Upgrade - 510: Jason Is Cool GOTO 10

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 510 for april 29th 2024 today's show is brought to you by squarespace sanebox and vitally my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike how are you doing good i've got a big show today there's a lot going on big show got a lot going on big show there's there is a lot there was a lot of movement that happened i've got a little story i got one of those stories you did some travel i did some travel yep a big weekend. We did not travel together, but we are big travel buddies in another sense. But you visited with a Real AFM host, and I visited with Real AFM hosts. How about that?

Incredible. Look at us. Different trips. Look at us. Different places. Look at us. You can look at us if you go to our YouTube channel, where this version of the show is posted as a video as well.

You love to see it. How about that? That was a little organic marketing. That was really good that was really good i have a question for you comes from dylan who wants to know do you read footnotes when you read a non-fiction ebook i love this question because of course we know that we are we are one of the world's foremost e-book podcasts. And my answer to Dylan is, okay, there's a method to reading footnotes when you're reading a nonfiction book. And the method is context. The method is, is the little symbol or number at the end of this statement that just happened strongly implying that something is going on in the footnote that you might want to read about?

Or is it like obligatory? And so my answer is, when it seems like the footnote is going to expand on a thing in a way I'm interested in, I will tap to bring up the footnote. I'll also say my habits with footnotes in eBooks were formed in an earlier age. There was a time when to read a footnote, you would tap on the footnote and it would take you to the end of the book where the footnote was and you couldn't get back automatically. of the book where the footnote was and you couldn't get back automatically and even worse in the earliest days of the kindle from then on it would think that you had read to the end of the book because it measured your it measured your furthest page read it was so bad congratulations you finished the book you finished the book yay uh so i i stopped most footnotes however software has advanced now

when you tap on a footnote it brings it up in a floating thing you don't even leave the page you can dismiss it it doesn't mess up your anything about your where you're reading and all that it's fine um however i will say i still only really do it if i think oh boy there's going to be something good here part of the context by the way is that you've had positive interactions with that in the past. If I read a book and like a couple of times I tap and it's just a citation to a scholarly journal or something, it's like fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you.

I will stop tapping on footnotes. I'm like, oh, in this book, the footnotes are boring. But if you got good footnotes, if I'm like, oh, this book, every time I see it like 22, I'm like, oh, what wacky side story will be under footnote 22? Then you got me. I will tap on those. Unless it seems, sometimes I'll see them and I'll be like, well, this is, I'm not that interested.

I don't need to tap on the footnote. But mostly, I will be into it. So it depends on what the book is and how the footnotes are used um and that's my that's my answer so it's not a yes or no it's like if they're good yes if they're just citing sources and you know so that you you know prove that they're not plagiarists whatever boring uh then i won't um i do have a little side note about footnotes though the way footnotes work and this, and this is sort of a harkening back to those primitive days early on in e-books where, as I described, tapping a footnote was a whole journey. The one thing that they don't seem to have the capability to do is mark the footnotes and the end material as outside the range of the length of the book. And I say this because I was reading a book the other week.

It was a book about, it's called Fifth Son. It's about the Aztecs. Really good book. Highly recommend it if you care about that kind of stuff. I'm really going into that middle-aged dad phase where I'm listening to history podcasts and reading books about history just leaning in leaning in mike yeah anyway read this book about the aztecs and there's a library loan and then what was the name of that book i want to make sure i get the right one for the fifth son s-u-n fifth son um by an American...

Fifth Son, A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend. Yeah. So I'm reading it and the library's like, you're going to need to get that back to us in two days. I'm like, oh my God, I'm only 40% through. I'm never going to get there. I'm never going to get there. And I'm rushing through it and I get to like, I swear, Mike, like 55%. And it's the end of the book and the rest of it, but notes like, Oh, I think I'm at the end. I got to the, I got to the last chapter and it was like, she's like kind of bringing it all together. And I'm like, strange to be bringing it all together in the late fifties. What's going on here? Tap boop done footnotes.

I'm like, ah, well, I got to turn in the book i read the whole book it was great but like here's my little feature request to cut the kobos and kindles of the world is you probably have like a mark and when you're gauging length of the book don't include the footnotes just don't don't do it i beg you anyway that's my footnotes rant that i didn't know i had that was a footnote for the footnote conversation that's that's right you can go back and by the way we've talked about ebooks in the past in previous episodes including last week that's also a footnote right there footnotes are in the show notes thank you for sending in dylan that question if you would like to send in a question of your own to start off the show go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snell Talk question.

Jason, what season is it? Merch season! It's merch season! Go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com because we have brand new merchandise. Jason Snell, purveyor of merchandise, would you like to give the Upgradians an audio tour

of what they will find at upgradeyourwardrobe.com? Normally at upgradeyourwardrobe.com, we've got a few on-demand things. There's a Rumor Roundup shirt. I think there's an Upgrade Logo shirt. There usually is an Upgrade Logo shirt, but not right now to avoid confusion. Right now because for a limited time, because it's

Cotton Bureau and this is how it goes, for the next couple of weeks, you will be able to get some new, with a footnote merch uh we're doing the upgrade t-shirt upgrade logo t-shirt with a little twist this time which is that the arrow pointing upward is going to be left blank and it will reflect the color of the shirt you're wearing so So we're basically creating a customize your upgrade logo experience. It comes in two versions. There is Upgrade Pro. Those are monochrome colors

because they're very professional. And you should be a professional and use them. And they're not boring at all. They're just professional. Lots of colors, lots of grays. Lots of, oh, grays, blacks, whites, whatever. It's shades of gray, professional gray.

So that's Upgrade Pro. And then if you're saying to yourself, but I am not a professional upgrade t-shirt wearer, Jason. I am merely a regular t-shirt wearer. Well, good news, everybody. You have gotten a visit from the Upgrade Colorsar and we've got non-pro colors. Yes, good news, everybody. You have gotten a visit from the Upgrade Colors R. And we've got non-pro colors. Yes, colorful colors, various new colors so that you can have your Upgrade logo in any of the colors that are on offer that are the color of a t-shirt. Mostly pastel colors, which is a new thing for us, which I'm very excited about. Some really lovely options in there some very summery as we're getting into the summer of fun

it seems appropriate to have some nice summery colors in there speaking of the summer of fun mike well another little segue we're all about the segues today summer of fun 2024 edition now this is not a new shirt it is the 2022 beach shirt with the iphone the sand. I love that design. It came in a couple of different color options last time. It was like a green and aqua with a yellow print. This time, the geniuses at the Cotton Bureau said, here's an idea. What if we did a gradient,

they call it split fountain. I don't know what it means. and i also didn't know it was actually possible i'm very impressed by this two different shades are put in instead of having it cover the shirt for one shade they have two different inks and then they they end up in a gradient so it's they look really interesting they're available on dark and light colored shirts. They look great on both. So if you want to relive the summer of fun with this, I love this

artwork. It's like a surfboard in the sand, but it's an iPhone and there's a palm tree and the upgrade logo is the setting sun or rising sun depending. And there's a pineapple. Which I think fell from the tree. I don't know, man. Because there's a pineapple. Which I think fell from the tree. I don't know, man. Because pineapple.

