Upgrade - 508: You’re Judging It Wrong

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 508 for april 15th 2024 today's show is brought to you by wild grain sane box and delete me my name is mike hurley i'm joined by the returning jason snell hi jason hi mike I'm back. Welcome back. You guys didn't ruin the place last week. Thank you for that. Try not to. You know, it makes me uneasy to not be on Upgrade, but I did get to listen to Upgrade this week,

so that was fun. That's fine. And I like you to have time off, Jason. You can have time off. There's more. Thank you. I have a Snell Talk question for you, though. We're getting right back into it.

This one comes from Brent, who wants to know, Jason, has the Snell SF Giants jersey giants jersey been acquired okay those who have listened know that the san francisco giants my my uh lifelong favorite sports team uh signed cy young award winning pitcher uh blake snell and therefore there's ready-made Snell related labeled merchandise now available. I am happy to report that on opening day, we went to the game and we went into the newly revamped Giants dugout store where you and Adina have purchased Giants outfits in the past. And I looked around and we didn't see it. And then we turned a corner and there it was, a rack of Snell jerseys. And that was that.

So I have mine. They did not have them in the women's cut, which is what Lauren preferred. Those are now available on the website. And so she should be getting that pretty soon from that. And then I think the kids will also be receiving other. And as soon as there's like shirts and I mean, like literally, if it's got a Giants and a Snell on it, we're going to take the advantage of this year because he's probably only going to be here for a year. We'll see.

But it doesn't matter because our names are here forever. So, you know, people will be like, why are you still wearing a Blake Snell jersey? And it's like, actually, it's me. are you still wearing a blake snell jersey i was like actually it's me so uh anyway yes acquired on day one on opening day and worn on opening day for your sake i hope that he isn't a disaster he is a disaster so far but that it's early yet and he tends he didn't have a spring training and all that but it doesn't matter again because it is my name yeah i know but like that because that's that's what i would worry about for you. Like he ends up costing you the World Series or something and then forever

it's complicated for you to wear a jersey with your own name on it because everyone's like, boo! It's okay. You know? Doesn't matter.

You'll take it? I'll take it. You could get, and then the journey would be like Snell and then like brackets, it's my name. Yeah, sure.

Add it to the journey. Is my name. Is my name. Just right below it. Is my name. Let is my name is right below it is my name it's got a sharpie be great let's go giants you know let's go giants on our curling jackets and we have those uh it it has j period snell on mine and l period snell on lauren's so you can tell that part love it yeah the sf giantsants are the official baseball team. Baseball team of Upgrade. Absolutely. Endorsed by both hosts.

If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question of your own to open a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send one in. Thank you, Brent. We have some follow-up, Jason. This is some follow-up for stuff that you weren't around for and some that you were Thank you, Brent. We have some follow-up, Jason. This is some follow-up for stuff that you weren't around for and some that you were, which is fun.

First piece is about emulators. Emulators are starting to hit the App Store, but it's not gotten off to a great start. So, over the last few days, there was an app called iGBA that hit the App Store. It was a Game Boy and Game Boy that hit the app store it was a game boy and game boy advance

emulator and it was like the heavens had opened for people because like oh my gosh i can play game boy games with roms that i have acquired somehow on my iphone then riley testert who created gba for ios and is also the creator AltStore and the Delta emulator and all that stuff posted that this application appeared to have been a knockoff of his work in creating GBA for iOS. And Riley was upset because they've been working on their own app.

It's unclear right now, but if Riley will be releasing the emulator outside of Europe on the App Store, but potentially, I don't know. The app then got removed from the App Store. Initially, it wasn't clear whether the developer had removed it or Apple had removed it, but then Apple confirmed to MacRumors that the app was removed for, quote, violating the company's app review guidelines related to spam and copyright, but also that they did not provide any specific details. So what we do not know, and this is only more questions here, is was this removed because of Riley making a complaint or making a complaint online that got back to apple or was it removed because it was a rum for

nintendo games indeed it's not a good look for apple either way because they accepted this and then rejected it right like so that's that's dumb um also i not only is it unclear like was this it turns out you can't do these kinds of things in the store breaking news breaking news from friend of the show chance miller at nine to five mac apple tells me the igba's functionality was originally approved in compliance with the app store guidelines the app was removed however when apple learned that it was a clone of GBA for iOS, a violation of the copyright and spam App Store guidelines. Okay. So this is what I was going to say about the lack of clarity

because when Riley said this is a knockoff, what does that mean? Because there's two meanings of that. One is they literally took my thing, stuck a bunch of crap in it, and put it in the store. That is what they did. And the other one is, hey, because, stuck a bunch of crap in it and put it in the store that is and the other one is hey because and i'm not saying riley would think this but people do think this way which is wait i did the the game boy uh emulator why are you on my turf and that would be

a more kind of like feeling based thing which is it feels like you're trotting on my territory but not legal but if they literally took the code the open source code from the emulator and then just put in a bunch of trackers and stuff um that gives uh that gives apple justification yeah it doesn't appear that that's what happened because there's even like ui elements and stuff that were very similar are very similar to gba for ios um so it appears that that was going on and also like i think the developer made a public statement to the verge i think and was like i never meant for it to be like this and riley said that they they they had gotten to riley and said that it was a mistake and apologized and all of that and so i guess i guess you know never mind in a

way um although i will point out the thought did cross my mind that people talking about rightfully replicating or not rightfully replicating other people's work i know is um while talking about game emulators is interesting right it's yes it's it's this is always what i felt about like do the people who make tools for piracy worry about piracy right like we're saying oh here come buy my cracking tools it's a hundred dollars it's like well yeah but you know what they're gonna do with your cracking tools is they're gonna crack them and like it is that that we're looking into like the the like a real like i don't even know like it it's like it reminds me of the meme from community right of the like when troy walks into the pizza and everything's on fire it's kind of how it feels like with this stuff or you look at it for too long you're like well who owns what

but effectively what we the question that i had in two minutes ago was it's still not actually really answered like will apple allow emulators to play nintendo games will riley put them in like riley riley's got a vision os stack of emulators now so like is riley going to be like no no no no no it's all going to be in the uh alt store or would riley because i think i think riley's feeling is that this was sort of done to undercut alt store right oh i well i don't to me there is no other option like this is not option there's no other reason like apple have could have done this at any point over the last like 15 years or whatever it could have and now all of a sudden, emulators are allowed.

I think this is 100% because the emulators in Alt Store are a genuine reason to use alternative app marketplaces. And if they now exist in the App Store, it will be a reason for people to not use alternative app marketplaces. Apparently,

and this is all thanks to people in our members Discord, thank you members, for participating in the show live as we record this on we record it monday mornings at noon eastern which is neither of our time zones but i just thought i'd throw it out there because case it's like the scent of casey is still in the air so we'll talk about eastern time for a minute anyway jason and the discord says that riley's uh license for his code for gba for ios says you can use this anywhere and modify it anywhere for any project except if you were going to submit it to apple's app store in which case you need my express written permission fair enough which he did not

provide so this is the guy's license he did the work that's the license and uh so yeah i'm still interested i i got the igba app and i have some roms which i have acquired in the means which i've acquired them there are these interesting devices that you can buy to rip uh game boy cartridges which i've done and it works so you know what i want is i I want a Wii emulator. Because we have lots of Wii games. And playing them through an old Wii or Wii U is a pain. I'd really like that on Apple TV, honestly. Well, that would be great.

It's going to be interesting to see what emulators appear. And how they run on Apple hardware. It's going to be very interesting. I feel like this is uncharted territory right now. This is the excitement of Apple being... Dan Morin wrote a piece last week on

Six Colors that I'll just mention in passing. It is a piece that is simultaneously kind of obvious, but also really needed to be said. And it's, hey, regulation works. Yeah. And the threat of regulation works.

