Upgrade - 586: An LLM in the Woods

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 586. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Claude, eCAM, and Delete Me. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hi, Mike Hurley. How are you? I'm good. We've got a big episode today. We've got a bunch of product reviews, all M5 product reviews to do. Yeah, people might be wondering why, you know, we're doing this on a, why the release is late.

And the answer is, it's an apple embargo, that's why. Sorry that we couldn't tell you, but that's just the way these things go. Those are the rules. I have a snow talk question for you that comes from Marcher who wants to know. Jason, what wallpaper backgrounds are you using for IMessage? Do you have the upgrade wallpaper for your conversations with Mike? I've defaulted to using some of Stevens 5K macOS wallpapers. I also have the Cortex wallpaper from being a relay member of my brother since he's

enjoys that show. Are you using any backgrounds? You may be in most of the chats that have backgrounds. I have to admit it mostly only ironically. Yeah. We have like our chat with you and me and Stephen Hackett has a has like a bubbly gray background that is animated. I think it's meant to be waves. Yeah. I had I had one on the one I have with about college football with Casey and Stephen, but I think Stephen basically rolled in there and was like, nope, take it out. Because I had pictures of college football

or pictures of us doing college football or whatever, you know, going to a game and that didn't work out. My chat with my family has a picture of our front yard in it. And the icon for the family chat is the sign on our, on our, the door, the house number.

That's cute. Sign. And the Magnet PI podcast I do with with David Laura and Philip Michaels we have a picture of Hawaii as you might expect

that's about it so nothing I haven't been doing a lot of dressing up of my message just mostly because I find them kind of distracting

yeah I tend to not like it so I haven't done it although I am now going to download one of the upgrade wallpapers and set it as ours and just see what it looks like

I've never considered wallpapers as a thing to use for this but I guess this is exactly what they are you know I guess so so maybe we could try

that out. See what it's all about. Yeah. Phone wall, phone wallpapers, right? Because they're vertical. Mm-hmm. Most people don't, don't view their messages window like widescreen, right? Right? I don't know. I don't know. There's 16 by 9 messages windows out there? It could be. If you use a 16 by 9 messages window. No, I don't want to, no, don't write in. Don't write in. Specifically don't write in. But if you have a question to help us open a future episode of the show, just go to UpgradeFeedback.com, and you can send in a Snell Talk question of your own.

We have some follow-up. Jason, things are bad for me, the spotlight. Uh-oh. It's getting worse. What happened? A few people have recommended, including you, this article on a website called Dr. Boo-ho. I don't know what that means.

Good old Dr. Boo-ho. But there's a How to Rebuild Spotlight Index on MacOS Tahoe three ways. And a few people recommended option two, which is a bunch of terminal. commands. I did the terminal commands and it actually made things worse for me because now Spotlight can't find most apps that I'm searching for. Like if I type pH for photos, it's like, hey, do you want to open photo capture? It's like, no, I don't want that. And photos are just not in

the list. Or if I want to type in system settings, right? If I type in settings or system, all it does is surface for me like deep links into settings rather than actually the settings app. our esteemed audio editor Jim Messendorf recommended using Alfred to rebuild the index because they kind of have a custom like a customized terminal command I did that and that also has not worked although the indexing wasn't complete

but it still wasn't finding these like basic apps from Apple a listener sent in a Reddit thread this Reddit thread is the problem I'm having during the public beta and it has some additional terminal steps that I may need to try but I've also been hearing from tons of upgradians. They've been writing into me

and sending me things on social media that they're having the same problem. I don't... I feel like I don't understand what's going on here for what is essentially the premier feature of Tahoe, like outside of liquid glass is spotlight. And it is, for me,

like, demonstrably worse than the spotlight replaces because it can't even open apps reliably. It's a bug. But it's a bug I can't seem to fix. Like, I don't know what. supposed to do. Again, how frustrating it is, but saying demonstrably worse for the spotlight feature, or the spotlight feature, ha ha.

Like, I'm using it and we used it all summer and it works great. So when it works, it works, it works great. There's a bug that is making your upgrade experience bad, and that is not great. So, I don't, it's like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. I don't know. This is the problem with so much of Apple stuff is like, I have the same thing where sometimes the clipboard history just vanishes and will never come back until I restart. Right.

I don't know what that is about. A bunch of people have said, like, they just, a clipboard history has never worked for them, too. Because I'm also having that. Clipboard history has never worked for me. There's never anything on the clipboard history. It's not good.

Not good. So I'm going to keep trying. I'll keep letting you know how it's going. Do you have any more thoughts on the Apple TV name change? So this happened while we were recording. My biggest takeaway is all the jokes have been done and have been done way too many times. if anything, I'm disappointed that it happened so close to our recording time

because we also just made jokes that then opened Mastodon and saw 50,000 times. But in our defense, I had not opened Mastodon at that point before the episode. Have you had any additional thoughts on Apple and Apple TV and maybe their strategies here? No. Well, you did say you wanted to rename the Apple TV 4K, wrote a whole article about it. I'm teaming you up for this article. I just I I did suggest that maybe the one way out of this is simply to rename the Apple TV 4K if you're actually going to have a bunch of home products coming. Could you rename it to whatever the name of that line is?

I suggested HomePod. It's sitting right there. I heard from somebody who said but pod is comes from iPod, which means audio. I was like no, pod does not mean audio. Pod means anything you wanted to mean. It means it's a container with something inside. It is a meaningless term. That's why they used it for the iPod and I know that they've got it in the home pod too but like you could you could call all of those things home pods if you really wanted to and that would be fine or they could call it something else I don't know but my thought was maybe you could create a a brand for your home products and tuck this under there instead of calling it Apple TV but also I think you could just keep calling at Apple TV 4K and nobody cares nobody cares I do think that the Apple TV box suffers the same problem

as the service, right? We're like, so there was a, we might talk about this later on, but Eddie Q was on the town, one of our favorite podcasts, and one of the things that they were talking about was them doing this.

And Eddie was just like, ah, we just thought we'd do it. Everyone inside the company says Apple TV anyway. Everyone calls it Apple TV, so we're just like, I forget it, let's just call it Apple TV. And so I agree with that. Like that, I think nothing can make sense.

Like, why not? Like, yeah, it's confusing in places, but so much of Apple's naming is confusing in places. This isn't any better or worse. And it does just make sense to just call the service Apple TV. But then the box is called the Apple TV 4K. It's like it's the same problem as Apple TV plus. Like yeah, the box should be called Apple TV or it should be called something else. Something else. I really liked your suggestion of HomePod, like even called and like I would say HomePod TV, right? HomePod TV, you know, you're right. HomePod display for the for the home thing.

you got like home pod mini for the little speaker you give the didn't even sell the big speaker anymore i can't remember yeah yeah but you could call it home pod studio or home pod audio i just couldn't remember right didn't it go away and come back and came back yeah so the second generation one is the one that's out there now but you could brand again this is one of those things where i i get frustrated sometimes by a lack of imagination uh in people who are like supporters of apple where they're like oh apple couldn't do that Friends, Apple can do anything they want. Apple can rebrand things.

They can do anything that they want. So if they thought that it was in their best interests to create a brand name and a product line for their home products and rebrand stuff and rebadge it to be HomePod this and HomePod that or whatever, they could just do it. There's nothing stopping them. You might disagree and think it's not worth it and all of that, but I'm always surprised when people are like,

oh, you can't do that. It's like, Apple can do whatever. it wants. So it just would need to find value. That was my suggestion anyway, was maybe if you really do have a whole bunch of home products that you're going to launch here, the best thing to do is to tuck the TV product and the speakers and that new screen all into this. And that camera that's happening, right? Like, theoretically, a doorbell camera or security camera is coming as well, according to Mark German. Like, give this product line a name, right? I think that that's the right way to do that. A name with the word home in it. Whether you call it Apple Home, you could call it Apple Home

TV if you wanted to, but I like HomePod. I think Apple, you know, the HomePod TV is not a bad, not a bad name. There are probably other options too. I just, I feel like something would be good and put it under the home brand, whatever that home brand might be. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or scatting a business, Squarespace will give you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. Squarespace, one of the things that I love about them is how easy it is to get started and how simple it is to make a website look the way you want

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So last week, Apple announced via selection of press releases a plethora, a smorgasbord, if you will, of M5 products. A little cheese plate. What would be the premier cheese? Because I guess that's the MacBook Pro, like a good cheddar maybe? We'll go with that. I'll tell you what, though, Jason, the Vision Pro is the Manchego. I know that much.

Oh, see, I was going to say the iPad was the Manchego. We'll go with that. We have, maybe the Vision Pro is like one of those cheeses has got, like, fruit in it, you know? Well, it's, it's, so it's, the point here is that they're all based on the M5, so they're all, I guess they're all cheeses. This is a cheese plate without any meats or fruits on it.

Yeah. They're all just M5 cheeses. M5 cheeses, if you please this. the M5 itself is a quote more advanced three nanometer process I'm quoting from your review of the MacBook Pro here with a new ultra-fast CPU performance cores a re-architected GPU memory bandwidth increases and faster SSD rewrite speeds

can you talk a little bit about the performance of just the M5 itself and then we can talk about how it lives inside of this computer well it is the usual story right which is apple has chosen places in the chip to make a difference and they don't change everything all the time they change it in bits so you know the the performance cores got a boost this time but the efficiency cores which got a boost i think last time didn't get one this time. The, what else?

