Upgrade - 585: Slide Over Sickos

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade. Episode 585. Today's show is brought to you by Interconnected, ExpressVPN, Factor, and One Password. My name is Mike Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hello, Mike Hurley. I'm joined by Mike Hurley.

Hello. This is, I'm excited for today's episode. It is an episode that. That has kept growing throughout the day. This one took me, again, extra long time to put together. Breaking. Yeah, we've got breaking news. But today's show, I'm not sure why,

but it took like nearly twice the amount of time a regular episode takes for me to prep. Well, thank you for doing that because you do all the happy lifting for this, using your powers as a person ahead of me on the globe. Are I in the past? Am I in the future or the past? You're in the future for me I'm in Oh no I'm in the future for you

I'm in the Yeah I'm in the future for you You're in the So now Jason you could say I am going back to the future I'm in the past I'm in your past Because I'm Monday morning

And you're Monday night So you know what happens on Monday And I haven't lived it yet Right okay Fair enough I have a snow talk question for you Okay great Comes from Elliot

Who wants to know Jason What is your method For note taking Or jotting down thoughts Where do they go What do you know No pressure here talking to Mike Hurley

yeah maker of and taker of notes maker of note making things and taker of notes and you know what I always say is you got to know when to hold them no when to fold them you do say that you're known for saying no when to walk away no when to run no when to take notes know when to note take this is the most boring answer to this question

I don't take notes generally if I do take notes it's if I'm out and about or something it's in notes the notes app I make a note and I put things in the notes app if I'm doing a product briefing sometimes

I will do that in the notes app I've been doing that a little bit more just because it means that it's everywhere kind of immediately and it's in a different place I also will just use BB edit if I'm sitting at my Mac sometimes I'll just make a text document and save it and it's got my notes from a briefing

or anything especially if it ends up being a story that I'm writing based on the briefing that that text document and be it will become the story document as well I'll just have the notes down at the bottom as I write the story so it's a boring answer I don't have any I don't have any structure but I'm also like I was never a note taker in well in college I took notes but I always felt like I was bad at it but I did it um I did it and I think maybe some of the principle there is it's useful to take notes if it's going to reinforce your memory. But I would sometimes get in the problem,

especially since my handwriting is so bad, when I was doing handwritten notes in college, where I would feel like if I was too diligent with my note-taking, I would miss what was going on. I'd be so focused on note-taking. I would miss the concepts. Yeah, there is the balance there of, like, learning what are the things that are actually important for you to write down.

And that is the thing that I've gone backwards and forward to over time, And I think I've got a pretty good internal brahm over it, but it is something that understandably people struggle with because you end up with people who are basically just writing down every single thing that's said. And that's not helpful. And you're supposed to be able to process and think about it and put down what you need to.

And honestly, that was me at my best in college was the very specific, right? Like I did very lightweight note-taking. I did not write down what people said. verbatim at all. I would write down what I felt were key concepts and phrases and that was it. And I never really thought that note taking was my speciality, but that's where I ended up kind of like in the in the note taking scheme. Yeah. And today, yeah, today functionally, either I've got a like if it's if it's something very specific like a story I want to write, I've got a reminders list for that or it's something we're going to need at the story.

I've got a reminders list for that. But if it's just general kind of like, I mean, I'll put it this way. This is how the base level of this. If I park somewhere in a big parking structure and I need to know that I'm in E8 at the, you know,

at the airport, I'll either take a picture of the post that says E8. Or I will make a note that says E8 as the title with no text and it's just a note. So notes is. is kind of where everything goes except for like I said more

bigger things, an Apple event, something like that, I just open a BB edit window if I'm on a Mac and I would open probably a text editor window regardless. Although if I was on an iPad,

I might just use notes, but something like that. Do you have any specific, interesting, note taking, jotting down thoughts? Well, my number one spot for notes

is the notes app. Like, while I am a pen and paper person, the, if I genuinely, If it's something that I feel like I might need later, it will always go in the notes up because paper is not syncable, right, like in that way. Yeah, that's true. But, like, my note taking is where I do it on pen and paper is mostly meetings and calls and stuff like that, where I want to be present in it.

I don't like to sit with a window open, a notes window open if I'm having a meeting. Sure. Or even if I'm having a Zoom call, I like to sit and write stuff. down and then the things that are important to me, I will then put wherever they might need to go, whether it's the notes app or it's a projection notion or Google Doc or whatever. Like I have a notebook confronting me right now where I write down things that I want to mention on the show. This is something I started doing recently. Like if you're in a good thought, I don't want to interrupt you.

I'm trying to write things down, so I'll remember to bring them up rather than jumping in. I actually think I started doing a little while ago. That's nice. Yeah, I struggle with this a little bit when I have a briefing at Apple, which doesn't happen that often anymore. Mostly they're just on WebEx. But if it's in person, sometimes I do bring a reporter's notebook. And the idea there is, and that some of this is because I have, you know, I've written,

I've done journalism stuff for long enough now that I've kind of, even with my terrible writing, I can still kind of scratch things down in the reporter's notebook, the important points, right? Because I write terribly and slow and it's bad. But what I've found is even there, I think, should I just have a laptop out and just type my notes in? Sometimes I do that.

Sometimes I don't. When I did that interview with Eddie Q about the sports app, I actually recorded the interview because it was on the record and I could kind of quote him as freely as I wanted to. And I had some notes written down and the notes were like my highlights and then I knew what to look for in the transcript.

And that was kind of instructive in what do I write down. But if I'm using the reporter's notebook and especially if you're in a scenario where you can directly quote people, that's the thing you end up writing down is the direct quotes that you think are important because I can't write a complete transcript, but I can write phrases they say or sentences they say that I know I'm going to quote. it's yeah it's tricky when you have terrible handwriting um it's not ideal that's the nice thing about and my handwriting was bad but now since i can type almost anything it's even worse so it's very rare that i do something that i that i write down then we have a worker come to the you know i i had they looked at my air conditioning vents and stuff the other day and the guy was like well you can give us a credit card for three percent service fee or you can write us a check or give us cash and i was like this is the only time I write checks anymore and it's also one of the only times I write things

with a pen and I have that moment of like how do you write things so I've kind of yeah the notes app is kind of killed the rest of it for me but I do have nice pens when I do write a check at least it's important if you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of upgrade just go to upgrade feedback.com and send in your snell talk like Elliott did got some follow-up for you, Jason Snell. First off, I want to talk about Maca West Tahoe again. So I rebuilt my spotlight database by dragging my hard drive in and out of the security preferences pane. It did nothing. Contact search still isn't working. Dropbox search still isn't working. And I realize clipboard history also does not work. So I don't know what's going on. I heard from a couple

of people who wrote in and said that they're having similar problems. My hope now is I, I I guess I'm going to wait for 26.1. It's just a fixed bug. Just see if that fixes it. If not, I'm going to have to do something else. I don't know what. So essentially at the moment, spotlight for me on Tahoe is basically just the old spotlight.

And also maybe worse, because it can't find contacts and files right now. So I've got that going on. If anybody has a fix, just write in and let me know. Please do. But I'm going to keep my eye on it. Also, the new hand cursor is freaking me out. Like, I keep forgetting that it's changed and it's different in just enough way.

It's kind of like uncanny. Where do you see it? I've seen it a few places like for links and stuff like that. Like, you're going to click a link and you get the little, you know, the little pointy guy. I've been seeing it in a few spots. It seems like pretty inconsistent as to where it appears. And it's like, it's freaking me out. It's like, wow, what are you?

I don't know why, but it's different enough that it's tripping me up. Okay. David wrote in and says, Am I going crazy as Apple in MacOS 26 removed the visual feedback when adjusting volume? Why would they do this? So there's two parts to the story. Part number one is my part, which is I also missed it for a few days, but they've moved it up to the top right, so it's up by the menu by now.

It's not like right in the middle of the screen. But you have a second part to the story. story. Yeah, I did check in with David. He was actually using a utility to hide items in the toolbar. Apparently, he had the sound drop down in the toolbar hidden, and that means that it didn't display at all. The idea here is that Apple wants you to know that when you're adjusting the volume, it's adjusting a thing that is in control center. And so they've got it set up that if the little volume adjustment thing flies out when you use your keyboard, it shows you the volume adjust thing, which, you know, I can see the argument for it. I can see the argument against it.

That's what they've chosen to do. I think it makes more sense to put it up there than right in the middle of the screen. Right in your face where it could get in the way. But then again, some people are, people are, I was going to say some people want it in their face. People are used to it being in their face. They may get used to it in a new location. I'm sure somebody will make a utility that will put it in your face if you want it to be. But that's where it is.

That man's name is John Syracusa. It flies out of control set. unless I think you have sound as an item on the menu bar, in which case it flies out of that. I think that's how that works. Yeah, mine comes out of the menu bar because I have, I have like the audio thing in the menu bar for like, so I know what I've got connected or what is it connected. Well, it all comes out of the menu bar, but mine comes out of the control center logo because I don't have sound as an item in the menu bar.

So it just comes out of the control center logo, but that's what it's trying to impart to you is the idea that all that stuff is happening up there where your controls are. So you could also adjust it manually without the keyboard from that menu. Moving on, Grapp wrote it wrote in and said, In the last episode, you were talking about Apple pulling people off the update for the Vision Pro in order to work on a Meta Rayband-style product instead. And Jason said it was the right call, but he wished that they could do both. But why can't they?

Okay. I'm just going to say, as I said that, I knew somebody would say, would say something like this, and I decided I wasn't going to do this particular rant at that particular moment. Yeah. But I knew this was, I knew what would happen. Go ahead. Here you go. Grant says, why is Apple one of the biggest companies in the world incapable of working on these two products simultaneously? Why do they not have enough employees to make that happen?

