Upgrade - 559: All Fingers Are Digital

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 559, recorded Monday, April the 14th, 2025, brought to you by Fitbot, ExpressVPN, and Factor. I am again one of your two regular co-hosts, Jason Snell, waiting for Mike to return. Come back, Mike. But in the interim, I have had now the theme, if it wasn't already revealed, can be revealed a parade of dads giving fatherly advice because of two reasons.

One, I thought it was a fun theme and two, I have to do all the work for upgrade and so I went with people I'm comfortable being around to not increase the level of difficulty of this paternity leave. And next up, last up possibly in the list, it is my good friend, a returning guest to upgrade after only And a returning guest to Upgrade after only about 500 episodes, it's Scott McNulty. Hi, Scott. Hello, Jason. I did such a good job. You had to wait 500 episodes because you couldn't stand the competition, I think.

Yeah, no, that was it. We brought you on an episode eight, an episode 85 to discuss primarily e-readers, which is a topic that you and I both are interested in and have diverging views on, which I think is fun. It's true. And you have become, I feel, in the intervening 500 episodes, you become much more interested in the e-readers, I think.

So you didn't need to trot me out to talk about the latest Kindle stuff because you already knew about it you were invested in it. There was a time when you you owned every e-reader ever released. It's true I have not I have I have since weaned my collection and I've only focused on things that I will actually use generally which is not that's not actually true at all because I still buy additional ones but I don't buy every single one. I buy them to review them and then I generally just have them and there are so many, although occasionally I do feel like Captain Picard in that Star Trek episode. I do sometimes have two different books going on two different e-readers.

Do you do that trick where you turn it on airplane mode so that the library will not take your book back? That's what I do. That is a pro tip. I like that a lot. Well, yeah, you can hold on because the e-readers don't know about time, apparently. Anyway, we don't have time for any of this because we have to

go to our Snelltalk question, which is actually perfectly picked for you being here. Colin wrote in and said, I, like Jason, love world-building sci-fi. Can you recommend a few book series that I can read that are like silo in that they have a beginning, a middle, and an end? So I took this to be like world building, sci-fi, and it has an end so you don't do that thing. I just read a book the other week, Scott,

where it was a very exciting book that ends and it's very clear that, and it was, um, uh, very exciting book that ends. And it's very clear that, that, and it was published like last year, very clear that there will be at least two more books before the story is complete and none of them will be released before next year. And it's a kind of a bummer, right? Like sometimes it's nice to know that there's a beginning and a middle and an end. Also, sometimes there are books that are like in the same universe, but they're And also sometimes there are books that are like in the same universe, but they're like, like I didn't mention Becky Chambers series of novels

and novellas, which I like a lot. And they are all in the same universe and they're sort of connected, but it isn't telling one story. Every book tells its own story. And I don't think that's what Colin is looking for here either. That's true.

And this is the, I call the George RR Martin problem in that you're really into the Game of Thrones And I was and still am but it takes time to write these books and he's not done And I think it's been over a decade since between the the final the last installment and I think there are two more installments that he's planning. Yeah, supposedly Yeah, and so that's a long time to wait. I'm not one of these people that's like, why are you watching football, George R. R. Martin get back to work?

But, you know, it's, it's an investment and people don't have a lot of time. So if you're, I can understand why you wouldn't want to start a new series that doesn't have an end because you don't know if you're ever going to get that end. And there's nothing worse than reading a book that, or a story that doesn't end. It reminds me of, I forget who it was, but some author wrote a really long book and kind of the economics of publishing

is that there's a certain page count where if you go past it, producing a physical book becomes much more expensive. So they split it in half and released two books, but they didn't make it clear that, like they didn't, you know, usually when it's ending a first in a series, they're like, it has a conclusion at least.

And then the next one picks up where, this literally was a book that was cut in half, so it just stopped. And then the next book starts. I don't like that. Is that Blackout All Clear by Connie Willis? Cause that was the one that I was thinking of. A similar one, but this is,

I think Scott Westerfield wrote a science fiction, two science fiction, well one, that turned into two. He wrote one, they released two. Exactly, so it was very discombobulating. Yeah, I don't like it. But luckily in that situation, they were both released, or they were both available. I don't know when they were released.

So I read the next one immediately, because I was like, this is not done. Yeah, the book continues. All right, so I wrote down a bunch, you wrote down a few, Colin, and anyone else who's interested in sci-fi world building with beginnings, middles, and ends. The ones I wrote down, M.R. Carey's

Pan-Dominion Duology, which is about parallel universes. There are two books. They are, they do feel like two separate books, but they tell a single continuing story that has a beginning, middle, and an end. If you're really ambitious and you somehow haven't read the Expanse series, maybe you saw the TV show, maybe you didn't,

it's nine books, but it does have a beginning, middle, and end. You could argue that it's sort of like three books, three sets of three. Adrian Tchaikovsky, there are so many, he's one of my favorite writers going right now. He wrote the final architecture series, three books starting with Shards of Earth. That is super weird, but I enjoyed it. It's sort of like, almost like what if Star Trek, but very much weirder than that.

And he wrote a series called the Children of Time, which has three books starting with Children of Time. Those are less beginning, middle and end. I guess I'm cheating a little bit. Those are a little more shared universe, but they have some connections. I really love the Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I guess that I guess I'm cheating a little bit. Those are a little more shared universe, but they have some connections. I really love the long earth series by Terry Pratchett

and Stephen Baxter. There are five books there. It's sad because I think Terry Pratchett was more involved in the beginning and obviously not involved much in the end as he was fading away, but also parallel universes. I ate that up like five books. I just like inhaled those five books. You're not supposed to eat books. I know, I know, but I did because they were, I got a rare, like five books. I just like inhaled those five books. You're not supposed to eat books, Jason.

I know, I know, but I did because I got a rare chocolate edition, Scott. Oh, delicious. It's pretty nice. And I wanted to mention the Merchant Princess series, another parallel, I went through like a parallel universe series binge last year, that's Charles Stross starting with the Family Trade.

And those were all fun, so there's some recommendation. But if I had to pick one right now and I'd say, this is gonna give you a world's building beginning, middle, and end. I might go with Mark Harry's pandemonium. That's a, that's a really nice duology. So it's, it's multiple books, but not too many. And it's pretty sure it's a lot of fun. Uh, and, and Jason listed many that I would have listed before I put it on the

list. So I, um, I think only one of mine really counts as answering Colin's question and the other two are kind of cheats. So I will start with the one that actually counts and with Yoon Ha Lee's The Machineries of Empire, which is, you know, Jason, you said Shards of Earth is weird. The Machineries of Empire, which starts with Ninefox Gambit, is incredibly weird. And it's very well written, tells the whole story. It's a weird, super weird story, but it's super sci-fi. So if you're looking for sci-fi where different regions of space have different rules

and we're not quite sure why, but then we kind of find out maybe we do, maybe we don't. Pick up that series. And then the other two are complete cheats One isn't even science fiction. Although one could argue alternate history is science fiction Joe Walton is a great writer. Yeah, and if you haven't read anything by Joe Walton, we could basically pick up anything By her and read it the thing that popped into my mind for this question was the small change series, which is Farthing a penny and half a crown. It's an alternate history where... Britain's, uh,

Neville Chamberlain's appeasement works basically. Yes. And so they joined with Hitler. Exactly. And it's very, it is a detective story, which I like. Um, and so, and it has a beginning, a middle and an end. Now this one, my final recommendation does not have a beginning, a middle or an end, but it does in that the author is dead. So there will be no more of them. Right. And I believe Amazon is turning them into some high production, super expensive TV show, maybe. The Culture novels by Ian Banks, which are all set in the same universe,

the culture, but they are not related to each other in that they don't in the same universe, the culture, but they are not related to each other in that they don't tell the same story. But it's a kind of an overarching mega story. And you can pick up basically any of them and you'll have a good time, depending on your definition of good, because some of them can be kind of grim.

That's true. Well, I hope this helps Colin many picks and we'll put them in the show notes too. Let's move on to fatherly advice that I have now admitted to is really a very loose concept because I decided I wanted to reduce the amount of production effort required while Mike was gone because I have to do the ads and I have to do the prep and I have to go. People out there should know that, um, I, I, I already appreciated Mike. You may not know, but I, I know how much work Mike

does to make upgrade happen, especially given the time zones that I essentially roll out of bed on Monday morning and do a podcast because Mike's had all day to work on the show prep. And that hasn't been the case for the last eight weeks or whatever. So, uh, anyway, anyway, come back, Mike. And in the interim, Scott, do you have any words of wisdom or observations to impart?

You have twin boys. I do. Oh, boy, there are a lot of McNulty boys running around. So many. Anything for Mike and his singular child. Oh, it's easy. That's what I say. One child I laugh at. One at a time. Come on, Mike's easy. That's what I say. One child I laugh at.

One at a time. Come on, Mike, you're an underachiever. I will say, I will preface all these things by saying I love my children. Great. Which is important to make clear at the start. I am not one of those people who has ever thought of that they would be a father or who,

now that I am a father defines myself by my fatherhood and that is no judgment on the people who do because I think that's great. Live your own lives. But it's not something that comes naturally to me and not something that I was ever interested in and in fact when I started dating my wife the first thing she said to me was I want to have children you have to be okay with that. And I was like, okay, fine, that's not actually gonna happen, but we'll do it.

And then many years went by and I thought she forgot, but she didn't. And so we have kids now. So it was an adjustment for me. And I knew that I was mostly afraid that I would love these children so much that it would just make me worried all the time because I wouldn't want them to get hurt. Because that's kind of how I am. Like if my wife is gone for slightly longer than I think she should be, I assume she's

dead. And so that's just my personality. And with children, it is amplified like a million times. And it turns out I was right, because I'm just constantly worried that they're going to hurt themselves. So my real advice, I think, is that children are more resilient than you might think.

It's really hard to screw them up if you love them and are providing the basics for them or even beyond the basics, right? If you're a negligent parent, that's super easy. So that still happens. But if you love your children, chances are everything else will fall into place. It will be amazing. It will be annoying, it will be exhausting, it will be 100%, maybe 1000% more work than you think. It will be even if you think it is a lot of work. And my kids are five and a half, and I talk to parents like Jason, who have older children,

and I'm like, when does it get easier? And the answer is it does not get easier. It just gets hard, it's just different, right? And so, because they know, they have like, they start developing opinions and they wanna do things their way, which is not the right way. So I think the biggest,

and this is not amazing advice at all, but it's just, you know, relax. It's gonna be okay. You're not an expert. And also the other thing that I would recommend is related is don't compare yourself to other parents and don't judge other parents' choices. We're all trying our best.

