Upgrade - 627: Do Not Use, Do Not Turn Off

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 627. Today's show is brought to you by Decagon, Squarespace, and Factor. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike Hurley, how are you? I'm very good. I have a Snow Talk question for you. Oh, okay.

Comes from Joseph, who wants to know. I've now been to WWDC twice, and so have therefore received two Apple-branded water bottles as a result. So Jason have a shelf in his house somewhere with 30 assorted. Apple-branded water bottles? You know, they didn't use to give water bottles out. I do have some Apple water bottles,

and I don't have any place to put them, because they're so tall. Yes. And most of my shelves are not that tall. And I have better water bottles is the other thing. I have, like, good water bottles. And these are like, they're, like, recyclable. They're like thin aluminum water bottles

that feel like they could be single use, but they could also be multi-use, which is fine. but I have other water bottles that are better. So right now they're actually over by my, and people watching the video version of the show will see me gesturing over by my washing machine. They're right next to that,

just in a pile with a bunch of other junk where it's like, I need to put these somewhere and I don't know where to put them. And I may end up just recycling them, honestly, because I just don't need that many water. How many water bottles does one person need? The problem is, well, not the problem. There is a situation that I have been in

And then there's two times that I've been to WWDC, which is being in the podcast studio. So when you go to the podcast studio, they give you water bottles. They put a water bottle out for you that is full of water, which is very kind and thoughtful of them to do. Yes. But because of the fact that they're putting them out, they say, please take it because they don't reuse them because they don't want to contaminate people. So I, in both 23 and 26, left with three water bottles. Uh-huh. I have two from this.

So this year, I have three of the WWDC ones, and I have one behind me, and I have two sitting over on the little table that I have that you know that exists when you come in. They are now my guest water bottles, so when people come to the studio, they can use those. In 2023, they did not give away extras of the water bottle that was in the tote bag, like the little gift bag. It was a different bottle made by a company called Swell, and I have two of those, and those are incredible. Those are really good. They're like insulated water bottles. Yes. Where like I've recently where it's been hot, like I'll leave the house in the morning,

one of those in my bag, with water and ice in it. And it's like 35 degrees it was one day or whatever. And I'm walking down the street with that in my bag. The ice is still in cubes at the end of the day. So I was very happy with those. Those are good. Now what they give away is these super thin. They might as well be.

They're basically the same thing you'd get at like a sporting event for a beer. It would be in an aluminum can shaped like a bottle. bottle, that's what it is. Yeah. But those bottles, they didn't, in 23, they didn't give away those. In 23, they gave the little fellow coffee cup thing, which is also amazing. Also, great. Yeah.

No, this is a, I mean, it's fine. They're fine. They don't need to give us anything, honestly. Merch was a thing. I could say merch. The little gift bags. They were a thing that started post-COVID, right? Especially for the media, at least.

Yeah, for the media. I mean, what I was going to say is, I don't know, because the challenge of my memory of WWDC is for a while there at Macworld we just bought WWDC badges yeah they weren't that expensive and you could just buy we bought a five pack and literally they sold it as a five pack yeah and then just distributed them to people and take a badge and go for a day or go for the whole week to the event and they all get gift bags yeah right because they're developers and then we started getting like do members of the media get the same little little choshka bag or not um and i think it varied from year to year. But yeah, since COVID, they've had this thing where it's a small event and

that everybody gets a little bag when they get there. Which is, I mean, it's nice and all. I mean, it's mostly just, like I said, pins. But we got the, got the, um, little Mac guy, little finder guy. Little finder guy. Yeah. Got his, got his pin, which was cute. And a water bottle, which is, which is practical, right, because you're there and you need to drink water and, you know, hydration break. I believe one year, or maybe the second year, they put sunscreen in the back. They did. That was the first year back. There was sunscreen in the bag.

Which is odd that they haven't kept doing it. Or a hat. Well, they put up a larger canopy so there's almost no sun and the sun exposure you get isn't very much. But they did. They gave a sunscreen and a hat. Which is a good idea. I think it's a black on black apple hat too.

Which is not ideal for the heat. No, but it's what they gave us. It's cool. It's a black hat with a black apple on it. Because I got that tote bag, even though I spent that. WDC in a hotel room. Yes, because somebody took pity on you.

Apple sent me a, like a gift basket full of things to make me feel better, including like, uh, day quill and, and it was very helpful. And a bunch of, like snacks. Did it make you feel better? It did. Okay. It did. It did.

It did make me feel better. Lots of snacks and medicines. I like to think about that as the, as the WWDC where we got to record an episode of upgrade at my house outside. That, yes. where, yes, that was wonderful. That was part of it. That part of it.

Oh, man. That was one of my favorite episodes of Upgrade ever because somebody treated me like a human being. Yeah. Because understandably, everybody was avoiding me like the literal plague that week. However, you and I were at the opposites of a long end of the table in the backyard. Which I insisted that we did that. Because you were like, hey, we're outside.

It will be fine. But I was like, no, I want to sit very far away from you. Yeah. So it was kind of Putin-like. It was amazing. I'm all the way down here at the end of this table. But yeah, and the birds are, you know, my neighbor feeds birds, so there's bird chirps in the background.

That's a classic. I hope we'll do that again. Maybe when I come for... I would love to do another outdoor episode. We were going to do it. The last time you were here, we were going to do it, but it was just cold and foggy, and so we didn't do it. We did it inside instead.

And I think they were re-roofing the house next door or something. It was terrible. Yeah. There was bad noises happening. That was 2023, wasn't it? After the Vision Pro, the episode, after the Vision Pro. Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

That's right. Yes, because your wife had to watch our new dog. She was... And Maisie basically licked her all over. And Jeremy Burge as well. And Jeremy Burge, yes. Good times. Yeah, good times.

Anyway. If you would like to send in a Snell talk question for us to open a future episode of the show, just go to UpgradeFeedback.com and send yours in. We have some follow-up, Jason Snell. The Kickstarter is now done. Thank you so much to everybody that support you. of Designing California. We finished at 3030303030, which is incredible. I don't know how that happened. The two of us actually got on stream for the countdown to the end. So that's on YouTube.

If people want to watch that, we're kind of reflecting on it and talking about some of our plans in the immediate future for designing California. So that's available to you. I'll put a link in the show notes in case people want to go and watch that. That's the thing that you can do. The special Glenn guest. Yes, Glenn Fleischman, has been our consultant. Kickstarter Whisperer. Yeah, for this whole process also joined us for a little bit too. And so we were kind of reflecting on what the Kickstarter had, how it'd gone,

and that kind of stuff said that's available. So we'll talk more about designing California again later. Just for now, we're heads down. Yeah, a new podcast is going to come from us this fall. And if you didn't get a chance and you still want to sign up for a membership, if you go to Design.fm, you can still, it's called the late pledge, but it's basically just the member price. And at some point when we get stuff up and running on relay, that'll be where you can get a membership.

But also, yes, there will be a regular version with ads and stuff that will be available. And we'll tell you when it comes out. Yeah. An anonymous feedbacker wrote in and said, Regarding AI helping Apple fix bugs in the new OSES, I can confirm from various friends at Apple that most of their software engineering team is now heavily leveraging Claude Code specifically. I'm a software engineer too, and the workflow of engineering. engineers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley has completely changed in the last 12 months,

from AI sometimes being useful to being the expected first step or the primary tool. I have zero doubt that Claude heavily contributed to the bug fixes and performance improvements. As mentioned, it excels at those. And I do remember there was a report a while ago, I think from Mark German, saying that Apple was encouraging people to use Claude in their work. And this was what was leading us to believe that they may go with Anthropic for helping with their AI efforts. But they ended up going with Google. They're partnering with everybody in different ways, which is kind of funny. I did a story last week on Six Colors about security fixes.

