Upgrade - 557: I Will Run a Four-Minute Mile

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

from Relay this is upgrade episode 557 recorded March 28 2025 released March 31st we're recording this a little bit early I am one of your regular hosts of Of course, Jason Snell, Mike Hurley continues to be on assignment. His assignment is paternity leave this time. And with me this week on a show brought to you by Google Gemini and Ecamp, by the way. Haha. See, got it in there. I'm going to totally get this nailed by the time Mike comes back.

It is my compatriot at Six Colors, as well as the host of Clockwise here on relay, the rebound off on its own on the rebound, and many other podcasts over at the incomparable. It's Dan Moran. Hi, Dan. Hi, Jason. I'd say it's so nice to talk to you unusually, but we talk pretty frequently. For those who do not know we are weekly on Actually on Fridays when we're recording this we do the six colors podcast which is for six colors members only and

And people seem to like it actually it's I get great great feedback and praise for that podcast every once in a while We break some news. You know how good I mean every now and then somebody quotes us on a site and it's weird But this time we are talking on what will be a regular episode of Upgrade. They're all a little bit different with Mike Gunn, but that's fine. We'd like to start though with a Snelltalk question. I know you love it. I'm going to ask you to chip in here after I answer this question. I'm prepared.

From Javier who says, does Jason have any Star Trek related memorabilia or collectibles? If so, which is his favorite and why? Javier, there was a time in my life when this would have been the most embarrassing question possible. Because having grown up, loving Star Trek, you get to that point when you're sort of like,

I would say a high school student, and you start to realize that everybody thinks you're a gigantic nerd because you're a gigantic nerd. And you're like, oh no, deny, just deny it. Deny that you're a gigantic nerd. Throw away all your stuff and pretendy that you're a gigantic nerd. Throw away all your stuff and pretend that you're not a gigantic nerd. Here's a pro tip kids.

It doesn't help. It doesn't hide anything. It does not hide anything at all. Anyway, during this period, I think when I graduated from high school maybe or thereabouts, my parents gave me what I still have and I'm now for the watches on YouTube I'm holding in my hand, which is a Franklin Mint pewter USS Enterprise. It probably cost

a lot of money. It's beautiful. And I was super embarrassed when they gave it to me, which is funny because I still have it. And now I think it's really beautiful. And the problem is that it came, because the USS Enterprise is meant to only fly in space and not be in Earth's atmosphere, even though it is in Earth's atmosphere in a few things, it had a stand. It was a little stand sort of shaped

like the Starfleet symbol, and that broke off. And the problem now is that I love this thing and would like to kind of have it on a stand, and I can't because it broke off. It's actually the part of the stand is still stuck in there. I might be able to get that out. Yeah, recruit our pal John Maltz and his 3D printer and print yourself a new stand. Like John Maltz might be up for this because he is a Star Trek fan, but I'm going to throw it out to the wider upgrade community. If somebody would like to work with me to figure out how to build maybe a 3D printed stand or a partially 3D printed stand,

maybe the piece that's coming out of the ship needs to be 3D printed because it's a specific shape, but then it could be on something heavier so it doesn't tip over. Anyway, upgradefeedback.com because it is beautiful and I'm no longer embarrassed by it. And in fact, it's a very sweet thing my parents did for their nerdy son. So that all said, it's not my Star Trek related memorabilia.

In the year 2000, I went to a wedding. It's actually our friends, Philip Michaels and Lisa Schmeiser's wedding in Las Vegas. And the lot and the Star Trek experience was still in Las Vegas then where you could go and there was like a bar, you could have like Romulan Ale or Klingon Blood Ale, which were just beer with food coloring. I had the Klingon Blood Ale. And there was a little experience you had where you're on the bridge of the next generation enterprise.

And in the gift shop, cause there's always a gift shop. Of course. There was a very simple product that yet it, it, it, I just loved it at the time and I still love it to this day. It's just a teddy bear, but it's a teddy bear wearing Captain Kirk's uniform from the original series. I love him.

He's the best. I always have him on a shelf somewhere nearby, uh, because he's just adorable. And so the Captain Kirk Bear is my favorite Star Trek memorabilia. Now, Dan, I have to ask you, you're a big Star Wars fan. I know you're also a Star Trek fan, cause nerds, what's your favorite piece of memorabilia or collectible?

Well, let me throw this out for you. A couple of things. One, I do remember when I was a kid, there was an exhibit at the science museum that was a Star Trek TNG exhibit and here in Boston and my parents took me. And the only thing I remember about it really is I bought a, it was like a lanyard with a badge,

like a ID badge on it. And I bought a Geordie one. So I had a Geordie little ID badge on a lanyard that I loved, no idea where that is now. I also had a little like toy phaser and a toy tricorder from TNG, both of which I, I still have the tricorder, I don't really know where the phaser is.

And recently I've also acquired a communicator, old school TOS communicator, and a badge, strange new world style, you know, or non-com badge, but insignia, because that's been my Halloween costume the last couple of years. I bought a shirt and I have the badge. But my favorite piece of Star Trek memorabilia is I got given probably circa 1993,

a mug that has the, it's from the NCC 1701A. It's part of like the, it's the official China, you know, sort of style, but it's like a mug with the Starfleet insignia on it on the back It says USS Enterprise NCC one seven one a And it's a Foltzgraf Muv mug. I still have it I still drink from it on the regular and then I was Amazed to discover that our pal John Moultz has one as well and his broke and he found another one on eBay

So I worry about the day when that goes and I won't be able to find it because John has already bought the replacement. He bought your replacement. He bought my replacement. On the Star Wars side, people who are watching the video can see behind me I have a bookcase here which has a bunch of stuff on it. Legos and some toys and stuff. I do have a nice Chewbacca sock monkey up there somewhere which you can't quite see. But recently, about a year and a half ago, my wife and I went to Disney World and I got to go to Galaxy's Edge for the first time. And I built my own custom lightsaber. Now I built a couple, I built one in the past. It's like the plastic pieces that you screw together and they're in a big bin when you go there. But this time we

splashed out for the experience. You go and like have within a room with like 20 other people and there's a whole like show as you pick your pieces and they're like metal. So you can also see behind me right here on my bookcase, that is my lightsaber, my custom lightsaber that I built. It is quite heavy. It weighs several pounds because it is made of solid metal. And it has in it, it's got a little switch and you can flick the switch

and it has a blade that's not currently screwed in because otherwise it would be really hard to store. It lights up and inside of it, there are crystals that you pick during this whole experience that dictate what color it is. Ah, yes. But you can get different crystals, swap them in, and it makes different color, it changes the color and it changes the sounds. I was very disturbed at this event when I looked around and realized

of the 20 or so people in there, the vast majority chose either purple or red lightsabers. Throwing aside, all of you choosing red lightsabers. Then I had green and there was like one person had purple. Everybody else had red and purple, red, one percent blue. Blue, one blue, one green, mostly purple and red. And I was like, I don't know, what's wrong with. I don't know, seems like in the zeitgeist,

seems about right actually. Yeah, I don't. When you think about it. I'm not happy about it. I'm not happy about it. I'm not happy about it. Mine's green, by the way. Mine's green, because green is my favorite color, and also because it's very similar

to Luke's Return of the Jedi lightsaber. All right. Okay, that's the nerdiest Snelltalk ever, but it's okay. You asked for it, Javier, and you got it. Mike's not here for us to get mad at us being nerdy. So we're doing it. Exactly, exactly right.

And yes, you can go to search for upgrade podcasts on YouTube if you want to see us pointing at things behind us or holding things. Not really great audio podcasting, but it's a rare moment where I feel like we had some show and tell there. Maybe I'll find a clip, a frame grab and stick it in there somewhere

All right moving on to the fatherly advice segment where I ask one of our parade of father co-host Fill-ins if they have any words of wisdom or observations to impart to Mike Early enough in the episode where he's still listening or he skipped that previous chapter and has moved on to this chapter straight Straight to the fatherly advice right in the veins. What's your advice for Mike? You know, it's interesting. I am probably of all your guests, I assume I'm the one with the most recent experience with a very young child.

You are. Yeah, my kid's only two and a half. So I've been through this in the not too distant past. And I will, so we got a lot of good advice when we were expecting our first kid. Like we had a lot of friends that we asked. And one of my friends I will, so we got a lot of good advice when we were expecting our first kid. Like we had a lot of friends that we asked. And one of my friends I will call out specifically is a woman named Angel sent us a really wonderful email

that she's like, this is my like standard email I send to people who ask me about this. And it's just really thoughtful and really well reasoned all this great advice. And one of the things that stuck in my mind from this is the nothing lasts longer than two weeks, which is a way of saying anything bad that's stuck in my mind from this is the, nothing lasts longer than two weeks. Which is a way of saying, anything bad that's happening, your baby's not sleeping, they're not like, you know,

oh, they don't like this food, or they're crying about this thing. Like, it's frustrating when you're in that moment and you feel like, oh my God, is this my life? Is my life forever, this baby not sleeping, or this baby being upset or not liking this thing or that thing? To which I say, deep breath,

nothing lasts longer than two weeks. Now, the flip side of that is nothing good lasts longer than two weeks. Good or bad, nothing lasts longer than two weeks. There will be something else. Something else will happen. Something else will change. But it also is a good reason and sort of reminder

to slow down and enjoy those things because you know, your kid doing something really amazing and cute, write it down like you will forget. You don't think you'll ever forget how cute that one thing they did was where they, I don't know, said a word the specific way or crawled over something and you're like, Oh my God, that's so amazing. I'll never forget that. There is a lot going on in your brain right now, trust me. Write it down, write yourself a little note. My wife and I have a little file of things where we write down cute stuff that our kid has done

so we can refer back to, oh yeah, I remember when he was doing that. And then my second corollary I'll put in there is the pick your battles thing, which I think somebody else mentioned as well, but I think is an important one to stress. And this probably is more of a long-term, you know, less a case when your kid is an infant, but as you hit toddlerhood and realize that there are some very particular, your

