Upgrade - 626: Unprecedented Weirdness

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 626, the June 29th, 20206. This episode is brought to you by Keeper, Century, and Claude. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. Did you know, I want to ask you a question. A little mic talk to start the show. Okay.

We are in the summer of betas as well as the summer of fun. And I have found that now that Apple names every OS, after the year after they announced the OS, that I have completely lost track of what year it is, and I just keep saying in writing that it's 2027 now, because I am in 27 mode. Interesting. I'm in 27 mode now.

As far as I'm concerned, the new year starts, the beginning of June, Apple says it's 27 now, and I go, yes, it is. It is now 27. Maybe we should do that now. Like, we just run the calendar from June to June, and we just make that thing.

Model year, 27. That kind of stuff. The biggest problem I'm having is not so much that it is trying to remember. I can never remember what the last version of iOS was before 26. Before 26. Yeah, I know. 18? Was it 18? I'm going to just say yes, because I don't know. And it's also made it significantly more complicated now for me to remember what iPhone model it is as well.

Oh, right. I'm struggling with both of those. It's 17. It's all those numbers. What's the, and what the A-series processor is inside it? They, they have the opportunity to sync them up, but they never took it. And I wish that they would, and I think we're now too late, because they're not going to do it this year. They're not going to do it next year, because they're not going to call the iPhone 20, the iPhone 28, or whatever.

And so I think we're, I think we're past it. I think the closest we have is 2030, which actually isn't that far away, and that might be the closest we have. but then iPhone 30 sounds terrible anyway, so it's all gone. But anyway, I have a snow talk question for you, Jason. Yoni wants to know, will you be lighting your house for the Fourth of July, and will the tube man be making an appearance this weekend? Well, I have permanent lights, so I just, and the people who make the lights have a... Yeah, so will you light them with the colors, you know, where...

Well, I mean, yes. The people who make the lights have a whole patriotic Fourth of July set of pre-programmed things that I've put in. but I mean I it's it's lit up most nights honestly oh yeah I program it with various things we got we got the pride rainbow going in June very good um we have we have some USA when the USA soccer team is playing and then uh in the World Cup and then yeah we're gonna we're gonna do third and fourth of July will be patriotic patriotic observance and um and to answer the second part of the question. Why would I buy an American flag-themed tube man if I were not to display him around Independence Day? Why would I do that? So I got to basically he's a sunk cost. Why don't you have him up for the whole World Cup?

Well, I mean, he makes, look, the blower makes a lot of noise. It's kind of annoying. I don't want it up there all the time. So it'll be, yeah, I'll put him up on the 4th of July. That'll be good. Mr. Flagg man will be out there. Flag tube man, waving, doing patriotic observance of waving his arms around. I would like a picture. That feels about right. What is a more patriotic observance of America right now than a flailing armed tube man?

A flailing, uncontrollable, nobody knows. Unpredictable. Does he have a plan? Probably not. Is he actually going anywhere or is he anchored to the spot? He's going to make a big song and dance about it and really let you know about it. And a lot of noise. So we're going to know. Generating some noise.

Yeah. If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, go to Upgradefeedback.com and you can do that. Jason, the final days remain in the Designed in California Kickstarter campaign. This is the last time, Upgradians, that we will ask you to go to designed.fm to back our Kickstarter campaign. Despite all of our saying very nicely that we know that we stuck a bunch of extra free content featuring us in your feed, but we're going to get out of your way now. We did get one angry person who was like, why are you sticking all this stuff in my feed?

I haven't seen that. You know, I meant to mention this. I did the Mike Hurley thing, which is it was a really mean comment in the upgrade feedback, and I just deleted it. You just got rid of it? Okay.

I just got rid of it because you didn't need to be burdened with it. I saw it. It was just a mean person. It's like, well, I'm understandable. Congratulations. We appreciate everybody's patience, as we said. And we, look,

Suffice it to say, we planned a bunch of stuff for the last week of the campaign because we thought this is the thing that we're going to need to push us over the top to $60,000. We're going to need it. Jason's going to need to be on the talk show. And we're going to get Daring Fireball to chime in because he likes pushing people over the top. And we're going to put John Syracusa in a regular episode and get them to talk about that on ATP. And we need everybody pushing so that we can get to our goal, which when we met our goal like on day one, all those plans remained intact. So here we are. but this is it.

It ends Wednesday, July 1st at 8 a.m. Pacific. We wanted to give ourselves, again, enough time for this episode to get people in right under the wire. And then if you want to wait longer, actually post-campaign, you will be able to buy a membership. At full price. At full price. So if you want to get it for $10 off, which is what it is on the campaign, you have until July 1st. But after that, if you missed it and you're kicking yourself, because we don't have the membership site up at Relay yet for the proper once the podcast launches.

In the interim, there's like a post-campaign pledge, but it won't be at the Kickstarter campaign price. It'll be $10 more. Yep. Now, just adding a to-do that I need to get the member four plans set up before the campaign ends. We have someone to send people. We got a lot of plans. There's a lot of things happening.

Lots of things. But anyway, thank you for everybody's patience. And the exciting thing is, you're going to get me and Mike twice a week in the fall for a year plus, where we're going to talk about, what do you like to say, Mike? We're going about what's happening on Mondays. We talk about where we are and where we're going. And then on whatever day, Wednesday, Thursday. We had a bunch of people right in and say there's too many podcasts on Thursday. Yeah.

So we haven't decided. We'll just say Wednesday for now. We'll say on Wednesday we'll talk about how we got here. So that's the combo that you get from us now, and we'll be getting from us for upgrading and design in California. That's the Mike Hurley marketing prowess right there. And so since we last spoke to you all, we passed our final stretch goal of $250,000, which is, I've run out of words.

Just to understand that we're incredibly appreciative. I don't have words anymore. We didn't have a $250,000 stretch goal. Our final stretch goal was $200, but we're at $264 now. Did that happen in a week? since last week? Yeah. Okay.

I think it happened last Monday. My gosh. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, that means that we're going to do events in San Francisco and London. Yep.

And we got, look, we're working, we're working hard and planning to work hard for the next year plus to make this really good. Yeah. So we will fulfill our, our promises and also make a good podcast. And just just as one piece of follow up. So we ask people to write in with suggestions because we have two things. that we need to name for members, right? So the podcast is called Design in California.

We have the members feed, which will have some kind of name, like we have Upgrade Plus. And then we're also going to have a bonus feed where we will publish additional bonus content. Many people wrote in to suggest one more thing as a name for the bonus feed. We're going to use that because it's broad. That's it. That's it. That's the name. We still need to work out something for the regular members feed. Chad wrote in and said, Designing California Extended, kind of like the Apple Extended.

keyboard, which I thought was fun, but it doesn't work for this show because it won't be extended. There isn't going to be bonus content in the episodes, like in the regular episodes. Right. They'll be shorter because they won't have ads in them. So we're still, we're still going to work on that. So if anybody has an idea for an, so this will be designing California something, right? It might, and it may just be plus or something. People should write out of that. Many people wrote and said it is, it is, it's a, it's a, shame for you to, I think someone said to dangle made in China or assembled in

China in front of us and not give it. I agree with you, but we can't call the podcast, it's not the name of the show. It's sort of like it would be a bit odd. So Zoe said SE, which that is a pretty good one. I like that.

And that's what I use for incomparable is the members app version of the incomparable is the incomparable special edition. If you have a suggestion, write in with that. at UpgradeFeedback.com, but please, if you want to support this show, if you want to get the membership at a year, at discount, or any of our physical rewards, we're adding stickers

for free to everybody that gets a physical rewards. It'll be like a little sticker pack now. That is just just a thank you for helping us get so far. So go to design.fm. You come back to kickstart the campaign. I'm really, like, you know, at some point, I think it might be fun on the show to talk about, like, where does this money go? Like, because people have asked these kinds of questions. Because for us, a lot of it is going into making the show better, but it will make more sense for us to talk about that down the line when we can show you the things that we're doing.

