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from relay this is upgrade episode 525 for august 19th 2024 today's show is brought to you by fit
bod delete me and krcs my name is mike curly i'm joined by jason snow hi jason hi mike by my
calculations if you do 52 episodes a year,
after 10 years of Relay,
you should have 520 episodes.
This is episode 525. We're not at
our 10th anniversary yet. I just want to point out
again how much extra work
we do. How much extra work...
No calendar can hold us down. No, we burst
straight through. There's like a week, and it's like, hey, one
episode of Upgrade, and we just kind of jam ourselves in there
and like, nuh-uh! Two this time to this time boom we did it how about that and we high
five and that we did that like nine times in 10 years apparently so great i have a snow talk
question for you it comes from anthony who wants to know jason you said on the last episode that
you were a long time youtube fan i'm curious what is your favorite album or song from the band you
too um originally this question said lifelong, and I just want to
point out I'm not a lifelong U2 fan because they didn't exist until like 1980.
Well, the whole lifetime of the band.
And in fact, the...
And I was not a fan for the lifetime of the band. In fact, when my sophomore year in high school
we had to do reports about a thing we liked. i don't even remember what extended project of some sort and there was a guy in our class who uh
did a thing about u2 and we thought it was uh we thought it was dumb and then in 1987 the joshua
tree came out and it's a great album and it's my favorite u2 album and i became a u2 fan so that's
the answer the joshua tree and favorite song i don't know i had a hard time picking i don't have
one clear favorite uh maybe one which is from octoon baby or with or without you which is from joshua tree but like
it's great i have a playlist called best of you too it's got like 50 songs in it it's great and
then there was that time that apple's uh apple music i cloud sync thing whatever had a had a
little burp and i got an additional playlist called best of you three oh my god i was i was already for that
i nearly just smelt water into my microphone that's going to affect me for the rest of the
episode now it incremented helpfully when it got a sync failure of some sort and i thought oh no
i can't i don't know which one of these playlists there aren't two playlists there were it it made
a mistake but it does that thing where it's like, well, okay, I'm going to add a number onto the end. But then they've obviously got code that says, but if
there's already a number at the end, just increment it. And therefore I got a playlist I have not yet
deleted because it's hilarious. Also, by the way, does not contain the entire contents of the best
of you two playlist. They messed that up too, but the best of you two playlist they messed that up too but the best of you three a great
classic playlist that i've never listened to because why would i do that incredible
yeah some good apple music uh bugs there you have to you have to keep it right like it's too
i do yeah i do best of you three it's uh best of you three there are only 34 songs best of you two
there's 55 songs so who what i don't ask it's but let me ask you jason is the best of you three
playlists better than the as the curation better is it gonna good edit do you think i don't think so. Okay.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's not just cut off at the end.
It's like there's some very weird sync problem.
I don't know.
Don't ask.
It's Apple Music.
If you'd like to send in a question of your own to help us open a future episode of the show,
just go to upgradefeedback.com
and send in a Snell talk.
We have some follow-up from last week's episode Jason.
We'll start with some stuff on macOS
screen sharing. So I'm
seeing from 9 to 5 Mac here. Starting in
beta 6 the screen sharing prompt
now allows you to approve for
a month rather than a week and the
pop up says app name is
requesting to bypass the system private
window picker and directly
access your screen and audio.
This will allow AppName to record your screen and system audio,
including personal sensitive information that may be visible or audible,
and you can approve, you can deny, or you can approve for one month.
Is this better?
No.
Well, yes, but it's better, but doesn't solve the underlying issue,
is what I would say,
which is asking once a month is better than asking once a week.
But not having, apparently, a way to say, no, really, I approve this app, stop asking me, I think is user hostile.
And then I also think the way that this is written, and again, it's a beta, but assuming's written it ships like this it's written in a way that shames the developer and provides a level of technical
detail that no regular user is going to understand bypass the system private window picker and
directly access your screen and audio like i don't actually know what private window picker means
what is that what are they talking about there is so is. So it's a system thing that they did where there's a more constrained way to grab information
off the screen where you, as an app, ask the system to have the user pick a window, right?
It's that thing.
And the user picks and it gets shared back to the app so that there's an intermediary.
This is one of the ways that Apple has tried to make things more private and secure is that there's an intermediary. This is one of the ways that Apple has tried to make
things more private and secure is that there's an intermediary that asks. So like in iOS,
it's the idea that when you select a photo, instead of the app reading your photo library,
the app asks Apple to ask the user to select a photo and the user selects a photo and Apple
hands the photo that was selected back to the app, right? Because that's more secure and private that way. The app
can't see all the photos. The problem is, one,
that's a very technical API kind of thing going on here. And two, it doesn't
actually solve the larger problem of apps that actually do need to read
your screen and are not just sort of screen sharing a window, which is what this seems
to be suggesting. so yeah so like apps that want to see everything do they get the one month still or is
it just a one week for those no i think they i think they get the one month okay i think i think
that this is just an example of of uh the the text one of the prompts yeah i mean a month is better
than a week but it's still worse than forever.
Right?
I mean, that's what we're arguing here.
And here's what I'll say.
We got some good feedback from a couple of listeners who wrote in
and these are things that I hadn't considered.
I'm sure you had, but we didn't talk about them on the show
specifically. So the first one comes from Adam
who says, this change
that Apple wants to make is going to be
a miserable mess for IT professionals.
Services like LogMeIn and Splashtop
must have screen recording permissions
to allow remote IT support to take control
and support remote computers.
Having to accept the permission
often would be a disaster for IT departments.
Confused users might disable the software
and create more work and frustration.
And Stephen wrote in and said,
I have a Mac mini home server like many people do. I also work at a church with the software and create more work and frustration and steven wrote in and said i have
a mac mini home server like many people do i also work at a church where people are remote every day
but sunday and remote interproduction machines to set up the weekend if you never or rarely see the
screen of the machine how would you re-authenticate so you can continue to have remote access yeah i
saw a master on post by luke v who does the Screens app that was similar,
which is how do you connect to a remote Mac
in order to control its screen
so that you can administer it
when it's in a data center or something like that
if the act of connecting to it pops up a dialogue?
Like you can't use what happens.
At least the second example in that example
is like it's something you're doing
to your own computer, right? So like, like you know maybe you can work it out but that first one about it
departments that feels like a a nightmare the second one maybe you can work it out if there's
a way to do it that doesn't do that prompt that's fine but if i'm on vacation and i need to connect
to my server back at my house and it throws up a prompt or honestly if i'm in sitting at my desk and i need to connect to my server in the back of my house and it throws up a prompt. Honestly, if I'm sitting at my desk
and I need to connect to my server
in the back of the house
and it throws up a prompt like that
and I don't have access to the interface,
it's actually an enormous problem
because I can't access that computer if that's the case.
It's a very, very, very bad use case.
That computer doesn't have a monitor attached to it.
And you can't dictate
when it's going to show you that prompt either, can you?
And there's that.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't APIs for a lot of this stuff and there are ways through and all that. I'm just saying that
there are lots of complexities here. Both of these examples are good. And we'll come back to what we
said last week, which is, I think I'll appreciate Apple trying to protect users. The issue is
protecting the users haphazardly, stumbling around and throwing a bunch of things, a bunch of permission dialogue boxes up there inartfully and without thinking through all the use cases is going to break people's workflows and make more work for people.
And they need to consider the whole before doing this.
And that is, see, that's at the root of my criticism of stuff like this is it just doesn't feel very well thought through. Like the security people, their job is to think things through carefully. And the reasons that they're choosing, I think, are careful. And the APIs that they're building to create more secure ways of accessing private information, I think, are carefully planned. And then you get to the point where it meets the user and it does not feel carefully planned.
It feels haphazard.
It feels last minute.
It feels like people who are really under the gun
to force an interface onto users
because this API has been built
and the security stuff has been built.
And the last people to meet it
where the rubber meets the road
are the people doing the interface.
And they're just kind of like tossing things out there.
And as I've read this week from a bunch of people, it also is very piecemeal.
Like that's the other problem is there's no holistic answer here.
There's no, you know, oh, there's three screen recorders that you use.
I'm going to put up a dialogue in, you know, at an unknown time to you in six or
seven days where I say, Hey, there are three apps looking at your screen. Do you care? Let us know.
Instead, you'll just get three pop-ups at three different times, presumably. And it's just, again,
it's just haphazard and frustrating. And I, you know, I, I I've discovered in the last week,
listening to podcasts that I have become the permissions guy, apparently.
