Upgrade - 536: The Sleeping Lifestyle

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

From Relay, this is Upgrade episode 536 for November 4th, 2024. Today's show is brought to you by Delete Me, Factor, and ExpressVPN. My name is Mike Hurley and I had the pleasure of being joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike Hurley and I had the pleasure of being joined by Jason Snell. Hi Jason. Jason Snell Hi Mike Hurley. Yet another week goes by. Another one of these wild fall apple things where everything is happening. Mike Hurley It actually feels like it's been longer than

a week since we spoke last because last week was so weird and wild. Jason Snell So many things happening. I think it's really nice. Like they got to upgrade, got to talk about announcements, and ATP got to talk about announcements, and Connected, and MacBreak Weekly, we got to talk about different announcements. Every podcast was different last week,

because there was more information every day. That's true. That's true. If you are a podcast junkie, you got something quite unique, which was each show didn't know where the rest of the week was going to go. But now we're back around again. That week is done and so we can now wrap up what we didn't talk about in today's episode. But first, we must address a snow talk question as we always do. I would like to thank Amar for

writing this in. When you're reading an article, Jason, or review from a renowned journalist or somebody that you know, do you read it in their voice or your own voice? Okay. The truth is I very rarely am subvocalizing when I'm reading. I just read the words. Ah, lucky. So it does sometimes happen, but really it's just in, I guess you would say it starts in my voice and then just disappears into reading mode. And I'm not, you know, it's not, when I read an article, I'm not envisioning it as a podcast.

I'm just reading it as an article. There are occasionally exceptions to that, but for the most part, that's the truth of it. Sorry to be boring about it, but that's the truth of it. No, but that is good, because it's interesting. See, I can't read about subvocalizing. I wish I wasn't this way, but I am this way. And so if I do read an article from somebody that I know,

I do hear that voice. So when I read Six Colors, I hear you. So I do have to check the biolink just to make sure it's not Dan. Because I will check, and I read it in Dan's voice. OK, good, good, good. That's good. Because I would feel like that. Because I will check and I read it in Dan's voice. Okay, good, good, good. That's good. Because I would feel like that's not fair to Dan

if I read it in your voice. The podcast in your mind, yeah. So it specifically works for me. Like I resonate as a reader much more to writers who have a personality in their writing. Like of course, I'm not a big fan of like a house, full house style, a website or something. I want to be able to read in the voices that I know, you know, that's what I gravitate

towards. But not everybody does that. But I like that. And I think that's the benefit too of like there being podcasts and stuff, right? Because I get to hear these people's voices a lot and how I know they would turn a phrase, things like that. So I do like that. If you would like to send in a question of your own to help us start a future episode of the show,

just write in with a Snow Talk question at upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to everybody that does. We have a couple of items of follow-up to get to today. We have our, the anonymous anonymous upgradian who writes in with some interesting tidbits every now and then has written in with a little tidbit for us today Jason. They say, I have news on screen improvements for the next generation of the M3 iPad Air. Apple is working on a higher refresh rate LCD display with a new liquid motion panel fix it around 90 Hertz. They're also working on expanding it to other models

or products like a 24 inch iMac and a next gen studio display. So this is in reference to our conversation about the iPad mini and kind of about the fact that we want it to be a 90Hz display. This person has written in to tell us that there is in the works a 90Hz kind of like base display. Ah yes.

And what I take from this is that Apple is working to the point that I want, which is where ProMotion is not available, it will be a 90Hz LCD display. Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense. That's good news. That's really good news. That was my real takeaway from my iPad mini review is I was looking for jelly scrolling and what I found is stuttery, low rate scrolling. Yeah, cuz my iPad Pro that I use every day has promotion and my iPhone has promotion

So I'm really in that context of an iPad, especially I'm used to it. Mm-hmm, and it wasn't there It's got some of some other feedback from an anonymous reader that I will I will read It's gonna be great. Yeah, you want me to read this one for you? You know what, why don't you? All right. Anonymous says, I think it's high time you guys get off your high horse. I just want to point out here that

canonically, do we have two horses in the room around up art? Yes, we're on a horse each. We each have our, okay. I'm gonna edit this comment then. I think it's high time you guys get off your high horses on the image playground thing. If you're still in your bubble, I hate to break it to you that you are in the minority. How does it hurt you when you just don't use and leave alone something that you don't like?

Imagine not having certain features just because someone else didn't like it. Please excuse those who fancy these things and keep your cynicism to yourself, Mike. So this feedback is funny to me because I don't know why I get hit at the end. What did I do? You know, like we're both in this together, I guess. Or maybe I'm on an even higher horse, maybe. You are on a much higher horse than me about this one. So I was reading this rolling my eyes and I got to the end and I was kind of delighted. I was like, oh, it's really about Mike. Take that Mike.

Yeah, I guess. And let me, I'm checking the room around up artwork right now. Am I higher than you? Let me see. Am I actually on a higher horse? The answer for that is low. Maybe you are. It's download. Nope. Uh, no, we're about level on our horses. Okay. So, but when it comes to in the playgrounds, yeah, I guess I am on a higher horse. And I will say Upgradian who wrote this in, anonymous Upgradian, I'm sorry, I'm not going to do that. I am in fact not going to keep my opinions to myself because I am half of this podcast and this podcast is us giving our opinions.

So I'm going to keep doing that. Frankly because, so since last week's episode, we both have got access to image playgrounds now in full image playgrounds, Jammoji and image one, which I've not used once. Cause uh, I don't care about that at all. Like I don't care about image playgrounds, in the sense of me wanting it. Um, but I want to use it and try it because I think it's interesting. Image one is just not really something that I want to try. I will, I will get around to it,

but I just haven't really thought about it. And so like my thing, having used image playgrounds for the best part of a week is that I think the thing that I have the biggest issue with now is I just, and I've said this already, I just don't think they did a good job. Like I don't think that this is a good idea to pursue anyway, like the creation of AI artwork,

especially of the creation of AI artwork of people in your photo library, which I just think is really bad. Which by the way, like come on, I can make this of like babies in my photo library. Like that's just gross. Like I just think that's gross. But anyway, I don't think this is a good idea

for them to pursue. But the bigger problem I have is I just don't think the quality of the imagery that they're producing is good enough. We generated some really bad stuff. They just don't look good. Really ugly stuff. They just don't look, they're not high quality.

And the art style just isn't that great. I don't think that image playgrounds is a good enough, a well enough implemented feature to take what I think will be a reputational hit. I don't believe, I'm not on the side of this person who's written in to say that there is like a majority of people who are so excited and can't wait to use these features. Yeah, you're in the minority.

Well, I'd love to see that poll of people who are using a feature that's only in a developer beta. Come on, come on, that's just BS, right? That's not, you don't know your opinion, you have your opinion, so therefore you're in the majority. Come on, get off your horse. Please, will free whether people use it and like it or not. That's free to have an opinion,

but you are in the minority is just BS, and that's not based on anything at all other than wanting to be right and wanting us to be wrong. And like, we don't, I'll tell you, we'll find out who's in the majority of the minority. They'll roll this out to everybody. And in a year, will people be using and liking Image Playgrounds,

or will people have tried it and gone, eh, this is no good, and dumped it? I guess we'll find out. That's the beauty of that. If you are a listener who wants to hear me talk a lot, a lot, a lot about my feelings on this, you can go listen to Connective. We spoke about it for a really long time because I just got an access to it. But I zeroed in on my main thing here. Like my main point

about image playgrounds that I will leave on today is I consider Apple a company of great taste. I think this is a tasteless feature. Like I do not see the taste in the way this has been implemented. And I will compare that to Genmoji, which I think is brilliant. Like it's really good. Fantastic idea implemented well enough. It doesn't go great. But in the ways that it goes wrong, it's just weird and funny. Not like I've made a grotesque version of Jason.

You know, I think that this is because I've also like I've made a grotesque version of Jason. You know, yeah, I think that this is because I've also like I've made like Jen Moji of my friends and that feels better because they're they look like emoji, they look more like me, Moji. Right. I just think like that. I realized they and also like the way in which they create the training set is like it's their emoji. You can clearly see that everything is styled in their emoji style. And I've been having a lot of fun with this. I've been creating loads of like fun little characters, like little ducks and

things that I'm sending to my friends. I think that it is a very good way of creating AI-generated imagery that fits in with Apple's platforms and fits in with what I think their customers are going to use. I think it has been implemented very, very well into the system by like it's in the emoji area. But also if you just search for an emoji like you might do and there isn't one, it's like, Hey, do you want to make this? Like this is great.

Like that's what I'm saying. Like I think Jomoji is a fantastically well-implemented thing. And that, again, shows the stark contrast to image playgrounds for me. Yeah. And I would say high time to get off the high horse. You know, disagreeing with us is fine. But telling us to shut up because you don't like what we

have to say is not fine. And so it's like saying, it's time you guys got off your high horse about the butterfly keyboard, or it's time you guys got off your high horse about the touch bar. Like, we get to have opinions, and sometimes they're positive, and you agree with them, and sometimes they're negative, and you agree with them, and sometimes it's the reverse. And that's fine. You know, this is not meant to beam into your brain and have you walk around like a zombie agreeing with everything we say.

I love, I would love it. I would prefer it if that this podcast was about challenging people and making them think about what they believe and do they agree with us and do they not? We're not trying to be provocateurs here. We're just trying to be honest with our opinions, but we can't, this podcast doesn't make sense

if we have a negative opinion about something and we don't share it, we just pretend that it's fine or tiptoe around it, that's not gonna happen. So, you know, just get over it and spare me, you're in the minority, cause that's ridiculous. And like, you don't have to agree with us, but if we don't like something, we're gonna so and if you like it great that's fine but we're not gonna stop talking about it. Yeah it's like I am a podcast listener right like

like everybody else isn't there are podcasts where I listen to every week and sometimes people say anything say something I listen to a podcast today a podcast I listen to twice a week and one of the hosts is saying something and I'm like you have no idea what you're talking about right now like there's a saying a thing like they're like stating it it's like saying something, and I'm like, you have no idea what you're talking about right now. Like there's a saying a thing, like they're like stating it as like this is what, and I'm like, no, that is completely wrong. And I thought about writing in, but I couldn't be bothered.

