Upgrade - 618: The WWDC Keynote Draft 2026

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 618. Today's show is brought to you by FitBod, Delete Me, and Mercury Weather. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Sinell. Hi, Jason Snell. Mike, it's June. It's June. It's June. It's June. Huge. Huge. Huge. Huge month. Huge. Huge month for us. You probably know what we're talking about. We will get to it, but nothing can stop the flow of time. on this show. It is time for a snow talk question. Cameron wrote in and said, if Apple were to have a 50th anniversary video package at WWDC, do you think it would feature more CEOs than just Steve Jobs and Tim Cook? I have to stop you there just to say nothing can stop the flow of time, literally anywhere. I guess a black hole, like extreme speed. I guess, okay. And that's not getting in the way of the show. You can't stop the flow of time. You can slow it down, but you cannot ever stop it. You can only hope to contain it. Cameron, I don't think, okay, this is my, this is my take here, which is I don't think any kind of video package or montage at Apple is going to be focused on people.

I think it's going to be focused on products. And so you might see, Steve, jobs in such a montage, maybe. But I don't think, I don't think that's the point of it. I think the point of it is going to be, would be the products more than it would be anything else. Yeah. Because I think that that's, and actually beyond that, I would say it would be the people using them. It would be like the customers. That's the kind of story Apple likes to tell.

I think that's too self-centered for Apple's marketing to go into that like a Doctor Who montage that shows the many CEOs of regenerating into one of it. I don't think that's going to happen. I picked this question for two reasons, though. Like, I didn't think they would do this particular thing, but there were a couple of things that I wanted to get your thoughts on.

One, if they will do any Apple and 50 thing as part of this, I feel like that's done. I don't expect that. But then it was also like just this thought of like, No one mentions the CEOs in the middle. They just never get mentioned. Like, people talk about Steve Jobs. They talk about Tim Cook.

The whole parade of people in the middle, it just never mentioned when like talking about the 50s stuff. It's like the start. It's all the others that came before Steve are kind of like prehistory at this point. So that's right. That's right. Somebody's going to need to talk about those CEOs

and explain who they were. But it's not going to be Apple's marketing at WWDC. you that. But we might do it. If you would like to send in a question of your own, please go to Upgradefeedback.com and send in your own Snell talk question. We've danced around it enough. Jason Snell, what are we up to over here, me and you? Well, okay, so if you didn't, if you're not an Upgrade Plus subscriber, you didn't hear our post show. You may have seen us on social media last week talking about this. If you're just hearing about it now, let me frame it to you this way. Mike and I are doing a new podcast, not trying to do.

We are doing a new podcast called Designed in California, which is based on our Apple at 50 episode where we told the story of the origins of Apple. We're going to do a year of it about all sorts of stuff across all 50 years of Apple history. And I can say we are going to do it because we launched a Kickstarter. About two hours ago as we're recording this, it funded before we went on the air so we're doing it it's happening

good news is there are lots of stretch goals we have lots of plans but we didn't want to we didn't want to set the bar so high that we couldn't cross it and we want to find out where that bar is with everybody else who's supporting it and that will determine what we do our next goal is to hit 60,000 at which point we'll do

50 episodes over the course of a year 50 seems about right It's basically one a week, take Christmas and New Year's off or something like that. And then after that, we've got all sorts of ideas for other things that we could do. There's a document about other things we could do to stretch it further. If we've got more money, we have more capabilities to do more work to create even more around it. So what it's going to be is these episodes are going to be 30 to 45 minutes in length. They're going to be scripted by me. I'm going to do a load of research.

It's like the rest is history, one of our favorite podcasts. you know, what I always say about that is I don't really want to read the 800-page book in small print where a historian explains everything that happened in a particular battle or whatever in history. What I want is Tom Holland or Dominic Sandbrook, these expert historians to read that book and maybe a few other books and then kind of tell the story as they reconcile it across all of those books. That's a little bit of what it's going to be is I have a bookshelf full of Apple Books and I have a Devon Think database full of searchable text from Apple books, and I got all the magazines. And then obviously from 1994 forward, I've got my personal experience covering Apple, which by my math is roughly two-thirds of the history of Apple. But the first third, there are also lots and lots of books. There's magazines. There's oral history stuff.

But I went to the Computer History Museum last week for the Steve Jobs in Exile panel, which was amazing and it just reminded me how much history is out there. So there's lots of opportunity to tell stories. We've got so many ideas. We've got like three years of material sitting in a notion file of things we could cover. So it'd be really exciting to get started. The more support we get, the more we're going to be able to do. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

And if the 50th episode of Upgrade is not enough, we're also going to show you what the podcast is going to be. Because every week this month, on Thursdays, The upgrade normally releases on Monday afternoons my time. On Thursdays, we're going to release every week this month an episode of Design in California in the upgrade feed. So you're going to be able to hear us continue the story we told on Apple's 50th birthday at the beginning of April. We're going to take that story slightly further. It turns out a lot is going on in 1976 and early 1977, a whole lot.

but we're going to take that story further with four episodes that will drop weekly on Thursdays in the upgrade feed. It's not a permanent feature. It is more like during this Kickstarter campaign, we want a place to show what we're going to do so people can get

a sense before they back us of what this project is going to be like. So that's the other we're pulling out all the stops here, everybody. So that's the idea. Design in California, and it's happening because minutes before we started today we got over the first goal. So as Mike said to me, get to work, buddy.

This is just, you know, now we know this project is a thing and now it's about how much of it we'll do. Basically, after we recorded our 50th anniversary episode, the origin of Apple episode, we were both just, we fell in love with making a show like this. That episode was supposed to be like 30 minutes of an episode, is what that story was supposed to be, and we did 100 minutes.

And then from there, it was just like, what is it going to take to be able to produce something like this? And what we wanted, the reason we turned to Kickstarter is, if we're going to do this, we want to do it the best way we possibly can.

And knowing that, you know, we're able to put the time aside to produce this show at the level that we need to really helps us make that a reality. Like, if we just launch this show into the world, We would have no idea if people won it, and then we'd have to slowly start to build an audience, build advertising, build members. This way, with the Kickstarter campaign, which is at Designed.fm, you are essentially becoming a member in advance.

We are pre-selling memberships. Yeah, exactly. And that gives us the confidence, because I did the math, because I did that episode. And this story goes back a long way. You wrote about it at The Enthusious, your blog that you have, which is I've been working on, an Apple history project as a potential follow-up to actually 20-max for 2020 since last year.

And I wrote a whole script for essentially two episodes on a totally different subject and then Jeopardy called and I just set it aside. And then as we were running up to the 50th, I thought, oh, I should take that concept and do a special episode of upgrade. What I got out of that was how much

time it takes to do that work and to build the research corpus and to get better at, at pulling it all together. I'm sure I'll be more efficient over time. But that allowed me to kind of set a bar. And the fact was it was it was going to be a heavy lift for us to do all the work that would go into this entirely speculatively. That's why we chose Kickstarter is it was just going to be a lot of work.

And that's scary to do when you have no listeners and no support until you earn it. And so we said, look, we've got a track record. We've shown you what we can do. We're going to continue this month to show you what we can do. And getting that support in advance with essentially, yeah, pre-sold memberships for the first year allows us to know that we're not going to put in enormous amounts of work. And then at the end of the year, think, oh, nobody wanted it. Why do we do all that work?

Yeah, like we really wanted to find out if people liked this idea as much as we did. It felt to me like something that deserves to exist. but you've got to have interest in it to be able to make it. So if you back the Kickstarter campaign at the founding producer level and above, we have like a $20 level of just supporter if you just want to throw some money

but you don't want to go the whole way. Because there will be a free version with ads that will release weekly. This will be a regular relay podcast. It's a relay podcast, yeah. That will launch once we deliver the campaign, we will launch a show. There will be a free version of the show.