toddler will be very particular and specific about things that they want to do, and you will be trying to put a jacket on them and get out the door you will be trying to get them to put their shoes on you will try to get them to eat their vegetables just you know again deep breath relax real think to yourself the hill I want to die on yeah and the answer is if it's not that's fine if they're throwing around their food and it's like you know I can't get them to eat that. It's fine It's gonna be okay if they miss their vegetables for a day or two. It's totally reasonable Just decide which of the things that you actually need to get done and do those don't worry about everything else

and I think I want to refer back also to I think John Circus had a really good one too about like the you know feeling like Having feelings about it and like questioning things and like beating yourself up sometimes and like having, you're like, Oh my God, I can't believe I'm having these thoughts or whatever. Forgive yourself. Really, I think is another big part of it. Like go easy on yourself. Like I definitely had a breakdown, like just a couple of weeks into having a kid where I was convinced I was the

world's worst dad and I was really bad at this. And I didn't know what I was doing. I couldn't have like the kid wasn't doing it like anything I felt like I tried didn't work. It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be fine. Everybody feels that way. Everybody feels that way. I like emailed a bunch of my friends who are dads and they are all super great and like don't worry everybody goes through this. Imposter syndrome. You're fine. Yeah. It's very statistically it's very unlikely that you're the worst dad exactly that is that that helps you know you're like oh I'm probably about average you know maybe a little above average I like to flatter myself but for it yeah yeah that's that's it so go easy on yourself it's gonna be okay all right

very good thank you happy to help hi Mike. And let's move on to some follow up. I got some good follow up in the last few days since we recorded Monday's episode, since we're recording this a little early. And here it is. First, an anonymous writer wrote in and said, I was listening to upgrade and Stephen Hackett posited that adding cameras to the Apple Watch or AirPods would pose a problem for people who work in sensitive areas I work in the defense industry Apple watches and AirPods are already banned from secure spaces So adding a camera wouldn't change anything the rules disallow any electronic device with a transmitter camera or storage But I do agree with Stephen's general point about introducing cameras unexpectedly into private spaces. See? It's not a problem. Put them in there because they can't use them already. Although I don't, Dan, I don't know. Aren't defense rules meant to be broken anyway?

Oh, topical. Let's move on to- Yeah. Before we start delving too deep into that one, probably. I mean, what is a rule, really? What is, I mean... Sometimes you just want AirPods. One of those people has brought a camera into some place they shouldn't have, I guarantee you. 100%.

Boyd wrote in and said, in that same episode, Jason suggested that ideally tvOS's primary landing page should be a TV app-centric one. As a non-US Apple TV user, I hope the screen full of app icons remains. Apple does not have a great track record when it comes to integrating non-US or really non-English content. I'm worried it would turn the TV experience into a wasteland for us abroad, because without the local streaming apps and live TV, is that not just the current TV app but then as the primary interface? No, thanks." Several people wrote in or posted on Blue Sky or Mastodon and said, Jason, you're completely wrong. The all app

grid is the way to go. And I appreciate their perspective. A lot of them, the argument was the TV app is bad. And, you know, I guess embedded in my argument that Apple needs to embrace the TV app as the main interface of the TV OS is that it wouldn't be the current TV app. It would be an improved TV app with more access to your apps. And yes, they should do a better job with content across the system and floating it up. I think I mentioned that the current TV app is even on the main screen is too TV plus centric and it needs to be focused on broader content. But if you look at what Google and Amazon do,

one of the top rows, maybe on Amazon, it's like right below that ad for Mancini's Sleep World, is a row of apps that are your apps. So the app launcher is in the home screen. And although Apple is, if you scroll down, there are apps in the home screen in the TV app as well. I do think the TV app, if it's gonna bear the load of the entire interface, would need to be better.

I'm not saying that, but I do think that when you use these other interfaces, it's just very clear that it's deeply confusing that Apple has that, but it also has this kind of blank screen, which feels old fashioned. I did hear from some people who don't use most services and just use third party apps that they completely control and they don't want to have this experience either because

they don't use their Apple TV that way. I would argue that there's no TV box that really is geared toward that use and that if Apple went away from that direction, I feel for those people, but I think it would be perfectly reasonable. Also, honestly, if Apple wanted to make it that if you really didn't want to use the TV app and you could go back to the app, the launch screen experience, they could maybe make that a setting,

but I think the default should be a very functional TV app that actually integrates with third-party apps. That's what I was trying to say. I would also argue maybe there's another like middle ground there in some ways, which is wouldn't it be nice if there was like a configurable app, kind of like the TVO app, almost like widgetized where you could drop in like, well, I watch these apps. Let me just drop in a widget for that here or a widget for that. And that way you could, I mean, the other alternative obviously is to make it much more

of an open API so those local apps could integrate in some way, but you'd still need some degree of user choice to allow the user to say, these are the things I wanna watch. I think there is something to that. I think there's something to the idea of making it more customizable. I would love, I was thinking about this

because I watch a bunch of stuff on Plex. I watch a bunch of stuff on YouTube. I would love apps to be able to contribute whole rows to the TV home screen. Again, configurable. So I could maybe put Up Next on Plex, if I really cared about it, or Up Next on YouTube,

or what's on my YouTube TV, DVR, or whatever it is, and have it be even more that's feeding out of those apps. And that's, again, I think that's one of my complaints about the current TV app is that is that Apple's not among the things that Apple's kind of not moving forward with with tvOS, better integrating the apps that do want to share data with the system. Right. And that's, you know, I know it's via API's and all that, but I'm telling you, I think if Apple did an API that allowed Plex

to put shows in your face on the home screen, the new home screen, I think Plex would jump to the challenge in a lot of apps. Maybe not Netflix, right? But a lot of apps would jump to that challenge. And then customizability, so it feels more like it's your device. I got a whole wish list.

Yeah, and that's what I wanna say to Boyd is, I've got a whole wish list about ways the TV app should be better. Yeah. That I think it is incumbent on Apple to make the TV app better if they go away from the home screen approach. But my larger point is that it's very hard to look at the state of affairs out there and think the right way to do a TV box is a blank screen full of icons and then you

launch individual silos. I think that that's just not the way it works or should work. Literally just over the last week, I was at my parents' house and my mother asked something about the Apple TV that I set up for them, and it was like, oh, I can see my photos on here. I'm like, yeah, there is a Photos app on the Apple TV, and I showed her where it was,

and she's trying to remember which, she's like, oh, it's that orange icon? I was like, no, it's the one that looks like the Photos app on your phone. And she's like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. And it was like, I understand why you never would have bothered looking for that, though. I mean, it's just a sea of icons.

And there was a time where that was very accessible and easy when we were all learning how to use our smartphones, but it's been almost 20 years. I think we can expect a little bit more and maybe push the envelope a bit and make things a little friendlier and more customizable. This is a classic Apple, like, we know best. We're gonna provide the one way of doing it

kind of situation. Yeah, somebody did actually write in, you mentioned widgets. Somebody wrote in and suggested, I wonder if the widget kit framework could be applied somehow to tvOS. and I think it's a great point. Like, could you drop a widget from one of your streaming apps on the home screen somewhere?

I think it'd be great. Yeah, really interesting idea, too. Linus wrote in, and he said, regarding the Snelltalk discussion about how exactly to disclose where you live on the internet. This was Casey writing in after he was already on the show about me talking about living in Mill Valley. Lana says, in Germany, you're legally obliged

to state your place of residence in the imprint of your own website, unless you have a company with a different address, I guess. I don't wanna judge this one way or the other, but it's a strange feeling at first. And I just wanted to say, I pay a surprising amount of money for a post office box at my local post office,

specifically because legally, if you send out mass emails, you must include a mailing address at the bottom of it. And even though, as I said last week, I bought my house in 1999, it's very easy to find where I live, don't be creepy. I don't wanna put my home address on every email I send, so I pay for a PO box at my local post office instead. So I think there are various rules about this

where it's like, you can't hide on the internet, you have to show where you really are, and if you've got especially a small business, it's like, but privacy? I'm just a guy, I'm just a guy in a house. I had the same thing where, I don't remember if it was for GDPR compliance or something, but there was a point at which I had to put on my website,

like my contact info. And I just made like a hidden page on the website, but it's like, and I think I even tried to avoid having it crawled by robots. I don't know how well that worked, but it's technically there just so I could link to it and put it in as the, you know, okay, I've fulfilled your requirements. but it is weird after all these years

to feel like, all right, I'm just going to put up my name and my address in plain text on my website. Very weird. I mean, the, and then this is the right thing to do is to go to your local PO or, or, uh, or mailbox store. And I thought about it, but as you pointed out, it's expensive. And I looked at it and I was like, it's just,

I don't know if it's worth it for me. The US Postal Service is just, it's jacked up that rate, like 40% every year. I was surprised how much, because I investigated this a couple of times, like maybe that would be worthwhile. And I was like, that is more than I pay for many of my services.

Honestly, if my business got enough mail, sure, it would be worth it. But the fact is we get so little mail that every now every like month or so Lauren says she takes the key chain that's got the key on it. And it's, it's right here. It's right by our whole foods. It's it's very, we can walk to the post office, but we'll check it. And there's like two things in it and they're junk mail and they go in the post office. But we'll check it. And there's like two things in it, and they're junk mail, and they go in the recycling bin. It's a great ecosystem where the paper comes in,

it gets put in a box, people take it out of the box, put it in the recycle bin, and then leave the post office. Because you can see all the same inserts from everybody else being put in the box. Because they just can't put it in everybody's box behind the scene there. Yeah, but anyway, it is, and I think Linus's point here is also very interesting

because it's meant to protect consumers, but it's also a privacy violation. So they've said like, I'm going to tip toward the consumers. But you could argue, especially for certain individuals, that it's also a privacy violation the other way. Feels like there should be a carve out for if you're a business with fewer than like, It feels like there should be a carve out for if you are a business with fewer than like, ex employees or if you have a customer base smaller than why maybe you could get an exemption or something. But yeah. This episode of upgrade is brought to you by Google Gemini. I use Gemini for the first time the other day and the most impressive thing to me was just talking to it. You go

live with it and then it's just like you're having a conversation. You can just talk about your day, or have it explain something to you, or start brainstorming ideas. I'll give you an example. I pretended I had a job interview coming up, and I asked for it to help me prep for the interview. It immediately started suggesting common questions I might get asked. Then I started talking through my answers out loud and it would give me feedback, and it's all happening in real time like I'm talking to a career coach.

