Upgrade - 547: Figure Out and Find Out

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 547 for January 20th, 2025. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, FitBud and DeleteMe. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi Jason. Hi Mike, how are you? I'm pretty good, I'm pretty good. I have a Snow Talk question for you that I'm pretty sure I've asked before from the same person. And Eli writes in and says,

Jason, how did you enjoy the Flophouse Live last night? Thank you for letting this upgrade and Flophouse fan say hi. It was great. Thank you to Eli. I did speak to some upgrade listeners. and Flophouse fan say hi. It was great. Thank you to Eli. I did speak to some upgrade listeners. The, you know, we have between John and Merlin and me. I feel like we've turned a lot of people onto the Flophouse, the Upgradees. There's a lot.

So there's some overlap there. So there were definitely some listeners there. Ran into a former co-worker of mine who works at Apple now, got to see him. I knew he was coming. He texted me. He was like, are you going? I said, yeah, I'm going. He says, okay, well, we'll see you there. But it was great to see him. We had a nice time. I mean, it's easy to get there. The show's in North Beach. It's like super easy to get there across the bridge. And then it's the boys.

And, you know, there's really a delightful thing about about seeing those people who I've been listening to for so long. And then they're just up there doing their doing their thing. Great, great. Highly recommend the flop house as a live podcast experience. We had a great time. All three of them. Oh, yeah. Good. I mean, I'm not sure how they do their live

shows. They don't do it. They don't do it any other way. No, it's they do a presentation or each of them for a live in person show that each of them does a presentation. The presentations are very funny. I think Stuart really killed it with his presentation, which was about New York City. But not quite. It was really good. It was very funny. It was just completely absurd and And and then they do when they're done with their presentations, then they do an episode where they talk about, you know a bad movie and we got Rennie Harlan's classic pirate flop Cutthroat Island. So I have not seen

Yeah, we had a good time and that the only problem is that you know in six months or eight months or something like that A Saturday will come and there'll be a new flop house episode and it'll be that what we already heard I'll be like, yeah, okay We heard that one that happens That's the downside of of going to a live show is that you don't get a new episode when they drop that in their feed And they they always do anyway It was great If you'd like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, please go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snell Talk question

and take you to Eli LastnamewithHerald for sending that question in. It's time for what has become our new recurring segment about notification summaries, Jason. It's time for Summing Up. Summing Up. This was a thought that I had on the train this morning. I was proud of myself and here we are it's summing up and Jason's made some wonderful artwork Which you can look at your podcast app now and see it and this is because I mean last few weeks We've been tracking the story about app notification summaries and and the BBC essentially

as kind of being the flag bearer for this feature isn't good. And it was announced in the past week that iOS 18.3 beta three came out with a selection of changes for notification summaries. First off, summaries of quote, news and entertainment apps has been temporarily disabled. Apple is apparently working on bringing this feature back

in a future update. During the setup process, it is made even clearer that this is a beta feature. You'll be able to disable summaries from notifications themselves by swiping to the side, tapping options and turning them off. Can't believe this wasn't already there. I just would have assumed that was already there.

And summarized notifications are now italicized. So if you have an app or even messages say, it summarizes your notifications. When they're summarized, it has that little icon that it has, right? The little summary icon that they've made. And then the text is italicized, which I think looks horrendous.

I think it looks so bad and it screams what it is, which is a bandaid that they have scrambled to come up with. Yep. Like what is the bare minimum we can do? This has literally happened between, you know, between betas here as this has gone on and it's clearly a directive from on high saying, this do something resembling anything, right? And that's what it is. It's a bandaid.

Among the things that we suggested was you could just turn it off for news apps for a while. And they totally did that, which is, it's funny too, cause you can still select news apps as one of the class of apps to get summaries for. And then below it, it just says, but not now it doesn't work now, but when it does work again, it'll work. It's like, okay. Thank you. Like what, what, uh, so. This is one of these things that happens, I think quite rarely where it's like, we have been saying they should do such and such a thing, right? Or like, you know, lots of people have been saying Apple should do such and such a thing, right? Or like, you know, lots of people have been saying Apple should do such and such a thing.

But when they do it, it's like, I didn't expect that. I didn't think they would do it. I mean, it's what we wanted them to do, but I'm surprised they did it. And they've done it, which is just turn it off, which yeah, it's not good. Like this is not running to the press. Never helps. Mike running to the press this is not good. Running to the press never helps, Mike. Running to the press never helps and missummarizing the press never helps either. And it is, I mean, it's bad.

When you're badly summarizing news organizations, they're gonna let you hear about it and that's bad press for Apple. And so, I mean, that is the classic Steve Jobs, the running to the press never helps thing in the App Store guidelines. But like the truth is that it does, it does help because it always helps

because Apple hates bad publicity. And people called them on this. And I think it's funny, I would not have predicted this would be the thing that got Apple in trouble, but it is. So now we're seeing them scrambling to, look, this was a bandaid anyway. Apple Intelligence is kind of a bandaid, right? Apple Intelligence is like, as we've detailed over the course of the last six months, is

a way for them to try and really quickly jam things into their operating system to look like they've got AI stuff going on because they were behind. And so I think this whole episode has exposed the fact that a lot of the issues with Apple intelligence aren't the LLMs. It's the implementations of the LLMs and the choices Apple has made.

Now, going into this, I thought this is an opportunity for Apple to show that it can make good choices. This is an area where it made bad choices because it wanted to scramble and put this stuff in there before really thinking it through. And now it has to do damage control. And, and the real problem here is, you know, okay, so you temporarily shut off news and entertainment summaries, but you keep the UI like you're kind of committing to bringing it back now, but what's your strategy for bringing it back?

How is that going to work? So again, it's not great. And it really does expose what we all kind of suspected all along, which is that this is a real scramble for Apple to get this stuff in there. And they left a lot of stuff in the background that was super messy. And it's not a great look for Apple.

Apple certainly doesn't, it's not to say that other tech companies don't do stuff like this all the time. It's that Apple doesn't like to be seen as breaking a sweat and scrambling and struggling. And that's what they're doing with his stuff. Naturally, the BBC is thrilled. They're very excited about this.

They wrote an article saying it with a, I like there was an analysis from technology editor Zoe Kleiman, whose title is a rare U-turn from Apple, which I do agree with that kind of framing of her addition to the news article. Like it is, as I say, with that kind of framing of her addition to the news article. Like it is, um, as I say, like it's what we wanted, like we wanted them to do something, but it's still surprising when it happens. Um, and I just wanted to say is, uh, I'm impressed with the BBC. Like they, they really, I think there are a lot of news organizations, a lot of people pushing on this, but, but it kind of feels like the BBC was really kind of waving the flag on this one because they got the

initial kind of quote from Apple to be like, hey, we're looking at this. And then they've ended up kind of making a bigger change. I also saw a coming right from a different angle. Joanna Stern has been writing in her newsletter, Tech Things. Apple intelligence insists that she or her wife has a husband, which is really rough. Got to be a husband in there somewhere. Somewhere. So frequently. Apple intelligence is basically like, look, there's a marriage here.

There surely is a husband somewhere in there. That's what Apple intelligence is saying, which we are joking, but that's so bad, right? Frequently with Joana Stans, iMessage summaries, it displays something along the lines of, I've been seeing a post these online over the last couple of months, something like expresses frustration with husband, like it says in the summary. And this is assuming based on the context of their being like there is, it seems like because there is a wife or partner mentioned in the message somewhere that the AI is making this leap.

