Upgrade - 601: Spreadsheet for Creators

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 601 for February 2, 2026. Today's show is brought to you by Century, FitBod, and Squarespace. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. It's a perfectly normal number now, 601, whatever, you know, it's fine. Also, happy birthday, Mike. Thank you. Due to the mysteries of podcasting, we are recording this slightly before your birthday,

and it will appear slightly after your birthday. but either way, happy birthday. 38 years old, I think. That sounds about, because you're a little trailer behind Stephen Hackett

who turned 40 this week. The old age. Dad's 40. The high age of 40. I'm not even near it. So, happy birthday to everybody. I actually don't know.

I think I'm 38. What year is it? 2026. What year is it? Classic old-man question. 38. 38. 38.

38. This is a Mike Hurley law story, but there was an episode of Analogue where I referenced how old I was and got feedback from friend of the show Rob to say, you are not that age. And he corrected me about my age. Nice. It happens. I have a snow talk question for you. It comes from Joey. Joey wants to know Jason.

Have you ever taken an overnight Amtrak trip? For example, the California Zephyr is beautiful and begins in the Bay Area. So American trains, this is the part where everybody in the rest of the world can laugh at American train stories. But yes, I have. Lauren and I, fairly early on in our marriage, we did a trip to in 90s, late 90s, did a trip to Denver. We only went to Denver on the train. And it's really interesting. You get on in Emeryville, which is right by Oakland, and then you go up into the Sierras, and it's beautiful. And you go over the Sierras.

and it's getting dark and you enter the Nevada desert and having driven through the Nevada desert I will tell you there's nothing there so it's actually timed pretty well there's nothing to see there and I think we stopped I think the train stopped at Salt Lake City

at like some ludicrous time like three in the morning so we slept through that and then we got to Denver and it was kind of like mid to late morning which means we got to spend the morning looking at the Rocky Mountains, which was also beautiful. So it was actually very beautiful and scenic. And then we spent a few days in Denver and then we flew home. And then

nothing puts the speed of airplanes in perspective like having taken the train one direction. Because we flew home and it went from being this day and a half journey to being, you know, two and a half hours. So yes, I have. It was lovely. I would do it again sometime. If I had the time. The challenge, as with everything, is that my wife has a job. that she has to be present in an office for, and that limits our vacation time. So I have been on a train called the Caledonian Sleeper, which is the London to Glasgow.

I think it also goes to Edinburgh train. The funny thing about that train is the amount of time it takes to get from London to Glasgow is not enough time for a night's sleep. No, it's not. I've done that train ride many times during the day. And when we came down with James and Saskia for Relay 10, Lauren and I and James Saske, we all came down. We had a nice time. But you know, you're chatting with friends and you're in London.

It's about four and a half to five hours, I think, is the typical time. So it's the Caledonian light sleeper. Well, no, no, no. It stops for like an hour and then brings you in. So like it waits before you arrive. so you can So you can Have good sleep

Yeah Because it would be terrible You'd get there at like Half-Boss 4 in the morning Yeah It's way too early Nobody wants that So they know

That's bad Leave it to European trains To just pull over to the side For a while To let everybody sleep That is class If you'd like to send in a snow talk question

For us to open a future episode of the show Just go to Upgradefeedback.com And send it in just like Joey did. We have some follow-up. The first imagery of Ted Lasso's season four has been revealed.

Yeah. And it is going to be debuting in the summer. I don't, I'm sure we knew it was coming this year, but in my mind, that feels like that's come around very quickly from when we found

out this show existed. We've been going from, you know, it'll show up eventually to, you know, forever. Yeah. And it's gradually kind of

come into focus. And now it's, uh, sometime this summer. And the pictures are, you know, Ted's coaching. a women's team and there's a picture of Ted

I think Rebecca like picking up Ted in Kansas City probably and there's a shot of May the bartender which was nice to see her because that's uh oh what's her she's she's she's in Doctor Who too oh great great Annette Badland Annette Badland yeah she's great

I like that she's still in the show too because she's got that she's a very good and then that's a fun character. And I think we're also seeing the first shot of Ted's recast son. Because if you remember, the rumor was they recast him because they needed him to be able to play football

with some level of competency because that apparently is also going to be a part of this season if I remember correctly, that like Ted's son becomes interested in playing football. And I think that's maybe part of the reason he comes home. We'll find out. That's Grant Feeley, the new Ted son. New Ted's son.

Ted got a, he got a sun replacement while he was gone. That's what he had to do. That's what happens. So there you go. It's coming this summer. Speaking of Apple TV, they have apparently signed a deal with Brandon Sanderson to produce TV and film projects based on his cosmere. I assume that's how you say it, fantasy universe of books.

Yeah, you, I like how carefully you said his name because it's so easily to call him Sandin Branderson and you didn't do it. Or just one sound, Brendan Sanderson. Brandon, Brandon, Brandon, Branson. Burnhamson, Zundsen. Uh-huh, yeah. Art Vandelay. So, um, he posted about this. Burr,

Burr, Harbenson and Art Vandley. Um, the decision he said on Reddit was, to pick Apple was due to two factors. First, the level of approvals and control. Apple wants to be a true partner with me and they feel like they really get what I want to do. Second their track record. Apple does fewer things, but with higher quality than some other studios. I find virtually everything of theirs I watch is excellent and creator-driven. He has got,

a massive amount of creator control as a part of this deal, which is really interesting. There were obviously other bidders, but Apple has apparently given the author a lot of creative control. He's writing the screenplay. I think the idea, at least right now, is that there's going to be a feature adaptation of one of his books. And then they're all set in the same universe, but they're in different parts of it. And then the hope is that they will make a film and then also follow it up with an Apple TV series. Interesting. I think there's something to be said, and we see this a lot now in going in with creators and making deals like this in order to have

somebody like because you're going to have to have a visionary who understands what the universe and the franchise is. Yeah. And Brandon Sanderson basically wanted to be that for his because he is for the books and he it's he's an amazing story. I have literally not read a word that he's written, but people rave about it. People love him. He shares an agent with Dan Moran, which I think is very fun. Um, and, uh, but people love it and and you know, you're looking for intellectual property and I think that there's like very expensive. franchises that you can be Amazon and pay huge amounts of money for Lord of the Rings.

Another way to go is to identify interesting authors and make deals with them. I think it's also, I want to draw a line between Silo because I know Hugh Howie had at least some conversation with the people who were making that and those are very good producers as well, but that was plucked from sort of not obscurity in sci-fi fantasy, but obscurity in wider world because sci-fi fantasy stuff does better as TV shows and movies than it does books. That's a funny thing about culturally, I guess books in general, but these are great sources of material. And then we've, I mean, the foundation, you know, Isaac Asimov's been dead for a long time, but that's an interesting sci-fi adaptation they made. They're making a William Gibson movie,

right? They're making Neuromancer as I think it's a miniseries. They've got this with Brandon Sanderson. And they've had, and MurderBot, which is, which Martha Wells, who wrote the MurderBut books, which are very, very popular in the genre, and they adapted those really well, and she's really happy. Would you call Severance science fiction? I would, for sure. That's an original, though, right? That's not based on anything, other than the guy who worked at the Door Factory, but it is, too.

Yeah, I mean, Apple, that's definitely a vibe of Apple TV, a lot of Apple TV content, but then also making deals and kind of like working with, I think the secret is out that if you've got a really well-regarded sci-fi or fantasy series. Apple might be interested in you. Because it's working for them, right? Like it is actually working for them. I think maybe it aligns with maybe decision makers at the company. Maybe they like this kind of content. Zoe mentions that Blake Crouch, who's the guy who wrote the book, Dark Matter, and he was the showrunner for Dark Matter season one. And they're making a season two. I assume that he's running that too. So that's another great example where it's like literally they're getting these writers to be involved in making

their adaptations and it's work well for them. I mean, especially with someone like Sanderson, because you're not just getting a book. Right. He's very prolific. Yeah. He's got fans. He's prolific. He's got a lot of fans.

And he's got lots of different worlds to choose from because it's a very large expanse of story I am told by those who have read them. The books are definitely very large. Apple acquires an AI company, Jason, but it's not what he's. you think. So the whole time. Well, I think it's Q.a.I. So it is what I think.

Well, it's not the one, it's not the type of company we thought they would acquire when we were talking about them making. A. A.I. So QAI is an Israel-based company. Apple has acquired them for $2 billion, which actually makes it Apple's second largest acquisition after Beats, which was, I think, $3 billion. Yeah. So this company is notable. because it was co-founded by Aviad Meisels,

who also founded Prime Sense, which was a company that Apple bought in 2013, which became part of the foundation for Face ID. So I would assume that Mises went to work at Apple and then left and then started this company, and now's going back again. Yeah, and this company's been in operation. It's been in stealth.

It's been an operation for only, I think, three-ish years. I read a story on an Israeli tech website called C-Tech about this or a couple stories. They're all over it because it's very much local company done good kind of kind of tale here. There's a big picture of Tim Cook and they are leaning into the Johnny Sruji thing because Johnny Sruji is also from Israel and was part of an Apple purchase and became a major Apple executive. So they've been operating in secrecy, but what they seem to have created, and it's really interesting.

