Upgrade - 522: Reserve Your Spot

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

from relay this is upgrade episode 522 for july 29th 2024 this episode is brought to you by fit bond delete me and ladder my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike anything interesting happen lately? Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. I have a Snow Talk question for you to begin today's episode. It comes from me and I would like to know, Jason, how was your flight home from London? Oh, it was great. I mean, I was sitting on a plane for a long time.

It wasn't great. I read a lot and that was fine. It was uneventful. We got home. I didn't hallucinate anything on the drive home which is important because you know that's flying this direction that's the long day you know you leave in the morning and it's and then a long time passes and it's still daytime uh that was weird but uh made it home um was gonna take the Elizabeth line. Very exciting.

So I took the Elizabeth line a couple of times this weekend. And this is crossrail. It's super fast and air conditioned and smooth ride. And it's great. We get to Paddington Station at six in the morning to go to Heathrow. And the Elizabeth line escalators are all blocked off. Right. And their trains are running,

and it's like, no, you can't go down there. I don't know why. Okay. But I have a theory. I have a conspiracy theory, which is it's a conspiracy theory by the Heathrow Express. Oh, you think that there's like, like putting barriers they just they

they just put barriers up and then they position their sales people because their train is right there like right next to where it is yep and they and they had a conveniently located salesperson there to sell us two tickets to go on the heathrow express how nice of them instead for twice the price but at that point we got to get to the airport right so we went on the heathrow express instead of the elizabeth line to the airport it's too bad point, we got to get to the airport, right? So we went on the Heathrow Express instead of the Elizabeth Line to the airport. It's too bad. I was looking forward to sticking it to the man by just riding the Elizabeth Line, which also, another thing I noticed before we even talk about London, just as part of this journeys thing, I noticed on all the signs and the maps and the website that the Elizabeth Line is not part of the London Underground.

No. It's weird. So there's the Underground Lines. There are the Overground Lines, which are going to get names, as we talked about this weekend. They're going to get names. And then there's the Elizabeth Line,

which is part of the transit system but not officially part of it well and it has no other name so it's just its own thing it's the elizabeth line it is what it is yeah it's like it's all tfl right and like tfl and underground and tube these are all used interchangeably Because ostensibly it works the same. Like if it's part of TFL, you use the Oyster card. It's all the, everything works together. But Elizabeth Line leaves London. Like it just goes and goes and goes.

Way out there. So instead it's got its own identity. And that's fine also i have a um another transit related update which was the first tube station we went to it would not accept my apple pay okay and so we're like i guess we're gonna have to get oyster cards because i was like well wait a second why it's supposed to work why is it not working so we went to the oyster card machine and we bought two Oyster cards of which one was delivered. And then there was a sign that put up saying, we don't have any more cards.

Contact somebody. You maybe got the only Oyster card in London. Like that. Yeah. Right. So then we go back and we tried every turnstile and one of the turnstiles took my Apple Pay. And so Lauren used all the credit on that Oyster card and then she used hers and I used mine. It was fine. But like, it's just the luck but I'm glad it did finally work because we were in a position there where we had, if we couldn't use

our card and our credit card, you know, Apple Pay to get in the tube and there weren't Oyster cards in the Oyster card machine, I'm not quite sure. I mean, we would have taken a cab to wherever we were going. I think it was with

our bag, so it was to the hotel, but it was fine. Probably you could have taken a cab to wherever we were going i think it was with our it was with our bag so it was to the hotel but it was fine probably you could have bought a paper ticket from the machine it's probably what you would have done yeah it anyway didn't it didn't end up mattering because uh then it worked and then it was great because there's nothing nothing like tapping with your watch and and going right on yeah Yes, the best. Absolutely the best. So that was my Snow Talk question. But if you would like to send in a Snow Talk question, dear listener, please go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send that in. So we obviously spoke about this.

I expect most people know, but Jason has just returned from London because we just had the Relay 10 event in London at the Historic Hackney Empire in front of over over a thousand relay listeners uh which it was an absolutely incredible event we have audio available so that's available now in the departures feed which is where we put uh all of our live stuff so i'll put a link to that in the show notes if you want to listen uh it was a great time it you know i wanted this to happen

for so long and we worked really really hard to make it work and this event excelled in every possible way for me uh it was just a wonderful celebration to of relay and everyone involved from all of the hosts that were there the host that couldn't be there even and all of the listeners that could be there and all the listeners that maybe couldn't it was just unforgettable and to have that many hosts together again in this kind of way it felt like something that has been so long and and it really felt like the family again which it hasn't felt like for me in a long time like wwdc 2023 was the last time we had that many people together but it's still not the same because it's people are still spread out and like really it hasn't felt this way for me for like five years since relay five in san francisco

and it was so incredible and jason you did such an incredible job as the host again and i am so grateful thank you that you did it it was thank you it was so much fun and really made the show you're the one who made me do it you were you were you were gonna host it and then you're like no you just do it i was gonna do it for the best you got to run the board you got to be mr scorekeeper yeah and it's better we got to do the thing that we do which i love you know we got to uh we got to be a double act which is always such a great great joy for me and then occasionally remember that steven was also there i steven got to give his thoughts you know he did i asked him his thoughts reluctantly and but don't forget we

asked him to do a job and he didn't do it do you remember that we won't spoil it but you know he was asked. Yeah. There's one specific request was made of Stephen. And then when came time for him to reveal what he was going to tell us, he said, I didn't do it. It was amazing. Actually, as a comedy moment, it was far better that way. I'm happy that he didn't have the answer. And I'm sure that Kate knows the answer to that question and has taken the actual, because that's really, the truth is, if you want precision counting, what you really want is a listener, not one of the hosts.

They're not good at it. No. We also were honored, surprisingly, with Relay has received the St. Jude Creator Achievement Award, which is such an incredible honor. And I've put some links in the show notes to some pictures of mine and also a picture Stephen took which shows the award. St. Jude came. We had some representatives from OSAC, which is the fundraising organization of St. Jude, to come and speak to our audience.

They wanted to come and be able to tell our audience how much this partnership has meant to them over the last five years. And they surprised us with this award. And I think we're the second people to get it. And that is truly one of the great honors of my life to receive an award like that to get that kind of recognition but it's not just for me it's not just for steven yes us and dr lupo but it's us is a big deal uh yeah i had never heard of dr lupo and then uh we went to memphis for the uh the the the fundraising you know creator summit earlier this year and uh i had never heard of dr lupo but i was rapidly told of dr lupo because his

fundraising skills for saint jude are legendary yeah he raises millions a year not a doctor i'm just saying not a doctor uh i think he might was he wasn't he a doctor at some point oh man if he was really a doctor i'd like him less now even uh and so dr l Lupo is a game streamer. We're connected with the gaming fundraising St. Jude Play Live. They honored us with that award, but it's for all of us. It's for the community. It's for everyone. I'm just

so thankful of it. You may have noticed at the top, and you'll notice how I'm doing. Now, one of the things we announced at the live show, and this is a rolling thing, most likely. We're changing i'm doing now uh one of the things we announced at the live show and this is a a rolling thing most likely uh we're changing the name of relay fm to just relay um and we have some branding stuff that's going to be happening we announced it in the live show and it's going to be happening hopefully over the coming weeks um we're still waiting on some uh approvals from the u.s uh

trademark office of the new artwork but i think the thing we're pretty set on is we're still waiting on some approvals from the US trademark office of the new artwork. But I think the thing we're pretty set on is we're dropping the FM from the name of the company because nobody calls it that. Still in the URL. If you miss it, don't worry. The URL is not going anywhere. No, you don't want to get rid of URL.

That tends to be a bad thing. Federated states of Micronesia. Yes. They're still getting their money. As we enter our 10th year, it's time for some some simplification uh when it comes to our branding bit of a refresh and uh it's going to be a relay soon time and yeah it's still called relay because that's all anybody ever calls it so

that includes us um it was something that me and steven really tried to hold on to for a long time um and then just just let it go uh steven had a very telling uh comment where he said that he's wanted to change the relay logo for um nine and a half years basically yeah yeah so i finally we've finally done it um he talked he finally talked you into it huh there was never an idea like really uh. Also, how often do you want to re-range your company, you know? And so, yeah, again, just an incredible time. Oh, can I shout out? I want to shout out listener Marlies who appeared.