And this extends to lots of other products as well, for example, stuff like AirPos Mac. So I saw this note from Grant, and I thought, it's funny, Mark German literally addressed the same issue this weekend on this same topic. And he did a good job. This is an example of Mark German totally getting how Apple is structured. This is what he said. Even Apple doesn't do everything at once. Despite its immense wealth, Apple is disciplined and selective, even frugal. It doesn't invest heavily in products that lack the potential to be.

become mainstream hits. There is some truth in that. I think he's kind of mixing two things here, but I had somebody write in to me and say, you know, about like, why doesn't Apple experiment with weird iPhones and stuff? And it's like,

if an iPhone isn't going to sell tens of millions, they're not interested. It's just a scale issue. Everything Apple does, you know, essentially has a scale that they expect, a scale that makes the return on investment worth it. And so,

and like on iPhone especially, it's like iPhone is the most successful product in the world. It's just got to, if you're going to do it, it's going to be big. That's the problem with the Vision Pro is the Vision Pro is like a weird experimental developer kind of thing. And even then the expectations for it. I keep hearing people who are like, oh, it's a flop. They should kill it and all that. It was like it was never going to be a mainstream hit.

If there's somebody at Apple who thought that the $3,500 Vision Pro was going to be a mainstream hit, who check on that person. Yeah, but that's actually like, for Grant's point. They must have known that it wasn't going to be more of a hit than it was. So shouldn't they have had a plan for this scenario rather than we're just going to move people around left, right and center? Well, so I think the idea was they were building up Vision Pro thinking that they would continue building that product and getting it lighter and thinner and lighter and thinner until it became AR glasses. And what meta has done is say we're going to approach it, like I keep saying from the bottom up, what if we make like AirPods glasses and then we put a little screen in them, and then we grow it from there.

And obviously, somebody at Apple, this is what we said last week, poohed that, and was like, nah, we already got AirPods. That's not the way. Those products aren't very interesting. And that was a mistake, I think. That was a mistake. But here's the answer, which is, yes, Apple could have two complete teams on this, but there's a few things going on here. First off, based on Mark Herman's reporting, this is an all hands-on-deck situation.

They're like, we need to accelerate. They already have people working on the glasses, right? They had people working on the glasses, and they had people working on Vision Pro. They did have what Grant is describing. And somebody, I think rightly, said, this is not fast enough. We need to work way harder on this. We are behind. We need to catch up.

We need to ship these things faster. I do not want to be shipping what Meta is about to ship in three years. That's ridiculous. We can't do that. And so what they did, functionally, according to German, is they pulled a bunch of people who were working on Vision Pro and just said, don't work on that, work on this instead, because we really need to help. So part of it is that.

Part of it is, this is an emergency. The other part of it is engineers aren't like super fungible. Like engineers are hard to, are, first off, Apple makes it hard to hire. Apple hiring is really a slow process. This is what he says about discipline, selective, frugal, Apple very limited with the people they hire. And engineer skills are specific. So, like, you can't just peel people off or bring a bunch of people in and toss them on a randomly onto a glasses project and have it solve the problem. Apple could probably do a better job of hiring people, you know, faster than they do.

But culturally, it's an issue for them. So it's not so simple. But what you're describing is what happened here. This is not Apple saying, oh, we just can't afford more engineers. it's Apple pulling engineers off of B to put them on A because A is suddenly a high priority. And they do pay in the sense that they don't have enough engineers to do that without leaving a hole

because they don't have enough engineers tasked for that kind of product design. But again, that's a specific... I mean, these are people working on hardware engineering for vision products. Like this is not, you know, get somebody who's working on USB on the Mac to come over. I mean, like, it's not, it's a different skill set in a lot of ways, too. So it's complicated.

But I think what we're seeing here with this story is Apple just shifting a bunch of people off of a similar product because they're desperate to go faster. Ben Wright-Sinner says, regarding the inevitability of smart glasses, I am unconvinced. I know both Mike and Jason wear glasses so they see a non-tech utility. But persuading non-glasses wearers to put a device on your face is going to be a substantial challenge. I personally had LASIC after decades of wearing glasses, and the benefit to me of going back to losing freedom from glasses for purely tech reasons would have to be absolutely colossal on top of the phone, the watch, etc.

Curious to know your thoughts. So I would expect, Jason, that most Apple Watch wearers did not replace another watch on their wrist. Like, they went from no watch to Apple Watch. Like, people just didn't feel a need for watches. they were using their phone to tell the time or whatever. That, I think, would be the closest analogy here. I know that, like, glasses, it's a big elite.

And so essentially, what Apple need to do, if they're going to make this product work, is what they did with the Apple Watch, but even more so. But they have to make the product so good that people will want to wear it. Like, wherever they can make it that good, I don't know. But I think it's possible to convince people

to wear a tech. version or something that they otherwise wouldn't. I think they've done that once already. So, Ben is completely right in that this is a big leap. And that people who don't wear glasses feeling like it's worth wearing glasses to get this product is going to be one of the ultimate tests of it. It's actually one of the reasons I think it's kind of smart that META did the Rayban thing, which is a sunglasses context. Because you know a lot of people who don't need prescription wear sunglasses when they're outside it being sunglasses makes it like a way in which you feel like you're testing it like you're trying it and you've not got to commit to living

your life that way exactly but more broadly what i would say to ben is it's incumbent on meta and apple and whoever else to make this if this category is going to be that huge it's incumbent on them to make it so useful that people who don't need to wear glasses for vision correction will take the leap. And it's the idea that, you know,

in 20 years, isn't that everybody wears glasses because you need them. Whether you need vision correction or not, everybody wears glasses and suddenly everybody... And yet, that may seem wild,

but like, you look at pictures of people in past eras and they're wearing hats. You're like, they look weird. They're wearing stuff that we don't wear.

Carrying briefcases around? They got cravats. Totally crevats. I mean, they got, there's stuff that is like de rigour. De rigour. Sorry, pardon my French. Bonjour.

Bonjour, chasselle. Michel. It's, it's, it was standard. And now we look at it and it's like that's banana as well. For example, imagine, and this is not exactly what Ben's saying, but imagine somebody saying, I don't want to wear, I don't want to have a smartphone. I don't need one. Why would I need a phone when I'm going around?

It's like, well, guess what? Everybody's got one now. Because the utility made it worth it. And in fact, I could go further and say, there were a lot of women who are like, I have no place to put this thing. Why would I have it with me? And now it's like, well, they got to find, make one that fits in a pocket or get a crossbody strap or add pockets to things. Because it's everybody's got to have it. The world changes.

And things move around in order to get to that. thing. And that's what they would have to do with classes. Yeah. You may remember back in July, we spoke about YouTuber John Proser being sued by Apple for alleged theft of trade secrets that was relating to the user interface of iOS 26. Mac Rumors is reporting on some court documents that have been released as part of this trial saying that Proser has yet to respond in any way to Apple's legal complaint and they have therefore filed for a default judgment which essentially could result in the judge ruling in Apple's favor because it's like the way that I understand it, he is essentially just showing noncompliance. Like he's just by not doing this. It's like just not responding and

it's like essentially just trying to ignore it is how it would appear. As a reminder, Apple had requested monetary damages and an injunction to stop process from reporting on any first over confidential information. And the thing that we spoke about at the time is that if Apple were to win, he would have to find a lot of money. I don't know if he has that money, but it would be a lot of money.

And also essentially would destroy the way he makes money, which is, you know, he talks about all kinds of tech, but I think Prosser is particularly in fame when he posts about some leak stuff. Yeah, I mean, he's still posting stuff. But yes, that's the thing. He has continued to make videos.

It's not like he's disappeared, which is what I thought. I thought we weren't going to hear from him. But no, he keeps doing it. So I'm surprised that he hasn't responded. Yeah, it seems like a bold move. I think there is an argument to be made that even if he couldn't cover confidential information, he might think, well, I've made my name with that. So now, let's, I'll just do reviews and stuff. I just, I'm skeptical of that.

This is, it's not a great look when you don't respond to a lawsuit. Yep. I will say, I don't, I don't typically watch his stuff. His style has never really been my style, but I've just now clicked onto his YouTube channel. On September 5th, he was leaking colors. You know, and like, he's like, that's his video. I was like, oh, these are the colors, which we all knew, but like, he's still doing it. So, Pross is co-defendant, Michael Ramakioti.

So he was the guy who was, you know, yep, thank you. One way or another. No one could ever know. He was the one who was doing the FaceTime call of the person's, of the Apple employee's phone. Ramisioti, we're soft seas? I said Ramasotti because I know somebody named Ramazzati, and my guess is it's the same name, just pronounced it slightly differently. Apologies to Italy. Well, yeah, some people change this stuff when they go from place to place.

It's true. It's true. So we'll call him Michael, because that's his first name, and I know I can say that one, right? Michael has been cooperative and has also been granted an extension on his part of the case, because he was delayed in retaining a lawyer, but has done so. The date has now passed, Brasser has not responded, and so Apple was now filed for this. I don't know if we're going to know what happens from here. Probably will, I guess, if we know this much. It doesn't feel good

This doesn't feel good Like this feels not good It feels like someone's life's about to get ruined I have no emotional attachment to John Prosser But I will just say that I read this story And I thought dude what are you doing? Yeah this doesn't feel great I don't know what the play is here

I figure really I mean look I don't know what Maybe he just knew he wasn't going to win I don't know Or like, you know, like, it's just like, ah, so just maybe not deal of it and hope it goes away. Not good. This is not good. And I, and I wanted to mention it because we've spoken about it, but like, this makes me feel bad.

I don't, I will say, I'm not like, oh, how could Apple do this? Like, I don't feel that way. Like, you know, but I kind of wished it was going to go a bit different because he said he was innocent. and I wished he would have proven that in court. Yeah. We had some breaking news before this episode began. Oh, man. So Apple put out a press release on their TV PR website,

which is different to the Apple Newsroom. So Apple TV has their own press release page. It does. Because they operate slightly differently, you know, in like what they're talking about. It would be too much if they just put all. of this on the, on the Apple newsrooms. Too much to have like slow horses, season premieres and stuff like that. And this many viewers and da-da-da-da-da. So they, they had a press release that went

out saying that the F-1 movie would debut on Friday, December 12th on Apple TV Plus. Great stuff. Love it. There was a line at the end of this press release that says, Apple TV plus is now simply Apple TV with a vibrant new identity. Hang on. It's one. It's what now? This is mentioned nowhere else. There is nothing about this vibrant identity. It is not referenced as of recording on any other place on Apple's websites. It then also says, which I just enjoyed this part, Apple TV is available on the Apple TV app in over 100 countries and regions on over 1 billion screens, including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro. So we do now have what we always wanted, which is,

Apple TV on Apple TV on Apple TV. It's happened. We have it. Yeah. So here's here I have two real quick thoughts about this since this just happened. One, everybody called it Apple TV. Everybody called it Apple TV. The plus sometimes was there, sometimes wasn't everybody just called it Apple TV. Apple TV is the brand. Apple was trying to differentiate Apple TV, the streaming service from Apple TV, the product, from

the TV app, which is not the Apple TV app, it's the TV app, but it's on Apple products. Well, I will say in this press release, they do call it the Apple TV app. They do. Oh, okay. No, I think that, uh-uh, but don't make me, look, I don't want to say this. It's not being unfair. I don't think it is actually called the Apple TV app, but they did call it the Apple TV app in this press release. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think they got this right. Well, and the truth is, the truth is on non-Apple platforms, it is the Apple platforms. It is the Apple TV app. That's true.