And Apple and other tech giants are so powerful. And I know we're going to talk about a little about this later. We've got a topic scheduled. I'll just throw it out here that at some point, as we've said all along for the

last few years, governments are the only ones with the power to make the tech giants do anything different. And they're very comfortable and not even really competing that hard with one another because they're all making a lot of money. And so how do we see Apple making wholesale changes in their policies? The only way it's happening is because they're either being forced to do so by laws or they're preemptively doing so because of their concern about what rulings or laws might be held against them. And we can and have frequently debated all the issues there and will continue to. But I will say it also makes things really interesting when policy changes happen, because who knows?

Will it be nothing or will it be a just like a huge sweeping change? Because this is you put this in with the cloud gaming and it may be nothing or it may be just a completely transformative moment. I don't know, you know, or somewhere in between, I suppose. But can't wait to see what happens. or somewhere in between, I suppose. But can't wait to see what happens. Speaking of regulation, Apple has made some enhancements to its repair programs.

So customers and independent repair companies will now be able to repair a device with a genuine used part from other devices, beginning with the iPhone later this year. Activation lock will also be extended to parts. So if a device is stolen and locked, its parts will also become locked. So, you know, now it would be the case because you can see the scenario of, oh, I can use parts while I can use them from stolen iPhones.

So they're doing these two things together to make it more parts available for different prices, I guess, for people to be able to repair devices. You know, companies could take devices in, strip them for people to be able to repair devices. Companies could take devices in, strip them for parts and use them to repair newer devices. And so, yeah, this is all happening. I think because it seems like it's also because of a bill. It's a law now. So this is one of those things where regulation never works, except it totally works, which is that we talked about how in California there was a right to repair a bill that Apple supported, right? Well, in Oregon, there was a right to repair a bill and Apple

did not support it. And you're thinking, well, why? Why would they not support it? Well, one of the things in the bill, which is now a law, the governor of Oregon signed it into law, is that this parts pairing shenanigans is not allowed. And Apple doesn't love that because that was a way for Apple to say, well, okay, you can fix your thing, but you have to buy the parts from us. And the state of Oregon said, no. And that's the law now. And again, it's one of those cases where in all of these repair things, these laws happen apple's like all right well we'll change our policy and they put out a press release saying that they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart but the truth is they're doing it because they have to but again it's like what i like about it is that apple also doing it the right way if they're going to do it which is

because i think the activation lock thing is really important um because you could see a scenario where more devices could get stolen. Right, and then you mix up the parts. Yeah, and so this will at least hopefully curb some of that or curb the potential of that, like stop an increase before it could increase. Speaking of iPhones being repaired, what about where iPhones are made? There was a report that was shared by 9to5Mac which says that one in seven iPhones are now made in India. I think this information came from

Bloomberg. So this is just basically Apple furthering its commitment to diversifying where its products are manufactured. Currently in India, the supply and manufacture is split between Foxconn, Pegatron, and Tata. And Pegatron and Tata are reportedly considering a joint venture on creating a new plant to boost their manufacturing efforts because Foxconn is currently doing the large bulk of this work split between the three companies. So just a continued move that I just think is interesting to track. I think it is partly Apple reducing its reliance on China, but I also think it's Apple reducing

its reliance on its products being made in one place, no matter where that might be. I think both things are important. To me, honestly, if I'm Tim Cook, the more important is just stopping all my products being made in one place. Like if I'm Tim Cook, because I think Apple has shown that it's fine with its relationship with China, by and large. But I think COVID showed them that if a country shuts down, your device manufacturer

shuts down, and then what do you do? And I'm not sure if this one comes from the Secret Puzzle Society, but new puzzles are coming in the news app in iOS 17.5. It's a game called Quartiles, where you select from a grid of tiles that include a couple of letters to form full

words. We spoke about the crosswords before in Apple News and now there are new games. So it feels like I don't know, it kind of feels like Apple is trying to compete with the New York Times a little bit here is what it feels like by adding these games inside of the news app itself.

Yeah, for sure. And there's some others in there like uh hearst has puzzmo um lex friedman has his thing that he's games lex friedman is apparently just decided that one of the things he's going to do is create an internet game service made by him more power to you lex you know yeah i mean yeah so what is there is there uh what what is the official lex uh lex games um website we should we should put that in the show notes at the very least i will find it and i'll put it in the show notes because google did not help me lex.games there you go is it lex.games lex.games for our good friend lex friedman friend so you could do that too if you don't want to do it and i'll just say the uh the first rule

of secret puzzle society is a puzzle you can't solve you can't get in you can't get into the society unless you solve the puzzle and then, you know, that's it. This episode is brought to you in part by Wild Grain, the first ever bake-from-Frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, fresh pastas, and artisanal pastries. Every item bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less, no thawing required. Jason, can you tell the Upgradians about the joys of these frozen treats?

Yeah, well, you get bread. It looks like bread. It doesn't look like dough, but what you do is you pop it in the oven, and it turns into fresh baked bread in a very short amount of time, and it feels and tastes like fresh baked bread. That's really nice. They have pasta. You use it. It tastes like and has that mouthfeel of like fresh pasta, just fresh, not dried, but the fresh kind of pasta. They've got other things too, like you got popovers at one point. We've got croissants in our freezer right now. Those look more like dough, but basically the idea is you can get, without actually making the thing, you can pop it in the oven and get what is a fresh baked bit of bread or put in the water and you get the fresh pasta. It just comes in a box to your house and you put it in your freezer.

You know, if you're one of those people like me who has a lot of things, my freezer is full, Mike. It's full. And we use that to do our meal planning, which is actually really great, It's full. And we use that to do our meal planning, which is actually really great. That we can do our meal planning based on the stock of frozen stuff. And that includes the bread. So this week we're going to have pasta. It's going to be the wild grain pasta.

And we're going to have at least one other meal with one of the loaves of bread. And it's going to be good. We could do them together. That's a lot of carbs. But it's not impossible. Anyway, it's really easy because you just pop it in the oven and then it gets the, you know, it's crispy on the outside and soft and warm and wonderful on the inside. And it's fresh baked bread without having to make the bread yourself and watch it rise and then, you know, put it in a plastic bag and watch it rise again. And I mean, I've baked a lot of my time this is much easier i'm gonna have to stop you because i'm getting too hungry okay you can if you're out there and you're hungry like me fill up on bread you can customize your wild grain box so you can get any combination of breads pastas and pastry that you like if you want a box full of bread or pasta or all pastry, you can have it. You can have as much as you want. Box full of bread.

Box full of bread. Sounds good to me. Plus, for a limited time, you can get $30 off your first box plus free croissants in every box when you go to wildgrain.com slash upgrade to start your subscription.

That is free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to w-i-l-d-g-r you go to wildgrain.com slash upgrade. That's wildgrain.com slash upgrade, or you can use the promo code upgrade at checkout. Our thanks to Wild Grain for their support of this show and RelayFM. We're going to have an extended rumor roundup, which is just one thing today.

Yeehaw. It's like a stampede of cattle. Yes, it's a stampede of Macintoshes. So Mark Gurman has shared a report on Apple's plans for the M4 chip generation. The first Macs of an M4 chip are expected to debut later this year, going on into 2025, with the plan being that all Macs will be updated to the M4 generation. This is the first time, right, that every Mac that Apple sells would be on the same chip generation. So this will include in 2024, Marcus saying there will be new iMacs. We're expecting just the one size that we can let it go.

New 24-inch iMac, I think he said specifically. A low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, the high-end 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, and a Mac Mini. So that'll be 2024. They're going to get M4 chips. Then in 2025, the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air,

the Mac Studio, and the Mac Pro will all get the M4 chip. The standard chip is going to be codenamed donan so that's just the m4 chip but it's just m4 yeah the higher end chips the pro or max chips are codenamed brava and then there is sharing that code name yeah and then the top end chip, is Hydra. Right. Except it's spelled with an I, so it's like Hydra? Yeah. Hydra?

Hail Hydra. I don't know. It doesn't matter because we're never going to call it that. We're going to call it M4 Ultra or whatever. Yeah. It's nice he knows the code names. That's good. Yeah.

