Upgrade - 610: We Hear You're Good at Computers

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 610. Today's show is brought to you by Delete Me, Squarespace, Steam Clock, and Factor. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined, and I'm happy to be joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow. Hi, Mike Hurley. It's good to be back on a normal episode of Upgrade. Yeah, I missed doing a dramatic reading. We'll talk about that a little bit more of it.

But I have a Snow Talk question for you who says, Bruce Ben, who says, with Jason's love of space and the Artemis 2 launch, what are some of Jason's favorite space blogs and reporters that people should be following? And I also just wanted to put this in here in case you wanted to just talk briefly about the Artemis 2. Yeah, sure.

Very exciting. They're going to the moon. As we record this, they're going by the moon. Like today, today is moon day. They're going to fly by the moon and then come back to Earth. I used to do podcasts with Stephen Hackett called Liftoff. People sending in messages saying, are you going to bring Liftoff back?

And it's funny because you, you witnessed, me many times refused to declare a liftoff retired and say that maybe we would bring it back sometime and Stephen would, you know, check the box in the CMS that said retired and I'd uncheck it. And I found a strange thing when this all was happening. I, uh, within me, where I thought within myself and I thought, no, actually, I'm, I'm also fine that it is retired. Okay. Sorry everybody who liked it, but I have, I have, I have let it go. Um, we have moved on to other things. However, I do love space stuff. I think it's great.

And I think it's inspirational. And I really like seeing a bunch of scientists and stuff in my social feeds who are not doing the thing, which is, you know, we really shouldn't do any crude exploration of anywhere and only sell some robots and just be kind of Debbie Downers about the whole thing. I think that I think that some human exploration is super important because it is inspirational and because it helps us understand more about our universe. And it makes the public understand more about our universe, which I think is important. Like, people are much more interested, I think, in people flying on the moon than they are in a robot digging up things on Mars, even though that's super important and interesting. Anyway, the reporters, Eric Berger at Ars Technica, there's a space section on Ars Technica that is the best. The best. So highly recommend Eric Berger is the primary reporter there, although they have another one whose name escapes me now.

sorry to that guy. But Eric Berger is the best. He's so good at this. And Lauren Grush, who used to be at The Virgin, is now at Bloomberg, is my other favorite space reporter at the moment. Also, the New York Times does a bunch of good space coverage. So that's another place to go. They've got a reporter on the space beat who's pretty good. Whose name also escapes me.

Sorry to that guy. But it's the New York Times guy. I subscribe to the New York Times space feed in my RSS reader, in fact, and get to see a bunch of their good stories about it. So, oh, and the other Apple-related news, or at least tech-related news is that they've been sending pictures back, including a really beautiful picture of the entire globe, which was taken with a Nikon camera. Because we've got, like, they're not shooting on a Hasselblad with film anymore like they did in Apollo 8. So they've got, like, really nice cameras that they're taking that are, well, I mean, the Hasselblad was a nice camera, but it was a film camera. And then they came and they came back and, like, developed the film and went, oh, oh, my God, it's Earthrise. It's the most beautiful picture humanity's ever taken.

this time they're going to be able to take better pictures even than that. And they can send them straight back to us too. Yeah, maybe not straight back. They have to like... Straight-ish, is it we'd have to wait for them to come home to get it. Yeah. Yeah, or they may be able to downlink some of them, but it'll take a while. But I also wanted to mention, though, I think in the Apple notability is that there are iPhones

on this mission. It's the first iPhone mission since I think the last shuttle launch that I saw. They have all the radios turned off. They're in what I always called. called on that shuttle mission, I called spaceship mode. So they have, uh, they had these iPhone 17 pro maxes and they are shooting, uh, photos with them. And the best ones are, they actually are using the selfie cam to take these selfies of themselves looking at the window at the, at the disc of earth. And presumably they'll do this with the moon too. Um, and those are, those are iPhone photos. So,

uh, there are, the iPhones are also being used. That's why the iPhones are there is to take photos. The crew, let the crew take photos of themselves and their crewmates and out the window and stuff. Um, but They also do have a fancy Nikon digital camera. So they're not just using iPhone photography to take vital pictures of the moon flyby and stuff like that. They've got a Nikon T5. Do you think those iPhones are provided by Apple? Do you think Apple worked with NASA or all with these iPhones? What do you think they're just iPhones?

I saw a story that said that Apple didn't work with NASA on it. I would be surprised if there weren't some unofficial conversation going on, especially since they needed to qualify them for use on a spacecraft. I'm sure Apple would help if they were asked. I'm not sure if they were asked. Okay. Because you fake a pretty good market. Right.

Right. And I'm told there are two fancy icons. Suffice to say they're fancy icon cameras on. Yeah. And they're also iPhones taking photos and video and stuff. And that's cool too. And there'll be some amazing shots that will come back. I predict there will be an amazing shot today because they're going to try to take that Earthrise photo.

and that will be amazing because the whole idea of seeing the entirety of the Earth, which contains all of human history, as a little blue dot rising over the horizon of the moon, will be extremely impressive. So just as it was on Apollo 8. Apollo 8, I was saying this to Stephen. Apollo 8 is like all-time underrated space mission, because that was the first time they sent people around the moon.

And they actually stopped and went into orbit for a while and then came back. and that was and that's where they shot the earth rise photo and it was the end of 1968 which the legend is you know because that was such a bad year that a lot of people felt like it was a positive note after a terrible year um which was it's a it's an old timer of space missions so anyway that's uh that's my space corner mike since i don't have lift off anymore you get space corner if you would like to send in a question of your own please go to upgrade fee And you can send in a Snell Talk question for us to open a future episode of the show. I'd like to do some follow up.

And just first off, thank you to everyone who sent us in very kind feedback about our origins of Apple episode. Last week, we're so pleased that people enjoyed it so much. For sure. When you ask for feedback, sometimes you're going to get what you're going to get. Yep. But we got it. And it was nice. like really, really, really good feedback.

And I'm very thankful for it. And we loved it. The episode was way big in and we thought it was going to be. And we moved to move a lot of stuff into today. It was meant to just be like a segment of the episode. But it was just so much fun to do. We just made it the whole show. And we really hope that you enjoyed it.

We loved making it. Yep. On that note, you published something on Six Colors about some Apple history books that you've been reading. And so I wanted to put this as a lot. link in if people want to catch up on some stuff. And I did want to make a recommendation to you for a book called Icon, which I mean, I've read it multiple times many years ago. I don't know how it stands up now, but I know you had spoken about that book that's coming, is it called in exile?

Jobs in exile, yeah, yeah, yeah. Icon focuses on some of that stuff too. And it's a lot of Pixar stuff in that book, which I think is, obviously a really interesting and important part of his story as well as some next stuff. So it's about his return, basically. I have it. And I should read it, but I have not read it. And one of the reasons is it's literally the worst title of any Apple book. Yeah, it's not great.

At the moment when it was released, because it's icon, lowercase I, of course, like iPod, capital C, O, N. And when it was released, it's very clear that the publisher is like, he-he, it doesn't mean I con people I'm a con man and it's like that is not the that is not the right title

for that book no I'm sorry that you messed it up and you know you you messed it up so it's a bad it's bad it's a bad title

good book and some people feel that the second coming of Steve Jobs is a better book on the same subject but I haven't read

that either so I got it on my list I, as a part of this whole, you know, Apple at 50 and doing that episode of Upgrade, and I have been acquiring more of these Apple books that I haven't read, obviously, because I came up with a list of 10 books, but there are so many. So I've been getting more of them. Yeah. But anyway, people can check that on Six Colors.

And I've got a Stephen Hacker recommendation in there and a John Syracusea recommendation in there. Yeah, I do. So there's a bunch. There's a bunch of good books about Apple. There are a lot. First off, there are a lot of books about Apple. But there are a smaller number that are good books about Apple. Yeah, but they are out there.

Unfortunately, one of the ones that should have been the best was one of the worst. Which is the Oz. Yeah, I had somebody asked me on some podcast. I think it was maybe Leo Lipport said, so you don't have Steve Jobs by Isaacson on your list. I'm like, well, two reasons. One is. It's a list about Apple.

books and not Steve Jobs' biographies. And two, people have lots of issues with that book. So, I mean, it's got stuff in it because of the access with Steve. I used it in my script for some of the raw material last week, right?

Because there are things that he told Isaacson. There's quotes. Yeah. There's good quotes and stuff in there. But, but the problem is that Walter Isaacson doesn't understand computers. I think that's the bottom line. He doesn't understand. He's a biographer, but he doesn't understand computers. And if you are a computer person, then you can see all the things that he says that are just like,

that's not right. That's not what happened. And he's obviously blind to it because he's not, he doesn't care about that. But I found that, I think we all found that a little bit troubling that there were so many things in that book that didn't seem quite right, given his level of access. And that's why I just, I view that book, rightly or wrongly, as a, as a source of a source of of material, but not as a definitive resource. It's more the book that you use to say, Steve Jobs told Isaacson this and not the book where you say,

just read this book. Like Pogue's book to me is one of the things that makes Pogue's book so good, is that especially, you know, from the beginning up to the, you know, through the iPhone, again, sort of less after that because of the issues with access and people still working at Apple.