And not only did I identify her on site, I said, that's Marlies, isn't it? Yep. But she was wearing a bootleg or shall we say semi unwittingly authorized by me but it doesn't matter it was bootleg bootleg merch it was a dma today t-shirt yep it was in blue the color of because you know it looked great spectacular so we may need to no we may need to like no one wants it reboot that nobody wants that t-shirt except molly's there'll be one person that will buy it they already have it they already made it for herself yeah so yeah it was just like you know i i don't really have the words to explain how i'm feeling right now i'm exhausted um it has been a very difficult couple of weeks

uh but this i i could not have asked for any better than uh and how the event went so i hope that people enjoyed it and they'll listen to the audio and enjoy that too the uh we'll talk more about some of my uh my excitement of uh of things things that i did on my trip in upgrade plus i just i just will mention here that um among the other things that we did we got a boat ride from the inventor of emojis himself jeremy burge the bur Burge Barge. That was amazing. If you look on Instagram, you will find, and TikTok, because Jeremy, you will find lots of pictures of me and Casey and Aaron Liss cranking locks up and down in central London so that Jeremy's boat could pass through various places. And of course the best place to learn how to use locks is in the middle of, uh, Camden where there's the, uh,

the, the huge shopping and dining and people watching area that the people they're watching are you while you try to figure out how boats work. So, uh, we had a great time. The weather was great. Jeremy was a wonderful host. And I could not have spent a more pleasant sort of half day than cruising

central London with the Lisses and Jeremy. And then at one point I turned around and James Thompson appeared on the boat. Ah, where'd he come from? Scotland, I think. Well, originally.

Yeah. I know that because he came down. He and his wife came down with me and Lauren on the train. They were right there. I saw him come down. But suddenly, you're just on a boat ride with people, and then you turn around and there's more people on the boat. Yeah.

Tricky. He's tricky. This episode is brought to you by FitBod. If you're looking to change your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to get started. That's why I'm pleased to let you know that FitBod is both an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan just for you.

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That is F-I-T-B-O-D dot me slash upgrade. Go there now and get your customized fitness plan and 25% off your membership. That is fitbod.me slash upgrade. A thanks to Fitbod for their support of this show and RelayFM. Mike, while you introduce the next segment i'm just gonna i'm uh there's a little local color okay you ready i'm gonna be eating a digestive biscuit oh wonderful that's great one of those things that i like to write like a little british little souvenir they're available here too at various stores but no no no these i bought at a like a tesco so very british they're really british

so we've been gone for a couple of weeks i think and so there's been a there's been a bit of news that i wanted to cover uh first off is some vision pro stuff so apple has released some more details about a selection of immersive content coming to vision pro uh the first new content which is available now asterisk is a series called boundless and it depicts a hot air balloon ride in the first episode uh weirdly this content is not available in the uk until the fall even though it's available in the us right now which is a thing i can't fully fathom because surely they own this content like i don't i can't i don't know what's going on there. They want to wait till more people have the Vision Pro in the UK

so they can blow their minds. I just don't understand. I mean, that, while weird, is like the only logical thing to me, but it doesn't make any sense. Like very, very strange. It's a very strange decision. But anyway, they also detail in a press release i've got in the show notes some some of the upcoming content that we'd saw a little bit about wbc there's a film from the weekend there's

a couple of new short films and footage from the nba all-star weekend they're all coming later on this year which means maybe they'll come next year to the uk i don't know i don't know what's going on there and i find it really peculiar. The final coming soon Vision Pro environment has now arrived. It's called Lake Wrangler. Wrangler? I'm definitely saying that wrong. It's named after a Norwegian

lake, which is the lake that it is based on. This is your moody foggy lake. Yeah. This is the Twin Peaks environment. It seems to have been, the availability for it seems to have been pushed out over the air. You go to the environments tab and download it. You don't need to do a software update to get it. And it's downloadable from the environments tab itself.

I find this really interesting that this is the second thing that I can remember with the Vision Pro where they're just like, oh, hey, you can do this now. And there hasn't been like a point update. So we had Spatial Personas was one of them. Like it was like, hey, reboot your device. And now we have this. I find that really interesting. This is the kind of, this is a way that I would like Apple to be doing more software

updates. I think people said this for a long time of like. You don't have to do this all at once. You can only do your feature updates when they're all paired with a much larger set of feature updates. You could do little bits here and there. But the thing that makes me hopeful is that this mechanic of pushing environments over the air maybe could lead to more in the future.

They've clearly built for the ability to i guess to just download books so since they're down they were already they were already downloadable right like you they weren't all on device you can remove them and download them yeah exactly because they're like big assets they're they're large and so if you're doing i think they're anticipating having storage management issues and that they built it to be modular. If that's the case, and there isn't any new operating system feature that's required, right? This should be totally modular. that the OS looks at that says, what are the available environments? And it can update dynamically to add other environments. And they just show up because they're downloads, right? They should be able to be this dynamic. So I hope they will be.

And I hope there are more of them. And as we've said before, I also hope that developers get a way to contribute environments at some point here, because there are some really nice immersive environments in other apps that it would be nice to use right like you you could then you could really hang out at the top of avengers tower and that would be fun someone asked me recently i think it's on mastodon they do you know if you think about these two things together like third

party watch faces and third party environments like are we in the same boat with this wish and my kind of feeling on that is Apple has never encouraged the development of watch faces for the Apple Watch but with the Vision Pro they have the ability for you to

create an immersive environment inside of an application and it's like a thing that's what it's called like you can do it and then then have your app sit on top of it so in theory it doesn't seem like a big leap no i i would be shocked if the disney plus app environments were really any different from what apple's building they're just walled off in the app and so i i think it's there may be some technical details, but I don't know why you would build

it differently. You'd want it to be using the same kind of process. And if that's the case, it would seem to be like the next step would be to let apps contribute those to the system. And it's really interesting, like weird in a way, that there were two coming soon environments. There was this one and there was Boroboro.

Boroboro is part of VisionOS 2, but this one's just available now. I love the Vision Pro and VisionOS team because they do things in ways that I just can't expect. There's some strange forking, strange dichotomy going on here. Wait till you hear about what's happening with the ios betas but that's later uh during comic-con ron moore gave more details about star city the for all mankind spin-off series set in the soviet union with parallel timing to the beginning of for all mankind so it goes back to the beginning of when for all mankind season one yeah the space race in the 60s uh the show will debut after the next season of for all mankind which is currently in production they are planning a multiple season arc for star city like for all mankind and it will feature time

jumps so i i would hope that we're going to basically go back to the beginning and tell every season um the show is currently being written, and they are planning on some, but not all of it, to be in Russian. Yeah. It sounds like somebody asked, is this just going to all be in Russian? Ron Moore said, I don't see how we can do that. So my guess is that they'll either hunt for Red October it, where they'll start it in Russian and have everybody speak English, or they'll do a thing that a lot of movies do, where they have everybody speaking with Russian accents in English, but the writing will all be in Cyrillic Russian.

And maybe when there are scenes with people speaking other languages, they might drop back to actually speaking Russian so that you can have that kind of disconnect between the languages that other people are speaking. But that's my guess. I don't think Apple TV Plus really wants a show that's entirely in Russian. Have you seen Shogun? Oh, Mike, it's so good.

Have you seen it? Yeah, we just finished it last week. Unbelievable. Like, truly incredible. That's a show that's almost entirely in Japanese. The difference there is that, first off japan you know is a market for uh disney plus and hulu um and it works better in japan also it's part of it's part of the real history of japan and it works better in japanese and there's very little english uh whereas apple's not really concerned about the

russian market but the reason i brought it up is like, it's such a mind-bending thing. So all of the Japanese characters are speaking Japanese to each other. Yes. But there is an English character who most of the time you hear him he's speaking Portuguese. But that's English. He speaks English. But he also speaks English sometimes.