I mean, it's fun. It's fun to know. It's fun. It's fun to play code names. Yeah. Apple is also apparently still testing an M3 chip for the mac studio as well as the more powerful version of the m4 but the uh ultra and the m4 ultra chip which is currently uh but sorry not the m4 ultra chip which is currently only being tested for the mac pro which is interesting

a couple of other details apple is testing for the Studio Mac Pro the ability to go up to 512 gigabytes of RAM which is also interesting that if the Mac Studio does not get the M4 Ultra it means that the M4 Max in theory would be able to support up to half a gigabyte of RAM in a desktop

machine right half a terabyte sorry because how else would that fit um then two details mark says that these the em4 generation is designed to highlight artificial intelligence and aiming to boost sluggish computer sales well these are these two statements are not statements based on facts these are statements based on narrative building by Bloomberg, right? This is the usual thing where we all know that Apple's been designing chips for years. They designed them way in advance, the way the story frames it. And it's because they're trying to tell a narrative about Apple.

It's a fantasy, really. It's like, oh, Apple's reacting to sluggish computer sales by doing a new chip generation. It's like, well, first off, they'd be doing that regardless. Second, I don't think that they were like, oh, geez, Mac sales are slowing down. I guess we should make a better chip. Let's do that. I think that it deeply overstates the linkage

between one fact and a different fact. And then to highlight artificial intelligence, I think given that Mark doesn't specifically report ways that these chips are totally more AI friendly, I think the only way to read it is it continues to be

that Apple has got neural engine and it's got a lot of GPUs and it keeps updating them. They just updated the neural engine core. Maybe there's a new neural engine core or more cores in the M4 than was in the M3 or the M2. But, you know, the way I would read this is that they're going to promote it in a new way because that's what they're doing now is promoting their stuff. But I doubt it has actually any change in the chip design itself. And if it does, it would probably be, you know, again, a new core or more cores, but that's not reported by Mark

Gurman. He's just saying designed to highlight artificial intelligence, which I think he knows this, but I think that this is just the way Bloomberg works is they want to tell these stories about how everything's connected, even if it's less juicy when the fact is it's not. Because what didn't happen is late last year, Apple executives didn't like pour over a ledger somewhere and go, oh no, Mac sales are slow. Boys, pour some more AI juice

in that new chip we're going to do. Because also it's not like whatever Apple announced at WWDC is only going to work on the M4. Right? So like whatever they announce will work on all of the Apple Silicon chips. Right? Like even if they

did do, I don't know, new MacBook Pros at WWDC which they're not going to, but even if they did it's not like they'll be like, oh artificial intelligence will only work well but like when they get to announcing the m4s they'll be like and the apple ai tools work even better like that's gonna be the story they'll just keep saying that forever but it's market it's marketing and i think that that's what bugs me about these stories and again mark german's sources great, and I think he does great work. But especially since he went to Bloomberg, I mean, there is this attempt to link these facts together to stitch a story that's broader about Apple's strategy.

And I think it happens because Bloomberg subscribers pay a lot of money, and the terminal subscribers pay even more money, and they want to seem super smart. They're like, oh, I get what Apple's doing. And so it becomes this portrayal of Apple as this company that is reacting in the moment to things that are going on. And that's not really what it is. Now, I mean, aiming to boost sluggish computer sales, yeah, Apple wants to sell more Macs

and the Mac sales are down from those pandemic fed heights. But I don't, and that's true. and they may do some strategies in terms of rollout or what chip goes where or whatever but like what's not happening is that a chip that was probably designed three years ago it right is like oh geez uh we need it in there like it just it doesn't the company doesn't have the ability to change that fast. And if they did, and they were doing things that were kind of wild and new in the M4 because sales are slow or because AI is important, I would have expected that to be reported, and it hasn't been

because that's not what's going on. So, I mean, new chips is always a good opportunity to sell more Macs. And M4 is going to be so far out in front of M1, presumably, that they can hope to tap some upgraders from M1, whereas they have been with M2 and M3 really highlighting Intel upgraders. So, you know, there's a story to be told here. I just, I want for our upgrade listeners, especially to understand that it's complex and I don't think these things are connected. You know, right?

I also feel like the idea of sluggish Mac sales, it's like, these are things that you can point to. But again, like we can look at this and be like, well, sales went bananas because of COVID and Apple Silicon. That's not what mac sales are always going to be like no matter what apple do and we are now returning more to where we were 20 you know above 2019 but maybe a little higher is kind of seeing where we're going to be

they've come out to a new plateau yeah and the install base is much larger but they're not but this also goes back to the um wall street mindset here too which is what you've got to do is grow but you can only grow if if apple does really does a really great job with their ai tools right and people are going mad for them and then these m4s do do an even better job like yeah sure maybe it will boost the sales but like as we said it's not why they're doing it we also expect mark german knows this as you say, his audience requires that kind of thing. in their stories a few hours after they're posted, indicating whatever stock price change happened in the hours after they posted it in order to imply that Bloomberg's report is what moved the market. And I'm sure sometimes that happens, but most of the time-

I think it might sometimes. Oh, it does. I mean, when they break news, but for a lot of this stuff, it's sort of like, and they were up 2% on the news. I was like, was it on the news? Or was it just another day at Apple? But it benefits Bloomberg and its business to be seen as market movers. So it's all part of the same sort of thing. But anyway, going back into this, I think there are a couple of things that are interesting to me.

One, doing the whole chip generation, the whole all max on one chip generation is interesting i think it's continuing to tell like a story that i've found particularly interesting in the apple silicon transition is that kind of has not been a reliable trend of how apple was managing their silicon chips in their max every time we think we might understand how they handle things they do something different which i kind of like i think that's fun um the other is what's going on with the mac studio and the mac pro i think is the most interesting part of this because i think that is it's quite intriguing it would be weird to me given what apple has done over the last few years with the Mac Pro, for them to build a chip only for the Mac Pro. That would be peculiar to me.

Yes. And I'm not, I mean, when he says it's only being tested with the Mac Pro, it's possible that that is also going to be a Mac Studio chip. But it's also possible that they've decided that they, you know, I can see both arguments. They've decided that they really need the Mac Pro or want the Mac Pro to be special in some way. But it's such a low volume computer that it seems to me that a more rational thing is to also make it available on the Mac Studio. I don't know. So that is, that's the part to me which is really odd because I'm a bit of a Mac Pro hater, I think, now.

I don't understand it really being there anymore. And maybe the M4 Ultra has something in it, which maybe they'll finally allow for external graphics cards again and then maybe it makes sense right but i don't think that's going to happen but then also why on earth would you do it like if if they do do it the way that mark says like why why would you have a chip only for that one machine which is the and the only characteristic difference between this machine and other machines

is you can put things inside the case because it's big enough. But at the moment, there's nothing to put in there. So my, look, I mean,

yes, there's a rational argument that the Mac Pro shouldn't exist at all, but it does. And I kind of understand why it exists. But one of the reasons

I say it exists is because it's a case that was already designed and they're basically using the you know the guts or at least a lot of the guts of the mac studio and so it dramatically reduces how much extra work gets to be in this special almost bespoke product that nobody buys um so you know unless apple does something illogical which they might it happens it feels to me like the the mac pro as a big mac studio thing is the most rational thing they could do

but who knows they might have some uh trick up their sleeve i just that market is so tiny and it's not going to get much bigger like if they grow it at all i just have a heart let's say they do something like support external gpus and you know you go down the john syracuse a list of mac you know virtues of the mac pro how many of them they're going to sell like none like none i mean that market is basically gone and it's i don't think it's coming back. So, yeah. I think I would probably guess that it's going to continue being what it is now, which is there will also be a compact version of it that you can get with the high-end chip that's in the Mac Studio shape. But they've surprised us before.

I'm waiting for a Mac Studio update. I would be very sad if it's in 2025. I was kind of hoping it'd be one this year. They're testing an M3. So I think this is one of the things where, like one of the things that happens with Marcus Reports is there's stuff he doesn't know. And so there's this haze,

this is like a fog of war over the things he doesn't know. He does say that they're testing an M3 with a Mac Studio. So my guess is there will be a Mac Studio update this year. And it will be with the M3 Max and M3 Ultra, presumably. And that they will do that. And no Mac Pro. And then next year, I think it's still hazy. Like the Mac Pro is being tested.