The neural engine, I think, is a new neural engine this time on the M5. And last time with the M4, they did neural accelerators on CPUs. So the idea there is that, you know, Apple was like, hey, everybody, we built a neural processor. You should use that for all your machine learning stuff on device. And the world said, but we use CPU and GPU cores for that. Like, basically, that things that they built somewhere else that focus on CPU or GPU for reasons involving the development, and they don't want to customize them to use the neural engine. So in the M4, they added the CPU neural accelerators, which the idea there is for machine learning tasks, they will now be faster on CPU.

That was with the M4. With the M5, they added those for the GPU. So the idea there is, again, if you've got tasks that run on graphics processors that are machine learning tasks, that was one of those areas where Apple felt that they were. I don't know if the right word is vulnerable, but it was like an area that they had not built specific machine learning stuff into the GPU cores. They're like, it's a GPU core, just use it. And it turns out everybody's using it for machine learning. They're like, all right, well, okay, we could do some work to make that better then.

And that's what they did. So they kind of, again, you saw that like the M4 came through and then the M5 came through with the other part of it. So they are, they take pieces of it. and upgrade those pieces. So in this case, the memory bandwidth on the base M4 to M5, that upgrade, the memory bandwidth is more on the M5. So all the lower end chips, the M5 chips, compared to the M4 generation,

have more memory bandwidth, which is also great for performance. So it's that kind of constant rolling iteration that they do, where you look back to the M1 and you realize, oh, the graphics are twice as fast. But it doesn't happen overnight. It happens over the course of five years. So the kind of the year-over-year improvements are what you would have expected to see, at least of the CPU.

I say they're in line with the A-19, right? Which was the same kind of idea. So, you know, the CPUs go up a bit, but not massively. And the GPU goes up a lot more. And that was the case on the A-19. Yep. and that is from versus A18 and that's the case for M4 to M5 remember the M4 was introduced about 18 months ago it was introduced in the spring of 24 with the iPad Pro yes that was where that that event happened that was I went to New York for that one and I was in London I went to Battersea and saw that that's right that's right so so so this is the next chip family chip group unveil so so more you know year and a half more like not a year and it's only this one

the others shall come later which was also true actually back in 24 they only unveiled the base model chip the difference is that they that in M1 generation they came out with the M1s

and there was a low-end MacBook Pro but in M2 and M3 I believe all the MacBook Proes went together and the same was the case in the M4 they released that iPad Pro but not a Mac

using the M4 If my memory serves me right, at least one of the MacBook Pro's, the Pro models came before the standard, like the M5DM whatever Pro chip. That, yeah, I don't remember that. That might be true. But my point being that in the M4 generation, they seem to hold the whole MacBook Pro line until they had the M4, M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips. And with this generation, they didn't bother. They're like, yep, okay, M5, it's out there, MacBook Pro. and the MacBook Pro high-end models

are still using M-4-generation chips that are faster. I mean, let's be clear here. The M-4-Pro and M-4 Macs are faster. On everything except single-core where you're just testing a single core, but they have 10, like, they're faster. Computers, but the new faster, faster chips

are not there yet. And the GPU being 37% faster, that is an outlier, right? Like I remember this from when we were looking at the A chip. Like it is a, it's a bigger jump than the typical jump. Yeah, I haven't done the, I haven't done my March of the M1 analysis yet. I should probably do that.

But it feels like it's, this is a GPU year is what it feels like to me, that the GPU core got a lot better. And imagine what it's going to be like when the, you know, like the pro of max chips, they put like 20 quarts. It's like, whoa, it's got a screwing. Presumably, the only, the only thing to watch there is that, you know, sometimes in the pro and max chips, they're doing some different stuff. that a lot of the

bonus that comes in the base model is that sometimes they're importing features from the high-end models like the memory bandwidth in I'm pretty sure the memory bandwidth in the M4 Pro and Max is quite a bit superior to the memory bandwidth

in the M-4. So the M-5 getting better memory bandwidth is good, but that was, I think, a feature that was already in the higher-end chip. So some of that is they're just sort of like rolling it down to the lower-end models of chip.

So you mentioned that basically these neural accelerators going into the GPUs and in doing this it's like this is what people running AI tasks want right the GPU is better for it but the neural car then it's going to accelerate that this is what apple is good at right is Apple's good at building this hardware Apple is struggling so much on the AI software side but Apple is good at creating hardware platforms and like Apple really really wants more AI tasks to happen on device for a couple reasons one of them is yes, it means your data doesn't leave your device. That's great. It's privacy. The other is that Apple's good at this. And so they want people to do this on device because Apple devices are better for it because Apple Silicon is so good. So they really have a kind of a mission reason to do it and also a strategy reason to do it. I was listening to you guys talk about this on Connected last week. And I think I think you, all made some really good points about this.

What I would say is, yeah, Federico is right that Apple's like saying, oh, say you're a college student and you're doing a, you've got all your notes and you're going to use an on-device LLM to analyze all of your notes. And his point was, well, no, you're just going to use chat GPT or Claude for that. You're not going to use Misty Studio. That's true. Misty Studio is a, it's a demo, you know, that Apple did for the M5. Misty Studio runs an open source model locally.

It's a very, it's very impressive. I felt bad for them. I mean, without getting into, I don't want to get into a lot of details, but like, what's the scenario for that? Like, they're like, you know, what's the scenario where you're on a college campus? You need to analyze your notes, but your college doesn't have the internet or you're in a wooded grove somewhere away from why. And of course, Apple doesn't put cellular modems into their laptops, so you're out of luck. But you've got your local large language model. That all said, I think what Apple would like, and I do think that this will happen as the devices become more capable, is that there are apps that have, either the OS integrates optional large language models of various kinds.

And the foundation models get better, right? that there are various Apple Foundation models. Federico mentioned this unconnected. So that, like, it's not a least common denominator kind of model. If you're on a Mac Studio with enormous GPUs, or if you're on an M5 that's got all these accelerators, that you're running a more powerful model than is running on an iPhone air, right?

That's part of the idea here. And then over time, you would ideally want all these apps to be more like that, like Misty Studio, if you run it, I actually think they did a pretty amazing job of making it feel kind of like a consumer app, but it's not, it's technical. It's like me saying,

oh, you know, Shortcuts does a pretty good job of being a consumer user scripting utility. It's like, well, yeah, but also really no. But in the long run, and there are other apps that are not LLMs that are like this now, there are lots of packaged apps on the Mac and the iPhone and the iPad, where there's machine learning models running under the surface,

and you as a user don't. really need to think about that. It's just part of the job. And if the, if the hardware has the ability to execute those models really well, that's good. But the challenge right now is that so much hardware is so bad that, and all the AI companies are really motivated to build out these GPUs in the cloud. So right now, the, the core AI world is like more, more GPUs in the cloud. And what Apple would say, and I think some app developers, would probably say is, I'd really rather not pay for more GPUs in the cloud. I'd really rather just have it run on device for so many reasons. Even if it's a little slower because, you know, so that would benefit Apple. I think it would benefit app developers because they would not necessarily have to, you know, there are already apps that I use that are like, if you would like to do this feature, you can use AI credits. And when you run out of AI credits, you must buy more, even though it's like, but I bought your software.

And they're like, yeah, but AI features are expensive. so you're going to have to pay for those, pay extra for those. It's not great. And if you could run them on device and just say, oh, yeah, this just runs on my device. It's fine. That's good. So that's where Apple is headed here,

but I would agree with the idea that it's a little premature because, or at least what you think of as AI right now is not happening on your device. So this is not going to help that. So Apple is town in big numbers, right? They say the 10-core GPU features a dedicated neural accelerator in each core, delivering over four times peak GPU compute performance, compared to the M4 and over six times peak GPU performance for AI compared to the M1. So we spoke about Federico a bunch and I'm going to mention him again.

So I was talking to him because he has a review of the iPad Pro. And he has been, yeah, we're going to get to you else in a minute. Don't you are. I'm there too. I did that too. He and I saw that same briefing about Misty Studio and a student lost out in the woods with an LLM on their device. But Federico has been trying to test...

some of the stuff based on MLX, which is Apple's on-device system for running AI models. Machine learning platform, yeah. And he has like a custom app that he has been worked, that he's had built so he can run these tools. Sure. And he was not seeing any improvement at all. And the reason is the version of MLX that,

Apple will release and that's the key to actually take advantage of the at least on the iPad Pro it doesn't exist yet it's not out yet so there there isn't even a way

for him to test these claims right now and it's like this is like the perfect encapsulation I think of Apple and AI right now which is like and it reminds me so much of like the years and years

we spent talking about the iPad Pro of like they have incredible hardware that is super capable, but they have none of the underpinning for it. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that that is true, but also that this is an industry-wide phenomenon. I think that if I'm a device maker, if I'm a chip maker, I'm really trying to extol the virtues of on-device machine learning. Because the Sam Altman's of the world want us to build as many data centers as possible, and the Jensen Wong's, right, to buy as many GPUs as possible to put in those data centers. and if you're Apple, you look at it and say,

well, what we would like for privacy reasons and for strategy reasons, like I said, is that you be able to run that stuff on device. And here's my optimism, which is, I think there are definitely scenarios where the processor ability to run machine learning models ramps up so quickly that you end up in a,

in a case where the things that people want to do on their device can be done on their device and that the cloud infrastructure is overkill for all but the most ambitious things. And if the ambitions, because this is AI we're talking about, if the ambitions outstrip reality, that's an opportunity for them to catch up. And I think it fits perfectly with Apple's whole privacy thing. But it's not there now. I mean, that's the bottom line is it's a great idea. And like I said about Misty Studio, all things. considered, it does a pretty good job of being kind of a friendly face to building an AI model, but in the end, it's like shortcuts in that it's not really that friendly. And what you really need,

and this is where Apple, I would say, is the most behind, right? Which is what's Apple's on device kind of like, we provide it for you, or there's a plug-in architecture or something, strategy for AI? Because what they did with Xcode is really interesting. With Xcode, there are models, you can choose your model and you can choose on device models or not. So like you could see a scenario where apps can bring models or there's a third party

installer that installs a model on your device or you point it at a cloud model that's your favorite or whatever. But like they're just not there. So they build this nice hardware and the other thing, we know the travails of Apple's AI strategy over the last few years, right?