But the fact that we have had such incredible support means that this is a project that can grow past what we had originally hoped it could be. And I think you're going to see that in the effort that we put in. So thank you so much to everybody who has shown their support for us. It really means the world. This is not be the last. time we talk about designing California, that's for sure, but it's the last time that we'll ask on this show for you to go support it, so thank you. Should we do a little bit-tails, Jason?

I think my answer is, who-hoo! Perfect. So 27.2 betas dropped during the recording of the show last week, and there's a series of refinements. There isn't any kind of groundbreaking thing in this beta. I would say that overall, the performance of the operating, I'm using iOS only, is is very strong still. Like, it doesn't feel like I'm using a beta, honestly, except I have this random bug sometimes where the keyboard doesn't appear. Oh, the keyboard is broken.

Oh, you're having that too? Okay. On the iPad, the keyboard opens sideways sometimes. It sticks. That's the part that kills me. I used to have this as a bug like six months ago when it's back now in the beta's where you tap a key and then you let your finger come up

and it stays tapped and it just sits there. and the entire device is just paused while we find out what is going to happen to that key. And if it's a key with an accent underneath it, then the accents pop up. And that's the big reveal is that it's going to be an accent instead. But it's like, yeah, the keyboard, there's lots of keyboard bugs. That's what I've discovered this time on the iPad, certainly. But generally, my solution was actually to install a couple third-party keyboards so that if I get really desperate and I'm in one of those keyboard traps,

I will just switch to a third-party keyboard for a while and forget that I'm, forget my pain of the, of the actual keyboard. But generally, yeah, it works, it works, it works, it works, it works pretty well. I've got on my, I've got on all my devices at this point. It's on my phone. Wow. It's on my iPad and it's on my Mac.

So about your Apple Watch? And it's on my Apple Watch. So you're doing the whole thing. The whole thing. I'm all, all the way in. No time to wait. Got to do it. Writing tools were added in 27.2 because they didn't exist.

in the point one beta, the first beta. So now there is a little Siri icon or write with Siri prompts in the keyboard all the time, which I think might be a little aggressive, the amount that it shows. What I haven't gotten yet is any kind of UI for good grammar checking. Now, there is an option to proof-free text in the write-with-serie UI, but I have not seemed to be able to get it to work yet.

Like, it looks like it does something, but then it doesn't offer me any suggestions. Well, isn't that a beta for you? Yeah. And so this is what I want. It still isn't doing it, but I still have my fingers crossed that I'm going to get it. Because it will, I'm just going to have to wait at zero goes.

And the one note that I have about, I'm continuing to use Siri AI a lot. Like, I'm using it a lot. and I have been nothing but impressed so far. It is falling for some of the typical traps that a lot of LLM's for for. Like I had to look up something. I didn't want me to look something up for her and I just asked Siri AI and it gave me a list of companies that provided a service we needed.

And she looked into a bit more. She's like, I can't find anything online about this company, one of the companies, except for a blog post that they wrote giving a list of the top five companies to provide that service would have put themselves at the top. It's like, this isn't a serial problem. That isn't a LN problem

because that article was written to trick the AI, right? Because AI's love a list. Love a list. And so they, you know, and it's like, oh, this one's the best. It's like, yes, says the company. You know, but that kind of stuff

is like it just is what it is. But overall, I've been really impressed and like I asked it a question today that I so simple but I know old Siri would not give me I wanted because you know the kickstart is counting down right and I wanted to confirm the time and it said like 56 hours left and so I asked what is the time 56 hours from now and it gave me the answer that is the kind of thing that I know old Siri would just be like here's the time right now and so I continue to be impressed with the simple stuff and also some of the more complex stuff. I think it's, I think it's really good. I think it's really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Similarly, it's, I mean, it's a work in progress, but I think it's going pretty well. One of the things on the Mac that I've noticed is, so they are, Apple is in a multi-year process that they aren't talking about, but it's very clear about where they're trying to sort of reform the Mac menu bar, which is funny because they should have done it when they put the notch in the hardware. and I think it is yet another thing we could put in the list of disconnections between the hardware and software groups at Apple, like the touchbar

being this amazing invention of the hardware group and the software group's like, yeah, we're not interested in that. It's just like, you can't do that. You can't manage it that way. It's actually one of those things about John Turner is being put in charge, though I think that's not going to happen again, right? Because he got burned by it multiple times where they made hardware

and then the software people basically didn't care. Yeah. So when they did the notch in the laptop screens, they should have had proper menu bar management built into the operating system. Now that they've got clipboard history, it's the next one on the list of like, why can you not do? Why are there all of these utilities like bartender, and there are many others now, that allow you to manage your menu bar? Especially after Apple want people, want developers to put more things in the menu bar, right? Yes. And so part of this is that there's a new thing in control center for menu items that can

live in control center or they can live in the menu bar. And that's that's the way forward, but the problem is so many apps don't use that system. And Apple has not supplied, as far as I can tell, a simple way for people who have an existing menu bar item to say, can you make that be a thing that also fits the control center system? Because that would solve this. Because then Apple, people don't know this. I wrote about it last year. Like, you can create multiple icons in your menu bar using base Apple OS, base MacOS, stuff, and then put different items in it from the control center. Or you can put the menu bar. So they built a menu bar manager that allows you put things on the menu bar or allows you put things in a submenu, off of the menu bar. But every

menu bar item made before last year doesn't work with it. But even with this system, I would still want things in my menu bar and it is a constant frustration to me that they're hiding behind the notch. Yeah. So this goes further. So one of the nice features of a lot of these menu bar managers is the ability to create a collapsed area to the left of your key items so that you can either mouse over or do a keyboard shortcut or click on an expander and see all of them, but then otherwise they go away. So in macOS 27 in Golden Gate, there is at least some management of the menu bar now happening involving things that are going to be hidden under the notch. Okay.

They have started to make that a priority. I would say, how many years has it been? Five years too late? Five years that they've been like, yeah, you know, the notch is there, whatever. So that's good. But my other note here is it has broken every menu bar based app to a certain degree. And all the menu bar managers are broken. So like I'm using an app called Melt.

which is a it's a melt I think it's called melt and it's a it's a fork of ice yeah yeah it's called melt it's a fork of ice which was a menu bar manager that was a free alternative to bartender that seems to have been abandoned

but melt has gotten picked up because it's open source and they're working on that and they are working on a fix now they have a beta running that runs on golden Gate, but like, it broke. Or is it thaw? Maybe it's thaw. There's melt and there's thaw.

Yeah, thaw is the one I'm using. That's the one I'm using. Thaw, T-H-A-W. And it's good, and they're working on a beta that will fix it. So this is just an example where, like, you can see, like, where Apple touches the OS sometimes, those are the things that just totally break for third-party apps. And it's fine. It's a beta.

Third-party apps are going to break. Don't get mad about it. I see people getting mad about it. it. And it's like, don't get mad about it. You're in a beta. Things will break. But I think it's interesting that I like that Apple is giving attention to the Mac menu bar. I wrote about this last year and said, it's one of the unique things about the Mac. They should pay attention to it. They should care about it. They should put some modern OS effort into a thing that's basically been laying there for 20 years. Great. What are they doing then? What is the management

options available? Oh, you know, you're asking me the thing that I don't actually know the detail. because I haven't investigated it. I think it does a little expand collapse thing where if things are going to collide to the menu bar, but they're making an attempt to make it that the notch doesn't break your stuff.