It's technology that can quote, decode silent speech by sensing small movements in the face of the user, detecting subtle muscle signals, and even identifying an intention to speak before speech occurs. And this is all with sensors that presumably would be on a wearable device. That's what the idea has been. Using a lot of things. In fact, according to the CTEC report that I read, another co-founder, Yonatan Wexler, described the company's work as spanning machine learning, physics, engineering, and human sciences. And it is a great quote. He said, we sped research that should have taken 20 years.

That's what he wrote after they got bought. It was one of the high fives that they're all doing. But like really interesting, like that they, the way that they tell this story is they decided to make a stealth startup because they wanted to, they thought that there was something they could get to that would be super actionable. but it was going to require this dedicated several years long research project and Apple certainly thought that this was worth buying.

So $2 billion, pretty impressive. Johnny Seruji provided this statement to Reuters. QAI is a remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning. We're thrilled to acquire the company with Aviad at the helm and are even more excited for what's

to come. I mean, so this seems like you would have AirPods or a pair of Apple glasses and you would be able to control them or control some kinds of experiences without having to speak.

And you know, this is kind of funny because I've been having this thing recently where I have been thinking to myself how nice it would be to be able to pause, skip or talk to Syria or whatever without having to say things.

Like, I've been having this thought recently. Like, in my life, my hands are more occupied in certain scenarios than they used to be. And being able to control things in my world would be really nice without having to physically interact with stuff. I mean, it's less socially disruptive if you're not speaking out loud because we tend to think that you're talking to me instead of, like, to your computer. And, I mean, I'm reminded of there are sci-fi books that I read. over the years that talk about having a kind of a neural AI kind of interface

right? I mean this is not what we're dealing with in the reality one of the reasons I love science fiction is what we're dealing with in society today has entirely been discussed from every angle in science fiction over the years but one of the things that always struck me as a necessity

in some of those books is this the idea that you are your interactions are sub vocal that you are if not thinking if it's not reading your mind, you're sub vocalizing, you're moving your mouth but not talking, and that the computer knows what you're saying. So you're saying it in your inside voice, basically. And this could do that, which is very interesting. Even if it's, I mean, I also really like the intention

to speak before speech occurs is really interesting, right? Because that's like, that changes how you choose how to detect speech, because you know it's coming. So you, you could, as a, as a, as a a device, you are prepped in that moment to receive it. Instead of having to kind of loop and wait for speech to occur, you watch and then you leap in. And then the idea that you could decode silent speech, that's really, really interesting. So, I mean, we'll see where it goes. This is one of those things that may take years to get in an actual Apple product. Well, yeah. I mean, it was four years from when they acquired Prime Sense to Face ID becoming a thing. But I think Apple definitely, I totally get why they'd be interested in this, this.

idea that you can, even if it ends up being much better at speech, but the idea of sub-vocalizing of doing silent speech to control devices, that's really, really interesting. I mean, because it would seem that we are moving towards a future where we will be dialoguing with computers more naturally than we have been in the past, right? Like we were just talking about the rumors for the 27 set of operating systems that you would be able to give them an instruction and they would be able to carry it out based on what it knows the computer can do so you could say like resize this image and send it to jason and it would do that so like having better systems for dealing with and expecting speech would be one thing but also you

know like i get the impression from some of the stuff that metas doing where they're using their neural wristband and i also think about the vision pro when you have these really high quality senses and they're sensing what your body's doing, but these things are second nature to us that we don't even consider them. It feels like the computer is reading your mind, which is a very powerful feeling. Like when you're really using a vision pro and like jamming on it, like you're having some time in there and you're doing some stuff, it really starts to feel like the computer is understanding you and that you're working together because you're being so natural in your movements. You know, like that you're, that you're,

you would look at something and just tap your fingers together. When you're really kind of doing that, especially in the first times you're using it, it kind of feels like your mind is being read. And this kind of stuff, I think, could be very powerful in making computers feel even more kind of extensions of ourselves. Yeah, absolutely. This episode is brought to you by Century. Logs are messy, trying to grab through them and line up with traces and dashboards just to understand an issue in an app that you're building, it just isn't it. Century, that's S-E-N-T-R-Y, has logs, but they've made them

usable. Centry's logs are trace-connected and structured, so you can follow the request flow and filter by whatever matters. And because Century surfaces the context right where you're debugging, the trace, the relevant logs, the error, and even the session replay, all land in one timeline, no timestamp matching, no tool hopping. Having an app that works well is important for your developers because you don't want them to be spending. tons of time debugging issues that are popping up in the applications, because what you want them to be doing is working on features. It's what your users want. They want your apps to be getting better and have more features in the mode of time. And I know that it's what developers

want to be working on, new ideas, new things, rather than just going back and trying to fix old stuff. Frontend, mobile, back end, whatever you're debugging, Century gives you the context you need so you can fix the problem and move on. More than 4.5 million developers use Century, including teams at Anthropic, Disney Plus, and more. Try it free at S-E-N-T-R-Y.O and tell them that we sent you. They have a free dev plan, and listeners of this show can use the code Upgrade 26 to get $100 in Century credits. That's S-E-N-T-R-Y-O and the code Upgrade 26.

Our thanks to Century for their support of this show and relay. Money, money, money, money, money, who has all the money? Money, money, money, money. Money, money, money, money, money, who has all the money? It's Apple. It's that time again. It's that time again. Jason, they actually do have all the money this time.

There's no more money left for anyone else. They've got all of it. This is an unbelievable. So, okay, so as we're recording this, we recorded a couple of days early, Apple's results were yesterday in our team. timeline. That secretly reveals that that day was Friday that we recorded. Indeed. And so this was Apple's

Q1 results, 2026, but this covers the end of 2025, right? Is the actual sales period? It's holiday quarter of 2025, yes. So we're looking at a revenue figure of $143.8 billion.

This is up 16% year of a year, obviously an all-time record quarter. Jason, next year we may pass we may see them pass $150 billion

Yes we will not pass it We will watch as someone else passes And this is not a team sport here Yeah In fact Not to jump ahead But one of the things That they suggested

Is 13 to 16% of growth year Over year next quarter Which would mean that it would be Apple's biggest non-holiday quarter of all time In the 108 to 111 billion range. And I just, we are at that point now where Apple is a company large enough that their routine quarters are now just going to be over $100 billion in revenue. And their peak quarter is now

headed toward maybe $150 billion in revenue. But the idea of a, Dan and I were talking about this at six colors, the idea that you can have a boring $100 billion quarter. That was Q3 last year. And then it's going to be Q, or that was Q4 last year. And it's going to be Q2. of this year, it's going to be also a probably boring $100 billion quarter. So that's just, it's a size thing. It's just, yeah, Apple, Apple makes a lot of money. That's the truth of it. That's the base of it is they make a lot of money and the iPhone is driving it.

Yeah, that's what happened. What happens is they sold a lot of iPhones. So, like, usually, you know, one of my favorite charts that you do is the Apple quarterly revenue by category chart. My pie chart. Your pie chart. I have one pie chart. And usually, like basically every other quarter of the year, this hovers around 50%, sometimes a little less than 50%.

It is 59%. So essentially 60% of Apple's revenue for this quarter was iPhones. And that came in at $85.3 billion, which is up, I would say, a staggering 23% year over year. Yeah. The figure that really jumped out to me is they made more money this quarter. on iPhone sales, there are many total quarters in the last five years, like of different times of the year. So like their entire revenue in say Q3, Q3, 2024, yeah. So just, you know, last year, right, eight quarter last year, they made less money overall than they made from just iPhones in this quarter, which is, I mean, I know all of that works out, right, of like, there's obviously the most iPhones are sold at this time. but that is just immense, absolutely immense.

Yeah, yeah. It's obviously it's the driver of the company, but you've got the holiday season and you've got new iPhones and iPhone 17. And it's hard not to just say, this is obviously a hit product, right? iPhone 17. And when asked by analysts to detail it,

Tim Cook was very much like, I can't choose among ones. my children. It's like, it's all over the place. There's lots of different cohorts who are loving the iPhone. But,

you know, and he had a moment where he was like, it was unexpected. I mean, up 23% like he was surprised. Can you guys believe these shots I got over here? I mean,

the truth is, they said that they weren't in supply demand balance. They couldn't make enough. They couldn't make them fast enough. And they said that the issue, it's funny, the issue is not,

remember the legacy notes, Mike, remember them, legacy notes. This is, a phrase that I had not even been familiar with, but it's the idea that in the sort of immediate pandemic and aftermath, they had trouble getting like Wi-Fi chips and Bluetooth chips

because those factories had shut down and it was hard and everybody wanted them. And this is the advanced nodes. They basically, there aren't that many. I mean, really, TSM is making them three nanometer systems on a chip, right? There's only what TSMC can make them. and they may they they had so much more demand for iPhone that apple was expecting that even if they increase what they are building there are only so many chips that tsmc can make on the three nanometer process for apple and you know there's a lot of talk about like tsmc and apple and how

that relationship is evolving but like this is this is not about that this is immediate this is literally um there's no you can't just like make a factory reappear. They're on a cutting-edge process and this is how many. It's just very interesting that the iPhone outstripped, iPhone demand outstripped their ability to make those chips, which is pretty wild. Well, I think this is a problem. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes to an article that Ben Thompson wrote about TSMC. Ben's been very animated about TSMC at the moment. Yes. And I see this is a significant issue for Apple. So one of the things that Tim says, at this time we're seeing less flexibility in the supply chain than normal.

