Upgrade - 558: My Bucket Is Full

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode number 558, recorded Monday, April the 7th, 2025. This episode has been brought to you by Oracle, Squarespace, and DeleteMe, and it will be, not just has been, but will continue to be I am Jason Snell doing my best to hold the show together while my curly is on paternity leave and joining me for this episode the latest in our cavalcade of guest stars it is developer extraordinaire pedometer plus plus and many others and of course co-host of Under the Radar here at Relay. It is underscore David Smith. David, welcome to Upgrade.

Again, welcome back. I guess you were on when I was in New Zealand, so welcome back. I think, yeah, no, it's good to be back. Upgrade is one of my favorite shows, and so it's a privilege to be able to be here and to try my best to fulfill in the very large shoes left behind by Mike. So it's, I'll do my best. I mean, he does have big feet. All right.

We like to start every episode of, as you know, of Upgrade with Snelltalk. This question comes from Brantz who said, do you have a beloved or just favorite baseball cap that you like to wear? I assume it's a Giants cap, but I'd love to know. And France, you got me. It is a Giants hat. I was just, I went to a baseball game yesterday, first game of the season for us, opening weekend.

And I was talking to Lauren as we were walking there because I was wearing a different hat from the hat that I usually wear, also a Giants hat, but in a different style. And I said to her, I'm trying to wear this hat a little bit more because I'm trying to stave off slash prepare the way for the inevitable failure of my most beloved baseball hat of the moment.

Cause you know, I mean, they don't last. So you have your time with any article of clothing and you know that it's gonna end and it's gonna wear out. And the more you wear it, the more it's gonna wear out. And so a few years ago for Christmas, she didn't even remember this. Lauren bought me a, and I should specify Lauren, we have, there are lots of Lauren's.

There are. Married to people involved in podcasts. Anyway, my Lauren Snell bought me this hat for Christmas and it's an orange Giants hat with a white SF logo on the front. It's sort of connected to their alternate City Connect uniforms they used to have, but it doesn't have like a Golden Gate Bridge

on the side or anything like that. It's just orange with a white SF. And I really like it. The bright orange, it's comfortable, but I wear it all the time and it is gonna die at some point and I'm gonna be sad. But for now, that is pretty much every time I leave the house, especially most of the time

I leave the house, I'm walking the dog. I put that hat on. And so that is my favorite hat. And then the hat I'm breaking in is a little more fitted, the fit is different. You know, it'll, my head will stretch it out and it'll become incredibly comfortable over time. But, and it's, it's what I call my classic Giants hat. When I was a kid, I got a Giants hat that was black with an orange brim, which was not briefly in the 70s. I think it was a standard hat. Now it's like an alternate hat, but that was my definitive hat as a kid.

I got it signed by a giant at one point. So I make every effort to buy that hat and not the all black hat because it's just me. It's from my history, so I like to keep that up. So thank you to brands for that. David, do you have a favorite? It doesn't have to be a hat. Do you have like a favorite clothing item? Well, I David, do you have a favorite? It doesn't have to be a hat. Do you have like a favorite clothing item?

Well, I mean, I do have a favorite hat. I have a hat that I actually, so I had a hat embroidered with the Widget Smith logo, which is extraordinarily simple because the Widget Smith logo is a round rack that is in like sort of the Widget Smith blue. Because it's every widget. And because it's every widget.

And so it's, it works really well because I feel like it's kind of a nice, it works generally like I'm an, it's like my app developer hat because I've been developing apps in round recs for 17 years. And so if it fits well, it's meaningful for Widget Smith. And I, when I had it made, cause I was just custom made, like I had a closing clothing company make it for me

before WBC one year. I just had to make like I was just custom made. I had a clothing company make it for me before WDC one year. I just had to make three or four of them. So most of them are in the sort of pristine in package in the back of my cupboard. So that as I wear my current one out, I will have a replacement ready to go. So that is my favorite hat. I take it with me all over the place. It's my hiking hat.

I just, it's nice. I like that it's understated because it doesn't have any sort of obvious logos on it. It's just a blue round direct, but it means a lot to me, but it doesn't mean anything to anyone else. I don't know. I think if you know, you know as well, the round. Exactly.

I think if somebody in this business were to spot you, it's fun. So yes, if I'm out in the Isle of Skye and I see a guy in a round direct hat, it's probably you. It's fun. So yes, if I'm out in the Isle of Sky and I see a guy in a round record hat, it's probably you. It's probably me. I realize now that your most popular app by far is Widget Smith and I introduced you with Pedometer++, but that's because that's the one that I use more often and you gave me some great hiking advice when Lauren and I were in Scotland.

Nice kind of low-impact hiking advice when Lauren and I were in Scotland, nice kind of low impact hiking advice and we had a great time and we used Pedometer Plus Plus because you sent me like the track of where we were going and it was great. So available where all apps are sold. There's only the one place. Pedometer Plus Plus and Widget Smith, of course. All right. Let's move on to the segment I introduced while Mike is on paternity leave,

which is called Fatherly Advice, for parents to give advice to Mike if they have any, it could be deep, it could be light. David, do you have any words of wisdom to impart to our new father, Mike Hurley? Sure, so I am in the unique position amongst your cavalcade of guest hosts, who I have, I've met baby Hurley.

I've held baby Hurley. I've seen Mike in action as a father. And so breaking news, everybody, we've got a witness. Yes. So I have been in the unique position of actually seeing, having seen Mike take, you know, take the advice he's been receiving over the past several weeks and putting it into practice. So the first thing I would say is that if he is listening to this you're doing a great job. I can say that with actual confidence and you know firsthand experience that you're doing a great job and things are you know it's it's wonderful to see

the you know him and you know grow into this role and it's been really cool and just a privilege to be a part of that and I think when I think of the advice I'm obviously I'm coming into this role. And it's been really cool and just a privilege to be a part of that. And I think when I think of the advice, I'm obviously, I'm coming into this segment late into it. And so a lot of great advice has already been given. And I think the thing that I was thinking about sort of what hasn't been said or what I think would be important and useful to say

is that I feel like it's one of the important thing to make parenting a sustainable thing is to be kind to yourself in this process and understand that while advice and information and these instructions and things that you get are useful and helpful and is clearly being a parent is not like a Lego kit where if you get the right advice, you get the right instructions, and you do the things in the right way, you're going to get the outcome that you desire. You could do everything right according to the book and not get the outcome that you hope for or the situation that you want or things like that. And that is not a failing on you as a parent. That is the reality of being a parent is that it is not this thing that there is a sort of a riddle to be solved. And once you've solved the riddle in the right way, the key will turn and everything will be great. That's just not the way it is.

You can do everything right and it just won't turn out the way you hope. And so in order for that to be sustainable is to understand that you need to be kind to yourself and understand that that's not you being a bad parent when those situations come up, when inevitably the things aren't going the way you want them to be. That's just part of the deal. And I think especially it's difficult because I feel like parenting is a multiplier on your emotions and your feelings where some of my greatest joys and deepest regrets have been related to parenting, not necessarily because the circumstances were so much more dramatic to other parts of my life, but I feel like the way I interact with my kids is bigger. There's a 10 times multiplier on the way that it makes me feel. And so I've learned over

the years of being a dad is being careful about being kind to myself in that and not beating myself up when things aren't going the way that I want them to be. I mean, and certainly it's lovely when things do you take take it you take advice and you work on it and it goes great. That's awesome. But understand that in some ways that is less necessary that is not as much you're doing than you perhaps wish or thought it might be. And so be kind to yourself as a result. Yeah, I've noticed a lot of parents, especially new parents who have this attitude. It's actually more dangerous when they're not new parents

that they can control everything. And you just can't, they're people and they've got their own, you cannot control them. And I sometimes think your attempts to try will frustrate everybody involved. So you've got to roll with the punches. I think that's great advice. And thank you for the eyewitness report.

I hadn't considered that, but yeah, that is absolutely true. Now, can confirm baby Hurley is very cute. Extraordinary. You've beaten Mike to be the firsthand account of baby Hurley, which is on upgrade, which is amazing. And I thank you for it. I'll hold that over Mike for a long time to come. Uh, I've got a little follow out.

Uh, I've decided to call this segment. I'm enjoying the segments. I press a button, I call out a new segment. It's a, it's a thing I'm trying out as, as a, as a interim driver of upgrade. Uh, on downstream, the downstream program last week here on relay episode 92, first off, I was rejoined by Julia Alexander, who was the original co-host of that show and got a job working for Disney and couldn't do media anymore and decided that she missed doing media and so now she's back full-time in the media actually at working at Puck.

And hopefully it's unclear to me because puck is in first position To use the entertainment industry slang That's her job and if they say don't do podcasts with Jason she has to say, okay So I hope I I will be able to do some podcasts with her and I would love to keep Joey Dalian and will Carol in the mix as well, so it could be a fun kind of a new look downstream. We'll see. But anyway, on that episode, which I encourage people to listen to, because Julia's brain is a marvel to behold, and I had forgotten quite what it's like to go on the ride of hosting a podcast where you feed her a topic and she just goes. It's

amazing. I mentioned there a thing that I also wrote up on Six Colors, which is my unsuccessful return to Netflix's ad tier. So I tried to cancel Netflix and realized I do lots of podcasts about things on streaming, including Netflix. And that I, I realized I probably am going to need to be more flexible about turning it on and off. Uh, I wasn't happy with paying for it every month and paying $18 a month,

but I decided to go back and try the ad tier because it's $10 cheaper. And I talked about this on downstream and I wrote about on Six Colors, how unpleasant it was because one, I bought a TiVo in like the year 2000 and so I haven't watched ads outside of sporting events on television all this time and to have unskippable ads

as part of the experience is brutal and I'm not wired for it anymore. But also as Julia pointed out, and Joe Adalian mentioned this on Blue Sky when I posted this story too, it's also just badly done by Netflix. Like there were ways that they could have placed the ads to make it a better experience

and you distinctly get the feeling that Netflix didn't care. And that's like, that's the worst part is that, ads aren't inherently the worst, right? I know different people have different opinions about ads and some people think that Apple's marketing of their own products is ads, which I would argue marketing your own stuff

is not quite the same as ads. Unskippable commercial advertisements inserted in shows is pretty strong, but like even then there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. And my experience with Netflix was so bad and such the wrong way to do it that I literally just gave them 10 more dollars the next morning so I didn't have to go through it.

