Upgrade - 632: [Redacted Apple Information]

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 632 for August 10th, 2026. Today's show is brought to you by FitBod, Daylight, and Backblaze. My name is Mike Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. Good to be here. Summer of fun.

Summer of fun. This summer has been full of news. This is, this summer reminds me of like the lockdown summers. Oh, yeah. There's just so much stuff going on all the time. It's like going on. But it was some summer of fun because, you know, I was away last week. It was really nice to have Dan fill in.

I was really bummed to miss the earnings conversation. You knew that. And I said this to you, but I was, I had that feeling of trying to argue with the episode or like to be a part of the episode while I was listening to it. You don't get to. And, oh, I guess why we're talking about summer of fun, actually, next week's episode, we're going to be, recording and releasing on Tuesday. Right. It'll be a day late. Not Monday. And there's no reason to this

other than Jason's not here on Monday. I'll give you the reason. This is a little bonus Snell talk right up at the top. I will be traveling back from Detroit, Michigan because one of my other less popular podcast is

the Magdum podcast where David J. Laura, Phil and I watch episodes of Magnum PI at random. And we've been doing that. That's speaking of the pandemic. That was kind of our pandemic project, but we're still doing it. And it's usually the last home game Sunday in August, although they moved it for reasons. There is a thing called Magnum Day at the Detroit Tigers ballpark where there's an entire section of people dressed up in Hawaiian shirts in Detroit Tiger hats like Thomas Magnum. And this year, David, Phil and I are all going. to Magnum Day at Comerica Park in Detroit.

And we're going to record an episode while we're there. The three of us have never been in. I don't think David and Phil have ever been in the same room. So wild scenes. And then we're going to, I think, do a meetup with fans of the podcast afterward. But, you know, there's anyway, it's of the Magnum podcast. So, yeah, wild, wild stuff. So I'm going to go to that and that's on the Sunday.

and then I'm flying back early Monday morning. There's no way that we could do the podcast because by the time I get home, you will be asleep. And so Tuesday, one day late. I look forward to hearing about how that goes for you. Man, yeah, we see, I hope, I mean, maybe it'll rain. I don't know, that would be sad. But we'll still have our podcast pals.

You'll still be dressed as mega PI. Yeah, I mean, I'm bringing my, I bought a Hawaiian shirt for it. Good. So, yeah, you know it did. I have a snow talk question for you. It comes from Darren, who says, I feel like we've heard a lot about Jason's home over the years, but I don't recall much about his yard. There's a bunch of questions. You can choose to answer whichever ones you want. Is it grassy? Do you have some kind of exotic California surface? Is it flat or hilly? Is there a fence? Do you have landscaping? What about trees?

And if we want to make the question more technology focused, what kind of equipment do you use for yard care? Is it battery powered or gas powered? Oh, there's a lot of questions here. I live in the flat part of Mill Valley, my little teeny tiny, my little teeny tiny house is on a little teeny tiny lot that is flat. Our front yard used to be grass and then it used to be dead grass and now it is not. It is, there's a gravel path and then there's a bunch of kind of like native plants that are low water use and some drip irrigation along with some little trees and one larger tree that was already there. And so it's really nice to not have a lawn out there and instead have all these other plants. And there's like some citrus trees out there and there's some other flowers and it's beautiful. I'm very happy with how that turned out.

It's lovely. And the backyard is, I have a, I have lawn just in the backyard, a little strip under the redwood tree and out to the back fence, mostly because I wanted a little bit of it because I do on a warm day like going out there in my little camp chair and sitting in the grass under the tree and working out there. It's a thing I like. So we kept that and there's, you know, and so there's more water use back there because we're using the sprinklers. You know, we have droughts here.

So we try to reduce the water use. I have some electric equipment to take care of it. I don't have any gas equipment. My area of, of equipping is so small that that's all that is required. It's very tiny. It's just like, I read these reviews of vacuum cleaners and they're like, well, you know, that stick vacuum cleaner is nice and all, but there's no way that the battery is going to hold out

to vacuum your entire house. It's like, holds out for my house. My house is very small. So my backyard is very small. So, yeah, I guess that's an exotic California service in the front. Flat. There's a back fence to my neighbor, who I know, who lived back there about as long as we've lived here.

Yeah, that's it. Not too exciting, but yeah, cool. grass in the back and California landscaping in the front. That's what they call the Mill Valley Mollet. That's what that is. That's it. That's it. If you would like to send it

a question of your own to open a future episode of the show, please go to upgradefeedback.com and send it in your Snell Talk question. To be clear, the Mill Valley Mollet probably is a hot tub in the back and we don't have one of those. Well, there you go. Aim for it. Yeah. I have some follow-up.

Joel wrote in and said, Update. Getting the 17 Pro Max to replace my 13 Mini has been a great success. I had to get a MagSafe loop to hold on to, but I'm not tempted to try and reach for the far edges of the screen anymore. So good work to Joel. So last week, we had a little mini segment in Ask Upgrade that I put together. That was all the 13 mini questions where people were seeking alternatives. And one of them that was suggested that was, I thought was clever,

was maybe I should just get a Pro Max. I think Joel suggested this for himself because that will prevent, it'll make it impossible for me. He was getting like RSI trying to reach across the screen, and now it's impossible to do that. And I like that kind of like behavioral approach. And then I had another, I had a big, I had my Samsung Galaxy S-brain idea.

You did, as Dan put it, which was maybe you should get a folding iPhone, which I did not advocate for, everybody, but I did say it might work for some people. It won't work for Jasper though. Can you tell us what Jasper wrote? Well, Jasper says I'm an iPhone 13 mini user and I feel the need to

respond to Jason's iPhone fold idea. The iPhone fold will not just be bigger and harder to use with one hand and open. It will also be thicker when folded in my pocket. It does not look appealing to me. Neither was the iPhone Air when I demoed it at an Apple store recently.

Not sure what I'm going to do other than put it in a fresh battery to my and hold out as long as I can. So I wanted to add some context to this. So the iPhone 13 Mini is 7.65 millimeters thick. The Samsung Fold 8 is 9.7 millimeters when folded. I think that Jasper may be more concerned about this than is accurate. I don't think you will notice like 2 millimeters in your pocket.

I don't. I really don't think so. I think Jasper is more concerned about the thick, the thickness of the two layers on top of each other than the width. But I don't know. Yeah. It's just different. That's what I'm saying. The thickness is, there's a two millimeter difference.

Okay. Right? But maybe, yes, maybe they're saying width instead of thickness. Is that what you meant? I don't know. This is the point, the point is, Jasper's not satisfied with my answer. And I think if you have Jasper's attitude, which is this is just not going to work, I'm going to get a new battery. That's what you should do.

Yeah. And then at some point, you're still going to have to choose. But, and maybe by then, you will be able to try whatever Apple is offering and find out what is least defensive to you. But I'm sure, like, there is no good answer here. I do not have a good answer because there is no iPhone mini anymore, bottom line. But I do wonder if the iPhone error might actually satisfy some people and if maybe something like the Pro Max will satisfy some people because it'll just make them give up and say this

is a two-handed phone and kind of move on and that that's what it has to be. But, but yeah, I agree. I think that some people might actually find that the dimensions of the folding phone will satisfy them in a weird way, which is why I thought it was a weird suggestion, but not necessarily a wrong one. I think is a good suggestion. We spoke a little bit about OpenAI's upcoming hardware device. Mark Gorman has published another report. I've got a few details here. He says the device will be shaped like a donut

and about the size of a hockey puck. It will be positioned by OpenAI as an AI-first computer and will feature moving parts and lights that make it feel alive. He kind of indicates that there is more moving parts in this than he was first assuming. And there was just a line in this article that was just very funny to me.