Chip design takes a long time. So Apple's chips are designed with the assumption that Apple software will have gotten its act together. And the reason you see that kind of weird disparity between Apple's chip prowess and their kind of confusion about software is because, you know, the chip design thing is just they're working years ahead and they're flying straight as an arrow. And it exposes when the, when the software loses its way, which it has. So I think it's really interesting. I think you're already seeing Johnny Sruji and his people adapt to the idea that the world doesn't just want the neural

engine, even though on the PC side, people are talking about NPUs a lot, right? That's the neural engine. They're trying to say, oh, yeah, we've got a specialized neural processor. But with these accelerators, I think they're also adapting to the fact that, you know, a lot of stuff is not built for that. It's just built to run on a GPU, so let's make the GPU better. And they have. Why not both, right? Like, let's do all of it. In fact, why not all three of them? They put numerous accelerators on everything.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Something they have not accelerated is connectivity. This MacBook Pro is missing Wi-Fi 7 on Bluetooth 6 and obviously still has no cellular. All of this is so much more painful now that Apple literally make chips to solve all of these problems themselves. This is the moment where I decided. I was writing my review when I got to this section. I was like, you know, I need to write this. I need to write this now, that Apple makes a chip that's in iPads and iPhones that connects to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth, whatever, 6-something or other.

It doesn't really matter. It's the latest Bluetooth or a very forward Bluetooth. And they didn't put it in the Mac, Bluetooth 6. So it's Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi 7 versus Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. and I understand that this is a a minor update and there's supposedly a major MacBook Pro update

coming at the end of next year which makes me wonder if that's the case if we will actually see MacBook Pros in the spring or not if they're coming in the fall we'll have to see I think they're holding off

that like they're holding these features off for that big refresh because it's just like another nice box they can tick on the spec sheet when they have the supposed touchscreen MacBook Pro coming or not. Whether there's a

M5 Pro MacBook Pro in the spring or not just a few months before the one in the fall. They've done that before. Again, Apple can do whatever it wants. But yeah, this is a case where they didn't build it in here. Probably they're holding it back. But you know what? It's not a good enough

excuse because Apple can do it at once. Apple has built a chip that does Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi. 7 and they didn't put it in the MacBook Pro and it's in iPhones and it's an iPads. So your Mac, your MacBook Pro, your professional Macintosh laptop can't connect to Wi-Fi as fast as an iPad or an iPhone. And the C1X is here now. And the iPhone Air has it and the M5 iPad Pro that I reviewed has it. cellular based on an Apple chip

and I just need to point out that the Mac still doesn't do it. Apple's built the chip. There are a lot. I'm not going to get into the reasons. I think I tried to boil it down as much as possible to say in my review, tethering to a phone is not a cure-all

and Apple's been offering cellular iPad since the very beginning. So like, make the case for cellular being an option. it just should be an option on laptops and it's still not Because also tethering is like It doesn't If your answer is tethering

Then you're not putting enough thought Into how a Mac uses cellular data Yeah No there's there's a lot of reasons I really don't want to get into the tethering argument again Because people are like Again it's that same thing Which is like you don't need tethering

Because Apple doesn't offer it They decide they need to defend Apple not offering But it's like well if you don't need tethering Why does the iPad have tethering? There's no answer. There's no good answer. Cellia, like, well, I have cellular, the iPad of cellular because she said tethering. Oh, well, I mean, yeah, if tethering's okay for the Mac, why isn't it okay for the iPad?

That's my point. Yeah. Like, well, you don't need cellular on an iPad, just tether to your phone. I was like, well, no, like, there are reasons battery drain, funkiness and connection. Like, tethering is a great fallback. But like, why has Apple been offering cellular iPads since 2010 if tethering is fine and cellular is unnecessary. Why?

The answer is tethering is not fine. It's a fallback. It's okay, but it's better to just have it. I pay $20 a month for my iPad cellular plan because I really,

really, really am happy when I'm using my iPad in a place without Wi-Fi out in the woods doing some ML models to have the cellular connection there. And that was, I mean, again,

if you're using that laptop and Missy Studio out in the woods to do your M. models. If you had a cellular Mac, you could just use the cloud, right? Yeah. Right? But they don't make one. And so, yeah, anyway, it's dumb. They make the chips now. They're officially on the clock. I am all out of excuses. Do you think that this was the right computer? Like, why didn't they start with the M5 in the MacBook Air? Why did they do just, I know we don't know, but like, do you think it makes sense to just, hey, here's the lowest level 14 inch MacBook

Pro, we'll just put it in there? It is probably about sales volume because the Air is the most popular Mac laptop. Do they have an FM5 chips for the air for the holidays? So that's probably part of it. It may be like how many M4 chips they've got and how many M4 airs they're building and whatever is looking at the end of that cycle.

Also, if they're doing anything other than just a straight-up, slap a new chip in it for the MacBook Air, a little more time. The MacBook Air came out in the spring, so it's not as, you know, it's not old. It's some combination of those. Because they also could have done no Macs, right? They could have just put this in the iPad

and left it at that. They chose to put it, I, you know, part of it is, I think that they, that this MacBook Pro is not that important. It sells fine. It sells well. They have the chip, so why not put it in there? They can, they can fulfill the volume.

I think it might be that simple. Give this computer a little day in the sun, right? Like that kind of thing. Well, and also, I could argue that if you're staging a rollout for your next chip and you're very proud of how great your chips are, being able to show it off on Mac OS, unlike last time, where they didn't talk about Mac performance with the M4. And we had to wait until there was finally an M4 Mac to talk about Mac performance. And this time, they erased that, right?

Because we do have a Mac. so we can talk about now ironically performance is identical across these systems but at least we know that the it's also on the mac that is that is something but it's a it's a curious little choice they made what a funny computer this is really like this base level MacBook pro like it was essentially an abandoned product right like after a period of time with the touch bar it seemed like they and you were touching this in review right like it seemed like they kind of wanted to get rid of it but couldn't because commercial buyers and stuff like business buyers yeah grouper called it an odd duck i think Yeah. And he's right. Like it was such a weird computer in the line. For a long time, it didn't make sense of why you'd even call it a MacBook Pro, because it wasn't a MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro's were the higher-end models. And they're like, we also have this MacBook Pro that is not like all the others. And it was, yeah. And we speculated that one of the reasons they kept it around was because businesses wouldn't buy a MacBook Air. They wanted to buy a MacBook Pro because the MacBook Pro is a professional product. And the MacBook Air is just a little flimsy consumer. laptop. And I think there's some truth to that. And they also didn't want to go to the cost of the like the pro level MacBook Pro.

That's the other part of it is it's the classic having a starts at price that's a lot lower than $2,000 because that's where those higher end models were starting and they wanted a laptop that they could call MacBook Pro that was cheaper. However,

I do take some umbrage at the idea that this is still that because with the M3 generation they added a bunch of functionality and with the M4 generation the MacBook Pro

was parallel to the MacBook Pro higher models in everything except the chip basically. They brought it all the way back. It's a real MacBook Pro starting with the M4. I even wrote in my review, I'm like, this is a real MacBook Pro now. It just has the M4 chip.

That is still the case with the M5. And the more power these base model chips get, the more I actually have to ask the question, for whom is this not enough? And there are going to be people up there at the high end who really, really have needs. But like, the more capable you make the base model chip, if you're Apple, the less necessary your high-end chips get. Not that they aren't necessary for certain tasks,

but I do think that the base models are so powerful now that we've been asking these questions on the iPad for a long time, but now I think we're asking them for the Mac, too, which is like, I'm not sure how many people who are MacBook Pro buyers even need more than an M5. Like, it's pretty impressive. I know there are reasons. They're always going to be exceptions. But like, it's pretty great.

And it's got the display. You know, and maybe the answer is that with the M6 generation, this thing's going to stick around like this. And the M6 generation, which is going to be way more expensive to build and it's going to have OLED and it's going to have a touchscreen. Like, maybe what's happening here is that we've been in this product cycle long enough

that the low-end product is, finally joined its high-end buddies because the margins are okay. And then we're about to enter a new cycle where it loses the high-end buddies again and they move off into the distance and it stays behind. That may very well be the case next year. This episode is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. Claude is a next generation AI assistant built by Anthropic and trained to be safe, accurate, and secure to help you do your best work. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop are good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing

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It is a really interesting feature. For me, one of the things that I really enjoy about Claude is how it can deal with large amounts of text. So, like, this episode, we didn't record this episode live because it was a review episode. So we need to come up with a title for the episode. Now, one of the things that we can do is the thing I've done a bunch of times. Take a transcript of the podcast, which is so many words, just an obscene amount of words. Give it to Claude and say, extract some quotes, maybe suggest titles.

You could suggest a description for me to help me get started on that, or even some links that could be included in the show notes. It is incredibly helpful at digging through this absolute massive text to give me the information that I I want. Stuff that would take me, I mean, if I would guess I'd have to listen back to the entire episode, like to get all this information out of it, but Claude can do it in a snap. If you're ready to tackle bigger problems, sign up for Claude today and get 50% of Clod Pro when you go to Claude.A.ai slash upgrade pod. That's CLAU-D-E.A-I-Sash upgrade pod right now for 50% off your first three months of Claude Pro. That includes access to all of the features that I have mentioned.

