like, you know, a different example, like in a very interesting example is Epic, right?

They have the Epic Games Store. They have, I don't remember what it is, but I know that their fee on other platforms is smaller than what Apple's cut is. I think it might be similar now because like because of this reduced thing but that is a a business where there is sense to be made for having your own app store right and because it is tailored i think an app store with a product that is generating a lot of money is or sorry an app marketplace a marketplace where inherently all of the the apps within that marketplace are expected to be paid which is

video games or they have a have a very lucrative freemium model yes yeah and that's it you know like epic knows how many people play fortnite or Fortnite or whatever and don't pay versus pay. What's the average? And it's ARPU, right? Average Revenue Per User is the term there. And if your ARPU is above whatever that break even is, whether it's like above 50 cents or a dollar or whatever, then it starts to be worth it, right, to do that. And I think that high-generating apps like games are the scenario that is the most likely for this. Now, it is irrevocable, and it means that you're going to be paying Apple that regardless of whether you're in the App Store or not. But I can see how somebody like Epic could construct a place where gamers in the EU know, like there are good games and there are, and, and,

and they will install the, uh, the marketplace because there are good games there. And those games are generating enough revenue that it's worth paying the tax to Apple on the downloads on the active users. It's not even downloads. It is. So like, if you get, if you get Fortnite and you delete it, um, the tax to apple on the downloads on the active users it's not even downloads it is so like if you get if you get fortnite and you delete it um you will fall off but you will no longer be

um counted so there's that too yeah i think it's i think it's quite possible that that games is the place where you might see this scenario it's the easiest one it's the easiest one right because you should you should as a game developer be making 50 cents per year right you should not be able and and if you're not you need to rethink your model right this is the whole like i've been playing like marvel snap for more than a year and i i did finally buy something in it after more than a year i i paid five dollars for something right and i thought well they've now gotten $5 out of me in 14 months. Is it worth it for them? I don't know.

I have that thought, which is I'm not sure. Because I was able to, like, as a user, I'm very happy to not have to pay to play that game. But thinking about the business, I thought maybe it's a little too easy to play this game for free right like you you need but the business is no and and the game companies are very good at monitoring and doing the mechanics and knowing what the arpu is uh and that's the that's the figure here is average revenue per user and and if you can say and you just do the math like okay we'll throw in apple's tax but we get this back and we control this and we're going to, and Epic is going to take this cut, which is smaller. And then we're left with, you know,

let's run the numbers. And the answer is, oh, it's worth it for us to do it. And they'll do it. And I can see that scenario, but what we're not going to see, I think, is this incredible flourishing of marketplaces. Let a thousand marketplaces bloom. I don't think that's going to happen. And even stuff that I thought thursday was more likely to to happen like alt store said they're going to go there and it's like okay fine alt store fine um that's a that's a an existing sort of outside the app store uh gray market the kind of marketplace but like i thought set app would be a good example of this but the problem is a lot of those Setapp apps are utilities that are very useful and that are also in the App Store because right now they have to be. And presumably they would stay in the App Store.

But for them to be in the marketplace, they have to opt into the new terms. And will that make sense for them? I don't know, right? know right so it makes it gives me pause for something like a subscription service like set app to do it because all their partners have to opt into the new terms and that might be economically unhelpful so they're just lots of questions here but someone could make it someone could make something else like that right and like and in such you model the business in a way that you understand that the ctf exists and that you kind of for every user you have to generate 50 cents yeah it's just a different model and honestly having an arpu for a free app above 50

cents is not hard no but you have but but in the app store the way that apple has had the app store for the last 15 years you haven't had to do that, right? Like, this is Apple weaponizing the fact that they've let free apps be completely free of charge in the App Store. Now they're saying basically like, all right, you want better terms, we'll give you better terms. You want more freedom, we'll give you more freedom. But free apps aren't free anymore. Bottom line. Again. Because they weren't in the first place. Huge hit free apps aren't free anymore bottom line for again because they weren't in the first place huge hit free apps aren't free anymore we should put it that way right because it is over

a million so congratulations to james thompson p-calc light is a huge hit it's over a million you can see through all of this right you see through all of this that how much money apple's making from in-app purchases from games yes that's That's what the CTF is. That's what this is all about. That's why I get frustrated when indie developers talk about this, because the truth is that if you look at Apple's policies, everything resolves itself. Why did they do the small business program and cut the fees to 15%? It was one, to get the heat off of them. And two, they don't really care about people who are making small amounts, under a million dollars a year in the app store. They don't. They just don't care. There are a few huge game developers who are

selling digital goods. It's what John Syracuse always calls, what, casino games for children. what uh casino games for children um and they and but it's not just children it's also adults and it's it's you know buy more gems or buy more spins or buy that beautiful uh set of marvel snap art which is what i did and uh those few companies that are excellent at monetizing all digital items in their apps obviously are the vast bulk of app store revenue obviously and that's what apple cares about is in the end apple is trying to protect the money they get from the the big players in the game space that's it when i read about the CTF, I'm kind of like, I wished it was just this way always. I wished it was this way from the beginning.

When I read about this, I wished Apple had a fixed amount of money they could make from a developer, over a million downloads in a year. Then we would not have had all of the stuff we have had around in-app purchases. We would not have had all of the stuff we have had around in our purchases we would not have had

all of this terrible monetization of video games it would have saved so many bad things from happening like the thousands and thousands and thousands of people getting laid off across the gaming industry each year at the moment because like games exploded with the freemium models during the pandemic and everyone's like i wished there was just a flat fee and that was it and that people built their business models around that like and if you're like how could you say that mike i'm an idiot it's like no because you wouldn't have built your business the way you've built it like yeah to me the idea that you run a business like look i have a very different business right to me like the idea of running a business and not being able to afford 50 cents per user,

you are running on some odd margins to the way that things seem simple to me. Right. But there's zero cost to it. So I can sort of see if your ARPU is below 50 cents, but you are able to monetize. Again, I don't know, you've got 5 million users. And the percentage of them who buy the upgrade is relatively small. But it doesn't have to be that big for it to be material to you. And it doesn't matter that your conversion rate is low. And what the 50 cent charge is, it matters if your conversion rate is low. You can't run that business.

