Upgrade - 538: A Lot of Mac in Your Face

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

From Relay, this is UpGrade, episode 538. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, FitBard, Notion, and Smarter World. My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. How are you? I'm pretty good, thank you. How are you? I'm pretty good. Very excited. It's big game week here.

Big game. And although my beloved cow bears are five and five, a 500 team, it doesn't matter. You throw the records out when you're playing against the hated Stanford Cardinals. Ooh, take off that red shirt. Take off that red shirt. You're right. Roll on. You bears on the way to a probably really rainy and wet Saturday sitting in Berkeley, but that's okay. We do it because we love it.

Anyway, I'm yeah, good week, fun week. I'll play some marching band music later. It'll be great. I have a snow talk question for you. Comes from Stuart who asks, do you prefer to travel by planes, trains or automobiles? See, I see what Stuart is doing here. Stuart's making a reference to the classic John Hughes film, Planes, Trains and Automobiles,

starring John Candy and Steve Martin. Love that movie. A certifiable Thanksgiving Day classic. And what do I prefer to travel on? Well, mostly I travel on automobiles because I prefer them because they're very convenient and there are no trains by my house. And planes, there's a whole rigmarole. I love traveling on a train, but it happens to me so rarely.

And planes, I don't know. I actually kind of enjoy the plane ride. I don't love the rest of it, but I actually kind of love the plane ride because I just put on my headphones and read my book. And I'm very happy to just sit there and read for hours and there's nobody bugging me and there's nothing else I wanna do. If I had to work on the plane,

I'd be a little more grumpy, but I generally use it as reading time and so it becomes kind of a refuge. But I like a good road trip too. I don't think I have a preference here. They're all different and they all have their advantages. So sorry, Stuart. You just do them all.

What you do is, like the characters in plane trains and automobiles, you ride for several hours in the back of a refrigerated truck and you get very cold. No, the worst way to do it is to do all of them. Yes, that's true. That's true. Separated by various other people. People haven't seen Plane, Trains, or Automobiles. We just did it for the incomparable. That episode will be out just in time for Thanksgiving. Oh, that's helpful. just in time for Thanksgiving. And it is, I know, right? And it's a classic. It really is a great movie. There's so many things about it that are good.

And that'll be this week's episode. So people should check that out. I'll probably can just show us the incomparable and then you can go subscribe and get it. Yeah, get it. Yeah. Yeah. My preference is planes because of the destination.

So if I'm getting on a plane, that's most likely the most exciting destination, is going to be when I get a phone call from a plane. For sure. Somebody in the chat mentioned buses, and I'll just say years of riding a school bus and stuff. I hate buses. That said, I also was a bus commuter for like 15 years. So I wrote a bus every single day for 15 years and I didn't hate the bus, but it's not my favorite.

I that that's, I draw the line at the bus. Yeah. I would go planes, trains, automobiles, bus. I love trains. I take trains happily every day. You know, um, well, we haven't mentioned yet. I, I, I, uh, for two years I was a ferry commuter. Now that's an interesting way to live. Boats. Boats. Yeah. Ride a boat every day. Uh, and that was actually very great. That was really civilized. Uh,

I enjoyed riding the boat. That was a, that was a fun time. So we'll get boats in there above buses for sure. Very fair. If you have a Snow Talk question you would like for us to answer in a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send us your Snow Talk question. Thank you to Stuart for that one. I enjoyed it.

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You'll also be helped supporting the show, which we will appreciate greatly. This week on Upgrade Plus, we're going to talk about our thoughts on the growth of Blue Sky. So you want to go and get this for yourself, go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up, use the code 2024HOLIDAY in an annual membership. You will get 20% off or just please click the link in the show notes and it will be done for you. We really appreciate it. Why not get this for yourself for the holidays or send giverelay.com to a family member or a friend and they can help sign you up for one whole year of Upgrade Plus, 20% off. Pretty great, right Jason?

Yeah, pretty good, pretty good. What a deal, such a bargain. Give the gift of to people you love of Relay, really. That's my thing. Why not, why not? You know, why not? Some people ask why, we ask why not. Exactly. Got some follow up. A lot of people wrote in. Why not? Why not? You know, why not? Some people ask why we ask why not exactly

Got some follow-up a lot of people wrote in we mentioned this you text me after last week's episode And you said that you really enjoyed our conversation that we had about in lawyer up, which was fun I enjoyed it too. It was this it was a good time to return to the topic of Apple and the European Union And this spurred a lot of conversation from listeners. First comes from Chris. Chris says, rather than Apple dramatically pulling out of the European market, I think the most likely outcome of European Commission decision that Apple violated the DMA would be years of grinding litigation.

What a beautiful way to put it. For comparison, the European Commission's decision in the Irish tax case came in 2016. The final appeal wasn't resolved until 2024. Here's the thing about this though. Here's the thing about this. They ended up having to pay it. And the years of grinding litigation, if there's another fine, another fine, another fine, another fine, and they keep accruing fines and they're like, oh yeah, but we're going to do this in grinding litigation. And five years from there, they're told, no, you need to pay it all. They've now accumulated five years of funds that they're going to

have to pay. I don't think it's a long-term strategy. And remember they lost that case. So it's a tough one. That's a tough, a tough strategy for ongoing fines to bank on you ultimately winning your case, especially given the track record. Well, because it's like, yeah, you can do this, but then not only will you eventually pay the fine that they told you you wanted to pay in the first place, but you'll also have to pay the legal fees for your lawyers to be in court over the stand. And presumably all the further fines for your continuing, if you assume, assuming you continue

not complying, you would continue to be fined. That's how it works. It's not a single thing. They keep refining you. So it's not great. Challenging it in court is a good strategy for individual fines. Like if the European commission says, look, you did this thing with determining your location and all of that that they're talking about, and we think that you need to pay now because you were in violation of this

for this amount of time. If it's like a one-time deal, I don't know if that one is or not, but like if it's a one-time deal, sure, of course you're gonna argue it. But the danger is if it's an ongoing problem that is not going to be resolved for years, you still have to make a decision about whether you're going to continue to defy the rule or not. Because if you lose, guess what? You've just accrued years of that. So I think there's a real danger there. An interesting clarification maybe from at least something I didn't really

consider from Mathaus who says the Commission is not the courts and these are separate. So a fine from the Commission is the same as a legal case in the US. Even if they issue a fine it will still go through the courts. The Commission does not have the power to just fine companies without them being able to defend themselves. Sure. There will always be some level of legal discussion, but it's if they will continue to appeal it or not. Right. It's like the FTC or the Justice Department in the US, it goes through the courts at that point. But again, that's the danger. That's the danger is you might lose in court.

And anonymous writes in and says, Apple doesn't have to walk away from the EU, but what they could do is send a shot across the EU lawmakers bow by scaling back job numbers in countries like Germany and France, the EU powerhouses and so like the EU powerhouses and move those roles to non EU countries like the UK or the USA, which would cause massive pressure on these governments. Interesting thought? Maybe although again, I think the European Commission is controlled by the European Parliament, which would not be the individual countries' governments. So it would need to put pressure on voters or certainly make I mean, we talked about this last week, diplomatic pressure, one of the games here is diplomatic pressure, which is, Hey, maybe

Europe needs to look at what the European Commission is doing and say, maybe we've gone too far here. That seems unlikely to me. But that would be one way you could play this is to is just to kind of put pressure on there. And I know that there's other talk about like how the incoming administration in the US might also try to put pressure on Europe. And that Tim Cook apparently like called Trump before the election and to complain, at least this is a story that is, is out there to complain about what Europe was making them do. So it's possible. Um, but again, you're risking, you're still going to get fined. So there's that without walking away, you're still going to get fined.

And then you're playing a different game of hardball and hoping that they crumble. And you have to be pretty confident that if you move some jobs out of Europe, that they're going to say, Oh, Oh, don't do that, we're sorry, please come back, you can do whatever you want. People in Europe can tell me if this is different, but my read from here, based on everything I've seen, is that there's very little appetite in Europe to give more free rein to US tech giants.

So it seems like a bad play, but they could do it. They could try it. I just did a quick Google search and apparently Apple employs 1,500 engineers in Germany. It's logic. I don't know who else. It's definitely logic. That's a lot of engineers, 1,500 engineers. I wonder what else they're working on.

Well, at least that's what Google's AI overview is telling me engineers. I wonder what else we're working on. That's well At least that's what Google's AI overview is telling me. Oh, well, so it's probably not right? Who knows who should tell but they even is an interesting idea right that they could they could threaten the Threaten they could Exert pressure in different ways, right? Of course, of course But again, you're left with see see, this is the problem though. Do I think that Apple, could Tim Cook go to Germany and say,

you're killing us here, what can we do? We've got plants, we've got engineers, let's work on this. But like, that's not where it is. It's in Brussels, it's at the EC. Is that is the Commission in Brussels? I don't know. But it's right that's where the Parliament is. It's the European Commission and it's the European Parliament and these are Europe-wide things that are part of the EU. So diplomacy with Germany doesn't really get you anywhere and I think that's the challenge is like the

diplomacy with the EU seems a lot harder to get your, you know, to even get your arms around it. Just try to get any kind of purchase with it. These individual member states are part of the European Union though, right? So like, I think if they were to pressure some of the bigger countries in the European Union, it does, they do still work together, right? Like pressure placed on Germany and France could assist in changing EU law. It could, but they can't do it alone. They would have to do it with everybody else. And again, I think that, you know, you've got your members of the European parliament who pass these rules that are independently elected, right? They're not

appointed by the governments, I don't believe. No, but they're still part of the political parties. Sure, sure. Although sometimes the parties that are sent to Europe are not the parties that are in charge in the country. Correct. So I guess this is what I'm saying though is if this was just Germany's regulating us, what do we do? The answer is talk to Germany. But it's like Europe is regulating us, what do we do? It's like, talk to a bunch of European countries and like it just, it's much slipperier to do. Definitely is.