But like, it feels to me very definitive. Like, you could, if somebody asked me, what's a book about Apple history? I'd say, just get Pokes book. Because, like, it is the definitive. The only issue with Pogue's book, I think, other than that, is that it is kind of exhaustive. It's very long. There may be more information about the Apple 2 than people, modern readers really care about. But it's in there, and that makes it definitive in a way.

Whereas the Isaacson book feels very much like not definitive, but a good source of material given his access, which is, it's not the same. Yeah, it's interesting comparing the response to the Pogue book and the Isaacson book, right? Where it's like the Isaacson book, as well as getting stuff wrong, it was criticized a lot for just retelling stories everybody knew. Yeah. And Pogue is doing that, but he obviously is doing a better job because that's not a criticism that is being levied at a book, just a practicality of the situation. I agree. I would also say that, yeah, I think Pogue's approach is better. and I think Pogue

is also writing a biography of Apple and I think that's a better approach to those stories than a biography of Steve Jobs. Apple has released some security updates for iOS 18 after previously we've holding security updates for iOS 18 pushing people to upgrade to iOS 26. I know we spoke about this a few months ago

and you were understanding to be quite upset about it but now they've gone and done what they should have done. So this is a really quick quirky story. It happened on April 1st, so it happened last week amid all the 50s hoopla,

50th hoopla, but the short version of this story is there were some serious security updates that were pushed out that were, like back in December, that were like for, they were very, they were for like

nation state actors or other groups that are contracted with nation states. It's pretty much where they came from. So it's not a security issue that broad sectors of the public would face. But what happened is, although Apple seems to offer plenty of security updates on other platforms for the people who are like one OS version back, on iOS, and this is not apparently a new policy.

On iOS, beyond a very short cutoff, they stop releasing security updates for anything but the latest OS that you can run. And it led to the very frustrating case where there was a bulletin that came out that said, This is a serious security issue. And there was an iOS 18 update that supported it, but it only ran on systems not capable of running iOS 26. For systems capable, iPhones capable of running iOS 26, you needed to update to iOS 26 to get the security update,

which I said was kind of ridiculous because it clearly existed for iOS 18. And they were just withholding it because if you're running one of these more modern phones, you should just run iOS 26. There are a lot of reasons people don't want to run iOS 26. I would argue that most of them aren't very good reasons, but let people have their feelings, right? So I've gotten, you know, I've gotten to understand a little bit more

about what's going on here. At least that this was not a broad attack, it was more like a very targeted nation state attack. And honestly, if you are the kind of person who is going to be attacked by a nation state, you're going to want to put all those security features on, and you're going to be on the latest version of iOS at all times. because...

Yeah, you should use that lockdown mode, right? Is that what it's called, I think? Yeah, exactly. So 1877, which came out last month, and the latest 26 update, both address these two scary security breaches, Dark Sword and Karuna. Okay? So the difference is there are some... In between... One of the features of iOS 26 over iOS 18 is every OS, full OS version that comes,

comes out, Apple is looking at the security, the security team looks at the security state of the world and knows what exploits have been out there and is making like systematic adjustments to the way the OS runs in order to fight them. So 26 is fundamentally more secure than 18. And so when I say there was a 26 update and an 18 update that both addressed DarkSword and Karuna, my understanding is the 1877 update is a patch, right? It's patching on a leakier foundation than the 26 update does. Because the 26 update comes with a bunch of other security features that make it fundamentally more secure. And so the message is, if you're some, one of these people who's really concerned about security, like even if, and we'll get back to the iOS 1877 update in a second,

even if you update to 1877 on your iPhone, you are not as secure as you are on the latest 26. You're more secure, but you're not as secure as on the latest, because the latest has a whole fundamental set of security updates that 18 never got because it was part of the 26 fundamental. right? It's not a, you can't backport that stuff. You can patch, but you can't backport that stuff. Yeah, I got a notification on my iPhone a week or so ago that said, like, your phone was received a security update. And it seemed detached from a software update. And I don't recall ever seeing this notification before.

It was very specifically called out security updates. And I wonder if this is part of what you're talking about, that are doing different things. I mean, so what happened here is 1877 came out last month, but on Wednesday the first, Apple pushed out 1877 to all devices running 18. So that's the change. The change is they finally did the thing I was complaining about, which is if this is a very big security problem, maybe what you should do is push your security updates for iOS 18, to all phones

running 18, not just the ones that are not capable of running 26. And the side effect of that, that I think is super important is that major

OS updates need to be manually agreed to by the user. The user is asked, would you like to go to iOS 26? And you can say no. You can say yes,

by mistake and stuff like that. But like, they don't just silently overnight update you to iOS 26. They don't do that. However, point releases in the same OS release can update automatically. And what it means is all those people who are holding back and saying, I don't want to go to iOS 26, even though I can, are getting a security update that will patch them against Dark Sword and Karuna, which is important because some of that stuff is like on GitHub where like everybody can see it, which means it's going to be a more broadly felt security exploit than it was when it was.

it was sort of limited to just nation states. So it's good that Apple did this. I'm a little, again, I don't understand this policy. I understand Apple believing that, well, if you can run 26, you should. It's so much more secure than 18, even with patches. I get that. But, like, if you're making 18 available to the people who can't run 26, just make it available. I'm not saying even forever,

but like maybe for one cycle, just do it, right? Like, just let those people have their patches. I think this is an unusual cycle because people really have gotten it in their heads that they're just refusing to run iOS 26. So be it. I'm glad that Apple finally did this.

Yeah, it's a weird story. So I'm glad they did it. I don't, I mean, what took them so long? The fact that 1877 came out last month, but it was only on April 1st that they decided to push it out. to everybody else. Like, what?

I don't know. But obviously this was, what I said in the story is it was good news and bad news, right? It's good news they did this. Bad news is they had a reason to do this, which is these very bad security breaches,

but they did do it. So I don't know. I think Apple cares a lot about their user security, but I think this is one of those areas where, certainly it gives the impression that they're withholding security updates in order to drive OS updates. And I know that,

probably what's really happening is they feel it doesn't make their users more secure to make it easy for them to stay back a version because of all the other stuff you get when you update. But I think that's probably a mistake and that more communication is probably warranted here about security updates in 26 versus in 18. Anyway, so it's a complicated, weird story. The good news is, And I'll say this now if you've still been saying no or you've turned off all updates or whatever. If you're using an iPhone that's still on 18, update to 1877. You can. All of you can no matter what model you're using and you should.

That's it. So Discord found the thing that I'm talking about is a new thing. It was from 26.1 onwards called Background Security Improvements. The quick patches that happen, even faster. So this is that thing that I saw. So this happened a couple of weeks ago. where overnight, I think it was March 17th was the thing. They can, between point updates, can rework.

It says components such as Safari, WebKit, and other system libraries that benefit from smaller ongoing security patches. So I got a notification that one of those was done. I bet those were patches regarding these leaks, right? I expect so. There's the, what is it, the Eclectic Light Company blog that is all about paintings and Apple security. seriously like paintings. It's art and it's amazing.

What is that called? What is that website? It's eclectic light. The eclectic light company? Yeah, yeah. It's Howard Oakley is his name. And there is a back front page now that you can go to if you don't want to see the blog post about paintings.

I love his blog post about paintings. They're awesome. Anyway, he writes about this a lot. And one of the things, it's a great blog. It's very technical. but he he like a lot of these security updates are doing things where like they don't need to update the whole OS they update like these little they're like little packages within the OS that can be updated and it allows Apple to do these kind of like more rapid response your Mac has this ability to where they'll send out like rapid response updates of different kinds because Apple believe it or not Apple has a big security team that is working hard to fight this stuff but yeah I don't love this policy I think they should just say We're going to do security updates, one OS back, and just do it that way. But they don't, for the iPhone for some reason, and I don't love it.

But at least they did in this case because this was a bad enough issue that they flipped that switch. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. Sadly, it's easier than ever to find personal information about people online, and nobody wants their address phone number or family members' information hanging out on the internet. And with Delete Me, you can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited.