You can't have a deeply inefficient freemium app business under this scenario. You can't do it. And I take your point, which is you're running a bad business if you can't monetize your free app like that. Like, I mean, it's true. That's just the truth of it is the whole purpose. Okay. We should say there are free apps that people just do for love. Right, but they're under the million.

And can't be monetized. They're probably under the million or they are just under the old terms, right? It doesn't matter. They're completely free. It doesn't matter. But yeah, if you're trying to make money from a free app, which means it's got an in-app purchase, it's got an upgrade of some kind you should be able to convert whatever you're charging you should be able to convert probably

at a level above 50 cents in a download an active user you've got you've got five million active users and can't convert them at that level that's not great it's weird it's not great right like there's just like on the face of it it just seems strange to me it's like spotify is saying they can't afford it and it's like yeah spotify you have a bad business model everyone already knows this like i don't think there's anything that apple can do for you that's going to help your business model we all know that you know if you've got five million active users and you can't make two million dollars a year on them there's something wrong yeah because that's that's right that's that's two dollars for every five users yeah so you're converting whatever that is

40 and that's for that's for a dollar you're converting at 40 for four dollars you're converting at 10 right i like again i'm just doing the math in my head here but like i anyway but what i will say mike is is free free right on the app store means nobody cares what your conversion rate is right they don't care it's like oh i just put it out for fun and there's a tip jar and sometimes i get money for it that's why i'm saying that's okay i wish it started this way, right? Like I know why now this is hard. I'm just saying I wished the 30% thing never existed.

Right. Because, because Apple has, has, has, I don't want to say distorted, but like the terms of the app store have led the app store in this direction. And one of the terms from the moment Steve Jobs unveiled it was if it's free, it's free. We don't charge you anything. You can just be there. We'll pay for your downloads and all those things and your hosting. You don't have to worry about it.

Free apps are just free. And that was from the beginning. And one of the reasons they did that is because there was this fear, I think, that nobody would, if you try to put an app up up for free apple can't charge you for it really like that's really that's really rough but they're not letting you out of the store and and so they were like okay look we're going to control everything but if you're not charging we'll just let you ride and that's fine but what happened with the and and remember mike at the beginning you couldn't be free with in-app purchases i was just about to say that it's one

of my favorite facts that i think is hard to wrap your head around that when they introduced in-app purchases they were only for paid apps yes free apps were not freemium was not there on day one free apps were there on day one and the premise originally for free apps was look they're never going to make any money for this thing it's just free yeah or or the or it's happening somewhere else so it's just free but but the moment that you could do free within app purchase, everything was different about what a free app was and how it was there. And then everybody has followed it. And I'm not saying it's a fundamentally wrong model. It's proven to be incredibly successful as a model, try it for free and then pay. And we have lots of friends who,

who have made very successful businesses on the free, and then pay. And we have lots of friends who have made very successful businesses on the free within-app purchase model. Most, actually, I would say all the developers we know who are successful have made money on this model. But this is how it works. Because this is how the App Store works now. Yeah, I see what you're saying there, but I think there's a twist in that, right?

Which is just like they follow the rule like how the app store is supposed to work you know what I mean which is but like if the app store was paid up front they still could have been it's a different it's an alternate reality to the one that we're in that's absolutely true but yes because of the way it's worked it has led lots

of developers to work this way like I right we know lots of developers who've had apps for a long time where the apps used to be paid. And now they're all free within that purchase because that's where the market went and they had to go there. And I, I,

I don't like it either. I understand it because Apple also didn't offer like free trials or things like that at various points. And so try it for free and then pay for the features has just become the model. But there are certain kinds of apps that are going to look... And that's how it can be a poison pill, is that Facebook has lots of free apps. And that means they're going to pay Apple a lot of money if they switch to this new system and they have to make a pencil out because they don't get those apps for free anymore. I want to talk about the one million

threshold a little bit because you're right like i think understandably a lot of indie developers in the community are freaking out right like oh i'd go overnight it'd be an overnight success and now i owe hundreds of thousands of dollars like that is incredibly rare like can you name one other person other than david David Smith that that happened to? He's the example. Yes. But like, he's the one? I'm sure, like, Flappy Bird Man.

Right? That's a game, though. I think, like, if I'm talking about, like, the listeners of our show, the people in our community tends to be independent app developers right yeah yeah it is incredibly rare for that to incredibly occur and you know david can speak to this for himself if he ever wanted to but maybe he had that and had enough success that he could have afforded right that like it happened but david has a subscription in his app maybe it was successful enough that he could have paid for the what would have happened i don't i genuinely don't know the answer to that but that might you know so like you're like oh what if i wake up and i have two million users like how many people signed up you know maybe you're okay now i don't know it goes back to

what we said before too about your business model like david launched widget smith not knowing it was going to be an enormous viral hit but with two dollars a month twenty dollars a year premium upsell in the app to get features that people were going to want calibrated carefully and i'm sure he learned a lot as he took that ride but like he benefited from having an enormous amount of installs he got to see how people were using it. He got to craft his app so that the premium features would have real reasons for you to buy them. And certainly his goal there is to make a pretty good average revenue per user, even though a bunch of people are just going to use the free version. As Nathan in the Discord is saying, if you are in these terms you all you need is a one euro a year subscription right which i think a lot of people pay anyway but look my point of that is

right like if you are a developer and you like the sound of some of this stuff you just have to prepare for this possibility right which is about having a business model like but if you don't want to have a business model don't do this right but there is i think for a lot of people there is more money to be made for your business outside of the app store potentially on paper on paper there is i would say if you're if you're a developer of a small app that is already doing fine in the app store, and you're under the 1 million threshold, so you're in the small business program, I would say it would not be impossible, but it's going to be a harder sell. You just got to look into it though, right? You have to work out what it could mean for you.