All of us who sort of know how these things work could say, I understand how it got there, right? I understand that why doesn't it for younger people who aren't married in general, why doesn't not summarize things as husbands and wives, all the boyfriends and all the other male people that people know are husbands and all the females are our wives and what doesn't it do that? Well, the answer is because the text of Joanna's text with her wife include the idea of a wife. And so they're like, oh, the LLM is

like, well, that's a super important context clue that there's a marriage here. So I can use married words, but then they mention one of their sons, and it's like, well, there is a male in the marriage cloud, and therefore we will assign that person to be a husband. I mean, I can't understand it. And Joanna talks about this, and I think that it's really interesting because it exposes exactly what's

going on here. And it's not the case, and she says this very much, it's like it's not the case that Apple is trying to be biased. And Apple says to her, Apple's AI tools were built with responsible AI principles to avoid perpetuating stereotypes and systemic biases. The problem, as Joanna points out, is that it's about probability. And so the LLM is saying it's more probable that there is a husband in this marriage than that there are two wives, which is true, right? But it's different to say, to have a computer say, I have beep boop beep boop, I have calculated the probability. And the way it comes from the human side, it's like an iPhone barreling into your marriage

like a Kool-Aid man going, hey, where's the husband? And it's like the two wives are there going, what the hell are you doing, iPhone, right? Like I can understand it from the beep boop computer side, but we don't see the beep boop computer, we see the Kool-Aid man. And it's just like, you're a big, dumb, rude lummox who's breaking things and making assumptions,

and you're wrong. And that's the difference between computers and probability and like society and being rude and having bad behavior. And the problem is when you have a computer act like it's a person, kind of, if you don't get that right, it's a disaster. Yeah, and it also doesn't feel intelligent, does it?

Right, like it doesn't feel intelligent. Like the phone knows Joanna Stern, knows everything about her, and knows, it should know she has a wife because the contact is called wife. Personal contact, baby. Like, you know, like it doesn't feel like a leap to make that assumption. And like I get the point. I really so like Joanna spoke to an Apple spokesperson and they said, quote,

Apple's AI tools were built with responsible AI principles to avoid perpetuating stereotypes and systemic biases. I really don't like that quote from them because that's great, but it didn't do it. That it like, you can say that as much as you like, but it didn't do it in this scenario, right? Like it's not worked has it, but like they don't, they don't say that didn't work. They're just like, Oh, well we tried and it's like, yeah, but it doesn't work like that. Yeah. Well, which comes back to the whole, um, we need to hold them responsible for what they do, not what they say and can't just say, well, it's a beta and you know, LLMs, right? They're kind of messy.

You got to say, it doesn't work. You guys know LLMs. You're doing it wrong. It's a failure. It's a bug. It's a failure. You need to fix it or stop it. It doesn't really matter what else is going on here.

We can all understand that you're trying to be, I mean, what they're really saying is, look, we tried, like you said, we tried everything to do it, but it's still probability. And so it's still going to happen. And like, I understand it, but it's not understanding why it's happening is not good enough, right? Like it, it, because in a human context, it's getting it wrong. And if the whole point of this tool is to use this stuff, to put things in a human context and it puts them in wrong, then it's a flop.

That's it. Because it's not even like, like you can listen to what we're saying and be like, oh, you guys are over blowing it or whatever. Like it's not, you know, like what is this scenario that is being spoken about? How is this, you know, like what? But the point is these features

are supposed to impress people, right? So you wanna use them. But if this is your scenario, you're not impressed by it, are you? Right? Like, and that is the problem here. And like, the bigger problem that, that I think we've been teasing out with Apple intelligence for the last six months,

maybe more, is this technology is supposed to impress people. It's supposed to be good. This is bad, right? Like over and over again, we're seeing examples of this technology just not being good enough. Now you can say it's a beta and that is fine

if Apple were in their actions saying that, which they're not, right? Like prompting people to go and install it, like when they set up their phones or giving them push notifications, making ads about it. Like that's not a feature you're trying to tweak, right? That is a buy this phone, get this feature. So that feature should be good.

I wrote a piece last week about one of the ways that Apple has failed. And I know I've mentioned this on the show, that one of the ways that Apple has sort of failed recently is when they make a misstep, it seems to be because they're making assumptions or following rules that no longer apply. And this is one of my examples, which is they don't know how to soft pedal a feature. Every feature is shouted as the greatest new thing and marketed and all of that.

And it seems like they kind of don't know how to say, here's a new thing that we're testing. You can try it if you want, but it might not work. Instead they're like, it's a beta, enjoy. And it's like, people don't know what that means. And it doesn't come across as as being You know reluctant it comes across as being super confident because everything Apple does is like no We're super confident and everything we do and you shouldn't be super confident about this feature

Because it isn't something to be confident about and you can put it out there and say look we're working on this new tech but but The reason that they're working on all this new tech. But, but, but the reason that they're working on all this new tech is they feel like they're behind. And so they want to catch up by acting all cool and being like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we got AI. Yeah, sure. Try it out. It's great. And then in the background, somebody's going beta. It's a beta. But like the whispered beta does not, is not heard over the shouts of Apple Intelligence, right? That's just the bottom line. And so that's what they're stuck with,

is this very weird situation where they are trying to act like one of the cool kids, but they're not one of the cool kids. And, you know, it's just not a great situation. It leads to bad outcomes. And I think that if you get somebody who's kind of poisoned with the narrative of AI, it's easy to scoff at this.

Why are they making a big deal about it? AI, it's probability and it makes mistakes and it'll all get better. But right now it's just not that. It's like all of that is true, but look through it through a product lens. It's like Johanna is an Apple customer who is being told by her device that she, I guess, should have a husband. She's certainly being told inaccurate information about her family. And like, that's not acceptable. That's a very large, in classic computer terms, we would say a very large bug. That's it. Okay, last thing I wanted to actually wrap up on this. I just think this technology is indicating

an issue with kind of the incumbents, where like the big companies where people have an expectation from them because they already have a bunch of data or whatever, like Apple and Google, they're really being pointed out with their failures more in this than the new companies because the new companies, they have an inherent like, hey, we're still working this out. We expect more from the big tech companies that exist currently. And that's kind of, I think, what Apple is falling foul to. Like, you have everything about me, right? So you should be able to do a good job.

You're right. If open AI or Anthropic or whatever does stupid stuff, everybody's like, oh, well, you know, it's the new tech. They're doing crazy stuff out there. They're just silly toddlers. They don't know what they're doing. Yeah, but then Apple does it and it comes with the weight of Apple.

And that's like, look, we all saw this coming. This is the consequence of Apple trying very hard to catch up in an area where they really got flat-footed, which they haven't done in a while and it's hard for them. And they're working really hard and it's, I get it, but this is the trade-off that Apple has chosen to make, which is in order to seem cool, they are taking this risk, which is to have big mistakes in their, in their tech. Yeah.

This is maybe a trick question because I feel like I know the answer and I know what you would say too, but do you think that Apple saw this coming? Like executives at Apple, do you think they saw this this this coming this? This kind of like the way it is gone so far I'm sure there are people inside Apple who knew this would happen. Yeah, because we knew this would happen We knew there would be a controversy involving something that was generated that didn't work, right? I'm sure there are people who warned about it hundred percent And I think what happened is that at a very high level,

probably Tim Cook, the decision was made that we have to do this. We have to go all in on this. This is a huge problem that we're behind. We have to catch up. And it will be worth it in the long run for us to do this, even if we take some hits in the short run. Now, my guess is that there's a spectrum of opinions or there was a spectrum of opinions among Apple's leaders about what that amount of hit taking would be. And I'm sure there were some who were told, no, no, no, we got it, we are on it, it's gonna be great.

And maybe this is Tim Cook who was like, yeah, I trust my people, it's Apple, we're gonna do the best stuff. And then there are probably some people again, I don't know who but like, let's say Craig Federighi, who is like, you know what, we're gonna take some hits, but we ought to do it because he was probably hearing from his managers are like, this stuff is not reliable. It doesn't reach Apple's expectation. And so it's going to be rough. And

we're going to be slapping these implementations in really fast. Now maybe it really just depends on how many yes men there are in the chain, right? To say, oh yeah, yeah, Craig, it's going to be great. It's going to be perfect. We're going to, it's Apple. But I'd imagine that there are some executives who knew. And this is the thing.

I don't think it makes a difference because I think through the line, if you had said to Apple executives when they made this decision to go all in on LLMs that, okay, you are going to be able to catch up. You are. But it's going to be a rough ride. And by rough ride, I mean you're going to features that don't work right. You're going to have to do some apologies. You're going to have to turn some stuff off. It's going to look, the facade is going to crack a little bit. But after a couple of years, two, three years, any potential existential threat you face from AI will be mitigated.

Every one of them would say, let's do it. And so here we are. It's like Apple Maps again, isn't it, or something, right? Where it's like- A little bit. They have an institutional memory of like, I know it's different, but just in the sense of like, it's gonna be bad for a while, but we will be able to pull through this.