But he said they'll all get updated. And I have a hard time believing that they're going to Like the Mac Pro is being tested, but he said they'll all get updated. And I have a hard time believing that they're going to hold the Mac Studio for 25 and then release it with the previous generation's chip, right? It doesn't make sense. So it's more likely that what's really going to happen is that in 25, there will be an M4 Mac Studio, 25 or 26, whatever, an M4 Mac Studio. And whether it has just the Macs or it has the Ultra or whatever is kind of up in the air because they're testing it. Because again, it's the stuff that he knows they're testing it in is what he's reporting. It doesn't mean that the other stuff isn't happening. It means he doesn't

know about that, so he can't report it. So that's my guess is that the Mac Studio is still going to happen because he does specifically say that it's being tested with a still unreleased M3 era chip, which has got to be the M3 Ultra. Yeah, and in his newsletter, he says Apple could choose to wait until the M4 line for a new Ultra, but it's worth noting that an M3 variation does exist internally. Because if they were going to update the Mac Studio, in theory, they would have a Macs and an Ultra for it, because it would be weird to do m3 max and m2 ultra as your as your two but i think the expectation is that they may not update the mac pro even still it's kind of right a little bit like up in the air right now but you can understand that a bit more right that like it's the same as like the mac mini is also niche and it doesn't get updates constantly even the imac and so I feel like the Mac Pro

definitely sits in that maybe even the Mac Studio to a point sits in that like um of how often does it need to be updated but for me like I'm just waiting it's just a little weird if they if they've designed an M3 Ultra they don't release it like that's strange right like we designed a whole chip and we're testing it internally and we're just not going to ship it that's that's unusual i would say that that would be and maybe there are issues maybe they tried to do it and they're like no it's not worth it maybe it's too expensive maybe it doesn't sell well they figure they can just wait a year all possible but we're we're left wondering based on the details of what mark german says and doesn't say. Yeah. But I can't wait for those artificial intelligence gains. Going to get those big AI gains.

They poured the AI juice right in there. It's going to be full of it. Brim to the top. This episode is brought to you by SaneBox. Having no emails in your inbox is a thing of the past. We are inundated with email like so much that it is no longer about responding to everything. Like it's just not possible anymore. It's all about responding to the important things, the messages that truly matter. And that's where SaneBox comes

in. You can think of it as triage for your email. As messages flow into your inbox, SaneBox will handle the sorting for you, sifting out the important emails in your inbox and directing the distracting stuff to your SaneLater folder, so you'll know what messages to pay attention to when you open your mail app and you know that there's stuff that you can get to later on when you have some time. There are also features like the SaneBlackHole, where if you get an email from someone, or maybe it's something you can't unsubscribe to, or just somebody you don't want to hear from anymore you can just move them to the same black hole and you'll never hear from them again and same reminders as well you can have this feature to

ping you if someone hasn't replied to your email by a certain date it's as simple as just moving that email to that folder adding that label to it and it will be handled for you get that reminder later on in your inbox best of all this is this is my favorite feature. You can use SaneBox with any email client or phone anywhere that you check your email. I've used some tools like this in the past where they restrict you to their app or to their system. What I love about SaneBox is it just works with your actual email provider and the emails coming in. And so you can use any application. You can use different apps on different devices and your email is going to work the way that you expect. And I will just say SaneBlackHole is so good

because sometimes you get those emails and it seems like there's nothing you can do to get rid of this sender. Put them in the SaneBlackHole. That person will never appear in your inbox again. It's really great. You can see how SaneBox can magically remove distractions from your inbox with a free two-week trial.

Visit SaneBox.com slash UpgradeFM today to start your free trial and get a $25 credit. That is S-A-N-E-B-O-X dot com slash UpgradeFM. A thanks to SaneBox for their support of this show and RelayFM. So we spoke, Casey and I, on last week's episode about some stuff with the Vision Pro and as to whether the Vision Pro could be considered a failure or a flop. And you wrote an article about this on Macworld as well. Do you want to kind of give the gist of what you're talking about? I think it actually lends quite nicely back to your review with the Vision Pro as well. Yeah, I mean, I tried to link it back.

The early days of computers, and the Apple Watch is a a little bit like this but the early days of computers were like this we have gotten used to an apple that is confident and uh or certainly doesn't let you see them sweat and they know what they're doing and they they roll out a product and they like this is the future and we're going to sell millions of them and we're going to make you know we're going to make them in high volume and people are going to want them and they do and they buy them and they're successful and all that. And I think that there are people who have gotten, they either don't remember the Apple that came before, they don't think of Apple that way, or maybe they just, it's been on standards that it can't and won't ever meet because that's not what it is. Like this is Apple at its most experimental and its most vulnerable that it's been in ages. and so people who write it off and say well you know two months into the vision pro and there's not a lot going on uh feels like a flop and it's like okay whoa it was never going to be two months

in and and going great it was always going to be a mess now does has apple made mistakes it absolutely has are there troubling things about it I wrote a whole piece about the Apple immersive video problem that they didn't release any of it. And then when they did, it was that MLS video that wasn't very good and suggested they didn't get it. about it with Casey. I know that Casey and Marco talked about it on ATP a little bit last week. For those who listened to that podcast, if you don't, basically what Marco said is, I'm not saying it's a flop. I'm saying I'm worried that Apple is not doing what is required for it to be successful. And I am worried about that too. But what I do see Apple do is I see them trying things and failing or not quite getting it. And I don't know, I guess that could trouble you. I just look at it and say, this is what this product is.

When this was rumored, we were all saying, you just got to ship it and see what happens and figure it out and figure out what it's for and learn and get developers to try stuff and have you realize, Oh, this works and this doesn't work. And we see it like they,

they, the spatial personas is sort of one of the reasons we talked about this. It's such a great feature, which is a plus also like, why wasn't it there on day one? That's a minus. And it's like, they were incapable of shipping it on day one,

apparently just like they're incapable of shipping it on day one apparently just like they're incapable of shipping those environments that still say coming soon which is so weird but like that is where we are is that there are things that apple does that are um that are good and there are things that apple does like the with the spatial video where you look at it and think oh they they haven't they don't have a clue or they're still figuring it out and they're releasing things that don't make sense and that is what this is i guess what my piece is really trying to say is if you're judging this like it's a product like every other apple product that's been released in the last decade you're doing it wrong because that's not

what this is this is a weird long game kind of thing where even Apple is going to basically be visibly grappling with what this product is in public. And that's not a sign of failure and it's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign that this is a very different kind of product and they're worried about the long run and they don't even know quite where it's going to go. And I find that refreshing in a way. It's frustrating in a way. It allows us moments of brilliance, like with spatial personas, where out of nowhere we're like, oh my God, this is an amazing feature. Literally like the week after they did that MLS video that was bad.

