Upgrade - 569: We Need More Rock Stars

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

from relay this is upgrade episode 569 today's show is brought to you by fit pod express VPN it is the summer fun summer fun I'm Mike Hurley and I'm joined by my summer co-host Jason Snow. Hello, Mike Hurley. This is the problem, Jason shouts all summer. I have a Snow Talk question for you, Jason Snow, and it comes from Brantz who wants to know, do you use the MLB app, Apple Sports app, or any other app for live activities for Giants games? If not, why not? Oh yeah, this is actually a great question, Prince, because when the season started, I

suddenly had double live activities. Too many. Like dueling, they'd be like, oh, the Giants are really playing, they're playing so much, they got two live activities to tell you all about it. And I am using Apple Sports. There's a reason. Okay. The reason is, cause you can use either one,

you mark the giants as your team or whatever. The reason I'm using Apple Sports for it is Apple Sports has a little like play-by-play line below it that tells you like the last event that happened. And the MLB live activity, I don't believe has that. And I thought that that was kind of fun. Also found it easier to shut off the I'm not, I would have to like unfavorite the giants in Apple Sports. And in MLB, I can just say, please don't show me a live activity.

That adds an extra configuration complication, right? It's like, do I want to unfavorite the giants, because then I won't be able to find them in Apple Sports. But if I turn off live activities, I'll also turn off my live activities for like Arsenal, which I don't want to do. And so this is the solution is I just am leaving it on there. But I do find that the Apple Sports live activities may be a little bit better. And I I enjoyed I have I've got a little follow up here too, because I use YouTube TV as my TV provider choice right now. And I discovered a setting that I didn't know existed before, which is, and so those of you who use YouTube TV

and watch sports, you might enjoy this setting and have a good internet connection. There's a setting, if you go to like options among like all your video options, there's a setting for latency. No way. There's normal and there's reduced. Oh my God.

And once I switched to reduced latency, the live activities, I no longer have the effect where my watch taps me to tell me that the opposition has just scored a run. And then I look at my watch and then I look back up and the batter hits a home run. Now it happens in the right order, almost at the same time. That's awesome. I don't know. I assume they, what they've done is by default, they add in a bunch of latency in order to keep the stream as smooth as possible.

And it is smooth as possible. You just, you are just behind. And so I discovered this feature just kind of clicking around in the YouTube TV app on the Apple TV. And there's a, there's a, you know, reduced latency mode, which is basically a sports mode. And it's awesome. So I'm doing that and that means my live activities not only keep me informed about what the giants are doing, but they don't spoil me seconds before events occur, which is I think important.

That's so awesome. I wish all streaming services had that. Like I think if you do sports, you should try to offer it because this is like, I don't use any live activities for, there's an app that I like that Has used live activities and I've used live activities from in the past for home of the one called box box But I don't use them anymore because sometimes I get the information before I see it Uh real time follow-up from zoe by the way, uh apple sports now has toggles per team for live activities So I could turn off the giants if I wanted to, but I'm very satisfied with my Apple Sports live activity

experience and I wish to continue. So I can just let the MLB app be where it is. Nice thing about MLB is you can pick any random game and just say, please track this game and it'll track that game, which is kind of cool if you're like, you know, watching a different game or something, but anyway, yeah. So that's the answer.

And I do like live activities and I really like how they extend to the to the watch and a big shout out to YouTube TV for offering that feature. And it's definitely a thing that's starting to happen. Where, like for the Super Bowl, Fox was talking about how they're going to try to do the lowest possible latency live stream, because they know that people want that. I had that experience, I've talked about it before, where Lex Friedman texted me, and I got the text saying, I'm sorry, moments before the Kansas City Chiefs

scored the touchdown in overtime to beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl, before it happened to my eyes. It's not great, it's not great. Yeah, I feel like if the streaming services want people to move to these like over the top services, which they do, they need to find a way to make this better for people whose internet can support it.

Exactly. And as my friend Will Carroll pointed out on downstream a few episodes ago, while sports stuff is motivated by gambling and you know, I'm not a gambler. I don't love gambling as a thing in sports. But the fact is a lot of money is in sports gambling and latency is the death of sports gambling because the people who are betting are betting on events that may have already occurred and you can't do that. So the more, the less latency the better. So we'll see. If you'd like to send in a question of your own

to help us open a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in a Snall Talk question. Thank you to Brantz for that question. Jason, I have some follow-up for you. This one is kind of a little history. I saw somewhere maybe on Threads, Threads is good for this kind of stuff for me,

random pieces of information about Apple. It was five years ago yesterday that Apple announced that they were moving from Intel to Apple Silicon at WWDC 2020. So I thought that was interesting, like it was fun. They had like this person posted a little clip. This was obviously the first all digital WWDC, 2020 WWDC. Later in the month for that reason. I had forgotten when I was looking this up today and reading a little bit about it that they made this announcement without any Macs. The Macs were announced in November.

So they announced in June that they were doing it and gave some details about it, but there were no actual products. And then they came later on. That's interesting that they did that. I think they let the developers start to think about doing their, you know, compiling for Apple Silicon and what the universal binary format was going to be like and stuff like that. And I believe, didn't they, they ended up with like a

developer test hardware that was essentially like a Mac mini with an iPad iPad put in inside it. Yeah. Like an A16. DTK. The DTK Developer Transition Kit. Yeah. Yeah. But the M1 Macs came later.

And so it was good. I mean, that's how they that's how you do it is you say, look, it's happening. We're going to do this starting this fall. And here's how you as a developer can prepare for that moment. And just really one of the most impressive transitions. And I've seen Apple do I started just as Apple I started in this business just as Apple was doing its first Mac chip transition. So I've seen them all right, I've seen the PowerPC transition and the Intel transition

and the Apple Silicon transition. And like just Apple knows how to do a chip transition. They did it really, really well. And it starts with that Johnny Sruji video talking about how their lessons of the iPad Pro especially are gonna inform what they do. And that's that's exactly I was saying to somebody the other day that those A16Z and A16X or whatever they were 14X I forget even what they were but those iPad Pro processors

right at the end before the M series came out. I mean those were their test beds right those are literally the what if we took a what if we built a higher test chip to put in an iPad Pro very clearly that was where they were heading. So yeah and they executed and it's great I mean that was it's one of the most successful things Apple has done in the last decade is that I would put that high on the list the Apple transition. This sheer jump in power performance and overall product capability is incredible. Like just incredible. Thanks to David Schaub for pointing out.

It's A12, how soon we forget, A12X and A12Z, which was at the time we were rolling our eyes a little bit, but clearly they're working on the M1. So they're like new iPad Pro, it's A12Z. It's a little bit, or I guess David's in Canada, so it would be Zed. Either way, Apple's in California at Z. It doesn't matter. Those were test beds for what would become the M1, which I was amused, because I read my story about this

that you put in our show doc, amused by the fact that it was very much like, well, they're calling it Apple Silicon, but surely there will be a brand name for these things. And the answer is yes, if the brand name you're thinking of is M. Or Apple Silicon, right? There's also, they kind of brand generically Apple Silicon

and the chips are just M just like the other chips were a, and that was definitely a possibility. I also really enjoyed how my story kind of started on that, which was, well, here we go. This is like, you know, into the breach, but it all, it all worked out spectacularly for, I think for users and Apple. I mean, there was just so much conversation about it beforehand, too, right. Which I think is users and Apple. I mean, there was just so much conversation about it beforehand too, right? Which I think is also leaning into like, here we go.

For years, our max, for years, our max. Are they gonna happen? An anonymous Apple Park dweller, I'll say, wrote in to say, last episode Jason talked about the Apple Park cat that he encountered during WWDC. He is right about there being critters for the cat to hunt, but the cat is definitely not top of the food chain here at Apple Park. There's also at least one coyote enjoying the relative shelter of the Apple Park grounds.

I have heard that a coyote has been spotted there. So the cat ought to watch out for that coyote, but there's definitely there's definitely other critters for that cat to to catch if you know of Something higher in the food chain at Apple Park than a coyote then please write in let us know Oh, I mean Craig Federighi clearly there's a bear There's a bear running around a trophy imagine. There could be like a mountain lion, but probably not Yeah, Adam wrote in and said, with the new iPad OS 26 windowing system,

I can have a small window of the app, Paste, which is a clipboard manager, open at all times. All times, there's a makeshift clipboard history. As long as it has a window open, it will just grab anything I copy. So I tried this out. I installed Paste. It wasn't an app that I was using.

And it's true. If you have it open as part of your window, it will take whatever you're copying in the background, and it will just save it into the clipboard. If you give it permission, which is an interesting thing, right? There is a clipboard permission, and it says, know, Pace wants to read the clipboard. And I'm struggling with this right now in developer beta one because, and I should file a feedback about this, because every single one of my apps has had its clipboard permission reset.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So every time I paste, it says, do you wanna paste a thing from one app to another? I'm like, oh my God. And that's not my feedback. I mean, that's a bug and they should fix that. Cause I had those settings. My feedback is you can't batch approve apps.

