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from relay this is upgrade episode 534 for october 21st 2024 today's show is brought to you by
squarespace fitpod and vitally and we are facing off in a draft today my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by my competitor and co-host jason
snow hi jason hi mike just let's play a clean game leave it all out on the field good luck
gentlemen yeah this is a weird one because we're just doing a little draft later on in the episode
because we'll get to it there's less the draft now than there was when we spoke last monday uh yes it's
true take it off the table but we still think something is going to be announced and so we're
going to uh predict it we will start off with a snell talk question that comes from james from
the plus four four who asks i was a huge fan of jason's tv talk machine podcast with the one and
only tim Goodman,
and it helped me discover lots of great shows.
I would like to know where does Jason get TV recommendations and reviews from these days?
I still have a TV Talk Machine-shaped hole in my life.
Love to your mothers.
I mean, this is very nice.
That was a fun show.
Tim, when Tim stopped being forcibly required by his job to review TV shows, we stopped the podcast.
He went off and wrote.
He had a development deal with FX for a little while.
And now he's back and he's got a sub stack that you can subscribe to.
And so I do read that.
I read some like Alan Sepinwall is a good source. He's got a, he writes at Rolling
Stone and has a sub stack of his own that's free. I read, you know, I read various, I don't know.
I just like kind of look around and I hear what people are talking about and I get recommendations
from friends and stuff, but yes, I have missed. It was really nice to talk every week to somebody
who was forced by their job to watch as many TV shows as possible because Tim was really
good at saying, oh, this was really good. You should watch this or even the don't bother with
this one thing. But also I have so many shows already that I don't feel the need quite so much,
but it is really nice to hear from a trusted source that this thing or this other thing is worth a shot. And I will follow this up
by just saying
my recommendation
of the moment that we just discussed
last week, it is entirely
there, the entire season is available
on Apple TV+.
It is Vince Vaughn
in Bad Monkey. Oh, good!
Which is spectacularly
good. Oh, this is spectacularly good.
Oh, this is such good news because I have it to watch.
Spectacularly good.
It is so good.
It has that Florida noir vibe where it's funny, but also there's a mystery and everything is a little bit shabby and shady.
And there's scenery and there's again jokes and i
don't know it's just i i loved it plus it's a bill lawrence show yep so it's also kind of got
that vibe that's like that a little bit like the hangout vibe that you get on something like
shrinking which came back which high recommendation for that too i watched the first episode of the second
season and it's just as good so i'm very happy about that that show's so good this show is so
well written so very good in that show i agree completely so anyway i'll throw i'll throw a bad
monkey on the list if you're like i don't know some show about a monkey well there's a monkey in
it but it's not about the monkey at all, really, at this point.
I mean, I have only seen half of it.
Probably it becomes very monkey-centric later.
No, I'm sure it doesn't.
But look, it's just part of the vibe, right?
Like, there's a guy with a monkey, and there's a lady who does curses, and there's a shady land developer, and there's a severed body part that is found.
And, you know, it's a thing.
It's great. It's very fun and funny so bad monkey high recommendation for me um but yeah it's hard without having it was really nice
what i'm saying is it's really nice to know a tv critic because then you can just say hey
what what are we watching but um but i don't have that anymore well my for me that is you
which is funny um You're my person.
Nice.
I will also make a couple of recommendations.
I think we may have spoken about it,
but for me and Jason,
well, for me at least,
I watched it all ages ago
because I do have early access to it,
which I'm very happy about.
Slow Horses.
Slow Horses, sure.
It just wrapped up.
This season's superb.
Superbly good.
As always.
Really, really, really good.
Do you know they just greenlit season six
so that five is done and
they're doing yet another one i'm like yes do it forever you know just like keep doing it do it
forever love it so good characters are fantastic uh the guy who plays uh the main like the lead
not gary oldman like the second river river jack loudon is his name i hope so he's he's married to shari uh oh man shari's ronin s-a-o-i-r
sersha sersha ron thank you that's irish anyway she suggested which i love that he should be the
next james bond which i 100 agree with i would like him to be james bond i think he would be
a good james bond i don't think it will be him but i think it's a little mini apple tv plus news here by the way um shrinking got picked up for season three wonderful they're
going ahead with that which is great and this is like a little asterisk on that whole like apple
adding tv plus as a channel on prime video like this is why i think it's a great move is their
catalog is really good now they they started with nothing and have built a catalog.
And at this point, even if you just never paid any attention, I mean, even for one month, you could watch your fill for $10 for one month with Prime Video buying it as a channel.
So I hope these shows find other audiences because they're doing some great work over there.
And Silo's coming back, which is also great.
There was actually on that note too,
I saw a promotion for Shrinking Season 2
from the Amazon Prime Video account on Instagram.
See, right?
Because now they get to be in the marketing machine
for Amazon, which is a big deal for them.
So thank you, James.
And I guess in addition to being the world's foremost Kindle podcast, maybe we'll occasionally recommend a TV show for you here.
But that's it.
Sorry.
Oh, I did.
I want to make one final recommendation.
Okay.
I think people have started to stay away from these shows, but Agatha all along on Disney Plus is excellent.
It's really good.
It's excellent.
It's really good.
Because the cast is brilliant, and it's weird and fun, and it's spooky. It's really good. It's excellent. It's really good. Because the cast is brilliant
and it's weird and fun
and it's spooky.
For October too.
It is not a Marvel show
in I would say any appreciable way
even though it is a...
Not yet.
Well, yeah, I know.
But it's going to have tie-ins
because it does have tie-ins.
It is in some ways
sort of a direct sequel to WandaVision
which by the way
is the first and still maybe the best of all marvel tv
shows in this run that's been done by marvel studios um and it's the same showrunner as as
wandavision which i think is super important and it is yeah it's really good it's not what you
expect it is kind of a character drama with action and and it's using witchcraft tropes,
so magic stuff.
So it's a different vibe
than you're going to get
from your more superhero-y kind of Marvel show.
Yeah, I agree.
High recommendation.
Really, really good.
Really good.
Yeah, the first episode is just superb.
Like, it's just, like, superb.
They did a great job with that show.
I've enjoyed it a lot.
And Katherine Hahn is just, like, incredible. Good supporting cast in that one plaza i mean you're
kidding me like it's just great it's really good did you see what aubrey plaza the bit that aubrey
plaza did the other day she was at the finals of the wnba yes in new york um not game five which
they just had where the new york liberty won uh we were excited by that because they one of the players is sabrina yanescu who went to oregon and is from the bay area so
we had a rooting interest in that so in the in the wmba and and sabrina did the three-point
shootout thing with steph curry at the nba all-star game which i watched a clip of because
there was a vision pro immersive nba all-star game thing that dropped last Friday.
Spectacular.
By the way,
they,
it like the,
like the Superbowl one,
they took their time a little bit.
I wish it had been three times as long.
Cause I would have liked to watch like more of it.
It was more like,
and this happened spectacular visuals.
And now we move on to this thing that happened spectacular visuals.
I wish, I wish I would have loved to watch the whole three-point contest and the whole steph
versus sabrina showdown in immersive it was great also a little sad moment they're showing these
amazing shots of the of the slam dunk contest and your courtside and i was really sad because
your courtside next to bill walton the great basketball player who died about three months
after the n All-Star
game. But he was there and he was
cheering and all and that was pretty
awesome. So anyway,
Aubrey Plaza,
they showed her on the big screen at the basketball
game and what was she doing? She had
a book and she was reading a book.
So she was at the finals last night
because I saw a clip of her today. They went to
her. She just double-flipping the bird to everyone. She last night. Comedy. Because I saw a clip of her today. They went to her. She just double flipping the bird to everyone.
Yeah.
She's incredible.
Amazing.
So good.
Amazing.
She's a star.
Anyway, thank you to James from the Plus44 for the Sneltalk question.
If you'd like to send in a question of your own,
just go to upgradefeedback.com and send us a Sneltalk.
I have a couple of follow-up items, Jason Snell.
First comes from sam
who says after the listening to the discussion of submerged do you think there is a future for
filmmakers using the immersive recording during feature-length movies but only in certain scenes
similar to how christopher nolan uses imax for specific scenes and then drops back to standard
shots the bulk of the movie could be viewed in a standard way, but then for specific scenes,
it could benefit from being in an immersive view
and could transition in and then back out again.
I mean, it's possible.
It would be a gimmick,
but Nolan flipping you into IMAX is also a gimmick.
I saw one of the Batman movies that Nolan directed
in, I think, Dark Knight in IMAX.
And suddenly it's
like oh now that now we're in imax oh now we're not anymore um i you so you could do it that way
that would be interesting i still think that a like a standalone like a a an immersive view
of something that happens in the movie from a different vantage point in immersive
might be a more like fun kind of extra um obviously to do this apple's gonna have to spend a lot of money because the audience
on vision pro is so small that there would be no financial reason for a studio to do it but if a
director like what is it john m chu is like super into the vision pro he loves it and it wouldn't
surprise me if he's like apple what can we do with my next movie what can we do with this so i mean i think people will still experiment
whether it's uh alternate scene that gets when you watch it on vision pro it gets spliced in
or just an alternate scene in immersive that you can watch as a standalone or something i you know
i definitely think they're going to be some filmmakers who are really into this and looked at Submerged and said, like we did, like, huh, he had an interesting approach to that.