And to Marco's point, and I think it's a good one, the danger, the biggest danger Vision Pro faces is Apple losing sight of it. Is Apple taking its eye off the ball? Because we, and I know Marco's been burned by this because he's been covering this stuff a long time. Anybody who's been closely observing Apple over the years knows that the company has a tendency to launch things with great fanfare and then never pay attention to them again kind of get bored of them yeah i would argue that they've gotten better at that recently still not great and only in a few areas but they've gotten a little better at that it's that classic we launch a feature and it's going to change the world and it's and and it comes out and it's got some obvious limitations and bugs and everybody goes oh well i'm sure they'll address those and the year goes by and the new os comes out and it's got some obvious limitations and bugs and everybody goes, oh, well, I'm sure they'll address those. And the year goes by and the new OS comes out

and they didn't touch it. And another year goes by and maybe they address some of what happened two years ago. And Vision Pro, not only is Vision Pro the kind of product that's gonna be weird like this, but Vision Pro is the kind of product where Apple has to just keep fighting, just keep working, just keep working,

just keep throwing things in there and learning and growing. It's not the kind of product you can ship and say, well, job done and walk away. And I think that's what is inspiring Marco to be concerned about the future of the Vision Pro. And that does concern me too. But I do see a lot of stuff coming from Apple, even now where they're doing things where I'm like, ah, see, the Space Personas is a great example. It's not great that it didn't ship with the product,

but when they did turn it on in Vision OS 1.1, we all had that kind of magical campfire moment where we were five of us on that call. And it was like, oh yeah, this is pretty good, right? So they just need to keep chipping away. But I think that there are people out there in the broader world who just don't know how to judge a product like this because they just expect every... I mean, remember the Apple Watch? Everybody expected it. Well, not everybody. Lots of people expected it to literally

be another iPhone. And all of us were like, well, no, first off, it's just an iPhone accessory really. But like, no, there's never going to be another iPhone. It like, that was really special. Um, vision pro is like even further out there than the Apple watch was. And, and so that, that was my point in the article is just that, uh, do not judge the vision pro you need. You can judge it, but don't judge it as a finished product that is ready to go and that it didn't sell a million units immediately. And it's weird and taking a journey and things are unfinished. And like, that's what it is. It's going to take a lot of time. And if you're impatient, I can't tell you not to be impatient.

But like patience for the Vision Pro is essential because it's nowhere near finished. It's nowhere near a product that makes sense for anybody. And I understand how that is for some people really different to the Apple that we have known for the last 20 years. Yeah, completely. They haven't done this, but I feel like I am not surprised by the fact that it is this way for the vision pro because it in theory is so different to anything that's that they've done before that there was going to be this steep curve and i think it was made clear to us in just the two simple facts of the name of the product and its price it's like that this is a long

game that they're playing you mentioned my original review of vision pro and i'll just to tie that back one more time i'll just say i was a kid when the first personal computers came out and if you look back to what they cost like the commodore pet the, the TRS-80, the Apple II from the late 70s and early 80s, those computers were incredibly expensive by today's standards. These are like $5,000 or $10,000 computers. And what did they do? Kind of nothing. Like, kind of nothing. It was ages. I don't think, like, in college, by the time I got to college in the late 80s, most, many kids in college had a computer. Many. Not most.

And that was a very elite group because it was college kids. People whose parents had sent them to college, right? Like, it was, I feel like in the 90s before computers were really, and then, you know, the internet or AOL or things like that sold a lot of computers. It was really until the 90s. And I first used a computer in the late 70s, right? It took more than a decade, a bit more than a decade for that thing to be kind of anything. And in those early days, they were like nothing. They didn't do anything. And nobody knew what they were going to be good for.

And then, you know, somebody did VisiCalc and everybody's like, oh, that's spreadsheets is a thing that computers are good for. And they figured it out. And that, I mean, again, I'm not saying it will succeed like a computer. I'm just saying that Vision Pro, that's what it is. It's a thing that nobody really understands, including Apple. And they're all trying to figure it out and throw technology at it and throw software at it and live with it and see what emerges. And it's just, I think that's exciting.

Just, I think that's exciting, but it's also very unlike modern Apple, which is just sort of like a machine that generates demand for tech products and then just like pop pops them out and everybody buys them and loves them. And like, this is not that product. It's just not, it is weird. And I love that it's weird. And I love that Apple struggling with it. And I love that we don't know what it is but you got to judge it like it or to put it another way it is a flop and a failure if what you thought was that it was going to be judged like every other apple product because you're judging it wrong do you have any expectations of vision os2 i think there's stuff in there i mean i have lots of hopes i would like to think that there's a bunch of stuff in there that they, in the development process, that they just put on another whiteboard somewhere and said, we can't do this for 1.0.

And that for 2, they triage things from that list of like, these are the things we're going to bring into version 2. Like, these are the things we're going to bring into version two. And my hope is actually that it's going to be one of these annual statement things that Apple does these days where when they announce Vision OS 2, they're going to say, here are all the features it's going to have. But it's not going to get them all in September, right? It's going to get them all in. Which I think is actually smart for this product. You don't need to rush it. Over the next year, here's what we're going to put into the vision pro i do hope that there is stuff that i i my expectation is what you're saying right that there was it will

become clear as like oh okay like you see what he's saying like oh now all of our apps have made you know we don't have any apple apps that are compatible apps anymore right and whatever new features get announced for the whole operating system go in there along with some other stuff that we hadn't considered or you know i'm expecting yeah exactly like some good some good bug fixes some good features and some new things that it can do like that that's what i want to see like i i really want to see them continue to keep their foot down on this product. And I think they need to show that they're going to do that with enhancements to VisionOS. Like, more environments.

Third-party environments. Like, stuff like that. Like, just keep pushing it. That's what I really want to see. I really hope that there is stuff. Yeah, I think there will be i'll i'll say again going back to what marco was talking about on atp efficient os2 is like super underwhelming soft pedaled nothing now that's scary yeah that's scary because they this is not a product that they

can take their foot off the gas right this is a product where they oh well we're just putting it out there we'll see what people do with it. Like, no, you can't do that. You have to keep on going. And I assume that they are, but that would be a real bad sign. Why are you spending billions of dollars to ship your essentially like prototype

and then walk away? It doesn't make sense. So I hope that we get a sense of, also, I mean mean it only shipped recently right so this may not be the release for this but the more you get the sense that apple is also observing how people use this thing and that's helping them zero in um the better but that feels more like a vision os3 thing honestly this feels more like here's all the other stuff that we know should be in there and we just didn't get it in there i like it's like the early days of ios or of mac os 10 where the first few releases

it was a lot of like oh yes you mean those obvious gaps where features are completely missing yeah yeah okay here they are right there was a lot of that early on never forget it took to iphone os 3 to get copy and post yeah and uh and version 2 for app store so why did the app store was before copy and paste yeah what was going on you know what were they doing over there they were days i yeah i think they were convinced that copy and paste was an esoteric fever feature that people didn't need and they also didn't know what the interaction was going to be on it and so they just kept yeah incredible so talking about products that can't being considered a flop let's talk about the ai pin from humane yeah there's a flop well so this is the thing there is it right so this is the question i think is interesting. So the reviews are out.

I think that my initial thought was it's as bad as we thought it could be. But then the more I've seen, the more I've heard, actually, I think this product has reviewed worse than I expected. I think some of the things about it are clear, like the hardware is nicely made. Sure. There are parts of it that are good there is a particular part of the hardware that is bad which is that it gets hot which is strange um but my laser it's got that laser my hope would be that they could they could amend that there might be something going wrong with the way that it's processing information where that it's processing information where

that it's heating up i don't know apple certainly released products that start out hot exactly right like do you remember the the iphone 15 that instagram was making the phone hot like you know weird stuff can happen and like i've heard some people suggesting and it could make sense that it's doing basically constantly it's trying to talk to the cloud and that maybe it's not being very efficient in areas where it doesn't have good reception. But the thing about the AI pin in the reviews that I've seen and for me my favorite review so far has been David Pierce's review at The Verge and Marcus Brownlee published a video that was really good too

that essentially there are really good ideas in here but this product ain't it but the ideas are good yes oh and when they announced it i that was my thought is like this does feel like the future and i have no doubt that stuff like this is going to be a part of how we interact with the world around us in the future the problem is yeah the the the hardware is early it made me think of google glass in that way yeah yeah but it's also misguided and then i know this has been discussed a lot but just you know i'll say it again to differentiate their product they did one of these things that's like uh an old infomercial where it's like, oh, fed up with your smartphone. Oh, I hate my smartphone.