Because pineapple. So that's available. And then we've also brought back the classic Dongletown, our most popular Dongletown shirt, the Dongletown, you know, USB- It's the Port Authority. Port Authority. Exactly

right. In new colors that we haven't had before. Port authority. Exactly right. In new colors that we haven't had before. So there's some variety. We wanted to- So we're bringing back some classics, but with different colors, different options. And that's our spring and summer, at least in the Northern Hemisphere,

vibe of merch. So those will be available for the next couple of weeks at upgradeyourwardrobe.com. You did a- This is Jason's idea, the kind of like customize your logo color one. And I think it's inspired. I love it so much.

Like some of the color options, it looks so good to see the little logo peeking through. I mean, you can go traditional and be red, right? So it matches the show artwork. But why not get pink or blue or purple or yellow or many other colors that are available to you? Or light gray or a slightly darker gray or an even darker, some would say, midnight to space black. You can also just get gray.

If you are wearing your shirt professionally, you can do that. So we'd appreciate it if you want to check these out at upgradeyourwardrobe.com on sale for just a couple of weeks. Limited time. Order now. I think. it if you want to check these out at upgradeyourwardrobe.com on sale for just a couple of weeks limited time order now i think i don't want to i don't want to make some claims here mike i don't want to make some claims here okay but i i'm just going to say there are other t-shirts being sold on cotton bureau i think if you ordered them all together you would get them all together with one shipping cost but you'll have to wait because of the way they phase their different

things you'd have to wait for them the way they phase their different things. You'd have to wait for them all to go off sale before that happens. So you do you, but it's there as an option. We have some follow-up. Scott wrote in to say, I found it strange that Mike was insistent about Delta adding in-app purchases or a premium subscription to the app

to make more money when the developer already said they have a Patreon. If the developer says their model is already working, why keep suggesting a model that would be worse for lower income consumers like keeping features behind a paywall? I get that a premium add-on or subscription would be optional, but the Patreon is already optional and it's working according to the developer. It's quite simple. I love the app and I want them to make loads of money.

And I don't think it's possible. Actually, I know it's impossible for the app store version for the patreon to provide any bonus features like you can't do that now the old store version they are doing that i would just like it because i think it's amazing and i want uh the the delta folks like riley and team to make more money so like to add simple things in like theming and stuff and put some behind a paywall and have people pay for it that's like the app also did not even call out the patreon i think this is something they've added but i'm not actually sure this is something apple will allow but i think they put it in anyway and i think it's

gonna see how it goes um but that's why because i just i want the developer to get as much support as possible i signed up for their patreon for for for a year because i'm using the app every single day and but i just want them to be very successful because they deserve it yeah i mean i would simplify it even further and say i think having a patreon for it is perfect but you can't you know you basically can't integrate patreon in that way in the app store outside of the eu right you have to in the app store period and the eu they've got the alt store instead so doing with it with it at the still at the top of the charts it would be nice if they find a way for people to be able to give the developers money i don't think what we're saying they should charge for it they should charge ten dollars for delta no that's not it

it's like you've got this huge user base. Maybe you should add a tip jar or a subscription where you get a little bit of a bonus content. Maybe it's some bonus content that's related to things that are unlocked by the Patreon. But in the rest of the world, they can't do that. So they have to like I would I would encourage them to do that. Look, if Riley is happy to just like let it be free, that's great. But like it would, it would be, it would be nice if people who liked it could give them more money.

I don't think we were saying take things away from people who don't, who can't afford it. That's not what we're saying. We're saying Riley deserves support for, and the product's been so successful. There should be ways to give, clearly give support. And if the patreon link works out that's great but you know there are other ways that app store apps uh turn goodwill into some

money for the creators and um it would be great if they could do that speaking of emulation uh so you wrote an article on six colors uh a little bit about this and i just there was a couple of things you know we've been talking about this stuff on and off and one of the things I just wanted to read is a quote from your article which I really agree with where you say, the right decision is for Apple to allow retro emulators of all

kinds in the App Store and to allow game emulators to use just-in-time performance to boost performance. Otherwise, its limited expansion of the rules feels mostly for show and not indicative of a real change in approach to App Store rules. Yeah, I mean, the goal here, I mean, the file name of this article was emulate all the things. I feel like this is a sign that there is a lot of potential here. And when we talk about Apple's rules, one of the things that we talk

about is that Apple is actually in some ways hurting itself because the flip side of the app store, which I firmly believe the app store and the richness of the app store is what helps make the Apple platforms rich, right? It's not like the iPhone is great and then also there are apps. It's like the iPhone has the rich app ecosystem. That's one of the reasons the iPhone is great. So the converse of that, the flip side of that is if there are things that aren't in the app store because Apple isn't allowing them, Apple is making their platform worse. I think the success of Delta shows that emulation has real potential i mean look emulators have been happening outside of iphones for a long time now but like on the iphone it's not been a possibility and my

point with my piece on six colors is that i don't want this delta thing to be a a fake like i said mostly for show where it's sort of like well we'll approve emulators but only in the most limited fashion possible in order to get everybody off of our backs i think they need to truly embrace this idea i i think that they need to so what i say in the article is like the j argument, to me, I get that they're worried, but the whole no emulator thing was a security worry. Remember, this is all based on a rule back in the day where they're like, nothing can execute code. No apps can execute code. And that was like, you could put Python on it, but you couldn't have any Python. You had to type in your Python scripts because you're like, no, no, no, you can't. It's code that could be interpreted or executed. We can't allow it. And they have gradually backed off on a lot of that. But this saying that they're not going to allow JITs, so they're not going to allow Dolphin in the store, it strikes me as being one of those cases where they are really hiding

behind security as a way to continue their control. And so my article is basically saying, Apple, give it up. Give it up. Give it up for Jits. Give it up for console. Give it up for Jits. And give it up for console. Give it up for console.

I've said this before, but like, my favorite games as a kid were on the Apple II. Well, that's not a console. It's a computer. And yeah, I could boot it up and do 10 print Jason is cool, 20 print, go to 10. But, or no, 20 go to 10.

If I do 20 print, go to 10, it's just going to say Jason is cool, go to 10, which no one cares about. I would. I just have a bug in a basic program right on a podcast. If I do 20 print go to 10, it's just going to say, Jason, this is cool, go to 10, which no one cares about. I would. I just have a bug in a basic program right on a podcast. Anyway. No, execute. You do execute this code on your podcast.

Mostly what I want to do is play Lode Runner, okay? I want to play SSI Computer Baseball on my iPhone and my iPad. I should be able to do that even though it's not a console. And it's such an arbitrary rule. All of those things. Retro, I know you've talked about this. What does retro mean? What does gaming mean? What does console mean? And I think it's stupid. I think these are more arbitrary words that give Apple essentially authority to say yes or no to anything. It's that classic argument about the point of a law that isn't enforced is that it can be arbitrarily enforced whenever, right? Like if you make everything illegal, then you can stop anyone you don't like for any reason. And it's, it's a portal to ultimate power. It's not law and order anymore. It's just control. And that's where we are with this rule. So I'll,

I'll go further. And some of this is i've talked about before but like old mac emulators i played a lot of games on the mac too but like regardless of games like mac emulators should be allowed and in fact i would say apple might want to start making an effort in fact there was just a story over the weekend about how what uh some version of is it is it dos or windows some old pc operating system that was just put out you know publicly um like i know it's a little bit of effort at least legally to do it but like i would really like to see some tiny portion of apple acknowledge that their old platforms can be emulated and that have some value and that they maybe should that apple should embrace it and not have it be in the on the black market essentially um and this also goes for the thing that we've lamented for a long time

which is iphone games uh that that and apps in general and i i would go beyond games here too and say one of the great tragedies of the app store and app development is that apple's pace of ios development is so great that apps break. And Apple even has a policy of like, if you don't touch an app, I have a sticker app that's literally just stickers for the incomparable in the store. And I got a note saying, if you don't change it, we'll take it off the store. And it's like, they're stickers, man. The stickers are still the stickers.

