Upgrade - 500: Core Face/Peripheral Face

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 500 500 it is february 19th 2024 today's show is brought to you by vitally delete me and ladder my name is mikeley, and I am joined by a man who's been on 499 of these 500 episodes. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. It might be 498, but most of them. You missed two? I thought we just won. A year ago, I think I missed both of those episodes when I went to New Zealand. You did. I made you take both of them off.

Yes, 498. I've been on less. I've probably been on less. I've probably been on like 470 or something like that. I'm sure one of our many official historians will tell us at some point what that is.

But I just want to point out that a little quirk of Roman numerals, they have a numeral for 500, which I think is funny. Like, you don't need that, but they have it and it's D so it is upgrade D

today nope and we're doing a report card so upgrade D below average upgrade D that's I've been hearing a lot of these things recently letterbox D it's one of those background tasks that you do it's a demon and also upgrade D

is upgraded. Which is also fun. Sure. Upgraded. Yeah, it is. Great. I love it. Upgraded. Welcome to Upgraded. Upgraded. I have a Snow Talk question for you. To start this 500th episode.

It comes from Ben. Ben wants to know, do the two of you do anything in particular to keep your relationship fresh and positive i marvel every week a mix of fun banter professional analysis and what seems like a true warm friendship with no apparent tension after all of these years well so i want to just start this off before you actually answer with like one of the things that like broke my heart as a younger man was finding out that the mythbusters guys didn't really get on very well like they had a good professional relationship but that was where it like ended like they were not friends and they would say that they were not

friends and like and when i found that out it like kind of broke my heart a little bit right and so i'm here to say we're not friends no that's right that's how we keep it that's how we keep it uh solid is never speak outside the podcast which is also not true we talk all the time we do well this is a snell talk question so you will get the ability to answer first but i have something okay about this also oh i i mean i i don't even know what to say about this we yeah we're we're friends and um i i think it would be different i mean you're very far away um so i only get to see you in person every so often and we we but we have like so many people do you know we have slack conversations and like there's always a back and forth um i think uh i think we get along i i i don't i don't i don't even know how to say it. Like, I don't.

I'll put it this way, Mike, because as we barrel toward 10 years of doing this, it's not work to stay connected to Mike. It's just, I mean, it's just nice. There's no strategies involved to keep it fresh. It just is good. That's what I say. I'm sorry. It's kind of a non-answer. No, that warmed my heart.

That was your gift to me on this 500th episode. I give that to you. What I'll say is I couldn't imagine doing this show with literally anybody else. This is the only person I've wanted to do a show with is you. We are a great partnership. We work very well together. We compliment each other in the right ways. Look, to say that we never get annoyed at each other would be wrong.

You know what I mean? We get frustrated. You hear us get frustrated at each other on the episodes sometimes. On the episodes, yeah. But we're professionals as well as friends. And I think that that combination can allow you to work together for this period of time. And we might say some of this again, if we talk about this coming up in September when it's 10 years of doing this, but I'll just say now that I also always appreciate

the fact that when I was leaving my job of many, many years and wanted to do a podcast, it was like one of my primary goals was like, well, when I leave my job, one of the things I'm going to need to do is do a podcast. And I need a partner for that. And I wanted it to be you and you already had connected and we're starting this network and all those things. And so once again, I will say also, thank you for agreeing to do this podcast because logically, I think you could have said it's one too many podcasts, and you didn't, so thank you for that. I wasn't going to turn that opportunity down.

And I feel like it was just a thing. It was just like a way, and I think this has become better and better over time, of how we split. This show is different to all the other shows I do, the things that you do. It is different. It's its own thing.

And I also think different to most of the other stuff that's out there of course you're gonna have to do a little bit of this today it is 500 episodes so we're gonna be a bit navel-gazing but we have some big topics to talk about thank you so much to ben for sending in that lovely snow talk question i've been sitting on that one for a little while because i thought it would be good for an episode like this some follow-up so uh on last week's episode you said you were going to stuff your vision pro into a backpack and cover it with some t-shirts and i just wanted to know how that sucks you don't forget the socks uh-huh the answer is uh after that episode i thought that it was a stupid idea but but my inherent cheapness kicked in right which is like i didn't want to buy an expensive bag and um so what i ended up doing is buying a super cheap bag or a super cheap case the one that casey

list bought ah because casey bought it and and it's it's you know it's like 25 case or whatever it's it's not 100 or 200 or 300 case and he said it's perfectly adequate and i mean it's clearly a meta quest case but uh it it works and it's all the pieces I mean, it's clearly a MetaQuest case, but it works. And all the pieces are Velcro, so you can kind of like move it around and get the dimensions to be a little bit close. So that's what I traveled with. I did put it in a dumb case that fits in my backpack and was not stuffing socks around the eye holes, which is what I realized after we talked that that was probably a stupid idea i'm so happy you got something yeah i saw casey's case because me and casey got to spend some time together in new york he came and surprised me which is a good friend see he's

a good friend he came all that way just to see your friend he's a good friend and he had that case and i was like what are you doing just like, just get the case. But to be honest, review, I'm just happy you had a case. A case. That's what I was going for. Baseline. Anything. Just anything. Just a case.

Yes. Bill wrote in to say, hey, Jason, there's a company in San Francisco. I'm sure you know them. Waterfield Bags. Waterfield. SF Bags. And they make a case of their own. SF Bags.

So this case, I saw people people i saw this reference as like a cheaper option it's still not cheap it's like it's not 180 dollars yeah but what looks cool about this case is it is much smaller physically than apples yeah so if that's what you're looking for yeah it looks good and i have some of their i've used some of their stuff over over the years and it's very high quality it's's good stuff. They sold out immediately. Yes. Of course. When they announced this product.

So it wasn't really an option for me. I did think about it. If they had been available, I might have bought one. But, It's not too bad. Like if you order it now, it ships middle of March.

So, Yeah, no, that's good. But the, for this trip, I just thought the Casey case

is good in the sense that it exists and was cheap. Yeah. And I really felt like, well, first off, I got Casey to say it's fine. And then I thought, well, I'll take a flyer on it. Casey says it's fine. And if it doesn't work out, I can just get something else because it was relatively cheap. But what I didn't want to do, and that Apple case, I know people love it i i looked at it and i'm like i saw one in person a couple of times and it just doesn't do it for me it doesn't do it for me and everybody else

everybody can be different so i'm happy to have my little cheap thing that i can put it in so it doesn't rattle around and have like i don't know chocolate melt on it or something, right? Like it's fine. It's good. It's enough for now. Jonathan wrote in to say, I feel most of the questions in the segment talking about Vision Pro sizing are answered well enough by Apple in a documentation that they put together, including the question of

when should I use the other cushion and specific fit issues that are fixed to specific adjustment changes or light seal or light seal cushions and even what the markings mean and what to look for. So Apple put together a knowledge base article about fitment of the Vision Pro

because we were talking about that. And there's some stuff in here that is useful for sure. But one of the things that I find frustrating about this article is they're referencing the fact that like maybe you should, if something doesn't fit right right you should get a different piece right like it may be a different light seal or something but that's just not a thing you can do you can't just do that

you can only buy the ones that apple will let you buy and like i'll say again like i'm here hi my name is mo curly and i'm here again with with like everybody else with another like just personal experience thing that happened to me. So I have two light seals. I think I got like a 21 and a 25. Yeah. The 21 was what I, which is when I bought the thing.

And when I bought, I put my order in and I put my prescription lens order in separately. And when I did that it was like hey you're gonna need a 25 for this and the reason is i read about it some people in some instances if you have lenses they recommend a different light seal for distance today i thought i would try the original one the smaller one i guess the 21 with my lenses in and i actually find it more comfortable interesting like and also i have less of the tunnel vision thing because it's yeah right

that's the idea is you get a little closer um i mean my feedback to jonathan is is i mean it's great that they have documentation but that doesn't help you if you don't have the sizes because what you what you need to do is try them on i can read lots of documentation about like how you know how like if you're online and you want to buy, let's say a hat, but it could be anything, pants, a shirt, and they have a little thing that says size information and you click on it and they're like, oh, it's this many inches or millimeters or centimeters or whatever you want miles around. And I think to myself, okay,

I don't know my measurement. I don't know where that measurement is taken. I don't know how to do it properly. And what you really want to do is try on a bunch of different hats or t-shirts and find the one that fits. And if you're at an Apple store where they theoretically have every size, the people at the Apple store should be pretty well trained to bring them all out and step you through it and figure out which one fits and ask you the right questions. And that's my complaint

is that I don't think that they've been well trained in that at all and that they need to be better at that. And I think it's the fault of, of people in Apple retail for focusing on the demo experience and not focusing on the fit experience. And I think it's, uh, that's why it's frustrating. I went to my local Apple store. They didn't have the 21. I ended up, and this is the other thing I think I mentioned, is you can't just order the other size. If you're doing a swap, you have to actually go through a series of questions, which you can game to get the one that you want. Anyway, I ended up with a, what is it, 15, 14, the one that's one, believe it or not up with a, what is it, 15, 14? The one that's one, believe it or not,

one size down from the 21. And I got that and it was terrible. It put all the pressure on my cheekbones. Much worse experience than the 25 that I originally got. So I actually went back to the 25 and I'm going to send the 15 back because it doesn't fit. But this is silly. It's silly. So I actually went back to the 25 and I'm going to send the 15 back because it doesn't fit. But this is silly.