And you think of it this way. Think of it this way. It's not the Apple TV app because that would make it the Apple, Apple TV app. It's not. It's the Apple TV app. Yeah. But same diff, right? It's Apple TV runs together.

So here is my thought, which is this is a morass of weirdness. But at the same time, one, the world does not need another weird, clever streaming service name. Two, everybody just calls it Apple TV. So three, just go with it. That's my response here is I actually saw this news and first reaction was what? And the second reaction was, thank goodness, it's over. Right? Like, it just doesn't need to be differentiated.

Nobody was differentiating it. It doesn't need to be differentiated. Apple TV, it's on Apple TV. Like, it's enough. It's enough. You don't need to make it more than. it is. So I'm, I'm okay with it. I look forward to the vibrant new identity, whatever that might be. Yeah, and I think that this is also like an indication that they've given up trying

to get everybody to be in the Apple TV app, right? Like, I feel like that was part of it, right? Like, the TV app is supposed to be where all your content is, it never will be. It just won't. Like, because you're never going to get Netflix there. They're not going to do it. So, except that one week where they did. Except for those couple of days where they were there, they will never be there. I don't know if it means anything about that. I think this is just simplifying the streaming service. The TV app is what it is. I don't think it's got its own issues, but I don't think it changes that at all. I mean, they've got that TV app all over the place now. That's the other challenge here, right, is that on other non-Apple platforms, the TV app is a vehicle for the Apple TV

service. On Apple's platforms, it's It's also this kind of like catalog of other things that are available on the platform except for Netflix. And, you know, and it remains that. And I still use it for that. I mean, I still use it for that on my Apple TV. The box, not the service. Yeah. I mean, I think it's so, I do think it says something. And I think, but I will want to see how it rolls out because Apple TV plus is a tab inside the TV app. Right. So what? Is there now going to be an Apple TV tab inside of the Apple TV app? So, like, I think that there is something to be said about what is going on here. We can't really draw too much from it when all we have is what is essentially a throwaway line at the bottom of a press release, which is an incredible way to do things. Like, I love it. I would make the argument here, having only known about this for 10 minutes, that just changing the tab to say Apple TV instead of Apple TV Plus in the side of the TV app actually makes no functional difference.

actually isn't confusing. Oh, no, I agree. I agree. Because we know what it is. So, like, and this is why you drop the plus, is that that's what that is. So just give up. I mean, I'm not going to do this. But like, you could just say originals or something like that.

Like, you know, look on the side if you wanted to differentiate it. But yeah, it's funny. This is hilarious. Apple TV Plus is now simply Apple TV of a vibrant new identity. It's so vibrant. We can't even see it, Jason. No, you can't. It's vibrating and ultraviolet.

So I reckon, I mean, we're going to talk about this in a room and round up. My bet is that this is going to be a busy week this week of stuff. I think that maybe this is a little bit earlier than it needs to be. And then maybe by the end of the week, this is a little bit more clear, like what is going on here. Well, I mean, yeah, we will get to it. But German's reported that there's other stuff going on and that this may be sort of leading into that. And in fact, I wonder if this announcement should have was going to happen Friday. And then for some reason it didn't.

I don't know. Weird. because I just what is fun about this is it supremely weird to do it this way like hey we're doing this thing but just don't worry about it

we're not going to tell you when but it'll be before December we know that much it will be before the movie comes but until then we'll see what happens yeah although I'm just going to put it out here because this is a Monday press release

and what if there's beta 3 and beta 3 drops and the rebranding happens in the software so they're like put it out there now who knows maybe before the episode ends today we'll have an answer that'll be fun that's fun I mean maybe sure

this episode is brought to you by Interconnected if you've ever wondered how the digital world really connects behind the scenes you're not alone the new podcast Interconnected is a video and podcast series by Equinix that explores the hidden infrastructure behind our connected future, from data centers to cloud ecosystems to the platforms

and people who use them. Interconnected's hosts bring tech leaders, industry experts and innovators together in candid conversations to break down and discuss the future of global connectivity. The third episode of Interconnected covers the digital infrastructure for a food secure world. You'll hear about how farmers are moving from the 20th century operations to AI and machine learning that analyzes soil, weather and crock data to tackle 21st century. century risks, how digital platforms are now connecting local producers to global demand through cloud-linked supply chains and how food security has evolved past land and labor and now requires the digital layer to connect and coordinate with AI-driven diagnostics.

With small farmers, sorry, and why small farmers are becoming critical nodes in a decentralized data-driven food system built to feed a growing world. So I listened to one of the episodes of Interconnected, I think it was the first one, about how AI is revolutionizing the health industry. And there's some parallels here about using this technology with modern data to be able to do stuff and to be able to learn. And they also bring in subject matter experts on the show that really dig into the subjects, which is what you want to hear. It's fascinating to hear about the beginnings of a new kind of preventative health care using the analysis of huge data sets and what that can enable. It was actually similar to some

of the stuff that we were hearing about in the podcast as well. So yeah, there's a lot of really interesting stuff in this podcast. It's worth checking out. You can discover the digital infrastructure powering today's biggest tech trends of Interconnected, follow Interconnected on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our thanks to Interconnected for their support of this show and Relay. So, we have, they've finally gone and done it, Apple and Charter have announced that a selection of L.A. Lakers games will be streamed live in immersive video on the Vision Pro. They did it.

They did it. It took two year, two and a bit years from when we first saw someone dunk a basketball in immersive video, then I'm actually doing it. There's a bunch of asterisks on this, which you might need to explain to me a little bit. So these games are only available live to Spectrum subscribers in Lakers' broadcast territories. So I know that it's something about Black House and stuff like that. So I get that. This is a quote from Apple's press release.

game replay and highlights will be available on demand via Spectrum Sportsnet, which is an app, and on the NBA app for national and international fans. So it feels a little restrictive. What's going on here? It's rights. Apple doesn't have NBA rights, so they have to work with rights holders.

And the way that the rights work is that the local rights for the Lakers games, the Spectrum is their partner. So they're working with Spectrum as the vehicle here and doing it at Lakers games. So they only have to do it at like one, I think one venue, presumably these will even be home games. I don't know. We don't know yet.

And so they're going to stream it live on the new Spectrum Sportsnet Vision Pro app. So they've obviously been working with them on that. And then the NBA app for Vision Pro, which has been out for a while and is a very interesting app, will have like highlights and on-demand replay for people who want to see what this is like, but it won't be live. Yeah, this is a... So that's the thing is this is a local event. So it's for Lakers people with spectrum subscribers because that's, they have the rights.

And they're the ones who are making this happen, right? So they're going to get their advantage here, which is they're letting this go live, but it's just in their market for their subscribers. But it's a good test case. And I like the fact that it'll be on the NBA app. So presumably everybody after the fact can like see. what it was like to watch it live. So we'll see what happens.

Also, this is, it's using the, the Black Magic Ursa cameras, but they said it's the new Cine Immersa Live cameras, which sounds to me like it's a, I think the Ursa Cine immersive was a product, but they said Cine Immersa Live. So I wonder if this is a modified version or an alternate version or an extension of the black magic camera that allows it to pull that stuff out. And instead of just writing it to a card, it is shooting it somewhere where it's being processed and ingested and turned into a live stream. Maybe it's the box could be a bit different. You know, maybe it's itself, like the camera casing itself to make it, I don't know, more movable or amenable to this kind of content.

And they said you've got to have a 150 megabit connection minimum to stream immersive basketball. That part stood out to me. I mean, it's obvious that you would need good internet. But it's, I wonder what buffering is like in immersive, right? Like, what is that experience going to be like if you get screen tears and all kinds of stuff? What it says is via streams of up to 150. So maybe it's less than that, but 150 is a, that's a big stream. Yeah.

And maybe that's the max stream. So that's the highest quality if you've got it that. So maybe it'll be available on smaller. It's hard to say, like, this is a spectrum press release. and then the next day Apple put out like a little mini press release about it. That's all we know. There's more to come.

It's not going to happen until probably early next year. So there's time yet for this to work out. But this is the answer is Apple is doing a live stream of an event. They're going to use basketball, which I think most people would say is probably the best sport for this because you're so close. and all the action is in such a small space versus so many other sports.

Like they could have done this with Friday night baseball, but you're going to literally just have to be sitting in a seat watching a baseball game. Whereas here, you're going to have those big basketball players just moving right past you if you're sitting court side. That's really interesting. And I think they said that there'll be multiple views. So there's court side and like behind the baskets or whatever.

Unclear, are you going to switch? Are they going to switch? We don't know. I mean, so many details to come. But this is Apple saying they're doing a live sports immersive test. That's exciting. So Jambo Hove in the Discord says something I just wanted to respond to on the show because I think it's funny. Live sports streaming in general was bad of how far you are, how far behind live you are, wonder how much worse it will be.

I don't think it matters when you can't do anything but watch the game. It's not like you're checking social media and seeing the score. You are locked in an immersive experience. Yeah, I think that's what you give away. that's what you give away when you do it is to have it be a little bit more delayed but you're there and unless you are following social media

or making bets like about events that happen in the game and all that it's like you just got to let it go and watch the spectacle that's just how it is I'm really excited to try this like to actually watch it I hope that I don't know

well then they're not clear about what part will be available for international is it the whole replay or is it the highlights? Because I want to sit and watch an extended period of a game. I think it's game replay and highlights will be available for national and international fans. Yeah, I hope so. Like that would be good. It would be very good. Because what I also wonder on this is who is the driving force here? Is it Spectrum or is it Apple? Like it's not important, but I just wonder. Like who has decided to do this?