And my favorite thing about Submerged, and I liked it, but my favorite thing about it is watching, really, you can watch a very intelligent, talented director trying to figure out the best approach to use artistically in a different version of a medium
that he knows pretty well. I would love to see other people do it. And I'm sure some directors
were out there who were like, oh man, I want to do this too. So I hope we see more of this,
but you know, maybe if there's a director with clout who has a good relationship with Apple
and they're making a movie and they say, look, we we want to do this immersive thing attached to this movie in
some way i'm sure it could happen but we'll we'll just have to see that's a that's a real confluence
of events there and it depends on how much apple wants to make it happen yeah feels like something
that they could do for one of their movies you know like a like an apple tv plus movie and maybe you could
do it as a separate thing or they also have a really good relationship with disney right so
you know yeah you know if they were willing to take a disney or marvel or you know or star wars
movie and put money into a vision pro immersive add-on to it but but they've got to put the money in it.
I mean, that's the bottom line,
is they've got to put the money in
if they want it to happen.
An anonymous listener wrote and said,
I wanted to respond to your conversation
about Meta showing Orion from a place of weakness
and that Apple hasn't done this for a long time.
I think Apple intelligence was Apple showing AI features
while they're not ready yet.
It's a good example of how Apple is showing its panic and weakness in this area.
If they were doing it from strength, they would have introduced it whenever they are almost ready.
Yeah, 100% true.
And we also talked about that last week, right?
We talked about the fact that Apple very much is selling the iPhone using features that don't exist yet and that you shouldn't buy an iPhone because of features that don't exist yet. But the conversation last week was really about pre-announcing
hardware. And I would say the other difference is that Apple actually, I think, intends to ship
Apple intelligence between now and next June. And everything they showed in June at WWDC is
something that they intend to ship. And the contrast there is that Meta doesn't plan
on shipping Orion at all. They've specifically
said they will not ship it.
What we have seen,
that will never ship.
They showed hardware that will never go to customers
and anything like it
won't ship for, they said, years.
They were vague, but it's years.
And so for me, that seems like
a very different thing than... I mean, like Apple Show Vision Pro and Apple Watch months before they shipped.
But they did ship exactly in that form, and it was months.
This is a product that nobody's ever going to get.
And I think that that was my point, is a lot of tech companies like to show off tech demos of things that don't exist.
Like they're not, you will never be able to buy this thing.
It happens at CES all the time, but you see it with major companies like last week right oh
man right so so let's anyway uh the the i don't have enough time to tell you all the things that
are that are wrong with the strategic direction of that company right now yeah um the uh so the
thing about this is i was pointing out that like when
was the last time that apple showed hardware that they didn't intend to ship and just and just did
it to show off their technical prowess and where they were going with their research lab and that
in that context like i can't remember like you pointed out i think the last time they really
talked about hardware that didn't exist that they were promising on shipping was that mac pro thing which is
legendary we talk about it to this day the round table where they brought in a bunch of journalists
and said we love the mac pro we're gonna make a new one eventually no more information and then
it was years before it happened it's a meme now, but air power too, right? Like, here's the thing. Yeah, although that,
I think Apple,
I don't think Apple showed that
out of weakness.
I think Apple showed that
out of confidence
that it was going to ship.
So I think it's a different issue.
They just screwed it up.
Yeah.
That was not,
that was not a,
like, oh,
we feel the pressure
to put out air power.
So we better get it out there now.
I'm just saying,
I'm coming from this,
from the perspective of somebody
who in the 90s,
the magazine I worked for
published a whole feature article of prototypes of Macs that never existed.
Some of them, sort of parts of them, got into other products.
Like, there was a bunch of things that looked sort of like the 20th anniversary Macintosh.
But, like, Apple was just like, we're spending all this money on R&D, and we're not doing anything with it.
What do we do? And the answer is, show the world that we're spending the money. And that was the vibe I got from Meta. I don't think Meta's troubled like Apple of the 90s was troubled.
Again, they're showing something that isn't going to ship to customers because they want to send a message that they're on it.
And that's because they felt like they were being misjudged.
So that was the point.
It is absolutely true. of hardware that was like, this will never ship, but we'll see in three years for the argument of why don't they show their own AR project right now. But yes, as we said last episode, the Apple
intelligence announcement is 100% from a position of weakness. That is Apple getting out ahead
and shipping and promoting features that don't even exist yet because they haven't shipped.
On top of the stuff that's about to come out, they're advertising features that don't even exist yet because they haven't shipped. Like on top of the stuff
that's about to come out,
they're advertising features
that will not arrive
until the end of the year
or maybe early next year.
And they're doing that
because they're behind in AI.
That is 100% true.
And may not be good
even when they do ship.
And may not be good
and the further out they are,
which is a point we made last week,
the further out they are,
the more risk you take
that the demo that you saw back in June, that it does this by the time it ships it's like well
it doesn't quite do that because we couldn't get that to work so it does something sort of like
that but not as good and that is always a danger and i was i still think some of the features that
we saw will not make it until 19 i i i don't know what but i i think this is such a long period of time
that they're potentially going to be shipping this stuff.
Something is not going to go exactly the way they want,
and they would like a little bit more time on it,
so they just put it into 19.
If I had to guess,
I'd say the more likely is that it's an aspect of it, right?
So they're like,
oh, well, you're going to be able to do Siri control of apps, but they're only Apple apps using App Intents. Yeah. And then it's going aspect of it, right? So they're like, oh, well, you're going to be able to do Siri control of apps,
but they're only Apple apps
using App Intents.
Yeah.
And then it's going to be like,
it's really only these two apps, right?
Something like that,
where they're like, oh,
I thought it was all the Apple apps.
I'm like, no, it's just,
it's just Calendar.
That's the only one we could do, right?
And you're like, okay, fine, right, whatever.
So I think that's,
I think that's going to happen.
So it's really interesting times though.
I just, and I don't want to to I don't want to ding to meta
too much for it because we both agreed
that it was a good move on their part
it's just like for Apple to get over that I think
I think Apple
Apple doesn't need to prove that it's
interested in this although
something that struck me which I don't
think we're going to talk about but there was a
Wall Street Journal it was like a little profile of Tim Cook there's not a whole lot in it other than the tidbit.
I haven't read it yet, honestly.
where obviously prompted by Apple PR to do this,
but that is a great environment for Tim Cook to do a little disclosure
that I think might solve some of this,
which is you ask Tim Cook about Meta's announcement
and Tim Cook says something like,
we've had stuff like that in our labs
for a couple of years too,
and we agree with Meta, it's not ready yet.
And at Apple, we don't ship stuff
until it's ready to ship.
So, you know, I'm glad that they believe in this.
We believe in it too.
We're here to compete, but we're not going to talk about products that aren't ready to
ship.
And that would be a way for the CEO's voice to basically say, we got that too, but we're
not going to show it to you. In a way, in a interview
or something where it's just like almost tossed off, but it's absolutely strategic for them to
just say, look, we know, we got it too. We're working like they are, but we're not going to
show it to you. And I think that it struck me that that's the kind of thing you could do if you want to counter the meta argument, is you could just acknowledge that, like, great, we've got prototypes too.
We'll, you know, see on the playing field in a few years.
And that would be a way that you could handle it.
By the way, the tidbit in the Tim Cook article that was the best is the interviewer asked him what he's named some of his iMessage chat groups.
I saw this.
And he said,
he said,
oh,
I've never done that.
Maybe I should try that.
And then in a subsequent chat with the writer,
he said,
oh,
I did what you suggested.
I,
I,
I renamed my chat with my roommates from college.
And what's it called?
Roommates.
I love him so much. You know know like that is such great energy i
saw another one which is that is this is that is this is tim energy right there i think i saw
another where he said his favorite drink was diet mountain dew but he doesn't drink it too much
because they don't stock it in apple and it's like okay but you're the the CEO. What? Make them do it.
So first off, yes.
I, like Tim Cook, my favorite soda is also Diet Mountain Dew.
Oh, look at that.
We got that, Tim.
But you're the CEO.
So one, you could have them stock it.
Two, you could just have a person buy Diet Mountain Dew and put it in your receptionist's outer office for your office and have it available to you you could do it that way but like i mean surely cafe max could unless they've got some sort of weird like did they sign a a distribution deal with coke and
so their pepsi products are not allowed i don't know what's going on there but i'll just here's
a tip for tim cook you can get diet mountain dew uh soda stream bottles and just get a little soda
stream okay and make your own diet mountain dew i can do that now i actually do that now so
lots of options out there for tim to uh and my condolences to tim on how bad the auburn tigers
are playing this year i will just say i just went to this is good follow-up and they did pick out
two things that are i guess guess, pertinent to the
conversation where, in regards
to the Vision Pro saying that at $3,500
it's not a mass market product.
Right now it's an early adopter product.
People who want to have tomorrow's technology
today. It's like, yep, that's a great
answer. And then also, I was talking
about his innovation saying, we're perfectly
fine with not being first.
It takes a while to do it really first uh it takes a long it takes
a while to do it really great it takes a lot of iteration you know so like he he's winking right
like we'd rather come out with the kind of product and the kind of contribution of people versus
running to get something out first if we can do both that's fantastic but if we can do one there's
no doubt around here right right so that and that that's my point is if they feel like there's
some advantage to be gained from saying yeah we've got prototype glasses too and they aren't and and
just as meta found out they're not good enough for people to buy now yeah and it'll probably be a few
years he could say that in an analyst call he could say that in a media interview and that's
all they need to do right like? Like the people are like,
oh, maybe Apple should show off.