And they're like, no, we're going to just take it off the store because it hasn't gotten any updates. And so they're really aggressive about updating the OS, which is fine, but it breaks old apps and then kicking old apps off the store. And I know that they've done some things with Apple Arcade where they've said, oh, well, we're going to pay somebody to make flight control work again and all that. But I'll just put it out there today's phones and ipads are so powerful that one thing you could do is offer a virtual machine four-year-old operating system versions so that old apps can still run right like i know that's a wild idea but like what's stopping Apple from emulating iOS 5 and letting all those apps run or iOS 7? Like resource-wise, it's not that much.

I mean, I'm not saying it wouldn't be work to build it, but like the hardware is so powerful that I would really like to see Apple embrace this as a strategy to keep things compatible. And I know that there's this relentless like, well, yeah, but you've got to keep, we want our developers to move with the times. It fine have the window be 10 years ago i don't care but like i think there's opportunity there and i've already said that you should also just open emulation like the ipad should be able to run a version of parallels or vmware and should be able to run windows uh for arm and it should be able to run macOS because it's an ARM processor. It's an M1 or M2 or who knows, M3 or M4 processor and that, I bet we'll get to it. And so I just emulate all the things is what I come back to. It's like emulation is an amazing thing because computers

have been around and phones have been around for a while now. And there's amazing software out there that people love. And yes, some of it is nostalgia, but like it's amazing software out there that people love. And yes, some of it is nostalgia. But it's amazing software out there that is lost to history otherwise. It shouldn't live in the darkness. It shouldn't be limited to just on a PC or a Linux box or something like that. Because other people should have the delight that you might currently have in being able to play Pokemon on your iPhone. That should happen for everyone. And i think it would make the platform better and i wish apple would get off of this box and just admit that emulation is is good and they should allow it not allow it with a big asterisk that means that only when they feel like it

so moving on ross young has corrected his report on the larger ipad air having a mini led screen he is now saying that the device could be coming later this year that features this screen but it won't be the air that we'll probably see what's the week huh yeah and that if there is this device that could come later on, it could be in Q4. Okay. Right? I still, I don't think I can even say. I have also heard that this is a perfectly logical thing, them reusing the mini LED screen, because they already built it. And that I've heard that that's a reasonable thing for them to do. Young says that he heard from many supply chain sources

that this won't be happening, that his earlier report was wrong. Not this one. So there may be something going on there, but it's not this one. Yeah. So they may be reusing that screen, yes, but it's not this. Interesting. Interesting. Well, this is bad in the sense that that's a

nice feature it's good in the sense that it probably allows the ipad air to be a little more clearly downscale from the ipad pro this episode is brought to you by our friends at squarespace the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or managing a growing brand, you can stand out from the crowd of a beautiful website,

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purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. It is time to lawyer up Jason Snow. Now, we have amazing artwork being made soon, is what I'll say the artwork is

coming soon it's very good but it takes time because today the european union has designated the ipad as a gatekeeper and had given apple six months to comply with the dma rules for ipad os previously the dma had just uh applied to iphone, but now iPadOS. I'm going to quote from the EU's press release. The commission opened a market investigation to assess whether Apple's iPadOS, despite not meeting the quantitative thresholds laid down in the EMA, constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end users and therefore should be designated as a gatekeeper. Basically, they're saying the iPad does exceed the thresholds of users for them and that those users are locked into iPadOS.

I think there's going to be a lot of argument in a lot of places about whether or not the EU has just basically extended the rules to include this. But nevertheless, they're saying they want it to comply. So they have six months to comply and put the iPad in the same bucket as the iPhone. And so that means at marketplaces and all that fun stuff for those in Europe. Right. Now, in terms of the sheer uh technical aspect of this ipad os and ios are the same essentially so it will they've done the work right so it's not extending it to

ipad os is not um going to be hard for them i'm just going to predict because they've they've already done it for ios i'll be interested to see, you know, the justification here. I'm fine with it. I always felt it was very weird that we would talk about this thing, but only in an iPhone context. Some of this stuff feels like it's actually better in an iPad context. I say that as somebody who uses his iPad more than he uses his iPhone, right? Like I can picture it better, a lot of things I'd like to do on the ipad and you can't do them so this will allow them to do that so i actually think they've updated

this press release because it's much more clear now than it was this morning when i looked at this so what that quote that i just read sounded weird right but basically what they were trying to say is end user numbers for consumers the uh numbers weren't large enough to be in the threshold but now they are now saying that apple's business customer numbers exceed the quantitative threshold for that 11 fold so that's why and i believe what they said too is that they expect that they will meet the quantitative threshold for the regular users soon. Because they say they are very close to it. And so they're just basically getting ahead of it and saying, put it in.

Yeah. the Department of Justice suit, that claiming that users are locked in is an extremely debatable issue. That said, justifications being whatever they are, the European Commission has the force of law to demand that Apple change its behavior. So we can debate this, but there's no debate society here in court like there will be in the U.S. This is just they've decided it, and therefore they will regulate it. will be a less fractured experience for users in the EU because it's got to be weird to have stuff on your phone that is completely unavailable on your iPad. Although I will say this,

if you've got a bunch of stuff, you've embraced the DMA lifestyle in the EU on your iPhone and your iPad can't use any of that. Does making the iPad be compatible with all that stuff actually make the iPad more part of an ecosystem and therefore increase lock-in? I'm just saying, right? Because if the iPad can't do all the stuff your phone can do, and then there's stuff on Android that does it, I mean, would you consider getting an Android tablet? I don't know. I'm being a little bit silly, but at the same time, it actually sort of bringing the iPad into alignment with the iPhone makes it actually easier to just be comfortable in Apple's ecosystem, because now those two things are connected in a way that they weren't

before. But I guess we'll see what happens. I don't anticipate this is going to be a big deal my guess if i had to guess right now it will be that apple will have an update that will follow the new os version in the fall there will be a subsequent update that will implement this in the eu um you know sometime this fall right right at the deadline right yeah it leave it'll either be like 18 or 18.1 or whatever, but it's going to be around that time. And as you say, I'm sure there's work, but way less, because they're essentially the same, right?

And that's going to be end of October, so it could be 18.0, but it could also easily be like an 18.1 update, depending on how they want to do their release schedule. I'm actually kind of happy this has happened just to make the bifurcation less complicated. I agree. I agree. It always felt a little bit weird that we would talk about that. We're so used to talking about everything in the iPhone and iPad context. And then there's this EU thing where it's just not. So for us, it'll be more convenient, us outside the EU.

But I would imagine that there are a lot of people in the EU who have iPhones and iPads who've been frustrated because they really love something, you know, whether it's just an emulator or whatever. They're going to, they're going to be things that they like, assuming that anybody adopts all of these changes, right? But assuming you add an alternative app store and all of that, like you get Fortnite, let's say, and you get it on your phone and you're like, yeah, but I'm going to switch to my iPad and play it there. It's like, nope, you can an alternative app store and all of that, like you get Fortnite, let's say, and you get it on your phone, and you're like, yeah, but I'm going to switch to my iPad and play it there.