Possibly by design. From a different perspective now, Leroy mentions, if Apple makes the integrated smart glasses that you were talking about in last week's episode, could they work around the DMA by not selling them in the European Union? So I think the couple of things going on here, I mean, they could do that. I don't think that that is an issue for them, though, like. This is not going to qualify as a gatekeeper product immediately,

which is the problem with the DMA. And if the issue is around like Apple opening up the iPhone for extra products, then making this is not going to change that rule. The EU wants this opened up no matter what, right? Like if you make an accessory product, you can communicate with the iPhone. So I don't think it's an issue that would affect that. I'm not sure whether the EU can mandate that there be smart glasses connectivity for third parties. If Apple, because Apple is making smart glasses, if Apple's not making, not selling them in the EU, I'm not sure they can reach that

far. Elsewhere in the world you have this, but not here. I think the reality would be what's happening with Apple intelligence, which is the EU will get them later, that Apple will ship them elsewhere. And then there'll be a software update six months or a year later that enables some of the things that are required by the DMA, and then they'll come to Europe. But to directly answer this question, sure, but I don't think that's, I don't think that their goal is ever to invest in building a new product and then not have it be available in the EU. And remember what I said last week, which is it's not just gonna be the EU. You're in danger of turning your back on any group

that regulates you. And that could be Japan and could be Korea, and it could be, you know, other, it could be, you know, who knows where that would say, oh, we like what Europe is doing, we're gonna do it too. And do you wanna take that risk and lose those sales? Yeah, and I do think for the time being, anything that Apple launches,

the EU will be later in the stack. You know, like how they'll launch something and it'll be in such and such countries? I can see for the foreseeable future, the EU and or any other nation or that wants to regulate Apple more heavily, they may just take more time before they launch these things, right? Like Apple intelligence is coming to the EU, but it's coming later. And I think that's going to start to occur, right? That, you know, they'll sell things in the US first, then UK and Canada, then maybe Japan, China, then they might start going to French and Germany.

I think we might start seeing that where they just don't want to, they want to kind of get things out there and maybe work with the EU a little bit afterwards because they're obviously not going to give the EU advance notice of anything, because that's not how Apple works. So it may be that things do roll out a little bit more slowly there now than they have done in the past. Yeah, I think that's exactly it, is that Apple's not going to share information. I think somebody actually complained about this at one point, where Apple Intelligence got announced.

And they're like, well, how dare they? And it's like, guys, they're not gonna share that with you in advance. First off, it would leak and they're not gonna do it. And so if the game is, well, we have to see it before we can even do a ruling about whether we think it's acceptable or not,

this is what will happen, is that it will be announced and not for them. And then they'll work it out. And I think that's the model. I think that you're exactly right, that this going to be, this will be available in Europe six months from now or a year from now. And Oliver wrote in to say there actually is a way with keyboard occlusion while using the Vision Pro Mac virtual display that the keyboard remains persistent, not just when

you have your hands near the keyboard. If you go into settings and then awareness and safety, there is an option to turn off quote bring hands near to reveal. If you turn that off, the keyboard should always remain occluded when using environments. So I got this from a few people. Yeah. And it entirely misses what I was saying. Oh no. So I'm going to say it again, which is my bug in Vision OS is if you turn on an

environment when you're not looking at your keyboard, the keyboard will never appear. It doesn't have anything to do with where your hands are. I think this is an interesting feature that you can have it disappear when your hands aren't over the keyboard or you can have it always be there. These are interesting decisions that they've made. I think that's great. What I'm saying is the only way I can use a keyboard and see it in Vision OS is if I dial up the environment while staring at the keyboard. Because if I'm not looking at the keyboard,

I'm looking at a thing that I'm working on and I dial in an environment and then I look back down to my keyboard, it's not there and it never shows up. I filed the feedback about it. I don't know whether the issue is that they, I mean, my guess is that they do their scan for the keyboard when the environment is entered,

and then they don't do it again. And I think that's a mistake. I think they need to be looking for that keyboard object, even when you're in the environment. Like, what if you dial up an environment, and then you put a keyboard in your lap afterward? Well, too bad, you won't see it because it's not persistent.

It needs to like know that the keyboard's there. I think that's a bug. And if not, it's certainly a missing feature, but it's not this. So I obviously, several people who know about this feature thought that this is what I was talking about. That's not it. It's that I literally can't get keyboards to show up if I'm not staring at them when I turn on the environment. And I wanted to remind Upgradients that it is Upgradees voting time.

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of your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay. Get online, online! Get on the line. It's time for room around up. Yeehaw, let's do it. This is very home

focused today, Apple home products. We're gonna start out by talking about another Mark Gurman report where he shares even more details about Apple's upcoming smart home controlling product with a screen that we need a name for, I think. Without a robotic arm too. Without a robotic arm. Without a robotic limb. I've seen, I think nine to five Mac or Macro rumors and maybe above calling it home pad as a kind of a short hand. But we need something because it's becoming more complicated to explain what this might be because it's also not really home pod with a screen anymore,

which is what we were calling it before. It seems to be slightly different to that. So we can, we can think about that. What was the name of their iPod speaker dock thing? What was that called? That was the iPod Hi-Fi. OK. That's not going to work.

That's not going to work. That's not going to work. HomePod Hi-Fi. I think I joked last week that it was, that we could just call it HousePod. It's a terrible name. I love it. There's HomePod and HousePod.

They're totally different. Totally different, yeah. Totally different. Totally different. So this device is, I think, somewhat unexpectedly to me, expected to debut as early as March of next year, and be, Mark calls it like, competitively

priced to products in the category. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, again, this is where, uh, my, my rule comes into, into, uh, effect where it's my classic, don't get, be prepared for disappointment rule where you're like, Oh, it's going to be competitively priced with a product that costs, you know, whatever $200 or like the Echo Show is at 150, the Echo Hub is 180, the Nest Hub Max costs 230. I'm like, okay, well, again, so that's so it's 230, but we're going to round

it up to 250. And then we're going to increase it to 300, 350. I mean, still it's not a thousand dollars. We had a whole segment a few weeks ago where we were worried about the robotic limb product and it being a thousand dollars for a thing you put on your kitchen counter and it seemed bananas. This, I love the idea of it being competitively priced, even if it's for Apple, that's a good thing. And if it can make it 250 or 200, then amazing, right?

Like also we have to say, Kerman's report suggests that it's got accessories. So this is really interesting to me because we've been talking about a HomePod with a screen and it sounds like it's, what if it's a touch screen device that's less than an iPad? It's it's what if it's a touchscreen device that's less than an iPad? It's not an iPad. It's definitely lesser than that, and it's got a simplified interface. But then there's like a wall mount that's probably got like a charger on it that you can attach in

various ways. And then there's a speaker mount, which I would read that as being basically like a home pod that it sits on. And that gives it power that way. Those, right, so we're like, Oh, competitively priced. But it's like if it's competitively priced with like an iPad speaker, and $200, but you're really going to want if you don't own home pods, you're really going to want to buy the speaker attachment for another $250 or $300 or whatever, right? It gets, it will be a classic Apple move. It will be, it will get pricey fast. And I actually kind of love that as a move for Apple to sell this thing at a relatively competitive price, and then say, Yeah, but you really want the accessories, don't you? That's a very Apple thing to do. Yeah. So you mentioned this warm out speaker docks, but it has a battery of its own and speakers of its own.

But I guess if you want to use it for certain things, you might put it on the kitchen counter speaker dock so you can watch movies while you're cooking. And then maybe you want to put it on the wall the rest of the time. So it becomes like the thing that people go to look at. We got a little wood stand for an iPad for the kitchen. It's like a wood block thing.

It's been, and, and it's, and it's nice. And I could see putting something like that in there and then like plugging it into an outlet. And that's not a fancy dock. That's just free. Uh, but you could do that too. But yeah, having the battery in it means that it can also be portable. Um, and who knows what the battery life will be on it

but you might have the ability to sort of like yeah and Unplug it from wherever it lives and then bring it with you and then you know use it in the kitchen or put it on The coffee table or whatever It will also feature a sensor to determine how far away a user is from the device and adapt the onscreen UI to match that. Just what was interesting. Could be interesting. Yeah, I mean, there's, it's apparently gonna support Apple intelligence, right?

Which means that it's gonna have enough kind of like sensors and ability to run models on it that stuff like this, there are versions of this that happen for other devices. Like even my Google Nest Home Mini Pro Max, whatever it's called. There's so many names in that product, I don't even remember what it is anymore. Nest Hub Home Mini.

It's got, you can wave your hand at it to dismiss an alert. Like it's got some stuff like that. But I like this idea that if you're far away, it's going to give you the big interface. And if you're right next far away, it's going to give you the big, the big interface. And if you're right next to it, it's going to give you a smaller interface. That's smart. That's really smart. I wanted to just, I just had a thought. Maybe they just call this thing Apple home. I mean, it would be just as confusing as Apple TV, but that's what made me think of it. Like,

cause I thought, no, they can't call it that because they have an app called the home app. And then I realized, Oh, Apple TV plus is part of Apple TV, which is an app that is on the Apple TV. So at this point it's probably I, I, I put my chips down on Apple Home as the name of this product. Um, okay. Quite from my government. The product has a touch interface that looks like a blend of the Apple watch operating system and the iPhone's recently launched standby mode. That's unexpected and weird and I can't imagine it. Like, I don't know what is going on there. That can't be right.

Well, that's somebody who's describing it, who saw it and is describing it to Mark Gurman. It's the parable of the men and the elephant, right? The blind men and the elephant. Everybody's got a different description of it. And then you're playing a game of telephone almost, where you're like, oh, it're playing a game of telephone almost, where you're like, oh, it looks like this.

