Upgrade - 523: I Got It to Hallucinate Already

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

from relay this is upgrade episode 523 for august 5th 2024 today's show is brought to you by squarespace and express vpn my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Summer of fun! Summer of fun! I heard from some people who said it wasn't as fun as they hoped. So we're going to amp up the fun here in August. We're going to amp up the fun. Today we may have too much fun. You may have noticed, potentially, depending on how close a listener you are,

that the intro may have sounded a little bit different this episode because today is the jingle episode it is it is the jingle episode that's what it is what is the jingle episode what is that um i was thinking i had this in my notes from at least one summer ago that i i remember listening to the radio and everything had a jingle when I was a kid. Um, they, they, you know, they, they had like people singing little jingles for different shows and different hosts. And this was just a thing in radio. And I thought, why do podcasts not have more jingles? And, uh, and maybe that could be a summer. A fun thing is that we get the show some jingles. So we got lots of segments.

We got a lot of the verticals. We got a lot of things going on. Maybe we could have some jingles. That was all. Maybe today we'll find out why podcasts don't have jingles. I think we will probably find that out. I think we might get there by the end. So the other thing that you mentioned to me

when you were talking about this is we have artwork for every segment. Yes yes and if you're not looking then you maybe don't get the benefits so what if we brought the artwork into audio audio artwork yeah that's a great way of looking at what this is is this is podcast artwork work that you can you know it's a important lesson you learn is that the number one thing that you can guarantee about podcast listeners is that they listen. You can't guarantee anything else. They aren't in your Discord.

They aren't on your social media. And they may not even be looking at your show artwork, but they are listening to the podcast. So if you want to reach them and really brand them. Jason, if there's one thing I know, though, is that sometimes podcast listeners also don't listen. Also don't listen. I know. Sometimes they should be listening and they think they're listening,

but they're not listening. What are the chances that this episode is going to get us an email from somebody who says, I don't understand why there were these weird jingles in this when we just explained it.

Very possible. Very possible. For the people that think, oh, I'm smart. I'll cut out the first 10 seconds of the episode or whatever it is they do. I'll jump to another segment.

Yeah. So before we played the first jingle, who made the jingles? uh lex friedman made the jingles our friend lex who is on a cruise right now so he will not get your feet well no maybe he will uh he i you and i found a company that made literally made the jingles that i listened to when i was a kid yes and i sent them an email and it was going to be expensive. And I was like, but I want to do it. And they, I think maybe that company has gone out of business and the people involved have all died of old age, but their website is still up.

They never got back to me. So instead I went to Lex and I said, here's what I'm thinking. Can you do this? And he said, this may be beyond me, but I've tried my best. And then later what he also told me was, um, I wish I could do this for a living. Okay. So that's two very different... I don't think I can do this. Now I only want to do this.

I think he's not... No, I think it's more like he doesn't think that he can measure up to the standards of the professional radio jingles, but boy, did he have fun, I think is the answer. He sure started. I will use this as an opportunity to recommend that people go and check out lex.games. Go and check that out. If you like

games that feel similar to some games that you may have experienced in other places, and some originals, go to lex.games and try them out. That will be a little plug for us. Thanks, Lex. Which we appreciate. Indeed for snell talk hey jason what do you think it's time for snell talk boy am i yeah yeah that i've forgotten these honestly um i'd forgotten about them uh i listened to these quite a while ago we've been planning

this uh and all i know is that is button the moose bush some of the segments later on in the episode jason multiple upgradians wrote in to ask if you were proud of your namesake blake snell yes Ah, yes. As far as I can tell, I'm not related in any way to Blake Snell, the two-time Cy Young Award winner, Giants pitcher. And earlier this week, there were people suggesting they should give up for the season and trade him, which I didn't agree with. And I thought, you know, I'm going to have a lot of explaining to do.

I'm not going to regret that Lauren and I bought Giants jerseys with Snell on the back. Because again, the stadium was full of personalized jerseys for my favorite team. Of course, I was going to buy one. But I might have to explain, like, why would you buy a Blake Snell? He was here for half a year. Anyway, never going to have to explain it again because he threw a no-hitter this week in Cincinnati for the Giants. What does that mean?

He pitched the entire game. It's the first time that he's ever pitched the entire game and he allowed no hits to the opposition he walked a couple of guys but he allowed no hits it's a very special thing for baseball pitchers to do so he he went through everybody and nobody got a point? Nine innings. So 27 outs. And so he faced, I think he had three walks, but he threw a double play. So probably he faced about 29 or 30 hitters and not a single one of them got a hit. Wow.

That's got to be pretty rare. There are two or three no-hitters, I'd say, a year. Okay, but that's still pretty rare, though. It's pretty rare. Yeah, the Giants haven't had a no-hitter since, I think, 2015. And when I was growing up, they had a no-hitter in the 70s, and then

they didn't have another one until, like, 2008 or something. So my whole sort of, like, falling in love with baseball and my favorite team and all that, and they just never had a no-hitter. And since 2008, they've had a perfect game, which is when nobody reaches base at all, 27 up, 27 down, and a bunch of no-hitters too. So yeah, very exciting. And I

watched this game. The other thing is that when the Giants finally broke through and Jonathan Sanchez threw a no-hitter, I was at camp up in the Sierras and unable to listen or anything. So it was like, what? They finally did it and i wasn't watching but i was watching this game so it was great and there was there were several moments where the announcers were like like wow he's really got it like they they said this is special he's really playing incredibly well and doing all sorts of code to not say out loud that it was a no hitter and in the seventh inning um lauren was watching too and i said you know what's going on right and she said no i said it's a no hitter she goes oh because it was and then we got to watch the last part of it it was

great so let's hear it for snow builds as it gets towards the end of the game according to blake snell um he wasn't thinking about it at all he was just minding his business and then in the seventh inning he looked up and uh saw there was no hits and he was like, oh. And he says, then I was like, okay, no more messing around. We're going to finish this up. Oh, wow. This guy's serious. Yeah. And then they dumped an ice bucket over his head at the end of the game.

But the lid hit him in the back of the head. And then they did the big post-game interview and he said, he said, come on, guys. Get the lid off. What are you doing like he was talking about criticizing the uh the dumping technique that was going on there anyway it was great that's fair it was awesome uh snell no hitter for the giants um my namesake even though we're i don't think we're related uh but yeah it's awesome yeah very good feels my jersey feels

better now but it does thanks to everybody who sent in that question if you would like to send in a question to open future episode of the show just go to upgradefeedback.com and it's time for some follow-up follow-up ollie did you not do one uh no we didn't do a follow-up one so i just used the one from the prompt okay so that's a good good uh okay to be honest to be fair we don't actually have special artwork for follow-up um and also i should have paid that's right to our show notes because you you put a little indicator by every uh segment but i did get steven i did get steven to send me the follow-up sound effect from the prompt so i could toss that in oh good so you

were going to play that no matter what happened. Yes. What was going to happen? Okay, good. Roley asks, the parallel betas for iOS 18 and 18.1 may be, like Jason said, to support the new iPhone earlier on in the year, since Apple wants to ship products by sea for better environmental impacts. It means they would have to ship their products

earlier in the year if they did want to do this. Apple mentioned something like this in a previous presentation. So give a bit more context for this we were talking about the fact that there are 18 and 18.1 we're going to talk about that a little later on in the episode and that potentially you you you threw out the idea that uh i received some messages from our developer friends who were very scared about the fact that maybe 18 comes out sooner yeah to support maybe the iphone being shipped sooner. Rory is crossing two things here.

Now, I actually found an article from TradeWinsNews.com, which I thought was like the best place to talk about shipping. Apple have spoken about committing to shipping more products by sea as a way to reduce their carbon emissions. But they are talking about, at least currently, older phones, that the new phones will still be shipped by air. Now, of course, this could amend over time, but I see that as unlikely, that they're going to shift their production time that much sooner.