Everybody should do the math, but I'm just saying the reduced commission is not as great for the people under a million as it is for the people over a million. The business is over a million. That's a substantial, you're going from 30 to 20, but going from 15 to 13 or whatever is not fantastic. And now presumably you're paying for all of your freemium installs if you're over a million, which we know, you know, pCalc Lite is. So like there are going to be a lot of longstanding apps that are going to pick up those.

So you're going to have to run the numbers. I think that there are going to be a lot, a lot of developers who are going to look at this and say, I am just going to stay with the terms I've got because I'm comfortable and I'm just going to stay in the app store

and there's no opportunity here. Some will find opportunity here, but I do think it's going to be more um the big the big guns that are going to be seeking the opportunity and it is funny how uh tim sweeney of epic um posted on twitter about how this was terrible and apple is evil and blah blah blah blah blah there's nothing apple can do with him look what i say well just wait just wait just wait what what'm saying is, Tim Sweeney can say all of that, but what also happened? Epic posted, we're totally

coming back in the EU with Fortnite. Here we come, right? So it's like, yeah, I hear you, Tim. You still hate Apple, but your company is immediately going to take advantage of this deal, this bad deal that Apple is offering you. So, you tell me

what i love about tim sweeney is he's consistent you know like oh yeah there is nothing they can do that he will be happy with and you know what i respect it i respect it like he has an opinion and his opinion is complete freedom or it's criminal and there are times where I agree with it. Because here's the thing, right? Why does the 10 to 10 slash 17% commission exist on the App Store? Why does that still exist? If you want to be in the App Store, what are you paying Apple 10% for?

If the core technology fee exists, Apple consider that what are you what they they consider 50 cents per customer per year to be their fee for you using ios right for using core technology yes i would say the app store 10 for what is the 17 for it's marketing it is being markets apple do they it yeah well yeah so it's being in the app store it's getting being eligible for you know highlights and promotion and editorial pieces in the app store and it's wait for this mic because i gotta say it it's being in the EU's premier iOS marketplace, the App Store, and everything that comes from it because so many users are always just going to use the App Store. And so by being in there, that is worth it to you. That's the argument.

That's the argument. Look, I think in 2024, the claim about its marketing marketing i just don't think it holds up like there may be 0.00001 percent of applications benefit from this but they're all paying 10 being in the search being in the search results is your number one reason you're in the app store and that is marketing of the sort well but these days jason you have to pay to make sure you're going to be at the top of the search sure that's true you get to pay apple in order this is what i'm saying like the terms of the deal has changed so significantly since the app store was introduced i'm not sure why they take a commission anymore we will we will see well because they want your money and they think that but like i don't know what grounds in

which they can argue it well i just said it so so. So let me- And I don't agree with it. Okay. Well, let me repeat it then. I think for a lot of apps, it's just better to be in the app store and you're going to have more app sales. And I'll say this, we're going to find out. Because if some apps decide, if they decide that it's just way better to either be in the app store in another marketplace or just not be in the app store anymore

and be in an alternate EU marketplace where they're going to make more money and have more customers and whatever else, then I guess we'll have our answer. My guess is that lots of people don't want to install app marketplaces. They're just going to stay with the app store and those developers are not going to want to abandon being in the default. I think that

the default is powerful enough. Now, you know, if, if 10 or 17% is still too much and that they're better off being on the outside, then Apple will have been, been proven wrong. But the power to me, the power of the default is so great that, and they're not yet putting up a randomized list of marketplaces for you to use right it's the app store by default and then you have to find another marketplace and install it i think being in the default is probably worth 10 see you actually started leaning into what i was going to talk about next to kind of wrap this back around again so i've been seeing lots of people and hearing lots of people really concerned that Chrome is going to become the most popular web browser on the iPhone because people will be given the choice rather than Safari, right?

They're like, given the choice, they'll choose Chrome rather than Safari because it's what they used to. It's what they choose on their Mac. It's what they choose on their PC. They choose Chrome. And I've seen people being like, ah, well, this is what people PC. They choose Chrome. And I've seen people being like, well, this is what people choose. They choose Chrome. So Apple has to work to make them want Safari, right? Instead. So my point is that, yeah, Apple has the premier default app store

place to get apps because they have been the only one. And even now, when there is the opportunity for there to be marketplaces, they have been the only one. And even now, when there is the opportunity for there to be marketplaces, they have set the terms for the other marketplaces to be in their favor. So it's like, I agree with you, right? You are making, that is the point, right? That you will stay and pay your 10% or 17% because you want to be in the main place.

But Apple set that table for themselves. Sure. At this point, I don't understand. Why? No, I understand why. Obviously, I understand why.

This is a business relationship between Apple and every developer. What do the developers actually get for giving Apple a cut in of every transaction and then an additional one on top when they hit a million? You know, it's like,

what is the deal? And then you look at things like, you know, we haven't really spoken about this, but obviously I would assume most of our listeners are aware of it. There's a lot of hand-wringing about how many apps are going to be on the Vision Pro and how many developers are not bothering.

