Upgrade - 593: Oops! All Departures

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 593 for December 8th, 2025. Today's show is brought to you by Century, FitBud, and Udacity. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by on location. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. I'm always at a location when you think about it, Mike. We've got him standing outside of Apple. Park. He's at the exit gates. Just checking if anyone's going to leave today.

Watching to see who leaves. Yeah. Sure. Could be. Could be. I have a snow talk question for you. And it comes from Mark. This was sent to me by a text message as sometimes snow talk questions come in. Mark wants to know, do you have any favorite curling related songs or TV or media in general? For me, it's got to be Tournament of Hearts by the Weaker Thans, both because I love that song, but also because I don't know. of any other songs about curling. I just want to give it to Mark here because I don't know any at all. So Mark wins by one.

And I don't. I don't have any favorite curling-related song, TV, media, anything. Nothing has raised to the level where I found it. Lauren really enjoyed there's a podcast about a curling scandal.

It's actually like a narrative podcast. About and then I watched Broom game. I think, yeah, that's it. She enjoyed it. I mean, there can't be other ones, right? I mean, it must be that one. It's like, no, it's a different one. You'd be surprised, but that's probably it. Yeah. Thanks to the CBC. Yeah, of course. Canada's on it. That's true, I guess. If anyone's going to get it, they're going to get it. And I will just say to forestall all the all the recommendations for the movie men with brooms.

I know it exists. I haven't seen it. You don't need to recommend it to me. I don't need a list of curling-related media. I'm actually watching the Olympic qualifying tournament on streaming this week. I'm watching actual curling. So that's your favorite curling media is Olympic coloring. Is watching curling, yeah.

That makes sense. If you would have a snow talk question, you'd like us to answer in a future episode. If you have my personal contact information, you can send them to me, although I would prefer in general, even if you do, to go to UpgradeFeedback.com and send that in. That's a good idea. We have some follow-up. So last week we spoke about how the Indian government was looking to mandate the install of an app

that could essentially be used to track citizens. They wanted Apple to do this. We spoke about it. Wonder what Apple would do. Well, Apple refused. Reuters was reporting that Apple was going to officially tell the Indian government, that they would not do this. They would not install mandatorily an app on everybody's iPhones in India. This then led to the Indian government completely scrapping the

entire program. But there has since been a second proposal to mandate that GPS is enabled on every iPhone sold in India with no option for disabling it. Now, that doesn't sound too bad on the face of it, but they then want there to be no notification of any kind that would inform a user if a cell carrier wanted to access that location information. Again, it is expected that Apple will deny his request via reporting from Reuters and others because they had already formally opposed a similar proposal back in July of this year. So the timeline, I think, is that the Indy Government recommended this, then went and suggested the app. The app has been a no, so now they're going back to this other request, but Apple's going to say no again, so I guess we'll

see what happens. I guess we'll see. It's interesting. They want, you know, the Indian government wants personal information, right? They want to be able to track, I mean, really what they want is the ability to track any person anywhere at any time. And when you think about it that way, it doesn't sound great to me. No, and remember as well, they wanted to be able to tie encryption apps to SIM cards, which they could then tie to individuals via their ID. So the Indian government, they are really taking some steps here, but it's not going very well for them so far. Analyst Jeff Poo expects that Intel may reach a deal with Apple

to produce some non-pro iPhone chips starting in 2028. Following up on the story from Ming Chi Kuo about the M-chips that we talked about. Now, this is one of those things where I see analyst reports, and I never really know how to take them. Like Ming Chi Kuo is an analyst, but we're familiar with Kuo's sources, which are the supply chain. And I see Jeff Poo's name mentioned a lot, and I'm sure we've covered some of their reporting in the past. But the report that I've seen, it doesn't necessarily say where this is coming from. But if people are well-respected analysts, which I know of who is, and people pay attention to what they have to say,

you assume that they're not just pulling things out of thin air, it's coming from somewhere. And this would actually make a lot of sense to me that if they're going to have the Intel produced the M-chip, why not also the A-chip, like the standard A-chip that goes in, you know, what would I think be the iPhone 20 and the iPhone 20E? Why not do that as well? It's the same theory, if not even more needed in the long term,

is iPhone chips more than Mac chips. It's like, what's that important to Apple? Yeah, I think that, I mean, what their sources in Intel probably probably yes yeah I it's not unreasonable

I mean this is just a different data point that maybe somebody wanted to get out there or that was unreported by Ming Chi Kuo and so they wanted to score a little point here but the largest story hasn't changed which is Apple is exploring the possibility

according to all these reports of thabbing some of their chips on Intel but probably starting with chips that are not at the cutting edge because that's a good place to start because Intel is not at the cutting edge of TSMC and and so they don't you know they can't really go there but they do want to start building a relationship with another fab because it's a US company and they've got fabs in the US and Intel is willing to do this in a way that they previously were not so this is just

sort of like another another little piece of color to that story that we already had so the F1 season just finished yesterday. I'm very pleased that Landon... Congratulations to Lando. Ah, see, I knew it. I knew it. It's good to know.

I did my research. When the season ended, Apple's promotional machine continues, right? Because now they are the home of Formula One in America and they put out a kind of sizzle reel. Yeah, a little hype video. A little hype video.

Now, in this video, there were some screens of what could, I'm going to say, potentially be the functionality that they may have on Apple TV. So they showed some things like, you know, here's some promotion for a race. But then they also had like tiles that you could tap on for the different drivers

with driver cams and multi-views. Interface mock-up. They had an interface mock-up and it showed driver cams and it showed multi-view. And so indicating potentially the kinds of features that people would want, I say this is very much a mock-up until we see it. I think Apple will definitely have this functionality,

but it may be via the F-1 TV app. I don't know, right? Like, I think that people are like, oh, they've shown off what the app's going to look like. And I just don't know that I would really, like, totally hang my hat on this mock-up of, like, what exactly will be in the Apple TV app. I may use this as a hat-rack.

see. I don't know where my hat is going. I might place my hat on it or near it, only in the sense that I think this is Apple stating their intention for what they want this interface to be. Yeah. But they could change their mind. My point is I am sure they want to have this. But if, you know, it's like one of these things where they could get there eventually, and I'm sure they will. But it is not imperative that they do because F1 TV, has all this stuff in it. So, like, you know, we'll say. I think that, I think what we see here is that Apple wants to bring an elevated experience to the TV app so that it can provide whizzy fun features to people who are not going to go download an additional F1 app because that's the even harder core people. And that they want to sort of like, I think they're in, in fact, I would say they're envisioning the ESPN audience coming to Apple and offering them some whizzy new tech stuff

beyond that, knowing that that audience is not paying for F1 TV and may not even think about going there. They're interested, but they're not that hardcore. But again, I think it's a statement of intent. I think they intend to ship all of the things they showed. But you never know how it's going to go. Also, F1 is not off very long, right? When's the first race at the next season? Much. Yeah. I mean, it's just around the corner. So it's much closer than, you know, maybe some sports off seasons that go on for, you know, six months or something. like that. Yeah. So we'll see. I mean, we'll absolutely say. I will say, like, I agree of what you're saying. This driver onboards is a pretty hardcore feature, though. Like,

it's not, I don't think it is a very common feature, but it's absolutely something that Apple should provide because they have the availability for it. Okay. So, I mean, just to be clear, it's a hardcore feature, but what I'm saying is they're going to get non-hardcore people who just are coming from ESPN who are going to be in the app and you want to show them wizzy technology and onboards is wizzy technology.

Absolutely. Even if they don't use it, it's cool to have it, right? Like you can go around and look at it. If they say we have wizzy technology in another app that's run by F1 and that is an Apple, it is an Apple showing off their wizzy technology, right?

And I think Apple wants to show they're going to have the streams. So I think they want to show them and I think Multivue is a great example where they have multi-view and they've implemented it and they've got F1. So I'm sure there was a meeting.

Yeah, to be fair, actually, to be fair, you're all right. They do already have a multi-view technology. So it's essentially pointing the cameras, like the feeds at their technology that already exists, right? If I were at EQ, I would say, what are we doing here? If we have multi-view on Apple TV and we have access to multiple video streams and we're not offering people multiple video streams. Yeah. So I think that's what's going behind that. But I think it will be, I don't think they're going to replicate F1 TV inside of Apple TV,

but I think this shows that they're going to try to do more in part because I think they want to push. Like, this is software. We can do more than ESPN could. You know, we're not going to tell you to press the red button, but we might tell you to go into multi-view. Yeah. Right. Or click to enter a multi-view that we picked for you. There's a bunch of things they can do like that that are like, I don't want to say like baby stuff.