But nevertheless, even if they did do this, they could ship these phones sooner if they wanted to get them done sooner and put them on a boat for a month. They have that in-store updating system, which I think they would use. That's right. I do wonder if they are going to try to GM, or I guess we don't use that term anymore. earlier with 18.1 running a little later, knowing that they've got this Apple intelligence update

that they're going to want to get out there as soon as possible. So it wouldn't surprise me if iOS 18 goes final sooner. I don't think they're going to ship it in August, right? I don't think that's going to happen, but it wouldn't surprise me if the goal is to get that done on the, on the sooner side so that it can be loaded on all those new iPhones. Um, and so that they can do the work of getting to 18.1 as quickly as possible. Cause that's the one that they're going to want to ship as soon as possible. But I don't think they're going to

drop an iOS 18 update for the world in two weeks. I think that's unlikely. It's not impossible, but I think it's unlikely. And Julian wrote in to say, I wanted to enforce the idea of phased rollouts, which is what you were describing with Apple Intelligence in 18.1. It's exactly why what happened at CrowdStrike was so terrible. Their update got pushed to everyone at once, which meant that everything was broken all at the same time.

I'm not saying that anything in Apple and Tudors were brick phones, but I mean, why risk it, especially with something so new? Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, it's the things we learned from the TiVo forums, right, Mike? Yep.

Yeah, indeed. What is especially interesting about 18.1 is it will be a double-phased rollout because Apple already phases the rollouts of the operating system updates right like if you don't opt into it you will get it at some point and they actually push that out a little bit to make sure because it's happened countless times that an os releases brick phones and has brick new phones like this has happened so many times and watches and all kinds. So they phase it.

We may not know that because we're all sitting there with the settings app, reloading and swiping and pulling and doing all the things to get the update to come to us immediately. But if you don't do that, it's a lot more kind of lazy about eventually getting the update. So they'll be phasing 18.1 and then phasing Apple Intelligence. We're really stacking up the phases. Love it. Time for Lawyer Up. Get on the right side of the law with Lawyer Up.

Oh, hello. I like that one. So good. I really like that one. Taylor writes in and says, Apple Intelligence is available in the EU after all, but on the Mac. Mac OS isn't declared a gatekeeper by the DMA

and the patch notes for 15.1 beta 1 only say that Apple intelligence won't be available in China, whereas for iOS and iPad OS, they explicitly say China and the EU. So seemingly it'll be available on the Mac when it launches, assuming it doesn't become a gatekeeper by then. This was hilarious to me to think about. But it's true,

right? Didn't even think about it. Yeah, absolutely. Mac's not covered by this. iPad and iPhone, yes. Mac, no. So if you want to use Apple Intelligence features, you'll be able to use them on the Mac. Get a Mac. That's right. As I said to Federico, it's like, back to the Mac. Yeah, get a mac that's right it's said to federico it's like back to the mac yeah exactly right exactly well he can do that because he's his ipad is also a mac half a mac yep half a mac the right half though and apple

has filed their motion to dismiss the department of justice lawsuit that one's creeping back around again so apple has argued i think in a way that we all expected that the case that the department of justice has levered against them does not meet the current law around antitrust that's what they're suing them over uh and that the department of justice is trying to reframe it to meet their ends in case you need a refresher the idea that it's all about interoperability and the department of Justice basically created their own categories to say that Apple was a monopoly player in those. Dubious as we talked about at the time.

Apple also says that this case would result in harming the security and user experience for their customers, which is the often used phrases by Apple. Now with this being this, now that they have filed this motion we will wait for the judge to decide

whether they will be throwing out the case or whether the case will proceed. Again, we're years away from this being resolved if the judge does decide to proceed. It would be interesting if the judge does decide to proceed, I think. I don't know what that will say

um as i think we if you know we spoke about at the time i support what the department of justice is like some of the things that they're getting at but if we're going by the legal ground i don't think they have legal ground yeah it it seems like it's a to me it seems like a real stretch but i'm not a lawyer so we'll see what the judge thinks of the argument that they've carved out this very specific sub sub category of a market that Apple dominates. But, but not really like, remember, it's not just a sub sub category of the market that Apple dominates. The number that they use to get to the big scary number is by adding apple and samsung together which is and world one yeah it's right yeah well and no it's us only because it's a higher number if it was worldwide apple would be a lower number that's a worse argument so they go well it's not worldwide it's in the us and it's just premium smartphones and then if you look at that and you look at samsung and apple sales together wow that's a big number which is you know again not looking at apple's sales and cutting it two different ways.

But we'll see. It might be good enough for the judge. Yeah. I still want the discovery. That's what I want. I want to read all the stuff. If anything, I will see if we get there. So if anything, I will see if we get there.

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They're coming right at you. Woohoo! Woohoo! Woohoo! I like when they have extra lyrics. Yeah. You know? I like when they have extra lyrics Yeah I think today's episode Particularly good to watch the video version of Just to see your reaction

We'll get to see my reactions to what's occurring That's amazing So that might be fun if you want to check that out I wrote most of the lyrics to these very high quality lyrics Did you? Oh yes, I supplied lyrics to Lex What a team effort i thought you were gonna say this episode might win a grammy oh well it's fine i mean it could you know

you never know i have to submit grammy for podcast jingles soundtrack yeah sure uh-huh so uh how much time have you spent with 18.1 a little bit a little bit not a lot um i haven't gone in on my main devices yet so i've got a second set of devices but i feel like i'm i'm this may be the week that i cut over to using the beta all the time but i've got it on you know separate devices right now i was we did an episode connected we had john volheys on the show and john is writing um the mac os review for mac stories and so one writing the Mac OS review for Mac Stories. And so one of the things I'll ask you is saying about going on these betas. What beta will you go on, though?

If you go on 0.1, that's not going to be the beta that you'll be writing reviews about, right? Yeah, I think maybe the answer is that I'm going to put my main system on 18.0 and leave the test system on 0.1. Yeah. I'm fortunate because I've got an extra Mac because I still have, I'm still holding onto a review unit. Um, I can have, cause this is the problem is you got to have an older system to refer to when you're writing about changes. So I could use Lauren's computer for it, I suppose, as well. But so the M3 Air loaner is running 18.1. I may update my Mac studio at my desk to 18.0.

And then 15 and 15. Or sorry, 15. Right. 15. Right. Sequoia. Because they haven't synced those numbers up which is stupid and uh my m2 air is gonna stay on uh 14 so so i i don't know if i mentioned it on this show but i have two ipad pros now um so i got the uh 11 inch m4 and fell in love with that computer and it's it's the thing that i use most at home. Took two iPads to replace the iPad mini

is what you're saying. Yes, basically. And then I started doing, I started working on some new design stuff with Cortex brand and realized I would really like to both, A, have an iPad that's always at my studio. So I'm not taking it backwards and forwards all the time

because I don't want to do that. Right. And also having a bigger screen is more helpful for that kind of work. So I also have an iPad at my studio now too. And so first off, I put 18.1 on the iPad at the studio. Okay.

And then fell in love with 18.1 and it's now also on my iPad at home. All right. What made you fall in love with it? Some of the features in 18.1 are genuinely fantastic. And I am faced with an interesting conundrum in which I now think I may switch to the Mail app away from Spark.

Why? Because the AI summaries are so useful so useful so this is both the summaries in the like the inbox taking place of a preview and also the fact that there is a summarize button um at the top of every email which i find really good for i get lots of very long email and also email newsletters. And also I sent for the first time an AI generated response to an email. So it was a, we'll maybe talk about this next week because you've got this email too.

I got an email asking if I wanted to try out an app under an embargo from a PR person. I don't know. And I pressed reply to the email and it popped up with the little like shiny color thing to suggest that it had like a tap it and it would fill it out for me. And it basically did exactly what I wanted. And then I added one more line. And there was a couple of emails sent back and forth.