And I don't want to be that guy,
but somebody has to say,
you can't just go,
oh yes, Apple, thank you.
Thank you for protecting us.
Thank you.
When you get smothered by pop-ups
and partly the people who just click yes
to get it out of their face they're not even
going to complain that's a huge security problem right and who's going to say right who who is
there to say so if i have to be the one to say this is bad do better i do think that's kind of
part of my job and unfortunately the reason i keep coming back to these permissions requests
it's not because i'm against security and privacy It's because this is a place where Apple is failing, right?
Like they are not doing a good enough job.
So that's the reason.
Like I would rather not.
But that's the reason is my Mac belongs to me.
I need to have a certain level of control over it.
You can get in my way to a certain extent, but then you need to get out of my way when I tell you to.
And that's not happening.
And it's just unacceptable. They need to change change how they approach this why can't they just I mean
there already exists a like that little screen sharing thing that pops up in the menu bar that
goes purple right like why isn't that enough like I don't I don't feel like I'm having to
re-authenticate my camera usage for applications and like my camera the access to my webcam for an
app is as audio is like that's as dangerous in my opinion as screen sharing just in different ways
i got my little orange microphone in my menu bar and like there is the purple one right because i
remember you had to change some stuff for bartender to get it to work so like what yeah what is not
good enough about that system that it can't be adapted?
And like,
I don't,
if what it takes
for me to never see
these things
is to have another one
of those colored icons
in my menu bar,
I'll take it.
Fine.
Like,
I'm a big boy.
Like,
I can handle that.
It's not going to upset me
that much
if I get to do the things
on the Mac
that I want to do
and maybe it protects
other people.
But like,
why does it have to be
this pop-up every month? Like, just give me the little purple icon on the menu bar or whatever
I I hope that the sign that they push this to a month is a sign that there's been some
understanding inside Apple that this is maybe not the the best approach and that hopefully
they will continue to make changes here honestly Honestly, having to give permission again later is fine for me
because it does solve a lot of issues where instead of it,
somebody has access to your system and you give permission in the moment
and then they never ask again is not a great situation to be in.
But the next time they ask,
or if you go immediately to a particular setting,
at some point you need to be able to say, stop asking.
Or notify only, right?
Where like, that's the other way to go, right?
Which is instead of having a permission,
have a notification, have a thing in the menu bar.
There are other things you could do,
but that's, and that's my big point here is,
I feel like a bunch of smart people at Apple who
are experts in user experience could get together and come up with kind of a holistic approach
that serves the needs of privacy without getting in the user's faces quite as badly and giving
users power to control their Macs when they want to. It doesn't feel like that has happened. And
instead, it's just another permission
thing comes off the conveyor belt and they slap another permissions dialogue box into the os and
we're showering in them now and it's just it's too much they need to they need to do better and
that's just and and i'm i'm aware of the fact that there are internal apple issues here right like
i'm aware of the fact that there are certainly people at apple who feel exactly the
way i do they're just not being heard and so i don't want to say apple doesn't get it i think
there are parts of apple that do get it and i think even the parts that maybe don't get it
kind of get it but they're like they just don't care and they don't think it's important enough
and and so you know all i can do is complain, I guess. So there, sorry, I did it again.
Well, you know, we're doing the best we can out here, you know.
I wanted to just do some follow-out, Jason,
to a wonderful movie that was put together by a friend of the show, Ian Anderson.
Ian was with us at the Relay 10 event,
and he was going to be making a video and he ended up making
this beautiful thing which is kind of like honestly it feels like like a love letter to Relay and he
spoke to all of the hosts that were there including you and everybody including you had some very
lovely incredible heartwarming things to say about what we've built together over
the last 10 years because relay is now 10 years old as of yesterday when we're recording um and
it's a 15 minute video uh i've watched it three times i cried all the way through all three times
um it's very special to me and i hope that people check it out and also if you subscribe to ian's
channel on friday i think this coming Friday,
he's going to be putting up a two-hour interview
that he did with me and Stephen.
So we both sat down with Ian
and spoke to him for like an hour about Relay.
And he's putting that together too.
But he ended up making something,
I think, wholly more heartwarming.
And yeah, everyone that I've seen
that's watched it in our Discord
and on social media is just like, still, it was incredible that I've seen that's watched it in our discord and on social
media,
it's just like,
still,
it was incredible.
So,
um,
I hope that people will give it a time.
And then again,
I would like to thank you in person because I have waited until now to
say that,
uh,
it meant so much to me,
the stuff that you said and,
and I love that very much.
That's,
that's great.
Um,
Ian literally just said,
Jason,
here's a microphone.
I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions.
And I had to speak extemporaneously it was a little before we went on for the show so it was kind
of a lot baby and i remember nothing about anything there so yeah i'm glad very sweet it's great it
was yeah it was just super nice to me that like so many people said such similar things unprompted
from each other which was just like
just made me feel real good about this thing that we've all built together over the last 10 years
and i'm very thankful feeling very thankful uh this past weekend so i hope people check it out
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It's time to lawyer up, Jason Snell.
Clunk clunk.
Fortnite is back on iPhone
via the Epic Games
Store and Alt Store Pal.
So we knew this was coming.
It has now happened. The Epic Games Store has launched.
Fortnite's on there and a couple of other games
as well. Epic has said
that they're going to expand this out as time
goes on and they're
going to be expanding and extending
the deals and arrangements
they have on the Epic Games Store
and other platforms to this. Namely,
Epic's cut is 12%
of transaction fees.
So that's one of the things that they'll be
extending for other games that want to join.
But there's been loads of interviews with Tim Sweeney
talking about how things like the core technology fee
makes him think it's probably not going to be
a lot of games that want to join, but nevertheless.
Alt Store has also announced
that they have received a grant from Epic,
which they're going to be using
to pay the core technology fee for their users.
Alt Store say that this basically
no longer means that at the moment you have to you give them a fee and it covers development
and also covers the ctf and it's an annual fee that you pay for just for access in alt store
so now no users will have to pay this going forward this is new customers and no renewals
will occur for previous customers these two things epic new business because they're also
putting fortnight and other stores as well there's like more stores than just all stores that other
stores are going to launch they're going to put fortnight there basically it seems like they're
doing everything they can to undermine apple and increase the desire for side loading worldwide
because all of the headlines that i've seen which i understand why the headline is this way like the one on the verge fortnight is back on the iphone just not your iphone exactly if unless
you're in the european union that's not your iphone but people will want fortnight back on
their iphone especially they have timed this so well jason i don't know how familiar you are with
this but it's their marvel season just started it was all time yeah yeah so they know what they're doing they mean they know what they're doing they do i i mean
i don't particularly like tim tim sweeney and the way he goes about things but i mean
and i think that some of the the stunts that they pulled with apple were counterproductive
but i appreciate their sticking with this and um and you And this is the great experiment. We'll see where it leads. But I honestly don't know where it will lead. I think that they're just trying to continue putting pressure on them. And again, is it self-serving? Of course it is.
other revenue around the world on iphone in order to make this point and maybe they're playing a long game here but i think they're also uh standing up for something that they believe so good good
for them i i could make a catty remark about that there's taking a percentage for games that are in
their store because isn't it supposed to be about gatekeeping etc etc but you know if you don't like
it you don't have to go on their store you can go to a different store because again there's uh different marketplaces in the eu there there's some
there's some the epic game store is quite complicated um there's a lot more to get into
but they are a better partner to their partners um like they they frequently fund games and then
take a cut like so there's a there's a different scenario going on there. But I mean, this is the thing.
I don't think they said they don't believe Apple should take nothing, but I think
what they said... Anyway, you were talking about putting pressure on it, making
changes. Starting in iOS 18.1, Apple is going
to be allowing developers access to the NFC chip
and the benefits of the secure element i don't
know when this was changed from enclave to element but apple refers to it as the secure element
so what is this going to mean i'm going to tell you right now this is quite complicated like i
read like three articles four times today um so there's a few things going on here so financial
institutions will be able to offer their own contactless payment options as well as other contactless payments in stores like a supermarket could have its own i think
walmart for example you can pay with a qr code or something and they would be able to uh basically
have their own but this will also be for keys car keys house keys that kind of stuff hotel keys
transit cards like if you like the oyster card in london it is just like an NFC card, but you can't have it in Apple Pay, but maybe
they would do that. Corporate badges, student IDs, loyalty cards, event tickets.
Apple say to incorporate this new solution
in iPhone apps, developers will need to enter into a commercial agreement with Apple,
request the NFC and SE entitlement, and pay the associated
fees. Of course there are fees. But I do like that there is
not anyone can just do this. You have to go to them and arrange it because you're really
going deep into the system for access to this.