They released a 2652 update that it's actually the features, the security fixes that were in the 266.6. public beta, but after a month, they're like, can we just release these? Because the public beta is not over yet. The beta cycle's not over yet, but they want the fixes out. So they released it as a in a 26-5-2. And talking to them about it, they made it clear that one of the reasons is obviously AI makes it, you know, a new beta comes out. It's got bug fixes. People can use the AI analysis to figure out what their, what bugs they're fixing. And as long as those bugs have not yet been fixed, they can use them for attacks. They can add them to their, they can add them to their, their library of tools. But the other part of it that they said to me, and I asked, is absolutely Apple is using frontier models to search for security flaws. And I got the distinct impression.

They make these announcements of sort of like, here are the credits for all the security researchers who pointed out bugs that we fixed. But they don't generally talk about the bugs that they fixed that no researcher can't. And that's the impression I get is they're using AI tools very much to find security issues. So it's not surprising they're using for bugs.

And yeah, I think that as this anonymous person points out, this is just a thing that's happening now in software professionally is you would be a friend of mine said to me, every time a new model comes out, what you need to do is pointed at your code and say, look for bugs. Yeah. And then just keep doing it. I mean, I'm kind of at the feeling of like, why not? Like, why would you not do that, you know?

I mean, Marco Arment did a beta of Overcast and he said, look, I had four bugs that had been intermittent that I couldn't figure out what they were in my code base and I pointed the AI at them and it found them. Yeah. And I fixed them. That fixed the bug that I've been dealing with Overcast since the redesign. Yeah. Little subtle bugs that the developer can't figure out. And then it gets pointed out to him by the AI and he goes, oh, oh, right? But it's a different, you know, it's a different logic engine looking at your code.

And that's, yeah, that's just how it's done now. Alan wrote in and said, An important factor in new iPhones and price increases are carrier deals and contracts. A $200 price increase spread over the 36-month cycle is just $5.55 a month. The iPhone pro on Apple's homepage is currently advertised at $45.79 a month. So that it would just be $51. 34. Apple may begin to lean more into the monthly pricing rather than the base. There was also that weird $30 deal during the iPhone 12 launch where it made the, it appear as $7.99 instead of the actual $829 price, maybe a similar thing like that or things like this could happen again. I think it's a fair point that iPhone pricing is complicated by carrier relationships and carrier marketing. And while a lot of us think of iPhone price as,

What does it cost to just go to Apple.com on the day and pay for an unlocked phone or pay for a phone that's attached to your carrier for a discount? But it's like you don't have a commitment. And but so many phones are sold. And they talk about this in the analyst calls every quarter. So many of the phones are sold through partners on installment plans. And then Apple also has its own. Honestly, like, it's kind of ridiculous to do what I do, which is to buy the phone. right. Because I'm paying every month

with my carrier anyway. But I just like to know I can get my phone when I want and not have to jump through the hoops. It's important for my job. But it makes some if you're on the plan, which you're going to be on anyway, be on that plan for a 36 months, 48 months, 12 months, whatever

and pay it monthly. You know, it spreads it out. Yeah. And yeah. I know people who are on the annual plan and you get the new phone every year. And you get the new phone every year. You pay monthly. And at the end of the, you hand it back and you get the new phone again. Yeah.

And that's it. Like there are, and your carrier will give you a free, whatever. I keep seeing, you know, during the World Cup, there are all these T-Mobile ads that are basically like, we will give you a free iPhone 17 Pro if you switch to T-Mobile. And like, yeah. So I, and in regarding the changes now, like, I'm sure that the price profile of the iPhone is going to change. But one of the reasons they may not have changed it now is because it's, it's. It's not as easy for Apple to change iPhone prices because it's not a traditional channel. That's the part right now that I think is probably relevant is it's not a traditional channel

because you have carrier partners. And the carrier partners, the carriers have a deal for what they're paying for for that phone. And then they're obviously reselling it to their customers essentially. And like there's got to be a whole other layer of complexity and different carriers and different markets. And so it's probably, again, I'm just. guessing here, but it may be that Apple looked at it and said, no, the way we need to do this is set new prices for the new phones in the fall with all our carrier partners. And then those

will be the new prices. Because if you think, like, you know, even all of the posters, all of the materials that every carrier around the world would need to change, where they would naturally have new ones in September. So if you can hold it off, hold it off. Do you go back to T-Mobile and say, okay, we're going to charge you $50 more for every iPhone? And they're like, well, we're not going to, we have a contract and we have these thing where we're giving them away for free and we're not going to pay you an extra $50. And it's a whole thing. So I think that,

I think Alan makes a good point here that this is probably one of the reasons why the iPhone is a more complex thing. But that's also why I would anticipate in the fall. That's when you do it because you've got a new price that you set. And every year they are setting a price with all their partners of like, this is what the price is and this is what you pay. And whatever those, all those deals are, are then based on that price that Apple cuts with them.

And they may be able to find some. way of dressing the price up so that it doesn't seem to be so catastrophic, let's say. We'll see. So Jason activated a selection of punsters on the last episode. I did. I said punsters assemble. And they did. He mentioned the location of the install base, which is in regard to us talking more about

maybe software in the future than hardware because all this pricing stuff. So Sonny said, install base, is that next to Dongletown? Is that where boot camp is? They probably train to the east of the blue screen of Death Valley. And on the weekend, pass they visit Jailbreak Ridge, which overlooks sandbox beach, or go rock climbing at the notch. No. Okay. I was with you.

And then you lost me. That's a pun run too far. And Kana says, I believe you're thinking of software by the sea, a small village north of Dongletown. is where the web surfers purchase their softwares. Softwares, yeah. I just want to state for the record. Sunny and Connor got in. The door is closed on this.

Yes. Like, you can send your puns to me and I will read them. I'm not going to keep reading them on the show. No. All right? Just, no. Thunderbolt dock, very important. And then, you know, we're going to leave the rest to your imagination

until our next T-shirt sale. Exactly. Yeah, we might ask for them when we need to make much. Until then, keep it to yourself. Apple has announced that its next quarterly earnings report will be on July 30th. This is notable because it's going to be Cook's last public commitment for Apple, most likely. I can't imagine there will be something else between now and September. You never know.

But this is set to be the last thing. There will surely be a lot of conversation about pricing strategies on this call. It will be my expectation. I'm sure lots of analysts will have lots of discussions. You can look forward to that conversation at the beginning of August on the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll do it. We'll do it.

That may be, uh, we do to travel that may be me and a special guest talking about. I'm not going to be here that episode. So Jason, we'll bring in a special guest. I know how much you like it. I do really like it. And I, and I, I, I had lots of consideration as to how to change it, but I just can't. We're going to be out on the East Coast. and we need to leave for the airport before we would finish recording.

So there's just no way of doing it. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Decagon. If your team is dealing with more support tickets, more channels, and higher expectations from your customers, you've probably thought about using AI for customer support. And you've probably seen how limited or time-consuming most options are, and that's where Decagon comes in.

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Check out Decagon at DECAG-G-O-N-G-O-N-A-I-Sash upgrade. That is Decagon. Dot A.I-S-UGRID. A thanks to Decagon for their support of this show and relay. So it is the summer of fun. And for the summer of fun today, Summer of Fun! Double follow-up.

I've got more follow-up for you. Whoa. What? Bloomberg has confirmed that Apple is indeed trying to buy RAM from China, but they're saying that Apple is actually in talks of two companies that are on the Pentagon blacklist. Bloomberg say it's expected that this RAM, if they do secure it, would be used for devices sold in China, allowing Apple to allocate their other. RAM inventory to devices sold outside of the region. Again, Apple are within their legal rights

to do this. They can just do this if they want to. Nothing is stopping them because especially as it's for Chinese devices. However, without the blessing of the government, the US government, they will face significant political backlash. Like it won't go well for them if they do it, even though they can do it. They're not importing the RAM or anything like that, but things would get messy for them. However, I was reading this report, I think that even if the president's like, go for it,

I don't think they're not, I think they're still going to get a lot of significant backlash politically. Like, just if Trump says it's okay, it's not going to make the rest of everybody else happy about this. So, you know, it kind of feels like, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Like, I don't, you know, it's like, okay, if the Pentagon's like, yeah, don't worry about it, you can do this.