No, and I think I loved at the end of your we talked about like the the way of thinking of ads as it's is there an amount of money you would sort of volunteer to be paid to have that experience? Like if if someone came up to you and said, I'll pay you one hundred and twenty dollars a year to sit here and watch ads and ruin the moments of the media that you are in deeply. You're in a really thrilling, interesting, engaging moment of something that you're watching and then being paid to have it interrupted. And I think that is a useful framing for that kind of a thing where there are some things where an ad is fine and

works well and like this show has ads and I don't think that is a bad thing. But I don't think it is the kind of media where that is deeply disruptive to your experience of listening to this show. Whereas so much of visual media in particular, part of it is about being transported into a world. And so you're in that place and you're experiencing that thing and then suddenly you're being like yoinked out of it is very disruptive in a way that like is just different and so I think I think what you're doing makes a lot of sense and I'm very much the same way that I would not I would not prefer I would not do the ad tier of something

like like Netflix I'd rather either have it or not have it and if I'm trying to for trying to save money with Netflix, I'll have it for three months, and then cancel it for three months, and then do something like that instead. Yeah, the intellectual exercise of Mr. Netflix offering me $120, and honestly, I think there are a lot of people

who are not bothered by ads. This bears out. There are a lot of people who are not bothered by ads or by certain kinds of ads, and really would rather, I mean, the balance is yes give me 120 back off my Netflix subscription every year and I'll deal with the ads and it'll be fine. I think that's where you get into that whole sort of like what are your priorities but also how what is the quality of the ad experience and that's the other thing that Julia and I

touched on which is if I'm Netflix I need to start as part of my show developing process. And the ad tier happened so quickly that a lot of shows were already in development and they couldn't do this, but you need to go to every show creator on Netflix and say, we're doing ads. And you don't need to put like network TV, crescendo, fade out, fade in, kind of like act breaks.

But like what I said on downstream is, the incomparable has dynamic ads in it, because for various reasons. And I don't love it, but we offer a very reasonably priced membership if you would like to not hear those ads. But my editor, Stephen Schepanski, has a standing order to find natural breaks in the conversation.

And in his edit, he actually pushes those breaks out a little bit so that there's just enough of a pause that I can reasonably drop a dynamic ad insertion point there. And it's a break in the conversation. And so Netflix needs to do that with all its creators. It needs to say, you need to identify and here are the specs. Here's where we want to put these ads roughly at 15 minutes and 30 minutes, whatever it is, and say, you need to identify and tell us where you think the reasonable breaks are. Because otherwise, there it's, you're going to be sad because people are going to get disrupted from your work and that's you know they don't necessarily have to go as far as just insert commercial breaks like it's a network tv show but you got to do something

and they they should already be doing that and if they're not it's really malpractice and it's too bad because an ad product doesn't have to be this terrible, but you gotta make some, you gotta do some work, basically. Yeah. I also have one little side note that I'm gonna slide in here, which is, I wrote a piece last week because there was a report about how Apple TV apparently has a lot of, Apple TV Plus apparently has a lot of churn.

Churn being a industry term of art for the idea that people are dropping off of their subscription. Like what you just described David about Have it for three months turn it off again. That's a churn rate. We get that for like our members all memberful subscription rates I know that Mike and Stephen have talked about how like relay subscribers That's a very low churn rate and memberful has said that to us that that people are loyal and they stay with the program And they're not dropping off and coming back on and things like that. That's awesome. But this report said that Apple

actually has pretty big turn rates for TV+, which surprised me a little bit, but the theory is they don't have a very big catalog and so people watch whatever they came to see and then they drop off because there's nothing else to watch. And I thought one of the great surprises of the last five years for me is that Apple TV Plus has actually done a really great job making TV shows. And I didn't think, I mean, I thought it would be okay, but their betting average is much higher than I thought.

So just using shows I watched, and there were a few shows that people keep mentioning that I didn't see. A lot of the cases it's Lauren watched it without me because I do all these podcasts. And so she's got time to watch TV shows. And once she watches it, I kind of can't watch it because I have very little time. Uh, to watch TV when she's not around.

And so if she watches it, I'm not going to make her watch it again. Um, very rare shows that she'll say, I'll watch that again. And, and, but still just with the stuff that I watched, I did a top 10 list of Apple TV plus shows. So if you're somebody who was Apple TV plus curious and is going to come back for some other reason, check out my story. It'll be in the show notes because I gave you 10 plus. I ended up with three like honorable mentions that I couldn't even get. I decided to keep it to 10, but I think there's a lot of content. Plus there were a bunch of documentaries I put on there and some movies that I really enjoyed. I think if somebody's gonna sign up for TV Plus for a month, you will be able to get your money's worth out of it

without a problem. So I was just surprised at how many shows I really, really liked on Apple TV Plus over the last five years. Yeah, and I'd say Apple TV feels very like a kind of service where you may be able to subscribe for, I mean, I get it because I'm an Apple One bundle subscriber. But I think if you aren't and you are signing up to two, you wanted to watch Severance,

you wanted to watch Ted Lasso, whatever it was the show that got you in. It's like there's enough there that it can keep you busy for a few months. It may not be a subscription that you would keep going forever because the pace of new awesome stuff maybe isn't high enough for that. But at this point, there's plenty of back catalog stuff that if you haven't been a subscriber before and you're coming in with something, there's going to be some really,

there's some very compelling good quality stuff in there. And I think that works well if you were, you're just looking for something new and different. And I think a lot of it has a slightly different feel to the kind of content you have on, be it Prime or Netflix or some of the other options as well. Sure, for sure. Okay, this episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Oracle.

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Join Modal, Skydance Animation, and today's innovative AI tech companies who upgraded to OCI, and save offer only for new US customers with minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify for half-off at www.oracle.com slash upgrade. That's www.oracle.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Oracle for sponsoring this show and all of Relay. Let's do some follow up. Arthur wrote in and this is truly the magic of podcasting where every now and then you talk about something and you get somebody who has a perspective on it that you,

I mean that person, you know that person exists but the fact that they listened to your show when you talked about this particular topic is kind of mind blowing. So this is from Arthur. Arthur says, Hey, Jason, I was so tickled to hear you have, uh, you have the Franklin mince pewter model of the original Starship enterprise, because I was the developer of this breakthrough product. I vividly remember the brainstorming session that birthed it. Somebody suggested we replicate the space shuttle. And I said, who would want that?

It turns out lots of Lego people. How about the Starship Enterprise? I was almost hooted down, but persevered. It turned out to be a monster hit. The first ever high end Star Trek collectible. Thank you, Arthur, for writing in. It is, you have to keep in mind that this is in early days of, everything is a collectible now, but early days of the collectible and this thing is very much high end. It's heavy. It's not like a cheap plastic model or something like that. In fact, when I, when I talked about it with Dan and I talked about how the, the Stan snapped off inside. I'm not sure I can even get the thing that snapped out out of there.

So it may, there may be no way to mount it. But what I heard from a lot of people was, do you have this one? Do you have this one? And it's all the successive Franklin mint models of various Starship enterprises. So that is the sign of a very successful product. So thank you, Arthur.

Amazing. That blew my mind. It's amazing. I mean, it's the joy of having a podcast, I suppose. You just never know who's listening. Like it could be anyone anywhere in the world and our lives could cross in all kinds of interesting ways. I know for a fact that I don't know if this is still true, but one of the hosts of one of my favorite podcasts,

their dad listens to upgrade apparently, or listened at some point. And it's just like, what? How? Anyway, Connor wrote in because we mentioned Mill Valley. There was a question from Casey about disclosing my location and somebody then followed that up. This is like third generation followup at this point,

all hail John Syracuse. About BJ Honeycutt, who is the character on MASH, who was from Mill Valley. And then we talked about how I've got like a MASH streaming channel and I've got it all on my plex and there are like streaming channels where you just watch MASH and you can just pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

It's just super comfortable to watch MASH. I got this from Connor. Follow up on MASH, as a current military doctor, it's hilarious how much of that show is still 100% accurate, particularly any joke related to bureaucratic administrivia, a great show to rewatch. Thank you, Connor. I also heard from friend of the show, Todd Vaziri,

about this. One of these days, Todd and I will do a MASH rewatch podcast, probably when we're retired. I love MASH. It is funny and kindhearted and absurd and really does the bureaucracy stuff is pretty great. Last time I watched it, I realized it's also super sexist, although not as much as the movie,

but you know, anything that's 50 plus years old, you watch any of that thinking this is the standards of the time. And in fact, a lot of the shows that had have survived from that were groundbreaking in their time and seem quaint or even bad now because things have moved on in part because of them. So I have that with the original Star Trek too, where people are like, oh, the original Star Trek too, where people are like, oh, the original Star Trek. And it's like, you don't understand. Like just having Uhura and Sulu in the crew

was totally groundbreaking. Even if there are some episodes where you're like, oh, did they really do that? It's just par for the course for the sixties or the seventies. Let's see, a lot of people pointed out iPads are not all four by three anymore. That's fair, they're not. That's true.

They're not. I mentioned this in the context of the foldable iPhone that's supposedly coming next year that Mark Gurman says will be kind of like a four by three iPad when you open it up. My point was really, I feel like, I feel a little like Seth Meyers doing corrections here. My point was that the canonical iPad aspect ratio

I feel like historically is four by three. So that a four by three mode in a fold out iPhone is gonna be able to run iPad apps. I would say pretty comfortably because we all know kind of what a four by three iPad app looks like. Even though the 11 inches, 11 inches are a little bit wider screen and the mini since they took the button off the bottom, they use that space and it's a little bit wider screen. And that's fine. I mean, they're

not all no. So I appreciate all, all the pedants who wrote about this, but my larger point is just, I think if I said what is the canonical aspect ratio of the iPad, four by three is close enough, I think. Yeah, and I think four by three is a great sort of baseline of iPad size to, in terms of, I imagine when you're designing a foldable phone, you're trying to balance the, two different sets of aspect ratios in a way that you're trying to make it a good phone

and a good tablet or a good larger screen. And if you can go standard iPhone size to four by three, you're doing well. And I think the sort of argument that, oh, well then your big screen isn't as good for watching movies or something. Well, it's still a bigger screen than you'd be watching otherwise.