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protecting me take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up today for delete, signing up today for delete me with a special discount because you listen to the show. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to join delete me.com slash upgrade 20 and use the promo code upgrade 20 at checkout. The only way to get that 20% off is at j-o-ind-d-e-l-e-e-m-e-teme.com with the code upgrade 20 at checkout. One last time, that is join delete me.com slash upgrade 20 with the code, Upgrade 20. Our thanks to delete me for their support of this show and relay. Apple confirmed to the New York Times that its fitness head, Fitness Head, Jay Blanick,

is retiring from the company. Blanick had previously been accused of creating a toxic work culture. The New York Times reported on this, I think, a couple years ago. And then after a reshuffle in the Fitnessorg, Blanick was going to be reporting to Sambald Dessai, Dr. Sambald Dessai, rather than directly to Eddie Q. This seemed from the outside to look like a demotion. You know, things were moved around,

and Blanick was not in that spot who was going to be reporting to the chief of the division anymore. And also there have been these conversations about whether Fitness Plus was being reconsidered. While all of that has resulted, my assumption is in Blanick taking leave for the company. Yeah, he's officially retiring. And this feels to me,

like this is what happens when you have a senior executive who's been there a long time who's been accused of things that are unacceptable. What happens? They get like a golden parachute, which is super unfair, but this seems to be what happens. But he's out is the answer. This guy's out. Yeah, this was one where Apple, they said, you know, we have no kind of, we've investigated, it can't find any wrongdoing.

But who knows, right? Like it seems that maybe something may have gone on here. Well, we can't tell. Yeah, I don't know anything about this. Yeah. But my read on it from the outside is those statements are basically like, we can't fire him for cause. Yeah. We are concerned that if we fire him for cause, he's going to take us to court and it's going to be really ugly.

So we've negotiated a settlement. Yes, I agree. Where he leaves. and we move on. But that happens, I mean, that's one of the reasons why these,

mostly men who have bad behavior of various kinds, uh, get paid off to leave is the company has just decided it's easier than having a lawsuit to, to just pay them to go away. And is it gross that people who behave badly get paid to go away for, because of their bad behavior?

Yeah. Yeah. It sounds real bad. But I will, I will say it's not my money. And that guy is out. And that seems like it's probably a good idea. Like this is the other way.

We've been talking a lot about employee turnover and how it's good to have new people in new positions of authority because they can make changes. Another advantage of employee turnover is when you have people who are toxic and they leave. And having experienced that, oh, my God, sometimes it is so freeing to have a toxic person out of your organization. and if you're in the organization, like you're not the one who paid his severance or his settlement, but you don't have to deal with that guy anymore and that can be a huge deal.

Writing at 9 to 5 Mac, Zach Hall was reporting that delivery times for the Mac Studio are at least four to five months away. If you do any RAM configurations, if you do not buy one of the stock configurations, you're looking at a four to five month lead time. Stephen Hackett followed this up

with the same kind of information about the Mac Mini. It seems like laptop delivery times are much better, even if you configure them. So you could assume that Apple is maybe prioritizing where it's RAMs going. I did some digging around this morning. I can get an M5 Macs, MacBook Pro,

of 128 gigabytes of RAM in two weeks. An M4 Pro Mac Mini with 64 gigabytes of RAM will take 16 weeks. So, you know, this is, I guess, the way that Apple is deciding to do. deal with the RAM issues. There's two issues going on here, though, because also I would say those Mac studio delays are lies, is my guess.

That's, that's, we don't, we aren't, this is just my read on it. I think my read on this is we are no longer building this, the M4 Mac Studio. So we can't make you a custom. Right. Because they're going to do an M5 Mac studio. And it's going to be out probably less than four to five months from now. Yeah. So that's my.

guess is that they are stopping or have stopped making the Mac Studio M4 because they're going to make the M5. And they've got the configurations that they've built that they will sell you, but they're not going to build you a custom whatever because, and this is how Apple does that with systems that are not going to ship. Is they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can order a MacBook Air, but now it's out four months. And then two months later, the new MacBook Air comes out. And they're like, oh, guess what? You can have that one now or whatever. So, I, I think that's what's going on here. The Mac Mini is a more interesting story,

and I think you're right. I think that maybe there is some prioritization going on about where their RAM chips are going right now, and that's to laptops, because they've got all those new laptops that are out there, and the MacBinney's been out there for a while. Yep. But some of this also is just that the Mac Studio,

like that is, we are at the end of the life of the M4 and M3 Ultra, I guess I got to say, Mac Studio, which, you know, it'll always be the Mac Studio that I wrote about by the pool, in Hawaii on my vacation. They can never take that away from you.

They can never owe M3 Ultra. What a baffling, baffling thing you are. So that's going to happen. And so my spider sense says that they're not making the M4 studio anymore. But the mag mini, yeah, it's really interesting. So I guess get a stock model if you really need one. I don't know. Maybe this is also a subtle way of Apple

stopping people from buying like RAM loaded up. Mac minis to do OpenClaw and stuff like that. There definitely was a run on the Mac Mini, right? That could also be part of this. Apple could not have foreseen how many Mac minis they were going to sell in certain locations. I don't know for a fact that they're doing this, but like I could see a scenario where they're literally looking at their spreadsheets and saying our margin on this RAM is much

higher in a MacBook Pro than it is in a Mac Mini. We price the RAM the way we did in the Mac Mini because it's a low volume product and now it's higher volume that we want and we have a limited supply of RAM and so let's put it in our products that are most profitable and that's not the Mac Mini. That is the MacBook Pro.

So it wouldn't surprise me at all if this was ultimately a spreadsheet-driven decision to just turn the dial down on Mac Mini production and use those chips somewhere more profitable. Speaking of discontinuing Macintosh models. A couple of weeks ago, Apple confirmed to 9 to 5 Mac

that the Mac Pro is no more. They have no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware. This is the end of the Mac Pro. We didn't get to talk about it, but we definitely should touch on it. The Mac Pro is dead. Yeah, it's dead.

It needed to die. Look, I, our friend John Syracusa, one of the things I love about him is that he is an idealist. Yeah. And he, like, he had a conference. I mean, it's good.

He was saying, he's been saying for a while, like, why, why is this still here? Just kill it. Put it out of his misery. It's very much like, you know, you've, I've loved, I've loved, like, when my, my 19-year-old cat was at the end, it was like this poor guy. It's just time. And it's like that with a Mac Pro. It's like, I love it, but it's got to go.

like John John is it's got like I mean right it's just like it nobody it's so it's sad and and it's like put it out of its misery I mean this is I mean I'm making jokes but it's a true thing like at the end I could bear my oh my poor cat right like and it was like we got to put him down now because we love him we got to put him down the Mac Pro like John loves it but he even knew it's like this is not this is not living this is terrible for all but his idealism is like but Apple could do a more powerful system. And the Mac Studio is not going to be able to... It's like, could God make a...

Make an M-chip... In this case, God is Johnny Sruji. So powerful that not even the Macs Studio could cool it. And, you know, my thought is, I don't know, the Mac Studio can cool a lot of things. And John's like, no, more powerful than that. I'm like, okay, John. But the truth is Mac Studio came out in, what,

2020, like, if Apple's looking at its chip roadmap and the most powerful chip it wants to make in five years or four years is outside of the Mac Studio's cooling footprint, what will they do? They'll redesign the Mac Studio so that it does better cooling. That's what they'll do, right? There's not a like, oh no, what will we do? We can't fit it in the Mac Studio anymore. Like, they know what the chips are going to be. And if they need to redesign the Mac Studio cooling for the next five generations of chips or whatever, they'll do that. But I Again, John, being an idealist, is like, but no, even more than that. I'm like, okay, even so much that you need a giant tower to cool it, which is like, I mean, I don't, I don't know. It just, so that's true, but I would say that given what where Apple is, like, I understand what John's saying. And given where Apple is and what Apple has tried, and they did apparently try to do like a quad chip. And they're like, this is either it didn't work or it didn't make any sense. I think the beauty of Apple's strategy is Apple knows what their chips are going to be like

and they know what their computers are going to be and that whatever Apple's vision is for what an M8 or 9 Ultra chip looks like either it will be cooled by the Mac Studio or they will make a new version of the Mac Studio that can cool it but that

but I acknowledge that whatever bar they're going to set for that M8, M9, Ultra, or whatever, that John would say, why do you not aspire for more? I get it. I just, I don't think Apple's interested

in aspiring for more. Yeah, I feel like the conversations that we have had on this show in the past about like an M extreme chip, you know, like if they take essentially four chips and stick them together. You know,

we were having those at a time many years ago that potentially now would have been when that chip would exist. And I would say maybe we just don't need it. Like right now, does anyone really feel like they need, like really genuinely need two to four times the performance they're currently getting from the top of the line apple silicon chips?

Like I'm just not, I just don't think that that is a realistic product that has a lot of use. And also, also I would say, not only does the further up you go, the fewer people there are. and that there maybe were more of them, but a decade plus of neglect of the Mac Pro has driven them all out of the market. But I would also say the flip side is true, which is Apple made a decision.

Look, when Apple made the Apple Silicon on that decision that came to fruition in 2020, Apple was saying, you know what? We want computers that are low power and are going to enable us to build things ultimately like the MacBook Neo. And we can scale them high enough up for us to get as high as we need to go.

And they made that decision, if you are above the high enough we need to go part. Apple basically is saying, look, we decided all of these MacBook airs and MacBook Nios and MacMinnies and everything else that we've sold in the M series that's possible because of the M series is more important to us than you are.