It's not like every senator and every congressperson is going to be like, we agree, you know? It has been a fraught thing because it's perceived as being like Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army related and it becomes a source of like national security arguments and are they subsidized and unfurized and unfurricular. fairly competing arguments. And really, there's a lot of it that's just, this is an easy way to beat up on China kind of arguments from various politicians from both parties in the U.S. Then again, what I've been saying all along is, if this is a deal, you know, the president of the United States enjoys making a deal,

if this is a deal that he likes, where it's like Apple's going to make some firm commitments to, for example, have chips made in the U.S. at Intel in exchange for something like this, if that deal comes to be, he'll just do it, right? Like, he'll just say it's fine. I say it's fine. And I'm not sure anybody's going to stop anybody

from doing that. I guess the fear is that there is a chance that Apple would make a deal with these companies and then Congress would basically step in and say, no, these are barred now or some other organization would say these are barred completely. and Apple seeking a guarantee that they wouldn't be barred. I look at this and think in a moment like this

where it's so extreme in terms of RAM availability, using some Chinese suppliers to make some RAM for the Chinese market and allowing Apple to then use the existing RAM supply elsewhere, I don't know. I mean, it seems okay to me with these very limited issues. But the argument would be, yeah, but you're giving money to these Chinese RAM companies, and that's what they want you to do, right? Like, you're propping them up

and giving them an infusion of cash and that's the last thing that we want for these unfair, you know, Communist Party and People's Liberation Army tied organizations. So there's politics. It's all politics, right? This is, but you, hashtag Mike was right.

This is what's going on here is Apple would really, really like access to some more RAM, and it's right there. Is there a deal to be struck? And that's, you know, in another era, I would say this seems like it's not going to happen just because of the political opposition. But I don't feel like I can say that. I think that if the guy in charge says this is a deal I want to make, then everybody's

going to say, yes, sir. Yep. John Proser has finally filed a response in the lawsuit Apple brought against him. So Jay Peters at the verge has written a good breakdown of process response, but I want to go through some key points. So this is a quote from Peter's Proser. denied that he planned or participated in any conspiracy, a cord or coordinated scheme for the purpose of injuring Apple.

Proser admitted to recording a FaceTime call, showing unreleased iOS software. He says he did not pay Ramikiotis, his co-defendant, up front, but agreed to share revenue from the YouTube videos he made as a result of the information being shared of him. Now, I'm not a lawyer, Jason. But that feels like six of one. half thousand of the other to me.

I mean, there are some legal reasons why you would make this argument. Right. Because Prosser is not, Prosser is protected by the First Amendment, first and foremost, from reporting, you know, to, he's allowed to report about information that comes his way. The question is about, did he induce this to happen? did he offer money to pay for this guy to surreptitiously access his friend's development iPhone? That's where it gets messy. And so I can see why they're making the argument they're making here.

It is absolutely throwing the other guy under the bus. Yes. But at the same time, the other guy, you could argue, by cooperating, is throwing John Prasser under the bus. And we know, so like, I want to be skeptical about this, but we know that Apple really wants to punish John Proser. Right. Ultimately, Ramasotti doesn't matter, right? Like, I mean, maybe they'll prosecute him.

I mean, if he really bribed an Apple employee to share secret information, that's not good. But like, what makes this an interesting story and what makes, I think, Apple more inclined to deal with Ramasotti is. that there's John Prosser, and they want to put the hurt to John Prosser. So, of course, so I think, you know, where's the truth here is a little bit of a mystery. I'm not sure. I understand Prosser's defense here.

I'm not sure it makes sense to me that this other guy would be like, oh, yeah, I was talking to John Prosser, and he said, you know, he could get me money if I would do this. And John Prosser's like, oh, I never said anything like that. I just said, oh, tell me more or whatever. It's like, did that, I try to play back those conversations and I'm not sure. But it's possible.

And the argument that Proz's attorney will probably make is that Ramassadi assumed that there would be a benefit. But that Procer only implied that he wanted the material and did not offer money for breaking the law. But like at some point, like they say he, like process admits that he agreed he would share YouTube revenue. when naturally would that come up? You know, what, that would come up after? Like, no. Afterward. You would, you would bring that up before you receive the information.

This is what I'm saying is when I try to emulate this conversation in my head, I have a hard time believing Prosser's series of events, but I understand why he's making those claims. And I want to be, I just want to be aware that Apple wants to put the hurt to Prosser. And Ramosadi cooperating, presumably, for, less strict punishment benefits everybody who's trying to put the hurt on on Prosser. Yeah.

So Prosser claims that Ramesiotti is completely responsible for the disclosure of trade secrets. Prosser said he was unaware of how Ramizhoti got the information and that he, quote, disconnected communication with him once he learned how it was acquired. Yeah. I mean, yeah, again, he's like, look, I didn't know. I just am here with a big bucket catching rumors as they fly into it. That's all.

I'm just catching them. Yeah. They come. I don't know where they come from. It's not my business, which on one level is defensible. That's the whole idea is you're not inducing people to break their confidentiality agreements or steal their friend's phones. The information you get, and you can, I mean, I hear from people about this a lot where it's like, he shouldn't do that, that's secret.

It's like, okay. But legally, legally, if somebody gives you the stuff, you can report on it. In the United States, it's First Amendment, where you get into trouble is with inducing the breaking of contracts and laws. That's where it becomes, you're now a participant in the crime, essentially.

Instead of just... Publishing information given to you is not a crime. inducing somebody to go steal some stuff and give it to you is a crime. Not the publishing of the information, the inducing of the crime. So that's what this hinges on here, really. We're going to see how it goes. I'm intrigued to see where it goes. Apple Creator Studio, the Apple Creator Studio apps got a selection of enhancements in new features.

I think the top lines are PixelMator Pro is now more tightly integrated into other apps. So if you're editing in Final Cut, you can grab a frame, edit that frame, bring it back in. There are better tools to create thumbnails and stuff like that in PixelMeter Pro. There are more AI-powered tools in Final Cut, like generating captions automatically and auto-masking. Yeah, I've heard good things about the masking. People were saying cool things about the masking. And yeah, everything got a PixelMator Pro, like open in PixelMater Pro, get from PixelMater. They put in all of those connections.

I made a joke on social media about how what about all the great updates to keynote pages and numbers that are a very important part of this suite and I got a very polite email from somebody at Apple saying just for the record

there are things that are updated in those two is from the press release keynote pages and numbers are also adding some highly requested features keynote gains stunning new transition and builds pages on iPhone and iPad adds auto hyphenate and show invisibles numbers makes navigating complex spreadsheets

faster than ever with the ability to hide or color code individual sheets. Yep. Yep. And then there are some features that are tied to the creator studio in terms of like PixelMater Pro connectivity and stuff like that. But they did add features. And this is just, you know, this is their challenge is they have to communicate now what features everybody gets and what features are only in the studio bundle for keynote pages and numbers. And I just want to say again that it's incredibly stupid that those things. are in that bundle. And as a user of a bunch of these apps,

I continue to be eternally frustrated because I keep getting told to need to update to a new version of an app and I just haven't done it yet. And it's like, it's a nightmare across all the devices that I use. I hate the way they did this. I think they completely bungled the launch.

It's adding too much overhead into my decision-making when I just want to use numbers. Like, I find it really frustrating the way that they did this. And now it's too late. even if they came up with a solution, it's just too late now.

They bungled it in my opinion. And I understand why, like I've seen this decision making, right? That like the team at, you know, like the creators, whoever would be responsible at Apple would be in the creator studio team. They really wanted to do this,

but they could not get the engineering resources to launch it in a different way. So they just had to kind of bolt it onto the existing app store infrastructure and it just ended up being a mess. Yeah. It's, I know why, you and I know why they did it. We can understand completely why they did it and why they had to do it the way they did it.

