Upgrade - 603: Recalibrate the Quality Bar

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade. Episode 603. Today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN, FitBod, Squarespace, and Fondera. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. I have a Snell talk question for you. I thought you might.

John wants to know, what sports besides curling are you watching in the Olympics? Oh, besides curling. I'm doing, we were talking to Lauren's parents last night. They're like, oh, we're watching this and we're watching this. I was thinking to myself. Other sports exist other than curling. Interesting, interesting. I mean, I've seen some of the ice dancing and figure skating and stuff flying back from vacation.

In fact, the Olympics were on on the TV provided by the airline. So we watched some of that. I've seen some skiing stuff, some snowboarding stuff, some short track speed speed. skating, which is fun, some long track speed skating. Like, I've seen, I've seen, basically what I do when it's not, a lot of what we're doing is, is watching curling, right? A lot of it is literally going to Peacock, the NBC app, and, and watching, like, because all these games are happening at like 2 a.m., 6 a.m., or 10 a.m. So some of, so a lot of them are just over by the time, or almost over by the time we wake up.

So I'm often just watching the replay of earlier curling. But in the evening, when we're not watching earlier curling, because there isn't any anymore, I have been just popping on whatever is on. And the way that the linear network part of the Olympics works is it's basically, if you're not up early watching live stuff from Italy, they've got an edited kind of compilation, like an omnibus of interesting stuff from that day. And so literally I just put the Olympics on and whatever they hand me. So we watched some biathlon last night, which is a wild sport that is even wilder this week because of the human.

Like there's somebody who is a convicted credit card theft thief who won a gold medal. And then there was the guy who admitted to cheating on his girlfriend and begged for her to take him back. Like, that's all biathlon. And those people have guns. So anyway, um, yeah. So it's a, it's a real. It's a real, just kind of a random assortment. And Zoe and our chat is talking about the gold zone. I haven't watched as much of the gold zone because I've been watching so much curling, but they had this great channel on Peacock called Gold Zone, which is literally the guy who hosts the NFL Red Zone and three other guys,

including one of the other guys who hosted the other Red Zone channel that used to exist, kind of wild. So NBC was like, that's a good idea. And so they whip around to all the different live events as they're happening. The problem being on the West. coast is there are not they're not live for very long after I wake up because a lot of that stuff is happening when I'm asleep. But yeah, that's a fun channel too. So, but mostly curling, but yeah, a little, little buffet of other stuff. So you can imagine we have been inundated

with curling questions this week. Yeah, we can all imagine that. We're going to actually devote an entire Ask Upgrade segment to curling today at the end of the show, including Jason's take on the controversy. The controversy, yeah. Jason's so many questions about the unbelievable amount of questions. Thank you for fielding them. I actually had somebody asked me yesterday, are you going to talk about at the curling club?

Are you going to talk about the controversy on your podcast? And I said, I think it's inevitable. Yeah, so many questions. So we will be talking about curling and all curling-related controversies at the end of the episode. So buckle up for that. If you would like to send in a snow talk question, to help us open a future episode of the show.

Just go to Upgradefeedback.com and send yours in. Let's handle some follow-up. So we spoke about the iPhone fold last time and if they would actually call it that. And we had a few listeners write in with their names that they would like to give the phone. I thought I would read them and we could judge them. Dominic wrote in and said,

how about the iPhone pocket for the folding phone name? I like that name, by the way. Maybe. Maybe. It feels small. The iPhone Pocket Jason's right behind me. It's the orange sock thing. They already, I just realized they already did it.

They already did it. Oh no. What, you monsters, you did it. iPhone Pocket's such a great name. They already did it. So unfortunately, Dominic, that one's taken. Rob wrote in and said, I enjoy the speculation around the name of the folding phone.

If Apple brought the iBook name back and used it for a new line of products, that would be a fun choice. They could offer multiple eyebook models that target different use cases, from iPhone replacements to iPad Air Replacements. all in the ibook family what do you think uh they're going to call it iPhone yeah there's nothing you do about it while i like that idea that like they have like a whole new set of products because they can just be different sizes and form factors and stuff um they're not going to not call an iPhone yeah i think that's the that's the truth of it because iPhone is the most important

product to them so and i like the idea conceptually this is the thing that i've stumbled on is book is actually not in a notebook or book is a pretty good idea yeah but no notebook means something and, you know, I guess you could call it the iPhone book, but then it's just the iPhone book. You could call it the iPhone note and it would explode on planes. You know? Yeah. Nick wrote and said iPhone flex or iPhone folio. Folio is fun, but I think might be a bit too much.

Yeah, I mean, it's okay. I would say, I think we might have even mentioned folio last time. FOLio is a word they use, so it's in the ballpark. I think it might not be right, but I get it. And iPhone Flex doesn't mean anything, but then again, that doesn't mean anything either. The fact that it doesn't mean anything itself does not mean anything. Names don't need to mean things really in the end. iPod.

So iPhone Flex, probably not, but also interesting. Like I said, I just struggle to come up with a name here, but I feel like there are some possible names that are not iPhone Fold. iPhone Folio is not a bad name. And Brian Broughton has said, all that the iPhone Studio, since it unfolds, it could be used for a more creative work. Also, it's not a Pro iPhone. It's not a base iPhone. Sort of like how the Mac Studio is not a Mac Pro, at least not when it was released, but also not a Mac Mini. I don't think Studio is a concept that works with the iPhone.

I agree. I mean, as a metaphor, like, I get it. I think this is not bad reasoning by Brian. I just don't think Apple's studio word is all about, like, harnessing creativity. And I don't think that's what they're trying to get across with a folding iPhone. I think they wanted to feel, have much more broad appeal than that. So, I mean, iPhone Flex is a better, is a better name than that for the,

you know, not only is it to play on it bending. you know, folding, but it's also your flexibility in being able to use it as little or big. So I would put more, more odds, better odds on that one. Yeah, iPhone flex feels very 2000s kind of market. It does. Weird flex, but okay. You know, I don't know. Yeah, see, that's why you couldn't call it that, because every single headline would be weird flex, but okay. I mean, honestly, in going through this, thank you for the suggestions, everyone. I think I'm back around to they're just going to go out the iPhone fold.

I mean, maybe. Maybe. Holger says in Discord, what about Ultra? That name is still out there. Could work for this. This doesn't feel like an Ultra though, right? That's the thing, especially if they've got another one coming next year. That's supposed to be like super new cutting edge.

Would you not save that for that? I don't know. I think that's going to be the iPhone 20? I think they're going to call out the iPhone 20. Just like double X or something like that. They're going to evoke. Well, even then they would have to call it like the iPhone 20 Pro or something. Yeah, which I think they would have.

Maybe it's iPhone 20 Ultra. Maybe it's iPhone 20 Ultra. YouTube now has an official app on the Vision Pro. It has happened. We did it, everyone. Two years later. I think the fact that the YouTube apps got taken off the App Store was an indication that this was going to happen. Yeah.

And I think maybe there was some sort of a, I feel like this with YouTube and Netflix that maybe they had some of a, some kind of a deal with meta that actually precluded them from building this. But it's there now. I don't have a chance to use it yet. I have been way too busy this last week. But I'm looking forward to trying it out. It supports 8K on the, on the, on the M5 version. And obviously any sort of 3D or 18360 content. I've got a Total Party Kill posted on YouTube that's a...

Yep. That's a 1-8 or is a 360. And I've watched it by side-loading the file, but it will be fun to be able to look at that and make sure that that's all, you know, like I'm a little person standing on a tabletop watching people play D&D because that's where the camera was. That's good.

That's good. People... YouTube is a good application for Vision Pro, so it probably should have an app. We should have been there from the beginning. Yeah, indeed. I'm only half joking when I say this, but it's like all it took was an LLM deal for Gemini.

I don't think that's what happened, but I don't not think it that someone was like, hey, can you just release that Vision Pro app that you've obviously been working on? I will say you said about Netflix. And previous anonymous informant told me that this was very much a thing that Apple expected to be there on day one, and that during the initial testing of the device,

people inside of Apple were using a Netflix app on their Vision Pro and it never shipped. So my expectation for that is the same thing as Netflix and the TV app integration. I think they build all this stuff

and then they hold it to Apple and they're like, give us what we want and we'll give you what you want and Apple says, no, we will not give you what you want so the Netflix says fine, we're not going to give you what you want then.