That show will have ads in it eventually. hopefully as it builds a listenership and you will get those episodes essentially weekly. So when we have a, you know, if we're doing 30 episodes, we'll take some breaks. If we're doing 50,

it will be a weekly show. But if you are a member, you will get all of the episodes of a specific topic at once. The four episodes we're going to release in June. Yeah. If, you know, four members,

the way that would have worked is instead of them being released weekly, you just get all four. episodes in your feed. This is what the rest is history does. And it's, it's a delightful moment when you can sit down and realize you, you suddenly have six episodes about some juicy topic in your feed. And everybody else is sort of like, wait till next week for the next one. And you get it, you get the whole story up front, which I think is pretty cool. And no ads. So, so that's all, that's all part of the deal. And we're also, we also have some tiers that have some merge items.

So we're going to produce an enamel pin. And we're going to produce a signed poster print of the artwork of the show artwork. We're also still working on these things. I'll get to that in a moment. So we'll show those as the campaign goes on, but you can back to get those as well. You can back at a level which is called full producer where we will read your name on a show as helping make that show, that episode of possibility and make that season. And also if you want to be a sponsor of the show, if you want to be one of our first sponsors, we have a sponsor tier as well. So, you know, we've got that come in. There's so much.

So we're going to be talking about this all month, right? That's because there are so many things that will be going on. But saying about the artwork, it's so interesting. Like, we've launched this project to the world. And it's maybe the most I've ever done for a show before we've told people about it. But also we don't have the least finalized. Yeah, the key. Yeah, because it's Kickstarter.

Yes. So, so, yeah, you said, to me, like, I feel I'm prepared, but because this is Kickstarter, we're doing a bunch of things out of order. Like, on one level, we have a content plan for more than a year. And I've written a bunch of episodes. I had to stop writing episodes because I thought, Jason, you cannot do more work on this until it funds. We've recorded episodes. We've recorded six episodes, essentially, of the show already as part of our test here. But because it's Kickstarter, the campaign runs through June. We will close it out on July 1st in the morning. So there will be four episodes of Upgrade where we talk about it a little bit at least. Well, that's when the campaign ends, but there's a gap before you actually have to deliver. And while we're planning on starting to deliver this, not too far after it ends, the fact is, Mike and I have done enough podcast now that we feel like the moment, like today, the moment we announce this to the world, we should have every single thing locked down because you would release your first episode. And that's not what we're doing. And so like, we, we

are working with an illustrator to do original artwork that will be the main show art and will also be what you see in that signed poster tier where we're going to get really nice prints on a really nice paper. Mike's going to sign it. I'm going to sign it. And then you're going to get that. It's going to be pretty cool. We're working with an illustrator on that. But he just sent me sketches the other day, right? Like it's not done yet. We're working on a theme song. Haven't heard it yet. But that's in process. All this stuff is like being worked on. But it is a little bit. weird for us because we are we try to be very professional and a little bit control freaks about this and like we want to do check all the boxes and it is very weird because not all the boxes are checked

because that's the point of kick starter is you know don't start checking boxes until you know that the project's going to happen uh which it is Mike so let's start checking those boxes I mean yes but it is also funny because like I've spent hours looking at shipping and taxes so it's like there's been many hours of work that have gone into this project but they're none of the things that we normally do is very strange. So like your people are going to ask us questions about this and we invite them on social media and the feedback form. There's a couple of things I think maybe you should talk about why is this a new show? Why is this not part of Upgrade Plus? We think this is something that should stand on its own. We want it to be its own thing.

One of the things that you've mentioned a lot and you speak about it in the video too is this is not like and will not be like other tech podcasts that you listen to. And there are people that don't really want a show like upgrade, which is just weekly news. I know. Shocker. I know. Shocker. Well, two things.

Some people don't want a weekly Apple news show at the level of detail that we provide and that other people provide. So I hope that there are people out there like, yeah, tech podcasts. Like we also know for a fact, this is one reason, by the way, everybody that we're doing this in June is we know that our most listened to episode of the year is next week. Next week, yeah. It is the WWDC post episode and then maybe the iPhone episode after that. We know that. We know that people listen sometimes or watch the YouTube video sometimes because they care about like that news, but they don't want it week to week. I'd love to capture those people and have them say, oh, this sounds interesting to me.

This is more interesting than 90 minutes of news every week. Also, I know that there are a lot of people out there who are listening to Upgrade sometimes, but they're also listening to Connected. They're listening to ATP. They're listening to the talk show. They're listening to all sorts of podcasts. And it may be a lot. So they may not listen to Upgrade every week or they may have said, you know,

ATP is so long that I listen to. I don't have any room. The talk show is so long that I sometimes get to ATP and then I, but then I can't get to upgrade or connected or whatever. So we think that there's an audience beyond just upgrades. So we didn't want to make it just sort of like upgrade part two. And also, I think technically, how do you get to the point where you can, right, again,

that we can fund the amount of work it's going to be. So it is a separate project, but we are making available. some, you know, some thank yous to the people who are existing members and we'll get into that and Upgrade Plus. Yeah. Yeah. If you're a member, then wait around for that at the end of the show. Yeah, I'm, I'm blown away by this. I feel like I was really prepared for selling this Kickstarter. And now I'm not as prepared now because it's funded. And also, we obviously still want you to go back at design.fm running all month. but I'm also just blown away because I you know we we felt confident that people would want this and that we could make it happen you never know but we felt like this is cool I think people will like it I have been absolutely blown away by the support like there's something that I talk about in my blog post but I have not launched a new podcast for like five years or something like that which in the in the prior five to ten years of my career that is a ridiculous thing to imagine I was launching more than one of these things a year so many you could stop him he's like

I just couldn't stop. But it just stopped. Over time, there's just like a bunch of reasons why it felt like I shouldn't do that. But this one, I fell in love with the idea and I couldn't stop myself from thinking about it. And it has occupied my mind constantly for the last 10 weeks or so since we started working on this. I am absolutely thrilled and honored to be able to do this show with you, Jason. you've done such an incredible job with what we've done so far and I'm so proud of what we're producing together

and I'm so excited that people are going to get this because you're in for a treat and you're going to see throughout the month you're going to get an episode every Thursday they tell a great story as you go through I think when you listen to them you'll realize why you would like to get them all at once and you will if you like the Kickstarter campaign instead of waiting for these things quickly

because they're just a great story And we have so many great stories. We have some extra things that we're going to talk about during the campaign. We've recorded some other episodes, but we won't spoil those for now. So yeah, go to design.fm. Please take a look, back the campaign. We will make it worth your while. Like, I promise you of that.

Like, we're going to work so hard on this to make it something that you will see a new episode and you will immediately put it to the top of your feed. That's what we're aiming for. That's it. That's what we're trying. Should we like do a draft? Should we like do an episode of upgrades? Should we do that?

I mean, we should do that probably. That's what the people are here for, right? Is that what they're here for? I hope so. I hope so. This episode is brought to you by our friends at FitBod. If you're looking to change your fitness level, getting started can be tough. That's why I want to tell you about FitBod.

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at FitBod.me slash upgrade. So go now and get your customized fitness plan at FITBOD.D.mee slash upgrade. Once again, that is FitBod. com for your 25% off your membership. A thanks to FitBod for their support of this show and Relay. It is time to draft Jason Snow. We are doing it.

WWDC is next week, unbelievably. Should we share the other little piece of fun news that we have right now? where we're talking about WRBC? Sure. Why not? Next week, as everybody kind of might expect,

I'll do my usual thing, which is I'm going to be ushered over, very kindly by people at Apple, ushered over after the keynote to a space that they've set up that is like a podcast studio, and they've got mics and cameras and chairs and stuff, and they set that up for us to do it.

And people may remember that, what, three years ago, I think, you and I did that together and the last two you've been kind of remote for various reasons what people may not know is that this year you will be there too I will. We're going to be sitting next to

each other after the keynote recording in person which is perfect it feels perfect for where we are this month that we'll be able to be together we'll be able to take a bunch of extra pictures of ourselves in fun environments that we can use on our Kickstarter page

so yes next week's episode we'll be recording as soon as we can after the keynote it will come out a little bit later on in the day. We will be together we'll be able to do the obligatory high five inside of Apple Park. Yeah, but obviously the event is in the morning and our recording is in the early afternoon Pacific time

so the episode will come out later as it usually I mean, it always does. It always does. It doesn't matter. In fact, it might be earlier than sometimes because we'll be able to record it while we're at Apple Park instead of recording it later after the day is done. Well, and because we're,

will be in person, it will be an easier edit too for Jim. A much, I think it will be a much easier edit, yeah. These are the rules of the draft. There are 14 rounds, 28 overall picks. These picks are chosen from a predetermined list of choices that we have agreed

could be verifiable and on screen and not ridiculously obvious. The WWDC rules for the draft are slightly different. Each host must draft at least one pick from the following categories. is iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, and Siri slash Apple Intelligence.