Like if you believe in the organization. Yeah, and I know there are AI skeptics out there who say things like, you know, they didn't have to do this. They didn't have to do it. They're just running like lemmings, like the rest of tech into this LLM stuff. I get what you're saying, and there's definitely a possibility

that at the end of all of this, all the LLM stuff ends up being like fruitless. And it's like, oh, this was all a parlor trick and it's really not there. I don't believe that. I don't believe that either. Cause I can see it's already benefiting me. So I know that that's not the case.

This is it. I think that a hundred percent of what they're trying is not gonna work, but some percentage of it is gonna work and therefore it's probably worth it. But I think if you're Apple, this is what we talked about with the car. It's what we have talked about with the Vision Pro. One of the things you're doing if you're Apple, this is what we talked about with the car. It's what we have talked about with the vision pro. One of the things you're doing if you're Apple is placing bets in order to eliminate existential threats.

You have all the money and power in the world and you know what happens in the innovators dilemma. You know that all the giants of one generation flop in the next generation because they can't adapt to changes. And Steve Jobs knew this, it's be your own replacement. That's the whole idea. You get too comfortable, you don't wanna be your own replacement, someone else will replace you and then where will you be? So they look at this and they say,

if we do nothing, cause we're skeptical about LLMs, like we did two years ago and now look at everybody talking about AI, if we continue to do nothing while Google goes all in and Microsoft goes all in with open AI, all the other platforms for computing are going to have robust AI integrated to them and we aren't. And at that point, what do you want to risk that it matters? And maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it matters a little. Maybe it matters a lot. But there's certainly a risk of existential distress for Apple in not following them. And I know it's not great to say you got to

follow them. But like once, and they didn't for a while, right. But once there started to be some fruitful things coming out of the AI world, that's when Apple went, oh crap. And now they're over, they are overreacting, but they're overreacting because they, they need to get to that end state where Google and open AI and Microsoft and all the rest can't kill Apple because Apple missed whatever the killer AI feature is. So that's why they did it. I understand why they did it. I could maybe make the argument that, look, I don't like how they rolled this out because it does feel like they could have, they could have, they certainly could have done a better job. Maybe they could have taken their time. But remember, we're also the ones bellyaching that the better series isn't going to come until 2026, right? Like they are kind of taking their time, but they also need to ship stuff. And I do think that the attitude, the change within Apple

a year ago was, I know it's not perfect, but we've got to ship it and then we'll figure it out. And guess what, we're in figure it out time now, we have reached with with the notification summaries, we certainly have reached figure it out time. And it's going to come down to Apple's people saying, what can we do with our Appley approach to this to make this better? And to make people understand what it is and to make it useful. And I think as we've detailed the last couple of weeks, there are a lot of things they could do that were more nuanced to get notification to be summarized in a better way. And they didn't do any of that, they just sort of slapped in an LLM. So maybe this will see them back off and say, okay, we're gonna refactor this. Maybe notification summaries for news don't become Apple intelligence again. Maybe when they come back, they are something,

they are like a bulleted list of summaries. Here are the three most recent summaries, three most recent headlines and tap to get a full list. And they're processing the summaries in a different way, instead of saying, well, there were 10 bubbles. Now there's one bubble, which is sort of how it's doing right now. So we'll see. We'll see. But this is, look, this is the, this is the path they have chosen, like the Godfather, right? Like, and I understand why they chose the path. And I think if you had asked them to answer your question, I think if you had asked them and you had told them what the cost was

and that it would give them a black eye and all of that, but in the end it was going to guarantee that they were gonna, well, not guarantee, but they were gonna give it a go to be at the other end and mitigate the existential threat. They do it. Figure out and find out. That's where we are.

Figure out and find out. That's where we are. Figure out and find out. They are finding it out. They're finding out. And now they gotta figure it out. Again, it just keeps going around. That's the cycle. It does.

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to show your support for the show. A thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Reli. So as two people who do not use TikTok, shall we talk about TikTok? I love the TikTok. It's where I talk about the Pokémans. I love it.

I think there are some news stories that are unavoidable, I think, and this is one of them. Yep. It is very complicated. Honestly, at this point, I think it is too complicated to try and sum this story up. I'm assuming most of our listeners have at least some grasp of what's going on, but I'm going to give a incredibly brief, confusing summary.

So as it stands of where we are recording right now on the 20th of January, TikTok is operational in the USA, but not available to download in any app store. It appears that President Trump is attempting to get an extension for the app to be sold, at least in part to a US company, or maybe the government, it's not really clear at this point. This is all gonna, I mean, this is all gonna change probably rapidly,

but it is an amazingly chaotic moment where the app went down, the companies that take care of the infrastructure put it back up and said basically, well, President Trump said, at this point, President-elect Trump said that he'll take care of us once he takes the oath of office, which he just did as we started this podcast, and he'll sign an executive order and it'll be okay.

Apple and Google are like, have you seen the fines that are there legally? We can't do that. And so they've kept them off of the App Store. The problem with I'll sign an executive order is this is a law and the only thing in it, it was a law passed by Congress, signed by Biden, it is a law, it remains a law now, even though Trump is president, it remains a law. And the only thing in it is the president can delay this for 90 days if there is a pending sale, which there isn't, or is there, or are they gonna pretend that there is,

and do laws matter anymore? I guess we'll find out. But it's a very peculiar scenario. And some of these statements, like the statement that like, oh, well, we're just, the US government will buy half of it, and then it'll be fine.

It's like, first off, buy half of it is not what the law requires. It needs to be a complete divestment. And also the idea that we would say, well, just cut in the US government for half and we're not gonna pay anything is like a shakedown. It's literally like, well, nice app you got there. Shame if anything happened to it.

But if it, like, I just, so who knows where it's gonna go. It's also funny because you know who started the talk about banning TikTok? Donald Trump. And now he's like, no, I'll save, I'll save TikTok. Like what? What? So it's nonsensical. But that's everybody though, at the same time, this, this topic has become like this weird, like hot potato where people want to do it and then don't want to do it. Right. Because

it's like, Biden's like, yeah, let's do it. And then on the day that's happening, he's like, yeah, no, I didn't really want to do it. And it's like, everybody is like, they wanted to do this. And there are apparently reasons that no one can talk about as to why TikTok needs to be banned in the US of A. And then also nobody wants to ever. And then this is one of my other things. One of the reasons I wanted to bring this story onto the show today is to give kind of like a thing that I want to kind of get across to Upgradians, right? I think part of the reason that this story has been so complicated over the last 48 hours

is because there are lots of opinions online and everybody is saying different things. Like, for example, the idea about this 90 day extension thing, I am seeing smart people say this does apply and also it doesn't apply. And so like, what are you supposed to do with that? So I think that this is our first test of media literacy in the second Trump presidency. This is where I'm not saying I have any feeling as to what is

right or wrong here because I genuinely have no idea but this is an example of what we're about to see for the next four years like it or not and I will say as someone who doesn't live in America I particularly do not like it. In the end, what this is, is it is both the consequence and the ongoing construction or destruction of American Chinese international politics. That's what's happening. It was the ban was mooted because the thought was that China is an adversary of the United States and they built this popular app with the kids that let, that can read their minds and can change their minds by using their, their, their evil algorithm.

And that has been perfected on the brains of the youths. And, um, and therefore we must ban it because the Chinese Communist Party is going to control our minds and we can't stop them. Oh, no. And now it seems to be has been turned into a bargaining chip, which is sort of like, well, you know, you are a Chinese company, but in the US, we need to run it, which sounds honestly, it sounds very much like some of the stuff out of Europe, except without the law part, which is very much like, well, no, in our region, you have to do

things completely differently or get out. And TikTok doesn't want to do them in the way the US wants them to do them, which is divest their US operations to someone in America. And so it becomes a political football, right? It is now part of the narrative between Washington and Beijing, and that's where we are. So I can't wait for Tim Cook to run in and say, I'll save your TikTok for you. TikTok might want to, right?

