Upgrade - 546: Headline Snob

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

from relay this is upgrade episode 546 today's show is brought to you by ecamm oracle and express VPN it is January 13th 2025 my name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow hi Jason Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Mike Hurley, it's amazing that this is episode 546 and just to let people in on a little behind the scenes secret, the documents at 545 and Mike's at 546 and I got really freaked out and had to go to relay.fm slash upgrade to make sure that it was indeed.

But we already did 545, that one's in the can. This is 546, baby. Well, I would take it further behind the scenes and say if you thought my energy was strange during the intro there is because I was clicking around tabs to make sure it was episode 546 or 545. So, you know, that's how it looks around here. I hope you're feeling better. You sound better. Yeah. Yeah. I feel much better. I feel much, much better this week. But we haven't got time for that.

If people, I've just got one little follow out here, which is if people would like to enjoy a podcast in which two thirds of the hosts are sick, and therefore the non-sick host has to take over an unaccustomed role as the lead host, I recommend last week's episode of Connected, also if you like reading rules. Reading rules, there's a lot of those.

Reading rules and not fully understanding them, I think that's last week's episode of Connected. Well, a ringing endorsement, I mean, who wouldn't want to listen to a podcast episode where two thirds of the people were sick and the other person was taking on a job that you hadn't taken on before? I appear on that episode,

who vucked from a phone call from my Apple Watch while walking the dog. You you do that was very helpful Yeah, then that was one of those things which I see this in other podcasts and TV all the time I was talking to you. You couldn't hear me because you were on the phone to Stephen, but I kept addressing you but that wasn't helpful No, no now it is time for snow talk. No now it is time for snow talk I've already started as sir I'm almost done. Do you guys like to hear your own voice when editing podcasts? I do not like the sounds of recordings, which I host Okay, I

like that that sir Ram says when editing podcasts and not like when recording podcasts because obviously we like that because we do podcasts the answer is I actually was in we had a radio station in my high school and so I I did a radio class and then I hosted a radio show weekly for a year for my junior year in high school and between those things and you're recording promos and you're doing you're learning how to read like voiceovers and cold reads and all those things, which I never thought would be a major part of my career. I think about it literally every time I do an ad read, I think about that class.

Anyway, it got me over listening to my voice real fast. And then I also made a lot of videos in high school. I was doing video for years and doing lots of editing of videos. And I just, I got over it. Even before the era of podcasting I was over it and I find it almost charming now when people say oh I just don't like to listen back because I don't like the sound of my own voice and I just I mean I left that behind so long ago now yeah that I just I'm just over it. It's not so far for me but it is far

right like it's I don't. I think I got used to it like 13 years ago. I've actually come all the way around on it now though, where I am now very sensitive to my voice sounding different. So I am so used to the sound of my own voice from editing myself and that kind of thing that if either like last week when I sounded sick or if my audio like from a podcast that has been compressed in a way like I am very sensitive to that like I I have a very good sense now of how my voice should sound that I get very freaked out if I hear it different done differently similarly like I don't don't particularly like hearing to my voice sped up in any way like if you to listen to a podcast in higher speed, because it just sounds wrong.

Sounds wrong. That's right. So last week must have been really rough for you. It was. It was pretty bad. Didn't enjoy it. If you would like to send in a question of your own for us to answer on a future episode of the show, please go to upgradefeedback.com.

And thank you to Suryam for this question. We have some follow up. We have lots of follow up. We have a response from the Bbonnet company, the BBC. Yes. They shook a response out of Apple over Apple intelligence notification summaries. They did. I'm going to read Apple's response they gave to the BBC

over the ongoing concerns that the BBC have about the way that Apple intelligence is summarizing the headlines of articles. Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback. A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary." So, I mean, we'll come back to the actual text of this and what they're saying in a second, but I will say hats off to the BBC.

They have really, they've, I think, taken the charge on this. I mean, I know there's been lots of reporting all over the internet about having issues with this, but the BBC, they got to be in their bonnet over this and they've, they have rattled their saber into Apple has provided this. Right. So they have bonnets off to them really. Yeah. Bonnets off, bonnets off. I don't know how this is going to do anything more than what Apple are currently doing. Like what is this label? Where is it going to be? What is it actually going to suggest? Like, and if you have to show the label, like a label that's like, hey, this might not be right, is it even worth doing it in the first place?

It's like the bigger, more existential question. It's funny, because we talked about all this and then that on upgrade last week, and then just mere, I think like an hour after we posted the episode, there was this response from Apple. And I thought, oh no, this whole story. And then I read the response and I thought, oh, okay.

Because this is the biggest non-answer answer, non-response response that you could give. It reminded me a little bit of Steve Jobs saying, if you want a bumper case, you can have one. It's a just sort of begrudging comment that somebody felt they were forced to make. Because here's what they said. First off, emphasizing beta at the beginning and the end.

I read that as them kind of saying, what do you expect? This is a beta. You should know that this is a beta. If you have a problem with it in a beta, file a feedback essentially, right? File a radar. We encourage users to report a concern

because it's a beta, which I don't love because it's a beta, you know, final version of software that's shipped out to customers, that's advertised and that they are, they send out like notifications, right, to offer, turn on this feature, turn on Apple intelligence, right? Like, so it's a beta. It's a beta as a shield to allow them to make statements like this saying, oh, don't blame us, it's just a beta. We're not going to apologize for anything that happens in a beta, which shows a lack of basically taking ownership of your own features that I find breathtaking.

So I don't love that. Then the other thing I don't love in this statement is what you mentioned, which is the software update in the coming weeks, which will put a warning label on it saying, this might be wrong or saying, I love Guy English suggested that perhaps they should just put an Apple logo next to all of them and put their own brand on the line

and see how they feel about that. That would be really powered by Apple intelligence. Yeah, you can trust us, but don't trust us. I don't know, because the solution needs to be, we mentioned some of this last week, but there are ways Apple could work to make this more reliable or to de-emphasize it. And the number one thing that I take away

from this whole thing is not that LLMs are unreliable, because they can be unreliable in specific circumstances like trying to summarize a summary, a headline. But it points out to me that the rush to integrate these features led to them putting something in without maybe considering the best way to get the best output to users for news summaries. And that's because they rushed it. So it's the, you know, they rushed to integrate Apple intelligence everywhere they could in the OS.

And this came up as like, yeah, yeah, yeah, summaries, let's do it. We're really good at summarizing notifications. Let's make it happen. And I don't think anybody was saying, I would really like my news summaries to be, or news notifications to be summarized. I'm not sure anybody was actually saying that, but it was an opportunity to put in Apple intelligence

But then they just kind of slammed it in there and they probably could do a more careful job Of doing it and they didn't and this is the result. So the question is what now? Right, like is the warning label the the extent of what Apple's going to do here? They're not saying anything more than that. They probably aren't happy with it internally, I would imagine. They can't be. But I find it funny that they resort to lashing out about the fact that it's, come on, it's just in beta.

It's like, how many Apple intelligence ads are on the TV? How many ways are they trying to push this feature to users and use it to sell iPhones and then to hide behind, oh, well, but it's just a beta. Come on. I mean, I can tell you what's going to happen here. They're going to ship this and within a week the BBC is going to write another story. Because this is not going to solve the problem that they have with this. The problem that the BBC and other people, like users and other outlets have with this, is it often enough gives wrong or misleading information. I think the way I put it in my piece last week was

for a certain percentage of the time, it turns information into misinformation. Yeah. And I think this is the story of the AI era, which is for the BBC, the threshold of turning information to misinformation is zero. What is it for Apple? And it seems to be maybe none, right? Maybe they just don't care, but that's a problem, right? That's a problem that the summaries are turning information into misinformation. And there are, again, there are ways around it.

I wrote a whole piece, follow-up on Tuesday, about just the issue of summarizing headlines. Because what I don't want this to turn into, people will do it anyway, right? Is just have it be about LLMs being bad. Because it's not about LLMs being as bad as this anyway. Look, they make mistakes. They do. But it's a summary of a summary. That's the biggest problem here is the way it's implemented is poor because you're taking six or seven words written by somebody summarizing an article and

then your LLM is turning it into five words or four words. And if you, so there's this app Artifact that went out of business and you could mark any headline as clickbait and have it rewrite the headline. What it did was it read the story and then wrote a headline. And I spent half an hour on Tuesday, pasting the text of news articles into ChatGPT and saying, write me a headline with these specs based on this story. And you know what, none of them were wrong. All of them, I would say, were okay as headlines.

I'd say that a couple of them got the emphasis of the story wrong. And as a headline snob, as a newspaper and magazine editor for many years, as a headline snob, I always rewrote the headlines. I was like, no, no, no, no, these headlines. I have very particular ideas about headlines. And so a couple of those chat GBT headlines I looked at and go, no, that's not what the story is about. You missed it.