We have some other categories too, but these are defined categories that we have to make a pick from. We can't do that at any point in the draft. Can't do all, you know, all AI picks. You can't do it. You got to throw a bone to the iPad and the MacDiv. An old boy, would you be throwing a bone to iPadOS or MacOS? Hey, Mike, I seriously considered making us pick Apple TV and watch OS picks.

Oh, that would have been just a real waste of a pick, honestly. Yeah. The current draft champion gets to make first pick. That is Jason Snell. For an item to count in scoring, it must be either clearly announced on stage or on a slide during the presentation. Our friend Stephen Hackett will adjudicate

in case of a scoring stalemate between the two of us. No partial points are awarded, and the points awarded in the episode of final. They are finalized during the scoring segment. In case of a tie, there is a tie-breaker question. I, as Draft Challenger, get the pick of that question, and Jason as Champion has to give an answer. The winner of the draft crowned next week will become draft champion and can display the champion pennant. The loser becomes Draft Challenger and displays

the Challenger pennant. I would like to thank Zoe Knox for creating the draft scorecards that you can play along with at home by going to Upgrade.cards, and you can buy your own draft T to wear on draft days like I am right now by going to upgrade your wardrobe.com. The results of drafts so far, there have been two drafts this year. There was a draft of the ages for episode 600, which I won. And then the March 2025 experience draft, which is the best title of any, went to Jason. Jason finally broke the draft drought. That's right. I went to New York. I had an experience and I want to draft all at once. All at once. All at once. This is our 11th WWDC draft.

Amazing. We have been drafting for 10 years now. This is the 11th one. Jason has won four and I have won six. Historically, this is where I perform best. Of any of our drafts. So the tiebreaker, I'm going to stick with the obligatory tiebreaker. I'm going to step the standard one that we go with.

And I'm going to go with the over, under on the length of the. event. We'll take this from Apple's website, so does they have like a video or from YouTube, but the same video. So that would give us the runtime. I took a look at previous years, right? So last year was an hour 32. 2022 and 2021 were all around an hour 45. And 23 was two hours and six minutes because of the Vision Pro. What were they doing? Vision Pro. That one went on and on. That was my, that was the one where I sat outside of my hat on for two hours. But that was fun. that's a good keynote. It was.

Yeah, that's good times. I was trying to get in the headspace here, right? I think last year, they didn't have as much as other years.

They had the redesign, but I don't, you know, they went into then more detail about that later. So I'm like, well,

this year we're expecting a lot of AI. So I think they're going to need some time for that. I'm setting the over under a one hour and 45 minutes.

You know, you could have described that any way you wanted to. Yeah. I knew that you would set it. 145. Oh, really? Because I would have said it at 145 because I think that's the real tipping point here is clearly. So one, clearly, even when you get, as a member of the press, you get like a little invitation with all of your briefings and stuff. And it's a two hour slot for the keynote. It's always a two hour slot for the keynote. They all think, so 2023, a real outlier there, right? Because they, they always think max two hours. But I think they also think, let's shoot for 90 minutes. And then you get what you get here, which is 90.

92 minutes, you know, maybe a little more. So 145, I think, is the right thing to do here. And as we've seen, they were over in 21 by a minute, in 22, by three minutes, and in 23 by more than half an hour. But they were under, and they were over in 24, but under in 25. Or no, they were under 24 by two minutes. So, well, I think 145 is the perfect time because if you set it at 150, it would be a lot easier. If you set it at 140, it would be, it would be. it would be just as hard.

I'm going to go under. I think they're going to go under. I think Apple would rather not be over 145. And I think that the keynote will be less specific than maybe you do. So let's say under. Okay. That's our tie break. You're ready to start making some draft picks?

Nope, but we're going to do it anyway. Yeah, you're up first, Jason Snow. Have you like it or not. What is your first round draft pick? Well, I'm going to shout out to, to my friends in the app that I always write about. And I'm going to say the Photos app gets AI editing tools like extend and reframe. This is a thing that Mark German has reported sounds completely entirely boringly logical to me,

that you would do that. Remember when they did the thing where you could take pictures and it also took the picture with like what was outside your lens on the other camera? and all of that. And now I feel like with so many of these features, portrait mode is like this too, Apple is like, nah, we'll just AI it.

It's fine. We don't need actual data. We'll just use AI. It'll be fine. So that's what I think is if you need, if you need a little more width, especially for like wallpapers and stuff, the option to extend just a little in order to get it to fit on your wallpaper or whatever.

It just makes sense. So I've mentioned this before. Like I've done this manually, Photoshop before to get it. Apple does have an extend feature in the lock screen editor, but it's not very good. And it can't go very far. It can't extend a lot.

And I'm hoping that they will be able to allow you to really make some good tool. I do also hope that they bring whatever powers that just directly into the lock screen creator. Like just make the extend button do this and maybe bring up a UI for that or whatever. The reframe one is the one. is the one where they're like using the spatial photo thing. I don't understand that and I'm intrigued to see what that is. It reminds me of, do you remember capture outside the frame? Yeah, that's what I was saying is, is this idea that they used to like capture optionally. You can capture beyond what you saw. Yeah. Yeah. And then you had like a few minutes to say I actually want to make it.

You could, you had, you were actually shooting kind of a crop. I forgot there was a time limit on that. Yeah. Capture outside the frame. And it was just complicated. It's a, a nice idea, but it just was never something that ended up being functional in any way. Because it became one of those things of like, oh, you know, now there's the information in the image. It's just going to say, all right. Right. My first round pick, I'm going to make my Siri slash Apple Intelligence pick.

I'm going to make the defined pick now. Siri gets a new chatbot style interface. Makes sense. Makes sense. So my home pod is currently finding web results for me, so that's really good news. Let's hope that that gets better after the next week. Yeah, I think to me this feels like

so the most picks that we have to pick from are in the Syrian AI category because this is clearly what WBDC is going to be about, right? Like I think logically it needs to be this and all the rumors are suggesting it's going to be this. Like this is what the big focus is going to be on. And absolute table stakes for them is they need to present the assistant

in a style like this where you, because it's what everybody's doing. If they don't do it, it's going to look very, very strange as a product, right? Like, we wanted it in 24 and didn't get it, right? It's like, you're surely you have to do this. They didn't do it. We've heard, you know, we've seen rumors from the sheriff that there was some pushback at Apple. I think John Ginn and Andrea specifically didn't like this style.

But now it seems like they're going to do it. And I hope that they do because I think this is the way that, I mean, seriously, should have always been so I should be able to go back and read what it told me 10 minutes ago, but you can't do that. So hopefully now we'll get that. Yeah, no, I think it's, I think it's perfectly logical. And this is one of those cases where you can be as you can poo-poo the chatbot interface all you want, but like people use it. Those apps are very popular. Yep. So there should be one in the operating system without needing to use an app. And it has value to be able to check your history or to change context. I think that's one of the really nice things that the chatbots,

allow you to do is say, this is my conversation about this one issue so that when I go back to it, it provides the context, it understands that conversation separate from this other conversation. And again, that would be a really nice thing to have to. Yeah. I'm going to stay on the Syrian AI and make my pick here too, which is more third-party AI support in the operating system, not just Open AI. Open AI, of course, is having serious talks with lawyers about whether or not they should sue Apple because they feel so wronged, come on.

But I just, I feel like this is a pick from last year that didn't work, but I still think it's there. I think that there needs to be a picker somewhere in the system that lets you say not just Open AI, but let you say, yes, I am a Claude Anthropic customer, and I want to use that as my extended AI, or whatever it is, like whatever their partners are that they've got signed up, Google, you know, Open AI.

the idea that this is an extensible framework, a plug-in interface essentially, so that you can bring your own favorite AI provider if you want. I think it's going to be really interesting to see if Open AI is spoken about during the keynote in this way. I know, right? Because obviously they're going to spend time talking about this feature because there will be new.