Like TikTok at this point may have decided we wanna sell. Like even though they were saying they didn't want to, but they thought that maybe this wouldn't happen. And they went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court were like, no, this law stands. You have to. Right? So now, and it seems like from the way they are talking,

right? And they're like, thank you, glorious leader Trump, right? Like in the app of like, he saved Tiktok for all of you. Right? Like it sounds very much like TikTok wants to work with President Trump, but that doesn't mean that the people of the Republic of China wants TikTok to sell its assets, which is a thing,

from my understanding, that has to occur. Yeah, the Chinese government has to say, we'll let you, otherwise it won't happen because they have absolute control of China. And so they have to want it. And then also, again, I'm going to point this out because theoretically, again, who knows, we're now in a new era. There's a law on the books that says they got to do this or they're out. It's like the first piece of technology focused legislation in like two decades or something. Yeah, yeah. It's very clear about what that law says. And the

president saying it's okay doesn't do it, right? Like you need, you really need an act of Congress to change the law. And again, I will say, can they get a majority of the House and the Senate to do anything, even remotely controversial right now? We will see. But like, that's part of the question here is, is yes, one, the law says they got to sell. Two, if the Chinese government doesn't want them to sell, they can't sell. Step three profit? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. It is going to be fascinating to watch, but that's why I keep coming back to the fact that in the end, the only answer here is international politics. The only answer is, what does that say about the relationship between the US and China. And like it might be unilateral, it might be cooperation.

Like it might be unilateral in the sense that the Chinese government might look at Trump. And this is a thing I think that gets underrated about Trump is Trump breaks all sorts of norms, but I will say this, he does sometimes, I think, break through calcified positions out of kind of terror, where like, if he's like, well, you know, I'm gonna do this thing and we're gonna take TikTok

or we're gonna do this. And I wouldn't put it past the Chinese government to be like, oh, this guy, all right, whatever. Like, I really wouldn't. They could also very easily be like, no, we draw, all right, whatever. Like I really wouldn't. Um, they could also very easily be like, no, we draw a line here on TikTok. That's it. That's what we're going to draw the line on. And that that's fair too, but you never know.

I think that, um, when you're dealing with Trump, you have a different playbook and some stuff changes that was that seemed intractable because the intractability was based on well the Americans would never do this and then this guy rolls in and he's like I'm doing it and everybody's like but sir we never do that he says I don't care I'm doing it and they're like okay well let's see what happens now and and then the other the the intractable situation then changes positively negatively negatively, who knows, but chaotically. But it can break log jams just because the accepted rules of the game no longer apply. In this case, who knows?

There's also been a lot of, it turns out that the chain of ownership that starts with ByteDance and goes downward includes several other unrelated apps that have also been banned. Yeah. Honestly, the real loser here is Marvel Snap. Absolutely. Like, what is it? I'm trying to like, like shrapnel, just catching some shrapnel on this one. So Marvel Snap is a game made by a company called Second Dinner.

They are developer, they're the developer of this game. It is published by a company called Nuvia, which is owned by ByteDance. Yep. This law does not get rid of TikTok. This law is against ByteDance. So any app associated with ByteDance, and there's other ones like CapCut,

which is like a video editing app, is, they're killed. Now the weird thing is, like, this is where we continue with like, what is like a video editing app, is, they're killed. Now, the weird thing is, like, so this is where we continue with like, what is actually going on here, right? So Marvel Snap is not available in the App Store. And as of today still, Marvel Snap is not available, which means the service providers for Marvel Snap to keep it online are not bringing it back in the

US, which is different to TikTok, right? Right. So that is like another thing where like there is this like TikTok carve out now within the law, which is bigger because it's bite dance. This is just, this is like it or hate it, an incredible story. Right? Like it is, there's so much happening. What I want to do is try and guess what happens next. So this is what I think is going to happen. Right? Okay. Lay it on me. Trump is going to find a way to do the 90 day extension.

Like, like it or not, like that's in there. Everyone's authority, right? It's probably like, well, what, what is the, what is the thing that you're, that you're, you know, you giving 90 days to, and he's like, I got a plan. It's we need 90 days and they're like, who's going to stop him? Who's going to stop him? Who is the president at this point? Right? Like is the question like the point that this was done. And I, and I am of the, I could be at the persuasion of the president of elect,

the president elect is a powerful person, right? Because everybody knows what happens to the sitting president at this point. No one cares. So like like it or not, no matter what the rules are, the fact that the president elect said something that he was going to do. I think you can argue to a point if that which most people could just let go. Sure. Like if it was supposed to be done by such and such day or whatever, he said he was going to do it. We'll say that. So they put the 90 day process in place during that time. Someone multiple someones are going to try to step in to buy TikTok

to run it in the US as a separate entity away from ByteDance, right? And there are already lots of suitors and we're going to hear about a lot more of them because this is an incredible asset for you to buy. It is. China will say no, it will go away at the end of the 90 days, TikTok gone. And then Trump can still say I tried. It's not me. That's what I, that's where I think this ends up. In fact, he can say, now I need my, my people in Congress to repeal that law if he wants

to, or cause here's the thing. Here's the funny thing about it. You could also say that he will realize at some point in these 90 days that it really is, China, especially if China just says no to him, right? That it's like, oh, well, they're the bad guys. We don't want them anyway. And just use good old American feeds on YouTube and Instagram. I don't think Congress repeals this law.

I don't think it's gonna happen. Because he can change his mind in a fraction of a second. And in fact, his original opinion was TikTok is bad because China and it won't take long. I think this will happen over the next four years a lot where whoever is sort of like the most influential in the inner circle goes and says, yeah, but sir, you don't actually it's China

and they're bad and they won't. And if he gets frustrated, he's like, ah, they won't sell it to me. Well, that just proves our point that it's bad. Let's ban it. Yep. Um, and, and they, he can do that too, or he can pivot and say Congress, please, you know, let's change the law here. Maybe it only needs to be half owned or something.

I mean, that's the other thing that you could always bet on is the unsatisfactory solution, which solves a problem that didn't need to exist was created to address a very specific thing going on. And then they solve it in a way that does not address the specific thing that went on. Right? Like that. That's a lot of politics, it seems to me is, oh, no, we've got a problem of our own creation. Let's fix it by doing this other thing unrelated to the problem that we created. So we'll, I have no predictions. This could go any way. I know I've said this is, there's no way that the chain of events that I've set out go in that order, like if at all, right? But that's just like, for as much as I could try and apply logic to what the next three months are going to look like it It is it is that from my mind Is my other question to you and see if you're willing to kind of hold my hand and jump off the cliff with me Do you have an opinion as to whether tick tock should be banned in the US?

You know, I don't I don't know that I do I don't know that I do. I don't know that I do. My default would be no. My default would be that banning blanket bans of things that are owned by companies in other countries is only going to backfire on the US since so many of our things are all around the world. And all it does is encourage the creation of a completely broken up internet,

which is exactly what China has. And, you know, do that for the rest of the world so that we're all using our own stuff and not interacting. Like, I don't think that's good for the world in general. And I think that this sort of thing deals with that. I think being concerned that an adversary of the US I think being concerned that an adversary of the US has control of an information platform in the US. It's a little bit like when Americans tried to buy that,

what was it, was it the Telegraph? They tried to buy a British newspaper. And the UK government was like, no, no, non-UK people can't own British newspapers. We won't allow it or whatever. I think that's like if you can't have a majority in a, you know, like full ownership. And the same is true of movie studios and TV networks,

for sure, is an issue in the US. So I think that you could argue that, which is that we are concerned about media control by a foreign country, especially with the power of the algorithm, I think there is an argument to be made there. My gut feeling is that maybe you could, I know, just dream on here, legislate some rules about what the owners of social media algorithms are allowed to do and how they're allowed to control it, and that there's a provision for it to be taken over if it's being used in a way that's contrary

to national security or something like that instead of just grabbing it. But I would say the short version is it's really complicated. And my gut is the more of this you do, the worse it will be for all of your other American tech companies because everybody else will start to do it too.

And that's not great. But I do understand it's just like the foreign foreign ownership laws. There is some reason for it because, you know, it's to take the pod people example. You know, the idea that some foreign adversary, whether it's China or Russia or whoever can, um, can like turn on the algorithm that makes everybody revolt in the US. Like it's an extreme ridiculous argument, but you know, again, there are less ridiculous versions of that that are potentially a problem. So I think there might be something there, but I think that

in the end, it's probably bad for the world and bad for the US if American companies are then made the target of everybody else. I agree with that. I do say that I, you know, I understand and sympathize with the opinion that if China blocks out the rest of the world and doesn't allow any social media in, it is peculiar to me that the rest of the world will let it out, right? Like there is a, I understand that the thinking there of like China blocks itself off from the rest of the world, and then like, then it creates an app

that is out to the world. I can see some of the thinking there, but I agree that it is very complicated. My bigger thought though is like, I just, I don't think TikTok is very good for people. I'm sorry, I don't. That's why I don't use it. I think that in, what I will say is,

I think that if it did go away, I think it might be good for people, even if they don't like it. And sorry, all TikTok users, but here's what I will hit. What I will posit, especially to the people that listen to this show, most people that listen to this show, I think would be of the opinion that they're I love it in disc and remembers discord right now. I see several people are typing, which you know is always a bad sign.