It's silly. When I was in the Apple store, they should have been able to walk me through multiple ones. And instead, they just sort of like took one and said, how's this different? And I went, I don't know. I can't tell. And they're like, well, all right, maybe you can get that one. And that was the end of it. So it's just it was really lacking.

I appreciate that there's documentation. I mentioned Apple Store employees also got a bunch of tips about sizing, but it doesn't feel like they've been trained in like, here's how you do it. And instead, I distinctly got the impression that they were kind of making it up. And again, frustrating that they're supposed to be the experts, but I was driving it.

And I didn't feel like that was how that was supposed to go. And that I would have had to be like, no, no, no no no bring me more light seals i want to try all the light seals i didn't want to be that guy yeah i feel like this is one of those things where it will get better over time right but like it is just a point of saying that like right now it is like a little bit of a black box you're like zach pointed out something in the chat that i didn't know, that you can order different light seals online,

but you need to know what number. You've got to know the number, right? You've got to know the number. How do you know? And it's... Because then you end up with these scenarios, which I've already seen some of this stuff, where there is Reddit threads. It's like, we've got the perfect one. It doesn't work like that either, right? Because people are different sizes, and that's why this is complicated.

We finally found the right size for the one head that everybody on Reddit has. It's like, no, that's not how it works. It isn't. Anyway, I appreciate Jonathan's link to the support. I appreciate that somebody in Apple – here's the thing. People in Apple documentation obviously felt that this was an issue that needed to be documented. However, at the store, the experience that at least i had was not as good as that as we've said last week and i feel like i'm going to keep saying this

the vision pro is like the most your mileage may vary product that has ever existed it's like a raw shock test because literally everybody sees something different because everybody has a different i mean i mean you know this you've seen some of the discourse about this it's not just that like our heads are different sizes and our faces are different shapes but it is that not and it's not just that our eyes have different things about them that require adjustment it's also that like our brains process visual stimulus differently like different people process it differently it's, it's the most one your mileage may vary product Apple has ever made, for sure. Janna wrote in to say, Jason mentioned that personas on the Vision Pro could have the benefit of not having to do your makeup to be as presentable

as your usual self on a video call. But unfortunately for me, this is disappointingly untrue. I scan myself wearing my fairly typical makeup, including eyeshadow and non-natural color purple, in a non-natural color purple, and the persona doesn't include it at all. Maybe the cameras are taking a depth map and applying a skin color as a skin. This is interesting to me because my persona has accurate blemishes on my skin. So why wouldn't it capture makeup? I find that to be peculiar. I would like to know from more people about this.

I wonder if it's because the eyes are animated and therefore the eyes are more generic. If there's a part of your core... What is this product driven us to, Mike? I'm just going to say it. what is this product driven us to, Mike? I'm just going to say it. So part of your core face, your central face, is more accurately rendered and then things that are more peripheral

are more animated or not. I don't know. This is great to hear from Jana because I'm surprised. Because we did see that, that your eyes didn't look correct, right? Like that there was something going on, but it wasn't what actually goes on in your eyes. I mean, what you said is it looked like one of my eyes was a different color. And I get that a lot.

It is maybe slightly, but mostly it's optical illusion because one of my pupils is bigger than the other. Some of the time, not all the time. If I make a new persona, what I need to do is get the light exactly right so that my pupils are equal sizes and then we won't have this conversation. But yeah, it represented – I don't know if it represented it entirely accurately, but it did represent it in a way. But this is a good question, right? Like does it have things like the color of the eye shadow? Does it say, I'm not going to render that? If you've got eyeliner, does it render the eyeliner?

I mentioned this before. I have a friend who, when she's on a Zoom, she uses, believe it or not, Zoom has this feature. Zoom has a virtual eyebrows feature. True story. And you can just add eyebrows in Zoom. And so there's lots of ways you can approach this. Can I ask some questions about this?

Maybe you can answer. I can't answer answer them does this friend have no eyebrows uh i think she's unhappy with her eyebrows and so zoom replaces them with other eyebrows new eyebrows on top of your existing eyebrows where otherwise you might do makeup or something okay exactly this feature in zoom is just for eyebrows like nothing else i don't know i This feature in Zoom is just for eyebrows? Like nothing else? I don't know. It's one of those things where it's like an overlay. It's like an Instagram. A touch-up thing? Like a Snapchat filter kind of thing. I don't know.

Eyebrows. It's virtual eyebrows. I didn't get it either. How do they work? It's how do they work. So this is a great data point for Jenna, and I really do wonder what gets picked up. And is it that she mentioned non-natural color, right?

Maybe there's something about that where um there are blemishes and things that they will try to do especially if it's in your central face my central face my blemishes are on my central face so i will agree but if you're in a it's part of your peripheral face and it's also a non-natural color maybe that they just drop that what language what are we talking about at this point you know central face peripheral face yeah that's right it's more and more of a suburb of your face it's an face and we need we need to eject from the apple vision pro follow-up and go into the land of sensibility welcome back to dma today today Everybody's so excited about DMA Today where we try and make sense

of what's going on with the DMA Today. And so the way that DMA Today has gone so far is how it's going to continue. I'm going to read some feedback about the core technology fee in this very slow argument

and debate we're having with our audience, which I love. And then I have some news for you. Daniel writes in to say regarding the core technology fee, I think the main problem referring to apps never having been built for the app store and therefore nothing has changed is that part of my reading on the DMA. Is it supposed to clamp down on Apple's monopoly on deciding who or what can be on your phone as opposed to it only

being about the money? this logic apple has made sure that a whole bunch of apps can realistically never be on the platform anyway after last week where i where i pushed back on listeners i'm just going to say daniel i agree thank you for your feedback i do but like you know where i feel like we're getting to the core of it and this is the core of the core this is a like a good point right there's like if these are apps this is supposed to be a situation where apps that couldn't exist before can exist but they still can't exist because they can't afford to exist right i i think it goes it gets to the question which i think is a question that we can argue about the legal points and the details

of it and all that but i think sometimes what you have to do is say, what was the intended purpose of all of this? And did that happen? And that I think is worth considering. I've got a good point from Mathouse who says, for open source apps that do not intend to make any money, they could publish through a charity. There are multiple existing open source charities that could publish open source apps since the code is open source anyone can publish it and charities do not pay the technology fee love it that's good yeah i think non-profits and educational institutions don't pay the technology fee so i mean a charity i I think it's nonprofits as well. So, literally a nonprofit for open source iPhone apps would not pay the CTF. And that could create an open source store.

Like that could be a way around it. Right. I suppose so. Yeah. And Matt writes in to say, regarding the core technology fee, maybe this should not apply if Apple has rejected an application. The developer gave Apple the opportunity to have the app in their app store

but then they chose not to have it. It seems fair that they should then not be able to make any money from it. I love this thought. I love it. If you said you don't want it, then you shouldn't make anything. You said you don't want it. You want nothing to do with it.

Get Europe on the phone. That's a you don't want it. You want nothing to do with it. Get Europe on the phone. That's a good one. Yeah, love it. Love it. Now we move into the news portion. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says that Microsoft will not bring Game Pass to iOS as they feel that they cannot effectively monetize it

with Apple's rules. This is a quote. I'm a big fan of how Windows works and you've got a Microsoft store on Windows. You've got Steam. You've got the Epic Games Store. You've got GOG. store on windows you've got steam you've got the epic game store you've got gog you have alternatives and i think alternative ways for people to buy things creates goodness for consumers and creators i think the largest platform for gamers which is mobile should have the same basically microsoft don't want to give

apple any money i don't think it matters what they do they don't want to give them anything i've seen some point out that it's ironic that microsoft don't do this with xbox um but i do think this comes back to that age-old question of how you define what an iphone is and i do not think that an iphone is in the same category as a games console personally i think it's in the same category as a pc or a mac but your again your mileage may vary your mileage may vary. Your mileage may vary wherever it hits you on your general face area.

I think, I mean, I was thinking about this the other day. I think it's fair to say, I was actually thinking about this while I was listening to last week's episode of Connected, where you guys were talking about the post-PC era

and how we're in it in the sense that there's not going to be a new pc made like we have pcs but like nobody's going to say oh we got a new device that's a pc and what i was thinking about is really what you're saying is when we in the infancy of computers we created these computers that were general use general purpose computers where the idea was they can do whatever. We don't know what they're for. Just program them to do whatever and they'll do that. And the way that the iPhone and the iPad and other devices like that are like game consoles is in the sense that they're not general purpose, in the sense that they are more controlled and more focused and they're not sort of like you can just do whatever it's wide open.