And that sucks to hear. It sucks to here. But part of this story is, I'm not going to deny that there are, users of computers who wish that Apple would make more powerful whatever's up there, what I'm saying is Apple's not interested in that market anymore, period. Like, they'll go real high. Like, make no mistake, the high-end Macs are very powerful.

But if you're somebody who's like, yeah, but I need more in this area, I would say, first off, there probably aren't that many of you. And that's one of the reasons why Apple's looking at that. Like, that market saved Apple back in the day because they were high-margin customers and they desperately needed them. But today, Apple's a mass market company, and Apple's much more concerned about selling MacBook Neos than they are selling Mac Pros. That's why the MacPro died.

And it is always hard to hear that Apple has decided you are not a customer they're interested in. But is it the right business decision? Huh, the right business decision was probably to kill the Mac Pro in 2013. Yeah. Because the Mac Pro used to be the Power Mac. Power Mac was a mid-range system. But every year with G5 and then the Mac Pro, it became more. more and more a high-end system.

And there were fewer and fewer people who could use it where it made sense. And there is a mistake in thinking that a Mac is like a PC. They're not the same anymore. PCs do also, how many people do we know? You have a gaming PC. That are Rico has a gaming PC. So many people who are not John Syracusa have a gaming PC. Like, it's a different device.

I have a console. I don't have a gaming PC, but I have a console. I have a PlayStation. I have a switch too, and that doesn't make me less of a Mac user, right? It's a different product. And Apple has chosen what they've chosen.

I think the Mac Pro irrelevance started so long ago because it's just a niche high-end product. And as much as Apple promised, like, no, we do love our high-end users, really. When they said that and they made that new Mac Pro,

in the background, they were already building the Mac Studio. and I can guarantee you that they all thought this is the new Mac Pro. This is what our Mac Pro is going to be. And the Mac Studio is amazing. And if you need more than that, Apple is not going to help you

because Apple made their decision. And you can say that it was a deal with the devil if you want to. If you're a very, very high-end user and you're pooing the MacBook Neo and the MacBook Air even as toys because you're a high-end user who needs more. and I would argue most of those people who say they need more, they actually just like having more or want more.

They don't actually need more. There are also people who actually need more. That's fair. But I think there's some delusion up there and some ego about like, I want the most powerful system. I think that's part of the dynamic too. But like Apple, in order to get this enormous benefit of Apple Silicon, had to draw a line in terms of what their chips were going to be capable of

or what they were willing to make them capable of. Because also, the other part of this, sorry for this rant, is I think they looked at that. quad, you know, ultra mega chip and said, why are we doing this? Like, who's going to buy this?

It's going to cost a fortune. And like, do we want Apple Silicon engineers working on chips that are going to get bought by nobody? We don't. Like, 99% of the people don't want that.

And for the 1% who do, I would say, I'm sorry, other computers are available. And I know that's a rough thing to hear. But like, at the end of the day, I appreciate the idealism

of somebody like John, who's like, but they could and imagine if they did. And it's like, yes, but they tap, you know, taps the spreadsheet. No, they are not. And, and, and it's not like they aren't making powerful computers. It's, it's that they're making power computers, powerful computers that fit their philosophy and no further. Yeah, I feel like I kind of had two thoughts on this. Like, one is a continuation of the thing that we've spoken about in the show so many times when considering the back pro, which is that the mistake of the trash can was that it forced,

them to make another Mac Pro when clearly Apple would decided they were going to the iMac Pro is the Pro Mac. And then you see, you go Mac Pro to IMac Pro to Mac Studio. That should have been where we are now, but instead we had this Mac Pro just like hanging around for a few more years. That Mac Pro apology, like I know people think, we all thought of it as a positive because it was Apple sort of like saying we do care about the Mac. But when they were really talking about like, we do care about our traditional from 10,

years ago high-end Mac users in these industries that we, you know, that used to be more relevant than maybe our plans are. Like, in hindsight, though, that Mac Pro roundtable, I'm just going to say that as a big, as big a mistake as the butterfly keyboard. It was, it is emblematic of an era where Apple had no idea what they wanted to do with the Mac or had decided what they wanted to do with the Mac, but couldn't tell anybody. But like, it was just what a disaster that whole era was. I really believe they thought the Mac was just going to go out on a nice flow and be done. And then they decided, no, we're going to bring the Mac up to spec with Apple Silicon in our iPhones and iPads. We're going to realign the OS is at the base level so that we can bring over compatibility layers, which have had varying degrees of success, but it made the OS is more similar.

And we're going to recommit to the Mac. And like, that recommitment killed the Mac Pro. Like, there's no doubt about it. But you're right. because the trash can was such a flop, they felt bad and they felt

they needed to do this kind of recommitment ceremony as like, we're going to renew our vows. But like, you're right.

The IMac Pro was the answer. That was going to be the replacement for the Mac Pro. And then that would get you to Apple Silicon, which was going to have the Mac Studio, which is amazing.

So, I don't know. It's just, I don't think that what are we doing here? was a mistake. I think in hindsight, you can see that it made things more complicated, but it was absolutely needed at the time because people were so down on Apple's strategy with them. Okay. It was not a mistake in sending a signal that Apple was committed to the Mac.

The signal it sent was that Apple was committed to the Mac as a high-end desktop platform, and that was not the right signal. That was not the right lesson to take from what was going on. like the Mac roundtable should have been about what they had done to their laptops, not what they had done to their, their tower PC. But it gave a shine on everything, though, right? Yeah, I guess. It's like, oh, they're opening the doors and telling us something. And the thing they could tell us were the things that ultimately did not matter, right? Like to, like, to say the company.

So let's tell you about the next iPhone, like six months. in advance, right? And as Stephen Hackett pointed out in such a brilliant bit of observation, the Intel Mac Pro shipped like months before the Apple Silicon transition. And while John Syracuse would say, well, yeah, but that's a great system.

It's like the last great Intel Mac. And I don't dispute that. In many ways, I think that Intel Mac Pro is an all-timer because it is the last and greatest. of that kind of Mac. But it's also like the end. I mean, literally the world changed after that

and it became essentially irrelevant after that. So I don't know. I think, okay, pulling back here, I think the real story of the Mac Pro is that we used to live in a world where tower computers were relevant. And three quarters of, and three quarters of the Mac's Apple sells our laptop.

the mobile chip strategy has worked really well for them but it's a longer trend even than that which is I always bought towers I always bought power Macs I bought a Power Mac G4 I bought a power computing clone that was essentially a Power Mac I had a Power Mac G5 and then and in 98 99 the iMac was a toy it was underpowered you would get the blue and white G3 or you'd get the G4 the iMac was a toy by 2007 to 2005, the iMac was no longer a toy. The iMac appealed to people like me who used to buy towers. And I'm just emblematic of that whole transition that over time, what used to be a mainstream computer because of laptops rising in popularity and power, and because lots of computers

had enough power to do computer stuff, that the idea of that tower Mac just, it went from being a mainstream computer that we all used as our main thing. that we did our jobs on to being esoteric high end and increasingly expensive by the way like the PowerMax used to be like

two grand and then suddenly there were five grand six grand right like it it all changed and that's ultimately that with all of these detours all of these weird things that Apple did that's the real story here

is that that computer doesn't need to exist anymore for at least for Apple's purposes because it's no longer it was once a mainstream computer and is no longer and that's just the truth of it and the great thing about it in my opinion of this time

that we're in right now is it's for the vast majority of people I mean they've moved away from it because they have so many options now it's not like they get rid of the MacPro and they have nothing in the in like that was very powerful

to help you out like there are so many options now that you could have instead. Even a Mac Mini, you know, like a Pro Mac Mini, that thing's a little, I've got a little beast sitting here, right? That's why, yeah, that's exactly why the, we just don't live in that world anymore. And Apple, Apple's decisions to use Apple Silicon on the Mac are informed by that knowledge that, that, that, because the whole premise is, our chips that we made to do phones. are now so powerful, and then they built scaled up versions, right? The M1 was kind of like a follow-on from their experiments that they had on the iPhone,

where they had the, on the iPad Pro, where they had like experimental, like different versions. Those are clearly like M-0 and M-1, right? They were setting the stage for what would be the M-1. But all of those decisions they made were made knowing that, like, they could make chips that did, that covered 99% of the uses of the Mac as a platform. And so they go together. And this is the result. But yes, the moment they decided to go to Apple Silicon and the Mac Pro was doomed.