Where, you know is always a bad sign. Of course they are. With services like threads or Twitter or whatever, people were like, I want a non-algorithmic timeline. Give me the people I follow. Chronological. But yet you will just scroll endlessly to the algorithm of video and just like lose hours. That's why algorithms in general are dangerous

and it is because they're so easy and they're so good. And that's why I think that they are dangerous and I'm not saying like it'll rot your brain or anything like that. I'm just saying they're dangerous for everybody because you have to exert a level of self control and that can be difficult. And I don't think that they're great for people in general. And that's not just TikTok. That's

like all of them. I think all of social media and I mean, TikTok is just doom scrolling. There's something about the short form video though that I think is like particularly bad and I don't know why. But like all of them, reels, TikTok, shorts, like there's something about that format that it feels like, for people that I observe in my life, becomes incredibly addictive, like more than, and I think part of it is, it doesn't end, right? So like-

Infinite. It will just carry on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. I have those moments. Here's an admission. I have those moments where I really don't want to be doing something else. And it's usually like I'm having my tea and my breakfast in the morning and I don't want to get up and maybe the maybe the cat is crawled underneath my legs under the blanket and it's warm and it's pleasant. And I have this sort of swirling set of things I can do. I can check my email. I can look at Ivory. I can look at Slack. I can look at Discord. I can look at

Blue Sky. I can look at my sports list. That's it. And I find occasionally, I will get to the point where I've done all of those things. I've had my morning routine and I don't want to get up. And I will check them again. But here's the thing, I do run out. I run out of places to check. And I think to myself, all right, time to get up. But when it never runs out,

like we bought a, we have a tankless hot water heater and a good thing to have when you have teenagers. But what I discovered is all it means is that they'll just take a shower forever. Because it'll never run out of hot water. It'll never run out of hot water. And again, it's just like, there is, it gets real dangerous when there's no end

to the internet. Right? Like it's just as really dangerous and we should be cognizant of that. I'm not saying that TikTok should be banned. I'm not saying that for that. I'm not saying that Reels or YouTube shorts or like any of that.

I'm just being aware that it's probably not good for us. And that as a society, we need to understand that. Yeah, I'm not saying it should be banned because of that. I'm saying if it was banned, that might not be a bad thing for people, right? In general, I think it could be helpful for people. I, this is why I never used TikTok. It's why I don't use Reels.

Like I could immediately see the problem for me that I would lose myself, like tons of time in my day that I would lose myself to it. And I don't want that. And I don't know how good it is. And I'm also very much at the persuasion that I like to choose who I'm following even if it's algorithmic. Like, I like to choose, you know? Like, and that's what I like to choose who I'm following, even if it's algorithmic. Like, I like to choose, you know?

Like, and that's what I like about Instagram. Like, it keeps showing me stuff, but it's from the people I'm following. It just shows them in the order that it wants, rather than this just like- That's better. Let's just turn on the fire hose forever. It's like similarly, I never watch anything

from the YouTube recommended page. I do occasionally, and it's scary because it knows what I'm interested in. And it will throw things out there that are like, oh yeah, I should probably watch that. But I agree, my primary use of YouTube is subscriptions. Let me refer to that. Never is too strong. Like on occasion, I'll be like, oh, here's a talk show segment from an actor that I like And I'll watch that but like nose. Yeah, but and that's because I don't want to subscribe to like yeah late night talk show

like I subscribe to the taskmaster YouTube channel and as a result my algorithm gets filled with all of the talk show appearances of Taskmaster contestants. Yes. Which is fine. Again, great, fine. I'll see James A. Castor doing something. It's fine, great. I hear he was at the Hackney Empire.

Really, that's what it is. My algorithm is just people who have performed at the Hackney Empire. Sometimes it's me, you know? Sometimes it's yourself. Sometimes it's Task, you know? Sometimes it's yourself. Sometimes it's Toph Mastah. But anyway, that's a conversation about TikTok from two people who don't use TikTok. I am very intrigued to see where this goes.

Can't wait for Apple Intelligence to summarize that one for us. I think I just did it. This episode is brought to you by FitBot. When you want to get your fitness level changed or you want to get a new level of fitness in your life, it can be hard to know where to start. That's why I want to let you know that FitBard is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan

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So go now and get your customized fitness plan at fitbod.me slash upgrade. Once again, that is fitbud.me slash upgrade and you will get 25% off your membership. Thanks thanks to fit bar for the support of this show and relay let's cleanse our palettes now by talking about severance and silo a little bit oh okay so big it's a bit tellers yeah I'll say no spoilers let's start the conversation by saying no spoilers right and if we're gonna get into anything then we will say hey spoilers but no spoilers, right? And if we're going to get into anything, then we will say, Hey, spoilers, but no spoilers.

I mean, I can't spoil season two of Severance because I haven't even seen any of it yet. So, uh, but I wanted to kind of just talk about the fact that these shows exist at the same time and what that could mean or not for Apple. So this is on Friday. Apple TV plus saw the season finale of silo season two, uh, and the season premiere of severance season one. That's good to do season two. Sorry.

Yes. That's good to do. Right. That was smart of them. That feels like some good programming over Apple TV plus to kind of get those to line up because you can't leave. You can't leave. And also maybe you're, you're, you know, you're coming for severance and you're

like, Oh, this, what's this silo show? I mean don't watch that episode because that'd be rough, but you might then go back and catch up, which I just did. I I've watched in the last couple of weeks all the silo. I'd never seen it before. So I actually at the end of this topic, I want to talk about silo a little bit, but but I'll let people know so they can skip ahead if they if they don't want spoilers, but I don't want to spoil anything. I want to talk big picture about the show, but I know that yeah different people have different Feelings about spoilers and I wanted them. There's quite a bit of buzz for severance

Apple is going big on the marketing for this one. So talking of YouTube and talk shows The stars of the show are in every talk show right now. They're appearing in every outlet possible, magazines, YouTube shows. I'm seeing them all over social media talking to, you know, every outlet possible. Apple pulled off a pretty big stunt, market stunt, at Grand Central Terminal in New York, where they had like a glass cube which had several desks in it. And they had some actors coming in and out of the day, culminating in the actual actors of the show being at Grand Central. I'll put a link in the show notes.

Yeah, for three hours apparently. They went for three hours, my word. That's what Adam Scott said on Stephen Colbert's show. He said we were in there for three hours and couldn't go to the bathroom. Whoa, that's big time. So I'll put a link in the show notes to a YouTube video that Apple made of that, which reminded me of just how much of a banger the Severance theme song is. I'd forgotten how good that is.

And also a kind of first-person account from Parker Ortolani who wrote like a good piece kind of talking about it. And he saw it kind of throughout the day. That is it. It's interesting that they're doing this. I mean, it kind of, there is another question. I was thinking about money, right? Like we've heard that Apple's trying to cut back, but this is quite expensive. I mean, similarly of seeing reports. I don't know if I believe that apparently the final episode of Severance had like a $40 million budget. I don't believe that, but I do believe the show is expensive. So first off, I want to be clear. I believe the reports about Apple cutting back are about movies and not TV.

Sure. Sure. Yes. Okay. But are the TV shows working that much more? That like, I don't know. I think they are. I think, I think that they, they bring more people to the, uh, to the service. And then the other thing I would say that Apple knows is true is people don't subscribe to Apple TV Plus to check out Apple TV Plus. And this is what all the streamers learn. They come for content. And you get these season two shows that were bangers in season one and people talked about them. And this is your biggest, I would argue, chance, which is season two, because you know people loved it. You know it's got some power.