This is going to be available in iOS 18.1 in
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the UK, and the US.
Now, I want to read from Apple's developer document
the very high level of how this works
because there's a bunch of things that developers will be able to have access to.
So first, NFC transactions.
Users of eligible iOS apps can initiate NFC transactions
from within the app with compatible NFC terminals.
So you can open up an
app, go to a terminal, you can hold your phone on it, and you can double click and pay. Default app
settings. Users can choose any eligible app as their default contactless app, which will enable
the app to support field detect and double click features. These are field detectors. The default
contactless app automatically launches when a user presents their iPhone
to a compatible NFC terminal
and after user authentication.
So for example, in transit here in the UK,
if you put your iPhone on an Oyster card thing,
it pops up, it automatically brings up Apple Pay
and then you can double click.
And then also double click.
The default contactless app automatically launches
when the user double clicks on the side button or the home button and does the authentication. So a user can choose for any app that is in the kind of NFC, given the NFC entitlement, to just replace Apple Pay if they want to do that.
I guess wallet, right, is what it's replacing yeah what is the wallet good point good point good point there's
also support for non-default apps eligible apps running in the foreground can prevent the system
default contactless app from launching and interfering with the nfc transaction so this is
i guess if you were in your supermarket and your supermarket had its own thing uh and you were in
the supermarket's app and you held it up it wouldn't bring up apple pay then it could bring
up the nfc thing but you don't Then it could bring up the NFC thing,
but you don't have to make it as the default.
This is really interesting, really weird,
really complicated.
I will be intrigued to see what actually this looks like when it launches.
And I desperately hope it does not mean
we're going to start seeing banks
pulling out of Apple Pay
because they want you to use theirs instead.
That is what I worry about in seeing this.
Every bank is going to be like,
great, now we're just going to do this.
So my hope is,
and what I think Apple's
probably going to do,
they're going to price these fees
in such a way that
it just means that you might
as well do both.
But I really hope
this isn't the case, man.
So this is what I assume.
I assume,
and this is just because this is how Apple's been behaving, I assume that the associated commercial agreement and fees will be the equivalent of what Apple has done with other stuff where they say, oh, you want to be outside of our Aegis as the wallet app.
the wallet app okay as long as the reason you want to be outside is not to get around paying us because you're still gonna have to pay us but you can build a a separate thing and not be an apple
wallet which is competition in a sense right which is a developer who wants to build something that
doesn't make sense in apple wallet or is is not supported by Apple Wallet could build it in their app and not worry about Apple Wallet. But Apple still has to approve that app. Apple still has to sign a commercial agreement with them. So is it really that different? I don't know.
I don't know.
And I agree with you.
I am a little concerned as well.
I mean, the advantage of having everything be in the Wallet app is everything's in the Wallet app and I don't have to worry about it. And if this is not the case, then that's less good.
open up an app and just do a bunch of NFC stuff in that app,
you know,
like tickets or hotel keys or even like a badge to get into a building or something like that kind of stuff is good.
But I worry about the financial institutions part of it and what might happen
to Apple.
I don't know.
So all of this,
the reason I brought this up as like pushing,
like all of this is similar to what Apple already announced they were doing for the EU
with opening
but like they have way less information
about that, so I'm not sure how
exactly they overlap, but I think they
overlap pretty close.
But I think there are going to be some
separate things that are going on, which is why
they're kind of being very restrictive about the countries
that this is going to
act in. But
this is like, again, the EU made them do something. So now Apple's doing it worldwide and
maybe it'll bring some good, maybe it'll bring some bad. Yeah, we'll see. Spotify is now able
to show the prices of the various plans that they have available in their iOS app in the European
Union as a result of Apple's legal battle with the European Commission, in which the $2 billion fine was proposed against them in March.
As a result of this, something called the Music Streaming Services Entitlement was created.
This appears to be able to provide a developer of a music streaming app
who opts into this the ability to add one link out to the developer's website
to explain how to purchase these plans.
You cannot do any purchasing in the app itself without also opting into the new developer terms and paying the ctf from spotify's
what they're talking about it doesn't look like they're actually putting this link in or talking
about the link but you can now go and see how much a spotify plan costs which is awesome. This is just
think about this.
Spotify has spent years
in a legal battle with Apple
for the right to list
their prices and link to
their website. Kind of.
They can't even link to the normal website. They can't link to
the purchase plan. They can link to a place
which explains how someone could potentially
buy something.
Imagine the money. The money that has gone into this yeah just for something that and this is the thing and i know i mean we've talked about it i i know john gruber's talked about it a
lot this is one of the most nettlesome things that apple does because this is like the biggest bit of
rent seeking behavior and i just just say it to say it again, making people aware of
things that happen outside of an app and outside of Apple's control is not a big deal. And yet
Apple treats it like, oh, every link to the internet is a scary thing that you must be
warned away from and information needs to not be shared. And it's the difference between saying,
look, buying it in the app using
Apple system is super convenient. And so you should do that. But if you don't want to,
you can also just go to the web because we all do it. It's fine. And Apple doesn't want to do that.
And they can say lots of reasons why, but the bottom line is they want all the money. That's
it. That's the only reason.
I can't believe that Spotify spent all this time and money for something as basic as telling their customers what the prices of their services are and linking to their website.
Like, come on.
What are we doing here?
Speaking of wanting all the money, I wanted to get your take on the Apple Patreon thing.
We mentioned this very briefly.
Who wants all the money?
It's Apple.
That was not a jingle.
No.
That was us singing on a podcast.
It's just us singing.
That's a different thing.
That's a single.
Yeah.
So just a quick disclosure about the thing.
We both work with Memberful.
Memberful is owned by Patreon.
I just think that's worth mentioning.
Yeah.
Real AFM, Incomparable, Six Colors are all Memberful plans memorable plans yeah and they've also been sponsored on these shows before we've had
members of sponsor uh so we mentioned this very briefly on the show last week because it happened
it broke last monday but it was too big a thing for us to really think about and digest and i've
actually went i gave a lot of my own thoughts about this on Connected last week, but I wanted to know your take.
So essentially, Apple is requiring Patreon to give them a cut of all memberships that are started in the Patreon iOS app from November.
This does not count any existing payments or memberships.
So like if somebody signed up in the iOS app today, Apple's not going to get any money from that person.
It is 30% of all iOS
only signups from November
of this year onwards.
What do you think about this?
It's also, they changed, they used to have a thing
where if you didn't post a thing during a span
you didn't get charged and that is not possible
with this scenario either.
Yes.
I mean,
I don't like this. I think that there are a couple ways to look at this and one is
um what is apple doing because i've heard there was a there have definitely been threads about
this what is apple's policy about having to offer in-app purchases because i've also heard from
people who've developed apps where apple said no this is based on buying something outside and even if you don't tell anybody it exists it
doesn't matter you need to also make it available for an app apple's apple's rules for the app store
is if you offer a purchase you must also offer in-app purchase so like if someone can buy your
thing on the web and it's a digital good,
they want you to offer it also in your app and also offer an in-app purchase for it.
Yeah. I think that's ridiculous. So there's a bunch of things going on here. First off,
I don't actually do any Patreon in the in-app purchase. It makes me think,
was it John Gruber who said this? should just they should just shut off their ios app and use the web i use the web for patreon
and it's fine clearly it's it's a it's important to their business right like the ios app must be
important to patreon or they would have just gotten rid of it it lets creators put push
notifications into iphones like i get i get there are there are there are actually like community stuff in it like people can have like group chats yeah like i don't i don't so things i don't like i don't
like apple saying if you have an app you have to offer in-app purchases um especially since you
have to offer in-app purchases and pretend that you don't know where else people can buy this
thing because it's against the rules that i i think is just fundamentally not great but i also think that this is apple
trying to insert itself in a product that already has a middleman so it's trying to invalidate
patreon's business model like it made it impossible for amazon to or comiXology for that matter right to sell in app uh because that means two
middlemen they're both taking their cut it can't it can't pencil out it doesn't work that way and
so they can't they can't do it not great and the whole idea of the the creators being taxed for
this like one of the problems is because Patreon rolls everything together into a
single account and then pays creators,
they have,
uh,
they're not eligible for the small business plan,
even though almost all their creators are.
So it's a 30% cut instead of 15.
So that's,
that's the top of it.