The speaker product was designed in collaboration with Johnny Ives' love from studio. I've also co-founded a device startup that OpenAI acquired last year. So if you want the keeping open AI at an arm's length from Johnny Ive, this is it. Like, I'm still over there. Right. You guys are over here, you know? Yeah. Isn't that weird?

Yeah. Isn't that weird? So they got double Johnny Ivan. They got I.O. and they've got Love From. Or are they saying, and this is a question, or are they saying that this product, or are they saying that this product maybe predates the pushing together of I.O. This was a different kind of Open AI

collab and therefore... It was always said that Johnny was going to remain at Love From when this happened. And so maybe their plan was always that like the products would be a collaboration or could if Johnny was involved, right? IO moves over to OpenAI. Johnny continues Love From.

They continue to collab together. But maybe not every device will be a Johnny I've collab, right? Maybe. I am fascinated by this report, if only because I'm fascinated by the responses to this report. Because, like, John Gruber wrote a thing where he's like, this isn't a smart speaker. This is a friend. This is a buddy. It's a droid that you have to carry along with you.

And, I mean, I looked at it and I thought, oh, boy, it's an Amazon Echo I can carry around with me. hooray, and it has some stuff on it that moves. So I guess Tabletop Robot is the wave of the future, and Mark German had it right. Yeah, also, I want to point out all of those great designers who Mark German used as sources now have, you know, many of them now work at Open AI, so now they're feeding them information from over there instead.

Isn't that nice? I don't know. I, look, I am a person who is very skeptical about broad adoption of speech interface for computer use. I think there are lots of contexts where people are not going to want to talk to devices. Yeah. That said, I also am a believer that having an ambient assistant who you can call on when you're in a space, especially your home, to give you information or act on your requests,

has some value. Now, this is a little bit different because it's like supposedly totable, which, like, so you've got to make an effort to carry it around, I guess, but you do get the value out of it. I don't know. I, I, and again, as I said, I think last week,

I also am skeptical of Open AIs approach to making it a more conversational experience because inserting a lot of silence-filling uh-huhs and then having like a sentence that doesn't say anything while the actual query is going on and then they fill it in with the actual answer. So there's like, oh, yeah, that's a really good question. Oh, here's my answer, right? Instead of just having a pause, I find them, I find all that trying too hard. I mean, I interview people. Sometimes people just talk like that.

I know, I know. I know, but I find it, I find it trying too hard. I think people should try to not do it. And what the problem, Mike, is, have you used the back and forth live speech thing with AI? I have and I don't like it. I don't like it because it's every time, right? Because it has to fill every time

while it's doing its cloud processing and giving you an answer back. So every time you go back and forth with this thing, it gives you a sentence that is content free because it doesn't have an answer for you. I would prefer more silence. Yeah, like if I'm talking to an AI agent, they've become, I feel like in the last few months,

they've become much more keen to just show you a spinner, which I'm fine with. I want you, I'm going to ask, I want you to give me the best answer you can, but yet the voice modes, they're not going to be like, please hold,

which I wouldn't mind if they did do that, but I think they don't want that experience for people. At some point, the echo would do that, where you'd ask you the question and you might get a, hmm, like it's thinking.

Well, Syria AI does it. Syria AI does it, and it plays a little, like, sound effect which I like, you know, and it gives an indication that it's working on things and it has a spinner. And I like that rather than it being like, oh, yeah, that's a great question. Mike, how you been today, by the way? You know, how's it going over there in London? I don't want that. Anyway, I, while I can roll my eyes at a lot of the hype that they do, especially with Johnny Ive, and I think that Open AI as a company is deeply dysfunctional because they're doing lots of crazy stuff.

and Chason, like, I mean, just they seem not disciplined and a mess, but they also have some impressive technology and may end up hitting on something great. And I mean, Samsung's phone strategy early on was a mess. And then they found out something important, which was big phones were really good and people like them. So like something very positive could come out of it. So I'm not going to say this is going to be nothing, but I'll also say that, you know, the challenge is you hype out that we're going to change the world and then you've got a little speaker. But we'll see.

That was into details. Here's some good news. Apple have raised trade-in values for many products as some devices gaining nearly 30% increases. So if you've got a trade-in coming up, they're going to give you more money back for it, which I think is great news, although I still say Apple's trade-in,

they do not give you enough for it. I think Apple should be trying to beat everyone because they get the most benefit and when they get these products back, but it's not how it works. And do you publish today an article like a news article, Apple is going to be producing some Friday night baseball games in immersive video.

Yeah, what we thought would happen years ago when the Vision Pro came out is finally happening. Apple is going to do, starting at the end of this month, there are four consecutive Fridays where a baseball game will be live on Vision Pro. And they're doing it kind of like the NBA in that there will be a bespoke announcer team just for the immersive.

it's a different broadcast. I think they're not going to have commercials. I think it's going to be like sights and sounds of the ballpark in between innings. And so all very interesting. And we'll see how it goes. Unlike the NBA, which was tied to charter cable and the NBA.com app and all sorts of like complexities about like where you could watch it. I watched part of one game and I could never get another game to play for my,

for my, you know, sampling. This is all just through Apple. So if you've got an Apple TV plus subscription and a Vision Pro, you can watch these four games in immersive. And I'm fascinated because I want to know what the creative choices they're making because the basketball court's a lot smaller than a baseball stadium. And so where are the cameras? How are they switching between cameras? They said in their release that they're going to be like floating graphics and stuff in the, like the graphics will kind of be in the air. I don't know. I can't wait to see it.

This is all, it's all like with everything with the Vision Pro. This is early days. This is first television broadcast kind of stuff of like figuring out how this stuff is supposed to work. So I'm,

and I love baseball. So I'm looking forward to it. They're going to be weekly four games starting on August 28th. Yeah, I'll be, there's a Giants game, right? One of them is a giant scheme. There are two giants games.

There's Giants, there's Giants Dodgers in San Francisco and Giant. Giants Dodgers or... Giants Padres. Giants Padres in San Francisco and Giants Dodgers in L.A. Yeah, that's right. And then they don't have a game the last week of the season.

So, yeah. Are the Giants and the Dodgers like long-time rivals? Going back to New York, yeah. Oh, wow. They were both the National League teams in New York. Also, really? And the Brooklyn Dodgers. It goes.

Wow, okay. There's a historic rivalry. Oh, I love it. Yes. So this is what we call a derby game in the UK. You would call it that, yeah. the rivalry, except one of the teams is very, very good and has won the World Series the last two years. And the other team is very, very bad.

Let's go Giants. Yep. Always. Jason was on connected last week, so you should go listen to that. Steven stole our format. He did. He literally stole questions for mask up. Yeah.

And didn't delete them either, which I just thought was real bad. It's like he stole something and didn't close the door behind him. It just made a mess. So I had to go in and remove them from our feedbacks. Yes, I expect most of the thieves who rummaged through my stuff to clean up after themselves. So, thanks, Stephen. I mean, they should, though. If they're going to steal from you, they may as well clean up.

It's like, it's like somebody broke into your house and used your stuff and then left. They didn't take it. They just used it all. So it's like there's like empty peanut butter jars and stuff laying around. Okay, that makes sense. Yes. Because he consumed it all for a podcast. Yeah.