And, you know, I think John Gruber, we spoke about earlier, has been referencing the idea of like Apple is reaping what it's sown at this point because they have not engendered themselves to developers they have not made it feel like an ongoing relationship it has been an ongoing set of adapting rules and guidelines that people need to just accept they have no choice. And even when given a choice, most developers feel now like they actually can't

even make the choice because they're worried that it won't work out for their businesses. Yep. Yep. What I would say about the competition in the marketplaces is if there is true competition, Apple gets the home field advantage, right? Which I think they should because they're the platform owner, but I think it shouldn't be that they shut out everybody else. But in a scenario where people can choose different app marketplaces, which I agree that, I mean, Apple, because of the poison pill, lots of things, Apple has stacked the deck here. I don't think that those marketplaces are going to be successful except for very specific niches of product. except for very specific niches of product. But what I would say is,

if you were in an environment where there was true competition, then we would find out whether being in Apple's app store was worth it or not. But I think it's because the competition is limited and it's the default. It's probably worth it

for most developers to be there regardless. But yes, in a true competition environment, which is not strangely what the DMA is asking for, or at least not how Apple has interpreted the DMA's asking for, or at least not how Apple has interpreted the DMA's rules. We're in a situation where we don't get to see Apple have to decide, does it lower its commission in order to make itself more palatable for app developers? And look at the Mac App Store.

It's not required and it's pretty quiet. There's stuff. There's a lot of stuff in the Mac App Store. There's also a lot of stuff that's not in the mac app store and even with the mac app store being more expansive than it used to be and maybe being a place that some developers are like it's worth it being in there because some people are going to use the mac app store it doesn't have the power that something like ios does because of all of the limitations and the fact that there's no competition now safari i want to mention here too, because like, if everybody starts using Chrome, is that a bad thing? Because they would, they chose it. And that means that Apple has to compete on browser with Chrome. And if Chrome is better, shouldn't it win? If Chrome is better on iOS than Safari, and I hear

people say, oh no, but Chrome is bad because it kills the battery. Hey, if it kills your battery on iOS like it does on a Mac laptop, don't you think people will notice and say, oh, I'm not going to use Chrome because it kills my battery? That will get out there

pretty quick. That's part of the competition. Yeah. That's part of the competition of all of this is that. So again, I don't have, like, I think Apple should welcome competition because i think it makes apple it keeps apple honest yeah and and apple will always say oh no we're always just

our dedication to our users is the most important thing that's what drives us and like that is true to a certain point but if chrome is breathing down your neck on ios and everybody in the eu is like oh man chrome is so much better than safari safari is really lagging behind in these areas do you not think people at apple are going to be like oh no um we need to do better with safari it's natural of course that's going to happen because that's the magic of competition i want to just state for the record and believe it or not i do believe that apple deserves the right to earn money i would have been happy genuinely happy here if they would have chosen one or the other right reduce the

app store commission or introduce the core technology fee right and just have one or the other because to me it would feel like great they've made a concession they are like holding or introduce the core technology fee, right? And just have one or the other. Because to me, it would have felt like, great, they've made a concession. They are like holding their hands up to the fact that they have the entire market and they have all of the leverage and they're adjusting. Like, because this is all I've wanted them to do for a long time is adjust.

Like you set the terms so many years ago it's over a decade right the app store yeah yeah yeah oh yeah they set the terms all that time ago and then years and then haven't really adjusted them but the world has changed so significantly that adjustment, I believe, is necessary. But in the end, they've adjusted it, but adjusted it in such a way that it still kind of behooves most people to not move. It's like it's not really a choice. If people feel like they don't have a choice. But I think that they deserve money. Yeah.

Oh, I agree. don't have a choice but i think that they deserve money yeah oh i i agree and i think that i think that that's part of apple's strategy is to couch all of this in terms of access to marketing in the app store access to the platform that apple puts i mean can we argue apple spends a enormous amount of money maintaining and operating the operating system and all the APIs for developers and all the developer tools. And they're essentially free. So to say you've built an entire business, like let's say Instagram, you've built an entire business on a free app download using our APIs. Is it wrong for Apple to say you should probably pay us? I don't think it is. That said, the problem is over the years, Apple has often acted like what I've said before, because I am colored by their actions toward Macworld over the years. The feeling that they view themselves as the creator of value and that everybody else is a

taker away of value and almost like a parasite. And I think that that is part of the attitude and has been all along. And both those things can be true. Apple could deserve to be compensated for access to their platform. At the same time though, the apps on the platform have made the platform and Apple makes a huge amount of profit per iPhone sold. Yes. So Apple's already reaping, but viewed a certain way.

Apple is already reaping the benefits of the work they put into their platform, which is they sell expensive phones that are very profitable and people buy them because of the apps that are on them. Yeah. And that's the transaction. Yeah. But we can debate it and say,

okay, yes, but there should probably be an extra cut for the tools that make those apps, even though Apple's already making their money. Look, billionaires who have more money than God ask cash-strapped cities and states to build stadiums for their baseball teams and their football teams. There are lots of examples where very wealthy, rich individuals or companies still want more money. That's why they got so rich. And so, okay, maybe Apple does deserve something from these businesses that are building huge businesses on Apple software platforms.

But you're right. What is that? And what is fair? And what I would say, what allows businesses to flourish, Apple to flourish, and consumers to benefit, Apple's customers to benefit? That's part of the question here. And the danger of Apple taking this very, very careful approach to carving out exactly what the DMA makes them carve out and nothing more is that you end up with sometimes some very weird distorted behavior.

I'm not sure it's going to fly. The idea that free to be, to sell your, not even to sell, to allow your free app to be downloaded in an alternative marketplace if your free app is it has more than a million users free app no monetization at all you owe apple money because of the act of being in an external marketplace you now owe apple money for all of your users even though you are still

not making any money yeah that's wild when you put it that way that is so wild right like right it's not because the rule is not if you make money in this app which i wonder sometimes if that should have been the rule right which is here's here's our rule. And it's not for free apps. It's not for all apps. It's for apps that make money. It's hard because it's like ads in Instagram make money. And they're not like in-app sequences. So I don't know how you would carve them out. Well, I mean, Jason, Apple these days are fine with auditing your books so they could find a way.