It's the worst. I can't go in and say, just, just approve them all. They want you to do, and I've got hundreds of apps like what, and, and, and they are multiple, multiple levels down. They're not even like, there I've got hundreds of apps. Like what, and they are multiple levels down. They're not even like, there's not even like a paste permission window with a list of apps that you can go, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes on five or six or eight or 10 commonly used apps.

There, it's not good. It's very bad. I hate it so much. I understand why they're concerned about it, but asking me permission to paste from one app of mine to another app of mine is the worst. Yeah, that's bad. It's the worst.

Yeah, because the clipboard is not in the privacy and security settings. There are some privacy security settings which are permissions, and they're like top level like the Mac and you can click into them and just turn them on. But no, it's in the individual apps settings in the settings app. Yeah, that's frustrating. But yeah, I tried this out. I thought this is like a cool thing. If you use stage manager with the new Windows system like I do, it will only capture if it's in the current stage that you're working in. But I think most people will just use this in the windowing mode. So you can have it there. It can be obscured. Like as long as it's open, it will just keep capturing your clipboard.

I find this interesting because I wonder what other types of apps will benefit from this feature where it's essentially open all the time. I'll be keen to see how that unfolds. Interesting idea. Speaking of unfolding, a few people have sent in links to me for the Logitech Flip Folio. So on last week's episode, I spoke about how I got a Magic Keyboard,

and I kind of wished that I could still just have the Folio in some way, like the smart Folio that Apple makes. I don't like having the big keyboard as well all the time. Like, it's just like the footprint of the iPad becomes quite big and it's heavy. So this case is essentially a folio case, which has a clip keyboard that you can attach and remove. There's two problems with this one. There's no track pad. I want a track pad.

Right. I actually the track pad is a lot of the time more important to me than the keyboard. Like the the trackpad is a lot of the time more important to me than the keyboard. Like the trackpad opens up a better experience than I could see with the SuperCube. Anyway, I want that both. However, I will read a quote from John Voorhees' review on Mac stories. The biggest downside of the Logitech's case is that it's a bit thick and heavy. The case for the 11-inch iPad Pro is 560 grams and the keyboard is 176 grams for a total of 641, which is more by 81 grams than Apple's 11 inch Magic Keyboard.

So this actually makes a problem worse in two ways. It removes a feature and makes it heavier. So I appreciate that people saw this and thought of me, but this is absolutely the exact opposite of what I'm looking for. But I'm happy that Logitech is still out there doing things. Also on headphones. So you know I spoke I spoke about headphones but wanted to replace my AirPods Max or something. I had a few recommendations. A bunch of people said they liked the Sony's. A Sonos employee told me to check out the

Sonos ones. But then I got a text from our friend Federico who was trying to sell me his Sony headphones because he was frustrated with losing the ability to switch between devices. So now I don't want to move because this is the thing that I was most. This is the thing that I like the most about the AirPods Max when I'm traveling. It's like I can be just like on my phone and it's there, go to my Mac and it's there, go to my iPad and it's there. And I really like that. I think what I'm actually going to do, the biggest issue that I have with the AirPods Max is if I use them when I'm recording,

I don't like how they sound when I record. Transparency mode, that's in too much noise. Noise cancellation sounds weird when I record because I can't really hear myself and hear the world very clearly. And when I turn it to off, I will say it just doesn't sound right to me. So what I think I'm actually going to do, maybe the next time that I travel,

is just use my AirPods Pro 2 as my headphones when I record podcasts. Like I use them all the time when I'm on Zoom calls and stuff. And it's fine. So I might just use those and then my regular microphone. So we'll see. But I'm not going to be switching headphones anymore. So what? Reviews are out for the F1 movie. I was F1 movie and it's sitting on Rotten Tomatoes right now at 88 percent,

which I think is good. I think it's done the job. But it's two things it needs to do. One is the movie needs to be decent and then the other is people need to go see it. And it does seem like the movie is good enough. Like critics seem to like it. So I think that is a good sign. Success. Successful right to begin, right? Cause this movie box office, but yes, but like this movie, you know, it's fighting an uphill battle.

I think, um, just because movies are hard and his movie was so expensive and it's an apple movie, right? So it's like, people know it's going to come to streaming. this movie was so expensive and it's an Apple movie, right? So it's like people know it's going to come to streaming and that can be difficult. If the movie wasn't good, then it was just going to fail, right? At least if the movie's good, people might go see it. Apple have been doing just an immense amount of promotion for this movie, right? And we've spoken about it in a bunch of different ways. Last week's promotion was an immersive video lap. So they put an immersive camera on the car that Brad Pitt drives and you go around him a lap around the Yas Marina circuit.

Did you watch this? I did. I thought it was fantastic. This is great. It's really good. That was the amount that I wanted. It proved to me I would not want to watch the whole movie like that. And also that I would not want to watch F1 in general like that. I think this is probably the most likely to induce motion sickness that any

immersive video has had before. I guess although it's a mouth, I mean, it depends on what gets you motion sick because it's mounted on the car. So the view doesn't really change from the perspective of the car, but the car is a car. So it's zipping around that. Because there was just when the car comes to a stop, I felt something in my body like I'd stopped. It was very strange, but it was great. You're on the car, you can turn left and you can see Brad Pitt. You can see him, watch him drive and then you're driving. Uh, there's music playing

in the background, which I wish there wasn't, but you can still hear the car, which I think is great. You can hear him like wheel spinning and skidding and yes, fantastic. This was really, really good. Uh, I wrote about it on my blog and I said at the end of it that I expect that Apple will be promoting this heavily in Apple stores if people want to go and see it. And I got good feedback that that's true, that they will be doing this. If you want to watch this, go to an Apple store and you can watch it. This episode is brought to you by FitBot. If you're looking to change your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to get started.

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So the beta for iOS 18.6 is out now I was I had a bit of a jump scare the other day when I think it was my iPhone was like hey You want to install the bear? I'm like, no, not that one. It's think it was my iPhone, was like, hey, you want to install the beta? And I'm like, no, not that one. It's like 18.6. I'm like, no, not that one. I don't want any of them.

So I got myself off the beta train. It is out and nine to five Mac have found some new references to a home product. It's in relation to image assets. So there are some image assets that have kind of like a tag which say home on them. And it's about like a screen. The image that 9to5Mac pulled out and they were doing some analysis on the kind of the metadata of it, suggests that the screen resolution and size could be close to that

of an iPad mini, but they're not sure, but it at least seems to indicate a new screen size compared to what is previously available. It's interesting to see it at work, it appears to be continuing with this product because it was considered to be in kind of no-man's land with the Siri changes, and in the last week or so there seems to have been a lot of talk online about a session and a new API called interactive snippets, which looks a lot like something the home device uses. These are little compact pieces of UI that are displayed via App Intense, so it can show information, allows some interactions.

They look like widgets, basically, but they're triggered from Intents. So you can trigger them in the new, like in iOS and iPad OS from Spotlight Serial Shortcuts. And it feels like maybe this kind of thing would be maybe interesting in this scenario too. Could be, interesting idea. You know, one of the great questions was if it doesn't do apps, the third-party apps, there's no app store, what happens here? How does this work?

And maybe there's some projection going on from your iPhone for some of this stuff. That's possible. I don't know. It's interesting to see interesting to see. We, we know that this product is out there. The report that Mark Gurman said is that it relies on some technology that's not ready. And so they can't ship it, whether that's the new Siri or whether it's just the app intense remains to be seen. But like, because that new Siri means it's next year for that product. It'd be a shame to have a product basically ready to build and not be able to ship it because of

the software not being there. So we'll see. You know, I also find it interesting that like, widgets are in CarPlay now too. Like that feels like an interesting thing, right? So like, that technology is, you know, widgets are being moved to this, you know the projection system that essentially Carplay is so could be something there too. Yeah, it's a it's a like sort of like standby Yeah, you know with those widgets in there, but it's those are great to see too There have been a selection of rumors that macromos was pulled together about the iPhone 17 Pro featuring a VAPOUR CHAMBER cooling system. These kinds of cooling systems are found a lot on gaming phones, but other phones

like the S25 Ultra. Essentially, vapour chamber cooling provides better, more efficient cooling for an iPhone. So, I'm going to read from their report here. It would consist of a thin, sealed metal chamber containing a small amount of liquid. When the iPhone heats up, the liquid would turn into vapor and dissipate across the chamber's surface area. Eventually, the vapor would cool down and condense, allowing for the process to repeat. The system would help to move heat away from the A19 Pro chip that is expected to power these models." This could indicate a couple of things. Gaming is always a thing, right? You can make things better for gaming. I wondered if