No. But then he didn't clean up after himself either. Yeah. Did not. Yeah. Also, I got to experience what it's like to be on Connect. when you guys have a surprise for your co-hosts? Because that segment just said hold for Stephen.

Yeah, hold for Stephen. With nothing in it. That's what the document says. When someone has a surprise, it says hold for something. Or there was one time, I don't remember what this was, where I had a surprise and I really didn't want them to know there was even a surprise. So I put a fake, I outlined a fake topic. Oh.

And then just threw that out and ambush them with something. I don't remember what it was. With some quiz or something, yeah. It may be. It may have been a quiz. Who could tell? This episode is brought to you by our friends over at FitBod. If you want to make changes to your fitness level, it can be really hard to know how to get started. That's why you should check out FitBod. It is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan that is made for you. FitBod understands that everybody has their own path of personal fitness, so it uses data to customize things to suit you. It will adapt as you improve, making sure every workout remains challenging, pushing you to make the progress that you want to achieve. You will see the best results. When a workout program is tailored to your body, your experience, your environment,

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Once again, that is FitBOD.com for 25% of your membership. And thanks to FitBod for the support of this show and Relay. It's time to lawyer up, Jason Snell. So I have a lawyer up t-shirt. So we have, today I'm wearing my room around-up t-shirt, but we also have a lawyer-up t-shirt. They're available on our Contr Bureau store. And I really like that t-shirt.

But sometimes I'm wearing it when I'm outside, and I'm like, what do people think is happening here? This is the man walking around of a t-shirt that says lawyer-up on it. Yeah, that's weird. So there's been a lot of movement in the last week in the Apple and Open AI Trade Secrets case. I'm going to try to do my best here to give like a real high-level view of all of this stuff. If you want to dig into anything anymore, Jason, please feel free. But I don't know how useful it is to try and give tons of information about what's going on here because it's not really.

I think everything's going to change. But anyway, Apple asked for a preliminary injunction. basically saying they would like to bar two former employees and OpenAI, and OpenAI, I should say, from accessing, acquiring, using, or disclosing alleged confidential information as it moves ahead of its trade secrets case. And they've also asked for expedited discovery to take place, along with depositions for Tang Tan and Chang Liu, who we spoke about last time, along with another Open AI employee, Yuteng Peng, and another unnamed employee.

that is not named in the soup. So there are four people that they want to depose. They have also asked that Open AI should not be permitted to, quote, develop, release, and benefit from products used and developed with the benefit

of Apple's trade secrets. So essentially, my read on this is we want to suck them from releasing any products before they do. For whatever reason. Yeah. By the way, you mentioned

Yuteng Ping. That's Alyssa Ping. That's who, the person who was alleged to be on the, the inside at Apple working with him and getting documents out and then left? And then left to go to Open AI. Good, good calls.

And then there's somebody else who has not been named in the lawsuit or that they want to also depose, whoever that might be. OpenAI published a blog post saying that Apple was, quote, getting it wrong, that the preliminary injunction was based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have nor want any of their trade secrets. in this blog post, which was really weird to just publish a blog post to try and say that this lawsuit was a bad one, they outlined some of the areas that they believe Apple had failed and shared an export of heavily redacted messages between Chang Liu and an unnamed Apple employee. Maybe this was Alyssa Pang, I don't know, right, or somebody else.

With these messages, like it's like you can read it. It's formatted. like an iMessage conversation. But they're really hard to read because everything just says redacted Apple information. But with these messages, they're attempting to highlight Apple's poor security practices, right, that like allowed a bunch of information to get out and that Chang Liu was trying to give it back. This is their PR smokescreen trying to appeal to the public that was nothing like their actual legal response, right? Yeah, which is odd. And as I was reading through, I read all the messages as best as I could because it's really hard to read because you just kind of know information. And what I took away from it was I don't, this doesn't seem to refute the stuff that they were talking about.

This blog post is a mistake. Yeah. This blog post does not serve anything other than to try and like scream into the wild that, you know, don't listen to them. But it also muddies everything up, which I guess benefits them in some ways. My read on this when it came out was this feels like this. This blog post was mandated by a high-ranking open AI executive who said, I'm really angry. We got to say something. And so they put this together.

But it's like, I don't, I think it's a mistake. I think it's kind of an ego trip. I think it's them kind of shouting into the, into the wind. And the irony is that their very good law firm was preparing lots of legal refutations to respond to the suit that I think do a better job. but I think somebody at Open AI couldn't help themselves and was like, no, we, and also consider the path that they've taken here. First, they gave it, gave like a one sentence statement. And that wasn't any good to anybody. It was like, this is baseless and we don't need it, your trade secrets. And then they did like a two second sentence statement. And then that wasn't good enough. So now there's a blog post. Yeah. About this. That is saying a lot of things. It's like, what do you mean we took your secrets? Your secrets were just laying there for us. to take, which doesn't say you didn't take them, right? And you having unclean data practices is not a defense, I think. Anyway, they did finally make a legal defense, which is great because I think the blog post is dumb.

Yeah, on the waveform podcast, they read this and I just have to read it myself because I thought it was just so funny. So this is just an example of one of the messages. Awesome. I was thinking redacted Apple information for redacted Apple information and redacted Apple information for redacted Apple information. But since redacted Apple information was pushed back, then it should get redacted Apple information also. What's the point?

What are we doing here? And I get, you should redact it, right? But like, what are we doing? Like, is that really going to do anything for anyone? Yeah. All of your questions about Open AI receiving redacted Apple information are answered by my redaction of Apple information. It's like, I also, I don't remember where I heard this, I'm listening to our podcast,

admit us on the verge cast. Like, this, this blog post is like an example of a company that is too online. Oh, yeah. They're just like, here's this thing. Like, there's no, there's no context for it. It's like, ah, they're getting it wrong. Like, what are you doing? Like, this is, don't do this before you filed the actual legal stuff.

filed the legal response first. There is somebody who lacks the larger perspective who's like, we got to get out there with this thing. Absolutely. I just don't. And I think also, look, Open AI's behavior shows a lot of a lack of discipline. Yeah. And this is one of those examples where

this blog post, I feel like if there were disciplined communications professionals who had authority and would be listened to, They would be like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do this. Yep. But Open AI is much more of a naked id running around than it is a disciplined corporation, especially for a company of its size and value.

And this is why are we surprised by that? Honestly, that is why Apple's accusations, which seem on their face to be really kind of wild about what Open, they allege Open AI to have done. That's why I give them more credence than I would otherwise have done because I can see a scenario where it's the Wild West inside of OpenAI

and they're making questionable decisions and saying, yeah, this is, I mean, one of their arguments is this is standard industry practice. And like, I have no doubt that they thought that it was fairly standard industry practice, right? It doesn't mean it's legal.

Like we don't know, but like, so I'm more likely to believe that Open AI might be a little fast and loose with their trade secrets and they're asking Apple to bring Apple employees to bring in stuff or planning. Actually, one of the things that they said that did make me laugh a lot. I think this might have been been in the legal case, the legal filing, was they said, why, yes, our, our guy did take the entire document of Apple's employee off-board. procedure. And because Apple alleges they took that document in order to warn everybody who was going to get hired by OpenAI about how to avoid all of Apple's things. OpenAI's legal brief says something like, we just took that so that we could remind people of their responsibilities to Apple so they could do the right thing. And I'm like, sure, sure. We stole that document to remind people not to steal documents.