Because all these things, like the TV app stuff, they have to have built that. Like it's not just like a thing that magically has. happens. So they've built all of the functionality. They just don't let it out because they're not getting what they want from Apple and their negotiations or whatever. That said, I do have suspect that the lack of Netflix on Vision Pro is more about them having some sort of a deal with

meta that gave them exclusivity on that app for a while. But I don't know. I mean, we'll see. We'll see. On the Wayform podcast, they were talking about the fact that Google is building their own XR stuff now, right? Like Android XR. And maybe they're just going to try and put these, the YouTube app everywhere to encourage more people to make this kind of 360 immersive content. Of course. Because it benefits them with their headset. So why not also put it on the Vision Pro? Yeah, you want that content available everywhere. And talking to those people at Apple who are making immersive content for the Vision Pro, you know, their goal is not to make Vision Pro exclusive content. Their goal is to make immersive content that over time more immersive. of devices exist so that they can get that stuff in front of more people. It's just that Vision Pro is a good place for them to work on it right now. The long term is you want that content anywhere and everywhere. So if your YouTube and your Google, you would like YouTube to be the

place where all that stuff lives and that it's available everywhere that has a device that's capable of viewing it. We finally have iOS 26 upgrade statistics from Apple. From Apple, yeah. So they have confirmed that 74% of iPhones that have been released in the last four years that are in active use are now running iOS 26. For context, this would be 66% of all iPhones in use, which there only being less than 10% difference between those two numbers is incredible. Right? To show how often people are upgrading their iPhones. Yep.

Like that is kind of astounding. that it's probably that last 30% or whatever are the people that just never are great their iPhone. So Apple got to 76% for iOS 18 on January to 21st of last year. So it's about three weeks behind, which I've seen a lot of reporting being like, it's behind. From my perspective,

I would consider that to be essentially in line. Like, three weeks is not that much of a difference. I mean, I would say it's three weeks behind, which is not a lot, I agree, but it is three weeks behind. And if we look at the numbers on independent data sources, we can see that it all happened a bit later. But again, part of that is Apple. Apple controls. Apple made the decision.

That's why. I mean, that's why I would say it's basically in line. The reason for me that I position it that way is because essentially nothing changed except when Apple decided to push it out because people write the story or talk about it in such a way to be like, see how much slower take-up is because nobody likes iOS 26.

It's like it's not that. It's just when did the automatic upgrades happen? And we know that that happened later. I suspect that Apple actually held some of its, you know, ability to push out 26 for 26.1, 26.2 purposefully, right? Because they've changed things about liquid glass and they change things about iPad OS. And they control when those big surges happen.

Because that's when people, instead of people manually updating, it's their offered an update. The update is pushed to them and they have to say no. Otherwise, it happens. So they control that part of it. So yeah. I mean, I'd say it's behind, but a little bit. But the reason is because Apple kind of like held it off. And this, you know, vision that there are a whole bunch of dead enders out there are like,

I'll never update. It's like, well, I mean, there are always some. But it's not that different from previous and it's not an enormous difference. Yeah, I mean, to me it feels like basically the same. I mean, I know it's not like technically the same, but I just feel like it's proving that whenever Apple decides to press the button, essentially the same amount of people will just upgrade whether they kind of want to or not. but I do think that that's important for this time

because I think people would say like, oh, there's so much negative press about iOS 26, people are going to not allow their phones to update. But I don't really think that that's the case at all, you know? Mm-hmm. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at ExpressVPN. Watching TV about ExpressVPN is like trying to travel the world about a passport.

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Mark Gohmann is reporting that the Apple intelligence features that were being planned to be shipping in iOS 26.4 are going to slip to later releases, may be even pushed to iOS 27. Quote from Mark, testing uncovered fresh problems. We may see some features as late as May, but most likely they are going to be introduced

as part of WWDC this year and then shipped in September or later. Mark says that personal context is one of the features most likely to be delayed and the app-intense-powered action across apps is struggling too. I'll read a quote from Mark German. The new series sometimes falls back, on its existing integration with OpenAI's chat GPT

instead of using Apple's own technology. That can happen even when Siri should be capable of handling the request. According to Mark, apparently 26.5 could include new web searching and image generation tools that are accessed via series, so that will come later in the year. The web searching stuff would be things

that are similar to what's available in complexity and chat GPT. Essentially, it seems that Apple is struggling to develop a system that feels up to the question, quality level that they are looking for with the iPhone. I wanted to ask you, Jason, do you think that maybe this is just something that's inherent to the technology and Apple was struggling to get their heads around that? Or does Apple just not have good enough technology to be able to make this stuff work? Oh, it's hard to say. I think that, I think it's entirely possible that part of the problem here is that Apple had a vision for how they wanted this to work and what they wanted to achieve.

That's actually hard to do with current models, including, I mean, we've been talking about this as a story about Apple's models failing. But the other way to view this is it's a story about LLM's failing Apple's vision, including Gemini, right? like even if they've got new tech that they're using on this is apples you know what apple was picturing not what they are getting and is that about apple's dream i don't know i mean my guess is it's probably both my guesses is probably both right it may be something about the way the series system is working and what it's routing where it's routing um it may be the inherent unreliability of lLMs like all of these things are possible So Mark is still talking about Apple getting ready to debut a, quote,

major new AI initiative at WWDC. This is what we spoke about for, about making Siri feel more like a chatbot, having deep integration inside of different apps so they hook together. So your data is all available to you, essentially so you could talk to your computer. But the thing that I'm stuck on in reading this article is, am I supposed to believe that they can do that? And also, if this is coming in WWDC, why would you ship any of those iOS 26 features? Like, what are we doing at this point? Like, you'd ship them in May and then in June show them off, like, completely differently. Like, I do not understand what's happening here. I would just, if you, I'm sorry to just keep monologuing here. I mean, me just read a statement from CNBC that Apple gave to them. Apple says that they are still on track to deliver, I would say, something in 2026. I want to read this statement because I think

it's fascinating. This is from CNBC. The long-awaited artificial intelligence update to Siri's assistant has been internally pushed back to May and potentially later Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The update was expected to launch within a couple of weeks, but the company may roll out the features over several months, the report stated, Apple told CNBC it is still on track to launch in 2026. The smallest statement that could ever be given, like, there's no detail there at all, but just that something's coming in this year. Part of the dynamic here is that Mark German reported that they were trying to ship this in the spring, and now he's reporting that they might not. Yeah. And I've seen a lot of people are out there who are like, well,

if Apple never really said they were shipping in the spring, how can it be late? How can it be delayed? It sounds like Mark German's report was wrong. I don't believe that. No. I believe that his report was right because his track record was really good. And also, when else were they going to ship it? That they wanted to ship it this spring.

And that they are now thinking differently about it. And if that has led to Apple stock going down, so be it. Because Mark German's previous report that they were going to ship this stuff was priced into the stock, too. It's all part of how this goes. All that information is there. And if you want to, you know, you can. It is true. Apple didn't delay anything because Apple hasn't said anything other than that it would launch this year. So that's fair. I was surprised when we got that initial report. We talked about it. That Apple, I think part of Apple's, we're going to promise nothing at WWC 2025 that we can't deliver.

That whole premise that they had. I think they were also saying, and we'll internally, and we'll deliver everything we promised. by the end of this cycle. I think they just set a goal for themselves, which was deliver everything we promised at WWC 24 by the end of the iOS 26 cycle. And then we'll do some new stuff in 27, and we'll launch that at WWC 26. But let's wrap up what we promised.

I think that was what was behind their attempt to get all this stuff out in a late version rather than holding it for June. And that answers your question, kind of, which is like, why would they do this? I think they just decided that it was part, of their, you know, let's keep that promise we broke. Let's show that we, you know, make good on our promises. I think it was a motivator for them internally. And I haven't heard this. It's just you can see it

from their actions. And it's become impractical to do it, though. It's even harder to do that. And you and I, I think, responded the same way when we heard this original report, which is like, is that what you want to do? Or are you better off recalibrating what you think your strategy is and launching a whole thing that makes sense in June. Because the danger here is what we maybe just saw, which is that they made guesses about what they were going to be capable of doing based on a faulty premise in 2024. And they've spent the last few months trying to make good on those promises

when perhaps the right thing to do was to throw those promises away. Yeah. And knowing what they know now about the case, capabilities of LLMs and about their infrastructure, what would those features look like today and make a new promise in June? But they didn't, I mean, obviously they held that in reserve, right? Because they didn't announce that they were going to do this in the spring. They didn't do that. They've only said this year for a good reason, which is they didn't want to over promise this. And what German says is in the background, they were trying to deliver it in the spring. And even that is not something that they're capable of doing. My prediction right now is that we will get, we will not see personal context or action across apps before iOS 27. And as part of the WWC keynote, they will introduce two features called personal context and action across apps, but they're doing different things than what we saw. I just don't think they're able to do what they showed off that they could do. They cannot get it done in time, and so they will start over.

As funny as it is to think about it this way, because this has been a story about Apple, Apple's models failing them. Part of this story seems to be Apple's imagining of what LLMs could do reliably being wrong. Yes. Right? Like part of it. And it's funny because that was 2024. LLMs are better at this stuff. now, although better at this stuff in ways that are in some cases really intensive in terms of

computing resources and potentially time, right? Because they want these responses to be fairly fast. So I, I, yeah, the picture I'm getting now is that Apple was let down by its LLM, you know, its models and let down by its, impression of what they would be able to do at a level that was reliable for Apple. Now, it may be given, I mean, one of the questions is what's the appetite of the audience for this? Because I don't believe that Apple, and I hear this from some people, I don't believe that Apple is incapable of putting AI stuff in the iPhone at the same level as Google. They have a deal with Google. Like, I don't believe that.