Exactly. it in your books so they could find a way exactly so so that's what that's what i would say is i'm a little surprised because one of the things that this rule does is say i am a developer of a thing that's based on open source and i just love it and i put it in the app store and i'm in the eu maybe and like i'm in and oh i like the alt store people and i want to be there too this is just a utility it's already in the app store it's approved by apple it's fine but i want to i want to be there too. This is just a utility. It's already in the app store. It's approved by Apple. It's fine. But I want to put it somewhere else. And then you say, oh, but I have 1.5 million active users in the EU of my free app that I just give away for fun. Apple basically has said, you can't. You can't have the freedom to give it away somewhere else because we're going to charge you and this project is never, ever, ever going to

pay for it. I know that's an extreme example, but it strikes me as being one that goes to the heart of like, this doesn't seem quite right. Not that Apple shouldn't find ways to make money, but that some of these acts, these aspects of these rules don't quite seem fair or right, morally, if not legally, right? So I don't know. I'm skeptical that these will stand for, even if they're allowed in March, I am skeptical that Apple, the danger of Apple sort of saying, ha ha, we followed the letter of the law, but nobody's going to like it, is that if nobody likes it and it makes no changes to the way that apps behave in the eu they're gonna write dma2 and they're gonna come for apple again that's the problem here is that if nothing changes then the regulators are not going to be satisfied one can hope

i think we'll see we'll see i i do think I we mentioned this earlier I just want to reiterate the act of Apple building all of this technology yep undercuts one of Apple's arguments which is how dare you demand that we use our employees to build special features for you because here they are and And Apple must know, I mean, Apple knows that this won't be the last place

where some aspect of this is going to be made a rule. And so they're going to, they're going to do things based on this now going forward. That's fine. The other risk Apple has here, by the way,

is that they've always said, once you allow this kind of unfettered access to the platform, scams and terrible things and terrible things will happen. And if those don't happen in the EU, they can't make that argument anymore either. And I do foresee, first off, I foresee that Apple's marketing and PR group is going to spring on any example of bad actors in third-party marketplaces. bad actors in third-party marketplaces. Because even if it means that Capilzone customers are going to be harmed, they're also going to want to make it clear that this is an example that wouldn't have happened without the DMA. I think they will try to make hay with that. It's going

to be tough, but I think they're going to try. But the reality is every other organization on the planet is looking at this and saying, oh, we could do that too. And now maybe they'll let the machine run in the EU for a while and see what the ramifications are. But it's got, it is just gotten so much easier for any regulatory body to demand things of Apple because of this. And so that may lead to some interesting places or nowhere at all depending on what happens in the eu but like i can totally see other countries and regions saying um give us that right do that like you did in europe we want that and and writing their regulations or laws specifically to do that or to do that with a twist because they don't like this part of it or not.

All of that is going to happen. So I feel like this is only the beginning. We're not even at day one yet. This is only the beginning of this, but the next phase of all of this is going to happen as we watch what happens in Europe, but also as everybody else

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to your own backyard. That is Ooni.com, O-O-N-I.com. Thanks to Ooni Pizza Ovens for their support of this show and RelayFM. I... Now, for me, the DMA is in the rear view. Right? We've spoken about this now.

It will come back, but I want to put that behind me because I want to focus on what I have been excited about and what I am excited about which is Vision Pro this week. Vision Pro. This is the week.

I want to hear from you because you got to try it again. I did on Friday. I went down to Apple Park, as you do. Swung by. Just did some power sliding. Yeah, I did. I went to Apple Park. I parked under the Visitor Center,

went across the street up to the Steve Jobs Theater and got another demo experience. Very similar, I would say, to our WWDC experience. Yeah. But I would say more polished. Clearly, it's gotten... WWDC experience. But I would say more polished. Clearly it's gotten

more polished. There was stuff that happened when we did it that was sort of like, we're going to play a video for you now. And instead it was like, go to the TV app and go to the spatial and then tap on this video and play it. And then

use this control to make it immersive uh so like there's ui for things that were more sort of wired up as demos before um i did i found it funny that i have internalized some gestures that are not right over the last six months where i thought like oh what you do to move a window is you reach out with your hand and grab it. And that's not what it is. You look at the grab bar and then you just make the pinch gesture anywhere. And I was like, oh, right. This is actually less work than I remember it being. Your eyes are doing all the work really, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I would say the challenge with any of these things and why I'm so looking forward

to people who've spent time with this product outside. And I imagine in the challenge with any of these things and why I'm so looking forward to people who have spent time with this product outside. And I imagine in the next day or two, we'll probably get a bunch of embargoed reviews. I do not have one, by the way. I will not be doing an embargoed review. I don't have a Vision Pro. Just there's the canary. But I imagine once we start getting people who've gotten them under embargo, we will finally have some first impressions that are not based on the walkthrough. And it's not just that Apple is walking you through

and controlling everything you see and do. It is that, but it's also that, honestly, there's just a sensory overload when you're in a thing that you've never been in before or haven't been in for six months. The first 10 or 15 minutes is just like, I can't apply any critical faculty to what I'm doing. I'm just trying, my brain's just trying critical faculty to what I'm doing. I'm,