And I decided to just go into it, like press what it responds. And it was doing kind of what I wanted. And like for me in this scenario, it's like, huh, this is almost the perfect thing for this type of email where it's like, I don't know this person. So I have no personal relationship to them. I want to use all the niceties. Isn't it easier to just have the computer to create the blanket niceties

that I would otherwise create that don't have any personality? You know, like, nice to meet you. Thanks for the intertouch. All that kind of nonsense stuff that I don't usually put into emails of people that I work with

because I don't communicate like that. But in a professional setting like this, it's kind of best to put these things in. So I just let Apple Mail do it for me and then added in the stuff that I wanted to add in myself. So all of this stuff together makes it so good. The fact that I can now look at my email and see, oh this brand has given you me a coupon code this brand is like telling me about their new release like it's very good at picking that stuff out and my tip is by the way if you're trying this out to increase the preview size right in the inbox to like three lines because then you get most of what you want so i really really like the email stuff. I think it's very, very good.

I, just to be clear, so the email you and I both got basically said, there's a new thing coming out. Here's an embargo. Will you accept it? And would you like to learn more? Let me know, basically. And you had AI write back a very polite email that said, yes, I would like to do all that. And I accept the embargo time and all that. I wrote a human written email that was as follows. Oh, would love to learn more and happy to accept an embargo. No punctuation. End of message. So your message was nicer. Yes.

Even though it was written by a robot. Even though it was written by a very polite robot. Yeah. And this summarization stuff extends to iMessages. So giving you the preview of a group thread is amazing. So this is very much the pinnacle of, I'm happy for you or sorry that happened, but I ain't reading all that. Correct. Okay.

I would say, by and large it does a really good job i've had it do some weird stuff like but in a scenario where i can't blame the computer because it's people talking about a thing that they're not given context for right but i know the context and so like in a scenario like that fine but a lot of the time i've been getting the messages they're coming through i'm I'm using the new focus mode, the reduce interruptions focus mode, which also I think is doing a good job. I'm not really sure how it's working, but it's interesting. Sometimes it's surfacing a message rather than, but it doesn't always surface that person, but maybe it's doing some kind of sentiment analysis on a message to maybe like indicating that it might be

important to me but i don't know if it's doing that but it's interesting to watch it this focus mode as well does also have the all of the manual overriding that other focus modes have so you can say always let this app through always let this person through so we'll go on top of the the machine learning but it's doing right so but instead of a blanket judge you know controlling it it's using the machine learning to judge each one and say whether does this seem like it's important enough to go through yeah interesting um but i'm using the so like you know the messages are all kind of collecting up in there um i really like it but there are a couple of scenarios where i'm not really sure what the intention is, or I think it might be kind of falling down.

So it's reading the messages and the notifications, and it bunches them together and gives you the little preview. These previews also show in the messages window itself, right, in the little preview on the side, like the inbox, essentially. But if you have notifications turned off for a thread, it doesn't give you this, right? Okay. Because it's not collecting the notifications. Right. And also, I think if you have messages pinned or the threads pinned, it also doesn't give you the summary. Because you can't see them.

Because you can't see them. Because they're in a little circle. Yeah, I have this problem because my big text chat is pinned and has notifications turned off. So to do this, I actually did try this and I couldn't get it to work last week. I'll try again on the betas where I took my, I unpinned my family chat and turned notifications back on. And then there were eight messages and there was no summary of any kind, which I was disappointed by. Yeah, it could be a little inconsistent. It's spotty.

I don't know. I've had it do summaries on one message from one person. It gave me a summary of that message. So I don't know what the thresholds are. But what I would like is, honestly, if I, you know, you can do, I don't know what it's called anymore, I think long press and it will give you the preview.

Yeah. If I long press on a pin, show me the summary preview first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I would really like those because I think it's very cool. And also I think the busiest group threads are the ones you turn the notifications off for, which are also the ones you would most likely want the summary for. Right. So I think this is all really interesting,

and you got more of it to work than I've gotten it to work thus far, but I'm going to live with it and spend more time with it. I'm struck. We're going to talk later about Apple's financial results, because that came out. Those came out. We're going to talk about that later. But I wanted to mention here,

Tim Cook talked a lot about AI stuff and the analysts are falling over themselves about AI, you know, and it's great. But the narrative that Apple is pushing about Apple intelligence is not, like, I would argue that it's misleading because, so they released this as a developer beta and Tim Cook says on the call,

you know, we rolled this out for developers to look at and we can, and we can't wait to see what they think and all of that. But the fundamental purpose of a developer beta is supposed to be for developers to use new features in order to plan their release for when that version comes out. That's what a developer beta is for. That's why it's called a developer beta. And the problem with it is developers can't do much with Apple intelligence. The big thing they can do is the intense stuff, which isn't in there. And it struck me. So you're talking about Apple mail and summarization. What Apple hasn't done is make a, maybe this is why it's not going to be available in the EU, what they haven't done is make an API so that if you're the developer of, let's say, Mimestream,

or anybody, that there's not like, I'm going to hand a message to Apple's LLM and ask for a summary. I'm going to go to summary kit or whatever, hand them this information, get a summary back and put it in my UI. No, it's just in mail. And so I think that that's one of the frustrations that I've got with the way that Apple

is sort of like saying, well, for developers and all of that, because a lot of these features, and I understand why, I understand it's early days yet, but Apple intelligence, a lot of these features, and I understand why, I understand it's early days yet, but Apple intelligence, a lot of these features are only going to be useful if you're using the stock Apple apps.

And I don't love it. And I'm sure that in the fullness of time, there will be APIs for third-party developers to use that will give them access to the same kind of model and summation and all of that that apple uses but i don't believe any of that is available right now no i'm getting slack messages and they're not being summarized yeah exactly now text right you could select text and summarize it but that's because you're using the text tools which are available if you use standard controls it's not really a thing it's

just part of the standard text control it's not really a thing it's just part of the standard text control it's not like a special thing but something like the email summary like if you're not apple mail like if if if uh mindstream wanted to implement this they would basically need to roll in their own machine learning model and then feed it data because apples is not available to them. Talking about those writing tools, I think they're pretty good. I like the controls that they have built in. So you select a bunch of text and you get some options, right? So you can change the tone of a message, right?

So you can be like, oh, give me this in a professional tone. Give me this in a friendly tone. And so I find that's pretty tone. And so like I find, you know, that's pretty helpful. And you can do this from kind of anywhere you can select text. And in some scenarios, it will show it in the quick type, you can press the little icon, or you can just it shows up also in the little popover, like the cut, copy, paste popover, which now is like 17 miles long, because they just keep adding things to it. But you can proofread and rewrite, which is helpful. You can change the

tone, but you can also make a summary of text, like take text and put it into bullet points, the key bullet points. Or if you have, you know, lots of text, you can turn it into a list or a table. So I like these options instead of me trying to craft a prompt to a chatbot to do this in a certain way right this is just our buttons just press the buttons so is this simplified list so it is more limited than if you were to ask a chat gpt to do this for you but i like the ui of it and then also you can have it once it gives you an answer you can have it rewrite it but you can't give it any guidance right so you can't be like oh yeah be friendly as if this is my mom not friendly as if this is my friend it's all pre-cooked friendly yeah exactly exactly i i

tried this out on uh on an article because i often use grammarly for that just to give it another pair of eyes that are not before i post something because i often use grammarly for that just to give it another pair of eyes that are not before i post something because i'm posting things just straight to the internet most of the time and uh it was pretty good it was not um i would say grammarly's got some ai stuff too that's also very good apple's advantage is going to be that they're built in that you don't have to pay any extra this is all really great great. And then there's the UI issue. Just like, what is the interface for this? Having it be built into the text controls is great.