That is all lowercase letters, clod.aI slash upgrade pod. Thanks to Claude for their support of this show and relay. So we have made reference to it. You also have an M5 iPad Pro. Sure. And you've reviewed it. Yep.

What does the power of the M5 do for the iPad Pro? I don't know, man. It is, like, theoretically with iPadOS 26, having more memory bandwidth and I think even for the M4 iOS 26 makes you take advantage of the power much better than in the past but in both of these cases

we're talking about I mean here's the truth the M5 power is only relevant in a sense that if you're coming from an old iPad it will be good that's what that's its relevance it's relevance in going from m4 to m5 you're like okay convince me that what m5 offers is more than what m4 offers so that i can go from m4 to m5 and there's a reason for it there's no reason for it everything cranks up a little bit but if you've got an m4 or m2 i've had pro like i'd say you're fine yeah even an m1 you're probably fine although i used the m1 a little bit and you know it's chunky and it's a little bit slow

for some of the stuff, especially iPad multitasking. It's still pretty good, actually. But that's the reason for this is it's not about people rushing in. It's about that when it comes time for you to buy a new iPad Pro, if you choose that, if you like that product line, you will find it better. And it gives Apple the freedom to put the M4 in the iPad Air if they want to. That's it, though. I mean, it's not, that's all that's happening here.

This is something that it means the next time you look, it'll be better than the last time you looked. That's it. Because, you know, this iPad Pro, it was only introduced a year and a bit ago. And it was a huge upgrade. Sure. Making it super thin, light and that incredible OLED screen. Absolutely. Really was.

And it also changed the screen sizes a little bit, right? So it became the 11 and 13. So, like, it kind of made the screen size a little bit bigger. Like, you get all of this. Like, if you're upgrading to anything other than an M4, which is like probably most iPad Pro owners, you get all of that plus this chip. Like, that's what you're getting.

That's right. That's right. Coming from the M1, looking at that M1 that I have in my house, and then comparing it to the M4 or the M5, right? Like, it's really nice. So that is, that's the thing, is that that was a great hardware upgrade, the M4. This is just that with the M5 in it.

There's not really anything appreciably different. The big things are actually not the M5 because, again, it is incrementally better. It's the other stuff. It's the C1X. It's the N1. So you can do Wi-Fi 7. I did some wireless testing, which is not something I usually do on iPads. Not a lot, but like I spotted the Wi-Fi.

I have a Wi-Fi 7 router that I bought specifically when Apple started adding a Wi-Fi 7 to their products with the iPhone. And yeah, you know what? Wi-Fi 7's really fast. And the Wi-Fi on the M-5 was faster when it was around my Wi-Fi 7 router than the M-4. The cellular was really interesting. Now, I cannot make claims of being a comprehensive cellular tester. I tested on one carrier, which was AT&T, and I tested in one location,

which was the harsh conditions of my backyard, where T-Mobile and Verizon fear to tread. I am in a dead zone for T-Mobile and Verizon here, but we do have a couple of ours of AT&T. And it was really interesting because on AT&T in my backyard, all the caveats necessary, what I found was that the download speeds, on average, on the M5, on the C1X,

were a little bit slower. Not a lot, but just a little bit slower. It was also like six times faster at upload. So I guess what I've learned is that it's different. But I think in the end it was probably pretty good. I also tried it on Verizon. My review unit had Verizon on it. I added AT&T onto it, onto my account,

paid that extra money for you. the listener and the reader and me and Verizon which is in a dead zone in my house I got a bar and I got some

decent download not good but decent and the upload speed was a joke the upload speed was like 0.2

megabits it was bad but the download speed the fact that it got service at all just kind of blows me away but I only tried in my backyard there are other places

I could try it but I am not a wireless review site. It's enough effort to review all these products without spending a day driving around to different places and doing head-to-heads. And I only have access to two iPads with one carrier and I'm not trying other carriers either on both devices. So this is what you get.

Please do not use this conversation to start C1XGate. The Upgrade podcast does not endorse C1XGate. And it's not worse. It's just different. Like, again, the peak download speeds were a little bit less at the same. And I tested them all identically at the same time and the same location, the whole thing on two different days. And it was consistently, I mean, again, the individual tests using Eucla speed test were varied. But the differences between the two were pretty much consistent.

So it felt a little slower to download things, not a lot, just a tiny bit and way faster at uploading for whatever reason. in my backyard. Certainly not an issue and maybe depending on what you want to do and improvement. So, and I've heard positive things for people with the iPhone Air as well, which uses this chip that there are circumstances where it's better. And also it's more power efficient. I think that that's one of the things. I haven't had a chance to really test the battery life. The battery on these things is so huge, especially the 13 inch, which is what I have. But they do fast charging, which charges fast. That's my report on fast charging as I plugged it in. And I can, I came, it was perilously close to being out and I was trying to review it and I plugged it

into a pretty powerful charger and I walked away and then I came back and I was like, whoa, it's got, you know, it's almost full now. And it had charged, it has the capability to charge real fast. Half of it in half an hour, something like that, Apple says. So that's good. But yeah, these are little things. But these are the changes this year. So when Apple releases a new MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro on the same day. It has always and continues to ask the inevitable questions of how these two devices compare to each other. Do you mind if I quote your review for a moment?

Go ahead and quote me. There was a time when it seemed like Apple viewed the iPad as the future of the computer and the Mac was seemingly consigned to the past. It's ironic that today, at a moment when the Mac seems to have come back to the center of Apple's computing universe, the iPad feels the closest it's ever been

to fulfilling that earlier. desire. It's better this way because the iPad can be as much of the Mac as it needs to be to fulfill its own destiny without needing to carry the burden of replacing the Mac. Beautiful pros, Jason Snaus. I just dashed that out on an iPad in my backyard yesterday afternoon. That's all. That's it. Now the iPad is so good and powerful. You have the ability to write such a lot. The words just fly out. You don't need the Mac for this kind of writing. And this is basically, you know, look, the iPad OS 26 is so incredible. It really is incredible.

Like, I absolutely love iPadOS 26. And so now there just isn't so much of an argument that the iPad just doesn't have the software to power it because it absolutely does. And you're able to take advantage of the software that's already been there in a way that just feels more capable. So it's fantastic that we're in that spot. So that now we don't have to compare them to each other so much

or like this can do that and this can do it because they're so much closer and it's especially good at a time when they are essentially sharing so many of their internals and they're on a path to continue sharing more with like these new cellular chips and stuff but they're also allowed to be their own thing

I think that's the the conundrum here the weird ironic twist that I tried to get across in that section of the review is the iPad finally feels like it is fulfilling what we've been waiting for it to fulfill for a decade. It's been 10 years almost to the day

that the iPad Pro was announced, the first one. It feels like we're closer than ever. An iPad OS 26 is an enormous part of that, the new multitasking, the background processing, all of these nice features that they've added. They've added a bunch over the last few years, but 26 really knocked it out of the park. Absolutely.

And yet there was a time when we all looked at the iPad Pro and thought Apple thinks this is the future of computers and the Mac's going to fade away. And today it doesn't feel like that at all. Today it feels like the Mac is riding high. Apple loves where the Mac is going. Apple does not think that the iPad has to carry the burden

of being the replacement for the Mac. And in a strange way, I think when we look at the multitasking in 26, it frees the iPad to be more Mac-like in some ways because it doesn't have to be like if the iPad had to replace the Mac, the multitasking

would be judged as what does it not do that the Mac does? And instead, I feel like what we judge in 26, an iPadOS 26 is the way it makes multi-windows better. Like, it's got a menu bar, it's not a Mac menu bar, but it is a menu bar that does a menu bar that are nice. It's got

the stoplight buttons. They don't work quite the same, but they are familiar, and they work, and they help. And it's got a dock, and it's got stage manager being like the Mac stage manager, and you can move the windows around anywhere, and if this makes any sense, like it's able to pick up what it wants from the Mac and apply it in an iPad context that makes sense

without the burden of having to fulfill the needs of everybody who is jumping onto the iPad as a life raft because the Mac is sinking because that's not happening anymore. And I think that frees the iPad to be itself, but also weirdly freeze it to pick and choose what it takes from the Mac conceptually without this overhead of like

we must rethink the Mac for the future because this is the future of the Mac instead it's just like hey those stoplight buttons work pretty well let's just put those in there and the fact that I could write a review of an iPad now without having the obligatory paragraph of disappointment which I wrote about last time with the M4 I actually quoted my original iPad pre review in in my M4 review and then I quoted myself quoting it in this review but It's this idea that there's always a paragraph in an iPad review that says, oh, but Apple is making pro hardware, but they let themselves down because the software can't

match it. And there's no pro apps and there's no pro features and it doesn't do this basic video export and it doesn't do like. And it's not completely gone. Just as it is not completely gone from any of Apple's devices because the hardware is so far ahead of the software in so many ways across the board. But I will say

this is this is the first time because of iPad OS 26. This is the first time that I can look at an iPad Pro and reasonably not say but what about.

And this is also great at a time when we maybe get in touch screens on the Mac right? Like to say that these devices are separate, they're on their own path, ways. They're similar. They share from each other. It's important at a time when we then just won't go, well, why don't you just put iPad

of us in this thing? You know, like, yeah. Yeah, so the answer is going to be, I can almost predict, when they do those touchscreen Macs in a year. They're going to say exactly a version of what I just said about the iPad, which is the Mac's its own thing. The Mac can learn things from the iPad, but what the Mac is not trying to be is an iPad.