And if that's all you need is something to watch movies for. I don't think a folding iPhone is necessarily the right device for you. There's probably a better device for watching it. So you're trying to, you know, I think four by three is a great end in my mind as someone who has made iPad apps since day one. I agree. I think four by three is the canonical sort of aspect ratio of an iPad. And if it, if you're, you know, if you're making an iPad app, that is definitely an aspect ratio you're going to make sure it looks good and works well as an app developer.

Right, right, exactly. Yeah, I have to admit I'm a little bit baffled by the argument that 4 by 3 is a bad thing because widescreen movies are going to not look great on it because I mean, I guess, but just leave your phone unfolded or folded or whatever and watch it that way. I mean, yeah, that's not the point. The point is that you could carry a phone that opens up to become an iPad. Like that's the point of it, I feel like. So I think that argument is kind of bizarre cause the iPad has always been this way,

again, within reason at four by three. And again, talking about mash, shot in four by three, right? So just get in there, watch a lot of mash on your $2,000 iPhone or $3,000 iPhone, whatever it ends up costing. I had one other tiny bit of follow-up, which is there is a new Vision Pro video that came out,

which is the VIP access Yankee Stadium. I don't know if you saw this, David. I did after I saw it in the show notes. Oh, good. A great amount of Vision Pro content, knowing that it's there is part of the problem. Part of, yes. Because I'm not regularly putting on my Vision Pro.

And so I was like, oh, there's a new thing? Great, I'll watch it before we record. And even though I thought I'd try the new Apple vision pro iPhone app to do that, that came out in eighteen point four and I'd give it a try. And I was so confused with even in there because all you can do is add it to the watch list. There's no trailer. There's no extra media. It's just the short, tiny sort of description that doesn't really tell you what it is. And it seemed very strange that the iPhone app like, why is there no little trailer here? Even, I mean, it's a short piece of content. It's only 13 minutes of the things,

having a trailer for a 13 minute piece of content, but still, like, you can show something and give me some sense of if this is going to be worth pulling out my Vision Pro for. So there just was a strange interaction with this new, the new iPhone app that is supposed to make it more compelling and easier to get into your Vision Pro. And that was not necessarily my experience trying it out. It's a work in progress at least. Yeah, it makes sense that they would have that in there. I mean, it's nice. I appreciate that that app exists, but it is kind of bare bones at this point. It's better than nothing, but it's also not exactly full featured. but okay. So Yankee Stadium, as with almost everything that I've watched on the

Vision Pro that's immersive, I really am impressed with a lot about it. I loved, I did feel like I was standing, you know, on that platform in the Bronx next to Yankee Stadium and you can see where the, where the train platform is and where the stadium is, and then you're down and the guy's rolling up and down his metal thing that's got the picture of Babe Ruth on it to open up his store in the morning. And you're in the Bronx, you're on the sidewalk right around the corner from Yankee Stadium. And then you're inside and you're up in the stands and you're down on the field and you're talking to the guy who's raking the dirt. And I'm thinking they mic'd the guy who's raking the dirt. And then there's that moment where he's

like, well, I'm done with this. I gotta go, bye. My bucket's full. Yep, my bucket's full. I'm gonna start saying that. My bucket's full, everybody. I think a Marissa video is awesome, but then they show the baseball stuff.

And I remember, David, when there were the demos of it back two Junes ago now, June 23, they had that one moment where you were in the camera well at Fenway park and there's a ground ball that gets thrown wide of the bag at first. And I thought, Oh my God, this is amazing. And there's been almost nothing since then that was baseball related. And I see all these clips and it's mostly of a Yankees Dodgers game during the regular season last year. They did for Apple, fortunately for Apple, that was also the World Series matchup. So it got to seem a little more momentous than it otherwise would have.

And Joe Buck did the narration, which I thought was really good to get a well-known voice to do it. Those moments, whether you were down on the field or behind home plate or up in the upper deck, there's a fly ball to the wall that, you know, you can watch the arc of the ball, like those individual moments I thought were again, really amazing, but all it really makes me want to do is say, can't you guys figure out how to do a game in this format? Because these little tiny highlights from a year ago are really not cutting it as amazing as they are. No, exactly. I mean, I remember watching I was in one of those demos two years ago as well.

And it's like, oh, this is cool. Wow. This is that they're talking about baseball. That must be cool. Or seeing the basketball, all these sports. And it's been two years since that almost. And, you know, it's there's just nothing there. And I don't it seem it seemed very surprising to me that the reason they haven't done longer form sport content is because they don't

they don't think it's good that it's not compelling, that it's not interesting. That seems that it doesn't make sense. It seems weird that they just haven't done good, that it's not compelling, that it's not interesting. That seems, it doesn't make sense. It just seems weird that they just haven't done it, that it hasn't been, and whether that's single games, whether that's other leagues or other ways of doing it, like it might be complicated with rights, and so it's better to do with an all-star game or something, the home run derby,

like any of these events that you can imagine would be easier to get rights for, there's none of it's happened. It's unsurprising that that Fenway Park shot that was in the original demo trailer was a Friday night baseball game. So it was an Apple TV plus game. And that Dodgers Yankees game

that they shot all that stuff at was a Friday night baseball game on Apple TV plus. So that is how they got around the rights issue is they actually do, I mean, even if they had to do additional deal with Major League Baseball or whatever, it's like, it's their game, it's their announcer, they have some latitude there. But yeah, I'm sure there are horrendous technical issues,

right? But I, and for all we know, they've tried stuff and said it's just not good enough. But I think an ongoing complaint about the Vision Pro, and I know that our pals on ATP have talked about this a bit, but I think it is a really good point, which is sometimes Apple is too precious. And I feel like if there was ever a project to not be too precious about it's the Vision Pro. The Vision Pro is already the exception.

Apple shipped a product that's not a mainstream consumer product at all. It's a tech demo and a developer kit and a point the way toward the future, which is why when it came out, I likened it to like early personal computers. It's like, this is not the end product. This is like expensive step one on the way

to something that might happen in five or 10 years, if you're lucky. And so don't be precious about it. Like if you're like, well, we did a baseball thing and it was 3d, but not quite immersive and it was okay, but it wasn't really up to our standards. I would say, what are your standards for the Apple vision pro? Because I think you could, you got a lot of latitude there that they're not, they don't seem to be taking.

Cause what, unless it was really bad and I have a hard time believing it was really bad or that it was technically impossible, which I could if somebody wanted to come to me and say actually the immersive video was so enormous that there's no way we could stream it live. I'd be like, okay, but could you do a version of it that's a little less immersive that you could stream live and we could try it like Like, can we try this? And that's my frustration is I feel like they are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good as the saying goes. Yeah, and if it's impossible, that's one thing,

but if it's just being precious, that doesn't make a lot of sense. And as someone who bought one and doesn't, I mean, I had other reasons to buy a Vision Pro, but it is not a compelling content device at this point. There's just nothing, you know, 13 minutes of baseball content over out of, you know, over a year later is just not much of anything. And so if you're into baseball, that's not a reason to get a vision pro.

Yeah, for sure. It's not. And that's, I think one of the interesting arguments, I know Ben Thompson made this argument is like, there are people who would buy a vision pro if there were NBA games, you could watch immersive from, uh, from the sideline from, you know, basically the front row, people would be like, yes, I'll buy it. I'll pay for the subscription, whatever. And I think there are people who would do that for other sports.

I think there are people who do that for, uh, for theater. Uh, I think there were people who do that for theater. I think there were people who would do that for concerts. But the fact is we seem to be in the era of little tasters as tech demos with this product. And I mean, fair enough, but at some point I'd really like to see something more. And I should say my colleague on MacBreak Weekly, Alex Lindsay, has been talking about how Blackmagic has finally released and gotten to some customers' hands this immersive video camera that Blackmagic is making and selling. And that's a big step forward and why Alex is excited because everything up to now has

sort of been these Apple rigs that Apple has put together. But now people who are not Apple will be able to shoot immersive. And Black Magic also put out a press release, I think last week that DaVinci Resolve has been updated to support the format for it. So we may yet get there, but I feel like Apple has had whatever,

a couple of years to experiment with this content. And are they gonna really leave it to others to try and take it across the goal line? I don't know. I'm surprised by that. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more there. And then the longer they don't lean into it too, I think the harder of a sell it is to a third party to want to be the one to do that work because the Vision pro becomes just nothing as it doesn't have a user base. It doesn't have an audience. And if it doesn't

have a user base in an audience, no third party is going to want to try and bootstrap that audience to it. And so the longer Apple waits, they may at some point be unrecoverable from because it just becomes the, oh, that's the expensive toy that rich people get, you know, but it doesn't actually have anything compelling or interesting on it. Yeah, it's very funny. And I feel like this way every time I talk

about the Vision Pro, where they do things and I'm impressed by them and I'm excited by them. And then that leads me to be disappointed because my disappointment is about unfulfilled potential and about showing me these incredible, right? It's like, when are they gonna get to the fireworks factory? That's essentially it. Or like, okay, you promised me this thing,

but all you're giving me is tantalizing bits of what it could be without actually doing the thing that it could be. It's just really frustrating. But I'll keep watching the clips. I just would like to see more. I would like to see more. I'd like to try it.

I would rather, and this is to go back to Ben Thompson, because I don't agree with his put a camera somewhere and just let it sit there all the time. I think that you could do a little bit more than that. But I am a believer that if Apple gets something and there are people inside Apple who are like, oh, this isn't really very good, just put it out there.

We'll tell you, right? The audience will tell you if it's good or not. But I feel like they're just not even willing to do that. Like, be willing to experiment and fail. That's okay. That's okay. I'd honestly be willing to watch a not live sporting event that was mostly intact just to see what the experience

will be like in the future if we could stream it live, but they don't seem interested in showing it. Yeah, and weirdly, and to talk, bring up another like media sort of term, it makes me, it weirdly, the Vision Pro within this kind of way feels a bit like a Chekhov's gun that like they introduced all these possibilities in the first act, but none of them have come to anything. And it feels like as a part of the audience, you're like, well, when is that going to pay off? When was that thing they brought up at the beginning, you know, two years ago at WDC,

that clip, you know, from a baseball, like it's, they put it out there. Where's the payoff? If that, where's the payoff? Where is all these things that they keep putting out there, but never actually paying off. And that at some point, at some point that's exciting. Like it's like, Ooh, what's, what's, you know, what's going to happen in act two,

what's going to happen in act three. But if at some point you feel like there's all these things that just were introduced, but never actually paid off on. Yeah. Frustrating. It's the story of the Vision Pro in a lot of ways. Let's say it's time for rumor roundup. Yeehaw!