I would say I find the UI not quite all there yet. But it's beta, right? I mean, it got confused. Sometimes it was showing me a correction, but not moving the text display to show it to me. So I couldn't see where the thing was it's supposed to when you're going sort of next next next it's supposed to move the selection so that you can see what you're what you're previewing and i thought that was kind of

unclear but i think there's a huge amount of potential there for the system to make some smart suggestions about things. Also, unlike Grammarly, believe it or not, the system seems to not understand about markdowns. So it was removing my markdown links and things. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. That's part of what I wrote is that URL with the brackets around it. You need to leave that there. But really encouraging, I would say.

I think it's got a lot of potential it's useful for me like you know i'm quite frequently just giving something to chat gpt to improve my grammar and just having it built into ios is just a mac was just better for me it's just easier and i don't have to be taking my text backwards and forwards. And I got it to hallucinate already, which is good news for everyone. So I was just playing around with the tools and I was copying and pasting. I was basically selecting some text from a Patreon sign up for a podcast called Into the Aether.

And I'll include a link in the show notes, but basically it's talking about, you'll get a behind-the-scenes database which shows every game that we played, da-da-da-da-da, and the Apple Intelligence summed it up as, oh, and guess what? You'll also get access to a special members area

called BEH, B-E-H. This doesn't feature anywhere. I don't know why it's gotten that. There isn't even a special members area. Also, it summarized that first paragraph paragraph and essentially it's not any shorter they just reworded some of it which i would say is yeah this was the friendly though i asked you to do it friendly this is the plagiarism bot kind of thing where it's like it's rewriting words i'm not sure saying so the original text was we might also throw some videos in here every once in a while and it rewrote it to we might even throw in some extra videos occasionally

it's not yeah it's not any different it is i would argue even in tone it's not any different it's just it's not changing the words as if you were trying to make it not seem like plagiarism to copy it so so there's there's a bunch of stuff going on but i bet bet i rewrote it multiple times and it kept talking about bear so you know maybe it's their problem maybe they need to create beth yeah it's time for beth so i was actually quite surprised at how quickly i got it to do that. I knew it was going to do it eventually, but I don't really feel like I threw a hard problem at it to get it to just come up with something completely on its own. Bigger thing that I wanted to talk to you about, though, is Siri.

Yeah. So it's not any smarter. Right. I know that we were expecting that. Really, it's just UI. Right. It's only smarter. It's only smarter. It's only smarter.

It's got the new UI, which is beautiful. It's not smarter other than that they've got the part of the model hooked up now where if you like stumble around and then correct yourself and all of that, it's better at understanding that. But in terms of its powers, it has no more power than it did. And like I've been able to ask it a bunch of stuff and it's still giving me as terrible answers as it's ever given me before right because they've not actually changed the underpinnings and and i for me now having access to these other tools and not being able to have a conversation with siri i think is is a problem right It feels really missing and makes them, I think, look, the OpenAI integration

will be important in some ways here, right? You might be able to ask some stuff and it'll go out to OpenAI for you or whatever, and Tim Cook confirmed in the earnings call that it's coming by the end of the year. But when Apple says, here's our AI, like here's AI, and they don't have something you can have a conversation with, I think that in a lot of people's minds, they're just going to go, well, this thing's as bad as it's always been.

That's the danger of saying, you know, you're making a bad first impression. I do wonder if they might even reconsider the Siri interface changes and roll that out. They should not change it until they've got something more significant. Until they've at least got the chat GPT. And what Cook said in the call is very specifically restating something they've said before, but I thought it was good to get the clarity,

which is our models on device are for, and in the private cloud, are for understanding your context and giving you answers based and performing tasks, right? Because all that app intent stuff is going to happen, and looking at your data. It's all about that personal data that it understands on your device and using that. World knowledge, that phrase that they kept using at WWDC, world knowledge, that phrase that they kept using at WWDC, looking up facts on the internet is not what Apple's stuff is for. So when we said back then, it sounds like ChatGPT and other plugins down the road are going to be the replacement for, I found a webpage for you

that answers this question, essentially. And that seems to be the case, that Apple wants to kick out to someone else's model, at least for now, if it's about world knowledge. And that gives them distance. And if they find other partners, it allows them to hold it at arm's length and just say, look, you choose who you trust, but it's not us. We're not giving you that information. It just feels like it's missing the personality yeah that is becoming much more prevalent they said so they said to me that there was some degree of context that is remaining but all the people everybody who's tried this context have failed the great example i have is you can use siri to say where is this person i know who

you've got on find friends and it will tell you oh jamie's in portland and then the next thing i say is what's the weather like there and it gives me my weather i had the exact same one i said where is steven it told me so what's the weather there and it told me what my weather was yeah and that's that's like there's no context and you're right that is one of the key things they need to do with siri is have it be a conversation oh and my next one i said no in memphis and then it googled memphis for me yeah no it just this is so although they claim there's some context there they're yes and that's why i would argue and i think you're right that until you've there's a certain bar that beyond

which you can change the siri ui but changing the siri ui while it's still dumb bad siri is a mistake right it's a mistake it shouldn't change no need to do it yet anyone and then and then i would also say i hope i i assume that if you don't have a device capable of Apple intelligence, that it will use the old Siri UI. Because nobody should see the new Siri UI unless it's Apple intelligence at a certain level. That's what new Siri should be. And I agree with you, this beta, it's not at that level yet. But it's a beta, right? It is a beta.

This is actually, I think Mark Gurman reported like October is probably when this is coming out. This is a long time. But so far, the stuff that I've tried, by and large, I am impressed with it. I wonder what you think. I'm not sure how I feel about this being like a compelling enough AI release, just these features,

like to say like, Hey, we're here. We're on the scene. I'm not sure this is enough. This is something that Gurman mentioned in his newsletter this weekend. And I, I think I agree to a certain point.

I mean, we all know, and we we've said since WWDC, Apple's playing catch up. They announced a lot of features they are um a lot of reactions to other features that exist elsewhere it's oh it's spread over the whole year so between now and next june essentially they're going to be rolling these out i think if you look at it very critically you'll say you know there's not a lot here it's a little and it's okay but there's a whole bunch of stuff that's not here yet that they're promising and they're already kind of behind

and it's going to take them this whole year to catch up where with where everybody else already is and there's some truth in that like i think. I think that that is part of what's going on here. At the same time, what else are they supposed to do? I mean, the alternative is to not ship anything because clearly they're behind and they're trying to do this as quickly as they can. So I think releasing features, first off, if you listen to the analysts on the call

and you look at Apple stock, people are really excited about the whole concept of Apple intelligence. It's almost as if what they wanted from Apple was acknowledgement that Apple was adding AI features over time and that they thought it was an important category. And Apple gave them that. And that's not just for the people in the tech industry and in the financial community who are looking at this and going, oh, I hope Apple isn't behind. It's also for consumers in the financial community who are looking at this and going, oh, I hope Apple isn't behind. It's also for consumers in the sense that if Apple can say,

hey, Apple intelligence, doesn't that make you feel good? And then the argument is not we're going to, you know, AI is fundamentally good. The argument is we are putting these features in that make your iPhone better and make your Mac better. And there's more to come because we've already announced these other features that are coming later. And then these other features that are coming after that, and it's just going to keep on rolling. I think first off, that's what it is. And I think that that will be a lot of people will say, okay, that's great. Now, will it mean that everybody's

going to buy a new iPhone this fall? Because, oh my God, Apple intelligence. Well, I think some people will, I think for other people, and I think Apple is okay with this, they'll hold off. And Apple knows they've got another release with more features and then another release with more features and then they'll have WWDC. Like Apple doesn't need to convert everybody to a new iPhone that supports Apple intelligence in September. They've got time to do it as they roll this stuff out so i guess what i would say is yeah it's it's a small amount of stuff but they pointed a direction they say where they're going they've got time and i think that beyond that a lot of it becomes people who are just impatient because they want to get to the next thing and then there's a lot of bad analysis that happens because the analysts are just bored and they want it they want to see more stuff now because they're bored. And Apple's got time to roll this stuff out. But yeah, if the litmus test is, is this going to sell more iPhones on day one, especially since 18.1 won't even be there on day one, the answer is probably no or probably very few. the answer is probably no or probably very few look i think it will but not in a way that you would want like i think more people will buy an iphone this year than they would have otherwise because they either want these features or think they're going to get them all right or or just

know that this new phone is going to be apple intelligence compatible and so they're going to get a new phone now and know that over the next couple of years Apple is going to keep on stuffing new AI features into it. I reckon I'm probably from the features I've spoken about going to be the, I think amongst our group, the person most excited about them are actually just things

that meet me where I need with my computer. But this does not feel like a big AI release to me. It's like here's a couple of machine learning features that have been added to iOS which I my computer. But this does not feel like a big AI release to me. It's like, here's a couple of machine learning features that have been added to iOS, which I really like. But I do believe that once we get to the end of all of the stuff they've spoken about, yes, it will feel like that.

