Upgrade - 631: Nessie Beneath the Waves

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade. Episode number six, three, one, that's a big number. It is brought to you this time by Factor Squarespace and Backblaze. I am your regular host, Jason Snell, but I'm reading the introduction, which means Mike Hurley is gone on assignment. We did an episode out of time last week. This week we are doing an episode in time. And joining me just in time is our special guest host this week. Dan Morin.

Hi, Dan. Jason, I was ready to be introduced as your irregular co-host. Although, I don't know. I don't want to judge. Just not on this show. I don't want to judge. Yeah, we, so we do the Six Colors podcast almost every Friday. And if you're, you have to be a member to become a member of Six Colors and you get

that, you're going to hear us every Friday, except for last Friday, where we were both traveling. And the promise was that we would come on upgrade instead and give everybody a whole episode of us talking about. stuff. As the prophecy has foretold, here we are. As far as I know, Mike is like in the air right now. And if not, he will soon be in the air. Hopefully he's flying home. In a plane. I don't know, maybe a hot air balloon. We'll see. And of course, this is the summer of fun. Summer of fun. Summer of fun. And what's more fun than Apple? Financial results, those are coming up later on the show. Well, it's fun if you're Apple, I guess. Super fun. I mean, and lucrative. Less less fun for us.

Less fun for others. I suppose that's true. Okay, so, well, let's start with a little bit. There's no time for any of this, Jason. We don't, because it's time for Snell Talk. Do you want to read the Snell Talk question to me? I would love to read the Snell Talk question. This is from Will.

Will says, Jason, on Upgrade Plus recently, you recommended a plethora of TV shows. By the way, Will, extra credit for the word plethora. Yeah, word, plethora of TV shows. And then you also talk about all the books you read, both for designed in California and for fun, as well as all the work for all the various writing and recording you do. How do you actually have time to do all of these things?

I love these questions. And I'm glad that you got to ask it because part of my answer, I think, is near and dear to your heart. And then I'm going to turn the tables on you. Okay. Like, okay, for designing California, I am not reading all the books. I, because I have a database full of the text of all the books, and I can search around and I can find the relevant chapters for the story I'm trying to tell. But there are books that I do read, and I have to put them in my book reading Q.

But I do read a lot of books. So I just finished a book last night on the plane coming home. I love reading books. I do read a very large number of books by some people's standards, although there are other people we know, Dan, who read way more books than we do. Scott McDulty. Fred Kish, I think he reads like a book a day or something. It's just wild these people who read. So I guess I see how people see me when I say I read like 80 books.

Is they like, how is that possible? It's like, well, here's my pat answer, but it's true. I don't play games. I think that that's the real answer is I listen to my friends talk about the games they're playing and the thing. Like our dear friend, Tony Sindelor, was just having a conversation about the new Lego Batman game. Yes, yes. And he said that he 100%ed it. He did every single thing in it.

It's a massive, massive game. It's a big game. It's a very big game. And that was when, at that moment where I was like, yeah, see, I like video games, fine. But I am one of those people who it's, it's going to be very hard for me to commit to playing a video game for, I'm not like, I'm not going to play a video game for 30 hours. It's just never going to happen. So I really like those, what John Syracuse calls the artsy fartsy games that are like five. Like I did, um, Hurdling, which Panic published, which is a journey.

It's kind of like journey vibes a little bit. And I think it was a total of about five hours. Yeah, it's like a, it's a little longer than watching a movie. It's like a mini series. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that was, that was a time commitment I could do. I wouldn't do it regularly.

I mean, we watch a lot of movies and TV and I read a lot of books. And that, I mean, that kind of covers it. And so it's very hard for me to find time. Also, I really try to prioritize stuff I can do with Lauren when she's home and I'm home and it's our entertainment time. And there are games that you can. I think we just handed off the controller for hurdling. And there are some games I was reading about, what was it, a big walk that panic? It's from the people who did Untitled Goose game.

There was just a report, a review of it this morning, I think, in The Verge. Because I sent it to my wife saying this could be our next game. Yeah. And I looked at that and I thought, well, that, even though it's a very long, open-ended game, it's a co-op game. And that's part, for me, that's part of it, too, is a, is stuff we can do together. Like, we played Journey together and it was the same thing. Like with Hurdling, we just handed the controller back and forth for various levels. So I only, I watched half the levels and played half the levels, but it was great. So I don't know how my, so my turning the tables question is, how do you find time to do all the stuff you do and play games? games and you've got a little kid. How, Dan? How is it possible? See, I'm taking Will's side here now. Oh, how the turntables have turned. Yes. I don't play that many games. I think I view games as kind of fungible with like TV for me in terms of a thing that I often do, like when I'm, like, there's TV shows I watch with my wife and there's TV shows I watch by myself

because she's not interested. And there's games that I play with my wife, and there's games I play by myself because she's not interested. Like you, I really enjoyed doing co-op games with my wife. We played Baldr's Gay 3. We put in like 120 hours on that game. And that's because for like several months, it was our largely instead of watching TV thing. Like we put our kid to bed. We have like an hour, maybe two to like stay up before we go to bed. And that was like what we did. You know, we sit down and we play the game for a couple hours. And we worked our way through the entire game. It was super fun. But I also, it was interesting. I was having this conversation with some of the people that we were hanging out with on vacation last week

because a lot of them are married couples a little bit younger. Some of them don't. And so we were discussing that. And there's a lot of people who are like, you know, my partner is not interested in playing in playing video games. And so that's a thing that I do by myself. And I think it really just depends on what people are interested in.

I don't play that many games. I've been playing the, there was a recent James Bond game called First Light, which I've played a bunch of but haven't finished and it's just because I got busy and I just don't have that much time to like spend, I like break it up. Like I do like hour chunks here and there. I don't sit down and play a 30 hour game, you know, in 30 hours. That would be real bad.

Yeah, don't do that. But like before that, I was playing Ghost of Yote, which is a sequel to like a samurai game on the PS5 and it's a very long game. And I was like picking away at it. I played it for months. And then I just got to a point of being, I'm just tired and I need something else. And then I've started playing the James Bond game. It's like, I'll go back to it at some point.

But I had put so much time into it because I feel like I get, like, Tony, get very detail oriented. Like, I'm going to check off all these boxes. But yeah, it's a thing I do instead of watching TV. If my wife is just, you know, I'm going to watch this show that I'm into or she's doing some work or something like that. That'll be my like, I'll burn an hour playing this game. But I don't read nearly as many books as you do. So I probably read about half as many books as you do. You write more books than I do, though.

So that's good. I probably do, yes. I will also say, you know, we do podcasts here in the evenings. And so Lauren watches a bunch of stuff that I don't watch because she's got shows she has as her. Like, when I'm in here doing a podcast, she's watching that show. But there's so much good TV on, it's also very hard to, like, I feel like we have an enormous backlog of good TV shows right now. That is the biggest challenge, too, because my wife gets very, like, she's, she runs hot and cold on, like, shows. She'll get really into it and we'll do nothing but, like, binge a show for, and then still taper off.

So, like, we still have the last half of last season of Silo. Oh, wow. And I'm just like, we should just finish this because the new season's coming out. We just blast it through the whole season of Silo because we, I got the, have the screeners. And that was like, that picked up speed as it went where we were, like, watching one every day. But, like, we finally last night, again, you have to. week of vacation so we were hanging out with people and stuff we weren't really watching TV. We finally watched the season opener of Strange New Worlds last night.

Oh yeah. Which is like a week and a half old. Yeah, yeah. My God, a Star Trek show I haven't watched in like a week and a half. This is wild. Yeah. I mean, there's just, we do live in a world where there is, there is, there are so many entertainment options and there's only so much time in the day.

And oh, the other thing I was going to say to Will is the other, my other big time hole is that I'm a sports fan. Yeah. And so I don't have that. I escape on that front. Yeah. And, and like the Giants are having a terrible year this year. But like when the Giants are having a good year, you know, a baseball game is like three

hours long, two and a half hours long. And if I want to sit down and I enjoy sitting down and watching a baseball game. But, you know, that blows a hole in your evening right there. Like that's what you're doing that evening is you're not reading a book. You're not watching a TV show. You're watching a baseball game for the whole time. The Red Sox were having a real bad season. They turned it around.

Something happened. Yeah, that didn't happen. The Giants are just trading all their players and they're done. But, and I have not, as a, I mean, the funny thing is, it's actually kind of optimal in a way where back in 2020. Back in 2021, the Giants won like 107 games. And like, that was such an entertaining season. And we watched so many games that year because it was so entertaining. The good news is when the product is bad, you get your time back.

Yeah. Don't watch. So it's kind of nice. We watched a bunch of World Cup games, as I know you did. Oh, yeah. That was also like a time limit. And we did the Olympics earlier this year, too. So it's got like, there's time limited events too sometimes that come up.

And yeah, that eats a whole. Yeah, yeah. Sports can really be, you know, and I'm a college football fan in the fall. And, uh, and the baseball playoffs, I'll absolutely. I mean, the baseball playoffs really do kind of capture us for a month where it's, it's a lot less likely to watch stuff. And the World Cup was a lot of fun. being a Premier League fan in the U.S. is actually nice because it's all like on weekend mornings.

So it doesn't interfere with the rest of my life. But yeah, so that eats up time too. So there's lots of places it goes. But I feel like the one that is a thing that I theoretically would like to do, but I never do is play video games because I have bought so many video games and consoles and over the years. And yet I never use even like 4% of. Oh, yeah.

I still have a Switch 2 that I got for Christmas, and I haven't played it in months because I just, again, there's just no time. Like, there's other stuff. Yeah, I have a switch too. And I've actually bought a couple of games for us to play on the Switch 2, and we still haven't played them yet. But maybe sometime.