It seems to be misguided in the sense that people creating art is not
something that Apple should actually take a cut of i think i think
makes i mean the optics it makes apple look bad but i think also it doesn't really make a lot of
sense it doesn't it doesn't cost a sniff test for logic like in a bunch of ways yeah and i think
also this is a great example i mean first off it off, it's Apple's one-size-fits-all
approach here, which is
Apple doesn't think about the creators at Patreon.
Apple thinks about Patreon.
Apple is focused on taking its cut
from this company called Patreon
that's making a lot of money.
Apple wants its cut.
Not thinking about the fact, at least
not aggressively thinking about the fact that
Patreon is actually a middleman,
a facilitator for a bunch of individual independent creators yeah but you're just
you're just brainless if you know what i mean i know what you're saying but that is like such
and i agree with you oh yeah you can't brainless thought this is what i'm saying is is you're
looking at it in this certain way because you've decided that that's how you're going to look at
the world even though there's very clearly isn't that kind of thing um but they've decided, I was like, I'm sorry. And it's that same thing, right?
Which is, I'm sorry, our hands are tied. These are the rules. It's like, you made the rules.
You make the rules. Your hands are not tied. You made the rules. So what are you doing here?
And in the end, just stepping back, what does it look like? It is Apple muscling into a whole
bunch of independent creators who
make a small amount of money on the internet and saying hey we want our money and it's like why do
you want the money patreon's doing all the work patreon built our app for us patreon's doing the
back end we're cutting in patreon what has apple given us and apple's response is well
we built the platform that the patreon app runs on. And it's like, well, okay.
Congratulations.
So why aren't you entitled to a portion of what Patreon takes from us?
Why are you entitled to 30% of what people are giving to me as an independent creator?
It just looks bad.
It doesn't pass the sniff test.
You're absolutely right.
And, you know, again is this is actually an easy one
this is a great example of apple playing by a playbook from when they were they were down on
their luck and desperate for money and now they're rich and they're still playing by that playbook and it makes them look
bad it it is i would say it's probably as harmful it's probably as bad a look as the hydraulic press
ad was but it's actually actual harm they're actually doing the thing that people were upset about that time
it is Patreon creators in the hydraulic press now
yeah exactly
well like that was just an interpretation before
I had a thought about
this and like you know like looking
through Patreon's rules and it clarified something
to me which I'm gonna I feel like I'm gonna
keep talking about now as people end up going to hit us a lot
like Apple
are perfectly happy with their customers paying more for digital goods than everybody else.
Because they have zero problem with you putting the 30% on top.
Yeah.
And the argument is, if it's so easy to do an in-app purchase, then you pay extra for it
if it makes it super easy.
Like, okay.
Like, all right.
I mean, I think that there's,
my frustration with Apple's
in-app purchase thing
is they don't want to compete.
They want to hide
and have this 30%
and not compete
and maybe have to lower their take
in order to make it.
But like, as a platform owner
who has built-in payment systems
that are just right there
in their APIs
and everything like that,
should Apple offer that and take a cut
and say, look, we made it really easy for you.
Just give us our cut and it's all built in
and it's using their existing credit card
and you don't have to worry about it.
Like that's not an unreasonable proposition.
It's all the other stuff that's been built around it,
which is you can't tell people about the other things.
You can't link to the other things.
There are no other alternatives if you're in our store,
unless you're in the EU.
This is your only choice. It's 30%. That's the total number uh we have very specific rules about it and
you are covered under it so everybody is going to be covered under it that's where it all goes
from being not an unreasonable argument uh about apple's convenience the convenience of in-app
purchases to being more like a racket just bums me out man yep just bumming this is the feelings
part of the podcast where we say um we're kind of tired of talking about all this stuff yeah um
because the bottom line is i i didn't get into this and you didn't get into this to talk about
legal policies and who gets cut of what in big business we got into this for enthusiasm about
the products and about what people can do with the products
and how we use them
and how other people use them
to make their lives better and have fun
and all of those things.
And none of this is that.
I think there's value in understanding Apple's business,
but like this, you know, we're going to,
it's the summer of fun.
Summer of fun.
You know, this year has reminded me of 2020.
It's just rough.
Just in that, in summer of 2020, there was no break in the news.
It's kept going for the whole summer.
Yes.
This year, there has been no break in the news.
The news has just kept happening.
The thing about this is, it's kind of in between
a rock and a hard place, right? This is
I think interesting stuff
that is happening
to Apple. We cover
Apple. We talk about Apple.
But it's also
depressing.
But I wouldn't
want to just pretend it didn't exist.
Right? And we just carry on like it didn't exist but i want to get lost in it even so basically what i've been like where i've been
thinking of i think once we get through this period like getting up to the iphone right
a couple of weeks for that potentially after the iphone i might readjust a little bit how much i'm putting in yeah but i i'm not gonna
ignore it like so like this patreon thing would have spoke about it right but maybe not the
spotify thing maybe not the fortnight thing if i was editing this down but i want to complete the
threads of the stuff we started talking about you know yeah i i think we need to talk about it but
i i and lawyer up you know the artwork is beautiful and all i i think we need to talk about it but i i i and lawyer up you
know the artwork is beautiful and all that i think we're going to continue talking about it but i do
think that there's a point at which we have to say as the kind of curators of the content of the show
that it's too much yeah and we don't want to do it and i can say from personal experience
steven hackett and i did a podcast called download and the the year plus that we did it was the year where every single week
was a terrible Facebook story about how Facebook had done another thing to ruin people's privacy
and change election results and lead to potential genocides. And just, it was one terrible story
after another to the point where we added a segment called the Fuzzy Puppy Update were so depressed at the end of the segment well we have rumor roundup coming up
next and that's a lot of fun yeah and the number one reason we stopped doing download is because
it was dispiriting to cover that terrible stuff all the time it's not what we got into this to do
and we didn't want to do it anymore and we have had the luxury of just saying let's just stop
this yeah and uh we're not going to stop
covering the stuff on upgrade but i do feel like at some point we're going to need to recalibrate
a little bit because it's a lot there's a lot going on and apple's it's gonna and we can't not
talk about stuff that's apple's apple's doing that we don't agree with or we think is is bad
and uh we have to talk about it but there's a there's so much of it right now.
And there's a limit to what we can do.
Well, it's like I said last week, right?
And I've been thinking about it a lot.
I think I said it on this show.
I don't remember if I said it on the show.
I'm going to say it again now anyway.
Okay, do it.
And Federico had a version of this himself too,
where he said like the two apples.
But like for me, it's just that I'm so happy
the products are good.
Yeah, because I was talking about the Mac malaise time, right? Like I'm so happy the products are good yeah because i was talking about
the mac malaise time right like i'm so i'm so happy the products are good right now imagine
if the butterfly keyboard was out there now imagine that right like then it would be like
i don't know what i would do like the products are good right now and and like the software is
good right now by and large but like the products are good at least. And they're doing interesting stuff.
So it at least gives some balance.
And basically, just going forward,
we're still going to talk about this stuff,
but I think I'm going to start tapering some of these bits off a little bit
and just try and cover the biggest things.
I don't want to do this every week.
But it's like, look, I don't want to do this every week and at this like but it's
like look but i don't want to let them off right like this patreon thing we would have spoke about
this no matter what it's so this is so unnecessary yeah it's so unnecessary and i'm going to tell you
having spent decades now understanding apple's mindset i'm sure the mindset here is essentially, oh, Patreon hides behind their creators,
but they're the one that's built a big business taking money from the creators.
And we've let them sort of slide and not taken our cut, but they're taking advantage of us now,
Patreon, the corporation, and we're not going to let them, we're going to put the screws to them. I guarantee you that's what they're thinking internally. And let me say, Patreon is not
without fault here. Patreon has chosen a path that they want to go with their business that
makes it more than maybe the initial plans of Patreon. Patreon made changes to the terms that creators are unhappy with.
Patreon is not without fault here at all.
And I do think that part of the reason Apple does this
is that Apple perceives Patreon as being a business
that is trying to make a lot of money from creators
while skating by Apple and giving Apple its cut.
That said, this is an own goal on Apple's part,
because in the end, you make your policies and you could adjust them. And so the argument of like,
well, but Apple had to do this because if they let Patreon slide, then somebody else is going
to slide. The answer is no. Apple can make a new entitlement, a new system, a new business term. They can say, oh, if you're passing on something to an independent creator and you have a certain, like, they could build a whole little program around it.
They did it for a different type of creator, the big Hollywood creators.
They created reader apps for them.
Yeah.
So they could do it if they wanted.
And maybe they will.