That's just what I tried first, but you can talk to it about anything, and that's the magic of it. How you can have this back and forth and it's all seamless. If you haven't tried it yet, it's definitely worth checking out. You'll see what I mean. I thanks to Google Gemini for the support of this show and all of Relay. Let's turn to Upstream. I have one Upstream item. Mike is gonna be so sad to not be here for an Upstream segment because he likes it so much. But I didn't know where else to put this,

so I'm gonna put it in the segment that we have. It's an interview with Seth Rogen in Variety about his new Apple TV Plus show, The Studio, which is getting great reviews. I haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen either, but it's on my list. Everybody I've seen seems to really like it and think it's very funny.

I love Hollywood satires. I really do. They're one of my favorite genres. Yeah, and apparently there's a character in this who is literally the Tim Robbins character from The Player. Ha! But it's not literally the Tim Robbins character from The Player. Ha! But it's not played by Tim Robbins,

it's played by Bryan Cranston, which is weird. Like, was Tim Robbins not available? He's on another Apple TV show. He's on the show, that's right. Anyway, people really like it, and that's great. This is an interesting tidbit. Oh, by the way, this show, the studio, every episode has a oner, which is the industry talk for a long single take shot

that is often, they're often spectacular, but they're also showing off. And apparently in the studio, there's, they put a, it's meta, they are discussing oners as well as doing them, sometimes while doing them, apparently, which is hilarious. I feel bad for them because the show Adolescents on Netflix. Yes, they did the same time.

It's four episodes and they're all oners the whole episode. So they kind of stole their concept there. We were talking about that on the rebound and Lex talking about how stressful it is when you get to like, okay, you're like 90% done, don't flub a line now. Yeah.

Oh boy. There's a before and afters has a thing about the CGI in the VFX in adolescence. Because, and this is actually kind of brilliant, right? It's messy to do a oner. And so they are erasing things that are bad in the background and taking the shadow of the camera off of the chest of somebody who's in the Wunner and things like that.

And I thought, I'd never really thought about that, but that's really cool. So you keep the concept of the Wunner, but you use VFX to clean it up so that you don't have to be as precise as you would otherwise have to be. Right. Like nobody wants to see, oh God, the boom's in the shot there. Right. You know, that really takes me out of this moment. You're making this very immersive,

very, you know, a shot designed to make you feel like you are in the thing, in the show, in with the, like it's just real and happening. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, I can see the guy holding the microphone over there. Although tangent, but it's the 20th anniversary of the office, the American office, and there was a great oral history about the office that I will try to find. But they were talking about how they had to hire,

they hired documentary filmmakers to shoot the show. And they had to explain to them, and the writers had to figure out, like, you can't say, you know, we want you to cut to this or that. They would set the scene, and they would tell the documentary filmmakers and the camera people, they're like, you know,

who are, they hired from making documentaries, like, shoot it like a documentary. And if the boom gets in the shot, it's fine because the boom is in the office. It's a documentary and that they had to, now it's incredibly common to do that. But at the time it was not, it was actually really hard. So that is a piece on the Hollywood Reporter,

I'll put in the show notes by Rick Porter. It's a great book. Never watched a full episode of that show, Jason. It's a great show. Went to high school with two of those guys. Never watched the episode of the show. Yeah, it's true, you did. Well, maybe that's why, I don't know. Did John Krasinski wrong you in some way?

Only one, no, never. Anyway. My minor interactions with him were always very pleasant. Anyway, Seth Rogen, B.J. Novback is the other person you went to high school with. Seth Rogen said to Variety, because of the way we shot it, essentially nothing could be done after the episode. Apple would give us notes, but the answer was always, we can't do that. Can you take out this line? Nope. Can you go from this line to this line? Nope. We can't do any of that because it's a oner. Brilliant. That is brilliant. Genius. Amazing. I really love that. And also, I mean, I also feel like at the same time, you got to have a pretty good relationship with the studio

to be able to do that. And especially in this case where you're doing something that is a satire about this industry, like you need them to be realize like, you know what, we're going to make fun of stuff. It might hit a little close home, close to home for you, but like, this is the show you hired us to make, right? This is the show you bought. That's right. That's right. And, and they probably said, we're going to have some wonders. So you, you need to give us notes about that at script stage and not when we shoot it, you know, not after we shoot it. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they give them notes. And they're like, well, it's too late now. Sorry.

But anyway, brilliant, brilliant move Seth Rogen. Okay, rumor roundup time. Yee-haw! Oh man, the best yee-haw yet. Well done. Thank you. Spoken by a Massachusetts guy. Oh boy.

We're a little cowboy out here. Okay, we're gonna start with the iPhone Fold, the folding phone due apparently next year. Apparently this is actually gonna happen in 2026. We're very much in a where there's smoke stage because the rumors about this have started to come much faster. I've seen half a dozen over the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, yeah, and it's between this and the thin phone, the iPhone Air. Mike and I did a podcast at some point last year where these things were starting to be talked about, where I did one of those connect the dots and I was like, wait a second, they make the thin phone next year and they use all of that thinning technology

that they're working on for a whole cycle the following year to make the two thin planes of a folding phone. And that seems to be what is happening here. My understanding is it's just one of those pasta things where you put the phone through and you crank it and it just spits out a nice thin. A very large thin phone at the other side

and then you throw it in hot water, you're done. So the detail here is about the aspect ratio of the unfolded display. Now this comes from a Weibo-based account called Digital Chat Station. So, sounds super legit, but again, it is a China-based source for something that's probably in the supply chain.

I actually think that's not unreasonable. Here's what it's gonna be. It's gonna fold out to a four by three aspect ratio screen that is 7.8 inches diagonally. Now, the reason this is interesting is, a four by three, in addition to being the classic television ratio. Yep, we're back.

Everything comes around, Jason. It's one of my favorite things. Speaking of Star Trek, watching those classic Star Trek episodes on an iPad, it fills the screen because iPads are also four by three. So the iPad mini is 8.3 inches diagonal. So this would be an iPhone that folds open to almost an iPad mini,

including being the right aspect ratio. And as our friend Federico Vettici commented on Mastodon, if this is true, it's kind of ironic. Apple will embrace the iPad's most common criticism. It is just a giant iPhone. But Dan, I gotta say, as a big fan of the iPad and somebody who uses his iPhone, but like not a lot lot, I love this idea.

I really love this idea that I could just have a phone that was an iPad or in my case, an iPad that was also a phone. I mean, yeah, I think this is always kind of where I envisioned with them going. I mean, unlike a lot of the, this is where their advantage is, right? Unlike a lot of the other companies making foldable phones,

almost all of those companies, with maybe the exception of Samsung, just make phones. They don't generally make tablets, and moreover, even if they do, they're not good. Because Android is not a great tablet system. So Apple has a huge advantage here in that they have a successful tablet system and a successful phone system.

And if they can make the utility of it is once you get that open into a four three ratio, you can probably run iPad apps, just like their iPad apps. I mean, yeah, there'll be some scaling and whatever, but it's fairly, it's the same ratio, so it shouldn't matter that much. It's a huge advantage that Apple has a good,

and there's a lot of iPad criticism out there and there's a lot of issues with Apple's developer relations and all that. But that all said, the iPad is the definitive tablet. It's got a great library of software, even if we have a lot. Again, not saying that it's perfect. I'm just saying that in terms of being a competitive advantage over Android phones,

in terms of making an iPhone that opens up and you go into iPad mode, it's a big advantage for them. I think it really is. It can make this product very, very good because they've spent 15 years on the iPad and they just get to use that when this phone is unfolded. Really interesting.

And I know I saw some criticism there like, well, all the videos in 16.9, so is it really, what's the point? And it's like, well, to your point, A, there is a lot of older content in 4.3. There is, I mean, if you're dealing with an iPad, you already have this problem. Like letterboxing is a thing, you know, it's fine.

We've been dealing with this for years. So I don't think it's necessarily bad. And I think the idea of having a larger screen that's available to you, because like, look, I like having a phone with a decent size screen, but if I could flip that open and have a much larger screen for the cases where I need that, that's pretty compelling to me.

So I don't know if it would be good enough to, like, I don't feel like it would make me get rid of my iPad necessarily, because I use my iPad for a lot of things that I think this may not be suited for, but. Sure. I'm super intrigued by it, and I think there's something here.

And plus, like, this is the first version, so it's gonna continue to evolve. I also think one of the points that's been interesting that we, you know, you've been making elsewhere, and I think people have been talking about is, Apple is, kind of feels like it's at the top of its hardware game. And the hardware is a big question of feels like it's at the top of its hardware game and the hardware is a big question here even more so than software as we just discussed like the

software could just be like it's iPad OS on the inside and it's iOS on the outside. Fine, but the hardware is the question because this is the issue we've seen with all the foldable phones. They are more fragile. They have creases. The screens can break, right? Like these are a lot of risks that you're taking here, but Apple does seem to have really high quality hardware engineers and they are really firing on all cylinders, so I'm sure there will be some shortcoming of this device. There has to be. Like, that's the first version, right? Doesn't do face ID, it's gonna be touch ID, it's gonna be, the camera's not gonna be that great, but we'll see. And maybe the screen won't work quite the way they want it

to and maybe there'll be more of a crease than they want, but like again, this is starting point, right? Starting point. Yeah. Yeah, and it feels very much like the point where Apple feels like the screen technology is good enough for an iPhone to have it, whereas I think many of their competitors

don't mind being out early with something that doesn't quite work right. Apple tends not to do that and kind of just hangs there for a while, especially with something like the iPhone, which is the crown jewel. I'm just not sure I'm ready to spend $2,000 on a phone. I know, I mean, but I will say this.