I mean, I don't think that's going to be changing in the next couple of years. Yes, no, that was a warning sign. That was definitely a warning sign. Less flexibility in the supply chain. Are we seeing the beginning of Nvidia, OpenAI, these other companies coming in and they're taking time away at TSM from Apple? So I don't think this is that moment. this is about TSM, you know, just kind of currently humming away making these chips and

they can't crank that dial up much more. But the long run, yes, this is this is one of Apple's threats is that Apple, it's not just that Apple might have to pay more for RAM or chips or whatever, but it's that Apple might not have access to more because they're not the number one customer at TSMC anymore. And TSMC likes their business very much, but TSMC has a bunch of other companies pressing on them. I will say that you could overstate it because I feel like Apple is a... Okay, and Ben Thompson has covered this really well

on Stratory. In his articles, he quotes the president of TSM and I think it's really fascinating because he's clearly conflicted, right? The TSMC guy is like, yeah, the AI companies come to me and they say they want more capacity, but like I have to build the capacity.

And if they don't end up needing the capacity, then I lose billions of dollars. don't love that. I will say he's got to be way more confident about Apple and that relationship. So I think Apple has an advantage there that although Apple is not the, oh my God, we could double our business kind of company rolling into TSM. I think he and Apple can collaborate together and he has a high confidence that it will work out. Whereas the AI stuff is kind of scary. And I'm sure he'll do it. But it's kind of scary because it's not a guaranteed thing. So, but yeah, that, and then you talk about the RAM thing.

I mean, Apple's going to do fine in the short term in terms of its margins and stuff. But like in the long term, they have to deal with, they're going to have to deal with the memory issues too. And it could, it could severely affect either their margins or their prices or the product availability. And that is a wild idea, right? The idea that for the last few years, Apple's been pretty good at managing demand. right. In the pandemic, they had some issues. But imagine having a product that is very much in demand and you can't sell that product to people because you can't make them fast enough. And that goes on for a while. That's, I mean, what do you do in that circumstance is probably you raise prices because that reduces demand. While increasing your margins, you may have to raise prices in order to get access to the chips anyway. So I would say the storm cloud. are not gathering maybe yet, but on the horizon,

because we love a storm clouds reference here on that grid. I mean, I just feel like it is indicative of the fact that TSM can be a blocker for them. And that is when they still have, presumably, as much supply as is possible to be given to them, right? this is the downside of being on an advanced node being on on the cutting edge is when you're on the cutting edge you presumably they provided TSM with estimates about how many products they were going to ship how many iPhone 17s they were going to need how many three nanometer chips they were going to need for this generation and they obviously missed right like either that or TSMC said we can't make that many but my guess is that they missed that well 23 percent they're legitimately surprised that it was up that much I think it's clear that... And they build in a little headroom, but not a lot. They sold more

than they expected, which is the problem. Yeah, for sure. They said so. They exceeded our expectations to say the least, is what Tim Cook said. To say the least.

And so it is... I don't doubt as well, right? That, like, the TSMC people know that Apple is looking at Intel. Like, that's not going to help, right? In, like, getting them what they need. If then there are these other companies who are like, no, no, we'll only work with you.

Like, there's a lot of, like, corporate politics at play here for who, you know, who got the shiny new child who's bringing all this money compared to the old one who's kind of starting to look elsewhere, not great. But, but cash is king.

Apple will still make the orders and they will make the orders forever, right? That is like, for as long as forever could be considered. If your TSMC, as you're saying, you cannot be guaranteed that the AI companies

will even be here in five years, like the ones you're currently dealing with. So if I'm TSM's CEO, I want to take advantage of access to the AI people. And Apple almost becomes my dependable, reliable... That's your baseline.

Right. Like, that one is going to have... That's a guaranteed customer. And I know, yeah, Apple's doing some stuff with Intel and all of that, but like, it's going to be a long time before Intel, if ever, before Intel is going to be able to rival TSM on the advanced nodes.

Sure, for sure. On the cutting edge. And so like, if I'm TSM's CEO, I'm like, yeah, I love it. I love them. And that gives you more confidence maybe

to make some bets with the, with these other, with the AI companies, because you've got Apple and you know that that is a trustworthy relationship. So I don't think it's fair to say like, oh, Apple's not going to be the shiny, they're not going to be the shiny new partner,

but they're a reliable partner that the business depends on. And I think that that will probably continue. But the ramp prices are going to be an issue. And yeah, this is, I think more broadly, leaving aside the pressure on TSM from the AI folks, just when you have a single source and they're on the cutting edge and you miss, you I mean because at the end this is a failure by Apple right

Apple failed to correctly gauge or predict demand for the iPhone 17 series that's what happened I mean unless I've seen no stories to suggest that it's actually that they the TSMC said we can't make you anymore and that that Apple wanted more it sounds like Apple gave itself some headroom but did not expect at this level of sales and that's on them because they could

could have probably worked it out with TSM to have a higher level that they didn't think was necessary because they're trying to optimize for profit. And then, you know, we're going to overbuild. And then after the initial push, it just kind of like, that's why Apple rolls down these chips into other devices is you build all of that volume for the early days when there's high demand. And then the peak goes down and you're like, what do we do with the volume? And the answer is you roll them into iPads and Max and wherever else. And you kind of like, that's how that monitors, whatever. It plays out over time.

So they missed on that. And it's good news in a sense, but it's also, I would argue maybe not as bad news for Apple as you might think, because this happened during the pandemic. And I'm skeptical that if somebody wants to buy an iPhone and it's not available for a few weeks, that they're going to say, well, forget about it and buy a competitor. I think that's unlikely. But, you know, if you're Apple, you really want that money and you want that sale. and you want it now. So going back to the earnings, the Mac is at $8.4 billion,

down 7% year over year. Yeah, tough compare. Classic tough compare. I have a little color here, more color. Please give me more color. Adjacent star for six colors. Yeah, more color.

So Mac is down. And I read some analysis that's like, oh, people are worried about the Mac. It's like, the Mac is fine. This was a tough compare. Apple released a bunch of products last fall 24 that they didn't release in 25, and so the number is going to be down. So it's not that big a deal.

The Mac is selling more than ever. It reached an all-time high in stall base. What I found funny, and Gold Star to the analyst who did this, an analyst said, I noticed you didn't say that this quarter would be a tough compare for the Mac. Do you have any more information about that? Love it. And the CFO, Kevin Perrick, was like,

no, that's pretty much it. You know, we did not rise to the level where we would give any warning. And I thought, this is the cleverest way I've seen yet of trying to get Apple to admit that they've got new Macs coming. Now, they didn't do it. But I think it's quite reasonable to assume that one of the reasons Apple is not worried about the tough compare next quarter is because they know that in a couple of weeks they're probably going to release a bunch of MacBook pros and sell, even though it's only half the quarter at that point, that they're still going to sell a lot. book a lot of Mac revenue and it's going to be okay. But we don't know that. They just didn't give a warning. And this is that

this is that canary thing, right? Where they didn't say it was a tough compare. What does that mean? Maybe it means nothing, but I think it means that they're probably new Macs coming, which we all expect. Yeah, there's not a big surprise. Is it Apple's going to release new computers? But there is something to be said about

what are these computers, right? And how does that make the compare? Sure. Apple may be creating a tough compare for themselves this year if they actually do release two macroproes, which is a possibility. Every time, this is, this is how silly the whole tough compare thing is, is this year's beat, this year's success is next year's tough compare. And last year's tough compare is this year's success. That's just how it goes, right? If you have a really good quarter in Q2 of one year, the next year, it's going to be tough to be up year over year. because that's just how it goes, which is why it's very silly

when I see these stories that are like, people are concerned because the Mac was down. It's like, if you look at that business and show concern about the Mac, I'm sorry, there's no sign that the Mac is struggling at all. They made,

they generated $8.4 billion in revenue on the Mac. The Mac is at all-time highs and so many different things, but they released more new products in that same three-month span a year ago. That's it. That's all that that, that means. So you can get worked up about it, but it just doesn't, it, it, it, I think it's

overstating it a lot. iPad is at 8.6 billion, which is up 6% year over year. Yeah, good to release iPads. They, they said specifically the A16 iPad and the M5 iPad Pro helped drive that. You know, you release new iPads, people buy them, turns out. Yeah. Remember that year where they didn't? And then nobody bought them. It was bad. Yeah, it was real bad. But you know what They did. It made a good compare for the next year. Sure did. Services has crossed $30 billion, up 14% year over a year, just the graph that just continues going up.

It keeps going up in the teens every quarter. It's up sequentially, too. It's been several years since they even had a down quarter sequentially, because it's not really, it's subscription business, right? So there's churn and stuff, but it's pretty much just growing. Which is wild. Yeah. I will say, I mean, they raise prices.

That helps it grow. too. It's not just new people, although they talk about how they have so many subscriptions, et cetera, et cetera. But like the number just keeps going up. Yes. Wearables, home, and accessories was at 11.5 billion, which is down 2%. I saw one detail that Apple

apparently couldn't make AirPods Pro 3 fast enough to meet demand. Yeah, another example of Apple's, it's a good news, bad news. It's like you couldn't make AirPods Pro 3 fast enough. Because of demand, the good news is demand, the bad news is those are missed sales or at least deferred sales. They actually said, so they were down 2% year over year. They said if they had been able to ship all of the AirPods Pro 3 that could be bought in the next, in that quarter, they would have grown instead of trunk by two year over year.