I don't know. Well, thank you, Will, for your question. And if you want to go to UpgradeFeedback.com and leave a Snowck question, of course, you can do that too. By just going to the website I just mentioned. That's how that works. It's the Internet. Come on.

I remember the first time I saw a URL on a billboard. It was in the 90s. driving up 101 in San Francisco. The place where it's all like the mind-blowing AI billboards now. And somebody, I don't even remember what it was, but somebody had like a, maybe it was like Yahoo or something,

but it was like somebody had a URL on a billboard. And I was like, what is happening? And now, now it's like QR codes on billboards. Yeah, well, and it's also like literally, would you like this completely basic thing?

Go to a website. Like, like there's no, no talking to people. There's no phone numbers anymore and there's nothing. It's just, or it's scan this QR code. Would you like to order? food at this airport restaurant.

Scan the QR code. I drove from Boston to Delaware last week. And when you are driving through New Jersey, like the New York, New Jersey area, Connecticut, too, there is the genre of like legal injury billboard is insane. That's the one thing about the weird AI billboards in the Bay Area, especially in San Francisco and down the Silicon Valley, like the 101 corridor. The nice thing about it. it is, it is a real break from the law firms. It's real, real break. Although, we have all these weird electronic billboards in the East Bay when I'm

driving to Oakland, which I do pretty frequently. We have all these electronic billboards. They rotate. They're giant screens. And sometimes they get like all fancy and they're like, oh, we're the official law firm of the giants. Here's the giant score. Or we're the official law firm of the 49ers.

here's the 49ers score, which is fun that they can do that when the game is going on. Although I did see a billboard the other day that was for somebody who was, it was like Bay Area get excited, the World Cup is coming to the Bay Area. And it said it's coming in minus 38 days. Someone, no one was ready to release that billboard, I guess. And I keep thinking what was the catastrophic chain of events that led to that screen being shown. And I kind of feel like it was like underneath a layer of a bunch of other stuff. that timed out. And so it ended up being visible when obviously nobody ever intended to be visible two months after the World Cup. I also just really have to share this. This is not from this

most recent trip, but I think last year's trip. Some lawyer got Christopher McDonald to be on his billboard, which in like Connecticut or something. Oh, do one like I have to Gilmore. Yes. And I kept passing all of these billboards. I'm like, I hope he got paid real. well for this. I bet he did. Or it's his niece. Also, the absurdity of Christopher McDonald is like, yeah, sure, I'll do a billboard thing. Yeah, I mean, hey, it's funny. This is how people. I want to, since I love the show hacks, I want to see him on a casino board. That's what I want. I'm, you know what? Connecticut also a place where you can see that. Also, he was on Star Trek and nobody should forget that. He's here. He usually plays a cad,

but he was actually a sweet guy on that next generation episode. All right, let's move on to a little bit of follow-up. a little bit. This is a segment, Dan, when, when you don't have to take any of the blame because you weren't here when we did this. Yeah, I didn't do nothing. Dave wrote in, we were talking about the iPhone upgrade program, which we're going to talk about on this show. Oh, boy, are we? Because I got somebody here who's in the program. Hello. So we'll get to that. But Dave wrote in and said, I have great news for the guy. We had a, we had a person who wrote in who's using Mint Mobile, but thinks he can't join the iPhone upgrade program. Now, the bad news is the iPhone upgrade program can no longer be joined. But the good news is that Dave uses Mint and is on the upgrade program. And now literally Dave points out on this upgrade program as well by picking a T-Mobile phone because Mint is owned by T-Mobile and is an MV-N-O T-Mobile. And it may be that that's the case. This is not news you can use, though, unfortunately, because the upgrade program is being discontinued.

And we will talk about that in a little bit because there's things happening there. and I think Dan has feelings about it. I do. But before we do that, I would like to tell you about our first sponsor. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Factor. The summer of fun is in full swing. Travel is in full swing.

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Very nice. Mark German, the sheriff of Rumortown, is back with more. We had two weeks of Mark German, so that's good. Double German. This week was pretty light. Yeah, it was. This week was pretty late. But last week, so he actually reported last week about the kind of onslaught of home tech.

He's sort of resetting. He's reported a lot of this before, but kind of resetting what's going to happen this fall and maybe into early next year. He says the much, much rumored by him, HomePod with a screen slash home control. tablet product, whatever it is. I've seen some people call it the home pad. I don't know what they're going to call it. Could be coming this fall alongside a new Apple TV 4K and HomePod Mini,

the idea being that they will all be upgraded so that they work with some version of Siri AI. Set to release, he says, Apple TV and HomePod Mini this fall for sure, and the Home Hub between October and early next year. And of course, he's reported previously that the John Turnus era is fitting for all of this because John Turnus is one of the people who's sort of like championed Apple pushing into the smart home. So we may be, we may finally be there. I actually keep picturing in my mind the idea of like a like a home event almost in October where they roll out their home strategy because it feels like they've got a lot of the pieces here. They just have failed to put together. I wonder if they will, so if they release a new home pub mini and Apple TV and like kind of an event and like, you know, that is. in itself is maybe, you know, a little sparse, but I wonder if they would tease this, you know,

home pad or something there as well. Oh, like, you know, well, they do that sometimes, right? They, especially things that require some developer buy-in, it might be like, hey, and next, you know, month to early spring, we're going to ship this product that has a screen. I think there's an argument there that it might be a case where they pre-announced something to give a little more critical mass to this whole genre. Yeah. And saying like, look, it's not just, the Home Pop Mini and the Apple TV, look, that's fine.

And there's no news there. Yeah, that's not a big tent pole product. With the screen, that's a big deal. Especially if, I'm very curious to see what the Siri AI integration is going to be because we have a couple models right now in terms of things like, you know, the phone versus, right, the watch, or is it only run like sort of on the watch? I mean, it's leaning hard on the iPhone that's attached to it. So there's a couple different possibilities, right?

I can see something like a HomePod mini following that same. Sure. Because it doesn't have the horsepower. Like even if they upgrade the chip in it, it's not going to be, it's not going to be a brand new chip for reasons. And so you're going to need to sort of offload some of that computing. But fundamentally, the challenge is that you have these devices right now that are supposed to be entry points into your smart home. And they're not very smart. And if you start, like in September, you know, people start getting Siri AI on their phones and then they go to their HomePod and they're like, why is this thing so dumb?

And that's a frustrating experience because you have to remember which Siri you're talking to. And if you get used to, oh, there's all these great new features that Siri AI can do and all this stuff it can do. And if your HomePod Mini still, I found some web results for you. Look at them on your iPhone. You're going to be annoyed. Yeah, it is the, I think we called this a couple years ago when we thought there would be Apple intelligence and there. wasn't really. Yeah.

It was like Siri fragmentation, the idea that you've got smart Siri in some places and dumb Siri in other places. And what I want to say is you can't do that. Now they can do it. Yeah. It's unavoidable because everybody owns a HomePod mini, you're probably not getting, sorry, your Siri stays dumb, probably. Yeah, I mean, I wish that they could do something as simple as a, I mean, simple, okay,

I'm overstating it, but like a software update that basically says, don't, if there's a, if there's a Siri AI capable device around, don't answer the question on the home pod. Like just don't do it. But I'm not sure that they can even do that. I don't think so. And it's a way to sell new home pods or whatever. I wonder about the Apple TV 4K just because one of the advantages of having a product like that, they already use it as the Home Hub for automation and thread or matter and whatever else they're doing there.

There's a lot of stuff that you can rely on an Apple TV for. I wonder if you've got devices that are incapable of doing Siri AI, I wonder if they bulk up the Apple TV 4K so that it is so that you're a lot of, other home devices don't necessarily have to go to your phone. They could go to your Apple TV or maybe this new screen, this new home pad or whatever you want to call it. That might also be another way to be one of those kind of controllers. Right.

Because you want to have the problem with having everything go to your your phone is first of different people have different phones and they will have different capabilities. And second, sometimes you, those people leave. Yeah. Yeah, I have this problem with, you know, my wife and I. You both use the HomePod Mini, and sometimes it doesn't recognize one of the other, and it tells you like, oh, you have to go re-authenticate. Tell us, once again, who you are.

And I think the Apple TV thing is really interesting, too, because one of the other, so we saw that price increase for it. And a lot of people speculated this is to sort of, you know, adjust people before a new Apple TV comes out. And one of the ways they could justify that price tag, if they felt like they had to, was okay now it's got Siri AI and it does all this other ancillary stuff too. It also helps compensate for the fact that TVOS 27 basically did not get any new features, right? Nothing really of note this year. And so that could help bulk up that product because the people who have an Apple TV are going to be like, it's barely worth it to upgrade the software, much less buy a new box at this

point. So yeah, if you want to sell some more Apple TVs and some HomeBob minis, then you need to make them do something that they don't already do. Right. The AI-enabled stuff might be a way to do that. I do wonder, I mean, German said that the, this home pad, for lack of a better word, is, is going to have some facial recognition so you, or voice recognition features so that you're going to be able to, you know,

the way he puts it, it might be plausibly more of a multi-user product, which is good, right? Like they, they've done some steps in this way where it's like voice recognition and things like that. But like, really, if you're in. a house and you have personal information from various people, knowing which data source to access on a query, knowing which phone to look at, whatever it is, would make the product better. And it makes me think that maybe that product is also smarter than a home pod. And if that's the

case, then maybe it's an alternative. You don't want an Apple TV. This thing will also be your hub. and, you know, there's a lot of skepticism about this product. And like when I'm on Mac Break Weekly, I definitely get, there's a lot of people are like, why do you even need, why does there need to be another home pod? And it's like, first off, having had an Echo Show and a Google Nest home, whatever, the bar is not even, there's no bar. Those products are so terrible. David Pogue wrote a piece today on his substack about how bad Alexa Plus is, by the way,

that's hilarious where he had to do all the things that Amazon says you should try. and it failed at all but like four of them. It's just amazing. And we'll see how Siri AI does with that too. But my point is that these other products with screens that let you do theoretically voice control and show some widgets and let you control things in your home, they're not in the Apple ecosystem and they're bad.