We're like, oh, does it? But we don't really know. Apple Watch seems weird, but like simplified operating system, okay. Like there are complications, and then there's the chain of like little mini widgets that are basically Dynamic Island items that are on the Apple Watch now.

And then there's standby mode on the iPhone, recently launched, it's like more than a year ago, but okay. But clearly this is where they're going, is that they're gonna have this small screen, but they've got a bunch of technology already in existence that lets them put widget-like things on a small screen, or on a slightly larger screen, but seen from a distance, right? That's the other part of what they're doing here. I think that's, I, again, I don't know quite what form this is taking. And there's

some challenges with things like standby mode as well. And standby mode is not an interactive mode, which is the other part of this is like, I assume that there's a standby mode ask thing where you're not interacting with it. And then when you come close or you touch it or whatever, then there's an interaction mode that's a completely different kind of interface. So as you mentioned, it will support Apple intelligence and Mark says it is apparently been designed for app intense support. But some other details of his article suggest it won't have an app store of its own.

Yeah. Apple will be making a suite of first party apps. So the core apps you'd expect. So where are the app intents coming from? Inside the house, I guess. My expectation is, and I saw underscore was talking about this too, in regards to widgets, that I might expect here that this device is pulling from other devices in the house, right?

If you're at home, your phone is at home. And so you're using this thing and it may be pulling widgets, app intents, information from your phone in the way that like a Mac does now or the way that an Apple Watch does as a way to kind of bridge the gap to not have another App Store, another development point for developers to just pull some information from the other devices that are in the home? Yeah. So let's start with App Intents. My guess is that where that's starting, and it's just starting there,

is Apple's own stuff. It's the idea that Apple's got some knowledge of your information that runs on this device and that you can control the software using Siri. But like, I think this is a challenge because you can't have it not be functional when your iPhone leaves the house, right? So it's got to be functional on that level. But we already see with the HomePod that they've got this personal requests kind of thing where it allows it to tap into an iPhone that's on the network that is paired with the Apple ID.

And then it'll also do voice recognition. And there are things they can do there about like, who's using this and what data do I have access to? But yes, the idea of App Intense really is that you can extend the vocabulary of Siri and of Apple Intelligence by tapping into the functionality of third-party apps, which aren't gonna exist on this apparently. So you end up in this question of sort of like, well, what is this thing?

And I love the idea that Underscore had, that is what if the Mac widget projection system that shipped last year and now it's more integrated this year because they've got the iPhone mirroring and the notifications will launch the iPhone and things like that, but it shipped last year. What if that is a test run and that and obviously David Smith underscore is thinking about Widget Smith his app, third-party app, if it doesn't have access to the device what does that mean? Well what if it does have access to the device? Because what if it is looking at your iPhone and knows that

your iPhone has Widget Smith on it and has that widget that can run and stand by and it says I can run that too. I can show that thing from your phone, which makes this thing much more of an iPhone accessory, which I think is interesting. Now, it's gonna have to fall back because if you leave the house, and you don't have your iPhone anymore, and somebody else in the house is looking at that screen, it's got to have something on it, right? It's got to be useful in some way. And the question is like, how much infrastructure do they have to build on the iPhone to support this thing, right? Because that's a big deal, right?

They have to do an OS update on the iPhone to project things onto this device or sync things with these devices. And what we haven't seen with any device is Apple intelligence sort of like working with another device's data store. Because that's a thing you could do here too with like all of the the personal, the semantic index thing, right? Like is my Apple home thing going to download all my email and index it? Or is it going

to just talk to my iPhone about what email it knows about and what my personal context is? I think however they do this, so like my initial thought in saying no app stores, that's madness because like how would I watch YouTube videos? But then my second thought is well, I think the vision pro has shown it's becoming harder and harder to get them to make developers want to make apps for new platforms. So if Apple is able to find a way, I don't know how, right? But find a way to benefit from the apps that you have installed on another device inside

of your home, they should do that. Yeah. What I don't understand here is why they aren't supporting iPad apps or iPhone apps or TVOS apps, right? Like that there isn't like a, an app compatibility. And I get it. It's a weird screen and it's not like the other screens and all of that. But especially if you're dealing with widgets and app intents and look, Mike, for all we know, that is what they're going to do is there won't be an app store, but you'll be able to sync over. I wouldn't put past Apple for them to make this announcement and say, hey, developers, good news. There's a new set of APIs that allow you to sync over some level of code that drives widgets from

your iPhone, and then they reside on this device and they run on this device. It's like, whoa, that's wild. But they could do it if they wanted to. They could say, actually, there's no app store because it runs apps from your iPhone, but in a certain mode. And it just picks them up from your Apple ID and downloads the right thing and does the right thing and syncs it with your iPhone apps. And there may be no facility for that today, but there's nothing stopping them from saying, we just added it. Go, hey developers, hey, David Smith, go add this thing in so that your widgets

run on this. They could totally do that. So it does. David's job in our chat says, it feels like we're missing a piece of the puzzle here. And I agree. There is the fact that it is not as simple a story as, oh, and it's going gonna run iPad apps or it's gonna run iPhone apps or it's gonna run tv os apps or it has its own app store. Which is another thing to do which is I think the wrong thing to do. It's not any of that. The simplest explanation is it's gonna start with Apple stock stuff that it's built and then they'll see it does, and that they will then expand it later. But I would argue that that makes standby less interesting. It makes the, you know, full experience a little less interesting, but it's a lot less ambitious. But it's a lot simpler if you've got, you know, basically Safari and the home app and the TV app and like a very limited selection of stuff that you can do

that they've already built. It makes this product way simpler at the very least, but it is a mystery that there are all these details about App Intense and no app store, but widgets that like the simple explanation is it will be way simpler than we think. But I wouldn't put it past Apple that there's a little added idea or a bit of complexity that we don't know about. And I think that's good because one of my big

complaints about something like the HomePod is that it's not integrated enough with the contents of your phone, right? If we, Apple really views the iPhone as the repository for people's personal information, then if your iPhone is present in your house when you're there, your devices on the network, your Apple devices that are authenticated and also logged into your Apple ID

should be able to leverage that device which has all that knowledge and in the future your semantic index to do stuff. And if you throw in also the apps that are on it and the standby widgets that are on it and all, and the desktop or a notification center or lock screen widgets that are on all of those things are already running on it. Maybe the, maybe the other Apple devices in the home should be smarter about using those and then separately for multiple people should be like,

Apple already has the technology to recognize you based on your voice and differentiate you from other people. So the other way you take this is, and this is gonna have a camera, so maybe it would even be able to detect you by your face to just say, oh, this request came from this person, so I'm gonna use their iPhone. And then you've got a device that adapts

based on who's using it, which again sounds really good But a little more complicated and that brings me back to like how complicated is Apple going to make this might An hour or an allegory. Let's make this a little a little tangent to my thing about Pricing where the pricing is always going to disappoint you because it can be higher than you think I would also say always going to disappoint you because it's going to be higher than you think. I would also say the Apple products that ship are always going to be simpler than you think. There's all any number of things they could do. They won't, they won't do most of them, but they might do a little bit because I agree. I think the vanilla version of this is fine, but these reports suggest it's not quite that. So I think they're going to do something, but I don't think it's going to be

a big chain of complexity in part because that would be very expensive, and in part because they want to ship the product, right? And like, if it does well, then they're like, aha, now we have a plan of attack for how we add to this going forward. So, but I do think there's a missing piece here. It is a little bit confusing. I love my iPhone in standby mode. I leave it in the kitchen and it's got a weather widget on it that I built in standby mode. I leave it in the kitchen and it's got a weather widget on it that I built in Scriptable and it's got the time and it's actually really nice. And I would love for that sort of thing to run on one of these devices. It would be disappointing if all I get anywhere is the very, very stock Apple

experience like you're using an iPhone with no third-party apps. That would be a lot less exciting. Another little tidbit in this report, which is separated from the Apple Home device from Mark Gurman says, Apple has explored building its own line of smart home accessories, including an indoor security camera

that could double as a baby monitor. The idea would be to emphasize privacy controls, one of Apple's hallmarks. I will now also go to Ming-Chi Kuo, who is reporting that Apple is, Apple may make its own smart home camera in 2026. Kuo says Apple expects this to be a major accessory with targets to ship tens of millions of units a year,

to which I say, whoa, buddy. Ah, that's aggressive. That's aggressive. Tens of millions of units. That's a lot of units. Like maybe this is an interesting idea for them, but I don't, yeah, that would have to be really good to get people to either decide to do something I never wanted to do or replace the products they've already bought because Apple hasn't done it. And then to ship tens of millions of units a year would be aggressive. Here's my reaction to this. My reaction to this

is that I wonder how big the potential market for this category is versus what's out there now. Based on my exploration, and I've bought a bunch of different internet connected cameras over the over the last few years, and I've been disappointed with every single one of them. Every single one of them is not very good. Whether they're using their own cloud service, or they're recording to, you know, a memory card in a base station, or whether they're using HomeKit secure video. None of them are reliable. They're always like, Oh, let's check on this camera. Oh, it's down.

Why is it down? Don't know. No reason. Oh, it's back up now. Just, I find them very unreliable. And so first off, I'm a little skeptical that even the market that's out there, how many people are actually using them I'm sure there are very they're the more expensive kinds and things that are hardwired and all this stuff that are better

But my based on my experience with this category, I would say is there There's room for Apple in it. I'll put it that way. There's room for Apple here to make something that is Pricy because it's Apple, but good. And if they could do that, if they can make a pricey, good, easy to set up for people in an Apple ecosystem, set of cameras, have it be the baby monitor thing is interesting. It's the idea that like you can put this, it's an indoor camera and you can use it as a baby monitor and set it up to, you know, to do walk.