I would just say they shouldn't have done it. Yeah. I just, in the end, I don't think it's worth it to include productivity apps in your creative bundle if it has to be under these terms. If there was a separate like bonus bundle for keynote pages and numbers that was optional, I'd be okay with it. If it didn't mess up the existing apps, I'd be okay with it. Because it seems like keynote pages and numbers

are the ones that have been most impacted by this. Like, when I open Final Cut or Logic, I'm not getting these pop-ups telling me to go get the new app or whatever. Because you can buy them, right? So they're not trying to necessarily incentivize you to go get the subscriber version. Exactly.

And yeah, it's just like, I know at some point I'm going to have to do this if not, I need to do it now because it's going to be features. No, you should. It's like I will get around to it, but it's like, I think I did it on one Mac, but not the other.

And it's like, I'm just trying to live my life. You know, like, I have a spreadsheet to fill out, leave me alone. But that's just the way it goes. Every Mac has turned 30. Jason, what is every Mac? It's a website that has specs of every Mac ever released. Along with iPods and iPhones and all.

all this kind of stuff too. I mean, you got to move with the times. You know, 30 years ago, it was just every Mac. This website hasn't, which I do kind of love about it, if I'm being honest. I mean, you build a site and then you just go with it. It says established 1996. So, yeah, it looks like a site that was established in 1996. I always like these things because when I was at Mac user,

we had a product called the Mac Catalog. And it was a guy named Mark Simmons who compiled it. and it was a filemaker database of all the Apple specs. And then the way it was distributed was he saved out a version of it. You could do this back in the day. You basically could save it out as a standalone app. So you didn't need FileMaker to run it. FileMaker let you save out like a database as an app

or FileMaker Developer Edition did or something. I don't know. The license has changed over time. FileMaker has gone through so many different lives. So I was going through my catalog of Oldenance, magazines and it says, you know, go to our CompuServe and then later was you can download this from our website and it's this

app that has the complete Mac catalog and then Mark would update it. I come into the story because I thought, because I was in charge of Mac users' website, we should get this on the website. And I did, but I did it through what in hindsight is the most ridiculous.

It was the way to do it at the time but it was the most ridiculous way possible because this is the early days of the web. So there was an app that bridged a web server

with FileMaker. I think, and I got to go back because this also evolved over time. Ultimately, FileMaker became its own web server.

Ultimately, there was a whole standalone product called Lasso that did this. Ultimately, there was also a product

that would rip out like modern static generation pages. Are you thinking of Bentow? No. Okay. Because FileMaker

made that. right? Yeah, well, that was just an organizer. Okay. No, there was, there was, an app called Lassau that did this. FileMaker did their own web server. And ultimately, yeah, there was also an app that I can't remember the name of that did a static generation thing, basically, where you could point it at a file maker database and it would generate a website full of pages based on your rules. And I used that a lot. My fiction magazine from the 90s intertext, that was how that site got generated was it got generated out of FileMaker.

Because that was the way back in those days, that was the easiest way. You weren't running live databases on the internet or anything like that, except that when Mac user launched the Mac catalog on the web, that's exactly what it was. It was a web server running on a Mac running classic Mac OS in the Mac user lab.

And every time somebody clicked on like, sort this or give me a detail view of that particular Mac, it would make a request, to that Mac web server, which would make a request to FileMaker to go to that record in the database and it would get the data out of it and then it would put it in a web page and return it.

Every single request. There was no caching. It was a single, single threaded Mac, running classic MacOS, running MacOS 8. And it worked because the web wasn't that big back then and there weren't that many people on it using this thing.

This is funny because I just got to the part of Jobs in Exile when they talk about Tim Berners-Lee. using the NextCube to set up the sound data. And it's like a similar thing where they said he wrote in like red ink on the side of the next cube, do not turn this off. Oh yeah. Our server at the journalism school at UC Berkeley was a PC or no, it was a Mac actually in the PC lab in the corner.

And it had a big sign on the screen that said, do not use, do not turn off. And so yeah, that was that was, that was just, I was essentially, it was my, experiment in what would it be like to have a more dynamic database-driven website, which today seems like so obvious, but that's like Web 2.0. This was not Web 2.0. This was Web 1.0. And it was a really fun experiment. It would have created enormous technical debt problems down the road. But the good news is they shut down Mac user and I went to work at Mac World and all that stuff got shut down. And so I didn't have to deal with it anymore. We just shut it all down. But anyway, so I have fondness for a thing like every Macs.

because that is absolutely a project that I worked on at almost the same time that every Mac started. I was working on that at Mac users. So that was pretty great. But yeah, folks don't. Don't run. Look, I wrote a whole book with Carl Stedman about running web servers and other services on classic MacOS. And I think about it now and I'm like, don't do that. Don't do that.

But there was the style at the time. Run a web server on macOS 8. Like, why would you? But we did it. We did it and we liked it. I also, while we're talking about FileMaker, I want to have a little FileMaker tangent to just say that last week,

so I'm on a Discord of people who played on Jeopardy. Oh, look at you. Yeah, and it's fun. There's a lot of, it's high, very high volume. But I'm doing Learned League now, which is like an online trivia league, and there's a bunch of fun conversation among trivia people in there about that.

I've really been enjoying that. And then there's comments about, like the day's Jeopardy games and all of that. And somebody posted the other day that they're hiring a writer at Jeopardy, full-time. We'll put a link in the show notes if you'd like to write Jeopardy, but you better hurry because you have to write

essentially two complete game boards plus three final Jeopardy questions and you have to get them all into Sony and it all has to be submitted by like the end of the week. It's like really fast, really fast. July 10th. So you've got very little time.

if you want to become a writer of Jeopardy and move to Culver City, California. But you can if you want. I'm not going to, I got, I got too, I just got a new job. Yeah. Designed to California. So I can't do it. But here's the part about it that I wanted to mention here.

I'm scrolling through the list. I'm like, because I almost did it. I almost applied for the job just for fun because I think it would be fun to assemble jeopardy boards and just to see. And then maybe they'd be like, well, Jason, you know, you, you're not going to move to L.A., but maybe we'll use you as a freelancer or something like that. I thought about it, but I'm not going to. to do it because I got too much going on. I got to rate design in California episodes. I got to do a

public beta preview. Like, there's all this stuff going on. But I'm scrolling. And I get to preferred qualifications for this job. And there are two. One is membership in the Writers Guild of America, which I do not have. So that's be a TV writer and in the union. Preferred. Great. It's a union shop. If you got the job, you'd need to join the union. The second bullet point is familiarity with FileMaker Pro. And I was like, dang, I can nail that part. I'd be like, whoa, what you really want to hire is me because I used to be a Jeopardy player. And I like trivia.

And most importantly, I have developed so many FileMaker databases over the years. Oh, my God. My other reaction was, you know, every so often I ask myself when Apple mentions that Claris is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple and they're still in business and they're still doing FileMaker Pro. I think to myself, who's still using FileMaker Pro? And now I have an answer, which is apparently the Jeopardy database isn't FileMaker? I expect there's lots of stuff like they're still floating around because they've used it 20 years ago and they continue. That's the answer. That's why is FileMaker still around?

I think in large part, like so many of these products, they have an installed base with deeply integrated to their systems. This is like, it's like a version of the why is there still cobal code running on a server somewhere from the 60s. The answer is there's a thing that is deeply integrated into a production workflow somewhere. And to remove it would be an enormous amount of work. And it still works. So why would you change it? And there's a business to be made supporting those people. And it turns out there's a business to be made supporting the producers and writers of Jeopardy who use FileMaker for some.

aspect, I assume the questions and answers and all of that, on their show using FileMaker. So shout out, if there's any Jeopardy writers out there, I swear I'm not going to apply for that job so you can talk to me and tell me about this. But anyway, FileMaker at Jeopardy made me laugh. So I really fell into a FileMaker-shaped hole last week. And it was fun. I had to do Command Shift D to define my fields. I had to do Command 1 to look at the scripting interface.