Um, Apple has chosen to build those platforms and I really most stuff now is much more kind of like lockdown. So in that way, I think it is like it, I don't think it's the same as it. And I, I,

I'm going to reserve a little bit of judgment for Phil Spencer talking about windows and not talking about how it works on Xbox because I do think that he's talking out of, was it both sides of his mouth? I don't know. I do think it's kind of rich that he talks about openness when he's got a platform that's closed and locked down. But at the same time, it doesn't mean that he's not making some decent points.

I completely agree. There is some irony there, but it comes back to that question, right? I think at the point now where it seems like some irony there, but it comes back to that question, right? That like, how I think at the point now where it seems like basically every device or platform is locked down to some degree, right?

We are in the post-PC era. Except for Mac and Windows, yeah. You've got to look at what is the purpose of the device, I think, a little bit more. Exactly. Yeah. What is the it's not general purpose, then what is it? Yeah. If you just do one thing, then you're maybe a little bit more like the specific.

But if you purport to do lots of different things and you're trying to fill lots of different areas, then you're creating a more open, in theory, platform. Not open in the sense of open. Right. Yeah, right. The way you define it uh also define sort of how you should be judged by it anyway my my thought here is mostly that i'm disappointed by this that microsoft has decided not to do this because apple did change the rules and it feels like microsoft

was headed there and then apple said it's against the rules now apple has said is it is okay and microsoft says well no we're not going to do it. What I don't understand is why Microsoft are not bringing Game Pass and just not putting the ability for people to sign up. Why isn't, can't they just make a reader app? I'm pretty sure they can make a reader app. Right, and I think that was what they were thinking of doing before and I don't know, I find it frustrating

because this feels like it's not, first off, a lot of this is getting conflated with the DMA and it's not the same a lot of this is getting conflated with the dma and it's not the same it's that's a different conversation but um even though we put it in dma today sorry everybody well i mean he is also in the quote like i took a bit he is talking about the dma right so this is the challenge is there's the dma which which they're against, but the global allowance of game streaming services on iOS is not the DMA. And that's the thing where I feel like Microsoft could just do that. And I hope they reconsider at some point because I think that would be good for everyone. Honestly, I see this as a similar thing to Mark Zuckerberg last week,

where everybody's making a lot of points right now because they're trying to get the EU to force Apple to go further. To more yeah i agree as mentioned previously epic are going to be bringing the epic game store to ios in europe but they needed something pretty important to do that which was an apple developer account because theirs was taken away apple have reinstated epic's developer account for the app store so they will be able to bring the Epic Games Store and Fortnite to iOS in the European Union in the not-too-distant future. I'm not sure if technically they reinstated that account, but they have a subsidiary that is in Sweden. Yeah. a european publisher for their store and fortnight in the eu and that's part of the rules of the of the uh of the european uh influenced app store environment whatever we want to call it

is if you're an entity in the eu you run you can run these alternative app marketplaces so they have taken their swedish entity um and they're going to use that i think it is a reinstatement in spirit because i reckon tried to set up an account before now apple would have not let them because they could have just kept doing that i think that's right but i technically i think it may be a new account but yes in spirit it is that the european commission has determined that i message is not a dominant enough platform to be regulated under the DMA. This was something that needed to be set up, and that's the case. Yep.

However, this isn't DMA-related, but it's Europe-related, so it's also in this category. The European Commission has issued a €500 million fine to Apple for working anti-competitively against Spotify for Apple Music. This is the result of a complaint filed by Spotify in 2019. I'm going to read from 9to5Mac. Specifically, the EU believes Apple acted illegally in blocking music streaming apps like Spotify from telling customers about other ways to subscribe to their services and thereby evade Apple's commission on in-app

purchases. They are usually referred to as the App Store's anti-steering provisions. The forthcoming EU judgment will not force Apple to permit alternative in-app payment methods, but it will insist music streaming app developers can freely link out to their website to subscribe online. So the expectation is that this is more than the reader app rule, which is just one link, right, that the European Union is going to save for music streaming services, specifically because that's what this case is for. You need to allow them to put links basically wherever they want.

Oh, and also you've got to give Spotify half a billion dollars, euros. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that I've always found the most offensive about Apple's practices is when they set up all like there are places where they're like we're just gardening our platform we're tending to to our users needs it's the moments when they're like oh but also we're going to make our own music service or we're going to make our own bookstore and their bookstore doesn't have to play by the rules that all the other bookstores do that's what really bothers me and we're going to price it the same yeah but we essentially make 30 more money than they can make than they could possibly make

yeah and therefore they can never come into our platform and we're the only ones who can you know who can have this business model on our on our platform. And that's the stuff that really irks me. So, I mean, 500 million euros is not going to hurt them really at all. But it is a lot of money. It is a lot of money. Yeah. But yes, to Apple, not a lot,

but they also don't want to pay it. But well, there you go. Of course they don't. That's what you get. This episode is brought to you by Vitally. Customer success teams today are facing a problem. How do they connect customer data back to their work? Vitally changes that.

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It's draft time. We're doing's draft time. We're doing a draft today. People, are they surprised? Do they know? Do they know? What did Apple, is Apple doing an event? No, it's not that kind of draft.

It's a draft of our own. So for the last few years, every 100 episodes, we make a set of predictions for 100 episodes from now. So we start this with episode 300 in 2020 yes we've done it again for episode 400 and here we are for episode 500 so we're going to do the upgrade draft of the ages of the ages we're going to look back our predictions from episode 400 we're going to grade them and then we're going to look uh at our predictions well then we're

going to set some predictions for episode 600 600 let's go through these so all right we'll do round one you said an iMac larger than 24 inches will exist don't you like my optimism but it's not true it didn't happen didn't happen in fact there was a's not true. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. In fact, there was a press release. This one really didn't happen. It's not happening, Jason, said an unattributed Apple executive. Then mine was an Apple car will not exist. I don't appreciate your lack of optimism, but you are correct. You said Apple TV Plus

broadcasts another live sport that is not baseball. MLS, baby. An entire league, not just a sport. They got all of it. They got all of it. And then I can't believe this one didn't happen. My second pick was Apple TV Plus will include

live programming that is not sports. I was really surprised that they didn't do like a christmas special or something i know right round three you said an ipad will have a display larger than 12.9 inches you know like i'm a month i'm a month away from this yeah you're so close so close month away maybe if we if we wouldn't you know we've definitely done some bonus episodes over the last couple of years right where like drafts have happened and stuff if those wouldn't have happened you might have actually gotten this one i think i think i might have gotten four out of five if if it was at the end at the end of march at the end and we'll get to it but like i think

i would have gotten four out of five if this was the end of March, but it's not yet. Can we do these every 110 episodes? Let's go through these because then I want to talk about this for a second. I said two more Apple hardware products will be called Studio. That didn't happen. No, it didn't happen.

I love your idea, though. I was really excited about Studio, but nothing else happened. Nope. Round four, somewhere in the world apple will allow users to sideload ios apps okay so this is so close to being because okay first off um there's the will allow and um as you pointed out to me when we were talking about this,

technically it hasn't happened yet. It happens in a couple of weeks. And second, I use the word sideload, which is not technically what's going to happen. This specifically is not sideloading. Alternative app stores. But honestly, if I had said allow alternative app stores but like but honestly if i had said allow alternative app stores i would still not get it because it hasn't happened it hasn't happened

hot this is this is so heartbreaking uh wwdc has not returned to its pre-w pre-2020 style which is correct absolutely that was yours and apple watch gets a new design apple watch ultra baby which is yes it was the apple watch ultra and i said external display support for ipad won't happen it happened it happened so that puts us at two two two with no tiebreaker three weeks four weeks from now it would probably be four two to you yeah at least three two yeah we could have debated sideload but it wouldn't have mattered right because there'll be a 13 inch ipad pro or something and that'll be enough even though i will say that was not my intent right like those two picks your studio and my 12.9 inches was both of us dreaming

a 15 inchinch iPad studio. We were dreaming that. I mean, it still might happen. Still might happen. You don't know. You don't know. It could still happen. But it didn't. Not today.

Not on February 19th, 2024 when episode 500 happens. And that's the point of it is it's every 100 episodes. So we're dealing with what will happen in slightly less than two years from now. And I just missed it. I will say, because we're going to make our picks again in a minute, there is something really weird about two years from now. Because it's in the future, but it's not that far away. It's actually pretty hard to make predictions for a two-year span.

Like five years is easy. One year is easy. Two years? Right. Hard. Because you get run away with future and then you're like, but wait, it's just two years from now. Yeah.

Magical things. Like Apple Car will ship. Like, probably not in two years. Probably not. So congratulations to us. We drew. Yes, 2-2. We drew.