I don't believe that it was like, oh, Android. and Microsoft Windows, they're going to have all these amazing things and Apple's going to be like, oh, we just don't know what to do. I just don't believe that. I don't think that's the issue. I think the issue is that Apple is even now reluctant

to ship AI-based features at what the rest of the industry considers acceptable levels of failure. And the question is, does Apple recalibrate their quality bar or does Apple hold back and be a little more restrained because they just don't like what they're seeing in terms of testing uncovering fresh problems, right?

Yeah. And I don't, it's a tough one, right? Because I mean, look, I've used AI stuff for a bunch of things. I've been exploring that. That's part of, I feel like part of our jobs is to explore what this stuff is and then talk about it. And I have, they don't happen like they used to, but like, I absolutely have stuff that happens. where I'm like, pooh, this thing is garbage, right? And then I'll do the next thing and it'll be like,

oh my God, it's magic. And then, you know, four or five times later, I'll say, nope, this thing completely blew it. And the nice thing about that happening in a in the Claude app or the chat GPT app or whatever, is you do command in and make a new conversation that is not that conversation and you just try it again. And maybe they'll get it right this time. But like, that's a fact of life. does Apple accept that sometimes you're going to have a Siri conversation

that gives you wrong answers and bad information or does or creates bad actions across your apps and you'll be like well it's AI that's what do you want and maybe so I mean that's what a lot of these tech giants seem to do is basically you know slap a label on it that says this may be wrong and ship it and maybe you know that's a question for Apple what do they want to be here do they want to be with the crowd or do they want to, I think that's what they're struggling with because I don't know where they're setting the bar, but like I could see, and this is a problem for them potentially.

I can see where they're in it, they've got an issue where they've got all these ambitious AI features, just like all the AI companies have. But when Apple does it and it has a certain failure rate, they're like, we can't ship this. Whereas maybe all the other AI companies are like, yeah,

we're just experimenting, ship it, see what happens. Well, I would say, though, both image playgrounds, and notification summaries were features that they were happy to ship, and neither of them produce reliable output.

Were they happy to ship them, or did they have to ship them because they were the only ones that were remotely functional? I think that's one of the questions I've got. They did ship them, though. You know what I mean? Right. And they continue to exist as functions. So I think that they are...

But they got beat up by the notification summary thing, right? I mean, yeah, but... I think this is the internal issue, even now inside Apple. it seems like to me, which is people at Apple, I think there are undoubtedly people at Apple who are like, this feature isn't good enough. And other people at Apple who are like, what do you mean?

It's amazing. Let's ship it. Sure. Because that's really, look, wouldn't you say that that's kind of the core of the AI reliability problem right now is that when it works, it's amazing and sometimes it doesn't work. And so it depends on how you look at it. You can either look at it as, well, yes, this feature sometimes is a complete piece of

garbage, but when it works, it's magical. Or do you say anything that produces garbage is unacceptable? Like, those are your choices, right? As you either accept that sometimes it's garbage or you don't use it. But the problem is that when you use it and it's magical, it does feel transformational as a tech product. And I wonder if Apple is even now having those issues. Also, to go back to what we were saying about Apple's ambition, app intents, action across apps, this idea? I mean, this is the danes. We are living in an era where giving models too much power can lead to catastrophic results.

And, you know, there are stories that maybe we'll talk about in Upgrade Plus today, but like chatbots, filing pull requests for open source projects and posting attacks on the project when it rejected them for being a bot, the bot posting, potentially attacks. Like all the stuff with whatever it's called now, OpenClaw,

the idea that once, but when it's like call it code and things like that too and codex from OpenAI, once they're in your command line, they can reach out of the internet, they can do stuff. Like, the more power you give them unsupervised, the more potential danger there is.

And I wonder, if Apple shipping a feature that essentially does that with control of all of your apps to every iPhone user, maybe too ambitious for right now. And if that is, again, part of their problem, is that they had a vision for this thing being like, this is gonna be great.

And then when it came down to it, they looked at it and thought, oh no. I just think they have to stop making promises. They keep making promises. They won't, they can't stop. making promises. Well, their promise now is that they're going to ship stuff in 2026, but they are still sort of saying they're going to ship what they announced. And I'm with you. I feel like if they're holding on to what they announced and like, look, we announced it so

we must ship it, even though they're thinking this is not what I would choose to do today, maybe they should not do it. Right? Like, maybe they should choose what they choose what they choose to do today. What's capable and reasonable knowing what they now know about the state of the art of this stuff, rather than sort of like trying to make a promise that is going to be two years. out of date. My bet now, between now and June, we see some new features for Apple Intelligence that are powered by their new models, which are powered by Gemini. I do not think that the big features that we're still waiting for are going to be those

ones, and I think we will see them rebranded, essentially. Well, the names remain the same, but the capabilities change, and that is part of iOS 27. I just think these initiatives are way too large to get... I mean, I've been questioning on this show. If the timeline for the Gemini deal is as it seemed to be, it always seemed like it was too fast to try and get these things done before WWDC. Also, if your idea is, like, let's just take it back to, we'll recalibrate Siri and make it a little bit better.

And finally we'll have a good Siri. Why would you put that in 26.4? I know. Right? Like to your point, why would you, oh, well, if you're in the later days of this OS cycle, you get a completely new Siri. Otherwise, you wait until 20, like doesn't it feel like as a, even as a user and in terms of communicating to people that the new OS would come with new Siri? Not that new Siri would just sort of like show up or new but transitional to yet a newer series will show up at the end of 26. and then in 27 you'll get.

So like 26 is like weird hybrid Siri. And in five years we'll all be looking back and saying, hey, remember that weird Siri that was in between? It's like if you're going to revisit and revamp a feature as major as Siri, why wouldn't you do that in 27 rather than... Because also they'll ship it. So they say they'd do it in 265 or whatever, 24. They'll ship it and people were still not a chat bot.

I said, yeah, we're going to do that later? I just don't do it. And I get this, again, the internalized sort of like we want to make good on our promises, but like, who's asking for this? Who is, who is tapping on their watch in April or May of 2026 and saying, Apple, where's that feature that you promised me 22 months ago? Like, nobody, this is self, this is self-imposed, right? Like, that's, that's part of it here is that I know you made a promise and you want to keep it.

But it's weird. Like, maybe you need to do that classic Apple thing of, of, of, casting your plan and announce it in June and say we stood up here two years ago and we set a bunch of stuff and the world has changed and we can't give you all that stuff we have new stuff that we are

confident that we're going to give you and here it is and we're going to give it to you this year. It's even better. And then they do the Apple thing where they're like that was interesting but this is going to be better especially because it's going to work and it's going to ship and here it is. I feel like that like that seems like a better approach to me

That's the bottom line is I'm not sure who's asking for them to make good on the video that they showed in 2024. I mean, they already took the black eye for it. I don't think there's more black eye if they don't ship those features. If they've got, if they've got a new plan, right? Yeah. I also don't think they're going to be hailed as heroes if 265 ships with those features at last. I just, I can't see that. Like, oh, yeah, you did it 22 months later.

I just don't know what they're doing with that. obviously we are asking what are you doing but that's different and also we're like we're asking them to just say or do something rather than just keep re-promising like it's just like it i don't know how helpful that is uh like the cnbc thing just like still on track to launch in 2026 like what does that even mean just deal with it. I could also imagine pre-WWDC there's a little blog post that goes out as an interview with someone and they're just like, hey, you know what?

We're just scrapping that. We're not doing that anymore and just kind of try and sweep it under a rug just before WWC comes around. That's not, I mean, that's not what I would advise them to do. I would advise them to do the classic stand-on stage at WWDC and say, you know, we announced some stuff, but we forget about that.

We've got better stuff today. Yeah. And then you just move on and you act like, you know, they did that with the butterfly keyboard. They've done that a bunch of times now where it's like, ah, that was, that we did this really an innovative keyboard. And we've heard from customers these other needs. And now we've got an even better keyboard. You've innovated harder. Yeah. Yeah. With more travel. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at FitBod.

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I don't know, I say Simulcast, but that's not... Simultaneously, I think. In New York, London, and Shanghai, on March 4th at what is 9 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time. Yes. 6 a.m. Pacific. Assumedly, this is for some of the smaller products that we're at. expecting. We're going to talk about one of them in a minute, but the MacBook, the 17E, if there is any kind of Apple intelligence features, they may want to show them to people here, which is why they

want to do these kind of split event kind of things. Well, it's, okay, I have a guess about what this is. And I should say, what do I know about this? Well, I woke up this morning like everybody else to this as a surprise, unlike probably many other people, but like some people, I woke up to an email saying, would you like to come to New York? So I'll be there. And I checked with my Apple BR person. I'm like, I can say I'll be there, right? Because sometimes these things are like, don't tell anybody.