You know you've got a season in the catalog if people want to sign up and binge and get to season two. It is the perfect time. And you're reminding people who saw season one, and by the way, Severance, it was so long ago now, it was like three years ago to remind them that Severance exists and that they like it and that they should probably come back to Apple TV plus and watch it again. This is the perfect time to market Apple TV

plus. And what we learned is it's a it's surprising. Once you get people on a service, they don't they don't churn as much as you think. Like, what we learned with a lot of the sports stuff is Pe uh, Peacock having an NFL playoff game did really well for Peacock long-term. So people came for the NFL game and then they stayed at a surprising rate. The Olympics, Peacock learned the same lesson. People came for the Olympics, but then they're like, well, I got Peacock and oh, there's stuff on Peacock.

And, and the percentage that churned out the cancelled was surprisingly low I Mean, it's still a big number But that's one way to build audience is to get people to sign up because and we know this with Apple TV plus There's so much really good stuff on Apple TV plus that you have a great time It's an easy. I would say if there's a show that interests you, it's an easy purchase, even if you only keep it for a month or two, because they have a catalog now.

So if you haven't seen a bunch of these shows that are really good, then you can binge them and then you can drop back off. And they know a percentage of people will see the value of the Apple TV content and will be like, I'm gonna stick around for this. So I think it's really smart on their part. Like people know about Ted Lasso, right?

Like that's the one I would say. Ted Lasso is solid mid tier in Apple's lineup of content. They have maybe four or five shows that are significantly better than Ted Lasso, including Shrinking, in my opinion. I think I saw someone post this last week. I don't have it in hand, but Shrinking is what people think Ted Lasso is, which is a beautiful way to describe it, which I really agree with. But there's so much good stuff there. And look, there is something to be said about There's so much good stuff there. And look, there is something to be said about,

like, Apple making investments, right? Because my point is, like, these shows, they are clearly expensive. And everything that we hear is that Apple TV Plus has a very small viewership compared to its competitors. So they are per... When I'm watching Siler, and I said to Adina, I was like, I would love to know how much Apple has spent per viewer on this show.

Oh, wow. Because I bet it is a an amount of money that would be upsetting, right? But like this is the bet, right? That like in the long term, considering they have the money, why not do this? Right? And like you're establishing Apple are as have, I think, established themselves at this point as like HBO, right? Like that they have a selection of small, good television that you will go and you will watch. And like at a certain point, and they're getting closer and

closer to this order time of having the HBO thing of one show ends, another one begins, right? That like, and they did it. Silo has ended. Severance has begun. And then Apple's thing of one show ends, another one begins, right? That like, and they did it. Silo is ended. Severance has begun. And then Apple's thing is like, well, it's not going to work out this way, but like Severance ends for all mankind starts for all mankind ends. Slow horses starts. That is what they, I think, are probably trying to get to,

because I think as always worked for HBO, right? That like, oh, White Lotus ends and now we're're gonna start the last of our season two, right? Like, they've had that kind of run. Absolutely, that's how you program, because you don't want people to drop, and HBO did that masterfully as well. I think, yeah, this is one of those cases where I saw a piece over the weekend

that was somebody complaining that Severance is on Apple TV Plus. So like, it's such a great show, but it's on this thing nobody watches. And it's like, guy, that's the point. It's like, you should watch it. The point is not they should move it to another streamer that I subscribe to. The answer should be you should pay the money and watch it.

And I'm just going to go through a list of the Jason recommended shows if you have not watched Apple TV. OK, Apple TV plus for all mankind, four seasons worth, 40 episodes you can watch there. Let's see what else do we have here? Foundation starts a little slow, picks up 20 episodes and they're making a third season of that.

Right now, let's see what else. Severance, two seasons of Severance. It's gonna be great. Slow Horses, four seasons. It's British, so 24 episodes, but still four seasons of Slow Horses. Really loved it. What else do I wanna put in here? I'm going through the list.

Alphabetically. Bad Monkey? You like Bad Monkey? Bad, yeah, Bad Monkey, Shrinking, Silo, for sure. And these are all kind of complete masters of the air. That mini series was really, really, really good. Dark Matter, I loved, could not love it more. Mythic Quest is great.

If you're somebody who is turned off by Rob McElhaney or by him buying a soccer team or by It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is not a tone for everybody. MythicQuest, we talked about this from inception here on Upgrade. We've talked about like what Rob McElhaney is doing a show with Apple

and it's about the video game industry and what is that? It's so great. So yeah, MythicQu Quest, Ted Lasso, Shmigadoon is really good. It's, you know, as a musical parody, but also actually a musical. The after party was really good. First season of both of those, better than the second,

but it doesn't matter. They're both really good. Shrinking is amazing. Time Bandits, I really enjoyed. I'm sad that they canceled it after 10 episodes because I thought it was a really fun show. Bad Monkey, great. Ted Lasso, great.

My wife really likes Loot. It's, I don't enjoy it, but she really likes it. I hear very good things about Bad Sisters too, which is also a show that I haven't seen. Oh, and she also loves Physical. Physical is also a winner in our house. Basically, you could subscribe for Severance and just have a real great time.

Because there is so much good stuff on there. And with this, and then maybe again, like season three of Silo, they're hitting maybe these points of like, this is a big deal now. And if Ted Lasso returns, that will be a big deal again. And you're kind of, over time, you're picking up these shows and it gets like becomes bigger and bigger. But I will say this for Severance season two feels like the biggest kind of moment for Apple TV+.

It does, I agree, I agree. I think it's a good opportunity for them and they are trying to take advantage of it. I think that they tried to do it with Ted Lasso, but I think that there were some challenges with Ted Lasso that with Severance, especially since it hasn't been on for a few years. So they're really trying to, it's been able to build some word of mouth, but also it's been forgotten. So having the big marketing push for it and having so much more in their library than they did when Ted Lasso kind of became a success, that there's that too. Certainly, I would say also, Severance is a perfect match for so much of their content, because so much of their content is that sort of big budget sci-fi tinged drama thing.

Silo is like that, For All Mankind is like that. Silo is like that. For All Mankind is like that. Dark Matter is like that. I mean, Foundation is like that. There are a lot of shows like that on Apple TV Plus that are close to severance in that way that I think is really interesting. And then, yeah, I feel like Adam Scott

from the comedy stuff he's done, you know, then there are some comedies too. So it's like, yeah, they've done a really great job with that service. It has exceeded all my expectations. I know we talk about it here every so often. I am surprised. It is, if you would ask me to predict what Apple TV Plus would look like in five years, I would not have imagined this hit rate. I really would not have. I want to talk about Silo real quick. So, okay. I'm not going to, I don't want to talk about any of the plot points of silo, right? So like, you're not going to hear about that, but I'm

going to talk in very vague terms, mostly about the show's production, but in very vague terms about the show. So if you are very spoiler adverse, you could just skip ahead to the next chapter. We won't talk about anything else after this. So I've watched all of it first two seasons, which I assume you have seen. Yep. It's really good. Yeah. Like I would say that the world building is what I like about the show because it's interesting, right? Like the, it's an interesting premise. Like season two started in a way that I was like, well, I don't know, but it really picked up and I, and I liked it a lot. Cause like season two was just a little bit like, the beginning of that season kind of felt like they were just trying to have new surprises

rather than them like really making sense as to why we're doing this. And season two is problematic from a storytelling standpoint in the sense that sort of half of it is the show you know, and half of it is not the show you know. And that's weird and it's tricky. I think they did a good job.

I really, really enjoyed the season. When it gets to the point where they're like flipping between the stories, that's when it picks up. Like the first episode is a bit like, I don't know what's going on here. I wonder if the first two episodes would have been more effective. Did they drop at the same time?

I don't know. Cause I think that once they're toggling back and forth more readily, it picks up. Yeah. I agree. And what I like about the show is that it's not really sure to know what the truth is as a viewer, which

is abnormal for these kinds of shows, right? Where typically something will happen, and then something else will happen and a new as the viewer could be like, oh, I know what's going on here. But I feel like this show is very much like the people in the show don't know what's going on and they have differing views and I don't feel like it's clear to know that I know what's happening either, which I like about this show. I agree. I want wanna say something about the premise too, because I, and maybe some of the listeners

will share this with me. I get exhausted by the worldview, even though I kinda share it, but I get exhausted by fiction that is, in the absence of society, you will end up with a terrible post-apocalyptic world that's ruled by the powerful at the point of a gun and everybody else will do their bidding and is awful. And this is actually why I stopped watching The Walking Dead is because they just kept

going to towns with cruel overlords and there was violence and terrible things and then they it's it's why I noped out of a bunch of other shows because I Appreciate that as a as a Speculative fiction premise But it's just soul sucking to watch another. Yes. We're the real enemy. The real enemy is humanity The zombies aren't the problem. It's the governor and all those things.