It's like literally all that Tim Cook needs to do
is say, yeah, it's great.
And, you know, we're working on it too.
We'll see you in a few years.
And that's it.
So that's fine.
A couple more pieces of follow-up.
One is that according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg,
Apple's chief people officer, Carol Surface,
is leaving the company after just two years.
Deidre O'Brien is taking the responsibility of people back into her role again.
This is follow-up because last week, when talking about Dan Riccio, you mentioned about Apple's issues of hiring externally.
Yeah, that a lot of those people, not all of them. And there are, there are examples of people who've stuck, but, um, actually, um, German mentioned this, uh, Luca Maestri was an external hire and he worked pretty well. And their, their legal counsel was an external hire.
And by all accounts, she's doing great too. They're chief counsel. Um, but, but there are
a lot of high profile, especially in the customer facing parts where there are high profile hires that don't go
well.
And this is essentially,
you know,
just like losing two retail chiefs.
Now we've lost the people officer was brought in to replace the person who was
moving over to just do retail chief.
So,
uh,
and,
and German also pointed out,
Deidre O'Brien is going to retire here probably pretty soon.
And then what are they going to do?
And it's like, she's going to, she's going to be here probably pretty soon, and then what are they going to do?
She's going to be worn down at some point. This poor woman.
I heard from somebody
this week after we had that conversation who
basically said, yes, Apple knows this.
Apple
makes every effort
to develop their own people on the inside
because they know that this is the case. And of course
they do. That's why we talked about dan riccio is like that felt very much like part of
a concerted strategy to keep the brain trust around longer than they would otherwise be around
and bring on the new person and give them more of a role just as uh greg jaswiak is now world
ride marketing head but phil schiller still there right because that gives jaws his opportunity and presumably he is now having the people step up behind him oh um he
mentioned they they brought in external uh pr person and they lasted like less than two years
and now kristen hugit who's been there forever and who i used to work with when she was just a pr
you know person on a product basis is now running their PR.
So she's been at Apple a long time. There are so many stories of this. So Apple's not an impossible
fit for an outside hire, but it's very difficult for a high level outside hire to fit in there.
So they're doing the right thing, according to the people that I've heard from, which is
they know it and they are trying very hard to develop their new talent from their existing employee base,
which one is great because if you're an employee there, what you want to believe
is that there's a ladder for you to climb instead of them just bringing in a high profile person
from the outside. And two, because they got to do it that way because there's nobody coming in from
the outside. The ladder is the only source of the next executive set so uh yeah really interesting to
right on the follow of that for this to break because i was like we just talked about that
on upgrade perfect timing yep um and as discovered by sigmund judge of the magic rays of light
podcast we mentioned about him he had pointed something out about ted lasso season four
shooting in london well the british film and television alliance is now published at ted
lasso season four is in production with filming to occur in both london and the usa there you go
it's it's not been announced confirmed by anybody at apple or warner brothers and i would say
i would say i still one of the reports that we haven't gotten to is, is it Ted Lasso season four in terms of how they market it?
Yeah.
Or is it going to be like a follow on that's got a different name?
And maybe they are spending so much money that they're just going to call it Ted Lasso season four.
But I was watching the last part of the last, I was trying to think like, where did they leave it?
I was watching the last part of the last,
I was trying to think like,
where did they leave it?
And one of the last shots, it's very telling of Ted Lasso season three is Ted's note on the manuscript
by Trent Crim.
That's called the Lasso way.
And his only note is my name.
It shouldn't be named after me.
It's not about,
it's not about me.
It never was something like that.
And I thought at the time,
this is how you hand off to a successor show is say it doesn't,
it shouldn't be called Ted Lasso.
That said,
if it's easier to market it as Ted Lasso season four,
and they can get Jason Sudeikis to be in it a teeny tiny bit,
then they'll probably do that.
It is that it is Apple's only like widely breakthrough hit
name breakthrough hit yeah actually great thought occurs to me great uh time to be on prime video
when they if they get ted lasso back for a season four yeah right to drive subs uh in a new place
for people who are like oh yeah i've heard about that ted lasso show and you can literally you
know sign up and watch the first three seasons and then season four is also there so interesting this episode is brought to you by
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of this show and all of Relay.
So last week in a press release in the Apple newsroom,
Apple unveiled a new iPad mini.
It features a bunch of small improvements,
but the biggest feature,
and actually the way that Apple is referring to this product on their website is the ipad mini with a17 pro it's really weird
like when you go to compare them it's like ipad mini sixth generation and then i and that has been
replaced by ipad mini a17 pro that's okay the next one will be eighth generation and we'll all just
start calling it the seventh generation and no people care. Yes. Also, mini, mini, mini, mini, who has all the mini?
Anyway, just get that in everybody's heads again.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
That's coming up, right?
It is.
Halloween is Apple results.
So I guess in a couple of weeks,
we'll get to talk about charts.
We're going to have to break out the jingle.
We have to break it out.
I feel like that's the breakout hit.
We're going to break out the jingle.
That is the hit of the jingle episode. You can look forward to that jingle so we'll we'll bring it back maybe
so so yeah this is 17 pro it's you know there's that's the the chip is really the only thing to
talk about i think like there's a lot of little details i'll put a link in the show notes to your
post you know there are there's there's a host of small things they added to this product removed i.e all of the saturation from the colors
um but they put this chip in and this chip is weird we've spoken about it a few times on the
show before because the a17 pro was on a three nanometer process at tsmc that was a dead end
but apple kind of committed with them to produce it because they needed the chip for the iphone yes so they did it and that was also the i think the m3 too right it is this but they
skipped a bunch of devices on the m3 to go probably straight to m4 and it seems that's why m4
happened so fast is that m4 is a new chip design on the new process that is the process tsmc is
using going forward um instead of being this dead end that is
this first generation three nanometer process and so apple has been clearing out the m3 and like
they're going to get it off of all the macs and they're going to get them all on m4 and then
here's a here's a a new product that is using the old process and it seems weird right but what is
it why well first off this entire product exists for
apple intelligence that's the it feels very much they made some other changes to it but they're so
minor um as you said they desaturated the color um but they're so minor really what's going on
here is this is not what everybody who's an ipad mini fan wanted which is a new ipad mini that's
been kind of rethought and upgraded in a lot of ways.
It's literally the old iPad mini, but compatible with Apple intelligence because that was the priority was we need to get all of our devices on Apple intelligence.
Now, it is weird that this is a chip that we basically figure they have stopped making or are going to stop making i have a lot of
theories about it my best guess is that they've because it's got one fewer gpu than the one in
the in the uh iphone last year last year's iphone pro so they've been saving up uh bend chips that
didn't pass the test for the iphone because they a gpo core
didn't work and maybe they've got excess that they didn't end up needing for the 15 pro and so
they've my question is one is there literally a big bin of 15 pro chips somewhere that apple has
and how many are in there and is that the total number that Apple thinks that they're
going to sell of the iPad mini and the product's entire life cycle? Or, you know, is it possible
that they're still making them because they haven't shut down that production line yet?
And Apple has some sort of contractual deal and it's going to make some more, but my guess is
Apple is going to get a certain number of these chips that apple says this is enough for
the ipad mini's lifetime and then they're going to turn off that production line which means
i mean look the future is promised to no one and uh nothing lasts forever so the ipad mini
that just got announced will one day be replaced as all products are but what's interesting is the ticking clock might be like
really ticking like literally we know exactly how many of these we can possibly make before we have
to introduce a new model that uses a different chip because so i don't know how big the bin is
and i don't know whether they're planning to go three more years for the next ipad mini
my gut feeling is they probably won't go
three years. My gut feeling is this is probably a midstream thing that they did for Apple
intelligence and that there's probably a better iPad mini in the works a couple of years down
the line, maybe. But it's possible that this is, they got three years worth of chips in a bin
and they're going to just grind them out. But it is wild to think that they put this product on a chip
that is basically done.
But they are.
It's a very peculiar thing to do.
Very peculiar.
Like the A18, which is just sitting right there,
which realistically the A18 non-pro makes more sense
for this product here's what i've heard uh several people pointed this out after i posted my story
last week which is if they were to use the a18 they would actually have to do a feature regression
on the ipad mini because the the sixth generation ipad mini supports usb3 and the a16 on the iphone does not
it only supports usb2 okay and if that is the case that is that is their choice is do they want to do
a feature regression but i will also say is it possible because the other the other story that
we've heard about these three nanometer chips is that they're expensive they're expensive to make
and they're expensive because they have a lot of failure on them.
So there are ones that Apple rejects.
And I think their deal with TSMC, I forget whether this was one where they had the ability to reject them at no cost to them.
And TSMC, like, look, it's bad business for Apple and TSMC to be on this line anymore.
So I think it must have been a little expediency thing, which is like, we're going to take all of the leftovers from this failed project and use them somewhere.
And this is a perfect place to use them because it allows them to do it without spending the money and effort to upgrade lots of internals in order to put an M chip in it. Right.
to upgrade lots of internals in order to put an M chip in it, right?
Because we heard from an anonymous source,
a good anonymous source who pointed out like,
put an M chip in an iPad mini,
like there's a lot more that goes into it than an A chip.