Don't tell anybody it's happening. But this is like a public event where they've said to everybody, you know, yeah, it's happening. I don't know more than that about it. I assume what they've decided to do is similar to what they've done in the past. In fact, I went to one of these last year, year before, where they do these. events in in New York and maybe other places where my guess is we're not going to be under embargo and that there'll probably be a product announcement at that time yeah this is just a guess I'm just guessing but having done a bunch of these events and that will be there for they'll

probably like play a video on their site that they play for us there is my guess and then we'll have a hands on and the reason you go to these events in New York London and Shanghai is because they'll have the new products there and they'll have demo stations and they'll have you know, oh, this audio professional is going to show you about how great it is to use this Mac to do logic or whatever it is. They always have these kind of like use cases, which is very funny for me because it's like, let me show you how you use the Mac. And I'm like, I know, but there are other people there from other media that are not as aware. And so they need to get them to. And I totally understand that. So yeah, this is another way, a slightly different maybe

way of launching new products. But my guess is that it's just, that's what it is, is that they want to have some members of the press get their hands on these things that they will have announced probably that day. I've been there where it's been under embargo for a few hours, but I've also been there where we are watching it simultaneous with the world. And then what's different about it, the reason you go to New York is because then you get your hands on it. And then presumably there's a review program that happens after that for when they're finally shipping that's separate from this entirely. So this was. be kind of like a news and hands-on event.

They're doing it in three places. I think that's nice. I have to go to New York. Yeah. But somebody who's in Europe can go to London and cover it, which is great. And somebody in Asia can go to Shanghai and cover it, which is great. Hilariously, the Shanghai event is at, no, Singapore event. Is it Shanghai or Singapore?

I don't know. Our notes say Shanghai. They do. They do say that and it is Shanghai. Yeah. Sorry. The Shanghai event is at 10pm. I saw someone post film threats.

It's 10 p.m. Because that's just the time zones. So my expectation is what you're saying. I reckon there will be a video that goes up on the website, not necessarily like one of their big live stream things. And newsroom posts or whatever. And so people can just, everyone will know what the news is at the same time, but then you will be taken to go look at the stuff and talk to the people

and do the experience, whatever that may be. Yeah, I'm going to talk to the people and do the experience. These are the things. These are the things. I can't wait for that experience. So, we draft in next week? I, well, okay. I mean, we don't have to do this on the show,

but my feeling is if this experience is happening on a Wednesday, I don't know. I mean, my gut feeling is maybe that we just draft on the Monday, right? Like, so we're not going to, yeah, I think that's actually fine. And then we'll just talk about it the following week. So we're just, we're not going to make an attempt. I think it is fair to assume this is not going to be a big enough deal that we will feel the need to record that day. An emergency episode later that day, probably not.

And would we, I mean, also it's because of time zones and because of everything. So this is real inside baseball is like, I might not be able to record a podcast until very late on Wednesday when you're already asleep. At which point it's Thursday. And honestly, once we get to Thursday, I start to think, why are we not just waiting for Monday? Just wait for Monday. Yeah, okay. So we'll do a draft on Monday to second then.

So people want to know that. So that's the thing that we can. I think it'll be an experienced draft. Very exciting. How do we experientially draft? We'll find out. The draft is always an experience. That's true.

Multimedia. Multimedia. Mm-hmm. Let's do some rumour around up, Jason Snell. Yeah, let's do it. So one of the products that I reckon, and we all reckon, will be debuted at this event, is the A-Series MacBook.

Mark German reported in his Power on Newsletter over the weekend, once again stating that it is a just under 13-inch display, interesting, but that it will be, this computer will be made of aluminium, and Apple have been testing,

quote, a series of playful colors over the past year. Apple has tested options such as light yellow, light green, blue pink, classic silver, and dark gray, though it's unlikely all of these will ship. But this is all we want to just put some color in that computer. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know about the colors. Are those all the colors? He says such as, right? So like he may not even know, but that they tested these colors. I remember him reporting in the past that they tested colors. I love it. Great. Let's, I mean, let's do it. I don't know why those aren't other on other things. But what he also said is it's a new process, right? So it's a new

aluminum process. So they're piloting a different aluminum process that also presumably is cheaper or in the long run will be cheaper. And using this laptop to do it. I don't know whether that'll come to other laptops or not. Great. Bring it on. I'm really, I mean, for a product that I'm not interested in buying or using myself, I'm actually, I think this is one of the most interesting products that they've done in a while because it's so different and it's trying to do different things. And every laptop they've made has been so samey for so long that it would be very interesting if they do something with some real color to it as well as that price, which is fascinating. In his power on newsletter, Mark is also reporting that Apple and Tesla have been working together

to get car play ready to debut in their cars at some point in the near future. Apparently, the two companies had to collaborate to get the mapping features to work correctly with Tesla's self-driving capabilities, but this update to car play has shipped with 26.3. So Tesla now appears to be waiting for a greater adoption of this version for it to, for them to roll it out in the cars. Yeah, or at least, I mean, I'm unclear. Grumman didn't specify the version either. It may have actually been an adult. I think I've guessed that one. But it's a recent version of 26.

I've just taken a stop there. I think if you're Tesla, you want them to solve the problem and you want to have it there and then you want to be able to tell people just run a do a system update and then it'll work and then you could roll it out and they obviously have to roll out a software update on their side to do it we talked about this a while ago um Tesla sales are are bad yep and um they want to push every button possible and when they were riding high it was very easy to say oh just use our thing um and now they're like if if it if new car buyers in the united states especially care about car play, maybe we should give them car play.

I'm fascinated because I don't actually know why. I assumed that linking up maps and Tesla's navigation was not relevant because you would, you know, the self-driving or whatever is going to be the navigation in the system. I guess their concern was something like, If the full self-driving is going somewhere via one route and Apple Maps says another route and people are looking at Apple Maps, they're going to be really confused about what's going on. I expect it's something about like automatic rerouting that like the Tesla system may choose on its own to start rerouting. But the Apple Maps doesn't know that and you're going to because and also the implementation here is also going to be weird. So the implementation says that CarPlay will run in a.

window in the Tesla interface. Yeah. Which is not how it usually runs. So there may be kind of like two maps on screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like maybe there's a thing about getting that to talk to each other. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is not how cars usually operate with car. So if you were wondering if this feature was going to happen, I would say the fact that Apple actually made adjustments in iOS to make it happen, suggest strongly it is going to happen. Yeah. And I think it's good. I think it's good for Tesla because I have been right out there saying that carmakers should just support CarPlay because it's what people want because phones are important. And carmakers that don't are either being incredibly arrogant or being really, I don't know, mistreating their customers by trying to extract more out of them by making their experience worse.

I just don't like it. Let people choose. Let people choose. So this is, it's a good move. I think it's a smart business move. They're at a point where they need to do anything they can to convert anybody who might consider buying a Tesla to make it a little easier for them to buy the Tesla. So great. And German doesn't say this, but given the track record of Tesla software updates, I imagine this will just get pushed out to their entire fleet, which means anybody who has a Tesla will get CarPlay. Yeah. And those people will probably be happy too. I love car play on our Chevy Bolt. It's awesome. I finally got a car that does car play. And it's like, it's really nice.

Lauren, who is very skeptical sometimes of all my computer-assisted thingies, loves it because that's the car she drives to work every day. And she loves it. She loves car play and how it gives her access to her, you know, her Libby audiobooks and,

you know, her podcast that she's listening to and all these things. So like, life is better. leaving aside everybody's feelings about Elon life is better when your car has car play. So if Tesla's finally getting over it, getting over it

and accepting that people want carplay, great. Bring it on. It's interesting because one of the reasons that it said that they would do things like this is because Elon has this like just truly insane compensation package available to him for increasing Tesla sales.

So I do wonder, like, Like maybe there might be an incentive for them to not put it in every Tesla, right? That like maybe a certain age you might want to get a new one to get it. But I don't know. We'll see. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like they're in such dire straits right now that they're throwing things at the wall.

But this is absolutely one of them, right? Like to just all of a sudden just be like, oh, we use carplay now? Like that is a very strange move. If you take away the context of their flailing as a car. on my co right now. Yeah, but I, but then again, I think it's the right thing to do. I mean, when the Rivian CEO came out and was like asked about carplay and he was like, mar, right? Like lots of nonsense to basically say, we just, we spent a lot of money on software. We don't want to let anybody's software into our device. And it's like, well, that's too bad.

Their phone is with them. You just need to get over it and let people choose what they want to do. And if you make a better system, they'll use your system. And so, so I, I, you know, in General Motors is a very similar way where they're like, oh, no, no, no. Our system is so great. And I will admit that this is also an iOS user problem because I believe a lot of these Android auto-based ones, not Rivian, but like what GM's doing, like that's going to, you can, you can actually load things from the Play Store in there, right? Like, but if you're using an iOS-only app, you are out of luck. And if you're used to CarPlay, you're going to be like, well, why would I not? keep using car play.