It's just exhausting. And I didn't watch Silo for several months after it came out, even though I read the books. Cause I'm like, it's about an authoritarian state in a silo and I don't really want it. And here's the thing. Here's the thing, because of the details of the society, because the society is theoretically

based on different but still like cultural norms and a system and it seems to be functional, you get into it and you're like, okay, this is a weird silo world and we're in it and I don't understand it. And then people start dying and you think to yourself, what's going to happen? But it becomes about like, how are the variations and details of the silo world going to affect these people? And for whatever reason, it skates past the like, more nihilistic view that it's just some dictator at the top, because at least, you know, the way it's working, it's much more complicated. Maybe it's more like a Soviet system, you know, maybe it's more like East

Germany, I don't know, but like, it's not the walking dead. And and that once I watched and I said, I read the books, but I'm like, I don't know about the tone of this thing. Once I watched it, I was like, oh, actually, this does not push any of those buttons for me. And and so if you're somebody who's wondering that, I would say you could go ahead and it doesn't feel like that. Similarly, the characters, nobody feels inherently bad.

Not all of the things that they do are bad or that they remain bad. I feel like it's like they're complicated and they're like doing whatever they're doing for the reason they're doing it. Yeah, and it shows the power of wanting to maintain continuity and how what people really want is continuity and safety.

And that sometimes they will act against their own best interest because they want continuity and safety. And you see that writ large in the silo. And then some people take advantage of that. It's very, yeah, I think it's really well done. Plus, there's a mystery and the origin questions. And it makes a lot of early, if you haven't seen the show at all, it makes a lot of early narrative choices

where you're like, oh, I wonder who the main character is here because it's not who you think. Yeah, that is a really nice way that the show starts. I mean, it would have worked better if I hadn't seen so much promotion for the show over time. But it's still really interesting. But also, there are lots't seen so much promotion for the show over time. But sure, it's at least it's still like really interesting, but also like there are lots of characters in the show, especially in season two, there's like

multiple main characters in season two, like which works very well that I like. I will say there's a few things that I bristle on with the show though. Like it has a lot of amazing performances, but also some not good performances that detract from me. Here's a funny thing. Everybody in Silo speaks with an American accent. What is going on? They shoot the show. They shoot the show in the UK. Yeah. And there's a varying degree of comfort with American English.

I'm so happy that you have zeroed in on my exact first problem, which is Walker. Why? Why is she doing this? That is, I don't remember the actress's name, but she plays the mum in succession. It's like, your accent is really bad. Why are you doing it? Because there are multiple characters in the show that don't have American accents. So why did we do this? Like, I don't understand. There are like, there's Irish people who are just speaking in Irish accents. I mean, there is the main character of the show who's not American and is not really doing

anything. There's a whole variety of accents, but some people choose some. Oh, wow. Rebecca Ferguson is Swedish, and her American accent is sort of British and sort of American and sort of Swedish, and it's kind of all over the place. I think she's just speaking, Jason. I don't think she's really doing an accent at all. That's her English language accent, is that?

Yeah, I think so. To me, I mean, I've seen her in a bunch of stuff, and it didn't really feel like she sounded any different to how she sounds now. So I think that what I would say is, I think one of the problems with Silo, and I don't think it's a big problem, but a thing to get over is,

I think some of the actors aren't comfortable with the accent they're doing, and as a result, their performances are a little, especially with dialogue, are a little bit, they kind of just hit your ear and you're like, mm, you know, and maybe you would let it go otherwise. It is a weird, weird choice on their part because it is shot in the UK.

There's also some of the writing is weird. Like some of the things that characters say to each other are just not how human beings talk. Maybe they talk like that in the silo. Maybe they're silo people. Maybe in the silo they are overly melodramatic. Like, I don't know. But like there's just some stuff where I'm like,

I don't know why they're talking that way. Like I find this particularly with like the people like in the mechanics area, the way that they say like, they constantly talk about the values. It's just weird. Some of the dialogue is like, I don't understand why this is happening. But anyway, my last thing I wanted to mention,

I wonder how long, and I think that there's two more series of this show, maybe, or like- Yes, they renewed it for a third and fourth season and then that is it. The plan is the show is done? Yes. Okay, because my fear on this show is,

how long could it persist? Well, so here's the thing is, the difference between it and a show that's spinning out mythology as it goes like Lost, which I loved Lost, I really did. And I'm fine with how it ended, it's fine. And it was a great ride, and I don't have a lot of time

for people who hate on Lost because I think it was one of the best shows ever. And just because they struggled with the plot at a few points, I think that there's just too much good stuff in there for it to matter. But this is based on a series of novellas by Hugh Howey called Wool. And the whole world is built.

And that means that Graham Yost, who's a great producer of television, by the way, has produced so much great TV, and he's running this show, he has a whole book of mythology, he knows exactly what the story is, and better than that, I would say, as a really successful TV producer

over a long period of time, he has the ability to tweak it as he sees fit to make it work better as a television show. So it's not just that they have the story, and that means they're not inventing it as they go. But when they started, they had the story, and they and they could know how they wanted to tell their version of that story. And I heard quite a while ago, when they renewed it for season two, I think the producer said, we want four seasons because that's the story. So then Apple gave them four seasons and that's the story. So I think it will be exactly what that is and no more.

You know, I put Lost in our document, so maybe that's why you mentioned it. And I'm not coming at Lost, I've never actually seen Lost, but I know it's a show that people bring up as like, there are threads never answered, right? And like- There are threads that are never answered. Also in life that happens, but here's,

I'm gonna give you a little pitch for Lost, maybe for when it's two in the morning and you're up because of the baby. Lost, when it aired, frustrated all of its viewers because it aired, you know, 22 episodes a year across 52 weeks. And it's traditional network TV. And that meant it came back for six episodes, and then there was like four weeks where it wasn't on,

or reruns. And then it'd come back for five episodes. It is a modern, connected, streaming essentially series before its time. And it plays way better when you can watch it all. Does it matter that I know how it ends? Then when you have to wait months between episodes. Will I still enjoy it if I know how it ends?

How it ends doesn't matter. Cool, that's good. Because what you know about how it ends doesn't matter. It's like a coda. That's a great point. Apple, I swear, what are you doing? So I'm watching Silo, season one. I'm halfway through season one.

I go to my Apple TV and select to continue watching for Silo. It auto plays the trailer for season two, which includes the final moment of season one. Why would you do that? Why would you do that to me? Don't do that to me. That is stupid.

So like halfway through season one, I know how the season's gonna end. Now the moment's still good, kind of loses some of its like punch if I've already seen it, because it's the first shot of the trailer that you're showing autoplay, even though I don't want you to.

It's very bad. Speaking of autoplay, I'll just say, after last week where we laughed about Mark Gurman calling Apple TV a laggard, I have purchased a new Fire TV and a new Google TV. And the process continues and I will report back about Apple's laggard status. But I did segue to this by saying,

speaking of autoplay, wow, do I have some stories. Anyway, we'll get there in a future episode. Whew, there's, again, there are things that both of those things have that I so wish Apple TV. I do not understand why Apple TV doesn't have them. But then there's all the other things. Anyway, we'll get to it. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. We talked before about how much of your personal data could be out there on the internet for people to see and how uncomfortable that can make you feel. I don't like it. I, like everybody,

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That is joindeleteme.com slash upgrade 20 code upgrade 20. Our thanks to delete me for their support of this show and relay. It's time for some followup. Ha ha, I tricked you. I tricked you. I had just a couple of followup items

that I wanted to do today, but they didn't fit any rows in the show because I have big topics I wanted to talk about. So, yeah, Simon writes in and says, if AirPods heart rate monitoring is more reliable than on the wrist, it would be great for running. The Apple Watch misses large portions of heart rate on a cold run for many people, including me, so we have to use a chest strap instead. If AirPods would do a better job because the ears are warmer so blood flow doesn't restrict like around your wrist, this would be great as chest straps aren't all that comfortable. Interesting.