It's trying to learn from the iPad. Lessons we've learned over 10 years or over 15 years on the iPad and apply those in a different context in the Mac. That is what they will say. Because I think that's where we are, is that the iPad and the Mac

are kind of facets of each other, but they're not the same. Do you want to say anything else about the iPad Pro? I mean, I feel like we've kind of covered what it has. It's, you know, this is what it is.

It is a bump. The only thing I'll say remaining is what I said earlier about how Apple's chips make the make you wonder like who actually

needs the high end it feels like the early like 15 years ago 20 years ago power users but but Power Macs

which then became a Mac Pro think about the idea of like what if most of our listeners own a Mac Pro yeah

right you're laughing it seems ludicrous today shout out to those who do hi John but

in the day that was the case. And what happened is the Mac Pro ended up being more and more of a niche product because they could make other products that were more affordable that had enough power to do the job. When the iMac was released, it was a joke for Mac users, for power users, for the people, kind of people who read Mac magazines, for example. It was a joke. It was not a professional computer. And then they did the G3 Power Mac. Like, it was a joke. Over time, the iMac got more and more and more capable to the point where, like, my last two Intel Macs were IMAX. It went from joke to me, a power user, just went ahead and bought an IMac.

So I say that because I feel that a little bit in all of Apple's products now, but especially in the iPad line where the Mac, first off, the iPad Pro is so expensive. It really is. if you compare it to a MacBook Pro it costs basically the same and it's got a better screen but no keyboard you have to buy that extra but like that's how it's priced

you were talking on Connected about how like you get a really nicely dressed up full storage iPad Pro and you're at two grand for an iPad and that's where you get in the most RAM too I mean you get it in both

the highest storage configuration so I want to say probably no needs an iPad pro honestly at this point I think there are very few people who need an iPad pro the reason you get an iPad pro is because it's the best because it's nice because it's thin and it is beautiful and it's got the best chip and it's got the best screen by far it's the best screen Apple has ever made in a product probably yep I would say so so you pay the money because it's really nice but I I would argue you don't pay because you need it for your work when there's

an M3, probably soon to be M4, iPad Air out there. And this is an interesting little thing where the iPad Air is basically the iPad Pro experience from three years ago, two years ago, and way cheaper. So that's an interesting feature as well, where Apple has decided, we're going to just break the bank here. We're going to build the ultimate expression of the iPad, where it's the best. It's got the best screen and the best processor. And it is in the most dynamic case super thin. And if you don't want that, the iPad Air is fine. And I just think that's

an interesting dynamic. Like for the M4 and M5 generations of iPad Pro, I look at the prices and I think, I think the only way to justify it is you want the best. I love the iPad. I want the best. and then I will use it for five years or whatever. Or I will hand it down and then get another one. I think that's why you buy the iPad Pro. I don't think there's any... Okay, somebody will come at me with an edge case, but I would say for the most part,

the iPad Air is the iPad that people who really love the iPad and want to use it should use unless you look at the price of the iPad Pro and you're like, yeah, I can pay that for something that's nicer. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. I think that the world is full of products where if you pay more, you can get the nicer one. I just don't think that the iPad Pro any longer has this sort of like, I need to pay that extra because it does something that I need for my work.

I think that that is almost non-existent at this point. I have an iPad Pro. I love it. I don't think I will buy an iPad Air. I think I will buy an iPad Pro because I love the iPad Pro. And I love the iPad enough that paying more for nice. makes sense for me because I use it so much. And I want it to be the nicest one with that beautiful screen.

But just to put it in context, as a practical person who gives buying advice from time to dime, the iPad Air is the one you should buy because it does all the same stuff. It's got, it uses the pencil pro. Its magic keyboard isn't quite as nice as the one on the pro, but it's perfectly nice. Like, it's there. So that's the other thing I would say is that, like, this is a product that the pro is out in the stratosphere and it's a product you buy

I don't want to say it's like a luxury car but it's a little like that it's a it's a a luxury iPad in a lot of ways and there's nothing wrong with that I think they just updated the magic keyboard for the iPad air if I remember right

no they just have put a new color on it that was what they did they added a new color no it's the it's the old iPad Pro Magic keyboard yeah is what it is Because when they changed the size in the M4, they came out with this new one that's got the aluminum on top and it's got the extra row and the bigger track pad. And you're like, that's all nicer, right?

But in the end, what you're paying for is it's nicer. And that's fine. It's paid to make it nicer is not a bad thing to do. But just to be clear in terms of pure functionality, if you're trying to save some money, the iPad air is great and continues to be great. This episode is brought to you by e-cam. If you're a Mac user who creates video,

podcasts. You need eCAM. E-CAM live is the all-in-one studio built exclusively for Mac. So it looks, feels, and performs just like a native Mac app for pros should. Whether you're live streaming, recording a podcast, or producing training videos, E-CAN gives you broadcast-level control with drag-and-drop simplicity. You can switch cameras, share your screen, queue overlays, and control audio, all without ever leaving your Mac. Jason, I'm sure that E-CAM Live would warrant pretty.

great on that new MacBook Pro. Yeah, for sure. I actually just use ECAM Live this weekend. We did a Total Party Kill. We've got the Apple results coming in a couple of weeks. I'm going to have we'll do probably a post game of that with Dan Moran. The

Total Party Kill, like we're talking about six people on a Zoom. But using the Zoom integration in ECAM Live, I can get a Zoom window inside of ECAM Live. I can assign all the people to cameras at which point my layouts that include like a screen capture of the map that we're using and all the logos and everything else is going on. And then I have little boxes for the players and they are all coming in as cameras from Zoom.

So I can hide the zoom window once I get it all set up. And I'm seeing the full production on every layout. You know, I've got one that is everybody pretty big. I've got one that's everybody's a little smaller with a map, a couple different orientations of them. the map depending on where we go and um and i it gives me complete command and the best thing about that actually is that when we come back and do our next session uh because it knows who those people are on zoom it will pop them all back into their cameras so i don't even and and i just want to be clear without this integration i was i was doing a screen capture of a zoom window and carving it up

manually into squares and i don't have to do that every time and and it's just it's so nice that they do that and then it picks up the zoom recordings and i get all the local recordings uh from uh my system where i've recorded everybody's audio like it just it's really nice and it works like a mac app should and uh and and in fact there's even a camera so in e cam live you can adjust a camera there's a camera adjustment view where i can like pan and tilt my uh insta 360 camera but you can also like zoom and crop so like i had somebody on over the weekend who was like down in the corner he was like on a laptop that was positioned high and he was kind of like down in the left corner and then there was just space around him you know what i go into that camera and i go

zoom it in a little bit pan it here crop it there and boom now he's in the center of the square i can do all of that with ecam live it's amazing i love it you can also with ecam brand your show with titles graphics and lower thirds you can pull in guests via interview mode you can record multi-track audio for the perfect post-production and if you're into automation just like my co-host is. E-CAM works beautifully with tools and apps like StreamDEC and Loopback as one of as many other Mac tools

that you know and love and you're probably using this, be honest. To get one month free, go to eCAM.com slash upgrade FM and use the code, Upgrade FM. That is a four month of E-C-M-Live-Free

at E-C-A-M-M-S-E-C-A-M-Sach-U-R-G-E-C-A-M with the code Upgrade FM. Our thanks to E-CAM for their support of this show and all of Relay. The M5 also found its way to the Vision Pro. Vision Pro got an update, Mike. It did.

So this is coming from the M2, Vision Pro, which if I remember rightly, was released kind of around M3 time because that was just the way that that was going to go. That's how that went. Yep. I want to read the ways that Apple are talking about what the M5 does for the Vision Pro, and then maybe you can tell me if you have any experience with that. So, faster and smoother. Yeah, you know, it's hard to tell. It's hard to equate. I actually talk to Apple about this a bit.

There are cases where it ramps up the frame rate. It turns out, okay, the displays didn't change, just the chip changed. Here's what the difference is. Apple, this reveals that there are places where Apple was reducing the capability of the Vision Pro to below what some of the hardware was capable. capable of because the processor couldn't keep up. Right. And they wouldn't have ever said it at the time, but now that there's a faster one,

now they say it. So they say that the pass-through is more responsive and that they can also increase the frame rate on the pass-through. Up to 120 hertz. To 120 hertz, which the displays are capable of, but it wasn't doing. A thing I did not know. I just assumed if you would have told me or asked me, what is the refresh rate

on the vision pro I would have told you 120 hours yeah no it was it was not doing that more like 90 it's unclear to me when you see this

and they were cagey about it it it there are basically there are going to be cases I don't think what we can say

is oh well all you know 120 get ready for the 120 or frames per second video because that'll all start rolling out I don't think that's

quite what this is I think this is that in certain areas where they felt they had the power to go up more in order to improve the experience. But it's hard for me to tell just wandering around my house with the Vision Pro in my head whether it's better or not. I can't A-B test it so I can like take one off and put the other one on.

But they say that it's better. And I think I probably believe them, right? But like, because it was good. But it's hard to quantify this. And then the other thing that's really interesting is the, well, you were going to mention this. It's the resolution, which is the other thing. is that they weren't rendering

at the full capability resolution of those displays, which if you think about it, we already knew, right? Because foviated rendering, which is what's happening in the Vision Pro, the whole idea there is those Sony screens are capable of rendering

or, you know, at full clarity, their entire expanse. Yeah. But the system doesn't do it. Why doesn't it do it? It's because it can't. Even the M5, I think,

is not powerful enough to do that. The M2 definitely wasn't. But what seems to have happened is that with the M5, all of that foviated rendering in the area where you're looking. Fovieter rendering, the idea there is basically like your brain and your eyes don't register your peripheral vision with a level of clarity as where you're staring, where your attention is. And so phoviated rendering is like, great, if the brain doesn't want it, we won't give it to them. And so wherever your eyes are looking is rendered at full or as not full, high quality. And the rest of it is rendered at lower quality, which if you've ever taken a screenshot in a Vision Pro, you'll see, you can see where you were looking because that part is clear. And the rest of the image is not clear because you weren't looking there.