And that so so it's a good, I think it's a net positive, um, regardless when any company says, we will let users choose a better way of navigating their phones information when they're in our car. Like, um,

it's better. It makes for better rental cars too, I'll, I'll say. Yeah. It's really nice when I get in a rental car in this car play. So the, the one you just mentioned about is that,

is it Android automotive rather than Android auto? Yes, Android automobos. My understanding is that Android automotive still has app compatibility with Play Store apps, with Android apps. And I got a good email from a previous guest on the show of Sam Abuel Sam Abou El-Samid, who pointed out that the Android story in terms of software is actually pretty good with those systems. But it doesn't help if you use Overcast, right? Yeah, correct. 9 to 5 Mac has collected a selection of reports. sets the groundwork

what we can expect from the iPhone 18 Pro later on this year more colors currently the rumors are circling around brown,

purple and burgundy this is not exciting to me compared to my orange that I have right now brown will never die like as a rumor

as a rumored color like brown has been suggested as an iPhone color for a very long time now and it ends up usually being

something else like desert titanium. Desert titanium. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I like brown will never die.

I think is a put somebody put that on someone's tombstone. I don't want brown and burgundy and purple. Like those, they're too much of in the same area for me, those colors. Like put all three of them together. I know they did seem very samey. I don't know if it's clear whether those are colors being tested

or whether those are supposedly the colors of the, of the next round, but it does seem, they all seem a little bit much, right? Like, it's like a, burgundy and like a plum and then brown. Yeah. I'm not sure.

I don't know about that. I'm not sure. I actually had a thought, I have not thought about an iPhone for a very long time, Mike, which is, I don't know, if I'm going to be willing

to give up my orange for that. Yeah. Like, the orange is so good. You got to wow me with another good color. Well, this might be the year for it though, right? Because you'll keep your orange iPhone and then get the folding iPhone. And so, you know.

Maybe. You need a regular iPhone and folding iPhone. The 18 Pro will have a smaller dynamic island but still have a dynamic island. And it's been going backwards and forwards and what that might be. And that's where the consensus is right now. The telephoto lens will be higher quality. And the main camera will get a variable aperture. So I've been trying to read a little bit about this today, Jason,

to understand what is the benefit to me as someone who doesn't understand cameras enough as an iPhone user, what their variable aperture would get me. Essentially, in a nutshell, it will open up the ability to tune the lens to be better in different lighting conditions, relying less on computational photography for everything. So you may have one mode where it's better in bright light, one mode where it's better in lower light, and that the, depending on what the variability of the aperture, it'll probably be between two settings. You could have different functions tuned for those modes so that they will perform better where they needed. We could see things like more realistic depth of field blur for the background about needing to do

portrait mode stuff, this kind of thing. So essentially you'll be getting more light in different scenarios and it may require Apple to have to lean less on some of the computer tricks that they're doing. I think this is amazing. One of the things that people who care a lot about photography have been hoping for a long time is that these phone cameras would somehow become more like

more sophisticated cameras and the challenge is the space right the space that these things are in so we've now got that lens that allows while not an actual physical zoom allows us multiple layers

of zoom up to a pretty impressive zoom through that special lens. If there's also a variable aperture, I mean, again, it's just another physical camera feature. And you can fake a lot of this in software. But having the hardware generally makes everything better, right? Like having real legitimate hardware.

So if they're able to do this, it's just one of these. Because if you think about the proverbial infinite time scale, you know, miniaturization and stuff, you should be able to get a whole camera into a phone. Yeah.

Eventually, somehow through magic ways, but let's just say it. Like, that's kind of the end goal is as many features that are great about traditional cameras,

capturing light as possible. Um, it is possible, because this has happened in some cases. When I was on vacation, I was, I was taking some, uh,

I wanted to take some more spatial stuff. And I realized that, There's literally no point in taking spatial photos because the software will do it and does it just as well. Yeah. And I do have that moment where I wonder if people will look back on something like this. I think striving forward is good, but if in the long run we look at the variable aperture camera and say, oh, we didn't actually need that because we were able to handle it in software. But the fact is capturing light is really tricky. and so I love this idea

and I think that you and I both have talked about like sometimes it's just watch what Apple introduces in their camera in the iPhone like in some ways that's their most important thing is just what are they doing

in the camera to make the camera better because a lot of people will buy a new iPhone because it's got an amazing camera and then other people will buy an iPhone assuming it has an amazing camera and when they get their pictures

if they're happy with them they're happy with their iPhone there's a lot of you know that the iPhone is more of a camera than anything else. And that is the expectation for this phone, really, of like, you know, we just got the big redesign. They're focusing on there being a brand new iPhone again this year with the falling phone.

So let's make some camera improvements to the profile to make that a worthy upgrade for people that would want to do that. And this would, this has the potential to be a significant upgrade. I am holding my thoughts on that because there have been times in the past where I've gotten too excited about big upgrades to the iPhone camera and they don't pan out immediately. They let you down. Well, I would say some of them did I just pan out over time. So like the increase to the megapixel count, like the 48 megapixel sensor, that has become

more beneficial over the years than the initial year that they did it because they've done the, like, the binning and all that kind of stuff to make the telephoto better. But that took multiple years of them having. the larger sensor technology to get to where we are now where that is actually much better from me as a user. They may do what they have done

in the past, like you mentioned, put a variable aperture camera in and spend a year with it on their side from their perspective and think of all these ways they can improve it, right? And that happens a lot where you're like, year one, you're like, oh, they got this thing. It's okay. And then year two,

they're like, oh, yeah, we completely rethought how it works and it works with software and that software doesn't go back to the previous model because it's different and sorry, now you need to get this version. They do that sometimes. Photographic styles is one. Yeah, that's life on the cutting edge sometimes.

Yeah, this phone will feature a C2 modem. So this is, we're going to go all new generation, all Apple this time, more efficient and may feature 5G via satellite connection. This is the rumored update for this. So you'd be able to continue. using your phone where you are not getting cell reception and also a slightly bigger battery. Yeah, there's some T-Mobile and Starlink, I think, have some 5G satellite thing now.

Okay. But this is a trend, right, is you're seeing more bands of, more radio bands, which for these various services gives you more ability to get a data connection via satellite. This episode is brought to you by SquareSpace. 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 that you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings for a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. From consultations to events and experiences, you can offer your services and get paid

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A couple of stories that caught my eye. This one is the most interesting, though. Apple has acquired the rights to severance. This is reported by deadline. So severance was being produced and was also owned by the production company fifth season. So, Ben Stiller,

it's not Ben Stiller's production company. This is something that I thought about. But it's not. Think about it this way, just to back up for people, like Ted Lassau is Warner Brothers. Yes. Right?

Like it's not, it's made for Apple TV by Warner Brothers. For All Mankind is made for Apple TV by Sony. Sony. It is Sony, yeah. So the challenge, so, and this is how you do it, right? Apple, Apple's involved. And they do it for other streamers and networks and stuff.

This is a thing that happens. You used to happen all the time. It happens a little less now where, you know, NBC Universal makes most of its content for itself. But sometimes they make for others. And Sony makes for everybody. That's their job. And Warner Brothers is a good example where they don't have broadcast,

but they've got HBO Max, but they make Ted Lasso for Apple. So Apple is now, there's some stuff that Apple is making itself for itself. And what's happened here is that Apple has basically bought severance. Apple now owns severance. And instead of it being, other company where the rights will expire

and then they can shop it elsewhere. Now, Apple owns it. You know, part and parcel. All of Severance is owned by Apple. Which gives them like long term investment in it if they want to. The reason seems to be that fifth seasons, the company that

fifth season, the company that produces it had a lot of budget overruns. And that is a risk that studios take is that they're, they get the money that they're spending from, Apple and then they're building the product and then you hope to make it back. But they ran into financial trouble. It's described at least a little bit to the second season, especially running over budget and doing reshrutes and taking more time and all these things. And then the third season has also been delayed. So like that is continuing to occur. Right. And they were having money trouble. And they actually apparently, reportedly, came to Apple and said, can we get an advance basically? Because we're having cash flow problems. And Apple said, why don't we buy? you out. Yeah.

Right. And then you get a lot of money and you will still be a producer on the show and you will still produce the show, but you'll be producing it for us. And Apple Studios will be the owner and operator of severance and, you know, the entire severance intellectual property going forward. So that's, that's what they did. So this is also similar to a deal that I don't know if I knew about or maybe I forgot that they did for Silo.

So AMC Studios made season one and then Apple acquired the rights to the Silo TV show from AMC Studios and made it an Apple Studios show which is now what Severance will be. It will be an Apple Studio show. And over time, Apple is trying to make more Apple Studios shows. So things that they own.