Maybe this is phase one. the fact is like they should not
have done this just unilaterally like this it makes them look really bad and the fact that it's
i think the most galling thing to me is that it's the 30 even though these are all so they don't
even get the discount they don't even get the half off even though each individual creator probably
deserves it because patreon doesn't as a whole. And so they're going to put the screws
to Patreon there. I do think in the end, that's probably what's going on here is Apple. Apple
views Patreon as a competitor or as a business partner that is not giving Apple its fair share.
I don't think they're thinking about the creators at all, which is obvious because
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around uptime partner.
Yeehaw. Your
favorite topic. Mark Gurman has published
another robot, another robot, another
report about his tabletop robot
robot or not. Robot or robot. Robot or not.
Robot or not.
Robot or not.
You can check out Robot or Not
and The Incomparable if you have no idea what that is.
Yeah, that's right. All those theme songs we sang by Lex Friedman,
maker of Upgrade Jingles.
Indeed. That's what he's best known for.
Oh, man.
Jingles.
I'll put a link in the show notes for Robot or Not.
So, Mark Gorman has posted a quite lengthy report
about Apple's robotics plans.
So the first thing is a product
that essentially combines the look of an iPad
on a robotic limb.
Yes, it's going to look like the iMac G4.
So I'm going to stop you here.
Why?
I'm going gonna stop you here. Why? I'm gonna stop you here
because I'm gonna,
I'm just gonna say it again.
A kitchen speaker
with a base
and an arm
and a screen
that rotates
or goes up and down
or whatever
is not
a robot. It's not a a robot are you allowed to give that
distinction yes okay i allow this show on this show you say well you want me to i mean i can
cite we had this question i had this we had this question for john syracuse and he said if it just
sits on a counter and moves around uh within itself itself and is not like skittering around and doing stuff on the counter, it is
not a robot. It is moving automatically, but it is not
a robot. And look, we love Mark Gurman.
He gets good scoops. He's very good at scooping. His
insistence on calling this thing a robot is killing me.
It's like a HomePod version of the Amazon Echo Show.
It's a kitchen speaker that does FaceTime,
and apparently it will move the screen around,
which some other things also do.
I think the Facebook one does it.
Also not a robot.
It's just not a robot.
But he's packed it in this narrative of like Apple has a lot of robotic things going on.
And there are other robotics things that he talks about in here.
Maybe more robots.
Maybe roll my eyes because I don't think that they're going to be anything we see anytime soon.
Sure, sure.
Probably never.
Whereas this seems like it's a real product.
But to say that like, to call it an iPad on a robotic limb,
it feels like this is the very definition
of the parable of the blind man and the elephant.
Where it's like,
you're describing a product
that we can all pretty much guess.
And I would never describe it as an iPad on a robotic limb.
I would call it a kitchen speaker on an arm.
It's more intriguing to call it a robot
though right this is what i'm that's that's why it's narrative building anyway it's not a robot
it's a it's a it's a home pod with a screen that that can you know move it around like can pivot
or something it's not like i'll just say unless it can move around on my countertop it is not a robot
that's it.
Quote, the device is envisioned as a smart home command center,
video conferencing machine, and remote-controlled home security tool.
Gurman says that Apple now has several hundred employees working on the project.
It is expected that there could be a debut of it in 2026 or 2027 at around $1,000.
And there has been internal concern about the price of such a device and if it would attract a market but tim cook and john turnus are
in favor of this project which has now become quote the sole responsibility of kevin lynch
okay here's a longer quote the idea is for the tabletop product doesn't call it a robot there
the tabletop product to be primarily controlled
using the Siri digital assistant
and upcoming features in Apple intelligence.
The device could respond to commands
such as look at me by repositioning the screen
to focus on the person saying the words,
say during a video call.
It could also understand different voices
and adjust its focus accordingly.
Current models in testing
run a customized version of ipad os
okay first off that's describing center stage except you have to tell it to do it and i get
the idea that center stage has limitations and if you can actually move the camera around
it's better although again what a weird example to say look at me when like during a video call
right like well during a video call it should just Like, well, during a video call, it should just look at you.
Why?
I mean, I'm now yelling commands at my robot.
I don't think this is just for video calls, though, right?
Like, you know, me and you are in the kitchen, and I want the weather, and the robot's pointing at you, and I'm like, hey, give me the weather.
It's not a robot, but yes, you say, look at me, because I want to see the weather.
I get it.
I get it.
Robo, HomePod Robo.
want to see the weather i get i get it i get it robo home pod robo uh i just again i this feels very much like somebody is describing it and it's being obfuscated and simplified and it sounds much
more complicated than it actually is we know all the parts that apple has for this thing
i a thousand dollars is a lot of money uh for a device like this um i which doesn't mean that Apple won't do it at that price.
But I would say one of my concerns about modern Apple is that they over-engineer their products.
Not that they're expensive, because Apple products are always expensive.
But that they overshoot and over-engineer their products and that if the only way to build a combination smart home command center video
conferencing machine and remote controlled home security tool that moves around in response to
your voice commands is by building this amazing thing that costs a thousand dollars you know
maybe let's just not do the arm how about that just get rid of the arm and it's 500 have a little
base that turns.
Don't even do that. Don't even have it move.
It doesn't need to move.
That's really not a robot then.
I agree. It doesn't, right?
Just because you can.
It doesn't. In fact, you could put very clever sensors
on it if you wanted to have a 360 view.
You could put a camera on the front and a camera on the back
and then it could see everywhere.
You could tell it to look at you, though. It it to look at you though it doesn't have to move it doesn't have to move and
that's i sometimes i wonder if what apple is doing with some of these products is they're saying well
there's already those products in the market so we can't make it better we have to make it better
we got to make it better but then they make it a thousand dollars it's like well no no make it good
and not full of ads and slow and bad,
like what Amazon and Google have,
and then bring it in at 500 or 750.
But also, yeah, look, make a HomePod,
put a screen on it, and it can move on a base, right?
Yeah.
And that could be 600, say, but it's not 1,000.
Yeah, feels very Vision Pro to me, where it's overdone just over over egged this product
too much in here is a product i want right like i do want this and so yes this is that enthusiasm
we were talking about in the last segment i'm very excited about apple using all the tech that
it's already got that we all know to build a product that is like a home speaker that could
go in the kitchen that's got a screen that I can control. And that ties into Apple's ecosystem.
Right.
Like it's got my calendar on it.
When I asked for my calendar, it shows me my calendar.
Yeah, I want it.
But they're going to have to tell a real good story, which I think they could.
But they have to do a real good story for why this needs to be on a robotic arm and cost $1,000.
Right.
Like maybe they can do it.
And maybe, hey, just maybe,
it's so beautiful
that you're happy to put it in your kitchen.
Sure.
You're happy to put it in your living room, right?
And it's $1,000 because this thing is like...
Maybe it's too beautiful.
You're like, no, no, it can't be in my kitchen.
It's too beautiful.
I can't even bear to look at it.
It's so beautiful.
My Amazon Echo show is an ugly duck it's yeah
right my google home is uh it's it's it's yeah it's not great and so maybe this would be really
nice and so like that you know that helps to the thing but still a thousand dollars on a roboticom
is a lot it's a lot it's a lot it's a a lot. And again, look, it's what we always say with these things. We have so many details we don't have,
but it's on the face of it as a lot.
And do you remember the HomePod?
How much was the HomePod?
Was that 500 when it came around the first time?
Something like that, yeah.
That was too much, right?
But I bought two of those
and I prefer one of these.
So maybe I'm the problem.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Yeah, it just...
$349, apparently. But still, two of those 349 seemed like a thousand dollars but it was 349 but this is the thing
this is the thing at a thousand dollars i i i look at it and i say whatever we're doing here
it's too much like and that's the problem i've got is like, what's going on inside Apple that you make these decisions and you're like, oh no, $3,500 headset.
That's a good idea.
And $1,000 kitchen speaker thing.
It's like, well, yeah, but it'll be so amazing.
It's like, yeah, what would the $700 one look like?
We'd have to take off the legs and the wheels that make it roll around on your countertop.
Oh, well, do that because then it's not a robot.
I think you made a very good point about they start with the,
we want to do this thing.
How do we make it different?
That's a problem when you do that.
We've got to blow away what Amazon and Google have done by taking it like it'll be next level in so many different ways.
Because I do think that there's a pride thing where even though again apple they're bad the amazon product the google product they're bad
they're not up to your standards it's the equivalent of apple tv versus the stuff that's
on a tv or or a roku or whatever yours is better i mean, asterisk, but it is better.