Thank you. Thank you. I don't know why that became a thing, but it became a thing. So when Dan and I did upgrade last time, we pre-recorded on a Friday because I went away for the weekend. So we missed two editions of Mark Gurman's newsletter,

which is the premier source of rumors for this entire community and for Rumor Roundup. Last week's Gurman rumors included the inevitable M5 iPad Pro and M5 MacBook Pros that will come this fall. And he talked about an M6 iPad Pro and a MacBook Pro eventually giving Oled probably around M6. And I think those have been talked about a lot.

Um, but, and he also talked about, this was interesting, uh, new Apple health plus service that might exist where they're trying to create AI quote, doctors. Never like, I never like quotes around the word doctor. That's not good. No. I'm not a doctor, but I'm a doctor in quotes. It's like not, hmm, I don't like that at all. It's a bit of doctor Nick vibes, right?

It's not the, that's not the kind of doctor you want. Yeah, I don't, I mean, I like the idea of Apple trying to use its technology to take. Okay. So let's step back and you actually are, are a great example of this because you've got all that pedometer data, but like, we swim in personal data. It's this life logging thing. We swim in personal data. There is so much personal data.

The more health sensors you've got, the more personal data you've got. And what does it mean to have a personal data. It's this life logging thing. We swim in personal data. There is so much personal data. The more health sensors you've got, the more personal data you've got. And what does it mean? Does it mean anything? And I even now am overwhelmed in the health app where it's trying to tell me all these various things. So I can see some benefit in just trying to do a better job of communicating when you when your system spots things Good or bad out of the soup of data because no human being can be expected to look at the soup of data So that that part's fair. You know, what do you think about this? Yeah, I mean, I think I don't like the idea of an actual like Presenting it as an AI doctor like it being a doctor is not, that is a different thing. That is a medical professional who spent many, many years

being qualified to give you specific medical advice. But on the positive side, I feel like one of the biggest disconnects that Apple has in this area is the way that they collect more and more detailed data about you all the time. And they know, your Apple Watch and your iPhone know so data about you and all the time. And they know your Apple Watch and your iPhone know so much about you. And I like, I know this from someone

who's been making health-based apps for more than 12 years. Like there's tons of data there, but the challenge is actually making that useful and meaningful and helpful. That it's easy to show data to a user. It's difficult to show useful data to a user. And I think their history here is complicated because so much of health,

the apple seems very reluctant to ever actually tell you anything about your health. They tell you information about you, but they don't tell you what that means. Is that a good thing? Is this a bad thing? Do you want more of this number? Do you want less of this number? I feel like they try very hard to not do that almost intentionally and at this point it feels intentional and so I guess the optimistic version that I would have of something a story like this is That Apple would be trying to go beyond just giving lots of data to actually interpreting that data for you and making that

leap from being just a data collector to an actual like something, you know, a giving you advice. And that's certainly I can see why they have been reluctant to give you advice because when you give someone advice, if you give them bad advice, then there you've given someone bad medical advice and that could get really problematic. But on the other side, like I think of the last year we got training load and vitals for the two big health features that were added to watchOS. And- Sleep apnea detection too, right?

Oh, sure, you're right. And sleep apnea detection in some ways is more straightforward because that's a good thing that they were able to sort of more buy it in a binary state, give you information and say you have it or go see a doctor or don't, like is to some degree what they're saying but like I look at the training load thing and I've been making fitness apps for years and I have no idea what this is trying to tell me I look at the graphs

and it's like you're you're 26 percent of your your last seven days or 26 above your 28 previous days it's like okay is that is that, is that good? Do I want that to be the case? Do I want that to be bad? Do I want, and like there are other fitness devices I've used, which are much more prescriptive that they start to have these things to try and be like, Hey, today, it seems like you've been working too hard. You're working yourself down.

You're have a sleep debt. Um, you need to sleep an extra 30 minutes for the next two nights to get back to sort of where you should be. They're giving you some kind of advice. And I think Apple has seemed so reluctant to ever give any kind of prescription out of the data. And when I see a feature like this rumored, it's like that would be the wonderful thing,

I think is just taking one step across the threshold there. And I hope that they're doing that kind of thing. I don't need an AI doctor to replace my actual doctor. It's wonderful that the Apple Watch is able to have these off-ramps where they're like, we're seeing something here that isn't healthy and the go see a doctor, but those tend to be these very severe or more profound conditions that they're identifying. And it would be great if rather than waiting until these massive off-ramps like you have arterial fibrillation or some really sort of meaningful problem, they could be like, hey, it seems like this is happening and you should

potentially do something or try and sleep more or ooh, it seems like you're doing less rather than it just being these numerical things that they tend to do now, where it's the fitness trends is just, are you walking more now or less than you did before? Right. Which that's, that doesn't help you if, am I working, walking enough? Right. Should I be walking more or less? There's, it's just telling me the number. You're walking less.

You get what I'm saying? No, I don't get what you're saying. I don't know what that means. What are you saying? Yeah. And like you go on, like my, this drives me crazy. You know, you go on holiday and you have a,, and like you go on like my this drives me crazy. You go on holiday and you have a you know you're walking a lot and so then that you know a week later or two weeks later

you get a trend update that says oh you're walking way less and it's like yeah yes that is true that is numerically accurate but it is not helpful um to tell me something like that and so I hope that they could be smarter about it. Yeah yeah no I no, I agree. This is the, it's all in the details. I have this argument with people sometimes where something will get announced, whether it's a product or a movie or whatever. And people are like, oh, that's gonna be terrible. Like, well, anything in human endeavor could be good

or it could be bad. It could be, you know, and so I look at this AI doctors thing and I think, okay, first off, that's a simplified thing. And I think Apple's team of health doctors that they have in the health team are, are not, are like, you're not going to Apple's so careful with this stuff.

It will never be called anything like doctor, right? It won't be, but there's a question of like, will it be too far where it's like super aggressive and annoying? Will it be so restrained that it doesn't tell you anything, which is kind of where they are now? Or where do they put it in the middle?

And there's an art to that. Like you said, of like, can you step over the threshold a little bit? Because algorithms are going to do a better job of looking at that data than any person because there's too much data. Even a doctor doesn't want to see all that data. A doctor wants to see some specific data that they will be able to evaluate. But if you can do a better job of interpreting all that data

in order to provide actionable feedback to me, and ideally intelligent about who I am and what my goals are, because when that training load thing was pitched to me at WWDC last year by people on the watch team, um, it was strongly pitched as being for people who were very serious athletes. And I thought, okay, but everybody gets asked to rate the strenuousness of their workout now.

Yeah. And if that's a feature that most people don't want, you should probably, I mean, I let them turn it off, but you should probably like into it that that's not a feature for this 55 year old man who's just trying to get out and exercise for 30 minutes a day, right? It may be too much for them.

And it's just dumb stuff like that. So like, minutes a day, right? It may be too much for them. And it's just dumb stuff like that. So like, could it be smarter? Yes. Will this make it smarter? I don't know. It could be good. It could be bad.

I think it's a little bit weird if they put some of this stuff behind a service. I get why they want to do services, but at the same time, it mutes the argument for the Apple Watch as a health device. If they, you know, they're talking about making a lot of video content. I have a question for that. Dan Moran and I were talking about that last week on the Sixth Colors podcast, the idea that there's,

what's the line between fitness plus and health plus content? And there is, like, I was thinking about how Kaiser, my medical provider, provides me with all these videos that are boring and dumb, but useful, but boring that are like, here's a stretch you can do. Right. And I'm like, okay, maybe there is some preventative, some stretching, some, some like maybe there is content that we created that is more health than fitness and that fitness is more like an exercise class and health is more broad than that. I don't I don't know. It's a

challenge. And that may be why this product doesn't exist yet, is that it's kind of hard to quantify what it would be. But, but I love that Apple has made this device that I wear every day that is monitoring me in all sorts of ways. I just I feel like in, in a lot of cases, they like to use your metaphor, they don't step over the threshold. They're willing to tell me that my sleep, with the sleep apnea, they'll say, not elevated, no evidence of sleep apnea. Or it's funny, I got this week, I got a couple instances of elevated breathing disturbances and I thought, well, all the pollen is out there. It's allergy season. My breathing is disrupted from what it has been. But like a lot of it, it's just like you said, oh, you walked a little more or a little less like, okay.

So like your, your oxygen intake level has gone from. Uninterpretable figure to other uninterpretable figure. I'm like, what is, what are you doing here? So definitely more could be done. I just don't know what, whether they are going to be willing to do it to step through that door. Absolutely. And I think a lot of it is very much, you have to have, be able to have, have a conversation with your device in the sense of giving it goals, giving an understanding of what it is you're actually trying to understand. And if you don't have that, all you have is the numbers.

And whether the number is good or bad depends on what your goal is. If you are training for a marathon, you want your certain numbers to go up and certain numbers to go down. And if that's not what you're doing, if you're recovering from an injury, you potentially want very different things.

And if those numbers were going in the same way as the person who was training for a marathon, it would be counterproductive. And so you have to be able to tell it what you're doing and what phase of fitness and health you're actually in yourself. Yeah, for sure. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you are just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace gives you everything you need

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You'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that's squarespace.com slash upgrade. Use code upgrade to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for upgrade. Thank you to Squarespace for supporting upgrade. David, it's time for the B- Woohoo! Or, as Steven Hackett coined it on Connected last week, I guess the details, because it's not in, 18.4 is not in beta anymore, really. It's-

No, it is out in the world. It's just out in the world. There is an 18.5 iOS beta now, and all the.5s are out there. They seem to have nothing in them. They seem to be like empty containers for bug fixes, which is fine, that's fine. But I was wondering, we should talk about 18.4 just being out there, since I just waved past 18.5 to call this the details.