So there's a real ripe opportunity there for people to have, even if it's just like pretty basic, like show me my photos and turn on these lights or adjust the thermostat or whatever. The bar is super low. I see this whole category of products now, you know, kind of like the terminal and things like that where it's like, hey, here's your calendar and it's on your fridge or whatever. You know, here's some photos. I just saw another one today. Skylight, I think, is one. Anyways, it's the idea of having a screen that shows stuff that's like visual information that people in your household need to like refer to. And it's maybe a smaller market, but it is a market. There are all these products that have cropped up to do this kind of thing. And the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. advantage of Apple doing it itself is it lowers the barrier to entry, right? A lot of those products are like setting it up is going to be kind of technical. You're going to have to jump through some hoops, etc. Whereas if Apple approaches it with its usual Apple system, it's like, you know, you plug it in,

you wave your phone near it or something, and you're basically done probably. Yeah. So I think there's a lot there. And I think, you know, the promise of all those screen-based systems were high. I mean, when I first got, I got an echo show, I think the very first one. And, you know, simple things like, I can see all the timers I've set. You know, that is legit useful because that was one of the places that these voice assistants were really good, but it was frustrating to like, oh, it would be really nice if I could see all these things. And so I think, you know, the place they aired is, and I think taking them too far out of what was useful. It's like, oh, now you're going to watch YouTube videos while you cook dinner.

I was like, only if I don't want to keep my fingers, because I'm cutting something off if I'm paying attention to a video while I'm cutting vegetables. Yeah, it's, I mean, people do have like TVs in their kitchen and stuff, but I never really got the appeal of that. No, it's, I can't wait. I mean, we've talked before about how all of those mysterious upgrades to video cameras in HomeKit Secure Video, seem to suggest that Apple suddenly cares about video cameras, which seems to suggest Apple's going to make a video camera. And German has said, he's squirrely about it. He said, I think that his latest report was an indoor video camera, which I am much less interested. in than an outdoor video camera, but also a doorbell like a ring-like thing, which is that's your

outdoor something. I don't, I don't, my house is so small. I do not need a doorbell, but I do have a video camera outside. I have a car, which is HomeKit Secure Video and has benefited greatly from the new features. So that, yeah, I really want an event. Look, Apple events are about storytelling. Otherwise, you just do a press release. Storytelling is part of the reason you do a whole event in Apple will invite people somewhere and they'll have like press demos and they will have a video and they will be able to tell their story. And if they have a new home strategy and it includes some products that that don't exist yet, which means you can't, you can't use the, you know, suppress sales of the existing ones because they don't exist to lay out their whole strategy and

say, we're doing these now and coming later this year, we'll have these other products and, and have a more expansive view of Apple's home strategy. Like, I want to hear them, if they're going to do this, they need to tell that story. And I, I hope they do it. To your earlier point, point about John Turnus being a good tie-in for that. It's also a good opportunity for him to put a stamp on something, right? Like to say, okay, here's an event, you know, would Tim have done this event? Who knows? But like, it feels fresh and new when it's a different CEO coming out and being like, hey, I've got this exciting new initiative to tell you all about, right? Like, that's a good moment for you as a CEO in the early days of your leadership is to be able to come out and say, here's a bunch of new products. And you're like, whoa, this guy. Yeah. Clearly, he built all these products himself. in the last two months. Yeah. Yeah, he's just a busy guy. He's just doing,

he's killing it. All right, well, we will keep an eye on that. Let's talk about the Apple upgrade program, which Apple has announced. It is a new Apple upgrade program. It is not to be confused with this,

the original upgrade program that you're listening to right now. It replaces the existing iPhone upgrade program with one that covers, not just the iPhone, but the Mac, the iPad, the Apple Watch. turns it from a loan into a lease. You have been an iPhone upgrade program user for many, many years.

Since the beginning, I think. I think I was their first year. So you wrote a piece on Sixth Colors about like all of your concerns about what it might be. Now that we know what Apple's doing here, this is a deal with Klarna, although it's really kind of branded as Apple. And the idea is that you are going to choose a length and you get an amount to pay. And then at the end, you either turn in the device or you buy out. the rest of the lease.

What are you thinking now, especially about, I mean, it goes beyond the iPhone and we should talk about that. But let's start with just sort of compared to the product that they were selling, which was the iPhone upgrade program that you've been on and that is now going to be ending next year. What strikes you about what's different about Apple's approach here? Yeah. I mean, look, there's a few things here, right? There's the mechanics of it.

And then there's some stuff that's more vibe-based. I think if you sit down and look at the numbers, the numbers are comparable. You know, you look at the, I looked at my iPhone. I've got a 17 Pro. It's just the base level 256. For the last year on the iPhone upgrade program, I've been paying, I think, $57 a month, which is, you know, it's divided by 24 or whatever. But you can upgrade after 12.

All right, under the new program, if I go and look at like, okay, I want to buy the same exact phone I've got now, how much is it going to cost me to lease that? it's a little bit cheaper. It's like, I want to say, $40 or so for a 12-year lease. This is one of the, or a 12-month lease. This is one of the interesting facts is like, nominally the price you're paying over the course of time is divided up into like 24 payments, I think. But if in a 12-month lease, you're still only paying only part of the value of the phone, essentially. So $46 is the 12-month lease now through the Apple upgrade program. Now, that's cheaper, but in large part, that's because

the previous iPhone upgrade program bundled AppleCare with it. So for that $57, I was paying $11 more per month, but I got AppleCare Plus, I believe, with theft and loss. That's now, they also Apple Tweet the prices to AppleCare stuff. So that's now $14. So if you wanted to get AppleCare on top of that, setting aside one thing I'll talk about it a second, then you're going to pay more. not a lot more, but a little more. Obviously, there's also AppleCare 1, which they introduced, late last year, early this year, which essentially is your monthly thing that covers several different devices.

So you could, if you have multiple Apple devices, maybe you would save some money if you have AppleCare and all of them. Like many people, I think including you, I do not tend to be an AppleCare subscriber. I got it with the phone, which was nice. I don't think I have ever used it in the decade, right? This is insurance. This is what happens. I paid for that because I did not really have a choice to not pay for it and I never used it. So yeah, I could save money on this plan. That would be nice. But now we enter into a couple other things that I think are tricky.

The upgrade path is a question. I mean, so they say you can upgrade at the end of your term of your lease. So that's 12 months for this particular one. you can upgrade sooner with a fee. There is like on the current system, which is a loan, not a lease, you can sort of buy out your loan. There's questions of what are the additional fees. I poked around a little bit to see if I could find the, you know, needy, gritty details of this. And I had not been able to find like a place that just laid out all of the, like here is the terms of the Apple upgrade program. I'm sure it's in there, but you might have to go further down the process you get there. And so that is kind of one question for me is there are a couple of places that allude to fees that you might have to pay if you want to do things like terminate your lease early.

And that is a question to me. And as always with these kinds of programs, you always kind of wonder, well, how are the people making their money, right? That was always a question with, you know, in the case of the previous iPhone upgrade program, this was a loan underwritten by Citizens Bank. and essentially like, you know, they lent you money to buy a phone, but it was your phone. In this case, you are essentially renting a phone. It may be to a certain degree of distinction about a difference, but I think there is slightly something there because you are more, I think, beholden to the terms of this deal potentially. And I think this is where the question of Klarna comes in because I think this is more of a vibes thing.

It's like, I don't associate anything great with Klarna. Right. mainly because one of the things they're known for are those buy now pay later ideas, right? Where it's like you pay something and sort of finance it over the short term. And in theory, it's all cheap. It's a zero interest loan. But you got to read the fine print. And if you miss plans or miss payments, you potentially rack up some costs.

So I think I have some questions about that before I would sort of step in and immediately being like, okay, this is a great substitute. I think Apple is still working hard to try and make sure that the Apple brand, promise is still delivered by this. Right. It's tricky because there is a different partner. And I think the thing about citizens, having like a bank involved was like, well, it's a bank, you know, like, I don't need to be like, how does the bank make its money?

I know how the banks make their money. And I felt like in that case, the loan was very well managed. I never really had a problem with any of them. You know, I had some problems like mechanically with the upgrade program. Every once in a while, you'd run into something weird where it's like, hey, you didn't ship your phone back. to us and I was like, yes, I did. But I worked, it all got worked out. And so I guess the question is, in the future, if something goes wrong, am I going to have to talk to Apple or am I going to have

to talk to Klarna? Because I know which of those I'd rather do. And it has me a little wary of this program. I'm not going to say it's a bad deal because I think anybody who's run the numbers has been like, it's very comparable. But I do have some questions about the implementation. And my biggest experience with the iPhone upgrade program over the course of it was that it started very rough and it got better over time. So a part of me is a little worried about the prospect of being a guinea pig with an unknown partner in the mix because if something does go wrong, how difficult is it going to be for me to untangle all of that? Because time has a value as well. So, you know, like I said, some of this is very vibes based where it's like, I feel,

a slightly uneasy of it or just wary about it. And I'm not quite ready to dive right in. But I do appreciate that it is a, it is not sort of overtly a like much worse deal from what I can tell. It's just different. And you're right. Vibes is part of it.