Come on. So anyway, it's just, I think open AI, I'm not, look, I'm not saying open AI is actually wrong here. They may well be right, but I'm more inclined to believe that open AI is kind of a mess and that they make rash decisions that parts of the organization might not even know about and that they might think are fine because, as you said, maybe a little too online and maybe a little too valley culture. Valley culture, it's like, oh, this is a standard procedure in Silicon Valley is not a defense. No. Because Silicon Valley does a lot of things standard that are bad and maybe illegal. So it's just standard. I'm not sure that's the argument that you think it is.

And that's what disappoints me when I see people saying, this is just sour grapes by Apple because it's mad that they're hiring their people. As I said, like the first time we talked about this when this case broke, is part of what Apple's doing here, trying to create a chilling, trying to make it so it's more difficult for Open AI to recruit people from Apple. We're watching you. Make people at Apple think, oh, I don't know if I want to even step in it with OpenAI. Is that part of what Apple's doing here? Yes. And is it great in California, you can't prevent people from taking their knowledge

and their skills to another job. That is great. And that aspect of this, I'm against. Because those people should do, if they can get a better job, more fulfilling job, doing something at AI when they, I understand when they probably just been designing iPhone iterations for the last 10 years. And now this is going to be more exciting. And they get to go back and work with Johnny Ive. Asterisk, you know, dotted line to Johnny Ive, whatever it is. And tang tan and all of those other people. Great. Like that's, I'm willing to stipulate all of that. However, I do think I'm not satisfied by. people saying, oh, that's all this is. When what Apple's saying is, it's not just that. It's also a plan

to extract information to bootstrap OpenAI's hardware system. And like, as much as I am a believer in people leaving Apple to go to Open AI or wherever else for a better job to ply their trade and do great work, I also am a believer that there is a level

beyond which trade secret law suggests you can't go. Now, maybe trade secret law is so porous and ill-defined and that Apple has not done enough to show that these are trade secrets, that it will all fall apart. It's entirely possible. But like, I refuse to believe that permissive hiring laws in California mean exfiltrating company secrets is allowed, right? There's a line there somewhere.

I don't know where that line is. And a lot of the legal, the Quinn Emanuel filing, that's the law firm that they're using, very good law firm. My sister-in-law used to work there. High-powered litigators. This is serious. This is serious, right? Open AI has found a good law firm to represent them. But a lot of the arguments are sort of like, well, Apple says that it's a trade secret, but they haven't said what.

And, you know, Apple, I think that's fair because Apple's whole filing is kind of like, we don't even know. but we found the pipeline so we would like to investigate here and we'll see where that goes but like I'm willing I think there's a lot of this like it's just complicated but but I have a level of skepticism

about open AI's practices here that I think a lot of other people I'm disappointed that they don't have which is like you know look beyond Apple having sour grapes about their people being hired did open AI cross a line and create a system

where they could remove information and was the reason that they did it because Open AI says, no, no, no, we don't want their trade secrets. But I don't know. Were there people who felt the pressure to build hardware at Open AI who are like, God, it would be really good if we had that documentation from back when I was at Apple. Or in the most, to me, damning individual item, the claim that they represented themselves as having Apple's authorization by going to a supplier for some sort of metal-related finishing thing.

Because, again, that is just, these are red flags to say, they're trying to grab, stuff because they want stuff at Apple that they know is there that would help them do their jobs. And like, that's the limitation here, I think, if they're trade secrets. Let's just think of this, like, from a very kind of like simple first principle of this company level, right? Open AI or ChatGPT was built upon the whole scale theft of content on the internet. Yeah. Yeah. Do I believe that this company may want people to to download thousands of documents to feed into a model to help them build their products? Yes, I do.

Of course. For just a very simple level, I believe that this is very probable because I do not believe that the leadership of this organization cares about this kind of ownership of information because their entire foundation is built upon this whole scale theft of everything that's on the internet taken without people's consent and used in ways that were not, that were, and used against the consent of people who would have otherwise given a different answer for what they were asked.

And then they have continued since the point of this lawsuit came out to kind of show who they are of like these like wild swings and like just not seeming very like put together does not fill me with confidence that everybody knows exactly. what is happening all the time inside of this organization. The whole culture is move fast, break things, ask permission later after you've already done it, like taking all the information on the internet and using it to build your model that gives you an enormous, you know, enormous valuation built on the backs of all the content that wasn't really yours to begin with. And so when they say, look, that legal filing is very much like, show us the trade secrets,

which on one level from a legal perspective, I think is actually a very powerful argument because it's them saying, look, this is very specifically under trade secret law, which is tricky. Trade secrets have to be very specific and specifically established. And we are going to question whether

what Apple is making trouble about here and accusing us of is actually a trade secret. I could also take the other side. And both of these things are true, by the way. Both of these things are true. The other side is that what they're really arguing is, hey, so we stole a bunch of documents from Apple. Are they, if they're not trade secrets, what are you going to do about it? Right.

I mean, that's kind of the argument that Quinn Emmanuel's filing makes is this is all, I mean, it's that classic standard industry practice. It's like people bring stuff. Apple and then there's the sophistry of like, oh, and Apple failed to secure their cloud storage, which is like, okay. I mean, if I forget to lock the safe and you come in and steal all the stuff on my safe. How important it can't be? I mean, it can't be a crime then, which is no, it's still a crime. It's like Stephen's stealing the Snell talk questions, really.

It is, it is just like Stephen Hackett. He is, he should just go work at Open AI. There is a pattern of behavior here. We're going to, we're going to wake up one day and the relay CMS is going to be blanked and all the Google Docs are going to be empty and Steven's going to be gone. And Open AI will be publishing loads of podcasts and we'll be like, oh, now. Now we know what they did it. Yeah. So that's my issue with it is I am fascinated by the fact that they're making a technical legal argument while not really denying the idea that that exfiltrating documents. Like, because to me, that's the core of this is it was there a conspiracy to move lots of important valuable documents outside of Apple?

And I wonder what's the legality of that? And is it going to be ultimately because what Apple's trying to do is pin this on open AI and make open AI stop. I wonder if in the end where we may end up is that they can't prove that Open AI as an organization did this, but they are going to be able to hang a bunch of former Apple employees out to dry for personal behavior instead of it being proving that it's sort of a systematic thing. Although the argument that goes to Tang Tan, who is in charge, he basically speaks for Open AI. So I don't know, but it's just very funny that that's the argument is like, yeah, I mean, we took a bunch of stuff, but like, was it a trade secret? Yeah, let's say it, like even in a scenario though where they just hang this on, let's imagine they hang it on Tang Tan. It still brings the products into question though, right? Like if they're able to say that even if it was one lone individual acting against our wishes, like he's still the head of the hardware.

And so any hardware was built on the back of trade secret. I have to believe that, and this is where I think I maybe side with some of the people who are skeptical about Apple here. it's when I think of what what do you want us to do? Like, what do you want a court to do if it finds that this happened? And I have a hard time imagining that in the end,

open a court is going to order open AI to forego certain methods of hardware development or pathways of production for their hardware. in the end, I'm really skeptical. I know we've talked about this a lot. I'm generally skeptical that U.S. courts are ever going to basically say to some corporation make your products a different way.

Like that it happens, but it doesn't happen that often. And so that makes me think that in the end, what does Apple want here? They want the chilling effect. They want a little revenge. They want to embarrass Open AI and they want to slow them down. And I think that's probably true, that Apple views them as. an increasingly dangerous enemy because they, in their view,

have sort of stolen their team and their knowledge, which, you know, boo-hoo on a certain level. But on another level, like, so then you use, you catch them in what you think is questionable behavior and you use that to maybe rein them in,

maybe stop the flow, and also maybe slow them down and burden them at a time when they want, because this is the other thing is if they're moving fast and they're trying to do all this stuff. And my theory is really a lot of it is about expediency. These people feel under immense pressure to ship products quickly.