And when I didn't have children and I saw a parent like scolding their child in a supermarket or not scolding their child when they were doing something, I might have thought for a second, why are they doing that? And now that I have children, I know sometimes if you are just at the end of your rope and you just need to ignore your kid ripping open

that box of cookies in the middle of the supermarket, you'll pay for it, you'll clean it up, but you just have to pick your battles. And that is not the time. You know the context of your own children and nobody else does. It's absolutely true. I think that's great advice. One of the context of your own children and nobody else does. It's absolutely true. I think that's great advice.

One of the things that I say often to parents of young kids is, we would not have made it as a species if children, think about during the earliest days of humankind, children have to be resilient. They have to be, not just emotionally, but physically, like literally, if you could kill your baby by dropping it on a rock, I mean, don't drop your baby on a rock to be clear, Jason's fatherly advice.

Drop your baby on a rock. If that was the case, we wouldn't be here because all babies would have died. Right? The fact is the baby's heads are really hard. Like not, you don't want to do it, but like you, we're resilient and babies are tough and don't, don't test this, but I'm just saying we have, Jamie had a thing where she had, uh, her elbow could get dislocated very easily. Like you could literally like pick her up, pull her up from sitting.

And sometimes her elbow would just kind of like go, and she'd go, ah, and we just learned to go and like pop it back in. And it's just like amazing. Like it comes off, but it goes right back on. So they're, they're amazing. So they're not, you're gonna, you worry, but like that it's a China doll when you get a baby, but actually, uh, they're, they're going to be able to deal with, uh, stupid things parents do because we've all survived

the stupid things our parents have done. And you're exhausted and you make poor choices, but it's gonna be ours. It's gonna be another choice. And you're gonna make the right choice then. And I do think when, I don't know when they released your children from the hospital, if you had to do this, Jason,

but before they gave us our child, I know we have two children, one got out before the other, is they had made us watch this video about don't shake your baby. Oh, interesting. And I thought to myself, who would ever shake a baby? And then I got a baby. And I thought, oh, I see why you might shake a baby.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't don't. So that's my other advice. Don't shake your baby. Don't shake your baby. You can shake your booty, but don't shake your baby.

Got it. Yes. Very good advice. I don't know, honestly, I don't know if they showed us that video, Scott, cause it's all a blur, but we had, we did like a class before and stuff. So I think we got the lessons. All right.

And that is fatherly advice, possibly for the last time, or maybe it'll be a continuing segment where I just keep bugging Mike or Mike imparts advice, the things that he's learned to others. Maybe he's, he's, he's a father now. He might have some advice. It could be. Um, all right. Well, we are going to move on to follow up.

I have a bunch of follow-up. Uh, first off, I just want to mention that I did the calculations. We did a paternity draft. We're going to resolve it next week when Mike returns, assuming he's back next week. Our tiebreaker was the total number of minutes of upgrade episodes released while Mike was gone. Now, the good news is, for Mike anyway, that so many weird things happened while he was gone in terms of what we drafted that he's going to win the draft. I'm spoiling it right now. He's going to win the draft. I guess I could make it more mysterious by saying it's not going to be tied. The point I'm making here is if it were tied, I looked at the tiebreaker and this episode

would have to be about 44 minutes long. So if it were tied, I would be thanking Scott for being here. Goodbye, Scott. Good night, everyone. I'd do a short episode and I'd win the draft, but it doesn't matter. So we'll just do another one of these long guest episodes that we've been doing all along. So that's my paternity draft update. I heard from some people about my Fresno Apple store setup story.

Mikhail wrote in and said, I've never set up an iPhone in the store. Why wouldn't you buy the phone still in the box in the store and set it up at home when you are more comfortable? Okay. Mikhail. I, in hindsight, okay, I got to back this up.

When we're 40 minutes outside of Fresno at my sister-in-law's house, and they're talking about going to the Apple Store. First off, it's just anno at my sister-in-law's house, and they're talking about going to the Apple store, first off, it's just an idea from my mother-in-law, and then my sister-in-law jumps in and says she could really use a new phone too. And I'm sitting there minding my own business, drinking tea, reading the paper, whatever I'm doing,

tapping around on my iPad. And I am trying not to say anything, like hoping maybe I could dodge this, right? Like, meh, they'll think better of it. And then like, and I'm not going to volunteer, I'm not going to jump up and say, Yeah, let's do it. Let's go to the Apple Store. Because it's a three day weekend, you know, I want to help them, but I also don't want to help them that much. So we go, I go with them. All right, we're gonna do it. I'm still in that phase of mine, though, which is sort of like, I'm here to help them, but I kind of want to just let them. I don't know whether that's that I was trying to be hands off or whether that I wanted to kind of observe what a normal Apple store interaction is.

But as a result, like I think in hindsight, if I had been running the show, I would have said, let's just sweep in, get the phones, get out of there. And then I'll set them up back at my sister-in-law's house. But I didn't do that. And then the transfers started to happen and there were lots of mess up things with Verizon. There was a lot going on there. I was also concerned about my mother-in-law's phone being completely inoperable, which it wasn't. It turns out it just had a very bad battery. I also heard from one of my retail sources relating to this who explained, Apple always wants to offer the option of walking out

with your new phone up and running, especially if you're doing a trade-in where you don't want to have to come back to the store again. But we always encourage the customer to take the phone home and do it there because it's less of a strain on our staff. The vast majority of our customers over the age of 40 have had PTSD from previous iCloud backup restores going horribly wrong.

So they choose to stay in our store to play it safe. Also, I was disappointed that you were abandoned during the Verizon problem. You should have been at a setup table where there was someone stationed there helping everyone and moving around the table at all times. Uh, whereas we had, uh, we sort of had somebody who then left and they had to find them and bring them back or bring somebody else back. So the point is, yes, Mikael in hindsight, the surgical strike technique to the Apple store was the right one, but I was trying to let my mother-in-law and my

sister-in-law kind of go through the process, being there to help rather than being like the guy who rolls into the Apple store and says, all right, I need two phones. Here we are. Let's go do it. I just sort of like wanted to let it happen. And that led to that moment where they're both calling for me across the store and I'm bouncing between them and all that. And it was like, in hindsight, it would have been less stressful for all concerned if, except me, maybe if we just take in the boxes and go, because then back at home, I would be there calling out like like I need you to enter your password and do you know your Verizon pin and all of that. Anyway, it's your choice. I think my the truth is my mother in law especially wanted to go through the process of making sure her iCloud backup worked and that her Verizon got transferred and so she could go out of the store with her phone functional. And I understand that. I think a lot of people, that's why they do it in the store. And that's why, as my retail store source said, that's why they are open to that, even though they are more than happy to just let you walk out with a box because it means they don't have to waste

their time. Oh man, but going to the Apple Store is horrific, generally speaking. I should say, everyone who works at the Apple Store that I've interacted with has been lovely. Yes, I agree. But the experience of the Apple store, for me, I have never had a very good experience at an Apple store. Even, you know, you have to, so much, like I go to the Apple store to buy something and I cannot find anyone to sell me something.

Like I have to, my wife, Marisa, has taken to raising her hand in the middle of the store, which is unusual. And then some an Apple concerned Apple employee shows up and says, Can we help you? And she says, Yeah, I want to buy this cable or whatever. And then she gets going. And I know you can buy it on your phone yourself. But I just feel weird about that. I know it is weird. I have done that. And I and then I walk out and I'm looking around to see where the you know, the secret camera is or the big guy who's going to stop me if I don't verify. But I like Marisa in the most polite way has learned you just make a scene.

You just cause trouble. That's right. You just cause trouble. I'm sorry. It's a little, we'll say, can we help you? Crazy lady. Yes. I would like to give you money for this product.

Yes. And I'm like, okay, we can do that. One of the things that I noticed at the Apple store that amused me, and I can't do this at my local Apple store because they know who I am now. They've spotted me. I didn't get spotted at the Fresno Apple store is I really love the secret drawers on those tables.

Have you noticed that? They've got like, there's the secret drawer with watch bands and there's the secret drawer with phone cases and there's the secret drawer with money. That and there's the secret drawer with phone cases, and there's the secret drawer with money. That was the one that made me laugh in Fresno, is there's a secret drawer with cash in it. I'm like, first off, who is going to the Apple Store and buying something with cash? But anyway, if you are, there is a cash register hidden in it.

You don't want any record of this. Light pine. And those special custom, super expensive tables that have, I guess they're super custom because they need special secret drawers. And they all like their key cards open and they all got like NFC tabs on them that make them kind of emerge. That's pretty fancy.

It's pretty wild. So we also got David Smith was on last week and we were talking about Apple Watch wireless failures. You don't have an Apple Watch, do you Scott? Or do you have an Apple Watch? You're a Fitbit guy, right? I'm wearing both a Fitbit and an Apple Watch at this very moment. Amazing. All right. So you're doubly monitored. I'm not an insane person who goes running without his phone though. Ah, okay. Well, you see that that is my problem. So you've got a Fitbit, an Apple Watch, and a phone when you go running. On my run, yes. Amazing. All right. Well, that's

good. Look, it's like weight training. It's when you go running. On my run, yes. Amazing. All right, well, that's good. Look, it's like weight training. It's like army guys running with a backpack, heavy backpack. Exactly. Kind of thing. All right, we talked about wireless failures. Ryan wrote in and said, I had this issue as well. I found the best way to work around this

is to turn off Bluetooth completely on your phone and then switch off Wi-Fi on your watch. This will force your watch to connect to LTE and you'll get no audio cut out. That's if you're using a cellular watch. This will force your watch to connect to LTE and you'll get no audio cut out. That's if you're using a cellular watch. But yeah, that's the idea there. I also heard from somebody who said,

if you even set up an automation so that when you start a workout, it turns wifi off on the Apple watch at that moment. And that might work. That's clever. I love these workarounds. I'll just point out this shouldn't be a problem. Like that, the reason we mentioned it

is because Apple should not, it should not do this, like that's weaker. You could fix it is not, uh, the, the, the truly right answer. We've got anonymous feedback that said, I've learned when I go to the gym, these, some of these feedback items are amazing. I need to turn off my iPhone while it's in a locker. If I don't, I have audio issues as I move from to machine to machine in the gym. If I happen to wander within Bluetooth range of my phone, I wish the workout out on the watch would default all audio playback locally to the watch. Ryan wrote in and

said, I'm listening to you talk about watch Wi Fi range. You remind me of a very frustrating experiment I did last year. I use over the ear noise cancellation headphones when I mowed the lawn. Last summer, I tried on at least three occasions to use my watch as a music or podcast source. I kept having weird issues where audio would drop or go out on one side or the other. I started testing it and found it was occurring when I went in and out of Wi-Fi range with my mower. It was infuriating to discover. Then Chris threw in, this reminded me of an issue where I can't get directions in CarPlay

if I'm in the driveway to the stop sign because because it is still seeing my Wi Fi but can't quite get a signal even though I have offline maps downloaded. And I think a lot of us have experienced that if you're pulling out of your driveway, and you're not driving and you're sitting there with your phone and there's that like, interim moment where it thinks it might get back on the Wi Fi even though the Wi-Fi is already gone, chief, it's gone. And it is not yet willing to say, all right, I'm gonna stop grieving my Wi-Fi and start using the cellular connection. So Apple has some wireless handoff issues is what I'm saying, Scott. Sure does. And more people are using their watch without their phone than I anticipated, because I feel like I never want to leave my phone anywhere. I take it with me everywhere I go. I understand it. I mean, you also live in like a city where there's stuff. I'm walking the dog or running around a suburb neighborhood where there's no stuff. I mean, I can pay for stuff. I know that almost everywhere here I can pay for it with Apple Pay off my watch if I need

to. And if my phone rings, since it's cellular, I can get that call and I can get texts and I can do all of those things. I don't have a cellular one, a cellular watch, so that also complicates that. That makes it, it makes it a little bit a tougher case if you, if you're completely out of contact when that's going on. Anyway, thank you for that feedback. And then there's more. Frenemy of the show, Griffin Jones from Cult of Mech. Griffin knows what he did. I've upgraded him from enemy of the show to frenemy of the show, Griffin Jones from Cult of Mech. Griffin knows what he did. I've upgraded him

from enemy of the show to frenemy of the show now. Griffin's been very helpful while still also potentially a foe. Griffin wrote, I tested the ambient music feature, which we talked about last week on two phones, one with an Apple music subscription and one without. So this is really interesting. On both, each of the four moods have four different sub-playlists, but the selections are entirely different. For example, Chill has piano chill and ambient chill with Apple Music, but without it has laid back lo-fi and ambient unwind.