But you know what I mean? Like the super hardcore isn't going to do. it, but they might hold somebody's hand and say, you know, this might be a fun way to watch F1 that's slightly different than you're used to and doing it that way. Plus, they just kind even if nobody uses it, it's showing off the technology. So interesting. We'll see. It won't be that long. March soon. Yeah. Also, what I found interesting was in that clip, they used the commentary from Alex Jacques, or Jack, who is the F1 TV main commentator, which suggests to me they will be using, this is a strongest indication to me that they will just be using the F1 TV

commentary team as their commentary team. Could very well be. They made that choice. In the same way that they are showing what we hope will be in the TV app, they chose to use commentary audio from Alex Shack. Yeah. My only warning there is if they have a announcer team announcement that they're going to make, they wouldn't do it here.

so they'd use existing existing commentary instead. They don't need to use commentary at all, though. Right? Like they can just show clips. So we'll see. I mean, also that I expect more likely

that they have a kind of trackside team that it would be theirs as opposed to the commentators. To the actual announcers. All right. Well, I'm just saying I'm not throwing my hat

on this hat rack. That hat rack. No. It's a big hat rack, this one. Apple has announced that Fitness Plus. will be expanding to 28 new markets over the next few months with a new language dubbing option

to Spanish, German and Japanese. So they're expanding to a bunch of different territories, but they're not expanding the languages, right? So everywhere that Fitness Plus is has been in English. But now they will be adding a generated voice. This is an AI voice in Spanish, German, and Japanese where they will be dubbing the existing content. But it seems like the dubbing is rolling out, like it's going to be something they're going to be, I guess, making sure works and is good and embedded in the videos. I mentioned all this because we've been talking about, like, you know, what is going to happen to Fitness Plus?

Well, currently, they're expanding it. I guess that's one way to try and make the service more worthwhile to them is have it available in more countries and with some new language options. Sure. Sounds good. And we'd like to offer our congratulations to previous Upgrady Award-winning podcast, The Rest is History, for being named Apple Podcasts Show of the Year. year for 2025. Ah, congratulations. We gave them an award first.

Yes. And we may. It's very likely we will give them an award again. Very likely we'll give them award again. I just wanted to point out the, what happens when you become Apple's standard bearer of something? Yeah. Which is they did, um, they did a photo shoot. There's shots of Tom and Dominic, the host of the show with the, uh, an Apple Podcasts award. They did a, what I think is a special episode of the rest is history

that includes their thanks and a quick ranking of the five, history's five best apples. That is, I think only in Apple Podcasts. I mean, I didn't get it in Overcast.

No. So I think that's really interesting. I listened to it in Apple Podcast because that's where it was. And they mobilized, they have, there's an Apple News and Conversation. podcast that Apple does

and so it's an interview podcast and that episode this week was with Tom and Dominic and it was actually those bonuses were a lot of fun and I really enjoyed both of them but I also had that moment of like and then also actually

on the site or in Apple podcasts you know many tiles for rest is history and then they built out and they built out a huge thing that includes you know playlist basically of various topics which Spotify has had for

a while, but Apple built that out. Did Goldhanger build that or did Apple? I think you can do some of that in their CMS, but like Apple did it up special. Yeah. But I love this. Like, I think obviously we love this show and something I like, you know how I am. It's even referenced in the press release. They are the first UK-based show to be named this. And they seem very proud of that fact, too, which I enjoy. It's a very patriotic podcast. It really is. This is one of my favorite things about it. In the bonus, in the bonus, they mention how, you know, Americans still owe 250 years of back taxes.

Yes. It's a, it's just tax dodgers. Point of contention. Speaking of the Upgraties, I would like to thank everybody who has sent in their nominations, who have hundreds and hundreds of nominations sent in so far, but we would like yours to, if you have not submitted your nominations for the 12th annual Upgadies Awards. You can go to Upgradies. You can go to Upgrading or you can click a link in the show notes and you can send your nominations in to us there. I am really looking forward to the upgrades now. It's not very far away. So please send in your nominations. And you can still get 20% off your first year of an annual plan supporting Upgrade Plus by going to getupgradeplus.com and using the code 2025 holidays

at checkout for just over, a smidge over $1 per episode. You'll get no ads, more content, and support the show that you love. If you're hearing me say this and you think this show is worth a dollar an episode to you, then please consider becoming a member today, as I coined on Connected. We are currently in the month of Decembership, because it's membership in December. You can go to getupgradeplus.com, use the code 2025 holidays at checkout. out, you will support this show and get a ton of bonus benefits. Throw your hat on our hat rack.

That is a great point. Yes, there's lots of, we have, this podcast is a hat rack, and you have hats. Those hats are in the shape of $56. And if you throw a $56 hat at us onto the hat rack, you won't get some benefits. Now you've ruined it. No, you ruined it. And today, today, that benefit is we're going to give some reactions. to Netflix's attempt, I will say now,

because the news kind of changed before we've got on the phone today. Netflix attempts for buying Warner Brothers. I want to talk to you a little bit about that, and we'll talk about that. I'm not Upgrid Plus today. And also, if you do subscribe to Upgrade Plus, you do not hear any ads in the show at all.

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So, I would say out of nowhere last Wednesday. No, because nobody was expecting this news. Mark German reported at Bloomberg that. Alan Dye Apple's head of user interface design would be leaving the company and joining Meta

where he will become the head of a new creative studio in the Reality Labs division. This is mostly AI and physical products that Meta is developing, like the Raybans and stuff like that, I think, in reality labs. Dye

is taking with him a small number of designers, potentially more, but there was a couple listed. This move was apparently a surprise to Apple. with Tim Cook providing a statement to Bloomberg about Dye's departure and his replacement, Stephen LeMay. LeMay has worked at Apple since 1999,

has a background in interface and direction design, less focused on pure visuals as Dye was and more on kind of like how things feel in use. Tim Cook providing that statement to Mark German is one of the most fascinating details of this whole thing to me. The fact that it was Tim that did it, not a, you know, this person at P. and that it was also provided to Mark German.

So you kind of get the impression that Mark found out about this, contacted Apple PR and Apple Scrabble to get a response. That's how I imagine that went down because I think it's pretty clear where Mark got that information from and it's meta's side. And it shows that they're actually trying to do damage control.

Because it is a problem, especially in, you know, we're going to talk about this in the second half of this discussion, a week that was being bookended by departures at Apple and then right in the middle of it, Alan Dye, it quits. Surprise, extra departures.

Oops, what is it? Oops, all departures? There you go. I love it. So this move was apparently a surprise to Apple, right? This is the thing that we're leaning on. Seems like. Die told them I'm leaving.

John Gruber published a big article that focuses on some things that he has heard from Apple employees. Many of them excited about this move that Dye has departed and Lemae is stepping in. I'm sure you're in a similar boat that over the last, it feels like a week, but it hasn't been half a week. I've heard from people I know Apple who share these sentiments.

Of course. They're excited about this and this is something that they're looking forward to. And that Stephen LeMay is a good guy. Yeah. Yeah. In a later report, Mark German states that Tim Cook is taking on more responsibility for overseeing a design, overseeing design, I should say, a role that was held by Jeff Williams

until he reparted retired reparted I like that reparted that's a retired departure that's when you retire and leave immediately because sometimes they retire and stick around which you're getting into

not looking at anybody but yeah you wrote an article about this in a major coup for someone a coup for someone which I found interesting how are you feeling about this you seem to be on the I'm happy about this side of the fence.

Yeah. I mean, my whole piece is like, I don't want to make it personal because I think that we make mistakes when we take our grievances and then put them on one person when we don't know actually

what's going on on the inside. I think Alan Dye has been such a visible leader and a leader of this part of it that it's fair for him to get some personal criticism because he's the leader of this. But it's a kind of,

complex issue, and I think that making it personal is a mistake. What I would say is I think Apple has had a rough time of it in terms of a lot of their priorities in terms of software design for a while now. And so change from the relief standpoint, I think change is good. Basically, just change is good because I think that it isn't going great and the priorities seem a little out of whack, and so maybe getting some change in the organization is good. I also want to say, I feel like this goes back to the original sin, which we've talked about a lot here, which is when Steve Jobs died, Apple was really desperate to show that they hadn't lost their mojo. And one way they decided to do that was pump up Johnny Ive. And so they made

him chief design officer and put him in charge of software design. And that was, you remember, Scott Forstall got fired. All those things were going on in this era. And I don't think that Johnny Ive was the right person to have a say on software design. I think that was probably a mistake. And I think that Alan Dye is an example of Johnny Ive putting a visual designer in charge of something that's probably a little more technical. Again, I don't want to boil this down. We all come with our own baggage, right?

Tim Cook is not just an operations guy, but he does come from a perspective of operations. and it's going to influence how he works as CEO. Alan Dye spent many, many years on software design. So just because he came from designing packaging and advertising and things like that as a visual designer, doesn't mean he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about interaction. But he also brought the perspective of a visual designer to it. And I think that it's possible to look at some of Apple's missteps and say maybe that vision was misaligned with what that job

actually should be, that also could be completely wrong and it's just a vehicle for people to heap all of their scorn on and then set it on fire the day that he leaves. I think it's more complicated than that, but at the same time, I also think it's fair to say Alan Dye was the prominent representative

of a part of Apple that didn't really work great for a while and didn't seem to be getting better. And just one other thing I'll throw on onto the pile here, which is when I say change is good, and this may be true for all of Apple or large parts of Apple, but I'll say it for the design group especially. I feel like Johnny I've built this very tight design group of people, and they were there a very long time. I think Johnny got burned out, but stayed too long. I think a lot of his lie lieutenants were looking for new challenges.