And then I did Command Q and got out of there. Is there any possibility that there will be an episode about FileMaker and designing California one day? Maybe if we've run out stuff to talk about? No, Mike, put it on the list. There is 100% a series about Clarice. Okay. Claris, which includes FileMaker. Fours works too, right?

I know that was maybe a bigger deal. Yeah, Claris emailer. I just added it. It's underneath Sherlocking now in a long list of things. Great. great this episode is brought to you by our friends over at square space they are the all-in-one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online whether you're

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That is Squarespace.com slash upgrade and the offer code upgrade. That will get you 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. Thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay. Rumor round up time, Jason Snell. Yeah. Let's do it. 9 to 5 Mac is reporting via Digitimes. It's saying that there will be a quote,

major redesign coming this year for the Apple Watch Ultra 4 with quote significant upgrades to sensing functions and Mac Rumors is reporting according to Leaker Instant Digital that the Apple Watch X rumor is back saying that a big redesign is coming for it

into 2027 for the series line of watches you know kind of that would be what series for the 12 13 13 yeah because it would be the last one was 11 12 is this year, that'll be 13.

Yeah. Instant Digital implied that it could change the way that bands connect to the Apple Watch, which would mean compatibility of existing watch bands, will finally end. Mark Gomer's original reporting for this big redesign, which was that he was expecting would have came at the 10-year anniversary, but it didn't come, would be for a magnetic band attachment, thinner case, and a micro-l-D screen. Mac Rumors points out that historically, Apple has revised the design of the Apple Watch

kind of around every three years so next year would be the time for a change of some kind if they're going to finally pull the trigger on this bigger design. By the way, I got an email from somebody who wanted to pedantically point out that current watch bands have magnets in them.

I don't think they do. I got that email too and I think that person's wrong. I don't believe the Apple Watch band has a magnet in it. I don't, I mean, I don't care because what it does is it slides in and there's like a little tooth and it kind of clicks and then you have to push it back out again. So it's primarily a physical attachment to the watch. And what this report is suggesting is that it would be primarily a magnetic attachment to the watch. That's the difference. The challenge there is that if you don't have any physical guiding principle there, you risk having your watch pop off under force, which is not great. Yeah, I wonder how they're going to do it. Like I've always been do. obvious of magnetic, but the Nintendo Switch 2 has, is

the JoyCons magnetically attach and those things do not come off. So, you know, there is a way to do it, but then you know, like Nintendo has this big, like physical switch that you kind of pull and it provides enough grip that it will come off.

I'm intrigued of how that's going to work and if it's going to be better. I want to hear, I mean, I heard you talk about this on Connected last week. idea is what's the reason they give here and honestly it could be as simple as we have a new design and so it you know we weren't going to be constrained we've we've designed 12 of these with the exact same 13 of these with the exact same connector and we're not going to do it anymore

because we we wanted to be unconstrained so we could create an entirely new design that's enough but I do wonder there have been lots of rumors about forever about the idea could you put some intelligence in the band and if they that would be a real reason to do this right

to have a new band format that allowed them to potentially put sensors in the band not necessarily even I know we always talk about like the like a blood sugar or whatever but like if they can make, for example,

what if they can take some sensors out of the watch or change sensors in the watch because they'll be supplemented by sensors on the opposite side of the wrist? I'm sure they've experimented with this and maybe they've just decided it's totally not worth it,

but the current format, you can't do it because it's just not made for that. So could there be a new format? There's no way to transmit data, right? It just doesn't exist. No, or power. I mean, you could create like a powered band,

but then you're like charging your band and it's just not going to make any sense. But they could. So that would be an interesting thing they could do. But they could also just simply say, you know what? It's time to do something new. And we've built so many of these based on, if you think about it,

that original Apple Watch, which was announced in 2014, a band from that fits in a current. series watch. So that's a long time to be designing slightly different versions of the watch and it constrains their design.

It undoubtedly does. So if they want to, they could break compatibility. And when these rumors were out there a few years ago, I was a little more bummed out about breaking compatibility. But as the years go on,

I am less and less concerned about it. Because it's like, it's been a good run, everybody, right? Yes. It's been a good run. And if we get a significant

redesign, for the Apple Watch, I will happily let go of my vans. Because I, you know, I want it to look different, like, in a meaningful way. And, like, because I just, I'm very tired of the overall look now. I'm really intrigued about the Apple Watch Ultra 4. Like, what is that going to be a precursor to this? Or, like, what are they going to do with that, right? That's coming this year, expectedly.

Right. And what is a significant upgrade to sensing function? Like, what does that mean? Yeah, what, is it better sensors? Is it different sensors? Yeah. It's a big watch. So packing them in there, it sort of makes sense for that. So it's funny because I wasn't sure that I would be upgraded my Apple Watch this year

because I'm expecting to buy two iPhones. But maybe they'll get me, you know? Maybe they'll get me. That's, this is, look, Apple didn't become a company that's, worth a gazillion dollars by making products you don't want to buy. Exactly. I mean, there was a period, but they learned their lesson. Last week, Indian-based supplier Tata Electronics suffered a large data breach that with it has exposed imagery and details of the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro.

These images have been spreading across the dark web, Jason, with some leaking out more broadly. There is a video that's got circulated a bunch of a drop test of a silver version. of the 18 Pro. Among these leaks, though, are details on suppliers, parts, and specifications of the upcoming iPhones, which Apple is really not happy about. I think they seem to, I would think that they care a lot more

about the parts information and the supplier information than the images, because like, it just looks like the iPhone 17 Pro. Yeah, not great, but I was surprised, like in reading it's like, oh, this doesn't happen. Like, I'm surprised this doesn't happen more. They've got so many companies. companies they're working with.

Well, I assume that what this is, is since this is a different company in a different country, that this is going to get a bunch of people yelled at about why this happened there and it doesn't happen in their other factories.

And somebody will get in trouble and their policies will change and they'll tighten up their privacy because they know that Apple is mad. And yeah, that's what I, we we accept some amount of leakage, but you're right. There's certain kinds of things that leak out and certain kinds of things that don't.

And this is unusual in that way. So we'll just have to see how they deal with it. But that was my thought is that somebody's going to get yelled at. There's going to be an investigation. Somebody's going to get fired. That's what's going to happen. Yep. Mark Garman is reporting on Apple's Spring 2027 hardware lineup that includes new iPad

pros and a new MacBook Pro. The iPad Pro update will mostly focus on the internal. There will be faster processors, presumably the M6, and the vapor chamber cooling will be coming to the iPad, I think, for the first time. So that's cool. I think that's... My iPhone did not get hot until I put the beta on it. When I put the beta on it, it got hot.

It's the first time my iPhone got really hot. So that vapor chamber cooling in the 17 Pro is the real deal. They did a good job there. The MacBook Pro that we're talking about here in spring 2027, will have a revamped design. It will be the entry-level model, so the 14-inch is what we're talking about here. Well, it's the 14-inch base model.

Yeah, right? Yes, sorry. We're talking about the M-5 Macbook Pro. So this will be an M-6 or maybe an M-7, depending on timing, but it's that base model that doesn't have the Pro or Max chip in it. Yeah.

This design, it will be more in line with whatever the touchscreen model of the MacBook Pro looks like, whenever that may happen, some months before it will be introduced. I think in his reporting, Mark is being opaque about what processor will be in this redesigned base model. So in the report, he mentions, quote, that Apple had already finished work months ago on a refreshed entry-level MacBook Pro, which has been planned for this year with the current design and a new base M6 chip.

Then he talks about Apple, quote, aiming to debut its first M7 processor as early as the first half of the next year as well, is targeting a fast transition from the coming M6 generation. So, assumedly, this means there will be an M6 this year, and then an M7, maybe six months later. And that is what would be in this MapCup Pro redesign,

but I don't think his reporting is clear, and I think that is a function of the fact that maybe Apple doesn't know, I think, what they're going to do. Or at least the people, it's unsettled enough that the people that Mark Herman is talking to don't know or they don't know of what they've heard is the latest. Yeah.