Like, it feels like maybe Spectrum wanted to do this because of the restrictions around it. Like, you know, it feels like Spectrum's like, hey, we want to do this, but we're going to do it our way. So only speculating here, my guess is that Apple and the NBA wanted to do this. And they decided that the best way to do it was to go to a rights holder. And Spectrum seemed amenable to it. And, you know, it worked out like that, is my guess. But I don't know. I don't have any facts about this.

just speculation. Because the NBA has been interested in Vision Pro, but Apple has no MBA rights. So how do you do this? And so rather than going to, I mean, you know, you can go, there are certain other rights that the NBA has, but like I think using a partner, a regional sports partner is not a bad. It's a start. It's just a thing to try. No, this is the way to do it. Like to restrict it, to a certain team. So like maybe people that work with that team are just working on this, right? Like, it's particular, probably all in the same place, right? It would not surprise me, as you mentioned, if they're only home games that they do or something. So it's like this, we can kind of like understand this scenario.

We know this stadium. It's got what we need, you know, because this is going to be wonky. Like, it's just going to be that way. Like, there is no way around it. This is the first time this has happened. No one has done this. Yeah. Zoe mentions that, and this is correct, Apple has a relationship with Spectrum where you can use their app on an Apple TV 4K and use it as your cable box, basically. So they have a little tech, a technological relationship there, which is important because they're going to have to do the Vision Pro app in order to enable this. There's a lot of stuff going on here. I mean, this is, I think we're all surprised this didn't happen a little sooner. I still am a little surprised this didn't happen with Friday night baseball. But it's great that's happening. Maybe it will. Maybe it will. Maybe it will. now. Like maybe it has needed this camera, like,

unless it's not been available. And the availability of the black magic cameras might be some of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that might be some of it, too. The impression I get I'm talking to Alex Lindsay on MacBrick Weekly especially is that the Apple immersive stuff has all been kind of like the hardware to capture it has been kind of experimental. And it's only with the black magic stuff that there's finally kind of a, if not mass produced, a produced product that people can get

and use for stuff like this instead of it being sort of Apple's bespoke magical box that they use to capture some of the early stuff. And that seems to be what's going on here. Yeah, I'm happy that this stuff is continuing. You know, we're referencing that story from last week, talking about it a little bit earlier, right, that like the heat has come off from some areas of the Vision Pro. I'm happy that there are people that are still pushing this stuff forward inside Apple and outside because it is really interesting technology and will be informative about the future, no matter what ends up happening to this one particular idea. VisionOS is pushing forward. This content is pushing forward. And we're going to get a

like M5 Vision Pro at some point, possibly even this week. So there's a lot going on here. Even if they pulled some engineers. And that's the thing. Pulled some engineers off for how long to work on before going back. Like we don't know any of that. And there's work. If VisionOS is a future strategy for them, they should just keep cranking on it. And that product doesn't, honestly, that product, the product that they pulled the people off of probably was not cheap enough or light enough for it to really move the needle because even now, I think that that's probably too far gone. So just let it go for a while and build up your platform and build up your content. Figure out how to do this stuff for when it matters. Yep.

So we mentioned how, you know, they could have been a beta coming out by the end of this episode. Something similar did it happen last week, just as we finished. last week's show, iPadOS 26.1 beta 2 came out and in it was some interesting stuff. I mean, so there was 26.1 beta 2 for other devices and that had different features in it. But the iPad was specifically interesting for the bringing back of a feature in the addition of another stuff that we have spoken about. So the most important thing I think for most people is that slideover has returned to the iPad. Yes.

Could you explain what is going on here? Because this isn't your granddad slide over. Yeah. So I think what happened is Apple, remember, the new windowing system in iPad OS is a complete replacement for what was there before. They threw everything out all the way back to split view and slide over. And they built something new that's Mac-like multi-window. One thing that they did do as a kind of affordance is if you tile two windows,

they kind of go into what is like a split view and there's even a little thing in the middle that you can slide left and right in order to change the size of the split view. What they didn't do is replicate slide over. I don't know whether that was them saying slide over was, because remember, slide over was kind of like

the start of iPad multitasking. And I wonder if they thought like, that was just a thing we did because we couldn't do anything else and it's not really worth it. Or whether they thought, we want to address that, but we can't address it at launch.

We'll get to it later. I don't, you'd have to ask the people on that team. But what I would say is, it became clear after this was announced in the BATES came out, that there were a lot of people who really rely on slideover for their workflow. I heard from a bunch of, like a bunch of people just in our little small community who said,

I won't update to 26 because I use slide over all the time. And I think, so what I wrote about in my review, is they threw the baby out with the bathwater a little bit because it turns out that as much as I like that multitasking experience, there is something to the idea of docking a window off screen, swiping to bring it on, swiping to put it away again, to have that kind of like temporary app,

it floats over your other windows, you can make reference, you can interact, and then you can put it away, like a picture and picture window, right, which has that same behavior. You've got the picture and picture window and then you can slide it off the edge of the screen if you want. And it's still playing audio and you can go get it back. But it's like it's there.

And so why not make it that you could do that with a window? And that's what they did in 261 beta 2 is they introduced new slideover. It only works in multi-window mode because it is an additional window. But then you can send it to slide over. And you can do that by tapping and holding on the little green stoplight. Or you can use it from the menu bar or you can use a keyboard shortcut. and then it will go left or right and it will become a slide over window. It can be unlike the old slide over, it can be any width and it can be any height so it can be

resized to be a little wider if it's more useful that way or a little shorter if that's more useful. And you swipe to bring it on and you swipe to put it away or if you're using a keyboard, you do globe backslash and it like slides out and then slides back, which is pretty sweet. I have to say that I was using this feature last week when I was in the back. backyard and I have the keyboard and I'd like keyboard to slide the thing out and then to make it go away. I don't even have to take my hands off the keyboard. That's pretty great. So that's there and it's and I think it's really good. I think they did a great job. And I love the fact that

if they weren't already planning it, perhaps it is that early on in the beta cycle they heard from people are like what, you know, clamor for slide over that maybe they as expert people inside Apple didn't understand was there. So it's great. I have heard from slideover connoisseurs. where they have some further complaints, which is apparently, you know, you could do multiple apps and slide over and then, like, swipe between them and all of that. And, and, you know, people are like,

well, maybe that'll come back at a later time. I don't think it will. Personal opinion here, I think that's too complicated for the metaphor here because we are still using the windowing metaphor. But they are letting you dock a window on the side using this thing called slide over. I'm a little surprised it doesn't have a gesture

but I think that they are afraid again of like mistaken gestures even though it's in multi-window mode what do you mean it doesn't have a gesture what is you saying I don't think you can like take it and just drag it off the screen and have it go into slide-over

I think you have to tell it to go into slide-over mode and then it's there I should say if you're using an external display you can put something else on that slide-over so you can't have multiple slide-overs one per display it's a very esoteric specific thing that you can do

so well I mean so if you want want to have multiple slideover windows. Just add more monitors to your iPad. By another monitor, you cheap skate, you know, that's what they're saying. I didn't say that. That's what they're saying. Just tape it onto the back of your iPad. It's like, I have a great solution for three slideover apps, you know? You're getting it yet?

This is three. It's three windows. It's three displays. Three. Yeah. So I think it's good. I think that there are going to be hardcore, slideover fans who are going to be

unhappy because it doesn't do everything that the old slideover did. But I think one of the reasons the slideover went away was it was so easy to get into that mode this is why it's only in window mode right? Yeah. It was so the biggest problem with the old iPad multitasking is that it was so easy to do it by mistake

and people will get stuck in slide over or in split view and be like, ah, what happened? I don't know how to get out of this. What did I do? Because they just swiped wrong. And so now you've got to be in multi-window mode, which is like that's just it. This is another window.

You can run all your other apps in full screen and it feels like the old thing, but you've got to be in that mode in order to get this to happen. And then, so I think people will grumble about that it has to be a multi-window mode even though functionally,

if you don't resize any of your windows, multi-window mode is full-screen mode. And people will grumble that you can't do more than one. But again, I think that there are reasons why that would be harder for Apple to do. I think this gets to the heart of the desire to have a dockable window off screen and so I think it is a win

even though I think we'll still hear complaints from people who want it to be more because I think that there's a limit to what Apple's willing to do. Yeah, I know that these people exist because I see them talking about it, right? Like there are people I follow it. Oh, yeah.

Like, you know, there are people that have been using the iPad forever. I don't want to call them slide over sickos, but they are slide over sickos, and I say that with love. Yeah. Like, they just love it. They're like, I love it. I love it. They have embraced this feature, and I think that's the thing, is that most people don't care, but they care so much about this feature.

Harry McCracken is one of them, right? Harry has been an Iron Power Power user forever, and is very focused still on the single window experience and, like, split future. And he did not like 26 because it doesn't do what he wants, and he responded positively. of the addition of slideover. But the thing that I just, I cannot, this is just a difference, right, in the way that people think and work.

I cannot get my head around someone who loves split view and slide over so much, but is opposed to the new windowing system. Like, to me, it just doesn't compute. Like, that if you, what you want is more Windows, I have a great solution for you. Harry's argument is, if I wanted more Windows, I'd use a Mac or a Windows laptop.