this kind of cooling could maybe better assist heavy on-device Apple intelligence tasks. You know, maybe it could if the system wasn't like throttling because it was getting too hot, that maybe this kind of cooling could assist that. I know that in general, I would be very keen for this because my phone gets very hot sometimes. Maybe I notice this because I don't use a case, but yeah. Matt It does happen, especially when processes are really kind of spinning, doing a lot of indexing. It tries to do most of that when it's plugged in because that's when it's got kind of unlimited power. It's not going to kill your battery on top of it. But you know, you've got these chips that are very powerful. And if they're, if they're peaking and it sounds like that's, that's why, you

know, game devices use it and why you might see that here is when you're, when it's peaking, whether it's the GPU or something else, that's kind of peaking in there, it gets really hot, really fast. And this seems to be a system like it's not a fan, but it's a system that's designed to sort of like be able to absorb a big heat spike and diffuse it better. And that's it's interesting. I think we're going to see a lot of really interesting iPhone engineering this year. Yes. Even if it doesn't look that different on the outside, it sounds like it'll look different on the back more than it'll look different on the front. It'll be very familiar. But if they're doing something like this for the pro models,

and then if they've got their thin model as well, like that, that it's going to be an interesting fall. I think they look really different. I think in Power On this week, Mark Gurman was answering a question and he's asked about this and he says that internally, Apple considers this a redesign year, you know, like what that means for us, who knows? But if that two tone visual, and like what that means for us, who knows, but if that two-tone visual, like two-tone back is the case, like I think that's going to be interesting. I mean, there's only so much you can redesign these things now, right? Like the form factor is

essentially set, but if you can change the way that the back looks or when they change the way that the side looks, changes the way the phone looks and it will look new But the one that will look the most new will be the brand new one the thing Well, so yeah, I think you're right problem with minimalism is once you get I mean It's like that spinal tap line like how much blacker could it be none more black? It's like how much more minimal could it be none more minimal? There's not a lot left for them to shave off there. There's some and they will try but It makes it harder to make people go. Oh my god. It's so different. I can't believe it's so different It's it's harder now. So but they're trying it is a problem when you have when you have been striving for minimalism

But you sell the most products when you have a new design It is a problem. You're right. That is two things that are an absolute direct conflict when it comes to the iPhone. But yeah, I think this year's teardowns will be really interesting, right? When we start seeing these devices pulled apart and seeing what on earth they're doing to make them work or attempt to work. Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple executives have held talks about buying perplexity. Quote, Adrian Perica, the company's head of mergers and acquisitions, has weighed the idea with services chief Eddie Kew and top AI decision makers. Apparently these discussions at Apple are very early stage and of course will probably

lead to nothing, but they would consider it as a way to build an AI-powered search engine along with bolstering their AI efforts in general. There is a quote in the piece, basically this was news to perplexity, which I find very funny, but apparently the two companies have already been meeting separately to look at integrations for search and other features. I have a couple of links to some posts in the show notes, one from Parker Ottelani and one from Federico Fattice. I will give him his full name because I gave Parker his full name,

even though I think everybody knows who Federico is. Just saying that Perplexity is probably not the right product to buy. Like Perplexity is a product focused company, right? Is the argument that they're making that use other companies' AI models as a backend to build a nice search experience on top. And Perplexity will tell you they have lots of really powerful models

that are pulling all this information together and da-da-da-da-da. And I'm sure they have some stuff, but they are essentially building on top of the foundations. They also have done some stuff about building some, that voice mode thing. They have have a voice mode in their app like all AI apps do, but they've actually built Apple's API's into their voice modes. If you use the perplexity voice mode and ask it to create an event for you, it will add it to your calendar because it's using Apple's API's, which is interesting. So what do you have any thoughts on this? My kind of feeling on it is like, I'm sure they're talking about it, but I don't expect it to happen. Yeah, I mean, so it is suspicious

that everybody's suddenly talking about perplexity because that sounds like somebody is trying to boost their valuation or get somebody to buy them and they wanna turn up some conversation about it. It could be all a coincidence, but I don't think it is. I think something is going on here where somebody with perplexity may be looking at their valuation, looking at their burn rate, I don't know,

and saying, hey, it would be great if a bunch of tech giants were vying to buy us. I think their survival means somebody needs to buy them eventually. Yeah. So what's interesting about them is that they have this product that they have worked hard on search. I take Parker or Latani's point that they don't have a model, right?

They just have a product built on top of models, which is what Apple's already doing. So if you're Apple, the only reason to buy them for that is because you feel that there is a lack in your culture of building AI focused products, which I, you know, I think Apple has been able to admit a lot of things about itself in the last year regarding AI, but I am not sure that this is one of them. The idea that they would really need to feel like, oh, well, this, we just don't have enough people who are thinking about productizing AI and we can buy this company for many, many, many billions of dollars because it's going to cost a lot. You're paying a premium for an AI company in 2025, right? But maybe we need to do it because we feel a lack of that. I don't, I am really skeptical that Apple has come to that, come to that point. Now, maybe internally they have, they've realized that like, oh, actually,

this is one of our cultural problems is that we're not productizing this. I will say the one part of this that makes me intrigued is the fact that they have a pretty good search product. And we're in an era where Apple's relationship with Google search is a question. And the idea that Apple may or may not be able to You know count on the money that they get from search referrals and Safari

so I would be open to the idea that the reason Apple buys something like perplexity is Not because they want like all AI product stuff to be better at Apple but because they could basically pick up an AI search engine and a bunch of people devoted to the idea of a search engine product and boom, Apple's got its own AI search engine that it could put in all its products. And also a popular one, right? One that has a customer base. It's like buying beats to start Apple music.

So that would be that would, right. And you take the rest of it comes along with, but like, cause I know that this is going to be, it would be like a $14 billion purchase. So it's a lot of money. Yep. But how big is the search business for Apple? Right. Like 20 billion a year. So if Eddie, if Eddie Q and that's, so that's, that's how I wanted to view this, there are lots of ways this could be viewed, but if it's talking, the report says that the head of mergers and acquisitions has weighed the idea with Eddie Q and top AI decision makers. Let's focus on Eddie Q. If you're Eddie Q and you're

worried about the future of search, which is under his remit, the whole idea of the search, it's a service.it, the whole idea of the search, it's a service. Oh, I assume, I don't know for certain, I assume it's Eddie Q, it's got Eddie Q all over it. And he was the one who testified and all that. Okay. If you're him and you're looking at the current search world

and you look at Perplexity's search product, I can see, like you ask yourself, could we build a product like Perplexity search product. I can see, like you ask yourself, could we build a product like Perplexity inside Apple? And would that make sense? And do we want that product? And I'd put all that in a bowl and I'd look at it and be like, well, what do I think? I can see a scenario where if you felt confident

that one of your ways forward with search was to have AI powered search products and to have, and you look at perplexity and you say they're actually really good and we really like their product and we like their culture and we think it would be a good fit. If you're at a queue, I feel like the money is not even a question, right? Like if the way Apple goes to a new level, shifts gears from the old kind of Google relationship. Search is such a moneymaker for them that, I mean, you got to look at that. I'm not saying that they should buy it. I'm saying that's why you would look carefully at it.

Is for something like the uneasiness about search and what if you could build your own search product on, even if it's on top of other people's models or eventually your models? That I could see and also you have to go back to like what is the exact? Analog of this discussion Google Maps right when Google Maps What went away right it was not the Maps app anymore? Apple had to build a map service from ground zero and they struggled. If Google for whatever reason either is forced to, decides to, or Apple decides to remove them as the default or whatever

and we're gonna have an Apple default, that's the decision that they decide they want to do, that search product has to be really, really good. Like if you thought Maps was a problem, if you take away the, if you change the way that people use Safari, because people just open Safari, they type what they want, and they're taken to a Google search result, right? Like if you're going to change that experience in some way,

you have to have a darn good search product in Safari to replace it. Right? I would throw in the other possibility here, which is, you know, what if the pressures of the change in search from traditional search engines to AI means you can't stick with the existing Google deal, right? Regardless of legality, that's the other issue here. Yeah, the decision might just become Apple's, right? They've even given a hint to that, whether that was, you know, we're not sure exactly what Eddie's reason was to say what he did like a month or so ago, right,

about the Google search stuff going down. There are many reasons he could have said it, but if you're Apple, if you're working on that team or whatever, you've got to be paying attention to that and be like, well, what if all of our competitors, you know, they integrate Gemini now instead or whatever, and we're stuck with Google and nobody likes it. So yeah. So it's, it's, uh, the other thing I'll throw out there, cause I think that the idea of viewing this as a product versus model is useful, because there are other conversations that people can have about, should Apple, how confident is Apple in its model versus others? company out there that doesn't already have its big tech partner that's got its hooks into it and therefore is not going to be something you know like Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI and OpenAI really believing like they're

they're number one and they don't even need everybody's coming to them and there are others you know Anthropic has what do they have an Amazon deal anyway it's complicated right but I will say if you view AI acquisitions from Apple, in the light of improving their culture, and you think, again, fundamentally, you think they aren't on the right path now, not a year ago, but now with their models, right? That's the, that is a question. We don't know the answer to it. Like they were behind clearly, but are they catching up or are they still lost? Yeah. And, and what I don't want to put this as is you have a choice between, do we think we can build it or should we buy it? do we think we can build it or should we buy it?

Because the truth is, the choice is, do we think after failing once, we now are on the right path or not? It's not like build it or buy it. It's like, well, we built it and we blew it, but now we have to build it again or buy it. Like it's complicated. But the question is, it all comes back to what Apple thinks it's capable of doing on the inside. And Beats, I think, is a great example of this. Apple Maps is not a bad example either. Apple Maps was a

choice where Apple wanted to get off of its dependency on Google. Right? That was what was going on there. And so they built a maps system in the background and then flip the switch and kick Google out and Google had to make its own app, which it did. Beats though is about, it's not about like replacing necessarily the existing default with your own default. It's more about directions they wanted to go because they wanted to go

because they wanted to do Apple Music. And Beats had a music service. That was pretty good. And a way of doing it, right? Like it was human curated and they had it as, and like it was like a style that Apple has maintained. Like there was something about the DNA of Beats Music that really spoke to them as like lovers of music

as institutionally as a company. And honestly, the headphone business continues on, but it's like a side business. That is just a nice thing that makes them some money and they just leave it alone. But really the motivator was was launching Apple Music. And that was the case where they they had to do some cultural integration. And Mark Gurman points out in his in his piece, like his piece is weird because it's's like Apple's gotta buy something. And then he's like, but Apple is bad at buying things and maybe it shouldn't. I'm like, okay, this is all over the place. He's not wrong. I mean, he's wrong about Apple's gotta buy something or else. Like, I don't know if that premise actually

works. But, but the key is like, if you're an Apple executive, if you're at a queue, or if you're somebody else at that level, what's your confidence in Apple's ability to build something? Because Apple has all the money in the world, essentially. Apple's got so much cash that it can buy almost anything if it really, really wants to. So what's your confidence in what you can build internally, culturally? Do you benefit from bringing in people who've been thinking about AI all the time from the outside who are experts in either the product or in rapidly iterating the models? Or

do you feel confident? I think the problem right now at Apple is, do you feel confident when you go to John Jan Andrea, and he says, we are great, we're doing great. Because I wonder if they believe him, right? Like that's a question I have, but that ultimately is the decision. It's like what you spend your money on has in part to do with your confidence

that that's a thing that you can do yourself versus importing it from the outside. And that comes down to a self-confidence about Apple. And that means a level of introspection that Apple executives have to have about their abilities. Because there is a time for you to say, I love my team. My team is great. We're doing great work. We're going to succeed. We're working hard. Yay, team." And there is a time for that cold-eyed realism where you're in a meeting with your peers as a senior vice president or a vice president, and they're saying, no, no, no, I know you love your team, but really are they up to it? And that is brutal because you need an honest appraisal

as a senior executive, right? You need an honest appraisal of like, are they up to it? And Happy Talk gets, Happy Talk is a killer for business strategy, right? Where people are like, you know, I don't wanna say like John Jan Andrea again, but like that sort of thing of like, if those stories are true, the idea of like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're good. We're good. We're great at AI. It's, we're great. And do you believe him? Or not? Do you believe anybody when they say, Oh, my group that is doing this thing that is make or break for the company. And they're like, Look, we can go spend $5 billion and solve this problem, or we don't have to, we can save that money and your team can do it.

Can your team do it? And I think there are a lot of executives who would say, of course, I love my team, my team is great, they're the best, of course we can do it. Rock stars. But what if they can't? I mean, you need to know, I mean, I don't know it's complicated

because of the parameters of like, well, what's my team's funding? And can I hire more people? And do you need this now? Or do you need it in four years? And like, I get that it's complicated, right? But in the end, the real danger is not knowing whether you're internally capable that introspection, like introspection and a human being involves you thinking about yourself. Introspection in the corporation is much harder because you have to go down all the levels and you need honesty from people who are normally going to say, we're killing it to say, we're not killing it. Like those, you need, you need somebody to say, yeah, I know that we're working on something, but if you went out and bought that company, Company X for $4 billion, they're already doing it. And your problem is solved.

And it's going to take us more budget and more years because although my team is rock stars, we don't have enough rock stars. We don't have enough budget or quite frankly, we don't have enough rock stars. We, we have some, you know, people who are more like, you know, session musicians. And so we need more rock stars and we don't have them, right? Like, I'm just saying it's really hard because that is the information. It needs to be clear-eyed and realistic. That's the information that you need if you're at a queue or anybody else to decide you're going to buy something. And the worst is if your people give you confidence that you got it handled internally,

and it turns out you don't, which I think is what's happened to Apple with AI in the last couple of years. Just a guess. And you would, I would guess somebody who was really passionate about generative AI, transformer based AI, they probably left. Like not everyone, but I could imagine if you were at Apple and you were really interested in this technology, it is likely that you may have gone to work somewhere else

if it didn't seem like your company was going to do it, right? Right. Yeah. Which I think for a long time, we just assumed they would not do this when it all started up because it's like, well, then Apple's thing. The rock star is left. So you would be like, well, I care about this technology. I think it's interesting.

I have something to say. I have opinions on this. Maybe you would go and work for OpenAI. Maybe you would go and work at a startup. maybe you'd go work for Claude or whatever, right? Whatever. And so it is, there is something to be said for Apple buying a company that has a hundred excellent engineers focused on AI, where they may have a smaller team or maybe they're having to get people

interested in it who maybe aren't. Like I don't know what the internal feeling is amongst all developers on it, right? But like, you know, you're like, okay, iOS team, you really need to get good at this now. I don't know if Apple had enough. We couldn't know, right? But do they have enough people who care about it, still left at the company when they decided

they wanted to start down this road? And it's a fun exercise, a very fun exercise, to talk about spending Apple's money. Maybe we will have fun with that later. But the problem is, and this is not fun for us or for people like Mark Gurman, or anybody else who's like a pundit or an observer of Apple. The truth is the right company for Apple to buy

is a company you've never heard of. Maybe somebody at TechCrunch or somebody who's following very closely AI startups knows who that company is, but like that's probably the company Apple needs to buy. Yeah. And we often hear of these like five person teams that have an interest in solution in glass or whatever, right? And they buy that. Exactly. It's like the, this is a startup to do AI and they haven't shipped a product and they've been in stealth and it's 25 people and they're working on next generation LLM technology. And they are

they are diehard experts at this. They live and die via their via their models in a way that people at Apple don't. And you can spend $800 million and you get that team and you integrate them and they are an infusion of talent. Like that's the kind of team you kind of want to buy, not the $14 billion company that's got an established culture. And like that's the problem. It's a lot less fun to talk about. Like when Apple bought PA Semi, did anybody care? I mean, some chip people cared,

but like that was the foundation of, of Apple Silicon was them buying PA Semi. But at the time, kind of nobody knew about it. And like, that's the problem. That's the problem with a lot of this is those little companies most people don't even know are there. And they're probably the ones you want to buy. If you think that you could get a really nice infusion of talent. And yeah, it's kind of aqua hire, but also if they've got a product that's like the product you've been trying to build and failing and they've got it, it's like we could buy them.

It's a lot harder when you're. The problem is the AI space is so overheated right now that the prices are all enormous. Everything's massively inflated. Like if anything is half decent, you just have money poured into it, which makes it hard to buy one. Yeah, absolutely. Because everybody wants to be there when the music stops, and if you're one of the ones

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and all of Relay. So you mentioned a minute ago about spending Apple's money. Why don't we do that? It's a summer of fun. Let's have some fun. We have the opportunity to spend as much of Apple's money as we like. Who would we have them buy? Jason, who should we buy? Money, money, money, money. Let's spend Apple's money. Or who has all the money? We do. We do. We do.

We have it. I love it. Who would we buy? After, so I just spent 10 minutes explaining why you can't do this. Sorry about that. That's fine. We can. Well, this was your idea.

So why don't you, why don't you go first? I think the first option for me right now would be Warner Brothers. They're trying to be bought, right? Which they really want to be bought. And I think if you're Apple, this is, I think Warner Brothers is a no-brainer for them if they can work it out.

Like, as in like the things that it can bring you. So content library, which would be fantastic for Apple TV+, you have all of that content, right? Yep. Warner has access to incredible IP, right? All of DC, for example, you can make TV shows with Batman in them for as long as you like, right? Yep. And they have lots.

They have studio space. Apple is expanding in Hollywood and they're trying to expand even more. I think that, you know, none of these, no content by would be easy. But Warner Brothers is interesting to them because they want to doesn't have. And this I'm not thinking they don't have a TV network and they don't have theme parks. And yeah, I think that's true. I think that's true.

They just license their theme park stuff. This is the Disney problem. This is the universal problem. Like if Apple ever wanted to buy a content company, I would argue that you could just spend those off and be done with it. Right. Like you could, but that's complicated, right? It is more complicated.

If Apple bought Disney and then spun off the parks and there has to be this weird Relationship between the two of them where the sharks are still need the IP like it's it becomes messy Yeah, yeah And also Apple Warner they will have a great relationship like tons of Apple TV plus content is produced by already being I think look I I To go back to build it or buy it they built HBO to Build It or Buy It, they built HBO, basically. They built HBO as Apple TV+. So this would also get them HBO.

It would get them more theatrical, whether they want that or not. It would get them the, I mean, they would get max they would get HBO max now It's gonna be called HBO max again was HBO max then it was max now It will be called that for now until hopefully somebody buys So and they've got some limited like other their sports rights are actually going to the cable companies and there's like a Licensing deal back because they're spinning off their cable companies, they're spinning off CNN and TNT and all of that.

That's gone. Um, that, that is going to be replaced. I I'm open to this idea. I don't think Apple has to do this. I think it would make Apple a much bigger player, but there's generally a consensus that there's going to be consolidation in the streaming market That you don't need this many players and that if you were to infuse Apple's service with the The max HBO max user base as well and put them all together

You've got a you've got a more visible high-profile service there And there was a time when I think it benefited them more to have a library, but I still think it would be of benefit. It would make it easier for people to remain subscribed. I think that is a problem that Apple has, which is the people sign up and then cancel because they like blow through the content that they need in a couple of weeks or whatever It's true, and then you know Straight through I mean, yeah, I think it's I think it's possible. I

I would put Other than it's about to be sold. It's probably like I think paramount, you know is a interesting one as well and I think Paramount is an interesting one as well. And I think the divested NBC Universal is interesting, but again, Paramount's got CBS, NBC Universal has NBC, Disney has ABC. Warner Brothers is unencumbered by legacy stuff like broadcast channels and now cable.

They're gonna spin off all their cable stuff. So I don't mind it. I don't mind it It's interesting. It would be very weird if Apple owned DC Comics. That would be extremely strange I mean, it's superman. It's Marvel and that Warner owns that is true They say like it seems normal to us now But I remember when it was announced that Disney was buying Marvel and I was like, oh my god, how weird like Disney owns the comics like the physical comics business. It's like such a strange thing to think about but they do they do they do Okay, let's see what else what else what else Well, I'll say since it's been the topic of the day, I think if there was a company out there that Apple

had confidence in as an AI model maker, model builder that really culturally good at iterating and making great models, I would seriously consider buying them because my external not knowing all the details, again, this is the fool me twice, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me thing. We're at fool me twice now. Like, do they got it? Does John Jan Andrea have the goods or do they not have it? I think the problem is the one that they actually truly believe in they can't afford which is open AI

Well, I mean, I'm not sure they can afford any of the ones that are the leaders because they and they've already got you know owner partial ownership or investment from other tech giants Yeah, because I agree I agree Of course open AI is trying to kind of like open a nice relationship to Microsoft right now is quite problematic Yeah, I just think open eyes valuation is obscene right like oh it is I mean it there are so many reasons and anybody who's got this is gonna is gonna have it but I'm just saying so what I'm gonna say is not anthropic although that that one I think is intriguing because it's not number

one it's not Google and it's not open AI. You want something else, but can you get something else that is going to move the needle? Or are you still just gonna have a bunch of sort of secondary players? And again, this comes back to your confidence, but I would say after what has happened in the past, my confidence in Apple,

if I was internal, I would be skeptical of that. So I don't know who that company is. A little Googling has put open AI's valuation is $300 billion. Apple doesn't even have that much cash. No, and Anthropic is 61. So. Apple does have that much cash, but that's too expensive. It's too expensive, but it's a steal compared to 300 billion. So this is what I'm saying is what you really want is a startup of really smart people who you can essentially acqui-hire, who are the people who left companies like Apple and Microsoft, because they really want to be on the cutting edge of pushing AI models. And you go to them, they're the PA semi of AI models. And you go there and say, you are going to be the core of our new AI model generation business at Apple. And you're going to

drive everything that Apple does. And you guys know Apple. We're big, we're huge. Um, and we've struggled and, and, uh, and we don't have rock stars. Again, this is incumbent on them knowing whether they have rock stars or not and believing it. That's what, that's what you should do. So again, I would say if I was, if I, if I covered the AI industry, I might have a better idea of what that company is, but you're looking for something that's smaller, but, uh, but doing great great work and that you could pick up. I'm not,

and I'm not opposed by the way to the idea that you buy perplexity for the search, for the search product. That's not a bad idea. Like I could see some of, while we're spitballing here, I can see some advantages in doing something like that. Other search companies you could buy, right? DuckDuckGo, Carghee, like if you're just trying to prepare for search, but I think it would be a, if you're gonna buy a search company, you should buy one that has an AI product, you benefit as well as, you know what I mean?

I think that's the right way to go. If you're talking about like an interest in startup that's doing things with AI, software applications incorporated, the company making Sky who was previously shortcuts, like workflow and shortcuts, like it really feels like that product, and like that team, like they're making a thing

and it's interesting and it's doing some cool stuff, but would also now, especially now we've seen the new Spotlight, would fit really well into that team now. Like, you know, Spotlight is doing a lot of interesting stuff and then Sky is doing more of it. So software applications, this is the old shortcuts team who got acquired by Apple and then they left

after their deal was up and they have started this new thing That is basically just a you know AI control Mac utility kind of thing So my question about that is it was a very impressive demo It's impressive that they got it out before WWDC even though it's not actually out yet. They showed it to Federico because it allowed them to Make an impression before stuff that might steal some of the spotlight from them. Oh, ha ha spotlight. I, I am not opposed to spending money to, to reacquire those that team again. I don't know what the dynamics are. Do they like people at Apple and hate other people at Apple and who would they be working for and all of that? But Apple has also had a little bit of an attitude adjustment in the last year. I think we could all agree. And I look at what they're doing. Honestly, I look at Sky and I think, why is that not being done by a group inside Apple?

It's that simple. This is what I was thinking about earlier when I was like, if you cared about this and thought you had something interesting, maybe nobody else wanted to do it. So you had to lead, I don't know this is their story, but I think it could be their story. They're like, they have this idea,

they're like, we could do some really interesting automation-based stuff using large language models and maybe nobody inside of Apple cared about that. So they decided to go out again and build something. Yeah. I don't know. But that feels like a story, right? So if I'm an Apple and again, this is that clear ride thing. Do I look at what I'm doing inside? And I think there's some truth in this too. Apple doesn't have enough people working on their core technologies.

They never have. They've always been like, oh no, no, we only hire A players. It takes forever to hire people at Apple. A lot of Apple is understaffed for what their ambition is. So I look at something like Sky and software applications and I say, you know, oh, it's those people we lost. We bring them back and now we've got a little group

that is doing this thing that we've struggled to do because even though our people could do it too, they're doing this other thing that also is important to us. Like that's one of the reasons you do that. And you pay them a premium to, because they're literally building. I mean, I think the sky demo is really interesting.

It's literally Mac system software. That's literally what it is, except on the outside. There's no reason that should not be part of Mac OS. So sure. I mean, if I, again, I don't know any of the personal political issues, that's what it would take. But like whatever they're worth, and I know they have an open AI investment.

It's like, just, I don't know. I mean, this goes back to some other things, which is why were they allowed to leave? Probably they left because they got paid and what, and then Apple wasn't letting them do the stuff that they thought would be an interesting path forward for them. So do you say we've changed and we're gonna buy you and we're gonna put you in charge of this because this time we're gonna listen to you? I hope so because what they're doing is really interesting and

it is the direction that Apple should go in and I'm not convinced that they've got, again, that they've got the people who are on this. Now it's also possible that that sky thing internally at Apple, they're like, yeah, we already, we're already building that. Okay. But I would be really open to that. Um, Mike, I'm going to throw out a wild one. Do it. Cause you thought we were done. I think Apple should buy a car company like Rivian. I think they should do it. Here's why Apple's got a lot of money. Apple wants to diversify. I feel like Rivian or something like that. But Rivian is the one I got my eye on. You get that for what? $15 billion, something like that. It's chump change for Apple, honestly. I think the Apple brand is so powerful that having a division that is doing cars and that is working with Apple's software group.

First off, you get car play on Rivians. Car play, ultra in fact, on Rivians. But I don't think the luxury-ish electric car business is a bad business to be in, as a part of the overall global Apple brand. You could pick up Lucid for six and a half. That's a deal. I mean, I have my eye on Rivian because I think that they have a lot going for them.

They're cooler. They are cooler and they're doing some interesting things. They're a California company. And I know we were like, oh, we're over it. We did it. We did the car thing. It was a mistake. We're done.

But if you view Apple as a, not as a computer company, which they're not, but as a global technological and manufacturing brand. And I still think we're in an era where there is room for companies with that kind of skill set, and that kind of brand to make money in the auto industry, because the auto industry is being really shaken up and it's gonna be different when all is said and done. And it's, you know, 10 years ago would have been better, but now it's not bad. My alternative suggestion, by the way,

is, and some people are gonna really love this and some people are really gonna hate it, and it may not be who you think is wait for the inevitable complete fall and crack up of Tesla's stock because they have been completely mismanaged for the last five plus years and snap it up. If you could buy any car company, that's the one you'd buy, right? Tesla is the best fit for Apple. They're just overvalued because people believe

that Elon Musk is gonna create lots of value with his AI and his robots, as opposed to the truth, which is they've got some really interesting electric cars that have been mismanaged for five years because the guy who runs the company is distracted by other stuff. No one would be happier than Mark Gurman if Apple or Tesla, because then they would like the robots, you know? Oh, God, the robots. Imagine the robot arms that they could build if they had Tesla. If I was Apple, I would say you can keep the robots, Elon. Keep your AI and your robots.

It's because they're building their own robots, Jason. They don't need it. They got their own robots. Apple I would I would say you can keep the robots see you like AI and your robots they got a tabletop robot already I'm gonna pick one that is purely self-serving whoop because if they bought whoop it would mean that they wanted to build non watch health products which I still desperately want Apple to make so I can get my health and my Apple health date of my rings and wear a regular watch. I want that more than anything and they won't do it but I wish they would just give me a bracelet or a pendant or whatever I don't care I just want to wear my nice watches I don't want to have to wear the computer watch all the time, but I also really love having the health data So I'm kind of stuck

This one is not it's not new But it really fits in with what we're saying which is at some point it's fool me This is the fool me twice shame on you portion category which is Sonos. Uh, the beleaguered Sonos, you mean? So they're a little beleaguered. The thing is they make really impressive products. And look, I have HomePods, but who are we?

Let's, let's, let's be honest with ourselves. This is what you need as an Apple executive. When you're talking to people who are saying, like, no, we're great, we got rock stars. Is Apple decided to get into the smart speaker business and make nice sounding speakers that also could be controlled by voice. How do we think that's gone?

And I've got a couple of HomePods in the other room, but like, let's be honest. Let's not say like, well, but they're, let's be honest. The Home, whoa, before Lauren left for work this morning, she's like, you're really full of it today. And I'm like, yeah, I think I am. And it's not just the tea. The HomePods a failure.

I mean, the HomePods a failure. And the products are- The whole product line's a failure. I mean, the HomePod's a failure. The whole product line is a failure. The products are fine, but if you think about our expectations when Apple started doing the HomePods, first off, the Siri part is a failure because Siri is a failure, and maybe they'll fix that. But who buys HomePods? They're not that good. They're very expensive. The people who should be buying HomePods? Like they're not that good, they're very expensive.

Like the people who should be buying HomePods are buying Sonos stuff. The Sonos stuff is better, there's more of it, it's more varied, it's more interesting. They're kinda on hard times here. This is one of those examples where like the best time to buy Sonos was probably 10 years ago, but the next best time is today.

Because they're better at it than Apple, and whoever is doing this stuff at Apple, and again, I'll say, maybe it's that they're understaffed. Maybe it's that they're not a priority. That's fair. Like maybe the people who are working at Apple on HomePod are like, Hey, trust me, we know, but we just can't. Like, I get it. But like, I'm so sick of Apple saying we care about a product category, so we're gonna enter it and then not try. Like either don't enter it or try. So I would say at this point,

you're gonna try to do a new Siri and all that. So you're clearly gonna try. But the stuff that they've done, like HomePods, it's embarrassing. It's just a failure. So, so by Sonos, they're in trouble, but their base is pretty good and they're very Apple in the sense that they sell expensive products, probably at really good margins, but they've built a whole product set with with a sound bar that Apple doesn't make and portable speakers and like, I don't know.

It used to be a cliche to say Apple should buy Sonos but I feel like it's come all the way back around where Apple should just buy Sonos. Especially they're worth like a billion dollars now or something, Sonos. Like it feels like something they should consider. Practically free. Yeah.

A billion dollars, cheap. Their peak was, I don't know, their share price. So their share price right now is $9.93, Sonos. Their peak in 2021 was $39. That's rough times. But I love my Sonos products. So I would like Apple to buy them and then keep them, you know, like keep them going. Like they do Beats. Oh yeah, like Beats. Because I don't want Sonos to go away because I love my Sonos products.

Like Beats. Yeah. And I think Sonos, at least it's just response to people that like people that buy their stuff love their stuff. Sure. Until they do something weird. But I like the new Apple. The history of the HomePod shows either a lack of ability or a complete neglect on Apple's part.

And maybe that means they shouldn't be in this category at all, but they're in this category, they don't seem to be leaving, and they're doing more stuff with AI and voice, which means that they're really, and they've got a new home product that we talked about. They're doing some stuff. So, okay, if you're gonna do this, you should try harder.

And do better. So I have one more for you. This is gonna solve two things. So we're talking about gaming now, right? No, it's not Nintendo. People need to stop that. You should never have said it in the first... I'm so happy about Nintendo.

Everyone was like, ah, Apple should buy Nintendo. And people that care about video games like, no, they shouldn't. And then they release a Switch and then amazing. So Apple is always talking about games, right? They have a commitment to games. They love games.

And they want everyone to know that they're a leader in gaming. So that's one thing. Do you know what Apple also loves? They love money, Jason. And do you know what they would love? A storefront. So I recommend they buy Valve. Valve and Steam. Along with some excellent IP, but they should just buy Valve and then imagine everyone publishing their PC games via an Apple-owned company. It will boost their gaming ambitions. They'll be able to make even more money from commissions. Happy days for nobody.

And we move along. Val, first of all. 10 billion. Just pick it off. Do it. Sure. OK, talk about corporate culture. This would have to be one of those admission things too.

This, this is a recurring theme in this episode, but it's like, okay. You're in that meeting and you're like, Hey, Hey gaming people, how's it going? It's like, ah, we're killing it. We're killing it in games. We got, we got that game developer toolkit and we got like metal is, the new metal is awesome. And like, we're just killing it in games. That's great. And then the senior executive goes, no, really.

And that person is like, oh yeah, it's hopeless. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm sorry, you want my actual answer? It's hopeless. Well, this, I'm not saying it would work, but like, if you really wanna have a part of your culture that actually cares about, understands, and thinks about games all the time,

I think you almost have to import it because Apple just can't do it, has never been able to do it, still can't do it. It's just not, you would need a division inside your company that you purchased that was completely focused on this and that would completely replace the existing culture of your approach to games.

Like you would have to do it. They did it with TV. This is how they made TV work. They imported an infrastructure. They brought in people from the TV world, right? And said, you do this because on our own, we make carpool karaoke. That's what we do. You know, right in that case, they, they, you could argue that then they just need to set up a game studio somewhere else and hire a couple of brilliant executives and have them go to town.

Because that's what they did with TV. I think the argument there is that it's just too close to Apple's core business and that there are going to be issues there. But if you make a big purchase and you empower a lot of people who are senior at your purchase company to define the culture, you could maybe make a difference. I don't know if it makes sense or not, but like, that's the idea here really ultimately is what are the parts of Apple, if Apple wants to buy something, what are the parts of Apple that for all their talk, just can't do the job? And could you buy something and bring it in and not, and I would say ideally not crush it, right? Ideally, it would become an engine inside your

company for change, not something that gets crushed. Like, PASMI, I keep coming back to it, but that was an engine to change the culture of Apple in terms of making chips. And it made a huge difference. What you don't want to do is buy something. All the values in the leadership, they all cash out and are gone. The culture is crushed. It's never allowed to be what it needs to be. And then you just wasted $10 billion, right? Nobody wants that. Yeah, like realistically, no, they shouldn't buy Valve, but they could maybe buy like a really good game publisher that could help them bring in new games. You know, like someone who's like really respected and could help them kind of like bring new stuff on board.

Because like realistically, if they bought Valve, they would crush it. They just would because everything's made for PC. So Zoe and Discord is written panic and then immediately struck it through. But that's, yeah, I mean, yes, they know video games. Yeah, but that's panic's whole point is that they are who they are. I think that's not what you want. It would be hilarious for Apple to

own the playdate. Be white to make white playdate. Yep. I want to move on I want to just talk to you real quick about the Apple intelligence transcription stuff that I've been seeing a bunch of people post about including you. So OTJ John Voorhees wrote an article at Mac Stories that shows off what Apple's new speech transcription APIs can do. And he had his son put together like a command line tool to use. Is it the speech analyzer APIs? Is that what it's, it's called? I think. Something like that. There are,

there are a couple different APIs that are being used to do it, but yeah, it's Speech Framework. He was really impressed with the response that he got considering how fast that response was, and I think you were playing around with it too. So I wanted to get your experiences with it. Yeah, I'm using mostly for transcriptions, I'm using Whisper, the C++ Whisper project, and I'm using v3 turbo, and it's fast. Apple's thing is faster. I feel like this is one of those cases where Finn Voorhees should not have to build a project to do

this. That there should probably be, Apple should probably make a transcribe command line app in Tahoe that does this I was listening to app source today and apparently is that there's a shortcut which I haven't seen so I don't have my app Having me today, but there is a transcribe shortcut It doesn't let you choose the output so it just comes out as text and the nice thing about the API is you can choose SRT I think subtitle format right I see and I already filed I. And I already filed the feedback about it saying you should be able to shortcut, should let you pick. Cause the shortcut solves it for in a lot of areas is just use a shortcut.

Although I would argue more broadly that if you can do something via a shortcut, you should probably be able to do it via command line. Um, and instead you end up with these commands that had end up calling a shortcut in the middle of them, because that's where you have to get it. Technically you can, but that's not what you're asking for. Right? I mean, I literally did that today. Maybe I'll mention that in a second. So anyway, it is way faster, like way faster than then, uh, turbo V three, which is fast at doing transcriptions. It's way faster.

It's less accurate. Okay. Well, I mean that comes to being fast, right? I think that it's just all about trade-offs. It would be nice in the long run. If apple let developers and shortcuts users. Yes. Um, make some choices about, you know, a little slower, more accurate or a little faster, less accurate. That might come in time.

Because Whisper does that. Whisper has different models. And these are, Whisper is from OpenAI. It's actually a few years old. And that's probably why Apple is so much faster in some ways, but it is, yeah, it's mostly like capitalization and punctuation, but also like phrases like whisper. It looks to me like whispers context window is a little bit wider. And the point there is that if you if you do a transcription based on a word at a time, you have to just use the sound of that word to guess what that word is. Your accuracy will be poor, because you don't know any of the context. If you have a large context window, and you know the whole paragraph, and you know what that sound is, not only do you know that sound, but you can infer from the context of the entire paragraph of what that word probably is. And good transcription engines do that. They're like, oh, that must be. In fact, at one of the transcriptions I tried, I said something like, gotta, and Whisper was like, got to. It was like, it knew it it knew it like corrected my speech. Oh, they, they were, yes, exactly.

So it looks to me like Apple's model because it's fast probably is has a little narrower context window. And so it missed some turns of phrase and trans and did a more literal transcription of them. But still pretty good and super fast. And keep in mind, on device, which is very good, and probably the reason that model is a little more lightweight is that they wanted to work well on an iPhone, too, and not just a Mac, at decent speed. Anyway, I'm very impressed by it.

You use this for things like, I mean, I use this to generate podcast transcripts or subtitles for YouTube, podcast transcripts that are searchable or... Why do you want to provide subtitles for YouTube? Like YouTube does it themselves. Do you find it to whisper to be better? Whispers are much better than YouTube subtitles. Much better? Okay. Good to know. Much better. Maybe YouTube will update them, but I think that they're using a very low cost model because they're transcribing everything on YouTube.

And I found that when I make an actual SRT based on our audio, it just is better. It just looks better. I don't think they're even using an LLM for that. They've had like speech detection transcripts forever. It's some sort of machine learning something, but it's not very good in my opinion. So, and then Apple added this thing,

which is really funny. Apple added this thing where they support transcripts for podcasts. And for most public podcasts, they transcribe it themselves. You don't have to do anything. They do all that work for you, which is great. But they don't do it for private podcasts. If it's not in Apple's podcast directory,

they don't generate a transcript. And there's a format for putting transcript URLs in RSS feeds. And so for some incomparable members' podcasts, I generate a transcript. OK. Now, and I generate a transcript. Okay now the and I filed a feedback about this but the problem is Apple will let a public podcast say I I would rather you use my transcript than your Transcript and it will honor that so it can see that transcript tag in the RSS feed

But if it's a private podcast that transcript tag in the RSS feed. But if it's a private podcast, even though the transcript is in the feed in Apple podcasts app, it won't load the transcript file. Now there are some reasons for that. They do some processing of the transcript and magic stuff, but like it's very frustrating as a person who's got some members only podcasts that I can hand them a transcript and they don't want it, they don't want to show it. By the way, Pocket cast does pocket cast supports that

format and it were they just started doing transcripts a little while ago like yeah like for public shows too like pocket cast makes transcripts now which is really cool yeah and this technology is making it easier for podcast apps to do that sort of thing I think they're all gonna do it and and this sort of tech will help I love Apple's Podcasts it's so good I find a multiple times in the last few months like I've been looking for things that I said in podcasts and I find them By going through the transcripts of my shows and Apple podcast. Yeah, it's really good. So

Basically the short version of this is Apple is building a model or has built a model that's in the betas that is a very fast, pretty good transcription engine, which is going to have lots of uses. Now, I should say it's not a dictation engine, it's a transcription engine. The reason for that is dictation engines tend to have a narrower context window and they are trying to be as real time as possible. It's just a little different. And they do have a context window because they'll sometimes go back and fix things that they initially transcribed one way and then they're like, no, no, no, it was actually this way. Anyway, it's a little bit different tech, but it's pretty cool

and it can be used in lots of different ways to generate subtitles and transcriptions. And it's awesome that that's gonna be built in. Because again, there are other tools out there. Also, honestly, Mike, you know, I tell people about like how I generate transcripts and they're like, oh, how do I do that? And I'm like, well, you go to the whisper.cpp GitHub page or you download Mac whisper, right?

But like, there are ways to do it, but to have it just be in the system, that's pretty great. That's where you can just take an audio file, take any file that has audio in it and say transcribe this and it does it. That's pretty awesome. I have one bonus here. Bonus, stuff that's in the new in the 26 releases, which is I realized yesterday, I was thinking about like, I really want to figure out something useful that I could do. Now that in 26, shortcuts has access to the on device model, the private cloud compute model. So I could like build a shortcut that's got an AI something step in it. And like it's really great in theory,

but the question is like, is there somewhere in my workflows that's practical where I could use this? And I thought of it yesterday and I built it today in no time, which is I have a script that takes an image on my computer or on my iPad, resizes it to the right size, optimizes it, uploads it to six colors,

gets back the URL that it's going to be at, and then generates an HTML fragment of the image. So I say this image, go boop-boop, it runs. What I get back is the thing I can paste into my story, that is the whole HTML image reference so that the image shows up in my story. Just a great shortcut, as opposed to opening WordPress and uploading the file and then grabbing the URL and then going back in and then typing, you

know, angle bracket image source equals paste, close quote, close, right, like I don't have to do any of that. So it's great. Saves me a lot of time. Well, today, I added a step, which is silly, because it's a shortcut that I have to call from an Apple script. Come on, people. But the net result is that now, when I do this thing, or I drag a file into BB editor or whatever to I execute my script It puts that HTML there with alt text describing the image

Because it sends the image to the private cloud compute model because you can't do images on the local model it turns out for now And says I have a little thing that's like give me back alt text for this image. You know, don't use double quotes, because it'll break the alt tag. And if it's a screenshot, please include the text that's in the screenshot. And, you know, I uploaded that picture of the cat that I took it at Apple Park. And it responded and it was like, this is a tabby cat sitting on concrete

with a purple flower near it. And I'm like, oh my God, that's exactly what it is. And so now I literally, I do this and the HTML includes as the alt text, the content of the image. Now I know you could do this with other LLMs and all that, but like that it's stock Apple and it has the ability for me as a regular user

to analyze an image and generate a description of it without my interaction. Like that is cool. It also means we are headed for a world where more and more of this stuff will be built into our third-party apps, which is pretty great, right? The idea that your third-party apps will be able to just do a little bit of AI stuff in the background to make their app features better. I love that. So, but there are so many of those little things that will be better, right? Like that you would attach an image in ivory and it would just say, hey, here's some alt text for you, would you like to use it? You know what I mean?

Well, that absolutely should. I don't know why apps don't do that, but one reason is that it's very expensive. Yeah, they don't want the cost, which I understand. They don't want the cost. What will really help here is if Apple's on-device model supports images, which it doesn't. I think right now, which is too bad, it needs to do that. But I also had a funny moment where I was testing this out, and I uploaded my full photo to private cloud compute, and it took forever to get a response. And I was like, huh.

And then I, so I put in a resize step and I said, resize this down to like 800 wide and then upload it. And then it was almost instantaneous. So all of the delay was in having a big image. It's like, I don't need it to be that big. I just need you to tell me what's in it. So I'm excited about that

because that was just one thought I had just passing through my mind where I was like, Oh, I could use this to generate alt text, probably a caption to but the fact is, most of my captions for six colors, I am making a point referring to the actual text of the article. So like, I'm not writing having it write a caption for me, just the alt text. And obviously, I can see the alt text and I can decide but like, just the alt text. And obviously I can see the alt text and I can decide, but like, how great is that that I put that cat in there? Or the one where it really gets me is screenshots, where having the text of the screenshot already be in there is really good so that I don't have to just say like, this is a screenshot containing these words, it's like it's just in there. It's pretty great. So I'm sure I will find other uses to it. But that was just like a little moment of I built a shortcut that tied into an

Apple script that uses private cloud compute to generate an alt text for an image like this. Yes, more like this, please. Jason, we just recently passed five years of Upgrade Plus. And let me tell you. And Apple Silicon. And Apple Silicon. The Upgradians love it. They love it, Jason. They're loving it. Over time, the Upgradian Pluses have grown,

and we're very thankful for people that sign up. The reason they love it is because they get longer ad-free episodes every week, and they get tons of other benefits for being a member of the show. They get access to the relay members discord, a bunch of other relay members content that they get every month. We say this before we say it again, our platform provider member for tell us that we have the lowest churn that they see, like which basically means when people sign up to become members, they get content,

they don't wanna leave. And what that tells you is they love it. So why don't you join? Go to getupgradeplus.com, you can sign up. It's a great price. You can get $7 a month or $70 a year, which is an even better price, right? You get like two months for free if you pay for a year.

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You won't hear us talk about any of our sponsors. And you get longer content. You get bonus content. This week, we're gonna talk a little bit about Jason and kind of re-architecting his studio space. Like if you watch the video version, you'll see that Jason has a new background. So we're going to talk a little bit

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Sign up today. Thank you so much. Let's finish today with some Ask Upgrade Questions. Anthony Wrightson says, on the video demoing Workout Buddy for Apple Watch, we see the woman put an iPhone in her pocket. Does that mean that Workout Buddy would not work without the iPhone with you?

Correct. As a bummer, right? Like I get it. And like, so you can go on Apple's page and it says requires an Apple intelligence enabled iPhone nearby and Bluetooth headphones with device and Siri language set to English. That's the requirements. It's generating all of that stuff, looking at your health data on your iPhone.

And I'm a little disappointed that there isn't like a private cloud version of this, but it would have to send all your health data, which is a lot in order to get those insights. And so this is, yeah. So those of us who run with just our watches don't get this. Honestly, I think an outdoor run was the wrong thing to show.

Yeah. That person should have been running on a treadmill. Yeah, I think I agree with you, yeah. Because I think outdoor runners that love the Apple watch love it because they don't have to take their phone with them. I would have liked to have seen them try to solve this problem somehow. And maybe the answer is you really just need more power on the Apple Watch in order to like, and the Apple Watch doesn't have all your health data, right?

I think that's part of the problem is that your health data ultimately is on your iPhone. This is too beefy for an iPhone. It just is way too beefy for an iPhone, for Apple Watch, sorry, for an Apple Watch. And here's what really kind of bugs me about this is really what they need to do is they need to make it that if you take a cellular watch away from your iPhone and the iPhone is on the internet

and your cellular watch is on the internet, they should be able to talk to each other. Right? Yeah. They should be able to say, oh, and maybe the answer is that they, they tried that and it's just the Apple watch maintaining the cellular connection really hurts the battery and it's really not reliable. And that may be, I, you know, I usually am listening to podcasts

when I'm out with the dog. There's also an inconsistency problem, right? Where it's like, what if you left your phone at home and your phone had 19% battery was like, then you can't do the exchange. So then you you left your phone at home and your phone had 19% battery? Well, like then you can't do the exchange. So then you just put your phone on charge every time, you know? What I was going to say is that is that when I'm streaming like connected live, there are dropouts because the cellular is not whereas when I'm just listening to a podcast, I'm not really constantly hitting the cell network. And so that is meaningful. So anyway, yeah, that's the short version

is there's lots of reasons why, but basically, yes, Workout Buddy, which I've heard from some people who say that it provides, my complaints about the demo, Mike, include the fact that the demo was the worst. That I've heard people say, oh, Workout Buddy actually says some interesting and insightful things about you. It's like, that's not what I heard. When I got this demo say, oh, workout, that he actually says some interesting and insightful things about you. It's like, that's not what I heard.

When I got this demo, it was literally just, you know, great workout. You did this in this many minutes per mile and the total, and it's literally just the data that's on the watch when you end the workout. That's what the demo showed that too. Like I didn't find the demo to really be that insightful. Like you ran for the fifth time this month.

It's like, okay, like great. Yeah, if workout buddy is more than that, I would like to see it, but the demo does not encourage me because it feels very much like it's not interesting. And if it works for you, I guess that's great. But I was, this is the personas of two years ago. This is this year's personas where I got the workout buddy video and I was

like, Nope. And then I got the demo in person and I thought, Nope, this is terrible. And, uh, I stand ready to be convinced otherwise, but using my product judgment today, I would say workout buddy is lousy because it doesn't add anything except a voice shouting at you things you already probably knew. Jason writes in, not this Jason, another one, and says the iPad OS 26 features look great. I'm curious if they only work when you attach a keyboard and mouse trackpad to the iPad. As a touchscreen only user will I have access to these new features such as windowing, window resizing, menu bar,

etc. Yes, one of the surprises of this announcement is there were rumors about oh it'll be a special desktop mode and you'll have to nope if you turn on windowing mode you can use it without a without anything you can resize the windows with your finger you can swipe down to reveal the menu bar and then trigger menu commands by tapping. Like it's all there. You don't have to have an external anything to use it. I think if you saw it, right?

If you just saw it, you'd be like, oh, there's no way that that's gonna be a touchscreen mode, right? But it's like, no, it does work. I mean, look, it works so much nicer with a keyboard and a track pad, but you don't need that. Absolutely not. CJ says, are you surprised that Apple had nothing to say about Pixelmator at WWDC?

I'm not, because that acquisition was relatively recent, and it usually takes them more time to digest something. I did find it funny that at some point, they use it as an example app in a demo, right? It's like, for example, Pixelmator. I'm like, mm-hmm, I know what you did there. I see what you did.

I mean, they also didn't say anything about pages, right, and numbers. Like, it's just, it's an app also didn't say anything about pages, right? And numbers. Like it's just, it's an app now that they have and it's a photo editing app. And if you were expecting it to be integrated into photos or something like that, it's too soon for that. And I don't think it should be. I think Pixelmator should remain out there.

I think Pixelmator is really powerful and cool, but too complicated to integrate some of those, like most of those features into photos. I would like a PhotoMator features to be in photos, some of those, but which I think they will, I'm sure they will. Elijah says, I recently bought a house, any favorite home kit devices or brands

that I should look into? What do you think? I would say by and large, Akara is really good for like, they just, they kind of do everything and I have a bunch of their products and I like all of them. Their setup is a little weird but you can use them purely in the home app if you want to. You don't get all the features if you just use them in the home app but you can do that. In general though, if you're looking for good recommendations, my

go-to person on HomeKit stuff is Shane Watley and I'll put a link to his YouTube channel so you can just go watch Shane's videos and Shane will tell you what to buy and what to buy but Like he's someone who's really focused on building like the best home kit home stuff Also, but Eric we landed to in that in that bucket Eric recently restarted his channel So I recommend those two as people that like really pay attention to this stuff. So you can kind of dip in and get what you need from them. And my unreserved endorsement goes to Lutron Casita switches.

Not every light bulb in your house needs to be smart. Sometimes all you need is the switches to be smart. And then you can tell the switches what to do with your light switches, you know, your light bulbs or whatever. So I've got Lutron Caseta switches. I've had them for years. They are rock solid.

They never let me down. And they have other benefits. It turns out that in addition to being in HomeKit, like they come with a remote control that you can control. So like we now have like a light, a lighting remote control on our, on our coffee table in our living room. I use that way more,

it turns out than HomeKit to press the button and the lights come on or make them a little dimmer or a little brighter. That's pretty awesome too. So I've been very happy with them. They've got a bunch. They came out with a new design that's actually a little less weird.

It's a looks more like a traditional rocker switch than the one that I have, which has got a bunch of buttons on it. But it still does the exact same stuff. So yeah, I highly recommend Lutron smart stuff, the Caseta brand especially. If you would like to send in a question of your own for us to answer in a future episode of the show, go to Upgradefeedback.com. If you have follow follow up, you can set it in there too, feedback as well. Hey, maybe you have a good idea for a summer of fun topic, you have something fun and weird you want us to do.

Go to upgradefeedback.com, let us know. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up today. You can find us on YouTube, you can search for the Upgrade Podcast and you'll find a video version of us there. You can see us hanging out, you can see Jason's got some new stuff behind him. We can see we're wearing some fun t-shirts, you know.

You can see who's the draft champion. You can find out at any time by watching us on YouTube. I'd like to thank our sponsors for this episode, that is ExpressVPN and FitBod for their support. But as always, most of all, thank you for listening, and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye Jason Snow. Goodbye, my curly.