And maybe they've cut some corners. Then one of the ways that Apple fights back is by slowing it all down, throwing sand in the gears with all of these legal issues. Because in the end, I'm really dubious that Open AI is going to be precluded from releasing products it wants to release. I think it's just far more likely that it's going to be slowed down maybe. Maybe they'll have to change some things. Maybe they'll have to pay some money to Apple. Maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe some of these other employees will be in some legal trouble.

We'll see. And so on that level, I do think that there's some truth in it. I think if I had to rank them, I would say one is probably, one is probably the chilling effect. number one motivation of Apple is probably let's make everybody think twice about going to Open AI And also chilling to other AI companies, right? Like, so you all think you can start doing this, right? Like, they probably want to do that.

It's like a little refresher about taking our documents, don't. And if you're going to take our people, we can't stop you, but you can't take our documents. Two, I would say in the hierarchy of motivations here for Apple is revenge. really is lashing out. I think it's a classic Steve Jobs kind of thing. It's, it's, you hurt us, we're going to hurt you.

I think that's part of it. I just, I can't, it's part of it. And then three is, maybe we slow them down a little. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like part of two, right? Because, I mean, obviously. No, two is not principled.

Two is, I mean, or it's entirely principled. Three is strategic. It's like, well, this will slow them down. Yeah. Because they're going to have to pay the price. That's the idea. They, they, they misbehaved a little, and this is going to offset their advantage a little bit. And that's right. Two is, these guys are jerks and we want to make them hurt. I think they're a little different. And I do think that's part of it. And they see them as a threat, right? They obviously see them as a threat, like, in one way or another. They're either a threat because they can compete of us or a threat because they're taking up people, right? And it's like, that is threatening. I don't know how you lose hundreds of people who are your experts at hardware design and not think that they're going to threaten the iPhone. Yeah. While we're on this into lawyer up, there's not really much to say on this right now, but Apple has filed a legal complaint in the UK against the government's request to get backdoor

access to encrypted user data in the advanced data protection system again. So this is, this happened a while back and then advanced data protection got kind of turned off from new signups in the UK because the government wanted a backdoor. Then the US government got real mad because they were like, how dare you want information about our citizens? And so the UK was like, we're sorry, big brother. We won't do that anymore. And then a few months later refiled it requesting access to everyone except Americans data. Thanks. And then, so the problem we're talking about this is that the, what the government is asking for, what Apple can provide, and the court proceedings where Apple is saying,

like his filing to say we don't want to do this, is all purposely secret. And no one's allowed to talk about it. So we don't really know what's going on other than the fact that something is going on. But at least this time Apple have said they've mounted a legal challenge.

So I don't really know what to think about all this. And I'm very disappointed. And it ought to be honest. And I'm also personally very annoyed because I turned off advanced data protection because they said everyone will be off-boarded and then that didn't happen and now I can't turn it back on again.

That's right. So, bumer for me. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Daylight. If you run a business on a Mac, you know this challenge. Your client emails are in one place, your notes are somewhere else

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That information is all in the show notes. A thanks to daylight for their support of this show and relay. Room around up time. Yaha. In his power on newsletter, this week, Mark German shared some considerations that Apple is making on the future of the Apple Watch. He starts by saying the main change coming this year is a new processor with increased performance for the Apple Watch series. 12 and Ultra 4.

Be 12, right? The 11 right now, 12 is this year's one? I don't know. Let's just say that. It doesn't matter. This is not the one I have and the one that, yeah, 12. The 2026 Apple Watch, we call that. Yeah, that's right. Apple Walk's 27.

He says that a ceramic case may return for the series line in the next year or two, which has me very excited. Oh, my God. It's the only truly good-looking Apple Watch was the Apple Watch Series 3, white ceramic. Oh, baby. I'll be very happy. I will move away from the Ultra back to the series line if they bring out a ceramic watch again. Oh, man.

We'll know that. Mark says that the Apple Watch is currently being considered. with multiple avenues of future for the product. So things like a version with no display, quote, different types of screens. I don't know what that means. New sizes, round screens have been considered, but less likely,

more premium models beyond Eames and Ultra, and more affordable ones too. Basically, it feels like everything is on the table, which makes me feel like leadership shakeup has happened, right? in the Apple Watch team. Leadership has changed all over the place, right? This feels like a, hey, who's got an idea because this thing needs some work? How this feels to me?

They're like, all of this stuff is on the table. Wasn't this Jeff Williams baby for a long time? It was, yep. And he retired. And now we got John Turnus, a CEO. And then there's been the health changes, which obviously leads in, right? Like, you've got to imagine health and Apple Watcher. Eddie Q, right, is in charge of health stuff.

Yeah, let me jump ahead real quick because there's a fascinating quote about Eddie Q. So apparently Apple are filling the pressure in wearables with an increase in options from competition, smart rings of fitness bands, talk about that in a minute. This is a direct quote from the Bloomberg article. It has ambitious long-term plans to overhaul its health app under the leadership of Eddie Q who took over the responsibilities last year. He's known as an avid fan of whoop and ura rings and is looking to better respond to shifting consumer tastes and the growth of AI-powered health and wellness.

Is he known as an avid fan of these competitive products? I didn't know this about it. According to Mark German, he is. I mean, so what, is Eddie wearing a woup band as well as or instead of an Apple Watch? I mean, wouldn't be the worst thing. People at Apple should probably be understanding the competition. Yeah, I hope he is because they could learn some things,

like a version of the Apple Watch with no display, which would make me so happy. I would love this. I think this is one of those areas where maybe Apple has suffered from the idea that everything, like the original Apple Watch conception was very much like, it's like an iPhone on your wrist and it's going to have apps and all those things. And I think the problem with that is that you end up in this scenario where everything looks like it needs to be an Apple or an iPhone on your wrist. and the Apple Watch is not allowed to be, or the product category is not allowed to be more varied than that.

And this is the thing that I know you and I have hammered on a lot. And I like my Apple Watch and all, but like if Apple Health is important and the health sensors are important, why are you making everybody wear a full-on Apple Watch on their wrist? Why would you not want to note that people have wanted other kinds of wearables to do health stuff that aren't a watch for ages, now. And I get the sense there have not been, let's put it this way, there have not been a lot of

reports that Apple has tried those things and decided that they weren't worth releasing. I've never seen a report that said, you know, Apple did a band, essentially an Apple Watch without a screen or without the full-on Apple screen. And they shelved it, they decided it wasn't good enough or that it, I've never seen a report like that. No. I feel like it became dogma. that they're just going to do the Apple Watch.

That's their health solution. We make computers. That's what we make. Yeah, no better solution exists. And like the only, the closer they've come is putting temperature sensors in the AirPods, right? And like, okay, that's fine.

But. And it has a heart rate sensor now, too, right? The AirPods. Yeah, right. Sorry, temperature and heart rate. I don't understand this. I don't understand why you wouldn't say we've done so much with miniaturization,

and Apple health is so important, that we're going to be able to build other products that will give us important information about you that will serve you in addition to the Apple Watch or instead of the Apple Watch because not everybody wants to wear an Apple Watch. That's the bottom line. It's not everybody does.