But the fact is, none of the ones I tried got it factually wrong. And that's because they had the whole story to consume and that's part of the problem with what Apple built here is that there's not enough data to summarize headlines because headlines have no context because they're headlines. The context is the story you're supposed to read based on the headline and they just messed it up. Yes because as you said in your article that I really liked that like humans aren't good at headlines either because

there are external forces now that push people to write bad headlines where the headlines are just to make you click. And so if you're starting with click bait, you're not starting with a good spot anyway. Right. Well, that's the worst scenario, right? Is that the headline is also bad. And different organizations have different... Some news organizations are good at writing good headlines and some are very bad at it.

The thing that I find distressing, and again, I come across, I'm like an old man, but the fact is I was rewriting people's headlines in the early 90s, right? So, okay, yes. I think there's a whole generation of people, these kids today, no, a whole generation of people who were brought up, basically,

they were forced to write clickbait headlines because that was the journalism in that era, in the web, you know, the 2000s, 2010s era. So much of it, especially in the period where everybody's just trying to drive traffic. Now we've got more paywalls and things like that. But in that era, you had to write clickbait headlines. And so people were trained to write them. And so I see even today on sites that are subscription driven with paywalls that they write clickbait headlines. And it drives me crazy because it's like, I'm paying you. Your headline should tell me whether the story is

of interest to me or not. Not to bait me into tapping, realizing it's not relevant to my life at all and then tapping back. You don't actually get more out of that. I mean, I guess they have some ads on their pages too, most of the time, but it's not relevant to my life at all, and then tapping back. You don't actually get more out of that. I mean, I guess they have some ads on their pages too, most of the time, but it's like, really, if I'm a paying customer, you gotta give me more.

You gotta actually tell me what's going on in the story, and then that should intrigue me and make me wanna read more. But you shouldn't be trying to deceive me, but leaving out all that information. So it's the classic example of like, this place is going to kill you if you go there. And you're like, uh-oh, I better click.

And then you click and it's like, this place is in New Zealand. And you're like, all right. Yeah, it's in space. It's space. It's Jupiter. And you're like, well, wait a second, I'm not going to Jupiter.

Why did I click it there? And that's the problem with it. So yes, that magnifies this whole situation. Sometimes the headlines are really bad. But if you read the article, and that's what I keep thinking is there is a way forward here, which is providing Apple's summarization system

with more content. But if you're going to summarize a short headline, so here's one example, the San Francisco Chronicle, If you're going to summarize a short headline. So here's one example, the San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper and website devoted to Northern California wrote a headline last week, and everybody knows about this news story now, which is destructive California windstorm. Here's where the risk is highest.

This is to Northern California readers. Well, of course, when you tap on it, you find that these are the Santa Ana winds in Southern California in Los Angeles, hundreds of miles away, and they were destructive. As we know, it's a terrible situation in Los Angeles right now. The the chat GBT rewrite of that headline, by the way, is Southern California braces for extreme Santa Ana winds, which is what the story is about. But the San Francisco Chronicle is like, what if we make all the northern Californians afraid that they're going to get a windstorm so that they tap on our

headline, even though it's a paywall, so they have to already be giving us money so that we can deceive them into loading a few crappy ads? Again, it's it's it's bad. But Chachipiti did a fine job with rewriting that headline. So I think the issue here is not just the pure badness of LLMs, which some people want to talk about. The issue is this is a bad feature implemented badly by Apple. Like that's what it is. Like Apple has a tool which is an LLM and they applied it to a place where it doesn't belong. That's the problem.

Because you've mentioned it, I will say. Like, I don't know how helpful it is that your favorite tech podcast talks about things that are happening in the world. But like, for me, obviously, like, I think anyone that pays any attention to me and my life, like, obviously knows how much I love LA County, like, and how much time I've spent there

in the last five years. And I am just, I'm devastated by the fires. Like it's so horrific and so upsetting. And I know people who have been moved from their homes or have lost homes, like just like, you know, people I'm friendly with. Everyone that is in our circle is fine that I'm aware of at least. And yeah, it's just, oh my god, it kills me. And I feel so bad. And that it's not even done. No, no. The pattern continues. It's absolutely terrible. Lauren's from Southern California. And in fact, when she was in elementary school,

she lived in that area. She actually lived just north of Sunset Boulevard on Curzon. So in the evacuation warning area, I guess, and you could literally walk up into those hills right there where there was fire. So it's definitely affected. Obviously, so many people as a Californian, these things happen and it's terrible and it has to do with the all the things that make us love California and want to live here are also things that can do

terrible things in the back. We we had a fire like this, we had a few fires like this, one very close to us up in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County. And yeah, suffice it to say that in our house, there's been a lot of, we already have a go bag. And we tested it out because we got that tsunami warning a few weeks ago. We're like, all right, well, let's use this as practice because it looked like the tsunami was not going to happen. But we're

like, well, you know, where are the cat carriers and where's the go bag and, you know, what's all that? And this is another reminder of how tenuous life in California can be because we are at the whim of our wonderful climate. It is also our terrible climate. Both of those things go together. So nobody's talking about, I mean, this is, I mean, this is the truth of it. It's January and it's like sunny and pleasantly warm in LA this week. That's why the fires are happening, right? And they haven't had any rain this winter,

which we've had a lot of. So a lot of terrible things, but it's like, yeah. So, and I mean, what do you do? It's also, it's nature, but obviously all of us feel terrible for all of our friends and really everybody else in LA who's affected by this. It's awful. Yeah, like just on that, like I saw Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg

in his newsletter wrote something. I just felt so perfectly encapsulated. I want to read it. It says, what makes LA so magical also makes it vulnerable. The dry desert climate exposes vast areas to the risk of fire. The te desert climate exposes vast areas to the risk of fire. The tectonic plates underneath our feet mean semi-frequent earthquakes. Living in Los Angeles has always meant compromise. You accept the heightened risk of natural

disaster to reside in paradise." I was just like, oh my God, how beautiful, how beautifully written in it. It encapsulates it so much. I just wanted to mention it because it came up and just, you know, obviously we both have a connection to that area. And so it felt like I wanted to say something. For sure. This episode is brought to you by E cam. E cam is the leading live video production and live streaming studio built for the Mac. You're like, what? Someone builds these tools for the Mac? Yes, they do. Ecamm does, and this isn't a Mac app for Mac app lovers. It's not just live streaming though. Ecamm is great at simplifying many workflows.

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and video output into a Zoom meeting, Zoom webinar or Zoom event. And it adds up to eight Zoom participants to use as camera sources in your broadcast or recording. Plus you can automatically create individual participant audio and video recordings and add Zoom chat messages to your broadcast or recording as text overlays Before I found ecamm for like before I could find ecamm live and I've used ecamm products for years

But before I found ecamm live it just wasn't possible for me to stream from my Mac Like it just you just couldn't it was impossible Macs just couldn't do it and they built the tools to mean that you could and now while there might be other solutions out there They do not feel like Mac apps at all That's what I love about E cam live is that it works and feels like an app that has had love and care Built for and by people who use the Mac So if you like us and I know Jason you use E cam. So if you, like us, and I know Jason, you use Ecam Live too. All the time I'm a subscriber,

I use it for our Six Color stuff and our Total Party Kill stuff. And the reason I chose it and chose to pay for it is because it is a Mac app through and through and has a bunch of really great features that are hard to match on this stuff that feels a little weird and runs a little sluggishly because it's a cross-platform app.

This is just all native Mac. It works really snappily. And I've been using their Zoom integration lately, which is amazing, because I used to do a screen capture of a Zoom window and use that to put people's faces on a live stream. And now you can just assign people in a Zoom chat to boxes in the layout.

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Let's get back into some follow-up. I saw this going around, I saw some 9-5 Mac. Semiconductor analyst, Tim Colpin is reporting that TSMC in Arizona is now producing the S9 chip for the Apple Watch, or they're just about to. This Arizona plant is currently making the A16 processor, which is going into the older phones that Apple is selling. But this is a, you know, for right now, a chip that they need,

and maybe will continue to need in new products, and they're looking to make it in America. So there are less sophisticated production lines than the cutting-edge three nanometer stuff that's in Taiwan, right? In fact, Mike, you might call these legacy nodes. Whoa, you know what, Jason? I would, I would call them that.

You should call them legacy nodes, but the fact is that this is part of a much larger story about TSMC being given money, encouraged strongly by the US to build up some chip supply chain in the United States because there's a great fear that if all of the chip supply chain is in Taiwan and China attacks Taiwan, that would be extremely bad for, I mean, and the only reason I would disagree with that is that I think it might be extremely bad in so many ways beyond can computers be purchased. Yes.