A lot of them have left now. Alan Die leaving, I feel like, is a little bit like that. And leaving aside any crimes that they're alleged to have committed against design or usability or whatever, I think that a problem at Apple is Apple got so big, so fast, and was so successful and made so much money, that there are parts of Apple where you've got people who have been in the same jobs for a very long time, and there are other talented people below them who would like to take a step up and can't because there's nowhere to go. And what ends up happening is you have a brain drain at a lower level where people have to leave Apple, people you've never heard of because there's nowhere for them to go because those people have been in that job for 20 years or 15 years or 10 years and they're never going to go anywhere because they've got so many stock options and you're trapped. So you have to leave because that's the only way through. And I think that's unhealthy. And I actually think that's the worst brain drain that Apple faces is having these static organizations run by people who've been there so long that they are set in their ways and they want it the way they want it and new ideas aren't really going to be

welcome. And so without alleging that about it, because it's human nature more than anything else, what I will say is I look at a departure from the design group and the elevation of somebody who's been at Apple a long time into a role of authority and presumably all of the things that happen underneath that to bring them up and give everybody else in that group opportunities to step up, as well as making the whole group a little more dynamic because it's not just kind of the same people at the top for the last decade and a half. I think that's healthy. And I could point at probably different groups, but the software design is an area I would point to at Apple and say, you know what, a little refresher there is probably a good idea. I don't

think it's healthy for any organization to be that static for that long, especially one that as an outside observer looks like they're having some trouble. So that's my surprise. It's a nuanced take. I'm not trying to burn anybody in effigy, but I also think it's fair for Alan die to take some criticism because he is the prominent representative of that part of Apple's business and that Apple has elevated him and his visibility. So, but I wouldn't go too far with it, right? Like, we don't know exactly what the deal is from behind the scenes. But anyway, that's what I think. What do you think? Yeah, I think I'm not like excited about this. I think that there are a lot of people in our broader

community, listeners, fellow podcasters who are very excited about this news. I mean, one, I have found the way that people talk about Al-a-Dy to be really distasteful anyway, like I've felt this since June. I think people, they speak about it in very derogatory terms, which I don't fully understand. Before June, I would, I would say that. Yeah, I think it really took off with 26. It got worse. But I mean, yes, it's this ding-dong the witch is dead kind of thing that's going on.

Whereas what I'm saying is I think change is probably good. And this is a good change. And it's a positive change because I think shaking things up is a good idea. But that's how I'm approaching it a lot more than ding-dong, the witch is dead. Yeah. I mean, as well, though, like I do feel like in the last, week. I'm hearing a lot of people talking about like how terrible Apple software design has been for a while. And I just don't feel like I have experienced this criticism before June.

Like I, it did not feel to me that there was like a, you know, like a hardware, you know, a Mac hardware of 20, I don't know, 18 level concern about software. But it feels like people are talking like that now. It's been bubbling under the surface. A lot of developers have felt that way and that, you know, there's a feeling about some of the design that it's been more about visual appeal than functionality for a while now. I'll go back to my, again, not the most important thing in the world by far, even at Apple, but I'll say, remember the settings app on the Mac where they completely redid it and it's terrible and they had an opportunity to make it good and they did. Okay, so I'm going to jump ahead here a little bit, like to my,

because I have a bunch of things I want to say in the middle. But you brought up something that I think is really important. And I think your perspective here is astute. I think people are getting too excited about a potential future here. Because Stephen LeMay is an interface, like, interaction designer, he's going to come in and fix all the things we don't like. I just think that this is, I believe that there are some fundamental things that are happening inside of Apple that have led to the scenario where the settings app becomes an iPhone app.

and like iOS 26 is what it is and what it is on the Mac is what it is. And I don't think that if your thing is, aha, Alan Dye's gone, the Mac is going to get more attention. I'm just not sure that we can draw these lines here. This is what I mean about not making a personal is even if he's in charge, the company and its priorities dictate a lot of what his priorities are. And that includes the thing that I keep coming back to, which is Apple is the iPhone company.

First and foremost, it's the iPhone company, and iOS is going to get the lion's share. Now, yes, I would say don't think that your pet issue. Like, for example, I don't think that because Steve LeMay is in charge, they're going to fix the Mac Settings app and make it good. I don't think that. What I do think is that change means the design group at Apple might have somewhat different priorities

that might make it more likely that things like, that don't happen or get fixed along the way, whereas the previous leader had made it clear apparently that it was never going to happen. So it's more about hope than anything else, or if this is bad, let's try something different. But this is the thing. In the end, there is the universe in which Steve LeMay will live, which is still whatever the executive priorities are. And like I said, I feel like just like Tim Cook is more than an operations guy, but views Apple from an operations perspective first and foremost because that's where he came from, any positivity that you're going to get out of this new leadership is probably going to come from the fact

that Steve LeMay has a different perspective than Alan Dye or, and this is kind of the wild one when we talk about something like John Turnus replacing Tim Cook, or the old leadership was never going to go back on a decision that they made, but new leadership could because it's new leadership. And so you can kind of break the log jam. And the example I think I gave last week is, you know, Tim Cook loved Steve Jobs and said all these great things about Steve Jobs. And Steve is the best.

And Tim Cook's first day on the job, he put donation matching back in as a policy at Apple. Because that's literally like Steve was never going to do it. And Tim was like, well, that's done. Let's do it. And it wasn't like Tim was rebelling against Steve. But Tim thought that that was something irrelevant. and Steve did not. And so he reversed a Steve Jobs decree on day one.

It gives a new leader has freedom to do stuff like that. But it's still the same job with the same issues and priority and resources and all of those things. So hope for huge change, I think, is probably misplaced. But hope for change, I think, is not unreasonable. Just change. This is not a referendum on liquid glass. right, Alan Dye left. Alan Dye was not fired.

Like, nothing that he has done has led to him losing his job. Now, there are some scenarios which I want to touch on of maybe why he's left that could be a part of it. But this isn't, I do not believe that we're going to see some like huge change in iOS 27. No. Or even iOS 28 because it would be such a bad decision to do another redesign. Like, it's not going to happen. That's not happening.

That's not happening. They'll continue to tweak it and they'll be big to. weeks because that's what would have happened anyway. Yeah. But you're right. I mean, I thought one of the funniest, weirdest things about Mark Herman's report was that, um, that they were taken aback by it, which, which suggests that, because he was not fired, he left and he, and it was a surprise that he left. But you alluded to it. There are other scenarios here, right? Like, we've all seen, I've certainly seen in my career, somebody is going to, has an impending like new boss that they don't want to report to or they think they're better than or they don't get a title that they wanted there are lots of things

that are not you're fired or not that we're down on you that are you're not i mean what i said in my article was you often in situations like this see a mismatch between how valuable the employee thinks they are and how valuable the company thinks the employee is and that doesn't mean they they don't think you're valuable. It means you think you deserve more than they are willing to give you. And if that's the case, people do leave because of that. Like, I wanted that title, they wouldn't give it to me. I wanted, I don't want to report to Tim, you know, I like reporting to Jeff and I'm going

to have to report to John Turnus in a year and can't I be cheap design officer like Johnny was? And I'm just spitballing those ideas. But like, my expectation is when Jeff left, he wanted. to take a C-suite position and was told no, and then started looking elsewhere. That's what I think has happened, because that chain of events makes perfect sense to me. If I had to guess about what happened based on no information, which is kind of where we are, other than that he gave notice, it's this sounds like somebody who didn't get forced out, but didn't feel sufficiently appreciated.

And Mark Zuckerberg is over there offering me a huge amount of money and complete leadership over design for meta's whole thing. And, well, he appreciates me. And I've been here a long time and a lot of my people have left. And like, that all gets baked in there too. But that's my gut feeling. And I'll put something else in the mix here,

which is this apparently was, I'm leaving and then he left. If that's the case, first thing is, did they try to keep him? And the story suggests they didn't. But that implies that there was an ongoing conversation. about what role he was going to have and that he was

dissatisfied with how that conversation went. So I think that's the most likely scenario is he wanted, you know, again, he valued himself more than maybe Apple valued him, which is not the same as Apple saying, get out. Well, possibly, but the conversation could have said, Cook, I'm leaving and there's nothing

you can do. Like, you can go in and like completely close the door. Right, but that's what I'm saying is, is I feel like those conversations had probably already happened. Like he knew what the lay of the land was. He knew what their offer was.