So Ben Stiller is working on something for Apple and it will be an Apple Studios production as opposed to, you know, like Warner Brothers. We mentioned Warner Brothers also do shrinking, right? Which, by the way, shrinking is just unbelievable. It's so good. I've seen a few episodes ahead. Me too.

And it's astounding. This season is incredible. I don't know how they're continuing to do it at the level that they're doing it at. Also, I'll say Raiders of the Lost Dark references and Star Wars references in relation to Harrison Ford. Yes, apparently.

What is going on with that? Just more winks. Okay, my theory is that he had lived that. And I don't know why you would have made that decision. Does Harrison Ford know the Indiana Jones music or not? Also, I don't know. Michael J. I was going to say Michael Scott.

Michael J. Fox. Michael J. Fox in this show is just amazing. And like, makes me want to cry every time I see him. I just think the man is amazing. And I love that he's done this. Shrinking is so special. I think I saw a quote recently, Harrison Ford said if this was his last thing, he would be happy with that.

Yeah, that he felt fulfilled. I think part of it is being in one of these hangout comedies with a bunch of people who are all just sort of like characters that have issues, but they're also fun and they're connected and all that. I think it's an experience that he's never really had. Yes. Because it's extended, right?

He goes back there for the next season and the next season. And they all seem to, like a lot of shows, everyone seems to really get on well. Like you see it, like outside of the show. And it seems like it's meaningful to him too. Like his character is dealing with, if not a death sentence, it's sort of like dealing with the end of a lot of the things that he considers part of his life. And so it's really meaty material for him as an actor,

but also it seems like he's having just a lot of fun with the group of people who make it. And I just love to see it because he's one of our great actors to see him having a good time and saying this is such a positive experience for him. And it is such a good show. Such a good show. Also, Jeff Daniels, as, like, as the father of Jason Segal is incredible casting.

Yeah. So anyway, that's a Warner Brothers show. Yeah. Like, because, because basically Bill Lawrence, who's the showrunner of that and who also was one of the showrunners at the start of Ted Lassow has to deal with Warner Brothers. So they did it through Warner Brothers.

It's also why the new Scrubs relaunch is not, he's not as heavily involved with because that's not at Warner Brothers. So it's a, and he's got other shows going on and he's got that deal with Warner Brothers. Anyway, Apple, yeah. I mean, in general, there's some vertical alignment that happens here where if you're making a show

for HBO Max, you know, Warner Brothers would prefer to make that show because it's their show and it's their streamer. Netflix makes shows from Netflix. But they also get shows from other people. Like, it's not a hard, fast rule. But this is a case where I think Apple is happy to spend some money sometimes, especially on these successful franchises.

Because they're going to have to keep... Ted Lassau is so successful, and that's... What, Warner Brothers? They're going to keep having to renegotiate with Warner Brothers about Ted Lassow forever because Warner Brothers owns Ted Lassow. So that's going to be an interesting challenge for them.

But Severance, obviously, it's a huge hit. They love it. The producer was having trouble. and I think Apple would prefer to produce more from Apple films, Apple Studios, so why would they not just say, we'll just take it on? So they did. And expanded Severance Universe, right? Like, it's going to run for at least four seasons,

and there may be prequel, spinoffs, and more. I don't know what I feel about that, other than that the show has been so good up to now that if they have other weird severance-related things they want to do, I'm not opposed to hearing about it if it's good, right? I think it makes perfect sense to do and to do prequels. Because this is a show where the lore is so deep that you can do things. Like, how did it start?

Are there other people? There could be a whole other team of people somewhere else. You know, like, why is it just these four people? They're not the only ones, right? Like, there is a lot that they could do. And the universe is very interesting. So I think you could see prequels and spinoffs and sequels and all kinds of stuff.

Like, it is a, I feel like a pretty rich world that could be tapped into. I guess one of my hesitations is just that I feel like there's lots of things in the severance world that we don't know. Right? We don't know. They've withheld some things about what this world is like. I, um, although I'll give you a short version of my, my pitch here, which is in season one, we met the woman who was the wife of the congressman. Yeah. Who had a baby while severed.

Yep. And I thought, okay, there is an interesting, like, window into what this world might be like, where you could have some other interesting stories in this very weird, almost dystopian world. Like that, I thought about the TV show, The Prisoner, which is a little bit like this, the idea of, like, what else could you do with people

who had no awareness of other parts of their world? I think there's some interesting. You don't want to have it be too much samey, but there's a whole world out there to explore and the presence of this weird company as a major tech company in a way, right? Lumen, that's interesting. I could also see, I mean, I guess my pitch

that I'm getting at here is, I could very easily see an anthology series a little bit like the one-off episodes and then ultimately the one-off series that Mithic Quest did. where you tell weird stories, Twilight Zone-esque stories in the Severance universe

might be a fun thing to do. Yep. F1 producer Jerry Brockheimer confirmed to the BBC that they are working on a sequel for the movie for Apple TV, which not a surprise, but here we are.

As of right now, there does not appear to be any other movie from Apple TV that's coming to theaters. Yeah, yeah, there's Super Bowl ad, right? all things that are not announced to be going to theaters even though they're high-profile people. Yeah, like Keanu Reeves, John Cena,

Jessica Beal, Chris Pat, Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh, and there's even a Spielberg and Scorsese-produced movie. These are all stuff, they just had, like, it's a big media day where they announced stuff coming this year. And so they have all of that, and none of it seems to be going to cinemas. I don't know what that says, but there we go.

And we have some breaking news, Jason. Oh, yes. Literally happening while we're recording. So 26.4 is shipping. Don't know what's in there yet in full. We'll find out. But this is actually kind of follow up from something we're talking about in the past.

Apple was going to be bringing some updates to Apple podcasts that will bring enhanced video podcast capabilities to the app. So like Spotify, you'll be able to switch between audio and video at the same time. Apple was working with audio and video hosting platforms. They've announced a bunch that they're working with

immediately. Those that support HLS video is a technology. Additional providers to join in the future. And I think it seems like one of the reasons that they're partnering with companies specifically is they are also touting the ability for podcasters to put dynamic video ads in the content. And so this would have to be done from a hosting provider's, uh, uh, uh, back end to be able to allow them to do that. Apple will charge participating ad networks and impressions-based fee for the delivery of dynamic ads and HLS video on Apple Podcasts.

Okay. Huh. Huh. So they want a piece of the dynamically inserted video advertising there. We're going to have to digest this one. Because also there's so little information about that. Yeah. My concern, because,

Generally, when Apple makes an announcement like this, when I get the detail, I have a million questions about the details. And the answer is usually that it's as simple as they announced it and that the details that I hope would be different are not. Because we've answered this before, but also we do a YouTube version of the podcast. And it's not on Spotify. And there's two reasons it's not on Spotify. Like one reason is video serving is an issue. Now, Spotify, I think, hosts the bandwidth themselves so you could do it. Apple here is not, so you have to pay somebody to host that video.

But the bigger issue is that we do an audio editor of the podcast that's detailed. And a video editor of the podcast that's not detailed. And Spotify, if you do a video version of your podcast, the audio version is just the audio of the video version. And that would require a complete revamp of how we edit our podcast that I would say is unlikely. But we'll see. We'll wait for the details. Yeah, I mean, like, this is why, like, in the Quartet series that I've been doing, I'm recording video of all of the conversations. And so in theory, I could do a video version of the show. But I edit that show so much. Yeah. It just wouldn't work to do a video. So, like, the idea of switching between the two would be nightmarish.

Well, you'd have to do what Erica does, my friend Erica, for Total Party Kill, which is she edits both audio and video simultaneously in a video editor. and so then the audio and video versions are identical? Well, but the problem is the way in which cortex is edited would make it unwatchable in video. I know, I know, because it's detail edited, so everything's jumping around. Way too many cuts. So you just have to sacrifice it. But the thing is, most podcasts that have video don't edit as good. They just don't.

And so we make a completely separate edit for this reason. So our video is not as well edited as our audio because you just can't make that work in the same way. Our goal and, you know, our video editor, Jamie does a great job. But like we're just asking her to do the big picture stuff of like if we had to do a redo, there's something to cut out. We ask her to do all of that. Jim is going in and removing overtalk and all this stuff that would, you know, triple Jamie's job if she had to do that. And we're willing to just sort of say, okay, the video version's a little rougher in terms of audio, but you get to see us and you get to choose. So if, and the challenge is Apple says this is going to be like Spotify and that you can just toggle between the two versions and our time codes don't track.

So that wouldn't work. So we'll, we'll see. Video is a, I mean, I would love to get more people watching our video who want to see it. Yeah. And maybe there are other ways to do it. Maybe we just, you know, use a path like this to offer a video version that's separate from. the audio version and people can choose. But for now, it's just YouTube and it's a good place to start and we'll keep watching because

this is definitely, look, video podcast is a thing, right? Like, this is a huge trend. And I want to be aware of it while also not changing the fact that the vast majority of people who consume upgrade are doing it in its audio version and that's the primary version. And I always want it to be, I want to be respectful to those people over. everything else that we do. So that's the primary. That's number one is make the audio version good. But all of this to say, like taking ourselves out of this conversation, finally, like this was the conversation, me and you had this conversation months ago. We did. Why does Apple not do this?