If you're somebody who frequently buys an iPhone and an iPad, it starts to get interesting. Although even then you could buy a regular iPhone and an iPad. It starts to get interesting, although even then you can buy a regular iPhone and an iPad Air and have two products. It's a place for them to get their revenue up, but also a place to experiment. I'm hoping this is all real. The other rumor item is the iOS 19 interface, which has been chatted about a lot. Frontpage Tech has a video showing mock-ups of it. I find it fascinating that one of the things that John Prosser says in his video is that when we last showed you, because remember they did a thing with a mock-up of the camera app and said, see, it kind of looks like the sports app, kind of looks like the invites app. This is what they're doing with their design language. And he says in this video, the camera app was all we were allowed to share at the time, which is fascinating because what that suggests to me is that they got a lot of information from somebody on the inside

and they said, you can't leak this all, which is interesting because that's a very weird condition to put on something as a leaker. Obviously they must've been afraid. It's a leaker. Yeah, right? Like it is, it just strikes me. It's like, here's all this information,

but you can't print most of it yet. Just wait and we'll get to it later. And I mean, we've worked with people who've had great sources who haven't been able to print stuff like that. I understand it, but I think it's funny where the control of what gets leaked out of the dump of information is the source's control.

But the source gives them everything, but then says, but you can't do all of it yet. It just is weird to me. Don't worry, Jason. They are clean on OpsSec. I'm sure it was all on Signal. It's fine. Anyway, this design is more rounded.

It has translucent class elements. It's the things we've been thinking about. You can get some suggestions of it from Vision OS. Although again, I will say, my feeling is they were working on this design language and Vision OS got it because they needed to ship Vision OS and they didn't want to ship it with an old design language that was about to be replaced. So they shipped it with what they were working on and used it as a trial. But I don't think it's like they built Vision OS and everybody said,

that's it, let's do that for everything. I don't think that's the case here. I do think that those apps that came out, sports and invites were influenced heavily by this design language. I do think that that's true. Interesting, like outline floating effect for the keyboard in some of the mockups.

Yeah, I mean, again, you can watch the French page tech video, it is like essentially if it was a web article that would have three screenshots, but instead there's this long video with jokes and false starts and filler and I don't love them, but I also understand it's the YouTube game. Yeah, yeah. It's a YouTube game.

It's a YouTube game. I, yeah, I'm curious to know just how accurate these are. I mean, obviously we see some pushback on this as you noted. Yeah, so Mark Gurman weighed in, and he said, the iOS 19 images floating around aren't representative of what we'll see at WWDC. They look to be based on either very old builds or vague descriptions missing key features.

Expect more from Apple in June. Regardless, mock-ups, real or not, are always exciting for Apple Watchers. So he literally like saying, don't listen to Jon Prosser, but pats him on the head and says, but it's fun. Everybody's having fun, aren't they? And what I think here is fascinating too,

because this either means Mark Gurman knows what it looks like, can't report more about it, and is knocking this down, or I think more likely, one of Mark Gurman's sources reached out to him and said, this is not representative. Yeah, yeah, and I can believe that. I mean, even if it's not inaccurate in the sense that it was correct at some point,

Apple always has a vested interest in trying to downplay these kinds of things, right? Because it wants to make a big splash when it unveils this. And so it is within their interest to be like, no, no, no, no, you think you've seen it all, but that's not really what it looks like. Either that or Mark Gurman was also given all that information with a condition not to leak.

This has got one guy going around telling everybody, oh, here's all the iOS 19 screenshots, but you can't publish them anywhere, except for this one and maybe these three. I mean I'm intrigued in the idea of a big new design overhaul. We talked about this a little bit on Clockwise this week, Micah and I especially in our post show. You know there's a lot to be said about this. The iOS 7 design language has lasted a long time, right? I mean 12 years. It's gotten refined, obviously, over

that time. We don't have exactly the same interface that we had when iOS 7 debuted, but it is still fundamentally kind of the same look and feel, broadly speaking. But in that time, we've had a lot of changes. Like, Johnny Ive was instrumental in the iOS 7 redesign, and he's not there anymore. So, and you know, not only is he not there, but a lot of the people who worked for him are not there. So the people who are coming up now probably have, you know, maybe this is all they've seen. They've only lived with the iOS 7 one. So they get a chance to really push the envelope and do something different. And you know, I know there's a lot of people who get trepidatious because of

the idea of like, Hey, we don't want change just for changes sake, right? Like, well, people get frustrated. The photos redesigned this year is a good example. Like I know people who still get frustrated with it. I think it's a nice redesign. I think it is thoughtful, but I can understand why people who are especially are very emotionally attached to their photos

and are frustrated when they can't find the thing that they used to know how to get to, are like, why is this all different? But I think one thing that we don't think about enough is sort of the flip side. Like you shouldn't leave things the way they are just for the sake of leaving things the way they are either. Like that's the corollary to this is you can't just keep things the same forever because especially in something like technology where the field is moving forward faster and faster and there's different stuff.

Like you can't just expect that last year's interface or 12 years ago interface is going to accommodate the stuff you're doing now. I've heard from a lot of people who say, I'm worried about this because I don't really like the direction that Apple's interfaces have been going lately and I totally get that. That is a reason to have trepidation.

At the same time though, I often see these arguments that are like, well, I don't like what Apple has done with this interface, so they shouldn't change it, essentially, so they shouldn't do something new because I don't like what they have now. And I get the fear, but it also doesn't make any sense. Like, I can make the argument,

I don't know if they're gonna succeed at this. I really don't. Like, I do agree, there are lots of reasons to be worried. And the truth is, you mentioned iOS 7, the truth is every redesign, this happened with a Macworld web redesign and the Macworld print redesign that I did and all that, like, every redesign goes too far. Yeah. And then spends time reeling it back. But you do end up getting to a new base place that was not possible when you spent a decade just shoving new things into an existing design. That's why designs get old and weird. So my counter argument, my hope, my reason for hope and

optimism, I'll say it again, for Mac users is, yes, it's been annoying to have iOS things shoved into Mac OS over the last decade. But what if that's because they were using iOS design language to shove things into macOS, because the iOS design language and the macOS design language never really synced up? What if with this, if they did it right, they should be thinking about a design language that can

scale across all their devices and what's unique about each of their devices. I'm not saying they will do this, but I'm saying that that's a reason for optimism because I think it would be that Mac stuff will get a better design in a design system that thinks about the Mac. And I'm not sure the stuff they brought to the Mac over the last 10 years from iOS has been anything but stuff that they slap into macOS and it doesn't feel like macOS. So I think there's reason for hope here. I totally get the argument that their track record recently is worrisome and that this

may be bad. Also, when it comes out and people have a million criticisms of it that doesn't Mean it's a failure for a few reasons one is as I discovered when people complained about the fox box during the super bowl Anything new will be will be attacked because it's new and people are used to what is there before and as I said before Every redesign goes too far and needs to get reeled back in it's the nature of the beast In fact a redesign that doesn't go too far is not an effective redesign, I would argue, because it's too timid and you need to try a bunch of stuff.

And then you find out over the summer and over the successive years of OS release, you sand off all the rough edges and hopefully get to a good place. That's where this is gonna go. But that's not gonna stop any of the discourse about this. No, absolutely not. Because people feel, I mean again, phones are things that we carry with us every day and many of us use them constantly. And so it is something you are exposed to much more than even in

many cases people who sit down at a computer at some point. And so I think people just get emotionally attached. And yeah, I get it. It can be frustrating if you pull out this device that you're so used to having your entire life in, and all of a sudden you're like, ah, everything's different. Where's my stuff? That's what happened with iOS 7. iOS 7 convinced a lot of people just to not trust any software updates because it completely changed their... And Apple has changed their approach since then, but yeah. Between that and it came on the heels of Apple Maps too, right? That was a bad one-two punch over those two years.

That's rough time. When people talk about dark time now for Apple with the AI stuff and all that, this came up in MacBreak Weekly last week where it was like, yeah, you remember the butterfly keyboard and all the ports going off the laptops? Or, yeah, you remember Apple Maps and the iOS 7 redesign? Apple has rough patches. And the question is, do they course correct or not? That's the catch. And how quickly do they course correct?

Also a good point being made in our member Discord, David Schaub saying, I'm concerned Apple will break the accessibility features I use to mitigate Apple's older wrong choices. And it's like, I get it, but this is one of those things like a movie is announced and people start listing all the reasons it's gonna be bad. And the fact is, any project can be good or bad and until you see it, you don't know.

And so yes, David is absolutely 100% right to be concerned that Apple is going to blow it and break things and mess everything up and not make accessibility features to allow you to un-mess it up. It is a legitimate concern, but I would also argue, maybe this is an opportunity for Apple to fix those issues so that it isn't a concern anymore. And until we see how they execute, we don't know. I'm gonna take it even a step further, Jason.

Every update, like every movie can be good and bad. There may be things about it that are good and there may be things about it that are bad. Also true. There probably will be. In fact, odds are. Unlike a movie, well, I mean, some movies, they do the special edition

and the director's cut and all that. But like, unlike most movies, software evolves, right? And redesigns evolve. So you throw it out there and then you, I mean, it always happens. We did a Macworld website redesign that was so vastly better than the previous one. And a lot of the feedback was,

I can't believe you did this, you've ruined the website because it doesn't do X. And our response to that was not, oh, let's revert to the old website. Our response was, oh, we got X a little bit wrong. Let's fix it, right? And that's not the same as this whole design is useless. It's like, no, I mean, we thought this would be something

that you would like, and it turns out it doesn't really work and let's talk about it and let's get more feedback and let's make changes if we need to. And that's just, it's part of the process. So we'll be talking, Dan, I think this is a preview of our summer. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of design change talk, I am sure.