They've got all the parts, right? They've got intercom, and they've got alerts based on sound. Like, they could build some stuff with this that would be perfectly fine. And you have an element of comfort with Apple in regards to that product of, like, there's not going to be some privacy breach or something,

and someone can't, you know, the bogeyman come and watch the camera or whatever. It'll all be home kit secure video or you might have the ability to store it locally on another device. I think it's an interesting idea and I think because of, again, it's because of my experience with this category, I feel like there's probably a large unaddressed market of people who might want these things, but just don't either have tried it and have failed or have never even considered it. And if, you know, the fact is, I don't know, I'm

sure there are people who are out there will say, well, you know, there's so many ring doorbells out there, so this must be fine. It's like, okay, yeah, maybe so. And remember how long ago was it that there was was Dropcam? And now that's just a Nest cam from Google. Like, these cameras have been around for a long time. But that doesn't mean that Apple can't come in and say, well, ours is way better, more reliable. For something that's looking inside your home, you need to have trust in who's doing it. I think there are a lot of areas where when I saw

this report, I thought I can see it. I could see Apple making a run here and having it be successful because of the way they sell it. And because if they can do it right, they're entering a market that's not great. It's like there are plenty of players, but again, my experience is they're not very good. So I think it's an interesting idea. They do have a good play. Like they're obviously their understanding of cameras and video and their security. Like it would help them build a compelling story. There's one last thing I want to bring in now and then I want to make another point. So Mark Gurman also mentioned in his power on newsletter that Apple is quote, evaluating the idea of making a TV set again, like an actual TV. And that this would hinge on the success of Apple's other smart home devices.

So, you know, this, this Apple Home Hub device, maybe this camera. I want Apple to make these kinds of products because I would like them. However, I am concerned about Apple making all these new products. Why are they doing this? Like, I worry that this is being done to fill an earnings report. I was gonna say it's to bend the curve

of the wearables, home, and accessories category into growth again. And I'm not sure that that is, like all all of these products Apple should have done five years ago, 10 years ago even. So my, I agree. I think that Apple abandoning the home market was a huge mistake on their part. I mean, they're doing fine, but like, I think they could have played in a bunch of these areas and they allowed competitors to get into those areas too. But does that mean they should never do it? I guess that's my take on it is like, yes, this is this is better late than never is my answer, right? That you

should have done this five years ago. You should have done this in all sorts of different categories, not the low margin stuff, but like enough for you to make a line of products that are going to bring people into Apple stores over the holidays, and they're going to add them in because if this if today's Apple this is a little baffling about the home category for me if Today's Apple is anything it is a company that is designed to maximize The extraction of money from people in its ecosystem, right? You get an iPhone But then you get an iPad because it's like an iPhone and you get a Mac because if you're gonna get a computer,

why not have it work with your iPhone really, really well. And then you're looking at a streamer box and it's like, yeah, well, I'm already in Apple's ecosystem and Apple TV is a little pricey, but it's nicer than the others. And there's gonna be ads that are on Amazon. Okay, I'll buy that too. And like everything,

and then I'm gonna subscribe to Apple TV or maybe the Apple One bundle. And you just it that is what Apple and Tim Cook's Apple in particular is great at is just building up this entire shell of Apple ecosystem and everything inside it. And you can go outside it. But there are reasons you might want to stay inside it, at least for many of the products. And I'm not saying this from a perspective of it being like, against competition or anything. I'm just saying like, it's a good way, like you love our products, buy more of them. It's a brand relationship. It doesn't have to be sinister. And a lot of us feel this where it's like, yeah, wouldn't it like,

like, when we talk about Wi Fi, it was like, well, I mean, I've got, I got an arrow, people have have the neck gear stuff, people have the ubiquity stuff. But like, there's a lot of nostalgia for like, airport, where it's like, Oh, remember when Apple just sold you a Wi Fi thing, and you could forget about it. And like, we can talk about whether that's kind of a nostalgic rosy glow, and that there weren't problems with airport base stations anyway, but like, abandoned that category and, and, and partly we look back and we're like, Oh, wouldn't that be simpler to just buy the Apple

thing? So that's the thing that's perplexing about the last five years is that Apple didn't identify this as a place where they could sell a whole bunch of stuff to a whole bunch of people in their ecosystem and make even more revenue and tie it even further into your iPhone and your Mac and everything else. Because it does sound very much like them. So maybe the answer is they had leadership changes, their eyes were on other products, and now the people in charge at Apple of the home stuff are, are, have been charged to make that happen. Because you said, you know, it's about a balance sheet a little bit. I think it is. I think maybe though in modern Apple, that's what it took is for them to

see wearables, home and accessories cooling and say, well, what do we do to warm it up? And somebody said, well, we have completely abandoned home accessories and there are some high profile, high margin products that we could do in that category that would make us really successful. And so we should do those. And then somebody Tim Cook said, Yeah, okay, let's put some effort into that. That's my best guess is that that's what they're doing here. Now the TV. My theory about the TV, by the way, because I don't understand it. I don't know why you would do that. I don't know why I just for everything I've just said, like buying a TV, it just doesn't seem to be a good match. The competition is not very high margin. It's not a place where Apple can add a whole lot because you could just buy a nice new TV and put an Apple TV box on it. Apple TV runs inside of most of these devices. My only guess about the TV scuttlebutt is that they might be considering building their

next line of displays with Apple TV brains in them because that's what Samsung does. When I reviewed that Samsung equivalent of the studio display, it's a smart TV. It's not just a 27 inch monitor. It's a smart TV. It's not just a 27 inch monitor. It's a smart TV. That makes more sense. So maybe their argument is we're going to make some monitors and they're going to be TVs and you can use them as either or both. And that's okay. Like I think that's fine. I think it's kind

of dumb that Apple's displays can't do anything when the computer's not attached to them. Maybe that would be a thing that they could do, but it doesn't make as much sense to me as these other reports where I think, okay, they should have done this five years ago or 10 years ago, but the next best time is now. So do it now. This episode is brought to you by our friends at FitBot. If you're looking to make changes to your personal fitness, it can be hard to know how to get started or to know if you're doing it right. That is why I'm pleased to let you know that FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan made for you, because everybody has their own path with fitness. FitBod uses tons of data to make sure they're customizing things to suit you perfectly. They will adapt the exercises as you improve, so every workout remains challenging and interesting,

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Go there and get 25% off your membership. Our thanks to FitBaud for their support of this show and Relay. So Jason, you finally got your new Kindles. I think you got the new Kindle Colorsoft and the new Kindle Paperwhite, correct? I did. I did. They don't send them to me, so I have to buy them. So I did buy them. Well, thank you for your service. That's okay. I'm going to return them.

Oh, okay. There we go. We're not going to bury Lee on this. You're not happy with the new 2024 Kindle lineup? No, I mean, okay. It's complicated. So the, the paper white, the new paper white, you know, for the, for years, the paper white has been the best e-reader for most people just because it's a good price and it's a good piece of hardware. And I think that's still true. Even though I prefer what Kobo is doing, especially on the software side. I think that my generic recommendation, if people are looking for an e-reader,

is get the paper white, and they have three versions of it. There's like a base model with or without ads, and then there's like the signature edition that's got like a light sensor, so it will auto adjust the brightness based on where you are, which I think is a nice feature, and it doesn't have ads in it at all, but that's $200.

If you wanna spend 160, you can get a slightly less nice version that shows you ads, but it's still a good product. It's fine. I don't love it, but it's fine. And of course I prefer readers with buttons to turn the page. And Kindle, Amazon doesn't believe in it. Doesn't believe in that as a concept. They're really into like, you can write on it with a stylus and you can make marks and we got a color version now, but um, but Buttons are too far. We can't do that. And so that's um, that's a little frustrating for me But I don't have a lot to say about the paper white. It's fine I wish I had a ko-bo I could recommend instead but ko-bo stopped building their black and white equivalent to the paper white

Um, they have a lower end model, but the one with buttons they replaced with color model and aren't selling the black and white model anymore. And the color model doesn't have as good text clarity as the black and white one. There's an added kind of texture on the background of the color screen that is not there on the black and white screen. And so if all you're primarily doing is reading text, like I'm not opposed to color on e-readers. I am opposed to color on e-readers making reading text on e-readers worse, because that's the number one thing

by a very wide margin that I want an e-reader to be good at is the text part. Right? Bad decisions. Do you think that buttons on e-readers is like small iPhones iPhones where like there are people that really want them and really want them a lot and say it is important, but you've got to assume that the e-reader companies know that people are using the screens on

the buttons, right? Otherwise they would keep the buttons. Kobo has kept the buttons. I think Amazon has just decided that not enough people care about buttons for it to make a difference because they had a high-end reader that had buttons because they decided that buttons are a high-end feature. It's like they're buttons, what are you doing?