It's like, nope, you can't. You're not allowed. Not allowed on the iPad. So this will change that. Room around up time. Yeehaw. Mark Gurman's been busy. He's had a bunch of reports in the last few days,

and I want to go over them with you. So first up, reporting that Apple and OpenAI have renewed discussions about being a part of iOS 18. It feels late in the game. I'm wondering, so basically this is them being one of the options.

Apple's going to have multiple partners and like a search engine, you'll be able to choose who you want. I think that this is very much I could imagine. We're talking with multiple partners change and you'll be able to choose who you want yeah uh i think that this is very much i could imagine we're talking with multiple part you know and and they might not even go over it yet and we might wait for september for this part we're not picking any winners and well this goes with this goes with our speculation a while ago which is the idea is if apple handles the front end and has a model on the phone then a lot of stuff can be in the in the

in the cloud and you can have different sources for different kinds of material you can have different sources in different regions you could be able to choose a primary source like a search engine and it it doesn't feel quite as late in the game to me because it's a back-end cloud service so and and i think like if you're Apple, you don't want to tie yourself so closely to a, a single cloud provider on the backend, uh, to, you know, cause then you're kind of yoked to them. And so I think this is the idea is it's all Apple upfront and then back in the cloud, there's stuff and it might be open AI stuff. It might be Google stuff. It might be other things that rise or things that fall get pulled out and they can just

have that all be, you know, it's backing information. It's my LLM is going to talk to your LLM and it's going to give back information, which then it's, then my LLM is going to process it and give it to the user, right? It's going to be stuff like that. Here's something that I think could be interesting here, right? Like I imagine Apple could potentially reference the fact that this would happen, right? There's on-device stuff and then there's stuff that happens off-device and that's, you know, there's another provider. I, you know, we call those for

the web, they're search engines, right? It's your default search engine. Yeah. Is Apple going to create a term to call ChatGPT Gemini? We call them LLMs. I don't think Apple's going to do that. I'd be surprised. It'll be like AI source or something, right? My wonder is if Apple

creates this term, could that become a term, like the industry term, to describe these things? It's possible? It's possible. I also had the thought that depending on where they're integrating this stuff. So let's say they're integrating this stuff into a generative AI thing, right?

Where they're not going to do generative, it sounds like, out of the box for their tool. But this is the sort of thing where it's like, look at this paragraph and correct the grammar. Or write three paragraphs about this topic. Right. And first off, that's really great. If Apple can like say, Nope, it wasn't us who hallucinated that thing. It was the cloud AI provider. But if they do that, one way for them to do that is to integrate it into their text editing apis right where this is an interesting idea where there might be new llm based features that are available through the text editing apis

that are basically so it's at the system level and then you would choose your source potentially but you would be able so if you're following me here like you could choose chat gpt or you could choose gemini or you could choose something else i don't even know and that would be what would be used when you say you know when you select text and say correct this or when you are in pages and you say give me me three paragraphs, it would use like, right. Which, which would make sense in a certain way that it would be pervasive in the system at an API level. And then there would be the models that would be, you know, part of that at the system level. Right. So instead of it being, we wired pages with chat GPT, it would be the system text and there's this API and they know about each other and your

apps also will know about it and get to use this feature. And so app developers, because at WWDC, they'll be talking to app developers. This is how you build this stuff in at a system level, which I think is smart. I think that's a way to do it. Because then instead of you having to do the work of integrating with uh you know an ai provider you integrate with a system that you're used to integrating with and it hands that stuff to you so if they do it that way so it's like you can do it in notes you can do it in pages you can do it in mail and you can do it in your third-party apps that starts to sound like a uh an apply approach to using these loms also mark german is reporting some other features coming to ios 18 so updates to many built-in apps

like mail fitness notes and photos how much those updates i don't know i could imagine all of these uh apps getting some ai stuff so i expect that to be sprinkled all over the place. The iPad is going to get a calculator app because the calculator app is going to be updated and they're going to put it on the iPad. Amazing. Pull one out for James Thompson. It only took him a million years. Yep.

And once again, confirming the other reports, free placement of icons on the home screen. Yeah. Yeah, you want to put that app down there in the corner? Go for it. Do it. You know? Yeah.

What a life, what a world. Let's get some aesthetics up in there. And also, Mark had a final report ahead of the new iPad unveiling, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, the iPad event coming next week. Two details. One, the Apple Pencil will have haptic feedback.

I don't know what this means. Like, is this haptic like an iPhone or haptic like an AirPod? You know? They're both haptic feedback, but, you know, the AirPod, it just feels like you're clicking it. Or, you know, the Magic Trackpad or whatever. But the iPhone, I mean, that thing's like buzzing and bipping and blooping all over the place.

So what's it going to be? Right. So is it a button that you squeeze and it makes it, you have a little bit that feels like you squeezed it? Or is it that I'm drawing on the screen and it's going, you know, when you get to the edge or when you snap to a marker or whatever? Do Apple do what so many people have tried to do and say, it feels like you're drawing on paper because they like give you a little vibration issue?

Let me tell you, having experienced the haptic feedback on the Magic Trackpad, which I've turned off on macOS, right? Where they have that thing where it hits the rule boundary and it locks, it snaps for a moment and it vibrates the trackpad. I hate all that stuff. No, don't do it but if it's uh i airpod like where it's sort of like i squeeze it and i get some feedback so that's how they're doing their button that's fine i'm also worried about like if you use it too much you're going to kill the battery too on top of everything else very possible because yeah but the weird news honestly uh the the uh mark german believes he doesn't feel sure about this himself Weird news, honestly. Mark Gurman believes,

he doesn't feel sure about this himself, I think, from his reporting, that he has heard that the iPad Pro could feature an M4 chip and be positioned as an AI-powered device. I have two issues with this. One, it's strange. I mean, not impossible, but strange to introduce the m4 here like that is

odd it would be even weirder for them to talk about this as an ai powered device when nothing will change for another six weeks like right at minimum you know like yeah it's only as ai powered as any other current product that apple sells? Like, it's not okay. Like, they may get the neural engine enhancements that every A&M series chip has had, right? That, like, things that, like, in Pixelmator on the iPad will happen quicker, but that's not making it any more AI-powered than before.

Just things happen faster. This would be... I would be fascinated to see if they're able to pull that happen faster. This would be, I'd be fascinated to see if they're able to pull that off, but it would be surprising to me, honestly. I could not believe this report. No. It doesn't make sense to me for so many reasons. It doesn't make sense in terms of the chip cycle.

Like this is doing a chip ahead of the chip cycle ahead of the iphone chip cycle it's you know what even is an m4 chip if it comes out a few months after the m3 chip um also wasn't this product supposed to be released like a month or two ago and like it was even closer to the like i i wonder if there's some enthusiasm wasn't this product supposed to be released like a month or two ago? And like, it was even closer to the, like, I, I wonder if there's some enthusiasm for the, this product that has gotten in the way. Cause I've, I've heard people assuming it was an M4 to begin with. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not there yet.

This is M3. This is late M3 cycle, not M4 cycle. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And the AI stuff, right? and the ai stuff right like the ai stuff is happening in in june at wwc right that's what we've all been told so why is it that a month earlier there's a product launch that details ai features but just for the for the ipad and also has this chip that should probably not be available for six months. It doesn't...