Without, it plays uncredited generic music with generic artwork. And there's a link to an article we'll put in the show notes about this. So basically, if you use Apple Music, your ambient modes are Apple Music playlists. If you don't have Apple Music, your ambient modes are mysterious, bespoke, Apple-supplied things that might still be Apple Music playlists, but nobody can see them. And they're just secret and licensed.

And Apple's willing to pay whatever it's paying for those even if you don't pay for Apple music. But they're probably substandard. They probably tell you it's like they're not good. They're the bad ambient music. I don't know. They're generated by Apple intelligence, maybe. That's where all the work has gone. I hope not. Generating those. I hope not. But thank you to Griffin. Upgraded to front of me. Maybe a friend of the show eventually, we'll see. Tariffs, I have some follow-up about tariffs. We talked about tariffs a little bit, even though David and I didn't want to.

Then they changed, then they might be different, but not gone and would still be over China, but maybe not other places. And then there was a 90 day extension, but then over the weekend, the treasury secretary said they were going to come back. I don't really, I mean, I don't want to waste anybody's time because this will just keep changing.

Other than to say that there were a couple of good articles last week, especially a 404 media article that goes into great detail about why you're never going to make an iPhone in the United States, has to do with the supply chain, has to do with the inability to build factories, has to do with the lack of workers who know how to run that equipment, the fact that you would have to import the equipment and the imports are also tariffed. There's so many reasons and if you just look at what TSMC has tried to do in Phoenix with their

American chip plant, like they basically had to bring in a whole bunch of people from Taiwan because they needed workers. And there are American workers in that plant. But we don't have the workforce and the training of the workforce to do that sort of job. Plus, most Americans don't want factory jobs. They want factories back in the US, but they don't want to actually work at a factory. So, I don't know, when I wrote my Macworld column last week, I said one of the top, maybe the number one thing, and I think I mentioned it here, that Apple can do is work the refs, is talk to the people in the White House and get them to do things that are favorable for Apple. And I still think that's the case. I thought that was the case when they announced that smartphones were going to be and chips were going to be exempted. And then the treasury secretary said only for a little while, and then maybe they'll come back. Nobody knows what's going on. Everybody

like, just look at the stock market like it's a roller coaster and go, weeeeee! That's my advice. Oh man, yeah. I think nobody knows what's going on. Not even the people who are making these decisions seem to know what's going on, which is the most terrifying part. Yeah, it is a little bit disturbing. In fact, perhaps more than a little bit.

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Thank you. That is the level of excitement that I expected. Over at the information, Information, Wayne Ma did a big story last week called, how Apple fumbled series AI makeover. It is a tale of years of indecision and frustration. It turns out while the users were frustrated on the outside, people at Apple were frustrated on the inside. And this is the thing that I know sometimes we talk about things Apple does and people go, how can Apple not be upset with this thing?

And what I always try to say is, oh, there are people who are in the know who are inside Apple, who are also upset about this thing. But and yet somehow it keeps happening. It portrays John Gianandrea, head of machine learning at Apple and Siri head Robbie Walker Andrea, head of machine learning at Apple, and Siri head, Robby Walker, as complacent and tentative and very conservative with their decision-making. Walker reportedly spent a lot of time on small wins like reducing response times by a few percentage points and getting so that you didn't have to say, hey, before the trigger word rather than the perhaps systemic larger

issues. Many other Apple employees outside the AI ML group, artificial intelligence, machine learning, felt that the people in the group were paid more, got promotions faster, and worked less, leading many of them to start referring to the AI ML group as aimless. I see what they did there. That's an apple burn. Uh, and Gian Andrea, when he came in, did not reorg Siri. When he was hired, he didn't think it needed a reset. And in the, in, I think Scott, the best example of the portrayal of a

company in deep dysfunction, there were two separate AI teams, the AI ML team under John G and Andrea and intelligence systems under Craig Federighi because that only happens it's either a turf war or one side is frustrated with the other side and how you allow that to continue to go on. Very clearly the OS group under Craig Federighi, the software group was like, we're not getting what we want.

We'll build our own intelligent systems group. They'll never know. They'll never know if we call it intelligent systems. They won't break the code. It just, I mean, that's the one, Scott, that's the one where I just shook my head and I was like, that is, that is really dysfunctional when you've got two separate warring factions inside different divisions inside Apple. That's not good. No, and I don't know, I have no insider knowledge. So I should say this. But this, this reads

to me like, um, this might be, you know, for a long time, AI was not a thing until it was, right? And that's not a huge revelation. But all these companies were looking into it because they knew something was there, right? And we could use an Apple's been using machine learning for a whole bunch of stuff for a long time. So it's natural that they'd be searching and looking into it, right?

And Google and Microsoft, they've all been doing that. And then OpenAI comes along and says, this is the next, this is the greatest thing. It's gonna reinvent everything. Everybody's like, OMG, this is the greatest thing. It's going to reinvent everything. Everybody's like, OMG, we have some of that. Let's just put that in a thing, right? Because we don't want to be left out. We have it too.

And we didn't think it was good enough. But OpenAI said, eh, it's fine. And everybody else pretty much said, I'm OK if it just makes up stuff, mostly. And so I feel like this is perhaps an issue where a research project suddenly becomes like the most critical thing that you need to get into everything no matter what.

And then you get all this kind of dysfunction when I was like, well, it's fine, it's interesting. Let's let them do their own thing. And then people are like, whoa, whoa, we can't have that group of people doing stuff. Like this now matters, we need to take it over. That's what it feels like to me. Yeah, I think you have nailed it actually.

That's exactly what I feel is that I get the real sense that John Jan Andrea is a very kind of almost professorly research kind of guy where it's like big thoughts, deep thoughts about machine learning. And that might lead into him scoffing at LLMs for, you know, not being good enough and being kind of dumb and making lots of mistakes, which is all true, right? But you end up at that point, I think you underscored it there, the idea that suddenly this is an important, like tactical product that needs to ship. And the sense I get anyway, is that that group was not so much about the let's move fast and ship products as let's think deep thoughts

about the right way to do something, which is probably why that other group was put in place in the OS group under Craig Federighi, because those people have to ship, like that's their job is to ship OS updates. So it's still dysfunctional, but I understand, I can understand why in the sense that it went from being just a research project with occasional spin-outs to do like photos, let's upgrade how photos recognizes faces and things like that into being,

no, we need to do a sprint to get a product out there. And in some ways you could say it was almost inevitable. That moment where everything changed was going to be kind of cataclysmic for some of the people working inside Apple because if you're not built to shift into high gear, you can't do it and somebody else is gonna have to do it. And the article spends a lot of time

kind of bemoaning his management style about being like he's not as type A or confrontational as the rest of the Apple executives, which made me think, I don't want to work for those Apple executives, but they're very successful, so who am I to judge? But I feel like, I imagine, now Jason, I've never applied for a job at Apple,

but I assume at a certain level, and it may be even a low level, it's very difficult to get a job at Apple, and there's a lot of, you know, they interview and kind of feel out your personality. Even at a low level. Exactly. They do interview.

Even at a low level, you have an interview to work at Apple. But I think they try to get a sense of your management style. So this could not have been a surprise when they hired this guy to do this. And I think his job changed as the market changed and he. And he is not the right person to do the new job. Possibly. I don't know. According to this article, certainly. Right. He's not the right person to deliver this. And it makes me think of. It might explain why he's been sort of like, he continues on in this role,

but this thing has been taken away from him is it seems to me like, like, look, that could be window dressing and he could be on his way out. But it's also that they could have just said functionally, taken away from him is it seems to me like, like look, that could be window dressing and he could be on his way out. But it's also that they could have just said, functionally, you're gonna go back to doing what you did before. We're not gonna make you ship products. We want you to do R&D about the future

of AI and machine learning. And you and your team of people with like patches on their sleeves and stuff like that. Wood paneled studies. Yeah, you can still do your kind of more academic, publish your white papers, R&D stuff over there, but over here, the house is on fire and we got a ship. And there's, I think that function is important

because it gives Apple cache amongst the super smart nerds that are interested in this and the people you'd want to hire to make the products or to investigate the the future of it right so you want to you want to have that group doing this stuff but it can't be the same people who would then turn it into a product because it's just not the way they think and it wouldn't be how you'd want them to think frankly yeah would you want one of the professors at your institution to be placed in charge of shipping a product? Maybe you shouldn't answer that question

because you've got an employer. I do. Professors have a certain mindset. Could we say that? Professors have a very important skill set and managing people is generally outside of that skill set because they're thinking about other things and they have a particular, not all professors are the same,

not all academics are the same, but generally they are interested in one particular thing and they just wanna think about that thing. And they don't wanna think about the HR paperwork or the deadline, like what deadline? It's not done yet, we're not gonna ship it. Exactly. And that is not a right answer

when you are a company trying to sell a phone that needs to have AI in it. That's exactly right. I also think this other data point that struck me was the managers were told they couldn't use models from outside companies in Apple products. And that I understand it on the level of you look at some of the output coming from some of those, you know, LLMs and you think, oh, that's, that's

bad. And yet they're taking the world by storm and people are using them and are more forgiving. And I can see somebody at Apple in general, but I can also see an, a more academic AI person scoff at that and say, no, no, no, no, we're going to, we're going to build our own models and they're going to be held to a higher standard. I can see that that is though, that is not invented here syndrome. And apparently, according to the information, Craig Federighi has reversed that decision. There was interesting speculation that Federico Vetticci made over the late last week where he said he wondered if what that meant was not necessarily that Apple would have other companies' models running on the iPhone, but that they might use other companies' models to help direct their training of models,

which is a possibility. Also, a lot of us who have tried these various features have said, when you can get Siri to go to ChatGBT, everything does start to work better. Most of my frustrations with Siri over the last year have been, or at least since they enabled this chat GPT stuff, has been when Siri takes a query that is very clearly for a chat GPT. I haven't said it, but like it's clearly an answer

chat GPT can give, and occasionally Siri will be like, no, no, no, no, no, I got this one, and then gives me the wrong answer. So I wonder how they will handle all of that. Also, speaking, no, no, no, no match. Not great does not match. Not great, not great. No, really good demos though, or not even demos, whatever they were. Whatever. Videos. Videos, amazing videos.