And it's weird. This is the weird part, right? It's like, why was it still here? And I can only think that they had some customers, somebody in their enterprise sales division who's like, oh, no, but these guys might need another one for their whatever sound system they're doing or whatever. It's like, okay. So they kept, they had enough on hand that they kept it on the price list until they ran out. And then they're like, let's cut it now. But I do hate, that is one of my least favorite things about modern Apple's behavior is keeping old products around at their original price point for years after they're irrelevant because it's embarrassing. And they should either like discount the heck out of those things or just say goodbye. But instead they just silently, I imagine, that somebody at 9 to 5 Mac has a little set of scripts that just check to see if pages change

on Apple.com and then go see and they're like, oh, hey, MacPro disappeared. MacPro order page disappeared. What's that about? But I'm glad it happened. It needed to happen. I just, I don't know why. Why did we wait so long? Yeah, but here we are. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online.

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and the offer code upgrade, you'll get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. Or thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay. It's Rubber Roundup Time, Jason Snell. Yeah.

Let's do it. Let's do it. By the way, I have a little tidbit which I'm going to share with you now. Okay. Which is, you know I know Mark Herman's editor, right? Yeah. I do. He was at my Jeopardy Watch party.

Yeah. And I'm not going to, we talked, I mean, we talked about it a little bit. But the thing that I wanted to say, and I try to do the right thing here, even though we call this rumor round up, I just want to point out again. because my friend, who is Mark German's editor, pointed out to me that Mark doesn't really appreciate when his news reports that are multiple sourced are referred to as rumors, because he's not spreading rumors.

He's reporting. He's a reporter who's reporting. So I just, I feel like I just want to make that clear again. Like, I try to do this. Like, rumor has it is, like,

it's okay for us to talk about this in general as rumors, but like, I firmly believe, like, when Mark German says something is going on, it's going on. And he's a journalist who's reporting it. Sure.

We try Mark Herman is reporting and all that. I just wanted to say that just because sometimes I see people, not us. I see people saying like, oh, those are just rumors, whatever. You can't believe rumors. Oh, right. Well, journalistic reports are not just rumors. They are more than that. And if we ever suggest that they are, I just want to say, no, I believe that Mark

German is extremely good at his job and that when he is reporting this stuff, it's because it's true. Yes, I agree with you, which is why we basically talk about everything that Mark Goeman says and we don't do that for everybody else. Because when Mark says something, it's as good as true.

We look at lots of stuff and then some of that stuff, it's like, no. But that would also suggest that Mark is right 100% at a time, which he isn't. And so that's why you kind of have to call them rumors. Well, no. Again, I don't think in their blanket term.

Because what happens is, just to be clear, when Mark Herman's wrong about something, I don't believe it's because he was wrong. I believe it's because either his source was not up to date or things changed. That's part of the danger in reporting about things two years out for some stuff.

Yeah. Is plans do change. And that doesn't mean that the report was wrong. It means that something happened afterward. So, but in general, I think he's very good. But you live by the sword, die by the sword, though, right? You know, it's like, you get, they're just how it does sometimes.

It happens. Nevertheless, we talk about Mark German's reports during Ruma Roundup, and that's where we are. That's why he's the sheriff. Exactly. They're not all sheriffs, but Mark is. So we've got a bunch of details for what Mark is expecting to see as part of the 27 release OSs that we'll see at WWDC. And it's essentially all series stuff and Apple and Tubman and stuff.

So luckily, I would say, one of the things that Mark Gohmann is now expecting to be the case is that Siri will get its own app in the 27 releases. It won't just be the voice assistant that you press the button to and call and can never ever find out any conversation you previously had. It will be a more chatbot app-like experience where you can go in, have conversations, go back to previous conversations,

and continue them in both text and voice. So this is, I think, much needed. And I think no matter what Apple, would have done with iOS 27. I think if they wouldn't have had this, it would have always felt like something was missing. Yeah, great, great. This is,

people know how to use chatbots, text interface. I mean, like, they had typed a Siri and stuff like that. I think, I think it's a good thing to offer and having it be like those other apps

and have like a history and stuff, I think is also really important. So you can like, especially if there's going to be some context, one of the things that I've found with these chatbots that I found, didn't realize I would find valuable, but I found valuable is it's not a person, right? It's a stack of contexts. And so having like a chat history is really useful because you have different chats with different contexts. So like if I was asking a question and then a day

later I need to ask a follow up, I can go back to that context. And then it knows what we talked about. It doesn't have to like guess. It knows the whole conversation we had that led to that point. And that's a valuable thing. I am still a firm believer that the solution to AI isn't just let everybody type in a window. Like I just, that is not it. That is, that is saying that the Apple 2 had it right and that everything that's come since that is a waste of time because just typing at a prompt is all you need. And I don't believe that.

But it is one of the ways we still do type at prompts a lot in lots of places. and having a chatbot-like experience in general and having histories that you can look at, which I assume is going to be part of this. Like, I think that's all all to the good. And weird, isn't it? I mean, also weird culturally that Apple seems to be fighting against it, but seems to have finally relented.

I think that's also kind of funny. Like, no, we don't, all right, you can have it. What, all right, fine. I think I heard, might have been on the verge cast that they mentioned this. It was definitely another podcast that I listened to. we're talking about maybe this is an app store downloadable app so they can make more improvements to Siri that are decoupled from OS releases,

which could be more important in a world of AI features. Most of Siri's on the back end and they can make those changes whenever they want, I would think. I don't know. But like UI stuff. You know, like, oh, now they do this, so we should do this, right? Like now Gem and I can do X, Y, and Z. So why don't we also do X, Y, Z?

Maybe. I guess. I don't know. expected to be that. I expected to just be a, because Siri is a system feature I expected to be a system app. There will be a, an enforcement of branding and a feature called Ask Siri. So apparently this label or button will be seen throughout the operating systems, prompting you to send content to Siri for assistance, like you could highlight text and say like, you know, go and find out more about this for me. Mark says that the current iOS 27 betas include personal context,

and on-screen awareness. And they are still hoping to ship them this year, but now most likely is a part of iOS 27. So these were the two of the key features shown in 2024. App Intense also apparently remains in development as well. And now 26.5, the beta is out. There is nothing Apple intelligence in Beta 1. So I think at this point it feels pretty safe to say

that the first time we will see the re-emergency of these features will probably be a WWC again. When they didn't come in March, it seemed like the writing was on the wall, but I think some people were still holding on to it. And Mark German, I mean, he said at some point, like they basically, what was that report? There was a report that the,

that the smart home screen had been moved on to the 27 train. We spoke about it a few weeks ago. If there was ever, if there was ever a signal that they had just decided, we're going to put this in for summer, it was, it was that. And that, I think that's fine. Honestly, I know we talked about this.

I don't understand why they were trying to get things in the spring. Like, or to get some things in the spring and then ship the rest, like, just don't. Just try to get it right this time. Try to have a coherent story at WWDC. Don't ship like weird halfway features and then eclipse them two months. Like, just don't do it. So I'm glad that they are not apparently doing that. Apple was apparently considering a redesign of the glowing Siri interface that was introduced in iOS 18, moving the main animation to the dynamic island. I'm going to read from Mark Gomer's report here.

Quote, when processing a request, a pill-shaped indicator labeled searching appears alongside a glowing Siri icon. Once results are ready, the interface expands into a larger translucent panel of Apple liquid glass design. Users can pull the menu down further to begin conversing back and forth. interesting to do a redesign so quickly. But again, it's like, it wasn't right. I didn't mind that animation, but they should not have put the animation out without features behind it.

Also, though, like, having it tied to the dynamic island is not a bad idea. Like, I'm a big fan of the dynamic island. I think it's a good idea. I think it's so good that it should just exist everywhere in some form, even if you don't have cutouts on your screen,

just because it's a having a little thing that pops open. animates open to show you what's going on in a basically a background process while you're doing whatever you're doing. I think it was a really good kind of interface breakthrough on their part. Look at me saying something nice about their interface team. And like, yes, go with that. Take that further. And so having Siri stuff be a dynamic island thing that can expand and that you can pull it down.

And like, great. Let's do it. Fun idea. And Siri is also expected to replace Spotlight. So there will be a unified interface, which will use personal context as well as everything else you can do in Spotlight. So you can start typing stuff. It's going to find things in your apps and know a bunch more about you. And it made me wonder, Jason, do you think that maybe Tahoe's Spotlight Revamp was supposed to include a little bit more?

Because it's interesting to do this and then the next year be like, ah, we don't do that anymore. or it's now called the Siri bar or something. Well, I mean, maybe. I think so Joe Rosenstiel back in March of last year wrote this piece for Six Colors and made the point that I think is a really good point, which is Apple has these two different text interfaces that are Syrian Spotlight,

and they do not talk. Yes. And Apple expects you to type things in different places and get different results and understand why you're getting it. And Joe's point, I think ultimately is, what are you doing? Why is there, why are there more than, you know, why is there more than one thing to do this? So this is great news, I think, because if I'm opening Spotlight and it's got like, right now, it's like Spotlight is in there, but it's also got like web things that it's doing and other

things that it's doing. And like, but it's not Siri because Siri is somewhere else is like, like, no, like, no, all the things should be together. And I'm not saying like, you have to ask Siri, hey, hey lady, uh, uh, open my app for me, right? It's not like you have to do command space and type, please open this app. Like you would still have a launcher or, or pull down on an iPhone or whatever. Like, but they should be integrated, right? Intelligently integrated so that there aren't like, you have to search for context clues about how to type because in certain circumstances you're expected to type a sentence

and in other circumstances you can't type a sentence or it'll get confused. Like, it just, Joe's rant about it is great. And he's right. This is a high level interface kind of thing. Like there shouldn't be two kinds of this in your computers.