And so he's not going to say, I'm going to leave unless you give me this because he already tried that, presumably, right? So instead it's just like, okay, well, then I'm leaving. And it's like, oh, okay. I think that's, yeah,

I think that's the most likely scenario, which is, it's interesting. And I think it suggests that based on everything we've heard from people inside Apple, the way I would almost phrase it is, I think that the, the major executives at Apple thought

Alan Dye was fine. Maybe not the greatest thing ever to be in the C-Suite, but fine, just fine, in a way that a lot of the commentators out here do not. But I do get the sense that inside Apple at the level of the lower, like the tech developers

and other people at Apple, not in the C-suite, that Alan Dye was not as appreciated. Which is not surprising that he was not as appreciated. and that the new guy is more appreciated. But I don't think that's what got him out. Now, I will throw out my outlandish suggestion here,

which is if you think Alan Dye is actually not that great and you think that liquid glass is kind of a mess and he's messed it up, one thing you could do is say, okay, Alan, you're going to be the face of this. And if it flops, you're going to be the face of this. And that's why Alan Dye was the face of it at WWDC. I don't think that's probably true. But I'm just going to say that is a thing that would happen in that scenario.

But I don't think so. I think they were proud of it and I think they were proud of him. And I think that was, in fact, I would even go to say that if there are discussions about Alan Dye's role

and he was feeling like he was chafing and wanted more responsibility and a bigger title and all of those things. One thing you could do to try to make him feel better as an employee was give him a higher visibility role

and put him at the centerpiece of your WDC roll out and say, well, you can own this. Yeah. Exactly. And I think that's probably more likely. Again, I think, you know, I think that's the most likely scenario here is that he wanted more than Apple was willing to give him, and so he left. I'm still also, like, considering a theory that iOS 26 was rushed. I still think there was a possibility that that is the case, the liquid glass was rushed out. Because they were trying to save face on the flop of Apple intelligence the year before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that could also be another reason why he wanted to leave. Maybe, look, I'm just,

I think I come across in these scenarios of like I love Alan Diet. Like I have no real feeling about him particularly. But I just, you know, I see there's like a lot of discussion and I think that there are multiple ways to look at every story and we just don't have the detail. But there is a possibility that he was working on this, had been working on this. They told him we need to accelerate this. It came out and people were unhappy about it in certain communities and maybe he was unhappy with the way that it landed.

I don't know, right? but also the other scenario is he just wanted a new challenge and Mark Zuckerberg gave him an interesting job and a lot of money like it could be just as simple as that it could be I doubt that because again I think that it doesn't it doesn't really add up that you would just do that and because even then Apple would you know if it was truly a surprise and nothing else was going on you'd think that Apple would say

please how can we make you stay even if he said no but instead it was like they were surprised and he left I would say I'm not I don't really have a lot of time for there's a kind of catty vein to this which is oh Alan Dye

cares about fashion you mentioned his Instagram he's very fashion he's a very fashion and this is I mean I could even draw a line here and say there's design

and there's programming and often there is a difference between them where nerds don't appreciate user experience at a level, some of them, some of them don't. I've used open source software.

A lot of it is, you know, not great UI. Sorry, open source software developers. I mean, like, you know, oh, here's a Linux project, but it also runs on the Mac now, and it's just really terrible. Like Calibur is like that, the eBook software. It's such a terrible interface. But it works. It's great.

And so there's this friction between like, oh, it works. It's great. Who cares about how it looks? That's just, you know, colors and whatever. It's dumb. And I think people are beaten up on Alan Dye because he represents the other, the aesthetic side of it. And I, you know, if design is how it works, it's not just that. Part of Apple's appeal is its design.

And part of the reason they did liquid glass is they wanted to have a cool new design that looked interesting and looked futuristic and that people would talk about. And it is that positively and negatively. And anyway, so I don't have, I do think that there is an undercurrent of, oh, look at this. guy in his fashionable clothes. He's not one of us. Beat the, you know, beat the, the heretic, burn the witch kind of thing about it. And that's unpleasant and unfortunate. Yeah. Like, I think that the iPhone is culture and fashion. It is. And it's the zeitgeist. To just make something work well isn't, it has to look good. It's not enough. You know, I will say there is no reason that you know aqua design we needed that we didn't need that you know like it worked which was helpful

and people loved it and fine but like we didn't need a user interface of a computer to look like that but there were decisions that the art the argument is that it was it was more usable um as well as being kind of wild but i remember that at the time um there were lots of complaints about like why are you wasting processor cycles on this garbage and there were i mean there was literally an app that I will not name that had a setting called Waste Cycles on Trendy 3D junk and I always think about that

of like you know check this box if you wanted to this app to look like every other app in the system uncheck it and it looks like this really weird generic gray nothing but the developer was obviously supporting

the new system theme under protest because he thought it was a waste of time but like Aqua was important and in fact it was a boast as liquid glass is, right? We talked about this. They're both boasts about Apple's prowess at hardware being capable of doing it, right? It was like, we could do those glass effects.

And back then it was we can have that Aqua interface with a translucency and things like that because it's a boast. And the argument is that translucency is more of a boast than it is a usability feature. And I get that. But like, I find honestly, there's stuff in liquid glass that I think is great. I actually find a lot of the animations incredibly fun. but it doesn't have to be either or and yeah i think sometimes the knives get out for people who are trying to make things look beautiful and like beauty is important aesthetics are important and on the iPhone look you and david smith and stephen working on widget smith is a great example

where that is a piece of software written by a very hardcore developer who we all know and like, and it has succeeded because it has struck a chord with a mass audience that cares about aesthetics, how their iPhone looks. And they can go together. The disconnect, and I'm not disagreeing here, the disconnect is when it looks great, but it's unusable. And I think that a lot of people have that criticism of parts of liquid glass. And I think some of that is fair. But like, you also don't, a rejection of caring about aesthetics, especially on the iPhone, is also a mistake. This episode is brought to you by FitBod.

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Alan Dye's departure was a bookend between of departures. And we have more. So, before Alan Dye's departure was public, on Monday of last week, Apple announced that John Gianandrea was retiring from the company. This was an expected thing by us, I think, and by the general reporting. For sure. Gene andrea had previously basically been stripped of all major responsibilities of his after being made, I would say, the figurehead of the missteps of Apple intelligence. It seemed like a matter of time. We invoked Scott Forstall earlier on in the conversation.

this felt like a forestall like thing of him kind of being pushed out after Apple Maps. He was the kind of the person who took that public and it kind of felt like John Gene and Andrea took this too. To me though this one felt like

a bit of a golden parachute. Like, yeah, Jain Andrea is sticking on for a little while he would advise. He is then retiring with all benefits rather than being fired or leaving himself. I think this feels to me different to maybe the

false little thing in that I feel like from the reporting Gian Andrea was kind of doing the best he could of what he had and also maybe some of the reporting is suggesting he was asking basically for GPUs and was being told no, right?

So it's like, you know, and also the issue of Apple intelligence seemed to come from the marketing division as opposed to, right, of like showing stuff that they couldn't ship was maybe potentially

more of a market. We don't know. We don't know. This is a global Apple problem, but I would say I think he proved to be maybe a cultural misfit and what they were trying to do and giving, having the group that's developing the models all, you know, be maybe not as connected to the necessities of shipping products as Craig Federigi's group, which is how they've kind of reorged it. And when they take all those, um, responsibilities away from a person. Like, they get it. They're on the outs.

They're going to leave. I don't know the conditions of his employment. He was a big hire. My guess is there were guarantees in terms of stock or compensation or whatever and that this is essentially a negotiated exit for him. So we can say golden parachute, but I don't think this is, they're paying him a lot of money because they like him. I think this is, they are paying him what he was promised.

Yes. They're doing right by him, I think. I think they're doing right by it. And structuring in a way that saves face. Yeah. And exactly. I think that's what's going on here. So we all know that it didn't go well at Apple, but officially he is retiring.