Some of the promised Apple intelligence features are apparently coming this fall, according to Tripp Mickle, my favorite, Apple reporter at the New York Times. Turns out he wrote a whole story about Apple losing its way again. It's his thing. What's wrong with Apple? It's his thing. It seems to be he thinks what's wrong with Apple is they are selling a super successful product but haven't made one that's equally successful. Right. Also they don't listen to the designers anymore. That's

what my understanding is. You just don't listen to the designers anymore. That's what my understanding is. You just need to listen to the designers more. That's what led to that Gold Apple Watch and the Vision Pro. Perfect. Listen to them more. I am very clearly not on his side and not on their side, but I will say this. In there, he says,

"'They haven't canceled the revamped series.' Of course not. They plan to release a virtual assistant in the fall, capable of doing things like editing and sending a photo to a friend on request. Three people with knowledge of the plan said. So that means that at least they are planning in the fall, not like sometime next year,

to bring those missing features like personal context, on-screen awareness and app integration. We'll see if they, let's see how it works out for them. But it's a tidbit from Tripp Mickel. So I'm gonna put it in there. The sheriff of the room around at Mark Gurman in his newsletter over the weekend had a little bit about the new plan for Vision Pro.

This has been a question is like, what does Apple do next with the Vision Pro? And he says they have now decided on a work on a, making a model that makes the headset both lighter and cheaper. I read this and I was like, okay. Like, yeah, yeah. He has previously reported that no, no, it will only be lighter or no, no, it will only be cheaper.

And this time he's like, Hey, what if it were both? And like, clearly the two worst things about the vision pro are its price. And the fact that it is uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time for a lot of people and that they probably put things in it to make it heavier that are not necessary or to make it more expensive that are not necessary. And you can learn from having that product out in the world and make a version that addresses, if not completely addresses both of those issues.

You make it a little lighter, you make it a little cheaper, it will be a little bit better. So good? Yeah, I mean. I hope it's a lot cheaper, but. Yeah, I don't know if they can make it a lot cheaper right out of the gate, but they but like if they keep pushing Eventually, they can make one that's but like even a little bit cheaper I've said this a lot but like at $3,500 you will get some people if you could offer like live NBA games from courtside

Who would be like sure I'll do that at $2,000. You'll get way more of them. Not as many as at $1,000 But again, it's like a process. It's just a process to get it down there. Also, he reports Apple is still working on a Vision Pro. He said they killed something that was a AR glasses that tethered to a Mac. Um, which like, so you can have the freedom of AR glasses, but. I'd tether to a Mac, but have a Mac attached to you. Yeah. You could walk around your neighborhood holding a laptop in front of you. Maybe I don't know.

I never understood that report at all. It sounded very much like a skunk works project, but now they said, well, it'll neighborhood holding a laptop in front of you, maybe. I don't know. I never understood that report at all. It sounded very much like a skunk works project, but now they said, well, it'll be a vision pro that plugs into a Mac, which I still I'm wondering, like, is that a sec Brit product to the vision pro? It's something that's like lighter apparently, but if it's a vision pro or AR glasses or VR, a VR set, I don't understand quite what this means, but I think he feels the need to follow up

on his various tethered glasses reportage with this one. Well, I mean, I guess they want to have, well, I don't really know what Apple wants with the whole Vision Pro, and I should say I've never used the Vision Pro, so I have no opinions about it as a product, but I imagine they want to have different flavors for people, like different steps as they do in their other product lineups.

So you want to have the one. You get the cheap one that just plugs into your Mac. And X is, I guess, the main thing would be it'd be a big fancy display for your Mac and do other things. Yeah, virtual display thing. Maybe. Because that was the latency issue.

And so he mentions medical uses and things like that where they want latency, low latency. Right. So they want to wire a tethered connection so that they don't have any networking cups during surgery, which I'm all for that. Which makes sense to me. So it does seem to me though that it would be like a graduated kind of, these are features for one product. So you would get the one that only tethers, then you could upgrade to one that doesn't have to tether, but can tether. It would be weird to me that if there was a tethering option, you would buy a more expensive one that can't tether at all. Well, this is, this is why I think what he's talking about here is things that they're

exploring that aren't products yet. The making one cheaper and lighter, again, not really much of a report. It's like, yeah, uh-huh. But that is the thing you would do to make a final product that you could ship. But in general, it just sounds like these are the things they're exploring. And like one of the applications is what if we could make something that was presumably cheaper and lighter because it wasn't doing on board as much on board because it was attached to a Mac, but it enabled, you know, applications in medical and maybe applications for developers or for other people who are using it as a virtual display as

the primary feature. It sounds like they're exploring it. The tidbit that I thought that was most interesting in the whole German piece was that Tim Cook has this at the top of his priority list because he, and you could look at that and say well but the iPhone should be at the top like the iPhone is doing okay um he wants to beat meta to the real AR glasses and this has been the case this is why this project exists is that Apple doesn't want the iPhone essentially to be replaced by a thing you just wear like glasses that does everything an iPhone does and more and just sits on your face because that's the thing that might kill the iPhone

and that's where all their money is. And that's not happening in the next five years, not really. And I think for it to be a product as broad as the smartphone, it's probably more like 15 years away. But if you're Tim Cook and you got all the money, you say, let's just keep pushing because there's nobody else doing this other than meta.

And the last thing we want is Facebook to own the future. So keep working on it. And I think that's, I don't have a problem with this being a top product priority of his, as long as we all agree, it's a long, I mean, it's long game stuff. It's decade away stuff. It's after Tim Cook is no longer CEO of Apple kind of stuff.

In fact, he's just trying to push it forward and get it closer to reality. And the thing that makes it so interesting to me, this quote is, so Tim Cook's top priority are these fancy AR glasses, which I understand as someone who wears glasses, I would like my glasses to do more for me than help me see, which is a fundamental thing and a good bonus.

So I say, thank you glasses. But it's interesting to me that they end up with something called with the Vision Pro as a starting point when you wanna get to AR glasses. It seems like an interesting kind of entry into it because they are similar products, but they're so fundamentally different that I don't really understand how you end up

with a Vision Pro if you're trying to get AR. My understanding is that the AR stuff it's just not ready enough and you need so much computer hardware. And that's why, I mean, this is why the Vision Pro has passed through and has all those cameras on the front is it's pretending to be an AR device, but it's not. Get me there. Because it can't be.

I'm glad you brought this up because I think Vision Pro is definitely Apple's attempt to start making a big clunky version of what they want to make in 10 years. The other part of this, and Meta is already experimenting there, is what can we do in a glass's shape? What can we do up there? And the answer is it's got to be super lightweight. It's tethered to a phone, but it's got a camera. It's got speakers. It's got a microphone and it's the Meta Ray-Ban's glasses. And Gurman also mentions that Apple is still working on glasses with camera and microphone like Meta.

Now, Mike and I talked about this earlier this year and we're talking about how, I think what I said is, earlier this year and we're talking about how I think what I said is Can it is get Apple capable of maybe like making a Product in a year or is everything a five-year plan for them now and like I feel like meta beat them out with this product and that it's it's essentially air pods in a glass's shape and they have all the pieces here and they should just Crash course make this product because I think it's a great idea to add to Apple's list of things. Now they got to make their Siri better and all of that. Totally true.

But, but that's a larger problem with everything that they've got. What troubles me is German's report says the company is actively debating whether it will allow the glasses to capture media like competing models. And this, first off, I feel like this is one of the great dangers of Apple right now. We said it before about the AI stuff and I think it's here, which is Apple says, no, no, no, no, no. We hold ourselves to a higher standard. But it really is sort of like,

you know, it's not invented here. We don't trust Facebook. We're going to work. We don't. People don't want cameras in their glasses because they'll feel surveilled. And it's like, well, no, people want cameras in their glasses because then your phone can say, oh, there's this thing ahead of you, I know where you are. And not to be too cynical here, but feels like the horse is out of the barn, folks. Like the Google Glass moment when everybody was like really offended that people were walking around with cameras,

something happened between them and the Meta Ray Bans, because I'm sorry if you're not, but I'm going to say generally, people are over it. Like we live in a society with cameras everywhere. And especially if the goal is not surreptitious photography, but sort of assisted, you know, photography when you want it, but also just like AI assisted information gathering. It's a great accessibility story. There's so many interesting things about it. And to say, well, there's a hot product out there from our arch rival in this category,

but we're not sure we feel comfortable making that product. It's like, what are you doing? It reads to me, like, you know, it's shrouded in the privacy thing, in this category, but we're not sure we feel comfortable making that product. It's like, what are you doing? It reads to me, like, you know, it's shrouded in the privacy thing, which I know Apple prides itself on valuing privacy, but it also reads to me like, well, we've got this iPhone and it has a really good camera on it.

Do we want to compete with ourselves? Like the iPhone is what we are selling people. And even though this is kind of trying to future proof it and maybe iPhones turn into glasses and nobody has phones anymore and everyone has smart glasses in 10 to 15 years, we're living in the now. So do we wanna compete with our own selves on that?

Sometimes I think that the story of Apple right now is that they are too often letting perfect be the enemy of the good or the great. It's just it's just not up to our standards. Like in some categories, I don't know, I don't want to say lower your standards, but in some categories it's like compete. You need to compete. What are you doing? Yeah. I mean if OpenAI has taught us anything, people will put up with a lot. A lot of garbage. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. A lot of garbage to get, because there are those moments when you're using any of these AI tools, these LLMs, where you are amazed at what it does. And it kind of shields the fact that it has completely made up, you know, I asked it about a book and it just like to make a summary of a book that I'd read. And it just completely made up the story. I asked if there was a sequel to a movie and it invented the sequel and all of its cast. Which is amazing. Not what you want, but it's amazing.

I think it was Google that I asked that of because you would expect a Google search to find truth, but it instead made up things. Yeah. And that's the point is I know Apple wants to be better than that, but also that is the, that is what they're competing with. And if you, there was something to be said for entering that space and then with a product that's kind of like shaky, but gets better because, and which is what open AI is doing.