And it's a frustration if you're taking screenshots because you have to go into developer mode and take full resolution and everything. When you go into developer mode and it stops foviated rendering, everything gets choppy because they just can't keep up. So anyway, the M5 apparently renders the higher resolution foveated rendering portion higher than it used to. So, okay, so this was a question that we had from looking at the press release. My thought was that the kind of blurry part was pushed out. But what you're saying is it's actually the part that you're looking at is now rendered at a 10% higher resolution is the way. Apple says 10% more pixels on the custom micro-Oled displays. My understanding is it's around the foviated rendering area because that's where you see it.

And it may have, I think, okay, there's a couple things going on. Again, this is all very vague and it's hard to measure. I think part of it is probably that it's a higher resolution or that they've expanded the area of high resolution. So it's further out so that more of your peripheral vision right around that area of attention. The other thing, though, that I think they are definitely doing is Mac Virtual Display. I think they are fully rendering, or as much as possible, fully rendering the Mac virtual display.

Okay, because this is my next question, because it says in the press release, smoother experience, whatever that means. I think what they found is that the way people use the virtual display, they notice the foviated rendering. They notice, unlike on my Mac where, you know, I'm looking right at the center of my studio display, but I know that the thing off to the side is perfectly crystal clear,

even if my brain isn't processing it as well. I think they found that with the Mac virtual display, it felt a little fuzzy, and that some of that was that it wasn't being rendered as crisply as it could be. Now, some of that was probably what you're directly looking at. Like, if there were, this is the way I would put it, the Sony displays are 8K,000. or whatever, they're going to max out

if you have the power to max them out. They don't have the power on these chips to max them out because that display is so huge. So they're going to render it at a lower resolution. The rest of it is playing a game of like, what can we get that's acceptable in terms of performance that's also like frame rate

that's also acceptable in terms of clarity. And I think with the virtual display, especially they're like, it needs to be clearer. You know, a lot of the complaints about the virtual display are it's fine but it's not great it's like it's okay but it's not super clear so my guess is and i i haven't spent enough time with this to be 100% my guess is the virtual display is clearer in where you're looking and it's probably clearer further out from where you're looking so that as you move around looking at your max display you see it more

clearly so it's not like it's just it's fascinating because it's it's about a chip limitation not about a display limitation which is actually answers one of the questions about why put a faster chip in something if you're not upgrading anything else in the hardware the answer is well one we can't use the display

to its fullest we have to cut corners we have to do clever rendering techniques okay well that's good and then the other one would be I think the battery life is going to be a lot better they talk about that that the M5 is so much more energy efficient

that the battery life on this thing will also get better so there's there are winds here. Now, Mike, I know the question everybody's asking is, should I upgrade from my M2 Vision Pro to my M5? And my answer is, no, stop, don't. Don't do that. Don't do it.

But they wanted, they didn't want to keep first of all, I think they didn't want to keep making the M2 and they don't want to keep selling an M2 product. So it was a fairly easy slip stream to just put this in here. But it does have benefits. And I have seen

some of them, but, you know, reviewing three products over a weekend it is very hard to spend a lot of time with all of them so I'm looking forward to spending more time with the Vision Pro I also have experience with some other Vision Pro items so that's very exciting

should we talk about you want to talk about the new headband which is available to all Vision Pro users now yeah this is the thing I'm most interested about so this is essentially what looks like two of the solo knit band which is the

iconic band for the Vision Pro kind of stuck together. One goes over the top of your head, one goes around the back of your head. How does this feel? So far feels pretty good. I have used, look, I used the 3D printed thing with another

knit band on top of my head. I did that for a while. That was okay. I used the belkin strap that was released this spring. That was better. That's the one I've been using. This is better than that. One of the reasons it's better than either of those is because it's a single piece, not two pieces.

There's a single dial to adjust it. You adjust it, the tightness on the back of your head, and then you pop it out a little bit, and then it adjusts the top of your head. So it's a really nice design. I don't know how they do that. I think that is just incredible design. Like, so good.

They kept the 3D knitted material, which I thought would be the first thing that they'd lose. because it felt like such a fancy kind of thing, but they kept it. And they put metal weights in the back headband. Yep. And look, if, here's the argument. People don't feel like the Vision Pro is making them tired

because of the weight pulling down onto their body. The idea is it's making you feel tired primarily because it's so heavy. on the front of your head and you're having to kind of hold it up and so what they've done is they put weights on the back to counterbalance it so that it's pulling down on your body a little bit more

but it's not pulling forward where your body is having to adjust I'd say I have not spent enough dedicated time with it to say how does it feel after five hours I'd like to do that at some point but I could say it feels really good

and the weight doesn't bother me? And I think that that's, it doesn't feel heavy. I don't go, oh, no, this is so heavy. I think that's because partially it's doing its job, which is it's holding it, it's holding the backside back. So it's a little more balanced. Because this has been like the, the controversy over the last couple of days is they made it heavier, right? Because like the technical specs to show that the weight is increased. But like they did give, Apple did give this information that I've got it here. Flexible fabric ribs embedded with tungsten inserts that provide a counterweight for additional comfort balance and stability that's in the Apple Newsroom Post.

Usually Apple likes to talk about metals that it uses that are lightweight and strong. The tungsten is there because it's heavy. Yeah. That's why it's there because it's heavy. It's heavy in small sizes, right? Little teeny tiny strips. Yeah. In the ribbing so that everything is a little more balanced, which is actually a good thing.

I'm intrigued to try this. I have not ordered one yet, but I think I will do at some point because it's nice. It's a real nice. It sounds like a nicer adjustment experience as well. Because like I like the Balkan one a lot too, but the adjustment experience is a little clunky, right? Like you've got a kind of unvalcrow it. Like if you want to do it off. But it's the best, it's absolutely the best strap that I have used. But I do miss the comfort that the knit band provided and this is I guess the best way to do this is really good and having the single control

to tighten the two different dimensions of it you can dial it in really quickly and the elasticity of it is really nice because part of the challenge with a Vision Pro if you have a not really very elastic band is when it goes on

you then have to adjust it and with this one you can kind of set it and then kind of push it on and it just kind of goes and fits on your head and there's less I'm finding so far I don't have to do as much adjustment when I put it on as I used to because it's just kind of like elastic enough to let me slide it over my head.

PSVR2 controllers are coming in November for $250, which is so much money. It is, although for what is a PSVR2 cost, $350? Yeah. For something like that. So you could just buy a PSVR2 if you wanted, especially if you have a PS5 I mean because then you can just VR it up all the time

I mean I don't know who would do that maybe me I bought a PSVR 2 this weekend no way and it works it works I played some ping pong I played some pick a ball on the Vision Pro

using the PSVR hand controllers so wait is the current shipping version does it support at least your one does the M5 supports these controllers? Well, I think it's using a standard version of VisionOS 26. Yeah. That's hilarious. You're a genius, Jason Snow. I charged them and paired them.

And they were, yeah, so they're not available standalone yet. And if you have a PS5, I would recommend considering whether you want to just buy a PSVR 2. If you have a PlayStation 5, this is the upgrade official recommendation. If you have a PlayStation 5, you should buy the PSVR 2 because $250 for these two controllers in a charger stand is way too much money. Like way too much money. So you may as well paid a little bit

of extra. You could probably find a decent discount on one because they did not sell very well. Oh yeah. You can get refurbs. Also, if you're a PC gamer, the PSVR2 works as a VR headset for PC games. Yep. Works with Steam VR.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. This is turns out Sony's found a way to sell the PlayStation VR2. Finally, the PSVR. Yeah. So, So I have tried them and used them. They're very similar to the quest. Yes.

And then it works very much like if you do eye tracking with the Vision Pro and then you're looking at something and then you click the trigger, it's like you tapped your fingers together. So you can navigate the whole interface while you've got them in your hands. There are not a lot of games. I think they're like four or five games out there. I think the pickleball game is actually still in test flight, but it's going to come out. Thing I've learned.

So they work really well, the controllers themselves. implementation seems pretty good on VisionOS. It is funny because I am using, you know, several hundred dollar controllers. I was going to say this about the bands as well. It's like the life of a Vision Pro owner, especially if you're a Vision Pro owner who covers this for a living, is you just keep buying more and more accessories. 3,500 is just the beginning, friends. It's just the start of the journey.

So, but that's said, once you get it all set up, Like, it is a very familiar experience to me as someone who has a Quest 3 and I had a Quest 2. Of course, the Quest 2 and 3 experience is just like $500 or whatever. And this is $4,000. So it's ridiculous that we're here. That said, you know, the pickleball game that I played in Test Flight that is a beta, so it's not out yet, was really good. It was really well done. and it had some bugs.

It's a test flight. I'll forgive it. There were moments where it lost where my paddle was. But when it was all working, the idea that I'm swinging a hand controller around in actual space, it was able to be much more precise than if I'm just hanging around with my hand. Because there's a ping pong game, table tennis game,

for the Vision Pro, and you've got to use your hand. And it's got hand tracking. And I have tried and tried to play it, and you can precisely position sort of like where you want the paddle um but then like i did that's for the forehand and then i do the back hand and the paddle's not in the right place anymore and i would try to play it and it was really hard and i was very bad at it and i would start to hold my hand out because i think that sometimes i would swing my hand back and the cameras would lose track of where it was um so i'm kind of in unnatural positions

and by the way uh 11 table tennis for the quest is so great it's great and it uses those hand hand controllers on the on the quest and it is flawless it is a fantastic table tennis simulator so i get these controllers and i start using the table tennis app on the um on the vision pro and i think oh no it turns out turns out mike it's not that the hand tracking was making that app bad i think it's that app is bad i think that's the answer because even with that even with these it was not close to being the quality of the game on the Quest 3 so it leads me to believe that maybe

that app is just not very good at at tracking. Maybe I'm sorry to that app but like even with a hand controller the Quest's one is better and I thought oh no so after all of this and all of this expensive hardware where are we

and then I tried the beta of the pickleball app and I will tell you when it was working and there were a couple quirks when it was working nailed it. When it was working, it worked. It was just as delightful as any of those Quest ones with the graphics you expect from the Vision Pro.