But you know, but I understand, I understand like this feeling of like, no, you're wrong, but you know, always send in your follow up, your feedback at upgradefeedback.com. I read all of it. So, you know, there you go. I don't, I don't know. You don't need to Mike is my screener.

Yeah. Mike is my screener. Yeah. Cause usually why it's funny when sometimes Jason does read the feedback and he gets it. He sends me screenshots. He's like so mad. Yep.

Yep. Yeah. It's, it's healthier if I don't, if I don't read it all. Cause Mike, Mike is like, you don't need to see this one. I'm like, okay, good. I've gotten, I've developed, I would say my skin is medium thickness. Like things get to me, right? But my skin has become thicker over time. Also there's no, it's not productive. I've seen it all at this point, right? So it's more like, it's not productive for me

to get something that's just being mean and just rail about, could you get a load of this guy? What does this even mean? This is so mean or stupid or whatever. It's just not like for me to get upset about some of that. I know we don't, we don't. It is the occasional. Look, anybody who does anything publicly, especially, you occasionally get the sack

of poop that gets dropped at your doorstep. It just happens, right? It just happens. And you learn to deal with it. But one of the pleasures of having Mike read all the upgrade feedback is that that particular mail slot, that particular deposit area, I don't have to deal with. I deal with all the others, but that one, I, you know, I deal with the downstream feedback. I deal with the six colors feedback. Like I deal

with the incomparable feedback. I don't have to deal with all the upgrade feedback. I just look at the show doc where Mike has pasted it in. And on the flip side, a little vacation. I get more feedback on this show than on any other show that I do, and I love it. Because we have so many great listeners who send in so much great stuff. And even this, right? I use this today as an opportunity

to be able to talk about the stuff again. So it's still beneficial to me. Exactly. Oh, you turned the tables. How the turns table. The request to not talk about something led to you talking about it. I'm just saying it sure did. And for me,

the best thing that has happened in, uh, in Elon buying Twitter is moving away from that as my feedback mechanism. Like these feedback forms is just like, it's massively changed. It's a cut above for me. Like how the quality of feedback that I receive because of our feedback forms, it's like 20,000 times better than it was before. Oh yeah. It's not drive-bys and they're more like as much as I disagree with this anonymous note, it is coming from a point of view that is understandable. And at least by letting this person be anonymous, they got to tell me how they truly feel. And it's interesting to read sometimes. I do find it interesting. But the Twitter stuff is such a drive by. It takes much more effort to even do an anonymous

thing in a form. And the Twitter stuff, one of the things that I still notice about Mastodon, and there are definitely reply guys on Mastodon, but I see posts on Mastodon that I think, oh geez, if I click into the comments here and into the replies, it is going to be a disaster and there's nothing. And I thought, well, on Twitter, this would have been a disaster. Yeah. But here it's just not. Yeah. It's just, it's very, and I, I agree with you.

That was some of the worst stuff that I got was, was on Twitter. So I don't mind not interacting with that stuff. Well, I can tell you that that feeling of like those posts, they're on threads, right? They are. I've seen them on threads, for sure. That stuff, these posts, they need an algorithm to like attract all of that.

Because people who don't know anything about you or who you are have any connection to you can then see them and pop off. Yeah, exactly. That's why algorithmic timelines are bad. Yep. And it's why quote-tweeting shouldn't exist. Hmm. Yeah. I think I think part of the problem with social media is the is the dunking and adjusting. It's dunking. Yeah, sure. Actually, one of the things that I have noticed that I do like about some algorithms and social media is that they're based on my preferences, right? Like there are algorithmic items that are, you're seeing this because a person you follow

replied to it. Yeah and I do think like for me Threads does a decent job. Like Threads for me is significantly better as an algorithmic timeline than Twitter ever was, I think. Yeah, and Twitter's worse now. Yeah, I would not know. I have not logged in since what, the end of 2022? Don't ask me. Ask the Wall Street Journal, who set up accounts with following nothing but innocuous subjects and their timeline got blasted with political stuff. So, innocuous subjects and their timeline got blasted with political stuff. So I mean, it's gotten worse.

It's been intentionally gotten worse. So we do love your feedback mostly, and we want to hear it. And Mike, I mean, again, send it to Mike. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Delete Me. Privacy is important to a lot of us. It's important to me, right? I like my privacy. I like that the information that I want to be online

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So the news has now passed in such a way that we can attempt to score the draft. Our draft. Okay. So I have some thoughts about the draft. I think that either, either, well, no, I mean, we, you and I, I, I checked some stuff today and I discovered that it was closer. I was ready to give this to you. And then I thought it was closer than I expected. However, and I know you've checked in with a ZMK, our, uh, our scorekeeper and adjudicator while Stephen has been on, uh, on his sabbatical, I don't think it's necessary. I was going to propose to you earlier today that we just wave this one off, in which case you would continue as draft champion. We can also accept it,

and you can continue as draft champion. Let me tell you what I scored, okay? I have it five-five with a tie that our tiebreaker is bad because we did, is it a traditional event? Is it event or newsroom? And it is a series of newsroom posts, not just one, and also a series of event-like videos,

but not just one and with no pre-invitation. So I would, so this is one of my arguments is, I think our tiebreaker is bad. I hate that, right? We need to make it so it can't not, it should have been like, will it be an event or not? And, or it'll be an event with invitation or not, something very precise. Or something else. It should have been something completely else. Will it be an event or not? Or will it be an event with invitation or not?

Something very precise. Or something else. It should have been something completely else. Right, will Tim appear in a video? We did our best. Whatever, we did our best, but we failed at it. And so this is the problem is that we could, what made me sad is like, even if I score this as a tie,

the tiebreaker is something we would have to argue about. And I don't like that. So here's how I broke it down and it's gonna end with you winning. So we don't have to argue about and I don't like that. So here's how I broke it down and it's gonna end with you winning. So we don't have to worry about it. Here are the things I got right. New Mac mini is smaller than ever. New MacBook Pro is introduced, new iMac introduced.

New Mac mini starting price remains unchanged. Took a little risk there, I got that one. Space Black comes to the base model MacBook Pro. Thank you, Russian Black Market. That's fine. Space Black Market. That's a black market. Yep. You got, well, Russians were first in space, right? So now they're first in space black cosmos black.

You've got, you got a roast cosmos black. You've got Mac mini has a new industrial design. New Mac mini comes with M four and M four pro configurations. Apple intelligence demo. I thought you were going to get this wrong, but because they did those videos and because every video had a lengthy Apple intelligence demo, which is hilarious that they made the poor lady who has to do

Apple intelligence demos do a different one for each of the three different computers they introduced. It's that important to them. So that was a good pick that I thought was risky and you nailed it. New Mac Mini removes all USB-A ports, yes. Pour one out for the USB-A port. It's going away once the Mac Studio gets kicked out.

Are there USB-As on the back of the Mac Pro too? I don't know, but anyway, it'll be gone soon, completely. They'll be gone soon. We're almost there. And a Mac Mini has some ports on the front, which you were right about. In fact, all of them do. So that's 5.5. Here's what we got wrong. I said some M4 Pro and Macs models ship later than base M4 models. I thought it was going to be one of those things where they were going to be like, M4 is available Friday, but the Pro or the Max is available later in November or something like that.

Nope, they're all shipping at the same time. So good for Apple on that. You said at least one Mac mini config doesn't have ethernet, that's not true. And then we have two that I would say are disputable. They're disputable. But I think they're both wrong. I think they're disputable, but they're both wrong.

So it's five five now You said release date given for first Apple intelligence features and I have checked the transcript Literally all they needed to say is yesterday today or tomorrow and they said now shipping I was just like not you can get it now. It's now not it because they released it and It's now. Not it, because they released it, and then they said, now. So I think that's a miss. And then I said, new iMac comes in same colors as before. What's funny about this one is,

the names of the colors didn't change, but the shades did. And I thought, am I gonna make a ridiculous argument that even though it's not the same shades, they are of the same colors and that since it's still purple, it's still purple. And then I went to the, I said, you know what? This is silly.

Let's go to the newsroom post, which has as the subhead in the iMac post, new colors. I was like, okay. Okay. Which takes us back around to will the announcement be an event or a newsroom post? You said newsroom post, I said event. I think, again, I could argue that it's neither,

but it was more of, there were newsroom posts, and it was not a traditional video event. And therefore, whether it's, I will, I'm gonna give it to you. Okay. Because I don't think I, as a gentleman participant in the draft can truthfully argue, I could argue it, but I, my heart wouldn't be in it that it goes the other way. So I think that, you know, either we could just throw out the tiebreaker and

say, forget it. We're just, I'm not saying it's a tie. There is no champion. Place your pen. It sideways. I'm saying it would just, you would continue as the champion. You can also just continue as the champion. It's fine. So I think this is a tie and I'm going to give you the tiebreaker. Cool. But so close, so close, so close. And also so silly that we did this, but I'm glad we did it. Yes. There's a couple of things. I'm happy we did it. I'm happy that we did as well as we did. We've got five out of seven and we've learned something valuable that for the next time we do this,

we need to come up with a tiebreaker that like will be indisputable. Exactly. Exactly. So how we worked that out. Like my my thought was for example, you know, like if we would have done something like this, just pick what would be a pick, right? Like something that seems like an obvious pick and it's just like a yes or no. Like for example, will there be ethernet on any Mac minis? Yes or no? Like that I think for something like this, it needs to be like an indisputable thing.