Cause the alternative is you're not in that space. And by the time you get there with something that's better, it's too late. It's gone. They, They walked away with it. And that's a difficult decision if you're inside Apple. But I think that a lot of that AI story is about the forces of shipping products against the forces of a little more academic research. We hold ourselves to a higher standard kind of thing.

And it's an interesting, interesting to see how it plays out. I have one more piece of rumor round up I wanted to throw in there. Mark Gurman mentions iPadOS 19. He says, the big theme, a big theme of WWDC will be iPadOS, which I find strange on the face.

He said, it will focus on productivity, multitasking, and app window management with an eye on the device operating more like a Mac. That is literally it. That's all he says. on productivity, multitasking, and app window management with an eye on the device operating more like a Mac. That is literally it. That's all he says. I don't know what this means. I fear that it means they're gonna keep tweaking stage manager. And the pro- like great, okay. I think that a lot of people who use the iPad would say that multitasking and window management is not the best productivity. I don't know what focus on productivity means. Does that mean like, you'll be able to let an app run in the background and it won't auto quit and you can export a video from Final Cut without leaving it open in the foreground? Like you're using a Mac in, you know, system seven? I don't know. But what I want to say about this report is, it's the software, like it's the software is the problem. It's the software,

moving a window around on the screen is not the problem with the iPad. It's what's in the window, and what can the app that's in the window do for you? And that is where everything on the iPad is so incredibly limited. And that is by Apple's choice. So I, as somebody who uses an iPad all the time, I look at the improved productivity, multitasking, and app window management and like awesome thumbs up, great.

And yet part of me is like, feels like they're rearranging the deck chairs again. Like, because I don't think any of this solves a root problem with the iPad that Apple seems unwilling to solve. Instead they're like, oh, oh, you don't like that we don't offer all these different apps and all this functionality, but you can move your windows better now. I just don't see it. That's why I don't use my iPad. Moving my windows around. Very difficult. Oh yeah, almost impossible.

I was thinking about this, because the iPad is really like an in-between product, right, you've got your iPhone and you've got your Mac, and then in between it is your iPad, or I'll speak for myself, that's how it feels for me, right, because I'm sitting at my Mac studio right now, if I want to do real stuff, I come in here and I use my Mac studio.

If I'm just surfing the web or whatever, writing something like I've even written long kind of little essays on my iPhone, because it's right there, it's easy to hold, I know how to use it, it does everything I want. And then I think, oh wait, if I'm gonna write this thing, why don't I use my iPad? I can sit on the couch, I have the keyboard thing,

it'll be great. And it is a great product and I like it. But if tomorrow the iPad were to disappear, I don't think I would miss it. For me, my phone. I would miss it only in the sense that I really like, the reason that I've gravitated more to the iPad is I like not having a whole laptop with a keyboard sitting on my lap when I'm watching TV or when I'm in bed in the morning drinking some tea and, and scrolling through stuff. Like it's nice, but that could be solved. This is the other, one of the great mysteries here is that there's this rumor that there's a,

a giant foldable iPad or something that Apple is working on that looks like a laptop, but sort of not. And none of us can have decoded whether that's really an iPad or it's a Mac or it's some weird conversion of them. And it's like, you know what, if I could take my MacBook Pro and pop the screen off and have it be functional as sort of like an iPad, then yes, I wouldn't miss my iPad at all, because it's really about that more than anything else is the ergonomics of it It's true. And this what is it the Surface Book?

I don't know if they still make the Surface Books that had the detachable screens, but that was a pretty cool I mean windows on a tablet not great But yes, that's convertible PC's do this sort of thing and it's not great But it's that same an Apple is sort of steadfastly refused. And that leads us to these the same thing, which is, okay, there's a Mac over there and an iPad over there. And, you know, they don't want to make the iPad a Mac, but that means that the iPad just doesn't do all this stuff. So, okay, but they sell it, but they sell an iPad Pro for, you know, thousands of dollars. So what is happening? For me, I think what I want is less a foldable iPad,

but a foldable iPhone that can turn into an iPad mini or whatever you would call it. That is the rumor. That is the rumor. I know and I'm excited about that. I like, I love the iPad. Yeah, it'll cost way more than both of them put together, but they won't be, you can't put them both together.

Tape, you can duct tape them. Yeah, I know, but the idea that you've got your phone when you're roaming around and then you pull it out and you go bloop and fold it open. It's a dream. It's an iPad Mini. And I was skeptical of the foldables, but I found myself in the Xfinity store.

I don't like the Apple store. I don't like the Xfinity store either, but they were also very helpful. Although they made, I was trying to unlock a phone so I could give it to my mother-in-law and it shouldn't have been locked and they were, couldn't figure out why it was locked. Oh, it's mother-in-law's, what's the deal with that?

I know. And so they made me do an annoying thing where they said, okay, it's not on the latest version of iOS, so maybe that's the problem. And I thought to myself, that is not the problem. But I will update it in this XFIDITY store, and it took forever. And so I had a lot of time to just wander around.

A long story short, it didn't work. And I think what happened was someone just wrote, typed in the wrong ID in their system, because someone came over and was like, oh, it should work later. And I was like, hmm, yeah, sure. Anyway, it gave me an opportunity to try, they had a whole bunch of foldable phones there,

and I'd never actually used one. It was more of a, like I was lusting from afar. But now that I've used one, I can see the drawbacks, the fold and all that stuff, the bend in it is not great, so I can see why Apple isn't rushing to do it. But I gotta say, it's pretty sweet to have this little phone that then folds out into an iPad-ish size. I can see the allure and it made me think, for a moment I thought, well maybe I could switch to an Android and then I

thought, I don't think so. Yeah, yeah. I'm with you there. Well that is Rumor Roundup. We've rounded it up, Scott. we did it. Woohoo, I'm a real cowboy now. Yep. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by FitBot. When you wanna change your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to start. That's why I'm pleased to let you know FitBot is an easy and affordable way

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I talked to Mike about this before he went on leave. He said, Jason, if I have one request, it's that the last segment before I return be you talking to Scott about e-readers, because then nobody will say, you know, I wish Mike hadn't come back and that the show was just about e-readers now. Great. That's the function I provide. When someone is absent, they say, let's get Scott in here at the last minute, too. People are like, please come back. To provide a contrast, yes. We haven't had that many people write in week by week, but there's always somebody who's like, boy, I wish John Syracusa and Jason talked every week. And it's like, thanks. That message, I deleted that one before Mike saw it. So, you know,

unique body type Scott That's a reference that upgrade plus members aren't gonna get because it was in the ad. So this is like extra Sorry, I made it. I told a story inside the ad my apologies. I am Scott. I'm feeling a little down. I'm a little despondent Because I'm here the the down. I'm a little despondent. Because I'm here. The M4 MacBook Air came out. And the great thing about it to me as a person who is often asked for technology advice is that it eliminated a couple of years of confusion

where people would say, what Mac laptop should I buy? And I'd be like, well, the M3 is 1099, but the M2 is 999. I know it's older, but it's still pretty good. And the M4 came out at 999 and I just, it's, we can quibble and, and, you know, tech nerds who have different needs are going to say something different, but like, for the most part, just get the M4 Macquaguer. Like that, it makes it so easy. for the most part, just get the M4 MacroGear. Like that, it makes it so easy.

And the problem I have is I cannot say the same thing about e-readers. We love e-readers, we love reading books. And we did Snell talk where we talked about novels and I read almost everything on an e-reader at some point. And I try to write about them on Six Colors. I've had you write some things for me about various interesting e-readers at some point. And I try to write about them on Six Colors. I've had you write some things for me about various interesting e-readers on Six Colors too.

I just feel like the, I don't know what it is. I don't know whether it's that Amazon and Kobo and some of the others are all like so bored with the basics of e-reading that they're just trying to find something new that will drive some sales of this category that feels so static sometimes. But it seems to be that we've settled on,

nobody wants page turn buttons anymore, almost nobody. But color screens, except me, yeah. But I don't have an e-reader company as the problem. But they want color screens and pens. is the problem, but they want color screens and pens. Yeah, I don't know how, I feel like, it's kind of like the smartphone market in that every smartphone you look at is just a slab of glass, right? With like 14 camera lenses on the back of it.

And that's kind of, I don't know if this is just natural evolution of a product where you just get to in the capitalism society, you want to get the cheapest thing to the most people possible. And so you just hone in on the least number of features that will satisfy the most number of people. And so you just get, you know, whatever the basic format of an e-reader is an E Ink display. That's generally seven inches No buttons because it's cheaper like people might like them But they break and let's just get rid of the buttons and we've got to pay for the touchscreen anyway

So, you know why why why bother paying for the buttons to write as we're putting them together? Yeah, I mean I've got a in in my, in my bedside table drawer, I've got a Kindle paper white, latest generation black and white. And like the truth is that is my recommendation. And I sort of got turned off of Kindles and I don't like that it doesn't have buttons, but like it's 159 it, it's, it does what it says on the tin, right? And like, it will show your books. It's a great e-reader. Yeah. Uh, if, if show your books. It's a great e-reader.

Yeah. If you want buttons, it's a bad e-reader. Yes. It's true. Actually, the biggest thing I don't like about it is that it's got a button right on the bottom, so it's so easy to turn it off accidentally. Oh my goodness.

That is my least favorite thing about the current lineup of Kindles is that button placement. I don't understand why it's there. It is awful. It's gotta be that it's there. It is awful. It's got to be that it's cheaper. I mean, that's the only because Kobo Kobo tries and I know that you've got some complaints because there's one Kobo that like the case covers

the power button, but Kobo puts them on the back. And they're they're sort of depressed and you have to push them in in order to do it. And I've never turned my Kobo off by accident while holding it. Whereas I turn that Kindle off all the time. So there's the one button they have and it's a bad button. I don't, what is happening? I would love it. In fact, I would love a firmware or like a firmware update

that enables a software feature, a setting feature that makes that button a page forward button instead. Oh, that's clever. Give me one button, let me use it. And I'll hold it down to turn it off or something. I don't know, it'll just go to sleep. I think it down to turn it off or something. I don't know. It'll just go to sleep. I think it's a good button.

It is a satisfying button to use. Except if you do it by accident. It's a bad button placement I would quibble with. I can always feel that satisfying thing when I'm not trying to turn off my Kindle. And it goes, ah, no! So you're both momentarily satisfied and then enraged. And then it's, yes, that button press was very pleasant,

but in a bad way. So Kobo, I started using Kobo's more. There are things I like about Kobo, but when I, Amazon, after I switched to Kobo, Amazon did actually do a major software update to the Kindle software, and it's much better than it used to be. It's got better library support,

it's got better typography than it used to, it's got a better interface than it used to be. It's got better library support. It's got better typography than it used to. Um, it's got a better interface than it used to. It's better, uh, the reading interface and the book interface are better. Like I would say. It reminded me a little bit of the early days of the iPhone and Android, where I came back to the Kindle after using Kobo, which was so superior to the old Kindle software and I opened up a new Kindle and I went, wait a second, like, Oh, it's, it's like, and it's just a matter of preference and they're, they're so close.