It opens like a portal through which the other player is playing. The ball, you can kind of hold the ball and drop the ball and the physics is really good. And the graphics are really good, better than on the Quest, I would say. I was very impressed with that. So I think there's some potential here. Again, no one who wants hand controllers in games should buy a Vision Pro. You should buy a Quest. But if you have a Vision Pro, maybe, and in the long run, if Apple thinks that this is a direction they might want to go, this is a good test case.

And that's where we are. It's a test case for this stuff. This is all experimental and silly. And if you want to play table tennis on against, in a virtual world, you should get a Quest 3. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. Right now, headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks. It's happening all the time. makes us all vulnerable. But you can do something about it. Delete Me is here to make it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data from the internet. Delete Me will do all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. This isn't just a one-time service. Delete Me is always working for you, constantly monitoring and

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their support of this show and relay so it happened it happened it happened it happened It did. Five-year partnership, starting from the 2026 season, Apple, and Formula One. Now, we have spent a lot of time in the past kind of talking about what would Apple do? Like, how were they going to handle being the, not only the broadcast partner essentially, but also the streaming partner of F1? Like, how would that work? And, you know, because F1 has its own streaming service and it has,

works of ESPN. Turns out Apple took the secret third answer, the things we were talking about. And not only will they have available on Apple TV, the races and the whole practice and everything, the whole kind of content of the racing weekends, they are also going to continue to offer with Formula One F1 TV Premium,

which is all of this, but also a ton of, technical stuff, which we can get into. But the way it's going to work is, you can only now subscribe to F1 TV premium by having an Apple TV subscription. It's not a separate purchase. It's not an ad on. You are just a standard Apple TV subscriber. And then you also, if you're in the, this is all in the US, get access to F1 TV premium as well. Assumidly, you will log in with an Apple ID or something like that. Yeah, you'll log in with your Apple ID and verify. and then that will be it.

And in fact, people who are subscribers to F1 TV in the U.S. received an email saying, here's what's happening. Your subscription will continue until it renews after this time, which is whatever, March or something of next year, at which point your subscription will no longer renew. And you will need to sign up for Apple TV to watch.

So if you've got another year on your subscription, you'll have it for the year. You'll have F1TME premium for the year. But whenever it lapses, it won't auto renew and instead you will be directed to go to Apple and subscribe to Apple TV

and so yeah this is a premium streaming product that is being rolled in to what Apple is doing so they're essentially doing what ESPN is doing and probably more on Apple TV, the app

and they are providing the access to F1 TV premium for everybody in the United States who's a TV subscriber and what this does by continuing to allow and kind of encourage F1 TV Premium, it solves a lot of the hang-ups that I've had

about how Apple were going to make this work. Like, for example, on F1 TV Premium, you can choose from any of the 22 onboard driver cameras and watch them in like quad boxes and all this kind of stuff. It just felt like a lot more technical lift than maybe Apple would want to do and that they may just on Apple TV just want to show

what ESPN would have shown which is just here is the race here is a TV show of the race why what I would say is why would Apple duplicate what the event the network the partner

Formula One has built that's the question is why would you duplicate that? Why would you say well we're going to rebuild that all in a different app and we're going to like why when you your, when they're your partner, just like MLS is Apple's partner.

Formula One is Apple's partner here. So why rebuild that thing? When the vendor, the partner, already has it. They built it. So they basically said, yep, we're going to hand that to you as part of this deal. And that's why, and you're like, well, they're foregoing revenue.

And they are foregoing revenue, Formula One, but Apple's paying 50% more for these rights than ESPN was. So they're actually, don't worry. Don't worry. Don't cry for Formula One. They're doing okay. Yeah, they're doing okay. And Apple gets to say, we have all access.

Also, unlike MLS, this is not an add-on package. MLS, you have to, if you want to see all the MLS games, you have to buy the MLS season pass. In this case, you just get it. If you're an Apple TV subscriber, you just get F1 and you get F1 premium. You get it all. So you can just watch the race or you can dive into the app and do the superfan stuff with all the data. And it's just all covered if you're an Apple TV subscriber. And I want to just, you know, because in case people who don't know, there are a bunch of different plans for F1 TV.

Right. The only one that gives you races now is F1TV Premium. There was something called F1TV Pro. Actually, no, sorry, F1 TV Pro and Premium both exist. They are the only ways to get races. F1TV Pro is going to go away because it was just HD. It wasn't 4K. Yeah, the premium was the upsell for 4K and multi-view.

Yes. F1 TV premium was $130 a year. So if you were just signed up for this, you're doing great because you could just get Apple TV now, which I think would be cheaper for you over a year. Now, if you were watching on ESPN, and you're, you know, because you were signed up to ESPN anyway and you didn't have Apple TV,

well, now you have an additional cost, right? You're going to have to sign up for Apple TV. But, like, there is also another tier, which I've seen a lot of people talk about, just F1 TV, which is like $30 a year. But that is just data. Like you don't get any feeds. I can sign up for F1 TV, even though we have Sky. And all I get is you get like live telemetry data and some like original documentaries and stuff. But there's no races in that. It's the sidecar for a place that's already got a broadcast license. Yeah. You can,

it's like the digital add-on of bonus content. It's not the live stuff. So, so yeah, this is um it's really interesting there are lots of questions out there um will carroll on downstream last week said that he had heard now he he said he didn't think the announcement would come Friday and then it did you know emailed me and he was like well got that wrong but he also had heard that they were already moving ahead and hiring people to like announcers so we we will see my guess is I feel strongly about this and we'll talk about why in a second when we talk about Eddie Q, that what Apple will not do is what ESPN did, which is just take the sky feed and run it.

Yep. And that's because, not to be mean, but this matters to Apple, and I don't think it mattered to ESPN. ESPN cared so, so little about the content that they took somebody else's, well, and when it was on, they did bid for it, but a fraction of what Apple bid for it. And like, they cared so little about the content that they just. just took the Sky Feed, even though the Sky feed has all sorts of details

about watch this on Sky and press the red button. Yeah, like the Sky Broadcasting team is great, but there was too much junk in the ESPN broadcast. It's made for Sky. Yeah. And it's irrelevant to ESPN. So Apple's not going to do that.

Apple is going to make a broadcast that is for Apple. Yeah. And I would say also something we talked about last time that I want to mention again here. this is a test of Apple's relationship with F1 because Apple has broad ambitions and the beauty of this is Apple on its own home territory of the United States is all in with Formula One.

The whole product is an Apple product. They are the partners, Apple and Formula One. If it goes well, if they experiment and try stuff, if they like it, as other international territories come available for rights, this is one way for Apple to add territories over time

if they want to, and if F1 wants to and they want to pay the money, to expand this, because this is U.S. only, but like, who's to say that the rights in Mexico

or in Australia or something come up? And Apple's like, we'll bid for that. Because they will have, at that point, they will have built the infrastructure and the relationship

and then they're just expanding to new territories. If they go to Mexico, they have to add a Spanish language fee. They can do that. They can hire, they do that for most of MLS, actually. So I think it's really interesting

because it's a five-year deal. It's an experiment, but it's also the flowering of the relationship that began with that movie. And like, we'll see where it takes them because, you know, maybe they won't expand

the relationship, or maybe this is the start of something bigger. We'll just have to see. But I think that that, I think Apple's got that in the back of its mind is, if this goes well, why will we not just keep picking up territories and, and expanding that we're the global, you know, maybe not everywhere. I looked it up. I think, I think they reported about $1.3 billion in media revenue last year, Formula One did. So, like, could Apple pay $1.5 billion for all rights all over the world? Yeah. but right now those rights are all coming up one by one

and they have to outbid local broadcasters and that may not happen and they may not have any desire to do that but it wouldn't surprise me if they do that going forward if this works out for them. Honestly, I'll be flabbergasted if they don't take the UK rights like the where it's from sky. Like it would be very odd to me and they come up in 29 so it's kind of like halfway through their agreement or whatever.

I give you a couple of like tip piece of information that I think you're interested which were like going on to the stuff I was saying in past episodes. So by keeping F1 TV around, Apple can have their own commentary team. And those commentary team can be seen good, bad, or whatever. It doesn't matter. Because in F1 TV, you can get F1 TV's commentary team if you like. But also in F1 TV, you can choose the sky feed.

So if you love, if you watch on ESPN and love Martin Brundle and David Crofty, like I do, you can. go to F1 TV and switch to their audio so you can listen to them. It's been interested on threads like the F1 TV commentary team are like we're not going anywhere like the people keep because like it seemed you know, I guess for now

I want to make a prediction too just to put it on record here I think Apple will hire Will Buxton to do part of their commentary so if you have ever watched Drive to Survive Willboxon is essentially the narrow Marita. I used to work at F1 TV. He clearly wanted to be in commentary, but F1 and F1 TV didn't put him on commentary permanently. They have a different team. Buxden left F1 and went to

Indycar, and he is one of the commentary people for IndyCar. And he obviously has always wanted to do F1. I reckon Apple were going to bring him in and he will be part of the broadcast team because he is known by the American audience now in sports racing and worldwide because of Drive to Survive. I think he would be a very good person because if you've seen Drive to Survive, which is most F1 fans, you are familiar with War Buxton. You know him. Like even though he is in IndyCarnell, he's still in Drive to Survive as kind of like the, the face of the show, like from a narrating, like he kind of like draws the lines between the stories during the documentary. So he would be my bet as someone that they're going to bring him for the team.