Indisputable. Exactly right. And I thought that we got there and we did not get friends. It needs to be like an indisputable thing? Indisputable. Exactly right. And I thought that we got there and we did not get friends. No, because they did both. And also me. They did something different. We decided we wanted to do it.

There weren't even any Ricky's on Connected, right? Like it just didn't even happen. So I'm glad we did it. I'm glad we are cornering the market on mini games related to Apple events. But we have learned some lessons for next time. And I will, I will reap my, my pennant fell down.

It's kind of like just sitting with challenger, uh, put forward, but I will repin it to the place where the pennants go. Uh, congratulations. I like, I like that this was a tie. I like that we came real close this time. I think it was a hard fought thing. Yep. And by the barest of margins

of really just sort of interpreting, if I had said like, you know, there will be lengthy videos or something, it would have been different. But I just said event and that's not good enough. So you get it. But there are new Macs. There are more new Macs. Theres. There are more new Macs.

There are! More new Macs than when we spoke last time, and at least one of them was the one that we were really waiting for, which is the Mac Mini. So we'll start by talking about that. It is very small. It is a small computer. Yes. They did the thing. They made a really tiny Mac. The imagery is great with like holding it in the hand. Like that's really cool. I guess it has the M4, has the M4 Pro.

There's IO on the front and the back. I'm just gonna run through a couple of bits. First, carbon neutral Mac. The Pro chip has Thunderbolt 5. The power button's on the bottom. It supports a bunch of display options, including up to three 6K displays, 16 gigabytes of RAM as standard.

And there are lots of upgrades available for the machine. And oh, boy, did those upgrades make that machine expensive. It does, although if you think about it, the M4 Pro Mac mini starting at whatever it is, 15 or $1600. Yeah, that's a pretty good buy. But but I think as many people have noticed, this is not new. But I think that it's getting more and more egregious over time, which is, uh, Apple gives and Apple takes away.

Apple's made 16 gigs of Ram the base everywhere. That's great. But if you want more of anything, you will pay. And when it's a cheaper system, I almost said cheap, but like, you know, $599 for a Mac Mini base, like an upgrade can double the price easily of that base model. Just a storage upgrade can almost double the price. And that's where it really hurts. Yeah, my favorite thing for this was from friend of the show, Quinn Nelson at Snazzy

Labs who posted on threads, you can buy two base model Mac minis for the price it costs to upgrade a single Mac mini to 32 gigabytes of RAM or 512 gigabytes of storage. So like to get the RAM and storage, you could just buy two computers, which is, something's wrong there. Like something is wrong there. Yeah. And then just connect them or anyway, yes, this is true.

This is true. This is Apple's look. Apple is keeping their base prices the same, which I think is admirable. That's great. This is the downside of that is by doing that, what they're doing is creating a buying scenario where you look at the base price and go, oh, great.

And then you start plugging in the numbers and you don't really realize until you're done like, wait, what, what, what is it's a thousand dollars. It's $1,200 now. I thought this was 599. And the answer is yeah, but you got to take the base. And the fact is a lot of people can just take the base. But if you are a more discerning user, you're not going to want to take the base and the prices are going to get pretty high, pretty fast. In fact, I, so I have an M1 Max, Max Studio bass model, I believe. And I, what I learned in looking at the Mac Mini is that I'm probably not going to buy an M4 Mac Studio when it comes out. The reason is I priced the Mac mini pro model,

the way I would configure it. And it was like $2,500 or $2,600. And I thought, I'm not spending, I'd like that's a lot of money. If I'm going to get a new computer, I'm not spending more than that. And I realized not spending, like that's a lot of money. If I'm gonna get a new computer, I'm not spending more than that. And I realized Mac Studio, it's probably gonna be more than that or in that ballpark.

So I'm gonna wait. I don't actually need a new computer right now. The M1 Macs, here's the other part of this. And so a little tangent here. I definitely saw a lot of people complaining that Apple continues to compare Mac, modern Macs to Intel Macs. But I also heard from a lot of people who pointed out

that there are a lot of people out there who keep their Macs for seven, eight, nine years. They do. I think it is an absolutely fair thing when they are very clear about what they're comparing it to. And in the videos, they compare it to M1 and Intel, and they're very clear about that. And I think that is such a valid thing to do.

Why would they not do that? I find it weird when people are like, oh. Exactly, I think only Intel might be disingenuous, but they're not just doing it only to Intel anymore. They're doing only Intel, they're doing Intel and Apple Silicon. And that's great because they know, look, they know better than anybody else, how many Intel Macs are still used. Yeah, they know, look, they know better than anybody else

how many Intel Macs are still used. They know that. They know in the install base that it's a lot, maybe more than half. I don't know, but like a lot, because a lot of people don't buy a computer every two years or three years or four years or five years even.

They're using iMacs from eight years ago. They're using a laptop they bought in 2016, right? Eight years ago. And for them, Apple wants to say, look, it's a no-brainer. You should finally come over to Apple Silicon. And every time they introduce a product, it's a time for them to point out to their existing customer base that maybe, hey, there's a new one. Maybe now is the time for you to finally make that jump. And we've come a long way, maybe people were reluctant about the whole Apple Silicon thing and now they've seen that it's gone really well.

And yes, those numbers are amazing. To say a late stage Intel laptop that's from 2019 even, and it's eight times faster or 12 times faster or something really, with 24-hour battery life and all these other things, like I think that's really powerful. So we need to accept that a lot of people are not just upgrading from Apple Silicon, and then my tangential point that I was going to make was M1 is still great. I mean, I actually think it's a good idea for Apple to target Intel and talk about Intel,

because there are probably a lot of people out there who are still using Intel Macs. And if you already jumped to Apple Silicon, unless you are very specifically needing something for your work as a pro person, like just to generalize for a moment, if you have an Apple Silicon Mac, you're good, right? You're good, you're good. It could be better, it could be faster. You may have reasons. You may want that plugin to run faster. You may like the look of the new laptop

and you have an older laptop or the, like I got an M2 Air because I really liked how that looked. And I handed down my M1 Air because I really wanted that M2 Air. But like I have an M1 Max. So like really high end Max Studio. And I can look, look, I'm sure that M1 Pro Mac Mini is faster in every dimension than the M1 Max Max Studio.

I'm sure it is. The M4 Pro. Oh is faster in every dimension than the M1 Max Max Studio. I'm sure it is. The M4 Pro. Oh, sorry, yes. The M4. I'm also sure that the M4 Max Studio when it comes next year will be incredibly impressive too. But do I need any of it?

Do I need any of it? Of course my audio plugins and my video exports would be a bit faster. But like do I do I feel with an M1 Max that I'm at the point where I need to spend $2,500 to get a new computer? And the truth is I don't because Apple Silicon is that good. So this is my way of saying comparing to Intel is a good idea, because there are a lot of people out there, Apple knows it. And because Apple Silicon is so good, that honestly, the upgrade argument from Apple Silicon is a lot weaker than it is from Intel, because the Apple Silicon Macs are so good. And that's not saying M4 isn't good. M4 seems to have

taken some really great strides, especially that M4 Pro chip that's increased its memory bandwidth by like 75% in a single generation. That's wild. That's wild. There are some benchmarks out there that are leaking. I'm looking forward to seeing all of them and to see how the performance boosted. But yeah, I think it's safe to say

that a mid-range M4 chip is gonna be faster than relatively recent vintage M4, or M Max chips of previous generations. Anyway, to bring it back to the Mac Mini, I've looked at that M4 Pro. I actually think it's a really great deal. It's not for me because I have a pretty great Apple Silicon system as well. But what I love about it is with the Mac Mini,

you've got these options. You've got a really good, like I have the base model of the previous generation, the M2 Mac Mini, and it's amazing. And that's my server now. And it's amazing and low power and incredibly powerful and so much better than the Intel one that I had before that. And this Mac Mini being small, like it fits in more places, like physically fits in more places. I really love that about it. And I love that there's a pro model that will take you to a higher level

if you're somebody who needs more power. Like, and I cannot tell you how many more technical people I know who are leaping on the M4 Pro mini bandwagon. It's the computer they want because it gives them just enough that they feel like it's a little more pro than a base model. Yeah, it's the computer I want. I mean, I've been saying this is the one that I want. My spec is £2,400 which is expensive. Actually not as much. It is as much as I thought it was gonna be

because leading up to this, like I was specing out the M2 Pro Mac Mini and it also got to similar prices. Like I think it's forgotten, like I was surprised that I was specing out an M2 Mac Mini just to kind of get an idea like a couple of weeks ago. And it was like, oh, this is basically the same price as the Mac Studio once you start actually putting

all of the features that you want into it. So this will be my next computer, but it's probably gonna be something I look at towards the end of this year or early next year. I'm not in a rush, because I have an M1 Macs MacBook Pro is doing great. I just desperately want to make changes to my desk and using a laptop as my desktop is like,

it's holding me back from being able to do that. And I want to just move to, I just have this little desktop and I will keep it for like 10 years because this thing is going to be so powerful. I'm not going to need it. Anything else, like it's just going to be like this great little box and do its thing. But I haven't gotten to need it. Anything else. Like it's just going to be like this great little box and do its thing. Um, but I, I'm, I haven't gotten to it yet. I will

get to it. I know it's out there now. I know what's what I want. I will not wait for the max studio cause I don't need that. This is going to be morning enough for me. Um, but I just, I just haven't gotten around to it yet and I'll trade in this MacBook pro and like I'll do the whole nine yards, but I'm going to wait. I'll wait for the reviews to come out too, because why not? Like I'm not in a, like, I'm not like in a rush nor am I concerned that this thing is going to be like unobtainable. Right. Um, so, but yeah, I was just like, ah, if it would have been just a bit cheaper,

I would have bought it already. It's not money. It is. It is. This could be a computer. I might do financing on it even. Because it's like a business thing. I could spread the cost over a few months. Like I'm going to have this thing forever anyway.