There are things I still prefer about the Kobo, but they're so much closer. The one that I love about the Kobo is that you can put your finger on the, on the side of the screen and swipe up and down and it changes the brightness of the screen dynamically. Whereas Kindle, it's like, you gotta swipe up and down and it changes the brightness of the screen dynamically. Whereas Kindle, it's like you gotta swipe down and slide a little slider around and swipe it back up.

So little stuff like that, but it's not the night and day than it used to be. But they also seem to be more committed to putting buttons on their, or leaving buttons on their e-readers. And I'm just a big fan of letting my finger rest on a button and then kind of just squeezing a little bit to go to the next page, next page, next page, instead of doing the touchscreen thing where

you have to go move it, touch, move it back. And I know it's a little thing, but it really, it's not having read a bunch of books on that new paper white, like it's not unusable. It just is not as nice. I just it's that simple. But Amazon doesn't seem to think because now they've they killed their high end reader the Oasis that had buttons, they seem to just think the buttons are irrelevant. Buttons are dumb. Yeah, that's what Amazon says. I don't know what Amazon says. But I will say I think it's so interesting.

Reading is a very intimate experience. Because you're the thing is close to you. It's taking up your entire kind of Concentration, right? And that's why you you have an e-reader is because you want to concentrate Yeah on what you're reading and you don't want the at least for me the sirens call of the internet or the Notifications. I could just flip over and check Twitter or blue sky now, right now. I could just flip over and do that right now. It's like, no, you can't.

No, you have to go pick up, you put it down, you're gonna pick up your other thing. And that's why you want an e-reader. I mean, there are lots of other reasons as well. But then that brings up your friend and mine, John Sarecusa talked about how the weird things that people do by themselves and they don't know people do things differently, like brushing your teeth and how you wash your mouth out

after you brush your teeth is something that everybody does, but you just assume everyone does it the way you do it. And it turns out there are many different ways to do it. People are making cups out of their hands. People are using cups. There's like, people are many different ways to do it. People are making cups out of their hands. People are using cups. There's like, people are sticking their face under the tap. I don't even know. There's so many different ways.

And there's so many different ways to read, even on the Kindle, because I very rarely am holding my Kindle when I read it. And so I am never, almost never resting my thumb where that button would be. I have a case and I set it up. And then, so I'm gonna move my hand anyway. And so while I agree with you that a button,

having buttons is nice, I'm not anti-button. It just is not relevant to the way that I generally use my e-reader. And it's just so interesting. And this is what these companies are dealing with, right? Is they have to figure out, well, who, what is the largest percentage of people doing? Like they have, I'm sure they have lots of data

on how many times people who own Kindles with buttons were using the buttons. And they thought, eh, it's cheaper to get rid of the buttons. Most people aren't using them. I guess. And so, and there were a long history of very bad Kindle buttons as well. So they did get two good buttons, but there were some bad buttons along the way.

There was that one was, I forget the name of it now, but there was the one where it was the squeeze buttons. So there was a little dot on the plastic and it was pressure sensitive underneath. So you had to sort of like squeeze the case. Harder than you would think to squeeze too. It wasn't great. I mean, I would take that over no button, honestly, but it was not great. It was, it was not great. Would you like a, like a tap sensitive, like a touch sensitive area that isn't the screen? This is the thing.

That you could just tap. This is the thing that I've been thinking of is alternatives. And that's one of them, which is if it, so another complaint I have about the Kindle software is that the Kindle software doesn't auto rotate. It doesn't. On some models it does. They seem to, oh, on the, on high end Kindles.

My scribal auto-rotate. Your scribal auto-rotate. Okay. The paper white doesn't auto-rotate cause they, it's too cheap. They're too cheap to put a, a, an accelerometer in there. And the thought I had is if you have an accelerometer in there, which allows the, you know, to tell you could build it so that if I, if I just tap with my finger on the back of the Kindle, it advances. And that would be great. Like I, cause my issue, my issue, I mean,

it would, it would not be as good. It would be different from moving my finger. But if I, if I, for me, sorry, everybody, I'm just going to explain this really quickly. The reason I care about a button is mostly because I don't wanna shift my grip. I like, you're reading the book, you're immersed. I don't wanna shift my grip. If I have to keep moving my, dancing my finger and holding it in a way that my finger is near the screen,

but not covering the screen because then I couldn't read the words. And then as I get to the last word, I go, ah, boop, and I tap it. It's less immersive to me than if I'm just holding it. And my thumb is on the button and I go, boop, boop, boop. And I just can do that forever. I'm making lots of boops today.

It's a very deep boop day for me. Yeah. You have to mute your Kindle. I don't know why it's booping. It's Morse code saying, come back, Mike. Um, so it is, so it would be different, but I think that, that there's something to be said for having a, having a standard grip where I could just tap the back. Because part of the problem is using a touchscreen is your finger covers up part of the screen when you do that. So you're not just moving it, but you have to position in a way that you're near the screen, but not on the screen. And so I could see like tapping on the back to advance.

Now, what's interesting is there are also all these weird Android readers that are out there now. I reviewed that, um, the books Palma, which is the, it's like a, an Android phone with an ink screen basically. Um, I, I like it, but ergonomically, like if I, if, look, if I was a commuter, I would probably use it, but I mostly just read it in my house, and I don't need my reader to be small like a phone. But there are lots of things I like about it, including that because they're just using a standard Android phone chipset, there are volume buttons on the side

that you can turn into page turn buttons. It's like, aha, that's how they get you. And I like that kind of innovation. I just keep thinking about, there's some smartphone innovation that could probably solve these problems if the developers of these e-readers wanted to solve them. But I fear with Kindle, and I don't know,

they've got a new head of hardware. I don't know how Panos Panay reads eBooks. I don't know what he's thinking there. I'm excited because he was very, I'm bringing up the Surface again, but he was very involved with the Microsoft Surface. One of the things that many of the Surfaces had were kickstands.

One of the things that I use my Kindle, I have a cover that's basically a kickstand. So if they somehow incorporate or make the covers better, I'm very excited. I think he's a kickstand fan is all I'm saying. And I'm hopeful that he will bring that energy to the panos. That's right. The Stan. Yeah. So maybe they'll do some more innovation there. I worry that Amazon's hardware, they've just that that paper white that 159. Yeah, you should buy it. It's fine. Paper white feels to me almost like giving up. Or if you want it

to be more positive, you could say the final form. But it feels like maybe they've optimized it to the point where it's just, that's just what it's going to be. You have to look at what Amazon or any company that's producing a product is trying to do, right? And I think Amazon is no, is not hiding the fact that they want to milk as much money as possible from you and all of your interactions with Amazon and I appreciate how upfront they are about it right because you buy a kid like they want to make the Kindle a good experience I do think they want it to be a good experience because that way you

buy more stuff yes and so they want it to be but they want it to be the cheapest good experience that you can get. And then they're like, well, what are nice things that some people will upgrade, but most people don't care about. So one of the things I really like about the Kobo that Amazon has copied is that it displays the cover of the book, right? That you're reading. Very nice. And a Kindle will do that too nowadays. You just need to pay Amazon a little bit more money to do it, which is insane, but also very clever. And so I think that's Amazon is just like, how do we get more money from this person who clearly wants to read books? And guess what? We sell books. So let's give them a device that we can sell them books for. Yeah, the color thing is a thing that

I put it in with the pens as as I think think there is, I think that they are trying to find an audience that is not interested in reading fiction like you and I do, but is nonfiction or on larger readers, it's even marking up documents. And I look, I think the idea, you could probably just use an iPad, but if you wanted to use an E ink reader, cause you reading lots of black and white, you know, legal documents or whatever, and marking them up with a pen, and they've got a workflow that lets you send them

off to Dropbox or wherever to your people after you've marked them up. Great. But on a little e reader that also supports a pen, I don't really understand why it's there other than I guess you could use it as a highlighter, although you can just use your finger for that. I know that the big feature on the color, e-reader seems to be that you can now highlight in different colors. So you can have your note like like back in college highlighting a book and it's like the red is this and the yellow if you're somebody who's that's that systematic, which I never was. But you could do that that way. The problem I have with the color, and maybe this will be gone in a generation or two, but I was shocked to discover that the color e-ink screens are lower contrast than the black and white ones. And that's the thing that bugged me the most about the Kobo Libre color is it didn't perform as well on black and white text as the Kobo Libre 2. And they didn't release a Kobo Libre 3, they only released the color version. And that was what shocked me.

It turns out that in order to enable the color, there's sort of across the whole screen, there's kind of a dot pattern. And from a distance, it just resolves as being more gray, like in the early days of the Kindle, where the contrast wasn't that great. And it wasn't backlit or side lit. So it was, those are the days when we used to clip book lights onto Kindles in order

to read at night. It was a different time. Ask your parents. Um, but, but so that, that super disappointed me because I, although I don't need color and the big problem I have also is those you mentioned the covers It's like well great the cover is now in color But when you turn off this the the device and let it sit there it goes dark So you can't really see the color unless it's in a Sunbeam. You can't really see that cover in color

That's where you get that book light out and you can put it on there just for display purposes. The book light is there so Yeah, just clip it right on there just for display purposes, the book light is there. So, but I'm going to make an admission here, which is my primary ebook reader now is the Kindra, the Kobo Libre Color, even though I kind of ripped it when it came out because the screen isn't as good. And the fact is, the text isn't as good. But I don't know about the next generation of processors that these e-readers are using, but I realized that for years I have been willing to use an e-reader that's super slow. Because what does it matter?

Yeah, you press the page turn button and then you wait and then it changes the page. But the truth is, when you're pressing the page turn button or you want to adjust the fonts or you want to check the time or or you wanna go back to the home screen, even one generational part that Kobo Libre 2, it's so slow. And the Libre color is super snappy and fast. And I realized, you know what? I have been ruined by modern e-readers

and the old e-readers are nice and all and they've got buttons and all of those things. But whew, they're really slow. So I guess that's one where they have gotten better, is that the interfaces are not. Right? Because for an e-ink device, at least today, you don't really need to worry about speed,

because the screens don't even refresh that fast. But we are, my understanding, based on the Vergecast interview with the Koboo CEO is that that stuff's advancing rapidly and all these e-readers are now going to have to start pondering what happens if you can refresh at a good refresh rate. Like do you start doing animations and making it feel more like a smartphone? Can you do a swipe where, like currently on the Kindle when you swipe to reveal, it just goes from not being there to it being there.