I think maybe this'll, I mean, you know, people doing the conspiracy theory that this will take the pressure off Apple intelligence, which I think is not, certainly not why they did it, but sure, it probably will. We'll have a new thing to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. which I think is not certainly not why they did it, but sure, it probably will. We'll have a new thing to talk about. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not a design smoke screen, but it might be a smoke screen regardless. To paraphrase the old, you won't have Apple intelligence to kick around anymore. Yeah. All right. Really quick dive into the B-Tails. Woo-hoo. Woo-hoo. Oh yeah, you got it.

You're the right age. Oh, I love DuckTales. For the B-Tails. Woo-hoo. Woo-hoo. Oh yeah, you got it. You're the right age. Oh, I love DuckTales. For the B-Tails. Please, I'm right here. I can do the whole song. This is like an almost all segment episode. I don't know why. We've got segments.

I might as well tag things as being in a segment if we've got a segment to do. Mac OS 15.4 and iOS 18.4 should be out imminently. Last week they put out a bunch of release candidates, including Mac OS twice, so something was in there that wasn't quite right. So that should be out this week, maybe even momentarily. Of course, what does it contain? Well, not any of those promised AI features. Zing! Boom! Oh, we already have been talking about that for weeks. But Apple Intelligence actually picks up support officially for French, German, Italian, Brazilian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean,

Chinese, simplified, and English in India and Singapore. So that's nice. The priority inbox features that were strangely only on the iPhone now appear on the Mac and the iPad in this update. Sure. The easy device setup with Quickstart where just like with a phone and an iPad, you can now set up a Mac by holding your old Mac, if it's running this or your phone near your Mac

and having it basically say, yeah, this is who this person is. This is their Apple ID and get that thing started quickly, which is really nice, great feature. I remember it was like eight, nine years ago, it was a long time ago, where Mike and I did that episode where we complained the whole episode about how Apple's iPhone setup was a disaster

and that your happiest day as an iPhone buyer became a nightmare because you couldn't get things transferred and all of that. And I'm happy to report, I'm not taking credit for it, but I'm happy to report that since we've done that, it really has been on a trajectory where they are, they are so much better at this aspect of device setup than they used to be. So this is bringing it to the Mac. It's great. It gets better every year. I mean, I honestly think that the transfer and speaking of someone

who gets a new phone every year and has to do that dance every time. I mean, I think that that process is vastly improved year over year over year. And I think it's good that they're adding that to the Mac side as well, because you don't do it probably as much as you do with the phone, but it's still, if you've got the benefits, you might as well leverage them.

Yeah, for sure. Also visual intelligence improvements. Yeah, it's coming to the iPhone 15 Pro will be able to use it in the Pro Max because it will remember, relied on the camera control button, which those didn't have. Right.

Even though those can run Apple intelligence. On the 16E, they do. And so now they'll be able to do that on the 15 Pro. Yeah, either via the action button and there's also a control in control center. What's the ambient music change? So there's now ambient music available in the control center as well.

The Apple added these four different sound categories, sleep, chill, productivity and well-being. And it just plays music in the background. Just plays ambient music. So if you're like, I mean, you know, speaking of someone who does put his headphones in sometimes and doesn't put anything on, like I'm at the coffee shop or something

and I'm just like, sometimes I'll have music on but then I'll pause it and I'll forget to put it on again. Like, I don't know, the idea of just having ambient background noise available. Sure, it's fun. It's a fun idea. And in a really interesting feature that I have not used a lot,

but the priority notifications are there on iOS so you get these notifications that it is analyzing with its ML models and saying this seems important. And so they get floated to the top and they are outlined and they glow. And it's like, this seems to be an important notification for you.

I've used this in the beta. It is mixed as you might expect from these. Sometimes it works fine, but just this morning, I definitely got one that was for one of those. You haven't paid your toll. Your car toll scams. Oh, good. Classic. Okay. Well, that's not important. So nevermind.

And then there's one other thing I noticed actually as I was scrolling through. I forgot this is, you know, was in the beta when 18.4 came out, is the Apple News food section will be available. Plus subscribers, so recipes and all that stuff, which I think is interesting. It does feel a little bit like with its integration with sports stuff and then the puzzles that it's added, in some ways I think Apple is trying to recreate

the newspaper a bit more in its Apple News thing, which I think is clever. It's a content bundle. I wonder sometimes, the food thing is the thing that made me wonder about it, but I also now am thinking about the puzzles and stuff too is, I appreciate the all-in-one approach, which is like it's all-in Apple News app

for News Plus subscribers. They're trying to create a content bundle. I do wonder if, and this is gonna make anybody who uses like a third party app wins, but like I do wonder if they should maybe just make a recipes app that contains all that content. And maybe a games app. Lex, Lex cover your ears. Apple.Games. I don't know. It's, it's, Lex, cover your ears. Apple.Games. I don't know. I mean, the challenge is that some people use news

all the time, other people don't even think about it. And if you, so the argument is this will get people to use the news app. And then once we got them, the counter argument is people who don't go in the news app because they don't find it valuable are never gonna find this content even if they might like to do the crossword puzzle,

even if they might like to look up recipes. Like I think about this and I'm like, oh, recipes in the news app. Yeah, I mean, the Times does this with its setup, right? The New York Times app is news, but then it has a cooking app and then it has a puzzles app and they're separate. And you can subscribe to them separately in some cases too.

Indeed, so I do wonder, I'm not saying that Apple should make a full-fledged recipes app that you could add your recipes to, although they might do that, but it would be interesting if they could put their News Plus. What I would really like, this will not happen, but wouldn't it be nice if Apple thought this way, is Apple's put a bunch of recipes in News Plus. What if Apple offered a recipes API that allowed recipe apps to include Apple News Plus recipes in their search? That'd be interesting.

So like Mela or Paprika or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Could pull from that. I don't know. Yeah, I was wondering briefly if there was a thing in the alternative too where it could like pull stuff from your recipe apps into Apple

News plus or pull games that you want to play and I was like I don't know if that's a good solution or not But it would be cool if there was integrations with like hey you like these games in Apple News plus Why don't you try out Lexus games or the New York Times games or have you? Yeah, that'd be interesting too Alright this episode of upgrade is brought to you by Ecamm. Ecamm Live is the leading video production and live streaming studio built for the Mac. And it doesn't stop there because Ecamm is great at simplifying your workflow too.

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That's a whole month free of ecamm live ecamm.com slash upgrade FM and code upgrade FM go there now check it out We like those people over at ecamm. Thank you for supporting upgrade Dan WWDC 2025 It's it's here. It's now, I gotta go. Surprised they're doing it. Right now, no, not right now.

Not a surprise that they're doing it. Not a surprise the way they're doing it. Not a surprise that it's the week of June 9th, but at least now we know, and can therefore make our hotel reservations. The most important of all, make your travel plans. Yeah, nothing, as you said, nothing surprising about this from the format,

which sounds like it's gonna be exactly what we've seen the last several years. I mean, we've talked a lot about this. I know you've talked a lot about this. There's no reason for them to change. This is kind of a piece with their like, when you're on top, why change, right? Like it's working for them. Yes. Yeah. Like it would there be elements of doing a live show that could have advantages? Sure. Would those advantages outweigh them being able to do a

heavily produced, you know, prerecorded video? Not necessarily. I don't think so. I don't think so. It gives them complete control. I wonder about some of the ancillary stuff. Like last year, for example, we got that post keynote session where iJustine interviewed John, John, Andrea, and Tim and everybody. And like, I, again, a lot of that felt like damage control, right? Like we're behind on AI and we need to talk about it. Yeah, let's promote our, what we're doing. I don't know that I expect them to repeat that this year. I think this will look more like the pre ones where it's like, okay, it's a record thing

then there's the state of the union and then you'll have some other stuff. Yeah. I mean, they may experiment. The Apple PR has shown, like if they have a new thing, like if they do the big redesign, I could see them doing a post keynote availability, press availability at the Steve Jobs Theater

with the design team talking about the new design. And the idea there is that it's a controlled environment that allows the press to write more about their, you know, what they want to say about why they did the design the way they did. I could see it, but it would really take that where they feel that that's necessary. And I could also see them say, no, it's not necessary. We'll do a, we'll do an exclusive with Wired or something. And, and it will put it there or the Wall Street Journal or whatever it is, we'll do some exclusive interviews, and we'll have somebody go on the talk show, and that'll be that. But it's gonna be the same game plan. We also got a lot of briefings, like there was an Xcode briefing,

and there was a private cloud compute briefing, and more than they've done in the past. And again, it depends on what they wanna explain to the press. They could do- It's controlled narrative, right? It's not only what they wanna talk about is what they don't wanna talk about, right? It's not only what they want to talk about,

it's what they don't want to talk about, right? So if you're like, you know, if they're promoting something where it's like, here, we're going to talk about the new redesign or whatever, it's because they may not want to talk about Apple Intelligence, for example, this year. And so if they can, again, spin, if they can shunt you into talking about,

these are the topics we're really excited to talk about and those other things, that's fine, we'll answer your questions, but we're not as excited to talk about those so let's focus on this stuff. I mean it's a press event and it's also a PR event because they'll invite developers there. And I mean that's going to be an interesting dynamic because there's a lot of uncertainty right now about US based events.