So they basically said, let's count it as a win, even though it's not a win because they couldn't do it. like the demand was there. No. No. We don't count that as a win. You can't just make stuff up, you know? I know. Well, they didn't make it up. Yeah, but they just say it, right?

Well, legally, they have to believe it when they say, sure. They said, we believe that if we had been able to fulfill the demand in the quarter, we would have been in growth instead of down 2%. And they're close enough that I can see that. However, the flip side of that is, why did you not, was it, and they didn't give us any additional color on this one. one, but like, did you miss forecast the AirPods Pro 3 or did you have a production issue?

And they didn't say. Is it, you know, are there advanced nodes or legacy nodes? Are the sorts of nodes, AirPod nodes? I don't know. But what I will say about wearables, home and accessories, we talk a lot in Roomer Roundup about all these stories that have been around for the last couple years that Apple's going to do a home controller. Apple's got a robot that sits on a table.

Apple's got a, you know, it's got a door lock. It's got a smart camera. It's got all of this stuff that it's working on that you, would put in the home category. If you look at the year over year chart for wearables, home, and accessories, it's been down

all but one quarter since the end of 2022. And all but two quarters since the middle of 2022. It has been down. This is a category in retreat. It is unlike, after a lot of growth early on,

it is unlike any other apple category. And the fact that it was in retreat, even with AirPods Pro 3 releasing, I think is saying something, even if, look, if they had fulfilled all demand for AirPods Pro 3 in this quarter, what would that number have been up 1%, up half a percent? It would not have been up 10%. Right? Like that, that's not the case. So they were really leaning back and enjoying life when it was AirPods and Apple Watch and there was a lot of growth in this category. But very clearly, they reached their peak with those products in terms of growth. and they've run out of growth.

There's no more growth in this category. And I've got to think that everybody was like, we should do home products. In the days when they were getting 20, 30 percent growth every quarter, they're like, why? Why should we bother? And then they had the hard fall in 22 and onward. And that's what got them to prioritize all those smart home products. So that's why we're going to see them, probably multiple smart home products this year, is that this category, which is, you know, it is other, it is miscellaneous.

There's other products that they could do that would fit in here. Air tags are in here, right? Like, there's lots of things that are in here. But I think that one of the reasons Apple is going to be finally leaning into the smart home is that their home category is not growing anymore. They've run out of road, it seems, in a lot of this for what it's worth. Yeah, I, it makes me think of like the iPad. You know, like the original, you know, at first the iPad was like a rocket ship.

And then everybody bought those. and then didn't replace them. And I figure AirPods, especially, are like that, where they had a real moment and lots of people bought them, and then they just used them for years and years and years. It's not quite as extreme as iPad, because iPad went up and then it went way down. Because, like, everybody bought one, and then nobody bought them after that for several years because they bought one. Wearables is more of a kind of a gentle decline.

I would even characterize it as, I mean, I feel like it's pretty natural that you come off of a high, right? Like you have that big year or big quarter and you come off of it a little. I actually think it's more amazing when Apple posts a high and then kind of maintains. But you usually come off of it a little bit. And if you look at wearables, you know, in 22, they were at $14.7 billion at the holiday quarter. And if you look at every successive holiday quarter, goes from 147 to $3.30. 13 to 12 to 117 to 115. So I think it's just sort of a gentle decline,

but mostly, you know, it's still a big business. But I think there was initial uptake and enthusiasm about Apple Watch and AirPods and that the AirPods cycle is long. They're not, the Apple Watch buying cycle is long. I mean, it really does, you don't buy an Apple Watch every year or two. You don't. You buy it every four years or something.

And it stretches it out. What they need is more. products in this category if they want to show growth. They need to find other areas, which is why they're doing the, you know, Mark Kerman likes to tell us the robots and things like that is, is they're trying to figure out what else they can do here. So one of the interesting stats, something that definitely helped is that Apple saw 38% year over year growth in revenue in China. Cook said the traffic in Chinese Apple stores grew by strong double digits. And, you know, We've spoken about it a bunch of times.

You referenced it in your article too, right? That it's, there has been a long held belief that a redesigned iPhone sells very well in Asia. That there is, there is something about that which, which, you know, if you look through in history, you'll see that that has happened. And I know this is a stupid question, but considering that, why don't they just do more? Like, I know how hard it must be. But this company makes so much money, like so much money. I feel like you have to kind of say, like, could you not redesign the phone more often? Because it seems like we're going to be seeing that over the next couple of years still.

Like, you know, we're going to be seeing drastic iPhone designs. You know, we had 17 line, then we're going to get the fold, and then the year after that, the iPhone 20, you know. I wonder, this is going to be kind of out of the blue, but I wonder if the pandemic is a part of this. I wonder if they really did take a hit and we're seeing it now where we, now we've got this big line of new iPhones coming out after like this quiet period. I wonder if maybe in other circumstances these would have been spaced out a little bit differently, but they got, you know, or maybe they just hit a technological wall or a manufacturing wall where they're like they ran out of ideas. Maybe. I mean, don't forget the iPhone. fixed line, right? That that design stuck around for, it wasn't that long, but at the time, it felt like a long time. Yeah, that's right. But those spaces have widened, right,

between the major updates. And I take your point. I think, and I don't know if Apple, I'm sure they've had these debates internally, but I think there is that question of like, is our opinion that we only redesign the iPhone when it's, when we have something to say? Or is it, no, actually, even if the technology inside only changes incrementally like it does, outside, you need to be pushing the design more. And I know there are a bunch of people in our audience who would say, oh, redesign for design's sake, you know, that's no good. But if it sells way more phones in certain markets,

would you not consider that? I don't know. I mean, we'll see. I think they'll, I'll tell you this. Apple is absolutely looking at the iPhone 17 and saying, what are the lessons learned here? And is it something about the 17 pro design? Because they know the details that we don't know about the 17s,

finally getting way more features, or is it the 17 Pro new design? Or in Asian markets, is it the air doing, is it doing better in driving sales there? They know that and we don't, but you got to be looking at this and saying, why did this happen? And again, maybe part of it is the feeling

that the last few years have been pretty sterile and minor, and that there was pent up demand for a new iPhone that has come out here. But certainly, if you're in charge of iPhone stuff, you've got to, the business of iPhone, you've got to be asking the question, what drove this moment? And can we, as a manufacturer, replicate it, right? So that these bumps come every couple of years instead of every four years. Yeah, iPhones are fashion, you know, and maybe it is a physical change, maybe it's big, bold, bright colors. I would love to know how much of this they pin on that orange color because I see it everywhere.

Yep. A lot of orange phones out there. Yep, got an ask upgrade question about that later on. Yeah. So, yeah, obviously massive quarter, huge. Last thing I want to lead on is that even with what is clear, increasing. prices in memory, Apple are remaining confident that they will be able to maintain their margins in the next quarter. Apple say they have, quote, a range of options. It's like, I don't even,

it's fascinating. What does that mean? Are they going to increase prices? Do they have a big stockpile? Like, we don't know. But it is going to be really interesting to see how this year plays out for them because the rest of the computer industry is struggling right now. Yeah. And Cook said, I don't want to get more specific than that it's a range of options. There's different levers that we can push. And who knows how successful they'll be. So, you know, I, they don't want to reveal the secret sauce. Among the levers is eating margin, is raising prices.

Yeah, but is that they're saying they will maintain their margin. So they, how much margin is there to eat? In the near term, what they have not talked about, is in the long term. Will they be able to maintain margin? They're going to maintain margin next quarter. But what happens after that? I will say that some of this is also negotiating in public.

Like Apple, it goes back to what we said about TSMC. I think that right now there is a huge need for RAM, right, among people building AI data centers. And so that is distorted the market. And that's going to be an issue for everybody else. but also this is Apple and Apple has volume and Apple I think is a more

trustworthy long-term play and among the levers they push which is weird because I always think you should pull the levers but anyway among the levers they push and pull I do wonder if some of it is you know big contracts that they haven't done recently where they're like look we'll guarantee we're going to buy an enormous number of these

over years and years. And if you're a RAM manufacturer, like what we said about TSMC, I do wonder if there's a negotiation to be had where Apple is useful because Apple, you can count on them in a way that maybe you don't, you're not sure. Like, is this, if this is just a moment in time,

you want to make as much money from these AI companies that are funded by dreams and have no profits and are spending enormous amounts of money, you want to make, hey, while the sun shines, right? I get it. But the TSM dilemma is also, if you invest massively in capacity that then you can't use, that's not great.

Having a partner like Apple, who's more reliable to be part of kind of your business plan mix that maybe even gives you more openness to risk because you've got them and you know you can bank on them. That's why I kept trying to come up with a financial example of this. They're like a bond or a, you know, they're like a T bill. They're like hard currency. It's Apple like they're going to come through.

And then you've got this risky gamble. And that if you can mix your portfolio, maybe that works. I actually don't know as somebody who has not bought, negotiate enormous contracts for components. I just have to emulate it and guess. But that may be a lever that Apple could pull is longer term, even if it costs more to give their partners some security.

Maybe. We'll see. We'll see. It's also possible that Apple's just going to have to deal with limited opportunity, limited availability, and they're going to have to raise prices. like I said, not just to increase margins or retain margins, but to reduce demand a little bit

if they literally can't make them as many as people want. That's one of the things you do is you just raise the prices. Apple hates racing prices, right? Apple finds these price slots and they stay in them.