And like, you never know. know and like i just wonder if they might try and maybe do something like that i don't know but i don't know what that would mean i can't conceive a no i i don't think they will i think almost everybody will speak english with a russian accent except for when maybe they're interacting with other people but yes uh shogun is brilliant and there's a whole, like the fact that they wrote it in English and then they had it translated into Japanese. And then they went to Japanese playwrights and had them write that Japanese in the style of Japanese Shogun dramas. So it's more flowery and more, they said a little more Shakespearean, right? Like it's period language, not modern Japanese.

And then that's what the actors were given in their scripts and then they based i think they based the the captions then for english on the the that sort of translated and then wordsmithed version to bring it back to english i love it that is the that is i could make an argument that one of the very first sort of truly global TV shows ever is Shogun because it's an American TV show except a lot of the producers

are Japanese. Most of the actors are Japanese. The writing started in English but went to Japanese and they used experts. It's a real collaboration. And it was shot in Canada.

And for anybody who hasn't seen it. Did you know that? It was shot in Canada? And shot in Canada. Well, I mean, they're like, we need something to double for a feudal Japan. And they're like, And it was shot in Canada. everybody out there. Shogun. It's great. Disney Plus everywhere but the US where it's Hulu. I would not be surprised if we're talking about this again in the Upgradies.

I would not be surprised. Yes. Agreed. The Retro PC Emulator UTM-SE has now been approved by Apple. It is now available in both the App Store and the Alt Store. This is one of the two retro PC emulators

we were talking about multiple weeks ago, is this and Eidos. So this app had been previously rejected and rejected in notarization after being held up in notarization. It got spoken about publicly. The app has now been what is being referred to as like adapted,

but not really sure how exactly like maybe some changes have been made to the app then it was approved by apple yeah and it's in the excel too we don't have a lot of details here about how much of this is apple changing its policies because of attention and how much of this is that that there was a lot of attention but the truth was that what was holding it up was something very specific. I think the problem there is that I could give Apple some benefit of the doubt that maybe it was being held up for a reason

that was not the reason we thought. The problem is that as far as anyone can tell, it was never properly communicated what was going on. And that's often a problem with this stuff is that Apple makes decisions and they just don't talk about it. They just, they, they are, they are, their default is to be as opaque as possible, even to their partners like developers. So now that UTMSC is out there, I've seen screenshots of people running like windows 95 on their iPads, which is wild. Um, and like, great. It's, I'm glad that this got

through. I think it's very funny that Apple strategy for alt stores seems to be, if we can co-opt as much of the alt store as possible and just put it in the app store, maybe we should do that. But I think it's good for users. I did note that Steve Troughton Smith tried to get old versions of macOS running on it.

And there are some things that make it, not like done by Apple, but just things that make that less difficult or more difficult that he couldn't. I think he couldn't get it to work. But the idea that it's a PC emulator and it's meant to be for games, old games. But if you want to run, you know, Internet Explorer and Windows 95 or whatever, I guess you can, which is also kind of cool. That actually means that my baseball game that i love um diamond mind which is a windows only game um it's so it uses no i don't want to insult it but i'll say it uses no modern

features of windows so i think it would probably just run in utm se as a retro game even though it's a current game so uh yeah this is this is cool but it's also very frustrating that apple is uh both seemingly kind of undercutting i mean the good news but it's also very frustrating that Apple is both seemingly kind of undercutting. I mean, the good news is it's in the App Store worldwide, which means Alt Store's existence in Europe is forcing Apple to make changes that it's rolling out worldwide, which means it benefits way more people. That's great.

It's frustrating that this is what it took. And it's frustrating that it went through the whole rejection dance with apparently very little conversation and communication with the people involved. Because that's the thing that really, we talk about Apple doing a lot of the stuff to itself. This is one of those areas, right? Where if you treat your partners, your business partners with some respect and communicate with them, then these things wouldn't necessarily blow up in the press because they would understand what was going on. Unfortunately, what seems to happen is there's a weird chain of command inside Apple where the people who decree, let's reject that, are not the

people communicating. People communicating don't really know and are told probably not to even elaborate. And so they just say, no, we're rejecting you, or they give a vague reason. And they can't, like, this is the problem, that if they were clearer with their business partners, the business partners would not necessarily have to run to the press if there was a real back and forth. But what ends up happening is they're opaque. They're making, you know making just clear, just like, no, you're rejected arguments. There's not really much of a conversation going on. And then you end up with people like us talking about it and people writing stories about it. And then people at Apple seeing those stories and saying, wait a second, why did we do it that way? And then they fix it. And it's like, this could all have been avoided. Why do we do it that way? And then they fix it. And it's like, this could all have been avoided.

You mentioned that it seems like Apple keep putting apps in the App Store that are being submitted to Alt Store. Let me tell you about one that won't. Alt Store has announced that they will be bringing Fortnite to Alt Store Pal in the EU, which is wild, wild. Yeah, yeah.

It's huge. So Epic is going ahead. And Epic epic's like you don't need our game store you can you can go to some other game store some other app store you can get fortnite there it's fine so they're going to be yeah that so the the epic game store for ios is still coming and now it seems like they'll put it in other places too so this is huge news for alt store and i think actually makes sense for epic because like i reckon why not alt store has a pretty good install base because of delta yeah and so why not put fortnite if i'm epic i mean they could be like no no the whole plan here is to build our own store i don't think that's it i think they're going to build

their own store but the whole plan is to get fortnite to people in the eu and if alt store has an existing audience and they can say sure you can get fortnite in the old store and not have to install a different app marketplace great do it's also a good political move for epic right like it makes them look good to developers which they want to do yeah they're so benevolent and also this will be like a thing that they can go to the European Commission and be like, hey, look, we love to play ball, but Apple, we just can't. You know, Alt Store's terms are really good for us. And we can now look where everyone's successful.

And speaking of Alt Store, Alt Store 2.1 is now available and it features the first third-party apps so as well as the uh as well as delta and clips which were from alt store there's now utmse which you mentioned earlier there are a couple of torrenting apps which is like wild to think about well that's that's the best example of a of an app category um i mean it's the best example left now that emulators are in there of an app category that Apple has just decided they don't want on their platforms, right? BitTorrent clients, they just don't want them because even though there are legitimate uses of BitTorrent, there

are far more illegitimate uses of BitTorrent. And so Apple is just like, we're not going to bother. We're just going to say this is a place we don't want to go as a matter of policy. And so in the EU, policy like that can't determine what gets notarized. So obviously, BitTorrent apps are being notarized by Apple and put in Alt Store in the EU. There's also an application which is reminiscent to 3DS StreetPass, if people know what that means. It's basically you can run this application, and if you pass people in the real world, your devices can communicate with each other if you want that as a thing in your life. Great.

And finally, Apple is partnering with Taboola to bring advertising to Apple News and Stocks. So if you are on the web and you see a grid of boxes as an ad with absolutely wild things in those boxes. Garbage headlines. are on the web and you see a grid of boxes as an ad with absolutely wild things in those boxes. Garbage headlines. Yeah, garbage headlines. That is Taboola.

However, they're going to be bringing a more tailored experience to Apple's platforms utilizing what Taboola calls native ads, which are expected to be more relevant to the content that they appear on. And Taboola's CEO told The Verge that they're giving Apple some control over what kinds of content could appear. I mean, okay, a couple of things. So there's an easy joke here, right?