Like I'm going to take a look at some stuff like that. I think because why not? Like I might just be smart with it and kind of treat it for the machine that it is. I had a couple of things I wanted to pick out particularly with you though. Now correct me if I'm wrong. Like from the videos they were making a friend. Friend of the show, Tim Millay, who I love. He's a great guy.

He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. a couple of things I wanted to pick out particularly with you though. Now, correct me if I'm wrong,

from the videos, they were making a friend, friend of the show, Tim Millay, who I love that they always refer to as Tim Millay. They don't say, here's Tim, because that would break people's brains. There's one Tim, and then everybody else is Tim Millay. So that's Tim Millay. I love seeing Tim Millay.

He's a great guy. We've spoke to him on the show multiple times. He's super smart. Absolutely. Every time I see him in a briefing, it's like, Hey, I know your brother. He referenced multiple times that the M4 Pro's core, like the chip, it's like the CPU chip is the fastest CPU core of on the market, right? Uh-huh. I just found that interesting. Is that different to the M4?

See this is, it's a question, right? In the past, the cores have been the same. Yeah. So there's a question is, does he mean the core or does he mean that because it's got many, many cores? Say reference like the core of the M4 chip is the fastest CPU core available. And like I'm intrigued like what that actually means. Yeah it may literally just mean all of the M4 CPU single core right? But we don't have any

benchmark numbers so we can't really say but that's the question is you know what is the you know what's the deal? Because I figured it's like as it always been but like to watching the videos they just kept talking about this during the M4 Pro part. Yeah and I don't know I mean it could it could be clock speed it, I mean, they may be doing something where it's literally the same core, but running at a different clock speed. You know, looking at the page, like I'm looking at the Mac mini page and it's in the performance for M4 and M4 Pro and it just says,

world's fastest CPU core for incredible response. So I think it's the M4 in general, but they just kept talking about it in the M4 Pro part because obviously like- That's where they wanna boast about it. the M4 Pro part because obviously like that's where they want to boast about About it because they update they update those you know The way the M series seems to go is that they update different components at different times so like Them three they updated the GPUs to do like the ray tracing and all of that

I think the GPUs in the M4 may just be the GPU cores more or less from the M3 I think that it maybe there are no leaps forward there as much. Because they'll do a next generation neural engine, but not every time. And they push parts of it forward faster than other parts of it. Yeah, it says here, both chips feature the world's fastest CPU core.

But it could be one of the things that Steve's mentioning in the Discord, that the performance might be better on different chips with the thermal envelope, and or it might be better in the Mac mini than it is in say the iPad, right? Like so I'm intrigued to see how that how that all comes out when we get those numbers. But it may just be literally they're saying it in those places, but both chips have suggest that it's they're just saying the M4 CPU cores, the individual performance cores are very

powerful. I'm thrilled with the amount of IOD that this machine's getting. I'm very happy that there isn't differences between the M4 and the M4 Pro and the amount of slots there are. Three Thunderbolt on the back and two USB on the front, USB-C on the front. And HDMI and Ethernet. And you can get a faster Ethernet and if you get the pro version you get thunderbolt 5 instead of thunderbolt 4 right which is dramatically faster which is especially important not just for data transfer but for driving monitors Thunderbolt 5 will have more power to drive external monitors

and the power button is on the bottom I wanted to get your feelings about the bottom button I feel as somebody who has traditionally shut their computer down every day, my desktop computer, for reasons, I've been exploring my feelings about those reasons this week, because I view this as a clear message from Apple that the power button is not meant to be pressed on a regular basis. Yeah.

I should have gotten that idea every time I have to reach back and press the power button on my Mac studio every morning. That alone is a little bit awkward. This is gonna be even more so, although I can't wait for the, you know, 3D printed mounts that have a little hole for the power button so that you can stick your finger up there and turn it on. I saw a 3D printed thing where it's like, it puts like a button that you press on the top and when you press it, it like moves this little arm that would stretch around to the bottom and press it underneath, which I thought was really funny.

Yeah, that's a, you just put a hole there. But, and we also, I got a very nice gentleman on Mastodon who was absolutely fishing for compliments, but he's, I guess he's gonna win it. He sent me- This works, you did it, you gave in. You know, it's so nice. So it's Jared Hofferth. And he, he said a thing that's just a mock up, but it's adorable.

It's a, it's a mini Mac pro enclosure for the M4 Mac mini. So you put it in sideways and it looks like a Mac pro. Yeah, it's like that. Like the, like the, I was citing the, like the little, uh, external drive that Steve Jobs had on his desk that looked like a, uh, like a Power Mac G five. Um, anyway, it's adorable. That's all I want to say about that. But anyway, I, Mike, okay, here's the thing. This, if I, especially if I get this, I will seriously consider, uh, or if the Mac studio comes to the power button on the bottom and I choose to get that, whatever, I will seriously consider rethinking if the Mac Studio comes with a power button on the bottom and I choose to get that, whatever, I will seriously consider rethinking my shutdown startup lifestyle. As I've said before, the reason I know almost all Macs are laptops now. So sleep is the preferred way of doing it. The main reasons I do it, part of it is I feel like my computer does not behave as weirdly because it has to do start from a fresh boot every day

instead of having things get weird and then you restart because it's been up for months and now something has gone wrong. But there are advantages to putting things to sleep, no doubt, and it wakes up fast and all those things. My big issue over time has been the way that it supplies power to USB devices when it's asleep, which means, you know, one stray bump and the computer wakes up, which I don't like.

I also don't, it makes me uncomfortable. So for example, I've got my USB pre-USB audio interface. Like it makes me uncomfortable that it's on all the time. Yep. And I know, I think Steven literally has a USB hub that he has a power switch on. You have that too? Yeah. It's from that company that sounds German, but also sounds like a curse word. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes.

They made a product called The Word, which they don't make anymore. Like, they actually stopped making it, which is a real shame because I don't know what I would do. But yeah, it allows me to independently cut off the USB power to my audio interface. So I have thought about, I actually have a, among the other reasons that I shut down,

I have an auto switching power strip that when the device that's plugged into the key outlet goes below a certain amount of power conception, it turns off all the other items on the power strip, which is great. So for example, when I shut down my computer, the power, my studio display does not go to sleep. It's powered off. It stops drawing power. My USB hub stops drawing power. A bunch of stuff on my desk that's attached to the computer, when the computer shuts down,

it all stops drawing power. The problem I have is if I go to sleep, instead, that doesn't happen, I don't think. I don't know if I could set it that way. Then everything is still around and I could do that. But it makes me uncomfortable. So, so what it would require for me to switch to this sleeping lifestyle is rejiggering my desk and maybe making different decisions about what things are plugged into and what happens when the computer goes to sleep. And I find that, um, I find that kind of uncomfortable. Like right now when I shut down, my stream deck goes off. Uh, whereas in the back of the house where the stream deck is attached, I think to a hub, unless I turn a power strip off, the stream deck is always just sort of sleeping

all night. And I don't like it. I just don't like that. So that's my, that's that's my challenge in going from the shutdown lifestyle to the sleeping lifestyle. I haven't gotten there yet. Yeah, I do. I was sleeping a lot. Sometimes I have to put my Mac to sleep twice because I could put it to sleep and it comes back on again and I don't know why and I have to do it again.

But I will say this, the power button being on the bottom of the Mac mini is a clear signal for all those out there that Apple thinks that my way of using a Mac is aberrant. Right? Clearly this is them saying, look, Macs are meant to be slept. The power button is like an emergency thing. I did have the thought about, and I don't know if this works or not,

but if I shut down myself and I have the setting to Start up on power on the restoration of power Would that start the computer? I think the answer is no I think the answer is no because I think it has to be when there's a power outage and it drops Then it restarts when the power comes back. But I don't know. I mean, I'm just clutching at straws here. So I don't know what's going to happen.

It's time to move on from it. I mean, my time was done when I started using stage manager because on a restart, your stage manager configuration does not get retained. It's completely thrown away, yeah. Which is incredible that they still have not done anything about that, but that's just the way it is. Or I'll build a home automation button pusher

That just pushes the button when I yeah switch to it too, you know, she's got this little thing stick it to the bottom Terrible terrible But there was also the MacBook Pro got updated this is interesting, right? So it's got the end less interesting but more important Yes, right people use MacBook Pros got the M4, the M4 Pro. Less interesting, but more important. Yes, a great way of putting it. Because more people use MacBook Pros. But not that interesting. I mean, it's got the chips, right? M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max.

So we get to see the M4 Max as well here. So even more. Although it doesn't seem to have progressed. We don't know about the benchmarks, but in terms of the memory bandwidth and all that, like the, the max took a big leap from M2 to M3. It looks like the pro took a bigger leap from M3 to M4, but the max already had had taken a bigger leap. Right. So it's, it's there. We'll see, you know, when the benchmark charts come out and people get them in their hands, what the profiles

here are, but you know, this is Apple's it's not Apple's biggest selling Mac, that's the MacBook Air, but it is the Apple professional Mac of choice. And so it's a big deal that that base model that used to be the last one with the touch bar and before that it was the one with the escape key that's always been kind of hanging around where it's like, it's, it's, it's got the same processor that'll be in the MacBook Air, but it's a MacBook Pro. It got better, right? It got, it got better in some appreciable ways that make it more like a real MacBook Pro now.