I love this follow up. I think it's interesting because as is famously true, if it doesn't happen in Cupertino, it doesn't happen anywhere. So the fact that if you're on a cold, a cold run, what is that? Right? Like we Cupertino doesn't know about that. So this is good feedback. That would be a great use case. I would also say more broadly, I'm not sure if we mentioned this last time, I feel like more sensors also doesn't just mean

maybe you could measure temperature better in the ears than on your wrist. More sensors in general means that you could, the device can compare the output of the two sensors and maybe come to a better idea of what the actual figure is. You could get more precise, potentially. That's also very interesting, but this is great, great info, Simon.

Thank you. Derek said, you mentioned that someone had created a list of your favorite The Rest is History episodes. Could you please share it? I don't remember whether this came up on the main show or on Upgrade Plus, but I wanted to share it? I don't remember whether this came up on the main show or on Upgrade Plus, but I wanted to share it here anyway. So I want to thank BlueSky user and upgrading and Brandon who put together a list of all of the series that we recommend people start with and their episode numbers. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes because if you do want

to get started, I recommend it because it's because these are great. Thank you, Brandon. And there's not enough time to do a rumor roundup today. Uh, actually next week there's room, there's, I've got rumors going back a month now that I want to talk about. So we're going to have a rumor roundup roundup. It's going to be a big, we're going to do a big rumor roundup. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in there. Um, but Mark Gurman said in his newsletter that Mac OS 15.4 will get the new mail

design with sorting and I hope this includes iPad OS and I'm very happy about this because I didn't think it was going to happen until iOS 16 or Mac OS 16 or whatever. This is with all the sorting, which I do actually like, I guess for my sins, because nobody else seems to like it, but it means that I could finally get rid of Spark. So this is probably for an April release, but I bet it to be soon. Now it is time for some Ask Upgrade Questions. Chareth wants to know, did the colour czar move to Nintendo? Jason, have you seen the new Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo Switch 2?

I have. It's all black with some little color on it now. It's like, oh no! Right, I guess the Joy-Cons are black with like little color on the sides, is that right? Yeah, yeah, there's a little color on the side of them and also around the joystick? Look, look, this is the launch video.

The colors are, I mean, first off, the colors are, the point of the colors are, I think, feel this has been lost is, the colors are supposed to bring good colors to things, which is why we think the colors are is being held captive inside Cupertino and occasionally allowed to design something. And then they're like the iPhone 16, and then they're put back in their cell.

Nintendo, my feeling is Nintendo can't help itself. And they're like, oh yeah, here's a preview, it's all black. And like, you know, will the first one be all black? Maybe, but like, they can't help themselves. There'll be a white one and there'll be a blue Joy-Con and a pink Joy-Con. I mean, it's just gonna happen. Come on, don't worry about it too much.

Yeah, I hope for more color. I hope that they have options, because the original Nintendo Switch shipped in two colors. You could get either the gray one or the red and blue one. So who knows, maybe they'll do this. But I agree, like this is Nintendo's whole thing. They just keep selling you more controls and more colors. But I was a little bit sad to see it be all black,

but it does look cool. And I actually think I want to talk about Nintendo Switch 2 a little bit more in Upgrade Plus this week. So we'll talk about an upgrade plus An anonymous person wrote in to say I recently got my first ever MacBook Air And I remember Jason talking about his desktop background the updates with the ISS as the International Space Station Right. I assess yeah the location, but I can't remember the name of the app. Can you help me out? Okay, this is not what I have. I think that there's some conflation going on here.

I have Downlink, it's downlinkapp.com. Downlink doesn't use the ISS. It uses a geostationary satellite. It's the GOES satellite, Geostationary Operational Environment Satellites. Geostationary means it's at such a high altitude that as it orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits under it and therefore it's stationary. It's always in the same place over the Pacific or over

the Atlantic and taking these pictures, which means that you can make a desktop and it looks like you are also always getting the same view as the clouds change and as night comes and all of that. That's what I do. Cool. And it's great. I don't know if that's what anonymous is thinking of, but I recommend downlink. It's a lot of fun and it's great. It uses the go satellites and the imagery is great. You can set a custom crop. So I've got sort of the West coast out to Hawaii.

Uh, I can, I can open and look at my desktop and see the clouds or see the high pressure that's been driving all that wind that's been terrible in California. Like right now, California is just a bubble with no clouds. And that's the high pressure that's happening there. Um, little bit of fog in the valley. That's about it. Um, it's great. I love it. And you can choose your crop or you can get the full earth view because it's so far out there. It shows the whole,

you can see the whole thing, which is pretty awesome. Although it can also be scary cause you're like, Oh no, they put that planet in outer space, but all planets are in outer space. That's the truth. Anyway, and hopefully nothing bad will happen to the ghost satellites because it is one of the many important services to environmental science currently being done by the U.S. government. We'll see how that goes. Before we do our final Ask Upgrade question, I wanted to ask upgrading and send in Ask Upgrade questions because I would like some more. We always get a couple every week but I would like some more. So if you have a question that you think would be you would even like us to answer, you think could be fun for us to answer, just go to upgradefeedback.com

and please send your question in. Our last today comes from Rob who asks if you could have any classic Mac desktop design but with fitted modern components what would it be? Yeah you should go first because you have the definitive answer here. It's the easy answer it's the iMac G4 so this is with a little kind of like half dome base and the monitor arm that's kind of free-floating. Obviously I would want a bigger screen than what it's shipped with, but that style is maybe the best industrial design that Apple's ever put out. Yeah.

I think it is especially good because it was one and done, right? If maybe they had continued iterating on that design, we may not hold so much fondness for it, right? Like, because it was this one thing in history, similar to the cube, right? A lot of people loved the cube. And I think these things that were, they were, they did little perfect things that never were iterated on. We kind of hold them with a lot of nostalgia because it's like, you know, like the iMac

when it was like the all-in-one, like the, the kind of the G4, no, the G5, which that was a really cool design too, right? Like the first Intel iMac that where it was just like all in the screen, but they iterated on that design so much that by the end of it, we don't love it as much, I think. So what I would say is I think the g4 is the answer to Rob's premise I think you are cheating by saying a bigger screen. I would say I am a 17 in inch adjustable on that chrome arm a 17 inch retina display I Would take it I would take it the reason that the G4 was one and done is because the logical next step for all of this was a bigger screen and they couldn't get the

floating thing to work now I would say that You could do that now. I think especially since the parts the parts are so much Less inside of it you could even use some of the room on the inside of it maybe, but you could you could make a bigger screen version of this now. I think you could probably do it. I guess the problem would be the weight, right? You have to weigh down the base so it doesn't tip over. But that all said, yes, I think the definitive answer to this question is if

it's the same design but with modern components, it would be the iMac G4. And if that meant that it was the 17-inch screen or slightly larger screen, but in that same space and retina and beautiful, I would take it. That would be awesome. I'm gonna throw in because my tweak to this premise is, Rob says, desktop design. And my answer is actually the 12-inch MacBook still.

Would love an Apple silicon design of that super small MacBook because it was amazing. And before its time, and it was so limited in terms of heat and processor speed and all that. And if you put a base level M series chip in there, that would be a great computer. So Jason, it's something very funny to me happened a couple of days ago. I sold my 12 inch MacBook to a friend of my wife's. And they got in contact to say, I think that computer has died now. To me, it was incredible to consider that computer was still going today, but it has now met its end.

It won't hold charge anymore. It just can't. And I think that's incredible. Well, I mean, honestly, they could probably replace the battery and keep using it. So this was the conversation, but the bigger conversation was, it's probably time for a new computer. Yeah, it is. Also, to Rob's point, because I know people will ask this point, modern components also means not that keyboard.

Thank you. Yeah, of course. If you would like to send in your feedback, your follow-up, or your questions for us to answer on the show, go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send them in. Thank you to those of you that do every week. Also, thank you to our members and supporters of Upgrade+.

They get longer ad-free episodes of the show every week. And today we're gonna talk a little bit about our impressions of the Nintendo Switch 2. Go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up. You can find the show on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast, and I would like to thank our sponsors for this episode, Delete Me, Squarespace, and FitBud, but most of all, thank you for listening.

Until next time, say goodbye, Jason. Goodbye, Mike.