And it's like, you would never do that on a smartphone, but on an E Ink device, you have to do it that way. And what he's saying is, you know, they're really going to have to start grappling with the fact that they can actually animate stuff. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's true. It'll be different. And I think that's when Amazon has started investing a while ago in the redoing the Kindle OS,

so that it is much nicer. Because as you said before, Jason, Kobo was like miles ahead in the software arena of usability for a long time. And I would still recommend Kindle's over Kobo's during that time, because it was just so much easier to get stuff onto a long time. And I would still recommend Kindles over Kobos during that time because it was just so much easier to get stuff onto a Kindle. Generally speaking, if you're buying from Amazon, if you don't want to buy from Amazon, that's a whole different conversation.

But they have reached parity pretty much. And I think that that's because Amazon and Kobo, both are like, well, at some point, these devices are going to be more capable and we need to think about the interface so that people will keep using them. Although I do hope to your point that they aren't gonna start like every single, like I tap to open a book and like the book cover opens up

and like a little person dances. Yeah. No, I don't want that. The book man is dancing, hooray. Book man, go away, can I disable book man? And that Book man, go away. Can I disable book man? And that was kind of the point. I recently, Amazon rolled out an update to the scribe, lovely update.

And it includes like you would think I'm not a product manager, but I would think that if you were the product manager for a e-reader, the most important real estate is the stuff that's on the screen, that stays on the screen while you're reading a book. That is sacrosanct area, right? And Amazon has added a little icon at the top. You can move it either to the right or the left, but you can't turn it off. That you can tap to take a note directly in the book, like kind of like, you know, writing in the margins, which I think is a good feature.

But as someone who has a scribe that I don't even know where the pen is, like I do not use that at all, it's now this little thing that's just staring there, standing there, annoying me as I read my book. I've tuned it out now, but it's visual clutter. And I just want to remove it from the interface. I just want an option that says, I understand why you're selling these scribes. It's not how I use it.

Just let me disable that thing. Yeah, I this is the it's it's fascinating to watch because it feels kind of like being a Mac user back in the 90s, where this is not a category that's hot. is not a category that's hot. It's a category that exists, but like you, there's so much bargaining where you're like, please, please a buttons, please, sir. May I have buttons, please sir. May I turn off this icon? And there's this feeling like part of it. I also feel like it's like being a podcast editor using music apps to edit podcasts where like logic is not made for me. They do not want me using logic and yet I use logic. And it feels a little bit like that with something like the Kindle scribe where it's like,

this is really for lawyers with a pen marking a PDFs. And you're like, I just want to read books, man, on a big e-reader. That's what I want. I like the big screen. I like a novelty size e-reader. Yeah, that's great. And you should be fine with that.

So anyway, it's a curious category. I really do recommend that Vergecast interview with Michael Tamblyn, who's the. And you should, you should be fine with that. It's a, so anyway, it's a curious category. I really do recommend that Vergecast interview with Michael Tamblyn, who's the CEO of Kobo. Makes me want to root for them. They obviously, this is what they do. This is all they care about. I think their product is good. I think that if you are, unfortunately, if you have built up a library of Kindle books, it's very hard to switch. Although what I tell people who are thinking of switching is here's what you do. Keep your Kindle. And, and you know, even if you can never get your Kindle books off your Kindle,

just keep your Kindle unless it's dead. Unless they last a long time. You can even replace the batteries. If you really want to look it up, there are ways to do that. You can go to iFixit and do a battery replacement. You can get a used Kindle, but you could keep your old books on the Kindle and then start buying new books on the Kobo. You could do that. Kobo also uses, this is a tidbit I didn't realize.

Kobo uses Adobe Digital Editions as its DRM. And what that means is you actually can take a book you bought at the Kobo store, I believe and put it on other devices as long as they support the digital editions DRM. Whereas Amazon has its own DRM. Because that's Amazon. That's what they're there. They don't want you moving them elsewhere. So the Kiddlescribe is your go to right now.

I love my Kiddlescribe. I bought a books is that how you say books? I like saying books. Spbe. I bought a books. Is that how you say books? I like saying books. Spooky. Palma 2 because I just wanted this. And I feel like much like my ideal iPhone, iPad combination is I can unfold it. My ideal e-reader is a scribe that I can just fold in half because I do feel like there are scenarios where I don't want the novelty size giant kindle even though it's I love it it's my favorite kindle ever but something like if I'm standing waiting for the bus I certainly use it but I'd like it to

be smaller at that point and and so if I could fold it, that would be great. Cause I think the Palma 2 is fantastic. It's a little weird. And I think they, it's kind of part of the joy of the product is it's a little weird. Like Kobo and Kindle have kind of shaved off all the weirdness of their products, I think, to make this kind of reading capsule that you can use, but where the books is like, well, you know, there's lots of weird stuff in between and we can

try and figure that out. Cause there have been in the past, a lot of weird Kindles and a lot of weird Kobos and they just don't exist anymore. Yeah. No, and they are, the Kindle and the Kobo are very much like, don't tell anybody it's Android and the books Palma is like, it's Android everybody. And like, that's the, it's like, you don't like this reader, use that, use moon reader, use the Kobo reader,

use the Kindle reader, use a web browser. There's a, there's a, the web browser that I have on there is called E Ink Bro. Apparently just bro is short for browser, it turns out. So think about that the next time you're around a bunch of bros, they're really just like, which one is Safari? You play that game.

But like there is stuff, I think the big problem I have, once you get it set up, it actually is pretty good. And I've watched, I've been reading stuff on books, devices for a while. I've been reviewing them. And when they started, it was rough because they're literally like, hey, we put Android in the E Ink screen. It's like, yeah, but none of the software was optimized for E Ink. And so it was kind of a disaster.

And now, I think they've contacted a bunch of these apps and they've built in some hooks where they've modified Android so that a lot of them will do things like go into a black and white mode, where they will accept a button press as a page turn, even in like a web browser, so that you can do that. Also, there is a convention on a lot of Android apps where you can use your for reading apps where you use your volume to change the page which is great too, works with those buttons. So I like that, I like that. It is, I think their biggest liability is that their Chinese company and their software developers

are not super great with the English but even there they've gotten a lot better. Setting up the first one was a real adventure, and the latest ones are just much more straightforward. But again, you have to be somebody who wants to tinker, and you describe those Kindles and Cobas as reading capsules. That's what they are. Like, they don't have apps. In fact, my complaint might be, it would be nice if they did have the ability to read other things that I read, like articles. Again, I don't want to read social media, but I would like to be able to read my RSS feed instead of having to sort of like send every article to pocket in order to read it on my Kobo.

I'd like them to be maybe a little more functional for other kinds of reading, but like that's the beauty of the Android side is you have to mess with it. But like, if there's an Android app for it, you can, you can read it on the books. Palma, it might be good. It might be terrible. No way to know, but try. And there is, so Kindle does have the whole send to Kindle thing, but it's not as, as it's not as easy to do as you would like.

So, uh, it'd be nice. They used to have a thing where you could subscribe to Various like RSS feeds and either pay or not pay depending on how they set it up. Newspapers. I used to get my newspaper. You could also opt in. Yeah, that's gone now. My website was open for nobody other than me because I was trying to figure out how to do it But you could make it available for free.

They killed all that stuff. I assume nobody to do it, but you could make it available for free. They killed all that stuff. I assume nobody was using it, but. Yeah, they killed the whole periodicals thing and everything. Well, Scott, thank you for talking about e-readers with me. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on to make people long for when I'm not on.

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and it's on HBO in the US. We have HBO or Max, HBO Max, whatever was called at the time, they keep changing the name anyway. So not available in that country. But one tap on my iPad while we were in Christchurch, New Zealand, and suddenly we were in America and could watch the show that we paid for. And that is awesome. I also watched a college football game while I was in Sweden. It's just, it's pretty cool. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash upgrade.

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It's lasers. That's what it was. Yeah, that's okay. I'm here. You're not here every week. You haven't been on for 500 weeks. I do listen, but I don't know the order. I know. And like, are we playing the Lex theme songs this week? We're not. I don't know. I play them in my head sometimes. This question comes from Codz, who says, I share your fondness for e-readers and in particular for e-readers with page turn buttons,

such as my Kobo Forma. It seems all of our concerns about recent e-reader designs ditching page turn buttons are mute thanks to this remote finger that may be the answer to all of our prayers." So the remote finger, about the remote finger, because a lot of people said this to me. the remote finger because a lot of people said this to me. It is great, it would be great for Scott actually. Our friend Erica uses a remote finger because what she does is if you're not holding the e-reader, you put it on a table or Erica has got like a stand she puts it in and it kind of hovers above her so she doesn't have to hold on to it. The remote finger is a Bluetooth device that clips on your e-reader and goes right over the edge. So you do have to try to not have it cover the text up, but it goes right on the edge and it's got a little piece of something on it that is like a finger in terms of how it touches it.

And then you get a remote and so you can sit back and read, and then you just keep clicking the button on the remote. And the finger goes, physically goes boop, and touches and turns the page. And Erica stands by this. I know a lot of people who do this, a lot of people who like are under blankets and stuff, and they wanna be cozy, and they don't wanna hold it,

or they have accessibility reasons. So yeah, Scott, you could do this if you wanted to, and then you would never have to reach forward and tap on your e-reader again. I've been tempted many times. It's a great idea. Here's my problem with it, which is these are computers. They have Bluetooth support.

Why don't they just support Bluetooth devices to turn the page? Why do I need a finger clipped to my e-reader? I should just have a clicker, a Bluetooth clicker and be able to go click and have it go to the next one. I shouldn't need this weird technique. I mean, I guess all fingers are digital, but you know what I mean.

As a middleman, I don't need a middleman. They should just make it. They should support, like literally just support a keyboard profile where any key goes forward or maybe most keys go forward and some keys go backward and then I assure you people will start building clickers that just do those two keys and they show up like keyboards, but That's so sorry to CODs But this doesn't solve my problem because my problem is that I'm holding it and I'm not going to hold in one hand and

That's not gonna happen. You could tape the clicker to the back deck and just click it. Imagine that It's a nice idea. Anyway, thank you Codd's. Jack says I have a theory I haven't seen written anywhere about why companies are pursuing colored e-readers despite their muted colors and lack of contrast I believe this is a response to both a reduction in first-time e-readers despite their muted colors and lack of contrast. I believe this is a response to both a reduction in first-time e-reader buyers and people not needing to upgrade their old e-readers. And due to this, e-reader manufacturers

are attempting to find ways to incentivize people already owning e-readers to upgrade to colored screens. So it's that classic, like, how do I get anybody to buy a new anything? You gotta have a feature. And Mr. E Ink Incorporated comes to you and says, we got color now. And you go, great, put it in there. I mean, give it to me. Sounds right. I think Jack has cracked capitalism. This is this is how it works

is you you try to create a desire when there isn't a need. And then you sell to that. Yeah, I mean, I would argue that this is the classic Apple move of saying, Mr. Ian comes to you and says, I've got this new thing. And you're like, yeah, but what problem does it solve? Because that's the whole idea is, in all my days covering Macs and PCs, the PCs and Android phones to a lesser extent, but the PCs, whenever there was a new technology, PC makers would just shove it in there. They're like, look, new thing. It's like, what does it do? Why is it practical? Fingerprint reader.