And that's it. In his place, Amar Sabromagna has joined Apple as the vice president of AI or as I've written at VP of AI, which is a very funny. That's just funny to me. Subramania will report to Craig Federigi. They have a 16 year career as head. of engineering for Google Gemini before joining Microsoft for four months and then going to Apple. This seems like the perfect person to have Apple if they are going to be using

Gemini models for Siri, right? Like the head of engineering for Gemini feels pretty good. Yeah, I think it's probably more that this person is interesting again reporting to Craig. And the way they've structured it, this feels like this is the long-term, work on our own foundation models in the background so we can use them in parts of our product eventually kind of structure, which I think Apple has learned is the right way to approach their AI development structure. And I, you know, I'll make this pitch again. Apple is never going to be probably on the forefront of AI research, no matter how much money they throw at it or how hard they try. But one, they might not need to be, especially if they have partners. They might not need

to be, especially if there are lots of different models out there and it's more commoditized and all of that. And two, they have a perspective on this that other companies don't have. And if I was recruiting for this, I would talk about how exciting it is to push the limits of, for example, on-device models and talking about how powerful apples on-device chips are and are going to be in the near future, and that by using on-device models, you get a quick turnaround and you get privacy. And then beyond that, the idea of the private cloud model, which is not the same as the giant models, but is private and is using Apple's kind of approach there, there are, it might be a benefit to Apple for it to focus on developing the models that it wants to see in the world

because they advantage Apple and not worry about the rest of it. so much, especially as long as you have partners. So they've got, I mean, I think this is fine. I don't know whether they'll succeed or not, but I think this is Apple saying, we're going to integrate other people's models, but we also want to be working in the background because we don't want to be beholden to one, like if it ends up being that there's one company, Open AI, let's say, who has like all the control over the best AI models and nobody else has anything. That's really bad for Apple because Apple doesn't want, you know, one company to control its destiny. Then on Thursday, Apple announced the retirement of Lisa Jackson, VP of

Environmental Policy and Social Initiatives. Kate Adams, Apple's current General Counsel, will take on the role of government affairs until she then retires at the end of 2026. Jennifer Neustead is joining the company from Meta. Newsted will become general counsel in March of 26 and will then take the government affairs role in addition to be. in general counsel when Kate Adams retires. So there's a lot of debt chair shuffling here in bringing someone

in and combining two jobs, well part that one and a half jobs will say and then moving the other parts away which I get to in a second. So Newsted Mark Germann notes that Newstead helped meta when it's antitrust

battle with the FTC, which feels like a key skill that Apple was going to need in the coming years as it gears up for their own. So it feels like the right hire. I am expecting Jennifer Newstead is making an incredible amount of money. I would assume this is a big,

big bag of cash. She's a lawyer for a big tech company. Of course she is. But an extra one. You're like, oh, she won that. Well, we'll have that. And she's got a history in, she's got a history in government.

I think she was in the George W. Bush administration and in the first Trump administration. So also Republican, administrations while Republicans are in charge. But also her background is, is, uh, is pretty varied. She's not just like a Republican operative or anything. She's done a bunch of different interesting jobs. She has this background working at meta, which has had plenty of lawsuits and issues that they've had to fight. Um, government affairs as a very clear thing is also really interesting, right? Like government affairs increasingly important to Apple in so many different ways. So really interesting to

combine that with the general counsel role. which is a pretty busy job on its own, right? But interesting to understand what they're doing there. The environment and social initiatives, so the environmental and social initiatives part of Lisa Jackson's role, that is a leadership position which will not be taken by anybody else. Those teams will report directly to CIO-Sab Khan. This to me feels like an important detail.

There is no longer a figurehead for these. I think that says something about the times that we're in. Yes, this is, this is an attempt by Apple to reduce the, okay, we don't know what's going on here. And I think one way, one way that this is possible is to say, well, this is Apple abandoning those issues. I think in reality, probably what's happening is Apple is reducing visibility of its programs. Yeah. By not having a figurehead who can be pointed at and told by people in Washington, you know, stop doing that. Shame on you, whatever it is. Because it's, it's a, it's a, for, it's a high. button with the people in charge. And so hiding it and making it not visible right now is a thing that is, you know, and you can decry it. And I get it. I hope they're continuing to do that work and just, I understand the political necessity perhaps of making it less visible because the last thing you need is for some other part of your business to get run aground until somebody demands that you stop doing a thing you believe in. Better to keep doing it in the background, not making a big

deal out of it, then not. But like, I can see the argument either way. It is the, like you said, I don't love this, but it's the time we live in. That's just how it is. As long as the work continues, I don't care if there's a C-suite person on it. You know what I mean? But I really hope that these teams continue to be given the resources that they need. But wait, there's more. Mark German finished the week with I will call a blockbuster report about the turmoil currently. I called it a banger. both on social media and to you and Stephen when it came out. This is a banger.

This is Mark German saying, hey, financial times. Hey, the information. You think you got stuff. I got the stuff. And then boom, in comes this Mark German report. Such, it's just like, yeah, this is Mark German on fire right here. So this is about the turmoil currently being felt at the top levels in Apple. The big scoop in this, well, there were two big scoops in this article at least.

But one of them is that Johnny Sruji, Chip Chief, Johnny Seruji, recently told Tim Cook that he is considering leaving the company but is not looking to retire. So basically he's going to go somewhere else. Remember what we said about Alan Dye having conversations with people potentially

about like what his role should be and how he should be appreciated? This is that. Apparently Cook is trying very hard to keep Surugi. They have given him a significantly better compensation package and the promise of more responsibility, including the potential of making him CTO, chief technology officer,

which is, that feels like a big job at Apple. Has there ever been a CTO? At least not in modern times, right? I don't remember that title ever being used. I mean, I guess, as you alluded to, I guess it's interesting that we don't have any detail like this about Alan Dye.

But again, we don't even know if they're... Anyway... Today, as we're recording, Mark Gomer shared a memo that Seruji had written to his team, saying that he is committed to staying at the company. Suruji references rumors and says, quote, I love my team and I love my job at Apple and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon. I don't know if soon was needed in this to try, like, that is the kind, like, that's not a great word if you're trying to keep everybody calm.

Like, I think this, you could have just not said soon. Yeah. I mean, and this could be, we worked it out. and it's not an issue anymore. It could be, we're still negotiating. But don't worry. But it is, I think, still important that he wrote a message to his team saying,

well, he wrote a message to Mark German, but he also shared it of his team, essentially. I see. But like when these, when these are written, when these kinds of things, if these things are written down and shared, they are intended to be shared outside the company.

They know they're going to leak. Otherwise, you just put everyone in a stand-up and say it, right? Which can still leak, but a memo, is much more leakable, right? And I think that is what we're seeing. It's true. It's true.

So, so, so, and, and you got a, you know, what does this mean is still kind of open? Um, it could mean they've worked it out. It could mean they're still talking. Um, but I think, the reason I think this is a huge, huge thing is this is a, this is a, I poo poohed a lot of the, uh, talent exodus pieces that Mark German has written over the ages. I think he's got some sources that allow him to paint a narrative that I think reached its zenith with the Allen Die story where he just wrote that story with the assumption that this was a win for Google or win for meta and a loss for Apple, which is why I had my story with the headline that I did is like, I'm not sure this is a loss for Apple. I'm not sure I believe that, but that was embedded in his story fundamentally is that this, you know, meta wins, Apple loses here. And so he's done that.

And you see with some of these, like the AI people leaving, I have some skepticism. Like he's saying, oh, there's a big AI brain drain. Med is stealing all of Apple's AI people. And I thought, well, yes, but also Apple's AI group has not done a good job. So I understand why they're leaving, but I'm not, I'm not entirely sure that it is a big shot to Apple or not. It's least debatable to me.

Johnny Sruji is. And I know, again, can't make it personal. It's very complicated. There are leaders who are important, but nobody's irreplaceable, and there's a whole organization that's aligned here, and there's so many parts of this. But just to put it in this way, Johnny Sruji is Apple Silicon. Johnny Sruji is Apple Silicon. He's not just the figurehead of Apple Silicon.

He's the guy who came into Apple and made Apple ahead of everybody in terms of the chip. and their products ahead of everybody. Apple who makes their own chips, or I mean, they're fad by TSMC, but Apple designs their own chips and puts them in their own devices. Everybody else is like, well, I got this cool chip from Qualcomm, and Qualcomm's competing with Apple. Apple is the only one out there running Apple's chips. And it's a huge advantage to become a huge advantage for Apple. It is one of the places where they are the furthest to head. It's one of those things that it's like, this is a lead that's important and leadership that should not be. squandered. So when I see Johnny Sruji may be leaving Apple, my gut feeling is you got to do

everything you can to keep them, everything you can other than destroying your organization, right, which is part of the deal here is like if making Johnny Sruji happy precludes you from naming your CEO replacement, if he has unreasonable demands that are so unreasonable that it's like he has to be CEO or he's leaving, then maybe you're like, all right, Johnny, okay. But like, if he wants to be CTO, you know, if he, if he wants to be elevated in, in a way like that that makes him feel good, there's very little that I wouldn't give to Johnny Sruji to have him stay because he does seem to me to be that important. Even though I know who there's a whole organization, he's got his lieutenants there and all of that, like he is one of, in charge of

one of the most important parts of Apple. And it's not great if he's like, I'm going somewhere else, right which is it is the part of this that is interesting he's not like hey tim i want to retire i'm done now like i've done what i've done what i need like no he's like you know what i think i'm gonna try something else that's not great it's so vague that it's more like well you it reads to me as well you know if i'm if i'm not made happy here someone else will be happy to have me and i will continue on or he'll start a startup and then sell that somewhere like i mean there are other things that he could do, that strikes me as coming out of this, this kind of negotiation of this. And honestly, look, all these executives make a lot of money. And relatively speaking,

everybody at Apple makes a lot of money in Cooperino, especially the people working in the ring, compared to the general public. But I would also say in terms of Silicon Valley and in terms of how much money Apple generates, a lot of these people actually are kind of underpaid for the value they generate. This is a little like saying baseball player. or professional athletes in general are overpaid, when you realize that there's only like a dozen of them on a team and that club is worth several billion dollars, you're like, oh, our key employees are these 12 people

at a several billion dollar operation? They're probably worth a lot, right? They're probably worth, they probably deserve to be compensated at a high level because the business is so huge. Apple is like that. So giving them more compensation, you know, and having him say, you know,

make it worth money. my while to stay. I'm okay with that. What triggers me here is, why did this happen? And that's my question is, why did this happen? Is it because of everything else that's going on right now? Everything is happening at once all of a sudden here. I have to wonder if Johnny Sruji is saying, well, when Tim, Tim is preparing to go and elevate and become the chairman and then eventually not the CEO anymore, what about Johnny? What about Johnny Sruji? Where's he going to be? Is this Johnny saying this?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, what about Johnny Surgy? What is he going to go? Switched, where's, what's his role? And I think that's the, I think that's the question he's asking himself and asking Apple. And, and the reason it comes up is like, if they're like, oh, you're going to ultimately report to Ternus, and he's like, I don't want to report to Ternus. It's like, well, he's a CEO, you got to report to him.