The fact is there are a lot of people are going to be reluctant to travel to the US given what's going on with immigration enforcement. Fortunately, most of the event is online, and the group of developers who gets invited is incredibly small, but I have also heard from a lot of people in our community who don't come as an invited developer, but come because this is the one event all year

where all the people in the community, high-profile developers and media people and people we know at Apple are people in the community, high profile developers and media people are and people we know at Apple are all in the same place. And that will also get hit by this where there are people we know who feel like they aren't comfortable coming through US immigration for various reasons. You know, and I think that will be the case where all those this is a everybody gets together. I suspect that it will not be as much as it's been in the past for those reasons. It does feel between that and also some of the flack Apple

has taken for its political and other stances or lack thereof, you know, there is a feeling, I think a slightly more subdued feeling around it this year. So there's a lot of challenges. That said, however many developers they invite, they will get a bunch of gleeful developers who will cheer that will be in the seats at Apple Park and they will go ahead with it. But you know, that is a thing that's kind of hanging over it and we'll see. It's not going to be the audience of a last place baseball team on a cold day, right?

It's not going to be like, oh, all those open seats, right? They'll fill all the seats. What's going to happen though, is that we're going to be at a dinner or at a restaurant somewhere and be like, or even at the event and say, well, where is so and so? And the answer is going to be, well, they didn't come. And in fact, what I would love, this is a thing that they haven't announced, but I would love if they would consider doing this and they might do this, it's possible, is to offer some alternate venues. I know they did that in London last year, where they did an event at Battersea.

So it's possible that there could be some other things, but it's not gonna be the same because it's not gonna be the one place that everybody is. That's not gonna happen. I do think that would be smart. And they've done a lot of their little like tech talks and stuff, right, in various places. the one place that everybody is. That's not gonna happen. I do think that would be smart. And they've done a lot of their little tech talks and stuff right in various places.

They have a lot of offices around the world. They have retail stores around the world. I've always thought if you're gonna call it the Worldwide Developers Conference, I don't know, embrace that first part a little bit more. Realize that you have lots of people. Granted, it's great that everybody's online, but if you can also sort of have opportunities

for people to gather locally to like, hey, where's the keynote at the Apple Store? Or we're gonna invite several developers who live in this country to come to the campus in, I don't know, Bangalore or something like, you know, that's great. You should do that. You should take advantage of the fact

that you're a global company. So you and I both spent our most recent Macworld columns talking about what this event is going to be and what they're going to do. I argued in mind this week that I think this is the most intriguing WWDC maybe ever since I've been covering it. And you know, the early days of OS 10, there was a lot of interest in like what they were doing. But here, it's more it's not really about what they're doing as much as like what is the strategy and how do they communicate it because they created

the Apple intelligence brand. That was kind of the goal of last June and they did do that. So maybe they back off a little bit. My theory in my Macworldcom was that they enter a cleanup and consolidation phase, right? They it was a big mess last year. Maybe they this year they can afford to say we're improving our models Here's a few details. Here's some changes that we're making to how it's implemented that make it nicer We'll ship the stuff that we promised that we didn't ship the last time. Maybe there's a few new features Wouldn't it be nice if part of the story was developer-focused this time? Because as we noted last June,

but I just wanna put it out there again, most of what they announced last June at the Worldwide Developer Conference was not things that developers could do anything with. Like the most developer integration is like, you could make a button to do image playgrounds, or you could use the writing tools in your app, but there wasn't like access to Apple's models or anything like

that. And I understand it on one level, which is it was brand new, and it was rushed to market. But another level, you it as a platform play, and Ben Thompson wrote about this on Stratechery a couple weeks ago, handing a lot of these tools to developers could actually make your platform much stronger. So I do wonder if they will have a developer story that's more fully featured this time. That would be nice.

Yeah, I agree. Obviously, the big thing that everybody was looking to for the developer story was App Intense. That is a place where there was integration. It's pretty much the only place that developers could have their apps touch Apple Intelligence at all. And of course, that's now been delayed. So there's a question as to whether or not

that will be something they wanna talk about this year. Like, is that still happening? Well, do they put that in the beta, right? I mean, they might say- That's a big question. Guess what? We are shipping that, and here it's in the developer betas, and you've got all summer to help us make this stuff better,

let's get going. And in fact, I would argue that that change is so huge that giving developers lots of runway instead of dropping it on a 0.4 would be really good. Like that would be a much, yeah. Especially if you've taken it a step further. Like if you're doing more. Yeah, if that's the case,

I do wonder if that's actually one of the reasons they delayed those features. Is there like, you know, there's so much here. Let's get the long rollout starting at WWDC instead of dropping this in a point release with a very narrow beta cycle. Maybe, I don't know. So maybe, I wanna see what they learned, right? Yeah. I want to see what they learned from last year.

Did they learn anything? Right? Did they learn their lessons? That's the question. Did they learn things about AI that they can say, oh, yeah, we've realized that this is the right thing to do? Or did they not? And then did they learn about over promising and under delivering? Because they just put a bunch of new executives in charge of Siri. And I know there's a lot of pressure to ship something that's better Siri and ship it soon, sooner rather than later. And I agree, I wanna see new Siri sooner rather than later. My fear is that they could get tricked into over-promising and under-delivering for Siri like they did with Apple intelligence, right?

Sure, yeah. There's a lot of questions about how they're gonna respond to what they did last year, right? Like this was kind of the thrust of my article, is like you've got a couple different options into how you handle this, right? First option is to cop to it. Be like, you know what?

We announced these really exciting features last year. We realized they were gonna take a little more time than we needed, but we're excited to announce they're coming in iOS 19, and maybe even here's of some tweaks we've made or things that, like more details, et cetera. That's one option. Option two is to just not talk about it,

which sounds ridiculous, but I can easily imagine a world where Apple maybe like says like, yeah, but we've obviously we've got Apple intelligence. Moving on, let's talk about iOS 19 redesign. Oh yeah, right. And we'll all look at each other and they'll just keep going, right? They just don't wanna talk about it.

Yeah, cause that was your column is like, feels like they might wanna apologize here or at least do a apologetic statement of some sort, right? Maybe not a full on apology, but just an acknowledgement. Yeah, maybe, or maybe not. And then the other question is, you know, like you said, is this just a consolidate and cleanup, or is this them saying, look, you know,

AI is still big, we're going hard on it, and here's our next generation of Apple intelligence features, or here's what we're doing to improve the stuff we put out last year. And especially in the case of the former, if you're talking about new features that you're adding under this umbrella of Apple intelligence,

how do you deal with the fact that you didn't ship everything that you promised the first time? Because on the one hand, it's like, well, can you build on it, technologically speaking? It's not like you can take something like App Intents or, you know, personalized Siri and soup it up when you never shipped it in the first place. And then the other side of that,

as you and I discussed elsewhere recently, is like, realize that you're talking, as we said, to a press event, you're talking to developers and you're talking to press. Both of these people are going to be a heck of a lot more skeptical about anything that else in this area. A lot, right? Because you did not ship it.

And in the past, you have a lot of credibility built up where we all kind of accepted that if you talked about a thing, like, okay, some stuff might ship in the fall, some stuff might ship in the spring, that had started slipping more and more lately, but it would get shipped in that version, especially with something that is that big a deal that you spent that much time on.

But instead what we got to is a point of realizing maybe not only are you not gonna ship that, but it didn't work when you had it, right? Like it was never a thing. Nobody saw it, nobody saw it demoed. So a lot of press are gonna be a lot like harder on like big claims that Apple makes. They're going to ask to see demos.

They're going to ask to see like, okay, does to ask to see, like, okay, does that work? Can you show that to me? Can I try it? What state is this in? So I think you have to realize if you're Apple going into this that you are gonna be subjected to a lot more scrutiny than in the past. And you have to be prepared to deal with that

because you're gonna get a lot of questions out of it. And Apple PR, they're very good at what they do. They're very good at talking about the things they wanna talk about and not talking about the things they want to talk about and not talking about the things they don't want to talk about. But I think a lot of those of us who are there are going to be asking a lot of questions and more to the point, we are going to be noting

when they talk about things and don't want to show them to us. So you got to be very careful about how you're doing that. And that's the lesson I want to see if they learn this time. Yeah, they made it harder on themselves. And I think they are aware of that. If I'm certain about anything, it's that one.

That I think they know because of what happened last time that they need to be more specific about timeframes if they can be. Also more warning flags about this is going to ship next year, which they did some. I mean, I will say that, that, um, like John Gruber was on here a few weeks ago and he said he felt bamboozled by WWDC announcements because they couldn't, they didn't ship them. And I dug up my piece from afterward and one of the things that I pointed out is the Siri section of that keynote is aggressively in the future tense.

Yeah. You know, so much of what they do is like, look at this, Image Playgrounds does this, Image Playgrounds does this, Genmoji does this. And then they're like, let's talk about what Siri will be able to do. Siri will be able to do this. And it's all suddenly we're like, in the future, the future we will do as opposed to it does it now i don't know 20 20 30 20 37 flag big red flag right there so uh we'll see a lot of things i'll do in the future jason oh yeah i mean it's amazing stuff in the future i'm gonna be in great shape i'm gonna go i'm gonna run a four minute mile in the future i will i will run a four minute mile i mean you could if you put your mind to it,

it's all possible. So yeah, how they frame it, what they show, how they choose to show it, I'm sure goes into the, they're gonna have conversations about it based on last year. But that's, again, that comes back to my thing that I find most fascinating is,

last year was an aberration. Last year really was Apple kind of panicked, rushing and behaving very unApple-like in some ways, because they felt like they had to get the stuff out. It's been a year, do they feel less panicked? I would argue yes, at least in some areas, maybe not so much in others. I mean, I really would argue that I don't think Apple

feels the abject panic, existential panic of being completely flat footed on AI. They've had, you know, a year plus to be on this path now. And I still believe that if you look at what's out there with AI, catching up is not going to be hard. Because it seems, and I was listening to a podcast the other day, where they're like, they're so so far behind and they're still behind, it's gonna take them forever to catch up. It's like, I don't know, I look out of the eye and it feels like everybody is just continuing to advance the ball. And that that deep seek suggested that it's really easy to just kind of like do a fast follow of the people who are out there. And that there's not much of a moat. And if that's true then Apple doesn't have a lot to worry about. They need to press forward. They are still behind, but it gives me more confidence that they can be good enough and catch up. So I feel like the panic is not quite as strong, although the Siri panic may be real. The features they didn't ship may be real. But so what do they learn? And how is their demeanor different? And how does that impact how they