The reason I like the iPad is that it's simpler than that. Apple's point would be what we're going to offer you is the choice between simplicity or flexibility. What I would also say is, look, you can replicate split view in 26, and you can replicate slide over in 26. They're not quite the same, but you can replicate it. And if you use stage manager, I think you can even go further with replicating a lot of these functions. stage manager, I think, will do what a lot of people want, but they burned by it before. But stage

manager with the new windowing system on the iPad is fantastic, and that's how I use my iPad all the time, and I love it. It's really good. So, hey, look, you can zip, zip, zap between apps. That's what I'm doing. Left, right, and center, you wouldn't believe. But, like, this is, I think, one of the glaring

maybe, again, we don't know whether they knew and just hadn't done it, or whether they didn't know, or somebody lost an argument. But it was, apparent as soon as this beta rolled out, the first betas of 26, that the slide over people were like, what did you do? And I just, I got the sense that it was like, oh, this is like an unintended consequences thing. They killed slideover thinking it was just this primitive thing that had been replaced by this great advanced thing and we didn't need anymore. And then a whole bunch of people

were like, no, no, no, slide over has a unique use case that you need to support. And this is what I think is awesome. In 26.1 beta 2 in October, it's in there. Like, they put it in there. That's, if this is indeed because of a reaction to the user saying, wait a second, that's so great that it happens so quickly. Instead of, I think Federico pointed this out the other last week was like, hey, remember when you'd see something like this and say, well, I guess we'll get that in two years. Yeah. An iPad feature, an obvious change that needed to happen on the iPad. And instead, here it is at 26.1.

The bigger one there is the next thing we're going to talk about, which is the audio recording improvements. So the ability to set gain control for a microphone, so like the volume of the microphone input. And you can also set file location preferences. I'm not sure if that's in there. They've just said that's coming. This to me is the feature that you would wait a year for. These are little things because what happened is they announced this feature and they're like, look, we gave you what you wanted. And I felt really bad because literally at WWDC, I installed the beta and we tried this.

And Dan Morin used an audio technica microphone and it was overmodulated and unusable. And I used a microphone that worked, but then I had to save it in a weird place. And so it was like, thank you for giving us the thing we wanted for 10 years. But you got some of the details wrong. And so sorry, but we also need to say you need to address these things. And that's exactly what happened. They seem to have addressed them, which is great. And again, it feels to me like they couldn't put those changes into point O because they needed to ship it.

But they had a list of like, oh, we need to sweep up a bunch of stuff that's like not quite right. That we did it, but we didn't implement it quite right. And we needed a few little details to get it right. Because like so many people I know have that audio technica microphone, because although it is not full featured, it is a little hand mic with a USB cord on the end of it. You can record on an iPhone from anywhere with that and do a full-on podcast, except it runs hot. And so if you tried with 26, it's overmodulated and unusable audio. And with 261 beta 2, there's a little slider and you slide it down until it's quieter.

And then it works fine. It's like just a really simple thing. So I'm really encouraged about this. It feels to me, I mean, maybe I'm wrong. maybe they were you know they were planning this all along but i don't i don't think so i think this is the good proof that i think they got a bunch of feedback in june about things that were not quite right about their new implementation and here we are in october and they're in the betas which is a great sign just a great sign i love it so the 26.1 beta three update has now been released so we may

continue to update this is like a we're essentially doing a live blog uh throughout today stay with upgrade as these events warrant you will discover where maybe beginning this episode you knew the answer yeah we're we're learning in real time stay stay with upgrade 24 7 we're going to launch now I like to announce upgrade plus plus the new 24 7 news service live stream it is a vibrant new identity for us here where we're adding the plus that apple dropped yeah we took it we picked it up and now there's two pluses here it's it's it's we turn what it's like a an asterisk now. It's an upgrade asterisk. We're happy to welcome Brad Pitt to the shop.

You know? He's going to come on board of us. I think that these updates in iPad OS 26, these are like goodwill, feeling great. I'm happy you've done this. You're showing you're committed. We will feel good about it. You know what I mean? Like, this is good stuff. Like, I'm happy to have done this.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. It's a good sign because the iPad used to be really really like they serve you whatever they decided to serve you and then you had to wait two years for something else. That, I think this is, look, we talked a lot about how Apple didn't, tried, tried very hard not to announce anything that they weren't confident they could ship in the fall this time, which is why I think there are going to be throughout the cycle, they're going to be beta releases with surprising content updates, surprising feature updates. We're like, oh, this new beta added this thing. All of those things, you know, some of them might be responses to people's feedback.

There are also going to be a lot of things that they knew that they were working on, but that they couldn't put in point O. and because of the debacle of 24 WWDC they just decided not to mention it and they'll ship it and that'll be a feature update that'll happen later so we're going to get those and this is how it's going to be at least this year I think

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most likely during the U.S. Grand Prix this weekend. Yeah. U.S. only, but yes. Yeah, well, that would make a particular sense for what they would do it during the U.S. Grand Prix. Iran says this is likely worth around $140 million a year. I think ESPN were paying less than 100. It's just a big chunk. I think it's 80, something like that, yeah. And that Apple and Liberty Media, who own F1, have been in negotiations over what happens to F1 TV.

As we expected, Apple is not key. to share the streaming rights of F1 themselves. It will be interesting to see what happens to this service in the U.S. I expect it goes away. There will be no F1 TV available anymore. Yeah, I have a couple of, they're not even theories. I think there are a couple of options here. So one option, I agree, if Apple's going to pay $140 million a year,

there can't be a separate service that's operated by F1, a separate streaming service. And what we also don't know, like, the expectation is that this is the only way to watch F1 in America, but... Yes. But that, we don't know that yet, but that is the expectation. There's no way that they're paying $140 million and sharing the rights. With ESPN or something. Well, no, or with, or with, for streaming with F1 TV. Like, it doesn't make sense.

You pay this, you own it. F1 at the moment is on broadcast, right? Like, but I expect it will not be anymore. I agree. although it's possible that like with MLS they will put specific events on broadcast or cable right

like the idea that they will say you know we'll put certain marquee events that'll also be available on ESPN or whoever their partner is maybe ESPN but primarily it will all be on Apple in the US so some options they've got here

F1 TV could be a product that remains, but it's essentially rolled into TV Plus that you log in with TV Plus to do it in the U.S. It could go away in the U.S. But the functionality of F1 TV would be built into the TV app. It could be one theory I had was,

what if Apple did? Because remember, MLS leak pass is a separate subscription. from TV plus. I think this would be the same for F1 as well. I think it would be so one of my theories was Apple TV subscribers

would get the races just like on ESPN and that if you subscribe to the service you get F1 TV essentially you get all of the extras

right so they basically be taking over F1 TV and saying you can watch if you're a TV just sign up for TV Plus, you can just watch the race on a single broadcast like ESPN is today. But if you pay us for the package, you get essentially you're paying for F1 TV.

But Apple owns it. I wonder. I don't know. It's interesting. I guess we'll find out. I could, my, my theory would be that it will be somewhat similar to the, to the MLS. You will pay extra for it, but some races will be free to everyone. I

F1 is a still somewhat niche but premium sport people will pay for it I don't think Apple need to give it away for free You're missing a tier here There's give it away for free There's roll it into TV

Formerly TV Plus And there's a special purchase of a subscription on top of it And Apple actually does all three For MLSS There are free games There are games for TV Plus subscribers And then there's the whole package

And that's what I'm saying here is I wonder if they do something like you can watch the race as a TV plus subscriber but if you want everything else then you pay us the extra and you get what is currently F1 TV but it will be through Apple instead. Yeah, maybe.

I think that I see where you're coming from there is a lot of content on an F1 weekend. The race is the most important thing. Sure. We'll see. I mean, there's so many questions. My counter argument would be you're splitting the value of this across making TV Plus, now Apple TV vibrant, more valuable, and still reaching the super fans with the whole package.

Yeah. Look, this one is going to be fascinating for so many reasons. Like, there's a bunch of answer questions that we spoke about last time that we obviously don't have answers to yet, and it's going to be great to know. Like, will Apple have their own commentary team? Will Apple have their own kind of like trackside commentator team? and will they present in their own show? Because F1 is very weird to other sports in that Sky in the UK

and F1 kind of control a lot of what is being seen for everyone. So one thing that I am certain of is that F1, the organisation, will continue to give the feed to Apple. Apple do not control what will be seen on track. F1 controls that.

That is how they do it for everyone around the world, right? So, like, what is actually seen is not determined by any of the individual sports networks. F1 controls that part. And then they show it, that footage to everyone.

Then each sports network overlays their own commentary. And there are... Like, also, F1 control the on-screen graphics as well. Like, they have... Everything you see, during the race is controlled by F1 and then they have their own

commentators that are overlay it a lot of places, including ESPN, just used the UK commentary team who talk about Sky as if it's a thing that you can watch. It's unknown what they would do about that part

if they're going to have their own, like what they're going to overlay on top. It's going to be really interesting to see how Apple will differ from ESPN or not in ways. My guess is that if you're paying $140 million a year, you're going to get your own commentators. I mean, yes, that would be the expectation, but then it's like, who would you get? Right.

And I know this isn't for you to think about so much because you know, you're not in the sport. I don't have any idea. But it's like, it's like imagine Apple got the streaming rights to NFL, right? I was going to say, major league baseball, what they did is they actually high. announcers who are in the pool of existing announcers, but there are lots of baseball announcers and there are fewer racing commentators. But my guess is they will, my guess is they will do a little bit of a talent search working with F1 to find people and, in fact, possibly American people, but maybe not, but it's a U.S. if it's a U.S. only thing, maybe some of them

will be American. But I think that's my guess is that they will work with F1 to identify an American broadcast team, whether they're from America or not, instead of doing just riding on the Sky team, because they're going to want to promote Apple TV and whatever Apple's features are instead of press the red button on Sky. I agree.

But it's just going to be, I'm fascinated, right? Where it's like, for Americans, Apple is taking over this sport and everything that you're used to is about to change. And it is going to be really interesting to see how people react to that. like I think it could go in one of two ways

some people love the UK commentary team some people hate them because they love people from the UK you know what I mean like it's like or they perceive a bias whether it's there or not I think a lot of the time it's not there sometimes it is there but people can't see past it so yeah I cannot wait for this to unfold I hope that we will learn about it before the next episode

and I will spend like two hours talking about it it's great I can just go get some more tea while you talk about F1 this is like well you know this is actually a good topic for us because I don't care about the sport at all, but I am fascinated by the strategy here, the broadcast strategy, right? So I'm in on this story, even though I could not, you know, again, I'll just say it again. If an F1 car drove through my house, I wouldn't look at it. You would, Jason, because it's driving through that house. It would be smash my house, probably, but otherwise, no. But so this is, what it's actually good is this is the one sport that I do know about.