I have realized now, and so for 15.4 for macOS that when I do a full on update to a new version, one of the things that happens is a whole host of permissions just get reset. And so all of my podcast animation on my Mac, automation on my Mac, that is involved with things like running a shortcut, or you're running an Apple script that that controls the finder or something like that. And they all break when I do an update. And I found like that my Apple script, I literally it's an applet, it just runs and it throws an error. And what I

have to do is I have to open it up in script editor and run it. And then it asks me, Oh, do you want to let this thing have permission to script the finder? And I'm like, well, yes, I did before. And shortcuts the same way I get this barrage every time I run a shortcut for the first time, it's like, do you want to look at this folder? And I'm like, yeah, that's what it's for. And it used to work fine. But a bunch of those things just get reset. And it used to work fine, but a bunch of those things just get reset at, and it breaks everything, literally everything I'm doing until I eventually slowly go through and use them all and have them yell at me and then say it's okay. And then it's fine until the next update. And, you know, it's not as bad as some of those huge rafts of permissions because it's only portions of permissions

that look like some of the scripting and automation stuff that are getting hit by this. But like, it stinks. Like this, an upgrade should not throw, should not ask you for new permission for the same thing that you already gave permission for. It's so frustrating. Yeah. And as a developer,

I can say that this is something that is a perennial problem that I run into with my users, where especially things around health and fitness permissions, where every time that there's a big point update, so last week, there's going to inevitably be a collection of people who complain that suddenly it's not stopped working. Like suddenly Pedometer++ isn't counting their steps anymore.

And why is that? And inevitably the answer is you installed 18.4, it reset the permissions and often in a way that is not as obvious that it got a reset. Like it isn't just like the first installation reset. It's in this weird limbo state where bad things happen or the watch has a different permission set now than the phone. And it's just inevitably trouble. And so it's just one of these things. I don't know what now than the phone. And it's just inevitably trouble. And so it's just one of these things. I don't know what it is about this. If there's some way that they're doing security, that if they make a change in

this, in the, you know, in the core OS of the system, that it touches some permission that was granted, they need to reauthorize it or some thing. But it's from a user's perspective. It is very infuriating when it's not, it doesn't feel like something that should be reset. And it makes anything you can do to your system that makes a user not want to install the last update is setting your future self up for a bad time because you don't want to train your users

that installing updates will hurt their productivity, hurt their experience, make things bad. You want updates to only ever be, I installed the update, good things happened, and that was great. Yeah. Yeah, this goes back to, as we're entering potentially an iOS redesign

and an all OS redesign, I'm reminded of iOS 7, which got pushed out everywhere. And I still have friends and family members who bear the scars of iOS 7 completely changing their iPhone. They still to this day, a lot of them won't update their devices until like I show up and I say, what are you doing?

Update your device. They won't do it because they're afraid of updates. And that was one event 10 years ago. And it's bad. Like you want to get updates. I say you want these updates, but they're like, I don't know. They do weird things.

And so yeah, it's incumbent on Apple to try and make them as smooth as possible. I remember Mike and I talked many years ago now about how awful the iPhone upgrade process was when you bought a new iPhone. And they've done a lot of work since then to make it better. But the same principle applies, which is this, this stuff should not hurt. Right. Like you should want to get a new iPhone. You should want to update your iPhone or your Mac. And, um, I do think that a lot of this has gotten better, but boy, one of the consequences of Apple being so strict with its permissions regime is that they miss some stuff and it gets reset and it breaks things. And there are so many different permissions now. I've lost track of how many permissions,

especially on my Mac. Is that is that a full disc access? Is that a folder permission? Is that a looking at the photo library permission? Is that a looking at the, you know, it's like, there are so many granular permissions. And, you know, when I write a script and I say, you know, look in this folder, like I read a shortcut and it says, unzip this thing, make a new folder and then do this thing in the folder. Like I think it's pretty strongly implied

that I'm, I want to do something in that folder. And it says, are you sure? Do you want to give me permission to use this folder? And it's like, of course I do. Never ask me again, but it asked me again. Which is just frustrating and makes it, makes, makes something that should be, should be exciting less exciting. And, um, you put a note in our show notes that we should mention, which is, uh, what

version is this? Like, this is the version that didn't have the AI things in it, but it does have like the extended mail features for iPad and, and, uh, Mac, which it very kindly now just when it slides down, it's like you just turn this off right now if you don't want to see switches. But you pointed out, it's actually kind of hard to find out what's in what update anymore. Yeah. And I think specifically I was like, I mean, I'm preparing for this show and want to make

sure if like there were particular things in 18.4 that I wanted to talk about. And it's like, I don't even couldn't find a good place like you go to apple.com and there's no reference to 18.4 or any of these updates anywhere like it seems like there should be in that like you know they have the maybe not like the hero image that these updates are out but somewhere on that page. I like to be like here's what's new and you go to even if you go to like iOS 18 page there's no indication no indication of what's there. And you go to the newsroom and there's nothing, there's just the priority notifications Apple intelligence thing listed there. But there's not like, it's weird. Like one of the things Apple recently shifted to was this system where they are sort of moving features

into, you know, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, who knows, maybe 0.5. And that is so that they can rather have these big monolithic releases in 0.0. And that's great. But I also feel like since they're doing this, they've not then realized that they also then need to communicate and market and communicate to their users what's in what.

And I think that is a missed opportunity to communicate that in a way that is clearer and sort of at this point other than if you happen to open the settings app and go to general software update and look at the little description that they have there. If you never see that, there's no place that is obviously presented as far as I can tell in a lot of Apple's marketing communications. I think increasingly Apple seems to be in this place where they are doing lots and lots of updates to iOS and macOS and watchOS.

Having a better and more robust system of communicating what's in what, especially as things are shifting around. It's like, well, the 18.4 was supposed to have this feature and now it doesn't. Now it's like, okay, well, it's not my job to keep track of what's in which, which feature is coming in. What thing, if I was excited about it at WWDC last June, it is not incumbent on me at this point to try and work out when that feature is actually going to appear. There are some support documents, I guess that have this.

Sure. Like in the, in the, in KBase or somewhere you could find something. Yeah, although even there, I'm looking at about iOS 18. Yeah, I think this is it. There is a KBase article called About iOS 18 Updates that will show you the release notes for every iOS update or in 18, 18.01 and all that. But you're right, it also is only down in the KBase. It's a support document.

Yeah, that is not a marketing document. This is a document that you need to reference for other reasons. It is not something that a typical user should ever find. Right, whereas you could have a friendly marketing document about iOS 18 that says, here's what's new. Yeah, with pictures and reasons why you might want these features.

Exactly, because here you're going to get, well, like cooking mode lets you easily follow step by step directions. There's probably a more exciting version of that that explains all the new recipes and cooking modes and all of that that could still be available as part of it. And I think it's an interesting point. Let's move on and put on our suits and lawyer up.

You've been waiting for this one, right? I mean, both of us are like, oh boy, I can't wait to talk about tariffs. Who wouldn't want the week that you're on, one of your favorite podcasts, be the time that you have to talk about tariffs and trade imbalances and trade deficits and all the percentages and this, yeah, no, it's a,

oof, and I think it's tough too, to wanna talk about something that I feel like is gonna change by the time we finish recording. I'm sure if I open up, if I open a newspaper or a news website, it's gonna be, something's gonna be changed. Something's gonna be different. And that is part of the insanity of this whole situation.

We did avoid talking about it for an hour. So that's yay for us. And I agree. I kind of want to keep a light touch with it because I do think this situation is so dynamic. We really don't know what's going to happen. Maybe nothing, probably something could be good, could be bad, really don't know.

But I like, so in Mark Gurman's newsletter this week, he had a nice bit about what Apple's options are with tariffs. And Ben Thompson wrote about it on Strategorita Day 2. And I just wanted to walk through it because it's interesting, we don't know, right? We don't know, not only do we not know the trade policy of the United States of America

in a month or six months or a year, or like let's say in September when the iPhones come out, we don't know what Apple's gonna do. But here are some options, because the idea, and this is in the US, because obviously this is going to affect Americans, because of these tariffs. Ironically, one of the things that will happen is that Apple will be fine in all its other markets, I guess,

because they'll be coming from China, or Vietnam, or India, or all the places they make, or Brazil, where they make products. It's just the tariffs are in the US. So it's importing things into the US that's the issue. So the questions are, like, what are Apple's options? One of the things they could do is services are not affected by tariffs.

No. So you could say yay, or you could say, this will make Apple more focused on services, even more focused on ways of generating money from services because services aren't affected by tariffs. Yeah. And that is something that honestly in all of this, that's the thing that makes me the most nervous as an app developer is that that's Apple will be like, well, let's tighten the

screws on service and try and pull that number higher and higher to offset whatever we may need to do on pricing. If they feel like, ooh, our hardware margins are as high as we want, but if we can get a little bit, get an extra dollar a user a month or something, suddenly that very quickly pays for the reduced price that they would have to do. And I think, I mean, they're probably gonna do it anyway.

I think Apple has been tightening the screws on services for years now, but it feels like they may be increasing the pace at which, and the emphasis that they place on that, which is a way that they can soften the blow of a lot of this. Yeah, I think this is one of those cases where Apple's growth of services is going to help them out at a time where like if Apple's business was composed like it was back before services was such a big

part of it and it was all on hardware margins, this would be, it's potentially a really tough situation for Apple regardless, but it would be so much tougher if they did not have the impossibly high margins on services as a huge part of their number. So when they release numbers for next quarter or the quarter thereafter, when tariffs are hitting them, they will be able to still point at some really nice numbers. Even if the US segment is kind of been brutalized. The other thing, and keep in mind too, US is Apple's number one market, but Apple has a lot of good markets out there. So this is only one market that gets affected by this, at least for now, because of the way

that they can move things around and ship them to other markets. One of their options, as you mentioned, is eating margin on hardware. Apple has very high margins on hardware. And actually one of the benefits that Apple gets from this is that tariffs are not charged. My understanding, again, all of us are learning on the fly. My belief is tariffs are charged on the value of the good and not the retail price of the good, which may mean that Apple has some advantages

in that that iPhone that they're importing isn't 9.99 when it's listed as a tariffable object. It is less because they have a huge profit margin on it when they sell it in the US. So, but anyway, be that as it may, they could eat some of this just in the margins and let their US hardware margins go down because unlike many companies that sell at super slim margins, Apple has very fat margins.

They're not services margins where it's in, you know, 75%, 90%, whatever, but they're really good. And so they can afford to eat some of that if they have to, they, they're not going to like it, but they could do it in the U S, um, they could change the prices. And there was a nice, uh, back and forth. John Gruber wrote something about this. Dan Morin over at six colors followed it up.