And I think, you know, we maybe will get to this. This is going to plug into new parts of the operating system as well. and maybe be elevated further into other parts of the operating system. But you're going to be really interesting to see because Google would assume will be there, Anthropic we assume will be there. You've got to assume Open AI is, but it's just going to be interesting to see.

I think they'll just continue with what they've done, which is to say, yeah, an Open AI, right? Just like, it's there. There it is. We have no knowledge of this lawsuit because there isn't one. Open AI remains a partner in our lineup. I'm going to make my iOS pick, but it is also related to the assistant. I'm trying to say it less now.

But I'm going to have to do it. Now, Syria interactions move to the dynamic island. All right. Now, I had this high on my list, and then I didn't pick it last time. Okay. And here's the reason, and I want to just be clear here,

there are conflicting reports about how Siri's going to work and how Siri interactions are going to work. And the dynamic island is very specific. Mm-hmm. if it doesn't happen in the dynamic island, but your interactions happen in a thing that you pull down from the top of the screen, yeah.

Then I think this pick is wrong, right? Yeah, we will not, like, it will be obvious if it's popping out of the dynamic island. If the dynamic island pops out and there's Siri things going on there and all of that, then I'll give it to you. It's like live activities, they happen in the dynamic island, right?

Yes. I think that the UI is going to look like it's coming out of that area of the phone. Okay. But if you have to pull, pull down and it looks like notification center or whatever, you know, like that kind of UI, that's not happening. I imagine that that might be a way to get

to previous conversations is to swipe down from that area. So when you say Siri interactions, does this mean like if I activate it and say something, there's a thing that pops out of the dynamic island that will show like what it's saying and give you results and stuff that is coming out of the dynamic island. Yes. Like the animation,

dynamic island animations have a specific look to them, right, where they've got that kind of is all dark and it's like liquidy, right? It like pops out of there. I guess they probably use that as some of the groundwork for liquid glass in general. But it has like a specific look. We will know it and we see it. I think it's obvious to work out.

All right. But if we don't, if we can't work it out, we've always got Stephen. That's true. I just want to set our terms here. No, I like that. This allows us to do it without having to resort to Stephen. Yeah. Which is best.

Nobody wants to resort to Stephen. You just did like two weeks ago. You had him on the show, which is a great option. I know, I know, I know. It's great. Oh, I also said in our special member spotlight that I would take a road trip with him. So we do it.

There's a show that we publish every month, which is just for relay members, which if you sign up for designed in California, and you will become a relay member. So you will also get spotlight, which is, so Kathy Campbell interview someone. and it's always questions on the Discord. And every single time this question is asked,

if you were to go on a road trip with anyone from Relay, who would it be? It's basically always Stephen. Everybody picks Stephen. You said it would be lovely to take a trip with me, which I appreciated that, but I wouldn't pick me. I'm no good.

Gotta pick Stephen. He's handy. You know, that's what you need. If you're going to be going on a big road trip, someone who knows how to drive a car, fix a car, and fix things. That's what you want, and that's what he's good at. Total data energy.

Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. We'd have a good time. We talk about space and related subjects. Exactly. We talk about old computers. We got stuff to talk about. It would be great.

Third round pick, you've stored long enough. The problem with a road trip with Stephen Hackett is that he doesn't eat lots of things because he's allergic to lots of foods. And so actually, it wouldn't be a problem because what would happen is I would just go wherever I wanted. And he'd have like a Tupperware full of like steamed chicken or something. He knows what to do. And he just takes care of himself. It's just bogus and less. Yeah.

I'm going to pick shortcuts gaining support for Apple intelligence-powered shortcuts creation. Okay. I'm going to do it. And I just want to point out, people can go back and check the record. Mark German had a story about how one of the plans for the Vision Pro, which didn't end up happening, I think it made Mike Rockwell really mad. One of the plans of the Vision Pro was that you could just describe what you wanted a shortcut or an app to be and it would make it. And I laughed and thought that was ridiculous. and friends, I made a Mac app last week.

And this feature of like, and Federico did a thing where you can just say, I'd like a shortcut to do this thing and it makes the shortcut for you. So we are there. And this seems like a really cool. I think it'll be, I think it'll be more limited than what Federico did. I think we'll be frustrated by why, why does it not do this? Why does it not do that? But I do think that they're going to try to do something like this that allows you to kind of very

simply create some automations using, simple text input. Yeah. Yeah, that was, it was like, what was the, the rumors you'd be able to describe an app that you want in Vision OS,

and it will build it for you, right? You'll build it for you. And I remember at the time, we're like, what does that even mean? And, and maybe now it will be something,

you know, it will be a shortcuts thing now instead, which would be really interesting. Okay. Where am I going to go now? It's like with the WWC rules, it's like, do I pick things because I'm going to need to pick them, like in the categories, or do I pick things that I actually want to pick because I think they're going to happen? That's the one thing. I mean, this is not, because there's so much AI this time, this has been a little bit hard.

But the idea of segmenting the draft and making you make some of these picks is to add a slight bit of strategy where, you know, your fear is going to be that I'm going to take the really nice iPad OS pick, leaving you with a really lousy iPad OS pick. but you may have less confidence in your iPad pick and I may go take a great pick that you wanted so that's strategy that's fine just a little I'm going to make my pick about one of maybe the most important app on the iPhone so I'm going back to iOS

this app is so important that's gotten incredibly bloated over time so I'm going to talk about the camera app the camera app gets customizable UI the camera app was already had a lot of stuff in it and I think Apple's attempts to try and clean that up with iOS 26

is one of the worst designs in iOS 26 when they made that like that sliding wheel thing it's not good I do not like it like today I was trying to use dual capture you know like where you can and it took me way too long to find that they've added some stuff in

like being able to choose your video frame rate and that kind of stuff is really great to have it in the camera app. But not everybody needs all of this stuff all the time. So having the ability to customize the UI, it's, you know, a lot of people would say it's not very Apple-like, but, you know, I think you and Stephen spoke about this, or maybe Stephen and Federico, it was one of the podcasts when I was away of like, you can customize the toolbars inside of Mac apps this way. And they added this iPad to us too.

You get a little palette, like what things do you want to be shown from? front and center in the UI. I could see them doing something like this, and I would be very thankful if they did because it would help me a lot. Yeah. I think this is good. Mike,

this was at the top of my pick list last round, or this round, I guess, because I pick first. Yeah. And I didn't pick it. And I'm going to tell you why. There is a non-zero chance with any feature regarding the camera app

that Apple doesn't, It doesn't announce it at WWDC because they hold it and announce it at the iPhone event. I know. Even if it ships for every other iPhone in iOS, you know, 0.0 or 0.1, it allows them to, like, hold it and talk about it in the context of how amazing the camera is on the new iPhone. And so there's, I'm not saying that will happen, but I'm saying I looked at that pick and was like, I don't think I want to pick it right now because that's the risk that you're taking. This was my concern. The reason I went with it is the iOS 26 camera UI was shipping in the Bay. It was the whole way through.

Yeah. And so who knows? But yes, they might be like they've got some new feature for the camera that would, that could would obviously be given away somehow if they changed the Y. But I'm going to go away. Also, it lets them, I mean, it gives them some time to hide if they, if they don't have to put it in and announce it to WWWDC. I also do think this is a feature that they might want a lot of user testing for during the base. Yeah. Oh, I agree. I agree completely. It's just that was that was why I had a very high on my list. I think it's going to happen. I'm just, I'm just a little concerned that they could on a whim essentially say, let's hold that.

Yep. Which they could do. Let's hold up for point one and we'll mention it. We'll intro it. And they love that and I hate it, right? Because it's the let's overcomplicate the iPhone announcement by announcing things that all iPhones get. But we're going to put it in the context of the new iPhone, making it seem like it's a new feature of the new iPhone. But some of those features are for the new iPhone and others of them are for every iPhone.