Well, I mean, but do you want to be CEO? And he's like, oh, no. No, probably not. It's like, no, you don't want to be CEO. How about you be CTO? And Turner will be CEO, but obviously you're going to have enormous amount of power because he's going to be a new guy. And, you know, right?

Like, those are negotiations that happen. But my gut feeling is that is what's happening here, is that he's looking at what Apple looks like as an organization in the next five years and does he want to stay and does he feel appreciated. And that's why this is happening now is probably not that he got a job offer so much as he is on top of the world. He maybe feels like he has no more worlds to conquer. And he looks around and says, well, you know, maybe I'm undervalued at Apple and underappreciated and someone else would appreciate me more. So, you know, then he sends the memo out and the question

is, is that because he's gotten what he wants or because they're still talking or because he's not yet ready to announce his departure? Who could tell? So you referenced Mark German talking about departures at Apple. So German references that, you know, he says that Apple is seeing larger than normal departures from engineers across the company who are moving to companies like meta, open AI, and others.

Apparently, Apple, you referenced this, but in general, their compensation packages are being increased to try and stop more people leaving. Good. That's how it's supposed to work. Yes, but Apple are seeing the biggest losses in AI, robotics

and both the user interface, and hardware design teams seem pretty important. Let me tell you. And this is when I talk about brain drain, I talk about I'm much more worried at the brain drain at the base level than I'm at the executive level.

I really am. And Apple, in becoming the world's most valuable company or close to it and a trillion dollar company, et cetera, et cetera. I'm throwing off all these profits. Apple is generally thought of as not being, not paying as well as other companies in Silicon Valley. Apple has had the attitude for a long time, and I'm going to say,

I think this is a Steve Jobs culture problem, is, yeah, but you work at Apple. You work at Apple. You got called up to the show. You're in the big leagues now. You're at Apple. This is where it all happens. And yeah, we might not pay you as much. And we might make you come into work, you know, four days a week or whatever and et cetera,

etc but like you're at apple and i think there is a generation multiple generations possibly of people who are starting their careers or have been in their careers for a little while in silicon valley who look at and say no pay me if you want me to be at apple being at apple is not in and of itself a win when meta is going to pay me 40% as much or 60% as much to do something else and some people will say i want to be at apple because the products are awesome and apple's got a halo and all of that And I think that that's been true for a long time. But I'll just say, if this era is the thing that finally gets them to change their hiring practices, be faster. I've heard from people who are also like they're so slow that people start going through the hiring process at Apple.

And by the time it's ready to progress, they've gotten another job. I think the hiring part has been a huge issue at Apple for a long time. They don't hire people quickly enough. It's very bureaucratic. And they don't pay their people well enough. I think that is generally the case. And maybe this, maybe this era will finally kick that culture out and replace it with a culture that is paying more competitive salaries, trying harder to retain its people, and maybe moving faster to acquire talent than it has done in the past. I mean, I heard just this month from somebody who said, who told me that they're like they're gearing up for doing F1 stuff and they've got jobs posted.

And like F1's in March and like those jobs are still sitting there. And it's like, what's happening with any of that? Right. And it wasn't surprising to me. Hey, we're getting multi-view though. It wasn't, it wasn't surprising to me because that's every experience I've talked to other people. And back when they tried to hire me, you know, a decade ago, it also was just a completely glacial process. And so I think that this is, I mean, it's bad news for Apple to be losing people or the threat of losing

people and having a brain drain at those low levels. What meta has shown, and meta, I would say all things being equal, most people, most reasonable people would rather work at Apple than meta. It feels like a much nicer place to work that's making products you can be more proud of than meta. Not everybody feels that way, but I think a lot of people would feel that way. So Apple can be pretty competitive. The meta will give you a billion dollars.

But if they're paying, if they're paying enormous salaries like that and your Apple, at some point you have to say, I know it seems like a lot for that person, but they're a power hitting third baseman, and that's what they make. They're a starting pitcher, and that's what they make. They're an attacking midfielder, and that's what they make. Like, it is, they're a, you know, they're a pass catching tight end, and that's what they make. You, nobody's going to give you an award for hiring on the pay scale spreadsheet. like, if you're losing people because the spreadsheet says you can't hire them at that level, you've got to change the spreadsheet. I'm sorry. And I think that Apple has faced this for a while now.

And I hope this is the time when it stops because they need to be competitive and they need to. And their competition is stepped up. So they have to step up to. And just being Apple is not enough. I want to read a quote. This is a long quote. But I mentioned a couple of like, big scoops in this and this is one of them. And I feel like I have to read the quote in four because I think it's quite delicate. For now, Cook remains active at Apple and travels extensively on behalf of the company. However, the executive does have an unexplained tremor that causes his hands to shake from time to time, something that's been discussed among Apple employees in recent months. The shaking has been noticed by executives and rank and file staff during meetings and large company gatherings, according to people familiar with the matter. But people, close to cook say he is healthy and refute rumors to the contrary that have circulated in Silicon Valley? You know, it's people talk and people notice things and who knows, like there's lots of explanations from good to bad. Yeah. You know, new medication, too much coffee. Craig Federigi was just shaking like a leaf because he was nervous, stress. It could be something or not. I hate people

diagnosing things in public. I hate whisper campaigns, which this feels a little bit like. But I will say, we went through this with Steve Jobs. And like, ultimately, if there is something medically going on with Tim Cook, he's going to have to disclose that at some point. Yeah. Especially now. But he's in his, he's a man in his mid-60s. He's going to have some medical stuff. Yeah. It may not matter. So I was just saying, like, there was a, there's a member of my family at a similar age who also had a tremor. And they had testing of all kinds of and, you know, it ruled out all of the things, right? Like Parkinson's, right?

That's why I think what everybody's thinking when they hear this. It was completely ruled out. And it ended, you know, they tried a bunch of different things and nothing was working. And they ended up having an experimental surgery where part of their brain was shot with a laser and now the tremors gone. Seriously. It was pretty intense. And, you know, it was one of these things that was experimental and they took a big risk because it could have caused damage. But now the trem is gone.

and it was like it was a neurological thing and so my point is there could be lots of things and and i do think that you know someone who's 65 years old with the amount of pressure and stress that tim cook is under this could be many things that are that are not like do like you know really die restrain yourselves all the armchair doctors need to restrain themselves but and i should express we should express concern too because he's a human being and i hope he's okay But this kind of thing would suggest that maybe the guy needs a break, right? Like maybe he needs a break in his life and to kind of reshuffle some stuff about. Maybe time to start the machinery for the succession plan.

Even if it takes a few years to take hold, maybe that is what's going on here, which I think, I think, I think, German has said, German also in his piece, I think, specifically mentioned the premise of him becoming chair of the board, which I'm not sure he had reported before. That was like a theorized thing, but it sounds to be a little more substantive now. Yeah, I mean, I wish the best for Tim Cook. I'm sorry people feel this way. It could be something that is a whispered campaign or it could be something that's concerning. But I'll tell you, people have health scares and issues at all ages. And it does make you take stock and it does make you consider. And when you're when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're. running a trillion-dollar company, even if it's nothing, even if it was your new medication was weird or whatever, or you had one of those lemonade's with a caffeine in it from Panera, right? Wasn't it Panera that had the, they had the lemonades with the caffeine in it that gave people heart attacks? Anyway, I was like, what I was talking about, but yes. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know I was going to go there, but I went there. So whatever it is, it's also possible that that's the thing that makes you take stock and say, you know, let's,

you know, what's our plan and where do I want to be, regardless of whether, you know, oh, I've got a test today. I'm really nervous about it. Oh, it's nothing, right? But still, it makes you think about it. And I wonder if that is actually kind of what's going on here is let's put these things into planning or into practice. I will say this too.