Taboola, maker of garbage ads, is going to bring garbage ads to Apple's news and stocks apps. That's the simple, easy. And is it entirely wrong? No, there's enough truth in it and it's good. And that's certainly what I felt. But there's a couple of things here. One is there are good ads and there are bad ads

and there are good ad platforms and bad ad platforms. And I would say, is the existence of a deal between Apple and Taboola a sign that what Apple wants is for more of Taboola's sign that what Apple wants is for more of Taboola's lousy ad boxes to be stuck in Apple's interface? I think not. I think they have

probably a range of ads and clients. And if you're Taboola, you don't want to say our business is garbage, right? You don't want to say that. You want to say our business is an ad business and we cover the gamut and we've got garbage. They won't say that, but let's just say we've got garbage and we've got really classy stuff and it's a whole range. And it's like, who do you want to reach? Where do you want to reach it? What kind of ads do you want to buy? How much do you want to pay? We gotcha. We got the whole range. So it could be that Apple is going to use them for garbage. It could be that Apple is actually going to use them for kind of like a higher level thing. I will also point out, and this is the other point that makes this story a little less easy to rip on them, which is Apple has always allowed its content providers to stick ads in their content, right? And so when you get news news plus

is not an ad-free experience right if you read wall street journal in news plus as i do first off you'll always get a pop-up asking you to sign up for a newsletter and second you will get uh their ads many of which are kind of garbagey and might even be taboo. So there's already garbage ads throughout Apple News. They're brought by Apple's partners. And this is not necessarily going to change any of that. This is the stuff that Apple is placing in news and having a new partner.

And so I don't like it because they make really lousy ads and have kind of polluted the web. And I had many, many arguments 10 years ago at IDG where somebody would come and say, look, it's free money. We just stick this thing on. It's like, well, it's not free. There's a cost. The cost is those terrible things are on every one of our pages showing terrible things. Initially, Taboola's pitch, by the way, was they used their technology to intuit from your website, which of your content was the most clickable. And then you would build, they would build an ad unit with like

four links and one or two or three of those links would actually be to your content. And the idea was we know what the real clickbait is. So let us drive your users to more content on your site, but also by placing your content in this ad unit alongside the ads that we're selling to other people's content. We're making that ad unit more visible to readers, which makes those other pieces of content more clickable, which makes the ad unit more effective, which makes more money for everybody involved. That was their initial pitch. It's a pretty good pitch, actually. It's not bad. But as with so many ad products, and you know this, you've seen this, as with so many ad products, it just degrades over time as everybody tries to push to revenue maximization. And I think that element everywhere I see it now is just all ads right it's not they're not using the initial idea which was a pretty

clever idea of like three of these things are from macworld and the fourth is a random thing and i think they even had a deal where like part of it was that your content went in their algorithm so relevant like your your readers i think even because they were following you, your readers on other sites would get ads for your content on those sites because they knew you would be into it. Like there was a whole technology pitch there, but in the end, it's just sort of like boxes full of garbage. So anyway, it's a more complicated story. complicated story. But this does fit into the narrative that we've talked about where there's an SVP at Apple who's in charge of, or maybe it's just a VP, who's in charge of ad revenue. He's in charge of ad revenue. And my immediate thought when I saw this was, this is my message to everybody who has told me that when I wrote that column saying an ad version

of Apple TV Plus is inevitable because literally everybody has it this is why it's inevitable because at some point they will say oh not enough people are watching tv plus what if we give them to a cheaper and we get to amp up our ad revenue so here we are so you mentioned that the ads that exist in partner content like they're there already and they're from the publisher. Where are these Taboola ads going to go? I think Apple can insert ads, but that their partners also insert ads. I think that's how that goes.

So there's going to be everyone's insert in ads. There's going to be ads everywhere. So I think that's the deal. I have not, you know, or do they go in the top level pages? Maybe that's it. Maybe they don't insert ads in content, but these will go, because I don't think I see their ads in my content on their site, but they could insert, right?

Because they've got like Today and News Plus and Sports and Puzzles and Shared With You and they've got special coverage sections and they have their own stuff now yeah right they've got all of that stuff and those are places where they can insert yeah uh new elements um you know they're not they're not sticking ads actually oh you know what i just found it said uh apps feeds and select publisher articles so maybe apple's also doing deals with the wall street journal to put ads in on their behalf or something could be also when i scroll down to a six colors post in news plus or news below the story there are there's a grid of currently it's news for me it's news plus recommended reads and then more from six colors

and then people also read and then more to read which is more six colors posts so they could also put taboola units down below where there's currently just currently they're trying to push you to other content in news plus they could also put ad units down there. Huh. Taboola's a funny word, isn't it? It's like a, yeah, isn't it a salad? I have no idea. I just figured it was one of those like nonsense web 2.0 words. It's bulgar and it's like from the Easter. We made that at the deli that I worked at in college.

It's tabouli. Yeah, I know. Tabouli. Tabouli. Tabouli. Yeah. That's what it is. There you go.

It's a cold salad that was one of the things that we sold at the deli that I worked at when I was in college. According to Wikipedia, tabouli, also transcribed taboula, tabouli, tabouli, tabuli tabula is a levantine salad most made mostly finely chopped parsley with tomatoes mint onion bulgur and others and yeah exactly it's a little it's a cold salad also um tabula i always thought was funny because it's also like a taboo like our ads are so bad that you shouldn't use them but you will uh all of those things can i here's my here's my aside for people who have not heard this story before uh the things can i here's my here's my aside for people who've not heard this story before uh the deli i worked out in college is my hometown just summers uh work

there family friends hungarian couple owned it hungarian immigrants uh went to school with their kids and um and the uh the the guy who ran it uh uh, his, well, his wife, they both passed away now. Um, she was great. I called her boss. That was, she, she'd be like,

Jason, what are you doing? I said, sorry, boss. You know, I just, I called her boss.

She's the only person I've ever called boss. She was great. Her husband, um, grumpy man, a very grumpy man. And, um,

I've got a million stories of things he said that were hilarious. Um, my favorite though is, cause this is a tourist town. We had like the the Gold Rush State Park is where their restaurant was. So you go across the street for lunch because you're visiting this Gold Rush town. And first off, if you were bringing your kids, he would see you coming with your kids and you'd say, oh, no, kids, which was great in his hungarian accent but the best one was people would come in and they'd order a sandwich and they'd say um what kind what can i can i have the sandwich on uh i'll have a ham sandwich and be like okay what kind of what kind bread you want he would say and they would say um just the regular bread and he'd say is no regular bread kaiser roll french roll wheat right pumper

nickel uh uh uh french roll okay could i'm not that hungry can i have a half sandwich no half sandwich order whole sandwich eat half anyway tabula he's he was he this was he like soup nazi he was he was yeah i mean he should not have been a frontline uh customer interactor but it was a mom and pop business and so that's how it was and and and roja was making most of the uh she was the the the chef she was making most of the other the other thing is roja had one of her fingers was partially truncated. Okay. And I don't know exactly what caused it, but when she showed me how to use the meat cutter for the first time, she held up her hand with one of her fingers too short and said,

Don't put your hand in the meat cutter! Oh, God! They were awesome. They were awesome. Shout out to the family. I really hope that maybe she was born with that, but just loved to let people think it was from the meat cutter. I don't know, but it's terrifying.

Anyway, those are my stories. But he had the real Dracula accent, and was super grumpy. So what kind of bread did you want? The Dracula accent. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Delete Me.

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Our thanks to delete me for the support of this show and relay. Room around up time, Jason Snow. Yeehaw. The horse is still here. They are still here. time, Jason Snell. Yeehaw. The horse is still here. They are still here. There's been some corralling of a certain

type of roundup horse in the shape of the SE, the iPhone SE. Over the last couple of weeks, there's been a flurry of rumors from various supply chain sources about the iPhone SE 4. 9to5Mac

reporting on a source from Weibo, gave the following spec list for this rumored device. A 6.06-inch OLED screen with a notch of a 60Hz refresh rate featuring an A18 processor, 6 or 8GB of RAM. It seems like, I'm not sure if that is a choice, probably not, or they're just not sure if that is like a choice, probably not,

or they're just not sure. A single 48 megapixel camera, aluminium frame, face ID, USB-C, looking to launch in spring of 2025 with a somewhere in the region of $499 to $549 price tag. Another Weibo source is reporting that it would use the same frame as the iPhone 16, which casts a little doubt on the idea of the single camera, because you would expect if they're using the exact same frame, they would need to adopt the two camera system that you'd find in the 16. But who knows? Let's just use that like we're either it's going to have one camera or two cameras, but it will be built on the kind of platform

of the current smallest iPhone. The Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that Apple is planning once again to debut their own 5G modem, and that the SE4 would be one of the first devices to get it. What do you think about this?