Uh, it is the immense desire by Apple to keep its prices static. Dan pointed out that the iMac almost always starts at 1299 and has forever since it first was introduced, uh, which was a long time ago, and yet it still costs 1299 and, um, Gruber mentioned like the Mac pro gets introduced and it's a joke after many years and it's going to be replaced and they've apologized for it and it's still the same price, right?

During that whole period, it was still the same price. And I wanted to bring up the MacBook Air where with the M4, they got it back down to 999. And in the intervening years, since they released the M2 and it was 1199, they have had to put older models on sale at $9.99, but it's very clear that Apple fundamentally wants a product at $9.99 that they can call MacBook Air, and now the M4 is there.

So they really don't wanna raise prices, but they might have to, they just might have to. Oh, sure. And I think it's very much tied into Apple seems to view the price of a product as just as much of a marketing feature as the processor in it or the screen technology or any of the aspects that are more tangible and related to that product that it is something that is they are they don't they don't want to change it because that is they've decided

what is the sort of the marketing version of thing, that this is a MacBook Air is a 999 product and that is an attribute of that product. They're trying to create that disconnect, that it isn't the price of this product is the sort of bill of goods plus 20%. It's no, that the price of this thing is 999 because that's what we have sort of determined is the best fit for that. And I think that means that they have a great margin as the price of the goods go down, their margins increase,

that works out well for them, but it also means that they are much more reluctant, I think, to change or to be to do that in a quick way that I don't expect it i'm sure there are some computer manufacturers who will be changing their prices on a monthly weekly basis to adapt to changing tariff rules or other kind of cost things because they're just. Whatever the price that they imported it for plus twenty percent is their price to some degree and where is i think apple that is not. is their price to some degree. And whereas I think Apple, that is not, they would rather have it be this thing that's going up and down internally to them, that their internal costs are shifting around. But from a user's perspective,

you don't have these weird tensions of, is this a good time to buy it? Is the price gonna go up? Is the price gonna go down? It's like, no, it's always, one of the things that's lovely with an Apple product is you, they don't really ever go on sale. It's never going to be a different price. So you have the risk of it's going to be replaced

at some point. So don't buy an iPhone at the end of August if you can avoid it because you could get a better one for the same price, but you're never going to get that. The prices themselves don't change beyond the kind of thing shifting down the ladder like they do now so that you could buy an iPhone, and the iPhone 17 will become the same price as the iPhone 16 and it kind of works its way down, but their pricing buckets are very stable and I think that is something that they view

as an important part of the marketing of the product. I agree, you see, we should say they do put things on sale, but they don't really, they let their channel partners put things on sale, right? So like they have their deal with Amazon, Amazon will put something on sale or Best Buy will put something on sale, but apple.com does not put things on sale,

which is kind of wild when you think about it, but that is part of the brand promise. It's like, it's 9.99 here. And oh yeah, there's a deal where you can get it for 8.99 on Amazon right now, but that's how they do that. They wanna do this. Now I know they're gonna, a lot of people outside the US are gonna say, well, that's not really true.

They do reprice. Yes, Apple has repriced in foreign markets, but even there, it tries really hard not to. There come moments where the dollar shifts or that local currency shifts and they will reprice, but even then there is a threshold that gets met where they will do a repricing. But what I know of no examples where Apple is floating prices around every few months in Australia or in the UK or in Japan. I think what they like to do is put it at a price and they build in a hedge against currency.

So that's one of the reasons why sometimes Apple products cost way more in Canada than they do in the US. Or again, you can pick your market. It's because Apple is trying to look at the, you know, ups and downs of currency and say, well, what's a nice price that we can hold forever? Essentially, unless there's something really unforeseen, we can hold this forever. I remember when I don't know how many years ago this was, there was a whole controversy because Apple repriced, I want to say in Australia, repriced a bunch of things. And it was because the two currencies had gotten so far so divergent that Apple did a big reprice, I want to say in Australia repriced a bunch of things. And it was because the two currencies had gotten so far so divergent that Apple did a big reprice. But like that, that feels

like the exception, not the rule. Apple really does. And you're right, David, this is a customer friendly thing, which is they want to eliminate the whole idea of like, is now a good time to buy that MacBook Air or will the price go up next week or down next week? And should I wait or should I buy now? Like they don't want to do that. And they may have to do that in the U S but I agree. I think, I think it's a last resort and I think they'll do it if they have to. But I don't think, I think that they will change prices if they have to, but they're

going to eat some margins too. Um, I haven't even mentioned another option that they have that they will look at is moving parts of the supply chain. It's hard because the supply chain, look, the truth is, they already did some of this. They moved a lot of things to Vietnam and to India. And Vietnam was put there, like everybody said, invest in Vietnam when you're moving out of

China because it will give you access to the Asian supply chain, but you won't be dependent on China. And then this administration slaps a bigger tariff on, well, it's not a bigger tariff than China, but it's an enormous tariff on Vietnam. So like they can move things around. And I do think one thing that will happen is like, there are places where they manufacture products that previously didn't get shipped to the United States. That will now get shipped to the United States that there'll be this like a shell

game where they, they redirect the output of their various factories in order to find ways to ship into the U S for the lowest price. And in my last bullet point here about things they could do is work the refs, because I think that we can never discount the fact that this is why, and we saw it in the last Trump administration, this is why Tim Cook tries real hard to be talking to people in the White House, and also talking to people in China, honestly, and in the Chinese government, but talking to people in the White House and also talking to people in China, honestly, and in the Chinese government,

but talking to people in the White House to be visible. And yes, this is why I went to the inauguration and all those things is look, not only do I think persuasion is a thing that can work with this group, that having the ear of people who have the ear of Trump or literally having the ear, right? Well, not literally like I got his ear in a jar. I didn't mean to say that, but like literally being able to talk to the guy and say, let me explain what's going on here. And knowing ways to give him the ability to declare victory. Cause that's very important is to be able to say, well, this is a victory because, even if it's actually not that same victory,

that's important, and Tim Cook has proven to be pretty good at that. So I think that's part of the scenario here. This is the famous, oh, we're cutting tariffs on all these things that Apple imports because they opened a Mac Pro factory, that kind of thing, right? Where it's like, is that really, was that meaningful?

Well, no, but it looks meaningful. And sometimes that's what you're going for there. And so I think don't underestimate Apple's at least attempts. I don't know if they'll be successful this time because this is different from last time, but like there were attempts to work the reps. And I know I sound like a broken record on this point,

but I'm gonna mention it again, which is Apple is a great American company. It is not to say that the president of the United States, on this point, but I'm going to mention it again, which is Apple is a great American company. It is not to say that the president of the United States, whoever that person might be, doesn't have to care about a great American company. But I would say it's not the best optics, especially if you're trying to make America great again, to have American companies get really hit hard by your policies, especially, this is the argument, especially if non-American companies don't get hit hard by your policies, which is why the fact that Samsung makes their stuff in Korea where the tariffs are lower. I mean, I know they've already used that before. They will use it again. Tim Cook

will go to Donald Trump and say, why are you making the Koreans a better deal than your American friends at Apple? And whether that will fall on deaf ears or whether it'll catch and he'll make a change, who knows? But I would put that up there. Honestly, as I think the number one, I don't know if it'll work, but I think Apple's number one tariff strategy is work the refs, is talk to the people in power and get them to change the policy. And if it's not now in a month, in two months, because there's probably going to be, I mean, anything could happen. But it strikes me that this thing has gone so badly, that the only way to turn this narrative around is to declare victory by making deals to solve the problem that you yourself created, but getting a pat on the back

for it. And I feel like that's where this is headed. I don't know. Yeah. And I think fundamentally the core of this problem is an operational problem. And who better to be navigating Apple through that than Tim Cook. Like I know in the last few weeks and months, there's been a lot of discussion about, you know, Apple's leadership and all of the aspects that are challenging and how Apple, Apple intelligence had its whole challenge and problem

and those kinds of aspects. And I think I am reminded that ultimate like Tim Cook's background is in operations. And I think he is likely very good at navigating the operational challenges of shifting supply chains around and adjusting prices and dealing with this kind of a problem because it's not a product problem.

It isn't that the iPhone suddenly because it's because a terrorist was applied to it that is less of a good product or iOS 19 is going to be less compelling because of this. This is much more of a manufacturing, like logistics, moving things around the world. And I think Apple in some ways also has shown that they have strategies for doing this. I would not be at all in the way that we hear about other markets outside the US where there are higher import duties or sales taxes or things charged on these products. And so Apple adjusts their product lineup in those places.

Like I would not be at all surprised if Apple does need to increase the pricing of some of their phones up that the iPhone 15 sort of sticks around a hundred dollars cheaper or at the same price again, in a way that it would be the one that this cycle theoretically would be sort of kicked out the bottom in the U.S. And maybe it sticks around because at this point, the sort of wholesale value of that phone is likely very, very low and Apple's margin is very, very high. And so they have much more space to absorb that there. And so I just wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple has all these strategies that they'll use and they'll make sure that they're being

profitable and doing well. And I mean, the reality that's beneficial in some ways is that this is applying to lots of sort of lots of manufacturers at the same time. It isn't just that if the tariffs were being applied unilaterally to Apple in a very specific way, that would be very challenging and problematic and complicated in a whole variety of ways. But their competitors are dealing with the same thing.

And if someone wants to buy a phone and all the phones go up by 10% as a result of these policies, okay. I'm not sure many people are buying an iPhone based on a sticker price. They're basing it on its utility. And if it's the most important technical device that they have in their life, their ability to pay 10% more for it, I think is pretty high, especially if you're paying for it on installment basis through your carrier, like those kinds of things will make this, I think, less of a fundamental problem and more of a, something interesting on the earnings calls for the next, you know, couple of quarters potentially.

And then I would hope and expect it would just sort of settle out and be okay. And it's not great, but it's fine. I should be clear. We're talking about like this in the context of Apple's business. In terms of everybody in the United States who has to buy products,

this is not necessarily going to be fine. But you make a good point that like, it's not the case like tariffs traditionally are used in very targeted ways, which has not happened this time. But the truth is the kinds of supply chains that assemble high-tech products don't exist in the US. It would be a different story if three companies made smartphones in the US

or sold smartphones in the US. Company A and B were made in the USA and company C was selling it cheaper because they were making it in China. Because then you were wrecked a tariff and what happens is you are encouraging people to buy the made in the USA product and not the product that was made cheaper in China,

but you raise the tariff now that that advantage of making it in China is gone, now you can buy it in the US. There are arguments that like some of that may go on with the auto industry, for example. But for high tech products, there is no American supply chain for this stuff. And if the goal is to build it, there are some great pieces out there on the internet.