My guess would be that it would be an M6. And then they could put an M7 in it, but they don't necessarily have to put it in it, like, right away, because they will have just turned that one over. Yeah. So, but, you know, I don't know what the timing is. Maybe the MacBook Pro just doesn't get the base M6. It just goes to M7, and maybe there's M6 Pro and max chips

that go into the bigger ones? No, I don't know. No, no M6 pro max chips. They don't exist. Well, then they just jump it completely. I forgot about that part. Yes. Oh, it's the, I'm thinking of the M5 Ultra is still assumedly coming, right? There was in the... But that would be, that would be for the Mac Studio. But I just, though, I knew there was a

hangover chip of some description. And that is the one. Yeah, it's very, the hangover chip. Confusing right now. It's a much less popular movie. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe it's, they, maybe, maybe it's, they put in the, in MacBook Air, and I don't know I mean I think you could do it I think there's no reason not to unless the M6 and M7 are coming so close together

that my feeling is that probably some of these products have already been designed right like the M6 iPad Pro and the M6 low end MacBook Pro and maybe the M6 MacBook Air have already been designed and that may be the reason they haven't killed the M6 entirely

because they could right there's like a scenario here where you just kill the M6 and the thing that you used to call M7 is now the M6

and they're not doing that that's what I'm wondering. Yeah, I guess I guess they're not doing that but it's they're not. It's not clear

I mean obviously because we don't know but and I can like this this MacBook Pro with an M6 chip kind of what's the point of doing this if you're gonna bring out

the M7 one within like six months like I don't why do that? It's a good question. I mean, my answer would be they already designed the M6 versions here, and it's good enough,

and it takes the pressure off of whenever they have to ship the base M7, and maybe they've got a contract with TSM for these chips on their line, and they need to produce them. Yeah. Obviously, we don't know the reason, but

they could have swept the whole generation under the rug if they wanted to, and they didn't, so they've got a reason. Yeah. We'll see. MacRumers is reporting that developer and designer Sam Henry Gold discovered some code in iOS 27 that could be referring to the AirPods of a camera. The code mentions a product code named B790 that can relay two images from cameras on either side of a user's head.

Of course, this could also be for smart glasses, but feels more likely to be AirPods based on the timeline we expect this product. MacRum has also reported, though, that a leak have had any of Kotsumi says that this product, the AirPods of a camera, has now been suspended, but no more information on that. Yeah, I think Mark German also reported that this product was originally targeted for the end of this year, and now it's being talked about for next year, end of next year. Like, they push it back a whole year. I'm starting to wonder if AI wearables of cameras have a future in general. Like, I think there's a, there's a stigma forming again, right? That,

I think we got away from it. People were excited about the method rebands and now everyone's upset about the meta raybans, you know? So this is why I think it's interesting that the AirPods with a camera thing has recently resolved to be like, well, these are not cameras for taking pictures. They're cameras to feed information into AI for data purposes.

And I do wonder if that is foreshadowing a future method of selling these devices, as like, no, no, those aren't cameras. You can't take pictures with them. They're just sensors. I just don't know if that's the thing you can get people to understand. I don't know.

I mean, Apple could try. Apple could say, we're different. We're not letting people peep with these things. They're just feeding... These aren't cameras. These are just cameras for AI. It's like, maybe worse. Mike, these aren't cameras.

These are sensors. Yeah. But if they look like, you know... Look. I mean, marketing is all about selling. people on things that they don't want. So we'll see. But you may be right.

I mean, I think right now the big issue is, first off, we all have cameras in our pocket. I know. So you could take those. You could take those. Well, no, but the counter argument would be, I've got a camera in my pocket. I can take it out if I need to.

Do I need something that's always hanging around on my face or in my ears? Or is that good enough? As an owner of them, there is an incredible technology to be able to take pictures in moments like that. However, I now don't feel comfortable wearing my met a rayband. anymore, like, because the tide has changed on it, which is very upsetting for me because they're

expensive, but, like, I've just kind of letting them go now. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I think that's the question is if you're Apple or anybody else, you've got to kind of, like, see where it goes, right? You don't want to be left behind if it turns out that it's okay. And, again, I wouldn't put it past Apple to try to kind of, say, tell a privacy story, right? Like, we're not using these for those reasons.

But I think the bottom line is, the way you get people to wear those is by providing real benefit from having them, like serious benefit from having them. And what I've seen so far of like visual intelligence and Apple sort of navigation stuff and all of that, uh, when you're in,

you know, GPS, uh, shadows in a tall city, big city with tall buildings. Like, I just don't know if it's there. That's like, okay, sell me on why I need to wear those glasses or sell me on why I need to have those AirPods that have the cameras in them.

What's my big benefit? And again, if the best you can gin up, if the best that the Wizards of Silicon Valley can gin up is, I'm going to ask this dog, what kind of dog it is when their owner is standing right there. if that's the best they can do, that ain't it. Or take a picture of this band poster and add it to your talent,

like, no. Yeah. Well, at that point, yeah. And again, again, if you really want to do that, take out your phone. Like, why am I buying a whole thing and charging it and all of that?

What is the ongoing benefit of feeding? And like, it may be that they have an answer, which is like, we're going to log who you talk to and make notes so you can go back later and say, when did I talk to that person in the real world? like it was a note or a message on your phone, but do it in a way that Apple says is private and secure and contextual

and consensual and all of these things, right? They could try that. But like, that's what it's going to take. It's going to take something like a major benefit for society to accept this. Just saying, ah, you can just look wherever and snap a picture is not, I think, enough. Jason, it's time to lawyer up.

Clunk, clunk, clunk. We haven't had a chance to get back to this. I promise we'd get back to this. to it and we're not going to talk about it in enough detail today, but Apple and the EU, they've been exchanging a war of words with Siri AI and the DMA. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a really good post that Michael Sy has been adding to overtime, kind of like as this story has been unfolding. So I'll put that in to the notes.

But essentially, Apple is saying that they want to work with the EU and are willing to create a new technology to allow for secure interoperability with AI agents, right? It's like, the technology is called trusted system agent. It's the technology they proposed. But Apple said they don't want to put the work in to it until they're told it will be approved by the EU. The EU is saying they cannot approve it until they see it working and they will not just allow Apple to bring Syria AI to the region in the meantime, which is what Apple want to do.

Apple want to launch Syria AI, spend a year. year and a half to make this technology and then ship it. I'll get to this in more in a second. The Financial Times is now reporting that Tim Cook had a, quote, constructive meeting with Hena Verkanen, who is the executive vice president of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. Big business card for Hena, I feel like. Yeah, you're really going for it. According to the FT, quote, the meeting included a discussion of how Apple can launch its reinvented Syria in Europe, while avoiding

millions of dollars in fines for violating the block's flagship competition rules according to two people familiar with the talks. Who knows where this leads, but Cook is settling nicely into his diplomacy role for Apple. Someone at the European Commission told the FT that the Justice System agent technology

to Apple proposed was not presented to them in a way that they considered to be any more than just a concept, and they believe that Apple wanted to get a green light on this to allow them to kind of delay getting full compliance and that they would then have kind of like nearly two years of competitive advantage of its users essentially rendering the competition useless by the time they ship the feature which is in reflection kind of like alternative app marketplaces right they're essentially useless because

people choose the app store and I think Europe want to kind of avoid that but who knows where this is going, but it's interesting that there's been a war of words, I would say, between Apple and the European Union over the last month, and at least there is some constructive conversation going on between the two entities currently. And it seems that the UK will be the next in pushing Apple to offer alternative payment methods. The CMA, the Competition Markets Authority has now said that this is something that they want. We'll see what. comes to this, it doesn't appear that they're asking for alternative app marketplaces, just the like give people different ways to pay. Nevertheless, though, from my perspective, pointless because Apple will continue to levy the convoluted fees that they have in every other market that they're forced to do this. So it kind of amounts to nothing other than maybe some massive companies saving 0.6%. Right. Like it doesn't really seem to do anything for

competition because of no one no one's got the guts to make them do something more. The only person who has had the guts I think so far is Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers but that's that's all kind of like filtering back through the Supreme Court we'll talk about that. The Supreme Court now yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly that was a that was a thing that actually happened last

Tuesday so we didn't talk about it but the Supreme Court took the case yeah in Apple versus Epic and what they wanted only, and they were very specific, the only thing that they're going to judge, because Apple wants to be like, this whole court is out of order, threw it all out. You're out of order.