I think overall, now here's what i'll say i noticed people already uh lamenting in the chat this is clearly the moving on from the iphone se as being the quote-unquote small phone um and that they are now bringing it into line with what would be considered in 2024 as like the base specs of an iphone Yeah. I think it's just inevitable. I think the SE has always represented old models and not size, even though the old models, the rule, it's like the law of iPhones

that further back in the past you go, the smaller they are, but it's not what the SE is for. The SE is to build... Okay, Tim Cook's plan, right? Let's go through here. Tim's Cook plan is to sell old phones for cheaper, right? That's their goal. Old phones for cheaper and not cheap phones, but old phones for cheaper. And that's how they get more affordable iPhones in their product line is they keep selling that phone from two years ago or three years ago.

The problem is that after a while, old phones for cheaper doesn't work because the specs are so bad that, first off, even if they can get the parts, because the parts will stop being available and the specs are bad. And the specs are so bad that you end up in a situation where you can't, ultimately you're like,

you either can't run the current OS or you're forced to maintain compatibility with old models much longer than you'd like to if you're Apple because you're still that's got, you know, it feels kind of like an old phone, but it has modern enough specs that Apple will support it for a while, right? And then it also doesn't get updated every year. And so it needs to last a while. Like, that's the purpose of the SE. All the rest of it, the size, the fact that it's a smaller phone is beside the point. So this, I mean, it seems reasonable um i'm actually a little surprised at some of this that the decisions that they've made that apparently will make this thing

affordable because you know obviously oleds now are at such volumes that they can do that and and with a notch and everything and that they consider that a baseline iphone thing i mean it's been there since the iphone 10 but still, and that Face ID is in it, right? They skimped on Face ID for most iPads, but on iPhone, it's the modern currency. And rather than build a Touch ID button for iPhone, they're like, nah, we'll just put Face ID in there. It's fine. Presumably that Face ID sensor sensor there is so much volume of it for the iphone that they're like we can do that it's not a problem uh we can get that price down i think it shows that in the future the ipads will all have face id too like it's just a case of getting there yeah there's some complication probably because of the the thinness of the

ipad versus the iphone um but yeah i think so because in the end one of the advantages that they have is if they're reusing parts they're making volume orders for parts and those parts get cheaper over time and that's why the se4 needs to be meant like the se is always made out of reused parts they're cheaper i know what you mean about the thinness but the ipad pro is the thinnest ever right and they've got it in that so yeah but it's probably expensive it's probably expensive oh definitely but so i imagine it a longer uh time frame than the se but i think it shows eventually yeah there's like a decay period where it comes down in in price as they as they ramp it yeah yeah exactly i think this phone sounds fantastic

for 500 pretty good for a $500 phone. Pretty good. Like OLED? I would not have expected OLED. Like if they do that, like actually pull off an OLED screen in here, like that's fantastic, I think. OLED A18, so it will get Apple intelligence. So it'll probably be on the higher side of RAM.

A 48 megapixel camera is fantastic. This sounds like a great phone. Like just like a great phone. I feel like in the past when the when new se models have been introduced they have rarely felt state of the art where i feel like even if this comes in 2025 this will feel modern like it's it's not going to feel old i don't think yeah and that's that's kind of the goal right is they don't going to feel old, I don't think. Yeah, and that's kind of the goal, right? They don't want it to feel old. They just want to make it affordable.

And that's why you can keep your old models around for a while, but one of the advantages of the fact that they kind of fall off after a while is that then you've got the SE down there, and it's modern, right? It's cheap, but it's modern. And this is a trick, right? It's cheap, but it's modern. And this is a trick, right? It's got a bunch of cheap parts, but it's got enough RAM and processor to do what Apple wants. And everything else is going to be cheaper,

but that's okay, right? Like the Apple, Apple is fine with that. But that's the downfall of the Tim Cook cell old phones model is that at some point you have to update like the processor in there. And that's what the SE is for. So, yeah, looks nice. You know, not everybody needs to buy a $1,000 iPhone.

This is the truth. Speaking of $1,000 iPhones, Ming-Chi Kuo has shared some details of the previously mentioned ultra thin iPhone, iPhone Air or whatever it's going to be. For next year. This is the, yeah, in the iPhone 17 line. So as a refresher, that the Plus will go away, and in its place will be a new designed

iPhone that is really thin. So it would feature, this is what Ming-Chi Kuo is currently saying, so this would be an iPhone 17 so 2025. Yes, 2025. A 6.6-inch display, so it's a lot smaller than the Max display. It will have an A19 chip, not the Pro version,

a single rear camera, the previously mentioned Apple 5G modem, and a, quote, titanium-al quote titanium aluminium frame so it will be aluminium with some titanium of less titanium in it than the pro phones so i guess so they can still call it titanium but it would be lighter and again this would mean the end of the plus phone for the 17 line but quo is stressing that like this phone is not expected to replace the plus it would be a fourth distinct product and the main selling point will be its design not its specs right so we talked about this a few episodes ago and I love the idea this is the idea of make a drive you know drive people who are design driven to a new new phone. We've seen it before. New iPhone designs sell phones. They sell phones.

One of the big criticisms when they do a nice internals update is, but it doesn't look any different. And for some people, it's often characterized as being like people want to be seen with a new iPhone. They're very status conscious and they want to be seen with it. I'm sure those people exist. Also, I think if you can see a change, you feel motivated because it's a different phone and it's less motivating to get an incredible internal upgrade on your iPhone, but it looks exactly like your old one. It's demotivating, right? Like there's real buying psychology going on here that is not, I want to be seen with the latest iPhone, right? It's more than that. So this is a really smart idea. Apple has obviously never found success with the mini and the plus in getting their lower end model,

but bigger or smaller to be a thing that satisfies them. Whatever metrics they're looking for, it doesn't do it. So it's like, what if we make a more expensive, totally different design? It's thin, it's got different set more expensive, totally different design? It's thin. It's got different set of specs. Single rear camera is really interesting. The idea that they might have one really good camera on there, but it's like, we're going to get rid of all those other cameras that people, they know, like people use them, but

most people don't use them very much. They use the camera. So can you do it that way? And does that save you a lot of space inside the device? I'm sure it does. So you do all of that stuff, and maybe you create something that's like an aspirational high-end product that points the way to the future. Because that's what I'm with the 10. It points the way to the future.

But for now, it also is like for the people who are looking at high design and they want to buy the future today and they're willing to spend more than they would on an iPhone pro that, that, that there's a, they're reaching a different market and they're able to extend that, um, that price that people are willing to pay. Right. Because while it's important to have a $500 iPhone out there, like the SE, I think what Apple has learned over time is there's a certain portion of their audience that if you keep selling more expensive iPhones, they don't care. They'll just buy it. Right. And so if you're Apple, you're like, oh, I would like more money, please. So yeah, so sell them a $2,000 iPhone or whatever. And not everybody has to buy that one. But if there's a portion of your audience that's currently giving you $1,400 who could now give you $2,000, you probably should let them, right?

Let me come back to that. Dig that digitimes is reporting that 2026 could also see the first foldable iphone the reports suggest it would be a foldable form factor similar to the z flip so it would fold in half it would be a flip phone jason could these be the same phone i i think not because there are reports about 25 or 26 but but mike what i just said about the future of the iphone and what we said the last time we were talking about this is one of the things about doing a thinner thinner iphone right one of the things about building a thinner iphone people like why does it need to be thinner? Is you are trying out technologies on that phone, making everything thinner. How do we make it thinner? Possibly in part because the thinner you make a single plane iPhone, the thinner a folded iPhone is when it's folded. And I don't know if these are the same phone, although I got those vibes. It's like, this sounds really familiar, but it feels like maybe

this iPhone thin for 2025 is like the technology test bed for their foldable iPhone in 2026, right? Which is like, first off, we've got to get this thing thin enough that it can fold. And then we make the one that folds. Now, you're a folding phone person, so I'm curious what you think about this report, about actually having a foldable iPhone. If Apple wants to make a foldable phone, this is the form factor I would like. It's very nice from a tactile perspective to close the phone. I've always enjoyed that with the Z Flip.