We drew. So let's, I know we've both got a bunch. So close. Let's start off by saying we'll do five rounds. Okay. And I think we're going to have to flip a coin to decide who goes first. I want you to go first. Oh, okay.

You're the existing champion of the regular draft, and this one had no winner. So I'm going to let you go first and that that way i can i can uh i can have more time to think what i'm gonna pick all right my first one is boring tim cook is still ceo of apple oh you know i think an upgrade plus we'll talk about what we didn't what we didn't pick but um i have some tim cook ones that are not that tim cook is still ceo of apple i again i'm gonna admire your optimism there i think good for you this is the two-year thing right two-year i know i think that he's not going anywhere for a

longer period of time than that i don't know i don't know i um okay now I gotta choose one what do I think I'm gonna say oh wow okay I got one for you this is too good not to pick so I'm gonna pick it Apple apologizes for offensive or embarrassing content that was generated by an Apple

AI algorithm. This is going to be Tim Cook sitting down in front of a sofa. It's like, we're sorry. You know, like one of those. They're going to get like a, we're sorry YouTube video. It's going to be a gate. No, it's going gonna be an unnamed Apple source on background saying

that they feel bad and that it's been corrected but still I just feel like right they're about to unveil lots of AI stuff and it's like isn't it inevitable that something bad will happen and they'll apologize for it I think it is I love it you've already

gone more excited more interesting than me because I get my next round. It's not particularly interesting. I think within two years. This is why I lose all these drafts is I try to be entertaining. Okay, that's fine. I appreciate it.

Revised Vision Pro hardware. Oh. I'm being specific. Again, I have a pick that says none. I think two years-ish is enough to see it's enough a hardware revision and i'm talking about the vision pro i'm not saying like vision or whatever like right i think in that period it will be enough time there is like a thought of mine where i'm wondering how fast it will be until that revision happens. Like, I don't think

they would do a year over year for this product, but for the first one, maybe they do, depending on, I don't know. Right? Like, this is a conversation we'll have later on about how much they could realistically change or would want to change within a short period of time.

But I think within the next 100 weeks we will see revised vision pro hardware okay i'm gonna go with a bummer pick and say one apple watch no longer fits at least one apple watch no longer fits the classic apple watch bands okay i don't like it, but it feels like it might happen. I think this feels like something that has to happen at some point. I'm not saying I want it, but I feel like it is an inevitability.

They can't keep that thing forever. At a certain point, it is going to limit the design of the Apple Watch. And as soon as that happens, they're going to have to change it. Yep. I'm going to go with an Apple Watch pick. Say that an Apple Watch gets a glucose monitor.

Ah, that was on my list. That was on my list. That's a big, yeah, that's good. I like how risky it is. See, now you're entertaining. Now you're entertaining me. I don't know if it's really entertaining, like how risky it is. Mm-hmm. So now you're entertaining. Now you're entertaining me. I don't know if it's really entertaining, but it's the thing. They're going to make it happen. They're going to do it.

That's great. That's great. All right. I will see you, your glucose monitor, and raise you. Apple Card or Apple Cash will expand to at least one more country. I think they need to find a partner first for the US. I'm just saying. I would like it.

It's US only. Yeah. It's still US only. Oh, yeah. It's been years now. Come on, Apple. I'm going to say for my fourth round pick, there is still no larger iMac.

Okay. All right. Taking my prediction from 100 episodes ago and just extending it into the future. I don't think it's... Now that Apple has said that they're not going to do it, you're saying, yeah, they're not going to do it. They're not going to do it.

All right. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm going to give you a Vision Pro pick that you're probably... I don't know, maybe you'll like it. It's broad. I tried to do something detailed here

and I decided I wanted to go broad with this, which is Apple will release some new input device product designed for Vision OS. Oh, I like this. So it could be combo keyboard trackpad yeah it could be hand tracker it could be thing you put on your wrist i don't know something what is the apple pencil for vision pro not that it's an apple pencil but like maybe it's a pencil, just a regular pencil. Something I would like to be able to walk up to... So in

the Horizon workrooms on the MetaQuest, you can use the controller as a pen to write on a fake whiteboard. I would like to be able to do that with Freeform. Apple have this weird thing where they try to do it with hand tracking, but it's not very good. I would like to be able to use

Freeform like a whiteboard, walk up to it with my pencil or whatever and just draw on it that so this is my this is my thought this is my thought process here is apple chose to go with pure hand tracking pure hand tracking as good as apple's hand tracking is and it is good it has a lot of limits the advantage I would say, optional hand accessories is precision. And there are certain, whether it's games or something like writing on a whiteboard, a little extra precision is nice. So whether it's, yes, an Apple Pencil or a little hand controller that you just put in your hand and then you can do it and then it's much more precise i don't really know but i i just had this i thought i think it's worth taking the chance of like maybe there's an accessory out there that that is an opportunity for them now that they

ship the product and they're getting user feedback maybe there is something that they can do to improve the vision os experience over the next two years are we going to make this our final round um we could or we could go one more. I don't care. I've got so many choices here. Let's do six. Let's do six. Okay, we'll do six.

Great. I'm going to build on some of my picks from last time, some of our picks from last time, but this is something that I think is going to happen at some point, so maybe it will happen over the next two years. Apple has another sport on TV+. Another sport? There were rumors about Formula One. be what will happen in the next two years apple has another sport on tv plus another sport like there were rumors about formula one i think formula one still makes a lot of sense but i

think there is enough tumult in sport rights that at some point this is going to happen and i think apple they've shown their willingness for sport right they they've obviously done a lot with vision pro oh sorry with mls and so i think and for vision pro right they're going to want more stuff so i think it could happen okay i like it let's do HomePod with a screen how about that HomePod with a screen I mean you know if it's not called HomePod

we know what it is we know what it is it's gentleman's agreement here I would like that alright final pick okay the iphone ultra is introduced so that's it huh that's it i mean iphone ultra i think that this that i think there is one more attempt at fixing the branding of the iphone right that they've had that issue with, like, the fourth iPhone. I think that there is a sense to be made for having

four distinct iPhone models, right, and that might actually help them with their lineup a little bit more, right? So, iPhone plus Pro Ultra rather than this, like, they've got the two Pros,

they have the regular iPhonehone and then they have another one so i think that this might give some consistency to the line allowing them to push up in price a little bit more ultra is a brand that they use i think it's obviously and so i think this is going to happen iphone ultra all right i like it i'm going to go with i started weirder than i'm ending but i'm going to go with a new standalone display from Apple. I would like that in a couple of weeks time. I mean, new,

new or updated, but the idea that it's been so long, they did like the, the, the something else update something into displays. They're so slow with displays, but I think if I give them a hundred weeks, maybe they could give me one. Maybe.

It would be nice. We will check back in about two years from now and see just how well did we fare. Join us in January of 2026. Wow. Look forward to it, everyone. Mm-hmm.

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show and RelayFM. So it's big day in Six Colors land. It is the 2023 Apple Report Card. It is. For people that are new around here, Jason, what is the Six Colors Report Card? I ask a bunch of people who are mostly kind of media

or other people involved in discussing the Apple on the internet, basically, to score Apple in a bunch of categories from one to five about what Apple did in the previous year. It is a measurement of general sentiment. I always use the phrase, it's the vibe in the room. I think that anybody who's been following

the conversation for the last year will not be surprised by the outcome because it is the people who have been having the conversation. So it shouldn't be like particularly shocking, but it's a way for us to measure it and compare it to previous years and then get a bunch of commentary from those people if they want to share commentary that goes in a very long post on my website. So more than 25,000 words of commentary if people want to wade through it

or they can skim it or they can ignore it, but also some numbers and some changes over time just to get a sense of sort of like what are people in this sphere thinking about Apple's performance in the last year? So what we're going to do, I'm going to run through each of the categories we'll talk about

the scores and their changes and then give our own scores I submitted my information to the report card you included me but you do not vote

so I want to get your votes today okay I really recommend people go check out the scorecard because there's so many great quotes

and also one of my favorite things that's happening right now which I'm sure you love too is people posting their full report cards on their websites that must be i reckon pretty good for sending traffic over to you but that's great and i like that i like that they do that because they have lots to say and you want to they want to say it and you can't and i trim it down so i trim down like uh people send in like explanations of why it's a certain score. And I take out the like the details of like why they chose a number.

I don't put in there. I'm not interested in that. And I will remove some things if it's redundant or if they didn't really have much to say. I try to slim it down at least a little bit. And I'll also say if people are curious, each section is sometimes there are very funny placements where one person says something and they're immediately contradicted by somebody else. I find those hilarious. Every section is randomized. So the sequence

of the comments in the story per section is random. So I'm not doing the thing where there's a moment in there where everybody says how great Apple TV Plus is and the next person's like, there's nothing on Apple TV Plus. I'm like like oh boy wow uh yeah but it's uh it's all there for people who want to spend a lot of time reading words about apple it's there so it's a score out of five five is

the maximum yeah one to five with the mac which got a 4.2 which was the same year over year. I scored four for the Mac, really just because I think that the Mac is just continuing to be in a very good spot. If you think about the hardware, in my opinion, it's like as best as it's been in the entire time I've been following Apple from capability and design and stuff like that. Like there are no glaring issues,

I feel. I know that everybody has their own issues, but this is my score. I think it's really good. The only reason I wouldn't put it higher is you kind of got to reserve it for if there's something new, right? And there isn't this time.