I wish there was something better. Now there's the humane AI pen. And fundamentally, people like their smartphones. And I do not understand these marketers who think that the solution to sell a tech product is to get people to say, oh, yes, I also hate using my smartphone because it's fantasy. People love their phones. That's why they're looking at them all the time is because they love it. And this product is built in a way that sort of like stands alone from your smartphone and like, oh no, no, no, no, you don't need that now i wrote a piece about this that uh on

friday that just published on six colors the other part of this though is why does it not connect to the phone very well and one of the reasons is well if they can if they integrate it to the phone they have some choices like they could integrate with android it might be hard but they could do it but what integration with the iphone could they do and in the u.s that's you know more than half the market and i think if apple had come out with a version of the apple watch essentially with an ai model which presumably they'll have this fall. Maybe even an on-device AI model for the Apple Watch, a new Apple Watch, which would be very interesting. David Pierce suggested that

the AI pin is kind of like a cellular Apple Watch, except the cellular Apple Watch can do more things. And it doesn't have its own phone number. And it does. The thing is the Apple Watch has its own phone number. They handle it. But they handle it. It rings the same and it does the thing is that it does they handle it they have but they handle it and so it rings the same and it texts the same as your your actual phone so this is my

point which is the truth is that when we talk about like how the doj talked about how apple is uh by not allowing other smartphones to have access to iOS in the same way that they do with Apple Watch, that Apple is making it harder for people to switch out of the Apple ecosystem because you buy an Apple Watch and now you would have to throw it away when you go to Android. Whereas if you had a competitive smartwatch that worked on both platforms and you bought that for your iPhone, then you could do that. And the DOJ at least claims that Apple's home field advantage there is too powerful. I'm reading this a slightly different way here and saying, can Humane or anybody else really make a product that is like this without it integrating into our digital lives? And that

means our smartphones and the apps on them and the data stores that are on our smartphones. And I think the answer is no. And I think that beyond that, what you have to say is, okay, so that means that every company that wants to make something that's innovative and new has to follow the rules of integration with Android and iPhone. And more than that, they have to deal with the limitations of Android and iPhone. And, you know, the more I thought about this, I thought, well, this is the argument. This is actually the anti-competitive and anti-innovation argument of having the duopoly of Android and iOS, which is a product like this kind of can't work unless you're deeply integrated. And it ultimately, it makes me, I mean, I just from a, if we back up a little bit and I look at the AI pen, one of the things I think about it is a product like this will never work unless it's made by Google or Apple or Samsung.

It just won't never work because it needs that integration. And that's the secret. I know that's the secret sauce that Apple has. And we've talked about it here endlessly. And it is true. It is a secret magical thing that Apple does where they can tie it all together and it makes a good product. It is a secret magical thing that Apple does where they can tie it all together and it makes a good product. But the other way that cuts is that if someone else wants to do it and the way that product is going to succeed is that it needs to tightly integrate with the rest of your life, including your smartphone.

And your smartphone manufacturer is like, no, not so fast. It can't be done. Or it can only be done with great difficulty and it hurts the product and then the smartphone platform owners make their own products that are actually integrated and they win again this is the inherent problem with the product which you know you said right like it doesn't matter if they fix every hardware problem it doesn't matter if you know because one of the things like oh it's slow it will get faster right like all of the models are slow right now yeah yeah everything's going to get better it will always fall down at it's divorced from your phone yeah which is where all your information is and it's not just the api right it's diverse from your phone we live in a world where and again this is the this is i'm not trying to make a doj argument here necessarily

but what i am saying is we live in a world where we're very tied to our data our personal data cloud and that's our smartphone it's also everything that's in the cloud it's in our apps what apps we choose to use all of that and one of the challenges they're, what it does is it is raised the bar. The table stakes are so high that say Humane wanted to do that. Like, what are they going to do? Are they, do they have to build their own integrations with every cloud service and every app and all these things that apple and google just they've got it they built it themselves or they had a decade plus

of app developers tying it all together and it's all there and like i'm not saying that apple and google haven't done the work to do that and that they don't deserve some benefit from that but what i'm saying is i look at i look at something like the Humane AI pin, and I think, well, what are they supposed to do? It is almost an impossible problem to solve for someone who is not a tech giant to make a product, because all of us have this huge amount of data in all these different places. And the product's no good, right? Bottom places and the product's no good right bottom line product's no good if it doesn't integrate if the humane ai pin talked to my iphone and could look at my stuff on my iphone and share my iphone's phone number and do all of those things would

it be a more compelling product it sure would 100 if this product was able to integrate we'd be having a different conversation like for sure we'd be having a different conversation. Like for sure, we'd be having a different conversation than the one that we're having right now. Like if it was able to just understand what was on my phone and be able to handle everything, the conversation would be like,

the battery life's not great, gets a bit warm and it's a little slow, but the promise is clear. And like, so, you know, the people that are saying the problem, and I see it, you see it it you can see that this could work but the table stakes are so high i immediately thought boy if they do a new apple watch in the fall that is capable of running at least a small machine learning model and then also using apple's back end or the phone's processor or whatever it is to essentially do what the AI pin is doing, but on an Apple watch, it's like, wow, like that's so cool.

And I think within reach for Apple, and that's immediately what I thought of, like the idea is not bad. And I also know what you said about like access to all the data on my phone. I was like, well, yeah, of course that's a security issue and privacy issue and all of those things, right? But again, also, it's an integration issue and it's a competitive issue and it's all of those things too. And I'm not bellyaching for Humane here. I think this is a misguided product, but it does strike me even if they did everything right, I'm not sure it could possibly work because I really can't conceive what I say in my piece. I really can't conceive of a product like this possibly succeeding unless it is done by one of a list of tech companies and there are only about five companies on that list. And or the iPhone is forced to be opened up. Basically what the Department of Justice is asking for. The iPhone and Android are both forced. I mean, I guess Android's got a lot of this stuff now.

And they chose not to do this, but I think one of the reasons is the lay of the land is why they chose not to do this with the AI pen. But yeah, this is, I don't know. I don't have an answer here other than, yeah, maybe the problem is that a lot of laws don't exist to address an issue like this. And also, governments are loathe to say to Apple, you can't integrate hardware and software together because that's what they do. And they make good products with it.

software together because that's what they do and they make good products with it. But this is the other side of that, which is, it does feel very much like, especially as an iPhone user, that if there's a cool new thing out there that looks interesting, my only real hope is that Apple makes one. Right. And I, and this goes in other dumb product categories too. Like I have a Google home mini, whatever nest, whatever it's called now but with a little screen i used to have an amazon echo and and neither of them is very good and and like you know i would love better integration and something from apple and that's why i keep wanting apple to make that version of that product a home pod with the screen it's mostly because the ones that currently exist aren't very good and one of the reasons they're not very good is they don't integrate because they're not from apple and apple is the one who

basically needs to do the integration like i think that there is a thread that ties the ai pin and the vision pro together in a way okay which is what we've spoken about i've already said a couple times is the table stakes are so high. And with Apple, they just didn't seem to do it all. Like, as I said, there are things that are missing from the Vision Pro, there are things that weren't developed for the Vision Pro, like Apple's Calendar app, for example. It's just like

it's not fully there. And the AI pin is also missing a bunch of table stakes right now. Like, you can't set an alarm on it, right, for example. But it's also, even if they had done all of that. You can't set an alarm on it, for example. But it's also, even if they had done all of that, they can't get to the table stakes

of an iPhone because it's too hard to do immediately what they need to do. And I think it's going to... I don't know how to solve this problem, because it can't order an Uber unless Uber tie into it why

would uber do that like what is their incentive to doing that yeah i i this is going to be very complicated and it comes back to what you're saying which is that unless like for this type of product to really work it seems like it has to come from apple and google yeah and i don't think that that is great i mean what could actually happen is that someone just makes a really good version of this type of product that can integrate with android somehow and like that is maybe more realistic because it might be able to integrate with an android phone because it is not fully but inherently more open or is like at least encouraged to do so and maybe google would be more willing to have like their google services available on another device because that's just

kind of what they do there's a lot of other things at play here too because there's also just the fact that we live in a world where the big companies have so much power and ability so like if a product like that that you described existed um, how many would it take one year for Samsung to knock it off and two years for them to outdo it? And they already have all their deep integration and all the market penetration of their phones. So, it would be a problem. But I also want to say, like, AI pen, I mean, it's not the best example. It gives me these vibes I mean basically this is like I get I get some bad vibes by the idea that I look at this product and I

think well of course they can't do this because they can't integrate uh or integrate well it's also possible that the problem with the humane AI pin is that when they started they thought they were building an amazing piece of hardware and then they realized the AI language model things were happening and they shifted gears. And now what they've basically built is, to quote Steve Jobs,

a feature, not a product. And I think that there's some truth in that. I think a device that listens to your commands and runs them through a machine learning model and gives you answers in five years is probably literally describing every device. Yeah.