And with the way the Z Flip works, it also has that screen on the front, which you can use for a lot of things. If you're watching the Olympics, you're seeing this phone a lot. It seems like you're giving it to everyone. I've been seeing it in the Olympics coverage. I really like the idea of Apple trying this.

I think it'd be very intriguing and you know i would also like to see them make a kind of foldable ipad too in the same same idea but in that one being you know you'd unfold it to make it bigger you know it's already big and you know you open it up and you can make it even bigger on the inside the reason i say about the to me i see what you're saying about like, it could help. One could help the other, but a one year time difference doesn't seem like a lot.

They're not looking for feedback, right? I think it's more like they've got a roadmap and then, and then there's like a whole bunch. Like if they have a limited number of things that they can do in any cycle and they need a huge number of things to make the flip phone happen, building some of them into the thin phone the year before gives them more runway to build out that whole thing is what I'm thinking. Because Apple is, for all we talk about Apple being huge and having all this money and all this stuff, right?

Apple is actually like a scrimp and save kind of company because they've got so many operating systems and so many different products. And they do so much of this work themselves for themselves, right? That they need to have like a multi-year strategy of like, we're going to do this and that enables this. And then we can move that technology to this other product. So I looked at this and thought, not that this was the same product,

but more like the only way to get to that product in two years is to do some of the work the year before for a different product and then we push to the to you right to the next product does that make sense i just wonder if it's too many phones could be so let's imagine that we get the flip phone, iPhone flip in 2026. That could mean the 2026 iPhone line, the new ones, the iPhone 7, 18 line would be the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone 18 Max, the iPhone 18 Air, and the iPhone 18 Flip. That might be too many phones. That might be too many. It might be too many it might be it might

be i don't know it's a good question unless like you know maybe they could swap them out like they have four but like some phones come every two years i don't know would they want to do that probably not right like i have no idea interesting i'll say at least right the idea of them trying stuff okay here's here's a wild idea for you though what if it's the iphone 18 18 pro 18 max and 18 flip and 18 pro and max are the thin phone okay huh right that's what they did with a 10 it's like it for the iphone 17 year it is a thing that stands on its own like look at this and then it's the future of the iphone but then the next year they have they have in they have enhanced that technology taking it a step further giving it the three cameras yeah or doing whatever or giving it an amazing camera that can do what the

three cameras did or whatever right yeah my i i don't know i'm just saying there are ways that they could simplify the product line there's also an argument that they don't need to necessarily simplify the product line and that having a bunch of iphones it's the most important product to them samsung has a bunch of galaxy phones right they don't they're not stopping they're happy to have 90 different phones out there they They have the Galaxy phone, the S phones, right? Which is like their regular phone. And then they have the two folding phones.

And they announced them at different times of the year. This is a thing we spoke about a long time ago that I thought Apple would do. Oh, you made that pick of like two different iPhone release schedules. Look, I would love them to get like weird with the iPhone, like at this point in the iPhone's

career, right? That now they're starting to try new stuff again. I think this excites me. The idea of like this year and next year,

brand new iPhones that have no previous comparison. That idea is very exciting to me of a thing that they could do. I guess we'll wait and see.

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Interesting one this week. iOS 18.1 beta 1,ad os 18.1 beta 1 and sequoia 15.1 are available as we are recording um we have not seen 18.0 yet but yet here they are that's right this is what we've done what's's going on here? I don't know. I mean, it is basically Apple has decided that they are going to do a parallel beta process for Apple intelligence. That it seems like these versions are probably essentially the 18.0, 15.0 versions, but with an additional thing, which is Apple intelligence features. And it wouldn't surprise me if they're developed their betas for a while. Apple's not saying whether there will also be public betas.

Apple's not saying why they're continuing doing the two streams. Obviously, Apple intends to ship the 18.0s and then the 18.1s will enable the intelligence features. I'm not entirely clear. Other than if you're a developer and you want to make sure that your app works on 18.0. Otherwise, you would presumably will want to run 18.1 because it's got the Apple intelligence features in it, unless there's

something cataclysmically broken there. I don't know. But for now for now yeah we've got multiple beta paths going on here where they're now developer betas for these new versions new new versions that have uh that have apple intelligence features built in so we finally people are getting their hands on or be able to get their hands on it if they go to the developer beta one of one of these versions they uh which you'll be able to choose from your little pop-up of like which stream do you want to be on and then there are some apple intelligence features in there so does this mean that 18.0 will have zero apple intelligence features now i think it does okay i think that's what that seems to have okay it's changed from the reporting and mark gorman did have a report about this over the weekend that he said this is going to happen

yeah i mean obviously doesn't change anything from apple's perspective because they were never clear yeah i mean we don't know about the timing it may be that we'll get an 18.0 update early right that's one thing they could do. They haven't done before, but they could do. Right. Is ship the OSs late summer, even early fall. So they're out on other devices and they are preloaded on the new iPhones when they arrive. And it's just a stable set of generic 18.0s that run. And then, and I wonder if that's what they're doing is saying, okay, what we're going to do is we're going0s that run. And then,

and I wonder if that's what they're doing, is saying, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to pull that forward and ship this stuff. I hadn't considered that. And then the 0.1s will come and we'll make a big deal about them. But maybe we should just get this

out the door first. I don't know. I don't know. Either that or these will be at the normal time. The new iPhone will ship. It won't have Apple intelligence enabled. They'll say it'll be later this month or whatever. And there'll be an 18.1 that follows behind it. I don't know. I do wonder, though, if part of this, whether the public sees it in August or early September, I do wonder if they'll lock it and start putting it on those devices, right as this is a 18.0 maybe nobody else will even see 18.0 who knows maybe they'll just put on the new devices and wait and hope that 18.1 is ready i don't it's it's a mystery we'll have to watch it but it's messy for now at least it's it's a little

bit messy also interesting so the new top level setting called apple intelligence and siri yeah when you first click on it what you're going to get is a thing that says, join the Apple Intelligence wait list. Yeah, baby. To reserve your spot. Let's go. And get ready to experience intelligence that understands your personal context.

Reserve your spot on the wait list. Apple is a star up now. There's a growth hacking, and then we're going to share our numbers online. That's right. Yeah, that's right. If you tweet our special URL, we'll put you on our wait list. Yeah.

So this is an interesting suggestion of how they are trying to prepare to gate demand. If they have demand problems, they can just not let people on. And I imagine this may continue through the summer and into the fall as these features roll out that they're going to kind of want to have the ability to say, oh no, that's too many people. Our servers are dying and be like, let's pause the beta for a little bit and wait until we've got everything together. So we'll have to watch how long the Apple intelligence wait list goes. Although what I've been told is that for the developer beta, developers should be granted access within a few hours. It can vary based on what time of day and the weekend and whatever, but like, it's not meant to be one of those things where you hurry up and

download the beta and then you have to wait a week for your waitlist item to be approved. It's intended for this developer beta, at least, to be something that is granted fairly quickly. I hope that they're going to use the developer beta as a way to judge scale, because I think it would kind of suck if Apple announced this and then never had to wait, like when it actually ships to the public, because that is, honestly, for me,

a very strange thing for a company of apple's size to be doing but i guess i guess their competitors do it too but it is just weird to me that is weird to me yeah i i think they're i whether it stays in the long term or not i think they are worried about you know if it's just for the beta or even it's when it's initially available for everybody i think they're worried about a spike in demand they can't handle, that they did not properly account for. And so this allows them some small degree of control if they get in a problematic moment

that they can be like, hold it. I guess it's like when Underscore talks about that phase releasing you can do in the App Store, right? That he doesn't want to release WidgetSmith to all WidgetSmith customers at once. Exactly. He wants to roll it out in case there's something he needs to adapt.