We're in a bit of maintenance. Well, I mean, there's the Mac Pro that didn't do anything more than the Mac Studio. Yep, yep. Maybe I should have given it a five because of the Mac Pro, but I didn't. But I feel like where Apple is right now, I think they've cleared basically everything up and they put themselves in a real good position

for the continuing future of Apple Silicon. So it feels like a very easy four for me. Yeah, I agree. I think four is a good number uh i don't think it was a perfect year but they are doing so well with the mac it's riding so high and i feel like i i feel like the report card a lot of people are very um focused on what's new and you'll see that with the ipad yeah and i course. And I get it on one level, but on another level, I feel like if the Mac lineup was not, I mean, the Mac lineup,

we got two sets of MacBook Pros this year, right? Like, there's a lot going on in the Mac. And yet, at the same time, there was not like a sea change. It was mostly just sort of updates. And that's fine, because it's in a good place. And so that carries some weight, too.

So I would say four is a good number. The iPhone is 4.1 up from a 3.9. I also gave it a 4. I think this is a very, very solid iPhone. The iPhone revision we got this year, especially the Pro, especially the Pro Max. I love the titanium.

I love the 5X camera. USB-C has been a great addition. But it's really just like a very solid refresh. There has been nothing earth shattering. So again, I feel like this is as high as I could give a score for this iPhone personally. If you did, if I could have given it a 4.5, I would have given it a 4.5. Yeah, given it a 4.5 yeah i don't let you

do that but that's kind of talk that i just removed from the story yeah right there you're talking about the rating system but you can't you can't edit me i can't edit you no i can't jim take that take that um the uh yeah yeah again it's i think four is probably what i would settle on to um part of me thinks the iphone is really quiet but at the same time the titanium details as fun as funny as it is when i see the ads they're like oh titanium like doesn't matter the fact is i love how that thing feels i don't use a case uh every time i pick it up i'm like oh you know smooth light nice it's like it's it's really a nice phone the pro max with the big telephoto is huge usbc is good bringing dynamic island to all the phone models or all the mainstream phone models this year was great because i like the

dynamic island as well so um four seems about right yep now we Now we move to, I think, the category probably going to get the most attention which is the iPad which is a 2.4 down from a 3.0. That's a bad grade. I gave it a 1

and you didn't include my comment probably because it's all about scores but I'm going to read my comment in its entirety because I feel this deeply. If there was a 0

on this list it's what I would have given. Zero new hardware, zero compelling OS features. They made some additions for iPhone parity and fixed some issues, introduced the 16. Feels like a pure maintenance year. I'm hoping to give this score a five for 2024. I see it.

You don't get a zero. The iPad has just been a disappointment this year. Honestly, I hope that it is a disappointing year because 2024 is going to be amazing and I'm going to choose that optimism but I'm not going to ignore what 2023 was which was bad

for the iPad. I think I'm going to give this a three because while I am also frustrated at the process of iPad hardware being not updated and of course the iPad Pro, the one that I used, its last update was not really much of an update either. So it's really been treading water for a very long time. At the same time, I think there are a bunch of really good iPads at good prices. I think that the line is pretty good. If there was an iPad line that could withstand a year without a fresh iPad, it's this one. It survived it's okay you could still buy an ipad and you know they they sold

whatever seven billion of them a dollar's worth of them last quarter so i mean those people didn't get shafted i think that was okay the reason i give it three instead of two honestly is one uh they made appreciable stage manager improvements in ipad os which is something they making improvements after you launch os which is something they making improvements after you launch a feature is not something that uh apple always does sometimes they just let it lay there being bad for years and they didn't do that and two i gotta give them credit for finally shipping i um two pro apps on the ipad logic and final cut pro um and while that doesn't necessarily balance out some of the

hardware sluggishness um i do want to give them credit for that because i've been complaining about that for years and years and years and they shipped them and they are they did a creditable job at shipping them so um for that i'll i'll take a three considered two um but i think i'll go with three yeah i think you're being way more fair than I am. I am frustrated. It's because for me, I agree with you on Stage Manager, but Stage Manager shouldn't have shipped originally. It was

bad, right? And so fixing it is great, but you put it to the bare minimum. It's not like they added the good things we wanted. They just made it work. They made it usable, yeah. No, this is the classic argument is, do you give them credit for fixing the thing that they added the good things we wanted they just got made it work they made it usable yeah no this is the this is the classic argument is do you give them credit for fixing the thing that they broke do you give them credit for finally shipping apps they should have shipped

four years before um i'm gonna give them a little credit for it i should give credit for the for the pro apps and here's what the saying what you're saying i would if i could i would actually adjust to it too because i forgot about the pro apps and that's my blind spot because i don't use them and they just don't work for me so i forget that they exist but it is an important thing that they did i think i was too harsh i was too harsh on the hardware thing but it is something that's frustrated me because i do think that the ipad hardware line has gotten quite confusing and complicated. And at the moment, there isn't much of a justification for why you should buy, say, the Pro still. And so I've gotten a bit frustrated about that over time.

And in a year when they haven't done anything, it kind of accentuated it for me. But I feel like you're right, that you were being more balanced and I was a bit more upset about it. The Apple Watch is a 3.4 down from a 4.2. I gave it a four because I got an Apple Watch Ultra this year. And I think that's why it was a four last year because lots of people got an Apple Watch Ultra.

And I absolutely love, the Apple Watch Ultra has changed my relationship to the Apple Watch in a sense that I now enjoy my Apple Watch where I felt like I was starting to begrudgingly wear my Apple Watch because of the frustrations I found in it and also the fact that it looked the same way for a long time and that bugged me and I really like the Ultra I'm a big fan it, and so I'm happy that it exists now. I think this is one of those categories where I personally don't agree with the panel focusing so much on what happened this year. I also would give the Apple Watch a 4. I think the Apple Watch is in a good place.

I don't really care that the Ultra 2, I mean, it was actually like a new chip I think the Apple Watch is in a good place. I don't really care that the Ultra 2, I mean, it was actually like a new chip. They hadn't done that in a while. I don't care that the pace of innovation is slow here because the Apple Watch has come a long way and they could always do more. But I think the Apple Watch is in a fine place. I think that updating the Ultra to the Ultra 2 is good.

They didn't just let it sit at Ultra. They did improve the chip on that. Yeah, I mean, I saw a lot of comments that are things like, Oh, that double tap feature is not very interesting. It's like, well, that's true.

That's true. But I'm not going to say, well, one, one out of five, because the new feature that they added wasn't very good. It's like, I think Apple watches in a pretty good place.

I think the ultra is a good addition to the, to the line. And I like that they updated it. Is there more to be done in the apple watch sure but it is it's kind of the leader in smart watches and the watch os i know watch os 12 10 was controversial i find myself not using most of the features of it i find that the the changes they made i don't really use those features so it's kind of a wash for me um i know people have opinions either way i could

have given this a three i like the wedges a lot yeah i could have given this a three i i you know i'll give it a four but like again i'm just really kind of reacting to the idea that uh i don't think we need a brand new fresh amazing totally different watch hardware every year for us to appreciate that the Apple Watch is in a pretty decent place. Wearables is a 3.5 down from a 4.4, I think, as you've mentioned before. There's just no, there wasn't stuff, right?

The AirPods Pro 2 came last year, I think in 2022, I think, which probably bought that up. The year before last. Okay. It's those new features, the conversational awareness and adaptive transparency, which, you know, active transparency is a really great feature.