And then I have to try to disclaim, you know, disclaim all of that, pick it all apart and explain to people what they get and what other people get. I hate it. But they do it. they do it. So we'll see. But I think it's a great pick otherwise. I agree. You agree that it's a great pick?

I do. Yeah. You like your pick? You're pretty happy about that. All right. My next pick, number four. I'm going to make my Mac pick. Okay.

And what I'm going to say is there is specific acknowledgement of the Mac as a popular platform for AI agents. Great pick. Right. Basically just, oh, MacOS.

AI people love MacOS because we're great at whatever. Like it really doesn't, the details of it almost don't even matter. I really just am looking for them. They did this on the earnings call. And so I want to, I think they'll mention it here too, because they're trying to talk about how great they are for AI. I think one of the virtues of the Mac that they will mention is that it's such a great platform to run agents on.

So that it's very popular with the AI. people. Yep. Real question, and this might come up in the draft, a real question to me is if they're going to try and say they're doing anything agent-like, but whether they do or they don't, they will tout, I believe,

you're right, tout MacOS as like, ah, everybody's using it. Using it so much you can't buy them. The escalation pick here that I did not pick, although I could later, or you could, is do they also say they're going to try and add some features in 27 that make the Mac better for AI people to run their agents

and whatever else they want to do. What I am actually hoping they do, just to build on that a little bit, this isn't in the draft specifically, is I hope that they create a set of security tools for agents. That's what I want them to do. That would be a great way to make the Mac even better for running agents,

is some sort of security framework that allows you to say, allow the agents to do that. Because the agents right now, they, you know, some of the tools ask you, right? And some of the tools hit Apple's, like, I've been using Claude code. And like, there are things that Claude is like, can I run this? And I'm like, yes, go ahead. And then there are other things where, you know, obviously Apple just was like, oh, can I look at the desktop? I'm like, yeah, okay.

But could they, you're asking the tools to go beyond what Apple's permissions are. Maybe Apple wants to add more granular permissions about what certain processes can do for this particular purpose of like, for users feeling like, I can allow an agent to do this, but not that in a way that maybe the current system doesn't allow them. It's all or nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Because you took such a great Mac pick. You've taken the pressure off me from making a Mac pick. It's true.

But I want to make an iPad pick. Okay. because there is even, I think, less than iPad. That's true. It's true. So I figure I might as well make it now so I can take one off the board. I don't even know if I believe in it, but I'm going to say it anyway. Spotlight improvements for iPad OS to be more Mac-like. What does that mean more Mac-like?

To function more like Spotlight on the Mac does. So, you know, there isn't a clipboard manager. You can't, you can't. Yeah. What are the differences? Clipboard manager, actions, right? To perform actions that you can search and do like a shortcut. You can search inside of apps like directly by pressing tab and all that kind of stuff. They could also just add some new features to Spotlight on the Mac and say, oh, these are on the iPad too. Yeah. And that would work. Yeah. But I think this was something that we pointed out last year, right, which is like, this is really good. It looks just like Spotlight for iPad, but Spotlight for iPad can't do any of stuff. And so maybe they should. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. Have you ever thought I should really be doing something to protect myself from scammers, hackers, stalkers, but not sure what?

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So I was able to go to Delete Me. They gave me an account to sign up for, this is way over a year ago now, and I was able to give them the information that I wanted to be removed. I have information that's public, and I want to be public because I'm a person who lives on the internet, but I also have information that's private. my address, some email addresses, an information that I just don't want there to be available for

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slash Upgrade 20 and enter the code Upgrade 20 at checkout. One last time that is Join Deleteme.com slash Upgrade 20 and the code, Upgrade 20. to delete me for their support of this show and relay. So we continue with the draft now. Jason, what is your fifth round pick? Okay, Mike, I have decided that now that I have lectured you about all the dangers of the camera app, oh, good. Let's say the camera app's going to get a Siri mode. Yeah, okay.

It's visual intelligence, Siri. I mean, whatever you want to say. It's basically an AI mode. mode of some kind where they're going to put, they're going to separate the, or they're going to eliminate the separation between, uh, camera for photo gathering and, and camera app for other things that you might want to do with it. I would, I would argue that not only does visual intelligence belong in here, but, um, a more explicit, I know that it does it anyway, but like a more explicit code scanning mode. Because if you get, if you put code scanner on, um, control center, like,

QR codes, you mean? Yeah, yeah. When you put that on control center and you tap and then there's a QR code, it like identifies it, it, it flies it like into your face and then it opens whatever is there. It's this whole thing. And it's very subtle with a camera. You can hold it up and a little yellow thing comes up and all that. But I think some people miss that.

It's hard to tap. Like I know it to do it, but it's not convenient as a place to tap on. Yeah. So I would like them to add that mode too. I think the camera camera app needs to get over itself and know that it's used for things other than taking pictures

and that's a camera camera. It's not the pictures app, it's the cameras app. What do we do with cameras? Lots of stuff, not just taking pictures. So get over it. Get over it, camera.

Yeah. Why am I so hostile to the camera app? I love it. The camera thinks it's so great, thinks it's so highfalutin. Yeah. It needs to be taken down a notch by AI.

Speaking of getting taken down a notch by AI, my fifth round pick is Apple intelligence grammar checking comes to writing tools. This to me is what I want writing tools to be. I don't want an AI to write for me. I'm not interested in that. I know how to write.

What I don't know, Jason, is grammar. What I don't know, you know this. You've worked for me for long enough. Mike is not good at grammar and punctuation. He knows what he wants to say. I'm done to fucking third person. I know what I want to say. I know how I want to say it.

I don't know how to say it grammatically correct. I'm just not my skill set. And so I would love Apple to build a set of comprehensive tools that allow me to do this on device, on my phone, on my Mac. That would be amazing. Yeah. Built in Grammarly for everything. Yeah. How bad would that be for Gramerly?

Whoa, it'd be bad, right? Well, they're already pivoting to, like, email and AI people. I don't know if they're pivoting to email in such a way of, like, didn't they, did superhuman? no, Grammally bought Superhuman and then renamed itself. Superhuman. I don't know what they're doing there, but yes, it would be, and I would make the same Sherlocking argument as usual, which is if Apple's going to do this, you need to offer features that are better than this. And I think that they're probably already working on that. But yeah, that would be great if Apple, this is, I use Grammarly because I don't have a copy desk at six

colors. I can't afford a copy desk at six colors. It's impractical. I would. Honestly, I would. I've work with so many great copy editors, but basically you need copy editors to, like, sit around and do other stuff, and then the moment that you send them something, you need them to turn around immediately. And that's not just, it's just not practical. So we read each other stuff when we can, and then I also run through grammar release. So it'll be like, you omitted a word here. For me, it's a lot of that. It's like, this is a word, but it's not, that passes a spell check, but it's the wrong one. Because you want the other spelling of it. And I just typed it wrong. And those are the worst typos, is typos that become other valid words, because then you miss them.

But it, so I would love Apple to have that built in and have it make sense and work in a good UI so that I could use it. Yes. It's like, you know, don't use a comma here, use the semicolon, like all that kind of stuff. Like, that's what I would like. And I like the idea of it potentially making suggestions and like breaking them down by suggestion. Because sometimes I'm like, you know, you know what? That's my style. Like I'm fine with that.

Like keep that as it is. Don't just change it all. Sometimes, sometimes you've got to break the rules, Jason. Uh, yeah, yeah. So that's great. I, uh, I need to pick something here. I am going to pick, pick, um, oh, I'm going to boo my own pick. Okay.

Boo. Boo. How could you pick that? It's a, boo. Image Playgrounds gets quality updates. Okay. Specifically, I did make a quick tweet to this, which you do, is Apple's image playground model. because they're obviously going to integrate

Anthropic and stuff into this. Gemini? Yeah. Well, at the moment, ChachyPT is in Image Playgrounds if you wanted to, right? So I think they're going to allow for different models in there as well. But this is like specifically the default ones. Yeah, that the default models are better.