Tim Cook knows what it's like to be the second in command when the boss gets sick and whether Tim is sick or not I will tell you I would never believe in a million years that Tim Cook hasn't thought that he wants to have a plan

so that nobody has to go through a succession process like he did. Yeah, we spoke about this. Yeah. Right? Like no one knows that more than Tim. No one knows more than Tim how difficult it was to have an ill and dying CEO and you're trying to kind of hold the organization together as an interim and as a temporary and then to have a moment where it's just thrust upon you. And you're on your own. So, and then you're on your own. So if anybody is thinking and has thought a lot about succession planning, I got to believe it's Tim.

I cannot imagine that a man who seems so deep. detail-oriented, let's just say, would possibly not think about the details of something that had personally affected him so much. So that's my thought. Gohmann notes that succession planning remains on the way, but he still does not expect Cook to set down soon, but does note if they want to make changes like John's Frugia becoming CTO, it's probably going to need to happen sooner rather than later. All of these departures are apparently seeing more power flowing to a quartet of John's. Turnus, Craig Federigi, Eddie Q, and Sabi Khan. And I want to read a quote.

Turnus is also poised to take a starring role next year in the celebration of Apple's 50th anniversary. Whatever the hell that means. And they do it a parade and he's going to be on the first float? What is happening? Is he going to have a festive hat, like a little pointy birthday hat? Is he going to come bursting out of a cake? So I wanted to note something like two things here about this whole thing. One, this kind of palace intrigue is something I feel like I've never seen at Apple where like all this stuff is happening I mean not even just this week

like we've been talking about this for weeks now that is weird to me but this reminds me a lot of political figures like a president or a prime minister and the wagons start surrounding them I think

at this point they have to pull the trigger on John Turner's they have got to sooner rather than later they need to take back the narrative and project strength of the company because all of this is bad enough and then allusions to a health concern of Tim Cook like none of this is good and it's not going to get better I don't think like I don't think this you know this situation is going to start resolving itself in a way that that looks good but like if they're able

now to be like oh hey we're making these radical changes for the future. of our business and look at all these young people we're elevating and we're creating new roles that didn't exist before and like if they're able to do this soon like early in the new year it completely will change the story because we have been talking about this for a while and it it has been shot up to level 25 we're way past 10 like this past week this is unbelievable like if you would have told me two weeks ago in one week all of this is going to happen and like the worst timing for Apple to have these planned announcements and then this big one in the middle and in this report at the end of it just honestly couldn't have gone worse for them in the span of a week. Yeah, I mean the thought occurs to me that these things being announced in December it's it's the annual equivalent of the Friday afternoon news drop which is like in the holiday. at the end of the year, you dump all of these announcements.

Somebody pointed out, I forget who it was, that a lot of Apple stock vested in October. And so, you know, once you got your money, then it's time to leave. If you're going to leave, that might be going on here. I don't know, I don't know what I think about the idea. Clearly, there is visibility here that Apple, I mean, your argument is they need to deal with this sooner

rather than later because now it's become a public matter of discussion and they need to manage it so it doesn't spin out of control in terms of chatter about the company. And like every time someone sits down for a meeting over the next six months and people are going to start asking questions about Tim Cook, about his health, about that, do, do, do, do. Like, you know, how much is this going to become a thing, you know? Somebody call the financial times.

But like, I mean, I think about it in like, you know, you look at Joe Biden or like in the UK, are parade of conservative prime ministers that like every time there seemed whenever there would seem to be a scenario in which nobody has faith in the leader anymore they get rid of them

and that's not what we've got here as much it's I feel more of like a Biden situation on that on that edge of like is this person the right person da da da and like and it you know continues to bubble out of control we're nowhere near that but this is more on that edge of a thing of like, well, now we're questioning

his health, not just his ability. It's just like, what are we doing now? You know, like, to me, it just doesn't feel like it's not the story you choose or want to be out there. And so now what do we do? Well, they did the, the FT thing,

if that was a leak from the board, that was their attempt to sort of like start this, but then now it, now it has taken on another dimension, where now that feels like a mistake, if that was the case. Right. I think. Like to have set that and then all this happens.

All this happens. We're not looking like an organization that's got our house in order, really. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this is natural. You've got a lot of people of a certain age who've made a lot of money at Apple and them leaving makes sense in terms of like Lisa Jackson and the general counsel and all of that. And Jeff Williams, that all kind of makes sense. John G. Andrea is a special case. But I think they had to do some of this. The challenge is that all of this, because they have so many, going back,

taking us all the way back around to talking about change when we were talking about Alan Dye and about having organizations get stuck where they're so successful and there are leaders at the top and they're not going anywhere. And so what ends up happening is you have this, it becomes calcified because those people are never leaving. So if you want to change, well, good luck. You're going to have to wait forever. If you want to get promoted, good luck.

you're going to have to wait forever because these people, this core group of people is not leaving. Now, that projects stability to the outside world, but if you leave it long enough, there's a lot of underlying issues. And I think Apple, here, Apple has done probably a great job at retention. I'm going to frame it that way. The fact that Apple has gone from the small company that was in the early 2000s to a $1 trillion valuation, one of the biggest companies and most important companies

and most profitable companies in history today, in 25 years. And there are a bunch of people at Apple who've been there, 25 years, 20 years, 15 years. And it's made an enormous amount of money. I think

in the grand scheme of things, it's impressive that they've held on to these people. Yeah. because these people don't need to be there. They could literally buy an island and go and retire and be done. They don't need to be there. And we saw, you know, some, they had, I mean, I remember when John Rubinstein left

and then he resurfaced doing like Palm stuff or all of that. But like executive departures are, and, you know, Bob, big Bob left. And came back and left again and came back and left again. And they called him, like, there are some of those. But, um, but the, the downside of that retention, which I think also can be explained a little bit, this is my theory, can be explained a little bit by Steve Jobs. I think when Steve Jobs died, there was an added emphasis on projecting stability. Um, and so I think Apple has done really right by these people.

I think also personality wise, they probably are like, why would I go anywhere else? What would I do with my life? I'm a type A personality. I want control. Yeah. I do think that there is a type of person who elevates to that level where the money isn't the important thing. And that's not what they're doing it for. It's the power or the control or the money, but also the changing the world kind of aspect, the mission aspect of Apple, which I do think resonates with a lot of those people.

But the downside of all that stability is that they're all human beings who are all now in their 60s. And we have longer lifespans now, and they can live and do active work for, you know, a couple more decades maybe even. Who knows? But there will come a time when they can't stay, right? They can't stay. Even if they want to stay forever, they literally can't stay forever. And it feels like right now what's happening is some of that is finally kind of like, Combusting. Some of that is finally happening where people start and maybe it started somewhere. Maybe it started with Tim having a conversation about succession planning where everybody else looked around and said, do I want to be here? Or is this a good time to step off? Because I've got all the money. I don't need to be here. Maybe this is a good time. And it makes me wonder if that's actually what's going on here. Not that Apple's like, oh boy, we got it. It's not like the execs are fleeing a sinking ship. That's actually not the case. If you're an exec at Apple who's been waiting for the ship,

ship to sink so that you could flee, you've been trapped there for like two decades, right? Like the ship is not sinking. And also, a lot of these people you would expect are Tim Cook lieutenants who maybe just don't want to work with anybody else. I think that's a really good dynamic. Even if, even if you like John Turnus, let's say. I mean, we're using him as a proxy. It could be somebody else, whatever. But let's say it's John. Even if you like him, fine. You've been there 20 years. You've been working for Tim. Here's this new guy. He's 10 or 15 years younger than you. You saw him come up. You're impressed by him. But like, he's going to be the CEO and I'm going to have to reflect sort of like I'm going to build a relationship with him and how's that going to be? Because I'm used to us being peers, but then he's going to be my boss and I'm so used to Tim.

It's a really natural moment to reflect and say, maybe this is the time I step off. Maybe this is it. I'll lose someone else to it, you know. Yeah. And some people won't. And some people won't. And some some people will remain. And I think that, I mean, I think it's like Phil Schiller stepped off and didn't step off and is still there. Eddie Q seems to just be loving life. He doesn't need to be there anymore. But I think he just digs it and is having a great time.

That's always the sense I get from Eddie Q is that he's just, he thinks what he's doing is cool and he's doing it. But like any of them could go to if, if, if the relationships get reset. So I do think that that's part of what's going on here. And it's the reason it seems like such a last week felt like a. conflagration, I think in part is because they've been so stable for so long that it only makes that final move worse because there's more pieces to move. A normal, a normal organization would have an executive departure or two every year and you just kind of keep going and

you, and you, you know, keep replenishing the ship and then there'd be the next one and the next one and it's like a ship of Theseus actually kind of thing where it's like you look, you look up in 10 years later, the executives are completely different, but it never seems like there was a loss of continuity. And by keeping continuity for 20 years, you know, great. And for the last 10 or 15, great job, Apple. But you risk then having a discontinuity because you've got all these senior people who are all going to be leaving at some point and maybe it's now. So I think that's actually one of their risks now is that how does, if Tim's going to do a transition, how does Tim send a message to the shareholders and to the market

that it's all going to be orderly and that there's still senior leadership who understands Apple and it's all going to be fine. And you can't do that if you wipe the slate clean and it's like, oh, well, John Turner has a completely new set of people and Eddie's going and Phil's going and all the other people you know are going and it's just going to be John and a new gang.