I mean, you're right. Mark Gurman is hedging. But it's also Mark Gurman. I think he has the same... I'm going to infer he has the same skepticism that we do that on the face of what he has said, it doesn't make sense. But I can understand a scenario where, take the AI part out of it,

that the M4 chip is so good for what they're going to announce, that they're just putting it in here now because it's the best thing for September, October time. So I've got... Let's say, I don't believe this, but i have a scenario where this happens so here it is we already we already did our draft uh we'll talk about it uh but i have a scenario where this happens so so scenario one the chip the what if the ai stuff really did, like Apple was concerned enough about the rise of AI stuff that while they couldn't change their roadmap, there was a way to expedite a generation where they're like, this is going to be way better and expedite the base chip from that generation and pull it forward a little bit. Like, is that impossible?

No, it doesn't it's not something they've done before but first off they can call anything an m4 it could literally be an m3 on a different process and they could call it m4 so there's that right like how different is it and is it possible that they felt like they were going to expedite the low-end M4 generation chip and get it out now? Although, keep in mind, there's an M3 chip, according to Gurman, that hasn't even shipped yet in a product, right? That they're planning on shipping. So how would this be an M4? is there a scenario where they kind of did a red alert and they were targeting this generation and saying, can we get this? Or maybe they got it, you know, the fab at TSMC came up that could make this. And they're like, you know what? We could put this in that iPad

because it's not going to ship in the kind of quantity where we need to get it up and running. And then, you know, by the time we need this in some iMacs or a MacBook Air air it's going to be six months from now and we can put it in now and it will give us a little bit of a benefit so and if we're talking ourselves into this right this we've been expecting these ipads for like two months i know and so you yeah although so and then also if i make one last point last point, what if some of the features that are AI-focused, they realized we can only have this on new hardware? Okay, so this is a good segue into my other point here, which is, remember, they were supposed to come earlier, according to Mark Gurman, and then they weren't.

They were supposed to come earlier, according to Mark Gurman, and then they weren't. And one of the things that he kept saying was because of the software update. And again, I'm not saying I believe this report because I don't, but he said because of the software update. And we read that as being, well, they got to add in the software for the keyboard and they got to add in the software for the pencil too i think right that's how it seemed but again just spitballing here i don't think this is likely but i'm just going to put it out there what if there were some features that were plausibly ai related if apple's really feeling the heat about ai plausibly ai related that were previously going to be held for another version of the software for an 18 beta and then an 18 release that were far enough along that they put them and again, that they put them, pulled them back and said, let's make this work on a very late 17 release on iPad OS market as a beta, but let us ship it in may and say new, because then we're going to be able to say these new iPads are AI monsters

and it's going to get some of the heat off of us. Because is that impossible? Like, is there even, if it's, if it's a Siri model, right. We'll just say for the sake of it, we'll call it Siri. not. If it's a Siri model, right? We'll just say for the sake of it, we'll call it Siri, right?

And it's doing some stuff. Yeah. Is there even an SDK for that anyway? Right. Is there a developer story at all? Does it need to wait for that? And they can also still have like a, hey, we have a new AI kit

that you can integrate with. But you're right. Could they stage it out? Could there be a part of it that's like it doesn't really need beta testing because it's not necessary i don't know i don't know it could it could also be literally that they tie pages and notes and stuff into an llm yeah as as a beta yeah and it's not the Apple thing at all. It's just some other features. And they're like, look, AI, more to come.

And then they walk away. So I guess what I'm saying is I can't entirely discount this rumor because if Apple was desperate enough to show that they're not behind in AI. I mean, they are not as far behind in AI as they're portrayed to be, and to make the stock market, make their investors feel good about it. And I'm not saying that is quite the opposite. That is not the way to develop a product. Can I just stay on that for a second because a lot of people say this yeah there is a possibility that apple do not want this perception inside of the technology community that it's not like just for investors it's that like generally in the community they are considered as behind and also do you know what this is before it's before google io yeah where it is very expected that

google is about to drop huge gemini integrations into android and that they are going to potentially keep some of it for themselves and their own devices and maybe they want to get ahead of that too i don't know like we're in for what is unprecedented times for a while because the playing field has been leveled a bit right so what i would say is it's not necessarily about the stock market but it is also about the stock market it is about general perception general perception about it it is about competition, which is great. Also, I can see Apple saying, wait, we have some of this stuff now, right? Like, so I say, this isn't how you design and develop a product, but I can see them saying, you know what? We have some of this stuff now

and we're going to have more in the future. And we've got these new iPads coming out, and then we're not going to update iPads for a year and a half. So if we're going to do this, maybe we should, if we've got it and we can make some claims now, let's make some claims now. And let's change the narrative going into WWDC with our first, and it doesn't have to run anywhere else yet, but like our first, you know, super AI powered product, and it's the iPad Pro, let's say, and that sets the table. So again, do I think that this is likely? I kind of don't. Do I think that Apple will position the iPad Pro as an AI powered device? Well, probably because everything is AI powered. They position the MacBook Air as an AI powered

device too, to a certain extent. So if they add a feature here or there in that software update, they will certainly, if it's got any machine learning algorithms in it, they will make claims that it is. But if it's got something where they're like, you know what, we pulled pages, AI powered pages forward or whatever, then they'll do that. If they've got some APIs that were basically at the ready, that they changed their priority on four months ago to get them in a little bit sooner, marked as beta. Because remember, the counterargument is it's only a month until WWDC, which means it's really only like five or six weeks before they would release a beta of the new features. So could you polish them a little more so that they fit in the existing OS and still call them beta. And I know developer beta is scary,

but like you give them an extra three or four months, like all of this is possible. I think the chip part is the most out outlandish one because it goes against everything they've done. And also, like I've said all along, these Apple's chips already have AI ML capabilities. They've they've with between the neural engine and the stuff they've done. And also, like I've said all along, these Apple's chips already have AI ML capabilities. They've, they've with between the neural engine and the stuff they've been doing

on the GPU, like they have lots of that stuff already built in. It doesn't require like to flip the switch to go to an AI chip. Like they don't need to do that. So I, you know, I'm super skeptical, but I, I can't just say it's not going to happen because I think you've got to look at the fact that Apple is fighting this going on the industry quarterly analyst calls talking about how they're going to do AI. He's doing interviews and saying AI is a big focus for us and we're going to make some big AI announcements later this year. That is a sign that they are very concerned about perception. And we saw with the MacBook Air release

that they've changed how they refer to features and they are talking about AI power now, which they always soft pedaled. They're now hard selling it because they are concerned about the perception that they are losing it when it comes to AI. So while this is an extreme, bizarre assertion that it's going to be an M4 chip with AI features, I don't think we can rule it out because Apple is feeling that pressure. And that might have led Apple to make some surprising off-pattern judgments a few months ago, which potentially delayed this product. Especially, I'll bring us back to that original report, delayed because of software. I'm still not convinced, but I'm more convinced than I was when I read this report. I feel like we have talked ourselves around on it, that I can understand the scenario in which it would happen, but I'm still not sure that it will. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure they sure that it will yeah it's i don't know i

mean i'm sure they will position it as an ai powered device right but like and and it would not be again i just want to say it would not be that wild i know everybody's like oh they're breaking their pattern they're not they're not going to do that but like it would not be that wild for them to say we have new versions of iWork that have AI features in them. Right? I mean, they could do something like that. That's not everywhere in the OS is a pervasive thing. But you're right, Mike.