Yeah. I gave it a four for those features. Conversational awareness and adaptive transparency, they take time, I think, to get used to. But if you commit to it for a bit, there's real benefit there. And I really like the features. I think they're really good. I think I would say four here, too, and it's for the same reason,

which is not a lot happened in this entire category, including the Apple Watch this year, of note. But it's a good category. Apple's products are good. I think Apple struggles with making new models and selling new models of things like AirPods, in part because they are already really good and so i mean i can't mark them down for that uh i'm looking at this now so we got 2022 the end of

2022 was the second generation but then of course we got the usbc version but i don't think anyone's really thinking about that yes just the minor usbc with other somehow apple vision pro features in it that actually annoyed me that annoyed me that i had to do that um but i did i did do i did buy the second pair but i was frustrated about that apple tv is a three down from a 3.6 i gave it a two um for me the issue is i just the hardware of the apple tv i feel like is is leaving so many things on the table and they're just doing anything with it i also think that similarly for tv os like there are improvements to tv os but i feel like with every improvement apple also finds a way to just buy,

a lot of improvements to the TV app, I should say specifically, but every improvement to the TV app comes with another thing where they're just trying to make you look at Apple TV Plus content, right? So like, oh, here are these tabs. And by the way, now we're just going to put you on the TV Plus tab a lot

rather than your home tabs. Like, okay. But there are some features that are called like continuity camera and stuff like that and it's hopefully building for something like we were talking about mentioned earlier in the draft like a home pod of a screen or something like that but i feel like apple tv just it kind of sits there not doing much and over time it's just getting older and older and creakier as time goes on so my primary entertainment portal is the apple tv so that's what i use i don't have a dvr i don't have anything like that anymore it's all apps on apple tv and tv os um and so if i'm following my

arguments from earlier and i think having tried over the years, including every so often I buy an Amazon thing or a Roku thing, I think Apple's is the best. I really do. I think it's the best. I think that having the good hardware that's expensive, that we complain about its price, but it also means that it's more responsive

and functional in a lot of ways than the other hardware is. So under that, I should give it a higher score. But I'm also going to give it a 2 because I agree. I don't like the direction that Apple TV and tvOS is going in. I think they desperately need to reconceive the difference or eliminate the difference between the home screen and the TV app. I hate that they have taken a user hostile approach to content where they really have decided they want to get in your way with Apple TV content instead of your own up next queue. I hate that they, you know, they share the blame, I think, in not being able to get Netflix on side.

They, you know, there's a bunch of stuff in the os i i'll even ding them for the their new feature um support for video conferencing using continuity camera is great there needs to be an accessory so i don't have to cart out my phone and put it on my tv every time i want to talk to somebody on apple tv there needs to be a continuity camera camera from someone and apple or a partner and there's nothing um and i hate it um and they and they eliminated the port on the back of the apple tv which would be perfect to plug in a usb camera so you can't use it's just a very frustrating so even when they give the kind of takeaway i just think it's a um it is simultaneously the best one of these out there and also

not great and going in the wrong direction there's promise right like that that's the thing that's frustrating because it's so good there is promise but the promise a lot of the time is unrealized in the apple tv which is a shame and a lot of it comes down to very similar things of the rules that apple puts in place for for developers and she said like they do share in the netflix thing just give netflix what they want netflix is television they should be i want netflix content in the tv app because yeah because of apple and netflix not being able to work out i feel like i don't get enough value from my netflix subscription because I forget to look.

Agreed. Same. Absolutely the same. Very frustrating. And again, also just the insistence of pushing down my content in order for them to promote their own content. And I pay for Apple TV Plus, and I'm aware that there's a tab. But the fact that they have these huge ads for things and then below it is the actual content of what I'm watching that I want to get to, it's so frustrating. And I get what they're doing, but their priorities are wrong. Their priorities are messed up.

And I get the idea that, well, we need to expose things to people who don't know what to watch. Okay, but I know what to watch. I know what I i want to watch and there's no way for me to say show me what i want to watch because that's what i care about i mean it's just it's very frustrating so they need to they are i rely on it all the time that's why i know all the flaws about it i'm gonna you know i'm gonna mark them down because I'm disappointed that they aren't doing a better job with the thing that I use every day. So I think two sides of the same coin these days.

Services. There's a 3.3 down from a 3.8. I gave it a 3. Now, this is interesting because basically my thing about services is Apple TV Plus, the content, is the best for me around there like original programming i think apple has the best original programming right now like slow horses for all mankind shrinking three of my favorite shows last

year um absolutely fantastic last season of ted las, we're just finishing Criminal Records. Silo was really good. Foundation was really good. There was so much there. Yeah, absolutely. But for me, outside of TV+, I just find it harder and harder to think and judge the services. There's so many

and I don't really feel like I'm necessarily getting... I don't feel like I'm getting good value, you know, from my Apple One bundle, but I pay it and I use it, but I don't really get the sense of like, this is worth it for me. No, I don't use News Plus.

I find the news app still very frustrating and full of sources that are terrible. And many people commented in the report card about how you can block a source but it's still there it just shows it is there but blocked it's like that's not what the and and like news news and new news should work better and then news plus should work even better it should it goes back to what i was saying about the tv app it feels like i'm being told what to see yeah and the the quality of the content is poor and there's lots of crappy ads i think they conceived the product wrong i i think they they conceived the product in a way that required them

to let publishers insert their garbage ads in it and they've got a lot of really bad blogs that just rewrite other right it's all the problems of the web with content. And instead of it being like a place where the good content lives, it's just the crappy content aggregated by Apple. So News Plus isn't that great. Fitness Plus is good. I don't use it as much. Lauren uses it a lot. So, you know, and I think they do a good job with fitness. I wanted to make an iCloud complaint. I actually have started to use iCloud more. I started syncing desktop and documents because I've got more computers that I'm using in different contexts now. But like even there, like what I discovered is there were a bunch of utilities that I

have that are like right click on a file. Like I do that a lot with services right click on a file and it turns out that a lot of apple's mac apis differentiate between whether something is in the cloud or on your local system so when i went from my desktop is on my local system to my desktop isn't a synced iCloud desktop, a bunch of stuff just stopped working. And that's on Apple because it's Apple who's providing the compatibility for iCloud. So even when I try to embrace iCloud, I get frustrated by it. So I don't know. I agree with you. I don't really know how to judge this. TV Plus is a standout. so three but you know there are other places where i'm i'm just really disappointed and and they raise the price of the bundles which is a point i i sometimes i

think i need to actually go back and decide is the apple one bundle actually making still making sense for me or would i be better off dumping a bunch of the ancillary parts and could I save money by dumping them? Next up is HomeKit and Home Automation, which is a 2.8 up from 2.7. Did you give a score for services, by the way? I think I said three just because I don't know what to give it otherwise. And that's how I feel about HomeKit and Home Automation. I just give it a three.

It's just like I don't have anything to say on this oh i do okay go for it um one i'm gonna give it the lowest rating wow uh the matter transition's been bad um a bunch of my items still show up as uh like they're ones that have taken off the network that you can't get rid of they're ones that suddenly just are a network that you can't get rid of. They're ones that suddenly just are like inactive or can't connect. And then they come back. There's a lot of instability. There are positives.

I've been using HomeKit secure video for a couple of cameras. That's actually part of the Apple one iCloud plus kind of bundle that I get. I get some camera connections and that's been nice but like I I am frustrated by HomeKit and home automation because things don't seem that the home app is bad the home app needs a complete rethink there are all these extra home apps that are in the app store that do stuff that the home app doesn't do with home kit which is bananas the automation isn't as good as it should be um i just i i get i feel like this is an area where apple said oh no we're gonna be we're gonna embrace the home and then there's just nothing happening there

very frustrated by it i think that they're doing this is one of those areas where it feels almost abandoned and i'm tired of being patient and saying well they're working on it matters spinning up it's like no no they um they've dropped the ball i actually agree with you i have retroactively changed my tool one two okay thank you thank you come with me join join me and we talk more in generally about their their home strategy which is not quite the same but it's close enough what's their home strategy they which is not quite the same, but it's close enough. What's their home strategy? They revised the HomePods and they still have that Apple TV, which we complained about a little bit. But there's so much opportunity in the home category and they've done almost nothing. And it's very frustrating. Hardware reliability is a 4.6 up from a 4.5 i gave it a five i'm very happy with the quality of the hardware from apple in this past year i have no no issues agreed fine i feel like it's

been a while since we've had like a a gate like get those keyboards out of there and and oh there's always a gate there's always a oh when i get a new iphone my iphone runs hot a little bit okay fine yeah sure i mean one that i think we can take seriously to be honest like like you know that that was a thing yes people found that their phones were hot but phones could always get hot and they fixed it and it like wasn't like an issue issue, I think. No. Software quality is a 3.6 up from a 3.4. I gave it a 4. Again,

I feel like we're not having these issues. There are things I don't like about the software, but I don't feel like the software is broken. Yeah, I think I'm going to say 3, but I feel similar to you. The idea that what I like about Apple's software right now is that I don't feel like there's some horrible pain that I'm going through somewhere. I don't feel like that. in general, including their apps and their operating systems, could really stand more attention on quality, attention on fixing bugs, attention on polish, attention to existing

software and features that have been left by the side of the road and could probably do with a little bit of a dusting off and updating. feel like and i understand why maybe they're not doing that right now because they just launched vision pro and all of that but like i feel like we talk about like doing a um a snow leopard year a mountain lion year like a lot about like maybe maybe they could do that and i think maybe they could do that for a long time there are very i mean they're always going to add a thing here and there, but what I would really like inside of Apple is Apple providing a little more incentive to its developers to have a certain amount of time that they can spend just making

everything that's already shipped better. Because I think the danger when you're Apple and you get in this shipping new features mode is you spend all your money on the new features, all your time on the new features, and your systems are littered with old new features that just sit there. And several people mentioned in the survey that screen time is a good example. Screen time is a system feature that shipped broken and has essentially never been fixed. And it's broken. The numbers aren't reliable. People have just given up on it.