But it's broken everything in the meantime. I stopped using a menu bar manager because they all kept breaking and now I just suffer through when I'm using my Mac in a laptop mode because when I've got my studio display, I don't have so many menu bar icons that it's a problem. But when I I'm using it on my Mac.

Every time I start a timer in timery, timer he just disappears. It's just gone. It's just gone. Because it's too large for the preview that I have. Yeah, my Swift bar is behaving weirdly. It works, but it's, you know, it lives in the menu bar and it's behaving weirdly. But it's a, yeah, it's, I'm glad they're giving it attention. But, but again, I have to say it.

like one, it's great that you've got this new system based on control center, but at least for this first year, nobody's using that system. Like, nobody's using that system. And I wonder if there is either a third party opportunity here or really for Apple to find a way to allow classic menu bar items, menu extras, I think they're called, to be used in that way. because then you've got menu bar management built into the OS, and you can take a lot of your things that you need to look at occasionally, but not all the time, and you could stash them in a sub-menu, and then you're not having that huge menu up there.

It may not be technically possible, but that's my frustration is that they're very slowly building this out. I'm glad they are, but it's happened way too late, given the existence of the notch, and it is breaking things in the meantime. So that's my number one. That's this week's Golden Gate Beta observation.

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is only available because you listen to the show. That is K-E-E-P-E-R security.com slash upgrade pod for 60% of personal and family plans. Make sure you use that link so they know that we sent you and so you get that 60% off. That is Keepersecurity.com slash upgrade pod. a thanks to keep a security for the support of this show and relay. So last week, on Monday, we spoke about the possibility of Apple raising their prices, and on Thursday, they raised those prices. Yeah, they did. You probably don't need us to go into detail on this now.

No. But essentially, prices have been raised on basically all product lines except the iPhone and Apple Watch, anywhere from 15 to 50%. Yeah. But, like, yes, AirPods is another major problem. Max, Macs, iPads, Apple TV, Vision Pro, all up. Home pods. Home pods, yeah. So it tracks anywhere from 15 to 50% for the price increases, depending on the product. A couple of headlining ones, the MacBook Neo is now $699 to start. Many Macs and iPads are up by hundreds of dollars, some more.

And the Apple TV has been increased in price by up to 50%. Woo-hoo. Yeah. here's Apple's full statement. The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge. The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly. We have shielded our customers from these increases so far,

but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today's increases for iPad and Mac. We know this is not welcome news. and we are working tirelessly to find solutions. There is, I've started, you're probably seeing this too, but there is now a sentiment in wider media that Apple will be in greedy and should cut into their profits to bear the brunt.

Further, have you seen this much? Yeah, sure. This is, so I'll put a link in the show notes to a Verge piece where they're kind of making the comments on, that they're kind of making the argument, that argument. And it is an argument that is harder to defend considering the many record quarters that Apple has experienced, right?

Like, it's hard to suggest that they couldn't cut their profit down a little bit. Couldn't, couldn't. It's true. They could. Yeah. So, yeah, these price increases stink. Nobody likes them.

Although you could argue that given inflation, Apple's been holding the line against price increases for five years at least. That is a choice that they decided. to make, right? They didn't need to do that. They could have been raising prices all along here and they didn't, but they finally are like, okay, we got to do it. Because they really like having stable prices and having the game be, they increase their margins, they maintain their margins, even with the stable prices because as they release products, they have ways of like releasing some more

expensive products and changing the skews. And there's games they play, but they can't play that game anymore. So they did this. Or they won't play that game anymore. It's reached a breaking point. I would boil down this argument, though. This argument is, I think is embedded in the idea that this is temporary. But this is a long-term change, and it doesn't just have to do with the RAM prices, but it also has to do with inflation and the cost of technology. And there may be a time when it's different,

but it's not going to be for the next few years. I'm not being cynical here. I want to just take a step back and say, this is actually just the argument that Apple products should cost less, an Apple should make less profit. That's the argument. This is not an argument about in this economy, right? In this economy, you raise prices, but you're so profitable.

This is an extraordinary circumstance. You should eat the margins and keep your products where they are, even though it'll eat your margins. And could they, yes, could they yes. But I would argue that the actual argument being made here is Apple products should just be cheaper than they shouldn't make as much money. And that's a valid argument.

They could choose to do that. But what I would say is... And they did for a bit, we think. And they did. And they did because they know it's better if the prices are stable. Yeah. But all the people in charge at Apple are compensated with stock. And this is a...

This is a... Eating into your margins is not a thing that the stock market approves because stock market likes the profile of Apple is it's very profitable with high margins. If you have tuned in, look, I watch financial television half an hour every quarter. The half an hour before Apple's results drop, I watch CNBC or Bloomberg. And, oh, those people love the profit margin number. Boy, do they love it. And on the call, on the earnings call afterward, the analysts, oh, they love the profit margin number so much.

And the CFO loves the profit margin. There was a CFO exchange a year ago, so it was Luca Maistri with an analyst who was like, hey, I think this was a record profit margin for you. And you could hear Luca Meistery break open a big grin. He was like, thank you for noticing. Oh, my God. It was an enormous record profit margin for us. So very hard to get those people to ultimately say, and again, I think this is how I would put it.

They've been holding the line because they could do it in their model. and it wouldn't kill their margins and it allows them to benefit from prices that they're comfortable with. The fact that they did this, this break, it's about that. It's about the fact that if they continue to eat it, they feel like at this point they're breaking their traditional margin numbers and that it's going to hurt their long-term profit margin. And they're not willing to do that. So could they? Of course they could.

But again, I think it's not a realistic argument because the people, in charge, it is the argument to say Apple should just make less money. And like Apple's a profit-seeking business that's publicly owned. It's owned by shareholders. It is you're not going to get it. They've never been

affordable. In fact, I don't know how you felt. This last week, I'm like, oh, wow. I hadn't felt I'll put it this way. I hadn't felt the Apple products are always way more expensive than you want them to be. Vibe. in a while. And I didn't realize it. I didn't realize it at the time. There was a time five years

ago even when they would come out with a product and you're like, oh, I mean, I want it, but it's so expensive. Oh. And it's been a while that I felt that way in the era of a 99 or even 1099. I think the last time I felt that way is when they came out with the M2 MacBook Air maybe. So that was 2021. Yeah, but even that computer was so impressive. It was like, I get what it was also, but it was also like, 1299 instead of 999. And that hurt. But like this last week, when I look at those prices, I think, I did not think to myself, this is outrageous.

I've never seen prices like these on Apple products. Actually, what I felt was, oh, I've got that old feeling back now of everything Apple makes being a little too expensive for me and for my preference. I think they got like sneakily affordable over time in a lot of areas. I think that's exactly it is that by holding the line as long as they did, And like the MacBook Neo is a great example. Apple loved it.

Apple benefited from feeling more affordable. They reached users and they reached customers that they couldn't reach before. I will say I do still think $699 is still a very good starting price. Well, every, to be clear, the MacBook Neo is $699 based on a year ago

would be a bummer. It wouldn't even be a bummer. It would be okay. I think a lot of people thought it would be $6.99. Yeah. But all of its competition is going up in price too. Yeah. Because everything's going up in price.

Period. So it's going to be $6.99 is a bummer, but the products that's going up against are all going to go up in price or down in quality. Or they already have, Jason. Or they already have. Apple hasn't done it until now. Yeah, it's interesting, right? Like, I have had that feeling in the last few days.