Ben Thompson wrote one and linked to a bunch of others. Like if the goal is to build an American tech, high tech supply chain, on one level, good luck. And on another level, I hope you've got 20 or 30 years of pain ready to go because it will take decades to get the skills back because we don't have those skills anymore because we changed our economy and China has built up incredible skills in that area. So it's a different situation to your point where everybody who's making these kinds of products is going to have to deal with it. And it's not a single company being singled out by it. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Delete Me, which makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches

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name gets sold on to someone else. It happens all the time. You can take control of your data. You can keep your private life private. Sign up for Delete Me. And there's a special discount for Upgrade listeners. You can get 20% off your plan. When you go to join deleteme.com slash upgrade 20 and use the promo code UP check out that spells join delete me.com slash upgrade 20 code upgrade 20 thank you to delete me for supporting upgrade David before we get to ash up ask upgrade before the lasers come out before they come out I have a little story if you let me me tell it. Okay. I love stories. Last weekend we pre-recorded upgrade because I was spent a three day weekend, uh, in, uh, the foothills where my sister-in-law lives. Uh, nice get together.

Uh, my sister-in-law has three dogs. We brought our dog. Uh, my, uh, in-laws came. So lots of dogs, lots of people. Nice to see family. It was great. There was a, it was a rainy Sunday. Like, well, what are we gonna do today?

And my mother-in-law said that she'd finally given up on her phone and she needed to get a new phone. Now she had, it turns out, an iPhone SE first generation. Excellent. Yep. It is, so running several iOS versions ago. And she said there were, she said the Southwest Airlines app no longer launched,

so she couldn't use an electronic boarding pass anymore. And her battery at this point had died. She told me it was dead, but it turned out that she could charge it. And then it would run for, you know, a good 20 minutes. Um, and there was a great moment where that, where we got to witness that. And it's like, yeah, okay. You don't need a new battery. You need a new phone.

So we go to the Apple store at fashion fair in Fresno. Shout out to Fresno, California. Yes. This is a story about you, or it really takes place in your mall, your indoor shopping mall, perfect place to spend a rainy day in Fresno. My sister-in-law also said she wanted a new iPhone.

So we ended up buying two iPhones. And this is not a long story. Apple, the Apple store people did a pretty good job. Apple stores are chaotic, right? I mean, they're chaotic, although we got there right when it was at peak chaos. And then after we were there for about 20 minutes, the chaos was reduced. But you expect sort of you walk in and you say, I want to buy an iPhone. They're like, oh yes, okay, go over there. We'll send somebody out to help. And personally, like the reason they did this is because I was there. Like literally they did it because they're like,

well, you can answer my questions. And it led to a very funny moment where my sister-in-law is in one part of the Apple store and my mother-in-law is in another part of the Apple store. And I'm like helping my sister-in-law with something. And I look across the store and my mother-in-law is waving at me to come over there and help her. So I'm like, okay, you do this.

I'm going over there. And I was ping pong and back and forth between them. It was hilarious. You were the genius. It was incredibly stressful, David. It was incredibly stressful. Cause like they're like asking me all these questions and some of them are like, do I need Apple care?

And I'm like the Apple store people bless them. They are so, they have so much incentive to sell you add-ons. They're like, do you, do I need Apple care? And I'm like, well, it's again, it's your decision, but, um, I don't get it. And you are using a very old iPhone that's still entirely functional. So you probably don't need it. And also really, if you drop your phone, you've got plenty of money to get a new phone, you don't shouldn't be using an S E one, but you are all right.

Just, and I told my mother-in-law, I told her to get the iPhone 16 standard. Sure, yeah. She was looking at the 16E, and again, I thought you can afford the better phone, you're gonna run it into the ground like you did this phone, get the better phone, get the 16 regular instead.

And my sister-in-law, she, uh, her husband told me before we went, cause he didn't come smart man, so smart, wily slippery man. Uh, he said, he said the big reason that she needs an upgrade is because her phone cameras weren't very good and that, that, um that he was taking all the pictures because his phone had a better camera and and that she wanted a much better camera in her phone and so I told her to get the iPhone 16 Pro I said you want that 5x zoom you want to you want to be able to zoom in on that you know the the the Raven's Nest that is being built outside your window at work true story

we saw the Raven's Nest it's being built outside your window at work. True story. We saw the Raven's nest. It's very impressive. Little side note in Fresno, watch for the Ravens. So, okay. So they're buying these iPhones and the AppleCare thing comes up and I say, okay. And then I go back to my sister-in-law to do the AppleCare question essentially.

And I, and I tell her, you probably don't need it either. And I see they've already sold her a screen protector. I'm like, okay, I could have had that. I don't think you need a screen protector either, but they've already sold that to you. And I said, well, you should look for a case because this is a good place to get a case. And she got a case, a silicone case. My mother-in-law, we looked at the cases with her. And this was an interesting data point I hadn't thought about, which is, uh, my mother-in-law wanted a red iPhone case. She always gets a red iPhone case and there were no red iPhone cases from Apple and the Apple store person actually said, yeah, it's weird.

We used to always have red stuff and Apple has no red accessories right now. Yeah. Why? I don't know. I don't know. Red is the colors are decreed. No red, get it out of here. Red. It's weird.

So she's going to have to buy a third party case on Amazon or something and and do it that way and it's fine. So I'm going back and forth trying to fight the upsell in a lot of cases. Um, and, and do all of this. And then the worst thing happens, which is we get through like, is she iCloud backed up on that iPhone SE? And the answer is yes.

Amazingly it is backed up. Wow. That is amazing. Because she was really worried like, I'm going to lose all my stuff. And I said, well, not if it's backed up, but if it's dead, we don't know if it's backed up. And then it turns out it wasn't dead. It was only mostly dead.

And the Apple Store, again, the person at the Apple Store, it was very funny because it was plugged in and he was like, oh yeah, I see it. He said, it's like 85%. And like five minutes ago, it was at 100 or like 75%. Five minutes ago, it was at 80. I'm like, yeah, that battery is not gonna last. But it allowed me to go into iCloud and be like, oh, it is backed up.

So this is gonna be fine. She's gonna get her stuff and all that. So that was good, except they're on Verizon. And so you get to the transferring the actual phone SIM over. Yeah. And Verizon, the Apple Store guy actually said, Oh, yeah, Verizon's the worst at this. They needed a pin for their for for their it's like a pin that you use to transfer your Verizon information.

Well, nobody remembered the pin, of course. So then how do you get a new pin? And the answer was log in on my father-in-law's phone as my mother-in-law to their Verizon account, which she had to look up her Verizon password, which she had in one password. Great. And Verizon does let you generate a new pin. You can't find your old pin, but you can just generate a new pin.

And I was like, surely it can't be this easy. They handed me the phone. I'm like, all right. Well, I said, generate a new pin. They're like, okay, good luck. My Lauren looked at me and she's like, do whatever. I'm like, all right. Tap, generate a new pin.

It's like putting a pin. I'm like, okay, I'm going to make a fair lease. I'll remember this pin if nobody else does. And then I said, okay, let a new pin. It's like, put in a pin. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make a fairly, I'll remember this pin if nobody else does. And then I said, okay, let's try it. And it worked, which was amazing. So super high security. Why do they even have a pin? If you can just reset the pin with the password

of the account, I don't really understand that. Because you might as well just let them log in and use the password, but they have a PIN for that. Okay. At this point though, because the Apple store people, it's a very busy store. When you hit the wall of Verizon, they leave. They're like, good luck, we'll send somebody back here.

Let us know when you get through the Verizon. So then we're like waving our hands and the person who was helping is like with another customer and might not come back. My mother-in-law is sitting there and it's about at this point that I take a picture, which I'm not going to share with anybody publicly, but I'm just going to say picture five people sitting at one of those beautiful, long light wood tables at an Apple store, all looking completely miserable. Yes. That was about 45 minutes into the Apple store iPhone buying experience. And it was the low point.

It was the point where they finally got through. We got the giddy moment where we got through to Verizon and we got the things transferred only to find there was nobody there anymore because they had abandoned us because they know that the Verizon thing takes forever. Yeah. So, you know, we walked out and I say it was busy. My understanding, I've actually heard from some friends of mine who work in Apple retail that right now Apple stores are apparently flooded. Speaking of our previous topic, because there are a lot of people who are apparently prompted to go into Apple stores and buy stuff

before the tariffs hit. Even if we don't know if they're gonna hit in a particular way that will be meaningful to a United States iPhone buyer or Mac buyer or whatever, but apparently Apple stores are being flooded by people. They're like, oh, buy it now before the, so that's good for Apple, I guess. I don't know.

So after like an hour, we leave the Apple fashion fair location back out into the mall It's like one o'clock. I am starving if there was a wet cells wet cells pretzels on the way in if I knew Going in what it was gonna be like. I would have bought a pretzel like and just anyway, so I'm starving Everybody comes out and and they're all like, well, that was a lot, but we got new phones, yay. And David, I was like the thousand yard stare. I was like, that was- I've seen some stuff.

The most traumatic experience I have had in a while where the stress level, it was an hour of pure stress because I like, true or not, where the stress level, it was an hour of pure stress because I, true or not, as the tech person in the family, I feel responsible for all tech failures, even if I'm not responsible for them. Sure. Anyway, they got iPhones and they love them.

Great, yay! Great. Oh! I mean, I always think about those experiences. A, condolences, I'm sorry that that was your experience. That's terrible. And B, it's always, I think about the people who don't have the technical expertise

to answer those questions and to know what to do. And if you don't have the pin, what do you do? And like, it's gotta be, I mean, it's miserable as it can be for the people who have some technological know-how. It's gotta be doubly miserable. if you're just endlessly in the Apple Store and they can't help you, but they're saying that you need to do this thing. You need this number.