So yeah, I am at the point now where as a critic of technology, I'm going to say buttons on e-readers are good. You should give people choices. You don't have to put buttons on every e-reader But buttons make an e-reader nicer for reasons I've talked about a million times But basically I can write I can hold in my hand and rest my finger on the button while I hold the e-reader and then Every time I turn the page. I just squeeze the e-reader whereas with a touchscreen. You gotta you gotta change your grip

And it's not as comfortable for me to hold and I've got a like use little finger kickstand kind of thing And then I gotta move my finger over and then tap and then move it back comfortable for me to hold. And I've got to like use little finger kickstand kind of thing. And then I got to move my finger over and then tap and then move it back. And for me, ergonomically, it's just superior to have a button there. Obviously, most people don't care. I need to I need to be I need to criticize it because I think it's a bad decision, while also accepting the fact that most people don't care, which is why I recommend that people buy the the paper white if they're looking for a generic e reader and not which has no button and not like the Kobo color, because it's got buttons, but it's more expensive and it doesn't look as good and just don't just don't bother. So or there's a high end Kobo that's also nice, but again, it's expensive and you don't need it and the paper white is fine, even though I don't like it because it doesn't have buttons. Most people do not care. The color thing though kills me. And this

is my so look, my post on Six Colors about this is as much an essay about how I feeling about the current state of e readers as it is a review of these two products, because it feels to me like there was a time this heady time when it was like, Oh, the future of books is e-readers. That's what it's gonna be, e-books and e-readers. And what we found is maybe the future of books is the past of books, it's books, like on paper,

and then they're also e-readers, but like they haven't destroyed the printing of books. A lot of people prefer to just read paper books. I don't, but a lot of people do, and that's fine. But as a result, Amazon and Rakuten, who makes Kobo and other companies that are trying to make e-readers, are trying to pick up other technology that's floating around and stick it in e-readers and see if this is like, how about this? Will this work? And so like they all have styluses now where you

can do note taking. Well, on a six or seven inch e reader, note taking is stupid. I just I just I think it's a waste. Like, why is that even there on a big one like the Kindle scribe where you could like have a big PDF, and you mark it up. It makes more sense to me. I mean, also on iPad would do that. But sure, okay. I can see it. But they try they're trying to shoehorn it in everywhere because they're just like, will this move the needle if we add this feature in? And then the color is one where E Ink, the company that makes these displays, has done an amazing job of building a color screen. It really is remarkable. And the refresh rates are pretty fast. As a piece of technology, I can't believe we've gotten to the point where the E ink stuff looks this good. But like I said, it actually makes the text worse. And ultimately, yes, it's impressive you put color in your e-reader, but why? And I don't want to come across as curmudgeonly here. I want to come across as being the person who's saying, what is the user benefit?

Because just shoving new technology in a product and selling it to people as new is not good enough. You need to provide reasons why. And their reasons for color are like, but color, and it's not enough. Like, so what is it? Well, the book covers, when you turn it off, that book cover, if you're not, you know, I guess the Amazon one doesn't come with ads at the color level. So that's fine. When you turn it off, the book covers in color you're not, you know, I guess the Amazon one doesn't come with ads at the color level. So that's fine. When you turn it off, uh, the book covers in color. Well, yeah, but the back, the backlighting goes off. So you can't really see the colors. It's too dim. Okay. Well, when you're shopping for books or looking at your library, you'll see little tiny thumbnails that are in color. Okay. I guess, honestly, I turned that feature off and I just have it be a list anyway, but all right,

it's not really core to the experience. It's a nice to have. It's a little bit nicer. Oh, but you can you can highlight in a bunch of different colors. Okay, I guess if you're somebody who's a compulsive book highlighter who needs different colors in order to have it mean different things, I guess it's a nice to have feature, but it seems like a pretty niche feature. If buttons are a niche feature, what is that? Then it's comics. Okay, but comics. Most comics are in color.

You want to read comics in color. I know I said on this podcast that the real test of the Kindle color soft was going to be, do they do something like Comicsology Guided View and go panel by panel? And they do, it's called Panel View. You double tap on a comic and you can read it panel by panel.

Now, I would argue that panel by panel is not a great experience for reading a comic, but it's better than nothing. I mean, it was invented for phones because people have their phones and they wanna read comics. You'd be better off using an iPad, but you could do it. I read a few comics on the Kindle ColorSoft panel by panel.

It's fine, although even there, you know, I did read Watchmen, which is mostly square or vertical panels, but like lots of comics do vertical panels. And I read the Star Trek comic that a lot of horizontal panels and like you know what the Kindle doesn't have? It doesn't have an accelerometer and auto-rotate. So like you get a wide panel, you can't just turn it on the side and see it wide on the screen. It's basically just like turning a book where nothing happens, right?

Nothing happens. I mean you can manually go to settings and change it to rotate, but then you go to the next panel and it's vertical and you're like, okay, uh, and it's all shrunk down and you can't read it. So like it's missing a bunch of things. Is it doable? Sure.

It's okay. There are better ways to read comics than on a Kindle one panel at a time. It's too small a screen to read it the whole page at once, it's just too small. In the end, I can be impressed by the eating screen and glad that they built the panel view in and still say, I feel like these color e-readers are trying to sell people on something that doesn't actually

add anything, which would be fine if it didn't take something away. But even on the Kindle ColorSoft, which has apparently they did like extra tricks to the lighting and stuff, because I think Amazon was not impressed by that e-ink panel that Kobo just slapped into their, in their Libra color and we're done and called it a day. And as a result, the Kindle lighting is better and it looks better than the Kobo color. But it's still, you know, it's still not as good as a reader, as text on a page.

And I think fundamentally you buy this thing for text on a page. If you don't you buy this thing for text on the page. If you don't, if you're buying it for pens and color and stuff, great. But I would think most people buying an e-reader really just want to read books. And color, again, color is a great idea, but it can't make the reading experience worse. Plus it makes it more expensive. So for me, color e-readers are a mistake for now, and nobody should buy them. And you should just buy a reasonable black and white e-reader. And I wish Kobo still made their reasonable black and white e-reader, but they stopped. It's still on their site and it just says sold out. So it makes

me wonder if ultimately they might do a version three or bring the version two back into the Libra back into production. But you know, for now I updated my what e-reader should I buy story to say it's the paper white, the latest paper white. It's good. Don't buy the cheap Kindle because it doesn't have a flush screen and it's not waterproof. And I think that's dumb. I think you should be able to read your e-book at the pool or in the bathtub and not worry about your

book being destroyed and shorted out and whatever. Like, forget it. Waterproof, I think, is a much more useful feature than color at this point. So it was a journey. And the answer to the overarching question about how I feel about this is sort of despairing because I feel like the stuff that I care about for e-readers, including not just niche things like buttons, but also things like text on a page and clarity, is like going by the wayside a little bit as they try to find other features that will goose sales of this category. And I accept that this is a weird category. It's not as big as anybody hoped. You're building these things in an era where you might be better off building a

smartphone or a tablet or a computer or whatever, but instead you've got these e-readers. But like I would love to see some innovation in e-readers. There's probably a story in this, although I've written about it before. Like I would love to see innovation where I can do something like do RSS feeds, or more content on them that's text might be interesting. There are ways you can get content on these things, but it's not very good. Or innovation in like Amazon,

okay, you don't wanna put in a button, I get it. How about you put in an accelerometer so that not only can your e-reader auto-rotate, especially when you're trying to read a button, I get it. How about you put in an accelerometer so that not only can your e-reader auto-rotate, especially when you're trying to read a comic, but if you put an accelerometer in, you could probably do something like let me double tap the back of it to change the page. Then I don't need a button. I can just double tap on the back and the accelerometer would go, oh, I got tapped and advance the page. I love it, let's do it. But instead I feel like they're going down paths

and this is the story of a lot of technology over the last 30 years, which is sometimes the suppliers come out with a new product. E Ink is perfectly reasonable to say, oh man, color, yeah, check it out. Look what we did. It is very impressive that they've made color ink displays.

But it's incumbent on the company that's building the product, and this is what Apple has always been good at, to say, what's the use case? Why does somebody want this? And in all my days, in the early part of my career, when we were covering Mac versus PC especially, the PC makers would put whatever was new in their product and then try to figure out a way to sell it. And a lot of times it made no sense. And Apple would be like, no, we're not gonna do that until we can find a way

to make this story make sense. We're not gonna put it in our product. And a bunch of like the color e-readers feels so much like that, which is, well, they gave us a color screen. So I guess we'll make a color e-readers feels so much like that, which is, well, they gave us a color screen, so I guess we'll make a color e-reader with it. It's like, that's fine, but why? Like, who wants it?

Who wants it other than, but it's in color. It's like, yeah, but why? So I don't know. I wish more people liked this category. I wish the products in it were better. I wish Kobo made a better version of the black and white Libra. I expect that in the next few years this will get resolved because the color screens from ink will get better and they won't degrade the reading experience. But for now, and also people don't buy, you know, you buy a Kindle

every eight years or 10 years or something. Really, you could just go on forever. So like, if you need one, you know, they're good. They're bright. They're waterproof. The paper white is like it's there. One of the sad footnotes of this is that as a part of this review, I spent some time reading on the Kindle Oasis, which was Amazon's now just discontinued high-end e-reader that has buttons on it. That's the best that's the best e-reader I own. It's great. The only problem is that it's got a micro USB port on it instead of USB-C, but it's

great. It's black and white. It's got buttons. It's got a really bright Sidelight display and a clear display 300 dpi display. It's a great e-reader But they don't make it anymore my two favorite e-readers. They don't make them anymore because they're off gallivanting around with color displays and Anyway, so I try not to be grumpy about it. I'm trying to understand why they're doing it I think that they're they're they're trying to find more markets for this product category and I get it It's not a big category, but what they're trying right now for me, I think goes against the whole purpose of the category This episode is brought to you by notion there's so much to love about notion for me I love that I have this one place where I can put everything about my business. I can put all of my ideas, I can put media, I can put meeting

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slash upgrade or lowercase of course. Our thanks to Notion for their support of this show and Relay. So there's been some, I guess we got a bunch of updates about Vision Pro stuff that we do over the last couple of weeks. So this week there was another piece of immersive content. This was a music video from the weekend. I think it's called Love Hurts is the, Open Hearts, man, that was in the same area, but completely wrong. It's called Open Hearts.