I think that that would be distressing. I think that's why it has to be a transition. So that's going to be a challenge for Tim and company. But I do think that what happened last week is, in part, a reaction to the fact that Apple has been so stable for so long because they can't stay that way. And I think a lot of stuff built up. But I do believe this is a symptom of the fact that people at Apple are looking at where the organization's structure is going to be in a year or two with a transition and saying, now it's a good time. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Udacity.

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40% of your order. That is UD-A-C-I-T-Y, Udacity.com slash upgrade for 40% off and make sure use the promo code upgrade so they will know that we sent you. Our thanks to Udacity for their support of this show and all of RELI. It is time for for some ask, upgrade questions. First one comes from Stuart who says, I'm still waiting for a cheaper vision pro, but I feel like eventually I will just get one. In the meantime, I am trying to take spatial videos and photos on my iPhone,

particularly of my young son. I also mix it up and take some 4K video as well. It got a lot of attention when it first came out, but do you still use or record important moments in spatial video and watch them back on Division Broad. I very rarely do because I'd rather have the quality. And the thing that people who shoot 3D movies will tell you is only certain shots are worth shooting in 3D because they need to have a lot of objects in the near ground that are that have and things in the background so that you've got a really strong depth, especially with that iPhone camera where the two. lenses are so close together, closer than our eyes, you need it even more to differentiate

the near from the far in video. So it's like a lot of shots, it doesn't matter. If you're at the Grand Canyon and you shoot a spatial, it doesn't look any different because it's so far away that there's no real distance happening between the two inputs from your eyes over the camera. So most spatial videos aren't necessary and you get better quality if you don't shoot it that way. So I don't plus, then I can only really watch it myself. So I like the idea of the spatial video, but like in most cases it's not necessary. And then photos I, Apple, even Apple is like you don't even need to capture spatial photos anymore because their machine learning algorithm can generate a spatialized photo and you know right now I think that that's good enough for everything

could it be better sure but what you really want if you want a real one is again a camera with the lens is pretty far apart so you can get like the background and stuff and they're instead they're filling it with like machine learning uh you know guesses if there's a wall behind them it'll fill in a little bit of the part you can't see with more wall and sometimes that works great and sometimes it doesn't but like even apple has reached the point where um like I asked them at one point if they use if there's depth data from like

LiDAR do they use that to generate the spatial photo and the answer is no they don't need to so yeah I would say like about the shoot in the video too it doesn't work very well if the video is moving it doesn't look good

like it's best if you're completely stable and there can be things moving but you shouldn't move I feel like Apple should suggest that to be people, but they don't. But those videos really work better if you as the camera person are still. Spatial photos, that shouldn't even bother existing anymore because the machine learning model handles it fine. We see it on our iPhones, like the spatialized scenes. Like, that's just not a thing.

I've taken a couple of videos of Sophia and I've watched them back on the Vision Pro and they are quite affecting. But I imagine a scenario where Apple creates a video model like they did the still model and we don't need this. Of course. So I don't know realistically how useful this is. And I'm with Jason. Take the video of these moments in the highest quality you can, and I think you'll get a better experience overall out of it.

Yeah. Agreed. John asks, what is the oldest file on your computer? And what is the oldest file on your computer you still use? I had to do some work to try and find something here. I found my CV, aka my resume. May from 2009 when I was desperately trying to get a new job. I was still working in banking before I'd even started podcasting.

And then I later found, while I was digging through multiple CVs that included different skills. Turns out, Jason, I applied for a job at the government once. I forgot that I'd done. Wow. Yeah, yeah, to be on the digital team at the government. And you saw when I was working there and I applied for that. So, yeah, I found some real things.

found a pitch deck for for a podcast network before relay um whoa yeah yeah i had some grand ideas let me tell you that um but there you go so that's the kind of stuff that i found uh on my mac on my computer i i have a lot of files that are on my server that is that are archived i'm not a stephen hackett who keeps all my files locally right i don't have the giant files are actually saved in drop box everything is so i found it i save everything in drop box yeah Yeah. So I have these aren't there. These are things from like that migrate from old computers and I want to keep them, but I don't actually need them. I think a lot of them were used to be on an external disk of archived stuff. And then I was like, well, now I have such a big disc. I'm going to, I don't want those things loose and running around. I want them just copied to the server hard drive. So on there, I have had the funny thing of, you know, sometimes I'm writing about history and, and, and, and, and, you know, or I'm talking to Stephen Hackett about something and we're like, oh, there's this article and it's, oh, it's not on the web, but it was in Macworld. And I forget what the latest one was, but I discovered that I could find the text of the article.

It wasn't on the web, but it was on Macworld's, it was in the Macworld magazine. And then I found that I literally had the Microsoft Word file in which I wrote the article and handed into the copy desk. I still have all of those. All of my things I wrote for Mac World and turned into the magazine and stuff, I saved those files when I turned them in. I didn't delete them or anything and I still have them.

So I was able to go back to my original article and find the text that I wrote about, you know, the launch of, I think it was Spotlight. I think it was when Spotlight came out, which is 25 years ago. The oldest file that I could find that I created on my Macs hard drive was in June of 1995

where I scanned an image there was a really cool poster at UC Berkeley that I took sorry, don't, you know, don't talk to me at UC Berkeley and it had a really cool, I took it because of a cool image of a bear.

The bear is the mascot of UC Berkeley. and I liked that image so I took it and then I scanned it because I wanted to make it my hard drive icon and I did and that image

which is a Photoshop file to PSD from 1995 because I think I had to clean it up it's still on my hard drive loose on in Dropbox I think June 1995 creation the other part of this

the oldest file on my computer that I still use I have a text file It's literally hugo.t. And it started as I wanted to read all of the novels that won the Hugo Award. I wanted to kind of like walk through the history of science fiction from the 50s to today. And so I found a list somewhere of all the novels that won the Hugo Award. But that was like at least 15 years ago, maybe longer.

And I've just been adding to it. And then at some point I added in the Nebula Award as well. and there's a little asterisk at the beginning if I've read it. And at this point, I've read almost every Hugo winner back to like 1980. And then it gets real spotty before that. But that's a file that I compiled

and it's basically in my little Hugo reading log and I will update it essentially every year or I read a couple, maybe last year, I read a couple older nominees and I put the little asterisk in. So that file, I still use. use, I guess, technically, and it's at least 15 years old. Pretty cool.

And Amar asks, why do you think the iPad Pro doesn't have an always-on display? Because it's huge, and it would use a lot of battery. And they may be uncomfortable with having a giant OLED screen that's always on. I would like it, though. And it's often used in a case where it's covered when it's off. Yeah, but then you can have it off, you know?

then you know it's it would be fun it would be fun i suspect the reasons are about power and maybe about something about that display yeah that it would be it's not necessarily able right i don't think that display can go down to one refresh per second like the watch and the phone i think that maybe is i don't know i don't know if they built that in because i don't know if they necessarily feel that it's required to do that maybe it does i mean it's promotion right yeah I don't know. I don't know. My guess is that there's a technical reason

where they think it's not worth it because otherwise they get it for free they could put it on there. So my guess is that they either it can't do a low... I think in the end it comes to probably power. 10 to 120 hertz. That's what's...

10 to 120 hertz. So I think they wanted to be down at 1 hertz and even then, you know, it's lighting up many, many, many more pixels than on the phone, which means it's using more power and there is more battery and maybe they have also

just not prioritized it because in Apple's mind an iPad screen is not hanging out somewhere providing information but I agree it would be kind of cool yeah I would like it

because I feel like there are just different things you could do you know like it would be fun like a bit more ambient information kind of stuff you could have a big screen nice full of widgets

which would be nice but you know maybe maybe that's I don't know why. Maybe I don't want they don't do it, but maybe that is why, right? And they've not prioritized it. Like, maybe there's a way that they could get the screen to do an even wider range, but it's just not something that they think is necessary.

And again, it's like one of those things Apple know more than we do, and maybe they know that the majority of their customers have them in a case or something, and so you can't really, can't really see it at that point. If you would like to send us in a question for a future episode of

the show, you can go to UpgradeFeedback.com, and you can send us in your follow-up, your feedback, your snow talk, or even your Ask Upgrade questions there. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. We're going to talk about Netflix buying Warner Bros. today. You can go to Get Upgradeplus.com and use the code 2025 holidays

for 20% of your first year for new subscribers. You can find this show on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast, where we're there every week with a video version of the show. I'd like to thank our sponsors, Udacity, FitBod, and Sentry for their support of the show. But most of all, as always, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time.

Until then, say goodbye, Justin's now. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.