And the hardware is really nice.
And you charge a lot for it.
And like, it's found an audience.
The remote is great.
The TV app is great.
Like, it's all good, I think.
So, Joe Rosensteil's in the chat room.
Don't anger him.
No, no.
But I'm willing to die on this cross.
I think Apple TV is awesome.
I love it. Having used other set-top box things, it's the willing to die on this cross. I think Apple TV is awesome. I love it.
Having used other set-top box things, it's the best. It's the best. It's got lots of issues,
but it's still the best. Okay. But this is my point. Google and Amazon stuff for this category
are awful. They're awful. They're not close to Apple standards. But Apple seems to want to,
well, but we got to blow them away. They don't want the glory of entering a category with a product that's kind of like what the ones that are already there, but more expensive and better.
And instead, it's like they want to dunk on them.
And like dunking on them is not a bad thing, but dunking on them for five times the price of them where nobody's going to buy it is a bad thing.
So that's the restraint I would like to see.
If you want to make Apple Tabletop Home Robot Pro and Apple Tabletop Home Not a Robot and sell them both, that's great.
But you end up in a HomePod situation where you do the HomePod and it goes over like a lead balloon.
And then they're like, oh, HomePod Mini.
And it's like, oh, yeah, people kind of like that.
Right, maybe that should have been your first product.
That's what I'm saying here is I'm getting real HomePod vibes,
real Vision Pro vibes where it's like you're making some decisions
to blow away the competition
when your basic thing would blow away the competition.
So maybe make that.
Apparently Apple also has a team now
that are exploring other robotic devices,
including a humanoid robot.
The actual robots.
You'd call that one a robot, wouldn't you?
Actual robots.
This team is being run by a robotics expert
by the names of Hans Warfram Tappaner.
Tappaner?
Tappaner.
I will say this person sounds like a robotics expert.
That is the name of someone who knows robots.
First against the wall when the robot revolution happens.
Hans Warfram Tapaina.
That person, I don't know anything about them,
but I know they're a robots expert and I believe it.
Tapaina's team consists of 100 engineers
who departed the car project.
They're going from one to the other you know look i i
think that here's what i think about this i like the idea that apple has people who are experts at
this stuff who are just messing around trying to figure stuff out that's fine it doesn't need to
be a product it could lead to a product it could accidentally accidentally lead to a product. We'll see. I'm not sure if this is in Apple's wheelhouse, but sure, why not?
Why not investigate that and experience it?
And if yes, if Apple eventually comes up with a little robot that can vacuum and mop and sweep and I don't know what, fold your laundry or whatever, like, great, that'll be amazing.
But it seems unlikely to me that any of that will
actually happen mark german stand by everybody mark german is also reporting that apple continues
to explore a larger imac oh i hope to find it it's what's what's out there what's across the
horizon could there be a larger imac they're looking for it they're out there they're still
developing it's like a bigfoot though it's like there are pictures that suggest there there be a larger iMac somewhere out there? They're looking for it. They're out there. They're still developing the idea.
It's like a Bigfoot, though.
It's like there are pictures that suggest
there might be a larger iMac,
but we can't verify them.
I don't want it anymore.
Okay.
All right, you told me I couldn't have it.
Now I don't want it.
Don't do it.
Honestly, I want them to do a larger display.
Yes, give me a big display.
That a Mac Studio, a laptop, a Mac Mini
could be attached to. I want a big
display that is
ProMotion. That's what I want.
Because I have my 14-inch
MacBook Pro that I
record on here hooked up to an LG display.
Because, like, whatever.
Even if I hooked up to a Studio display,
it's not getting everything that computer can do.
That computer can do ProMotion, and I want that. Give me that a studio display, it's not getting everything that computer can do. That computer can do promotion,
and I want that.
Give me that in a display, please.
Yeah, that's fair.
As well as this,
Mark is reporting that the next generation of AirPods
could get active noise cancellation.
So, currently,
you can buy two sets of products called AirPods.
AirPods 2, which were the long-stem called AirPods. AirPods 2,
which were the long-stem ones, and AirPods
3, which was redesigned
to be closer to AirPods Pro
in packaging and
its format, but they don't go in
your ears.
They don't go directly in.
They're the rubber tips.
This year, Apple is looking
to
repackage these right so there'll
be two new sets of airpods called the airpods they'll be like airpods 4 basically and then
maybe like they may name them slightly different so but what they will do is create a new entry
level product that retains the features of the current AirPods 3.
Yeah, and AirPods 2, right?
So it retains those features.
And then add in a new mid-tier AirPods product
that gets noise cancellation,
but not all the other features of the AirPods Pro.
Both would get USB-C cases.
I wonder what these will actually look like. Like they going to redesign airpods 2 to be like
shorter stem maybe and then also is the airpods 3 i guess it has to have in-ear silicon tips
right like how else can you do noise cancellation you have to have a seal don't you
i don't know no i mean to do a good one yeah because otherwise the
the sound gets in and because then what's the point so it looks like what they're going to do
is create a regular airpod set and i you know i feel bad for the people who airpods 3 don't fit
in their ears because maybe there won't be any more airpods that will fit in their ears then
create a active noise cancellation cheaper version, and then AirPods
Pro,
I don't know what it will get.
I wonder, I assume
that these...
I guess, but that's not this year.
There won't be a new AirPods Pro this year.
That will be next year at the earliest, Mark says.
I mean, I would assume
that as well as noise cancellation, it will
also get transparency mode. I mean, it doesn't say that, but I would assume that as well as noise cancellation, it will also get transparency mode.
I mean, it doesn't say that, but I would assume that you would get that.
Intriguing.
I mean, this is the iPad and iPad Pro of it all, right?
Like, this is what they do.
The features roll down the line.
Yeah, I think they've got...
One question is, it's like, is it a mid-tier or is it essentially an extension of what we have now,
where we essentially have a low-end AirPod and a mid-tier AirPod?
In other words, is AirPods 2 replaced by something that is also at a similar price, right?
I think so.
That is sort of very limited in features, but just revised to be a little more modern.
revised to be a little more modern and that airpods 3 gets replaced with something that is is you know really just kind of in the middle there so that they've got a good better best kind of scenario
with the airpods pro on top you know airpods air no don't call it that it's a bad idea airpods uh
and say put the air in airpods in all caps you know just to let you know that it's the okay so
yeah interesting i will be intrigued to see where this goes, and
I know it's going to upset some people, because people get very specific. Some people
AirPods 3 don't fit in their ears, and some people don't want
in-ear silicon. I will just say, you know, people
that have... I didn't want to do in-ear silicon. I've never liked that
before, but I like AirPods.
They work for me.
The next iPhone Pro,
we've been talking about a bronze color.
Is it actually going to be brown though?
So there is an image that has come out of potentially
what the next iPhone lineup
is going to look like from Sonny Dixon,
who has had a pretty good track record
with this stuff in the past and the the bronze color iphone pro it looks very uh microsoft zuni
it's very brown looking in this image yeah i i would caution people because based on lighting and cameras, colors can really be different than reality.
It does look really brown in here.
Although there is that one thing that suggested it's like desert titanium or something.
One of the names is suggested is desert titanium, which I think is a translation error.
But nevertheless, that's fair.
Well, look, it's iPhone math.
Okay.
Forget about it. Forget that it's iPhone math, okay? Forget about it.
Forget that it's iPhone math.
That's a reference.
What I would say is,
worst case scenario,
Zune phone.
Yeah.
Best case scenario,
Tan phone?
Yeah.
It's not a great best case scenario.
Yeah, I'm not sure. so i was intrigued about bronze but
like now i'm like i don't know like was this worth replacing blue no as a owner of a blue titanium
phone no but the black one looks nice though you know in this of course it does the black one looks
good something that i've forgotten about but i saw in another article about this uh which was the rumor that they were going to move from
matte rails back to polished again and it definitely looks like that in this image and
and i and i don't know how i feel about that because i actually quite like the matte
texture on the side of the current titanium one and i don't want to go back to shiny again
i think that's too soon to go straight back um i understand the idea you change things up so they're like you know
you're just setting your own trends and stuff but i think one year of the matte rails may not
have been long enough uh to go straight back to shiny again but yeah i mean looking at this
lineup i'm probably going to stick with natural titanium.
I bought blue and then at the podcast last year, I saw you guys had your natural titanium models
and I thought about returning the blue and in the end, I decided
the blue is fine. I like the blue and I don't want to go through the trouble of returning my phone
and getting a new phone. That said, natural titanium
looks real good.