They could also say, here's a preview. You can turn on this beta preview of Siri 2 or Siri Pro or whatever, Siri AI on the iPad Pro. And people are like, what do you mean? It's just on the iPad Pro. And they're like, wait and see. They could do that too. So certainly, I would guarantee there will be an AI story at this event about the iPad. There will absolutely be. The question is, is it as kind of radical as it seems here in this report? Or is it more what we expected, which is Apple's going to, like with a MacBook Air, they're going to kind of push it and what we expected, which is Apple's going to, like with a MacBook

Air, they're going to kind of push it and say, yeah, AI, AI, but we're really going to need to wait until the developer conference to see more. I don't know. This episode is brought to you by SaneBox. Having an empty inbox is a thing of the past. We are inundated and unindated with email, and there is no longer the ability to respond to anything and everything because it's just about responding to the important things. Now, the messages that truly matter, the things you actually care about, the things that are important to you, that is where SaneBox comes in. You can think of it as triage for your email. As messages flow in, pile into your inbox, SaneBox does that sorting for you. It sifts

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to start your free trial and get a $25 credit too. That is S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com slash UpgradeFM. Our thanks to SaneBox for their support of this show and RelayFM. So there is an iPad event. There is an actual video event, which we did not expect. And it is happening on May 7th. Now, leading on from that conversation we just had,

I'm like, why would they do that? They have something to say? I'm coming around to this report that I'm not sure about. So we'll be recording after the event at some point. So on May 7th, because we'll be talking about the thing that it was. But we have already drafted. So I've spent a few days with my friend and our friend, friend of the show, underscore David Smith.

I'm going to talk about that in Upgrade plus today because we got up to some fun stuff and he referenced to me he's like are you going to draft today and it's like and then he was like oh you already did it yes we already did it on march 25th over a month ago we drafted because we were expecting some press releases to appear but no any. Now we have an actual event coming up, which I'm excited about. It's going to be interesting. I thought, though, what might be fun today is to now, in the cruel light of a month later, look at our picks and run through them real quick and see how confident we're feeling about them one way or another ahead of scoring them next week.

What do you think? Let's do it all right you go through yours and i'll go through mine okay new apple pencil introduced okay feel good about it yeah yeah i think that is that one that is yeah that one's good oh some of these others are not so good but that one one's good. Larger trackpad on the magic keyboard. Okay. I'm just trying to imagine. So the rationale here is I'm trying to imagine.

I'm also seeing in the harsh light of day why I've lost so many drafts in a row. It's because I'm making dumb picks. That's why. Making picks that are entertaining and that I want to happen and not picks that are boring and actually going to happen. So the rationale here is if you're going to do a magic keyboard and one of the big knocks on it is the lack of function rows and the other big knock on it is the trackpad is tiny. Would you not make the trackpad bigger? That's it. That's all I got.

The base model iPad receives an update. Now, I think I've seen some reports that that's not happening. Oh, really? So I thought I saw something that said that that wasn't going to happen. Possibly. So we'll see. We'll see. An iPad Pro case is offered in a color that isn't essentially gray, white, or black.

I don't know. I don't know, Mike. Right now, they used to do it in colors, and then they kind of took the colors away. So I'm concerned about this. But again, I want to manifest things that are good into the world by picking them on the draft. It's not how you should draft. iPad Pro has a new os feature that takes advantage of a new accessory i think that's a given right it'll

be something that takes advantage of a new accessory pencil thing that is alternate pencil items or something there's an expectation of some kind of button or feature right so like you've got a tire to something yeah yeah uh magic keyboard comes color match to ipad pro models so right currently it's like white and gray so but there's this metallic it's supposed to be like aluminum so i i feel like they want to make them match i actually feel okay about that pick too you got a lot of magic keyboard picks here i'm really excited about the magic keyboard that's the problem uh magic keyboard only works with 2024 ipad pro models i i still believe that too yep it'll eventually work with others but i think not out of the gate no and new apple pencil has

an eraser which we we said at the time if you can flip it over and erase something in a mode then that's what i'm talking about it's sort of a second surface to do that sort of thing um i don't know what happens we'd have to check the tape if you can press a button and turn it into a eraser but that's sort of not what i was thinking okay those are my choices. Mine are both iPad Pro models have an OLED display. I'm feeling good about that. The iPad Pro front camera is on the horizontal edge. Feeling good about that. iPad Air comes in current iPad Pro sizes.

Also feeling good about that. iPad Pro starts at a higher price. Feeling good about that. New Magic Keyboard has a function row. I mean, why not? This is very similar to your larger trackpad if you're going to do it actually do it do it do it if you're going to do it uh the ipad air front camera is on the horizontal ledge i'm going all horizontal ledge i didn't remember doing it's interesting because it's possible i mean it should be right but it's possible that this will be one of those frustrations where Apple still doesn't drag the whole product line where it needs to go because it's reusing old hardware designs or something.

I don't know. I hope so. The new Apple Pencil charges magnetically. And the reason that is, I guess, a pick of question is because of the camera right like what happens to that thing yeah they they came up with that new apple pencil that charges via usbc yeah so there's a question like if they move the camera do they offer magnetic charging or is it just you know also a usbc kind of thing and the ipad pro gets magsafe for charging yeah i don't think that one's gonna happen i still do but i i think it's not magsafe as we think of it like it could even

be mac magsafe or something else i mean they already have two magsafes why not have another one why not more keep doing it do they say that the apple watch charges via magsafe uh no no yeah no they don't that would be funny though uh i'm feeling confident about mine i i think that you're being too harsh on yours um i i still think there's a lot of stuff in here which is of which will happen but i feel good about i feel better about my picks than you're feeling about yours i think yes i feel better about your picks than i'm feeling about mine maybe that's why you're a champion you know i think so maybe that's why and also not making bad picks those two things to be champion you have to make good picks yeah my advice to people

who are playing drafts uh make better picks. Yeah, it's really good. Make good picks and you win. Yeah, make dumb picks and you will not win. It's just how it goes. I have a story for you, Jason Snell. Okay. Something that happened to me over the weekend. It's going to be one of those good stories, right?

A really happy story? Like a life-affirming... I don't think so. It's an interesting story. So, on Friday, reports started appearing, and I've got a link here for 9to5Mac, of people having their Apple IDs locked randomly and that password changes were required

to unlock their Apple ID. And as of recording, so this happened on Friday, as of recording on Monday, there has been no clarity over why this happened. And it seemed like it was relatively widespread.

I have a few friends that I know this happened to and there was a lot of reports of it that are in somebody's articles. I was away this weekend. I went to the Lake District with our friend underscore David Smith. We did some hiking.

It was a wonderful trip. I love the Lake District. I had a notification on my Apple Watch at 6.15 in the morning on Friday to enter my password. So I was going to be waking up at 7, so it was a little early, but I felt a tap. I guess I was kind a little early, but I felt a tap.

I guess I was kind of starting to rise. I felt a tap. And it said, enter your password for your Apple ID, which I thought was very peculiar. But I was still slightly asleep, and I managed to type it in on my Apple Watch. No problem. Type, type, type, type, type. Enter. Your Apple ID has been locked.