Some people have other watch preferences. Well, how do you reach them? And Apple's like, we don't, because they should be wearing an Apple Watch. It's like, well, or you could also make a product using your incredible hardware skills and everything that you built over the Apple over more than decade with the Apple Watch to build something that is low profile, has no screen or has a teeny tiny thing that is basically not a screen so that it doesn't scan as a watch so they can wear that and not wear a watch or wear that in addition to a watch.

Why not? And as for the ring thing, I mean, I don't know if you look at ORA if Apple is actually envious of that business or if it thinks that that business is exactly the kind of niche hardware business that it doesn't want to be in, which is a smart ring. But again,

I don't recall the stories where Apple has really looked into it and seriously considered it and thought that they shouldn't do it, which is what they should decide. Like, they should decide whether they should make a ring or not. Not what I feel like the vibe that I get from Apple is, which is Apple Watcher Nothing,

which I think is foolish. So if they're rethinking all of these things, that's great. I don't think you need to throw the Apple Watch out. I think the Apple Watch is great. Like, it's a perennial. Keep it around. I love mine. But boy, there are other options here. If you really care about health and not the Apple Watch, you say you care about health and not just the Apple Watch, maybe some other health products. I feel like there's something going on where somebody got really mad about wearables, home and accessories, right? Because it feels to me like this whole category is, now in a place where there's a bunch of new stuff coming or potentially coming

where they looked at the wearables home and accessories category and said this is completely stagnant because there's home stuff and even there's like AirPods the experiments with like are we going to put cameras in there and things like that and the and the uh and the glasses are they going to do those and now also this question about the apple watch it feels like that that maybe that was a category that really like you said had a real was drift without a lot of leadership and a lot of vision, and maybe now it's got more a vision, or it's trying to find one, which is good news. Yeah, I mean, I would love just to have a fitness band from them that has all of the

sensors, right? So, like, it does all the health tracking stuff, but also has full detection, car crash detection, like those kinds of things. Sure. But just none of the things that I need a screen for, right? Like, I don't want apps. I don't need it to tell me the time. because I want to wear a regular watch.

I wouldn't mind if maybe it had a tactic motor and it could just alert me for specific notifications I really care about, just like it's tapping you, so you should look at your phone now. I can make a pitch here too, which is once you've got AirPods, like,

I mean, but you'd have your phone with you anyway. You got your phone with you. You use AirPods. It's talking to your phone. It'll alert you. Your phone will alert you. Yeah. It's just, it doesn't need to, you don't need to have a full on watch to have a health experience like that.

I would also say, I would love the option to wear a band for sleep tracking because I'm not, I don't like, I decided I don't like wearing my watch at night. It's too much. But I'd wear a band. And then you could do stuff like, you could set like an alarm and have the band tap you awake. But it would be much smaller. And I could have my Apple Watch. charging overnight and wear the band to sleep and then swap them in the morning. Like I could, I think, yeah, I don't, I don't understand why Apple looked at this and said, we're going to do one product and it's never going to change. And there will be never, there will never be anything else in this category. But that seems to be the last decade. And also, Mark notes that there is a feeling that with Siri AI in wearables, right,

which they're making work with watch OS, it gives them more avenues to try and new things and call them AI devices as well as fitness devices. Yeah. Like, you know, like in this, it's in the screenless, it's wearable, right? Put a microphone in there. Let me talk in my ideas into it, right? Like, why not? You know, like, the processing's all happening on the phone anyway.

And so, you know, just let it do its thing. So I think this is really interesting. And I'm, I'm really excited about this because I want to see them do more. You know, like, we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago with a watch redesign. And for me, I just feel like, Apple Watch is stagnated for like five, six years. Like it just doesn't feel like they've pushed this device into different areas.

And so I'm very excited about the possibility. I don't mind the Apple Watch not changing on its own because, for example, talking to Stephen Hackett, right? Like he's got like Cassio or something. I don't even know. He's got a he's got a watch that has looked the same for decades. they sell all sorts of watches that have looked the same for decades. The Apple Watch series,

as it's currently constituted, is perfectly nice. It doesn't have to be the only thing they do. Yeah. Right? It just doesn't have to be the only one. Hasio have hundreds of watches that they sell, right? So, yeah.

In this newsletter, Mark also shares that Apple feels very confident in the future of the iPhone fold. They're expecting to revise it annually, and the third version is expected to have slightly larger screens. So they're already planning this product out. Great.

I look forward to the summer Samsung announcement with the largest screen in 2028. It leads to the Apple announcement that fall. This is what they get to do. They're going to make the displays. It's fine. I will say, like, you know, the reviews for that phone

are making me so excited about the folding iPhone. Because everyone that's tried that folding Samsung was like, oh, wow, this one, this form fact is fantastic. like people are really excited about this form factor for whatever reason and it feels like one of these things like you kind of got to use it to understand it because it seemed like nobody understood why Samsung would make this and like a lot of the talk was like oh they're just doing it to cover off apple but now it turns out maybe they did it because the form factor's really nice he's just a nice

shape and size so very excited yeah yeah beats beats reports about people 3D printing plastic folding iPhones yeah and It's like a actual phone. Yeah. And this is kind of room around up and follow up. Apparently, according to Mark German, Apple was considering an option for the Apple upgrade program where your device arrived with all of your data preloaded,

which was something we spoke about a few months ago, like the idea of why can't Apple do this. But apparently it was considered to be an optics issue from privacy that you would be shipping somebody's phone with all their personal information on it in a box somewhere. Even though this is a. a solvable problem. I imagine that it was encrypted data that would be only decryptable by you entering in your Apple ID password, at which point it would decrypt it all. I'm sure that's what

they were thinking, but they were still like, people aren't going to understand that. And then it's going to become like a whole thing. And so they decided not to do it. But I still think it's a shame. I think there's an opt-in. Like, absolutely you should do this. But anyway. And finally, Mark Gohmann is reporting that John Turnus is bringing back retired Apple Hardware Engineering Vice President Laura Legros. Legros who would report directly to Ternus acting as a vice president who, quote,

is cross-functionally with different parts of the, works cross-functionally with different parts of the company. And also during her career at Apple, Lagros helped manage product delivery, development schedules and coordination across engineering teams to ensure they remained aligned.

I think it would be interesting to see where Lagros fits on the leadership page and if there are going to be other changes. on September 1st because remember Seruji will be chief hardware officer and so where does this person fit and what else is you going to do? It's exciting times. It's so close.

Sure feels like she's like his fixer, his enforcer feels like that right? Big, I want you to help me deal with big issues across the company and making sure that the sort of like CEO level

so she's almost like his lieutenant for big picture stuff, which is really interesting. And somebody obviously that he relied on. We all made the Big Bob Mansfield reference to. It's the coming out of retirement kind of. I need you. The CEO at Apple needs you and needs your help.

It also could be that she felt like she had done everything that she could. And now suddenly the guy she worked with is the CEO. And he's like, I got some new stuff that's real important. You want to come back? And she was like, all right. Just when I thought they was out. Yeah, no. They pulled her right.

right back in. Speaking of, actually, Ted Lassau's back. So you wrote a review of episode one of Ted Lassau? I wrote a review of the first five episodes. Yeah, I know. Without spoilers. We can't say that, right? Yeah.