It already had the nice screen, but now it's got a third port and that ports on the other side, which means you've got ports on both sides of this thing now, which was a very MacBook Air kind of thing for it to have before, but now it's got ports on either side. It's no longer got the sort of like leftover enclosures that were space gray. It's now got the space black or whatever that the other models have. So it's more part of the family, even though it's just an M4 than it used to be. It feels more like a Mac Pro now, rather than this weird, like, wannabe Mac Pro. Like a Mac Pro, yeah, like a fraud Mac Pro. It's like a real Mac Pro now. It's just,

because it's got, it's got not everything, but it's got lots of things. It's got Thunderbolt 4 instead of Thunderbolt 5. But again, it's pretty good. And like, you know, I, I, one of the things that I keep thinking is, when do you buy that instead of a MacBook Air? And part of it is, like we've said before, companies don't want to buy a MacBook Air. They want to buy a MacBook Pro. And this gives them that. The display, you know, like that is like a genuine thing. You get that gorgeous display.

And the trade-off is that it's, it's thicker and heavier, but you know, but it's got a fan too, right? So it's got that advantage over the Air, which is fanless. It's really sort of like a personal preference thing more than anything else. Do you want HDMI, for example? Like, some people would really want that and you get that? Sure. Yeah, it just feels less compromised compared to its higher-end MacBook Pro buddies than it used to, and I think that's a good thing. And then they did a really interesting thing with the screen. So I think, I've said this for a long time,

I think the screen is like the number one feature of the MacBook Pro, because it's amazing. It's bright and ProMotion, and it's just gorgeous. They updated the screen in a weird way. So it's not any brighter when you're in HDR mode, but it's brighter in SDR mode. So basically you can crank up the brightness and leave it at a much at like a thousand nits. It's a much higher brightness than it used to be. So a little bit of a difference there where they're willing to let it go brighter

permanently. That's the difference between HDR brightness and SDR brightness is really like they can blast that thing, but only briefly and then it kind of backs off Yeah, because realistically this is more useful to more people right the fact that you get like really bright in HDR is like this actually It's not that it's not like useful. It's just nice like for when you're watching HDR content But this is like you can use your laptop outside Asia because like it will be the screen will go brighter like this is more useful to the people that are actually using the computer I feel like and like the iMac that we talked about last week the MacBook Pro also got they have clearly finally built a thin enough center stage camera that it can

fit in the MacBook Pro in the iMac where they're using the wide it's the center stage camera it's the one we've, it's not new, right? I mean, it's basically the one we already know, I think. 12 megapixel camera, widescreen, so it's cropping and allows you to move around a little bit and adjust where the camera is going. I know some people don't love it.

It's not perfect, you know, you can buy better cameras, but it's, I think center stage is a good feature to have. And so I'm glad that they've added it to both of these because that was the question was like on a super thin laptop screen. Can you get a 12 megapixel wide, you know, widescreen camera small enough, thin enough to fit in that enclosure as well as the iMac, which is a little bit thicker. And the answer is yes, this time they did that. And I think it's a good thing

Yeah, that's cool And also this starts at 16 gigabytes of RAM for the 14 or 24 gigabytes of RAM for the 16 and then they also upgraded the MacBook Air to start 16 gigabytes of RAM to and the starting prices remain the same and this is all to enable better Apple intelligence performance because these machines will still get Apple intelligence even if they don't have that 16 gigabytes of RAM. But this will make them more future-proofed,

and they will be better. If you have an M whatever Mac that has less than 16 gigabytes of RAM, you can still run Apple intelligence stuff. I don't know what effect that will have, but you can still do it. But I think Apple's being very clear that 16 gigabytes provides a better experience for this stuff. Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons they're doing it. It's a benefit of the increased memory bandwidth. A little just to get a little more granular here. The 16 gigs of RAM is the starting RAM for M4 models and And the M4 model is only available

in the smaller laptop, the 14. M4 Pro and M4 Max are available in both sizes and they all start at 24. It's only the M4 so that you can get, if you buy an M4 Pro 14, it starts at 24. It's only the base model that starts at 16. Oh, okay. Okay.

Yeah. Pro and Max don't take 16. Pro and Max chips start at 24. So the new RAM floor for Pro and Max, you know, is it even new? I think it might've been the RAM floor before, where it's just 24, but that's what it is.

And it's three, basically they have three memory chips that are feeding it, which is why it's 24 and not 16, because they've got three eight gig chips that are feeding it, which is why it's 24 and not 16, because they've got three eight gig chips that are feeding it. Okay. But yeah, so it's good. And again, pretty boring as an update.

I mean, new chips, which is great, but like they already redesigned this thing a couple of years ago, so they don't need to do that. They already did that. So you get some incremental benefits and the new chips, but it's important because MacBook Pros are important. It is the tool of choice for most Mac professionals these days.

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I mean, these sound like really great meals, but what's important is the food has to be, tastes good, has to be good quality. And I know that's something that you've mentioned many times that the factor quality of food is really, really high. Yeah, many times. They probably need to send me more food, but here's what, here's the story.

We get a lot of podcast products, right? My life is full, your life is full of podcast products. And Factor has been kind enough to send me a couple boxes over the time that they've been a sponsor. And what happened the first time is I tried them out. I said to Lauren, you could try them out too. And she goes, she leaves the house, unlike me, leaves the house and goes to a workplace all day and needs to

bring a lunch every time. And so she took them. And what I noticed is then we didn't have any more conversations about it. I mean, she might have said that it was good, but that was about it. But what happened is she just started taking them after that, which I think is a real endorsement because, you know, sometimes you get stuff and you're like, all right, well, it was free, but it's a podcast thing, but whatever. But when we got the second box, it was, I think I managed to eat one of them because she took the rest of them to work. I think this is a huge endorsement. And like I said, for food that is coming in a box that is in a container that you can, you know, cook in two minutes in a microwave. I was deeply skeptical that the ingredients

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all the ingredients were really good. So they have, I think that that is the secret sauce here. And there may also be a secret sauce, but I think the secret sauce probably so is just that, which is they're not going to give you, oh yeah, it's a thing you can microwave for lunch. And then you, and then you tear into it and you're like, Oh, this is kind of gross. I just, I've had those experiences before and I didn't have them with factor. Weekly menus offer ways to treat yourself to restaurant like meal experience with gourmet plus dishes that feature premium proteins and seasonal sides like broccolini, leeks and asparagus.

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Our thanks to Factor for the support of this show and all of Relay. Jason, play me the song. Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? It's Apple. It's Apple. It's Apple.

It's Apple. It's Apple. One time, one quarter, I promised to harmonize with that song. I'm going to do the whole thing along with Lex. Thank you to Lex Friedman for providing this jingle. This jingle was part of our jingle episode that we did during the summer of fun. And this one was to stand out here. And we decided that four times a year,

you'll get to hear it when we do Apple's quarterly results. It's the perfect time to hear a wonderful song. I recommend people go to lex.games and try out Lex's collection of wonderful daily games that you can play. Lex puts a ton of work into these. And they're a ton of fun. And you can go try them for yourself over at Lex.Games. Ooh.

Let me run through some headlines. Okay. And we can dig into anything that you think might be relevant, because I know that you have obviously paid a lot of attention to this in joining the call checker. Sure. Although this came out on Halloween, and then I had to go do trick-or-treaters, so I didn't write an article about it this time.

I just... There's too much else going on. Yeah. Apple's revenue for the quarter. This is Q4, which is. Yeah. Calendar Q3. Yeah. Which means sometime probably later this week or early next week, I get to do my

post that I, where I round up the annuals because they closed their financial year. Um, so I'm going to get to that. I got a big pile of stuff I got to work on. But that's on the list because it is their fifth, their fiscal fourth quarter, because yes, it is confusing. Their big holiday quarter is Q1 of their fiscal year, not Q4. But this is the first quarter where any iPhones from the current, like the new generation are sold. Just a couple of weeks though. It's's never gonna be a really great indicator of iPhone because

it's just the first few weeks so it's nice and this is true every time almost but really that's why again why the holiday quarter is such a big deal is that the iPhone sales keep rolling through October November December obviously and and that's a big part of it. This was a 94.9 billion in revenue, which is up 6%. So it is up in the Wall Street. People love to see that. It is another all-time fourth quarter record. Again, not huge, but bigger than last time, which makes it a record. They did in terms of their profit, they're 10.2 billion shorter than they would have been otherwise because of that European tax case that they had to officially write down that 10.2

billion that they had to pay Ireland. So has that just been accepted now then? Like they're just paying it now? Yeah. Okay. So they're not challenging it anymore. That was the last moment. It was being held in escrow. So it wasn't really in their hands, you know, exactly. And it was sitting there. It was on their books though, right? And that new story was not like initial ruling that might. It was final ruling, you do have to pay it, and that money goes and is paid. So they applied that to this in terms of, and you only really see that in the profit number more than anything else. profit number more than anything else. Basically, you know, sum this up, I would say we can get into some of the details by product category, but flat it is for a, for a company that is making enormous amounts of profit every quarter.

Um, it was fine, right? Like some things were up a little, some things were down a little, but Apple for the last three years has been more or less at this plateau where they're not really enormously growing but they're also not sliding back. And that's the thing that I always say about when you look at Apple's numbers, they seem to have these quantum leaps to a new plateau and then they stay there, which is, you know,

not necessarily in every product category, but Apple as a whole, that seems to happen. And the iPhone, because as the iPhone goes, so goes Apple. I think that happens with the iPhone as well. And there are people who always want growth, growth, growth every single quarter. But I will say, I'm impressed by the fact that once Apple gains ground, they seem to maintain it.