I think all the analysis I've seen from people who kind of run the numbers are saying, look, and this is true of literally everything that's ever been the case with buying, even buying outright a device. which is if you put in the work, you buy it yourself, you've got the money to buy it up front,

and then you use it, and then at that perfect moment where you want to get something new, you sell it to someone, you can make, it will be better off than using a program like this. But the thing is,

you have to have the money up front and you have to put in the effort to sell it. And I know for a lot of people, this is why, okay, why does the Apple trade-in not pay off as well as some other trade-ins do? And the answer is because

you're, giving money away for convenience because then you just do it as part of your Apple transaction when you buy your new phone is give them your old phone and they buy it back and they give you credit. And it's easy. And like, could you sell that phone for more on, you know, Craigslist or eBay or to a friend or from a third party buyback service that has slightly better rates than apples? Yes, you could. But most people are not going to because it's just more effort. And so it's a little bit more to do it this way. But most people, I think the argument goes,

are going to be either not going to look or are going to say that I'm not going to go down that path. It's just too complicated. It does sound that ultimately, I mean, I think a lot of our listeners especially, the reason that a program like this appeals, and I think it's why it appeals to you is you get a new phone every year.

And the part of that is you give your old phone back and get the new phone. You don't have to worry. And there is something, as you said, like the selling it comes with a cost because there's an idea that like, what happens if you've slightly dinged up your phone, right? Like, how much damage is it before Apple will accept it back versus how much damage is it before somebody else who wants to buy that phone will be like, that's a little too dinged up for me. And there is a cost there.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's all part of the challenge. But I think, like, the appeal of this, because I know the other part of this is I know that a lot of people are like, well, I just buy it every year. And that's what I do. I just buy a phone. But it's not just, oh, I don't have the money in the bank. That is part of it for some people. But it's, it's what I think you get out of it, which is it is reliability. That for some people who are looking at their budgets, they like the idea of spending a fixed amount that they know they're going to be spending for the next year, not that every September they're going to get a bill for a thousand and something dollars. And that there's value in saying, I would rather not, and it's essentially interest free, right? So it's

not anything other than I just want to spread this out so it's the same number every month because then my expenses are flat every month. Yeah. And there are still alternatives as you have the Apple card. You can finance it over the Apple card on sort of the same plan where you kind of just pay in installments, but you are essentially buying outright, but like paying an installments. Slightly different. You don't get the same upgrade like treadmill from that because you aren't immediately, like, it's not part of a program. You're still going to have to trade it back into Apple. But, like, you know, you can do that with Apple, right? When you buy a new phone from Apple, they're like, do you want to trade one in? Like the Apple card, this is all US only, by the way.

It's part of it, too. And there's, I mean, it's just financial stuff is so restrictive. And it obviously, it shows the limits of Apple's powers that they, at least initially, there are only certain places. This is their number one market. And so they're going to choose it. But also, it's their home market and they're more comfortable with the, with the, with the regulations and all of that. But obviously also not, according to German, not so comfortable that they wanted to set up their own bank or whatever, right? Like they really like having financial partners. Yeah, they briefly had like a financial company that they kind of created and then they wound it down. Yeah. I think because they decided it was more trouble than it's worth. And I can't

blame them for that. I mean, it goes to the whole Tim Cook doctrine of like you control the stuff that is inherent and inimical into your business. And you know what? I think they decided this finance stuff is not. It's just we don't need to be the ones who own this. It's like we could just let, do we want to do spread it over four payments? Let's just let Klarna do that. We don't need to do that. Or do we need a financial backer. And so Klarna here is not a silent partner, but it is, vibes aside, it is basically just the engine powering this from a financial and regulatory perspective. And I think that's reasonable. Now, now, we've got to expand this. This also covers the Mac, the iPad, the Apple Watch, the big ticket items, Vision Pro, the big ticket items are covered

in this as well. And this is, I want to read a couple of quotes from Mark German's take on this because I thought, we're out of the room around up now, but like, German, you know, you had some thoughts that I thought were cynical maybe. I don't know. German as a pundit is interesting. And then also the worldview of Bloomberg, right, and all financial journalism is fascinating because they often have a very different worldview than somebody who's more of a technology person. But he said that Apple could end up turning its hardware business into, quote, potentially the largest subscription provider in history.

And ultimately, Apple is changing the psychology of the purchase. Now, I think this is interesting because on one level, I actually kind of like where he's going here, where prices are going up. prices have gone up and are about to go up and may go up for a while. Everything is more expensive than it used to be. And there are a lot of people in Apple's ecosystem who are, in fact, I think a lot of our listeners, and we are like this too, where the way we live our lives is we go from Apple device to Apple device to Apple device, right? And this is sort of Apple's opportunity to say, why don't you not buy products anymore?

more. Why don't you just get them and add them to your bill? And if you think about it, they already got Apple one. They've got AppleCare one. Now they're going to add this program that gives you the ability to basically say, send me, like we said about the iPhone program, send me a monthly bill. I know what it's going to be. And when I reach the point where I want to new whatever, and they all have terms, right? So if you say, well, what if I want to keep that macrocare for three years? Well, at a certain point, you either upgrade. or you just pay it off. You buy it out. And then you have it. So there is a decision point, but it could be 24 or 36 months out.

Like, look, I'm somebody who just buys this stuff up front. So it's, it's not for me. But I kind of see the appeal on one level of like, if you're just always going to get a new Mac every couple years and a new iPhone every year, having a just put it on my bill, my Apple Tive that is now whatever it is a month. but you just have the Apple stuff, and it's an understandable number that hits your credit card every month. I get it. I mean, I knew people, as I'm sure you have, who always leased cars, right?

They're like, I'm going to get a car lease. I've never done that either, but it's like, I'm going to get a car for three years. I'm going to get a new car. Right. Some people are going to be that, and some people are going to be the me thing, and you, which is I'm going to buy a car,

and then I'm going to keep that car a very long time. Yeah. And I, but I get the appeal. I mean, if you're a person who is like, likes cars and like doesn't want to deal with like ongoing maintenance as cars, you know, age and break down. Always wants a new car. I get a new car. And it's kind of interesting. I mean, you know, one of German's points was also about sort of the marketing of it. And I just was, you know, went to the iPhone page. And it says, right up front. So from 1090, this iPhone 17 pro from 1099 or 45.79 cents a month for 24 months. Next line, lease from 31.99. for 24 months with Apple upgrade. And it's like, boy, right? Like, I see those numbers. And I'm like, why is it so much cheaper?

I can only just pay, I could pay $32 a month and get it and get this great iPhone, this top of the line iPhone. Like, you know, there's a lot of work going into that. And I think, you know, it's also nice for Apple because not just in terms of services revenue, but in terms of smoothing their revenue a bit, right? They get these giant quarters when the new iPhone comes out. Yeah. And you're like, well, what if we could take some of that income and divide it?

it up so that every month we get paid a little bit. Just spread it out. There's something to that from their financial perspective. And we should say there are also carrier deals. So there are other, if you're thinking about this, your carrier also has deals. They're different. And you may prefer to work with Apple than work with your carrier because there's probably greater trust. Although I think I said on a Mac break last week that like I've been on AT&T since it was singular. In fact, I think I've been on AT&T since it was AT&T before it was singular and then it became singular and then it became AT&T. I think I just missed the singular years.

And I only have one cell phone service that gives me bars at my house and it's AT&T. So I'm never leaving AT&T. I'm just never leaving AT&T. And yet I never ever, ever look, even look at their offers. And like, I know the cell phone companies are evil and bad. I know. but I probably am not saving money I could save because they're going to give me the same offer

that they'd give to retain a customer whom I churn and I know I'm never going to churn. And yet, so people should look. I guess what I'm saying is I know you don't like your carrier or you like them less than Apple maybe, but also a thing to consider. There are lots of companies that would like to, in exchange for a commitment,

get a monthly fee from you. I guess it's what I really, they want your business. Yeah, absolutely. But beyond the phone, though, I think like the Mac, it gets really interesting. The Mac, the iPad, the Apple Watch, where you could just say, you know, I always want to have an Apple Watch. I always wanted to be relatively new.