The Supreme Court was like, we will judge this one thing, which is, can Judge Gonzalez Rogers hold Apple in contempt? Remember, that was what she did. She said, look, you have been in contempt, and now I'm going to set the rules. and she ruled them in contempt because she felt like their response to her order

was not reflecting the spirit of her order, but instead got very technical in a way that minimized what they had to do. And Apple's argument that the Supreme Court said they were willing to hear was essentially, what do you mean the spirit of the law? The letter of the law is the letter of the law. If you didn't want us to do it, tell us. But we can't, like, you may disagree with what we did, but to hold us in contempt when everything we did was to the letter of your order is not right,

which is just weasily enough that it might work. We'll see. But that's the only thing that the Supreme Court is judging in that case. They're not. Apple, again, wants them to be like, throw everything out, we're fine. And the Supreme Court, even the Supreme Court was like, no, no, no, no, no. But we are intrigued by this issue of can she, you know, is Apple's obvious contempt for the ruling, not contempt of court if they're still pedantically following the letter of the law, even though they know what she's asking for and they refuse to give it to her. I don't know if this will go the way Apple hopes, but it's interesting.

And so that means we're going to get a Supreme Court argument from Alex. Lawyers, which is also interesting. So that's all to come in the next court term. I don't know why this is, it feels weird to me, but it does about lawyers arguing about how lawyers interpret, like how judges arguing about how judges interpret law. There's just like something very like circular about this.

That's, that's the, a lot of the Supreme Court stuff is that, though. It's like, was this judge right to judge it this way? We will judge if the judge was right. We will judge the judgment is the judge's judgment of all. Yeah. And then what they'll do, I mean, if I had to throw out just a quick prediction is they'll say that Apple has some merit and the Supreme Court will remand this back to Judge Gonzalez-Rogers with an instruction.

And the instruction will probably be like, why don't you tell Apple, you know, we're going to say that Apple isn't in contempt. And why don't you give them a new order? Yeah. And then basically be more specific. And what that I think would do is it would mean that her order of Apple having to take much less percentage would be set aside. And she would have to give them a new chance to make a new way to follow her orders, perhaps based on a new set of orders from her. That's my guess is it's kind of going to be a big nothing. and that's just going to extend this and run out the clock even further.

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See the website for more details. That's factormeals.com slash upgrade 50 off and the code upgrade 50 off. Thanks to Factor for the support of this show and all of Relay. It is time for some ask upgrade questions. John Wright Sinner says, Do you think the rising cost of storage components will cause Apple to raise the price of iCloud storage? Believe it or not, this is a no. Storage components aren't really going up.

SSDs are going up. And cloud storage in bulk is spinning hard drives, I think, still. And I think those are not going up because they don't use RAM really and they don't use processors, really. They're just spinning disks. And I don't think the spinning hard drive industry. I mean, I haven't checked the prices on spinning. If the price on spinning hard drives are going up, then sure. I think there might be.

Well, I've been looking at some spinning hard drives. prices because I'm looking at sonology stuff, Jason, they're so expensive. Yeah, but and some of that may be they're like, oh, we got them where we want them. We can raise the price of spinning hard drives. They're just putting them up because they can. Yeah, I know spinning hard drives have RAM, but they don't have very much RAM. Like, okay, John, here's the answer. Yeah, if they can get away with it, they will because they just want more money.

I think it's, I think we can expect little increases in lots of places to try and offset the increases. They're trying to stop from happening, you know? like they want to do what they can do to make sure that they don't have to put up like the iPhone as much as possible so they increase the price in the Apple TV by twice and then you know it's like put

iCloud up by a dollar you just made millions of millions of dollars you know like I think it'll go in the margins are really huge in Apple services business um they're varied like Apple has not been afraid to raise the cost of its services and so perhaps that will continue

It wouldn't surprise me, but that's not just about components. It's about inflation and about finding places to get your profit margin to go up. So, you know, anyway, if the prices of hard drives are going up, I would say it's probably more about opportunism than actual physical cost. But why not make them more expensive? Everything else is. Chris says, I have an archive of pre-Iphone digital photos that I want my

my wife and I have access to via Apple Photos. I've been procrastinating about uploading them to a shared library for as long as shared libraries have been a thing, but I haven't because I don't like having my photos split across two libraries. I'm wondering if the full resolution shared album feature in iOS 27 makes having a shared library mostly redundant. Is there anything I'd be missing out on by using the shared album approach? I want to start by saying,

I don't understand I don't like having my photos split across two libraries. That's not how the shared library works. The shared library, you have a library and it has photos that are in two states. One of which is,

it's just in your library and the other is that it's a shared photo. It's in the shared space. This is what Chris is saying, though, right? Like, depending on, so, okay, me and I have a shared library and everything goes in the library, right? Yeah.

So we have one photo library, essentially. we share it. I think that there are some people who are like, I don't want to share all of my photos with someone, even if you don't have to do it that way, but I think, yeah, I think that's the thinking. But that's what I'm saying is there's a setting for that. You can have it not contribute to the shared library and you can choose. I just want to be clear here. I don't like having my photos split across two libraries is not the right way to phrase this. Yeah. I don't like having to maintain which ones are shared and which ones are not. Like, I get that. But like, it's not like you have two different libraries and you open one and the photos are over there and you open another.

Apple has made it so that you can view one or the other or both of the photos that are in those states. And the advantage of that is that your partner also has access to the ones that are in the shared state and they can contribute and they can choose to not contribute some of them. And it all works together because they're all kind of shared and you have access to all the features between them. If you use the new, everybody updates to 27 when it comes. out. The new feature of shared libraries where it's full res, yeah, it's full res, but it's in the shared, in your partner's library, it's in the shared albums thing, because it's a shared album and not a shared library. And if they want it in their library, they will need to import it into their library

in order to do things with it, at which point, there are now two photos in your shared iCloud space if you're doing that. And I don't think that those de-dupe, I think that that's just more I cloud space and it creates that. Now your partner has to choose if they want to import them or just look at them and what do they want to do with them. So like, I think they're very different features. I don't think that this makes having a shared library redundant at all. However, if you're somebody like Chris who is like, I just don't want to do shared libraries because it's too complicated for me, even though I would argue it's really not that complicated. But if it's too much of a mess for you and you don't want to do it, yes, the beauty of the new

shared albums is that they are high-res, they're full-res, so you can get those photos, share them with friends. Like, we did a boat ride when we were in London for Relay 10, and everybody who was on the boat ride on Jeremy Burge's boat, there was like a shared album. And like, it's great, but it's not full-res. Or, you know, I have other events like that where Apple savvy people and I have done something and we've made a little shared album. I love that because now I know that those photos that I can get out of there are full resolution, and it's not a person I'm going to share my library with. That part of it is good.

So you could use it this way. It gives you another tool in the arsenal. But like, unless you and your partner have very specific ways that you want to handle your photo libraries, the shared photo library is, I think, for most people, a much better solution. Certainly, this does not make that redundant at all. I'll say for me like I you know

saying about like just just the kind of the shared photo library thing you know like why would you use it I love that it's automatic right so because adina and I want to do this I really like that

I don't have to work to add photos to a library or to an album in this case that Chris is presenting as maybe a thing that he would want to do I like that what you know for both me and adina it's only about just remove the photos that we don't want to have in the shared library.