Because the other way to look at this would be, imagine if Apple had a big year three years ago, and then everything had been going down down down and they needed a new thing to go back up to those heights And that's not really something that's happened to Apple in the last 15 years once they go up. They kind of stay there Yeah, and I guess they hit these ceilings right for a period of time Which is I think there is, it's logical. They sell so many products. There is an effective maximum that you can hit over a certain period of time. And I should say, they do increase it. They find ways to increase it, but they

only increase it to a point and they don't break that for a period of time. To use one of my charts, year-over-year total revenue change I think this is instructive about what we're talking about in fiscal 2020 If you go quarter by quarter their revenue versus the previous year What it was nine percent growth one percent eleven percent one percent? So a couple that grew a little bit and a couple that grew almost nothing. Fiscal 21 was 21, 54, 36, 29. Huge growth boost. It was the iPhone.

The following year was 11, nine, two, and eight. So a lot less, but still some growth. 23 minus five minus three minus one minus one and 24, two minus four, five, six. So what you see there is huge bounce, little bit of progression, a little bit of fallback and then a little bit of progression again. And this seems to be a pattern with them.

And yes, it does sort of coincide with some new iPhones usually that spur iPhone sales and iPhone refresh cycle. But what they're not doing is going up 50% and then going down 40%, right? Like that's not what they seem to be doing, which I think is, I mean, that's what I think one of the strengths of Apple's business over the last few years has been,

is when they find a new plateau, they tend to stay there. You know what, actually I spoke incorrectly, which I think it makes this even more interesting. That 21 was when they were selling a lot of everything. Of everything. Yeah. For sure. And then the incredible thing is, so there was just like, Oh, this is this once in a lifetime quarter where COVID meant that people need stuff. And it also people have some,

a lot of people have a little bit of extra money in their pocket. And Apple silicon happened at the same time. Apple silicon happened. So everyone's buying everything. The next two years, they buy the same amount. Right? And it's like... Yeah, that's the impressive thing, right? Yes.

Is that they did all of that, and then they just kind of kept going. And that, I think, is one of the most impressive things they do. Some product categories over that time have hurt more than others, right? Like the Mac in 23 was a bloodbath, right? No, so the Mac, when I say like they find a new peak and they stuck to it, the Mac was growing and growing and growing and growing. And then in 22, 21, 22, it had its best run ever.

And the Mac has never gotten back to Q4 of 2022. They've never gotten back to two years ago. Sales have been down since then and they found a new level. Now that new level is higher than the level was before, but what they didn't do with the Mac is maintain because that really, I think really was a super buying cycle in late 20 and early 21, which again, like you said, it's COVID spurring a lot of replacements. It's Apple Silicon spurring a lot of replacements. It's Apple Silicon spurring a lot of replacements. And it's stimulus, people having money,

or stimulus slash people not going on trips and things like that, having money to spend to do those upgrades. Probably, again, more of a once in a cycle kind of thing. And we'll see how the Mac goes. But even there, I feel like the Mac got a boost. They didn't come all the way back down to previous levels. They're a little bit up from that but the Mac is a good example of that. Yeah but let's run through these real quick.

So the iPhone this is for this quarter that's just passed 46.2 billion up 6 percent. The Mac 7.7 billion up 2 percent. The iPad 7 billion up 8 percent. So that's all good, right? That doesn't always happen, right? iPad, you know, this is what happens when they release new iPads. Yeah.

Is they had two quarters of growth after having five straight quarters of no growth of loss of growth year over year. So this is the iPad Pro, right? That has done this and mostly we would expect, right? It was like a truly new product. And just continuing to have a refresh the iPad line in Q3, right? The iPad didn't have updates for a year and now they've got some new machines that are out there, new devices

that people can buy and I think that's a winner for them, the Air and the Pro. Wearables, home and accessories at $9 billion, down 3%. Yeah, that's a case of a product category that was a huge growth driver through 21. In 22, it hit the wall. And now it's been kind of like flat to a little down since then, which is really interesting. And that's primarily, I think, Apple Watch and AirPods. Now, AirPods has been pretty quiet until recently, right? So we might see that jump up in the Q1 results. And then we'll see think Apple Watch and AirPods. Now AirPods has been pretty quiet until recently, right?

So we might see that jump up in the Q1 results. And then we'll see about Apple Watch. They keep saying that they're getting a lot of people that are new to Apple Watch. I think that the Apple Watch replacement cycle has also gotten a lot longer. Remember those early Apple Watches felt really outmoded and dated really fast.

And honestly, I did finally upgrade my Apple Watch, but even for me, a tech person, it took me, I think, three years to do it, which is, and I didn't need to do it. I fancied the new thinness of it. And I wanted to do all of that. But like, I think that the Apple Watch cycle is just getting wider. They do, they do keep saying that they're getting a lot of new people to Apple Watch, which is great. That's good for the long term installed base, even if it's,

you know, even if the longer cycles are hard for them. But wearables, yes, wearables was a, an up and coming growth every quarter kind of category. And it's now, it's now not. So, you know, O2B whoever is in charge of that area, they're feeling the heat a little bit. I would wonder if it's a tough compare. Like, whoever is in charge of that area, they're feeling the heat a little bit. I would wonder if it's a tough compare. Like I don't know if maybe the introduction of AirPods 4 might like save that and then it would be like, oh, we don't worry about it.

It was just when the products were announced. I'm going to be curious to see how their holiday quarter did. Because if we think about wearables as maybe being a little more seasonal than some of other Apple stuff, they had a peak at $14.7 billion in 2022, then they were down 1% in 2023 and down 11% in 2024 to $12 billion. So the question is, where are they going to be? Are they going to be below that $12 billion of last year? Are they going to turn it around and have some really nice holiday sales? We'll see.

And services is at 25 billion, up 12%. Yeah, services, new services record, because every quarter almost is a new services record. I would say there was a period in there, again, that same inflationary period, the same sort of 21, where they were growing more than 20% every single quarter year over year. And before and after that, for a little bit, they were in the teens. And this year has been interesting because last year was down in single digits. This year has been back up in the double digits, but just barely. So this was a up 12%. So growing a little bit slower than they did at their peak, but growing a little bit faster than they did last year at this time. So, you know, services keeps going up. It will be quite a thing when it stops going up. But that hasn't happened yet. Maybe it will never happen. I

don't know. But never say never. But it's still, it's still chugging away. While we're in earnings, let's talk about some M&A news. Okay. Apple have invested 1.1 billion into Global Star's satellite networks. This is the company that provides the satellite SOS stuff for Apple. They're also taking an ownership stake in the company. Interesting. Like, why not? Right? They're also taking an ownership stake in the company. Interesting.

Why not, right? Make this an important part of the puzzle. And then this one was actually the shocking one. Pixelmator, the company behind Pixelmator and Photometer, they've been acquired by Apple. Acquired by Apple. That is, this is what I would say is like it is shocking but not surprising because they are the most Apple like soft that is I think Pixelmator is the most Apple

like piece of software that is made not by Apple. Like if you just use it, it's like, oh, this really just feels like and looks like what aperture should be today. And already Photoshop by our Photoshop. Yeah. And I am fascinated to try and work out what the plan here is. Like are is Apple building planning to build Photoshop? Like do they want Photoshop now? Like is that what they're looking to do here?

Is Final Cut, Logic Pro, and then Pixelmator, if it keeps that name, is that their Photoshop competitor? Is that what they're going for? I, so yeah, like what could they be doing? One is talent, I guess, right? Aqua Hire, you're gonna get the developers who make this stuff.

I don't know. I mean, yes, I don't mean to demean them by saying it that way, but like, it's a lot of money to spend when you could just hire people. But they wanna get all the code. When I first saw this, I thought, well, you know, the photo-mater stuff would really help bulk up photos.

They have been doing machine learning-based adjustments for a long time. There's more to photo-mater than sort of in photos, and I could see them kind of using those people and that code to upgrade the photos editing experience. I think that's true. But pixel-mater is the photos editing experience. I think that's true. But Pixelmator is the big one here.

And if I wanna be optimistic, I look at it and think, Pixelmator could become a thing that joins Logic and Final Cut as an Apple Pro app, while they also kind of make photos better with the photo meter stuff. That's my positive outlook. My negative outlook would be sometimes. How should I put this? Apple doesn't care how much you like pixel meter, right? They don't

care. They care about whatever matters to them strategically. Yeah. So the danger here is Apple wants the people, they want some of the technology, and they got plans to roll it out, and Pixelmator as a product doesn't interest them. They want the people and maybe some of the code base, and they're going to integrate it into places that might frustrate bands of Pixelmator, users of Pixelmator. Like, maybe they're just going to update photos and the camera app and the photography pipeline of iPhone and maybe some of their other apps like Freeform and, you know, I don't know, Pages and Keynote. And that

would be fine if they think that that's what they want to do strategically, but if you're a user of Pixelmator, your app is eventually going to disappear. You know, but I don't know. I mean, I hope it's not that. I hope it is that Apple has decided this app is already kind of up to our standards. And this other app has been doing stuff that we're struggling to get into photos even now. And that maybe, maybe this app should just be one of our pro apps, and we can put it on a, you know, pro app subscription, just like that, maybe start building a bundle. And that's, that's great. Like having photos pro or whatever they want to call it, because I don't think Pixelmator is going to be the name. or whatever they want to call it. Cause I don't think pixelmator is going to be the name. I can see that. I just, I, I, I worry. I don't want to be negative about this so much, but I do want to say I worry that we all view it

from a customer's perspective, which is fine. But like Apple is a big creature that does things for reasons. It's like a dragon in Lord of the Rings or something. Like it does things that we don't understand. Like for reasons we mirror Mirror humans, do not understand. And that's a bummer, but like they have their reasons. They have the reasons that they might want to just take Pixelmator and eat it.