I was going to say, I was going to say, it's a very similar thing, which is, I first had this when I had a TiVo back in the day, that TiVo pushed, like there were secret codes if you're in the like TiVo forums where you could get the update. But what they did is what a lot of commercial, it's become sort of standard practice, especially for stuff that's like more sort of slow to update home stuff

is, you know, they update 1% of their list and see what happens, right? Why update everybody at once? Update a tiny portion and see what happens and then go to 10% and see what happens, right? Because if it's a disaster, then you've not destroyed all of your customers stuff. You've only destroyed a small random sample of them, which is not great, but it's better. So yeah, so we're all going to get on the, on the wait list. That'll be exciting. And when you get off the wait list, what you get are you get the writing tools, which come in the context menu. So like where copy and paste is, there'll be a writing tools item. And it brings up a little slides up from the bottom of writing on the iPhone and iPad,

a writing tool sheet that has all those, you know, summarize or make this more businesslike or, you know, whatever, check the grammar, all of that's in that sheet. There's a bunch of Siri stuff. So the writing tool stuff yeah serious stuff is seamlessly switching between voice and typing um so you can type a little and then talk a little and then type a little and that will apparently work which is wild uh the new design is in there that um that people were trying to enable before it's like it's in there including um activating type to siri by double tapping on the bottom of the screen that gesture is in there and then you can type

your you're in a place where you're not supposed to yell at your phone. You can just type your, your query in there. All the product knowledge is in there. So they did this thing where they, their model has learned everything that's in Apple's documentation. So if you're like, how, yeah, exactly. So it's like, how do I do this thing? And it'll just bring you an answer uh from the knowledge search um and part of this is this is the series that will allow you to sort of like if you stumble while you're talking and say no no no i meant this it follows along with that and it will be able to maintain some context across um multiple statements i really hope that that product knowledge stuff is good because i would like to be able to rely on that for myself and also for other people that i will be able to just

teach people in my life that that's what you do to find something because like there was a thing when we were trying to do the live show when we were setting up for the live show three people including me were trying to find the setting on mac os that would stop my screensaver from coming on when the mac was on power and it was actually in the lock screen part of system settings which was not the place that i thought it would be in right i looked in screensaver it was not there i looked in battery and it was not there. That's where these things used to be. But it was in a new thing called lock screen,

which isn't what I would have thought for the Mac, like the screensaver settings being in lock screen. I don't think that those two things are the same, but I would love to have been able to just bring up my assistant and said, and just say like how do i disable my screensaver when on battery and it tell me just do that but we'll see if how good it is you know i would love to never have to google something and be taken to the apple support forums

ever again in my life yeah no kidding right oh the fact is they make all that they make this great instructional content for their stuff i think this this is going to be, I'm sure that the people I know who work on this stuff are not necessarily thrilled with the idea that their work is now just sort of like grist for an AI model. At the same time, if it means that you can ask your phone how to do a thing and it just tells you that is kind of the purpose. Or takes you there. That is kind of the purpose of what they're working on is to actually inform and help users and maybe this is a better way to do that. So that's all in there. The reduce interruptions focus, which is the

AI-driven focus mode, including an auto-summary of the notifications on your lock screen so it will summarize what's going on but you're going to reduce interruption so that's there some some of the new photos features natural language search within photos and the ability to create a memory movie based on a text prompt are both in there and summaries of audio transcription so you can do audio transcriptions from things like recording a call or recording audio in notes from like a lecture or a meeting or whatever.

And then the feature that will allow you to summarize that. So the transcription is a feature that's already in there. And now you will be able to apply a summary of like what happened in this. And so that's all in there. Mail features, priority messages is in there. Mail, the summaries in mail where it summarizes your message

instead of giving you the first two lines of it is supposedly in there. What about image stuff, like image playgrounds? No, no, no, no, no. We'll get to that. So smart reply for mail

is also in there. Summaries and messages and smart reply and messages are in there. Quite a lot messages and smart reply and messages okay are in there quite a lot actually so that's a lot of stuff yeah what's not in there image creation both image playground and genmoji are not in there cleanup in photos the background removal feature or background replacement feature not in there um priority notifications ai stuff is not in there oh so this is where it's like moving your notifications around and trying to surface the ones at the top that's that stuff's

not in there so the notification summarizing notifications i don't i think it's just the focus mode that's doing that but i'm not 100 on that okay okay um no no summarizing notifications is in there and reduce the reduce interruptions is in there. It's just the priority notifications isn't happening. All the personal context series stuff and the in-app actions, shortcuts kind of stuff, that's just not there. And obviously the chat GPT integration I think previously said was not going to be there until later in the fall. And it's not in the beta either. So that's sort of where they are. It's an interesting mix of what's in and what's out. But there's actual stuff that's out. And we should just say, the beta dropped as we were recording the show.

We knew about it in advance, right? Like I had this all written up, but like we... Haven't used it. But we haven't used it, right? I literally got briefed on this and then we started upgrade and then the beta dropped

while we were recording upgrade. So you can hear about it now because it's out but we don't have personal experience with it that's gonna have to wait but um but there's a lot in there are you gonna put 18.1 on any of your devices oh yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna take my beta devices at least one of my beta devices will go on 18.1 immediately yeah for sure i haven't put any of the betas i haven't put 18 on my phone yet i was wondering if to do it i don't think i want to put 18 one on my iphone um because it will make moving to a new iphone really complicated tricky yeah but i might put it on my ipad now and try and try this stuff out i'll see i'll see i'll see what people say about it over the next few days.

I'm being pretty restrained with the betas this year. That's good. That's fine. Everybody gets to make their own decision. This is very peculiar. It's very strange.

For a very limited set of people, the Apple intelligence era, get ready, Mike, begins now. Yeah. You know, Chills. Here's the thing,

I wonder, what's gonna happen are we of these betas now like are we gonna get 18-0 and 18-1 every two weeks with the same features in except one has the ample intelligence on top or are they gonna be completely different tracks now i gotta be honest i asked them that okay and i did not get a answer. I didn't really didn't get an answer. And so I don't know. I'm surprised that they didn't have an answer ready to go. I think I would be surprised if they didn't move in lockstep from here on out. But I don't have a guarantee that that's the case and i do worry a little bit that there's going to be stuff locked down in 18.0

that's not going to be in 18.1 quite like at the i hope that's not the case i hope it's really just sort of like two builds of the same changes but one of them has the ai stuff in and the other doesn't yeah yeah that'd be so it's going to be interesting yeah we'll watch it and see but but you know first taste and yeah And yeah, early days. The thing I would specify here is there was some talk in our Discord about this, and I think it's 100% true, that what Apple's trying to do here is suggest

this is a preview for developers and, you know, wink, everybody else who wants to go there. But what it is is not what they're going to ship to customers it is beta it is early days there are going to be things that are weird about it it's a beta they know that people are going to hop on this and they're going to talk about everything that's going on with apple intelligence they're obviously really wary of that but and and should be right but at the same time i know we've talked about in the past when when

you know we talk about me writing about betas and stuff it's like they ship something to everybody and it's broken you say apple shipped a broken thing yep if they ship a beta that has something broken it you say hey this thing is broken i hope it it's fixed. And that's the difference between something that's not shipping to customers and something that's shipping to customers. So there is a level, you can acknowledge things that are broken, but there is a level, I know the internet doesn't do nuance, but there is a level of judgment and outrage that should not happen this summer because it is in beta. And because it's in 18.1 i would say that's another attempt by apple to say it's really in beta like really in beta so be gentle i guess is what they're saying

be gentle it's time for some ask upgrade questions first one comes from carlos who says against jason's advice i tried the kobo libra color and he was right it's not good my kindle oasis is dying and amazon has discontinued it since upgrade is the premier e-reader podcast i wanted to ask is there a nice Kobo or other e-ink reader in the same way the Oasis feels light but premium? It's tough. I have been meaning to write, and I've just not done it yet, a story about the sad state of e-readers. Because the latest Kobo updates made me so sad. I wrote a review of that Libra color. It's worse than the Libra 2's screen

because it's using the color E ink screen and the contrast isn't as good. I like Kobos in general, but the fact that they aren't selling their black and white one Libra anymore. They just aren't. They just sell the color one now, which means you get washed out,

okay color that's not really relevant when you're reading but every page that you read the background's like a little grayer the contrast is worse it's not good um it still may be the one that i'd recommend but it's a real regression and a disappointment i would say the one i would look at is the one that Lauren uses. And it's a little pricier and it's a little bigger, but it's still really good. And that's the Kobo Sage. It's a little bit bigger. It's got a flush screen.