Otherwise, it's like, incredible. Like, we have all these photos, especially since we had a kid, right? Like, but we were doing it from before anyway, because we were doing things together, right? Going to places together, doing things together. It made sense to just, we'll just share all of our photos. And I love that it's in the camera and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I think it's great. But, you know, I would say go for it.

But if you don't want to do it, then I don't know, create your shared. album in full resolution. Yeah, it depends. I mean, if this is a bunch of old photos that your, that your, um, that your wife might want to look at, but doesn't need to do anything with and doesn't need to maintain in any way, then it's probably fine, right? Like, I, I think it's, but, but the question is, does it make it mostly redundant? And I say absolutely not. But there are going to be, this may be a case where for this particular set of photos, you don't need to bother with that, because you can just toss them in here. But I think the ongoing photos of your life and having family

members be able to take photos at the same place and at different places and have them all just kind of come together, I think that is, that's great. We used to have to do a photo merge at the end of the year when we were working on our calendar for next year, where Lauren would have to import all her photos that she'd taken over the year into my photo library so we would have them all in one place so that we could build a calendar. And that's so dumb. And yet, now you could make it like a two-step process where she creates a shared library of her photos for the year that she wants to put in consideration and then come to my computer and drag them in and now we've got I've we've got that but like our system is better because we just throw most

of our photos in the same bin together and you know I only turn that feature off when I'm like shooting pictures of people at at WWDC or something like that where it's like no she doesn't even need this and we don't need this in the shared library. So I think it's got a lot of benefits, but not necessarily for all instances. Next question comes from Jason, who says, Not me. Not you.

I've read that 26.6 will pre-index the iPhone so that when users update to iOS 27 in the fall, the Apple intelligence features will be ready to go. Is the index included in an ICloud backup, or will my phone need to be re-indexed when I upgrade to the 18 Pro 4 days after iOS? US 27 releases. When you get a new device, the index has to be built again.

That's just how it works. That's because they do all that stuff on device and they don't want it to leave your device. It has to be done again. It's not in the backup. It's not in my knowledge. God, that's never been before. That's never ever been before. I assume it would, I just assumed it would have to be.

So like, I know that I know the indexing was the thing, but this new spotlight indexing takes over a week to do. Yeah. They've got to find a way to do this, to have it transferred. I mean, this is the thing they worked out with faces, right? Like, faces in photos was like a whole problem. No. I mean, this is the thing with photos is anything you manually tag is marked.

So if you manually tag a face as being a person, that stuff crosses over. But the actual facial analysis does not. I don't understand the difference. The way Apple's photo stuff works, at least the last time I checked, but I don't think it's changed, is they rescan your entire photo library on a new device. Every device you own has a different scan. But if you mark a photo as being, if you say, this is a, this person, because it'll ask you, like, is this this person? that human interaction identifying a face sinks is my understanding

but the actual like mass scanning data does not sync. They need to work out a way to sync these things over from device to device if you're doing an eye cloud backup. Like I'm sorry, this is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. And maybe there's something in here we don't know about that that makes it more portable this time

but like right now all your devices because this is the problem is like, is your new device, does it have access to the same information? If you, if you, let me give you an example. If you don't have all that email on your new device, but it's got the transfer of the data from the email that you had, now it's got things that are not on the device that it thinks it knows about.

And then it has to go get them. And like, but this, I agree, there is also a privacy thing here where Apple's decided we're never going to let all this intensive metadata off your device. and if they put it in the backup, then it's off your device. And I know end-end encryption or whatever. Yeah, but they've found ways to deal with that with health, right?

Like the health information is in the backup. And that feels much more private to me than my friggin' spotlight index. So I hope they work this out because that will be really annoying. Well, this is the balance between functionality and speed and feeling, I think, philosophical. like that stuff shouldn't leave your device because it's device specific.

But yeah, so this pre, look, it's all 266, not just iOS. And so obviously what they want is if it's a brand new device you get that week, you're going to have to go through the whole thing that we already have to go through where everything gets indexed. Like that that will continue, I think, as far as I can tell, that will continue. But that Mac you update to 27 will pick up that, should pick up that index. and be fine, and you're probably not getting a new Mac that day. This pre-indexing is really for devices that are going to stay,

are going to just update and it'll be available. If you replace your device, you're resetting the clock, basically, zero days since the last accident at the factory. They need to work this out, in my opinion. All this information should be encrypted and shared from ICloud backup to ICloud backup, even if you do something where you create a device-to-device, connection to move this information over.

And you're saying it's devices of a kind too. So it's like one iPhone to the other. So all the apps with all the settings. I understand the issue we're trying to do this from the iPhone to the Mac for what you mentioned. You're not going to have the same apps. You're not going to have the same data. Exactly.

But when I change device, I should not be getting a different experience if I'm choosing to do a backup. My new iPhone and my old iPhone should basically be the same. So they should be able to transfer that information. Yeah. Again, I'm not a hundred.

I just, I think I have heard, I think somebody I know asked Apple about this and they were basically said, you know, that's not how we do it. But I would love to be proven wrong if they've invented a new way to do this that will solve this problem. But that's not what I'm hearing. Please, Apple, find a way. Find a way. There is a will from me. So I would like you to find a way, you know? Great.

I think I said that works. It would be so much better, though. And nothing to do the indexing every time. come on. Because also it's like a bad experience for users, right? Because their batteries bad, like the phone works slow. Like it's not a great, it's already not a great first-run experience. And I expect that this indexing is much more intensive than the one it's replacing.

But anyway. Finally, Amar asks, with Apple focusing heavily on resizable iPhone apps in iOS 27, so landscape apps on iPhone, resizable apps in the iPhone mirroring on the Mac, is it safe to assume that the foldable iPhone will not run iPad apps in full screen on the inner display, but in fact, iPhone apps? Yes.

Yeah. But most iPhone apps are iPad apps. Sure. So I just don't think this is, I think this is a, it's a distinction almost without a difference. I think though the idea is, yes, these are going to be iPhone apps

that have new size classes and new size resizing, functionality that will allow them to adapt to these smaller screens that are smaller than any iPad has been. But in the end, I don't know, like, these are all iPad apps are basically iOS apps with larger windows, right? Like, they're all the same. So I'm not too concerned about this detail. But yes, if they didn't need to do anything because they were just going to use the iPad stuff, they wouldn't have rolled out a whole bunch of new technology to do this. But they have, which implies that what they're really saying is. And there's a reason for that, too,

right? Which is like, there's still apps that, like, they prioritize the iPhone or they're only on the iPhone. And Apple's basically saying, no, you need to do this too now. It may benefit the iPad as well. I think it will because now a bunch of other apps that just didn't bother before are going to have to deal with bigger screen sizes. But, um, but yes, I think that's 100% true that this wouldn't have been the case if they were just picking up iPad apps. This is not that. This is going to be that iPhone that iPhone, think of your iPhone

app getting bigger not your iPad app getting smaller. Yeah. And if there are iPad only experiences, they're not going to run on this folding iPhone,

which I think was a thing that people had hoped, right? It would be, you know, iOS on the outside, iPadOS on the inside. That's not, it's not going to be it.

Well, yeah, and the multitasking isn't going to work the same. Or if there's, if there's split, well, there's going to be like Split View probably.

Yeah. There will be some multi-app features, but they're not going to the iPad multitasking. No. It's going to be a new one. It's got what we need.

Or the old one. Another new. It's what we need a new multitasking thing. Because hey, they didn't do one this year. So, you know, here's another one. Let's do that instead. They did do it this year. We just haven't seen it yet.

Ah. Ah, that's how they get you. That's how to get you. You can send us your questions and also your feedback and follow up by going to upgrade feedback.com. I would like to thank our members to support us every week of Upgrade Plus. Go to Get Upgrade Plus. and you can get longer ad-free versions of this show each and every week.

You can find us on YouTube by searching for the Upgrade Podcast. I'd like to thank our sponsors of this week's episode. That is Decagon, Squarespace and Factor. But most of all, I'd like to thank you for listening. Until then, until next week, I should say. Say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.