And so what does Humane do that's special? And it's not the laser projector. And it's probably not the fact that they've got a second battery on the other side of a magnet. And it's probably, I mean, it's probably nothing. Or or if it's anything it's some little quirks of hardware design but it's like it's not their ai model they're just using a cellular connection to a cloud service that's running an ai model it's entirely possible that in a year or two everything that was even a little bit unique about the ai pin will just be washed away because it will be available on every platform everywhere. And, and so of course a feature is not going to succeed if you're trying

to build a feature and not a product because the platform owners will build that feature. They will Sherlock, so to speak the humane AI pin. And, and we already know the reports like Apple's totally going to do this. I don't know if they're going to make a pin, right? They have the Apple Watch. And then you throw in, maybe they'll have cameras on your AirPods or I don't know what else, but this is where the world is going. It just gives me the heebie-jeebies a little bit to think about the fact that somebody says, oh, here's an interesting thing you could do with tech. And the answer tends to be, yeah, but if it doesn't really come from Google or Apple, nobody's ever going to do it. That troubles me. Even though I get why, it troubles me. After seeing this, I would love to know what the AI pin was going to be a year and a half ago.

What was this product actually going to be before it became the AI pin? What was it? I don't know. Because they were building it. But what was it going to do? Very strange. On a personal cloud, an Alexa on your shirt?

Yeah, but then it doesn't do so many things i know i know now so like did they just get rid of it all maybe maybe they build an operating system they threw out to build a new one and couldn't get everything ready and i feel for them but um you know they took they took the cash they took the shot i mean and the other thing that I see some people say, well, if they do a good job here, maybe they'll get acquired. That's what I'm talking about, though. Is if the end goal of the tech industry... Okay, here's a tangent, just for a moment.

Cable Sasser gave a talk at GDC. They posted the video. It's amazing. I wish they put it on YouTube. It's about Playdate. It's not on YouTube now. Yeah, you got to watch it on gdc but um you can airplay it to your tv if you want um i watched it last night and it's great but one of the things he says is i he says panic is always described as a startup so we've been around for you know two decades we are not a startup but the tech industry

doesn't seem to understand what we are um which is what i would call like a lifestyle business i forget what what cable calls it um oh now i can't think of the word it was a slow biz that was it thank you uh cm nox slow biz that's what he calls it but he's like in the rest of the world, this would just be called a business, like a hardware store. It is a business that operates and makes money and has employees and just goes on. But in the tech industry, there's this obsession with, you know, it's a startup and then it's going to get acquired and or it's going to go public. And these are the ways that you do it. to get acquired and or it's going to go public and these are the ways that you do it but this is this is my point about something like the ai pen even if you're like oh well if they do a good job they'll just get acquired it's like well yeah but like that's what how we got where we are which is your only choices are to really luck out and go public and make a lot of money and hope to one day be sort of at the feet of the tech giants or it's to have a tech giant buy you and give you money and then you're subsumed so is it a win for anybody other than the investors in humane if the ai pin ends up having some interesting tech in it

that makes google or samsung or apple or amazon or microsoft snap it up i I mean, no. That gets us back to where we started. And, you know, I'm not, I don't know. It just, that's not an answer to say, what if they get subsumed into a tech giant? Slow biz. I like it. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Delete Me. Do you ever wonder how much of your personal data is out there and available on the internet for somebody to find? It can be an uncomfortable thought, especially when you consider having too much information out there could lead to identity theft attempts, phishing, harassment, unwanted spam calls, unwanted email, or more. But the sad thing is, it's easier than ever to find personal information about people online.

That is why so many people use and recommend Delete.me to protect their privacy, including me. Delete.me finds and removes personal information that you don't want online and makes sure that it stays off the internet. It's a subscription service that removes your personal information from the largest people search databases on the web

and in the process helps prevent potential ID theft, doxing and phishing scams. You just sign up, you tell them what information you want deleted from the internet and their experts take it from there. You'll get regular personalized privacy reports showing you what information they found, where they found it and what they removed.

And this isn't just a one-time service. Delete.me is always out there working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the internet. I really value my subscription with Delete.me. I like that I get these reports and they're telling me what they found, what they've removed.

They've updated me on previous things that they've found, which I appreciate. Like sometimes they're like, hey, you know, we're going to put in a request to remove you from this database, but it might take a little while. And then in my next report, they'll be like, yep, it's done now. And I feel comfortable knowing that there's someone out there in my corner removing this information as it goes around the web to try and just reduce the amount of stuff online that I

don't want to be out there. Just like my email address. I don't want it publicly available everywhere, but it seems like without Delete Me, there's nothing I can do about it, but they handle it for me. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe. Now, at a special discount for listeners of this show, you can get 20% of your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash upgrade20 and use the promo code upgrade20 at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to j-o-i-n-d-e-l-e-t-e-m-e.com slash upgrade20 and use the code UPGRADE20 at checkout. That is join, delete me, dot com slash upgrade20 and the code UPGRADE20, upgrade20.

Our thanks to Delete Me for the support of this show and RelayFM. It is time for some Ask Upgrade questions. First question comes from Jonathan who says, Jason, new Kobo readers were just announced. I've had a Kindle Paperwhite 2012 model for the last 11 years.

It can't get to websites anymore, but it still connects to Wi-Fi and syncs books I borrow from the library. What should I consider when evaluating e-readers today? Are text specs relevant? Any recommendations on the various form factors available would be appreciated. Oh man, I love this subject so much.

I know you do. And I update my thing about like which e-book reader you should buy. So one thing is 2012 Kindle Paper, right? There's probably a higher resolution screen available now. So one thing is, um, 2012 Kindle paper, right? There's probably a higher resolution screen available now. So the text will be crisper. Um, I assume that's a, I don't know off the top of my head. I assume that's a backlit model, but the other, here are the things you want. You want a side, it's side lighting, but it's like backlighting

side. You want a side lit model. You want a model that lights itself up. So you don't have to clip a book light on it when you read it in the dark. That used to be a thing. The new screens are great because they're all high resolution. They're all like 300 DPI. They're all like a laser printed text. It's crisp. You don't need a color screen,

even though the Kobo ones have them. They're nice. And they're probably, I look forward to see these new screens because they may also be nicer black and white screens, but they're kind of unnecessary. I would say, ideally, you'd want one with USB-C

and not micro USB because that's modern. You could get one with a new screen. And then the questions that you should ask yourself are, how big do you want it to be? Because they make a really nice larger screen

that's the Kobo Forma, I think is the, what is the one that my wife has is the Sage, Kobo Sage is what it's called. Really nice. It's like a seven inch screen. So it's like reading a hardcover. But if you want a smaller one, like I have a Kobo Libra, which is smaller and really nice. And it's about the same size as a Kindle. The other thing I would say is buttons. Do you like buttons or not? You can tap on the screen to change the pages i really like page turning buttons um amazon doesn't so if you like page turning buttons the kobos have the advantage um and a flush screen is the other one amazon's paperwhite i believe has a flush screen now and the larger kobo does but the smaller one doesn't

and so you know stuff can get in the little cracks and you got to kind of blow it, blow it out. No. I still think that probably the best choice for a regular person is a Kindle Paperwhite because they're cheap

and they're easy. And it's Kindle. And they're nice. All the books are there, you know, like it's... Well, all the books are on Kobo. People have them. So here's the thing.