I think it may not matter, right? Like, but anyway, and so what would they make at the Arizona plant? And here is a great report about that, that they're making Apple Watch chips, they're making A16s. And I'm sure, you know, it may be the case that it's always the more of the legacy nodes that get built, obviously the cutting edge stuff gets built in Taiwan and then they kind of roll it down to the stuff in the US. But still, I also wanted to mention actually, since you brought this up,

there's a great New York Times story, we'll put it in the show notes, about the people who've come from Taiwan to help set up the factories in Phoenix and how that has transformed the area around the plant. And there are people who are like from Taiwan who lived in other parts where there was like a Taiwanese community in a far off part of Phoenix,

because Phoenix is enormous, who have come to this area to set up businesses and to help make those people feel more at home and adapt. Tiny Taipei in the desert, they call it, which is a beautiful phrase. I like that. Yeah, right? And the goal is, I mean, obviously the goal is not to have just a bunch of people from Taiwan come to Phoenix and make chips, because the goal is to have American workers working

on it too. But the challenge is that the TSMC people are the people who know how to do this. And so there's this the mixture of the people from Taiwan who are working for TSMC and then people from America. It's just a great little story. I thought it was really well reported about all the cultural issues that are involved with moving from somewhere very far away with a very different culture and plopping Down in the desert and what does that mean? And how do you live your life? And it's just it's a really interesting story So we'll link to it in the show. Yes. I mean and this is you saying like, you know

TSMC they get a lot of benefits to doing this and then companies like Apple can ride that benefit like this benefits Apple because they can Say look what we're doing in America, we're back into that again. But I don't disagree with the premise anyway. Like even if you take out the, we're worried about Taiwan part, I do think that there is a, there is a benefit to if you can do it, having these things around the world in different places, creating jobs for different people who might not be otherwise working these kinds of fields. Like I have no problem with that. I think it's a good idea. Yeah.

This morning you sent me a YouTube video for the Jemmoji ad. Yes, because you said you hadn't seen it. Yeah, I had not seen it. So I saw it for the first time this morning. It's a good ad. It's a good ad. Very catchy.

Yeah, it's a good ad. It's a good ad. Very catchy. Yeah, it's a good ad. It's a catchy ad. I would love to know, and I don't know if anybody out there can tell me the answer to this. I'm not convinced that these are all actually genmoji. So there is a disclaimer on the ad. Okay. And I think it says, Genmoji animated by human animators or something like that. Okay. But that is a question, right? Are those really Genmoji at all?

Did they start as Genmoji or did they kind of get there later? I don't know. It doesn't matter to me. Like I'm not like, oh, this is like a scandal, but like, because some of them do genuinely look like what the stuff that I have made from Genmoji. Yeah, so it's a static Genmojis,

comma, professionally animated. Cool, I'll buy that then. I don't know if they used a, like a higher resolution Genmoji pipeline in order to get them to look better for TV, but I think the implication is that they are genmoji now, how many thousands of them they had to generate before they got the ones that were good enough to then have them professionally animated.

But I think it's a really effective ad. We've been talking a lot about Apple intelligence and the ads and that it's a beta and all those things. I think this ad is the best endorsement of Apple intelligence that I've seen. Yeah, well, cause Jemmoji is the best feature. That's why. Yeah, good one.

And the song is an earworm, gets stuck in your head and it's all just, you're gonna be thinking about Bucatini with some peas, Socrates on mountain skis for a long time after you watch that ad. So and I watch football, so I see it every commercial break. This song, I can only imagine there was two briefings, which was, can you make a song which is kind of part, we didn't start the fire. If that's the name of the song, right? Is that the name of the song?

We didn't. Yep. And part Technologic by Daft Punk. And then just smushed them together and you came out with this song. Like that's what this song is. I think it's a bit more Daft Punk than anything else. Um, but the, yeah, this is like, Oh, what if we made our own version of Technologic and then just made Jemoji for that.

I think that's what they're doing there. And I like it, it's fun. It's a good song. And I'm actually happy that they made an original song to do this. Yeah, it's a band called The Dare, which is actually a guy. It's a guy whose band name is The Dare.

That's fun. But he has actually, he is like from New York club musician and DJ, I think. And that's cool, right? Like I think they did. It doesn't, what it doesn't feel like is a kind of like silly commercial jingle. It has a vibe of all of those cutting edge songs that Apple does. They make a Jemmoji that looks like this guy at the end. Oh yeah.

See, there you go. That's fun. That's fun. But yeah, he obviously wrote this song for Apple end. Ah, yeah, see, there you go. That's fun. That's fun. But yeah, he obviously wrote this song for Apple for Jemoji, right? Like there's no way that he made this before. No, I mean, actually, I was thinking

if you did make this song, and then somebody at Apple heard it, they'd be like, oh my God, this is perfect for Jemoji. But I was like, probably not, probably not, right? It's still an earworm and the ad is fun. And it's like, oh yeah, you can make like ridiculous things. A horse wearing a tie, sure, you can do that. Okay, this is pretty great, Jason.

In the description for the YouTube video, they have the prompts. Oh, look at that. Now, you know what? Apple, whoever made this video, whoever made this, bravo. You thought of everything. I'm like, oh, did this work? It's like, no, they have got, all you have to do is find the pieces.

They put it all out there for us, right? Like, oh, I'm like, oh, no, no way. But Eggman was fried egg with arms and legs, you know, poodle shopper, pink poodle holding multicolored shopping bags, sunglasses walking. Like it's the actual prompts, because like they don't make any sense in English, some of them, right? Tomato face emoji wearing long body trench coat,

hat, glasses, legs, red hands. Bravo. Right? Got to say, bravo. Yeah, handsome horse in black suit and tie with flowing mane. So I guess you could try and make them yourself, right? Based on these prompts is to see how it comes out.

I really like this ad. I think it's a good ad and it really is my opinion. The only ad they should write about Apple intelligence, the rest of them, they've not engendered kind thoughts, I think, from people in general on the internet but I think but look this is like gemmoji because gemmoji is basically fun and harmless yes where a lot of the other stuff there's a lot more quibbles to be had by it and this is a good ad to show off what it can do yeah you wanted to talk about script debugger yeah just really quickly I wrote about this last week. This is long term follow-up for upgrade,

like really long, like episode 338 of upgrade, which for those who do not remember that far back, I can tell you that is the episode where we stopped using Call Recorder by sponsor Ecamm, they moved on to better things with Ecamm Live. Well, they didn't have a choice. Well, they were getting pinched by Skype on one side

and by the operating system on the other side, and they decided that it was over and they shut it down. And that prompted me to write an article as well, which was called The Mortality of Software, which contained a meme that I had forgotten existed, which is Simone de Rochefort, who used to be a relay host. It's a Thanos and Child Nebula meme, where it's, did you drastically reduce export times

with Apple Silicon? Yes. What did it cost? Everything. And it's a picture of Call Recorder. Because Call Recorder couldn't make it. Couldn't make it to Apple Silicon. Was getting squeezed by Skype, so we gave it up. And my piece was basically like, okay, you know, apps come and go. And it really sucks when an app you rely on gets discontinued. It happens, but

it stinks. It's a lousy thing to have happen. But I thought at the time, and this came up again this week, and what prompted me to write that article, is there are also a lot of apps I rely on and love, and that a lot of Mac users rely on and love, that are indie apps, and they are the product of one or two or three people, a single person or a small team. And those people are human beings. Not only are there all the risks, I mean, very sadly, remember there were those great shortcuts utilities that were written by Alex Hay and he passed away.

And in that case, they actually, you know, the group that picked them up, including our friend Rosemary, worked with his family. But a very difficult situation to even do that. A lot of times I think that in situations like that, it's just over, right? The code just disappears and is gone. That's a rare kind of success story of being able to pick up Alex's legacy. I mention all this because Script Debugger from Late Night Software has been around for 30 years. It is what it sounds like, which is if you were somebody who wrote Apple Script scripts like I did, it gave you a debugging platform that was incredibly useful. You could stop and check the

variables at any point. It gave you output of where all the variables were and what they were, so you could figure out why Apple Script wasn't working right, which boy, that is required because it's often so impenetrable. Just an incredibly useful utility. And the fact is that its authors are retiring, which they should. If they can retire, they should retire. But it means the app is going to not be updated anymore. And they are doing a very nice thing where they're going to, they promise updates for any issues in the next six months. And then at that point they will,

and they've announced that they're going to stop selling it. They'll stop selling it in six months. And then they will actually post like all the versions back to version five or something with serial numbers on their website. And basically say if you've got a compatibility issue for a past, you really need a version that runs on this version of Mac OS or whatever you can have it which is great like this so the right way to do it but the the bottom line is that the next time there's an OS update that breaks

script debugger you can't use it beyond that point that's just the truth of it and look if Apple script was a thriving world that Apple was putting lots of like time and money into, and it was a major part of Apple strategy going forward, it would probably be a viable reason for somebody to buy this business and move it forward. But it's not, it is also kind of fading away. I haven't even used script debugger, like a fraction of how much I used to because I've moved so much of what I do to shortcuts and to Python. But ironically, I used ScriptBugger the very day before this announcement came across my timeline because I was being frustrated by something in AppleScript. I was like, what is happening here? Let's go into ScriptBugger and figure out what I

need to do. So it's a bummer, but again, it just reminds me of that whole mortality of software thing, which is I worry that the Mac as a platform has a lot of go-to apps that were built in the early days of Mac OS X or maybe even the later days of classic Mac OS. And they're indie apps, and they've been put together by small teams or individuals.