So you will know that they're really hard against it if they raise prices, especially in the U.S. Other countries, they raise prices all the time. But in the U.S., they really don't like to change. change their price.

So that happens. Yeah. Oh, the headwind. Yes, that's right. So that storm, storm's not necessarily,

it's on the horizon. Like there's something going on over on the horizon. Will it bring the headwinds? And what will those headwinds be? That is a, you know, boy, do financial people think that they're sailors?

There's got to be some kind of correlation there, right? I mean, they'll take their boats out on the weekend or something. It's like master and commander, right? Like markets are. now battlefields and also oceans. I don't know what it is.

Sometimes there are bears and sometimes there are bulls. You know, who could tell. Yeah, I've got a, uh, our next call comes from, uh, Captain Bly. Please go ahead. Y'Army, mate. Hoist the mainsail. My question is about the foreign exchange headwinds. This episode is brought to you by FitBod.

If you're looking to change your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to start. And that's why I'm going to let you know that FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan that is just for you. Everybody's fitness path is different. That's why FitBod uses data to make sure they customize things to suit you. It will adapt as you improve so every workout is challenging, pushing you to make the progress that you want. Because superior results are achieved and a workout program is tailored to your unique body, experience, environment and goals. FitBod stores this in your FitBod Gym profile. It will then track your muscle recovery so you'll avoid burnout and keep your workout and keep your.

keep up your momentum. FitBod builds your best possible workouts by combining exercise science and AI. They have analyzed billions of data points fine-tuned by certified personal trainers to make sure that you have the right well-balanced workout routine. It tracks your muscle fatigue and recovery and also means, you know, so that that way making sure that everything's working together because your muscles improve when they work together. You don't want to overwork or underwork some. This will see bad results. This also means, as they're mixing a up for you, that you're not going to get bored because you're going to see new exercises, rep schemes, supersets and circuits and every time you're shown a new exercise, you'll be able to learn it the right way because they have over a thousand demonstration videos in the app

that show you how to perform every exercise and great detailed instructions too. The FitBod app is super easy to use. You can stay informed at their progress tracking charts, weekly reports and sharing cards, letting you keep track of your achievements and personal bests and share them for friends and family. It also integrates with your Apple Watch, wearOS smart watch and apps like Strava, Fitbit and Apple Health. Personalized training of this quality can be expensive. FitBOD is just $1599 a month or $9599 a year, but you can get 25% of your membership by signing up at FitBOD.Me slash upgrade. So go now and get your customized fitness plan at FITBOD.mysh upgrade.

Once again, FitBOD.mysh upgrade for 25% of your membership. Our thanks to FitBod for their support of this show and relay. So you wrote a review of Apple Creator Studio. So you had the apps for a few days or something like that? Yeah, kind of a week. I had them from basically when they were announced until they came out on last Wednesday. Okay.

I mean, I kind of called it hands-on with. The thing is, it's not like I don't use Final Cut, and it's not like I don't use logic. but what I'm not is making you know documentaries and final cut and music and logic and so I'm familiar with the apps

the new stuff that they added is mostly stuff that I would not use or I would almost not use like I do use every so often I'm moved usually because a tune pops into my head to make a song it's always a robot or not theme song

that's where all my creative musical output goes is to robot or not theme songs and I've used their AI session players before and it's very impressive and they've got a new one and that's great. Those are kind of amazing. So they look like, you know, interesting, good updates to Final Cut and Logic.

And PixelMator, I am a Photoshop person because I've been a Photoshop person for like 30 years now. So, I mean, more than 30 years now, a long, long time since college. and I still pay Adobe for Photoshop but PixelMeter is very impressive like PixelMeter Pro is really good enough that I should probably spend enough time with it

so that if especially if I'm going to be paying for the suite anyway which I may one way to pay for it is to literally cancel my Photoshop subscription because that costs about the same for just Photoshop. Although good luck doing that. I mean I'll have to call and put it in writing

and triplicate. Yeah, yeah. So it's all good And they add some features And like and I like the idea I understand that people dislike the idea That somebody else is asking them for a subscription I do like the idea that the Mac

Versions if you bought them, you still have them And they still update and it's fine. Right? That those people can just kind of keep doing it But if you want them on Mac and iPad You do the subscription and subscription fatigue is real, but I'm sure I've said this before on this podcast,

you always rented software because there was always a software, but it's very, like very few people are, I know George Martin is still writing on WordStar, right, in emulation, and there are very few people out there writing in Microsoft Word 5.1, for example, right? Like, eventually you spend money. You can choose when you spend the money, but in the end, like for software to work,

they have to have a business, which means they have to sell updates. And I will tell you that upgrade, the upgrade business model, not our business model, our business model is great. The software upgrade business model was not great

because it distorted the product because every year or two, you had to have a big new update. And so apps that were really good and streamlined got bloated and bad because they had to make their money. And I had a developer I like a lot was really mad at me once

because I reviewed his software and did not give it, I gave it a fine review. It was not a bad review, but he was really mad because he said, we did so much work to make this work with Apple's current OS technologies

and build a platform for new features in the future. And I said, yeah, but there aren't any new features now when you're asking people for $100. And I think that is, I think that shows something, right, which is when you're selling upgrades, there's like a quid pro quo.

It's like, I give you $100 and you give me new features. Yeah. And it's, I'm sorry, that's unhealthy for software. It's bad for software development. Paying, what you're paying program X in that time, $100 for is so that their business days and they built this foundation. And so over the next few years, they'll roll out a bunch of new features. You shouldn't view it as I'm buying, I'll just skip this one and not give them money. And then in two years, I'll give them $100 for all the new features they finally add on.

it's just it's it distorts the business and the software gets weird and bloated and bad because they have to keep shoving things into it and then if you talk about compatibility if you're a utility or something that's compatible with the OS well you've got to do that work every year which means that long before subscriptions were in vogue every time Apple updated the operating system

you had to pay for a new version that upgrade fee for the new version of the program you bought so that's how is that not a subscription It's a subscription and name only. So while I am sympathetic to the idea that people don't like subscriptions, the truth is they were, the previous error was not so great. And there's something to be said for saying, I use this tool all the time and so I'm going to pay for it.

I also like the idea of like, I need to use this tool a little, so I'll pay, you know, $10 for it or $5 or whatever for this month, and then I'll turn it back off, which is what we did with Final Cut for iPad when we shot our episodes of upgrade with it is I'd just turn it on for a month and then turn it off because I didn't need it otherwise

and that was fine. So I think it's a good deal if you use these apps and if you use even like one of these apps, like the idea that you use Final Cut and now you get PixelMater with it, I think that's really actually kind of cool

and that it's on the iPad, pixel meter for the first time on the iPad. Like I think when you look at what Adobe charges, these are very reasonable prices. There are free options and I think that's the other way to go there are free, there's a free video editor, there's a free design tool,

there's a free audio, digital audio workstation for music. Like, I put links in my article, they're out there, and you can do that too. There's always open source stuff too that you can use. So it depends on your needs, but I think from Apple,

given, I like the fact that Apple is, and I know we said this a couple weeks ago, I like Apple is creating a revenue stream for these apps because these apps are super important and should exist and their professional apps and creating a revenue stream for them makes Apple

and Apple's managers more comfortable in continuing to invest in development of them which is how it's supposed to work. Yeah. So on that front, all good, I think. Yeah, I'm in a real funny spot

with the creator studio. So like I read your review and by and large, it's good, right? That like, some of the things of Varno Cup really interesting to me that like you can search transcripts,

search files in natural language, it will find them. Beat detection sounds very clever, very clever, right? Like for matching up cuts with your music. Absolutely. You finally got your background export and Final Cut Pro for iPad. PixelMator Pro on iPad seems good. There is like a weirdness of me. There was already a pixel meter on iPad and it did already work of PixelMator pro for Mac files, but maybe there was like it wasn't fully compatible and it definitely didn't have every feature. So I'm excited to get that so like I can continue, because I love pixel meter. I use it all the time. I spoke about that a couple of weeks ago. You know, and what you were saying in I work, right? Well, this is, this is the thing. Well, I mean, some of the things seem

interesting, right? The content hub has got some, some stuff going on. Yeah. Very nice, very nice clip art library. You didn't seem thrilled about the templates that they just were not super exciting. Well, I mean, they're more, it's like great, more templates and they're professionally designed templates I saw somebody comment like were the did amateurs design the old templates? It's like I mean somebody has to design them yeah um it's a larger issue right like the content hemp is nice the templates doing more keynote and pages templates and numbers I guess whatever is good I just think it's funny that Apple decided we'll just charge for those templates we'll make those templates part of the equation because it throws more content in the bundle and it's like it's

okay. I guess that means that there will never be more templates that aren't part of the bundle, even though templates are nice. But okay, like they threw it in there. They seem fine. I very rarely use templates of any kind other than like keynote templates where they give me, you know, they make a font and background choice and even then I often override it. Yeah. But having more templates is fine. I, you know, the content hub, that's licensed media and I understand that and that that is a price. Templates to me, you know, my argument, my be that maybe that should just be part of the product and you should make more nice templates. If they want to sell them to me as premium, I don't know how premium they feel.

They just feel like more I work templates. But okay, I mean, it does have a cost to develop them. I get it. And then there are a bunch of open AI features in there too, right, which is interesting. Powered by open AI, which again, my argument is that has an actual cost. So, okay, you put that behind a paywall. So I'm a bit confused about this, right? because you mentioned there's a token limit on the image generation.