We don't know. What is new? I remember when all the PCs had fingerprint readers, but Windows really didn't know what to do with a fingerprint reader. No. But they were there. But they were there. It was exciting. So yes, Jack, I think that's it. The problem I have with it is that for most use cases that I have,

the color is immaterial. I will admit, it's nice when I turn it on and the little color thing comes up, but not at the expense of the contrast in reading, which is unfortunate, but maybe they'll get better at that and then it'll be fine. I do like color more than I thought I would because I was long like, I don't need any color,

but it is nice to have. It's a nice app. Sure. And I agree with you. When the contrast, the black and white contrast is the same as it is on just black and white Kindles or e-readers, I should say, color all over the place. I will happily have color be the default, but until then, I'm a black and white. The screens just need to get better. I don't read very much non-fiction especially that has embedded photos, but that is one of those cases. And back when I read newspapers, it was like this too.

Like I'm not, I mean, if a book's got color photos in it, that's gonna be great. The next time I'm gonna read a non-fiction book at some point, there's gonna be a color photo and I'm gonna go, oh, like, right, this is a color, Koba. Oh my God. It's gonna be great. It'll be a great moment.

I look forward to it. Tom writes, I've happily used an iPad 2 as my primary reading device for years, but now I'm definitely in the market for something new that will make my middle-aged eyes happier. How do the newer iPads compare with the current crop of E Ink devices as an e-reader? Well, it's what you said partially, which is an iPad,

you are always going to have the temptation to do other stuff. And I know you could resist temptation, but what's better than resisting temptation is being unable to fulfill the temptation. And that's what works for me. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's a little like, I forget what the scenario was. It was something like, Oh, Oh, this was it.

Um, a few years ago, Lauren and I decided the right way to eat, we don't usually have potato chips or other kinds of chips in our house, snack items. But the right way to eat a snack item is to get a little bowl and put some snack items in it. And then you close up the bag and put it away. And then you take the little bowl. What you don't do is bring the whole bag, right?

You don't do that. And this is a little like that, which is, look, if you want more, there's more, you can go get more, but you have to get up and go over there and get it. And it's a very conscious decision. It's, there's a, the barriers don't have to be huge. You don't have to lock it away with a timer and say the chips won't be available

for another three days, right? You don't have to do that. You just have to make it away with a timer and say the chips won't be available for another three days, right? You don't have to do that. You just have to make it a conscious decision to meter things out and that that little soft barrier can be enough. And that's how I feel about e-readers is I can pick up my iPad, but like I have to put down my Kobo and pick up my iPad and open it up and unlock and do all those things. And as a result, I do that sometimes, but most of the time I don't. I'm just reading my book. And maybe after 20 minutes, I will check to see

if something's going on or something. But like, I will, that's the appeal I have. And I think the current crop of eating devices, that's what they're gonna give you, is they're not an iPad. Yes, and I think when at bedtime, my children, we sit down and my kids run in after they brush their teeth and they yell, it's book time, because we read before they go to bed. And that's what in my mind when I pick up my Kindle, I think it's book time, because that's all my Kindle will do.

And so I'm going to do that. And the other thing, I mean, I like that, even though I said I don't, it's an in-between device. I do like my iPad. It's a great piece of equipment, but it's also heavy. So if you're like Jason and holding your iPad, get a smaller Kindle. And it's much nicer on your wrist. I'm one of those Kindle holders.

You're a Kindle holder. Yeah, I would also say, look, the screens are very different because you mentioned middle-aged eyes. The screens are very different. I think they both have their pros and cons, right? Like frame rates and all of that. But they're also backlit, those iPads. And the way that the e-ink readers work

and what makes them so different is they have lights on them, but the lights come from the side to illuminate the screen. Or you're outside or you're in a well lit room and you can just read it without any help or without as much help. But it's a different quality of light. Also, they're all like 300 dpi now. So they don't they look good. I don't want to make any medical claims. But I think I would say they are kind of easier on the eyes for long reading sessions because they're more like paper. That's the idea. So I think that I think middle-aged eyes might be happier with e-ink, but you know your mileage may vary. Get a cheap one. Try it out. Yeah, yeah. I mean Amazon, it's

easy to buy one and return it if you don't like it. But I think if you're using an iPad 2 as your primary reading device, you can definitely do better. And probably there's almost nothing on that iPad that I don't even know what apps are available anymore. So yeah, try an e-reader and see. Michael writes, if you had to pick a form factor from the early generations of e-readers to use and modernize, USB-C, backlight, etc.

What would you pick? I'm thinking Kindles with full keyboards, Sony readers, Nooks with two screens, Cobo's with four way toggles, those sort of models from the early Wild West days of e-reading. What do you think, Scott? It's when they were weird. I have a drawer full of e-readers, and so I pulled out some to go down memory lane. And I think that my, I won't hold them up because it's not good for audio podcasting. But so I have a Kobo Mini. So Kobo made this tiny little cute e-reader. The first e-reader I bought was a Sony PRS-505, which is beautiful,

and a beautiful piece of hardware. The most atrocious software to get a book on. It was awful, but it is a beautiful device. And I actually like a Nook Touch Simple. It's kind of rubberized. It's nice in the hand. But I think what I would pick, if I had to pick one, is gonna be a controversial pick, because I know Jason does not like the original Kindle. I loved the original Kindle. I know you returned it almost immediately.

But I just love the shape of it. It's so weird, it looks like, you know, something from the 80s somehow fell into a time portal. The buttons are a bit flappy. So if we were updating it, we'd make the buttons a little better, I think. But keep the buttons, get rid of the keyboard, get rid of the weird silver roller thing.

I don't understand. See, I was gonna pick it and say, let's bring the silver roller back. Let's do it. So to do selection, because it wasn't a touch screen to do selection, there was this stripe down the side, vertical stripe that could have like a little silver bar on each line. And so you'd roll a wheel and the silver bar would

move to a different line and then you would select it and that would be how you select that line. It was the weirdest thing. Plus yes, the eighties shape of it where the, the move to a different line and then you would select it. And that would be how you select that line. It was the weirdest thing. Plus, yes, the 80s shape of it where the button on the right side, it was like at an angle, like it was the side of a pyramid or something.

I was gonna mention the original Kindle sort of as a joke, but like it's so weird and unlike any other e-reader that it would be fascinating to see another take on it. I agree with you, don't need keyboards. I don't miss keyboards on Kindles at all. And we have touch screen keyboards now that are good enough for taking notes. And I just, you know, if you wanna type that much,

I don't know, get out your iPhone or something. I seriously like, or get a pen. I guess you get a pen now is what you do. The one that I wanted to mention is the original Kindle Oasis. It was weird, but what I really liked about the original Kindle Oasis is it came with a cover, a really nice leather cover,

and the cover had a battery in it. And so what you could do is by default, you could just use your Kindle in the case. Like if you're a case using kind of person and you've got this great Kindle. And then if you take the battery off of it, it has much lower battery life. It's a little like AirPods and an AirPods case. Because you could charge the main device from this auxiliary battery or you could charge them both together. But what it meant is if you took the case off, the whole thing gets way lighter and way thinner and it was like the thinnest e-reader, lightest

e-reader I've ever used. Very pleasant to hold. Um, it was tiny, but like, I, I can see why maybe Amazon was like, this is too many moving parts and it's too complex and people don't care. We'll just put the battery in it and that's fine. That's okay. But as somebody who now, at least when I travel, I use a case.

The idea that I could have an e-reader with enough battery to get me through some reading sessions and then when I pop it in the case, it recharges off the battery in the case. But when it's out of there, I don't have to hold that battery up and it's way lighter. I kind of miss it. I kind of miss that original Kindle Oasis as weird as it was. I kind of liked it. The thing it shares with the original Kindle is it has kind of a contour to it right when you take the the battery case off it's got a thick side and a very very thin side and you just hold the thick side naturally right and it feels good. Which is what the Cobo's do for the most part. Exactly so that is the thing I don't like about Kindle design now is they're all just like flat rectangles. Yeah, they're stones from a stream, polished stones. They're all just flat round bricks. Yeah.

And as to Jason, to your point, like it's not horrible. It's just a small thing would make it more pleasant. Like having buttons, making it fit better in your hand are nice things. And you would think e-readers are at a mature, they're a pretty mature product that you know a very small group of people use but those small, that small group of people really cares about it right? So you would think, there's probably two markets, there's people buying it for other people who are like oh you like to read or I don't know what, or you like gadgets. So here's a cheap Kindle.

But then there are the other people like you and I who really like to read and really care about the reading experience. And so, and that's why I think Amazon was clever to have basically two segments. They have the cheap Kindles and the super expensive Kindles. But I would like them to do more in the super expensive. Yeah. I agree. Um, there is, I think in the cheap Kindle category, I would also put people like our

friend, uh, Casey lists who like mostly doesn't read, I think a lot in general. And, but it goes on vacations and once like a beach read and all of that. And, and I have several times given him the, here's the right super cheap e-reader to buy right now because he doesn't want features. And it used to be, now I would say the paper white only because it's like waterproof and like there are advantages to it.

But, and that's fine. Like I think that's a reasonable market. I wish there was more of a market for the people who care a little bit more about them, like you said, but maybe not. Well, Scott, that brings us, you did it. We did it together to the end of this episode of Upgrade. Thanks to everybody who's listening.

You can send your feedback, follow up and questions to Upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. This week, I'm gonna ask Scott some questions about stories of his life, as depicted in his blog. Getupgradeplus.com. And Mike authorizes that as the approved way to get a gift for Mike and his baby,

is just to join Upgrade Plus. You can find us on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast. Thank you to our sponsors this week. They were Fitbot, Express Express VPN and Factor. And thanks so much to Scott for being on this episode, Scott, it was a pleasure you and I do a Star Trek podcast when Star Trek is in season called the Vulcan Hello over on the incomparable. And I always say that podcast exists because I enjoy talking to my friend Scott about Star

Trek. But it was nice talking about e-readers and computers and stuff too. It was fun talking to you. I enjoy talking to you friend Scott about Star Trek. But it was nice talking to you about e-readers and computers and stuff too. It was fun talking to you. I enjoy talking to you, Jason. I also enjoy listening to you and Mike talk. So I'm excited for Mike to be back. Whenever he comes back as a proud Upgrade Plus member, I enjoy supporting the podcast and listening to the podcast. It's a lot of fun and an honor to be here.

So thank you for inviting me on. That was great having you. Thank you everybody out there for listening to Upgrade as Usual. And once again, I would also like to thank Casey Liss, John Gruber, John Ciracusa, Stephen Hackett, Dan Morin, David Smith, and Scott McNulty, the Dead Squad, for being here.

We'll be back next week. Will Mike be here? I sure hope so, but until then, goodbye.