Sometimes I get 24 hours a day for seven days a week because something got stuck in Safari. That's my favorite one. Yeah. And I mean, that's maybe an outlier of an example, but it's a great example in the sense that that was a new feature they talked up and it didn't really work right. And that's it. Like, that's the end of the story. And that's why I feel like this isn't more about like a snow leopard year. I kind of want a snow leopard mentality in the software group that I know they're going to have to push forward new features, and I know they've got new operating systems, but I would really like it if they got a little less ambitious, honestly, with some of their features year to year and cultivated more of a culture of rewarding people for glowing up existing stuff. Because a lot of this stuff is dusty and dingy and needs a glow up. Developer relations, a three up from 2.8. I gave it a three.

And basically for me, this is always one of my lowest scoring categories for reasons that I don't think listeners of the show will be surprised about. And also this, I mean, this was just bear in mind this is the 2023 report card right so doesn't include what we've been talking about in 2024 right but i gave it a three this year which i actually think is one of the better scores i could give because i thought that wwdc was was really good i think that they did the best they could of what they had. I saw a lot of developers very happy, enjoying themselves.

And I think that they did, during that time, I think they did a good job to get developers excited for VisionOS. And I think that the labs that they've done were very good too. Again, like very similar sentiment, it seems from a lot of the community. But there were also a lot of developers that were frustrated about a lot of things in Vision OS, like the dev kits that never materialized for many and stuff like that.

But I do think that for where Apple is right now, in my opinion, to score a three out of five for developer relations would suggest that 2023 was a pretty good year for them. Yeah, I'm going to say three as well. I'm tempted to say one because of everything. But the fact is, I think, and I know this is looking into 2024,

which we're not technically allowed to do, but you can see with the Vision Pro apps that there's still enthusiasm for new Apple platforms out there. Maybe not from bigger players as quickly as the indies, but there's enthusiasm and I bought a lot of apps on Vision Pro in the last two weeks. The other thing I would say is it's all about who the developer is. relationship with a lot of bigger developers is fraught because they're taking 30 because they have rules about how you have to format your logins and how you use the app store and like i get it but i always come back to the fact that most of the like we talk about the 30 but the fact is

most developers don't pay 30% anymore. They pay 15%. For whether they're in the program or they're on like a subscription or something. Or the second year of a subscription, either way, right? So it's really the bigger developers who have more fraught relationships. And I know that there are complaints among indie developers and they need to do better documentation and there are things about the like they're always going to be issues i feel like we're not in a situation where developers are all out there with um with torches and pitchforks right now and when i the reason this category exists is because when i started the report card they were the torches were lit when i started the report card and um i think that Apple has gotten better and that the deal is better and that they have mitigated a lot of it,

even though there is all, I would say always going to be frustration with the way Apple treats developers. If Apple treated every developer like they treat like Basecamp and Hay, right? If they treated them the same as they do Epic, well, sure, it would be a one. But there are also a lot of positive stories

about people doing good work and using Swift and SwiftUI. And again, could those be better? Sure. So I'm going to throw it in the middle. I think we so often dwell on the negative, but I do see a lot of positive too. And so I think I just have to come up with a default three here. I feel like as well, developers, indie developers in our circle,

our community, it seems like by and large these days, they are disappointed at the things going on at wider scale, but their individual experience seems to be better. Seems to be okay. Yeah. Let's talk about our friend casey lists we love talking about casey so casey is frustrated about things like documentation and you know maybe some of the stuff that happened with vision but at the same time course she just got an editor's choice award so he is an individual developer is getting a nice experience right like that is then paying attention to some of the quality apps that exist on the

platform so or like i think about you know underscore underscore when we talk he has glowingly positive things to say about apple and his experiences with them because he kind of does what they want i think and in doing that he has a better experience than people who maybe want a different who want something different so i think that there are individual like macro and micro experiences that people have and I think that the micro experiences are actually getting better over time. But you can't avoid the macro, which actually brings us on quite nicely

to environmental, social, and societal impact. Yes. This scored a 3.8 this year, up from a 3.4. I think the reason it went up is the reason I gave it a four, which was the carbon neutral stuff I think this is a huge deal hey mother nature several people pointed out that you know when mother nature is in your promo video you're doing pretty good pretty good uh and so like for me

the carbon neutral stuff was a big jump and and the commitments they're making and actually shipping products today that are carbon neutral for their lifetime is very bold and I think is helping them set a new path for what the kind of the torch should be. But I can't get, to me today, it is too complicated to give a full score to Apple because a company of this size,

I don't know if I can call them a good for the world anymore like it's just too big and they're doing too many things and they're working on political stages you know like i yeah i just i there's too much going on that i don't know about that i feel like i can say like oh yeah top marks you know whatever issue you care about will also influence the one you care about the most will influence your feeling look so when i started this um i forget what there was some there was some it's it's changed every year there's some issue involving apple and i think in the end it is it is the greatest rorschach test it really is everybody's going to

score differently the reason it's so vague on one level is I just kind of want to get like Apple always says they want to, they want to be a force for positivity in the world, right? They want to leave the world better than they found it. That's what they say. And this category is sort of like, how are they doing? How do you think they're doing? And we can't, we can't know. And I think you're right. They're so huge. It's actually very hard. I'll say four, maybe three, but I'll say four. It doesn't matter. But what I wanted to say is several people pointed this out, and I think that it is the best way to look at this on a broad scale, which is Apple did the carbon neutral products thing. They had the mother nature video, which I thought was funny. And it's very easy to point at them and say, yeah, but your carbon neutral has got a lot of offsets, which are just tree planting, which is just a rife with fraud and not really like planting a tree where there was always already going to be a tree's tree planting is probably of a better quality than the lowest, but still, we can have that argument. And the Mother Nature thing, you can be like, come on, I don't like that, and I don't like what it says because they're really a big corporation, and I'll give you that too. But what I will say is Apple's carbon neutral commitments are valuable if for no other reason than they put all of their other competitors and other companies in the world to shame. And it makes, by having a company the size and visibility of Apple make those carbon neutral commitments, it makes every other corporation have to answer the question of what's their commitment.

And then you start to see commitments like, I forget what the company is. Is it Honda? Somebody was like, we're going to be carbon neutral. Or no, it was an airline, American airline. I was like, we're going to be carbon neutral by 2050. I'm like 2050. And I don't believe them, but 2050. them but 2050 like i so i think apple deserves a lot of credit for trying in public to live up to its commitment and making the commitment um there are lots of other issues here you know apple's

involvement in china um depends on how you feel about china union busting yeah oh yeah yeah that came up in the comments their relationship with employees who are trying to unionize. We can talk about their work from home policy being rescinded. There are lots of things that we could talk about here. It's complicated, like you said. at some high level are trying to do good in the world, even though they are also, and we should never forget it, a publicly held profit-making corporation. That is what they are. They are not a charity to make the world a better place. So I think in the context of being a publicly held profit-making giant corporation, I think that they're a force for positivity

among their ilk, right? Among their kind. You've got to adjust your expectations accordingly, right? You can't judge them as a non-profit as you would a non-profit. But it means you can go to Google or Facebook or a car company

or an airline and say, this is what Apple's doing. What are you doing? Why aren't you doing what Apple's doing? and i'm sure those companies hate that apple is bringing this up because then they have to talk about it right and and that is i i think that is in apple's credit even though we should never forget they're not a charity they're here to make a lot of money never forget that but like you know for me they get this boost from the carbon neutral thing this one time.

Like, you've done it. Great. Now this is just what I expect from you. And so next year, we go back. We reset the clock again. So that's the scorecard. There is so much good stuff in there. Quinn Nelson makes a very good jab at me.