Yeah, 100 images-ish a month. So are they using, maybe you don't know, but are they using a different model to what's in image playgrounds? Because I don't believe there's any limit there. In fact, there are two separate UIs. You can use image playgrounds or you can use this open AI image generation.

So the open AI one, you're probably getting the current. Well, because the image playgrounds one is still quite limited. Right? You can only do certain things with that. So they clearly have got quite a focused version. And then I guess, I mean, because I haven't used it yet. I'll get to why in a minute. You can ask for whatever you want in this image generation inside of I work. Is that how that works? Okay. Oh, yeah. So that's the difference. Okay. Oh, yeah. And ask it to edit stuff. So I had to edit a piece of clip media from the content hub. I had a picture of a kid holding an apple with a bite out of it. And I said make it the rainbow color of the classic Apple logo. And it totally did it. It also changed the kid's face to be creepy. However, it just decides to do that part on its own. You didn't ask for that, but then it also makes a change to the child's face.

Like, okay, thank you. Thank you, image generation model. Thanks so much. That was what I wanted. Thank you. Yeah, so there's a bunch of this. And the other stuff that's going on, like, in keynote you can make, I made a presentation in keynote with notes. I actually, I had notes from a user group meeting that I was going to do.

and I didn't do slides for it. I just talked because I don't, the technical complexity of adding slides to a Zoom presentation when all of they are bold points. It's like, I didn't need to do that, but I'm like, let's take my notes and make a presentation.

It made a very generic presentation, but it did explode it into slides and try its best. It got some things wrong. But that's also chat GPT. It's using for that. But it's still kind of cool, right, that you give it text

and then you watch as your keynote app just starts adding slides and stuff. I like the idea of the presenter notes being generated from my slides. I think that's quite clever too. So I did that too. And yeah, the idea that you put up bullet points, but you don't want to say the bullet points, having chat GPT basically say, okay, how about I will turn your bullet points into things a person would say to describe the bullet points, basically? Like, I can see that there's value in that. I wouldn't do that, but I can see. that people would want to do that. So it's stuff like that.

And there's a magic fill, apparently, in numbers that also uses, uses chat GPTA AI infrastructure. I didn't get that to work. So I don't know how that is. But I get it. Like, there's, I understand it. I have lots of problems with this.

But none of them are about that, really. Can I give my little point in and we go into those? Because I assume the problems are what you wrote your second post about. Yes. Go ahead. So I've read your article, and I was like, some of this stuff sounds really interesting. So I went to the app store and searched for PixelMator. And I was given two, this is on my Mac. I was given two options.

I had PixelMator Pro, which says update, because I have that installed. Then I saw PixelMator Pro edit images get. And it was at that moment where I thought, I don't know if I can be bothered to do this. Like, I would be a happy customer of the creator studio. I use most of the apps, like the proper apps. I'm not including the small ones, right? Like the kind of final apper add-ons. Mainstage.

You're not using main stage on stage to do your- I use essentially everything. I use pages. I use keynote. I use numbers. I use FinalCart. I use Logic and I use PixelMator. Like, I use them all and I am a happy customer of all of these products.

And would like some of the features that are mentioned and that I expect will come in the future. But when I see that there are separate apps to download, I'm like, well, this isn't going to be a fun experience for me. Like, pulling the trigger on doing this feels like it's something that's going to take work. Well, what I want to happen is the apps just update. And then I can choose if I want to become a subscriber at that point. Like, it feels like, because of choices Apple has made,

for other developers and the way they want the economics to be in the app store my experience is lessened in this scenario and it does almost feel like the chickens are coming home to roost on them

absolutely so I wrote this under embargo so I was in a test flight for all these apps so I didn't get that experience at all I got other apps but like it wasn't the same so I post that story or set it to post at 6 a.m.

I'm asleep but it drops and then that day I keep hearing from people who are like, you didn't write about this and you didn't write about that. And I said, I didn't get to see what the experience that the rollout was going to be like. I only just saw the apps.

So I wrote another piece about this because it's a tough rollout. And the answer is, I said something, somewhere in the article I say, it's a shame that Apple couldn't convince Apple to do a better job with the app store back end. But like this, it is the chickens coming home to Roos because Apple is now dealing with a very difficult, confusing, complicated,

upgrade and sales process for this suite. that is not it's because the app store is bad. I mean, basically it's because the app store back end is bad. And I will say, just in passing, when there's no competition, there's no motivation to make things better. And if there was some other store

that was amazing at doing bundles and upgrades and things and very flexible for developers that could be pitted against Apple, then maybe Apple would be motivated to make their system better. But instead, they're just like, we're going to add another ad spot. yippee. And I get like the people who work on the backend tools in the app store probably are underfunded

because I'm not saying that like the people are bad, but the organization doesn't care. To a certain degree doesn't care about all of these issues that have been raised by developers that we know and developers we don't know for years. And it all comes home to roost here. So they have to add a tag on the name of every app in order to market it. So it's Pixomator Pro colon edit images. Why is it that way?

That annoys me. That's what you do in the App Store now is you add things to the name to do SEO basically because you shouldn't have to do that. There should be a better way to do that, but that is what we're stuck with with the App Store. The skew thing.

So these Mac apps were Mac apps. And the iPad apps were under a different thing. So what you can't do is merge them together. You should be able to do that, right? I got a Mac app, I got an iPad app. I want them to be the same thing, so you get them once and then do a subscription and all that. Like, sorry, can't do it.

So what they have is they've got the old apps and the new apps, a separate bundles. And they did an update on release day to the old apps that now every time you launch them, it brings up a thing that says, this is old, get the new one. And you can say, no. But because it's off version now,

I think it doesn't do sharing features and stuff because it's the old version. Um this is so annoying and you have to go to the app store and download it and if you already downloaded it it'll open it

but then until you delete the old version you'll have both versions I discovered that if you're scripting it because I was doing the Apple results right and I use numbers and I had my script failed because it's a different app now it's not numbers

it's actually numbers creator studio it's got a long if you look in the finder this is an amazing detail for all of these. If you look in the finder and get info on numbers,

it's Numberscreatorstudio.app. It shows as numbers, but it's a lie. They're all tagged creatorstudio.com at the end of their name. So all of this, so double versions, app updates that tell you to download

other app updates, I would say one of my big problems with this overall, again, is the idea that iWork apps are not, creator apps. They're not. Creators use them. They're not creator apps. They should be in a separate bundle or they should be in two bundles. If you want to do a premium AI feature package to somebody,

because like, I was talking to Lauren about this yesterday. Lauren uses, she had pages open. I took some screenshots of what it looks like and I opened her laptop and she had pages open to write a note that she's going to print and give to our house sitter when we're on vacation. And I told her, well, this is how they're going to have to do this and they offer this as a suite and all of that with logic and final cut. And she's like, I don't do any of those things. I said, I know.

You just use the pages and numbers and stuff. But I'm telling you, I think one of the reasons that they did this is because the app store won't let them have the flexibility to offer different bundles. And different subscriptions for different apps and different bundles. I think it's all, and if it's like, well, you can do it, but this, but that, obviously they had a conversation

where they're like, forget it. And yes, that means that on one level, it is Apple being hoist by its own patard. On another hand, it is the chickens coming home to roost. It is a group at Apple being completely let down by another group at Apple. And the result is that this bundle and this upgrade experience is terrible. It is a terrible customer experience. And they know it, right? They're not going to talk about it.

Certainly they didn't explain to anybody who was under embargo about how this was going to work because it's embarrassing. Like the idea that you have to, you know, you get a thing in your face that goes to another thing that brings up another thing that you download and then you've got two, but one of them has a hidden secret name and then you delete it. And then you have the new thing with a new icon. Unless you have the old Mac apps because they kept those there. But again, there's a duplicate. I guess as small business owners ourselves, it is refreshing that even if you make 140 billion. dollars in a quarter, you still can find yourself in scenarios where you're like,

ah, just to ship this, I just can't do anything better right now. You know, like it's refreshing because I'm sure you, I know I come to these things where you're like, this could be done better, but to get it out, I need to do it in a slightly janky way. Now, they obviously had a year here, but whatever, my guess is that the app store back end is so complicated. Yeah. And one suite release is not enough, either not enough to do it or it's going to take so long for them to do it that they didn't do it or that work is still in process.

But for whatever reason, like the people involved with doing the creative apps are like, we're going to do an Apple software in general, we're like, we're going to do a suite. And the people over in the app store were like, good luck with that. And I'd actually say, not only is it dispiriting that the customer experience is so bad, it's also dispiriting that not. And is it dispiriting or should developers feel good about this? Third-party developers. I'll just say it. Not even Apple, internally, with a strategic product, could get the App Store to work better. That's incredibly disparate.

Because I feel like the only way, the only way that fundamental change like that would occur is if the company was making more money themselves. This is specifically the scenario where you would hope The classic move with Apple is Apple's like, no, we can't do that. No, we can't do that. And then they eat their own dog food and they're like, oh, no, no. And then they do it. They do it because they're solving an Apple problem. But here, clearly, they didn't. They're like, no, we're just going to, I guess we'll put up a thing that every time you launch the old numbers that says this is old, get the new numbers instead. Use the new version of numbers. It says number is 14.5 is out of date. and can be deleted, which is such a weird phrase. Like, everything can be deleted, people. Everything can be deleted. And then it's open new version or not now. And then you can actually continue to use it every time.