And it would have been a much more substantial upgrade.
They're like, they don't want to do that.
So it has to be an A chip.
And I don't know whether it was something that they came to
and they're like, aha,
I've got the answer for the iPad mini
and Apple intelligence or what.
Or if somebody was like made the vice president of A17 Pro bins, it was like, what do I do with these things?
And they found this.
But whatever the reason, like, it's very Tim Cook, too.
to just almost as tim cook is naming your texting thread with your roommates roommates is taking a part that you bought that isn't very good in terms of your flagship product uh in the future i mean
i'm not it's not a bad chip right but it's like it's it's a it's a broken process that you're
turning off but you've got extra extra parts there's a lot of benefit and you're like let's
reuse them like it saves money it saves efficiency and it's probably better for the environment right rather
than just like practically free well why would you throw them away yeah they're perfectly functional
so but you've got to find a place to put them and here it is right but you take a risk right
where like in theory there is a maximum amount of this product that can be sold yeah unless they are
continuing to produce for tsmc
as you mentioned in your article which would also be really weird but i would expect to at some level
of degree apple do get to ask of tms tsmc to do things that they would otherwise not like to do
you know yeah exactly exactly also i mean i have a list in my article you can read it uh somebody
david shop mentioned in our chat that um another reason is they need the the ace the a18 for iphone
16 right i mean they i don't know how much volume they've got of that but like if you're ramping up
production of iphones the last thing you want to do is divert production of iphones for ipad minis
i'm sorry fans of the ipad mini but but even you must see that if you're Apple and
it's summer and you're building iPhones for your big fall splash, diverting the number of iPhone
16s you can sell because of the iPad mini is a bad idea. It's a really bad idea. So here we are.
You're right. It's not that, like I said, all products will be replaced. It's the ticking
clock aspect of it, which is they know exactly how many they need to make. But my guess is they also know how many they're going to sell. And if it's a runaway hit, well, you know, they'll move up the introduction of the next iPad mini. But my guess is that they probably got, they're good for a couple of years. That's my guess. Yeah. So one of the issues of the 6th gen iPad mini was what was called jelly scrolling.
So I've mentioned this before.
In portrait, when you would scroll with the iPad mini, it would sometimes look that like one half of the screen would move at a different speed than the other.
It was a small thing, but noticeable.
it was a small thing but but noticeable uh well well mac rumors is reporting on a conversation from the sixth color secret podcast where co-host jason snell told dan moran that it was his
understanding that this had been addressed in the new ipad mini yeah uh very funny to have i mean
shout out to julie clover at mac rumors who either listens to the podcast thanks i should look up if
who had mac rumors as a subscriber
or whether there was a tip was there a hot tip or maybe you know you you go to that feed and
you find out there's like six people listening to it everyone at mac rumors anyway look we have
briefings that are that are on background and so you know i can't say apple says and i can't quote
anybody i mean i can't wait for the news story about this to break this conversation here.
But, you know, my understanding is,
just totally separate from that,
my understanding is that they did make some changes to the display circuitry.
And what's unclear is whether they addressed
this problem or not.
But what I would say is,
if Apple knew that jelly scrolling was a thing,
but hadn't acknowledged it,
the last thing they would do is acknowledge
that they had a flaw in saying that they fixed it. They would do it in this way, which is to be asked directly about
jelly scrolling and reply by saying, well, we did make some changes to the display circuitry.
And then you're just left hanging of like, but did it solve this? Was it meant to address this?
But what they won't say is we fixed that horrible jelly scrolling problem that we had that we've never talked about and never admitted to because then they're going to get sued and all these things.
So they just said, oh, we changed the display controller is probably what they might have said.
That's my understanding.
Anyway, I don't know.
Yeah.
No Apple says here.
Yeah.
You understand.
It's probably my understanding.
Anyway.
Anyway, I would imagine that later this week there will be embargo drops and there will be reviews and stuff and we'll have a better idea of whether jelly scrolling is still a thing.
But they changed something.
So maybe jelly scrolling is not a thing anymore.
But that's really all we know right now.
And again, thank you to MacRumors for reminding me that even in my members-only podcast for Six Colors, which is an excellent…
Which is called the Secret Podcast, right? Which I like the most. I think technically it's just for Six Colors which is an excellent which is called the secret podcast right like
which I like the most
I think technically
it's just the Six Colors podcast
now I don't think
it's secret anymore
we don't swear
anybody to secrecy
I don't think
we do it anymore
I think that
when we started
it was the secret podcast
I've internalized that
we realized that
if we want to sell memberships
we should not keep it a secret
because people do like
listening to that podcast
it's a very nice podcast
people can join
Six Colors and listen to it and if you join at the higher levels you get more of it
because we do more in a big q a every month and all this stuff anyway sell my i'll sell my other
podcast here um but now i need to just remind myself that if there's something that i don't
want turned into a story on mac rumors i should I should probably not mention it, even on a members-only podcast. Just a
lesson for me and
other podcasters, that just because it's behind a
paywall doesn't mean somebody won't go find
it and report on it. Sort of like what we do with
Mark Gurman's Bloomberg
stories, which are behind a paywall, but we just
talk about them. But I pay for it.
I do pay for it, too.
That's true. Well, I'm sure somebody paid for
whatever Julie Clover reported
maybe Julie Clover herself
I don't know
there are new Kindles
new Kindles
led by
my favorite
Panos Panay
who was previously
at Microsoft
running Surface
and he left
and went to Amazon
and now runs hardware
at Amazon
and this was the first
Panos kind of
product unveiling
in so and you can see the
difference in that they decided to actually have an event and they unveiled an entire range of
kindles which is not usually how they do things um they usually like do one here or there but
they're like no here is a lot of new kindles uh i'll put a link in the show notes to the most
recent episode of the verge cast where they had panels on and this is a great interviewer i actually got to interview him once and it was a great time he's
a he's a very very thoughtful person who really cares you know and he he's a good salesman too
but like you could tell that you know he i don't know i like the guy he's got a lot of heart
anyway so they have a bunch of products i'm going to just talk about them real quick and then you
can touch on the things that you care about
because you're the e-reader guy.
So we've got the Kindle Color Soft,
which is the first color ink Kindle.
The new Kindle Scribe,
so they've redesigned it a little bit visually
and made some changes.
They've put some new software features in there,
so you can take your notes with your Kindle Scribes,
like a pen on an e-ink screen,
and they can give you some AI summaries of your handwritten
notes and they've put
some new ways to
put notes on books so you can write your notes
on a book and it will flow the text around your
notes. That's really cool.
They have a new Kindle Paperwhite
which has faster page turns
on a larger screen and then a new entry level
Kindle and some of these Kindles
have color options on the cases too yes so so the big kindles yay this is the foremost e-reader podcast so um
first thing is they also discontinued uh their i think 2018 kindle oasis is finally officially dead
which was the last kindle that had page turn buttons on it.
And, you know, every time this comes up, people say, well, I don't need buttons to turn. I just
tap the screen and it's fine. And I'll just say, obviously for most people, that is the case. I
hate it because it makes the ergonomics of holding it for me awkward and I have to shift my finger.
So if I get a good grip, it doesn't matter because when I need to turn the page, I need to either
use the other hand or I need to shift a finger or whatever to tap or swipe in order to move to the next page.
Whereas I can rest my hand holding my e-reader with my thumb on the page turn button and then just kind of sit there and go click, click, click, click without moving my hand.
So I prefer page turn buttons.
I think that they should be an option.
Amazon first thought that they should only be on the very high end.
And then now they think that they shouldn't exist at all.
So I'm disappointed by that.
If you like page turn buttons, I think the answer is you should probably buy the Kobo Sage.
Or you could get the Kobo Libra color, but it's not as good a screen as the old Libra 2 was.
Or find a Kobo Libra 2 on eBay or something and just get that.
That's what I still use day to day is the last generation.
Mike, I bought a Kobo Libra 2 case, which I already have one, but it's kind of beat up over the years.
And they were putting them on clearance at Kobo.com, and I just went and bought another one.
bought another one because i i have basically i'm like okay this is the one this is my uh e-reader i'm going to keep using for the most part is the kobo uh liber 2 so i might as well because i
noticed on my last trip like it was really beat up and i was like it's a shame that they don't
make this anymore but it turns out they still had some cases left in the warehouse so i bought one
anyway so i'm a little despondent about the the state of e-readers in the sense. So I bought one anyway. So I'm a little despondent about the state of e-readers
in the sense that I think page turn buttons are important, but a couple of things. I'm really
encouraged that Panos Panay is involved in Kindles because it felt like for the longest time, Amazon
wasn't really paying attention to Kindles at all. And that they didn't have a strategy and they
would like do stuff in the background. They did a big software update that I think dramatically
improved the usability of the Kindle. I'm generally disappointed in the trend in e-readers.