I know. It's amazing. You're a very sporty guy. Really excited. CNBC is reporting that Apple is close to acquiring the, quote, talent and technology from a company named Prompt AI. This is one of the classic 2025 AI acquisitions where you buy all of the people and the technology without actually buying the company and then leaving a skeleton crew in the old company for it to slowly wither away.

Yeah, to be shut down. It's the classic I'm buying all the assets, but none of the liabilities. And well, and also I don't want the department. and justice to look at me acquiring a company. We're just having to be hiring people. Yeah, you just acquire intellectual property and hire staff and then leave a hole behind. There is a word for this term. I don't remember this.

I just, I'm going to put this out here. This would make a really funny TV show. Imagine the TV show, a workplace comedy, comedy, dromedy set in the acquired the hollowed out

company yeah where they just have nothing to do they have nothing to do but for some

reason they have the the money like for legal reasons they must continue to

exist but have nothing to do I think that would be or a movie it could just be a

movie or something but Jason you just you just create it a spec

you've got to get writing on this one it's a TM $700 $700 $700

$700 contact me TM, but the, this is actually a genuinely good idea. But I think that, right? It's like, oh, it reminds me of, you know, the concept of the window workers in Japan,

where they have people who they couldn't lay off, but they didn't want to give them anything to do anymore. And so they would go to work every day and just stare out the window. Yeah. It's that kind of thing, which is like, how do these people? Plus, they'd be a little like slow horses. They would be misfits, right? These are the people who didn't get taken.

Yes. Also, you can have the crosses where they've got their, they've run into their colleagues, and they're all, like, super rich and successful. So you are not considered to be either talent or technology. You are not either. By the way, I have real-time follow-up from Hulgar and Discord. iPad beta-3, still called Apple TV Plus. Still branded as TV Plus. Well, give a time. Give it time. Maybe it will refresh. So much for that theory. Anyway, that's my, yeah, I'm going to get to work on my, on my spec script. Jason, it's a genuinely very funny idea. I love it.

The hollowed out remnants of an old company, what do they do? To give you an example of how these things tend to go, this is from the CNBC article. Those who don't end up joining Apple will be paid a reduced salary and encouraged to apply for open roles at the company. So if you're not considered to be important, just apply for a job at Apple or maybe you'll get one. Great.

I'm also going to tell you what prompt AI does. This is, I'm going to read from the CBC article. Prompt Flagship App Seymour connects to home security cameras, adding sophisticated capabilities. The technology helps cameras detect specific people, pets, and other animals or objects around a household, and send alerts and text-based descriptions of unused or activity or answer questions about what's been happening in front of the camera. Essentially, this company has not been successful. Like, their product is failing, and now Apple looks to be coming in and Scoo. it up. And it feels like a great technology for Apple if they are actually looking to get into

smart home cameras, but it also could be useful for other indoor devices to detect specific users, right? Like this feels like a typical Apple acquisition where they're buying a bunch of technology that they would like to have that somebody else has already built. Could be useful for them. As expected, Apple is reshuffling the Apple Watch and health teams due to Jeff Williams' imminent retirement. Mark Gorman is reporting in Bloomberg. that Eddie Q will gain supervision over both the health and fitness teams while Craig Federigi will now

fully oversee watchOS. The health and fitness groups will be consolidated under previous health manager Sumbold Desai. We see Dr. Desai always talking about health stuff in the keynotes. Exactly. Jay Blanick has essentially been demoted.

Blanick was in charge of fitness, so when they would talk about the fitness stuff, they would go to Jay. Blanick was under fire early this year for some workplace misconduct stuff. Maybe this is a factor of what's happening here. Maybe not, but it's interesting. Yes, it noted. Mark German also notes that putting these teams in Q's division underscores that Apple sees

a future for health as more of a service. He references Health Plus, which would have an AI fitness coach coming in 2026. And obviously, CEO in waiting, John Turnus will assume full responsibility for Apple Watch hardware. So Mark German is also reported that Apple is actively looking for a replacement for John Giann Andrea's role as head of artificial intelligence, which is super weird because he's still there. So I don't know what's going on with that one. And also that Lisa Jackson, head of Environment and Government Affairs, is also considering retirement in the near future. So continued change. going on. I also have, we have

additional real-time follow-up. This is fantastic. The Apple TV app icon now features a rainbow hue. Vibrant, you could say. Yeah, I say smeared smeared gradient. This must be the

vibrant rebrand. That is the vibrant new brand. A smeared gradient. A smeared gradient. It's what we'll be looking for. So yeah, there's stuff going on at Apple. They're moving people around. Most, the Apple watch stuff has shaken out into what I will call the logical home for all of this stuff realistically rather than sitting underneath the chief operating officer. And also Mark does reference that essentially

this is how it was anyway. Right. Like Federi did run watch OS and Turner's did do the hardware. Yeah. It's just that Jeff Williams was kind of doing some overseeing that is no longer going to be there. Which makes perfect sense, really. I mean, my assumption is that Jeff just really cared about it. So he was a good person to be in that role, if he did truly care about the Apple Watch, which you would expect he did, because why on earth would they have done it otherwise, unless it was some kind of training for him to maybe be the CEO, put him across a whole vertical of the company, so you could understand that. But that's not happening. But yeah, it looks like there's going to be continued change. It's also, we've referenced this a little bit already. It is also

likely that this week we're going to see some new Apple products, the stuff that we have been expecting into come in October. Looks like they may be coming this week. Mark German noted in his power on newsletter that the M5 MacBook Pro and the M5 iPad Pro are likely to be announced this week via press releases.

This is not going to be an event. I would also expect a Vision Pro update and maybe F1 News and maybe this Apple TV stuff to actually get a true press release. I reckon we might end up with one of those like multiple day announcement, like multiple like days of announcement kind of week.

for the rest of this. You know, Mike, if I had thought about it sooner than 15 minutes before the show started, this is when I would press the button that would do the air horn sound, and it would be the upgrade emergency draft. Yes. Of what will happen

this week, but we're not doing that. I did think about this this morning, and thought, that is, it is a boring draft. That's the reason we're not doing it is like, what is the draft? Like, these products are Completely unchanged, but they get M5 processes in them.

And that maybe there's a new headstrap for the Vision Pro. Like, that's all of it. That's like all of them. So we'll see. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Factor. I don't know about you, but fall, it feels like a little bit of a reset time. People are getting back into busier routines. The holidays are over.

Kids are going back to school. And when you add that to the shorter days, finding the time to cook can be tough. I'm looking out my window right now and it's dark outside. Those days are getting shorter. That's why so many people love Factor because their chef-prepped, dietitian-approved meals make it easy to stay on track and enjoy something comforting and delicious no matter how hectic the season gets. With Factor, you can enjoy more variety and more meals.

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with other options? Well, yeah, I mean, the other options, I will just say I have not tasted any other kind of option like this that taste is good. You get a lot of like frozen stuff and put it in the microwave and it tastes weird and all that. And Factor has figured it out to make it actually taste good, which is why, you know, they don't stay in the house too long and why we ordered them for my mom to supplement her nutrition as well.

Eat Smart at FactorMeals.com slash upgrade 50 off and use the code upgrade 50. off to get 50% off on your first box plus free breakfast for a year. That is the code upgrade 50 off at factormeals.com to get 50% off plus free breakfast for a year. Get delicious, ready to eat meals delivered with Factor. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. So thanks to Factor for their support of this show and Reli. So you have written your iPhone Air review and you published it in the last week. And here's, finally happened.

Here's what I'll say. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, um, I'm going to give you some, a compliment here, Jason, so get ready for it, right? I'm, I'm prepared. In these situations where, you know, you get a product for review and you publish your review two weeks after the deadline or whatever, there is a worry about like, oh, man, like, that's like, like, is it going to be, how much can you really get out of it, right? Like, hasn't everybody already said everything?

You know, like, you've published your review now. People have the phones or whatever. Right, because the moment, if you're not in the first wave, you're getting the phones after all the first reviews are out. Yeah. So, like, the first reviews are out. So you're just, you can either rush through and, like, review something after using it for a couple of days, in which case you're worse than the first reviews because they had a week with it. Yes. Or you wait, and now you're old news.

So how do you do you do? And so in these scenarios, you need to have something to say, like, you have to have a thing to say. Ideally. But, but, like, that's the only way that it's good. Right? It's like you have to have a take. Because if you don't have a take, all you're doing is the same thing everyone else has done, but two weeks later. Exactly. Your take in this review of comparing it to the MacBook Air, fantastically good.

Oh, good. Like, I loved it. You know, essentially, just like the MacBook Air, the original, which is one we don't think about too much, the one with a little drop-down USB door that I've told this story before that my brother got, I think, got an actual bone. on his leg from his one that he used because that thing was terrible, but really exciting. This is the one that got pulled from the manila envelope, like this was

the original. This is the one that I had to not use in the afternoon in my office because the sun shined in and warmed it up to the point where it turned off one of its two processor cores. Yeah. Like it truly just used it in a meat locker. That's the answer.

But this is like, this is what I like about this is that you're saying that, you know, The iPhone Air is also a product that has obvious flaws that people are pointing to, but is kind of a proof-of-concept product. And who knows, right? Like, the MacBook Air got iterated upon to the point that it is the best Mac and maybe the best-selling laptop that exists today. Yes, it is.