I'm just trying, my brain's just trying to process what it's being sent. And it was only the last half of the demo where I started to have like questions about, Oh, this is an interesting interaction that they've chosen. Like I noticed only after about 15 minutes, I was like, Oh,

every time an app wants you to generate a 3d object in space or put you in an immersive space or anything like that, there's a button to enable it. And I had that moment where I thought, oh, that one of the best practices of this thing is if you're going to enter a very different kind of mode, like an immersive mode or generate an object, that it needs to be the user saying, let's do this now, rather than it just sort of happening. But it took me 15 minutes into it before my brain was capable of sort of appreciating interface details just because it's so much. So, so, uh, I, I feel very strongly by the way that although there will be some embargo reviews in the

first few days, uh, next few days, um, this thing is so huge that even if somebody's had it for a week ish, maybe a little less than a week. Yeah. Do I think that those,

those will be great first tests of first impressions? But I'll just say it now, nobody is going to be able to do a complete comprehensive review of this thing in six days, even if they take all six days to use it. The apps aren't even available yet. You can't even get the apps, right? Exactly. I'm sure that there's some you can, but like a lot of stuff that we're going to find to be really cool and maybe interesting use,

cases they're not available yet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm still, as we've been talking today, I've been getting notes. Obviously Apple has encouraged people to announce their Vision Pro apps today because I keep getting emails

with more Vision Pro apps in them. Okay. But yeah, and it's more than anything else. It's also a new platform and a new interaction model. Like I think after, if you spend six days with it, and by the way, when you get a product and you review it, you don't actually spend six days with it. You spend some number of days with it

and then you also have to write your review and capture your video and do all those other things. I think those are all essentially going to be first looks, first impressions. I think it's going to take a long time. And there are so many different angles here that there will be much more to say about it from everybody involved. Don't take those first impressions as the be all end all. I think that there's a lot more to come because there's just so much there.

I would be, if I had been given an embargo and told you've got five days with this, I would be grateful and I would work very hard to do a first impressions piece about it. But do I think that if I had been given five days with the Vision Pro, I could write a thorough and complete review of the whole experience? I do not, because I think it's too much for that.

I think it's too many things. It's going to take time. But I did appreciate seeing the latest state of the art. There are more apps. There are third-party apps. I was able to run, I ran DJ from Algorithm, which is always there at every new Apple platform that happens. DJ Palace Lighter in the house.

Yeah, so yeah yeah well it was really hilarious me incompetently djing but but uh you it pop out of you pop out a 3d turntable you press that button and a 3d turntable pops out and you stand at the turntable and you can actually use your hands to to uh uh what is it uh it's not jogging it's uh to to scratching is that it is that what it is when you take your hand on the on the on the record and go i'm not i'm choosing not to help you i'm enjoying this yeah scratching is what you're looking for yeah yeah i don't know anyway i i did it i did it you but i did it yeah it was really good um i said where's the where's the middle

age dad music to choose from here and they said they don't have that no tears for fears on these decks i picked some beeps and boops and they were beepy and boopy and that's fine too yeah i've been keeping a an apple note of apps that i'm seeing like um online and and i'm i'm like like these are ones i want to try you know like i'm just, like I've just got like a running list of stuff. DJ is one of them just because I think it's going to be in. Well, because one, I know they've had a lot of access, right? Because they've been in press releases going all the way back to the beginning. And so I expect it should be polished when it's released.

It should be one of the more. But it also is one of the only apps that i've seen anybody talk about so i was doing some interesting stuff to use your hand to use hand tracking to interact with something that's not a video game yeah right so like i i'm intrigued about it for that and i want to try it out for that because i think it's got dials and stuff that you actually can grab and slide i want to try all of that will that be the right interface is it too skeuomorphic i i don't know but it's an interesting experiment and that's that's why i found it fascinating they had me watch the super mario brothers movie clip as i mentioned before that they're using in the demos even though freaking avatar is right there

we're like no no did mario look good what i look listen to chris pratt going it looked it looked fine it's a 3d animated Pratt was great in that movie. He was great in that movie. Whatever. People didn't like it, but he was great in that movie. I have no interest in watching that movie. So, yeah, he says that. He does a little, oh, what's that?

And I'm like, oh, no. No, no, no, no, thank you. Anyway, so I did watch that. The immersive video looks really great. Again, boy, I can't wait to see what they do with that. I saw the clips, but those are all programs in the TV app. So like the Alicia Keys concert where she's singing to you and you're standing there awkwardly saying,

but I don't even know you, Alicia. Surely somebody more important is in this room. Perhaps you should to them i should can i step out of the room now um the whole thing is there and the sharks and the rhinos and like all there are like programs with that stuff so that'll be interesting to watch so there's a goal from above the above the the the bar the crossbar of the of the soccer goal did you oh so good to see the disney plus app i did was it good i did it's good um so they have they have their own immersive environments that are just in the disney plus app so like um you can choose the the scare floor tattooing you're you're actually like in moss icely uh among it's almost like you're at the drive the the land speeder drive-in at moss icely is basically where you are uh there's avengers tower that's got little and they've

dressed it up you know they've dressed it up like disneyland like the avengers tower reminded me so much of the avengers headquarters at uh or avengers campus at at california adventure because it's the same thing where it's like it's a set essentially from the avengers movies but they've also placed in a very disney way little objects everywhere that are things referring to the avengers and stuff right i can't so those are in there uh and you can watch and then and then they have a bunch of 3d content because they a lot of their movies are in 3d my my understanding is that when you start to play something um i think in the tv app and in the disney plus app this may only be true in one of them. You basically are told there's a 3D version of this. Do you want to watch that? And then you choose that. And then

you're watching a 3D, if you want, movie at the edge of the Avengers Tower or on the scare floor for Monsters, Inc. And then when you're in the TV app, Apple's immersive environments are available for that too. But the Disney Plus app, yeah, I was impressed. It shows you the possibilities there. I think the only, only thing that I think is funny

is that like the environments, the Disney environments are only available in the Disney app. So you can't watch somebody else's movie on the scare floor, right? Yeah, but you get that though, right?

That's not allowed. I do. I do, and I think it's okay. Because also, Apple said, right, that, I mean, I hope that it changes in the future. I hope it's not like watch faces. But, like, all the environments are theirs. They're the only ones that you can mix and match apps and environments. It's Apple's environments.