Like I don't, I'm not offended by the idea that people who are reading text on, on a e-reader
is a niche market that a lot of people just think phones are fine or iPads are fine, which I don't,
but a lot of people do. So it's a very niche product already. So I don't,
I'm not offended by the idea that they're trying to find other ways to push this technology,
but it seems to be the thing that they've found is using pens and taking notes. And the problem
I have with that is that's not a use case for me. So it's great for others and all that. I had
somebody ask me, are you going to review the Kindle scribe? And my answer is what it always is,
which is it's too big. It has a pin. That's sort of what it's about. I'm just not interested in that category. It's just
not a thing. Above a certain point for people who need to like mark up PDFs and stuff, I think it's
kind of a brilliant idea. Although you could also use an iPad, but I've heard positive things about
marking up documents on a Kindle. So I'm not interested in the Scribe at all, which leaves
us with the ColorSoft and the Paperwhite really. ColorSoft isn't out yet. It's coming out in a week, I think. It is their first color Kindle. They resisted this for a long time.
E-Ink has been making color screens for a while.
And like I said, Kobo just did a turnaround and did the color screens.
The problem is... And the Remarkable color one too.
I know it's not an e-reader, but like...
Right.
But they're out there, right?
Yeah.
And, you know, there are issues with them where the DPI is, I think, half the points per inch is half of what it is for the black and white.
So your black and white text is crisp, but your color is not that crisp.
But still still interesting. The problem is that it also puts a gray cast on the back of the screen that actually
reduces readability of text because now it's, it's black on kind of speckly gray instead of
black on very light gray to white. Amazon made some sort of claim about how they've got like
their color is different and they've got different lighting and they it sounds like what they're implying is that they have somehow overcome some of the limitations of the color screen.
I'll believe it when I see it.
But that I think that's interesting because Kobo just came out with these color versions and discontinued some of their black and white readers like it doesn't matter it's okay and i'm not sure i believe them so we'll see if that color is better
than the color on these other devices um if amazon is beaten back somehow i assume they're still
using e-inks technology but if they if they've done some things to modify it, we'll see.
I will throw out there, though,
that this is a seven-inch, I think, reader.
It's not huge.
A lot of people are like,
oh, you read comics on it.
It's like, I've tried to read comics
on readers this size.
I mean, also,
the way I read comics is not available, right?
Like, Marvel Unlimited is not on Kindle.
That's true.
That's true.
You've got to buy comics on Kindle.
If you did Kindle Unlimited, I think you'd get some comics. Anyway, it's not on kindle that's true that's true you gotta buy comics on kindle although i if you did kindle unlimited i think you get some comics anyway it's not ideal however here here's the thing and i don't know the answer to this question so i'm just going to put it out there
and we'll find out the answer probably in a week which is kindle is also comiXology they sell
comics they merged it all into the kindle store you can buy individual issues of comics you can buy trade paperbacks they use the comiXology technology it's in the Kindle store. You can buy individual issues of comics.
You can buy trade paperbacks. They use the Comixology technology. It's in the Kindle app
on the iPad and on the iPhone. It's called Guided View. I don't read comics this way because I read
on a big iPad. But the idea was that Comixology built this thing to make comics readable on
iPhones. You double tap and it will take you, it's built into the metadata of the
comic. It'll take you page by page or panel by panel through a comic, which means you don't have
to see the whole comic. It will lead you through the individual panels, which are then much larger,
which makes it more readable without you having to kind of pan and zoom, which is
really bad on an e-ink screen that doesn't have a high refresh rate. So my question, and as far as I can tell, they didn't say anything about it. My question is,
does the Kindle ColorSoft do guided view for comics? Because if it does, it could be a decent
comic reader. And if it doesn't, why doesn't it, right? Because it's literally their technology.
So either it's going to be better for comics than any e-reader has ever been
or i don't know what amazon is even or a missed opportunity like a severe opportunity it's like
why even on comixology like if you're not gonna if you're exactly so we'll see they specifically
call out comics and guided and and sorry, and graphic novels,
like as a thing for this.
And like the image that they show,
it looks good.
Like they have a panel from Ms. Marvel.
Sure.
But is that, am I getting there through guided view?
Because I read an issue of Saga on the Kobo
and it's just like panning and zooming.
Oh, it's so bad.
Yeah.
So we'll see.
We'll see.
Jury's still out. I ordered one. I'm excited to see it. I will review it, but it's just like panning and zooming. Oh, it's so bad. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see. Jury's still out.
I ordered one.
I'm excited to see it.
I will review it, but it's not here yet.
I have the paper white.
Okay.
It's reminded me of all the reasons why I like physical page turn buttons.
But it's good.
It looks good.
It frustrates me.
It also doesn't have a light sensor.
So when I'm reading in the daytime, I have to swipe down and crank up the brightness and when i'm meeting it needed reading at nighttime i turn it on it's super bright and i
have to swipe down and crank down the brightness i'm like how expensive is that light sensor part
it's in it's in older kindles that are i guess higher end like i don't know why they left that
out it's a real degradation of the quality of the product. And Paperwhite is not the entry-level Kindle.
So I don't know why it does that.
But it looks good.
The software is good.
I'll write a review of it.
The use cases for people who...
It used to be that Kindle was way worse for people who use libraries than Kobo,
especially since Kobo at one point was the same company that did Overdrive, which is libraries.
However, if you have more than one library that you're a member of, Kindle's way better because it uses Amazon's infrastructure to fulfill the books.
Whereas Kobo, you log into your library and it only lets you log into one.
So that's kind of interesting, too.
So my gut feeling now is, despite all my frustrations, I think the best, if you, e-readers last forever, you don't need to upgrade them very often. However, if you, the best general purpose e-reader right now is probably this new paperwhite. I will, you know, write my review and see. I also want to throw out one suggestion to our dear friend Panos Panay,
who is obviously listening to the world's greatest e-reader podcast. You heard Mike
say nice things about you. If we're not going to do page turn buttons, which again,
I think they're really good. How about alternate ways of turning a page that don't require you to
move your fingers? How about something like at one point
they had a pressure sensitive side where if you gave it a squeeze over a certain area it advanced
or how about an accelerometer you already you already have one at least a an accelerometer
because you can do portrait to landscape but like the other way i was thinking that you could do it is if you get it if you get it kind of like in your hand and you've got a grip
what if you use a finger to like tap the back like do a double tap or something and it advances the
page you could do that maybe and that wouldn't require a moving part and a button that you have
to protect against water ingress and all that just please find something that isn't putting my moving
my finger and putting it on the screen because I would really like that.
But anyway, so that is, I'll have more follow-up, Mike, as we go down this path with the new Kindles.
Very exciting.
I look forward to it.
Who knows?
Maybe one of these days we'll bring back Scott McNulty and we'll just do an e-reader blowout.
No promises.
No promises.
We did that, though.
In a very early episode of Upgrade, we just did a whole thing with Scott where we talked about Kindles.
And Mike got to make a sandwich. So there we are. I had a good time.
I was just listening. Yeah. You know, you're just, yeah. Just listening to me and Scott talking
about Kindles as you do. This episode is brought to you by FitBod. If you're looking to change your
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Thanks to FitBod for their support of this show and relay oh i have one last kindle point okay thank you to zmk
in the chat for pointing this out there is a kindle paperwhite signature edition for 40 more
you do get the light sensor why why and it's got more storage that you don't really need
and support for wireless charging.
So I guess if you want to pay $200, you can get the one with the auto twice as much as the cheap Kindle.
$40 more than the paper white standard.
They have the signature edition and the signature apparently is a little cheap light sensor.
So there you go.
Anyway, review to come.
Whatever, Amazon.
Come on, Panos. Get in there. come. Whatever, Amazon. Come on.
Panos, get in there.
Work it out.
He's doing it.
He's making you pay $40 more for your light. Yeah, I guess so.
For a light sensor.
That's what he's doing.
Great.
Yeah.
Great.
It's time for a draft.
All right.
These are the rules, and the rules are slightly different.
So if you don't usually pay attention to the rules, these are the rules.
Yeah.
We don't have a whole rules process. We just kind of talk about it and plan the rules, these are the rules. Yeah. We don't have a whole rules process.
We just kind of talk about it and plan it.
But these are our rules.
Yes.
Five rounds.
No, I've already said it wrong.
It was originally going to be five.
It's more.
Seven rounds.
Seven rounds.
We changed it today.
Seven rounds, 14 overall picks.
The winner of the previous draft gets to pick first.
That is me, as I am current draft champion.
Our items are chosen from a predetermined list of choices,
which we have agreed could be verifiable and not ridiculously obvious.
For an item to count, it must either be clearly announced on stage
or on a slide during a presentation,
or viewable on Apple's website if announced via a press release.
That is the difference for this drive
because we have no idea what's going to happen.
If they don't have a pre-announced live stream,
we switch into press release mode.
Or if they don't just publish a video, right?
Which is like an event video, I guess.
It could be either or, right?
I suppose.
Which we've seen in the past,
but that's rare that they would do that.
Incredibly unlikely that they would do that but right nevertheless steven hackett will adjudicate
in case of a scoring stalemate between the two of us but he's currently on leave so let's say
steven hackett will adjudicate if steven is away who should be our adjudicator zach let's put zach
in it we're gonna put zach in it i don't know if Zach wants this, but Zach Knox
who makes our scorecards will
adjudicate in case of Stephen's
unavailability
of adjudication. No
partial points are awarded. The points
awarded on the episode are final, and
they are finalized during the scoring segment.
In the case of a tie,
there is a tiebreaker question.
The loser gets picked of the tiebreaker question.
The winner becomes draft champion and displays the champion pennant.
Loser becomes draft challenger and displays the challenger pennant.
I am currently displaying my champion pennant as champion.
I am currently displaying the challenger pennant as challenger.