Yeah. They don't have to specify the models, but they basically, what I'm picking here is that Apple says, oh, image playgrounds looks better. Yeah, look at, which is just man just I'm gonna be so upset about it

you know like it's just boo boo! I just don't want them to I just want them to leave it alone like just get rid of it you know like I was listening to Mac power users

from last week and Marco was on the show and he was talking about setting up his Mac minis right for the transcription thing it's a great episode of MPU and he was saying about how you know he has 48 of these Mac minis and he has seen the welcome flow

48 times and part of the welcome flow for macOS of a brand new Mac is Imitted Playground who put that in there who put that in there you know

like you don't need to tell people about it there like that's you can't be proud of this you know like you couldn't have been proud of it when you launched it let alone all this time later

and you haven't done anything you had a whole other OS cycle to think better of it and the way you fixed it was you put a GPT in it and not even the good model for chat chbtee right like so bad it's just terrible just such a mistake no i don't like this but i feel like they'll do it because it's so bad that they're going to want to boast about it a little bit and you know i would rather they say hey image playground is dead or

image playground is only using uh like i don't even know image playground is dead but it's a dream episode of designed in California for me in the future is that we somehow get to tell the story of image playground. Like that would be a dream of mine to be able to tell that story. One day, we or somebody else will be able to tell the story of what went on with the whole Apple Intelligence disaster. And when somebody tells that story, we will tell it to. Okay. All right. All of my, I've got like this big block of picks because I take our list and I distill it. And they're just all Siri and Apple intelligence, which I know. But I think this is it, though, right?

So, like, I feel like, if I'm not picking these, I'm just hurting my opportunity to win. Yeah. So I'm going to go with, for the number six, Siri remembers your context so you can have real back and forth conversations. Yeah, this is the, you know, this is the I say something Siri responds, and then I don't have to recent. stated, I can just say in context. So it's like, you know, lady, do the, do the giants play today? No, they don't. They play tomorrow. Who are they playing tomorrow? Yeah. Oh, it's, it's, you know, the Minnesota twins or whatever. Just to be an actual back and forth conversation instead of a one shot, which is what it is now. And then taking it a step further than that, like I want to be able to weigh later. in the day. Talk again. Like just,

and it knows what I'm saying, right? Like, like all of the chatbots have a memory. They have context that they keep about you. Like if I said,

you know, hey, dingus, a hoi telephone. I would like to go somebody to eat with Jason tonight. Can you make some recommendations

and it makes, you know, and then two hours later, could you give the phone number for that restaurant? Like, that's what I want it to do. I hope it will be able to do that.

But even just being able to have a conversation with the thing without every search being a brand new fresh baby into the world, that would be amazing. I prefer not to think of every search as a brand new fresh baby. Yeah. So this is a weird and creepy. That came from like an inside joke that me and Edina have where if we hold Sophia like in a kind of baby pose, you know, like how you would hold like a newborn. It's a fresh new baby, even though she's not a fresh new baby. She is a massive toddler now. Who's walking, by the way.

She's walking. Yeah, I saw that. Unbelievable. It just happened all of a sudden. She just was holding my hand and let go. Just walk to her mama. And that was amazing. Jamie's first walk, she was wearing, hi Jamie, who edits our show.

Hi, Jamie. It was on Halloween. So she was wearing a costume. She was dressed up as a monkey. And she just walked from the chair to the, the coffee table. And we're like, what? That's incredible.

Only could have been bested if maybe she was a ghost, right? It's just like, she's just like walking around on its own. All right, man, what an episode. Boy. Round eight. Four words for you, Mike. Apple intelligence wallpaper creator. Yeah.

Again, a feature. I'm just leaning into the crappy image generation, aren't I? But I think they're going to do it, right? Like, there are rumors that they're going to do it. they put in a whole bunch of wallpaper and backdrop kind of things so it would be logical that they would create a more of an AI

generated wallpaper thingy and tell people it was great and you know, TBD if it's actually great but they'll tell us that. Yeah. Well, in part of my work, I am, I am you know, at Widget Smith, right?

We offer lots of wallpapers for people. We also have tools. I just think people like nice wallpapers and don't want to make their own. But we will see. We will see about that. And I think that this is a fine feature to add, though. Like, I want a gradient or whatever. I was going to say, people want nice wallpapers and they don't want to make their own.

Could be an argument for this feature, right? Because this isn't really much of making their own. Even then. Even then, oh, I agree. My gut is people, most people know what they like when they see it. Yeah. They just want to scroll and pick things. But they should add this.

Like, they should add this. This is like, this and Gen Moji are the kind of places where they should be doing some form of image creation. Not I'm going to make a picture of my mom in a, like, superhero costume, you know? Like, that's not what you should be doing. Speaking of which, my next year pick is improved Gen Moji quality because Apple, please. If you're going to put any, boo. No, actually, I don't move this one. If you're going to put any effort into image creation, make this better.

Because sometimes they're brilliant. Most of the time, they're horrific. They're bad. So bad. But when you get a good one, so good. Like one of my favorites, I made the Tim Cook Donald Trump trophy and I sent it around. Like I made it. One of my favorites is I did a typo when I typed Tim Kool.

Yes. And I was like, who is Tim Kool? And then I've got the Gen Moji of Tim Kook on a surfboard. So what we're saying is, Better Gen Kookeuk-related gem-mojis are the best Jem-Mogis, is what we're saying? Yeah, I guess that's... John Turnus has got some work to do. That's what we're saying.

This is our challenge to John Turner. Make Gen Moji better or make it just for you. Make Gen Moji better again, J.T. No, don't do that. Don't do that. Please don't do that. Sorry. All right.

What's your next pick? This is kind of an all-OS pick and it's kind of a stagecraft pick. Okay. I think that at least one feature will be labeled as coming, you know, labeled or described as coming later in the year. So this is, the code here is there are the ones that they promise in the 0.0 release. And they're the ones they say, well, it's going to happen, but not in 0.0. And the way they say that is coming later in the year. And that gives them the latitude to ship it in October, November, December, all the months that are later in the year from the release.

Just explaining how the calendar works to our friends out there. So I think, well, I realized as I was doing it, that I was just, I mean, like, those are, I don't need to list them. You know what the later months are. Anyway, I think they will do that because what are the chances? I mean, there's usually something where they're like, this is a bit of a heavy lift. We know we can do it, but it's not going to be. But the challenge is, are they still, do they still have the fear from last year, which is we got to, we got to only announce anything that's imminently shipping. But I'm willing to put down a draft pick on this, that there'll be something where they're like, we can ship this, but we're not going to prioritize it for 0.0. It's going to come in point one. And they'll say, you know, and it may be a sub feature. It may be like, oh, you're going to be able to do this. And coming later in this year, you'll be able to do that too. And I'm like, okay, there it is. Coming later. this year. That's the code. Just for the fun of it, I'm going to pick no features are labeled as

coming later in the year. This is obviously during the keynote. I reckon it'll be different on the website. This recommendation came from friend of the show, Brian Hamilton. And Brian suggested this to me with the framing that you just gave, which was, are they going to be so scared that no one will believe them that they can't say it, whether it's true or not? You know, And there might be that some features won't come until like halfway through the beta cycle, but they're expecting everything to come and they're aiming for everything that they're making to ship in September. And I think there's such an AI heavy WWDC. I think it would be best if they don't say these words.

Yeah, let's see what happens. I love it. I think it's more likely that you get this. But I think it would be, I think it would be beneficial for them. to not say these words at all. Because, you know, we spoke about this on last week's episode. Everyone's going to have their knives out for every demo that happens. Are you actually doing this? Can I see it?

When's this shipping? It's going to be a lot of that, I think. Mm-hmm. All right. Next up for me. Boo! Boo! Buzzkill. No new hardware announcements. Okay. WWDC is not for hardware. Wait, except when it is. Except when it serves them.

I think it's funny because I think this is actually a great year for a hardware announcement, but I just don't believe that they're going to, given all the chip shortages out there, I just don't think they're going to flip the switch on the Mac Studio and the Mac Mini at WWDC. They don't need to. They don't need to. So I think they're going to not do it. No new hardware announcements. I'm going to add into this pick in a way.

Oh, no. and say John Ternus appears in the keynote. So like, I think that's reasonable. I think, but it's like,

you know, we, we, we, I mean, last week you said, you don't think you'll be in it

unless is hardware. Well, no, I think that that's the best reason for him to be in it. It gives him a clear, I got, I got some feedback about this too

where people are like, he's going to be the CEO. He could be in the keynote. He can be the keynote. He can be the keynote. It's like, well, that's not what I meant.