There should be one kind of place that you say or type things and expect a response. and it should do the right thing. Mark is also reporting that Apple is developing the ability to have Siri take multiple actions from a single prompt. The example that he gives in his article is you could ask it to check the weather, create a calendar event, and send a message in one prompt, and it will go ahead and do each thing.

It is wild to me that this doesn't work right now. I know it doesn't, but also, man, it feels like it should be able to do this stuff. And so I guess it will be nice to do that And it will be interesting to see how long it takes me to get used to the fact that I can ask Siri to do that Right, right. No, this is all, I mean, this is all stuff that makes sense. And I worry that we're heaping so much expectation on Siri that it's not going to be able to make it.

But like this is all of the stuff that we feel like Siri should have been able to do like five years ago or longer. And it has not done. And maybe they maybe they will get that. there now with, you know, with Gemini in the background and with Apple's models being able to be better at taking the incoming call or incoming requests. And I don't know. I mean, they're setting the bar pretty high here, but this is, but honestly, this is how it should be, right? Like you said, why should you not be able to say do these two things? And then in a separate report, Mark is saying that Apple is preparing to allow other companies

to have the AI access to iOS that currently open AI is the only one in America at least and other parts of the world. So this is what ChatGPT has now. And they were offered the ability for other providers to become the world knowledge partner for Siri,

which is something that is still a part of iOS 27. So even though Siri will be an Apple intelligence powered by Gemini, there is still an expectation that chat GPT will remain in the OS as like going out and searching things for you. It would be fascinating to see in what scenarios that would still appear. Except in this case, it would be whatever chat provider you want. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not entirely clear whether it will be chat GPT as the default world knowledge. But the point here is that they have an extension system where you can sign. into your favorite chatbot app, and then because of this extension system that already exists, but it's just chat GPT, you'll be able to say, like, I want to use whatever.

Like, I have a Claude subscription. I want you to use Claude. And it'll be like, great, I'll use Claude. So it's essentially allowing AI providers to say, we are capable of providing this information and users to say,

I want to use them. And that's how it should work, right? Like that should be, part of it is this should be modular. If you're a, you know, if you're paying for chat GPT or if you're paying for Claude or whatever, you should be, you know, I don't know, XAI, meta AI, whatever, you should be able to say, yeah, I want to use that. That's the one I want. And that makes sense to me. And his power on newsletter, Mark said, a cornerstone of Apple strategy in the upcoming iOS 27 extensions feature, which will let users install third-party AI chat pots beyond chat GPT and run them inside

Siri. This feature will have its own dedicated app store section, effectively creating an AI app store. It will be a marketplace of sorts for third-party AI integrations. This made me wonder if you could maybe have multiple that you're plugging in to Siri. So like you could have different types of questions that would be fulfilled by different types of apps. Like for example, I think of one of my favorite apps, athletic, right? Which is doing interpretations of health data. What if it could present itself as an AI extensions app to the system that if I was to ask about a health thing, maybe Siri could grab information from there? I don't know, but I wonder why would they need to be part of the app store for this if it's only going to be like five apps total that could provide an extension? Yeah.

Well, we don't know. Yeah. But I think the idea here is that any comer, in any market, by the way, so it allows China to certify companies in the Chinese app store and then they appear to people in China. Let's the EU say, no, not these, but these and whatever. Like, I think kicking it to the app store is kind of interesting in that way. And like I said, my understanding is this is based on, I mean, the existing extensions that are used for chat GPT now. So they're basically saying we're opening this up to anybody who wants to do this. And I would also say, I feel like my gut feeling here is this is not like how we go beyond world knowledge in Siri.

It's also essentially how different AI providers can tie into the system in different ways. And essentially it is your preferred AI system. So if you stock Apple, I think you're getting Siri and then Siri powered by Gemini. But if you want full-on Gemini that maybe is doing very different things because it's tuned by Google and has access to things that Apple's implementation doesn't. Or you're like, no, no, no, I don't want that. I want Open AI. Or no, no, no, I want Claude and Anthropic. Like, you choose.

You get to choose. and that all the like system features that cascade out to AI will use what you prefer. That's how it's, that's how it should be, right? That is how it should be is that Apple should be providing a stock experience that's good, which they're not currently, but maybe they will be. And then say, if you want more and have a choice, have a, you know, a preference, just go to the App Store and get your app that you already have.

and you already have that app. And it's going to say, would you like to use me as an extension on iOS? And you'll say yes, and then it'll just do it. And that sounds like a really natural workflow, actually. Yes, definitely. This episode is brought to you by Steam Clock.

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Visit SteamClock.com slash upgrade to find out more and get in touch. That's steamclock.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Steamcloc for their support of this show and relay. So we are still continuing our coverage of Apple at 50. Like it wasn't just last week. We have things that we're planning to do throughout all of April. And today I wanted us to kind of share a little bit. And you have definitely some stories we've told before, but I think it's a good time to retell them. And there's some people that won't know them. A little bit about our own origin stories of Apple, kind of like how we found Apple, where we were in our lives, and why finding them the time that we did kind of carried us through to where we are now,

to the point that we care so much about the company and its products that we chose to make our living and through multiple iterations at this point of work in our lives, continue to come back and talk about this company. Would you like to go first, or would like me to go first? Oh, I'll go first. Go for it. I think chronologically it makes sense. Yeah, I suppose that's true. So, I mean, and I did write about this a little bit. It's at Macworld, or if you're a Six Colors member, you can just read it Six Colors. I wrote about this last week, because they wanted something about it. And I tried to tie it in with Macworld. They wanted it sort of like, also their readers know that I've been writing for Macworld forever. And so, like, tie that in there. But,

you know, my story starts in Sonora, California, where I grew up out in the middle of nowhere, one stoplight town. And as a result, we were probably not on the, I mean, we were telling the story last week about being in Silicon Valley and being in Santa Clara. It's like, yeah, really exciting stuff happening there was not happening up in the foothills until many years later. But my best friend, as in elementary school, was a kid named Crispin Holland. and his dad, Chuck Holland, was an elementary school teacher, and he was into computers. And I don't know Chuck's whole background,

but, like, his classroom was where the first computer in my school appeared. And it was a Commodore pet, so it was a very early, primitive, no graphics computer. And then at home, a year maybe later, Chuck had and Crispin had an Apple 2 plus. And so I would go over to Crispin's house and we would just mess around on that. We would play games. We would type in programs. And it just, we were obsessed with it.

And ultimately the Apple 2, there was at least one Apple 2 in the school. Then there were more. I have fond memories of, there were little hallways. in between, California school, we had buildings that you just entered from the outside,

but there was like a little hallway. So we had like these, these rooms, for the, fifth, six, seven, eighth grade,

they were these buildings that were just squares with four classrooms. And in the middle between the four classrooms were the hallway. And the hallway is often where the computer was.

And so I just have memories throughout that period, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, of, going out in the hallway. Like we, in eighth grade, we went out in the hallway at recess

to play Ultima 3, I think, on a computer instead of going outside. And I think they had to clamp down on us after a while. I don't know what I was doing in eighth grade other than playing video games.

This is what I remember. And about then, about then I got an Apple 2e at home. And, And that was a real sales job on my parents. And they were putting money away for me for college. So I literally, they were like, okay, we'll do it. But it's coming out of your college money.

And you're just going to have to deal with that. And I was like, let's do it. And so like super that started me on my way. And I was using that computer throughout high school, you know, for everything. I wrote papers on it. I did all the credits for the movies we made in high school using the graphics on the Apple two. which, you know, involved, like,

hooking it up to a VCR and then outputting the, the graphics files one by one. They were in big, with fonts and stuff. I used an app called font tricks to do that. Ran a computer bulletin board, you know, on my Apple 2, like all of that stuff. Like, I was super into it to the point where, even though I never took a computer class in high school,

they did a, uh, they, there's only a slightly self-aggrandizing story, but they did a, uh, there was a, there was the first programming contest or something that was going on for schools, for high schools. And, I mean,

I don't want to overstate it, but it was a little bit like all the people came out of the computer lab and came to me somewhere and said, Jason, we hear you're good at computers join us in this contest. It was like, oh, they,

I apparently was known as somebody who knew about computers yet did not hang out to the computer lab. They wanted the cool ringer to come in. Yeah, well, I wasn't as, I mean, I only knew Applesoft Base.