You can watch our YouTube video to see me displaying it right
now i'm holding it indeed there will be an interactive scorecard at upgrade.cards which
are maintained and managed by zach knox you can buy a t-shirt at any time at the draft
upgradeyourwardrobe.com if you want that there's always there is some t-shirts available it's a
fun rumor roundup t-shirt there too yeah a couple of upgrade logo t-shirts and also a some t-shirts available there's a fun rumor roundup t-shirt there too a couple of upgrade logo t-shirts
and also a draft t-shirt which you can buy
whenever you want
if you would like to celebrate the draft
you can go to our Cotton Bureau store and do that
there have been
five previous drafts
held in October
Jason has won three of these
I have won two of them
and so far this year i am winning
at two drafts to one so you have the opportunity to tie up for the year because i doubt there will
be another draft so yeah likely of course like so the reason we made the tweak this time is we
wanted to do the draft because it's fun to draft and we expect there to be some mac stuff and we
thought it was going to be mac and ipad
but then obviously apple just released the ipad mini as a press release so we're still drafting
anyway because we wanted to and we said we would so we're doing it but for this one instance and
maybe if we ever do this specific kind of thing before where we draft without an announcement
we'll see how this goes to to try and judge it by the newsroom post,
which I think,
the newsroom post and whatever's on Apple's website
by the time that we get there,
which I honestly, realistically,
provided that we pick,
and so what we've done today
is we've been very particular
in the picks that we are making,
and we spoke about this in Upgrade Plus last week.
The picks that we are making,
they are product.
They are not stagecraft.
We are specifically doing product stuff, us last week the pics that we are making they are product they are not stagecraft like we are
specifically doing product stuff and so yeah it has to be on apple's website so um i'll just point
out we we thought i thought about it maybe like a day too late i thought about us doing this last
week but a little too late for us to prep for it which would have been great because we would we
would know some of the answers but not all of them and we would have to wait on judging because you know what i think it's better
this way because that would have made it really complicated because it's like do we score the
whole draft now scoring i don't like that part two of the draft that's in the rules no partial
points so we have to score the entire draft it would have been a nightmare so i'm happy
that it's actually gone this way.
We dodged a bullet there.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
So we have seven rounds.
I'm going to go first.
The first pick that I'm going to make
is that the new Mac Mini
has a new industrial design.
That's going to be my first pick.
Okay.
That's good.
Now we had before just to,
to let,
uh,
let you in on it,
everybody.
Um,
one of the things that we debated beforehand was,
are these two obvious?
And we decided,
you know what?
Part of the draft is actually talking about what's going
to happen and then what did happen and so we just expanded our our picks a couple so that we can
make some picks that are not guaranteed not guaranteed i think nothing here is a hundred
percent right they could throw us a curveball but we wanted to not just sort of like ignore the
basic like we're not picking a new Mac mini as announced.
That's I've decided is a hundred percent,
but this is at least a little detail.
We've heard that it's smaller.
What if it's not?
Is that your pick?
What if it doesn't have a new design?
Then you get the pick wrong,
but I'm just going to like counter you here with my pick,
which is the new Mac mini is smaller than ever.
Yep.
So here's why i think
it's actually worthwhile so the mac mini has been around for how long let me google this real quick
a very long time 2005 okay so 20 years essentially something like that there have been two industrial
designs for the mac mini in its entire 20-year history and i know this because steven stacked
them up
and showed me them while I was in Memphis.
He was like, look, this has not changed.
There's the tall one.
Yep.
And then there's the flatter one,
which, as Stephen pointed out,
I have conflated with getting rid of the optical drive,
but it's not true.
No.
The flatter one had an optical drive option
for a little while,
which means that that enclosure that we've been using
all of this time was built to fit an optical drive,
which is bananas.
So it doesn't need to be that big.
So the way I think of it,
not even just the tall one,
it's the one with the plastic top
and then one that was all aluminum.
And so I do actually think
that a new industrial design
for the Mac Mini,
while we expect it to happen,
could have happened many times in many times we have we probably picked it many times i know i've written
many articles about they should make a smaller mac mini and i think the answer is they finally
you're like why make it smaller we've heard that from people which is like but why make it smaller
what's the point it's a it's a little desktop what why does it need to be smaller i think the
answer is they decided to refresh the enclosure first off they're going to save money on like aluminum and stuff
they don't need it to be that big it's not just we need to make it smaller so let's engineer it
to be smaller if you look at what's inside a mac mini it doesn't need to be that big it's it's
mostly air in there so also do you know what i say? Have some fun in your life, you know?
Also, it's just going to last for a decade more.
The Mac Studio exists.
Get that.
I want the exact opposite of the Mac Studio.
I want the Mac Mini to be as small as they can make it,
because why not?
I want to stick it to the back of a monitor with Velcro.
Like, let me do it, you know?
Make a tiny little computer.
I think it'd be amazing. Let's do it. I'm excited about this by the way i think we'll talk about it great but like this is
i have my mind on this computer being my next computer and i'm excited about this mac mini
it's great cool my second round pick is that the new mac mini comes with both an M4 and M4 Pro configuration.
Yeah.
It currently does, right?
It currently does.
It currently has a standard and a Pro.
So I think that's a reasonable pick.
And I think that's, I think it's great, right?
Again, imagine the power in such a little tiny device.
Tiny little computer and it has an M4 pro chip in it that'd be oh
that'd be so great i'd be really excited about that the risks here are it doesn't happen this
time because they change the configuration they change the enclosure and they can't fit the pro
in there or they just don't have an m4 version like they could they could get rid of them or
the pro version could still be in the old size. That's the other possibility.
There are some, again, we're going from like 100 down to like 98% to down to 95%, but still.
All right.
Very excited about that.
But I'm going to pick new MacBook Pros.
Okay.
I think there will be new MacBook Pros. I think that is also up there.
Again, not necessarily the case, right? I think Mac Mini feels the most certain. MacBook Pro feels the next most certain to me. And so I'm going to be very different. I know we've got the Russian leak out there. They already redesigned these things.
All they're doing is bumping the processors up from M3 to M4.
Nobody get too excited about it.
They will highlight Apple intelligence,
but of course the old ones will,
all Apple Silicon Macs have Apple intelligence.
They will talk about something that is very specific to M4
that was not there in M3
that might be something we haven't heard of
involving the Mac
that the iPad didn't,
the iPad Pro,
remember, because M4 already exists,
but iPad Pro,
they didn't talk about Mac features.
And also we don't know
about the M4 Pro
and the M4 Max,
which presumably will also be introduced
and available in MacBook Pros.
So there will be some details there that will
probably be little chip details that they'll be able to boast on that will be an improvement from
the m3 versions of these but otherwise they're going to be just you know people buy macbook
pros and we put our latest chip in it the end but that latest chip is you know they did it last time
too right like it was an important it's an important enough thing for them that they want to talk about it.
Absolutely.
And so. about pro and max configurations which presumably are coming because why would you launch the macbook
pro without them and that's where they can boast about like all the stuff they poured into that
higher end model of chip and we learned last time last october when they did this we expected it to
be boring and just like the m2 and what we saw was that the pro and the max were diverging from
each other and from the the base model that m4 pro was turning
into like it was it was i think continuing on to being kind of like m4 or m3 in that case but but
more but the max was like not just like m m pro bigger it was like no no no it's like high end much higher end than the pro so that may happen
again uh we may be surprised by what they're doing there so there's some surprise to come
they'll boast on it for sure all right my third round pick i'm gonna diverge away from hardware
um and assume an Apple Intelligence demonstration.
And I, for me, I feel like if we're thinking about the potential,
what could this event be?
It would either be a portion of Apple Intelligence demonstration in the video or part of the newsroom post
to specifically show features.
So like not the product pages, because that's too easy, I think,
but the newsroom post announcing this product
to have like, here is the section about Apple intelligence.
Here's why I think this is risky.
Yeah.
I think it's risky only in that
it is a new piece of Mac hardware
and every Mac product supports Apple intelligence.
However, the reason I think this is a good pick,
the reason I think this is a good pick is, and again, I'm not trying to tell
tales out of school here, but Apple gives reviewers materials to refer to about the tech specs and all
of that. And I will tell you that ever since Apple intelligence got announced, every product that
Apple has shipped has had a lengthy section in it about apple intelligence even if it's like yeah this is
just in the operating system it's like nope we're pushing apple intelligence we're going to talk
about it again so i think you've got a pretty good uh chance here there's a huge chunk of the
press release for the ipad mini that is talking about apple intelligence including a bunch of
things that aren't even in 18.1 like So I actually feel no matter what they ship,
there is a part of me that I am most confident
that the thing that they will do is show Apple Intelligence.
I think it is, for them, key right now.
Why I think this could actually be a video
is just another opportunity to show these features.
And potentially, if it's an event, to announce when Apple Intelligence is shipping.
Yes.
Right?
Because we've heard it's shipping.
That is indeed something somebody could pick in this draft.
If they wanted to.
The 28th.
So they could potentially do that as a part of that conversation.
Yeah. All right. I am going to bring in the potentially do that as a part of that conversation. Yeah.
All right.
I am going to bring in the other product that is rumored to be announced here and say new iMac.
Okay.
So, yes, there was.
So they went from M1 to M3.
So it's like, well, why would they go to M4 when they just went from M1 to M3?