And the danger is that all of those apps are of a certain age and their developers are of a certain age. And if something happens to them or they just say, I'm going to retire now, which they have every right to do, the fear is that that's the end of those apps and my larger fear is that so many apps on the Mac date from that period that the Mac has kind of gotten along with a lot of developers support from kind of the the gray hairs of development and They have provided a continuity My counter argument would be the only people who care about those old apps are old people and they'll all fade away together.

We'll all retire together and none of us will need BB-Ed anymore or whatever. But I would say that's not necessarily true. James Thompson is like a year younger than me and Peacock, lots of people use Peacock of various ages. It appeals to all sorts of ages, but he's just one person writing that code. So I think when you have a platform as old as the Mac, right, 41 years old and 25 years, as we said last week for Mac OS X, this becomes a risk. And also I worry about just the sort of

like, it's like an old car or something like that where the miles add up. And I don't think Apple, right? Apple is not even that focused on it, the truth, right? Cause Apple has been focused for the last decade plus on, you know, 15, 18 years on iOS platform software more than Mac software for good reasons, but the Mac has been able to kind of get by. So anyway, it's just another one of those signs out there that I was struck by that it wasn't, we're shutting this down because we can't make

any money at it. It was not, we're shutting this down because we've, whatever, because Apple's made it untenable. It was, we're shutting this down because we're retiring and we can't open source it because it's got a lot of stuff in it that can't be open sourced. So it just has to go. A little like how in a different context, James Thompson made drag thing go away. That was because of a technical issue, but this is not really a technical issue. It's just we can't do it.

We're retiring, we're over. So something to keep an eye on and it's just something that fills me with slight existential dread for being a Mac user is other software that I rely on that has a developer again, they don't need to work until the day they die in their 90s, in order to please me, right? They don't need to do that. They need to do what's right for them. And if they can retire, they should retire. But still, what does that mean for everybody else? I don't know. Big feelings for a follow-up, I am. You know? You know, that's what happens. You go deep, you go back to 338 of upgrade that far back.

Big emotions, yeah. Feelings deepen. Big, big feelings. You go deep, you get the big feels. That's just how it is, Mike. I understand. This episode is brought to you by Oracle. Even if you think it's overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, from self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast.

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Our thanks to Oracle for their support of this show and all of Relay. So last week on the show, we gave our feelings about what Apple should and could do in 2025. Well now, it's Mark Gurman's turn to do the same. So Mark published his first kind of newsletter for the year, in which he broke down what he is expecting to be the entire year's worth of stuff. And I want to go through the big highlights here because there's some reporting we've heard before, some stuff, little tidbits that are new,

but it's always interesting to kind of look at what is your feeling on this if you know a bunch of stuff, right? Well, we're giving our vibes, right? Like this is what we think might, but what happens if you actually know? So we're going to do this kind of chronologically. The first updates that we're expected to see this year would be new versions of the MacBook Air featuring M4 chips.

This Mark spoke about this and actually made me think about me and Stephen were talking, I think over the weekend about like the M2 MacBook Air. Does that replace the M1 MacBook Air, like in Walmart and stuff? Like is the M1 gonna go away? Cause Mark talks about like the M4 probably will replace the M3 and the M2 he thinks will remain, not that the M3 will shuffle down.

And I think that makes sense. Yeah, I sent you and Steven a link because you guys were having that conversation about how the M3 MacBook Air was $899 at Amazon. Like what? So I feel like the question of what happens with a MacBook Air line is really interesting, but I think their margins have gotten to the point where, yeah, they could kick the M1 and M3 out of the product line if they wanted to,

make the M2 cheap, and then introduce an M4 and be fine. Yeah. Some new products are likely to come in the spring. The iPhone SE is expected to be the highlight of that. With the modern design, with Face ID and Apple intelligence support, Mark mentions that he thinks that the new design and some of the new features could push the price up and says that they could maybe keep the old device around.

And I just think this is a terrible idea. So if you look at the way he worded that, I think he shifts from knowledge to punditry in the middle there. He does. He does. Where he's like, I think they should keep the old device around and push it down to $200 for some markets. And it's like, I think they should keep the old device around and push it down to $200 for some markets. And it's like, okay, well, you can think that, but are they going to do that or not?

Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, a device that doesn't run Apple intelligence that's got a lightning port on it. I mean, I don't know. Here's the thing. Here's what I say. I could imagine a scenario where like what we were just talking about with the Walmart MacBook Air That there are some parts of the world where they write the old iPhone SE around and it's sold through certain Partners at a really cheap price. Yeah, you definitely don't see it on Apple's website and it's not part of their marketing

But you can still get it in certain markets at a low price Because that market needs to have an entry iPhone at that price. Yes, I agree. That could happen. And also at this point, if they have not found a way to make like a face ID design phone for this price, I don't know what's going on, right? Because there was a time where a touch ID based phone cost a lot of money and they did it for a long enough time that they got the price down. Face ID started in 2017, okay, right? Woo hoo!

Yeah. Right, so that's seven years ago. Well, six plus years ago because it was in fall with the iPhone X. Okay, you should be able to get that in your base model phone now. Yeah. Right, you should be able to do that.

Yeah. There's gotta be a way. The first, I mean, have they upgraded all the specs in the latest Face ID's? Well, maybe they go back to the cheaper, more readily available, not quite as great version that they put in, you know, that they can put in this version.

But yeah, that seems to make a lot of sense to me. Just, they can do it. They can do it. They may have to forego, as with any hardware redesign, you have to forego some of your really sweet margins on the product that's been in the law in the line forever I get it, but that's why you waited Seven years and also this is a product that you know is gonna be around for a super long time So could you not is it not possible to?

Think about the profit margin in the long term rather than just in the short term. And it's an important product for them. It really is important for them. And keep in mind too that they can't sell the current, the current model is not on sale in the EU, for example, right? It can't be because it has lightning on it. So like they need to get it out there,

having a base model iPhone to get people in the store, to get people to become iPhone customers who might otherwise not be in the ecosystem. There's so many reasons to do it. And so yeah, it's time. I really look forward to, only partly, all of the moratoriums for the home button that will be written on that day. Oh, the memorials of like RIP home button. It's like, somebody will work up at like an AI-generated image of like RIP home button. It's like, can somebody will work up at like an AI generated image of like a tombstone where the home button has been laid to rest

in the family plot next to the headphone jack. Well, I always think about the verge art of core about the MacBook Air design, and how they were sad that it was gone. Like in a way that like like I just don't understand. Like the MacBook Air's wedge is truly gone and I miss it already. That article didn't make any sense to me.

And I was all about opinion and like, it's written by Victoria Song, who is one of my favorite reporters at the Verge, but you can't agree on everything, you know? And I don't agree on this one. But I, yeah. Also, let's be clear, a Verge piece has a weight and a piece by Victoria Song has an extra weight to it.

And that is, that post, that story was a classic blog post which is, look, I know that it doesn't make sense, but I'm just sharing some vibes here, which is, boy, I loved that wedge-shaped MacBook Air and this is the end. And to frame it as the Verge decries the elimination of the wedge. It's like, I'm sure they didn't mean it, but I rolled my eyes at it too.

I'm like, come on, like that's just progress. That's just the world moving. But again, I think that the point was just, Hey, things move on. Script a bugger gets a discontinued. It happens. I will say though, there is somebody in my house who I know feels this way so As I guess I can't say too much and it is a point of contention in my home that Idina Really does not want to update her and one MacBook Air because she she much prefers that design and

To mine in a way that I just I cannot get my head around it But she was a and I I don't understand it. I was the world's biggest MacBook Air fan, but I love the new design so much. It's the best. I rolled it down. So this is part of the story, just a little sidebar here. Now that I've got my MacBook Pro,

Lauren's got my M2 Air, and Jamie's got the M1 Air that Lauren had, that I had previously. So that's gone down to another one. She was on an Intel MacBook Air Air so bad, so bad. Oh my God, it was the computer we got when she went to college. And oh, if you can just imagine a MacBook Air

of that vintage, a six year old, seven year old MacBook Air, Intel, going to an M1, huge, huge jump for her, it's great. But I was struck by the sentimentalism, I guess, that came out in this moment when I was migrating computers. Because first, Lauren says to Jamie, you take good care of that thing. That was my computer. I really loved it.

I mean, come on, that's silly. Then Lauren sat down on the couch a couple of days ago with my old M2 MacBook Air, midnight MacBook Air and was doing something and I was like, Oh, I have those feelings too. You better take care of that thing. I love that thing. I have such a strong attachment to my into MacBook Air.

Like I love that computer so much. And then I probably mentioned this in the show, but like I put stickers on that laptop. I've not done that in a long time, but I'm just like, no, I'm good. Like this computer's moved in with me. Like we're not going anywhere. Like I genuinely, like I can imagine, like I will use this MacBook Air until Apple takes a big jump with the MacBook Air again.