Right. I love that Apple calls it an immersive music experience. It's a music video. It's a music video. It's a music video. And it feels like a music video. It is, it's a music video. It's a classic, I would say classic style music video,

like me growing up watching MTV. It gave me kind of like thriller vibes at times where it was like, oh yeah, we spent a lot of money on a music video. That's what it is. I think what this shows, I think more than anything, is that special effects, good special effects, can have quite an impact, to be very impactful in immersive video. So there are like a couple of moments where they really

play around with your perspective and stuff like that. And it's very interesting. Adam Backs I had the exact same reaction that you did, which is everything Apple has shown us up to now in Immersive has at least seemed real. I know that that submerged movie has VFX in it, right? Shout out to our friend Todd Vizieri, but it's meant to be naturalistic. This is a surreal experience. Like you're flying and going through like portals

and like it's not, you see a bunch of stuff that can't be real, right? So you know you're watching special effects. They look great. They really do. I'm very impressed with them. But what it does is it says very clearly, this is what an immersive VFX show can look like. And I liked seeing that.

And there are a few moments where I need to watch it again because one of the things I really like about it is a lot of immersive stuff. When we were talking about the what if animation, one of the fun things about the what if stuff is if you notice, if you look to the little sides, you can see like there's little Easter eggs here. And there's some of that in this where like, if you look to the little sides, you can see like there's little Easter eggs here. And there's some of that in this where like, if you look out the window, various points, like yeah,

up front is one thing and out the window is a completely other thing. And that's really interesting, right? Like they're playing up the fact that you're in this very weird scenario and it's surreal. And I liked that a lot. I thought that was, yeah, it definitely felt to me like, you know, this is, it's not a movie, you know, it's not even much of a narrative. No, I have no idea what's going on in this video.

I have no idea what the point of it is. He's in an ambulance, but also like a flying machine. And then he, I guess, spoiler alert for a thing that doesn't need spoilers because it doesn't make any sense. But I guess he dies at the end or doesn't. I don't know. It doesn't, well, there's the over the end credits. There's like a flatline sound,

like he died in the ambulance or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's ridiculous, but it's visually very interesting. And I liked, I mean, the song is fun. The Weeknd is a charismatic performer. He was a good pick for this because he is very creative, right? As like, that, and so like, I think that it, it fits that.

And the Weeknd's music is good. I like his music. And so like, I like his music too. You can sit and like, this is a song I never heard before. And I'm like, I'm going to enjoy it because I know I like his style of music and it's like fun to watch. And he is, he is like, you know, love him or hate him. He's like one of these artist kind of performers. And so I think, you know, he, it makes sense to throw something like

a project like this at him, like an, and that he will, he will go all in on that. And so, yeah, this is interesting. Like I would say to me though, I want more stuff like submerged and I want this, right? Like I don't want a bunch of music videos, right? Like I want more engaging narratives, but this was to me, just an interesting idea of like, Oh, here's a completely different style of content. And it also really works. So yeah, experiment, let them try some things that may not have been tried yet in immersive, because it doesn't matter because it's a music video and they just are throwing visuals at the wall. And I think

that's fine. When you talk about music, I know they've got that concert that's coming up. And that is more in the context of what I would like to see. I wanna see some live concert performances and I suppose some more Alicia Keys style performances as well. I'm really interested to see about on the music side, what are the different options here. And I know that they've got this concert for one series

that they're starting. And that concert for one makes it sound very Alicia Keys like. I think this is focused on the Alicia Keys thing. So that the first one is a musician called Ray and this is coming soon. However, uh, so I asked, uh, contact the Apple about, is this a series or is this just a one-off? And they confirmed to me that it's a series and also that you can actually go and watch this in UK Apple stores now, even though it's not confirmed to me that it's a series, and also that you can actually go and watch this

in UK Apple stores now, even though it's not available yet, because she's a British artist, right? And with this new series, Concert for One, there will also be an accompanying spatial audio EP on Apple Music. So this reminds me of like, they did this in the past. It wasn't called like Made for iTunes, but they used to bring artists in and create EPs, right? Like there were like iTunes EPs. So maybe it feels

a little bit like that. And so, yeah, I think that this one is going to be very much in the vein of the Alicia Keys thing. I don't know. I didn't see I have maybe of everyone. I know I reacted very negatively to the Alicia Keys portion of the music, immersive video stuff. I found it really awkward to have someone singing at me. Yes. I wonder what this is going to be like. I would like to say concert like performances, but I don't want to be making eye contact with the musician for the whole time. I know. I know. I, we should say, um, Apple is apparently also letting people, like if you're a fan of The Weeknd or you want to see this thing and this is a smart way to market this, you can go into an Apple store apparently and say I would like to watch The Weeknd's music

video on the Vision Pro and you can do that. They'll let you do that. So they're using content to drive people to try Vision Pro, I think that's very smart. That makes sense because otherwise there's not really a lot of point signing up these big names, right? Because essentially you want the weekend to be promoting this, but there's no point in the weekend promoting this if only then the people that can watch it are people that already own a Vision Pro.

Right. And it gets them in the Apple Store, and there's the long game aspect of it, but they get to try it and maybe rave about, oh, so it was amazing. And it's all good. It's all to the better for Apple, I think. Also, they announced, along with the weekend thing

and the console one, that they have new episodes in two of their series, Adventure and Wildlife, in 2024. And there's more stuff coming 2025. I know that this has been a point maybe made often, too often at this point, but the thing about the slow rollout of this content is I think it's putting too much pressure on each piece of individual content. Like if I wait a month and like I'm not in,

like I haven't particularly been taken by the wildlife series, right? Like they've been doing, I've watched some of it, but I haven't really, it's just not necessarily the stuff that I want. I don't know why I just haven't. But then it's like, oh, there's a wildlife episode this week. It's like, well, if there was lots of stuff,

then I could kind of pick and choose where at the moment I kind of feel like I'm forcing myself to watch some of this content because it's like the only stuff available. It's like, okay, Mike, you got to watch the rhinos now. Yeah. It's like, I don't really want to. Like I like nature documentaries. I don It's like, okay, Mike, you got to watch the rhinos now. Yeah. It's like, I don't really want to. Like I like nature documentaries.

I love that. Why they just haven't, maybe I got to give them another go. But like those ones, they haven't really grabbed me. I've liked the adventure stuff more. Yeah. But my point here is it just puts a lot of pressure on this, the content. I know because there's not that much of it. And so you, yeah, I get that. I've really liked the wildlife stuff as somebody

who's never been to Africa to see Africa and see rhinos or elephants. Like it's kind of amazing and feels, you know, more immersive as a travelogue. And so I kind of liked that about it, but you're right. All of this stuff has way more pressure put on it because there's this slow drip of content. But I will say this, at least there's a drip of content now.

It feels like they are now getting this stuff out there at a pace where they weren't the first six months that the Vision Pro was out. You know what I realized now? I'm not talking about the wildlife. I'm talking about the dinosaur one. Oh, I don't like the dinosaur one. The dinosaur one made me feel motion sick. So I should go watch the wildlife stuff. I don't think I've watched enough of that. I'm thinking of the rhinos and the elephants.

They're amazing. Don't watch fake. I mean, they're not fake animals, but they're CGI. I didn't like like the opening shots of the dinosaur one. You're kind of like moving like overhead and it made me feel motion sick. And I've never felt motion sick from VR before. And I don't like those are my least. The dinosaurs are my least favorite of all of the ones that they've done. Then I'm going to watch some of the wildlife stuff and just some tangential stuff.

But I thought it was funny. I thought you'd like it. I sent you some screenshots today. Bbc, no, BBC, British Broadcast. BBC Channel 4. BBC Channel 4. BBC Channel 4. British Broadcast, the Channel 4.

Who are the proprietors of Taskmaster. BBC, British Broadcast. BBC Channel 4. BBC Channel 4, as we call it here in America. British Broadcast, Channel 4, who are the proprietors of Taskmaster, I guess I'll say. They're like the home of Taskmaster in the UK. They are the UK home of Taskmaster, yes. Yeah, they have- One of my favorite TV shows, yeah. Exactly, they have made a Vision Pro app, Channel 4, and with it, a Taskmaster environment in which

you can watch shows, which is like a fun thing, but they have, I think, committed a cardinal sin of environments. So when you're in the environment, you were sitting in the chair of the host of the TV show, Greg, right. Uh huh. But the way they have set it up, if you're sitting in his chair, you are not dead center with the screen that they're showing content to you on. So to watch the content,

you're kind of off center, which is that's not great. So they really, they've created a fun environment, but it's not one that you should be watching content in, which is not the way that say Disney have done it where they're fun but they're also really good experiences for watching content plus the screen is too far away from you it's a fun thing but not a great not a great use of this technology here's totally what they did there's a taskmaster VR game for for quest yeah

and my guess is that they that the environment is a render of the space from the VR game okay that's my guess it's also not very high quality compared to some of the others I've seen yeah and it's it's it is yeah it's it's like it's like a CD-ROM game a little bit yeah there's not a lot of like there's like a try but none of it is like great but yeah look it's a fun thing to do and it's also a fun thing to get some headlines Which is you know, it's part of the reason I'm sure they did it because they want people to know they got this thing

yeah, and they went to the trouble of doing a vision Pro app and Apple Did them a solid by saying, you know, can we make a let's work with you to make an environment? They're like, we've got this VR thing and so they made the test master environment environment and they're like, we've got this VR thing. And so they made the taskmaster environment. You received two Vision Pro accessories from Belkin, some new stuff, a travel bag and a new head strap. I did, I did new Vision Pro accessories that feel very much

like they're the Vision Pro accessories Apple should have shipped with when they shipped the Vision Pro. But they didn't. shipped with when they shipped the Vision Pro, but they didn't. So the head strap works with the knit band, right? The one that goes around the back of your head. The solo band. And I was using Solo Top

where there was a second band on top, but this is a, it's thicker than the basic strap and it's got a velcro attach and basically you take the two plastic pieces and put them on the the band that that's coming back from the Vision Pro that's got the speakers on it and then you put and then this band runs over your head and you can adjust it with the velcro and then you still use the knit band. This is the setup that we had when we got our first preview of this in June of last year. And yet Apple didn't ship it. They ship the two thin bands or the knit band by itself. And it's way better. This is how it should have been shipped. I don't know. I mean, I guess the reason Apple didn't sell this product themselves is because they would have to admit that it's the right configuration and instead everybody's going to have to pay $50 if they want this configuration. But I can endorse it. I think

it's really comfortable. I think they did a really good job. There are some other products that do similar things, but it's solid. It's solid. I have a Spigen one, which is nice, but I can't get it to go as tight as I would want. And this one looks like it is basically infinitely adjustable. So I have ordered yet another strap for the Vision Pro. Amazing. I want to strap like four at this point.