And the answer is they don't want to make the M3 chips anymore because they're on that process, that old three nanometer process that's expensive and TSMC and Apple don't want to use it anymore. So I think the rumors point to this,
and I think it makes sense. Mark Gurman has said they want to get all the Macs onto M4.
So he says the iMac is coming. I'm going to take him at his word and pick new iMac,
even though I think of the three products rumored to be in this event or release,
it feels to me like the least essential of the three.
I would not have picked this this early for that reason.
I think I could imagine a scenario where we got MacBook Pros and Mac Minis now and like
the iMac next year.
Pros and Mac Minis now and the iMac next year.
I see your point.
But I feel like the iMac
to me is a product that I
don't understand anymore.
I can't fully
see where it sits
for Apple anymore.
To use draft parlance, you think
this is a reach, whereas I
actually had it second on my board
and I think it's a value at three
because I think it's very likely to happen.
But we'll see.
I believe it is very likely to happen.
I'm not sure it is likely to happen
this month.
But I don't know.
It's possible.
I don't know. We'll see.
It's possible.
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and Relay.
All right, so we're into
round four of the draft.
I'm at the point where I have my list
and the list is ranked
and I'm moving things around on the list.
Ah, yes.
You know, like it's that,
so like earlier today,
I felt so confident about my ordering and
now i'm moving it if we want to be behind the scenes for a moment well i have three documents
open here at the same time yeah i have our master list which i am strike throughing as picks get
picked i copy then strike through and then i paste it in our show document, which is also open. And then I have a little text document off to the right in BBEdit
that has my ranked groups of priority.
So I have a list of 18 picks that I had pulled out as most likely
and then ranked them, and I have those in an Apple Note.
And then as you take them away from me, I remove them from my list.
I'm going to go now.
Yeah, okay.
So my issue at the moment is I have significantly,
I have seeded the Mac Mini picks more than anything else.
And like, yes, your concern with that kind of thing
is if the product is announced
i i think i feel confident in getting the items correct but what if they don't do it you know and
then then you're you're ruined but i'm going to do it anyway okay and i'm going to say that the
new mac mini removes all USB-A ports.
All right.
I think this is a good pick.
Yeah, I think it's done.
But again, it could be weird.
They're cheap to put back there, but I think they've run out of space for them.
Yes.
And I just think...
It's over.
A time has to come.
And they're gone from the laptops and have been for a long time.
Right.
But they've been on the Mini and the Studio.
If they're going to, again,
like they're redesigning the Mac Mini for the next 10 years or whatever,
the USB-A ports are not going to be there
over the long period of time.
And I do think for the vast majority
of Mac Mini customers,
they will be perfectly fine
without a USB- a port i believe
yeah no i think i think you're right i think for me first off it's cheap to put usb a on because
they don't take up a whole stream like you can put like two on and it's like it's really cheap
for them to do it but that's complexity anyway and it adds size and you're you're going to a tiny size there's not
room for usb a and you wouldn't design it as you said you wouldn't design an enclosure with the
size of a usb a port as a constraint that would be like designing it for an optical drive right like
you don't want to do that if it's going to go in the long haul. So I agree. I think it's time. I think maybe,
maybe,
or maybe not.
They stick around as a couple of extra ports on the back of a Mac studio,
but not on the Mac mini.
It feels like it's over.
I agree.
I think that's a good pick.
I also had that same thought,
which is I'm a little concerned that I've got a couple of iMac picks that I
like,
but if I pick them and the imac doesn't ship that's bad for me right so i'm gonna pick oh boy yeah everything's riskier Basically. Yeah.
I'm going to say... Wow, yeah, they all...
They're all tough.
I'm going to say
Mac Mini
starting price
remains unchanged. This was the pick that i decided to move
for this because it's like i do believe this but like that price was set a while ago
i don't know i don't know i think recently apple have shown i mean i noticed there's a lot of
conversation amongst the analysts uh about the iphone that there was surprise that apple did
not increase the starting price right because of inflation yes i think apple are in a position
where just like i think they just shouldn't care about inflation in the same way just because of
how much money they make and like that there is a benefit on not improving the prices yes so this is my rationale
here yeah this is my rationale which is and i i went to starting price here we originally it said
prices remain the same i don't think that's necessarily true apple has shown an interest
in keeping their base price the same now Now, upgrade prices can be big.
Also, Apple has big margins.
The higher-end models might be more expensive.
It's possible.
Or the build-to-order options will be more expensive.
But the starting price, it's a good low starting price.
I would imagine that even though there's some initial cost
in doing a case redesign and all of that,
that in the long run,
this is probably going to
be a cheaper product to make than the old one because it's smaller you know they don't have to
you know use as much aluminum all those things about it like i feel like in the end
it's they want that starting price for the low-end model to be good and be the same price that it is
now but maybe the other prices even go up.
But that seems to be their strategy.
It's either keep them all the same or keep the base the same and raise the other ones.
So if you want a fancy one, maybe you pay more.
But the base one, you don't pay more.
Also, I should say, this is unchanged.
They could also be really aggressive and take it down, but I think they won't do that.
I think that in a world without as much inflation as we had in the last a couple of years maybe they would consider something
like that but i think i think not so i'm across my fingers but i'm going to just say status quo
for the starting price of the mac mini all right round five uh i'm going to request something to the judge here.
So we have a pick that says release date given for iOS 18.1.
Could we maybe just change this for like release date given for first Apple Intelligence features or 0.1 or something?
You know, like because they might not specifically talk about point one and that would be well and
they're not going to talk about ios right they're going to i mean i have no idea like it they might
right like they might they might say that's good along with ios 18.1 but like i i think that that
might not be necessary apparently we just the release candidate just came out sack is telling
us so i think so release date given for first Apple intelligence features slash, you know,
point one.
But we know what we mean here.
And again,
all sportsman-like,
release date given
for first Apple
intelligence features.
Yes.
That can be your pick.
You just think
it's going to happen?
They can't help themselves.
They're going to talk
about Apple intelligence
and they're going to talk
about when you're going
to first be able to see that.
So apparently,
they have been said it's coming next week,
but I'm expecting a date.
Like I think that there will be like, yes, it's coming January 28th,
but I think they're going to say coming out tomorrow,
coming out today or whatever, because I think this event is happening next week.
Yes. So if they, I think you get it.
If they give a date, if it's a specific date,
or it's tomorrow, or it's Thursday, or whatever, or even if they say it came out today.
Yeah. They must reference a day in which Apple Intelligence first starts shipping in point one.
All right. That would be interesting. Because it's tuesday and it ships on monday they have to say it came out yesterday yeah sure we'll go with
that but go with all right okay okay interesting interesting choice all right um wow wow um
um that may have been a bad pick for me, but I'm sticking with it anyway.
I'm going to pick...
I wrote this wrong in the doc, so I'm slightly revising it.
But basically, I think what I'm going to pick is that some M4 Pro or Max models, and it could be the MacBook Pro, it could be the Mac Mini, but some of the Pro or Max models will ship later, will have later ship dates than the M4 models.
Yep.
and the M4 models.
Yep.
Which is not really a rumor,
but it's a thing that happens sometimes.
And we definitely have heard,
like the M4, they've got them,
but they got to have the Pro and Max chips.
And sometimes they'll say,
these will be available Friday and the ones with the Max will be available
later next month or something like that.
Also a risky pick, but it happens.
It builds on the Russian MacBook Pro scenario, right?
Where that was what we were talking about.
Is the M4 just ready to
go and the other ones aren't we don't right that's the way that it could potentially be but we don't
know we don't know all right so what are we at round six now yeah
see this is why i wanted us to do more rounds
is that it puts a little more variability into it
than we were so certain with the first one.
I'm so excited about the Mac Mini.
I'm just going to continue.
So like I'm now in the phase at the draft
where I don't feel confident anymore.
So what I'm deciding to do
is to just continue talking about the computer that I really want.
All right.
I'm going to continue talking.
I love it.
I'm going to continue talking about the Mac Mini.
And I'm going to say, a Mac Mini has some ports on the front.
I love it.
I love it.
I hope this happens.
Yeah.
It's phrased the way it is because it's possible that the pro mac mini will have ports on the front
yeah and the regular mac mini won't it's also possible that they'll both have ports on the
front it's also possible that apple will say no only the mac studio is allowed to have ports on
the front although i hope they've gotten over it so we'll see like i think where do all the ports
go if you're making a tiny puck of a computer maybe they can't all go on the back so i think where do all the ports go if you're making a tiny puck of a computer maybe they can't
all go on the back so i think i'm putting them on the side that seems unlikely on the front
seems like a good place for it and this is like considering that potentially a difference between
the m4 and the m4 pro could be the amount of ports that it has i I mean, Apple has shown that, right?
That they will mix that stuff up.
We see it with the MacBook Pro, for example, right?
The MacBook Pro, the Pro and Max models
have more ports than the regular M3
and same with the M2 and I think the M1 as well.
Nice.