communicate this stuff? Is is it less panicky than last time? Is it not panicky? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think, you know, Apple say what you will for Apple, I think they work hard to try and cultivate obviously a demeanor of being very calm and rational, right? Like they don't like to look like they're sweating. It's not in their image. So everything you're gonna see out of them

is going to feel very, I think they'll project an image of being very much on top of things, very decisive. Effortless, yes. And very, yeah, this is how things are doing. They were very excited about this, all of this. But yeah, our job as people who have watched this company for a long time is to read between the lines and see why are they doing these things

and what does that tell us about what they learned or did not learn from last year? I think in the post keynote episode that Mike and I did last year, I said they feel very much like the proverbial duck, where they really wanna be completely serene above the waterline. But in this case, everybody knows they are paddling

furiously below the waterline, because they just don't wanna be seen as breaking a sweat. And you could argue that that's why those features went in there and that people feel like they blew it, is because if they're gonna announce a feature, they're gonna do so with confidence. So much confidence, in fact, that then their marketing team put out ads

showing the feature in action. And that's why I think maybe the greatest failure in that whole process was a failure to communicate properly how hard it was going to be to implement those features when lots of us sat there and thought, that's a heavy lift. That's going to take them a lot of time. That's clearly a next spring kind of thing because that's a big, big hard feature to implement. And they were like, no, but we're never going to let them see us sweat. What I'm hearing, Jason, is you're saying what we have here is a failure to communicate.

I'm just saying be a duck. Be a duck. Be a duck or don't be a duck. Be a goldfish. Be a goldfish. Thank you. Um, we're going to go to ask upgrade in a moment. I just wanted to mention if you love upgrade and want to get more of it, please consider

subscribing to Upgrade Plus. Longer ad-free episodes every week, access to the Relay Members Discord, tons of bonus content including two members-only relay shows and more bonus content. You support Mike and his new baby by signing up for Upgrade Plus. People in memberful tell us we have incredibly low churn Which basically means our members want to say stay subscribed once they've signed up. That's a good sign So, please consider upgrade plus and now we move on It's time for ask upgrade I

Expected nothing less from the author of the Galactic Cold War series. Full of lasers. I'm just full of lasers. You are a laser machine. First question comes from Rio, who asks, What do you do when you fall behind on your podcast listening? I'm on a business family vacation, combined with additional hockey episodes. I fell behind close to 100 hours on my podcast. So far I've bumped speed to 2x on some episodes and not listening to time irrelevant episodes.

What do you think? What do you do when you're behind on podcasts? I have the dirty secret of a podcaster, Jason. I don't listen to that many podcasts. I mean, how could you? You work at home. And I make podcasts. I'm usually podcasting or writing.

I have limited time to listen to podcasts. I do try to catch up on the few shows that I listen to regularly, of which I should say upgrade is one. I don't always, I think I triage some stuff, right? Like there's times where I'll be like, I've got to be backlogged. Usually if I have a backlog, it's because I was traveling.

And a lot of times if I really have a backlog, it's because I was traveling and I want to a lot of times if I really have a backlog, it's because I was traveling and I want to listen to the shows that I am normally on, but I was not on like my shows. So it's like, Oh, I was not in the rebound on the rebound this week. So let me listen to John and Lex and what they talked about, or I wasn't on clockwise. Let me listen to what Micah did in my absence so I can know kind of have

continuity or what have you. Sure. Um, a lot of times I have the benefit there of like, I've traveled so maybe I'm on a plane or something and I have some time or I'm at the airport and I need to kill some time listening to a podcast. So that's fine. But I, you know, in the past when I have, you know, listened to more podcasts, more consistently,

I literally, I just declare bankruptcy. I think that's what it is. Yep. That's the answer. If it's new stuff, especially. Oh yeah. Like if it's timely. No. I'm not gonna listen to that.. Yep. That's the answer. If it's new stuff, especially. Oh yeah. Like if it's timely. No. I'm not gonna listen to that.

Declare bankruptcy is the answer. If you can't get to it. If it's narrative or whatever, it's like, okay, then I will spool it out. But no, new stuff, don't worry about it. I have podcasts where I'm largely not on the current. I'm just going through the archive. Rest is history is kind of like that for me.

And that's easy because I can just hold those there. It's history, exactly. All that's happened, it's fine. But I mean, I was in Hawaii and I had a huge backlog and I just recently, I deleted a bunch of like two ATPs and a couple of connecteds and like, I just, yes, this is the truth, bankruptcy is a thing. If you are behind, first off, the timely stuff, listen to the timely episodes.

Don't listen to the past episodes. You can go back to the past episodes if you need to. If there are segments in the past episodes that sound interesting, maybe you jump to those and listen to those and then delete those episodes. But you can't be a completist in these scenarios. Cause I absolutely have dealt with the same thing, especially on vacations. And I think the answer is it's okay. If let's say, I know you're gonna feel like you missed out,

but like if you went on vacation and came back and you had that really long John Gruber episode of Upgrade and the really long John Syracuse episode of Upgrade, and then you're looking at Stephen Hackett and Dan Morin, you're like, oh boy, well, you know, maybe you don't listen to the Gruber and Syracuse episodes, or maybe you look at the chapter markers and say, well, I really want to hear the Upgrade Plus segment

where Jason and John talked about James Bond for 40 minutes, or maybe the reverse. And you say, definitely not that. Skip that. Whatever it is, take control of your life, and it's okay to skip. And if, you know what, if it becomes a part of podcast lore, it's still there, you go back and download it again

and listen to it again and that's fine. Think about it this way. You were on vacation having amazing experiences. Those podcast hosts didn't get to have those experiences. They missed out on you. I was watching, on YouTube I was watching a segment of Conan O'Brien's podcast where he was talking about hosting the Oscars.

It was really interesting. The whole time I'm watching it though, I'm thinking, meanwhile, while the Oscars were going on, I was literally sitting on a beach in Hawaii. Yeah, you win, you win. I win, Conan O'Brien loses, I win. I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii. I had to host the Oscars.

He had to host the Oscars, exactly. Nobody wants that job. Nobody wants that. He's coming back. He's doing it again, I know. Good for him, good for him. All right, Logan wrote in and said, seeing as Apple's rumored to be running behind,

do you think the company will purchase their way to a better Siri? If so, what would they pick? Maybe perplexity or anthropic. I mean, they could. The problem is the AI companies tend to have really overflated valuations. And like I said, I feel like one of the lessons of DeepSeek

is maybe there's not much of a moat here. And then unless you really want the people and an influx of people and the risk there is they're not gonna wanna come work for Apple. Aqua Hire I could maybe see, or if something really ends up in trouble. But I think not. I think I think you need to state your commitment to AI and keep hiring people to do the job and catch up. Because I don't get the sense that, you know, Google what Google does can't

be replicated by perplexity. What anthropic does can't be replicated by open AI and vice versa. I just don't get that sense. If that becomes true, then yeah, they're going to have to buy somebody, but I just don't think it's true. Yeah, I think if you look at Apple's history, it's far more likely that if they wanted to purchase something, they'd purchase a small company doing something with AI that's specific to something they want to do. I mean, they've done this a bunch with mapping and different kinds of software over the years. It's very rare for them to do a really big purchase.

I mean, we've talked about this. Beats is still, I think, the biggest purchase. 3.2 million, or was it next? I don't remember. Either way, it's very rare. We're talking decades between acquisitions that large. And I don't think, as Jason said, there's not enough for them to get in terms of secret sauce that makes it worthwhile for them to go out and spend however many hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, it's gonna cost them to buy a company that is that big and that prominent.

And they have talent. I mean, you look at the stuff they've done, look at their machine learning blog, like they have people doing this. I don't think that the AI is necessarily the problem. I think the bigger question is, what are you gonna do with it? And that's the part where the rubber meets the road

and you gotta figure that out. And that's not a problem that you can necessarily just throw people at. I agree. Anthony writes, Jason has spoken before that he primarily uses his Mac at home and doesn't use his phone as much unless he's away from the house. the new iPhone mirroring does he ever pick up his phone at home anymore. First off, I actually probably use my iPad as much as I use my Mac at home because I use my Mac for work and everything else I use my iPad at home.

the Mac is a laptop now, I still don't generally don't leave it anywhere but docked. It's a very rare day that the the MacBook Pro comes out into another place in my house. I did work on it in the backyard the other day where we had a really beautiful day. We had like an 80 degree day, sunny warm sat in the backyard for the first time this year. That was really sweet and I used my laptop because I got that now. I bring my whole computer with me out there works pretty well. So that's the case, but I don't use my iPhone as much. Although, I will say, Anthony, I use my iPhone more than I used to, in part because I have so many devices now that have iPhone apps to control them. And even if I can put them on my iPad or even on my Mac, there's this whole issue of like, you know, is the iPad authenticated? So I use that more than I used to. iPhone mirroring. Here's the truth. I don't use iPhone mirroring as much as I would like to for two reasons. The first is my iPhone lives on in a charger in standby mode, and the charger is in my kitchen. It's actually, it's coming out of my kitchen. There's a counter that runs sort of to the hallway door, and that's where it is. It is, the two places that I work are in my garage and in the back bedroom, neither of which is within range of that to do iPhone mirroring. So that's not great. It means I have to pick up the iPhone and, and mindfully bring it with me, at which point within range of that to do iPhone mirroring. So that's not great.

It means I have to pick up the iPhone and mindfully bring it with me, at which point I kinda can just open the iPhone. And my other problem with the iPhone mirroring is authentication. And I don't know, I'm sure Apple is doing things properly from a security standpoint, but let's be honest here. Every time I use the iPhone mirroring,

one of two things happens. Either it says, you need to go open your iPhone and put in your password for me to use this feature, which is so frustrating. It's like, I'm right here. Or the other thing that sometimes happens is I've got my iPhone open and I think, you know what? I can just do this on the Mac.