Right, right. They're like system-wide environments versus app-specific environments. But anyway, Disney did app-specific environments, and I saw a couple of them they were really good which i think is great i'm happy that disney have done that because i bet that's going to be something that people are really excited about and i hope that it encourages more companies i mean it's quote unquote easy for disney because they have like obvious things they can do like some companies are going to struggle like what what is the thing we would put our app in but there are lots of companies that could do a similar thing right like you know insert your favorite franchise here right like why could you not watch that you know why could

you not watch lord of the rings sitting on the top of a hill in new zealand right you know or yeah so um the you could also go to new zealand with your iphone and do that by the way but it would be more logistics it's quite i see actually even more expensive than more expensive than the vision pro yeah so the fourth item um there's question in the discord about you know will watching movies and immersive video fade away and appeal over time maybe it is a novelty but like the fourth disney location is the is a novelty, but like the fourth Disney location is a theater, a movie theater. And what I found is on the Quest, they have lots of ridiculous things like you can watch in space and stuff. I like the movie theater.

You're sitting in the best seat in the house in a movie theater. And then it's got interactive lighting. So like when the movie is bright the seats light is on the seats and when it's dark there's not lights on the seats it feels really realistic as being in the context of a movie theater i am looking forward to testing the disney movie theater experience and seeing how that is because in the end after you've had your fun and tattoo at the tattooing drive-in or the t Stark drive-in, you know, it might be that the best thing is the really nice movie theater environment or nothing. But so I also, among the things that

I think is more polished, although I can't decide how much of this is out, I think it's a little bit of both. How much of this is Apple and how much of this is the, well, it's all Apple. How much of it is Apple making some feature decisions and how much of it is apple uh improving the product since it was you know in beta back in june but um the the safari demo where they say oh look at that crisp text and the readability etc etc you remember that right i do i think they've made the fonts bigger, which is probably good because if the fonts are bigger, everything is going to look crisper in that way. I do think it was crisper, though. I don't know for sure because I can't compare exactly what I saw six months ago to now or, I guess, seven months ago to now.

Well, here's a question I have for you. Do you feel like it fit you better than the first time? Well, let me finish this thought and then I have some thoughts about that. So I think the text rendering though was crisper and clearer. I think that maybe one of the reasons that I've heard people say,

oh yeah, I can read in it just fine, where I felt kind of like it didn't, it wasn't, it was a little muddy back in June. Whatever has happened, it felt like the text was better. But I think that it was also larger, but I do think it was better. Fit is a huge one. So I think in the end, that knit band is going to go down in history with the digital touch on the Apple Watch.

Because they had us all wear that knit band. And in June, you remember my report about that, right? Which is like my face hurt, my head hurt, and I couldn't get comfortable. And I was trying it lower down on the back and higher up. And I was cranking it tighter and cranking it looser and moving around on my front of my face and just trying to get it to work so that it didn't hurt. And I never did. It really was uncomfortable the entire time I used it. So this time they had me use the dual strap. They didn't even have me. The knit strap was just laying on the table. They had me use the dual strap. And when I put it on, they actually said,

yo, yeah, you can, you can basically unvelcro it and move it until you get it and you can adjust it to go. Once I got that adjusted, it was fine the whole time. I had no issues whatsoever with comfort. So I don't know. Well, something I wonder about is if you can combine the two. Like, can I use the knit strap with the top part? Because that's what we did at WWDC. It was a combo.

They didn't suggest that. They suggested that this is the strap and i've heard through the grapevine that this is the snap you use for longer experiences that it's harder to adjust and harder to get into but it also is much better uh in terms of a proper fit than than the other thing also people are asking in the in the discord uh about how it worked it worked very i brought my glasses although actually i sent them i sent them a prescription in advance my glasses prescription which i had because i made an order of ones and then they scanned my face there and then they used that as setup they used the you know essentially the same app that they use for the store to scan my face for that.

And then very nicely at the end, they said, can we save your personal data for your review unit? And I said, sure. It was nice of them to ask. Because this is the rare Apple product that requires exact measurements. So hopefully I will get a review unit at some point. Don't know when, but hopefully I will. Do you know if the sizing matched what you had scanned? That I do not know.

They didn't tell me. So when I get a review unit, I will know the size of that, and I'll know if it matched the one that I ordered from the Apple store to come on Friday. So we'll see. But yeah, I used the, but yeah, it felt, I used the dual strap and it felt really good and it was vastly superior. Like I was comfortable wearing it and I couldn't say that in June. Now back in June, I said, look, we couldn't get it right. The goal was to get through the demo. It was a very, you know, limited amount of time. I wasn't going to push it and i'm sure that i would

figure out how to be more comfortable down the road um i'm happy to report that that this demo i didn't have any comfort problems at all i do wonder too because they they specifically told us at wwdc that they didn't have that many light seals available like the part that goes in the front of the face right and i wonder if like another component of it as well as the straps which i completely understand will cause a massive difference but like i wonder if maybe it fit better to your face this time than last time we don't know the answer to that but i could imagine that being something also i wanted to mention just a funny thing they did the spatial video thing so they showed videos some of which were very familiar of uh video spatial video shot with vision pro and then they showed a video shot with

iphone 15 pro and it made me laugh because it's it's a mom and kids blowing bubbles on like a grassy area yeah and you know why they're blowing the bubbles it's because the bubbles are in that foreground where you're going to get a 3d effect. And the 3D effect is really limited on the iPhone because the distance between the two lenses isn't particularly great. But what made me laugh was very clearly somebody or probably something, a bubble machine, had been placed just off camera to the right. Because while this scene with the kids was going on a constant stream of bubbles was being emitted right in front of me and i just laughed and i actually said to the people in the room the apple pr people in the room with me i said does it come with a bubble maker off to the

right and they just chuckled but it's like you know because i i appreciate like a lot of the 3d effects especially on the iphone are going to be subtle because of all of the technical reasons. And I just, I appreciate that they're like, nope, we're going to have a bubble machine. Or again, I don't know that for sure. Or a couple of interns frantically blowing bubbles, but there were a lot of bubbles coming from off screen is all I'm saying in order to give that extra effect. Extra. So turn on the bubble machine. That's a very old reference.