So a note about Kindle or Kobo. Good point. All the books are on kobo so here's the thing so a note about kindle or kobo good point all the books are on both um libraries work with both and it's just not that big a deal um so especially since uh in this case jonathan's talking about the library um it's not a problem either way okay. So I would say look at what the Kindle Paperwhite is and see if that interests you. It's probably going to be faster at turning

pages and the text will look nicer. And those are the reasons to get it and make sure that it, I mean, they all have lights now. So that'll be an

upgrade maybe for you. I don't know. And look at the Kobo's because I switched to Kobo primarily because I was kind of tired of being in the amazon ecosystem for that stuff and all the same stuff is available and it's uh and it also has

pocket support which is nice so you can add articles on the web from pocket and sync them and read them on your code i'd forgotten what pocket was initially and was surprised by the idea of pocket support. It fits in your pocket? You can fit it in your pocket? You just gotta have a big pocket, Mike. You gotta have a big pocket. I was like, what does that mean? Oh, it goes in your pocket.

I was like, okay. No, everybody knows Kindles don't support pockets. You put a Kindle in a pocket, jump right out of there. You can't trust that thing. Amazing. Tell you what I want, Jason.

I'll tell you what I want. I want a Android e-reader with a high quality color screen that's what i want i want to read comic books all right so this is what i was going to say is comics are different and the small e-readers are not appropriate for comics they're too small they're too small too small. I think the smaller iPad Pro is too small for comics, but certainly a Kindle or equivalent is too small for comics. Well, I'm reading my comics on

an iPad Mini, so I'm making it work. The size. It's just not as nice. Yeah, and I've tried a lot of weird Kindle, or weird Android readers, and we'll get there. It's all gonna it's gonna happen someday the color screens the e and color screens are getting a lot better so there's there's a lot

of choices but um but kindle paperweight is probably the current whatever it is is probably the best choice but i also really like the kindle or the kobo libra um you don't need the color version though calvin asks i just got a Vision Pro, but before I unbox it, I have a thought. What if I never unbox it and keep it as a collector's item? The original iPhone in box form can sell for more than $50,000 these days.

What do you think about just keeping it? Mike, you take it. Kelvin, find some joy in your life. You know, live. Live for now. Don't live your life for a potential future that may never come.

I would like to point you towards Beanie Babies as a thing to consider. Episode 100 of the podcast that I do with Real Life and co-founder Stephen Hacker, it's called Ungenious, where we take weird Wikipedia articles and we talk about them. Episode 100 was about Beanie Babies, and this was the thing people did with Beanie Babies and they lived to regret it. But I'll just say, if you've bought the Vision Pro, you surely bought it for a reason. Use it. Like just unbox the thing, put it on, watch the masters.

That's what people are talking about right now. The golf masters, the apps were good. I haven't tried it yet, but people seem excited about it. It's too late now. The masters is over. I mean, maybe- I'm sure you can watch old clips. Like highlights. Yeah yeah or old stuff so here's the here's the thing that i've learned is by the time you

recognize that a certain kind of thing could be bought and saved so that it rises in price at a later time it's too late that's my that's my advice is by the time you're thinking about speculating it's too late because what will happen is because beanie babies is a good example comic books in the 90s they put out all these special covers and number ones and all those things and there was a huge and it collapsed the industry. And the reason is everybody thought they were collectibles, so they bought them and saved them. But guess what? When everybody buys them, there's no market for them because everybody's got them. So the original iPhones are collectible because people didn't think it would be a collectible. Because nobody's kept them in the box, right right and the ones that were kept in the box accidentally or whatever are incredibly rare and

valuable but i'll guarantee you there are a bunch of people out there now who buy new apple products and keep them in the box and put them in the vault somewhere and as a result those ones will never have the value it's like no pokemon card is ever going to be as valuable as the Charizard from the original set because now there's value in Pokemon cards. All trading cards, right? It's like a similar thing.

Yeah, the Inverted Jenny was a one-time deal. I don't know what that is. Oh man, that would be a great that would be a great ungenius episode the Inverted Jenny.

Inverted Jenny Wikipedia. That will be sent to Stephen right now. Maybe it will find its way into a future episode. It's a stamp. Oh, okay. It's printed upside down. Whoops.

Da-da-da-da-da-da. And the final question comes from Adam. With AirPods having become so ubiquitous have either of you developed any personal etiquette around their usage in public or with family i was thinking about this the other day because i had a whole conversation with a lady i was out walking my dog and she was walking a dog without a leash and i was like oh geez because my dog gets very excited when she sees other dogs when we're out on the walk and she's on a leash and a dog on a leash and a dog not on a leash there can be bad reactions because they can be scared or aggressive my dog gets

scared um but i i came to realize this dog omar is his name i i remember the dog's name and not the lady's name that tells you something about me. Omar was a sweetheart. He's super non-reactive and he just walked around and I chatted with her. And after 30 seconds of chatting with her, the dogs, my dog had calmed down and they were sniffing each other and it was all really nice. And I found out where she lives and she actually lives next to another white boxer that's in my neighborhood. And I was like, oh, that's Rosie's house. And she said the name of the lady who lives there. And again, I don't remember her name, but I do remember the name of the dog who lives there.

I'm bad with names of humans, apparently. So we had this nice conversation. And as we said goodbye and Maisie and I went up the hill, I realized I had that whole conversation with her with my AirPods in. Because I do my walks listening to podcasts from my Apple Watch with transparency on and my AirPods in. This is my point of saying I have gotten over the idea of removing AirPods as a show of interest. I don't care. I can hear her perfectly. It's fine.

So I will alert Lauren, like, I'm going to listen to podcasts now. And she's like, okay. So that she doesn't just say something to me as an aside. This actually happened the other day when I was cooking. Because the thing I realized, the thing I hate about cooking dinner is not cooking dinner. It's being bored. So I listen to podcasts now. Oh, yeah.

You kidding? That's how you. That's not one of my favorite podcast times. That's how you got to do it. Right. But when she comes home and I'm making dinner, I do a little check-in of like, I'm doing this. She's like, okay. But yeah, beyond that, there's a long story-laden answer to Adam's question, which is my personal etiquette is I don't care if they're in or not.

I'm not going to take them out as a as a show of interest my interaction should be enough i don't think it's needed anymore for that reason but with me and adina like when if we're not doing something together we have one of us at least has airpods in because you're doing something or listening to something or whatever and so we just kind of treat it as like i'm just gonna talk to you and and you're just gonna deal with it right and like that's kind of treat it as like i'm just gonna talk to you and and you're just gonna deal with it right and like that's kind of how we live our lives we don't i understand why you might do i think i'm gonna listen to something now but like we don't we don't do that like if if we're doing some kind of separate activity one of us probably has airpods in and is either

listening to musicals into podcasts or watching a video or whatever. And we just kind of talk to each other and expect that the person who's listening is going to deal with it, which is one of the reasons why I actually really like the conversation awareness, because sometimes the dean will start talking to me and I'll just say something and then it's going to pause. Like, I don't even need to pause anymore. I can't do that because I talk to the dog. I can't do that. But yes. The one place where I've found that I don't like need to pause anymore. I can't do that because I talked to the dog. I can't do that. But yes. The one place where I found that I don't like this is you can't sing along to anything anymore. I feel like they should do something. The karaoke awareness needs to happen. I genuinely think that like there is an AI model in there somewhere where like you can kind of work out if I'm singing along to something and don't bring the music

down because that's kind of the whole point. I prefer to sing along and not hear me. That's my preference. If you would like to send in a question of your own to help us close out an episode of Upgrade, but also maybe we can help you with something like how we helped

Jonathan with their Kobo e-book question. Kindle or whatever. Well, Jason says Kobo or Kindle. E-reader question. You can go to UpgradeFeedback.com and send us in a question of your own. You can also do this for follow-up.

You can do it for Snow Talk or just general feedback about the show. If you want to find Jason's work online, go to SixColors.com and you can hear his podcast here on RelayFM and at theincomparable.com. You'll hear me on RelayFM too, and you can check out my work at cortexbrand.com. If you want to find us on social media, Jason is at Jason L, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can watch video clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are at UpgradeRelay. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. They get

longer ad-free versions of the show at GetUpgradePlus.com. Thank you to Delete Me, Wild Grain, and SaneBox for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Justin Snow. Good to be back, Mike Hurley. Always.