And then I click iPhone mirroring, it says, I'm sorry, iPhone mirroring won't work because your iPhone is being used. And then, you know what I do? Then I lock it so that I can do that. And it says, now you need to authenticate on your iPhone because it's locked. What is happening?

Yeah, there is definitely an, I don't know if this is intentional or not, but I think it reset the permit reset the permissions every time there was a software update. And we're in the beta phase now, so I'm frequently updating the software on my iPhone every couple weeks. And so I think every time I did that, it's like, Oh, you got to re authenticate. And it's so few and far between that I forget. And I did notice the other day I used it and it did not prompt me. And I was like, Oh, did I enter the password or maybe they fixed that. So I'm not sure. Maybe they'll make some changes

about that. But I agree. The barrier to entry on it is just high enough that a lot of times it's like, look, I've got face ID. I can literally just pick this up, open it, and I'll be doing the thing I want to be doing. I might as well just, just I like it. It's a, it's a cool feature. And I like it for specific tasks that I want to do where it's like, you know what would be great? Having a keyboard that I can use with my iPhone right now or accessing this app that I like only can get on my phone. So this is one of my, maybe I'll put this on my Mac OS wishlist. In addition to having the lock behavior be better,

what I would really like is I would like to be able to add iPhone apps like I can add web apps. So they go in the doc or they go in users, my user folder applications, so that I could just have a shortcut that opens iPhone mirroring and opens that app so it feels like that app is running. But I don't think that feature exists.

I don't think, I think it's just like all or nothing. And I would love that because there are specific apps. You can launch from notifications. So if you can do that, it feels like you could have a shortcut to open the app. And you can do widgets on your desktop. So anyway, yeah, I also, I know why they're doing it

because they're using continuity. But like, if my iPhone is in my house on my wifi and I want to view it, I should just be able to view it. I shouldn't I should not have to even if it's a setting I have to set like saying if you're on my home Wi Fi, just let me do it. Because that's the thing that really kills me is I have this great iPhone mirror feature, but it doesn't matter. I have to get up and walk down the hallway and get the iPhone and then do the thing I wanted to do without

getting up and walking down the hallway and getting the iPhone. So I hope they make it better. It's a cool feature, but I don't use it. The answer to Anthony is I actually don't use my iPhone as much with mirroring because of all the roadblocks. So I hope it gets better is all I can say. I agree. Darren wrote in and he says,

do you listen to any podcasts where you can't tell the hosts apart? I don't have that issue with upgrade, but on Jason's recommendation, I started listening to the rest is history. And for the life of me, I can't separate the identities of the two hosts. I used to have the same problem with reply, reply all as well. Does this ever happen to you? And if so, any tips on how to fix it? Now I'm fascinated by this because I can tell Tom and Dominic apart easily. But I think some of it is you have to have an ear for it.

I was always really good. I have always been really good at hearing voices, even of like voiceover artists and being able to pick out who it is. So some of it is just how our brains process information. I'd say for me, it's time is the other thing. It's just the more time you spend. Also, if that podcast has a video, Rest is History has a YouTube channel, they post clips and they sometimes post extended segments.

You watch that a little bit and then you'll get pictures of them in your mind and you'll see who's speaking and that might help your brain kind of lock on to who is who. I would like to ask now my co-host, John Syracusa, what he thinks. Oh, I mean, Dan Morin, lots of people can't tell you guys apart, which I don't understand,

but apparently it's a thing. We're clearly very different, Jason. What? It's not a robot. People tell me that too, and I don't get it, because I don't hear. John, to my mind, has a very distinctive voice. He does.

I do not confuse him with anybody. No. I do get that a lot, though. I does I do not confuse him with anybody. No, I don't I don't really yeah I do get that a lot though. I don't have this problem either. I think like you I just have a brain that's wired for it And again, I don't listen to so many podcasts Oh my other piece of advice in addition to give it time and maybe watch videos to kind of maybe trick your brain into Into learning who these people are my other you're not gonna like it people, but I'm gonna put it out there. Maybe for that podcast, slow it down. I was gonna say, maybe they sound very different at one X and it's because you're listening at two X that you can't differentiate between them. Just a guess. I wouldn't advocate going to 0.5. No, unless,

unless you enjoy where people sound drunk. I have a kid who enjoyed a car accident. And it's very funny for about the two seconds I let it say. But yeah, I agree. I mean, slow it down to one is what I'm saying. Or just slow it down a notch or two until you can pick it up and then maybe you can crank it back up. But that would be another suggestion.

I think there are ways to trick your brain to do this or to educate your brain. And then it starts to map everything and then it will can crank it back up. But that would be another suggestion. I think there are ways to trick your brain to do this or to educate your brain. And then it starts to map everything and then it will start to work. That's my guess. I know it's hard. Brains are weird. Brains are weird. Brains are weird.

Anyway, thanks, John. I mean, Dan, sorry, I got you confused again. Jason, I'm done with this show. It happened a lot in the beginning with The Incomparable. I was like, I never ever in a million years. It's weird. You know, the funny thing is, as I joke, John lives like five minutes from the house where I grew up. He lives in the same town where I grew up.

He lives very close to my parents, but he grew up in New York. So it's not like our accents are very same. I read a whole piece today about the California accent, which was really funny because the whole idea is Californians say they don't have California accent, which was really funny because it's the whole idea is California say they don't have an accent, but they do have an accent. Great story. Very fun. And they said that the biggest, the thing that the one thing that everybody already knew about people in the West is that the is the cot-cot merger where the COT and CAUGHT in

California are identical. whereas in the East, you get a lot of people who say cot and caught. Cot? Cot. Yeah. It is, my in-laws are both from Queens, so I have lots of New Yorkisms. That's very strong.

Every now and then, I just like to rip out a Florida because it's fun. I do highly recommend, by the way, it's several years old now, but the old New York Times quiz where it would ask you, it would try to nail down where your dialect is from. That thing was incredible.

It was so good. This piece points out that it's two things, right? It's your word use and it's your vowels and things like that. Exactly. And that they can move at different rates and that usually word use is fast and that the phonetics are slow. But in the case of California, that's actually not the case. So really interesting. And yeah, that New York Times thing said you're probably

from Modesto for me. And it's like, Modesto was the largest city to where I grew up. So yeah, yeah, nailed it. The one that got me on that one was they told me, all right, so I got Boston, which I did not think was terribly hard. But then it does like secondary places. And the secondary place for me was Rochester, New York, where my mom's family is from.

And I was like, I don't even understand how you figured that out. Amazing, amazing. One last question. This is from Chris who said, the perfect segue, I'm thinking about getting upgrade plus, but I'm in hesitant since the bonus content isn't in its own feed.

How do you recommend going back and listening to all the past episodes, or should I just start listening going forward? It's sort of a bookend podcast question. First, Chris, thanks for thinking about getting Upgrade Plus. The way Upgrade Plus works is generally just, we do an Upgrade Plus segment at the end of the show. So there aren't standalone episodes, it's true.

I would say it's all just, I would go forward, but if you do wanna go back and dip into the archive, just be a little more active, make sure your podcast player has a chapter skip function and skip to Upgrade Plus, because there's a chapter for the Plus version, always at the very end that just plays plus and Depending on your podcast players

Some of them will even let you like say only play this chapter with this name and you could do it that way to it And Castro does that so I yeah I was gonna say the the I am always amazed when people tell me they've gone back and listened to some of our older Like there's shows where that's fine Like people will listen to like total party kill because it's like okay. It's a story over and over start the beginning that's great, but like I Love I love all of you out there, but please don't start it like clockwise one They're available 600 episode, but you don't need to get continuity. You know the only person who would do that. It's John Syracuse

I started at the beginning, Jason. Always start at the beginning. I like continuity. Syracuse mode. It's a little too muppet. It's a little too muppet, I think. Yeah, a little too muppety there. John is a little muppety, but not that muppety.

You gotta turn it down a little bit. Thank you for this episode. We have reached the end. You can send us your feedback, follow-up, and questions at upgradefeedback.com. I am still in charge of that, so be nice. I also wrote an awesome shortcut that automatically puts them on the clipboard, formatted, right, so I I am still in charge of that, so be nice. I also wrote an awesome shortcut that automatically puts them on the clipboard formatted,

so I can paste them in the show doc, because I'm not willing to live like Mike lives. Thank you to our members who support us, as mentioned earlier with Upgrade+. We are gonna take a couple extra kind of home tech questions from listeners in Upgrade+, this time, and of course, support Mike and his baby. I'm gonna keep holding that baby up by being an Upgrade Plus subscriber.

To be fair, the notes say Mike Hurley colon, if you want to buy a gift for Mike's baby, get yourself an Upgrade Plus membership. So it's Mike saying this. Mike's holding his baby up. I got some pictures, baby pictures the other day from Mike, adorable, adorable baby. And Mike has a very nice striped robe, little comment.

I've never seen Mike's robe before, but when you're a new baby. Oh yeah, he spent a lot of time in that robe. You let it all hang out. And then sweatpants in that first couple months. Absolutely. You can find us on YouTube and see our things that we like from Star Wars and Star Trek

by searching for Upgrade Podcast. Thank you to our sponsors, Google, Gemini, and Ecamm, live for supporting this episode. And thank you all for listening. And of course, thank you, Dan Moran, for taking some time away from your many other podcasts, including the one we do at Six Colors, to be here this week. I really appreciate it.

It is distinctly my pleasure. I love Upgrade. It really is one of the few shows I listen to every week. So it's always nice to be on because... It's one podcast you don't have to listen to this week. I don't have to listen to it this week. Yeah. All right. Thanks for that. Thanks, everybody. We'll be back next time with yet another in the cavalcade of guest stars. Who will it be? I don't know. I actually do know, but I'm not going to tell you. And we will see you next time.