Like, you know, they have to make a big jump for me to want to move. Cause I just, for what I am doing on that computer It's it's like yeah, it's perfect So just also as a as a little note the as part of this computer exchange process. Yeah My I went to Etsy as I do and bought a rainbow Apple logo sticker and affixed it to the Apple logo on my MacBook Pro. And in a quiet ceremony, while the migration was going on, the Apple rainbow decal was removed

from the M2 MacBook Air because you need to tell those two things apart and the rainbow one is mine. So that's how we did it. And also you're probably the only person in the house that has such a strong affinity for rainbow. Of course, of course. It's just that, you know, it's more that that was a midnight and I've got the space black and they're close enough in color and shape at this point that we need to be able to identify whose is whose. And so I get the rainbow and I de-rainbow the other one.

And, you know, Lauren can put stickers on it if she wants to, but I actually was shopping. There was a surprising lack of Apple, well, I guess because it's the Apple logo, but like the people on Etsy who do the rainbow Apple logo, I'm really surprised that there aren't more just like colored Apple decals that will go on the shape of the Apple logo on a Mac laptop.

Because I'd get lower and I found one, but they didn't have models. They didn't go to the trouble of the good Etsy shops as somebody who's done this like 10 times now have measured the exact measurements of every Mac model and the Apple logo on it. And they just put the model in your picker when you're ordering your, your decal. And the one that I found that had like a purple or an orange or whatever, they just had dimensions. And I was like, Oh my God, I have to go measure the Apple and see. I don't want to do that.

But anyway, that would be cool because that's a fun way that even if you don't love stickers, you could, you know, and Apple won't let you buy computers and fun colors, you could just put a fun color on the Apple logo. You could do that. Going back to Mark's report. Yes. Kind of also in the spring, probably along with the iPhone SE, new versions of the iPad and the iPad Air, these both get faster ships, so the regular iPad would probably get an A17 Pro for Apple

intelligence and Mark believes that the iPad Air could go to an M4, which I guess makes sense. I mean, it's powerful, but it's gonna stick around for a while. So yeah, and I know that the thought is always, well, why would that, why would you do that? Because that makes it less differentiated with the iPad Pro. I think Apple has shown that they kind of don't care that much. And there are so many other things about the Air in terms of compatibility with Magic Keyboard and in terms of the OLED screen, right? Like that the Pro has, like there's enough there. If the Air ends up with the M4, it's fine. It's vastly differentiated at the moment. And also as well, don't forget that like the

M3 was a bit of an ugly duckling kind of chip. So they- And M4, Apple's making so many M4s, right? And they're gonna make even more with the MacBook Air when it goes to M4. Like M4 is the right thing to put in there. And then at some point the iPad Pro will get

M5 or M6 and it'll differentiate again. But until then, there's plenty to differentiate those two products other than the processor. The thinness is a big one too. Thinness OLED new keyboard although he says there might be an they might update the 2020 Magic Keyboard right which is what the Air currently uses. Yeah. That's interesting. He just says Magic Keyboard updates. So what they will be, not entirely sure. Yeah, that's weird. But something.

A home hub device. So as a refresher of the specs, seven inch screen can be wall mounted or placed on the counter. Mark Gurman was originally expecting a March release, but this could take a bit more time. A quote from his article, the device's operating system, code named Pebble, is heavily tied to App Intense features, the features coming in iOS 18.4 and iOS 19. So it's plausible that the hardware itself will ship a bit later.

So there you go. There's a little detail of how does this thing work. It's somehow going to use App Intense. Right, which is a question because there's a whole, it can't run apps, but like, does it run App Intense and does it run them remotely or what's exactly going on there? There's a lot of mystery here. This also is a suggestion that as the last remaining big WWDC features, the personal context and the App Intense that are still not shipping. That you build a piece of hardware that's tied around them and you're like, okay, can't

ship it. Can't ship it until you've got that stuff shipping in a product, which is going to be, again, 18.4. And the way he words this, first off, I think, well, one of two things is probably true here. Either App Intents is coming in 18 for in a limited fashion and then they're gonna kick the rest of it into iOS 19 and And I do wonder about that. The other way to read this is it'll be an 18 for unless it slips to 19 Which may be

I mean, this is always a thing that we knew was gonna be you know limited in 18.4 because I think it's just certain types of apps right and then expected to expand but But any of the above could be true Because I mean it's January now and there is not currently a shipping beta That includes any of this stuff. So, how far do we go? Yeah, that's a good question. By the way, I want to back up for a second. I do wonder if when there's a new version of the low-end iPad and the iPad Air, I do wonder if they will try something to get the iPad and the smaller iPad Air to be

the same size so they can have a single keyboard accessory for both? Yeah, why not? Maybe? Yeah, why not? Because right now they've got that kickstand thing on the one and then they've got the old 2020 keyboard on the other. I wonder if they might go to a single accessory that works with both of the small sizes at least. Even if the large size remains using the existing. They could also change the iPad Airs to use the new Magic Keyboard instead, but they would

have changed the dimensions in order to match. And they're actually, they're too thick, right? I think that they actually can't do that, but we'll see. We'll see. But that's a thought is that maybe they're trying to sync up. The reason there's a Magic Keyboard update is they're trying to sync up the shape of their low end iPads so that they can use the same accessories. Yeah, because we've got a 10.9 inch and an 11 inch. They're the screen sizes, and so with that comes a slightly different...

I think, yeah, just going to 11 inch on the iPad would be a good move if they can make it work. Yeah, I mean, even if it's just, you know, the shape of the hardware and not the size of the screen would be a way they could do it. Well, we'll see, we'll see. Mac Studio will get an update to the M4 generation due in the first half of 2025. The Mac Pro as well as expected, but the timing is not clear. I don't think it's gonna happen.

He, yeah, he really equivocated about this. Like there might be a Mac Pro. What he's not saying is the Mac Pro will ship with the Mac Studio. Now he's certain the Mac Studio is going to update in the first half. But the Mac Pro is just a cloud with a question mark in it. Like, and when I read that newsletter,

I thought it sounds to me like summer or fall. And that's interesting. That's interesting. But yeah, it might, they might skip it. I still am not entirely convinced that there isn't like a Mac Pro strategy hiding in the background where they actually do have a plan to differentiate the Mac Pro. But it to me it's just as likely that the Mac Pro is a, you know, we designed this case so we might as well update the chips in it but no it doesn't make sense for anybody. We'll see.

As much as it hurts people, I just don't understand the business case for the amount of development that it would take to make an effective Mac Pro and how much it would have to add to MacOS and Apple Silicon to make that work. And I just I'm just not sure that I see the business case for it. I could see a partner too. They could do their little partner thing where they design something and then have somebody else sell it where they say, you know, it's the Mac studio. And if you need those, uh, those cards, here's our mega Thunderbolt connection

kit thingy that is being sold by Belkin or whoever. And you can put the cards in there and then they work. I don't know, I don't know, we'll see, we'll see. I wonder if they're holding out for a future where they actually do decouple, optionally decouple the GPUs and do something very different in the Mac Pro. But again, nobody buys the Mac Pro.

Sorry, fans of the Mac Pro. Essentially nobody buys the Mac Pro. Sorry, fans of the Mac Pro. Essentially, nobody buys the Mac Pro. So it's a tough one. Quote, more conversation on Siri would be debuting in 2026. But if we're following this chronologically, we will see it at WWDC. So this would be around the middle of the year. Right, right.

They'll announce something for next year about Siri being better. And this will probably also tie up. was thinking we're talking earlier I could imagine genuinely that we might I mean if we spoke about this before but just thinking about it now we will still be getting Apple intelligence features from iOS 18 post WWDC. That could be right that could be because there are a few big stuff left and we may still see that. I feel like 18.4 will probably ship in maybe May and we'll be like at last, the last bill of goods from.

We'll see. I don't know. And then in June, but you're right, it could slip. It could slip. It's possible. And the question, I wonder if what they're doing right now to go back to that App Intense statement that he made, I wonder if the debate right now inside Apple is like,

what can we ship now, I mean, 18.4, as a way to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we ship this feature we promised. And what do we boot out of this feature? Like, App Intense is an interesting one where there are whole classes of App Intents for different kinds of apps and I really do wonder if they're like if we're gonna ship this we can only focus on these limited sets of classes and potentially some of the ones that they said they

would support in 18 they just kick it to 19 and say look we know we need to do more but we just can't and so they focus on the ones that the hardware requires, maybe, and the rest of them, they just put it in the keynote again for June and see what happens in the next cycle. Mark calls out one of the things for iOS 19 could be an AI-powered health coaching service, which could potentially- He's been talking about that a while, yeah, which could potentially, he's been talking about that a while, yeah.

That could potentially, depending on what that means, that could potentially solve an issue that I have with Apple's overall health strategy, which is they give you information, but give you zero context of what any of it means or how any of it works together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. I'm not ready to talk about it yet

because I've not given it enough of a college try, but in the last few weeks, I've been trying out a whoop band, if you're familiar with this company, W H O O P. They're like, it's just a strap that you wear and it's doing a lot of stuff. It's measuring stuff and it's even pulling in data from my Apple watch. And they actually take multiple pieces of information and give me suggestions about my day and how I might want to use my energy throughout the day in a way that I wished that Apple Health would. And maybe this could be a step to that. But I also feel like I'm being, I'm hoping too much from it. But nevertheless.