But this is just the way things are rolling. I would say, actually, if the summary stuff works well, and if the adjusting your tone in an email or doing your grammar check in your email works well, a lot of regular people are going to be impressed with that, right? Because, yes, you've been able to do that in ChatGBT or Grammarly or all these other places, but there are a lot of people who just never do stuff like that. And if they have the ability to be like, oh my God, I can just select this paragraph and say, fix the grammar. And it does it. Yeah. You could have done that in something else, but for a lot of people, it's just going to be, oh, this is amazing. Right. Because it's been given to them for free with their, with their device. And, uh, and so that's worth keeping in mind, but yeah, this is a long, it's going to be a long process, right? Like they're going to,

first they're going to roll out phones with no AI. ai it's just a promise and then it's a promise of an update that's followed by a promise of another update and i guess what i would say i think they will sell models and i think that apple's got a good track record but what i would say to a more savvy uh iphone buyer is um remember the classic warning, which is never buy new hardware because of the promise of a software update. So if you're really excited about a thing that Apple is supposedly doing sometime this year, but it's not out yet, and that's the reason you're going to buy a new iPhone, maybe don't. Maybe wait. The iPhone will remain on sale, right? It will remain on sale for the moment when you actually are confident. But if you don't need a new iPhone, I would wait until there's something that's compelling. And you never know. I mean, it's possible that next

June at WWDC, they'll announce a bunch of stuff and you'll realize, oh, I actually want next year's iPhone because it's going to be that much better for those features that we don't even know about now. And I think from Apple's perspective, that's fine. If Apple intelligence kicks off an upgrade cycle a little bit early, but it takes two years instead of all happening in the holiday quarter this year, I think Apple's okay with that. I think Apple actually kind of must accept that that's probably what's going to happen because they can't ship a whole boatload of features on day one. They know it's not going to be like that. So they'll do their best, right? They're branding it all as Apple intelligence compatible, but I think even Apple would probably admit that it's going to take time and probably not kick off a super cycle right away. This episode is brought to you by

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Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and all of Relay. It's time to talk about Apple's earnings. Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? Money, money, money, money. Who has all the money? Money, money, money, money. Who has all the money? It's Apple. Oh, dear.

This episode, man. You know, I'm so pleased there was no bad news like this week. Like we didn't have to talk about something really sad, you know? Can you imagine? I guess we probably would have just kicked it off a week. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go.

Money, money, money. Who has all the money? It's Apple. It's Apple. Revenue of $85.8 billion for their fiscal third quarter in 2024. That is up 5% year over year the mac was at seven billion dollars of revenue up two percent the ipad is 7.2 billion up 24 percent what happens when you release a new product what imagine that imagine that the iphone 39.3 billion down one

percent year over year services at 24.2 billion, up 14%. We'll talk about that in a minute. And wearables and home, $8.1 billion, down 2%. So, not a lot going on here, really. It is. My standard line is, it is the most boring quarter possible that sets a quarterly revenue record and throws off more than 20 billion dollars in profit but that's apple right now is it is a it is a mostly boring report where they made huge sums of money uh bought a lot of stock back did a big dividend set a q3 record which you know they said

to buy a little tiny bit in q3 is not a very interesting quarter for them but still it's a record it's the most revenue they've ever had in this in the the third fiscal quarter um most of their product line was just sort of like up a little tiny bit or down a little tiny bit and apple would even tell you that the iphone being down one percent actually in constant currency it grew it was just the you know strong dollar met some of that went down like you know anyway a fairly standard apple machine continues rolling kind of quarter well this is the thing though you've got to find your story right there's always a story in the earnings somewhere and you found it i think you wrote a just an excellent article about services

it's actually an article where really to talk about it i just have to quote big chunks of it okay because you make a lot of good points so over this is from jason snell six cars.com okay over the last three years apple has averaged a 72% profit margin on services revenue. Even if a quarter of the services revenue that Apple receives is just payments from Google, and a further portion is Apple taking its cut from App Store transactions, there's still a lot more going on here. Apple is building an enormous business that's based on Apple customers giving the company their credit cards and charging them regularly and that business is incredibly profitable and

is expected to continue growing at double digit double digit percentages so what i found interesting here is that you you made a point and then made its counterpoint like in the article right you're talking about the fact that apple a ton of this money's from google a ton of this money is from Google, a ton of this money is from App Store stuff, and Apple's making its TV shows. But if you took those out, that's still a huge amount of money. So they are kind of doing all of it and doing well. Yeah. I mean, they're building this business where what they want is to make more ongoing money on their existing customer base. That's the goal, is they're going to offer additional services, and then also they're making money via, again, the Google licensing deal

and via a cut of App Store transactions, although you could argue that the App Store transactions fit in because it's a service Apple is providing an app store. And then they get a cut of that too. And leaving aside the, you know, monopoly questions there, it's still,

I think even if there could be other app stores, Apple would still do pretty well offering its own app store as the platform owner. And I also here wanted to, I didn't want people reading this article to spend the length of the article going, but what about Google? Right? Like, yes, Google generates whatever it is. It's a very large number of, you know, amount of money.

Isn't it like $40 billion a year? I think it's like $20 billion a year. But regardless, it's a lot. It's a lot. But there's a whole bunch of other stuff too. And Apple rolls it it's like $20 billion a year. But regardless, it's a lot. It's a lot. But there's a whole bunch of other stuff too. And Apple rolls it all together. $20. You're right. I found it. $20 billion. Yeah. So it's like less than a quarter of Apple's overall services revenue at this point, which probably when it started, it was almost all of it. But now it's not. It's less than a

quarter of Apple, because this was $25 billion in one quarter. And it's not it's less than a quarter of apple because this was 25 billion in one quarter and it's about 20 billion a year from google so a fraction a an important fraction that's 100 profit but still a fraction yeah and the key thing being it the services revenue grows quarter to quarter it's not just year on year and like you look at that chart and it just goes up keeps going up it just keeps going up i think it said a i think apple has set a services revenue record something like 15 out of the last 16 quarters or 15 out of the last 17 quarters there was a little bump where they kind of came back down a little bit three and q4 of 2022 went down a little other than that it's been up it's been up for like five years i think probably so um so yeah so it's

profitable it's growing and apple said on the call they can expect it to continue growing at double digit percentages like that for next quarter um so so yeah it's a it's a huge business and it's not just google and it's not just app store. It is a whole big lump of money. And, and of course the other part of this. So there's two bits of, I had a little, I had a little buzzing in my head. I was like, what's going on here? Right. I'm looking at this.