Don't get it. I'm very excited for Friday. I don't truly know what to expect from having an extended period of time with this. What is it going to be like when I'm in hour two? I don't know, but i'm excited about it i'm excited about all of the apps that are going to appear i'm excited to watch an avengers movie sitting in avengers tower that's exciting to me yeah we're on the verge of this thing whatever it's gonna end up being whatever it is yeah what is it going to

be like to prepare for next week's upgrade while wearing it because that will be my plan right i'll do all my show right wearing it sure um what is that going to feel like how is that going to be like am i going to use my mac how much am i going to use my mac oh i typed oh i typed okay i did hand typing where you type with fingers on the keyboard it's kind of dumb but it works i type sixcolors.com how different is it to using like a virtual keyboard on an ipad like a software keyboard on an ipad like is it very very different you're it's suspended in the air i'd say it's much slower and it really is i felt like it was a finger typing experience. However, they said you can also use, and this is a mind-bending thing, you can eye type.

Yeah. Which is you look at a letter and pinch your fingers, and look at a letter and pinch your fingers. I don't recommend that either. Can you swipe type? I don't think so. I didn't try, but I assume not. Maybe. I don't know.

I have real doubts about the precision available on that keyboard i think the answer is and and i did try this too there is talk to type where there's also a little microphone icon that you can look at and tap actually you don't even tap you look at the microphone icon and then you say words and they come out that's cool right you don't even have to tap that's smart because that's going to be your best way to do short field text input is your voice it's going to be the easiest way I feel like I don't have a list of here are the 10 things to do when I put it together. I think I'm just going to feel my

way around. I imagine I'll use the built-in apps. Finally, all these nice people who put me on their test flights for their Vision OS apps, I'm like, finally, I'll actually be able to use that because I get the updates. It's like, oh, I did a new beta. I'm like, ah, I still don't have it. Third-party apps, then, yeah, it's going to be FaceTime calls and personas. I'm looking forward to whoever I can persona call with first, right? Like, this is going to be a race. Who can I persona call with first? Right. That is going to be a race. Who can I persona call

with first? Right. That's going to be a train wreck in the low-flying. And I want to try to use it with a Mac and see how that goes. I'm looking forward

to 3D movies too. Oh, sure. I'm going to give that a go. Yeah, I was telling a friend who was visiting this weekend, I said, you know,

I'm going to have to do some testing. And he's like, oh, like watch a whole 3D movie? I'm like, yeah, but for my work. I'm going to have to watch a 3. And he's like, oh, like watch a whole 3D movie. I'm like, yeah, but for my work.

I'm going to have to watch a 3D movie for my work or at least portions of various 3D movies for my work. That's going to be good. So should I ask? I assume you've got a transatlantic flight coming up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to America. I'm picking one up on Friday morning. And then spending like best part of the week where we're kind of turning it

into a little bit of a vacation too. Uh, and so, cause you know, I've got to make the trips and make most of it. And also it's like one of those things where like, I wouldn't want to pick it up on Friday. Then when am I going to leave?

Cause I don't want to leave and like arrive and then like mess up all my shows. Right. Cause I'm all weirded out and jet lag. Cause it's a big week, right? Like recording all these shows it's gonna be a big week like this is no matter what as we said before no matter what way this goes it's big

content for us and so like i want to be on it and ready and raring to go i'm i'm very excited i'm very excited and it's gonna be and i'm preparing for headaches you know sure yeah because i'm gonna overuse it paracetamol like i will be using this over the first few days more than i assume i would use it on a regular day that would be my assumption but i think that's i think that's probably right for both of us that's true wow this is weird it this is weird. It's like we're holding hands and jumping into a new world together, right? Like this is the last upgrade of this era and then a new era begins of whatever it is.

Yeah. Like this is one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to this because I just don't feel like we've done this, anything like this before. No. Right? This just isn't a thing that me and you have gone through

in the history of our show, nearly 500 episodes. Yeah. And now this thing's about to happen, and we don't really know what to expect from it. And it's going to change the trajectory of the show for an amount of time. I have said to several people over the last week, this is why I got into this business is seeing what new

things are before it's ready for everybody else, but getting that glimpse of the future, trying to understand it, trying to communicate what it is, what the issues are, but like the fundamentally the idea that you are seeing something that is at the edge of what we can make right now and that might be telling us things about what the future is like.

I just think that's really exciting. We'll be there and we'll be back next week where we will have our impressions very well i think yes we will won't we yep wow um just like that i'm sure that you'll be writing more at sixcolors.com over that time sure i'll be i'll be writing them all with one finger on a little keyboard and uh i'll say for me i I'm going to be planning to post videos and photos and stuff, probably on Instagram.

I'm like, I-M-Y-K-E of my whole vision quest that I'm going to be going on to pick this thing up. You can find us on Mastodon. Jason is at jsnl on zeppelin.flights. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E on mike.social. You can find video clips of the show on our Mastodon

account. We are upgrade at relayfm.social. You can find video clips of the show on our Masterline account. We are upgrade at relayfm.social. You can also watch clips of the show there and on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube where we are at Upgrade Relay. If you would like longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week, go to getupgradeplus.com. This week, we're going to talk about podcast transcriptions in 17.4 and how that makes us feel. Thanks to our sponsors for this week's episode. Thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Once more into the breach, Mike.

Once more. Here we go.