Do I want to go through, it's back to convenience again, the trouble of buying an Apple Watch and then trying to gauge when its battery is bad and do I want to buy full price a new Apple Watch? Or do I want to commit to an Apple Watch for two years or three years? And then know that when it's over, it goes away and I commit. to a new one for two or three years. I can see the appeal. I do. And I think, look, it's not an exact analogy, but like, if you are lucky enough and privileged enough to be in the position to be able to choose, do I want to rent this apartment or buy a house? There are different considerations that go into that. And I think, obviously, more considerations in the case of renting versus buying a house. But yeah, there is something to be said for if you're renting a place,

is like, well, you can terminate your lease and walk away and rent someplace else generally. Whereas if you've got a house, well, now you've got to sell a house. You know, it changes the dynamics. The prices, you know, change. You have to worry about things like financing. If you miss a payment, right, like that is an issue as well. And that's where, again, where companies like Klarna are and probably to a certain extent, the assistance one loan that you got, like they want or assume some number of people.

will miss payments and they will make some money on those people, whether it's via interest or via fees or whatever. And so, you know, if you are somebody who feels like, well, I can very confidently make $45 a month payments, then maybe this is a good plan for you. I don't know. I, on the face of it, I feel like there's no reason I shouldn't be willing to just switch to this program, but I also feel like I just don't. Yeah. I'm just not sure. Like you said, the vibes are weird. Vibes. And then, I mean, you've got, because you're already in the iPhone upgrade program,

you've got a year to think about it before they wind down this program, right? Well, I mean, I have to, I can't, I have to change now because if I'm going to get a new phone this fall, I have to get out. And so this, and this is the other part of this equation, right? Like, A, prices are getting, you mentioned this before, but prices are getting higher. Yes. B, Apple is poised to unveil the most expensive iPhone that it is ever made. Yes.

and that and buy a lot and so there's an interesting question there right do you want to pay two thousand plus dollars you know for a brand new phone would you rather just pay 70 a month exactly and i i you know seven dollars a month seems like a lot better deal but where i always think to myself and i i'm sure you do too where's the catch yeah and and i i don't i can't find it and that makes me wearier like if i know what the catch is i feel like okay i'm fully informed and I'll go in, like, knowing that's going to be the issue and I know that it's not going to be an issue for me or I'll know how to avoid it. But when I can't tell what the catch is, I'm like, well, am I going to get got, right? Like, am I going to miss something in the fine print and realize,

you know, when a year comes around, it's like, oh, well, you owe us this money or, no, you can't do this. And so, you know, I had a lot of concerns when this report first came out because we also saw a similar report at the same time that said, like, Apple's building these features in that can restrict the use of a phone. Now, they came out very publicly, I noted, including with a distributed statements to people saying, we're not going to do that for this program. And I think that was real smart to get in front of that because, you know, there was a lot of concern around it. Yeah, quite rightly.

But, but, yeah, if they're building those features, they're for somebody else in some other market that is probably going to be pretty ugly. Yeah, I mean, good news is you've got, you know, I guess six weeks to figure it out. The bad news is, I think for Apple is you're taking people out of a program and you're making them reconsider their options and they're not always going to throw down. with you and your new option. You're giving everybody a chance to rethink it. I think it's a great opportunity for the people who are in that program and people who have thought about that program to think, how do I want to approach this, especially as these prices go up, does this work better

for me? Because look, I'm somebody who pays my credit card off every month, right? But I use a credit card, but I pay it off every month, which means other than a credit card fee, annual fee, for some of the cards that we've got, I'm not ever hitting their interest rate. And these are zero interest rate loans or their leases at basically the same kind of terms. So if you're responsible and do what you need to do, it's actually your financial benefit because instead of, you could take the money that you're not paying up front and have it earn interest or whatever elsewhere at a rate that, you know, because it's in your pocket instead of being in their pocket. So you could make that argument, but there's a lot of catches. And you've got to think

about it and you've got to be smart about it. A lot of people, a lot of these companies, this goes back to your vibes. A lot of these companies make their bank on people who fall through those cracks, who don't make the payments. Yeah, or over their skis, you know, or aren't great at managing their money. And that, I think this is the struggle with it is it feels gross at times, but it is also the world that we live in. So it's hard to kind of. gross. So great. Yeah, the world is gross at times. Amazing. Yeah. There's a little heartwarming moment there from your upgrade program.

Anyway, I got six weeks. I'm definitely going to be thinking about this. I think it's going to be a big question, especially when I see the price tag on that folding phone because I am interested in the folding phone. Yeah. And am I going to be able to cough up however many thousands of dollars it will be? Or am I going to think to myself, well, it's just so much easier if I only have to pay them 70 bucks a month or whatever. I think it's a tough, tough question. We'll have to see. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Backblaze. Here's the thing that comes up a lot.

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Money, money, money, money, money, who has all the money? Money, money, money, money, money who has all the money? Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? It's Apple. Apple results time. Everybody's favorite time of the quarter. We get to hear the song. When I'm not on my show, I can still hear the dulcet tones of Lex Friedman.

That's right. My good friend and co-host. You can't escape Lex because he made the greatest earworm he'll ever make. which is the Apple Money song. Lyrics by me, by the way, but there are not many lyrics. Yeah, that Grammy nomination is going to be well-deserved. It's my poetry.

It's like, that's my slam poetry is the money, Apple Money poetry. Yet another record quarter, Dan. Well, now I feel like you and I, because we do this usually on YouTube. Chart-Tuck. Every quarter. We didn't do it this time.

So here it is. Yet another record, quarter, Dan, 109.4 billion continuing their streak. Will we ever have a quarter under 100 billion from Apple again? I don't know. Not unless something goes real wrong. Yeah, real bad. That would be bad for John Turner. Up 16% year over year. It's the third straight quarter of double digit year over year revenue growth. I don't know if anybody saw that coming. Their ninth straight quarter of year year over year growth, they made $29.8 billion in profit. And their gross margins were above 50%, although a lot of that was driven a few points of it by tariff refunds,

which then they promised the president they would invest back in America. We're good. We're good. We promise we'll be good. Third straight quarter of strong growth in China. And iPhone up 22%, Mac up 29%, services up 12%, wearables up 6%. And the iPad, down 6%.

But again, just an incredibly strong quarter of, performance from Apple here. Yeah, I, you know, like we said, a hundred million, a hundred billion, excuse me, now we're talking about real money, has quickly become just the default for Apple, for revenue. And that's astounding, because it was not that long ago that we were talking about, oh, when is $100 billion going to be just a normal quarter? And that was like a year, less than a year ago, Jason. And now here we are. And so, you know, somebody pointed out that Tim, like, it was a hundred and like they made like a hundred and eight billion in revenue the first year Tim was CEO yeah and they made that and in a quarter in a quarter in a non-holiday quarter yeah kind

of I mean yeah we're going into a couple of big quarters coming up so it feels like watching that graph change is going to be kind of fascinating um there's a there's a lot to unpack here um that that growth particularly I think in in was the iPhone and the Mac yeah yeah was a 22 and 20 29% growth, I think, respectively. Year over year. And they specifically called out the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Neo as strong performers. And they said the Neo has been especially popular and strongly suggested that they are struggling to meet demand for the Neo. And that I've got a great line here about the Mac and the iPhone because those numbers, right, are huge.

And they asked, and their supply constraint, like they can't make enough. They could have sold more, but they are having these problems. And we know that some of that is, which we'll talk about in a second, is about the RAM shortages and issues with volume at TSM for the systems on a chip. Advanced nodes. But this is what, yeah, we've gone from the legacy notes. Now the legacy nodes are not the problem. It's the advanced nodes that are the problem. Tim Cook said, the root cause of this is not a supply issue because everybody's like, oh, yeah, you know, the problem is supply.

And he's like, it's a demand forecast issue, our bad, he says. The iPhone and the Mac are both doing remarkably better than we thought they would do. And we had high expectations. It wasn't that our expectations were low. We really tried everybody. But as you can see, these are extraordinary numbers, and the supply chain just has less flexibility in it than normal. We've been pulling supply ahead. At some point, there's a limit to that.

And so we've got a quarter that we're going to be scrambling on the supply side, essentially. This isn't a partner or supplier issue. The issue is an incredibly strong iPhone and Mac product cycle that has yielded a demand beyond our expectations. And he's right. Like the iPhone 17 cycle has been way up. And I think beyond, because up isn't the problem. Up beyond what Apple thought it would be up. And the MacBook Neo, doing well, I'm sure Apple thought it would do well.

It did way more than even they expected it would do. This is also Tim Cook not throwing TSMC under the bus, right? Right. It's a double-barreled problem, right? It is high demand and supply construed. And the way he phrased it, I think the less flexibility line is so key there. Because I think what he's implying, and I think this is true, is if you miss with your expectations, you're basically saying, I didn't order enough, right? I thought we would sell 1,000.

We sold 2,000. I only ordered 1,000. So what are we, how do we? So that's part of it. But the other part of it is, right, perhaps in another era, TSM would have more flexibility to increase their orders. But they don't because they are maxed out everywhere with AI chips and stuff in addition to Apple. So it's not TSM's fault is what he's saying. But we have to say one of the consequences of TSM having all of these other clients is that they can't turn the dial on Apple's or.

order and Apple underordered, so Apple has to pay for it. If you, as you said, if you forecast you're going to sell 1,000 and you sell 2,000, you're in trouble. If you can't then go to your supplier and be like, hey, how much should we pay you for another thousand? And they're just like, we can't do it. We do not have the space to make these things. Then you're really in trouble.

And so I'm kind of fascinated by this because some of this, so I don't know your read on this, but they talk a little bit about the memory shortages and stuff like that. Obviously, a lot of this is getting driven by AI-related stuff. Right? All the Ram-Geddon, Ram Armageddon stuff is driven by that. But I'm also trying to wonder how much of the demand for stuff is AI-driven, right? For certainly for higher-end stuff like the MacBook Pro, and they talked about demand on that, or the Mac Studio or the Mac Mini, there is definitely some demand from people using them for AI workflows, right? We know people who bought a ton of Mac Minis, and they started taking models off sale, right?

And, like, that is, it is fascinating to watch a singular inflection point. that has shifted in, and affected both supply and demand, because the demand is so high that the supply can't keep up. And so there are two sides of the same coin to a certain degree. And it means that they are kind of like a, like a wave amplification thing, where you get two waves that, like, intersect and it, like, makes the wave even bigger. You're dealing with this thing that, as he, you know, Cook has, has called it a hundred-year

flood. it just doesn't happen very often. So it is fascinating to see why, what things have driven demand and why they're driving demand and why supply is not able to keep up. And Apple is usually a company that, as they said, they do a really good job of forecasting these things. The iPhone one in particular, I am especially fascinated by because it wouldn't seem to me that there is a clear driver there, right?

Like, there's not like, oh, it's this one thing that these price. products do that no old products could do and therefore people want to buy them to do X, right? There's a lot of good things in this product line. I think that's what's doing it is like the 17s are really good a phone. It is a strong. I mean, at the time, we knew it, right? As a reviewers.