I know, same, but it's a good one. I think they did a good job with it. And it's very clear. This is Apple going to a partner. In fact, Mark Gurman wrote a thing this week about it where he basically said, look, Apple can't do this. But they went to their partner and said, please do this. I don't know why people say it. Why can't Apple do this? Apple can do this. I think they maybe it's, it would be a little

embarrassing. I mean, I agree. I think two straps like in the thing, like they could, they can have a third. That's a combo between the two. They could do this if they want to, they just don't want to. More than that, my theory is that they will, if they do a revised division pro next year, that it'll, this'll be what it'll have. Yeah. I think this is it. We know that they thought it was a good idea

because this is what we used in the original demos. And some of the original shot I know a version. I mean it wasn't this exact one, but it looked like this not again I don't know behind the scenes But so much of the vision Pro detail does seem to be driven by designers who have this fantasy of how people use technology Yeah, and the the knit strap which is very beautiful Obviously are expensive to make and super comfortable and easy to adjust and all that and it is great And the knit strap, which is very beautiful, obviously very expensive to make. And super comfortable and easy to adjust

and all that sort of thing. And it is. So here's the thing is, my theory is that they're like, okay, we wanna put this with the strap on top and the designers are like, oh no, that will ruin the entire experience of it. It's like, okay, fine. But it would be better.

It would actually be nicer if you had that strap up there. And so they ship it with two straps, the nice one that doesn't fit and the ones that aren't as nice. Yep. Come on, like it's baffling. Anyway, it is $50 for a couple pieces of plastic and a strap.

Yeah, I know, I know. I'm just resigned to the fact that every Vision Pro accessory is gonna be expensive. Okay, how many could they even ever possibly sell? I mean, this is the thing right like every the volumes must be so low that every single Vision Pro accessory has to be a high Margin good like it has to be because they're never gonna make any money on it. Exactly. Exactly, but There's also a carrying case for the Vision Pro. And it's really good.

It's so good. So I've been using the $20 basically MetaQuest case that Casey Liss suggested. And it's, I mean, it's just bad. It did the job of being a container for the Vision Pro, but like, it's just this one layer of material and it's not very good. This Belkin bag is so good, it's like half the price of Apple's Marshmallow, and it's also smaller.

It's made to fit the Vision Pro so it fits it perfectly. It's got a little thing that you flip up after you put it in there to cover the eye part, the lenses, so that they don't get messed up. It's got a little battery spot that you put the battery in and flip it down so it stays attached. And if you put the battery the right way in, the USB charge port on the battery is accessible.

So you can zip the case mostly up, you can have it all in there and still plug it in and charge it up when you're not using it and then unplug it. And it's so much smaller than the Apple case. It's a perfect fit. It's got an optional shoulder strap and a regular carrying handle and it's got a zipper pocket in the front for some probably pretty thin things that you can put in there and a non zip pocket in the back where you can

put stuff. It's just a nice little case. They did a good job. Again, it's like 100 bucks or something. It's not cheap. But I look at it and I think, why did Apple not make this? And my only answer is because the same designers who thought that the the knit strap by itself was the most elegant and that you couldn't muddy it up with that strap that goes over the top with the velcro. Oh, who does velcro anyway? Also designed this case. They're like, oh, but it's so big and puffy and it's so beautiful. And clearly those people were in the design driver's seat for initial Vision Pro. And the number one thing that I'm looking forward to in another Vision Pro iteration is maybe all of that stuff starting to get cleared away.

It might take multiple years for that. But again, this is such a practical case for the Vision Pro. And the Apple case is so impractical. So anyway, I think both of these accessories are great. I don't know how many people are going to buy them because you've got to have a Vision Pro and you've got to have the stomach to spend the money. But I will tell you, I think they're both really good. Thumbs up to Belkin.

I guess thumbs up to whoever at Apple whispered at Belkin about this, but yeah, they're good. It's a much better scenario all along. And I'm looking forward to traveling with that strap and with that bag. I had already ordered the strap and that's not coming until the end of November for me. I don't know why it's pretty back-ordered.

But the bag I hadn't ordered and I just ordered the bag. And that will be here on Wednesday. So this might mean that I might actually take my Vision Pro on my next vacation, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. I might take it with me. I might be the guy on the plane, Jason. I might do it.

Oh, yeah. Well, I'm excited about it, not just for all of this, which I'm absolutely gonna travel with this thing too, and I'm looking forward to it. But the other reason is the thing that we're gonna talk about now, which is also with the 0.2 latest betas on Mac OS and Vision OS, guess what you get?

You get wide and ultra wide views of Mac screen sharing. This is the big, this is in some ways the feature that everybody thought would be the big feature, but it was like promised later. And now we've reached kind of promise time. And it's a lot, it's a lot. It's a lot of Mac in your face. Last week we touched on it because you tried it and I haven't tried it and today I installed the

beta on my Mac. This is a spoiler for Cortex. We talk about it on Cortex and Grey like just says to me, you have to do this. So I did it. It's incredible. It is. The ultra wide is indeed very ultra wide. It is massive. Yeah, hilariously so. It's massive. Imagine that you're just surrounded by,

I'm surprised it doesn't go further back and it's just like a three, get a swivel chair and just zip around it. It's so wide. It's genuinely to the point where any window management that I do on a Mac is rendered pointless. Like the windows are so far away from each other. Like for me, like for actually for using it,

I would use the wide rather than the ultra wide. But if I ever needed the ultra wide, I have it. And yeah, like at this point, like if I am going on a trip or I'm going to be working in a hotel, this has made the Vision Pro absolutely indispensable, indispensable for me, because I can actually really, truly have an improvement on my working rather than just like, hey, look, I can make my Mac screen bigger, which is how it was before. Right? So, you know, whatever your laptop was, you

could essentially project it and it would make that bigger, but it was still the resolution and size roughly of your screen that you were using when now you can take that, but you can also make it bigger and even bigger. And I think I heard Ben Thompson say on sharp tech that the ultra wide is the same resolution as putting two studio displays next to each other, which is massive, but you can also make it massive. Well, and, and I think I'm going to mention this last week, but one of the things that I like to do in the vision pro is in terms of window management is putting things off to the side, right? That's one of the great things about the spatial experience

is I can take a music player, like albums or something, and I put it off way off to the right or a clock, and I put it way up or off to the right or off to the left. And it's running and it's playing music, but it's out of sight and out of mind. And I like that. And then if I need to adjust it or look at it, I can either look over and grab it and bring it forward,

or I can just look over and interact with it and then go back to my task. Nice. Well, with the wide and the ultra wide, you can do that on the Mac, which if you are intensely on the Mac right now, and you want the Mac stuff to be in your world, taking a window from the Mac that you might need to consult with, but is not part of your general focus, you put it

all the way over on the right or on the left and leave it there. And now it's doing the same thing as those Vision OS apps that I did, which is I don't need to see it. I just need to look at it when I need it. And then I turn and I look and it's there and I interact with it and then I go back. I also was playing around with really wide windows, which in something like Logic or Final Cut especially, it's really interesting to just say,

what if this window was extremely wide? I want to see the entire podcast at once. Well, with Logic, you've got a lot of stuff, with Logic, but Final Cut especially, you've got a lot of stuff on the sides. You've got like your bins and your effects and all that stuff that's on the sides. And so it kind of works where if you've got the timeline

and the video kind of right in front of you, and then you kind of turn to the really wide areas to grab something or click something, I can see that being a pretty good experience. I know some people look at the screen sharing stuff on Vision Pro and they say it's just not clear enough, it's just not good enough. I guess eyes will vary.

I would say be very, I'm gonna say, I think it works pretty well. I like it. It's not going to say I think it works pretty well. I like it. It's not perfect, but I think it works really well. It's definitely better than me trying to window manage on my 13 inch laptop. I'll tell you that. Exactly. But somebody else might say it doesn't look clear to me and I'd rather window manage on my 13 inch laptop.