And that is like a most popular laptop, right? Yeah. Like, will the iPhone Air have that trajectory? Probably not. But I think it will have a, what we see in the iPhone Air, I think will have a strong lineage, right? That like, what this product is bringing will push the future forward. And you wrap up the review by also comparing it to the iPhone 10, which had that, which was the technology that we saw in the iPhone 10 was kind of like a harbinger for what would come. So the iPhone Air is in this. fascinating spot, which it is actually drawing from these two really important pieces of technology in the MacBook Air and the iPhone 10 into kind of like where it sits in the iPhone learn up. I love the framing. I thought it was really good. Thank you. I mean, one of the challenges, like we said, is what do you have to say? And I keep referring to this as an essay about the iPhone air because, right, I mean, like going through the specs, like we knew the specs the day of the event,

going through the initial burst of hands-on and all of that, like that already happened weeks ago. So you've, you know, so you've got to think of something else to say. Yeah. That's the challenge. Yep. And as you said, like this one, you know, the iPhone Air, kind of like the MacBook Air,

it's like here is a product that doesn't make sense based on the way that we know things to be, right? Yeah, certainly if in our traditional way of judging a product in this category, it fails in so many ways that versus the competition essentially that if that you have to recalibrate how you judge things

essentially in order to make sense of it in any way I went back and looked my original MacBook Air Review is still up at Macworld and I use the word compromise 10 times in that review. Wow. That's a law

of compromise. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. And that is where this product kind of sits. I would say the iPhone Air is a less compromised product than the MacBook Air was, the original MacBook Air. Sure. What they have in common, other than the name, is they have priorities that are different and that are out of step with the mainstream perception. of what our priorities should be. And I think especially among more technical people, it's even further out of step. And so one aspect of this review is me basically saying,

if any of these limitations are deal breakers for you, don't buy it. Because Apple makes two, three, really, excellent alternative phones that have those things, right? the the 17 and the 17 pro and pro max so like if battery life is an issue for you although I would argue if battery life is an issue for you and you are very much focused on all day battery life every day and eking it out to the end of the day don't get this although personally I sometimes have extended issues and then the rest of the time it doesn't matter to me at all and so if you're you're somebody who brings a battery with you, then you could actually use the MacBook Air, because, or the, the, uh, iPhone air, because the, um, if you're bringing a big battery or you're bringing Apple's battery pack, then you can quickly recharge this thing and, and then keep using it. But, um, but yeah,

battery is a, is an issue. Don't get it. If the cameras aren't an issue, because it's got one very good camera, but it's only got the one. Don't get it. Like, there are so many things that you can just check the box off. It's like, if any of these issues is a. killer for you. There's a better iPhone for you. My experience of the iPhone air from a battery life perspective is hilarious because to me it feels like stick with me because this is weird. Because of the way

I use it, which is essentially a work phone, I'm using it in small bursts throughout the day. I'm not using it as my main device. It's not getting, you know, I'm not listening to the podcast on it. I'm not watching YouTube videos on it. I'm like dealing with Slack. I'm looking at social media here. I'm doing some stuff.

I, my iPhone air lasts for days because Like, I just leave it on, but the standby time is so good. Yeah. Literally, I charge the iPhone air like every three days. Right. Which is like a hilarious thing, which is just like very unique to me. In certain circumstances, it's very efficient because it has to be.

Yeah. So it's very funny. I see it though. So the deal breakers, like, that's the beauty of this. It's like they've made a product that basically has a lot of things missing. Yes. And that Apple knows are deal breakers. And they would never make a phone just one.

phone that had all of these things. But they don't. They make, they make, they've introduced five iPhones this year, right? Like there are lots of other options. So this has the freedom to break, to, to be transgressive in terms of a lot of its functionality. Now, the other thing that I pull from the MacBook Air that I'd apply to the iPhone Air is some people prioritize different features. And there is within especially our community a real focus on technological features. Right. It's all about that. And again, for those people, this is not the product. But I'm reminded of the incredulity that the MacBook Air received in a lot of circles, especially writing for Mac World, right, where people are very serious Mac users, a lot of them, is I remember at the time saying, yeah, but you know what two of the specs of this product are is how much does it weigh and how small is it? And it's really good at those. And the iPhone Air is the same way. Like, how thin is. it how light is it how big and honestly how big is that screen given how thin and light it is these are not traditionally the top priorities but for some people they carry more weight again i i feel

like i run into a lot of people who are like well i'm not i can't buy it it doesn't have the it doesn't have the you know the the second or third camera it doesn't have this doesn't have that it's like yeah they make other iPhones for that but like there are a lot of the it doesn't have a I believe there are also a lot of people who don't care about those features, but love how thin it feels or will love it, how what it looks like. And using it for a week, that bigger screen, I notice that my iPhone 17 Pro has a smaller screen than the air. The air bigger screen is also nice.

I was, could not believe. So maybe those large screens aren't so bad when they're attached to lightweight phones. Yeah. That's, yep, yeah, right? Maybe that's what I said. Maybe they're not so bad. This is absolutely the best big screen iPhone from usability perspective. Like, you still can't reach everything with one hand, but overall it just feels nicer to hold and use because it's so thin and it's so light that it makes it just feel overall more comfortable in a way that I genuinely can't imagine how uncomfortable the Pro Max would be for me this year.

because the pro is thick and it's heavy and I like it but the pro max my word do you have one or do you just have the pro

you have a pro max yeah that must I mean that must feel like quite they all they all feel like big old remote controls

you know the clicker for your TV that's what they feel like now and so this one you know honestly funny thing Mike and you might have found

this too the pro 17 pro is so kind of chunky that I actually don't find the Pro Max as offensive because I feel like they're both across the line.

I mean, in some ways, it's like if you're going to embrace that this is a big chunky utility product, it's a tool. At that point, this is just, you know, the Pro Max is just a little bit bigger tool. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. It's funny. Using the air for a while,

I find the Pro Max less offensive because the air screen is so big and because I had to adjust my hand I mean, it's still heavy, but so is the pro. Yeah. So I don't know. You might have said to the pro max been like, oh, yeah. But, but yeah, I, it's all, I mean, that's the beauty of it.

Is Apple like I, Apple makes a product line now. The iPhone is a product line. The iPhone has five new phones in it and they sell six phones. Like, and that's the point with the air is the air, the air is free to explore a different aspect of prioritization for features. on an iPhone. It's free to do that. And yes, they're also doing some work to figure out how to make a folding phone next year. Like, it's part of that process. But, um, I think it's, that's, that's what they're going for is like, not, if you make all phones with the same list of priorities, all phones will be the same. Yep. And even when you got like, the only priority shift between the, the, the 17, 16, 15, and the prover, version. The real one priority change there is price. And everything else falls from that. Air isn't like that. It's not, it just, it's following other, a totally different stack of priorities for better or worse, but it totally different, which I think is interesting. Now, what about performance and heat? You noted that the iPhone Air felt like it was getting hot to you up at the top?

Sure. I mean, it'll be very familiar to anybody who use an iPhone 16. Yeah. Because those ran hot. It runs hot. Yeah. And so I'm sure it throttles, although I didn't get it to throttle, but I'm sure if I had put on some sort of a GPU intensive game and played it for a little while. But I never do that on an iPhone. But if I did, it would throttle and it would get hot. The good news is you're mostly holding it down below. And so you don't have to really worry about it. Yeah. Getting that hot because you're you're holding it way, you know, way, you know, down at the thin part of the bottom and not up at the thick part at the top. I actually feel like that's one of those areas where it feels like the future in the sense that putting everything in the bump in the plateau, the processor plateau, the brain bump, whatever you want to say, that thing is, putting the computer, not just the cameras, but the computer in that, it's the equivalent of the wedge shape for the MacBook Air, I think. idea that you've got a you've got a thicker part that is where the brains go but like the part where you are grabbing it and where you know where your fingers are meeting the keyboard and all

of that is super thin this is kind of like that too and and that feels a bunch of us have said this it's not a new observation but it certainly felt in the moment like oh that's that's going to be a design goal for apple going forward is put more stuff up in the bump so that the rest of the phone can be thinner, even if not to the extreme of the iPhone air, I feel like that's a thing that they're doing. I wonder, I mean, I'm sure they have thought about this and handled it, but like, putting all that stuff up there, which maybe is stuff that all wouldn't be so close together. Like, does the, does it getting hot like that have negative consequences in some way?

Like, I think only the processor throttling, but that's just, you know, and in the long run, they will have other technologies to reduce the heat. But I feel like that's a direction that they're going. You know, maybe everybody will have a vapor chamber eventually. But like that is, what we're seeing here with the air, I think, is Apple trying a bunch of stuff that wouldn't make sense on a on a mainstream iPhone, but it's stuff they want to experiment with. And if it's like the MacBook Air, what you're seeing is experimentation on the cutting edge

in with weird priorities that will have ancillary benefits a few years down the line for everybody. But it starts here. Yeah, it's like you can even draw like the Vision Pro into the conversation, right?

Where the iPhone Air I think will sell better than the Vision Pro but will not, I expect, sell as much as the iPhone 17 even though this would have cost Apple so much money. to develop but they have done this because it will enable other things like you know obviously we keep

and everyone is drawing the comparison now to the faulting fund like yes definitely right like you you would do this kind of stuff to help with folding fun but maybe all of the funds right like in going into the future like this is stuff that you start doing now because this kind of like rearranging of the where the parts go and how much battery you can put in like it will enable other breakthroughs down the road. Like this is just the beginning of that

and like with a lot of stuff they can't just keep working on this technology in a lab hoping that one day it will be shippable. Like with all of this type of stuff you actually have to start doing it

because that's how you get it to the point where you can do it at larger scale, right? Where you learn fast, you're testing quickly and you're also getting the parts to be affordable. by making it part of a process.

And it's not one thing, right? It's all of these things going forward. Yes, exactly. Apple is experimenting with iPhone construction techniques. Apple is planning for, it's not even just planning for a folding phone. It's planning for miniaturization and reallocation and restructuring and building the titanium frame. They know that their, you know, their next one up is a folding phone. And, you know, keep in mind, this is all actually happening several years ago because it takes that long to build an iPhone.

but at the time they were like this is where we're shooting so it is that it's also observing and i think this is where that screen size comes into it it's observing that you've got two kind of key characteristics of an iPhone one of them is you got to have battery and the other one is people want screens big screens and they go together because the more screen size you've got just because of the the way that three dimensions work, the bigger you make the screen, if you've got a battery behind it, you add so much more volume to the battery.

If the battery is a function of the size of the screen, which it is, and it has been. So they're investigating here. We make the screen bigger. We make the battery thinner. And then also like we, but we also migrate,

start to migrate almost everything else into an area where the size matters less because it's at the top of the phone away from your grip. And that's a design direction, not a visual design, like an engineering design direction that I think they are interested in pushing on because I think they think that that is a place that phones are going to go. And that having that knowledge and having built, because again, this is the first one of these, right?

But then you ship it and you learn and you iterate. And Apple's a really good at iteration. So that's going on here, too. I think all those things are going on. What are future techniques that we could use to build other great iPhones down the road? What do we need to learn about in order to execute on a good folding device? Not just a phone, but like other folding devices. Like, they've got to be thin because you've got to fold them together and then they get thick.