To be in this market because they're going to lose ground. Now they're doing it in a way, which again, as you say, the questions, right, like this is going to be an additional cost to producers. And Apple's also going to take some money in some scenarios, of course. Yep. But if you are producing a very popular podcast and you have a video version, why would you not just opt into this? This just makes a lot of sense. So I'm pleased to see it.

Yeah, totally makes sense. And they're already doing it on Spotify. So this gets them on Apple podcast too, which is absolutely what they're trying to do. Apple, I should say, Apple does support video podcasts and has since the beginning. but they're the traditional like RSS feed and a file that gets downloaded and this is a this is streaming.

So you're basically when you choose to watch it, it's streaming the video on the fly which actually does reduce bandwidth, which is good. But it's a different approach than what Apple has done up to now where they've been using the MP3 approach

where you just download the whole video file and it sits there. I really love that they've gone to the lengths that they are going to just so they don't have to host the video. It's so consistent for them. Huge levels of work and partnerships just so they don't have to start hosting video.

Yeah, I find that hilarious. Yeah, that sounds like them. This episode is brought to you by Fondera, powered by NerdWallet. Running a small business is tough, and when it's time to get a loan, it can feel impossible to find a lender you can actually trust. Big banks say no, the internet is full of sketchy offers of sky high interest rates and fine print you can barely read.

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Let's finish out with some curling ask upgrade. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry hard! Go! Yeah, line! Go! Hurry!

I was calling out some sweeping there, Mike. I'm sure that that means something to people, and maybe I will mean something to me, but Ian. We'll start there. So line calls, so you're, uh, if you're the skip, you're standing at the far end. You're 110 feet away. You're a basketball court length away. It's far.

Okay. You have to shout and there's lots of other people may ignore. noise as hard. So you do hand gesture sometimes and you put down the broom. And basically, you're, you're calling the shot because it's strategic. It's a lot of strategy in curling. And you put the target down and that's what they're throwing to from the far end. They throw the rock. And then as the skip, you stand there and you're looking and you're seeing, is it inside or outside, right? Like, did they hit the target or not? And then you get a sense, especially from your sweepers, because the two sweepers are following the rock down the ice. How fast is it?

how slow is it? Because I, let's say I wanted to get to the, to the button, to the T-line, which is in the middle of the target. Halfway between the front and the back, button is right-dead center.

And they say to me, it's looking like, there are numbers to determine how deep it's going to go. So let's say, it's like four or five, which is like top of the house, not to the T-line.

I will then say, yeah, start, you know, and we try to leave it to very simple, sounds that can be heard over the din. So like no, we do off for stop and and and yeah for for start to go and I'll have them start sweeping because I wanted to go deeper and sweeping makes it go further. So if it's coming to the top of the house, I'll I'll start yelling so they can hear me

to sweep it so that it'll go, it'll go deeper. Or if it looks like it's a little inside and it might hit a guard and not get in, I might say yeah line because I want the person called closest to the stone, especially to start sweeping, because if that person sweeps, it holds, it makes it less likely to curl. It will hold the line. And so if I'm worried that it's going to curl too much and hit the guard, if I have them sweep it, I'm trying to get them to hold it straight. If it's way outside, I may say curl and have the person who is on the other side of the rock further away, start sweeping because that direction of sweeping will increase the curl to get it to move more because I needed to come further inside. And that's why there's all

the shouting and curling is because once you release the stone, you can't make it slower, but you can make it go further, you can make it straighter, or you can make it move more all through the actions of those two or if there's one person out there, they have to like flip around from side to side in order to get the sweep you want. So that's what the yelling is all about. And now you know what I was shouting earlier in this episode. Maybe. I have a question it came in from Gareth and one from David. Gariff's question is,

what does Jason make of the Canadian cheating scandal and the curling? I've gone from barely remembering curling exists to outrage in about a week, thanks to upgrade in social media. And David says, why is double touching such a big deal? Does Jason watch for that in his matches? Okay. So there was a scandal, sort of. There was a controversy.

And it's about Canadian players releasing the stone and then touching the stone. And the rule is you can release, you can touch the handle more than once before it gets to the hog line, which is when you have to have let go. What you can't do is touch outside the handle a second time. And they were touching and then they had a weird release where they were touching, they sort of let go and then let their hand drop. and it was rubbing against, or kind of booping the back of the granite of the stone. This is,

this is not legal. However, illegal booping. It is, it's boop gate. However, it's not cheating. It's like a,

it's like a rules violation. First off, there's no benefit to it at all. It's literally that they've got, I think, a quirky, messy delivery that they've never been called on because it's totally irrelevant

and nobody cares. And I think the sweet, weeds did a little bit of gamesmanship and called them on it in order to fluster them. They, they, and the way it works in curling is you police yourself. So if you realize that you've double-touch, this happened to me the other day. I, um, I was sweeping near the stone and my teammates swept their broom into mine and my broom hit the stone while it was going down the ice.

And we just took it out of play. And we, there's no referee. take it out of play. And that's how you're supposed to do it. However, I don't think the Canadians even know that they're doing it. They were so opposed to the idea that they did it. They said, it's totally unfair. They didn't do it.

I think they just don't even notice because it's just this weird. It's how their delivery works. And they're certainly not imparting anything of value to it in terms of gamesmanship. It's not about, they're not cheating to win. They have technically violated a rule. Lauren has said to me that she thinks it's like a foot fault in, in tennis. It's like if you're over the line

when you serve, it doesn't count. You're not like cheating. You just step too far. And it's kind of like that. So anyway, it all got overblown because first off, it's curling and people are kind of interested in curling

and curious about curling during the Winter Olympics. Also because one of the men on the Canadian team cursed at the Swede who had called them on it. I would say, he lost it. He lost it. He was like, supposed to be a friendly, that was not, I'll put it this way, that was not in the spirit of curling. No, no. It seemed very anti-curling and, you know, I'm going to use a stereotype here,

anti-Canadian. Well, I mean, you get Canadians riled and things like this will happen. He was, he was waiting for a scrap. Everybody knows who's watched Letterkenny knows that. So, so it's kind of a tempest in a teapot. I think, I think there was some gamesmanship involved where the Swedes have been like, you know, they touch it again. We could bring that up. And let's save it for the Olympics and like get them off their game and all of that. I think nobody covered themselves in glory here, honestly, because I do think that the Swedes, it was totally unnecessary and they did it because I think they wanted to make trouble. And then the Canadians reacted badly to it.

I watched the, there was a, the woman, team Skip, Rachel Homan, who we mentioned on Upgrade. So after this complaint came in, they started having officials monitor the sheets, but they don't even have. enough officials to monitor all the sheets all the time because this is a self-policing game. But World Curling did have people kind of spot-check deliveries. And they pulled one of her stones out, one of Rachel Holman's stones out in a game. And she lost it. And she said 100% there's no way. And her teammates were like, no way.

And then you look at her delivery and she lets go of the stone. And her finger comes down. And her finger absolutely touches the top and probably the side of the stone. So they don't even know they're doing it. And it doesn't impart any value. Everyone's cheating. Everyone. Everyone's giving them pushes.

I just think they have, and because it's all Canada, I actually think it's maybe that they've all settled on a release of the stone during their delivery that drops their hand and their fingers right down the back of the stone when they're not being as careful as they should be, which they are absolutely going to be now. So to answer David's question, why is double touching such a big deal? It's not. This is a totally irrelevant controversy that is just, it's mostly fun because that one Canadian player totally lost it and yelled at the Swedish player about it. This is great for curling, though. It is all publicity. This is great for curling. It is.

No, it is, it is amazing. We're answering, I have so many people asking me these questions. And I love it. I love it. I'll also say that one of the things that the Canadians lost them about is that if we, we talk about this being kind of a friendly, good sportsmanship kind of thing. When the Canadians were losing it, one of the things they pointed out is, you know, I had a shot and you were moving around behind me on the other side.

And technically you're supposed to get out of their way, right? Like, there are lots of things that are technically against the rules or against the etiquette that nobody cares about. And so what he was saying is, I could have complained that you were behind me, behind my target when I was shooting moving around. And I didn't complain about that, but you complain about this. So it's very silly, is what I'm saying. But it's great for curling.

We have people showing up at our curling club, asking if they can do it, just showing up, literally just driving in and saying, hey, they're curling people. On Friday night, we were at our league on two of the sheets, and there were probably 50 or 60 people in the other three sheets doing less. And similarly on Sunday, there were probably 40 or 50 people Sunday morning. They're doing lessons. Wild scenes. So it's great for curling. And the U.S. being in contention and having won a medal in doubles, that's helped it too. And this is our big boost that we get for the year.