Like, oh, I remember what this used to be like. Like, I'm looking at the prices now of iPads. And especially the iPad Pro, like, I don't, I don't. Like, the iPad prices right now are just way too high. They are way too high. And I don't know what's going to happen there. Like the iPad Pro, what starts like, 1,200 now or something? It's like, that's too much money.

So my, look, when this all is over, because some, I think some of what they're doing here is prioritizing products based on the ones that they think are important. It's also why the iPhone hasn't been dealt with yet, which is interesting. I think the iPad is not super important to Apple right now and that they're okay with people not buying the iPad Pro, and they've got them and they're available, but they're not really willing to come down on margin on it. I think in the long run, though,

when this surge of component pricing ends, you are going to have to have that moment if you're Apple, or you look at something like the iPad and say, ugh, iPad sales are in the tank. iPad Pro sales are really bad. I've had air sales are off. What happened? And you look at the pricing and you're like,

yeah, these are overpriced. We can't do it. And then you maybe cut the price. But that's not going to happen until you're in a place where all of the RAM kind of circulates freely and at a good price. Because that's the pressure, the downward pressure on price and part is like,

if you can't sell it because it's too expensive, nobody's buying it because it's just a bad deal. you got to, I mean, two things are going to happen. One is they're going to look at the price. And two is they're going to look at the tech inside it. And it may be that there's like an expensive component that they thought that they were going to use in the next iPad Pro. And they're like, we can't do it. Yep.

We just can't do it. Yeah, because I was thinking about that when you were saying about like, you know, thinking about the earnings scores and stuff. And it's like, yeah, your profit margin is great to keep. But what if you end up losing more money from lost sales? Like, then was it good to keep the margin? Like, this is the tightrope walk. the people in Apple's finance team have to be dealing with right now, like trying to model out, like, will we still make money if we drop, if we increase the prices because we will

definitely drop, well, will we drop themselves? How much will we drop? That must be incredibly complicated to work out. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's, I think the other way they could go with some of the high-end products they just say, look, high-end products exist to be awesome. And so we're going to make them awesome and they're going to be expensive. And then what you're going to see is the iPad errors of the world will be their focus on that. And that's okay. Like, I think we all assume that that OLED MacBook Pro is going to be a high-end, more expensive product anyway. Like, that is one strategy is if you want to look cool and cutting edge with the latest tech, you put it in your, I mean, this has been Apple all along. You put it in your very

expensive product. And everybody else is like, oh, I want it, but it's too expensive. And it's like, that's okay. That's okay. Because eventually that stuff will come down. And there are some people who will buy it. And then your focus is more on the mid range because it's more affordable. Now, the iPad Air is also very expensive, but it's not a $749. I mean, it's, it's an iPad Pro expensive. It's old school iPad Pro expensive. So I don't know. It's, it's really interesting as a challenge for them, but I just want to say for people who are like, it's too expensive, well, it's going to slow buying cycles. It's going to hurt sales. It's not necessarily going to hurt revenue because the revenue is going to go up, but the sales will go down, but they don't even

report sales figures anymore. They only report revenue numbers. So maybe it'll look okay on their bottom line, but they will know that sales are down and that the buying cycle has been elongated. And in the long term, that's not good for them. They know that. So I wouldn't say like Apple blindly put up the price, right? That's not what they did. They know the ramifications of this. No, I think you can tell that because they tried to hold it.

Yeah. And this is the breaking point. In fact, in fact, what we're getting now is the shock. It's like bending, bend, bend, bend, bend until it snaps. That's what happened here. Because also what should be baked into these prices is, is some element of forecasting. So they don't do it again, right?

Like, I feel like in the last few days, I'm seeing different headlines almost every day for how long this situation could last for, and it seems to either extend a contract, but the trend line is it's going to take, this is going to take longer than you think for the RAM prices to come down. But Apple should have built into the price increases,

some level of we do this now and we can hold it for X amount of time. Like you don't want to do this again this year, say, because that's not good. But they also have no control over it, right? Like if prices multiply by another five times in a couple of weeks, what are you going to do? My guess is that what they've done here is try to make their best guess about a price that they can keep fixed. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

Because they don't like to change prices. So it's probably a price they want to keep fixed and they're building in more margin than is necessary because they anticipate more pain, right? And so they're trying to do that. Also, I think it's very hard not to look at the home pod and Apple TV prices and not think that they're pricing those because they know what the next one's going to be priced at.

Yeah, they may be trying to price it towards where it's going. I would be shocked if there was an appreciable, amount of margin recovery required, we'll put it, for the Apple TV in the HomePod. I'm really skeptical about it. They're not making more Apple TV. Right. Like, surely. They have all the ones they're going to need. Well, I actually do. I think that that's one of the things that I think is going on here is that they've made all of the ones that they're going to make and they're on to the next one.

And they're pricing those products because they know what they're going to have to price the next one at. And I actually think with the iPhone, it's a very similar thing. They're probably, I mean, the iPhone 17, they're still going to make, because it's probably not going to be replaced until the spring. But like, they're not making iPhone 17 pros anymore, probably, right? They're moving on to the 18 pro. And maybe that gives them a little bit of latitude now. I don't know.

That I don't know. But the Apple TV and the HomePod, it sure feels to me like there's a new version of both of those coming that's Apple intelligence capable. and they know what, and some new products too. And they know what those prices are going to have to be now. And so these adjustments are almost like, yeah,

that's what Apple TV has to cost now because the next one's going to cost that. You mentioned the iPhone. They didn't touch the iPhone. Why do you think they didn't do that? Do you think they will? I don't know. I think they will. I do think they will.

You kind of have to, right? I think maybe the economics are a little bit different, and maybe they feel like they can hold off until the fall for that one. Maybe it's just the most important product. Yeah, but do you want to announce the new iPhone, and that starting price is $200 more than the other? Like, is that the way you want to introduce the iPhone 19? I don't know.

And here's the starting price. It's, yeah, I don't know. It seems interesting to me that they did it in two waves. I feel like now, if you're going to do it, now's the time to do it. But maybe they're hoping for some kind of magic between now and then. Like, I don't know what it might be. Well, actually, I don't know if this will help, but my analysis last week is spot on. The Financial Times is reporting that Apple is lobbying the Trump administration for an exemption

to buy and use RAM from Chinese manufacturers. So Apple specifically want to buy RAM from a company called C. which is a company on the Pentagon's blacklist because of ties to the Chinese military. So it's actually not illegal for Apple to buy RAM from these companies, but it would carry significant complications in both procurement, so getting them into America or elsewhere, and also reputational risk if they do it without working with the government. And apparently, according to the Financial Times, Apple started this effort a month ago working with the government to try and say like,

we want to do this, let us do this. And this was your, I mean, this was your take that the deal with like, we're going to, we're going to let Intel, we're going to work with Intel. Yeah. Is they're trying to do a quid pro quo here of like, look, we're going to do more American stuff. But right now we have a memory challenge and let us work with these guys. Yep.

I think one of the issues to, because so Apple tried this a few years ago, right? 2020, yeah. And both parties in Congress were like, you can't do this. And a lot of the issue, it's not even just the Chinese military. I think a lot of the issues is, is it is a, it is viewed as a government propped up company and therefore doesn't. One of the big challenges with a lot of international trade stuff is you're not playing fair because your government is making this product is subsidizing the making of this product. It's not a, it's not an actual, uh, competitive company. It's a company that you're, like,

A great example of this is that for years, the U.S. yelled a lot about Airbus, the French-based airplane manufacturer. Obviously, Boeing, their prime competitor is in the U.S. And a lot of those arguments I remember seeing about Airbus were Airbus get subsidies from Europe and from the European governments. And therefore it's not a – and so that they would say we are going to have sanctions on Airbus because – it's not fairly competing with Boeing. You're propping it up. And that that ruins the competition. I get the sense that that's part of the argument here is that this is this is not just a Chinese company that makes RAM. It's a company funded by the Chinese military and government that makes RAM. But also, look, the U.S. both parties are not immune from saber rattling about the Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese military or China in general. And so that's what's going on here. I do wonder if Donald Trump doesn't care.