I'm thinking I'm going to write something about the Apple results. It was a really boring quarter in the most, you know, again, I would love to have a boring quarter like that where I generate $20 billion in profit and set a record, but still for Apple, kind of a boring quarter. And I was thinking like, well, what is in here? And two things hit me. And one of them was the basic math of $24.4 billion in services revenue is more than the Mac, iPad, and wearables, is more than the Mac, iPad, and wearables, home and accessories categories generated. So already, if you look at the pie chart, there's iPhone, which is big, and then there's services, and then there's everything else, wearables, Mac, and iPad, and they're not as big as services. So services is now eclipsed all but the iPhone of Apple's product category.

That's wild. It's just a huge Apple's product category. It's wild. It's just a huge business for them. And that's revenue. And the other thing that you, and you made a good chart for this, that the profit figure. Yes, that's the other penny that dropped then. I'm like, okay. I'm like, all right. So that's impressive.

It's bigger than Mac, iPad, and wearables put together. Like, all right, so that's impressive. It's bigger than Mac, iPad, and wearables put together. But keep in mind, Apple's profit margin on services revenue, I did the math, over the last three years, it's 72%. And, you know, Apple makes really good profit on its hardware, but it's nothing like that. Because it can't be. Because hardware costs. It has fixed costs. You know, every iPhone costs to manufacture. It costs all the parts and all of that. that because it can't be because hardware costs it has fixed costs of you know every iphone cost

to manufacture it costs all the parts and all of that services is a lot lighter because it's sort of intangible and there there are costs but 72 profit margin and if you do the math based on the profit margins in the last quarter what you end up getting is how much profit did Apple's products make, including the iPhone, and how much profit, the bottom line here, we're not talking the top line, we're talking the bottom line, profit from products versus profit from services. And the answer is, I did a little chart, $22 billion in profit from products and $18 billion from services. So products still more profitable for Apple than services, but it's close. And I would guess that in the next year, there will be at least one quarter where Apple makes more of its profit from the services line than from all of its products, including the iPhone.

I feel like it's probably the earliest it would be would be Q3 25. Two or three, right? Because it's not going to be the holiday quarter. There's a huge spike in product revenue. It's on the chart. You can see it. But we're getting to that point. So it's just an interesting thing to think about.

And again, a lot of people leapt to conclusions based on this. It was very interesting to see. It was like a little Rorschach test where some people are saying, oh, you're saying that Apple shouldn't make money on services. And there are other people who are like, yes, this is why Apple is doomed and has sold its soul because of this. It's like, I'm not saying either of those things.

I'm saying, isn't this an interesting fact that colors how we think about how Apple's business is put together? I'm really not going beyond that. In fact, in the story, one of the things I said, trying to reason this out is, the truth is anyone who has a runaway services narrative, I think is probably wrong.

The danger is that there ends up being people at Apple who don't understand and have misunderstood the business. And I hope they're never put in positions of authority because it's obvious that services is revenue stream built on the back of Apple's hardware. And that if there is no iPhone, there is no services revenue. You can't have one without the other. It starts with the hardware. The hardware matters. The hardware and software are bundled together in that device. It matters. The hardware matters. The hardware and software are bundled together in that device. It matters. What Apple has done, though, is said, when we sell you an iPhone or a Mac. But I think it's very quickly becoming true that, you know, when somebody buys an iPhone,

Apple makes a lot of money, but maybe not as much money as they make over the life of that iPhone on the services sold to that person. I think services, like if we're being, if we're just being completely kind to Apple services makes so much sense to them as a company because they have spent the last 25 years, especially building an ecosystem, right? That you want to have four products of theirs and you're going to have a great time. Services is the glue between all of them, right?

That actually connects the multiple products that you have of theirs together. So really, services, the idea of things in the cloud and the connection of these devices, that's kind of the proposition, right? That you can have four things of theirs and they all kind of work similarly and you get the same service

and the same features across all these devices so like if you just take it at its face value of what we like about apple and the way that apple products work services makes a lot of sense the problem is everything that gets dumped into services right some of that stuff not so good yeah yeah but yeah i think what apple has tried to do with services is say, I mean, when they say hardware and software and services now, instead of just hardware and software, I think what they're getting at is what you said. It's the glue. It's the idea that, look, one advantage is that our hardware is great and the software that runs on it.

Another advantage is then we build services that improve your usage of those products, Another advantage is then we build services that improve your usage of those products, make them work better together, improve. You know, these are key products in your life and we can build services that elevate it further. And let's be honest, are also easier. Like the thing I always think about, like Apple retail, like Apple retail is incredibly profitable. There are other retail outlets. Like Apple retail is incredibly profitable. There are other retail outlets. This is why I'm not super enthusiastic about the idea of, oh, everything when Apple does a thing, it's a monopoly play. It's like there are other retail outlets, but it's sure convenient to go to the Apple store because you know that it's Apple.

It's nice. They're going to have everything. They're going to have people there. And even if that's not entirely true true like i think that's the vibe you get i'm going to apple i'm going to be i hear a lot of people say i'm going to apple when i say i'm going to apple i mean i'm driving to cupertino but a lot of people just i'm going to apple means i'm going to the mall right i'm going to apple and apple has everything and if they don't have it they can get it and they're the experts and they know all about it. And it's convenient.

And there's third-party products in the Apple store and they're not cheap, but it's certainly easy. And again, could you save money by doing this elsewhere and buying different products that aren't in the Apple retail store and all that? Yes, but it's super convenient to just be in the Apple retail store. So they make a lot of money from it.

And I think services is the same kind of story where, you know, like we have on these podcasts, we talk about this and on my website and all that, like, okay, cloud storage. Google makes cloud storage. Microsoft has cloud storage. There's Dropbox. There's Box. There's all of these things. And there's iCloud.

Does iCloud have issues? Yeah, not as many as it used to. Does iCloud have all the features of those other things? No, it doesn't. Is iCloud easy because it's built into the operating system and you're already giving Apple money for something else? Yeah, it really is. And that goes for all of this stuff. So that's, I think that's ultimately their game. And I don't think it's fundamentally evil. I think it's actually perfectly reasonable, which is we're going to make this thing that is a little pricey and very profitable for us, but it's going to make our products nicer and it's easy for you to do it. And you know what? There are always going to be coupon clippers out there. And there are always people who are going to be like, no, no, no, I've cobbled together a system that saves me $8 a month and take that Apple. It's like, okay, that's fine. In fact, I would argue that's where Apple's anti-competitive nature is like, let those people do that. Just let them do that. That's fine. Because most people, it goes back to like when Steve Jobs said, we're going to start selling music on iTunes, right? It's like,

you could, people are downloading music for free. Like, you can get Napster and get music for free. But you know what? You just pay 99 cents for a song. It's easy. It's right there. It's convenient. And a lot of people are like, that's fine.

I'll do that. So convenience goes a long way. Having it be from Apple and deeply integrated goes a long way. I know there are any competitive arguments that can be made there. But in the big picture i think that's really what's going on with services is like they just want like they've got these products and then there's this big warm fuzzy cloud around all of them that is apple services and they're just they're nice and they're easy and before you know it apple is extracting huge amounts of money out of your bank account every uh every month it happens to all of us i mean it's it's you know to kind of wrap this up it is kind of incredible that they made the services thing work yeah it was i looked it up it was seven or eight

years ago that they did the services narrative thing right where they're like okay hey everybody we are announcing today that we're going to make a big bet on our services revenue and we're going to double it in the next, I forget what it was, five years or whatever. They doubled it so much faster than that. And they knew they were going to do that, but it was the launching of the services narrative, which is we as a company. So this is not new, right? This is eight years since they announced it. So probably longer that they were workshopping it internally. We are going to grow our services business. We are not going to stand. And I think some of this is Apple wanting all the money and it's on this platform. I think that's a thing that is a not great bit of Apple's personality as a corporation, but it's this idea of like, well, wait a second,

why are other people building businesses on connecting all these things and offering services to our users? Why don't we do do that and so they set about building an enormous services business and as you said the funny thing is it worked worked in i think beyond their wildest expectations it worked yep because then also the industry moved in such a way that they were able to collect up more pieces and put them into services like when they started this they didn't that they were able to collect up more pieces and put them into services. When they started this, they didn't think they were going to make a TV show with Jennifer Aniston in it. No. That wasn't what they were thinking about.