Yeah, I caught a stray from Quinn, so you can go check that one out over at sixcolors.com where you can get the report card. It's always a good time to sit down, cup of coffee and sort of just scroll through and have a good time with what people have got to say. This episode is brought to you by Ladder. Let's be real. If you're anything like me, you've got a tendency to put some things off until the very last minute,

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or is it a recording clip? If it is live, he's very consistent. Live. Live every time. Live every time. Can you imagine if that was a clip? No, no. They're live. I mean, to be honest,

that would be the logical thing to do, right? But no, why do a clip? Then we just get a laser sound effect and it would sound professional and that's not what we're here for. No, we're here for the live lasers. From Jason. Chris says,

you called the Apple Vision Pro an iPad on on my face when thinking about how to make a cheaper product in this category what do you think about the possibility of an apple vision tv a product focused on entertainment and not general computing here's my take on this i've been thinking about this question over the last couple of weeks i think what this is getting to is the idea that this that would be a cheaper product right because it was just more focused on entertainment question over the last couple of weeks i think what this is getting to is the idea that this that would be a cheaper product right because it was just more focused on entertainment but i think the problem is a lot of the expensive product the parts of this product are the best for entertainment high quality displays high quality audio like i think these are some of the components that are

the most expensive and difficult to make and they are the ones in my opinion that are most needed for entertainment i watched some of avatar today by the way i just watched i wanted to experience it i think i like it but it's weird right like it's weird thing it is weird it looks like a video game is what it looks like yeah it does it looks like a video game yeah it does because it's all animated and it's running at what you know to me feels like 60 frames per second yeah i know it's yeah it might be 48 running at what you know to me feels like 60 frames per second yeah i know it's yeah it's it might be 48 but yeah but like it has that vibe of like oh there's a lot of motion going on here yeah yeah and it's in 3d it looks fantastic i need to watch it yeah although then sometimes there's a human child in the shot and you're like wait a second this isn't

all what are you doing here human child how did you get in there it's very strange um yeah i agree the the challenge here is that the the expense the thing that makes this a good entertainment product now is the stuff that's expensive and look in the long run i think we already see it with like the x real glasses that federico bought that he's gonna sell on ebay um there are entertainment devices out there that are just like glasses you wear that have really nice screens in front of them. And I imagine that those products will continue to exist. I think if Apple finds that there's a niche that they can fill, they will try. But at this point, they need to make this product and it costs $3,500. And I will also say like you can watch, They need to make this product and it costs $3,500.

And I will also say like you can watch, there aren't stores and there need to be, but like on the Quest, you can watch a 3D movie and it looks fine. It doesn't look great. It doesn't look like it does on the Vision Pro, but it looks fine. So I think that there are going to be products like this that are focused more on,

I mean, entertainment includes games, by the way, but it also means things like watching movies and all of that. But the challenge is that getting the services tied in Apple has the advantage of having its whole platform and app developers who have their own platforms like Disney that can bring them over so I don't know I I think maybe in the long run if there's a niche that can be filled they will try to fill it but right now just like an iPad right an iPad can be an entertainment device but it can also be all those other things. And it's not, you know,

if somebody's just watching movies, they don't need to buy an iPad. They could buy just like an Amazon tablet and they'd be fine. Rob asks, if Apple is already offloading the battery to a separate device for the Vision Pro, would you trade some of the size

or weight of the headset itself if they put some of the computing in an external pack or do you think they should shift some of that to the back strap to help balance the device so my my belief is that one of the reasons the stuff is on the device is because they want the latency to be as low as possible and the reason that they had the latency which is very good like uh i think quinn nelson again has like a video of of him like throwing stuff up in the air and catching it while he's wearing it and somebody has a video is it mkbhd somebody's got a video playing ping pong yeah it's mkbhd in in the in the thing right and and like you got to have low latency to do that

and and the speed of light is a limiter it's fast but it's a limiter and so if you've got to have low latency to do that. And the speed of light is a limiter. It's fast, but it's a limiter. And so if you've got all your chips right there, right where the cameras are and right where the displays are, I think you've got to do that. I know that historically there was that rumor that they wanted it to be like a box. So I looked this up today. Beaming in.

When I was putting this together, there was something in my brain about this and i found a bloomberg report from june 2020 so basically saying mike rockwell's team originally worked on the idea of a what they called a stationary hub which in prototype form resembled a small mac that would connect to the headset of a wireless signal but johnny ive said that they should not do this and they needed to work on something that was more integrated and i think once again johnny was right because if you think about like people complaining about the clarity of the mac, this would have been just that.

Everything streaming to the device. And I think if they would have done that, they would have had an Apple Watch 1 situation on their hands, where people would have been universally unhappy with the quality of the product. Look, there are a lot of stories over the last week that apparently everyone in the world

is returning their Vision Pro. I just feel like this is a story that's good to write right now. I know people are returning them, but come on. First off, people return Apple products after two weeks a lot. And this was an expensive product that people wanted to try out but didn't want

to buy. I don't think it says anything about the product. What I would say is that, look at the reviews of this product. I thought, Mike, I know this is a little bit of a sidebar, but every Vision Pro thing was so tightly controlled. We got those demos. I got a second demo. People were getting the multiple demos. And I really thought, oh, man, this is going to be a disaster.

It's going to be. Or are they hiding? Not necessarily a disaster, but the reviews are going to be rough. They're going to be rough. They're going to be rough because Apple is hiding stuff from us. And when we actually get our hands on it, it's going to be like, uh, no,

that they were hiding all of these bad things about it. And the reviews, honestly, are vastly more positive than I thought they would be. Yeah. Because they talk about the potential and then about how weird it is.

And all that is true. But I really thought that they would be meaner and more about how weird it is. And all that is true. But I really thought that they would be meaner and more negative and how this is a disaster. And that didn't happen. So I think they're kind of validated about their decisions here. And so, yeah, it's – and I think they made the right decisions. Bottom line, I think they made the right decisions to ship it. And the reception has been better than I expected.

And people are going to return it because it's a weird product and it's expensive. So some people want to try it and don't want to keep it. And I don't think that that's actually particularly notable. I'll also note – and I'm not going to single anybody out here because there were multiple sources like this. Anytime you see a story that talks about something like people returning Vision Pro and refers to the people in it as the faithful or the fans, that tells you something about how that person views that story and the people who are doing it it is creating a narrative uh and like yeah every time every time it's fans or or faithful um it uh i cry a little inside and scott asks everyone keeps saying that the non-pro version of the apple vision pro presumably be called the apple vision take the Pro away and you're left with that name.

But given how some reviews have emphasized the weight of the device, do you think it's possible that they'll call the cheaper and presumably lighter version Apple Vision Air? MacBooks have set a precedent for only having Air or Pro models. There's no MacBook without a modifier. Could Apple Vision follow that

route? Totally. I love this. I hadn't thought of this before i think that this makes so much sense to me i mentioned it earlier i i said apple vision air earlier and one of the reasons actually was um that i've gotten this maybe even from scott this comment of like well what about air and uh yeah i i think it's possible that they'll do that that there won't be an adjective list you know that like an Apple vision and Apple vision pro, like an iPhone, that it might be Apple vision air and Apple vision pro. And it's like,

it's lighter and it has less stuff in it. And you know, you can wear it and like, it's possible that they'll do that. It feels like the only product in recent memory that I can think of is the Apple watch, right? Where they ended up,

because at first they all had names and then they've, they've kind of standardized on that. Yeah. It is possible that what this will ultimately be called is that there'll be an Apple Vision Pro 2 or Apple Vision 2 Pro. And then there'll be an Apple Vision 3 and an Apple Vision 3 Pro like the iPhone. That's another way they could go. But I like the idea of having it just be Air. That's not bad.

Studio. Studio. Go Apple Vision Studio. Let let's do it let's bring it back it's big apple vision studio put it in there 100 weeks we'll find out if you would like to send in a question of your own for a future episode just go to upgradefeedback.com you can send in your ask every question just no talk questions your feedback and your follow-up. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com where you should look at the report card. Actually, before I continue, this is episode 500. I would like to thank everybody for listening to this show. For as long as you have listened, this show is a joy to do.

I will speak for myself. I agree. But it is an absolute professional achievement of mine i think upgrade has made me better all of my work and it has afforded me some incredible experiences things that i'd always wished could happen um and so i'm thankful for this show i'm thankful for the audience i'm thankful for you jason and everybody that works on this show now, which there is just a growing team of people from our audio editor, Jim, to our video editor, Chip, to our social media manager, Jamie,

and everyone else in between. I absolutely love doing this show. It is a professional and personal honor. So thank you. Same. Thank you to all for listening. You don't have to listen to all 500. Don't let John Syracuse

bully you into it, but thank you for being here for as many as you wanted. But if you jump on whenever you like, maybe you won't understand why there's lasers. And honestly,

at this point, I don't know either. I don't know. Hey, remember verticals? Enjoy. Oh, those days. But now, we got rid of verticals

and we just have loads of chapters by the way rumor roundup will return at some point will return I was gonna do it

this week but then you publish a scorecard I was like oh well rumor roundup will return it's like James Bond

you know like at the end of a book it is it is if you want to find video versions of this show

we publish a full video version to YouTube. We are at Upgrade Relay on YouTube. We're also at Upgrade Relay on TikTok and Instagram where you can find video clips of the show, which are very fun. You can find some good stuff there too

to engage with the show afterwards. Sometimes there are things posted on there that are not actually in the episode, little bonuses. Not in the show. It's true. Last week, there was a whole like you threatened to do a thing and then later you did the thing and the

whole thing is in there. It's hilarious. So you can go find that over on our social pages. Jason is on Mastodon. He's Jsnell. I'm iMike on Mastodon 2 and on Threads. Same names. Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. We appreciate you even a little bit more

because you help support the show. Go to getupgradeplus.com Today we're going to talk about the additional things on our lists that we didn't pick for the draft, the episode 600 draft. Thank you to Ladder and Delete Me and Vitally for their support of this

week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, everybody. And most especially, goodbye, Mike.