There's an ad, another effective actually, I would say Apple ad is this ad called Quit Quitting. That's about, you know, you quit your New Year's resolutions on the second Friday of January on average. And it's a, you know, what if, but what if you didn't, what if you had, and it's an Apple Watch ad, and it's all about fitness. And it's a good ad. I mean, it's not Bucatini with some peas,

but it's a good ad. I mean, it's not Bucatini with some peas, but it's a good ad. But what strikes me about it is, I get the aspirational aspect of it, which is like the Apple Watch will help you stick with your fitness regimen, it'll measure and all that. But when you talk about the AI powered health coaching and all of that, it strikes me that this is an area where Apple with all of its data does not really lend you

a helping hand to, I mean, they'll do like, yeah, you closed your rings and stuff like that, or, oh, you're a little behind on your rings. Maybe you should go for a walk or something like that, but it's dumb. And there's something better to be done with this. And if you look at that ad, you think of Apple's, what Apple wants the Apple watch to be, which is a companion that helps you get over the hump, not quit your goals, fulfill your goals.

That's a health coach, basically. So they do need a feature like this AI powered or not. They do need a feature like this. powered or not. They do need a feature like this That to fulfill what their clear aspirations are Talking about the Apple watch the Apple watch se will get a redesign don't Interested to see what this is. I really want them to just make a plastic Apple watch, right? Like but I don't think they're gonna do it, but I think it would be fun um, and the ultra the the series 11 and the Ultra 3.

Is it series 11 or series 12? It would be series 11? Yeah, I'm going to go with that. Oh, that's this year. It would be a series 11. Yeah. Series 11 and the Ultra 3 will get high blood pressure detection and the Ultra 3 will get satellite connectivity. So high blood pressure detection and the Ultra 3 will get satellite connectivity.

So high blood pressure detection is interesting. So you can have hypertension and get medicated and all that. But also what will happen is this is going to be more like not we're going to take your blood pressure and give you your details and send it to your doctor. It's more like if it detects that you've got high blood pressure, you're having a high blood pressure event, it's like having an AFib event or something like that, they will send you an alert and say, you need to talk to your doctor. I have a friend that this happened to.

He ended up having a very high blood pressure incident and went to the hospital and was in the hospital for a few days. It's a whole thing. The idea that people who are, again, if you're maintaining, that's not what this feature is. This is one of those classic Apple features in a way where they're turning the weakness of the Apple Watch into a benefit, which is, okay,

we can't act as your blood pressure cuff, but we can throw a warning when your blood pressure seems high. And for some people, you know, most of us, I think, are oblivious of lots of aspects of our health to be told by the Apple Watch, you have a problem. Talk to your doctor now. Tell them this. That's good. That's great. Yeah. Even if the answer is, yeah, you have hypertension and you need to go on

this medication and you need to check your blood pressure every day, like your Apple Watch is not necessarily gonna do that part of it, but it could do the warning part, which is, you know, then there's a montage at WWDC about, or sorry, at the Apple watch launch about how it saved more lives. And that's the goal. But that's the goal. That's what they're trying to do. Like literally if you ask the Apple watch people and the watch OS people what they're trying to do, they'll say sell products and save lives. Those are the two things. I say, sell products and save lives. Those are the two things.

I mean, and that kind of rules. I mean, like I had that thing, it's a very minor thing, but like, you know, the vitals widget that's in my home screen, I mean, I could see that I was sick, you know? And like the device knows, like it knows, because I, hey, look, something's wrong here. And it was right.

I was sick last week. And my Apple watch knew that in the level than which it can know that which is like you could see that there are a couple of things that are out that were out of line. Yeah the iPhone's the iPhone line really the only thing of note is the iPhone 17 Air it will be thin it will feature Apple's own modem, an A19 chip and a single camera. This is the thing I've been wondering about. There's been lots of rumors and back and forward, but Mark saying this makes me like, okay, that phone's going to have one camera.

That is going to be complicated for people, I think, especially in our sphere who might like the idea of a super thin iPhone, but with one camera. And Apple are betting that this will outsell the Plus, but won't outsell the Pro, which I think is the right way to think about it. I think that this will be a winner in the way that the Mini and the Plus were not. I imagine that they will put one of their versions of a 48 megapixel with the bend pixels so that they can do a full 48 or you can do a 24 megapixel with the bin pixels so that they can do a full 48 or you can do a 24 megapixel with binning

or you could set it to a 2X zoom essentially which is just using the center portion which gives you a zoom even though it's not a camera with zoom. I think that that's all good. They said, he said that it'll be about as thin as the iPad Pro, right? So that's thin, that's really thin.

There was another rumor, a Ming-Chi Kuo rumor, that its thinnest part, this will be 5.5 millimeters. The 11 inch iPad Pro is 5.3. So yeah, that's, that is genuinely like, that five millimeter range at the moment. Technology of this ilk cannot be thinner than this. Like it can't because there are, there are factors like, uh, buttons, right? Like if you're going to have any buttons, there is just a thickness level that they literally have to be at. So

that five millimeter range seems like the absolute like thinnest a piece of technology can be. And I will say that that iPad is so thin. And a phone that thin would be quite special. It would be. And that's the thing is, you know, tech nerds who want all the things will get the pro. But a lot of people, regular people, and also some tech nerds, I would say, will say that the iPhone is so advanced now that giving up some of those features in order to get this super thin, awesome new thing

is worth it for them. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to get this super thin, awesome, new thing is worth it for them. So I'm looking forward to seeing this product. I definitely think it will do better than the plus and the mini because it's offering something more substantial than screen size differences. And I know it's like, well, wait, it's just a different dimension that's getting thinner. But like, yeah, I know, but I don't know. It's going to feel like no iPhone before it. And that, that has some value.

I'm going to make a mic prediction here, Jason. You ready? Ready. Steven Hackett, Federico Vettici and Marco Amem will all buy this phone. Not one of them will be using it before the iPhone 18 comes out. That is my prediction. I love it. Those three guys are like in this realm and like they will want it and I

understand it, but like they're all going to struggle with the problems that it has over time. I agree. I think I want to, I want to say that one of them won't, but I think you're right. I think that that's exactly what's going to happen is they'll all buy it and they'll all get a replacement for it before the cycle is up. Yeah. Yeah. Apple is working on adding heart rate monitoring to the AirPods Pro 3 is something that Mark has reported about previously that we haven't gotten to yet and mentions in this again. They're also working on temperature sensing and other physiological measurements in general.

I find this to be an interesting one. I guess it would set apart the Pro models again, right? Because it has an extra feature that regular AirPods don't. But I really, for me, I'm not sure who this customer is. I think that the AirPods base is broader than the Apple Watch base. And that there is also a certain percentage of them who do not overlap. And I think this is a way for Apple

to basically start getting health data in from people who are not using Apple Watch. So it's not a huge selling point I would say. I feel like it's more that Apple, as you buy these because you want a new pair of AirPods, one of the things that it's gonna get you is more data in the health app and that they want that to happen. But I don't think a lot of people are like, oh man, take my temperature in my ear, let's do it. It's a nice to have, right, the heart rate monitoring in AirPods Pro is a nice to have.

But I just, I don't see it as like a potential, like a real selling point. Cause like for me, the person that I'm thinking of, right? Because the difference here is this is only really useful for when you're working out, like that's going to be the pitch for it. And it's just like, if you really care about your heart rate monitoring when you're working out,

you probably have an Apple watch. Yeah, but some people, some people might not. And I think it gives value there. There's also heart rate monitoring when you're working out, you probably have an Apple Watch. Yeah, but some people might not, and I think it gives value to their, there's also heart rate monitoring for people who do not work out, who are like, where you're walking and your phone and your AirPods are measuring your exertion and they can tell you things about

whether you're getting in better shape or worse shape. I think there's also some warning stuff, like if they can do AFib detection or something like that, then they're gonna throw an alert. But it is different in the sense that it's only when you've got the AirPods in, right? It's not all the time with your Apple Watch. So it's less, look, I like this.