Because remember, he has a very weird relationship with China where he's often belligerent toward them, but also talks about how great she is. So go figure. And if Tim Cook comes to him and is like, so much of what Trump does is transactional, if he views this as a deal, which is I'm getting Apple to invest in Intel, which the government owns a part of now. and it's going to be about American manufacturer we can let them have the Chinese chips and put like I said last week I think put some restrictions on it like only for phones in China

or not for phones in the US or however you want to do it but they're they need a solid now because in 2022 they wanted to do this and sell these phones only in China and the American government just lost to the same thing was like you cannot do this you cannot allow to do it

because you're going to be giving money to and propping up this company. Yeah. So it's a real challenge, but you did call it. It was Cook mentioning it. Like, it seemed so out of character

for him to just, because it felt to me, like in reading that article, that that was something that he brought up. Like, it wasn't really a question. It just felt to me like, maybe it's like,

you know, someone slipped the report or a note, but like, ask about Chinese ram. He's like, oh, great question. Like, it seemed so strange for him to just,

be like, well, everything's on the table. Like, it just, it was a very odd exchange to me, just in the way that it read. And then with the intel, yeah, it just seemed like this was a thing that was going to happen. And I reckon they'll get some, it will work. I reckon it will work. I don't know exactly what the shape of it will be.

But I think that we're in times where deals can be made. And also we're in this, like, unprecedented weirdness. It's like, you know, I can imagine, and Cook being like, well, we won't sell as many iPhones. And you know, that's not good for our economy. Like, it's going to be weird, but we're in a very strange time. So I, uh, I consider myself one of the lucky ones. Uh, I bought a MacBook Air the day, the day before the price increase was announced. I, I, I'm going to take some credit to this. I feel like I talk to you into this.

Oh, absolutely. You did. For this reason. So this is an upgrade plus last week. I was talking about some issues I'm having my M2 MacBook Air. I felt like it was getting really slow. creaky and was causing me issues and I was getting very frustrated with it but I was trying to hold out for the MacBook Pro, the touchscreen MacBook Pro. And you basically said to me, well, one, you don't even know if you're going to like that machine, which is true. It might not be what I want. And it turns out there's more truth than that that we'll get to later. And then you also said, if you buy that computer now, the value will probably only go up. So if you trade it in, you'll be fine. And I bought a computer that went up 400 pounds in value the next day.

Nothing holds its value better than a device you buy for one price and then they raise it by 400 pounds. And you know what's so funny too? Like I did a comparison and like, because I had an M2, right? I paid essentially pretty much the same amount of money for a vastly better spec to machine because the starting price of the M2 was more expensive than the starting price of the M5 when I bought. it. Yeah. And so, like,

I ended up getting, like, I think 2 terabyte SSD, I think 36 gigabytes of RAM, I'm going to have a great time with that computer.

Jamie's, we bought my daughter who's going to be editing all the video for designing California and loves it. I mentioned her last week and said that she loves it

when we mentioned her on the show and she texted me while she was editing the show and said, yes, I do. I love it.

Oh, hi, Jamie. There she is again. She had a 15-inch M4 refurb 16 gig RAM 1 terabyte drive for like a thousand and 15 dollars

whew Good deal, good deal my MacBook hair will not arrive with me into August oh no no it's yeah it's gonna take forever it'll take a lot it might they might get it faster than that but like it will see sometimes I order things like they'll referb for Jamie

I was like it'll be a couple of weeks and then they're like nope it'll be tomorrow okay all right Right? Whatever. Also, the evening of the price increase, I got a text from my mom. I had promised that I would get her on Apple TV. She just moved. And she's using like this Chinese set top box thing. Like DVR, it's terrible.

It's really bad. And I said to her, like, because she was very frustrated. It's like, I'm going to buy you an Apple TV. I'm going to set you up and you'll just watch everything on demand. Like, you're going to have a better time. And she sent me a message. And she was like, I can't wait for you to sort this out. TV out from me because I hate this thing. I was like, oh my God. The price just went up by 50%.

But I went to Amazon. They hadn't changed the prices yet. Yeah. Got one at the old price. So I feel like the luckiest man alive walking around. I wonder how many people like went to Costco the day the announcement happened and picked up a MacBook Neo or a MacBook air before they got to relabel the prices. Yep. I do not know how I got that price at Amazon about them. It's nice. Just as a side note, I've been thinking about this before we move on. I think the next couple of years are going to be weird. Like, yeah. You know, like, I feel like there is going to be a new kind of like cloud over new hardware that didn't exist, right?

That like it's going to be way more expensive. We're going to be talking about price of stuff more than we have, which is, I think, is a necessary but somewhat frustrating kind of conversation to have. And I also see a world where a lot of our audience keep their devices for longer than they would have before. Of course. The utility of talking about new stuff maybe diminishes a little bit. We're obviously going to do it because it's interesting and exciting to talk about the new products. But I can just, I kind of see that there will be a need that we will meet of talking more about software. like the balance of hardware and software on the show might shift a little bit.

And I also hope that tech companies in general put more effort into their software over the next few years to make their products nicer to use for longer for their customers, because this is a thing where customers are not going to be able to upgrade on the same cycles that they would have wanted to before or will not be willing to. and so yeah I can imagine I hope that for the general tech

industry that people focus on this but I just it will be a focus of mine over the next while in thinking about the like the production

of this show that we try and bring more more software into the conversation than we would have before it's kind of like a thing I've been thinking about I think it's going to be

a necessary component of coverage so it'll be summer of fun for the next two years basically what I'm trying to say it's basically it's a summer of fun

a fun mentality. Do we need like a is Dongletown a place where you go when the prices are high or something like that? Is there a concept there? Some kind of software related town, like a mountain town.

The old Dongletown upgrade. Yeah. But I feel like there's a different place, right? Like Dongletown. Oh, interesting. Dongle town is where you go when you need hardware, right? Like that's the whole point of it because you have less ports.

Oh, did you know? Here's a little fun fact about Dongletown since we were talking about where it was. It's actually built. It's by the sea, obviously. Yeah. But it's built, it's not very far from a very large military base. The install base. I didn't know that.

Military base. What an interesting choice. So maybe there's like a PX on the install base where you can get bargain hardware and software. Yeah. You know what? We're working on lore here. It's like there's a t-shirt in there somewhere. That's all I'm saying.

There's a t-shirt in there somewhere. In store-based military supply. Yeah. Yeah, conveniently located near Dongletown. Very super convenient for this. Yeah, so this actually places Dongletown probably closer to San Diego. It's probably more like North San Diego County near Camp Pendleton,

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Our thanks to Century for their support of this show and Relay. Room around up time, Jason Snow. On Thursday last week, Saddle prices are going up, Mike. Oh, no. And, you know, it costs more to feed a horse than ever before. than ever before. Poor Mark. He reported last week on Thursday that Apple will be skipping the most powerful M6 chips in favor of jumping right to M7. It's wild. According to Mark's sources, M6 will only be available in its entry-level base chip products, right? So like the IMac. The Macbook Pro. No M6. No M6 Pro, no M6 Max, no M6 Ultra, just an base M6 and we'll go in the machines that you would expect. A Mac. Mac.

Apple Air, everything that has an M5. Yeah. Maybe an iPad. Maybe. An iPad, yeah. iPad Pro, an iPad pro, for sure. These products could start arriving.