But what is also funny about that scenario too is that like showing enough, they can't delete it for you. Right? Like if I open new version, the old version remains, right? They're not like, oh, don't worry. They don't have the power. We're going to delete that old version now. We'll get rid of it for you.

No, you won't. Like, I then have to deal with that. Yeah, it can be deleted. It can be. Will it be? If you wouldn't mind. No, one knows. No, who among us could not be deleted?

Yeah, it is, so, it is dispiriting. It is exposing all the limitations of the app store model that developers have been complained about for ages, and it is super sad that not even Apple could get the app store to work better. I hope. My only hope here is that this entire process revealed to people at Apple just how busted their back-end system is.

And that maybe they actually do need to fix it because Apple would like to do this in a better way. And they're kind of embarrassed by how it rolled out. But who knows? Maybe they're just like, oh, well, you know, you don't mess with the App Store guys. They're like the mob. They're like, you don't mess with those guys. They bring in all that services revenue. We just got to let them do what they're going to do.

And please, sir, can we have a bundle? I haven't even gotten to maybe the worst part about this. which is if you're just because again my argument is there needs to be another bundle. I actually am not opposed to the idea. I don't love it, but I'm not opposed to the idea

that they're going to add a bunch of AI features and so they need to have a bundle for all those AI features in I work. So, but right now you have to pay full price for Final Cut and Logic and PixelMator, even though you're just using pages. It's dumb.

There should be another bundle that's just those apps. So those four apps. Pages, numbers, keynote, and later, freeform. as Apple keeps saying, because Freeform is in the bundle, but not yet.

Okay. But they don't have that. Either way, though, what happens when you launch, when you're told that you can delete your old app and you need to open the new app? And the answer is, every time you do a new document

and it brings up the template interface, there's an ad to subscribe to the Apple Creator Studio. The launch screen the first time has a what's changed. It's a list of things you can get if you subscribe to the Apple Creator Studio. There's a splash screen that shows Apple Creator Studio. So you are pummeled with UPSL. And in fact, I think it's in pages.

If you've got the sidebar open, there's a tile that is an ad for Creator Studio that sits in the UI permanently. Or at least so far, maybe it'll disappear. Maybe it'll disappear someday. Maybe not. So ads attached to interface elements, a first large screen.

In the application menu, there are two prominent Creator Studio menu items. So they're advertising in the menu bar. And the Content Hub interface appears whether you have the subscription or not. So you've got a button for Content Hub. It does have some of the clip media that was in there before that you have access to, but you also have access to the whole Content Hub interface.

And it shows up. And if you place any of those images, it places them with a watermark on it, saying Creator Studio. because they're saying you could use this image. You know, if you were a subscriber, you'd be home by now because you would have this image. I'm trying it on my iPhone,

so I've just opened pages. Yeah. I would say more than three quarters of the first launch screen, which opens to templates, is just included to creator studio and all the premium stuff. And the recents are at the very, very bottom.

It's like, what are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it, again, I didn't see any of this when I was writing my review. But my fear when they announced it and my fear when I was writing the review was this kind of intangible fear of Apple taking a product that was free me, or was free and making it freemium. And freemium is free with upsell.

And one of the reasons these products are free is because they make Apple's platforms better. When you buy a Mac, you don't need to buy Microsoft Office. You don't need to use Google Docs. You have a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation creator, and whatever freeform is. Which I think the people who do free form would be proud of. Yeah, infinite canvas, it's whatever you want to be is whatever free form is. I actually kind of like free form. Anyway, it's fun.

It's whatever you want it to be. So they junked it up. I mean, the fear was they would junk it up, that they would take these things that are really there to make the platform better and make them into an ad for a subscription. And like I don't, again, I understand, like, I don't love the idea of adding features behind a paywall. And I really don't love the idea of potentially adding features that don't have any extra cost behind a paywall.

I don't think that the I Work apps should be a revenue center in this way. But I also think that if they're going to build AI features in that have a cost, I can understand gating some of them. Again, I don't want to have that argument. I don't love it, but I'm going to set it aside. But making these free apps this junkie with ads for this bundle is terrible. And it's worse because the bundle is a misaligned bundle. I would bet money.

Money, money, money, money. Who has all the money? I would bet money. that the vast majority of people who use pages, numbers, and keynote have not and will not ever have a need to use Final Cut Pro or logic. But that's the bundle. That's the way it's been priced. And I'm sorry, for those people, this is a bad deal. It's a bad bundle.

There's no value in it. It is not worth paying $130 a year for some, access to some templates and that creative hub because there are other subscription services that are cheaper that will give you access to clip media like that. And some AI features that are okay, I guess. Like it's a bad deal. There's probably a better deal to be had. And if they offered that, I would still want it to be less junky. But the fact that it's junked up and it's a bad deal, it's just terrible.

At the end of my piece, what I say is the icon thing. I did a little aside about the icon thing because it's a conversation that we've had on podcast before. it's easy to complain about icons. It's fun. I think the design brief was just to differentiate them based on shape and color because mostly you just see them in small spaces on the dock or on the home screen and you want to know, oh, that one is, you know, the green one is numbers. Fair enough.

But like, what's the greater offense to the user experience? Some icons that look different or a bunch of ads for a bad fit suite. in your productivity apps that are there to make your platform better. Just like, it's very clear to me what the greater offense is. So it's very weird because I don't dislike the suite at all.

I think it's not a bad idea. I think the inclusion of, I work, bottom line is I think the inclusion of I work in it was a mistake. And it doesn't make sense. Even if you're a creator, to shoehorn,

I work in here, just have another suite for these apps. Or include Iwork in your premium creator studio bundle. The backend, I think, precludes that, but you could do that. But instead, they've put them in this bundle. They've renamed them in the background. They are creator studio apps now, and I'm sorry, Numbers Creator Studio Studio is the dumbest thing I've seen in a long time.

As a name. As a concept, right? Spreadsheet for creators. I mean, do some creators need spreadsheets? Sure. But do most spreadsheet users need logic or final cut? No.

Of course not. And they shouldn't, those people shouldn't be upsold into a suite that's got a bad price and they shouldn't have it in their face all the time. There needs to be a way to make it go away. And like, I am not open.

into the argument that, well, Apple gives you these tools for free and what do you expect their ads? Apple benefits from these tools being on their platform and then they make their money with those enormous hardware margins that they have. That's how this works. Yeah, it's kind of like you get the feeling that's like you just can't help yourselves, can you? Right? And it's a shame because, I mean, I was, and I'm still interested, I was excited, still interested in the creator studio. Sure. But I feel like I'm just going to have to sit down and dedicate an afternoon to it. And that's not what you want people to be doing if you want them to sign up for your subscription service. You should make it easy for them. And they haven't. And the reason they haven't is because

they decided a long time ago not to make it easy for anyone. And here we are. I'm very skeptical about everybody who's like, oh, Apple's being distorted by services revenue and everything they chase is revenue and it makes everything terrible. Because I think offering things via service by a subscription is not entirely unreasonable. I think it's part of the mix. And that's fine. But, boy, if there was ever a way to convert me to believe that Apple is actually aggressively degrading its user experience in order to chase incremental services revenue, this is it.

And not the pro apps. It's throwing I work in the mix. It's like, what are you even doing? Who made this decision? And you degrade the fun, I mean, I work, in my opinion, is part of the fundamental Mac, especially, but really fundamental Apple device experience, meaning that when you buy this thing, it

works. It'll open a word doc. Somebody sent me a word doc the other week. I'm like, what are you even doing? They apologized. But I opened it. It wasn't a big deal. It opens and with, you know, so to do this, you're degrading

the base Apple product experience for what incremental revenue. And then to add insult to injury, it is the incremental revenue in a suite that is misaligned. So like this is bad on so many different levels and it should never have gotten here. I enjoy the fact that Apple has

run into the app stores limitations, but it's actually a crushing disappointment because they, even they couldn't fix them. So yeah, it's very, I just have weird feelings because I also am enthusiastic about the idea of paying for this suite and having it on my iPad and my Mac and having access to some tools I don't have access to currently, and yet

the other part of it is so bad and the rollout is so bad that they really have botched it and taken my initial positive feelings about the concept of a suite, which we've been talking about ever since they bought PixelMator, right? We've been talking about they're going to do a suite.

And then all the details make me less and less enthusiastic about it. It's really a shame. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or scaling a business, Squarespace will give you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place.

I've been using Squarespace for over 10 years. The main thing for me is how easy they make it for me to design the website that I'm looking for. they have so many fantastic tools that help you just design it visually. As you're making changes to the design of your site, you're seeing it update in real-time. This is from fonts to layouts to tons of options. I really love it. Once you've got that website done, you want people to see it.

And thanks to Squarespace's integrated SEO tools, it will mean that your website will be available for people to find. Every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions and auto-generated site map and more, making sure that people will find your site through search engine results. Then, once they've been there, you'll be able to make smarter business decisions to Squarespace's analytics. You can keep track of the stats that matter with intuitive built-in analytics tools, makes it super easy for you to review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement and track revenue from bookings, invoices, or products, sales. Head on over to Squarespace.com slash upgrade and you can sign up for a free trial today.

and when you're ready to launch to the world, use the offer code, upgrade, and you'll get 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. That is Squarespace.com slash upgrade and the offer code upgrade and you will get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show.

Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RELIE. It is time for some ask, upgrade questions. First question comes from Michael who wants to know. Is it me?

Or did everyone who bought the iPhone 17 Pro get the cosmic orange? I see them everywhere. Or is it more likely that the only 17s I spot in the crowd are when they are orange? What are your feelings on this? I think and hope that Apple's colors are, the Apple Carlisar's bold choice has paid off. Okay, as was foretold. It's a great question. You know, and that, like, you notice that orange, right?

You notice it when you see it. Yes. You don't, I'm not looking at the camera bump in silver or in a case and being like, oh, iPhone 17 Pro. So I don't know. It's a great question. Only Apple knows. Yeah, Adina has the blue one and I feel like I don't recognize it as often as I recognize the orange. Yeah. You know, like it's a nice looking phone, but it's not the orange. They use the orange. They seem to use the orange a lot in the marketing too.

Of course, because it's the most interesting. So my hope is that it has sold well enough and that it has gained enough attention for Apple to be convinced that every year they need to do a pro phone in a in a fun color. That is all I can ask for. I don't imagine that we're going to be getting five different bright color options and pro phones going forward. My hope is, and it feels to me like it's done enough, but the sales figures tell the tale that they realize that maybe they should have a fun color and not, you know, midnight lemon and various. other kinds of beige, you know, dark rainforest. I would be into beige. If they made a beige iPhone, I would be into that,

just for the, for your vibes. Here's what I, look, I know we asked for color, you gave us color, and now we continue to ask Apple, but I'm going to ask for something else. I want every year too bright, too boring. Because my concern is I love my orange phone, and then next year the bright color is going to be a color I don't want. And then it's like, ah, you know what I mean?

Like, I want too bright, too boring. That's right. As I said that, Jason's written in the Discord like too fast, too furious, which is brilliant. I thought of it like that. But yeah, too bright, too boring, too boring for y'all. Yes. So you just want it, you want four colors instead of three, is what you're saying. Yeah, and I think that's fine because the, like the regular iPhone, like the iPhone 17, like in years possible, like five.

So why not? Yeah, I know. More colors of the, I think, more popular phone. Like, let's do it. So he points out the 2Bright, 2Boring is the sequel to the bright and the boring, which was less successful. And then what the next one would just be bright boring, like,

and just take the numbers off and then it's like bright nine. Yeah, it would be bright, boring, but the R's or threes. Oh, I like that. Yeah, or bright and boring San Francisco drift. Because Zoe says Tokyo drift, but it wouldn't be that. Cupertino drift, please. Cupertino drift. You know, I think the threes would be.

be the bees because that looks they look visually similar right so three right through yoring okay great we'll workshop that we'll workshop it Elliot says do you or have you ever edited Wikipedia additionally do you ever look at your own

Wikipedia pages P.S. Mike's page is very sad now I'm going to start with the end my my Wikipedia page is relatively empty however I do have a Wikipedia page, which is, I would say, good. I'm pleased to have one. Thank you for whoever set that up. I would say if listeners of this show went to that Wikipedia page and felt like they had the

opportunity or desire to update it with any of the many things that have happened in my life since the year of 2016, which was in the last, I think, substantial update in my quote, unquote, career. And though, 2018, I peaked in 2018. That was the last thing anyone put in there. I just saying I wouldn't mind it. Yeah. If people update that. Well, no, this is the beauty of Wikipedia is, uh, if you are, if you're, if you've never edited Wikipedia, you probably shouldn't edit it because it's a, uh, there are rules. Yeah.

But if you have, if you have edited Wikipedia pages before, this is how it works. We're not allowed to edit our own pages, right? Yep. So if you, uh, want to do that and make Mike's, Mike's page better, uh, go right ahead. Yep. Um, my page has been up there a very long time. You have a great Wikipedia page. It's pretty good.

like it's well it's well maintained someone someone's doing a good the person who's doing such a good job for you should do a job for me too i think that's what i think because you have yours is a good page just has got lots of good information on it you know that's great have i edited wikipedia page i absolutely have in fact i think there's probably a note somewhere on um is there maybe there isn't um there used to be a note that said this person has a wikipedia account but But I do have a Wikipedia account and I have edited pages. Sometimes it's because pages annoy me and they're so bad or I see something that's so wrong that I just fix them. I worked on a couple of pages.

There was like a UCSD related page that I worked on for a while and there was a Cal football page that I worked on for a while because I was like, this is bad. And, you know, it's essentially pro bono editorial work. But I had those moments where I thought somebody should edit this and the beauty of it is I could do it. So I have done that occasionally. I know what the rules are. I don't spend a lot of time on it because it really is my job to do my own editorial work and not fix Wikipedia pages. But they're there. If it happens, I will pop in and I'll make some changes.

I'm going to make an observation at this point because I have been meaning to write an article about this and I haven't, but I'll just throw this in here. One of the greatest, it's funny, but it's a scourge of Wikipedia is because anyone can edit it and they edit it and real time, you end up with these articles that are like layers of sediment through time, and they're terrible, unreadable articles. So you'll go to a page about a musical artist, let's say, or an athlete, but especially it's a musical artist. And it's not an article anyone would ever write about them, but because it was on Wikipedia, they have constantly been updating, and it's the super fans, right? And so you'll read about this band, and it'll be like, On August 18th, 2018, they announced that their new album would be released later this year.

On October 3rd, 2018, they released a single from that album. On November 4th, 2018, they released that album. And it will go like this forever, where it's like every detail. And you know that what was happening is the new single came out and they went and edited the page and they're like, oh, man, the new single came out. And then it just stays there forever. And it's this, the sedimentary Wikipedia page. And I'm sure there are Wikipedians who are like, yeah, we tag those. Those are really bad.

But like, those are the ones that I'm tempted to edit is like, guys, hey everybody, this page sucks. I'm going to, I don't care about the individual details of when little, when singles or music videos or when, when somebody said there would be a new album someday, it's so irrelevant from the perspective of today wanting to understand who's in this band and what have they done. I think that's one of actually the biggest problems Wikipedia has is that there's nobody there who has the perspective to say that it's not a litany of news items, but is supposed to be an overview of what the band is doing. So, or whatever. So anyway, that's the part that bugs me about Wikipedia is such, it is a side effect of the fact that people can edit it, that they end up

editing breathlessly in real time. And then a couple of years past and you look at the document and you're like, this is a real time log of things and not an article. And those need to go by-bye. So maybe I'll write a story about it. My idea I had was I was going to take a Wikipedia article for a band that I like and I was going to edit it. And I was going to have a snapshot of it before and after. And I was going to talk about why this is the problem with Wikipedia. And maybe I will do that sometime, but not today. But anyway, that's my Wikipedia take. And Yoni says,

now that Apple has released the creator studio with PixelMator Pro included, what do you think is going to happen to Photomator? Do you think that it will remain as a standalone app of updates or go away or go the way of aperture and have its features folded into photos? I currently have a Creative Cloud subscription for Lightroom and Photoshop.

I would love to reduce the number of subscriptions I pay for since I don't use everything in Creative Cloud. Yeah. My hope is that Photomator will become part of the suite. And Joe Rosenstiel pointed this out that they announced like some app was not going to be updated. And then they didn't talk about Photomator suspiciously. Like that's almost like an Apple signal. It's like something an analyst could ask about. Is this a tough compare? That may be Photomator. There is a plan there and they're not willing to say what it is yet. Because I have definitely heard, from people who've said, you know what this thing lacks is Lightroom. And ironically, yes, Aperture was Lightroom's competitor and they killed Aperture like a decade ago and they're not bringing back Aperture, or at least they're not bringing back that code base. I guess I could reuse that name if they really wanted to. So I think what I would like to see happen is that Apple make their equivalent of Lightroom for Pro creators. I don't think that's Photos. I don't think that's Photos pro with a

freemium upsell. I feel like that needs to be its own app. And maybe it's Photomator. And maybe they will do that. My other gut feeling is that if they do that, they will probably still add features to photos from Photomator and that that's okay. My fear is that they will make photos part of the premium bundle, which would be terrible because for reasons already specified. So that's my guess is that they haven't announced that it's dying, which means they have plans for it that they're not willing to talk about yet. And that's a very Apple thing. Yeah. Interesting. It would be nice to continue having a product like this that exists, I suppose. I've never used Photomater because it's just not the type of thing that I do to photos. On the iPad, it was the best way to touch up photos for a long time. Before they did cleanup, you know, that was how you could like circle somebody. You could wipe somebody out in the background and Photomator would let you do that. And then, you know, Apple did it like five years later and required Apple intelligence.

and they've been working on photomator for years. So it's good. But yeah, that's the best example I can give and the best scenario is that they haven't talked about killing it, which probably means that it's part of a strategy because they should totally add a photography element like this to the bundle on top photo management and batching and processing and stuff that isn't, you know, that's above pixelmator

to do that sort of thing and throw it in the creative bundle. That would be cool. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode of the show, or you have any feedback or follow-up about this episode, go to Upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to our members to support us of Upgrade Plus. They get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week.

If you'd like to find us on YouTube, search for Upgrade Podcast on YouTube. Thank you to our sponsors, that is, people over at Squarespace, FitBod, and Century for supporting this show. But most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Curley.

Happy birthday. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.