And things from it go places, but Pixelmator itself as a product just vanishes. So I want to put that out there as a possibility, but my hope is that they do something more than that and that they do something more like what they did with shortcuts. Yeah, that's where my gut leans at this product, that they want this to actually build a product, like that Apple has a product.

I have two things for why I think this thing. One, I agree, like, you know, the stuff that they're doing with Photomator and stuff, that is great. But like, realistically, I don't know how different this is to what Apple could just do on their own, right? I don't really get much of a sense. They would need to build a team to make a pro photo app. And they've got it, they can just buy a team and an app. I mean, it's what they did with logic and final cut too, right? Those are both purchases. But that's kind of what I'm saying is it's more going to be more, I believe that a product, either pixelmator or a photomator, I think more likely pixelmator will become the foundation of a product that Apple is going to make. That's what I think this is because I, and I feel like they wanted pixelmator. I was like, this is a fantastic starting point with some people that know what they're doing.

And so I see this as more of a workflow turning into shortcuts than a, someone in the chat, I was thinking it was Matt in the chat asked, yeah, rather than a dark sky becoming just the, like, just going away. And it's like, we just want your algorithm or whatever to make all of the service. I hope so.

I mean, it is not Aperture, right? It's Photoshop. Aperture was a little bit different. Aperture was kind of Lightroom with some Photoshop in it. This feels more like, you know, Photoshop kind of thing. But having it be an Apple Pro app that's good and it's gonna reach more people because it's from Apple and Apple's marketing is behind it

and they can, and they're gonna reach more people and it's going to reach more people because it's from Apple and Apple's marketing is behind it and they can and they're going to reach more people and it's another tool to highlight for professionals on their platforms. I also wonder a little bit, this thought just occurred to me, if in their pro workflows team there were a lot of things emerging from that where they're like, why don't we just have Pixelmator? Pixelmator is so great. I 100% believe that this is where that conversation would have begun, right? Because it fits that team. The only question mark I have on this is why not Procreate? Like if that's the scenario, because I have been told Procreate is the most popular iPad app. Right, right. Right. Like the most popular app on the iPad app store

is Procreate. Like it is the most used app on iPad. Like out of all of the apps that are built specifically for iPad, Procreate is the biggest one. Sure. And they use it. And they use it. As a demo fodder all the time.

Constantly. And so I just find that interesting. Not that I think that it's this instead of that, but like maybe they've already had this conversation with Procreate and Procreate didn't want to do it, you know? Yeah, Joe Rosenstiel says that that's a different product. It's more for illustration. Yeah, but I'm just saying like companies

that Apple would acquire is what I mean. Right, if they wanted to take on Adobe, there are a few ways they could do it. I don't know if they want to take on Adobe or if they felt like this was a missing piece because they're so into photography, right? And I wonder if, I also wonder if there are times when they're developing features for the iPhone,

especially the iPhone Pro, Pro features, and then they integrate them into photos and they're like, why do we have to stuff Pro features into photos? It's not a Pro product. And I wonder if that might've been part of this too, stuff pro features into photos. It's not a pro product. And I wonder if that might've been part of this too, which is like, we really need a product for our photography,

our professional photography features that we've got. And photos isn't it, because photos is meant to be a consumer photo editing product. And the more, yes, the more stuff we do, the harder it's gonna be to jam that stuff into photos where it doesn't belong. Why don't we just have a pro photos app?

And if we're gonna do that, what is the best fit? And it's Pixelmator. And I think that makes, unless they wanted to go get like Acorn or something, like, I mean, there's some choices here. Pixelmator is the right move for Apple. I think it is. I think it makes sense.

It feels like an Apple product. There's lots of things about it that fit that fit, but you know, if they wanted to take on Adobe, which, you know, they would get, you know, there'd be antitrust investigations and all sorts of things, but like there are other things they could do. There's serif, right. But like, I, that's why I think this feels more targeted. Like I could see them doing Procreate as well if they really wanted to,

but I'm not sure their ambitions are in the Procreate illustration painting kind of end, but we all know how important photography is to Apple because it's important to the iPhone and it's a driver of iPhone sales and iPhone is number one at Apple by a long shot. Yeah, and so for all of those reasons bulking up your photography software makes sense. Yeah, so I would just say this is a note. It's just the

Serif the company makes a finite it was bought by Canva early this year, so they couldn't. Ah, okay. There you go. So not for not for sale. I don't think they would want them anyway because I think that that would call too much attention to being directly taking on Adobe. I don't know who owns Procreate or if they're out there on their own because I could see that. But again, if we're talking about like,

what is core to Apple that would make a notoriously reluctant to do this kind of thing company to buy high profile third party software, say yes to pixelmator. To me, it comes back to iPhone photography is an important differentiator. And they keep making pro features on these iPhones that cost you know, more than $1,000 and advertising the pro features and they have final cut and they have photos and and that is what I keep coming back to as as maybe the rationale for doing this is photos is not what you should be doing if you're trying to get the pro photography story across they do mention subject to regulatory approval of course of course it seems like there's so much competition in this area that I

don't think is gonna be an issue but yeah of course I It seems like there's so much competition in this area that I don't think is going to be an issue. But yeah, of course. I say genuinely like congratulations to them. I think it's amazing. I think they deserve it and I hope that it goes well for everybody involved. Yeah, and Photomator I love so I hope that there's room for that technology in the Photos app because I think that they've done a really good job with some of that stuff and I would love more friendly photo editing features in in photos, but we'll see. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Watching streaming services about ExpressVPN is a little bit like going out for dinner,

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and all of Relay. It's time for some Ask Upgrade questions. First one comes from Tim. This is a complicated question. Tim Millay? I don't know. I hope not. Tim Cook?

I also hope not considering the question. Okay. All right. I hope not. Tim Cook? I also hope not, considering the question. I'm planning to replace two older Macs with a single new MacBook Pro. I need to consolidate the data from both of these Macs into one, so into the new one. Can you recommend an approach for this kind of migration? Normally I just use Migration Assistant, but I'm not sure if it can handle this particular use case. Well, this is a tough sure if it can handle this particular use case. Well, this is a tough one. Yeah, it's interesting, right?

What I would say is if you've got one Mac that you like better than the other, migrate that one first, but you can migrate the other one to a different user, which will get that user data migrated over. And so that is what I would do. And then you may need to do some manual stuff, but think about that, right? You can migrate multiple times to a Mac and what it'll do is it'll have you create a different,

if they're the same username, it will have you move that user to a different username, but I believe it will still migrate all your stuff. So that's what I would try. The alternative is to do it piecemeal, and you're going to be doing that anyway. There's no merge concept, but what would be nice is if you've migrated both of those users to your new Mac, you can gradually move things over that are in the other user directory to where you want them and do it that way. That's one approach.

The other approach would be to clone the secondary Mac to an external drive and keep it around. And then over time, as you find yourself needing things from the secondary Mac, have that drive available and then copy them over. Depending on how you work, you could do it piecemeal and you'll bring over the stuff you need and not the rest of it. It gets complicated if you've got preferences and stuff like that. I have definitely done that thing where I have selected a whole bunch of preferences in user folder library preferences or application support, and just selected a bunch of stuff and copied it over because the apps didn't have the right preferences. It's a pain, but you can do it.

But to get it all in one place, I think that's where I would start is do that. Now, Steve in our Discord suggests an app called FileSide that has a merge feature. There may be some other features out there. I don't think you need a utility for this. I would use other than Migration Assistant. So that's what I, if this were me

and I needed to go from two to one, I'd pick my winner, migrate everything from that first, migrate the other user from the other computer second, and then pick and choose as I need to because it'll all be on my drive as long as it fits. Yeah, I feel like you've got to pick your canonical to do the migration assistant, right? So like what is the machine that's going to have all your preferences? Do that. And then locate your data and move that. And so so like you might I might recommend using a tool like daisy disk or clean my Mac to like

Where is the data on my machine like and make sure you're moving it across? It's gonna take a long time, but that's that's what I would do I would want to do it manually like the first one by migration assistant and then move on your own Yeah, there are a bunch of merging utilities. I would merge, personally. I would do it piecemeal. I'm a big believer in that idea that, you know, like you do a first pass and say,

I'm going to copy all this stuff over these apps, these documents, whatever. You could do that, and that's pretty straightforward. But if you're thinking about app preferences and things like that, I would wait and see when you need those app preferences and then figure out where they live. And again, you're gonna be dipping into the library folder

and I know that's annoying, but that's how you do that if you get to that point. I would not, yeah, wholesale merge. Buy an SSD and do a clone of the machine that is not the migrated machine. Yeah and just leave it and keep it around. Yeah. I think that that's another great way to do it. That's I had a disastrous something computer something a year ago where I did a I did a wipe on my Mac studio instead and what I ended up having was I had the clone and I just spent about a

week hitting a wall where I'd be like, oh, that didn't come over and copying it off the SSD. And until after a few weeks, I was done and I had everything that I needed. And then I was done with that. So that's what I'd recommend. Logan writes in to say, Do you think that if John Tanner succeeds Tim Cook's CEO, he will be more involved with the product development and design? Tim has reportedly stayed away from the product group,

but John has been in charge of hardware engineering and knows these products on a different level than Cook ever could. With John's introduction of the Mac lineup this week, it had me thinking that he would be a better CEO when it comes to products. What we learned when Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs is Apple CEO needs to be themselves. Because nobody can be Steve Jobs and nobody can be Tim Cook. Tim Cook, Mr. Roommates, very efficient fellow, all about the supply chain.

Steven changed a group chat that we have with us to Federico and John is changed to roommates. To roommates, makes sense, makes sense. Yeah, Tim Cook, he's got his skills. And his other thing that he's got as CEO is to lean on other people who are very talented. This is a good way to be an executive is you can't do it all. Even Steve jobs couldn't do it all right.