Okay, so I'm i'm gonna pick boy it's amazing how the uh the russian leak has
has gotten in our heads like yours more but if you're about to pick what i think you're gonna
pick um yeah i know this is like this is this i can't believe i'm gonna do this right now but i'm
leaning into it is this like russian interference in the draft is that what's happening here oh
somebody's gonna have to launch a special committee on this
i know right no no no collusion come on what are you talking about um oh boy yeah then this is tough but the um so currently the macbook pro models
okay let's start there let's start there currently the macbook pro models come with a space gray
or silver for the 14 inch yeah in the m3 but the pro or max have space black
which always seemed weird like we've got some extra space gray enclosures
that we gotta move because it's just it's literally like it's a little darker if you
get the other version unless you get the silver so yeah the russian leak suggests that the base models will get space
black instead of space gray or in addition to or who knows so that's what i'm going to pick is
space black comes to the base model macbook pro yep that's it oh buddy oh boy oh boy. All right, we're in the final pick now. And it's rough.
It's rough over here.
It is.
I was going to make that pick, by the way,
because I was like, I've got to...
Oh, okay.
You were talking it down
and you were totally going to make it.
All right.
Oh, 100%.
I'll take it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll call it the Putin pick.
No, let's not.
No, let's not do that
there's just some that I just like
they're just not exciting or they're not good
you know and I need to just
choose
between those
I know it's hard i'm gonna go boring i've only got a couple here that i like so yeah okay go
for it go boring at least one mac mini doesn't have ethernet whoa i don't think that's boring
at all really i think that's one of the great mysteries i think that's one of the great
mysteries of this is are they going to do an apple tv thing
and just leave the ethernet off of like the cheap one i think they will yeah and the imac is like
that too right the imac the base model they don't even have the brick with the with the ethernet
port in it they just have a standard brick with no port so there's i feel like there's a lot of
evidence that suggests they would do this but but I don't think we know.
Genuinely, the pick that is there
that I don't want to pick, but I
think they will do,
is they will put Ethernet on
the power adapter.
They have to do it, right?
They did all this engineering. It can't
have just been for the iMac. I can't
bring myself to believe. No, because it's not going to have a brick.
It's going to have an internal power supply.
Well, you know.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay.
I mean, I think they did this with the Apple TV, right?
So that's the precedent here is, and that's why I put it on the list, is they did this with the Apple TV.
The base model doesn't have Ethernet.
I'm like, okay.
I don't want that one.
That's what I genuinely, I think you put Ethernet on the pro model.
Because look, we need to be realistic here.
All right.
Now, listen to me, listeners.
We're all a bunch of nerds.
All right.
And we want our Ethernet.
But come on now.
The cheapest Mac, right, which would be the Mac mini.
People are using Wi-Fi like that's what they're doing.
Right. Like we need to be realistic here there we don't need ethernet on the base Mac mini we don't need that like
it doesn't need to be there like it really doesn't today so the the way it works on the iMac
is the base model and it's different because it's on the power brick, right?
So that's a quick swap,
but the base model doesn't have it.
And then you can upgrade the base model to get it or the higher end models get it.
So the argument here is what you're saying,
which is you can save some money and not offering ethernet and space,
but,
but you know,
the ones,
some of them have to have it,
but you're, you're saving them have to have it but you're
saving some money and differentiating your low end yeah save a little bit of money and you price
it a little bit lower i'm not sure ethernet itself costs so much that right no no but the money thing
is differentiate from like nerds it's the opposite it's like hey you want ethernet on your mac mini
give us a hundred dollars more yeah right right which is so so
the nerds so basically you're you're saving costs for the people who are not going to care because
they don't use ethernet yeah they never have which is and you're making all the nerds pay more like
95 of computer users in the world and you know what like we're all using laptops you plug it
into your non-existent ethernet port on your laptop you know like be realistic here
i don't know who i'm arguing with i think all the discord i think at the moment is yeah
and potentially our entire listener base i use ethernet right i have ethernet plugged into my
cow digit dock that my macbook pro is plugged into because i i want the fastest internet when
i'm working but at home when i'm using my macbook, I'm just connected to my internet, like my Wi-Fi,
and I'm having a great time.
And so, yeah.
Enjoy yourself.
I love it.
Wi-Fi is amazing.
All right.
I am going to pick something that is another iMac pick.
So I am making a risk here.
And it's a bummer pick.
But I feel like I have to.
I feel like I have to.
Because one of the things that I remember from when they finally updated the iMac from M1 to M3 was that they changed nothing else about it.
And I'm not going to pick that they changed nothing about it other than the chip.
Although I feel that that's probably the most likely scenario.
I would love for them to do a pro version.
I would love for them to upgrade the webcam, which is really substandard.
I would love them to have an adjustable base as an option.
I would love for it to come in a different size as an option.
There's lots of things I would like.
But here's what I'm going to pick, Mike.
And I'm sorry to end this draft on a down note, but here it is.
The new iMac comes in the same colors as before.
Boo!
Boo! Boo!
I don't want to get my hopes up.
I just don't think they're going to do it. I think they've got like...
Actually, no, it's not
a bummer pick. I'm booing,
but no, those colors are good.
I like those colors. You're right. I like those
colors. I do. I do. I just think...
Because Apple released the new
iPad Mini. No, you're right. The risk here is that they're all
desaturated and boring.
The iPad mini, they had a purple one.
They have a new purple one, and it's worse.
No, okay.
So the risk here is that we have all the same colors.
I'm a little worried about this,
because especially if they change the input devices, they might say, yeah, we're color matching them
to the new boring colors now,
or they're only available in silver or whatever.
So I don't know. But I'm going to just go with momentum here, which is that they don't want to color matching them to the new boring colors now or they're only available in silver or whatever so i don't know but i i'm gonna just go with momentum here which is that they don't want
to change the case they make these cases they're just gonna leave the case the way it was and
upgrade the internals because it's the imac they don't want to upgrade the imac with every chip
generation they have to do it this time they're just gonna kick the can down the road let's leave
it all the same so i'm gonna say same same for the colors down the road. Let's leave it all the same. So I'm going to say same, same for the colors.
I like the colors.
It's true.
But also it says something when they're like, yeah, they're the same.
No, we're not going to bother.
So, yeah.
We're going to end today with a tiebreaker, which is not the way that we usually do things, but I think makes sense for this one.
So you get to pick the tiebreaker question.
Would you like to let me know what it is?
Oh, well, we agree to this.
The tiebreaker question is,
is it going to be an event or not?
Is it going to be an event or a newsroom post?
It's that simple, which is like literally,
are they going to do a thing where there's either,
you know, they will give you a week's warning
and say, come and watch our event
at 9 a.m. Pacific or whatever.
Or do they do a thing where they just put up press releases?
So I think that's what I want to pick is.
And you said you said like if they just drop it, but it's a big video that feels like an event that would probably count, too, because that's a that's basically what you were talking about earlier
with the apple intelligence demo pick so yeah i'm going to pick that i'm going to pick that there
will be an event or a substantial video presentation and it won't just be done by newsroom now i think
this is risky because i think they could very well wait so you're setting the question and picking it
yeah okay to pick it i thought we agreed it was a vendor newsroom post. The way it usually works, which is fine.
You can do this. It's not a problem. We're all off the wall
this time. The loser, which is you, gets
to pick a tiebreaker question, which you then
ask me. This is how we usually do it.
I see. That's not what I meant for this.
Event runtime over or under, and then I would
say over or under. But I'm fine with this.
This is no problem for me.
I think it's an event.
Yes, I do me. Okay. All right. I think it's an event. Okay. Yes, I do too.
Okay.
So I'm going to take that one.
So you get to pick first, and I get to pick the tiebreaker.
So that's what I pick.
It's going to be an event.
I think it's risky.
I do think it's risky because I can absolutely see a scenario where on next Monday or Tuesday morning, there's just a raft of press releases about the new Macs and the new chips,
and they don't even bother.
But I don't know.
They bothered last year.
They brought everybody to New York
for a Halloween thing.
This is more of a reason this year,
like I think than last year.
New chips.
I think MacBook Pro is important.
A new Mac mini design is important,
and boasting on the new chip performance is important, and flogging Apple intelligence is important a new mac mini design is important and boasting on the new chip performance is important and flogging apple intelligence is important like as a marketing person on the inside
i would strongly advocate to advocate to do this because you have so many points to hit and you get
to hit apple intelligence again the day or the week that it's launching. So do it. Right?
So that's my take.
Yep.
I completely agree.
My expectation is that this happens tomorrow.
I almost made Will Jason be in New York next week, but I changed it from that.
My expectation is tomorrow, so Tuesday, is when they'll send out the thing.
And it'll either be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week,
I reckon, is what will end up happening.
But we'll see.
We will see.
I'm excited.
Yeah, draft.
No Ask Upgrade this week because we're running long.
But I'll be back next week.
You can send us in your questions at upgradefeedback.com.
You can also send us in your feedback and your follow-up there, too.
If you want to find Jason's work, go to sixcolors.com you can also send us in your feedback and your follow-up there too if you want to find
jason's work go to sixcolors.com you can hear him here on relay and at the incomparable.com
you can listen to my podcast here on relay too and check out my work at cortexbrand.com
jason is at j snell j s n e double l i am at imyke i m y k e you can find video of this show on
tiktok instagram and youtube we are at Upgrade Relay.
Thank you to our members
who support us through Upgrade Plus.
We're going to talk this week
about some of the things
we did not pick in the draft
from our shortlists and others.
You can go to getupgradeplus.com.
You can sign up and get longer
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Thank you to our sponsors this week,
which was Vitally, Fitbod, and Squarespace.
Thank you for listening.
We'll be back next time.
Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.
Goodbye, Mike Hurley. Thank you.