The M6 products could start arriving this year. The next Pro-M-7 Pro, an M-7 Macs, that will come in 2027 at some point. Right. These chips are said to have a stronger focus on AI capabilities, which is why Apple is looking to fast track M7 and just skip M6. On one level, I am fascinated by this because of the chaos of it, right? It seems like such a break. And if Mark Germman's story is right that they planned on doing an M6 and then they

scrapped it and said, the stuff in M7 is too good, they're reading the room. They're like, this is the fallout of all those Mac minis becoming AI machines, right? Is there a realization of like, oh, we need to press this? And they look at the M6 generation. They're like, it's really not that great. The M5 is great and the M7 is great. And the M6 is kind of in between. Why do we not just skip it and move everything ahead to the next one?

Because the next one, because they know several generations out, right? So I think that's interesting if that's what happened. Also, potentially they're like, maybe we're not going to sell that many M6 Pro MacBook Pros. It may take some time. That's true. We got some anonymous feedback from somebody who says, that Mark German is full of it, essentially,

and that they were never going to do an M6 Pro or Macs, and that that was never the plan for the MacBook Pro with the touchscreen. I mean, I had two reactions. That doesn't make sense to me. That doesn't make sense to me. I have two reactions to be. I would love confirmation of that from people who know

because a random anonymous person could be anything. And then my second thing was I was like, John Gruber, is that you? Because I know Gruber's like down on German, and I'm like, John, is that you? Are you in the feedback form again, John? You can text me. It's okay. You know how to text me.

But assuming that it is true, which I'm going to assume for now, unless told by sources who know otherwise, I like the idea that Apple and Johnny Sruji are so dynamic in this moment that they're like, you know, the world has changed. When we made the M6 plans, things were different. We've got M7. We're feeling really good about it. Let's make a break here. Especially since we know that Apple, within Apple, there's a lot of responsibility between like the chip people and the hardware people.

We're like, you know, you don't ask for a chip and then not ship it in a product, right? You don't do that if you're a hardware person. You don't demand a chip from the chip people and then say, never mind because you're letting them down. They want everybody to be in sync. making this chip decision has impact on other hardware because we've been talking for the last six months or whatever about what Mark German's been reporting about the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro being the M6 generation MacBook Pro,

which can't happen if there's no M6 Pro and max processors, which is why Mark German posted this story on Thursday, I think, last week, and everybody's like, well, what about the laptop? And then on Friday he had that story, which is they're going to apparently do the touchscreen, an OLED MacBook Pro as an M5 and then as an M7 which again

interesting right but I think it shows you how Apple feels like from a chip perspective they have an advantage that they want to press here and that's what I like about this decision is not that it says oh boy Apple's in disarray they killed the M5 Pro and Max no no it's

the way it's spun and the way that I would read it is Apple would really rather go straight to M7 because M7 is going to be great. And so they're just going to get there. They're going to pay a little bit of a price now in order to jump straight to M7. That's interesting.

Yeah, and I feel like this is part of the thing that I always want to see them exhibiting with the chip design, which is like, well, if you're in complete control of it, make decisions that you otherwise wouldn't make. And one of those decisions could be, the world is changing, the industry is changing, demands on some of our products are changing.

so we should accelerate the chip that will meet the change. Because why wait? Like if you know the M7 chip is going to do a better job of what people want to be doing on these machines right now, especially when these machines are more expensive, so they potentially could see that would want higher need from some market segments. Bring these chips.

We're talking about MacBook Pro and MacSstudio here. And then also keep in mind, while MacBook Pro would be interesting because you'd get these new body MacBook Pro with the same chips that it has currently, which is a little weird, but it's not unprecedented, and they could do it.

And the OLED and a touchscreen make it interesting regardless, right? But the other part of this is the Mac Studio, which is the one that really, I mean, Mac Mini and Mac Studio are the ones that people are really interested in. Haven't been updated yet. So they've got a whole other generation to come

for those products, where they go to M5, including, according to Mark German, M5 Ultra, is going to happen. Yeah. On the Mac Studio. So they're going to have an AI story in M5 generation. They don't need, and then they'll go to,

and they'll jump to M7 the next year, year and a half. And that works. Yep. Mark did say, I think this is hilarious, really, in a very macabre way. The M5 Ultra, which they will still bring out, they're still planning or bringing out for the Mac Studio, had been tested to be able to support up to 700,

68 gigabytes of RAM. It's just like, no, they're not going to do that. That's not happening. Oh my God. It will cost a million dollars per machine. Mark does say, so, you know, this is,

the M7 chips would be introduced in, quote, relatively quick succession after the M6, basically at some point in the first half of 27. Now, my thought is like the weird thing here, so would they bring out M6 between now and the

of the year and then M7 like new base chips in the first six months. I mean, they've done stuff like that before. I mean, they could. They could. But yeah, imagine getting an M6 MacBook error in the fall and then an M7 MacBook error in the spring. Well, unless I think they've done this before where they might just not update the M7 base until later in the year, right?

So like, actually, you take the M's, well, yeah, you could also take the M6 and put it in the MacBook Air and take the M7 and put it in the MacBook Pro base model. Yeah, and then you could do an M7 MacBook Air refresh in the fall again. Like, they don't have to go in order. Like, sometimes they go in weird order like that. Right, right. And you ultimately end up with an M7 iPad Pro and an M6 iPad Air. There was one where they did the iPad Pro got a base chip,

and then they brought out the Pro Max chips, and then he didn't put that base chip into something later on. I don't remember what one this was where, you know, they do this kind of stuff. They have the ability to do that. So the pro and max versions of the M7 would come later in 2027. So it's all over the place. And then an M7 Ultra in 2028.

It might actually mean that you're going to get that OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro this fall after all. And that then a year later, you would get the M7. A year and a half later, either late 27 or early 28, you'd get the M7 version of it. Because Mark says that the touchscreen MacBook Pro is still on track for the end of this year of the beginning of 2027. Yeah. Yeah. And if it's using the existing M5 chips, that would strike me as being more doable if this is all, if this is all happening. So, you know, we're taking Mark German's word. His track record's been pretty good. Especially about these kind of plans, I think that most of his reports have ended up being accurate. So again, I'm much more confident about Mark German as a reporter of details. It follows a common sense logic to me, though. Yeah. Like I can see the chain of events that.

result in this. And there is a somewhat hopeful thinking from me that they would do this kind of thing, because I think it's the right thing to do. You shouldn't just be kind of like nailed to a march that you continue just because, like, we have to have an M6 pro because we have an M6. Yeah, the idea here is it takes years to plan ships. And the danger is that you get so far ahead that you miss the moment. And I think that's what happened, right? Like, Apple, look, at WWDC, you saw it. Apple is happy to show off and boast about this fact that agents are running on Mac minis and Mac Studios. And they had that demo experience where they had the four Mac studios with a terabyte of collective memory running AI models.

And that price just went up by $10,000, right? You can't buy it. I mean, you can't, you can't buy those. Those are ones you actually can't buy, but they had them as a demo. And they're very proud of it. But let's be clear, it was an accident. It was a byproduct of Apple's investment in its chip technologies and building these systems with lots of really interesting onboard capabilities. But it was an accident.

And if they're looking at their chip future, right, and they're looking at the M5, M6, M7 generations, the M5 isn't even out yet. And they're like, how do we get on top? And now they've made adjustments and they're like, M7's actually going to kill it for all of these uses, but it's like three generations out. This is how you have to do it. You have to be willing to make calls like this if you're going to be working years out because otherwise you're not able to turn the ship fast enough.