And I might go with that
next time.
We'll see.
I'll probably stick with it.
I don't think
I'm going to change it
because I actually
do kind of like it.
I want to just say
while we're talking
about the iPhone real quick.
Yeah.
These things
are made of
really strong glass.
I have dropped
you've been in my house.
I have concrete floors
downstairs.
I dropped my phone twice in the last i have concrete floors downstairs i dropped my phone
twice in the last week because i had like shorts i had uh i was wearing some shorts i didn't have
very deep pockets so it kept falling out my pocket i have dropped my phone twice hard onto the
concrete perfectly fine these phones are strong now i know that they break i know that they break
but like in years you know going back into the past i don't know how long my phone would have
been absolutely done.
I've had a couple little drops here and there where I thought,
oh, and nothing has happened.
It has hit hard.
I had one that hit directly onto the front,
and then one that hit onto the side, and then the front,
and they made bad noises.
It was the kind of noise where Adina was like, oh, no,
when she heard it, right, because she knew what it was.
No, absolutely fine, not a mark on it.
Beautiful. These phones are strong. Not a mark on it. Beautiful.
These phones are strong.
The investments that they've made in glass,
I know that they have that deal with Corning, right?
Yeah.
To make stronger glass.
It's doing the business.
I've got to say, I'm happy with it.
I've got a statement that I want you to think about here,
which is you've got to have deep pockets
if you'll use an iPhone without a case.
Huh?
Bravo.
No, I think that's incredible.
And figuratively.
You should be proud of that one, genuinely.
Thank you.
I'm putting it on the Hall of Fame,
putting it on the board.
Yes.
Congratulations to me, everybody.
Let's raise your jersey.
He's going to retire now.
Wait, don't stand up for the champions. Yes. Congratulations to me, everybody. Let's raise your jersey. He's going to retire now. We're done standing.
Stand up for the champions.
Yes.
Wow.
That's so good, Jason.
You can tell you're a writer, you know?
Yeah, the shallow pockets.
That was your problem.
That was my problem. Because then, you know, you have to shell out for it.
Anyway, I'm not going to explain.
Don't keep doing it because we're going to ruin it.
Yep.
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And it's time for some Ask Upgrade Questions.
First question comes in from Steven, not that one, who asks,
Jason, what was better in the 90s, Mac user or Mac world?
Oh, Mac user.
Oh.
I was a Mac user reader, and that's why I wanted to work there,
and then I worked there.
And we were the upstart.
We were a little less formal.
We had more fun.
And then they merged us together with Macworld.
And, you know, most of the Macworld people left and most of the Mac user people stayed.
and most of the people you see out there writing about uh tech or working at apple or whatever now are almost entirely people who worked at mac user and not who worked at mac world and that was the
big surprise i had was that mac world was much again i don't want to i don't want to say that
everybody was like this but so generalizing is bad but um i felt like most of the people in the mac world staff were, but, um, I felt like most of the people on the
Mac world staff were, were happy to be in the magazine business. And most of the people on
the Mac user staff were excited to write about Macs. And, uh, and I think it showed, I think
Mac world was very serious and professional and, and Mac user was wackier and had more fun and had
Chris Breen and Andy and I go and Bob Levitas. And, you know, and I was a fan.
That was the one that I read.
And so, you know, we tried, when we went to Macworld,
we tried to kind of make it more like we wanted it to be.
And just the effect of everybody from Macworld leaving
and most of the Mac user people who went over there staying
and then, you know, turnover
and eventually me being put in charge,
like Mac world ended up in a very different place in the two thousands than
it was in the nineties.
But in the nineties,
yeah,
Mac user was my,
my thing.
Peter wrote in to ask,
I'm just wondering if the bigger icons on iOS and iPadOS removed the silly
blue dots after you updated an app.
I think Peter is very anti blue dot.
I tried this out today to check
for peter and currently i will say yes it does so i was on my ipad and i updated some apps and i
switched the icons to big and they went up and the dots weren't there because the names aren't there
so there's nowhere to put the dot however when i then switched my icons back from big to small
the dots were gone even from my test flight appslight apps. So who could tell, you know?
Who could tell?
Because that's not supposed to happen.
But currently, yeah, it does get rid of them.
And I would put a bet on it will actually get rid of them.
So there you go.
I don't know if I need to know that my apps have been updated.
I don't think I need to know that.
But there you go.
James asked a question. Jason, you're not gonna like the frame of this question i could tell you that because i don't
like the frame of this question either but it's an interesting question james asks why does craig
federighi seem to get a pass from apple commentators see this is the framing i don't
like being like everyone being lumped in together like I called him out on a podcast recently, by the way.
But continue.
People are quick to directly excoriate.
That's an interesting word.
Good word.
Tim Cook for issues with regulation, services, revenue,
and the China supply chain,
or Phil Schiller for App Store rules.
But for all of the complaints about Apple's software,
paternalism, quality, release cadence, no one seems to bring up the SVP of software engineering who's actually in charge
of these things. Can it really be the hair? Well, first off, you mentioned Tim Cook and
Phil Schiller. Tim Cook's the boss. It stops with him. And Phil Schiller, he's been there
longer than anybody, and he's kind of the boss when it comes to some of the stuff that is in his purview so that's why they get brought up even though we don't know the true
dynamics of it we don't that's the that's the thing about making anything personal at apple
is you don't actually know the real dynamics going on that said i don't know whether it was
on this podcast or mac break weekly i mean i do lots of podcast people, but I have absolutely,
in the last week or two,
mentioned Craig Federici.
I think about the permissions thing,
but I think the reason,
to answer this question directly,
Craig seems to get a light touch from Apple commentators,
in part,
because he feels like he's one of us.
He's personable.
He's a friendly guy. He's personable. He's a friendly guy.
He's nerdy.
He understands about software development.
There's so many things as a character in interviews and in Apple events, and it's lighthearted.
And we remember when he did his first demo and he was shaking because he was so nervous.
And he feels like one of us.
So that's the that's my answer.
But I will say this.
Absolutely.
A lot of these issues about Apple software system and the missteps they make in terms of their software development can be laid at the foot of Fed.
Craig, Craig, Craig, Gregory. See Fed. See Fed himself. in terms of their software development can be laid at the foot of Craig Fegery.
CFED.
CFED himself, our buddy,
our guy with the hair.
The buck doesn't stop
with Craig. There are a lot of SVPs at Apple,
but he's in charge of the software.
If we think that Apple software quality is bad
or that they have misguided priorities
or that the security and privacy
people are bullying the user experience people and the user experience failed. Ultimately, while we can't know who's
responsible, and that's why you should never make it personal, I do know that ultimately Craig
is responsible. And I think a lot of people think, well, he's so likable and he's got to be fighting for what's right on the inside.
And, you know, he seems like a nice guy.
I think that's all true.
I think it would be fair to say, is he a good leader of a giant software group or not?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I haven't heard from anybody at Apple about it.
I don't know if he's like, just because he's a nice guy and we like him and he seems like one of us, does that make him flawless?
It does not.
Is it the case that Craig Federighi is fighting the good fight every day, but that there's some stuff that he just can't win on?
Sure.
Could it also be true that Craig Federighi is letting things go that he shouldn't and not standing up for things?
is letting things go that he shouldn't and not standing up for things. And as a result, the processes are not as clean and good as they should be.
Could also be true.
This I don't know.
But I will agree with James that Craig doesn't deserve a pass, even though we like him.
That ultimately we can't know, unless somebody wants to tell us,
the details of the inner workings of Apple. You can never say, oh, this thing happened that I
don't like. Who is at fault? Very hard to say, right? There's huge organizational dynamics at
play here. But ultimately, yeah, he's the guy in charge of software. And if software is messing
things up, he's the guy we got to question. I mean mean not that we can talk to him other than maybe at
the talk show john gruber can ask him a question that greg jaswiak reaches out and bats out of
the air before it can reach him but other than that i mean yeah i i think that's true it's just
a lot he's one of many svps and he and and so it's harder to make that statement than it is for
something like tim cook who's the boss or ph Schiller, who's been there for a million years and very clearly has had stuff just sort of delegated to him that he rules over and that's it.
So that's kind of my answer.
I don't think it's the hair, though.
If I had to do armchair psychology, I would say it's because he's the most like us.
He's like our wish fulfillment character at Apple a little bit.
And as a result, it's very hard to criticize Craig.
He seems so nice.
And like one of us, I seem to understand him.
And we know that like they send people over to his house when there are bugs, right?
Like that's all sweet.