Yeah. We were like, wow, iPhone 17, 17 per. Like, this is a really good product line. Other than people being like, oh, no, the iPhone air is no good. Like, it hasn't hurt them at all. But like pulling all those pro features down into the 17. And then the new, that aluminum body and the orange one and all, like, it didn't feel at the time, it felt like a really solid upgrade, but I felt it was almost like, real ones know that this is a good year for the iPhone. Turns out real ones knew, everybody else knew too.

And every, that's just it. 30% increase, right? Like, that is beyond the like, oh, this is a good product. Not a wholesale redesign of the product line, right? Or a killer new feature, right? There's not one killer new feature in this. And so I kind of looked at that and thinking to myself, like, are people buying iPhones to chain them together and use them in AI? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, what is going on? iPhone Air. It's going to be great for it. Just everybody get on it. Stack of them. Yeah, it's just, it is. And I remember talking about this about the Neo, when there are all the stories about, oh, they're not going to, how many neos can they make? And I do wonder how many choices they make that are like, make more of this one, make.

German wrote at one point that Apple's pushing people toward the low-end MacBook Pro instead of the MacBook Air right now for like back to school and stuff. And it's like, well, it's kind of an inventory issue, isn't it? And I know that if you've only got a finite number of chips, you can make decisions like which product will you produce. And so that's fascinating.

But, you know, the Neo's success is a great example of this and maybe the MacBook Pro too, where Apple, I just, I'm fascinated by the fact that Apple's decision making generally seems pretty careful and, and knowledgeable, and they don't miss. And they don't lack confidence in their own products. Not by this much. Yeah, exactly. They don't sandbag and they don't, you know, they're not like, they're not modest about it. Oh, no, it's a nice product. Maybe people won't know. Like, I'm sure people at Apple believe the Neo was going to be a huge hit. I'm fascinated by the. fact that they still undersold it.

Yes. And what does that say about their decision making and will it change in the future? And similarly, um, the iPhone 17. Like, I'm sure they thought it was great. But clearly they had no idea that there would be a sales surge on the 17 because it really isn't like, like you said, it's better in lots of ways. Uh, we're talking in a previous segment about like expensive phones coming and about buying programs, and I've got to be honest, the more I read about that, the more I think,

little orange iPhone 17 Pro, I love you, I'm never going to let you go. Yeah, yeah. On one level, it's like, maybe I'll just keep this phone for a while because I love it so much. So it's strong. I just am fascinated by the fact that even Apple, a company that does not lack confidence, didn't understand how much people were going to want to buy these products. It's fascinating. It also casts into sort of fascinating, like,

retrospect now the price raising decisions because somewhere in there, they're looking at the data and they're saying the Neo has done so well that if we bump, even if we bump the price by a hundred bucks and we will lose some customers because of that, it will not matter because we are selling so many. Like I think they allow them more elasticity in their pricing because they could look at these results and be like, look, this stuff is selling like hotcakes. And if we charge a little bit more, yeah, well, we'll, some people will say that's too rich for my blood, but a lot of them won't. And that's a really interesting position to be in for them. Because they are not a company that, you know, the Neo we all talked about is this is not a company that plays in this part of the market. And they walked in and immediately were like, we are selling this like his bananas, right? And then they jack the price a little bit after like six months, less than six months. just a fascinating ability. I was drawn, you know, so you do a bunch of charts over at Six Colors.

A couple of them grabbed my attention. I thought the one that really has kind of a fascinating look to it is that your product versus services total profit. Yes, the March. This has, yes, it's the, it's Nessie, Nessie beneath the waves. I always think of it because the services has this nice gradual ramp. And then the product is this spiky, like, you know, dorsal fins of sharks. And you can kind of look at it over a long period and think to yourself, okay, what are the trends? What are we seeing?

Right? Like, fascinating to me that in this most recent quarter, the services actually took a little bit of a dip. It did. But the product line, like, and we're used to seeing those peaks get higher and higher. And that peak from the last holiday quarter is high. Yeah. Like, look at that. Way up there.

But then when it came back down, it's still pretty high. That's the thing that got me is it's like, it's still in the, what, like 30, low 30s, 30s for total profit. And then this one went up when they usually go down in Q3. Although they, exactly. Some of that's the tariffs, right?

I like the tariffs. It's the tariffs. Tariff refunds fed that, pushed that up by a, I think, one or two points, essentially. Yeah.

But, but it's still high. And I mean, and the services being soft, because services was down sequentially, which hasn't happened in like four years. I looked three or three or four years. It's up year over year,

but it was down sequentially. And what Apple will tell you, they've got lots of excuses. I think foreign exchange headwinds I love a headwind Is probably a big part of it I enjoyed how they tried to throw a lot of

chum in the water or maybe it's chaff What is it in a submarine movie? They got to blow the chaff They blow the chaff out the bag so that the torpedo doesn't hit them So they're like The one that made me laugh the most is they're like Well you know last year we released F1 And it made a lot of money

and this year we didn't release a movie and so that's one reason why services might be a little softer and I'm like really I mean they were like it was one of the most profitable movies last year like even then only made a few hundred million probably like and then they also tried to blame regulations

from mean old judges and regulators that made them share things and not that one text that one got me link out yeah that one got me the most right because Kevin Perak was talking and he mentioned like look at all this

they have hit us so This is in the same section. We have the theatrical release of F1, one of the highest grossing sports films in history. And this year we did have a theater release. We also had some factors on the App Store. Like we said, Headwinds in mobile gaming.

Keep in mind, we also made some changes to App Store of business model in certain countries. And in the U.S., we do continue to operate under a court ruling impacting linkout transactions. We're pleased the Supreme Court will hear our appeal. Then there's a beat. And then he says, despite this, the App Store did set a June quarter revenue record.

I'm like, well, what are you complaining about? That got me. I know. I know. I know. I did the one note that it sounded like it had the ring of truth about it is headwinds in mobile gaming that they saw. That's kind of random. They saw some issues with mobile gaming. There's huge app store revenue ramifications for mobile gaming and that there were issues with mobile gaming. But still the app store set a quarter record. So, yeah. I mean, I love that they pitch it like, well, we persevered. Yeah. We persevered. Somehow. and we'd buckle down and we still set a record instead of

we just kept collecting the money allowed people to link to the internet from their apps and despite that and it didn't hurt our business nevertheless we persisted

yeah I thought that was pretty rich for if you'll excuse the expression yeah everything else is pretty rich these days so that's fair

that's fair oh we talk about systems on chips but RAM obviously the other thing that's being driven by the AI boom and RAM shortages are causing problems. And I just like,

I thought Tim Cook made it very clear that, and this is one of the reasons that Apple stock actually took a tumble afterward, even though they did, had all these successes, because he basically said, in addition to the having to scramble on the supplier side for, for systems on chips, for advanced nodes,

you know, basically memory, the prices keep going up. He said they went up. We said they'd go up more last time and they did. Next time they're going to go up more and they're going to keep going up for the foreseeable future. And he said, I think most chillingly, that Apple has been pulling stuff from its carryover inventory. Basically, they've got stuff on hand that they've been using to make it make a little more sense financially.

But we're going to run out of that stuff. Yeah. Because at some point, they have everything. Yeah, they've sold everything. Yeah. right, that is a challenge. We have not seen the end of this demand issue because, yeah, they talked about the carry-in inventory being one of the things that offset the problems, you know, these quarters. And they say like, okay, we had that last quarter and the quarter before,

we, you know, we benefited from that. But yeah, there's only a certain amount of time that that stuff you have in the warehouse stays there because eventually you will sell it all. And then you will not have as much carry-in inventory or at least is not to carry an inventory that you paid last quarters prices for. Right. Right. That's the key. It's like we bought this. It's, you know, arbitrage or like, we bought this like, you know, six months ago. And the RAM prices were not that bad. But eventually we will sell that. We will book the, you know, revenue from it. And now we have to start selling all the stuff that we paid more for. Yeah. And now that's the stuff. Yeah, that's why we raised prices when we did, right? Because they're trying to sort of soften that blow.

It's like, well, we, you know, paid more for it. So let's sell it for more. But, you know, that's a, that's a difficult treadmill too, right? Because I have to assume the pricing changes were done with some foresight here in thinking about like, we can weather this storm if it's six months. But if it's like, we don't know, you know, a year, two years might be more. Like, you presumably rose the, you know, raise the prices enough so that you don't have to raise them again. Yeah, I don't know. It may also be, they raised it maybe enough so that the next time they do a new version of something, they'll raise it again. That's, yeah, that's there. They do have a little bit of possibility there.

And I think we're all waiting to see what those, you know, iPhone prices look like in the fall. He also did a, Cook did an oblique. And this was his last, right, last earnings call. This is his 90th and final earnings call. He did a little oblique reference to basically, there are only three memory manufacturers. And it would be sure be nice if there were more, which is the, you know, Apple trying to get a RAM provider in China into the mix, at least temporarily. as a stopgap here and how that has all sorts of

political fallout. There are lots of senators who want to make hay on how you're funding the Communist Party and you're going to destroy American ram manufacturing by doing this.

And it's like, you know, I, look, I, my opinion is that if you get the government to say we'll give you two years, I don't think it does anything other than maybe reduce the harm of all this.

But I guess if you're, if you're concerned that the other ram manufacturers will not have as much leverage over the entire market, I guess that's a government decision to make is, do you, are you more concerned about Apple, um, struggling to release products? Are you more concerned with a couple years of, um, good revenue going to a Chinese rain manufacturer that's tied in with the government there? I don't know. That, I guess that's for the, for the U.S. government to decide, but, um, but he did, at least obliquely reference the thing that's been reported in lots of places that Apple is trying to I still feel like in the end, this comes down to, is there a quid pro quo here?