Other, other hosts of other podcasts might even say that that's a sub tweet. I'm sure they will. This, this is what I'm saying is I'm not going to say that the person who says that is wrong. I'm going to say that that is not my experience. And that therefore, I don't think that it is fundamentally true that everybody who uses this feature will find it clear or find it blurry. I think it's going to depend and you're going to have to try it and see if it works for you or not. And if you're thinking of buying a Vision Pro for something like this, go to the Apple Store. Well, I mean, you can return it if it doesn't work, but like, go to the Apple Store and try it out there. Because I think it works really well. I think it's, I think it is a very impressive bit of technology. And, and so I'm just, I'm not sure I would go as far as Mark Gurman who says this is it This is the killer app, but it's pretty good Like this is a really really good feature that that is good in an area that vision pro has struggled with which is actual

Productivity that it can be a big Mac monitor, which was always the promise now They've delivered at it, and I think they did a really good job big Mac monitor, which was always the promise. Now they've delivered at it and I think they did a really good job. This episode is brought to you by Smarter World. If you're into podcasts, and I think you probably are, and you like podcasts that delve into how tech shapes your lives, this show is for you. Let's start with a couple of questions. How do you control a robotic forearm with your voice? What technology allows cars to communicate in real time as they drive? And what's inside that smart plug that reduces home fires

and saves lives? What's inside of them to make sure that that happens? If you're curious about the answers to these questions, you will want to listen to the Smarter World podcast because they speak to some of the world's biggest brands and most exciting startups about how they use technology to change the world around us. The host, Kyle Fox, recently spoke to Honeywell about how smart energy is changing the buildings that we work in, while AppliedEV shared how they're working to bring autonomous driving vehicles to delivery fleets and commercial products, and in another episode, Damon Motors explained how they're redefining the riding experience of their electric motorbike. Motors explained how they're redefining the riding experience of their electric motorbike. The podcast features guests discussing technology topics from drones to software-defined vehicles

to smart home innovations. They explore the stories behind the tech that we use every day. You can listen to these conversations by searching Smarter World wherever you listen to podcasts. That's the Smarter World podcast. Search for it now and take a listen. Our thanks to Smarter World for their support of this show and Relay. We'll finish out today's episode with some Ask Upgrade Questions. Our first question this week comes from Jacob who says, Thanks to you talking about Homebridge, Jason, I've realized I can finally control all my smart devices from the Home app and start using shortcuts to control and automate them. This means I need to get a home hub. Do you have a recommendation between

a HomePod mini and an Apple TV? Okay, Mike, let him have it. I think Apple TV is the answer here. I think you could use a HomePod mini and that's fine. You can also use an iPad to do this, but I don't recommend an iPad because then you're needing to think about the battery, right? And with both the Apple TV and the HomePod Mini, you're not thinking about the battery and that's great. I just think for a device, both of these devices bring other things to your home. And I think the Apple TV is a bigger benefit to your home entertainment experience than a HomePod Mini is. HomePod Mini is great, but really you're going to end up wanting a bunch of them if you get

one of them. And I think, oh, apparently I've been told that the iPad isn't a Home Hub anymore. So there you go. So you need a HomePod Mini or an Apple TV. They used to be, iPads used to be, but they must have changed that. Thank you, Live Chat, for that. But still, I think the Apple TV is better. Like I think you'll get a nice experience.

I think the Apple TV is better. Like I think you'll get a nice experience. I think the Apple TV is a really good home entertainment device. It's where I watch basically all of my TV. The remote is really good. The apps are all there, right? Like this is unbelievably one device where Apple did get everybody to make an app for it. Now they don't all integrate in the way that Apple would like,

you know, like Netflix and YouTube in the TV app, for example, but you can still get really good Netflix experiences, really good YouTube experiences, as well as just a good way to watch all of your content and it's all available there. So I recommend an Apple TV. I like Apple TV.

I think that that is a premium experience. Look, if you don't have a TV, if you have no use for a streamer box, then get a HomePod mini, I guess. Maybe you can use that for something. But I think Apple TV is a nice thing to have. So yeah, I agree. David asks, can the new Mac Mini be powered

via the USB and all Thunderbolt ports? Nope. It's a shame though, isn't it? Like it would have been nice. It would have been nice. No, you don't think so? I can see the appeal of having a bus powered thing so that you could potentially like take it from one room to another,

let's say, and just plug it in with one cable and it would provide power and data. The problem is unlike a laptop where you can bus power it, it doesn't have a battery. So there's all sorts of, and I don't know what, how much power it draws at the high end, but like it would require a whole lot more circuitry to include a battery and the ability to charge it. And I think that it would be really dangerous

if all it did was do bus power, because if there's any power lag at any point, you're gonna lose the device. And I think there was too much engineering for a non-laptop. Is that USB Power more unreliable than mains power in that way? I don't know all the details. I'm not an electrical engineer. It's just my gut feeling that you don't have the backup of a battery and that a laptop's

electrical system is very different from a desktop's electrical system because it doesn't have that protection as well as requiring the ability to charge and things like that and I I mean it would be nice But my guess is that there are some reasons involving complexity and stability that would not be ideal now David Shavinar Chad says well some many PCs can happen. It's great option I think my answer would be Apple looked at it and said, it's not worth it. Like it's not worth it. And, and I think there are probably some very specific things that they made the decision to not bother with.

Um, I love the idea of a bus powered Mac mini. You just literally it's one cable instead of two, because if I were to get a Mac mini and take it back and forth between my two desks I Would need to plug in two things right power and Thunderbolt that sounds nice, but again, I can also see why Apple would say this is not a priority for for us I think I think it would be sick. Give us power I think you'd give awesome just like this one cable and you've got absolutely everything because your daisy chaining it all of a doc Let's put it on the to-do list and let's see if Apple can get there someday

You can do it get rid of that that would give more space on the back if they didn't have the power plug Exactly, they could put I don't know But something else there. What do people want? What's the port that people want SD card or something for some reason more more Thunderbolt? card or something for some reason. More Thunderbolts. More Thunderbolts. Hacon asks, I'm pondering the purchase of an Apple Watch series 10, but what would be the real world changes in my day to day of going with the cellular option? Is it worth the additional money? Now I know you use yours a lot. Do you find it to be worth it? Yes.

Okay, why? That's why I still do it. So the reason, in my opinion, that you do the cellular Apple Watch is because you go places without your phone. That's it. If you don't go, if you never go a place without your phone and you're just using your watch with your phone, you don't need to worry about it.

If you, I think that's the use case. If you wanna do what I do, which is leave my phone at home and go walk the dog or go for a run with just AirPods and my Apple watch, you need cellular. Not that you can't listen to things with just a wifi watch, but if you fall, get hit by a car, whatever it is, it can't call for help if you don't have a

cellular model, if your phone isn't there. So I think that's it. I think the number one use case for cellular model of Apple Watch is you go places without your iPhone or you'd like to. Like, I don't miss, I was walking the dog the other day and a woman ran past me and she's got an iPhone strapped to her arm. And I thought, like, I don't like, I don't like the iPhone in my pocket. When I'm, when I'm running or even walking the dog, I don't I don't like it. I really like not having a big iPhone and they keep getting

bigger in my pocket. When I'm running or when I'm even walking the dog and it's just kind of moving around in there and pulling down my pants and like, I, I just don't like it. So, so for me it's totally worth it because I'm free and if I fall and hurt myself, it can call for help. Like you did that one time. Like I did when I bruised my ribs. Yeah.

Absolutely. I mean, I just called Lauren and said, I, I fell and bruised my ribs and I'm gonna go to the ER, but I was able to do that because I have the cellular model. So for me, that's it, is, do you wanna be phone free at points? And if so, I think it's totally worth it and it's great. If you don't, then save your money. Save your money on the cellular model

and save your money on your monthly bill. And Peter writes in and says, I just got a base Mac Mini to use as a home server. That's gonna be a great time. With some RAID external enclosures. And I'm intending to use it for a backup and media server. But I wondered if you guys had any suggestions or ideas to do more with this Mac Mini. My Mac Mini, I've written about it a lot,

has changed over the years. I've done all sorts of stuff on that, but I've had a server for like 15 years, if not more, 20 years. Oh, long time. Today, I mean, I am, some of the stuff that Peter mentions I am doing, it's my Plex server, it's my channels server,

which is a great app that records stuff and lets you play back. It's running a bunch of Python scripts. It's running my weather station software. It's a web server. So it's got web pages that serve off of it. My entire Dropbox downloads to that. My entire Photos library downloads to that,

all obviously onto the an external RAID that I have attached. I use it for screen sharing when I'm away from my network and I need a Mac. I was in Hawaii and just had my iPad and I needed to do something that required a Mac and I was able to just connect to it and do it on the Mac. All the stuff on the RAID gets backed up via Backblaze on that, you know, on that system. So all of that stuff gets backed up an extra time. I'm using it as my time machine server for my network. So my Mac here gets backed up to that Mac mini every day.

That's a good use because I don't have time machine on my MacBook Air. I've never set it up. I use Backblaze and, you know, I deal with it. But because I don't have like a machine that I would set up like the over the air time machine to, but that would be a really good use for something like that. Yeah. I once bought a Mac mini to do all this stuff with and never did anything with it. Because I don't know. These are all really good things.

There's just so many of these things that I, I just don't, they don't really, it doesn't really appeal to me. Like the tinkering-ness of it. But having an always on computer like this, there is a lot of benefit to it, I see. And also, you know, this machine will be always on because as we know, you can't get to the the power button so you gotta leave it on. As Jacob

mentioned earlier homebridge is also running on it so I've got a bunch of non home kit stuff that runs that appears in my home app because I'm running home bridge on it and that's just a thing that I'm able to do it's it's like I know the there are a lot of different options, especially for home storage. One of the reasons that I choose a Mac and have always chosen a Mac is I'm really comfortable with Mac software. And also the Mac will run Unix stuff on top of that, right? Which gives you compatibility with lots of stuff that's out there. And I've always been more comfortable with that than the idea of having like a NAS box that is running some flavor of Unix or at one point there was one that I had that was running windows.

Like I really like having a Mac and I can set it up the way I want it. And I can hang huge amounts of storage off of it. If I want to, I have a. I have an OWC Thunder Bay, four drive RAID enclosure that sounds like a popcorn popper, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, but it's got 25 terabytes of data or whatever, and I love it.

So I always find new reasons to keep a server around, and currently it's an M2 based Mac mini, and it's doing great in a closet. Very cool. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode of the show it's very easy to do that just go to upgradefeedback.com this is where you can also send in any follow-up or feedback that you may have for us. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com. You can hear his podcast at the incomparable.com and here on relay where you can hear me too.

You can check out my work at cortex brand.com. You can find us online on many various social media platforms. Jason is at J.Snow or J.Snow or something. And I am I Mike I am YK E. You will find us somehow if you search for those handles. You can watch clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, we're at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. We are gonna talk about Blue Sky and Upgrade Plus this week.

And don't forget, you can get 20% off an annual plan by going to giverelay.com. Thank you to our sponsors, Smarter World, FitBard, Notion, and Squarespace. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason. Roll on you bears.