So bring on the controversy, I guess. But I'm just telling you as an insider, it's actually kind of nothing. It doesn't mean anything other than a Canadian got really angry. And he shouldn't have. That was against the spirit of curling. Sam says, I'm a curling fan from the south of England and I've recently discovered

that of the three curling clubs in England one is close enough for me to visit. In honor of the Winter Olympics, they're running beginners courses, so as of March, I'm going to be a curler just like Jason. Just like me. What recommendations do you have

for a beginner curler, whether it's things to do or buy before I go for the first time? Thank you for saying this, Sam. Here's what's great about curling. is you don't need to bring anything. Wear a comfortable pair of shoes. That's it.

Because although there is curling equipment, your curling club will have a broom for you to use. And your curling club will have a slider, which is basically a Teflon. It's Teflon on one side and grippy on the other, the shape of a foot, and you stand on it when you deliver and it allows you to slide down the ice.

Once you start curling more regularly, you buy a broom, you buy curling shoes, which have the Teflon on them, so you take off your gripper and you can slide down the ice and then put your gripper back on. But you don't need any of that to start. You can just start with the equipment that they have there for beginners. And you can play for a while with no outlay at all, which I think is great.

I think that is a thing that puts it above maybe like golf where you need some stuff to begin with. Boy, do you? Right? I mean, even when you start getting into curling, there's only so much you can buy, really. I mean, you buy a broom and you can buy shoes. And I mean, I maybe, I mean, bring a jacket because it's cold on the ice, right? Like, bring a jacket. But otherwise, you can just go and try it out.

And that's the beauty of it. And I'd also say it's a very welcoming sport. There's wheelchair curling. If you don't want to squat down, there's stick curling. These are all perfectly valid. So curling with a stick, you stand behind the hack and the rock is on a stick. and you push it down and then let it go. And that's a completely valid way of delivering.

So if you're worried about the physical aspect of it, I'll also say it's not particularly physically. Yeah. stressful. You have to squat a little bit and push out, and you might be a little sore the next day, but I, you know, I don't think it's a, there's not a lot of barriers to trying curling. And by the, I mean, the beauty of it is,

I think like a lot of these similar sports like golf, it's fairly easy to learn it and then a lifetime to master it to the point where I mean I see Olympians missing Olympians throw things through the house and they don't stay I was playing Sunday with a really good player at our club who was subbing for one of our teammates

who's actually in Italy right now and going to the Olympics and he's so good He's so much better than us, and he missed a bunch of shots. Like, it's just, so that's the beauty of it is you can learn it and you can play it. You can get the rock to the other side and you can start playing games and having fun. And then it's just a matter of getting better if you want to get better, practicing or playing more to get better. After four years, we are appreciably better than we were four years ago.

We're not good, right? Like, that is going even twice a week. It's not enough for us to be what I would say is good. the good players at our club are there all the time and practicing and stuff like that. But you don't have to be. You don't have to be at that level. You just can have a good time and we do.

So I would say just try it. If any of you are curious, try it. I tried to get our friend James. There's a lot of curling in Scotland, but I haven't managed to get James out of the house to do some curling. He would like it, I think. You said just comfortable shoes.

You don't need specific shoes for curling, so you don't slip? No. If you've got sneakers, Um, you, you just walk, you just wear those on the ice. They don't want to clean. No. You got to be careful.

Okay. But, but, but I mean, you're not, yeah, you don't want to run. You don't run. You walk carefully. But it's, you got, you got a, if you've got sneakers, um, you can walk on the ice and it's fine. We, we, we step on sticky stuff as you enter to get all the dirt off of them that you don't want to track onto the ice.

But yeah, you can just, you can just walk. And then, when you need to slide, you've got the little slider to do it in your delivery. The rest time you just walk on the ice. You've got to be careful. People do slip and fall, but it's mostly people who are sweeping vigorously and kind of step wrong, or it's people who are not paying attention. Like, one of the things that I realize that I do is I get to the edge of the ice and then

I stop and then I step one foot onto the ice and then the other, because that's the thing that'll happen is you'll carry your momentum from the boards onto the ice and you'll put your foot down and it'll kind of slide a little bit and it's like no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. But you don't need special shoes. You just need basically a pair of sneakers. Charles says, I'm currently watching mixed doubles at the Olympics and there are a few things

that aren't cleared to me. Steering the rock. From what I can tell, the amount of spin put on the rock helps determine how much the rock curls or breaks. Does sweeping influence the curl too, or is the sweeping just for speed control? Well, I said so

at the top. So, you You turn the stone in or out when you release it. And that spin is going to be the direction that it ultimately goes. When it's going fast, it doesn't move as much. So what you'll see is that it starts out and it's pretty straight. And then as it slows, it starts to break right or left based on the spin. And then, like I said, if you're sweeping on one side, you're sweeping for straightness. It will try to hold it, although there's only so much you can do, but you can try to hold it straight.

if you sweep, that's the direction against the spin. If you're sweeping the direction of the spin, you are going to encourage curl, and it's going to move ideally further. But generally when you're sweeping and both people are sweeping and you're seeing that, what they're trying to do is just make a go further because they think it's a little lighter.

They think it's going to come to the top of the house, but they want it to go into the house. Or they think it's not going to get across the hog line and not count, and you want it to be a guard, so you want it to go across and then stay and then guard the house. And the house is like the target, right? The target. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. There's the button, which is in the center, and then it's the four foot ring, eight foot ring, and a 12 foot ring. And there's no value. The rings are there for you to gauge who's closest,

which I think is another question. Did that get deleted? The scoring works? Yes. I'll just, I'll do a really quick version. The rings are just there to tell you how far all the rocks are away from the center

because the way scoring works is just who's got the rock closest to the center. That was Macon's question. I thought that they might take too long to explain. Right, right. No, it's not about it. It's whose rock is closest to the center. So if the red rock is closer to the center, red gets one point.

But then it's whose rock is second closest to the center. If you have three rocks at the four foot and the button, and then your competitor's closest rock is in the eight foot, you get three points because you've got the three closest rocks. And that's all it is, is at the end, after everything is thrown, what color has the rock closest to the center and how many of them are close before there's another color. So if the other color is not in there at all,

because you've knocked them all out or they've missed, and you've got five in the house, you get five. That's very hard to do. It's usually one or two, but that's how you do it. Charles also asked ice quality. The announcers keep talking about how the ice at the Olympic venue isn't great, what makes ice good or bad? It's really hard.

Curling ice is very specific. I think I'm not even sure if it's not great. It's just that it's new. They just put it in. And there's a lot of tweaking that happens with ice. What I'll say is that it's very different from figure skating or hockey ice, which is why it's hard to do curling at an arena that shares its space with figure skating or hockey, because the ice gets carved up by ice skates.

And we just wear shoes. You want it to be like really, perfectly flat. And then somebody comes in and sprays basically, it's called pebble. It's basically little water droplets all across it that freeze instantly into little bumps. And then you run a thing called a nipper over it that kind of shaves off the top of the bumps. So you end up with this is kind of like pebbled, textured surface that is good for sliding the rocks on it. So what happened in Cortina is it sounds like everything was running a little fast. So the rocks. So the rock were running faster than on most ice surfaces.

Unclear whether that's the rocks or the ice, actually. And then it was curling a bit. So they, after a couple of days, they put sandpaper on the bottom and sanded the rocks a little bit. And it sounds like what happened then is they slowed down, but they also stopped curling as much.

So this is stuff that gets dialed in, usually in a curling venue, but this is a, you know, this stadium is being used for this, but it's also used for other stuff. So it's not always a curling venue. And so they've had to kind of dial it in. It's just, it's complicated.

We have a whole ice crew there's a whole formulation. We build up the ice every fall. We melt it all every spring. And then put it back again in the fall. And it's many layers and paint and, you know, and the decals go in for the targets. It's a whole thing.

And then the ice maintenance, like throughout the year, they're scraping it down to get it back to flat. Sometimes they do a flood where they put more water on it because they're worried that it's kind of like gotten out of alignment and isn't properly flat. It's tricky. It's super tricky.

And there's no alternative, right? There's no artificial substance that can match it. So you have to use the ice because that's how the friction happens and how the sliding happens. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a few trips of the show, it could be about other stuff. It doesn't have to be curling. But that's up to you. Go to UpgradeFeedback.com.

You can also send us your follow-up of feedback there as well. Thank you to our members to support us of Upgrade Plus. They get longer ad-free episodes of the show each and every week. You can sign up and support the show by going to getupgradeplus.com. We mentioned that there is a video version of this show. If you'd like to check it out or if you would prefer it, just search for Upgrade Podcast on YouTube and we're always there each and every week. Even when we're traveling, we find ways to do it because we are committed to giving you the content in the way in which you would like it.

I would like to thank ExpressVPN, FitBod, Squarespace and Fondera for their support of this week's episode. but most of all thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.