And so this is the downside, I suppose. That's why I'm so enthusiastic about this conceptually is like, I know you work out years ahead. But if in this case, you're like, no, no, no, no, no, we need to jump to this now. and we can pull it ahead a little bit by just foregoing the one that was in the middle here. Let's do it. And they did it.

And if that's the case, I think that's encouraging because it shows that they're going to jump on this one because they see in a damage. Moving on from the max, there have also been a flurry of reports signaling that the folding iPhone is on track for September after some previous concerns of delay. So there's two reports from the ILAQ.

one is that there have been problems that the development of the hinge mechanism but these have now been resolved. This has allowed the device to go into test production which is the final step before mass production and that Samsung display have been given the approval by Apple to start the production of the

OLED display. Apparently the order that has been made is for 3 million panels for delivery this year. Okay. We're looking at still September for this. We have some element of an estimate for maybe what Apple thinks it could sell or hopes it could sell, but we'll see how

that goes. Yeah. Considering it is the summer of fun, I wanted to mention something here. We want to jump on a bandwagon to free the icons, Jason. Yes. So here at the Upgrade podcast, we want to use our time in the summer of fun to fully endorse a movement spearheaded today by Rogamieba to free MacOS icons from the Squirrel Jam. So this

just happened in Tahoe where we lost the inconsistent shapes of Mac OS icons they all put if you had an inconsistent shape you were shoved inside of a grey

box and in Golden Gate there have been some tweaks to some icons and some of them have a little bit more detail in them again that they've lost

so they look a little bit better but we want them to break free of their boxes again I'm going to read from Porcafussus at Rory Orgaimeba. Apple's prohibition on shapes is a step backwards for both usability and creativity and app icons. Icons are now harder to distinguish because they're no longer allowed to be

distinctive. But there's no technical reason for it. Apple could and should once again allow icons to take on a wide variety of shapes. We want to agree and endorse this message. Yeah, I also, There was a link made by Marchand witchery at Aris, Unsung Blog, great blog, by the way, Aris Luna. And he wrote that, he wrote about this and really made the case that the Mac should be able to burst out of the squircle. Like, there's actually some delight. Mac icon designers got really good at just having things like pop out the edges.

And that's what was. frustrating about Tahoe is if you went outside the edges at all, your your whole icon, including the box that was already there, got put in another box. So then you got a box in a box, which is the worst of all. So like Rogamiba's little microphone in audio hijack pushed out the side. Automator robot's head pushed out the top and the little pipey's carrying pushed out the side. It was cute. Very threatening. He's going to kill you with a pipe. No. It's plumbing. It's plumbing. So, Marchean says this is a, this is a thing they should probably allow, which I agree. I think that they should probably allow it.

I wonder if there are technical things they did in the Icon foundation that make it harder. But yes, forcing those gray boxes is the worst. It was the worst in Tahoe. It remains the worst. And what Paul Kaffas has made the point is, like, if you then do like an icon style that like takes away all the color or whatever, you know, what are you left with? Like you can't differentiate on shape. You have to differentiate on the shape of the thing in the box instead of the shape.

And the box breaks the silhouette. So you can't look at a silhouette anymore. You have to then scan the box. And it makes a lot of apps look exactly the same, even if they're full color, but especially if you can't even differentiate based on color, which not everybody can do, including yours truly, but some of the time. But like, that's a good point. And then his other point that I thought was good.

and you really should be on somebody at Apple's wish list. Right now, we have friends who do this, James Thompson does this with P-Calc. Lots of fun apps let you choose different icons, right? You can set custom icons in the app for that app, which lets you do stuff like color code. Like, I've got a, my carrot weather is orange. I've got some that are like six colors, rainbows and stuff.

And, and, Martin's suggestion, is there ought to be an API for that from Apple that lets you like when you're editing your home screen scroll through all the available custom icons and pick one. It's like, that's such a good idea. There's such a good idea that why am I going into the settings of various apps and out of context picking a custom icon and then going back and looking at it? Wouldn't it be better if I could style my lock screen from the lock screen editor? Like, oh, that's actually a pretty good idea. So there's work to be done on all fronts, but certainly on the Mac.

It would be nice if there was a little more freedom because the system just shaming apps with a gray box is just the worst. And all the apps look the same, you know, have the same shape icon now. And it's just not on the Mac, it is really not necessary. So I'm glad we could bring it up again. Everybody file your feedbacks. Maybe we'll get this addressed next year, probably not this year. No, I think it's worth. I think it's worth talking about.

as Apple is bringing, because Apple's doing a lot of work on icons. And that's great. But I think this is one of those cases where they need to rethink some of the things they're doing on icons. This episode is brought to you in part by Claude from Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Wherever your debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move,

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I now have this app on my Mac. I have tons of adjustments. It was making suggestions to me, like, would you like to be able to do this? Like to be able to do that. It really was incredible. And now I have this little tool. that I can use forever, and it's a tool that I need, but I couldn't find anything else,

and Claude was able to help me do it. If you're considering adding a new tool to your setup, you want to know you're in good company. Companies like Stripe, Shopify, and Pfizer, trust Anthropic with the rollout of AI in their businesses. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude today by going to clod.a-a-I-S-U-U-Grade. That is c-L-A-U-D-E-E-Sach upgrade and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to the features that I mentioned in today's episode. That is clod.a.ai slash upgrade. A thanks to Claude for their support of this show and all of Relay. It is time for some Ask Upgrade Questions. Ashley wrote in and said, I've been thinking of the commentary of the Snow Leopard-like 27 OS releases. Mike said

that AI Focus could have given them the cover to do it, so that Apple focusing on Syria AI, right, was one of the thing. Then, you know, they can in the background from an organization perspective, and then everybody can go fix their bugs because they have this other big feature that's out there. They don't need to work on an OS features. That's the context, right? Ashley's getting it. But Ashley says, what do you think of the idea that these performance improvements

are actually enabled by Apple developers using AI tools? These are exactly the kinds of byte-sized features that I think a good engineer with good coding and model agents could just churn through. I think it's all related. I think it's a very good point. I think, yeah, I think it's all related. I think the AI focus allowed Apple to take the pressure off of everybody else to focus on performance and bug fixes. I think Apple also prioritized bug fixes and performance issues that were going to be required for the AI features to do their job, right?

There's a lot of knock-on effects where they're fixing spotlight so that Syria, I can use it, but also we all get to use it. But yeah, let's throw it in the mix because I think it's reasonable that part of this may be that the tools now, the AI-based tools that are whatever is allowed by Apple engineers anyway to use are, this is a thing they're good at, is finding bugs, highlighting bugs and performance issues. And in fact, there was just, our friend Marco Arment just wrote about this that he, used, I believe, previous sponsor, Claude, current recent sponsor, like minutes ago. Yeah.

And basically said, here are four longstanding bugs that I haven't been able to fix. Look at my code and make some suggestions. And he says that in like 70 lines of code, he was able to address those bugs that he said were so subtle that he couldn't see him. He wrote the code. He couldn't see the bugs. And so it's not a stretch to say that Apple developers might also be using AI tools to analyze. And for people who are frustrated about like, do I want AI writing code and all of that?

First off, I think there's an argument to be made. I would make it the one thing that computers are good at is writing code for computers. Like that's actually a real good use of them. But even if you take the writing code part out and say it's the analysis of the code, find my bugs. find my potential performance issues, and then have a trained sophisticated engineer fix them, but that you could use the AI to find them, to spot them much faster, if not like making something that was impossible for somebody like Marco to see. It's like at a very basic level, how different is that to a spell checker?