Is this where Tim Cook calls on Donald Trump and says, look, we're putting a lot of money into the U.S. We're committed to the U.S. We're committed to building more RAM factories in the U.S. But right now we are bleeding. Help us. It takes too long. Yeah. And I've seen people say, yeah, but it's not going to happen because the senators are really grumpy about it.

and, you know, Chuck Schumer and Ted Cruz are angry about it. And it's like, I, in a normal functioning U.S. government, I would agree that that might be an issue. But I don't know. I kind of feel like if Donald Trump was like, fine, then who's going to stop him? Yeah, I think that, I think that's fair. I mean, I don't know. I mean, you know, I look at some of this and think to myself, they've tried a lot of things. I also noted they had one of Ben Wrights, he's asked them about the, like, fabs in Arizona. Yeah. And this was, Tim came back and be like, look, it's not the suppliers. Like, we just have too much.

And I, to my. And we're spending money in Arizona. And we're spending the lines on that. Yeah. My read between the lines on that is like, look, he says we source, do source over 100 million components this year out of Arizona. I think they are basically getting as much they can out of those, right? Like, those are kind of limited. And they're spinning up small fabs.

They're building new fabs there and in Colorado too. It takes time. Yeah. And Apple's, you know, invest in whatever they said, $30 billion in U.S. manufacturing. And they talked about that a lot. And, you know, that's great. But, like, I feel like part of their argument is we are invested in the future of manufacturing. He said, Cook actually said, look, we're doing this thing in Houston, where we're bringing in people from our suppliers and other suppliers and showing them how they're trying to set up a thing where they're literally like, we're going to show you how we manufacture things because we want to invest.

invest in American manufacturing, but, and he said the goal is over the long term to increase the capacity of American companies and American factories to do this production work, but it will take time. And so the argument is, while we're doing that, it would sure be nice if we could buy some RAM from over here in China to save us from the current, you know, temporary peril that we're in. The counterargument would be, well, yeah, but you're enabling, you know, if there's a big glut, the American factories are going to be in trouble in the future. Maybe you shouldn't do that. Right. And just as your point, you said 30 billion. That was just their deal with Broadcom. You're right. There's 600 billion for the American manufacturing program. You're right.

Plus those tariff refunds. So enjoy that. Broadcom alone. Finally, for this, I just had a favorite thing that Tim Cook said that I thought was funny. And I put it in my piece at Sixth Colors, but I want to read it here. Somebody asked about the price increases, right? You and I have talked about this. Mike and I have talked about it on the show. It's like, if you're Apple, how do you choose? What's your methodology for choosing to raise the Apple TV by that, raise the iPad Mini by that, and raise the MacBook Air by that? And somebody asked him. And so Cook said, in terms of our philosophy on dollars or percentages,

we look at units, revenue, and margin, and then come to a business judgment as to how to handle that. And so it's not a mathematical formula that gets us to a specific result, or just looking at one dimension of that. We look at all three dimensions and think about it over the long term instead of a 90-day clock. Hopefully that helps.

I'm like, I felt like Morpheus was explaining the matrix to me a little bit. Think of it three-dimensionally. You've been thinking, get out of your two-dimensional perspective, or it's like Captain Kirk realizing that Kahn is not going to go up and down

that he's thinking in two dimensions. It's that, Tim Cook is playing 3D chess out here. He's playing 3D chess, yeah. I laughed at that. And I also thought, I don't know if you thought to like this as well, Jason. I was like, it's Tim's last call. And it seems fitting that everything is about the supply chain. Right.

Like, send him off to play the hits, right? This is Tim Cook's opportunities. Like, this is a pitch right down the middle for me. This is my jam. And if you ask John Turner's about anything, he'll just smile and nod and say two lines of platitudes, which I thought was also my favorite moment. Turnus was on the call and he didn't say a word. And then as we're getting toward the end, somebody is like,

hey, John, how do you feel about all this? And he's like, hey, everybody, great to be here. I believe everything that Tim says is great. And I'll see you next time. Bye. And it's like, yeah, I thought that was an amazing moment because there's this hesitation, right? And you're like sitting there going like, well, they must have been prepared for someone to ask him something.

He was there. But also, yeah, also I had that moment if they're going to be like, well, John's not really taking question. I was like, we can't do that. He's going to be the CEO. He needs to be able to assist. Yeah. But I thought it was a great moment of John Turner's being like, me? Yeah. And he did not detract from Tim's moment, right? I thought that was important. No, obviously, he's very diplomatic. I will be, I am fascinated because this answer to question that we had last time, which is will John Turnerst be on the calls. And the answer seems to be yes. He said he is going to take the Tim. Yeah, like they said, basically in the future, he will be taking these calls. Fascinating. Let's be clear. Steve Jobs is not. always on the calls. He was not. Yeah.

And I don't blame him. I remember the thrill. Because I have also been... Steve's here too. I don't want to say I've done 90 analyst calls, but I've done a lot. It's approaching that. And Tim used to run the analyst call. And I remember the thrill when you get on the call and they'd be like, Steve Jobs is here

and he wants to talk to you. And it's like, whoa. What is he going to, what's that guy going to do now? To me? He wants to talk to me? Well, I mean, all of us collectively. Jason, I will say, I think I'm going to tube my own heart a little bit, which I think back in when I was at macusor.com, or a blog at Macworld, I think I started live blogging these financial calls because generally Macworld would have like a story about it. Yeah. But like I started live blogging them. And I think that was early, fairly early on in people like actually transcribing them. And I remember that too, like being like, Steve's here. And I felt like once Steve would show up, a. few times. I feel like that's when everybody else kind of also got into live walking it because

they're like, oh, it's not just a boring financial call. Steve Jobs is here. Yeah. Yeah. He's doing a tight 10 on whatever he's mad about this month. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Fun, fun, fun stuff. I also want to call my other favorite line from this, which made me laugh as I was walking, walking to the drugstore at the beach and I'm listening to my air pod. This is how messed up we are, by the way, everybody. It's like, for us, this is like the, with Tim Cook leaving, it's like a major cast member of a favorite TV show leaving because it's like all of these stupid financial analysts are like characters in the drama you get to know them over time and here they're all saying goodbye to Tim and then yes you end up in this deranged situation where you're on vacation near the beach

listening to an earnings haul chuckling at somebody asking for some more color yeah it was Kevin Perk doing the overview and saying wearables home and accessory revenue was 7.9 billion up 6% year over year driven by strength in wearables and accessories and I had a moment thinking, isn't that the whole category? I forgot that home was there. I forgot home was a thing in that moment. Because I thought I heard him say,

wearables and accessory was up driven by strength and wearables and accessories. I was like, what? No, that was the, that's their little teaser, the little foreshadowing. The home. Home. What of home?

Lurking, like the Death Star Rising over Scar. Yeah, exactly. There's my Star Wars. Thank you. I appreciate it. I knew we did some Star Wars. in there eventually. Oh boy.

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Squarespace.com slash upgrade and code upgrade to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for this podcast. Thank you to Squarespace for supporting Upgrade and all of Relay. Time now for Ask Upgrade. Whoa. I brought my own laser. It's a blaster. It was a blaster. I had to grab it off my shelf, but there it is. Very nice. Very nice. Thank you. Real lasers flying. Or blaster bolts. Real, quote unquote, real lasers. In Star Wars, are those, is the implication those are basically energy beams or, Do they have like little things that fly? No, there's little, it's like Tibana gas that's little pellets of energy.

I don't know. It's not like phasers where like a phaser beam shoots out, right? And like you see like little packets of energy. I'm not, I'm sure I have a technical manual over here on my shelf somewhere. And is it a wave or a particle? Nobody really knows anyway. Either one. Nate writes in and says,

I've been holding onto my iPhone 13 mini for a while, but I feel like it may be finally time to let it go before prices. crease. Jason is a former lover of the mini. I mean, I still love it. I just don't have it anymore. Will the air give the same feeling of a small phone or am I better off with an orange pro that has smaller overall dimensions for the screen size? John also writes in, I'm someone who's clinging desperately to my iPhone 13 mini. I'd love to know if I'm going to be completely S.O.L for an iPhone that could do Siri AI that isn't huge. I've tried larger phones and I just find that I cannot use any of them single-handed. And Joel wrote in and said, I got an eye.

iPhone 13 Mini because I was getting RSI pain from trying to stretch and use a 12 Pro one-handed. Since the minifones aren't an option anymore, I'm seriously considering going to the 17 Pro Max so that it's so ridiculously large that one-handed use isn't an option. Do you think that'll work? So we have, this is iPhone. Coming out of the woodwork, Jason. 13 mini roundup. And I do. I still have my iPhone. I don't know. In blue. It's beautiful, but I don't use it anymore. A bunch of questions. I love Joel saying maybe I should just get the largest phone possible because then I can't use it one-handed. Yeah. I kind of like that.

That might be good. You could also get the 17 plus, which would be cheaper, but also huge. Egonomics are weird, right? Like, I didn't even realize how I type until I took video of my hands typing and I was like, I do what? Because you just don't even think about it. And small changes can completely change how you use a device. So, like, if you can't use it one-handed, I think that's actually a pretty clever option to, like, make it so you can't. And then you won't. And then you won't hurt your hand, which is what was happening to Joel. For the others, I mean, in terms of the current products that are out there,

I do love my 17 Pro. I was going to mention the air. The air is thin and light, which is nice. it's actually wider than the 17 pro. Yeah. Yeah. So I think depending on your sensitivity, there's some things about the air I think are really nice. In fact, it might even be good for Joel because it is wider. So it's nice and light in your pocket. But then when you take it out, it's like you're using, I mean, it's appreciably larger than the 17 pro. It feels, it feels wider to me.