So I wasn't, the other people in that competition knew like Pascal. And I was like, well, I'm not out of my element here. But that was a fun. So I was known as a computer person anyway. So, um, we went off to call. So Apple, like Apple, six color rainbow, the whole deal. Absolutely. 100%.

Um, went off to college, um, and spent my first two years there with the Apple two, which is good because it was out of the college money that that thing got bought when I was in eighth grade or whatever. Um, And in college, I mean, first thing, like, you get, that was when you got like internet access for the first time in that era was like, you know, here's a login to a shell prompt on a Vax VMS or Unix system. But then you could do email with your friends at other colleges who also had that computer thing, which was, that was pretty funny. And, and so I started doing that and I could use my modem to dial into the Unix systems from my Apple 2, which was, which was, that was pretty funny. that and I could use my modem to dial into the Unix systems from my Apple 2, which was pretty

awesome. But the real cataclysmic moment for me was my sophomore year, not my freshman year, because I felt super intimidated. My sophomore year, I saw that my college newspaper, my campus-wide newspaper was looking for people to work for them. They had, it turned out, they had just converted to Max from a more traditional paste-up kind of thing. They had gone computer they were laying out the pages and page maker and a lot of the editors were struggling with it. So I entered this environment as a typist literally in those days, man, this really makes me feel old. But I was super cool, but everybody else was super old.

People come with their articles that they'd written for the newspaper that they had typed on a typewriter. Right. Or maybe they'd done it on like a computer and printed it out. but to get it on the Macs, you had to re-type it. Somebody could come in with a Mac on a floppy disk, but otherwise you had to re-type it into Microsoft Word. So that was my first job because as is known throughout the podcast sphere, I am a fast.

I was always a fast typist. So that was my first job. It's a very fast type of folks. I can attest to it. And very rapidly, what would happen, because I did work on my high school newspaper and stuff, is I started kind of editing the articles as I typed them in

because I was fixing mistakes and stuff. and I'm not sure they appreciated that. The editors there, but their solution was to make me an assistant editor instead. So I went from typist to editor fairly quickly in the news department. And we did have some like MacSEs in back rooms where you could like, if you were the writer, you could literally go write your article on the Mac back there and then and turn your story in that way.

And people would do that too. Anyway, so that was my exposure to the Mac for the first time. And that was, I was hooked. Literally, by the end of that year, there was a sale of the already discounted MacS.E because it was about to be replaced by the Mac Classic. At my, an education price back then was really much lower. And then it was lower even still. Still a lot of money.

And at that point, I, you know, the money my parents had saved for me for college was a bank account I had a checkbook for because I was paying the bills. And I just bought a computer. It's bought a MacS.E. And that was the end of the Apple 2. The Apple 2 went home with me and it never came back. But the MacS.E came home with me and then went back to school for the last two years. And that was when I fell in love with a Mac. And, you know, I ran the cables so that we could network our office so that we could all print to our fancy printer instead of what we had to do before then, which was put things on a floppy disk, walk it over to the one computer that was connected to the printer.

The worst. So, yeah, and nothing would say my, would point my career direction. more than the fact that I was both the editor-in-chief of my college newspaper and the person who was installing the file-sharing software and running the cables for the network so that we could all have a better computing environment at... So I was the IT guy and the editor-in-chief at the same time. And it was like, oh, this guy is going to do journalism and computers, right? I feel like... I feel like the arrow forward was obvious. I think other people I work with, maybe, and the people I went to high school with... When I went to my high school reunion,

a lot of them were like, oh, yeah, we figured. you do something in computers. I'm like, really? My two years of radio and three years of newspaper and three years of video production didn't tell you that maybe I'd be in the media. And they're like, oh, did you do that? Like, okay, everybody has their own vision of themselves. And it doesn't always come into contact with reality. So anyway, yeah, so I went to grad school and because the job market was terrible and my friend Randy had gotten a job for like $16,000 a year as a journalist. I was like, oh, God, no, let's find a better job. And I did. because I met Pam Piffner, who was a senior editor at Mac user,

and that was that moment of like, oh, I could do the magazines that I'm reading, and it would be both media and about the subject area that I cared so much about. And that is literally it because I became an intern, and then that went well because they offered me a job. And so I started a job there when I was still finishing up, my master's degree. And that takes me all the way to when they merged Mac user and Macworld and they said,

we would like you to move over to Macworld. And that takes me all the way to 2014 when I left Macworld, which is why every time we give my daughter advice about applying for a job, my wife points out that I have, I applied for a job one time. Which is true. Although I will say, I have hired a lot of. people. I've seen job applications from the other side a lot, but I only ever really, I mean, basically, I think I technically had to apply for the job after I was an intern, but like, it was my job.

It was made for me. So I basically got to talk my way into being a summer intern and then never left forever until 2014 when I left. So that's my story. So basically fell in love with Apple II. and then the Mac, and then found a way to make it part of what I did, and found a way to make a job out of that, and found a way to make a career out of that, and that, you know, takes me to now. So that's my story. I have a story, too, but let's take a break and we'll do my story too.

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Our thanks to Factor for the support of this show and all of Relay. So my story is different than your story. Of course. I think is a different story, I think, maybe even to like a lot of people in our world. So I mean, I had experience with different Apple computers as a kid. My problem is I don't remember exactly what they were. My uncle was and is a technologically minded person. he is the person that I really have to owe my love of technology.

He always had the latest gadgets. I remember there was a big hubbub when he got like a CD player that was an MP3 player, right, where you could like load all your CDs onto it and it would take them as MP3s and you could just choose from you. Like that was like a big deal in my life when he got that. It was an incredible thing to say. But we had, he had access through his job. He used to work for BT, British Telecom.

So, like, the, um, was at our time, and it kind of still is, like, our main kind of telecoms provider in the UK for like, especially if I landline calls and stuff like that. But also, like, then he, he went to mobile phone stuff. Um, I remember he had that, like, Sony Erickson, like, a Palm piloty kind of thing. That was an incredible thing, uh, in my life to see him use this kind of stuff. Um, he, he once actually gave me, this thing that BT was trialing that did not work out. It was a

wristwatch that was a pager. That was very fun. But anyway, he had various Apple computers. I believe he had an Apple 2 of some flavor that I played around with. And I especially remember a PGA tour golf game that I poured many hours into

whenever I'd visit him. But I didn't really care about golf, but it was a game he had because he loved golf. And so that was the video game I played. And I know that he had various PowerBook laptops over time as well. And some of this stuff would get handed down to me. The first time I ever saw a sad Mac face was when, you know, the internet didn't exist for me at the time. So I would just dig through the file directories on this computer. And I assume I deleted something really important.

And I also remember at one point seeing a floppy disk of a question mark on it. I don't know what I did to these computers, but they were happy to do. downs and I kind of, I learned a love of computing by just digging around on this stuff. But, so this was like a thing and then we got a PC at home and then we got the internet and I didn't think about it for many years until the iPod became a thing. And so I was really intrigued about the iPod mini. So I think this was what? 2004. And I don't know what it was. Maybe it was just the advertising that got to me, but it was like, I want one of the things. I want one of the things. these. I actually had had a

mini-disc player before them, which I loved, but then an MP3 player sounded even better. So cool. Yeah. So cool min-disc. Wow. I loved my... I loved my Sony minidist player. It was so great. It was the blue one, like the classic blue one. Oh man, I loved that thing. But then I was like, no, I don't want the discs

anymore. I want an MP3 player. And the only MP3 player that I want is an iPod. And the iPod mini was very exciting to me. And I remember I went to an electronic store, and the only one they had was the pink one. which wasn't necessarily what I wanted. I wanted the green one,

but I wanted it so bad, I was like, I'm just going to get the pink one. And I'm actually really happy I had the pink one because the pink iPod Mini was awesome. And then over time, I had all the accessories.

I had the belt clip, you know, which is actually, the belt clip was actually pretty cool. And I loved my iPod Mini. And this then got me in. I was in. With the iPod Mini,

I was plugging it into a PC at the time, but this was what I wanted. And I would, every week I would be on the iTunes music store, seeing what new music there was, and then I'll buy new albums. And I discovered so much music during this time, just because I had the iPod mini. But it also threw me into the world of like iPod rumors and then just general Apple. And then like it expanded my love of what was possible in computing because I came through from the iPod. So websites like, obviously Mac World, but I lounge. was a big one, the

unofficial Apple weblog, like these were sites that I would start frequenting to read about rumors and things like that. This then ended up, you know, through different, you know, I would then start looking at more iPods and then another big one for me was the video iPod. So, what's that?

Maybe fourth gen was the first iPod with video. I remember something that is very funny for me at the time. I guess I was maybe like 16 or 17 when this came out. And I convinced my mom that she had to let me, this is a Christmas gift. And I had to, I convinced her that I needed to have it for a few days. This is my only Christmas gift that year. So I could set it up because I said to her like it's useless to me as a gift as there's nothing on it.