Now that was odd, I will say. And the reason I did this is because the hotel that I was in, it did not have, I hate when this happens, they did not have plug sockets next to the bed. So my phone was charging over on the, like a little desk. so that was why i didn't grab my phone to type in my password right so i get up and go grab my phone grab my phone and it says your apple id has been locked unlock your apple id so i tap whatever button to put in my password and it says oh sir no no no stolen device protection because i'm not at home, kicks in. To tell me, you know, for the safety of my device and my Apple ID, I will need to wait an hour now. Now, the key thing here is, I think this is happening just to me at this point.

I don't know. I didn't see the reports. I was sleeping. I didn't know that this was like a widespread thing that was happening. And so I'm thinking I'm being hacked, right? Is what's happening to me. Someone's trying to get into my Apple ID and I don't know what is going on. And now I'm like, wait an hour. And at the same time, I'm starting to get tons of notifications on my watch of things not working, right? Like it's just freaking out. Like, iMessage, all this kind of stuff is going on. I grab my laptop, all the same errors, right? Like,

iMessage isn't working, I'm getting errors from my email app, errors from my calendar, all of the stuff that's attached to my Apple ID. And I'm also getting the same, like, you know, your Apple ID has been locked, unlock your Apple ID thing there and because stolen device protection is not on the Mac I was able to do this I was able to go in, reset my Apple ID and I had to change my password which is not a thing I wanted

to do at that point so I now have a brand new Apple ID password and I didn't have to wait on the device this then fixed all the device prompts so that it stopped then and it actually fixed it on my iPhone. I don't know how this was the case but it did, it stopped it.

I guess they're linking together somehow and I did, by the way, get like 45 minutes later a thing that says, hey, you can change your password now on my iPhone but I'd already done it so I didn't need to.

This then had a couple of knock-on effects. So some applications, like calendar apps, mail apps, stuff like that, they require app-specific passwords. And so all of my devices, so two Macs, my iPhone, my iPad, whatever, they're logged into Fantastical and Spark via this app-specific password thing, which, by the way, Apple, sort that out however you have to do it. I don't care.

Just find a way to do it. None of my other services need this thing. You can just log in via some authentication system or create some kind of version of a system-level thing that they can take that information from or whatever, but like,

I don't know why I need to do this. Well, all of those apps, specific app, specific passwords have now been deleted because I changed, because I changed my Apple ID password, a thing I didn't want to do. So now all of my devices are not working with the things that require

apps, specific passwords. So like a lot of this stuff, there are a couple of other things that require abstract passwords. So a lot of this stuff, there are a couple other things too that I'll mention in a minute. I hate the kind of errors where there are knock-on effects that you can't see yet. I know that there are things that are broken. I don't know what's broken.

But there's stuff that's broken. Similarly, I didn't know, because it happened to our friend James Thompson, he was posting about it on Mastodon saying that you if this happened to you you have to go in on your devices and manually re-enable imessage and facetime because for some reason this turns them off and also changes your settings so if you're like start new messages from email or phone number it just reverts that to phone number i think but like all my devices like signed out of imessage i had to go in and sign them all in and so i'm also like uh i couldn't see fitness sharing on my apple watch until i rebooted my apple watch like there's all this

weird stuff that's now happening and i'm very frustrated about it all but this was just a very weird thing that happened to me because it all kicked off and was made worse by the fact that I happened to be traveling. So stolen device protection. I think it's a good idea unless something happens on Apple's Apple ID servers randomly and makes you reset your password. And as I mentioned before, no idea what happened.

Was this a security breach? Was there some kind of code deployment issue? Like, unknown. But this is what happened to me at 6.20 a.m. on Saturday morning. I think it's interesting that Apple, like, it's not great that Apple has not communicated to people about this. Yeah. about this yeah as of this recording like that's a that's a thing where you should have a communication either via the press or via you know a direct email or something to customers who are affected i don't need them to contact me directly really like i think it would be best but like it's it's just surprising to me that they haven't responded to media inquiries it seems like

right and the status page doesn't say we had this issue. Now, I have one theory about this, which is this could be a security measure, right? They could have had an ongoing or an alert about some sort of security problem that basically led them to do a mass reset, a mass locking of IDs. But I feel like if you do that, should disclose that right like that's the thing that you would proactively disclose yeah yeah i mean i get again i could see the argument of like if it's an ongoing issue where they're concerned about something that's still happening and they don't want you know but once people are talking about it it's not like that you could give away what's going on necessarily by just admitting that there's an issue there.

But the fact that they aren't talking about it at all, I find that very strange. And it makes me uncomfortable, right? Because it actually suggests that maybe this is a larger problem that they don't want to admit to right now or that they don't understand right now. Where there was some ingress that they don't fully understand and that this was just like a quick response to that but whatever it is there should be some disclosure that hasn't happened it's too bad so yeah that's my little story it was very strange very weird i was very freaked out and i felt much better when i'm in a mastodon and just saw the the timeline of people happening and then i told

my wife and she was like oh so that's why the apple tv was freaking out last night that's why the apple tv was freaking out makes sense makes sense that happened to her too she had to do the whole thing that i had to do as well um so i'm glad that you got your hiking time in the lake district which is a beautiful place i've been to a couple of times. It's great. Although, did Dave take it easy on you? He did. He did. I'll have more details about this in Upgrade Plus.

He did mention to me, which is good, let's just be happy that this didn't happen while we were up a mountain. Yeah. With one bar of reception. With one. Yeah. Mm-hmm. All right. That's good.

Well, we'll talk about it in Upgrade Plus a little bit. Because I'm going to Scotlandotland and and to islands where you've got to hike around i should probably ask dave for advice you should ask him he'll have recommendations for you i know that awesome i will i will do that then all right well this sucks and uh and on top of that the fact that apple hasn't explained anything about it that's bad because yeah i mean these things happen when it's like one person, you know, weird stuff happens to one person. This wasn't one of those. We have a mutual friend who is locked out of his account all the time. Yeah, because someone wants it.

Yeah. Probably. Or something else. He's being griefed or whatever. But like, yeah, these things happen. But I don't think this was that. No. This episode is brought to you by Vitally.

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A thanks to Vitally for their support of this show and RelayFM. Let's finish out today with some Ask Upgrade questions. First up today comes from Janice who asks, in what area or with what tasks would you like AI

to help you the most? Oh. Oh, wow. Like, okay, a couple of things. things one is i want to have a voice assistant that understands context better is able to do things is able to remember what we're talking about and allows me to you know correct it and move it in the right direction and is is like i think voice assistance is a very clever category that has never lived up in any voice assistant to its potential. I would like to be able to say

something complex to a voice assistant and have it ask me questions that clarify things it doesn't understand about what I said. And that just doesn't happen. So that would be one of them. And then the other thing is something that we've talked about here, which is this idea that, like, I use the example of Dan Morin looking up, like, facts about things that happened in his books. And he's got, like, four books, four or five books set in the same world. he doesn't remember that i mean when i've written novels it's the same thing right it's like i don't remember every detail about every character across even one book let alone five books and being able to pour that into uh an ai where it has read your books and knows them all and can hold it in its mind. So that if you say, did I ever say what hair color

this person was, or when did this last person fire a weapon? And it's something that you can't really search the text for because there's so many different ways of phrasing that, but the AI can do that. Like being able to look at my email repository and give me an answer so i don't have to try to craft search queries and i'm pretty good at crafting search queries but i think that i'm an outlier at that right like i'm in the 99th percentile of search query crafting and even i get frustrated but like people who are in the 50th percentile or the 20th percentile, like imagine the boon to them of saying, when was the last time I heard from so-and-so? Or say, I got a text from a friend this weekend who said it's been 10 years since we went to a Premier League soccer match. I can't believe it's been 10 years since that.