I use it ergonomically very differently. I do a lot of hold it in one hand poke with the other hand, with that, whereas on my iPhone 17 Pro, I do a lot more kind of like hold it and kind of graze with my thumb, which is that how Joel got RSI. So maybe. The chat has pointed out there is not a 17 plus.

Oh, is there not? Oh, because it's the air. Well, you got a 16 plus. So try that. Pro Max. Jill knows. That's pretty good. Joel knows.

So I'm going to do, Dan, are you ready for my big brain, my galaxy brain idea? Yeah, please. Open up that big brain. Nate, John, Joel. Galaxy Brain idea here Folding iPhone

I believe you mean Galaxy Brain S Yeah it could be Galaxy Fold S Brain Sorry Yeah in fact Because we

We now have an idea Of what screen Apple's gonna use Because Samsung Released or announced a phone That's got the same dimensions As the ones that everybody 3D plus Because it's probably the same

Because they made They literally make the screen They made the panel They get to go first It's not ideal from these guys may not want this but what I will say about it is and it's going to be wide

but it's not going to be tall and it's going to be thick right because it's a folding thing but what I will say is it will be smaller in your pocket and it will be small when you hold it like a phone right that's one of the issues that the Samsung phone

has that the Apple phone is going to have to deal with which is Apple has as iPhone mini users know very well it for a while now apps have just assumed that iPhones are tall. And the iPhone mini, sometimes you'd use an app and you're like, I can't tap that button.

It's not on the screen because the phone is not as big as the app thinks it is. And Apple's going to have to deal with that. But the folded up version of the screen, it will be wide, so maybe not ideal for Joel, but it will be small in footprint. And

then you can open it up and you've got a little like almost iPad mini that you can use two-handed, which is also a nice ergonomic thing. I know it's going to cost a lot of money. It's not going to be for everybody. That's right, guys. For the price of only three iPhone 13 minis, you can get a small phone just buy three of them and tape them together

and see how that feels. I look forward to Apple announcing this as the most ergonomic iPhone they've ever built. I love my Pro Max, but if we're just talking ergonomics here, it's worth holding an iPhone air in your hand if you haven't because

what do you like about the mini? Is it the size? Is it the lightness? You may find a different set of tradeoffs is interesting that it's this light, thin phone and it's got a big screen. Maybe that's a nicer feature. I do like my iPhone 17 Pro. The idea of going and getting a Pro Max is very interesting in terms of just making it not an option to use it one-handed for Joel. And I don't know. Like, I am kidding, but I'm also not kidding.

I wonder in the long run if the folding phone will actually be something. that appeals to fans of smaller phones because when it's folded, it's small. Maybe. I mean, my good pal John Maltz is a longtime minifone stand. And I think if it were not for the price tag, I think would seriously consider it. I got a payment plan for him that he should look into. But anyway, I don't know. Look, as somebody who always liked the little phone and as somebody who loves my iPad,

as my as my like primary personal Apple device like I set at my desk and I use a Mac right but like when I'm not sitting at my desk I am the iPad is primarily what I'm using I don't I'm not a phone primary I'm really an iPad primary person the idea that my phone could be my iPad and I don't know if this will work because it's going to be a small iPad right but like that idea really intrigues me that I may actually be dead center at the at the target for this product because it would give me a phone that kind of folds up nice and little but then it opens up and it's an iPad gives me an iPad kind of experience I'm intrigued depends how iPady it is yeah it really does I mean yeah I know it's not going to do like multi windows and stuff it'll just split screen at most but like I don't know

maybe that's enough for me maybe it's not I I honestly don't know the last two trips I've taken by the way I did iPad only again it's been a little while I um well that worked pretty well I um I brought my keyboard both times so I could go into like multi window iPad OS 27 when you're in multi window moan with a keyboard attached it's it's practically like you're using a Mac I got the windows up I got the menu bar it's pretty wild I was able to do a podcast with local recording um that worked pretty well like it it was mostly these are short trips and I didn't I didn't need to take my laptop so I didn't bring it because it adds a bunch that's the thing about having a MacBook Pro is it does add a lot of weight.

Right. I have an 11-inch iPad Pro and a 13-inch MacBook Air, and the difference between them is often so close that I think to myself, maybe I'll just bring my Mac. Yeah, but that's the thing is I'm never, for me, I'm never going to travel without my iPad. Like, I'm never going to take a trip with only a laptop. It's never going to happen. Always, because I am so iPad forward. But what if it was a phone? Anyway, we'll find out. Lorenza wrote in and said, I was listening. to you talk about Siri AI and how useful it is in getting data from messages. But where I live in the Netherlands, most people use WhatsApp. Will Siri AI be able to index third party apps? Most of my useful data is in that app. Not like we can use Siri AI anytime soon here on iPhone, but I was wondering anyway. Yeah, we should mention Siri AI will work fine in the EU on the Mac. Yeah,

because the Mac is not a gatekeeper platform. So you will be able to do it there. I think it is per app you have to be indexed by Spotlight essentially. And so that's up to WhatsApp, I think, to do that. I would think they would, though. I assume they would. I mean, it's meta, so you God only know sometimes. But the general, I mean, if people are using it and they get annoyed at WhatsApp for not supporting it, I think WhatsApp will support it. That's my theory. Yeah. But I think they'll probably support it. Most people want to be relevant and implement Apple's latest features, They want to not look like they're lagging behind. So I imagine, I would be very surprised if there is not an update to WhatsApp,

you know, day one release of 27. That's like, and use it with Siri AI. Yeah. Because why wouldn't you? It's useful. I, so we were in Denver over the weekend, seeing my, it's Lawrence brother and his family. And they've got two little kids who are adorable. And we, we were going to get, we got to their house at like one in the more.

morning. We flew late on Thursday night. Got in at one in the morning. And I thought this is a good opportunity because we visited them a bunch of times and they have a smart door lock with a code. So we're going to let ourselves at one in the morning. We're letting ourselves in with a code. And I asked Siri AI, what's the code at Mike and Kaylee's house? And it pulled a text message from Thanksgiving of 2020 five the last year I think with the code and you know then you tap and it's got the code

it's got their their address in that message which is tapable so I can just add it to Apple Maps and navigate there and Lauren pointed out that that's not the code they sent to her

so she's like aha take that Siri AI that they must have changed the code but then when we told this story to them they're like oh that code works too that other code also works. So either way. Siri knew. But that's the stuff, right?

Like, it's stuff like that where you're like, I know that they sent us the code. It was probably in messages. I said Mike and Kaylee to give it just enough information that they would. And then it said, I'm searching your mail. Now I'm searching your messages. And it's like, oh, I found it. Here it is. There's the code.

And totally that was the code. So it's good. You know, it doesn't always work. But being able to plumb the depths of your. mail and messages alone plus other apps is going to be great. It is pretty killer when it works. I mean, not perfect, but, you know, the, I find myself turning to it for things that I would have turned to chat GPT or cloth.

Oh, yeah. For that stuff, for the basic, like, knowledge lookup stuff, it works. I had this moment the other day. I was walking down the hill to pick up my kid from daycare, and I looked over as I'm looking down the hill, and you can see the Prudential Center, which is one of the tallest buildings in Boston, from where I was walking down the hill. And I just kind of idly was thinking, I wonder how far away it is.

I can see it from here. And I was walking with my AirPods in. And I just asked, like, hey, how far away is the prudential center from where I am right now? And it's like, oh, it's 3.1 miles away or something. I said, how far is it as the crow flies? And it gave me a short, oh, as the crow flies, it's 2.4 miles or something. And I was like, that was a wild interaction I just had with a robot walking down the hill. It didn't even break my stride.

I just talked to it on my AirPods. It was very, very cool. Yeah. Crows are very efficient, you see. Those are very efficient. They're very efficient. All right, well, that brings us to the end of this show. But before we go, I wanted to point out,

you can hear me and Dan talking about stuff on Fridays in a podcast by becoming a Six Colors member at six colors.com slash subscribe. People like it. Yeah. Big, big show. We don't have, we don't have notes. No. Sometimes I'm doing laundry.

It's pretty, it's chill. It's just like a hangout. Yeah, we're just, what happened this week? What are we doing? Dan hosts clockwise here at Relay. And the rebound, as mentioned, with John Maltz and Lex Friedman at Rebound. Name a more iconic trio, I'll wait. Yeah, reboundcast.com.

And thanks to Lex for the Apple Money song, by the way, as always. And if you missed Mike and you missed my interactions with Mike, I have great news for you. I will be a guest on the connected program this week, later this week, with Mike and Stephen, filling in for Federico. So check that out. I will have less to say about AI than Federico does. Everybody take one seat to the left and be on a different podcast. It seems like that. Well, I was on clockwise last week, and I think I'm on clockwise next week.

Yeah, congratulations. This is vacation time. It is summer of fun. Summer of fun. Anyway, you can send feedback here. Here, follow up, questions, Snelltalk, upgradefeedback.com is the place to do that. Thank you to our members to support us with Upgrade Plus.

This week we are going to be talking about the XT Inc. Weird e-readers that are getting better and better all the time. GetUpgradeplus.com. Find us on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast. Thanks once again to our sponsors, Factor, Squarespace, and Backblaze. But most of all, thanks to you for listening. Until we meet again, Dan, say goodbye. Goodbye, Jason.