Well, no, I mean, this is, look, Apple's embargo for this was really unclear, but the fact is all the TV critics write a non-spoilery review of the episodes that they've seen. and I mean I specifically call out characters who are not in episode one so I mean you tell me but I'm not going to give away like everything that happens but I am giving impressions

about the first half of the season because I've seen the whole first half of the season yeah me too this I'll read a quote from your six calls post I've seen the first half of the season I'm happy to report that though the teams have changed this is still Ted Lassow through and through

thematically the first three seasons are about Ted's journey about Ted's journey is running in running away from a dissolving marriage season four a whole new set of themes begin to emerge

and saying about the three seasons you know Ted Lassar season four is more in tone with Ted Lassar season one I feel like than anything else sure especially because it's building right like we're building a new squad

but I think that that is to say that this is as good as the show has been I think like as good as it is good this show is also at that level. I don't think it exceeds the way Ted Lassar Season 1 made me feel, but I think it's impossible to do that, considering like the time

in which we were watching that show. But it has a lot of all of the things that I love about Ted Lassau are in this. Except for there is a character that is added to the season that I'm not supposed to like, but the amount that I

dislike this character is reducing my enjoyment of the show. Like I really, really dislike this character. and every time they're on the screen, I'm annoyed about the fact that they're on the screen. Is this Coach Alice? No, I love Coach Alice. Okay.

I love Coach Alice. This is a character that's introduced like a couple of episodes in, and I really, really just like the portrayal of this character. Okay, well, I, coach Alice, I wanted to mention. So this is Tanya Reynolds, who was in sex education is the girl who writes the fan fiction

about, like, aliens having sex with her. I haven't seen. show so that is an incredible just random thing to pull but oh i mean well that's that's sex education for you it's great great show um Hannah Wondingham is in it too um so and and jillian anderson for Pete's sake anyway um she's great because what i said in the piece is um this could have been like a gooey love fest where it's like we got the band back together at the reunion show everybody's having a good time. And that character is important because that,

that character is there to make trouble basically and to make it not happy and to make them have to figure out how they're going to approach with the women's team. And that is necessary. You need, you need to have some lessons for Ted. You need to have some opportunity for growth. He wants to be her mentor and doesn't understand how to do that,

which is good. Yes. So I really, I like that character a lot. And she gives opportunities for Tedisms, right? The little lessons of like

pieces of wisdom. Also true. That he can impart. My other note in the, in the piece is that I love Roy Kent. I love Britt Goldstein. I think he feels the least integrated.

Like so much of it is perfectly natural because it's still at Richmond and it's still the Richmond football club. But now we're looking at the, at the women's club and the meds club is still there but like all we really ever see of it is that Roy Kent appears from time to time

it's almost like he's in a cameo from a different show that is happening in parallel he keeps walking into the bar and the audience cheer yeah and and my feeling is that such a strong character that he either needs to be more in or less in than he is but I get why he's there because Brett Goldstein is under contract and it's a very popular character

I also appreciate the irony that this character has been relegated to being about his relationship with Keely because I like the turnabout there that this is the manager of the men's team but on this show all we care about

is his relationship status which is what women what female characters it happens to them all the time so that Roy Kent is getting that too at the same time I'm like I love seeing Roy Kent again, but I don't know why he's there.

He feels extraneous. I like it. I know what you mean. It is weird, but I do like, I like the journey that his character is going on. But yes,

it does sometimes feel like he's shoehorned into the show. Like, where's the rest of the team? Or you just see someone running away in the distance and here's Roy. You know? Where's everybody else?

Yeah. And in fact, I think what I'd like more is if they had leaned more into the idea that Roy is on his own show. Like, referencing kind of a subplot that's happening on the show that you're not seeing would actually be kind of funny. But they don't really do that. It's more like he runs into Keely and everything's really awkward. Like one episode he comes in and he's wearing an eye patch, you know?

It's like, why is he wearing the eye patch? Like, no, don't worry about it. Or worse, you know, Beard says, oh yeah, that thing. And then he's like, yeah, that thing. And we're like, what, what thing is that? And it's like, you'll never know. Because that's on that show that doesn't exist. I mean, also just like, there's the reason that he's in the show is because like he's

produced, right? He makes the show, right? Like, Brett Goldstein's one of the creative team. So like, it's easy to have him on. Plus, he is obviously a fan favorite character. Right. I think, I think that's it. If Roy Kemp was not in the show, people would be like, where's Roy?

Like, it would be a deal. And so they pick the right person to keep on. But yeah. Every second Roy is not on screen. People are asking, where's Roy? Yeah. loving it. Like, I'm, I'm really enjoying it. I think it's good. I was relieved because, again, I was, I was, I was, you never know, right? That this was going to be, um, yeah, they, they, they're just trying to make this happen and it's not going to happen and they were done and I wish they would have stopped. And I've seen a bunch of sort of very cynical, uh, takes on it that are like, why are they doing more of this? They finished. And it's like, I mean, you know that they're very popular like series of books where a book finishes and then they do another book. later and then they do another book after that.

This is kind of like that. But some people are like over it. It's like whatever. I read one review was amazing. I read a review that was basically like, Ted Lasser was never very good and it still isn't. I'm like, who is this for? What is that review for?

Who are you trying to communicate with other than, you know, yourself? But anyway, I had trepidation about it. I was like, can they really redo this and have it be good again? And it made me laugh. And I enjoyed it. So I'm, you know, I'm through five episodes. I'm very positive about it.

Me too. I'm loving it. There's a couple more, actually. I think Jason on the screen is, which I've watched too. Well, we'll have to get to those. But I've only seen through five still. We'll get back to it. The ways of the Apple TV screeners app are mysterious.

Yeah, it's a... Very mysterious. Sometimes, Jason, sometimes it doesn't look like this in episode. But if you just tap the... thing at an episode place. So, it just never know. You never know. And other times, it looks like you've got all the shows.

But if you tap any of the shows you don't have. You don't have them. It dies. Yes. Crash. Fascinating. Mysterious ways. Mm-hmm.

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slash upgrade with the code upgrade 20. Our thanks to Backblaze for their support of this show and all of Relay. It is time for some ask upgrade questions. Niehow wrote and then asks, I seem to remember you talking about the Spider-Man comics that you've loved and I want to know where you recommend starting. I would give two points that I would like to recommend for people, and I believe that we agree, at least on one of them. The ultimate, the original Ultimate Spider-Man run. Yes. By Michael Bendis.

From 2000 and through 2009 is my favorite overall kind of spider. I have all of those as hard covers. I have the whole run as hard covers. It's a shelf on my bookshelf, yeah. Absolutely brilliant. It's a modern retelling and recasting of the classic Spider-Man mythos. So instead of it being spun out by various writers over the course of 30 years from the 60s and having all, you know, it's kind of ungainly and a mess. And then from that, movies took little bits.

This is like a retelling, a masterful retelling by the same one writer, Brian Michael Bendis, and I think only two artists over the course of a decade telling a lot of the same beats of the Spider-Man mythos in a more kind of modern context. and it's really, really good. Yes, really good. And yeah, it is like the classic, like, he's a kid, right? Like, it's Spider-Man's a kid, and you're going to do it all over again. And some of the characters aren't who you think they are or don't act the way you think they're going to act really good. Yeah, yeah. And that's where Miles Morales comes from, by the way, is that comes out of that series.

So that's where Miles Morales from the Spider-Verse movies is his origin is, in the ultimate Spider-Man. Yeah. There is also a run on the Amazing Spider-Man by Nick Spencer. I'll have links to these in the show notes. Good writer, Nick Spencer. This run, it's a more adult Spider-Man, and some of the issues of this are just unbelievably good.