I'm fascinated to see what that broadcasting looks like and just in general like Apple has said like production information is coming later. If you look at what Apple did

with Major League Baseball what they did is they took an off-the-shelf this is why Eddie Q called and we'll talk about this podcast in a minute but he called it an experiment with Major League Baseball what they did is they took an off-the-rack

baseball broadcast. They literally took MLB Network broadcast. So they're partner, their league partner handled the production. And then what they did is, they tweaked it because they wanted to experiment. I think this might be an interesting model for F1 as well, which is like we've got, we're partners. You've got a turnkey thing that you do for races. You've got your international feed. You've got your cameras. The way this works is it's not like every every broadcaster has its own cameras, right? There are the can. It's like the Olympics. There are the cameras at the track. And then you may have some specific cameras, if you think about whatever your country's Olympic coverage is, you know how like there's the coverage of the sport and then there's like the shot of the announcers and there's the shot of the person down at the pool interviewing the swimmers. Like in America, NBC's got the shot of the announcers and the shot of the people down at the pool. But like the swimming cameras are not NBC's cameras. Those are the Olympics pool cameras. It's a pool of pool. Anyway, um, So F1 is like that, is my understanding, right? You don't have 20 different sets of cameras. You have one set of cameras, and then you can have your extras.

So the question for me is going to be, what does Apple push on? Because with Major League Baseball, they changed the, they reduced the compression of the video. They were worried about, you know, they set their own, you know, they wanted the good color and they wanted it to look really nice. And they did their graphics. They had them in Apple style. And they added stats that, like, Apple felt like were good for its audience to have this extra sort of dynamic stats package that they did. And they pushed in some production areas. Not only did they do the thing where they added iPhones to the broadcast the last couple weeks of the year.

But they added a more, they were more aggressive with drone footage on Friday nights. And they claim, you know, they were the first one to get the OK from MLB from their partner that they could take their drone onto the field, not during. play but like at the end of an inning their drone could go over the stadium and show it from above and then leave and like that needed to be worked out with their partner but those were

always where they were trying to experiment with enhancing so Friday night baseball felt a little bit different and a little bit better I think and I think they've been trying to do some of that in MLS it's harder because MLS is so many games at once Formula One is not so many games at once

it's these events I so I would imagine they will be and are already talking to Formula One about how do we make the Apple broadcast of this, which includes Apple's own announcers and possibly some even interactive elements because they too can let you press the

red, you know, press the button. Yeah. Like they, how will they push that part forward? Not F1 TV. They don't have to touch F1 TV. It is what it is. But they can take their kind of mainstream broadcast and make it their own in a way that,

ESPN, you know, didn't bother with, it wasn't worth it to them to just not take Sky. Yeah. So it will be interesting because some of this stuff, as I said before, like if they make, if they are, if they have F1 make some changes, everybody will benefit from them, even if it's not, um, on Apple, right? I think that's also probably the case, right? If they're truly partners, Apple may push F1 on some things that then everybody benefits from because like if they do like lower compression. Because I have like, uh, ultra HD I pay for. But like the camera. at the track side, they're not that high quality. Like, when they go to, like, the pre and post race interviews and stuff like that with the Sky team, it's way higher quality imagery. So maybe they push them on that. You know, you're saying, like, F1 is very forward-focused. We already have drones that follow the cars around and, like, helicopters and all kinds of stuff. Little tiny cameras on the cars and stuff, yeah. And maybe they do push them on the graphics,

as I mentioned before, the graphics like baked into the feed, but maybe everybody just gets the, because F1 just make the graphics. But if Apple's like, hey, what if they look like this and look like this, then everyone will get that, right? They're going to look better for every feed. Maybe. Or they'll be a good partner and they'll provide Apple with a graphics light version of the feed that Apple puts its own graphics on.

And then that's the place where Apple can experiment with graphics. Maybe. And then F1 can learn lessons. I mean, this is the thing is it's a partnership, right? So the question is like, what's the push and pull of that? Because I would imagine, this may not stay the case for five years. But right now, I would imagine this is how do we make this the best partnership everywhere and if you talk

I know this is an Apple focused podcast but like if you talk to people in the sports world about partnering with Apple they're like whoa it's Apple

they make the iPhone they're one of the biggest companies in the world they're our partner now Apple brings a kind of a cachet and they also have a global reach and lots of money so if you're Formula One

you're like this is interesting like let's see where this partnership takes us which probably takes us to Eddie Q on the town and his money quote which is we'd like to own a sport end-to-end.

He talks about baseball was an experiment. MLS is much closer. This was before the F-1 partnership was revealed. MLS is everywhere end-to-end, right? It's globally. F-1 is U.S., but it is end-to-end. They own it. If you want access to that starting next year,

you will need to be an Apple subscriber. And we've been talking about this for years. This is so clearly their strategy is they don't want pieces. Matt Bellany asked them about, asked him about, do you want part of the NFL? You're a part of the NBA. And he's like, no, I don't. I want it all.

Even when they were bidding for college rights, because they bid for the PAC 12 football, they wanted the whole conference, right? Like, they wanted it all of that little subset. They wanted it all. That's their strategy. So here we see it in the U.S., and that's why I bring up, like,

their global ambitions. I think they, I think, I think Apple, ideally, if everything goes well, thinks that eventually they will buy all the global F1 media rights. Yeah, I think that that should be, like, I expect that that is what they're looking for, but it's like, well, we can't right now, so why don't we just start with the territory that matters most to us and see how it goes? And see how it goes, right? And then it's easy. That's the thing is, if they say starting in 2027, Australian, New Zealand will be Apple. And, you know, and, you know, pick, and Japan. okay like that that may happen it may not be everywhere because everybody's rights are timing out at different times too this is not the case in some sports they've tried to time the rights so that they all go at once but this is a legacy of kind of international media rights all the i believe all the f1 deals sort of like are all over the place it's also like based on the fact that like the interest in f1 has changed over times like yes sure never had a long window because it just wasn't of important to them yeah yeah the sky have wanted to be take it a huge chunks

at a time because it is important to them Right You know So we'll see But it is The beginning

I mean Unless you'd say F1 the movie was the beginning But now With the sports rights It's the beginning Of a very interesting

Relationship That could potentially Have global ambition They're only doing this Because of the movie Like They built a relationship I actually saw a quote

I don't know If you spoke about it On this show or not Eddie was at a motorsport conference and he referenced that the CEO of F1, Stefano Domenicali, him and Eddie Q are close personal friends,

which is hilarious. By the way, my theory on this, like, Eddie being on the town and then Eddie going to this motorsport conference, they wanted to announce this before now and couldn't. Like, there was like a bunch of things that happened and then this happened. It's like, this doesn't make any sense in this order,

like why you would do this. but I thought it was very funny. My bet, like, I get what you're saying about, like, the graphics thing. I really think that Apple will push F1 to improve stuff, and then it will kind of work in the reverse to how it's worked to Sky for years, where now what Apple wants, everyone else gets, where it has always been what Sky wanted the rest of the world got. Because I think F1's preferred partner is going to become Apple,

and they're just going to make it as simple as they can, which is like, here are our graphics, everybody gets them, Here's our feed. Everybody gets it. It's just how the sport works. It's weird like that. Also, I should say that I mentioned, like, you buy the rights in Mexico and you add a Spanish feed. There are a bunch of broadcasters, streaming broadcasters who already do multiple streams.

Like I said, MLS offers multiple language streams. Amazon with Prime Video, there's a Spanish stream in addition to an English stream. So Apple may push on that to broaden it out. And then, yeah, if they add Canada rights, they will add a French stream. The French MLS teams have a French audio as well. So I feel like Apple's ambitions are global and maybe or maybe not. That may or may not work out here, but I think the ambition is global. I would be shocked if Apple didn't think that this was going to be a start of many countries

having F1 rights be in Apple. Yeah, because to me, owning a sport end-to-end doesn't mean just one geographical. location, but I'm sure I would show it, right? No, no. Like, if a network owned all of the NBA in the U.S., they would feel like that was end-to-end, but Apple doesn't think that way. Apple plays globally. Apple and Netflix and Amazon, I think, basically play globally.

Certainly Apple and Netflix are, there are not that many streaming services that are available in almost every region in the world, but Apple is. and Netflix is. So, yeah. Big episode today. We're going to skip Ask Upgrade this week because it's been so much. Send them in.

But if you're like, oh, man, I'm really enjoying this show. I'd love more of it. Well, let me tell you, go to getupgradeplus.com, because I want to talk about the news of video podcasts on Netflix. That's what I want to talk about it today.

Okay. So I think if you've enjoyed this conversation of TV and all this kind of stuff, you're going to love it, so go to getupgrateplus.com. you can send in questions for next week though by going to upgrade feedback.com sending your follow up as well I'm going to be away next week so Jason's going to have a guest host

Stephen Hackett will be here there you go there you go Stephen Hackett's going to be here co-founders I'm just moving co-founders here it's just how it works it makes sense if you'd like to find a video version of this show we're not on Netflix we're on YouTube just search for the upgrade podcast I'd like to thank our sponsors again that is delete me e-cam Claude and Squarespace but most of all, as always,

thank you for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, my curly.