I don't think this is a game changer. I think this is more showing that Apple has realized that all of its products should have health sensors in them and contribute to the whole. I'll also say it's possible that if you've got an Apple Watch and you've got AirPods Pro 3 with these new sensors that they are going to be able to coordinate because I suspect some of the monitoring will be more accurate in the AirPods than in the Apple Watch, believe it or not. There might be things that you could measure

better in the ear, like temperature, than you can on the wrist, but certainly to make it more accurate by having two different data points. And I think Apple's goal is ultimately this constellation of devices thing where they've got data everywhere. I mean, maybe eventually, I believe Mark Gurman's report is that it wouldn't be as accurate, at least to begin with, but that's to begin with, right? Maybe it works. wouldn't be as accurate at least to begin with, but that's okay. Maybe it works in the city. They take temperature on, on, uh, on in people's ears. So I wonder if not far off though. This is okay. So again, it's like, it might get better over time and like, please look, upgrade Ian's, if you have opened a thing to write to me to tell me you don't wear an Apple watch,

but you'd love this. Great. I'm not saying nobody wants this. My point is that like it is a, it is the, the Venn diagram of like would like heart rate monitoring and does it, you know, like an Apple watch and doesn't have a tracker of some sort. Like that, that is like a very small market to, to, for me, for features in app, one of Apple's most popular products, like that's kind of what I'm getting at. I think Apple has to go into this thinking it's either additive or they're gonna be able to reach people who are never gonna,

who aren't tracking, aren't fitness tracking and aren't doing any of that and they can still get some vitals from them and use it as part of the health app. I think that's gotta be what their goal is. But I know, I don't think it's gonna be a selling point. Right, like I don't think that's part of it. The hearing aid part is a selling point.

This other health stuff is more just like comes along for the ride, which is fine. And then kind of the last time thing in the years that the MacBook Pro will get an M5 update, but not expecting much more. Mark notes that Apple is planning a bigger update for the MacBook Pro in 2026 as it marks the 20 year anniversary. Do you think... Would you expect them to make a big deal product wise at the 20th anniversary of the MacBook Pro?

No. I don't either. I don't think anybody cares. No. I mean, this is one of these things which reminds me of like, remember that rumor of like the Steve Jobs edition of the Vision Pro like it feels like that kind of thing Like I don't think Apple's making a big deal of the 20th anniversary of the MacBook Pro Like that doesn't and like and like making a big change to the MacBook Pro because of it

It's literally just the anniversary of the Intel transition Because it was the power book before yeah That's it. It was the PowerBook. I'm not sure that I see it. The PowerBook's existed since the 80s. So MacBook Pro, it's literally the name. Maybe they have some new features next year for the MacBook Pro, right?

But it's not like, oh, we've got to hold them for the 20th anniversary. I don't know if I, I don't think those two things match up for me. I don't believe it. But he's talked about this in the past. Yeah, it's, they will eventually do a MacBook Pro that's got, you know, super OLED screen.

Dual tandem OLED screens and stuff like that. Sure. I mean, there's room for there. And cellular would be great, sure. Cause they have their own modems, Jason, any day now. You know, any day now. Any day day now any day now well maybe that new iPhone SE or whatever so we didn't even mention the fact that there's some speculation that they're not gonna call it the iPhone SE that they might call it

something like the iPhone 16s which I think it's fine because it says what it says what features are in it right it says it's from the 16 line and it's from that era and it's got that that chip and you kind of know what it is. And it allows it not to be quite as much of an outlier. And the problem about 16 sounding data, it's like, well, in an era where they sell multiple previous generations of iPhones, I don't think it's a problem.

I don't know, because I feel like we'll be up to iPhone 20, and they'll still be selling this version of the product And I think that that makes a bit. I think that makes it a bit more complicated Maybe although it might also be that they're committing to update it Maybe every two or three years instead of more than that. Maybe Mark also says that throughout the year at least we'll get a new air tag a better range new version of the home pod Mini and the Apple TV that are quote built with Apple's new smart home ecosystem in mind. Okay. All right. I still think that there may be an Apple intelligence story. I got some

feedback from somebody who was like, what do you mean Apple intelligence doesn't really make sense on TV OS? I'm like, well, no, I'm thinking like Apple intelligence on TV OS like Apple intelligence on tvOS is things like it's it's related to things that tvOS does or it's as a home hub where there's part of their smart home ecosystem is tagged with apple intelligence of we're going to control this or that i don't even know but like whatever they're doing there makes sense to get everything kind of up to speed thread radios and you know all those and whatever else they're doing as part of this forthcoming focus on the home that they've sort of not had up to now which is great like with past due but great bring it on I did come not love that that Mark Gurman

referred to the Apple TV as a laggard I mean because like tech technically it's so here's the thing. Technically, it's not a laggard. Technically, it is still by far the best, most powerful box you can buy for your TV. It's only a laggard because Apple won't sell a cheaper version to get their market share up. Now, I would argue that at this point, again, they should really do that. You're never going to really compete with Amazon and Roku because they're not playing the same game. They're selling you stuff or getting your data and they're happy to make a,

some of those things have such a, they're so slow. It's such a bad interface. I've tried them. They're not very good. Apple stuff is vastly better. Apple is a laggard in other ways, and the software is part of the problem. There are parts of tvOS that could do with a lot of work,

and there are also things that tvOS lacks because Apple's unwilling to do deals that people want them to do. Yes, I agree with that. Although in most cases, if you compare it to what the state of the art is with the other TV platforms, it's not. It's a laggard from the ideal. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying.

There are very few features of Roku or the Amazon Fire stuff that I would look at and say, well, I wish I had that on Apple TV. In fact, the one that you mentioned, you alluded to is, some people have made a deal with Netflix so that Netflix is integrated into their stuff and Apple just hasn't. And, you know, somebody needs to, Apple needs to swallow their pride there because it really hurts their product.

But in most cases, that stuff on the other side, there's like a live guide that Amazon I think has. And like, look, they need to do more with tv os but just saying they're a laggard is weird to me because in a lot of ways they like if you if you use any of the other products you realize how much better apple's hardware is like just it's faster and more capable and more responsive than the stuff on the other platforms. But they are also, as Joe Rosenstiel has detailed, repeatedly on his blog, there are so many areas of low-hanging fruit for Apple

that they just have not taken off the tree, including a live guide. That would be one of my number one features is, Apple TV needs a live section that is properly showing everything that's currently on, on anything that you've got that does, whether it's a free ad supported streaming, or you get Peacock and you get 20 channels with that,

and you've got ESPN, whatever it is, that's such a great trend, and Apple's just sort of like, very much living 15 years ago in that. So, okay, I guess they're a laggard in some places, but I laughed cause he tossed it off like, oh, what a laggard, it needs a hardware update. And it's like hardware update is not Apple TV's problem.

Right? That's not the problem. Cause he was saying in the context of there'll be a new Apple TV box and like great, but like doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. It's the software that's the problem. I'll finish this out by reading a quote from Mark Gurman. It's like that 2025 is ultimately remembered as a stepping stone towards more revolutionary products rather than a year

of remarkable innovation. 2025 will set the stage for future years of advancements in mixed reality, smart home accessories, and foldable devices. I think it's a good way to look at the year maybe, right? Like if it does end up playing out that way, because obviously, you know, they're laying some of the groundwork for some of the stuff they want to do in smart home, maybe if that ends up working out

for them, and also if they're gonna get to foldable, they have to first make a iPhone super, super, super thin, and maybe this is the way they get there. Yep, I agree with Mark too. When I wrote my predictions column in Macworld for this year, I was like, that's why the article ended up being, it's the year of Apple intelligence again, is like, feels like a lot of that is going on. And then on the hardware side, it's just going to kind of be mostly other than like that home thing is really interesting, right?

That home gadget, but most of it is going to be the truth is Apple's products are in pretty good places right now. They don't need, they'll put the new chips in them and that'll be great. But like, I don't think this is a year where any of these products needs a big overhaul and I don't expect that they'll get a big overhaul. They'll, we'll have that thin phone. We have the weird smart home, whatever thing they're doing with that, that screen and accessories and modules or whatever.

And everything else that's going to be Apple intelligence Apple intelligence Apple intelligence, and that's that's what this year's going to be I think yeah This episode is brought to you by Express VPN How did you choose which internet service provider to use? The sad thing is lots of people have very little choice because ISPs have a lot of control in the regions they serve. They can then use this control to take advantage of their customers with dating camps and streaming throttles the list goes on, but they also have the ability to keep logs of the websites that you visit, unless you use ExpressVPN. Without ExpressVPN, third parties could still see every website you visit, even in incognito

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To learn more and sign up. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show. And Relay. It's time for some Ask. Upgrade. Questions questions to finish out. Today's episode Adam writes in and said I recently got my first Apple watch for the holidays this year and while exploring the settings I found a hand washing timer. Do either of you use this? Do you know anyone who does? Who does? Adam, did you miss COVID? Look, here's the thing.

If you're if you weren't thinking about it at the time, it is weird to see now. Right? Like it made sense then. That was when they launched it. Even though there was like this rumor going around that Apple had apparently been working on it for a while, which I'd never believe. I'm sorry. I don't believe that. Because why would you do this? No.