It's like, well, I don't have that number. It's like, well, you need that number. Well, I don't have the number. And it goes endlessly around in a circle. That's the insight that I had, honestly, more than anything else is, and I've said on the show before, I had a problem with my Mac studio booting and I thought I had tried everything and I took it up to my local Apple store and they brought over the guy who knows about this stuff and he was like, oh, let's try this. And I was like,

oh my God, how did I not try that thing? And he's like, yeah, don't, don't feel bad about it. Like I've seen, he had seen it a million times before. So he knew all of the details. And that's amazing. But like, I realized that all that complexity on a regular person who doesn't think about this stuff, the is iCloud backup on, or do you have your password, or do you reset, or if my phone isn't working, how do I log into Verizon? I mean, you could just go over to a MacBook Air there and log in, I guess, and do it that way if you really needed to.

But like, I looked at my mother-in-law especially, and I felt really bad because like, she's 80. And she's actually pretty, pretty sharp with this stuff. But she's 80. And she was kind of overwhelmed. Just like, I don't know where that is. Why would I know where that is? Like, it's just, I think anything, whether she's 80 or 50, kind of overwhelmed. Just like I don't know where that is Why would I know where that is? Like it's just I think anything whether she's 80 or 50 like it's it's not unreasonable and I felt like I feel a lot of

Empathy for the people who work at Apple stores because they have to be that person that I was in a way They have to they've got their like you should sell AppleCare, but they've also got their like you need to decode very specific technical problems for people who don't understand the technical stuff. And it's gotta be really hard. And I feel bad for the customers because these are complicated computers essentially, and they're so necessary for modern life.

And you can get in these scenarios where you're kind of trapped, where you're like, I just want a new iPhone. And even Apple is like, sorry, it's Verizon's problem now. Which I understand. And this is why you end up with a first gen iPhone SE that you've been using until it is turning to dust in your hand, because this process is something you do not want or do not want to face.

And you'll just keep using it even if it's only working for 20 minutes at a time. It's like, well, you can just try and get done what you need to do in those 20 minutes or carry a battery pack with you everywhere you go. That's, no, you're absolutely right. And when we were at lunch afterward, there was definitely that moment of like,

you know, well, you're not gonna have to do this again for another 10 years, so good job, everybody, right? Like that was, and, you know, well, you're not gonna have to do this again for another 10 years. So good job everybody, right? Like that was, and you know, my father-in-law likes to pay for meals when we go out. And it's always the thing of like, well, thank you very much. That's very kind of you. That lunch, David, he was like, I'll pay for it. And I'm like, yeah, you will.

You will, you can pay for dinner too And I'm like, yeah, you will. You can pay for dinner too. Are you kidding me? I'm not going to even pretend that you're not paying for this meal. You are absolutely paying for this meal after what we just went through. Anyway, that was my day in Fresno. Miserable people, but we got two iPhones out of it.

So it's okay. Let's wrap up with some mask upgrade. All right. I was trying to do phasers rather Upgrade. All right. I was trying to do phasers rather than lasers. All right. Uh, this one comes from you. Uh, it says Jason, you want to read it? You read it.

Read it to me. I can read it. I'm the one asking the question. Listener, listener, listener. David says, Jason, everyone knows that you are the foremost authority on running with only an Apple watch, leaving your iPhone at home. I do this sometimes, but find playing music while doing this completely infuriating. Is there some magical incantation that you can tell me that while I'm standing at the

threshold of my house with my iPhone still in range of my watch, that I can start an Apple Music listening session on my watch such that when I head out the door, 50 feet down the street, it's not going to stop because it was playing on my phone. Like, and the Spotify app on my watch, I have a button, there's a big button that says like, play from your Apple Watch, but I cannot work out how to do this on the Apple Watch. As far as I can tell, if I pre-download music,

it doesn't help. It always seems to wanna start it on the iPhone and it drives me crazy. So help me, Jason, you're my only hope. Oh, so the challenge here. Okay. And you as a developer of watch apps, I find this amazing that you're asking me this question.

So I, I, so the problem is that I don't listen to music when I run, I listen to podcasts, so I'm using overcast. However, I have become a, uh, uh, an Apple watch user in this mode without the phone, where I've realized some of the quirks of the Apple watch. And I think maybe I can give you some strategies to try. Excellent. The big thing to know, and this is a huge bug in the app in watch iOS that they, it's always been there and maybe it's better now, but it's not fixed.

Which is I can leave the house. So, so what I do and the dog, my dog is amazingly good at picking up cues. So she can tell that we're going to go on a walk or a run. She can tell. And it's things like I put on my sunglasses or I put on my baseball cap or we're bringing it all the way back around to the beginning of the show. All the way back. Or I'm putting in my AirPods and she starts jumping around and she's spinning and jumping.

She like levitates. It's amazing. She's so excited to go on the walk. But one of the things I'd always do as a part of that is I open overcast on my watch and I press the reload button, the sync button, because I want to make sure it's got the latest sync information

so I don't end up having to forward 20 minutes into a podcast because it failed to sync to the latest I listened on the phone to that podcast, if that makes any sense. I do all of this. I start play, it plays in my AirPods, that's great. Got the dog, go out the door. So even with all of that, I am playing podcasts

that are on my watch. And I've got a cellular watch, I could stream them too, but these are pre-downloaded. They're on my watch. I'm listening. I'm not using the internet and I've got my Bluetooth headphones, my AirPods in. With all of that, it's completely self-contained.

We are an island. It's just us. Sure. I walk out the door, make a left, walk down to the corner. And when I'm five steps away from the corner, everything drops out for about a second and then comes back. And that is the moment that I'm leaving Wi-Fi range from my house. I'm not using the Wi-Fi.

I'm not connected to my iPhone. It doesn't matter. The watch doesn't care. The watch so objects to leaving home that it freaks out and drops temporarily it comes back but it even drops the audio playing on my AirPods because it's lost connection to Wi-Fi. So my and previously that it's not true anymore with overcast but previously that moment would sometimes just kill everything. Like the reason, number one reason,

and you probably feel this way too, the number one reason I try to start playing before I leave the house is that many has been the time that I would walk all the way past the wifi range and start playing and it would just be like, nope, nope. Not today. Not gonna do it. And then just be like, nope, nope. Not today. Not gonna do it. And then I'm like, well, do I go back?

Or do I just go without? What do I do now? So I hate to say it because I don't have direct music experience here. But I would say you might wanna try exiting wifi range and then starting a play session because that moment where you lose the Wi-Fi where it finally, I mean, it's obviously it's attenuating the signal and it's trying and it's trying.

And there's a piece where it's just like, did I just lose it? And it's going to come back and then it gives up. It times out and it says, okay. I think that does bad things in watchOS to apps. And, and, and so that's the best guess I've got. My other guess would be, can you turn off wifi before you leave the house and then see if, and do it that way?

Cause I, that's my guess is that there's this really bad moment that happens when you're 50 feet away from your house that some apps can't survive. Have you tried all that or? I've done some of those. And the one that really gets me is when I'm doing like a workout where I'm like running 400 yards, like I like run 200 yards away from my house

and then run back and I'm doing some kind of interval thing. And every single time I have exactly the same thing, there's a corner, like I know exactly the spot. Like as I get to this spot, the audio will just go weird. And it doesn't make any sense. It's playing from a, I downloaded the music to my watch. There's no reason why this seems like it should be the case.

But yeah, so, okay. So I guess the short version is it's not just me. It sounds like this is just a bad situation. Yeah, so you just kind of have to mitigate it with different behaviors. I've got the simple solution for you is when you want to run intervals, just unplug your wifi at home.

Done. There you go. Perfect, just unplug your wifi at home. Done. There you go, perfect. My family will be very pleased. Oh, he's running. Okay, he's doing intervals right now. That's right, the internet will be back later or get to a hard line if you need to. Yeah, or I just need to run with an iPod shuffle

and I'd be fine. Yeah, also that would work. I do love it though. I do love not having a phone in my pocket when I'm running or walking the dog. It's just pulling down my pants and jiggling and I hate it. So I'm so happy to finally, that was always my dream when the Apple watch was announced. And it took many years before I was able to actually live the dream, but I have been living the dream for a few years now. It's great. I love it. That's great. Well, we'll do one more Ask Upgrade. This is from Adam who said,

do you know if the new ambient music features in Control Center, here's another 18.4 feature, are AI generated? They work without an Apple Music subscription. And I'm curious what the origin is of the music. And I'll put a link in the show notes to a 9to5 Mac story about this. It is actually Apple Music Playlist. So if you can use them without an Apple Music subscription, that's probably either different content or it's a carve out. But when I try it, it's adding an Apple Music playlist and playing it. And in fact, if you add the control center item

and then you edit your control center items and tap on it, you can choose different playlists for each one of those ambient moods, including ones they suggest or your own. So it's way more extensible than you might think. And to answer a question I also saw about like, is this AI generated ambience? It sounds like these are artists on Apple Music.

Now maybe they're AI generated. I don't know that, probably not, but maybe. But it sounds like you can, for example, and this is from the nine to five Mac article, the productivity control by default plays a playlist called Beat Instrumentals, which dates from Be beats music era maybe I don't know but you can also choose from binaural

frequencies pure focus classical concentration or choose any other playlist from your library. So this is a way more functional feature than I expected that it would be. And if it works at least to a certain extent without Apple music that's also pretty awesome. So that's also pretty awesome. So that's my answer. And I think it's a lot of these things, Apple Music just has these playlists that like rather than head being some kind of bespoke audio experience that there's

like there's these apps that do white noise or background music or these kind of very specific, you know, procedurally generated music things. Apple just seems to just take a playlist of a bunch of, um, you know, about a bunch of tracks and put them together. And similarly, like I'm always amused by, if you look sort of early in the morning at the sort of top playlists chart in iTunes, it is always there. If one that's just like their sleep playlist, and it's just like sleepy songs that clearly people are just searching for

right before they go to bed and then hit play. And it's not some kind of deep complicated thing. It's just like Apple collected 40 sleepy songs and put it in a list and you can hit play on the sleepy songs. Amazing. All right, well that brings us to the end of this episode. As always, you can send us your feedback, follow-up and questions at upgradefeedback.com.

Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. This week, we are going to be talking about some of the stuff that David and Marco have been talking about under the radar. I just want to get a little read on that from David. Get UpgradePlus.com. And of course, Mike says, if you want to buy a gift for Mike and Adina and their baby get yourself an UpgradePlus membership. You can also find us on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast. Thanks to our sponsors they were Oracle, Squarespace and Delete Me. And most of all in addition to all of

you out there thank you to David Smith for joining me today Dave it was great having you on. It was my pleasure, thanks for having me. Thanks to everyone out there. We will see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye.