Upgrade - 583: It Feels So Good to Be Right

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 583 for September 29th, 2025. Today's show is brought to you by eCAM. Hello, Fresh, Claude, and Zbiotics. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Hello, far away, Mike Hurley. We are back apart. Back in our respective locations.

We're trying to bring the energy this morning because it's Monday morning. Monday, Monday, Monday. It's hard sometimes Monday evening to do a podcast when you just woke up from a weekend. But I do it every week. So it's good to be back,

although, of course, it was great to be in Memphis in person. Correct. I have a snow talk question for you. Yeah. Nathan writes in and says, I'm going to be trying curling for the first time very soon after years of wanting to do you have any advice for a first time curler or so what was it that got

you into the sport jason i i have zero advice listen to the people who are going to give you uh your advice about it other than to say that it's it's easy to pick it up you have to learn how to you know what the rules are and how to throw the rock but you're you basically almost anybody can do it you just kind of crutch down and push a rock out like there's not a lot to it and then they'll teach you the details so pay attention um what got me into it is is actually, it's good timing. Seeing it in the Winter Olympics is how I got into it. And we, Lauren and I would watch the Winter Olympics curling,

and we were fascinated by it. And we would do that every four years. And I set like a season pass on my TiVo at one point to like get curling events. And, you know, they're watchable and interesting. And we always thought about doing it. But it was always too far away. And then the last Winter Olympics four years ago, that we discovered they had just opened a new facility in Oakland,

which was drivable for us, more drivable than the, far off South Bay where they used to do it. And, um, and so we signed up just as Nathan has for a, uh, try curling session. And, uh, that's it. So we've been almost doing it for four years now. And we expect the club is gearing up for an influx of curious people around the winter Olympics. So we're trying to get that all set up so that we can make them, um, make, make them, uh, our guests and hopefully convert some of them to become, uh, to become curlers. Because it's fun. And it's, I realize that it's such an outlier among, you know, people I know and I talk to, but it's really not any different than playing tennis or golf or bowling or whatever. It is, it's just a, it's just a sport that you do a couple times a week. And this is ours. So I will also say that this, um, yesterday, um, I was playing, uh, third, which meant that I was doing a lot of sweeping. And, um, I always do an Apple Watch.

workout because it's curling workout is in there but it's kind of funny because if I'm skipping if I'm calling the shots my heart rate doesn't go up very much but we did so much sweeping on Sunday and I looked and like I was in zone I was in zone two for a very long time which does not usually happen so it's good for the old ticker so it good the sweeping is really good the problem is that you sweep and sweep and sweep and then you're expected to immediately shoot yes and that's I was thinking it's like biathlon you know the sport where they make you ski a lot, and then you have to very precisely shoot a target. That is such an incredible mixture, those two things.

It is bizarre, but when you think about it, you realize what it is is, they're going to get your heart rate up as high as possible, and then you have to hold absolutely still. And that is a real skill, and a real physical skill. And you've used your arms a bunch, too, right? So, like, you've used that. And you've used your arms a bunch. Yeah, and that's the idea is that they're stressing you out. And there's historic reasons for biathlon.

I think it's like soldiers in cold climates would have to be skilled at moving and shooting, right? Like, anyway, curling, you know, if you've swept a lot and then you have to do a shot, it is very hard sometimes to not just chuck that thing as fast as possible because your heart is racing. You're going to be like, settle it down. Anyway, I find it fun, and I think lots of people would find it fun. So Nathan, I hope you find it fun. And everybody else out there, maybe check out the curling at the Winter Olympics, just see if you've got a curling club near you.

They will almost certainly have a lesson series or an intro class. And I will say this about the curling culture. It is incredibly friendly and welcoming. That's what it's all about. Nathan, right back in. Let us know how it goes once you've done your course. A tasted session. I'd love to know.

If you have a snow talk question that you would like to hear us begin an episode with in the future, just go to Upgradefeedback.com and you can send your Zen. September is ending. It is that time, which means our campaign for the wonderful kids of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is drawing to a close, but there is still time left. We're actually going to be keeping the campaign open until I think next Monday, but this will probably be the last time that we ask for your donations. Usually there's like a few days where like donation matching is rolling in.

Donation matching, by the way, very important. If you make a donation at st.jude.org slash relay, click the blue button when you make your donation for a donation matching because your employer may have St. Judean employment in their donation matching program and it will double your donation, which is fantastic. You don't even have to do anything except click that button. I think fill out just a small amount of information, and your donation can be doubled.

We do this throughout all of September to raise support and awareness. for Chartered Cancer Awareness Month. And we have been, as a community, raising money for St. Jude since 2019. So this is the seventh time we've done this. I will never understand how that math works, but it is the seventh time that we've done this. And in that time, Jason Snow, I'm very happy to report that as of today, as a community, we have now passed over $4.7 million raised for the kids of St. Jude. that happened this morning, as we are very close to the time of recording this to $640,000 raised

this year, thanks to the incredible generosity of our audience. But they do it, you know, people get involved for a very good reason. It's because this stuff is super, super important. And St. Jude is really at the forefront of doing this work. And it's cancer research, it's childhood cancer research, it's prevention, it's cures, it's the whole nine yards, you know, looking after the family, and also sharing the information that they have, including medicine worldwide. So, for example, in April of 2025, St. Jude announced that childhood cancer medicines

had been delivered to five countries, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Ecuador, Nepal, and Zambia. This effort is part of the global platform for access to childhood cancer medicines, a collaboration between St. Jude, the World Health Organization, and other global partners. And this initiative aims to reach more than 120,000 children in 50 countries in the next seven years. And, you know, I know we talk about this a lot through the month, but we do it for a reason. It's important to all of us. It's important to us to raise money to, in part, thank St. Jude for saving Josiah Hackett's life, but also for, as the years have gone on, because of all of the things that we see that they do, close at hand. Absolutely. You know, first, firsthand. And we got to see Domino's Village this time where I just, people have heard this throughout the month. And, um, And just to restate this, they, they have the coverage that for the families who have children with cancer, we talk a lot about like they don't get any bills and you think, oh, isn't that nice not to get a doctor's bill? But it's like, they pay for travel.

They put them up. They don't just put them up in hotels. They build buildings with apartments. And so Domino's Village is a great example of we went in there. you know, one, two, and three bedroom apartments with kitchens attached to a facility with lots of external rooms and cafeteria and an outside play area. And that's just there for families who are staying at St. Jude, I think presumably in that facility for a little more extended periods of time. That means their kids are having treatment

for a week or two or three or four, you know, even longer. and they get a place to live because they don't have a place to live in Memphis. And that's covered, right? Like, all of it is covered. So St. Jude is covering the families and they're paying the doctors. And they're paying the buildings full of researchers to do studies because they're not just treating kids, but they're also doing research to create new treatments. It really is the more time I spend there, the more I realize that it is an A to Z kind of anti-cancer.

organization. It is covering all bases and the patient families don't pay a dime. It's amazing. So if for any reason you've been thinking to yourself, I've got to donate this year, I've got to donate you and you haven't. This is your last call to do that. This is us waking you up when September ends. Exactly. That is a great way to speak. Please go to st.jude.org slash relay. Just give whatever you can. It doesn't matter how big, how small. It truly doesn't because, you know, we could have tens of thousands of people giving small gifts and that goes an awful long way. I'll tell you. In fact, we actually do. That is what happens. I'll say that. We do. That is what happens. We do. This community is not made up of a whole bunch of money bags

who are tossing in millions of dollars. It's not CEOs of, I mean, there are some people who do big donations and it's amazing. But when you talk to the people at St. Jude, what they will tell you is Relay's community is remarkable because, and so many of these online communities, the gamers that we meet with the game streamers at the Play Live event that they do in the spring that we go to where we're the outliers because we're the tech podcasters among all these video game streamers. But like the remarkable thing is we're all about those folks and us about bringing communities of people together who don't have a lot of money, but we'll reach into their pocket and make even, you know, lots and lots and lots of small nodations make a difference

too. It doesn't always have to be, you know, the CEO of a big company who rolls in and puts his name on a sign, right? Like, it's just any big corporation. Like, you know, I see, I do see this in other, like, how the community isn't a part of, like, they do a fundraiser and the platform that they're streaming to will donate a bunch of money or whatever. But no, this is actually people. This is our listeners who are connected with what we care about, and they make donations. And then together we're, we're like hunting down on $5 million raised in this short time. So, saintejo.org slash relay, please give whatever you can. We really appreciate the efforts that you've shown this year.

Thank you so much. So in last week's episode, we had a question about companies that could make Mac clones. And I had a suggestion, you didn't have one, and I asked for listeners. Can I be clear here? Yes. Just to go back, we'll talk about this more in a minute, but just to go back to last, weeks episode, which was great. And I think it was kind of giddy and goofy and fun and all that. But to be clear about the level of brain power you and I were operating on. Yes. We had been in Memphis for almost a week, including a couple of rehearsal days, a 12 hour long podcastathon day, followed up by an early wake-up call the next day to go to sit in the 90-degree humidity in the sun to watch a college football game. And pre-due. dating the recording of that episode,

we spent like an hour trying to figure out how we were going to shoot video and hook up all this stuff and move furniture in your room and all of that. I'm just saying this follow-up is really good and I appreciate everybody here for like supporting us

because I was definitely a bear of very little brain during that episode. Especially, again, my brain was like whirring on the iPhone and stuff. I was thinking about the iPhone and stuff. And then there's this question of like what company would make a Mac

clone and it so requires creative thought on the spur of the moment and friends I didn't have it so Mike who had it for me who's got my back here Joel wrote in and suggested Dyson Mm-hmm great

Joseph suggested Cassio There are a ton of different vibes here by the way Amazing. Semikami wrote in to suggest Nintendo and a few people say Nintendo I don't think I would like Nintendo But they also I think this is an S-tier suggestion love from.

Just let Johnny do it again. You know, like, what would he do? That's cheating. It's cheating. You made it out of glass this time. That's cheating. Simon wants Yeti, the cooler people, to make it. I guess they would, you know,

new kind of cooling system, I guess you could put in a Mac if you just fill up the eyes. I mean, you don't want to insulate, though. You don't want to make a thermos with a Mac inside it because they've got real hot. Yeah. We have Chris recommended a company called Joseph Joseph, which I don't know if you know who they are, but I would say they are akin to

OXO. They make really nice kitchen and like appliances. And didn't I say, I think from the barest recess of my mind, I said OXO at one point. I think this is where Chris recommended that. I would just say there's a point of order in the Discord from Zoe saying Mac clone doesn't imply nice. Those 90s clones really weren't about design. I would say Zoe that everybody here is suggesting what they would like, not what they think would be bad. What they would like? That was the question was what you would like, not what would it be? This isn't who's making the worst products. This is making the good products. Joseph, it makes me think that what I should have said last week is, obviously Mark Jacobs, because then we could have had like a Mac by Mac from Mark Jacobs courtesy of Mark Jacobs

by Mac, concerted of Mark Jacobs. And that would be hilarious. I'm still not, you know, I don't It's like an Apple with an Apple in the Apple logo, and then it says Apple, and the A is an Apple, like that. I don't need clarification on this, so don't write in. I don't believe that label's real. You know, like, that's been going around the internet forever. I don't believe anybody actually made that label. It doesn't matter now, if it's real or not. It doesn't.

It's in history. Sam recommended Bethesda, the video game company, because of Fallout. So they make Fallout, like the way that technology is and Fallout. So they design a weird Fallout tech thing. James Thompson would buy one of those. 50s era, like future tech, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, I like it. And as recommended fellow, fellow make, like, coffee gear.

I think you may have a fellow product that you might not know that you have, Jason, which was the WWDC-2023 insulated coffee mug things. They're in the swag bags. Which one is that? The car to move mug. Oh, yes, I do have that. I bought another one. one the David Smith bought.

Yep. I have two of those because I have my WWC one and I liked it so much. It is my favorite travel mug period. So I bought a second.

So imagine them making a laptop. I mean, they could stick a whole Mac Pro inside one of those little canisters if they wanted to. Exactly.

Stefan recommended Framework, so they're the PC people who make really repairable things. Interesting. Stephen recommended Belroy. They're my favorite, like, wallet company.

I have no idea what that would look like. I have two of their backpacks. I just don't know what it would be. It's a backpack Mac? Backback. Jonathan recommended peak design, so I guess the two of them together could make backpack max. Tom recommended Unify.

So they're ubiquity people. I know you're not a fan of ubiquity. I heard about that recently. And Peter recommended the pen brand Lami. Specifically, Jason, you would like this because they do multiple limited edition colors a year. Yeah. So it'll be all about colors. Let's do that.

I think we're all in agreement that a company that is going to have lots of colors would be a winner. Yep. And actually, that was one of the things that Stefan said, because Framework just did a bunch of colors on their laptops. And I'll put in Cortex brand. Oh, thank you. That's great. Yes, what could they do? What could they do?

Just made a paper. It's a paper Mac. You mentioned a minute ago about us setting up for video. What is your final verdict on final cut camera and final. Cup for iPad for making last week's episode because we didn't know at that point. Obviously, we didn't know. It was like left as a cliffhanger for the listener about we didn't know what was going to happen. I'm going to write about this too, I think, because I have not seen a lot of real world experience with this. Because remember, in I would say spring of

24, Apple did the, because it was the thing where I went to New York and they did a demo in New York at their thing about the new iPad and Final Cut camera. And so the idea was you set up an iPad and a bunch of cameras. And you can use the iPad to like view what the cameras are seeing live and adjust their settings and all of that, which I was looking forward to doing while we recorded until we realized that we couldn't connect a third camera. And so I had to use the iPad as a camera, which means that I couldn't control it while we were going.

It was not ideal. That part, that's my negative part of it is that we tried everything. You and I. Something just didn't work. And like it just, you know, you could say like maybe because it was my phone and Jason's camera, but I had three phones or whatever. And we had another one of your phones in there that did work. So you knows why. It was, it was not great. We tried everything from both ends there and like, nope, did not work. So that was a negative. But so what we got out of it for people who don't know, the other thing that was funny is I described this to people and they didn't know this thing existed. So they announced it. It's a thing that Apple announced that's pretty cool and that nobody seems to have remembered, which is. is Final Cut camera is not just a camera app on your iPhone. If you use it with Final Cut Pro on the iPad,

there is a mode in which Final Cut camera sends a streamed a signal to the iPad. You can have up to four cameras connected to that iPad. It's by Wi-Fi Direct, so you don't need to worry about the bad hotel Wi-Fi. It uses Wi-Fi Direct to stream these things to the iPad if you can connect them. And the iPad will be able to remotely control the settings on the cameras and set how they're all set up and then record and it streams it all live to the iPad and then at the end when you're done

it streams the full quality version it's like a proxy version but it will record super high you know 4K I think HDR and transfer that afterward and honestly by the time we finished upgrade plus because I stopped when we were done with upgrade by the time we finished upgrade plus all of the high res video files had transferred

and I was ready to walk out the door which I did because I had to go to the airport at the airport I went to my favorite place in the Memphis airport which is there's a little brew pub by gate six they've got a bunch of Adirondack chairs by the window you can look out on the airport and there's a QR code and they'll bring you a beer

done. I'm sitting there waiting for my flight and I get out the iPad and my AirPods and I start editing and Mike by the time I went to board my flight, the beer was gone, and the podcast was about 80% done. And the way we did this is you gave me your audio files. So you had two processed audio files of you and me that we sent on to Jim, our audio editor. So I had those and I had the video. So I'm in the final cut project, you get a multicam clip, which basically is like up to, in this case up before,

It was three different cameras, two iPhones and the iPad itself, which was the two shot. And then I added the audio of you and me. So I had sort of those tracks in there. And then I got Jamie to send me the image of the upgrade logo. And I put in our upgrade theme song audio files. And I did all of that part too. But the key central part of this is I can see the multicam clip and you can bring up like a little multi-cam switcher. And then there's like the two audio files.

because it was both of us on separate audio files I could see when you talked and I could see when I talked and that meant I didn't have to watch the whole show in order to direct what camera we were going to use I was able to just see oh well we both go back and forth here for a while that'll be in the two shot

and then I monologue for a while that'll be the one shot and then Mike monologues for a while and there were a couple moments where I opened a can during an ad read I want to recommend if you Even if you don't want to watch the episode, I recommend going to, and I'll say if you're an upgrade plus subscriber, then you wouldn't have seen this.

You didn't hear it. They're about 19 minutes and 35 seconds. That's the time code of the episode. I start reading an ad. Jason decides he wants to open a drink. I usually do this. I mute my microphone, but I couldn't do it. So I did it under the table.

It didn't work. It was very loud. And at that point, I just opened it over the. the table and stared at you. And you and so that moment, which was very funny, that's an example because I had just lived it. I made a more detailed set of choices for the camera angles because I thought it would be funny to show me smiling at you and then show you. So I did that in a few places. But mostly I was able to just use our audio tracks and get the and get the back and forth ready to go. I finished it like 20 minutes into the flight to Dallas from Memphis. It was so

fast to do that. There are things that I did wrong. I was worried about the speed of the transfer and the fact that I had to get to the airport. So I set the, I set the iPhones to do SDR at 1080 instead of 4K HDR. My mistake is because we were so flustered because we ended up having to use the iPad. I didn't set the iPad to record at SDR, which meant I had an HDR project with SDR video in it as a result the video is dimmer

than I would like it to be and I did not have the time or inclination to figure out how to adjust the brightness on clips in Final Cut on an iPad it just there is a point

but I will say this it was easy to do it looks pretty good I think it was great the alternative was literally just setting up a phone on a tripod and doing a two shot

of it and it's so much better than that and I will say this going forward if I need to capture video in a live setting this is how I will do it because it really was quite good and the way it works

it doesn't they don't need to be your phones they just need to you just need to pair them so assuming that we could successfully pair the phones it was a it worked out really well so it's a cool feature very limited use right you have to you have to have to have a multi-cam thing that you want to record but if you do

and you have an iPad and some iPhones Final Cut camera is free. You can also, you can subscribe to Final Cut Pro for iPad for $5 a month and then just cancel it after a month. That's what I did. It's pretty cool. So like thumbs up to Apple for that. And you can do, I recomposed the two shot of you and me because it was weird because I wasn't able to compose it with me sitting in the chair. And I was able to zoom in a little bit and figure out how to do that.

Again, figure out to do that on an iPad because I know how to do that on a Mac and Final Cut Pro, but not in the iPad. And yeah, so it was a cool experiment that also generated a unique video clip or video episode of upgrade for those who partake of such a thing. But it was fun to do just as an experiment as well. Yeah. Very cool. We had an anonymous person writing to say, I worked for one of the big three US telecom carriers and have heard that over the first 72 hours of pre-orders, the air made up less than 5% of sales. uh this also matches a statistic that mkbhd shared and in his video about the 17 pro from dbrand and like dbrand their case sales 5% of that makeup was the air he didn't do a very good job with

talking about the statistic in his video i think to kind of he extrapolated it out further than i i think makes sense um you also wrote an article about this this is one of the reason to hold this together on Macworld about kind of like how the shape of iPhone sales and I want to really quote from from your piece. The problem with reports about early iPhone sales is isn't that they're untrue, but that they're out of context. The type of people who rush into Apple stores in mid-September to buy new iPhones are not the same people who are buying iPhones the rest of the year. Yeah. I think it's, you know, it's that thing where on one level you get a sample and if it's a representative sample. That's all you need. And people are always skeptical about that. But having

seen how like online polls work in representative communities, I will say it's not always the case. But generally, if I open an online poll somewhere, you know, or I'm a participant in one and I can see it, you do that for a day. And then you can leave it open for another week. And unless there's, unless somebody like brings in their community to skew the results or something, The point is, once you reach a sample size that is representative, the numbers aren't going to change. 500 people who are a representative sample come and vote on something, and then you get 5,000, I'm telling you the percentages won't change. They won't. They won't because it's a representative sample. This is not a representative sample, is my argument here. It's partially a representative sample. It's not nothing. It's not like the air is going to suddenly flip over and be half the sales. That's not true. And I'll also say the air is in a slot that is the word. selling of the four, because it's always been the worst selling of the four. And one of the things we don't know here is, is this worse or better than the plus or the mini? But what I will say

is, I strongly suspect that the 17 and the air will sell better from December on than they are right now. And that's because the people who buy iPhones in September and October are people who really want the new iPhone. It's a lot of our community. Our community is very much skewed to the pro phones. And so I think this is worth watching because we don't know that. It may be a flop.

It may not be. It is, it was, like I said, it was already in the slot of two phones that if you want, you can call flops that were not good enough for Apple to maintain. But I feel like the air is going to get a little bit of wind in its sales from people seeing it. Yeah. And also from random, this effect, the random people on the street who need a new iPhone and they roll in in March to an Apple store and they go, whoa, what's this? And they're upgrading from an older phone. And because of their priorities, it's not as much of a compromise and they really like how thin and light it is. And that that is a, that is a, if this is a phone that is all about the vibes and not about the specs, then the people in our community who are all. all about the specs, of course, you're not going to like it, but that there is a probably a broader community. The point of my pie chart that I did is 40% of iPhone revenue happens

in Q3 and Q4 of Apple's fiscal year. In other words, the six months furthest away from the iPhone launch. And that's something that's always important to keep in mind is that first quarter, 36% it's true. And that's the holiday quarter. But then it's 24% and then 20 and then 20. So a lot of iPhones are sold not now. In fact, you could say 64% of iPhones sold are roughly. Two-thirds are not now in this high season for iPhones. It's absolutely the highest season.

It's very seasonal, I think, because of the newness of it and because of the holidays. I think that those are the things that drive it. But the rest of the year, they're still selling iPhones, right? And I think, and I have no figures to back this up. This is just kind of my logic here is, I suspect the numbers really change. This may also be one of the reasons that Apple's okay with doing a spring release of some of the iPhones that we've talked about over the last few years is the 16E came out in the spring. And the 16E, like, my mother and my mother-in-law bought a 16E. Like, they don't care.

They just needed a new phone. And that was a good phone for them. I think the composition will change. We'll see what happens in terms of the air in the long run. I think the air is a, we could argue that the air is a strategic product for Apple. That is also a product. And we'll see how it does,

but maybe its existence is more, like nobody should buy a product because it's strategic for Apple. That is the truth. But we have to think about that in our analysis of it. So more later on all of this. But I just, I wanted to, I did go through the numbers in a way that I had never done it before just to see like, what percentage of iPhone sales really do happen in that peak period? And you could say, yes, there's a week or two that's actually in Q3, right at the very beginning. And it's like, it's never a whole lot, but there is something there. But, you know, even if you say that, 20% of the sales are in Q4 where there is nothing happening. And it's like, that's a lot of phones that just get sold when nothing is happening. When we're just about to have new ones. yeah yeah right and the clock is ticking yeah so everybody in theory can and most people do know

there's a new iPhone every year yeah but they're still buying them anyway they still buy them in Q2 and Q3 yeah and Q4 so anyway that's the uh that that was my I wanted to check and see because I knew that that was the case but I wanted to put numbers on it of of how even when the iPhone is seasonal and everybody in our community feels like they're buying a new iPhone there are an awful lot of people who buy new iPhones in March and May and July

even though it's almost September in July they're still just buying they just need a new iPhone they don't care because they haven't bought an iPhone in five years so it's new to them

and it's something for us I think it's something for us in the tech forward bubble to keep in mind that there are some people who just don't care like we care and they are

a huge driver of iPhone sales so Apple cares Yeah, my kind of gut feeling on the air is that it it will outsell the Plus and the Mini

purely because people are talking about this phone like content is being made about it people are talking about it I don't remember the last time anyone really put that much attention in talking about the iPhone Plus model

I don't even really know if you would know it existed I don't know how much of this is is now kind of received wisdom and narrative versus reality but the story goes this is a good rest is history thing Mike it's the you know stories tell us that

it's the that's the cue when the historians are like oh this is probably made up the narrative goes that there are certain markets and those stats were from an American carrier right the stories go that in certain markets new looking phones sell better because there's a greater element of desire

to be seen with or to have I don't want to judge why but like to have a different looking phone and so if you have a really amazing iPhone but it looks exactly the same as last years there's less motivation to update and if that's true in certain markets presumably the air is going to sell better in those markets and I would not be surprised if we heard

that the air actually sells better Of course, the biggest market that is part of that narrative has issues with ESIMs that are an issue. It can't sell it in China. That's what I was about to mention. Yeah. Not yet. But they will, presumably. They will. We'll see. They will. Just got to get there. We'll see. This episode is brought to you by eCAM. If you're looking to get into video, you need eCAM. ECam Live is the leading video production and live streaming studio built for Mac. It's great for streaming, recording, podcasting and presenting. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need high-quality video. And with e-cam, you can screen-share, use multiple cameras, and even direct the show in real-time with their live-camera switcher.

It's great for simplifying your workflow, too, because you can do everything with the e-cam app. You get started quickly and have everything on hand to create whatever you need with video. Jason, we were just talking through charts and quarterly stuff when you do your live streams for every quarterly earnings results. You're using e-cam, right? Yep. That's right. We use ICAM live. I get Dan Morin in either on Zoom, which it integrates with or on ECAM's own video call platform, which they have connected to live. You can choose either one. And then I got the charts in a window and I've laid out the whole canvas there. And it's a really friendly experience. And we do that for the Total Party Kill streams too. I do. I have a layout for that. And I actually have multiple YouTube channels connected to it. And I have multiple. layouts, I think I called profiles in eCam Live,

something like that, where I've got sort of like pre-laid out for the D&D with all the branding, all the graphics, and for six colors with all the graphics, and so I can get that all set up fairly quickly. And yeah, it's great. It's my personal choice.

I've used a bunch of these options, and I like ECam Live because it feels so familiar to me. It's a great Mac app, and it feels like it, and I feel like there's no conference. in terms of performance, and I can do 4K streaming to YouTube, and it's not a problem. You can add your own stamp to videos of logos, titles, lower thirds, and graphics.

You can drop in video clips, bring in interview guests, use a green screen, and so much more. Ecam Live does it all. Ecamp's members are marketing professionals, podcasters like us, musicians, church leaders, bloggers like Jason and content creators of all kinds. If you're on the pro-level plan, you can enjoy E-CAM for Zoom, where you automatically send e-CAM lives audio and video output into a Zoom meeting, Zoom webinar, or a Zoom event, and you can add up to eight Zoom participants as camera sources in your broadcast or recording. You can automatically create individual recordings for those two

and add Zoom chat messages to your broadcast or recording as text overlays. To get one month free, just go to eCAM.com slash upgrade FM and use the code to UpgradeFM. That's a whole month free of ECAM live at E-C-A-M-M dot com slash upgrade FM with the code Upgrade FM. Go there now and check it out. Our thanks to eCAM for the support of this show and Reli. So when we spoke last week, Jason, your iPhone review units had not yet arrived of you. They were on your way to your home and we were in a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, which is not where your phones were. So I want to get an update from you. What have we got? What are we using? What are we thinking? I've got the air. I've got the Pro Max. I've got the 17.

I bought myself a pro, so I have that. I've got a cross-body strap that hasn't come out of the box. I've got cases that haven't come out of the box. I have not gotten to that point. But what I have done is when it came last Monday, I transferred the air from my old phone. Okay. So I have been using the iPhone air for a week.

That's my primary. I feel like I probably know the answer to this, but I'll ask it anyway. Why have you gone with the air? It's the most interesting phone. Yeah. It's the newest thing, right? Look, I, if, if I have to prioritize based on my interest and the interests of the world, a phone that is new in a lot of different and interesting in a lot of ways, especially considering that I have to make, this is the case of anybody who isn't an embargo reviewer, right?

Embargo reviewers are breaking news. News, their opinions are news because they're the first outside opinions allowed. yeah um everybody else has to find an angle and i don't know what my angle is but it's like well i'm gonna start with the most interesting phone which is this air and i had a week and i've started to the parts of my brain somebody was asking me like uh last week about it and i was like i don't know i just haven't gotten there yet i think i think you know yesterday i was thinking i think i actually could write something about the air now um because i spent a week with it and then i can move on because, you know, I'm looking forward to moving on to my, you know,

magical orange thing that I've got here in my hand right now, which I haven't even turned on. I bought it. I took it out of the box. I haven't even turned it on yet because I've been focused on the air because, yeah, it is, it's for, for specialists like us, even, it's the most interesting because it's the most novel. I'm not saying anything beyond that, but it is, it's the most novel I mean I guess on this podcast I will say more about that but that was the decision point

when I got them was well of course it's going to be the air that's that's got to be what it is because I got to try it yeah and it and it's novel in ways that I don't necessarily think that we would have assumed like it is

a very capable phone in a way that maybe it didn't need to be to still do what it's doing, right, which is to be thin and light. It didn't have to have an A-19 Pro in it. It didn't have to have Promotion always on display. There are

things this phone has, which are, if they didn't have them, we would have excused it for because it was so thin and light, I feel like. I think the promotion, I mean, this is the year the Promotion and Always On came to

the 17 as well. And I don't know whether this is connected or not, But one of the thoughts that I've had is that if you're trying to induce air purchases from pro users, which I don't know if they are or not. I mean, I would imagine Apple makes more profit on a pro or a Pro Max than on an air because presumably the margins on this are worse for now. It would have to be. It's brand new, right? the amount of R&D that went into the things is going to mess it up. Exactly. I mean, it's hard to measure because they're also, I think, very clearly headed in direction for the whole line and this investment in this design is investing in lots of technologies that are going on other places.

But I think if you didn't have the always on display and promotion, it would be almost impossible to make a case for anybody who is a pro user to consider the air instead. I think they did this is I don't know if this is the reason but this was the perfect year to do that bringing down at the screen and having everybody get the selfie camera all the things that make the 17

so much better than the 16 also make the air a more viable product than it would have otherwise I think I think or to put it another way for a thousand dollars this thing better have a lot of good features right it better not be as much of a

compromises the 17, or the 16 was for sure, right? Like if it was that, if it was literally compromised like the 16, it's just a much harder sell. The more you take out of it, the heart of the cell it is. So I think it was necessary. The pro chip is, I mean, it doesn't matter. That part doesn't matter so much because even the standard chip is so solid that it doesn't really matter, I think. The camera matters, and I think the camera will be what drive people away from it.

the battery life matters. I think that that will drive some people away from it. But at least they got the screen right. I want to come back to camera and battery life. I mean, the things that people have hung up on, but I kind of want to get your feeling on just the overall feel of the device,

the thinness, the lightness, the screen size, like what has been your experience, making this your primary phone for the last seven days? Yeah, I love how thin it is. I love how light it is. I because I transferred all of my overcast podcast that were loaded to my Apple Watch didn't the the downloaded ones were gone so it was going to have to re-download them all just a quirk of how that's set up and so I walked the dog with my with my iPhone in my pocket which I try not to do and it was really a really nice experience and I think it's a combination of it being thin and light and also maybe a little wider so it actually kind of fills my pocket widthwise a little bit so it's not rattling around as much but it was i forgot that it was there

i mean i forgot it was in my pocket and i never felt felt that way with a pro so that was really nice um holding it in my hand you know just between my fingers holding it in my hand it just feels so good that thinness it has a science fiction almost quality to it the idea that i'm just holding a bare screen and yeah there's a bump at the top but i don't hold it at the bump except if I want to get some extra leverage, in which case I put my finger up at the top and I'm at the bottom of the little bump for some extra leverage.

However, speaking of extra leverage, I will say, this is a wider phone than the pro, right? It's on the way to being a pro max. And while the screen is really nice, as somebody who's been using a pro for the last couple of years up from the mini, I have found it awkward to hold. Now, maybe I'll get used to it.

I think there's some muscle memory going on there, but it also reminds me of when I've used some other larger phones where I feel like I'm doing a lot of like shimmying with my fingers and propping with my back index finger. And I don't think about how often I try to use my phone one-handed, but this week I've been thinking, about it a lot because I've struggled to use it one-handed because of the way everything, the grip is different and it's wider and I struggle to get to the top and I'm trying to

shimmy the phone up in my hand so I can tap with my thumb and then my thumb doesn't quite reach because it's, you know, over too far away because the phone is wider. And that's, I was surprised by that. That's the aspect of the ergonomics that I didn't really realize is it's a wider phone and I can feel it. Yeah, I... In using the air, I am reminded of the reason that I switched from the Macs to the Pro, right? Because I'm very aware of the fact that the Pro Max, it is a two-handed device. Like, that's kind of the way you have to use it. And I knew that the life I was heading towards was a one-handed device with holding a baby.

And which is why I went down to the Pro. And I'm reminded of this when using this phone, but the difference of being, like, remembering what it was like to use the max is that I am aware of the fact that the screen is larger but I don't notice it as often because it's easier to hold than a pro maxes because of the thinness and lightness like it's easier to kind of maneuver my hand around but I do agree I do still notice that the screen is bigger like I ended up I mean this is how I use my phones anyway but on my air I have a pops socket on the back now like I always do and the combination of the pop socket and the kind of the

iconic plateau is enough to kind of make it easyish to hold but yeah I mean it is a bigger screen that is undeniable and I can't reach to the top in my usual grip like I do have to shimmy in a way that I don't really need to do with with the pros so it is it is noticeable I do in a way I'm happy that the screen is bigger. I think that that makes the phone really interesting because it's so thin, making it big is quite an interesting combo to have done. But obviously it changes the usability of the device

because basically nobody can use it completely one-handed. And just from a physics perspective, increasing the screen size every little bit you increase the screen size increases the battery a lot it was absolutely required for this phone and I think that's it I think that they needed to have a larger screen

I don't think a pro or even smaller version of the air would have a viable battery I think it had to be had to be shaped like this so you know I think it's great other than that weird kind of ergonomic issues that I've faced and tried to get over and I'm sure I would

get over it. I'm sure I would internalize all these little finger moves that I remember from previous phones but haven't had to deal with with the latest pros. I'm sure I would get over it because I got over it when we went to larger phones from smaller phones and you just kind of get over it. You internalize it in a way. You do. So I would do that. I just find it so such a remarkably pleasant device to hold. I'm not somebody who cares about battery life that much. I think also the people who really, like I already was at the case where if I was going to go somewhere and I was really worried about running out of battery in the middle of the

trip, I would bring a battery, right? And so I don't think this would change that much at all. I'm also not, I'm somebody who works at home and does not spend lots and lots of time outside in my house where the battery life would be an issue. I'm not saying that it isn't an issue for people. I'm saying for me, I'm the kind of iPhone user who doesn't care so much about extended battery life

as long as I'm near a charger or I can bring a battery with me. And the camera, front and back, the cameras are really nice. I went to a baseball game, last baseball game of the year on Saturday for us. And I was sitting there and I was getting texts from Casey and Stephen

about college football and I realized I was going to send them a picture of the ballpark and then I realized what I should do is send them a tandem video from the ballpark

with me in the corner and a video of the ballpark because you can do that now with with the new selfie cam so you do dual capture and so I sent them a little video dual capture and then I sent you a little video

you and Brad a dual capture video as well um following up on podcast podcast athon shenanigans so uh that was fun that that selfie camera i did a few selfies uh it's really great and then you know that single camera on the back is a very good camera it is not going to get you much of a zoom it's not going to get you the advantages of the wide and the macro like it's of course it's compromised but it is also a very good single camera. And again, I say for some people, it's good enough to be worth having this futuristic experience. But I keep coming back, Mike, to the original MacBook Air, where it felt simultaneously like the future and also like you were, it was too early. That's why it was the

future. It was just, there were so many, I mean, the word that I used over and over again in those reviews in the early days, the MacBook Air was compromised. I was like, there's so many compromises and people would would say well why why would you even do it if it's so compromised and the answer is yeah but it's so light right like i mean that was the answer yeah but it's it's so nice other than all the terrible things it's so great to have a laptop that small and i feel the same way about this phone it is really compromised and yet it's also so amazing to have this light thing in your pocket or especially between you know your fingers and it feels like a prop from a sci-fi show, and I like that about it. So it's not for everybody, that's for sure. I'm not sure

it's even for me, but as an act of creation on Apple's part, I think it's very impressive. You and I have been talking for ages now about how it's very clearly also a stake in the ground so that they can have technology to build toward that enables a folding iPhone down the road. rumor has it next year like one of the ways you get there is by putting your engineers through the question of like how do we make a single iPhone plane

that is this thin how do we do that and have it not bend and have it have good good enough heat characteristics let's say and battery and camera how do we do that and this is the answer to that question obviously shipping a real product is different than

just having it in the lab so they shipped it I think this is definitely the direction they're going with something like a folding phone. And also, I say this to people and they get very upset. I do think it's the direction that Apple is going with phones in general. I mean, if you can, you should. Right? And people are like, no, no, no, I like it when the phones are thick and all that. It's like, I know, I know what you're saying. And what I'm not saying is Apple is going to inflict a low featured product on everybody next year. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is, like the iPhone 10, Apple is test driving new functionality.

here, that it will apply to solving, just like how the MacBook Air influenced the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is still not thicker than the MacBook Air. It's still thicker than the MacBook Air. It's still heavier than the MacBook Air. But it's more like the MacBook Air than the MacBook Pro was in 2011, right? Like, it was technology

and approaches that got integrated into the larger thing. And the idea here, where you're trying to build a battery and display plane that is so thin, and that you are starting to load more technology up into the bump, which is the iPhone equivalent of the wedge on the MacBook Air.

Like, do we not think that these are things Apple's going to strive toward? I don't think, because I always hear from people who are like, I just want a thick, heavy phone. It's like, okay, there's some truth to that, but I would say you've got the dimensions wrong. The thing that we've really learned is that you can never make a phone with a big enough screen. And people who love the little phones will be mad about this.

But the truth is, the market is shown big screens sell, bigger screens sell more. That's the direction it's going. And if you're doing that, like, again, the MacBook Pro is not the MacBook Air. But having a way to manage battery and thinness is important to lots and lots of people. And Apple could ship a MacBook Pro today that's an inch thick and has battery life for a week. Nobody wants that, right? You've got to find a balance. And by seeking the technologies in the air, they are trying to find that balance or the pieces

that will allow them to recalculate their balance because they know that a lot of people want more battery life and they're not giving it to them. And they will give it to them. But if they can give it to them and make it a little thinner and make it a little lighter, over time, that is a great advantage for them. Plus, there's the foldable idea. that's going on there. So, you know, I think it's an important device

for all those reasons. And I think that the people who buy it are not unreasonable. I'm not sure how I feel about it. But honestly, for me, it's primarily about that width thing and not about the rest of it. Because I think I could get used to the rest of it.

Yeah, I think, like, people, when they're asking for a thick phone, what day one is the features that it provides. But I think what we're both saying here is the hope is Apple can maintain the feature set, but use all this, all this, they're learning technology-wise to make all the phones thinner. It's like, if you can do that, brilliant, right?

What if there's enough space up in the new plateau in the pro in a couple of years? Put the processor up there. You know, like, I don't know, but what if, right? Like, that is the hope at least, right? And you said the iPhone 10, and I was thinking about the iPhone 10 a minute ago, Like, the air is nowhere near as good a phone as the iPhone 10 was, but the air is the most interesting phone since the iPhone 10, I think. Right? I got it.

Yeah. I don't think there has been an iPhone as interesting since the iPhone 10. Right, because it's got so much different about it. Yeah. Yeah. It has something like the iPhone 10 was fundamentally different because it had a full screen, right? And the notch. This is fundamentally different because it is unbelievable.

thin for what is in it, right? Where, like, realistically, you're losing out on one or two cameras, depending on how you would judge it, and an amount of battery life, depending on how you use the phone, for those to be realistically your only compromises, it's a technical marvel. And what they'll learn from this can be fascinating. Yeah, and presumably over time, they will apply this technique to phones with more cameras. Yeah. to phones with more battery life

to phones like they that's the whole idea here is they're applying this stuff once they build this they know how to do it they can apply it elsewhere and and they just maybe I'm talking too much about this but like I see so many reactions to people

who are like Apple's going to take away my iPhone and replace it with an iPhone air it's like no that's not it but it is a little bit like somebody with a 12 inch power book saying Apple's going to take away my 12-inch power book. And it's like, well, they are, but they're going to replace it with a power book that's like a quarter of the thickness

and has a 13-inch high-resolution. Like, tech marches on. And this is how, like, you know, the people complain, like, the iPhone's really boring. And the truth is, smartphone, the pace of smartphone innovation has slowed. There's no doubt about it. Because there's low-hanging fruit

that gets taken off and then it's hard because then you're you're no longer on oh my god we discovered a new category and now we can invent things for it and it's going to be great and those days are heady they're very exciting but the truth is that once all that is gone you are back to being at the pace of innovation at the pace of tech innovation not at the pace of pulling things off of you know oh we'll use this tech from over here and yeah yeah yeah that's great and we could stuff another camera in there yeah yeah and it becomes oh we've already stuffed a lot of cameras in there, but how do we go from 24 to 48 megapixels and what does that sensor look like

and do we need a tetraprism and like it gets harder. And so it's fair to say that like the iPhone 10 was the last time Apple really kind of broke open the iPhone and started rethinking it to the point where they sold the old model as well, right? Because they're like

nobody's going to buy this thing. We're a thousand dollar phone. That's wild, right? And then over time all that stuff got interspersed to the point where now today's iPhone 17 has all of the contents of the iPhone 10, right? Like, it's just, they're all down there and more. And it is, it is the iPhone.

And it's not identical to the iPhone 10, but it has become the iPhone. The air is like that where it's like, we are seeing Apple figure out problems that will allow it to apply those answers to other products. And the products will change and improve over time. And that's what makes it,

like you said, interesting in a way, different in a way that is impressive and that we haven't seen in seven or eight years. Not that there isn't progress, but mostly it's sort of slow,

iterative progress. And here I feel like there are some, a larger leap is happening. Yep. This episode is brought to you by Hello Fresh. Fall is here and with it

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podcast box and now we'll speak about the podcast box. Friends, we pay for Hello Fresh. It was great. They sent us, they sent us an extra box. We got a week where we took off from the regular. We pay for it. We pay for it every week. We have Hello Fresh every week. On Wednesday, a box comes with meals in it. And it's great. I think that's why we do it is we can we cook for ourselves. Yes, we can. But I will tell you, we had a skip week a couple weeks ago and we have a skip week this week because we're traveling next weekend. And then it's like, oh, man, we've got to come up with, we're doing meal planning. Lauren's going to go to the store.

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That isn't what we are. We make the meals. But it's such a relief to not be like, oh, no, I can't make that because I don't have that ingredient. the ingredients are in the paper bag, if there's meat or posse or whatever, it's in the box, and you put it in the fridge as well. And then you get it all out. And you, and then you get the pleasure, I would say, of producing that meal more or less from scratch, right? It's not coming in a, in a tube or a can or something. It's like there's a pepper and there's an onion and, you know, there's a sauce packet. But they show you how to do it. You got to do it. And then once you

know how to do it, you can say, I can replicate that. I can put that on my shopping. list and go to the store, which is also cool, but it means that we don't, you know, there are three meals a week that we don't have to meal plan other than the meal planning of going to their website and choosing from their vast array of choices for every given week, which is more of a pleasure than a chore. The best way to cook just got better. Go to hellofresh.com slash upgrade 10 FM and you will get 10 free meals plus a free item for life, one per box with an active subscription.

Free meals applied as a discount on the first box with new subscribers only and varies by plan. that's hallowfresh.com slash upgrade 10 FM to get 10 free meals and a free item for life. A thanks to HelloFresh for their support of this show and all of Relay. So I have been using the

I guess I should explain. I have an air and a pro. I think I kind of spoke about it last week, but the air is kind of becoming your work. It is becoming my work device. You know, I've been using an Android phone for the last six months or so as a work device

and now I'm moving some of that over to my air. Plus, it is already being incredibly helpful for the stuff that I'm doing across forward, which has been from pedometer of having a device that I have set up in my family, but as a new user, so it doesn't have any of my stuff in it. Because this was becoming a problem for me of, like, you open the photo picker and here's pictures of my baby that I don't want in a video that will be seen by millions of people, right? So I now have, like, a completely, like, siloed device,

but then also putting it in my family plan means that I benefit from things that I've purchased already. It's in my storage, right? The two terabytes of storage that I have and all that kind of stuff. So I'll put that in there. But the iPhone Pro, the 17 Pro, is my phone.

That is the phone that I've been using all week. And I will say, I understand why some people will say after a few days, this orange is too much for me. I get it. However, I am all about it. Oh, my, Jason. I, it feels so good,

be right, where me and you have been talking for years now on this show, spearheading with the colors are idea that Apple just need to put colors on the pro phones. And they did it. I would say they maybe went a little too far, like further than they needed to go with this orange and like by and also removing a kind of neutral like black or gray. But they did it and they were right to do it because this phone is fantastic. I love looking at my phone and seeing like a band of orange going all the way around it. And I don't think there has ever been a back of an iPhone that looks better than this one. Yeah.

I love it so much. I agree. I think it's great. And again, we never argued for Apple to remove people's choice. We argued for more choice. And this is what this is. I agree with you. I think the blue is really nice,

but I do love blue. I think it's a nice dark phone. I know that there's some people who don't want any color at all and they really want it to be gray or black. And I think it's a little curious that they didn't offer it in gray or black, but only in that dark blue,

which I think is very pretty. And in any other year, I would have been very happy to get. But, like, the point is, you should offer a silvery white phone. You should probably offer a black or dark gray phone. But like, let people have some color choice in their life.

If for those, because, because again, it's human nature. I know. But like, I see people who are like, oh, the orange, it's too much. I hate it. It's like, nobody is making you buy an orange phone. Buy your boring colored phone. By the silver phone, which I think also looks fantastic. This is like when I said that the IMAX came in six colors and also silver, which is not

a color and people are all offended. And I'm like, I'm sure silver sells the best. And that's why they do it. I'm sure silver sells the best. And I'm only tweaking you a little bit when I joke about your boring colors. I am a little bit. But, like, I think it's a perfectly legitimate choice to say, I just want a boring color. It's fine.

Like, I get it. I get it. I think there are lots of people who look at this orange and be like, whoa, that is too much. But, you know what? It's got personality. And I think it says, already I think it says, iPhone 17 Pro. I think that color is the iPhone 17 Pro color. I would be, I would not be surprised if it, if it, because.

kind of like a reference point, like a little bit iconic as, oh, remember that orange. That was the orange one. Because I don't think we get an orange phone next year. I expect that they will continue making colors now. I think it would be incredibly weird to not. I mean, because this is the benefit of them moving back to aluminium. They have more, it is easier for them to produce a range of color in their, in the profiles again. So I expect them to continue doing. this. Go back and look at the iPods, right? Go back and look at the iPods. There's lots, and you can look at the IMAX too, but look at the iPods and see all the bright colors that they've got there. They could do a bright blue. They could do a pinky red. They could do a bright green. There's lots of things that they could do. I think there's value in saying that was the orange one. Now, Apple is going to look at the skews and see how it goes. I hope we're right. But I feel like this is what they should do. They should offer a phone with personality in terms of the color for those who choose. And everybody else

doesn't have to do it. Now, the brilliant thing about how this is built is even if you put a case on it, you get the big plateau just sticking out there with its big expanse of anodized orange aluminum. And so you

still get it. You still get that feel. And around the front of the phone, you see the orange bracketing it. And it just looks so good. So it's not for everybody. And that's fine. And I love orange. And so I love this phone. If they had chosen a different color, I would be less enthusiastic about it. But I'm enthusiastic most about the concept of offering a bright color in an iPhone. Pro. Hooray for that. I've also been really taken by the

industrial feel of this phone in the days that I've been using it, where it is thick and heavy, which is not necessarily what, isn't what I wanted from a phone. I didn't want a heavier iPhone. I didn't, but it's like one of those wide pencils that workers use when they're cutting wood or carpenters or slicing up drywall or something. It's just a tough. You put it in your denim coveralls as you go. Like it, I know we're talking about high technology here, but yet there is a little bit of that vibe, right? Like this is like what makes a phone pro?

But like it does feel like that. It's like a pro. It's like a pro tool. And again, it's not just those people who. who use them. It's, it's, it's, it's lots of people who use those tools and appreciate pro tools, but there's that feel, that nice feel. And, and, but I, you know, even though it has got that kind of like heft to it, the way that it looks and feels in my hand, like the way the edges feel, the density, the way that the plateau feels, like, it actually works together, that

that it feels pleasant in my hand when I'm holding onto it. Like, I like the overall, package of the device. Yeah, this is our, these are our tools. These are our tools. And it is that for me. Like my iPhone is so many things, right? Like, it is the window onto the world, right, in so many ways. And one of those worlds is work.

And this feels like a thing that I am working on. It's actually will bring me to a question from Ben, who asked if we could speak to the scratch or durability concerns of the 17 Pro phones that have been found in Apple stores. I put an article in the show notes, 95 Mac wrote it up. Apple was responded to this saying that there is some weird thing going on in their Apple stores, that they're leaving marks on the phones and people are saying this is a scratch gate thing, but Apple says it wipes off, like it's a residue basically that wipes off. Then other people have done durability testing and they're like, oh, you can get scratches

on the plateau. Look, I know these things cost a lot of money, right? I understand it. Don't expect you're not going to scratch your phone. Like, just don't expect that. They are physical objects that exist in the world. They're not made of magical substances. Put a case on it if you want to protect it more. I don't put a case on it because I don't mind that. It's a little bit like that argument about leather.

It discolors and scratches and stuff. And that's just how life is. I have no doubt that there is something to the fact that certain parts of the anonymization probably are more, you know, Liable to get scratched than other parts of the Anonization are up around the corner, the curve of the of the plateau. That's true. But Mike,

it's hard for me to find a story that I have more contempt for than a whole bunch of people trying to find a gate, trying to make a scratch gate a thing. I will share here my little pet theory that I shared unconnected, which is this is only taking off because everybody was really excited about bending the air and that didn't happen. That didn't work.

So now the people that really want to talk about, because every year there has to be a gate, right? There has to be. Because there is like a whole industry of people and it's getting worse for social media. Especially threads is super bad for this. I don't know what it's like on Twitter, but I assume similar. Of people

it's rage baiting, right? Yeah, yeah, sure. And so like people want to find these things and it's like because the air doesn't bend well I guess we'll find the next thing and it turns out that it's possible to scratch an iPhone oh no way really like every single iPhone

you can see the you can see the the dynamic the economic dynamic on YouTube thumbnails because that's where I see it because I do enough tech to content that my YouTube channel my new YouTube suggestions is full of this stuff and most of the year it's just not

that there it's not there or it's not that But this time of year, every thumbnail is some person, I almost said a bad word, some person holding an iPhone with a big arrow, making a face like they are smelling a dead fish. And then what you'll realize in the thumbnail, it'll be like, this doesn't work. And then the title of it will be iPhone review impressions, power at a price or something like that. And I'm like, oh, they're already walking it back in the title from the thumbnail. And we know that the actual video is not going to be able to do it. But and my point here is, yeah, that's how YouTube thumbnails work.

That's how social media works. It's engagement bait. And the iPhone is so big that people make their livings this time of year. And you have to, the spotlight, the same thing that I talk about with the Apple events being, the iPhone events being so important. Like the spotlight is on this subject right now. And if you're somebody who makes your money, creating engagement in one way or another or makes your brand or however it is, now is the time you do it.

And it's a vacuum that must be filled. I mean, that's the bottom line. And you're right. One of the things that could have felt it was unsightly bends, but instead it's scratches, mild scratches at a certain level of hardness on a certain part of an anodized aluminum. I mean, give me a break. Come on. Yeah, I agree.

Kind of moving on a little bit. I've been thinking, I've been taking pictures of this phone, right? And I think that I've gotten to the point where I just can't evaluate the cameras on these phones anymore in a way which is helpful.

Because they're so good? They're just, they're so good now, unless there is a problem. And I think that the problems, or like what I perceive as problems of Apple's cameras, it actually takes a really long time

for me to, to realize a change. Like, you know, I ended up not liking the way that the macro mode works. I turned it on again and I haven't had problems of it so far, but I don't think I've taken enough images yet. So like the base, like I was, you know,

we went out yesterday and I was taking a bunch of pictures walking around the park and they all look incredible. And it's like, well, yeah, like the lighting was great and, you know, the iPhone camera is always great. I don't really feel like I can say this is I cannot discern the differences year over year.

People can. I am not that person. Like I can tell you that I prefer the 4x over the 5x lens just because I didn't like how far the jump to 5 was. I can tell you that I like being able to go to eight times, there's just a bonus, but that's just like a functionality thing, which is fine. But the big thing about the cameras is you just a selfie camera,

having the options on the selfie camera, they didn't exist before at all. So that's really great. But the quality of individual images, I just don't know if I can pixel be that way. You can see it in the Zoom because that camera didn't used to do that, right? That camera didn't used to go to 48 and crop like that.

The 8X, it is a digital crop. It is processed differently. people who are angry about, you know, don't call it an optical quality zoom because it's not optical. Well, it's like it is kind of. It's not a digital zoom

in the way you're thinking of it where it's making things up. It's a crop that's processed. But like when you've got 48 megapixels of resolution, even the digital crop looks pretty good. And there were reviews that compared it to the 5X on the previous model. Right?

And it's like, it's a better camera with a better sensor. And as a result, all the Zoom stuff is better than it was. But I agree with you. In general, for the last few years, I used to spend a lot of time doing photo testing. And like the iPhone photos, they are so good. And also the processor, processing details are so subtle that I agree. You kind of got to live with it. And I rely on people like Tyler Stallman or Subalmers.

Sebastian DeVit to talk about, who both posted reviews. Yeah. People like that who really know photography to talk about how they've reacted to the camera. Now, they're also content creators who are going to, you know, to, you know, go to Iceland to shoot, you know, like, look, it's part of the deal. But, like, I rely on those people who know what they're talking about to show me the differences that they're perceiving in it. because I think that it's important to understand that but it is also telling that it's at such a high level now that we can all kind of just say

okay iPhone cameras are good the selfie camera is very different and that's worth explaining but otherwise and the fact that the new 48 megapixel zoom camera gives you reach because you can go 4x or even digital crop to 8x and that's way beyond what you could do before yeah that has to be for me things that are functionally different or didn't exist before for me to really be able to be like,

okay, this is a nice thing to have. But like photographic styles for me was one of those because I got to tune my image to look the way that I want it to look. Yeah, I heard, I heard Federico complain about that unconnected last week. I think, so I think what he's getting at, I mean, I know you burrowed down there,

which is like, well, it's just a setting. He's like, yeah, but there's the square. You said, don't look at the square. And he said, I can't stop looking at the square. I can't help you. I can't help you anymore. And is that a feature, is that UI that Apple over-engineered it is? I would argue that Apple made that whole thing way too confusing.

But why they did it, what you said is exactly right, why they did it is, the way an image gets processed is based on choices made by the people who build the image pipeline. And Apple got tired of getting dinged because people would look at a different choice made on a different phone and say, I like that better than Apple's choice. So Apple made this thing and over-engineered it and it was, it's a little like Steve Jobs saying, you can have a bumper case if you want it. It's like, do it whatever you like.

We don't care anymore. Photographic styles. But the truth of it is, yeah, if you spend time once going through photographic styles and picking your default photographic style and having it please you, and like you,

I prefer a little bit of warmer style, and then all your photos just come out looking like, like that and there's nothing wrong with making a photo look like it pleases you and having it happen up front so you don't have to edit it later to please you even if you can edit it later to change it if you want is the right approach they just kind of overdid it um but yeah so i i mean iphone cameras are good the the selfie thing i need to spend more time with it but um i think it's great like i literally did the thing where you hold the camera up and you take a

selfie and then you tilt it a little so that Lauren's in the shot and it zooms back and frames us both perfectly and now it's a selfie of both of us like where have you been all my life like that that's that's and that I think in some ways I know I said this last week too this is Apple reinventing something that didn't need to be reinvented and that people didn't know they're like oh well that's better right like that is that is a perfect Apple kind of thing to say hey the way we've all been trained to take selfies is dumb let's do it a better way and uh i think that's really smart so on last week's episode we both shared a not great first impression with the AirPods pro three right um and i will say we got a lot of feedback from upgrading

yes who had the same thoughts um yes and different i i also heard from people who said that they hated the AirPods Pro 2 and they liked the AirPods pro 3 there's a lot of feelings about these headphones and you and I got to ride home on an airplane with them. Yes. Yes. So that's good. It, they did the job. It did. It absolutely did the job. Absolutely. The noise cancellation on a plane is, so I said last time, if it was good enough, I wouldn't need my AirPods Max anymore. I don't need my AirPods Max anymore. No. I won't be bringing them on future trips because the AirPods Pro 3, they are,

absolutely doing the job for me in that environment. Let me see if I can describe what's going on with the noise canceling there. There are times when I got an airplane and I don't actually, I'm not ready to listen to a podcast or music, but I will put them in and turn on noise canceling because I just don't want to hear people are boarding the plane and the air is blowing out of the vents and all those things and I'll turn it off. And you could still hear stuff. It's just all quieter.

And if I start playing music, I can still kind of. kind of hear stuff, but it's, it's all much quieter, and I can hear my music, and it's great. AirPods Pro 3, you do that. You can still hear stuff. But I saw this, somebody, somebody said this on, maybe on Mastodon, maybe in a review I read, and it's absolutely right, which is the difference is on the AirPods Pro 3, if I'm playing music or a podcast, I don't hear anything from the plane. it's gone and and I know that's a weird way to say it but like that's that's the level of difference for me is before I could still hear that stuff was going on outside but it was so much quieter that I could focus on the music after with the three I can't hear that stuff going on outside

it's there because if I pause the music I can kind of hear it but the the noise floor has been dropped that much and I think it's a combination of a better seal and better noise cancelling, right? I think those are both going on. And the way we reacted to it last week, I think one of the things that's happening is because those ear tips are stiffer,

there is more of a feeling of insertion when you put them in your ears. Yes. And there's more of a feeling of positive pressure on your ear canals. Yes. Than there was with the AirPods Pro 2. That said, after a week of using them,

I don't know whether I've squished the ear tips a little bit or whether the ear tips have expanded my ear canals a little bit but they already feel more comfortable but certainly the act of putting them in your ears feels much more like an act than they did before.

I feel like I used to place them in now I have to put them in. It is a small but noticeable difference. What I would say is like I have gotten used to it also something that did really help me was to make a

another size adjustment on just one ear. So I have extra small in left and small in right. That made it feel much more like the AirPods Pro 2 did, closer to that than it did before. And I think like a lot of people, like the people who spend time reviewing it, I've realized, you know, I'm used to it, or it's gotten easier or whatever,

but it feels more normal. And the quality of the product is outshining, the discomfort that I will stand by the fact that like this is one of the first Apple products in a really long time that had such a negative first impression for me but I've come to to appreciate it so I would say that if you if you feel you're not sure about it when you get them keep keep it going because it gets easier yeah it does you do get used to them personal you know nothing is more personal than personal ergonomics. In this case, you're literally

sticking an Apple product in your body, right? Like in your ear canal, it's a different level. It's a very personal kind of thing. And I do think you get used to it, but I agree. I think Apple was more aggressive here. Apple wanted the seal to be better and they wanted the tips to be more resilient and they wanted to do better in oils canceling. And so they pushed it in a way that makes it not feel quite as natural out of the gate. And that's an interesting choice. I get why they did it. I think a lot of people will

find this better than the old ones. I think there's always people who can't wear the old ones who can wear the new ones and it's great for them. I also think if you're one of these people who's like, I just don't like the feeling of something in my ears, I think this is going to be worse. because it's more of a feeling of something in my ears. And I'm used to, I wear, I've been wearing in-air headphones for like 20 years. I'm used to it and I still found it a little bit weird, let alone somebody who's just like, likes the earbuds, likes them hanging out there. And I mean, that's why they make, the argument could be that's why they make AirPods

4 with active noise canceling. It's like if you, you have two paths for noise canceling now. You've got the path where we aren't very intrusive and it just sits there. and then we've got the path where we stick it in your ear and you can choose and this is the path where they stick it in your ear and uh yeah i got i got used to it but i that initial reaction that we both had was very interesting um and spending more time size adjusting is part of the deal i think here i've definitely done that i've been popping them off and putting on different sizes and trying to figure it out i went too small and then there was more noise leakage and i went back up

a size and I may adjust the size of my right ear because I'm not sure my right ear is as comfortable as my left ear. But I'm also getting used to it over time and the quality difference is kind of amazing. So that's the trade-off there. Yeah, when I did the test, I went both down to extra small and did the fit test and it's like your right ear. That's the wrong one. So then I did extra small and small and it's like, yeah, you've got it right now. And it also felt better. Good. This episode is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. Claude is a next-generation AI assistant built by Anthropic and trained to be safe, accurate, and secure to help you do your best work.

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Claude can have contacts from your calendar, emails and all of your go-to tools. It's like having a central brain for all of your work, no more digging through multiple tools and documents. I find Claude to be excellent at understanding huge amounts of text and doing interesting things with it. For example, I will transcribe, I get a transcript of a podcast, and I can give it to Claude to help me extract quotes from these transcripts, to help suggest episode titles, to help me with writing descriptions for those episodes, which is something that I always really struggle to do on my own, and also to help me get answers on links that could be included in our show notes that somehow I've missed. It is super helpful doing these tasks that can take me a ton of time or that I find a struggle. If you're ready to tackle bigger problems, sign up for Claude today and get 50% off Clord Pro when you go to clod.a-a-a-i-slash-upgrade pod. That's C-L-A-U-D-E dot-A-I-slash upgrade pod right now for 50% off your first three months of Claude Pro. That includes access to all of the features mentioned right now, and that is all lowercase.

letters in that URL, which is clod.a.ai slash upgrade pod. Our thanks to Claude for their support of this show and relay. It's time for room and roundup, Jason, Snell. Yeah, ha! Let's do it. Mark German is reporting that Apple has developed an internal chatbot. This project is code named Veritas and is being used in anticipation of the new version of Siri coming next year. I'm excited. An internal chat bot.

Hello, stomach. Hello, stomach. Get ready. Yes. The Doritos are coming. Developers are using this tool to test how the new Siri models are performing for finding information about the data on device,

music, and in-app actions powered by app intents. This app will probably never be released in the way that Apple are using it internally because we should actually be seeing the results of this baked into a new experience with our devices using Siri, which is due to a wife,

quote, as early as March. I think that means March or later, right? As early as... March or later. This is a quote from Mark's article. Veritas resembles most popular chatbots that he uses manage multiple conversations

across different topics. It can save and reference past chats. Follow up on earlier queries and support extended back and forth exchanges. So I hope that when they ship this, there is a UI that is like that. I don't want to be doing things primarily by voice, and I don't want to start fresh requests every single time.

I think it makes sense, right? Like, and Mark German put on his pundit hat and said Apple should release this to the public. And I think I look at this and think, well, what they should do is they should make type to Siri more functional, right? Type to Siri should have memory. Type to Siri should have ability to reference multiple chats just like you can in other chatbot apps.

It should just be part of Siri is the type to Siri should become a little more prominent. And type to Siri is your chat. And if they want to process type to Siri in some different ways so that it gets results that they want, I'm okay with that. I don't think it needs to necessarily be, no, when you're in this mode, it's just the bare model. They can do whatever. But I think the ability to have that kind of library of different text queries and a context inside them, right? That's one of the most important things about this is when you deal with one of these chatbots, they are able to reference that entire, that entire. conversation. Not necessarily all your other conversations. That's sometimes an option, but like that

conversation and understand the context of it and be able to follow up or go back to it later, which I do all the time with like programming projects where I'm like, oh, it doesn't quite do it right. And I go back and I say, hey, how about we fix this thing? And it's like, oh, of course, Jason, you're absolutely right. But in general, I'm not opposed to this because I think it should text interaction is perfectly valid. one of the things that's not clear from Mark's report is what is powering this experience? Like, is this an apple model?

Have they, are they using a model that they're hoping to license? Like, these are the questions that we're still unanswered based on the previous reporting. Like, are they working with third party? What is the underpinning

of the new Syria experience? Like, that is not known from this. Is this a foundation model that'll kick things off to another model? like a private cloud compute or chat GPT or Gemini or something it's unclear unclear from code found in the 26.1 beta 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that Apple is laying the groundwork for other AI companies

to provide models to create imagery in image playgrounds so they're putting in some stuff that I think wouldn't need to exist if it was just chat GPT and them right I got a wonder though who wants to be in this app specific I'm not sure who these companies are that we'd like to have our model available in Apple's tool. So I don't love Image Playground, that's an understanding

but I would say I feel like what Apple's going for here is a system-wide image generation API. Right? Because you can access image playgrounds and apps too. So I think that's what they're doing here is they're saying we've built kind of a nice UI on top of

image generators and maybe the long run is your image generator can also be, you know, in that, in that same API, you know, so that people want to use your image generator from anywhere in the system using our UI. You can. I think whether that works or not, I don't know, but that's the advantage Apple has is to say, like, anywhere in the system, if you're like, make an image, you can do it and it can use stable diffusion or, you know, whatever you want. But it's using Apple's APIs and it's using Apple's UI. So it's like a consistent UI for whoever is generating the image in the background. Maybe. Maybe.

Philip Esposito at Mac Wilde has found evidence in 26.1 that Apple is building some new frameworks to allow third-party smart watches to work better with iPhones. There are two things that Philip has found. Notification forwarding, as referenced for better notification support, and something called accessory extension, which would allow for better pairing. Yeah. I mean, I guess all those pebble people Get excited about the pebble coming back. I mean, this is clearly a thing to appease the regulators all around the world

that want it. It will help. It will make Europe happy and this is also part of what the Department of Justice is saying. Yes. So do this and maybe you'll make people get off your back. Yeah, I think, yes. We've talked about this at length, but I'll just say it's been more than 10 years since the Apple Watch came out. You can, you know, iOS should probably

do a decent job of allowing other watches to pair with the operating system because not everybody wants to buy an Apple Watch. And you're making your, I mean, my argument is essentially you're making your product lesser. iOS is lesser because there's a whole class of devices that won't work with iPhones. And you're almost building a system like back in the day when the Mac was incompatible with everything because everybody used PCs. It's a little like that where like there's whole classes of products. And Apple's responses, well, no, just buy an Apple. watch, but not everybody wants an Apple Watch. And they should probably have decent access to the system. And I get Apple's argument here, but like Apple provides all of the, all of those

features for the Apple Watch. Maybe it should provide those for other devices too. I mentioned a DMA. I couldn't, I didn't want to talk about it today. So I don't think we're not, I don't want to. Okay. So let's not. But like, I've just put a link in the show on it's to Apple wrote a big thing again about the DMA and why it's so terrible. for everybody. But to me, it just felt like not really worth rehashing. But I just wanted to mark that it was a thing that happened. We're going to keep the good vibes rolling for now. And if we want to get into it, we will get into it next time. Or another time. I just, I have nothing to say about it. Yeah, it's the same old thing. It's like, you know, by offering different app stores, you're somehow

a limiting choice. It's amazing. Some of the work that they're doing there. Yeah. It's great. Mark German is also reporting that Apple is gearing up for production of M5 MacBook Pros. I would like to make a clarification from last week's episode. I don't know if I read something wrong or conflated to different reports, but there is expected to be a M5

MacBook Pro that comes out towards the end of this year or early 2026. This is not the OLED touchscreen model, which is also still expected to come in 2026, but not the next revision of the MacBook Pro. This is what we think the sequencing will be, is

late this year or early next year, there will be will be an M5 MacBook Pro. It will be the last of the current generation of MacBook Pros. It will use a new M5 chip, but it will be very familiar. If you've got an M4 like I do, it'll just be that with a different chip in it. Then next fall, there will be an M6 MacBook Pro with OLED and the touchscreen. And it'll be, if they do the M5 MacBook Pro's early next year, it'll be like it happened the last time where there'll be two MacBook Pro releases in a single year because they're kind of like filling out the old line and then they're kicking. into the new line, and that's how they'll do it.

So your OLED touchscreen is going to come late next year. But in the meantime, there will be one last generational revision to what we think of as the current feature set of the MacBook Pro with M5. I was like, maybe M6? I don't know. Like, is that you'd assume. I mean, I would think that they won't ship that without the M6, right? That they won't ship two MacBook Pros with the same chip.

but who knows how their chip? I mean, if everything else is different? Map goes. Well, no, but like next, we're already on to the next generation. We'll be an iPad. At very least, there's going to be an M5 iPad, I would, a pro, I would imagine.

So we're into M5. So having the M6 come next October is right on time, I think. Yeah, but I mean, yes. No, you're right. Yeah, you're right. As well as these, we're still set for new iPad

pros, an update to the Vision Pro, that would all be M5, MacBook Air updates, and two new Mac monitors, all within the same time frame. So sometime between now and early 2026. And Mark has not included in here, but we're still expecting this MacBook. Like, where are they going to do all of this? Yeah. And the question is... It's October next week. I mean, I think my guess is some of this will come next month and the rest of it will come early next year. Yeah. Yeah. And Ryan Gordon, and Leanna Baker at Bloomberg are reporting that Intel has approached Apple for investment.

This is apparently very early discussion, but the companies are talking about how they could potentially work together, and this follows a pattern of Intel making some partnerships right now to essentially protect the business, stop it from imploding. For Apple, so there's an

episode of Dithering that I spoke about this and it gave me a bit more insight into it, like Ben was talking about this, and saying that essentially, Apple should or could consider doing this as a future insurance policy for something occurring with TSM. You build up Intel's fab capability. And we're not talking about Apple using Intel processors.

We're talking about the other part of Intel's business that people are very concerned about, which is making other people ships for them. That's the fab part of it, fab for rent. And it comes back to TSM, which is Taiwan Semiconductor, their headquarters. You know, everything is emanating from Taiwan. What happens if something happens to Taiwan? What happens if China attacks Taiwan? Does the entire world lose the capability to build chips because of that? And, you know, TSM has some factories in the U.S. again, because the U.S. is providing incentives

because they want to kind of get over this, but it's not quite the same. The idea here would be you also keep Intel afloat because there's a counterweight to TSM. and they're building things in the U.S. and they're building knowledge in the U.S. So if something happens to Taiwan and therefore something happens to TSM, Intel is there as at least a fallback, which is interesting.

I mean, they likened it, Ben and John likened it to paying insurance. And there's some truth in that. It's like you're not actually paying for the business now. You're paying for that business to be around in case you need to jump later. And you hope you don't have to, but you do pay for it.

It's also, again, this pattern in the United States where there's a lot of like because the U.S. is investing in Intel as well. I mean, there is from an American perspective, what what is going on here is, oh no, we used to have the definitive chipmaker in the world and they have fumbled it. They are now on hard times and it's bad for America if they're no longer viable because then the only source is. Taiwan Semiconductor. So I get it. I would add the only bit of analysis, I guess, that I would add to this is just because we can't think of anything that Intel could provide Apple, I'm sure there's something Intel

could provide Apple. It might not be an A-series chip or an M-series chip, but I bet there's stuff they could fab for Apple. I bet there's stuff that Apple uses that is not as crucial. And I know it burns Intel to, right, to be like, well, we'll throw you a bone or something. But I'm sure there's a bone that could be thrown to Intel if they want to actually fab some chips for Apple that are up to speed. But it's not going to be a chip in an iPhone or probably a Mac or an iPad. But I'm sure there could be something.

But really this is about trying to maintain American chip production capacity in the long run. Because there is a fundamental danger of having so much. much of it be in Taiwan. And I agree with this idea, by the way. Like, I think that it is a good idea for American tech companies to make sure that Intel is around. I know that Intel essentially have screwed up, which have gotten to this to this point. Bailouts are never a great thing, but sometimes there are reasons you do it. And I think that there are lots of reasons to do this.

I think that there is like it makes, to me, it makes a lot of sense that you would make sure that this company was around for the long haul, whether you don't make you happy or not. I mean, nothing is forever. Intel lost this lead. TSM is riding high, but nothing is forever. And if Intel gets enough momentum, it could become a relevant option for Apple. Maybe not now, but maybe in a few years. even if Taiwan is not invaded by China and TSM is still able to do whatever it needs to do. And yeah, it's, again, to have the United States and the U.S. tech companies place a bet that's like,

I know it's essentially saying Intel is too big to fail, but there's a real strong argument that Intel is too big to fail. That it would be too catastrophic if Intel failed. I did have a thought. I had a stray thought, which is like,

I know Apple had to buy Intel's modem business and took it, you know, to years and years to ship their own modem and all that. But I have thought of like, Apple ever entertained the idea of just saying, okay, we'll fabbat ourselves. And I think the answer is no for the same reason that they don't manufacture themselves. They have Foxcon do it and other companies do it, is there's a level below which Apple doesn't actually feel like they need to go. they're happy with TSM fabbing their chips for them. They don't need to fab their own chips. They're doing the design part. So I don't think they would go down there,

but I think it's an interesting idea of like how intertwined might Apple become with Intel. They also want to, you know, TSM, they want TSM to invest in American factories as well. So I don't know. I think that, yeah, this is all about strategic. Nobody run out and say Apple's going to build another Intel Mac because that's not going to happen. This episode is brought to you by Zbiotics. Let's face it, after a night with some drinks, we don't all bounce back the way that we'd like to the next day. A lot of us have to make the choice between enjoying a night or making sure we have a good next day. But thankfully, pre-alcohol is here

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As you know, I love to do. Go to Zibiotics.com slash Upgrade FM to learn more and get 15% of your first order when you use Upgrade FM at checkout. Zibiotics is backed of a 100% money-back guarantee so if you're unsatisfied for any reason they'll refund your money no questions asked remember to head to zbiotics.com slash upgrade fm and use the code upgrade fm at checkout for 15% off a thanks to zeobiotics for their support of this show and all of relay it is time for some ask upgrade questions scott writes in and says the iPhone air having all the compute in the camera bump and iPhone chips being compatible to computer chips. Do you think there's a world in which

Apple starts putting full computers into smaller objects like keyboards and trackpads? And Dominic wrote in and said, what do you think about a Mac inside of a USB stick? All right. First off, what would the Mac and the USB stick attach to? Another Mac?

You put it into a monitor, right? I mean... TVs and one of just have USBs in them. Yeah, but not for... Not for that amount of power. It'd be like Thunderbolt, right? Yeah. What you're talking about there essentially is a is a TV streaming stick like the like the

Amazon stick and so it'll be HDMI and then it would be USB powered I laugh at this because we just spent 15 years hoping the Mac Mini would get smaller and then the Mac Mini got smaller so talk to me in another 15 years not small enough I think the answer I think the answer is the Mac Mini is a smaller device as Apple is interested in making however I will say Apple TV, like we've all been saying, wouldn't it be nice if there was a smaller Apple TV? Maybe they could do that. That would be, you know, they could make their own little Apple TV stick. It would still probably cost too much. But they could do it and you just hang it off the TV. That's more of a possibility than a teeny tiny Mac, I think. The teeny tiny Mac is the

MacBook Air. It just comes with a keyboard and a screen. But I feel like the Mac Mini is where they want to go with small Macs for right now. I will say the keyboard thing makes me slightly intrigued. I just saw how there's a new Raspberry Pi keyboard thing where it's like a whole computer inside a keyboard. It's probably impractical, but I do have that thought of like, oh, you know, what if there's just a Mac that's a keyboard? Yeah.

Right? And then you plug it into a monitor and the keyboard is the Mac. Are you getting it yet? It's a keyboard and a Mac all in one. That could be cool. I'm not sure Apple wants to do that, right? I feel like the they like the iMac, they like the Mac

Mini, and that's all they want to do. But that's the one that strikes me is that would be pretty awesome. If you had a keyboard or maybe even a keyboard track bad combo that was also a Mac that you could just attach anywhere you went, that would be pretty sweet. Yep.

Logging writes in and said, while blood oxygen sensing is now back on the Apple Watch, with the results being displayed on the iPhone, why isn't the same data available in the vital section on the iPhone? I understand it not being able to be displayed on the watch, but if it's already displayed on the iPhone in the blood oxygen section,

why can't it be displayed in the Vital section? Now, I'll say this is a example of a classic kind of question that we get, which we obviously cannot answer, right? Like, Jason and I do not have the answer to this question. However, I thought it was interesting. Now, you can tell me if this is the case, because I know for me on the Apple Watch vitals, both on my watch and in the health app on my iPhone,

blood oxygen is a part of my vitals. So is that not the case for you then? And if so, why? Like, if you have the data now, why can't that be put back into the vital system? It's not on the watch, I think, because of Massimo. But what about the... But now that you have the blood oxygen sensing back on the phone,

why does it not show up there? So just... Again, we don't know, but it's interesting. My guess is because this strategy of syncing oxygen back to the phone happened relatively soon. And the vitals app and the vitals tab and the health app were probably built to reflect the same data set. And that to uncouple them is something that if they want to do, it will take time. That's my just gut feeling. That is like too much work to engineer a solution that they are hoping they don't need,

long term. Right. You go to the vitals people. Well, also you just go roll to the vitals people and you're like, hey, great news.

We have this workaround where we only show it on the phone. And the vitals people are like, uh, we show it on both. And they're like, well, can you only show it on the phone and not the watch in the U.S.?

And they're like, mm, that's kind of a big project. And I'm like, okay, forget it. Forget it. We're going to ship it anyway. Forget a ticket in Jera. We'll get back to it later.

You know, yeah, where do we want to prioritize this? Let's prioritize this as a nice to have. Um, yeah. And well, yeah, because, you know, Mossimo and the patent's expiring and do you want to put in work that's going to just get thrown away and how important is the vitals on the phone? And, and how important is it for you to remain parallel where your vitals on the phone and your vitals on the watch reflect the same things, right? Instead of it being like different on the phone. Yep. So it's, this whole thing is so dumb, but that's probably why. I feel like we figured it out. Reid writes in and says, has Mike ever had issues getting service on his US purchased e-sim-only iPhones in the UK?

Especially now that the e-sim-only iPhone pro have a larger battery than their sim slot counterparts and of course we have the air, which is e-sim-only everywhere. I'm wondering if this causes any headaches if anything is ever needed. So I will say I've had absolutely zero problems with this. So I have been on the e-sim

train longer than most people would in my country because I've been buying iPhones in America for years, like from when they were first ESIM phones, right, in the States, which was a few years ago. The first year or two, I couldn't do the transfer while I was in America, but now that works. I can. I don't know how on earth that happens, but it does. And I have made the transfer many times. I even just transferred an e-sim from an Android phone to an iPhone. All of this stuff is just handled by the carrier app. So I'm an EE customer. That's the name of my cell network. And they have just functionality in their app for moving your e-sim from device to device. It's not complicated and has worked for me flawlessly in the ways in which I would expect it to. And even now,

also somehow works on overseas. I don't recommend that you do that. I was just curious one year if it would work and it did and I was like oh okay um but the the actual transfer from device to device is really very simple um so you know I I don't necessarily recommend that you buy a phone in another country like I do that because it you just kind of need to do that and like and I'm lucky that UK and US cell bands are the same like I remember looking this up years ago because different phones are sold in different territories they won't all work everywhere to get the best speeds but the UK and the US use the same bands

that the devices have the same kind of antennas in them I do recommend I recommend that when you go to a different country you buy a phone there as a souvenir and bring it home just for fun for kicks just remind you every time it's good it's a laugh

that's right why can't I hear you it's because I bought this phone in Singapore Or, yeah. Well, it works great. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm here to tell you not to be scared of E-Sims. It's fine, right? Like, people were scared.

It's fine. I was scared, too. I was scared, too, because I review a bunch of phones, and I used to just pop the Sims back and forth. And you know what I do now? I just pop the E-Sims back and forth. It's fine. And Matt asked me another question, which is, am I playing Hollow Night Silk Song? And I will say no, because I'm too scared of that video game.

It's too hard for me. Oh, interesting. Yeah, it's very, very tough, but it's the game of the moment. Although I did just start playing Hades 2 this weekend, and that game, all boy, love it. Hollow Night was a favorite, a childhood favorite of my son. Really? He must be playing Silk Song then, undoubtedly. You should just text him and say, are you playing Silk Song?

Just say that. We talked about it. We talked about it. Oh, there you go. I am convinced that he's playing Silk Song because the whole world is playing Silk Song. but Hades 2, that's more my speed and I think I just the other thing for me is Silk Song

I'm not really playing games at the moment to try because I just don't have that time at the moment so I'm playing games that I'm convinced that I'm going to like and I loved Hades so I'm enjoying Hades too it's actually really fun because I've now just started listening to the rest of history episode about Greek myths

Hades 2 is based in Greek mythology so that's true so I'm going to getting a bit of backstory. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode of the show, you'd also send in your feedback and follow-up to us at UpgradeFeedback.com. I'd like to thank our members who support us of Upgrade Plus. They get longer ad-free episodes each and every week. The companies that provide the advertising on this episode with Ebiotics,

Claude, E-CAM, and HelloFresh. Thank you to them for their support. If you'd like a video version of the show, you can search for it on YouTube. we're at Upgrade Podcast. Don't forget, go to St. Jude.org slash Relay. Donate what you can to help support the fight against childhood cancer. I want to thank you all for listening.

We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye to Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.