For a writer. Yeah, I mean, well, especially if you're not using it to write sentences, you're using it to find a bug. So to answer Ashley's point, I wouldn't be surprised if that is also part of what's going on here. I think it all is happening sort of together, but it would not surprise me at all if that is one of the ways that Apple's developers can use AI tools is spot the bugs. You know, you get a feedback about something and you can't reproduce it and you basically say, here's the feedback and here's the code to somebody like Claude and say, how can this happen? is what, analyze this and have them say, ah, yes, there is a bug in this line that does this, and if you change it to this, it will work. And then the developer, you know, the programmer looks at it and there's like, oh, that's what it is.

And then they're off. That's huge. That's a huge productivity saver. Tom writes in and says, everyone originally assumed that Apple was going to white label the Gemini models from Google and that they were paying a billion dollars for it. Now that we know that instead, they did some form. of distillation of the Gemini models or other Google frontier models to create the Apple Foundation model, are the room, and the rumors that Anthropics said no to the same ask,

is the thinking that Google could have agreed this, to do this, to simply to hurt their competition? Sure. It does seem like Apple got a very good deal here in what they were able to do. Yeah, that was the competition. Obviously, they're also going to be in Google's data centers. So that's a part of the deal that we maybe didn't understand at the time.

Sure, Google wants to, like Apple's a good partner because it gives Google's technology another place to be. It blocks out at Google's competitors from potentially working with them. I mean, it's all, I don't,

I think it's too simplistic to say Google agreed to this simply to hurt them. Google agreed to this for a lot of reasons, but part of competition is winning the contract and boxing out your competition. And I've been saying here for a couple of years now that like, if I'm open AI, the last thing I want is for Google to control 100% of smartphone AI. And what they're doing with Apple is not control, but it's like Google is the partner there. That's why Open AI is so grumpy about Apple right now is that, you know, it's tough. in the smartphone context, you've got Gemini on Android.

And yet, there are others there, but like that's the platform owner. And then you've got Apple stuff that is also powered, at least to some degree by Gemini, on all of Apple stuff. And in terms of the smartphone market, that's it. This is probably one of their motivators to hiring all of those hardware people to build their own whatevers that they're building with Johnny Ive and company and all those former Apple designers and engineers is one way you, I mean, this is the problem with the duopoly of Android and iPhone is if you're open AI, what do you do? Your competitor is one of your prime competitors is a platform owner and they've got the other platform owner as a partner.

And so, you know, we all have opinions about Johnny Ive and Johnny Ives' weird Sam Altman video where they had coffee in San Francisco and all of that. Like, I understand from a strategy perspective why you look at that and say, if they've got this hold on the smartphone, our only possible approach on hardware is to either do our own smartphone or break the smartphone. Yeah. And so that's why they're doing what they're doing. I don't know if they'll succeed at it. I'm skeptical. But that's why they're doing. The situation has gotten worse for O'Penae since they made that race.

right? Because now Google and Apple are so close. It's like Google is just, they're in all the platforms now. Like, you know, in all the smartphones, they're just, that's the one. It's like they have a foothold in all of it. It's like, what are you going to do? Yeah. Rob writes in and says, will the impasse around introducing Apple intelligence features to the EU affect the sale of rumored home pod devices or other Siri dependent hardware in the the EU. Okay. So my answer, this is a good question. My answer is, to the extent that these new products rely on talking to, for example, an iPhone. Yeah.

Then, yes, because iPhones don't have Siri AI in the EU. Yep. But only some Apple devices are gatekeepers that are under the DMA. Others aren't. These devices aren't. they could use Siri AI out of the box. They are not gatekeeper devices. They could use it out of the box.

If you've got an Apple TV that could be used as a Home Hub and has more power, but some of these will probably have power too. It's not a gatekeeper product. I think the iPad, is the iPad not a gatekeeper product? I think it's not. I think it is now. Oh, is it now? I think that was one that they came on later on.

Maybe. Maybe. Because the Mac isn't. The Mac will have Siri AI because it's not a gatekeeper. So my guess is that the way that this is built is either that it's going to be resident on device and the most it's going to do is look at your iCloud or something. Or it will have some features that will require a paired Apple device and those might not work. Yeah. But that others will and that it will be a lesser but not incomplete device. Because remember, again, these devices can have Siri AI.

However, if they have to talk to your iPhone and get it to search your spotlight, and this is all how they're built, right? Like, can there be a personal context at all? Or is the most that it can do to sync, you know? I mean, maybe, maybe there are ways that it could be built to get some good information. Maybe all it's really doing is asking the calendar for data, like it's a smart watch or something. And that that might, from the iPhone and that might be allowed. Maybe. Yeah.

But like, that's, to me, that's how this product can exist in the EU, is that it's primarily its own product talking to Apple server. and it can do that without using the gatekeeper product with that feature turned on. But it's all about how they've created it, right? Like that's the ultimate thing. It's like in theory, yes, it can work because TVOS or home OS or whatever is not a gatekeeper. So what I would say about that is if I have a home screen product in my house

and it's paired to somebody's phone and that person walks out the door, it's got to still work, right? It's got to still work. So I think that there are ways that it would be structured. so that it would be functional without an iPhone with Apple intelligence on it. Yeah. Yeah. And Logan writes in and says,

I've always been somebody that deletes my texts, emails, notes, etc. when I no longer needed. However, the new search in Siri makes me think it might be beneficial to archive emails and keep texts forever. Would you recommend keeping these so Siri has better context or am I thinking too much about this? I think you're thinking the exact right amount about this. Yeah. You shouldn't delete things anymore,

Basically, it's that Siri will know more about you, the less information you delete. The more you give it, the more it knows. Well, I think the real thing is when no longer needed here. Like, if a thing is truly disposable, disposing of it is fine. But I'll point out cloud storage is available. Our storage on our devices is available. Yes, if you want to use these new features and have a Siri that can search through all of your old stuff and tell you things, you've got to keep those things around.

That's the bottom line of it. And I have, I had a moment, my moment, which is similar is that I started using Gmail and I stopped filing my email. I used to file my email. I used to auto filter it or then transfer it to various mailboxes and things. Yeah. And I realized that with Gmail, if I need to find something, I just search for it. And I just gave up. I just gave up.

It's a little like that. You're going to need to embrace the idea. that you need to leave a track record behind if you want to be able to use these features, whether it's Spotlight or Siri AI, to search your track record. So my recommendation to you, Logan, and to other people, just stop deleting things. Don't create the mental overhead in your life of, should I keep that message? Just stop deleting stuff. Just let it build up and you'll be able to take the benefit.

Like the amount of information that an individual message takes up is not that much. Now, what I will say, there is a problem about Apple's devices and message attachments, which I think that they need to get better at, like, removing the attachments a bit more. Like, that needs to be a bit smarter because I have a very large I message database on my Mac, like, which I don't need. The reason I know this is because of how much issue I've been having with storage on my Mac, right? So I need a new one because I have hundreds of gigabytes of iMessage attachments that I'm not sure I need access to all the time, but they're there.

and I always get so nervous anyway, we don't need to worry about that for now but just stop the laying stuff just let it build up. It's just text on a computer it can handle it. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode of the show

please go to upgradefeedback.com and you can do that and please go to designed.fm and check out and back our Kickstarter to campaign. We hope that you enjoyed all of the preview episodes and please look forward to designing California launching later on this year

and we'll tell you more about that when the time comes. If you'd like to send in your feedback or follow-up for this show, please go to Upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to our members to support us with Upgradeplus. You can go to GetUpgradeplus.com and you can sign up for a longer ad-free version of the show each and every week. This week we're going to talk about Jason saying goodbye to Macworld,

maybe for the last time, who knows? Who knows? You can find this show on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast. I'd like to thank our sponsors of this week's episode. That is Keeper, Sentry, and Claude. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

Goodbye, Mike Erling.