It's got page turn buttons. It's an eight inch e-reader. So if size, if you're willing to go a little bit larger, it's really nice. So I think at this point, that's probably what I would recommend. Um, but I wish,

yeah, I'm really disappointed that Kobo is not keeping, it is like all in on this color thing being, well, everybody loves color. And it's like, maybe the, that color E ink screen will improve over time. I mean, not the one that's in that model, but they'll improve that technology

so that when you're not displaying color, it doesn't have that background dot pattern, which is basically a gray. When you look close, you realize it's kind of a dot pattern, but it just decreases contrast. Because what you want with text is you want your text and the background to have high contrast. That's what makes a good reading experience. Because what you want with text is you want your text and the background to have high contrast. That's what makes a good reading experience. And what they did is they sacrificed contrast for color. But the color's not important enough to make that sacrifice. I'm sorry.

And if people disagree, that's fine. But Kobo has decided that if you disagree too bad, you can't buy that product anymore. You can only buy the color version. So I am sorry to listener Carlos, but that would be the one I'd recommend is maybe try the Sage. If you're willing to have a little bit larger ear eater, it's good. It's really good. So the Libra 2 then? Libra 2 is discontinued.

If you can get a used Libra 2 somewhere, the Libra Color has replaced the Libra 2. That is strange, isn't it? Yeah, so if you can get a Libra 2 used on eBay or whatever, go for it because that's what I'm still using. I bought the color and I'm back to the Libra 2 and it's good. But that Sage is really good too. It's just a little bit larger than maybe you're used to, but otherwise it's got all the advantages and it's still using the black and white screen for now until they get

a color screen that size and they discontinue it. But right now that would be what I would do. And this may be a silly question, but I just want to ask it anyway can you read amazon books on a kobo is there like an amazon app or anything like i don't know if this is an android no the way the way you work if you've got an existing there's a whole story here if you've got an existing kindle library and you have a kindle even if it's an older kindle in fact especially if it's an older kindle first off if you're going it's an older Kindle. First off, if you're going to a Kobo, don't get rid of your Kindle. Keep it around.

Two things you can do. One is you can have your old books on the Kindle and read those on the Kindle instead of the Kobo. But the other thing, this is a little secret. Amazon lets you download files, book files, for your registered Kindle to sideload it to the kindle via usb and this is because some people can't get their kindle connected if there's a whole legacy of history here but what it means is you can you can download that file right and if you download that

file if you look around the internet you'll find that there's a plugin for Calibre, the ebook management app, that will take that file that you've downloaded and pull the DRM off of it, and then you can just put it on a Kobo. You got to find it fell off the back of a truck somewhere. It'll pull, well, I mean, you can just search for Calibre plugin, remove DRM from Kindle books, and you will find it. And once you get, and you have to put in your Kindle serial number, because it's all based on like, basically it's using the pathway that your Kindle uses. But I will say that has, that, that continues to work for me, but you got to have a Kindle. It's, it's much more complicated if you don't have a Kindle

and you've got Kindle books. But, but anyway, for me, that works reliably that if I've got a Kindle and you've got Kindle books. But anyway, for me, that works reliably that if I've got a Kindle book, I want to look at on a Kobo or if there's like a special, it's very rarely the case that there's price disparity between Kindle and Kobo. But if there is, I can get it on the Kindle and then I just download it for my Kindle, which I have, and then drop in Calibre and it will convert it from whatever Kindle format it's in, Mobi, and it will turn it into an EPUB designed for Kobo and sync it to my Kobo. So that's the pro tip if you want to go there. But the other way you could do it is just keep your old Kindle around. They're small.

Just keep it around. And if you want to, it's like revisiting an old book, right? You go get the old book off the shelf. So you could get the old e-reader off the shelf if you want for that old book. That's the other way to do it. Jorgen writes in and says, these days make a lot of fuss about AI being able to sum up

a large text large text, just large text into a few sentences. If I recall correctly, this is something that System 7 or so could do back in the late 20th century does jason have any information about this feature um yeah it was called v twin um it was used in a feature called apple eg which was a search engine you could basically

i think that it was a tech demo they built a search engine for your contents. It's like a proto spotlight almost. Okay. And it did, so you could search your content. You could put it up as a search engine on your website if your website was served from a Mac, which some of us did back in the day. And it had a summary feature to it. So I think that's what Jorgen is talking about here.

That was Mac user days for me so we're talking like 96 97 that apple eg existed and if you search for apple eg you can't find it but if you search for v twin uh you can find i found at least one document that's like a white paper about uh v twin and how they built it but it which is really adorable because it's like search engines from 1996 but uh it went basically nowhere even though apple has basically rebuilt it when they when they built spotlight they rebuilt their indexing engine and i don't know what it uses now and if it ever used v twin or anything like that uh reading this question and also with you just mentioning then about um tech demos made me recall a conversation i was having over the

weekend with some of our friends and it was kind of about like these kinds of features that have been shown off multiple times but they never actually catch on because they don't work well enough. And how I think large language models might be able to make them better. So stuff like this, and I was thinking about language translation. Like I've lost count of the amount of companies

that have shown off as part of a new device or a new operating system, how good their live translation is, but it never seems to really catch on obviously in a way because companies keep reintroducing live translation as a thing that they've now made and i wonder if things like large language models might help here i don't know but this is kind of the the point that i'm driving at is like there are certain types of features that are always so intriguing that people will keep

like companies would keep trying to do them over and over and over but they may never actually really work the way you want and that's what i was thinking about with this like text summaries like we're still doing the same thing we've been doing for 20 or 30 years because it would be a great thing if it existed it just doesn't what has not yet worked well enough. It's an interesting thought. Yeah. And B asks, you recently spoke about the possibility that the Apple intelligence model

could be using around three gigabytes of memory. It's a pretty large amount to be taken up on a Mac that could only have eight gigabytes of RAM. Do you think this could be the moment that Apple bumps up the base Mac models? No. I think, okay, because I say, I think in general,

we could be in the era of just more RAM in devices, but you can't use it all. Could be, right? The idea that you increase the RAM, but everybody knows that there's a big chunk of it that's going to be taken up by Apple intelligence. Yeah, like we go from 8 to 12, but really it's the same as it was previously because the intelligence models are just hoarding it. Yeah, never bet on Apple increasing the bases, although that would be nice.

I do wonder if the next set of chips will have a, they'll do the three RAM chip design where they can bump it all, but they only bump it to 12, not 16. Yeah. Something like that and do, I mean, we'll see. We'll see where they go with it. It would be an appropriate moment for Apple to do it because they want the base experience

of Apple intelligence to be decent. But we'll see what they think if they think that that it doesn't if that eight is good enough or if they're like all right this is an opportunity to take it to 12 or 16 as the base or whether they say it's okay at eight and then we'll sell RAM upgrades yeah if you would like to send us in a question of your own, please go to upgradefeedback.com where you can also send in your feedback of the show

and your follow-up. If you want to check out Jason's work, go to sixcolors.com and you can hear his podcasts on theincomparable.com and here on Relay. You can listen to my shows here

and check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us online. Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. And I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can watch video clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are at Upgrade Relay. Thanks to our members who support us each and every week with Upgrade Plus.

And thank you to our sponsors, Ladder, Delete Me, and FitBard. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley. you