Steve jobs had a unique skills, but then there was also an organization supporting all the things that he was not good at. And there were a lot of them involving, you know, different parts of management and people and the business and all of that, including the stuff Tim Cook did and the stuff the CFO did. So yes, I think if John Turness became the CEO of Apple, he would absolutely be more involved and opinionated about aspects of product development

and technology decisions, because that seems to be his thing. That's him. That he's good at. Yeah. And that he will then rely on, if he becomes the CEO, he will rely on an operations person like Steve Jobs did to do, and Tim Cook does too, right?

But Tim Cook has some unique viewpoints into operations that John Turness might not. I get the feeling that Jeff Williams, no, I'm convinced of this. Jeff Williams is not as involved in the operations as Tim Cook was for jobs. Like I would be convinced that Tim Cook still has quite a hand in that organization

because that's his thing. Right, like there's an argument that, you know, Tim Cook as the CEO can't be the COO anymore, but he's more COO than Steve Jobs was. And that perhaps Jeff Williams is a little less COO than Tim Cook was because Tim Cook has a little bit of focus on that. And which is not, and again, it's, this is tough. This is management stuff, right?

This is, I know all about this, but it's your job. On one level, yes, you need to let them do their job. On another level though, you may have some unique insights into that job. So you need to get a good shorthand with the person who has your old job where you can provide your insights while not becoming the COO, because it is their job.

And because you've got a different job now, right? So there's a dynamic there, but I do think that it's true that despite the fact that Tim Cook is the CEO and has been for a long time now, Apple's structure has taken on a little bit of the flavor of we have a CEO who's really good at operations. Right? And that's fine. And so if John Turnis is the CEO or anybody else, ideally, they will have that kind of flavor. And yes, would that be a little more of a Steve Jobs vibe than Tim Cook? It would, because I think that John Ternes would be more connected to the products than Tim is.

But in the end, to be a good CEO, you also have to build a team and rely on other people and identify the right people. And that's the part that anybody who succeeds Tim Cook is gonna be tested on, but they will be able to lean on whatever their area of expertise is. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I don't think it's fair to say better.

I just think it's different, right? That John Tarnas would be a more focused, a product focused CEO, but realistically, are we not assuming that he would have the same input on the products as he currently does under Tim Cook as the CEO? And don't forget the legacy of the people who've built the teams around them, right? I mean, we know we've like Johnny, all Johnny Ives people have left. But but let me give you a better example. Like Johnny Ives philosophy is still there.

Steve Jobs's philosophy is still there. A product design, even though Tim Cook's not a product design guy, his philosophy is still there. When Tim Cook retires, his philosophy that he built, that Steve Jobs brought him in to build when Apple was incredibly undisciplined at the operations side, and remember the volume that Apple does now is nothing like when even when Tim Cook took over, that operations machine will continue to run and it's going to be the imprint of Tim Cook. Yeah. These CEOs and their lieutenants, but especially the CEOs, leave their imprint on the company

when they go. So does that mean that if you had somebody like John Turnis involved, that there might be a little more product forward focus? Sure. I think that you're only human and that, and that, you know, you can maybe even argue that at different times in Apple's lifespan, it needs a CEO with a different focus, but they can't lose sight of the rest of it. A wartime consigliere is what they need. Like I was thinking, you know, like,'s very, um, like romanticized over time. And I think for a lot of good reason that like jobs, I have was this design powerhouse, right?

And like bill Apple into this company that's so focused around design. But the cook Williams era is this operations powerhouse that, as you said, has turned Apple from a medium company, a big company into the biggest company, right? Like it doesn't matter how good the products are if you can't make them at the scale needed to sell. And that's what Cook and Williams have done. Yes. But what that means is that if Turner's takes over, he has to inherit the operations powerhouse.

Somebody needs to do that because you can't just be like, I'm a product CEO, so we're not going to make as many products now. No, that doesn't work. That's not how it works. In the same way that no matter what you think about what Apple's products have been like in the last 20 years or whatever, I have a long he's been CEO now. It's not 20 years. It's 15. I have no idea. They still had to inherit the design philosophy

and push that forward. They couldn't just be like, we're going to make now the most operationally efficient product. No, they also had to look good. And sometimes I'm sure the disadvantage of trying to make these things as operationally efficient as they could be. So here's a thing that has stuck with me and forgive me because we're on the precipice

of a presidential election in the US, but I'm going to quote a former president of the United States. Why would you invoke that here? Why would you do this? Well, because it's relevant to this because we're talking about CEOs. I thought we were going to get the whole way through, you know? No, no, no, but this is relevant. But I'm gonna quote Barack Obama here.

Please do. And it's super relevant, which is somebody was asking him about the job of being president. And he said, every decision that comes to your desk as president, and this is true of Apple CEO too, is not, well, 70, 30, 60, 40. Like everybody agrees we should do this, but what do you think?

That's not what happens when you're president of the United States. And it's not what happens when you're CEO of Apple. Everything Obama said is 59, 41. Or sorry, again, is, boy, let's do that again. It's Monday morning, Mike. Sometimes it's hard, math is hard. Everything he said is 51 49.

Everything is 50.5 49.5. The, you come to the boss when there's a decision to be made and there's no clear decision, you've got to make the decision. That's where the buck stops. The oval office and at whatever they call Tim Cook's airy, well lit Apple Pork Desk is the, I don't know what that's called, Tim's office. This is Tim. And that that is the thing, right? So like, part of being CEO is to make the trends run on time, get the products going, rely on your people who are incredibly talented, make sure they're being paid well,

making sure they're being treated well. A lot of that is that. What it comes down to, and I think we ascribe maybe too much in some cases, but where it comes down to in the end is that person at that desk, when it comes time to, are we gonna do this or not? And everybody's split.

And it's like, this is gonna be a big investment. We think it's risky, but we think we should do it. But these people think we shouldn't do it. What should we do? If everybody agrees like it's great, let's do it. Then, you know, the CEO doesn't have to do anything. It's the hard decisions that matter. And that doesn't, that does affect the future of the company.

It really does. And you can't always tell what it's going to be. And so the difference from going to Tim Cook versus John Turnis or Steve Jobs or whoever else is going to be in those moments. And I do think that those decisions are informed by their particular knowledge. You should be knowledgeable about the entire business, but I do think that there is sometimes a sense that some of the hard decisions Apple has made during the Tim Cook era were being made by a guy who was aware of Steve Jobs' product legacy and also aware of all the necessities of running a business at the scale that Apple has become. And then Tim Cook has to

sit there and think, do I want to do this product? Do I want to make this decision? Because I know a lot about the operations and I'm also putting on faith, you know, in my trust in my people about the product side of it. And he has to synthesize that. And John Turnis would be the other way. He would know more probably about the product side of it and the engineering side of it and would need to rely on the trust or faith in the people on the

operations side or wherever to make that decision. And that's, you know, at the end of the day, that's what we're talking about is to be a CEO is to make those difficult decisions and they do reflect you. But also hopefully they reflect the team you've built and the trust that you've engendered across them. So this is a long non-answer in some ways, cause it's like, no CEO is gonna come in and say, all the pro products are gonna have colors now, right? They're not gonna do that.

They're not gonna do that. But it does matter who the CEO is. Yeah. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a video that I actually quite enjoyed from the Wall Street Journal. They have a series called The Job Interview. And Tim Cook was on that. And it's an eight minute video.

And he's talking about a few questions. He talks about Steve a little bit. Uh, you know, he talks about like kind of his philosophy and, and like how he feels about, um, operations is a nice fit. Is it, I like when people can kind of break him out of the PR answers, right? Cause it's just not, he's not really talking about products. One of the main reasons that I bring this up here is I manifesting a new life goal that I have. All right.

Okay. It's out there and it just came up a little bit on connected and I'm putting it out there again. Now I want to interview Tim Cook and talk to him purely about how he works. That's what I want to speak to him about. I want to ask him about how he deals with email. How much email does he see? I want to know how does he like to meet with people? Does he like to meet in person? How does that work? I thought of a question this morning, because now this is in my brain now is the thing that I want. A question I had this morning, which

pops into my mind is, how often do you work on your own? Do you ever work on your own or are there always people working with you? Right? Does Tim Cook ever sit in an office in front of a computer and work on his own? And if he does, what work is that? You know, like these are the questions I want to ask him because I think it would be fascinating. So I'm just putting this out there, right? I just want to talk to him.

So we'll see what happens. Yeah. I have those moments where I think, I think, uh, wouldn't it be interesting to talk to him, so we'll see what happens. Yeah, I have those moments where I think, I think wouldn't it be interesting to talk to somebody about, and there's usually somebody who's a better fit because it's about a subject where there's specialized media for that. This is an example where we are the specialized media for that. So I keep, you know, dare to dream.

I would love that. Maybe we could get it, if not from Tim Cook, let's get it from John Ternes or from Jaws. I would love to speak to, I would like to speak to anybody at Apple about these specific things. About how they actually use their devices. Because I also genuinely think it would be more interesting

than the other types of interviews that these people have to do. Yeah. Because I would just like to understand if you are the CEO of the world's most powerful company, potentially big company, whatever, I think Apple's the most powerful company in the world. But if you're the CEO of that company,

what is your actual work like? I'd be intrigued. Anyway, if you would like to send in your feedback, follow up and questions, go to upgradefeedback.com where you can always send that in, we appreciate you. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com. You can hear him at the incomparable.com and here on Relay where you'll find me too.

You can check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us online. Jason is at Jsnow, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I am Y-K-E. You can watch clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube where we are at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members that support us every week with Upgrade Plus.

You can get longer ad free versions of the show every single week by going to getupgradeplus.com. Thank you to ExpressVPN, Delete Me, and Factor for their support of this show, but most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, draft champion Mike Hurley. Oh, thank you.