But like at the end of the day, if Apple's messing up at software, he's the boss.
I don't know if I do a good job of this.
I know how I feel.
And so maybe, you know, I know how it job of this. I know how I feel. And so maybe, you know,
I know how it makes me feel.
So I hope I do.
I try my best to never try
and ascribe anything to an individual
because I don't know.
Don't get personal.
There's no point, right?
Because I don't know who's making the decision.
Yeah.
Like just because you're the boss
doesn't really,
sometimes you have to make a decision
even though you don't agree with it
because everybody in your organization
is asking for it, but it doesn't mean you agree with it. Yeah. But at a certain level, you have to make a decision even though you don't agree with it because everybody in your organization is asking for it,
but it doesn't mean you agree with it.
Yeah, but at a certain level,
you got to wear it, though.
If Tim Cook makes a decision,
he can say that he doesn't like it,
but he made it,
and he's the CEO,
so he has to take it.
But you also can't say
that he doesn't like it.
You can't say that because...
Because you don't know.
It's true.
That's why you should never get personal.
Even if he doesn't like a decision
that he makes,
you can't say he doesn't like it,
but he has to take it. Sure, of course. take of course do it because i was but he's still
the ceo so in the end he's sometimes things are but anyway i i just for me like i i i would never
try and ascribe blame to someone for something like i don't i mean yes apple is what apple is
do i think that like the services stuff is like Tim Cook's fault?
I don't know that.
I don't know that.
Or Eddie Cue's fault, for that matter.
Or anybody's.
But they just are where they are.
This is why I always say the extreme example of this that I really don't like,
but it's a spectrum, is people say this person should be fired.
Right?
Yes.
First off, talking about somebody's livelihood
is really, it makes me very uncomfortable.
It's gross.
Yes.
Second, you don't know.
You don't know.
Like you, unless you literally have been working
with these people inside Apple for years
and they can say to me,
oh yeah, he should have been fired years ago, whoever it was. Yeah, she should get out of there because
it's a bad fit. She got promoted above her level. Whoever it is, one of these people inside Apple,
unless you're inside there, you don't get to say, oh, well, you know, the thing is about Craig is
they should fire him because I had a bug in the beta. And people say that kind of stuff. And it's
like, you don't know. Like I imagine the pressure on Craig Vettorigi to run that organization is enormous. And I imagine that there are very difficult
decisions he has to make. I'm reminded of something Obama said, which was like,
what is it like being president that surprised you? And he said, you know,
they don't come to me with the 98% decisions or the 70-30 decisions. They come to me with 49-51. Really, they come
to me with 50-50. If it's a decision that's easy, it never even gets to the president.
Only the very, very hard decisions where there's no good answer get to the president's desk.
That's sort of the truth of being a leader in general. But I always remember him saying that
because like Craig Federighi, I'm sure that he
has all sorts of forces pushing him left and right. And there's the politics and there's people at
different at his level who are like, we need this thing. Like, cause he's got John Gianandrea who's
in charge of AI that's software, but it's also his own fiefdom and not Craig's group. And how
do they interact? Like, so very hard to say, oh, happened it's craig because like we don't know
we don't know maybe he navigated it better than anyone else could possibly have done in difficult
circumstances or alternately maybe he totally messed it up but we don't know we just don't
know and that's why you should never make it personal. And while I can say, like I said, I do believe that I can say something's going on in software.
Craig Federighi is in charge of software.
What's going on, Craig?
I'm not going to say Craig Federighi should be fired, right?
Craig, go fire him because you can't because you don't know.
It's way more complicated than that.
And again, I do believe the buck stops here.
We talk about Tim Cook and the Tim Cook era.
It represents he's been presiding over it for a decade. This is the direction Apple's going in.
There is a nuanced debate to have in there, but also as the CEO, I would argue, he's a big boy.
He's the man in charge. He has to own it regardless. But even then, I wouldn't make
it personal because you are right that there are lots of things I think
Tim Cook does as the CEO of Apple that he's uneasy about but he feels that he has to because that's
the job he gets his wins where he can get them like when he stood next to Donald Trump in a
Mac Pro factory sometime and just said oh he did this you know yeah no I mean he gets the wins
where he can and he does the other things.
Yes, I'm pretty
sure Tim Cook didn't want to go to the Mac
Pro factory with Donald Trump, but
he was the President of the United States and he wanted to do it
and they're like, okay.
You know, okay, we are going to do this.
It makes sense for Apple. I'm sure he was
uneasy about it sitting next to him at that thing.
But again, he's the CEO
of Apple. He's got to do a whole bunch of stuff that makes himself uneasy. And then he's got the places where he says,
oh, look at our environmental record. We're going to take the win over here.
And that's just, it's a hard job. It's easy to throw stones from the outside. And we can be
critical of Apple as a company because they make bad decisions. We've talked about them
in this episode, but very hard to say it's that person there because it's just not that easy.
Even though it would feel so good if it was that easy, but it's just not that easy.
And Noah asks, now that we're in the summer of fun, what is your go-to music album or
playlist for the summer while testing out the betas?
Noah specifically asks, Mike, I remember a few years ago, your album of choice was Maggie
Rogers' Surrender. Are you enjoying her album this year don't forget me now let me tell you real quick
we'll take a quick maggie rogers aside yeah yeah yeah yeah if you have a different thing
i was really apprehensive of maggie rogers third album don't forget me because i just didn't think
it was possible she could do it again because her first two albums are just absolutely perfect albums and she did it again
don't forget me isn't just incredible as a body of work across three albums it is hard to find
i i find i struggle to find a comparable artist where like of all the artists that i love that i
consider of my favorites to have three
albums in a row and they're all absolutely fantastic i mean she she is what she's operating
at a different level like it's i love that album that new album has grown on me first time i heard
it it left me kind of cold but it has grown on me over time and i like it a lot better now by the
way if you're wondering where an artist of the
caliber of maggie rogers might play when she's in london yep she's got two dates september 4th and
5th you can go see her at london's storied hackney empire where all the best perform
only the best and also every taskmaster contestant but also maggie rogers it's wild it's wild yeah she's
doing she's doing that they were like i think you it was one of those ones where like if you buy
a pre-sale album you could get a code and they're like intimate dates that she's not anyway but yeah
like uh i would just say on that album like uh so sick of dreaming the kill and don't forget me
they're just oh those songs are just so good.
So good.
The summer album that people should listen to
to give them the vibe of the summer of fun
is, of course, Exotic Themes for the Solar Screen
by Michael Cicchino.
We mentioned it on a previous episode.
That's where Michael Cicchino, the composer,
took a bunch of his famous movie themes
and turned them all into essentially summer of fun music.
It's pretty great. I also recommend the best of you three it is an amazing playlist that album music made for me it's in the show notes it's in the show notes man just get on that
yeah yeah i don't have one thing that i listen to for for betas or anything in the summer my
music is just i've got a bunch of different do you have anything new this year though that you've really been enjoying uh
i don't know um been listening to a lot of uh caroline polachek who's uh who's really great
um and a couple of her recent albums and then she's had she has an album on a soundtrack i
forget what i saw the tv light maybe that's really great that i've that i've really been into um
yeah maggie rogers i don't know it's uh let me look i've got a i've got a best of see now have
they made a best of 2025 playlist out of my best of 2024 they haven't or would it be a best of 2022
would apple music do that i don't know it's yeah my uh my best of 2024 is is mostly like
maggie rogers biba doobie caroline polacek and holly humberstone so you know just the usuals
what was that last one ho Holly? Holly Humberstone.
She's a Brit.
She's great.
Oh, well, come on.
Really, really great.
Yeah.
Oh, I love her stuff.
She's great.
She did an EP with Maddie from the 1975
because every artist I like apparently has a collaboration
with Maddie from the 1975 at some point in their catalog.
He's out there hunting them.
But Holly Humberstone is great. Fantastic.
All right. If you would like to ask us a question for a future episode of the show, if you have
any feedback or follow up about today's episode, just go to upgradefeedback.com
and you can send that in. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com
and you can hear him on Relay and at theincomparable.com. You can also
listen to me on Relay too and check out my TheIncomparable.com. You can also listen to me on Relay, too, and check out my work at CortexBrand.com.
You can find us online.
Jason is at Jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.
I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E.
You can watch clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are at Upgrade
Relay.
Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus.
Thank you to our sponsors, KRCS, Delete Me, and Fitbod.
But most of all, thank you for listening.
We'll be back next time. Until then,
say goodbye, Jason Stowe.
Goodbye, everybody.
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