But it's still there. I mean, for me at the time, it was helpful because it was just a reminder on my Apple Watch, like that I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing. You know, I'm washing my hands like 15 seconds or 20 seconds is the countdown. It's still on for me now, and I still see it and laugh every now and then, because just like this idea of my watch shooting the countdown for me,

but yeah, it's there, it works, and that's that. It was a crash program for Apple to build a COVID-related feature into WatchOS, and they thought they could train their model to look at the Accelerometer data on the Apple watch detect that you're washing your hands and then automatically give you a timer to encourage you to wash it for the appropriate length of time and they rolled it out and as a sort of typical first off hand washing never goes out of style But it like it took so long that like the heights of the COVID functionality that would have been nice in the moment, you know, they sort of missed that. But it was one of the things that they got out to show like, oh, like, we're doing this along with the detection thing they worked on with Google that kind of didn't go anywhere. That's what it is. I don't use it. I never did. I don't know anybody who does. But then again, I don't have conversations where I say, hey, can I wash the timer? So I always had like a thing that still happens and I kind of can't believe it where like,

you know, you get like the the loud noise detection. You got that yesterday at the basketball game. Right. We'll talk about that in upgrade plus actually. I want to hear about that. Okay. The that I get that from a hand dryer, right? So like I put my hands in a hand in the hand dryer, the dyes and hand dryer, and it sets off the loud noise detection thing.

But it does it after a hand washing detection event. Now, I feel like these two things should work together. Like if hand washing event, do not worry about a very quick loud noise for the next minute, because it's probably a hand dryer, you know? Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I feel like they could they could they could put these two things together. But what if you were washing your hands while loading? Great point. Things onto a plane.

It's a great point, Jason. It's a great thank you. That's why people listen to the upgrade program is hypotheticals like that. So whatever. Mattias writes in and says, I recently got my first Apple Silicon Mac and was wondering if there are any useful iOS on the Mac apps. Right now, I use Overcast, but not really much more. Do you use any?

This was a feature that had so much promise, but nobody wanted to use it. Right? The issue was so many developers opted out of it. Like I went through the apps on my Mac today, my MacBook Air, and the only one that I have is overcast. You know, the ones that I use, and some of them are gone now, I use the MLB app, but they removed it. This is the problem. And said use our website.

And the fact is their website is pretty good and their website is in fact more functional than their iOS app in terms of like multi-view and stuff. And you know, I love a quad box. Fubo TV, my TV provider, actually my former TV provider, oh, um, they have an iPad app that I used to watch Fubo on, on the Mac, but YouTube TV, my new TV provider for now, uh, they just want you to go to tv.youtube.com and their web interface is very good and it's fine. Fubo has a web interface too,

but I did like the fact that it was self-contained and not in a web browser. It was kind of nice. And Overcast, I use every Monday to check our MP3 files before posting the episode. I upload them to Overcast and then I play them back and I check the chapter art and I check the chapter titles and stuff like that.

I'm not sure there's more, although I've been, I feel like I've got an answer to this question, which is I've been using more stuff, but it's not true. I've been using more stuff using iPhone mirroring now. Yes, that has kind of made it, iPhone mirroring and iPhone widgets and like all that kind of stuff has really made the need for this less. But definitely like the, you know,

there were apps that I wanted to use and either what happened was I just, it never got, it just never got done. So like whatever, I just let it go. But there were a couple of apps that I wanted the iPhone versions of on the Mac. The developers didn't enable it, but that actually like encouraged them to make a Mac app like Timery is one of them Where Joe of Timery Timery Joe or Joe time Joe Timery? I ended up just really going down the route of using catalyst And making a Mac app Mac version of Timery, which is definitely better than what would have been just the iOS version on the Mac Right, right because it's got access to the menu bar and stuff like that.

Yeah. Jerry says with the rumored launch of the new Apple Home devices with screens, where does the HomePod line go? Is there a future for both of these devices or would the HomePod and HomePod mini be discontinued in your opinion in favor of these new devices? I think Apple's done the work to engineer the HomePod and I think it will keep around. I think that the new device will be a HomePod. I think it will be called HomePod, whether it is called,

I heard a prediction on Connected last week, HomePod Touch. Yeah, that came from this show. Someone wrote into this show and said that. Oh, interesting. Well, my official Macworld prediction was they will call it the new HomePod. Yes, I can see that too. I think HomePod as we know it is not long for this world.

But I think I feel like those speakers will stick around. I think that they- The little ones, but I don't think the big ones for very long. Maybe not the big ones. Maybe not the big ones. Maybe the little ones, or maybe there will be a redesigned version that's kind of in between, that's more affordable.

But here's the thing, I don't think Apple wants to seed the home speaker market to the competition, especially because having, you know, if they're going to base everything on AirPlay 2 or things like that, or they've got a home strategy, a smart home strategy, they want to make sure that they're selling things that like give you the best experience. If they had a partner that they felt did that, I think they would work with them. But I don't think they feel that they do. So I think having some speakers you can put in your house is a thing that they're going to continue to do. Although again, the argument is, if all of Apple stuff works with the partner speakers, then Apple doesn't need to make speakers. It's just I think that that's not where they are right now. So I think HomePod speakers will stick around. I'm very interested in the idea that you won't need a big HomePod anymore because one of Mark Gurman's suggestions is that this HomePod with a screen will have a speaker dock, essentially, that you can put it in. It's like the iPod Hi-Fi is coming back, Mike. And that's interesting, right? Because that's the idea,

like you put on a wall using a little wall thing, or you can put it in a speaker, and then it's a HomePod with a screen at that point. But it's one product that does these two different kind of contexts. And he mentioned in his story also the idea that Apple actually thinks that they might be able to sell multiples of these. And I thought, well, if you can get the price down, so it's not an unreasonable price to have these little home pods in your house, you could put them in a couple

of rooms and carry them around and do whatever. And that could be interesting. So I think they're revamping here, but I do feel like having a device or set of devices that will give you pleasant sound from Apple Music in your home is a thing that they still want to do. Michael asks, having used the Vision Pro for several months now, do you think a Vision Pro monitor product could be an interesting least viable product? How much of your use

of the Vision Pro is outside of the vicinity of a Mac? Would this work maybe at $1,000? So a bit more context around this. Basically, what if a Vision Pro, but it had kind of nothing inside and it was essentially just to give you a very large screen for a Mac? Do you think that that is an interesting product on its own? I don't. And I think the number one reason is the cost

of the Vision Pro is the displays and the sensors and you still need those for something like this. I mostly don't use my Vision Pro with a Mac. In fact, I almost never use my Vision Pro with a Mac. I am almost entirely, like if I travel or I've got a very specific context, I might use it, but I've got I've got screens at home. I'm doing fine. I'm mostly at home anyway. And so I'm using it for other stuff.

But even if you just said, Well, what if Vision Pro focused on that, like it would still cost too much money, because it because of all the other things that go into it. So I like it as an additive feature that makes the Vision Pro more appealing to people over time and in certain contexts like travel, but the Vision Pro just needs to get cheaper, period. And although some of that could be done probably at the expensive thing, features nobody cares about, I don't think you could make like a Mac virtual display that would be like the Vision Pro for a low price,

unless you could make the Vision Pro for the low price because of those displays, because of all the sensors that are required. But even if you could, I don't think this is a product that is really that worthy. Like, I don't think Apple wants to make like X-Real glasses that have very little like spatial tracking and you just plug them into your Mac

and you've got a screen in your face. I feel like the X-Real wants to make that, that's great. But like, I don't think Apple wants to make something like that. I think that they have bigger plans. Mac virtual display is a really nice feature of Vision OS. It is not the only reason of Vision OS. It is not the only reason to use it and it shouldn't be. If that was the only reason to use it,

they're like they've kind of messed up. I think. Yeah. There are other many good features that are part of Vision OS. I just like using Vision OS. I think Vision OS is a very enjoyable operating system to use when it works correctly. You know, when your eye tracking is working correctly, which it doesn't always. But when it does, most of the time, it's like, say like 90% of the time I have no problems. When I do have problems, it's like, oh, that's annoying. But the Mac is like a nice part of it. It shouldn't, that is not the product.

Like you shouldn't have done all this and then just end up with this product That is just a monitor that you drop to your face. That's not that's not really a worthy exploration in my opinion For Apple to have gone that far Like maybe you know if you were to start with that and then build it out to what the vision Pro is then fine I don't know why you would have done that but that would have made more sense The idea of like getting to vision Pro and then just shrinking it down to this thing you can just plug into a Mac doesn't. Right. And it's glasses or goggles or whatever that don't track your movement. And so it's just, there's just a big screen in your face and you sit there and type away.

And like, that is, again, that's more like X-Real glasses, it feels like to me. And I was like, that's fine. But I don't, I don't see Apple finding that to be a use case. That's not what we're going to... I think, I actually think a more exciting use case is a Vision Pro that runs Mac OS than a Mac with X-Real Glasses attached to it. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You can send in your questions along with your feedback and follow up by going to upgradefeedback.com. If you have enjoyed this episode and think to yourself, Oh man, they're wrapping up now. I'd like some more of it. Well, let me tell you that you can actually get more of it. Just go to getupgradeplus.com. You can sign up, you can support the show and you'll also get more stuff. I want to ask Jason about his experience,

which looked like what was essentially courtside basketball seats, which he posted on those guys. I want to hear all about that. You can find the video version of this show by going to YouTube and searching for upgrade podcasts. And we'll be there. And you can you can watch along with us if you would like to do that.

Thank you to ExpressVPN, Oracle and Ecamm for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, as always, I would like to thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.