What I meant is, if there's new hardware, it's a really easy way to put him in the keynote because you just have him talk about the hardware and you get his presence there. They can stick him anywhere. They can stick him in a bit, a comedy bit. He's, I don't know, skydiving out of a plane

with Phil Schiller and plunging into a pool where Tim is swimming and I don't even, or surfing, I don't even know. There's ways that they, they don't need a reason. It's just that would be a place you could put him. He can go anywhere. Here's what I would do, right? This would be my ideal turn of,

appearance in the keynote. The opening skit is focused around Tim, right? And it's like building to his final WWDC, which I think would actually be quite nice, right? Like they're showing him kind of doing his thing. And at one point, he walks past his office and John Tarnas is in the tape measure. He's like measuring the desk. He's like, you know, checking out what's going on. That would be, I think, the best way to use John Ternis in the keynote. Because I think I'd be very fun. Because they do these weird inside joke stuff, right? because they know who's watching this. And, like, you know, they do a lot of these things,

like Air Force One or this kind of stuff. I think that would be very funny. But I do think, I think John Tennis is wrong in this keynote will be much more than that. But that would be my, like, if you're going to use him sparingly, that would be my ideal.

I'm doing some kind of funny thing about to get over. I think that's a good pick. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Mercury Weather, a thoughtfully designed weather app that shows all the essential weather details you need right at a glance. It has a beautiful, colorful interface that will dynamically adapt to your weather conditions. You'll see a warm orange palette on the sunny day. Jason,

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Our thanks to Mercury Weather for their support of this show and all of Relay. what you got, Jason. We're into pick number 10 of 14. Yeah. By the way, we were going to do 10 and Mike was like, more, more, more, more. We have so many picks this time. And WWDC is usually where we make the most. And I think it's the most

entertaining when you've got a lot so that you can, you're less likely to tie. Oh, yeah. It's going to go back and forth. It's very dramatic. I'm going to follow on your stagecraft pick with a pick of my own, which is Mike Rockwell appears. Ah, I had this high up. Yeah. And I'll say AI or Siri features, because that's

what he's in charge of apparently, but like they like to show lots of different people. Mike Rockwell was put in charge of Siri. I just think Mike Rockwell is going to appear. And we'll leave it at that. But like he's got he shipped the Vision Pro and all of that. I think they're going to make him appear because they're, they obviously need,

Mark German had a hilarious post on social media the other day where he's like, well, the woman who showed off all those AI features that didn't ship just started at Open AI. So it'll be somebody new. presenting. It's like, well, yeah, I think that was probably a given. Sometimes Montgomery just says things. Sometimes he does. He's just out here saying stuff. Also showing Mark German's just, he's got his finger on the pulse of the HR departments at various Silicon Valley companies.

That's one of the things that he's really into. So anyway, Mike Rockwell appears, presumably to talk about Siri. Did, I'm trying to scan through the keynote right now. Did Rockwell show up at WDBC 23? It was he? he in the video? There was a lot of of Vision Pro video. Yeah, I think he was in the Vision Pro video. There's a lot of Alan Dyer in this. Oh, Bob Iger. Bob Igas here. I was getting through the video.

I forgot about that. People who are no longer in their previous roles. Yeah. There he is. I found him. Okay. Yeah. There he is. And I've got, I just saw just just the word technology next to him on a screen. That's great. No, I like, I think it's a little bit creepy that you're just freesthraming on Mike Rockwell

because it's like, I always feel. like somebody's watching me. Sorry, see, that was a reference to 80s music by an artist named Rockwell. Anyway, moving on. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, I don't know where I am anymore. Nope.

I don't either. Where are we? We're just in space. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, this is a bit of a, I would say, like a pet pick at this point. We do not see a return of all of the AI features promised at WWDC.

2024. I just don't think it's going to happen. Yeah. I feel like we had that moment where they had they were, remember we talked about this in the spring. They had a moment

where they were like, we're going to make good on all our promises. And then there was a moment where they're like, hold on. And they wrapped it all in that in the coming year kind of stuff and then there was the German report

that they was supposed to be the spring and then they were like, no, we're not going to do it. I think as a part of this, absolutely what they are not going to do. I agree with you. I mean,

we'll see how it's pitched, but I have a hard time imagining that they're going to make good on all their promises because I think part of the problem with the 24 announcements is that some of those promises proved impossible.

Yeah, exactly. Quite simply. I just think, yeah, as you're saying, some of these things they can't do them, How they deal with that, going to be fascinating. Do they ignore it? Do they bring it up again?

I had made so unconnected we make picks for the whole year, right? And one of mine was this, and that essentially Federigi will do a condensed version of his two architectures conversation. I think it will come up somewhere. He'll say we had these two architectures. We went down this road. Then we found, you know, and then he's going to expand on it and say, now we've got this great, whether they talk about. Google or not, I don't know, but they can't talk about, we've got this new stuff. And so now we feel

like we have even better features than the ones that we shipped. So there are some that we're not going to do, you know, sure. Yeah. I mean, that's even if they even address it that way. But I think I think you're right. My guess, if I had to predict, is that they will make a cheeky statement that we'll all know what they mean, but they're not going to say it. And it'll be something like, I know we've been up here the last couple of years telling you about Apple intelligence, but this time we mean it. Let me tell you what we're going to do, right? And there'll be some laughter and like whatever. I don't think.

I think they would maybe say something, but I'm not sure it would be in the keynote. You know, they might say it somewhere else in an interview or whatever. Because they kind of fell on their sword at the beginning of last year. I don't think they want to do that again. That's true.

They may, they may, because remember, we're picking the keynote here. So there may be external communication about this that isn't in the keynote. But if we look at the keynote and the AI features from 24,

many of them are absent, then you get it, right? Or any, I guess any of them, I would say, like, if it's like a feature that's there, but one aspect of it is not there, that's not enough. But, like, if things are just missing, if there are holes, we'll know,

we'll know what we mean by that. I'd like people to watch that very carefully. Just get your checklist out about what they announced at 24, and then, like, just see if they all get mentioned. Because I don't think it's going to happen. To me, the obvious one is actions across apps. I just don't think that's happening. See, that's a funny thing, because that's app intense.

and I think that's a thing that could happen. Maybe, but that's the one to me where I'm like, I don't know about that. Okay. We'll see. My next pick, my 11th pick. I'm going to pick this now because I'm afraid you're going to pick it too soon. And I need this one.

I need this one, not because I know it will happen, but because I want to be rooting for this the whole time. It has to be. And I want everybody with me, everybody we know with me saying I'm with Jason I want this to happen and that is Lil Finder appears somewhere in the keynote yes the little mascot the little MacOS logo character right somewhere in the keynote yeah anywhere anywhere anywhere on a pin I mean I want anywhere much a funko pop on a desk they they surely have to make an enamel pin out of this little

You know, like, what are the, you know, like this is a hit. And it's also something they made. It's not like this was, like the community has taken it and turned it into something more. But Apple made this, right, like for their advertising for the Neo. Yeah. And it has continued to pop up. So embrace this little friend of us, you know? Yeah.

There's some people in the chat room who are like, no, I'm not with you. I don't want to see it. It's like, I don't know. Why? I just think it's adorable. I just think it's fun. I just think it's a cute. It's like whimsy.

Let's get a little whimsy in there. And it allows all of us to play Where's Waldo, which is great with the keynote. I say, pay attention. If it's not in the keynote, I know where it will appear on the desk of somebody's video. You know, like they do the videos, developer sessions and they have little trinkets. There will be one. Almost certainly. Almost certainly.

I would not put it past being a pin that developers and get. I would not put them past that it's literally a thing that everybody gets at Apple Park. Speaker of Finder has influenced me now. It's time to make my Mac pick. Oh. I'm going to go out there on this one, I think. Yeah, do it. 14 picks, Mike, we got to get weird.