They're twice the thickness. So how do we do that? And, yeah, all of those things are all happening. It's not one direction here. The iPhone Air is, is a product that they're trying to, because that's the other part of it, right? Is they're trying to seek a way to differentiate that fourth new fall for now iPhone that is not, it's a little bigger or a little smaller because that didn't seem to move the needle for them. So this is like not only all that other stuff, but also it's an appreciably different model. And that's interesting too.

So there's a lot. I mean, that's why I ended up finding a few thousand words to write about a phone that came out a month ago. Are you on the pro now? I am. I am. I got it. I got all my buddies here. All my phones are here.

I bought the Orange Pro. And after using, I mean, it does feel chunky. But I like it. Yeah. I like it. And I love the orange. And so I'm going with that for now. Okay.

If I had to do it all over again, I mean, I'm very torn. I thought about sending the pro back. And I didn't, but I thought about it because the air would suit me just fine. I do like having the, like, we went away a couple weekends ago up into the foothills to visit Lauren's sister. And I was taking a bunch of pictures of their dogs and our dog running around. And I was like, zooming and stuff. And I was like, yeah, right.

Okay. Yeah. Like, I, I think the camera, losing the camera would be a tough one for me. But there's so much appealing about that phone that I, I, if you said, Jason, you can't have it. You have to have the air this cycle. I'd be okay with it. It would be fine because I like it. And I'm not, and that's okay.

Again, it's not for everybody, your priorities or your priorities. But the way I came to, and Stephen Hacker wrote a really nice piece about, about the iPhone air as well. Mm-hmm. on 512 pixels 112 512 pixels he got it together and wrote that piece

it's great it's really good and I was relieved because I already knew what my conclusion was and then he wrote his piece and I was like

he better not have stolen my conclusion and he didn't thank you Stephen had the best headline though iPhone air to the throne so good air to the throne yeah I

I very rarely write the end of my thing first. But in this case, I was like the core of my argument about what the, of where I come down on like iPhone 17 Pro versus iPhone air. I thought for a while that what I was going to say is the pro feels like the past. And I don't feel that way. So that's why I ended it and I said, the pro. and the 17 feel like the present. They do.

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slash upgrade. That is OnePassword.com slash upgrade or lowercase. Our thanks to OnePassword for their support of this show and relay. It is time for some ask. Upgrade questions. That is how we will finish today's show as we tend to do.

Jason, different ones. wrote in and said, Now that Apple has stopped using ProMotion displays as a differentiator in the iPhone lineup, ignoring the 16E, do you think this is the upgrade cycle that the same could happen for the iPad

or at least the iPad Air and Mini, do we have to wait until they're all OLED? I don't know. I guess what I would say is it's more complicated to do it on a bigger screen and I think it will happen

but I think it will happen I don't know when it will happen it could be now it could be in a year or two I do think it will happen in the air and probably the mini the mini being a small screen actually kind of makes it help

so good oh my god right and in terms of the OLED I mean the real question is like cost right because a lot of what's going on with the air and the mini is just bringing the cost down but I think you figure at some point though OLED displays will become so

prevalent, they will become cheaper. Yeah, and the high refresh rate will there'll be some desirability there as well. There's like a thing, I don't remember what product this was, but like I know that there was an Apple product once where it was like they're using this display technology because

it's become too expensive to do the old one. Like I don't know, I remember there's something about this a while ago. It's like, oh, they've swapped over to something else because it's like it's just becoming too complicated and expensive to keep using the old one. Everybody starts using OLED and the old tech is fading away

and it becomes harder to get and more expensive and the new tech cuts cheaper and at some point you switch it over and you don't need it as a differentiator and I feel like that'll happen so I do think that it will happen. Will it happen this year? I mean maybe but I would not bet on

it because the iPad is going at a different pace than the iPhone and it's a much bigger screen. Yep and I it is actually funny to think that like the promotion began life on the iPad. And it's taking this long to get to all the iPads, even though now it is a somewhat standard thing on the iPhone. I think ProMotion is more likely on the iPad error than the

than the dual OLED, tandem OLED display and stuff, right? I don't think they need to do the tandem OLED, right, on the other devices. Like, I don't think that's necessary. Exactly. I think there's a way to get a display and do, you know, bring the high refresh rate, but not, I, I, Because I think the tandem olet is the differentiator on the pro at this point. Absolutely. Not the refresh rate. Yeah. I agree with you.

Like, do you want the most color, the blackest blacks, the best HDR? Yeah. You'll get it there. And maybe they update the, I think there's some difference in, maybe there's some difference in how the pencil refresh happens. And there's some things that they could do to make it on a high free rest rate. It would be nicer. Yeah.

Without it being everything. Stephen Wrightson says, Mike, I want to follow up on a question that I asked about your camera. set up right before your daughter was born. As a busy dad, how often do you find you're using your big camera? Are you happy with the quality of the photos coming from your iPhone? So this was the thing that Stephen wrote into a long time ago, and then I said on the show that I was going to take my Sony camera to the hospital to take photos of our baby in the first moments of her life. And I did that, and I'm very happy that I did that because now those pictures, which are incredibly important are the best quality picture that I could conceivably have taken.

And I also have some even better quality images that friend of the show David Smith took when we brought our child home because he helped do that because he is the best. Outside of that, now I'm just using my iPhone. I am sure that I will bring in a better camera for things like birthdays or whatever, but it's not something for me where I want to be dealing with even just the complexity of like taking a lens cover off of a camera

right? Like I just, it is more complicated and most of the time the pictures that I'm taking I don't know that I'm going to be taking them until the moment that they happen. You know,

like here's the thing that I want to take a picture of. It's less planned. But yeah, the pictures that I get from my iPhone are fantastic. I would always want better, especially in low light. Like you always want you're an iPhone. camera to be better than it is because you know and you've seen images that exist if you have

like proper lenses right and like big sensors but I'm very happy like some of the photos that I have taken with my iPhone man they're so good like because just all of the stars aligned and they're just fantastic and you know like it can be argued and I do believe it like there are photos that I have because I took them on my iPhone that I wouldn't have gotten if I would have trying to take most of these pictures on a proper camera because I just would have not gone to the agro. So for me, I think that this is a thing that I will pull out at specific times when they're extra special and there are moments that I know are going to happen and I will want to be the best that they can be. So, yeah. Tim wrote in and said, I know that you've spoken before

about internal teams and Apple working separately on secondary apps, but I'm still very surprised to see there are no updates to the IWWork Suite, notably on the Mac, where icons do not adhere to any of the liquid glass steaming, did Apple itself give their teams too much work with liquid glass? I opened pages today to check this. I was like, oh, look at you. Look, Apple is, they've got teams working on Iwork. And they work, they seem to work to me on their own schedule and in their own time. And for whatever reason, like, they didn't ship updates for this. They probably have updates that they're working on and they're not going to ship it with just a little bit. Is it true that they possibly, like every other developer, got a lot of extra work forced on them by liquid glass?

Sure. Sure. But they're just, they're working on it. Like Tim says, there's a team that works and I work and they don't have these apps out. And I don't know anything about the internals there, but that's, I think that they're working on them and they're working on them in their own time. And since they're not tethered to the OS, they can release them when they're ready. All software developers got extra work given to them by Liquid Glass for sure. Something that is particularly funny about the iOS versions of the apps is when you open them, they go to that like documents view, which is liquid glassified because it is a system element.

But then when you go into the app and to like to edit a document. It's like a file picker. None of it looks new. to the old time. That's brilliant. I didn't know that. That's so funny. I didn't actually think about that.

But yeah, it is, I completely agree of what you're saying. Makes sense. It's still funny though. Like, it's still just like a strange quirk that they have. And yeah, you're probably right. That team, they're doing what they're doing on the time frame.

They're doing it. Like, hey, we added pivot tables and we did it like a random time of the year. Like, they have features, actual features for their apps that they are working on. And they will ship it all. together. Yeah. In April, they added 30 new functions to numbers. Yeah. So they're doing their

thing on their schedule. And they're, yeah, and they're still, I mean, not only are they very functional apps, but they're still doing stuff to them. They absolutely keep going, but on their own time. Yeah. It's true. Kind of like logic, right, in Final Cut. Yeah. By the way, speaking of Apple apps that have their own development teams, I don't believe Final Cut has been updated on the iPad to support the background export feature that was made for it. Don't think that's happened yet. Huh. Yeah.

I mean, when I added an upgrade from Memphis, it hadn't been updated. I don't think it's been updated since then. Like, that's a feature that it's right there, you know, but they haven't, they don't seem to have shipped it. I don't think Logic has either. Like, you know, things happen in their own time for those apps that have separate,

things and they are it is better to look at them as third party developers even though the first party developers they are not in the system so they are not attached to the whims of the system and so they go when they go yep if you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode of the show it's very easy to do just go to upgrade feedback.com and you can send in your questions you can send in whatever you like You know, if you want to send in some feedback, you want to send in some follow-up, it's very easy to do that. Jason, I've hit a problem here at the end of the show. Somehow, I have deleted the usual outro notes that I have.

Oh, no. So they're gone now. So now I'm about, I'm going to start riffing, right? We're just going to go for it. Let's do it. If you would like to get yourself some more vibrancy in your podcast, it's very easy to do that. If you want a new vibrant podcast, go to getupgradeplus.com where you could sign up for longer and free versions of the show each and every week. I already mentioned it, but if you want to send in some

feedback, some follow-ups and questions, Snell Talk or Ask Upgrade, go to UpgradeFeedback.com. If you want to find this show on YouTube, there is a video version there. See, I did that wrong way around. Search for Upgrade podcast. I should have said, if you want to find a video version of this show, go to YouTube. If you want to find this YouTube, go to the video. See, this is why I need the notes. I'd like to thank our sponsors for this week's episode, One Password, Factor, ExpressVPN, and interconnected. Didn't delete them, did you? No, I just scored up the document and re-read them. So they're still there. Good job. Good job. And most of all, though, I want to thank you for listening. I probably missed some stuff, but it will be back next week because I'm going to go into

the Google Doc history now. We'll find it. History and do that. All right, say goodbye, Mike Hurley. Goodbye, Jason Snell. Thank you.