Which meant that I then spent a few days just playing with and watching. I think episodes of Family Guy under the covers at night. and anything else I could find. And actually the video iPod is what led me to discover podcasts. Because there was a burgeoning field of video podcasts at the time. And that was like Dignation was the first one that I watched. And then other stuff from Revision 3 is how I found Twitter

and then how I found Mac Break was all through wanting to watch video podcasts on my iPod. This all leads to 2006. So January, 2006 was my 18th birthday. And through a combination of my birthday money that was coming and the part-time job I had at the time, I decided I was buying my first Mac. And the expectation was that there would be a new IMac announced at MacWild in 2006. And I decided this was the one I was going to get. That just so happened to be the first Intel Mac. That is what I ended up buying. So my first Mac of my own

was the first Intel IMac, the white kind of plasticy, bulbous one. That was my first Mac. And I remember, like, I just fell in love with this computer. I loved it so much and would show all of my friends and we loved photo booth. Everybody loved photo booth. Like, that was like such a big deal at the time and I did, you know, everything I could possibly do, right? I built websites of Iweb. I was just in it spending all my days on this computer and then that then just I fell in love of Apple at that point. Later on down the line, I got a white MacBook. This was, I bought my white MacBook using my first paycheck, my entire first paycheck from my full-time job in banking. I remember I was at a training course and I went to the ATM to check that it had been deposited. It was, I was on my way home

from the training course. I stopped off at the Apple store and I spent every penny on a white MacBook. So now I had two Macs, right? I had my laptop and I had my desktop. And then, like, this is, I don't remember what this is, but, but like we're in it now. And then I'm into the iPod Touch and the iPhone. And like when I was reflecting on this today, that 2004, to say 2008 run, unbelievable. Yeah. Right. Like who would not have been me at that moment and then not just be completely devoted to Apple for the rest of their lives?

Like if you start in 2004 and then you end up with it. an iPod mini, a video iPod, an iMac, a MacBook, an iPod touch, and an iPhone, all in like a four to five year span. Like, unbelievable. Like, just like, like, like a legendary run for a company. Like, I couldn't believe it when I was looking at this today. Yeah. And then it was like, now we're off.

Boom. Yeah. Just unbelievable. And then in 2010, I decided I needed to start a podcast of my own. And this was in between the iPad being announced and being released. released. So I started podcasting in April of 2010. The iPad was released here in July. Like it was a, you know, there was both the iPhone, the first iPhone and the first iPad, they came internationally a little bit later. And I remember just like the first few episodes of my first ever podcast was

just me just being increasingly frustrated about having to wait because Apple, I mean, Apple was a much smaller company at this time. They didn't even, acknowledged that it would ship internationally, let alone talk about when that might be. It was like, ah, you know, we're going to be shipping in April. It's like, yeah, but only in one place. And then they eventually announced it. And then, yeah. So this, like, when I was, I was spending time looking back at this over the last couple of days,

and I kind of think to myself, well, of course I'm doing what I'm doing. You know, like, I just, I can't see a scenario where I could care about anything more, you know? But this span of five years, it gave me kind of everything I could ever imagine. I was still so young. I was a late teen into early 20s with this stuff. And so it was just so formative to me. And it was also so cool at the time. Like I think that's the thing that is maybe if you're younger,

is hard to explain how cool Apple was in the 2000. because they were small but their products were so amazing and everybody wanted them whether they had them or not it wasn't like a given that you might that you would have one everyone wanted an iPod

especially the iPod everybody wanted the MacBook right the plastic MacBooks either the white one or the black one everybody wanted one of those computers then everybody wanted an iPhone and it was it was such an incredible time and I feel

so lucky that this is kind of my story with them. Yeah. I would maybe even argue that you and I are representative of the two great influxes of people who started getting into Apple stuff. Yeah. Is that I was part of that group of kids who were exposed in the Apple II generation and then just kind of went off. And I guess there's all the other group would be bring it back to

John Syracuse, I feel like the people who just saw the Mac, original Mac, and were blown away, but I was primed to see the Mac and get it by my time with an Apple 2. And then the second wave is that is the iPod. iPod to iPhone, that early 2000s. I don't think many people were getting that into it in the intervening time, right? Like it wasn't the right time. It was probably not the coolest time to be an Apple fan of 1990. when I started by a job, right? When it was dying.

But it does feel like it's like if it wasn't your time, it was my time, right? Like these are the times that created the enthusiasts, the fanboys, whatever you would call them. Like this was the time in which these things were happening because they were doing such unbelievable things. You know, like the thing like the iPhone was just so incredible. I don't remember if I mentioned this on the show last week, but in preparation for my incredible impression of an impression of an impression, I watched some of the iPhone keynote, like the Steve Jobs' iPhone keynote.

Yeah. One, it's the greatest product demonstration ever and then never be a better one. But two, just like the way in which people were reacting to the things that were happening, I've never heard before that, like, people were showing. shocked to see scrolling. Like that was on its, like, what's he doing? Like,

just the unlocking of the phone was eliciting gasps. You were there, right? I was there. Yeah, I mean, I know you obviously touched one afterwards, but you were obviously in the room when it was happening. I remember the moment that I got what he was doing with the, you know,

it's a breakthrough internet communicator. It's a, it's an iPod that plays video. It's a phone. and and then and then I remember it's spinning around again for him to repeat it and I was like oh I see I see what the bit is here and I felt like it took a couple more

for the audience to start going and him saying are you getting it but yeah that's a masterful legendary you could it's possible that you could argue that there are other Steve Jobs keynotes that are more impressive in terms of the showmanship but the combination of the showmanship

and the product that's being shown put those together and you can't match that one, I think. And I say that as somebody who just scrubbed through the entirety of the iPod launch video, which is a very different vibe. Like there's like a moment in it very early on

like when he's just, you know, he's basically just shown the whole thing. And he's like, and here it is and he takes it out of his pocket and he puts it away again. And it's like, Oh, that's such a flex. It's like, I'm not showing it to you yet.

I've got it. It's in my hands, but not for you. It's like, wow. Wait for it. It's just, it's so good. So yeah, that is my origin story. Very nice. Let's knock out one ask upgrade question because we don't really have time.

But I, you know, I feel bad when we don't. Single laser. One single laser. And this question is going to come from Logan. Logan says, if Apple introducing the MacBook Neo, and discontinuing the MacPro. Could there be a new naming scheme in the works? Neo, Air, Studio, and Ultra,

becoming the tags while Pro and Pro Max are retired or just used for chips? Could the MacBook Pro become the MacBook Studio or the MacBook Ultra? Could other products be named the same way? Or is this all just marketing jargon that never made sense in the first place? I'm sorry to do this to you, Logan,

but the answer is just no. Pro doesn't mean what you think it means. Yeah. Pro being used in the Macs. Mac Pro is the worst example of using Pro in Apple's product lines. I'm sure they're relieved that it's not there anymore. I will also say that the Mac Studio, you know, it could have been called the Mac Pro in a different world,

but Studio is pretty good name too. So that's fine. I think that's a nice way to do it. But like, they're not going to change the name of the iPhone 17 Pro. Like, pro max, like, no, they're not going to do any of that. That's that. Pro means nice, except for the Mac Pro, which is now. gone. So it just, it makes Apple's use of Pro better and more consistent now. So no, it's not going

anywhere. Yeah, there are people that, I mean, I've seen rumors about this that like the, or people suggesting that the touchscreen MacBook Pro will be called the MacBook Ultra, and I just don't think that's going to be the case of all. That's going to be the MacBook Pro. I don't see it. I don't see it. I think it's going to be the high-end models of the MacBook Pro. Yeah. And then they'll still keep the M6 around in the base model that is not redesigned. I think that's what's going to happen there so that they can sell it at a low price. Yeah, I just, this is overthinking it. And nobody thinks of Apple products with a pro label and thinks about the Mac Pro.

Because nobody thinks about the Mac Pro. So, no. Sorry. I don't know why Mike picked this question just for me to kick it, but there it is. That's the one question we've got. Because, Jason, we have had so many questions about product naming. We had to do it. We had to do one.

one of them so people will stop asking. Don't look at the discontinuation of the Mac Pro is literally meaning anything about anything other than the Mac Pro. Well, it all started with the Neo. So, like, the Neo started a title, one of the product naming questions that I wanted to just answer one of them so we could get it out there. And I like Logans, because Logan admits it at the end, it's all just marketing jargon that never made sense. That's right. Don't try to apply a lot. There is logic to Apple's product names, but it's not the logic you're thinking of.

If you would like to send us in a question for us to answer in a future show where you have any feedback or follow up, go to Upgradefeedback.com. I'd like to thank our members who support us with UpgradePlus. Go to GetUpgradeplus.com and you'll get longer ad-free versions of the show every week. You can find us on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast. I would like to thank our sponsors of this week's episode one more time. That is Delete Me, Squarespace, Steam Clock and Factor. But most of all, I would like to thank you for listening.

Until the next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, my curly.