Because, I mean, it's not weird, but I think it's a risk. Okay, it's out there. But I feel like it's out there. It's out there that we will see significant slash noticeable improvements to liquid glass on macOS. Okay. I love it. I love to hear about it. And what you're saying is right when you say we will see. Because that's how we're going to have to judge this, right?

They're not going to have to show MacOS and we're going to have to look at it and we're going to have to decide while sitting at Apple Park right after the keynote. We're going to have to decide is this significant and or noticeable. I don't think even me and you are going to need to decide. I think this will be such a thing that everyone's going to be looking for and like MasterDome will light up and be like, oh, they fixed it. This looks so much better. And like, I only expect any tweaks of significance to be on macOS. I think there will be tweaks of all kinds throughout all of the operating systems.

But I think MacOS hurts people the most. And I think they're going to make some tweaks out. I do not know what they will be, if I'm being honest. of you. I don't, I have no idea, but I think we'll see it and be like, hang on a minute, that's different. They've changed this. And everyone will be excited and people will applaud. And that's my Macawas pick. So I have now made all of the obligatory picks. Congratulations, Mike. Thank you. I've met my contractual obligations. I am playing a long game with the iPad pick.

Yeah. This was going to be my last pick because I didn't think anyone, like, you know, but you've influenced me by bringing up finder, so I may as well. I appreciate it. Now, I will just let people in on part of my strategy here, which is now, you could hurt me by picking another iPad pick. But I've decided that if you do that, you're only hurting yourself. I'm a maniac. Yeah. Jason, I could genuinely imagine they don't even talk about the iPad this year. Oh, I don't think that'll be the case. I could imagine. Like, it could happen, right? They don't, that it doesn't get its own segment right like that they do iOS and then say

and so many of these features are coming to iPad OS and just show it but like I could imagine it you know if they have like their big segments I could imagine them not doing one for the iPad this year because I don't even think there's going to be that much added to iOS that isn't just Apple intelligence stuff so we'll see okay Mike I'm going to go back to the AI well and I'm kind of picking backing off of you

you talked about conversational series I'm going to throw in the other one, which is tell Siri to do two things at once. Okay. Shockingly, it doesn't do. Yeah. So this is like multiple requests. So you'd say like... Turn off these lights and also turn on this thing or also run this.

Like multiple things at once, just to see... I mean, we're both just putting a chip down on Siri. Be decent. Be what we want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know.

All right. My 13th pick is developers get access to more powerful on-device models. I think this should be a thing that Apple provides, right? There are already models. So the reason I was thinking of picking this, if I go back a little bit. WWDC is the developer conference, right? Like that's what it is. and often it's really just here is the new operating systems, right?

And then the state of the union, they talk about some of the things that will actually be available for developers to build on. But I think this is something that might get into the keynote is, you know, I think they may spend a little bit of time getting a little bit nerdy in the keynote and talking about how great Apple intelligence is. And I'm hoping that they will say here, I mean, I'm hoping it will happen. I'm hoping it would be in the keynote. I think it would definitely be in the state of the union,

is, and for our developers, we have more powerful on device models to allow you to do this. And they'll say, like, Cruton, that's doing this. And like, what is that app? They use flighty a lot. Gentle streak, just doing this. Right, gentler streak is doing this.

Like, they have these apps that they feature frequently with this stuff. And I think it will be some of that to show people what they can do with Apple intelligence. All right. All right. Well, I'm down to my last pitch.

and it has to be an iPad pick. Yeah. I've left it for last. Yeah. I've got many choices here. We did very many choices. There's a thing that I think is going to happen, but I don't think it's going to be in the keynote. Okay.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I'm going to not wish-casting. Everything is a wishcast. Clipboard history on iPad OS, straight up. we'll talk about what I thought maybe in plus, but like clipboard history out on iPadOS straight up.

I think everybody's reaction to clipboard history in MacOS last year was this is great, put it on iOS. And I don't know whether it'll be on iOS, but iPadOS seems like a reasonable place to put it. And this would be funny because I think technically if this is it, we'll both get a point, right? Yeah.

Because it will go into spotlight. Unless, hey, you never know. I might put it somewhere else. you know, they just throw it somewhere else in the system. We've got a new keyboard. All right, so I got the last pick. Oh boy, I have so many.

I have like another 15 things in my list here that I could pick from. Because I'm the last pick, I'm going to talk this out a little bit. So the things that I'm debating here is Apple debut is its own AI-powered search tools because they've been calling the web forever. Why not start doing some of their own searches?

UI to activate writing tools in new places in the OS. This is a Mark German thing. I have a few more that we might get to talk about upgrade plus. But the one that I'm actually going to pick is expansion of satellite features to new parts of the operating system. Whoa. Interesting. There has been a bunch of rumors about, I mean, there was a rumor about an API for developers, but there was a rumor about more things being possible over satellite. And I just read that, because Amazon bought the company Global Star, right? And they're putting it into- And they bought out Apple's shares of Global Star, too. And so I think that they are setting the table for a more advanced partnership here. And to do that, more satellite features available in the operating

system. So that is the draft. We've done it. Yeah. So, As we mentioned, next week, we'll be recording the podcast together at Apple Park, which I'm so excited about. What a lovely treat that will be. Jason, we, the Kickstarter, as you speak right now, is getting very close to $55,000 raised. So I feel very confident in saying that designed in California will have 50 episodes in its first year. That feels very...

It's looking like it. And we have a bunch of other stretch goals. So it's going to get better and that's going to be if you back it, you're going to get more. More. If you're at the membership levels, so everything but that base level of wallpapers, you will get the more stretch goals we hit, the more stuff we do. We won't do. It's not going to be like more.

We're not going to do like 70 episodes a year. No, that's not going to happen. It's like different types of content. Yeah. We've got other bonus content that we will put, that will be members only that we'll start adding as the stretch goals go up. Yeah. And remember, stay tuned on.

Thursday this week for our first preview episode as we begin the road to the Apple 2. How does Apple go from the Apple 1 to the Apple 2? That is what we're going to be talking about on the very first episodes of Designed in California, which by the way, these will all be in the feed when the show launches, including the episode of Upgrade. We're going to kind of make some tweaks and re-edit that. That will be the first episode in the feed. And then all of this road to the Apple 2 will be in the feed. I don't know if this is something we touched upon earlier, but we're not going to be

telling Apple's history chronologically in the show. We're going to be jumping around throughout the history of the company. But we're just, we're starting out with the road to the Apple 2 and then we're going to kind of jump around from there. Yeah, we figure that since it's going to be in the upgrade feed, it made sense

because we did sort of end our Apple at 50 on a to be continued. And so this is a continuation of that. So you can pick up where you left off. But yeah, we're going to jump around. We don't want it to, like the 70s are very interesting, but we can't, I'm not going to just do a podcast about the 70s. No, I don't want to. Yeah. There's, there's smelly there. Yeah. I want to, I also want to do some stuff that we both are remembering and both a part of at the time, right? Like we were working during those times or really paying attention during those times, as we have already established Jason was working for most of it. But that's what makes him the best person for this job. Oh man, I am elated. This is like the perfect start to the month. There's people know about this project now,

and we're actually going to do it. And we're going to be able to do it at the level that we really wanted to do it. So I'm thrilled. Absolutely thrilled. Go todesigned.fm to learn more. There are links in the show notes too, of course. If you would like to send us your feedback, follow-up and questions, go to Upgradefeedback.com.

Thank you to the Upgrade Plus members. Go to GetUpgradeplus.com. We'll just note, it's a great time to sign up if you want to support the podcast because if you want to do any of the tiers that come with merch items, we're offering great discounts there.

So it could be a great time to become an Upgrade Plus subscriber. You may actually pay for the vast majority of your membership if you sign up for a year and you want to back a podcast. If you want to buy a pin or especially the poster, you can save

just by being a member, you can save maybe enough to pay for most of that membership for a year. So go to getupgradeplus.com. All that information will be in Upgrade Plus. You can find a video version of this show by going to YouTube, searching for Upgrade Podcast. I'd like to thank Mercury Weather, FitBod, and Delete Me for their support of this show. And I want to thank you for supporting us in all of the ways that you do. It means so much. We'll be back next week live from Apple Park.

Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. See you next week, Mike. Thank you.