That was probably not what they were thinking. And again, Apple TV Plus loses money, right? That's a real hit to the profit margin. Yeah. It loses money. But I think, again, it's got some other benefits that we talked about. They really like being nominated for awards and things like that. It adds a sheen to it. And it's a shield as well.

Yeah. I would also say it adds a sheen to the services line because it's much more glamorous to talk about services and say, you know, we got a lot of Emmy nominations than it is to say, you know, we got another big check from Google. If you enjoy this show and would like more of this show, you should subscribe to Upgrade Plus. Not only do you get no ads, you get bonus content every single week. You get access to the RelayFM members Discord and just general bonus content for being a RelayFM member.

We have monthly shows that talk about the behind the scenes or the bear at Relay, I guess, as well as a great show that Cathy Campbell puts on for us called Spotlight, where Cathy asks questions to a Relay FM host each and every month. And I just did one recently talking about some questions that the audience had for me and talking about Relay 10, so you get that. But on Upgrade Plus this week, we're going to talk in a little bit more detail about Jason's solar experience.

Ooh. Solar panels. He didn't go to the sun. Or did you go to the sun? I did not go to the sun. Okay. Go to getupgradeplus.com. You'll get longer ad-free listening every week,

and you'll be helping to support the show, too. Saddle up, Jason. It's room Around Up time. Saddle up and ride into the future. Saddle up and ride into the future. Saddle up and ride into the future. It's the Room Around Up. Yeah.

I've got to hand it to Lex for harmonizing with himself. I know. What a talent that man is. Amazing. The things he's able to do. I especially like that I said saddle up and then Lex said saddle up.

That was good. That means you really know me, Jason. I do. I do. How do you write lyrics about the rumor roundup that's how you do it well the future is that the colors are is upon us uh we're starting to see some supposed case leaks of this year's iphone line so the iphone 16 and i guess it will still be the 16 plus will come in a white black blue pink and, pink, and green. These colors, very saturated.

They look good. They look great. And they have the, what we're expecting to see, the stacked cameras on top of each other in the new kind of vertical layout, which I like. I think it looks cool. It makes the bump way smaller, right?

And then the flash is just out on the, flush on the case. So that's actually a really good look. And the colors that blue that green oh so nice they're good yeah pink too like all of them the white and black like whatever it's white and black but that blue is i know i know i know real good and luckily uh in the in the pro world for those of us who get pro phones, there's going to be a kind of bronze looking titanium option called Rose is the name right now. I don't know why it would be Rose. Why don't you call it bronze?

However, there might be some good news for people who like the most boring of phones uh that could exist the there are some also some leaks of the other uh like the white the natural and the black titanium and the the images that have leaked from these uh show a very dark black phone yeah like very dark which could be fun for people that like that i'll take it yep i have the blue right now natural is really good though natural is really good but i have the blue and natural is the winner natural was was was the best black would be interesting too so i'm i like i like the colors be interested in maybe what this like rose or bronze could be

because i think it could just be like a warmer natural titanium is probably what we're gonna end up with yeah uh yeah because i what i want is is just go gold again but i don't think they're gonna do that but this would be the closest to that all right um but yeah it is gonna be uh funny when they get rid of the only color and now we have white black and two essentially grays yes colors are you want to color what we're gonna get rid of all of it what are you doing it doesn't belong i just don't again if you don't want to color a full phone that's fine but like i don't understand why people who want to buy an iphone pro can't have a nice color i just don't understand it i don't i just it's so frustrating to me that they don't. They go, no, no, the iPhone 16 is in the fun colors.

16 Pro, no. No color for you. What are you doing? No color for you. What are you doing? It's a shame. Come on. It is a shame.

I would love some color. But I will say, I, you know, nearly a year in, or however long we are, I really like the natural titanium. I think it looks so, so, so good. And just for all the people that whenever we talk about these inevitably say, what's the point? People just put them in cases. I don't.

I don't. I don't. Neither of us put our phones in our cases. Nope. So we care about the colors of the phones. I did buy Lauren a new case. She's been using the fine woven since it came out. And it's just a little fine woven up.

It's a disaster. It's so battered and smashed and terrible. And she's had leather cases in the past and they've all looked good. And this thing, it's so ratty that I finally just went ahead and bought her a leather case, a proper case for it

because it's so bad. Make a little prediction now. Fine woven. R.I.P.? Do you think it's gone? Like no fine woven r.i.p do you think do you think it's gone like no fine I think if apple has any ability to build a different case they will but I'm not convinced how long their lead time is for this yeah I know we've spoken about it in the past and there was some some questions about it my thinking is I think kind of going on what you're saying, fine woven, they will make one this year. I expect next year

all silicon. Probably. And that they might make some premium feeling silicon. Like, they will be all silicon, maybe a texture on one of them or something, but I think they're just going to go all silicon, because that's what they can do. They know they can do it well, and they're just going to go all all silicon because that's what they can

do they know they can do it well um and they'll just find some way to to wait one of the more expensive what a disaster we were right i'm just going to say we were right like there's a lot of pushback about oh people are critical of fine woven it's just because it's new it'll be fine it's like it's not fine it's bad. No, it's real bad. Yeah. Let's finish out today's episode with some ask upgrade questions. Sometimes you just don't know the answer. You don't know what to do. Your friends,

Mike and Jason. Might have some advice for you just ask oh okay there we go that one continued in every possible way that i thought it could continue uh-huh like even the end of the song, I think, like the final note was further than. No lasers? Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

I thought the lasers were implied by the jingle, but okay. Oh, laser implied. You want me to play the jingle again and do lasers? Nope. We don't have that kind of time, do we? All right. We don't. We don't. We don't have that kind of time do we all right we don't we don't we don't have that kind of time matthew asks given the rumors of a folding

phone there were more rumors of the folding phone which we'll talk about next week uh is it possible that apple may implement some sort of dual screen usage or multitasking mode in preparation for something like that on a folding phone so the the age-old classic here was size classes being introduced to the ipad to get ready for multitasking do you think we could see something that may be a harbinger for what might come yeah if i had to predict i would say that uh sometime in the next couple of years apple will will introduce split view for the iPhone. Yeah. And it'll be top and bottom.

And people will be like, why? And Apple will say, why not? And basically make it small. Because not only is it if you've got a folding phone that's open, but like halfway, but also if it's closed and you've got that back screen, the other possibility would be that they're not going to, they're not going to do it, that they view that like the, it's either open or closed and the app just runs and you don't have two apps on those two different halves of the screen. They might do it where they just have it be a regular screen on the inside and on the outside, they instead adapt kind of like a widget model, right? So they use their widgets or their their standby and so it's standby on that other screen or

widgets and they've got those pieces already we'll say i mean i want to congratulate samsung for an absolutely incredible integration into the olympics um which i'm sure you've seen every time there is a medal ceremony there is a Z Flip given to somebody and they take a selfie with it with the phone closed. Yep. Saw that just yesterday. Yeah, that kind of thing they will want, right? Having the camera on the front screen.