This is a really, really good run of Spider-Man that I recommend to people. I recommend it in this order. I recommend Ultimate than Amazing Spider-Man because they're dealing with different things. So yeah, I recommend both of those Spider-Man rules. Yeah, and my other Spider-Man recommendation is not Spider-Man. It's Invincible from Image Comics by Robert Kirkman,

now a popular Amazon Prime video show. It is Invincible is a love letter to teenage superhero angst comics, of which the prime example is Spider-Man. It is very clearly a Spider-Man-esque story, even though Invisible is more Superman-like in his powers. But it's about family and sadness and relationships and betrayal and also lots of punching and flying in capes. And that's a complete, like Ultimate Spider-Man,

a completed series. I think the Amazon Prime show is actually really great too. Yeah, I've only heard good things about that show. I haven't seen you. Great show, really good adaptation. But Invincible, Kirkman, while he was doing The Walking Dead, also was doing Invincible.

And it's like the two different sides of his personality where there's this like black and white, dark, awful, apocalyptic story. And then this brightly colored love letter to superhero comics. And I love it. I also have the complete run of Invincible

on my bookshelf because I love it so much. I read like half of Invincible. I think I like read and caught up and then just fell off. I was very thankful for, Invincible because I was reading The Walking Dead and at one point just had to tap out. Like there's this, there's this, yeah, it's the same point that made people tap out in the show. Yeah.

Right. And it's just, it gets, walking dead gets to a point and it's like, I don't know how anyone can continue with this. I got to that point in the comics, couldn't do it anymore and then went to Invincible. because I really liked the way that he tells stories, but he just went. It just goes too far. Walking Dead goes too far. Also, by the way, in the comics,

that is so much worse than it is in the TV show. Thankfully, they didn't do everything on the TV show that they did in the comics. It is, I just can't believe the places that it went to. Logan writes in, the section two weeks ago about upgrading now versus waiting until September is really making me think. On the one hand, the idea of the fold is really intriguing to me

as often as I wish I had an iPad many for things like reading or social media and having the fold meet that need would be great. On the other hand, coming from a 15 Pro, which I could stick with for another year or two easily, getting a 17 Pro that will last me in other three to four years with a price bump seems like a good idea, help. I think if you have choice, Logan, then just wait. like if you could afford the potential many thousands of dollars of iPhone fold,

I would say don't upgrade and just wait it out. Like yeah, you might pay more if you're going to then upgrade to the 18 and that will suck. But you, you know, it's like I would, I would wait. I would wait too because the other thing is there will be a bunch of refurb used 17 pros out there. Yeah. And if the fold doesn't do it for you or is too expensive or whatever, you could do a kind of like a partial upgrade to a 17 Pro, which is a really good phone, even if the 18 Pro is out,

for probably a reasonable price as a used or refurb. Yeah. And maybe that's the way you do it if you don't like the fold after all. Mike writes in and says, what is your current launcher setup and what are your thoughts on Siri AI being integrated into Spotlight on the Mac so far?

I struggle to use it, to remember to use it, because I just don't think in those terms, but it's been okay so far. My current status is I have Spotlight on CommandSpace and I have LaunchBar on Command Shift Space. And I mostly don't use Launchbar. Actually, and this is my note for Apple,

and I should probably find a utility that does this. But my most used reason to use launch bar is that launch bar will insert an emoji when you type the name of the emoji. You literally just type grimace and hit return and the grimace emoji goes where your cursor is. Yeah, okay. And I know there's like Rocket,

but that one is like... That's what I was going to recommend Rocket to you. But that's like with colon expansions and stuff. It's just like... Yeah, I like, well, what I don't like is that Rocket then happens in context where I don't want it, but then I tell it not to be there and then it's not available in other contexts. And command space or command shift space and typing and hitting return is perfect.

It's a better way. I like it better than using Rocket. And so maybe there's another utility out there that just does that or maybe I'll just keep using LaunchBarr as an emoji launcher. But my note to Apple is Spotlight should insert emoji. That's my note to Apple. Spotlight should insert emoji. But anyway, I'm mostly just using Spotlight and it's fine and it works pretty well.

And when I use the Siri AI stuff with it, it works. It's just that mostly I don't think about that. But sometimes I do and I use it and it works pretty well. Not perfect, but pretty well. Yeah. I don't know if in Brockett maybe you can like change the thing that you used to bring it up. Maybe that would be helpful to you. I can't find the rocket preference pain because I hit it from the menu bar.

And now I just can't open the preference. Of course. I just can't do it. So got that going on for me. I need a good menu bar utility, but I'm waiting now. I figure I don't want to. Well, I'm not using Tahoe. And I know that Tahoe has some function.

So I'm just kind of just going to wait and see what that's all about. Like, and I don't want to invest. That's what I mean, Golden Gate. I mean, not really. It's just going to protect. Well, I know. broken and golden gates, so I don't want to get too attached to one. Anyway, that's a problem for another time.

I use Spotlight. I'm happy with Spotlight, and I've started using PaySpot 3 for Clipboard, instead of Spotlight Clipboard or anything else. Oh, I'm still using LaunchBarr for Clipboard right now. And David wants to know. I was curious if you had seen or had any comment on Jamie Ding winning on who wants to be a millionaire. I don't. I didn't watch it, but I saw that he was on,

and I'm a big fan of Jamie. And was that for charity? I don't know. He was with, he won with Ben Affleck. I don't know how charity millionaire works. I assume that it all goes to charity. I think it all goes to charity.

Usually, it's like two really famous people. Yeah. I bet Jamie got paid something to be there. Yeah. Or maybe he donated to charity because he is that kind of guy. I love Jamie. He's great.

And it's not a surprise that you won millionaire, right? Like, it's not surprised. Not surprising. He knows everything. Jamie, I learned this on my tape day. Jamie Ding learns everything. Oh, I have a, but I have a related.

I'm going to do a little pre-announce here. All right. Which is, I'm going to pre-announce a segment that you're going to see in the Relay St. Jude Podcastathon this year, which is Glenn and Dan and I are going to play a game that is similar to, but legally distinct from Jeopardy. Is this like who's the best? Who's actually the best? you put them off against each other.

Well, it's just one game. So, you know, it's just one game. We did a practice last week using this, um, online, uh, Jeopardy, like, Schmephedy tool. Well, it's called J-Party. Okay. Totally different. Jay Party. Get it?

Oh, yeah. And we are, we, uh, it works great, actually. It was a lot of fun to play a game of Jeopardy and, um, to be full disclosure, um, Dan one. Dan one. Dan won. I was close. He had to answer right in final. Glenn was also present, although Glenn knew, turns out, knows everything about gardening. I had no idea. There's a gardening category, and he killed it. But that was just a sample based on an old Jeopardy game. But we have a custom board created by a listener who is also a trivia host who used to be a writer for a trivia podcast

and came to us and said, I would love to write a Jeopardy-like, legally distinct set of questions for you guys to play, and I said, why don't we do that for St. Jude? So we're going to record that in advance, and then all of us in Memphis will get a 30-minute break when that runs, which is great,

and I think people will love it, and I look forward to it. So that's a little forward promotion of Jeopardy-related items, is that we're finally going to get the throwdown between me and Dan and Glenn. I can't wait. see who wins. I can't wait to see that. I can't wait to see that. I can't wait to play it.

That's going to be good times. Yeah. If you would like to send us your fee, I'll put a link in the show notes, by the way, to the winning moment. I did watch the winning moment. It's pretty cool of Jamie Ding on Milina. You can send us your feedback, your follow up, your questions, over at UpgradeFeedback.com. I would like to thank our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. You can get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week. You can find a video version of the show.

this show on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast. I'd like to thank our sponsors of this episode. That's the fine folk over at FitBod, Daylight and Backblaze. But most of all, as always, I would like to thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.