It was 2014. But it was great. It was Fulham and Hull. Hull was in the Premier League back then. They're not now. And, uh, I had that moment where, where I thought, you know, this is the sort of thing where you could ask an assistant, like, when did I go to that soccer match? And it would be able to look at like my text messages, my emails and my photo library and be like, Oh, I've got a photo library

item that was, that was taken at Craven cottage, the the home of fulham it's on this date and it might even be able to say oh yeah you went with matt and simon to that match and it was now here's the final score or i could ask at the final score like it's all there but i want to be able to have it do that work researching my own data trove right like? Like I could do it, but why? Like the computer should do that for me. I'm in complete agreement with you. And to further talk about what I would want, I'm going to go to Eric's question.

Eric asked, for the new AI features coming out at the next WWDC, do you think they'll call it Knowledge Navigator? I don't, but if you don't know what that means or if you have not watched the apple knowledge navigator video in a while from 1987 i recommend you do that because while this video is kind of hilarious and incredibly pompous uh but i guess it was it was made in 1987 it's just like is what it is by a bunch of white lab coat computer geniuses who thought that they i mean it's one of those

uh this was a the knowledge navigator was a concept idea uh that apple was working out during working out during the john scully era and it is essentially like a a foldable iPad, which is a little hilarious. But the key thing that's going on is the computer user in his Oak office is just talking to the computer, having a conversation with his computer and asking the computer to retrieve things for him in very colloquial language, simple language, like talking to it as if it's a person and asking for the computer to do things for him. Like, since 1987, people have wanted to do this, and we've not gotten there. But I believe that large language models are the biggest, I mean, obviously not unloading this,

but watching this, large language models are the biggest thing to have happened that could possibly allow for something like this. A computer's ability to store an incredible amount of information and make sense of it all in one go and keep contacts and have memory. This is something we've not truly had before. Maybe we're getting closer now, but I would like some version of this this that i could have a conversation with my computer in a way that makes sense in my brain to be able to extract information but like what jason was saying mostly i want it for my own information like anything anywhere on my computer to be able to get that for me and like and it doesn't need to be like screen capturing my computer forever and recording all the video.

Like I don't need that. But like to be able to, at a moment's notice, be able to search every task I've ever completed, every email I've ever sent, every iMessage I've ever sent, to check my browser history, like all of this stuff that exists on my computer

that is searchable by text by me, but I have to know where to look for it to be able to search all of that stuff and provide that information for me along with web searches. That's what I want my computer to be able to do. I want a knowledge navigator, and I'm hoping that maybe we're going to start getting that

in the next couple of years. So I've got a weird related thing, which is just this weekend, I was having a conversation with John Maltz about Star Trek, as you do. And John has a t-shirt for sale that I guess I'll plug here. So it's a reference to a Star Trek episode called The Conscience the king original star trek it's a great episode it turns out it was not like they didn't repeat it on nbc because it's too talky that's because it's like yeah it's it's serious and weighty and not actiony uh but it's a great episode um and one of the things that happens in it i was

just struck by it again so you said we've been wanting this since the 80s. How about the 60s? So here is, there are multiple of these in this episode, and there are in other episodes too, but I thought this was a great example where Spock goes to the computer and says, library computer. Kevin Kirk says, history file, subject, former governor Kodos of Tarsus IV, also known as Kodos the Executioner. After that, background on actor Anton Karadian. And the computer says, working,

Kodos the Executioner, summary, governor of Tarsus IV, 20 Earth years ago, invoke marshal, starts to give the summary. Literally, it's the TLDR. And then it says, case closed, detailed information follows on stardate. And he goes, stop information on Anton Caridian gives the background on him. And then says, uh, give comparative identification between actor Caridian and governor Kodos, no identification records available. The computer says, give information on Caridian prior to Kodos his death,

no information available prior on the actor prior to 20 years ago. And then Kirk says, photograph of Kodos. And then it says photograph of Caridian. He says, put them Kodos. And then it says, photograph of Caridian. He says, put them side by side. And it does it. And it's like, dun, dun, dun. They're the same guy, right?

And I was sitting there thinking, oh my God, we are still talking about letting computers do this. Star Trek got it exactly right, which is, you know, he could be using, Captain Kirk could have his mouse and his keyboard out and he could be like, do, do, do, do. We'll click on that. And if he needs help, he can get a second Captain Kirk could have his mouse and his keyboard out and he could be like, we'll click on that. And if he needs help, he can get a second person to type with him on the keyboard because that's what makes that, that goes faster according to television.

But no, he just talks to the computer and has it refine its searches and it's searching the interstellar federation database or whatever. But like, so I love that because it's still the dream and it should be doable, right? It's just, how do you get there? I think actually one of the reasons people are super excited about these LLMs is this, which is it actually fulfills a promise, which is give me a system that is not smarter than me in most ways, but is smarter than me in the fact that it can hold all of this information in its brain or find it if it needs to, and then give me back my

answer without me spending five or 10 or 20 or 30 minutes doing all the research. And it's just, that's what we're looking for here. And it just struck me watching an episode of Star Trek from like 1966 that this is absolutely the dream even now that's literally they're talking to siri and siri is in this case good so that's what i would love that's what we would love give us the things we've wanted forever let's navigate our knowledge you didn't think original star trek was going to happen did you um i mean it's me there's always a non-zero chance of it right i never don't think it's i'm never when it happens i'm not like whoa what star trek no i'm always ready yeah it's not it's not the spanish inquisition

i mean you kind of expect it before it gets here yeah and nick asks do you think the new ipad pro will feature a titanium design like the iPhone 15 Pro? No. I hadn't considered it, but I see it as possible. I don't think so, because I think they're going to do an aluminum laptop look, and the keyboard has to match it. Yeah, that's a good point.

You wouldn't want to do a titanium keyboard, probably. But, I mean, I hadn't considered this. It's an interesting thought, but you're right right it's maybe going to lean more towards macbook pro than iphone pro if you would like to send in a question for a future episode very easy to do so go to upgradefeedback.com you can check out jason's work at sixcolors.com you can hear him here on relay fm and at the incomparable.com. You can hear him here on RelayFM and at theincomparable.com. You'll hear my shows here on RelayFM as well. You can check out my other work at cortexbrand.com.

Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. We mentioned it at the top of the show, but you can always watch video episodes or video clips. We're on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We're at Upgrade Relay. Please go and check out our limited edition, limited time merchandise

over at UpgradeYourWardrobe.com. Are you a professional? Are you a color czar-ian? Yeah, just a regular old colorful t-shirt wearer. Non-professional, yeah. Go and check it out, UpgradeYourWardrobe.com Thank you to our members who support us of Upgrade Plus and thank you to our sponsors

too. Vitally, Squarespace, and SaneBox. We'll be back next week with our post-game analysis of Apple's iPad announcements. Sometime on Tuesday to be determined, but we will get there post-game on Tuesday. Is it a game maybe who knows and all

will be revealed then but if for any reason it's not whenever you might expect it to be uh we'll let people know in discord and on mastodon there will be an episode next week you can rest assured unusual time probably uh for those in america my guess is it'll be Tuesday night sometime by the time you get it, which is instead of Monday afternoon, a little late, but you know, what are we going to do? There's an Apple event.

You got to wait and then you got to talk about it afterward and we will. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.