And I just think that they've done such a good job with that. It is funny to me every time to see the phone held and then given back to somebody um which is very funny i got to touch a z flip this weekend okay because i was on uh the last studio twit from petaluma with and jason howell was sitting next to me and he had oh no it was actually it wasn't jason howell even though he's got he had a weird android phone too leo had the z flip and um having not put my hands on a one of those folding phones in a while um first off the z flip like oh samsung like the when it's open the industrial industrial design of it it is just an iphone like yeah this this newest one the z flip 6 it's it's just a

folding iphone it's just a folding iphone it looks exactly like the iphone they there is nothing about it that says samsung it is a it is an iphone that said it's weird to me because that's not how they've been in the past and like that they've felt a little bit more unique but now it just looks like a folding just an iphone so uh when it's open yeah i mean if you angle it there's a little you can see the little bump the little bend but it's otherwise it's a pretty nice big iphone like phone and then you you fold it over and the folding is quite pleasant and then you've got this little screen that can have information on it and stuff and like i can see it i can see an iphone that folds and the rumor is you know that'll be like year after next but i totally can see it uh if apple is confident enough in the uh the hardware and the

quality and all of that to stand by it, I think that that has been one of the things. They're not willing to be quite as far out on the edge as some other phone makers are, but I totally can see it being a thing. And they've got, like I said, with widgets and standby and stuff like that, they're already kind of building an infrastructure for this. And remember, what Apple always does is reuse parts, right? so they'll build that home pod with the screen and it'll be reusing parts including widgets and standby and and tv os and whatever and if they do a folding phone with a little screen on the outside will it not be a standby-esque kind of thing of course it will be

of course yeah yeah that that that z flip 6 is is very good like this is the first time that a z flip has gotten the most up-to-date camera and processor it's usually been a one behind the phone has gotten a little bit expensive more expensive because of that but like i think that they have actually this time made like this is this is just a very good phone and it also folds um and yeah i think this integration with the olympics i think is is going to really help them sell a lot of those i think they've done it very naturally and also i know it looks like it looks like a folding iphone the phone also does just look cool at the same time like i think the industrial design is great obviously because it looks like an iphone

where iphones look but i just think you know it also has the two cameras and the screen on the front it's massive now like it's Like it's a cool looking product. Jack wants to know, how has your editing process been affected now that you offer videos of these episodes on YouTube? Oh, that's a good question. Not at all in the sense that we have our good editor, Jim Metzendorf, who's been working on this for a while um since my audio handed over the audio edit and jim continues to do an audio edit we do not have a unified process

jim edits the audio that is the primary of the of the show what we do is our videos go to chip sutterth um and our audio files obviously as well and he puts them all together in a video project he gets the same editing notes that go to jim i think he doesn't do the detailed audio edit nor should he that jim does but if we say cut this out move this around he pulls some of that stuff out i think chip a detailed audio edit on video is bad because then the video is cut. Video is weird. Right. So I think, I think Chip might do some things where like an under, I say something and he

takes it out because I'm, you're talking. Right. But, um, but yeah, so Chip does that. Uh, so we have two streams basically where we're doing, uh, an edit that is going to do the best audio. And then we're doing a, a video version that will take into account, like we did the other week because of the embargo. We had a segment that we recorded at the end of the show

that moved to the middle of the show. Because literally the embargo dropped about Apple Intelligence while we were recording. And we already, I'd been prepped on it. I'd been briefed, but we couldn't talk about it live on the internet until it had come out. And so that note goes to Jim and Chip. And so for, is that you give multiple podcaster streams and then it generates a cut where it's cutting back and forth. And so that helps that. Chip is doing his own different stuff though, right? Yes.

stuff though right so like yes jim is looking for imperfections in the audio background noises if we're if you know maybe me and you have spoken over each other and i didn't make a note of that like he's doing those kinds of things chip is making sure that our frames look good yes like and chip is very patient um with me like for example he told me last week that i i move around a lot when i record and so he has to like try and level me out uh because i'm a bit of i am a bit of a fidget when we record like i move a lot anybody that watches the youtube version will see that i move a lot when i record and so i cause him a lot of problems that way i think but like that's like the difference is you know jim is editing to make the audio the best it can

sound and chip is making sure that the video looks as good as it possibly can yes which is it's quite interesting that we have these two things going on and i think it's particularly interesting and as we for us because i'm just not used to the visual part and i'm still trying to get used to that uh it's interesting yeah and chip does some things too where he'll drop in like some images I'm just not used to the visual part. And I'm still trying to get used to that. It's interesting. Yeah. And Chip does some things too where he'll drop in some images. So this episode probably will have some of those charts that we were referring to.

And he does chapter art sometimes. So there's a bunch of stuff that goes in there from him. Again, we want to do a nice version for YouTube because we think that there's an audience on YouTube and that there are people who prefer YouTube. Hi, YouTube. Hi, YouTube. we want to do the best version of the audio podcast so we've philosophically we basically have kept our audio production identical and then added a video production separately um and sometimes there's collaboration like sometimes we'll have noise and jim will do a denoise and you know and chip will say jim can i have the denoise of jason's track because there was a bad sound in the background or whatever and they'll they'll exchange files behind the scenes but basically we've got two processes so it's the editing process has not been affected but it's been doubled and then of course there are the shorts which is the whole

reason that this um started in the first place right so chip will cut out those in various places chip will cut out some shorts identify those and then jamie will post them. And then Chip also, the other thing we're doing, if people don't know, is we've been pulling some segments out, one or two segments a week. So instead of people clicking on a thing on YouTube and getting a 90-minute long podcast, they'll get a 15-minute long discussion of this topic. And that's a good way, I think, to get people sort of introduced to who we are, who might not know, or who might not want to spend 90 minutes with us every week, but still get something out of it. So, and again, it's just an experiment.

I fundamentally believe there are lots of different ways to consume this kind of content that we're creating. And that if we just do podcast, we will reach the people for whom that works. And we have, and that's great. But I know that there are people out there who would rather consume it in a different way. And if that broadens the scope of upgrade, great, but it's not, you know, that's great but i know that there are people out there who would rather consume it in a different way and if that broadens the scope of upgrade great but it's not you know that's what it's for is just to try to reach uh people who don't think about podcast apps but might think about youtube and we love them too we love them i'm giving them a thumbs up but you can only see that on youtube yeah the podcast literally takes a village now. No, we got a team.

We got a team. We're coming up on 10 years and it's going to be that thing. We talked about this when I was in London that when we started, it was just you and me and we hung together and now we got a whole upgrade crew that puts the show together.

So it's great. Shout out to all of them. And sometimes there are jingles. And sometimes there are jingles. It's true. Did we get to them all? We did. Did we do them all? We did them all. I want to thank Lex again for those jingles.

Is there any you would like to replay for fun because you like them? I feel like we did it. I don't want to overplay them. Okay. That's my concern. Is there one you want to hear? I want to hear Lawyer Up again. I really like it. Okay. That's good. It's got the mariachi kind of horn thing there.

It's this one. Get on the right side of the law with Lawyer Up. I feel like that one's going to be in my head a lot. I think I'm going to be singing that one to myself for a bit. Okay. I'm going to give you a little bit, and I won't play the whole thing,

but I think this is the true earworm of the whole batch. Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? It's the little do-do-do-do-do-do-do. It's like a little xylophone kind of in the background there. I mean, and also it's like ABBA, right? Money, money, money, who's got all the money? Oh, yeah.

So you can imagine my problem with earworms is when they become another song, that's when I can never get rid of them. Money, money, money, money. Well, thank you to Lex, who's truly found his calling. That was good fun. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay very well. We're going to have to give him a thank you gift of some sort

for doing all of that. But I have fulfilled my summer of fun dream of doing an episode that is like AM radio in the 1970s and 80s, full of jingles. That's what I was going for. If you would like to send us in your feedback, maybe go to, or your follow-up or questions, go to upgradefeedback.com. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com and hear his podcast on theincalibur.com and here on Relay, where you can hear me too. And you can check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us online.

Jason is at jsnau, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. You can watch full video versions of this show on YouTube as well as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube where we have clips. We are at Upgrade Relay in all of those places. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com to learn more. And thank you to our sponsors of this week's episode.

That is the people at ExpressVPN and Squarespace. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, everybody.